ADSN
ADSN (The Ads Network) is a weekly show for people building and investing in ads, media, and monetization products. Every Tuesday, join James Borow and Daniel Druger as they bring over 30 years of experience to discuss the headlines and the why and how behind them. They also welcome industry leaders to go deep on topics in a fun and approachable format. Join the ADSN crew every Tuesday 🗓️
Episodes
Daniel and James debate where the next durable technology businesses will come from, starting with their enterprise thesis for Anthropic and Meta's combination of AI products and distribution. A public exchange over a vibe-coded beehiiv alternative becomes a discussion about what customers actually pay for: dependable email delivery, continued development, and a team that stays focused after the first demo.
They also discuss Thrad's...
Daniel and James welcome back Ari Paparo, author of Yield and host of Marketecture, to debate where advertising and commerce go next. Ari shares his impressions of Amazon's combined retail-media and DSP buying experience, explains why purchase signals can be more useful than broad search histories, and makes the case for Walmart's advertising ambitions. As an early Vibe investor and board member, he discusses how retail data, telev...
Pinterest and Crexi Executives Chloe Wix and Mary Bloom introduce Ladies Who Launch, a new ADSN conversation about the products, careers, and friendships people build along the way. They revisit their early Snapchat days, how a connection through Mary's future husband became a working relationship, and why moving their meetings outside helped them solve problems. Their “run-on-ones” along Venice Beach became both a brai...
Daniel and James start with a student selling ad space on her wall to pay tuition, then take the idea of “everything is an ad network” straight to James's hat and Daniel's family-photo background. They discuss an X Money appeal that reportedly raised more than $10,000 toward a Cybertruck and debate a cited figure showing only 2.2% of US households paying for AI. Daniel sees a promising starting point; James sees a consu...
"Volume negates luck." That is one of the many Jay-"isms" we get into on this episode of No Permission.
Jay Yang is the author of You Can Just Do Things and the upcoming Work With The Best. He's on a mission to show people they can create their own opportunities through permissionless action (No Permission!!!). And it's not just his mission, it's also how he lives his life.
Jay cold emailed Tyler Denk at Beehiiv at 16 and landed an...
This week on the ADSN Rundown, Daniel Druger and James Borow examine how artificial intelligence is moving from software into hardware, commerce and public infrastructure. They break down Meta’s Apple-like hardware moment, Google and SpaceX testing TPUs in orbit, and the future of advertising when agents shop on a consumer’s behalf. They also explore X’s phone-number strategy, Amazon’s new Ads Agent and why ...
Rob Leathern, CEO and founder of Infohawk and the creator of the Facebook Ad Library, joins Daniel and James to break down the rapidly escalating world of AI-powered scams and online fraud. Rob explains how scammers are now vibe-coding their own analytics dashboards, producing 60-minute deepfake celebrity endorsement videos, and scraping public data to send hyper-targeted phishing messages. He shares why online fraud, estimated at ...
This week on the ADSN Rundown, Daniel Druger and James Borow unpack Meta’s decision to open Muse to developers and why connectors from Shopify, Stripe, Expedia, Instacart and others could turn it into a new consumer platform. They explore a potential open-web coalition between Meta, Shopify and Stripe, debate whether Meta will eventually acquire Shopify, and explain why the combination of social distribution, commerce data an...
Jason Levin, founder and CEO of Meme Lord, joins Daniel and James to break down how he turned internet humor into a legitimate B2B SaaS business. Jason explains his concept of "humor arbitrage," the idea that the boringer your company, the more you stand to gain from being funny, and how that thesis has landed Meme Lord enterprise clients with ACVs of $60-80K across HR, legal, and tech.
He walks through how the company helps brands...
"Everything AI related that has ever been innovated on has been through the lens of something completely digital. The challenge for the physical AI world is how do you actually experience things in real life."
In this episode, Daniel and James sit down with Zach Greenberger, CEO of Nexar and former chief business officer at Lyft, to dig into the real-world data layer that's accelerating autonomous vehicles and physical AI. Nexar has...
This week on the ADSN Rundown, James and Daniel go from Eric Seufert's optimistic vision for an ad-supported prosperous society to Travis Kelce getting a warm welcome into the world of ads.
James makes the case for agentic insurance and for bringing Bitmoji back as a personalization layer for agents, Meta’s aggressive Muse launch, Mark Lou’s $100,000 body-ad takeover, and a former Anthropic researcher’s warning abo...
Before you start this episode, please give us a subscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & YouTube. This helps the podcast grow and makes James very happy.
"The founders that we invest in, the last thing that they want is our money. They want us."
Every big tech company has an alumni investing group, and until this summer Snap was the exception. On this episode of 30 Minutes, Daniel and James sit down with Max Rivera, foun...
Eric Seufert, the mind behind Mobile Dev Memo, released a 4-part series called The Prosperous Society. In it, Eric lays out a deeply optimistic case for AI's impact on the economy: as AI-enabled tools reduce the friction around both production and distribution, the binding constraint flips from production to distribution, and the digital advertising economy becomes accessible to businesses that were previously locked out entirely. ...
This week's ADSN Rundown covers a packed slate, starting with True Classic running QVC-style live video directly on its homepage and whether that model or agentic commerce has a better shot at reshaping e-com. Daniel and James dig into Nikita Bier's take on shipping fast at X, where press releases were written 20 minutes before launch, and why overthinking go-to-market is a trap. They break down reporting that Chinese institutions ...
"The health paradigm has totally changed. It's never going back to where you're just going to go see your doctor in the physical office and get treated. That's never going to happen again."
Dr. Neil Paulvin, a board-certified physician with over 20 years of experience in integrative medicine joins 30 Minutes to cut through the BS when it comes to peptides and DIY health. Dr. Paulvin has been prescribing peptides since 2017 and break...
Daniel and James open with a run of ad-tech news that keeps circling one idea: everything is becoming an ads business, and agents won't change that. Starting from Antonio García Martínez's viral post, they make the case that the visible ad is just the tip of the iceberg — the targeting, attribution, and budgeting underneath is the real machine, and AI agents will simply inherit it. From there they hit Spotify testing a skip b...
Daniel and JB are back for the ADSN rundown and this week's theme is clear: the creator economy just became the main economy. They kick off with Orin John showing that creators can now link Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to Google Search Console — the first real step in creators becoming the new publishers. Then they break down YouTube doubling its monetization requirements and X relaunching its creator program, both cracking...
Episode One of an ADSN Original: 30 Minutes kicks off welcoming Harry Campbell, founder of Driverless Digest and one of the leading global experts on autonomous vehicles and mobility. He joins hosts James Borow and Daniel Druger to break down the state of the self-driving industry. Harry unpacks the Waymo vs. Tesla debate, explaining why Waymo has a massive safety and operational lead, but how Tesla's fleet scale could flip the scr...
Rundown is back and this week is all about backlash. Backlash against AI slop, against automating parenting, and against putting ads in your $60K BMW. They kick off with LinkedIn testing a "Sounds Like AI Slop" button, Snapchat banning AI from Spotlight, and YouTube nuking 130,000 channels overnight. Then Sam Altman gets roasted for suggesting ChatGPT generate podcasts for his kids (just talk to your children, Sam), and OpenAI catc...
This is a featured episode of the NEW No Permission Podcast hosted by Daniel. Subscribe at No Permission Podcast (https://open.spotify.com/show/033nNxrnG1SI4HRqq1RUeL)
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"People crave intimacy in the sense of companionship and friendship rather than romance."
Carter Munk, founder and CEO of Pinned Social is on a mission to solve loneliness. This is his story as a 3x founder, never asking for permission to build.
How many 3x, sub...
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