Upfront marketplaces drive price discovery, empower buyers and sellers to do long-term planning and facilitate premium content creation. Rather than resetting the marketplace at an annual event, publishers should embrace upfront strategies throughout the year. In fact, as GDPR and other privacy measures put greater emphasis on first-party data, publishers have an opportunity to create audience segments for all content, sell those audiences on an upfront basis and deliver them programmatically.A continued upfront marketplace means publishers won’t have to agonize between upfront sales and the open market because they’ll get price discovery on an ongoing basis. That’s a big deal …

Future of Media with MAGNA's EVP of Innovation, Vin Paolozzi. Vin Paolozzi serves as EVP, Innovation for MAGNA. In this position, he is responsible for the development of strategic relationships with leading media, data and technology companies to drive solutions for IPG clients. We recently met up with Vin at Penn 6 in New York for Italian food and a discussion about where the industry is headed.

Agencies are the new broker-dealers From a macro level, the disruption that swept through the financial services industry nearly two decades ago parallels the transformation that’s currently reshaping advertising. In fact, the concern many people currently express for the future of the media agency echoes the fears that once dominated financial services. But online brokerages like eTrade didn’t put investment banks out of business. On the contrary, the same digital tools that brought us those online trading portals simultaneously opened up a new class of retail customers and helped investment banks thrive as market experts for institutional investors.

What I have learned is to find partners and employees who complement you in areas where you are weak and surround yourself with people who enhance your business plan for creation, development, and execution. For me, this entailed networking and culture. You need people who believe in you to not only launch your business, but to fund your business to be cash-flow positive.