In the fast-fast world of digital marketing today, actual influence isn’t catching up, but leading the charge. And leading the charge is Evan Rutchik, a self-styled visionary with two decades of experience in his resume that covers operating agencies, creating ad-tech platforms, entrepreneurial ventures, speaking tour circuits, and even angel investing. Always ahead of the curve, he preached best practices and, literally, re-shaped the way humans engage with brands today in the broken digital world.
Innovation Origins: Strategy and Creativity Education
The groundwork for Rutchik’s professional life was established at Syracuse University, where he earned a unique double Bachelor of Science degree—one in Management from the Whitman School of Management, and one in Marketing from the S.I. Newhouse College of Public Communications. Both organization and communication combined created a base of analytical skill coupled with storytelling skill.
But all of that was in Evan Rutchik’s New York, in NYU’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. There’s where he earned a Master of Business Administration in Finance, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship—the very same expertise that would enable him to untangle the knot of 21st-century advertising. There’s where he learned numeracy, storytelling, and quick idea-execution—three skills that would define his entire career.
Scaling the Ranks: Ad-Tech Savvy and Agency Innovation
Rutchik established his leadership early in life by driving award-winning media campaigns that consistently broke into what is now familiar territory—programmatic and data-driven buying—before it was fashionable. Perhaps most notably of all, he married agency-side storytelling with in-the-trenches deployment of technology, creating a 360° perspective on marketing opportunities and challenges.
This was his golden period at Yieldbot. He was Senior Vice President of Agency Sales and led a 25-member high-achieving team and brought in a record $60 million of revenues in 2016 alone. It wasn’t sales alone—it was building scalable partnerships that combined data insights with strategic creativity.
Subsequently during the year, Rutchik was appointed as Chief Revenue Officer, United States, with Ogury. Based out of New York and other offices, he quickly grew the company’s footprint in the United States’ top ten cities, and Ogury was a go-to source for mobile consumer insights. Their extremely detailed mobile journey data was a balance of sensitivity to privacy and actionable intelligence, and Rutchik’s vision was leading the way as the company grew.
Entrepreneurial Leap: Finding the Local Opportunity From agency floors to expansion worldwide—but only in early 2021 did Rutchik turn game-changer. Drawing on decades of industry experience, he saw a simple market need: affordable and sustainable local advertising at scale—i.e., in a post-cookie world. And LocalFactor Group was born.
Capable of precision-delivering brands at the neighborhood level, LocalFactor cut through traditional geotargeting. LocalFactor selected local content, messaged opted-in users, and combined that capability with cookieless technology to create privacy-focused media solutions. LocalFactor’s trademarked LocalFactorID and Geo‑Graph™ technology brought pinpoint, real-time targeting from consented local data—cookies weren’t needed. It was a fresh, innovative solution for an industry increasingly criticized for data usage and customer tracking.
Strategic Synergy: LocalFactor Innovation Meets Viamedia Vision LocalFactor’s rise hadn’t gone unnoticed by March 2025. Viamedia—largest U.S. independent ad representation company in linear, and now aggressively focused digital, television—saw in LocalFactor a strategic, technology-savvy extension to its broadcast and cable buying platform. LocalFactor was acquired, along with a career achievement for Rutchik: he was appointed President and Chief Strategy Officer of Viamedia, to its board, reporting to CEO David Solomon.
Rutchik brings today under one roof two powerful forces: Viamedia’s nationwide presence and LocalFactor’s local know-how. LocalFactor is still an independent company with the same mission it was established upon, since Rutchik gives energy to Viamedia’s broader strategic vision. The result is a commitment to privacy-safe, local-first advertising at massive scale—heretofore, unimaginable.
A Voice of Authority: Thought Leadership with Ethics
Apart from company credentials, Rutchik is also a veteran industry voice. A frequent panelist and guest speaker, he’s a champion of the same causes that matter most to the future of the ad business: the craft of targeting without intrusiveness, the power of trust in consumer relationships, and building brand-safe inventory. His ideas were integrated into foundational dialog at leading industry conferences years prior to privacy-first marketing becoming an enforcement requirement.
He has appeared in media outlets like DotCom Magazine, where he has talked of user-centric platforms, choice, and openness. By doing so, he focuses more on data-responsible, local models of advertising, which help safeguard consumers and provide actual value to enterprises.
Innovation Investment: RIII Ventures and Community Influence
Rutchik’s focus extends far beyond the corporate sphere. Co-founder and Managing Partner of RIII Ventures, he angel invests in early-stage “for-good” businesses—businesses that use technology to make the world and the human condition better. Whether education, city infrastructure, or health-tech, his angel investments point to his conviction that technology can make humankind better, not merely entertain it.
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A Moral Roadmap for the Commercials of Tomorrow From Syracuse to Evan Rutchik New York, from boardroom chairs to agency suites, his is a model journey: lay strategic foundations, surf industry waves, innovate responsibly, and grow purposefully. With LocalFactor charting Viamedia’s course for tomorrow—and Rutchik to write their strategy—the company can look forward to a people- and place-based advertising revolution.
These are the fundamental pillars upon which he stands today:
Localization at Scale
Not only is a global ad, but it’s also hyper-local. His work makes city blocks, even zip codes, a viable unit of targetability.
Privacy-First Innovation By eliminating cookie reliance, he made cookieless targeting mainstream—living proof that data ethics and business objectives are not mutually exclusive. Brand-Safe Environment Based on trust and quality, LocalFactorID and Geo‑Graph™ place advertising in appropriate, safe locations. Empowered Advertising With LocalFactor in the extended reach of Viamedia, advertisers achieve hyper-targeted broad reach. Human-Centric Investing RIII Ventures is Evan Rutchik’s technology passion for the good of humanity. Last Word: A Continuing Legacy When the consumer is more cautious, when regulation is crushing, and when the cry for authenticity is being loudly scaled, Evan Rutchik is the crossroads of business and good. He’s not building companies—he’s building trust. From academic beginnings in communications and management, to data-driven agency leadership, to the building of localized cookieless ads, to purposeful careers and socially responsible investing—I can think of no better example of future-forward leadership. That is: Evan Rutchik is the best of the promise of responsible innovation. His is the promise that with strategy, ethics, and innovation mindset, advertising need no longer sell—at this point, it can connect, contribute, and thrive. With LocalFactor now live on Viamedia, and RIII Ventures incubating socially conscious startups, the future of the industry is becoming more human, more local, and unequivocally more positive.
