Relationship-building. Audience. Creative.

Ready to meet another one of the intelligent folks behind U of Digital training and educational content? Here are some practical tips and uncensored stories from one of the very best in the business, Julian Frachtman. Besides being an incredibly valuable member of the U of Digital Expert Network, Julian spends is Co-Founder and CEO of Airtory, a digital ad builder that helps create Rich Media ads. Here’s what he had to say:

What do you teach at U of Digital, and why?

I focus on the importance of leveraging rich media / HTML5 creative as it relates to programmatic display.  Creative has always been such an important part of the success of display marketing but frequently is stuck as an afterthought due to the difficulty to create truly engaging creative at scale. Being able to effectively match your creative along with your audience and campaign set up is already crucial for success, but will become even more important as it becomes more difficult to target audiences via third party cookies.

Tell us a little bit about your day job. How would you explain what you do at your company, or in your career in general (in case you are between roles) to a friend or family member?

During a regular day I’m generally spending about half of the time on outreach and sales efforts, about a quarter on calls with existing customers to ensure they’re finding success leveraging our platform and up to date on our latest feature releases, and the remainder working with my co-founder on roadmap and strategic efforts.

What’s your story. Did you end up in Digital Marketing on purpose, or by accident? 

As Co-Founder of my first company, Perk.com (acquired by RhythmOne), I managed a significant amount of our user acquisition efforts and I remember being extremely frustrated with the available offerings to create ad units that allowed me to really engaged with the end-users and convey how they would get value from downloading our apps and why they should click through to learn more. After a brief stop in enterprise SaaS, I reconnected with my Co-Founder and we decided to dive in headfirst to create a ‘Squarespace for Rich Media Ad Creation’ to allow publishers, brands, and agencies, no matter what size or scale, to bring compelling ad units to market at scale in an operationally and cost-effective manner.

If you had to explain the Digital Marketing Industry in 3 words, what would they be?

Relationship-building, audience, creative. 

Your advice to folks looking for success in this industry?

I think the main thing is to not be afraid to ask for help and connect with other co-opetition or even people working in other verticals from you within the industry. No’s are free, so it doesn’t hurt to ask, and 90% of the time I take a call, even if the value wasn’t evident from the outset, I end up discovering a new angle or opportunity or at the very least, learning something new and interesting. 

 

That’s all for this month’s edition of Experts of Digital! If you’re interested in joining our Expert Network or learning more about what our great team does, feel free to drop us a line at contact@uof.digital.