Willard Simmons is a well-known figure in the world of digital advertising and platform product strategy. With years of experience in the industry, Simmons has made a significant contribution to the development and adoption of real-time bidder advertising. He is a visionary entrepreneur who co-founded dataxu, a demand-side platform for digital advertising named a leader by Forrester four times over. His contribution to the industry is visible in the form of the OpenRTB standard, a prevalent open standard adopted by hundreds of companies worldwide.

Simmons is an alumnus of prestigious academic institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of New Hampshire. He has held various research and engineering roles at MIT, Princeton, TRW (now Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems), and Lockheed Martin Astronautics.

Currently, Simmons is the VP of Product Management, Ad Platform, at Roku, where he leads the team responsible for Roku's advertising platform strategy. He also advises and invests in startups.