Each Tuesday, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.
Christiana Marouchos is senior director of digital marketing at StackAdapt, a programmatic advertising platform, where she leads a team of 17 marketers.
How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in marketing? StackAdapt is an advertising software company. We provide the software to advertisers who run online ads. This includes on your laptop, your smartphone, and even your smart TV. Think of the ads you see on social networks, but for the rest of the internet. I work on our marketing team, so my entire purpose is to find ways to build the right brand presence and help those interested in StackAdapt understand what we do and the industry we work in.
Favorite project you’ve worked on? Working with our creative agency on two brand videos showcasing a new side of StackAdapt. I got the chance to really flex my creative muscle, choose outfits for actors, and script Easter-egg messages in an animated ad. It was invigorating to put a different director hat on. Instead of plan, execute, analyze, this was more like lights, camera, action!
What’s your favorite ad campaign? I love everything Disney, and the Disneyland Paris ad from 2018 of “The Little Duck” has always been a fave of mine.
One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile? So when I said I love Disney, I really meant it. The films, the songs, the animation, the fun. My LinkedIn profile shows all my past jobs and how I’ve grown in my career, but it doesn’t show where I want to be going…My dream job is to voice a Disney character! Not quite adtech, but I suppose my video ad-production experience has got me one step closer.
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What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I am super optimistic about contextual advertising. I think privacy is one of the biggest challenges when discussing adtech with an audience that doesn’t fully understand what happens behind the scenes in programmatic. Cookie targeting is so contested, and I think it’s because of that misunderstanding about how it really works and what is really tracked. The prospect of contextual advertising being highly successful, incredibly targeted to the user, and yet doesn’t touch a single cookie seems like a win-win to me. Least optimistic about the decline of cookies. By the same vein, as much as I think there is incredible opportunity in cookieless targeting, I think it’s a shame that we’re doing away with cookies when they serve a purpose for many digital scenarios and may not be as harmful as many may think. Sure they’re high in sugar, but a little sugar is good sometimes.
What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? Growth Marketing Camp by Opensense. It really dives into the industry topics that marketers actually want to hear about, and invites speakers that have the actual experience to support their subject matter expertise. I find it so valuable to hear from different perspectives on any given topic.