A Speciale Role At Data-Driven Start-Up Audyns

Advertising industry legend Donna Speciale, an early advocate of audience-based targeting, has been named a senior advisor to Audyns, a startup using agentic-AI to build driven linear campaigns.

Audyns was launched in May by former ad sales veterans Michael Strober, Dan Aversano and long-time agency media buyer Todd Gordon. 

Strober and Aversan0 worked with Speciale when she was head of advertising sales at Turner Broadcasting. And when she left her most recent post as president of advertising sales and marketing at TelevisaUnivision, Strober told The Measure he called to recruit her.

Under Speciale, Turner was one of the partners that launched OpenAP in 2017, an initiative designed to standardize advanced audiences and make it easier for agencies and advertisers to target the audiences they want to reach and not be limited to the old-school age and sex demographics.

“It’s the dream team, right? Dan and I know the mechanics, but Donna, she’s a personality, she is the ambassador,” Strober said. “We’re so proud and excited that we have her joining us. She has so much credibility and she’s a great spokesperson for everything we’re doing.”

Speciale said that the industry needed OpenAP because audience buying was too complicated. “Things are still complex. With all the fragmentation, and the growth of CTV and streaming, it got even more complex,” she said.

Audyns has been built using agentic AI, which provides agencies with a simple and transparent platform for planning and buying data-driven linear ad campaigns that deliver better outcomes. The company continues to work closely with OpenAP on standardized audiences. 

“It’s not experimental anymore. The publishers are going to have the scale, and the agencies and the advertisers are basically going to have the simplicity in the automation. And the timing is perfect,” said Speciale, who signed on after taking a few months to travel to Portugal and Italy.

Audyns has access inventory from a number of independent networks generating 400 billion impressions a year, or about 11% of the non-sports cable impressions. 

“Obviously our goal is to continue to keep growing,” Strober said. That includes getting access to streaming inventory. “We are in discussions. That is a big priority for us for 2026.”

Strober said Audyns expects to have more people join Speciale on the company’s advisory board after New Year’s. 

With a few months under his belt, Strober said he’s learned how great demand would be for a platform that could make data-driven linear easier for agencies and their clients.

“We didn’t realize until we started getting deeper into the market, talking to both agencies and clients, how vital something like this is to help improve and remain relevant and competitive in today's market, especially with premium video,” he said. 

Cable’s share of viewing has shrunk with cord cutting and the shift of content to streaming. Buyers now want to look at plans that combine cable and streaming.

That means they’re not buying individual cable networks like they used to. “It’s so fragmented, it’s hard to do that,” Strober said. “We can help to simplify, make it a scalable solution that is automated and takes a lot of the friction out. That’s what I think they’re looking for in today’s new modern media landscape, and that’s what we hope to achieve and provide.”

The search for an easy button intensifies as the industry consolidates, especially on the agency side. Companies like Audyns can benefit if parts of the buying function are automated and outsourced.

Ad dollars will continue to follow eyeballs to streaming, Strober said. “From a linear standpoint, especially cable, you know they’re struggling and they do have inventory. If we can help scale it for advertisers and bring additional revenue to the publishers, it’s a win-win for both sides."

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JamLoop, an ad-tech company focused on bringing performance advertising to CTV, said it named Jeff Fagel as chief marketing officer and promoted Osana Korsakova, who had been in charge of marketing, to COO.

Fagel had been CMO at Epsilon and Madhive. He’s also held marketing posts at PepsiCo, Gatorade, Frito-Lay and ConAgra.

Fagel said advertisers want to know how much of a return they’re getting for their spending. “JamLoop answers that with a CTV advertising platform built from the ground up for precision, flexibility, and measurable results,” he said. “The explosion of AI, self-service, and local activation has created new urgency – and new opportunity. My goal is to elevate the conversation and help brands treat TV advertising as a growth engine, not a guessing game.”

Korsakova was CMO at JamLoop for two years after joining the company from Oracle.

“Performance is in our DNA, and so is accountability,” said Korsakova. “My goal is to build operational systems that scale with our clients’ ambitions, from onboarding to attribution, while forging the publisher and data relationships that give advertisers a true edge.”

JamLoop said that its revenue is up 35% year-over-year, and average revenue per customer has increased 48%.