Kargo Welcomes Eric Hoffert as Chief Technology Officer
September 18th, 2024
Visionary Technology Leader to Drive Innovation and Focus on Accelerating Kargo’s Streaming and Video Capabilities
Kargo is announcing that Eric Hoffert has joined the company as CTO. Eric is a proven technology leader with deep expertise, especially in developing game-changing video technology for advertising. Eric is well suited to Kargo’s innovative product portfolio, which is increasingly focused on streaming and video. Eric is to play a pivotal role in continuing Kargo’s advancement as a leader in captivating, effective advertising solutions.
“Eric brings an incredible wealth of experience and expertise to Kargo with his video background as a great fit for our go forward strategy. We’re a unique ad company, with equal focus on differentiated creative formats and AI-driven technology, enabling precise targeting and high performance in quality publisher environments. Eric understands the importance of these assets and brings decades of insights to help drive our next phase of growth focused on expansion of our video offering,” said Harry Kargman, CEO and Founder at Kargo.
Eric is a pivotal hire for Kargo as the company doubles down on their powerful suite of video capabilities. Kargo recently launched Narrative, which uses AI to build high quality CTV commercials without the need for expensive video production shoots, and precise content targeting on CTV which enables brands to use granular data to place ads adjacent to the right context. Eric is based in NYC at Kargo HQ; he will oversee global engineering and data teams for mobile, video, CTV and e-commerce products integrated with machine learning, AI, and big data technologies.
Eric is a unique product and engineering visionary. Over the last twenty-five years, Eric has developed and managed video products and ad delivery, demand side platforms and bidding infrastructure as well as digital media products at companies such as Xandr (formerly AppNexus), Microsoft, AT&T, Apple, JWPlayer and Spotify.
At Microsoft in the AI division, Eric led the Connected TV and Video Ads product strategy; while at Microsoft he was part of the team that launched Netflix with ads in less than 100 days. Prior to that, he spearheaded product and engineering for the Invest DSP at Xandr/AT&T and prior to leading DSP engineering ran Video at AppNexus. In his role as CTO and EVP of Product at JW Player, he led engineering and product development for one of the world’s most popular web video players, reaching an audience of one billion viewers.
Eric also played a key role at Spotify, serving as Video Architect and contributed to the foundational development of Spotify video streaming technology. At Apple Inc., he co-founded the QuickTime software effort and led the development of the first real-time software video compression algorithm, a cornerstone of the QuickTime multimedia standard. QuickTime has been downloaded more than a billion times, and he received the CEO Technical Award from Apple.
Earlier in his career, Eric was a research scientist at AT&T's Bell Laboratories. He holds 83 patents and has published 14 papers, contributing significantly to the fields of digital video and computer science. Eric holds a BS in Computer Science from New York University as well as a BS in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering from Cooper Union, and an MS in Computer Science from the Courant Institute of Math at New York University.
“Throughout my career I have been most excited by companies that are working to solve tough technical challenges to unlock business and consumer value and that’s exactly what Kargo is doing. Kargo combines art and technology to deliver outcomes for advertisers across all screens, while elevating creative to new heights. I’m thrilled to join the team at a time when their long held vision is proving to be a winning approach with video and CTV as central to strategy” said Eric Hoffert, CTO at Kargo.