Mike Racic — Managing Director at Knower Tech

Mike Racic has joined Knower Tech as Managing Director, taking on a leadership role to helm a new data curation offering designed to serve both the buy-side and sell-side of the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Racic brings significant industry credibility to the role, having previously been deeply involved with Prebid.org, the open-source header bidding initiative that has become foundational infrastructure for programmatic advertising. His background in open-source ad tech and supply-side optimization makes him a strategic hire for a company positioning itself in the data curation space. Knower Tech is building a data curation product that aims to bridge the gap between advertisers and publishers by enabling more precise audience targeting and inventory packaging at the curation layer. Data curation has emerged as a significant trend in programmatic advertising, particularly as third-party cookie deprecation accelerates the need for alternative data activation strategies. By hiring a figure with Racic's pedigree — someone closely associated with transparent, open-source programmatic infrastructure — Knower Tech is signaling a commitment to credibility and technical depth in its go-to-market approach. This hire is notable in the context of a broader industry shift toward curation as a mechanism for value creation in the programmatic supply chain. Curation platforms allow data owners, publishers, and intermediaries to package curated deals that combine quality inventory with audience signals, often leveraging private marketplace (PMP) and programmatic guaranteed structures. Racic's appointment suggests Knower Tech is serious about competing in this increasingly crowded but strategically important segment.

The appointment of Mike Racic at Knower Tech reflects and reinforces several converging trends in the AdTech ecosystem. First, data curation is rapidly becoming a central battleground in programmatic advertising as the industry moves away from open auction trading toward more curated, deal-based inventory packaging. Racic's hire gives Knower Tech instant credibility with both publishers and buyers who are familiar with his work at Prebid.org, potentially accelerating adoption on both sides of the marketplace. His presence may also attract partnerships with SSPs and DSPs that have existing relationships with him from the Prebid community. From a competitive standpoint, Knower Tech enters a market that includes established curation players such as Audigent, Proximic by Comscore, and various SSP-native curation tools offered by platforms like Magnite and PubMatic. Racic's background in open-source, transparent programmatic infrastructure could differentiate Knower Tech by positioning it as a neutral, trustworthy curation layer rather than one tied to a specific SSP or data provider's commercial interests. This neutrality narrative is increasingly valuable as buyers scrutinize supply path optimization (SPO) decisions more carefully. More broadly, this event underscores the talent migration happening across AdTech as professionals from open-source and standards bodies move into commercial ventures that operationalize the infrastructure they helped build. It also highlights how curation is absorbing investment and talent as a post-cookie identity and targeting strategy, signaling continued momentum for the segment heading into 2025 and beyond.