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For TransUnion’s Spiegel, Human Oversight Will Be the Governor on AI’s Engine

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- As artificial intelligence reshapes the marketing ecosystem, a new hierarchy of influence is emerging. While automation will inevitably handle more of the day-to-day campaign mechanics, some think this will put a premium on the uniquely human ability to unearth consumer insights, build brands, and craft campaigns rooted in a deep understanding of data. It will require a delicate balance between machine efficiency and human judgment, according to Matt Spiegel, evp of TruAudience growth strategy at TransUnion. In a video interview with Beet.TV, he argued that, while automation [...]

Posted on 03/08/2026 at12:35

Beet Retreat San Juan 2026, presented by Alliant and TransUnion

Recent Videos

AI Agents Are ‘Nascent’ but Data Clean Rooms Are Ready for the Collaboration Era

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. - Data clean rooms were never meant to be a silver bullet. But, as AI agents begin reaching across organizational boundaries to hoover up everything they can find, the humble clean room is getting a second look -- this time, as a critical guardrail. That tension, between AI's appetite for data and the enterprise's need to control it, [...]

Jeremi Gorman of Fanatics Advertising Says the Business Is Bigger Than Your Closet

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. – Jeremi Gorman, chief revenue officer of Fanatics Advertising, would like to clear something up before anyone files Fanatics under “people who sell hats.” “It’s actually much bigger than a lot of people think,” she said in this interview at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, describing a portfolio that stretches from officially licensed merchandise across major leagues to [...]

United’s Kinective: The Traveler Mindset Creates an Open Wallet

The vacation mindset is a spending mindset. New research from United Airlines' Kinective Media and Marriott Media reveals that the vast majority of travelers make purchases they never planned on while in transit or at their destination, opening up opportunities for brands willing to meet consumers where their wallets are already open. The study found that 85% of travelers make unplanned [...]

In-store Is Retail Media’s Blind Spot: Michele Roney of Mars United Commerce

LAS VEGAS – For all the precision lavished on ecommerce pixels, the physical store remains retail media’s great shrug. Speaking with David Kaplan at CES 2026, Michele Roney, executive vp of retailer CX at Mars United Commerce, put it bluntly. “The gaps in the shopper experience as it relates to retail media are hands down in-store,” she said. Brands can model every click [...]

Horizon Media’s Alex Stone: AI Dynamics Making Deal Negotiations ‘Take More Time’

LAS VEGAS — While artificial intelligence is supposed to simplify all kinds of processes, the relative newness of agencies’ AI embrace is still complicating enterprise partnership negotiations, particularly when it comes to structuring contracts around new AI dynamics, pricing models, and technical integration requirements. “There’s certainly more time spent on contracts and on the principles and dynamics to make some of [...]

TVision’s Yan Liu: AI Enables Scene-Level Targeting Beyond ‘Genre Blocking’

Brands routinely block entire news or music categories despite content variation within those genres, missing advertising opportunities that artificial intelligence can identify through granular scene-level analysis rather than broad categorical exclusions. “Many brands just block the entire news category. Is every news bad for your brands? I don’t think so,” Yan Liu, CEO and co-founder at TVision, told Beet.TV contributor David [...]

Gen AI Ads: Consumers More Bearish Than Ad Execs, and the Gap Is Widening

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. - The advertising industry's rush to embrace AI-generated creative may be outpacing its understanding of how audiences actually receive it. New research suggests ad executives are misreading their own consumers - and the misalignment is getting worse, not better. A study conducted by Sonata Insights in partnership with the IAB found that young consumers remain considerably less hostile [...]

TV Buyers Need Better Signals Not Just More Floss Data: Alliant’s Suvadip Choudhury

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO – At the Beet Retreat San Juan, Suvadip Choudhury, head of television partnerships at Alliant, delivered a reality check to the TV ad business. Yes, we have more data than ever. No, that does not mean we should blindly chase every shiny behavioral segment that appears in a dashboard. “The TV industry has done a great job [...]

Walmart Connect’s Mayward: Why Retail Media Must Live Off-Site

Retail media is breaking out of the digital shopping aisle. For years, the category has been synonymous with sponsored product listings and banner ads on a retailer’s own website or app. Now, however, the strategy is expanding to find customers wherever they are spending their time. That means following shoppers to the connected TV in their living room, the social media [...]

In-Store Retail Media Is the Untapped Giant: SMG North America’s Sean Crawford

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. – Sean Crawford, managing director of SMG North America, has a simple message for brands chasing the next shiny thing: most shoppers are still, very literally, shopping. “I think in store for retail media is a hugely untapped opportunity here,” Crawford said in this interview with Beet.TV at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, pointing to categories like grocery [...]

IAB’s Zoe Soon: Media Agencies Increasingly Consider Creator Economy ‘A Must Buy’

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. — Perhaps it’s because the creator economy is so unlike traditional forms of media that it’s still not quite seen as “essential” by advertisers as much as consumers do. But that appears to be changing, as brands shift from tacking creators onto campaigns to building storytelling with influencers at the center. “About 50% of U.S. buyers now consider [...]

Trustworthy Data Beats Shiny AI at CES 2026: Horizon Media’s Dominic Venuto

LAS VEGAS — At CES 2026, Domenic Venuto, chief product and data officer at Horizon Media, delivered a reality check to anyone dazzled by flashing AI demos: “The data capabilities that matter most are the ones that you trust.” Venuto has been busy rolling out Horizon’s Blue AI native platform, which takes client data, enriches it with Horizon’s own assets and [...]

AI Is Everywhere, but Human Marketers Still Get the Credit: Horizon’s Jeremy Flynn

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. – The modern CMO is no longer satisfied with charts about impressions and reach, according to Jeremy Flynn, head of product at Horizon Media. He said the job now extends well beyond buying ads and into proving that marketing actually grows the business. “The demand from the CMO is changing beyond just marketing,” Flynn said in this interview [...]

Walmart Connect’s Khurrum Malik: CTV Plus Linear TV Delivers 55% Reach Increase

LAS VEGAS — Walmart Connect’s evolution from retail media network to comprehensive digital platform enables storytelling from “couch to cart to sales,” with research showing CTV advertising combined with linear TV delivers 55% reach increases. “About a year ago, we launched Vizio, and we now have the ability to tell a story from a brand solution perspective on TV,” Khurrum Malik, [...]

Beyond the Niche: Unity Exec Urges Marketers to Rethink Gaming

Marketers have poured billions into streaming and social, yet gaming, a medium commanding comparable scale and engagement, remains oddly underfunded. The disconnect, according to one industry veteran, lies in outdated perceptions rather than genuine limitations. "We've created a medium and an opportunity that continues to expand in terms of the number of monthly active users, continues to grow in the amount [...]

IRIS.TV’s Field Garthwaite: Contextual Targeting Enables Privacy-First CTV Performance

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CALIF. — Connected TV is emerging as a performance channel, thanks to new ways of marshalling data that allow advertisers to zero in on consumers who are open to a brand’s offer. The only challenge, it seems, is convincing advertisers of the possibility after years of such promises by CTV platforms. “Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of [...]

AI’s 97% Problem: Chatbots Barely are Making a Dent in Search, Analyst Finds

Search may be stubborn. Despite the breathless hype surrounding “zero-click” AI search, the predicted exodus of consumers from traditional search bars to chatbots has yet to materialize. New data suggests that standalone AI tools still command a negligible fraction of the time users spend hunting for information online. "AI is revolutionizing search, but maybe not in the way that a lot of [...]

Canvas Worldwide’s Paul Woolmington: AI Without Human Judgment Creates ‘Race to the Bottom’

LAS VEGAS — Artificial intelligence provides speed and efficiency but lacks taste and aesthetic judgment, making human oversight essential to prevent automation that eliminates human input entirely. “What we’re missing is this notion of taste and judgment,” Paul Woolmington, CEO of Canvas Worldwide, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at CES. “Taste is very aesthetic and I think it’s going to be [...]

For Retail Media in Gaming, It’s a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure,’ Says KINESSO’s Owen

The advertising world is obsessed with capturing fleeting consumer attention across a multitude of distraction-laden screens. But one environment, more than most, boasts undivided focus. Unlike passive television viewing or social media scrolling, which are often accompanied by a second screen, gaming demands a player’s full concentration. This is the opportunity for retail media, a market which Forrester projects will grow to [...]

Standards Meet Scale in Retail Media to Deliver for Brands: DG Media’s Austin Leonard

PALM SPRINGS, CALIF. – Retail media standards are no longer a side conversation for the most patient people in the room. They are front and center, especially as more brand dollars flow into the channel. Speaking at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, Austin Leonard, vice president and general manager of the DG Media Network at Dollar General, said the pressure from [...]