Episode 194: Hooray for Advertising Week. Ari and Eric Talk About Everything That Happened

Ari Paparo (0:30)

Marketecture Podcast, this is Ari Paparo. I'm here with Eric Franchi, and we are celebrating the annual tradition of Advertising Week, or more precisely, Advertising Week, being over. So, the end of Advertising Week. Yay.

How was your time in the mall, Eric?

Eric Franchi (0:46)

I spent no time in the mall, Ari.

Ari Paparo (0:49)

Oh, smart, smart.

Eric Franchi (0:50)

I was running around. There's a lot of things going on outside of the mall, but I successfully evaded the low ceilings and the leftover signage on where women's hosiery is. What about you?

Ari Paparo (1:03)

Women hosiery. Yeah, exactly. No, I spent some time in the mall. Not a lot, but I did spend a bit. Let's run through everything we did this week, like events and stuff like that.

So, yeah, so I started off the week with some conversations, meetings, et cetera, in the mall, which was pretty exciting. Went to Tom Triscari's AdTech Economic Forum, which down in the Varick Street offices of Horizon. That was kind of interesting. Were you there?

Eric Franchi (1:34)

That's where we ran, oh, man, what's going on?

Ari Paparo (1:36)

We ran into each other in the meeting, in the lobby, right?

Eric Franchi (1:39)

In the lobby, yeah, yeah. And I was on my way out. I had just spoken. We could talk about the AdTechEcon Forum.

And that's where I noticed that you were dressed very similar to me.

Ari Paparo (1:52)

Was I? What was I wearing? Is there a phrase for it? I said, I was like, I was like, my man, we're bringing back the AdTechSuxedo. The AdTechSuxedo. Yeah, I'm just teeing it up for you, man.

So that was a great event. And then I spoke at Rosenblatt. The Investment Bank had a little forum in the mall where everyone wants to know, you know, how soon will the Google money come to the other public companies in the space? That's the only thing that the finance bros want to know, you know. What else was in your agenda?

Eric Franchi (2:28)

What did I do? So we kicked off the week with an event. We co-hosted with MediaOcean. So a couple of weeks ago, they launched their AI fund. So we put together an event and co-hosted and invited specifically Agentic AI founders and some co-investors. It was great. It was a packed room, about 75 people. And it was such a good vibe in the air of all of these early stage founders, very much next gen. Many of them, this is their first ad tech startup. And then we had them intermingled with both investors and some OGs. So Bill Wise was there. Bach was there. Zawadzki was there. So it was pretty cool to see a little bit of generational intermingling.

From there, Mad Connect had their annual party, which I stopped by.

Did you go to that one?

Ari Paparo (3:26)

I couldn't. So I had, it was my wedding anniversary. So I skipped the first night of festivities. Yeah. I went out for some expensive sushi. It was, I'm very happy with my choice. But how was the Mad Connect event?

Eric Franchi (3:38)

It was great. It was great.

Extremely well-produced. Shout out to Sharona, who is the leading events person in the industry, helps us on the pod and everything like that. It was incredible. So great job there. Next day, he spoke at the AdTechEcon forum. I got to say, Tom does a really good job of creating what is like a one-of-one event, which is just about all things investing, exiting, IPO-ing around AdTech. So really, really well done. And then there was one thing that I went to that I thought was neat, was LiveRamp, did a demo day.

Ari Paparo (4:15)

Oh, yeah, I heard about it. I couldn't make it. I heard it was good.

Eric Franchi (4:18)

It was great. Standing room only. So, and a lot of brands and agencies in the room. And they had basically the idea was we're going to take you from campaign inception to campaign ending and reporting. And companies that are trying to transform every part of it agentically, like some really great companies.

Datalinks was there for Joe Lux, your old CRO, our portfolio company. Newton Research was there. It was really well done.

And then, and then Index had this fantastic happy hour at Boom at the Standard Hotel, like one of the, I think, like best spots in the city. So it was busy, man. It was busy. Shout out to everybody that invited us to places.

Ari Paparo (4:58)

I love the demo day idea. Like basically, people are starved for, you know, real life demos, startup demos. That's why it's the most popular session of Marketecture Live. Like so many people in our industry forget the tech part of AdTech. I know people want to see it. People are using the products. They want to see it. I also did a little guest moderation at the Criteo Client Advisory Board, which was great because, you know, different voices, retail voices, I don't always hear every day.