Publishers, tech vendors, marketers and investors have been forced to adapt to a roller-coaster year caused by the coronavirus pandemic and racial inequality protests.
In the process, their business needs have also changed, according to Matt Prohaska, who leads one of the industry’s most well-known programmatic consultancies.
From his home in Fairfield, Conn., Matt explains how the pandemic has given companies a license to experiment and take bold moves, such as subscription services for publishers, and accelerated many changes that would normally have taken years to play out.
M&A dollars are beginning to flow again, particularly into adjacent industries where ad tech can play a role. And workforces are undergoing dramatic transformations with bottom lines under pressure.
“Talent is getting a massive, necessary but challenging look in terms of where to pare down, where to cut and where expand and go on offense,” Matt says.
Prohaska Consulting employs a core team of full-time staff but has access to more than 700 professionals globally who it can tap for client projects. The company is receiving significantly more interest from contractors looking for work.
For those prospects, Matt has specific advice to stand out: Create personal stories that help potential employers visualize how they conquered a project, showing the before, after and results.
“Specifically, I would say creating personal case studies for yourself as you’re going out there if looking for new full-time work,” he says. “It’s weird, we do case studies all the time when publishers, tech firms or agencies are looking to tout their wares and show examples of what they’ve done with brands, but for some reason it feels weird when we do it individually.”
