Send us Fan Mail In this week’s episode of the Digital and Dirt podcast, Ian sits down with Todd Johnson to discuss the evolution of programmatic advertising, the growing role of AI and attention measurement in media buying, and why storytelling still matters in an increasingly automated industry. Podcast Breakdown 00:00 - 04:50 Introduction, career beginnings &amp; action movie fandom 04:51 - 13:55 Generalist vs. specialist &amp; building a career path 13:56 - 22:14 Inside Viant &amp; the programmatic advertising ecosystem 22:15 - 26:51 Storytelling, brand strategy &amp; connecting with consumers 26:52 - 30:33 Attention, creativity &amp; campaign effectiveness 30:34 - 36:11 Data-driven media buying &amp; optimizing performance 36:12 - 43:29 AI, adaptability &amp; navigating industry change 43:30 - 44:45 Future trends, consumer behavior &amp; what&#x27;s next for advertising

Todd Johnson - Head of Industry, Dining at Viant

Digital & Dirt

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Digital &amp; Dirt

## Participants

- **Ian Delamore** (Lamar Advertising)
- **Todd Johnson** (Viant)

## Transcript

I'm Ian Delamore, and this is Digital & Dirt. Alright, welcome back guys. My next guest, he started his career in the mailroom of McCann Erickson in San Francisco after majoring in history at UC Berkeley. He took a three month work gap to travel across parts of South America with his partner now wife.

And he has a passion for action movies and started a tracker which we're going to go straight into. Head of Industry, Dining at Viant, Todd Johnson. Good to see you my friend. Great to see you Ian. I'm doing well. I'm excited that you're excited about the action movies. I'm very excited. I know that's, we're going to deviate off here, but this typically happens with people's fun facts. But so I know you've rewatched, what was it, 235 movies that you've already escorted across eight categories? Yeah.

As my wife would say, like, sounds like you got a lot of time on your hand. And I know you've done that while you traveled, but give me the, give me the algorithm that you've produced and a sidebar. You should probably sell this on the podcast and give you some side revenue. Well, you know, it's like any good passion. It's a product of time and energy. I started, gosh, back in my UMI days, we were, it was the early days of connected TV.

And I had a role there where it was a bit of a futurist role. And I would go around the country working with the sales team, talking about trends in linear TV and CTV. So I was going all over the country. We're going to Kansas City, we're Chicago, New York, Miami, LA, all over the place. And so I was on a plane a bunch and I really enjoy action movies always have from my youth. Like I'm of that generation and came up with this idea of like, if in my opinion, Die Hard is a perfect action movie, like representation of that genre.

Could I start to evaluate other movies based on the qualities that make Die Hard a great movie where it's the protagonist, the villain, the sidekick, the action itself, the story, the je ne sais quoi elements of certain action movies. And so as I traveled and then when I was at home on weekends and had some downtime, I'd throw on a movie and start to think about it relative to Die Hard. Well, since you said Die Hard is the benchmark, is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Yes or no?

I don't think we have to box ourselves into any one thing. I think it definitely is a Christmas movie. I showed it to my son at Christmas time. Unfortunately, a couple of years ago, he was sick and so we couldn't go see family on Christmas Eve. And I said, you know what? It's time to see Die Hard. So I think it plays there, but I don't think you only have to watch it in Christmas time. Wait, and so how old is your son? He's 14 now. Okay, so our kids are right at the same age. Yeah, I'm at the point now we were having this discussion, which is so funny that you have an algori...

Todd Johnson - Head of Industry, Dining at Viant

Transcript

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Todd Johnson - Head of Industry, Dining at Viant

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.