Right now.
A snapshot of what I'm actually doing — operating, advising, building, thinking, reading. Updated as the work ships. August 2026.
This is a /now page.
Live now — Friday Thought Experiment No. 13 · 17+ votes inSep 23 · Cologne Moderating “From Data to Impact: How Martech Drives Real Business Growth” at DMEXCO 2026 (Tech Stage).
Where advantage, money, and power move once agents can act.
Season 1 asked who answers when agents act. Season 2 asks where advantage, money, and power move once they can. Eight Fridays tracing what gets traded, which functions survive disintermediation, and where the surplus finally settles.
Which intermediary function remains most valuable when agents transact directly?
- Finding counterparties 23%
- Negotiating price 5%
- Verifying results 23%
- Assuming risk 47%
Standings shown are a point-in-time snapshot. Each poll earns a short essay, and a meta-analysis follows once the series has enough data to argue with.
Past seasons.
-
S1
From standards to the standard that matters. 8 Fridays · 512 ballots · Nos. 01–08The finale — The Answerer of Record → Discussion ↗- W1 Jun 5
If AI can understand “anything,” do we still need standards?
an 87% landslide — the market’s least ambiguous answer: AI raises the value of standards rather than replacing them.
- W2 Jun 12
What will be the first AI-native form of fraud?
68% picked authenticity frauds we already have — synthetic audiences + attribution. The one genuinely agentic failure mode, agency laundering, came last. The blind spot is accountability, not authenticity.
- W3 Jun 19
At what point does an AI recommendation become an AI decision?
A 65% majority put the line at the withdrawal of human review — not automation (4%) or money moving (24%); only 6% said it never crosses. The room read the recommendation-to-decision boundary as an accountability handoff, not a technical one.
- W4 Jun 26
In an agentic market, what becomes the most valuable asset?
Trust closed at a 52% majority — Data second at 33%, Compute and Distribution tied at 8% each, 52 votes. The reflex answer (Data, the asset that won the last cycle) lost decisively to the one this cycle actually makes scarce: whose agent is allowed to act.
- W5 Jul 3
Which metric breaks first when agents become the primary buyers?
Three fragile inference metrics clustered at 28–35% while ROAS sat alone at 5% — the room re-ranked the cluster all week and never moved ROAS.
- W6 Jul 10
Who should be accountable for an agent’s decision?
The Agent Owner closed at 50% of 91 ballots — the season’s biggest room — double Shared Responsibility’s 25%, with vendor and user barely claimed: accountability concentrates on whoever deploys and constrains the agent, and the room read “shared” as the absence of an assignment, not a model of one.
- W7 Jul 17
What will agents optimize for?
Business Outcomes closed at 54% of 51 ballots — beating Lowest Cost (23%) and Highest ROAS (11%) combined, with User Satisfaction last at 9%: asked what agents should actually optimize for, the room chose outcomes over cost or return — the same room six weeks of accountability questions had already been persuading.
- W8 Jul 24
In 5 years, what will be the most important standard?
Trust & Accountability closed at 40% of 81 ballots, ahead of Agent Protocols (29%), Measurement (17%), and Identity (12%): asked which standard will matter most in five years, the room chose accountability over communication, measurement, or identity — the same convergence seven weeks of standards-to-stakes questions had been pointing toward all along.
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Agentic Transformation
The most active work right now is helping companies move from AI pilots to governed agentic workflows: decision rights, tool access, evaluation, fallbacks, semantic infrastructure, and measurable business outcomes.
I'm also experimenting with a live AdCP Ecosystem prototype — a visual model for how agentic advertising workflows could coordinate signals, identity, governance, creative, buying, clean rooms, and measurement around a live brief.
Closed so far.
- W1 Jul 31
When every advertiser has a capable buying agent, what creates the edge?
Proprietary data closed at 78% of 42 ballots — Faster execution, Privileged access, and Clearer mandate split the rest at 9%, 7%, and 4%. Season 2 opened with a thesis that advantage moves to the quality of the mandate once intelligence commoditizes; the room didn’t buy it yet — they still named the asset that won the last cycle.
- W2 Aug 7
When agents decide what gets considered, what becomes the new shelf space?
Retrieval results and Paid recommendations tied at 31% each of 16 ballots — Training data and Default integrations trailed at 18% apiece: the room split evenly between the two levers that already exist to buy visibility, not the newer training-data or default-integration routes.
- W3 Aug 14
What will autonomous buying agents ultimately buy?
Outcomes closed at 57% of 73 ballots — the clearest majority of the season so far — with Impressions at 27%, Audiences 8%, Attention 6%. The room endorsed the week’s thesis: the unit of trade follows the result, not the delivery. A quarter still defend the impression, which is the constituency every outcome-priced model has to win over or route around.
- W4 Aug 21
What will buyer and seller agents negotiate hardest?
Success criteria edged Price 34% to 32% of 55 ballots — the tightest finish of the season — with Audience definitions and Liability at 16% each. Read as a block, two-thirds of the room said the hardest negotiation is no longer the price line but the things that were never really settled before agents had to write them down: what counts, whose audience, who owns the miss.
Three lanes,
in parallel.
- Day jobGlobal Head of Enterprise · Samba TVBuilding the enterprise commercial motion across global markets — product, partnerships, and the buyer-side conversation about agentic measurement.
- Founder / CEONo Fluff AdvisoryStrategic advisory for AdTech, MarTech, and data vendors. US market entry, GTM, monetization, org design. Thirteen specialized playbooks: six vertical (Audio, Gaming, Travel, Performance & Native, Attention, Mobile App Growth) + seven operating (Growth Operating System, Org Design for Scale-Ups, Enterprise Data Collaboration, Retention & Expansion, Agentic Transformation, Commercial Productization, Commercial Architecture). Three engagement shapes: Audit, Sprint, Retainer. Newest practice area: AI Visibility & GEO Advisory — making vendors the source AI engines cite, every technique run on this site first. Selective.
- StandardsAdCP Founding Member · Signals & Measurement WG Co-LeadCo-leading the Signals & Measurement working group of the Ad Context Protocol — the open standard for agentic advertising. Shipping the reference signals adaptor in the open.
In the open.
- AI Can Interpret Data. It Can't Vouch For It.AdExchanger Data-Driven Thinking. AI can interpret data and bridge systems, but it cannot establish trust — as agents move from assisting to deciding, standards must cover provenance, permission, delegation, and auditability, making trust a real-time execution layer rather than an after-the-fact audit.
- The Future of Marketing Measurement: From Reports to Real-Time FeedbackDMEXCO column. As agents make decisions in real time, measurement must shift from delayed reports to live, machine-readable feedback — a pricing signal, not a post-campaign scorecard.
- Vectors Won't Save You From GDPR. They Just Move The Problem.The often-overlooked intersection of AI, data governance, privacy, and regulations (GDPR · CCPA). Why vector databases don't fix the compliance problem — they just relocate it.
- Why Agentic Measurement Will Reprice The Ad MarketAdExchanger Data-Driven Thinking. How agent-mediated measurement collapses the gap between exposure and outcome.
- AdCP 3.0 Gave Linear TV Its Rails. Here’s the Other Half.What linear TV still needs from AdCP 3.0 — measurement standards, identity bridges, and a cross-screen ledger.
Open questions.
- Agent-mediated measurement — what attribution looks like when buyer agents and seller agents negotiate the impression in real time
- Vector-based audience matching — graded similarity scores replacing the audience yes/no binary
- Operator + advisor as a permanent posture, not a transition state
- How thoughtful organizations stay thoughtful at 1,000+ people
Selective
conversations.
- Board roles AdTech / MarTech / data — US, EMEA, APAC
- Advisory mandates Series B Scaleup (75–200 · $10–30M ARR) primary · Series A PMF selective
- Fractional GTM US market entry, BD partnerships
- Speaking DMEXCO, IAB events, podcasts, private salons
- Pro bono Skills-based consulting for mission-driven orgs (since 2015)
- Conversations About what AI is actually changing in advertising
On the shelf.
- Everything You Want Is on the Other Side of Hard
- Reshuffle: Who Wins When AI Restacks the Knowledge Economy
- We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine
Last updated August 2026 — stamped from the newest poll,
essay, or byline on this page, so it can't go stale by neglect.
Drift > 90 days means I owe the commentary an update — feel free to nudge me.
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