IAB Tech Lab Innovation Day: Transparency and a Secure Programmatic Supply Chain

Yoav Arnstein is the Director of Product Marketing for Publisher Solutions in Facebook’s London office. Yoav joined Facebook from LiveRail. Previously, he was at Legolas Media where he was CEO and grew the company to a multi-million dollar revenue business. Prior to Legolas, Yoav was at Eyeblaster (now MediaMind) where he was GM International, and then GM North American operations. At Eyeblaster, Yoav oversaw revenue growth of more than 5x, opened multiple international offices and helped build Eyeblaster into the world’s leading rich media ad platform. Yoav holds a B.Sc in Computer Science and Statistics from Tel-Aviv University and an M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Denmark’s Technical University.

Amit Bhawnani is the VP of Engineering at Media.net. He leads the tech talent that is responsible for Media.net’s proprietary contextual engine as well as their pioneering server-side programmatic platform. With more than a decade of experience in AdTech, he has watched from close quarters the evolution of the industry into its present state and helped Media.net to consistently add value in an increasingly complicated market environment.

Amit works with Media.net teams across the globe, building and strengthening Media.net’s products and platforms.

Bismit Boruah is Head of Programmatic Operations for InMobi, and is based in New York. He has been at InMobi since 2014, and was one of the first members of the InMobi Exchange programmatic team. Bismit set up and continues to lead the operations and account management team for InMobi’s programmatic business. Prior to InMobi, Bismit worked as a management consultant for Accenture Strategy and in Research and Development for Samsung.

Dennis Buchheim has worked in digital advertising for 20+ years, driven to ensure content and services remain accessible and useful. He is a product-oriented leader who has led organizations to define, launch, and manage demand-side platforms, ad exchanges, targeting systems, identity solutions, audience insights tools, measurement and verification platforms, and other large-scale products/programs in advertising and beyond.

Dennis founded advisory firm ThinkMedium (www.thinkmedium.tech) in 2023 to advance his mission, helping ads and media clients navigate shifts and opportunities in privacy and data strategy, safety, and efficiency.

He was previously a VP at Meta, recruited to collaborate with the advertising ecosystem on privacy, measurement, and trust/safety, with scope later expanded to data science and enablement across business products. This role built on Dennis’ tenure as CEO of advertising technical standards body IAB Tech Lab and his prior ad tech product/business leadership experience at Yahoo and Microsoft.

Before “finding advertising” in 2002, Dennis held engineering and product roles at Apple, Oracle, Actioneer, and iHarvest (which he co-founded), working on a range of enterprise and consumer software products. Dennis earned dual degrees from Brown University, in computer science and business economics.

Eric Cherng is director, product management for FreeWheel, a Comcast Company that provides advertising software and solutions for the entire television ecosystem. He is responsible for partnering with company leaders to drive FreeWheel’s next generation marketplace, formulating the product strategy and aligning business functions across the globe. In this role, Eric leads the team to enable buyer connections and access to buy across the FreeWheel pool of premium video inventory.

In 2015, Eric first joined FreeWheel as product manager and was quickly promoted to senior product manager. Throughout this time, Eric played an integral part in developing a custom unified solution that integrated two systems into one holistic platform to simplify configuration and maximize revenue. In addition, he helped create new solutions to help clients monetize premium video content.

Eric has more than 15 years of experience developing, architecting and leading enterprise software projects for leading companies. Prior to FreeWheel, he co-founded Amify 360, a social networking platform designed for women, where he led the company’s customer research, business strategy, marketing strategy and technology execution.

Previously, Eric was senior product manager for Redbox Automation Retail. He managed the strategy and execution of the Redbox API, in addition to researching industry trends, establishing key partnerships and identifying and resolving potential issues. At Redbox, Eric also served as software engineer for Redbox API and senior software engineer for Redbox.com.

Before Redbox, Eric co-founded Exceed III, a Software as a Service company, to build and sell a product designed to solve a market pain point for the Cell Center industry. He also served as chief technology officer for Exceed III and was responsible for business operations. Eric began his career as software engineer for Vertigo Software.

Eric holds a Bachelor of Science in electric engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago. He is a Certified Scrum Master, Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer and Microsoft Certified Database Administrator.

Eric resides in the New York area.

Alex is a product manager on the Privacy Sandbox team at Google. Prior to Google he co-founded Coir, an ads privacy learning platform, led privacy and addressability standards making at IAB Tech Lab, and held product management roles overseeing privacy, ad creative, video ad serving and more at AppNexus/Xandr. Insider named him one of “14 experts from companies like Google and The Washington Post who are determining the future of digital advertising.”

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Benjamin Dick is Global Lead, Data Collaboration & Interoperability at Amazon Web Services (AWS). He drives the development of cloud-based measurement and interoperability solutions for advertising & marketing customers by leveraging privacy-enhancing tools and other technology primitives. Ben brings 15 years of experience from various industry roles. Prior to joining AWS, he served as VP of Product – Privacy, Identity & Addressability at IAB Tech Lab, where he worked closely with ad tech platforms, agencies, and publishers to develop new industry standards aimed at navigating collaboration challenges stemming from emerging privacy laws and broader data deprecation. Prior to joining IAB Tech Lab, Ben was responsible for programmatic trading at GroupM for Nestlé’s 85 brand portfolio across the US, Canada and Mexico. He also developed programmatic and attribution strategies for clients including MasterCard, NBC Universal, Barclays, and Harvard Business School. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner Kate and their Swiss Mountain Dog Billie.

Anthony Katsur is a media technology veteran with more than twenty-five years of executive leadership and operational experience at innovative technology companies in the digital media industry.

At Nexstar Digital, Anthony is responsible for leading all digital partnerships, corporate development and business operations across Nexstar Media Group’s portfolio of digital assets.

He most recently served as President of Sonobi, where he implemented strategy, recruited and led highly effective teams and drove partnerships with leading agencies, brands and media companies.

Prior to Sonobi, Anthony held global leadership roles at Rubicon Project as EVP of Business Operations and General Manager of Buyer Cloud. He also held global executive roles at MediaMath and Maxifier, where he served as CEO. Earlier in his career, he joined DoubleClick via the acquisition of NetGravity and quickly ascended to lead multiple product, operations and engineering divisions.

Anthony is an active participant at industry conferences, speaking about the latest trends in advertising at the National Association of Broadcasters, AdAge’s Brand Summit, Advertising Week, Broadcasting & Cable, AdMonsters and GABBCON. He has been quoted on industry trends and provided thought leadership in The Wall Street Journal, AdAge, Adweek, AdExchanger, MediaPost, Econsultancy and Digiday, among others.

Amy is passionate about bringing the hidden to light. She leads product marketing and marketing at Pixalate, where she enjoys helping businesses stay current with the latest solutions available for growing media quality. A digital veteran, Amy began her ad tech career at artnet.com, where she managed the build, launch and marketing of software and subscription products. Interest in the bigger data world of digital advertising led her to Ghostery, MaxPoint, Valassis Digital and, finally, Pixalate. With experience across the ad technology ecosystem, Amy crafts stories that reveal the importance of quality in the programmatic world.

Curt Larson has over 20 years of career experience in technology and product management. After spending 5 years at Deloitte Consulting managing large-scale systems implementation projects, he led the rollout of new mobile handsets and services for Vodafone Japan.

He then moved to Silicon Valley and led several product management teams, including as a founding employee at Jibe mobile (now Google), growing and taking RingCentral public, and 8 years at Sharethrough, where he led the creation of the first native exchange and guided Sharethrough to a programmatic business model.

He has co-authored numerous programmatic specs with the IAB and is active in the industry. He has experience leading product, UX, analytics, business development, operations, marketing, and publisher sales.

Angelos Lazaris is the Chief Data Scientist at Pixalate, leading the development of innovative data-driven solutions that aim to increase quality in the ad ecosystem. He oversees the development of Pixalate’s Invalid Traffic (IVT) detection and prevention platform and enjoys conducting R&D to uncover new types of sophisticated IVT. Angelos has extensive experience in modeling and analysis of network traffic, and he holds a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.

For nearly 12 years, Curtis Light has built software throughout Google’s advertising platforms, including Display & Video 360, AdSense, and YouTube Ads.  With a strong interest in combating ad fraud, he actively contributed to designing and authoring the app-ads.txt standard, along with contributions to IAB Tech Lab security working groups.  Within Google, he works on various anti-abuse initiatives.

Mike is an industry veteran with over 12 years of experience in digital advertising. As Vice President of Product at Index Exchange, Mike leads the product team responsible for DSPs and exchange buyers. He also manages the design team and oversees the building of our next generation UI.

Prior to Index Exchange, Mike worked at several technology companies including AppNexus, Yahoo!, and Right Media. Most recently at AppNexus, Mike was the product leader responsible for growing the SSP business and Prebid.

Amy Ogawa is a results-driven media professional with over 10+ years in partnership marketing and advertising technology. As Director of Strategic Partnerships, she manages Media.net’s programmatic buying partnerships with the company’s leading clients. Prior to Media.net, Amy held key partnerships and marketing positions at AppNexus, WWE, and Conde Nast.

Robyn is the CIO of Adslot where he is responsible for technology service delivery for all applications built and used by Adslot. With over 20 years in the digital media and marketing industry, he has a broad range of technical experience in both online and offline environments. Robyn has been co-chair of the IAB Tech Lab Open Direct Working Group since February 2016.

Shelley Pinsonneault serves as the VP of Partnerships & Standards at Publicis Media, focusing on data and activation partnerships and solutions. Shelley has been with the Publicis family for over three years and has focused her career around programmatic technologies since 2011.

In her current role, Shelley supports the creation of technology standards for DSPs, data, and inventory through Publicis Media’s Verified process. She is a liaison to vendors, helping prioritize product roadmaps and establish marketplace relationships. Shelley also authors a variety of Publicis Media thought leadership including industry updates, marketplace trends, and vendor POVs. She is an active member of the Publicis Blockchain Task Force, as well as the IAB Blockchain working group.

Having obtained her Masters of Science in Innovation from Northeastern University, Shelley is now working towards completing her MBA. She is an avid runner and has participated in the Boston Marathon twice, raising over $20,000 for Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in the process.

Aron Schatz is a Director of Product Management, Publisher Products at DoubleVerify where he leads the charge to provide revenue analytics for the sell side of the industry. Before DoubleVerify, Aron was the Head of Product at Jeeng, an email advertising company, and ViralGains, a video DSP. Aron has worked in the technology industry for almost 20 years and was awarded by the IAB and Tech Lab many times over that tenure.

Aron sits on many industry working groups such as VAST, SIMID, SHARC, OpenRTB, and others. He enjoys moving the industry forward in reducing friction between system to system transactions.

Aron holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Jud Spencer is a Principal Software Engineer at the Trade Desk. He leads a small team of engineers who focus on Inventory Quality and serving efficiency.

White Ops’ co-founder and President Michael Tiffany started the company to attract the kind of people who wow him, and to focus their energy on a new way of protecting people in the interconnected future. Michael’s founding vision for White Ops is to make people more secure by making them less attractive targets, by disrupting the profit centers of cybercrime. Tiffany is also a lifetime Technical Fellow of Critical Assets Labs, a DARPA-funded cyber-security research lab, and a Subject Matter Advisor for the Signal Media Project, a nonprofit promoting the accurate portrayal of science, technology and history in popular media. And he is a member of the old school white hat hacker collective ninjas.org.

Ian Trider is Director of RTB Platform Operations at Centro (www.centro.net), a global provider of advertising technology. Centro’s platform, Basis, is the first of its kind SaaS advertising solution unifying programmatic and direct media buying, along with workflow automation, cross-channel campaign planning, universal reporting and business intelligence.

Ian leads the integration of supply and data partners in Basis and curates its technology partnerships for ad quality, inventory quality and security. He focuses on creating technical solutions to unique customer needs and bringing synergy to Centro’s business and technology teams. As part of the IAB’s working group that sets RTB standards for the industry, Ian is a key contributor to the ads.txt and app-ads.txt specifications that protect publishers. Ian’s commentary and opinions have been cited in Advertising Age, AdExchanger, The Drum, and Digiday. Ian graduated from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, with a bachelor of commerce in marketing with a minor in global management.

Michael Zacharski is the Global CEO of EMX Digital and Engine Technology. He leads Engine Group’s programmatic and mar-tech platform businesses. He is focused on solving complex challenges within the programmatic supply chain while driving measurable business results for agencies, advertisers, and publishers. His experience includes business operations, technology development, product and solution go-to-market strategy, as well as mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring across global businesses of varying sizes and stages.

Most Recently, Michael held the role of CEO of bRealTime, where he led the development of the company’s automated global exchange for both demand and supply side partners. Previously, Michael served as COO of Digital Remedy (formerly CPXi), a global digital media holding company.

Prior he founded and operated multiple start-up businesses across the entertainment and music industry achieving two successful exits. He received his BA from New York University.