Rich, Kevin and Ciarán are joined again by Shane Shevlin, CEO and co-founder of Bedrock Platform.
The conversation digs into Bedrock’s recent announcement with Index Exchange, which sees Bedrock’s bidder containerised inside Index Cloud. Shane explains why bringing bid decisioning closer to the impression can dramatically reduce latency, lower infrastructure costs, and unlock more sophisticated use of data, models and signals in real-time media buying.
The team also explores the return of specialist and verticalised bidders, the role of agentic workflows in campaign execution, the importance of composability and standards, and why the next wave of ad tech innovation may come from independent, highly focused players rather than the traditional scaled platforms.
The FPC Podcast timeline:
00:00 - Introduction
Welcome to episode 32 of the FPC Podcast with returning guest Shane Shevlin, CEO and founder of Bedrock Platform.
01:00 - What is Bedrock Platform?
Shane introduces Bedrock as a next-generation media buying platform, with a focus on agentic workflows, automation and composable infrastructure.
02:44 - Bedrock’s Index Cloud announcement
The team discusses Bedrock’s recent partnership with Index Exchange and the significance of containerising Bedrock’s bidder inside Index Cloud.
04:23 - Why containerisation matters
Shane explains the cost, infrastructure and performance benefits of deploying Bedrock’s codebase inside Index’s environment.
07:02 - Collapsing the latency window
A deep dive into how reducing bid decisioning latency from tens of milliseconds to near-instantaneous response times can unlock new capabilities.
09:31 - More signals, better outcomes
Kevin explains how access to more signal data, from geospatial to retail and transactional data, can improve media buying performance.
11:27 - The rise of specialist bidders
The conversation explores how Bedrock’s composable stack could make it easier and cheaper to build verticalised bidders for specific use cases, channels and audiences.
14:15 - What this means for SSPs and DSPs
Ciarán shares his view on whether other SSPs will adopt containerisation, and why Bedrock may occupy a new role in the ecosystem.
17:47 - Composability, portability and standards
Shane and Kevin discuss the importance of open standards, shared infrastructure and collaborative development in the next phase of ad tech.
22:08 - New channels and new optimism
The group discusses emerging environments such as agentic advertising, live sports and high-speed monetisation, and why the market feels exciting again.
23:04 - What has changed in the industry?
Kevin reflects on the technological, financial and cultural shifts that have created a new generation of ad tech challengers.
25:35 - Shane’s experience building bidders
Shane talks about the lessons learned from building multiple bidding systems and how Bedrock is applying that experience to CTV, video, audio and performance.
27:37 - Pathfinder and agentic capabilities
Shane discusses Bedrock’s Pathfinder agents and early client tests around emerging specs and workflows.
28:35 - The thousand-bidder dream returns
Rich closes by reflecting on how Bedrock and Index may bring back the original programmatic dream of many specialist bidders built for different use cases.
29:43 - Next episode preview
A preview of the next FPC Podcast episode, featuring Rob McLaughlin of Audiences and a discussion of the Publicis-LiveRamp announcement.
