VideoWeek

This week's episode is something of a departure from the podcast's usual stomping ground of speaking to industry insiders. Instead it focuses on how the industry and wider society can deal with narcissistic leaders, during a time in history when both media companies and tech platforms are faced with challenges on balancing the spread of misinformation - something that is part and parcel of having a sociopathic narcissist at the helm - with the need to protect freedom of speech. 

Our guest is Radhia Gleis, who was a member of Buddhafield, a cult that started in Hollywood in the 1980s. The group was the subject of a documentary, Holy Hell, which was produced by actor Jared Leto. Radhia also wrote a more comprehensive account of the cult in her book, The Followers, which explores the parallels between narcisstic leaders, most notably Donald Trump, and people like Jaime Gomez, Buddahfield's leader. 
 

Alex Khan is MD, International at Unruly, and is a veteran of the digital advertising space, having worked in influential roles in both EMEA and APAC. 

In this episode Alex joins Vincent Flood, Editor-in-Chief at VideoWeek, to discuss his career working in various parts of the media and digital advertising space, his experiences in APAC, one of the world's most interesting and complicated markets, the state of outstream advertising, and how Unruly has been adapting to the CTV advertising market. 

This week's episode features Lisa Utzschneider, CEO at Integral Ad Science, a company that has been an industry leader on brand safety and fraud detection for some time now, but recently moved into CTV ad tech with the acquisition of Publica for $220 million. 

Lisa joins Vincent Flood, VideoWeek's Editor-in-Chief, to discuss the acquisition, whether we're winning the war against fraud, brand safety on the social platforms, and her advice to people in the industry about how they can make a meaningful impact at their companies. 

This week's episode features Aki Tsuchiya, CEO of Streamhub, and Jamie West, who has joined the company as a non-executive director. Jamie is probably best known for his work at Sky, where he was one of the people who led the pioneering Adsmart initiative. Since leaving Sky, West has been working with Streamhub after seeing how successful the company was in Japan, where they successful in persuading broadcasters in the market to share their data to the mutual benefit of all. Also discussed in this episode was Streamhub's work in helping broadcasters deliver the Tokyo Olympics during a pandemic, how they managed to get the Japanese TV market to work together and a regular theme of the podcast - just how can the TV incumbents survive the coming years and compete more effectively?

This week's episode is with Karen Nelson-Field, CEO of Amplified Intelligence, an ad measurement company that focuses heavily on which ads and media channels people are actually pay attention to. Karen formerly worked at the world-renowned Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, but had also spent many years working in the industry prior to spending some time in academia. She joins Vincent Flood, Editor-in-Chief at Videoweek, to discuss what actually works for advertisers online, how Amplified Intelligence are measuring what people pay attention to, and the whether awards are being given to the creatives that actually work. 

This week's episode form part of our new 'Founders' series and features Callum Smeaton, CEO at TV Squared, a cross-platform TV ad measurement platform. Calum joins Vincent Flood, Editor-in-Chief at VideoWeek to discuss how he started the company, what he spent a £50,000 prize on to get the company started, and why he moved to LA early on in the company's history. Also discussed is the TV industry's moves to become more data-driven and programmatic, along with the development of in-housing on the advertiser side. 

Zack Sullivan is Chief Revenue of Future, one of modern publishing's great success stories. In this episode Zack joins Vincent Flood, Editor-in-Chief at VideoWeek to discuss the company's business model and why the company regards itself as part publishing platform and part creative agency, how the company has diversified their revenue streams beyond advertising. 

This week's episode is with Harlan Mandel, CEO of the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), an organisation that has funded independent media globally to the tune of $220 million. The organisation's mission is to help supply capital to independent media organisations in countries where democracy is under threat from autocratic regimes. MDIF's work has becoming increasingly important in countries like Hungary and Poland where 'media capture' is taking place as the state seeks to control the media by having state-controlled companies buy media companies and by levying taxes on advertising. 

This week’s episode is the first of a new series on the VideoWeek podcast called "Founders", which will speak feature people from a variety of backgrounds who have started companies in video and TV advertising. Our first guest is Amy Williams, Founder and CEO of Good-Loop, an ad technology company that generates charity donations for worthy causes in exchange for user engagement with advertising.

Amy founded Good-Loop in 2016 and joins Vincent Flood, Editor-in-Chief of VideoWeek to talk about how she came to start her business, her most difficult decisions, and the challenges associated with being a commercially successful but socially-minded business. 

This week's episode is with Maria Flores Portillo, General Manager, EMEA, at Amobee. Maria has been at the forefront of video and TV ad technology for many years now and her deep understanding of both the technological and commercial challenges makes her one of Europe's most highly regarded ad tech executives. This episode features discussions about how telcos can best exploit their role in the market, how Maria almost teared up when she first saw ITV's Planet V in action for the first time, and how broadcasters are/aren't adapting to the CTV revolution.