Last month, Mediamath’s GM, Matt Spiegel, was interviewed as part of the Argyle Executive Forums’ Argyle Conversations series in which he shared details about his industry experiences. We turned his interview into a three-part blog series for our readers. In this series, Spiegel will help us take a closer look at the evolution of the digital marketing landscape and the challenges and difficulties in reaching consumers. The first part of the series will focus on Spiegel’s background and his wisdom in digital marketing.
Part 1: “Getting to Know Digital Veteran Matt Spiegel, GM MediaMath Americas”
A true digital veteran and respected thought leader, Spiegel entered the industry in 1997 and quickly discovered the power of interactive data driven marketing. Capitalizing on the growing field, he became an early advocate for digital media on both the buying and selling sides of the industry.
As part of the Q&A, Spiegel noted that the earlier part of his career was focused on ad sales, and that he has been in the digital marketing world since the late 1990s.
“In those early days, I gravitated towards the data-driven marketing side of the business and moved to leading the sales and product development efforts of direct-marketing focused solutions like e-mail, lead-gen programs and sweepstakes-based campaigns for one of the leading ad networks,” he said.
After that experience, he transitioned into the search world and founded a search engine marketing agency called Resolution Media in 2003, which he ran for Omnicom for a couple of years after he sold it to them in 2005. Next, Matt became the global CEO of Omnicom Media Group’s digital media practice. That experience, he said, led him to help launch what’s now known as Accuen, a business focused on helping clients leverage programmatic or, tradable digital media. After six years with Omnicom, Matt returned to his start-up roots with Tap.Me a business focused on mobile advertising technology. He ran the business for about a year until he sold it to MediaMath last December.
During the Argyle Q&A, Matt emphasized how he has seen the digital marketing landscape change, and how life is therefore much different for today’s CMO.
“It’s not nearly as simple as it used to be. People seek different types of messages in different forms, they do more individual research and check more user reviews,” he said. “The fact that the purchase cycle is more complicated in many cases makes marketing today more difficult.”
With the impact of social channels and mobile, he noted, this is all leading to a world where CMOs and marketers are facing more channels at more speed, with more variables with which to make decisions.
“The ability to reach a mass audience is nowhere near as easy as it used to be. And as that continues to change, we need to have technology available that can provide a complete view of the customer and a holistic view of marketing efforts,” he said. “Unless you’re leveraging the latest technology, there’s just way too much going on to be able to think that you can navigate all the channels, connect them in a smart way and make smart decisions.”
Our next blog post in this series will discuss Spiegel’s thoughts on today’s technology ecosystem, the state of the industry regarding adopting and implementing these technologies, and innovation that’s impacting the world of digital marketing and advertising. Finally, stay tuned for the third blog post where he will highlight success stories in solving problems for clients.