Bob Lord: The Quantum Computing Defector Who Escaped Advertising, Spent 8 Years Learning How Technology Actually Works at IBM, and Then Came Back to Burn Down the FTE Model

Here's a career arc that sounds like a fever dream: He ran Razorfish, sold it to Microsoft, sold it again to Publicis, became president of AOL during Verizon's $4.4 billion acquisition, then completely abandoned advertising to become a senior vice president at IBM where he got "steeped in large language models, neural networks, quantum computing" and learned to track a single product floating somewhere in the South China Sea. Now he's back as President of Horizon Media—one of the largest independent agencies in the country with $10 billion in billings—and he has some thoughts about why everything is broken.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Bob Lord walks us through the career nobody plans, the lessons that shaped how he operates, and why he thinks the entire agency compensation model is a dying relic that's holding the industry hostage.

We get into:

1. The great escape and return: Why would anyone leave advertising at the top of their game, spend nearly a decade at IBM learning about quantum computing and supply chain software, and then voluntarily come back to an industry that had only gotten more chaotic in his absence?
2. The damning comparison: At IBM, Lord could track a single product across global supply chains and tell you exactly when it would dock in San Francisco. Meanwhile, back in advertising? "I still couldn't tell a marketer how their campaign ran in the last week. Something went wrong."
3. The Rube Goldberg problem: More ad tech vendors. More data companies. More martech platforms. More confusion. More complexity. Less clarity. The industry spent a decade building an elaborate machine and forgot what it was supposed to be making.
4. The FTE model must die: Lord is pitching clients on performance-based compensation tied to actual business outcomes—not marketing qualified leads, not downloads, but actual transactions. Cars sold. Internet packages purchased. Widgets moved. "If I can swap out technology and cut the staff by a third—shouldn't that be the model?"
5. The boots story: How a 19-year-old Bob Lord on a GM factory floor learned the hard way that not everyone operates from goodness—a lesson that's guided his trust-but-verify approach for four decades.
6. Growth and comfort don't coexist: The mantra he picked up from IBM's Ginni Rometty that sounds like a LinkedIn platitude but that Lord means literally. He talks about being in the "muddy middle" at Horizon—knowing where he wants to go, not having all the answers, watching everyone's role change in real time.
7. The first P&L: The exhausting, trial-by-fire experience of running a $20 million business in North Carolina with no idea how to hire, fire, or run a sales department—and why he keeps putting himself through these sink-or-swim moments decade after decade.

Jason White has spent 20+ years actually BUILDING technology at Viacom, OpenX, CBS, Fox MySpace, and multiple startups. Unlike the PowerPoint warriors flooding LinkedIn, he's coded real systems, invented RTB structures, and survived every hype cycle from the dot-com bubble to today's AI frenzy. In this brutally honest conversation, Jason exposes: ❌ Why 60-70% of "AI features" are just rule-based logic with an LLM wrapper ❌ The platform risk nobody talks about (spoiler: when ChatGPT builds your feature, you're done) ❌ Why ChatGPT is only right 50% of the time—and argues when it's wrong ❌ How ad blockers are inexplicably allowed in buying platforms ❌ Why programmatic "transparency" is the industry's biggest joke ❌ The real reason companies blow $100M on shiny objects (metaverse, anyone?) ✅ But also what ACTUALLY works: ✅ The three-circle test for real innovation (save money + bandwidth + revenue = unicorn) ✅ Why ad networks worked better than what replaced them ✅ How to build culture that doesn't turn teams into "office hostages" ✅ The future of AdCP and agents talking to each other ✅ Why democratizing information still matters 🔥 CONTROVERSIAL TAKES: "Programmatic guaranteed pricing makes no sense" - Google's $0.40 on $2 CPM vs $6 on $30 CPM "SSPs were taking 30-50% margins as intermediaries" "The Trade Desk hasn't integrated with a new SSP in 8 years" "Token costs are going to rise—this automation party won't last" "ChatGPT will lose a billion dollars a month... not for long" 📊 BY THE NUMBERS: 60-70% of AI features are just rule-based logic AI costs went from $50/month to $1,000/month in one year 30-50% margins taken by intermediary SSPs Only 10% of companies survive hype bubbles—but they change the world 🎯 WHO IS JASON WHITE? 20+ years building advertising technology across: Fox MySpace (invented client-side programmatic) CBS Interactive (built MyAds) OpenX (ad exchange infrastructure) TrueCar (growth) Arena Group (revenue turnaround) Jiffy AI (RPA-based ad operations) Mula (current: combining ML, RTB, header bidding, analytics) Survived: dot-com bubble, ad networks, programmatic, mobile, and now AI hype 🗣️ QUOTES THAT HIT DIFFERENT: "I've never seen an absolute. I immediately discount it when somebody says everything." "There's little people behind the green curtain running data back and forth." "Maybe if ad networks were just transparent with their margins..." "Culture is how people behave when things go wrong, not the posters you put up." "My religion is democratizing information." "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." 📚 READ THE FULL SERIES: This interview is being turned into a 4-part article series: Part 1: The AI Hype Bubble (FREE) Part 2: Revenue Discipline in the Age of Shiny Objects (FREE) Part 3: The Programmatic Paradox (PAID) Part 4: The Future of Advertising Technology (PAID) 🔔 SUBSCRIBE for more unfiltered conversations with people who actually build technology instead of selling PowerPoint decks. 👍 LIKE if you're tired of AI theater and want to hear the truth. 💬 COMMENT: What's the biggest BS claim you've heard about "AI" in your industry? 🎙️ The ADOTAT Show Hosted by Pesach Lattin Where we separate real innovation from LinkedIn theater #AIinAdvertising #AdTech #Programmatic #ChatGPT #MarketingTechnology #DigitalAdvertising

Local TV has been written off as plumbers, pizza shops, and leftover budgets for far too long. Jason Manningham is here to explain why that take is lazy, expensive, and wrong. In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin sits down with Blockgraph CEO Jason Manningham to unpack the part of the TV ecosystem everyone pretends to understand and absolutely does not. We dig into why local advertising is actually a $170B market, why zip codes are a blunt instrument, and why proximity and household identity outperform the buzzword soup most decks are built on. This conversation covers: Why local TV is bigger than national TV, and why brands keep missing it Household identity vs “targeting a person” on a shared screen Why IP targeting is mostly fiction and why geo still matters when done right Attribution dashboards as cosplay and the limits of last-click thinking Currency wars, outcomes measurement, and why Nielsen isn’t the whole story What AI gets wrong about TV and why the real world still matters Why most “performance TV” claims collapse under basic scrutiny No hype. No vendor theater. Just infrastructure, incentives, and the uncomfortable math underneath modern TV advertising. Sponsored by: Troutman Amin LLP – When ad tech deals get complicated, regulated, or quietly risky. Incremental.com – Because lift beats vibes, and proof beats promises. This is The ADOTAT Show. Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Nick Stark didn’t come on The ADOTAT Show to talk about “the future of CTV” in soft-focus buzzwords. He came to talk about why connected TV advertising quietly bleeds money every day and why most of the industry pretends it’s normal. Nick is the CEO of GoGoCTV, a company that exists for one uncomfortable reason: streaming ads are often built on bad metadata, missing signals, broken ad plumbing, and contracts nobody audits after signing. If you’ve ever seen premium CTV inventory monetize like clearance-bin display, this episode explains exactly how that happens and why it keeps happening. We unpack how a single missing metadata field can slash revenue by up to 90%, why “data-driven marketing” often means “staring at dashboards you don’t fully understand,” and how optimization culture turned creativity into a hostage negotiation with math. Nick breaks down dirty vs missing metadata, IVT detection gone sideways, why new devices get punished for not being on whitelist spreadsheets, and how “fixed pricing” quietly sabotages performance in a dynamic market. There’s also a blunt conversation about: CTV ad tech infrastructure and ad serving Metadata hygiene, data quality, and monetization leakage Programmatic advertising myths and supply chain confusion IVT, SIVT, fraud detection, and false positives Attention economics vs impressions vs results Dynamic pricing, floor management, and latency realities Why audits matter more than optimism Why half the industry is confident their stack works and wrong Plus desert-island adtech hypotheticals, a reality check on AI in advertising, why consultants behave exactly like mosquitoes, and an honest look at leadership when everything runs in milliseconds and ego runs in seconds. If you work in CTV, streaming advertising, programmatic media, ad operations, ad tech infrastructure, media buying, data engineering, or revenue optimization, this episode is required listening. If you don’t, it’s still a great tour of how complex systems fail politely while everyone nods. Huge thanks to our sponsors: Troutman Amin LLP, because when ad tech deals get strange, you want lawyers who actually understand how this industry breaks. Incremental.com, because outcomes beat vibes, lift beats dashboards, and proof beats promises. This is The ADOTAT Show. Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Founders love telling you they’re “building the future.” Most of them are really just building new ways to charge you for the same old chaos. On this episode of The ADOTAT Show, Pesach Lattin runs a rare double-header: Amol Waishampayan (the product philosopher behind Full Throttle AI) and David Regn (the guy who helped build Stream into a 27-year force of nature without lighting the building on fire). Together, they walk straight into adtech’s identity problem and do the unthinkable: talk like adults. Topics include: First-party identity: why the industry treated it like optional kale until the cookies started entering hospice care “95%+ confidence” household identity: less magic, more math, way more uncomfortable truths Third-party data: useful, sure… if you enjoy navigating by fog Mid-market miniaturization: why measurement is finally getting shrink-wrapped instead of locked behind enterprise gates Automation: the kind that replaces five humans and three spreadsheets, not the kind that needs constant supervision and snacks Leadership delusion: why “tools” won for so long and “outcomes” got avoided like an audit Desert island adtech: no dashboards, no WiFi, just coconuts and the terrifying realization you might need common sense Also: Flash nostalgia, Newgrounds deep cuts, and Pesach attempting to strand two executives on an island for content. Because this is what passes for “media” now. Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

If you’ve ever wondered why half the industry still behaves like cookies are a personality trait, welcome to the episode that’s about to ruin a lot of vendor slide decks. Rabbi Pesach Lattin breaks down how Keith Gooberman, founder of Pontiac Intelligence, quietly engineered one of the only CTV-first DSPs that isn’t dragging a decade of open-web baggage behind it like a wounded pack mule.

This isn’t your standard adtech kumbaya chat.

This is the part where we look under the hood, point at the wires, and ask why everyone else keeps pretending their bidders “support CTV” while behaving like they’re still loading banners on a recipe blog in 2013.

• The Pontiac DSP’s stateless, cookieless-by-design architecture

Keith Gooberman didn’t “go cookieless.”

He built a bidder that never needed identity maps, lookup tables, sync storms, or any of the legacy machinery that makes other DSPs choke during high-volume TV moments.

• Why legacy optimization fails on CTV every single time

CPM-chasing, remnant-sniping, bid-density “AI” that was fine for the open web but collapses the moment it touches premium pods.

If your CTV campaigns feel like chaos, this is why.

• How CTV really operates

Pods, rotations, pacing windows, dayparts, MVPD pipes, app-level supply differences, publisher metadata games, curated PMPs, and the real economics behind premium impressions.

The stuff no one says out loud on stage.

• The new DSP model Pontiac proved is the future

Small. Lean. Stateless. Infrastructure-like. Built for curated CTV, not welded onto a display bidder with duct tape and optimism.

Keith Gooberman, Pontiac Intelligence, Pontiac DSP, CTV advertising, CTV-first DSP, programmatic CTV, connected TV strategy, premium video advertising, identity-free bidding, stateless bidder, SSP CTV integrations, curated PMP strategy, Roku ads, Amazon Fire TV advertising, MVPD CTV supply, predictive allocation, pod-level pacing, programmatic optimization, DSP engineering, adtech architecture, supply path optimization, premium video supply, cross-screen strategy, streaming adtech trends, advanced TV advertising, privacy-safe programmatic, cookieless DSP design, 2025 CTV buying.

Because this isn’t hype.

It’s the forensic breakdown of how one DSP actually solved the physics of television while everyone else tried to rebrand their failures as “AI-driven.”

Because Keith Gooberman didn’t follow the industry map — he burned it and built something that actually respects CTV’s structure, rules, and supply constraints.

Because if you’re buying CTV, planning budgets, leading a media team, building a platform, or just trying not to embarrass yourself in the next meeting about streaming strategy, this is the stuff you can’t afford to misunderstand anymore.

And if you want the version with the spicy parts I can’t say on YouTube without getting emergency calls from PR teams, that’s waiting inside ADOTAT+.

Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Dave Madden is the rare executive who doesn’t just have stories. He has receipts. In this episode of The ADOTAT Show, we walk straight into the eye of modern gaming, advertising, cloud chaos, and one of the wildest brand partnerships ever attempted. It’s a full tour of an industry desperately trying to innovate while tripping over its own jargon.

Dave takes us all the way back to his WildTangent years, where rewarded ads were born long before today’s pitch decks pretended to invent them. He breaks down how he and Alex St. John reunited after decades apart, why a “barn full of PhDs” might actually be the future of cloud gaming, and how Playcast.io could rewrite discovery, access, and game economics in a way hyperscalers probably don’t want you thinking about.

We also get the uncensored version of the Titanfall-Mt. Dew-Doritos incident: a global promo with hundreds of millions of packages already printed, sitting on shelves, while the game itself flirted with a delay. Dave describes the moment he realized the entire operation could implode. And what he did next. Survival mode, not spin.

From there, we dive into Dave’s unfiltered assessment of adtech’s chronic delusion problem. He talks about “vaporware,” Cannes cosplay, and the industry’s obsession with pretending innovation is whatever shiny buzzword someone stapled to a slide last week. His quote about adtech being “an industry of lampreys sitting on the back of a whale” is the kind of line that should probably be printed on a plaque and sent to every CMO.

We talk brand soul, too. Dave walks us through the Lululemon campaign that almost got Duke Stump fired but ended up saving the brand. He breaks down why some brands should be excommunicated from the Church of Authenticity entirely, and why gamers don’t hate ads—they hate being treated like idiots. There’s a difference.

We wrap with the desert-island picks, the identity that actually matters when everything collapses, and the “achievement unlocked” Dave wants on the final screen of his life. Spoiler: it’s not about titles. It’s about people.

If you want the real story of where gaming and adtech are heading—not the sanitized conference version—this is the episode. Pour a drink, cancel your next meeting, and watch a master dismantle the mythology.

Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More than You Did Yesterday.

Strap in. Anne Coghlan — co-founder of Scope3 and one of the few adults supervising the industry’s AI experimentation — joins The ADOTAT Show to explain why the ad-tech ecosystem is teetering on the edge of a long-overdue reckoning.

If you’ve ever tried to understand programmatic and ended up feeling like you were reading a ransom note assembled from mismatched acronyms, Anne is here to decode the mess. She walks through why AI agents shouldn’t be treated like futuristic prophets, but rather like “smart interns” who need guardrails, human supervision, and — most importantly — a protocol that prevents them from burning the house down.

We dive deep into the logic, engineering, governance, and sheer absurdity of a marketplace where one publisher can somehow have 24,000 resellers, entire layers profit from “data mud,” and MFA sites thrive by gaming the gaps that no one wants to talk about publicly.

Anne doesn’t do euphemisms.

She talks plainly about waste, fraud, obfuscation, sustainability, outcomes, and why the industry is held together by habit more than design. She explains how AdCP rewrites those rules, how agentic negotiation actually works, and why it’s time for the ecosystem to evolve on purpose — rather than stumbling forward on top of a decade’s worth of duct tape.

This episode is far more than another AI-ad-tech fireside chat. It’s a blueprint for the next era of digital marketing, created by someone who actually understands the pipes, the politics, and the incentives.

If you want to know where the ecosystem is heading — and who’s sweating behind the scenes — this is the episode you don’t skip.

💬 Deep-Dive Topics We Hit

(yes, we hit all of this)

• How AdCP actually functions (beyond slide-deck mythology)

• Why AI agents need guardrails, supervision, and human veto power

• Multi-hop supply chains & why 24,000 resellers is not a rounding error

• Ad fraud, MFA patterns, and the “crap and waste” Anne wants gone

• The carbon footprint of bad media and why sustainability correlates with outcomes

• What “agentic negotiation” looks like — and why it's nothing like RTB

• Creative + context reasoning: the missing puzzle piece

• Why publishers finally regain leverage in an agentic marketplace

• How brands shift from “spend allocation” to genuine outcome architecture

• The coming political battle: AdCP vs ARTF vs UCP vs “the old guard”

• Who gets left behind when transparency stops being optional

• Human-in-the-loop: what automation still absolutely cannot do

• What goes extinct, and what replaces the ad-tech fossils

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