Cutting the cord

Consumers are fundamentally changing the way they watch TV. The pandemic expedited the shift from traditional linear viewership, with US TV viewers spending nearly three-and-a-half hours every day watching digital video, two of which are viewed on CTV devices. 

As this transformation matures, buyers need to rely on new targeting capabilities to reach valuable audiences across CTV devices in measurable ways while driving deeper engagement and ROI against their media campaigns.

So why are so many brands and agencies still buying this inventory through upfronts via programmatic guaranteed or private marketplaces, mimicking the old-school ways of securing premium video inventory? 

Change is good, if not always perfect

Think back to the early days of buying linear TV. A media buyer would broker individual deals with networks to commit upfront dollars to new programming, helping develop predictable revenue streams for media companies and supporting high-quality programs as they were produced. 

The downside was that if the audiences never materialized, networks were left to navigate makegoods, program cancellations, and poor performance. Conversely, buyers who didn’t get in early would be shut out of some real winners because the inventory was locked up before they even had a chance to make a deal.

In the early years of the digital revolution, the Digital Newfronts emerged. For a while, this seemed to help networks navigate a new era of TV viewership, but buyers began to demand better measurement, stronger guarantees, and more flexibility. Thus, programmatic emerged to not only fill the remaining inventory avails that hadn’t been committed to in upfront negotiations, but to command more efficient CPMs against inventory that wasn’t necessarily first run.

It’s no surprise that these new technologies were recognized as a way to streamline these transactions, with most sellers opting for programmatic guaranteed or private marketplaces to ensure they maintained optimal control over their most valuable inventory. Unfortunately, this perpetuated some of the issues experienced with traditional linear buys: Makegoods persisted, individual deals needed to be set up between buyers and publishers, and CPMs remained flat.       

More transparent and efficient options

No longer do buyers and publishers need to settle for the traditional methods of transacting premium video inventory. Through biddable programmatic TV by OpenX, publishers can rest easy knowing their premium inventory is only being sold directly and alongside other premium content.

Improvements in measurement allow publishers to understand which audiences are deeply engaged, further enhancing the rich targeting biddable provides. The wealth of first-party data means publishers can make better informed programming decisions. Additionally, by passing on some of this information through SSPs like OpenX, they can help buyers deterministically target desired audiences across all media formats.

For buyers, biddable CTV delivers the flexibility to compete on premium inventory based on real-time market dynamics, without being locked into firm budget commitments. This method of buying also eliminates the need to create individual deals with publishers, streamlining campaign setup and activation across the board and saving valuable time.

Additionally, biddable CTV allows brands and agencies to enhance their CTV campaigns by matching audiences through identity resolution tools, effectively delivering their messages to consumers across whatever environments they’re visiting. Because many of these consumers have cut the cord, this delivers incremental reach to audiences that aren’t accessible via traditional linear methods.

Win Win Win with Biddable TV by OpenX

We’re in the early stages of the era of biddable TV, but the benefits are clear. 

To learn more about how TV by OpenX can help you navigate this shifting landscape, reach out to us today or download the one-sheet below.

To mark International Women’s Day, we spoke with four women at OpenX on what this year’s theme means to them. The answers ranged from where diversity in tech leadership stands now to their meaningful experiences with mentorship and beyond. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Melanie Tymm, Culture Program Manager

Despite being relatively new to the ad tech industry, I’ve come across the firsthand experiences of other women who have been in adtech for years. Unfortunately, the industry has been known for the challenges regarding gender diversity and inclusion. This year, International Women’s Day focuses on championing women from diverse backgrounds, encouraging them not only to feel at ease expressing their authentic selves in their professional roles but to also be empowered to continue to shatter glass ceilings as they excel in their careers.

At OpenX, I’m incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by so many driven and powerful women who have paved the way for early-career female professionals like myself. I see them as mentors who have continuously reminded me to be confident in my abilities and celebrate my accomplishments without hesitation.

Within OpenX, our Women In Tech employee resource group aims to capture stories similar to those of the inspiring women I work alongside, who have overcome challenges to reach the highest point of their careers. This year’s theme serves as a reminder for those of us in influential positions within the industry to continue raising our voices and actively work toward positive change for every woman in adtech. By actively engaging in education and advocacy, each of us has the power to become an ally within the tech industry, working towards the advancement of opportunities and accomplishments for women across the world.

Stacy Borher, VP, US Sales

The gender imbalance in the technology industry continues to persist, especially when it comes to the number of women in leadership roles. According to a Global Gender Gap 2023 report, the proportion of women in C-suite positions in tech businesses stood at just 20%, while the share of women in senior leadership positions has barely changed since 2016. 

Women, especially those from underrepresented communities, need to see that people of all backgrounds can make it to the very top of businesses. Female leaders not only empower others to follow their lead, but challenge stereotypes and help to instill a culture that places value on integrity, emotional intelligence and empathy – an environment where everyone can thrive.

On this International Women’s Day (or month), I salute my independent mother. I can still recall days gone by in high school when my mother would wake me up blaring, “I’m woman hear me roar” before a major test or event. 

I was raised to believe that it wasn’t in spite of being a woman, but because of it, that I could do anything. My mother taught me that doing difficult things despite being afraid is bravery. As a woman in leadership, I force myself to be brave on a daily basis. And that, my friends, is to be woman.

“If I have to, I can do anything. I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman”

Anna Hitchins, Director of Account Management, Publisher Development

Since becoming a working mom, I have realized the importance of work-life balance. I recently saw this billboard meme that said: “Twenty years from now, the only people who’ll remember if you worked late are your kids.” This quote really resonated with me as a working mother of 9 year old twin girls.

Rowena Taylor, VP, Publisher Partnerships, EMEA

I always find International women’s day to be a day of reflection, whether I intend it to be or not! This year alongside the fact that there are no more women in senior leadership in tech than there were in 2016, I am also struck by the continuing imbalance in the amount of unpaid support work women are expected to pick up. 

Women are still statistically more likely to be picking up the slack on domestic duties, life admin, childcare, and holding down full time jobs. 

With the added pressure of contributing to initiatives aimed at improving women’s chances of leadership roles such as coaching and mentoring programs, the scales are unfairly tipped. There is often significant value to these programs, not because women need to be fixed or made better for leadership but because who wouldn’t benefit from mentorship, coaching and training? 

I would like to see more Companies to properly recognise and reward the extra work done in this space or genuinely investing in trained professionals to roll out big projects. If a woman in your organisation has worked hard to deliver a program which is to the benefit of gender equality across the business, give her the credit she deserves. 

We also need to ensure men are visibly undertaking this support work of mentoring and coaching too. There is always the expectation that women will be involved in initiatives, so it’s a delight when men pick up the baton. 

As the programmatic ecosystem prepares for the deprecation of the third-party cookie, the proportion of campaigns run via CTV across Europe is set to increase substantially while brands and agencies alike lean more into curated media buys. 

This is according to a new research report published by ExchangeWire, in association with OpenX, that reveals trends in CTV and targeting for the European digital media industry.

We recently connected with Chad Hickey, CEO at Givsly, on teaming up with OpenX, why he founded Givsly, and the importance of brand values. Really happy to be chatting with you, Chad!

What book has had the biggest impact on you?

I read “The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*Ck” on vacation, and it was a key part of starting Givsly. The author says, “What are you willing to feel pain for?” is the true test of what you want in life. At the time, I was making a very comfortable salary as a CRO but felt unfulfilled on some level. 

I realized I was willing to “feel pain” by giving up that very comfortable salary to help create more responsible products for advertising and marketing. It was the best decision of my life because I found a way to use my skill set and help our industry be better. While the pain of not being able to afford certain things anymore is sometimes a struggle, it is worth it to follow my passion.

What inspired you to create Givsly?

When I was a CRO, my sales team would use give-back strategies with our clients to connect with them on a human level. Instead of always going to a fancy dinner, baseball game, etc., we would volunteer with our clients. It was a way for the company to show values while also connecting with our clients in business. It drove better ROI than any traditional way of doing business. I used this as inspiration and started Givsly to create turnkey ways that any company could easily take more responsible approaches like this.

How does Givsly help marketers incorporate purpose into their advertising strategies?

Givsly provides a way for marketers to incorporate purpose and responsibility into every step of the marketing funnel. Whether it is launching campaigns via our OpenX partnership through a Givsly Deal ID that gives back 5 percent of the gross media spend to nonprofits or utilizing our platform to replace spend on unwanted swag with nonprofit donations, Givsly has a solution to move people through the marketing funnel more quickly.

How does the partnership between OpenX and Givsly help support communities in need?

There are two primary ways: 1) Anytime you utilize a Givsly Impact PMP via OpenX, we will donate five percent back to a nonprofit of the brand’s or agency’s choice, and 2) we can also provide creative formats (Impact Creative) that drive support to communities in need when consumers give the ads more engagement.

This approach combines two strategies into one: The brand’s campaign performance increases while they showcase their values to consumers.

What does the buyer experience look like for someone setting up Impact PMPs with Givsly and OpenX?

The buyer experience should be pretty similar to the traditional way of buying a PMP via OpenX. Buyers simply need to set up a Givsly Impact PMP Deal ID so we can track the five percent that needs to be donated during the campaign. All targeting, creative, etc., can stay the same.

How does this work for advertising events outside traditional charitable moments?

We believe that brand values are not only important during Black History Month, Pride Month, or any other traditional moment. Brand values are something that lives in an organization every day of the year. 

Our partnership with OpenX has created PMPs that take traditional moments like March Madness, back to school, political, and more and provides a charitable element to programmatic buys that may not have historically had the ability to better our communities. With our partnership, you can make an impact every day of the year and with any campaign.

Can you walk us through how Givsly Good Advertising Solutions work?

The way it works is pretty simple. Anytime you are running campaigns with Givsly Impact PMPs or using our Impact Creative, there is a donation going to a cause important to the brand or agency. 

Givsly has direct relationships with more than 420 nonprofits who have given us consent to partner and be included in these campaigns. This allows us to make the process very turnkey for any brand wanting to implement our solutions in their campaign. Our tools automate this so brands and agencies can place campaigns the way they typically do without adding a lot of additional work.

What kind of engagement results does this solution drive?

The engagement definitely increases when brands are using our Impact Creative. For example, we see video completions increase up to 18 percent, CTV engagement increase up to nine percent, and brand recall be up to four times higher. 

This is a direct result of the fact that a majority of consumers now shop based on values alignment. We saw this front-and-center during Pride Month in 2023. Instead of that scaring brands, it should only reinforce the importance of brand values and making sure the approach is authentic.

What’s the added benefit of activating Impact PMPs on premium, TAG-certified inventory?

Impact PMPs allow you to achieve two goals in one solution. You can drive better performance if you are utilizing our Impact Creative, and you get to run any campaign, not just cause marketing, to drive positive impact back to causes important to your brand or agency. When that is paired with premium, transparent inventory, buyers are able to optimize their campaign results and measure against their KPIs with confidence. 

To learn more about Impact PMPs, download the one-sheet below.

Outcomes matter

We’re halfway through Black History Month, and I want to challenge my friends and colleagues across the marketing/advertising/tech landscape to be thoughtful and innovative about how we approach diversity and responsible media in general in our industry. 

As a Black employee, I think it’s all too common for adtech to get caught up in the semantics of making our industry more inclusive rather than the tangible steps of actually fostering inclusivity and equity. I frankly don’t care about the term “black list” or “white list,” or the lip service that a small portion of our industry provides once a year. I care about outcomes. 

What do I mean by outcomes? Representation at the executive level, a sense of inclusion and belonging in our companies, diversity in media and content creation, the recognition that no one person can speak for an entire demographic, and innovative solutions that allow brands/agencies and publishers to improve access to opportunities for communities of color and sectors of the population that are underrepresented in general. 

Starting somewhere meaningful

When many partners attempt to diversify their media-buying, they most often start with simple questions like, “What percentage of your company is diverse?” and “Do you have access to minority-owned media – if so, list below.” 

While this is a great starting point, it’s also a little bit lazy. We all know that any decent supply-side platform has access to almost all of the “diverse-owned media.” We also know that outside of Group Black and a small handful of organizations, the vetting of some of these classifications is suspect at best. 

The goal is not to highlight what’s wrong but how we can innovate together to be more impactful. I firmly believe that the lack of meaningful progress is  not because brands and agencies don’t want it; it’s because adtech is not as diverse as it could be and that most organizations are more concerned about “unlocking that cash flow” than they are about making a difference. 

Measurable impact

So how can we do more? One, keep purchasing minority-owned media. At the same time, look at the makeup of those organizations. Two, work with companies who are innovating to create measurable impact. 

To that end, OpenX has launched a new solution called Impact PMPs in partnership with Givsly. Through these Impact PMPs, 5 percent of gross media spend is directly contributed to the 501(c)(3) organizations, communities, and causes of the buyers choice. 

For Black History Month, Impact PMPs can help ensure equality of opportunity — while delivering quality media performance. Specifically, Givsly Impact PMPs allow people to support 501(c)(3) organizations like The Creative Ladder, founded by Dionna Dorsey, that are helping to diversify the creative business so that ad content, and media content has a more representative makeup. 

Is this a silver bullet? No. Is it a start to innovating and diversifying the media/tech space? Yes. And my favorite part of this program is that it’s not exclusive to a month or a specific cause. Through our partnership with Givsly, brands can donate 5 percent of their gross media spend to LGBTQ organizations, minority programs, programs that support women, sustainability programs, and so much more.


Take action today with one of OpenX’s Impact PMPs — powered by Givsly. Download the one-sheet here.

Andrew Digiseg

As a part of OpenX’s recent launch of its Cookieless Deal Library, Craig Golaszewski, Senior Director, Strategic Partnerships, spoke with Andrew Furst, Chief Commercial Officer at Digiseg. They covered industry topics from how IP segmenting works to the biggest misconceptions about cookie deprecation. Thanks for joining us, Andrew!

To kick things off, what did you want to be when you grew up? 

When I was in high school I was into graffiti, street art and collecting sneakers. I really liked the idea that you could imbue value on something ordinary if you created a brand, and applied it in creative ways. It could be a pair of sneakers, a concrete wall, or a soda can. That’s what drew me to advertising. My career in programmatic came about because I love learning and teaching, and there’s ALWAYS something to learn and to teach on this side of things.

If you could see one movie again for the first time, what would you choose? 

I cry every time I watch Coco. That movie’s the best.

What are the advantages of using household identifiers?

Household identifiers help advertisers cut away all of the audiences that wouldn’t qualify for their product. If you instead use niche intent signals for your prospecting, you risk paying too much to target too narrowly. Even with the intent signals, there’s still a chance the audience isn’t qualified to buy the product in the first place.

Prospecting should be broad enough to bring new audiences into your funnel, but they need to be qualified for your product. For example, you wouldn’t buy car insurance if you don’t have a car. You wouldn’t buy gardening supplies if you don’t have a garden. That’s the approach we take at Digiseg.

Walk us through the process of calculating, locating, and segmenting IP addresses.

To start, the most important thing is the word “calculate.” Digiseg data is all math. We don’t use personal data anywhere in our process.

It starts by calculating every possible IP address for a given country. We generate a list based on what we know from places like ARIN in the US or RIPE in the EU. The list of IPs even includes unused IP addresses. 

After making the list, we locate each IP address using a variety of probabilistic geo vendors. Finally, we match those IP locations with household characteristics from government statistics offices like the US Census or the ONS in the UK.

How is this approach different from using other identifiers?

Digiseg’s approach is different because it contains zero personal data. We’re not scraping, tracking, or storing IPs. We only know what segments are associated with a specific IP address. So we use a very stable identifier 100% probabilistically.

How does the Digiseg and OpenX partnership unlock unique value for buyers?

In a word, scale. Buyers need privacy-friendly audience data that works across all programmatic channels they’re buying, including CTV, audio, in-app, in-game, digital display, and video. For it to work in all of these environments, there needs to be lots of scale. Digiseg’s data gives buyers a powerful audience targeting tool to combine with premium cross-channel inventory from OpenX.

What’s the biggest misconception around the deprecation of the third-party cookie?

I think the biggest misconception is that cookies were one-to-one, super-precise trackers of consumer behavior.

How does measurement need to evolve in a post-cookie environment?

Part of the reason cookies are deprecating and regulators continue to have a close eye on adtech is because of consumer privacy concerns. Finding more persistent, deterministic identifiers to track individuals’ behavior seems to miss the point. Advertisers will need to become better at profiling their consented first-party audiences, identifying their core attributes, and reaching more people that match those attributes.

When it comes to attribution, it’s especially tempting right now to overinvest in retail media, social, or search because advertisers can get more last-touch attribution in their own respective platforms. I hope more of them focus on media mixed modeling and other more advanced attribution strategies. There’s nothing objectively wrong with those channels. They just account for fewer incremental conversions because they sit at the bottom of the funnel. But that’s nothing new, right? Look at the vast remarketing budgets of the 2010s. Same thing.

What are the advantages in working with an SSP with strong direct publisher relationships?

Getting closer to the publisher means a more efficient supply path. That gives you more scale and price efficiency, and a smaller carbon footprint. When it comes to your audience targeting, it gives you a better match-rate, meaning even more targeting precision and scale. The dream has always been premium inventory matched with the right audience. That’s what you can achieve with OpenX and Digiseg.

Coinciding with the launch of OpenX’s Attention Marketplace, we sat down with Hassan Babajane, SVP Commercial at TVision to discuss the role of attention as a future-proof solution in CTV. Thanks for joining us, Hassan!

If you could see one movie again for the first time, what would you choose?

This is an incredibly tough question and had me thinking for quite some time. However, I would love to see The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou again for the first time. It’s a beautiful film, has an amazing cast that delivers fantastic performances, and an incredible soundtrack.

How does TVision measure and report television viewer engagement?

TVision maintains the industry’s largest opt-in, privacy-safe, CTV viewing panel. Our panel is census-backed and demographically representative. Through a combination of advanced computer vision technology and ACR, we measure every second of television viewing at the person-level across hundreds of apps and thousands of programs. We report attention, co-viewing, viewability and more enabling the media ecosystem to better understand the value of inventory. 

TVision occupies a unique space with its person-level measurement & viewer attention for CTV. Can you tell us more about that?

TVision is the only company measuring person-level CTV attention at scale. Smart TVs and device manufacturers provide huge amounts of data on a household level.  While device-level data may be sufficient for digital measurement, TV viewing is a different experience – everyone in a household watches the same TV at different times, and sometimes together. TVision goes beyond subscriber data and head of household information to identify who is paying attention to what programming, on which app, and at what time of day. This level of detail helps DSPs, SSPs, advertisers, and media companies better identify audiences, better value inventory, and avoid wasteful, low-attention inventory.

How does that translate into actionable media insights?

Our data enables the entire media ecosystem to better value inventory. Media sellers and exchanges are able to position inventory based on high, medium or low attention and agencies, advertisers and media buyers can then optimize their budgets to secure inventory that delivers the greatest impact.  

How does the TVision and OpenX partnership help deliver meaningful returns on CTV investments?

CTV represents one of the greatest opportunities for all buyers. By combining TVision attention data with the scale and signal that OpenX offers, our partnership will provide buyers an efficient solution to find the right inventory in an ever-expanding ecosystem.

Let’s talk more about the role of attention in CTV – what results are buyers seeing?

Attention is helping buyers understand the quality of their media investments. Measurement in CTV can be complicated, and leveraging attention metrics in CTV helps buyers understand where their investments are most likely to drive outcomes vs the value of an impression. For example, viewers pay the most attention to CTV during primetime, and less attention overnight. However, a large amount of ad inventory is priced the same no matter where or when it airs. 

What are the benefits of leveraging supply-side targeting combined with the ability to identify top-performing CTV apps for attention?

When SSPs like OpenX offer attention-based targeting they are delivering higher value opportunities to buyers. This improves campaign performance without increasing costs for advertisers. There is less waste in the process as well, with fewer ads delivered to unengaged audiences.


To learn more about this partnership or OpenX’s Attention Marketplace, download the one-sheet below or check out the Cookieless Deal Library.

Download the Attention Marketplace one-sheet:

Simplifying buyers’ transition to cookieless targeting

As the advertising industry prepares to face the biggest shift in the history of programmatic, marketers are increasingly concerned about signal loss, and buyers aren’t equipped with a seamless way to test cookieless offerings within existing workflows.

In order to determine which solutions perform best at scale, we’re collectively going to need to test, learn, and pivot quickly in this new landscape. With OpenX’s new Cookieless Deal Library, buyers can select from the universe of cookieless deal IDs and start testing solutions today.

Programmatic’s first supply-side Cookieless Deal Library

Building on the recent launch of ConteX, OpenX’s contextual marketplace, The Cookieless Deal Library is OpenX’s newest advancement in its suite of cookieless targeting solutions. 

The Cookieless Deal Library allows advertisers to easily test and scale campaigns against the full universe of cookieless targeting options and activate in their DSP of choice.

This innovation streamlines the process of testing new cookieless solutions, enabling buyers to maintain existing workflows and continue to use their platforms of choice. This means it’s easy for buyers to immediately start testing multiple solutions, compare results, and set new benchmarks – all without incremental contracts or negotiations.

Powerful Data Partners

This new DSP-agnostic solution will allow buyers to easily access more than 1,000 pre-built deal IDs from a full range of cookieless tactics, which will include:

OpenX’s Cookieless Deal Library marks the first time that Google Privacy Sandbox Topics segments will be made available for buyers to target in any DSP, including those that aren’t currently supporting that technology.

Empowering advertisers to future-proof their media investments

With this new library, buyers can easily find and activate deals from OpenX’s robust ecosystem of dozens of data partners and targeting solutions that don’t rely on third-party cookies for matching or activation. This is an important step in cookieless innovation, with future innovations including enhanced forecasting tools and new off-the-shelf cookieless audiences.

The Cookieless Deal Library is made possible by OpenX’s unique tech capabilities. Leveraging our ID graph that translates multiple IDs in real-time, we built signal-agnostic activation capabilities that enable us to activate durable IDs in the bidsteam, ConteX for direct contextual integrations, and a platform that enables us to manage and activate partner data at scale.

To activate today, please reach out directly or click here.

The 2024 election season is upon us, and buyers are looking to gain an advantage with improved data-driven audience targeting and political-approved inventory solutions.

OpenX’s auction packages leverage supply-side targeting to enable buyers to granularly target voters across formats at scale. Buyers can quickly and easily activate turnkey deals via pre-built or customized deal IDs, across premium and direct CTV, display, and mobile inventory.

How it works

Supply-side targeting will be new to most advertisers this political season. It works by applying data directly within the bidstream, bringing campaigns closer to the supply through direct SSP-publisher integrations.

More publisher control means access to high-quality inventory at scale

OpenX delivers access to political-approved, premium inventory at scale across video, display, and CTV through our direct publisher relationships and proprietary publisher control tools.

Packages can be customized according to campaign goals and activated against target audiences using first-party data, our data partners, or via highly curated inventory targeting.

With OpenX’s political supply-side targeting, buyers can access:

Interested in getting your political deal IDs set up today?  Download the one-sheet below.

Today’s political landscape is passionate, divided, and vocal, and some SSPs have stopped taking political dollars — but with a well-developed creative review tool and a sophisticated supply-side targeting strategy, publishers don’t have to miss out on this valuable ad spend. 

The magnitude of political spend

In 2020, a cycle that included a presidential election, $9 billion was spent on political ads in the US, and there was only a slight drop to $8.9 billion during the 2022 midterm elections. AdImpact estimates that the 2024 political cycle will see the total ad spend increase to $10.2 billion.

The organization detailed the spending breakdown by platform as well, with digital seeing $1 billion in political spending in 2022, a number that is expected to rise to $1.1 billion in 2024. When It comes to CTV, AdImpact expects that platform to see $1.3 billion in spending during the 2024 cycle.

If these numbers feel tremendous, it’s because they are.

Alleviate uncertainty and expand revenue

As the only SSP that is both TAG Certified for Transparency and is facilitating political campaigns, OpenX has developed advanced creative review tools that empower publishers to streamline the vetting of individual creative, giving them ultimate control over their brand and their environment.

This new creative review tool is incremental to OpenX’s already-existing brand safety guidelines and serves as an additional level of scrutiny, acting as a safeguard for publishers from any types of political creative they don’t want appearing alongside their content.

Enhanced audience segmentation through insightful data is key when it comes to targeted political messaging, and it’s something OpenX has been advancing for more than a decade to serve buyers. Through continued partnership and development with publishers to ensure that their content is monetized safely, we can facilitate confident participation in this massive advertising market segment. 

With the right tools, strategies, and protections in place, willing publishers can capture their share of the lucrative opportunity that lies ahead in 2024 and beyond. 

In recognition of OpenX’s practices, benefits and rewards, and competitive compensation, OpenX has been named one of Built In’s Best Places To Work 2024 in five major lists. Impressively, OpenX earned at least one award for each of the US cities in which we operate an office.

Open to all companies in the US, Built In’s Best Places To Work 2024 Awards recognizes the best companies for tech professionals based on compensation packages, total rewards, and culture programs. 

Best Places to Work winners are determined using a proprietary Built In algorithm that assesses both benefits/rewards and salaries offered by a company. Each of these categories represent 50 percent of a company’s assessment. OpenX received recognition for its four-day holiday weekends and unlimited PTO; 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision; 401(k) matching, maternal and paternal leave; flexible work locations; and compensation packages. To learn more about working at OpenX or to view open roles, visit www.openx.com/careers.

As a part of OpenX’s ongoing Women in Tech series, we recently hosted Sophie Coleman, VP of Go To Market at The Trade Desk in our New York office for a live conversation ranging from learning how to lead to developing confidence, and beyond. Read on for key takeaways from the session.

You have to spend time being bad at leadership to learn to be good at it.

One of the dirty secrets of leadership is that you have to spend time being bad at it to learn to be good at it. The job of someone in leadership is to get roadblocks out of the way and let people be their brilliant selves. The things that you did as an individual contributor are not the same things that are going to make you successful as a leader. As a leader, a lot of people’s days are influenced by how I walk up to a situation. It’s OK to fake it til you make it, but do it with humility. 

I also think when it comes to leadership roles there’s this inclination to say, “Once I get more senior, I won’t feel imposter syndrome or anxiety anymore,” but I don’t think there’s a connection there. You have to be confident enough in leadership to ask a bunch of questions. Nobody knows everything. If someone tells you they know everything, they’re full of it. Particularly in this industry, everybody is learning all the time. 

Get comfortable with ambiguity.

When it comes to adtech, I think it’s really tempting to think, “I’ve got to learn it all.” Part of the issue is by the time you’ve learned it all, most of it has changed – there’s so much in flux at all times. The people who succeed are the people who get comfortable with some measure of gray. You don’t have to love ambiguity, but you do have to get comfortable with it. 

There’s still a gender bias in tech.

When you go to any adtech event and look at the line for the men’s room and the line for the women’s room, it’s immediately apparent that gender bias still exists, but it’s not specific to adtech. I think there are a lot of opportunities for women in sales, but in a lot of other areas, the more senior you get, the more sparse it appears. 

Women are also still getting paid 80 cents on the dollar. If you do the math, , in certain jobs that means giving up close to $1 million in compensation over the course of a career. That’s life-changing money. Men negotiate at every much more frequently – every job offer, every annual raise, every achievement. I think about the million dollars and force myself to negotiate every time now, too. 

Stop clearing the plates.

I had a job where we would have catered lunch in the conference room for meetings, and when everyone was done, they would get up and leave their plates. I’m a fixer, so I would pick up the plates. My boss at the time pulled me aside and told me to stop clearing the plates. I said, “Oh, no. I don’t mind,” and he responded, “but the other women in the room do.”

Be deliberate about boundaries.

I spent a lot of time waiting for other people to set work-life balance for me, and that never happened. And then when I set that boundary, I thought something terrible would happen, but no one cared. Everyone just moved on.

I’m much more deliberate about those boundaries now. It used to be that I didn’t have the boundary to eat dinner with my kids, but I do now. If I have to get on the train to be home for dinner, you can set a meeting with me then, but know that it will be via phone. You have to do this yourself. Even the best-meaning boss in the world won’t know enough about your circumstances to set those boundaries for you.

The relationship with your direct manager is crucial. 

Every decision we make in our careers feels like “this is the decision,” but the reality is that’s not the way your career works. However, the relationship with your direct manager is crucial. Choosing the people I work for has been really important. I’ve had perfect jobs working for the wrong people, and it doesn’t work out. 

Mentorship is most effective when it’s someone you connect with.

There’s a difference between mentorship and sponsorship, and there’s a place for each. Mentorship is most effective when it’s someone you connect with. People have been so generous with me, and I now realize that mentorship helps people on both sides. Whenever I’m talking with someone I’m mentoring, I learn something about myself or a problem I wasn’t thinking about in that way, or advice I’m not following myself until I said it out loud.

You’re good at your job because you’re a human.

In adtech, we’re trying to help our clients navigate through change all the time. It’s really hard to do that without deep relationships, and the same is true for your colleagues. What feels like silly or small gestures go such a long way. I’ll sometimes send flowers or something if I know someone’s having a really tough day. All of human interaction is interpretation, and you don’t get a lot of those cues virtually.

What we see as boxes on the screen are human beings working with human beings. I was actually disappointed when they introduced blurring your background in Zoom. Seeing someone’s photos or artwork was something that made it feel really real. It was a way to connect beyond just the work and make a personal connection with people, which makes everything go easier. You’re good at your job because you’re a human.