MediAnswers, known for its development of products and processes for individuals on the “sell side” of the broadcast media business, has just expanded its expertise on the “buy side” of the media business by hiring a new VP/Agency Solutions.
Ron Levy takes the position at the global workflow optimization firm as a 30-year industry veteran, mainly in the agency space.
Levy’s hire is designed to help MediAnswers “bridge the often-disparate worlds of advertising management and media delivery to consumers,” the company says.
MediAnswers’ efforts include those tied to the emerging OBID open binding standardization effort to strengthen multiplatform audience measurement. With the Levy appointment, MediAnswers says it now has “the necessary depth to tackle the space where ad agencies and media organizations intersect.”
MediAnswers President/CEO Chris Lennon commented, “Technology solutions have not advanced to the stage where efficient communications have been established between these two worlds. It’s essential that this gap be closed, as the fragmentation caused by multiplatform content distribution creates dramatically higher transaction volumes that are increasingly difficult to manage.”
He further explains that “while some programmatic systems have attempted to bridge this divide, they have typically evolved from either the agency or media outlet viewpoint, focusing primarily on the pain points of that particular business aspect. The addition of Levy’s agency perspective and expertise will be invaluable as MediAnswers strengthens the two-way interaction between systems and people on both sides of ad transactions.”
As a SVP and partner of Datatech – acquired by MediaBank and then merged to become Mediaocean – Levy played a lead role in the creation of what is known today as Mediaocean OX Network, among the largest dollar-volume media buying systems in the United States. He also held executive leadership roles at Rentrak (now comScore) and Broadway Systems (now Sintec), and in his own consulting practice he has secured top-tier clients in the agency, system vendor, media audit and data analysis spaces.
“The rise of programmatic buying and selling is opening up a lot of possibilities, and it’s time to move beyond exchanging simple transactions to a unified experience where buyers and sellers can efficiently work off the same data in the same place,” said Levy. “I’m excited to join this talented team in working towards this goal.”
Formed in 2013 by Lennon – a respected visionary known as the ‘father’ of the widely-used Broadcast eXchange Format (BXF) standard – MediAnswers offers services in the areas of media systems integration, standards leadership, custom software development and education, as well as market, product, and sales development.
