"Today, in America, the typical person makes 35,000 decisions a day," Aaron Shapiro said recently during a presentation championing Huge's brand of "anticipatory design" -- a new approach to user experience design he says will do more to change the way brands interact with consumers over the next ten years than all digital media has done over the last 20. In a world of infinite media and brand options, designs that anticipate a user's needs increasingly will end up being a user's most important choice, if not their only one. Having and realizing that vision, made Shapiro our obvious choice …

At a time when it seemed like everyone was just about talked out on the subject of "programmatic," Scott Hagedorn changed the conversation, reminding Madison Avenue -- and some of its biggest clients -- that it's not just about the science of targeting consumers, but the art of winning their hearts once you've reached them.

When George Schweitzer became head of marketing for CBS in the early 1990s, it was the most watched television network. A quarter of a century later, CBS is still the most watched television network -- thanks in large part to Schweitzer's constant creativity, ingenuity and innovation, and especially his willingness to proactively utilize the very same media options that have been fragmenting consumer media choices in order to get them to keep choosing the one they watch the most.

Recognitions like this frequently throw the word "pioneer" around, but when it comes to pioneering the field of digital media and especially online advertising, Dave Smith is one of the people who helped define it, and he's still redefining it.

When Bob Liodice joined the Association of National Advertisers in 1995, there was already a pretty pervasive sense that the Internet was about to change advertising as we know it. While it was still early days and online advertising was still nascent, formative and a gleam in most ad executives' eyes, most people knew it was going to be something big. It was a year after Procter & Gamble CEO Ed Artzt had given his famous rallying cry speech at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' annual conference, and the earliest form of banner advertising was already beginning to, well, …

Alex Bogusky. What just went on in your head when you read those words? Envy, perhaps? Admiration? No doubt a confusing mix of love and hate as well. Advertising loves its heroes. However, few of them are compared in gushing magazine articles to Jesus, or described in the blog of a fellow creative director as a "demi-god of advertising." But Bogusky was.

GE prides itself on its disruptive, experimental culture -- and that goes as much for its marketing and advertising as for its corporate strategy. Described by her predecessor Beth Comstock as "one of the most innovative and forward-thinking marketers in the business," 12-year GE veteran Linda Boff has taken on the role of CMO at a historic juncture as GE spins off its consumer appliances and financial services businesses to focus on being a digital industrial company -- meaning, in GE's own words, being at the forefront of "machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive." GE has become …

While digital media startups are hardly rare, it's probably safe to say that few executives have co-founded, incubated and been instrumental in driving the growth of as many visible ventures as Josh Engroff has in 16 years.