Episode 1: Why Is Joe Doing More Podcasts?
Host: Joe Zappa
Length: 9 minutes
Published: July 13, 2026
What adtech really needs is another podcast. Joe explains his theory that media is diverging into two very distinct formats: short human-written text and long-form podcasts. In other words: why every CEO evangelist needs a non-slop, human-first, personality-driven podcast. Lend me your ears, adtech CEOs, salespeople, and marketers.
Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
Full Transcript
Hello, welcome to the Adtech Marketing Podcast, the only podcast exclusively devoted to adtech marketing.
My name is Joe Zappa. I'm the CEO and founder of Sharp Pen Media, an adtech marketing agency. But I'm not necessarily going to rant about adtech marketing in this podcast. I want to talk a bit about what's happening in marketing and media, and why I decided to launch another podcast.
If you're listening to this, and you have the potential misfortune of working in the very niche world of adtech marketing, you may know that I already have another podcast with Eric Franchi called Open Market.
So, why do another one?
That podcast focuses on entrepreneurship, go to market, investing, trends in adtech, and a whole bunch of different topics. This one is going to be even more niche, focusing specifically on adtech marketing.
There's another reason I wanted to launch a second podcast. I wanted a place for really free flowing conversations about what I'm seeing in media and culture. I wanted something that feels distinctly me, which means if you're listening to this, maybe you actually care about that. I don't know. We're about to find out.
Part of the reason I think it's worth doing a second podcast is because I think media and marketing are heading toward a sort of barbell situation. On one side you have text media, and on the other you have audio. I think text is going to become even more compressed.
What do I mean by that?
It's not necessarily like Twitter in 2009. It's not about strict character limits. Obviously, even on Twitter, now X, people regularly publish extremely long AI generated posts.
My growing impression is that on text driven platforms like X and LinkedIn, people are becoming increasingly aware of the explosion of AI generated content. As a result, they're going to start discounting it. The volume of content will continue to grow, but consumption may decline. Even if overall consumption doesn't decline, which remains to be seen, trust certainly will.
We've already seen an interesting shift over the last ten to twenty years. Trust in what's often called the mainstream media, organizations like CNN or The New York Times, has declined. At the same time, trust in and usage of social media has increased.
I think AI introduces a new paradigm, a genuine crisis of trust in social media.
Now, if you're listening and thinking there's already a crisis of trust in social media, my response is, sort of.
Among certain groups, especially educated people who still value objective reporting like that of The New York Times, skepticism toward social media has existed for years, especially since 2016 and Facebook's alleged role in Trump's election.
But for the average consumer, I think there has still been a great deal of trust in user generated content platforms. AI generated content is going to erode that trust.
Even putting politics aside, think about it from a business perspective.
Back in the world of adtech marketing, LinkedIn is becoming a hellscape of AI generated pablum.
It's obvious that even smart people I genuinely respect aren't just using AI as a writing assistant. That's not the problem. The problem is that Publicis buys LiveRamp, executives ask AI for a take on the acquisition, copy the response, paste it into LinkedIn, and publish it as their own opinion.
The barrier to creating content and expressing an opinion has been lowered so dramatically that these platforms are becoming corrupted. People will probably continue using them, but they'll trust them less and less.
That brings me back to the barbell analogy.
On one side, text platforms become dominated by AI slop. The reaction will be more human, much shorter content.
That's already what I've been doing.
I used to write much longer posts on both Twitter and LinkedIn, especially on LinkedIn. But now there's so much AI slop that unless I can immediately tell something was written by a human, I don't even want to read it.
Even when it is human, I often think there's simply too much text to get through. There's too much noise, too much slop, too much BS.
What I increasingly value on text driven platforms, and what I'm beginning to create myself, is shorter, pithier content.
It's an interesting reversal.
Even though X now allows much longer posts, and AI makes writing them effortless, I think we're going to see a return to the style that originally defined Twitter, really short, human, pithy, maybe even slightly unhinged posts.
So if one side of the barbell becomes short, human, funny text posts, what happens on the other side?
I think that's where podcasts like this belong.
Long form, expressive, personality driven conversations.
I think audio, and to a lesser extent video, become the natural format for this kind of content.
That's why I'm launching a second podcast, even at a time when people might reasonably ask how anyone has time for another podcast.
If you want to build a personal brand or develop a public intellectual presence, I think you'll essentially have two options.
One is very short, very human, often humorous posts on text platforms.
The other is long form, messy conversations that wander, explore ideas, and sound like an actual person.
That's what I'm trying to create here.
Yes, we're going to talk about adtech marketing.
Everything I've been discussing so far is really a question about media and marketing.
But we're also going to touch on plenty of other topics.
The kind of rant I just went on about AI, media, and trust is difficult to communicate on text platforms because nobody is going to give you that much attention. They'll keep scrolling.
Honestly, I do exactly the same thing.
It's also difficult to do on podcasts unless they're specifically built for that kind of conversation.
That's what I want this show to become.
A place for best practices and philosophies around adtech marketing.
But also a place that's genuinely free flowing.
Sometimes an episode will be seven minutes.
Sometimes it might be two hours.
Sometimes it'll just be me.
Sometimes it'll be me talking with a public company adtech CMO or CEO who has thoughtful ideas about marketing or is simply an outstanding practitioner.
Sometimes it'll feature another member of my team that you'll all get to know.
At its core, this podcast is about adtech marketing, best practices, and philosophy.
But I also want it to feel deeply personal and intentionally unstructured, because I believe that's where adtech marketing, media, and marketing more broadly are heading.
With that said, I hope I've got your attention.
I've got some great podcasts coming your way soon.
Thanks, guys.
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