Adam and Gareth return from their respective conferences (RampUp and Beeler Basecamp) to unpack a massive news week in the ad tech world. The duo dives straight into the “knife fight” of sell-side monetization, unpacking why publishers are getting bullied over ads.txt files and why managing prebid auctions is a brutal, low-margin business.Then, they pivot to the biggest stories of the week: The Trade Desk’s soft guidance, the market’s overreaction, and why everyone needs to stop freaking out about OpenAI having meetings with Jeff Green. Plus, they explore the wild theories behind AppLovin’s explosive stock growth, debate whether “performance” is still a moat in 2026, and roast the increasingly aggressive AI bots sliding into LinkedIn DMs.00:00 Intro: Conference Exhaustion & Beeler Basecamp03:03 The Ads.txt Bullying Problem05:46 The Knife Fight of Publisher Yield Management08:24 Publisher CPMs vs. Buy-Side Costs16:08 TTD Earnings & The Market Overreaction23:44 OpenAI Meets with The Trade Desk28:51 Will OpenAI Compete with Google Search?32:00 Anthropic vs. OpenAI: The Enterprise AI Race48:07 Postmortem: AppLovin’s Google Playbook51:30 The “Street Thesis” on AppLovin’s Growth58:43 StinkedIn: Aggressive AI Bots & “Negging”