A series about building a real career in ad tech, navigating chaos, learning fast, and finding ways to grow without burning out.

People ask me fairly often how to start or advance a career in ad tech. This series is my attempt to capture the advice I wish I'd had early on—backed by authentic stories, not theory.

I've been Head of Product at an acquired ad tech startup (Beachfront), Principal Product Manager at a leading video SSP (SpotX, also acquired), and now VP of Product at NBCUniversal, responsible for all programmatic advertising products powering Peacock and NBCU properties. I also built and sold the ad tech newsletter you're reading now.

If you're early in your ad tech career or trying to level up, this is for you.

OK, that's enough tooting my own horn. Let's dive into today's story.

When you find what you want, create your own opportunity to get there.

When I began my career in digital advertising, I had little more than an entry-level web design college course to my name and a burning desire to do anything other than attend the law school I was set to start that fall.

So I took an inside sales job at the beginning of summer with a salary based primarily on commission at a company that did something called "ad tech." Worst-case scenario, I could start law school classes in the fall.

I knew within a week that I would hate this job and never last.

God bless all you salespeople out there, but the day-to-day grind of basing your livelihood on convincing others to buy what you're selling takes a particular kind of grit and unwavering optimism that I knew I could never manifest.

But during that week I spent on a beanbag with a laptop scalding my crotch in our only American engineer's townhome (we didn't have an office yet), I became fascinated with the technology behind what I attempted to sell. It was little more than a video player with ads and syndicated content at that point, but the fact that a video player, placed on a website, could generate money out of thin air made my mind spin. Our CEO also extolled grand aspirations for something called an "SSP," a video syndication platform, and even a video app builder platform.

I then learned about the companies and platforms behind the technology serving these ads, like Adap.tv, LiveRail, and an entire ecosystem of companies and advertisers using something called "real-time bidding" to try to win the right to show a video ad on a website.

I was like a caveman discovering fire, except this was real-life money being created out of nowhere, as long as you find the eyeballs to see these ads. I decided then and there that my interests lie on the technology side of advertising, not the sales side.

I had to learn more about how all of this worked, but there was one big problem: That wasn't my job.

How was I going to learn how this stuff worked if I was also expected to hit a certain sales quota? If I didn't perform in my sales role, I would lose my job and, consequently, the opportunity to learn more about the inner workings of the technology behind what I was selling.

I didn't need permission. I needed a path.

Phase 1: Identify the opportunity

So I developed a plan and figured out what type of role would be a better fit for me. I needed a role that would allow me to work more closely with engineers and eventually create the things we sell. This is how I came across the concept of a "product manager."

I found out that a product manager works with the business to determine what customers need, then defines that vision into a set of requirements for engineers to develop. The exact nature of product management changes from company to company, but product managers are ultimately responsible for the success of a given product or feature.

Since my interest lay in the line between how software generated money and how the technology worked, this sounded right up my alley. I devoured any resources I could find on product management to make sure this was what I wanted and, eventually, how I could become one.

While still cranking away on the sales side, I noticed that our CEO was constantly pulled in different directions by the demands of growing a startup and our offshore engineering team. He was acting as a de facto product manager and trying to run a company. So I figured he wouldn't mind if I helped in any way I could, as long as I was pulling my weight on the sales side.

If I couldn't change my title yet, I could change my impact.

Phase 2: Make yourself useful

This also led me to part two of my plan: volunteering to bring rigor and organization through project management, something I learned in my product management studies. I found out that most companies use software like JIRA to organize their product development and Confluence to organize their internal documentation, and they implemented some weird thing called "scrum" to keep engineering teams accountable and to deliver on roadmapped engineering tasks.

I was all in on becoming a product manager in ad tech. I let law school know I was out and took my chance on pursuing a new path that actually excited me. Now I just needed to finalize my plan on how to make it happen.

The fastest way out of a role you don't want is to dominate it.

Phase 3: Become indispensable

I implemented phase three of my plan when I decided to become the very best salesperson possible, so I would never have to do sales again. I shit you not, I think I emailed every single website and publisher on the internet over the course of a year. I used every tactic I could to find emails and phone numbers for decision-makers at publishers I had a realistic shot at landing, and I did this every day for over a year.

I started making money. A lot of money. Enough money that when I finally went to leadership about transitioning into a product role, I'm sure they were relieved. Now they could adjust the commission model for the new salespeople that they told me I had to train and manage, even after I became what I told them I wanted to be: a product manager.

In my off-hours, I continued studying product and project management and applied what I learned at work while scaling and managing a sales team:

• Implementing agile principles

• Rolling out JIRA for project tracking

• Launching Confluence for internal documentation

• Running scrum ceremonies with dev teams

• Writing product requirements and user stories

I also started devouring books on information architecture and UX design. I watched YouTube videos that taught me how to use graphic design software so I could turn the platforms in our CEO’s head into mockups, and eventually into real, working products.

Eventually, once the sales team hummed along, the company recognized that all my time would be better served managing all our products and eventually promoted me to Head of Product.

Master plan accomplished.

Main lesson: Find a way to create your own opportunities in the situation you're given.

It would have been a tough sell to find a product management job with no relevant college or career experience, so I found a way to get the job I wanted and also made some good money along the way. I might not have had the grit to be a salesperson, but I did have the grit to become a product manager.

I also created this opportunity by choosing to stay at a tiny company; a maneuver like this would have been tricky to pull off if we didn't have a CEO filling multiple roles.

Additional lessons

1. You can teach yourself almost anything if you actually care.

I did this before AI existed, with nothing but the good old-fashioned internet. Today, there's no excuse not to learn fast.

2. Be realistic but relentless.

I couldn't quit sales because I needed to eat. So I learned at night and on weekends. Passion doesn't replace rent, but it can coexist with it.

3. Be extremely useful.

I didn't ask for permission; I solved problems. When you create visible value, companies give you room to grow.

This post is part of Surviving and Thriving in Ad Tech, a series on building a durable, fulfilling career in an industry that rarely slows down.

EVENTS

Marketecture Live III

New speakers just added
Ready or Not: AI Is Changing Advertising

How Agencies Are Adapting to the AI Meteorite 
Bob Lord, Horizon Media & Obele “Brown-West” Hinsley, Colle McVoy

Consumer Protection in the AI Era 
Mark Meador, Federal Trade Commission & Alan Chapell, The Monopoly Report