Next Chapter: Viamedia Lines Up Leadership After Milestone Year

People know New York City as one of the media capitals of the world, but standing tall next to it is Lexington, Kentucky, where Viamedia houses its operations as an independent advertising rep firm.

The Big Apple and Bluegrass may have a few differences between them, but they share a similar energy when it comes to opportunities for growth. In March, Viamedia crossed the milestone of partnering with 100 video providers to manage their ad sales, signifying a year of growth that included 31 new providers across 75 DMAs. Shortly after, it acquired LocalFactor, a Connecticut-based digital ad company that specializes in omnichannel programmatic solutions for large regional and national brands and agencies.

Recently, Viamedia restructured its leadership team to reflect the LocalFactor acquisition and chart a new, unified organization. David Solomon will remain in his post as CEO, while Evan Rutchik—formerly LocalFactor’s Founder/CEO—was named President/Chief Strategy Officer and will oversee company-wide strategic alignment and the scaling of Viamedia’s revenue, data, technology and operational capabilities. Becky Jones will continue as Chief Marketing and People Officer as will Rick Tarvin as CRO, while Wendell Decker was promoted to CTO. LocalFactor folks joining Viamedia’s leadership include Joel Hall as Chief Product Officer and Kristen McDonnell as EVP, Operations.

Viamedia has been on a charge to grow, but for Solomon and the new-look Viamedia team, it’s just the beginning. Cablefax sat down with Solomon to talk about Viamedia’s trajectory and what the ad environment looks like today. An edited excerpt of the conversation is below. (Note: the interview was conducted prior to the leadership changes being announced.)

Viamedia President/CEO David Solomon first joined the company in 2003.

Let’s start with the 100-provider milestone. Why is that important for Viamedia?

It’s not easy. It’s kind of like Baskin-Robbins. You got 31 flavors. Well, imagine having 100, and we have to customize to every single operator. Some have some similarities, but we have to be Switzerland. Representing one operator is a challenge. Representing 100 is 100 challenges. We pride ourselves on delivering custom solutions for our operators. They hire us, ultimately, to be a good representative, extending their brand and going to their customers. There’s a lot of reasons, [but] a lot of it comes down to math. Are you going to generate? Can we count on the revenue? Can we count on performance? But that’s just one piece of the puzzle, so we’ve got to set up teams that go out and drive revenue. Step one.

Step two is we have teams out there that are expanding their brand into the community, because the community, they’re out there talking to those customers about B2B, they’re out there talking about a variety of products and they lean on Viamedia to be an extension of that brand. So we’re talking to the same customers. When we walk in, we want to make sure we make those partners proud. We got to do that 100 different times in multiple cities. So still carrying the Viamedia brand, but representing a variety of operators. Even in a single market, we may represent 10 in one DMA. It’s the biggest we’ve been, and we’ve had this ebb and flow—you win some, you lose some—but very proud of the direction, especially in a market that is really chaotic right now … most of our business is not coming from pounding the pavement trying to get people to do business with us. Which we are, but the majority comes through word of mouth. So what it tells me is operator one is talking, talking to operator two, and said, ‘Go with Viamedia. Their tech is top-notch; they bring your cost down … and they’ll represent you proudly.’

What sparked the heightened level of activity over the past year?

There was a lot of work that had to happen to get to this year, and there’s a lot of work that is in motion to get to our plans for next year and beyond. This is not an overnight [process] … this was by design. We want to make our customers extremely proud, and it’s not that hard to do as long as you do what you say you’re going to do, you pay your bills and you exceed customer service expectations. It really is [about] taking care of the customer. We had to get a lot of things ironed out and worked through so that we could scale. Making sure our operations here and every department have the ability to take on one, five, 50, 500 operators. Do we have the operational know-how in technology and systems to scale? You’ve got to iron that out before you start selling it, because it doesn’t matter if you can get the deal and you can go out and sell the media. But if you can’t bill it, what’s the point? You have to have all your systems in alignment. So we started on this long ago, saying, ‘Alright, we’ve got to get in the gym and work out before we ever actually play the game.’ This just happens to be the year that the game really started coming to us. Knock on wood, hopefully we’re prepared [for] more scaling.

How do economic trends, such as inflation or a possible recession, trickle down to Viamedia and its providers?

I think it’s a tale of two cities. Unfortunately—or fortunately—for us, whether the economy is strong or whether the economy is weak, advertising is always necessary. It’s just the reality and we’ve been through all those. We’ve been in strong times, went through bad times, but how is [Viamedia] positioned? Because at the end of the day, the customer still needs to get people in their store, making a commitment and transacting. If business is really good, they have more money spent. If business is really bad, they need to attract more customers. It’s a tale of two cities there. Would I prefer for the economy to be great? Of course. The challenge is more like a COVID … You just got to adapt. Which way is the wind blowing? Change the way you sail your boat.

What’s the state of political advertising? Is money starting to come in for the midterm elections?

First quarter was exceptional. Now, compared year-over-year, it’s nowhere near the same. Political years—I don’t care, broadcast, cable, it doesn’t matter—are just a vote. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. I love political years. I don’t like the political ads, personally, but they’re paying the bills, so I’m very happy with them. But even in non-political years, you still have local campaigns. You got dog catchers, sheriffs, they’re going at it … It looks like we’re going to have a banner year. It’ll slow down, but post-July, August, it’s going to start picking back up again. I’m predicting double-digit growth in political. Last year was the most odd political year pacing-wise. We have tracked 25 years, could probably track further than that, and we could almost tell you how much is going to fall by month. 2024 was the craziest political year I’ve ever been in. It was wild. It didn’t follow any historical pace, and I think everyone was confused.

What are the trends in advertising that people should be keeping an eye on?

We’re doubling down on AI. There’s a lot of things we can do quicker, more efficiently, smoother. It can be our operations to make things more economical. The more economically we can do things, the better we can service our customers and our partners. That all trickles down, so there are savings opportunities in workflows, processes that AI can help. Can we automate things, [make] less mistakes, less fingers on keyboards? Of course. [We can] give that time to focus on customers, because a lot of these are manual tasks. So we can take that time and focus on ways to provide data, information, strategy to a customer versus plugging things in