• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, September 22, 2024

Cognitiv, a deep learning ad platform, was looking for its first president, someone who understood the programmatic ecosystem, earlier this year. It found him in Eric Danetz, global head of revenue and CRO at Reuters, who came on board on Sept. 9 and hopes to help advertisers achieve alogorithm outcomes that drive return on ad spend. 

Danetz will oversee sales and client success while leading Cognitiv’s partnerships with media agencies. He hopes to leverage the fact-based ethos of Reuters and other places he has worked, and to do that in “ways that are progressive and creative,” Danetz says.  

His first chore is to “get out there and have conversations,” and learn the challenges being faced by advertisers. “That’s going to be my focus over the next 3 to 6 months,” he says. 

“Advertisers have experienced how deep learning drives dramatically better results and are shifting their media spend away from traditional ad tech towards AI powered solutions,” says Jeremy Fain co-founder and CEO of Cognitiv, with whom Danetz will work. “As president, Eric will deliver critical strategic leadership, driving company growth by aligning initiatives across sales, marketing, product and more.” 

Danetz had a long publishing background before Reuters, having worked at AccuWeather, Newsweek, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time and other top places. 

What are some of the challenges he sees in the programmatic advertising realm?  

“A lot of companies in the ecosystem make a lot of claims, but have not updated their way of reaching audiences,” Danetz says.

But he calls Cognitiv’s deep learning advertising platform “the next generation in digital advertising” and hails the use of AI to improve performance for brands. 

Founded in 2015, Cognitiv will be approaching 150 employees by the end of the year. The company  has generated 166% growth YoY and its Cognitiv Curation product has grown by 6X YoY.  

What’s next for Cognitiv? One thing is international expansion. The company has already formed a partnership with Adform, a media buying platform based in Scandanavia.

In addition, Cognitiv plans to launch new products in 2025. The predominant component will be “engineering because we were founded by data scientists,” Danetz says. 

To support that, he makes this final point: “Our technology is built in-house, not on the back of other technologies.”