Radically Candid: Learn about Streaming TV advertising.

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Bill Schomberg, one of [cognition]'s founding advisors, to go all the way back to the beginning and explore how culture, values, and relationships built the foundation for everything the company is today.

Who's This Conversation For?

This conversation is for anyone who wants to understand what makes [cognition] different from the inside out. Whether you're a new hire trying to understand the DNA of the company, a long-time team member who wants to hear how it all started, or someone on the outside curious about what a values-driven ad tech company actually looks like, this one's for you.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1) How It All Started Before It Started Bill wasn't looking for an advisory role, he didn't even know it was a possibility. After connecting with Carson at a digital dealer meeting and having a two-hour conversation, an unexpected email and phone call changed everything. He joined [cognition] before most people knew it existed.

• The Payoff: Sometimes the most important roles aren't ones you apply for. Community and genuine connection open doors you didn't know were there.

2) The Founders Learned to Disagree In the earliest team conversations, Bill noticed a problem: nobody pushed back. Everyone agreed, which meant most of the room wasn't adding value. Today, that dynamic has completely flipped. Different opinions are welcomed, and that shift is one of the biggest reasons the company has scaled the way it has.

• 💡 Key Takeaway: Agreement isn't alignment. Real growth starts when people feel safe enough to challenge each other.

3) DIRT Values and the SOIL Framework Dare, Innovate, Respect, Trust, the core values that spell DIRT aren't just a poster on the wall. Bill connects them to his own framework, SOIL (Signs of Intelligent Life), drawing on his upbringing around Nebraska farming to explain why healthy culture, like fertile soil, has to be intentionally tended season after season.

• Culture isn't maintenance. It's constant effort, accountability, and expectation, and [cognition] treats it that way every day.

4) Failure Is the Fastest Way to Learn Bill shares the image of a brick wall where the failure bricks far outnumber the success ones, and that's exactly how it should be. At [cognition], failure isn't a setback. It's expected, encouraged, and treated as the engine behind innovation.

• The company is on a rocket ship trajectory, and the people who thrive here are the ones who let go of the idea that failure is a negative.

5) You Can't Teach Someone to Care When it comes to hiring, Bill and Ava land on the one quality that matters most: caring. Skills can be taught, products can be learned, but showing up every day wanting to make an impact is something a person either brings with them or they don't.

• That's the filter. If someone cares, everything else [cognition] needs from them can be built.

Connect with Bill Schomberg on LinkedIn here!

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds goes deep into the world of Account Management with four Enterprise Account Managers at [cognition]. From what the role actually looks like day-to-day to the soft skills that separate good AMs from great ones, this episode is an honest, inside look at what it takes to build lasting client relationships in the ad tech space and why the shift to Streaming TV is changing everything about how value gets proven.

Who's This Conversation For? 

This conversation is for anyone considering a career in account management, agency and brand partners who want to understand what makes client relationships actually work, and anyone curious about how Streaming TV is reshaping the way advertisers measure success and ROI.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1. What Account Management Really Means AJ Gardner and Annie Monaghan break down the hybrid nature of the AM role, part strategist, part consultant, part advocate. Before any recommendation gets made the best AMs start with one thing, listening.

• Learn why understanding a client's business, differentiators, and gaps matters more than pitching a solution and how that approach shapes every interaction from onboarding forward.

2. The Full Client Lifecycle Annie walks through what it looks like to bring a new client into the platform, from onboarding to ongoing optimization.

• Getting a client in the driver's seat isn't just about platform access, it's about making sure every internal team, from Operations to Finance to Product, understands what success looks like for that partner.

3. Proactivity as a Retention Strategy AJ shares a real example of how noticing a pattern across a handful of dealership requests led to a fully packaged live sports and CTV bundle shared proactively with agency partners before they ever asked.

• This is the mindset the whole team operates with, don't wait for the ask. Stay on the pulse, anticipate the need, and show up before the client has to.

4. Trust Is Built in the Hard Moments Kirsten Scutaro and Kelly Bourbonnais get candid about what client retention really comes down to and it's not perfection.

• When something goes wrong, how you show up to fix it matters more than never making a mistake. Clients stay because they trust you, and trust is built through transparency, in-person connection, and accountability.

5. The Streaming Shift And Why the Data Changes Everything The team breaks down why the move from traditional TV to Streaming TV isn't just a media trend, it's a measurement revolution.

• From [cognition]'s Headless Analytics Tag to real-time attribution that connects ad exposure to actual consumer action, streaming unlocks insights that traditional TV never could. Go-to-market time is cut in half, and reporting can be set up and delivered in real time.

Connect with the Guests

• AJ Gardner (Enterprise Account Manager)
• Annie Monaghan (Enterprise Account Manager)
• Kirsten Scutaro (Enterprise Account Manager)
• Kelly Bourbonnais (Enterprise Account Manager)

Interested in joining the team? 

Account Manager and Account Coordinator roles are currently open. 

Reach out to Alex Mills or visit [cognition]'s careers page.

Click here to get a demo

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Alex Bronkar, Product Enablement Specialist at Cognition, to pull back the curtain on what it really means to be the bridge between Product, Development, and the rest of the organization.

Who's This Conversation For?

This conversation is for anyone who wants to understand how ad tech products get built, refined, and rolled out across a growing team. If you've ever wondered how client feedback actually turns into a new feature, or what [cognition]'s six products do and how they connect, this episode is for you.

What You'll Learn By Listening

1) Why the Bridge Role Exists Alex traces his path from Operations Analyst to Account Manager to Product Enablement, a role that was born out of necessity. As [cognition] grew, someone needed to translate between the Development team building the tools and the people using them every day.

• The Payoff: Faster onboarding, fewer miscommunications, and a direct line from client needs to product improvements.

2) The Feedback Loop That Builds Products Not all feedback is created equal. Alex breaks down the three categories every request falls into: bug, user error, or enhancement, and explains how that classification determines what happens next.

• 💡 Key Takeaway: If the team ships a product and no one says anything, they've failed. The feedback loop is the engine behind every product improvement at [cognition].

3) From Manual Creative Swaps to a Full Ad Server One of the best examples of that feedback loop in action, creative swaps used to mean downloading and re-uploading videos across multiple platforms. That pain point evolved into a file transfer system, which eventually became [cognition]'s own ad server.

• Start with the manual process, identify the friction, then build the tool that eliminates it.

4) A Crash Course on All Six Products Alex walks through every product in the [cognition] suite: Media Studio for campaign management, Measurement Studio for performance and attribution, Data Studio for audience creation, Creative Studio to create advertisements, Ad Serving for multi-platform creative delivery, and Planning & Insights for tying it all together into a media plan.

• Headless Analytics is the connective tissue that will increasingly tie all six products together, giving clients a unified view of the customer journey across touch points.

5) What's Next? Faster, More Dynamic, and Fully Connected Alex sees the product roadmap heading toward speed and scale, think 100 videos uploaded in 10 minutes, with Headless Analytics as the key to making the entire suite work as one cohesive platform.

Connect with Alex Bronkar on LinkedIn here!  

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds goes deep into the mechanics of Streaming TV advertising with the leadership team at [cognition]. From the technical how-to of dynamic creative to the strategic shift from demand capture to demand generation, this episode pulls back the curtain on how dealers and agencies can finally see inside the black box of Streaming TV.

Who’s This Conversation For?

This conversation is for anyone looking to move beyond vanity metrics and master the technical side of Streaming TV. Listeners will discover how to navigate fragmented data across Walled Gardens like Amazon and Google while shifting from search-heavy budgets to a holistic attribution model. 

What You’ll Learn By Listening

1. The Why vs. The How of Streaming Ads

Adam Holt (Vice President of Product) and Collin Davis (CTO) explain that while streaming feels like a new medium, the core strategy remains: Being the Translation Layer. [cognition] acts as the bridge between complex DSPs (Demand Side Platforms) and the end goal, selling a vehicle.

• Learn how [cognition] uses a library of B-roll and automated tech to get campaigns live in minutes, solving the "I don't have video content" pain point.

2. Creative Studio & The Power of Dynamic Tags

The team breaks down how Creative Studio and Media Studio work in tandem.

• By using a certified ad server, [cognition] can update offers and inventory within a video ad dynamically. If a car sells or a price changes, the ad updates automatically without needing a new video file.

3. Measuring the Black Box: Overlap & Attribution

Tim Daher (Vice President of Sales) and Amber Daniel (CRO) tackle the transparency issue in programmatic buying.

• Tim reveals that even when buying across different platforms, there is often only a 10% overlap in audience reach, meaning incremental reach is higher than most marketers realize.
• The team discusses why relying solely on Search is dangerous and you are letting the market dictate your future. Streaming TV doesn't just capture demand, it creates it.

4. The 90-Day Clock

While most dealers are obsessed with the 30-day sales cycle, the [cognition] team argues that success is driven by the 90-day clock. By influencing the consumer journey earlier through streaming and programmatic video, the 30-day bottom of the funnel results take care of themselves.

Key Takeaways

• Using Data Clean Rooms to match impression data with sales records without exposing PII.
• A sneak peek into [cognition]’s roadmap, including deeper integration with DV360 and YouTube to complement their Amazon DSP expertise.
• For agencies that struggle to get weekly data from dealers, [cognition] leverages third-party registration data (like Polk) to prove ROI automatically.

Connect with the Guests

• Adam Holt (Vice President of Product) 
• Collin Davis (CTO)
• Tim Daher (Vice President of Sales)
• Amber Daniel (CRO) – Reach out at [email protected]

Click here to get a demo of the first unified streaming media activation and measurement platform for agencies and enterprise teams.

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Aqua Bailey, Operational Support Lead at [cognition], to pull back the curtain on how data actually moves from a dealership’s sales floor to a high-performing digital campaign.

Who's This Conversation For?

This conversation is for anyone looking to understand the technical back end of attribution. If you’ve ever wondered how to prove an ad actually sold a car, or what exactly happens inside a Data Clean Room, this episode is for you.  

What You'll Learn By Listening

1) Why Lower Numbers Can Mean Better Data Aqua explains the critical role of de-duplication. In the DSP, numbers might look inflated because one person saw multiple ads. By using Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), Aqua’s team identifies the unique individual behind the clicks.

• The Payoff: You get a true metric of reach and a realistic ROI, rather than vanity metrics that count the same person five times.

2) Understanding Data Clean Rooms (DCR) Data privacy is non-negotiable, but data access is essential. Aqua breaks down the DCR as a secure, private filing cabinet that stores inventory, impressions, and sales data while protecting PII (Personally Identifiable Information).

• 💡 Key Technical Takeaway: [cognition] leverages a 95-day backfill window, a massive advantage over other platforms for tracking long-term trends and maintaining client trust.

3) How to Track Sales Without Sharing Sensitive Data For clients hesitant to share first-party sales data due to privacy concerns, Aqua introduces the Polk/DMV integration.

• By pulling registered buyer data directly from the DMV, [cognition] can aggregate matchbacks to prove campaign effectiveness without the dealer ever having to export a customer list.

4) Turning Past Data into Future Audiences Data isn't just for reporting, it’s for targeting. Aqua discusses how segments, built from either first-party sales data or previous conversion events, are pushed back into the DSP to create high-intent audiences.

• The Strategy: If you have over 2,500 impressions, you can turn that data into a retargeting powerhouse to reach the people who almost bought.

Connect with Aqua Bailey on LinkedIn here!

In this episode of [radically candid], Matt Wilson, Vice President of Digital at SilverBack Advertising, discusses his non-linear career path and the power of listening to your market with Tim Rowe.

Who's This Conversation For?

This conversation is for anyone looking to redefine their career path or stand out in a crowded marketplace...of any sort - whether its as a career, as an agency, or within the programmatic or streaming media space. 🚀 

What You'll Learn By Listening

1) Why Audience Matters More Than Your Ego 

Matt’s first radio show originally covered both baseball and NASCAR. But when he and his co-host realized the audience only wanted to hear about NASCAR, they pivoted to an all-NASCAR format. 

And the payoff?

By putting the audience first, the show was picked up by an ESPN affiliate station. Proof that true success comes from listening to your audience.

2) How to Design Your Dream Job (even when it doesn’t exist…yet)

Don’t wait for the opportunity, create it.

Matt shares his story of inventing roles for himself that didn't exist yet, the importance of working hard to build a reputation, and why "everyone is in sales"- especially when you are the product.

💡Key Career Takeaway: Show your strengths, be enthusiastic about the work you want, and back it with hard work (“just get it done mentality”). 

3) No one-size-fits-all strategy

Every client is unique. Different goals, different problems, different definitions of success.

The right approach isn't, "Here's our playbook." 

It's, "Let's talk about your goals and how to achieve them."

4) Streaming TV is powerful, but education & proof matter most

Matt explains that the key is to educate clients and prove value from the start. SilverBack Advertising's highest-performing campaigns use tools like retargeting and smart identity solutions to provide undeniable proof that the ads are working on a smaller scale.

The job to be done is creating "investment confidence," and that comes from education. 

See also: #3 No one-size-fits-all strategy, be consultative and prescriptive.

5) Being “Seen” vs “Effective” 

Seeing is believing, but this game is about dollars and cents.

"Why haven't I seen my own ad?" is the most common question Matt hears when talking about Streaming TV advertising.

And the answer?

You are not your target audience.

So if you don't see your own hyper-targeted streaming ad...that might be a good thing. It means your system is working and is optimizing for impact (vs vanity metrics). 

Ready to get all of the lessons?

Listen to the Full Episode Now!

The trend lines show that AI is only getting smarter and more complex, so how do you ride the wave without getting crushed by it?

We are given three options:

• Be in denial 
• Run for the hills when change occurs 
• See it on the horizon and plan ahead 

In this episode of [radically candid], Whitfield Athey, Chief Operations Officer at [cognition], discusses these changes and how to plan for the disruptions AI will cause in the next 2-3 years with Tim Rowe.

Who's This Conversation For

This is an important conversation that businesses (and families alike) should be having and taking into account during decision-making. AI has become the sharpest knife in the drawer and is evolving both entry-level and senior positions in a business. Given the magnitude of complexity this technology will have, it's more important now than ever to understand it quickly and get ahead.

Why?

The way you can get ahead with your team is by accepting that "the only constant is change" and putting a focus on how you can help your clients successfully navigate it themselves.

Want to connect with Whitfield? Find him on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitfieldathey/).

🎧 Episode Highlights 

This week on [radically candid], Tim Rowe sits down with [cognition]'s Chief Revenue Officer, Amber Daniel, to break down the massive shifts rocking the advertising world—from the streaming takeover to the rise of AI search.

⏱️ Quick Takeaways:

• Streaming Drives Search: Did you know? As much as 30% of all website traffic originates from someone seeing a Streaming TV ad.
• AI is Changing Search: According the Pew Research Center, 26% of all searches end after being presented an AI summary.
• Creative is the New Targeting: In a world of data, an emotional connection is what wins. Pro-Tip: Dynamic, personalized creative that resonates is more powerful than targeting alone 💡

Want to connect with Amber? Find her on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/amberdaniel/) or email her at [email protected].

🎧 Episode Highlights This week on [radically candid], Tim Rowe gets a behind-the-scenes look at recruiting and culture building with our Head of People, Alexandra Mills of [cognition].

⏱️ Quick Takeaways:

• People vs. HR: "People" isn't just the new HR—it's about fostering a holistic, supportive ecosystem.
• Authenticity is Key: In the age of AI, being your authentic self in resumes, cover letters, and interviews is your biggest advantage.
• Cover Letters Matter: A tailored letter that shows you've done your homework makes a huge difference.
• The Interview is a Two-Way Street: Come prepared to ask questions and see if the company is a true fit.
• Culture in High-Growth: Building a great culture relies on trust, communication, and "psychological safety."

🎙️ Episode Deep Dive:

• Standing Out (08:45): Find out what's actually being standing out to recruiters reviewing your resume (and how to do more of the right stuff)
• Acing the Interview (14:50): Be prepared, but not robotic. Remember you are interviewing them, too—don't be afraid to ask about compensation, benefits, and team dynamics.
• Building Culture (19:28): Alex discusses navigating hyper-growth while maintaining a strong culture through psychological safety and living the D.I.R.T. values (Dare, Innovate, Respect, Trust).
• AI & Hiring (28:45): Learn how AI is changing recruiting and how to leverage connections to get noticed by a human.

🎧 Episode Highlights [radically candid] hosts Brian Dukes (Exitwise) to demystify M&A for founders. Learn to destigmatize exits, prepare from day one with financial hygiene and a strong team, and turn M&A into a strategic win. Brian shares how proactive planning and Exitwise empower this journey.

⏱️ Quick Takeaways (2-min read)

• The Stigma: Demystifying M&A—it's strategy, not failure.
• The Timing: Why exit planning should start from day one.
• The Prep: Early document & financial hygiene is non-negotiable.
• The Mindset: Business management focus over founder entrenchment.
• The Wins: Proactive planning creates M&A success.

🎙️ Setting the Stage (00:00:00)

• Meet Brian Dukes: M&A expert, Exitwise Managing Partner
• Episode Focus: Navigating Mergers & Acquisitions for founders

💡 M&A: Opportunity, Not Failure (00:01:01)

• Shifting founder perspectives on selling your business
• Viewing M&A as a strategic growth path, not an end
• Overcoming fear and hesitation around exit conversations

⏳ The Exit Timeline (00:03:21)

• M&A prep isn't just for late-stage companies
• Integrating exit strategy considerations from day one
• The power of proactive planning vs. reactive decisions

📂 Document Hygiene Essentials (00:05:40)

• Critical records: Employee agreements, client contracts, IP
• Streamlining due diligence before it officially starts
• Clean paperwork = smoother, faster M&A process

📊 Crafting Your Financial Story (00:07:33)

• Key elements: Revenue history, customer concentration, projections
• Presenting a clear, compelling value proposition to buyers
• Making financial assessment easy and attractive for acquirers

🧠 Founder to CEO Mindset (00:11:00)

• Moving beyond startup hustle to structured, scalable growth
• The role of delegation, process, and sustainable systems
• Enhancing overall business attractiveness for potential M&A

🚧 Navigating M&A Hurdles (00:13:14)

• Common obstacles: Valuation gaps, due diligence deep dives
• Managing the emotional rollercoaster of negotiations

⚠️ Avoiding M&A Pitfalls (00:14:43)

• Recognizing signs of poor preparation & unrealistic expectations
• Keeping emotional decision-making in check
• The danger of neglecting core business operations during talks

🏆 M&A Wins: The Power of Prep (00:19:57)

• Real-world examples of founders achieving favorable exits
• How platforms like Exitwise facilitate successful outcomes
• Strategic planning directly leading to strong buyer interest

🎯 Serving the Lower Middle Market (00:22:36)

• Addressing the unique M&A needs of this often-underserved segment
• Tailored support, strategies, and opportunities

🔬 The Value of Sector Expertise (00:25:21)

• Deep industry knowledge as a significant deal advantage
• Understanding specific sectoral trends and buyer motivations

🔗 Resources & Next Steps (00:28:00)

• Accessing valuable tools on the Exitwise website (e.g., free valuation)
• How to connect with Brian Dukes and his team for guidance
• Continuing your M&A education journey beyond the episode

🎬 Listen to the Full Episode A deep dive into the preparation, mindset, and strategies demystifying M&A and unlocking successful founder exits.