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Kurt Donnell scaled Freestar from under 30 employees to a top publisher monetization network, keeping clients, operations, and culture front and center.
Kurt Donnell is the President and CEO of Freestar, an advertising technology partner for digital media publishers. Since joining in 2019, he has scaled the company from a US-based team of 25 to nearly 200 employees across 15 countries and increased revenue by more than 600% by embedding a publisher-first culture while driving innovation in ad tech for publishers, retailers, and app developers.
Under his leadership, Freestar has tripled in size and expanded its offerings, including in-app monetization, video, and email solutions, and recently launched pubOS, a new all-in-one toolkit helping publishers maximize revenue with a streamlined, clutter-free platform.
Prior to Freestar, Kurt was EVP, Corporate Development and General Counsel at YogaWorks, where he helped lead the company to its 2017 IPO as the first publicly traded boutique fitness company.
Under his leadership, Freestar has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. on the annual Inc. 5000 list for the past seven consecutive years, topping the list at #1 in 2019. The company has also prioritized transparency in programmatic ad tech and solutions that help publishers improve performance and grow revenue.
A former corporate lawyer, Kurt has extensive experience across corporate development, mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships, digital media, and corporate law, having led legal, business, and growth functions at both high-growth companies and Am Law 100 firms. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, golfing, road trips, and grilling on his Big Green Egg.
Kurt Donnell is the President and CEO of Freestar, an advertising technology partner for digital media publishers. Since joining in 2019, he has scaled the company from a US-based team of 25 to nearly 200 employees across 15 countries and increased revenue by more than 600% by embedding a publisher-first culture while driving innovation in ad tech for publishers, retailers, and app developers.
Under his leadership, Freestar has tripled in size and expanded its offerings, including in-app monetization, video, and email solutions, and recently launched pubOS, a new all-in-one toolkit helping publishers maximize revenue with a streamlined, clutter-free platform.
Prior to Freestar, Kurt was EVP, Corporate Development and General Counsel at YogaWorks, where he helped lead the company to its 2017 IPO as the first publicly traded boutique fitness company.
Under his leadership, Freestar has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. on the annual Inc. 5000 list for the past seven consecutive years, topping the list at #1 in 2019. The company has also prioritized transparency in programmatic ad tech and solutions that help publishers improve performance and grow revenue.
A former corporate lawyer, Kurt has extensive experience across corporate development, mergers and acquisitions, strategic partnerships, digital media, and corporate law, having led legal, business, and growth functions at both high-growth companies and Am Law 100 firms. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, golfing, road trips, and grilling on his Big Green Egg.
Publishers are facing a new threat: AI is diverting attention and traffic away from their sites. Instead of searching for content, readers are getting answers directly from AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini.
What once drove audiences to publishers’ pages: Search engines, social shares, direct visits, is now being bypassed entirely, leaving many struggling to maintain revenue and engagement.
Kurt Donnell is leading Freestar to stand up for publishers in this rapidly shifting AI era. Under his guidance, the company is providing strategies and tools that help publishers protect their traffic, optimize monetization, and adapt to the AI-driven world.
Kurt believes most advertisers avoid news sites by default due to an outdated belief that ads may appear next to negative stories and harm their brand.
This rule was shaped by early brand safety incidents and has stayed in place despite new data and a changed environment. Freestar works with major news publishers to help brands move past this default and advertise in news environments with more confidence.
For Kurt, real brand safety risks come from genuinely harmful content like hate speech or extremist material, not from legitimate journalism such as politics, crime, or global news. Large-scale research with 50,000 respondents shows ads next to news perform on par with “safe” environments like sports and entertainment, with no meaningful impact on brand perception.
Kurt believes news avoidance is causing advertisers to miss high-value audiences, yet many brands still spend in lower-quality environments without realizing the trade-off. Through Freestar’s work with publishers like Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera, and Fortune, he sees consistent performance and strong engagement in news environments.
Kurt Donnell is leading Freestar with a clear focus: solve Platform Fragmentation. He believes that this is holding publishers back. Over time, the ad tech space has become overcrowded. Instead of making things easier, the growing number of platforms and partners has made it harder for publishers to operate efficiently and stay focused on their core business.
Publishers today struggle with too many disconnected tools. That’s what led to pubOS. Rather than adding something new, Freestar unified all existing solutions into one comprehensive system, combining monetization, analytics, and a full spectrum of publisher tools.
With pubOS, the goal is simple: remove the clutter and make running a publishing business feel manageable again.
Most people see AI as a tool that simply answers questions, but Kurt believes it is now becoming a middle layer between users and the internet. As tools like ChatGPT pull information directly from websites, the question is what AI should be allowed to take, and whether it should pay for it.
Some large publishers are already signing deals with AI companies to license their content, allowing it to be used in AI responses. This creates a new system where AI can give users answers without them ever visiting the original websites, but publishers are still compensated and can continue to benefit instead of being fully bypassed.
The concern is what happens to smaller publishers if traffic keeps dropping. Larger publishers may be the ones striking licensing deals with AI companies, while smaller publishers risk being left out with nothing, even though AI still relies on their content.
Kurt believes this shift will likely lead to more debate around rules, payments, and how AI uses publisher content going forward.
Kurt Donnell believes that even the best technology is nothing without the right team behind it. Freestar has always invested in smart, dedicated people who care about customers and results. This goes against the common Silicon Valley obsession with tech-first solutions,
Kurt often uses Freestar as a real-world example of how hiring and empowering industry experts across ad tech and publishing allowed them to scale rapidly. He also explores how a strong team culture can outperform even the most advanced software in delivering value and long-term success.
When talking about culture, Kurt doesn’t believe perks build culture, but they empower people. Instead of focusing on superficial amenities, Freestar invests in meaningful programs: virtual retreats, speaker series, wellness initiatives, and mentorship. This challenges leaders who rely on flashy perks to claim cultural success.
If there is a specific topic you would like Kurt to focus on during the interview that is not listed here, please let us know.
We would be more than happy to run this by Kurt to see if he would be able to discuss it in detail and deliver value to your audience.