At Turner, Amit Chaturvedi’s job is to support ad sales and drive revenue.
He’s the guy responsible for vetting vendor partners and building a stack to ensure the broadcaster has the proper tech infrastructure to deliver content in emerging channels.
“There are a bunch of teams supporting me, including analytics, ad operations and account management, but the broadest way to define my role is the delivery of ad dollars and all of the associated plumbing that goes with it,” he said.
Chaturvedi spoke with AdExchanger about how Turner builds its business plans on the basis of a good user experience.
AdExchanger: How does building an ad stack and monetization strategy for news, like CNN, differ than live sports, like the NBA playoffs and March Madness?
AMIT CHATURVEDI: A news publisher like CNN has a ton of scale, but the content we’re publishing is so diverse. On CNN you have 120 million uniques across all these different platforms, so it’s literally all of America tuning in.
So audience-based targeting on CNN is likely going to come from a demand standpoint, and advertisers are going to ask for [inventory] much earlier and more frequently than in sports.
Sports is almost in a class of its own because you’re selling a lifestyle and people have strong affinities to teams.
Marketers want contextual alignment against key tent pole events like NBA playoffs and March Madness. That’s very different than mass market news where the asks will come much more frequently for audience targeting and programmatic execution.
How do you ensure your tech partners are equipped to handle these different demands?
We used to be in a place where one point solution helped us solve [a] very specific problem. Over the last couple of years [we’ve moved toward] talking about the issues that could come up in the next 12-18 months, and that has led to more strategic road map questions.
Ad tech and mar tech is still in its infancy, but the pace of change is so great. And if you’re not transparent with internal and external partners, you’re really just limiting the pace of innovation.
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