The AI Edge Podcast

No guest this week, just Shiv and Myles answering listener questions in their first-ever mailbag episode. And the questions got deep.

Your hosts unpack this and so much more.

Then things get existential: How can we tell if AI is speeding up good judgment or slowly eroding it? And what AI workflows do Shiv and Myles actually trust enough to use every day at U of Digital?

Shiv confesses his secret Claude projects, Myles admits his "workflow" is just opening another browser tab, and they both tackle whether we should be measuring the quality of human judgment before worrying about AI making it worse.

Plus: synthetic audiences, B2B data garbage, and why anti-sycophancy technology might be the thing nobody's talking about.

New episodes every Monday. Get your AI Edge here. 

Simon Poulton searched for toilets in Google's AI Mode and saw his first AI-generated ad. That moment confirmed what he's been saying for months: Google's already won the AI platform wars, and OpenAI has 12 months to prove otherwise.

This week, hosts Shiv Gupta and Myles Younger sit down with Simon Poulton, EVP of Innovation & Growth at Tinuiti, to break down the AI platform wars and what's actually happening behind the hype.

They dig into why Google's distribution advantage beats model quality, what happens when ChatGPT remembers your furniture preferences from six months ago, whether agentic advertising is real or just a stunt, and why brands keep building AI tools they don't actually need.

Plus: Simon's take on vibe coding, the rise of "agentic deference," and what marketers should actually be doing right now instead of chasing every shiny AI object.

Link to Tinuiti's 2026 AI Trends report we referenced in this episode is available here.

New episodes every Monday. Get your AI Edge here. 

Myles wrote a piece saying agentic commerce is coming fast. Andrew Lipsman rebutted, calling it a "collective hallucination." The discussion got interesting, so we brought it to the podcast.

This week, hosts Shiv Gupta and Myles Younger sit down with Andrew Lipsman, Independent Analyst & Consultant in Retail Media, to hash out whether AI agents shopping on our behalf is real, or just another overhyped trend like Facebook Shops and Google Shopping.

They also dig into Disney's $1B OpenAI bet (licensing Mickey Mouse to Sora), Criteo piping commerce data into LLMs, Google bringing ads to Gemini in 2026, and the big question: if agentic commerce takes off, does retail media collapse?

The episode ends with "Convince Me," where each gets 60 seconds to sell the other. Good stuff. You don't want to miss it. 

New episodes every Monday.

Black Friday 2025 was the inflection point: AI shoppers converted at double the rate, AI traffic surged 805%, and brands finally learned that if AI can't see you, you don't exist.

This week, hosts Shiv Gupta and Myles Younger are joined by Heather Macaulay, President of MadConnect, to break down what the Black Friday data actually means, unpack Scott Brinker's massive 2026 Martech Report, and tackle the elephant in the room: the decade-old divide between AdTech and MarTech is finally collapsing...and most marketing teams aren't ready.

Heather also unpacks why integration is harder than it looks, what Amazon's walled garden strategy means for other retailers, and where most brands are getting AI readiness wrong. Plus the big hard truth: AI won't fix bad data; it amplifies it.

If your org chart still separates AdTech and MarTech, this episode is your wake-up call.

The big questions: Are we teaching AI to tell us what we want to hear? If AI only knows the past, who discovers the future? And what happens to the $50 billion market research industry?

This week, Shiv Gupta and Myles Younger dive into the biggest AI announcements shaking up advertising right now, including the Amazon vs. Google AI agent wars and what happens when ad platforms automate the work agencies used to do.

For the main event, Chad Reynolds, Founder & CEO of Vurvey Labs, talks synthetic audiences: what they are, how brands are using them to test ideas without recruiting real people, and why Vurvey's approach is different. Chad's building AI models powered by actual human data from 3 million people, not scraped internet content. He reveals where synthetic audiences work (and where they spectacularly fail), how to validate AI-generated insights against real behavior, and whether we're headed toward a world where market research happens entirely without humans.

The question isn't if synthetic audiences will replace traditional research, it's when. You don't want to miss this one.

New episodes every Monday.

Welcome to Episode 1 of The AI Edge Podcast!

Mark Zuckerberg is skating to where the ad puck is headed — and that destination is full automation. In this week’s episode of U of Digital Live!, we break down Meta’s bold plan to fully automate advertising with AI by 2026, and what that could mean for agencies, marketers, and the entire ecosystem.

But we’re just getting started. Also on this week’s rundown:

Madison and Wall say ad spend is still climbing — we look at what’s fueling the growth  

WPP drops a major AI play with Open Intelligence — a glimpse at the future of creative automation?

 A pair of big tech mergers: Salesforce + Informatica and Snowflake + Crunchy Data — and what they reveal about the next wave of the data economy  

It’s AI, ad forecasts, mergers, and media — all decoded and debated by the U of Digital crew. If you want to stay sharp in ad tech, this is your weekly must-listen.

AI is taking center stage — and so are we. In this episode of U of Digital Live!, we break down the flood of news coming out of two of the biggest events of the week: Google I/O and Google Marketing Live. From product updates to strategic shifts, we unpack what it all means for marketers and the adtech industry.

Plus, we dive into:

OpenAI’s partnership with Jony Ive and what it could signal about the future of AI-powered devices

Chase Media Solutions is making serious waves — how did a bank become a rising star in retail media?

Join the U of Digital crew as we make sense of all the noise, connect the dots, and share the insights you won’t get anywhere else.

Fast news. Smart takes. All things adtech.

In this episode of U of Digital Live!, we dig into one of the biggest headlines shaking up the adtech landscape — Microsoft is sunsetting its DSP. What does this mean for the industry? Who wins, who loses, and where does this leave advertisers?

In this episode we also break down:

The latest buzz from the 2025 Upfronts — what's changed, what's hype, and what's next.

ChatGPT stepping into the world of product recommendations — a signal of the future, or just another tech experiment?

A roundtable discussion with the U of Digital crew on the biggest stories and shifts happening across adtech right now.

Whether you're a seasoned programmatic pro or just trying to keep up with the ever-evolving ecosystem, this episode has insights, hot takes, and a little healthy debate.

Tune in, stay sharp, and get schooled — U of Digital style.

In this episode of U of Digital Live!, we dive into Google's latest bombshell: the company has officially announced that it will not prompt users for consent to enable third-party cookies as it begins phasing them out. Instead, the burden is now on consumers to dig through settings and opt in themselves—a move with huge implications for the digital marketing ecosystem.

We unpack what this means for privacy, user experience, ad tech, and the future of personalized advertising. Then, things get lively with a real-time group discussion featuring audience reactions, hot takes, and sharp perspectives on whether this shift is a step forward or a missed opportunity.

Tune in for an unfiltered, insightful conversation that every marketer needs to hear.