Eric Picard

Current

• Director of Advertising Technology Strategy at Microsoft

Past

• Director, Product Management and Founder at Bluestreak
• Founder, Executive VP, Executive Producer at 9th Square, Inc.
• Founder, President at Waterworks Interactive, Inc.

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Education

• University of Cincinnati
• University of Rhode Island
• University of Rhode Island

• Rogers High School
• Franciscan University of Steubenville

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2 more...

Recommended

5 people have recommended Eric

Connections

469 connections

Industry

Online Media

Eric Picard’s Summary

Director of advertising technology strategy at Microsoft. Help set corporate-level strategy for how Microsoft approaches advertising from a business and technology standpoint.

Formerly founder and director of product management at Bluestreak. Oversaw advertising products, such as third-party ad serving, ad analytics, and rich media and led development of many company technologies. Bluestreak was founded in 1999, and raised $28 Million dollars from a variety of Venture Capital firms and Angel Investors.

Have held a number of positions at Bluestreak beyond simply recruiting the initial management team and assisting in raising capital. Overall responsibility for market research, product strategy, product development processes and, ultimately, the measurable success of those products in the market.

Helped pioneer rich media advertising in the late '90s and have been active in most of the critical industry conversations related to technology, including the IAB's Measurement Committee and Rich Media Task Force. Prior to Bluestreak, founded 9th Square Inc, and Waterworks Interactive Inc.

Enjoy startup experience, and my skills really lend to improving products and business models through a combination of intuitive understanding of what people want - and traditional market sensing techniques. Team building is another favorite part of this whole thing.

Write a monthly column on ClickZ, an online marketing publication.

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=clickz_author_fullarchive&author=3622782

Eric Picard’s Specialties:

Start-ups, Technology, Advertising, Product Strategy, Product Management, Venture Funding, Functionality, Usability, Online Advertising, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Interface Design

Eric Picard’s Experience

• Director of Advertising Technology Strategy

  Microsoft

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; MSFT; Online Media industry)

  December 2004 — Present (3 years 11 months)

  Help to set corporate-level strategy for how Microsoft approaches advertising from a business and technology standpoint. My team manages long-term advertising platform and product strategy, emerging media strategy, and planning for incubation and research teams, and designs next generation advertising products.

• Director, Product Management and Founder

  Bluestreak

  (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)

  March 1999 — December 2004 (5 years 10 months)

  Co-Founded Bluestreak out of the ashes of 9th Square. Bluestreak started out as the leader in Rich Media advertising - we were responsible for inventing many of the ad formats that became industry standards. We built a rich media ad server, creative production suite, rich media clients, and numerous additional capabilities such as an analytics suite, video ads, transactions within an ad, and did a lot of things with data that hadn't been done yet.
  
  In 2000 we began to shift focus to (Buy Side) 3rd Party ad serving - first to invent automated creative optomization, first to enable automated Flash creative tracking, and completely configurable reporting. I was responsible for advertising products - including product strategy, product management, program management, product development processes, and ultimately the measurable success of those products in the market. Our advertising products were incredibly profitable, highly scalable, and led the market in technical innovation.

• Founder, Executive VP, Executive Producer

  9th Square, Inc.

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)

  January 1998 — March 1999 (1 year 3 months)

  Founded and built executive management team at 9th Square, Inc. Raised initial seed round of financing from local angel investors. Sold assets of company in 1999.

• Founder, President

  Waterworks Interactive, Inc.

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)

  May 1996 — January 1998 (1 year 9 months)

  Founded small boutique web application development firm - one of the first firms doing the kinds of high end application development we were doing. Had great clients, such as Compaq, Microsoft, Digital, etc... But this business wasn't scalable. Great experience though.

Eric Picard’s Education

• University of Cincinnati

  MFA, Photography, Electronic Media, 1993 — 1996

  Worked almost exclusively on interactive digital art projects, including very high end Virtual Reality and realtime 3D, CD-ROM Authoring, and Web Based Projects. Also taught photography to undergraduate students.

• University of Rhode Island

  BA, Fine Art, 1991 — 1993

  Studied photography under Bart Parker (http://www.bartparker.com). Began shifting focus to digital as I became sensitive to photo chemistry - too many immersions in direct positive chemicals!

• University of Rhode Island

  BA, History, 1988 — 1991

  Studied history - focused on US 20th Century.

• Rogers High School

  1981 — 1989

• Franciscan University of Steubenville

  history 1986 — 1988