The Mystery Man Who Made Amazon an Ad Giant

Paul Kotas helped turn Amazon into the No. 3 player in the digital advertising market, creating one of its most profitable businesses, all while remaining largely under the radar. Next up for him: a push to snatch more dollars from TV ad budgets.

and

Art by Mike Sullivan

Paul Kotas may be the most important person in internet advertising that almost nobody in advertising has ever heard of.

Mention Kotas—the leader of Amazon’s burgeoning, multibillion-dollar ad businesses—around ad agencies, as The Information did to more than a half-dozen senior ad executives, and you’ll get blank stares. One of those executives, whose agency will spend between $100 million and $150 million on streaming video ads alone this year with Amazon, Google-stalked Kotas in the middle of a phone interview to see if he could recognize Kotas. He couldn’t.

“I have not heard of him,” said David Campanelli, co–chief investment officer at Horizon Media, a top ad agency, when asked about Kotas.