Publications and press
Writing, interviews and coverage
What I publish, where I've been interviewed, and what the trade press has written about the companies I've built.
Published by me
- Newsletter · daily, five days a week Refacto AdTech The day's ad tech news with an argument attached, drawn from trade press, earnings and industry podcasts. Calls about where the market is heading are graded later on a public scoreboard.
- Newsletter · daily, five days a week Refacto AI The same treatment applied to artificial intelligence — what shipped, what it costs, and which claims survive contact with the detail.
- Newsletter · daily, five days a week Refacto Agents Coverage of AI agents specifically: what people are actually deploying, and where the gap sits between demo and production.
- LinkedIn Hiring and Behavioral Economics What decision research says about the way interviews actually go, and what to do about it.
Academic
- PhD dissertation · Duke University, 2000 Assessing the Impact of Communication Cost on Worker Productivity: An Individual Level Examination of the Productivity Paradox Fuqua School of Business, advised by Gerardine DeSanctis. Full text, PDF. Two experiments on the productivity paradox: cheaper communication raises how much people are asked to do, so they fall back on simpler decision rules, and the resulting errors mean work gets redone. Monetary and social costs turned out to act on accuracy the same way.
Podcasts and video
- U of Digital · February 2026 Why Meta and Apple's Next AI Devices Could Make Your Life Both Smarter and More Intrusive With Shiv Gupta and Myles Younger, on what happens when AI moves off the screen and into the physical world.
- Marketecture · July 2023 Emergency Pod: MediaMath Bankruptcy and Implications A same-week panel with Ari Paparo, Shiv Gupta and Ana Milicevic on what MediaMath's Chapter 7 filing meant for the buy side.
- The ADOTAT Show · with Pesach Lattin Data Science in the Post-Cookie World Where data science in programmatic actually stood as third-party cookies went away.
In the news
- July 2025 JWP Connatix appoints Dr. Kenneth Rona as its first Chief AI Officer Covered by Adweek, ExchangeWire, CDO Magazine and Sports Video Group.
- AdExchanger · July 2020 Introducing Chalice, A Startup For Brands Fed Up With Google And Facebook Launch coverage of Chalice Custom Algorithms.
- MarTech Series · June 2020 Amplifyer and Chalice Partnership Delivers Customized Algorithms for Leading Brands and Ad Agencies
- AdExchanger · archive Further AdExchanger coverage
- JWX · profile About Dr. Kenneth Rona
Recognition
- AdExchanger Awards · 2024 SWYM — Best Industry Startup
- AdExchanger Awards · 2022 Chalice — Best Early Stage Technology Company, and Best Demand-Side Technology
Press enquiries
For comment, an interview or a podcast booking, email ken@thedigitaladlab.com. The topics I'm most useful on are listed on the speaking page.