Paleo Ad Tech

Ramsey McGrory joined DoubleClick before the dot-com crash and rode it down, joining former DoubleClickers who founded Right Media, the first exchange; later moving on to Yahoo and MediaOcean as CDO.More

Daniel Jaye was co-founder in 1995 of Engage, a pioneer in bringing database marketing to the internet. A competitor of DoubleClick, Engage built arguably the largest database of pseudonymous profiles at the time, and Daniel and his team created innovative technologies for ETL, large-scale analytics and behavioral targeting. Daniel was also the man behind much…More

Adam Singolda is the Founder and CEO of Taboola, a performance-focused advertising company he started in 2007 after spending seven years as a cryptological engineer in the Israeli Defense Forces. Today, Taboola is a public company with 2023 revenues of $1.4 billion (and growing nicely), around 2,000 employees in 22 countries, 18,000 advertiser customers reaching…More

Greg joined DoubleClick in 1998 as a product manager and gravitated toward Boomerang, later founding the retargeting company EchoTarget. He is GM NA for Aniview.More

Jason was co-founder of pioneering programmatic ad server and exchange OpenX and today runs tvScientific. He started his career in the boom years of Web 1 at Earthlink and GoTo, working with the legendary Bill Gross.More

John was at Modem Media for the first-ever digital ad campaign and later led MMA, [x+1] and FlashtalkingMore

Jonah was the founder as a Cornell student with his brother Noah of Colonize, which became a big customer of DoubleClick's remnant network. They later backed Right Media and co-founded Moat, acquired by Oracle.More

Katrin was a co-founder of Datorama in 2012 and the platform was acquired by Salesforce in 2018 for a reported $800 million. She is now CEO of Ask-Y and an angel investor.More

Andy was head of pricing at Yahoo when they brought on both Rapt and Right Media for optimization and networking. He also co-founded Brand.net and worked at AppNexusMore

Jeff was at early ad networks ValueClick and co-founder of FastClick in SoCal before becoming CEO of AudienceScience, which may have built the first DMP for its client Procter and Gamble as part of the secret Project HawkeyeMore

Mike is CEO and co-founder of Yieldmo, and formerly was CEO of contextual ad network Quigo which was acquired by AOL in 2007 and became part of Advertising.comMore

Tom was co-founder of the DMP Krux in 2010 and before that co-founded a yield management platform called Rapt, sold to Microsoft in 2007. He is currently co-founder of the startup studio SuperSet, focused on data management issues.More

Ari is a well-known influencer, media mogul, former DoubleClicker, Nielsen patent holder, founder of Beeswax and LaunchScience and much more.More

Lee was the original head of marketing at DoubleClick in the 90s and the force behind its notorious guerilla tactics including the Flatiron sign 'DoubleClick Welcomes You to Silicon Alley'More

Omar co-founded pioneering data platform BlueKai and lead Oracle Data Cloud before launching Voicera and now Rembrand - and AI tool for video product placementMore

Ana was product manager at the early DMP Demdex before its sale to Adobe in 2011 and now runs the consulting firm Sparrow Advisors.More

Wes was co-founder and CEO of MarketShare, based on some academic insights, which measured the impact of ad spend for major marketers. It was acquired by Neustar in 2015 for $450M.More

Brian is co-founder with Terry Kawaja of LUMA Partners, the best-known boutique investment bank operating at the luminescent nexus of digital media and marketing technology.More

Dave was the co-founder and CEO of AdAuction which was an innovative digital auction platform for remnant inventory starting in 1997 until the dot-com meltdown - he now runs Rosebud PR in FloridaMore

Brian co-founded AppNexus in 2007 as a cloud hosting platform, morphing into an SSP and then DSP, meanwhile pioneering header bidding and RTB and more.More

Larry co-founded Flycast in 1996 as an early remnant-focused ad network with user-friendly ad and publisher tools to minimize CPMs for reach on 'long tail' publishersMore

Jay Schwedelson founded one of the first ad networks in 1995, called WebConnect, and took an ethical stance against cookies that ultimately ceded the market to DoubleClick and othersMore

Jim Jorgensen is a prolific serial entrepreneur and co-founder of a well-known dot-com advertising startup called AllAdvantage. The company paid people to surf the web as part of a multi-level marketing program. Launched in April, 1999, without a product, it ultimately raised $175 million from blue-chip VCs and was on track to go public in…More

Shawn started in digital publishing and worked at Real Media before founding Centro aka Basis Technologies in 2001 as a digital workflow solutionMore

Matt worked at ad network L90 and in DRTV before founding pioneering search agency Resolution Media in Chicago in 2003More

Joseph moved from Experian to Datalogix and was at the company through its explosive growth and acquisition into the Oracle Data Cloud in 2012More

Lynda left a legal career to guide AOL through acquisitions such as Ad.com, later joined Nielsen and now helps women founders in technologyMore

Brian tells the seminal story of Right Media and the first user-level auction-based exchange for ad networksMore

Brian O'Kelley started businesses in high school and Princeton and then helped launch a ticket-selling website before moving back east in 1999More

Brian ignited his digital media rocket at 24/7 in the early 00s and rose to be CEO of WPP's Xaxis and GroupM before leaving to lead what became ATT's Xandr division from 2017-2020More

Blagica was a media planner at Orbitz in the legendary days of playable interactive pop-ups and pop-unders and went on to work across social and affiliates at Edelman and elsewhereMore

Ben Barokas co-founded AdMeld, an innovative SSP that formed the basis for Google's market-leading publisher platform GAM, after learning the business on the product side at AOL and JumpTV.More

Michael is co-founder and CEO of mParticle, a customer data platform (CDP) that launched in 2013, after he sold his ad network InterCLICK to Yahoo and worked there for (almost) a yearMore

Andrew founded the Casale Media ad network in Toronto as a teenager and transformed it into an SSP and exchange for publishers in the programmatic era, championing transparency and header biddingMore

Nancy is founder of MediaWallah and was present at many seminal moments in ad tech history, including L90's acquisition of DoubleClick Media and DrivePM's crash into MicrosoftMore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeremy Ring was the first in-house sales person at Yahoo and started its East Coast operation around the time of its massive IPOMore

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

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

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

Mark is the CEO of DoubleVerify and a seasoned ad tech CEO having headed up eXelate and TelariaMore

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

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

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