Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.
Michael Loban is chief growth officer of InfoTrust, a digital analytics and data privacy consulting company. He has also served as an adjunct professor and as adjunct faculty at the University of Cincinnati and at Xavier University. He has been published in Forbes, Adweek, and CIO Magazine.
Favorite project you’ve worked on? Recently, several of our largest enterprise clients shared that they’re experiencing increasing challenges in measuring performance and driving standards compliance across a range of brands, digital properties, and internal and external teams. Over the last six months, InfoTrust has taken this recurring, nearly identical feedback from different companies to build our best solution—AdTech DNA. This proprietary platform monitors adherence to standards and data quality across Google Marketing Platform products (Google Ads, Campaign Manager, Display & Video 360, etc.) and other platforms (Meta products, Amazon Ads, etc.). It’s been exciting to lead this project from pre-concept to real-world application with the clients who needed it. It’s been a rewarding experience to create something new and proprietary with my team that solves real pain points for the people and organizations who have been great partners to us over the years.
What’s your favorite ad campaign? My favorite campaign is, and likely will remain, Apple’s iPod launch campaign. I was relatively young when the product debuted, and digital marketing was very much in its infancy, but Apple’s “silhouette” campaign is an incredible example of using creativity and simplicity to launch a new category. It also stood the test of time and sold a lot of iPods.
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One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I will accomplish my goal of running a marathon on every continent this year when I hopefully complete the Antarctic Ice Marathon in December.
What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? The move toward advertisers using owned, first-party data is exciting. There’s a lot of buzz and chatter due to Google’s depreciation of third-party cookies, but I see significant opportunities for advertisers with this transition. As brands capture and utilize more of their own data, it will undoubtedly lead to more informed and impactful marketing decisions. Additionally, this is an important and necessary shift to respect consumer privacy and remain compliant with regulations.
As for the marketing trend I’m least optimistic about, it’s currently privacy concerns surrounding AI. Don’t get me wrong, AI will be transformative and provide a plethora of net positives to marketers. With that said, advertisers need to consider its risks and ensure proper protections are put in place before jumping head-first into using AI. Professionals and organizations in the industry are feeling the pressure to innovate, keep up and integrate AI into all processes and services, but we have to be strategic and cautious with the company and consumer data we are handing over to AI-powered tools.
What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? I always find Byron Sharp’s writing to be interesting. While he can be slightly controversial and skeptical of newer marketing ideas, his work is rooted in research and is very influential with many of the world’s largest advertisers. Scott Galloway is another I follow closely and listen to every week.