I’m Randall Rothenberg, and I have spent much of the past 40 years helping consumer and B2B brands, media companies, advertising agencies, tech firms, governments, political parties, NGOs, and creators see - and adapt to - the waves of technology-driven change that have overwhelmed economies and restructured entire industries.

For the past 16 years, as CEO and most recently as Executive Chair, I built the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) into one of the most influential trade associations in the world, by helping organizations make sense of - and adapt to - the digital revolution. Among the IAB’s 750 member companies are such major platforms as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok; the nation’s most important ad-supported media companies, including The New York Times, Walt Disney Co., NBC Universal, Paramount, Hearst Corp., Spotify, Verizon Media, Warner Media, LinkedIn, iHeartMedia, and Dotdash Meredith; incumbent and disruptor brands, including Coca-Cola, Walmart, Procter & Gamble, AirBnB, ThirdLove, General Motors, Uber, Brooklinen, Johnson & Johnson, and Citigroup; and scores of technology and data companies, among them Roku, Adobe, LiveRamp, MediaOcean, Quantcast, and Innovid. With these members and its 47 affiliate associations on every inhabited continent, the IAB and its sister technology-standards group, the IAB Tech Lab, serve as the digital marketing industry’s public policy and lobbying organization, market and consumer research center, training and development base, and hub for the development of standards and best practices.

I joined the IAB in January 2007 as President and Chief Executive Officer, and led the organization until becoming Executive Chair in September 2020. During my tenure, the organization became one of the largest and most potent media and marketing trade bodies in the world, helping to develop technical standards, self-regulation, government regulation, market and consumer research, global digital content marketplaces, and professional development programs to protect consumer privacy, foster brand and media revenue growth, improve data security, and reduce supply chain friction in the digital marketing industry.

During my 14 years as CEO, IAB quadrupled association membership and quintupled revenue; launched a Federal policy and lobbying unit in Washington, D.C.; created the Long Tail Alliance to represent small Web publishers; led the industry’s first-ever “long tail” and mobile-advertising lobbying trips to Capitol Hill; spun off the IAB Tech Lab as an affiliated, 501(c)(6) trade association with global, cross-industry membership to focus entirely on development of digital marketing standards and applications; launched and led the Digital Content Newfronts, Podcast Upfronts, and the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting global marketplaces for ad-supported digital media; led the creation of the first-ever cross-industry Supply Chain Reinvention Task Force, reaching business process agreements to reduce industry transaction costs; forged groundbreaking collaborations with multiple trade associations to create the Digital Advertising Alliance, the lauded cross-industry self-regulatory mechanism to protect consumer privacy on the Internet; crafted the “Making Measurement Make Sense” initiative, successfully changing the currency in digital advertising to the viewable impression; created the Trustworthy Accountability Group, a cross-industry alliance to successfully reduce fraudulent inventory in the digital advertising supply chain; introduced the industry’s first certification program for Digital Advertising Sales Professionals, which has certified 14,000 people since 2013; and published major research on The Rise of the Direct Brand Economy, The Economic Value of the Internet Advertising Ecosystem, as well as buyers’ guides to social media, mobile advertising, interactive games advertising, and digital video advertising.

I testified frequently before the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and Federal Trade Commission; presented to marketing, media, and technology conferences in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Australia; and was a frequent guest on television, radio, and digital news programs.

Prior to my IAB role, I was the Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Director of Intellectual Capital at Booz Allen Hamilton, the international strategy and technology consulting firm, where I oversaw business development, knowledge management, and thought leadership activities, and directed the award-winning quarterly business magazine strategy+business, Strategy+Business Books, www.strategy-business.com, and other electronic and print publications for senior business executives. At Booz Allen, I created and led or co-led groundbreaking initiatives, including the firm’s annual study on the causes and consequences of CEO succession at the world’s 2,500 largest companies; the development of its Organizational DNA and Enterprise Resilience service offerings; its research on the evolution of marketing capabilities, and many thought leader interviews.

Earlier in my career, I spent six years at The New York Times, where I was the technology editor and politics editor of The New York Times Magazine, the daily advertising columnist, and a media and marketing reporter. For 10 years, I was a weekly marketing and media columnist for Advertising Age. Even earlier, I wrote for a score of major national magazines, among them Esquire, GQ, The Nation, The New York Times Magazine, and New York Magazine. I am the author of four books, including Where the Suckers Moon: An Advertising Story (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), a critically-acclaimed chronicle of the birth, evolution, and death of a single advertising campaign.

I’ve served on numerous nonprofit and commercial boards, including the Ad Council, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Advertising Self-Regulatory Council, the Chamber of Progress, the International Center of Photography, and the Executive Advisory Board of EDO, Inc., the pioneering television metrics and analytics company. I’m a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University with an A.B. in the classics. (I wrote my thesis on the doctrine of metempsychosis and the use of myth in Plato’s dialogues, which proved to be a superb background for a career in media, marketing, and advertising.)

And that camera around my neck? I’m an avid nature, urban, and portrait photographer. Jazz guitarist, too.