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Greetings!
We are very excited about this month's newsletter, featuring a phenomenal story about a planner who made the trek from Seattle to New York, some interesting facts about our publishers, and a commentary about the word "premium".
  
Media Planner Profile


Sarah Faber

Assistant Integrated Planner
ZenithOptimedia
 

Where are you from?
I was born in LA but my parents moved when I was young and I grew up on eleven acres in the mountains on the border of Canada in Washington State.

 

What did you study in school, and where? 

I started out as a physics major at the University of Washington in Seattle and graduated with a degree in Sociocultural Anthropology and International Studies. 

 

Tell us a little bit about your career background.  

I worked at the NASA JPL labs when I was eighteen, then bars and restaurants to pay my way through college, and Publicis Seattle upon graduation in 2010.  I knew I wanted to work at a large agency but wasn't sure if that meant media or creative advertising. A friend of mine was working in HR at Publicis Seattle and the only job available at the time was Mailroom Coordinator.  This meant I could talk to everyone from the various Publicis sister agencies, so I took the job. I was at Publicis for seven months and came to the conclusion that I wanted to work in media and  I knew I wanted  to be at a company where my career could grow. I had been planning on moving to NYC for about a year and it was just the right time to make the move. Someone at Optimedia in Seattle sent through my resume to HR in NYC and here I am.  

 

What do you enjoy most about your job, and what is the biggest challenge?
I greatly enjoy working in digital because there's something new to learn every day. The minute you feel as though you have a solid grasp of the landscape, a new technology comes out that makes both consumers and advertisers rethink the way they behave in the digital space. There's something incredibly unique about the digital space in the way that many networks function as ecosystems that mirror economic and health structures. That being said one of our biggest challenges is that we're in a constant catch up mode to gain and utilize data to our advantage to reach the right people at the right time and place.   
  
Where do you see the future of media and advertising heading in the next 10 years?
Data is one of our most valuable resources in digital advertising.  As Millennials we were brought up in a constant sharing mindset and as our technologies become more and more personalized, advertisers are increasingly in need of data. Older generations tend to be very skeptical, still citing security as the main reason why they don't trust online services and purchasing, but I don't think that will hold true in the years ahead.   
What do you like most about Ideas People Media?  
Ideas People media provides a high reach to an exclusive and influential audience at an efficient cost. The reps I work with are great at providing me with the information I need before I ask for it. The audiences they represent are the people who creatively problem solve through changing economies and seek to understand the world around them, that's an incredibly valuable audience.
  
Did You Know?
Interesting facts about some of our publisher partners:
 
           
In 1981, Inc. made history by being the first magazine to put late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on its cover next to this headline: "This man has changed business forever." This fact was mentioned in Steve Job's biography by Walter Isaacson. 
 
"Thought leader" was coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of Strategy + Business. The term was used to designate interview subjects for their print magazine who had business ideas that merited attention. 
 
In March 2012, The New Republic was purchased by Chris Hughes, the Facebook Co-Founder and the coordinator of Barack Obama's social media efforts during his 2008 presidential campaign. Hughes is currently serving as Publisher and Editor-in-chief of the nearly 100 year old publication.
  
From The Desk of 

Stéphane Père

Follow me on Twitter 

 

Did I hear "premium" again?

 

Like any industry, advertising is not bereft of jargon. Sit in for a few minutes at any trade conference and you will be sure to hear everyone talking about "engagement", "curation", "serendipity", and the latest one "native advertising". One word that seems to be thrown around more than ever is "premium". Almost every publisher, tech/data vendor, and ad network has chosen to define their audience & solutions as premium. Yet, what does this mean? What makes their offering of higher quality/value?

 

The reality is that our industry has committed many misleading practices in the past. In order to change advertiser's perception - we tell them "trust me, it's not what it used to be". Most Display Lumascape vendors define themselves as "trust me" technology companies offering "trust me" solutions across "trust me" publishers".

 

Premium seems to be used to describe what something is NOT more so than what is is. Often times, content gets labeled premium as it is NOT porn or gambling. Others are calling their inventory premium because their ads are NOT below the fold. Leads are premium since they are NOT generated by robot click farms.

 

Is that enough? It seems more appropriate to describe an offering as what it IS.

 

At Ideas People Media - we refrain from using the "P" word.

 

We describe our publishers as: high quality news publications focusing on slow-media; the majority of them are award-winning print legacy publications. We describe our audience as: curious, opinionated and influential readers; thought leaders.

 

Our offering is truly transparent : we provide the list of publishers that we have a contractual relationship with and are effectively working with.

 

If everyone in the industry keeps repeating "premium", then the word will lose its meaning, and marketers will lose their trust. Don't you remember Kaa, the snake in the Jungle Book who sang the song "Trust In Me"? Maybe that's where the term "native advertising" came from.

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Looking to advertise?
Contact Ben Rabunski, Global Sales Director
212.541.0527