Last month, partner Sam Thompson attended Barcelona's Mobile World Congress where he met with dozens of key innovators and entrepreneurs in the digital advertising and tech space. Read his scouting report for more detail.

Partner and Senior Managing Director Chris Legg provides his perspectives on the digital automotive landscape after attending the NADA, J.D. Power Automotive Forum, and MediaPost's Marketing Automotive last month. The automotive landscape is changing drastically, with the increase in digital ad spend in the automotive space and dealers and OEMs alike focusing their efforts on taking a more digital approach. Read more here.

Senior managing director and partner Sam Thompson was quoted in a The Wall Street Journal article on OpenX's recent pledge to invest $25M in advertising quality initiatives. “It’s more than just the budget; it’s about how the company is changing their purpose and values as an operating company so everyone inside is operating toward the same goal,” Mr. Thompson said.

Machine Intelligence, in the form of ML, Neural Networks, and self-adapting AI, will grow in importance and significance, impacting all industries in some ways that have yet to be determined. Is it ‘an interest’ or ‘a necessity’ for companies to replace loyal carbon elements with silicon and source code? It depends.

Yes, physical retail is changing and is not growing as fast as e-commerce, but it is how brick-and-mortar stores approach these fluctuations in consumption pattern – and alter their business models to incorporate automation, personalization, and Artificial Intelligence into their strategies – that they will prevail.

Boasting over 170,000 exhibitors and attendees, CES 2018 positioned the acceleration of technological innovation in B2C and B2B spaces front and center in Las Vegas. With the promise of Artificial Intelligence becoming ever more present and increasingly featured, we found heighted demand for tech companies to deliver ever more sophisticated and networked technology.

The much-discussed potential sale of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox assets – even if it never happens – shows the media industry is changing fast, says FTI Consulting’s senior advisor. Read the entire article by Progress Partners EIR, Mary Ann Halford.

The partners at Progress were asked what came to mind when thinking about Progress Connect, providing what they believed the best word was to describe this leadership summit. Part of a series of videos taken for Progress Connect. To find more, visit our YouTube channel.

Chris Legg, senior managing director at Progress Partners, provides his banker's perspective on the Hearst-Rodale acquisition, both relevant and timely as it relates to the current and future state of the media industry. 

What were some of the key undercurrents that ran throughout Progress Connect 2017? The answer happened to be more of a question: what comes next? Part of a series of videos taken for Progress Connect. To find more, visit our YouTube channel.

On October 11, 2017, over 300+ C-level and senior leaders from some of the top Media and Internet technology companies in the industry gathered together for one day. Check out the introductory video from our event for a deeper understanding of our firm, partners, and summit.

Data is the world’s “new” hot commodity, and every year we meet companies in Cologne who are transforming both user experiences and marketing effectiveness by using this resource more effectively than ever before. Dmexco brings industry players and rising stars alike to the forefront – enabling innovators across the spectrum to put their progress on display for the rest of the market and give onlookers a glimpse of things to come.

Progress Partners founder Nick MacShane and Davis Rosborough (VP, Progress Partners and Co-founder, IndustryMaps) made their way into the oral history of LUMA Partner's LUMAscapes. Through early work on industry and sector mapping, Davis' IndustryMaps have developed significantly and have come a long way, just as LUMAscapes have. Here is the story of how the Lumascape came to be, from some of those who helped popularize it.

Although 5,000 ad tech companies exist today, the industry is full of dead men walking. Unlike other tech industries, struggling ad tech companies rarely die swiftly, even if they’re not on the path to growth. Davis Rosborough, VP at Progress Partners, provides his take on why some ad tech companies become "zombies."

In Axial's series "Dealmaker Profiles," Progress Partners founder and senior managing director Nick MacShane was featured, discussing the challenges of founding a company, supercharging the firm's biz dev strategy, and what he likes to do in his spare time.

"Fresh off an $850 million acquisition by Yahoo, Right Media CEO Michael Walrath and board members Noah and Jonah Goodhart thought their next big ad tech venture was a crowdsourced marketplace meant to connect ad creators with brands. Despite their respect in the ad industry and connections to the largest investors in Silicon Valley and some of media’s biggest, the group’s initial product floundered."

Chris Legg shares his top takeaways and retrospective from his week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, highlighting big announcements from Comcast and Oath, the 5th Annual Mastercard LeRooftop Panel, and our co-hosted yacht party to kick off the week.