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

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 🎧 Subscribe to Next in Media on Apple Podcasts and Spotify 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