News & views
Our goal is your success as part of a healthy ads/media ecosystem.
Ongoing changes related to data usage and protection, AI adoption, efficiency demands, consumer and brand safety, and more mean that advertising and media companies can’t afford to focus on short-term goals in isolation. With pragmatic guidance and true collaboration, our ecosystem can support sustainable success across all of its constituents — while keeping digital content and services accessible and affordable.
June 2, 2026
Sherene Hilal of SiriusXM + Dennis
At Snowflake Summit 2026, Dennis sat down with Sherene Hilal, Chief Ad Product and Technology Officer at SiriusXM, for a conversation on how audio and marketing data platforms are evolving together.
March 12, 2026
Beyond Automation: How AI Is Rewiring Control In The Ad Tech Stack
In this AdExchanger column, Dennis argues that the real disruption from AI in ad tech isn’t automation — it’s access, and explains why the winners will be organizations that enable governed data access rather than hoarding it.
February 4, 2026
What AI means for media, data and adtech
Speaking with The Drum at IAB ALM 26, Dennis — who previously led IAB Tech Lab — argues AI agents will reshape media buying, data strategy, and the adtech ecosystem faster than programmatic or mobile ever did.
December 8, 2025
Modern Marketing + Measurement: Inside the Composable Future
On the Modern Marketing + Measurement podcast, Dennis breaks down how a unified data foundation, composable technology, and emerging AI capabilities are reshaping how brands plan, activate, and measure media.
November 25, 2025
Business of Marketing: Next Era of Advertising
On the Business of Marketing podcast, Dennis unpacks the future of data, AI, identity and measurement in advertising, and what the next era of advertising will look like.
October 16, 2025
The Rise of the Composable Marketing and Media Stack
Fresh off Advertising Week NY, Dennis writes about the decline of the monolithic “one-stop-shop” platform and the rise of composability in the marketing and media stack.
June 19, 2025
A Conversation With Snowflake’s New Global Head of Advertising, Media and Entertainment
At Cannes Lions, Dennis joined “Data Cloud Now” anchor Ryan Green shortly after being named Snowflake’s Global Head of Advertising, Media and Entertainment.
June 6, 2025
Privacy Game-Changers 3: Before/After
Critical advertising use cases — including remarketing, attribution and incrementality, and audience segmentation — can be satisfied with Privacy-Enhancing Technologies and other privacy-forward practices. This explainer can help you understand the differences between historical and more durable approaches.
June 6, 2025
Privacy Game-Changers 2: Assessing Impact
To motivate your company to adopt privacy-forward technologies and solutions for advertising, you first need to understand the impact identity signal loss may have on your business. This explainer helps you do just that.
May 28, 2025
Monopoly Report: Privacy-Enhancing Tech
In part two of his conversation with Alan Chapell on The Monopoly Report, Dennis discusses the future of addressability and how the industry can create ad standards that are both principled and fair.
May 21, 2025
Monopoly Report: Industry Trades
In part one of his conversation with Alan Chapell on The Monopoly Report, Dennis goes deep on the historical challenges IAB Tech Lab faced building Project Rearc and steering the industry toward a post-cookie ad ecosystem.
April 29, 2025
Publisher Readiness Playbook
Growing privacy scrutiny, regulations, and platform policies are reshaping digital advertising. To help you understand and navigate impacts and opportunities, ThinkMedium offers a Readiness Strategy Program. The first component of this program is a Publisher Readiness Playbook, which outlines the context, questions, and steps that you can take today to understand your preparedness for ongoing data- and identity-related shifts.
April 15, 2025
Undermining Ourselves
Many advertising standards fail to gain traction despite good intentions. This is a result of premature releases, overly complex specifications, and competitive resistance. ThinkMedium founder, Dennis Buchheim, cites historical examples and argues for fewer, higher-value standards backed by up-front commitments. He emphasizes that collaborative, shared infrastructure is crucial for the industry amidst changing privacy landscape, AI, and other shifts.
February 11, 2025
Privacy Game-Changers 1: PETs
Have you heard that Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are a game-changer for digital advertising, but haven’t been clear on why and how? Introducing… Privacy Game Changers: Understanding Privacy-Enhancing Technologies.
November 12, 2024
Report: Identity Resolution
Identity and identity resolution (IDR) have continued to serve as the backbone for ad experiences that are relevant, personalized, and impactful across Advanced TV and Video Advertising (ATVA). But with the rise of digital streaming, privacy concerns, and ongoing inefficiencies, it’s clear the ecosystem needs a strategic reset. CIMM and OpenAP commissioned ThinkMedium to tackle these challenges head-on in a report…
September 17, 2024
Marketer Readiness Playbook
Growing privacy scrutiny, regulations, and platform policies are reshaping digital advertising. To help you understand and navigate impacts and opportunities, ThinkMedium offers a Readiness Strategy Program. The latest offering in this program is a Marketer Readiness Playbook, which outlines the context, questions, and steps that you can take today to understand your preparedness for ongoing data- and identity-related shifts.
August 27, 2024
AAM Media Matters Interview
Dennis Buchheim is a longtime advocate of privacy-forward advertising technologies and practices and is founder of ThinkMedium, which released a Playbook to support publishers with ongoing data, identity and privacy shifts. AAM spoke with Dennis about privacy misconceptions and how creating an implementation plan can help publishers sustain and grow amid evolving industry regulations and platform policies.
August 20, 2024
Webinar: Are You Ready?
ThinkMedium’s recent webinar with SourcePoint provides practical information and advice on how to navigate shifts in data, identity, and privacy. It features an overview of ThinkMedium’s Readiness Strategy Program, which features a framework to help you assess and evolve advertising data and business strategies, product plans, solutions portfolio, and partner selection.
March 28, 2024
Sincera+ThinkMedium = Insights+Support for Publishers
Sincera Technologies and ThinkMedium are excited to announce a new program to support publishers via advisory services from ThinkMedium, with insights and reporting powered by Sincera’s vast metadata library.
March 7, 2024
Our Use of AI
ThinkMedium believes in transparency about business practices and views the rapid rise of Generative AI as a moment to demonstrate our commitment to being clear with our client, partner, and prospect community. This short post outlines our current use of AI-based technologies.
January 26, 2024
Principles for Responsible AI in Advertising
In just one year, GenAI has entered everyday conversations and seen adoption across industries. The benefit of everyone simultaneously leaning in is that we can learn from each other. While there have been some industry efforts to define AI principles, this post aims to apply industry-agnostic AI governance principles identified by academics to advertising use cases and prompt an industry discussion on defining/refining the responsible use of AI.
December 12, 2023
Report: Privacy and the Future of TV Advertising
This comprehensive report provides a structured approach to understanding and addressing the potential impact of privacy laws, regulations, and platform policies details on TV advertising. It supports stakeholders in the media, advertising, and marketing ecosystems in revisiting their preparedness and risk tolerances, assessing the issues associated with different services and solutions and technologies, and building and partnering to enable growth in the face of privacy shifts.
December 11, 2023
Conscious AI Innovation: How to Protect Your Business and Customers
It’s easy to get swept up in the promise of AI technology and its applications, let alone the boardroom drama (Cue “OpenAI: The Movie!”). The exuberance is not unfounded: AI may have $16T(!) of economic impact by 2030, and 75% of advertisers are using generative AI or will soon. But all is not rosy, of course. AI’s speed of innovation and deployment have raised concerns about harm to people and businesses. So, how do we balance the opportunities and risks?
November 17, 2023
BVDW DATA:matters Interview
“I really appreciated the opportunity to speak with BVDW for their DATA:matters week and share some thoughts on how European and US privacy regulation and platform policies have affected the advertising ecosystem, how AI will change data usage, what solutions are emerging for targeting and measurement, how we can collaborate globally, and more.”
–Dennis Buchheim, ThinkMedium Founder
November 15, 2023
Privacy and Measurement I/O
As the ad industry tackles privacy and data protection, it’s crucial to maximize efficiency and effectiveness — but solutions for measurement of both are being upended. Adapting requires employing durable strategies today and preparing to assess and adopt emerging solutions in the future that can complement or replace your portfolio. We share a framework for evaluating solutions and considering the privacy implications of required input and intended output.
October 30, 2023
“Build for 3 Years from Now”
(A ThinkMedium POV on the IAB Tech Lab Privacy event)
Insights and a call to action from an event that focused on: 1/ privacy-preserving solutions for advertising; 2/ regulatory/platform trends and industry standardization efforts; 3/ technology vendors, brands, agencies and platforms with their POV and concrete applications; and 4/ how to ensure interoperability across all constituents.
October 9, 2023
Ad Tech Industry? The Doctor Will See You Now
“Healthy habits are hard to form and even harder to maintain, especially after a lifetime of neglecting the advice of doctors to eat better and exercise more. Not a bad metaphor for how the online advertising ecosystem has been operating – and a big reason why it’s now facing a reckoning in the form of regulations and scrutiny of certain less-than-salubrious practices.” Read more in this AdExchanger interview with ThinkMedium founder, Dennis Buchheim.
September 13, 2023
Our First Six Months of… Thinking Medium
We launched ThinkMedium early this year, focusing on privacy and data, safety, and efficiency in ads and media. Our client engagements and interest from prospects have validated the industry’s need for support in these areas — with pragmatic ideas that foster “medium-term” success and support a healthy ecosystem. We’re pleased to share more about our engagements and are excited about what comes next!
September 6, 2023
Efficiency: Doing More with Purpose in the Medium Term
(ThinkMedium’s POV on Efficiency, one of our 3 focus areas)
Business, ecological, and technology efficiency is a strategic imperative for enterprises in the advertising and media spaces. They can be at odds in the short term, but they support each other – and a healthy ecosystem – in the medium term.
August 25, 2023
4A’s and CIMM Launch Study with ThinkMedium to Explore Privacy and the Future of TV Measurement and Advanced TV Advertising
This industry initiative will explore perspectives and experiences to develop practical recommendations for solutions that may be most viable given evolving privacy requirements.
July 19, 2023
Safety: Conceptually Simple, Operationally Complex
(ThinkMedium’s POV on Safety, one of our 3 focus areas)
The concept of brand and consumer safety across the ad industry is relatively straightforward and is not a new issue, but the increasing complexity of advertising and media environments has created immense operational challenges – making it imperative to prioritize the right solutions.
June 16, 2023
A Principled Approach to Privacy
(ThinkMedium’s POV on Privacy, one of our 3 focus areas)
Data privacy has been a key issue in advertising over the past decade and has resulted in massive change across the industry – with many advertisers and media companies still not well positioned to navigate ongoing shifts. We propose a principled approach and solutions framework that can support the industry in achieving a sustainable state.
May 31, 2023
TV of Tomorrow: The Journey towards Trust and Collaboration
(A ThinkMedium POV on the TV of Tomorrow conference)
Some key takeaways on the state of the TV industry, both today and into the future:
1/ Collaboration is happening and bearing fruit across the industry.
2/ Incentive alignment remains the number top barrier to progress.
3/ Data and consent will drive priorities; when done well, it will open up new models and efficiency.
May 16, 2023
Attention’s Redemption…or History Repeating Itself?
(A ThinkMedium POV from the ARF AUDIENCExSCIENCE conference)
Key takeaways from attention session:
1/ The ads and media ecosystem needs to align on attention: What is it? And how can it be used?
2/ If we can’t agree on biometric or onsite behavioral metrics for attention, results will be inconsistent.
3/ Without precautions, buy-side attention optimization may not drive sales and could negatively impact consumer safety.
May 4, 2023
Multiple Initiatives for Multiple Currencies
(A ThinkMedium POV from the ARF AUDIENCExSCIENCE conference)
Some takeaways from cross-media measurement sessions:
1/ Premium video players should be commended for taking joint action toward solving a complex problem.
2/ A holistic view is needed on how JIC work intersects with other industry initiatives and company efforts.
3/ We need collaborative development of systems that are optimal for the new landscape, not just bridging gaps.
April 17, 2023
The Green Elephant in the Room
(A ThinkMedium POV from the Green Media Summit)
While measurement was described as the number one need, the lack of specificity made it sound like a blocker to progress. In our blog post, we discuss how differentiating between proxy and direct measures creates an immediate path forward for pursuing ecological sustainability within the advertising and media ecosystem and how to move past the impasse of “perfect being the enemy of good.”
March 15, 2023
Why Privacy, Safety, and Efficiency?
The three members of the ThinkMedium team have all developed strong personal missions related to ads, and the goal of a recent exercise was to push ourselves on why “privacy, safety, and efficiency” instead of the dozens of other possible focus areas (e.g., creative, video, brand vs. DR, effectiveness).
