CEO at SteelHouse (now part of Vivvix)
Building SteelHouse into a competitive performance marketing and retargeting platform, and for publicly challenging industry giants like Criteo over ad fraud and measurement integrity.
Last updated Mar 28, 2026 by AI Enrichment
Mark Douglas is best known as the co-founder and long-tenured CEO of SteelHouse, a Los Angeles-based advertising technology company that carved out a distinctive niche in performance marketing, retargeting, and programmatic advertising. Under his leadership, SteelHouse developed a self-serve advertising platform that competed directly with major players like Facebook and Google in the retargeting space, and became notable for its transparent, performance-driven approach to digital advertising. Douglas was a vocal advocate for advertiser-friendly pricing models and challenged industry norms around ad tech fees and opacity. Douglas guided SteelHouse through significant industry turbulence, including a high-profile legal dispute with Criteo over alleged click fraud and data practices — a case that drew wide attention across the AdTech ecosystem and underscored growing concerns about measurement integrity in programmatic. His willingness to take on larger incumbents publicly positioned him as a combative and outspoken voice in the industry. SteelHouse was eventually acquired and its capabilities folded into Vivvix, the media intelligence platform. With over 15 years in advertising technology, Douglas has been a consistent operator-class executive focused on building scalable ad platforms that serve brand and performance advertisers. His career reflects a through-line of challenging entrenched players, championing transparency, and leveraging programmatic infrastructure to deliver measurable outcomes for marketers.
SteelHouse (2010-2023)