Marketing when milliseconds matter

If you shop at a store’s website, you’re likely to see an ad for that store on your Facebook feed the next day. But did you know that many targeted online ads were bid-winners in near-instantaneous auctions? Based on your browsing, searches, and other information, customized ads can be vied for and posted within milliseconds of your clicking on a webpage.

A leader in this growing industry is entrepreneur Alan Osetek ’91, the global CEO of Boston-based ad firm Digilant. Working with ad agencies and brands (Estee Lauder, Prudential, Uber), Digilant uses real-time bidding technology to win placement of ads on websites, in videos, on mobile apps, and on social media from Facebook to WhatsApp.

Osetek explains, “The auction format for buying advertising inventory is very similar to the way Wall Street traders go online to buy stocks, bidding to purchase at a particular market price.” To get relevant messages placed on a user’s screen, “there’s often someone behind the scenes at a company like mine bidding to serve those ads to that user.” When staff at Digilant use the Facebook ad platform, for instance, they can set up ad campaigns targeted to a user’s interests, age, income, sex, and location. Such geotargeting and other data may be bought from third-party providers. According to one report, digital ad revenues in the US totaled $60 billion in 2015, up more than 20% from 2014.

A natural entrepreneur, Osetek ran his own house-painting company as a Skidmore economics student. After graduating he spent a summer teaching English and coaching an expat high school baseball team in Taipei, Taiwan. With his MBA from Babson University, he has worked for database and marketing startups. In the 1990s he raised $1 million to found Vizium, one of the first email marketers, which he later sold to the Aegis group. He was also global president of Resolution Media, guiding the growth of Omnicom Media Group’s search, social, and digital unit. He has served on advisory boards for several ad-tech startups.

As Digilant CEO, Osetek says the industry’s speed of change can be daunting. With Google, Facebook, and other channels revising their platforms frequently, “you have to quickly figure out what they’ve changed and how you can better utilize these technologies to reach people,” he says. Another challenge is finding and retaining key talent such as data scientists, who must analyze and glean insights from vast seas of marketing information across many platforms.

Often, Osetek says, he tries to hire people much like himself: “It’s people who have right-brain and left-brain skills, who can think creatively but also have a technical mindset.” —Pamela Babcock