Since I met Jamie Gutfreund a few years back—AT CANNES, of course—I’ve wanted her to deliver a keynote to the Publisher Forum. Given her diverse experience—from working on digital advertising on Microsoft properties during the 90s (she shared a picture of herself hoisting a laptop that looked about the same size as her) to serving as Global CMO for creative agency JWT (now Wunderman Thompson)—over the development of the digital media and ad tech space, I could only imagine the kind of insight she could sprinkle on an eager publisher audience.
In particular, I was curious her thoughts on the relationships between brand marketers and publishers. For the last few years, most conversations I’ve had with top brand marketing executives have focused on developing 1-to-1 relationships with consumers via social media channels—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, now TikTok, etc. But can you really do that at scale? Definitely not the scale you can get with online media.
Obviously marketers have been disappointed with digital media performance, and who can blame them? They bought wholesale into programmatic targeting only to learn a lot of their messaging was going to bots and agencies were profiting off of arbitrage deals. And online data regulation and browser privacy initiatives threaten to bring digital advertising back a step
When I was chatting with Jamie about keynoting the 50th Publisher Forum in Santa Monica, she came back to me with an interesting idea—she’s currently a senior advisor for SuperAwesome, which specializes in “kidtech” that enables brands to safely engage with younger audiences… You know, the ones that publishers have to be super cautious about targeting and collecting data from lest they run astray of COPPA.
Why not take a look at how brands are engaging with younger audiences to understand how to best reach and message the next generation of adults while also reconsidering our current practices so that they’re both more respectful and valuable to consumers? This could be a great way to rebuild the trust between advertisers and publishers that has been frayed over the years.
It’s an inspiring talk, and we’re happy to share it with the wider AdMonsters community. You’ll find more videos from the 50th PubForum at our Vimeo channel.
KEYNOTE: How Publishers Become Advertisers’ Guides in a Turbulent Digital Ad Landscape—Jamie Gutfreund, SuperAwesome from AdMonsters on Vimeo.