An Account Executive at OpenX is a critical, high-impact growth driver responsible for expanding the company’s footprint in the highly competitive programmatic advertising market. In this role, you act as the primary strategic partner for publishers, demand partners, agencies, or brands, helping them navigate the complex digital media monetization ecosystem. By selling OpenX’s industry-leading Supply-Side Platform (SSP), programmatic ad exchange, and header bidding technologies, you directly influence how digital publishers maximize their ad revenue and how buyers access high-quality ad inventory.

At its core, this position requires a sophisticated blend of enterprise sales acumen and deep technical adtech expertise. You will not simply sell off-the-shelf software; you will consult on complex monetization strategies, real-time bidding (RTB) mechanics, and supply path optimization (SPO). The solutions you pitch enable high-volume, low-latency programmatic transactions at an immense global scale, making your work central to OpenX’s market leadership and financial success.

Success as an Account Executive means managing long, complex sales cycles that involve multiple technical and business stakeholders. You will work closely with internal teams, including solutions architects, account managers, and product engineering, to deliver customized integration strategies. It is a challenging but rewarding role that places you at the intersection of media, technology, and data-driven commerce.

To succeed in the OpenX hiring process, you must be prepared for a rigorous evaluation that tests both your sales methodology and your technical understanding of the programmatic landscape. The questions are designed to assess your industry credibility, your ability to manage complex pipelines, and your alignment with the company's collaborative culture.

AdTech & Programmatic Domain Knowledge

This category evaluates your technical literacy regarding programmatic advertising. You must demonstrate that you understand how the underlying technology works and can explain it clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• What do you know about OpenX’s marketplace position, and how do we differentiate ourselves from other SSPs?
• Can you explain the mechanics of Real-Time Bidding (RTB) and header bidding to a client?

Preparing for an Account Executive interview at OpenX requires a balanced approach. You must be ready to showcase your sales track record while proving you can hold your own in deep technical discussions about programmatic infrastructure.

Domain Expertise (Programmatic & AdTech) – You must have a strong working knowledge of the programmatic landscape, including SSPs, DSPs, data management platforms (DMPs), and identity solutions. Interviewers will evaluate how well you understand trade-offs in different integration types (e.g., prebid, open bidding, SDKs).

Consultative Selling & Deal Execution – OpenX values sales professionals who act as trusted advisors rather than transactional sellers. You need to demonstrate how you identify client pain points, map them to programmatic solutions, and manage complex, multi-stakeholder negotiations.

Resilience & Pipeline Discipline – Enterprise adtech sales can have long sales cycles with substantial technical hurdles. You must show that you possess the grit to push through long evaluation periods, handle frequent objections, and maintain a highly organized, data-driven pipeline.

Cultural Alignment & Collaboration – Because onboarding an adtech client requires cross-functional effort, you must prove you can collaborate effectively with internal solutions engineers, account managers, and product teams. Showing a collaborative, low-ego mindset is critical.

The interview process for the Account Executive role at OpenX is thorough, comprehensive, and designed to evaluate both your sales DNA and your technical aptitude. While the process is highly structured, candidates should prepare for a timeline that can span several weeks, occasionally involving coordination across multiple global offices.

The journey typically begins with a standard recruiter phone screen to review your resume, assess your basic qualifications, and gauge your interest in the adtech space. This is followed by a more in-depth phone interview with the hiring manager, often a VP or Director of Business Development. This round dives deep into your sales achievements, your understanding of programmatic mechanics, and your knowledge of OpenX's products.

The final stage is an intensive series of interviews, historically conducted onsite but now frequently hosted virtually. This stage consists of multiple back-to-back panels or individual sessions with key stakeholders, including peer account executives, account managers, and regional leadership. Each session focuses on a specific competency, such as technical domain knowledge, sales pitch execution, or cross-functional collaboration.

The visual timeline above outlines the typical stage-by-stage progression you will experience. Candidates should use this roadmap to pace their preparation, ensuring they master foundational adtech concepts before advancing to the intensive scenario-based and panel rounds. Keep in mind that because OpenX operates globally, scheduling coordination may occasionally involve stakeholders in different time zones.

To stand out in the OpenX interview process, you must demonstrate deep competence across several core execution areas. Interviewers will look for concrete examples of how you have applied these skills in your past roles.

Programmatic Advertising & RTB Mastery

This evaluation area focuses on your ability to navigate the technical complexities of programmatic monetization. You cannot sell OpenX's solutions effectively without a clear grasp of how digital inventory is bought and sold in real time.

Be ready to go over:

• Supply-Side Platform (SSP) Functionality – How SSPs aggregate publisher inventory, conduct auctions, and interface with DSPs.
• Header Bidding Mechanics – The technical flow of client-side versus server-side header bidding, including latency considerations and wrapper management.
• Supply Path Optimization (SPO) – Why buyers are consolidating their spend with fewer SSPs and how OpenX positions itself to win these partnerships.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Be familiar with the impact of cookie deprecation, privacy frameworks (like GDPR and CCPA), alternative identity solutions, and the growing importance of first-party data strategies.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "A publisher client is worried that adding our header bidding wrapper will slow down their page load speed and hurt their user experience. How do you address this concern?"
• "Explain the step-by-step journey of an ad request from the moment a user lands on a webpage to the moment the ad is served via RTB."

Consultative Sales Process & Deal Closure

This area evaluates your core sales skills. Interviewers want to see that you have a repeatable, structured methodology for identifying opportunities, building relationships, and closing complex enterprise deals.

Be ready to go over:

• Value-Based Pitching – How to move away from feature-dumping and instead focus on how OpenX can increase yield, improve fill rates, or provide better data transparency.
• Objection Handling – Strategies for overcoming pushback on revenue share, contract exclusivity, or technical integration effort.
• Negotiation and Contract Structuring – Managing master services agreements (MSAs), service level agreements (SLAs), and custom commercial terms.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through a complex deal you closed where you had to win over both a technical stakeholder (like a CTO) and a business stakeholder (like a Chief Revenue Officer)."
• "How do you handle a prospect who tells you that our competitor is offering a significantly lower take-rate?"

Strategic Relationship & Pipeline Management

Building a book of business in adtech requires long-term strategic planning. You must demonstrate that you can manage a pipeline efficiently and nurture relationships over months or even years.

Be ready to go over:

• Account Mapping – Identifying key decision-makers, influencers, and blockers within a target publisher or agency organization.
• Pipeline Hygiene – Using CRM tools (like Salesforce) to track deal velocity, accurately forecast revenue, and prioritize high-yield opportunities.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration – Working with technical account managers to ensure that once a contract is signed, the integration is completed successfully and begins generating revenue.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "How do you prioritize your time when managing a pipeline of fifty target accounts at various stages of the sales funnel?"
• "Describe a situation where a signed client was stalled in the integration phase. How did you intervene to get the project back on track?"