The Aperiam Podcast

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 Todd breaks down why the concept of "ranking" is obsolete in an LLM world, what it actually means for an AI to have brand preferences, and why the brands that win will be the ones that treat AI like a digital sales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— not search teams — are the ones best positioned to capitalize on this, and why your customer personas are probably outdated the moment they're printed.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of experience at Google, Meta, Netflix, and Snap, Andrew breaks down why so many brands are still wasting ad dollars on outdated attribution methods, why simply "throwing AI at it" won't fix broken measurement foundations, and what a smarter approach actually looks like — starting with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 

Joe and Corey speak with Heather Macaulay, co-founder of MADConnect and Audience Choice winner at the Marketecture Startup Challenge.There is a problem that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: integration debt. Every audience sync, conversion pull, and cross-platform workflow depends on APIs that are expensive to build, harder to maintain, and constantly breaking. That hidden “connectivity tax” is quietly draining engineering time across AdTech and MarTech.When the plumbing underneath isn’t solid, everything above it stalls.  Learn more about what is needed from the underlying infrastructure to enable data to really work for a company.

AI is reshaping every corner of the advertising ecosystem—faster than most organizations can absorb. Joe  and Corey dig into what they're seeing on the ground: agencies rethinking their operating models, brands finally experimenting with AI in planning and measurement, and programmatic moving toward a more automated, decision-driven future.The through-line: this isn’t about replacing people overnight. It’s about rebuilding workflows, challenging long-held assumptions, and getting comfortable experimenting with tools that didn’t exist a year ago.If you’re not testing, learning, and pushing your teams to understand what AI can unlock, you’re already behind. The companies leaning in now will define what the next era of marketing looks like.

Joe and Corey sit down with Jenna Griffith for a conversation about what leadership really looks like when a company is going through change. The consistent theme: clarity wins. If you don’t communicate clearly and often, people fill in the gaps on their own—and usually incorrectly.They discuss how to handle internal agendas, why you start with customers when you’re trying to understand what's actually happening, and how AI is forcing every organization to rethink roles, expectations, and pace. The next generation is already adapting; the question is whether leaders are listening closely enough to keep up.Whether you're leading a team or a large organization there is something to get from this episode of the Aperiam podcast.

A conversation with Oz Etzioni, CEO of Clinch, to talk about something a lot of brands and agencies are wrestling with right now: the widening gap between media and creative — and how AI is rapidly changing what’s possible in that space.Clinch has been focused for years on the connective layer between creative and media. The idea is simple to say, but hard to execute: unify the creative strategy with the media plan so that the right message can be delivered to the right audience in real time, across every channel. And now, with the acceleration of AI, that “missing middle” is becoming the most important part of the stack.Major market shifts are happening such as creative is no longer a static asset — it’s dynamic, personalized, and constantly adapting and media buying is automating faster than most organizations are structurally prepared for.A great discussion of where the industry is heading. Not someday. Now.

Joe and Corey are joined by Erica Chriss and we dug into a question that’s coming up everywhere: what happens to the open web as more consumer activity moves into AI-driven interfaces?There’s no doubt the landscape is shifting — from checkout happening inside chat to new tools that shape how brands appear in LLM environments. But that doesn’t mean the open web is disappearing. It means publishers, advertisers, agencies, and platforms have to rethink how they show up. The advantage will go to those who adapt their business models, not just their tech stacks. Flexibility and experimentation matter more right now than certainty or scale.The open web isn’t dead — it’s evolving, and there’s a lot of opportunity for those willing to move with it. Full episode coming soon. 

In this episode of the Aperiam Podcast, Joe Zawadzki and Corey Ferengul talked about the hardest step — turning a great idea into a repeatable business. You can’t outsource that early work. The founder (and early team) have to be with customers, hearing what works, what doesn’t, and adjusting without losing sight of the bigger vision.The mistake we see most often? Hiring a senior “head of sales” too early. The better move is to find a player-coach — someone who can sell alongside the founder and start building process without losing momentum.Whether you’re a startup or a big company launching a new line of business, the same lesson applies: stay close to your customers, keep learning, and scale only when the pattern is real.

On this episode, we spoke with Max Snow and Frank Portman, the founders of Yobi.Yobi started in 2019 as a research lab with roots in Princeton’s behavioral science program. From day one, they focused on predicting consumer behavior ethically and with privacy at the forefront—being “born post-GDPR” gave them an early framework to build responsibly.What stood out in our conversation is how they’ve turned that foundation into one of the most powerful data estates in the market—investing over $100M to partner with enterprises like retailers and banks to assemble unique first- and second-party data. That dataset powers their AI models to rival the walled gardens, particularly in programmatic and CTV, and they’ve built deep partnerships with Microsoft Azure to scale securely and profitably.Yobi shows what the next generation of ad tech looks like: transparent, data-rich, and aligned with business outcomes, not just media metrics.

In our latest Aperiam Podcast, Joe and Corey dug into the ongoing tug-of-war every CMO faces: what to keep in-house and what to outsource.This isn’t a new debate. Marketing has always lived on a continuum—search once started outsourced, then became core. Social was brought in-house, then pushed out again. Creative has cycled between internal teams and outside agencies. And now AI is adding a new twist, with vendors pitching both sides of the argument: “AI makes it simple enough to run internally” vs. “AI lets us scale your marketing more cost-effectively.”See where we think the pendulum will go next.

On this week’s Aperiam Podcast, Joe and I were joined by Ari Paparo to talk about his new book.For years, Ari’s been both a builder and a commentator in our industry. From helping shape the foundations of programmatic to calling it like it is on his blog, he’s influenced how many of us understand ad tech. His book takes that further—capturing the history of programmatic, the personalities behind it, and the lessons learned along the way.What I appreciate is that Ari doesn’t write like an outsider looking in. He’s lived the ups and downs, and that perspective makes the book more than just a history—it’s a candid reflection on what worked, what didn’t, and why.In our conversation, we talked about why he felt the timing was right to publish, the themes he wanted to highlight, and what he hopes readers—operators, investors, or just curious observers—take away.If you care about how digital advertising evolved, how programmatic became the backbone of the industry, or just want an insider’s view told with humor and honesty, this is an episode worth listening to—and a book worth reading.

Audience fragmentation isn’t just about where people spend time—it’s about who they trust.In this episode of the Aperiam Podcast, Joe Zawadzki and Corey dive into how the splintering of media channels has reshaped trust itself. We discuss:Why traditional anchors of credibility—publishers, institutions, even brands—no longer carry the same weight.How trust is migrating to influencers, niche communities, and peer networks.What this means for advertisers trying to build durable connections with their audiences.The conversation highlights a critical point: in today’s environment, earning attention isn’t enough. You also have to earn trust—and fragmentation makes that both harder and more important than ever.