Social Media Portal (SMP) interview with Mark Connolly from AudienceScience

Mark Connolly, chief revenue officer and VP of international at enterprise marketing technology company AudienceScience

Social Media Portal (SMP): What is your name and what do you do there at AudienceScience?  

Mark Connolly (MC): My name is Mark Connolly and I?m chief revenue officer and VP of international.  I have responsibility for leading the company?s global business development and revenue generation. I have the global sales, global account management, global technical client services and global business development teams reporting into me.  I?m accountable for AudienceScience?s operations outside the USA, including London, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo.

SMP: Briefly, tell us about AudienceScience (for those that don?t know), what is it and what does the company do?  

MC: AudienceScience is a digital marketing technology company.  We create technology that gives advertisers complete control of their digital marketing investment.  Our clients can manage all their audience data and all their media spend in one place ? which enables them to improve the efficiency, transparency and effectiveness of their online ad campaigns.

SMP: When was the company founded, how many people work there and how is it funded?  

MC: It was launched in 1999 by a number of founders including our current CTO, Basem Nayfeh.  We are a privately held, venture capital backed business. We are a global business and employ 200 staff.

SMP: Who are your target audience and why?

MC: Our primary audience is advertisers.  Our integrated technology platform, AudienceScience Gateway, has been developed with advertiser needs at its core, providing them with a transparent alternative to the trading desk.  It integrates data insights from hundreds of millions of audience data points with robust digital advertising execution tools.  This provides advertisers with the tools they need to identify exactly how they?re spending their digital marketing budget (for display, online video and mobile) while also perfecting campaign targeting and implementation in real time. 




SMP: What are the challenges that you?ve encountered and how are you overcoming them in what you have been doing so far AudienceScience?

MC: When I joined it was making the transition from a network business to its current positioning as a digital marketing technology and enterprise company.  This was a big move for the company and it has taken hard work to create the right organisational structure to ensure we have everything in place to reach our accelerated growth targets for 2014.

SMP: What are the high moments of what you have been doing so far?  

MC: As we?ve taken our story out to CEOs and CMOs, it?s been seeing out message gain traction amongst advertisers at a high level.  

SMP: In your blog post you discuss how CMOs need to have greater control on knowing where advertising is being placed etc., why do you think this is a challenge for them (and how can they overcome it)?  

MC: The trouble is, they are working with a flawed, and extremely complex, media buying ecosystem.  With so many partners involved (e.g. data providers, agencies, ad networks, trading desks etc) it makes it extremely difficult for advertisers to see where there money is being spent.

What makes this situation even worse is the fact that each of these partners in the process will require their own fees and perverse incentives ? plus, as data is transferred between them there is a loss in translation and data quality diminishes.  Not only that, the responsibility for managing campaign standards such as frequency, targeting and viewability are then left to the publishers, at the furthest end of the supply chain from the advertiser.

The upshot of this is that between 50-80% of advertisers? digital media budget is either eaten up by the partner fees I mention above, or wasted on out-of-target and out-of-frequency impressions.

There are three essential things that advertisers need to do to counteract this.  Firstly, they need to consolidate.  One platform that combines data management and media buying can reduce waste by 80% almost immediately. More important, marketers must control the technology to ensure that they have complete authority and transparency from segment creation to frequency capping to campaign delivery. Finally, they must avoid partners who charge on a percentage-of-media basis; they have an incentive to keep volume high, even when the advertiser isn?t happy.




SMP: What sort of issues is the blocking of cookies having for your services (and the industries) and how are you addressing this?  

MC: The cookie issue is being talked about a lot but no one really knows if it?s going to happen.  If it does, it will be a concern for the whole industry, not just AudienceScience.  As we own our own technology and have our own development, engineering and product teams, we are constantly working to future proof our business through technology and will be able to respond accordingly ? unlike organisations such as ad agencies who don?t own technology.

SMP: There is no doubt technology is an important element to manage advertising more effectively, but how can advertisers / marketers trust what is being presented to them via technology?

MC: This is about transparency and providing a clear understanding around what is being done by whom.  The closer the relationship between client and media owner the better ? with fewer intermediaries in the digital advertising process there will be greater trust.  It?s as simple as that.

SMP: What do you see as your biggest challenges and opportunities for advertisers / marketers when using digital advertising?  

MC: The speed of change in technology is accelerating so quickly and consumers are fast adapting to the new places and ways in which brands are communicating with them.  One of the biggest opportunities this creates is for advertisers to take their brand assets ? such as TV ads ? and reuse them across other channels, which will ultimately bring costs down for them.  

The biggest challenge is around reducing wastage ? intermediary fees, incorrect frequency capping and bad viewability.  All these issues are stopping advertisers from achieving the kind of ROI they should be expecting from their online advertising.

SMP: What?s going to be the most interesting aspect regarding social media, social networks and/or technology in regards to advertising for the next 12 to 18-months and why?  

MC: As the lines continue to blur between the different media channels, I see technology being adapted to help advertisers manage more of their advertising channels beyond online ads, mobile and video.

What are your top tips for agencies and brands when planning / executing and advertising campaign?  

MC: Firstly, there will continue to be seismic changes in the way that digital advertising is bought by clients.  Secondly, there is going to be real momentum behind clients wanting data ownership (many don?t realise that they have signed this away to their agencies in their contracts) and also visibility on where their budget is being spent.  The media is going to have to adapt to these needs and work out how they can give advertisers what they want.

SMP: There is still much talk about big data is 2014 going to be the year when it really makes an impact (If yes, why. If no, why)?  

MC: I think data will be bigger than ever in 2014.  Everyone understands now that it is essential to everything that we do in media.  That said, the quality of data must be developed and monitored if we want to make optimum use of it.  

SMP: How are you making sure that AudienceScience?s technology is on the right side of maintaining the privacy of web, mobile and tablet users?  

MC: We take this seriously and have had tight compliance and legal processes around this since we launched.  We are active members of the IAB UK and IAB Europe, as well as of the Network Advertising Initiative in the USA.  We also have a European head of data and privacy based in the UK and a global executive team member heading this up in America.



SMP: Best way to contact you and AudienceScience?

Email me at mark.connolly @ audiencescience.com, Facebook, LinkedIn and @audiencescience. Or, contact our PR agency Loudmouth PR at 020 7981 9858 / susanp @ loudmouthpr.co.uk.  Read more about AudienceScience and its whitepapers at our website.


SMP: What did you have for breakfast / lunch?  

MC: I had a bagel and cream cheese ? on the fly, as usual!

SMP: What?s the last good thing that you did for someone?  

MC: Talking of flies, I told someone theirs were undone just before they went on stage to present to a room of over 100 people.

SMP: If you weren?t working at AudienceScience what would you be doing?  

MC: I would have loved to have been a photographer.  Photography is a passion of mine and I particularly enjoy travel photography ? so it?s a shame that despite travelling so much with my role at AudienceScience I never seem to have any spare time to get the camera out.

SMP: What the best advertising campaign that you?ve seen in the last three months and why?  

MC: I think that Coke?s marketing and advertising activity is consistently amongst the best in the world. The viral campaign they ran in 2012 around the launch of Skyfall is one of my favourites ? clever marketing and Bond films are two of my favourite things!  However, my favourite campaign of the last three months is the one that Coke didn?t do ? they suspended their advertising in the Philippines and donated their entire ad budget to relief efforts following Typhoon Haiyan, donating more than $2.5 million in cash and in-kind contributions.  

SMP: When and where did you go on your last holiday?  

MC: We took the kids to Paris before Christmas.  They loved eating snails on the Champs D?Elysee!

SMP: What?s the first thing you do when you get into the office of a morning?  

MC: Put the kettle on.

SMP: If you had a superpower what would it be and why?  

MC: As I seem to spend so much time in aeroplanes it would be great if I could just fly myself!

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