#74: AdTech Economic Forum | April 24 at The New York Times Center
AdTech Economic Forum: Agenda Flow Part 1/Morning Session
AdTech Economic Forum is 45 days away. We’ve designed a unique agenda flow across a full-day event split into three parts. This post covers the inspiration behind the event and describes the topics and speakers in Part 1 (Morning Session). We hope to see you at The New York Times Center on April 24 — it’s an event not to be missed!
Inspiration Behind The AdTech Economic Forum
Quo Vadis started as a curiosity that turned into a spreadsheet model which then turned into my first post in March 2021. The model is an evolving equal-dollar portfolio of public adtech companies used to track what’s going on and look for interesting aspects to write about.
At the time, there were just a handful of public adtech players with several more aiming to IPO during the pandemic digital high. I wrote the first few posts, gained early subscribers, and continued to track these players ever since overlaying economics with a bit of game theory, use cases, written interviews, and podcast interviews… and from time to time we delve into fundamental valuation.
The adtech space employs tens of thousands of people and billions of dollars of invested capital. It’s massive and growing with many challenges and opportunities ahead (e.g. identity, AI, flight to quality, revenue growth maturity, etc). Quo Vadis is on the beat reporting what we observe.
Thanks to our amazing subscribers, Quo Vadis has grown into a diverse audience ranging from marketers and agency folks to adtech practitioners from DSPs, SSPs, and data providers to equity analysts, venture capitalists, private equity, investment bankers, and corporate development types.
With all that in mind, we thought it fun and useful to bring everyone into a forum in New York. That’s the essence of The AdTech Economic Forum.
One curiosity usually leads to another
Everything is a series of steps. Step one started last November when Rob Beeler and I had a fireside chat during Beeler Tech’s NYC Navigator event hosted at DotDash Meredith. For the roughly two hundred attendees in the auditorium, we hoped our session on the economics that underpin the changing publisher world would resonate. Economics is not your typical subject matter at industry events, so we were happily surprised to see how much the audience enjoyed it.
That was the precise moment when I conceived an event that would bring adtech together with finance, economics, corporate development, investors, and equity analysts. But there was a roadblock. I didn’t have any experience putting together events. Event coordination is like solving a complex puzzle with a time limit. Where to begin?
So I shared my vision with Rob who has an amazing event team and the rest is history as they say. What we have on our hands now is an event that is shaping up to be the most important event in the AdTech space. This is the “Davos of AdTech” in a single-day event.
The inspiration behind AdTech Economic Forum comes from my admiration of Andrew Sorkin’s DealBook Summit, which also took place last November. Sorkin runs a first-class event with guests who have an important and sometimes unorthodox point of view. His guests have compelling theses and strong convictions.
Invite-only: DealBook Summit is invite-only or apply-to-attend, so we designed The AdTech Economic Forum the same way. Get on the invite list today.
What you get from attending
No one can predict the future. However, what we can do is create a forum filled with top minds and thought leaders who can help us reduce our prediction error rate by looking through their lens of what is possible, plausible, and probable. That’s why you should get on the invite list, get your ticket, and get better at making probability-based bets from what you hear, learn, and think about at The AdTech Economic Forum.
Agenda Framework and Flow
We’ve created a full-day event split into three parts. Let’s walk through how we envision the day starting with the Part 1/Morning Session. We’ll cover Parts 2 and 3 next week. During the day-long journey, our attendees will gain new ways to think through or re-examine what is possible, plausible, and, probable across the changing adtech scene.
Part 1: Macro vs. Micro and Public vs. Private
Session #1: Brian Wieser and yours truly will open the day with a fly-on-the-wall conversation.
Brian is one of the two very best thinkers and educators with impeccable coverage of the macroeconomic factors that affect (and effect) advertising in one way or the other. The other great macro-advertising thinker is Ian Whittaker, he’ll be on stage too later in the day.
Tip: You should subscribe to Brian’s newsletter
if you don’t already. The same goes for Ian’s newsletter The Bigger Picture.
Macro trends tend to trickle downward causing advertising to zig and zag. For instance, an inverted yield curve has always preceded a recession, but a recession has not shown up. Are you (advertiser, publisher, adtech, etc.) prepared either way?
On the other hand, people like Jamie Diamond (CEO of JP Morgan) increasingly believe a soft landing is in the cards (e.g. decent expected probability), but does it matter for advertising one way or the other? What about public and private adtech and the forces that decelerate or accelerate fundraising, M&A, and IPOs — which way should you bet?
Then there is one of Brian’s favorite frameworks — the cyclical churn of Creative Destruction. This concept was made famous by economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1940s. It describes the dismantling of established processes to make way for improved methods of production. For adtech today, creative destruction is like a live case study playing out before our eyes with cookie deprecation and AI. Everything is changing, but advertisers will still look for the best advertising and audience-targeting alternatives to sell more stuff. There will be winners and losers, but who are they, and where are they today? Quo vadis? (Latin for “where are we headed?”
Session #2: Fireside Chat About Public Adtech Players, Valuations, Good Bets, Bad Bets, Winning And Losing
In Session 2 we’ll switch gears and look at the microeconomics (e.g. the firm) of public tech companies. Before the pandemic, only a small handful of non-walled garden public adtech companies existed. Today, we have over twenty, but only a small handful are doing well.
Rule of 20: If you take YoY revenue growth and add it to EBIT margin, only a few players are achieving 20% or more. The others are low single digit players or negative. What does the future hold?
Revenue growth for the display ad sector is currently sub 10% YoY. Since many of the companies have ample cash on their balance sheet, one question for our esteemed equity analysts guests — Laura Martin from Needham & Co, Shweta Khajuria from Evercore, and Mark Zgutowitz from The Benchmark Company — is will these public players buy growth in 2024/2025? What are the chances? If not, from where will new growth come? Who is overvalued or undervalued and why?
What about the forces of change like cookie deprecation — a perfect example of creative destruction permeating all of adtech? What will the fallout be? Who takes advantage versus who can’t take advantage? This will be an amazing session for sure!
Session #3: Venture Capital Perspective
In Session 3, we’ll turn it over to our guest speakers from the venture capital world. This is a star-studded group with hundreds of portfolio investments. These astute investors see most, if not all, adtech pitches — Eric Franchi (Aperiam Ventures), Sanja Partalo (S4S Ventures), Joe Marchese (Human Ventures), Darcy Frisch (Hearst Ventures) moderated by the angel everyone seems to go to for seed funding — Brian O’Kelley, the “Godfather of AdTech.”
Forshadowing: Another angel investor everyone goes to is Ari Paparo. He’s hosting a panel on Retail Media later in the day with Todd Parsons (Chief Product Officer of Criteo) and Leora Kelman (Partner at Boston Consulting Group, Retail Media Practice).
What kinds of adtech pitches are they seeing? What do they like? What don’t they like? What’s fresh and surprising? What’s old and DOA? What do they like but they’re not quite sure about yet? What’s the next AdTech unicorn? Is there one?
Session #4 Private Equity and Investment Banker Perspective
In Session 4, we’ll move up the asset class continuum with a fascinating discussion from a private equity perspective mixed with an investment banker's point of view. Reed Rayman (Apollo), John Kunschner (Landmark Ventures) along with a TBD All-star from private equity (Goldman Sachs?) will walk us through how they view the adtech deal scene taking shape in 2024 and 2025.
Are roll-ups in the mix in 2024? What about bolt-ons? Will we see some public companies go private in 2024 or perhaps 2025 or maybe not at all? What’s the M&A temperature out there right now and what subsectors of adtech are getting the best multiples? Are multiples going or down or staying where they are? What adtech assets are investors seeking but can’t find?
Whether you are raising money or investing in the space, Part 1 of The AdTech Economic Forum is made for you!
Parts 2 and 3
We’ll tell you about session descriptions for Parts 2 and 3 soon. In the meantime, check out our top-notch confirmed speakers with a few surprises to come.
Get your ticket today. Find out what is possible, plausible, and probable on April 24 at The New York Times Center.
Confirmed Speakers
Sir Martin Sorrell, Chairman at S4 Capital
Sheila Spence, VP Corporate Development, Spotify
Rishad Tobaccowala, Sr. Advisor at Publicis and What Next Podcast Host
Brian Wieser from Madison & Wall Newsletter
John Kunschner, Managing Director at Landmark Ventures
Todd Parsons, Chief Product Officer at Criteo
Leora Kelman, Partner at Boston Consulting Group
Ari Paparo, CEO at Marketecture
Shweta Khajuria, Managing Director at Evercore
Laura Martin, Managing Director at Needham & Co
Mark Zgutowicz, Managing Director at The Benchmark Company
Darcy Frisch, Managing Director at Hearst Ventures
Sanja Partalo, Managing Partner at S4S Ventures
Joe Marchese, Managing Partner at Human Capital
Eric Franchi, Managing Partner at Aperiam
Brian O'Kelley, CEO at Scope3 (Angel Investor)
Matt Sanchez, President at Yahoo
Paul Bannister, Chief Strategy Officer at Raptive
Sabrina Traskos, SVP Commercial Procurement at AstraZeneca
Reed Rayman, Partner at Apollo
Stephen Master, Managing Director, GTCR
Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, Chief Revenue Officer, Yahoo
Michael Farmer, Managing Partner at Farmer & Co
Lauren Dillard , CFO at Liveramp
Joe Root, CEO/co-founder at Permutive
Ian Whittaker, Managing Director at Liberty Sky Advisors, The Bigger Picture
Kathryn Farrara, General Counsel at Unilever
Marc Guldimann, CEO of Adelaide
Alysa Nutnik, Partner at Kelley Drye & Warren
Jamie Barnard, CEO at Compliant
Ask Us Anything (About AdTech)
If you are confused about something adtechie, then a bunch of other folks are probably confused about the exact same thing. Send your question over and we’ll get you an answer.
Disclaimer: This post, and any other post from Quo Vadis, should not be considered investment advice. This content is for informational purposes only. You should not construe this information, or any other material from Quo Vadis, as investment, financial, or any other form of advice.