Dan Grossman

Hey Bay Area! In 2010, the Warriors started on a journey to transform from a basketball team into a larger sports media and entertainment company. Learn how the organization is reshaping its IT and data operations as well as redefining how it delivers digital experiences for its fans. #GoogleCloud #FanExperiences #genAI

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"Although there are exceptions to the rule, there are very few founding teams that are marvelous at groundbreaking innovation that can successfully make the transition to managing and operating at scale,"  Anyone who’s been with a company transitioning from startup to scale-up will relate to this. It's a bumpy ride. It’s a massive sea change when you get investment, but with that comes the need to 10X revenue. Tomorrow. Here are three observations that, from my experience, have made the difference in getting it right and getting to exit: Culture/People: When you start to scale rapidly, you need to be honest about the types of people you’ll need, while also holding on to what made the culture special. It’s a balancing act, but the truth is, some of the people who helped you reach base camp won’t be the ones to take you to the summit. Many will make that decision for themselves. The business won’t be the cool new kid anymore, and it just won’t be for them. Sometimes it’s the people you like and respect the most. That hurts. Too Many Horses in the Race: Any business, no matter the size, is usually trying to do too much with too little. As an exec team, you have to be ruthless and aligned on which horses you’re betting on. Some of the ones you’re sure will win fall at the first hurdle. Others, you really want them to win, but they just won’t, and you need to know when to call it quits. Make sure everyone, top to bottom, knows what the focus is. At Unruly, we put the quarterly objectives on the back of the toilet door—everyone knew exactly what we were doing and why. Be the Lighthouse in Your Sector: With influencer marketing, CTV, and retail media all exploding, competition for budgets is fierce. What I’ve found is that the secret to securing a seat at the table is measurement and insight. At Unruly, we built a tool to predict virality—not just because it was cool, but because it gave us credibility with brands and agencies. It made us a voice of authority in a noisy market full of unproven claims about how to go viral. In all of the above three sectors, there’s a real opportunity to lead the market. This is partly thanks to a whole range of amazing new tools that can give brands the confidence to invest. But it’s also because brands are now more open to sharing their data, allowing us to predict and model real-world outcomes. No surprise, this approach isn’t for the faint-hearted—but the reality is, fortune favours the brave. https://lnkd.in/e2JDJ32D.

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Listen: Comparing the same 3 datapoints against competitors has gotten a bit tired. As marketers, we talk alllll the time about the importance of niching down, yet we're all still using the same few general success metrics across industries and verticals. Fatigue has set in and even if the number is genuinely impressive, it just doesn't have the same OOMPH anymore. But we've still got to find ways to communicate: - How much money we can save you - How much time we can save you - How happy our customers are - How easy it is to win with us So we've got to find ways to do that beyond the ones that people have started to tune out or not take seriously. That's why finding new metrics & datapoints to demonstrate success MORE SPECIFICALLY can be so powerful. (Instead of simply increasing ROI by 100% vs. 200% vs. 300% and so on until the world stops spinning and there exists no more investments to return on!!!) The 37signals Rework podcast is one of the few I consistently listen to — and in a not-so-recent episode, they covered both how they hire & measure the success of hires. At the one-year point post-hire, they make a determination on whether or not they would say "HELL YEAH" to hiring this person again. If not, they posit, maybe it's best to part ways. As a marketer by trade who now works in the recruitment tech space, I loveeeeee thinking through creative ways recruiters can demonstrate their unique impact. How cool would it be to take 37signals' "HELL YEAH" index and turn it into a metric you can then use in bizdev moving forward? "X% of my hires result in a HELL YEAH a year down the line — meaning both the client and the candidate would make the same decision again if they could go back in time." What I love most about this datapoint is that it says a LOT by saying very little. It communicates: - Client satisfaction - Candidate satisfaction - The fact that you care about success DOWN THE LINE, not just about making a placement and moving on - The fact that you maintain relationships with clients & candidates in the long-term, checking in even after the quote-unquote job is done Sometimes compelling data storytelling means finding the story in tired datapoints. Sometimes it means finding a new datapoint altogether.

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Calling everyone who's ever sat through an awkward creative presentation. Over the last decade, we’ve made a shift at Mortar that’s changed the game for our creative process. Instead of starting with "big ideas" and treating creative briefs as launching pads, we’ve adopted a framework focused on imagining what we want our target audience to say--that singular Aha moment of delight and surprise—and it’s paid off. I don’t remember one creative presentation that has missed its mark since we adopted this framework. The difference? Aha briefs aren’t about blasting off into the creative unknown. They’re landing zones. They’re about aligning the team and the client around a clear, shared vision of how we want customers to respond. This focus keeps the creative work sharp, purposeful, and, most importantly, effective. So, while big ideas can be exciting and captivating, we’ve found that aiming for that Aha moment—with a disciplined, collaborative approach—consistently delivers results that hit the bullseye. See www.mortaragency.com for more. #CreativeStrategy #AhaMoments #MarketingInnovation #ClientCollaboration #BreakthroughThinking #MarketingFramework #OriginalIdeas #TargetedCreativity #MarketingSuccess #BrandDevelopment

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Join Vivian Chang from The Clorox Company and I in room 313 at 230pm in Vegas as we discuss transitioning to business outcomes and Ai + Human operating models. Three insights to remember: 1. The right tech & people can scale any advertiser with fixed headcount. 2. Hidden value is everywhere you just need to know where to look. 3. Evolving KPIs into business outcomes is easier than you think.

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How can advertisers stay ahead of the curve while keeping their ad campaigns brand safe? Integral Ad Science SVP of Product Craig Ziegler sat down with Beet.TV to discuss why AI is key in the fight for brand safety, especially on emerging platforms. Want to learn more? Watch below! #BrandSafety #AI

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ROI is making it RAIN!!! (aka incremental revenue) No Seattle jokes please;) We are working with large scale publishers in News, Sports, Entertainment, Health, Travel, and Autos verticals. High volume, high frequency. STOP READIG NOW if you are not interested or incentivized by incremental revenue. Now that we have dropped nonrevenue incented/operation types, let's talk about increasing revenue. If you are selling 100% of your supply you are in a rare, probably non-optimized group. Most publisher do not and should not fill more than 75% of supply directly. Using the bottom 25% to leverage floors higher, increasing bids/ecpm. ROI allows publishers the opportunity to efficiently monetize 100% of their supply. Accomplishing this by selling unfilled outside of the direct adstack in a secondary auction or post-bid strategy. We will deliver real time market data on supply value, allowing publishers to understand supply value and flooring. Selling and optimizing your unsold is a simple and import part of a balanced programmatic strategy. ROI is the only company that is doing this and has been doing this from the beginning of programmatic. Let's talk, let's drive incremental rev!

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Streaming’s on fire, and we’re here for it! 🔥 LiveRamp's Adam Paul breaks down why CTV is dominating screens and what it means for advertisers. Ready to get ahead? Watch episode 3 of “Here’s the deal...”

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BIG NEWS: Google announced that AI Overviews are rolling out to all users in the US and globally very soon. Search has been transformed by the Gemini AI model. AI Overviews represent the Future of Search for Google. We at the Omnicom Media Group have prepared for this moment, and are already working with our clients on adjustments to make the most of this moment. #GoogleIO

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Fan of Matthew Fantazier - well spoken / well written marketer at Kenvue. “Matt’s Hot Takes” on Substack, too! Insights on 2024 trends (or lack of) in convo with Jake Piasecki of Roku : - social commerce has been “coming soon” for years. The tech exists. Why not a behavior here, like it is in China? - #AVOD? Explore the possibilities and get creative. “The scale has made it viable now and it’s targetable.” - #Sports. “Moving into streaming - like NFL playoffs only streamed - is an interesting change. Biggest moment? Tonnage of Olympics being streamed! [note: see my interview w/ Fencing CEO! https://lnkd.in/de27Y6Ts ] You’re going to see more in the “live + experience.” Sample of predictions for 2025? The Brand Innovators room gave a collective “wooo!” of surprise when Matt said he is not bullish on the growth of #Retailmedia “the way it exists now. The data feeds do not make sense for the performance. It won’t grow at the pace they think it will.” You heard it here first!

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Pause ads are gaining traction across streaming platforms, with Hulu, Prime Video, Max, Peacock, and Netflix all experimenting with this approach. Roku might be the next big player to join the trend! Roku is on the verge of expanding its ad capabilities with a new patent for "HDMI customized ad insertion." According to Morning Brew, the application in question is for “HDMI customized ad insertion.” According to the filing, the tech would be able to, through a display device’s HDMI connection to a media device, pick up when any kind of content is paused on a media device and proceed to display an ad. The patent could be issued soon following a Notice of Allowance from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). #Roku #AdTech #StreamingTV #PauseAds #Innovation #Marketing

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Amazing week at Brandweek last week- Spending time with fellow marketers reminded me why I love media, experiences and brands so much. Had a fun chat with Nicole Parlapiano and Adam Grossman (and thank you Mark Stenberg!) about changes in the TV landscape- how/when fans view, how TV lives beyond the screen and what makes for an authentic and compelling ad experience in this new fragmented world. Key takeaways: being a TV fan today is both amazing and a lot of work. There are more opportunities to reach fans than ever before but it takes a lot more insight and planning to get it right. Attended the Marketing Vanguard dinner at Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's school and "lab" where we experienced his creative genius and how he thought about the fit of environment + structure + human was inspiring. Key Takeaway: the details matter- if you want your guests to sit, relax and get to know each other, keep the ceilings low! And learned more about the journeys of heritage brands including Crayola, Hilton and Wendy's (with amazing CMOs Victoria B. Lozano, Mark Weinstein, Lindsay Radkoski), all of which have become so much more than a product. They're experience brands with loyal fans for whom these brands are part of their identities (I pulled my Wendy's booklet out of my wallet as Lindsay was speaking, a roadtrip isn't a roadtrip without a stop at Wendy's for my family!) Key Takeaway: Brands that focus on who their fans are and what they care about beyond a transactional moment will thrive for (hundreds of) years! Big thank you to Jenny Rooney for getting this amazing community together to take a moment to remember why we love what we do- bringing joy to fans! #fortheloveoffans #brandweek #adweek https://lnkd.in/eTmxpU2Y

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Traditional pricing based on billable hours and costs per employee is being replaced by more innovative compensation models. We share our perspective on compensation models and options along with some of our peer agencies including Bullish in this recent Ad Age article. Maybe it's time to reevaluate what and how you're paying for agency and media services. Feel free to get in touch. #agencycompensation #agencymodels #performancemarketing #vujadedigital

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In this cluttered, competitive #adtech industry, buyers view tech as a commodity. Your product and your differentiator is your PEOPLE. If your PEOPLE are not kickass thought leaders / consultants in critical areas like identity, data collaboration, CTV, commerce media, curation, AI, etc., you are going to lose to the big walled gardens often, and you will leave $$$ on the table. DM me if you want to chat about how we can help supercharge your PEOPLE, and your growth in 2025. #KnowledgeIsRevenue

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As Connected TV (CTV) viewership continues to soar first party data & identity must keep pace. To that end - Yahoo Advertising Identity Solutions are now backed by global partnerships with Paramount, Tubi, NBCUniversal and FreeWheel. We're enriching premium inventory with Yahoo ConnectID addressable data, combined with Next-Gen non-addressable solutions to help brands optimise and measure campaigns more effectively. Find out more about how Yahoo is tackling an Identity constrained future: https://lnkd.in/gBgZ9RWJ B&T Alba Marco John McNerney Andrew Gilbert Keren Homan Kristine Celona Eliot Thompson Lorraine Donnelly Natalie Phang Kenneth Koh Rahila Nadir Sebastian Tatur Lucinda Pfitzner Sonya Llewellyn Giovanni Gardelli Serena Jiao Kurt Anderson Niki Zacharopoulou Emily Ray Joshua John Miles Brehm Alice Beecroft Robin Jackson Prachi Singh #identity #data #privacy #omnichannel

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🚨🚨IT’S ABOUT TIME 🚨🚨 It is frustrating how slowly (most) brands and (almost all) agencies make moves in media. - It’s been crystal clear for a decade that this was the trajectory and low-and-behold, brands are (finally) adjusting spend despite agencies urging them to waste ever more billions on the geriatric TV audience; - What’s also clear… interruptive spot advertising is a TV thing and doesn’t port well to digital native. We are all thankful to the inventor of the SkipAd button. For brand marketers: when the ad isn’t skipped, it’s not that they’re into your product… they’re probably on a second screen or got distracted; - What’s painfully clear is authentic connection between creator and brand can drive so much value. I recently worked with a creator who loves a popular kids breakfast product. This creator has over 10M followers…in the kids space! No brainer? NOPE! It was impossible to get the brand’s ad agency to see what the genuine love this creator had for the brand could do to sales (they even told me once “I’d talk about _____ for free, I love it so much!!”). - Instead brands source creators like they were products on a grocery shelf, selecting them for various reasons but never asking themselves or the creator about the emotional connections between creator<>brand<>audience. Instead, they give these creators an overworked brief and tons and tons of notes along the way. We have a LONG way to go… - Brands need to evolve their thinking; - To do this they need to ask critical questions of their agencies; -Agency incentives need to fundamentally change from simply putting dollars to work (on which they scrape a %). They need drive actual relevance in a changed (and changing) media landscape.

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David Nyurenberg, your article struck a chord with me. It reflects where we’ve been as an industry and, hopefully, where we’re headed. I remember when media planning was rooted in quality and context. Early in my career, I worked on campaigns where publisher credibility was as critical as the creative. We poured over placements, ensuring ads appeared in environments that elevated the message rather than just reaching an audience. It wasn’t about chasing impressions; it was about creating resonance. But somewhere along the way, the allure of hypertargeting pulled us off course. I recall the first time I was asked to justify a campaign’s success using metrics that, deep down, I knew didn’t reflect true impact - CTRs on a subpar site that wouldn’t pass even the loosest brand safety checks. It felt like we were trading integrity for convenience. Fast forward to today, and your article highlights the consequences of that trade-off. Made-for-advertising sites, inflated metrics, and automation tools prioritising scale over quality are symptoms of an industry that has lost sight of its purpose. But as you pointed out, there’s hope. Voices like Hershey’s Vinny Rinaldi and Walgreens’ James L. pave the way for a much-needed shift that values the environments in which we place our messages as much as the audiences we target. This shift feels personal to me. It’s a return to what I first loved about marketing: the balance of art and science and the belief that where you tell your story matters as much as the story itself. The challenge now is to act. To hold platforms accountable. To educate teams on the importance of supply-path optimisation. To champion quality-first metrics. Your article reminds us that change is possible, but it requires all of us to step up. The question is no longer whether this shift is necessary - it’s whether we dare to lead it. Let’s ensure this moment isn’t just a reflection but the start of a revolution. Keep up the great work, my friend. Ivan

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Who will the merger between Omnicom and IPG be good for? Not for employees - Expect to see layoffs and for those that remain, a huge amount of busywork adapting to new corporate policies and procedures. Not for the work itself - Consolidating creative agencies and media buying will further water down creativity and disincentivize innovation. Not for clients - See above. It's a survival move with shareholder value being the primary consideration. Could these holding companies have saved themselves by other means? I've worked at big brands and small startups, big holding companies and small agencies -- and I can tell you that the best work, the most creativity and the most innovative solutions are coming from the smaller outfits. If you're a brand of any size looking for an agency partner that will deliver outsized value, consider these smaller guys, to name just a few. nmbl, Public Display of Affection (PDA), Magic Camp, Darkroom, X&O, QRY

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We're getting dialed in for our holiday push (I'm aware it's July, never too early : ) A big focus for the media team—data quality (aka META EMQ scores, Catalog Match Rate, Google Ads Enhanced Conversion score). And data feeds (my favorite). META Shops (which are powered by catalogs) continue to be a growth area we're focused on. And judging from the new "Shops-assisted purchases" metrics https://lnkd.in/gTYqVEmp we're getting in Ads Manager—we're not alone. Across our portfolio we're seeing meaningful interactions with META Shops. AND direct conversions (aka checkout) happening in Shops. Here's an example. 31% of conversions interacted with Shops. Getting Shops enabled has been a meaningful difference maker in this account. Moral of the story. Don't neglect your feeds. Get Shops setup now if you haven't already. Make your Shop look cool. Check out some of the new "auto-add UGC" functionality in Commerce Manager. Happy holiday planning!

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