Paramount was three companies for a long time. Now under Skydance ownership, Jay Askinasi is helping build one. As CRO, his focus is pairing the most powerful IP in Hollywood with a data-driven approach that most traditional media companies have never been able to pull off. One Paramount for the First Time: Paramount Pictures, CBS, and Viacom operated separately for decades. For the first time they are running as one company, and Jay says that unlocks something most competitors simply cannot match. 🎬 Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley: Silicon Valley has been pushing into Hollywood for 15 years. Jay believes Paramount can balance the best of both worlds better than anyone. 💡 The Flywheel Nobody Else Has: Theatrical. AVOD. SVOD. Cable. Broadcast. Not every piece of content was meant for every platform, and Paramount has them all. 📺 Storytelling Still Matters. A Lot.: Great IP, meaningful moments, and well-lit storytelling are still rare and valuable. Jay says Paramount is fortunate to have a lot of it. ✨ Twelve Years as a Caddy: Jay spent 12 years caddying as a kid. Work ethic, interactions with seasoned executives, a worldview. His son has been informed he will not have a choice about doing the same. ⛳

Alice Ma founded Mad Realities in 2021 with one question: if MTV was created today and lived on social, what would that look like. The answer generated a billion organic views last year and a new partnership with Fox Creator Studios for a slate of six shows including a dating show and a cooking competition. A Billion Views. Zero Paid Spend: Mad Realities launched social-first shows that generated a billion views last year purely through organic virality. Alice helped write the playbook for social-first series before anyone else was calling it that. 🚀 Fox Creator Studios Just Came Calling: Mad Realities just announced a partnership with Fox Creator Studios, bringing six new shows to life over the next six months including a dating show and a cooking competition. Stay tuned. 📺 Gen Alpha Is Allergic to Your Ads: Gen Z will tolerate a bad ad. Gen Alpha will just leave. Alice says advertising has to find an entertainment middle ground or it will lose the next generation entirely. 🎯 Her 13-Year-Old Brother Is the Research: Four hours of Roblox every day during the pandemic. Everything on 2x speed. Constantly scrolling. Alice watched her youngest brother and understood exactly where entertainment was going. 💡 You Will Need to Speak All Three Languages: In 18 months Alice says it will be obvious. To make hit IP and stay competitive, brands will have to speak social, interactive, and entertainment fluently. All three. 🌍

DIRECTV Advertising brought together some of the sharpest minds in CTV for a collective conversation about what premium really means right now. Live sports, professionally produced content, authenticated signals, who's winning? Premium Means Different Things to Different People: DIRECTV Advertising, Pinterest, StackAdapt, and DeepIntent all came in with different definitions and the conversation that followed was exactly what the industry needed. 📺 Live Sports Is the Gold Standard: Every voice in the room pointed to live sports as the clearest example of what premium content actually looks like in CTV right now. Gregory Joseph made it personal: if you want to understand premium, start with the Jets. 🏈 Professionally Produced Content Sets the Bar: StackAdapt defines premium through the quality of the content itself. If it was built with craft and intention, audiences and advertisers both respond. 🎯 Authenticated Signals Are the Edge: DIRECTV Advertising's authenticated data approach gives advertisers contextual targeting precision that most CTV environments simply cannot match. 💡 Signal Fidelity and Transparency Are Non-Negotiable: Without clean signals and full transparency, premium is just a word. The brands winning in CTV are the ones demanding both. 🤖

Breakaway Music Festival started in a dorm room and just cracked the Big Apple. Adam Lynn brought Tiësto to Under the K Bridge for the first ever Breakaway New York, and the crowd showed up in full force. IRL is the term of 2026 and Breakaway is the proof. From a Dorm Room to the Big Apple: Breakaway started with college tours in Ann Arbor and grew to arenas, then festivals, then 13 markets. New York is the latest and most exciting stop yet. 🎵 IRL Is the Term of 2026: Adam Lynn says he could not be happier because he happens to be in the IRL business. You cannot fake a real interaction and everyone at Breakaway New York felt that. 🎶 Brands Cannot Fake IRL: More brands are gravitating toward live experiences because digital alone is not enough. Breakaway is in the right place at the right time and the energy proves it. 🎯 Tiësto. The Legend. The Night: A sold-out crowd. The most iconic venue in New York City right now. And the legend himself on stage. Some nights just deliver. 🏆 Next Year Is Already Coming: More markets. International cities. A lot more Breakaway on the way. Adam Lynn is just getting started. 🌍

Brian Carley taught himself design making band posters and album art before landing at an ad agency and never looking back. Now as CCO at Razorfish, the agency that built the first banner ad ever made, he is focused on one thing: applying craft and human thinking on top of AI to get results nobody expected. Craft Plus AI Equals Incredible: Brian's bet is simple. Once you understand how to use AI, the question becomes how much craft and human thinking you can layer on top. That is where the really incredible results live. 🎯 Razorfish Built the First Banner Ad Ever: Three years in a row as Most Innovative Agency in Campaign magazine, and it all started with a legacy of being first. Brian is making sure that continues. 🏆 AI Didn't Build the Game. It Taught Someone How: Brian watched a team member build an entire video game using AI not to do the work but to explain how to do it. That distinction is everything. 💡 Be Weirder: Brian spent years being cautious about the ideas in his head before realizing that was exactly what he was being paid for. His advice to anyone: be okay with being as weird as you know you are. 🎸 From Band Posters to the CCO Chair: He taught himself design making posters and T-shirts for his band. An internship followed. Then a job. Then he never looked back. 🎵

Jeff Miller went from Ogilvy to Snap to PepsiCo before landing somewhere that felt mission-driven. At Anduril Industries, the defense tech company rewriting what national security looks like, he is making the case that storytelling matters in defense and that conviction is the one thing AI cannot mass produce. Conviction Is the Only Thing That Breaks Through: Content is already democratized and AI is making it exponential. Jeff says the one thing that is actually scarce right now is a clear point of view and the courage to hold it even when it is not popular. 🎯 Defense Has Never Told Its Story. Anduril Does: Legacy defense companies have historically said there is no value in narrative. Jeff strongly disagrees. Anduril tells its story with pride and transparency so citizens and allies understand where their investment is going. 🇺🇸 Modern Defense Looks Like the Commercial World: Anduril is building military capabilities rooted in advanced technology and greater precision, closer to what you would expect from a commercial tech company than a traditional defense contractor. 💡 From Ogilvy to National Defense: American Express, Motorola, Snap, Cruise, PepsiCo. Everything Jeff learned led him here. Two years in and he says he has never felt more like he is making a real impact. 🚀 He Plays Soccer Like He Is Lionel Messi: Three days a week, pickup soccer in his 40s. His dream is to one day coach an 11s team. Maybe even the World Cup. A pipe dream, of course. ⚽

Bridget Evans went from PR to Gary Vaynerchuk's agency to Amazon to Meta before landing at Spotify, where she is now leading business marketing at one of the most culturally connected platforms on earth. Her conviction is simple: audio is about to become the most important part of every media plan. Audio Is the Next Frontier: AI is changing how people interact with sound, from voice memos to work documents to daily playlists. Bridget says audio will become a non-negotiable part of every media plan as voice technology becomes part of daily life. 🎧 Among Fans Is Spotify's New B2B Play: Spotify just launched a B2B campaign featuring Lizzo and Jay Shetty that helps brands understand how to earn the loyalty of deeply engaged fan communities. It is not just advertising. It is participation. 🎵 Reserved Changes the Fan Experience: Spotify's new feature lets top streamers reserve tickets for their favorite artists' tours before anyone else. Bridget calls it exactly what the best fan experience should look like. 🎟️ From PR to the Platform of Culture: Bridget started in PR when Tumblr was blurring the lines between traditional media and social. Every stop, from Gary Vee's agency to Amazon to Meta, prepared her for this moment at Spotify. 🚀 Coffee. Music. Surprise: Every morning Bridget opens Spotify, puts on her daily playlist, and lets it surprise her. She would not start the day any other way. ☕

Heather Conneely wanted to build peace treaties for the United Nations. A cold call to Univision changed everything. Twenty-five years later she is leading multimedia sales at TelevisaUnivision and the momentum has never been stronger. VIX Is One of the Fastest-Growing Streamers: 56% growth year over year and 45 million unduplicated reach. Heather is focused on making sure every advertiser knows what VIX can do. 📺 Vertical Formats Are Changing the Ad Game: Short-form novelas of one to two minutes are driving brand favorability on VIX. Heather saw vertical formats work at Meta and brought that conviction to TelevisaUnivision. 🎬 Custom Micro-Novelas for Brands: TelevisaUnivision is building bespoke micro-novela content for advertisers like Garnier and JCPenney, partnering with Así Studios from the very start. 💡 She Cold-Called Her Way In: Heather wanted to work for the UN. When 9/11 closed that door, she called Univision directly, got an entry-level position, and built a 25-year career from there. 📞 Do It Scared: Trust the process. Lean into your strengths. And if you are scared, do it anyway. The advice Heather would give herself at the start is the same thing she tells everyone now. 💪

Guy Tytunovich combined Defense Intelligence and digital advertising to build CHEQ, the only company in the world that can tell you entity, identity, and intent in real time. His data does things Claude and ChatGPT simply cannot, and he says the inflection point has not even arrived yet. The Only Company That Knows Who Is Really There: CHEQ is the only company that can identify entity, identity, and intent in real time. Is it a human, a bot, or an AI agent? Is it who it says it is? And what does it actually want? 🔍 Guy Says the Numbers Are Bananas: Analysts are projecting that more than half of internet transactions will soon be completed by non-human users. Guy calls it bananas and says the complexity of sorting legitimate from illegitimate is only growing. 🤖 His Data Builds What General AI Cannot: CHEQ sits on a pool of proprietary data that compounds every second of every day. That unique advantage lets them build things no general AI model can replicate. 💡 From Israeli Intelligence to Ad Tech: Guy joined Israeli Defense Intelligence at 18, pivoted to a digital ad agency across the Middle East and North Africa, then combined cybersecurity with marketing technology to build CHEQ. 🎯 His Daughters Think He Works with Robots: Guy is a self-described pushover girl dad. His seven-year-old took away one thing from learning about his job: Dad's the boss and I want to be a boss one day too. 👧

Michelle Monaco joined Wheel a year ago to fix one of healthcare's most persistent problems: women are being asked to carry the entire burden of their own care, and the system was built to let that happen. As head of R&D, she is using AI to make clinicians superhuman and building true data portability so patients never have to walk into another appointment carrying a virtual folder full of their own files. Making Clinicians Superhuman: Wheel is aggregating patient context from health records, wearables, and AI front ends and packaging it so clinicians can provide excellent care faster and with full support. 🤖 GLP-1s Are Opening Unexpected Doors: Women are coming to virtual care for GLP-1 therapy and while they are there, conversations about perimenopause, menopause, sleep, and cardiometabolic health are following. Michelle calls it a flavor of virtual primary care the industry has been waiting for. 💊 Women Are the Glue. That Has to Change: Today women are responsible for stitching together their own care journeys across every provider in the ecosystem. Wheel is building true data portability so patients do not have to carry that burden alone. 🌍 More Data Than Ever. Harder to Navigate Than Ever: Between wearables, labs, search history, and multiple care providers, the volume of patient context is overwhelming. Wheel is solving for how both patients and clinicians navigate it. 📊 Coffee Is for Yogis: Michelle's family rule is a daily yoga snack before the coffee. Her personal non-negotiable is a mental health mile outside every single day. She started it for physical health and found the mental health benefits were the real gift. 🧘

Dr. Elina Berglund Scherwitzl was a particle physicist before she decided the birth control options available to her were not good enough and built her own. Thirteen years later Natural Cycles is the first FDA-cleared medical device for birth control and she is just getting started. A Particle Physicist Who Built Her Own Birth Control: Elina spent years doing physics before founding Natural Cycles out of a personal need for something better. The science background turned out to be exactly what the problem required. 🔬 Decoding Your Cycle While You Sleep: Natural Cycles measures biomarkers through a wearable you sleep with and decodes your cycle and your hormones. Birth control, pregnancy planning, postpartum, and now perimenopause. 📱 Accessible by Design: Elina made a deliberate choice on pricing so that Natural Cycles would be within reach for most women. Because it is FDA-cleared for contraception, insurance covers it without a co-pay. 💡 Women's Health Is Still Catching Up: Underfunded. Under-researched. Elina is building into that gap at Natural Cycles and not slowing down. 🌍 Stress Less. Enjoy More: She built something extraordinary and admits she stressed through a lot of it. Her advice: worry less and enjoy the moments you are actually in. 🌿

Retail media has a fragmentation problem. Hundreds of networks, different measurement, different attribution, and brands drowning in complexity. Ali Miller is building the fix at Instacart, where one platform now powers advertising across 2,200 retailers and 310 partners. Retail Media Has a Fragmentation Problem. Instacart Is Fixing It: Hundreds of retail media networks with different buying platforms, measurement, and attribution. Instacart built the solution: one place to buy, showing everywhere your products are sold. 📊 From Lower Funnel to Full Funnel: Instacart started with sponsored products and strong measurement. Now they are expanding into discovery, inspiration, and powering other retailers' own retail media networks with the same technology. 🎯 The Convergence Nobody Can Ignore: Chief commercial officers and chief marketing officers are coming together. Discovery, media, and commerce are converging. Ali says the next six months will teach the industry more about AI in shopping than the last few years combined. 🤖 17 Years at Google. Then a Phone Call Changed Everything: Ali thought she might stay at Google for a couple of years. Seventeen years later Instacart came calling and she finally had a reason to leave. 🚀 Moonlighting as a Violinist: Ali plays in a symphony and has kept it up through the craziness of her career. She thinks orchestra playing has a masterclass in teamwork and listening. She is not wrong. 🎻

Sarah Robertson wrote her dissertation on neural networks before most people knew what AI was. Now as CPO at Experian, she is building the data infrastructure that the industry runs on, and she has a simple test for whether any brand should be using consumer data: if you cannot explain it to your grandma, you probably should not be doing it. The Grandma Test for Data: If you cannot explain to your grandmother what you are doing with her data, Sarah says you should seriously reconsider whether you should be doing it at all. Trust is the foundation and Experian stands on it. 🔒 Identity Is the Cornerstone of Every Marketing Decision: Experian is building identity solutions, measurement tools for publishers and brands, geospatial targeting through a product called Worldview, and getting ready for what privacy looks like in an agentic world. 📊 Two Different Generations. One Data Problem: Younger consumers give their data away freely. Older consumers are cautious. Sarah says brands need to stand by what they will do with data across both, and that commitment will only become more important. 💡 She Wrote Her Dissertation on Neural Networks: Before AI was everywhere, Sarah was studying it. Her background in statistics and analytics shaped every product decision she makes today. 🤖 A 20-Pound Inflatable Pool and the Whole Family: The best moment of Sarah's recent life was sitting in a cheap blow-up pool in the garden with her entire family on a sunny afternoon. The dog got in too. Sometimes the smallest things are everything. 🐾

Brian Rappaport built Quan Media Group on a conviction most of the industry has been slow to accept: out-of-home is a measurable channel and the proof is coming fast. From scratch-and-sniff billboards to a bar built inside a billboard for The Rock's tequila brand, Brian is redefining what outdoor advertising can do. Out-of-Home Is Measurable. Full Stop.: Brian is willing to say it on stage to a room full of skeptics. Out-of-home drives conversion, site visitation, app downloads, and brand lift. The tools to prove it exist now and are only getting sharper. 📊 The Billboard That Became a Bar: Quan worked with Teremana tequila to build a fully functioning bar out of a billboard on Abbot Kinney in Venice. Pull a lever, a table drops down, and a bartender is waiting. That is the new frontier of experiential out-of-home. 🍹 Scent, Sound, and the Senses Are Next: Tower 28 has a billboard in Soho that mists you with their product when you press a button. Billie had scratch-and-sniff billboards across Manhattan. Brian says tapping into the senses is where outdoor is going. 🌿 Real-Time Data on Digital Screens: Brands are now pulling live APIs into outdoor screens. World Cup odds displayed in real time across New York City. The digitization of out-of-home is accelerating and Brian is building for where it lands. 📱 Passion, Persistence, and a Tiny Bit of Luck.: Brian built Quan through a relentless community, strong networking, and a lot of determination. The luck part he says was tiny. Everything else was earned. 🎯

Aimee Corso started at a research bench before realizing she was better at communicating science than doing it. That clarity led her to Mirvie, where the company just launched the first test ever to predict preeclampsia before it happens and the momentum in biology-based solutions for women's health is finally building. The First of Its Kind: Mirvie launched the first ever test to predict preeclampsia before it occurs. It is already changing how physicians and patients manage care. 🔬 Women Were Left Out of Science Until 1993: It was not until 1993 that women were included in clinical trials. Aimee connects that history directly to why biology-based solutions are only now catching up. 📊 The Pricing Problem Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud: An OB's time is compensated at lower rates than almost any other specialty. Aimee calls it a cascading effect that has kept women's health undervalued for decades. But it is starting to change. 💡 The Campaign That Got It Right: The Bobbie campaign featuring Cardi B. Beautiful creative, honest content, and a voice that resonated with every mom. Aimee calls it exactly what breakthrough looks like in women's health. 🎨 Life Is a Series of Adventures: Stress less. Stay open to fate. Enjoy the ride. 🌊