"Now that we've secured Westwood One and Gannett," he said, his tone measured, "we've got access to nearly the entire offline spectrum—radio, television, newspapers, magazines, local journals. Everything that used to be out of reach is now at our fingertips."
He tapped once on the table, letting the words sink in.
"And once these agreements are signed," he continued, "we'll have the power to place our ads across all of it. Every station, every paper, every regional affiliate. We won't just run campaigns—we'll direct traffic in the entire ecosystem."
Marcus's eyes widened slightly. "And with Interpublic…"
James nodded before Marcus could even finish the sentence.
"Yes. With Interpublic, we don't just gain reach—we gain insight. Access to the top-tier ad clients in the world. Multinational brands. Consumer data, market behaviors, timing windows, campaign results going back years." He paused. "All of that becomes fuel."
"Fuel?" Marcus echoed.
"For AdNova," James said. His voice hardened with conviction. "Their data—combined with our algorithms, our systems, our vision—will make AdNova more than just an engine. It'll be a learning, evolving ecosystem. One that no other company can replicate."
Marcus stood still, lips slightly parted, stunned by the clarity of it.
"So this… this is the company's next move," he said slowly. "We walk in both worlds—online and offline."
James smiled at him. "That's right. We launch our services across both markets at once. While everyone else is trying to bridge the gap, we'll already be standing on both sides."
He rose from his chair, voice strengthening with each word.
"Marcus, I didn't just build an ad platform. I built an infrastructure. We're not in the business of placing web banners anymore—we're orchestrating every ad that moves across America. Radio, print, local TV, internet—all of it, all from one brain."
He took a few steps forward, the sound of his shoes echoing lightly in the high-ceilinged conference room.
"That brain is AdNova."
He turned, his eyes now sharp and cold as glass.
"With AdNova ET, the big players—Gannett, Westwood One, IPG—they'll pay us to automate and optimize everything they touch. Media planning, slot buying, campaign design. We're becoming Wall Street for advertising. Not an agency. A marketplace. A system."
Then he leaned in slightly, lowering his voice.
"But AdNova SS… that's where we scale."
He took a breath, letting the words unfold with deliberate precision.
"That's our Trojan horse. Every small business in America—the local pizzeria, the dentist office, the real estate broker—right now, they can't touch national TV or radio. But we give them access. Two clicks, and their ad goes live. Web, radio, and print."
Marcus blinked. "Two clicks?"
James nodded. "And we'll charge them small fees. Manageable. But stacked in the tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of accounts. Monthly. Recurring. Predictable. And once they're inside our ecosystem, they stay."
He took a slow step forward, now directly in front of Marcus.
"We grow viral. And once the data starts flowing—user targeting, budget pacing, local trends—AdNova becomes self-optimizing. Every campaign feeds the next."
James's expression shifted—less commanding now, more conspiratorial.
"You won't just be CEO of an ad company, Marcus. You'll be at the helm of the nervous system for every brand in this country."
He paused, letting the silence carry the weight of what he just said.
"The future of advertising isn't digital. It isn't traditional. It's us. Everywhere. At once."
Marcus stared at him, breath caught somewhere between awe and disbelief.
James gave a final nod. "Now go. Gather the executive team. Department heads too. I want every major division lead in the conference room within the hour. It's time they understood the next phase."
Marcus straightened, his grin reappearing as the realization fully crystallized. "Yes, boss."
He turned and moved quickly toward the exit, the glass door swinging shut behind him.
James remained, eyes fixed on the city beyond the window. The sun was dipping lower now, streaking the sky with gold. In a few hours, San Francisco would be glowing with neon and ambition, but for James, the future was already illuminated.
The signatures hadn't even dried.
But the campaign had already begun.
The conference room door clicked shut behind Marcus, leaving James alone in the polished silence.
He let the stillness settle. For a few moments, he simply stood there—surrounded by chrome fixtures, glass walls, and the distant hum of the city thirty floors below. It was the kind of room designed to impress investors. But now, it would be the birthplace of something else entirely.
James walked to the whiteboard at the far end of the room. It was still mostly clean, a faint outline of a rushed diagram from earlier meetings barely visible in dry-erase ghost lines. He uncapped a black marker and stared at the blank space, then raised his hand and drew a single vertical line.
AdNova — he wrote it at the top, underlined it twice.
Then, branching out like arteries from a heart, he added two limbs beneath it:ET on the left. SS on the right.
"Enterprise Technology," he murmured. "Self-Serve."
Under ET, he began listing:— Media planning automation— Slot optimization— Cross-channel integration— Real-time campaign adjustment— Reporting dashboards for execs
Each bullet felt like a hammer hitting steel. Precise. Loud in his mind.
"These are the suits," he whispered. "Gannett, Westwood One, IPG. They don't want disruption. They want control. ET gives them the illusion of mastery."
Then he moved to SS, the more delicate side of the machine.
— Instant ad creation— Plug-and-play formats— Geo-targeted reach— Local radio & print access— Viral referral credit system
He paused, tapping the cap of the marker against his palm.
"This," he said, "is the revolution."
He stepped back and drew a third layer beneath both arms—a wide rectangle spanning them. Across it, in sharp block letters, he wrote:
AdNova Alliance
"This is the bridge," he said aloud. "Where they meet. Where Gannett's unused inventory can be sold to a small bakery in Tulsa. Where Interpublic's data helps optimize ads for a local gym in Newark. Where TV time gets sliced and sold like stock."
James circled it three times. Then he stared.
The whole thing looked less like a business model and more like a battlefield diagram. A war map. One brain at the top. Two arms spreading into the economy. One alliance gluing it together.
He recapped the marker and stepped away. His heart was beating faster now, but not from fear. From anticipation. From the cold, electric high that always followed a breakthrough.
He sat down again, folding his hands, gazing out the window.
This isn't an ad network, he thought. This is a sovereign system. A new layer over the American economy. And I'm the one who codes its pulse.
He could already see the future forming. When the agreements were signed, DoubleClick wouldn't just be a fast-growing dot-com anymore. It would become the command center of American advertising—digital and physical, local and national.
No more gatekeepers. No more middlemen. No more fragmentation.
It would all run through AdNova.
He imagined the dominoes toppling: Westwood One syndicating campaigns from ten thousand local businesses. Gannett flipping every unused inch of newspaper space into real-time inventory. Interpublic, unknowingly, feeding its own crown jewels—data, timing, behavioral graphs—into James's evolving machine.
All roads would lead back to DoubleClick.
No. To him.
He leaned back in the chair, eyes narrowing.
"They think this is about ad placements," he muttered. "They have no idea."
He stepped back from the whiteboard, the markers still warm in his hand, and let his gaze settle on the blueprint of his future.
It wasn't just a plan — it was prophecy written in ink.
In 2025, he had watched the internet become the bloodstream of the world, every heartbeat pulsing with ads — funding search engines, fueling media empires, keeping the entire digital ecosystem alive.
When he first heard his family in 1995 dismiss the internet as a passing fad, even calling it a fraud, he had smiled to himself. They had no idea.
That was the moment he built DoubleClick — to seize the digital throne before anyone else even knew it existed.
But he had miscalculated.
It was still too early. The internet in America had barely reached nine million users. The world he remembered hadn't arrived yet.
At first, he told himself to wait — to make DoubleClick survive long enough to catch the wave when it finally hit around the year 2000.
But then he looked closer.
The offline world was already drowning in ad money — newspapers, television, radio, magazines, billboards. The gold rush had already begun, just not where he'd first expected.
So why wait?
If the online market was still small, didn't that mean the offline one was even bigger now?
And with the deals lined up — Westwood One, Gannett, Interpublic — he wasn't just entering the old world. He was wiring it into his own system.
With AdNova ET guiding the giants, AdNova SS empowering the small businesses, and the AdNova Alliance binding them all under one command —
He would rule both worlds.
Not tomorrow.
Now.