Eric Picard

An execution-oriented strategically minded product leader with more than 20 years of experience in technology, product and business roles. Eric is Vice President of Product Management for Advertising at Pandora. Eric was Vice President of Omni-Channel Media at MediaMath from 2014 - 2016. Eric founded and was the CEO at Rare Crowds from 2012-2014 - the company was acquired by MediaMath. Eric was the Chief Product Officer at TRAFFIQ reporting to CEO Nick Pahade from 2010-2012. He lead Product Management, Engineering, Quality Assurance and Technical Operations. Eric previously held a variety of roles at Microsoft from 2004 - 2010: In 2010, Eric took on his last project at Microsoft; Starting the Bing Business Portal, reporting to Peter Mansour. From 2008-10 he was the Advertising Technology Advisor to the Advertising Platform Engineering team reporting to Alex Gounares, CVP of Ads Engineering. From 2007 - 2008 Eric reported to Tarek Najm, Technical Fellow, working on long term ad technology projects as well as managing the long term technology vision process for the Online Services Division. From 2004-2007 he was Director of Advertising Technology Strategy & Emerging Media Product Management reporting to Joe Doran. He led long term ad technology strategy as well as the product management function for advertising in Mobile, OTT Video, Video Games, Long Term Display (RTB), Ads in Software, and Local. From 1997 - 2004 Eric was founder and director of product management at Bluestreak, where he oversaw advertising products, such as third-party ad serving, ad analytics, and rich media products. He helped pioneer rich media advertising in the late 90s, inventing many of the common formats today. From 1996-1997 Eric was Founder and CEO of Waterworks Interactive, an early boutique web software development firm.

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