Born: Iowa, USA
Worked in: Chicago, Illinois, USA with extensive travel in the US and worldwide
Tracey Scheppach currently serves in a dual role, where she splits her time between Starcom MediaVest Group’s Advanced Media Center of Excellence (SMGx) and VivaKi, where she oversees the entity’s unique research initiative The Pool, which aims to find the most optimal ad formats across emerging media.
In her role at SMGx, she champions smarter ways for clients to leverage emerging media
contact points. She is also an advocate for further advancing interactive television and
addressable advertising, a field in which she has led many research initiatives.
From her research in the first two lanes of The Pool, Tracey has helped identify a winning
ad model called the ASq that is being built and operationalized for the industry-at-large.
Helping her in this large undertaking is an industry task force called the Rising Tide Co-op, which includes tech companies such as Panache, TidalTV, Visible Measures, VINDICO and, of course, VivaKi.
The amount of work this one woman has done to advance standardization of online
video, promote addressable advertising as the future of TV, and obtain more accurate data
and metrics for emerging media is astounding.
What role does innovation play in his marketing strategy today? The world we
live in is one of constant innovation, with online video, DVRs, VOD, mobile media and video sites like YouTube and Hulu allowing consumers to access information however and whenever they want. And that's just the beginning. As video technology continues to develop, Tracey’s job is not only to understand it all, but to grasp how these changes affect consumers' behavior and responses to advertising- and figure out how marketers can best adapt to these new equations.
Her role, which was created in June 2009, makes Tracey responsible for all strategic and operational oversight of SMG's Advanced Media Center of Excellence and charges her with determining best practices and standards for emerging video technologies. She also helps invest clients' advertising dollars across cutting edge video contact points such as addressable advertising, online video, DVRs, VOD, IPTV, interactive TV, mobile video, second-by-second set-top box measurement and more.
Name an innovative idea or business solution for which you are most proud. Tracey is one of the founders of the VivaKi program known as The Pool, a testing initiative built on the collaborative participation of a select group of clients, content providers and tech companies—all of whom are “pooling” insights and resources in pursuit of future engagement models while still in the
development stage. The goal of this research and development initiative is to gain insights into emerging forms of media and create industry standards for new advertising models.
The Pool’s first “lane” of study named ASq® the winning online video ad format. This scalable, new
online video ad format could potentially change the economics of the category to provide higher rates for advertisers and greater engagement for consumers. Tracey believes that the ad formats now used are not properly monetizing the value of the content.
With ASq®, advertisers pay when their ad is selected, resulting in publishers getting a higher ad rate for that selection. Consumers get to pre-select the categories of ad messaging they prefer—movies, auto, retail, fashion, etc.—rather than being targeting with random ads.
Any other interesting aspects to your international background? Tracey worked with Wink, Inc., a pioneer in the interactive television industry, where she helped to create branding campaigns with 60 advertisers – including Procter & Gamble – on over 100 brands across 28 U.S. networks.
She oversaw global advertising strategy and research as the Monsanto Company’s marketing director. There, she developed and implemented communications strategies to secure global public acceptance of biotechnology. Tracey also served as Monsanto's brand manager for Equal and NutraSweet, helping earn a Clio Award for Equal's 1998 “Scream” execution.
Any internationalist trivia? Tracey graduated from the University of Colorado with a B.S. in finance and accounting and became a licensed CPA. That seems like a long time ago given her achievements in marketing and media. Today she also serves as a member of the American Association of Advertising Agencies Digital Video Innovation committee, Google TV's Measurement Advisory Board and Invidi’s Advisory Board.
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