Inside Ramp's Marketing: Creative Bets, Measurement, and AI Agents (with Drew Pinta)

#346 | Dave sits down with Drew Pinta, Director of Growth Data at Ramp, to talk about what it actually looks like to measure marketing when the hardest things to measure are often the ones working hardest. Drew breaks down how Ramp uses incrementality testing and event studies to put real numbers on brand stunts, how they split budget 70/30 between proven channels and experimental bets, and how scanning thousands of Gong calls with AI surfaced attribution insights that contradicted every model they had. He also makes the bull case for why marketers might be better positioned than engineers in the age of AI, and doesn't shy away from the bear case either.Timestamps(00:00) - - Intro (02:10) - - Drew's background: from the Fed to growth data (05:00) - - Drew's role as a data partner to marketing (07:36) - - How Ramp's funnel works (09:19) - - Using AI to scan Gong calls and finding attribution was wrong (14:00) - - Why measurement should meet the marketing, not the other way around (25:35) - - The 70/30 budget split (26:35) - - Ramp's channel maturity framework (33:00) - - The marketing leader as pilot, data team as instruments (36:15) - - The bull case: why marketers are better positioned than engineers in the age of AI (40:00) - - The bear case (45:00) - - Real AI workflows Ramp's marketing team has built (49:54) - - How Ramp enabled the team on AI (52:25) - - Guardrails for AI agents Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. ***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more