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
14. Lou Montulli – building browsers, cookies and more
Lou was an engineer on the launch team at Netscape in the 1990s and helped build the cookie, animated GIFs and the web as we know itMore
13. Dave Morgan – keeping it Real(Media), TACODA and Simulmedia
After practicing law the intrepid Morgan pitched a VC in an elevator and went on to found ad server and network Real Media, TACODA and SimulmediaMore
12. Kevin O’Connor – on co-founding DoubleClick and more
Kevin O’Connor is the co-founder with Dwight Merriman of DoubleClick in 1995 and was its CEO until 2001 when he left to become a VC and entrepreneurMore
11. Auren Hoffman – building a LiveRamp to the info highway
Auren is a serial entrepreneur best known for co-founding middleware giant LiveRamp which was spun out of his people-data company Rapleaf in 2012More
10. Chris O’Hara – getting to the Krux of DMPs and ad data
Chris is a marketer and author with a colorful career spanning Traffiq, Bionic Ads, Nielsen, early DMP nPario and Krux, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2016More
9. Beth Wallace – you’ve got AOL’s ad-tech advocate
Wallace grounded herself in direct marketing at Meredith and joined AOL in 2001 to apply the principles of DM to the new world of online acquisitionMore
8. Ratko Vidakovic – the SiteScout becomes an AdProf
Ratko worked in IT and ran a website for Toyota fans which sparked an idea for a self-serve ad server and DSP that became SiteScout – he is now at AdProfsMore
7. Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan – raising the Drawbridge
Kamakshi is the founder of Drawbridge, alumna of AdMob and expert in applying ML to identity graphsMore
6. Cory Treffiletti – agency guy to BlueKai, Oracle and beyond
Cory was an agency guy from the beginning of the internet and became a well-known CMO at BlueKai, Oracle and others while writing a weekly column for MediaPostMore
5. Paul Bannister – gamer turned prophet for the publisher
Paul Bannister is an ex-professional video gamer turned champion of the long-tail publisher via almost two decades with CafeMom and now CafeMediaMore