Eight months ago I sat down to pitch investors on a new kind of digital advertising network.

One where neither publishers nor advertisers were censored or black-listed based on their interests or beliefs… built on the principles of freedom and voluntary association.

I envisioned an advertising network where brands could advertise anything that’s legal. 🤯

There was a caveat: publishers could reject any ad or ad category they wished.

This allowed us to put the control back in the hands of the people who actually use our network—publishers and advertisers—and not social media activists or anonymous hacks hired to be the arbiters of what is, and is not, acceptable to promote on the internet.

My goal was to be able to serve 4 billion ad experiences by the end of 2024.

We hit that milestone in our very first year. 🚀

It takes a lot of coordination to pull off something like this and I want to thank everyone who helped us hit this goal so far ahead of schedule. From our engineers, accountants, and attorneys to our employees, investors, publishers, and advertisers. The list of people to thank is too long for this post. 

If you’ve been a part of this journey so far, thank you. 

Looking back on twenty-twenty-one, I’m amazed by what a little bit of perseverance, grit, and determination can accomplish when people work towards the common goal of unleashing the full potential of digital advertising. So much of the industry has been overrun by bad-actors, bots, and dystopian censors that I began to believe this was the natural state of the industry… but it’s not. 

Our industry has a chance to unite tech, creativity, and freedom. Freedom of expression, association, and speech. That’s what this industry was founded on. That’s what made advertising great before it became a commoditized race to the bottom. 

There are a handful of companies out there shaping the future of digital advertising and I’m incredibly proud of everyone who has helped Topple become one of those companies.

We have a lot of exciting new features launching in the coming year but I’ll share more about that in a future blog post. For now, I just wanted to express my gratitude to everyone who has worked tirelessly to get us where we are in our first year of operation.

To health, happiness, and success in twenty-twenty-two.