Scott Messer is the guy who walks into a chaotic ad tech
situation, surveys the smoldering remains of what once passed for a digital strategy, and without missing a beat, grabs his proverbial fire extinguisher. Think of him as the industry’s fixer, the guy you call when your ad stack is a dumpster fire, your data looks like it's been fed through a wood chipper, and your team is ready to start flipping tables. His career is like a cross between The Martian and Mad Men, except instead of growing potatoes on Mars, he’s solving ad tech
crises and occasionally dealing with executives who’d rather pretend everything’s fine.
It all started in Hollywood—yes, Hollywood, where Scott was on the verge of becoming a big shot at Fox Searchlight. He was one interview away from landing the golden ticket, the rotational program that could’ve launched him into studio exec glory. But instead, Scott found himself in what he describes as a “dumpster fire of an interview,” where, in an existential moment of
cold-induced fog, he answered a question about digital rights management (DRM) with a less-than-optimal “it depends who you are” when the correct answer to a movie studio executive is, of course, “DRM is the greatest thing since sliced bread!” That moment, while it may have ended his Hollywood dreams, set the stage for what would become a storied career in ad tech—Hollywood’s loss, but our gain.
With his movie career derailed, Scott did what any self-respecting MBA
with a background in the entertainment industry would do—he dove headfirst into ad tech. And let’s be honest, while ad tech may not have the glamour of Hollywood, it’s a whole lot more chaotic. But that’s exactly where Scott thrives. From his early days at Demand Media to his current role as a high-profile consultant, Scott’s been putting out fires and navigating ad tech’s ever-changing landscape with the kind of calm efficiency you’d expect from someone who’s been on both sides of the
negotiating table. He’s the guy you call when things are on fire—literally or metaphorically—and you need someone to figure out where the nearest fire extinguisher is.
In the wild world of ad tech, consulting is akin to being a zookeeper in a zoo where the lions are constantly loose, the clowns are trying to juggle flaming chainsaws, and no one’s quite sure where the exits are. For Scott, this chaos is a natural habitat. When asked about his most outrageous “didn’t
see that coming” moment, he recounted the time he was hired to build a data targeting system for a company—only to spend the first few months convincing the company that they even needed the system in the first place. It’s like being hired as a chef and then spending three months convincing the restaurant owner that they should probably invest in a stove. It’s not that they didn’t want the shiny new thing; it’s that they didn’t fully grasp what that shiny new thing would actually do for them.
Scott calls this “internal advocacy”—a fancy way of saying you sometimes have to educate the client before you can actually start the work. And it’s not just about tech; it’s about people, their egos, and their resistance to change. Welcome to the circus.
Speaking of people, Scott’s “ad tech therapy” concept came from the realization that the biggest problems in ad tech are rarely just about technology—they’re about people, processes, and the strange ways in which
companies manage (or fail to manage) both. Ad tech therapy, as Scott explains, is like physical therapy for your digital operations. You go in, assess where the pain points are, and start fixing them—whether those pain points are technological (like a broken targeting system) or human (like the ad ops manager who’s basically doing the job of three people and is one bad day away from walking out the door). It’s not just about fixing the tech stack; it’s about fixing the organizational dysfunction
that’s preventing the company from using that tech effectively.
Now, if you’ve been in ad tech long enough, you’ve probably heard someone say, “We just want to run some ads”—as if running ads is as simple as flipping a switch and watching the money roll in. Scott, of course, has heard this line more times than he can count. It’s particularly common in the world of retail, where companies still think they can just slap a few banner ads on their site and call it a
day. Scott’s job, in these cases, is to break it to them gently: You’re not just a retailer—you’re a publisher. If you’re running ads, you’re in the publishing business now, and that means you’ve got to think like a publisher, which includes dealing with yield, tracking, third-party discrepancies, and a whole bunch of other fun topics that make most marketers’ eyes glaze over.
For Scott, educating retailers to think like publishers is all about helping them
understand the ad tech universe they’ve inadvertently stepped into. Retailers are fantastic at driving sales, but they often have no idea how to optimize ad inventory. Publishers, on the other hand, have spent decades mastering yield optimization and monetizing content. Bridging that gap is Scott’s sweet spot—teaching marketers how to think like publishers and use ad tech tools to maximize their revenue without losing their minds in the process.
But let’s not
forget about the elephant in the room—deal curation. In recent years, deal curation has become the buzzword du jour in ad tech, with everyone treating it like the second coming of programmatic salvation. Scott’s view? There’s definitely gold at the end of that rainbow, but only if you’re doing it right. The old model of curation was basically bulk supply deals that lumped thousands of publishers together, and shocker—they didn’t really move the needle. But the new wave of curation, which focuses
on ID-less, contextual targeting and audience-specific deals, actually has some teeth. It’s all about creating liquidity in the market, making publishers’ data more valuable, and—here’s the kicker—doing it in a way that benefits both the buyer and the seller.
Of course, as with anything in ad tech, there’s always the risk of snake oil salesmen. Some companies are just repackaging the same inventory and calling it curation, but Scott’s got a simple litmus test: If a
curation house is actually driving incremental lift and sharing back data licensing revenue with publishers, then they’re the real deal. If not, they’re just slapping a new label on an old bottle of wine and hoping no one notices.
Let’s be real: Scott Messer doesn’t just have a pulse on the future of ad tech—he’s the guy reading the EKG and telling you whether you need to prep for open-heart surgery. His prediction for the industry? It’s not good news for the faint
of heart. The cookie apocalypse isn’t looming in some distant future; it’s already here. Those third-party cookies that have been the backbone of digital advertising for years are now on life support, and privacy regulations are coming in fast with the proverbial pillow. Scott’s been shouting this from the rooftops for a while now: if publishers don’t adapt—and soon—they’re going to be left holding the bag, while their data-tracking capabilities crumble into dust.
But the cookie disaster is just the opening act. The real chaos comes from the search engines and social media platforms, who’ve decided they’re done playing nice and are hoarding traffic like a dragon sitting on a pile of gold. Meta’s on a mission to keep users on their platforms longer, which means less traffic flowing to publishers. And let’s not even get started on the AI-generated search results and Apple News-like experiences that give users what they want while leaving publishers
fighting over scraps. Publishers are no longer just competing for ad dollars—they’re fighting for eyeballs in an ecosystem designed to keep those eyeballs anywhere but on the open web.
So, what’s the path forward? Scott’s advice to publishers is simple: get creative, or get left behind. This isn’t the time for incremental tweaks to your digital strategy—it’s the time for bold moves. Whether that means leaning into video, experimenting with social platforms, or
finding innovative ways to engage users directly, publishers are going to have to rethink their entire approach to audience monetization. It’s a survival-of-the-fittest situation out there, and the publishers that thrive will be the ones who figure out how to pull a “Jurassic Park” and find a way to evolve—fast.
And then there’s bid enrichment, the latest shiny object in the ad tech playground. It’s a little like the Wild West—exciting, lawless, and occasionally
filled with people doing things that would make a compliance officer break out in hives. Everyone’s scrambling to figure out how to enrich bids with additional data signals, but as with anything shiny and new in ad tech, there’s a dark side. ID laundering, for example—basically swapping out a less valuable identifier for a higher-paying one—is still happening, and it’s about as ethical as a three-card monte game on a street corner. But the chaos of bid enrichment isn’t scaring Scott Messer off.
He’s seen enough trends to know which ones are passing fads and which ones are here to stay. And make no mistake, bid enrichment is sticking around, whether the industry is ready for it or not.
That said, Scott’s not under any illusions that this is going to be a smooth transition. For bid enrichment to actually work long-term, it’s going to require a massive injection of transparency—something the ad tech world isn’t exactly known for. On one side, publishers need
to understand exactly what’s happening with their data. Right now, too many publishers are in the dark about where their data is going and how it’s being used, which makes them easy targets for less-than-scrupulous players looking to make a quick buck. Scott’s vision is more transparency: if you’re going to enrich bids, publishers need to be in the loop, not just about who’s enriching their data but about what’s being added and why.
On the flip side, buyers need to
know if all this fancy bid enrichment is actually worth the extra zeros on their invoices. You can slap all the additional data signals you want on a bid, but if it’s not driving better performance, it’s basically just dressing up a pig in lipstick and charging extra for it. Scott’s take? It’s time to add a “nutrition label” to bids. You know how organic produce comes with a sticker telling you exactly where it came from and what makes it better than the regular stuff? That’s what needs to
happen with bid enrichment. Buyers deserve to know what’s been added to their bid, where it came from, and whether it’s actually making their ad spend more effective. Otherwise, it’s all just marketing fluff.
And this isn’t just about protecting buyers and sellers—it’s about the future of the ad tech ecosystem as a whole. If bid enrichment is going to become a permanent fixture in the industry, it needs to be standardized and regulated. Otherwise, the Wild West
vibe will continue, and you’ll see more sketchy behavior, like multiple vendors piling on different enrichment signals and all taking a cut. The result? Buyers paying a premium for something that’s barely moving the needle and publishers losing control over their data. Scott’s pushing for a system where both sides can trust what’s happening in the bid process, with clear guidelines about what’s being enriched, who’s doing it, and how much value it’s actually adding. Because without that
transparency, bid enrichment is just another overhyped trend waiting to implode.
If you’re thinking this all sounds exhausting, well, welcome to Scott’s world. But despite the chaos, there’s one thing that keeps him going—curiosity. Whether he’s pushing all the buttons (literally—his mantra is “push all the buttons”) or diving into the weeds of some esoteric ad tech issue, Scott’s driving force is the desire to learn, explore, and, most importantly, fix things. And
let’s not forget the personal side of things. Scott recently welcomed his first child into the world, and while he’s operating on a sleep schedule that could be politely described as “sporadic,” he’s as grateful as ever for the new chapter in his life.
So, what’s the takeaway from Scott Messer’s wild ride through ad tech? It’s that no matter how complicated or chaotic the industry gets, there are always solutions if you’re willing to dig deep, break down barriers,
and, yes, sometimes act as the company therapist. In an industry full of buzzwords, snake oil, and constantly shifting landscapes, Scott’s the guy who brings a healthy dose of reality—and, more importantly, results. Whether it’s deal curation, bid enrichment, or just helping a client realize that they’re not “just running ads,” Scott Messer is the one who gets things done.
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