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Industry Profile: MediaMath VP Platform Solutions, Geoffrey King

September 19, 2016 — by MediaMath

Geoffrey King, our VP of platform solutions in APAC, was profiled last month in AdNews’s “Industry Profile” series, which interviews those working in advertising, ad tech, marketing and media in Australia. Below is an excerpt from the interview.

Duration in current role/time at the company:

Two years employed at MediaMath and another two and half years working as a MediaMath partner .

In one sentence, how would you describe what the company does?

Helping marketers connect with their best customers and prospects across all touch points, at scale, fuelled by data, powered by machines, driving business outcomes.

In one sentence, what does your role involve?

Driving this evolution of marketing both internally and externally whilst empowering my team to achieve big.

Within the last six months/year, what stands out as the company’s major milestones?

Released a real-time data management platform that challenges the preconceived notion of how data aggregation, analysis and application should work. I am constantly humbled by what our product and engineering teams are able to put out to solve industry challenges.

Best thing about the industry you work in:

Helping to realise real-world business outcomes that drive every industry in the world from selling burgers to driving awareness of policies.

Previous industry related (ad land/ad tech) companies you have worked at:

I was cofounder of a business called Kinected, worked at Sizmek both in APAC and the US, and Macquarie Radio Network prior to that.

Career-wise, where do you see yourself in three years’ time?

With good planning and execution I hope to still be doing what I love with great people around me – a dramatically evolved product and service offering helping marketers to be more successful.

What is the elephant in the room? The thing that no one is talking about – but they should be.

Despite the amazing technology and innovation of this space, we are not adequately incentivising staff to implement change. We should encourage and motivate people to innovate and drive change and recognise that a little bit of effort to try new things can pay off in the long run.

To read the full interview, head over to AdNews.

Culture DIGITAL MARKETING Media People PROGRAMMATIC Uncategorized

Mathlete Values: Obsess About Outcomes

September 14, 2016 — by MediaMath

Last month, MediaMath redefined the values that we hold ourselves to for our clients, partners, and employees. In this series, Mathletes reflect on each of the values that MediaMath has adopted.

How do Mathletes obsess about outcomes?

Like most of our company values, these are both a promise to clients as well as an expectation for ourselves. TerminalOne optimizes advertising spend towards media that actually improves a business’ bottom line. In the exact same way, we value actions that drive actual results for our business objectives and the business objectives of our clients. As employees and as partners, we obsess about outcomes. If it doesn’t affect the outcome, it doesn’t matter.

Careers People Uncategorized

How Education Can Address the Gender Gap in Adtech

September 12, 2016 — by MediaMath

The New Marketing Institute recognizes that there is a large talent and education gap in the digital marketing industry. This shortage exists for both genders, but we also acknowledge that women in particular have struggled to enter STEM fields and often don’t have enough support and encouragement along the way. NMI has committed to resolving the gender gap in tech through a number of initiatives, the most recent of which is the launch of our NMI Advisory Board. It was important to me and the team that the Board was diverse in gender (four out of the 13 members are women), industry and experience. We want to lead by example and show that NMI is doing its part to increase diversity within the adtech space as well as elevate the conversation around diversity as a whole.

The below infographic highlights the challenges facing women aspiring to enter technology jobs around the globe and also includes some of the ways we can change the status quo. Feel free to share it, comment on it and use it as a visual tool when talking to the women in your work and in your life who want to pursue a career in technology. To download the infographic in full, click here.

Careers People Uncategorized

Employee Spotlight: From Adjunct to Engineer

August 30, 2016 — by MediaMath

This post originally appeared on the MediaMath Developer Blog and is reprinted below.

Owein Reese, who manages a group of engineers in MediaMath’s Creatives Management Tribe, took an unusual route to a career in software development. Owein’s mother was a programmer at IBM back in the days of punch-card programming (well… the 80’s) but punch cards failed to interest him in programming as a child. It wasn’t until he got to college that he began to write code to solve mathematical problems and still later on in his career that software became the focus.

Owein entered the University of Rochester with degrees in optical engineering and math at the peak of the dotcom boom. While still an undergraduate he rebuffed job offers to leave school and take over entire production lines at optical fabrication labs; a side-effect of the hyper competitive, anything is fundable environment which characterized the birth of the internet.

As Owein describes, “They would just call up and ask: what are you studying? What classes have you taken? Your GPA is what? And then offer me a job leading production at a factory or in a company for some mind-blowing salary …and two years later, they were all unemployed.”

After Rochester, he finished a Masters degree in Industrial Mathematics at Worchester Polytechnic Institute. There his research in the Physics department on how phonons (vibrations at a quantum level) induce different behaviors at an optical level yielded two papers: one in Physics Review B and the other in Nano Letters. Following graduation, he continued to pursue an academic bent, spending time as an adjunction professor teaching statistics and math for liberal arts before deciding to join the work force.

His first job out of academia was in defense, working on modeling and simulations of infrared countermeasures. From defense he moved to NASA weather satellite systems and joined a team of software developers under the mentorship of a wise old programmer. Suddenly code was more interesting than the science and his interests took him into functional programming at a financial startup. After a very brief stint at JPMorgan he joined MediaMath.

Today, Owein oversees engineers distributed around the country focusing on validating, classifying and serving creative assets at MediaMath. He loves working with distributed teams and adventurous developers—he is a pilot and wind surfs for fun. He also is a big believer in open source software, an active contributor to the Scala community, and has created a number of libraries and plugins. He’ll be speaking at Scala by the Bay on Sunday, November 13th.

Careers People Uncategorized

The “3 Things” Rule to Successful Communication

August 29, 2016 — by Michael Lamb

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.

The language of adtech is rife with acronyms and highly technical terminology that seem to change almost daily. If you’re in the trenches with me, watch the reaction next time you explain to someone outside the industry what you do. Their eyes will get a far-off look that betrays they’re pondering what’s for lunch and not the inner workings of a demand-side platform.

We talk in my industry about how there’s still a need for the humans behind the machines, to understand emotion and the nuance of client needs. That personal touch is also necessary in how we communicate—to clients, partners and colleagues up and down the org chart. Speaking in jargon, in ways that only our inner business confidantes understand, strips away the genuine essence of our message.

So how do you move away from a stiff, technical communication style and towards an approach that will better resonate with an audience? There’s a technique I began employing years ago, and I think it can work regardless of your industry or audience. I believe there are always three things to communicate when you’re presenting ideas, whether it’s to a board meeting or a room full of first-graders. In the 10 years I was at McKinsey before I came to MediaMath, the three things technique evolved into the set of structures and habitual ways to share ideas with people that I return to time and time again. It is helpful in formulating my message and conveying it over time.

Why three things? Two allows you to share a contrast, but three allows you to resolve it. When I’m presented with a nuanced question, even before I know what my POV is, I am confident that I can express it in three parts: general thought, qualification and resolution. And for each, there are tactics for getting your point across eloquently:

1.) General thought:

Do rehearse your open. The hardest part is getting started. Know how you’re going to start at the very least. What are you going to say and how are you going to say it? Rehearse that, and then trust the structure to carry you through the rest.
Do have enthusiasm. If you are nervous and feeling too constrained in your exposition, that’s when it comes out stilted—too technical and too dry. One tactic is to express and develop your enthusiasm by using analogies.

2.) Qualification:

Don’t worry about the third thing. Don’t be afraid to improvise or ad lib. If you have figured out the majors in advance, you will naturally come to the third point you want to make.
Don’t fill the air. Don’t over-talk what you’re trying to convey. Silence is a powerful tool. The worst thing you can do is undermine that silence by filling it with “ums.” People use those words to buy themselves time to think about what to say next—while the audience would just as happily use that time to process what has been said and prepare for what’s coming next.
Don’t try to be someone else. Don’t try to give someone else’s speech in someone else’s style. There are lots of different ways to be effective, memorable and motivating. Be thoughtful and confident in your personal source of credibility, which includes your own experience both in life and work.

3.) Resolution:

Close the deal. Once you’re done telling them, tell them WHAT you’ve told them. Close with a summary and repetition of the overall message.

Speaking of which, here’s mine: The three things technique can help you break down a talk in a way that’s both easier for you to communicate and for your audience to grasp. By having an exposition, a complication and a resolution, it will sound like you’re telling a narrative instead of talking at a crowd. And who doesn’t love a good story?

Careers Culture People Uncategorized

Making Soft Skills Stick

August 19, 2016 — by MediaMath

If you look at any job description, it’s likely that a variety of soft skills will be listed as a “required qualification.” From “excellent communication skills,” to being a “strong team player,” soft skills are integral to just about every job. In a 2015 Pew Research Center Report, American adults were asked which skills were valuable for children to develop both in life and work – 90 percent said communication skills were most important for children to get ahead in the world today. That said, soft skills often play second fiddle to hard skills. While both are critical to success, we often hire and promote based on hard skills (e.g. what you can do) and consider soft skills a bonus (e.g. how you do it). Our hard skills may be the engine that powers the car, but our soft skills are the steering wheel, allowing us to navigate an often complicated work environment.

For many organizations and teams, it can be difficult to develop and incorporate soft skills into an employee training program. Where do you find the time? How do you develop training without a dedicated training team? How do you make the content stick given everyone’s busy schedules? And most importantly, how do you make people care about soft skills? These are all valid challenges. However, developing these skills within your team or organization doesn’t have to be difficult. Here are some ways to weave soft skills development into your organization:

Find expertise across your organization

Training doesn’t have to come from one individual, or even one team. Leveraging the unique skill set of your employees will allow you to offer a breadth of courses. You may find that the product team can lead a session on project management, or your account team can teach a session on presentation skills. You may also find a willingness amongst employees to find new ways to get involved outside of their current role. Find influencers within your organization and tap them to get involved.

Involve your leadership team

Change comes from the top down. If leaders support a new organizational initiative, it’s likely others will too. Employees want to hear from leadership and leaders have a lot of experiences to share. But when will they have time to lead a training session? The answer is, they wouldn’t have to. At MediaMath, we ask leaders to participate in 30 minute discussions following a training session (e.g. effective feedback, motivating employees). This allows people to learn from our leaders’ breadth of knowledge, but with minimal preparation and time commitment.

Integrate and align it with hard skills

Adult learners learn best when they understand the purpose behind what they’re learning and how they can apply it. To ensure that soft skills stick, align it with hard skills that are critical to their role. If your team will be giving product pitches to clients, include a presentation skills training that improves public speaking; if your company is going through performance reviews, put together an effective feedback session to develop their ability to constructively assess peers and direct reports. When these topics are delivered as standalone sessions, it is often hard to fill seats and participants don’t see the connection to their day-to-day work. However, if you can make it relevant, you can increase attendance and retention.

Utilize existing communication channels to deliver content

You don’t need a facilitator-led session to deliver soft skills training. Find ways to reinforce it through existing work channels. Review a new soft skills topic each week in your team meeting; make it a recurring agenda item in your 1:1’s; encourage discussion via group chats & other social tools. These are easy wins that make learning accessible and digestable for employees.

Get yourself involved

People follow leaders, so lead by example! Teach a topic to your team that you’re passionate about. If they know these skills matter to you, they are more likely to make learning them a priority. It will also allow you to make better connections with your team and foster more open communication around these topics.

If every team makes learning a priority, your organization can become a true learning organization.

Careers DIGITAL MARKETING Media People Uncategorized

Training Goes Global with Consistency and Relevance

August 15, 2016 — by MediaMath

Training is a critical piece of the success of any organization because improved skills and knowledge at all levels increases competency and productivity. Training can improve skills and subject matter content knowledge, and offers relevant information to appropriate audiences.

New Marketing Institute (NMI) has committed to training our industry to increase growth and preparation of individuals and organizations as a whole. Our solution to the setting up our learner for success is our train-the-trainer approach to programming, where we expand the talent pipeline beyond our own enterprise’s growth by training others in ways that enable them to become trainers. Our ambition is to scale our training and certification programs and facilitate the development of professionals in all facets of digital marketing. With this model in mind, we are expanding our operations on a global scale.

In an article posted in April 2016 via TD Magazine we outlined our solutions and best practices for addressing globalization in training and talent development. We’ve outlined some of its key point here.

Challenges of Global Learning

Globalization and transformative scale brings with it some snags:

Localization of content
Localization of language and translation
Reaching learners at multiple knowledge and skill levels
Learners have multiple learning styles

Our Solutions

Adopt a blended learning approach. Treat blended learning like the fully integrated program it is rather than a solution that happens to have a little bit of one thing or another. NMI’s blended learning approaches include facilitator-led live sessions, e-learning, self-directed videos, games, and workbooks; for customized training we offer Q&A sessions and more.

Documentation. A robust offering of documentation is essential to ensuring successful global expansion of programs. This documentation should support all of the functions with a specific audience in mind, while taking into account the characteristics of processes and documentation in different locations.

Trusted advisers. We recommend cultivating local subject matter experts through a train-the-trainer program that trains and identifies local partners and trusted advisers. You can’t do it alone—and you shouldn’t either.

A robust set of resources. Adult learners must be involved in the planning and evaluation of their own instruction and training. Providing relevant and timely materials to accompany training enables learners to be in control. Additionally, updating workbooks and class resources on a regular basis will keep material fresh and training programs current.

Best practices

NMI’s mantra is to “meet the learner where they are.” That mantra speaks to all of the challenges by keeping in mind that all learners bring different backgrounds, expertise, experiences, and preferences; and encouraging planners and facilitators to think about all those levels in their implementation of programs. Just as MediaMath, promises advertisers “outcomes, transparency, and control” in their digital marketing efforts, NMI also subscribes to that promise when designing instructional programs.

Outcomes. We design with outcomes in mind, setting measurable goals and planning instruction that will meet those objectives. Keeping outcomes in mind will drive the direction of the program as well as drive the way a program is evaluated. In our opinion, measurable, data-driven outcomes are essential in scaling success globally.

Transparency. Learners should take an active part in expected outcomes and evaluation. Without transparency into results and evaluation, it is hard for professionals to improve and optimize in their work. Professional development and growth of individuals happens by receiving feedback at multiple points in learning and through subsequent self-reflection.

Control. We invite learners to take the reins of their own growth, development, and learning. Learning programs are designed with the resources, structure, and flexibility to allow learners to be in control of their progress. This control puts learners in the driver’s seat and empowers them to see the value of their development on their own.

For more information about NMI and its offerings, visit our homepage and download our Engagement Packet.

Careers People PROGRAMMATIC Technology Uncategorized

Employee Spotlight: From Tech’s Infancy to Programmatic

July 29, 2016 — by MediaMath

“I think I was lucky when I came out of school at a very exciting time when the internet was really nascent and the “Gold Rush” was just about to begin,” said Jen Gold, Director of Product Strategy for Helix at MediaMath. “It was about the geeking out of it and the passion and the excitement of getting on the internet for the first time and thinking, this is like a wild west of information and content!”

From joining the digital tech space in its infancy to witnessing the dot-com bust and everything in-between, Gold didn’t step foot on the tech turf until after graduation.

She jokingly said she started in a very high tech field — majoring in intellectual history at the University of Pennsylvania. “It was a combination of history, philosophy, political science and literature, as well as art. Not high tech at all! I initially really wanted to get into some form of media and advertising but really, digital wasn’t a big thing back then.”

Gold’s first job out of school was with the New York Times, working in the advertising division on sales planning.

“I stayed there for a year and a half and it really wasn’t a tech job but I was put on a task force to figure out what to do with the content online.”

Here, Gold got to work on what content should be put out on AOL, CompuServe or the actual world wide web, which was starting to become a content rich place.

“The second I got on the internet I was like this is what I want to be doing, I’ve got to get out of this old school media place and into digital, so I left and joined a very small 18-person website development company startup and have been in that realm for most of my career since then.”

The boom was really happening around this time in the late 90s – Netscape went public among others and companies could do no wrong. But even when the bubble burst, Gold stayed in tech.

“I joined a travel guide book company called Rough Guides where I managed all their digital strategy. I’ve always been really into travel and totally fascinated by traveling around the world.”

Watch the video below!

This led to her next adventure.

In 2004, Gold and her partner decided to make a huge leap of faith and leave New York City for a tiny island in the Caribbean called Vieques, off the coast of Puerto Rico. They bought property there and spent a lot of time on renovation, turning it into a guest house. Gold was fortunate enough to keep her job with Rough Guides, working remotely while learning about the hospitality business. It was during this time she inadvertently became a marketer.

“It wasn’t on my radar but in marketing my own hospitality business, I found that I really liked it. I got into SEO, SEM, some paid display and started experimenting with a little mobile and social and I was hooked!”

Gold still owns the business, but moved back to the States working on product and marketing with TripAdvisor for a few years, where she then made her way to MediaMath. Throughout her interview process, Gold says she was excited about the opportunities here and the growth of programmatic, working on product strategy for MediaMath’s proprietary shared data asset.

“I synthesize what our product teams are building in to something that’s packaged and digestible, which our client services organization and engagement teams can easily take to market and explain to clients what it is we have and why they need it. I find that really rewarding.”

Reflecting back on her career thus far, what would Gold tell her younger self?

“I love the fact that I was able to get right into digital pretty quickly. I guess if I was to say anything to my recently college graduated self, I would just say buckle in, get ready for the ride and be ready for lots of change!”

Culture Education People Technology Uncategorized

Getting Started with Snapchat Communications

July 15, 2016 — by MediaMath

This article originally appeared on Training Daily Advisor.

How to Get Started

All teams can and should use (free) tools that already exist, to keep internal communications fun, casual, and quick. Once you get everyone on your team to download the app, you can launch Snapchat in three simple steps.

Establish use cases. Share best practices with the team regarding the type of content that will be most impactful and effective when sent to members across the globe. This includes providing sample photos and videos to set loose parameters around length and content and ensure that all snaps are coherent, on-brand, and useful.
Start snapping. There is no better way to get people familiar and comfortable with the platform than by asking them to begin using it in their daily routines. Encourage team members to start snapping pictures and videos that align with their projects to get everyone in the habit of sending and checking the latest snaps.
Talk about it. Snapchat can be an effective tool for sparking dialogue around individual and team projects in a workplace setting. Generate discussion around the snaps exchanged between team members in order to foster productive conversation around current initiatives. These conversations ensure that everyone is on the same page and can lead to cross-departmental insights and actionable next steps for improving performance globally.

What Could Your Team Snap?

You can use Snapchat for everything from essential news for the team to celebrations of local wins. On the practical end of the spectrum, daily snaps might include photos of events, internal and external communications, live footage of trainings, or relevant industry events team members are attending.

Since videos are so easy to create and share, Snapchat allows for a real-time review process so team members can audit the flow of the event and offer suggestions for improvement. Additionally, it can allow the team members who are unable to attend an event, the chance to catch the highlights of speeches or panels.

At the Festival of Media event, one trainer utilized Snapchat’s story function to create a visual replica of the entire event that he then shared on social media, which the team was able to reference in later event discussions.

Not everything shared on Snapchat will be as relevant to a teams’ daily grind, but it’s still important to encourage casual and fun exchanges to maintain the collegiality and fun for everyone, instead of making people take those interactions off-line. Snapchat can make coworkers a natural group of friends, and interspersed with work-related messages, they can share events they go to, funny things they see, challenges, or inside jokes.

Again, teams that are new to Snapchat should choose three types of communications that people should share—relevant events they might attend, celebrating wins, team outings, finished products, visits to the office, etc.

You do not need to establish much in terms of a code of conduct or rules of the road, just make sure to tell people not to post anything they wouldn’t want their boss to see. Soon enough, jokes will develop, interests emerge, and people will let their personalities show as they become more comfortable with the platform.

Snapchat has strongly impacted the temporal and cultural differences and communication challenges that can arise in global teams. This enhanced level of communication subsequently increased the team’s utilization of other tools (Like Whatsapp or HipChat), allowing us to continue important discussions across other channels and devices. Additionally, Snapchat has strengthened relationships on a personal front, as the connectivity created by the app isn’t just limited to work hours.

Culture Education People Uncategorized

MediaMath’s Story: Our Founder Joe Zawadzki Explains

July 14, 2016 — by MediaMath

MediaMath will celebrate its 10th birthday next year. A lot has changed since 2007, when Joe Zawadzki, Erich Wasserman and Greg Williams came together to start the industry’s first demand-side platform. From a shoebox office of a handful of employees to a global operation with 750 employees in 16 locations around the world, MediaMath has certainly grown into its own. But the early days weren’t easy, as our CEO Joe Z explans in this video on our founder’s story. Watch the clip to hear about one fateful Thanksgiving in the early days of the business when he accidentally turned a client campaign upside down and the work it has taken to get MediaMath where it is today.

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