martech - Martech Therapy

Why we keep solving human problems with robot solutions

The Martech industry keeps solving human problems with robot solutions. While vendors launch AI agents and blame data quality, the real issue is organizational dysfunction. Why architecture, not technology, determines if marketing teams succeed or fail.

Ok, I need to get this off my chest. This week in Martech feels like watching an episode of the Twilight Zone. Treasure Data launches their AI Marketing Cloud. Hightouch teases new Agents feature. Tealium rolls out their Behavioral Insight Agent. Meanwhile, McKinsey drops a report essentially saying "your technology is writing checks your operating model can't cash", and Hightouch's "Has Martech failed marketers" report includes data showing that marketers think their tools are broken.

Now take a sip of your coffee before I reveal the plot twist. Ready? Everyone's basically saying the same thing without saying it ->

If CDPs are dead, they’ve donated their organs...

Despite the headlines, Customer Data Platforms aren’t dead. Their best parts now power engagement platforms and data warehouses. This article explains why CDPs still matter, especially for mid-market businesses driving the next wave of customer data innovation.

Every week a new headline drops like a bomb. This company's app just killed another company's app, blew up something else, or declared the death of a technology category. As a military veteran, I find it strange how casually our industry borrows the language of conflict. There’s enough of that in real life.

Take Customer Data Platforms. Depending on who you follow, CDPs are either dead, obsolete, or absorbed beyond recognition. But as Brian Blessed once roared in Flash Gordon, “GORDON’S ALIVE!”

If he worked in martech, he’d be shouting, “CDP’S ARE ALIVE!”

When a Martech guy walks into AdTech... and lives to tell the tale.

I was entirely out of my depth in this one. Sitting down with AdLib co-founder Mike Hauptman turned into more than just an AdTech crash course.

I’m a complete novice when it comes to AdTech and raising my two teenage kids. And Mike brought me up to speed on one of those topics.

Programmatic, DSPs, audience segments… it’s always sounded like a parallel universe to the Martech world I live in.

So when I sat down with Mike Hauptman, co-founder and CEO of AdLib DSP, I treated it as a chance to get schooled and he didn’t disappoint.

We talked about how programmatic advertising actually works, why it got so complicated, and how AdLib is trying to make it as easy as Google

Ten reasons to bring in outside expertise for your CDP RFP

...and why your team will thank you.

I’ll be honest, I usually dislike “top ten” style articles. They tend to oversimplify complex decisions and make it sound like ticking boxes will magically solve everything. But after publishing my last three pieces, on dating vendors, reference calls, and surviving the RFP process, I kept hearing the same question: why bring in outside help at all?

So, against my better instincts, here’s a list. Not because every company will face all ten of these issues, but because most will recognize at least a few of them. And if even one sounds true to you, it might be

Can an AI marketing OS really think like a CMO?

Inside my demo with Dojo AI, from Lucky Saint campaigns to zebra striping trends

I sat down with Duarte Garrido and Luke Costly-White to see what DOJO AI calls an “all-in-one AI Marketing Operating System”. Big claims, but then again, these are undoubtedly “big claim” days we are living in, so I wanted to see what that actually looks like in practice.

Luke’s story already makes this demo interesting. Luke began as a DOJO power user, then became an angel investor, and now works at the very company he backed (for those who read my piece on reference calls with angel investors: this one isn’t on the sidelines anymore).

The demo itself

From particle physics to privacy-first analytics

Mitzu's István Mészáros explains why the future of Martech runs on composable data

From CERN’s particle accelerators to the messy world of marketing data, István Mészáros has seen it all. In this episode of Couch Confidentials, we trace his path from working on the Large Hadron Collider to building Mitzu, a startup rethinking how companies approach composable analytics.

We talk about why centralizing KPIs matters more than shiny dashboards, how enterprise data culture often lags behind the technology, and why privacy is becoming as big a driver as scale.

I loved how István described the “people-pleaser” instinct that shaped his career, always chasing faster answers for colleagues, which eventually grew into a

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