Before Joetta Gobell, SVP of Data Strategy and Insights at Dotdash Meredith (DDM), was helping steer research and measurement for one of the industry’s largest publisher portfolios, she was a painfully shy kid who couldn’t speak when called on in class without becoming overwhelmed.
Today, she’s the opposite—leading conversations across the organization, translating complex data into clear, actionable strategy and championing how tools like DDM’s contextual targeting platform D/Cipher can help brands reach audiences.
That transformation didn’t happen overnight, she told AdMonsters. It took time, growth and a few defining moments—like heading off to college and realizing that sometimes, you’ve just got to be brave.
That fearlessness carries into her work life, where no two days ever look the same. One moment, she’s in a sprint review for D/Cipher; the next, she’s troubleshooting measurement challenges, collaborating with data ops on infrastructure or working with her teams to tell deeper stories about user behavior across DDM’s properties, which include over 40 brands and 188 million monthly consumers.
But Gobell’s work always comes back to the same core principle: helping others understand complicated technology. “It’s not about the mathy parts,” she said. “It’s about what we can learn and why it matters.”
When she’s not unpacking audience insights or making targeting strategies less opaque, she’s gaming—avidly. Joetta spends hours at a time in expansive, open-world titles like GTA V and Assassin’s Creed. Her gamer side even offers the perfect metaphor for how cookie-based audiences can misfire.
“As a gamer with no kids, I constantly end up in cookie pools designed for 18- to 24-year-old men,” she joked.
That unique mix of strengths—data expertise, a knack for honest storytelling and just enough edge—helps Joetta cut through all the noise surrounding ad tech today.
Andrew Byrd: What were some of the biggest technical or operational challenges in implementing D/Cipher, and what have been the biggest wins? 
Joetta Gobell: D/Cipher builds on work we were already doing: creating intent-driven content that helps users make decisions. I always joke that D/Cipher is like a parasite—in a good way. It latches onto all that existing effort and makes it smarter by identifying the signals that show when someone’s in a moment of need, and matching content and advertising accordingly.
The real challenge came when Dotdash merged with Meredith. The scale of data and the diversity of brands exploded. More data can strengthen signals, but it also requires reconciling different editorial and audience strategies into a unified system.
The harder part wasn’t technical; it was human. At Dotdash, the targeting team was tiny, so alignment was easy. Now, with a much larger group, the challenge is maintaining consistency without stifling flexibility. You need enough structure to learn and improve, but not so much that you lose the nuance.
AB: Google Chrome is no longer introducing a new opt-out mechanism for third-party cookies, so it looks like business as usual going forward for cookies. What’s your take on that news—especially considering DDM’s investment in cookieless tools like D/Cipher?
JG: We’ve always had standard digital targeting capabilities, but D/Cipher was built to complement those—not replace them. No single tool solves everything; each has strengths and limits. D/Cipher focuses on understanding user intent through content consumption, which remains valuable regardless of what Google decides. It gives us incremental reach, especially in environments like Apple’s, where identity-based targeting doesn’t work.
The recent announcement surprised me, but it doesn’t diminish D/Cipher’s role. Its value was never tied to cookie deprecation. And while D/Cipher excels in the right context, it’s not one-size-fits-all. Knowing when and where to apply it is just as important as having the tool itself.
AB: What role do data partnerships play in your ad strategy?
JG: Data partnerships are a way to enhance our strengths without adding complexity. At D/Cipher, we have rich intent signals based on what people are reading—everything from discovery (“What is temporary wallpaper?”) to decision-making (“What’s on sale?”). But we’re not the only ones with valuable data.
A good example is our partnership with Amazon. They contribute deep insights into buying behavior. Their signals aren’t duplicative of ours; they’re complementary. By aligning their in-market audiences with our content insights, we can identify where interest and action overlap, which improves campaign performance.
We always test these integrations first to make sure combining signals leads to real value. It’s never just about layering on more data; it’s about purposefully enriching what we do and being willing to adapt when things don’t play out as expected.
AB: Are there any emerging trends shaping how you’re thinking about the future of DDM?
JG: We’re leaning into how to measure advertising impact in a world where you can’t rely on a single, persistent identity. Whether Google actually deprecates cookies, the industry has to be ready for environments where identity is fragmented or unavailable.
For a long time, we’ve accepted a lack of visibility in these scenarios. But that period when cookie deprecation felt imminent really pushed more people to engage with this problem. And that’s a good thing. I’m excited about developing smarter, more privacy-conscious ways to understand user behavior and advertising effectiveness without tying everything back to a deterministic ID.
But for me, measurement is not just about proving that something “worked” or “didn’t work.” The real value is in the nuance—figuring out where it worked, why it worked and what that tells us not just about the campaign but about human behavior. Those insights can be shared across our organization—with product, editorial, licensing or brand partners. It’s about building a more complete picture of our audiences and using that knowledge to drive smarter decisions.