Digiday Media Buying Summit Recap: When Strategy Meets Signal

The Digiday Media Buying Summit in Phoenix was more than another industry event, it was a real look at where media is heading. The conversations were sharper, the questions bolder, and the energy felt less about buzzwords and more about building what’s next.

Across three days, one theme kept surfacing: the industry isn’t waiting for the future of media, it’s rebuilding it.

From retail and commerce to TV and AI, the lines between data, creative, and culture are blurring and fast.

Here’s what stood out.

Commerce Media Gets Smarter

Nili Klenoff (Mastercard) opened strong with a redefinition of “commerce media.” Her message was clear: scale means nothing without intelligence. Mastercard’s Commerce Media Network is a reminder that the power of retail media isn’t in the pipes...it’s in the precision. When brands invest strategically instead of just broadly, they create real value and relevance.

That’s where the industry is headed - away from reach for reach’s sake, and toward signal-based decisions that connect intent with context.

Culture Still Wins (and Ownership Matters)

Amanda DeVito (Butler/Till) and Allison McMenimen Bakken (Collective Measures) shifted the conversation from technology to people. Their case for employee-owned agencies hit on something the industry often misses: transparency and culture aren’t just HR terms, they’re performance drivers.

Ownership changes the equation. When teams share in the outcome, they think differently. It’s the kind of foundation that attracts top talent, and keeps it.

TV Isn’t Dead. It’s Reprogrammed.

The DAC and Tatari discussion reminded everyone that “TV” is less a format now and more a framework. Linear and streaming are no longer competitors, they’re partners in a broader performance ecosystem.

The smartest agencies are mixing direct and programmatic buying to keep both reach and control. And the result? TV continues to lift every other channel. It’s the halo effect that’s now measurable, and actionable.

Balancing Art and Science

Eric Beane (VML) hit a nerve when he said data should fuel creative, not flatten it. In a world obsessed with optimization, it’s easy to lose the human spark that makes data meaningful. His perspective was a call to arms for buyers and planners: stop treating analytics as an endpoint and start using it as a creative accelerant.

That’s exactly the balance we believe in at Mavern Media, data as signal, creativity as scale.

Clarity Over Chaos

Brent Seaborn (Tunnl) took on the issue no one wants to admit, analytics overload. His “Data Navigator” reframed the strategist’s job from reporting numbers to connecting meaning. Less dashboard fatigue, more decision clarity.

It’s the same principle behind how we built SignalTap — clean signal, clean outcomes.

Culture Moves Faster Than Algorithms

The final act of Day 2 came from Evan Horowitz (Movers+Shakers), and it was pure gold.

His take on virality? You don’t chase trends — you listen. Brands like Tinder and e.l.f. Cosmetics proved that authenticity and timing beat performance formulas every time.

Cultural resonance still outperforms raw data. You can’t model authenticity, but you can align with it.

Day 3: AI Meets Context

The closing sessions in Scottsdale made one thing clear: AI isn’t the future of programmatic, it’s the present.

In “Navigating the AI-Powered, Cookieless Future of Programmatic Advertising,” Amy Porter (RPA) and Ashmita Chatterjee broke down how agencies are reengineering media buying around first-party data, semantic context, and real modeling.

That shift is exactly what SignalTap was built for (not to replace people, but to amplify them). Our approach uses AI to read and understand meaning, sentiment, and intent at scale, giving buyers visibility into what truly drives performance.

Top Takeaways:

• Contextual is no longer about keywords — it’s about meaning.

• First-party and consent-based data are now the new currency.

• Commerce and content are converging — discovery and transaction are merging into one experience.

• The best agencies act as consultants, not just media operators.

Also worth noting: sessions from Kern Schireson (KNOWN) and Swapnil Patel (Attention Arc) on how AI is bridging creative and media workflows. When creativity and machine learning finally talk to each other, efficiency becomes emotional (and that’s where attention really happens).

Final Word

If this Summit showed anything, it’s that we’ve moved past the era of isolated systems. The future of media is connective - powered by AI, contextual intelligence, and human insight working together.

At Mavern Media, that’s what we’re building every day through SignalTap - a smarter, cleaner, and more explainable way to buy.

Because performance doesn’t come from more data, it comes from better signals.