New Talent For Ad Tech Chair; More Speakers For MadTechMoney; CTV & Analytics Podcast

Rethinking The Ad Tech Chair Role

Lumen announced this week that it has hired Philippa Snare as its new chair.  Philippa has a wealth of experience in big tech and ad tech, having worked at Microsoft and Meta. She recently managed the EMEA and MENA business for The Trade Desk.

Philippa represents a new breed of ad tech chair.  

Your typical variety of ad tech chair has always over-indexed to pension-aged male agency stalwarts.  This cohort came with a big reputation and client contact roller deck.  That profile was sometimes helpful; but invariably it didn’t always have the desired effect.

Most lacked a fundamental understanding of ad tech: specifically, its application in marketing and media.  And too few had the knowledge/seasoned skillset around how best to help management teams scale and achieve successful liquidity events.

The choice of chair for startups has been the product of industry habit rather than an informed process.  

Given FPC is breaking the rules on everything else, we are actively looking for a new generation of ad tech chairs that do not fit the current mould. Ultimately, we need these people to help us achieve our core objectives: namely, building great companies, getting scale and returning money to our LPs.

In many cases, this new generation doesn't even know they are chair material.  So, what does the new ad tech chair profile look like?  Below we have outlined a VERY high-level job spec.

• Has the required name, reputation and contacts.

• Has experience working in ad tech and/or big tech (essential).

• A student of our industry, understanding the nuances of the space.

• Has a track record of building and scaling businesses.

• Authoritative and respected, bringing structure to those startups in a hyper scale mode.

• Can work with management teams to help reach potential (not always an easy task).

Over the coming 12 months we have a bunch of portfolio companies hitting the “teenage” years in terms of development where a chair is required to join the board.  We look forward to helping to put more talented leaders like Philippa in these critical roles.

As Philippa would say herself, onwards.

More Speakers Announced For MadTechMoney

We are only a few days away from MadTechMoney.  We have a few speaker additions to the agenda.

• Matthew Newcomb, Regional Director, North America & APAC, Azerion - one of the most active strategic buyers in the sector.

• Daniel Glazer, London Office Managing Partner, Wilson Sonsini - a Silicon Valley law firm that specialises in helping European tech firms to expand to the US.

You have still time to get your ticket:

https://madtechmoney.com/#tickets

We look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday. Please join us from 1.30pm for coffee and networking. Content starts at 2pm sharp and will run until 5.30pm. Drinks and canapés will be served until 9pm.

The more active networkers will no doubt move on to a local pub to continue the conversation.

Cameron Church Talking Analytics & The Future Of TV

Cameron Church joined The Six Sells Podcast this week to talk all things analytics and TV ad tech.

In the episode, Mike Nicholson (host) and Cameron go deep on the tech driving ad-funded TV, the growing pains of data-driven TV and how Watching That is building solutions to solve the problems it faces.

Below are some hot takes from the interview:

• How Watching That tackles the ad revenue at risk problem.

• What is un-rendered inventory? And what to do about it.

• The three biggest challenges facing CTV.

• Solving the plague of ad duplication.

• The impact of AI, attention metrics and privacy laws.

You can listen to the podcast in full here: https://lnkd.in/gu2_xNpp.

Have a great weekend, readers.  And we will see you Tuesday at MadTechMoney if you are attending.