Sarah Welch

Substack publication 'The Free Press,' a blog started in 2022, has grown to around 15M a year in revenue, and is now in talks to be acquired by Paramount for $200M (and founder Bari Weiss given an exec role at CBS News). I've predicted blogging is back for several years - thanks mostly to email and the fact that Substack and Beehiiv got distribution right. It turns out independent media can thrive in an environment even when social platforms like this one, Meta and Twitter/X throttle our hyperlinks. I honestly think it's a loss for these products to not show them as often as they do. As many users here are simply less informed, less educated and stuck in algo-generated filter bubbles. Of course, this isn't everyone. The smartest internet users are looking to things like email where there's less algo interference. You hope the big tech platforms catch on and remember hyperlinks are important again, at some point this will be a liability for them jamming the plumbing of the web. Anyway - if you want to start a blog, it's never been a better time. We have so much validation all around us. You can even be well-compensated for your work this time. The internet is great if you play the right games.

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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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My First AI Post @2025 (and thank you to the Aperiam AI Fellows and to Dawn West and Alex Netelkos for making that happen!): If viewability was the training wheels of digital measurement, attention is the carbon-fiber racing bike we’ve just learned to ride. Erica kicked us off by pointing out the obvious: “viewable” doesn’t mean “seen,” and certainly doesn’t mean “engaged.” McKinsey’s neat formula — time × focus × intent — resonated as a starting point, but the real magic is in using that across channels and across the funnel. Why does this matter now? Because omni-channel is no longer a buzzword — it’s the messy, lived reality. CTV, digital out-of-home, mobile gaming, social feeds — each has wildly different engagement norms. An attention metric gives marketers and publishers a lingua franca, a Rosetta Stone to compare value and outcomes without pretending a click on a banner is the same as leaning into a big-screen spot. Publishers want credit for premium environments. Marketers want to normalize buys across hundreds of brands, countries, and media types. Attention-weighted CPMs (ACPMs) start to solve both. Even a global CPG can look across Meta, YouTube, stadium signage, and print — and make sense of it. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than a stack of inconsistent KPIs and gut feel? Absolutely. And yes, AI is in the wings — not as the protagonist, but as the stagehand making the hard stuff easier. It can normalize messy data, connect attention signals to outcomes, and embolden teams to try bolder experiments. Which brings us to the closing provocation: What if a few brave brands and publishers agreed to really transact on attention — rough edges, no gaming, shared responsibility for outcomes? The moment feels right to test whether attention can become not just a metric, but a currency. Marc Guldimann Adelaide David Zapata AB InBev Michael Shields Cory Treffiletti Rembrand McKinsey & Company

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Having to keep copy-pasting feedback across chat windows between Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT is exhausting. Wish I could pull them all into a group chat so I wouldn't have to be the intermediary all the time.

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An awesome conversation with Instacart's very own Ali Miller and The Drum's Kiri Masters on how Instacart's platform allows retailers of all sizes to participate in retail media without contributing to the fragmentation that has been so challenging for brands and agencies to manage. Definitely worth the read! Here we go!

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The Real Story Behind the DoorDash/Criteo Partnership: It’s All About the $Billion-Dollar Ad Engine. I was reading about the new multi-year partnership between DoorDash and Criteo, and it dawned on me, this isn't just a collaboration, it’s a massive strategic play to accelerate DoorDash’s highest-margin revenue stream: advertising. DoorDash's ad business already surpassed a $1 billion annual run rate in 2024, and this move aims to push it toward an anticipated $2.5+ billion within the next few years — nothing like a high-margin cash cow The Synergy... DoorDash's Strength: Unlocking its high-intent grocery, convenience, and CPG audience. The most critical "new path" in the consumer journey. Criteo's Strength: Serving as an extension of DoorDash’s ad sales team, bringing massive brand and agency demand and proven ad tech (like its Commerce Max DSP) to the delivery marketplace. The Mission: Scaling to $2.5B+ Criteo’s continuous involvement immediately addresses DoorDash's biggest need: attracting large, off-site CPG ad budgets. By offering seamless access to high-impact ad formats (on-site video, Sponsored Product, off-site display) and closed-loop measurement, they simplify the complex retail media buying process for major brands. But here are the critical hurdles they must overcome: Competition: They face established giants like Amazon Advertising and Walmart Connect in the CPG sector, and fierce rivals like Uber Ads in the delivery space. Seamless Integration: The promise to "defragment media buying" hinges on successful, deep technological integration between the two platforms, which is never a simple feat. User Experience: They must scale ad load without annoying the end consumer, whose primary goal on DoorDash is fast, easy ordering. This is a high-stakes, high-reward move that defines the future of local commerce monetisation. #RetailMedia #CommerceMedia #DoorDash #Criteo #AdTech #CPG What do you think is the biggest challenge for this new powerhouse: Winning against Amazon, or perfecting the technical integration?

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I’m excited to announce that Klaviyo has acquired Gatsby a longtime partner helping brands turn social engagement into lasting relationships. Social commerce is expected to surpass $100B by 2026, yet many brands still struggle to capture that momentum. Bringing Gatsby into Klaviyo is another big step toward building the best B2C CRM - so every interaction, from a like to a purchase, helps you grow faster. Welcome to the team, Gatsby. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gGzcZW3Y

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Brandon Caudill and I will be here to talk about: • Engagement that doesn’t evaporate • Retention that survives the heat • Personalization that actually feels personal Because in retail, the real desert is losing customers after the first visit. If you're at eTail™ West and want to chat about turning browsers into loyal revenue, let’s grab time. I promise — no dry conversations. 😎 #engagement #retention #personalization #pushly

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Most QR campaigns stop at product placement. 📦 Put it on the box. 🛒 Stick it on the shelf. 🧾 Slap it on the receipt. But here’s the problem: Same code. Same experience. No context. You’re not selling to robots. You’re marketing to people in wildly different states: Browsing in-aisle 🔹Unboxing at home 🔹Finishing checkout 🔹Grabbing a refill Each scan moment deserves a different journey. And if your QR doesn’t meet that journey? You’re losing conversions (and insights) at the moment of highest intent.

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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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