Pandora VP Eric Picard Elected to Executive Committee, as 17 Companies Join
Tech Lab Board to Collaborate on Global Technical Standards
NEW YORK, NY (October 17, 2019) – The IAB Technology Laboratory (Tech Lab) today announced that SpotX Chief Scientist Neal Richter was elected by its board of directors as the new chair. In this position, Richter will play a key role in guiding the Tech Lab’s work to evolve privacy-compliant standards for programmatic advertising, simplify video ad delivery, increase supply chain transparency, and reduce fraud, among other initiatives.
Richter takes on the board post with 20 years of experience leading software teams and developing effective, data-driven products that build the bottom line. As co-chair of Tech Lab’s OpenRTB Working Group, Richter has helped lead the development of the OpenRTB protocol, which has standardized the process of programmatic real-time bidding, and has brought transparency to digital inventory through the ads.txt and sellers.json standards.
“The industry relies on the Tech Lab to develop solutions to support a trustworthy and efficient marketplace, across platforms and devices. And now, consumers and governments around the world are rightfully demanding greater data privacy and transparency, therefore, our work on tools such as the Transparency and Consent Framework and Data Label have only become more important,” said Dennis Buchheim, Executive Vice President and General Manager, IAB Tech Lab. “As a brilliant engineering leader and a committed contributor to several of our most widely adopted standards, Neal Richter is the perfect person to lead our board of directors during this pivotal time of change in the global digital media ecosystem.”
“It is an absolute honor to be elected chair of Tech Lab’s board of directors,” Richter said. “Having spent the past eight years collaborating with other members on standards like OpenRTB, I know how important our work is in building a better digital supply chain. I can’t wait to take an even larger role in driving the agenda and creating guidance and technology that supports the growth of video, audio, and other content and services worldwide.”
The IAB Tech Lab board also elected Eric Picard, Pandora’s Vice President of Advertising Product Management, to join its six-member executive committee, which also includes:
- Dennis Buchheim, Executive Vice President and General Manager, IAB Tech Lab
- Patrick Dolan, President, IAB
- Randall Rothenberg, CEO, IAB
- Scott Spencer, Director of Product Management, Google
IAB Tech Lab’s global membership of over 750 companies includes a broad range of digital publishers, advertising technology providers, agencies, and others – and membership grew over 18 percent from mid-2018 to mid-2019. Growth of the Tech Lab board of directors has been even more significant, with 30 companies now represented, up from 17 in mid-2018.
In addition to the executive committee cited above, current members of the Tech Lab board of directors are:
- Yoav Arnstein, Director of Product Marketing, Facebook
- Paige Bilins, Chief Product Officer, Telaria
- Daniel Brackett, CTO, Extreme Reach
- Andrew Casale, President and CEO, Index Exchange
- Joe Cepollina, Partner, Group Program Manager, Microsoft Advertising
- Alanna Gombert, Head of Advertising Technology, ConsenSys
- Chris Guenther, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Programmatic and GM of News IQ, News Corp
- Anneka Gupta, President and Head of Products and Platforms, LiveRamp
- Vincent Karachira, Chief Product Officer, Rakuten Marketing
- James Kelm, Senior Director of Product Management, Twitter
- Mark Kopera, Head of Product, Oracle Data Cloud
- Guy Levit, Vice President, Product Management, Verizon Media Group
- Ai Matsubara, Video Ads Specialist, Yahoo Japan
- Dale Older, Chief Product Officer, Integral Ad Science
- Michael Palmer, Global Vice President, Emerging Technologies, GroupM
- Todd Parsons, Chief Product Officer, OpenX
- Gruia Pitigoi-Aron, Vice President, Product, The Trade Desk
- Mike Romoff, Head of Global Agency and Channel Sales, LinkedIn
- John Sabella, Chief Technology Officer, PubMatic
- Wilfried Schobeiri, CTO, MediaMath
- Steve Silvers, General Manager and Vice President of Product, Customer Experience, Neustar Inc.
- Kate Sloan, Programmatic Sales Director, Hearst Magazines Digital Media
- Ajit Thupil, Senior Vice President, Identity, Tapad
- Steve Truxal, Vice President, Product Management, Xandr
- Dorothy Tse, Vice President, Product Management, Quantcast
- Ken Weiner, Chief Technology Officer, GumGum
- Jason White, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Global Programmatic Revenue and Partnerships, CBS Interactive
To learn more about joining the IAB Tech Lab, please visit https://iabtechlab.com/ or email membership@iabtechlab.com.
About IAB Technology Laboratory
Established in 2014, the IAB Technology Laboratory (Tech Lab) is a non-profit consortium that engages a member community globally to develop foundational technology and standards that enable growth and trust in the digital media ecosystem. Comprised of digital publishers, ad technology firms, agencies, marketers, and other member companies, IAB Tech Lab focuses on solutions for brand safety and ad fraud; identity, data, and consumer privacy; ad experiences and measurement; and programmatic effectiveness. Its work includes the OpenRTB real-time bidding protocol, ads.txt anti-fraud specification, Open Measurement SDK for viewability and verification, VAST video specification, and DigiTrust identity service. Board members/companies are listed at https://iabtechlab.com/about-the-iab-tech-lab/tech-lab-leadership/. For more information, please visit https://iabtechlab.com.
IAB & IAB Tech Lab Media Contact
Laura Goldberg
347.683.1859
laura.goldberg@iab.com