What is RTB Day?
RTB Day events are part of a global, invite-only conference series for senior performance marketers. They’re days full of sessions, debates, and conversations built around the topics shaping the industry right now. RTB House curates the agenda and the guest list, then hands the floor to the people in the room.
The third Berlin edition brought together senior leaders from around the world representing nearly 60 brands including Mytheresa, ABOUT YOU, Breuninger, TUI, Douglas, Tchibo, and AutoScout24, and the Swiss Marketplace Group alongside industry voices from The German Association for the Digital Economy and W&V.
That setup, a day at Fotografiska Berlin, a photography museum in Central Berlin, gave the day a particular quality. As Daniel Volož, RTB House Business Development Director for DACH, put it afterward:
"What makes RTB Day Berlin special is not only the content or the speakers, it’s the exchange. The openness to share ideas, to question perspectives and to learn from each other. It is precisely this sense of community that makes the event so valuable every year."
The future of digital advertising drove the day
Rolf Schröter, Editor-in-Chief of W&V kicked off the day with his keynote on the paradox of perfect advertising and laid out where digital marketing stands today, and how it will need to evolve to stay relevant in the near future.
Immediately after, Samuel Cornelius, Senior Expert Performance Marketing Manager at Breuninger; Nicolas Elshout, Head of Performance Marketing and Attribution at TUI; and Florian Glashoff, Head of Programmatic & Partnerships & SEO at ABOUT YOU held the first panel discussion of the day on navigating attribution complexity today as modern methods and shifting consumer behavior changes. Our Head of Account Management DACH, Mara Maas moderated the talk and the panel explored how teams balance hard incrementality data with marketer intuition in an increasingly complex, fragmented attribution space.
Jaysen Gillespie, VP of Global Product Commercialization here at RTB House presented the findings of a recent internal report on consumer buying behavior examining what factors influence ecommerce. Some of the major conclusions were to meet customers where they are, showing up across web, PC, and app, on the media that matters to their lives, and within their own economic frame of reference. Second, out-maneuver competitors during the heavy research phase with upper- and mid-funnel marketing that moves users toward purchase, kept broad across diverse channels. And lastly, keep up your sales momentum through full-site retargeting, eliminating segment blackout, proving incrementality, and spending based on economics rather than fixed budgets.
Katerina Schneeberg, Head of Innovation & Technology at BVDW moderated the second panel of the day, which was on AI in marketing, and how brands are using it. Giacomo Iotti, New Product and AI Lead of SMG Group; Stefan Bubolz Team Lead Display Advertising at Douglas; and Ruppert Bodmeier addressed swirling AI hype and separated the marketing applications teams genuinely rely on today, like customer service automation and AI-generated content, from the ones still being tested, such as LLM visibility and post-cookie measurement. The discussion gave the audience grounded, practical takeaways on where AI delivers measurable wins and where human judgment is still essential.
After lunch, Jaysen Gillespie also presented on how large language models are being applied to audience building, moving beyond segment-based targeting toward genuinely customized experiences. For more on how AI tools are changing the marketer's toolkit, see our overview of generative AI tools for performance teams.
André Pinto, Senior Marketing Manager; and Federico Lagomarsino, Junior Marketing Manager at Mytheresa laid out a pragmatic full-funnel strategy for hard-to-reach luxury retail customers.
Rounding off the day was the final panel discussion featuring Marc Castañe, Global Director Digital Marketing of Autoscout and Valeria Semeraro, Head of Performance Marketing at Tchibo discussed steering strategy for sustainable international growth. Erkhan Soy, Head of Sales DACH at RTB House moderated. The panel tackled the intricacies of international expansion, such as how much to standardize versus localize when scaling into new markets. The discussion drew on real experiences across organizational setup, budget allocation, and channel strategy. Successful scaling depends on balancing efficiency with local relevance rather than following any universal playbook.
Underpinning all the themes was the idea that the marketers who will perform in the next few years are the ones combining strategic clarity with rigorous measurement.
3 takeaways from RTB Day Berlin ‘26
Not every event produces clear consensus. Berlin did. Three things kept surfacing, regardless of which session they came up in.
Being an AI early mover is not enough on its own. The advantage comes when AI adoption is tied to specific, well-defined objectives and the measurement infrastructure to evaluate them honestly. Novelty without purpose is expensive.
Of course, growth is still very much available in performance marketing. The opportunity is real for teams that combine a clear strategy with clean measurement. The challenge is the internal discipline to execute against it.
Lastly, the value of being in the room. In a period when the industry is moving fast and the signals are mixed, there is something distinct about spending a full day with senior practitioners who are willing to share what's working and what isn't. Several attendees noted that the conversations after the official sessions, over dinner and into the evening, were where the most useful exchanges happened.
Watch the recap video for the standout moments from RTB Day Berlin.
What comes next
RTB Day events continue across Europe through the year, with each edition building on the conversations started at the last. The goal isn't to repeat the same agenda in a new city. It's to track how the thinking evolves as more teams work through the same challenges in distinct markets and regions.
Attendance is by invitation. If you work in performance marketing and want to be considered for an upcoming edition, learn more at rtbday.com.
