The two executives spoke at the UBS 43rd Annual Global Media and Communications Conference in New York in December.

(Pictured left to right: Jay Sears of Rubicon Project, Brian Quinn of Triad Retail Media and Charlie Weiss of News Corp. at the UBS event.)

(Editor’s note: You can also listen to the audio replay of the UBS fireside chat between Sears, Weiss and Quinn.)

YOUR NAME: Charlie Weiss

YOUR COMPANY: News Corp.

YOUR TITLE: Vice President, Ad Marketplaces

JAY SEARS: What do you read to keep up with politics, art and culture?

CHARLIE WEISS: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and Vice. If I’m overseas, I pick up the Times of London and the Sun.

SEARS: What do you read to keep up with friends?

WEISS: ESPN, SB Nation and the New York Post.

SEARS: What do you read to keep up with the advertising technology industry?

WEISS: AdExchanger, MediaPost, Jack Myers’ MediaVillage, Shelly Palmer, CMO Today, AdWeek and TechCrunch to name a few.

SEARS: What’s your favorite commercial of all time?

WEISS: Anything that continues to combine George Clooney and Danny DeVito for Nespresso.

SEARS: Describe your company’s business and where it leverages ad automation.

WEISS: News Corp. is a global diversified media and information services company. Our businesses include news and information services, book publishing and digital real estate services to name a few. We leverage ad automation for digital advertising across all formats including display, mobile, video and more.

SEARS: With regards to advertising automation, what are the three biggest trends you expect to impact the industry in 2016?

WEISS:

  1. Obviously mobile will continue to rise with usage.
  2. Linking attribution between the physical and digital world.
  3. Consolidation of the space.

SEARS: With regards to advertising automation, what are the three most overblown topics that you wish would just go away?

WEISS: I don’t want these to go away, but I’d have to say:

  1. Programmatic TV. It’s an important topic but going to take a while for adoption.
  2. Anything that ends in “geddon.”
  3. Anything that ends in “lypse.”

SEARS: In relation to ad automation, what are News Corp.’s three biggest initiatives for 2016?

WEISS:

  1. Doing more with data. For measurement, targeting and anything else to drive performance.
  2. Valuing ads by engagement and impact as much as audience/brand.
  3. Cross-Platform and InLine Video.

SEARS: In 2016, what percentage of total advertising sales across your company will be from automated or programmatic channel?

WEISS: I’d never quote something outside of an earnings report. Let’s just say it’s on the rise.

SEARS: Tell us about your first party data strategy. Do you currently have a DMP (data management platform) for your first party data?

WEISS: Yes, absolutely. We partner globally with Krux. Looking at Realtor.com for example, packaging data and media is critical to our strategy. Capturing the attention of users while they are in the process of buying new houses is critical to their endemic advertising base through automation or a direct IO. Continuing with Realtor.com, we are able to successfully package first party data segments and sell them through the Rubicon Orders platform. This is our strategy for both endemic and non-endemic advertisers.

SEARS: Salesforce compensation. Do you compensate your salespeople for every dollar sold, regardless if the media is sold via insertion order (IO) manually or via an automated channel? Pick one.

  1. Our salespeople are compensated on every dollar sold — Manual, Orders and Auction.
  2. Our salespeople are compensated on Manual and Orders only. They are not compensated for advertisers sold via auction.
  3. Our salespeople are not compensated on sales made via our automated channel.

WEISS: We leave compensation of sales people up to individual business units. It really depends on the goals of your organization. If you are trying to promote adoption of ad automation and get your sales reps to discuss it with your clients, then you definitely should. If you want salespeople working on a different initiative, be it custom content, native, etc., then you might adjust compensating them on every programmatic dollar.

SEARS: What are signs that a media owner is savvy about ad automation?

WEISS: That they refer to us as advertising and not ad tech or ad automation.

SEARS: If you could go to the airport right now with friends or family and fly anywhere in the world for vacation, who would you take and where would you go?

WEISS: I’d grab my wife. A warm island with a good beach and food.

SEARS: If you could create an endowment to fund any existing non-profit you designated, what lucky non-profit organization would that be?

WEISS: The Alzheimer’s Association and Doctors Without Borders.

SEARS: What is your favorite restaurant in the world?

WEISS: Ian’s Pizza in Madison, Wisconsin.

SEARS: Thanks, Charlie!

See PDF or original article from January 2016.