Remember me
In the spring of 2006, a young strategist at Digitas named David Dugan was handed an assignment: help figure out what the agency was worth, and what to do about it.
The work was delicate, and it required someone who could think in two registers at once, the analytical and the transactional. Digitas would be sold to Publicis the following year. Dugan moved on. But the people who worked alongside him during those months didn’t forget him.
One of them was Michael Kassan, the consultant — now CEO and founder of 3C Ventures — who had been brought in to help navigate the deal.
“He was assigned to work with me to develop the strategy — kind of a Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote,” said Kassan.
That framing, two decades on, requires some revision. The faithful squire, it turns out, had his own quests in mind.
Now he’s heading to OpenAI to lead the global advertising business the company has already begun rapidly building. Kassan, for one, isn’t surprised.
“David’s got a strong strategic side, and an equally strong sales side — he’s a builder and a seller. And that’s exactly what OpenAI needs,” said Kassan, who credits OpenAI’s CEO of applications Fidji Simo with the smarts to hire Dugan for the role. “For three months we bonded. But I’ve considered him a friend ever since,” said Kassan.
That early impression, of someone equally comfortable shaping strategy and closing deals, has followed Dugan throughout his career. After earning a BA in business economics from Brown University, he began as a consultant at Capgemini in 1993, before joining Digitas in 1996. Each step reinforced it – strategy lead at Digitas, president of word-of-mouth marketing firm social media startup BzzAgent where he led its sale to Tesco and chief commercial officer at Havas’ Arnold Worldwide – roles that required both skills simultaneously.
At Meta, where he spent more than a decade managing relationships with the world’s largest advertisers and holdcos, the two became inseparable. He joined in 2013 and oversaw the tech firm’s global partnership with WPP before stepping up to lead its global agency team and then the wider global clients and agencies vp role. Along the way he worked closely with Simo – one of the key architects of Meta’s ads business – and Carolyn Everson, who served as the social media company’s chief emissary to the ad industry during its most commercially formative years. Dugan, in other words, has seen the walled garden built from the inside.
“Regarding Dave, he is truly one of the best professionals in the business,” said Ben Moore, managing director of U.S. at BeReal. “I’ve known him since my agency days, he led the agency business at Meta for over a decade. This is a great move for him. His primary strengths lie in building deep, lasting industry relationships.”
If ever there was a role that demanded that combination of skills, it is this one. OpenAI needs to get advertising right. The company is hurtling toward a public listing, it is burning through capital at a rate that makes even its most bullish backers wince and subscriptions alone will not cover the bill.
Advertising won’t either, but it will help, and that means convincing agencies and their clients to commit serious money to an unproven format in a market where every major platform is competing for the same budgets. Netflix learned that when it hired Jeremi Gorman and Peter Naylor in 2022 to stand up its own ad business. Advertiser trust isn’t built through product alone – at least not at the start. It’s built through relationships – and relationships are won or lost by the people in the room.
“Dave’s a strong leader who attracts talent, and he’s spent years building trust with the world’s largest agencies and brands through good times and bad in his roles at Meta,” said Steve Irvine, founder and CEO of integrate.ai, who worked closely with Dugan for several years at Meta (then Facebook). “What I think sets him apart is his ability to bridge advertiser needs with internal product and engineering teams. He knows how to push for solutions that are effective for advertisers and genuinely additive for consumers.”
Professional reputation, though, only tells part of the story. The people who know Dugan well tend to reach, unprompted for the same take.
“A bunch of the time we spent together was talking about family, passions, the mission of the company, and the impact on people and customers,” said Irvine. “He is caring and considerate in addition to being smart and strategic.
Moore puts it more simply: “throughout his tenure at Meta, I also knew him to be very family-oriented.”
Tony Evans, founder of onv.ai, who worked alongside him at Meta, offered a telling detail – that for all the seniority and the global client relationships, Dugan was the kind of person who would turn up to the airport in running shoes and think nothing of it – a habit that feels fitting, given he’s set to run the Boston Marathon on April 20, this year.
The ad industry has a long memory for the people who made things better and a longer one for those who didn’t. Dugan, by most accounts, falls firmly in the first camp.
“We worked in different teams that were co-dependent,” said Evans. “Dave had this great ability to coordinate many complex interests – both internal and external – to find a solution that worked for the end client, whilst keeping everyone internally not just engaged but excited by the work.”
Even those who never worked directly with him say much the same.
“I worked with David’s team while he was at Meta and trying to push more and more into AI-led products, such as their Advantage+ offering,” said Shamsul Chowdhury, svp paid social at Zeno Group. “As OpenAI starts to dabble into the world of advertising, they will want someone who has spearheaded that initiative at scale, and David has definitely done so at Meta.”
The company that once saw advertising as a last resort has hired someone in Dugan who has spent a career making it feel like the only logical choice. The rest, as they say, is execution.
OpenAI did not respond to Digiday’s request for comment.
Senior media buying editor Michael Bürgi contributed reporting to this article
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