After leading marketing teams at Netflix, Hulu and Nickelodeon, Jenny Wall feels a personal connection to executives who struggle to get insight on how the ad dollars they spend perform. Now, in a new role as chief marketing officer for advertising measurement tech firm VideoAmp, she thinks she’ll be able to help.
“As a CMO and head of marketing for many, many years, the biggest frustration that I had and the biggest pain point that I had was how to effectively and efficiently spend my media dollars to get results,” she told TheWrap. “I know what it feels like to be a CMO and be in that position, and I want the world to know there is a solution.”
That solution, which she is now tasked with bringing to more companies on all sides of the advertising business, is VideoAmp’s suite of technology and services, which integrates data from television and digital advertising in one place, providing measurement and optimization tools across linear TV, streaming video and other forms of digital media.
Most importantly, she said, VideoAmp has the ability to connect media exposures to an advertiser’s sales.
“I hate waste,” Wall said. “It’s estimated about $300 billion is wasted in advertising. I want to help people spend their money better and I want to make advertising better, more targeted to people who would love your product, whatever that product might be.”
The company has already signed some of the biggest players in advertising, including Omnicom Media Group, Dentsu, IPG, GroupM, Publicis Groupe Horizon and Havas on the buy side.
Paramount, Fox, TelevisaUnivision, NBCUniversal, Disney and most recently Warner Bros. Discovery have also inked deals with VideoAmp, which has headquarters in both New York and Los Angeles.
Wall joins the audience measurement business at a time when the exponential growth of streaming — more viewers now watch streaming than cable — has led to massive disruption. Many sellers in the industry have lost faith in Nielsen, whose data long provided a universal currency for pricing ads, even after it added streaming data to its connected TVs last year.
Competitors have been nipping at Nielsen’s heels, and as marketers face declining ad budgets, broader insight into their spending is growing ever more important.
VideoAmp has strong backing, having raised $456 million since its 2014 founding, according to CrunchBase. It announced the most recent round in October 2021, with the company taking a $275 million infusion from multiple investors that brought its valuation to $1.4 billion.
Let’s talk about VideoAmp’s vision. Does the company see itself as an alternative to Nielsen or do you expect to operate alongside them?
The markets want choice. There’s a lot of money tied up in legacy companies. I don’t think there’s going to be overnight, one-size-fits-all changes. I think it’s going to be a market with alternatives. There’s contracts, there’s Upfronts which trade on a certain currency and that’s not going to change overnight. Our currency is better, but that’s going to take time to prove. I really do see us as the one-stop shop of an advertising platform, one that will make buyers and sellers and agencies much better partners, much more efficient.
Why make a move to that side of the market now?
I think we’re at a tipping point. I think the world’s been asking for it. There’s just a lot of legacy in this business, and I think it’s ripe for disruption. I like to think I’ve been at the disrupters before they disrupted. I like the challenge, and I’m attracted to companies that I think are willing to take that on. There’s so much opportunity in this space, but it’s also really complicated. I can bring empathy, because I have been on the other side of the business.
What about VideoAmp’s offering differentiates it enough to draw the big clients you aim to attract?
Old models look backwards and this one looks forward and in real time. We’re not just measuring. We’re able to measure, plan, optimize, do attribution all with the same audiences. I remember as a CMO, you had to look at five or six different tools and try to make insights yourself, while the CFO or the board is asking you real-time questions about what your marketing dollars are doing. We bring that in one place that actually provides information you can use. The goal is to create efficiency and be smarter.
How do you see yourself resonating with potential clients?
I think I can help educate CMOs and other buyers and sellers of media. The main thing is I’ve been on both sides of the business and I know the pain points, and I’m hoping to really move this industry forward. Because I do believe there’s a better way. I think we can save a lot of sleepless nights for marketers around the world.
