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The adtech rebellion may not be televised, but it’ll be measured—with incrementality.
Return of the Math: Infillion’s Strange Gamble on Adtech’s Fallen Star
Once upon a time in adtech (read: eight quarters ago), MediaMath was a warship—one of the last independent DSPs sailing proudly before it ran smack into a reef made of debt, silence, and "sorry, we can’t make payroll."
July 4th weekend, 2023, two years ago… MediaMath went down faster than your patience during a CTV ad load loop. The timing? Chef’s kiss. Nothing says “respect for buyers” like shuttering your platform on a Friday and leaving advertisers to scramble while someone was probably halfway through a BBQ brisket.
But now, MediaMath is back.
Sort of.
Infillion—the company that’s been quietly hoarding once-great adtech brands like a collector of vintage guitars—has brought it back from the dead, bolted it onto TrueX, Gimbal, and a few other brands you forgot you still had logins for.
And here’s the plot twist: it might actually work.
“We’re not doing MediaMath 1.0 again.”
Let’s start here. Jeremy Woodlee, who’s now running point as General Manager at Infillion, knows exactly what you’re thinking: Why in the name of cookie deprecation would anyone relaunch a legacy DSP in 2025?
Because this time, they’re doing it differently. “We’re not doing MediaMath 1.0 again,” Woodlee wrote on Linkedin. “We’re not trying to be the chosen DSP. We want to work with people who want someone to return their calls.”
Let that sink in. The bar is now: returning calls.
And in this industry, that’s revolutionary.
🛠️ Forget “Self-Service.” Retailers Want Someone to Do the Thing.
The first wave of retail media was cute. Put a banner on your website, sell it to a CPG, call it programmatic. But that party’s over. Today’s retailers want the whole funnel, from awareness to conversion—and they want it offsite, programmatic, and done for them.
“Retailers want control,” Woodlee said, “but they don’t always know how to have that control.” Translation: they want the outcomes of running a media business without having to learn how to spell DSP. And that’s where Infillion thinks it has the edge—by stitching together services and software in a way that doesn’t require a 20-person ad ops team.
In other words: they’re finally admitting “self-service everything” was a myth built to win Gartner awards.
📡 Walmart Mexico: Not a Case Study—an Adtech Flex
Here’s the part you’re not supposed to ignore. Infillion didn’t just put out a blog post; they built a full-on white-labeled platform for Walmart Connect in Mexico. Not some out-of-the-box hackjob either. A bespoke interface built on MediaMath bones, but stripped down for agency clients to actually use.
“We power all their inbound campaigns, even ones we don’t serve directly,” Woodlee explained. “We’ll take onsite campaigns and route them through Google Ad Manager. Out-of-home stuff goes to the right vendor. It’s all coordinated.”
In other words: they’re acting like an actual media partner, not just another SaaS subscription with onboarding fees and disappearing account reps.
🤖 AI Isn’t Magic. It’s a Janitor.
Everyone and their uncle is talking about AI in advertising like it’s going to summon audiences from thin air. Woodlee, refreshingly, isn’t selling fantasy.
“There’s a lot of opportunity right now to use agents to make things more efficient and connect the dots,” he said. “But we still need oversight. These tools aren’t perfect.”
Translation: AI isn’t replacing jobs—it’s cleaning up after them. For now.
So while the rest of the industry is pitching “AI-driven brand alchemy,” Infillion’s just trying to not let your campaigns collapse under the weight of your Frankenstack.
🧠 Real Tech, Real People, Real... Layoffs?
Let’s not gloss over the fact that over 300 people lost their jobs when MediaMath vanished. Infillion didn’t pretend it never happened.
They’ve already rehired over 60 former staffers, many of them engineers. And those aren’t pity hires.
They’re rebuilding MediaMath with the same people who built it right the first time—before the finance bros lit it on fire and added vodka. Lots of it.
They’ve also reactivated old partner relationships and now claim to have 80 customers in the pipeline, with three-quarters already live.
Not bad for a DSP that was legally dead and buried two years ago.
“I don’t know what we expected,” said Infillion’s Laurel Rossi mentioned in a recent interview, “but we didn’t expect anything to some degree.”
(Which, in adtech, might be the most honest thing anyone’s said all year.)
📺 Next Up: CTV, Because Of Course It Is
Like every adtech company that’s made it past 2020, Infillion is going all in on CTV. But here’s where they might have an edge: TrueX. Remember that name? The interactive ad platform that used to actually make ads you didn’t want to skip?
Infillion’s bet is that creative plus data plus retail is where CTV finally breaks out of “look at our shiny QR code” purgatory.
Add in first-party location data (opted in at hotels, sports stadiums, etc.), and you’ve got something interesting: a feedback loop where people see an ad, show up in person, and get a personalized offer—all tracked back to the source.
🪦 But Should You Actually Care?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the DSP landscape is basically The Walking Dead.
The Trade Desk has eaten most of the oxygen.
Everyone else is either buying or being bought.
So why care about Infillion rebooting MediaMath?
Because this isn’t nostalgia. It’s a company betting that the next chapter of adtech belongs to those who show up with actual infrastructure, a customizable stack, and a willingness to do the damn work.
And, look—if they can turn MediaMath into a fully-operational, retailer-focused media engine in a year, then maybe the rest of this broken industry has a shot, too…
Retail Media Needs a Grown-Up. Is Infillion It?
Retailers are racing to become media companies faster than you can say “clean room,” but most can barely spell DSP—let alone build one. The gold rush is on, yet under the surface, Tier 2 and 3 retailers are underwater.
They’ve got the shopper data, but not the plumbing.
They want ad revenue, but not the operational complexity.
They crave control, but keep handing over the wheel to third-party vendors who vanish when something breaks.
Infillion sees the gap—and is stepping in as the AWS-for-retail-media. Not just a software vendor, but a builder, an orchestrator, and, yes, a grown-up in a room full of white-labeled widgets pretending to be media networks.
Their pitch is simple: Retailers don’t need more software. They need help.
📦 Walmart Connect Mexico: Less Slide Deck, More Real Deal
Forget proof of concept. Infillion already rebuilt Walmart Connect Mexico’s ad platform from scratch. Not some off-the-shelf DSP with a logo swap. A custom, white-labeled platform built on MediaMath’s bones, tailored for Walmart’s workflow, and optimized for the LATAM market’s chaos.
The result? A working platform that routes campaigns wherever they need to go: onsite ads through Google Ad Manager, out-of-home placements to external vendors, even manual trade budget buys through a unified flow.
They’re not just managing media—they’re conducting it.
Advertisers can tap into:
Custom segmentation and AI optimization, targeting high-intent buyers at different points in the funnel.
Proprietary identity tools, like Infillion’s XGraph, which maps over 2 billion digital signals to tie together offsite, onsite, and even physical traffic.
Full-funnel measurement, including incrementality—not just last-click gymnastics.
One five-brand dairy campaign (yes, dairy) brought in 13.2x ROAS, proving that when you pair the right data with the right execution, you don’t need a Madison Avenue zip code to print performance.
🚧 The Problem Isn’t the Stack—It’s the Org Chart
Let’s be honest: most retailers don’t have the internal DNA to run a media business. They were built for supply chains, not CPMs. Trade marketing is still stuck in 2006, and digital talent often gets buried in performance silos.
“Retailers want control—but they don’t always know how to have it.” That’s not just a soundbite—it’s a diagnosis. Infillion’s model says: skip the full rebuild, let us plug in what you’re missing. That might be a managed service team. It might be campaign orchestration. It might just be someone who understands how GAM actually works.
Either way, orchestration beats raw horsepower, every time.
🧠 First-Party Data That Actually Moves
Everyone’s sitting on a mountain of first-party data—loyalty cards, purchase history, app logins—but most retailers treat it like a display case, not a working asset.
Infillion helps turn that data into something brands can activate. Location-based targeting? Yes. Audience segmentation that works across CTV, mobile, and OOH? Also yes. Need to drive in-store traffic and prove it happened? They’ll do that, too.
Add in TrueX-style value exchange ads—opt-in, respectful, and measurable—and suddenly the “retail media network” isn’t just a line item in the earnings call. It’s an actual business unit.
🧩 Modular by Design. Flexible by Default.
Most legacy ad tech stacks are bloated, monolithic monsters. You buy one thing, and suddenly you’re locked into an entire ecosystem that requires three engineers, two SOWs, and a prayer to deploy.
Infillion doesn’t believe in that. Their platform is modular, API-first, and built to snap into what you already have. Need identity but not creative? Fine. Want just measurement? Done. Need a full-service deployment across mobile, site, app, and store? That’s Tuesday.
This is especially useful for retailers who don’t have a million-dollar ad ops budget but still want a media stack that can hold its own in the boardroom.
🔮 What’s Next? Less Hype, More Infrastructure
Retail media isn’t dying. It’s just growing up. And the winners won’t be the ones with the flashiest dashboards—they’ll be the ones who can offer brands actual results, with minimal chaos.
Infillion’s bet is that the next stage of this space will belong to operators, not just platforms. Those who can build, integrate, and manage—at scale. That means showing up with tech, people, and process. Not just press releases.
For Tier 2 and 3 retailers, and even for giants like Walmart Mexico, that’s not just helpful. That’s essential.
And in a market full of “mini walled gardens,” Infillion’s orchestration-first model might just be the bridge everyone’s been waiting for.
No spin. No fluff. No backroom deals with the usual suspects.
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