AI is finally compressing the supply chain. But the business stays human to human. Trust is still the product.

Newman has been in digital marketing since 1999, almost entirely on the publisher side, until she joined PubMatic 12 years ago to support publishers from inside a pure play technology company. She believed then, as her CEO still says, that every ad will be digital and every digital ad will be transacted programmatically. She has stayed because the industry is in constant change, to the point that every two years she feels like she is almost working in a different industry. The real inflection now is the role AI will play in simplifying and streamlining the digital advertising supply chain.

Customers never ask for less. They want transparency, quality, trusted platforms and a data-safe environment, and publishers and retailers who spent years earning customer trust will not break it. Everything the industry has delivered over the years is now table stakes, and the real demand is to do all of it more efficiently and effectively, with greater ROI for buyers and more working media for publishers.

The table stakes are consistent worldwide, with nuances by region. APAC is mobile first, North America has a different CTV landscape, and EMEA CTV is still dominated by the big streamers and the broadcasters, where broadcasters play a role they do not in other regions. PubMatic operates globally while respecting those differences.

There has been real fear about AI and jobs. Newman's view is that AI drives efficiency on the repeatable work and frees the human element for strategic thinking, critical thinking and time with customers, and she has taken her team through that understanding.

To operate in an agentic world you need infrastructure that is fit for purpose. PubMatic owns all of its own data centres, a decision made 14 or 15 years ago to control its own destiny, and five years ago it started working with NVIDIA to increase computing power rather than endlessly piling on more infrastructure. Both felt risky at the time and look intelligent in hindsight.

For 18 months the conversation was about the ambition of agentic. In the first six months of this year that became reality. Agent-to-agent campaigns cut setup time dramatically because an agent can optimise before a human notices a problem. In head-to-heads PubMatic is generally outperforming rivals across most metrics, buyers reduce wastage and time, and compressing the supply chain means publishers capture more of the spend.

For years people talked about supply chain simplification and the ad tech tax with cynicism. What is genuinely new is proof that you can simplify the supply chain and deliver better results, not just the same, and the cynicism has gone.

Newman does not see a trade-off between growth and trust. PubMatic has spent 20 years building trusted relationships, first with publishers and then with buyers, and that is exactly why customers will try something unknown with them. She would not recommend trying it with a partner you have never worked with.

The agentic system has checkpoints built in so a human can stop the workflow, review what happened and approve before it moves on. Early on there is more human oversight, and as people get comfortable that relaxes, until some run it agent to agent all the way through.

Programmatic used to be resource-heavy, needing serious investment in technology and specialist people, so it was hard for small independent agencies or brands trying to bring it in-house. AI is enabling the democratisation of buying programmatically and access to premium inventory. That brings new money into the ecosystem, more ROI for buyers and working media for premium publishers that was previously out of reach.

Every country manager insists their market is different, and Newman knows that, which is why it is kind of the same everywhere. PubMatic behaves like a global organisation for the benefits of scale while respecting different regulations, market mixes and creative compliance bodies like Clearcast in the UK. Roughly 80 per cent is standardised globally and 20 per cent localised, supported by flexible legal, product and go-to-market teams.

A tight leadership team of country and functional leads talks weekly and surfaces what is happening in each market. Newman mixes experience and gut with cross-referencing global customers across countries, and uses internal AI tools to scan every call report over a quarter to find where a conversation is cropping up, so she can spot trends and decide faster.

The Creator Marketplace is North America only for now, but the thinking is that the creator economy is a cultural zeitgeist brands want to reach. Around a World Cup, a broadcaster holds the live rights and programmatic already lets a brand engage with the moment, but the interesting part is the adjacency of content created around those 90 minutes. A goalkeeper went from 600,000 Instagram followers to around 27 million, and smart brands can tap into that moment.

Newman has always worked in the startup within the large corporate, MSN under Microsoft, AOL as it came out from under Time Warner, Clear Channel UK turning digital, and PubMatic as a teenager. That taught her to take calculated risks, create a space of safety where people can make mistakes and learn, balance gut with data, be vulnerable as a leader and know the business cold.

AI risks removing the bottom rung of the ladder, and Newman insists the industry stays intentional about entry-level routes, because without them there are no future leaders. On diversity she hires the best person for the job but demands a diverse candidate pool and diverse panels, arguing for equity of opportunity so the cream rises. She loves change and disruption, and believes that if you lean into this industry it will really support you.