Matt Thornton leads Google Canada's agency and programmatic business, a role created in 2023 by pulling the company's programmatic, creative, media and tech resources under one roof.
Worth knowing
Matt knows how Canadian media budgets actually get spent: who buys programmatic, which agencies hold the relationships, and where the ad tech stack helps or gets in the way. He has argued publicly about when bringing programmatic in-house makes sense and when it does not. Founders selling into Canadian marketers, and operators weighing an in-house media build, should get in touch.
Story
Matt's career tracks the whole arc of digital advertising. He joined DoubleClick in 2002 as a technical account manager and spent four years there before moving to Yahoo, where he ran business development for Canada, and then to Shaw Communications for strategic partnerships. In 2012 he joined Google to help build its Canadian advertising technology business out of Toronto and Montreal, and led Google Marketing Platform in Canada for the next eleven years. He now works from Oakville.
In Matt's words
Over 13 years at Google I’ve been building and leading the Platforms (Enterprise Technology -- AdTech) & Ad Agency partnerships in Canada. In that time I’ve established myself as a programmatic media industry thought leader and trusted partner to Marketers and Agencies across the Canadian advertising ecosystem. I’ve established a reputation as a collaborator, builder and have successfully demonstrated an ability to influence across many different stakeholders and relationships, internal and external, locally and globally.
Highlights
- Managing Director, Agency, Partners & Programmatic Media, Google Canada (2023-present)
- Managing Director, Google Marketing Platform Canada (2012-2023)
- Head of Business Development, Canada, Yahoo (2008-2011)
- Three roles at DoubleClick, 2002-2006
- Applied Information Technology, Information Technology Institute
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