Shirley Marschall
Member since February 2025Contact Shirley- AdTech & Programmatic Consultant Freelance
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirleymarschall
- 83103 SVK
AdTech is shifting faster than ever – privacy, AI, and platform fragmentation are rewriting the rules in real time. My focus? Cutting through the noise to make sense of it all, independent, unapologetic, pragmatic, and solution-oriented. With over a decade in programmatic and digital media — and Ex’s from every corner of the ecosystem (Big Tech, agency holding companies, Fortune 500 brand) — I’ve seen the game from all sides. Now I do things my way. No titles. No KPIs. No decks. Just research, writing, frameworks and a relentless curiosity to figure out where this industry is really going. Think of it as my self-directed PhD in AdTech: one post, one article, one rabbit hole at a time.
Articles by Shirley All articles by Shirley
- Apple's Privacy Play: Moat, Marketing, Or Moral Baseline? in
Marketing Insider on
06/12/2025
If Apple used privacy to differentiate itself from surveillance-heavy rivals, good. Let's compete on who can be less creepy and more transparent.
- Digital Divorce: One Web For Humans, One For Bots in
Marketing Insider on
05/29/2025
Let humans have their own web. Let bots optimize each other into oblivion.
- Why AI's Persuasive Power Isn't Coming -- It's Already Here in
Marketing Insider on
05/22/2025
AI powers our search engines, shopping feeds and social scrolls. And the more it anticipates our needs, the more we let it steer.
- You Reap What You Fund: Advertising's Moral Debt in
Marketing Insider on
05/15/2025
We've normalized the absurd: Platforms profiting from chaos while offering brand safety as a premium feature.
- Micro-Mistakes, Major Mess: When Algorithms Misread Attention in
Marketing Insider on
05/08/2025
If platforms want to fix discovery, they need to get smarter -- not just about what we pause on, but why we pause.
- Frequency Fatigue: The Action Figure Lesson in
Marketing Insider on
05/01/2025
In a world of limitless reach and algorithmic momentum, virality rarely dies of old age. It dies of overuse.
- He Said, She Said, Bot Said in
Marketing Insider on
04/24/2025
We're not just fighting fraud anymore -- we're fighting over fraud. And in the process, we're losing something just as critical: credibility.
- 6 Degrees of Optimization: The Distance Between Brands And People in
Marketing Insider on
04/17/2025
With every new layer of optimization, something slips. The signal gets filtered. The intent gets diluted. And the human gets lost.
- Data's Identity Crisis: How Ad Tech Lost The Plot in
Marketing Insider on
04/10/2025
Ad tech has spent the last decade trying to simplify data and somehow made it more confusing than ever.
- Ad Tech Fragmentation: The Problem No One Actually Wants to Solve in
Marketing Insider on
04/03/2025
Multiple players -- publishers, agencies, platforms, walled gardens -- benefit from keeping the ecosystem fragmented.
Comments by Shirley All comments by Shirley
- YouTube's Evolution: From Reach To Rule
by
Luke Bristow
(Marketing Insider on
05/12/2025)
Love this and agree with every single word!
- Micro-Mistakes, Major Mess: When Algorithms Misread Attention
by
Shirley Marschall
(Marketing Insider on
05/08/2025)
You're of course right, Ed. This was more of a personal rant and frustration as a user... I know there's no easy fix but I do believe the algos are a reason for people going "social light". Maybe someone will come up with a creative AI (of course AI...) solution for a fix as I'm not sure the human oversight will be scalable.
- Data's Identity Crisis: How Ad Tech Lost The Plot
by
Shirley Marschall
(Marketing Insider on
04/10/2025)
Thank you, really appreciate your kind words! Yes, it's scary how easily we forget the most important thing - humans/customers...
- Targeting AIs And Filtering Invalid Human Traffic
by
Joe Mandese
(Media 3.0 on
04/11/2025)
Fascinating read! I predicted a two folded future - AI and human targted digital ads. You can find my article heret: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/404600/ad-tech-is-optimizing-for-people-but-whos-actu.html - would love to hear your thoughts!
- Ad Tech Is Optimizing For People -- But Who's Actually Seeing The Ads?
by
Shirley Marschall
(Marketing Insider on
03/27/2025)
We’re still in the early days of AI and even more so when it comes to AI-filtered recommendations and advertising. You’re absolutely right that things are far from ideal right now. But to be fair, digital advertising has always been shaped by gatekeepers: search algorithms, social feeds, and now AI-powered assistants, predictive models, curated experiences, you name it. The crucial part, the human part, is keeping us in the loop. Because if we want people to feel seen, understood, and inspired, we can’t hand everything over to machines. It’s worrying how fast the focus is shifting to AI...and how easily we forget ourselves in the process.
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