— Speaker & Panelist
Brian Kennett
Twenty years on both sides of the local media buy. Now building the AI underneath the revenue.
Founder, Built Revenue · AI and local media revenue
Houlton, Wisconsin
Speaker bio
Brian Kennett is the founder of Built Revenue, an operator-led advisory and implementation practice for media companies and agencies. He advises on where the durable revenue is — pricing, packaging, sales workflow, retention, and where AI earns its place — and then builds the systems that carry it.
He spent more than twelve years running publisher-owned digital ad agencies. Most recently he owned the full P&L for digital advertising and agency solutions at a top metro publisher — strategy, pricing, direct and programmatic sales, paid media, creative, analytics, and ad operations — and launched its full-service agency.
He put AI into production there rather than into a pilot deck — custom GPTs for proposals, media plans, and RFP responses; agentic workflows in trafficking, pacing, and anomaly detection; and the governance, policy, and training to keep all of it accountable.
He has also worked the other side of the buy — running creative services, media, and digital for a large regional health system, where he placed the local buys and produced the spots. Earlier he ran social and paid search for a national business-services company.
Twenty years on both sides of the local media buy gives him a working opinion on where AI actually pays — and where it does not.
Short version
Brian Kennett runs Built Revenue, an operator-led advisory and implementation practice for media companies and agencies: he advises on where the durable revenue is, then builds the systems underneath it. Twenty years on both sides of the local media buy, more than twelve of them running publisher-owned ad agencies.
Both versions are cleared for use in programs, promos, and intros. No approval needed.
The background
- 20 years
- On both sides of the local media buy
- 12+ years
- Leading publisher-owned ad agencies
- Full P&L
- Strategy, pricing, sales, media, creative, ad operations
- In production
- AI shipped into live revenue workflow, not pilot decks
Speaking topics
- 01
Shipping AI into a P&L, not a pilot
What survives contact with a revenue team, and what quietly gets abandoned in month three.
- 02
The agentic sales desk
Proposals, media plans, trafficking, pacing, and QA — where agents earn their keep and where a human still signs.
- 03
Lightweight AI governance
Prompts, policies, review, and training that a fifty-person team will actually follow.
- 04
Who pays for local journalism next
Pricing, packaging, retention, and civic inventory as a revenue line rather than a grant application.
Photos & press kit
All four files are cleared for use. Click to download — the first one is full resolution, for print.
- High resolutionPrint safe — use this one for programs, signage, and anything going to a printer3456 × 4608 · JPG · 2.9 MB
- Square headshotFor conference programs, speaker directories, and event apps1200 × 1200 · JPG · 221 KB
- Web optimizedFor blogs, social cards, and email1200 × 1600 · JPG · 216 KB
- GrayscaleMatches the treatment used on this page1200 × 1600 · JPG · 217 KB
Logos & brand
Cleared for programs, signage, event apps, slides, and promotion — no approval needed. Every file is outlined, so the logo can’t re-render in a substitute font on your machine. Start with the SVG; the PDF is what a print vendor will ask for.
Primary lockup
Wordmark and practice line on the night surface. Use this one by default.
Lockup, light background
The same lockup on white and light program pages.
Wordmark
Name alone, for light backgrounds and tight horizontal space.
Wordmark, dark background
Name alone, reversed for dark slides and signage.
Square mark
Avatars, app tiles, and speaker directory thumbnails.
Color
- Press Red
- #b5392bThe accent — carries “built” and the terminal bar
- Ink
- #1b1814Type on light surfaces
- Night
- #16130fThe sign surface
- Paper
- #f4efe6Warm off-white ground
- Press Dim
- #df8d7e“built” when it sits on night
- Muted
- #837a6cThe practice line and fine print
Type
- IBM Plex Mono
- The wordmark, labels, and all small caps
- Newsreader
- Headlines and body — the editorial voice
- Libre Franklin
- Interface and supporting text
All three are open source and free to install from Google Fonts. You don’t need them to use the logo files above — those are already outlined.
Using it
- Clear space. Keep a margin of one character cell — 60% of the wordmark’s type size — on all sides. The tight-cropped files already have it built in.
- Minimum size. 120px wide on screen, one inch in print. Below that, use the square mark.
- Please don’t. Recolor it, stretch it, add effects, box it in, or set the name in a different typeface.
- Need a variant that isn’t here? Ask and you’ll get a real file back, not a screenshot.
Elsewhere
Booking, panels, and workshops.
Send the room, the date, and what you want the audience to walk out arguing about. If you’d rather start with the thinking, the Field Notes make the whole case.