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Why Button’s New CRO Sees Retail Media As A Revenue Lifeline - adtechsolutions

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Why Button’s New CRO Sees Retail Media As A Revenue Lifeline


Lauren Newman is well aware of the challenges facing news publishers trying to get their fair share of the digital performance marketing pie.

She worked her way through selling famous pubs like Time Out, Conde Nast, Reader’s Digest, Time Inc. and Meredith, and has spent the past two and a half years as EVP of Media and Business at Red Ventures.

On Thursday, Newman announced a new role as CRO of Button, a deep-link and commerce marketing startup that offers technology to optimize mobile purchases.

Although times are tough for news publishers and digital media in general, she told AdExchanger, there is real opportunity for those who can find a way to capitalize on commerce-focused marketing.

From paper to SaaS

Button isn’t Newman’s first foray into the software side of the publishing business.

During her tenure at Meredith in 2018 as President of Beauty, she became interested in the performance marketing side of the business. The following year, she took a job as EVP of Revenue at Skimlinks, a major affiliate marketing network that was shortly thereafter acquired by Connexity. (Connexity was later bought by Taboola in 2021).

Newman joins Button from Red Ventures, which runs a portfolio of media and mar-tech publishers including The Points Guy, Best Colleges, Lonely Planet travel guides and, until recently, CNET. Red Ventures sold to CNET Ziff Davis at the end of last year.

Before the sale, however, Newman worked with CNET to partner with Best Buy, which integrated its product reviews and other content with Best Buy’s media and advertising platform.

When she learned that Button was planning to start offering something similar for its content creation and publishing products, she decided to join and lead the sales effort.

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Traditional publishers and newer online content creators are struggling to capitalize on the revenue opportunities in commercial marketing, Newman said.

CNET and Best Buy have formed a unique partnership to monetize CNET’s obvious value as one of the de facto sources of product reviews for gaming hardware and electronics. But this type of deal takes months to create and accounting teams to manage. It’s not feasible for smaller publishers or creators, or even larger news companies trying to scale with retailers one at a time.

That means an intermediary with a network of retailers and an e-commerce website or app can bring a lot of value to the sell-side, Newman said.

Creating value

Online content creators face the same problem as more established publishers.

“There are individual creators that are just as important and high-converting as traditional publishers,” Newman said.

Although Button doesn’t have its own product for home builders, the company started the year by launching an integration with Linktree.

The “retail media installation” is still in the process of being installed, Newman said.

On the other side of Button’s marketplace are actual retailers and malls like Sam’s Club, Expedia, Uber Eats, and Etsy. One commonality among these very different types of companies is that each is aggressively building its own data-driven ad platform business.

But integration across these networks is the whole point, as Newman put it.

Publishers and individual content creators with an engaged readership or fan base know they move the dial for retailers and brands with products to sell.

The opportunity with retail media, she says, is to “provide more revenue recognition within the channel that might not otherwise be seen by the retailer or manufacturer.”



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