Jacob Cook is a Lecturer in the Marketing Unit at Harvard Business School, where he teaches the EC course Digital Marketing & AI Workshop. His work focuses on how companies design and scale customer acquisition and retention strategies using digital marketing, data, and performance-driven decision-making with AI.
Cook brings nearly two decades of experience in digital marketing and e-commerce. He is the co-founder of Tadpull, a software and data science company that helps both emerging and established brands grow through data and AI. His work has supported companies including Google, Microsoft, YETI, Caterpillar, Jackson Hole Resort, and Mailchimp, as well as private equity firms such as H.I.G. Capital. The digital marketing frameworks developed through these partnerships have helped drive growth, guide acquisitions, and contribute to successful exits demonstrating how disciplined campaigns can create meaningful enterprise value. Much of this work now informs his teaching and case development at HBS.
His current research explores how marketers use data and emerging AI tools to guide decisions across the funnel from customer acquisition to retention and lifetime value. He is particularly interested in how large language models can support testing, creative development, and campaign analysis. This work often draws on proprietary data from industry collaborations and is developed in partnership with faculty at HBS, Wharton, and INSEAD.
Cook has created case materials and interactive AI tools that explore tradeoffs in customer ownership, data access, and channel strategy. His teaching emphasizes hands-on learning, helping students apply digital marketing frameworks, evaluate performance, and communicate impact across teams. Guest speakers from Adobe, HubSpot, SEMRush, and OpenAI contribute real-world insight to the course’s workshop-style format.
He has taught digital marketing, e-commerce, and data science at both the undergraduate and graduate levels since 2007. His approach centers on simplifying complex systems and helping students develop practical, adaptable skills they can apply across industries.
Outside the classroom, Cook writes at OnDigitalMarketing.com, a platform he started in 2012 to share tools and educational content for aspiring entrepreneurs and marketing leaders around the world. He attended both Drury University and Washington University in St. Louis, earning degrees in physics and marketing communications. He enjoys cooking with his family, painting, tinkering with mobile art, and finding new places to be a digital nomad between semesters.