← AdTechGod Pod
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- [00:01]
AdTech God
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- [00:40]
Host
A word from our sponsors Philo Ads brings performance focused CTV advertising to brands of every size. With over 900 million ad impressions each month, no minimum spend and a brand safe environment, Philo Ads makes it easy to scale your campaigns with confidence. Ready to see how Philo Ads can work for you? Head to Ads Philo TV that's a D S.P H I L O TV to get started today. Welcome to the Ad Tech Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, AdTech God. Welcome to the AdTech Godpod where we are joined by the revenue leaders of our industry. Today I'm joined by Rachel Savage, Senior Vice President, Ad Revenue Operations at Hearst. Rachel has a very impressive background having spent the past two and a half years at Hearst, nearly five years at Conde Nast, Google, the New York Times and more. Rachel was suggested by a prior guest, so I'm excited to get to know her and what she sees on the horizon for publishers. Rachel, thank you for joining me today. Welcome to the pod.
- [01:55]
Rachel Savage
Awesome. Happy to be here. Thanks.
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Host
Rachel, you know we were chatting before the pod. You were highly recommended by a friend. I love anyone that is revenue generating operational savvy, so I'm really looking forward to chatting with you.
- [02:10]
Rachel Savage
Great.
- [02:10]
Host
Rachel, can you give me a little bit of a understanding of your background having worked at Google and major publisher like Conde Nast and now Hearst? If you wanted to kind of take it back a little bit, let me know how you, you know, reach the point where you're at today as a senior Vice president and then we'll just continue on with the chat.
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Rachel Savage
Sure. So I think you know where I would say I started my career and maybe I'll go back really far. This is going to be a little bit weird, but when I was in seventh grade I had a best friend who was taking a computer camp over the summer and I told all of our friends about her taking computer camp. She got really mad at me and I didn't mean to embarrass her but I went home to my mom and I said, Lauren's, going to computer camp. And she's mad at me because I told everybody and my mom said, well, it's time for you to go to computer camp too. So that summer I learned how to write HTML, and I can very much connect that experience to where I am right now. I went to college for communications. I was interested in sort of where things are going on the web, and I think that's how you end up in Adopts. That's always the question is like, nobody finishes college and says, I want to work in ad operations, but here we are. So I finished school and worked for Smart Brief, which was an email newsletter publication. I think they're still kicking. And did. You know, I think the benefit of that experience was, you know, working at a startup and being jack of all trades, working in email, doing everything from Adopts to pricing to media kits. And I applied for a job at the New York Times on a whim, and I got it. And it was sort of like, oh, my gosh, I have to move to New York for this job at the New York Times. Which felt like a big deal back then. But I spent the next 10 years at the New York Times. You know, I started the same year the iPhone came out. And, you know, the. The experiences we had at the New York Times during that period. We were using a proprietary ad server at the time, which, in retrospect, like, was a server in New Jersey. It was a literal server. I think it's really cool now that I've sort of navigated ad tech the way that we have. It came with its own challenges. But during that time, we had to figure out how to get ads on mobile apps. We introduced a subscription model. We eventually, you know, Programmatic came along and ad networks were evolving. And all of a sudden header bidding came along. And you can't do header bidding with a proprietary ad server. This is literally a server because the content and the ads came before all of the auctions. And so that was a forcing function for the Times to move to Google. So I sort of think about the 10 years I had at Google, and it gave me this breadth of experience and, you know, relationships with people in media, understanding, you know, how the New York Times functioned, you know, with the editorial side of the house and the business and how the business was evolving. I think on those times, fondly with everybody I worked there, you know, looking at print to digital, and then digital to, you know, subscription service and beyond. So 10 years at the New York Times and, you know, I left the New York Times for Google. And I spent a year at Google and it was such a culture shock for me, I think just I was in an operations role there. And it's very different thinking about the machine that is Google versus, you know, working on the media side of the equation where you can kind of connect the dots between an earnings call and, you know, campaign manager on your team and the work that the team is doing every day or Google, that was a little bit harder. So luckily, all the, you know, friends that I had made along the way at the New York Times, you know, were at Google. Right. We were doing a Google partnership. We onboarded Google during that period. And so when it was time for me to get out of Google, that set me on the way to Conde Nast. Five years of Conde Nast and then more recently, two years at Hearst Magazines. We are, you know, if you think about Hearst, Hurst is got multiple media divisions. Newspapers, television and magazines. We, we are collaborative but work a little bit independently because of the products and services that we do. So I oversee revenue operations for the magazines division.
- [06:24]
Host
Now, Hurst covers a variety of publishers. Right. That's like Cosmo L. You got it.
- [06:30]
Rachel Savage
Cosmo L, Esquire, Good housekeeping. We have 30 brands here in the US and many of those go globally. That number grows exponentially when we, we think about the global footprint first.
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Host
Do you run revenue ops for all of it?
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Rachel Savage
Just the U.S. just the U.S. just.
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Host
THE U.S. market, yep. Awesome. When, when you were working and shifting into kind of like a. You had mentioned, you know, the mobile phone came out and that changed everything. How. How did that impact the way you looked at monetizing inventory, distribution of content? Because during that time, that's when really social networks started to scale and we saw the shift of consumption of content change a lot. How did that impact your role? How did that make you feel about the direction of the industry?
- [07:16]
Rachel Savage
Sure. I mean, I think at the Times and as you were sort of asking that question, what went through my mind is while I've worked at maybe three different, you know, publishing houses, the New York Times is very different as a news service versus sort of magazine and lifestyle content. And I think that, you know, the primary goal of the New York Times, for very good reason, is to, you know, prioritize the news and get the news report out. They think about that, but every page load they do. And so I just remember thinking about mobile experiences at the New York Times or how do we do that through, you know, mobile, web or apps? And how are we creating apps and services that I think it was a really innovative time for the New York Times where they would create mobile apps, but sort of see what worked and were okay with, you know, a product launching and sort of learning something from it and failing. And I use the New York Times app on my phone and you can think about where they've come from, you know, between now and then. But I would say that my experience during that period, which was, it's been a while now, was much more focused on how are we delivering the news report, but then how are we getting the ads to serve in the apps. And, you know, how do we know that we're using this? At the time was a homegrown ad server, which was brilliant. But to be interoperable with the rest of, you know, the ad tech ecosystem, it really forced a change for us. And so that's what the shift to Google was about. I think that we prioritize mobile in that project so that we could be monetizing our apps and websites more effectively. But I also think that there was a lot of, like, you know, we introduced iPad apps. There's a lot of rich media innovation that went along with that. So it was a fun period. I look, I look back on it fondly, but I would say that, you know, it wasn't so much about social distribution at that point. But I can say in my seat now, you know, many years later, that's paramount. And when I look across, you know, what we do here at Hearst Magazines, I think that, you know, how we're thinking about how our brands show up on social platforms is just as important as how they show up on building web and, you know, really mobile experiences. We need to reach our audiences everywhere and really think about how we're working with advertisers to tailor messages and sort of show up in all of those places. So it's a huge part of what we do here.
- [09:41]
Host
It's also you. You shifted like from a news publisher like the New York Times into more of, I guess like lifestyle luxury brands like Conde Nast. And, you know, Hearst has so many variety of publishers as well. The need for speed of publishing news content definitely changed during mobile, I would think, where it's no longer publishing a News article at 9am or 6am to get it out in front of people's homes or on their laptops. It's now very accessible by phone. It's like Your news cycle's 24 7, 360, like you're pushing content out all the time, and that probably creates a lot of volatility. And ad inventory and the way you.
- [10:23]
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- [11:06]
Rachel Savage
Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think we, on the, on the magazine side of things, we see that sometimes I think it's like more pop culture related and maybe a little less newsy depending on the brand we're talking about. You know, you can think about something like Good Housekeeping, which is really focused on product reviews, is really more influenced by probably search behavior and new products or sort of seasonal trends where, you know, we have some brands that could be a little bit more newsworthy. I actually love everything that Esquire is doing right now. I think that they, you know, are doing storytelling, but I think some of those features, you know, depending on where they catch on, like Apple News as a service, we find that Esquire is really getting a lot of eyeballs there. And so it just really depends on where we're distributing and, and what we're covering during that period.
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Host
How is revenue operations across your, your print and your, your digital running today? Is that something that you manage on your own or are there two separate teams? Is the, is the print of the digital kind of two different orgs?
- [12:15]
Rachel Savage
They're two different orgs, but they're all within my team. And I would say that, you know, print is important to us and digital is where a lot of our focus goes and so we'll kind of roll up under the same team and you know, there, there are places, I think where there becomes some synergy. Maybe it's, you know, our, our agency partnerships or larger advertising agreements, but that's sort of like on the sales and client facing side of things and how, how we want to show up for them. So it's sort of an evolving work in progress as, as the landscape changes.
- [12:52]
Host
What do you think is, is the biggest opportunity for you guys going into the second half of this year in terms of, you know, revenue opportunity with such A variety of publishers. Where are you seeing, I guess the growth happening? Is it creative? Is it, you know, obviously content is a huge role in it. But where are you seeing the biggest opportunity for revenue as Hurst Overall, I.
- [13:14]
Rachel Savage
You know, I think about the, the brands that were in our, you know, magazine's portfolio and I think they represent a spectrum of interests and audiences and you know, multi platform. So you could think about brands like Cosmopolitan and, you know, what's happening there. We've got Willa Bennett who joined as the EIC on that brand and she is sort of, you know, redefining what Cosmo means, I think for a newer generation. And that is very social forward. It is a little bit of everywhere. I think when she launched her first issue, there were billboards in Times Square and sort of activation events. And you know, the way that, that her team is showing up in social and creating content and engaging with audiences is just a different way to think about a brand. And it's not really a magazine brand, it's a cultural influence. And then you have other, you know, brands in the portfolio, whether it's Harper's Bazaar, Elle, I mentioned Esquire earlier. I think they all kind of show up in different ways depending on, you know, how our readers are resonating and what the teams are covering. And so I think that's part of the, you know, it's part of the fun here. It's part of the challenge is thinking about how you can think about. When I hear ad tech, I think about, you know, display advertising and programmatic. But at this point it transcends, you know, media is transcending so many different endpoints and ways that we can show up creatively and with editorial messaging that it's this sort of interesting intersection of how we're partnering with advertisers and showing up with insights, solutions, creativity, the right way and maximizing the opportunity to keep the brands going in the future. So, you know, back to your question. In terms of the revenue opportunity, I think some brands it is leaning big into, you know, our online presence. It could be display advertising, our targeting solutions with aura. It could be affiliate. We lean really well into affiliate where we're making product recommendations, in some cases social distribution and then in some cases print. Something new for me has been the autos brands. I've been diving into that. We recently acquired Motor Trend And I think MotorTrend is another one of those sort of 360 opportunities where I'm learning all about the different events that, you know, the autos teams holds around Car enthusiasts and what that looks like, but then also, you know, all the way from events and content creation, but also targeting solutions for different, you know, purchase intent or conquesting efforts. So I think they all show up in really interesting ways.
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Host
I'm a fan of Motor Trend. I like their, their site. So I'm glad you guys acquired them. I think they were owned by the Enthusiast network prior.
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Rachel Savage
Yeah. Warner Brothers.
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Host
Oh, was it Warner Brothers? Wow. Things have changed.
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Rachel Savage
It's been, you know, fun getting to know the team and sort of. It's a different world, you know.
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Host
Yeah, it is. It's a. It's an exciting product line for sure. The automotive space is definitely attractive to so many advertisers. As a revenue leader, where, where do you spend most of your time? Like, what's your dashboard that you can't live without? That's always something I'm interested in hearing.
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Rachel Savage
Ooh, dashboard I can't live without. We, we have a lot of dashboards, but I do get one every day that's, you know, going to show me, you know, how, how the sites we got to one, make sure that the lights are on and nothing broke yesterday, but then also how much money we made. And I have my team send that over email every day with, you know, a two tweet version of what happened. I love it and I'm glad they do it. So this is my endorsement of that. So it's the dashboard. I mean, how I spend my days. I think that, you know, we're a media company in transformation and transition and I've been doing this for a while. There's so much changing about our site, you know, traffic patterns and distribution models that multiplied by brands and, you know, regulation that we stay busy. And it's sort of finding those intersections and connecting the dots between different groups here at Hearst. So I could think about this week. You know, I've had some really interesting conversations about how we think about our sort of editorial collaboration on advertising programs and how we bring together sort of that creative talent consultatively, how we do it in a way that everybody understands, how we're booking and billing it, how we, you know, come to approach it from a legal perspective, how we actually execute it technically and measure it and talk about it. So I find that my role touches a little bit of everybody and I become that sort of person to bring everybody together and, you know, bring it to life. So that's one thing I've always enjoyed about the roles I'm in.
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Host
Definitely. It's also nice because you have this, like, you know, if, if you wanted, you could be closer, but a 35,000 foot view of, of what's happening across the entire portfolio.
- [18:22]
Rachel Savage
Yes.
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Host
Which I think is very different when, you know, you can monitor those trends by publisher type, by content type during some sort of tentpole event or major event that happens that causes these spikes of traffic or whether it's just like you said, organic, SEO focused traffic that's generated. So I would think that watching these trends could be really interesting to see and then follow over a long period of time where, you know, the fall collection drops for some designer and you see the, the, the, the traffic spike and the interest spike and, and watching that could be really totally interesting. I'd geek out over it, to be honest.
- [18:56]
Rachel Savage
I, well, I think about, you know, I go back to, you know, the brands that we cover and it was a little bit this way at Conde Nast too, where I would say that Conde leans a little bit more. You know, we, we have a, we have a really solid fashion and luxury set of brands here with Harper's Bazaar and Esquire and Elle. That business just works a little bit differently. I think that the advertiser expectations are different than we see across other categories. And so how we meet the needs of those advertisers and sort of that editorial product looks very different than motor trend, you know, and, or a Good Housekeeping or Delish and that sort of mass population sort of content. And so we're thinking about monetization and talking about those dashboards. I think within the first year of us sort of transforming the monetization strategy for some of those brands, like we started to see a good rhythm and it starts to shape your product strategy in interesting ways. So it does start to add up when you're looking at that day to day dashboard and then looking at the trends over time and sort of recognizing how you can sort of segment the different brands or, you know, audience channels or media types to drive revenue and making sure that my team is set up to do that and that they sort of understand the nuances and are working in lockstep to get there.
- [20:21]
Host
So where do you see the biggest opportunity for the next six months for you? What kind of excites you about whether it's the tech coming out in market, whether it's the changes in the way buyers buy, but what truly excites you for the second half of this year? What are you ready for?
- [20:36]
Rachel Savage
I, I mean, I think Q4 starts in September. I know that's not, I mean, it's not technically Q4, but Q4 starts in September, especially when you're working with fashion brands and you do have Fashion Month, which is a series of fashion weeks in September. So I just kind of at the operator part of my role, I say no changes to what we do after September because we want everybody's eye on the prize to deliver the revenue and be a good partner to our advertisers and make sure that we do everything we can to ensure success. So that means kind of putting pause on rolling out new stuff. So, you know, I think about what excites me in the second half is gearing up for that season. I think that they're, you know, from a, you know, content perspective and, you know, just change that I've seen at Hearst in the past couple of years. I think we'll have a good, you know, into the year. I think that the brands are doing some exciting things that we'll see expressed through advertiser programs. And then I think about the turn of the year and you know, if I think about what's happening in the ecosystem right now, you know, there's, there's some long range development and sort of progress that we want to make on things that has to happen at the same time. And so I can't be on an ad tech podcast and not talk about AI. Right?
- [21:58]
Host
It's true. I mean, yeah, it's, trust me, I hear it every episode, but everybody has such a different perspective that I'm like, I love it, lean into it, whatever.
- [22:09]
Rachel Savage
I think Hearst as a corporation is doing a really nice job. By the way, there are a lot of really great ad technologists at Hearst Corporation. Across all of the divisions. I, I'm wholly impressed by the folks that are on the teams and any opportunity to collaborate with other divisions or sort of at the corporate level, you end up hearing how everybody's working on these things in new and different ways. But I think Hearst Corporation overall has taken an approach to AI to think about what it means for the content that we create across, whether it's newspapers, television, magazines, and making sure that the Hearst sort of credibility comes through and that, that human judgment and authenticity is still paramount for everything we do. But you know, there are also really interesting ways that we've seen the teams adopt AI for product development. I will shout out Mike Nuzzo, who is one of my partners on the team who's really thought about this in terms of how it influences our targeting products and our insights and is building some interesting things, you know, with Jen De Ray on our team for ad product development, we have been really digging into what it means for our workflow and the relationship to our underlying data foundation and how we can, you know, fast track some of the work happening across the team just to do. To level up the work, you know, to cut out some of the busy things so that we're getting a little bit more insightful and strategic about what we're recommending. But I really think the intersection of those things is interesting where it's not just the product that we're delivering to advertiser, but the service that we're offering. And somewhere in the middle of the insights that come about, I think AI can influence all of that. And so it's just making sure that we do the right foundational work to get there and that we are using in ways that are helping the teams do interesting stuff. Like I said, it won't change anything going into Q4 unless it's minor and it's going to help the teams. But, you know, one of the things we'll be working on in the background is some, you know, workflow improvements or sort of product enhancements to really turn the year and do some new things.
- [24:22]
Host
So if you're an ad tech vendor, please reach out in January.
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Rachel Savage
Yes.
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Host
Yeah, it's not happening in Q4.
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Rachel Savage
I mean, we can talk, but just like manage your expectations. I'm pretty good about that, of being clear about what I can do when I can do it. But, yeah, it's a principle that's worked for me so far.
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Host
Yeah. Yeah.
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Rachel Savage
You know, obviously I think about, as I build my teams that you always need a group of folks that are thinking about what's happening in the next 12 to 18 months. So that's, you know, I've only been here for two years and some change. So that has been an exciting part of building the team out is having people who are thinking about the strategy and the intersection of strategy and operations, really.
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Host
Right.
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Rachel Savage
And so we'll be working on stuff. It's just, you know, everybody's.
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Host
We're not rolling it out in Q4, though.
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Rachel Savage
That's right. You got it.
- [25:09]
Host
Question for you, Rachel. We chatted prior, you know, we were talking about how busy you've been and how busy we have been with Market Live, which is our second conference planned. But you were still very positive and you seemed like, extremely enthusiastic about the future and everything that's happening. How do you find that balance between, you know, your personal happiness and, of course, the pressures of work and the busyness of work and family. Family and Life. What keeps you grounded and what keeps you motivated in moving forward?
- [25:40]
Rachel Savage
That is a. That's a very big question, and I'm glad that you are feeling positivity in all my answers because I, you know, it's hard some days, and I would say that there have been times, I think at some point last year, I remember looking at somebody, a colleague in. In a room and being like, is it? Has media always been this hard? Can you think of another time when everything changed all at once? And there's been, you know, a lot of changes? Right. Like, I talk about my time at the New York Times, and it kind of felt like we were changing business models and we were changing technology, and it was a constant, you know, what's happening next. So I'm used to that. But I just think that it's been profound over the past year or two, especially with, you know, thinking about AI or just sort of the way that, you know, big tech and content consumption has changed. And it can be. It can be hard to keep up. It can feel like we're running at a million miles an hour and we don't get everything right sometimes. But, you know, I think that every once in a while, there's a project that comes across my desk where you find these. Like I was saying to somebody this past week at work, I've found that different departments, we're all kind of chasing down something that feels right and everybody's expressing it the right way. And I think my job as an operator is to help us communicate and collaborate towards creating an outcome. And so that inspires me to want to sit down and put pen to paper and, like, bring everybody together and bring them along to creating that outcome. So it's that. I think it's finding a sense of humor with those colleagues and, you know, celebrating their creativity and inspiration, but then also being able to laugh at ourselves every once in a while. And so I and blessed to have people around me to do that. When I think about, you know, outside of the Hearst building, the ad tech network, and all of, you know, the friends I've made along the way, keep it fun. I know that I have somebody to call when there's a hard question, and so that really keeps me sort of grounded in the space. You go to any of these conferences and you sort of realize you're not alone in solving these problems and can learn from somebody else. And so having somebody to text or, you know, have a drink with and learn, that will go a long way. Outside of that. I got a puppy and so when things get really bad, I just look at my puppy pics these days and I am. It's like my little dopamine hit and I'll send those around. Everybody happy?
- [28:14]
Host
Sometimes too amazing. Rachel, thank you. And thank you to Hearst for coming on as my guest. I really appreciate it and thank you for the chat.
- [28:21]
Rachel Savage
Of course. I love what you're doing and thank you.
- [28:25]
Host
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the AdTech Godpod, a podcast for the people about the people. Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of ad tech. Don't miss out on the latest updates, so follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.