By Seb Joseph

Yes, it’s a bit early for trend rundowns — months early, in fact. However, it’s not often that an investment banker publicly (and freely) shares their expertise on any market — that is, unless it’s Terry Kawaja.

Ad tech’s loudest dealmaker yesterday (Sept. 27) spoke at an event hosted by New Digital Age, during which he went off the beaten path, sharing insights and shedding light on aspects of the ad tech market that usually fly under the radar for ad executives. The founder of investment bank Luma Partners covered everything from the big picture to the tiniest details.

Not all trends are real — especially in ad tech

If 2023 has done anything for advertising so far, it’s been a year of separating the wheat from the chaff for trends. Kawaja has been keeping score. He called out Web 3.0 as just a fancy term, questioned the practicality of crypto, said blockchain isn’t a great fit for ads and compared NFTs to fancy JPEGs with a backstory. The underlying message here isn’t that these technologies are inherently flawed, but that their applications in advertising have yet to hit the mark. As Kawaja explained, “This is all real tech actually, but its application to media and marketing just simply doesn’t work.”

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Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron