The Trade Desk's Terry Kane on Ad Tech in MENA

Welcome to The MadTech Podcast special from ExchangeWire, a weekly deep dive into a pressing industry issue. Hello everyone and welcome to this special edition of The MadTech Podcast, coming to you all the way from the sunny south of France. Not that sunny, but don't be fooled by the clouds. My very special guest today, Terry Kane from the Trade Desk, covering the MENA region, MD in the MENA region.

Terry, welcome to The MadTech Podcast. Sunny Cannes, but sunnier in Dubai. We're okay, yes. Good to be here, thank you.

Yeah. And, you know, from what I understand it's a lot sunnier and a lot hotter back in London today. So actually I think we've probably got the good the good end of the stick for one. Much, much, much better views.

So delightful to be able to catch up with you here in Cannes. We're really excited about doing some activation in the MENA region later in the year. And really I wanted to take the opportunity for this special episode to just chat with you a little bit about what is happening in the MENA region. So let's kick off with I'd I'd love to understand your perspective in terms of growth and maturity.

What does ad tech and marketing tech look like in MENA compared with other global regions? Where is the industry at at the moment? Well I think I think one of the key things that I'm sitting here talking to you guys, the experts in ad tech, I think there's definite interest in the market globally. and that's that's for me is a signal of maturity, number one.

So the fact that the market is looking for greater outcome-focused results, greater from branding all the way through to bottom of the funnel results and everything in between, it can only be really be done through really high quality ad tech, and that maturity is really starting to show. It's starting to show in how people are planning, it's starting to show in how people are utilizing tech, bringing tech providers and vendors on board, asking the right challenging questions when it comes to their agencies as well as the tech vendors themselves, but holistically also looking at what's working best for the brand.

So maturity is... I wouldn't say we're anywhere near as mature as, you know, certain markets of the world, the European markets or the USA, for example, or even parts of Asia. But the future is right now in the region, whether that be the UAE or Saudi Arabia, or even the more lagging parts of the region itself like you sub-Saharan Africa, there's a lot of growth ahead of us. And that's probably one of the most exciting parts for us as The Trade Desk is that it's all here.

It's all right in front of us. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you hit on a really important point there, Terry, that, you know, the rest of the world is really looking to the MENA region. certainly in, you know, in the industry of ad tech and marketing tech in terms of what's happening.

And I think that, you know, that that's one of the reasons why at ExchangeWire we're so interested in covering what's going on in the region and getting out there later this year to hopefully host ATS in person, which will be amazing. Very excited about that. But tell me, I'm interested to to understand what of maybe some of the drivers in the ad tech industry that are occurring in international, global markets. What of those are prominent, if at all, in the MENA region?

So I'm thinking here about, you know, obviously drop in search referral traffic, what that's doing to identity in the sort of open internet. You know, privacy requirements. What are some of those main sort of challenges and driving issues for the industry are important in MENA? And you know, if any aren't, what is different?

What are the characteristics of the region that make it a little different? Well Look, I mean, when we talk about the region Middle East and North Africa as a identifier, if you will, Yeah. within that there's cohorts of maturity as well. So you've got the GCC countries, and then you've obviously got the the North African countries as well.

So within the GCC, there's very much a much more advanced conversation than than parts of the North African. So the holistic region itself is very, very diverse but the the same challenges that exist with, you know, a brand in New York exists with a brand in Dubai. So they're they're both looking for the same results, which is ultimately going to be performance, it's going to be shareholder return, for want of a better word. How do we perform the best for whatever dollar goes into the system or whatever DRHM goes into the system?

So that then ties back to what you know what content's available, what channels are available, what's digitally connected, what is, you know, what's connectable via identity, and all of those combined are obviously what we're trying to build and with other partners in the market as well, but we're trying to build for the future of The Trade Desk. So identity, a great example. You know, identity is, you know, you have very much the identity solution of GDPR in Europe, and then you have other federal systems in the USA.

Two very, very different scenes. In the MENA region, you've got lots of different countries, lots of different regulations that don't necessarily always speak to each other. So that identity challenge is something that we're very much focused on of bringing I you know UID or EUID to the market and helping elevate this conversation around persistent identities in the market. So you know, all all both on the supply side, on the buy side, all maximise that opportunity in the market because it is enormous, you know, the IAB puts the growth of the region far outstripping the rest of the world in terms of pace, so it's, you know, everyone's excited.

It's just about putting the parts in place. Yeah, to sort of back that up and to and to and to sort of learn to understand where the opportunities within those sort of growth forecasts are. And I suppose so two things bring to mind there. The first is, we've been keenly watching stats, growth figures and so forth in the MENA region for a while now.

You know, every year, especially when we're at we're in Singapore running our APAC conference, I'm always looking at global ad growth stats and more specific stats within the market and MENA always stands out massively as do some of the regions within APAC, but MENA's usually head and shoulders above in terms of growth rate. So I'm really interested to sort of understand a little bit from you what that means on the ground. And then sort of related to that I suppose, how do you deal with the fragmentation of lots of different markets within this overarching market?

You know, slightly different cultural approaches perhaps to transactions, to advertising. maybe even sort of slightly different consumer behaviors associated with different cultural approaches. How do you deal with those sorts This is the really interesting thing, and through our research, the three partners research, we know for a fact that seventy percent of people's time that's spent online in the region, I'd say the MENA region as a whole, is spent outside of a walled garden.

Yeah. So it's you know, I myself I spend a lot of time in traffic. I'm listening to Spotify. Yeah.

You know, I'm up in the morning listening to digital radio, I'm in obviously the office and displays right there in front of me. I'm at home, I'm watching connected television and local connected television, and then back to running an exercise on Spotify again or Algami. And on all of that, 70% of the time doesn't reflect in where media spend is. Yeah.

Because you know, the IAB research itself is that 80% of media spend is is sitting behind the walled gardens. Yeah. And that to me is the biggest dispar, you biggest opportunity. Um biggest opportunity for advertisers, biggest opportunity for media and for supply side.

is to start to win some of that money back from the walled gardens and actually put it into local media, to put it into local production, and put it into local results in identifying identifiers and retailers, et cetera, as well. So that that's the biggest opportunity. When it comes to to culturally, you know, there there's periods like Ramadan, for example, in in the region, which is just such a momentous moment every year. It's 30 days of uh changing of behaviors, of lifestyle, of You know, awake times of consumption of content, consumption of retail, and, you know, that's one real nuance of the market once per year.

But it's also a time when everybody gathers as a family to watch television. You know, there's the Ramadan specials which come out every single year, which are just real, you know, high quality production uh series specifically for Ramadan. And those are real golden moments. So we've got those as well as you know, like the World Cup right now, football fanatic part of the world, you know.

We've got Ronaldo playing in Saudi Arabia and you know, the the volume of television consumption in Saudi Arabia because of Ronaldo in there is enormous. Yeah. The volume of consumption of audio is, you know, it's enormous. I mean it's such a connected marketplace when it comes to consumption of music, of podcasting, and all of that, you know, We need to educate the market how to utilize these channels and and how to do it in an omnichannel way.

So it's really interesting because that was going to be my next question as well was, you know, what do you see the opportunity for growth? What do you see as the opportunity for growth in general across the open internet? Are we looking at specific channels? Because obviously you guys at The Trade Desk, you know, uh first and foremost, huge supporters of, you know, a sort of democratized open internet, in independent, uh but also, you know, really active in CTV and other channels, big proponents, of course, of omnichannel execution, planning and execution.

What, you know, I mean you've already given me a bit of a rundown, but are there some standout specific channels in MENA that you think are, you know, really interesting, especially compared with other markets? And where I'm going here, for an example, is whenever we're in APAC, we're often talking about things like social commerce, you know, that one step beyond beyond retail media into an entirely, you know, social platform commerce environment, which includes live commerce as well.

Is there some sort of standout trends or areas of opportunity in MENA, do you think? Well look, I coming back to the to where we are in this life cycle, we are very much at the you know stage two of a journey, if you will. We've gone through the social media stage and you know in the market, and now we're look re-looking at the open internet and saying, actually, this is really interesting again. And the renaissance is here because suddenly you can buy without complications, and suddenly there is transparency, and suddenly there is identity, and suddenly there is retail data, etcetera, in there.

So all parts of this marketplace are suddenly opening up to programmatic. Education is my priority. It's education of the hands-on keyboard from a trading standpoint on why The Trade Desk works really well and why Kokai and AI is such an integral part of, you know, of their trading day, all the way through to the CEOs, and how do they understand at a agency standpoint and at a brand standpoint why omnichannel transparency is so so important? So, from a holistic standpoint, there's there's too many things to focus on in the short term.

So, what we do is we double down. We double down on where the the market is is really leaning into and and where there's a renaissance. And there's a renaissance on CTV, without a shadow of a doubt. There's a renaissance on retail data.

We have some of the biggest retailers in the market and also some of the biggest telco companies in the market, uh in the world, sorry. And what's really nuanced about the market is that there's only one or two telco companies per country because of the way the the federalized system structured there. So you have you know, incredible reach through one or two companies that you would never have in many places. Yeah.

And then you have just a consumption driven marketplace as well. So you have, you know, Dubai is a prime example of this. They have a five minute city that you can go on an app and you can get your food delivered in five minutes, you can get a haircut, you can get fuel delivered to your house in five minutes, you can do multitude of things in in five minutes. It's a five minute city.

So that's that commerce, that last minute, last mile commerce is really interesting from a you know from a programmatic standpoint. So you know. Out-of-home as well. I mean you've all seen the the the pictures of Dubai and Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the volume of out of home and what you can do with out of home now versus what it was previously.

Massive populations within these cities as well. You know, Cairo is 30 million people or whatever, whatever the number for Cairo is, 90 million people in Egypt overall. It's a huge marketplace and it's really at that stage too now, I believe, where we have so much excitement ahead of us and and bringing all of the partners on board. At this journey from, like I say, the the the advertisers to the other tech partners, the supply partners, and obviously the agencies as well.

That's the critical part for us. And that's why I love what we do. We're independent, so we can play in many different fields without stepping on anyone's toes. And the retailers like Al Shaya and the Nunes, they love us because again, we're not the ones taking business on the other side, Yeah.

we're focused purely on the media side of it, and that's what they love. Yeah. So digging into that a little bit, if we think about some of your clients and some of the agency folks that you work with in the region and maybe some brands and so forth that you might be facilitating in the region, to what extent do they, you know, to what extent are they kind of leaning into activations again that might be different from other regions? So you've already kind of given a hint there, like big consumption-based economies, big populations in some of the economies within the region, you know, things like a five minute city which is all about that last mile convenience.

Are you seeing some brands and even maybe some global brands that are executing differently in MENA from elsewhere? Because they're like, okay, this is a particular type of opportunity that we've got here, so let's do things a bit differently. Yeah, look, I I think there's two ways to look at this. One is the in market opportunity.

Yeah. So that's the brands who are in market for people who are living within the the towns, cities and and countries themselves. And there's the export opportunity. Yeah.

So the the the major brands who are advertising globally. I see many of them at Cannes this year. So I it's really exciting to see that the region is really just fast emerging out of a crisis into, you know, back to being on you know, on target for being one of the biggest in the world. But the, you know, the way that I think Most of those major brands are approaching this market is that they're challenging us to challenge, you know, publishers and and agencies and themselves to say, well, how can we do better?

How can we make decisions around buying out-of-home more effective than they have been, you know previously? What can you do in The Trade Desk that is better than anything that's gone before? And you know, we're pretty confident that we can answer these questions for them. And it's about educating the again how to buy, uh how to plan, and how to buy effectively.

And I think, you know, when we talk about out-of-home, that's such an interesting part for the Middle East because it's such a prevalent part of of life. You know, and when you've got, you know, tech, which you know, for example in The Trade Desk, you're able to pull lat long data off to build first party data from out-of-home advertising. When you say this to the market, suddenly the ears open up and say, Well, actually out of home's really interesting again. Yeah.

So that renaissance and you can build a first party targeting audience off the back of that and use it in other channels. It was almost an eye-opening moment, ears perk up and eyes open up and say, actually I want to do this again. So again, doing doing better with existing and planning for the exciting agentic AI world as well. I think that that's you know, that's a big part of what we're we're focusing on on the today and in the future.

And actually you've given a practical example there, Terry, as well, of how, you know, arguably data infrastructure then in the region is becoming a bit more sophisticated, and I think that's super exciting, right? Because when you perhaps have the collision of large economies with growing sophistication, strongly focused on consumerism, but also you're starting to see the infrastructure for the transaction of advertising improve and you're getting a good strong data layer in there, that's when some really quite fancy things can be achieved, right?

Okay, so let me just sort of then focus our minds a little bit on the future. Yep. What are some of the things that you're hoping to see in the region within, say, the next kind of three to five years? Where do you think um, what do you think is going to happen on the ad tech side of the industry?

So where do you think sort of technology innovation and infrastructure is going? And then what do you think the MENA region in general is going to look like in three to five years from advertising and marketing? It's really interesting, and we've all talked about it here. Is this the Cannes of AI?

It's the Cannes of agentic AI. But I think that that's really important. For us, it's really important to understand it's not just the can of agentic AI, but it's the can of agentic AI and actually delivering on the AI side of things. So, you know, I'm really excited about what we're doing there here and tests we've got got running currently with Stagwell and and you know around the agentic AI side of things.

I'm excited what they're they're gonna do for the, you know, the rest of the company and region. So MENA will be, MENA will be up there with it as well. So, I mean, the ideal scenario for us, I guess, in the region is that we are leapfrogging you know, the the status of Web 1.0, Web 2.

0, Web 3.0 into web agentic AI market, where I think, you know, Arabic content thrives, performance on channels thrive and people move traditional spend, linear spend, into programmatic so it performs better. I think whenever we look at omnichannel, we're still very much up. Plan by channel market versus planning omnichannel.

So I think that that in the next couple of years, particularly with the ability around agentic will will make that thrive in the market. I think that brands from the market going global is really interesting as well. So I think you know we see a lot Advertising out and growing in that, yeah. So the airlines, the Emirates, the Qatars, the Etihads, and obviously then the sovereign wealth funds as well.

So the public investment funds and to buy holding, etcetera. These are enormous brands and houses of brands as well. there's a real opportunity to help the region expand globally as well. And I think that's an important part that we have to play.

It's being The Trade Desk in the market and the market in The Trade Desk Yeah. and helping build tech around those opportunities. And that's what's, you know, really unique about The Trade Desk is we can build tech for clients to do really interesting things and, you know, more of those please. Yeah.

Yeah, and I mean it feels like, you know, you're in the market in the region at a time where you're enabling your customers to grow, but you're sort of growing with them as well, right? Exactly. So that means that you can be using innovations and and leaning into projects that you've started elsewhere, you know, like for example your agentic AI example with Stagwell. And you can be using those and applying those in the region and seeing how what that actually looks like, you know, from a practical point of view and trying to grow things organically from that point within the region.

Well, this is exactly the one of the real values I have with The Trade Desk personally is the fact that we can grow our teams in the market. Because you gotta be there with your agencies and your clients to understand those local problems around identity and around data and around publishers to navigate and build tech that you couldn't do sitting in the valley or sitting in another, you know, a suburb. In London or in New York or whatever. Yeah.

No, no, no. And that's why you know, really excited about how we built our team in the market and uh committed to the market and and we're gonna build with the market. Yeah. Look, I feel like that's something that we at ExchangeWire absolutely observed in all of the years that we've been operating our business out in APAC as well.

You know, it's a good example of when we first started there sort of 15 years ago, a kind of a growth market that really required international ad tech companies to be based locally so that they could understand the mechanics of the market locally and then grow from there. And of course that, you know, that gave birth to some local technology innovations, but it also started to fire up lot of innovative projects amongst brands and agencies and tech vendors and publishers and created the industry that exists there now.

And it sounds like a similar trajectory in Yeah, very much so. Look, I mean in in the region we don't have an AVOD model across Netflix or Disney or other big TV, CTV providers. We believe it will come and it's obviously their priority to do it when it's right for them. But we encourage, you know, the model to come to the market so the market overall rises itself and we see the local players obviously adopt a more technical approach to programming and start to shape it.

Yeah. One final question, then sort of future facing again. what about from a consumer point of view? Like obviously globally, none of us are using search the way that we're used to.

Everybody's leaning into, you know, LLM queries. What do you see? You know, do you see any particular kind of consumer trends that you might come out of this new world where people aren't moving around the internet the way they did even two years ago? It's a brilliant question.

And actually on a on a personal basis, I started my doctorate three years ago and my doctorate's on the use of AI and organizational behavior. One of the key areas is why people are using this and what's it gonna do to the media landscape. And look, I've done a body of research. So the the interesting thing about doing a doctorate in AI is there's not a lot of research that's gone.

I'm about to say this is groundbreaking here, Terry. So I'll be I'll be doing research specifically on these subject areas. But what's really interesting and I think that there's a fifth 'P'. So there's price, product, promotion and place.

The fifth P is gonna be prompting. And the way that prompts are built, and particularly from an advertising standpoint, is gonna be crucial. So, you know, as humans we talk in a human way, you know, we don't go in and ask for a specific brand on ChatGPT, we'll go in and ask for a, you know, what's the best suntan lotion to use in a certain place, et cetera, et cetera. And I think the ability to have that in the open internet in order for advertisers to build around that human inquiry is going to be a crucial part of the future.

And I really hope, and obviously all of us do, that this sits in an open internet and not behind a walled garden like like gone previously. I think the the real opportunity is for for companies like The Trade Desk to act as an independent player um to ensure that we can, you know, bring those opportunities to life in the open internet and protecting obviously local products. I want to have a lot more chats with you about that, about that PhD that you're doing, and also about many other things.

But I guess maybe one thing I'd chime in on on there as a as a bit of a summary point is I personally have a lot of hope that actually the way that we currently use LLMs is gonna change massively in the next kind of twelve to eighteen months and it is not gonna fall into the hands of just one or two big players. I think it's gonna look really interesting and much more diverse. So I don't think it's gonna mirror Search, and I think it's gonna be much more democratized and it's really gonna breathe some real life into the open internet.

Well what's really interesting is gonna be, you know, the these almost micro fast paced companies that are just going to appear built off the back of agents. I think I think that's gonna be really interesting and and uh you know how how we're already seeing companies that are built off certain prompt orientations, you know, it whether it be retail media, whether it be a specific part of a retail media, these micro companies will pop up suddenly and, you know, command respect like faster than ever before.

It'll be a really interesting part of the new AI prompt world. And I mean, we've got so much to learn just as humans within that, right? And it'll be fascinating to see how consumer behaviour changes as a result of that. We've all got to get a lot better at kind of prompting any any form of AI that we're using and thinking about it through a different lens, right?

Can I... you interview a lot of people, can I ask you a question on this? Please. Yeah.

What are you, what's your view? How ready is the market? How ready are marketers for this? I mean when you start to talk to marketers about LLM queries and what advertising might look like in that environment, the conversation I find very quickly boils down to how can I understand whether my brand is visible in that environment and what do I do to, you know, optimise that?

So they get very focused on quite specific metrics, which I think is an interesting conversation in and of itself because it's taking the industry away from accepted metrics that we've been using for the last fifteen years and pushing us To a different place altogether. But I think it's not a it's a conversation that's not just for marketers. So at the start of the year, when we were, well, maybe back end of last year and we were doing some predictions for 2026. One of the things I was saying is that if you think about our use of LLMs and the way that we query and search for things in the internet now, it won't just be brands that need to be marketers, it will also be publishers.

They need to suddenly become brands. They need to think of how they're going to be discovered and what that discoverability is going to look like. So how ready do I think we are for that? You know, not I think it's on everyone's minds and it's on the tip of everyone's tongues, but I think we are all grappling around to understand what is the best way for us to move around this environment and what is the best way from a professional point of view to make sure our products and our services are searchable and discoverable.

And at the same time, lots and lots of technology tools are bubbling up to try to assist us with that. Personally, I think that's super exciting. But I think as well what's what's really exciting in this is the backend AI stuff. Yeah.

so you know we we get a trillion bid requests a day, plus plus, whatever that number is. It keeps growing every time I see it, but a trillion bid requests a day. There's no way that any technology can decipher the value of that unless it's AI first focused. So I mean that that back end, we're all, you know, it's very the front end AI is obviously very sexy and top of mind for everybody, but you know what sits behind that immense volume of data and what you do with it.

I think it's gonna be a real crucible in the conversation. Absolutely. And sort of bringing more visibility into that and focusing people's minds on understanding the implications of that I think is gonna really, I actually think we are at the precipice of really changing the advertising value chain. Yeah.

The fifth 'P', the fifth 'P'. Yes, exactly. Getting better at prompting and um yeah, and and and that's what I think makes it such an exciting, exciting time to be in this industry. Yeah.

We could go down lots of rabbit holes now, Terry. So I'm gonna I'm gonna pull us back from the from the brink, especially because you and I are probably quietly and hopefully not visibly melting in the sun right now, but a huge thank you to you for making some time for me here in Cannes. I know it's a super busy week for you guys, so it's been fantastic to chat with you to learn a little bit more about the MENA market. And a shout out to you and everyone else in the market there.

We're super excited about bringing ATS to Dubai Glad to see you guys. towards the end of the year, November, it's currently scheduled for, so we're super excited about that. And thank you very much. And thanks everybody for listening and watching The MadTech Podcast.

Thanks for tuning in to this MadTech Podcast special. We'll be back to discuss another hot industry topic soon.