Calling out all of my female leaders and programmatic ninjas to join us as guests.

We dare you to be bold and to brave and come on in!!!

The post Calling out all of my female leaders and programmatic ninjas to join us as guests. appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.

Episode 208 is live 🎧

Carole Lawson explains why strong programmatic performance needs both human judgment and AI.

Watch on YouTube or listen on your favorite podcast platform.

#ProgrammaticDigest #ProgrammaticAdvertising #AdTech

The post Episode 208 Is Live: Carole Lawson on Human Judgment and AI appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.

Programmatic advertising gives us more data, automation, and targeting options than ever. But behind every impression, click, and conversion is a real person whose circumstances, attention, and needs can change.
In this episode of the Programmatic Digest Podcast, Hélène Parker speaks with Carole Lawson, founding partner of Marketstorm, about the relationship between data, technology, AI, and human behavior.
Carole shares how her experience in technology, government innovation, behavioral economics, and data science led her into programmatic advertising. She also explains why traders should be careful about overcontrolling campaigns based only on what appears logical inside a DSP.
One powerful example involves a luxury bottle of wine purchased at 4 a.m. after the buyer saw an ad while playing Solitaire in Oklahoma. A trader might have excluded that time, location, or environment. The technology, however, recognized that it was the right moment for that specific person.
This conversation explores how programmatic professionals can combine human judgment with AI, select stronger audience signals, recognize audience fatigue, and measure performance beyond the last click.

Check out the interview on YouTube!

🧠 About Us:
We are Helene Parker Consulting, where programmatic hands on keys buying meet Revenue Growth. We’re expanding our work with Independent agencies, media and ad-tech companies through revenue growth, go-to-market support, pipeline development, and sales enablement. We also offer practical programmatic workshops and customized training for teams that want to strengthen their skills, with a trader/buyer lens.

Are you or anyone in your network looking for support? Email us helene@heleneparker.com
Past workshops, paid gems, and every new recording + resource added as we go. This library isn’t a one-time thing, it’s the full vault plus all future trainings, recordings, and guides
Access it here: https://www.heleneparker.com/library

⏱ Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction and welcome
00:41 Carole Lawson’s career journey
01:27 Moving from technology into data and behavioral economics
03:28 How Marketstorm was created
05:45 “The ad may not have changed, but the person did”
07:23 Remembering the human behind programmatic data
08:25 The unexpected 4 a.m. luxury-wine conversion
09:59 Why excluding overnight hours can hurt performance
11:16 Campaign budget and return
11:34 Focused audiences and negative targeting
13:09 Understanding signals inside custom algorithms
13:54 Researching customers and creating custom audiences
15:17 Primary versus secondary conversions
16:13 Recognizing when an audience becomes stale
17:06 Questions to ask an audience-data partner
18:58 Ordinary browsing versus emerging intent
21:28 Does more precise targeting cost more?
22:59 Intent, influence, demand capture, and attribution
25:00 AI assistants as a new form of search
26:02 Making websites and content readable by AI
27:42 Career advice for programmatic professionals
28:18 Programmatic’s role in the marketing ecosystem
29:38 Closing thoughts
29:43 Where to follow Carole’s work

👤 Meet Our Guests:

Carolee Lawson – Founding Partner, Chief Innovation Officer, MarketStorm

Carole Lawson is a data scientist and founding partner of Marketstorm. For the past 20 years, her work has focused on behavioral economics and the relationship between people and technology, including how human behavior influences technology and how technology shapes human behavior.

Before founding Marketstorm, Carole worked in technology for the State of California, where she led a major redesign of the state’s websites. She also chaired the Governor’s Innovation Council, collaborating with emerging technology companies and exploring how data and technology could improve the delivery of government services.

Carole later brought her experience in data, human behavior, and technology into programmatic advertising. Today, she helps organizations use audience intelligence, custom algorithms, and behavioral signals to reach the right people and improve marketing outcomes.
Subscribe to her Substack: https://www.thinkwithmarketstorm.com
Website: https://marketstorm.ai/
📎 Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroleslawson/

💻 Meet The Team:
Hélène Parker – Chief Programmatic Coach
🌐 heleneparker.com
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helene-parker/
Manuela Cortes – Co-Host, Programmatic Digest en Español
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuela-cortes-/

🎓 Learn Programmatic:
For Individual Buyers: https://heleneparker.com/library
Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://heleneparker.com/newsletter
Be the first to find out about free programmatic training workshops: https://www.heleneparker.com/waitlist/

📲 Follow Us:
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/programmatic-digest-podcast
▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@programmaticdigest

The post 208. The Data Is Technical, but the Decision Is Human with Carole Lawson appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.

New episode alert 🎙️

Episode 208 with Carole Lawson drops tomorrow. We’re talking AI, audience signals, and the human decisions behind programmatic performance.

#ProgrammaticDigest #AdTech #AI

The post Episode 208 Alert: AI, Audience Signals, and Human Judgment appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.

New episode Tuesday 🎙️

Carole Lawson joins us to explore why the data may be technical, but the decision is still human.

#ProgrammaticDigest #ProgrammaticAdvertising #AdTech

The post Episode 208 Preview: The Data Is Technical, but the Decision Is Human appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.

ICYMI 🎙️

Is AI speaking for your brand without your permission? It is time to take back control.

Welcome back to the Programmatic Digest podcast. I am your host Hélène Parker. In Episode 207, we have a powerhouse conversation featuring Dr. Cecilia Dones, Founder and Chief Data Officer at Three Standard Deviations, and Iesha White, Director of Intelligence at Check My Ads Institute.

We are diving deep into a major shift every brand leader needs to pay attention to. AI is becoming a new and unapproved middle layer between brands and consumers. These closed systems are answering questions, influencing decisions, and even making purchases using information your brand never created or approved.

Here are the biggest takeaways from the conversation:

1. Closed systems from tech giants give advertisers the illusion of choice. You must demand transparency from your platforms to protect your brand from hallucinations.
2. Organic marketing matters more than ever. To fight back against LLM manipulation and SEO poisoning, you need a strong foundation of organic SEO, real testimonials, and in-person connections.
3. Agencies must pivot to show their true human value. Automation and efficiency will eventually become cheap commodities. Your premium value lies in human judgment and curation.

You do not want to miss these insights. Watch on YouTube and listen on all major podcast platforms.

#ProgrammaticDigest #ArtificialIntelligence #BrandSafety #AdTech #DigitalMarketing #SEOPoisoning #AIAgents

The post The AI Middle Layer: Protecting Brands from LLM Poisoning and Rogue AI Agents appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.

Optimize programmatic campaigns like a structured science experiment in four quick steps:

1. Formulate a Hypothesis: State a testable link between a lever and your outcome (e.g., “Pausing sites with under 60% VCR will improve overall campaign completion”).

2. Execute the Experiment: Take targeted action in your DSP (e.g., removing those specific underperforming domains from your list).

3. Draw a Conclusion: Analyze performance data to verify if the change worked (e.g., checking if overall VCR successfully increased).

4. Iterate and Refine: Use the outcome to build your next test (e.g., testing if shifting budget to high-attention placements raises completion further).

Optimizing Programmatic Campaigns with AI is 60 mins workshop, showing programmatic traders how to ditch the spreadsheet slog and step into the role of a strategic pilot.

Access it this workshop recordings and past ones here: www.heleneparker/com/library

The post 4 quick steps to Optimize programmatic campaigns like a structured science experiment appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.

–
If you’ve ever felt like you’re spending hours in your DSP trying to figure out what to optimize next, this video is going to hit home.

In this session, we walk through how AI can actually support programmatic optimization in a way that feels practical, not overwhelming, not buzzwordy, and definitely not “set it and forget it.”

The big theme throughout the video is this: AI is only as good as the way you use it. It can help you move faster, spot patterns quicker, and make smarter decisions—but it still needs structure, direction, and a human behind it who understands what success actually looks like.

We get into real examples of where AI can help most:
– spotting inefficiencies in your campaigns
– identifying audience overlap and wasted spend
– catching creative fatigue before performance drops
– and helping you think through budget shifts with more confidence

There’s also an honest conversation about what AI can’t do. It doesn’t understand your client, your strategy, or your campaign goals the way you do. So instead of replacing traders, it’s really about helping you level up—from being stuck in execution to thinking more strategically.

If you’re a trader, in ad ops, or even client services trying to make sense of all the AI noise right now, this is a grounded walkthrough of how to actually start using it in your day-to-day workflow—without losing control of your campaigns.

⏱️ Timestamps + Titles
[00:00 – 01:30] Introduction: AI in Programmatic
[01:30 – 04:00] The Role of AI in Campaign Optimization
[04:00 – 07:00] Data Inputs: Garbage In, Garbage Out
[07:00 – 10:00] Identifying Optimization Opportunities
[10:00 – 13:00] Audience & Targeting Optimization
[13:00 – 16:00] Creative Optimization with AI
[16:00 – 18:30] Budget Allocation & Efficiency
[18:30 – 23:00] Automation vs. Human Oversight
[24:00 – 27:00] Real-World Use Cases of AI in Campaign Optimization
[27:00 – 30:00] Setting Up Campaigns for AI Success
[30:00 – 33:00] Common Mistakes When Using AI in Programmatic
[33:00 – 36:00] Interpreting AI Recommendations Effectively
[36:00 – 39:00] Balancing Automation with Strategic Control
[39:00 – 42:00] Measurement, KPIs, and Signal Quality
[42:00 – 45:00] Scaling Campaigns with AI Insights
[45:00 – 48:00] Collaboration Between Traders and AI Tools
[48:00 – 51:00] Workflow Integration: Making AI Practical Day-to-Day
[51:00 – 54:00] The Evolving Role of the Programmatic Trader
[54:00 – 58:00] Final Takeaways & Future Outlook

The post Optimizing Programmatic Campaigns with AI appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.

In-person relationships are still the ultimate cheat code in ad tech. 🗽

From 18 people to 200+ RSVPs, Christian Robinson built a massive monthly NYC marketing meetup—All Things Advertising (now rebranding to The Signal Brief).
Learn how he took the pressure out of networking and built a thriving community of marketers, programmatic traders, and sellers.

Join Manuela Cortes on ep 206 on Youtube and all major podcast platforms!

The post 206. In-person relationships are still the ultimate cheat code in ad tech. 🗽 appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.

New episode is live today with special guests Iesha White and Dr. Cecilia Dones! 🎙️

The post AI, Brand Safety & LLM Search Poisoning | Episode 207 appeared first on Helene Parker Consulting LLC.