The new Signal & Noise episode with Zack Wenthe and Adrian Bolosan, “The Future of the Connected Customer Stack,” is here, recorded LIVE at Advertising Week in New York City. Watch (or listen): The Future of the Connected Customer Statck: Zack Wenthe & Adrian Bolosan on Signal & Noise LIVE at Advertising Week 2026.

Zack Wenthe is Director of Product Marketing & Customer Data Evangelist at Tealium. Adrian Bolosan is Head of ISV GTM, Americas at Databricks. Both are longtime friends of the show.

Filmed LIVE at Advertising Week 2026 at MCM Creative Studios in New York City, this episode of Signal & Noise brings together hosts Brett House and Rio Longacre with Tealium’s Zack Wenthe and Databricks’ Adrian Bolosan. It starts with a question: what happens to the enterprise marketing stack when AI becomes more than another feature and starts changing how data, technology, people, and decisions work together?

Has the ‘headless’ or ‘composable’ stack actually won, or have these simply become empty, catch-all marketing terms? The four discuss moving applications closer to the data, federated architectures, and why flexibility matters more than another monolithic platform.

They also cover the foundation under every AI strategy: the data. Tag management is back, because the more context an agent gets, the better its response. Then comes the debate over where decisioning should live. Zack argues it sits at the channel. Adrian points to “perishable moments” that need real-time signals alongside historical intelligence.

The conversation also looks at what AI means for marketing teams, SaaS, and consulting, and why human judgment matters more as the tools get better.

This one was filmed in front of a live audience, so watch the video if you can. Watch (or listen): The Future of the Connected Customer Statck: Zack Wenthe & Adrian Bolosan on Signal & Noise LIVE at Advertising Week 2026.

By Quinn Harrington, Founder & Chief Brand Concierge, Harrington Design Co.

What do four cats outside a garage teach you about audience alignment? Quinn Harrington thought feeding them would be simple. Instead, the calico hissed at the hand holding the bowl, the two young greys bolted, and Grand Kitty watched it all from a sunny spot by the fence. Quinn’s first reaction was to send the calico away. Then she realized her clients run the same play.

Quinn’s takeaways: the loudest customer can quietly push the rest of your audience away, the quiet ones leave without telling you why, and your best clients chose you for the environment, not the line item. The fix wasn’t firing the calico. It was changing the setup, so each cat has her own spot.

Read the article: Three Grey and a Calico