Welcome to Episode 9 of the Breaking Through the Mayhem podcast, where we explore marketing and advertising in a time of constantly shifting risk and opportunity.   Brought to you by Sightly, our goal is to share the insights of industry leaders from brands, agencies, publishers, and partners as they discuss the challenges and possibilities emerging from the ever-shifting media landscape, such as real-time marketing, brand safety and purpose, influencers, cancel culture, data privacy, technology and more.   Today's guest is Vanessa Otero.   She is the CEO and Founder of Ad Fontes Media.   Vanessa Otero is the creator of the Media Bias Chart and the Founder and CEO of Ad Fontes Media. A former patent attorney in the Denver, Colorado area, Vanessa holds a B.A. in English from UCLA and a J.D. from the University of Denver. Vanessa's formal education and professional career has centered on analytical reading, writing, and reasoning, creating an ideal background for her to create a content analysis methodology for evaluating text.    In 2016, Vanessa had been enjoying her life as a Patent Attorney, when the noise surrounding the Presidential Election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump became louder and louder. She noticed that people would share articles on Facebook that supported their side, but weren't very convincing to the other. Alarmed by the unhealthy state of the media ecosystem, Vanessa used her expertise in content analysis to create the original Media Bias Chart, and thus, the groundwork for what would later become Ad Fontes Media was laid.    In 2018, she founded Ad Fontes Media to fulfill the need revealed by the popularity of the chart- namely, to meet the demand for a map to help people navigate the complex media landscape, as well as for comprehensive content analysis of media sources themselves.    Today, Ad Fontes Media uses a systematic approach to content analysis in which a team of politically-balanced professional analysts examine and categorize news content creating data that is useful to news consumers, educators, marketers, and even publishers themselves.    In the episode, which was recorded live at the Brand Safety Summit NY on November 3, 2022, Vanessa discusses: How the viral Media Bias Chart led her to founding Ad Fontes Media  Why she thinks the Chart has resonated so deeply in the market Why investing in reputable journalism is just as important as avoiding misinformation

Today's guest is Neal Thurman. He's one of the founders of The Brand Safety Institute. Neal Thurman brings many threads of his career together for the founding of the Brand Safety Institute. His career started in Industrial Psychology, managing major standardized tests and certification programs for higher education and professional organizations. After receiving his MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, he worked for Fortune 500 clients, including Sony Electronics, UPS, Coca-Cola, Axciom, Hard Rock Cafe, and Fannie Mae on how to harness new digital technologies to enhance existing business models and create new ones. He had an entrepreneurial bug that led him to be on the founding team of two successful bootstrapped professional services start-ups – Customer Value Partners and Black Turtle Services – where he served in a variety of executive management roles, including oversight of Product Development, Profitability, Accounting and Finance, Human Resources, Contracts, Facilities, and IT while continuing to work with clients like AOL, Cricket Wireless, the McGraw-Hill Companies, and the US Federal Government on solving critical business problems. While helping build Customer Value Partners into an Inc 500-winning firm, he co-founded a blog about English Premier League soccer that moved from the Blogger platform to YahooUK to SBNation to the Rotoworld.com division of NBC Sports Digital. In addition to his duties as Co-founder of the Brand Safety Institute and for Rotoworld, Neal serves as the Director of the Coalition for Better Ads, championing customer experience in digital advertising. In the episode, which was recorded live at the Brand Safety Summit NY on November 3, 2022, Neal discusses: How he got involved with creating the Brand Saftey Institute His view on the most important ways the Brand Safety Institue can have an impact Why he believes that a common language between marketers and publishers is paramount

Today's guest is Scott Cunningham. He's one of the founders of the IAB Tech Lab. Scott has a long history of implementing ad technology policies that have helped major organizations reach new heights with their ad programs. He got his start in the journalism industry, implementing the first online banner ads at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s independent newspaper, The Badger Herald, and serving as Manager of Multimedia Technologies for nearly 10 years at USA Today, where he developed rich media technologies and video to enhance the publication’s stories and provide more opportunities for advertising for USATODAY.com, as well as across Gannett broadcasting and newspaper sites. He then joined ManiaTV as Vice President of Publishing and Software Development, where he led tool-development and content-publishing teams for the broadband video distribution network and launched five video ad networks. From there, he proceeded to head the software/web development, operations, and analytics teams at The Denver Post as Vice President of Operations and Solutions; lead engineering and operations for more than 800 nationwide news and niche websites and mobile products at Digital First Media as Vice President of Technology and Platforms; and handled product and design for programmatic and native advertising solutions at Federated Media Publishing as Senior Vice President of Product. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the episode, which was recorded live at the Brand Safety Summit NY on November 3, 2022, Scott discusses: How he got his start in advertising How brands can be authentic and consistent in today's wild ad market  Ad fraud on desktop vs CTV  Some of the best groups to be a part of in the advertising industry

Today's guest is Alex Stone. Alex Stone is the SVP of Advanced Video and Agency Partnerships at Horizon Media. He and his team are responsible for the development of agency-level partnerships with key media, data, and technology vendors across all marketplace mediums. Alex developed the agency’s strategic approach to digital investment partnerships to maximize negotiations with key partners emphasizing areas of interest that provide the greatest value to the agency’s clients in the form of innovation, competitive rates, research, data, programmatic and education. He worked with key stakeholders to develop a new private marketplace specific to OTT/CTV inventory featuring over 45 direct partnerships, dubbed SeleCTV. In the episode, which was recorded live at the Brand Safety Summit NY on November 3, 2022, Alex discusses: How brands are handling the speed of culture today How Alex stays on top of industry trends What some of the largest areas for improvement in the advertising world are

Today's guest is Jon Suarez-Davis. Jon Suarez-Davis (jsd) is super{set}’s Chief Commercial Officer. He leads market strategy and development designed to accelerate super{set} companies’ growth in current, new, and expanding markets. Prior to super{set}, Jon was SVP, Marketing Strategy & Innovation at Salesforce, where he was responsible for developing and co-creating innovative marketing strategies and solutions with customers and partners designed to build brands and drive sustainable growth. Jon previously served as the Chief Strategy Officer, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, with a focus on developing technology solutions that empower marketers to deliver connected, personalized, and real-time brand experiences across channels and throughout the customer journey at scale. In the episode, which was recorded live at the Brand Safety Summit NY on November 3, 2022, Jon discusses: How super{set} was founded and the values it holds paramount How brands can handle the speed of culture today How consumer privacy regulations could change in the future

Recorded at the Brand Safety Summit, Mark Proulx from J&J, walks us through his approach to brand safety and how brands can quickly yet thoughtfully respond to viral moments.

Today’s guest is Deva Bronson, EVP and Global Head of Brand Assurance at Dentsu Media. Dentsu Media is the largest area of specialism within Dentsu International, and is brought to markets globally through three award-winning agency brands: Carat, iProspect and dentsu X. Our favorite quote from the episode - “It’s important that we are data and science-based. We’ve got to be careful because the narrative is always changing. The news cycle never stops.”

Today’s guest is Yale Cohen, EVP, Global Digital Standards at Publicis Media. Publicis Media harnesses the power of modern media through global agency brands Performics, Spark Foundry, Starcom, and Zenith. Our favorite quote from the show - “Culture is one of the things that we talk about. How we address culture is through brand integrity. A brand needs to address what it stands for.”

Welcome to the inaugural episode (Episode 1) of the Breaking Through the Mayhem podcast — the show where we explore marketing and advertising in a time of constantly shifting risk and opportunity. Our favorite quote from this episode - “What we’re doing is taking a step back with clients and really trying to better understand them and have them better understand themselves.”