We All Have a Strong Part to Play

January 7, 2021 | by Dave Hills, CEO at Spectrum Media Services

I think it goes without saying that what happened at the Capitol yesterday was shocking and the actions reprehensible. Four of our fellow citizens died and our most visible monument to our democracy was attacked from within. I’ll leave it to our competent public officials and career folks to uphold the constitution and our laws.

We can all agree that our industry is part of what brought on yesterday and I’ll submit we all own, as operators, to do our part by not supporting content that encourages and gives harbor to what happened yesterday. I’ve learned over the years two things: (1) America is a journey and not a destination and (2) we all play a part in making that journey closely resemble what our founders had in mind. They didn’t have yesterday in mind.

What can we as CEO’s and team members do to support our union? We have to redouble our efforts to isolate and I think starve content that is incendiary as its only purpose. When we put money on that content we are aiding those groups who would threaten our way of life.

It’s easy enough to do. On the spend side, taking money from organizations which clearly promoted yesterday and similar activities is just plain wrong. On the buy side, we all have allowed lists of sites/terms and we should all be examining those very carefully and on an ongoing basis.

We all own what happened yesterday and our industry, like it or not, has a strong hand to play. We owe it to ourselves, families and our way of life to do our part.

We at Spectrum recommit to our principles of doing business and doing business the right way within the advertising industry. Please join us.

A Moment of Reflection on 21 Great People

December 29, 2020 | by Dave Hills, CEO at Spectrum Media Services

2020 has been a year of constant and unrelenting tests of our varied infrastructure as a society, as well as our ability to see a positive path going forward into 2021 as individuals. Unfortunately, we know there’s no switch that gets flipped at midnight on December 31st. Our world, literally and figuratively, will have the same urgent problems on January 1st, 2021, as they do on the last day of 2020. Therefore, we don’t get a break and we’re expected to keep going.

So what changes in 2021? We certainly hope COVID-19 is managed via vaccines and personal behavior. We also hope managing COVID effectively will allow millions of people to return to their jobs and their productive lives. Finally, we hope to see life return to normal while we leverage what we learned in 2020, so that the new normal includes vigilance against disease that is too easily spread, like COVID or other diseases, in the future.

What I observed in 2020 in our company gives me great confidence in what to expect from us in 2021, and the benefits we'll pass along to our customers and partners, too. We’re a small company, as you all know, and being a small company at the outset of COVID earlier this year was not something to aspire to. We saw the life and death nature of where we were as a company in March. A lesser group of people would have been overcome with the gravity of the situation professionally and personally.

But not my team. We realized we had something of value which we’ve spoken about all year and you’ll see more from us early next year and throughout all of 2021. I think more importantly we realized how dependent we were on each other and how much we had to pull together to protect and grow our company, which we did.

What I’ve learned over the decades of my career is how much one individual can do in any situation if they put their mind to it. When you’re able to put together a team of those single minded people in one company, the impact is really incredible. With Spectrum I caught a huge break with the team, investors and advisors we have. To a person they performed and I was glad to be in this foxhole with them.

As noisy as things got throughout the year this team stayed focused, driven and effective. They also stayed “human” never ignoring what was going on around them, even while they created innovation upon innovation in our platform. It was a study and lesson in discipline and we’re ready for 2021 as a company and as people.

You’ll hear from us a fair bit in 2021 and we think you’ll like what we’ve developed and are deploying through our great partner network. As you hear about what we’ve accomplished you’ll also learn more about the people who I’m speaking about. Before we set out on our next journey I wanted to take a moment to thank Ali, Liz, Tanya, Bonnie, Carolynn, Kelsey, Andy, Mike, Michael, Pete, Paul, Bob, Ken, Huck, Ezra, Warren, Seth, Derrick, Jonathan, Jon and Tiffany. Pros and humans to a person and I’m proud to be associated with them.

Thank you again to our customers, partners, team, advisors, and investors. We look forward to a successful and healthy 2021!

Learn more about us here.

Audience Intelligence Report: Gaming

Spectrum’s Audience Intelligence Report shows marketers other topics their ideal clients are reading/watching online. Using an analytic driven approach which leverages content consumption comp indexes, like found in Nielsen reports, we applied our Audience Intelligence Report to gaming content.

Our findings indicate that compared to other users online, people reading about video games & gaming are more likely to consume content around the following topics: Movies & TV, Music News, Comic Books, Cell Phones, Mobile Apps, Internet Service, Laptops & Computers, and Breweries & Beers.

Based on this observed content consumption behavior, we recommend adding these segments to an advertising campaign that is reaching people who are shopping for video games. This gives marketers an opportunity to connect with ideal customers outside of endemic content we know they are interested in. Our custom targeting segments can be activated against pages, MAIDs, or UIDs, maximizing reach, scale, and frequency in your desired tactics. Contact us to learn more about using Spectrum to achieve your advertising goals by reaching gamers through the content they read and watch online.

Looking for other ways to reach gamers? Check out this post – Content Consumption Trends: Gaming