Show Notes
In this special episode of The MadTech Podcast, ExchangeWire co-founders Rachel Smith and Ciaran O'Kane join John Still to discuss IAB UK's Digital Adspend report, as well as their top takeaways from ATS London 2026... ATS London took place on September 15, featuring industry experts like Index Exchange president and CEO Andrew Casale, PubMatic co-founder and CEO Rajeev Goel, and many more. Rachel and Ciaran share their top takeaways and favourite moments from the networking sessions, the Churchill and Burton room talks, MadTech Money insights, and the ad tech gilet crowd. They also share their thoughts on IAB UK's latest Digital Adspend report. UK digital advertising spend grew 13% year-on-year in H1 of 2026, reaching £21.2bn* – £5bn more than the entirety of 2020. *Figure was mistakenly cited as £21.6bn. We'll be rolling out a selection of panels and voxpops from the event on exchangewire.com and ExchangeWireTV. Stay tuned to hear from more insights from established and rising voices in ad tech. See you again at ATS London 2027! ••• 0:00 Introduction 1:29 Digital Adspend UK report 11:48 ATS London 2026 review 24:15 Top ATS London takeaways
More from The MadTech Podcast
In today’s MadTech Daily, Publicis reaches settlement with the FTC over its planned LiveRamp acquisition, a New Mexico judge orders Meta to pay $25bn (£19bn) in penalties over misleading users on privacy, and retail media firm Kevel raises $52m (£19bn) and eyes acquisitions
In today’s ExchangeWire news digest: Australia moves to sue Meta, TikTok, Snap and Google over enforcement of its under-16 social media ban, Spotify launches paid memberships to help podcasters monetise their biggest fans, and Spark Foundry research finds 25-to-34-year-olds are the toughest consumers for UK brands to win over
In today’s digest, Apple defends its WebKit crackdown on ad tech identity resolution and signals more to come, YouTube tests AI answers at the top of search results, and Meta removes contract language over scraping business websites for AI training
In today’s MadTech Daily, Google rolls out Universal Cart, its AI shopping tool, in the US ahead of the holiday season, Universal Music Group launches layoffs and an executive shake-up across the US and UK, and Apple and Meta team up on an open AI model built for Mac
In today’s MadTech Daily, we discuss United reorganising its advertising business to support its tech push, WARC tracking shifts in ad spend among 25 global brands, and Alibaba’s Taobao adding AI to cross-border shopping.