Media.net’s Terrence Moduthagam on Smarter Curation & Human-Centered AI

In this episode of Breaking Through the Mayhem live from Adweek, host Adam Katz sits down with Terrence Moduthagam, VP at Media.net, to reflect on a year of partnership, cultural alignment, and shared innovation between their companies. Terrence leads the curation business for Media.net Exchange — a nearly 2,000-person, product-led organization shaping the future of sell-side media targeting.

Terrence explains how curation is evolving beyond data signals alone — toward pairing intelligence with culturally relevant moments that matter to real people. He discusses why collaboration with partners like Sightly has helped unlock growth through culturally aligned activation and stronger marketplace influence.

The conversation dives deep into:

• AI’s true role in advertising — not replacing people, but elevating creativity and decision-making
• How democratized knowledge is expanding global maturity and leveling access to innovation
• The importance of product experimentation and tinkering to drive what’s next
• How Media.net builds global culture and scale while still operating like a scrappy startup

Terrence also shares his passion for mentorship — helping others break into the industry — and how teaching empathy to his daughters keeps him grounded, optimistic, and focused on what matters most.

This episode is an inside look at where ad tech, culture, and humanity meet — and how leaders like Terrence are steering the industry into its next wave of intelligent change.

TRANSCRIPT

Adam Katz
Welcome back to Breaking Through the Mayhem. It's been an amazing day live here at Adweek. We have another amazing guest.

Tell us who we have here.

Terrence Moduthagam
Hey, everyone. My name is Terrence Meduthigam. I'm the vice president of Media.net.

I run the curation business over at Media.net Exchange.

Adam Katz
That's awesome. What brought you here? Why don't you say yes to come join me?

Terrence Moduthagam
This is interesting. I mean, this brings you back to exactly a year ago. I met Annalise, who works for you, of course, precisely a year ago at the Virgin Hotel.

We were kicking off a partnership, understanding exactly how we could connect, work together, discuss ideas, be innovative. And now, a year later, we're here again. So yeah, I'm happy to come back.

Adam Katz
That's awesome. I feel like our companies work so well together because it's very similar cultures.

Terrence Moduthagam
100%.

Adam Katz
What's been your experience so far in the partnership? And what do you want to tell the world about it?

Terrence Moduthagam
I think you touched upon something that's really, really important, right? Culturally aligned companies, right? From individuals that take things from zero to one, to individuals that have no ego, that are willing to roll up their sleeves and get in the weeds is what we've experienced working with every layer of Sightly, right?

And that pretty much reflects our own ethos and culture when it comes to Media.net. So it's been nice. Over the last year, I think we've made tremendous progress in terms of working backwards from areas that we want to help, initiatives that we want to grow and scale.

And it's been nothing but fantastic. It's been great.

Adam Katz
Wow. That's amazing to hear. What do you think is the next iteration of this curation business?

Obviously, you've been doing this for a long time and curation is having its moment. What do you think is the next evolution right now?

Terrence Moduthagam
So I think the idea of sell-side targeting is nothing new, right? I think that many companies have been doing this for a while, but realizing that there's certain aspects to just sell-side targeting and data-driven marketing is honestly the most important thing, right? Going past that and working with partners like Sightly has helped support the idea of looking at culturally intelligent moments, right?

How do we pair the data with opportunities and moments that are relevant to the consumers and what their preferences are? And I think that's where we're trying to take this. Not only give as much signal and as much data that we can to intelligently bid, but more an understanding exactly, okay, wait, what are those moments that are particularly important to the consumer, right?

And I think that's where we're trying to achieve a lot of growth and scale. So when it comes time, going back to your last question, what are those partners that are aligned with those mutual goals? I mean, Sightly is on a short list of a number of agencies that help support that growth, right?

And it's great. It's wonderful.

Adam Katz
You know, I didn't realize media.net was so big. You know, the other day I was playing around and I was just throwing it in our new world of search, media.net, and I was like, damn. How big are you guys?

How many people do you interact with? How do you navigate that?

Terrence Moduthagam
It's nuts. And I think that it's a question often I don't get enough, right? To go back to what media.net is. From an ethos standpoint, it is like your scrappy lean startup that gets stuff done, right? However, we are a 2,000 person company, like close to 2,000, x amount of engineers, like 600 engineers in India. We're a very product-led organization.

I think that when it comes to working with product organizations, media.net sits at the top of those organizations I've supported over the years because we're constantly trying to figure out exactly how to innovate, right? And it's not just initiation, the planning, the testing, but really diving deep in terms of the details and working backwards from what the customer wants is something that we focused on. So at that scale with 2,000 people globally, you tend to go through various shifts and changes as the company evolves.

And I think that's what we work on constantly to navigate and try and figure out. So it's a work in progress.

Adam Katz
What are your favorite offices you've been to for media.net?

Terrence Moduthagam
Oh, to be honest with you, I've been around the United States. In the last four years that I've worked at media.net, I've yet to go back to India in spite of having so much family there. So in the next couple of months, I'm going to India to spend a lot of time in Mumbai, which I've heard is an absolutely fun office, right?

And I think in spite of -

Adam Katz
How many people are in Mumbai for the company?

Terrence Moduthagam
We have about 600 engineers, about, I think close to 1,200, 1,300 people now.

Adam Katz
Wow.

Terrence Moduthagam
So it's great. We have obviously a lot of folks coming back and forth with India all the time, a lot of folks in town right now that are enjoying ADweek. And I think that speaks to media.net as a whole, right?

Just giving experiences, right? Giving experiences to all employees globally to help them understand, okay, what's going on in other areas, other markets, and how do we develop new solutions and let ideas lead the conversations or innovations.

Adam Katz
What are you trying to learn this week that has nothing to do with media.net?

Terrence Moduthagam
Oh, nothing to do. That's a great question. I think along the lines of what it means to be...

Okay, so the application of AI and data is there, right? We're seeing a huge amount of money pour into AI. I think that there's opportunities to revalue from that.

I think like 90% of CEOs have seen returns supposedly. I think I'd like to see what goes beyond that, right? I think we're at a point where people are understanding, okay, there's from a creative optimization standpoint, activation measurement, AI is going to have a material impact and consequence in the way we do everything in terms of media buying.

I'd like to see some thought leadership in terms of where we're going after that, right? What it looks like X amount of years out now that it's embedded in our everyday operations, right?

Adam Katz
And do you mean like how work's going to look? Do you mean how people are going to be affected? What kind of goes through your mind there?

Knowing how good of a guy you are, how do you see that playing out and what do you mean by that?

Terrence Moduthagam
Yeah. So my career in the last X amount of years has been at the intersection of partnerships and product management. So I've always been working with product, always been working with people to help move solutions forward, right?

I love that about my job. I actually am thrilled about that. When it comes to the idea of AI and how we talk about the disruption with people in workforces, truth be told, I just don't think we're going to see a ton of that right now, right?

The way I think about this is that I really do believe that this goes back to a comment that a friend of mine made about 10 years ago. I'll give a shout out to him, Brian Simpkins, a guy I used to work with a long time ago. He said that, listen, if you're in an airplane, airplanes can go A to B without much direction, right?

But you still want to pilot in that seat, right? And I think that speaks to what I'm thinking about in terms of how AI is going to be applied meaningfully, right? There's still that human element in terms of helping drive and the creative thought behind advertising that's always going to be important to the space, right?

And yeah, I'm excited to see where that takes us.

Adam Katz
Wow. I mean, like that's a great point. I mean, yesterday, I don't know if you saw, but not going to knock the company, but there was a huge problem where a company did a report for the government and there was a 400 million issue.

Yeah, I think the problem is like where the human element has to come in is to create no negligence and also like care. So the question is like, how do you keep that care as this also moves? And I feel like you're well-positioned in the way you think.

How do you currently use AI in your day to day?

Terrence Moduthagam
I mean, so the idea of application around AI has never been anything new to advertising in general. We have various centers of excellence around helping support labs and new ideas and innovations to iterate, test, and learn what's going to work and what's not going to work, right? Because I'm hopeful that we find things that are going to work and learn from that.

Adam Katz
Are you teaching yourself how to build agents right now?

Terrence Moduthagam
I'm having fun with this. Like we have a whole team that's fun just tinkering away and so forth. And I love it.

I get in the weeds a lot and this goes back to Media.net as a whole. To give you the latitude and runway to play with things, right? To learn, to test, to experiment and see exactly how it fits the problems that we're trying to solve for.

Yeah. So I enjoy this a lot. It's fun.

Adam Katz
Wow. That's so cool. I mean, the other thing I was very curious about, obviously with your background now, you're in New York, Chicago, India, like where do you see AI advancing in terms of like world growth?

Do you think it's going to be much more equal than it usually is? Or how do you see that playing out?

Terrence Moduthagam
Honestly, I think that comes down to the organizations that you're a part of, right? How much they're leaned in, right? Organizations like Media.net and hopefully all the other ad tech companies that we're talking to, right?

They tend to lean in and be more focused on the idea of moving the agenda forward, trying to solve for interesting problems versus not having some level of pushback, right? I think that to answer your question more pointedly, we're going to see a level of more leaning in, right? Across the board, across more markets.

I don't think there's one stronger market than other, to tell you the truth. I'm excited about how our teams grow.

Adam Katz
That's interesting because I think that's going to level up things, whereas other times in the world, that's the one thing I've been seeing. You'll have countries that were behind technology. This feels like it has more of a chance of creating a level of equality with it.

Terrence Moduthagam
Yeah. It's essentially democratized knowledge, right? Whereas before, if you talk about the programmatic maturity over the years, over the last 20 years, let's say, the programmatic maturity has had challenges because of learning, development, access to knowledge, right?

I think that AI and a lot of the LLMs that we all work with on a day-to-day basis have democratized knowledge to a point where you can actually take advantage of information faster and apply it more meaningfully in a careful way, right? I mean, I think that that's just as important, right? Making sure that organizations put controls and processes in place around making sure that things don't break, right?

And we're working towards a good outcome.

Adam Katz
I love that. What do you want people to know about you that they don't?

Terrence Moduthagam
Know about me. I spend a lot of my time mentoring a lot of people. I think that in this timeframe that we're in, there's a lot of variables and I spend a good chunk of my time helping individuals out, whether it's revamping their resume or helping them get a job or something as simple as putting them in touch with someone in my network.

Adam Katz
That's so cool.

Terrence Moduthagam
And I'm proud of that, right? And I hope more people do that and like lean into help and so forth. I think the one thing that I'm most proud about is like teaching that to my daughters, right?

Like my daughters are 11 and 8 now, and it's nice to see them sort of take on that same level of empathy and care for helping other people out. And it's nice. I think that's what I'm most proud of.

Adam Katz
That's awesome. How do you stay so positive in this mayhem of a world?

Terrence Moduthagam
Well, it's funny that, yeah, the name of your podcast, Breaking Through the Mayhem, that's where that works. You know, I honestly do think like we were talking about this before the podcast, like family is a challenge, but it's also a blessing, right? I think constantly like going back and keeping that grounded and understanding like why I'm doing what I do, right?

And constantly evaluating, okay, what are the check boxes, if you will, that are important to me? Help me stay focused, right? Like purposeful, what's challenging, what's good for my family, right?

It's something that is constantly helping me maintain that level of focus and move forward. So yeah, I think that helps me get through the mayhem.

Adam Katz
I love that. And I'll close this. Who would you go to, if you could have a dinner with one person who's not dead and not in your family, who would it be?

Terrence Moduthagam
Not dead and not in my family. That's a tough one. Okay.

Oh, actually I do have one. So like I said earlier, I come from a family of teachers. My parents, my wife is somewhat a teacher.

Adam Katz
My wife's a teacher, so there you go.

Terrence Moduthagam
And I love them. My youngest daughter has special needs and she has an army of teachers that are supportive. So over the years, I've become a huge fan of Sal Khan.

So the founder of Khan Academy, I think that he had a very humble start to how he actually developed a product for his family member. And now it's scaled to a level where it's had a ridiculous impact globally, right? To a point where I'm very trusting of his products, software skills, services that he offers to kids for free.

And I think that meeting a person like that and having like an hour worth of dinner and drinks would be something that would be invaluable.

Adam Katz
In true your fashion, closing it with compassion, empathy, and also being a part of things. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Terrence Moduthagam
We appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you for having me.

I appreciate the time.

Adam Katz
Thank you.