The 24/7 CEO: The Battle for Survival That Helped Build Digital Advertising

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By SM Harrison

In March 2000, the dot-com bubble burst and thousands of companies vanished overnight. David Moore's 24/7 Media went from a $1.8 billion market cap and 52 offices across 29 countries to penny stock territory in months. Four hundred employees were laid off. The stock price sank below a dollar. Auditors issued a going concern opinion, which is the corporate equivalent of a doctor telling you to get your affairs in order. His own leadership team began talking about bankruptcy. Moore's response was four words: we are taking this to the end.

That is the sentence this book was written to explain, and it takes 45 years of hard-earned experience to fully unpack it.

The 24/7 CEO is not a retrospective polished by distance and success. It is a raw, chronological account of what actually happens inside a company that refuses to die when the rational choice would have been to let it, written by the man who made that choice and then had to live inside it every single day until it paid off. The brutality of the decision-making process Moore describes, which employees to cut, how to keep enough of the organization functioning to have something worth saving, how to lead when the people around you have stopped believing, is rendered with the candor of someone who has had a long time to make peace with what it actually cost.

What gives the book its particular resonance right now is the parallel Moore draws between the dot-com crash and the current AI technology platform shift. Every transformative technology wave produces the same cycle: euphoria, overcapitalization, collapse, and then the slow, unglamorous rebuilding by the handful of companies that refused to quit. The lessons Moore learned in 2001, about cash management, about maintaining relationships with clients who had every reason to leave, about what leadership actually means when optimism feels delusional, are the lessons that will determine which AI-era companies are still standing in five years.

Dave Morgan called him the Winston Churchill of dot-com CEOs. After reading this book, that comparison does not feel like hyperbole.

About the Author

David J. Moore

For over forty-five years, David J. Moore’s career has centered on the intersection of media, technology, and advertising. He has held numerous roles, ranging from founding and leading digital advertising start-ups to serving in senior executive positions at WPP. Throughout his career, his focus has been on finding innovative ways to make technology work for marketers.

His fascination with creating value through technology led him to pioneer innovations in early digital ad networks, search engine marketing, behavioral targeting, and big data. Earlier in his career, Moore co-founded 24/7 Media and helped lead the company from a start-up into a digital marketing and advertising technology leader. Following WPP’s acquisition of 24/7 Real Media, he joined WPP, where he helped lead the transformation of Xaxis and served as Global President of WPP Digital.

Moore has also played a meaningful role in the evolution of the advertising industry. He served on the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) board for nearly twenty years, including as Chairman from 2009 to 2011, and became the first Chairman of the IAB Tech Lab. He has also served as a board member and Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Advertising Education Foundation (AEF), helping support the development of the next generation of advertising talent.