Ad-tech vets start media company

A new media-slash-marketing-research company is taking a stab at demystifying the wild, wild world of ad tech.

Launched on Monday, Marketecture—which isn’t a bad name for an industry that gave birth to companies like Choozle and Taboola—was created by Ari Paparo, former co-founder and CEO of ad-tech firm Beeswax, whose resume includes stints at Google, Nielsen, and AppNexus.

The pitch: Paparo and his co-founders—media consultant and founder of Shields Strategic Consulting, Mike Shields; a mobile advertising analyst who runs Mobile Dev Memo, Eric Suefert; and former AdExchanger Executive Editor Zach Rodgers—will each take turns grilling separate ad-tech vendors, breaking down their offerings and releasing the findings as both a podcast and a video.

The point is to replace wasteful and what Paparo believes to be costly ice-breaking, get-to-know-you meetings between agencies, brands, and the Lumascape.

So far, the site lists interviews with executives at Magnite, LiveRamp, Innovid, and Habu.

Ad tech is “complex, and the vendors see an advantage to not speaking plainly…They get opportunities they maybe aren’t the best solution for,” Paparo told Marketing Brew. “Replacing that with a subscription that’s a couple hundred dollars a year seems like a no-brainer.”

He also said that the co-founders’ reputation in the industry has helped them land the interviews already posted on their site.

• A monthly subscription is $29.99, but readers can purchase podcasts and videos à la carte for $75. New content will drop twice a week. Shorter, edited videos and podcasts will be available on the site for free.
• He didn’t provide any specific figures on subscription goals or expectations.
• Marketecture doesn’t yet have a sales team, nor has it sold any corporate sponsorships or advertising.

Zoom out: Marketecture isn’t aiming to break news, but to provide an alternative to the vendor-review industry—publishers like G2.com, or market research firms like Gartner and Forrester—which are primarily used as lead generators.

“Journalists cover things when they’re exciting, when there’s news, and that’s very helpful, but it’s not on the schedule that a buyer needs,” said Paparo. “A buyer needs to know right now, ‘I’m looking at these five vendors, and I want to understand everything about these five vendors.’”—RB