Gareth Hates AdTech

@EricTilbury_RTB dudeeeeee this is so deadly. i used to stop by the gas station before driving to pick up my daughter, red bulls and quest bars for days. definitely took years off my life.

How the gas station white monster and twix bar hit after you fill up.

@This_Liss @quichenpatel @eladgil G-g-g-g-guis

@quichenpatel @eladgil The chart needs 3 axes: intelligence, speed and cost. Cheaper GPT-3.5 --> contextual ad targeting Faster GPT-4 --> real-time voice. Smarter GPT-5 --> we're almost at generative UIs. I think that breakpoint in model quality is close.

I'm curious what people would fill in here for GPT5 now that we've had 6+ months of it. To me, it really feels like more / better versions of what was working for GPT4, but not necessarily net new categories like previous upgrades.

@JamesBorow This is conquering Russia in winter.

This is the part of the timeline where $TDD just embraces being a tech enabled agency and goes hard in the paint w AI right? Lean into the services are the new software meme, sprinkle in some system of record references?

@This_Liss @KendraEBarnett Ad tech tweet of the year

@KendraEBarnett Anthropic getting into yield management

Totally normal and cool

@mikeroplastics @grok I read that as perineal and was ready to purchase before finishing groks description

@HatesAdtech Actually yes. @grok can you please explain overnight peritoneal dialysis and how it could theoretically be applied to plasmapheresis?

Prediction: pregnant women are going to start getting plasmapheresis. We've known that microplastics pass from mother to fetus, and they show up in the baby's first poop. Now we're learning that fetuses have high levels of PFAS too -- and it's contributing to infant mortality, birth defects, and obesity later in life. Avoiding these chemicals is impossible today -- but we can remove them from our bodies.

@EricTilbury_RTB @verklin We need an ai answering service to screen unknown numbers!!!!

@verklin Same, I was thinking the same thing.

If you cold call me to sell me something in adtech I PROMISE you I will never do business with you.

@mikeroplastics Can you hook this up to my bed so that I can dock at night while I’m sleeping? Maybe partner with 8sleep or w/e they’re called?

Fetuses likely have more ‘forever chemicals’ in blood than thought – report theguardian.com/society/2026/m…

@This_Liss I believe those are called “product roadmaps”

@HatesAdtech Malvertising in AI chat goes near the top of my "unethical inevitable adtech ideas" notes doc

ChatGPT ads are hitting the same problem we did with chatbot ads in 2023-25: relevance without conversions. I looked up the etymology of γλαυκῶπις (Athena's Homeric epithet, don't ask why). I got an ad for modern Greek tutors. It's an ad for something AI already does for me.

@This_Liss I dunno, have you seen the payouts on those malware installs?

@HatesAdtech Unfortunately all their ads seem to be browser extension malvertising. Probably not doing $60 CPMs

@Moe_rants Earned media! Pound your message deep into the psyche of your viewers.

Someone needs to tell the Disney AdOps person managing the eBay campaign to add fCaps. I've seen the same 2 eBay creatives 12x combined in the last two hours. Sheesh.

@EricTilbury_RTB @acfou @DustinCha_ Dude this shouldn’t happen. What do they say the explanation is?

I don’t have to educate anyone on this thread, just for anyone reading this thread. Some PMPs straight from publishers themselves (not an ssp salesperson) will come through as unauthorized, if you have a hard block on authorized direct you’ll miss out on that inventory. That’s why sellers.json is such a good tool to validate who’s selling you what. It’s also a good reason to manage your own QPS where you can make exceptions for those PMPs and have the hammer of authorized direct on others. Knowing when to filter and when to allow is such a good thing.

I urge you all, please, to regularly pull reports using ads.txt and sellers.json. You should absolutely know what percentage of your buy is authorized direct versus unauthorized versus reseller, and exactly who is selling you what. If you do have unauthorized or even reseller purchasing going on, you should know exactly why you are buying that. Blindly buying unauthorized and reseller inventory will burn your budget. Not enough people say this often enough. I love this industry, and I want to see it thrive. It only thrives with trust, and that trust comes with better performance, and that better performance comes with better buying habits. Please, hear me out.

@acfou @EricTilbury_RTB @DustinCha_ I mean here’s the thing — the override could potentially exist for reasons, but like, it should be hard. It should be like when you’re on a website without an ssl cert

@HatesAdtech @EricTilbury_RTB @DustinCha_ and letting them thru and transacting on it too did you know the buyer has to check "enforce ads.txt" checkbox on Xandr otherwise it doesn't get enforced, even though "they have ads.txt"

@EricTilbury_RTB @DustinCha_ What fucking dsp is out there listening to unauthorized traffic? How is this possible in 2026? You might as well run the campaign on redtube, it would probably perform an order of magnitude better. So crazy what we allow to happen.

@DustinCha_ Should be 100% something you can just pull easily out of DSP UI reporting. I know that always isn't the case though. I quite literally have an automated dashboard that tells me this that I look at daily.

@DustinCha_ Sorry I realize I was unclear, I was saying that none of that inventory filled at all hahahahhaa

@HatesAdtech Tip of the iceberg...

Adblock Plus claims to have blocked 200 trillion ads. At $1 CPM, that's $200BN.

@JohnathanBarnes Right answer wrong reason!

@HatesAdtech Sorry, I can't take the other side on that one. Unless your definition of yield management is "every hop in the chain is maximizing yield for THEMSELVES. Then I'll gladly come on and tell you how we are in the golden age of platforms rent seeking to the max for their own gain.

I have a hot take for all of you. I don’t think yield management exists. Come argue about it with me and Adam tomorrow on our podcast if you disagree, and I’ll explain all the things you don’t understand to you. Psa, this doesn’t apply to CTV, because CTV is a hot mess and I can’t fit what needs to be done to fix it into a tweet.

@aripap @adtechradar Every time I hear the word unique in ad tech I lose another strand of hair. If you couldn’t tell it’s not going great

@adtechradar I didn't really like this analogy because it doesn't take into consideration the role of SSPs as market makers. If you were a real estate broker who *also* had access to a unique pool of home buyers that would be genuine value add for the sellers, not just arbitrage.

NEW: TTD’s CEO likened SSPs to house flippers in a talk yesterday at Marketecture Live. adtechradar.com/2026/03/12/ttd…

@BishPlsOk @BradAT Not just viable, the probable outcome at scale. The desired return to bundled inventory remains nonsensical to me. I believe in math too much.

@BradAT Not necessarily. Agentic buy executed through programmatic pipes is completely viable.

It was my impression that agentic buying was always meant to sit outside the overly complex programmatic eco, no? Regardless, MadConnect seems to have built the right infra to enable these agentic connections in a turnkey way. Should be interesting to watch.