Join us for Speaker Office Hours – your chance to pick the brains of a few of our brilliant presenters in a casual, no-pressure setting. Whether you're looking for clarification, deeper insights, or just want to chat shop, this is your moment. No slides, no scripts – just real talk, good vibes, and maybe a few hot takes. Come curious! Open to everyone!

Catch up with fellow attendees over some refreshments and have another opportunity to meet with our Live Exchange partners.

What does it really take to make programmatic work in connected TV? In this session, Hillary Slattery, Senior Director of Programmatic, Product at IAB Tech Lab, breaks down the messy, magical process of the “programmatic-ing” of CTV. From the business headaches (like transparency and curation) to the technical hurdles (like actually delivering ads, including AI-generated ones, into CTV environments), Hillary will unpack what is working, what is still weird, and what it is going to take to scale. Expect frank talk about signal sharing, measurement gaps, and why CTV apps and FAST channels cannot just copy and paste from digital video playbooks. There might even be a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference. Just saying.

Measurement has never been this fast, and it's getting faster. Is that a good thing for publishers? As advertisers have returned to holistic measurement approaches like marketing mix modeling (MMM), upstarts as well as advertising giants such as Meta and Google, have started to change the expectation that media mix modeling should take weeks, or even months to do. How will this new mode of measuring media, which has never been faster (or more accessible), change the way advertisers regard publishers' inventory?

Aroma Joe’s is one of America's fastest-growing QSRs (quick-service restaurants, and we have Chief Marketing Officer Carrie Riley on hand to spill the secrets behind scaling a brick-and-mortar shop through digital. Hear how the coffee shop chain, working with Campfire’s Chris Marine, blends programmatic CTV, direct-to-publisher deals and high-impact broadcast to unlock new value in local and national streaming – plus why the next ad gold rush might just be brewing on using local TV to drive performance and build brand equity.

AI agents are redefining programmatic advertising, making workflows faster and linking platforms through Agent‑to‑Agent (A2A) and Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections. In this interactive session, you’ll build your own AI agent to power media planning and activation, no coding needed. Learn how to customize your agent to suit your workflow, and how to seamlessly integrate with Dstillery’s Multimodal AI tools for discovering, creating, and activating AI audiences. You’ll walk away with a working AI agent, a solid understanding of agentic workflows, and fresh ideas for automating your day-to-day. Just bring your laptop, Wi-Fi connection, and curiosity.

In an era where privacy regulations continue to reshape the connected landscape, it raises the question - How can advertisers consistently and efficiently reach the right audiences with precision and impact? 
 
This panel takes on that challenge head-on, exploring how AI is redefining audience targeting through innovative, privacy-first approaches. Attendees will learn how leading marketers are transforming data into scalable, future-proof solutions that not only protect consumer trust and privacy but also deliver measurable performance across platforms. 

The promise of CTV is tremendous, but realizing its full potential remains complex. Opaque inventory packaging, fragmented buying paths, inconsistent measurement, a lack of standardization and a convoluted consumer journey all create friction—limiting CTV’s performance both as a standalone channel and within a broader omnichannel strategy. In this session, Cadent will explore the root causes of this fragmentation and challenge common assumptions. Advertisers will leave this session equipped with a practical framework to bring greater clarity, cohesion and impact to their CTV investments.

Over $700 billion will be spent in digital ad auctions this year – on pace to hit $1 trillion by 2030, with more than 20% going toward programmatic. Yet advertisers remain in the dark about how programmatic auctions work, leading to inefficiency and even manipulation. In this eye-opening session, Ben Hovaness, OMD Worldwide’s chief media officer, will reveal what really happens under the hood. Expect a live demo (with audience participation) and a first look at a cross-industry effort with the MRC, ANA, WFA, IAB Tech Lab and others to establish much-needed transparency standards.

 AI is disrupting agency workflows and processes. But hype still often outweighs reality. In this head-to-head presentation, two ad agencies, Butler/Till and WPP Media, share how they’re using AI for planning, research, creative and optimization. Attend this presentation to compare and contrast approaches to incorporating AI into workflows and gain an inside view into how this tech is changing the business of advertising.

Hear from a brand and agency on how they are reinventing their measurement framework.

CTV has long been hailed as the future of video advertising, but despite explosive consumer adoption, advertising dollars haven’t followed at the same pace. Join Moe Chughtai, Global VP of Strategy and Partnerships at MiQ and a guest, as they explore 3 key reasons why that gap exists and how AI will remove those hurdles in the next 18 months. With better algorithms, richer insights, and tighter interoperability, we'll workshop how AI will be the solution to making CTV the killer category is poised to be.

Pairing programmatic media with retail media data can bring the best of commerce and media together. Attend this workshop to learn how to seamlessly bridge the upper and lower funnel by putting retail data and media to work. We’ll go through optimization strategies that deliver on measurable outcomes and support halo effects, including attracting new-to-brand customers. Hear directly from industry leaders in an engaging fireside chat as they share key wins and actionable learnings from a successful case study example.

Do you actually know what’s driving your marketing performance, or are you just trusting what the platforms tell you? In this fundamentals-focused session, attribution expert Madan Bharadwaj (M-Squared) and a marketer break down the core building blocks of modern marketing measurement. Together, they’ll walk through a real-world case study from the brand, showing how attribution best practices can be applied to uncover insights, challenge assumptions and improve performance. You’ll leave with a crash course in attribution and a foundational framework you can bring back to your team.

Sell-side packaging is the new normal in the programmatic supply chain. The overwhelming majority of RTB bid requests now represent an opportunity to participate in the open auction along with opportunities to participate in multiple curated deal IDs. Join this session with Jounce Media's Chris Kane to understand the ways in which curated deal IDs are packaged and priced, the most common pitfalls that buyers need to avoid, and the steps savvy publishers are taking to maximize curation revenue.

Retail media is redefining how brands reach shoppers, but the rules differ from traditional “national” media. This fundamentals session demystifies the retail media landscape and clarifies how objectives, data, buying, measurement and creative differ from national campaigns. We’ll map the major omni retail media networks (Walmart Connect, Target, Instacart, and Kroger), focusing on the key pillars of keyword and audience-based buying. Attendees will learn how to activate retailer first-party data to reach high-intent shoppers both onsite and offsite, optimize campaign performance, and use the unique strengths of each platform. You’ll leave with a practical playbook into targeting strategies that drive results across the full funnel and unlock the true potential of retail media.

Advertisers and their agencies find themselves navigating a sea of change thanks to ever-changing macroeconomic influences, AI innovations and pressures to perform. Can their relationships rise above, or are they sailing toward disaster? Join Advertiser Perception's GM of Business Intelligence Lauren Fisher as she discusses some of the major influences facing agencies and brands and what it means for the future of their relationships. We'll discuss:

• How the macroeconomic climate is affecting the ad industry at large in the US and in select global markets
• The major trends and technologies impacting how agencies pitch and service their clients (e.g., AI, privacy/regulation, growth of influencer, CTV, commerce media and more)
• Where agencies and marketers don’t see eye-to-eye today in terms of advertising’s role in driving tangible outcomes for organizations – and what media sellers, marketers and agencies can do to come together

Supply Path Optimization (SPO) has traditionally been about efficiency: making sure ad dollars go further, reducing tech fees and exposure to fraud. But SPO 2.0 is bigger than that. It’s about insights: understanding who your partners are, who they work with and setting your own standards to mitigate risk. Beyond efficiency, SPO can directly inform brand safety and suitability decisions, helping advertisers protect quality, value, and real performance in a post-GARM world. Attend this session to understand more about the good, bad and ugly in the current supply chain, and how to use this knowledge to drive better results and buy more responsible media. 

With dozens of alternative IDs promising scale, accuracy and interoperability, how can buyers know what approach maximizes identity fidelity? This workshop digs into the questions advertisers should be asking: How do you test the accuracy of a third-party ID against first-party identity from the likes of Google, Meta or Amazon? What does “interoperable” mean when each ID provider still requires its own enrichment path? And how can brands compare the identity chops of retail media networks with their micro-walled garden realities? This workshop will explore how to frame identity evaluation not as a vendor checklist, but as a dynamic balancing act between accuracy, confidence and accountability. Expect a candid look at how to separate identity marketing from measurable identity performance.

Strap in for a reality check on which ad tech companies and platforms will survive the many challenges ahead. Margins are slimming, AI is disrupting open web traffic, Google is facing an antitrust shakeup – and that’s just the shortlist of industry-shaking changes happening right now. Join Arete Research’s Richard Kramer and Rocco Strauss for the investor’s perspective on what these transformations mean for you and your business. As usual, they’ll talk fast and take no prisoners.