In this episode, Corey and Joe sit down with Jake Vachal, Managing Director at Raine — a leading banker with a practice focused on Adtech. Jake discusses what's really driving M&A activity right now: a more deal-friendly regulatory environment, PE firms pushing hard for liquidity, and boards grappling with existential questions about their equity story in a world being rapidly reshaped by agentic AI. He shares what he actually looks for when deciding to represent a company, why profitable growth now trumps revenue multiples, why private markets currently offer better outcomes than an IPO, and how AI compressed a typical two-to-three-year market cycle into just three months in 2025. 

In this episode of the Aperiam Podcast, Corey and Joe are joined by Todd Sawicki, founder and CEO of Gumshoe.ai, to explore one of the most consequential and least understood shifts in marketing today: how AI search is changing the way brands are discovered, recommended, and perceived. Todd breaks down why the concept of "ranking" is obsolete in an LLM world, what it actually means for an AI to have brand preferences, and why the brands that win will be the ones that treat AI like a digital sales rep they need to train. He also explains why growth marketers — not search teams — are the ones best positioned to capitalize on this, and why your customer personas are probably outdated the moment they're printed. 

Corey and Joe sit down with Raghu Kodige, CEO and co-founder of Anoki, to explore how AI is transforming the way brands advertise on connected TV. Raghu breaks down why CTV has historically been bought with the same blunt tools as traditional linear TV — and how Anoki is changing that.  Drawing on his background building Alfonso (now LG Ads), Raghu shares how the "seeing is believing" philosophy drives Anoki's approach to AI transparency, why news inventory is massively undervalued, and how generative AI is collapsing the product development timeline in ways that give startups a serious edge. 

In this episode of The Aperiam Podcast, Corey and Joe sit down with Andrew Covato, founder of Growth by Science, to tackle one of marketing's most persistent challenges: measurement. With over 15 years of experience at Google, Meta, Netflix, and Snap, Andrew breaks down why so many brands are still wasting ad dollars on outdated attribution methods, why simply "throwing AI at it" won't fix broken measurement foundations, and what a smarter approach actually looks like — starting with the fundamental question: what would happen to your business if you turned off your ads? Whether you're a scrappy DTC brand or a multinational with nine-figure budgets, this conversation delivers a practical, no-nonsense framework for building a measurement program rooted in science, not vanity metrics.

On this episode of the Aperiam Podcast, Corey Ferengul and Joe Zawadzki sit down with Michael Richardson, VP of Product at Index Exchange to break down ARTF — the Agentic Real-Time Framework.

Michael walks through what ARTF actually is, why ad tech needed a new interoperability standard beyond OpenRTB, and how containerization is enabling companies to run custom logic directly inside publisher infrastructure at scale. Also, how ARTF fits alongside emerging standards like AdCP, why agencies should be paying attention right now.

If you're building in ad tech, running a curation business, or just trying to understand where the open web goes from here — this one is essential listening.

Hosts Corey Ferengul and Joe Zawadzki are joined by Joe Hirsch, founder and CEO of Swivel, to explore AdCP—the Ad Context Protocol.  AdCP represents a new standard for agentic ad buying in the advertising industry, drawing inspiration from the Model Context Protocol (MCP). As AI agents become more prevalent in advertising operations, the need for standardized protocols has never been more critical.

In this episode, the Joes dive into the technical foundations and practical implications of this emerging standard, discussing how AdCP aims to streamline and standardize the way AI agents interact with advertising platforms and execute media buys.

Ravi Patel, founder of SWYM, joins the pod to discuss why programmatic wastes money, how supply control fixes broken auctions, and what disciplined, capital-efficient ad tech building really looks like. 

Gareth Glaser, CEO and founder of Gamera, joins Corey and Joe fresh off announcing his fundraise. Gareth—former chair of Prebid.js and founder of RTK—explains Gamera's mission: creating a shared inventory identifier so buyers actually know what placements their ads run on. They discuss why the sell side has been "the Wild West," how the MFA crackdown proved transparency works, and why his "Gareth Hates Ad Tech" blog built trust before he hired salespeople. The goal? Make the open web work as efficiently as walled gardens—without taking sides.

Fresh from the show floor, Joe Z and Erica Chriss join Corey Ferengul to break down CES 2026. This year felt different—less hype, more real momentum behind AI transformation. From seamless home habitats to ad tech innovations with actual case studies, the team explores why this CES marked a turning point. They discuss the collapse of the "tale of two shows," agencies finally leaning forward on transformation, and why human connection matters more than ever as we navigate historic change. Plus: Why is there so much smoke at CES? And who's still booking bands for 50-year-olds?

 Corey Ferengul and Joe Zawadzki wrap up the year by breaking down the biggest shifts in advertising and marketing technology—and what they signal for 2026. They discuss the TVScientific–Pinterest acquisition, trends in ad-tech investing, the rise of AI and agents across the ad stack, growing bot traffic, and mounting pressure on legacy platforms. The episode closes with predictions on LLM ad models, creative disruption, and an expected wave of M&A