About this episode
Michael Rubenstein discusses the future of digital advertising and the role of AI in transforming the industry.
Michael Rubenstein, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Firsthand, joins Radical's Molly Welch to dig into what's broken in digital advertising — a trillion-dollar-plus industry that AI isn't just improving, it's replacing entirely. Drawing on a career that spans DoubleClick, AppNexus, and now Firsthand, Michael makes the case for why the future belongs to brand agents, not ads. The conversation covers how Firsthand's infrastructure meets consumers at the moment of intent, why the real bottleneck is structural rather than technical, and what has to be true for this new model to go mainstream without leaving brands behind.
People in this episode
Host: Molly Welch
Guest: Michael Rubenstein
Topics covered
- digital advertising
- AI
- brand agents
- consumer intent
- infrastructure
- industry disruption
Keywords
- digital advertising
- AI
- Firsthand
- brand agents
- consumer intent
- DoubleClick
- AppNexus
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Firsthand, DoubleClick, AppNexus
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