Are you looking to transform your agency or in-house marketing team with cutting-edge programmatic advertising strategies?

Curious how AI in media buying is changing the landscape for independent digital agencies?

This episode dives deep with guest Mike Hauptman, founder of AdLib, as he shares actionable approaches for media buyers, ad tech specialists, and marketing agencies eager to elevate their campaign performance.

Learn how tools like AdLib offer DSP-agnostic programmatic access, empower mid-market agencies, and deliver game-changing transparency and scale.

Discover the evolution from faxed insertion orders to real-time bidding and how legacy systems can hinder growth compared to new, lean agency models leveraging API-first platforms and artificial intelligence.

You’ll also hear candid takes on client relationships, defining an Ideal Client Persona (ICP), navigating industry conferences, and the balance between automation and authentic strategy.

Whether you’re a tech-savvy marketer, agency leader, or digital media pro, this conversation is packed with practical tips, trends, and honest reflections that will help you future-proof your advertising strategies and client partnerships.

💡 Boost Your Agency’s Growth:

1. Practical tips for finding scalable solutions and maximizing reach with programmatic ads
2. How independent agencies can remain competitive—even against industry giants
3. The real-world impact of AI on marketing automation and client interactions
4. Strategies for building long-term, trust-based client relationships

🚀 Ready for more?

Subscribe for expert insights on media buying, ad tech, and agency innovation.

welcome to this episode of the Media Buying podcast.

I'm joined today by Mike Hauptman.

I'm, I'm horrible.

I'm, I'm got a habit of butchering people's names.

Have I got your name right or wrong?

close enough.

Mike Hauptman.

Hauptman.

There we go.

so yeah, again, I have another podcast that I do called,

digital Marketing Stories.

And every single guest I've had on there, I've butchered virtually

every single person's name.

So I wanted to keep the tradition going on, on the media buying podcast.

And, and sometimes that's the, the thing I'm looking for in a guest is

have they got a name that I can butcher?

I am all for tradition.

And, and unfortunately, so I was, just, just talking to my co-host, Rob Adler, who

normally does these, interviews with me.

but he has a kind of clash of, you got another appointment

at this particular time.

So he sends his apologies and says, we'll have to kinda have you, have you back to,

to do another one where we can grill you together, rather than just me on my own.

So hopefully that'll be okay.

yeah, of course.

Looking forward to the next one already.

yeah, me too.

Me too.

Um, yeah, so o obviously like you, you, you've been involved in media

buying for quite some time now.

tell us a little bit about your background.

How did you get into the industry?

Sure.

started in the digital ad advertising space back in 2006, fresh Outta College.

Looking at technical roles at the intersection of technology and business.

Found myself at a third party ad server, which was a part of a

large organization, and worked my way up there for, for a few years.

Thought that challenges that were being worked on were really

interesting and, there was some really interesting developments

happening in the space surrounding, Moving away from eo, paper-based and

fact-based transactions to the world of programmatic and realtime bidding

that we know today.

And there were companies that were just starting to create this space and wound

up landing at one of those companies, called Media Math back in 2010 as

one of the first a hundred employees.

Helped to build out organizations there, along with my co-founder

Dan, who is the technical side of the house, and he's in London.

And while we were there, we.

not to get too far into the story, we learned a lot about programmatic.

We learned about how programmatic was being used by large enterprises.

How other sectors of, the marketing industry were struggling to access

and, and benefit from these same tools.

Because I think, I think, you, you mentioning, fax machines.

I mean, I, I remember when I, first, first got involved with like the, if you

like, the programmatic side of things.

like I, I, I had an affiliate network, which I sold to, a company.

'cause they were being bought by, a kind of a big telecoms company

in France and they needed an additional kind of revenue stream.

So they were an ad sales house.

So they typically work with big publishers and help to sell the, the inventory

on those big publishers' websites.

and again, I, I was, shocked, really.

I mean, I sold my, my, affiliate network in 2009 and for the next

12 months, I basically worked in-house at this, this agency,

where we were at the ad sales house.

And I was stunned at just how inefficient that media buying

process was for publishers and advertisers to to, to do everything.

I mean, it was all insertion orders or iOS, you had to fax through

the, the kind of the requirements.

It would be a million impressions that say 25 bucks, CPM, and then at the end of the,

the kind of the delivery there would be a.

I cut a report and they would say, well, we're not very happy with the performance.

We might have to do another 500,000 impressions just to try and give them

the, the performance that they wanted.

and, and the two, the two of the guys that were involved with this

particular company that, that, I sold my agency to, they were part of

the sort of founding team for OpenX.

Right?

Which was again, one of the sort of the early platforms, I guess probably

the same timeframe around media math for, for delivering that ability for,

it it to be a more open sort of system where, you know, the, the ecosystem.

I mean, when, when you look at the Lumascapes now, the, the kind of the,

the buy side and the sell side should really just sit there and those, those

should be the only two things that are on there, but it's just become such

a kind of messy kind of ecosystem.

but, but for me, I was fascinated by one, how in inefficient the, the, the old

way of doing things was, but two, how.

exciting.

The, the kind of the programmatic side of thing was to kind to capture the ability

to, to, again, to, to try and put some value on what an actual impression might

be worth to a particular buyer, right?

Yeah.

I've come a long way.

Uh, it, but it's at, at at some point.

it, it feels like we've, we've made a left, a few too many

lefts and we've, we've kind of retraced our steps a little bit

and.

why do you think that's happened?

Why do you think there's been like a lot, a lot of like left steps

rather than going straightforward?

Um, shifting dynamics in the market and shifting players and strategies, right?

So

we had a promise, once of programmatic, eliminating the need for there to be

all these steps in the process, from sales all the way through execution.

And that did happen.

And and it still happens or it's still happening most.

Media is purchased programmatically now, and the pipes are no longer

an insertion order that gets faxed over and someone's ringing a gong.

And, the, the, the assets are sent by email.

Like those are all happening through platforms now.

But

Yeah.

with the proliferation of first party data and the value of the

data, that's to be extracted.

Now we're at this point where there's dozens of different DSPs.

There's hundreds of retail media networks and other ways of purchasing

programmatic media that are again behind now, that are now again, behind

emails and phone calls and manual processes to access this inventory.

That at one point you could go into a DSP.

Access mo all the data, you can create a white list.

But the, business strategies and, the, I think the, the value that

different players were adding to the chain has, has been highlighted or,

has, has the, the, the, someone else's margin is your opportunity, right?

So, so.

' cause that was sort the thing that struck me.

Like the, the advertiser was paying a certain amount of money and the

publisher was getting a certain amount of money and there was all these

people in between those two taking their sort of cut of what was there.

And some people were very greedy in terms of what they took off the table.

And and I know it's at the end of the day, everyone has overheads of, of trying to

run a platform and so on, and they need to try and balance their books and I get it.

That's, that makes complete sense.

But at the same time, it's gotta, it's gotta.

Kind of work for both parties, right?

The advertiser and the publisher.

If the advertiser doesn't feel like they're getting good value from,

from their, their buy, then they're not gonna come back and do it again.

And if the publisher doesn't make enough money from the, the revenue,

enough revenue from, from the, the what comes down from the advertiser, then,

ultimately they're gonna end up having to shut down, their, their business

to, because they can't afford to keep the lights on, And it's trying to get

that balance right between sort of those, those two kind of parties and

every, everyone in between trying to do what they can to add value, right?

And I've always said, if as long as, as long as you are adding

value in the ecosystem, then you deserve your seat at the table.

And if you're not adding value, you should get out the

Well, I I think for far too long, publishers got squeezed and they

were seeing diminishing returns and other companies make a lot of, get,

get a lot of, Too many middlemen involved that were diluting the,

economics for, for, for them.

and they've rebuilt, I think in leaner ways.

And, you see a lot of sales houses and organizations that are helping outsource.

That's really the, what curation is, is all about in terms

of, making those audiences available and, and outsourcing that, The sales, of

those audiences, outsourcing the media buys to a curation house, and allowing

them to have con not control, but the ability to deliver those audiences

in your inventory on your behalf.

So

there's, there's more efficient ways of doing it there.

And, Besides from just sending out a whole, building out the

whole sales team internally.

I think that's, that's

been a, that's been a big, shift in the, in the dynamics as well.

So, so you started, you, you, you kind of like got involved with media math,

you worked your way up the sort of food chain within the ecosystem at media math.

when did, when did ad lib start?

When did you start that, that business?

I.

Adlib was incorporated in 2014 as an idea that we could

reach, turn the open internet into the next frontier of social media

content by allowing users to.

Target their friends and their, and their network with content across the

open web in places where you'd normally see ads using the same technology.

instead of a branded creative, you have a, a post or an image that I've

customized and now I'm putting out there.

And my audience that I'm targeting is just my social media network

who's opted in and, using the same pixeling and email matching,

you can reach those users online.

We tinkered with that for a while.

struggled to monetize the, app as, as, as cool as it was and

still think it's a great idea.

followed money, followed the influencer marketing and the creator space, and built

a product and an offering for them to amplify their content and get more reach.

Out of the content that they've created.

So really extract way more value out of their posts and be able to sell infinite

reach and a lot of, opportunity there.

But again, we were a bootstrap business and we were trying to follow

wherever the opportunity was and.

Eventually we landed where we are now, which is maybe the third or fourth

iteration of the business, really about two years ago after media math shut

down or shut down, or paused activity.

Uh, we like to say this version of the business is about two years old

and we, we now offer, a solution to mid-market emerging independent

agencies to get the most out of programmatic 'cause they've been, Really

under service for, for, for so long.

Yeah.

Yeah.

'cause I mean, I, I do programmatic advertising through, basis.

They're my sort of DSP of Choice.

And again, I, the, the thing I like about Basis is they're really good both in

terms of what they have available for, for, for like in, in their platform.

The ability to contact advertisers directly if you

need to through their system.

they've, they've tried to do the best they can to bring in, bring on

board, your social media stuff, your.

PPC stuff from Google and Microsoft and TikTok and whatever else, right?

To, so you can get as close you can to one dashboard of, this

is what's going on collectively for this particular advertiser.

they, they again, like they, they, they partner up with, lots of different.

Publishers, lots of different, exchanges.

and you can mix and match and do whatever you like.

But I think the thing I really like about them, probably more so than

anything, is they've got really good people, really good training.

they, they provide a lot of support for, for, for, agencies like mine to be able

to provide a service to clients, right?

By educating my staff to know what to do, how to, how the platform

works and, and everything else.

but it's really, a again, I still find it strange that, even though

they, they make that sort of, accessible to, to everyone, right?

There are still so many people that call themselves media buys.

Like people that run Facebook agencies or Google agencies,

they call themselves media buys.

I keep going.

Well, I don't really see at what point in time you are in

control of anything, right?

I mean, on a sort of a, a media buying platform like a, a, A-A-A-D-S-P, you are

in control of what you buy, where you buy, how you buy, what you spend, what,

what creative you use and everything else.

Whereas I think if you look at it now, I mean, Facebook and Google, they're,

they're basically saying, you have to trust our ai, our AI's amazing.

You have to trust it.

We know what we're doing, right?

We'll spend your money and we'll deliver results.

And if they don't deliver results, there's no penalties to them, right?

I mean, there's, there's no punishment for them not delivering on the promise, right?

So if you say, I want you to deliver with me as many sales as you can,

I've got a thousand dollars a day to spend, and I want you to deliver

as many sales you can at $50 a sale.

They'll come in and they'll spend three times as much money and

deliver half as much in terms of the, the, the CPA will be four times

as much, or three times as much.

And there's no apology, there's no, we'll, we'll make good or anything like that.

It's just, it's just tough luck.

and I, I find that, so many people, that, that are doing,

that are just accepting it.

And I mean, for me, I, I've reduced significantly the amount of money that

my clients spend on Facebook now because the performance is just not there.

I'm hoping, I really hope that they can bring it back, but, but I don't, I'm

not holding my breath that they will.

So what are your thoughts?

I mean, do you do much on the, the, the Facebook side of

things or social media at all?

Or is it just primarily through DSPs?

So we just launched the ability to, we just ba we launched

Facebook reporting in the platform.

So now clients that are running through Facebook Ads, they're expanding

a similar model to, to ra, right?

We, we've a lot of clients who are.

Scaling out of search, scaling out of social, want to tackle programmatic,

it's really hard to access.

It's hard to use.

I am now gonna create more fragmentation because my data's all over the place.

So we offer a single place to access that data.

still monitor all your social campaigns, see their performance alongside of

programmatic and how they're, how they're complimenting each other and we, or.

Primarily working with these agencies and, and these emerging, these, these

independent agencies who are in this growth mode and they need more tools

and they need a lot of the things that you mentioned, which we're really

focusing on, which is empowering them to grow and not just giving them a, a

platform and letting them linger and figure it out, but making sure they

know how to use it, making sure they

know how to talk to their clients about it and, and and

help them sell it through and.

We believe it's, it's, it's, it's a new way of, of, of, of approaching it.

Because what we're not is, is a, is another platform like Centro or

simplify or stack adapt in that.

We sit on top of the whole programmatic ecosystem and we're DSP agnostic.

So we are, we are not A DSP ourselves.

We provide access to the entire programmatic ecosystem, including all

the tier one DSPs, to any agency who wants to be able to run programmatic

at scale without any barriers and without any, without any blind spots.

Because if you talk about.

CTV especially.

a lot of that inventory is only available in very specific platforms, right?

Netflix, you have, YouTube is only available in DV 360.

Amazon Prime is only available on Amazon.

Peacock, is, is is more exclusive.

And even in the display world, in the video world, you have inventory that's.

Able to be had for more efficient economics by the, through the

DSP that owns that inventory.

Yahoo,

right?

if you wanna be buying finance@yahoo.com, you should

probably buy, be buying it on Yahoo.

If you're doing first party data matching and you want to be maximizing

the reach of your first party audiences, well don't settle for,

40%, 50% match rates through your DSP.

Use a platform that can push the Yahoo emails to Yahoo, can push

the Gmail addresses to Google, push MSN to Xandr, still, or wherever,

and maximize your match rates.

And you, you, you don't have to settle for a platform that I can access and I

can use and it's great, but I'm usually, something's usually left to be desired

in terms of reach, in terms of scale, sometimes in terms of inventory quality.

And that's all gone away, right?

You have the same problem of agencies who historically have had to say no

to business because maybe that DSP didn't, the DSP that they had wasn't

great at mobile app installs, right?

And you don't want to whole go learn Mo Loco and smx and liftoff

and, that, that that whole world.

It's a turnkey entire programmatic ecosystem without leaving

anything on on the table.

Yeah.

so in, in terms of like your, your position in the, the kind of the

ecosystem, I mean, you, you said you work with kind of, agencies primarily.

do, do you also work with in-house people that kind of don't want to

necessarily work with agencies?

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's in-house programmatic teams.

Agencies, any, any programmatic marketer who is, is in, is in growth mode, right?

They're thinking about how do I build a solution and how, how do

I, how do I make sure that the partner I'm using is future proof?

How do I make sure I'm not building against the technology that may.

Go down in the middle of the night, because you see DSPs go away.

So with ad-lib, we're thinking of ourselves a little bit more like

stripe of programmatic, where it's the single platform, single partner with

all these built in redundancies, the best of everything out there, and I

don't have to maintain that myself.

Um, versus picking a single solution or picking a point solution.

'cause it's expensive.

I'm an independent agency.

I can't license all the DSPs and deal with all those minimums to maybe sell a

YouTube campaign or maybe sell an Amazon private campaign or maybe, digital outta

home on this specific inventory, which is only available through this 1D SP.

so we, we, we represent.

Just entire unlock for the entire ecosystem.

And then we're also, our whole platform is API first, and it's customizable

and it's modular, and we're seeing a lot of excitement about the ability to

eliminate all that friction and all that tedium in, in ad ops that really hold

agencies back as well and just having to say no to business because it's.

Possible to get things live in, a an amount of time and in a

profitable way for the business.

'cause resources are just too expensive.

zero trafficking headaches to, to really do all this thing and it's a white label.

So if I want to just get into market with A DSP, I can now do all these things.

And the barrier to just getting.

Started a programmatic agency and really scaling.

Usually the, historically, I think the model hasn't worked and

we, we flipped that, that model.

Yeah.

And in terms of, I mean, actually every conversation I have now, at some point

in time will touch kinda even if it's dipping a small toe in, in the pond, but

it'll definitely talk in some way, shape or form about AI and the impact of ai.

In terms of what's going on in the future and everything else.

What, where do you see AI fitting in, in, in regards to the, the programmatic

side of things, media buying generally.

How do you, how do you think it figures.

certainly a lot of noise about that this week, in terms of

what Scope three and some others released in the A CDP protocol.

And I think, that's the, that's the moonshot, right?

all of programmatic and advertising will eventually move away from.

RTP protocols and programmatic protocols that have been like, like

the TCP IP of ad networks for the past

10, 15, 20 years at this point.

I'm not as bullish on that happening anytime soon.

I, I do believe there's a world and there's frag and there's emerging

media and others ways of, Using agents to, to, to make media more efficient.

I don't know about a whole, redo of the infrastructure.

Where we're seeing it is as a co, as a copilot and, and a force

multiplier and a unfair advantage for.

Companies and second movers and third movers who don't have all this

legacy process and legacy systems and legacy organizational structure

already in place that they would then have to rip out and replace

with more efficient tools and agents.

Yeah, because that, that was always the thing.

I remember when, at the turn of the century when Y 2K happened, right?

And you had all these.

Really, really old.

Like in, in the UK we have high Street Banks, I'm guessing in, in

the US it's probably your Merrill Lynches and Bank of America and so on.

And they obviously built on legacy systems from years and years and years ago.

Whereas some of the, the more the newer types of, banking, companies were built

on an open banking kind of infrastructure.

So they didn't have all of that legacy crap to bring forward with them to try

and get it all to talk to, to each other.

it was much easier for them to get to where they needed to get to.

And, and, and I'm, I'm sure that the same sort of ecosystem and problem applies

to, the media buying side of things.

I mean, I think, when you look, when you look at Facebook, I mean, they,

they had the, the, the golden egg.

They were, but.

Buying all these third party, audiences from elsewhere and being able to

offer them within their platform.

And then all of a sudden they it all went away, right?

And, and people were like, oh, this is crazy.

I was getting great results.

But the reality of it is, is that if, if there was still a way for

you to find those audiences, right?

'cause the companies that were providing them to Facebook didn't go away.

They just didn't.

Work with Facebook anymore, right?

But you could still create your audience over there.

Say, I wanna find people that are, 25 to 34 live in Minnesota that, driver high

and die, whatever it might be, right?

And then create ads by bringing that audience from there into Facebook

yourself, rather than letting Facebook do it and build in their margin.

And and when I, when I talk to people about that, they

go, you can still do that.

And I'm like, yeah, you can still do that.

But, the challenge is that, in, in most cases the, the route to market

to, to get that, the, the kind of, the barrier to entry is pretty high, right?

Because you mentioned there are about DSPs having table stakes or minimums, right?

Sometimes if you are not prepared to spend a ton of money, then you

probably won't be able to get access to to those, those audiences, right?

And I, I, again, I think it's like you've gotta try and balance everything out.

Um, it's, it's, it's, there's never been a better time to start

a business than now, and I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about it, right?

There's, there's, there's a so many ways to, to use ai and I was having

a conversation about a co about this with a colleague yesterday, and I

was like, what is the opportunity?

And I don't know if it needs to be.

A specific application like this killer application of ai.

Just think AI in itself and making you faster, making you quicker, making

you better, is is the opportunity.

And if I'm

a, if I'm someone who's grinds and hustles and I can use chat GPT to

find a lead list, build a email so we can sequence for me, build a website.

Presence for me, generate social media content for, for me and build an audience.

And all of a sudden I'm a local regional agency and I'm using a white labeled

DSP like I, there's, I'm, I'm, I'm light years ahead of others who are,

Not using these tools, using outdated processes, and I, I can just start from

square one without having the bloat of outsourcing all of those pieces and all

the money that you would like to, whatcha talking about a hundred bucks, couple

hundred bucks to, to do any of that, uh,

versus thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to even build

a website that, that is, that is,

that is professional.

enough.

You can do that in, in moments now, and we're, as an organization, we're.

Building our own tools on Rept that used to cost, we used to have to outsource if

they're non-core to our platform, you hire maybe a dev shop or outsource to a, a, a

team to build us some automation tools.

And now we're just doing that all in-house, right?

We're technical enough, we know exactly what we need to

build and to move it along.

We just are talking and giving those specs to a, a, a platform instead of an engineer

who's charging $250 or $350 an hour.

So we're now

as you say, but every, everything is kind of like API driven now.

And I mean, when you look at, again, again, I, I'm, I'm

really curious and interested.

I mean, I was quite slow and, and I'm, I'm kicking myself and not being

on it right when it first came out.

But, the whole thing with ai, I mean, I kept thinking, oh, it's a fad.

It'll go, it'll go.

And it really isn't gonna go anywhere anytime soon.

But, there's all these sort of young, young guys, like probably 1920 that, that

are setting up automation agencies and they're using NAN and make.com and and

they're, they're creating some amazing kind of automations, as you say, for

like lead generation for, for like B2B.

they, they can but I, I think the, the problem is, is, for people

like me, a purist that's been using LinkedIn for forever, right?

And work really hard to build up the audience that I have, right?

I get bombarded with all this crap.

It's just.

awful, awful experience, right?

Because it's been made easy for by somebody else to grab my information

and send me a, a, a thing where it'll praise all the work that

I've done and blah, blah, blah.

But what about this?

And can I fill your pipeline full of, 10, 15 new leads a day or whatever it is?

And again, I, I keep thinking like at the moment, I'm at the point now

where I have a great book of business, great clients, love the clients I've

got with, I, I I work with, never have to go and look to, to find clients.

They always find me.

And, and, and for me, I'm, I'm.

Comfortable and very happy to be running a boutique agency that's small.

with the agency of record for the clients that we work with, we do

all of their media buying for them.

but for us it's not about having like a hundred clients and, everything else.

We, we are very, very comfortable and happy to be small.

And, because of that it's I wish there was a button I could turn to say, don't

hit me up 'cause you're wasting your time.

All I do is like report spam done.

That's what I do in terms of how I handle the, inbound inquiries that come from

Yeah.

And

nobody wants 50 new meetings on their calendar a day,

No.

right?

No, no, no.

Nobody wants that.

And like any technology that's new, I, I think it's gonna, there's

gonna be a learning curve and there's gonna be a tolerance curve.

as, as well with great power comes great responsibility.

And yeah, there's been a lot of, Obviously

just spam the AI lops emails that I've gotten.

so

working, how, how do you, how do you address that?

Well,

we're not using.

AI in those ways and thinking of it as just a cheat, like a cheat.

It's, it's a force multiplier.

try to use it to look up infor, try to do, to do faster research and

allow you to make your custom email that you're reaching out to this

prospect, because you should really be very personalized and it's not,

Hey, I noticed you're in New York.

Do you like hot dogs?

Like it's, it's.

It's, it's going deeper and, and it's, and it's bringing something to the,

to the table that someone knows can only be an email written to them.

Can I fill the rest of it?

And, and I think the thing is, as, as much as the, the ecosystem exists, right?

And again, don't get me wrong, I love the fact that the programmatic

ecosystem exists, right?

And that it's much, much easier to to, to get a complex media buy in place than it.

Used to be before.

So what that's done for me is it's freed up some of my time to enable

me to focus on the relationship building that I do with my clients.

And I think a lot of, for me it's like I'm going to use as much AI as

I can to take the things off my plate that prevent me from being able to

spend my time with my clients and with my staff and everything else.

That's, that's where I want to kinda like lean into ai, right?

I don't want AI to do the work that I am the best person or the, the, the,

the, the person that's most logical to do that particular piece of work, right?

That's got to be the way, things move forward.

And I think when you look at it, I mean, I've, I've run businesses

of various sizes and shapes for, what are we now, 25 years, right?

and, and, and.

To me, it's almost like it's insulting that the barrier to

entry for people setting up a business is so low now, right?

I mean, literally, as you say, probably a hundred dollars, right?

You can have a very well nice looking website domain, email

address, all that sort of stuff.

Everything can be set up with less than a hundred dollars and you

can start bombarding the hell out of unsuspecting business owners.

Offering them solutions when, in a lot of cases, the, the kind of the, the,

the detail that of how specifically the, the challenges that they have

as an individual business owner aren't all going to be the same.

So every single business owner that is a plumber in Milwaukee is not,

they're not all gonna be the same size.

They're not gonna have the same requirements.

They're not gonna have the same skills.

So to have a cookie cutter, this is like the, the model that works for everything.

I, I just don't think that works for me.

And I, I think, there are going to be, I think there's going to be a

period, I dunno when it's gonna happen.

I dunno if it's gonna be this year, next year, but there's gonna be pushback

right from a lot of, advertisers, agencies, clients that just I'm, I

don't want to kinda like use ai, I want to move away from it, Because

it's not helping my business in

no, and I, I want, I need to have control and I need to make sure

that I'm adding value as an agency.

I, I don't, don't replace, don't try to replace us.

We don't want, nobody wants to replace agencies.

The advertisers

don't want to replace agencies.

The agencies don't want agencies to go away, and it's this, we

think an opportunity to allow, allow those people to focus.

More of their time on strategy, more their time on relationship building, less on

pouring through, never ending data sets, looking for anomalies and looking for data

spikes, and identifying when things are going right and coming up with new tests,

and always on nights and weekends and crazy weekend, like crazy holiday outages.

Yes, embrace.

And we are gonna lean into all of those amazing possibilities and,

and allow the agencies to continue to thrive and allow the agencies

to continue to be the, the decision makers and hold that control as to

where air, ultimately brand dollars should be flowing.

'cause it's not just, it can't, can't just be a black box.

we're embracing that.

Yeah.

And I, I think, I think the, the thing is, I spent, A period of time.

I mean, my current agency, I've been running since 2012.

So what's that?

13 years.

And, I spent a period of time initially when I first set it up,

it was like, I'll work with anyone.

And then it soon became really apparent to me, there was a type

of business that I really liked working with, a type of business I

really did, didn't like working with.

So I made a kind of conscious effort to go through the process

of defining what my ICP was, right?

I wanted to make sure I had an ideal client persona, right?

And everything that kind of came through the door, right from

that point forward, I could then benchmark it against that, right?

So in other words, like for me, I don't like working with startups.

I find them too needy, too entitled.

And they've got no right to be entitled.

So for me, like in startups was a non, was a non-starter, right?

I did, I. Used to, to do a lot of lead generation B2B I got, I got

to the point where I thought, okay, well I don't wanna do anymore.

So I started to do e-commerce, but I chose e-commerce businesses that, that

were running on Shopify, doing between one and $5 million a year in sales

looking to grow to between five and 50.

That was like my sweet spot.

That didn't mean that I didn't work with people outside of those sort

of boundaries, but that gave me the ability if I wanted to, to go, sorry,

you're not one of the kind of, you're not my ICP, so I'm going to pass.

If I didn't feel the vibe of when I'm talking to people Whether I

felt that they would be a good fit.

And I think sometimes it's doesn't really matter what they're selling, it's more

about what will, will they be a pain in the ass to me as a, as an agency,

as a client, Or will they be great?

And some of the clients that I have, I've had clients for a long, long time.

And they're best friends of, of mine now.

I, I love the clients.

They love me, so there's no way that they're ever gonna kind

of park company with me and I'm gonna not park company with them.

And, and that's the way I, I like it.

I, I prefer those intimate relationships with my clients rather than, I've got

50, a hundred clients and sometimes I don't even know what their names are.

I'd, I'd much rather have that sort of small boutique like intimacy

rather than, a big sort of, like I said, you don't know the names of

the people that you're dealing with.

You just send 'em an invoice.

And that's not the way I wanna

Yes, same here.

Um, learning how to say no was took a lot of time and

Yeah.

we were always chasing that next opportunity and, oh, if we could just

do this one thing, it's a huge unlock.

And then

never really, those, those opportunities never came to

fruition and over time have really.

Zeroed in on our core ICP, and it helps us more than anything

prioritize our time and it's okay.

We'll still have conversations with co, with clients outside of our core ICP, but

we know how much time to be spending on them, how much effort to be chasing and

to be fair, it's also not just for our benefit, it's to their benefit, right?

Because there's plenty of organizations out there who are happy

to take business and may have a.

Better pro solution for them.

So if we're just trying to build something new or go out of our way to service a

client that we may not be best suited for, it's in no, it's in nobody's

best, best interest to go that way.

And we think, I, I personally believe that it's all, it's all a long game, right?

And if I'm talking to someone and I know I'm not, we're not the right

fit, I'll point them in the right direction and say, when you need this,

come to, come back to us and, mm-hmm.

They re that, that is respected.

There's way more benefit in that in the long run for both sides, because they'll

remember that and they'll, they'll,

I, I mean, I've, I've seen situations where, you have

people that work with you, right?

So pe-people that are members of your staff, right?

And, and they do nothing but bitch about their, their clients.

They bitch about the company, they bitch about.

and I always, I always say to them, look, if you don't like

here, then just go, right?

You're not, you're not doing yourself any favors by sticking around, right?

You are, you are really hurting your business and you

are hurting yourself, right?

And there's no point in doing that, right?

Not, not every.

Client, not every sort of employee that you have is going to be a good fit.

You like, you like to think they would be right.

But sometimes it's just not, there's, there's, there's like

the, the chemistry's not there.

And it's better to kinda identify and, and a address it as soon as you are

able to, rather than keeping it on.

I mean, I, I, I'm, I'm amazed at how many people do stick in

a job that they absolutely hate.

For long, long periods beyond the point where they should, They should

just be like, okay, I admit this is not working for me and I'm out.

Yeah.

Lots of dynamics at play in tough time to be, super picky about, about roles, but

everybody, who knows what's going on at home and what, what they're dealing with.

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and just if people are gonna

be, I. allow, allow them to, not try to not let that affect me too much in the

day to day and try to keep my center.

just, uh, it's been a, and I wasn't always that way.

I, I have not always,

you, so if you, if you were gonna go out and say, I'm, I'm gonna try and attract

my, my ICP, where do you go go to find new prospective agencies to work with?

Where, how do you

Oh man.

we are doing a little bit of everything, right?

There's a lot of tools out there that can help you understand

who's using your competitors.

There's a lot of tools and a lot of.

Communities out there specific to ad tech and programmatic, where

people are talking about challenges.

and I've never been shy about being out there.

Reddit has a really good community.

There's a bunch of different Slack communities and, branding and

advertising and being around works.

events?

Do you go to live like shows or live

I go to, I go to conferences

and that's helpful.

do we.

Which conferences did you go to?

I'm just, again, I'm just

Um, possible in Miami is a good conference where basically everybody's there.

I've been to a bunch of the digit day events historically, and

that's great for mid-size agencies.

but I've also moved out of.

Founder led sales over the past year.

so my conference, attendance has, has, has dipped, all the stuff in

New York as far as programmatic io, Adweek, the scape events, and, we've been

doing a little bit more mobile as well.

so MAU was out in Vegas earlier this year.

We're open to, we're open to other, other tips on, on where to, where to

find, agencies in this change mode and in this kind of growth mode.

It's honestly been a, a challenge.

We, there's a lot of signals that you're able to access from different

software providers like G two and

built with, but we're really,

SimilarWeb

similar web.

Similar web.

And there's another one I, I just heard, I just found that's kinda

similar to built with, but yeah, I mean,

have you heard of Bordy?

No, I haven't.

speaking of AI in chat, GPTI got a random WhatsApp message a couple of months ago

from Bordy telling me that they knew what ad-Lib was and they've got clients that

they wanted to introduce me to for free.

And, uh, I've been chatting with this bot for the past few months

and they're just connecting me with people in their network.

And it's some kind of a wrapper on top, on top of chat GPT

that, opt in network of people.

It shares what they do and then it tries to match, make them,

but it's very natural and it's

very human focused and came outta nowhere and I found 'em on LinkedIn.

They've got a ton of followers and I think a lot of.

People are using it.

Wow.

so that's an interesting one to, to check out if you haven't looked at it yet.

I, I, I don't know how it found me.

I don't know how to even sign up for it.

But if you go to like BRD on LinkedIn, you could probably figure out how

to, how to opt into their network.

Yeah, I mean, again, I, I think, for me that, that there's always

somebody will come up with a really innovative way of doing things

that's not spammy and not horrible.

and I'm all for that, right?

I mean, I, I've got absolutely every admiration for people that can come up

with an innovative way of ensuring that people are, are looking for a certain

thing, can find that certain thing in an easy way, In, in the most effective way.

I mean, I've, again, I, I, to go back to conferences, I mean, I, I,

I, I go to, a lot of conferences.

I used to go to a lot of conferences pre, pre pandemic.

I've certainly curtailed them a lot more since then, I've been, I've

been a bit more, thoughtful about.

return on investment.

I mean, I, I, I hate, I hate using return on investment in respect of conferences,

but, but at the same time, it's I see it.

I had a lot, I've got a lot of friends that spend a ton of

time, speaking at conferences.

They, they travel all over the world speaking at conferences now.

And I think the days when you used to be able to go to a conference, stand on

stage, tell them how amazing you are, and share all your mind blowing kind of

tips and tricks and everything, and then at the end of the conference, there'd

be like a queue of people wanting to come and work with your agency, right?

Those days are gone, right?

What tends to happen now, it's become a much more mature market.

So what tends to happen now is that the companies that are

looking for the help, right?

What they do is they send their team along to, to get educated, right?

So they can go back to the office and kind of implement what they

learned from the speakers, right?

The speakers are there expecting to get clients.

They're not getting clients right?

In most cases, they have to go to the conference at their own expense, right?

So they have to pay for a flight, they have to pay for hotels, they

have to pay for all the incidentals and, and, and everything else.

They're per diems.

And it it costs them a lot of money, right?

And I think if they stopped at the end of the year and analyzed how much

money did I spend on travel, right?

Flights, hotels, and so on and so on, how much time did

I have away from the business?

And evaluate that to what I got in, in net new clients.

They'd probably go, oh, I, I'm not sure about that.

And I, I, I've got a friend who, runs a big sort of SEO agency, and

he's now, instead of going to the SEO conferences, what he does is

he, he wants to focus on maybe legal clients or something like that.

So he'll go to all the legal shows, And if you think about it, there's

all these legal companies there.

They're, criminal laws and blah, blah, blah.

And then there's this guy that's got like an SEO business, and they're

like, wow, what's an SEO business?

And they, he's picking up lots and lots of inquiries on that basis, right?

Because he's, as, as I put it, he's ying when everyone else is yanging, right?

and it's, for me, it's just clever that he's

how do you stand out?

Right?

How, how do you, how do you get,

how do you get that interest?

And it's, yeah.

It's, it's not being another ed tech provider at an ed tech conference.

Yeah.

But, but it's difficult.

I mean, you, you like, I, I like going to affiliate Summit, right?

And in most cases I say I like going to affiliate Summit.

I like going to Vegas when affiliate Summit is on.

I stopped going to the conference itself many years ago, right?

I just go to the, the, the Chandelier bar and the Cosmopolitan Hotel, right?

And all the friends that I have all come to to there, right?

That's become like the, the go-to place for, for all the

networking to happen, right?

And, but I'm, again, I, I, I think when you, when you look at it, I enjoy going

there 'cause I can meet up with friends.

Whereas if I was gonna do, do that and might say, well I'm gonna go and,

and go to a conference where, they're all lawyers or what have you, then

I wouldn't know anyone there, right?

And it'd be boring in some regards.

So it, it is just trying to get that balance right between, going because you

want to try and win business versus going 'cause you wanna see your friends, right?

people like to do business with their friends, They like to do

business with people that they like, and relationships are important.

If you get in person and you build out that relationship first, and you're not

selling, you're just around, I. They come to you when they need your solution.

And those, that's a long game, obviously, but those are the most powerful business

relationships, and those are the, the most sustainable ones because they're,

they're rooted on trust and they're rooted on, a, a personal, a friendship that

has the, ben has the added benefits of.

Making money.

And,

and and you don't wanna work with people that you don't wanna talk

to and that you don't wanna, get involved with or you don't trust.

So yeah, I mean, that's one way to stand out.

Now also, as people are maybe going to less conferences or really focusing

less on relationship building and everyone's remote and not getting on

a plane and going to see clients and spending time with in, in FaceTime.

Yeah.

Somebody will, so Will's our head of growth and he's went out and,

visited a client, took them out to dinner and took them to a, a, a game

and said the last time a vendor came out and visited me and showed me a

good time, was probably 10 years ago.

It's just, it's just changing dynamics.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I try and make a point where, where possible to go

and visit clients, even if they're overseas, I'll, I'll go and visit

clients as frequently as I'm able to.

I mean, if I can go once a year, I'll go once a year and, and, some, again,

sometimes I'll spend, a couple of days on site with them in their office or go

out for lunches, dinners, because like I said, I'm, I consider them friends,

so I'm just going and hanging out with friends and we're, shooting the breeze.

but at the same time, we're also able to talk about the business and how

we can put things in place to, future proof, the, the performance of, of what

we're, we're running for them, right?

Because ultimately we're only as good as the clients we work with,

and if the clients are struggling, then we are gonna struggle, right?

it's important that you try and again, just have that sort of, awareness of

the fact that you, you need to put yourself in, in a position where you

can do that, where you can go and visit them and, and everything else.

It's partnership.

No, that's, that's how we view it, right?

It's, it's all about growth together.

And when you really lean in and you show that you're not just a vendor,

you're, you're a growth partner,

clients just are gonna keep coming back.

So if, if I was a, a kind of a watcher or a listener of, of this podcast

episode and, and I wanted to find out a little bit more about Adlib, where

would be the best place to go to do that.

Get ad lib.com.

Okay, cool.

And all of your contact details will be available in the show notes,

like when, when we, we are done.

Mike, it just remains me to say thank you so much for being a

fantastic guest on the show.

if, if, I mean, do you have anything else that you want to throw in, in,

in terms of, information before we go?

thanks Jim for having me.

This was a great chat.

enjoyed talking about some history and of, of, of the platform, talking about

history of ad tech and also a little bit of a glimpse into the future.

Yeah.

And, and like I said, I, I should have been on with my cohost Rob,

thought he couldn't make this.

So we'll definitely have you back for a future episode when, the two

of us can put you through your paces.

so again, thank you again for being such a fantastic guest and, for

everyone's watching all listening.

This has been the Media Buying Podcast.

Make sure you tell all your media buying friends about the show and,

we'll see you on the next episode.

Cheers.

Nice.

Good.

Excellent.

Thank you so much for that.

That was great.

Oh yeah.

You're very welcome.

It was my pleasure.

Thanks for the engaging chat.

it's, are you in the uk?

I am in the uk.

it's good, it's late in your time.

you got a lot of energy for, for eight 30?

Yeah.

Um,

in the evening.

You, you are in New York,

I'm in New York.

Co-founder Dan's in London.

So he's over by you.

Um.

Most of the team is in London, actually.

Okay.

So do you get over to the UK at all or,

It's been a while.

I've got a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, and I've been,

oh, okay.

yeah, had a little bit locked down for the, for the, for the,

for the past couple of years.

I, I, I owe it to the team to get out there.

Well make sure you, when you do, when you do get over, make sure

you drop me a note and I'd, I'd love to meet up and have a drink

percent

man.

And I won't sell you, but if you ever wanna hear more about ad-lib and

how we think we're different and how we're different than than Centro or

Basis, or if you have opportunities that you've left on the table.

Or Site Scout.

I started with, I think I started with Site Scout, then became

Centro, then became basis, and then became Basis platform.

And it's

for a long time, man.

yeah.

And it doesn't have to be, nor you ever need to run Netflix

or whatever, just reach out.

Happy to help.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it's quite interesting.

I was talking to some, I was reading somewhere today, I think Netflix are about

to do a deal, I think with Spotify to enable some of the Spotify video podcasts

to appear on the Netflix platform.

And I'm like, that's quite interesting.

I could be a, I could be a podcaster that runs a, has a channel on Netflix.

I mean, that'd be

very very cool.

I mean, well, content and just Twitch and streaming and creators, they're just

sitting there talking and that's people are consuming that as video content.

Yeah.

all right, Jim,

I gotta jump to, oh, I'm late to another client call.

I'll, we'll speak soon later.

Cheers.

Thanks again, Mike.

Bye for now.