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People Trends

4A’s Decisions 2020: To Be a Better Partner, You Must Partner Better

April 9, 2019 — by MediaMath

We heard the call for agencies to “evolve” at Decisions 2020 two weeks ago (and in the media coverage around it), just as we’ve heard it from Marc Pritchard and other industry leaders in recent years. We know our agency partners must be exhausted over their growing “To-Do” list of things to improve upon—be more transparent, deep-dive into data and insights, give up and just go home because all brands are just going to in-house eventually anyway.

Phew. It’s a lot.

Here’s the thing—just as brands need the right consultative partners across the spectrum, so do agencies. This stuff ain’t easy—the technical part of it, new tools, new channels, plus keeping on top of industry shifts, privacy laws, consolidation. We all need help. We need each other.

To our agency friends, we’re asking to help us help you.

Almost a year ago, we started building a new Global Partnerships team focused on accelerating the success of our key partnerships to achieve client outcomes. “Partnerships” can mean many things, but in our world, it focuses on our relationships with agencies whom we sell both to and with like Havas, major business channels through which we sell our technology, such as IBM, and consultancies like McKinsey. Across these groups, we aim to continue to provide solutions around data, identity, supply and optimization and build bespoke, joint products to drive outcomes for their client base, just as we do for our brand clients.

And what about this whole in-housing thing? Funny you ask, because we put out a whole playbook on it nine months ago. As a technology company that serves both brands and agencies, we know that “full” in-housing is currently uncommon and tough to accomplish. The operational complexity of media buying often makes the scaled and specialized workforce of an agency a requirement, and institutional knowledge also benefits the agency’s clients. In fact, we have identified four models for brands that want to take more control of their tech, and agencies play a major role in three of the four. One of those three models is what we like to call a “triangulation” (or “Happy Commune” in our playbook) in which brand + agency + tech partner have an equal seat at the table in driving strategy and operations.

And more research is on the way. We are excited that our very own Head of Global Partnerships Jim Sink was interviewed for a whitepaper the 4A’s and 614 Group are putting out on programmatic best practices later this quarter. We anticipate that this paper will share critical insights on the interplay between tech and talent and how brands and agencies can best partner to drive success.

To recap:

Yes, agencies have a lot of work to do, but they can get by with a little help from their friends
In-housing is happening, but not without the help of agencies
Inform yourself with the latest insights and research from industry subject matter experts to guide your partnership approach

Partner on, friends.

Data People

An Open, Inclusive and Neutral Foundation for Identity vs. a Proprietary Commercial Consortium Foundation: Part 1

April 8, 2019 — by MediaMath

MediaMath’s John Slocum recently penned a column for AdExchanger’s Data-Driven Thinking on why proprietary universal identity efforts will hurt, not help, the marketing ecosystem. Below, he shares more in-depth insights on how MediaMath is providing the alternative via an open, inclusive, neutral approach to identity.

MediaMath believes that any industry-wide ID solution needs to be standard and commoditized to gain broad adoption across our intensely dynamic space. The standard must be neutral, not pick winners and be free from risk of change in control and strategic or competitive conflict. It should not be profit-driven but rather designed for reinvestment in the standard for the good of the whole.

Commercial consortium ID solutions perpetuate the fragmentation in identity and are unreliable.

With so many options being proffered as open, accessible, scaled identity ‘consortium’ solutions, it’s weak that the product of the solutions being offered to the siloed, fragmented identity landscape is—more fragmentation, trading out proprietary cookies for proprietary ID solutions. The proposed solutions operate purely on proprietary tech, controlled by for-profit vendors, benefiting those vendors directly. The proposed solutions do anything but level the playing field; they fence it off, create a gatekeeper and charge a hefty admission fee.

The vulnerability to instability in a proprietary solution is evident already. Anyone who invested in keying and transacting on the AppNexus ID, with APN the primary domain supporting the Ad ID Consortium, now has to re-key their device ID entirely because APN left Ad ID last September. That demonstrates to advertisers, publishers and platforms that the risk of entrusting your fundamental connection—your digital last mile—to consumers, on proprietary, for-profit components they don’t control, is too great. To anyone still keying off another platform’s proprietary offering, it might be good to have a Plan B.

MediaMath can and will sell you our proprietary identity solutions—ConnectedID and EnrichedID. They are differentiated, scaled, hybrid, global, fully integrated throughout our platform, open on the front end and portable. We invest significantly in developing these products with a single goal that is to create client value. They are not standards, they are not free and they are competitive. We think it’s worth being clear on this point—you get what you pay for!

MediaMath will not sell you what we believe is the right new standard ID that aligns with our principles because it’s not ours to sell. We will present to you our principles and hope you find them cogently assembled. We will also propose to you the solution that we see aligning with these principles, and support your investigation into the same.

The failure of the AD ID Consortium is the canary in the coal mine.

Ad ID joined DigiTrust in 2018 because Ad ID was clearly feeling the pressure of serving its founders’ interests above members,’ while competing on multiple fronts with those it sought to recruit as members. Ad ID’s decision to join DigiTrust confirmed the market’s need for a neutral, independent device-level identifier. MediaMath has been committed to neutrality and independence since we helped to found Ad ID (then Open Ad ID) before deciding to leave when the effort veered down a path incompatible with broad adoption.

We are experiencing more fragmentation than ever before as device and channel proliferation continues unabated. Consortium members competing directly against each other and their claimed consortiums adds confusion for marketers. MediaMath strives to offer clarity and solutions. We can do better.

Check back next week for Part II of this series.

Media People

MediaMath All Fronts Event Shows What the Future of TV Can Look Like

April 4, 2019 — by MediaMath

Last week, MediaMath hosted a successful event focused on the future of TV with clients and publishers at its 4 World Trade headquarters. Premium TV publishers spoke about their connected TV and OTT offerings, highlighting the differentiators in their content, viewership and app environment, and learned more about MediaMath’s TV offering.

“The role that we’ve taken in the TV space is really to be the connection point between buyers and sellers, to take premium TV content, surface it, make it available to the buy-side in a way that the sell-side wants it to be made available,” said Mike Fisher, our head of advanced TV and video. “So we’re never going to be arbing or re-selling or black-boxing anybody’s inventory.”

DISH Media EVP Kevin Arrix, who spoke at the All Fronts event, highlighted the ability for advertisers to use its Sling TV data to deliver unique targeting and reporting that ties into ROI and attribution. For the industry to truly see the benefit of that type of application of data, the supply side needs to “get connected and get integrated” to what the demand side is doing.

“The demand side is saying ‘I like this company, I like MediaMath I like their UI, I like their platform and I am going to run my marketing dollars through to this platform,'” he said.

Being that connection means being as transparent as possible, according to Fisher.

“We do believe that transparency is the most important thing for TV because we want to make sure that the networks and the publishers in OTT are giving us access to the best of the best content. What we’re doing is further enhancing it with audience targeting, enhanced measurement, attribution reporting…basically tying back everything that a client is already doing in the online environment to TV.”

But it’s about consumers, too, and the ability to deliver engaging, entertaining content across screens in a privacy-compliant way.

“We know the goals of our clients. They’re looking to reach the people they that care about, they need to do it in a way that the people at the other end of the screens appreciate,” MediaMath Founder & CEO Joe Zawadzki says in this Beet.TV. interview.

People Trends

Stop, Collaborate and Bid Shade: Two-Way Communication Crucial for DSPs and SSPs

March 18, 2019 — by MediaMath

As every major exchange has switched to first-price auction, in which the winner pays precisely the amount that he or she bid, bid shading is being used more and more as a technique to avoid paying too much. Our MediaMath Product Lead Sara Skrmetti was interviewed by AdExchanger last week on our take on the practice. Skrmetti drove home the point that MediaMath wants both DSPs and SSPs to take a collaborative approach to bid shading.

“Two-way data sharing [will] make both shading solutions smarter and complementary,” she said. “If we work separately and don’t inform one another’s approaches, we might end up negatively affecting advertisers’ performance, so this two-way communication is critical.”

As Skrmetti explained it, if an exchange aggressively bid shades when an advertiser wants a high win rate, the advertiser will be negatively impacted by that higher loss rate.

To find out more about our take on bid shading, download our whitepaper on the industry shift to first-price auctions.

People

MediaMath Honors International Women’s Day 2019

March 8, 2019 — by MediaMath

International Women’s Day serves as a time to pause, honor and celebrate women and everyone who works to promote an equal and inclusive environment, as well as those who empower and provide guidance and strength in the workforce. To give #IWD2019 its proper attention, MediaMath hosted a panel at our NYC headquarters centered around the theme of #balanceforbetter.

Balance is a common topic of discussion among working women. Balancing a successful career, family, social life, healthy lifestyle, religious/spiritual pursuits and more is quite an undertaking and often a constant battle for anyone with an appetite for a rewarding career. The panel’s focus of #balanceforbetter reviewed tips and tactics for achieving work-life balance and how we can all work better together to achieve this sought-after state.

As Anna Grodecka-Grad, Client Services Officer, pointed out that balance is key to keeping yourself sane and maintaining a larger perspective. Anna encourages her colleagues to think about the choices they make every day and carefully observe how these choices affect how they feel. As Anna suggested, this includes being mindful of balancing both proactive and reactive work in your role.

To support our growth and success as a growing global company, we are also prioritizing a more balanced workforce. As Anna clarified, “We hire with a focus on diverse talent. We’re always looking to hire more women. We always look at the balance and diversity of teams across regions.” Balance, when it comes to gender inclusivity or any kind of diversity initiative, requires having a representation of multiple perspectives.

To exemplify the benefits of a more inclusive workforce, we hosted two male Mathletes on our panel—Chris Balzan, VP, Global Head of Professional Services, and John Labriola, VP, User Experience. Including diverse perspectives allows for a more holistic view. Chris provided guidance on how he motivates and inspires his team during times of instability by simultaneously examining high-level priorities and individual difficulties. John also pointed out how imperative it is for a leader to exemplify balance in his or her own life, as reports often take cues and mimic their respective manager’s behaviors.

Taking that idea a step further brings up questions of how to grow and support a global, more balanced workforce that embraces and actively encourages diversity and inclusivity by providing opportunities for us all to find the balance we need. Amanda Magnusson, IT Project Manager, suggests that you ensure one of your goals each quarter is personal. Anjali Arjungi, Senior Analyst, Engineering Support, also recommends that individuals spend about 80 hours a year dedicated to personal and professional growth.

Our panelists also discussed the importance of finding mentors in the pursuit of a more balanced lifestyle. Laura Colona, VP, Global Communications, advises to look outside your current company and tap into the brainpower of former colleagues and industry connections. She also suggested the positive benefits of having a male mentor, as a male mentor can provide a different perspective, which comes in handy when you find yourself sitting at a table of men as the only female.

Examples include policies such as unlimited paid time off as well as internal mobility (both cross-departmentally and regionally). MediaMath also promotes an inclusive and diverse workforce through our ALLiance group (supporting the LGBTQA+ community) as well as Women in Tech. We welcome you to join us in our support of a more balanced and diverse ecosystem.

People Trends

MediaMath EMEA 2019 Summit: Key Takeaways

March 5, 2019 — by MediaMath

Last month, we hosted MediaMath’s second annual EMEA Client Summit in Iceland. We brought together our clients, partners and executives in a freezing cold, yet magical, setting,

Now that we’re back, and somewhat defrosted, here’s a summary of some key takeaways.

Bringing more transparency into the ecosystem

We heard multiple times from clients and MediaMath experts about the importance of the “T” word: transparency.

Digital marketing technologies have disrupted the market and changed the way we purchase media. Brands must have full transparency into their advertising spend to understand ad fees and to measure attribution accurately, the media buying process to ensure target audiences actually see ads designed for them and also visibility into customer insights and data, including how and where it is being used. There were frustrations shared by many clients with the closeness of the walled gardens. The consensus in the room was that data must be made available and shared internally across teams for interpretation. But who should lead this effort, and is it more of an educational issue, or do we simply need more government regulation or intervention?

The reality is, that we ALL play a role—brands, agencies, partners, publishers. The ecosystem is complex, with many players involved, but to get to a point of total transparency, we must all hold ourselves accountable.

Recognising and respecting the consumer

The “identity” roundtable discussion highlighted key challenges faced by marketers such as fragmented online identities. The result is a disconnected set of experiences for the consumer, and the tough task for marketers to truly create a unified experience across devices. With rising consumer demands over brand experiences and levels of personalisation, identity is a huge deal. To solve for fragmentation and disconnected experiences, clients expressed the need for more data-driven marketing, using the right data in the right ways to generate true value.

MediaMath’s Chief Product and Technology Officer Wilfried Schobeiri and our CEO Joe Zawadzki shared our vision for a consistent, open, portable approach to identity. We help marketers respect and prove relevance to consumers by enabling a single view of them as people, not devices, and an observed, not inferred, understanding of their behaviour. We do this with an identity graph that is deterministic for accuracy, with an option to activate probabilistic for scale. Clients can then leverage our MediaMath Audiences proprietary data asset to layer on attributes to consumers that are based on observed actions. This understanding of consumers is portable, able to be leveraged in other platforms beyond ours.

Balancing machine power with human expertise

Even when identity has been addressed, there are still challenges in knowing what to do with the data and insights. This was a dilemma raised by clients in the AI-themed roundtable discussion—when to use machines and when to use people to analyse the data?

Anna Grodecka-Grad, Chief Services Officer at MediaMath, delivered a thought-provoking keynote on this topic. With automation playing a significant role in driving efficiencies and speed, we will see a pivot from “media doers” to “media consultants.” There will be a need for more strategic, actionable expertise. AI will help to mature industry talent.

Other themes that came up around AI were that people’s definition of the term varies—the common understanding seemed to be “connectivity” and the ability to optimise projects and touchpoints. Concerns around data and how to evaluate the accuracy of your data, what to automate and how best to leverage insights were common challenges. On the measurement front, clients are at different stages of being able to attribute their marketing, and questions arose about the ability to measure frequency.

The future of programmatic/emerging channels

The most popular and well-attended session was “the future of programmatic.” With more accurate targeting, marketers are investing in channels like digital-out-of-home (DOOH) and addressable TV (learn more about the latter from a Beet.TV interview with Mike Fisher, our VP/Head of Advanced TV & Video).

Some discussions highlighted the key benefits of emerging channels such as enhanced creativity in the delivery of campaigns, increased efficiencies and the ability to create more visually appealing, meaningful and unique customer experiences. However, there were some common challenges flagged, which seemed to prevent more widespread adoption:

Supply & market forces: These solutions are not being made 100-percent available or feasible from the supply side (too little inventory, programmatic prices too high).
Internal politics: To whom does this budget belong? Which department? Legacy teams feel pressure not to give it to digital.
Measurement: How do marketers best assess KPIs once these channels are brought to digital activation?

As noted by our Director of Emerging Channels Karen Chan in a blog post earlier this year, the best way to get started with new channels such as DOOH is to have the right expectations, creatives and supply strategy in addition to the right partners to help you achieve success with these emerging mediums across your multichannel campaigns.

The opportunity for media agencies to be consultative partners

Another interesting topic of conversation and debate was the role of media agencies.

Brands shared reasons why they are re-evaluating their media-buying models and which model seemed to work best for them. While the role of media agencies will change over time, the fireside chat with our agency clients felt there are significant benefits to strategic involvement of external partners in media buying. MediaMath experts recently authored a playbook “Tech & Talent: Four Models for Managing the Evolution of Your Programmatic Media” which suggests that a triangulation between the three will prove most effective over time.

As Joe stated in his fireside chat at the end of the event, MediaMath is committed to bringing accountability to the industry, and to helping our clients and partners create an environment that is aligned to their needs for brand health and growth. We look forward to welcoming you back in 2020, to see how the industry has evolved, to share what we have been doing about it and to hear your feedback on how we can continue to transform our solutions to meet these needs.

Watch highlights from the event below!

Media People

Beet.TV Interviews Mike Fisher on TV and Video Trends at IAB Annual Leadership Meeting

February 27, 2019 — by MediaMath

This article originally appears on Beet.TV.

When it comes to advertising, screen size matters and it all starts with the big TV. The first exposure to a brand message begins the storytelling, which then leads to finding “that same user, same household, same viewer on other screens either for down-funnel messaging in web video, mobile video or even display,” says MediaMath’s Mike Fisher.

This is particularly appealing to so-called direct-to-consumer brands with traditional digital video assets they can now extend to TV, the company’s VP and Head of Advanced TV and Video says in this interview with Beet.TV at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting.

What those newer brands have in common is that they probably haven’t had a relationship with a traditional agency while growing their businesses on the Internet with one-to-one, measurable marketing. They’re attracted to things like programming and tent-pole events they’ve never been able to access. “Programmatic really fits well into that pipe especially for TV, which is why direct to consumer is so big for us,” Fisher adds.

As video SSP’s continue to evolve, MediaMath’s model is “to focus on running on the rails that the publisher wants us to run on. A lot of our partners build leverage, Telaria and other video SSP’s, as their connection point for us into their inventory.”

This, in turn, “allows us to connect to multiple supply sources. It allows them to connect to multiple demand sources without having to do one-to-one integrations with networks.”

Data Education People

IAB Recognizes MediaMath Across Sales, Identity, Data Privacy and Education

February 22, 2019 — by MediaMath

Last week, MediaMath was honored with four awards at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. The recognition focused on our work across sales, identity, the GDPR and education—diverse areas of our business in which we are committed to making an impact not just at MediaMath, but in the industry as a whole. We wanted to share a bit about what we’re doing in each of these areas, and our plans to bolster our commitment throughout 2019.

Sales

MediaMath received an Overall Sales Excellence Award for a Small-to-Medium Sales Organization for “exceptional client service, digital advertising expertise and innovation in digital advertising sales.” IAB and Advertising Perceptions surveyed over 500 marketing leaders to nominate and vote on the winners.

MediaMath is committed in 2019 to continuing to use an enterprise-grade, consultative approach to help both brands and agencies use media, data and machine learning in a way that enables transformation at considerable scale. We believe we have both the tech and the talent to back this up. In the 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Ad Tech, we were the leading DSP in the “Leaders” quadrant and were recognized for our completeness of vision and ability to execute. Advertiser Perceptions survey respondents also ranked MediaMath #1 in consultative approach to client relationship and solution design and gave us the highest net promoter score (NPS) out of 22 DSPs. Clients like CBSi are seeing the value of our multichannel media execution while others like REA are using our combined DMP+DSP to more seamlessly manage and activate audiences in media.

Identity

Our Director, Mobile Product Strategy, Floriana Nicastro received a Service Excellence Award for helping IAB establish a common framework for “5 Questions to Evaluate Your Identity Partners.” Floriana is passionate about solving measurement and identity challenges for mobile, pointing to accuracy vs. scale, walled gardens and a lack of multi-touch attribution as obstacles to quantifying true mobile ROI.

MediaMath has several initiatives we’re working on to ensure marketers can both accurately and scalably solve for identity and pull customer understanding into the center for activation across marketing. Our cross-device graph ConnectedID is pseudonymous, proprietary, deterministic-first (with option for probabilistic expansion) and global. Data is exportable down to the log level and can be used in other DMPs, DSPs and platforms so that marketers control their understanding of their customers and can activate it in whichever way they see fit. We are also a member of the DigiTrust ID consortium, which supports an open, neutral ID that will make the Internet experience better for consumers by supporting privacy, reducing page load time, increasing the relevance of marketing messages and enabling the diverse ecosystem of publishers and online platforms upon which they rely.

The GDPR

Charlie Simon, Director, Data Policy and Governance, received an IAB Tech Lab Service Excellence Award for his work in the GDPR Commit Group. The GDPR Commit Group, under the auspices of IAB Tech Lab, contributes to and maintains the code bases, technical specifications and implementation resources, underpinning the IAB Europe Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) of which MediaMath is a founding member. Charlie has helped develop and champion the TCF to ensure the industry provides Internet users with greater transparency and control over how personal data is collected. TCF-based transparency and consent-based technologies are baked into DMP, DSP, identity and other core MediaMath products.

Charlie, with the assistance of Alice Lincoln, VP, Data Privacy and Governance, and John Slocum, VP, DMP, led MediaMath’s preparation for the GDPR, leveraging the expertise of the company’s Legal, Product and Engineering teams. Simultaneously, Charlie worked with industry groups and their members to assess and design solutions for the GDPR’s many requirements. That work continues as standards like the TCF and OpenRTB evolve, new laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act are enacted and Internet users’ concerns about data use grow.

Education

MediaMath’s New Marketing Institute, led by Elise James-Decruise, VP, Global Learning & Development, Education, just celebrated its seventh birthday, and what a gift to have received one of the first-ever Education Excellence Awards from IAB. A client and employee education team that offers trainings and certification accessible in person, virtually and via a self-paced online portal, NMI courses cover topics across the programmatic and digital marketing industry and our DSP and DMP, from campaign management to best practices. A past recipient of both the Brandon Hall and Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice awards, NMI has trained and certified over 19,000 people since inception.

NMI has undertaken a few new initiatives over the last year. The team created a learner-centered environment called NMI Learn that gives clients access to resources 24/7. NMI has also had recent training success with its Bid Masters program, a gamified approach to teaching digital and programmatic that has been rolled out in Asia. It is also looking to further develop curriculum, programs and partnerships to speed up the harvesting of the native marketing tech talent in countries like Mexico.

People

Why We Have Invested in Solution Engineering as a Key Talent Ingredient

February 20, 2019 — by MediaMath

We all seek meaning in our work, in our jobs, where we spend many hours each week. And even in the world of ad tech, an industry in which one could argue we’re not saving lives (but actually, we kind of are), we need work that inspires us and people who encourage us.

I’m not one to brag, but because I have the great fortune of leading the Global Solution Engineering team here at MediaMath, finding my sources of fulfillment is quite simple. I can break it down to two: First, bringing strategy, technical direction and delight to every client experience. And second, managing, coaching and mentoring our team of global SEs, knowing each team member is on his or her own journey to deliver as much value and client delight as possible. It’s a virtuous cycle!

But it wasn’t always so easy.

Let me take you back…way back

When we began to invest more heavily in the SE function more than three years ago, we didn’t quite know how to navigate the jungle of ad tech. (Because, hey, this stuff is hard!) We started in the more obvious place of helping to engage MediaMath prospects and convert them into our newest customers, working closely alongside our sales teams, and maintaining the benefit of being NOT Sales (even though back then we were called “Sales Engineering”). We determined that evolving beyond the “sales” moniker was important—words do matter, after all. So, we changed our team name to “Solution Engineering” in order to convey to the universe of current and aspirational client brands and agencies that we were there—in the room, on the Zoom—to help them SOLUTION their way to an understanding of how to fit the marketing stack pieces.

What we’ve seen in the last 40 months or so (the equivalent of 40 years in ad-tech terms) is a combination of market forces that has forced us to continuously adapt. We’ve had to stay nimble in the face of our customers’ needs and requirements—especially when our customers may not know exactly what they want to do and where they want to go. When we started down our new SE path, we observed many brands and agencies thinking about and executing their marketing in silos, on a campaign-by-campaign basis and oftentimes with a narrow mindset around how their investment into different paid/owned channels and technologies could actually operate together more seamlessly. It sometimes felt like they didn’t quite recognize the true possibilities of programmatic (now I sound like one of those ad-tech preachers…). But of course, it was no one’s fault—ad tech has grown up fast, kind of like Tom Hanks in “Big.”

And the future’s so bright…

Fast forward to 2019, and we are in a very different place. Perhaps not surprisingly, the industry consolidation continues to unfold. Our client base, and the brands and agencies with whom we engage, have matured. They are savvier, more data-centric and programmatically capable. Very often they know what they want, be it an integrated marketing stack, a customized attribution methodology or a unique way to take their customer/loyalty scores to influence the intelligent media bidding/buying they are investing in to grow their business.

And this is the STUFF.

These once-complex challenges, wrapped in both technical and business hurdles, are what makes coming to work every day fascinating. And I hope/think my team is reading this, smiling and nodding, because we live for helping our clients solve their “programmatic puzzles,” for shaping solutions that both help our customers feel heard and validate that we’ve built the right blueprint—before we go out and build the house together.

The ninja-like quality of Solution Engineering also means that success demands working across nearly all our internal teams to deliver on our commitments to clients. It begins with Sales, then Account, Client Services and PSO, our Analytics crew, across our Product organization and Support. And then we must find the right methods to engage in an ongoing way to ensure that the original blueprint is something that’s well understood by all teams so the house doesn’t end up without a roof (or better, without plumbing…see what I did there?). This need for inter-organizational teamwork is yet another reason why SE is both so rewarding and challenging.

And that’s the key to continued success as a partner to our clients, as a company and for our team. Creative, passionate team members, working together, to help our clients think in new ways and solve their business challenges while navigating the inevitable obstacles and opportunities—sometimes one in the same—that pop up. For us in Solution Engineering, we remain pumped to continue this journey. Because it will mean more frequent and ever-more-complex customer challenges to solve for, bringing our drive and commitment to each one.

People Trends

MediaMath and the 2019 IAB Leadership Conference: A Rewarding Experience

February 14, 2019 — by MediaMath

In a meeting with Joe Z this week at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting (ALM) in Phoenix, Arizona, one of our partners dated our relationship by saying, “Seven IABs ago…” It was said with humor, but the fact also communicates the importance of this particular gathering of the IAB and its members to our community. We date our progress and relationships to some degree by the passing of the conferences—and in an industry that moves at lightning speed, that’s saying something.

The IAB ALM was more than an opportunity for marathon meetings. First, it was a chance to recognize some of the great work being done in the industry, including here at MediaMath. Our peers commended our leadership across four areas:

A Service Excellence Award to Floriana Nicastro, Director, Mobile Product Strategy, for helping IAB establish a common framework for “5 Questions to Evaluate Your Identity Partners”
A Tech Lab Service Excellence Award to Charlie Simon, Director, Data Policy and Governance, for his work on the GDPR Commit Group
An Education Excellence Award to the New Marketing Institute
An Award for Overall Sales Excellence for a Small-to-Medium Sales Organization

It was like being Lady Gaga at the Grammys (which happened to be trending on Twitter at the same time we were live-tweeting the #IABALM opening).

But beyond the accolades, for which we were very humbled, we learned and grew ourselves. Conference speakers communicated the important message that we are in a new age of disruption on three fronts. First, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands have come of age and are disrupting the markets in which they compete as well as the way in which businesses use data. Second, marketers are demanding to get and know more from the advertising and marketing technology that connects them to consumers. Third, privacy is no longer an issue for the legal department, it is an existential challenge that demands the ecosystem’s full attention.

DTC disruption

The main stage at the conference opened with IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg delivering a flawless and well-constructed presentation of the disruptors among us (check out the IAB 250 Report to discover the most important disruptor consumer brands in U.S. economy). He highlighted that DTC brands are growing in ways that outpace incumbents in their market and doing it using data and digital platforms as well as traditional physical infrastructure and linear television. For the programmatic world, these companies are relatively new to the scene, largely dependent on Facebook because it is easy and it is what they know, but they are seeking alternatives and seeing the benefits of trying out different digital paths to consumers. Over time, we believe they will become key demand-side actors in the space, and we aim to serve them.

After Randall’s speech, he welcomed to the stage the founders of the wildly successful DTC brand ThirdLove. Their presentation was interesting because of how data-enriched their service is and the story they tell about how ThirdLove came to be. First the data. It tells you things that are at first counter-intuitive. The brand’s primary customer is not in cities, and it’s not all millennials. The feedback from consumers drives the brand’s product development and sheds light on things ranging from the need for different color undergarments to reflect different skin tones to the importance of women over age 30 seeing themselves reflected in marketing.

For those of us from MediaMath in the audience, we saw a kindred spirit in the young DTC company. It is up against much larger competitors, taking risks, working as a force for good using its product to help women and girls around the world, and investing and reinvesting in its technology as a tool for driving value for customers and employees.

From digital video to digital identity

MediaMath also participated in two important panels at the conference. Mike Fisher, our passionate advocate for all things sight, sound, and motion, participated in a town hall with SpotX, CBS Interactive, Hulu and Sony Crackle about the future of connected TV and digital video. He broke down the need to address digital and linear differently: “Video is video, but getting the right video creative and using the right screen for the right message is what you have to do…screen size matters and engagement matters.”

While Mike was in one ballroom, Danny Sepulveda was in another communicating our passionate commitment to doing right by consumers and the ecosystem when it comes to privacy. Joined by luminaries in the business John Montgomery from Group M, Townsend Feehan from IAB Europe and Doug Miller from Verizon, the group agreed that the business needs to plan for the new California privacy law as if it will go into effect without changes while respectfully advocating for reasonable amendments to the law for the good of the ecosystem as a whole. The panel was ably moderated by the IAB’s man in Washington and an old friend of MediaMath’s David Grimaldi. The other message that the panel delivered was that the ecosystem needs to invest in, rally around and present a better way to design law that does right by consumers without distorting the data-driven economy in favor of one business model or at the cost of creating barriers to independent ad tech’s existence.

Where to from here

No single part of the ecosystem is independent from the others. We work to serve each other—publishers, marketers, agencies and tech providers alike—and when we do it well, information is not hoarded or trapped inside a garden—it is distributed and shared with respect for consumer privacy to serve their market needs. We at MediaMath are committed to that value exchange and are working hard to deliver it within the construct of a mature, responsive and respectful tech stack.

We also know that education plays a critical role in moving the industry forward. It’s fitting that NMI just celebrated its seventh birthday (seems to be our lucky number). Having had an opportunity to connect with industry colleagues and friends during the conference, there seemed to be shared enthusiasm for our commitment to education and the acknowledgment that this industry is complex and fast-moving. Creating a safe space in which to have bold conversations, recognizing where the learning gaps exist and designing a structured educational framework that drives adoption of new technologies and digital transformation are critical components.

Seven IABs from today, we will still be there, having constructed a digital path to consumers that is simple, scaled and accessible to brands, from those with pop-up stores and a quality product of any size to publishers with engaging platforms on which to reach consumers.

About Lauren Fritsky

Lauren is the Senior Director of Content at MediaMath, responsible for creating, executing against and managing the global, data-driven content strategy that informs key themes and messaging across paid, owned and earned. A native of the Jersey Shore, Lauren graduated from La Salle University in Philadelphia with an English degree that she has put to use as a print journalist, trade magazine editor, professional blogger and now content marketer. After a 3.5-year stint in Sydney, Australia and a 4.5-year stint in New York City, Lauren now lives in Phoenix with her husband and two children. She loves to travel, read true crime books and eat all the dark chocolate.

About Daniel Sepulveda

As VP for Global Government Relations, Danny Sepulveda joined MediaMath after spending two decades in public service, including work at the highest levels of the US government. In the Obama administration, Danny served as Ambassador and Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department under Secretary of State John Kerry, where he traveled the world working on high-level initiatives including cyber policy, digital economy, internet governance and human rights. Prior to that, he worked as a senior aide to three US Senators, including then Senators Barack Obama and John Kerry. Danny’s role at MediaMath is focused on shaping, implementing and communicating MediaMath’s policies and practices around the consumer value proposition, privacy protection and public policy.

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