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C Wire

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Insights

Writing on contextual buying, placement quality and the supply we sell.

Glossary

01

  • Product · 2026-09-10

    What BrandDNA and CampaignDNA actually record

    Two records sit under every C Wire decision. Here is what is in them, where it comes from, and why a quality score matters more than a long brief.

    Rui de Freitas · 5 min

  • Event · 2026-07-14

    Bootstrapped vs. VC-Backed in Ad Tech: Six Founders on the Real Trade-Offs

    Between them, the six founders on stage at our Cannes Lions activation have run companies for a combined fifty-plus years. Four of them have never taken a cent of outside money. Two of us have. We sat down for half an hour with no slides and no press-release language, and what came out wasn't a debate about which path is better. It was something more useful: a very specific account of what each path costs you, on the days nobody is watching.

    Rui de Freitas · 7 min

  • Event · 2026-07-01

    Sir Martin Sorrell and the Wrong Question About AI

    At our Cannes "Street Talk" fireside with Tom Triscari, Sir Martin Sorrell argued that the advertising industry is obsessing over AI and creative while the real disruption is happening one layer down: in how media is planned, bought and priced. We think he's right, and it's the reason C Wire exists.

    Rui de Freitas · 4 min

  • C Wire News · 2026-06-12

    Better signal, not more tracking.

    Why C Wire is hosting Cannes Lions alongside VideoRunRun, and why the future of effective advertising is richer signal, not heavier tracking.

    Rui de Freitas · 3 min

  • Good Read · 2026-03-30

    The Hardest Leadership Decision Today Isn’t AI. It’s culture!

    Office presence has quietly become one of the hardest leadership questions to solve. As teams spread across cities and countries, flexibility increases but so does the risk of fragmentation. At C Wire, we’re experimenting with a model that combines distributed work with intentional moments of physical collaboration, including yearly offsites and dedicated collaboration days. Not because tools aren’t good enough, but because trust, culture, and informal communication still happen best when people share the same space. There may not be a perfect formula, but there are better questions leaders should be asking.

    Rui de Freitas · 4 min

  • Industry Insights · 2026-03-27

    Sora Dies, Agentic AI Arrives, and the Holdco Standoff: The Week That Re-wrote the Ad Playbook

    From a massive power struggle between holding companies and The Trade Desk to OpenAI's sudden pivot from video creation to ad revenue, the digital advertising playbook is being rewritten in real-time. Discover the top five structural shifts in ad-tech, agentic AI, and media buying that will redefine your strategy this quarter.

    Rui de Freitas · 4 min

  • Event · 2026-03-23

    What I Took Away from Pitching at the Advertising Economic Forum in New York

    Pitching at the Advertising Economic Forum in New York was a powerful reminder that the biggest challenge in advertising is no longer buying media it is executing strategy at scale. The conversations with investors and operators confirmed a clear shift: the future of advertising will be defined by systems that turn strategy into autonomous execution. That is exactly the problem we are building C Wire to solve.

    Rui de Freitas · 3 min

  • Industry Insights · 2026-03-16

    5 signals reshaping the industry in 2026

    Advertising is entering a new phase. AI is moving from experimentation to infrastructure, search and commerce are fragmenting, contextual relevance is becoming more intelligent, measurement pressure is rising, and trust is turning into a performance variable. These signals point to one clear conclusion: the future of advertising will belong to brands and platforms that combine intelligent execution, trusted environments, creative relevance, and measurable outcomes.

    Rui de Freitas · 7 min

  • Product · 2026-02-10

    Reconnecting marketing strategy with programmatic activation

    In this video interview, Rui de Freitas discusses how Match Persona uses AI agents to reconnect marketing strategy with programmatic activation through persona driven targeting and creative execution.

    Rui de Freitas · 3 min

  • Event · 2026-02-09

    From Attention to Agents: 7 signals that the Trusted Web is reinventing itself

    Last week at the first Open Garden Innovator Awards in Paris, something became very clear: The Trusted Web isn’t defending itself anymore. It’s reinventing itself. What stood out wasn’t just innovation theatre but operational, measurable, scalable execution across media, data, and creativity. From attention becoming a trading currency… to AI industrializing creative production… to GEO strategies designed for LLM discovery… We’re witnessing a structural shift. Programmatic is no longer just automating media buying. It’s evolving into something far more autonomous. Here are 7 signals that prove the Open Web is entering its next chapter.

    Rui de Freitas · 4 min

  • Product · 2026-01-19

    Where Marketing Personas Go to Die

    Most marketing teams carefully define personas, complete with names, motivations, and context. But when campaigns move from strategy into activation, those personas often get reduced to broad segments and abstract audiences. Here’s why that happens, and how MatchPersona was built to close the gap.

    Rui de Freitas · 2 min

  • Industry Insights · 2026-01-19

    AI Is Not a Feature. It’s an Operating Model.

    In this Quo Vadis Live webinar, C Wire Founder & CEO Rui de Freitas explores why adding AI on top of existing workflows only delivers marginal gains and why the real transformation happens when companies redesign their entire operating model to be AI-native. From productivity and leverage to valuation dynamics, the session offers a practical look at how AI is reshaping how modern advertising companies are built.

    Rui de Freitas · 3 min

  • Industry Insights · 2025-12-11

    Why Context Engineering Is the Real Bottleneck for AI Agents in Advertising

    AI agents don’t fail because of intelligence, they fail because of missing context. In this Quo Vadis Live session recorded in London, Rui de Freitas explains why context engineering is the real bottleneck for agentic advertising and how MatchPersona turns brand inputs into actionable marketing personas that can be activated across media without cookies or IDs.

    Rui de Freitas · 4 min

  • Good Read · 2024-10-15

    ADMaP Protocol v1.0 Now Available for Public Comment

    Explore the newly released Attribution Data Matching Protocol (ADMaP) v1.0, a privacy-centric framework for measuring digital advertising attributions using Data Clean Rooms (DCRs) and Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs).

    Rui de Freitas · 2 min

  • Event · 2024-10-13

    Future of Cookieless: Key Takeaways from the Minted event in Paris

    The Future of Cookieless event, held in Paris on October 8th, 2024, brought together over 350 professionals to discuss the impending end of third-party cookies. Key discussions included the shift from testing to implementation of cookieless solutions, the rise of shared ID and Privacy Sandbox, and the increasing reliance on first-party data. Industry leaders from Dentsu, Weborama, and GroupM highlighted the need for new targeting and measurement strategies. The event also showcased insights on marketing mix modeling pitfalls and privacy-first approaches to digital advertising. Key topics: third-party cookie alternatives, Privacy Sandbox, shared ID solutions, first-party data, cookieless advertising strategies, marketing mix modeling.

    Rui de Freitas · 4 min

  • Product · 2022-02-14

    C Wire Launches New Story Ads Advertising Format

    C Wire brings the familiar social media Stories format to Swiss premium websites. First campaign launched in cooperation with Bank Cler and PHD Switzerland.

    Martin Garling · 1 min

  • C Wire News · 2021-08-01

    C Wire Secures Pre-Seed Investment Round Led by 21 Celsius

    C Wire has closed its first external round of investment led by 21 Celsius in order to fuel the development of its advertising platform. The company is building a transparent advertising ecosystem to support news and other quality content publishers, with powerful, sustainable, high-impact advertising and targeting capabilities.

    Rui de Freitas · 2 min

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What we learn from reading content and auditing placements across the supply we sell. Occasional, written by the people doing the work.