Agile Businesses: Katie Burwell Of AdQuick On How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of Disruptive Technologies

An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Keep learning. The more you learn about disruptive technologies and confront the unknowns, the less power they have to disrupt the business. The most important thing leaders can do is continuously take in and synthesize new information. This ultimately allows us to deliberate faster and be swiftly decisive rather than reactive or blind sided by a disruption.

As part of my series about the “How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of Disruptive Technologies”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Katie Burwell.

Katie Burwell leads business development at AdQuick.com, the first platform to allow marketers to complete the entire process of planning, buying, executing and measuring out-of-home (OOH) advertising campaigns anywhere in the U.S. and around the globe. At AdQuick, Katie oversees over 1300 vendor partners, and is responsible for sourcing and managing new partnerships throughout the marketing ecosystem.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Thanks for having me! I started my professional career at an IT staffing firm in Ohio. While in the IT business services world, I moved into more sales and solutions-oriented roles until I unexpectedly clicked with a potential client and the work their organization was doing. There was an opportunity for me to be more hands on in tech which was where my education and professional interests were aligned. I got to help shape some interesting pieces of software, participate in full development cycles and take it to market as a sales engineer–and ultimately moved to New York to grow other parts of the business. During this time I was a “digital nomad” working in my clients offices and many coworking spaces around the city doing everything from business process mapping and requirements gathering, to daily project management and media planning. Today, I head up supply side partnerships at AdQuick, the top out-of-home advertising marketplace in the world. I’ve gotten to help launch our programmatic DSP, develop our marketplace programs and enable our internal and external sales teams to hit their goals.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

I really wanted to come in guns blazing so I self-taught a lot of my technical skills and read books on methodology to further enhance my knowledge. But none of that really prepares you for when you run your first script and overwrite important data. Luckily, it was an easily fixable mistake, but that did not stop the gut dropping feeling that my first script blew up some part of our database. The takeaway is the same as woodworking, “measure twice, cut once.” Lastly, you can always have the engineers run the scripts.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

Adam Culbertson is the manager who hired me away from the IT staffing business which–we both agree now–was a shot in the dark. He is one of the best teachers, mentors and friends I’ve gained in my career. I was a novice in every aspect of the business, role and industry, and he created an environment where experimentation and personal development could exist harmoniously with our KPIs. He helped build my confidence quickly in a new space and that is something I try to impart on the people I work with today.

Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?

At AdQuick, our mission has always been to empower everyone to put their message into the world. We do that by removing all barriers to out-of-home (OOH) ad buying, with a powerful platform that’s a delight to use. Our products might have evolved over the years, but our mission remains the same.

Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you tell our readers a bit about what your business does? How do you help people?

AdQuick is revolutionizing how companies view and approach out-of-home (OOH) advertising. Founded in Los Angeles in 2016, AdQuick’s end-to-end OOH platform has rocketed to the top of the outdoor advertising arena by placing the ability to buy, plan, and measure campaigns right at the fingertips of advertisers. In just six years, AdQuick has turned the OOH space on its head.

As the first true OOH marketplace, AdQuick is at the forefront of reviving the marketing channel long thought to be antiquated and limited to static billboards. Today, thanks to new technologies, a plethora of new formats–i.e., street furniture, wallscapes, and digital OOH to name a few–and AdQuick, marketers are realizing that OOH is truly without limits and has endless space to grow.

Which technological innovation has encroached or disrupted your industry? Can you explain why this has been disruptive?

OOH advertising can trace its roots back before the invention of the internet, when farmers wanted to sell their goods on fences and walls in the early 1800’s. Like every industry, OOH has grown and evolved with the times, eventually becoming the billboards, bus shelters, street furniture and more along the highways and roads that we see around the world. Even today, OOH supports municipalities through partnerships that both broadcast community information and contribute revenue to public budgets.

Until recently the world’s oldest form of advertising was at risk of being left behind. OOH remained stagnant. Unchanged. In 1994, the first digital banner ad appeared and the world of advertising forever changed. The rise of digital advertising quickly evolved to give marketers a clearer look at the ROI they desperately needed. Would OOH be left behind as the dinosaur of the advertising industry? AdQuick wasn’t going to let that happen.

What did you do to pivot as a result of this disruption?

AdQuick is at the helm of bringing OOH advertising into the advanced technology fold. Thanks to AdQuick, advertisers can now buy ad space on billboards, bus benches, transit wraps and more worldwide like they’re web ads.

There’s no question that OOH, and specifically digital out-of-home (DOOH), is an effective medium. However, the process of researching, bidding, securing, planning, executing, and measuring outdoor media have been a complex, confusing, and painfully slow process. AdQuick has changed that.

AdQuick Programmatic DSP provides simple, end-to-end self service, giving advertisers complete control over their OOH campaigns including flexible scheduling, audience targeting, instantaneous creative swaps, and measurements that optimize for conversions rather than impressions.

In the past, advertisers have measured OOH performance through impressions without any connection to conversions. With the ability to get granular and in-depth during the creative process, AdQuick Programmatic DSP provides advertisers with comprehensive analytics to easily monitor and adjust campaigns based on performance. Right from their dashboard, AdQuick Programmatic DSP users can measure and track online, offline and performance KPIs such as in-store foot traffic and sales, app events, attributed conversions and exposure conversion rate.

With such insightful analytics, advertisers can show an OOH campaign’s direct impact on the success of marketing campaigns and ultimately, revenue generation. Advertisers can utilize this data to determine which ad units are the most likely to be high performing and responsively adjust campaigns in real time to capitalize on, and get the most out of, their OOH campaigns.

OOH now effectively competes with the digital advertising industry and beats it in value. Using outdoor advertising space can save marketers time, money, and generate higher consumer response than many forms of in-home or digital advertising.

Was there a specific “Aha moment” that gave you the idea to start this new path? If yes, we’d love to hear the story.

I can’t take credit for the idea, but I was excited to roll up my sleeves and get to work on it. For me, the aha moment is on a weekly rotation these days. Every week I’m reminded that we cannot yet contemplate the full capabilities of what we’re building and how we are pushing the industry forward. The aha moment is that we’re no longer following a framework or looking at how digital is doing things. We’re setting the roadmap as we learn, iterate, and develop these new approaches to OOH.

Programmatic DOOH was talked about for a decade before anyone did anything about it. When we launched our bidder and Rick Rolled Times Square, all of those conversations, conferences and concepts felt very real. It was a big moment; clicking a button and seeing our goofy ad on the Nasdaq screen a few seconds later.

So, how are things going with this new direction?

AdQuick Programmatic DSP now stands alone as a leader in the programmatic DOOH space. Now, media buyers and advertisers have access to the largest collection of OOH inventory available (over 30 billion impressions across 600K screens from 170+ publishers) in real-time.

Placing even more information right in the hands of advertisers, AdQuick Programmatic DSP includes a global map in which advertisers can set filters and quickly scan over 600K ad units across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, and 13 other major nations. These filters, including geography, CPM, venue type, screen type, publisher, audience, and point of interest, allow advertisers to find the best available units for their OOH campaigns in mere minutes.

AdQuick is continuously introducing ways for advertisers to uplevel their programmatic OOH campaigns. For example, AdQuick introduced dynamic creative and smart spend controls to enable advertisers to optimize their creative content and deliver the right content at the right moment. More specifically, users can optimize their content based on dynamic triggers, such as the weather, dayparting and point of interest. Smart spend controls help advertisers stay within budget by auto adjusting budget allocation based on performance.

Advertisers finally have the experts and resources needed to make the most of their OOH campaigns and deliver meaningful — and measurable — results.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this pivot?

Perhaps it’s okay to admit now, but I knew next to nothing about programmatic advertising when we started building our DSP. I was very much in the deep end learning to swim in this world. Together with our engineers and some fantastic partners, I got to see our programmatic DSP go from zero to sixty–and now we have bonafide experts in DOOH programmatic sales and strategy at the helm which is incredibly satisfying.

Overseeing the programmatic and direct supply side of our platform has given me a unique perspective on how things function across different sides of the industry. Almost nothing is simple, but AdQuick makes it very easy.

What would you say is the most critical role of a leader during a disruptive period?

A leader needs to have a laser focus on the vision. There are endless distractions, lots of parties that have different priorities, markets rising and falling, and upstarts trying to hack their way in. I used to row and in a boat race, your job is to be in sync with your crew for 2000 meters. If you look at the boat next to you, your 11-pound head turn disrupts the entire boat’s stroke. Keep your head in the boat and row.

When the future seems so uncertain, what is the best way to boost morale? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team?

Ground yourself every day in the things you do that have made you successful to this point. The chance that those behaviors need to change are slim, but they will be refined and applied in different and innovative ways in the future. Make sure you celebrate every win, professional or personal. Celebrate every new feature shipped as well. Learn from your team and what makes them feel successful.

Is there a “number one principle” that can help guide a company through the ups and downs of turbulent times?

Prepare to be adaptable. A lot of organizations get very tied to their processes, governance, and the way things have always been done. All of these practices seem functional on paper but can make the business brittle and ill prepared to pivot much less survive turbulent times. Disaster Recovery is not just about servers anymore, it’s about your space, your people, your product, and your planned reaction to disruption.

Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses make when faced with a disruptive technology? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?

• Thinking you can only do the thing you’ve been doing in the face of disruption. Outdoor advertising used to be thought of as old fashioned or only a brand awareness medium. Now, through connected DOOH networks and robust measurement, OOH performs alongside digital, radio and TV, positively impacting every part of the marketing funnel.
• Another misstep is that they hit the brakes or shift budgets away from the core product or strategies, but instead end up churning through valuable resources. When technology is disrupted, like the changes we’re seeing to third party cookies, it doesn’t mean every innovation that uses cookies is broken. OOH is not becoming more or less valuable because of cookie policies. OOH is valuable because it communicates with the masses and it has since long before the internet.
• Lastly, I’ve seen companies overcomplicate their pitch while trying to pivot around disruptive technologies. Facebook is one of the most disruptive platforms in advertising, privacy, politics, you name it. They’ve added and removed features countless times. However, after all these years evolving into the ad platform they are today, their pitch to consumers is still social networking: connect with people, share photos, and invite your friends. Explaining something simply and consistently can outlast disruptive tech.

Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should do to pivot and stay relevant in the face of disruptive technologies? Please share a story or an example for each.

• Stay nimble — The more attached we get to one way of doing things the less easy it is to pivot, so staying nimble means you’ll never get whiplash. OOH selling and buying was done the same way for a very, very long time. Companies that have implemented technology, partnered with emerging companies, and prepared for a future where things would be done differently have enjoyed growth and stability.
• Iterate or Die — Okay, this is the title of a book by Eric Berridge and Michael Kervin, but the sentiment carries through. Disruptive technologies don’t care about your roadmap or development cycle. Media used to be planned and bought in 12-month upfront cycles. We’ve all experienced how much can change in one year, so by allowing teams to iterate and run shorter sprints whether in software development or media planning, you are allowing your teams to not just move faster, but adapt to disruptions in real time, and preserve your dollars by not locking budgets up in long term programs.
• Keep an open mind — Not every disruptive technology is going to disrupt your business. Maybe it’s invigorating or having less of an impact than you thought it would. Third-party cookies, which I mentioned earlier, that are heavily integrated into marketers’ measurement and tracking models are going away. What we have seen measuring OOH campaigns at AdQuick, where some of our data sets rely on cookies.
• Try it — One of our core values at AdQuick and an important part of pivoting is trying new things. Run experiments and establish what success looks like. Empower every member of your team to be entrepreneurial and seek out solutions.
• Keep learning. The more you learn about disruptive technologies and confront the unknowns, the less power they have to disrupt the business. The most important thing leaders can do is continuously take in and synthesize new information. This ultimately allows us to deliberate faster and be swiftly decisive rather than reactive or blind sided by a disruption.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“If you rest, you rust.” — Helen Hayes. I’ve applied this quote throughout my life whether it be pursuing sport, lifelong learning, or work. While I do not wish to have an 80-year career like Ms. Hayes, I’ve always striven to keep momentum, stay energized, and reject complacency.

How can our readers further follow your work?

Follow me and AdQuick on LinkedIn and Twitter!

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!

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Agile Businesses: Katie Burwell Of AdQuick On How Businesses Pivot and Stay Relevant In The Face of… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.