IAB Tech Lab Q1 Council Meeting

Andrew Casale is the president and CEO of Index Exchange, a global supply-side platform renowned for its innovation in programmatic advertising. With a career in digital media spanning over three decades, Andrew has been at the forefront of the ad tech evolution, driving industry standards and championing efficiency, scale, and transparency.

Andrew’s journey began in the late 1990s, when he created his first website on GeoCities, sparking a lifelong fascination with the internet and media. His early entrepreneurial ventures in web publishing and digital advertising led him to found Casale Media in 2001. The company quickly distinguished itself as a pioneer in programmatic advertising, evolving into Index Exchange in 2015. Under Andrew’s leadership, Index has become one of the most efficient and transparent exchanges in the advertising ecosystem with operations spanning North America, EMEA, and APAC.

Throughout his career, Andrew has remained dedicated to advancing the open internet, playing a pivotal role in developing industry standards and protocols. Recognized as a thought leader in ad tech, Andrew has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Ad Age, Forbes, and Reuters. He is an influential speaker at global events, including CES, Advertising Week New York, ATS London, IAB ALM, and many others. His contributions to the industry were honored in 2024 with the IAB Tech Lab Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ben is Director, Data & Ad Effectiveness within IAB’s Data Center of Excellence. He leads IAB projects within its automation, identity, measurement/attribution groups, and works with leading ad technologists, agencies and publishers to identify and navigate some of the most pressing opportunities and challenges within these verticals. By developing best practices, research, white papers, and thought leadership in collaboration with IAB members, Ben helps improve and facilitate digital media buying and selling via automated tools, software and data.

Prior to joining the IAB, Ben was Associate Director, Digital Trading at GroupM where he oversaw programmatic strategy, measurement / optimization, ad operations, and private marketplace relationships across Nestlé 85 brand US portfolio. In this capacity he was responsible for building and “productizing” the Nestlé Trade Desk (NTD), an independent programmatic buying unit developed specifically to service Nestle brands. Prior to his work on Nestlé, Ben held positions at both Maxus Global and Universal McCann where he helped lead the development of programmatic and measurement/attribution strategies for large global brands including MasterCard, Barclays, Harvard Business School, and Welch’s.

Ben received a B.S. in Communications and Entrepreneurship from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Patrick is SVP Research at Raptive where he works on yield, audience and content segmentation, compliance, identity, and auction dynamics. At Prebid.org, Patrick chairs the JS committee managing product development for Prebid.js. Previously, Patrick has been Lead Data Scientist at eXelate and an analyst at comScore.

Building best-in-class accredited advertising measurements solutions for the use of the largest global brands, agencies, AdTech platforms and partners. Focused on exposure and engagement measurements, delivering analytics used to optimize media buys and understand the value of inventory and its billable status.

Aron Schatz is a Director of Product Management, Publisher Products at DoubleVerify where he leads the charge to provide revenue analytics for the sell side of the industry. Before DoubleVerify, Aron was the Head of Product at Jeeng, an email advertising company, and ViralGains, a video DSP. Aron has worked in the technology industry for almost 20 years and was awarded by the IAB and Tech Lab many times over that tenure.

Aron sits on many industry working groups such as VAST, SIMID, SHARC, OpenRTB, and others. He enjoys moving the industry forward in reducing friction between system to system transactions.

Aron holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Jill Wittkopp is Senior Director of Management at the IAB Tech Lab, a global consortium for technical standards in the digital advertising industry. Prior to joining the IAB Tech Lab, Jill worked on the buy side of programmatic advertising with companies like MyBuys, Magnetic and Rakuten. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Michigan, Dearborn and lives in San Francisco, California.