Digital Marketing in the Age of AI: Insights From Grapeseed Media's Bill Updegraff

Arts Management and Technology Laboratory

In this episode of Tech in the Arts, Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford of the Arts Management and interviews Bill Updegraff, founder and CEO of Grapeseed Media, a programmatic digital advertising firm. Grapeseed Media, established in 2013, has grown into a trusted partner for brands and agencies in digital advertising, earning recognition on Inc.’s 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies.

In this episode, Updegraff explains that Grapeseed Media's initial goal was to provide arts organizations with access to programmatic advertising, a concept he once thought was exclusive to larger corporations. The company's role has since evolved from introducing programmatic advertising to guiding clients through its complexities. He highlights three approaches to programmatic advertising: in-house management, managed service partnerships, or working with a single, agnostic programmatic partner like Grapeseed Media, which provides unbiased access to all programmatic channels and consolidated reporting.

Updegraff also differentiates programmatic advertising from search and paid social media, noting that programmatic is more "open market" compared to the "walled gardens" of platforms like Google and Meta. He also discusses the growing integration of programmatic into digital out-of-home advertising, offering hyper-targeting and data collection capabilities. Of course, they also discuss the ethical uses of AI in marketing, particularly in data analysis and creative ideation.

Show Notes

Grapeseed Media

Programmatic Marketing (Video)

Bill Updegraff

Brett Ashley Crawford, PhD

Read the transcript at amt-lab.org.