Signal & Noise

Join advertising industry veterans Brett House and Rio Longacre as they share regular updates and analysis on the changing world of data, tech, and AI. You’ll hear real talk from thought leaders across industries about the latest trends having the biggest impact on our jobs… and lives. Signal & Noise means no BS - only straight talk and first-hand insights from leading operators, creators, and founders.

Signal & Noise is a news podcast hosted by Signal and Noise, with 80 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Signal and Noise hosts Signal & Noise, a news show with 80 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Signal & Noise

  Can the Open Web Survive the Al Age? Kurt Donnell on Publisher Economics, Radical Transparency, and pubOS

  Oct 2, 20261h 23m

  The open web has survived search, social media, programmatic advertising, privacy regulation, and the rise of the walled gardens. But does generative AI represent a fundamentally different threat? In this episode of Signal & Noise , Rio Longacre sits down one-on-one with Kurt Donnell, President & CEO of Freestar , while Brett House is away. Kurt brings an unusual perspective. He began his career as an M&A attorney, moved into media and operations, helped take YogaWorks public, and eventually joined Freestar as its first CEO. Under his leadership, Freestar says it has grown sevenfold, expanded to 185 employees across 15 countries, and returned more than $1 billion to publishers. Rio and Kurt tackle an increasingly urgent question for digital media: Is the publisher crisis still primarily a monetization problem, or has AI created a structural break in the economics of the open web? Kurt explains how the historical bargain between publishers and platforms is changing. Search engines consumed publisher content but also sent traffic back. AI answer engines can deliver the answer without the click. Larger publishers with strong brands, direct audiences, and genuine utility have generally held up better, while SEO-dependent long-tail publishers have faced greater pressure. The conversation goes well beyond AI. Rio and Kurt discuss why original journalism remains essential even in a world of podcasts, Substacks, creators, and AI summaries. Someone still has to produce the reporting—the raw material everyone else analyzes, summarizes, and synthesizes. Without a sustainable model for creating that information, the ecosystem suffers. They also unpack the economics of programmatic: supply-path duplication, unnecessary intermediaries, declining trust, and why the open web remains harder for advertisers to understand than closed platforms. Kurt argues one of the walled gardens’ greatest advantages is simplicity and transparency —the ability to show advertisers what happens when they put money into the system. Kurt also explains Freestar’s pubOS , a unified operating layer to help publishers manage header bidding, yield optimization, analytics, identity, integrations, demand partners, and managed services with less complexity. Rio and Kurt explore: Why publishers need to become better marketers Whether subscriptions, commerce, events, and licensing can supplement ads Why email and newsletters may be among the most valuable assets pubs control How first-party data and authenticated audiences can improve economics Why trust and verification remain barriers to monetizing pub signals Whether cleaner supply paths can rebuild advertiser confidence Why CPM and fill rate can be misleading The role of curation and first-party audience signals Whether agentic trading can remove unnecessary layers from programmatic What publishers must own directly as discovery shifts from search On agentic advertising, Kurt is cautiously optimistic. Direct communication between scaled buyer and seller systems could improve targeting, packaging, reporting, and transparency, but the market remains early and infrastructure still needs to be recreated. This is a conversation about much more than publisher yield. It is about whether independent digital media can build a new economic model around direct relationships, trusted content, cleaner advertising infrastructure, better data, and dramatically less friction before AI permanently reshapes how audiences discover information. Featuring: Kurt Donnell, President & CEO, Freestar Hosted by: Rio Longacre, Signal & Noise #SignalAndNoise #KurtDonnell #Freestar #AdTech #Publishing #OpenWeb #ProgrammaticAdvertising #DigitalMedia #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #PublisherMonetization #FirstPartyData #HeaderBidding #SupplyPathOptimization #Journalism #MediaEconomics #pubOS

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  Signal & Noise

  Companies Don’t Transform, People Do: Rishad Tobaccowala on Work, Agencies, and Reinvention

  Sep 28, 20261h 37m

  ew people have had a better vantage point on the transformation of advertising, technology, and work than Rishad Tobaccowala . Over a 37-year career at Publicis Groupe, Rishad helped pioneer its digital businesses, chaired Digitas and Razorfish, and ultimately served as Global Chief Strategist and Growth Officer. Today, he is an author, teacher, adviser, senior adviser to Publicis Groupe, co-founder of the Athena Project on Modern Leadership , and one of the industry’s most original thinkers on how people and organizations navigate change. In this wide-ranging, smart, funny, and deeply thought-provoking conversation, Rishad joins Brett House and Rio Longacre to challenge one of the biggest assumptions surrounding technological transformation: companies don’t transform simply because they buy new technology, reorganize, or deploy AI. Companies transform when their people do. Rishad argues that AI represents something fundamentally different from previous technology waves—not simply another tool, but what he calls an emerging form of “alien intelligence.” The question, then, isn’t whether organizations have an AI strategy. It’s whether they are willing to rethink how work gets done, how people are rewarded, where power sits, and what human beings uniquely contribute. The conversation explores why transformation is ultimately about power, politics, people, and partnering ; why technology moves faster than organizations; and why simply making the old model more efficient is like putting a faster engine into a car when what you really need is to design an airplane. Rishad also explains his idea of “de-bossification” —the decline of management built around control and the rise of leadership built around influence. He compares the organization of the future to jazz rather than classical music: more improvisational, collaborative, fluid, and less dependent on rigid hierarchy. Along the way, they dig into: Why AI may change nearly every white-collar job without necessarily eliminating work The rise of portfolio careers , fractional talent, freelance work, and agentic employees The six skills Rishad believes matter most: creativity, curiosity, cognition, collaboration, convincing, and communication Why knowledge may become abundant while judgment, imagination, and wisdom become more valuable How individuals can “rearchitect” their careers instead of waiting for an employer to provide purpose Why leaders should “untie, not cut” when leaving organizations What Publicis got right in its decade-long transformation—and why changing incentives and behavior mattered as much as acquisitions and technology Why agencies, consultancies, and other services businesses will struggle to keep selling hours and FTEs in an AI-enabled economy Rishad also shares a deceptively simple definition of success: the freedom to spend your time in ways that give you joy. This is a conversation about AI, but even more, it is about work, leadership, careers, agencies, reinvention, and human agency . And it’s a reminder from one of advertising’s great strategic thinkers that the hardest part of transformation has never been the technology. #SignalAndNoise #RishadTobaccowala #FutureOfWork #Leadership #Reinvention #Advertising #Marketing #Agencies #PublicisGroupe #DigitalTransformation #OrganizationalTransformation #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #Careers #FutureOfAgencies #Workplace #BusinessStrategy #HumanIntelligence #Debossification #RethinkingWork

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  Signal & Noise

  From Cash Back to Outcomes: Bryan Leach on Building Ibotta, Going Public, and Betting on Denver

  Sep 24, 202656 min

  What does it take to walk away from a prestigious legal career, build a technology company from scratch, take it public—and then reinvent the business along the way? In this episode of Signal & Noise , Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Bryan Leach, Founder, CEO, President & Chairman of Ibotta , for a wide-ranging conversation about entrepreneurship, commerce media, measurement, AI, and why he chose Denver as the place to build. Bryan’s path to technology was anything but conventional. After Harvard, Oxford as a Marshall Scholar, Yale Law School, a Supreme Court clerkship, and a successful career at Bartlit Beck, he realized he wanted to build something of his own. The idea that became Ibotta began on an airplane, when Bryan watched another traveler photograph receipts and started thinking about how smartphones could capture purchase data—and eventually make rebates dramatically easier for consumers. What started as a cash-back app has evolved into something much larger: the Ibotta Performance Network (IPN) , which distributes digital promotions through major platforms and retailers. Today, much of Ibotta operates behind the scenes, powering offers inside experiences like Walmart and other publisher partners rather than requiring consumers to use the Ibotta app itself. The conversation goes deep on one of advertising’s hardest problems: proving outcomes . Bryan explains why a redemption isn’t enough, why incrementality matters, and how Ibotta is trying to shift CPG promotions away from impressions, clicks, and blanket discounts toward measurable incremental sales and a true cost-per-outcome model. He also explains how persistent retailer IDs and item-level purchase data make it possible to compare exposed and unexposed consumers and measure actual lift. They also dig into: Why Bryan left law even after reaching a career most people would never walk away from—and how one mentor’s decision to invest became a pivotal moment in Ibotta’s creation. How Ibotta grew from roughly 2 million to 20.9 million redeemers , with much of that growth coming through third-party publishers. Why Bryan believes promotions should increasingly be treated as an always-on performance channel , with spending governed by incremental economics rather than fixed annual budgets. How AI is already changing Ibotta’s product, software development, measurement capabilities, and internal workflows. The transition from private company to public company—and the lessons of building one of Colorado’s landmark technology companies. Why Bryan sees Denver’s culture, talent base, quality of life, and civic accessibility as competitive advantages for founders. It’s a conversation about much more than coupons or cash back. It’s about transforming promotions from a century-old marketing tactic into a measurable growth engine—and what Bryan learned from taking Ibotta from an idea to a public technology company along the way. #SignalAndNoise #Ibotta #BryanLeach #CommerceMedia #RetailMedia #CPG #PerformanceMarketing #AdTech #MarTech #Incrementality #MarketingMeasurement #DigitalPromotions #RetailTech #CustomerData #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Entrepreneurship #Founders #Startups #DenverTech #ColoradoTech #IPO #BusinessLeadership #Innovation #Marketing #Advertising #ConsumerBehavior #FutureOfCommerce

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  Signal & Noise

  When Content Becomes Infinite: Alex Collmer on Creative Intelligence in the AI Advertising Era

  Sep 21, 202652 min

  Generative AI has made it radically easier—and cheaper—to create advertising. But if every brand can suddenly produce infinite variations using the same models, what creates competitive advantage? In this episode of Signal & Noise , Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Alex Collmer, Founder & Executive Chairman of Vidmob , to explore why the next battleground in advertising may not be content generation. It may be the intelligence that determines what to create, why it works, and what brands learn from every ad they put into market . Alex traces Vidmob’s evolution from a marketplace connecting marketers with video creators into what it now calls a creative data company . The turning point came when Vidmob connected its production systems directly to advertising platforms and suddenly gained access to performance data. That exposed a major disconnect: marketers spent years optimizing audiences, bids, identity, attribution, geography, and media—but creative remains one of advertising’s most important and least-instrumented variables. Alex explains what creative data means: a structured understanding of the thousands of decisions contained within an ad—from messaging and narrative arc to logo placement, pacing, framing, imagery, and brand cues—and how those decisions correlate with business and campaign outcomes. The conversation turns to generative AI. Alex argues foundation models themselves are rapidly becoming commodities. If every competitor has access to the same technology, simply having better AI won’t create a durable advantage. The differentiator is proprietary intelligence brands bring into those systems: what they know about their creative, customers, performance, and how their brand communicates effectively. That raises an even bigger strategic question: Should brands allow platforms to own that intelligence—or build and control it themselves? Alex discusses Vidmob360 and the shift from static dashboards to APIs, MCP services, assistants, and agents that make creative intelligence actionable inside existing marketing workflows. Instead of receiving a PowerPoint weeks after a campaign launches, marketers can interrogate live creative performance, identify fatigue, understand why assets are succeeding or failing, generate better briefs, and connect insights directly to production and media decisioning. Rio, Brett, and Alex also tackle the danger of creative sameness . Generative AI can produce thousands of variations, but volume isn't originality. Continuous optimization can easily become a feedback loop in which every brand learns from yesterday's winners and gradually begins looking and sounding the same. They also explore what all of this means for designers and creative professionals. Alex sees AI less as a replacement for great creatives than another powerful tool—and argues the best technically literate creators may enter an entirely new playing field. Real-time performance feedback can also finally give creative teams something they've historically lacked: a direct learning loop between what they make and how audiences respond. Plus: why Alex once raced humans against horses, why click-through rate is the creative metric he'd eliminate tomorrow, and the human capability he believes becomes even more valuable as AI improves: storytelling . Topics include: Creative intelligence • Creative data • Generative AI • Vidmob360 • MCP and AI agents • Creative optimization • Brand sovereignty • Walled gardens • Creative measurement • Content abundance • Advertising automation • Creative fatigue • Human creativity • The changing role of designers #SignalAndNoise #AlexCollmer #Vidmob #CreativeIntelligence #CreativeData #GenerativeAI #Advertising #AdTech #Marketing #MarketingTechnology #CreativeTechnology #AIAdvertising #AgenticAI #AIAgents #MCP #BrandStrategy #DigitalAdvertising #CreativeOptimization #MarketingAI #Media #PerformanceMarketing #CreativeStrategy #FutureOfAdvertising #ContentCreation #BrandMarketing

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  Signal & Noise

  The Operating System for Commerce Media: Jeffrey Cohen on Amazon Ads’ Rise, Retail Media’s Measurement Reckoning, and the Shift from Dashboards to Agents

  Sep 17, 20261h 22m

  Retail media was built on a powerful promise: connect advertising directly to transactions and finally show marketers what their media dollars produced. But as the category matures, a harder question is replacing simple attribution: Did the advertising actually cause the sale? In this episode of Signal & Noise , Rio Longacre and Brett House sit down with Jeffrey Cohen, Chief Business Development Officer at Skai and former Principal Evangelist at Amazon Ads , for a wide-ranging conversation about the evolution of commerce media—and what happens as intelligent agents begin taking over work once performed through dashboards, spreadsheets, rules engines, and manual campaign management. Jeff had a front-row seat during Amazon Ads’ extraordinary rise. He explains what Amazon got right, from the simplicity of “search, find, buy” to its ability to connect media exposure with actual commerce. But from outside Amazon, he now sees the larger challenge: consumers don’t live inside walled gardens. TikTok can drive an Amazon purchase. Prime Video can influence a Walmart sale. In-store activity affects digital behavior, and digital media influences what happens on the shelf. That creates a measurement reckoning. ROAS and last-touch attribution can tell marketers what received credit for a transaction, but not necessarily what caused it. The conversation digs into incrementality, cross-channel effects, independent measurement, and why historically siloed media, shopper marketing, trade promotion, and commerce teams increasingly need to operate together. Then the discussion moves from dashboards to agents . Jeff explains how Skai is approaching this transition through Celeste, Skai Studio, MCP connectivity, and agentic workflows. Instead of asking an AI assistant for an insight, marketers can build systems capable of analyzing signals, finding audiences, recommending budgets, creating campaigns, monitoring performance, and escalating decisions to humans for approval. The goal, Jeff argues, shouldn't be another marketing black box , but a glass box : automation where marketers can understand the logic behind decisions, establish guardrails, audit actions, and retain control over critical choices—especially where budgets are concerned. One particularly striking finding: Jeff says 45% of the questions asked through Celeste could not have been answered manually within the traditional Skai platform. Agents aren't simply making analytics faster; they're combining data and performing analysis that previously required people to jump between systems, download reports, manipulate data, and assemble the answer themselves. The implications extend far beyond media buying. Jeff describes Skai's own company-wide agentic transformation and the emergence of a new kind of marketer: the builder —someone who may not be a traditional software engineer but understands systems, processes, data, business rules, and how to turn them into intelligent workflows. In this episode: How Amazon Ads became an advertising giant Why “search, find, buy” proved so powerful Attribution vs. incrementality Why platforms end up “grading their own homework” The convergence of retail media, CTV, social, and in-store Celeste, Skai Studio, MCP, and agentic workflows Why agents need guardrails, auditability, and human oversight Why major budget decisions still require human approval Why AI transformation is really operating-model transformation The marketer as a builder Why companies need to rethink workflows instead of automating them The big question is no longer whether AI can optimize another campaign or generate dashboards. It’s what decisions we delegate, what governance those systems require, and where human judgment remains essential. Hosted by Rio Longacre and Brett House on Signal & Noise . #RetailMedia #CommerceMedia #AmazonAds #AdTech #MarketingTechnology #AgenticAI #MarketingAI #RetailMediaNetworks #Incrementality #Advertising #MediaBuying #Skai #DigitalAdvertising #SignalAndNoise

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