The Future of AdTech and What to Look Out From Corey Ferengul
I had the pleasure of interviewing Corey Ferengul. Corey is the Chairman and CEO of Magnetic, a digital marketing and AI company. Corey is a talented executive whose last CEO role led to a $180 million acquisition of the company by a publicly traded firm.
Chris: Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory” of how you become involved in the adtech or digital media space?
“I was an executive at a public company, Rovi from 2006–2012. Rovi was very deep in the digital media space but focused on software for pay tv operators and consumer electronics manufacturers, including data about TV, video, and music. We also had a business around advertising on the guide within cable systems we supported (e.g., push the Guide button and that was our software, it had an ad in there). Around 2010 Rovi was looking at expanding markets through M&A and development. Ad Tech kept sticking out to me because there was so much happening, seemed to be no rules, seemed to be endless innovation and of course a lot of revenue potential. Shortly after I left Rovi I found an opportunity to join Undertone who was not only in the ad tech space but had an asset most ad tech companies didn’t — profit. From there I just got deeper and deeper into ad tech. I was CEO of Undertone when we sold that business, then started to do BOD work and ended up with Magnetic.”
Chris: What do you think is the most interesting thing that has happened to the industry thus far?
“IfG, however there is lots of room for others and innovation does get noticed.”
Chris: What are your “5 things you think will change or should change over the next 5 years in adtech and digital publishing” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
“Simplicity — we make everything too hard in this market. We make it hard to figure out your audience, hard to track detailed results, hard to know if there is fraud, hard to see ALL the costs. We have to find ways to make the processes easier. It feels like every time we surface a new issue (e.g., viewability, fraud) we just layer on another vendor. The brands effective media dollars seem to continue to be challenged. I see charts today that lay out all the vendors that an agency must work with on a given campaign and its crazy. There are direct publishers (some direct, some as a PMP via their DSP), an appropriate buying platform (usually multiple), audience providers, other targeting data providers (e.g., context), specialized creative providers, maybe some ad tech provider via an IO, then there are the litany of measurement providers that need to be part of it all and I’m simplifying. How has it gotten his hard?
Transparency — part of the complexity leads to so much hidden in the details. While we have made strides in transparency, now we have almost buried people in data to the point that it isn’t all transparent again. How do we make it so all our customers have confidence that they know what they are paying for, who they are paying, and that the results are REAL and not being gamed by someone in the market?
The user experience needs to evolve. All too often I find that I’m on my mobile device and enter a page an start to read, then the page jumps because the ads just arrived…then it moves again cause another ad arrived. Then a few seconds later one of those ad slots changes ad and the page layout jumps again, then I find myself scrolling and scrolling past ads to find just a few sentences of text buried between ads. Those cause consumers to hate digital ads. It’s not just load time, its not just clutter, it’s not just ensure they are ads I want to see, its rethink the user experience and how ads need to be part of the experience. In app isn’t a lot better.
All ads in one platform — TV, audio, current digital, etc. I think the idea of applying a single audience across all media is going to happen. It has been long discussed, many are working on it, some claim to have it, I do think it becomes real.”
Chris: Tell us something you or your company is doing to stay up to date in adtech (maybe making changes to comply with Better Ads Standards or GDPR, working on your header bidding stack or testing new types of ads)
“We are constantly having to make adjustments to our infrastructure and systems to adapt to new capabilities and requirements of the industry. We are doing work on ensuring our data science can understand the flow of data that is generated by header bidding, that we can meet all the varying privacy efforts. The biggest part of keeping up is being involved. Involved in industry groups, meeting with peers, talking to others in the industry. If we wait for a customer to request we provide something or comply with a standard then we are already too late.”
Chris: Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?
“Barak Obama. He seems to have such insight and of course based on his past experience he has details on stuff I’d love to know.”
