Domenic Venuto on Building the AI-Native Agency from the Inside Out

Adam sits down with Domenic Venuto, Chief Product and Data Officer at Horizon Media, to unpack how a career across agencies, publishers, ad tech, and finance shaped his approach to product, data, and transformation. Domenic explains why Horizon’s independent culture and human-first leadership pulled him back to agency life—and how the Blu Platform is using AI to democratize data, accelerate strategy, and deepen client partnerships beyond media execution.

Highlights:

• How “quarter turns” across the industry built a full-stack leadership perspective
• Why Horizon’s independence enables faster, more personal client relationships
• Blu Platform decoded: AI-native data, identity, and strategy in one ecosystem
• How AI shifts agencies from media delivery to business problem-solving
• The leadership principle of “be interested and be interesting.”

EPISODE 58 TRANSCRIPT

Adam Katz
Welcome back to Breaking Through the Mayhem, hosted by Sightly. We are so lucky to have Domenic Venuto with us today, who is the Chief Product and Data Officer over at Horizon Media. Welcome to the show.

Domenic Venuto
Thanks, Adam. Appreciate the intro.

Adam Katz
I know. It's been a lot of fun getting to know you over the last year plus, and you're making some big waves. Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself, kind of how you got to Horizon. I know it's been different roles along the way, and what shaped your experience getting here.

Domenic Venuto
Yeah. I think it's an interesting story. I've had the benefit of seeing the industry from every angle.

I started at Razorfish many years ago, and was responsible for building out the media and entertainment practice there, so working with clients like Condé Nast and The Wall Street Journal. Now, building the first-generation revenue-generating websites, helping Condé Nast move their magazines from print to digital products way back in the aughts, so that was fun. And then, Publicis bought us out of Microsoft, and then we were part of the agency holding company world.

There, I was responsible for helping scale our programmatic agency trading desk, which at that time was called Audience on Demand at Publicis. And then, I followed David Kenney over to the Weather Channel, and I was on the publisher side building ad product and consumer product for billions of people, which was fun. Really enjoyed that.

And then, I moved into Amobi when they bought Videology, so then I was in ad tech, and I spent some time in investment banking in the advertising space. So, I think about my career as quarter turns to the right, so every shift has been a quarter turn to the right. And when you do enough of those quarter turns, you end up back at the same place, so here I am back at agency land.

And I never thought that that would be my destination, candidly, but I used to work with Bob Lord at Razorfish way back when, and he called me and he said, I think there's a great opportunity for you. You should talk to Bill Konigsberg, the founder and CEO of Horizon. And I was like, you know, I've done the agency thing, Bob.

Like I've been there for, I was there for effectively 14 years, Razorfish slash Publicis. I didn't know that I want to go back, and he was insistent, like, you should talk to Bill. There's something special there.

And he was right. I spoke to Bill, and Horizon is this special place. It's like, it's the largest independent media agency.

It has a terrific culture. It's 2,500 people across three offices in North America. We do have a joint venture with Horizon Global, which makes us, gives us a global footprint.

But we have all the right ingredients to redefine the agency-client relationship in this modern era. And Bill's vision, Bob's energy and vision, and getting to work with him again, were compelling reasons, all of those together. So here I am, back after 15 years, back at agency, and loving it as chief product and data officer.

Adam Katz
It's amazing. I mean, listen, every step of the way is going to help you now. You have knowledge in every part of the game, right?

So ultimately, that's a big piece to bring to an agency for other people to learn from.

Domenic Venuto
Yeah, it's definitely an asset, having been at the agency, having been at a publisher. And all through this, I've been on the forefront of transformation. Way back when, as I said, we were helping print publications move to the digital world.

Then there was mobile. Then there was programmatic. Then there was streaming video.

And now we have AI. So I've been responsible for product development, digital product development initiatives for my entire career. So it's definitely an advantage to be here.

And there's certainly some things that you see patterns in, and my experience brings to bear. But also, this is a new world. I mean, AI and just the speed and power of the tools that we have available to us are unprecedented.

I think the speed of change is mind-boggling. And that poses other opportunities and challenges, like how do you design and build product that could quickly be obsolete in a matter of months. So all of the skills and the muscle memory that I've established throughout my career definitely come into play.

But there's also, I'm constantly learning, and learning from the team at Horizon, learning from the industry around AI, and learning from our clients, what's important to them and how do we help them drive growth in their businesses.

Adam Katz
I love it. I mean, listen, Horizon is a special place. For me, it's been a place that I've loved since the day I've walked in it.

Just feels warm.

Domenic Venuto
That's the way I get that. I get that sense from you when you come into the office. You've got a spring in your step and you're excited to be here.

We love hosting you.

Adam Katz
I know. It's a great place. But for me, it's been fun to watch you guys usher in a new era of Horizon Media and bring that vision to life.

What kind of struck you when you talked to Bill that made you say yes after you were such a, I don't know about agency guy?

Domenic Venuto
Yeah. Well, Bill's mantra, and he's built the business, built a great business and successful business over the 30 years that he's been doing this, his ethos is business is personal. So with all the technology and with all the innovation that he's been driving across his business, it comes down to the people and the business is personal and he fundamentally believes that.

And that struck a chord with me. I've worked in some very large organizations and global businesses and at some point, it's just the scale gets in the way and it just takes a long time to get things done. So certainly the business is personal and the human touch was important and that resonated.

But then his vision. Here's a man that's built a great business and has canvassed the industry and said to himself, we need to do things differently. And he was willing to shake things up, make the investments and jump in with both feet into technology development and AI.

And at the right time as well, he made that decision. He hired me, brought Bob on board and there's a whole bunch of other changes throughout the organization that have happened, truly transformational. And everybody's leaning in.

Everybody's excited about that. Everybody wants to use these tools. Everybody's doing double duty servicing their clients and working hard to grow our clients' business.

So all of that resonated to me and felt like, hey, I need to rethink this. Horizon isn't just another agency. It's a special place led by a man that has a vision and is willing to invest in technology to basically reinvent the next generation of agency client relationships.

Adam Katz
I love it. You know, basically one of the themes I'm kind of seeing is that you're able to keep relationships for a long time. You know, you obviously met Bob, you said back at Razorfish, right?

So think about how long ago that was, not the age, but maybe some different hair color and a different world. But ultimately, what would you say is your unique skill set to keep up with relationships? I think one of the keys to our lives is building that kind of network.

And how do you work on that and how do you think about that for people?

Domenic Venuto
Yeah, I think about it in, it's fundamentally two ways. Be interested and be interesting. And I think that works both personally.

Adam Katz
I've heard that from you, by the way.

Domenic Venuto
Please do. And it works at a personal level and it works at a professional level. And I'll share this, a moment of vulnerability.

I used to have a lot of social anxiety and people like, I don't believe that at all. You know, going to a cocktail party, a room surrounded with people. And then I learned this skill, be interested and interesting.

So share a little bit about yourself and ask questions. And I think that fundamentally makes it, builds relationships. And in a professional environment, whether you're working with a partner or whether you're working with a client, be interested in their business.

Like, what are the mechanics of the business? What are the levers that drive growth? What are your clients, customers looking for?

Like, be curious and ask questions. And then bring yourself to the table as well. Build a relationship with your clients and bring the best of you in all the meetings and all the work product that you produce.

I think that's a successful strategy. And that ethos kind of permeates through the walls of all the holes of Horizon, coming from Bill. Like Bill is intimately involved with every one of our clients.

He knows their businesses. If there's a market, if there's a market move, there's an email that goes out to the account team. It's like, how are we thinking about this for our client?

I know that this client is concerned about X, Y, and Z. Are we doing, you know, whatever it is? So, I think that, you know, be interested, be interesting applies personally and professionally.

Adam Katz
I love that. You know, you're everywhere. How do you keep up with your schedule?

Domenic Venuto
Hopefully in a good way. Hopefully in a good way.

Adam Katz
You know, you always got a nice outfit on. So, how do you keep up with your schedule? How do you just go through life and actually stay up with your head not on a swivel at all times?

Domenic Venuto
Yeah, ruthlessly prioritizing. And also just like being in the moment. I try really hard to be in the moment.

You know, as executives with a lot on our plate, we do a lot of time slicing. And over the years, again, technology has been an enabler or maybe the culprit, you know, pick the vice. But you're constantly slicing your time, whether you're trying to solve small issues in small chunks of time, answering email or talking to people.

But when I'm at a conference or when I'm in a meeting, I try and be present. And that keeps me sane. I can just focus on the task at hand and then just ruthlessly prioritize.

But, you know, the industry is dynamic. And I love that. It's one of the reasons that I'm still in this seat is that every three to six months, there's another evolution of innovation.

And being on the forefront of that is really exciting. So, yeah, try and stay present. And just the energy and dynamic nature of the business is exciting.

Adam Katz
Well, you're having fun. So, you know, you're having fun because you're also building a really cool product. Why don't you tell people a little bit about Blu, tell people this OS that you guys have come out with and a little bit about where you're taking the next phase of your product and evolution?

Domenic Venuto
Yeah, I appreciate the question. So, Blu has been around for Horizon for a number of years, I think 2018, 2019. And when the holding companies were going and buying data assets and spending billions of dollars, Horizon took a different approach and decided that a partnership model was the best way to approach data.

So, Blu is fundamentally our data and identity ecosystem. And we've been using that data set to solve our clients' biggest challenges. Who are my customers?

Who are my next best customers? Where do I put the next investment, the next dollar of investment? Which customers are likely to churn?

You know, those type of questions. But predominantly, those questions were answered by our data science team. Now, with the advent of AI and just the power that we have of AI and these large language models, and you can type a question in a natural language and get a response back.

What we've done is we've put an AI native application layer on top of that data set. So now, whether it be the team, the team on the floor, the account team, or our clients directly, they can interrogate that data set themselves without the need for a data scientist for every question. And we still need data scientists because there are some bigger challenging and product development work that they focus on.

But we've basically democratized access. So, Blu, as a data asset, is now Blu Platform. So, we've got an AI native application layer sitting on top of that data set.

And we've extended the workflow to cover strategy as well as all of the downstream performance data to create a virtuous circle of optimization. It's an open ecosystem, so we plug partners in. So, we're plugging creative partners in right now.

So, now we have strategy audience capabilities. We've got the performance and measurement piece and analytics. But now we're able to connect creative signals with the audience signals, optimize audience, optimize creative, and begin to do that in real time, which is really exciting.

Now, that platform that I just described, I want to underscore this because I think it's a unique differentiator, is that platform that we've built, it is the backbone of what the teams on the floor at Horizon use. But we give it to our clients.

We're ingesting our clients' first-party data. We put it in their container for them. We enrich their data with our data set.

And then we hand the whole application back to them. And we're able to basically AI-ify our client's business in something like six to eight weeks, depending on the data sets that we're ingesting. Think about that.

If you're a business and you've got a bunch of first-party data, we can enrich that data. We can do that in a couple of months. We can give you the application back.

So, now you have a tool that you can ask business questions on. And they don't necessarily have to be media questions. We've got a client in the retail grocery space, and they're using the tool to understand where to build their next, or where to open their next three stores.

And, because of the information that we have in Blu, what products to put on the shelves based on a five-mile radius of the audience that is in that location. So, we're excited about the Blu platform. It opens up a host of possibilities.

It gives incredible power to our clients. And puts us in a more strategic position with our clients to help them answer some of these big business problems that just go beyond media.

Adam Katz
I'm sold. I'm sold. I'm in.

I'm in. I'm in.

Domenic Venuto
Well, you've seen that's high praise, because you've seen the product, and you get to see innovation across the industry, as well as what Sightly's doing, of course. So, you've got a broad purview. So, that's high praise.

I appreciate that.

Adam Katz
Yeah, I mean, listen. Obviously, I've seen them all. I've seen kind of what they do.

Everyone's product has their own differentiator or their own lean. And I think what you guys are doing is super special. And led by great people who have great ethics, which is always the key to these products in the end.

When it comes down to it, you're kind of hearing that theme. You're always interesting. You're always interested, right?

Who are some of the people that you learn from the most that you can kind of give advice to others to learn from for them? Like, what do you read? What do you think about?

What do you... Where do you go to learn today?

Domenic Venuto
It's an interesting question, because there is so much change. I think you have to be an omnivore. Like, you have to digest a lot of...

Adam Katz
All over.

Domenic Venuto
Like, yeah, you can't get your news from one site anymore. You have to have a plethora of news sources.

And I think that's the same in the industry. Innovation is coming in. Ideas come from everywhere.

So just have a very broad-based media diet and friend base and get out there. Ask a lot of questions and absorb. You don't know where the next idea is coming from.

But if I go back in my career history, I was fortunate when Publicis bought Razorfish in 2009. 2010, I moved to Viviki to help scale Audience on Demand, the agency trading desk. And in that capacity, I got to work with some of the industry titans in the media business.

Laura Desmond, Rashad Tabakawala, Jack Cluse, David Kenney, Bob, closely with Bob. And then get exposed to the brass at Publicis at the time, Maurice Levy and Jean-Yves Nauri, who was a COO. And I'd pinch myself at some times, like, how did I get here?

Because I didn't think of myself as a media guy or an advertising guy. I was building web-based products, creating digital revenue-generating products for clients. But it was an incredible experience and I got to learn a great deal.

And I still look fondly back at that time as my mentors. David Kenney went to the Weather Channel and then he was at IBM and was leading Watson. And then now he's chairman of Nielsen.

Adam Katz
You guys still have a relationship?

Domenic Venuto
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I chat to David every now and then. So yeah, the Razorfish, Digitas, Publicis cabal is very tight.

Adam Katz
You call it a cabal? I wanted to know what the name was.

Domenic Venuto
You can call it the mafia, you can call it a cabal. Pick your, pick the label.

Adam Katz
I didn't want to mafia you.

Domenic Venuto
These were, you go back, now we're reminiscing and maybe getting a little bit nostalgic, but that was an incredible time in the industry. There was so much growth and innovation. We're seeing that again.

And those were close-knit times, especially in the whole, in Chicago, where Starcom and Viviki were based, certainly in New York and Silicon Alley. And then obviously you had San Francisco and the Valley and the innovation that was happening there and the money that was going into ad tech at the time.

Adam Katz
What would you say was the most planes you've been on in one year?

Domenic Venuto
Oh, certainly with Publicis, because the Viviki job was global. I think I did...

Adam Katz
How can you think about how many times you've been on a plane listening to all this story, you know?

Domenic Venuto
Yeah, we spent a lot of time, spent a lot of time in Europe and Asia. I'd be in Shanghai and Delhi a week, a quarter. So that was like two weeks.

And then London every other week and Paris once a month or something like that. I mean, I think I did 260,000 miles one year. And then I continued because my role at Amovi was global.

The videology was global. We had Singapore. Singtel was our parent company.

So it was a lot of traveling, a lot of traveling there. But that was... Once you get into a rhythm and routine, you get to deal with the travel.

But again, it comes back to the people, like just forming relationships and having and building relationships with the people in Shanghai and in Delhi, seeing them and they became close friends. And those relationships are important when you're driving initiatives and transformation, but you're doing it with a notion between you. That's when the relationships really play out.

Adam Katz
Unbelievable. What was your favorite city to go to?

Domenic Venuto
Well, you know, London as an Australian-American or Australian, London is always special. So London was fun. I really enjoyed my time in Shanghai.

And then also, I don't know that I've got any one favorite, but being in Shanghai on a regular basis was fun. And Delhi as well, two very different cities. And Shanghai is like sparkling and gleaming, take away the smog.

But an energy in that city that was unmistakable. And then in Delhi, just the entrepreneurialism of the Indian culture and the pace of change that they were driving and just the friendliness of the people that we got to interact with there and the can-do attitude was really inspiring. I'd always come home after a trip to Delhi, just energized for what was possible.

Adam Katz
I love that. As we kind of come to the close here, I mean, we've learned a lot about your journey, who you are, your teaching. What do you think we missed today that you want people to know?

What's a mistake you made? It's been coming to my head. You've made so many great moves.

When did Dom strike out or miss the penalty kick?

Domenic Venuto
Well, there've been plenty of those for sure. But as they say, every mistake is an opportunity to learn. I think where I've had a misstep is, I can be, I am vision and goal driven.

And sometimes just in the pursuit of an objective, try and take a straight line from here to there. And sometimes that's not always the best path. You have to go around the mountain sometimes to get something done.

So taking a beat and most straight and direct line, which might be an obvious direction, a path that I would take may not be the path that others need to take. So have some patience, let other people chart the path, but be very clear about where the destination is.

Adam Katz
I got nothing left for you after that. Thank you for, this is a lot of fun, just shooting shit with you and getting to know you, learning more about you. People are gonna be inspired.

I'm gonna steal the be interesting and be interested for the rest of my career. Thank you for joining us today, I really appreciate it.

Domenic Venuto
I'm glad you were able to take something away and it was helpful. Always a pleasure talking to you, Adam, and I appreciate you having me on the podcast.

Adam Katz
All right, take care.

Domenic Venuto
Thanks, Adam.