Episode description

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.

Key Highlights

🏢 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.

Resources & Next Steps

🔗 Kristina Canada on LinkedIn

🌐 Net Conversion

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Chapter Timestamps

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

Why Independent Agencies Are Having a Renaissance – with CMO Kristina Canada

Next in Media

Why Independent Agencies Are Having a Renaissance – with CMO Kristina Canada