When we launched ThinkMedium early this year, we decided to focus on three pillars – privacy and data, safety, and efficiency – and on how we could engage advertising and media clients with pragmatic ideas to foster their “medium-term” success.

Our focus matches our collective domain expertise and interests but more importantly represents where we saw the greatest need for guidance and support, given market dynamics, industry shifts, and regulatory evolution. Moreover, privacy, safety, and efficiency are key ingredients in ensuring a healthy ads and media ecosystem – which aligns with our mission.

Since ramping up in February, we’re gratified to have validated our focus areas by executing projects with a half dozen clients – most recently, we were excited to be selected by 4A’s and CIMM for a TV-related study – and developing a robust pipeline of prospective clients, a curated list of potential vendor partnerships, relationships with experts who can complement and scale our team’s core capabilities, and a refined sense of client fit for our services. It’s been a great start and we thought we’d share some of our learnings…

MISSION VALIDATION
We quickly found that our pillars of privacy, safety, and efficiency (the latter inclusive of ecological sustainability) resonated with the overwhelming majority of leaders and companies we pursued. Further, we found that these topics often informed both immediate needs and ongoing projects, such as providing timely input to guide roadmaps, informing strategic board presentations and event plans, recommending partners and potential hires, and refining broader plans through research of the latest industry technologies, trends, and standards.

Our resulting initial client portfolio has been an exciting mix: a major media and advertising platform, both public and private ad tech companies, and industry organizations. We found every customer to be leaned in, with great access to team members and internal resources, which facilitated logistics, insights, and high-quality deliverables. We’re thrilled and thankful to have had the opportunity to work with each client on such interesting projects.

HOT TOPICS AND PROJECTS
Our initial engagements have spanned various aspects of our services and have generally related to the evolving media and advertising landscape. Work to date includes:

• Formulating durable data monetization, product roadmap, and partnership guidance, in light of privacy and technology evolution
• Providing brand safety best practices education in the context of standards and verification solutions, and developing specific plans with the client’s team
• Increasing business durability by guiding a client on privacy-enhancing technologies and related solutions
• Creating product marketing materials for a client to drive a market-leading narrative and unlock revenue
• Facilitating the validation of a potential new privacy compliance-oriented product offering
• Informing a client’s efforts to define and pursue privacy-related standards and integrate them into their products

Organizations we’ve engaged with were keenly aware of the pressing need to continuously adapt to new regulations, technologies, consumer sentiment, etc. to sustain their businesses in the short, medium, and long terms – but they needed a range of help, from getting an expert 3rd-party opinion, to pressure-testing ideas and identifying stakeholders for input and validation. We’re truly pleased to have had the opportunity to inform vital business imperatives, and our expert team is looking forward to more exciting projects on the horizon.

DON’T TAKE OUR WORD ;)
We’re proud of the work we’ve done together so far, but our value is defined by our clients’ feedback – which is why we’re so pleased and grateful to hear these words:

• “The ThinkMedium team comprehensively assessed our data assets and market position and made specific product and partnership recommendations that will help us set in motion both core product enhancements and innovative plans.”
  –CEO, leading measurement platform
• “ThinkMedium worked as an extension of our team to level-set on industry shifts and inform our brand safety and privacy tech strategies. Their expertise and experience were instrumental in crafting and refining actionable product plans, industry engagements, and marketing narratives for this year and next.”
  –VP, Monetization Go-to-Market, social media platform
• “We engaged ThinkMedium to support the evaluation of a potential new product offering and were thrilled with the industry knowledge, product feedback, and relevant introductions the team provided.”
  –Lead Product Manager, ad security/quality platform 
• “The privacy and data knowledge and industry experience of the team has been truly valuable in informing our product strategy and key new projects this year.”
  –VP, Innovation, advertising services provider

HOW CAN WE HELP YOU?
Do you have a project you would like to discuss? Please get in touch with us. 

Or check out our new site and read more about our services, our team, and our perspectives. 

And lastly, if you have any feedback or suggestions on our focus areas, services, or anything else, please let us know in the comments or via email. We’re always learning…