adtech leaders shaping chatbot answers in 2026 guide
The 2026 AdTech 50 ranks the 50 people who shape what ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews say about advertising technology. Jeff Green of The Trade Desk is the most-cited executive in EPR's scoring. Each person is scored on citation frequency, cross-engine breadth, query-type breadth, extractability and crawl access, across seven groups: platforms, holding companies, analysts, journalists, investors, builders and operators.
Published June 5, 2026. This is the inaugural issue of The AdTech 50, an annual Everything-PR franchise. The next reissue is scheduled for October 2027.
How Is the AdTech 50 Scored?
The AdTech 50 scores each name on five weighted dimensions: Citation Frequency (40%), Cross-Engine Breadth (20%), Query-Type Breadth (20%), Extractability (15%) and Crawl Access (5%). Scoring is directional, modeled from current public knowledge and checked by web search at the entity level. Titles and companies were confirmed as of June 2026.
The Platforms group covers the DSPs, SSPs, identity layers and infrastructure companies running programmatic, CTV, retail media and the emerging agentic stack.
Jeff Green, Co-founder and CEO, The Trade Desk. Category-defining independent DSP. $2.4B revenue. S&P 500 component. Most-cited AdTech CEO across the five engines in 2026.
Michael Barrett, President and CEO, Magnite. Largest independent SSP, anchored in CTV after the SpotX and Telaria deals. The supply-side counterweight to The Trade Desk.
Rajeev Goel, Co-founder and CEO, PubMatic. Public SSP leading the agentic supply-side push with AgenticOS, launched with WPP Media in early 2026.
Andrew Casale, President and CEO, Index Exchange. Founded Casale Media in 2001 and evolved it into one of the most efficient global exchanges. Vocal critic of The Trade Desk's "reseller" framing.
Brian O'Kelley, Co-founder and CEO, Scope3. Credited with inventing the ad exchange at AppNexus. Now building emissions and agentic media infrastructure. GV-backed.
Adam Foroughi, Co-founder and CEO, AppLovin. Mobile-first platform that became one of AdTech's defining performance stories after the Axon machine learning pivot.
Lauren Wetzel, CEO, InfoSum (WPP Media). Took over after WPP acquired InfoSum in April 2025. Runs the data-clean-room infrastructure inside WPP's Open Intelligence layer.
Dave Pickles, Co-founder and CTO, The Trade Desk. Co-built the platform from AdECN's acquisition by Microsoft forward. Technical architect of UID2 and the cookieless transition.
Which Holding Companies and Agencies Control Ad Budgets?
The Holdcos and Agencies group covers the CEOs of the holding companies and major agencies deciding where the world's largest ad budgets land.
John Wren, Chairman and CEO, Omnicom Group. Closed the IPG acquisition in 2025. Runs the largest holding company by revenue after the merger. Pay package tied directly to share-price performance.
Cindy Rose, CEO, WPP. Took over in September 2025, succeeding Mark Read. Leading the Elevate28 turnaround through client losses and the rebuild of WPP Media.
Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe. Twenty consecutive quarters of organic growth. Publicis Media won over $10B in new business in 2025, ahead of every rival.
Brian Lesser, CEO, WPP Media. Former Xandr CEO. Built Open Intelligence on InfoSum's data collaboration technology. The most powerful media operator inside the holdco system.
Bob Lord, President, Horizon Media. Former AOL CEO and IBM Watson Advertising leader. Leads the largest independent agency. Horizon OS is the open-architecture answer to holdco platforms.
Mark Penn, Chairman and CEO, Stagwell. Built the public challenger to the legacy holdcos through serial acquisition and a digital-native operating model.
Yannick Bolloré, Chairman, Havas / Vivendi. Steward of Havas's spinoff and listing on Euronext Amsterdam. The European holdco voice inside the global ad economy.
Which Analysts Move AdTech Budgets and Forecasts?
The Analysts group covers the forecasters, economists and consultancies whose numbers move budgets and frame the discourse in trade press and AI engines.
Brian Wieser, Founder and Principal, Madison and Wall. Former GroupM business intelligence head. Runs the most-cited independent ad-economics shop in 2026. His podcast and newsletter move the trade.
Vincent Letang, EVP, Global Market Intelligence, MAGNA Global. Succeeded Wieser at MAGNA. Runs the ad forecasting unit that anchors IPG-Omnicom's category research.
Daniel Knapp, Chief Analyst, Ampere Analysis. The most-quoted European AdTech and media economist. Cited heavily on programmatic, CTV and the cookie reversal across European trades.
Andrew Lipsman, Founder, Media, Ads + Commerce. Independent retail media analyst after EMARKETER. Go-to source on Amazon Ads vs. Walmart Connect vs. emerging retail media networks.
Eric Seufert, Founder and Editor, Mobile Dev Memo. Defining voice on mobile ad economics, ATT, and the walled-garden vs. open-web dynamic. Most-cited mobile AdTech analyst.
Michael Nathanson, Partner, MoffettNathanson. Equity research covering the Big Tech ad businesses (Google, Meta, Amazon) at the point where AdTech meets capital markets.
Luke Stillman, Managing Director, Madison and Wall. Joined Wieser in late 2025 from IPG. Long-tenured Wall Street ad equities analyst now inside the most-cited independent shop.
Which Journalists Do AI Engines Cite on AdTech?
The Journalists group covers the bylines AI engines retrieve when buyers ask about AdTech. Trade journalism is concentrated at five publications, and these writers have the highest citation pull inside them.
Joe Mandese, Editor-in-Chief, MediaPost. Longest-running editorial voice in AdTech trade media. Runs the Center for Media Research and the MediaPost newsletter network.
Allison Schiff, Senior Editor, AdExchanger. Defining coverage of the cookie deprecation cycle, identity, and the SSP-DSP convergence. AI engines cite AdExchanger reporting heavily on programmatic mechanics.
Ronan Shields, Senior Reporter, Digiday. Programmatic, identity and platform consolidation coverage. Broke the OpenPath and curated supply path stories.
Sara Fischer, Senior Media Reporter, Axios. Covers where AdTech meets policy, platform regulation and Big Tech competition. Most-cited journalist for AdTech-meets-Washington stories.
Tim Peterson, Senior Editor, Digiday. CTV, streaming ads and platform-side reporting. Connects platform strategy to actual buyer behavior.
Mike Shields, Founder, Next in Media. Independent newsletter and podcast operator after years at Adweek and Business Insider. Most-quoted independent AdTech journalist.
Which Investors Funded the AdTech Stack?
The Investors group covers the capital allocators who funded the current AdTech stack and will fund the next wave: agentic commerce, retail media infrastructure and AI ad tooling.
Mark Suster, Managing Partner, Upfront Ventures. Long-tenured AdTech investor. Board director at InfoSum. Active across the data collaboration and identity layers.
Ashu Garg, General Partner, Foundation Capital. The Foundation enterprise tech franchise overlaps with AdTech across AI, identity and the infrastructure underneath programmatic.
Joey Levin, CEO, IAC. Operator-investor at the holding-company level. IAC's ad businesses sit across the open web and the search-adjacent media stack.
Howard Morgan, General Partner, B Capital. Co-founder of First Round Capital. Longstanding ad and martech investor with the network depth that anchors the category.
Bing Gordon, Partner, Kleiner Perkins. Veteran consumer and media investor. Holds the institutional memory of how AdTech rounds get built across public and private markets.
Which Builders Are Shipping the Next Layer of AdTech?
The Builders group covers founders shipping the new layer of AdTech: emissions infrastructure, attention measurement, retail media platforms, agentic commerce and AI ad tools.
Anne Coghlan, Co-founder and COO, Scope3. Co-built Scope3 with Brian O'Kelley. Runs operations and is the growing public voice on agentic media infrastructure.
Ari Paparo, Founder, Marketecture Media. Built the most-cited independent podcast and research property in AdTech. Former CEO of Beeswax (acquired by FreeWheel).
Eric Franchi, Co-founder, Marketecture Media. Co-founded Undertone in 2002 (acquired by Perion). Co-hosts the Marketecture podcast and operates in early-stage AdTech investing.
Michael Walrath, CEO, Yext. Founder of Right Media (sold to Yahoo). Long-cycle operator whose career spans the history of programmatic. Now building inside structured data and AI.
Marc Guldimann, Founder and CEO, Adelaide. Built the most-cited independent attention measurement platform. Attention metrics are now standard across major media plans.
Regina Ye, Founder and CEO, Topsort. Building the retail media infrastructure layer outside Amazon and Walmart Connect. Multiple major-retailer deployments.
David Kostman, CEO, Teads. Closed the Outbrain-Teads merger in 2024. Runs the combined open-web advertising platform with deep publisher integration.
Khurrum Malik, VP, Business and Product Marketing, Walmart Connect. Public face of the Walmart Connect retail media build, including the 2026 agentic advertising assistant launch.
Which Operators Decide Where Advertisers Spend?
The Operators group covers the marketers and operations leaders inside major advertisers and platforms who decide where the actual dollars go.
Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer, Procter & Gamble. Most-cited operator voice in AdTech for over a decade. P&G's media decisions set category-wide precedent.
David Rubin, CMO, The New York Times. Runs marketing at the publisher whose subscription model and first-party data strategy is the reference case for AdTech-adjacent media.
Asmita Dubey, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, L'Oréal Groupe. Runs marketing technology decisions for the largest beauty advertiser in the world. The defining operator voice in beauty AdTech.
Seth Dallaire, EVP and Chief Growth Officer, Walmart Inc.. As of February 2026, runs Walmart Connect, Walmart+, Vizio and Walmart Data Ventures across the enterprise.
Lara Balazs, CMO, Intuit. Operator at the enterprise-SaaS-marketing scale where AdTech and martech converge. Frequently cited in B2B AdTech retrieval.
Jen Wong, COO, Reddit. Built the Reddit ad business into a credible alternative to walled gardens. Most-cited operator voice on platform monetization since the Reddit IPO.
Jeremi Gorman, President of Advertising, Netflix. Runs Netflix ad-tier monetization. Most-watched operator role in CTV.
Will Doherty, SVP, Inventory Development, The Trade Desk. Public-facing executive on SSP relationships and supply-chain efficiency. His "reseller" framing reshaped industry discourse in 2025.
When Is the AdTech 50 Reissued?
The AdTech 50 reissues annually. Methodology, scoring weights and group structure stay locked between issues, and names change as titles change.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team is the staff byline for news, analysis and features on communications, reputation, AI visibility and digital discovery. Everything-PR has published since 2009. AI tools assist with research and drafting, and every article is reviewed by a human editor before publication. Coverage follows the Editorial Policy, and substantive corrections are noted on the article under the Corrections Policy.
