The AI Advertising Podcast

As AI reshapes retail advertising with real-time optimization, faster creative testing, and new ways to reach shoppers across CTV, the open web, and commerce environments—one big question remains:
Can AI actually deliver relevance at scale and prove what’s truly incremental?
In this episode, we dive into that question with a leader on the front lines of commerce and programmatic:
Dana Karlin, Head of Commerce, StackAdapt

AI in marketing automation has reached an inflection point. The tools are powerful, budgets are rising, and AI now touches everything from campaign planning to personalization. But outcomes are still inconsistent.
In this episode, Diego Pineda sits down with Chris Bentley (Director, Marketing Operations and Analytics at StackAdapt) and Wayne Coburn (Director of Product at StackAdapt) to unpack why.
The core insight is simple: AI advantage no longer comes from features alone. Performance now comes from consolidation, integration, and activating AI as a shared intelligence layer across fewer, more powerful systems—so journeys connect, learnings compound, and waste drops.
We also dig into a structural problem highlighted by StackAdapt research: 66% of marketers say up to 30% of programmatic budget is wasted due to siloed or fragmented execution. Adoption has moved faster than coordination—and that gap creates “automation debt.”

Marketers have long been obsessed with performance—but is it costing us long-term growth? This episode explores the growing tension between brand and performance marketing and the role of AI in helping marketers finally see the full funnel.
Our guest: Becky Tasker, VP of Growth Marketing at StackAdapt.

According to StackAdapt’s new report, The State of Programmatic Advertising 2026, the next phase of programmatic won’t be about incremental optimization. It will be about orchestration: unifying data, creative, channels, measurement, and AI into a single, intelligent system.
In this episode, we sit down with two industry leaders to unpack what that shift really means in practice.
Paul Verna | VP of Content, EMARKETER
Yang Han | CTO, StackAdapt

AI in advertising is entering a new phase of autonomy. This episode unpacks what agentic AI really means, how Ivy™ is evolving into a true marketing agent, and why the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is quietly becoming one of the most important technologies in ad tech.
Our guests are:
Yang Han, CTO at StackAdapt
Lee Odden, CEO at TopRank Marketing