In this episode of Next in Media, I sit down with Michael Wolf, CEO and Founder of Activate Consulting, to break down the findings from the firm’s 11th annual Technology and Media Outlook. Michael walks us through Activate's "Attention Clock" and how multitasking stretches the average American's day well past 24 hours, leaving brands to fight for partial attention while still paying like they're getting all of it.

We also get into the state of television. Michael explains why TV is more fragmented than Madison Avenue admits, why YouTube still doesn't get full credit despite dominating CTV, and what the Paramount-Warner deal actually changes. From there, we turn to predictions: Michael makes the case for virtual product placement as the next frontier in creator and in-game ads, and explains how sports gambling is changing live sports. He closes with his biggest sleeper story of 2026: spatial computing and the data layer that will power it.

Key Highlights:

⏰ The Attention Clock Hits 32 Hours a Day: Activate's research shows multitasking is pushing daily media consumption past the limits of a 24-hour day, leaving advertisers fighting for partial attention.

📺 TV Is More Fragmented Than Anyone Admits: Even the biggest TV players hold surprisingly small slices of total viewership, and a merged Paramount-Warner barely moves the needle.

🎬 Why YouTube Still Isn't "TV" to Madison Avenue: YouTube dominates CTV but lacks the big simultaneous tentpole events that brand advertisers use to reach huge audiences at once.

🛒 The Shopping Journey No Longer Starts at Google: For younger consumers, product discovery now begins directly at Amazon, Target, and Walmart — reshaping how brands think about the funnel.

🎮 Virtual Product Placement Is the Next Ad Frontier: Michael argues the future of in-game and in-content ads is authentic integration powered by AI, not interruption.

🎰 Sports Gambling Is Quietly Saving Long-Form Sports: In-game betting and prop bets are driving Gen Z viewers to watch entire games front to back.

👓 Spatial Computing Is the Most Underrated Story of 2026: Nearly every major tech company is betting on AI glasses and spatial devices, but the real battleground will be the visual data layer in the cloud.

Resources & Next Steps:

💡 Download the full Tech & Media Outlook at activate.com

🔗 Follow Michael J. Wolf on LinkedIn

🎧 Subscribe to Next in Media on Apple Podcasts

Chapter Time Stamps:

00:00 Cold open – Why YouTube is winning on every screen

1:29 Introducing Michael Wolf, CEO & Founder of Activate Consulting

2:31 Activate's Attention Clock: 11 years of measuring multitasking

4:35 How fragmented is TV viewership, really?

6:33 How YouTube quietly took over social and CTV

7:46 Why video is eating the internet

8:54 Why Madison Avenue still hesitates to treat YouTube like TV

12:05 Sponsor break: Why the household graph is a differentiator

13:24 What the Paramount-Warner deal actually changes

14:45 Why CTV still isn't built for small brands

15:54 AI, personalization, and the future of video creative

16:22 The bottleneck holding back creator marketing

18:01 How can video games finally get advertising right?

19:19 Live sports, Gen Z, and the gambling effect

20:54 Michael's biggest sleeper call for 2026

24:17 Wrap up and thanks

Explore how the "cookie apocalypse" evolved into a hyper-fragmented identity landscape where iPhone users, cookieless browsers, and diverse CTV signals have created massive monetization gaps for the unprepared.

I sit down with Intent IQ’s Fabrice Beer-Gabel to reveal why the future of programmatic advertising isn't a choice between deterministic or probabilistic data, but a high-stakes race to balance scale with the 99% accuracy required to prevent AI from amplifying inaccuracies at scale.

Episode Takeaways:

🌐 The "Cookie Apocalypse" didn't disappear; it simply evolved into a hyper-fragmented landscape of "idealist" environments across 150 million iPhone users and 70 million cookieless desktop browsers.

⚖️ True identity accuracy isn't a binary choice between deterministic and probabilistic methods but a strategic effort to strike the perfect balance between massive scale and reliable user recognition.

🌍 Global compliance requires a nuanced, jurisdiction-specific approach because adopting a single "strictest" standard unnecessarily limits reach and creates a massive competitive disadvantage.

🌉 Bridging the gap between proprietary "data spines" and "biddable identifiers" is the only way to actually translate deep audience insights into real-world programmatic transactions.

🤖 AI acts as a powerful force multiplier for identity resolution, but it poses a systemic risk by amplifying bad data into "inaccuracy at scale" if the initial training sets are flawed.

🕷️ Publishers face a sustainability crisis as non-monetizable crawler traffic now outweighs human visitors by a staggering 200-to-1 ratio.

📈 Mastering identity resolution delivers a massive ROI punch, with the potential to double advertiser reach and lift publisher ad revenue by as much as 60%.

Time Stamps:

00:00 Introduction to Identity Resolution Challenges and Intent IQ Overview

1:53 The Fragmented Identity Landscape and Signal Constraints

4:06 Deterministic vs Probabilistic Identity Debate

5:33 Mobile Identity Evolution and Cross-Platform Similarities

7:25 Regulatory Complexity and Compliance Strategies

9:36 Intent IQ's Business Model and Client Examples

12:45 Walled Gardens vs Open Ecosystem Competition

15:00 AI's Impact on Identity Resolution and Industry Transformation

17:54 Agentic AI and Content Protection Concerns

19:38 Identity Accuracy Crisis and AI Amplification Risks

21:45 ROI Impact and Business Outcomes

22:50 Strategic Advice for Brands in a Changing Landscape

In this episode of Next in Media, I sit down with Mike Law, CEO of Carat North America, to talk about one of the biggest tensions in modern media: the push for more targeted TV advertising versus the risk of going too narrow and losing brand growth. Mike and I discuss how brands have at times gotten too addressable, siloing themselves into repeat customers while forgetting to grow the top of the funnel. We dig into the fragmentation challenge across streaming, CTV, and social video, and why defining your audience has never been harder with a million data sets and walled gardens competing for attention.

We also get into how YouTube is becoming more like TV every day, the evolving role of creators in upfront conversations, and whether creator media belongs in the same budget bucket as a big show on CBS. Mike shares how Carat is using AI agents to run multiple media plan scenarios in minutes instead of hours, and we explore what the next generation of media planners (AI native, digital native) will bring to the industry. We wrap up talking about measurement, why the industry needs to come together to solve identity and addressability, and what Go Addressable is doing to advance deterministic audience-based advertising at scale.

__________________________________________________

📺 CTV Targeting vs. Brand Growth: Mike argues that brands have sometimes gotten too addressable, squeezing existing customers dry before realizing they need to find new audiences to grow the business.

🔀 Fragmentation Is the Core Challenge: With a million data sets, walled gardens, and consumers bouncing between streaming, search, and LLMs in seconds, the media planning landscape is what Mike calls a "bowl of spaghetti."

📱 YouTube as TV Replacement: Mike sees YouTube becoming more like television every day, but its dual identity as both a TV replacement and a social video performance platform makes it tricky to plan against.

🎥 Creators in the Upfront: Long-form, episodic creators are increasingly part of upfront conversations, but the question remains whether they belong in the TV budget or require their own planning approach.

🤖 AI Agents for Media Planning: Carat is using AI agents to generate eight to ten versions of a media plan at once, letting planners compare trade-offs and craft strategy faster than ever.

📊 The Measurement Gap: Cross-platform measurement remains fragmented, and Mike believes the industry needs to come together to solve identity and comparability across CTV, linear, and digital.

🌐 Go Addressable and Industry Collaboration: The episode is part of a special series with Go Addressable, the trade organization working to advance deterministic audience-based advertising across the full TV ecosystem.

__________________________________________________

🌐 Learn more about Go Addressable at GoAddressable.com

🔗 Follow Mike Law on LinkedIn

🎧 Subscribe to Next in Media on Apple Podcasts

__________________________________________________

00:00 Cold open: the state of TV targeting and brand growth

01:07 Introducing Mike Law, CEO of Carat North America

01:43 Where we are with CTV targeting today

03:25 When brands get too addressable and forget reach

05:00 The cycle of squeezing audiences and finding new ones

06:50 Fragmentation, walled gardens, and identity challenges

08:50 How identity resolution tools are evolving

10:15 YouTube as a TV replacement and where it fits

12:53 YouTube in the upfront: TV bucket or something else?

14:47 Creators in upfront conversations and long-form episodic content

17:30 The premium creator economy and brand integrations

19:30 AI in media planning: what is changing day to day

22:00 AI agents running multiple plan scenarios at Carat

23:13 The next generation of media planners (AI and digital native)

25:30 Measurement challenges across platforms

27:30 Industry collaboration and lessons learned

28:42 Wrap up and Go Addressable sponsor message