EPISODE 01: Terry Kane (The Trade Desk)

Yeah, absolutely.

And that creative is obviously all important, right? It's where the consumer meets the campaign.

It's the real interface.

And I think it's really, I find it really interesting, this region.

Every single week I see something which just makes me realise that it's a region that perhaps moves in a way unencumbered by history in certain senses.

So you see these absolutely mind-blowing creative ideas come to life.

But that's kind of the positive, I guess.

But I like to pick into mistakes, what goes wrong, what can go wrong.

So what do you think is the biggest ad tech or martech mistake that you've seen companies make when they're entering this region?

You know what? Without being too crude, they say assumptions are the biggest of all F-ups.

Assuming that your tech is just going to work like it's worked in London or New York or wherever it might be is definitely one of those big mistakes that we've seen come into play, particularly in programmatic.

Our region here is building, it's diversified, it's exciting, but it's also chaotic, Dom.

I really do feel deeply passionate about where an independent body like The Trade Desk plays its role because we help local brands, local companies, Arabic language, Arabic culture by enabling a business model to support local development of premium, high-quality content.

So when I took this job on, when I left Meta, and I left Meta for the reason that I didn't think a large part of it was giving back to the region, I wanted to join a company that was giving back into the region.

And And that, you know, that's that's really what I think is an important part of understanding how to approach a region is you have to be part of you have to build for it.

You have to give to the community.

You have to be part of the community.

You have to build product that reaches the challenges and opportunities in this market.

And.

Media buying in this market is still very traditional, still very rebate heavy, still very deal heavy.

And simple conversations around, and again, without getting too technical, but PMPs versus PGs, as in the style of buying media, Well, this market is a very PG or programmatic guaranteed market.

And that's like as old as a fax machine.

You're sending in your insertion orders and fax machine.

There's no data flying in it.

So that's the way of doing business here.