Earning an internship in the current advertising landscape typically requires cover letters and extensive interviews, but independent media agency Horizon Media is challenging young job-seekers to solve real-world business challenges right from the jump.
And they’re enthusiastically rising up to the challenge.
Horizon recently partnered with Google to host Hacking the Screen, a one-day AI hackathon held at Google’s St. John’s Terminal office in New York. The inaugural Hacking the Screen was designed to harness the power of AI and data to solve real-world business challenges in the entertainment industry. It was hosted by Bob Lord, president of Horizon Media Holdings, and Paijmaan Premji, data transformation lead at Google, and featured students from nine universities, including the University of Massachusetts, Cornell University, Columbia University and New York University, in a hackathon in applied innovation.
“One key focus was predicting box office performance by analyzing a rich array of variables — audience sentiment, ad impressions, CPA, genre and seasonal trends — to forecast success more accurately,” Lord told Campaign. The goal was twofold: to inspire innovative, data-driven solutions and to explore how evolving client discovery processes, particularly in entertainment, could be reimagined using AI.
The two companies share a commitment to advancing responsible AI, nurturing emerging talent and shaping the next wave of intelligent media solutions.
The brief
The Horizon-Google collaboration emphasized “innovation with integrity.” The participants worked in teams, leveraging Horizon’s proprietary audience intelligence tools and Google’s Vertex AI platform. The goal was to develop innovative solutions for key marketing use cases on behalf of a leading entertainment brand.
Participants were competitively chosen from a diverse and talented pool of students across nine universities.
“We sought out individuals with a strong problem-solving mindset and a genuine curiosity about how AI and data could reshape entertainment marketing. By intentionally selecting students from both technical and business backgrounds, we encouraged interdisciplinary collaboration — underscoring that today’s AI landscape is no longer siloed to data scientists, but instead requires a symphony of perspectives,” said Domenic Venuto, chief data and product officer at Horizon Media.
Each team’s prototype was a real-world exploration of AI’s potential to transform business outcomes across industries and audiences. The findings were grounded in behavioral data and evaluated for strategic impact.
Venuto said entertainment marketing was a natural choice because it’s a fast-paced, highly influential industry where audience behaviors shift rapidly. It’s also where Horizon brings deep expertise, having long partnered with studios, streamers and network clients.
“It also provided a compelling, accessible challenge for students. Entertainment is relatable and culturally relevant, which made it an ideal sandbox for rapid ideation and tangible problem-solving within the time constraints of a hackathon,” said Venuto.
The hackathon is part of Horizon’s plan to fuse experimentation with execution for its clients, advancing the ongoing development of Blu, its AI-native growth platform, while also training next-gen talent and cultivating new partnerships across technology, media and culture.
“These students surfaced actionable opportunities, not hypotheticals,” said Lord. “By pressure-testing Google’s AI tools and Horizon’s data insights against real business challenges, they revealed how AI can elevate strategy, speed execution and sharpen relevance.”
The winner
The winning team, Synth Solutions, earned a $10,000 grand prize for its use of large language models to optimize campaign messaging across nuanced audience segments. The team — Nyosha Homicil of Pace University, Matthew Labasan of Columbia University, Eric Kouperman of Pace University and Apun Datta of Hunter College — developed a prototype that blended empathy, data and generative intelligence to power more predictive, high-impact campaigns.
Projects were evaluated on a five-point scale across five categories: problem understanding, technical execution, creativity and innovation, real-world relevance and presentation. Judges looked for clear problem statements, effective use of AI and data tools, original thinking and practical applications in media and advertising.
The judging panel included Nadia Carta, head of data, measurement and analytics at Google; Elizabeth Twersky, VP of product design at Horizon Media; and Cindy Kim, EVP and managing partner of entertainment at Horizon Media.
Top participants in the hackathon were selected for internships with Horizon’s AI, analytics and innovation teams.
Lord said the enthusiasm and caliber of thinking at Hacking the Screen confirmed the format works.
“Due to overwhelming interest, we’re expanding the initiative into a series of Google/Horizon hackathons. The next stop? Retail. This fall, students will explore how emerging Google AI tools — such as Google Lens, the LLM Notebook and other cutting-edge platforms — can transform the retail landscape,” said Lord.
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