Episode 1. What AdTech is About in 2025

Episode 1. What AdTech is about in 2025

 

What is the AdTech industry exactly? Where is advertising currently headed? Which events shaped the industry as we know it, and what are the key insights we have for 2025?

Moderator: Neha Dawar

Speakers: Malika Kennedy, Deniz Chiftchi

TRAILER

Neha

Is traditional advertising actually dead or there's a reshift happening?

Malika

The most important word in the marketer's vocabulary is test and with modern ad tech it's never been easier to test at scale.

Deniz

Open bidding, check, alternative stores already proven.

Neha

At what point do you say okay this is going to be here for a while?

Deniz

Users have become much more selective nowadays. They want value in exchange for attention.

Malika

Yeah, thank you, AI, for this beautiful contribution for our launch campaign.

EPISODE

Neha

I need more coffee. Hi, everyone. This is Points of Growth, a podcast about the ad tech industry by Yango Ads. Here, we unite marketing and business people to discuss advertising, app monetization, current trends, and challenges. My name is Neha Dawar. I'm a business development manager at Yango Ads, and I will be hosting this podcast alongside our speakers. I've actually always wanted to try this because I'm still considering a stand-up comedy as my side career.

So you see, advertising is all about communication, yet somehow people in the industry rarely get a chance to sit down at the same table and just, you know, kind of discuss the work that they do every day.

Well, here's your chance. Points of Growth is where ad tech experts can come together to share their insights, ask the big questions, and believe it or not, find some common ground along the way. Maybe. We'll see. So we are kicking off the first episode about AdTech, about now. What is this industry exactly? Where is the advertising currently headed? What events shape the industry as we know it? And what are the key insights we have for 2025.

So my guests today are Malika Kennedy, Chief Business Development Officer at Yango Ads in the Middle East and Africa. Hi everyone. And our second guest today is Deniz Chiftchi, Senior Monetization Expert at Yango Ads.

Deniz

Hello dears. Thank you for your invitation.

Neha

So I'm very glad to have both of you here. This is actually like a great combination since Malika is going to be covering the advertising side while Denise will enlighten us on the app monetization. So can you tell us, and this is everybody's favorite question in the world, tell us a bit more about what you do. I work with the top mobile developers.

Deniz

And publishers and helping them scale revenue through smart monetization in app advertising and analytics. My focus is emerging markets, alternative app stores, open bidding and automation. 

So basically everything that helps turn an app into a real business. So I help our partners grow sustainably, reduce operation complexity and unlock new revenue streams they didn't even know existed. 

Malika

I've been in the Middle East for the past 18 years. I love the market and I've been in the advertising industry for over a decade. I guess, my role is a bit of a person wearing many hats. I helped Yango Ads establish its ground in the region. I work alongside a variety of teams by building partnerships and truly beneficial win-win scenarios for our clients, aka advertisers, across the span of the Middle East and Africa. We're very strongly present across the UAE. We establish our grounds in Saudi, in Oman, and some of the more emerging markets such as Jordan and Egypt. So yeah, that's pretty much.

Neha

Wow, that's quite a background, Malika. That's quite impressive. In this episode, we want to make a good intro into the AdTech industry for our listeners. So can you give us an overview from your side what ad tech is about? What are the major tools or services we're talking about?

Deniz

From my perspective, AdTech nowadays is no longer just about placing ads. It's about building a full ecosystem where data, automation, and UX come together to drive monetization. So in the app world, ad tech, I would say, is how you turn user sessions into sustainable business outcomes without hurting your product.

Neha

And you, Malika, what does the AdTech industry mean to you?

Malika

David Ogilvy himself said that the most important word in a marketer’s vocabulary is test, and with modern AdTech, it’s never been easier to test at scale. 

So AdTech covers all sorts of cool topics like, more quote unquote traditional topics like DSPs, SSPs, DMPs, MMPs, and so on. But it also covers emerging topics — really amazing ones —  like how we can better use AI to rapidly iterate on creative concepts and machine learning, which helps us optimize in real time to our business objectives. 

So it’s quite wide-ranging, but also very exciting.

Deniz

So I would add that for me, AdTech is a full stack approach to the advertising businesses. So, from monetization to acquisition and back again. And I agree with Malika. That was so deep.

Neha

Well, I’m very glad we chose you to be the first guest on our podcast. I’m wondering — what have been the game changers over the past few years? The moments that, you know, really changed the advertising industry? Was there a specific event that made you personally think, okay, this is it, there’s no coming back from this one?

Malika

For me, that moment was when I first saw a case study by Digitas, which I was part of.  The case was from the US and was called Delta: The Path You Make. Essentially, we used template-based personalized video ads to create a unique video for each premium Delta Airlines customer, powered by AI.

It blew my mind at the time because there were over 600,000 personalized videos, each seamlessly incorporating the data the airline had collected about its loyalty program members. From that moment on, I knew that if we could deliver data-powered personalization at such a scale, it would change the game forever. Back then, it was truly an innovation. 

Deniz

We have alternative app stores as a game changer. For example, Huawei, Xiaomi, Samsung, and RuStore. Together, these stores give access to around 600 million users, which is a huge number.

First of all, over the past two years, we’ve seen Open Bidding emerge as a major game changer. On average, partners who switched to it using different mediation platforms to serve ads saw a 30% revenue uplift. Open Bidding is transparent, efficient, and much more scalable than the waterfall model. People who are familiar with app monetization understand that Open Bidding is having a massive impact on the market for apps and games.

Neha

That is absolutely fascinating. How do you identify which trends to, you know, pay attention to? How do you know if something is long term or just a short-term thing?

We’re constantly fed so much information on a daily basis that it’s actually really hard to keep up. I’m struggling. But at what point do you say, okay, this is going to be here for a while, versus, nope, this is going to disappear over the next, you know, two months?

Deniz

Neha, I would put it very simply: if it saves you time and drives revenue at scale, it’s worth following. Let’s look at it this way: Open Bidding? Check. Alternative stores? Already proven. AI-powered ad targeting based on predicted LTV? Absolutely.

If a solution makes the app team, for example, faster and smarter, that’s what we double down on. The rest is just noise for us.

Neha

That was possibly the shortest, most concise, and extremely helpful answer I’ve ever heard. So thank you!

Malika

Honestly, yeah, I agree. The key here is to identify whether it’s solving any fundamental problems. Is it being adopted across different levels of the industry, from startups to major platforms? If the answer to both is yes, it’s worth tracking.

Agent learning, probabilistic measurement, rapid iteration — they’re all becoming the norm for what we need to do as marketing experts.

So it is exciting. And as long as it makes your life easier, this is it.

Neha

Can we say that traditional advertising is dead? Or are we still waiting for some kind of comeback? Because everything is so digital nowadays. Everything you do, you do on your phone or your computer.

But at what point do you get, you know, advertising fatigue? When people are just constantly thinking, No, okay, I kind of want to switch off.

Malika

I would love to answer this question. Honestly, when I started my career, I began in performance marketing, back when search advertising was considered something ultra-technical — a complete puzzle for most people in the advertising business. We were hoping to get anything between 5 to 15% of the whole marketing budget.

Then the shift happened toward digital. Nowadays, it’s a completely flipped ratio. Traditional media is still alive and kicking, but it plays a different role than before. It’s all becoming more integrated. You think of digital billboards, connected smart TVs, and digital packaging with QR codes — it’s becoming more aware.

And it’s true that the shift is moving away from broadcast media, where you “spray and pray,” toward more personalized communication. Traditional media is adapting to this. Not everywhere, but we see a lot more digital billboards tracking the types of cars that pass by them. We see a lot more exciting retail media in stores that connect with different kinds of customers.

So it’s just becoming more digitized, more personalized, and evolving this way. Because at the end of the day, you have so many points of interaction with brands on a daily basis. You can’t just think that we’ll live our whole lives in the digital world — because we’re not. We go outside, we go to the cinema, we drive from point A to point B, we take our walks.

So no, I don’t think traditional advertising is dead. I think it’s just evolving.

Deniz

I would like to say, first of all — as we say in Serbia — 100% true.

In mobile, what we see is that we are moving toward integrated monetization and ads that feel like part of the experience, not a disruption. That’s why, for example, when you use an app or play a game, rewarded videos and native formats perform so well.

Users have become much more selective nowadays. They want value in exchange for their attention. If you do that well, users are okay with all the ads you show.

For example, last week I was in Hanoi meeting with my partners — app developers and game developers — and they were saying that spammy banners are out. They are remaking their apps in new formats.

They are moving away from hyper-casual games — so easy, you know, like matching three in a row or playing chess. For the last five to seven years, all those apps were fully covered by banners. That’s over.

Nowadays, those gaming studios are shifting to more mid-core games, which are harder to play and require more time. For example, instead of 5–10 minute sessions like before, they are switching to 20–30–40 minute gaming sessions.

That’s why, yes, I would say it’s not about traditional advertising anymore. It’s no longer the hero.

Neha

Actually, coming back to Malika’s mention of retail media — one major shift we saw over the past year was the rise of retail media.

Before I talk about how it’s impacted your work and so on, can you explain to our listeners what retail media is?

Malika

Oh yeah, 100%. Retail media is like seeing advertising while you shop for products, contextually. For example, Amazon already generates 9% of its revenue through retail media.

Globally, we’re seeing a trend going from $123 billion in retail media in 2023, projected to become nearly a $200 billion business. And here in the Middle East, it’s expected to almost double from $3.2 billion to nearly $6 billion. I absolutely see this happening because a lot of e-commerce players are really picking up.

So yeah, in simple terms, it’s a great solution for shoppers to be shown advertising for something they actually want to see. It’s great for advertisers, of course, because they can benefit by getting more revenue generated through the retailers. And of course, it’s an additional revenue stream for the retailers themselves. So it works as a win-win solution for all three.

I hope I painted the picture quite clearly on this one.

Neha

Yes, you actually did,chaha! I just wanted to ask — do you have any examples? For instance, how has this impacted your work, or do you foresee it happening?

Malika

No, I am kind of a retail media expert. It was a very exciting journey because you’re taking this traditional powerhouse of retailers and shops that have been here almost since the inception of the UAE — they’ve been here for the past 50 years nearly. And you’re trying to change their mindset to see the value of creating an additional revenue stream from digital, enhancing their digital presence, and building the ecosystem by using the data they’ve been accumulating all these years. And that shift wasn’t a simple one.

Deniz

What I can say, in addition, is that in apps, developers are now thinking more like platforms. They are building their own ad ecosystems and leveraging user behavior to create valuable inventory. This impacts how we think about demand, targeting, and how value flows inside the app.

Neha

I’m going to talk about everyone’s favorite subtopic when it comes to advertising. You can’t talk about advertising and not mention AI. And well, since we’re all here, it does look like our jobs are safe for now.

Do you see any risks of over-automation down the line?

Deniz

I wouldn’t say that it impacts my future job, but I would say that in our ecosystem, ML models predict LTV and adjust bids in real time. For example, in app campaigns, we also use auto-targeting. The system matches the app with the user based on interest and behavior — not just keywords.

As you know, for two decades, when search engines first started, they were working only with keywords. Nowadays, it’s much deeper. The apps, the ad machines, the ad networks, the mediations — they all help dive deep into people’s minds: what they want, what they want to buy, what they’re willing to buy in the future. It’s crazy. And it works pretty well here.

But the risk is also in blind automation, right? You can’t just let the model run wild, because human input is still critical.

Malika

AI has already been doing a lot of tasks for digital marketers for years. Automated bidding systems have been around since the early 2010s. And while they’re not quite as amazing as turning your photo into Studio Ghibli, they’ve still been a powerful tool since then.

I remember the days when I had just started in search advertising. We began each day by checking the bids and budgets and making changes based on the data. If you had huge global campaigns — and at the time, we were managing advertising for Dubai Tourism and Abu Dhabi Tourism — it was quite a task.

Once the bidding systems came in, we were able to breathe. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I’ve worked in digital marketing for years and can honestly say we need more help with automated controls, more creative support, and more ways to fill our CPMs, and so on. Bring more AI into the field. Use it as a co-pilot. Benefit from it. Learn how to make the most of it.

And to the point — is it taking our jobs? Not quite yet.

There was a funny story with one of the clients I won’t disclose, but it was a very high-end real estate developer. As with any real estate developer, they usually have tight deadlines for campaign launches because of the project’s commercial schedule. They didn’t have time to do a proper creative launch for their new project, so they decided to use AI.

The production from AI was quite funny because it wasn’t clear what was even being launched. I remember discussing it with the client. She said there was a room full of super senior marketers, and we were debating what color the robe of the girl should be in front of the sea in the backdrop.

Then, at some point, we all suddenly realized that the girl had two left legs.

Neha

Oh, dear God!

Deniz

Yeah!

Malika

And we’re talking about a billion-dollar project development. Oh, yeah — thank you, AI, for this beautiful contribution to our launch campaign. But no, it’s not taking our jobs.

Neha

Okay, so let’s wrap it up by discussing geography. I want to talk about the geography of advertising today. In your opinion, what kinds of markets do you think are becoming more and more promising?

Deniz

Oh, guys, I came prepared for this question today.

Malika

Go for it, Denis!

Deniz

Emerging markets are booming nowadays. I would say eight out of the top ten countries by app downloads are emerging markets. Just imagine — we see huge momentum in MENA, SEA, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

Lots of countries and lots of publishers and gaming studios whose main focus has always been the United States and Europe — for example, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain. That’s it. 

But emerging markets are booming now. For example, in these regions at Yango Ads, we offer localized monetization through alternative stores. They have deep coverage with app campaigns. So growth is faster, acquisition is cheaper, and users are mobile-first. It’s like a no-brainer.

I would say this is the main topic nowadays.

Neha

Yeah, I’m actually of the same opinion. I think the next big thing is emerging markets. There’s a lot of potential and a lot of untapped opportunity, and businesses should be grabbing it as soon as possible.

Malika

I’ll probably start with my region specifically. For me, Saudi Arabia is a dynamic and innovative market with its giga projects. You can really feel the buzz from the moment you set foot in Riyadh Airport, and Riyadh Season makes it the place to be. You have mega projects like Neom and the Red Sea, and they’ve done a lot of work preserving their heritage with Hegra and AlUla.

At the same time, of course, we cannot overlook the UAE, which is a hub always humming with innovation. Beyond this, we’ve also seen amazing developments coming up in other markets, whether it’s Oman or Pakistan. Burj Al-Jazeera, for example, has an intra-city digital display, and there’s so much more on the way.

It’s an exciting part of the world to be in, and we’re looking forward to what’s next.

Neha

Well, Malika and Deniz, thank you so much for this conversation. I’d like to wrap it up here because we’ve unpacked a lot today — I don’t want to scare our listeners! I think we’ve also set the stage for some big conversations in our future episodes.

And of course, to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. If you want to dive deeper into advertising and monetization trends, tap the link in the description. At Yango Ads, we’ve created the Ad Tech Trends Playbook to help you stay ahead in the industry.

Learn more about advertising, monetization, and the tools Yango Ads has to offer. Actually, the tools deserve a separate episode. We’ll be discussing the advertising toolbox next time, and it’s going to be a very hands-on conversation.

Hit subscribe and stay tuned!