Transcript
Ad Tech God (0:01)
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Business. We could all use more time. Amazon Business offers smart business buying solutions so you can spend more time growing your business and less time doing the admin. I can see why they call it smart. Learn more@amazonbusiness.com welcome to the ADTech Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, Ad Tech God. Welcome to another episode of the AdTech Godpod, where we connect with sales leaders shaping our industry. Today, we're thrilled to welcome Dave Simon, the Vice President of Sales at Viant. Previously, Dave worked at Bright Roll and helped with the Yahoo acquisition, where he was on the North American team helping build their programmatic sales team. He spent the past 15 years truly building programmatic businesses throughout the US and he continues to do so at Viome. Dave, I'm super excited to have you here and as a friend of the podcast and as a friend of Jeremy's, I love that you are joining me today. Thanks for being here.
Dave Simon (1:07)
Hi, atg. Thanks for having me. It's been so surreal and fun watching you and Jeremy and Arie build this business from afar. Rest assured, I'm honored to be here and I'm excited to chat with you and get started.
Ad Tech God (1:20)
Thank you. Thank you for being here. And Dave, you know, your background's pretty incredible because you've spent quite a bit of time in the programmatic space. You know, when I looked at your profile, you had spent some time at Bright Roll and, and that obviously was acquired by Yahoo. And that's. That's really interesting to hear, but I'd love for you to take it to the very beginning. Like, how did you get into the industry and what led you to lead up sales at at Vyant today?
Dave Simon (1:43)
It's a long story. Like a lot of people, I've held a ton of roles within advertising. I've had twists and turns to get to where I am now, and I've definitely had my share of successes and challenges. So after I graduated from the University of Iowa, I was a bartender out of school. I wanted to get into the creative side of advertising, but I had no formal training and obviously I couldn't get hired anywhere as a copywriter. But I had a friend of a friend who is a media buyer on the TV side and she helped me land an interview at BBDO in Chicago. I got that job and I became an assistant media buyer. I was later promoted to a junior buyer where I was filling the country with Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler TV and radio. Commercials. I was at BBDO for maybe two years and then I pivoted to the sales side. I started to work at a rep firm selling local spot tv because I was quite simply just drawn to that side of the business. It felt a little more entrepreneurial to me. It excited me more and I just chose to make the leap and follow that passion. That was kind of the first lesson for me was you need to like what you do. You need to feel some passion, some belief in what you do because otherwise you, you won't, you won't be as good. And now admitting this a hundred percent ages me. But I'll say that my goal at the time was to sell network tv. That was by far the coolest gig at the time. And after a few years at the rep firm I jumped to selling network radio because I felt like selling network at any level in any sort of format would position me best for network tv. I worked at a small independent company called Jones Media America. I was selling network radio for maybe four years and then overnight the company was acquired and they let go of all the salespeople. This was a super scary experience for me because while I was earning a decent living, I wasn't saving anything at the time. I just thought this would continue and money would keep coming in. And we had a baby. We were talking about having a second baby. So lesson number two was I learned the value of saving Immediately after this experience. My wife was working in search marketing. She's a long time search and digital OG and around this time she started talking to me about moving to the digital side. This was 2008. Online video was just starting to come on the scene. I could immediately see the value of it. There were a bunch of ad networks popping up like broadband enterprises and VEO and because I understood that the network aspect of grouping together like minded stations or sites and I love the site sound and motion of tv. I just knew this format was going to work. I wanted to find a way to get to this space. I. I wanted to be on the the cutting edge of the business. It became important to me after leaving radio to try to push the boundaries of of the space. So for me online video was just the newest of the new and that's where I wanted to be. However, just like when I couldn't get a job as a copywriter because I had no training or experience, I found a similar experience waiting for me when I tried to get a job digital after a career in TV and radio. I lied on my during my interview experience and we've all done that, We've all done that. And it's well documented within, within the company. They, they all know. But I somehow convinced a small video startup called Bright Roll to take a chance on me. You had mentioned it earlier. I joined there and I became employee number 19 and I helped open up the Midwest. At the time of acquisition, spoiler alert, it was around 350. But I'll say opening up a market for a brand new company with a brand new format is a special kind of torture. And we experienced so many losses in those early days. But my boss Brad and I, we just kept grinding and working and little by little the business opened up like we thought it would. We made our first hire and then our second, our third and we grew that company into a really large entity. As a company, we pivoted early to Programmatic. So we turned what was an ad network into a programmatic dsp. For a long time I thought we were the first until your friend Jeremy Bloom informed me that Tubemogul beat us by a few months. We were maybe the second DSP. Bright Roll was acquired by Yahoo in 2014 and that was such a huge collective achievement. To go from a small startup where we were worried about making payroll or worried about keeping the doors open to having a large nine figure exit was incredible. Yahoo was then acquired by Verizon and became Oath. And I stated that combined company for a little over 10 years, ending as the head of agency trading desk sales for them and helping stand up the Yahoo dsp, which was a Bright Roll dsp. I mean it was such a great experience. But Oath was such a huge company. I wanted to build again at a startup. I think I wanted that feeling of success that we had at Bright Roll. And so I rejoined my Bright Roll boss at a company called Cubic that was in the mobile location space. It was interesting technology. I stood up their, their programmatic sales. Then I went on to the, to the BD side. I got some, some BD experience and it was a great move. And then March of 2020 happened. The pandemic happened. Nobody moved. We were all stuck in our house and there really wasn't a ton of use for a mobile location company.