Spotlight Interview

An Interview with Doug Weaver, Founder and CEO, Upstream Group, @UpstreamDW

Today we feature a short interview with digital industry veteran and opinion leader Doug Weaver of Upstream Group.  On March 20^th, Doug will be co-hosting a private publisher dinner program with PulsePoint, featuring compelling original content and discussion.  The dinner series will be by invitation only, but if you’re interested in learning more, please contact us.

PulsePoint: Doug, for those that may not be familiar with Upstream Group, could you please share a bit about your organization.

Doug Weaver:  I started Upstream Group in 1998 with the mission of helping the sales side of the digital advertising and marketing business.  Most customers hire me to work directly with their sales teams, helping them sell more strategically and rise above the price commoditization that’s becoming all too common.  We also consult on high level organization and product strategy.  In addition, three times a year Upstream hosts “The Seller Forum,” a gathering of 50 top digital sales leaders, and we publish “The Drift,” a weekly idea blog about the digital advertising and marketing space.  For a small team, we get a lot done!

PulsePoint: Over the years, you have held a variety of management, sales and analyst roles across publications including iMedia, FireFly Network and Wired Magazine and have advised hundreds of  of leading publishers and brands. From your informed perspective, what is the biggest change that publishers must confront in order to succeed?

Doug Weaver: You ask about the biggest “change” that’s confronting publishers.  I’d answer that two different ways, based on the publisher’s background and trajectory.  Those media companies coming from a more traditional background – broadcast, cable, print – have to get used to selling in an asymmetrical marketplace.  This is not a linear market where one can line up at the media buyer’s door and compete on an even footing.  There are multiple sales channels, resellers, and overlapping marketing agendas.  If you’re a sales leader, you’re trading in your bag for a dashboard.  On the other hand, there are publishers who’ve “grown up” in the automated side of digital selling.  To the carpenter who only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  The change that they confront is the realization that technology has limits;  you need smart judgment, human interaction, business rules to compliment those algorithms.  Those who cling to automation alone will, in the end get marginalized.

PulsePoint: How about advertisers?

Doug Weaver: Having been part of the web advertising business from its literal beginning, I’m surprised at how simplistic and one-dimensional the advertiser’s perspective can be.  We’re still stuck in the late stage of the direct response era of the web, and the focus is still on transportation metrics – get them to click on something and go to my website.  So much of the brilliant automation, targeting and data-mining seems to be in service of this uninspired formula.  I think the big change comes when marketers really embrace the communication and story-telling value of the online creative.  With the growth of video and mobile devices – especially tablets – this change is right on top of us.

PulsePoint: Who do you think is doing things right these days and why?

Doug Weaver: William Gibson – the author who coined the term ‘cyberspace’ – famously said “The future is already here.  It’s just unevenly distributed.”  I think most success in our world is episodic, not systemic.  Individuals within a team do well, but it’s tough for whole organizations or sales teams to rise as one.  There are a lot of good things happening – I like ESPN’s approach to integration, The New York Times’ organization of its digital sale, the video networks’ (YuMe and Tremor, notably) rapid evolution.   And it’s hard to argue with the ad success of Facebook.  They created an engine that just ran about $4 billion in ads worldwide last year which – as far as I can tell – was largely self-serve.  Smart.

PulsePoint:  How do you paint the content and advertising landscape ten years from now?

Doug Weaver: I think the big agency holding companies would like their trading desks to end up looking like the phone companies – connecting calls and getting paid a little bit for each connection.  The actual plumbing – the switching – will be done by the demand and supply side platforms.   The rest of us get to stop haggling over the carriage fees and instead focus on how to send more valuable packages through the system.   Content grows in value, but not in the anachronistic way that many publishers may think of it.  Your content won’t just live on your website, your channel or your pages:  we’ll have new models for distribution and syndication.  For one thing, I believe you’ll see content and advertising packaged together within rich media and video creative that will be easily transportable within Ad Exchange environments.  One way to simplify all this is to say that the “right brain” activities of placement and audience identification will be automated and concentrated;  the “left brain” work of message enhancement and marketing problem solving will undergo a renaissance and keep a lot of people working.  My fondest hope for ten years from now is that – at 64 – I’ll be just as excited about the future as I am today.  I believe I will be.