by Dana Lee on 19th Aug 2026 in Video Interviews

In this episode of A Coffee With... Paul Evans, founder & chief positioning engineer at V2RSION, joins ExchangeWire's John Still over an americano to chat priorities and positioning in ad tech.

Paul had a 20-year career on the advertiser side spanning companies like Vodafone, Xbox, and Bacardi. After making the transition into consulting, he founded V2RSION, a positioning studio for marketing, media, and advertising businesses focused on translating business strategy into market context.

Positioning is no longer just a messaging tactic; it is a foundational strategy which enables businesses to differentiate themselves, align their teams, and achieve discoverability with both human and machine audiences. In an increasingly homogenised and saturated market, the key to future success lies not in producing more content, but in being strategically different.

Ad Tech's Changing Priorities

The industry has a tendency of focusing intensely on one issue before quickly moving on to the next shiny thing. Paul lists a sequence of ad tech's fleeting priorities over the last 15 years: supply chain transparency, independent measurement, diversity and inclusion, and most recently, sustainability. He feels these issues are often abandoned before being fully solved.

"The lens is focused on AI, and rightly so, because it's a moment of clear inflection for the industry in how it operates... But it's felt a little bit like we've shone a light on these great things and then moved on potentially too fast, potentially before really solving them. In a kind of binary way, as though they were one thing only to focus on, at the expense of then moving on to the next thing and the next thing."
— Paul Evans

Paul believes the industry's focus on sustainability was short-lived, quietly pushed into the background by the rise of AI. He views this as a missed opportunity, as AI's high energy consumption is the antithesis of the sustainability agenda. Instead, these two areas could have been developed interdependently, creating intelligent solutions that are also sustainable.

The Importance of Positioning

Positioning is often misunderstood as mere messaging or a tactical marketing function. Instead, Paul redefines it as the nexus between business strategy and go-to-market execution. It enables companies to translate their goals for their customers and competitive landscape. He notes over half of B2B businesses lack documented positioning, which is a significant handicap.

The current environment of attention scarcity and AI-driven content creation makes the role of positioning even more vital. Using AI tools for messaging can lead to homogenisation, with different AI models producing 80-90% similar outputs in one test. Distinctive positioning is needed for companies to create a unique, defensible market space and align internal teams.

Future Outlook for Ad Tech

With content now needing to be optimised for both humans and machines, positioning must be context-rich, clearly defining the problem solved and the business category. These signals are read by LLMs, which then surface the business in relevant searches and recommendations. This makes strategic positioning a key component of modern discoverability.

Paul stated that while it is easier than ever to start a business and build products, it has never been harder to scale one. As content abundance and AI capabilities intensify, the primary strategy for success is not more content, but differentiation. Companies that "zig when everybody else is zagging" will be the ones that succeed in today's increasingly competitive landscape.

Ad TechAIContentOptimisationStrategySustainability