Loaded episode this week. Starting off with a celebration to all the ADSN fans in Nimibia for skyrocketing our show to #1! This is not a drill and not a joke.
Nothing else is going to top that news, but let’s do our best. Alphabet is raising $80B, the first major capital raise since 2006 (🤯), but James pointed out something I hadn't considered, that this could also be an offensive play. With SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all approaching IPOs, every dollar Alphabet, Meta, and others take in is a dollar their future competitors can't access. And then what if rates get cut on top of this? We’re about to see Gatsby level 10. Speaking of SpaceX (congrats to all the new millionairs, 100 millionaires, billionaires, and first trillionaire). That said, this IPO feels like the new bitcoin. Every dinner, every coffee shop, every sidewalk convo is all about SpaceX.
The other big theme: everyone can build apps now thanks to agentic AI tools (nothing new here), but people still can’t figure out the distribution problem. This is "the YouTubefication” of software. Almost nobody has an audience, almost nobody can pay for distribution, and the creative genius to go viral organically is extremely rare. Meanwhile ChatGPT is quietly running Facebook’s old blue app playbook: give people tools to build inside the platform, then sell ads to promote those things.
We also got into Substack app-walling content and holding creator’s audiences hostage (shoutout ADSN sponsor Beehiiv which let’s us own our audience). Apple is getting cute at WWDC and their AI strategy, and a Northbeam stat that should be a wake-up call: only 1.4% of Meta ad accounts produce 36% of all creative on the platform. CREATE MORE ADS. The algo suppresses bad ads anyway, so the real risk isn't shipping bad creative, it’s much worst to not be shipping enough.
Enjoy this week’s episode and go visit our sponsors, we love all of them. And if you want to become a sponsor reach out to me at my first name, last name @gmail.com.
THE RUNDOWN
ADAM RYAN | CEO & CO-FOUNDER OF WORKWEEK
James and Daniel interview with Adam Ryan, CEO of Workweek, about building professional communities and improving how media engagement is tracked and valued.
Workweek is launching a partner platform that connects newsletter engagement data directly to advertiser CRMs to better measure real business impact.
Adam claims ~95% of newsletter clicks may be non-human, which heavily skews performance reporting.
The platform reportedly matches about 44% of Fortune 500 CRM systems to real engagement data.
Main takeaway: newsletter ROI is often unreliable today, and Workweek aims to fix attribution between marketing and actual sales outcomes.
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS
AdQuick makes out-of-home advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as your digital campaigns. If OOH isn’t in your media mix yet, AdQuick will change your mind. Check them out at adquick.com
beehiiv helps creators (like ADSN) create, grow, and monetize newsletters with easy-to-use tools and lets them actually own their audience. If you’ve got a newsletter, it should be on beehiiv.com
The Farm is the premier fractional commercial legal team for tech. They bring an in-house approach to outside counsel with no billable hours, no commitments, just one flat monthly fee. thefarmllp.com.
STAY CONNECTED
JAMES BOROW
Twitter – /jamesborow
LinkedIn — /jamesborow
DANIEL DRUGER
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TikTok — /danieldruger
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