AdFusion’s new voice
Augie Ciulla on trust, tech, and transformation
November 11, 2025
Comcast Technology Solutions is thrilled that Augie Ciulla has recently chosen to join us as our Director of Sales Strategy for the AdFusion™ team. With over two decades of experience in ad tech and ad delivery, Augie brings a wealth of industry experience that has gone from radio to television, and on to the complexity of today’s digital distribution and contextual advertising.
We recently sat down with Augie to learn more about his journey in the advertising world and talked about how ad technology continues to evolve, how to stay relevant to both ad companies and their consumers, and why automation will never replace the need for honest, transparent relationships.
Augie, we’re really glad you’re joining us at CTS! Where has your career in advertising taken you?
I’ve been in the advertising distribution industry for over 20 years. I got my start in radio distribution, just selling radio delivery, which then morphed into TV distribution, which has been a good portion of my career. I’ve worked for most of the big distribution companies in the industry and been through a lot of acquisitions – lots of “big fish eating the little fish” situations where I’ve been very fortunate to keep swimming and move with all the change.
Within the last few years, the industry has changed – we’ve had to change the way that we sell based on the way people view content now. And that always trickles down to how content needs to get delivered. I’ve always been in the delivery aspect of the business, but now you need to be informed on everything from talent, payments, asset management, and on to delivery around the digital ad serving piece.
Looking at your LinkedIn profile it reads like a who’s who in the ad space. What are some highlights, or key things that keep you in the hunt?
Well, I think every win in sales is a highlight because earning a client’s trust is a very difficult thing to do. For me, I think the building of relationships in this industry is probably one of the biggest things that I've been able to take away from it—building relationships with a lot of my clients, the brands, the agencies, the people who I work with. I mean, obviously, there's been some bigger wins, some smaller wins. They're all fantastic. I love to sell, and we all love to win, but I think the relationships that I've built throughout the years are some of my proudest wins.
Let’s look more at the relationship angle – ad campaigns aim to build consumer relationships, you’re building relationships with advertisers and agencies… do you see a through-line there?
One thing that comes up is the transparency piece. I think it’s extremely important personally, with my clients. Getting with the client and being truthful with them and servicing the account to the best of my abilities is one thing, but going above that and giving them what they need and then being transparent with your client so they really know what's going on—they see and feel the truthfulness.
What are the big challenges that the people you’re talking to are facing in ad delivery or just ad tech in general right now? I’m sure that’s changed a lot over your career.
Within a lot of companies, at least on the agency side, things are very siloed between linear and digital; it's bridging the gap between the two. Today, obviously the data is one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle. It's always about the end product, right? It's about them selling something. And then it's around the data that's going to help them make decisions on how to move forward. Is it going to be beneficial for them to buy more digital locations to serve an ad, or is it around TV? A big event like a championship football game is still very big with linear television, but we've seen that change throughout the years now where it’s being streamed on multiple channels. So how are we going to reach the audience that we want to reach? Data that matters is something that's extremely important to clients now, and that really ties back to the transparency piece as well. They want to make sure that the data that they're receiving is actually true so that they can make the decisions they need to move forward.
That ‘siloed’ dynamic seems like a persistent challenge that goes beyond an org chart. Would you agree?
I think fragmentation is a big thing because there's so many channels, there's so many different destinations involved in delivering a campaign, and it's about measuring the success of all those different places. And I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges that you see today. Job one is to make sure that ads are going to the right place, on time. I think because this industry is so fragmented now, between all the different channels and—whether it's social media or whether you're going to a website or TV or even radio or whatever that might be, that's probably the biggest challenge in the industry right now.
From a tech standpoint how have you seen that evolve in the past five or ten years?
I think a lot of it was manually driven, and now everything is data-driven and obviously there's a lot more automation built into everything that's being done right now. The switch from manual to data and automation is definitely one of the biggest changes.
Has that been solved for yet? That's one of the things that we've talked about a lot – the manual processes vs. the “need for speed.” From a workflow standpoint, it's sort of like a caterpillar; some stuff starts to improve, and then other parts catch up. Are there still a lot of spreadsheets being emailed around?
Yeah, there is totally. I know on the agency side that there's still tons of spreadsheets that go around, and that's one of the things that AdFusion could help address. But yeah, from my experience in talking to a lot of different people, there's still a lot of room for improvement around the automation side.
We’ve talked a lot about relationships and transparency, the need for better data, and increased automation. Are these some of the things that brought you to CTS and AdFusion?
Honestly, there are a lot of ad tech companies where all they have is an ad delivery component. Comcast to me is Comcast—it’s this global company that can give you so much more. And just from my short time here, knowing that if a client needs something, we could probably build it for them, so we can help them get what they need. We're not so rigid where we can only do one thing and nothing else, we can provide a lot of other things for them. So that's an advantage to me and a big part of why I wanted to come here as well.
I’d also say, it’s the AdFusion technology, but it’s also the integrations and partnerships across the industry. Not just the FreeWheel relationship, which is of course part of Comcast, but also the integration with Mediaocean, Innovid for linear and digital, Storyteq’s creative automation, AD-ID, AdImpact… It’s like a complete ecosystem that’s coming from a company that’s a top advertiser in their own right and that needs all of this for their own brands. Again – being able to handle linear and digital with trust and reliability, while also bringing the data back to the client so they can make better moves going forward.
Augie, it’s been a pleasure – Welcome aboard!
Thank you!
Click the resources below to learn more about AdFusion and our partnerships:
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| Explore AdFusion | CTS & Mediaocean partnership | CTS & Storyteq partnership | CTS & Innovid partnership |
