Michael Akkerman

Love this - AI is the Oppenheimer moment for marketing. It fundamentally collapses the time and cost of production. A $2.5 million campaign that used to take four months can now be delivered for $500,000 in four weeks. Legacy firms that charge based on hours with the 'time-driven' model are existentially threatened by this.

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Excited to share that Aperiam has invested in Bedrock Platform. Obvious statement of the century: programmatic advertising has a complexity problem. The infrastructure that was built to give media buyers control has, over time, done the opposite. Burying teams under layers of operational overhead, legacy tooling, and opaque supply chains. Bedrock is built on a simple but powerful thesis: what if you stripped away the bloat and rebuilt the stack around what actually matters... precision, transparency, and speed to execution. Their platform combines AI-driven campaign automation with curated, premium inventory across video, CTV, DOOH, and audio, and aims to be flexible and get smarter over time. Plus, the team (Shane, Austin, Ryan, James) has deep roots in the infrastructure layer of ad tech and understands the plumbing better than almost anyone. We believe the next generation of programmatic will be leaner, faster and AI-first. Bedrock is building that.

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CTV is a driving force for digital ad spend growth, but those of us who have been around since the days of "Ad Network 1.0" know that non-transparent "ad bundles" and fuzzy PMPs with fancy logos and no accountability will burn out the minute that the supply - demand imbalance come into play. With the rise of Amazon Prime Video and the growth of FAST channels reaching saturation overload, we are just about there. Program level transparency and full impression-level accountability across all CTV sources is only a matter of time.

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It’s not often you get to hear from two OGs who helped build programmatic back when it all started. PubMatic's Rajeev Goel and Scope3's Brian O’Kelley reflect on how far we’ve come, and how the Ad Context Protocol could shape what’s next for digital advertising.

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Interesting to see the gaps in priorities between brands and agencies. It seems that brands choose to retain the core work of their brand marketing in-house while tasking agencies to handle performance related activities.

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Nice piece in AdExchanger about our acquisition of streamr.ai and how AI-powered technology will help empower small and medium-sized business (SMB) advertisers to invest more in streaming — unlocking the next major revenue opportunity for CTV publishers. https://magnite.smh.re/1Vw

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🚨 Great coverage of how Fandom supercharged its AI-powered ad targeting with new integrations from Experian and Audigent, a part of Experian. Thanks to MarTech Edge for breaking it down 🙌 : "With over 350 million monthly unique users, Fandom is the undisputed king of fan platforms—housing content for everything from Call of Duty to Stranger Things. But as audiences become more ad-averse and privacy regulations tighten, targeting users in meaningful, compliant ways is increasingly complex. That's where this trio’s combined strength comes in. 💡Fandom brings real-time context and cultural insight. 📊 Experian delivers scalable audience segments built from verified consumer data. 🔒 Audigent, acting as the data tech backbone, ensures the entire system is privacy-first and interoperable across platforms." “This move raises the stakes for rival platforms like Reddit, TikTok, or even Spotify, which are also eyeing Gen Z with laser focus. But unlike walled gardens that require brands to play by platform-specific rules, Helix aims to offer more flexibility and cross-channel reach—all while rooted in fandom behavior.” #Fandom #FanDNA #Audigent #Experian #GenZ #Helix #AIPowered #PopCulture #WhatsTrending #Targeting https://lnkd.in/eZqJxzxk

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CMOs demand guaranteed delivery, lowest CPMs, strategic flexibility, and outcome-based pricing. Physics says you can't have all four simultaneously. Principal media delivers three of them. The question is which three matter most. Forrester's new principal media report from the inimitable Jay Pattisall is very much worth a read, and it's going to trigger the predictable debate. Critics will argue agencies are creating conflicts. Evangelists will tout cost savings. Both will miss the strategic reality: CMOs facing compression don't have the luxury of perfect markets. I've watched boards push CMOs for guaranteed outcomes while slashing budgets. In that environment, academic arguments about strategic flexibility mean nothing. The anti-principal media argument assumes unlimited client patience, perfect information, and rational markets. Reality looks different. Reality is: your board wants cost certainty so they can model P&L without media volatility. Reality is: your CFO wants guaranteed delivery so you're not scrambling for Super Bowl inventory in scatter markets. Reality is: your CEO wants outcome-based pricing that ties media spend to business results. Principal media trades strategic flexibility for the three things boards actually care about: cost certainty, delivery guarantee, and outcome alignment. The Forrester report shows 80% of marketers are interested in principal media advantages. That's not because CMOs are naive about conflicts of interest. It's because they're making rational trade-offs under real constraints. The criticism of principal media comes from people who've never faced the impossible triangle. They can afford to optimize for strategic flexibility because they're not accountable for the P&L impact when media costs spike or inventory disappears. Yes, principal media requires transparency. Yes, it needs contractual controls and performance accountability. Yes, clients should cap how much spend flows through principal arrangements. But the mechanism itself? It's agencies finally building inventory positions that enable the outcome-based pricing we've demanded for years. I'm a big supporter as, for two decades, I've watched CMOs demand that agencies move from billing hours to pricing on outcomes. "Put skin in the game," they said. "Share the risk." Now agencies are doing exactly that with principal media, and the industry is calling it a conflict of interest. We can't have it both ways. Forrester predicts principal media will grow to one-third of billings by 2026. Read their report, then decide which three variables matter most for your business. https://lnkd.in/eKHg5qmk #PrincipalMedia #MediaBuying #CMO #MarketingLeadership #MarketingStrategy

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Digital technologies, data, and #AI are redefining the role of the Chief Marketing Officer. Denise Dahlhoff #cmo #genAI https://lnkd.in/esF-syHV

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