{"id":396220,"date":"2026-03-03T12:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T07:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/martechseries.com\/?p=396220"},"modified":"2026-03-03T12:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T07:28:13","slug":"martech-interview-with-punit-shah-director-of-product-marketing-pubmatic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martechseries.com\/mts-insights\/interviews\/martech-interview-with-punit-shah-director-of-product-marketing-pubmatic\/","title":{"rendered":"MarTech Interview with Punit Shah, Director of Product Marketing @ PubMatic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Punit Shah, Director of Product Marketing at PubMatic comments on the future of marketing in view of how AI driven marketing automation is setting new standards in this MarTech Series catch-up:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

_________________<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Take us through your time in the martech ecosystem and more about your role at PubMatic.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I\u2019ve spent over 15 years working at the intersection of strategy, analytics, and large-scale digital platforms \u2014 across consulting, enterprise technology, and now advertising infrastructure.<\/p>\n

What has consistently drawn me to this space is that ad tech isn\u2019t just about media delivery; it\u2019s about market architecture. It shapes how brands connect with consumers, how publishers monetize content, and how transparency and trust scale across the open internet.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I\u2019ve worked across commerce enablement, brand safety, political advertising transparency, and AI-driven automation. A consistent lesson has emerged: when you improve the intelligence layer of infrastructure, you fundamentally improve decision quality.<\/p>\n

At PubMatic, I lead developing and marketing products across AI-driven analytics, performance solutions, curation, and vertical specific initiatives such as political and pharma ads. Increasingly, my focus is on agentic AI, building systems that move beyond static workflows to fast, contextual reasoning, and translating that into measurable outcomes for publishers and buyers globally.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d love the top highlights on your recent AI Insights launch \u2014 how does it enable end users?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Much of AI in ad tech has historically been incremental, summarizing dashboards or automating isolated tasks. The more meaningful shift is architectural with AI.<\/p>\n

With AI Insights, we focused on structuring data from the ground up so the system can reason across signals rather than simply display them. That enables real-time benchmarking against relevant peer sets, detection of demand shifts, and surfacing of next-best actions directly within the workflow.<\/p>\n

The shift is assisted, automated, and agentic decision-making.<\/p>\n

For example, during election cycles, publishers with political inventory often see volatile demand patterns across geographies and content categories. AI-driven benchmarking can highlight where pricing strategies or packaging approaches are underperforming relative to comparable publishers, where is the demand coming from across PACs, geographies and enabling faster, data-backed adjustments while maintaining policy and transparency standards.<\/p>\n

The broader vision is agentic workflows, where AI doesn\u2019t just summarize information but helps operators navigate complexity with context. As more structured signals are integrated, the value compounds directly to growth and profitability.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s trending in the CTV space today? What will dominate the market in 2026?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

CTV is increasingly being treated as performance-grade media with premium storytelling layered on top.<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019re seeing stronger demand for transparent supply paths, growth in curated marketplaces, tighter alignment between CTV and commerce signals, and more scrutiny around measurement consistency.<\/p>\n

The deeper shift is sophistication. Buyers are no longer optimizing for scale alone; they\u2019re optimizing for validated, structured supply.<\/p>\n

By 2026, three forces will likely define the market. First, AI-driven optimization across CTV supply, dynamically adjusting pricing and packaging in real time. Second, outcome-based evaluation, where campaigns are judged by business impact rather than impressions alone. And third, intelligent curation, where inventory is transacted based on contextual quality and performance intelligence rather than volume.<\/p>\n

CTV will increasingly operate like high-quality programmatic performance media, while retaining the creative power that makes it distinct.<\/p>\n

What are some top tips publishers should keep in mind as martech and ad tech evolve?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Three priorities stand out.<\/p>\n

First, build structured data foundations. AI and automation only deliver value when signals are clean, interoperable, and contextualized. This sometimes needs to be built from the ground up.<\/p>\n

Second, operationalize transparency. Across political advertising, brand safety, and CTV, transparency increasingly drives premium demand and long-term trust.<\/p>\n

Third, adopt AI with intent. The goal isn\u2019t full automation; it\u2019s embedding AI-assisted reasoning into workflows so human operators can make faster, higher-quality decisions.<\/p>\n

Publishers that combine premium environments with intelligent, structured supply will lead the next phase of programmatic growth.<\/p>\n

How is AI fueling a complete shift in the industry?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

AI is reshaping ad tech across three dimensions.<\/p>\n

It reduces operational friction in reporting and campaign management. It amplifies intelligence by identifying patterns across supply and demand. And most importantly, it begins to influence market design, enabling adaptive packaging, dynamic pricing strategies, and predictive optimization at scale.<\/p>\n

The real shift isn\u2019t speed; it\u2019s decision quality. Markets become more data-native and less intuition-driven.<\/p>\n

But this only works when AI is built on structured data foundations and clear governance. The companies investing architecturally, rather than layering AI superficially, will define the next decade of digital advertising.<\/p>\n

Five ad tech and martech thoughts you\u2019d leave our readers with before we wrap up.<\/strong><\/h4>\n