AdDaptive: Interview With Co-Founders Patrick Shea And Kevin O’Malley About The B2B Ad Provider – Pulse 2.0

AdDaptive Intelligence is a B2B advertising technology provider that leverages AI and validated, proprietary data to bridge offline and online information, enabling businesses to execute targeted account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns with high precision. Pulse 2.0 interviewed AdDaptive co-founders Patrick Shea and Kevin O’Malley to learn more.
Patrick Shea And Kevin O’Malley’s Background

(L to R: Kevin O’Malley & Patrick Shea)
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Could you tell me more about your background?
AdDaptive (Kevin): I’ve spent most of my career in digital advertising, with a focus on helping B2B marketers connect with the right audiences. Over the years, I’ve worked across data-driven marketing, analytics, and account-based strategies, which really shaped my perspective on where the gaps were in the industry. That experience led me to co-found AdDaptive, where my role today centers around guiding the vision of the company and making sure we’re consistently delivering value to our clients.
AdDaptive (Patrick): My background is also rooted in advertising technology and B2B marketing. I’ve had the chance to work in both operational and strategic roles, so I’ve seen firsthand how complex it can be for marketers to connect digital efforts to business outcomes. At AdDaptive, I focus on scaling the business, building partnerships, and making sure we’re aligned with our clients’ evolving needs.
Formation Of The Company 
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): How did the idea for the company come together? 
AdDaptive (Patrick): The idea came from our early work in the publisher space around 2007–2009, when we saw how data was starting to transform advertising. Campaigns performed dramatically better when powered by audience insights, and we realized there was untapped value in datasets that weren’t yet being activated.
Publishers, for example, had incredibly rich niche data, but needed better tools to put it to work. That insight led to our first audience extension platform — giving them a way to harness their own data and capture the value directly.
Over time, we saw even bigger potential in B2B, where long sales cycles and complex buying groups made precision data even more critical. That shift opened the door to working directly with major brands, helping them activate their own marketing data in ways that drive clear outcomes.
At its core, the company has always been about the same idea: unlocking underutilized data and building tools that turn it into measurable marketing performance.
Favorite Memory 
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far?
AdDaptive (Patrick): One of my favorite memories is both personal and professional. On a personal level, I loved our first office Halloween party about eight years ago, where we brought in kids from our team—some of whom are now off to college. It really made me appreciate the tight-knit, long-lasting community we’ve built here. On a professional level, signing large clients stands out. In one scenario, the client evaluated 70 different ad tech partners and chose us, even making an exception for our unique solution. It was a nice validation of our platform and the team’s hard work.
For me, a proud moment has been watching the longevity of our team. When seeing our first wave of early employees receive their 10-year plaques, it struck me how rare it is for so many people to stay with a company this long. Now we’re seeing a second wave of long-tenured employees, which speaks to the culture we’ve built.
AdDaptive (Kevin): Another highlight was being included in the Forrester Wave study for B2B Advertising Solutions, alongside some of the largest and most well-respected companies in the industry. For AdDaptive to be mentioned on the same stage as globally established industry leaders was a tremendous validation of the strength, innovation, and competitiveness we have built in one of the most competitive markets in the world.
Core Products 
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What are the company’s core products and features?
AdDaptive (Patrick): Our core product is our platform — it’s really the engine behind everything we do. The platform is built around four key capabilities: Activate, Reach, Engage, and Analyze.
Activate: We help brands, agencies, and publishers activate their data — whether it’s first-party, partner, or contextual — so it can actually drive performance.
Reach: We then find and reach the right audiences across all channels, executing campaigns as a managed service to deliver on key business KPIs.
Engage: This is where optimization comes in. We focus on outcome-based marketing, driving the qualified engagement, pipeline, and sales outcomes our clients care about most.
Analyze: Finally, we close the loop with robust analytics. We feed intelligence back into both marketing and sales teams, creating a two-way data cycle that sharpens future campaigns and deepens audience understanding.
At its core, the platform is about transforming underutilized data into measurable marketing outcomes, and making that process smarter every time.
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology 
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): How has the company’s technology evolved since launching?
AdDaptive (Kevin): While the foundation of our targeting technology has stayed the same, the richness of our data and the sophistication of our analytics have completely transformed the platform.
Our core targeting technology has remained consistent since launch — using IP-to-postal mapping to connect digital activity with real-world business data. What’s evolved significantly is the breadth and depth of the data itself.
Early on, it was as simple as identifying that a company sat at a specific IP address. Today, we’ve layered in a wide range of firmographic and business-level data by partnering with multiple B2B data providers, which has dramatically enhanced the precision and quality of our targeting.
Another major evolution was the introduction of our analytics product. At launch, the platform was essentially a one-way targeting tool. Now, with ABM-style analytics and detailed firmographic insights, we give clients a feedback loop — not just executing campaigns but reporting on outcomes, informing sales and marketing teams, and powering the next cycle of campaigns.

Significant Milestones 
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones?
AdDaptive (Kevin): Some of our most significant milestones have been both product- and market-driven. On the product side, launching Campaign Analytics and later Site Analytics was transformative—moving us beyond targeting to delivering deep ABM insights and setting us apart as a true partner in account-based marketing.
On the market side, we’ve expanded from working primarily with publishers to building strong partnerships with agencies and now directly with some of the world’s largest brands. When our analytics are embedded directly into our clients’ sales and marketing workflow, we help their teams prioritize outreach and accelerate deals.
Together, these milestones reflect how we’ve scaled our technology, broadened our market, and proven value through real client success.

Funding/Revenue 
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): Are you able to discuss funding and/or revenue metrics?
AdDaptive (Kevin): We are proud to be a self-funded company and have never taken outside investment. That independence gives us a strategic advantage in our industry: unlike many competitors focused on exit value, we can concentrate fully on customer success. In terms of revenue, while we don’t disclose exact figures, the company has been profitable and self-sustaining since its inception over 15 years ago.
Total Addressable Market (TAM) 
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing?
AdDaptive (Patrick): The company is targeting a total addressable market (TAM) of approximately $10 billion in B2B digital marketing, with room for growth as digital advertising continues to expand. Current estimates suggest a range of $5–10 billion, and we see opportunities to create additional value within that market, potentially expanding it further over time.
Differentiation From The Competition 
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What differentiates the company from its competition?
AdDaptive (Patrick): One of our key differentiators is our analytics. We provide the most robust analytics in the space, both for account-level insights and media-focused site analytics. Unlike many solutions that are primarily lead-focused, we focus on media performance and outcomes. In addition, our experience and client service set us apart—we execute campaigns end-to-end to deliver truly data-driven marketing results, rather than just offering a software platform.
AdDaptive (Kevin): Yes, to add to that, from a technology perspective, our approach to activating data is unique. We connect valid offline business data to numerous digital identifiers in a scalable and transparent way that competitors can’t match. This scale allows us to run millions of impressions, optimize campaign performance in real time, and deliver more meaningful insights to clients, giving them both better targeting and more accurate analytics.
Future Company Goals 
Pulse 2.0 (Amit): What are some of the company’s future goals? 
AdDaptive (Patrick): Our primary goal is to continue growing our presence with brands directly, replicating the success we’ve seen with clients. We aim to deepen the use of client data to drive better marketing outcomes, investing in our platform to enhance performance and insights. AI remains a key focus—we’ve integrated large language models into our platform and plan to expand the ways AI can increase value, accuracy, and efficiency for our clients.
AdDaptive (Kevin): Complementing that, we’re focused on expanding into additional media channels and advertising types. Over the last five years, we’ve diversified from mostly display ads to include native, video, CTV, and streaming audio. Looking ahead, we plan to explore new and emerging channels to provide our clients with more options for programmatic and performance-driven campaigns.
 
 
 

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