MOps-Apalooza 2025 brought more than four hundred marketing operations, revenue operations, and GTM professionals together at The Westin Anaheim for three days of hands-on learning, live workshops, and community conversations.
This year’s program made room for everything from AI agent building to leadership development and tech stack decision-making. Attendees came ready to build, test, and refine strategies that make marketing operations more effective and better connected across teams.
Here’s an analysis of the top 10 most popular sessions from the event based on views and bookmarks.
Top 10 Most Watched Live Sessions
The sessions that drew the largest live audiences revealed what resonated most in the moment: leadership frameworks, practical demonstrations, and authentic stories from the frontlines of marketing operations.
‘The New Marketing COO: Why Ops Is the New Strategic Leadership Lane’ ranked first with 56 live views. In this October 28 keynote, Darrell Alfonso reframed MOps as a true leadership lane that connects strategy, data, operations, and customer experience. His real-world examples showed what senior influence looks like in practice, which made the session especially impactful for those watching live.
The rest of the top ten mixed inspiration, hands-on learning, and future-ready thinking:
- The Old Playbook is Dead: Marketing Operations in the Age of AI with Jon Miller expanded on the declining usefulness of traditional automation and explained how to support meaningful interactions that strengthen trust.
- No Bullsh*t Demos and Birds of a Feather Networking offered live product demonstrations without sales-style framing. Attendees asked direct questions, voted on standout tools, and then joined topic-based networking circles.
- Three Learnings from MOps-Apalooza 2025 with Frans Riemersma combined research trends and audience insights to highlight practical takeaways from across the conference.
- Opening Keynote with Mike Rizzo, Audrey Harze, and Mike Simmons opened the event with guidance for the week and updates that shaped the conversations that followed.
- How I Built a Free and Open Source AI Bot for Marketo with Sushrut Sadana showed how he created a functional Artificial Intelligence bot using open-source tools, complete with a link attendees could use to try it on their own systems.
- Certifying the Future of Marketing Ops: Beyond the Tools with Mary Souza, Britney Young, Eric Hollebone, and Naomi Liu highlighted the need for a tech-agnostic certification that focuses on strategy, systems thinking, and cross-functional collaboration.
- Confessions from 100 MarOps Teams with Neil Tewari shared trends from hundreds of interviews and revealed the habits and workflows that consistently drive pipeline performance.
- Scaling Authenticity: Using AI to Drive Conversations That Convert with Wendy Barnum offered examples of how to guide AI so that emails feel human, relevant, and more likely to spark replies.
- Ugh, As If You Know Your ICP with Britney Young and Ellie Cary broke down how to refresh ideal customer profiles using intent signals, behavioral data, and real buyer trends.
Each of these sessions stood out because they balanced inspiration with actionable learning. Attendees left with ideas they could immediately put into practice once the conference ended.
Top 10 Most Watched Recorded Sessions
While live attendance reflected immediate engagement, the sessions most replayed after the event revealed what ideas attendees wanted to revisit and share with their teams. These recordings captured frameworks, playbooks, and fresh thinking that continued to spark discussion long after MOps-Apalooza ended.
‘Opening Keynote’ took the top position with 33 recorded views. Hosted by Mike Rizzo, Audrey Harze, and Mike Simmons on October 27 it gave attendees a grounded look at the state of the MarketingOps.com community. The hosts shared growth milestones, program updates, and the direction of the broader MOps profession. The high replay count showed how much the audience valued the clarity and context this session offered.
The rest of the top ten delivered a mix of practical frameworks, strategic thinking, and hands-on learning:
- The Old Playbook is Dead: Marketing Operations in the Age of AI with Jon Miller explained why MQL-heavy operating models are losing effectiveness and walked through how to rebuild MOps around stronger brand signals, human relationships, and AI-supported buying behaviors.
- The New Marketing COO with Darrell Alfonso showed how MOps leaders can step into a company-wide operator role by aligning execution with business strategy, customer experience, and revenue outcomes. It gave attendees a leadership-oriented blueprint they could immediately use.
- Expanding the Scope of MOPs to Include M&A Operations with Kelly Greenwalt covered templates and checklists for supporting acquisitions, including data mapping, platform consolidation, messaging alignment, and budget planning.
- Career Pathways and Pitfalls with Courtney McAra and Julz James walked through real skill expectations at each career stage, examples of lateral transitions across MOps, RevOps, and GTMOps, and practical ways to gain visibility with senior leadership.
- Create Your Own MOPs Assistant with MCP with Lucas Gonçalves Machado demonstrated how to use model context protocol so that large language models can interact with CRM and MAP systems. The session included real examples like program cloning, lead cleanup, and operational guardrails.
- From Intake to Impact: Building a QA Culture in Campaign Operations with Marian Hobinc shared how Infoblox established a repeatable QA process using Monday.com. It included scoring models, templates, and examples of how the system changed day-to-day campaign delivery.
- Build Your First AI Agent (without bugging an engineer) with Cory Huff offered a full walkthrough of building a working AI agent from scratch. It covered identifying the use case, creating a lightweight knowledge base, prompt design, and testing.
- How Marketing Ops Can Lead the Attribution Revolution with Emily Gustin and Chris Golec made the case for switching from lead-level attribution toward company-level engagement patterns. It outlined how MOps can operationalize the shift.
- The Kickoff Kit: What to Do Before You Outsource Anything with Jamye Breidenbach laid out the must-have preparation steps for outsourcing. It included stakeholder maps, scope templates, pitfalls to avoid, and communication methods for smoother vendor collaboration.
The strong replay numbers across this list showed that MOps-Apalooza’s value extends far beyond the event itself. The most-watched recordings became reference points for teams looking to apply what they learned at their own pace.
Top 10 Most Bookmarked Sessions
In addition to views, bookmarks reflected where the community’s curiosity truly lies: practical AI adoption, leadership evolution, and personal growth within marketing operations.
‘The Old Playbook is Dead: Marketing Operations in the Age of AI’ led with 70 bookmarks. Jon Miller delivered this keynote in the Main Stage room at Anabella AB on October 28. He challenged the traditional MQL-driven mindset and presented a model centered on trust, brand strength, and AI-supported buying journeys. Attendees bookmarked the session because it offered a clear, modern view of how MOps can blend AI with human insight to build stronger relationships.
The rest of the top ten included sessions that equipped the community with practical tools, leadership clarity, and hands-on learning:
- Build Your First AI Agent (without bugging an engineer) with Cory Huff took place on the Main Stage and showed attendees how to move from a simple use case to a working AI agent. The session included a live build, a lightweight knowledge base setup, prompt guidance, and example agents that anyone could replicate.
- The New Marketing COO with Darrell Alfonso outlined how MOps professionals can step into a broader leadership role, driving alignment across strategy and execution. He explained how to connect team execution with strategic planning, customer experience, and revenue objectives in a way that earns trust across the organization.
- How to Start Sharing Your Operations Knowledge with Alysha Khan, Sara McNamara, Darrell Alfonso, and Jen Bergren helped professionals turn their expertise into content. The panel shared advice on writing newsletters, launching podcasts, structuring tutorials, and avoiding common pitfalls that block people from publishing.
- Building an AI-Enabled Tech Stack You Will Actually Use with Alex Long covered how to evaluate a current stack, identify gaps, choose where AI can add measurable value, and support marketers with the enablement they need to use new tools correctly.
- Throw the Dice: Do Not Leave Your Marketing Operations to Chance (The Sequel) with Courtny Edwards-Jones, Kelly Jo Horton, Zoe Forman, and Chloe Pott delivered an interactive, game-style format. The group tackled real MOps challenges submitted by the audience and modeled fast, practical decision-making.
- Scaling Authenticity: Using AI to Drive Conversations That Convert with Wendy Barnum showed how to guide AI tools so that outreach sounds context-aware and human. Attendees learned how to improve relevance, tone, and response rates.
- Career Pathways and Pitfalls with Courtney McAra and Julz James walked through a clear career structure for MOps and RevOps. The session included examples of skills to build at each level, cross-functional moves that open new doors, and ways to gain recognition from leadership.
- Strategic by Design: Using AI to Elevate MOps Conversations with the C-Suite with Brian Schmid and Andrea Frazier offered methods to present data in formats that resonate with CEOs, CMOs, and CFOs. They also demonstrated how AI tools can simulate executive perspectives to help refine messaging.
- One Field to Rule Them All: Operationalizing Marketability at Scale with Courtney McAra explained how to centralize marketability criteria into one unified field. This structure helps teams work in sync with Legal, Demand Gen, and Sales while simplifying reporting and campaign execution.
Together, these sessions showed that the most bookmarked topics focused on clarity, confidence, and sustainable progress.
What These Trends Tell Us
Looking across all the top sessions of MOps-Apalooza 2025, several key themes stand out. Here’s what the data and discussions revealed:
- AI is becoming practical- The popularity of sessions like Build Your First AI Agent and Scaling Authenticity with AI proved that the community is past experimentation and now focused on execution, enablement, and measurable outcomes.
- Leadership matters more than ever- Talks such as The New Marketing COO and Certifying the Future of Marketing Ops showed how MOps is stepping into a strategic leadership lane and influencing decisions at the highest levels.
- Learning is becoming public- Interest in panels like How to Start Sharing Your Operations Knowledge showed professionals are interested to teach, mentor, and document their expertise for collective growth.
- Human-centered systems win- Interest in sessions like The Old Playbook is Dead or Strategic by Design indicated that emphasis is moving to using technology to empower rather than replace people.
- Collaboration drives the future- From gamified panels to peer-led discussions, the most popular sessions were participatory and action-oriented. This signalled a stronger sense of shared progress in the community.
These trends reflect how marketing operations continues to mature as both a discipline and a leadership function.
Watch the Best of MOps-Apalooza 2025
Every session mentioned here, and many more, is available to stream on demand! You can watch on-demand in the Mopza 25 portal until January 31, 2026 if you are a Pro / Pro + member or ticket holder. After that time, access is only for Pro+ members in our Member Vault.
If you aren’t a member yet, become a member now to dig into years of insights from the brightest minds in marketing operations and discover how to apply these lessons in your own work today.
