Net Conversion CMO Kristina Canada on why independent agencies are having a renaissance — and how her team is using CTV, AI skepticism, and radical transparency to take on the holdcos.
In this episode of Next in Media, Mike Shields sits down with Kristina Canada, CMO at Net Conversion, a 19-year-old independent marketing and analytics agency based in Orlando that's in the middle of a serious growth push — with a new Chicago office, a recent acquisition of CTV specialists Elevate the Outcome, and a philosophy rooted in measurable business outcomes over vanity metrics.
Kristina and Mike dig into why independent agencies are experiencing a renaissance right now as clients seek out agility and transparency. They unpack Net Conversion's approach to making CTV a true performance channel without losing the brand-building benefits, and get into the agency's pragmatic but skeptical stance on AI — from arguing with Google reps about Performance Max to building their own internal chatbot and copilot tools for analysts.
🏢 The Independent Agency Renaissance: Clients are gravitating toward independents for agility, transparency, and freedom from holdco conflicts of interest.
📺 CTV as a Performance Channel: Net Conversion splits CTV into demand capture and demand creation, applying measurement rigor without forcing direct-response KPIs on brand-building.
🤖 AI as Co-Pilot, Not Pilot: The agency's internal mantra is "everyone gets an intern" — they've built their own chatbot but remain vocal skeptics of handing everything to PMAX.
🔍 AI Search Is Merging Paid and Organic: Kristina advises shifting from keyword matching to intent matching, and shares early learnings from piloting ads inside ChatGPT.
🤝 Against Principal-Based Buying: When agencies pre-buy media, incentives shift away from the client — Net Conversion keeps its model firmly aligned with client outcomes.
📈 Undervalued Platforms: Reddit and YouTube are two channels Kristina says deserve more attention from performance-minded advertisers.
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00:00 Cold open
01:51 Introducing Kristina Canada and Net Conversion
04:23 The Elevate the Outcome acquisition and CTV/OTT push
06:03 Why independent agencies are having a "renaissance"
08:00 Making CTV a performance channel without losing brand value
10:23 Sponsor break: Reaching the right audiences on streaming TV
11:21 Being a healthy skeptic of PMAX and Advantage+
13:19 AI adoption in staff workflows and training
16:00 OpenAI's advertising push and AI-powered search
18:18 The problem with principal-based media buying
19:37 Why YouTube and Reddit are still undervalued
21:02 Wrap up