Hyper-Targeting Is Killing Growth. With Vince Simone
EP 174 · Feb 17, 2026 · 50 min · Vince Simone
0:00 / 50:21
The short version
Overview
The promise of digital advertising was precision: right message, right person, right time. No waste. But here's the uncomfortable truth, while we've been obsessing over hyper-targeting, consumer behaviour has already shifted without us. 90% of Canadians now consume CTV. Less than 50% still have cable. And 60% of their time is spent on the open web, not walled gardens.
The question isn't whether CTV matters. It's whether we're measuring it correctly, or optimizing ourselves into invisibility.
About Vince is the Head of DSP Sales at Yahoo Canada, where he works closely with the country's top agencies and brands to achieve their marketing goals through Yahoo's advanced programmatic advertising platform. A 25+ year advertising veteran, Vince has deep expertise in programmatic, CTV, and data-driven media. He previously launched AdTheorent in the Canadian market and is an active voice in the Canadian digital advertising community through IAB Canada.
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vincesimone
Timestamps
00:00 - Intro - The unification challenge for marketers
01:25 - Guest intro - Vince Simone, Yahoo
02:32 - What's different about this moment in CTV
04:05 - The evolution of CTV data - from freebie to foundational
06:04 - TV is now just "video" - the pipe goes everywhere
08:01 - Programmatic as the unifier - Samba partnership
10:01 - The cost waterfall problem - fraud, duplication, inefficiency
12:17 - What people misunderstand about DSPs (it's decisioning, not bidding)
13:37 - Buzzword that needs to die: "Hyper-target"
15:22 - The promise of digital vs. the reality of reach
17:05 - Reverse engineering the customer journey
18:52 - Is CTV actually about scale, not precision?
20:21 - The persona trap - seeing people as fractions of themselves
24:23 - Suppression lists vs. over-engineered targeting
29:07 - Consistency as the multiplier across linear, CTV, digital
31:18 - Dynamic creative optimization vs. many cuts
34:00 - The 60/40 split - CTV in no man's land
37:15 - The one metric to stop obsessing about: Last click
39:07 - How the best marketers layer MMMs, lift studies, and last click
42:10 - The "remove the logo" test for distinctiveness
44:22 - Over-optimizing before campaigns settle
46:00 - Dashboard updates vs. business data timing
46:56 - What excites Vince: AI agents, Netflix inventory, unified systems
49:20 - Where to find Vince
Show Links
- Sleeping Barber Podcast: 8 Fundamentals of Effective Marketing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlJVEd9YXag&list=PL8Dcu1vikGN38ABGV4iuRQV1GmaAMvUSQ&index=1
- Yahoo DSP: https://www.yahooinc.com/our-solutions
- IAB Data Label: https://iabtechlab.com/press-releases/iab-tech-lab-finalizes-data-transparency-standard-compliance-program-to-advance-data-collection-best-practices
- ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/pr-2025-08-programmatictrans
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Transcript
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SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Baba podcast.
SPEAKER_03: I have all these different mediums. As a marketer, how do I unify that? Because that's the real challenge, right? It's not just having these channels and accessing them, but how do I unify it so that I'm telling the story I want to tell and I'm being intentional about how I deploy my investment.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Barber Podcast, a place for business leaders to get the best and most credible information on marketing, strategy, and innovation. Your hosts, Mark Finkley and Vasili Storos, share their experiences as they gather insights from the world's leading experts. Now, on with the show.