3410: Smartly CEO Laura Desmond on how AI is Rewriting the Rules of AdTech
Release Date: 09/05/2025
3413: Why Medium-Range Forecasts Could Save Millions: Lessons from Planette AI
Tech Talks Daily
I spoke with Kalai Ramea at a timely moment. We recorded this conversation during a heatwave in the UK, which made her work at Planette AI feel very real. Kalai calls herself an all-purpose scientist, with a path that runs through California climate policy, Xerox PARC, and now a startup focused on the forecast window that most people ignore. Not tomorrow’s weather. Not far-off climate scenarios. The space in between. Two weeks to two months out, where decisions get made and money is on the line. Kalai explains Planette AI’s idea of scientific AI in plain words. Instead of learning from...
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3412: PuppyGraph at the IT Press Tour: Graph Power Without the Pain
Tech Talks Daily
During the IT Press Tour, I had the pleasure of speaking with Weimo Liu, CEO and co-founder of PuppyGraph, and hearing firsthand how his team is rethinking graph technology for the enterprise. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, Weimo joins me to share the story behind PuppyGraph’s “zero ETL” approach, which lets organizations query their existing data as a graph without ever moving or duplicating it. We discuss why graph databases, despite their promise, have struggled with mainstream adoption, often because of complex pipelines and heavy infrastructure requirements. Weimo explains how...
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3411: Why The Browser Is The New Security Perimeter
Tech Talks Daily
When I invited Or Eshed, CEO and co-founder of LayerX Security, onto Tech Talks Daily, I wanted to challenge a blind spot most teams carry into work each day. We talk about phishing, ransomware, and endpoint controls, yet we skip the place where employees actually live online. The browser. That quiet tab bar has become the front door to identities, payments, SaaS, and now AI. Or calls it a different operating system in its own right, and once you hear his examples of how extensions can intercept cookies, mimic logins, or even meddle with AI chats, the penny drops fast. Here’s the thing....
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3410: Smartly CEO Laura Desmond on how AI is Rewriting the Rules of AdTech
Tech Talks Daily
I invited Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly, to make sense of what feels like the biggest shake-up in marketing since the mobile era. She has led through every cycle I can remember, from the early internet to the rise of social, and she sees AI changing the rules faster than any previous wave. Across our conversation we unpack how AI is rewriting creative work, buying, and measurement, while forcing brands to rebuild trust with clear rules on data, models, and creator rights. Here’s the thing. Attention is shorter, and the thumb moves fast. Most people give an ad about two seconds, and video is...
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How Fugro is Using Tech to Chart the Ocean Floor
Tech Talks Daily
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3408: Lightricks, Open Source Video, and the Race for Faster Creativity
Tech Talks Daily
Here’s the thing. Generative AI for visuals has shifted from a party trick to everyday craftwork, and few people sit closer to that shift than Ofir Bibi, VP of Research at Lightricks. In this conversation, I wanted to understand how a company famous for Facetune, Photoleap, and Videoleap is building for a future where creators expect speed, control, and choice without a headache. What I found was a story about building core technology that serves real creative workflows, not the other way around. Ofir traces Lightricks’ journey from clever on-device tricks that made small screens...
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How Altair’s AI Fabric Helps Businesses Move Beyond Pilot Projects
Tech Talks Daily
Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to experiments in labs or one-off pilot projects. For many enterprises, it is becoming the backbone of how they operate, innovate, and compete. But as companies race to deploy AI, the biggest challenge is not whether the technology works, but whether the foundations exist to scale it safely and effectively. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I’m joined by Christian Buckner, Senior Vice President of Data and AI Platform at Altair, a company known for combining rocket science with data science. Christian unpacks the concept of an AI Fabric, a...
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Arthur AI and the Future of Digital Co-Workers
Tech Talks Daily
What if meetings stopped draining your time and instead became engines for action? That’s the question driving Christoph Fleischmann, CEO of Arthur AI, and the conversation in today’s episode of Tech Talks Daily. Christoph has spent his career at the intersection of human potential and technology, and now he’s leading a company that wants to change how enterprises actually get work done. Arthur AI isn’t another tool to add to the stack. It’s a digital co-worker—an intelligent presence that joins meetings, captures knowledge, and keeps teams aligned across time zones and formats....
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From Pinterest and Airbnb to Kumo AI: Reinventing Enterprise AI
Tech Talks Daily
Here’s the thing. Most enterprise AI talk today starts with chatbots and ends with glossy demos. Meanwhile, the data that actually runs a business lives in rows, columns, and time stamps. That gap is where my conversation with Vanja Josifovski, CEO of Kumo AI really comes alive. Vanja has spent two and a half decades helping companies turn data into decisions, from research roles at Yahoo and Google to steering product and engineering at Pinterest through its IPO and later leading Airbnb Homes. He’s now building Kumo AI to answer an old question with a new approach: how do you get...
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VMware Explore 2025: Broadcom Showcases the Next Chapter of VCF Innovation
Tech Talks Daily
When VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 launched in June, it marked more than just another release. It was the clearest signal yet that Broadcom is betting big on the modern private cloud. In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I sat down with Prashanth Shenoy, who leads marketing and learning for the VCF division at Broadcom, to discuss what the launch means for enterprises and how those themes are playing out live at VMware Explore in Las Vegas. Prashanth shares how VCF 9.0 was designed to help enterprises operate private clouds with the same simplicity and scale as public hyperscalers, while keeping...
info_outlineI invited Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly, to make sense of what feels like the biggest shake-up in marketing since the mobile era. She has led through every cycle I can remember, from the early internet to the rise of social, and she sees AI changing the rules faster than any previous wave. Across our conversation we unpack how AI is rewriting creative work, buying, and measurement, while forcing brands to rebuild trust with clear rules on data, models, and creator rights.
Here’s the thing. Attention is shorter, and the thumb moves fast. Most people give an ad about two seconds, and video is taking over the feed. Laura expects video to account for three quarters of digital ads by 2026, which tracks with what I am seeing across every platform. Smartly is betting on that shift with tools that turn Shorts or TikToks into personalized CTV spots, and bring CTV signal back into social. The goal is simple to say and hard to pull off. Show every person something that feels made for them, then learn from the response and improve the next piece of creative in near real time.
We also talk about why the ground is moving under search. A growing number of people, especially younger users, skip the front page of Google and ask an AI assistant instead. That changes how discovery works, how queries appear, and where ad products live. Laura thinks we are heading toward campaigns that cut across search, social, retail media, and CTV as one flowing video-first effort, with creative and media stitched together by software rather than teams tossing files over the wall.
Results matter, and Laura shared two proof points I kept coming back to. Smartly’s platform has been validated by PwC for a 13 percent ROI lift across clients. The same study confirmed time savings that add up to 42 minutes a day for hands-on users. That reclaimed time funds the work that actually moves the needle, like faster A/B tests, sharper creative decisions, and better budget moves across channels. We also dig into conversational ads. In a recent test with Boots, Smartly’s format delivered roughly four times the return on investment versus business as usual, which speaks to how fast query-style interactions are shaping expectations.
Trust sits in the middle of all this. Laura is clear that responsible AI is table stakes. Brands need controls to tune or override generated assets, clarity on data sources and model choice, and a stance on creator rights before any content goes live. Her view of AI is creative first. Automate the tedious parts. Keep people in charge of taste, tone, and brand. Use the feedback loop to learn faster, not to replace the team.
We close on where this all leads. Expect brand experiences that blur physical and digital without losing the human spark. Stadiums full, stores buzzing, and at the same time richer virtual touchpoints, snackable video, and one-to-one conversations that feel helpful rather than creepy.
If this is your world, Laura is hosting Smartly’s ADVANCE on September 17 in Brooklyn, and it looks set to be a real working session for marketers who want results, not theater. You can find details here: https://bit.ly/4fRgWEE.
Tune in if you want a candid, practical map for where creative, media, and AI are heading next, and how to measure what matters while keeping your brand worthy of trust.