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Meet the Sponsors of the LBB & Friends Beach 2023: Keynes Digital

04/05/2023
Associations, Award Shows and Festivals
Cannes, France
130
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Ahead of Cannes Lions, Keynes Digital take us through a snapshot of its company

For our company snapshot series, we want to create a profile that pinpoints exactly what makes our sponsor company's unique right now in 2023. We want to know about the culture and the competitive edge that they bring as well as finding out how the company has evolved over the past couple of years as new tech and changes in the market have disrupted the industry.



Q> When and why was your company founded? 

2018


Q> Give us an elevator pitch for your company!

We are the premium programmatic advertiser partner, focused on Connected TV advertising. With our industry leading Data Intelligence Hub, we’re able to help provide the most detailed insights from the performance of your Connected TV campaign to how your Connected TV campaign is impacting all other paid media channels. Our team of experts will do all the heavy lifting and takes the guesswork out of running your campaigns, while doing all the set-up, optimisations, and analytics. We’ve built and use the leading artificial insentience technologies to help drive the strongest outcome from your marketing budgets. Meaning you save time and don’t have to learn a new channel from scratch with you marketing budgets. All in all, you get a premium service without the premium prices tag, expert advice and a team that are dedicated to advice on what’s best for your company.


Q> What sets your company apart from others in the industry?

We are a full service company that specialises in improving all marketing performance and not looking at CTV in a silo. When looking at the competitor landscape your options are: Buying through a Self Service technology – One size might fit most for Social but not for CTV. When you think about Facebook that is two publishers (IG and FB) and your options are basic audiences and creative changes. Compare that to programmatic, or CTV in general. You have an average of 5.4 CTV subscriptions per household in the US and those subscriptions have multiple TV networks within them. Meaning the optimisations and goals are multiples of what you will see across social. Not to mention the 186 data providers we work with. It’s not a set and forget channel, and not a channel you can learn on. Self service is great for small brands, but not for brands that are looking for hyper growth. 

Otherwise your options are traditional agencies, who buy from us or the Self Service tools and you have the same hurdles but with additional costs. No one is offering a full service, MarTech offering with the data intelligence we offer. 


Q> How big is your team and where are your key locations?

15 people. Mainly US based: (USA) Los Angeles CA, Denver CO, Philadelphia PA, Pittsburg PA, Austin TX, Dallas TX, Atlanta GA, Charleston NC, Phoenix AZ & (UK) Brighton/Hove


Q> How would you describe your company culture?

Our company was founded on giving people a better lifestyle, whether that is clients or our team members. Our culture is based on a very close knit team that enjoys spending time with each other. Honesty and trust is a core pillar of what we’ve tried to create. We offer the team many perks to create a culture across a remote team, including offsites, travel and personal trips, monthly budget to spend on their own self-care and social life.  

We recently paid for a top performing sales exec, Steve, to go to Europe for the first time and to have a week’s holiday in Amsterdam in recognition of his contribution to the team. He is sending us a daily vlog of his travels and it is a great example of team culture. 


Q> Who are some of the key members of your team that our readers should know?

Every member of the team is a key member:

Daniella Romanaggi – Our head trader is a rockstar. She’s always positive and is the backbone of our team

Brittany Alexander – Our account director who has been with us from the start. Helping shape Keynes and the CTV industry

Chris Chen – Our partner who has been helping build the CTV industry with insights, knowledge and relationships 

Fiona Mckinnon – Who was on the board of Keynes from Day one and is now part of the running as the COO. From culture to business growth, to larger strategic conversations. Her energy and experience touches every element of the business


Q> How do you foster creativity within your team?

I believe in boundaries and not rules. Boundaries can be moved and are not rigid. Rules are fixed. I believe everyone at Keynes’s role is to automate their own job and balancing process and creativity is crucial. Allowing people to be creatives and improve Keynes is crucial in our long term success. 

We run monthly performance and wellbeing workshops that bring the teams together to work in small virtual groups on communication skills,  mindfulness, generative change, non verbal communication and positive habit formation. These build the skills to help people think ‘out of the box’


Q> How does your company address sustainability, and diversity and Inclusion internally?

I think about Diversity with a capital D. Diversity in upbringing, culture, gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic, etc. I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with some amazing diverse thinkers. Our board is three people: one English white male, one Scottish white female and one Canadian Asian male

Our leadership team is five people: three females and two males. One Asian and four white people. Everyone grew up in different areas, with different socioeconomics and different experiences, different age groups and different skill sets/experiences. 

These qualities allow us to make sure we have a diverse panel of thinkers and world views. 


Q> What are some of the most interesting projects that your company has worked on in the past year?

We recently introduced a Performance & Wellbeing Program (through Moment Company) which provides 1:1 coaching and personal development workshops for everyone in the team.  

This program focuses on the growth of the ‘whole human’ and builds on life skills and resilience that are applicable both inside and outside the workplace and is therefore fully aligned with our goals when setting up the business

Insight from new hires was that having a program of wellbeing support in place that isn’t just an app, or sign on a wall, but is a full vested program, was a decision in joining our team. 


Q> What are some of the biggest challenges that your company has faced?

Maintaining a strong culture, while not being in the office. Leadership books are great but are typically based on in office or regular communication. WFH has created a new challenge, where people are finding it harder to stop working as their office is now their living rooms or bedrooms. 

Trying to maintain our goal of a better quality of life, while helping the team learn area’s that might be deficiency or simply miss communications via slack, zoom, text, email is a new challenge that we had in offices, but could be fixed much faster. 

From a leadership point of view training is challenging, when you’re in an office things can be less planned out, where conversions are had freely, overhearing how your coworker is describing a situation and you gain from that unformatted “training”. WFH you don’t have that, so being conscious of how to maintain the softer trainings as well as the deeper industry trainings have been the biggest challenges we’ve faced


Q> What are some of the most important lessons that you have learned while running your company?

People are sceptical. I’ve always been proud that I am a very honest person and I want to maintain that throughout the company. From day 1 we’ve offered unlimited vacation; you pick the days you want to take off. What we found was the team would still ask what days holidays they get off, me responding with “you choose” was not taken as I meant it as “I don’t mind if you want to take it off take it off” but was heard “I am testing you, if you want to keep your job I wouldn’t take it off”. This is bigger than just vacation days and rolls into other areas. This has lead to me realizing I need to be more explicit about work life balance and why we have the benefits we do

Admin sucks. Nothing more than this. Admin sucks and no one tells you as a founder that will be a huge amount of your day

Giving up control. Anyone who has been in senior leadership in the past will know that feeling of giving up control of a situation, conversation, process, etc and we’ve all struggled a little, I can tell you it is 100x harder when it is your business 


Q> How do you ensure that your company stays competitive in 2023?

We have by far the strongest offering in the Programmatic Connected TV market right now. To stay ahead we are investing heavily in even more Data Intelligences and services. We are looking at including Open AI into our processes to free up our expert’s time and give them more room to focus on improving outcomes for our advertising partners.


Q> How has your company adapted to changes in the industry over the past couple of years?

We’ve been at the forefront of changing the industry from a Connected TV point of view. We’ve advocated for stronger privacy restrictions and been part of unified ID 2.0 (the open internet) from day one. We’ve been leaning into the changes in the industry and will continue to do so in the future 


Q> What are some of the most exciting new developments that have taken place at your company recently?

We recently launched a new Data Intelligence Hub, accessible for all clients, that creates a one stop show for all their campaign insights and drives our optimisation decision making.  It was a project that has been a year in development and launched in March this year and will continue to develop to ensure our data insights remain the best in class and we are servicing our clients in the way that matches their business needs. 


Q> What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the advertising industry in 2023?

The obvious is the economy.

I see this on a few fronts: 1) Less brands launching, therefore less advertisers 2) Brands closing or going bankrupt 3) Net Term Clients defaulting on their payments.

The biggest hurdle I see is with point 2 and 3. If advertisers can’t pay their bills the media owner has to bank roll them, which only works if most advertisers pay their bills. But if the majority cannot pay the bills you will see advertisers and media owners going bankrupt 


Q> Looking forward, what are your key goals and ambitions for the year ahead?

Team growth

Personal and professional

More automation with the Open AI

More automation with detailed Data Intelligences

Four day work week 

Credits
Work from LBB & Friends Beach
ALL THEIR WORK