Radically Candid: Learn about Streaming TV advertising.

In this episode of Radically Candid, host Bill Schomberg sits down with Matt Burke, Director of Sales Engineering. Tracing his career trajectory from early DSP acquisitions to Amazon and ultimately joining Cognition as employee #11, Matt reflects on what it takes to thrive in a fast-growing tech environment. He shares key insights on embracing change, building psychological safety through trust, and why cultivating genuine curiosity is the ultimate driver of personal and team success.

Who's This Conversation For?

• Professionals interested in joining a fast-paced, high-growth tech company who want an inside look at Cognition’s leadership style, team dynamics, and hiring criteria.
• Managers seeking strategies on how to foster psychological safety, give teams autonomy to fail and innovate, and break down departmental silos.
• Anyone looking to build in rapidly evolving markets and learn how to continuously adapt their role to meet changing business needs.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1.) Embracing Change as a Prerequisite for Growth Matt discusses his career transition from Amazon to Cognition, emphasizing that constant change is not just inevitable in tech, it's required. 

• Staying adaptable allows both individuals and organizations to avoid stagnation and continually innovate ahead of the market.

2.) Psychological Safety Fosters True Innovation By grounding operations in core values like DIRT (Dare, Innovate, Respect, Trust), leaders give their teams the autonomy and psychological safety to fail, learn, and iterate quickly without fear of blame.

• Cognition’s culture actively encourages taking calculated risks.

3.) Cross-Functional Collaboration Drives Collective Success Matt highlights how learning occurs across all experience levels, from industry veterans to fresh graduates, and explains why bringing other teams along is critical to building a high-performing organization.

• Growth happens when employees look beyond their strict job descriptions. 

4.) Hiring for Genuine Curiosity Success at Cognition comes down to candidates who want to understand the broader industry landscape, solve complex problems, and actively contribute to the company's collective growth.

• When evaluating prospective team members, Matt places high value on innate curiosity.

In this episode of [radically candid], Bill Schomburg steps into his new role as host and sits down with Ruhan Gagnani, Advertising Operations Analyst at [cognition].

Tracing his journey from navigating a corporate downsizing to intentionally seeking a fast-growing, ambitious company, Ruhan reflects on how [cognition]’s fast-paced environment, open leadership access, and culture of personal accountability have driven his professional growth.

Who's This Conversation For?

This conversation is for young professionals, company culture leaders, and recent career pivoters who want an inside look at how high-growth startups empower employees to make a real impact and own their career paths.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1.) Intentionality Drives Career Transitions

Ruhan shares how moving on from a company downsizing led him to seek a role with real purpose rather than just taking any available job. 

• By looking for an ambitious, fast-growing company, he found an environment where his everyday work directly impacts company goals.

2.) Open Communication and Feedback Accelerate Personal Growth

Ruhan discusses how receiving constructive feedback from leadership, and feeling comfortable offering feedback to managers and peers alike, creates a strong accountability model that helps everyone continuously improve.

• A thriving feedback culture requires two-way transparency. 

3.) Big Market Gaps Offer Massive Career Opportunity

With only a fraction of total ad spend currently in Streaming TV, Ruhan highlights the huge market potential in the industry. 

• Capitalizing on an emerging landscape creates clear career paths and endless room for team members to innovate and expand into new verticals.

4.) Living Core Values (DIRT) Drives Culture and Autonomy

Cognition's core values of Dare, Innovate, Respect, and Trust to encourage employees to step outside fixed job descriptions. 

• Ruhan explains why refusing to say "that's not my job" and daring to solve new challenges helps build high-performing teams and a sense of shared accomplishment.

In this episode of [radically candid], Ava Hinds, Marketing Manager sits down with Bill Schomburg, Workplace Development Advisor as she prepares to hand over the mic to him as the new host for Season 4.

Tracing her two-year journey from recent college graduate to Advertising Operations Analyst to Marketing Manager, Ava reflects on how [cognition]'s culture of psychological safety and continuous learning allowed her to shape her own career path.

Who's This Conversation For? 

This conversation is for marketers, HR leaders, and recent college graduates who want an inside look at building a supportive workplace culture to encourage continuous professional growth.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1.) Creating Initiative to Drive Internal Growth Ava shares how transitioning from operations to marketing required more than just expressing interest. 

• By taking on responsibilities and showing eagerness every day, she demonstrated her readiness to earn her spot and step into leadership.

2.) Psychological Safety Empowers Employees to Fail Overcoming the fear of failure is essential for personal and organizational growth. 

• Ava discusses how an environment grounded in psychological safety allows team members to communicate openly, take risks, and view failure as a necessary step in the learning process.

3.) Intentional Weekly Meetings Build Stronger Teams Ava shares how her team structures every week with themes, such as Leadership Tuesdays, Book Club Wednesdays, and Friday Highs/Lows. 

• She shares that this maintains momentum, encourages continuous personal development, and strengthens team alignment.

4.) Care and Curiosity Define Success Technical skills can be taught, but genuine curiosity and care for the work cannot. 

• Startup environments thrive when employees bring high commitment, alignment with core values, and a shared passion for making a real impact.

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Michael Lieberman, CTO at [cognition], for a recap of the platform’s Q2 evolution. 

Building on the foundational work of Q1, Michael walks through the newest features designed to accelerate media execution, including automatic Amazon ad tag injection and expanded DV360 measurement. 

Who's This Conversation For?

This conversation is for digital marketers, ad tech professionals, and [cognition] partners who want a behind-the-scenes look at how the platform's infrastructure is evolving to solve real-world media execution, measurement, and attribution challenges.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1. Automation Removes Operational Friction Michael explains how the new automatic ad tag makes launching campaigns easier. 

• By removing a manual operational step, partners can instantly get signals back to the DSP, which directly fuels better targeting and faster optimizations.

2. Full Journey Insights Expose Hidden Obstacles Tracking a user from a Streaming TV ad, to a mobile search, and eventually to a dealership's site reveals more than just media performance. 

• Michael highlights how this full-journey visibility helps advertisers pinpoint exactly where to optimize, whether that means adjusting the media spend or fixing a roadblock in the website's user experience.

3. DV360 Enhances Measurement and Attribution Rolling out measurement and attribution reporting for DV360 allows advertisers to seamlessly evaluate performance within the Google and YouTube ecosystems. 

• Paired with Amazon, the platform now covers the primary environments where audiences are actually consuming media.

4. OEM Programs Need Faster Reporting In large OEM organizations, waiting in a queue for an analytics team to return a report slows down critical campaign adjustments. 

• Q2's updates focused on delivering these insights much faster, allowing OEMs to make agile decisions without the traditional lag time.

5. Unifying Tools Sets the Stage for the Future Bringing together disparate technologies from past acquisitions into a cohesive workflow has been a major focus this quarter. 

• While individual features, like custom audience dashboards, might seem minor on their own, they drastically improve the effectiveness of media execution and lay the groundwork for some exciting, unannounced releases coming in Q3.

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with [cognition]’s Development team, Zachary Loughridge, Lauren Haven, and Cody Thurber. In this conversation we talk about how the platform is actually built behind the scenes. 

Who's This Conversation For?

This conversation is for anyone curious about how software engineering teams actually operate, professionals thinking about a move into development or ad tech, and those who want an honest look at how developers turn product requirements into real-world solutions.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1. Planning Takes Up More Time Than Coding While it might seem like developers just sit down and hammer out code, the reality is much more iterative. The team explains that a large majority of their time is spent planning out the architecture and running through proofs of concept.

• Building small, step-by-step iterations and running them by the product team ensures they build what is actually needed.

2. Less Is Always More When Building New Features A common misconception is that because it's "just code," everything should be built in at once. The developers emphasize a minimalist approach when starting out. 

• It's much cleaner and more efficient to start small and add complexity only as it's truly needed.

3. AI is a Massive Accelerator, But Not a Replacement Tools like Claude have revolutionized the team's workflow by automating repetitive tasks, performing safety checks, and acting as a sounding board to summarize unfamiliar codebases. 

• However, the team warns against relying on it to code for you if you don't understand the underlying architecture. AI can easily send a developer down a rabbit hole of over-complex, unoptimized code if they don't know how to evaluate or fix its output.

4. Context Switching is the Hardest Daily Problem Developers are often juggling multiple applications, workspaces, and codebases simultaneously. 

• An interruption or a high-priority bug fix means mentally resetting and remembering how different repositories and architectures are handled.

5. Curiosity is Your Best Career Asset For anyone looking to break into development, the team’s biggest piece of advice is to be wildly inquisitive. You don't have to know everything before you start, in fact, knowing everything is impossible. 

• Thriving in this role means asking a million questions, daring to fail during trial and error, and taking the time to deeply understand the business side of ad tech so you can build better solutions.

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Travis Pedersen, Product Manager at [cognition], for a conversation about how products actually get built in ad tech. Travis walks through what his day-to-day looks like, how an idea travels from a client request all the way to live in the platform, and why attribution has become one of the biggest players in the industry. Along the way he breaks down the work happening around Headless Analytics, bulk tools, and stitching together the full customer journey across DSPs.

Who's This Conversation For? 

This conversation is for anyone curious about how product gets made, professionals thinking about a move into ad tech or product management, and those who want to understand how client feedback turns into real platform features.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1. Being a Former User Makes a Better Product Manager Travis spent years managing advertising campaigns before moving into product, and that background shapes how he builds. He keeps the user top of mind and works to make their journey as easy and frustration-free as possible.

• When you've been the person inside the platform, you understand why a clunky workflow makes someone not want to come back. That empathy is what turns features into experiences people actually use.

2. How an Idea Becomes a Feature Travis explains the path from feedback to launch. The team gathers input from internal and external users, looks for commonality, and prioritizes the changes that make the biggest impact.

• Sometimes one user flags a small fix that turns out to affect everyone. Other times pattern emerges, like several people struggling with attribution because their list sizes are too small, and that theme points toward a bigger vision for the platform.

3. Product Enablement Is in the Room Early Travis breaks down how he collaborates with developers and product enablement throughout the build. Enablement helps scope requirements up front and returns once there's a working shell to run through use cases.

• Bringing enablement in early means that when a feature rolls out, the sales team and account managers already understand it well enough to apply the new capabilities for clients.

4. Internal and External Releases Need Different Mindsets Travis describes why an internal release and an external launch call for different playbooks. Internal users often get early access and a chance to help expand how a feature is used.

• External releases require more communication. Users should never discover a new feature without being aware it's coming, so external launches lean into detailing exactly what's new.

5. QA Is Where the Edge Cases Surface Travis walks through the testing process, from basic unit tests on the code to users running happy path flows and a few edge cases. The goal is to catch the weird stuff before it reaches broader clients.

• Sometimes a user tries a tool in a way it wasn't designed for, and a bug appears. That moment matters. Maybe the tool could be used that way, and catching it early is what keeps the external experience clean.

6. Attribution Is the Industry's Biggest Shift Travis points to privacy and customer attribution as the most significant change in advertising. Eight years ago it was click attribution. Now the work is getting down to user attribution and pulling it into a unified view.

• This is where HAT (Headless Analytics Tag) comes in. While clean rooms inside Google and Amazon handle attribution from sales lists, HAT helps stitch together the full customer journey across different platforms and devices, so the whole picture comes back into one report.

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Alexandra Mills, Director of People at [cognition], for a conversation about how to build a career in Streaming TV. Alex shares what actually gets a candidate noticed in a fast-growing company, why curiosity and caring matter more than a perfect resume, and how [cognition] protects its culture while doubling in size.

Who's This Conversation For? 

This conversation is for job seekers who want to stand out in a competitive streaming TV market, early-career professionals breaking into ad tech without a traditional background, and hiring leaders thinking about how to scale a team without losing what makes their culture work.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1. Soft Skills Can Matter as Much as Your Resume Alex explains why [cognition] looks past the black-and-white of what's on a resume. Your skill set and background help, but how you show up as a human is just as important.

• A candidate without prior experience can come in with fresh eyes and learn how the team actually works.

2. Authenticity Beats AI-Generated Polish Alex revisits her own advice from last year, know thyself and be authentic, and applies it to a world where most applicants are using AI to some degree. The tool isn't the problem. Replacing yourself with it is.

• The tells are easy to spot: robotic phrasing, generic copy, the same opening line everyone else uses. Use AI as a companion to express your authentic self, not as a substitute for it.

3. Your Digital Footprint Should Tell One Story Alex uses the "one shoe" analogy to explain why your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile all need to be cohesive and updated. You wouldn't show up to work missing a shoe, so don't show up online with a piece of you missing.

• Cover letters are often optional, but Alex recommends including one. What stands out in the sea of templates is a specific reference to the company's website or work, or a genuine personal story that ties to how you'd show up in the role.

4. The First Three Seconds Set the Tone Alex can tell a lot about a candidate by how they open the call. Energy and warmth go a long way, and nerves are completely human.

• Saying "I'm a little nervous, but I'm so excited to learn about this" lands far better than a flat "hi, nice to meet you." Caring is the through-line and a flat open sets the tone for the rest of the conversation.

5. The Interview Is a Two-Way Street Alex encourages candidates to interview the company right back. Asking thoughtful questions doesn't read as ungrateful, it signals you're serious about the role.

• No questions are off limits. Ask about benefits, the day-to-day, your future manager, expectations, and next steps. The best interviews feel like a conversation you don't want to end.

6. Bet on Potential, and Protect the Culture as You Grow [cognition] is intentional about taking chances on people who don't have the perfect background but show real potential. Alex points to her own role, which didn't exist until she pitched it.

• The company doubled in the last year, but the goal isn't a headcount number, it's growing strategically. That means promoting internally, rewarding hard work quickly, and keeping the small things sacred, from Friday lunches to office candy-tasting contests.

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Ilka Pritchard, Director of Account Management at [cognition], to dig into one of the most critical parts of the business: client relationships. From onboarding through long-term partnerships, this conversation covers what it takes to manage, scale, and retain the accounts that keep everything moving.

Who's This Conversation For?

This conversation is for anyone who wants to understand how strong client relationships are built and maintained in the programmatic and Streaming TV space. Whether you're in account management, working alongside it, or just curious about how [cognition] approaches partnership, this one's for you.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1) From Choir Tours to Ad Tech (0:45) Before [cognition], Ilka spent 11 years organizing international choir tours. That same instinct, building trust and helping people succeed, carried directly into her pivot into ad tech.

• Great AM skills aren't industry-specific. Curiosity and relationship-building translate anywhere.

2) The AM Team Is the Voice of the Customer (2:40) Day-to-day account management runs on constant communication, internally and externally. Ilka explains how the team brings client feedback to product and tech, advocating for clients in every internal room.

• 💡 Key Takeaway: Great AMs have their clients' backs internally. That advocacy turns a vendor into a partner.

3) Responsiveness Without Instant Answers (4:30) Being responsive doesn't mean having an immediate solution. Acknowledging the request, communicating progress, and following up when promised builds far more trust than a half-formed response.

• Trust is built in the follow-through, not the first reply.

4) Retention Comes From Active Listening (5:26) Three months or three years in, complacency is the killer. Ilka makes the case that retention hinges on active listening and tying every interaction back to value. Sometimes what a client asks for isn't what will actually solve their problem.

• Clients renew when they feel heard. The questions you ask matter as much as the answers you deliver.

5) The Lifecycle Starts Before the Contract (7:13) The client journey begins well before signature, sales discovery, internal and external kickoffs, and a cadence built around what success looks like for that client.

• A great kickoff sets the tone for everything that follows.

6) You Don't Need Every Answer, You Need to Care (9:04) Ilka looks for people who like working with people, bring curiosity, and have demonstrated respect and collaboration. 

The biggest mistake? AMs who think they need every answer themselves instead of leaning on the team.

• Authenticity is the filter. If someone shows up willing to learn and stay themselves, the rest can be built.

7) Data Only Matters in Context (14:49) Reporting is essential, but only when tied to what the client cares about. The team surfaces trends, raises flags proactively, and connects every number back to the client's broader goals.

• Data without context is noise. The value is in the connection.

8) Programmatic Misconceptions Worth Addressing (16:27) From "I didn't see my ad, but I know it's working" to preamp vs. FAST, Ilka shares the misconceptions she hears most and why education is core to the AM role.

• The clients seeing the most success aren't asking whether to do programmatic. They're asking how to integrate it.

Connect with Ilka on LinkedIn here!

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Michael Lieberman, Vice President of Innovation at [cognition], to recap what the team has been building in Q1 and where innovation is headed for the rest of the year.

Who's This Conversation For?

This conversation is for anyone who wants to understand the technology and strategy behind [cognition]'s platform. Whether you're a partner looking to get more out of your measurement capabilities or someone in ad tech curious about how cross-channel measurement and Streaming TV attribution are evolving, this one's for you.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1) What the Headless Analytics Tag Actually Does Michael walks through how HAT connects the dots across the entire customer journey, from a Streaming TV impression to on-site activity to a form fill. Using a real-world example of someone watching Amazon Prime, searching on their phone, and landing on a dealer site, he explains how HAT stitches that full path together in a way traditional attribution tools can't.

• HAT isn't just another pixel. It's two components working together, on-site tracking and a pixel on the creative, to give clients a direct line from impression to conversion.

2) Cross-Channel Visibility Is Expanding HAT doesn't just measure Streaming TV. Because of the on-site tracking layer, clients are also gaining visibility into how search, social, and other channels are performing alongside their streaming campaigns. Michael explains how combining all of those signals is becoming a bigger part of what clients expect and leverage.

• Measurement isn't siloed anymore. Clients are starting to see the full picture of how every channel contributes, not just the ones [cognition] executes on.

3) OEM Programs Are Getting Smarter A big Q1 effort focused on helping clients who run OEM programs better manage, filter, and report on those campaigns. Michael shares a fun insight about how customer paths don't always go in a straight line, sometimes a tier-three ad sends someone to the OEM site first before they end up exactly where the ad intended.

• The data tells a story. Customers get where the ad wants them to go, but the journey is more complex than most people assume, and now clients can see that.

4) Media Execution Is Getting Faster On the execution side, Q1 was about making the managed service team more efficient and effective. Michael explains why speed of execution is one of the biggest pieces of value [cognition] brings to partners, and why a lot of behind-the-scenes work went into making that faster this quarter.

• Not every innovation is client-facing. Some of the most important work is operational, helping the team move quicker so clients see results sooner.

5) DV360 and Beyond [cognition] has been enhancing its DV360 offering with plans to integrate and support more platforms in the months ahead. Michael frames this as part of a larger mission: providing measurement and insight across every channel and DSP clients are working in, not just the ones [cognition] started with.

• The vision is platform-agnostic measurement. As new channels and DSPs are added, clients should expect consistent insight no matter where their media runs.

6) What's Next and Why Michael Is Excited Looking ahead, Michael points to new technologies, clean room capabilities, and the speed at which the team can now bring new products to market. At its core, the goal is the same: give partners the tools and insights they need to grow their business, because when they grow, [cognition] grows.

• The pace of innovation is accelerating. What's coming in Q2 and beyond is going to give partners yet another reason to lean into the platform.

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Renuka Lakra, Senior UX Designer at [cognition], for a conversation about why design is one of the most undervalued growth levers in business. Renuka shares her perspective on how great UX closes the gap between a product and the people using it, why function always comes before aesthetics, and how a single design decision can move millions in revenue.

Who's This Conversation For? 

This conversation is for startup founders who want to understand how design drives real business outcomes, anyone building or managing a software product who wants to invest in UX the right way, and designers looking for language to advocate for the strategic value of their work.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1. UX Design Is Function Before Aesthetics Renuka reframes what UX design actually is and why it belongs at the start of the software development process, not the end. A product is a tool, not a piece of art, and if it doesn't function the way users expect, no amount of visual polish will save it.

• Learn why the word "design" creates confusion and why terms like UX strategy or UX architecture better communicate what the work really involves.

2. Empathy Is the Designer's Most Important Tool Renuka walks through two everyday examples, Gmail's forgotten-attachment reminder and Canva's template library, to show how the best products anticipate user needs before users even realize them.

• Gmail isn't showing you a beautiful screen when it catches a missing attachment. It's preventing a mistake and building trust. Canva's templates aren't there to look pretty, they're there to remove the paralysis of a blank page so someone with zero design skills can produce professional work in five minutes.

3. One Design Decision That Doubled Airbnb's Revenue In 2009, Airbnb was nearly dead at $200 a week. The founders flew to New York, knocked on doors, and found the problem, terrible listing photos. They rented a camera, took professional shots, and revenue doubled in a single week.

• Same platform, same listings, same city. Just better photos. From 2010 to 2012, bookings went from almost nothing to nearly 5 million nights. 

4. Amazon's One-Click Checkout and 300% Conversion Lift People already knew what they wanted to buy. The problem was the checkout process had too many steps, and that's exactly where the drop-off was happening. Amazon reduced the entire flow to one click.

• Conversion rates went from 2.5% to over 10%. More people who wanted to buy something actually completed the purchase.

5. Give Designers Goals, Not Tasks Give your UX designer a North Star goal, not a feature to design. Make them part of your product strategy and let them understand your business.

• Airbnb's goal was to increase bookings. Spotify's goal was to keep users listening longer. Duolingo's goal was to bring users back every day. None of those are feature requests. They're real business problems, and that's exactly where design should start.

6. Dark Design and Why Values Come First Renuka opens up about dark design patterns, the manipulative UX tactics some companies use to make it harder for users to cancel, unsubscribe, or leave. 

• If your values don't align with designing against the user, don't do it. As a UX designer, Renuka's stance is clear: she advocates for users, always.

Connect with Renuka Lakra on LinkedIn here!