Q&A with Jennifer Laing, SVP, Operations, Causal IQ

Thanks for stopping by! This mini-interview series features various industry thought leaders that share their perspectives, opinions and predictions. Today’s interview is with Jennifer Laing, SVP, Operations at Causal IQ, a programmatic solutions provider that uses Neutronian data for a unique approach to programmatic buying. 

Causal IQ’s approach to programmatic buying takes transparency, data quality and privacy compliance into account. Leveraging Neutronian’s Data Quality and Cookieless Certification signals, Causal IQ can identify the best high quality, privacy compliant audience segments to leverage for targeting on their client campaigns. In addition, Causal IQ has recently started testing out Neutronian Data Privacy Scores for inventory curation in order to ensure client campaigns are not running on high-privacy risk websites and applications. By partnering with Neutronian on these efforts, Causal IQ has been able to demonstrate increased value, mitigate risk and enhance campaign performance for their clients – a win-win all around!

Now on to our interview with Jennifer…

Q: You have been involved in programmatic since its inception. Tell us, what has been the most surprising along the way? 

A: Having seen programmatic develop from the legacy ad network model was exciting in that the ability to optimize both supply and demand paths became a reality, allowing us to get in front of the right user at the right time and bid accordingly. With that, publishers and supply partners have become more accountable with the introduction of brand safety, then viewability, and now KPIs like attention. It’s not the wild west anymore, as privacy in both targeting and measurement are key requirements for advertisers and also much more on a consumer’s mind. All of the changes along the way have posed challenges as we’ve had to adapt technology to use new data, measurement, targeting and attribution, but I love how our industry comes together to find solutions. 

Q: Causal IQ talks about delivering the “human side of programmatic” – can you share what that means and why it works as a differentiator in the market? 

A: Delivering the “human side of programmatic” refers to our Causal team’s experience, insight, creativity, and empathy that we bring to programmatic advertising. By nature, programmatic leans on algorithms and data to automate much of the bidding and optimization,  but we believe we bring a human touch to audience building, optimizing, creative messaging, & brand storytelling. We uniquely blend automation and our data-driven approach with human expertise, because even the smartest algorithms don’t understand the strategies and nuances of each advertiser and their campaign goals. Our team employs test & learn approaches with different creative messages, data partners/audiences and inventory, and unique combinations thereof, to find the optimal outcomes for all campaigns.

Q: Do you have any predictions for the future of programmatic?

A: I have a lot of predictions for where we’re headed. A few key themes continue to become more important and integrated in our daily workflows, including increased data privacy & regulation. Even though Google continues to delay 3P cookie deprecation in Chrome, other browsers and platforms have already done this and increased scrutiny from regulating bodies and consumers desiring more privacy will lead us to a safer and more authenticated (or anonymous) ad buying and selling future. This goes along with more emphasis on contextual, brand safe targeting leveraging 1P data. I’ve also seen advertisers become savvier with cross-channel integration and looking at the full-funnel holistically to give each channel credit where it’s due in driving conversions or brand lift.

Q: What would you tell a colleague that is just getting started in programmatic?

A: Congrats on getting into a fun and dynamic industry that will keep you busy and on your toes. Have an open mind, be flexible, and roll with the punches. I am learning something new every day and I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years. It keeps changing as new technology, data, inventory and regulations pop up. This gives us the perfect opportunity to continue learning and testing new solutions. We must innovate, or we’ll lose touch with the latest advancements. We are the specialists and are expected to provide guidance and advice to our clients, oftentimes this means testing a variety of tactics to see what works best. Even with experience, sometimes I’m surprised at performance outcomes!

We hope you enjoyed this post and we look forward to sharing more perspectives, opinions, and discussions with other industry thought leaders. If you missed the previous interviews in this series, you can access them below.

Arielle Garcia, Founder, ASG Solutions, shares privacy-related challenges she’s seeing in the industry as well as her opinion about the industry’s readiness for the looming cookie apocalypse. 

Lynn Tornabene, CMO, Anteriad, discusses challenges she’s seeing in the industry and Anteriad’s data driven, tech-enabled, and growth obsessed mindset. 

Steven Millman, Global Head of Research & Data Science, Dynata provides tips on how to mitigate risk when using GenAI and LLMs.