In this episode of The Digital Edge, host Mark Reed-Edwards sits down with Adam Woods, the Chief Product Officer at Incubeta to discuss how marketers can navigate media complexity and adapt to the rapid shift toward an AI-driven landscape. Adam shares actionable insights on moving toward an AI outcomes agency model, the crucial importance of data sovereignty over accumulating fragmented SaaS tools, and why building a unified data foundation is essential before choosing your tech stack. They also explore how personal AI immersion helps business leaders overcome anxiety, shift toward agentic decision-making, and drive capital efficiently, and prove incremental business growth.
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Mark Reed-Edwards: This is The Digital Edge from Incubeta. I’m Mark Reed-Edwards. This podcast is about how you can balance technology and humanity. How, as AI eats the world, you can integrate efficiency with empathy. We’ll talk with leaders from Incubeta and across the industry as we traverse the digital edge into tomorrow’s world.
Today, I’m talking with Adam Woods, Global Chief Product Officer at Incubeta. Adam describes himself as helping marketers navigate media complexity with AI-driven, cost-efficient, and performant advertising. In our chat, he sheds light on the challenges marketers face today, from evolving measurement techniques to a revolutionary AI-driven landscape. Let’s get into this discussion. Welcome, Adam.
Adam Woods: Yeah, thank you, Mark.
Mark Reed-Edwards: Can you tell us about your role as Global Chief Product Officer at Incubeta? You know, what does that mean in practice? And what are you actually building?
Adam Woods: Yeah. Yeah. So joined Incubeta about six months ago. We had really been focusing on this transformation to be an AI outcomes agency.
And, you know, when we think about that and the challenge of the moment at this point in time, we see all of this amazing transformation coming to the industry. We see fundamental shifts on things like generative AI and AI search and we actually see really true behavioral shifts in the way that consumers are actually kind of interacting with this world.
And so, you know, I think there’s this really incredible moment for agencies, for advertising as an industry to really kind of like embrace and adapt to these things. And so this role was really kind of like created as a vehicle for Incubeta to continue that journey into being very AI-led, starting to position as very much more of a product-led company and starting to think about how do we challenge some of those fundamental notions of, as an industry, you know, where did we make money?
And so, you know, really looking at it kind of like through a few lenses of what does AI mean, how do we build and compose better products around it? And then ultimately, you know, how do we take those products and then help the advertisers that we work with just, you know, frankly be more successful in a world where, you know, so much change makes it even harder than it’s ever been before.
Mark Reed-Edwards: I wasn’t going to ask this, but what the heck. What tools do you use every day?
Adam Woods: So very much spend a lot of time with Claude. I do a lot of coding using kind of like Claude Code, being able to do some of that, like, rapid innovation and really frankly, just being able to kind of like work inside of those different kind of practices and that.
Part of my personal journey was more around how do I actually get really good at all of this stuff personally so that then I can help, you know, really lead a team and, you know, work through a transformation that I’ve gone through myself. That was kind of like years in the making.
So, personal toolkit is very much a lot of Claude Code. I use a lot of Claude Cowork to be able to kind of extend my work surfaces and be able to coordinate across a lot of different input streams. And then all of that gets really heavily infused with a ton of kind of like the Google side of the AI ecosystem.
So building on top of GCP, feeding and building models and agentic behavior, you know, a lot of things powered by Gemini in terms of like what we’re doing that’s client-facing experiences. So, you know, really kind of like, pretty across the board, but use a lot of different AIs, a lot of different frameworks, a lot of different agents, and then really kind of like, you know, trying to figure out like what is the best of the best that I can be bringing to a certain problem.
Mark Reed-Edwards: Yeah, thanks. So it’s, it’s always interesting to hear the tools that people who kind of are in the marketplace selling AI as a, a tool to see what you use.
Adam Woods: Yeah.
Mark Reed-Edwards: In our last episode, Jessica Jacobs talked about brands quietly losing ground to AI. Search traffic is disappearing before they even know it’s happening. So from a product and technology perspective, what does that mean for the tools marketers are relying on right now?
Adam Woods: Yeah. Yeah, I think there’s, you know, the, there’s a few aspects to that question. And, you know, when, when I think about it, I think, you know, there there’s a part of me that feels like it’s, you know, it’s kind of the continuous evolution that we’ve had as a market or as a space or as an industry where, early on it was like we got very hooked on deterministic signal and identity graphs, right?
And then you start to have like signal decay, and you start to lose the ability to measure things that you could. And then, you know, the industry kind of adapts, and then there’s, you know, there’s different frameworks, different approaches. And, this to me is both like evolutionary and revolutionary, right?
Like there’s, you know, there’s a moment of this where we’ve seen the kind of like changing landscape of like actual behavior shift more rapidly than, like really anything that, that I can recall in the industry. You know, so when you think about like people going from, you know, simple keyword searches that then drives a behavior of doing research and then diving into that research to now, you know, some of the stats that we’ve seen come out of Google where, you know, that kind of like longer form sentence structure, repetitive, iterative, AI discovery refinement, you know, letting it do the research and then helping you compose the answer, even in a consumer space.
The kind of like shift of that behavior in such a short span of time has been what truly is, I think, revolutionary about this moment. The evolutionary piece of it is, yes, you’re a marketer, and things that you used to do are suddenly not working for you and serving you the way that they did.
And so, you know, your challenge is now to adapt. And, you know, I think that, like, one of the things that always drew me to the industry is there’s so many innovative people out there. There’s so many ways to adapt. And, you know, the winners move fast, the losers move slow, right? Like, there’s a lot in between.
It is just a continuous challenge, right? There’s something new to learn. And so, you know, how do you rise to that occasion?
Mark Reed-Edwards: And marketers have their hands full don’t they? Geez, when you think about it, they’re dealing with AI-driven search, fragmented data, new privacy constraints, and maybe a, you know, a 10-year-old content strategy that was working fine, but now they may have to, rebuild it from scratch. So is the average marketing tech stack even remotely equipped for this moment, or are most brands running tools from a different era that simply aren’t up to the task?
Adam Woods: Yeah, I think there’s a couple of kind of like interesting things inside of that question that, m- hard to predict how is, you know, how everything is going to play out. I mean, I look at like where we were at a year ago to today, and it’s, broadly, I think it was predictable.
But like the pace and how far we’ve come, I think, you know, that feels a little bit less predictable. I think, things that I know to be true, it’s, you know, this moment in time, it’s easier than ever to create a tool, right? Like, the ability for somebody to go in, have domain experience, create something, bootstrap a business, get it launched with like low capital requirements.
There’s never been a moment like that in the history of the world. Like you’ve never been able to create a new platform as cheaply and as easily as you can today. And so, you know, I think that as a byproduct of that, we’re gonna see a pretty massive proliferation of tools, right?
Now, the problem with that is that in a lot of cases, yet another tool is not the answer, right? You’ve got, um, you know, when you think about traditional SaaS businesses, it was a premise that worked, but it was almost like a broken premise, which is… You know, I’m a tool, give me your data, give me, your context. Let me do my interesting thing for you, and then I’ll give you back an answer, right? Oftentimes it was composed around you give me something and I’ll process it in my infrastructure. What we’re really thinking about and doing is kind of inverting that.
Our goal is that we give advertisers capability to bring their data together and then use our tooling on top of that in their environment. And so it’s this kind of like inversion of the model, and we talk about it in terms of data sovereignty often, which is, you know, if you’re a large brand, even if you’re a small brand, you should be very protective of your data, right?
You’ve got compliance regulations. You’ve got competitive risk. You’ve got all these things. You should want to hold control of your data. You should want to own your security perimeter. And, you know, anytime somebody asks you to pass your data out, it should be, you know, something that you say “What value am I getting?”
Like, you know, all these things. And so I think that you know, that model gives us a little bit of a different approach than some of the things that we’ve seen. But it also gives us kind of like an ability to help brands resist that urge of like more tools, more fragmentation, right? In broad strokes, what hurts a lot of brands, and I think what’s hurt us as an industry is all of that innovation, you know, oftentimes comes as brand new tools, right?
And so it’s something else to set up. It’s another context, it’s another data silo. Even if they’ve got agentic behavior, it’s an agent that’s working inside of a little box. And then you think about like, how incredible is it if you actually have all of your data in a single place where you’ve got good context and governance, and then you can start to compose everything bell to bell with a full, informed view that lets you get the best possible outcome rather than stacking on yet another silo, yet another data slice.
Mark Reed-Edwards: Well, let’s drill down on that a little bit. When you’re sitting in your office with that great view of the Rockies in front of you and you’re knee-deep in Claude Code building products for marketers, what is the core problem you’re trying to solve? And do you think that problem has changed in the last two, three years?
Adam Woods: I think it’s a good question. Has the shape of the problem changed? Has the solution changed? Yes. But when you take a step back and you look at it from really more like a broad picture, the problem that we are solving, you know, as an industry, but very specifically as Incubeta is we think about, like, how do we help people, it’s really the same problem that we’ve solved in marketing and advertising for decades, like, more than decades, frankly, right?
You know, you’ve got this moment where if you’re a business, you’re trying to find ways to grow your business. And if you’re a smart business, you have discipline around, “What am I doing that is essentially capitally efficient,” right? Am I taking, you know, scarce resource and defining scarcity however you will, but am I taking scarce resource and am I deploying it in the way that is most effective for my business, right?
And my business can be different from your business. And to the extent that we understand things like inventory, that we understand creative, that we understand content, and that we understand how the media is flowing and the entirety of the picture, at the end of the day, every brand wants the same thing: I want to be able to grow, and I want to know that if I have a strategy that is incrementally efficient on acquisition, that I can put more money in and I can grow faster, right? You take a step back and you look at it through, you know, like a very financial lens and then you see that that problem has not changed, has not materially changed, in a long time.
It is: how do I grow my business and how do I grow it faster than I have to put cash out? And then as a marketer, as a CMO, as, whatever the role is inside, all of those things are still true that you have to adapt. But at the end of the day, it is that kind of like contract of, CFO, CEO, board, CMO of: here’s money that we’re going to choose to deploy. How do we deploy that in a way that, we actually keep our customers and then get incrementality?
And that’s the problem that’s hard: how do you find new people to do business with and not pay for people that ultimately would have done business with you in the first place? So to answer your question, is it different? Absolutely. But when you step back and you actually are solving the problem for the CMO, it’s the same problem that we were solving two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago.
I mean, go back as far as you want.
Mark Reed-Edwards: Complexity is something you hear a lot in marketing these days, and marketers have a bad habit of responding to it by buying more tools. I don’t think they’re alone. I think probably finance, operations, they all try and solve a problem by adding a tool, and then you got more tools and more problems, right?
So how do you think about the difference between a tech stack that genuinely solves problems and one that just adds noise?
Adam Woods: I think it goes back to having an architecture and a discipline around: what are you going to do and how are you actually going to compose your ecosystem?
When I think about, like, what are the must-haves, right? There’s certain foundational systems that I think always kind of like serve as bedrock. And, you know, some of those things are, you, you know, you, you think about, like, you think about, like, search, you think about programmatic.
You think about, like, the originating systems of how do you actually get access to inventory, and I think, you know, those things don’t change. I think what you’re going to see is the composition of tools around those bedrocks shapes and changes over time. I think, you know, one of the things that I’ve personally been doing a lot over the last few years is just, generally pushing towards shorter contracts rather than longer ones because in this age of innovation, in this age of acceleration, there is kind of that moment of, things that I saw two years ago that I thought were incredible, best of class.
And then you see what was available a year ago and you’re like, “Wow, that’s different.” And then you think about what you’re using today and you just kinda look at that and you say like, “I, I don’t, like, I don’t know that I would ever sign a three-year deal again in my life,” right?
So, so I think it’s, you know, it’s, it’s kinda some of those realizations. But then when you think about that realization, it’s like, okay, now how do I find partners, companies to work with, people that understand that and people that can build towards what ultimately becomes a pluggable architecture where, you know, again, when you think about that data sovereignty that we’re kind of using as one of our bedrock foundations if I’m bringing tools in and out over time, I don’t wanna actually have my data locked up in somebody’s platform.
I don’t want to rent intelligence from somebody else. I want to be developing my own, you know, owned and operated data and intelligence layer that I can then compose tools around, and that is ultimately, you know, the problem that we’re working on bringing, you know, this product to life that is ultimately seamless by Incubeta, which is how do you have that productization where we help advertisers and brands really do that?
So their own data, their own environment, composing it, making it AI-ready, bringing in and out different components, different capabilities, giving them maximum performance based on everything that we know, and then helping them architect to that reality of things moving faster than any of us have ever experienced, you know, frankly, in our lives.
Mark Reed-Edwards: Boy, you got a feel for marketing leaders these days, right? Mm-hmm. Because they’re, they’re overwhelmed by that rapid kind of change that’s happening. You know, the tool- Mm-hmm … you bought last year is now not the best one. You’ve got to change. Things are moving fast, so- How do you advise they start? Is it strategy first, data first, or tools first, or, all of the above?
Adam Woods: Two answers to that. I think organizationally, I’d always say start with data. If you don’t have good control of your data, if you’re building strategy on misunderstanding, then you’re building the wrong strategy. So if you can get data into a place where you’ve got, very high confidence in it, you’ve got the right levels of accessibility, you’ve got the appropriate controls around it, that to me has always been foundational. Nothing else scales if you haven’t built that solid foundation. So, you know, I think that would always be the place to start. And I think that oftentimes you get big wins early there. And it is being able to say like, “Wow, you know, I’m running this business, and now I have the ability to look all the way from, say, inventory to demand generation to creative strategy and feeding that all off of a single view of data.”
How much stronger are you? How much better of a position are you than your competitor if they can’t do that? So I think start there. I think that then leads into strategy. Without strategy, you don’t have anything, you’re drifting. And then I think the rest kind of falls in place from thereafter.
That’s my view for the organization. I think individually, there’s also this thing of, as individuals, as business leaders, we actually need to take the time to be really good at all of this stuff. And it’s challenging. It’s like, how much can I do in a day?
How many hours are there? And so, you know, what I would say to leaders that feel like they’re falling behind is, how do you start incorporating AI, agentics, all of these things, you get to more exotic versions of it, and you can think about like knowledge graphs and like MCP servers.
But even before you get there, it’s just: how do you use AI as your primary work surface? Start coming out of email, start coming out of Slack, start spending your day really fully immersed in this, and then using that as a way to start getting past some of the fear and discomfort, and then start actually being a leader that can help guide your team shape the future, because that is the way that things are going to go.
And sometimes I think a lot of that anxiety, like I can answer, from my personal experience, the anxiety of like, what does this all mean? What does it mean for the future of work? What does it mean for my kids? What is– you know, it’s like, it was like so many questions, and I didn’t start to really get a handle on that until I went through that personal journey of actually how far can I push myself to use this?
How much more productive could I be as a leader if I’m like fully immersed in this? And then, you know, and then how do I give that kind of like freely to my teams, to my peers, to, frankly, random people on the street. And so I think that it’s getting immersed, it’s trying, but it’s also, for a lot of leaders, I think it’s finding somebody that can be your debate partner or your coach.
Find somebody that’s doing this, talk to them, see what they’re doing, ask them what works, and then just start adopting it a little bit by a little bit. I mean, it’s not like a course is gonna get you there, right? Like a course is gonna get you started. Getting there is putting in the work every single day.
Mark Reed-Edwards: It’s a fundamental kind of culture shift, but it’s a shift that is coming from external forces. Usually, when you wanna adjust the culture inside your firm, you’re the one doing the pushing, but there’s a force being exerted on the organization from outside because of AI. Mm-hmm. So it’s, it’s an uncomfortable situation for many people.
Adam Woods: Yeah. I, I mean, absolutely. But I, I think it’s like y- you can also use that as an advantage. Yeah. Um, you know, one of, one of the things that I’ve seen and I think that it’s really interesting is y- you know, really over the last six months, I think that it’s gone from something where, we’ve been pushing people to adopt AI more to now, like, broadly speaking, I see lots and lots of people coming forward, personally, professionally, in Incubeta, outside, that are just hungry to be able to use it more, hungry to be able to use it more effectively.
And so I’m actually seeing that kind of shift from: it’s something where people think they should be doing it, to now it’s where people are actively saying like, “No, give me this tooling, give me better tooling. What more can I do? How am I pushing you to push the boundaries of what we can do organizationally?”
And then I put my CIO brain on and I’m like, “Okay, let’s do this responsibly.” … You know, I would say, like, don’t ignore those voices in the room because it’s, you know, like, that’s incredibly important as well.
Mark Reed-Edwards: Yeah. So to wrap up, I wanna take a look ahead, and this can be a thorny question- Mm-hmm
but I’m gonna ask it anyway. You know, what does the well-equipped marketing organization look like in three to five years? Or given our discussion about the pace of change, even next year. Yeah. You know, what have they built? What have they bought, and what are they gonna let go of?
Adam Woods: I think it goes back to that fundamental question of: what are you doing to be successful?
In your marketing organization, as you’re deploying money across all of these things, how do you know what you’re doing? What is it that works? What have you discarded? How do you prove value? And how are you really, truly driving an organization that meets the challenge of the need for your company?
And so, you know, what does it look like is hard to say. I think things that speak to me is you’ve got control of your data, and you’ve got an ability across all of your data to be able to compose that into the right capabilities for the right roles, the right people with governance, and that you’re plugging that into all of the workflows that you’re really building and engaging.
And, you know, so I think that it’s like a year from now, if you don’t have a strong data foundation and you don’t have a strong AI layer sitting on top of that, you are in a very, very poor position as a marketer. And then I think above that, it’s like, what’s the selection of tools that you’ve made?
How well are you leveraging those things? And how are you evaluating them, and are you really sure you’re getting incrementality out of those investments? I think those are the other things. And, you know, what does that look like? Yeah, I think it’s heavily moved into this world of AI summarization for search, but, it’s probably, a lot more comfort with generative creative.
And then I think that it’s a lot more comfortable with kind of like agentic control of certain decisions that are, I would say, uncomfortable to give control up on. And so you think about like, how do I create an agent that’s actually making like true strategic decisions because it’s going to be at a pace that people just frankly aren’t going to be able to compete.
And, so when you think about that competitive edge, it’s how do you build responsible systems? How do you keep enough control of them? But how do you give enough control to this acceleration that you’re actually driving an edge from your competitors?
Mark Reed-Edwards: Well, lots to think about, eh?
Adam Woods: Yes. Lots.
Mark Reed-Edwards: Well, Adam, I really appreciate you joining me here on The Digital Edge. Thanks so much.
Adam Woods: Yeah, you’re welcome. No, I, I really enjoyed this conversation and, uh, appreciate you having me on.
Mark Reed-Edwards: Okay. The key takeaway from my discussion with Adam that I have is that it all starts with the data. If you don’t have that right, well, you’re gonna head off in the wrong direction. So make sure that’s your focus right off the bat. Thanks for being here today. I’m Mark Reed-Edwards. Join me on the Digital Edge next time.