Mike Welch was appointed EVP and General Manager of Xandr in August of 2020, in month five of the global pandemic. AT&T also had chosen to divest the company, putting Xandr at a crossroads. The path ahead is clearer with Microsoft closing its acquisition of Xandr in June. Welch firmly believes that the leadership team at the helm was what pulled the company through and enabled him to win Digital Exec of the Year.
His colleagues turn this praise around and praise his “people-first” approach. Despite COVID-19 restrictions, he instated monthly company-wide “Turn Up the Mike” sessions to allow employees to share successes, address industry news, and ask questions.
“I think the pandemic humanized all of us. We all have anxieties, fears, families we care about. We communicated a lot during the pandemic, especially during the early days… We started to view each other as way more than coworkers…[and] the company [even] produced better results,” Welch says.
In 2021, these results included the launch of Xandr Curate, which enables data owners to create tailored packages to be sold programmatically to media buyers through any DSP. “Rather than having to set up an individual deal with sports programmers [for example], they can activate one deal and buy across all relevant sellers,” Welch says.
Also last year, Xandr introduced Yield Analytics, a forecasting and converged inventory analysis technology that unifies audiences and ad systems across linear addressable and OTT. “You can take your OTT premium and stitch it with linear inventory for a unified forecast across the two,” says Welch.
In 2022, one of the most pressing issues for the industry is identity, which is evolving on the regulatory side. There could be a cookie-less environment, Welch explains, which will mean working around a third-party identifier.
“We want to be the best at activating first-party data on platforms,” he says, noting that Xandr will continue to participate in consortiums.
Collaboration is important when facing other challenges within the larger advertising ecosystem as well. Welch is credited with promoting open, transparent, and interoperable solutions as a way to drive innovation. “We consume media in so many ways. We are not just in one walled garden. It behooves everyone to collaborate and develop solutions,” Welch says.
