Adswerve is a premier data, media, and technology consultancy that operates at the intersection of adtech and martech. It leverages its agnostic expertise as a leading partner with Google Marketing Platform, Google Cloud, Adobe and many other respected solution providers to help brands and agencies maximize the ROI of their digital marketing. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Adswerve CEO Tom Zawacki to learn more.
Tom Zawacki’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Zawacki said:
“I’ve spent more than 30 years in the adtech/martech space, at both agencies and advertising technology companies. Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of leading teams that have built meaningful marketing innovations that enable better, richer customer experiences and client success.”
“I’ve founded start-ups and held leadership roles in global enterprise-level organizations. The common thread across all of them is my passion for creating vibrant cultures that celebrate entrepreneurial spirit and innovation.”
“I was a Princeton University Anthropology major, immersing myself in what makes cultures unique. I applied this to marketing strategy and tech development, as every campaign, or UX, starts with understanding the hearts and minds of the audience.”
“I’ve had the privilege of witnessing and influencing at least three waves of category-changing innovation in our industry. The first when I was leading digital agencies, and placing our clients’ first banners online. The next 10 years, I served in platform development working on DSP, DMP, ESP, Social, and e-commerce. And most recently, I’ve been in data and AI, creating models and agents to drive personalization and improved business results.”
Across each chapter of my career, I’ve had a curiosity and passion for understanding audiences, innovation, and improving ROI for my clients. Their success is my success.”
“On a personal note, I’ve served as the varsity baseball coach for our local high school. In addition to allowing me to stay connected with a sport I played and love, it’s another opportunity for me to build culture, and develop people, which energizes me.”
Primary Responsibilities
What are your primary responsibilities? Zawacki shared:
“Similar to the leaders of Bhutan, I strive to be the Chief Happiness Officer. I have 3 things I focus on:
- Employee happiness – motivated and passionate teams create successful companies
- Client happiness – driving ROI for them every day while ensuring we exceed expectations and increase satisfaction
- Company happiness – Adswerve is a growth company with an eye toward innovation and revenue growth by enabling our customers to be the best marketers in the world
Ultimately, my functional responsibility as CEO is to build upon Adswerve’s success and help accelerate its next chapter of growth.”
“Specifically, I think the organization has been very humble about our capabilities, and I don’t think the market is aware of Adswerve’s deep expertise, or the breadth of solutions we offer. I want to share our story more deeply with our clients and strategic partners.”
“Secondarily, as I mentioned earlier, I believe we are in a moment of disruptive change in our industry. Marketing will be redefined over the next 3-5 years, and brands that build their capabilities responsibly, balance human intelligence and artificial intelligence, and employ technology to deepen their connection with their customers will be those that not only endure, but thrive.”
“I view my role as ensuring Adswerve is poised to lead that change for our employees and clients today and in the future.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Zawacki reflected:
“Well, I’ve only been with Adswerve for a few months, but one thing that has immediately struck me is the energy and enthusiasm within our team and externally with our partners. Our team genuinely cares for one another, their clients, our partners, and the quality of what we do every day. It is clear that Adswerve delivers real value and confidence to those with whom we work, which is tremendously exciting to me.”
“So, my favorite memory so far is Adswerve celebrates the 10th anniversary of each employee with a significant “appreciation bonus.” One of our team members used his bonus to take his dad, a long-time Eagles fan, to the Super Bowl last year. Even as a diehard NY Giants fan, I love this. Adswerve is a company that really values and supports its people.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Zawacki explained:
“Adswerve sits squarely at the intersection of adtech and martech, offering consulting services and performance media solutions that help marketers and agencies unlock the power and potential of their marketing. We provide:
- Data Solutions – technology solutions that help manage, clean, unify and democratize data
- Intelligence Solutions – maximizing the data foundation to achieve identity resolution, and advanced modeling (e.g. propensity models, generative audiences, and predictive ROI analysis) to determine the best audience, channel, creative, and offer for paid and owned experiences
- Customer Experience Solutions – strategy and management of acquisition and retention campaigns, optimizing performance, deploying AI-driven personalization for more relevant omnichannel customer experiences
- Measurement Solutions – Campaign analysis, multi-touch fractional attribution, and marketing mix modeling, and data visualization dashboards
- Consulting Services – Ecosystem Audits, Three-year Predictive Marketing Roadmaps, Campaign strategies
- “Connect” Agentic Marketing Platform – helping marketers get the most out of their workflow tools, improve speed, enhance productivity, and automate manual tasks through LLMs and AI agents.
We partner with the best product platforms in the industry to deliver these solutions. We are Google’s oldest and largest U.S. performance media partner, and three-time Adobe Partner of the Year, and work with other industry leaders like Amazon, Amplitude, Microsoft, Snowflake, etc. to ensure we implement the best solution for our clients’ requirements. Internally, we employ more than 250+ data scientists, media specialists, and analytics industry thought leaders to develop, implement, and integrate these marketing, analytics, and cloud platforms.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? Zawacki acknowledged:
“Remote working environments and building a culture with employees, partners, and clients. There is no substitute for being in person. We have been named the best place to work several years in a row, in part because we work extremely hard on culture-building and strong collaboration remotely. We have a concerted effort around internal communications, including regular and frequent all-hands meetings, forums, newsletters, and Slack channels dedicated to sharing, celebrating, informing, training, and inspiring our teams.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Zawacki noted:
“This is a great question. Adswerve is a 15-year-old company, founded initially as Google’s first U.S. adtech reseller. We have expanded significantly to address the growing needs of our clients since, with:
- A fast-growing Adobe practice – implementing Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, Adobe Journey Optimizer, and RT-CDP.
- Expanding Google solutions across the Google Marketing Platform and Google Cloud Platform.
- Adding new data, analytics, and media partner solutions from Amazon, Amplitude, Snowflake, as well as agentic solutions incorporating Gemini and Vertex AI, Sensei, and Firefly, and more.
- Additionally, we have built proprietary products and consulting services that help our clients define their requirements, audit their existing ecosystems, and implement solutions that not only provide immediate value to their organizations but can also evolve with their needs and technology over time.
We have leveraged our strong reputation for strategically and flawlessly implementing martech and adtech solutions.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Zawacki cited:
“The expansion of our services didn’t happen overnight, but through a series of acquisitions and in-house investment – from our purchase of Analytics Pros in 2018, to expanding our demand- and supply-side media offerings this year.”
“That said, the new products planned for this coming year are perhaps the most exciting and will allow us to better meet the needs of more customers. Proprietary AI solutions such as propensity modeling, agentic data science, and our Adswerve Connect AI Support Agent are helping our clients deliver better results more efficiently.”
“Candidly, as impressed as I was about Adswerve’s rich history, these most recent capabilities are why I was so excited to join the company.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Zawacki highlighted:
“Yes, we have a consistent reputation of delivering value and impact to the Brands and Agencies we serve. A few of our most recent examples:
- Alaska Airlines: Building a customer Meridian MMM to deliver $100M in incremental revenue opportunity
- Betterment: Reducing the financial services firm’s CPA by 10% with a customer-bidding script
- Six Flags: Utilizing real-time social sentiment and GenAI for the entertainment giant to improve in-park customer experience
And we’re excited to share more examples soon – kicking off projects to optimize media buys for a national professional home services provider; increase ROAS for agencies managing campaigns for their clients; and build dynamic/real-time customer audience segmentation for a major US retailer by implementing Adobe Customer Journey Analytics solutions.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Zawacki assessed:
“We have a significant total addressable market that is primarily made up of two segments – mid-market and challenger brands, and agencies. Companies that require a focus on ROI, innovation, and enterprise-level strategy, who value a martech partner who works fast, flexibly and at a reasonable cost.”
“We have developed expertise and practice areas in vertical industries such as Travel, Hospitality, Retail, Consumer Products, Finance, Insurance, Entertainment, and Healthcare – thoughtfully defining their unique requirements not just for today, but for their future, and integrating AI to enable human intelligence to act faster, more efficiently, and with more certainty.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Zawacki affirmed:
“First and foremost, I think it is our people-first culture – with both clients, strategic partners, and employees. Our partners and customers consistently cite our empathy, expertise, and service level as the reason they stay with Adswerve. I believe that is why our client retention, renewal, and average client tenure are so high, and why we are frequently asked to speak at our partners’ industry events. Our folks, while brilliant, are authentic – people you’d want to have a beer with.”
“Second, our 15-year track record of delivering results (ROI) for our clients. Our teams are expert and passionate. We deliver high-quality work, quickly.”
“Third, the breadth of our expertise – because we work across technologies and platforms, we are able to utilize the best tools for our clients’ requirements, and capably develop and implement breakthrough innovations to help them make an impact.”
“Lastly, I believe our philosophy of Augmented Intelligence is a separator for us – specifically our ability to build solutions that allow Human Intelligence (people) to be enhanced by, rather than replaced by, Artificial Intelligence. There are firms claiming AI can and should replace teams entirely, but we believe we can deliver the richest results when technology enables a marketing team.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Zawacki concluded:
“Our company vision is to make a positive impact every day, which provides a north star for our goals. How do we define ‘positive impact’? We want to be known as the company that enables our customers to be the greatest marketers in the world. We want to ensure every Adswerve team member accomplishes their life goals. And as a company, we want to contribute positively to our communities.”
“From a business goals perspective, I am bullish about the future for Adswerve. As the industry and technology reinvent themselves, we will be at the forefront of innovation and helping our customers navigate through the disruption. I see us continuing to lead in performance media solutions, expand our consultative solutions, and build out our agentic AI libraries smartly and responsibly to fully meet the future needs of the market.”
