The traditional annual media budget is dying. Audiences move faster than forecasts, and marketers must constantly reallocate spend to respond. "Atomic Budgeting" offers a data-first model for continuous rebalancing, connecting marketing, procurement, and finance in near real‑time to support more agile spend decisions. Explore the technology, governance, and leadership changes needed to make atomic budgeting work—and how to align it with procurement's accountability framework. 

Federico Salvitti

Operating Partner & Prof.
New York University

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Step into a procurement masterclass—work through real world marketing sourcing challenges, benchmark best-inclass supplier management, and unlock negotiation wins you can implement right away. 

Sponsored by: Level Agency

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With AI and martech platforms evolving weekly, procurement must rethink long term sourcing models. Learn how to implement modular, outcome based contracting frameworks that encourage pilot adoption and innovation—without locking the organization into outdated tools or inflated commitments. 

Howard Proctor

Associate Director, Marketing Procurement
HelloFresh

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Most procurement teams are applying media and agency contract logic to brand activation deals — and it isn't working. Kill fees, force majeure clauses, and custom fabrication rights require a fundamentally different commercial approach. This workshop pulls back the curtain on what's actually in activation contracts, where the hidden risks live, and how marketing procurement can build the category-specific expertise needed to protect the business when a live experience doesn't go according to plan. 

Font licensing has often been an overlooked and misunderstood by marketing procurement teams, partly due to the fragmented spend, complex supplier landscape and wide variety of licensing models. Yet there are substantial financial risks to companies that do not manage their font licensing properly. There is now increased pressure on advertisers to start getting serious about managing their font spend to control costs and mitigate risk. Christian Hauptman has been on a multi-year journey to understand the best way to get a handle on this complex topic. In this session, he will share some of his learnings as well as practical steps you can take to get your Font House in Order.

Christian Hauptman

Senior Category Manager
Kellanova

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Retail media is one of the fastest-growing and most complex categories in marketing spend — and one of the hardest for procurement to evaluate. Retailers offer a dizzying array of metrics, but not all KPIs are created equal, and many are designed to favor the seller rather than the buyer. For marketing procurement teams, the real challenge isn't just understanding what the numbers mean — it's knowing which KPIs actually signal performance, which ones are noise, and how to use that knowledge as leverage in commercial negotiations and supplier accountability conversations. 

Ready to take strategic sourcing to the next level? Join this hands-on case study for actionable frameworks, cross functional collaboration tips, and proven methods for delivering business impact from marketing procurement. 

Why do media spend and delivery data so often fail to match—and what can procurement do now that AI auditing tools are finally affordable and accessible? As media prices shift and assets underdeliver, traditional MMM assumptions break down and procurement is left manually reconciling what was planned, bought, and actually delivered. AI‑powered reconciliation systems are changing this equation, dramatically reducing audit effort and enabling a "clear box" view of media performance and value. 

• Diagnose the root causes of misalignment between planned, purchased, and delivered media 
• Leverage AI‑driven tools to automate reconciliation and reduce auditing costs 
• Elevate procurement's role by turning reconciled data into strategic guidance for marketing and finance 

Lisa Hurst

Sr. Strategic Sourcing Manager/Category Manager Marketing
Sony Interactive Entertainment

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Transparency has been a fixture of marketing procurement conversations for years — and yet the challenge keeps evolving. What procurement meant by transparency five years ago barely scratches the surface today. AI-generated costs, algorithmic media buying, and complex sub-contractor chains have introduced new layers of opacity that traditional contract frameworks were never designed to handle. This session takes stock of where the transparency debate stands now, what procurement teams are actually demanding, and what agencies and solution providers must do differently to build the trust that wins and retains business.

For many clients, fee capture is top of mind—but a narrow focus on cost can unintentionally squeeze out innovation and long-term value. In this session, marketing procurement pulls back the curtain on how they are redefining agency partnerships in the AI era: moving away from pure rate negotiation toward frameworks that reward performance, creativity, and measurable business impact. You'll hear directly what partnership frameworks and incentives they're moving toward in the AI era, and what agencies and solution providers can do to position themselves as growth partners instead of line items to be reduced. 

Barry Kull

Senior Director, Enterprise Marketing and Market Access Category Management
AstraZeneca

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