Guest
Christoph Berg
CEO and Founder, MINT Square GmbH
Fifteen years across publisher sales, DSP technology and a decade running MINT Square, Berg is the programmatic simplifier who refuses to tolerate the black box.
About
Christoph Berg is the CEO and Founder of MINT Square GmbH, a programmatic reseller and consultancy that helps mid-market agencies and advertisers choose technology, set up campaigns and run programmatic without treating it as a black box. By his account, more than 80 percent of MINT Square's clients are independent agencies.
Berg began on the sell side, working in publisher sales at a travel ad network around fifteen years ago, when programmatic was at its very beginning, before moving to the DSP side of ad tech selling technology for AdForm. That combination of publisher, SSP and buy side experience gave him an unusually complete view of where money moves across the supply path, and of the motivations of the publishers on the other side of the table.
Ten years ago he founded MINT Square, which resells three technologies, the German local platform Active Agent, Adform and The Trade Desk, and consults on others its clients hold. Berg built the business around simplifying programmatic for the mid-market: testing platforms inside out, training traders through shadowing and blueprints rather than one-off workshops, and insisting on transparency over which SSPs, data and verification partners sit behind a campaign. He is an open enthusiast for AI, using Anthropic's models internally, while arguing that human judgement remains essential to running client budgets.
Career15 years
- 2016 to now MINT Square GmbH CEO and Founder
- 2015 to 2016 Adform Publisher Sales Manager DACH
- 2013 to 2014 travel audience (an Amadeus company) Head of Publisher Network
- 2011 to 2013 travel audience (an Amadeus company) Portfolio Manager, Publisher
How Christoph thinks3 convictions
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Inventory decides the platform
Berg argues there is no bad DSP, only fit, and the first question of fit is always inventory. His worked example is blunt: a client who needs Netflix has to go to The Trade Desk, because it is not available on Adform or Active Agent. Only after inventory do API connections and reporting integration enter the decision.
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Test before you trust
For Berg, the expectation that a platform performs the instant you switch it on is the single biggest source of failure. He insists teams set aside budget to test a DSP inside out, treating the spend as a learning cost rather than a loss. That testing, run over roughly three months of shadowing and comparison, is how clients decide whether a technology genuinely works for them.
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Stay brave with new tech
Berg is struck by how hesitant even young people are to use AI and new tools beyond simple questions. He wants hires who are comfortable with numbers and willing to experiment with the SSPs, DMPs and verification partners that appear almost every month. The capability set changes constantly, he says, and keeping up means testing bravely, not waiting for certainty.