The Interdisciplinary Round Table: Professional Reflections
Taking a Step Back to Move Forward
By Marc Cristiano, President - The Council on Interdisciplinary Advancement
Early in my career, I spent nearly a decade in digital advertising sales. Like many people in the industry at the time, I was working on the publisher side: building relationships with media buyers, pitching inventory, and negotiating campaigns. It was a fast-paced environment, and for a long time it felt like the center of the digital advertising universe.
By the early 2010s, however, something new was beginning to emerge that many people around me were underestimating - programmatic advertising. At the time, most digital media was still sold through direct relationships. Sales teams had the advantage of established connections with agencies and brands, and publishers took pride in their ability to package and sell premium inventory directly. Programmatic, by contrast, was still viewed by many as a niche technology for low-quality ad supply.
But something interesting started happening during my meetings with media buyers. Increasingly, they asked questions that traditional publishers didn’t yet have answers for. They wanted audience targeting capabilities. They wanted real-time bidding for ad supply. They wanted automated buying systems that could optimize campaigns dynamically rather than relying on manual insertion orders. At the time, publishers weren’t built for that. Direct sales still carried the prestige: the recognizable brands, the big deals, the traditional revenue structure. But to me, programmatic looked like the future. I could see where the market was heading.
Around that time, I was working as a Sales Director with a well-known online property. The role was financially rewarding, but the more I watched the industry evolve, the more I felt that the center of gravity in digital advertising was shifting. Eventually, I made a decision that surprised a lot of people. In 2014, I left my sales role and joined OpenX as a Senior Monetization Manager. The move came with a roughly $40,000 pay cut.
When friends and colleagues heard about it, many of them questioned the decision. Some asked why I would walk away from a lucrative sales role to take a mid-level operational job at a relatively unknown company at the time that dealt with a “technology niche.” Others were less subtle, suggesting it was a flat-out mistake. If I’m being honest, explaining the decision was uncomfortable; there was a certain amount of embarrassment involved and I was aware that, from the outside, it looked like I was stepping backward in my career.
But, I strove to view it from a different angle.
I believed that if programmatic was going to reshape digital advertising (the signals suggested it would and my intuition did as well), then understanding how the ecosystem actually worked would be invaluable. I wanted to learn the mechanics behind the marketplace: how supply-side platforms functioned, how auctions operated, how publishers optimized yield, and how real-time bidding transformed the economics of media buying. And OpenX was the place that opened that door of opportunity for me.
During my four and a half years there, I was immersed in the technical and strategic side of programmatic advertising. I learned how RTB auctions worked, how publishers managed and priced their inventory, and how automated systems were changing the relationship between buyers and sellers. Instead of pitching media deals, I was now helping publishers understand how to monetize their inventory more effectively in a rapidly evolving ecosystem. Within two years of joining OpenX, I had been promoted twice and stepped into a team lead role. My compensation had recovered to the level I had been earning in my sales position, and I had gained something far more valuable: a deep understanding of the infrastructure that was reshaping the entire digital advertising industry. I had done something that I felt was extremely difficult for folks at the same stage in their careers as I was: I successfully pivoted in my career and recovered “lost time.”
I was also introduced to a new level in my career: managing a team. Leadership had always been something I aspired to, but my earlier roles hadn’t provided that opportunity. At OpenX, I developed those skills while building expertise in one of the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising. In many ways, that experience became the foundation for the next decade of my career. But the story doesn’t end there.
In the years that followed, programmatic continued to transform the advertising landscape. Automation, data-driven targeting, and auction-based marketplaces became the dominant model for digital media transactions. And with that shift came significant changes to the traditional sales landscape. Many of the peers I had worked alongside in direct sales roles eventually felt the impact of this transformation. Some adapted successfully and continued to thrive. But many others struggled as the industry changed around them.
In fact, after I left OpenX in 2019, I watched several former colleagues face layoffs or significant career disruptions as programmatic continued to reshape the economics of media sales. One of my former sales team members experienced these same pressures. Eventually, he reached out to explore new options, faced with the reality that he may be forced out of his element. I knew exactly how he felt; I had been there and felt all of the doubt and what-ifs. But I was glad I could be in his corner during his time of need to help him through that phase. I helped bring him over to OpenX. He later reflected that he recognized that the industry had shifted and that adapting to the new landscape was essential. Looking back, the decision I made in 2014 feels far less risky than it did at the time, but that’s the luxury of looking back; the past is always 20/20 vision. It’s having the confidence, diligence in research, and courage to make a move at the moment that creates the positive moments of reflection in the future.
At the time that I made the decision to pivot, it required accepting something that many professionals struggle with; the idea that moving forward sometimes means stepping sideways, or even taking a step, or steps, backward. We often measure career progress through titles, compensation, or prestige, or all of the above. But those markers don’t always reflect where a company, sector, industry, or even the economy is headed. Sometimes, the most valuable move is the one that positions you closer to the future that you desire, even if it doesn’t look impressive on paper in the short term or leads to uncomfortable conversation with family, peers, colleagues.
Disruption is seldom comfortable. New technologies often appear uncertain or imperfect in their early stages. But when you begin to see structural change taking shape in your industry, it’s worth asking an important question: Where will the center of gravity be five years from now? For me, the answer was an emerging technology in my field: programmatic advertising. Taking a $40,000 pay cut to immerse myself in that ecosystem turned out to be one of the most important career decisions I ever made. And the lesson is simple: when you feel a disruption in your field, sometimes the smartest move is to step into it, even if that means taking a step back, first.
-Marc C.