By: Christos Makridis
"It’s a brother’s story in many ways," begins Ryan Steelberg, CEO, president, and co-founder of Veritone, reflecting on his unexpected journey from a pre-med student at UCLA to a tech entrepreneur. “It’s those two classic roles you think of in tech startups; me primarily being the front line as the public-facing business leader, and Chad always the technology and product wizard.”
Steelberg stands today as a pioneering force in the burgeoning field of AI software and services, primarily for enterprises and major customers like ESPN, CBS and the US government- but also attainable to mid-sized firms as well. His entry into the tech sphere was marked by a collaborative effort with his brother Chad, a partnership fueled by their shared curiosity and passion for technology, bolstered by steady encouragement from their parents along the way, growing up in Orange County, California. Their journey would ultimately redefine the contours of digital advertising, and eventually, establish key pillars of today’s enterprise AI solutions industry.
Ryan Steelberg, Veritone’s CEO and Chairman of the Board
The brothers’ first formal internet outing was launching a first of its kind real estate platform in 1994 (akin to what we know today as online real estate listing services), similar to Zillow or Trulia. A big idea for sure, but what appealed most to VCs was the potential to monetize ads across its real estate sites. "Within three months, we had signed contracts with multiple real estate brokerages, including Coldwell Banker, Edina Realty, and Century 21 Realty, generating high demand for advertising space," Steelberg recalls, highlighting the rapid success of their venture. This led to the duo's initial breakthrough with the establishment of AdForce, which became the world's largest centralized independent ad-serving and management solution. Under the Steelberg’s leadership, AdForce pioneered and grew their advanced advertising platform signing dozens of industry behemoths, including AOL and Yahoo, which ultimately lead to an acquisition by CMGI for more than $500 million after going public on Nasdaq in 1999. In 2000, AdForce won the Smithsonian Award for the Best Technology in IT.
Despite a big splash right out of the gate, the Steelberg brothers’ entrepreneurial journey, however, was not without its share of challenges and setbacks. Their next venture in 1999, Winfire, Inc., faced formidable monopolistic obstacles amidst the rapid proliferation of broadband technology. Winfire aimed to provide free high-speed Internet access to broadband users and was established as a DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) service provider, offering an alternative to traditional high-priced paid Internet services. The company had tremendous initial interest, quickly amassing a major paid customer base; however, a breakdown occurred with Winfire’s partnered telecom companies’ ability, or willingness, to deliver timely service, as they instead chose to prioritize existing customers over Winfire’s. It ultimately led to the collapse of the firm, which only had a total lifespan of about a year. “A big early lesson in resilience and dealing with monopolies for two guys in their early twenties”, said Steelberg. “An experience that was definitely formative in seeing all sides of the coin not far out of the starting gate, and ultimately, looking back, it was painful, but there was serious learning there.”
In 2002, the Steelbergs co-founded dMarc, at the time, the largest centralized radio advertising network and digital automation company servicing more than 4,600 Radio Broadcasters. dMarc was acquired by Google in February 2006 for $102 million in cash, with revenue targets that pushed the deal upwards of $1.2B. As of January 2009, total payouts exceeded $400 million. In 2007, the brothers founded Brand Affinity Technologies, an influencer technology and marketing services company.
It was within the crucible of these early adtech-centric ventures, ripe with experimentation, that Ryan honed his skills in navigating the intricate terrain of data-intensive environments and making sense of non-linear content—a skill set that would prove priceless in the field of artificial intelligence, where large language models and engines must effectively analyze tremendous amounts of disparate information and extrapolate faces, logos, trends, patterns, which can then be actioned in myriad ways. Since the essence of adtech lies in the ability to harness vast troves of data and extract actionable insights to optimize advertising strategies, Steelberg’s skill set seamlessly translated into the domain of AI for enterprise.
Human-Centered AI: Redefining Industries
Veritone, which means “truth in the signal,” was launched in 2014 where Steelberg would serve as president from 2015 to 2022 prior to becoming CEO. Again, they began with a core mission of addressing fundamental advertising problems, like the way audio data was ingested and analyzed. Quickly, Veritone's proprietary cloud-agnostic solution, aiWARETM—which can be thought of as an operating system which AI programs are built on—represented a quantum leap in the field, heralding a paradigm shift in the way enterprises interacted with data. Leveraging multiple AI engines in parallel, Veritone's platform offered novel accuracy in analyzing and interpreting audio data.
“The problem we tackled emerged when things shifted from the desktop to your mobile phone,” said Steelberg of Veritone’s beginnings. “When you started to watch a video there was no place to serve an ad adjacent to the content anymore, so we became obsessed with trying to understand native-based advertising or product placement, embedded into the content. It could be the broadcast host for a sporting event talking about Geico during a timeout, it could be a logo of a Chevy truck in a Michael Bay movie, or it could be the Apple laptop on the coffee shop counter in a sitcom. It was this incredibly rich content opportunity where frankly people are most in tune and engaged, and we knew we could figure out a way to look at this more transactionally, meaning could we start to bring structure to linear unstructured audio and video and unlock a world of new possibilities. That was the initial idea,” he concluded. From there, this initial vision of ingesting and understanding unstructured data leveraging AI, would be the foundation for aiWARE and Veritone into the future.
Veritone is committed to advancing the capabilities of AI to empower people to do even better than ... [+]
Wth a focus on talent acquisition, media, entertainment, the public sector, and generative AI, Veritone carved a niche for itself, redefining how industries harness the power of AI to drive efficiency, enhance decision-making, and ultimately, maximize human potential. At the core of Veritone's ethos lies a deep commitment to human-centered AI solutions. Unlike traditional approaches that seek to replace human effort with automation, Veritone believes in augmenting human capabilities. With aiWARE, Veritone orchestrated a symphony of machine learning models, transforming raw data into actionable intelligence across a spectrum of industries, just as Steelberg had envisioned.
In the realm of talent acquisition, Veritone's solutions are reshaping the landscape. Veritone Hire seamlessly integrates global job distribution tools with programmatic advertising AI technology. By optimizing recruiting strategies, reducing costs, and improving efficiency, Veritone helps organizations attract diverse talent at scale, reaffirming their commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Its suite of solutions for talent acquisition cater to both centralized and decentralized recruitment needs and is built on job distribution software and technology specializing in programmatic advertising. Talent acquisition teams and staffing firms can automatically post job ads to job boards, search engines and social media channels all in one place with seamless integrations into over 100 Applicant Tracking System (ATS) partners and optimize individual ads or full campaigns with AI to maximize ROI by increasing candidate volume while reducing wasted ad spend. Veritone enables streamlining of the screening processes by leveraging conversational AI to engage and screen candidates post-apply, all within an ATS.
Veritone's impact extends beyond corporate corridors into the realms of media, entertainment, sports, and broadcast. Their AI solutions empower content creators, advertisers, podcasters, and producers to unlock human potential. From metadata extraction to AI-powered digital asset management, Veritone is disrupting content creation and distribution, providing proof-of-performance metrics, and maximizing the value of every piece of content. Customers can gain value from video, audio, images, text and data through metadata extraction, and search and visualization, enhancing customer support and system integrations. Veritone holds that while generative AI is already used to create outlines, jumpstart content writing and develop ad copy, it will eventually provide an ability to create multilingual content at scale, helping brands test new regions with ad promos and other AI-generated assets and such as full prebuilt campaigns.
Veritone’s Advertising and Content Intelligence Suite, which leverages the organization’s aiWARE ... [+]
“It is in the public sector where we see possibly the greatest growth opportunity in the near term,” said Steelberg. “Where efficiency and safety are paramount, Veritone's AI solutions are making a tangible difference,” he added. Through aiWARE, law enforcement agencies, government bodies, and public safety organizations streamline previously manual processes while gaining invaluable insights from vast amounts of data. Biometric identification means law enforcement agencies can authenticate users and identify callers and suspects by recognizing voices and faces in videos, images and calls. Redaction capabilities help departments save time and costs while freeing up valuable resources by using automating the exaction of sensitive information within audio, video and image-based evidence. Transcription and translation functions enable legal and contact center teams to automate manual work with near-real-time transcription and translation of any data source, while person-of-interest tracking tracks persons of interest across video files regardless of source without using personal identifiable information (PII).
Ethics and Responsibility: Guiding Principles
Veritone remains at the forefront of innovation through the lens of its “AI For Good” motto. Through frequent collaboration with regulators, industry leaders, and stakeholders, Veritone is shaping the future of AI regulation, ensuring that technology evolves responsibly and ethically. With a keen eye on emerging trends and challenges, Veritone is committed to empowering industries to harness the full potential of AI for the betterment of society. “We have a big responsibility here to self-police in this industry in a way that we just haven’t seen in tech, and with the rapid evolution of AI and its profound potential, companies have to lead the charge here,” said Steelberg. “Social media platforms are still trying to play catch up and we see the friction there; it’s a great lesson in how our industry can and must stay ahead of the curve of where this is all going from a societal protection standpoint.”
Veritone has specifically focused on transparency in the design of ethical AI. Their solutions are designed to be easily explainable, generating outputs that are reliable and understandable, in hopes this will build trust among users, stakeholders, and the broader community. Trust is further bolstered by the company's commitment to fairness and non-discrimination, as its systems are engineered to mitigate bias and uphold fairness in their outcomes. The company adheres to stringent security and compliance practices to safeguard data and complies with industry regulations and standards. But as a serial entrepreneur with a passion to empower other innovators, Steelberg is maybe most bullish on the democratization message:
“Fundamentally, we are democratizing and advancing AI access and utilization for enterprises,” Steelberg said. “However, small businesses must also have the tools and opportunity to embrace AI. To avoid the next digital divide—one where I believe the stakes are even higher than ever—small businesses must embrace and educate themselves on AI. Thankfully we have solutions like Veritone’s aiWARE and other cost-effective platforms out there that ensure CEOs can start their AI journey cost-effectively and intelligently. This is a dynamic and ever-changing AI environment that we are living through, and Veritone will continue to build solutions to make AI more accessible and actionable for all enterprises. We see ourselves as ‘wilderness guides for AI’ in a digital world,” he concluded.
