“Be bold in choosing who to bring into your team, even if they do not necessarily have extensive experience in the specific field – then inspire and reward them accordingly.”
Jon, can you tell us about your professional background and your role at Audience Store?
My 30-year career in advertising has taken me through radio, print, TV and programmatic, giving me an unusual breadth of knowledge across all media channels and how advertising works. Through different sales and commercial director roles – at ITV, The Guardian, VisualDNA Exponential, Seedtag and others – I’ve had the benefit of working in the pre-digital arena as well as at the cutting edge of digital. The crux for me is understanding that all channels are there to get results for clients – it is simply a case of different applications for different channels.
At Audience Store, it is essentially about putting this into practice to drive outcomes for our clients, as well as pursuing new initiatives to grow the bottom line, and fostering a high-performance culture with an engaged team.
How does Audience Store differentiate itself from others in the same space?
Firstly, we have our own proprietary audience intelligence platform, which powers everything we do as a customer insights business. We are also technology-agnostic and open to any solutions which enable us to get results for clients. As part of that objective, we place huge value on the quality of dynamic creative optimisation (DCO), and have our own studio to ensure we retain creative quality across all our work.
More specifically, our connected TV offering, Targetcast, is a differentiator in the market. We can plan and report in standard TV terms, with a deep understanding of how CTV can complement and enhance linear TV advertising. We are one of just two adtech companies in the UK with a BARB licence, allowing us to analyse linear TV campaigns, and show clients how we could generate the same audience with connected TV. It is a hugely valuable planning tool.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we are a people-focused business. We motivate and reward our staff, and as such we have built and retained an amazing team.
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With your extensive experience in advertising, how do you inspire and lead high-performing media sales teams to achieve success, while integrating innovative strategies across multi-channel platforms?
It is all about hiring the right people – we employ them for their attitudes rather than experience. The specifics of adtech and martech – the technical knowledge and the familiarity with platforms and channels – can all be taught through training. And if you give your team clarity in their roles, and encourage self-motivation so they enjoy what they are doing, they will learn those skills as a matter of course.
How does Audience Store help brands and agencies understand consumers and their buying motivations to engage with them more effectively?
Our granular consumer insights, which are generated by Discover AI, our proprietary audience intelligence platform, are second to none and enable us to deliver against our objectives for our clients – to discover, engage and acquire their potential customers.
How does Audience Store’s Brand Impact solution enhance brand visibility and engagement through premium contextual and behavioural advertising, and what are the key features that contribute to its effectiveness?
The key elements of our solution that allow brands to truly understand and engage consumers – context and behaviour – are intertwined. In other words, the environment of the content users are consuming informs their likely behaviours. And particularly with the demise of cookies, we are finding contextual works at least as well as cookie-based campaigns, particularly for branding.
How does Audience Store’s integration of DiscoverAI’s technology and data-drivenperformance marketing strategies enhance targeting and efficiency in digital advertising campaigns?
As a customer acquisition and engagement business, DiscoverAI gives us a unique view of our clients’ customers – and potential customers – through a combination of geographic, transactional, media consumption and behavioural data. It also feeds our DCO offering with its ability and expertise to serve a different ad according to who is seeing it. Everything we do in audience identification and targeting stems from this proprietary platform, and the actionable insight it provides.
How do you anticipate programmatic media evolving in the future, and what potential innovations might shape its role in digital advertising?
I envisage the continued rise of CTV, and AI/ML, and consequently a knock-on effect that transforms how we collect and manage insight, data and attribution, personalisation and creative content.
The most significant change within media, and therefore programmatic advertising, which is already well underway, is the move away from broadcast TV. We can expect the same seismic shift in TV today as we saw in print journalism with the demise of newspapers.
What is the biggest problem you or your team is solving this year?
I would say we are very focused on helping to navigate confusion around how to use CTV, and how it can complement more established linear TV.
What advice do you have for other leaders who are looking to drive growth for their brand?
As I’ve said, it really is all about hiring the right people and making sure you keep them. Be bold in choosing who to bring into your team, even if they do not necessarily have extensive experience in the specific field – then inspire and reward them accordingly.
Is there anything that you’re currently reading, or any favourite books, that you would recommend?
I would recommend that any leaders (or aspiring leaders) read ‘Good to Great’ by Professor Jim Collins, about how successful companies maintain sustainable growth. It draws on facts and surveys to establish the commonalities between businesses that thrive long-term.
Thanks Jon!
Jon, as the Managing Director of Audience Store, exemplifies a modern approach to leadership marked by a strategic vision and a deep commitment to fostering growth. He brings over a decade of experience in senior roles, especially in AdTech, where he has sharpened his expertise in programmatic advertising and innovative solutions. His leadership style is not only about achieving targets but also about creating a culture of high performance through meaningful employee engagement and development initiatives.
Audience Store is an international customer insight and next-generation programmatic media activation partner for brands and agencies. We help brands understand consumer behaviour and purchasing motivations at a granular level by leveraging AI, technology, and sophisticated insights to empower brands, embracing the power of simplicity, not complexity. By applying these insights, we fuel digital marketing for enhanced customer discovery, engagement and acquisition throughout the purchase journey. Through our programmatic expertise, we achieve brand-safe, high-performance campaign goals through curating the right inventory and implementing real-time optimisation. As a proud partner of the IAB Gold-approved 2.1 standard, we stand as a trusted solution to inform, create, and consistently deliver cost-effective results.