# S2 E11 - Infillion - Jeremy Woodlee

S2 E11 - Infillion - Jeremy Woodlee 

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[00:00:14] Tom: So welcome to the middlemen. We, had a discussion with Infillion at Possible. We talked with Jeremy Woodley and he's talking about the reemergence of a brand that we, all know as media math, under the Infinian umbrella. In the world of retail media when I was a quotient we bought a DSP and in the last couple of years you have the trade desk and that's one of the only options out there. 

[00:00:43] Tom: 'cause they're the biggest. And when it comes to a retailer, do you need a DSP? And, what is the point of the smaller DSPs is there a place for them? 

[00:00:54] Todd: So what's interesting is as someone who built. DSP and sold it to out brain, and it [00:01:00] lives on within out brain. That, and I love DSPs, but the reality is most anyone running a retail media program doesn't really need to understand what A DSP does and so forth. Even though MediaMath was technically speaking a reasonable DSP. 

[00:01:13] Todd: And what was interesting is that DSPs are what you need to know are the component that allows you to offsite. Media buys. And so retailers who build out retail media programs need a dsp. That's, all you need to know. You don't really need to understand how they work, what they really do. Just know that it's a, component of that. 

[00:01:34] Todd: But what was interesting to me about in fill in is a, it's trying to move into retail media. It's explicitly as it's acquired media math, as it's building it back out as it's re enabling it is. It's specifically targeting retailers and it's trying to move that direction as being retail media focused. 

[00:01:56] Todd: But to that point, what was interesting is [00:02:00] they're seeing the need for more managed services. More end-to-end solutions. And as I think you and I know from our work with retailers, especially for tier two and tier three, that is a huge gaping need. 

[00:02:15] Tom: Yeah. 

[00:02:15] Todd: The I Silicon Valley calls these tech enabled services. 

[00:02:19] Todd: So Filium bought a DSP to, provide these services, but we in the ad world have called them managed services and I think that's gonna be one of the interesting things here is what's old is new because that's where Quotient started and I think we're seeing a need for that again. 

[00:02:33] Tom: to scoop up all the retailers 'cause we had managed service and that's what everybody wanted. As much as the market and analysts told us you need to go self-service, and they awarded the best in the DSP world the I think it was it was Gartner or whoever it was, they said, oh, the ones who are gonna win are the ones that have a self-service capability. Lo and behold, that wasn't really what the retailers needed. 

[00:02:59] Todd: Oh, [00:03:00] especially tier two and tier three retailers, and we say tier two and tier three. We're not, we don't mean in terms of how good or bad they are, we mean in terms of size and, 

[00:03:08] Tom: retailers like HEB are beloved, but they're not as big as Amazon. 

[00:03:12] Todd: and they don't have the people to service a. The operation side of a retail media business or platform. And I think this is gonna be a very interesting evolution, is again, what was old is, new again. And right now in the market it's epsilon or bust, maybe a little bit of Criteo in some aspects, but in affiliates willing to step in and move and, then migrate their DSP to be something that can help manage onsite onsite, meaning the web property. 

[00:03:41] Tom: Yep. 

[00:03:42] Todd: The onsite pieces of it become really interesting. And so to me it's like I, where's the direction? Does affiliate wanna go? Is this, do they see , the same opportunity? And in talking with Jeremy, it's clear that this is something that they think the market also needs. So to be really interesting to see the evolution in the [00:04:00] marketplace. 

[00:04:02] Todd: Do we see more end-to-end service providers and platforms emerge? I think that to me is what's interesting here. So if you're a retailer, you're gonna have more than just Epsilon as an option and, Epsilon's a great platform. It's just, it's a very big platform and there's a lot of pieces to it. And if it's not the fit for you, then , what's your plan B? 

[00:04:22] Todd: And that's not always so obvious right now, if you need. A more service oriented solution. 

[00:04:28] Tom: Yeah, I think the modularity of it is where it will get interesting because if the policy of the platform is we're not doing in-store yet, I. That's a challenge, but if, you're more modular, and I think we're gonna hear a little bit about how Filium MediaMath is working with say, Walmart, Mexico. They may want certain things and I think if the MediaMath platform allows for customization and allows the retailer to invest in certain areas more so than others, that could [00:05:00] be a great solution. 

[00:05:01] Todd: What's good about Jeremy Nephi is Jeremy is a longtime ad tech exact leader. He's got deep knowledge of the space. He and I go back and from a business standpoint, 15 years. And he has been, he is really a part of the OG ad tech world. We were joking at possible that we need like the the OG cabana at possible, at the fontan blue, with smokers jackets, kinda like the SNL. 

[00:05:31] Todd: Five time hosting club. For those of us who've been in the business for 15 or 20 years you need something like, that so Jeremy has seen a lot and seen it all. And, as he looks to rebuild media map, he, it's an interesting perspective because Jeremy's coming to this with a very deep similar to myself of ad tech experience and understanding. 

[00:05:51] Tom: I think maybe Rob Beeler, who we saw at possible, could figure out that connection with Beeler's Blazers. But I think [00:06:00] that, generally it's, it was refreshing to hear Jeremy and we'll get into it in a second. I've been waiting for the people from Ad Tech and that was one of the reasons when we met, I was excited about our conversations, is the real hardcore people of ad tech to come into the retail media world. And I thought initially it was gonna be those people came in, it was like, you're gonna clear everybody out. 

[00:06:22] Tom: And I think what's happening instead is that coming in with some, a level of humility look, we're taking this diamond in the rough, like media math, and we're gonna bring it to you, but we're gonna do it in a way that's, collaborative. And so I think, that's what was fun for me about this discussion. I. 

[00:06:38] Todd: I think there's a, there's some interesting perspectives as the two sides mean. We've talked about this, the retailers have been smart about bringing in ad tech people. And the ad tech people see the opportunity as, retailers and publishers come together under sort of one broader umbrella. And there's gonna be some really interesting opportunities to see how this business evolves. 

[00:06:58] Todd: And there, and also the [00:07:00] buzz out of possible is.  

[00:07:01] Todd: Retail media is absolutely the future of online advertising.  

[00:07:07] Todd: It, the growth in retail media interest and we, and every new acquisition, like in fill in buying media math is I think a part of that. That story is, what we're gonna hear more and more about. 

[00:07:19] Todd: And it just was nice to see the evidence of that at possible, where all the big retail media platform players had large presence in Walmart Connect, had a big presence. Amazon ads had been present, Rundell from Target had a big presence, and others CVS it had a big presence, all of them. 

[00:07:35] Tom: So let's get into it. Let's go to the affiliate suite at the font. 

[00:07:42] Tom: Great. So we are here at Possible in Miami. 

[00:07:44] Tom: We're at the  

[00:07:45] Jeremy-Infillion: font, the  

[00:07:46] Tom: Hotel and we're here with Jeremy Woodley from In Philly. Jeremy, we had a chance to meet up at Chop Talk and that you had just joined , specifically focused on media math. And I looked back and I saw some articles, [00:08:00] so. 

[00:08:00] Tom: I think it was like 23. it's been like around two years since media math. ran a ground try to use yachting metaphors here.  

[00:08:08] Todd: Let's go back to the story.  

[00:08:09] Todd: Let's, actually get the real story of how Infillion ends up with MediaMath because I'm not sure everyone knows the gritty details of that.  

[00:08:14] Todd: Let, So let's start with the story of how does media map end up with Infinian? I like that in terms of, 'cause I think most, not everyone knows the story if they're aware of it, but Yep. 

[00:08:21] Todd: And, I think that's a good place to start.  

[00:08:23] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah.  

[00:08:23] Todd: Yeah. And I, was not there, so I'm a recent No, it's okay. You can, as best you know it, right? As best I know it as, you know, the Lord. it's now like a lore versus actually maybe  

[00:08:31] Jeremy-Infillion: a  

[00:08:32] Todd: reality. Yeah. So I, I think the right way to tell this story is Infillion is our CEO Rob Emrich has, bought a lot of ad tech companies over the years The brands you, we all know, like a gimbal, a drawbridge, a truex. 

[00:08:46] Todd: And has created a, very unique combination So I didn't even know that affiliate had acquired Truex in the past. Yeah, that's just, see, that's good. so, all these assets it's developed, he's bought and integrated into our common platform. It's, it is just a little bit of a [00:09:00] different approach to building an ad tech business. 

[00:09:02] Todd: And I was at Google for a long time on their platform business and they acquired businesses, but then integrated and created this. Thing. So the way Rob likes to work is what I've seen is he, keeps his eye out. He likes to look for companies that are available for sale, that are complimentary. 

[00:09:16] Todd: what We have, so he was paying attention to media math as that they slipped went into bankruptcy and went through that process  

[00:09:24] Todd: And decided that he wanted to be a serious bidder of the, for the assets and went to bankruptcy court and did the thing. And just saw it as a tremendously, like a valuable platform that really never failed. 

[00:09:36] Todd: There was no product flaw there. It was just some unfortunate financing and corporate development decisions that just didn't play out but a, brand that was still worth something brand that's worth something than the tech that was in very good shape. And, still was. People refer last night we were talking, we heard that media math was referred to as the smartest guys in the room. 

[00:09:57] Todd: Is that still the case? I, would hope so. [00:10:00] I, like the things that I joined because I believe in what it can be done with this platform. I, don't think, I think one of the things we're trying to be smart about is we're not trying to go do media math 1.0, like we're trying to take the moment we're in and understand the context what's happening in the industry, which is honestly like a lot of change in disruption, right? 

[00:10:16] Todd: There's a lot going on and in a way that I don't think I've seen since 2010 to 2012. When they emerged originally. So we're trying to take a fresh look at it and be smart about how we deploy it. So we're not gonna go out and try to be the whole coast chosen DSP down that path. 

[00:10:32] Todd: We're not gonna be talking to the largest brands in the world the, first team did.  

[00:10:36] Jeremy-Infillion: We're looking for people that maybe are newer to the programmatic game that want world-class technology want somebody to return their calls and work with 'em and be flexible. 

[00:10:45] Jeremy-Infillion: We're looking at  

[00:10:46] Todd: I'm focusing on this at like  

[00:10:48] Jeremy-Infillion: companies that want to customize. And compose what they want and not take something off the shelf and use it.  

[00:10:53] Todd: So  

[00:10:53] Jeremy-Infillion: we're  

[00:10:53] Todd: looking at it from a fresh eye. Yeah we're trying to be really smart about it and trying to take the moment  

[00:10:59] Todd: And go with it. 

[00:10:59] Todd: And I [00:11:00] think part of the story too is you mentioned you worked at Google, but that's not really your story, your story. For those unaware, Jeremy and I've known each other probably for over a decade, maybe 15 years. You've been in the space a long time. Rob's been in the space a long time. 

[00:11:13] Todd: We were joking about, we need a little SNL five timer's club for us 20 year guys in, in the ed tech space. And I think that's an interesting perspective in terms of media math goes back, is that part of that same generation We grew up with the media mass of the world and to see a technology in a company that evolved, I think it's interesting. 

[00:11:29] Todd: What's your perspective on looking at where Ad Tech has come from over the last 20 years in terms of where do you think it's gonna go and where do you think the opportunities lie? And you mentioned what is this new media math 2.0 lens? And we worked together. I was at Rubicon project. 

[00:11:44] Todd: Yes. I was all or  

[00:11:47] Tom: one.  

[00:11:47] Jeremy-Infillion: cheese  

[00:11:47] Todd: cheeseburger, yeah. OT publishers really giving that a shot. It was fun. It was good times. I think that, the spirit then is what I re, I'm feeling now. Again, it's just that there's enough disruption and change about [00:12:00] how the tech platforms are assembled and how much data is available. And then the accessibility of data, like particularly AI based data, compute based  

[00:12:08] Jeremy-Infillion: cloud-based  

[00:12:09] Todd: computing. 

[00:12:10] Todd: That it, it's democratized access to technology and data in a way that a lot of people that  

[00:12:15] Jeremy-Infillion: 10,  

[00:12:15] Todd: 15 years ago really had to leverage. Like the brand the big platforms in the middle, the wall gardens, the trade desks of the world to be able to do clever things with programmatic  

[00:12:24] Jeremy-Infillion: advertising. 

[00:12:25] Todd: You're getting it pushed back to the fringes, like back, not the fringe. Really back out of the middle toward the edges of the business, toward publishers who are, that have the ability to maybe be in power. People who building media businesses like retail media networks, And then toward the agencies and advertisers who are also principals. 

[00:12:41] Todd: So I think that's what we think is interesting is this, sort of more openness that AI and data can drive around people being able to get their hands dirty and do clever things with programmatic and digital advertising. It I, think it's like the end of the first era of programmatic in the sense like the wall gardens, the middle players made a lot of money and rightfully they had [00:13:00] good data, good tech. They executed on the, first phase, but I think they're making a little too much money. The, actual value creation in our industry is with publishers and with advertisers, right? Like it's all about connecting the two. Like they should both have more power and, have a greater share of the upside in this business. 

[00:13:15] Todd: Business. So I think we're positioning ourselves as like being a, like a tech vendor, a managed service vendor to be able to like power that like moment in the market. So. Retailers are acting more as publishers, but. In retail media, they need to do more. They have enough data, they need to, they need this modular approach that you're talking about. 

[00:13:34] Todd: Yeah. So talk to us about what the retail media opportunities. Yeah, it's been fascinating. We have a real amazing relationship with Walmart Mexico. We power the connect platform down there, and we built from scratch with  

[00:13:46] Jeremy-Infillion: with  

[00:13:47] Todd: a,  

[00:13:47] Todd: with media math as the foundation of their own cell service, white labeled ui with unique features. 

[00:13:53] Todd: Honestly a lot of things pulled out that an agency buying their media doesn't need. So that experience has put us right in the middle. 'cause [00:14:00] we handle all their adv, inbound advertising campaigns, even stuff that we don't serve directly. We take uns onsite advertising campaigns and push it to Google Ad Manager. 

[00:14:09] Todd: We take the digital out of home and push it to digital out the home vendor.  

[00:14:12] Jeremy-Infillion: But we've seen is like every retail media network, even the biggest of the biggest, Walmart have stitched together technologies and assets  

[00:14:19] Jeremy-Infillion: be able to pull  

[00:14:19] Tom: to Yeah. That together's kind of the dirty secret. Yeah, it is. It's never just a single platform. 

[00:14:23] Tom: Oh, no. there's no such thing.  

[00:14:24] Jeremy-Infillion: that does  

[00:14:25] Tom: it's  

[00:14:25] Jeremy-Infillion: not  

[00:14:25] Tom: Kind Of like when you think about sci-fi, it's everybody uses the same platform where everything works. That's not how technology evolves. No, it's not like you're you're using Koddi for your ad server and you're using Criteo for your on onsite  

[00:14:37] Jeremy-Infillion: PLAs  

[00:14:37] Jeremy-Infillion: and you're using Trade Desk for offsite. 

[00:14:39] Jeremy-Infillion: And maybe you have another DSP using MediaMath for a secondary offsite use case. It's all cobbled together and it's done by a company that is relatively new to media and it's messy,  

[00:14:51] Tom: but they want control.  

[00:14:52] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah, they want control but they don't necessarily know how to have that control. 

[00:14:56] Jeremy-Infillion: And so there's a lot of outsourcing.  

[00:14:57] Jeremy-Infillion: I think AI agents will be a really [00:15:00] interesting area for them. There's some buzz and people are poking around on this. But I think a AI agents could really power that orchestration of that, sort of, that Franken stack to use a negative term. But the point is there's nobody that does it all. 

[00:15:12] Jeremy-Infillion: So you have to do this. It is, it, there's an interesting tension 'cause we'll hear vendors talk to us about avoid the Franken stack  

[00:15:18] Tom: Use and, actually this is another one where the big agencies, this is the trend that we saw from Shop Talk Horizon Publicis are all trying to come up with their own  

[00:15:27] Jeremy-Infillion: HoldCo  

[00:15:28] Tom: identity. 

[00:15:29] Tom: A core ID or whatever Horizon's gonna call their id. I'm assuming the rest of them are gonna come up with an id. What does that look like? 'cause those are the guys who are trying to it's do another monolith Dynamic, on the other side of the spectrum. Okay. 

[00:15:41] Tom: It's and this is a, media company effectively building mutual retail media and having to build the stack. Agencies are doing the same thing. It's wait, we can  

[00:15:49] Tom: do this  

[00:15:50] Jeremy-Infillion: ourselves. Like the identity like situation as opens the door, like you need help. Brands need help. Being able to stitch identity together so they can do that as [00:16:00] well as other people. 

[00:16:01] Jeremy-Infillion: Can do that. Why not? And Publicis has shown the market that you can develop and buy and develop tech assets that help an agency business and it's not as competitive. And  

[00:16:10] Jeremy-Infillion: It's more complimentary than you would think. So we're seeing a lot of agency activation in interest in building their own tech having their own data. 

[00:16:18] Jeremy-Infillion: And it shows up in different ways. It depends on the core we call it like, how do we empower their special sauce? How do we take what they have? And how allow them to build like interesting, differentiated businesses. Some, of them are really good at measurement, so they're leaning into the measurement use case. 

[00:16:32] Jeremy-Infillion: Others are trying to build indemnity platform. Others are looking at creative as a differentiation, like all the little elements that come into there. So we're having really interesting conversations with agencies as well about how do we help them build differentiated tech, proprietary tech and data capabilities and be able to be more principle in value creation for their advertiser clients. 

[00:16:50] Jeremy-Infillion: There  

[00:16:51] Jeremy-Infillion: can still be transparency in that process. It doesn't mean you have to it's about taking margin, but it's about can they be more directly involved with giving what the brand [00:17:00] wants? And not outsourcing that to somebody in the middle. of gym. going back to Walmart, connect, Mexico, are you all providing managed services for them in terms of powering the managed services? 

[00:17:09] Jeremy-Infillion: 'cause that's, I think that's one of the big questions with retail media networks is the retailers aren't ad tech people. They're not ad serving specialists. They're not media people. And how do they build these organizations? And so are they are you all trying to fill that gap in terms of how do you support and service the advertising base? 

[00:17:26] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah, we, not for Walmart Mexico, Okay. They, felt like they could do it themselves and they are, they're doing a great job. A lot of other retailers are looking at that. So I think it's important for us, we show up with flexible and customizable tech, but also service level. So if they want outsourced media management, we can do that. 

[00:17:42] Jeremy-Infillion: That's something Infinian does. Has done forever. But I think that dynamic is one where it's just you kinda have to show up where they are and, show up and help them grow that business. I think what we're seeing is that particularly in offsite media and sort of audience extension use cases for them, which is a big [00:18:00] opportunity for all the retail media networks, even Walmart, Mexico, they're still figuring this out. 

[00:18:03] Jeremy-Infillion: That they haven't fundamentally built the relationships and the tech yet. So it's very much in transition to being able to be relevant. Even to their endemic brands, the CPGs they work with to get access to brand and performance budgets, like they're still figuring that all out. So it's just a hodgepodge of approaches. 

[00:18:19] Jeremy-Infillion: Like some people are working with their media agents. Some people are outsourcing effectively to Trade Desk and Yahoo. Others are hiring salespeople and going to do it themselves. I think personally, I think most should invest in building their own tech and having their own sales. 

[00:18:34] Jeremy-Infillion: It's nice to get money from data sales and obviously extension, but. We're in a media business, like you get more money, you have more value when you're actually involved with the media itself.  

[00:18:44] Todd: So  

[00:18:44] Jeremy-Infillion: anyway, back to Walmart, Mexico. What we do is we build a self-service interface for their agency clients. 

[00:18:48] Jeremy-Infillion: Got it.  

[00:18:48] Jeremy-Infillion: So they sell to the agencies and then they go into a version of Media math that's bespoke to Walmart, Mexico. They  

[00:18:54] Jeremy-Infillion: load  

[00:18:55] Jeremy-Infillion: the campaign and they can tweak it, they can manage it, they can pull data out. So it's like a very [00:19:00] familiar environment comparable to what they're seeing in a Trade desk or DB 360, but it's Walmart's. It's Walmart's, DSP 

[00:19:07] Tom: Does that ever get to a place where they actually collaborate with Walmart, US  

[00:19:13] Tom: on campaigns?  

[00:19:13] Jeremy-Infillion: The corporate like relationships is fascinating. Yeah. Like They give a lot of independence, Walmart does to us and Canada 

[00:19:19] Jeremy-Infillion: And and Central America and Mexico. Yeah. 

[00:19:21] Jeremy-Infillion: They share a lot of the best practices, but the different regions have a lot of autonomy about who they work with and how they. Do things. It's interesting to me because I think about this, 'cause a lot of the challenges when I was a Quotient was how do you get smaller retailers  

[00:19:34] Jeremy-Infillion: to  

[00:19:35] Tom: Have either a national footprint or work together in some way without having problems with the data or the competitiveness? 

[00:19:41] Tom: And I wonder where does the model come from? And we all thought it was gonna be that somebody's gonna create a great self-service interface and then every agency's gonna use it. And it now sounds like you guys are building those 

[00:19:51] Tom: agency friendly platforms. 

[00:19:55] Tom: Maybe Trade Desk has one, but it's not every channel. You guys are trying to do more channels, but I, [00:20:00] look at it and see okay. Do you guys start to band together all of your customers and do a network or is that too far? I, we are, we're early in this journey. Yeah. Only a year to change. 

[00:20:10] Tom: I think retail media's early in this journey. I think it's it's I think it's more of a, an open-ended question of where does retail media go as, especially as smaller, and more regional retailers show up. And this is a big question that we've it's brought up Keble is pushing programmatic, standards, trying to allow people to trade across retailers. 

[00:20:27] Tom: And like that approach. What's old is new yet, right? Potentially do you start to see retailers start banding together Yes. so they have a bigger established footprint? I, see no reason why that version of the 2010 programmatic story is not repeated in this case where the ad servers of the world the Kes Codys of Locos world become like an SSP in a programmatic context. The retail media networks are like publishers, right? No, I agree. The retailers are publishers in this case and, they just show, but in our con we're moving a context into the DSP programmatic land landscape, and then that would [00:21:00] then potentially open up a lot of, like passive who will demand and,  

[00:21:05] Jeremy-Infillion: buying  

[00:21:05] Jeremy-Infillion: power into their portals, and I think that's probably the next big game. Like you have the skies. And PAC views of world doing this, but really focused on the 

[00:21:14] Jeremy-Infillion: PLAs  

[00:21:14] Jeremy-Infillion: PLAs and search and onsite, right? Like very but what about display? What about, and honestly there's a lot of demand that they're never gonna get. 

[00:21:22] Jeremy-Infillion: They just don't have those relationships. Like why not? A media math emerge as like a source of all kinds of programmatic media. Inclusive, of retail media. And you could transact that via RTV environment, right? Oh, no. Or you could, it could just be like basically a PG buy that's an IO that gets loaded in their system and runs, right? 

[00:21:40] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah. I think on a lot of these retailers, the maybe Walmart, Mexico is different, but a lot of them, the inventory's small. Yeah. And so it's, tough to not say, yeah, PG buy or something like that would make a little more sense. Yeah. I think the other thing is, we've talked too, is that for retail media, one of the challenges in getting it to grow has been. 

[00:21:58] Jeremy-Infillion: How do you enable the [00:22:00] media agency buyer? The media agencies are not transacting retail media in large part today. No, and I think that's been an interesting miss, partly because I think the retailers don't understand the media landscape and don't realize that 80% of media spend is controlled by media agencies. 

[00:22:14] Jeremy-Infillion: And if as they wanna move and generate more media dollars, it's go to where the dollars are. Yeah. And the reality is to this point of you're gonna sell to these large agencies. You have to have large reach, you have to have large avails. And so I think that's part of the story here of what unlocks the media landscape for the retailers, yeah. I think it's they're not gonna stop doing what they do Now  

[00:22:35] Todd: the measurement is absolutely beautiful.  

[00:22:36] Tom: Absolutely.  

[00:22:37] Jeremy-Infillion: I see this possibility for them to sell like full funnel, upper funnel, mid funnel advertising through to an agency that does this all the time. But then ends with a real conversion moment. 

[00:22:49] Jeremy-Infillion: And these endemic brands, that's. why they do everything they do. And I think that's why everybody's excited about the potential is what? right now they're just all the retail media networks are really focused at the [00:23:00] bottom of the funnel and focused on really the trade marketing spend from an endemic brand. So they're right where they should be. But think about opening up all the other types of budget from the same brands and moving up and starting to drive awareness and then think about like eventually the non endemics and all you can do with that. And, but there, like, for me it's like I feel like I, it's emerging like very clear next steps. 

[00:23:20] Jeremy-Infillion: It's just a little messy 'cause everybody's in a different place in this investment paradigm like that. A lot of them don't have that sales team can have that conversation. That's the I think, do you, one of the questions we have as. You look at publishers, open web publishers, and they have the upper funnel sales teams and the brand sales teams. 

[00:23:37] Jeremy-Infillion: Are they natural allies to the retailers? And are we gonna see more of these partnerships? That's interesting. I had And, does an affiliate enable that? Yeah. At some point. That's I think one of the questions of as we talk to and, retailers and publishers, I'm always like, you guys, why aren't you all working together? 

[00:23:51] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah. It's a natural peanut butter and chocolate moment. But why, that federation never came to, I don't think it ever fully realized itself in programmatic. I think there are friction [00:24:00] points. I do think there is an opportunity and we think there's an opportunity for us to play a role of creating federation, right? 

[00:24:06] Jeremy-Infillion: Like around non-competitive retail media networks, being able to share data, be able to share be able to bundle media. I think Who's doing that now? Is it Uber and Instacart? Who, does that? yeah. That's a really interesting  

[00:24:19] Jeremy-Infillion: it's a 

[00:24:19] Tom: news  

[00:24:19] Todd: that came up.  

[00:24:20] Jeremy-Infillion: You just gotta  

[00:24:20] Todd: Dunno if you saw this, but  

[00:24:22] Tom: Uber  

[00:24:22] Tom: said, you know what? 

[00:24:23] Tom: Instacart's gonna be better at monetizing Uber Eats. We'll let 'em do it.  

[00:24:27] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah.  

[00:24:27] Tom: And I think I, those types of partnerships when we were talking about  

[00:24:31] Todd: it's retailer to retailer. Yeah. Which I think is interesting your point. And then I think I was talking with another OG ad guy, right, Patrick over at meredith do dash and was asking what are they seeing  

[00:24:41] Jeremy-Infillion: and  

[00:24:41] Todd: are they starting to try to recruit and partner with RMNs? 

[00:24:44] Todd: And he's we have a whole RMN team. I think you as a affiliate as a tech provider, you, to your point of enabling these federations. You're have an opportunity to help orchestrate or en enable those. Yeah. And that sharing, because it's gonna be largely through your data as a platform. 

[00:24:57] Todd: That's probably the common link here. [00:25:00] And so it'll be interesting to see how you are the matchmaker to an extent between these different Yeah.  

[00:25:07] Jeremy-Infillion: I don't, we don't wanna develop AI features on our platform that make our platform more awesome. 

[00:25:11] Jeremy-Infillion: We wanna be open to ai like capabilities of others to be able to connect the web of all the things that are happening. And this is a good example. Like we could play a, major role in orchestrating connections between all these places and, advertising demand and supply.  

[00:25:26] Tom: Yeah.  

[00:25:26] Tom: there's an opportunity. Yeah. you, are you saying that you're almost,  

[00:25:29] Tom: I  

[00:25:29] Tom: don't know if you're doing all of these things, but you're almost like a, an alternative to an AWS or GCP for the retailer? 

[00:25:34] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah. I was at Accenture for a couple years between my ad tech journeys and, that's one of the reasons that I'm here, is I think there's an opportunity for us to show up more like AWS or GCP and take these components and build it to what they need. With the scalability behind it and the ability to like really do some big stuff eventually, but in the moment we just gotta make it work for this retailer, X, Y, Z or this local media company that's building something. 

[00:25:58] Jeremy-Infillion: ERUs decipher [00:26:00] business is fascinating. What they're doing with that is amazing. A publisher really embracing technology to drive differentiation and actually launch ad products and market.  

[00:26:09] Jeremy-Infillion: And  

[00:26:09] Jeremy-Infillion: So anyway, like I, it was a lot of this going on. Like I, every time I turn around I'm like, there's another company building a media business, right? 

[00:26:16] Tom: And we we started to do this on our podcast is to see okay we were at Shop Talk a month ago, now we're at possible. Are you seeing any sort of changes? And then we can talk about it. I have another one, which is about the fact that nobody seems to know each other at this conference. 

[00:26:31] Tom: There's the vendors and there's the brands, and they're not, really friends from, a long time. So there  

[00:26:36] Tom: that  

[00:26:37] Tom: could be an opportunity where this is. You start to mingle and, new opportunities. But what, do you think's gone on since we saw you at Shop Talk? What's, percolating? 

[00:26:46] Tom: I think part the dash, Meredith, that's not an accident. Their an announcement around decipher and launching their own ad product, basically a DSP ish business. Yeah. It's fascinating to me. It's like validation that we believe there's a lot of different types of companies that are gonna be [00:27:00] looking to build their own media business, on the backs Of technology we can provide or others like, so we, I see that validating. And I think we've been seeing a lot of continued interest from the agency community in this, the retail media. It's just a march. Like they're going it's just a, like a process of getting engaged and talking. I can't say I've seen much more like change and like the few months between now and then. 

[00:27:24] Tom: Other than I, do think that there's been a little bit more fleshing out of the AI agent story for the industry. Like you're starting to see publisher focused use cases and advertiser and agency  

[00:27:33] Jeremy-Infillion: focused  

[00:27:34] Jeremy-Infillion: cases. You're seeing people think about automation versus orchestration versus value creation, like. 

[00:27:39] Jeremy-Infillion: Transformation. So it's I'm, following all those stories closely. 'cause it, I feel like it might not look like it's happening, but in 2, 3, 4 years when I wake up and  

[00:27:48] Tom: we  

[00:27:48] Jeremy-Infillion: might be doing this business entirely differently.  

[00:27:51] Tom: Yeah Kiri Masters this week had something about saying MCP might be. 

[00:27:56] Tom: The way where a retailer could share data with a lot of [00:28:00] different vendors quickly without, without a lot of danger of losing their  

[00:28:04] Jeremy-Infillion: Mm-hmm. 

[00:28:04] Jeremy-Infillion: protecting  

[00:28:05] Todd: the 

[00:28:05] Tom: the protecting the data. So we'll see how that plays out.  

[00:28:07] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah, there's, I think it, the technology is way ahead of security standards or other things that we've set up. 

[00:28:14] Jeremy-Infillion: You forget about all the work we've done in the last 20, 25 years, making the internet actually fairly safe and secure. This is like a remaking of it. So I think it'll, I think that will be probably the, slow people down more than anything else. Like making sure that, know, Albertsons or CVS or Walmart, they don't lose their data in some weird way 'cause they didn't understand this protocol properly and it got exposed. 

[00:28:35] Jeremy-Infillion: And they aren't gonna move quickly on that, but some others will, and then three or four years maybe they'll rethink how they, connect the dots in the middle. Right. Like they, we all have to be on our toes. It's a,  

[00:28:47] Jeremy-Infillion: it's, a,  

[00:28:47] Jeremy-Infillion: lot of buzz, but it's a legitimate buzz in my mind. 

[00:28:51] Todd: It's funny to me in terms of, you, you're talking about the March of Retail media. And getting the, all these parties to work together for SOG guys, it's like seeing the rise of first gen ad networks all [00:29:00] over. again. Yeah. They're just ad networks, right? They are. It's a Eric Seaford is comment, everything's an ad network and retailers are definitely building or trying to build networks and, you to your point of, them trying to realize they, how do you work together? 

[00:29:11] Todd: Like publishers figured this out 20 years ago. It's kind of surprising That retailers aren't paying as much attention to that history. And I'm sure like what you, when you sell or talk to 'em about. Why don't you wanna work with other people? And are they receptive to that story or, 

[00:29:26] Jeremy-Infillion: I think this is I think it's just like it's organizations or people and people learn and have a history, right? 

[00:29:31] Jeremy-Infillion: Like I was at Tribune back in the two thousands, right? And, True, even though they were not programmatic and LA I was@latimes.com particularly. And they were just figuring all this digital advertising thing out. They were still, they'd been selling advertising forever.  

[00:29:46] Jeremy-Infillion: forever.  

[00:29:47] Jeremy-Infillion: So their DNA was as an advertiser, like an advertising business as a publisher. 

[00:29:51] Jeremy-Infillion: The retailers don't have that DNA, like they have no intuition like about this, and they've hired good people, but inevitably some part of the organization doesn't get it. [00:30:00]  

[00:30:00] Todd: It's, that sort of the top of the organization's not being as familiar. Do you feel like they're beginning to listen? To the people who have experience as you walk in and start telling the story. 

[00:30:07] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah, a hundred percent. Look at Walmart's doing that's a hard, hardcore, real retailer, and they have pivoted hard into their DSP business side. That is a big pivot and it's a very impactful one and it has a lot of dangers. They have a lot of data and a lot of risk there, supply chains and their direct relationships. 

[00:30:25] Jeremy-Infillion: So yeah, they figured it out and so all the others players out there, like they will, it's too good. Have an amplifier of what they do. because one, you're gonna make more money at a very high margin compared to a core business. But also you're also actually in the business of creating a different experience with your consumers, which ultimately they do get right. 

[00:30:40] Jeremy-Infillion: Like, they get that like, they  

[00:30:42] Tom: It's also getting credit for teaching consumers giving them avenues to discovery to new channels and line extensions and all that kinda stuff. A lot of that is not really credited in the right way yet.  

[00:30:55] Jeremy-Infillion: No. Yeah, because they sit where they sit, right? 

[00:30:58] Jeremy-Infillion: Like they don't. people can't, couldn't connect [00:31:00] the dots now we can't connect the dots. It's interesting.  

[00:31:02] Jeremy-Infillion: I, just think that they're just a little, they're like, they're not even teens yet in this journey. They're like an eight my, my 10, 11-year-old. Like sentient creatures moving around doing things and you're like, think that they can be, act independently. 

[00:31:15] Jeremy-Infillion: I'm not, I don't wanna speak badly of my retail media friends, but it's just they just, you can't move faster than. You can move, like you, just trip them. at some point. But there the level of sophistication is un  

[00:31:25] Jeremy-Infillion: unending.  

[00:31:26] Jeremy-Infillion: Like it's a, it is a march toward this end state. 

[00:31:29] Jeremy-Infillion: And I think the first tranche of the, big the retailers the Best Buys and the Krogers and the others, they're now at a point where they've done the first era and they're closing that out and they're moving formally into the next. And then you have the, next tier of retailers that are just starting to figure this out and might have, might be able to skip some of the growing pains and go directly into a better model. 

[00:31:48] Jeremy-Infillion: But I don't see any reason why this couldn't reach to almost any retailer. It just becomes more an out of box solution. A network for a network, right? Like the ability just to plug in and federate this. I think that's the, real future. [00:32:00] But why wouldn't you want to make a little bit extra money and enhance your relationship with your brands and be able to like, prove your value and ecosystem. 

[00:32:07] Jeremy-Infillion: Like, I, I think it's a little bit inevitable but  

[00:32:11] Todd: We'll see how all plays out. It'll be fun. This is my reason I'm back in this space. 'cause like it feels similar. So 20 years ago, but it's different. It's old as new. Yeah. That kind of concept. No it's interesting seeing are we gonna learn from the lessons  

[00:32:27] Jeremy-Infillion: from  

[00:32:27] Todd: years ago or 15 years ago? 

[00:32:29] Todd: And do things better and slightly different as a result. So You, look at the first versus third party data. Yeah. I think third party data is largely gone.  

[00:32:39] Todd: I think even with the, Google maintaining the third party cookie, I'm not sure there's really anybody using that data anymore, realistically, which is why they maintained it. 

[00:32:46] Todd: It's there are of dumb bidders out there, but yeah, I, yes, there are dumb bidders out there I that seed cookie and all of a sudden they're like, oh, this is way more valuable than it was before. Oh boy. Whereas 'cause, because what's interesting with the retailers is it is a movement into first party [00:33:00] data at scale. 

[00:33:01] Todd: And I think that's one of the interesting aspects of this. And it, as the industry moves towards.  

[00:33:07] Jeremy-Infillion: First party  

[00:33:07] Todd: data in mass. 'cause you have these retailer relationships and it gives you attribution and bottle funnel and all sorts of interesting things. And it and I that like the first party revolution outside the walled gardens to me is what gets interesting about retail media.  

[00:33:20] Jeremy-Infillion: Like we're finally gonna have first party data across the open web. Yeah. I don't think people truly understand the impact of what that could be.  

[00:33:26] Todd: And I don't quite. And understand necessarily all the use cases that emerge, but that's, to me, one of the fascinating things is  

[00:33:32] Jeremy-Infillion: we have liberated first party data  

[00:33:34] Todd: to an extent, or made it enabled or powerful or extended or whatever terms you want to use. 

[00:33:38] Todd: And that is an interesting change. I don't think we understand yet. And that's on the somebody with a retailer and retail media background. We were looking to liberate first party data so you can do better merchandising.  

[00:33:50] Jeremy-Infillion: Because  

[00:33:50] Todd: that was the problem with the web was that and I think the Placer, Ethan from Placer AI did a really good job of saying if you  

[00:33:58] Jeremy-Infillion: go  

[00:33:59] Todd: to to [00:34:00] warby parker.com and you're searching for glasses and they have a carousel that shows hats on it, whatever, are you gonna click on that? 

[00:34:07] Todd: You go to Warby Park or store and they have a hat stand, or are you gonna try one of them on? It's a totally different thing.  

[00:34:14] Jeremy-Infillion: How  

[00:34:14] Todd: you make sure that you credit all those places in the right way, if you don't unlock the first party data to move outside of.com, you're not getting all those signals. 

[00:34:23] Todd: Yeah. So yeah I, think you're dead right.  

[00:34:25] Jeremy-Infillion: Like  

[00:34:26] Todd: This, first party revolution is just beginning and there's a lot of pockets and the middle got the rents in the beginning because they had  

[00:34:33] Jeremy-Infillion: critical  

[00:34:33] Todd: mass, enormous amounts of first party data and meta, and Amazon and Google could make it work. Now it's more disaggregated and you've got a very advanced technology and  

[00:34:43] Jeremy-Infillion: increasingly  

[00:34:44] Todd: AI driven, that can make sense of what is like. 

[00:34:46] Todd: Dozens of different pockets of first party data, but orchestrate that appropriately. That's, powerful. And then that pushes, again, value creation outta the middle to the fringes, right to the edges where really it should be.  

[00:34:57] Tom: One  

[00:34:58] Todd: of the things that I've, this is really [00:35:00] getting into the weeds of the ad tech world, which is the thing I think we screwed up as ad tech in the first gen of programmatic was, and even browsers, was using cookies in the browser instead of server side. 

[00:35:11] Todd: Server to server. Allows for much better first party data integration and sharing. And effectively the walled gardens, that's what they do. They're effectively server side, first party targeting. And do you think we're gonna be able to see this sort of the, as you think about your product and media math and the integration of that, and Truex has was a great supply side, tech. 

[00:35:30] Todd: So it's interesting when filling is both supply side and buy side. Tech, do you see that maybe they're finally the rise of server side? Targeting and server side data enablement and res ID resolution and that, 'cause that solves a lot of these problems. It does. It is funny. I was in the Google analytics world for a long time at Google. 

[00:35:51] Todd: I managed that partner program and then I, was then, you understand right? If You worked at Google, you understand server side, and I was, CEO EO of a small agency was reselling Google Analytics  

[00:35:59] Todd: I, have [00:36:00] intimate understanding of this and that's the right way to go. I don't. I think the way I would say answer that is like we're seeing server side integrations already effectively with things like clean rooms and the way that identity graphs work and these days and how you access them and connect the dots and things like customer match from Google. 

[00:36:17] Todd: The ability to like connect directly data tables and understand that. I agree with that. I, it'd be interesting. I don't know exact, I haven't gamed out like how that would work across the open web and how everybody would do that, but I know that  

[00:36:29] Todd: Every analytics provider worth their salt is pushing server side integrations right now? 

[00:36:33] Todd: Yeah. Are you saying, Todd, that more people are gonna be logged in the trade desk way or is it, no, it's not. It has nothing to do with trade. Trade desk way is actually at browser side. It has nothing to do. with, There's no server side aspect to that. And it's more, it has to be more at the sort of the ad management layer in terms of. 

[00:36:49] Todd: Instead, the way that ad serving works now is that a browser, your browser makes a call to the ad server and your ad server returns to the browser. Instead of if it were server to server, the ad actually gets [00:37:00] loaded into the web server and then presented to the browser. There's no call from your computer to ad server. 

[00:37:05] Todd: It's happened all behind the scenes, and that's the way that the, walled gardens all work.  

[00:37:09] Jeremy-Infillion: Yeah.  

[00:37:09] Todd: And so it means you, it's how you get around ad blocking. Fundamentally, data resolution happens again, server side, so you can't be blocked. And so this is again, why the walled gardens have done is they're effectively server side ad targeting and delivery. 

[00:37:24] Todd: And so that's the way that I think it has to work fundamentally. what, so if you're a retailer and the minute the person shows up, you can then the identity resolution starts with a login. Once you have that, you can do all server side from that point on. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's what the retailers can enable. 

[00:37:38] Todd: The publishers never figured out, logged in how to get someone to log in. .  

[00:37:41] Todd: But I guess what I'm saying is CTV is logged in generally Correct. CTV streaming services. Are logged in experience and that's one of the things, so video has always been.  

[00:37:51] Tom: Video  

[00:37:51] Todd: ad serving, interestingly enough, has always been server side. Yeah. Vast is a server side that's video ad serving, standard  

[00:37:58] Jeremy-Infillion: ad serving  

[00:37:59] Todd: technology, but it's the [00:38:00] vast standard is the video ad survey. and that's always been server side, which has always been interesting is that there was this little pocket of the internet. 

[00:38:07] Todd: Yeah. Advertising for 10 years has been server side. That's been video and it's worked and it's part of the reason video ad serving has worked really well and I think works well with retail media as it is server side and it's really easy to do the integrated. Logged in connection and identification. 

[00:38:23] Todd: And so we can get the same thing across the open web and retailers are logged in PLA ads can be done in via logged in identity resolution. So this is where it gets interesting and where we can enable this more broadly. Again, you unlock the open web. Yep. I would like to see the open web say. Yeah. I fundamentally think strategically invaluable. I, like publishers. I've worked with you, you and I both worked. I've been a publisher in the past. That's why we all started down this road. It was fun to work with publishers. Like doing clever things. I think this is a great discussion and I think you gave us our first question that we're gonna go ask Attain in our next session about how you're doing measurement of these types of campaigns on a first [00:39:00] party basis. 

[00:39:00] Todd: So  

[00:39:01] Tom: thank  

[00:39:01] Todd: you Jeremy, for, thank you for  

[00:39:03] Tom: having  

[00:39:03] Todd: us here in your in your suite. And I'm interested in keeping in touch and understanding what happens at Ken and what happens. It's me. An interesting year. Yeah, we're, gonna have, it's gonna be a lot of fun to see how this all evolves. 

[00:39:15] Todd: It's all moving so fast and we're excited to be part of it. Very good. Thank you. We'll see you next time. and Thank you.  

[00:39:20]  

[00:39:20] Tom: You are listening to the Middlemen podcast with me, Tom Limongello