Laurie Sullivan
Laurie Sullivan tracks how data, identity and performance media reshape the business of advertising, translating complex ad-tech and search developments into clear, news-driven stories for MediaPost. She sits at the point where marketing technology, media economics and consumer behavior meet, focusing on what new tools, platforms and deals mean for brands, agencies and platforms competing for ad dollars.
Search and performance media through a business lens
Sullivan’s core subject is the business of search and performance marketing across the major platforms. She follows how Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other large media and commerce companies evolve their search, retail media and performance ad offerings, with close attention to product changes, targeting capabilities and measurement tools that move budgets. Her headlines often frame platform news in terms of spend, revenue contribution, or share shifts, making clear how a new feature or policy translates into winners and losers in the ad market.
She regularly reports on how marketers structure search and performance campaigns, from shifting spend between branded and non-branded search to reallocating budgets into performance channels like retail media networks and marketplace ads. Agency perspectives and brand-side examples show up frequently, using practitioner quotes to ground technical updates in day-to-day planning and optimization decisions. Sullivan’s stories in this area are concise and transactional, but they consistently point back to the broader business question: which channels deliver accountable growth and how that is changing.
Data, identity and the economics of ad tech
A defining thread in Sullivan’s coverage is the business of marketing data and identity. She reports on privacy changes, third-party cookie deprecation, first-party data strategies and the rise of clean rooms and identity solutions as they reshape how advertisers target and measure campaigns. Her work follows the companies that sell those capabilities as well as the brands and agencies that depend on them, treating data infrastructure as a competitive asset rather than a technical footnote.
Sullivan covers mergers, acquisitions and strategic investments that rewire the ad-tech and data landscape, highlighting the price tags, strategic rationale and implications for clients. When she writes about deals such as Publicis acquiring data platforms like LiveRamp for multibillion-dollar sums, she focuses on how ownership of identity, onboarding and enrichment capabilities shifts leverage in the marketplace. Her reporting in this vein connects financial transactions to operational realities, explaining what new combinations of holding companies, data providers and platforms will mean for targeting, measurement and the flow of media spend.
Benchmarks, research and marketer sentiment
Much of Sullivan’s reporting is built around fresh numbers. She frequently anchors stories in earnings reports, third-party benchmarks, ad spend forecasts, consumer surveys and behavioral data from search, e-commerce and media platforms. Headlines call out changes in query volumes, category-level ad spending, conversion rates or consumer preferences, and the accompanying articles translate those data points into practical signals about where budgets and attention are moving.
She pays particular attention to how marketers feel about new tools and constraints: confidence in AI-driven optimization, skepticism about walled-garden measurement, readiness for privacy enforcement, or frustration with fragmented identity. By pairing quantitative findings with quotes from marketers, agency leads and technology vendors, Sullivan builds a picture of both the hard numbers and the sentiment behind them. The result is coverage that helps readers understand not only what is happening in the market, but how decision-makers are reacting.
Fast-turn news with executive voices and plain language
Sullivan works primarily in short, time-sensitive news pieces rather than long-form features. Her stories tend to move quickly from the core development—a new platform product, a dataset, a regulatory change, a corporate deal—into the implications for advertisers and their partners. She writes in plain, unadorned language, often unpacking technical concepts like clean rooms, identity graphs or performance measurement in straightforward terms that keep the focus on business impact rather than jargon.
Executive voices are a consistent part of her format. She draws on comments from CMOs, agency search and performance leads, product executives at platforms and independent analysts, using their quotes to stress-test claims and add perspective on how a change will play out in media plans, tech stacks and P&Ls. Across beats, Sullivan’s work is distinguished less by opinion than by the steady accumulation of concrete developments—product updates, financial results, data releases and deals—assembled into a clear view of where the business of data-driven advertising is heading.
4 more business journalists.
Alex Bronzini-Vender
Alex Bronzini-Vender is a business reporter who focuses on how economic forces and corporate decisions shape specific communities and industries. He covers business for the Washington Monthly, writing reported pieces at the intersection of commerce and public life. His work reflects the magazine’s emphasis on linking markets and money to power, policy, and everyday experience. He treats business not as balance sheets and deals but as choices that affect local realities. In “Fear and Loathing in Palo Alto,” he uses a city tied to the tech sector to examine how a powerful industry influences a community. He grounds his business beat in on-the-ground consequences rather than treating corporate and financial developments in isolation.
Alex Smith
Alex Smith focuses on the business impact of enterprise technology, with a distinctive emphasis on AI literacy and skills rather than technical specifications. They write for Technology Record, covering how artificial intelligence and cloud platforms from major providers are turned into concrete programmes for organisations and governments. Their beat sits at the junction of business strategy, national digital policy and large-scale technology partnerships. They report on national AI literacy programmes and public–private partnerships, showing how policy choices, vendor capabilities and skills gaps intersect. On the business beat, they treat AI and cloud as tools for competitiveness, workforce readiness and participation in a data-driven economy. Their concise, announcement-led reporting highlights who is partnering with whom, what programme is being launched, which technologies underpin it and how it changes capability on the ground for executive readers.
Alison Durkee
Alison Durkee focuses on how law, regulation and politics create business risks for major companies and industries. She is a reporter at Forbes, where she writes news-driven explainers on complex legal and regulatory developments and their impact on corporate strategy, reputation and markets. Her coverage centers on companies under scrutiny, especially in technology and other high-growth sectors, and tracks trials, investigations and fast-changing policy fights. She breaks down lawsuits, inquiries and regulatory moves into clear parts, grounded in timelines, filings and official actions. She reports on generative artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies as tests of legal frameworks and corporate risk management, explaining how issues like intellectual property, safety compliance, consumer protection and governance can reshape product roadmaps, partnerships and investor expectations.
Alyson Shontell
Alyson Shontell covers business through the lens of leadership, using in-depth conversations with powerful executives and founders to show how their decisions shape companies, markets, and public life. She is editor in chief at Fortune, overseeing coverage across the masthead while continuing to write selected high-impact pieces. Her core work is long, reported interviews and profiles of CEOs of large companies, dominant tech firms, and fast-growing startups. She focuses on how leaders think, manage risk, make unconventional calls, and handle crises, culture, and the future of work. Her subjects include corporate chiefs, startup founders, and political figures treated as executives. She probes operating detail, governance, internal culture, and trade-offs around growth, disruption, and workplace models, using concrete examples and direct, accessible prose that foregrounds the subject’s voice while pressing for specifics.