Golden Gateways: Accelerating the Age of Intelligent Marketing (Virtual Only)

This event is over.

From the birthplace of modern innovation comes a new frontier in marketing technology. Golden Gateways brings together leaders and practitioners in the Bay Area to explore how AI, automation, and human ingenuity are expanding the capabilities of the MarTech stack. This conference bridges the gap between data, creativity, and performance, helping brands design intelligent systems that personalize at scale and deliver measurable growth. Join us at the gateway to the future, where marketing’s most transformative ideas take flight.

Agenda

TIME	EVENT DETAILS	LOCATION
Thursday, November 20, 2025
12:00pm - 12:10pm	OPENING REMARKS John Hardy SVP, Marketing Technology Practice ANA
12:10pm - 12:25pm	OPENING KEYNOTE: THE FUTURE OF MARTECH IN THE ERA OF AGENTIC AND GENERATIVE AI The marketing technology landscape is evolving at unprecedented speed. Agentic and Generative AI are no longer experimental tools — they are redefining how brands design customer experiences, orchestrate workflows, and unlock growth. In this keynote, the transformative impact of AI on the marketing stack will be explored, from data and decisioning to content and customer journeys. Attendees will gain a clear view of the opportunities and challenges ahead, and what it will take to build resilient, future-ready MarTech capabilities. Dennis Startsev Deloitte Digital, Principal, Marketing Technology Leader Deloitte Digital US
12:25pm - 1:00pm	BEYOND ROAS: UNLOCKING LONG-TERM VALUE WITH AUTOMATED AD OPTIMIZATION As digital ad ecosystems explode—across marketplaces, retail media networks, and performance channels—most brands are still optimizing for short-term ROAS while acquisition costs rise and margins shrink. At the same time, “automation” often stops at basic bid rules and budget pacing, leaving teams buried in manual work and disconnected from the metrics that really matter: profit, new customer growth, and lifetime value. In this session, Shirofune and Direct Agents will share how a profit-first, automation-powered approach can turn performance media from a margin drain into a compounding growth engine. You’ll see how unifying data across platforms, automating day-to-day optimization, and shifting success metrics from clicks and ROAS to LTV, NTB, and incremental profit can free teams to focus on strategy instead of spreadsheets. Through real examples and a behind-the-scenes look at how Shirofune scales what would otherwise be tens of thousands of hours of manual campaign management, you’ll learn how to grow efficiently while protecting long-term customer value. What You’ll Learn Why traditional optimization and “efficiency-only” automation are no longer enough in today’s fragmented media landscape How to connect ad performance to business-level metrics like profit, new-to-brand customers, and lifetime value A practical framework for balancing acquisition and loyalty to drive sustainable, profitable growth How automation can reduce manual workload while improving ROI, customer quality, and long-term value How agencies and brands can reclaim time for strategy, testing, and insights—without losing control of performance Mitsunaga Kikuchi Founder & CEO Shirofune Megan Conahan EVP Direct Agents Rocco Baldassarre Head of Business Development Shirofune View Presentation
1:00pm - 1:35pm	REDEFINING FIT: HOW TECHNOLOGY AND TRUST ARE RESHAPING THE FUTURE OF APPAREL MARKETING As emerging technologies redefine how consumers engage with brands, marketers face a new mandate: build trust in experiences that don’t yet exist in the traditional marketplace. This session explores how Aura—a startup developing an intelligent, at-home measurement and personalization platform—is shaping its product vision and marketing strategy in tandem. By reimagining how women discover and purchase bras, Aura is designing a digital experience that prioritizes accuracy, comfort, and confidence from the very first interaction. Attendees will gain insight into how marketing technologists can educate consumers, foster trust, and activate demand for transformative products long before they reach the market. Malcolm Goodwin Co-Founder and CEO Aura View Event Recap
1:35pm - 2:10pm	SMARTER, FASTER, MORE HUMAN: HOW TOYOTA IS REDEFINING CRM IN THE AI ERA As the pace of innovation in technology and AI advance, new expectations of brands have emerged. Today’s CRM demands intelligent and timely engagements, wrapped in seamless, cross-channel experiences. Despite significant investments in data and MarTech, many brands are failing to deliver—compromising customer loyalty, diluting brand equity, and diminishing marketing returns. In this session, discover how CRM 3.0 helps you break through the algorithmic noise. Learn how to activate your data, apply AI where it counts, and design customer journeys that feel seamless, human, and impossible to ignore. It’s not about spending more—it’s about building smarter, faster, more intuitive experiences at scale. This session takes you behind the scenes of Toyota’s flagship campaigns, which deliver millions of personalized permutations efficiently with the help of 1:1 marketing platforms. We’ll explore how embracing AI and MarTech can transform our ability to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. Brad Bettinson Executive Vice President of Innovations and Solutions JAM CR John Bortolotti Manager – Business Analytics & Optimization Toyota
2:10pm - 2:30pm	BREAK
2:30pm - 3:05pm	SUPERFIRING CONTENT SUPPLY CHAIN WITH AGENTIC PLATFORMS THAT ACTUALLY EXECUTE Autonomous agents and agentic AI are revolutionizing content workflow - dramatically accelerating velocity and reducing time to market. These AI-powered agents can independently connect and perform complex tasks from independent sources - significantly cutting down the time and human resources needed to connect copy, design and code updates. Join us as we demonstrate how companies like AWS are deploying real autonomous agents right now - allowing them to swiftly migrate, adapt and personalize their content messaging. Alan Schulman Managing Partner And Chief Content Officer UpperRight Jonathan Smith Senior Digital Marketing Leader AWS Anup Chamrajnagar Co-Founder and COO Gradial View Event Recap
3:05pm - 3:40pm	PERSONALIZATION AT SCALE: HOW RETAIL LEADERS ARE REDEFINING CUSTOMER CONNECTION As retail enters its next era of experience-driven growth, personalization has become both the ultimate differentiator and the toughest challenge. This session brings together leaders from Deloitte and Macy’s to explore how the world’s most customer-centric retailers are balancing strategy, data, and technology to deliver relevance at scale. From AI-powered decisioning and identity resolution to cross-channel orchestration and organizational alignment, the discussion will unpack what it really takes to turn personalization from a promise into a performance driver. Key takeaways: How leading retailers align data, analytics, and MarTech systems to deliver real-time personalization. The evolving role of AI and predictive modeling in customer engagement. How to balance privacy, scale, and creativity in retail personalization. Steps to operationalize personalization across marketing, data, and IT functions. Moderator: John Hardy SVP, Marketing Technology Practice ANA Panelists: Dennis Startsev Deloitte Digital, Principal, Marketing Technology Leader Deloitte Digital US Seetha Chakrapany Sr. Director, Customer Data Systems Macy's View Event Recap
4:15pm - 4:20pm	CLOSING REMARKS John Hardy Senior Vice President, Marketing Technology ANA

Cancellation Policy and Notes

No refunds will be granted for any cancellations or for 'no shows.' Unused registrations/applications have no monetary value and cannot be credited to future years or events. ANA will not issue refunds or credits due to failure to redeem a discount coupon during the registration process. You may transfer your registration to a colleague at no additional cost.