Adrian Williams leads Strategic Partnerships and Corp Dev for OnAudience and is also a Co-Founder of Repped. He has been in digital advertising for nearly 20 yrs, at companies such as Centaur, Incisive Media, Criteo, Teads, Ogury and Captify.
Who is your digital hero?
Pascal Gauthier, former COO of Criteo and now Chairman & CEO of Ledger.
What has he done to win hero status in your eyes?
Pascal is not my digital hero for anything he’s personally done for me, but more for what he represents to me. Unfortunately, I have never had a mentor or a senior figure really help me in any company I have been a part of. There have been people who have impacted me along the way, who know who they are! I have become obsessed recently with the quote ‘TALENT achieves targets others cannot HIT, GENIUS achieves targets others cannot SEE.
I think this perfectly encapsulates the energy of what Pascal represents to me. We have all heard the legend of Pascal pivoting Criteo’s revenue model by asking ‘What if…?’, taking the product from retailer pages to other websites thus evolving programmatic retargeting and creating a very successful business!
How has his heroism helped drive digital?
Well, we all know how well Criteo did! Creating the revenue model and driving the growth of a startup that went from a room on top of a pizza place to listing on the Nasdaq for $250m in 5 yrs, inspired so many people and companies and launched so many careers, especially in Europe.
I was the first hire in the Publisher Marketplace division driving the SMB supply at Criteo in 2010 and Pascal was always around and very direct, keeping things simple and focused on the vision and that is something I took from my interactions with him. Keep it simple and execute to the vision. In my opinion, vision is the key to Pascal’s heroism, he has made some great decisions.
I left Criteo to head up supply at BeeAd which was acquired by Ebuzzing who merged with Teads, which Pascal was an advisor for. So from retargeting to outstream video and native advertising shows vision. Now, of course, how he has helped shape and grow Ledger into the leading physical Crypto wallet and Web3 gateway shows his vision yet again in a still growing area.
What are the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
Other than measurement…I think diversity is the easy answer. I have often been the only Filipino in the building let alone in the room! In all seriousness, we need to do better to attract and retain diverse talent.
Being involved in MEFA (Media for All) through mentoring and generally supporting the group and being present does help. As we all know, representation is important, so I implore people to represent! We cannot complain about the lack of diversity on a panel, at an event, in an office, at a drinks, if we do not go there and represent ourselves.
As an industry we are great at innovating around problems to create new opportunities. But I feel as an industry with diversity it’s the other way round. We are great at identifying the problem of the lack of diversity but struggle to create meaningful solutions for it. As if just having a senior person of colour in the organisation or a whole marketing team of ladies is enough.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
My biggest personal achievement has been being authentic and true to myself and very vocal about my culture. I have had many ‘conversations’ with management about what I hold valuable. For instance, I took my children to school in the morning as a priority and I put them to bed most nights, they are 18 and 15 now so I have been a father throughout my career.
I have spent over 30 years in social activism and have been very active in the Filipino and other migrant communities. Often taking time out to appear on TV, protest, attend or host debates and events. That was something I know put me at a disadvantage to some of my peers as many expected me not to be so vocal or opinionated, or that I should go out for drinks or be in early for no other reason than just to be in.
Of course after the pandemic and George Floyd, so much has changed with work/life balance, remote working and being involved in causes and diversity, but I have always walked to the beat of my own drum. I have always looked at things from the bigger picture, what’s important, the vision, how to execute and keep it simple. I have often been at odds with management and senior staff as my vision didn’t align with their targets.
But I have mostly been proven right as to where it was all heading or what needed to be done! I remember one of the product managers told me when I left Criteo ‘I understand why you are leaving. Right now we need good people to just follow the path but at the beginning we needed crazy people to create the path!’.
