# Escape The AI Paralysis - Mike Lane

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-cmo-whisperer-6598568/escape-the-ai-paralysis-mike-lane
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-cmo-whisperer-6598568/escape-the-ai-paralysis-mike-lane.md
Podcast: [The CMO Whisperer](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-cmo-whisperer-6598568)
Published: 2026-07-24T11:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/d8a419f4
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/media.transistor.fm/d8a419f4/91f6ec2a.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-cmo-whisperer-6598568/episodes/escape-the-ai-paralysis-mike-lane
Duration seconds: 1478

## Resource

My guest today is Mike Lane, CEO and co-founder of Fluency, the digital advertising operating system helping agencies scale paid media campaigns across every major digital ad channel. Fluency manages more than 250,000 campaigns monthly and nearly $3 billion in annual media spend, giving Mike a unique lens into where advertising, automation, and AI are all headed. The company recently raised a $40 million Series A to accelerate its growing agentic AI capabilities. And today we're going to dig into what all that actually means for CMOs, marketing teams, and the future of advertising operations. Before Fluency, Mike was COO and co-founder of Dealer.com, which became the automotive retail industry's largest marketing and advertising platform. And finally, he's also an active angel investor, board advisor, and serves on several nonprofit boards.

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## Transcript

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