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In OhHello.io's second livestreamed session of #everyonecannes, Jeremy Bloom of OhHello sits down with AdTechGod of AdTechGod.com for the deity of digital's first ever LIVE Q+A

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Transcript

Introduction and Special Guest

00:00:32
Speaker
Oh, hello and welcome to day two
00:00:37
Speaker
of hashtag, everyone can. With us today, well, first and foremost, my name is Jeremy Blim. I am the founder and chief mentor of ohhello.io. I have a special guest with me right now. Very, very special guest. He, she, they are the Lord of our TB. The programmatic prophecy, advertising's Aristotle.
00:01:03
Speaker
Marketing's Mystic Maven with us today. Ladies and gentlemen, AdTech God. ATG, thanks so much. Thanks for coming on. Oh, bonjour, Jamie. How are you doing? Can you join us from France?

Networking and Event Goals

00:01:19
Speaker
I am. I'm hidden in my Airbnb trying not to, you know, let people know who I am. So, so far it's been, it's been amazing and an amazing experience.
00:01:34
Speaker
What has the best session been thus far while at camp? The bar session. Honestly, I would say all of them are really good. I think the greatest part about Con overall is just the networking and the experience you have just talking to people.
00:01:58
Speaker
I'm obviously a big supporter of the industry overall. So I love hearing and seeing tweets and those about the industry, whether it's creative winners or whether it's new partnerships or potential partnerships down the line. So I absolutely love it. That's great. That's great that you're such a big fan.
00:02:23
Speaker
Part of the reason that we decided that when we say when I say we I'm referring I guess to me when I decided to set this up for everyone can it is basically to make
00:02:37
Speaker
all of the goodness of advertising, marketing, SaaS, tech media, inclusive. So whether you're joining us from France, from the Croissette, I don't know French, I'm sorry, guys. If you're joining us from your, thank you, your home office, if you're joining us from an actual office, or if you're looking for work right now, which a lot of people in our industry are, what I thought would be so helpful is just making this stupid easy, seamless, and having some
00:03:06
Speaker
really good guests like you. Come on, ATG. So why don't we just take a step back. Thank you so much for joining us. I have the pleasure of knowing and understanding your mission, but why don't we take a step back and tell us like how you got started.

Building a Positive Platform

00:03:24
Speaker
This seems to be a fun meme account that has just cascaded in and ascended into a wonderfully positive
00:03:37
Speaker
personality that everyone in this industry is embracing. So tell us a little bit more about just how you got the idea and we'll go from there.
00:03:45
Speaker
Well, let me I think first and foremost say that I am not deserving of being here. I think there are so many people in this industry that do so much on the ground, whether they're, you know, I say this all the time, whether they're in sales, business development, operations, whether they're engineers, whether they're accounts payable and receivable, I think
00:04:07
Speaker
there's so many people that make this industry tick. And I think the select few that are lucky enough to attend this type of event really gets so much experience and interaction with people that are just part of the overall wheel that just keeps rolling. We're all a spout in this giant wheel of attack. And I think all of our contributions matter so much
00:04:31
Speaker
And it's hard to see people who are upset that this event is happening. And at the same time, seeing so much bid coming out of it by creating new opportunities and roles and jobs and future careers. So it's a little bit tough to be on both sides of that spectrum to support it. And at the same time, say, well, maybe they should take that budget to keeping someone employed. So during a very odd time in our industry, I think there's so much good that this type of event could bring.
00:05:03
Speaker
Love that positivity, but help those that are watching this live stream or that are going to be watching the recording understand just how you developed this amazing account and this personality. Give us a little bit of a lens into the mind of ATG.
00:05:24
Speaker
So I've always been a Twitter user. And when I say that, I mean, for years and years, I just wasn't active. I was one of those guys that just kind of ran to what was going on, followed hashtags, followed the more popular people on Twitter, but never really gave any feedback. And in October of 2020, if you remember, we had something called a pandemic,
00:05:52
Speaker
And everybody was locked up at home. And I felt that I needed to just have a voice and give my opinion of things. So layer of sarcasm or just making fun of the industry overall. It was just fun. I just did it, you know, watching TV at night when the kids were sleeping and it was enough to just make me chuckle.
00:06:11
Speaker
And somehow it took off. You know, three years later, it's thousands of people. I feel like a lot of people know the name. But really, it's just a hobby. There was really no intention of this ever reaching this point. It's amazing. So a hobby to be able to just exert your opinion to
00:06:31
Speaker
let loose to engage with some great people in our industry.

Success and Impact of the Account

00:06:34
Speaker
What a couple things that I picked up on there is that you're, you're a father, you mentioned, which is from one father to another. I appreciate that. It's nice to have some extracurricular hobbies outside of parenthood, where you can at the end of the day, just engage with other adults. And yeah, did you ever think that you would
00:06:58
Speaker
that this account would ascend to having roughly 13,000 followers on Twitter, thousands on Instagram, building your new LinkedIn presence. Help us understand what the steps were to build this brand and the fact that it started as a meme account but took such a positive spin
00:07:22
Speaker
where people want to engage with you. People enjoy the personality. You are the farthest thing from an online troll and we've all seen a lot of online trolls. No, farthest thing from it.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely not trying to be a troll. I know I make fun of things at times, but it's all poking fun things that we all think anyway, but maybe I'll say it because nobody knows who I am anyway. So it can come back to nobody.
00:07:56
Speaker
But the positivity really comes from just, it's been a rough ride over the last three years. So when we talk about the stress of the pandemic, the stress of what would happen to our careers, this sudden boom of connected TV in the industry seeing a flood of jobs into the market, and then the reversal of a lot of those jobs being eliminated later on. There's a lot of emotions, a lot of stress and pressure people are feeling over time.
00:08:25
Speaker
And then you talked about the competitive landscape changing so much, right? We have the connected TV industries changing so much across the consolidation. You're seeing competition becoming quite fierce in the ad serving SSP world. We're seeing DSPs and SSPs really kind of merging into a singular ad network platform model. And so I felt that it was important to just kind of poke fun and it turned into
00:08:52
Speaker
Hey, Bob, does it have a job? But can somebody just help Bob? Jenny is not working. Can you reach out to her? She does ad ops, or he does sales, or business development. And surprisingly, it worked. And until this day, I still do. And I think I posted one the other day. I posted one three or four days ago. On occasion, I reach out to people randomly and say, hey, I saw that you're looking for work. Are you unemployed?
00:09:18
Speaker
And if they say yes, I say great. Do you mind if I just tweet something about you? And if you get something, great. And if you don't, you know, I tried. I feel like I did something. So it's really just a minimal effort to help people. Yeah, you're a munch. It's a really wonderful thing. What, what is your mission? What is your mission becoming at this point? Because going from an outlet, a hobby,
00:09:43
Speaker
a mix of dashing in some sarcasm to seeing that you're helping, that you're connecting people, that you're engaging with folks, that you are helping to educate others on what the space is within marketing, within marketing technology, with advertising, with an advertising technology within SAS. I guess the mission to me seems like it's just constantly been evolving. Can you kind of just
00:10:13
Speaker
dive into where you're going because I know that you're building a platform, but I think it'd be helpful and I want to be able to use this opportunity to
00:10:26
Speaker
to mutually do good, to be able to do good for you because you do good for so many people, to be able to explain what the new adtechgod.com platform is and what you're trying to build. Please go ahead. Sure. It's still really early on. I mean, I think as I kind of flush out the details, I want to say that it wants, I say it wants because I feel like it's going to be constantly evolving over time, but I want it to be
00:10:55
Speaker
Just a central hub. I think we get lost in the clutter of LinkedIn and I think we get lost in the clutter of job posting sites because there's just so much variance and roles. When we talk about ad tech in particular, I think people are looking to level up their knowledge. I think training and certification is really key for people to grow.
00:11:18
Speaker
If you don't stay up to the latest and greatest tech we're offering in marketing, you can really get lost and that can happen within a month of you just not staying up to date because things move so fast. So be able to keep people up to date on technology changes, keep people up to date on new trends, provide obviously a job post, which is probably the easiest and most helpful piece
00:11:45
Speaker
Um, and then I'm all diversified over time with the podcast and just getting to know people. So with that, what are some, what are some trends that you're seeing?

Trends in Ad Tech

00:11:57
Speaker
What are, I'm going to, I'm going to ask three different questions and I'll come back to them. And as you and I talked earlier, ATG, we're going to keep this super, super loose, super informal. Um, what are some, first and foremost, what are some trends that you're seeing? Second,
00:12:12
Speaker
We'd love to get a better idea of just some of the great people. Feel free to call out great people that you've met from having this account or just interacted with, whether it's Linda Jacarino, or if it's Elon Musk, or if it's C-suite or founders of other amazing martech or ad tech companies, and then also just
00:12:36
Speaker
Let's start with those two. I don't want to throw too much at you. Start with those two. Some trends that you're seeing in this space. So trends, obviously, we're seeing SSPs diversify, DSPs diversify how they work with publishers, SSPs how they diversify with supply path optimization overall. I think we're seeing
00:12:58
Speaker
an overall entrance into the market from companies like Whirl, from mobile-focused companies across the border, trying to utilize that data that's very enriched and unique. I think we're also seeing AI really scaling. I saw something earlier today that had said, if you think investment in AI has started, it hasn't even started yet, and wait to see where that money flows.
00:13:24
Speaker
So as the investments diversify, I don't think we're seeing any type of contraction in the space. I actually think we're just seeing a diversification in the space. And I think that's why it's so important to stay up to date because you can get very, very lost and outdated very, very quickly in this industry. And I think if I can help provide that knowledge base to people, then it just makes them better to go get a better job and to provide for their families.
00:13:54
Speaker
That's very altruistic. That's wonderful to hear. Where do you stay up to date and how do you stay up to date? Twitter. A lot of stuff is Twitter. I think certification to sites are good. Obviously, educational programs like you have digital grade at Magnite has a great like basics training. We talked to the trade test. Certification is important to understand that perspective coming directly from Jeff Green. I think that's
00:14:23
Speaker
It's super important to hear ML. But you have a lot of experts on Twitter that really are open discussion, rather than more uniform press release on LinkedIn. And I've said this before, it's not every day you get to interact with Zini from Hershey, right? It's not every day that Barry Paparro can say something to you and give you advice. It's not every day that Eric Frenchie only follows that tech guide. And I'm the only guy who follows which I got was cool.
00:14:52
Speaker
So I think the open, yeah, if you check, that's what I mean as I was a couple weeks ago. But if you really want to learn, I think it's okay to ask questions. And I am not right all the time. I am wrong most of the time. But I think what's important is reading the feedback and asking why. And I think that's why a lot of my posts are done the way they're done.
00:15:18
Speaker
So what you just said about you're not right all the time, do you think that it also comes with a level of maturity and a level of experience, self-awareness?
00:15:29
Speaker
Yeah, nobody's perfect. Maybe it is a maturity. I think it's also just you can't possibly be an expert on everything, but you should be a generalist if you can. So you don't need to understand the details of how an SSP works or a DSP works or a DMP works or whatever, but you should understand the basic functionality of that technology or else you can't speak
00:15:59
Speaker
the same language as the other people in the room. So I think it's really important to just have a good overview of the industry overall. That's fair, that's fair. Going back to one of my earlier questions, which I was snowballing into a few.

Networking and Learning via Twitter

00:16:19
Speaker
Some of the personalities that you've met, that you've engaged with through Twitter, through LinkedIn, through other social platforms,
00:16:27
Speaker
What are some memorable experiences that you've had thus far? Or just a wow factor that has come in? I think the first one was Elon Musk collecting a tweet. I thought that was pretty cool. I think it was
00:16:48
Speaker
so much of Linda, you know, obviously wondering who I was and then commenting, but in terms of real interaction with people, I think it's all of them. I think it's you, I think it's Vinny, I think it's Eri Popario, I think it's Eric Frenchie, I think it's Anthony Consure, I think it's
00:17:04
Speaker
Paul Gubbins, I think it's Wong, Jeremy Sony, Lou Pascalis, I mean, everybody, right? The interaction of that I've had across Twitter has been amazing. You know, Lindy Johnson, you're talking
00:17:20
Speaker
You know, big shout out to the Last Party Cookie. I don't know if you're there. People are going to laugh if they're not on Twitter. But human propensity is amazing. Totally beats his own podcast. But yeah, I think I've just interacted with so many great people. It's hard to list them all.
00:17:41
Speaker
I'd love to be able to turn this over to our audience to see if those watching have some, have some questions. Uh, if you go ahead and put in the comments for anyone watching live, it would be wonderful to have you ask ATG some real time questions. Uh, if you see my eyes moving over, I'm just going over to my monitor. I'm refreshing LinkedIn to see any comments that have come in since we started. Um, a lot of people,
00:18:11
Speaker
said that they're listening. How many people are listening? I'm curious. I can see Twitter. I know there's, there's a few on Twitter. There's going to be at least 4,000 on LinkedIn. Just kidding. I'll take it though. Quite possibly. I'll tell you this after, well, I just put up a tab and I can see, I can see at one point there are nine or 10 people. Perfect. Up here. Oh,
00:18:41
Speaker
from a LinkedIn user. Well, thank you, LinkedIn. I appreciate that. First time caller. But I can tell you just from from creating a lot of content from Oh, hello. And
00:18:55
Speaker
I have recorded 55 pods or so, and I've released approximately 30, 31. And amongst those pods, I mean, I can confidently tell you that 10,000 plus views and thousands of minutes watched at each one.
00:19:15
Speaker
creating content for anyone that's curious, it is entirely worth it, especially if you have experience, if you are accountable, if you are not a bullshitter, if you're real, if you're authentic, if you, so like what ATG is doing, what I've been doing with Oh Hello, it's absolutely worth it. Ah, it looks like Mark Donatelli has posted something. What prompted the recent turn towards altruism or has it always been the goal?
00:19:47
Speaker
It was not the goal. I could tell you that, if I'm being totally honest, I think the goal is just sarcasm and commenting. I think it was when I started to see the layouts happening. I think it's where it flipped the switch for me. Oh, I've been laid off before, I've been out of work before, and it's not fun. It's super stressful, I think it creates a bunch of anxiety and stress, both financially and emotionally.
00:20:12
Speaker
And I honestly just felt that if I had the type of network that I have today, would I have been that stressed? And the answer is probably no. But the reality is that many of the people that are out of the work now may not have such a strong network. So I might as well use mine. I love that. That is one of the reasons I decided to start. Oh, hello.
00:20:40
Speaker
I saw that Grant LaRice, who's a former colleague and a friend of mine who started Tube Mobile Canada. He was the one that said, oh, hello. So hello to my friend in Toronto. ATG, I agree. That's one of the reasons why I'm creating a marketplace for mentorship. It is to be able to bridge connections. We all have a little bit of extra time that we can use to give back to corral, to meet up, to
00:21:09
Speaker
essentially pay it forward and help the next generation or our equals. And so that was part of the catalyst for me to start, oh, hello, seeing so many people out of work and figuring out what my next move is going to be. Having gone from being a really early builder and a wonderful fast-paced GSD, MSH, FSO kind of company, which was to mogul and then
00:21:39
Speaker
helping to IPO, helping with the acquisition, them being part of Adobe. What I really wanted to do was just pay it forward and make a difference because there's so many great people within our industry. It's people-based. A lot of us like advertising and find it interesting because it's innovative and it changes, but there's some wonderfully amazing people.
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's a big part of it, too. I think I'm not getting into the mentorship business. I'm not getting into the training and education business. That's not something I'm interested in doing, but it's important. I think a lot of people's mentors might be their current managers. They might be a coworker. It might be management within their company.
00:22:30
Speaker
You need someone that's a little bit removed from your day-to-day to give you true, unbiased opinions and guidance. If I didn't have you, Jeremy, to balance this idea of the podcast with, then it would be hard for me to have done this, right? If you didn't say, go out and do it, do the podcast.
00:23:00
Speaker
Someone's going to wind up doing this, ATG. You might as well go and do it yourself.
00:23:05
Speaker
Right, and I think that's where I was going to, because when I was talking to Sean, who you don't know, but while I was talking to Sean, he basically said, you've got to do this, do it now, write it out.

Audience Engagement and Content Creation

00:23:21
Speaker
And then Eric Crenshaw said, do it, ride the wave. And I realized, yeah, maybe I'm onto something. If this can become bigger and I can help more people, then that's great. Amazing, amazing.
00:23:34
Speaker
Looks like we have a new comment from Michael. I really enjoy ATG looking back into ad tech for a new job. I was running a performance network for the last few years. Thank you, Michael. Thank you for mentioning that to ATG.
00:23:48
Speaker
It's always nice to receive a compliment. DM me, I'll put it out there. I mean, I'll take a look at your experience, I'll put it out there. I mean, I think the other day somebody was looking for a fractional, what do you call it, fractional CLL. And I think three or four people came in.
00:24:06
Speaker
We had a whole bunch of them on Twitter. I'm happy, happy, happy to help. I'm not a recruiter. I want to get paid for it. I'm just happy to do an interaction. And we'll see if anybody comes in and says they're interested, then it's easy for me.
00:24:21
Speaker
We actually have, so for everyone can hashtag everyone can on LinkedIn and Twitter, uh, on Friday, which is going to be day four, because we decided to start on June 20th. We decided to push what was originally scheduled for Juneteenth on Monday. We postponed that. So today is day two, uh, Thursday is going to be day three, Friday is day four and on day four.
00:24:44
Speaker
at 11 a.m. Central, nine o'clock Pacific noon Eastern, we have a fractional leadership panel with two fractional CMOs or two fractional CXOs and a VP of marketing at a brand. And so we're gonna be talking just about that. David Berkowitz, who is a friend and he's also, he was one of our first guests. Hello.
00:25:13
Speaker
I'm the Oh Hello pod. We haven't released his pod yet, but we will shortly. He has created a company called FOTH, F-O-A-F, Fraction of a Fraction. And we're going to be discussing just that. Another Hello, Camille Federer, who runs Talentfoot, which is a wonderful executive search and talent company
00:25:39
Speaker
Camille and I have had in-depth discussions on that exact topic, and her team has spent a lot of time basically helping to place C-suite in fractional-based roles. So Michael, since you're listening, it is absolutely an area that is heating up with
00:25:58
Speaker
with all of the changes taking place in our ecosystem. Some businesses are realizing that fractional is the way to go and having several fractional jobs, it could be quite fulfilling. So great question.
00:26:12
Speaker
ATG, looking at the time, we've got about three minutes left. For those watching, we would love some more engagement. The whole purpose of this was to be able to have all of ATG and Oh Hello's fans simply just ask us questions, ask ATG questions about what he is building.
00:26:35
Speaker
why he does what he does. And just to get in the mind of what started as a meme account, which is turning into a brand, simply put.
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that wasn't my intention, but it did. And I think it's great. And I really just think that if it can help people out, I think that's wonderful. I can sleep better at night knowing I'm not a troll. I'm just trying to help people. I do. You know me. You know me personally. And so you know how I run. And the way I run is very cautious, which is why I created this account in the beginning. So I think
00:27:17
Speaker
Um, being able to just kind of do help and sleep better at night is really the best way for me personally, um, and being a troll and, you know, causing problems. Yeah. Well, this has been a great session. Um, I'm not a fan of dead air. I'd rather leave on a high note. So thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for being on the Oh, hello pod for those that missed the Oh, hello pod with ATG.
00:27:47
Speaker
that we released on 4-20 on April 20th as our special guest. You can find it on YouTube. It was on 4-20. It was a special event. Oh, that's amazing. Yep. Yep. It just worked out serendipitously. So Serenity Now, with that said,
00:28:05
Speaker
You can find that on our YouTube page and feel free to tweet either of us and we appreciate everyone. Thank you so much for engaging with us during our day two of Everyone Can.

Preview of Upcoming Sessions

00:28:18
Speaker
Tomorrow, day three, we have an awesome lineup. We have marketers from, formerly from Constellation, from McDonald's, from Humana, from
00:28:31
Speaker
Nordstrom's Trunk Club, now the Vice President of PopLE, an executive recruiter, all discussing basically marketers rebranding themselves and how to pivot in this just weird ecosystem that we're in. Marketers being marketing themselves and also just the loyalty. What does it mean? Brand loyalty, customer acquisition, and then the third component is employee-employer loyalty.
00:28:59
Speaker
We've seen tremendous changes over the past couple of years, and I think it's going to be really relevant to talk about employee-employee relations and what we advice that we can give to employers to just be better, to do better, especially for those that were once held in the highest regard.
00:29:22
Speaker
With that said, thank you, ATG. Oh, we got a comment from dear friend, Joe Madison. Joe. Thank you, Joe. Love you, buddy. Thanks, Joe. And thanks, thanks again for having me. I really appreciate it. And always thankful for your friendship and your guidance and having me on here. You too, ATG. Adtech on, everybody. Thanks for being part of Everyone Can. Catch you tomorrow, everyone, as we're going to be doing day three.
00:29:49
Speaker
Friday, day four, Monday, day five. And then we already have several sessions booked for later next week that weren't even part of everyone cam that have organically taken place. But let's take it one day at a time for now. All right. Thanks, ATG. Bye, everyone. Have a great night. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the cam. Thank you.