Madhive CRO Jon Kaplan On Helping Advertisers Navigate Connected TV

Madhive Chief Revenue Officer Jon Kaplan

Former Google and Pinterest executive Jon Kaplan has joined Madhive as Chief Revenue Officer.

Kaplan, who has 20-plus years of experience scaling sales teams across the digital advertising and technology sectors, is tasked with accelerating the growth of Madhive’s full-stack TV enterprise software.

The sales veteran has embraced challenges throughout his career, most recently helping clients navigate the world of digital assets as CRO at Falcon X.

TVREV sat down with Kaplan to find out more about the obstacles he has faced on his journey to Madhive and the parallels he sees between his early years in programmatic advertising and where we’re at with connected TV now.

TVREV: Tell us about your journey and what made you decide to join Madhive?

Jon Kaplan: Throughout my career I’ve looked for opportunities to build categories at the earliest stages of their evolution and then see their growth through to scale. I see some of the same opportunities at Madhive that I saw at Google, Pinterest and FalconX to teach the industry something new.

When Google acquired YouTube, we had to figure out how to teach the industry a new way of thinking about digital video. At DoubleClick I had the chance to do the same thing with programmatic and data driven marketing. Later on I did that – though a bit differently – at Falcon X with crypto where we helped institutions think about how they use digital assets to build their business and diversify their trading approach.

What I saw with Madhive, is that we are in the early stages of growing the connected TV business, and there really is this disconnect between the amount of time that's being spent by users in this space and the amount of money that's going into it from advertisers. That gap right now is what we have the opportunity to bridge. And it’s only going to grow! We can help guide advertisers to target their television advertising in a more effective and efficient way, a modern way.

TVREV: We love the two examples you gave on Google and YouTube and on DoubleClick. What was it like being at Google and acquiring YouTube?

JK: In the early days with YouTube, we were fighting a battle between highly polished, very processed content versus this new era of ubiquity of content creation, constant connectivity, and mobile technology. We had to teach marketers a new way of thinking about quality content and targeted advertising, while also evolving and changing the offering to fit into the way buyers wanted to buy. So it was part changing minds and part conforming.

We had a similar journey with DoubleClick as well. There were a lot of point solution technology providers that advertisers used and it was really hard to unseat those relationships. For us, we tried to demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency that an advertiser would get if they were to integrate the entire stack of DoubleClick as opposed to having point solutions for each piece. It was a true enterprise technology conversation with both the CMO and CIO.

But it’s important to say that both of these were very long processes, all anchored in this notion of helping our clients and the industry see a better way forward.

TVREV: When you moved to Pinterest and you were selling against Google and against the so-called walled gardens. What did you learn there being on the other side? How did you potentially position or sell against that?

JK: Our approach at Pinterest was to build on our own strengths, which was our unique data asset. We had over 450 million people organizing hundreds of billions of pins onto over eight billion boards every year. That was an incredible signal of intent based on what people were planning to do, buy and try in the future. Ultimately, that led our clients to look for ways to integrate their advertising into the platform such that you couldn’t even tell it was advertising. Ads were simply content, and they were a utility in the context of what users were trying to accomplish. So as it relates to Google, ours was a similar approach to how search ads are viewed  – as helpful given what you’re searching for. What was different was the unique mindset people had when they were on Pinterest – future oriented, open to new ideas and open to brands that can help them make their ideas a reality. 

TVREV: What types of parallels do you see with streaming advertising or local streaming advertising and your experiences at Google and Pinterest?

JK: When mobile advertising was first getting started, there was a big disconnect between the consumer usage of mobile and the advertising dollars flowing to mobile. That disconnect was due in part because it took a while for ad formats, targeting, and measurement to evolve to take advantage of the unique capabilities of mobile. But eventually, the industry caught up and now mobile usage and advertising dollars are aligned.

The same dynamic exists in streaming TV right now where the usage is outstripping the advertising demand. If you take advantage of all the things that are available on connected TV, advertisers have an amazing opportunity to buy television advertising in a more efficient and effective way.

TVREV: There was an article about YouTube moving towards a 30-second non-skippable format and looking to position itself more as television advertising. Do you have any thoughts around this idea that for a viewer it's all TV and the idea that video is all coming together?

JK: I think it’s fair to say that YouTube has been on a journey to make their offering easier for TV buyers to buy. When I was at Google, the first step we took was to package up the ‘quality channels’ in YouTube that had the largest viewership, subscriber base and great content so we could secure an upfront commitment – even though we were focused on desktop on mobile. Now viewers see it all as TV regardless of device; these worlds are intersecting in a way that it's all just video. In fact, Madhive’s marketing campaign for Cannes Lions, “Set TV Free”, harkens to that. There’s a convergence of devices, content and the viewer's experience that are coming together. Madhive is helping brands see the value of CTV advertising, moving beyond the commoditization of high value streaming inventory.

TVREV: If you're describing your new position to friends, family, colleagues, how are you pitching it?

JK: I think there are secular tailwinds in connected TV and I believe it is the future of television. Madhive has been at the cutting edge of that streaming space since the company’s inception, modernizing legacy systems and building full-stack solutions, and I’m excited to see that through to scale.

The simplest way I describe it is that we're enabling every broadcaster, every media company and ultimately every marketer to build their business with the power of connected TV.