This one is with Jason Manningham, CEO of BlockGraph, and it is basically a guided tour of the part of TV advertising everyone ignores because it is not shiny enough for conference keynotes.

Local gets treated like “mom-and-pop and plumbers.” Jason’s point is the opposite: local is where the money is, where the data is, and where the targeting actually becomes real-world useful. He puts a number on it too: $170B local ad market, bigger than “TV” as most people talk about it. Not cute. Not small. Not optional.

A few moments you’ll want to steal for your group chat:

Zip codes are lazy. The performance indicator he keeps coming back to: households within ~3 miles of a store. Not “hyper audiences” held together with duct tape and vibes.

We talk about the industry’s obsession with “identity” like it’s a religion, and Jason calmly reminds everyone: TV is a household screen. Treating it like a 1:1 individual ID is how you end up targeting a grown man with tampon ads and calling it precision.

BlockGraph’s origin story is almost too perfect: the internal code name was basically “Data Drano.” Yes, really. The pipes were clogged. They built plumbing.

Measurement is still the Hunger Games, except instead of knives everyone brought spreadsheets and trauma. Jason’s take: you probably don’t need 400 currencies, you need one or two, and a bunch of outcomes layers that actually understand verticals.

If you’ve been watching “AI” get chanted like a wellness mantra in Sedona, this episode is the antidote. The sharpest line in spirit: AI is trained on the internet, and the internet is not the real world. Purchases happen in neighborhoods, communities, stores, and households. Reality still wins, even when the dashboard insists otherwise.

Listen here:

This clip’s throwaway provocation about resurrecting Anthony Bourdain with AI lands because it exposes the same tension Manningham is circling: leadership isn’t about volume, novelty, or chasing the loudest trend, it’s about cutting through illusion to create real value. Strategy beats spectacle, infrastructure beats slogans, and competition only matters if you’re actually measuring what works instead of admiring your own reflection in the hype machine.

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