V2 + Databricks: What We’ve Observed a Year into Our Databricks Journey for Media & Ad Sales

Forgoing the Status Quo

My colleagues and I have often chosen to forgo the status quo and pioneer new approaches. True in form, my firm’s journey to become a Databricks partner likely isn’t the path most consulting organizations would follow. This week we published a press release announcing our formal partnership, which got me thinking about what I’ve learned about them over the past 12 months. It’s fitting that we’re announcing this partnership during Advertising Week, with our team on the ground meeting colleagues, clients, and partners from across the industry. Here’s the story and my insights.

A Chance Encounter in NYC

Our Databricks journey began when I serendipitously ran into a former industry connection at a NYC restaurant. I hadn’t seen him in a few years, and he had made a bold move (at the time) to leave a great role at Salesforce and join Databricks. We had a quick chat that evening, and I mentioned my recent research and excitement around possibly establishing a Databricks practice focusing on media & ad sales. A few weeks later, we jumped on a call, and I immediately began to see and experience “the energy” that I now associate with Databricks. My connection’s insights exuded authentic excitement and conviction I hadn’t encountered in quite some time. It felt infectious. I needed to check this out on my own.

A Last-Minute Trip to the Data + AI Summit

Fast forward a few months, and I landed at SFO with a ticket in hand for the 2025 Databricks Data + AI Summit. I wanted to gather data firsthand and learn more about why there was so much hype about Databricks. Unfortunately, as a busy CEO, I hadn’t taken the time to line up meetings prior. Out came the laptop, and I began sending cold InMail introductions to Databricks sellers and leaders with a brief explanation of my firm and why we should connect about media & ad sales. Miraculously, I received a few replies that afternoon and the next morning - astonishing given the size and significance of the conference and the last-minute nature of my outreach.

Over the next few days at the conference, I began immersing myself in Databricks' technical solutions (I’m a geek at heart) and its culture. And while I’ve been in tech for a majority of my career, it did feel different - more technical, less marketing, and overall, more genuine excitement than I’ve experienced in other similar conferences. Notably, I met one of the key media & ad sales leaders at the industry booth who ended up walking the floor with me between meetings for forty-five minutes, sharing his vision. And while I was confident that my firm’s reputation in media & ad sales would generate some initial interest with Databricks, I never would have imagined how helpful and generous that leader and others would be to an ecosystem newcomer. I took notes, flew home, and felt inspired.

Twelve Months of Getting to Know Databricks

Over the next twelve months, my firm steadily invested time, energy, and resources. I lined up some 1:1 meals with Databricks folks and continued to ask, “How can we help Databricks make a larger impact with its media & ad sales customers?” I attended a more modest-sized Databricks event in LA later in the year. I figured the annual conference may have been a fluke and that I’d become disillusioned once I saw more of the ecosystem. The opposite happened - I became even more enamored with Databricks' vision, company culture, quality of employees, and importantly, its genuine desire to do the right thing for its customers. While it sounds cliché, it wasn’t. In a world of enterprise license software sales (BTW, I’m a former Oracle seller from many years ago), where it often feels like reps are pushing products, Databricks seemed genuinely interested in defining use cases, investing up front, and earning its customers' consumption. Earning being the keyword.

The Kool-Aid Started to Taste Real

By Q4, I had tasked some of my firm’s best and brightest to build a Databricks for Ad Sales proof of concept. It was extremely energizing to see my team take 20 years of media & ad sales experience and bake it into a platform spanning data warehousing, analytics, AI, and custom applications. The Kool-Aid started to taste real! We received very positive feedback, and V2’s path with Databricks began to crystallize. And while our firm didn’t evolve with data warehousing roots, we soon realized that our well-established consulting framework spanning data, people, processes, and platforms, “D(3P)”, combined with our deep industry subject-matter expertise, would help us stand out in the Databricks ecosystem as well. Instead of competing for programs involving massive data migrations from legacy on-prem data warehouses, we’ve instead chosen to bring our deep understanding of media & ad sales process flows, business challenges, and datasets into conversations with CROs, CFOs, and RevOps leaders.

Year Two and What’s Next

Today, a little over a year later, V2 is leading exciting Databricks work directly for clients, and our practice has been established. We see tremendous potential for Databricks to not only help media & ad sales organizations with pipeline, consolidated revenue forecasting, and seller productivity, but also to transform post-sales teams managing campaigns, programmatic, and financial functions, among others. Databricks solutions can span app-based command centers, AI recommendations, and versatile analytics that go well beyond CRM data sets. Admittedly, it’s tough stuff to tackle, but we’ve always enjoyed solving business and technology challenges in the media & ad sales world. Right now, in year two, my team and I are thrilled to see what’s next as Databricks continues to evolve with leading-edge solutions that our enterprise media & ad sales clients can leverage to transform their businesses!