About

Optimal, Inc. is the leading social advertising and analytics platform, with offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, Chicago, and London. The company is a member of Facebook's Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program. Contact us to learn more

Why Work With Us

Since 2008, Optimal's audience-based ad technologies have managed and optimized over 100 billion impressions for advertisers and agencies. Our proprietary audience analytics suite and real-time social media-buying platform are robust and easy-to-use, and help advertisers achieve their engagement and performance goals. In 2012, we released the first entirely self-service Facebook buying platform to support Marketplace, Mobile, Premium and FBX retargeting in a single interface. Optimal, Inc. is funded by prominent advertising technology investors and our expert team provides world-class support to our clients.

“Anyone serious about growing their customer base should be looking at this [Optimal Analytics] data. ”
– Ilya Vedrashko, SVP Analytics, Hill-Holliday

“Optimal’s services and platform showed Optimedia how to gain incremental scale and efficiency on behalf of our client, and proved key to our overall buying strategy. We were able to optimize bids and identify the best-performing portions of campaigns in real time, quickly generating insights that were re-integrated back into the buy.”
– Rudy Grahn, VP, Optimedia

"I'm in love with this tool called Optimal [Analytics]. We use that tool to discover new audiences to target on Facebook."
– Nate Luman, Head of Facebook Media, Zappos.com [video]

"The Optimal Expander targets on Facebook returned 300% lift on conversions vs. a control set of advertisements. I strongly encourage any brand or agency looking to generate conversions on Facebook to make frequent use of the Optimal Keyword tools."
– Alan Edgett, Co-Founder, GetPerception

Team

Rob Leathern, Founder and CEO

Rob cofounded Optimal, Inc. in 2008 with David Li. He previously held senior management, business development and marketing positions with Consorte Media, NexTag and Root Markets. He was an early employee at LinkedIn where he was director of marketing and then LinkedIn's first General Manager of advertising. Prior to these roles, Rob spent four and a half years as a senior market research analyst at Jupiter Research and Nielsen NetRatings, covering ecommerce, payments and online retail, and two years on Wall Street. He holds the CFA designation and is a proud graduate of Dartmouth College (Computer Science and Economics) and Pretoria Boys High School (South Africa). Widely recognized as an advertising, data and social media expert, his commentary is frequently sought by media outlets like NPR, CNBC, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, AdWeek, AdAge, Adexchanger, Bloomberg, Forbes and others. See our blog for recent press mentions and commentary.

David Li, Founder and CTO

David leads the technology team and oversees product development and platform infrastructure. He was previously Chief Architect at Consorte Media where he led the development of the company’s ad buying platform to streamline workflow via deep integrations into Google AdWords, Yahoo! RightMedia, and Salesforce. Prior to Consorte Media, he worked as a technical lead at Root Markets, where he designed and implemented web applications for the company’s lead generation exchange platform, and built ad serving and conversion optimization systems. Previously he was a senior engineer at Zip Realty and BenefitPoint. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from San Jose State University.

Paul Suh, CFO

Paul joined Optimal in January 2013. Most recently, he was the SVP of Finance and Operations for Live Gamer, Inc. which acquired Gamer DNA Media in June of 2011, where Paul was the CFO and COO. Prior to that, Paul served as the COO of Flexplay Technologies which was sold to the Convex Group in 2004 and was part of the corporate development team at About.com prior to the acquisition by Primedia. Paul began his career as an investment banker in New York, after graduating from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Patrick Toland, CRO

Patrick is responsible for revenue growth and managing the company’s sales and client services operations. Prior to Optimal, Patrick was senior vice president and managing director of North America at UK-based social marketing agency TBG Digital where he established the social ad agency as one of the largest third-party buyers of Facebook advertising. Previously, Patrick co-founded Incentive Networks, which was acquired by WebLoyalty in 2008. In addition, Patrick has worked in business development and marketing roles at companies including Schoolpop, Digital River, CNET and Edelman Worldwide.

Jonathan Wood, VP Platform

Jonathan leads Optimal’s world-class product team, which recently delivered the Optimal News Feed Promoter: a winner of Facebook's inaugural PMD Innovation Competition. Prior to Optimal, he directed operations and was a founding member of 5:1, a premium display network acquired by Yahoo!. Jonathan has a track record of building successful technology organizations. His first start-up -- GoodStorm, where he was VP of Product -- was acquired by Zazzle in 2007. Jonathan graduated from the University of Hawai’i with a double major in Philosophy and Literature.

Jamie McCrindle, VP Engineering

Jamie joined Optimal in 2011 and leads the real time bidding and analytics technology teams. Before joining Optimal, Jamie was a founding member and Chief Technology Officer at Strategic Imperatives, a successful telecommunications start-up in the UK. Prior to Strategic Imperatives, Jamie led the team that built the self-service customer management platform for UK wireless carrier 3 mobile. Jamie was the technology lead for Zawya.com, a leading provider of financial news in the Middle East. Jamie has an honours degree in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town.

Ben Miles, Sr Dr Client Ops

Ben Miles is the Senior Director of Client Services, where he is responsible for managing the account management and analyst team at Optimal. Prior to Optimal, Ben was client operations director for TBG Digital, a social media marketing agency, where he was directly responsible for the client services team in North America. Ben has nearly 10 years of experience in the digital marketing space, working for large media companies such as CNET, Yahoo, and eBay. He graduated from UC Berkeley.

Dan Ho, Sr Dr Marketing

Dan leads Optimal’s marketing and PR efforts. He was previously an Account Director at Initiative Media (part of the Interpublic Group), where he oversaw digital planning and strategy for Intuit’s TurboTax (a top 10 online advertiser) and worked with Citi Home Loans, Home Depot, and Hitachi. Prior to Initiative, Dan managed display advertising and revenue optimization at NexTag, and was a product manager for Root Markets. Dan graduated from Princeton University with a BSE degree in Electrical Engineering, and is pursuing an MBA from UCLA Anderson’s School of Management.

Jonah Goodhart, Board Member

Jonah is the Co-Founder and CEO of Moat, and was the founding investor and board member of Right Media (sold to Yahoo!), and a Founding Partner of WGI Group. He has been a member of Optimal's board since WGI Group's investment in the company in 2008. Visit Jonah's LinkedIn Profile.

James Altucher, Board Member

James manages a portfolio of 20 angel investments, which included Buddy Media (sold to Salesforce.com), Ticketfly, Bitly, and Ctera. He sits on the board of several companies, has started and sold several companies, ran a venture capital firm, traded for hedge funds and ran a fund of hedge funds. James' blog is well-known (jamesaltucher.com) and he has written over 10 books including "I Was Blind But Now I See", "FAQ ME", and "40 Alternatives To College". His thoughts are often featured in the WSJ, Techcrunch, Forbes, Seeking Alpha, and he has been profiled in print by The New Yorker, Haaretz, and Business Week.

Suraj Kumar Rajwani, Board Member

Suraj Kumar Rajwani is a co-founder and partner of DoubleRock. He has lived in Beijing and Shanghai for over 3 years and is always pushing for his portfolio companies to expand internationally.He has over seven years of management and M&A experience in Silicon Valley, China and India. He was the Managing Director of the Global Network Entrepreneurs Network Organization (GENO), an entrepreneurial organization with over 27 chapters worldwide. As head of sales and marketing, he grew GENO's footprint to over 23 countries and led product expansion into new areas such as enterprise pricing and enterprise incentive management. Visit Suraj's LinkedIn Profile.

Mike Greenfield, Advisor

Mike cofounded and was CTO of Circle of Moms (sold to Sugar in 2012) and prior to that, was the Sr. Analytics Scientist at LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, he was responsible for much of PayPal's back-end predictive fraud modeling. He graduated with honors from Stanford with a degree in Mathematical and Computational Science. His LinkedIn profile is here.

Lou Kerner, Advisor

Lou is the founder and Managing Partner of The Social Internet Fund. His recent investments include Appia, appsavvy, Bottlenose, Evr.st, GameSalad, ITAgility, Meetup, Optimal, PushTotest, Scribd, TripleLift, and Yashi. He was Managing Director of the Private Securities Group at Wedbush Morgan, and prior to that was the President of Bolt Media. Before Bolt, Lou was CEO of the .tv Corporation (acquired by Verisign) and Vice President of Equity Research at Goldman Sachs. See him on LinkedIn.

Spencer Scott, Advisor

Spencer Scott is VP of Sales at Fiksu. Spencer has 15+ years of business development experience with early stage ventures in complex digital ecosystems, including video solutions provider OneScreen and search engine marketing innovator Adverplex. Spencer was founder and CEO of ColoAccess, a colocation consulting company, and spent the early part of his career at Verizon and MCI. He holds a BS in Business Administration from Boston University. Spencer's LinkedIn profile.

Tom Cole, Advisor

Tom is the CEO of Beau-coup, the leading online retailer of favors, gifts, and supplies for weddings and other celebrations of life events. Beau-coup has been profitable since inception with continuous year-over-year growth. Previously, Tom was a General Partner at Trinity Ventures for over 10 years, where he co-managed a partnership managing over $1 billion in venture capital funds. He is a graduate of Stanford's Graduate School for Business and Yale University. His LinkedIn profile.

Edmond Jonckheere, Advisor

Edmond A. Jonckheere, Ph.D. is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Mathematics at the University of Southern California (USC). His research interests include topological methods in robust control, control of (biological) chaos, quantum control, control of noncommutative dynamics, coarse geometry methods in networks: network curvature, Gromov-hyperbolic graphs, and application to routing, congestion, sensor network geographical localization, and autonomous agents. His USC Faculty Page.

John Pappajohn, Advisor

With over 50 years of experience in entrepreneurial endeavors, John Pappajohn is one of the most recognized and celebrated business leaders in and outside of the Midwest. Mr. Pappajohn has organized and financed the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Centers at five different universities and colleges in the state of Iowa for more than $30 million. These centers have helped create and launch over 1,000 new companies. In 1969, Mr. Pappajohn organized Equity Dynamics, Inc., a financial consulting entity and Pappajohn Capital Resources, a venture capital firm in Des Moines, Iowa. He was one of the early venture capitalists. Since this time, Mr. Pappajohn has been involved in over 100 start ups and has served as a Director in over 40 public companies.More information here.