Let’s be honest: adtech is not exactly known for its saints. It’s an industry filled with jargon-slingers, PowerPoint mercenaries, and people who think “synergy” is a personality trait. And yet—enter Mike Brooks, Global Head of Business Development and Partnerships at LG Ad Solutions. The guy’s reputation? Sharp operator, straight shooter, and yes, a genuinely good human being. Outspoken when it counts, quick with insights that cut through the spin, and one of the rare leaders who can balance P&L with principles.

This is the same Mike Brooks who, instead of doing the Cannes cocktail circuit, had the guts to call out sexual harassment and the objectification of women in the industry—on LinkedIn, in public, with his name on it. That’s not a safe move when your job involves closing nine-figure deals. That’s a “good guy” move. And it tells you more about who Brooks is than any resume bullet ever could.

But don’t let the nice-guy vibe fool you. Brooks is also the guy who’s managed massive budgets, built global strategies, and turned programmatic headaches into scalable businesses. He’s as comfortable talking measurement frameworks as he is tearing into the absurdity of “empty impressions.” He knows what makes this ecosystem tick—and more importantly, what makes it break.

So how did he get here? That’s where the story gets interesting.

Long before “adtech” was a buzzword, Brooks was at AOL/Advertising.com, pulling apart the mechanics of digital display. While others were fawning over banners and CPMs, he was studying the macroeconomics of the whole system—early DSP architecture, cookie-driven targeting, and how the money actually flowed. Think of it as standing backstage while the magician palms the cards. Everyone else saw magic; Brooks saw the wiring.

Then came the “Year of Mobile”—which, let’s be real, was every year for about a decade. Brooks was one of AOL’s first hires on the mobile team, dropped straight into the Wild West of app installs. Uber, Candy Crush, every hungry startup came knocking, desperate to understand how to track, measure, and grow. Brooks wasn’t just answering questions—he was writing the manual in real time.

When Verizon scooped up AOL, most people got lost in the merger shuffle. Brooks didn’t. He navigated preloads, scale plays, and asset integrations like someone who’d already peeked at the ending.

Next stop: WeatherBug. Not exactly a household name, but under Brooks’ leadership, it became a programmatic powerhouse, doubling its business and proving he could take a scrappy publisher and make it matter. From there, he went on to COO of Verve Group, overseeing PubNative and Smaato, getting a front-row seat to the exchange and SSP game.

Brooks isn’t the guy who chases fads. He’s the one who reads the room, spots the shift, and bets early. From web to mobile to CTV, he’s been in the right place at the right time—because he knew where the industry was actually heading, not where the press releases said it was.

For most of TV’s history, the people who made the screens were just hardware vendors. But in connected TV, the device itself has become a gateway to inventory, data, and consumer engagement. That’s why Mike Brooks, Global Head of Business Development & Partnerships at LG Ad Solutions, is worth listening to. His mission, as he puts it, is to “create this lattice of measurement and targeting partnerships” that let advertisers treat CTV with the same rigor as digital, while preserving the reach and brand safety of television.

Brooks describes LG’s strategy as a three-part growth engine:

The adtech world often pretends that CTV is just like digital. Brooks is quick to correct that. “In display, everyone had cookies and device IDs—we spoke a single language. In CTV, we don’t. My job is to stitch together one-to-one partnerships so we can meet buyers where they want to be met.”

That approach explains his skepticism of relying on any single ID system. “In the U.S. we can use email-based IDs, but in much of the world IP isn’t available. That’s why we’ve leaned on geo-based implementations with partners like Mastercard and Experian. If you’re trying to create a globally scalable data business, you need more than one lever.”

Brooks has no shortage of predictions for where CTV is heading next.

For Brooks, the larger point is simple: OEMs aren’t selling parts anymore. They’re building platforms. “We compete on 15s and 30s just like Disney. But we also have the home screen, and we have the data. Those three things together—that’s the flywheel. It’s not one product. It’s an ecosystem.”

That philosophy positions LG—and Brooks himself—as more than just a supplier in the adtech chain. It makes them indispensable to the next wave of connected TV advertising.

In an industry that thrives on jargon, quarterly targets, and late-night debates over acronyms that sound like prescription drugs, very few leaders manage to cut through with something rarer than technical knowledge: moral clarity. Mike Brooks is one of those exceptions. His reputation isn’t just built on his ability to stitch together the fragmented ecosystem of connected TV. It’s built on how he shows up—as a human being first, an executive second.

The adtech world loves its conferences. Glossy decks, rooftop parties, panel debates on “the future of identity.” But underneath the champagne and the hashtags, there are real problems—ones that the industry often prefers to whisper about, if at all. That’s why Brooks’ public comments about sexual harassment at Cannes landed so hard.

“Way too much sexual harassment and objectification of women’s bodies,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post after the festival. “I don’t encounter crude comments often…but this week, I heard a conversation-derailing awkward comment in upwards of 30% of my casual discussions.”

He could have ignored it. He could have brushed it off as background noise. Instead, he called it out directly, adding, “As someone who’s managed nine-figure P&Ls…I cannot emphasize how bad of a look this is. You are not a leader if you cannot create an inclusive, high-performance environment. Don’t make it weird.”

That wasn’t a throwaway line—it was a signal. Brooks understands that culture isn’t a soft issue; it’s a performance issue. Leadership, to him, means more than managing revenue streams. It means making the industry a place where people can do their best work without being diminished or derailed.

For Brooks, culture extends beyond calling out bad behavior. It’s also about building up the next generation. He has become a kind of informal mentor in the industry, known for his willingness to give straight, practical advice.

On the professional front, he pushes people to take risks. “A lot of the advice I got was, ‘don’t do it.’ That was all really bad advice,” he says of his own career. He took the risks—jumping into mobile when it was unproven, taking on leadership roles outside the corporate safety net—and those decisions accelerated his trajectory. “When you get the chance to go out on a limb, take it. That’s where the real transformation happens.”

On the personal side, his advice is refreshingly blunt: “Show up and shut up.” He means it literally. Show up—because closing deals in person is exponentially more effective than scheduling another Zoom. “Conversations flow more freely, business moves faster, and you simply build trust you cannot replicate on video calls.” And shut up—because too many young professionals think networking means talking. “Keep the ratio at three-to-one—listen three times more than you speak—and you’ll find yourself being far more influential.”

These aren’t the platitudes of a LinkedIn hustle post. They’re the lived rules of someone who’s spent two decades navigating the pivots of digital, mobile, and now CTV.

What ties it together is a philosophy grounded in three principles: transparency, accountability, and risk-taking. Brooks has no patience for the status quo, whether it’s outdated measurement models or toxic industry behaviors. He believes in investing back into ecosystems rather than just extracting value.

At LG, that means reinvesting the gains from the LG Channels flywheel into improving consumer experiences and ad performance. It means thinking beyond the U.S. and developing “post-privacy infrastructure” that can work globally in markets where cookies and IP data don’t exist. And it means treating local media not as an afterthought but as a growth opportunity.

His approach is pragmatic yet ambitious: build for scale, but do it in a way that balances innovation with responsibility. It’s not the loudest philosophy in the industry, but it may be one of the most durable.

What makes Brooks stand out is not that he can talk fluently about clean rooms, UID2 integrations, or retail media convergence—plenty of executives can. What makes him rare is that he combines that technical fluency with a sense of integrity that’s harder to find. He is, in the truest sense, a mensch: someone who can win in business without losing his moral compass.

In an industry where the gravitational pull often tilts toward short-term gains, Mike Brooks is a reminder that long-term success is built not only on strategy but also on character.

He’s the guy in the room who not only knows where the market is going, but insists on making it a better place to work when we get there.