Overview

The promise of digital advertising was precision: right message, right person, right time. No waste. But here's the uncomfortable truth, while we've been obsessing over hyper-targeting, consumer behaviour has already shifted without us. 90% of Canadians now consume CTV. Less than 50% still have cable. And 60% of their time is spent on the open web, not walled gardens.

The question isn't whether CTV matters. It's whether we're measuring it correctly, or optimizing ourselves into invisibility.

About Vince is the Head of DSP Sales at Yahoo Canada, where he works closely with the country's top agencies and brands to achieve their marketing goals through Yahoo's advanced programmatic advertising platform. A 25+ year advertising veteran, Vince has deep expertise in programmatic, CTV, and data-driven media. He previously launched AdTheorent in the Canadian market and is an active voice in the Canadian digital advertising community through IAB Canada.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vincesimone

00:00 - Intro - The unification challenge for marketers

01:25 - Guest intro - Vince Simone, Yahoo

02:32 - What's different about this moment in CTV

04:05 - The evolution of CTV data - from freebie to foundational

06:04 - TV is now just "video" - the pipe goes everywhere

08:01 - Programmatic as the unifier - Samba partnership

10:01 - The cost waterfall problem - fraud, duplication, inefficiency

12:17 - What people misunderstand about DSPs (it's decisioning, not bidding)

13:37 - Buzzword that needs to die: "Hyper-target"

15:22 - The promise of digital vs. the reality of reach

17:05 - Reverse engineering the customer journey

18:52 - Is CTV actually about scale, not precision?

20:21 - The persona trap - seeing people as fractions of themselves

24:23 - Suppression lists vs. over-engineered targeting

29:07 - Consistency as the multiplier across linear, CTV, digital

31:18 - Dynamic creative optimization vs. many cuts

34:00 - The 60/40 split - CTV in no man's land

37:15 - The one metric to stop obsessing about: Last click

39:07 - How the best marketers layer MMMs, lift studies, and last click

42:10 - The "remove the logo" test for distinctiveness

44:22 - Over-optimizing before campaigns settle

46:00 - Dashboard updates vs. business data timing

46:56 - What excites Vince: AI agents, Netflix inventory, unified systems

49:20 - Where to find Vince

1. Sleeping Barber Podcast: 8 Fundamentals of Effective Marketing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJVEd9YXag&list=PL8Dcu1vikGN38ABGV4iuRQV1GmaAMvUSQ&index=1
2. Yahoo DSP: https://www.yahooinc.com/our-solutions
3. IAB Data Label: https://iabtechlab.com/press-releases/iab-tech-lab-finalizes-data-transparency-standard-compliance-program-to-advance-data-collection-best-practices
4. ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/pr-2025-08-programmatictrans