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Media Mobile PROGRAMMATIC Technology Uncategorized

The Use Case for Hyperlocal: What Marketers Need to Know

August 8, 2016 — by MediaMath

The cat is out of the bag on hyperlocal targeting. Marketers have recognized the value of location specific advertising on mobile and are putting significant dollars behind the tactic. In the US alone, location targeted mobile ad revenue is expected to reach 18.2 billion by 2019. To put that in perspective, 2015 had only 6.8 billion dollars in mobile location ad revenue. Hyperlocal mobile targeting allows advertisers to message users in a very specific location. But what should those locations be? Let’s take a look at a few examples of the power of hyperlocal mobile location targeting.

Proximity Targeting

This one is obvious, but it’s powerful enough that it can’t be left out. The ability to message a user at or near a specific location is incredibly powerful. For the first time, marketers are able to message users digitally with great accuracy, while knowing exactly where they are. This of course is unlocked by the information signals mobile devices receive, specifically signals coming from apps that have been given access to the GPS functionality of the device. Let’s be clear – we never had this type of information precision on desktops. Retailers can now message users when they are within a few blocks (or any radius) of a brick and mortar location. By providing valued incentives (coupons, discounts, etc.) these advertisements can be incredibly effective at driving foot traffic. Brands can message users while they are in a department store and showcase products they know are inside (and even in stock) at the specific location the ad is being viewed.

Conquesting

Location is a great signal of intent and should be used as such. In the scenario of a device being seen at an auto lot, it can be inferred that said person is likely in-market for a new vehicle. Messages can be tailored accordingly and shown to the device owner. However, what if the device isn’t on your auto lot, but instead a competitors? This is an excellent scenario to leverage hyperlocal mobile targeting in efforts to lure users away from a competitor and towards another brand! In the desktop world, conquesting is often used as a tactic in online advertising and these practices can be effectively carried over to mobile. Targeting the physical footprint of competitors can be an effective method of conquesting and easily achievable via hyperlocal mobile targeting!

Association

Some brands or advertisers may desire an association with a specific activity, location or event. This could be as simple as geofencing around Central Park or a beach. Nevertheless, the impact may be substantial. By advertising to users when they are at a specific type of location, a brand may be able to tie association to that activity. For example, a sunscreen brand may want to reach users at the beach, or a shoe company may advertise at sporting venues. These types of associations, while definitely more brand-focused as opposed to a direct response campaign, can be great ways to leverage location targeting.

Need Based Association

It’s important to remember that location is not a tool that must be used in a vacuum. Location information is a powerful tool when used alone, but we can enrich our understanding of a location by layering on other types of information. By layering in information like time of day, or current weather conditions, advertisers can create much more powerful campaigns. For example, knowing that it’s raining and a user is near an outdoor recreation store may present an opportunity to showcase an umbrella in a mobile ad. By surfacing relevant real time information such as weather, it can allow advertisers to add move value to their messaging and make it more likely for the viewer to take action. By leveraging time and location, marketers can serve the most relevant messaging.

Retargeting

While not a new concept, knowing the device that an ad was served to, in real time, while at a specific location, opens the door for powerful re-marketing and retargeting campaigns. Advertisers should be leveraging the fact that they know that an individual device was at a specific location, to create more relevant messages for users. What’s more, advertisers can use this past location information to drive foot traffic, conversions and purchases by incentivizing users based on their location history.

Hyperlocal location targeting can be an incredibly powerful tool when used by marketers. Advertisers should be pushing the limits of traditional location based campaigns and looking to layer new types of targeting, information and data, on top of the powerful location signals received.

So get creative!

Media Social Media Technology Uncategorized

Did you Miss Targaryen Tuesday? Don’t.

August 4, 2016 — by MediaMath

Last month, New Marketing Institute (NMI) shared our experiences and advice on Snapchat via the HR Business & Legal Resources site. Our team has adopted Snapchat and other traditionally casual social media tools to stay in touch in both silly and professional ways. We have found Snapchat to be the most powerful when we used it to coordinate team activities, share and celebrate wins, and preview new programs and content. The fleeting and short nature of Snapchat allows our team to share things with each other we normally wouldn’t be prone to otherwise, such as a work in progress or an idea someone is thinking of moving forward with.

We then decided to use Snapchat to document some of NMI’s learning and share it externally! We developed a cadence of posts that include:

MediaMath Monday – where we showcase facts and fun around MediaMath
WTF Wednesday – where we look at statistic from different media channels
Fun Fact Fridays – where we address confusion and definitions in the digital marketing industry

We deviate from the cadence with event posts and trending topics. Did you miss Targaryen Tuesday? Check out some of the highlights of what you missed in the last month on NMI’s Snapchat in the compilation below and make sure to follow nmi_live on Snapchat!

Media Social Media Uncategorized

As Social Media Platforms Get Better at Monetising, What Should Marketers Expect?

July 27, 2016 — by Cedric Peillet

This post originally appeared on City A.M.

Monetising is a top priority for the world’s leading social platforms like Twitter and Periscope, and recent figures suggest they’re getting better at it. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, the UK’s social media ad spend rose 51 per cent last year to £574m, so what developments should marketers expect from these firms over the coming months?

Live streaming and video

The live streaming of video content via social media is a huge growth area and a way to communicate with targeted audiences in real time. Twitter’s video app Periscope and Facebook’s Live service are already up and running, and the likes of Land Rover are using both platforms to broadcast live driving demonstrations. Twitter’s overall advertising model is becoming increasingly video-centric and the platform credits its auto-play video ads for its 48 per cent year-on-year growth in ad revenue.

Sharing branded content

Facebook recently agreed to the sharing of sponsored content on its pages so long as it is clearly marked as such. This is in response to the growing role of native advertising in the form of branded content, which product manager Clare Rubin describes as “a growing and evolving part of the media landscape.”

Although this development doesn’t directly increase Facebook revenue, brands sharing sponsored content will increase Facebook ad spend to maximise exposure.

Emerging platforms

Ad budgets are shifting to emerging platforms such as Pinterest to reach distinctive user groups. John Lewis and Tesco have already used promoted pins, which were recently opened up to UK advertisers.

Like many other networks, Pinterest is exploring social shopping through its buyable pins—currently being trialled by Asos-–and these are likely to be available in the UK soon. Snapchat is also becoming an influential ad platform. Its unique format and youthful audience is likely to divert spend from TV once its new application programming interface is confirmed – which should be any day now.

Keyword-based search

Facebook is developing a proprietary search product and indexing all content. While the objective is to improve the search experience, Facebook is unlikely to pass up the opportunity to monetise the 1.5bn daily searches carried out on its platform, and the launch of an advanced keyword-based advertising solution is predicted.

Audience targeting using first-party data

The potential for using first-party data to reach target audiences across social media is immense and prominent networks are developing solutions to allow brands to do just that. Starcom MediaVest Group recently leveraged Facebook’s demographic targeting to promote Yahoo content in real time, resulting in a significant increase in traffic at a low cost per visit.

Social media plays an ever-increasing role in brand marketing strategies with networks providing access to highly engaged and precisely targeted audiences. The development of social audience monetisation strategies is only just beginning.

Media Mobile Technology Uncategorized

3 Lessons Companies Can Learn From the Pokémon Phenomenon

July 26, 2016 — by MediaMath

This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com.

Every once in a while, there’s a product that successfully delivers on several fronts: user experience, adoption, monetization and growth potential. It’s rare to achieve all four. But Pokémon Go has entered that special category. The mobile app that sends players on an augmented reality adventure in real locations around their homes, offices and neighborhoods has been downloaded 15 million times since it was released last week. Now what?

I’m as enthralled with the game as everyone else. Except my motivation is from a product and advertising perspective. Pokémon Go effectively uses all aspects of the device it is built on (mobile), has achieved an unprecedented adoption rate, gone viral in mainstream media, surpassed Twitter’s U.S. user base and found an effective monetization model (fastest-ever game to get to the top of mobile revenue charts, all in just seven days). It provides the first real showcase for a technology that has threatened to break through for a few years – augmented reality. And with today’s announcement that Niantic, the game developer behind the Nintendo game, will allow a unique form of in-app advertising in Pokémon Go, the opportunity for marketers is rife. Here are a few takeaways from the hit game that businesses should think about in the context of mobile, consumer engagement and getting a great product to market fast.

Lesson 1. Mobile done right is great.
Pokémon Go is an illustration of the power mobile can have if its features are harnessed smartly. Nintendo has gone from being phenomenally late to mobile to nailing all that is good about it. They built a product that delivers a unique experience by tapping into the unique capabilities of mobile — location, camera, hi-res graphics. The app was not perfect. It has had multiple glitches (Gmail security concerns on iOS, scalability challenges), but was strong enough to catch the attention of millions of users. This app concept was validated by a previous app built by Niantic, Ingress, and is likely built on the Ingress engine. It’s a pretty cool illustration of lean product development, testing ideas quickly and iterating to a product that is truly powerful.

Lesson 2. The real and virtual worlds can be blended seamlessly.
Pokémon Go is the first solid example of a technology concept promising to break through for nearly a decade — augmented reality. Despite the hype, augmented reality never hit its stride. In the realm of mobile, it’s an area typically fraught with issues related to processing power and development fragmentation. Still, it’s a market — along with its companion virtual reality — expected to reach $120 billion by 2020, according to Digi-Capital.

Where Pokémon Go succeeded is in not just seamlessly blending the real world with the imaginary or the overlay of graphics through the camera, but by enabling true real-world actions and interactions. Strangers playing the game get off their couches, talk to each other and congregate for Pokémon catching sprees. It’s an impressive example of driving very specific human behaviors through a well-gamified product. And they have built an open-ended product. This gives brands and businesses a “platform” to build their experiences on top of, much like a well-built tech platform puts tremendous power in the hands of developers (think iOS/Google and the App Store). A lot of the early beneficiaries of this have been brick-and mortar stores—people discovering a really cool bakery in their neighborhood because it is a Poke Stop, store owners laying out “Lures” for players and driving foot traffic and brands tweeting about the existence of Pokémon near their store. Nintendo has taken the logical next step and integrated advertising in the app experience by way of retailers and restaurants becoming sponsored locations, instead of annoying banner or pop up ads.

Lesson 3. Advertising should blend with and enhance the user experience.
The ultimate goal for a brand is to be able to drive purchase of their product. The ongoing quest for marketers is to deliver an ad experience that is relevant, valuable and actionable by the user. The workflow for online advertising goes like this: serve ad, customer clicks, buys product online / in-store and action is attributed to served ad. It’s vital to deliver the ad at the right time and in the right place.

Pokémon Go illustrates an elegant way to simplify this flow by literally walking consumers to the door steps of physical locations while keeping them engaged in their quest for monsters. There is an incredible array of things Nintendo can now do with this app — from a pure user experience standpoint and from the advertising/monetization angle. Think dynamic allocation of sponsored locations based on real-time data such as weather, deals from nearby stores and more. And we haven’t even touched the rich data set and all the ways that it can be leveraged.

The best part for marketers: advertising is fitting seamlessly into consumers’ lives and adding value instead of interrupting their tasks. It’s experiential marketing at its finest.

Will Pokémon Go endure? Yes, as long as Nintendo keeps a strong product-thinking lens that puts superior game quality and user experience front and center. The shortsighted approach is to push augmented reality into everything we do, inserting advertising content at every possible turn. There will be countless mobile app copycats who will attempt to do just that.

The responsible way to look at the Pokémon Go phenomenon is as an illustration of a smartly designed platform connecting multiple pieces of technology to create a monetizable product that offers a powerful user experience. There are lessons to be taken from the game’s success and applied throughout the mobile marketing ecosystem, and smart marketers will do just that.

DIGITAL MARKETING Media PROGRAMMATIC Uncategorized

Programmatic Education – For Today and into the Future

July 19, 2016 — by MediaMath

With programmatic mechanisms now rapidly expanding beyond display and video inventory into native, digital audio, digital out-of-home, and even linear TV inventory, the need to stay abreast of these new tools sets is greater than ever. As with any evolution of technology, there are opportunities, challenges, and limitations. And there appears to be a wide disparity between those who “get it” and those who don’t. The volume of news and jargon around “programmatic” concepts is so vast it can be overwhelming to some while appearing overstated to others.

IAB is working to develop comprehensive, broadly accessible programmatic training to educate the marketplace around programmatic processes, tools, and strategic capabilities. We sat down with Ben Dick, Director of Industry Initiatives who manages the IAB’s programmatic and attribution initiatives to discuss what he and the Programmatic Council are focusing on.

What is the current state of the programmatic marketplace?

Marketplace activity is as strong as it’s ever been. According to a recent eMarketer Study, 2015 was the first year that discretionary investment in programmatically monetized inventory surpassed reserve buying across a few key areas, including display, video, native, social, and even “sponsorship” activity. And it’s only expected to grow higher and plateau at around 70% over the next few years. While there is most definitely still a place for reserve buying on media plans, execution and optimization across automated platforms is very much the “new normal” for digital strategists.

Who needs to be trained and educated around programmatic and what does that mean for employers?

Because of the central role that automated tools are playing across buying and selling, everyone in the strategic development process (clients, research teams, media strategists, analytics teams) as well as participants in the broader digital supply chain (operations, product, sales) need to be, at bare minimum, conversant with the tools and capabilities that programmatic affords.

And it’s not just the hands-on practitioners. Support staff are affected as well. For example, programmatic concepts are bleeding into how finance teams manage reconciliation and billing. These folks need to understand the new pricing, cost models, and platforms of record for this media delivery. HR teams need to recruit talent in a completely different way and identify skill sets from more technical backgrounds. The C-suite needs to acknowledge the operational changes programmatic processes necessitate as well as the investments needed to secure top talent.

As little as a year ago, when I was working in a trading desk and continuously onboarding new traders, there was very little comprehensive third-party training that managers could turn to. And because traders need to be conversant with a broader array of concepts than “traditional digital” planners, i.e. cross-functional across media strategy, analytics, and ad operations, the learning curve is steeper and time requirements exponentially greater. Often new traders need to wait four to six months before they can touch a bidding UI, whereas assistant media planners can start in a few weeks. While training is often rewarding work, it creates a burden for the more senior managers.

What types of programs has IAB created to meet the industry’s need for Programmatic education and professional development?

Right now, IAB offers a full-day, in-person, Advanced Programmatic class that been touring the country. It’s a very popular program created for all players in the marketplace. The interactive course covers all steps of the media process including stages of selling and buying, SSPs, DSPs, “Programmatic Guaranteed”, the tech stack, and much more.

The August the class will be hosted at MediaMath’s New Marketing Institute in New York City and it has additional stops in Chicago this July as well as Dallas and Atlanta in the fall.

Additionally, the IAB Programmatic Council and IAB Learning & Development team have been working diligently to develop deeper interactive, online curriculum around specific buy- and sell-side concepts to help expand the accessibility of the program.

What do buyers and sellers need to know about programmatic tools and capabilities to be successful in 2016?

If I had to highlight one thing, it’s that successful programmatic strategists think of their jobs more as the application of data and software to “guide a conversation” with consumers, rather than using it to find and target them at right moment with the right creative.

The word “conversation” implies that there’s a feedback loop or exchange between advertiser and consumer, which is often forgotten. Programmatic tools allow for always-on, real time consumer addressability across their devices. This data travels both ways, and allows consumers to provide an intimate portrait of their preferences relative to your product. This enables advertisers to constantly evolve their approach to ensure their messaging is as relevant as possible while telling a compelling story. This often translates into cost efficiencies and improved campaign ROAS (Return On Advertising Spending)

Learn more about the IAB Advanced Programmatic Course

DIGITAL MARKETING Media PROGRAMMATIC Uncategorized

Are You Programmatic Ready?

July 13, 2016 — by MediaMath

As much as we try and convince ourselves otherwise, this industry is confusing. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but things are changing rapidly.

Another thing that’s changing is the way people learn. How many times have you looked for a video tutorial before going to a professional? Add this to the ever evolving digital landscape and it’s clear that we all need to keep up!

Here at New Marketing Institute we understand this and we want to help. That’s why we’re launching our global webinar series next month, starting with an explanation of the programmatic key players. We know you’re busy, so we’ve designed the NMI Live webinars to be short snippets of digestible information.

How confident are you in answering the following questions?

• What is a Demand Side Platform (DSP) and what does it do?

• What is a Supply Side Platform (SSP) and what does it do?

• What are Data Management Platforms (DMP)? What do they do?

• What is an Ad Network? How is that different than an Ad Exchange?

• Why do marketers work with Ad Servers?

Feeling confident? Great! Come for refresher! Feeling a little shaky? Worry not, our expert trainers will be running through the who’s and the why’s of the programmatic space. The webinars will go out across 6 different time zones, so everyone is invited!

Join us on Wednesday, August 3rd for our first webinar and be sure to visit our website to find out more about the rest of the series. Register at 11am in your local region:

Data Media Mobile Technology Uncategorized

Making the Most of Digital Marketing on Social Platforms

July 5, 2016 — by MediaMath — 1

This article originally appeared on EContent Magazine.

The divide between the physical and digital world is diminishing very quickly. Consumers are constantly mobile and have various devices to cater to a “live-in-the-moment” type of world. As people become more mobile, the channels and ways of interactions are multiplying quickly. E-commerce capabilities available on third-party platforms such as Snapchat, Google, Pinterest and more allow brands to more easily have conversations in the consumers’ own environment. It is no surprise that social platforms have become common marketing tools to reach the connected customer. But, not all social media platforms are alike, and neither should the marketing campaigns that utilize them be.

Where Marketers Should Engage Customers

Following in the footsteps of Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, Snapchat recently implemented “shoppable” advertisements, allowing their 100 million users to simply swipe up to buy a product. While this fast (10 seconds to be exact) approach to advertising is relatively new, the adoption of ad capabilities by social media platforms is setting the stage for what’s to come for both publishers and brands alike. From a marketing perspective, the shift toward more dynamic storytelling forms of media such as real-time messaging apps like Snapchat are opening up the ways in which marketers can engage with their audiences that go beyond the traditional forms of digital advertising. But this trend also begets another challenge: keeping up with the vast number of new social media platforms entering the market on a regular basis, understanding their users and learning the best way to utilize the platforms to communicate with them. It is inevitable that there will continue to be dramatic changes over the next few years as social media platforms go in and out of popularity. Brands must determine the best places to interact with their customers and be mindful of how they interact with them.

Marketers Need to Get Personal

The key to turning these channels into successful commerce opportunities is taking the insights from customer data and determining how to best utilize them for personalized marketing tactics. Having a pool of data from these social channels will allow marketers to better target their audiences based on a number of factors such as behavior, demography, and location. Using this data, marketers can target their desired audience across multiple applications, serving diverse creative based on the user’s preferred social media platforms all within seconds. However, it’s important to remember that while leveraging user data from these platforms can promote effective commerce opportunities, relying exclusively on it will result in a platform-centric engagement and not a customer-centric engagement. Brands that are not cautious of this will find themselves compromising long-term gains in favor of short-term wins.

What Tools Marketers Can Use

The tools and channels to reach customers in the marketing world are evolving at the speed of light, yet many brands are still playing catch-up. As the customer experience becomes more interactive and connected all of the time, how do brands take advantage and keep up with the new marketing shift? Brands must set up an infrastructure that enables them to always market in a way that meets customer demands and behaviors and have the ability to plug into a variety of platforms quickly as they emerge. Using programmatic marketing as an infrastructure, brands gain the most cost-efficient way to deliver personalized content to target audiences at scale in a very quick and systematic way. Programmatic marketing allows brands to leverage data to deliver the right message to the right customer in the right context in an intelligent, automated, and scalable fashion.

Moving forward, programmatic will no longer be just a line item in the marketing plan, but will be the primary method of managing digital spend. This will allow both campaigns and the overall marketing strategy to be increasingly consumer- and user-centric, regardless of the channel. The goal is to address customers in a manner that is not only specific, but that also allows for ongoing, two-way interaction across addressable channels.

The Future of Digital Marketing in Social Media

Due to the enormous potential for direct response activations coming from the wealth of data patterns of user engagement, different social platforms will continue to emerge as key ad platforms. More than ever, marketers will need to develop creative digital experiences tailored to individuals and utilize technology solutions to provide cross-targeting and reporting across multiple channels/platforms. With hundreds of billions of dollars in the balance, understanding how to gain insight from vast amounts of data about audiences and the different media they consume across all channels can be the difference between success and failure for the world’s largest brands.

DIGITAL MARKETING Events Media Trends Uncategorized

Monthly Roundup: Top 5 Most Popular Blog Posts for June

July 4, 2016 — by MediaMath

Another month has flown by. Another blog roundup is due!

In light of the Agency Whitepaper launch with the CMO Club last month, readers were drawn to our coverage on driving business outcomes for brand clients and the future of programmatic in the agency. We also got share stories about MediaMath’s presence at this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity! Check out our top 5 blog posts below:

• #1 Amnet and MediaMath Talk the Future of Programmatic in the Agency

• #2 14 Facts About What CMOs Want from Agencies

• #3 Whitepaper with The CMO Club: Evolving Your Agency Partnership Model to Drive Programmatic Success

• #4 6 Million Americans Will Take an Online Class This Year. Here’s Why.

• #5 From Cannes First-Timer to Cannes Believer

DIGITAL MARKETING Education Events Media PROGRAMMATIC Trends Uncategorized

Elevating the Educational Conversation at Cannes

July 1, 2016 — by MediaMath

This year marked the first year for the New Marketing Institute (NMI) to have a physical presence at the Cannes Lions Festival. We couldn’t have asked for a better experience — whether it was through good conversations, speakers, panels and workshops — we were able to connect with a diverse audience who shared our commitment to adtech and education.

Cannes first timers, Elise James DeCruise, VP and Founder of NMI along with Debbie Taylor, NMI EMEA Lead, joined the wider MediaMath group for some EXTREME networking.

For anyone reading this who has not attended, the festival is huge and can be a little overwhelming. There is so much to do and so many workshops to attend. All the way down La Croisette (the beachfront) are branding and work (rosé drinking) spaces, sponsored by key players, including some fairly swanky yachts. Thank you, Mr. Murdoch!

The Palais de Festival is where all the main content happened. Many high profile personalities gave talks and sat on panels throughout, including Gwyneth Paltrow, The Fat Jew, Amber Rose, Blac Chyna and Martha Stewart to name a few. The lifestyle entrepreneur even divulged the fact that she took up ceramics while serving five months in prison, making a very beautiful nativity scene!

We had a booth at the very cool “Innovations Centre,” where brands, start ups and educational folks got together to see what’s new, what’s hot and ultimately, share ideas. Each day brought awesome speakers to the various stages. They covered a breadth of topics, like how to make video content engaging and meaningful. Harvard Business School talked about technology and its impact on education and the future. The space was designed to be a hub for creativity and how to move our industry forward collectively.

We were fortunate enough to meet with a number of interesting people at our booth who undertake all sorts of different roles across our industry everyday. And all sharing a common problem: education and the gap we have in this particular space. NMI are solving for a very real need and as we shared our story at Cannes, we saw faces light up! We took a LOT of new contacts into our database. Everyone was on the same page, understanding the complexities of this industry and all the nuances that come with it. What this means is we cannot navigate it alone, nor can we work in silos.

What became apparent in our many talks with brands and agencies across the industry — from globally recognized to smaller set ups — was how excited folks were when we spoke about our offering. Including the way NMI is solving for the talent gap through our Marketing Engineer Program (MEP). MEP is where we train and place individuals interested in learning about the ecosystem and the technology that underpins it, placing them in full-time roles at brands, agencies and technology partners.

Our ability to meet the learner where they are in location, learning style and experience was also a hot topic of conversation. For example, if you are doing business in London and EMEA, US stats and figures are great but not as helpful as what’s happening in your market. Additionally, accessible online bite-sized information is a major factor when you’re trying to stay on top of the latest trends in our ever changing industry. We get that.

All in all, NMI at Cannes was incredibly valuable. It gave us a fantastic platform to be able to tell our story and everyone loves a GREAT story, right?! Here’s to next year…

Careers Culture DIGITAL MARKETING Media People Uncategorized

Connecting the Dots: An Economics Major to Designer and Everything in Between

June 30, 2016 — by MediaMath

Economics. Journalism. Graphic Design. Ad Tech.

These may seem like completely different career fields but for Peter Noah, Manager, Global Creative at MediaMath, his multifaceted background has helped shape what he does professionally today.

A graduate of UCLA, Noah earned a degree in Economics, with the intent that learning the fundamentals of supply and demand would provide a broad enough base to go in several different career directions. But entering the real world meant more than practicality.

“Towards the end of my time at UCLA, I realized that I was really interested in creative expression and I had always had a knack for creative writing,” Noah said. “So I thought at the time, journalism would be something I really needed to pursue because it would be the ultimate way of expressing myself creatively in a medium that I had an affinity toward.”

So right out of college, Noah spent a year interning at the Los Angeles Times and eventually got a job in Allentown, PA working as a general assignment reporter for the local paper The Morning Call. But his reporting days were to come to a close when Noah realized late in the game that just because he wanted to write, did not necessarily mean he needed to be a reporter.

“I was still interested in the act of creative expression, but I realized that I needed to make some adjustments in terms of what I was doing and why I was pursuing reporting.”

After leaving sleepy Allentown for the cosmopolitan city of New York, Noah discovered the world of web design as a producer for Popular Science. He helped to build an online version of the magazine, implementing ad tags on the website. That was the light bulb moment where Noah started focusing on advertising and marketing design. His next move? Parsons School of Design.

Shortly after putting together a portfolio, Noah landed a job at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Agency as a junior art director. He stayed in agency life for a few years and put his economics education to use, working with finance-related clients. Noah then decided to move to in-house marketing. As his career was headed towards financial services, Noah came across a job opening at MediaMath for a senior designer position.

“What I didn’t realize at the time was that MediaMath was this perfect combination of opportunities for me that tapped into all of the experiences I had in the past,” Noah said. “And it wasn’t until a few months after I got in that I realized it was going to really let me take advantage of everything I had learned to date in my career.”

Today, as manager of the global creative team, Noah works on everything from designing ads for a journal to designing a booth for an upcoming exhibit. Working with a talented group of individuals, Noah is now in a unique position to help develop MediaMath’s brand identity in a meaningful way.

As Noah looks back on his career trajectory, what would he tell his younger self?

“No regrets.”

“I think I’ve always believed that all of your experiences count. I believe even when you’ve had bad experiences, it becomes part of the fabric of who you are. It makes you stronger, it makes you more well-informed, it gives you a broader perspective of the world and it makes you more attuned with how people work. It just makes you a better person.”

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