How Media Leaders Create Real Advantage in an AI Era

As AI accelerates change across advertising, true advantage comes from clarity, creativity, and outcome-driven decision-making. This conversation explores how modern media leaders are redefining value, empowering teams, and using technology to elevate—not replace—human strategy. Featuring insights from Jacob Davis, Global Head of Media at Crossmedia, a respected leader shaping the future of independent media, in conversation with host Adam Katz.

Key takeaways:

• Why value is shifting from time spent to outcomes delivered

• How AI should remove friction, not replace thinking

• What smarter partnerships unlock beyond platform defaults

• Why human creativity remains the ultimate differentiator

• How trust and clarity lead to better media performance

EPISODE 53 TRANSCRIPT

Adam Katz
Welcome back to Breaking Through the Mayhem, live from ADWeek. Who do we have here with us?

Jacob Davis
ADWeek, ADWeek. You've got Jacob Davis here. I'm our global head of media over at Crossmedia.

Adam Katz
I love that. I love your suit.

Jacob Davis
Thank you so much.

Adam Katz
You look perfect.

Jacob Davis
I tried to match the wall.

Adam Katz
Oh man, this is going to be fun. Let's do it.

Jacob Davis
We're going to have a great time. Let's do it.

Adam Katz
So what are you excited about most this year at ADWeek?

Jacob Davis
I mean, I think watching the different permutations of the ways that people are thinking about, whether it's AI, whether it's machine learning, whether it's deep research, the components that you're seeing about how creative people are being with utilization, it's not enough to just think about how the platforms are doing things and some of the different ways that they're carrying forward. But what I start to think about a ton is from an agency perspective, from a partner perspective, what are we asking of those people that we want to work with most and how are they returning it? And the sheer creativity is unbelievable.

So when I think about getting all of those people in the same rooms and then being able to bump into those people and starting to make introductions between those groups, all of a sudden you start to see some really interesting magical moments.

Adam Katz
I love that. And do you find that size of agency, being independent makes it a lot easier for you guys with how fast things are moving today?

Jacob Davis
I think for us, there is certainly an advantage to thinking outside the box and not being beholden to any one partner or having to represent the interests of outside investment and things like that. Being fiercely independent, in my opinion, there's never been a better time. And it's one of the reasons that I moved from a holding company environment to one of independence.

We can make the best decisions, we can make the best partnerships, and it's all being done in service of our clients. What is the best thing that we can do that moves beyond media KPIs and into business outcomes that clients actually care about?

Adam Katz
I love that. I mean, as you kind of see that evolving, how do you see the landscape playing out with like service versus tech and kind of agency staying agencies? It's one of the questions I've been thinking about a lot.

Jacob Davis
It's a great question. And I think it's important to anyone who is providing a service to a brand, to a client, to a partner. You've got to be very realistic about the value that you're creating.

I think we're slowly watching the erosion of value being tied to time. And value really needs to be tied to outcomes. So when we think about something like, will AI take the place of numerous people?

I don't think so. I think we're going to see a lot of those monotonous, very repetitive tasks start to be automated in better ways. It should free up, though, strategic insight.

It should free up the availability of smart people to do smart things. We will always be more creative than a computer. We will always be more creative than an AI piece of technology.

It's really the value and the thoughtfulness that you're putting into it. It should be riding along in your sidecar. But if you think that all of a sudden, since you entered a couple of buttons and chat GPT, produced something magic, that that's your marketing plan, you should absolutely expect to be eaten alive.

Adam Katz
And you deserve it. I completely agree. I mean, you saw yesterday, there was a report that came out that wasn't fun for the consultancy world of that.

I mean, you've got to have the human elements. They'll obviously deeply care about your work. How are you helping the rest of your team improve, though, today with all the tools that are out there?

Do you teach them what to use? Do you let them just be creative? Where do you play into it?

Jacob Davis
Yeah. I think what we try to do is make sure that people have access to anything that they could potentially want. There is no mandate to specifically use something.

So what we try to outline for our teams and what we try to do is strike relationships with different partners that we think can be interesting and that can move us beyond simply what's available in a platform. So whether that be custom-tailored audiences, interesting algorithmic move forwards, areas of interest within creative, the end goal is never that someone is mandatory to use a specific piece of technology or another, but instead one that says you need to have a mastery of how this tool works. Because if you don't, you're going to be left in these situations where you're going to look and say, that wrench could hammer in that nail, but isn't a hammer better.

So it's really being thoughtful about what the tools are supposed to do on your behalf and how you use them, instead of being hyper-focused on something that could be quick, but not necessarily right. Yeah.

Adam Katz
And I was also taking it back to the question, I was also thinking about how are you helping your team become users of these AI stacks today? Are you pushing that on your team to learn? Are you giving them a space to do that?

Where do you play there?

Jacob Davis
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. In how to think about it, our teams, what we've started with is a foundational, what's taking too long? If we think 20 years ago when we were all kind of coming into the business and we started- That's a great way to think about it.

Yeah.

Adam Katz
When we started to say- Just sit down, what's taking too long?

Jacob Davis
Could I do this faster in Excel? Because we were all in Excel at the very beginning, and all of a sudden you learned about concatenation, VLOOKUPs, things of that nature. And it felt like you were an octopus with eight arms.

It became incredibly important that as you started to utilize those various formulas, all of a sudden things were faster. I think we are looking at it in a very similar way, which really just starts to say, what are those tasks that seem to take too long? What are those things that seem to be a little bit too complicated, and that we could work through a little bit faster?

So at Crossmedia, we've built tools, one of them is called Crossmedia Gardener. And what it does is it has an API connection into our programmatic DSPs, and we have it automate and pull log files. These are normally multi-gig files that have numerous, numerous rows.

Our XM Gardener tool will go through, do the pull for us, we'll put recommendations out, generate an output that the team manually goes in and reviews, and then we can send it back to a DSP, and we've automated the log file process. Automatic cleanliness, it's super easy, it's super interesting. So instead of us sitting there, going up and down, yo-yoing around with some of these tools and not being able to figure out what we're doing, we can be really clear about what need is it serving, and is it something that already exists in the marketplace?

Adam Katz
Very interesting. I mean, as you guys are seeing growth, right? Where do you strategically, globally, and kind of put yourself into that mindset?

Like where are you pitching most now today? There's so much pitching going on.

Jacob Davis
There's so much pitching going on. As an independent, there's never been a better time. People are frustrated with some of the scenarios that they're finding themselves in.

They used to be one of the largest clients at various agencies. Now they feel like the forgotten stepchild. It's a perfect opportunity for independents like Crossmedia to come in and bring it back to what it's all about, which is three very basic things.

Trust, everything that you're doing has to be based in data that logically makes sense. Reason, if you can't explain it, you shouldn't be doing it. And the pursuit of happiness.

Shouldn't we be out there having some fun? That's what this is supposed to be all about.

Adam Katz
And figuring out how to get an octopus in this interview, right?

Jacob Davis
You know, ups, downs, left and right.

Adam Katz
I love that.

Jacob Davis
We've got to do it.

Adam Katz
The pursuit of happiness. The new way to win in media is going to be just get in a room. What are we doing that's taking too fast and too slow? And then the pursuit of happiness.

Jacob Davis
Start making decisions that make people happier. You want to know what makes people happier?

Not doing monotonous work. Not doing stuff that they easily believe could be done by someone else or something else. So let's get that type of work out and let's let people be creative around the solutions that we should be deploying on behalf of the clients we serve.

Adam Katz
I love that. What about you? Do people not know outside of work that you want people to know that makes you...

Jacob Davis
What do people not know? Well, you recently learned I have three children. So I'm an unbelievably proud husband, proud parent.

Adam Katz
How old are the kids?

Jacob Davis
I've got a 10-year-old, a five-year-old and a three-year-old.

Adam Katz
Wow. Do they get along?

Depends on the day. Normally two of the three gang up on the third. And it changes like a triangle each and every day, which is a wonderful thing.

You had no idea when you looked at your parents as a child and you really thought about when they looked at you and they made that look and you didn't really understand it. And now being a parent, I'm like, oh, I get it.

Adam Katz
Got it.

Jacob Davis
You have no idea about your capacity to love until you're in that scenario. So a proud parent, proud husband to an amazing wife who lets me come to New York and have wonderful sessions like this. I coached my five-year-old daughter's soccer team.

Adam Katz
Wow.

Jacob Davis
And as a collegiate athlete playing soccer there's nothing more rewarding.

Adam Katz
What did you play?

Jacob Davis
So I was a right midfielder when I played. And my daughter now is playing everywhere.

Adam Katz
Where did you play?

Jacob Davis
I played at Landmark College and then I transferred to Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Adam Katz
Of course.

Jacob Davis
So it's…

Adam Katz
I was just by Poughkeepsie this weekend.

Jacob Davis
Well, what'd you think? Beautiful on the Hudson, right?

Adam Katz
Yeah. I mean, I went to sleepaway camp up there, so I understand the world up there.

Jacob Davis
Were you back at the camp for some reason?

Adam Katz
Yes. Yes.

Jacob Davis
Did you forget something and you had to go back for it?

Adam Katz
I forgot something like 24 years ago. Yeah, yeah.

Jacob Davis
It was time.

Adam Katz
I buried in the woods and went and got it. No, it was actually showing my kids a rookie day or whatever they call it.

Jacob Davis
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam Katz
Have them check it out. So I know. So when you coach, how do you think about coaching your kid versus the other kids?

Jacob Davis
Well, there's only one kid on that field who calls me dad, so that's a little bit different. And I think the real intention is that you ensure that each person is being met where they are from a development standpoint.

Adam Katz
Very similar to how you look at work.

Jacob Davis
I think about work in the same way, but my end goal as a coach or as someone who has employees on their team, I'm not interested in making them better employees. I have no interest in it at all. I've said it to every person I've ever interviewed.

I will say it publicly here. I am not interested in making you better employees. I am interested in making you better people.

And if I can do that and you treat people better and you walk out of this with a better experience, inherently you will be a happier person. You will be a person that is better to others and you will get more out of your colleagues because they will understand that if they fall, you're going to be there to back them up.

Adam Katz
I love that. And that's a very sports mentality.

Jacob Davis
It's exactly a sports mentality.

Adam Katz
Did your parents coach you growing up too or…

Jacob Davis
My dad coached me until, but had never played soccer.

Adam Katz
Ever?

Never. Had never played soccer. And so growing up just outside of Washington, DC, we had the United Nations of soccer players.

I had Bulgarians, I had Greeks, I had Albanians, I had people, I had Kenyans, I had Egyptians, Jordanians. So the beautiful thing for me is that was our melting pot.

Adam Katz
And you had Freddie Adu back then.

Jacob Davis
Freddie Adu played at DC United for us.

Adam Katz
He absolutely did.

Jacob Davis
He was a 15-year-old too.

Adam Katz
I remember that.

Jacob Davis
Unbelievable.

Adam Katz
Because when I was at College Park, Maryland, I remember people talking about Freddie Adu in the area. What a guy that didn't make it, huh?

Jacob Davis
I mean, he certainly outkicked the coverage. He had expectations as a 15-year-old that most people don't get until many years later with a lot of money behind him. But being a College Park guy, you guys had Abe Thompson, one of the best soccer players to ever come out of Virginia, who played at Maryland.

And they were a national championship team.

Adam Katz
You know, it's interesting. You never think about that pressure that LeBron, Bryce Harper and the fact that those guys actually made it happen.

Jacob Davis
I feel it every day in advertising. I think of what we do as pretty much being like LeBron and Bryce Harper. Not with the talent, but certainly with the pressure.

Adam Katz
I love that. I love that. What else do you want the audience to know about the future of Crossmedia that you haven't been able to talk about yet?

Jacob Davis
I couldn't be more bullish on what's possible. I think that we have tremendously large aspirations as an organization. I think our fundamental truths will always be there, as I mentioned, trust, reason, pursuit of happiness.

It will ground us forever. And so if, as we seek out partnership with any brand out there, we're aligned on strategic values and we're aligned on what's most interesting to them and to us, I think the sky's the limit. I think we've are a founder owned, founder led company with no outside investment, which is tremendously empowering because we can make decisions for what's right for us.

We don't have anyone to go ask. And so when we start to think about what, you know, which horses we should back, what partnerships that we should be striking, the question is only how does this best serve our clients? And because of that, because there's no other thumb on the scale, there's never been a better time to be an independent.

Adam Katz
So at this point, what do you think, you know, knowing that, what do you think makes you guys lose when you do?

Jacob Davis
I think that there are a couple of things. I can't sometimes beat people on rates. You know, like I don't buy television at the scale of a holding company.

I just don't.

Adam Katz
So, you know, it's all about scale and rates.

Jacob Davis
It can become that. It can become that because there are. And while we are global, we are not global in the same way that certain other companies are.

Right. I don't while I can buy I currently buy in 120 countries. Right.

I don't have boots in the ground in every single one of those countries. And so if you desperately need someone who can buy media in Mauritania and they live in the country, I don't have that resource. But some of my competitors do.

Like when I was at Dentsu, that was one of the things that we had available. And so we've had to be very creative in the ways that we support clients who truly have an interest there to start to separate what does that capability provide and enable for you that you otherwise wouldn't have if we did it with a model that's more similar to what we do. So when I think about, you know, those opportunities that haven't gone our way, in some cases, it's strategic fit and there's mutual. We both kind of go, this doesn't feel right. And we both walked away from it. I think that's a tremendously good thing.

Adam Katz
It is.

Jacob Davis
Because what ends up happening is…

Adam Katz
The relationship erodes anyway.

Jacob Davis
Exactly. But a lot of these people, we have relationships that extend, you know, further and far beyond.

And whether it's with pitch consultants or it's with that end client who eventually moves and becomes the CMO somewhere else, they remember what they knew our strengths were and they come to us and say, are those still your strengths? Tell me what you've been up to. We've had numerous clients come and we've won them in those ways where they went.

The legacy brand that I was working for wasn't right for what you guys can do. But now that I'm at this new place, we can truly recognize the tremendous value that you have. Some of our best relationships for sure.

Adam Katz
I love that. What do you want to close with to tell everyone that's next for Crossmedia that people don't know?

Jacob Davis
What's next for Crossmedia?

Adam Katz
What are you going to break for the world today?

Jacob Davis
Oh, what am I going to break?

These are big questions. These are the heavy hitters. I think the things that are tremendously interesting become the combination of the partners that we seek that are external but are not the, you know, the big five ad platforms.

But all of those halo partners around them that have said, we know how to be better. We know how to be faster. We know how to be smarter.

And we know how to bolt onto that capability. We're not looking to replace it. We're looking to add on to it and enhance it to give you a disproportionate advantage.

I love those partnerships and I love the dreamers that we have within our own teams who are constantly coming day in and day out saying, how could we be doing this better? How can I be better? How can I support my teammates better?

So in terms of what am I breaking today? It's that we continue to be making strides to be a better company every single day. And I go every day in inspired.

I get to wear fancy suits like this and fancy shirts like this and have a tremendously good job representing the interests of so many incredible people.

Adam Katz
That's awesome. Well, I got nothing else after that.

Jacob Davis
There we go.

Adam Katz
Just drop your mic and let's walk off. Thank you for joining us today.

Jacob Davis
Absolutely.