The new Signal & Noise episode with Cimin Ahmadi Cohen, “When the Dashboard Lies,” is here. Watch (or listen): When the Dashboard Lies: Cimin Ahmadi Cohen on Building a Better Agency and Exposing Advertising’s Attribution Illusion.

Cimin Ahmadi Cohen is Founder and CEO of Idea Peddler, an independent, woman-owned, full-service agency based in Austin. She left a fast track at major agencies to build the agency she wanted to work for, co-authored the research “The Attribution Illusion,” and is an adjunct professor of Advanced Media at Texas State University.

What happens when ROAS keeps climbing, but the business doesn’t grow? Cimin Ahmadi Cohen, Founder and CEO of Idea Peddler, Brett House, and Rio Longacre talk about the attribution illusion, the incentives behind it, and what it takes to build an independent agency on Signal & Noise.

It’s a candid conversation about what it means to tell a client the truth when the easy number is misleading. Cimin tells the story of leaving big agency life without a net after a drive through the mountains of New Mexico, building a woman-led agency with real flexibility for parents, and why Austin is home base. Then she and the hosts get into why she believes dashboards can look healthy while the business goes sideways.

Key takeaways:
- ROAS can rise while business outcomes stay flat, Cimin says, because it often captures sales already in motion instead of incremental sales.
- The root problem is incentives. Agencies, platforms, ad tech, and marketers are all rewarded for more spend, so few want to look closely, and media audits meet what Rio calls “fear of finding out.”
- Agency transparency is paramount: fees stated up front, media billed at cost, and more working media through direct deals with premium publishers.

Watch (or listen): When the Dashboard Lies: Cimin Ahmadi Cohen on Building a Better Agency and Exposing Advertising’s Attribution Illusion.

What happens when society can no longer agree on basic facts? Vanessa Otero, Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media, Brett House, and Rio Longacre talk about trust, polarization, and the economics of news media on Signal & Noise.

Vanessa explains why attention is finite and anger is the most engaging emotion, so algorithms tend to reward outrage over reliability. She compares today’s information environment to the food industry, with a few “health food” options in a landscape built on fat, salt, and sugar. They get into why advertisers stopped buying news, why original journalism is a low-margin product that still feeds the rest of the media ecosystem, and what AI means for publishers.

Key takeaways:
- Engagement is a poor proxy for reliability, Vanessa says. Anger is the most engaging emotion, so platforms optimizing for engagement tend to amplify outrage.
- Original journalism is infrastructure. Podcasts, creators, and re-reported content depend on it, yet it has very low margins, so advertisers who avoid news altogether weaken the whole ecosystem.
- News has been more insulated from AI-driven traffic loss than generic content, she says, and buyers can now isolate high-quality news in CTV through Ad Fontes Media’s partnership with Viant.

Watch (or listen): News, Trust, and Polarization: Vanessa Otero on the Fragmented Media Era