Outfront Media's Senior Leadership is Recognized For Technology Innovation
Outfront Media recently announced that two of its senior leaders were recognized for their work in the advancement of programmatic media buying.
Joel Melby, chief technology officer, has been awarded an ABBI (Audience Based Buying Innovation) Gold Award from the Global Audience Based Buying Conference and Consultancy (GABBCON). Melby was recognized for his lead work on an industry standard, Automated Linear Broadcast Cross-Device (ABCD) Specification that enables audience-based ad-buying focused on television and video. His contributions will be utilized by GABBCON for standardizing audience based media buying and will also help inform OUTFRONT's ON Smart Media platform with a standard for audience-based buying in OOH. Melby began writing the specification with his former employer,clypd, a Boston-based startup which built a programmatic TV platform for broadcasters, cable programmers and Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs), and continued to work on it over the past year.
In addition, Outfront Media unveiled the details around a new patent co-authored by James Price, chief product officer. The patent focuses on the management of advertisers' budgets by allocating their spend into separate sets or groupings. It then programmatically realigns those potential budget amounts based upon external signals like spend rate, quality, previous spend history, and more. These methodologies were designed in an effort to keep advertisers from overspending and to ensure they receive optimum delivery against a set of distribution points. This is Price's second co-authored patent to be awarded in his career. Price worked on the patent, which was filed in in 2009 during his time with a former employer, where he led several teams of product managers and engineers.
Together with Marion Parrish, SVP of digital operations, Outfront Media's team of technology leaders are dedicated to the implementation of the company's ON Smart Media platform. Parrish was previously responsible for the largest deployment and ongoing management of OOH digital displays completed to-date, building a network across Walmart, Albertsons, Best Buy and other retail footprints during her time at Premier Retail Networks.
In 2016, Parrish took operational control of Outfront's digital display footprint, increasing it with OnSmart Liveboard deployments throughout multiple transit systems such as the New York MTA and across large format billboards around the US. Parrish has also begun preparations for the deployment of Liveboards across the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) system in 2017.
"This 'dream team' is dedicated to bringing our company and the OOH buying process into the modern age of advertising," said Andy Sriubas, EVP, strategic planning & development, Outfront Media. "The work by our talented executives, like Joel, James and Marion, is a clear indicator of the future. We are all very proud of their achievements."
