Frank Lee

Sooo... how can the same product, from the same company, with the same experience; suddenly grab market share from the market leader. No flashy launch, no innovation, no nothing. Change your brand positioning. How about if you are Anthropic (Claude), and you go up against a powerful government department like the DoW? Your intent was not brand position change; that'd be too pedestrian. There is of course, a lot of nuances in what happened; but the market does not care about the nuance - most of which I am most likely missing. The market cares about what they see and hear and feel. The Brand Positioning Deck on Amodei's laptop on never changed. Perceptions of the market changed of what Anthropic was. What it stood for, how far it will go for something as abstract, yet important as principles. As an aside: Amodei has re-engaged DoW and opened negotiations again as of late last week. Anthropic is still a business; and sometimes the market make a lot of assumptions, so you never know what is going on behind the scenes. But the users have made up their minds of what OpenAI and Anthropic stands for - rightly or wrongly. Both CEOs played a big role in this evolution. Speaking of CEOs and big companies and their 'products,'.... Nah, that'd be too easy. https://lnkd.in/gyfapkyF

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My First AI Post @2025 (and thank you to the Aperiam AI Fellows and to Dawn West and Alex Netelkos for making that happen!): If viewability was the training wheels of digital measurement, attention is the carbon-fiber racing bike we’ve just learned to ride. Erica kicked us off by pointing out the obvious: “viewable” doesn’t mean “seen,” and certainly doesn’t mean “engaged.” McKinsey’s neat formula — time × focus × intent — resonated as a starting point, but the real magic is in using that across channels and across the funnel. Why does this matter now? Because omni-channel is no longer a buzzword — it’s the messy, lived reality. CTV, digital out-of-home, mobile gaming, social feeds — each has wildly different engagement norms. An attention metric gives marketers and publishers a lingua franca, a Rosetta Stone to compare value and outcomes without pretending a click on a banner is the same as leaning into a big-screen spot. Publishers want credit for premium environments. Marketers want to normalize buys across hundreds of brands, countries, and media types. Attention-weighted CPMs (ACPMs) start to solve both. Even a global CPG can look across Meta, YouTube, stadium signage, and print — and make sense of it. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than a stack of inconsistent KPIs and gut feel? Absolutely. And yes, AI is in the wings — not as the protagonist, but as the stagehand making the hard stuff easier. It can normalize messy data, connect attention signals to outcomes, and embolden teams to try bolder experiments. Which brings us to the closing provocation: What if a few brave brands and publishers agreed to really transact on attention — rough edges, no gaming, shared responsibility for outcomes? The moment feels right to test whether attention can become not just a metric, but a currency. Marc Guldimann Adelaide David Zapata AB InBev Michael Shields Cory Treffiletti Rembrand McKinsey & Company

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Kroger Just Unlocked the TV and Audio Ad Market for small and medium sized brands. Generally, CPG giants with dedicated in-house programmatic teams have been able to take advantage of first-party data supported Connected TV (CTV) and streaming audio.  However, without significant resources, smaller and mid-sized brand were stuck on the outside looking in. Until Now. Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) just unlocked the door for challenger brands of all sizes. They recognized the critical gap : Brands want to leverage streaming media but lack the expertise and / or resources for complex programmatic buying. Kroger’s solution?                                                          They’ll do the heavy lifting for you. KPM’s in-house experts will activate and manage your campaigns across premium platforms like Roku, Paramount+, Pandora, and iHeartRadio. The Secret Weapon: Selling Outcomes, Not Impressions. KPM isn't just selling ad slots; they're providing the data-powered precision that's impossible to replicate independently. -Precision Targeting: Using Kroger’s first-party loyalty card data for unrivaled accuracy. -Guaranteed Measurement: Every campaign provides closed-loop measurement, including ROAS, sales lift, and the direct impact on dollar and unit sales. -The Proof: A campaign using this data achieved a 5.5% increase in sales by targeting lapsed Neutrogena buyers on Roku. This is a strategic play that democratizes access to high-value media channels. If you've viewed CTV and streaming audio as out of reach, the door is now open. ➡️ See the full strategic analysis on how KPM is weaponizing its data for the masses and creating a lifeline for challenger brands (Link below and in the first comment!)

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Excited to share that Aperiam has invested in Bedrock Platform. Obvious statement of the century: programmatic advertising has a complexity problem. The infrastructure that was built to give media buyers control has, over time, done the opposite. Burying teams under layers of operational overhead, legacy tooling, and opaque supply chains. Bedrock is built on a simple but powerful thesis: what if you stripped away the bloat and rebuilt the stack around what actually matters... precision, transparency, and speed to execution. Their platform combines AI-driven campaign automation with curated, premium inventory across video, CTV, DOOH, and audio, and aims to be flexible and get smarter over time. Plus, the team (Shane, Austin, Ryan, James) has deep roots in the infrastructure layer of ad tech and understands the plumbing better than almost anyone. We believe the next generation of programmatic will be leaner, faster and AI-first. Bedrock is building that.

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A significant share of programmatic spend is wasted simply because ads reach the wrong audience. Persona 360 reduces wasted ad spend by combining hyperlocal, behavioural, and lifestyle data to help brands target smarter. 🚀

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