Let's talk about atech's dirty little secret: we're all pretending reach and frequency are the Ten Commandments handed down from Mount Marketing, when really they're more like suggestions scribbled on a napkin at a 1995 media buying lunch.

Jason Manningham doesn't mince words about why the industry is stuck in this rut. When asked why AdTech clings so desperately to the past instead of building the future, his answer is refreshingly blunt: "People continue to focus on reach and frequency because that's what they know."

And there it is. The entire industry, summed up in eight words. We're not doing it because it's right.

We're doing it because it's comfortable.

Look, Manningham will be the first to tell you that reach and frequency actually matter. "The number of times you show a person an ad matters," he says. "It matters in not annoying them and in actually driving results."

Fair enough.

Nobody wants to be that brand that shows up in someone's feed seventeen times before breakfast like an overeager ex-boyfriend.

But here's where it gets spicy: "That's not ultimately the only signal that companies need to be thinking about."

Only. As in, there's a whole world of data out there that we're ignoring because we're too busy counting impressions like Scrooge McDuck counting gold coins.

Manningham rattles off the missing pieces with the exhaustion of someone who's explained this at approximately four thousand industry conferences: "They need to be thinking about geography. They need to be thinking about neighborhood context. They need to consider the person's context. And then also looking at what results we're actually generating."

Geography. Neighborhood. Person. Results. You know, the stuff that actually matters when someone decides to buy something.

Because here's the thing nobody wants to admit at those industry conferences: knowing you reached someone seven times doesn't tell you jack about whether they live in a neighborhood where your product makes sense, whether they're in a life stage where they'd actually buy it, or whether your ad showed up while they were doom-scrolling at 2 AM versus actively shopping for solutions.

"That creates a more rich picture of what influences the path to purchase," Manningham explains. "And ultimately, identity should be touching every single one of those parts, not just measuring reach and frequency."

Every. Single. One.

Not reach and frequency. Not impressions and clicks. Not whatever metric we've decided to optimize this quarter because it makes the dashboard look pretty.

His final assessment? "That's just such a small sliver of what it needs to do for an advertiser."

A small sliver. We've built an entire industry around a small sliver of what identity could actually unlock. It's like buying a smartphone and only using it to tell time. Sure, it does that, but you're missing the entire point of the device.

The real issue isn't that reach and frequency don't matter—it's that we've turned them into performance art. We measure them because we can, because the tools exist, because someone in 1987 decided these were important and we've been genuflecting at that altar ever since.

Meanwhile, actual context—the stuff that determines whether someone sees your ad for luxury watches while browsing Architectural Digest versus while playing Candy Crush at the DMV—gets treated like a nice-to-have feature instead of the entire ballgame.

We're so busy measuring our reach that we forgot to ask: are we reaching the right people, in the right context, with the right message, at the right time?

And before you say "but that's what targeting is for," remember that targeting based on a thin identity layer that only knows someone's age, gender, and the fact that they once clicked on a shoe ad three years ago is not the same as actually understanding context.

The tools to build a richer identity framework exist. The data exists. The technology exists. What doesn't exist is the collective willpower to stop doing things the way we've always done them and actually build something better.

Because building something better means admitting that what we've been doing might not be enough. It means learning new systems, adopting new metrics, explaining to clients why the old way of measuring success was incomplete.

It means doing the hard work of actually understanding the path to purchase instead of just counting how many times we interrupted it.

And that, friends, is why ad tech keeps clinging to reach and frequency like they're gospel: not because they're right, but because change is hard and admitting we've been optimizing for the wrong things is harder.

But as Manningham's patience clearly indicates, the time for that excuse has run out.

Here's what nobody tells you at those glossy industry panels where everyone pretends they had a master plan: every single person who built something in ad tech had absolutely no idea what they were doing when they started.

I asked Manningham what advice he'd give his 25-year-old self about breaking into ad tech, fully expecting some platitude about "following your passion" or "believing in yourself." Instead, he hit me with this: "Don't be afraid to start something. Everyone who jumps into building a business has no idea what they're doing."

Everyone. No idea.

Not some people. Not most people. Everyone. That VP at the holding company who acts like they emerged from the womb understanding programmatic? Faking it. The founder who sold their company for nine figures and now gives TED talks? Figured it out as they went.

"Don't wait too long. Just get started," Manningham says. "You'll figure it out along the way."

This is the advice that makes cautious people uncomfortable and action-takers rich. Because here's what happens when you wait: the market moves, the opportunity closes, and someone else who knows less than you but fears less than you builds the thing you were planning.

The ad tech graveyard isn't filled with people who tried and failed. It's filled with brilliant ideas that someone was going to execute "once they learned a little bit more" about attribution modeling, or identity resolution, or whatever the hot topic was that year.

Waiting for perfect knowledge is a trap disguised as prudence. It's a socially acceptable way to avoid the uncomfortable truth that building something means being wrong in public, repeatedly, until you're eventually right.

And yes, Manningham does add "Be disciplined" to his advice, because starting before you're ready doesn't mean starting stupid. But notice the order: start first, discipline yourself along the way. Not the other way around.

Here's where Manningham drops the real truth bomb, the one that should be printed on business cards and handed out at every industry conference: "You are just as smart as everyone else in the industry and don't mistake opinion for knowledge."

Read that again. Slower this time.

Don't. Mistake. Opinion. For. Knowledge.

This is the secret handshake of the ad tech world that nobody teaches you. Half the "insights" being shared at industry events aren't backed by data, peer review, or even basic logic—they're just confident people stating preferences loudly until everyone else assumes it must be true.

Someone says "contextual will never work as well as behavioral targeting" with enough authority, and suddenly it's canon. Never mind that they're basing this on one campaign they ran in 2019 and vibes. Opinion presented confidently becomes mistaken for expertise.

The corollary to this? All those people whose opinions you're treating as gospel probably don't know much more than you do. They just got started earlier, failed more publicly, and learned to speak with conviction.

Manningham mentions discipline specifically, and it's worth unpacking why. Because starting before you're ready is easy—it's just a decision. Continuing when you're six months in, burning cash, and not sure if anything's working? That's where discipline matters.

Ad tech isn't like SaaS where you build it, launch it, and watch the recurring revenue compound. It's messy. There are integration issues. There are partnerships that fall through. There are pivots that feel like starting over. The discipline is in staying focused when every instinct tells you to chase the shiny new opportunity that just popped up in your LinkedIn feed.

The discipline is also in ignoring the noise. Because for every actual insight in ad tech, there are seventeen people with podcasts explaining why your approach is doomed and their framework is the future. The discipline is in knowing when to listen and when to tune out the opinions masquerading as knowledge.

When Manningham says "don't be afraid to start something," he's not being dismissive of the fear. The fear is real and rational. You could waste years of your life. You could burn through savings. You could look stupid in front of people whose opinions you care about.

But here's what's also real: every successful ad tech company you admire started with someone who was afraid and did it anyway. They didn't have less fear. They just had more tolerance for uncertainty.

The courage isn't in being fearless. The courage is in recognizing that waiting until you're not afraid means waiting forever.

There's a beautiful moment in our conversation where Manningham talks about his son thinking he "makes the ads show up on the TV." And honestly? That's about as accurate as most people's understanding of what happens in ad tech.

His kid complains when he gets a bad ad—"It's dad, come on, man"—and that's the realest product feedback you can get. Not analytics dashboards. Not engagement metrics. A seven-year-old telling you the betting ads at 7 PM are annoying.

This matters because it's a reminder that all the complexity we build in ad tech ultimately comes down to one simple question: are we showing people stuff they actually want to see, or are we just annoying them in increasingly sophisticated ways?

If you're reading this and thinking "maybe I should start that identity resolution company I've been planning" or "maybe I should pitch that client on the approach everyone says won't work"—this is your sign.

You're not going to feel ready. You're not going to have all the answers. You're going to be surrounded by people who sound more confident than you feel, and you're going to wonder if you're missing something they all know.

You're not missing anything. They're just better at faking certainty while figuring it out.

Manningham's parting shot to his younger self applies to anyone still on the sidelines: "Don't wait too long."

Because the only difference between the people building the future of ad tech and the people still planning to build it?

The builders started.

The planners are still waiting for permission that's never coming, from experts who are just as confused as everyone else, to do something they already know needs to be done.

So here's your brutal truth: Start messy. Start incomplete. Start before the fear goes away. Because it won't. And everyone else who's already building? They're scared too.

You’ve seen the problem.
You haven’t seen who profits from it.

The missing incentives, the quiet failure points, the math nobody puts in the deck.
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