In the fast-evolving world of programmatic media and adtech, staying informed is key to advertising success. In this episode, U of Digital Founder Shiv Gupta joins host Noor Naseer to discuss how advertisers need sources of credible information to build sound adtech perspective.
Gupta explores how education can help advertisers adapt to rapid industry evolutions, from AI-driven programmatic advertising to evolving privacy regulations. This episode equips advertisers with the mindset shift needed to stay competitive as changes like these redefine the advertising ecosystem.
Noor Naseer: Maybe you want to understand AdTech like a pro, get into the weeds on a particular topic or something in between. That's what Shiv Gupta is helping address in the advertising industry. He's the founder of UofDigital, an education company that focuses on teaching professionals about digital advertising, AdTech, and martech. Shiv shares his perspective on why AdTech education is more important than ever before, who needs to know more, topics to prioritize and much, much more. Let's get into this episode with Shiv now.
Well, thanks for joining me today, Shiv. I'm excited to talk about everything that's happening from an AdTech perspective and getting educated and knowledgeable. So just want to thank you for the time.
Shiv Gupta: Yeah, thanks for having me, Noor. I'm very excited for this conversation.
NN: So I wanted to start off with a really kind of baseline question over here around AdTech education, and that is why is it more important now than it ever has been before?
SG: Yeah, I'd say there's a few reasons. So one is the obvious point of like the pace of change in our industry is accelerating. And you know, every year we say, Oh, it's changing faster this year than ever. And hey, guess what, we're gonna say that every year, we're gonna keep saying that year after year after year, because that's how technology works, right? Technology exponentially kind of increases pace of change. And that's true for our industry as well. So in a fast moving industry, that's only getting faster and faster, in order to be effective in your role, whether you're a buyer, whether you're a seller, whether you're, you know, an operator, a builder, you know, somebody commercializing products, you have to stay on the cutting edge of the space. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to do those things effectively.
So pace of change, number one, obvious thing. Number two, I think, really interesting in our industry is we're seeing a lot of convergence right now, between AdTech and martech, between like social media and programmatic advertising, linear and streaming, you know, you go down the line, like, everything is converging. And I think in the past, you know, let's say 10 years ago, we had these little bubbles, and we still have bubbles. But the bubbles are starting to coalesce, they're starting to come together. And so, you know, I'll use a simple example, like, if you used to be, you know, somebody that worked at DSPs, I could talk DSP all day long, and you were really good at it, maybe 10 years ago, that was totally fine. You're in a bubble, you're in your lane, you're doing a great job building, commercializing, etc. But today, if you're commercializing a DSP, you also need to know how to talk about CDPs, right? You also need to know how to talk about data clean rooms. You also need to know how to talk about martech more broadly, you need to know how to talk about cloud, because everything is starting to converge, all these areas are starting to converge. And because of that convergence, people have this increased need to be upskilled, right? Like that person that was able to talk DSP, well, it's cool to say, hey, now you need to talk CDP. But how do they talk CDP, you can't just like flip a switch and talk CDP, like, CDPs are a whole part of the LUMAscape on their own, they require actual like formal learning and formal upscaling and knowledge, you know, sharing and structured education for all intents and purposes, right?
So I'd say pace of change, number one, convergence, number two, I think those are the two key things I want to highlight right now.
NN: I think in so many ways you're already addressing this next question, but what is it in particular that people have to lose by not leveling up and having an intentional plan in place?
SG: Yeah, that's a great question. So I'm going to use another example or analogy, as you can tell, I like doing that. So if you think back, let's say to like the paper industry, right, or the oil industry, right, if you're somebody that was kind of in these industries, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago, those industries, because they're not necessarily like technology, you could argue they're technology industries today, but they didn't used to be, those industries didn't change very fast, right? Like once you're in it, you know it, you know how it works, then it's all about like, okay, who are the key players, do I build relationships, you know, etc, etc, right?
Now, today, we're in a technological space, you have to be tech savvy, and the pace of change, like I said, is increasing, right? So I think mentality wise, like we have inertia as humans, right, society, we have inertia, I think people have been slow to kind of get to this idea of like, oh, no, like, I am in AdTech or martech, I've been in this for 20 years, but I actually need to be in some kind of structured learning program, to be able to keep up with everything and learn about all the things I know, I'm not going to just learn it through osmosis, right? Because there's so much information and because of the pace of the change, because of convergence, right? So I think that kind of explains it in a nutshell, like, that's why you need formal education, we're not in the paper industry from the 1980s, right? We're not in oil from the 1960s and 70s, we're in a fast paced technology industry, and you have to stay on top of it. And listen, reading headlines is great. That's the first step. A lot of people aren't even doing some of that, right? So like, having an intellectual curiosity and going out and reading some of those things is great. But I think there's a difference between structured education and reading headlines. Because like, reading headlines, a lot of times, the purpose of that content is not to educate, the purpose of that content may be used to inform. And I think that's an important nuance, right? If I'm reading an article, that journalist or that reporter is trying to give me all the information associated with that news story. But they're not necessarily trying to teach me what happened in that partnership or what to take away from it or what it means for the industry moving forward, or how it applies to my day to day. They're not trying to teach me those things. They're trying to inform me about what happened. And so reading articles is very different than learning about what is going on.
NN: Who needs to get educated out there? I think there's so many different parties that can benefit from it, and it's not as narrow in scope as some may think.
I'd love to know who are some of those audiences that are leaning into you and are getting a lot of benefit from it.
SG: I mean, I'm biased, so I'm going to say everybody, right? Everybody needs it to a certain extent.
You'll be surprised. We get all sorts of different personas saying, hey, we need this. We get newcomers to the industry. That's an obvious one, right? If you're new to the space, obviously, there's no degree for EdTech and MarTech in college. And so typically in the past, we've just put people on the job and said, learn through osmosis. Hey, there's a better way. We don't have to do it that way and waste the first three years of someone's career just learning through osmosis. You can actually teach them some of these things. That's persona number one. Persona number two, I'd say, is people that have been in the space for a long time, 15, 20, 25 years, they're commercial people, they're sales people, they're account people, they're strategy people, they're marketing people, and they just have a need to keep up and also get upskilled on those adjacent areas that are outside their bubble that they need to learn about to do their jobs better. So I'd say that's another persona.
You'd be surprised, but we get a lot of leadership teams coming to us, CROs, CEOs, CTOs, saying, hey, I have to run a big company. That's more than a full-time job, but that means I can't keep up with all this stuff that I need to learn about. Can you help create a leadership track for things we need to know about? So leadership training.
I think on the buy side, you have marketers and agency folks that they're getting pitched all the time by vendors, but the pitches are obviously all biased. And so they have a need to get more unbiased objective knowledge so that they can make better buying decisions.
I think back office folks and engineers and product people, that's a really interesting use case as well, because those folks a lot of times, especially technical folks, they may not come from this industry, they may have great engineering skills, but they were from some other place, building SaaS products or something completely different. And then all of a sudden, it's like, hey, build an AdTech thing. And the context of AdTech really matters if you're going to build all sorts of personas. We've mapped out at U of Digital what all the different personas need, what level of depth they need, whether you're new to the industry or you're very senior. But frankly, everyone has a use case for education and knowledge.
NN: On a previous episode, I've spoken to a couple of different people on this topic, and I think a repeated theme is something you just brought up, which is that the proxy for education outside of headlines or industry trades is sales collateral, which is highly biased material and definitely incomplete. That's the baseline for so many people who are getting educated in this space.
There's massive gaps and space for more learning.
SG: Yeah. And I think to that point, right? Like I credit the big tech companies and all of the tech companies that are trying to educate their customers through like Google has a thing called skill shop and Facebook has blueprint and all these things are great. And they have some really great material.
A lot of it ends up becoming a bit of a product pitch. Cause that's the point. That's why they're doing it in the first place. They want people to learn about, yes, the industry, but from their lens and from their point of view, which then guides people to buy their thing. I think having objective information and knowledge and education is critical.
NN: At Basis we have a program called AdTech Academy. And we have an incredible team that's focused on education.
But we have our scope, our scope corresponds to whether it's our product suite, our service suite, and goes maybe a little bit beyond. But there's so much more right to your point as far as adjacencies and tangential information that can really expand learning. All of these organizations, whether it's like the really big guys, or everybody in between, they have a little bit of a more narrow parameter. So there's need for more education, for sure. I wanted to dive into some points with you around what are some trouble areas that people have consistently struggled with. And maybe we can talk about one or two different points. But I'm sure you're very familiar with what people are struggling with.
SG: I'm going to answer your question, but I'm going to caveat it, right? So my caveat is like, depending on where you sit in the industry, your experience level, your job function, the company you work at, there are different answers. And so it's hard to kind of make a blanket statement on that.
I would say right now, if you kind of like froze this moment, right now, AI is top of mind for everybody, right? Just in terms of like learning about it, what is it? How does it work? What's the future hold? And so right now, that's probably our most popular kind of request, like, hey, teach us about AI in advertising, in marketing and AdTech, more tech, et cetera. So I'd say that's number one, I'd say number two is probably CTV. I think connected TV is such a big opportunity in our industry. And everyone recognizes that it's changing super fast, like everything else, we're trying to smash together linear TV principles with digital principles. And that's connected TV right now. And like, you have people from different sides, you have linear TV buyers, you have more digital buyers. And that creates like this big mishmash of confusion and complexity. And that's how we're building products, right? Like we still, for example, measure CTV using old school linear TV measurement methods, right? We still track GRPs and TRPs for CTV buys, which is crazy. But we do that, right? And that's, that's an inertia thing, that's a traditional media thing. And so, you know, I'd say like, emerging channels in general, right, I kind of highlighted CTV, but any kind of channel or format that is transitioning, let's say from more traditional means into a more digital means, right? So that's digital out of home, that's streaming audio, I think those are the key ones, right? CTV streaming audio, digital out of home, those are kind of the key channels right now that are making that transition. And that creates a lot of complexity, which people don't feel comfortable with and need to learn about and need to unpack.
NN: So let's dive a little more into the CTV piece. It's very obvious why there's so much interest in CTV. There's, you know, if you're on the sell side, there's the most money to be made. And I guess that trickles down the supply chain.
What is it that people are struggling with the most? I think it's clear in many cases, but I'd love to hear from you what those struggle points are for CTV.
SG: Sure. I think, first of all, CTV, it's so complex on the supply side and the content side first. You have content that originates with one party, but then that content can be distributed in so many different ways. It can be distributed directly from that publisher. It can go into an MVPD. It can be packaged in with a SVOT or AVOT app, streamed live. It can be sold linearly. There's 25 different ways in which a piece of content, TV content, can make its way to a user. That in itself creates all sorts of complexity in terms of how that content can be monetized. I think unpacking that and understanding that is the root of the education gap.
Then you get into the nuances of, because we were trying to make this bridge between linear and CTV, the measurement is complex. We train a lot on the measurement of how can it be measured. Also, the targetability and the data aspect of CTV is very complex. What can you target? How can you target them? What's actually real and what is not? How do these ID solutions work for CTV? I think that's pretty complex. I'd say it's measurement. It's targeting an identity. Then last but not least, it is just understanding the ecosystem of players. Because in classic AdTech fashion, CTV has its own LUMAscape now with a bunch of different boxes. It's like, okay, well, you're a content producer, but you control everything through your own app. Oh, but no, there's another content producer that only distributes to third party apps. Okay, well, there's three buckets within the content producer square. Now we get to OEMs. OEMs, there's the Roku's and the Samsung's and the LG's of the world. Then there's Comcast, because they're technically an OEM as well or a device owner. Then there's all sorts of blurred lines and different boxes within that box. Then you get an AdTech and it's like, oh, we have CTV specific SSPs. We have CTV specific DSPs. Now we have startups that are just like Vibe and the Jam loop. These guys are just focused maybe on the mid market. There's CTV DSP for those guys. It's like there is a lot of complexity and just understanding the ecosystem of players. That's another area where we're having to educate a lot.
NN: A question I get most frequently from people on the agency side and the brand side, anybody who's responsible for buying is the classic measurement question. So to go back to something you mentioned earlier, Shiv, it's that how do we convert this rating point system into one that is equitable and that my client can respect when it seems like this dust still hasn't settled on what's going to be standardized in the CTV world?
How do you start to have that conversation with media buyers?
SG: My perspective is that I don't think we will standardize it. I don't think we will.
And there's a few reasons for that. Linear TV was a very clear cut advertising medium in terms of what it is trying to achieve, which is more upper funnel type of outcomes for whom. And there were a few kind of publishers that controlled a lot of that inventory and sold it in a very specific way. And so it's easy for us to agree all on like a general kind of way to measure this. Digital is a whole other ballgame. When you think about like the way you can target people, the calls to action and the things that people can do after seeing an ad on TV now with QR codes and things like that. And so all of a sudden now you are selling advertising to people in more targeted ways with different desired outcomes up and down the funnel through all sorts of different tech. And that then just, it opens up the box that is digital advertising. And so if you think about the way we measure and digital advertising, there's 15 gazillion different ways to do it. There's brand lift studies, there's conversion tracking and attribution, there's MMM, there's MTA. You know, there's tons and tons and tons of different ways to measure with different types of data. And that's where we're going with TV. Like I think brands and advertisers have to actually get comfortable with that idea, learn about all the different ways to measure. I understand why it feels like a curse. It's actually a blessing, right? Because the reason we were doing linear TV in this very uniform way is because the only way we could buy and sell TV and the only thing we could achieve was a very basic thing. So that's my kind of viewpoint on like, we're not gonna have standardization in CTV. And that's actually a good thing because it helps advertisers figure out like, how do I actually measure what I am trying to achieve.
NN: I want to shift over into another topic. I think you mentioned two big ones. I think the other one was AI. And I'd love if you could frame the AI side of things, thinking about it from the perspective of like a media buyer or somebody who's responsible for programmatic campaigns.
And I'll just like set the table a little bit as far as where we're hearing a lot of energy is, of course, AI has a myriad of applications. But specifically, when we've been talking about it for programmatic, it's like, oh, we have all these AI solutions. But what we actually mean is that we already had stuff in place. And it's not actually new type of AI. And a lot of these solutions are smoke and mirror solutions. I can't imagine you get any shortage of questions around how much of this is legit? How do I even understand what like AI means pertaining to me, because I think what people are looking for is advancement, they're looking for some sort of new emerging opportunity to level up and solve for challenges that they're currently facing. And people are trying to distract them with a new title on an old thing, so wanted to get your thoughts and how you've been addressing AI for media buyers.
SG: Yeah, 100%. So I think there's a few answers to that. So first of all, machine learning has always been around, right? It's been around forever. And so, hey, everybody, let's be cautious about when we use the term AI, are we talking about machine learning, which is totally fine to do, right? Because machine learning, if the machine is actually learning and getting smarter and taking data and, and getting better and better and better, that's literally the definition of AI. But machine learning is very different than what AI, let's say, has become in the last couple of years since ChatGPT launched. And now, you know, we kind of talk about AI as being synonymous with LLMs or NLP, natural language processing. And so, first of all, let's figure out, which one is it? Is it that? Or is it machine learning? And machine learning, we've been doing for a long time? Is it a new thing? Or is it a branding exercise? Is it a marketing exercise, that, you know, somebody's coming and pitching to me just like a rebranded version? It's actually just machine learning, and they slap a new logo on it, or a new, you know, label on it.
So there's that. The other thing I'd say is like, it's really important, I think, to talk about AI, starting from the use cases, right? So like, again, classic industry and technology problem, we talk about the technology and how cool it is, and what it might be able to do. We don't actually talk about the business problem we're trying to solve first. That's where we should always start, right? Like start from the use case, start from the business problem, and then go backwards from there and figure out like, oh, okay, well, maybe AI is a solution to this thing that I'm trying to achieve.
When we are training marketers and buyers on AI, we're literally breaking down all the things that marketers have to do. So that's planning. That's execution. That's optimization. That's measurement and analytics. Let's go through each of these tasks that we have to do as buyers, and think about now, okay, here are the problems. And then are there ways in which AI, whether that's machine learning, or LLMs, or natural language processing, or some other form of AI that I'm not even talking about, right now, can solve those things. And if there are, let's talk through how those things work, which tools exist out there. And that way, we make it tangible, right? We're actually solving a business problem, right? And that's like, frankly, how we like to educate. It's about actually learning in a way that's applicable to what you do.
One more thing to add, I'd say is like, AI, like any tool, people are more likely to understand it and want to use it when they actually start using it for their own life. That's what creates behavioral change. Hey, I actually like, I bought the Google Home. And so now I understand voice a little bit better, right? Or I have a smart TV. So now I understand like, the tile ads on my smart TV better, right?
A lot of what we're seeing with AI right now, which is bonkers to me, we're two years into this, and it's going to revolutionize everything. A lot of people still aren't comfortable going to ChatGPT, and so like, help me write an email, right? Or like, dissect this report, or here's a PDF. Can I ask you a few questions about what's in here in this 30 page PDF, right? Instead of me going through manual and reading all of it.
And so we're trying to get people to apply it to their regular life a little bit to start creating the behavioral change where they will start opening their mind by themselves organically to how it can be applied in other areas in their work, potentially, right? So that's another aspect of what we're trying to do with the AI training is like, just create behavioral change by getting people in there, getting them using it, even for simple things.
NN: I know we went through two topics, and I want to backpedal a little bit correlated with some things that you said about TV. And the fact is that the standardization of the past is not something that's going to apply to the future.
It's something that me and my team have been talking about constantly across this year. People have misconceptions, people who have been in the advertising space for a long time. So I'm curious to ask you, not just specifically related to CTV, but are there a couple of areas where people can't abandon the past that they're so addicted to? And how do you try to help people get to a place where they can accept that? This is a misconception. And we need to start thinking about this, whatever that thing is, they need to get educated on.
SG: Yeah, it's a great question. My mind just goes to one place, and it's kind of full circle here, like it's measurement. It's measurement, measurement, measurement. Measurement is what validates or disproves the value of everything we do in this space in terms of marketing and advertising. If we measure it, and the measurement tells us it didn't work, then we're not going to do it anymore. If we measure it, and it says it worked, we're going to do more of it, right? And we're going to keep doing it and doing it and doing it. And so measurement, fundamentally, in our industry is broken because of inertia, because of the old ways of doing things, right?
So, you know, just some examples, last click attribution, I think is a broken way of measuring. I don't blame marketers for being hooked to it. There's a lot of good reasons why they're hooked to it. It is not actually telling us what is good and what is bad. Even last view attribution, you can make the argument for that. GRPs and TRPs, a lot of these things are broken. And you know, when we talk about some of the problems downstream in our industry, content issues, brand safety issues, fraud issues, all of these problems that we have downstream in our industry can all be traced back to problems with how we measure. Because when we say something is good, and we buy more of it, when it's not actually good, and it can be gained, then that's where we get, you know, nefarious activity and fraud, and you know, bad content, etc.
If I serve an ad, and it drove a last click conversion or a last view conversion, but it was served on a garbage MFA website, we're basically supporting that website. We're basically saying, hey, good job, pat on the back, keep doing what you're doing. And so that's the thing that is hardest. I'll go back to what I was saying a minute ago, which is like, people are hooked to some of these antiquated ways of measuring. Because listen, at the end of the day, you have to be able to explain to your CFO why you're doing what you're doing. And the CFOs don't understand, there's a big education gap there. And they're like, well, last year, you drove, you know, X many click conversions for me, I want to see what you're doing this year. And I don't want to hear a story about how click conversions are broken.
That's what I understand on the CFO, right? So we have to answer to our CFO, we have to look good on spreadsheets. And in order to look good on spreadsheets, you have to show year over year, month over month, apples to apples comparisons, you can't just say, hey, I'm completely changing how I measure things. Like, that's hard to do. That's got to come from the CMO down, or even the CEO or the CFO down. And changing that is hard. Those people in the leadership suite don't understand some of this stuff. They need the knowledge and the education, so they can change. And so that's why we're stuck to it. That's why we're addicted to it. But it needs to change if our industry is going to improve and get better.
NN: It's making me think of what these needs are for a lot of people who report to people in the C-suite or the executive suite, wherever their organization is. Maybe they're in charge of media buying or just overarching campaigns and they're struggling with exactly what you described. And they're also struggling with the sources from which they gather information. So even if I seek knowledge from whomever it is that I seek it from, I ultimately need to sit down with partners and evaluate and see if what they're offering is in fact going to meet my needs.
And let's say it's from the spectrum of measurement. Measurement's been another space where there's been no shortage of smoke and mirror type of players. Attribution is a space where there's like maybe the vast majority of smoke and mirrors. I'm sure some people will not like to hear me saying that. It's just so very true. Like people build these glass houses and they can be knocked down easily, but sometimes you don't know until you test and learn. So I think that's where people really are seeking a lot of education. How do I know that I know enough so that I'm not wasting my time signing up for something that's going to be a waste of my client or whoever that their needs are being met? So if you were to address a question like that, how do you make sure somebody knows enough so that they're not getting scammed? Seems like a strong word, but like essentially so that they're not getting tied up in something that they don't want to be associated with.
SG: Like, I think that that's tricky, right? Because on one hand, yeah, you want to be able to kind of say, No, listen, this is how I do things. And this is how I've set it up. And I believe in that.
On the other hand, you want to have a mentality of like, always be learning and keep your mind open. And maybe you're not doing it the right way. And so always be scoping out what's out there and keep an open mind. I think with measurement in particular, right now, we're a really interesting moment where there's a lot of stuff going on, there's signal loss, right? So we're losing a lot of our tracking mechanisms, there's new types of signal coming in, that makes things, you know, more difficult, walled gardens are putting up their walls, it's hard to get data out, etc. fragmentation of partners and channels, we talked about channels earlier, like CTV is different from streaming audio is different from display from social. And so measurement is getting harder and harder and harder.
And I think in this moment, you have to be open minded, you have to do a few things. One is like, you have to always be questioning what is your source of truth, you always have to be gut checking your source of truth. I actually think the idea of a source of truth is almost becoming antiquated in a way, because there is actually no right answer anymore. To measurement, you have to constantly be triangulating multiple different methodologies and approaches to measurement to constantly be gut checking what's actually real and what's not. And so I think almost like taking that mentality is the right approach of like, no, I have to keep gut checking everything I I'm going to keep questioning, you know, the source of truth or the measurement that I have in place. Because at the end of the day, with everything in flux, everything changing, like, if I get set in my ways, you know, I'm gonna extrapolate a little bit, but like, you're just like playing out the next version of last click attribution, right? Like, in a microcosm of like this current environment, I think it's almost like, hey, don't say you know enough, always be questioning and get your organization and the people around you to have that same mentality. And that's what's going to help you drive outcomes and drive your business for them, right? Because at the end of the day, right? Marketing is not about the number of conversions you got in your spreadsheet. Marketing is about, hey, did my business grow from last year to this year? And if you're keeping that lens, and then questioning all the measurement underneath it, to get to that result and get to that outcome, I think that's when you know you're doing a good job.
NN: I want to ask you a specific question about the tech stack. You mentioned many different elements that are associated with it, and that there's tangential learning that needs to take place.
So I have my specific role, but then there's this halo effect or ripple effect where I need to learn about these other things. And I'm just framing the question to ask, how much does a non technical professional need to learn about some of these different elements in the tech stack, especially when they don't have the opportunity to really like dive in on a day to day basis.
SG: I love that question. I mean, most of our learners nor our non-technical audiences, right? We're training a lot of business people, right? Sales people, account people, media buyers, strategy people, marketing people, et cetera, right? So we deal with these folks a lot.
And frankly, like there's too much to learn. There's too many subject matters. There's too many domains. There's too much technology to expect yourself to go a mile deep on everything. You don't need to. What you need to be able to do is understand the strategic big picture. You need to understand where all of the things kind of fit and what purposes they serve, what use cases they serve, why they exist. You need to be somewhat of a thought leader and you need to be opinionated about some of these things. Not all of them. You don't need to always have an opinion, but you need to have some thoughtful opinions about the things that are relevant to, let's say, your partners or your customers or your key constituents or to your business.
Those are the things you need to know, right? It's like what matters to the people I work with, what matters to the outcome I'm trying to drive out of my role. I think that's where people fall down a lot because they don't think that certain things matter when they do. It's just kind of expanding your aperture, opening your mind to like, oh, okay, I sell a DSP. In the last five meetings I've had with customers, the term data clean rooms has come up and I didn't know it. I didn't understand. I don't understand why it exists. I don't understand what purpose it serves or maybe even I did, but I didn't have thoughtful opinions about it. Okay, that's an area where I need to go get more conversant.
I don't need to get technical. I don't need to access a UI and actually set up a data integration. I don't need to do that, but I need to know what it is. I need to know what use cases it serves so I can talk to it about my customers. That's how I'm going to do a good job, right? By no means do I encourage everyone to go out and learn everything and go a mile deep. That's unreasonable. I can't do that. You can't do that. Nobody can do that. There's too much, but what you need to think about is what job do you do? What outcome are you trying to achieve? And where are your blind spots or knowledge gaps that are preventing you from doing that? And I guarantee you, everyone has those. There's not a single person that is like, oh, I know all the things I need to know in order to do my job as effectively as possible.
NN: What do you think about, I'm going to call it AdTech Twitter, and just social spaces in general, because we talked about some other sources that there is sales collateral. There is obviously educational resources that have been developed, like you have digital amongst some other players out there. There's articles from the trades, which those people they have a beat, but they're not speaking of non-technical people, typically people who are writing about it are also non-technical. And then there are these thought leaders online that are speaking about it extensively. And a lot of people use that as a proxy for, I guess, education as well.
This is kind of a question that's going a little bit of an outlier question. How often are you seeing something where you feel unaligned or you think, oh, the baseline of this person's understanding of this topic, it's not quite there. How do you internalize that? Because you're in the business of really knowing these things, because there's so much accountability that you need to take on in order to be an educator in this space. But when you see something that's not quite right and it's being publicly solicited for consumption by people in the AdTech world, what do you do?
SG: I'll be the first one to say, you mentioned accountability. Yes, I have accountability, especially when I'm formally in a learning environment. I don't feel that level of accountability on social media, for better or for worse.
I'm out there just trying to talk to people and learn and hear what's going on. Honestly, sometimes have fun with it because sometimes I think we take ourselves too seriously in the industry, so I think it's a nice outlet. But I think the key thing with social media is taking it for what it is. People go to social media to be whimsical, to get a break, to get entertained, to listen to thought leaders and hear opinions. Social media is all about opinions and not necessarily facts and reality. I think if you go into social media with that mindset, you'll do well and you'll take away valuable stuff from it, but you have to have that grain of salt with everything you get. Also, a lot of times on social media, people are using social media as a marketing channel, whether that's to propagate their own opinions or their company's viewpoints or what have you. That's what social media is. It's a marketing channel. There's a lot of value there, 100%. Also, just the speed of social media. Oh, this company just bought this other company. What does it mean? I'm getting that from Twitter and LinkedIn. I'm not getting that from a press release. I'm not getting that from a blog post from the companies. There's a lot of value there in terms of speed and quick hit information. But again, everything I think on social media should be taken with that grain of salt of people are going there with an angle. People are going there to be whimsical. People are going there to share their opinions. People are going there to be entertained. If you can take that mindset into it, I think there's a lot of value to be had.
NN: Do you think the AdTech slash digital media programmatic industry has failed to resonate with audiences as far as actually educating them? And I'll give a little bit more context around that question.
So often you'll go to a conference and people to go back to the agenda piece, people have their talking points, they've worked with their marketing team. Now they have their best executives up on stage saying something as like, this is objectively true. It is something where people are trying to like determine like, am I learning something new? Is this true? Is this just true with your technology? Is this an actual opportunity for me to learn? Just again, curious for your opinions and in these types of other spaces, which also I left it out when I shared earlier, like places of learning, in theory, you would go to a conference as a space for learning, but everything is sponsored. So it is another space where you take things with a grain of salt. Just again, curious for your thoughts in that space as well.
SG: 100% listen, I think like and this goes back to what we were talking about with like the academies, right? There's a lot of value in all of these forums, whether that's conferences, social media, you know, vendor provided academies, there's a lot of rich content, you definitely shouldn't dismiss it, you just have to go in eyes wide open of like, who is telling me this? What is their angle? And if I can remember that, and kind of caveat everything I'm hearing, then I can get a lot of value out of this.
And I just feel I feel the same way about conferences, you shouldn't ever go into like a sponsored panel, expecting to come away with the objective truth and nothing but the truth, like, you should come in expecting to hear opinions and angles. And like, you know, a lot of times, it's very valuable to know the angles of these companies, as long as you go in with the eyes wide open of like, this is not just going to be objective truths, this is going to be, you know, an angle, and that's okay. And I can still benefit from that. I think you're fine, right? And I think you're fine in most forums. Very rarely do I go into like, I mean, sure, there's like webinars that are just garbage, and it's just like fluff and nothing material there. Sure, there's plenty of panels like that, too, where they just say like the words and the jargon, there's a lot of garbage. So sure, obviously, like have that filter. But there's also plenty of those situations where it's very valuable, even though there's an angle.
NN: Yeah, the opportunity is to observe how people choose to position and then like make a note of it. Very much agree with that. And that's important, right?
Like the, you mentioned of the LUMAscape earlier, it feels like an infinite volume of micro LUMAscapes out there, not micro actually, they're big LUMAscapes out there. And despite M&A activity, there's new actors popping up all the time, new spaces, sometimes it feels like there's overlap. So maybe that can be one of these final questions I'm moving towards probably should have asked this earlier, sometimes it just feels so overwhelming. And you had said earlier that you can't know everything, nobody can know everything, but you want to know enough. Do you ever advise on how often you should be leaning into educating yourself? Because you have a lot of other responsibilities. How do you set aside enough time to feel like you're chipping away enough to be knowledgeable?
SG: Great question. Couple of thoughts. First of all, being okay and being comfortable with the idea that I'm never going to know enough and I'm not going to know everything is the first step. Knowing that you're not always going to know is good. That's step one.
Step two is I don't think I'm a fair comparison for folks that are actually working at companies and building products and things like that because I'm in a very fortunate position of my job is to teach, my company's job is to teach and educate. Because I don't know if you've heard this saying, but the best way to learn is to teach. When you teach somebody, you’re learning. You have accountability to the information. We're in this fortunate position where we have to be learning all the time in order to teach. For me, that's my job. It's constantly learning, constantly reading, constantly asking questions. If I was to say to other people, it goes back to the question you asked earlier, you have to feel confident. Being confident is important that you know the things you need to know to do your job effectively and also knowing that there's always going to be more. I know I'm talking on both sides of my mouth. I'm saying both sides of it, but that is reality. That's the reality of our situation is on one side, have that confidence. If you don't, go out and get there and learn the things you need to know in order to do your job effectively. Also, be confident in knowing that you're not always going to know and you're always going to need to be learning more. That's my very wishy-washy abstract answer.
NN: No, I think that framing is something that I have encountered, maybe more so in the past. And it's because I used to ask more binary questions in front of audiences where I say, do you know about X? And then people I think felt pressure to say, yes. But yes, to what? What is it that you know? So now I'll ask many more, you know, qualitative questions, tell me what it is that you know, and let's go from there, as far as really understanding where there's opportunity to like fill a gap and or find where are there potentially misconceptions?
Where do we have differing opinions? How can we get more aligned? And that that scenario that has application for every single person that not only works in the AdTech space that works for everybody who works on anything ever. And it's, it's just AdTech happens to be so incredibly complex. So from there, I wanted to ask you one or two last questions to round us out, one of them being to just learn about a little bit more about you and your process, what does Shiv Gupta do to stay informed? Are there foundational or fundamental things, just topics that people really should educate themselves on so that when they do read the trades, when they do get exposed to all these things you describe, they can feel more comfortable knowing that you're not going to know everything, but there are actually some things you absolutely need to know.
SG: I could say a bunch of things that are true for different types of people and personas. So it's hard to give one answer.
But my one answer right now in this moment, March 2025, is go learn about AI, please go learn about AI. Everyone's talking about AI, every article has something to do with AI, every company's rebranding itself as AI, learn about AI, our whole world is going to be very different in a few years. It's like the internet, like how the world changed from 95 to 2005. That's going to happen in a condensed period of time over the next few years. And you want to be ahead of that curve, right? If there's one thing I would encourage you all to listen to or learn about right now, it's AI.
NN: if there were some other topics like in my mind, there is the never ending challenge of understanding addressability slash targetability. And to your point measurements, are there things about any one of those more foundational topics? Because to your point, you could say a million things, right? You could say every emerging platform, every emerging technology, every part of the tech stack, that would all be seemingly valid as a foundation.
If you are a programmatic buyer, or you're responsible for campaigns, since that that's like a classic angle for us, I feel like things pertaining to identity measurement and attribution, they’re table stakes in that everybody wants to know about them, but they don't know as much about them as they would like. How would you advise someone if that was their baseline? What should they be doing to learn more about those types of topics?
SG: I mean, listen, the word data is nebulous. I'm going to say like all things data to your point, right? Like understand what kind of data exists out there, how it can be used, how it can be tracked, how it can be used for different parts of, let's say, a campaign process and the planning process, the execution process, activation, optimization, measurement, analytics, like data, data, data, right? If you don't understand something about where data is coming from, how it is being used, the output, then that's an area to get smarter.
And I even think like tying it back to AI. In the world of AI, UIs are going to become defunct, right? We're always, we're going to start talking to things. We're going to have agents doing things for us. Gone are going to be the days of I log into a thing and I click some buttons and it does tasks for me. Those days are going to go away pretty soon.
And so I think you have to think about like what underpins what we're trying to do and where there's differentiation and it's going to come from data. And so I think all things data.
NN: I love that answer. I love landing the plane there.
I know there's so much that you can say about what's happening in the AdTech and programmatic and digital marketing and digital media world. We'll have to have you back another time to talk about something additional. And I just want to thank you for the time today, Shiv.
SG: Yeah, thanks Noor for having me on. This was a really fun conversation and I'm excited to maybe do it again one day. Thank you.
NN: Thanks to Shiv Gupta, founder of UofDigital, for sharing how at-tech pros can level up through education and training. Staying ahead has become more complex and labyrinthine than ever before, making continuous learning essential.
If you want to learn more, a good place to start is UofDigital's newsletter, which you can sign up for at the letters U of, that's the letter U-O-F dot digital forward slash newsletter. And while you're there, you can learn more about their other programming. You can also check out Basis' website's resource center to find more education resources and insights. You can also check out AdTech Academy, which offers free courses, learning paths, and certifications. That's it for now, another AdTech Unfiltered episode coming up soon.
How a premium tourism board leveraged expert strategy and advanced automation to maximize reach, engagement, and visitor growth.
THE CHALLENGE
A premier tourism board aimed to position its destination as a top choice for year-round travelers, driving high-value website traffic while maintaining cost-efficient media spend and engagement. However, a competitive travel landscape required a more sophisticated strategy to:
Without a strategic and data-driven approach, the organization risked missing valuable travelers and overspending on inefficient ad placements. To succeed, the organization required media operations and tourism marketing experts to guide strategy, activate campaigns, and deliver measurable results.
THE SOLUTION
Basis’ media experts designed and activated a high-impact media strategy, ensuring every media dollar drove measurable results.
Multi-Channel Media Activation
A tailored programmatic strategy used display retargeting, contextual targeting, high-impact HTML5 creatives, and premium video placements (CTV, OLV, PMP) to maximize reach and engagement.
AI-Powered Optimization & Automation
Automated bidding strategies and real-time performance monitoring ensured cost-efficient conversions and maximized campaign effectiveness.
Strategic Audience Targeting
By focusing on priority markets and excluding local audiences within a 100-mile radius, the campaign engaged adventure seekers, outdoor enthusiasts, and family travelers most likely to visit.
Seamless Media Operations & Performance Tracking
A dedicated team managed campaign activation, analysis, and refinements, enabling faster insights and better decision-making.
LASTING RESULTS
With over two years of partnership and $1M in annual media spend, Basis has fueled tourism growth through expert strategy and programmatic activation—driving stronger engagement, economic impact, and visitor activity:
Brands and agencies are bracing for economic turbulence.
Amidst the Trump Administration’s shifting tariff announcements, budget reallocations, massive federal layoffs, and other emerging economic policies, global ad spend forecasts have been reduced by nearly a full percentage point. Consumer spending is also slowing due to economic concerns, with consumer sentiment declining for the third consecutive month in March—and down 27% year-over-year.
Unfortunately, this uncertainly appears likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Rather than waiting for stability, brands and agencies must take proactive steps to ensure their media investments remain efficient and effective in a shifting landscape. To help advertising leaders stay ahead, Basis experts outlined the following recommendations for navigating the current landscape:
“The most challenging thing for advertising leaders right now is the uncertainty,” says Grace Briscoe, EVP of Client Development at Basis. While leaders can’t predict exactly how this uncertainty will pan out, they can mitigate risk by analyzing potential economic conditions and preparing strategic responses in advance.
“In times of uncertainty and economic downturns, we know that advertising and marketing budgets are a line item that can be cut quickly,” says April Weeks, Chief Investment and Media Officer at Basis. “Forward thinking brands and agencies are assessing the potential outcomes of today’s economic uncertainty and planning strategically for success in each one.”
Scenario planning can help businesses respond more swiftly when the economy takes a clearer direction. Leaders should reflect on past economic downturns, analyze the strategies they used during those periods, assess their effectiveness with historical data, and apply those insights to prepare for varying degrees of future economic challenges and ensure the highest likelihood of success.
“There’s a lot of appetite for visibility into how media dollars are invested and for using that knowledge to optimize spending,” notes Briscoe. This was true even before economic volatility became a concern, as transparency has long been a point of tension between agencies and brands.
During an economic downturn, stakeholders’ already high demand for transparency will only intensify. If advertising budgets shrink, marketing leaders will need robust, reliable reporting systems to help demonstrate the impact of their spend and, when necessary, advocate for more investment.
“In times of economic uncertainty, it’s critical to be able to show that marketing isn’t a cost center, but rather a revenue-generating asset,” says Weeks.
For agency leaders, staying tightly aligned with clients on KPIs and leveraging historical data to communicate the potential impacts of budget cuts across specific channels or platforms will be key to serving as effective strategic partners to their clients.
Amidst economic volatility, it’s especially important for brands and agencies to keep tabs on the competitive landscape specific to their sectors. In particular, marketing teams should keep a pulse on how their competitors are reacting to economic conditions.
“Especially when it comes to things like discounts and limited time offers, advertisers should be ready to match competitors or implement alternative strategies to protect their brand or client,” says Weeks.
One clear insight has emerged throughout economic downturns over the past century: Brands that continue spending fare better and recover more quickly than those who don’t.
“Pulling back on advertising in a time when a lot of other brands are taking that approach isn’t necessarily the best strategy,” says Katie McAdams, Chief Marketing Officer at Basis.
When businesses scale back on advertising, they reduce brand awareness—the financial impacts of which may not be immediately apparent, but will be felt over time.
“Branding and revenue are intrinsically linked. When we’ve heavied up on brand awareness tactics, we’ve seen performance metrics like lead flow spike,” says McAdams. “That, in turn, drives other key metrics like revenue growth and the expansion of new customer bases. When marketing teams pull back on brand awareness efforts, those metrics inevitably decline.” This relationship between brand awareness and performance has been observed beyond the B2B sector as well.
In the face of economic volatility, advertisers should reevaluate the tone of their communications. During these periods, consumers are often more stressed and more deliberate about their spending decisions, making sensitivity in marketing communications crucial.
“You want to be sensitive to what is happening and how it’s impacting people,” says McAdams. “It’s essential to stay aware and listen, as even a poorly chosen word or phrase could alienate your audience.”
To avoid this, McAdams emphasizes the importance of robust internal review processes. “Getting multiple perspectives on marketing and advertising materials before they go live helps ensure messaging stays relevant and resonates with audiences.”
Economic uncertainty presents challenges, but there are ways for advertising leaders to get ahead by taking a proactive approach. Scenario planning, prioritizing transparency, tracking competitors, learning from past downturns, and keeping an eye on tone can are key to navigating the current landscape with confidence.
Automation and data-driven strategies drove $4.6M in revenue and a $23 ROAS, showcasing the power of precision-driven digital marketing.
THE CHALLENGE
A Fortune 500 medical technology leader sought to enhance its digital marketing strategy with a data-driven approach to:
The company needed a strategic partner to execute and refine its media strategy to achieve these goals.
THE SOLUTION
As the company’s partner since December 2020, Basis implemented a sophisticated, technology-powered approach to digital media activation. Our strategy included:
Comprehensive Cross-Channel Media Activation
Leveraging search, social, digital out-of-home (DOOH), programmatic display, video, connected TV (CTV), and audio streaming to reach and engage key healthcare professionals.
Advanced Analytics & Optimization
Delivering real-time performance insights through custom dashboards, allowing for ongoing optimization and agile media adjustments.
Audience Targeting & Data Activation
Partnering with LiveRamp and TransUnion to activate the company's first-party data and supplementing it with third-party insights for precise job title and industry targeting.
Seamless Ad Operations & Automation
Utilizing Basis Technologies’ automation tools to streamline ad trafficking, pacing, creative QA, and billing.
LASTING RESULTS
Across all campaigns, Basis’ data-driven approach and automation tools delivered exceptional business results:
$23 ROAS achieved in the-commerce campaign, showcasing highly efficient ad spend.
1,770 qualified leads generated through Always On campaigns, ensuring a strong pipeline of potential customers.
$4.6 million in combined tracked and closed revenue, reinforcing Basis’ ability to drive tangible business outcomes.
Team Wins:
Digital advertising has long promised relevance through data. As the industry has grown more sophisticated, the wealth of available data has allowed teams to craft increasingly personalized messages, pinpoint the ideal individuals to deliver those messages to, and measure the results of their efforts.
But as privacy regulations tighten, signal loss accelerates, and consumers continue to push back on tactics perceived as invasive, the industry is evolving to prioritize privacy. At the same time, with access to some kinds of data growing more restricted, advertisers are rethinking how they deliver relevance at scale. In this context, community-based marketing approaches are gaining momentum, offering ways to engage meaningfully with consumers while staying ahead of the shifting data landscape.
Taking a community-centric approach to marketing can include identifying and targeting a specific group based on a shared identity (i.e., sports fans, pet lovers, or gardeners)—rather than hyper-personalizing ads based on more sensitive personal information. It can also mean building a sense of community among groups of consumers, whether that be in person or online. Through both approaches, marketing teams can forge meaningful connections with target audiences and deliver personalized messages in ways that respect individual privacy and meet evolving data privacy standards.
In many ways, community-based marketing represents a return to advertising’s roots, where community played a central role in shaping brand perception and consumer behavior. From iconic campaigns tied to sports fandoms, regional culinary pride, or social movements, brands have long sought relevance through shared identity. Today, advertisers can layer in modern data signals to these approaches, enhancing the precision of such strategies while respecting consumer privacy.
Personalization in digital advertising is no longer as simple as it used to be, particularly as the industry contends with the growing challenges of signal loss and consumer privacy demands. A staggering 95% of data and advertising leaders across brands, agencies, and publishers predict continued signal loss and privacy-focused legislation in the coming years, and almost 90% of ad buyers say they are reorganizing their personalization tactics, ad spend, and data mix to adapt to increased regulation and signal loss.
At the same time, consumers are more resistant to hyper-targeted ads than advertisers may expect. Over half have occasionally thought, “Who approved this?” when coming across targeted ads, and many say they are uncomfortable with how much personal data companies have and feel that companies overdo prepurchase personalization. Even more, 62% of consumers say they object to ads based on sensitive personal data, and nearly half feel they’ve been targeted by an ad that offensively stereotypes them. These sentiments are forcing marketers to reconsider their approaches and rethink how they engage audiences without crossing privacy boundaries.
In today’s privacy-centric digital landscape, brands and advertisers are discovering (or, more aptly, rediscovering) that engaging audiences through shared values, experiences, and interests is an effective way to build connections—without compromising privacy.
“We’re seeing brands embrace this idea of connecting with communities and also fostering community with their own consumer base,” says Susan Mandell, VP of Brand Development at Basis. “When brands align with communities, consumers don’t just buy into the product—they also buy into a shared identity and sense of belonging.” While this idea isn’t new, the vast amount of data available to marketing teams today allows these community-driven strategies to be more precise and effective.
A financial services company, for example, could use first-party data to segment customers with a shared interest, such as retirement planning. Beyond delivering personalized tools and messaging based on that shared financial goal, the brand could foster deeper engagement by offering spaces for these individuals to connect, ask questions, and share tips, such as through an online forum or members-only webinars. By taking such an approach, the brand isn’t just targeting individuals based on a data point, but rather cultivating a sense of belonging around a shared need.
Alternatively, a local retail brand could use customer data or media placements like digital out-of-home (DOOH) to connect with a geographically defined community: people who live nearby, work in the area, or regularly visit the store. By offering this local community special benefits and experiences—such as a local loyalty program or neighborhood events—the brand can help foster a sense of community, build brand loyalty, and ensure their messaging resonates with local audiences.
For community-based media strategies to work, brands must start by thinking about who they are, what they stand for, and which communities it makes the most sense to show up in and connect with.
“We’re in a moment where smart brands are really thinking about their personality, persona, and core values, and then translating that to the communities they want to connect with, either tangibly or in an aspirational way,” says Mandell.
From there, marketing teams can layer on the right tools, tactics, and partnerships to bring those strategies to life:
Research where communities are already spending time and find opportunities to reach them in key moments of impact across multiple channels. For instance, advertisers might use CTV to connect with avid sports fans cheering on their home team, then reinforce that message through social content tied to influencer-led fan groups or DOOH placements around the stadium. Podcasts can deepen connections with listeners who share a specific passion, while social media can extend that engagement with interactive content or community conversations. And location-based media—like DOOH highlighting iconic regional drinks or local college loyalty—can work alongside geofenced digital campaigns to reflect the identity and culture of the community being reached.
Move away from third-party data dependency and toward first-party data unification and enrichment. Seek out partners that make it easy to collect, store, and integrate disparate data sources—such as website interactions, loyalty programs, and commerce platforms—into a single, privacy-safe environment. A unified view helps brands and marketers better understand the communities they connect with, allowing them to activate more relevant, privacy-friendly media strategies.
Focus on values-driven storytelling and community moments over hyper-targeted, one-to-one messaging. When creative speaks to a shared identity—whether it’s a commitment to sustainability, pride in a hometown, or a shared love of gaming—it builds emotional connection and trust. Meaningful messaging should reflect the real-life aspirations, interests, and values of a community, not just assumptions based on demographics.
As personalization changes amidst increasing signal loss and heightened consumer demand for data privacy, community is emerging as a powerful lever for building long-term brand connection—particularly since marketing teams can leverage data in privacy-friendly ways to better understand where and how people come together around shared passions and target them, as communities, more effectively.
By leaning into relevance, resonance, and real connections through community, marketers can elevate personalization in a way that feels more human and more durable in a privacy-first digital environment. This approach helps build trust, cultivate long-term loyalty, and create deeper emotional connections that ultimately lead to stronger brand performance in a rapidly evolving, increasingly competitive market.
In 2025, consumer trust is anything but a given. In fact, for many audience segments, distrust is the norm.
The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer characterizes today’s climate as a global “Crisis of Grievance,” the result of events over the past 25 years—from the Iraq War to the 2008 financial crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic—that have chipped away at trust in leaders and institutions. Evidence of this crisis includes an unprecedented decline in employees’ trust in their employers to do what’s right, record-high levels of concern that leaders lie to the public, and four in 10 global respondents reporting that they view hostile activism (including threats or even violence) as a viable means for driving change. That ratio rises to 1 in 2 among people between the ages of 18 and 34.
Among major institutions, brands still hold a relatively advantageous position—ranking as more trusted than government, NGO, and media entities—but this climate of growing distrust is impacting them as well. In 2024, 71% of global consumers agreed with the statement, “I trust companies less than I did a year ago.” Brand trust from Gen Z, a demographic that makes up about 20% of the US population and is projected to account for $12 trillion in spending power by 2030, is particularly difficult to come by.
Marketing and advertising professionals also face consumer skepticism around an assortment of industry practices such as data privacy (64% of global consumers think companies are reckless with customer data) and the use of artificial intelligence (one study found that mentioning AI’s use in products often reduces emotional trust and lowers purchase intentions).
Even more, consumers have grown increasingly willing to voice their displeasure by “voting with their wallets”: 2025 has seen a wave of viral consumer boycotts, from “a total economic blackout” on February 28, to a weeklong Amazon boycott in March, to planned boycotts of General Mills, Nestle, Target, and Walmart. In just the first few months of 2025, 43% of American consumers have shifted their spending to align with their morals, and 36% report “opting out” of various aspects of the economy. Perhaps more alarmingly, consumers are pulling back on spending as a result of uncertainty around the Trump Administration’s shifting plans for tariffs and trade policies, which means brands will have to work even harder to earn their dollars.
Brands cannot take consumer trust for granted amidst today’s crisis of grievance. As leaders strategize around how to earn and maintain that trust, authenticity, consistency, data privacy, and brand safety must remain top of mind.
Over the past decade or so, the rise of conscious consumerism has led to brands increasingly taking social and environmental stands. But consumers and stakeholders demand authenticity and expect a coherent alignment between brands’ words and their actions: Those who try to talk the talk without walking the walk will quickly garner backlash and lose consumer trust—and dollars—as a result (see: “greenwashing;” “rainbow washing;” “woke-washing,” etc.).
But a key aspect of effective authenticity that’s less discussed (though equally important) is consistency. “Brands need to be loud and proud about what they stand for,” says Molly Marshall, Client Strategy and Insights Partner at Basis. “But they also need to do that consistently. When brands try to please everyone or shift their values according to the cultural or political climate, that’s when they receive backlash.”
A cautionary tale around consistency (or lack thereof) has been playing out in the industry in recent years in relation to Target. In 2023, the brand received blowback for the Pride month-themed merchandise it featured, with conservative consumers and social media creators encouraging a boycott. Target, which at that point had celebrated Pride month with Pride-themed merchandise for over a decade, then released a statement that it would remove some of the items from that year’s Pride collection in response to the backlash. This, in turn, garnered even more negative reactions: The company received bomb threats accusing it of betraying LGBTQIA+ people, and a coalition of 15 state attorneys general came together to encourage the brand to stand by the LGBTQIA+ community. Panelists discussing LGBTQ brand advocacy at SXSW the following year agreed that Target’s decision to walk back its stance in the face of backlash ultimately made things worse for the brand. Still, the controversy continues in 2025, with the State Board of Administration of Florida recently filing a class-action lawsuit against Target alleging that the brand misled shareholders about the risks associated with its 2023 Pride Month campaign, resulting in billions of dollars in investor losses.
A similar controversy began in January, when Target—known for its strong support of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and Black-owned businesses after the 2020 George Floyd protests—announced plans to scale back several DEI programs. This move aligns with a broader trend among major brands and comes as the Trump Administration takes steps to end government DEI programs. The retail giant received swift blowback from consumers, and a 40-day boycott organized by Reverend Jamal Bryant began on March 5. “When consumers see a brand like Target—which had previously committed to DEI—pull those commitments back, they’re going to wonder if they can trust them to authentically act out their brand values or if they’re just going to react based on what’s happening politically,” says Kate Diehl, Group VP of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis.
Target’s year-over-year foot traffic has also fallen for 5 consecutive weeks, though it’s unclear whether this is a direct result of the boycott. Continued consumer pullbacks could hit Target especially hard, as the ongoing threats of tariffs could lead to huge price spikes and drive down the company’s economic outlook.
The takeaway for brands? The combination of today’s crisis of grievance with the rise of conscious consumerism and a polarized political climate means that taking a stand on social and political issues comes with real risk. Brands should only take a stand when they can back it up with authentic action and are prepared to weather criticism. And, when pushback comes, the best response is often to stay the course and maintain their initial stance to demonstrate consistency.
That said, for many (if not most) brands, the best move may be to simply not take a position on such polarizing issues. Just 38% of adults in the US feel that businesses should take a public stance on current events, and many brands whose products or services aren’t related to social or political issues or politicized communities may reasonably choose not to engage in those issues.
Ensuring the ethical use of consumer data is another key strategy for brands looking to build trust with consumers in 2025, with a recent PwC report finding that 88% of consumers say protecting customer data is one of the most important factors in brands’ ability to earn their trust. “Data privacy is considered table stakes by consumers at this point,” says Marshall. “Still, brands and advertisers are struggling to implement it consistently.”
Going into 2024, nearly half of US marketers felt their organizations were unprepared to succeed in a cookieless world. And even though Google no longer plans to fully deprecate cookies in its Chrome browser, its plans to give users a choice over how they’re tracked with cookies in Chrome is expected to have essentially the same impact. It’s estimated that nearly 90% of US browsers could be cookieless once user choice comes to Chrome, with additional factors such as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, Safari and Mozilla’s default-blocking of third-party cookies, and privacy-minded digital advertising regulations all contributing to widespread signal loss.
As a result, first-party data has emerged as a top privacy-friendly identity solution among advertisers. “Even beyond building trust with consumers by respecting their data privacy, advertisers need to be able to rely on privacy-friendly solutions like first-party data to successfully target and measure their campaigns as signals drop off,” says Diehl. At the same time, first-party data comes with an ethical responsibility for advertisers—to gather, organize, store, and leverage that data in ways that preserve consumers’ privacy.
With over 90% of digital advertisers reporting that they use generative AI in their work at least once a month, marketing teams must take even more care to protect customer data. Some AI-driven tools, particularly those used in collecting and analyzing data, present serious data privacy risks. And with 57% of consumers believing that AI poses a significant threat to their privacy, this is an area where brands stand to garner significant distrust if they don’t take the proper precautions.
Finally, advertisers looking to build more trust with consumers should work to prioritize brand safety across their campaigns, with recent industry developments making this focus all the more critical.
Advertisers have felt increasing concern around brand safety for years now—indeed, it’s programmatic advertisers’ top concern by a significant margin. The rise of generative AI has only amplified these concerns, with 100% of marketers agreeing in a recent survey that generative AI presents a brand safety and misinformation risk, and 88.7% describing that risk as moderate to significant.
Social media carries the highest brand risk of all digital media channels, according to just over half of advertisers. Just recently, Meta apologized after Instagram users reported seeing extreme violence in their Reels feeds, including videos of people being murdered. “This is an example of a brand safety concern that’s really hard for brands and agencies to get ahead of,” says Marshall. “I do think it brings up larger questions around what platforms are safe and effective for advertisers, and what consumers expect from brands who run on those platforms.” Even more, content moderation rollbacks at social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X have aggravated the riskiness of social media environments.
Beyond social media, brand safety made headlines recently as a result of an Adalytics report that found that multiple adtech companies have placed ads for major brands on websites hosting CSAM. (Note: The report cites Basis as an adtech vendor who did not serve ads on any of the sites in question.) This extraordinary brand safety crisis underscores how critical it is for brands to have robust and multi-layered systems to ensure their advertising content is only shown in safe and suitable environments—not only to safeguard consumer trust, but to avoid ethical catastrophes such as these.
Of course, there’s a case to be made that consumers are now savvy enough to know that brands aren’t choosing to serve ads next to disturbing content, hate speech, or misinformation—particularly on social media. Still, 82% say it’s important to them that the content around online ads is appropriate, and three-quarters say they would feel less favorable towards brands that serve ads on sites that contain misinformation. Considering this majority opinion as well as the broader culture of consumer distrust, brands who prioritize brand safety likely stand to gain a competitive advantage over their peers who take a laxer approach.
In the face of deepening consumer distrust, heightened social tensions, and growing scrutiny around corporate behavior, earning and maintaining trust from target audiences will be a defining priority for today’s most successful brands—and authenticity, consistency, data privacy, and brand safety will be foundational elements of their strategies.
For marketing leaders, now is the time to double down on trust as a core metric of success. Failing to do so may carry financial consequences in a world where consumers are spending more intentionally and brand loyalty is increasingly difficult to earn and maintain.
A Fortune 500 company partnered with Basis to optimize its recruitment marketing, resulting in 71% more qualified applicants and an 11% reduction in hiring time.
OVERVIEW
A telecom company struggled to scale recruitment amid a competitive labor market. With a small team and limited budget, they faced challenges in tracking performance, filling high-demand roles quickly, and gaining insights from fragmented data. Their goal: A data-driven strategy to streamline hiring, reduce time-to-fill, and improve applicant quality.
SOLUTION
Acting as an extension of the company’s team, Basis implemented a closed-loop analytics solution that transformed the recruitment marketing strategy. This approach delivered:
• Seamless Data Integration: Unified insights from job boards, social platforms, and Google Analytics for a comprehensive performance overview.
• Advanced Predictive Analytics: Regression modeling revealed the true impact of both paid and organic efforts on applicant behavior.
• Real-Time Performance Visibility: A custom dashboard with real-time key metrics, including cost per application, creative effectiveness, and channel influence.
The client gained unparalleled efficiency, transparency, and strategic control by aligning paid and organic efforts, optimizing media spend, and shifting to performance-based partnerships.
THE APPROACH
• Data Integration & Measurement Framework
• Programmatic Innovation & Real-Time Insights
• Deep Collaboration & Flexibility
BUSINESS RESULTS
11% Reduction in Time-to-Fill
71% of All Quality Applicants Influenced by Paid Media
100% YoY Increase In Website Traffic
100+ Hours Saved in Monthly Reporting
$263 Cost Per Qualified Applicant (Outperformed $300 Benchmark by 13%)
Connected TV has become a driving force in digital advertising, with many media buyers now bringing over a decade of experience to the table. Yet, the landscape continues to evolve rapidly, as new technologies, shifting consumer habits, and advancements in measurement reshape how advertisers approach the space.
In this webinar, Comscore Vice President of Emerging Solutions Becca Marco joins host Noor Naseer to break down essential strategies, best practices, and trends to help advertisers make the most of the CTV opportunity in 2025.
Reaching the right person with the right message at the right time has long been the cornerstone of advertising strategy. But in an era where misinformation spreads quickly and consumer trust is difficult to earn, advertisers must also consider the integrity of the content their ads appear alongside.
According to the World Economic Forum, experts across the globe have identified misinformation and disinformation as the most severe global risk over the next two years. While this threat affects everyone, it poses unique challenges for the advertising industry. More and more AI-generated content is flooding the internet, and AI is increasingly being used to create made-for-advertising sites (MFAs), which are filled with low-quality content at best and blatant mis- and disinformation at worst. In this context, marketing teams must double down on brand safety efforts. At the same time, advertisers have a responsibility to ensure their budgets don’t inadvertently fund the spread of misleading or harmful information.
That responsibility has grown harder to fulfill amidst recent content moderation rollbacks. Several platforms have eliminated or reduced their programs for regulating the spread of mis- and disinformation, instead opting for community-driven approaches that outsource content moderation to users rather than dedicated teams of professionals. Meta, for instance, recently removed its fact-checking program, instead adopting a user-sourced “Community Notes” approach (similar to the one used by X). The company also updated its Hateful Content guidelines to allow previously banned content to remain on the platform. These changes signal a broader industry trend—one that puts more onus on advertisers to ensure their media dollars align with brand safe, responsible content.
Amidst these challenges, it’s no surprise that brand safety and suitability are at the forefront of advertisers’ minds. In fact, 60% of programmatic advertisers say that it’s their biggest concern. The question is: How can advertisers take a proactive approach to misinformation to not only protect their brands but also build a safer, more trustworthy digital ecosystem?
Noor Naseer, Basis Technologies’ VP of Media Innovations & Technology, explored this challenge in detail in her presentation at SXSW 2025 in Austin. She unpacked how association with misinformation impacts brand perception and consumer trust, shared strategies for maintaining authenticity and credibility, offered tips for ensuring brand safety, and more. Check out the video below for all her insights and recommendations on how marketers can tackle advertising in the misinformation age:
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Want to dive further into Noor’s presentation? Click here to download the slides from her talk.
