By Kris Qiu, CEO

When people hear “compliance,” they picture someone from legal showing up at the end of the process to say, “You can’t do that.” At Advertising Week New York, I sat down with Michael Gewirtzman, Global VP of Programming at Advertising Week, to talk about why I think that picture is wrong.

I don’t think the rules are the problem. The problem is technology that wasn’t designed around the rules. You don’t build a house and then ask where the plumbing goes. But a lot of ad tech does exactly that with compliance.

They build the campaign, select the audience, approve the creative and add compliance last. The result is organizational ping pong: build it, send it to legal, get rejected, repeat.

This matters even more now. AI is going to make marketing 10 times faster. So the question becomes: can your governance move 10 times faster too?

If you’re choosing a DSP, here’s what I’d consider:

• Bring legal upstream. Before you pick a partner, evaluate how they collect data and how they actually execute campaigns.
• Don’t just ask whether the data is compliant. Ask: compliant for what? Where did it come from, what permissions surround it, and what happens downstream?
• Ensure you ask this question: If anything goes wrong six months from now, can you show me exactly what happened? That means where the audience came from, what creative ran, what rules were applied, and what AI decided versus what a human decided.

Advertising Week New York badge holders can watch the full conversation here, or connect with our team below to keep the conversation going.