In partnership with

Find your customers on Roku this Black Friday

As with any digital ad campaign, the important thing is to reach streaming audiences who will convert. To that end, Roku’s self-service Ads Manager stands ready with powerful segmentation and targeting options. After all, you know your customers, and we know our streaming audience.

Worried it’s too late to spin up new Black Friday creative? With Roku Ads Manager, you can easily import and augment existing creative assets from your social channels. We also have AI-assisted upscaling, so every ad is primed for CTV.

Once you’ve done this, then you can easily set up A/B tests to flight different creative variants and Black Friday offers. If you’re a Shopify brand, you can even run shoppable ads directly on-screen so viewers can purchase with just a click of their Roku remote.

Bonus: we’re gifting you $5K in ad credits when you spend your first $5K on Roku Ads Manager. Just sign up and use code GET5K. Terms apply.

Use code GET5K now

Hello, Visionary CTOs! 🌟

In this issue, we unpack what CTOs need to drive AI-led transformations that actually deliver - strategic data readiness, cross-functional alignment, and the authority to re-engineer processes at scale.

This isn’t about pilots - it’s about embedding AI into the operational core.

📰 Upcoming in this issue

• 🔐 AI’s New Cyber Reality: Who Has the Upper Hand?

• 🧭 AI Transformation: Managerial Must-Haves

• 🧠 How AI Is Reshaping Work - A Snapshot of Tonight’s Job Market

📈 Trending news

• Flash, Cloud, Edge: Building the Backbone of Next-Gen AI

• Internal Threats Dominate CTO Cloud Security Priorities

• The CTO’s Responsibility in Ensuring Workplace Well-Being

🔐 AI’s New Cyber Reality: Who Has the Upper Hand?

Hackers are speeding up recon and phishing with open-source models while defenders race to deploy AI-powered detectors - after Black Hat and DEF CON, experts are split on who’s winning.

Read the full article here »

Key Takeaways:

• 🤖 Offense Accelerates: Generative AI helps attackers spin up convincing lures and find weaknesses faster than before.

• 🛡️ Defense Levels Up: Security teams are rolling out AI tools for threat hunting, malware detection, and faster response.

• ⚖️ Balance Is Uncertain: Industry leaders disagree on whether AI currently favors attackers or defenders.

• ⏳ Change Is Imminent: The threat landscape is poised to shift quickly, demanding stronger guardrails and readiness.

🧭 AI Transformation: Managerial Must-Haves

Turning pilots into performance takes more than models - leaders need clear ownership, guardrails, and metrics to scale AI with confidence.

Read the full article here »

Key Takeaways:

• 🎯 Ownership & Operating Model: Choose a Center-of-Excellence or federated approach, assign accountable product owners, and tie budgets to outcomes.

• 🧹 Data, Access & Quality: Establish governance, lineage, and privacy controls while building reliable pipelines that deliver trusted, audit-ready data.

• 🛡️ Risk, Compliance & Security by Design: Bake in model risk management, human oversight, and vendor controls with continuous monitoring and clear audit trails.

• 📏 Value & Change Management: Define success metrics and stage gates, upskill teams, and communicate benefits so AI products ship, stick, and show ROI.

🧠 How AI Is Reshaping Work - A Snapshot of Tonight’s Job Market

Hiring, roles, and pay are shifting fast: AI is cutting routine tasks, redefining entry-level work, and rewarding skills that blend human judgment with machine speed.

Read the full article here »

Key Takeaways:

• 📉 Entry-Level Jobs Are Changing: Automation is absorbing repetitive tasks, shrinking traditional starter roles while raising the bar for analytical and cross-functional skills.

• 🧩 Hybrid Skill Sets Win: Candidates who pair domain expertise with AI literacy - prompting, validation, and oversight - advance faster than single-track specialists.

• 🔎 Hiring Is Getting Smarter (and Tougher): Recruiters use AI to screen at scale, favoring measurable outcomes, portfolio evidence, and continuous learning signals.

• 🔄 Upskill or Be Outpaced: Short, focused reskilling cycles in data, automation, and workflow tools now determine mobility, compensation, and resilience through market swings.

Why It Matters

AI adoption fails when leadership treats it like a side project. CTOs who pair technical vision with disciplined execution will be the ones turning AI from a cost center into a competitive advantage.

Rachel Miller
Editor-in-Chief
CTO Executive Insights

How was today's edition?

Rate this newsletter.

• Mediocre ⭐⭐⭐
• Above average ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• World-class ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐