Celebrating the Journey: From Unexpected Beginnings to Career Milestones
Perion Marketing
10th Mar 2025
Deborah Hall, CEO & Co-Founder of DIVE, brings extensive expertise in ad-tech, engineering, mobile, CTV, and DOOH marketing. A serial entrepreneur, Deb was the driving force behind web2mobile, which was purchased by Torstar Digital (one of Canada’s largest media companies) in 2010. Since 2000, Deb has built companies that have redefined how the public interacts with mobile, digital out-of-home media, creative brand stories, and technology.
Throughout my career, I have always tried to push the boundaries on new ideas and try things that have not been done before. When I started my first company, in mobile app development, it was to address the gap of content not rendering properly on handsets as it was built for desktop screens. Over the past decade, so much content has been created and most is viewed on the mobile device, so we are solving the opposite challenge of bringing mobile content to the physical world. In each project I’ve worked on, the highlight has been the wonderful people I have had the pleasure of working with, both on our team and across brands, platforms and agencies. I love the moment of the creative spark & ideation when a conversation brings a new campaign idea to life. One thing I have learned about myself is that getting up away from my desk and taking a walk or a bike ride usually unlocks a creative idea. Some may say I take this too far and bike to meetings when I could safely take a car, but I love the feeling of skipping past New York or Toronto traffic on a bike, even in the winter :). My hope is that the technology that our teams work on brings joy to people and does something to change the world for the better. For a recent campaign for Mastercard, DIVE featured cancer survivors on billboards across NYC to applaud them in their fight to “Stand up to Cancer”. I was truly honoured to be a part of that campaign and it felt great to use our technology for that purpose.
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What an exciting time to work in our industry! The creator economy is proving to be more than a trend. Now valued at $250 billion, it continues to thrive and is projected to reach $480 billion by 2027. This shift has been a key focus area for DIVE, as we work to help brands & agencies bring the best of their creator content to the physical world. We’ve also seen major growth in Connected TV and Retail experiences with global advertisers increasingly investing in these spaces. Our focus has been on seamlessly integrating these emerging channels with digital billboard campaigns, creating cohesive, cross-platform brand experiences that bridge the digital and physical worlds.
The future of DOOH advertising is audience – DIVE + Perion is the best of campaign technology to help brands serve advertising in the most efficient way possible. DIVE brings the best of mobile & creator content through our DIVE campaign system & tools & Perion’s technology for finding audiences and screens is un-matched.
Deborah Hall is a Canadian Tech Entrepreneur & Award-Winning Media Innovator
Her leadership has been praised by peers and recognized with prestigious industry accolades, including Digital Marketing Awards, Media Innovation Awards (Gold & Bronze), Cannes Lions, and the NYC Smarties Mobile Awards (2012). In 2015, Mobile Marketer named Deb one of the Top Global Women to Watch.
At DIVE, Deb continues to push creative and technological boundaries, bringing creator content off the screen and into the physical world. In 2017, DIVE launched Twitter Billboard, turning tweets into larger-than-life statements. That innovation was followed by TikTok Out of Phone, which broke the fourth wall between digital and reality. DIVE’s work doesn’t just capture attention — it reinvents how audiences experience brands.
These bold innovations haven’t gone unnoticed, earning some of the industry’s highest honors, including:
Under Deb’s leadership, DIVE is pioneering a new era of immersive advertising — blending technology, creativity, and the physical world like never before.
Looking into the evolving landscape of digital advertising, we see how retail media, DOOH, and CTV are innovatively harnessing location-based strategies to offer a unique approach to how brands connect with consumers.
Advertising has evolved since the days when buying ad space required a personal meeting between media buyers and publishers. These days, software algorithms simplify the media buying process completing the transaction in seconds.
By Daniel E. Aks and RJ Turchick
