Piero Pavone on taking Preciso native advertising to Shopify merchants

Piero Pavone is the founder and CEO of Preciso, the Italian adtech company behind the Smart Bidding programmatic platform and the Ultima native advertising solution.

In May 2026 Preciso launched Ultima Ads for Advertisers as an app for Shopify merchants, a month after releasing Ultima for Publishers as a WordPress plugin. The company says tests of Ultima for a fashion client delivered a clickthrough rate of 2.1 per cent against an industry average of 1.84 per cent, and it now has teams in six countries.

He tells Business Matters why he flipped the programmatic question from spend to outcomes, and why he would have moved faster.

What do you currently do at Preciso?

I founded Preciso and, as CEO, I am involved to some extent in every part of the business. I also define the company’s long-term vision. A significant part of my focus is on research and innovation, and benchmarking our newly developed technical strategies.

Things move fast in adtech, so we have to make sure our technology and solutions are working as hard as they can for advertisers and publishers. Alongside our Smart Bidding solution, which we developed when we launched the company in 2020, we released Ultima in 2024. This is an integrated advertising solution for efficient, targeted native ads that drive meaningful engagement while minimising ad spend.

With consumers tuning out of traditional banner advertising, we saw the value in native as a much less intrusive, more contextual type of advertising that promised to deliver better results for advertisers, and our faith has not been misplaced. We see better clickthrough rates, better engagement rates, longer average session durations and lower bounce rates. All things an advertiser wants to see.

Following the successful launch of Ultima, we have since launched Ultima for Publishers, which enables WordPress publishers to place native advertising units on their sites and monetise them with reputable, brand-safe ads that respect the user experience. That means no gambling or adult advertising content, and no pop-unders or intrusive banners.

Earlier this year, we launched Ultima Ads for Advertisers, the first native ads app plugin for Shopify focused on a merchant’s advertising goals. It enables them to access highly qualified traffic and 100 per cent user engagement within their Shopify dashboard.

And there is always something new in the pipeline: technical solutions that help advertisers buy media more efficiently and publishers monetise their inventory more effectively.

What was the inspiration behind your business?

On a philosophical level, it came from curiosity, long-term thinking and a strong commitment to innovation. I have always believed that the marriage of technology and human intuition is a very powerful combination.

But the company was not born overnight. It was the culmination of several years spent testing legacy DSPs, such as AppNexus, and similar tools. That work led to the development of our own Smart Bidding tool, designed to deliver client campaigns in just a few clicks.

The idea came from recognising a fundamental inefficiency in programmatic advertising. There were too many platforms optimising for spend rather than outcomes. Advertisers were effectively paying for impressions that did not convert, audiences that were not relevant and placements that did not make contextual sense.

So when we launched, we flipped the question from, “How do we spend this budget?” to, “Which impressions actually matter?” That shift led to our Smart Bidding approach, which underpins everything we do.

By focusing on bidding precision rather than budget size, we have also been able to create a more balanced ecosystem, where smaller advertisers and publishers can access the same quality of inventory as larger players, and therefore be better equipped to compete with them.

Who do you admire?

Brian O’Kelley, and not just for his achievements in adtech. For sure, he founded AppNexus, growing it into a billion-dollar company before selling it to AT&T for $1.6bn in 2018.

But he has continued to pursue meaningful ventures and ideas beyond adtech, through his work as an angel investor and an active board member of Tech:NYC.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

I would have moved faster. If I could go back, I would trust my instincts more and take action sooner.

Caution in the early days of a new business is understandable, perhaps even advisable, but with the benefit of hindsight, I think we could have grown even faster than we have.

What defines your way of doing business?

I believe innovation comes from asking better questions and being willing to explore new ideas. I try to absorb information from as many sources as possible: events, podcasts, LinkedIn posts, blogs and conversations with strangers.

The biggest threat to growth is complacency: the feeling that you know everything and have nothing more to learn.

I also believe in moving fast. In adtech, speed can matter more than perfection. It is the perfect environment for the MVP, or minimum viable product. You need to execute, test, learn and adapt rather than wait for everything to be perfect.

And you need to do it constantly. In this business, if something is working well today, there is no guarantee it will still work well tomorrow.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

Building something meaningful takes time, but you do not need to have everything figured out from the beginning. Have a clear vision, take the next step, learn from it and keep moving forward.

Take advice from others, but remember that no one knows or understands your business better than you do. Learn from other sectors and other industries. Many of the things that help a business to be successful are transferable.

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