Prediction Series 2019

What are the major mobile ad trends that dominated the industry in 2018? Have there been any surprises? Fighting ad fraud and ensuring quality is a major industry priority. Kargo’s ads.txt compliance is a major step in the right direction in this regard, especially as they became something of an industry leader as a result. Brand safety and assuring quality across outlets has also become a major focus. Distrust of the duopoly continued from 2017 into 2018, with numerous stories around Facebook’s sloppy reporting and…

Tell us about your role and how you got here. What inspired you to join Adform? I had been handling partnerships at Adslot and before that, I worked at Facilitate Digital. From my experiences at those two companies, I learned how important global strategic partnerships are and got an education in the programmatic media trading ecosystem. I had also been at Operative and had agency experience when I worked at Saatchi so, I got to see the inner workings of those kinds of organizations. Throughout all of this, I lived in…

Tell us how you came to be at Mediasmith. Before recently becoming CEO, I was the COO for eight years. And, prior to joining Mediasmith, I was EVP and General Manager for Carat/Aegis and had worked at Leftfield, TBWA\Chiat\Day, and McCann-Erickson. So, I’ve been in similar roles at media agencies for a large part of my career. What really drew me to Mediasmith was what still makes it a compelling agency today, it’s independent and transparent, and the people here are dedicated to client success, which means we’re…

Tell us about your role at the company and how you started here. Udayan Bose, Founder and CEO, NetElixir, a retail search marketing agency. I founded the company in 2004 to help retailers win new online shoppers through data-driven search marketing. What opportunities and challenges did you and/or the company identify at the start of 2018 and have things worked out as planned? We have been focusing on three trends this year. The first is voice search, which is changing search from being keyword led to context led. The…

What was the most impactful moment of the year for you at 6sense? We had a case study breakout session at the Gartner Sales & Marketing event to discuss the importance of Artificial Intelligence for executing ABM at scale, and ultimately competing and winning in the age of B2B buying, which requires a much more data-driven approach to Sales and Marketing. It was supposed to be a small roundtable discussion, but the room was packed. Still new to 6sense, I was incredibly nervous. Fortunately, Olivier Thierry, the CMO…

Tell us about your role at Yext and the team/technology you handle. I am the VP of Marketing at Yext. I’ve been with Yext for more than six years and have held nearly every role within the Marketing Department in that time. In my current role, I lead Demand Generation, Content, and Marketing Operations. I consider myself an entrepreneur first and a marketer second — I love the effect good marketing has on a company’s growth.  I joined the company in 2012 when we had just 75 employees, and today we have about 1000…

Tell us about your role and how you got here. What inspired you to be part of the Marketing Technology company — SmartyAds? It was June 2016, when I officially joined SmartyAds as the brand’s “lifesaver” and dedicated advisor. Such responsibilities may sound epic, but they had no chance to be average after several DDos attacks and a series of poor-quality outbursts of weblinks, leading to our website and referencing our brand out of blue. Reputation is very important for every brand. Ours, obviously, needed urgent…

Tell us about your role at LogMeIn and the team/technology you handle. I am the Vice President of Customer Engagement Products for LogMeIn. My team and I are focused on the Bold360 platform, which is an AI-powered customer engagement solution that helps brands all over the world deliver personalized and consistent customer experiences seamlessly across both AI and agent-based interactions. Could you tell us about the product development lifecycle for Bold360? How did your technology team plan this launch? Much of the…

Tell us about your journey into technology and how you started Ternio. I have worked in digital media for over 10 years with a heavy focus on business development, sales, and strategy. My career started as the 1st employee in a media startup which grew into a $50mm a year business during my tenure. Over my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work in both early stage and mature organizations, be a part of acquisitions on the buy and sell side, and drive go-to-market strategy for various data and media products. Seeing…

What opportunities and challenges did you and/or Uberflip identify at the start of 2018 and manage to conquer by now, or plan to soon? We saw a real need for a platform that wasn’t just focused on the creation of content. So often, marketers think that if they keep churning out content, it will result in more conversions, ROI, etc., but that’s just not the case. We’re simplifying the web for marketers by helping them create personalized content experiences at scale under one roof. You know the motto “work smarter, not…

Tell us about your role and how you got here. What inspired you to be part of the programmatic industry? I started in a mobile ad network to drive their first programmatic offering. I was fascinated by the technological exploits around data and measurement, and the early promise of reaching the right audience, at the right time, in the right place. I quickly moved to MediaMath — already pioneering the way — and I have never left! As the mobile channel lead for MediaMath, I’m working with both our product and sales teams…

Tell us about your role and journey into technology. How did you co-start C3 Metrics? While working in the world of product placement and branded entertainment, I was lucky enough to meet my C3 Metrics Co-Founder Mark Hughes.  A marketing legend, Hughes convinced a town to rename themselves from Halfway, Oregon to Half.com Oregon, creating both the first ‘dot-com’ town and one of the most memorable company launches. The worldwide attention attracted eBay and shortly thereafter Half.com was acquired. With the release of…

Tell us about your role at NICE and how you leverage technology to manage your team and complete tasks you are responsible for. I lead the global marketing strategy for NICE, reinforcing our company’s mission of perfecting customer experience and preventing financial crime. This includes overseeing all go-to-market strategies, including demand generation, brand awareness and field activities. Technology plays an important role in every aspect of my job, from executing marketing activities to enhancing team…

Tell us about your role at SAP. I lead the Strategy and Solution Management team for SAP Marketing Cloud. In this role, I am responsible for the strategic vision and direction of the product including long-term roadmap, partnerships, acquisitions, analyst and influencer interactions. I have more than two decades of experience in the marketing and customer experience space and have held various leadership positions in product management and marketing for software vendors such as Teradata, Infor and Epiphany. I was also a…

How will video be leveraged this year? In 2018, there was yet another turning point in the video marketing landscape as video continues to be one of the most leveraged forms of content. In fact, 87 percent of online marketers today use video in their content strategies. In 2019, we can not only expect another year full of new developments and video trends such as interactive video, shoppable content, GIFs, and more, but we’ll also see video leveraged for better communications both inside and outside the enterprise.…

What are your predictions for small businesses in 2019? For the last century, the marketing abilities of small businesses have paled in comparison with what large, well-established companies could achieve. Big brands have always had access to more comprehensive marketing tools and could create more targeted, more “intelligent” ads that used data and insights simply out of reach for cash-strapped SMBs. 2019 will see this trend change as the barrier of entry for intelligent advertising will finally begin dropping so that…

Tell us about your role at CloudHealth and how you got here. What inspired you to join the company? I lead Marketing for CloudHealth Technologies. I started in April 2013, joining the founding team as they Secured series A funding. Our CEO at the time had pulled together an executive leadership team and two senior engineers to build a cloud management business that leveraged the emerging public cloud market. Why did I join? It was the people. After speaking with the CEO and Co-Founder, I got excited about the…

Cary, tell us about your role at Adslot and the team/technology you handle. Adslot Media is the world's only independent technology that scales audience-enabled, publisher-direct media buying. Through our technology you can plan, buy, optimize and reconcile your premium, guaranteed campaigns through a single platform. The North American team services premium publishers and advertisers by leveraging the Adslot platform to simplify their buying and selling of guaranteed, premium display and video inventory across all…

How can businesses up their customer engagement game in 2019? Make 2019 the year you focus on omnichannel. Unlike message-based multichannel campaigns, true omnichannel campaigns are customer-centric. Instead of repeating the same message in every marketing channel, tell a multi-faceted story — one that unfolds as customers continue on their journey with your brand at different touchpoints and different stages of discovery. It’s more personal and relevant and will deepen the relationship in the end. What were the AdTech…

How much did ROI dashboards and Sales Intelligence evolve in 2018? Both a lot and too little. On one hand, dashboards are becoming easy to build and, therefore, are included as part of many vendors’ offerings. This means that users don’t have to create their own dashboards. However, the main problem remains that the dashboard itself is largely a descriptive and reactive element within the stack rather than a prescriptive, proactive one. Dashboards, as a whole, still need to evolve beyond reporting on what is happening…