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Ad Tech God sat down for a Q&A with Ravit Ross, CRO of Start.io

The global financial uncertainty that has characterized 2025 thus far is being felt deeply among marketing teams, which are often the first to see their budgets cut. Already, eMarketer has revised certain key ad spending forecasts downward for the year (including a drop in U.S. social media spending of $10 billion).

If there’s a takeaway for marketers in the macroeconomic rollercoaster we’ve ridden this year, it’s this: You can’t count on anything.

Between inflation fears, supply chain unpredictability, shifting consumer sentiment, and the endless game of regulatory whack-a-mole, today’s media planners are navigating one of the most volatile environments in recent memory. So how do you build a plan when the ground beneath you keeps moving?

To understand how marketers can maintain their sanity (and results) in a marketplace ruled by chaos, we spoke with Ravit Ross, CRO of Start.io. Here’s what advertisers need to know about building certainty into campaigns when everything around them feels uncertain.

The global markets have had a helluva ride recently, and those wild rides always seem to leave marketing teams feeling the queasiest. What new realities are brands and agencies waking up to right now?

There’s a very real chance that many marketers are about to face budget contractions, again. We’re hearing a lot of “do more with less” right now, and the emphasis is on precision and efficiency. 

For marketers, that’s where our favorite new tools—the AI-driven ones—are going to come into play, and not just as a buzzword, but as a necessity. You can’t talk about doing “more with less” without bringing AI into the conversation. The good news is, we’re now at a point where the tools are smart enough to actually deliver on that promise.

So what does this mean for the media mix? What gets cut?

The knee-jerk reaction is often to pull back on all spending that isn’t with one of the titans—Google, Meta, Amazon. But that can actually increase your vulnerability. If you pour 100% of your spend into just a few walled gardens, you're at the mercy of their pricing, their algorithms, and their reach. Diversification is more than a nice-to-have—it’s a survival tactic.

We always tell marketers: Keep the mixture. Maintain a balanced budget across multiple channels and partners. That way, when there’s a spike in CPMs or a change in audience reach on one platform, you’ve got options. Without that diversity, you run out of levers fast.

That’s good advice. What else? How can brands make sure their marketing outcomes don’t look as chaotic as the stock market indexes?

Make changes gradually. If you suddenly cut spend in Q1 and try to make up for it in Q2, your performance will likely suffer. The more abrupt the shift, the harder it is for your optimization algorithms to keep up.

We encourage clients to recalibrate in increments. A/B test new channels. Rebalance targeting strategies. If you have to trim budgets, don’t assume a 25% cut means you’ll lose just 25% of performance. Often, the impact is nonlinear. The smarter move is to adjust slowly and measure constantly.

Where does all of this leave the industry’s ongoing push for addressability?

Addressability is more important than ever, especially when budgets are tight. Every dollar needs to go toward an actual person who’s likely to convert—not just toward impressions. But the reality is, a lot of advertisers are still spending on very broad, often generic audiences because it feels safe or scalable.

That mindset has to shift. As third-party signals fade and platform policies evolve, the only way to ensure ROI is to double down on precision. That means relying on curated segments, verified signals, and AI to connect with real audiences in meaningful ways. You don’t want to just “hope” your message lands—you want to know it does.

What has this rollercoaster meant for Start.io and its clients?

We’re actually built for moments like this. Start.io has always prioritized audience curation and intelligent segmentation, especially in mobile. Because we’re rooted in mobile-first data—processing more than 50 billion first-party signals daily—we’re able to help advertisers pinpoint exactly who they should be targeting and when.

That’s been a lifeline for our clients, especially with the "more with less" mentality taking over. Our AI-driven tools help optimize spend across a fragmented ecosystem, and our ability to deliver ads across thousands of publishers globally means our clients have access to scalable, addressable audiences that aren’t just stuck inside one or two platforms.

Final advice for marketers trying to keep their campaigns above water?

Hang in there. And don’t freeze. It’s easy to panic when things get weird in the market, but marketing is one of the few levers you still have in moments like these. That said, you have to use it wisely.

Build for volatility, not stability. Create agile frameworks. Prioritize quality connections over spray-and-pray tactics. And revisit your 2025 playbook—it might already be outdated.

Good advice. Thank you. Let’s all try to keep our wits about us. 

About Start.io

Start.io is a sell-side omni-channel advertising platform powered by real-time mobile audiences. Start.io delivers hundreds of millions of ads per day across thousands of global leading apps. Our platform uses AI to deliver more efficient, effective and precise digital advertising campaigns. Our direct integration with thousands of mobile publishers gives us access to more than 50 billion first-party data signals per day across the globe. Marketers use these anonymized signals to understand and predict consumer behavior, identify new opportunities and fuel business growth.

For more information, visit www.start.io.