Only in advertising is God himself up for sale.
On Wednesday, the ad tech information resource business Marketecture announced it had acquired AdTechGod, an anonymous ad tech Twitter poster turned one-man content studio, and The AdTech Forum, an information resource hosted by AdTechGod and Jeremy Bloom, founder and CEO of the advertising and technology career mentorship company OhHello.
Bloom will become Marketecture’s chief commercial officer, while AdTechGod will serve as CMO – while still remaining anonymous.
“I do know who he is,” Paparo said. But why bother doxing him? “With the rate at which CMOs get fired, why not just keep it anonymous?” he joked.
The new trades?
Marketecture is trying to build out a new niche of ad industry trade news and media.
And Marketecture sells ads for a growing roster of other industry podcasts. Paparo currently sells ads for Eric Seufert’s Mobile Dev Memo podcast; Mike Shields’ “Next in Media” podcast; and a new podcast launched by Eric Franchi and Joe Zappa a week ago.
Bloom, AdTechGod and Paparo are the only three full-timers at the company. “But we already have the major pillars,” Paparo said, “a subscription service, advertising services, and soon we’ll have events.”
“That’s how you build the B2B media business nowadays,” he added.
Marketecture has a strange assembly of media properties, though.
The Marketecture site, which has an archive of videos for things like ad tech and mar tech company explainers and executive interviews, is the membership portion of the business.
AdTechGod is a social-based personality – on Twitter and LinkedIn, mainly – and oversees a Slack forum that’s free to join and sponsored per section. Bloom publishes content on LinkedIn and videos on YouTube.
News and pods
Since each commentator already has their own podcast, social and newsletter audiences, “I can envision a world where we’re selling and promoting a whole stable of podcasts and making it into a sizable business,” Paparo said.
That’s because podcasts are relatively cheap and easy to create, he said. But it’s difficult to sell ads for a single podcast audience. For instance, The Mobile Dev Memo is particularly deep with mobile and app-install audiences, while Shields’ podcast leans more toward traditional TV and media advertisers.
“We’re bundling all these independent creators,” Paparo said, which means greater overall campaign reach and helping the creators themselves find potential new audiences from across the network.
Marketecture is also dabbling with news reporting, according to Paparo. “I think we’re already doing journalism,” he said, noting a recent write-up on the Colossus SSP.
“We’re not anticipating hiring journalists at this stage,” he said. “But you never know.”
