iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

3) it’s not worth having certain kinds of debates with trolls, especially in spaces they are well-versed in (thinking of Shapiro in those phony debate setups, or Musk on X) - however they’re only comfy in particular mediums and are vulnerable elsewhere (Musk in live settings, etc…)

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

2) he is unpredictable. Vance/Thiel have an endgame. Musk is a reactive dog who will jump to some other avenue if he senses an opportunistic upside to his financial goals. That means patience is probably more key with Musk than with others, as he has a higher likelier to self-implode or abandon

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I think it helps me in a couple ways: 1) modulate my own emotional bandwidth. He will say stupid shit. But outrage over that will always find some kind of dumb run around. Might as well save the outrage for the dumb shit he DOES (which is numerous)

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

I think it’s useful only in the sense that it’s helpful to know that we are not dealing with an ideologue or someone with a comprehensive world view such as Vance or Thiel. We’re essentially talking about someone from 4chan with the highest risk tolerance possible

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

You hit the suburbs and all you find are either chili’s or more expensive versions of chili’s

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Especially as it’s clear that they are putting their thumbs on the scales of these algorithms in NUMEROUS ways to enrich themselves - not just how they are shaping the news but also how they withhold revenue from actual publishers while denying the responsibility of publishing for themselves

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

I can see where @syedschemes.bsky.social and his love for pressuring the middle of the field with passing off play action came from

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

Coming off the absolute top rope. I love it. And can’t agree more - the “discourse” feels so disconnected from actual day to day reality. Weirdly lately I’ve been more encouraged by Reddit than anything else cause on there ppl are trying to figure out actual solutions to others’ problems

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

Fed up with this not only in these settings, but also in slack convos and docs. Like jfc of course it occurred to me to ask Claude, but I also assumed it'd be unusable slop so I didn't

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

I’m glad that the creator economy has made it so that instead of subscribing to one newspaper I now follow 18 substacks of former NYT writers. This is going great yall

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 26/12/2024

No but seriously what is Christmas fettuccine?

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

The amount of blogs, websites, and articles I used to read in between opto-ing campaigns or flicking between that and an excel sheet is crazy. But why not just watch a YouTube video or straight up read a book when I have 20 min between meetings?

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Unsubstantiated take: The rise of remote work during the pandemic accelerated the collapse of the “open web” because ppl spend less time on websites trying to look like they’re doing work in an office. You can be completely shameless about spending downtime between tasks on TikTok at home

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Me wondering at what point a well-trained LLM could take over strategic investment teams that have historically driven premium pub/linear TV negotiations

media.tenor.com

a football player with the number 5 on his jersey is being interviewed

ALT: a football player with the number 5 on his jersey is being interviewed

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Honestly it probably will take some giant debate breaking out and getting covered in a trade lollll

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Yeah - this was my first guess, and maybe a bit of an acquihire/get their client list situation too, but again - don’t totally see it?

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

I don’t totally understand this move. Audigent has big curation capabilities, but their Hadron ID has always seemed like the latest nothingburger of cookieless ID solutions, and Experian has always had more data than they knew what to do with Happy for someone to explain to me the upside here

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Yeah being split between here and X for some convos is bizarre and I find myself checking the aggregate less than I did just Twitter itself

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Life indeed caught up with me fast. Fairly certain I’m officially washed

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Easier to articulate populism with us vs them vibes than it is to articulate a compromise-driven rising tide that lifts all boats as that dynamic is rarely tangibly felt in most ppl’s lives

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

What’s crazy is that all of the DEI initiatives came with studies on how diverse workplaces were more effective and profitable and corporations are still like, “nah I’m good”

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Anakin then attempts stairway to heaven and is immediately shown the door

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Wow - they did not hold back at all

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

I think this strategy makes sense because their longterm goals seem to be disintermediation around anything that might eat away at advertiser spend, right now specifically around their data marketplace rev shares and SSP take rates.

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

But their announcements around Ventura, and before that OpenPath or UID2.0 basically came down "hey it'll help the money keep flowing." They don't get into the weeds very much in terms of how it'll benefit anyone who'll actually have to adopt it

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

When it comes to their DSP, they'll go into feature benefits, differentiators from alternatives, and overall business impact (see their Kokai release this summer) www.thetradedesk.com/us/news/pres... The stitch it all together in a specific narrative that speaks to the current moment

thetradedesk.com

The Trade Desk Launches Kokai – a New Media Buying Platform that Brings the Full Power of AI to Digital Marketing | The Trade Desk

Kokai also Features Breakthrough Measurement Tools; Free Retail Measurement Data from Pioneer Retailers; Massively Streamlined Partner Integrations; and the Programmatic Table, a Revolutionary New UX.

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

I find TTD's product marketing strategy when it comes to anything outside of their traditional DSP tooling to essentially be: Our differentiator is that we got a bunch of holdco/brand $$$, so get on board. And I think this is probably the correct call?

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

My personal guess is that it basically incentivizes CTV inventory looking even more like the open web - a greater split between what normal humans actually browse on a day to day basis, and then an extreme long tail of cheaply made content that comes up randomly on demand

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Does produce an interesting question - does lack of content ownership actually provide meaningful upside for content makers? Monetization and programming has (in best cases) operated simpatico, so curious how programming and creation responds w/o that explicit partnership

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

I’m trying to imagine explaining this skeet to my 5yo self who watched WWF religiously

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

god who would have thought a dumb story about Hulk Hogan's sex tape would land us here

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

This is my big subjective gripe. He is just such a fucking dork

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

I was on the darn waitlist forever LOL

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Also so much engagement baiting on threads

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Ugh those darn croissants have made AUS so incredible slow

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Love this. How do you guys think about the consumer consent piece of it raised by Jeffrey Chester in the article?

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

As product marketer, these are the things that make my job easier in proliferating these differentiators throughout the industry - by advocating for these in the public sphere it sets the framework that buyers think about the overall landscape prior them opening an RFP or seeing a sales deck

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Like the attempt here by Stesin to take his time to soapbox for simplicity + interoperability (whether or not I believe in their actual utility as a necessity for DCRs)

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Love that Lauren Wetzel (how is she still not on here @bencicchetti.bsky.social) takes the time to contend that DCRs CAN and SHOULD include PETs - that as a technology provider they consider it their duty to build them in:

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Not much to add w/r/t the FTC's take on clean rooms (hey, they require robust corporate compliance + data governance) but did want to comment on the quotes w/in the writeup www.adexchanger.com/data-privacy... As a PMM, I enjoy when execs in PR pieces use it as an opportunity to do positioning judo

adexchanger.com

The FTC Thinks Data Clean Rooms May Have A Few Dusty Corners | AdExchanger

The FTC is warning companies that using a data clean room isn’t some kind of get-out-of-compliance-free card.

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Used to be the best at Citi Field

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

This is the uncomfortable truth about it

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Oh - also not needing an in-app browser to read links. That’s p nice

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

2) we in ad tech aren’t curing cancer. We’re important in an increasingly strange information ecosystem, but we also aren’t discovering new treatments here (though some clean room providers might protest here! Which is fair!)

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

+1 My only adds here: 1) it’s worthwhile for us, as ad tech professionals, to always be skeptical of our own kool-aid. Esp as someone who is a professional evangelist in my PMM role, I always want to be cautious knowing that some stuff isn’t what it’s cracked up to be AT ALL

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Steven Choi @stevenchoi.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Lack of monetization. Not having WILD ads served to me all the time has been nice. No functional difference though

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