OpenX Technologies, Inc., a leading global omnichannel advertising exchange, today announced the appointment of Mike Chowla, an accomplished digital advertising executive with deep product management and technical operations expertise, as senior vice president of product.
In this role, Chowla will be responsible for the full product life cycle, from customer discovery and user research to development, delivery and support of a market-leading product suite. Chowla will report to Paul Ryan, chief technology officer for OpenX, and serve as a member of the company’s Executive Leadership Team.
Chowla’s appointment comes at a pivotal period for the industry as it prepares for a future without third-party cookies that track user preferences and activity. At the same time, the sustainability of digital ad campaigns and the steady march to a “net-zero” future are overarching considerations for every participant in the ecosystem.
Prior to joining OpenX, Chowla spent five years at PubMatic, a leading sell-side ad platform, serving most recently as vice president of product management and focused on developing products for high-growth areas, including retail media, video and CTV, and mobile in-app advertising. Previously, Chowla was head of product for The Garage, the innovation lab of the ad platform Rubicon Project, and senior director of product management for Aeris Communications, which develops Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. Chowla began his career serving in product management and system architecture roles at Inktomi and AOL.
“Mike Chowla is a world-class product management leader who is expertly equipped to drive high-velocity product innovation in a fast, fluid market,” said OpenX’s Ryan. “His skills and experience strongly position him to create a product road map aligned with our strategy of helping marketers identify and engage targeted audiences at scale across web, mobile and CTV.”
The OpenX product portfolio is aimed at efficiently delivering addressable and scalable ad inventory to buyers while allowing publishers to maintain control of and monetize their first-party (1P) data. As part of this, the company is natively integrating key components of the programmatic value chain on its exchange, with a focus on data and identity. The first and only independent cloud-native exchange, OpenX processes more than 300 billion ad requests a day across a network of more than 130,000 domains.
“OpenX has fantastic technology built on a modern platform, and it has a strong track record of innovation,” said Chowla. “I’m eager to apply those strengths in building solutions for both buyers and publishers as the industry transitions to new types of identity and targeting, and as it accelerates the adoption of programmatic and biddable CTV advertising.”
Chowla earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School. He served for four years as a board member of Prebid.org, an independent organization promoting fair, transparent and effective header bidding based on Prebid.js, the popular open-source header bidding wrapper.
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