Tubular Labs, the social media measurement company, named Stephen DiMarco chief strategy officer.
DiMarco, who had been chief digital at Kantar, will look to broaden Tubular’s product offering, first looking at giving media buyers and brands better data for planning social media campaigns, and then moving into other digital media, including over-the-top video.
He joins Tubular three months after Scott Ernst was appointed CEO. Ernst and DiMarco founded Compete, which analyzed the web pages consumers visited for brands and agencies, and was acquired by Kantar.
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“Stephen is a recognized leader in media measurement with a deep understanding of the dramatic shift in consumer mindsets and what it means for media companies, agencies and brands,” said Scott Ernst, CEO at Tubular Labs. “I’m excited for Stephen to lead our product innovation with a focus on bringing together media buyers and sellers as Tubular sets its sights on becoming the content and audience ratings authority that empowers confident investments in social video programming and advertising.”
Tubular delivers audience and time-based engagement metrics for social video that tell publishers how many people watched social content.
At Kantar, DiMarco helped build a campaign effectiveness business, creating tools for measuring the effectiveness of non-linear ad campaigns. He will bring that expertise to Tubular.
“This is a new age digital measurement company that has a lot of legs and lots of growth ahead of it,” DiMarco told Broadcasting+Cable
With linear TV ratings falling, companies are investing more in social content. “Comscore and Nielsen are duking it out, and here’s Tubular, which is slightly under the radar right now, but poised to really dominate the social video space, both on the intelligence and the ratings side,” DiMarco said.
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He plans to use Tubular’s platform to go beyond social video. “We need to nail social media first,” he said. Buyers need better measurement tools so that more ad dollars can flow into social media. “The social video market is big enough, but I know that our aspirations are larger than social media,” he said.
In a similar vein, media buyers are looking for better measurement of OTT, so that they can plan campaigns, understand their reach and the outcomes resulting from those investments,” he said.
Social video and other forms of video are closely intertwined these days and Tubular’s platform already has the ability to ingest and analyze data from all of the over-the-top video platforms. “If we wanted to, we could go in that direction without necessarily needing their consent,” DiMarco said. “Not that we would do that. We always like to have platforms consent before we start measuring them and reporting out on them.”
Tubular’s board has an aggressive 18-month plan for rolling out new measurement products. “By the end of next year, Tubular will be singularly on the map and in the conversation with Comscore and Nielsen, he said.
DiMarco began his career in marketing in cable’s early day at Comedy Central and was at FX Networks when it launched.
