If there’s one buzzword Jay Friedman would pay money to never hear again, it’s “brand safety.”
Technically, that’s a buzz phrase, but fair enough.
Not that brand safety isn’t important; it is, said Friedman, who stepped down as CEO of digital marketing services agency Goodway Group earlier this month, handing the reins to Chief Growth Officer Paul Frampton-Calero.
Friedman, a longtime puller of zero punches, is staying on as a strategic advisor to the company.
In Friedman’s view, the problem with brand safety isn’t the concept itself but the way it’s been applied.
“Brand safety has been botched to the point where it’s not helping marketers,” Friedman said. “I don’t think most of the verification vendors out there are actually doing a whole lot to help brands be safe.”
He likened the protection marketers get from brand safety tech to that of a home alarm system but less reliable.
“A home alarm system doesn’t prevent someone from breaking in; it just lets you know when something’s happened,” Friedman said. “But then imagine if your alarm only went off one out of every 20 times someone broke in. You wouldn’t pay for that.”
AdExchanger caught up with Friedman for more hot takes.
AdExchanger: You’ve been with Goodway in various roles for nearly two decades, including as CEO for the past two and a half years. Why leave day-to-day operations?
JAY FRIEDMAN: Every leader should consistently look at themselves and ask, “Am I the best person to lead now and for the future?” In many ways, I still check a lot of the boxes, but I also think it’s important to create space for the next generation of leadership. And this is especially true as we transition to an era of AI and we need to be more consultative than executional.
What was your proudest moment as CEO and which moment was your most difficult? The two rounds of layoffs couldn’t have been easy.
We’ve had business achievements, like winning important clients and cultural achievements, like being on Ad Age’s Best Places to Work list. But we’ve also done things that had an impact on the industry, like being early to recognize that SPO needed to happen.
But yes, you’re right, the most difficult moments are when you have to communicate with your team during times of uncertainty. Whether it’s that the economy has softened or that demand for higher-paid knowledge workers has softened or that AI needs to be integrated into the workforce and we don’t know yet exactly what that means – none of those messages is fun to deliver.
Now let’s remove your filter. What’s the most ridiculous topic of conversation in ad tech right now?
Can I choose seven? Seriously, though, it would have to be curation. Picking good inventory and buying it – I mean, that’s literally an agency’s job, but now there are third-party companies that do that.
Think of it like this: If you went to a grocery store and there was so much bad produce that you had to hire a third-party company to go through it to find the good stuff, you just wouldn’t go to that grocery store anymore.
That’s why I think the whole curation thing is absurd.
You’re at an industry conference and you look down at the agenda. You see a session on X topic and it causes you to roll your eyes in annoyance. What’s the topic?
Anything about supply path at this point. We don’t need DSPs and SSPs; we need one unit. That can be Magnite or PubMatic developing for the buy side or The Trade Desk developing for the sell side. I’m not siding with one or the other; I’m just saying we don’t need two hops.
Most basic hygiene practices can solve for all supply path problems, and we don’t need a panel of experts to explain that to people. Just use an inclusion list.
There’s a lot to be cynical about in this industry, but what’s something cool in ad tech that excites you?
AI and creative. One person being able to make 100 versions of a video in four hours or whatever isn’t what’s exciting, though; it’s the fact that AI will raise the bar for what actually counts as great creative.
And then there’s also whatever happens with Google over the next couple of years. The antitrust trials could create a new dynamic in the ecosystem. There will be winners and losers, but if at least there’s the possibility of more competition, then that’s exciting.
Sticking with Google, you testified during the ad tech antitrust trial. Is the verdict too late to make a difference?
It’s not too late and it’s still worth pursuing, because the web is still a thing. Long-form content still exists. Not everybody is watching 20-second cat videos all the time, and so it’s absolutely worth remedying the web.
We need competition in the ad server space.
What do you have against 20-second cat videos?
I have nothing against any form of media so long as we don’t devolve to a point where the primary form of content consumed online doesn’t necessarily advance society.
Whether that’s a 22-second cat video or a four-second video of a home run in baseball, the normalization of clips and highlights is molding our brains, and we should be careful about that.
Back to the Google trial – which was definitely long-form content! – what was your experience of being on the stand?
Well, Ari Paparo said it was like listening to NPR at .5 speed.
The way I saw it, my job wasn’t to make the case for either side, but simply to answer all questions truthfully, although I know not everybody took that approach. There were people who really wanted one outcome or another. But in terms of what it was like, it was a fascinating lesson in market dynamics, if nothing else.
I have to ask this. Do you think twice now before posting online? During your testimony, Google’s lawyers tried to trip you up by referring to stuff you’d shared on Quora nine years before.
When they asked me about it, I barely remembered that Quora exists!
I mean, look, I post on LinkedIn all the time, and that’s public. I don’t think twice about posting publicly, in that I’m sharing opinions and thought provocations of the moment – and I’m not always right even six months later let alone nine years later.
The value of platforms like that is the ability to think out loud, share thoughts, get feedback and form new opinions. To try and use that as evidence in a legal proceeding – I think that was a stretch.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
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