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🗞️ Welcome to the ADOTAT Sunday Edition
This Week: French Adtech, Real ROAS, and a Man Who Actually Knows What “CTV” Is
Bonjour, mes amis.
Yes, I’m still writing. And yes, you’re still here—which means either you’re genuinely curious, or you’re just waiting for me to finally snap and compare a supply path to a baguette.
Either way, merci.
Look, I’ve said it before: this newsletter isn’t polished, branded, or brought to you by a holding company’s “Insights Lab.”
It’s messy. It’s real.
And it’s written by someone who’s been in this industry long enough to recognize when someone is full of buzzwords... and when someone actually has a clue.
Which brings us to this week’s guest on The ADOTAT Show:
Jules Minvielle, CEO of Olyzon—a Paris-based adtech company that’s not selling snake oil or chasing the latest privacy patchwork trend like a dog after a drone.
Instead, Jules and his team are focused on the stuff that actually matters in Connected TV:
📈 Brand lift that isn’t imaginary.
🎯 User engagement that doesn’t involve tricking someone into watching an ad.
💰 ROAS you don’t need to explain away with four slides and a hope.
Olyzon isn’t playing the same tired game.
They’re building tools for advertisers, content owners, and distributors that actually work—frame by frame, campaign by campaign. While half the industry is still trying to count impressions on an app that autoplayed during someone’s bathroom break, Jules is over here rethinking what CTV performance should actually look like.
And yes, we talked about it all:
Why most CTV attribution models are stitched together with duct tape and delusion
How outdated taxonomies are still controlling your media dollars
And whether the U.S. adtech ecosystem is too bloated to keep up with what’s coming next
Jules was sharp, candid, and shockingly unpretentious for a French CEO in adtech.
Which, let’s be real, is rarer than a programmatic campaign with no makegoods.
So as we continue this season of The ADOTAT Show, we’re not slowing down—we’re cranking the dial on honesty, skepticism, and awkwardly direct questions you won’t hear on sponsored panels.
Thanks for sticking with me—for the replies, the DMs, the corrections, the “wtf was that analogy?” emails.
If I’ve ever written something that made you laugh, wince, mutter “he’s not wrong,” or throw your phone across the room:
That means I’m doing my job.
🎥 Watch the Jules Minvielle episode this week.
📬 Forward this to someone who still thinks CTV is just “TV, but internet.”
🥃 And yes, drinks on me if we ever meet IRL.
Stay bold. Stay curious. Know more than you did yesterday.
Even if it comes with a French accent.
Why Everyone in Adtech, Media & Advertising Thinks They’re the Smartest Person in the Room
Let me level with you.
I’ve been that guy. Walked into a pitch, a panel, a Slack thread, full of confidence, chest puffed up with coffee, statistics, and barely contained sarcasm. Thought I was the smartest person in the room.
Sometimes, I was.
Most of the time? I was just the most caffeinated, the most obsessed, the one who stayed up until 3AM reading every damn thing I could find on the topic.
But over the years, I’ve had to learn something humbling:
Being “smart” isn’t about knowing more than everyone else. It’s about knowing what you don’t know—and shutting up long enough to learn it.
So why does it feel like this industry is allergic to that idea?
💼 Welcome to Adland, Where Ego Is a Feature, Not a Bug
Adtech, media, and advertising are industries powered by insecurity wrapped in bravado.
You don’t sell $2 million in programmatic without acting like you’ve cracked the human psyche.
You don’t keynote at Cannes without pretending you invented attention metrics.
Confidence is currency. But unchecked ego? That’s counterfeit.
Here’s what ego inflation looks like when it’s running the show:
🏖️ The Cannes Syndrome
Half the industry parties in the south of France pretending they disrupted something. Meanwhile, their campaigns are running on third-tier supply with viewability that makes ghosts jealous.🎤 Panels of Self-Worship
You’ve heard them. Five people on stage, each trying to out-strategize the other using the same recycled jargon, like it’s a spoken-word competition at a VC co-working space.📊 Gut > Graph
For an industry supposedly obsessed with data, we sure have a lot of execs who treat metrics like bad horoscopes—only believing them when they confirm what they already wanted to do.🎭 Performative Intelligence
Everyone sounds smart. Thought leadership posts polished by interns, media kits with phrases like “brand-safe authenticity,” and decks full of “solutions” that are mostly just rebranded problems.
The Dunning-Kruger Drag Race
You know this one. It’s not new. But it’s having a golden era in our industry right now.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is what happens when the least competent people are the most confident in their brilliance—and the most allergic to self-awareness.
In adland, it sounds like this:
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years”
Cool. And radio’s been around for 100. Doesn’t mean it’s good at targeting Gen Z on Twitch.“I just feel this is the right move”
AKA: I haven’t looked at a single report, but my gut told me what my ego wanted to hear.“The data must be wrong”
No, your assumptions were. You just didn’t want to get dunked on by a Google Sheet.
The scariest part?
These people get promoted.
They speak at conferences. They write LinkedIn novellas. They dominate meetings with the confidence of a TED Talker and the insight of a Magic 8 Ball.
R.I.P. Intellectual Humility
Gone too soon, buried under buzzwords and bravado.
Let’s be clear: Confidence is fine. Essential, even. But when it’s divorced from humility, it becomes delusion.
And delusion doesn’t just cost you a client. It burns bridges, tanks quarters, and creates cultures of dysfunction.
What happens when no one admits they’re wrong?
🚪Closed Minds = Missed Signals
Market shifted? Oh, you didn’t notice because you were too busy being right. Or loud. Or both.🔥 Hype Over Heat
Brilliant ideas get buried because someone higher up needed to “own the room” more than they needed results.👂 Deaf to Data, Allergic to Feedback
The loudest person wins the meeting. The smartest person updates the brief in silence. Guess who gets promoted?
🎯 BONUS: Fake Quiz — Are YOU the Smartest Person in the Room?
Let’s find out. No prizes, just a little existential dread.
# | Question | A | B | C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Someone pushes back on your idea. You: | Argue until they give up | Actually listen | Wait, were they talking to me? |
2 | In meetings, you usually: | Talk first, last, and most | Wait, observe, then speak | Open Slack and pray for WiFi issues |
3 | When proven wrong by data: | Change the data | Change your mind | Change the subject |
4 | When reading industry analysis: | “I already knew this.” | “I could learn something here.” | “Didn’t read, just liked the post.” |
5 | Your reaction to this quiz: | “This is dumb, I could write better.” | “Yikes, I needed this.” | “Wait, am I in the wrong room?” |
Scoring:
Mostly A’s:
Congratulations, you think you’re the smartest in the room. Which probably means you’re not. But thanks for the TEDx Talk.Mostly B’s:
You might actually be the smartest—because you’re willing to learn, adapt, and collaborate. Nerd.Mostly C’s:
You’re on mute. Literally and intellectually. Wake up.
🧠 Final Thought: The Real Smartest Person in the Room
Isn’t the one flexing.
Isn’t the one with the “Chief Visionary Architect” title.
It’s the one asking, “What am I missing?”
If you never feel a little uncomfortable, a little out of your depth—you’re either a unicorn or a delusional loudmouth.
In adtech and media, ego is the water we swim in. But if you’re not careful, you’ll drown in your own reflection.
So next time you walk into a room thinking you’re the smartest one there—
Ask yourself: When’s the last time I learned something that made me uncomfortable?
If the answer is “never,”
you might be the reason this industry keeps launching solutions to problems it doesn’t understand.
Stay bold.
Stay curious.
Know more than you did yesterday.
Even if it hurts your ego a little.
