- ADOTAT Newsletter - Adtech, Marketing and Media
- Posts
- AI Snake Oil, Wall Street Tantrums, and the Never-Ending Ad Tech Dumpster Fire
AI Snake Oil, Wall Street Tantrums, and the Never-Ending Ad Tech Dumpster Fire
From AI Hype to Ad Fraud Fails—This Week in Marketing Madness
Pesach Lattin (ADOTAT)
February 21, 2025
Rembrand’s AI: Product Placement Without the Headache
Why reshoot when you can remaster? Rembrand’s AI Studio lets you drop products into your videos like they were always meant to be there—seamlessly, effortlessly, and without the post-production migraines.
🎬 Creators: Monetize on your terms—no awkward ad breaks, just seamless integrations.
📢 Advertisers: Be part of the story, not an annoying pop-up.
Try it now and you could snag $10,000 (because who doesn’t love free money?).
Adtech is a dysfunctional family drama, and Andy Dhanik has had a front-row seat to all the chaos. In this episode, he pulls back the curtain on the backstabbing, inflated bid prices, and mystery fees that keep the industry running (and ad buyers blissfully unaware).
Your daily AI dose
Mindstream is your one-stop shop for all things AI.
How good are we? Well, we become only the second ever newsletter (after the Hustle) to be acquired by HubSpot. Our small team of writers works hard to put out the most enjoyable and informative newsletter on AI around.
It’s completely free, and you’ll get a bunch of free AI resources when you subscribe.
The ad tech world never disappoints when it comes to delivering chaos, and this week was no exception. Hightouch grabbed an $80M bag to build an AI that promises marketers they’ll never have to make a creative decision again—because why trust instincts when you can let an algorithm hyper-target dog lovers with cat memes? Meanwhile, The Trade Desk fumbled its revenue forecast by a mere $15M, sending Wall Street into a toddler-esque meltdown, proving once again that investors don’t care about making money—they care about making exactly the amount they were promised. And Nike, in a desperate bid to reclaim its cool factor, turned to the one thing guaranteed to print money: a Kardashian collab. Get ready for NikeSkims, because nothing says “performance wear” like shapewear designed for Instagram thirst traps.
But wait, there’s more. Coca-Cola has decided it’s no longer the villain ruining your diet and is jumping on the prebiotic soda bandwagon. Because, sure, gut health is trending, and if slapping “wellness” on a can sells more sugar water, why not? And then, there’s the week’s biggest disaster—ad verification companies once again proving they have the efficacy of a screen door on a submarine. A new Adalytics report exposed how supposedly “brand-safe” ads ended up next to some of the worst content on the internet, making MRC and TAG’s certification processes look about as trustworthy as a used car salesman. Naturally, rather than fixing the problem, the industry’s finest are more focused on shooting the messenger.
And finally, let’s talk about the one thing ad execs fear more than a TikTok ban: accountability. With fraud siphoning off billions from digital ad budgets, and malvertising running rampant, the industry’s solution is—as always—to throw out some vague promises, form a committee, and hope the problem magically goes away. Spoiler: it won’t. But hey, why address systemic fraud when you can just blame “bad actors” and pretend it’s all under control? So, grab your overpriced coffee, fire up that ad blocker you totally don’t use, and let’s get into the mess.
🚨 Hightouch’s $80M AI Gamble—Personalized Marketing or Just Fancy Guesswork?
🔍 Why Should You Care?
Marketers are so scared of making creative decisions that Hightouch is stepping in with an AI agent to do the thinking for them. Because nothing says “cutting-edge” like outsourcing your job to a robot that might just send dog pictures to cat lovers.
📜 Show Me the Receipts
Hightouch’s AI Decisioning tool promises to learn consumer behavior and send ultra-personalized marketing messages—like if Netflix recommendations and retargeted ads had a weird, hyper-obsessed baby. PetSmart is already using it to determine which dog breeds get the most engagement, because apparently, Corgis and Golden Retrievers now run the economy.
⚠️ The Potential Disaster
AI-driven marketing sounds great until it inevitably goes rogue and starts offering cat food to dog owners. Plus, marketers still have to set the rules and watch over it like a toddler with finger paint. So, really, how “autonomous” is this thing?
🔥 Will It Take Over Marketing, or Are We Just Feeding the AI Hype Machine?
Investors threw in $80M in record time, but let’s check back in six months to see if marketers are singing praises or sending out emergency apologies for AI-generated disasters.