The Intersection of Creativity, Technology, and Emerging Media
A Conversation with Strategic Marketer, Mari Kim Novak
Mari Kim Novak is a strategic marketer with over twenty years of experience in the advertising industry, focused on emerging technology within the digital space. She spent nearly a decade at Microsoft as the Global Head of Marketing where she managed a $22M budget for Microsoft Advertising. Her recent roles have been in programmatic media, as CMO of Yieldmo (where she currently serves as an Advisor) and before that, as CMO of Rubicon Project (now Magnite) where she oversaw global marketing and product marketing teams charged with advancing the industry and maximizing the value of advertising for buyers, sellers, and most importantly consumers.
The Continuum recently sat down with Mari Kim to talk about her career, the intersection of advertising and technology, as well as her thoughts on this year’s Cannes Lions Festival and the future of Performance Marketing.
Can you please start by telling us about your career journey and how you got to where you are today?
It’s funny you asked the question that way because my career really has been a journey – and a pretty exciting one. Some people believe a career should be linear; that you should know where you want to go and start making a direct line to it. I don't believe that. I think that every opportunity layers on top of what you’ve done before and gives you a new experience. Those experiences make you more proficient, and you become an expert in being able to solve the problems that will come up in the next job you have.
I started in the advertising agency world when the Internet had just taken off. I was able to work with the biggest and the best clients like Procter & Gamble, Mars, and Dell, building out their digital strategies at a time when brands were just beginning to understand the Internet and all of its capacity. That allowed me to have a seat at the table early in my career and to be able to understand the true power of emerging technology.
From there, I really stayed focused on emerging technology and started looking at the idea of how measurement could drive digital marketing. I worked for companies like Media Metrics
(MMXI), which was building audience measurement for the Internet. Very much like the way Nielsen ratings covered television – we actually started a ratings system for websites that could help brands understand where consumers were going on the Web and what their audience composition was on their websites
I started with creativity in the ad agency world and then moved to data, and my next thought was how do I merge the two together. When I went to work for Microsoft, the company was a very big proponent of the fact that technology and creativity should be coming together to advance the story, something I still believe very strongly in.
My last two ventures have been in the Programmatic Marketing space, focused on building the infrastructure to make sure that advertising dollars are being spent in the most efficient and effective ways.
It’s been an interesting and very varied career journey, but it's always been living at the intersection of creativity, technology, and emerging media.
“I believe this is one of the most exciting times for performance marketing because you have to go much deeper into your creative toolkit, deeper into your strategy toolkit, and make sure that everything is working together to create more valuable connections with consumers.”
As you said, you’ve been in the advertising and tech world for a long time. How has it changed?
Change is probably the wrong word; I think I’ve watched it evolve. Back when digital marketing started, the promise was that it would be the most measurable medium we’d ever had. We were told that by collecting and analyzing the data, marketers could know when, where, and how to reach individual consumers. It’s taken a long time for that promise to truly catch up to itself and allow brands to connect the right message to the right consumer in the right tone and in the right setting. What we’ve watched isn’t change, but the evolution of technology to meet that promise.
Now it’s a matter of closing the loop by developing more and better measuring tools to see if we really are meeting that promise. As brands become more purpose-driven, for example, we need to be able to prove efficiency on a granular level. Where we used to buy on the URL level, we now should be buying on the page level or even at the ad unit level, and we need the tools to see that the messages are reaching and resonating with the right audience. Purpose-driven investment is great, but if you don’t have the means of measurement, you can't prove that the media outperformed the expectation.
When you say tools, are you talking about AI?
That’s only part of it. AI is obviously a very hot topic right now because some major players have come into it, but it’s not really new. What is exciting about it now is that we’re combining AI with actual data science which allows a new level of sophistication.
“I think that every opportunity layers on top of what you’ve done before and gives you a new experience. Those experiences make you more proficient, and you become an expert in being able to solve the problems that will come up in the next job you have.”
Switching gears a little bit, you just got back from the Cannes Lions Festival. You have been going since your Microsoft days. What was your impression of the festival this year?
In my early days at Cannes, Microsoft was the first and only technology sponsor. Now, technology is everywhere. Microsoft is still there in force along with many major media platforms and publishers from Disney, Netflix, Google, and Amazon. Meta was there with Meta Beach, and The Wall Street Journal with Journal House. There was also a strong focus on DEI with the Female Quotient having another amazing setup and Group Black with Inkwell Beach, Infillion with the Inclusion Café, and many new players showings as well.
All of these players provided spaces for compelling conversation, and that’s what I’ve always liked about Cannes. It’s the ultimate networking event and you’ve got a really diverse group of minds coming together with a commitment to move things forward. You have Creativity, Technology, Talent, and Media all together.
Before we go, what do you see as the future of performance marketing right now?
There are so many places right now for a consumer to find information, whether you're talking about podcasts, streaming, creators, or traditional ads. Some people would say this is super scary because, with so much competition, you’ll never be able to garner a very large audience. I think completely the opposite.
Performance marketing is on the absolute rise. Technology is only the enabler, it’s the creative thinking that enables the technology to do what you want it to do. I believe this is one of the most exciting times for performance marketing because you have to go much deeper into your creative toolkit, deeper into your strategy toolkit, and make sure that everything is working together to create more valuable connections with consumers.
July 11, 2023
