The Complete Feed

Fern Potter left a senior ad-tech leadership role to co-found Intelligent Assistance around a bold premise: AI works best when it expands human judgment rather than pretending to replace it. She joins Signal & Noise to discuss why AI is not a strategy, how companies move from pilots to commercial impact, what programmatic advertising can teach us about unchecked automation, and why the future belongs to organizations that combine machine speed with human context, creativity,

As AI becomes the primary gateway to discovering brands online, traditional SEO is giving way to a new discipline: AI Visibility. In this episode, Leah Nurik, CEO and Co-Founder of Brandi AI, joins Signal & Noise to explore Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), how AI decides which brands to recommend, and what the shift from search engines to answer engines means for marketers, publishers, and the future of digital marketing.

Dollar General may be one of America’s most underestimated media businesses. Austin Leonard, VP & GM of DG Media Network, joins Signal & Noise to reveal how DG is turning 21,000+ stores, billions of transactions and rich first-party data into a powerful retail media platform—and using AI to transform targeting, measurement, in-store media and customer experiences.

Day 4 closes out Signal & Noise’s first Cannes Lions with conversations that capture where marketing is headed next. From AI agents and ad fraud to transparency, identity, enterprise transformation, and publisher innovation, Rio Longacre, Brett House, and Krish Raja speak with leaders from Dstillery, CHEQ, Stagwell Marketing Cloud, Chili Piper, Credera, and more to wrap up an unforgettable week at Cannes Lions 2026.

What happens when AI stops assisting consumers and starts acting on their behalf? In this episode of Signal & Noise, Rio Longacre and Brett House speak with industry analyst Karsten Weide about the future of AI-powered advertising, agentic commerce, and autonomous media buying. The conversation explores how OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Meta, and emerging AI platforms could fundamentally reshape the digital economy and the future of the open web.

The future of marketing isn't about managing more software—it's about connecting data, intelligence, and decision-making. Scott Brinker explains how AI is dissolving the boundaries between MarTech, AdTech, and enterprise operations, creating a new operating model built around context, automation, and orchestration.

What if marketing’s real problem isn’t data—but discipline? In this Signal & Noise episode, Greg Stuart (CEO, MMA) breaks down why marketing struggles to earn trust and how to fix it. From weak measurement and flawed attribution to AI’s limits, this conversation challenges the industry to shift from opinion to evidence—and finally prove real business impact.