Danny Weisman and Barry Dan, co-founders of Obsessed Media, have a mission statement so plain it almost sounds radical: better media. That’s it. Not more media. Not cheaper media. Not AI-powered, programmatic, algorithm-optimized media. Just — better.
The duo launched Obsessed Media just over a year ago after watching brands spend millions on fractured media plans cobbled together by in-house buyers, freelancers and channel-specific agencies that never talked to each other. Their first client engagement always starts the same way — a live media audit that typically uncovers 20% to 30% in waste. Current clients include Ollie dog food, where they’re partnering with CMO Allison Stodd to rethink the brand’s media approach from the ground up.
The audit that pays for itself
Every Obsessed Media engagement starts with what they call a live media audit — a full evaluation of a client’s media portfolio to find what’s working and what’s hemorrhaging money. It’s not a sales tactic. It’s the foundation.
“We’re often recommending clients keep buying for themselves,” Dan says. “Most media agencies don’t do that. Most agencies exist to gobble up more and more buying.”
That distinction matters. In the CTV landscape alone, $26 billion in fraud was reported last year. If you don’t know what to look for, Weisman says, you’re at high risk for media waste — overpaying for targeting that never hits a human.
What Obsessed Media is known for: attention and context over everything
The agency’s planning philosophy flips conventional media wisdom on its head. Where most agencies obsess over audience targeting, Weisman and Dan put attention and context at the forefront of every buy.
“The industry has over-revved on audience targeting,” Weisman says. “It’s overrated, not always accurate — in fact, often rarely accurate. It’s more important to put media in a high-attention context.”
It sounds obvious. That’s what makes it weird. “It feels crazy to say your media should just be seen in the right context with enough attention to break through,” Weisman adds. “Instead of below the fold or for less than two seconds — which isn’t enough time to make a memory.”
3 things Obsessed Media does differently
First — that live media audit. Second — senior-only expertise. Dan and Weisman bring experience across hundreds of campaigns and hundreds of millions in spend. At most agencies, you might get 2% to 5% of someone at that level. At Obsessed Media, they’re your strategy leads.
Third — they’re generalists in a world of specialists. Both co-founders believe deeply in integrated thinking. “We’re not a search or a social shop,” Dan says. “We plan and buy and understand all media.” They’ll give creative recommendations alongside media ones because — as Dan puts it — it’s hard to separate creative and media when a brand is running a gorgeous 30-second spot in an environment that’s muted and under 2.5 seconds.
The indie advantage: no puppet, no principal-based buys
Dan doesn’t mince words about holding company media agencies. “There are often either explicit or underlying rules,” he says. Briefs under $5 million get funneled to Google and Meta because of existing deals. Principal-based buys let agencies resell inventory without disclosing what they paid.
“At best, it’s more challenging to do effective plans,” Dan says. “At worst, it’s not the best feeling to say I can’t put forth the best recommendation because my boss’s boss’s boss told me everything goes to Meta and Google.”
Independence means no deals to honor, no inventory to resell and no incentive to recommend anything other than what works.
Why brands should bring their problems (and their budgets) to Obsessed
Weisman frames it around a tension most CMOs feel. Media agencies today tend to be one of two things: fast and shallow (same old Google and Meta playbook) or thoughtful but glacially slow (two to 12 weeks for a media plan). CMOs with two-to-three-year tenures don’t have time for either.
“Quick and thoughtful,” Weisman says. That’s the bar. The agency delivers both — without defaulting to the usual suspects.
Why talent joins the obsession
The team is 10 people and growing. Obsessed Media is bootstrapped — no outside investors, no one to answer to beyond their clients and their own standards. They hire by inviting candidates to a bar with a creative brief: pick a campaign from Ad Age or Adweek and pitch three media ideas.
“If you’re a good hang, that’s the A-plus,” Weisman says. The learning curve bends fast because employees work across three to five clients in different industries. “It feels like you’re working at the agency, not for the client,” he adds. “We want to build a culture where our way of doing work translates to business results.”
Misfits who buck the hive mind
Dan calls Obsessed Media a misfit — the product of growing up as a media person inside a creative agency, which shaped how he thinks about the discipline entirely. Weisman goes with weirdo, borrowing a reference from Coriolanus to describe the hive-mind mentality of modern media.
“Everyone just agrees on the same things,” Weisman says. “And all those things seem kind of foreign and zombie-like. You have to run programmatically. You have to run only a handful of channels.”
Being the outlier isn’t comfortable. But that’s the point.
Dear new CMO of Pinterest: let’s talk
Dan shouts out Stodd at Ollie dog food for being a brave partner in the agency’s early chapter. Weisman has his eye on something broader — any CMO at an inflection point. “I want to talk to the new CMO of Pinterest,” he says. “Any CMO who is coming into a new situation, not sure what the media program they inherited is, or knows they need to change something — those are the CMOs we’re for.”
He adds: “I’m always scouring Ad Age and Adweek to look at who’s in the news.” If a campaign didn’t meet expectations — Obsessed Media is there for the next one.
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