John co-founded Advertising.com with his brother Scott in 1998 and sold it to AOL in 2004. For years it was the largest digital ad network and perfected CPM to CPC arbitrage and retargeting.More
31. Steve Latham – taking an Encore at Flashtalking
Steve was Director of Analytics at Flashtalking which acquired his measurement company Encore in 2015 and was itself acquired by Mediaocean for a reported $500 million in 2020More
30. Dave Zinman – on the first ad server, BlueLithium and beyond
Dave co-founded the company that built the first – albeit not by much – ad server called AdKnowledge and later worked at BlueLithium, Yahoo and Drawbridge among othersMore
29. Bill Urschel – the captain of AdECN, the first exchange
Bill Urschel was the founder and CEO of early ad exchange Ad:ECN, acquired by Microsoft in 2007; it also launched Jeff Green onto his Trade Desk trajectoryMore
Paleo Pellet: The History of Advertising Before DoubleClick in 15 Minutes
Covering the history of advertising from its birth until the beginning of programmatic advertising in 1995 in 15 minutesMore
28. Bill Wise – accounting for the rise of Right Media and more
Bill was an accountant at DoubleClick through the IPO and a member of the Right Media team when they sold to Yahoo in 2007 – he’s now the CEO of MediaOceanMore
27. Rex Briggs – the theory of Marketing Evolution
Rex founded Marketing Evolution in 2000 to build on the cross-channel measurement and audience insight techniques he started as Wired’s research director in the 1990’sMore
26. Manu Mathew – raising the Visual IQ of ads
Manu was co-founder and CEO of Visual IQ, a leader in the field of multi-touch attribution (MTA) and marketing insights, sold to Nielsen in 2017More
25. Jeremy Ring – We Were Yahoo!
Jeremy Ring was the first in-house sales person at Yahoo and started its East Coast operation around the time of its massive IPOMore
24. Tolman Geffs – banking on ad tech and media
Tolman is a long-time ad tech and media investment banker and advisor who was CEO of Internet Broadcasting during the dot-com boom and bustMore
Paleo Pellet: How DoubleClick worked
A brief explanation of how the DoubleClick ad serving technology worked based on its 1996 patent filingMore
23. David Shen – inside Yahoo!’s ad revolution
David was employee #17 at Yahoo! and a friend of founders Jerry Yang and David Filo at Stanford, and he guided the ad UX from grainy banners to the homepage takeoverMore
22. Michael Provenzano – issuing an Invite (Media) to Google
Michael was co-founder of Invite Media, one of the first DSPs, sold to Google in 2010 and the basis for its DV360 platform; and the co-founder and CEO of Vistar, a DOOH solution providerMore
21. Mark Zagorski – eXelate, Telaria & DoubleVerify
Mark is the CEO of DoubleVerify and a seasoned ad tech CEO having headed up eXelate and TelariaMore
20. Ari Lewine – going native with TripleLift
Ari is co-founder with Eric Berry and Shaun Zacharia of TripleLift, a native ad platform that sold a majority stake to Vista Equity for a reported $1.4B in 2021More
19. Scott McCorkle – hitting the ExactTarget at MetaCX
Scott McCorkle was a long-time leader and technical visionary at ExactTarget, a pioneering ESP and mar-tech hub that was acquired by Salesforce in 2012More
18. Kevin Ryan – up and down and up with DoubleClick
Ryan was an early DoubleClick leader and president during the tumultuous years of the boom and bust, ultimately shepherding its sale to PE in 2005More
17. Steven Comfort – HotWired into the first online ads
Comfort witnessed the birth of ads on the internet as a media buyer and later seller at Hotwired and Wired in SF in the mid-1990sMore
16. David Carlick – untold story of Poppe Tyson and DoubleClick
Carlick was a B2B ad pioneer in Silicon Valley and worked for Poppe Tyson and the legendary Fergus O’Dalley, who came up with the name DoubleClickMore
15. Dave Moore – the epic of 24/7
David Moore is the CEO of Britepool, an advertising identity management and resolution company developing an alternative ID for publishers. An affable Midwestern dealmaker, he moved east to join a TV ad sales rep company and then CNN at the dawn of the cable TV revolution. He recalls going on sales calls with an exuberant…More
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