Inmar Intelligence

EY US announces winners for the Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 Southeast Award

Ernst & Young LLP (EY US) proudly announces the winners of the Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2026 Southeast Award, honoring visionary leaders of high-growth companies driving innovation, growth and prosperity for future generations.

AudienceMix Disrupts Data Sales with Cost-Effective Solutions

AudienceMix is a data-curation startup aiming to reduce waste and cost in programmatic advertising by enabling marketers to mix and match audience signals rather than using standalone segments. Founded in April by Tom Mitchel, former SVP of programmatic sales at InMarket, it leverages LiveRamp to offer over 8,200 syndicated audiences drawn from data on more than 3 billion devices and 1 billion daily active users. The company prices curated audiences at an average CPM of 65 cents, claimed to be less than half the price of typical LiveRamp syndicated segments ($1–$3 CPM). Since launching in LiveRamp’s data marketplace in July, AudienceMix has seen strong demand, with August revenue the highest among data companies on the platform and September revenue doubling that. The startup remains largely bootstrapped, recently securing $100,000 in outside funding from Nvidia’s Inception accelerator, and is expanding its team and pursuing a self-serve UI and additional data-partner integrations, while ensuring privacy compliance via Frankfurt Kurnit and AWS-based infrastructure.

Ranjana Choudhry Takes Retail Media to New Heights

Aki Technologies named Ranjana Choudhry as SVP of media and data platforms, replacing Scott Swanson, signaling a shift to a data-enabled, self-serve approach to media buying. Choudhry previously built Wakefern Food Corp.'s first retail media network, for operators including Fairway and ShopRite, and later served as chief client officer and managing director at Red Fuse Communications, the WPP unit for Colgate-Palmolive brands. She also teaches graduate-level integrated marketing at NYU School of Professional Studies. In an AdExchanger interview, she explains that the expanded title reflects emphasis on technology, reporting, and data sources to improve media effectiveness, and outlines three customer pillars—advertising agencies, consumer packaged goods brands, and retailers. She advocates blending art and science, using data-driven insights, and prioritizing the customer problem when shaping retail media strategies. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed.