What AI Can’t Do - The Short Stack
Friends,
Maureen Dowd wrote in The New York Times that “AI is [technologists’] baby, hurtling toward the rebellious teenage years.” Touchy issue. And yeah, hopefully AI never takes over her column.
Controversy aside for a second, AI is clearly doing a lot of amazing things across the market, and our space is no exception. It’s also obviously not the only facet of media/advertising tech that’s making solutions work better for buyers, and making life easier for vendors. Broadcast-to-podcast capabilities, dynamic ad insertion, and a million other innovations will be, if they aren't already, table stakes.
That said, there’s a regular refrain we hear from customers (and in the market generally): great service in media/ad tech – from smart, dedicated humans – is just as fundamental as the smartest technology. We wrote about it in Advertising Week this past Tuesday.
We also hear that many companies forget to give service the focus it deserves. With the steady flow of bright, new, shiny objects, it’s not hard to understand why.
Can media/ad tech companies afford to drop the ball on solid collaboration with customers? According to Qualtrics research, 85% of buyers won’t forgive vendors if they do.
Check out the piece, and please reach out to chat about this. Lots more to come!
Rockie Thomas , CSO 
Podcasts are already ahead of the game. For those invested in the industry’s future, this is not a format with potentially fluctuating popularity, but a state of mind.
Broadcasters and podcasters have sung from a similar hymnal when complaining that the amount of ad dollars funneled into the two forms of audio has not kept pace with actual consumer usage. But the size of the digital audio opportunity may bring a chorus of hallelujah.
