Making AI Pay Its Way, With Cloudflare

SPEAKER_1 (0:12)

Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.

Sarah Sluis (0:24)

Today's episode is sponsored by Basis, the leading intelligent operating system for autonomous advertising. Its enterprise AI solution transforms campaign briefs into strategies and media plans that integrate directly into omni-channel activation. You can learn more at basis.com.

Allison Schiff (0:51)

I'm Allison Schiff, Editor-in-Chief of AdExchanger, and I care a lot about the work that goes into good journalism and also what it takes to keep that work going. But it gets harder to do when AI tools use original reporting and publisher content to answer questions without sending readers to the original source. What choices do publishers have? Can they protect their work and get value when AI uses it?

My guest this week is Lara Cohen, the VP of Strategic Partnerships for Media, Creators, and AI at Cloudflare, and she has a lot to say about that. But first, I'd like to take a moment to tell you about our upcoming Top Women in Media and AdTech event. Join us on the evening of November 3rd in New York City as we celebrate the leaders, innovators, and builders moving advertising and media technology forward. The awards gala will take place at the lighthouse at Chelsea Piers, honoring an extraordinary group of women across AI, commerce media, privacy, programmatic, measurement, and CTV. Look forward to seeing you there.

Hey, Lara, welcome to the podcast. Hi.

Lara Cohen (1:53)

Good to see you, Allison.

Allison Schiff (1:55)

Good to see you as well.

What is one thing about you that not a lot of other people already know? Something that I could not find out just by Googling you, because there is one very fun fact about you that I'm going to bring up, but that is Googleable.

Lara Cohen (2:10)

Let's see.

I'm a deep thrift head. I'm like that big vintage Levi's connoisseur, and I've started a side hustle in the last couple of years of basically because I had bought too much vintage of doing some reselling of vintage, appearing at vintage pop-ups and stuff, which is a very fun creative outlet, actually.

Allison Schiff (2:37)

That's very cool. I was just at Housing Works yesterday over the weekend, and I bought an Armani blazer for $33.

Michael Olson (2:48)

Yeah. It's really cool.

Lara Cohen (2:50)

Once you get into it, you get addicted and you are less into buying things fast fashion because you realize everything was such better quality made.

Michael Olson (3:00)

Yeah.

Allison Schiff (3:00)

This one was, I think it was from the 80s. I don't know. It does make me feel like Don Johnson when I wear it. I want to roll up those sleeves, but I like that style.

Lara Cohen (3:12)

Listen, it's all back. Fashion is cyclical. So Don Johnson vibe will be, or maybe it's big this year. Who knows?

Allison Schiff (3:20)

Quality maintains itself. Yes. And that's going to be a fun segue that I'll put a pin into because we're going to be talking about what quality means on the internet and how we make sure that we have quality content going forward in the future, which I think is very important.

Lara Cohen (3:38)

But it's Armani's AEO reading.

Michael Olson (3:40)

Exactly.

Allison Schiff (3:43)

But before we get into that, I want to do a quick career rewind on you. You spent 11 years at Winter Media and you were eventually the editorial director of US Weekly, so traditional media.

Then you spent time at Twitter when it was still Twitter, and you orchestrated one of the most-

Lara Cohen (4:04)

I know.

Allison Schiff (4:05)

And when you were there, you were instrumental in getting that Ellen DeGeneres Oscar selfie happening, which is pretty cool. So social media tick.

And then you left, came back to Twitter for a second stint, left again after the whole Musk acquisition. There's probably a story there.

Lara Cohen (4:27)

That's a drink story, Allison. I don't know if that's podcast-friendly, but yeah.

Allison Schiff (4:31)

I will take you out.

Lara Cohen (4:32)

Yes.

Allison Schiff (4:33)

A couple of years as VP at Linktree, a VP at Linktree working with millions of creators. And then a couple of years ago, you come to Cloudflare as VP of strategic partnerships for media creators and AI at an Internet infrastructure company, which I think is really interesting.

Lara Cohen (4:52)

Not on my bingo card, for sure, to be at a deep security infrastructure tech team.

But I started my career in media as a journalist myself, and then made the switch to Twitter. And the through line of my career is that I've been really interested in helping creators of all size and scale, publishers, journalists, media, best use technology to connect with their audiences.