Tod Sacerdoti, BrightRoll
Company: BrightRoll, San Francisco, CA
Entry Submitted By: LaunchSquad
Company Description: With more than 70 million monthly unique viewers, BrightRoll is the world's largest and most trusted video ad network and the leading provider of online video advertising services. The BrightRoll Network, powered by its online video ad-buying platform BRX, enables advertisers to execute smart online video campaigns across a massive pool of video inventory.
Nomination Category: Management Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Executive of the Year - Media & Entertainment
Nomination Title: Tod Sacerdoti, CEO
Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since January 1 2010 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
Online video advertising experienced tremendous growth throughout 2010 as
advertisers shifted more money away from traditional print and broadcast media
to follow their customers online. Under CEO Tod Sacerdoti’s direction,
BrightRoll has grown into the most recognized, premier online video network and
service provider and is among the largest video properties on the Web. The
company’s network of top online publishers reaches 100 million viewers every
month, making BrightRoll the dominant market leader. Success in the evolving
world of online advertising means anticipating the habits of consumers and
translating that intelligence into tools that empower advertisers. BrightRoll is
constantly forced to innovate in order to meet the needs of advertisers across a
variety of criteria: research, reporting tools and standardization efforts. To
this end, during the past year, Tod has led BrightRoll in introducing several
new innovations designed to make the process of buying online video ads simpler,
more efficient and more effective than ever before. The most significant of
these is an industry-first video ad- buying platform known as the BrightRoll
Exchange (BRX).
At its highest level, BRX facilitates the continued flow of ad dollars from
traditional media to the Internet. BRX is intended to combat one of the largest
problems in the space — namely, that the process media buyers have to go through
to buy video inventory can be cumbersome and labor- intensive. BRX automates the
entire process, enabling advertisers to quickly and easily connect with massive,
targeted audiences across the Web.
Among the greatest challenges facing the online video advertising was (and still
is) the relative lack of standardization in the industry. Tod championed
BrightRoll’s effort to work with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) – a
unified industry organization – and other industry stakeholders to advance
industry-wide standards. The result is a unified approach that better serves
advertisers and broadens the reach of online videos across the Web. Tod feels so
strongly about the importance of standardization that he led BrightRoll’s pledge
of $1M toward market and innovation research for online video.
In addition to product initiatives, Tod understands the importance of supporting
BrightRoll’s employees. Because the company sits at an intersection between the
more traditional media world of advertising agencies and the new media world of
online video, Tod recognized that his employees must carefully navigate the
cultural differences and varying business practices that exist between the two
worlds. In response, he created a program called the Agency Service. The program
pairs BrightRoll employees with an agency background with those who have digital
experience, with the aim of helping both sides develop a better understanding of
the other’s values.
Tod and BrightRoll frequently execute philanthropic video campaigns on behalf of
charitable organizations. Most recently, the company supported the Lazarus
Effect Campaign Project from (RED) to raise funding for and awareness about HIV.
BrightRoll served nearly 4.5 million online video ads for the campaign, totaling
$35,000 in advertisement support. The campaign ensured that the Lazarus Effect’s
messages reached a targeted set of online video users to generate maximum
awareness and financial support.
List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/28/dont-pull-a-patzer-and-other-lessons-learned-on-our-trip-down-sand-hill-road/
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=146578
http://www.businessinsider.com/social-games-killed-the-soap-opera-star-2010-9
http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/23/brightroll/
http://www.beet.tv/2010/08/brightrolls-tod-scarodoti-on-a-new-video-ad-exchange-the-power-of-retargeted-video-ads-.html
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=69130
http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/digital-marketing-brightroll-opens-online-video-ad-exchange/145237/
http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/?2010-06-21/BrightRoll-Breaks-New-Ground-with-Reporting-Suite/&id=2609
http://www.adexchanger.com/digital-tv/brightroll-exchange-brx/
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=133181
http://www.videonuze.com/blogs/?2010-06-21/BrightRoll-Breaks-New-Ground-with-Reporting-Suite/&id=2609
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=130457
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-video-ad-network-brightroll-gets-10-million/
Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the nominee:
Tod M. Sacerdoti is the Chief Executive Officer of BrightRoll and co-founded the
business in July, 2006. Under Sacerdoti’s direction, BrightRoll has grown from
conception into the premier video advertising network, having served billions of
ads on behalf of the world’s leading agencies and their clients and executed
campaigns on more than two-thirds of the top 100 online media properties in the
United States. Tod is a regular guest columnist for AdAge and MediaPost. He
holds a B.A. in Economics from Yale University and a MBA from the Stanford
Graduate School of Business.