I Originally Posted a Version of This on LinkedIn. And What Happened Next Told Me Everything I Needed to Know.

I'm looking at the speaker lineup for a certain adtech event. No, I'm not naming it, because honestly, pick one. It's like someone ran a LinkedIn search for "white guy, mid-level, says 'AI' a lot" and just hit select all.

Bro after bro after bro. Half of them were junior account managers eighteen months ago. Now they're "AI visionaries." These folks read two blog posts about LLMs and suddenly they're keynoting between the open bar and the branded socks giveaway. Incredible. These guys talk loud, dress bad, and have never done anything remotely useful in this industry. But sure, give them the main stage.

Meanwhile, the women who've actually been in adtech for twenty years, the ones who built the programmatic stack these guys are now slapping "AI-powered" onto, are nowhere on the agenda. Not moderating. Not keynoting. Not even on the throwaway 4 PM panel everyone skips for happy hour.

Here's a fun thing about LinkedIn that people seem to forget: you can see who views your profile.

So when I posted about this, I watched the views roll in. Industry leaders. Conference organizers. Executives at companies that love to put "diversity" in their annual reports. The exact people who could actually do something about this. They looked. They read. And then they did absolutely nothing. No like. No comment. No repost. Just a quiet little digital peep through the curtain and then right back to business as usual.

That silence is the loudest thing I've ever heard in this industry.

And it tells you everything you need to know about how adtech actually works. It's the same energy as how they hire. They'll look at a resume from a brilliant woman who's been in programmatic since before header bidding existed, nod politely, and then give the job to some guy named Tyler who once attended a Google certification webinar and now describes himself as a "growth hacker." They see the talent. They know it's there. They acknowledge it privately. They just don't act on it, because acting on it would mean disrupting the comfortable little boys' club they've spent two decades building and maintaining.

The looking without acting? That's not neutrality. That's a choice.

And this brings me to something that's been gnawing at me for a long time. This industry has created a culture where your value is directly proportional to how loud you are.

How often you post on LinkedIn. How aggressively you self-promote. How willing you are to turn yourself into a walking content machine that vomits hot takes about CTV and "agentic AI" five times a day. That's not merit. That's performance. And it's a performance that overwhelmingly rewards a very specific type of person.

I get told by companies, regularly, that certain people in the industry aren't good hires because they're "too quiet." Let me translate that for you: they don't scream and yell. They don't post twelve times a week. They don't have a podcast where they say "AI" every six seconds while a logo spins behind them. They just, you know, do the actual work.

Here's what "quiet" looks like in practice: Look, here's Bob. Bob has a hoodie. Bob can say the word "AI" while scratching his balls on a conference stage. Bob gets the keynote. Bob gets the job. Bob gets the panel.

Mary? Mary doesn't have balls.

Mary has twenty years of experience. Mary built the tech stack Bob is now putting on a slide deck he didn't make. Mary has actual, demonstrable, measurable results. But Mary is "quiet." So Mary doesn't get the call.

WTF, dudes? Seriously. WTF?

You want to know how huge of an issue this is? Here's a homework assignment. Tomorrow, listen to every adtech podcast. Every single one. Go down the list. Pull them all up.

The LinkedIn post went viral. The whole industry is talking about it. People are sharing it. People are DMing me about it. It clearly struck a nerve because, shocker, everyone already knows this is true.

Now count how many of those podcasts actually mention it.

Count how many of those shows, run by the same guys who populate the same panels at the same conferences, actually address the fact that their industry has a massive, obvious, embarrassing gender problem that just went viral on the platform they all live on. I'll save you the suspense: the number will be close to zero.

Because Mr. Adtech isn't going to talk about this. Mr. Adtech is going to put on his hoodie, fire up the mic, talk about how "AI is changing everything," deliver the same reheated take he's been giving for eighteen months, and then go back to watching porn. Let's not lie here. Let's not pretend. We all know who's running the show. We all know what the priorities are. And we all know that "disrupting the industry" apparently means disrupting everything except the part where the same dudes keep getting all the opportunities while doing absolutely none of the work.

The silence from the podcast circuit will tell you everything the LinkedIn silence already did. They see it. They know it. They just don't care enough to say it out loud, because saying it out loud means admitting they're part of the problem.

And since we're here, let's sit with something for a second. Really sit with it.

There are hundreds of women in this industry with decades of experience, deep expertise, and sharp perspectives who have been systematically overlooked, passed over for panels, ignored for keynotes, and left off every lineup that matters. Women who have been begging for a platform. Women who built the infrastructure this entire industry runs on.

And when the industry decided it needed a bold new voice? A disruptive, truth-telling presence? It created an anonymous podcast fronted by a man.

Not a woman who'd been silenced. Not someone who'd never had a seat at the table. A man. A man who, by definition, already had a voice in this industry. A man who already had access, already had a network, already had every door open to him that this industry keeps locked for women. And now he has two voices. His real one, which was already being heard, and an anonymous one, which now gets even more attention.

I'm not knocking anyone personally. But I need you to think about what that says as a symbol. The industry had the opportunity to amplify someone who'd been shut out. Instead, it gave a second microphone to someone who was already holding one. Because apparently, only men can speak in adtech. Even the anonymous disruptors have to be dudes.

That's not disruption. That's the system reinforcing itself while wearing a mask.

That's the implication, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. When the revolutionary voice, the one that's supposed to shake things up, still has to be male? You've told on yourselves. You've shown exactly who you think deserves to be heard and who doesn't. You didn't break the mold. You just made a second copy of it.

I want to be clear about something: I'm a man. I know that. I'm aware that I shouldn't speak for women, and I'm also aware that I'm not doing that here. I'm not telling women's stories. I'm not claiming their struggle. I'm complaining because this bothers me. Because I have eyes. Because I look at conference lineups and hiring decisions and the way this industry allocates attention and opportunity, and it is visibly, measurably, embarrassingly broken.

I feel this one personally. I'm constantly pushing to get more women on my show. More people who represent actual maturity and experience. More voices from outside the bubble of a few loud, poorly dressed adtech bros who've coasted on confidence and connections while contributing exactly nothing of substance. And you know what? Finding them isn't hard. They're everywhere. They're running teams, building products, making the actual decisions. They just aren't getting the call.

And before someone fires up the "pipeline problem" excuse: Stop.

The pipeline is fine. The women are there. They've been there. They were there when you were still trying to explain what a DSP was to your parents.

The problem isn't the pipeline. It's the plumbing.

Conference lineups get built the same way deals get built in this industry: over drinks at 11 PM, on the back nine, and let's just say it, in venues where women aren't exactly the target clientele. The adtech social circuit still runs on rituals designed by and for a very specific demographic. If your networking strategy requires a two-drink minimum and a caddy, you're not building a meritocracy. You're building a fraternity with a media budget.

So the same guys recommend the same guys, who recommend the same guys, who all end up on the same stage saying the same things about "agentic AI" that they half-understood from a podcast last week. It's an ouroboros of mediocrity. A snake eating its own tail and then keynoting about it.

This industry loves to talk about data-driven decision making. About optimization. About finding signal in noise.

But when it comes to who gets on stage? Pure vibes. Pure network. Pure "oh yeah, I know that guy from Cannes." Pure "he's got a big LinkedIn following," which, by the way, is a metric that tells you absolutely nothing about whether someone has ever had an original thought or built anything that matters.

You want to fix this? It's not complicated.

Audit your lineup. If it looks like a golf foursome, start over. Ask the women who've been doing this work for two decades who they'd want to hear from. You'll get a better conference. You'll get better content. You'll get better ideas. And maybe, just maybe, the industry will stop looking like it's stuck in 2007.

Because right now? It's embarrassing.

And it's not accidental. It's purposeful. Every lineup that looks like this is a decision. Every woman who doesn't get the call is a choice someone made. Every leader who looked at that LinkedIn post and quietly scrolled past made a choice too.

The silence is the strategy.

And I'm done being quiet about it.