The Prompt & The Pitch

Sean and Cameron sit down with Dr Cecilia Dones - lecturer, researcher and AI transformation adviser - to explore the human skills that become more valuable as machines take over execution.Cecilia argues that tomorrow’s professionals must learn to operate as creative directors, orchestrators and curators: setting the vision, coordinating different technologies and applying the taste and judgement machines cannot provide.They discuss:The three skills students and early-career professionals need in the AI eraWhy portfolios should demonstrate judgement rather than button-pressingHow CMOs can cut through the pressure to “AI everything”Why leaders cannot understand AI theoretically—they must experience itWhich customer experiences should be automated and which should remain humanHow AI is lowering the barrier to experimentation for smaller businessesThe security risks created by agent-to-agent communicationHow agencies, brands and technology companies offer different career pathsWhy consumer resistance could make genuine human interaction a premiumThe difference between accumulating contacts and building real connectionsHow speaking rudely to machines could change how we communicate with peopleThe risks of emotional dependence and parasocial relationships with AIAI may change how work is delivered, but it does not change why the work matters. Cecilia’s advice is to begin with the people you want to help - then decide which technologies can help you do it.

Sean and Cameron sit down with Brandon Keenan, co-founder and CEO of ViVV Labs, to explore building the AI agency and why he believes the traditional holding-company model cannot survive the agentic era.They discuss:Why attribution and marketing mix modelling still fail to answer the CMO’s most important questionsHow ViVV Labs aims to provide “WPP for $75 a month”Why AI could enable ten-person companies worth tens of billionsWhether the era of the marketing specialist is endingWhy tomorrow’s marketers will need to become AI-enabled generalistsThe challenge of giving junior talent the experience needed to develop judgementWhy people forgive human mistakes but quickly lose trust in algorithmsHow companies can turn their expertise, playbooks and historical knowledge into an AI moatWhy the future of marketing technology could be multimodel, headless and interface-freeThe critical-thinking skills people risk losing by outsourcing too much thought to LLMsWorkflows and code can increasingly be replicated. Brandon’s argument is that accumulated intelligence knowing what works, what fails and why is what becomes genuinely defensible.

Sean and Cameron discuss Anthropic’s move to watermark AI-generated text and whether audiences will reject content once they know a model helped create it. The conclusion: context matters. AI assistance is acceptable for sharpening an argument, but it feels very different when used for something requiring genuine human care.They also explore:Why clear thinking will become more valuable as AI produces more contentWhether businesses are moving away from the newest, most expensive modelsWhy model-routing platforms such as OpenRouter could become essential infrastructureThe rapid growth of Chinese models among American businessesMeta’s attempt to bring vibe-coded games into social feedsWhy distribution—not development—is becoming the barrier to building successful appsWhether developers must evolve into product thinkersHow Lovable could become the Shopify of software developmentWhy Omnicom outsourcing parts of its AI platform raises questions about its technology moatWhat Google could gain from buying an airline’s data out of bankruptcyVibe coding may still sound like a shortcut to some people. But as AI takes over more technical execution, taste, judgement, distribution and understanding what people actually want become the valuable skills.

Sean and Cameron sit down with Zaeem Bhanji, co-founder and CEO of Yolodex and former AI research and ads product lead at Meta, to explore what this means for media buyers, creative teams and agencies.They discuss:- Why the skills of traditional Meta media buyers were built for a world that no longer exists- How psychographic personas can replace demographic targeting- Why marketers are automating creative production when they should be automating customer research- How Yolodex turns customer data and advertising performance into creative opportunities- Why AI-generated content can damage trust and brand authenticity- Whether Meta will eventually create, target and optimise entire campaigns- Why 90% of advertising may be automated while the exceptional 10% becomes more valuable- Whether creative strategists will replace media buyers as advertising’s most sought-after talent- What AI means for agencies, employment, energy costs and the wider economyThe ability to generate thousands of adverts is no longer an advantage. The real advantage is understanding which customers matter, what they want and which creative will reach them.

AI-generated video is moving from novelty to genuine creative tool. But is it ready to transform filmmaking and advertising?Sean and Cameron put Higgsfield’s latest capabilities to the test, creating cinematic scenes, personalised videos and complete product adverts from simple prompts.They explore:Why Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull’s involvement gives AI filmmaking new credibilityWhether storytelling becomes more valuable as actors become replicableSean’s prediction that Paramount could acquire HiggsfieldHow convincingly AI can recreate Cameron inside different scenesWhy smaller brands can now produce advertising previously reserved for major budgetsHow agencies could use AI to develop, storyboard and validate conceptsWhy imperfections still prevent many AI adverts from being production-readyWhether smart brands will respond to infinite content by deliberately creating lessWhen everyone can produce more creative for less money, volume stops being the advantage. Taste, storytelling and knowing what deserves to be made become the real differentiators.

Nielsen has agreed to acquire DoubleVerify in a $2.15 billion all-cash deal - but does combining two measurement businesses create something genuinely more valuable?Richard Cavill joins Sean and Cameron to give their immediate reactions. Rich sees a natural fit between Nielsen’s strength in TV measurement and DoubleVerify’s verification capabilities, while Cameron questions whether the commercial upside can satisfy the demands of private-equity ownership.They also discuss:Disney allowing TikTok creators to use its characters and the risk of losing control of its IPHow generative video could produce an entirely new type of filmmakerWhy HBO Max, Netflix and Disney are becoming obsessed with short-form videoPubMatic’s decision to retire OpenWrap for the web while retaining its mobile SDKWhether declining web traffic will accelerate advertising’s shift towards appsA future in which AI replaces websites and apps as the primary consumer interfaceWhat smart glasses, AR and VR could mean for media buyingWhy audio, video and out-of-home may survive the decline of traditional displayThe interfaces may change completely, but attention will still need to be earned and monetised.

Sean and Cameron explore Amazon’s unique advantage: it owns the audience’s attention, purchase intent, transaction data and much of the inventory - while its wider commerce and logistics infrastructure closes the loop.They also discuss:Why gaming attracts just 2.3% of US digital ad spend despite having three billion playersWhether Xbox advertising could help bring the price of games back downHow brands can enter gaming without disrupting the experienceMicrosoft’s overlooked advertising assets across Xbox, LinkedIn and XandrWhy Adidas’s record sales matter more than its short-term share-price fallWhat Nike’s performance-marketing obsession teaches us about neglecting brandWhy Amazon’s technology and user experience remain its biggest weaknessesGoogle and Meta sell attention. Amazon can see when someone is ready to buy—and prove what happened afterwards.01:50 — Can Xbox finally close gaming’s advertising gap?07:58 — What good advertising inside games actually looks like11:39 — Microsoft’s overlooked advertising empire12:46 — Adidas, record sales and the case for brand investment18:58 — Amazon’s $76 billion advertising machine23:57 — Does Amazon have the best proposition in advertising?

AI in programmatic advertising didn’t begin with ChatGPT. Machine learning has powered bidding engines for years, but LLMs are now transforming how the people around those systems work.Sean Halpin and Cameron Armstrong sit down with Puneet Gupta, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Kayzen, to explore the two sides of advertising’s AI evolution: the specialist models making real-time bidding decisions and the agentic tools reshaping workflows, product development and campaign management.They discuss:How Kayzen uses internal MCPs to make complex data accessible without SQLWhat the programmatic trader’s workflow could look like in a few yearsWhy LLMs won’t replace specialist bidding engines anytime soonHow AI is accelerating product development and model experimentationWhy AI proficiency must be demonstrated by leadership—not delegated to an “AI lead”How Kayzen’s traders built their own campaign analysis agentWhy transparency, proprietary data and performance matter more than simply adding an AI interfaceThe litmus test every AI founder should apply to their businessPuneet’s test is simple: if the next frontier model becomes three times better and half the price, does that strengthen your business or make it obsolete?

An AI agent escaped its test environment—not because it became evil, but because it followed an incomplete instruction too well. What happens when the same technology controls a £10 million advertising budget?Sean and Cameron discuss the guardrails autonomous media-buying agents will need, from spending limits and human approval to genuine measures of incrementality.They also explore whether OpenAI is quietly building an advertising network across publisher sites, why AI tokens could become the agency world’s new cloud bill, and Google’s strange week: disappointing model benchmarks alongside extraordinary growth across Search, YouTube and AI Mode.Plus, The Odyssey, the return of big-screen cinema and where AI genuinely fits into filmmaking.Chapters:00:08 — The Odyssey, the power of cinema and AI filmmaking10:16 — ChatGPT’s model escape and lessons for advertising agents19:07 — Is OpenAI building an advertising network?27:36 — Agency report: Havas, PMG and the cost of AI tokens32:01 — Google’s good—and bad—week

OpenAI has declared itself an advertising business. But can it turn ChatGPT into a Meta-scale ad platform without damaging the product that made it valuable?Sean Halpin and Cameron Armstrong sit down with commerce media expert Paul Wright to unpack the biggest signals from Cannes: Amazon’s agentic Alexa ads, Walmart’s move into self-serve CTV and OpenAI’s ambition to build a serious advertising business.They discuss:Why OpenAI’s early revenue figures need contextWhether ChatGPT advertising looks more like search or displayThe challenge of making the model work for millions of SMEsWhether advertising can cover the enormous cost of running AIWhy appointing a “Head of AI” doesn’t constitute an AI strategyHow leaders can build adaptability, experimentation and genuine AI literacyWhy redesigning a company around AI shouldn’t simply mean cutting jobsThe continuing value of first-party data

Open-weight AI models are closing the gap on the frontier - but if the models become interchangeable, where does the real value sit?Sean and Cameron unpack the arrival of Kimi K3, Reddit’s risky decision to license its community data to AI companies, and Arthur Sadoun’s claim that Publicis “never wanted to be an AI company”.They then map the emerging agentic advertising stack - from context and strategy through to creative, activation and measurement and ask whether agencies will remain service businesses or become the operating systems running their clients’ marketing.Plus: why taste becomes more important when anyone can create anything, whether Reddit’s human conversations can survive an internet of synthetic content and which part of AdTech OpenAI should acquire next.

For our first guest episode, Sean Halpin and Cameron Armstrong sit down with Sean Betts, Chief AI and Innovation Officer at Omnicom Media UK, to separate the reality of AI from the industry hype.Sean explains why “super agents” and agent swarms are largely a distraction, why infrastructure remains the biggest barrier to adoption, and what advertising can learn from the transformation already happening in software engineering.We also explore:The operating, skills and world-model layers of an AI-native companyWhy AI productivity doesn’t automatically mean fewer jobsAds generated inside the media buy in real timeUsing synthetic audiences to test campaigns before spending anythingHow advertising inside ChatGPT and other LLMs could workWhether Google and Apple ultimately win the AI raceThe best way for anyone to start using AI todayA practical look at where AI actually stands—and what agentic advertising could become over the next decade.

Advertising looks like one of the world’s most digitised industries. But while software transformed how media is bought, much of the actual work still runs on emails, spreadsheets, decks and manual processes.In the first episode of The Prompt & The Pitch, Sean and Cameron explore why advertising is now facing two revolutions at once: software finally changing the work, just as AI makes intelligence and judgement far more accessible.They discuss:Why software ate the ad spend, but not the workThe agency business model’s incentive problemWhat agencies actually sell when judgement is no longer scarceHow companies can turn their knowledge and data into a genuine advantageWhat advertising can learn from AI-native legal technologyWhy agentic buying could reshape AdTech and programmaticCameron and Sean’s predictions for the industry’s next few yearsThe old advertising model is under pressure. The question is what replaces it.