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<\/p>\nA lot has changed since the mid 2010s. Smartphones, social media and streaming come to mind. And over in the ad tech world, there have been huge shifts, too, notably with the rise of AI infiltrating everything from campaign optimization to creative.<\/p>\n
Mike Hauptman, co-founder of AdLib and former MediaMath exec, is confident that the role of AI will only continue to grow over the next few years. \n <\/p>\n
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Hauptman co-founded AdLib with Dan Bougourd nearly 10 years ago to make premium DSPs more accessible to marketers across the board. Both Hauptman and Bougourd were working at MediaMath at the time and built AdLib as an \u201ceasy-to-use version\u201d for the mid-market, Hauptman told AdExchanger.<\/p>\n
But the platform doesn\u2019t look like it did a decade ago. AdLib is \u201cfully embracing and exploring\u201d new uses for AI, Hauptman said, but it\u2019s not going to be a seamless transition for the industry. There will be \u201csome conflicting incentives and some friction\u201d before the industry is on a unified page, with a shared understanding of the best way to use these new tools.<\/p>\n
AdExchanger: Tell me a little bit more about the history of AdLib and how it got on its feet.<\/p>\n
MIKE HAUPTMAN: At MediaMath, we saw that enterprise marketers needed different workflows and tools to be successful. Dan was overseeing development of the core UI and core APIs, which were being built for enterprise customers, sort of like Salesforce. And that\u2019s great, but those tools can be cumbersome. It\u2019s like a Ferrari, where it has a lot of speed, but if you don\u2019t really know what you\u2019re doing, you spin out and hit a light pole.<\/p>\n
We took a little bit of seed funding and incubated ourselves at MediaMath for a couple of years until we were able to focus on that full time and build out the business in that model until 2023, when MediaMath went dark<\/a>.<\/p>\n Why is AdLib necessary right now? What problem is it solving? <\/p>\n The mid-market has some tools, but they usually leave a lot to be desired in terms of quality and capabilities.<\/p>\n AdLib has evolved to connect to over 20 different DSPs and platforms as a singular entry point to access all of programmatic. It eliminates the barriers and the complexities that you usually have by needing to have individual commercial agreements and interfaces with each license.<\/p>\n Plus, people are often specialized in one or two platforms, but they don\u2019t know how to use all of them. So we\u2019ve been preaching the need for redundancy, a layer where you\u2019re controlling your workflow and controlling operations, and whatever happens on the DSP side doesn\u2019t really matter.<\/p>\n <\/a> Get our editors\u2019 roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n MFAs have been a pretty contentious topic lately. What do you think is the best way to ensure that advertisers are getting the most out of ad placements, and do you think there are any upsides to these sites?<\/p>\n Low quality publishers that are just fake news sites are a problem and a stain on the industry. It\u2019s a constant game of Whac-A-Mole that a lot of players are involved in providing the mallets for.<\/p>\n There are solutions to minimize the effect of MFA sites and to allow buyers to avoid them, but a lot of those involve taking on another partner, another vendor, another cost, another thing to manage.<\/p>\n
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