A new acronym is entering the acronym-rich advertising ecosystem.

(editor’s note: YES – complexity, you are my brother!)

As his company enters the AI age, Live Ramp CEO Scott Howe is thinking about what comes next for his data collaboration platform company and it appears to be Model Context Protocol or… MCP.

Howe’s underlying thesis for MCP is existential. After all, how is his (or anyone’s) company going to protect the client data pulsing through his company’s platform with data-sucking Large Language Models (LLMs) slurping up every last bit.

On Wednesday in a LinkedIn post titled, “The Real AI Power Grab: It’s About the Data, Not the Model,” Howe explained:

“The real question isn’t how smart these models are, but rather who controls both the public and increasingly proprietary information from which they learn.”

“That’s where MCP (model context protocol) enters the picture. It creates a standardized way for models to access source data — without forcing everyone into a single ecosystem. It’s a quiet but critical shift: from closed platforms to open frameworks, from owning the interface to empowering the input. If MCP becomes the norm, the value moves from the select, advantaged few to the more deserving many— to the data itself and the people who manage it. That flips the script on decades of tech strategy, even as some of the giants work feverishly but perhaps futilely to create deeper moats around their black box algorithms.”

Howe says he’ll be talking MCP at the Cannes Lions festival next week.

more:

• “What Is MCP, and Why Is Everyone – Suddenly!– Talking About It?” (March 17, 2025) – Hugging Face

MCP – a startup

Former Korrelate founder and Tacoda executive Dan Jaye is thinking about MCP, too, with his marketing data solutions startup, Aqfer. In fact, MCP appears to be a key premise for the company.

In a LinkedIn post this week, Jaye wrote:

“To my madtech friends and colleagues: Model Context Protocol, or MCP, is the most important AI development you likely haven’t heard of.”

“I’ve been in tech long enough to recognize a paradigm shift when I see one. OpenAPI transformed web development. OpenRTB revolutionized programmatic advertising, handling trillions of transactions daily.”

“Now we have MCP – and I think it’s about to do the same thing for AI. In fact, I’ve started a 5-part series on the topic this week….”

Jaye says he’ll be talking MCP in Cannes, too.

more:

• “MCP as the Open API Standard for the AI Era” – Aqfer (the first of 5 blog posts)

another bad day

• “Tech Giants’ New AI Ad Tools Threaten Big Agencies” (June 12) – The Wall Street Journal

• From the article: “If I had an e-commerce business with one to three employees, I’d be pretty excited about a tool like this…” – Jessica Serrano, CMO, Dig

RMNs & AI – DoorDash

In addition to announcing the $175 million acquisition of ad tech company Symbiosis (former Hooklogic founder Jonathan Opdyke was an investor – read) on Wednesday, DoorDash announced it’s own AI ads toolkit to complement its retail media network business which did $1 billion of business globally last year and is serviced by Wolt Ads.

From the press release which announced the mish-mash of news:

• “For Restaurants – AI Tooling For Campaigns, Targeting, and Discounts: SMB restaurant merchants provide us with their goals, targets, and budget, and then our AI solutions will do the heavy lifting to create customized campaigns that deliver results.”

Toby Espinosa, VP of Ads at DoorDash, hints at the AI difference in the release, too: “With new product capabilities, AI-powered tools, and Symbiosys’ offsite reach, businesses of any size can now connect with high-intent consumers seamlessly. Moving forward, every business from local owner-operators to the largest global brands will have the opportunity to grow on DoorDash and beyond with the click of a button.”

Read: “Introducing the New DoorDash Ads: AI-Powered Tools and Acquisition of Ad Tech Platform Symbiosys to Help Restaurants and Brands Grow” (June 11) – Door Dash

RMNs & AI – Lyft

A Lyft executive told Axios yesterday that they are looking to boost their $100 million per year retail media network (RMN) business, but they’re not pitching AI or anything big tech-related to clients.

Suzie Reider, a former Google exec before joining Lyft Media and Business as president, positions her company’s RMN offering as “a challenger” and that “Given that we do not have the scale that Meta or Google have, we hustle in the mindset of ‘necessity is the mother of innovation. (…) In this era of AI, algorithmic, massively scaled and programmatic media, our team will eagerly engage in creative solutions.“

There are, at least, two sides to this pitch:

• Owning up to the fact that Lyft doesn’t have the latest tech or scale;

• Trying to overcome the tech/scale deficit by speaking to the mind of the marketer who wants to hear about ideas and creative.

Will it be enough? A differentiated audience and scale would help. But you knew that. Read more.

vibe targeting, day 2

“This afternoon, I was curious if anybody was using the vibe targeting prototype I built. I checked the logs and was immediately horrified…” – read more from Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley on LinkedIn yesterday and the “AI safety” update

podcast: AI kills attribution

On a podcast episode titled, “Advertising measurement in an AI landscape,” Mobile Dev Memo analyst Eric Seufert huddles with Maor Sadra, the CEO of ad measurement company INCRMNTAL, about the end of attribution as we know it and the changing role of the marketer – especially performance marketers – in an AI world. Small stuff.

Hear the 50-minute podcast and see the auto-transcript on the Apple Podcasts app.

Snippet: Identifying the big changes ahead for marketers, Sadra says [21:00]:

“The role of the actual marketer becomes strategic capital allocation – asking questions – by essentially having these platforms (the walled gardens) provide you the answers so that you can make more decisions and more capital allocation to whoever you believe is generating the results you’re aiming for.”

“[Due to AI] the actual attribution of who’s-generating-what is happening in levels that are beyond the typical marketer’s understanding. It’s not a click to a conversion, (…) we’re in an AI world where the platform that does your measurement is using AI and the platform that does your delivery to users is also using AI. So you just need to understand that your role is different.”

Seufert, a former performance marketer, is likewise adamant that media mixed modeling provides little value.

Side note: Seufert was one of the keynotes at last week’s Meta Performance Marketing Summit.

Trade Desk – manifesto

On Wednesday, The Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green published a 1600-word manifesto looking to rally “open internet” lovers in the face of AI and the walled gardens. Clearly, he is also writing in support of The Trade Desk’s own business model and the expanding reach (and opportunity for success) he sees through non-walled-garden, connected TV sources.

As he defines what he means by “open internet,” Green muses about one of his chief competitors, Google:

“AI is changing our lives and the digital world in a way that is at least as profound as the way the internet itself did so 30 years ago. Among so many other things, AI will change the nature of content and our interactions with browsers.”

“One of the most fascinating manifestations of this is a little-known debate that has been ongoing for years in some corners of Google — along with the related power struggles. The debate centers around a fundamental question — is Chrome a platform or an app? As the AMA AI chatbot race rages on, we will likely get an answer to this. We’ll find the answer in how Chrome, with its built-in search, evolves its relationship with its sibling, Gemini. For this discussion however, a definition of the open internet that confines it to a browser is not practical. It never was. But it is even less pragmatic in the AI world that we’re all rapidly building.”

Read it on TTD’s The Current.

Trade Desk – TV OS AI

• Anoki Announces Plans to Bring Streamlined AI-Native FAST Solution for OEMs to the Ventura TV Operating System – press release

prompt: how will connected TV be transformed in 5 years?

Response from meta.ai:

Connected TV (CTV) is expected to undergo significant transformations in the next five years, driven by advancements in digitalization, video-on-demand (VoD) providers, and shifting consumer behavior. Here are some key trends that will shape the CTV landscape:

• Advancements in Technology: The integration of artificial intelligence, analytics, and 5G networks will enable more flexible and mobile consumption of media content, further transforming the CTV experience ¹ ² ³.

• Increased Personalization: CTV advertising will rely more on personalized content, leveraging user data to optimize ads and enhance customer engagement. This shift towards personalization will lead to more effective advertising and better return on investment for brands.

Read more on tipsheet.ai.

podcast: at Meta Summit

The Operators podcast, which is devoted to DTC ecommerce marketers, recorded an episode at the Meta Performance Marketing Summit last week. Meta marketing solutions exec Yoni Levy joined the group for the discussion.

This is a great, in-the-weeds, sharing of ideas on all things performance marketing using Meta ads.

An insight on AI’s incremental benefits and Meta customer service came from Sean Frank, CEO of Ridge and a performance marketer:

“Do you know what’s interesting with the whole AI thing to me? I just always expected it to be like a 10X thing or like a 100X thing. And so far, my impression is like, no, you’re just going to have like 1-5% wins and they’re going to add up to something big.“

“And I think that’s actually kind of cool. Like being here [at the Summit], what I’m noticing is [that] there’s like a little bit there, and a little bit there, and a little bit here. And it’s all making the system better.”

“(…) I think the refreshing part, at least for us, has been the last couple of years. Meta seems to be like the human part of this, like the relationship side of like being a brand and working with people in Meta.”

“Yeah, it’s getting better. Like, it’s really good.”

Listed to more here.

Auto-transcript on Apple Podcasts app.

Olyzon: AI Agents for CTV

• Agentic CTV Startup Olyzon Snags $5 Million In Funding To Hire More Humans (June 12) – AdExchanger

• Also, read the press release.

still more

• How Kalshi made an AI (video) ad using Google Veo 3 – Ad Age (subscription)

• “MCP MCP MCP….do you repeat this to yourself at night instead of counting sheep? But make no mistake, it’s an absolutely transformative topic.” – Phil Fernandez, former CEO of Marketo, on LinkedIn yesterday