Writings at the intersection of adtech and strategy, m&a, and startup operating. https://craigaron.com/memos Fri, 02 Oct 2026 18:39:08 GMT https://craigaron.com/memos/how-not-to-run-a-startup https://craigaron.com/memos/how-not-to-run-a-startup Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT I've been lucky (or unlucky) enough to have a front row seat as an early employee at four different AdTech startups. I lived through two exits and one to later go public, several near-death experiences, and many ups and downs. Through my experiences, I've learned some things about the activities and actions that can make or break a startup. https://craigaron.com/memos/five-years-of-programmatic-ma https://craigaron.com/memos/five-years-of-programmatic-ma Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT Looking back at notable M&A transactions that involved a DSP, SSP/exchange, ad network, or publisher monetization technology on at least one side of the transaction, two dominant themes have emerged. https://craigaron.com/memos/the-role-of-ssps-is-changing https://craigaron.com/memos/the-role-of-ssps-is-changing Wed, 30 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMT If you've looked closely at the programmatic ecosystem over the past couple of years, you've probably noticed that traditional SSPs have evolved from publisher-centric technologies to demand aggregation businesses, often competing with their biggest customers: buy-side platforms or DSPs. https://craigaron.com/memos/without-change-there-is-seldom-opportunity https://craigaron.com/memos/without-change-there-is-seldom-opportunity Wed, 09 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT If you look at current public market valuations, the recent IPO's and SPAC's, funding rounds, and the flurry of M&A activity in the space today, you can say AdTech is having a moment. At the time of writing this, publicly-traded AdTech companies have a combined market cap of over $160B compared to $5B just four years ago. This would be surprising to you if you had read the headlines of AdTech's demise as recently as February 2020, when nuclear winter was declared and most investors and outsiders wouldn't touch AdTech with a ten-foot pole. https://craigaron.com/memos/angel-operator-joining-an-early-stage-startup https://craigaron.com/memos/angel-operator-joining-an-early-stage-startup Tue, 01 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT ### The Startup Employee's Perspective https://craigaron.com/memos/spo-the-future-is-already-here https://craigaron.com/memos/spo-the-future-is-already-here Wed, 09 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT Never has it been clearer that the programmatic ecosystem is in need of reform. https://craigaron.com/memos/dtc-and-the-new-brand-customer-relationship https://craigaron.com/memos/dtc-and-the-new-brand-customer-relationship Thu, 14 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT Unless you've been living under a rock this past year, you have been exposed to the Direct-to-Consumer Brand movement (DTC), in some form or another. Maybe you receive a monthly delivery from the Dollar Shave Club or have spotted ads for Casper Mattress while riding the New York City Subway. Let's be clear, communicating directly with consumers, which is at the center of the Direct-to-Consumer movement, is certainly not a new concept. https://craigaron.com/memos/native-two-thirds-display-spend https://craigaron.com/memos/native-two-thirds-display-spend Tue, 16 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT "We have the ability to very easily adjust those assets from social, like Facebook, and are able to amplify an ad and distribute it on our platform easily—we're seeing a lot of that," said Craig Aron, senior vice president of strategic business development at buy-side native platform Bidtellect. "We have brands that are heavy up in social; they find native to be a nice bridge to extend their messaging and get customers in a new way." https://craigaron.com/memos/what-you-learned-in-2018 https://craigaron.com/memos/what-you-learned-in-2018 Wed, 19 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT "Facing a lot of personal and professional adversity this year, I have learned to 'stay in the game.' If you have a broader vision or purpose and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, trust in the process and focus on small activities to help you put one foot in front of the other. There will be point in time when you step back and realize that just staying in the game has enabled you to re-center and get closer to your purpose." https://craigaron.com/memos/interview-svp-bidtellect https://craigaron.com/memos/interview-svp-bidtellect Thu, 18 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT Over the last few years, there's been a steady shift towards more consumer-friendly ad formats and experiences. The technology has been there to support this for some time, and has been something of a talking point in the Ad Tech space over the last 10+ years. During the emergence of the digital pre-roll video ad format a decade ago, we coined the term "Polite Pre-Roll" at AdoTube (where I was an early employee working closely with the founding team). This ad unit gave the user the choice to engage further with the ad or disengage to continue viewing the intended content. During my time at Innovid, the Interactive Pre-Roll gained market adoption, giving complete control to a user to engage with their ad experience on-demand in a variety of formats. https://craigaron.com/memos/content-creation-and-distribution https://craigaron.com/memos/content-creation-and-distribution Thu, 07 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT While Marketers are getting smarter about the content they create, the opportunity to distribute that content to the right audience in a way that creates brand loyalty and/or influences consumer action has not yet been fully realized. https://craigaron.com/memos/marketers-dream-one-thing https://craigaron.com/memos/marketers-dream-one-thing Wed, 22 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT Like many things in digital media, the current process for content creation, distribution and measurement is extremely disparate. The myriad stakeholders and companies in the content journey has proven to be a double-edged sword. While there is great expertise in this growing field, it has also created silos that lead to inefficiencies and a non-optimized consumer experience. The holy grail of digital advertising has always been to reach a target consumer with the right message, at the right time, and right place, but until we bring the walls between these silos down, this will be unattainable. https://craigaron.com/memos/online-video-viewability-to-engagement https://craigaron.com/memos/online-video-viewability-to-engagement Wed, 03 Sep 2014 00:00:00 GMT Since the Media Rating Council (MRC) gave the green light for buyers and sellers to transact on viewable video ads earlier this summer, there's been an unavoidable hype in the industry around this new form of measurement. The MRC and IAB defined Viewability as an online video ad which is 50 percent visible on a user's screen for at least two continuous seconds. But this neglects to measure the real benefits of digital video advertising. https://craigaron.com/memos/sayandwin-tweet-jackpots https://craigaron.com/memos/sayandwin-tweet-jackpots Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT While Publishers Clearing House hits older audiences with its paper-based contests, the company wanted to figure out how to reach younger audiences. So it formed a new division through its incubator group, said Craig Aron, manager of digital and emerging media for Publishers Clearing House Online Network. The idea is to integrate contests into something that people are already doing every day. "This was born from the challenge of how to get our brand into the social space," Aron said.