It's Always Media Thursday: Indie agencies, CTV creativity and Titan OS's Joe Evea

We discuss our launch of PitchLab and the continued rise of indie agencies, the looming presence of Cannes, and the creativity challenges in retail media and CTV advertising. This week's special guest is Joe Evea, SVP Advertising and Retail Media EMEA at Titan OS, which this week announced it had raised €50 million in Series A funding, in a round led by Highland Europe.We discuss the creative potential of CTV, such as the TV Home Screen, the chaging needs and demands from the buy side, and the vital of proving incremtality. "We work with a agency which spends a lot of money on Netflix but they're only buying 30% of the Netflix customers on our devices because only 30% buy into the ad tier," he pointed out. "We're able to use data to enable them to reach the other 70% and that incrementally is very important. But we need more focus on the creative. It's great that. you've got incremental reach but how can you use the medium to create advertising that really resonates and I think that will be a major discussion point in 2026."And with Christmas starting to hit, we discuss the critical role of industry socialising in building and strengthening the relationships the drive this industry. "We're doing team-focussed meetings at agencies more and more now and this is so much more efficient and productive," said Evea. "We've even started taking a TV into agencies to demonstrate the home screen and it's really working."