In December, the advertising expertise agency Epsilon named Jeff Smith its new chief advertising officer. Smith succeeds the corporate’s former advertising chief, Jon Beebe, who stepped down final yr to discovered the consultancy, QuirkWerk.
For greater than 25 years earlier than becoming a member of Epsilon, Smith labored in advertising or data-adjacent roles at firms together with Oracle, Nielsen, LiveRamp and a number of other high-growth startups.
“I can say that I’m sufficiently old to have seen what advertising and promoting regarded like earlier than the entire digital revolution took maintain, and actually been part of that journey because it did,” Smith informed ADWEEK. “The frequent thread? It’s at all times been centered on servicing the CMO and serving to entrepreneurs higher wield knowledge.”
In 2019, Publicis Groupe acquired Epsilon and now depends on it to energy its PeopleCloud viewers administration platform—media planning and activation software program that guides shoppers’ funding methods. For its holding firm, Epsilon performs an important function as an in-house knowledge asset and opens new income streams with its product providing, since expertise property like PeopleCloud typically sway media company evaluate outcomes. Now, holding firms are competing for probably the most complete dataset and expertise platform interface. By the tip of 2022, Epsilon was rolling out a PeopleCloud rebrand that simplified its product by evaluating knowledge to constructing blocks.
Earlier than accepting the CMO function final yr, Smith was a senior advisor on the consulting agency McKinsey & Firm and an unbiased guide to model entrepreneurs. In each roles, he famous chief entrepreneurs’ urgent challenges. After exploring Epsilon’s providing, he realized its product suite offered options to frequent issues his former shoppers flagged.
“There’s some low-hanging fruit with Epsilon, within the sense that the corporate has invested little or no in advertising traditionally,” Smith mentioned.
He spoke additional with ADWEEK about what drew him to the CMO function and entrepreneurs’ largest tech stack challenges.
This interview has been flippantly edited for size and readability.
ADWEEK: What about Epsilon, particularly, was enticing to you?
Smith: When Epsilon first reached out to me, I had not thought lots in regards to the firm for the reason that Publicis acquisition. After I began doing somewhat little bit of due diligence, I noticed all of the issues my shoppers have been telling me that they wanted. I noticed a CDP; I noticed a cleanroom; I noticed a DSP; I noticed a retail media community; I noticed an SSP … All the things that entrepreneurs are asking about proper now, this firm has.
