MarTech Series: Interview with Jack Bamberger, Chief Revenue Officer at Captify

Looking for better ways to optimize your marketing and ad spends? Jack Bamberger, Chief Revenue Officer at Captify has you covered:

Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Jack, tell us about yourself and more about your role at Captify… 

I’ve always been in advertising in one way or another since my teenage years. Many find this surprising, given most people tend to explore many industries. Whether it was working for an agency / agency holding company (or three), in a media company or at a tech company, I’ve always been obsessed about building impactful, strategic solutions for my industry friends, with the end goal of improving and growing their business – be they marketers, agency leaders or partners.

Joining Captify, which only came to the US a few years ago, was a super easy decision once I got to know Captify’s unique product offering and their leadership team.  Given today’s economic headwinds – plus the need for brands and agencies to ensure that every marketing / media dollar spent is laser focused on delivering best-in-industry outcomes – being a part of a company which has created an intelligence platform built on the world’s largest set of on-site search “truth” data (ie:  what consumers did and are doing to guide brands on what to do next), Captify insights and activation solutions are more relevant today than ever before in helping brands powerfully leverage near real time intent signals to improve outcomes across TV, CTV, Video and Digital.

What are some thoughts on the current state of digital advertising that you’d like to highlight and have marketers/advertisers pay more attention to given current market changes and needs?

There’s a lot up in the air right now — cookies, privacy, economic uncertainty and more. However, while these are trends we’ve seen before, there’s a slight difference in the current opportunities and challenges. The challenge being that not only are consumer behaviors shifting at a record rate, but there is also the increasing velocity of ad opportunities on a daily basis.

I also think about what tools brands and advertisers may have or can use today which provide near real time truth intelligence and powerful insights (ie it’s what you do with your data in creating growth driving insights) to help them improve their strategic planning AND activation outcomes (and that’s where Captify’s unique product offering valuably comes into play).  I’m also bullish about the incredible growth of in-game advertising and how broad the gaming consumer is (vs the perception that it’s only young guys).

For advertisers who are looking for ways to maximize on ad spends, what top tips would you share?

I would challenge advertisers to make a distinction between using data to know consumer behavior versus using data to better understand consumer behavior. Knowing is more transactional. Understanding is more strategic (and much more powerful).  For example, I may know a consumer has interest in headphones. A marketer can take this information and target this consumer with different types of headphones and earbuds. However, if that same marketer understands the context in which that consumer buys the headphones – say, because they are a gamer living at home with their parents – well they can show adjacent offerings like gaming laptops, gaming chairs, upcoming releases and much more.

To do this, advertisers will need multiple sources of data to create meaningful insights – the true key to success – in the building of strategic solutions to drive growth while continuously optimizing and leveraging the richest source of 1st and 3rd party intelligence. With this approach, you get to uncover new opportunities, plus experiment with regularity.

Some of our most successful clients have made it a habit in working with Captify to explore different strategies around creative, ad formats, messaging, timing, geography, competitors and much more (which I love and we love).  And by having a strategic process like this in place, the outcomes Captify delivers for brands are pretty remarkable.

How should today’s advertisers/marketers use their data and insights to drive better audience impact in a market where users are constantly bombarded with ads and marketing messages?

One thing we continue to see is that the insights we extract from the unique Captify data uncovers new, lucrative audiences which brands may not have initially considered every day. Not only can data be used to expand a brand’s core audiences, but also uncover new ways to engage them to drive incremental growth.

What do you feel about the future of the B2B adtech and digital advertising industry?

I’m extremely bullish about the future of the industry, otherwise, I wouldn’t still be here! As a student of the industry who obsesses over marketing effectiveness, I am laser focused on consumer trends and platforms which help brands / agencies both get smarter faster as well as drive better outcomes.  Like many, I’m also watching the streaming / video / CTV space closely and how that space is transforming our industry around the globe to how AI may disrupt the way we work to the next chapter of planning and activation to creative ways brands will leverage data and create powerful insights to accelerate growth and more.