On The Leaders' Lounge with Colin Barnard
Enjoy the moment and your time in a role, but also know when you have finished adding value. When you feel like you are treading water, pass the role onto the next person who can bring fresh ideas and eyes to the position to help the business grow.
Colin Barnard is Managing Director, ANZ at Criteo, the advertising platform for the open internet.
A highly accomplished marketing technology professional, Colin is a Google alumni who is passionate about helping businesses unlock the power of technology to make their marketing not just more targeted and efficient but also more relevant and accountable.
What does your organisation do?
Criteo is the world’s leading Commerce Media Platform, helping brands, agencies and retailers activate their data and optimise their sales, marketing goals and digital advertising returns. Currently we help over 20,000 advertisers and 5,000 publishers with our expertise and platform. As the future of advertising relies on companies activating first-party data to build long-lasting relationships with consumers, we are proud to be building our First-Party Media Network to assist marketers and publishers in enriching, growing and monetising their first-party data for a scalable path forward in the upcoming cookieless era.
What excites you most about your current role?
I love that Criteo is big enough to be a global player and make a large impact in the advertising industry but small enough to be able to have open conversations with the CEO about feedback and adaptations for the Australian market. This is highlighted by changes such as the huge industry shift brought about from iOS and Chrome privacy changes, all the way to the big shift of ad dollars towards Retail Media where Criteo has a global platform to help Aussie businesses compete with Amazon. All those challenges and opportunities make life and work so interesting and fun.
You've had quite a remarkable career to date at the intersection of digital media and technology, what's helped you get there?
Thank you – I put it down to a combination of luck, timing, passion and the inspirational people I’ve worked for, worked alongside and who have worked for me. There have also been a huge number of intelligent customers who have taught me about their business and invited me to help them solve big problems. I’ve learned so much along the way, I genuinely feel honoured to be let in on the inside.
What's the best piece of career advice you ever received?
Enjoy the moment and your time in a role, but also know when you have finished adding value. When you feel like you are treading water, pass the role onto the next person who can bring fresh ideas and eyes to the position to help the business grow – I have found 3-4 years in any role tends to be the sweet spot. Then, look to the next challenge, get out of your comfort zone and make an impact somewhere new.
Define ‘media’:
Media is a place to convey a message. In our world, it is the environment for a business to promote its products and messages but also for publishers or those businesses to make money from the eyeballs generated from their substantial investments.
What skills and/or knowledge will be necessary for future industry leaders?
Put simply, the ability to adapt. The world of advertising is constantly changing, and you need to be able to assess why you are (or aren’t) successful, plan for the future and invest in it. Pivot on campaigns that aren’t working, explore new technologies and take risks – this is how you will thrive in the industry. It is incredible to see the huge differences between the amazing companies who turn out to be successful and those that are living on past glories and with teams that aren’t empowered to make the changes needed.
And finally, how will digital media evolve over the next 10 years? What can we look forward to?
It is all about being relevant. AI will be key with personalised but slick-looking, native creative that has a high level of automation; however, they will only appear at the right time and in the right place. It will be important to integrate relevant advertising into the fabric of what consumers are looking at, whether that is online or in apps. Retail Media will also be a large part of that as brands look to be in front of the most relevant consumers at the critical moment of truth. There is almost no better environment for a TV brand to advertise than on the website of an electronics retailer. Expect to see this more and more in years to come.
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