Meet Joline: EVP of Data & Analytics
The coronavirus world pandemic has caused massive uncertainties for advertisers, publishers, and everyone involved in the digital advertising world. On top of that, there’s a tectonic shift right around the corner when third-party cookies go away that will change how the entirety of the industry works.
In light of these factors, it’s more important than ever that we’re driving solutions for our publishers based on data instead of opinion.
At the beginning of 2020, we were eager to find a dynamic and strategic leader for our rapidly growing Data and Analytics team — someone with a passion for serving our publishers and who could take our extensive amount of traffic, advertising, and industry data to an even higher level.
We’re so excited to introduce you to Joline McGoldrick, EVP of Data and Analytics!
Before joining us, Joline and her team at Vidmob helped interpret creative insights for companies like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter to optimize their video advertising campaigns, making her the ideal person to take our massive amount of data and turn it into meaningful information for our team and our publishers!
As the EVP of Data and Analytics, Joline works with our team to make sure we’re capturing, organizing, and analyzing all of our data in smart and scalable ways — from the individual publisher-level to company-wide metrics.
Her extensive experience and unique ability to transform complex data into compelling insights helps us develop smart products and cutting edge strategies, and constantly improve our service so we can be the best partner for our publishers in this ever-changing industry.
We thought it’d be fun to hear from Joline herself to dive a little deeper into her background, current role, and some fun facts!
We’d love to hear more about your backstory! How’d you get started in data and analytics?
Prior to 2001, I was in consulting and decided to take a year off to work at an orphanage in South America.
When I came back, I joined a small research startup (there were only 12 people at the time!) called Dynamic Logic. This was the first company to start measuring the effectiveness of digital advertising from an attitudinal and branding perspective.
At the time, brands were very skeptical of digital advertising — a lot of my work was helping brands understand the impact of their ads and the ways in which they needed to design them differently from their TV or print ads (this was all before mobile or much video and social!).
What excited you about the EVP position here at AdThrive/CafeMedia?
I was leading a data team for a social video startup working primarily with advertisers on social platforms. It was a great team and company and I imagined I’d be there for a long time.
But once I started talking to CafeMedia, the opportunity to be able to spend more time focusing on so many of the travel, home, and cooking sites that I was already an avid reader of was really compelling.
What I came to feel so strongly about is how CafeMedia really empowers and makes digital small businesses possible in the form of blogs. I’ve always believed that creativity and opportunity can be anywhere, not constrained by geography, and CafeMedia makes that a reality for so many of our publishers.
The opportunity to develop data and analytics features to continue helping our publishers learn and be more productive and successful was just something I couldn’t pass up!
Why do you think data and analytics are so important to AdThrive/CafeMedia and our publishers?
I’ve been so amazed at how much of a data-driven organization CafeMedia is. The team is laser-focused on publisher performance and what we can do to help our publishers. I think that shows in the ways we’ve been able to support publishers during the coronavirus pandemic.
Capabilities like RPM by Page and taking a detailed look at traffic sources really help our publishers make good decisions about the type of content and promotion efforts they should invest in.
What’s the most rewarding part of your role?
The most rewarding part of my role is definitely my team. Every person is creative and proactive in thinking up new ways to deliver the best work possible.
Right now, we’re focused on how we can continue to help publishers drive traffic in new ways and making sure their experience, from applying to AdThrive to the ad formats they adopt, is as streamlined and productive as possible.
Seeing how the team approaches and works through massive data sets to have insights for our internal teams and develop new innovative capabilities makes every day exciting and worthwhile.
Tell us three fun things about yourself!
1. My husband, two daughters (ages 8 and 11), and I love to travel. On our last family trip to Bogota, Colombia (thank you to The Blonde Abroad for your travel guide), protests broke out and we had to stay in our hotel room for 24 hours straight due to an enforced curfew — little did we realize the foreshadowing for 2020!
2. I started running competitively when I was in fifth grade. By the end of high school I was completely burned out and ended up taking 25 years off. After being winded trying to catch a flight, I picked it back up and now run every day — it’s amazing how it clears my head and gives me a great perspective on the day.
3. My entire family — besides one lucky brother — can’t eat gluten. We’ve had many years of failed Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners! When we first discovered this a long time ago, there weren’t a lot of great gluten-free recipes or products but thankfully now there’s a ton of handy resources (another shout out to AdThrive publishers!) focused on providing tasty gluten-free food. 🙂
We’re thrilled Joline is part of our team. With her at the helm, our Data and Analytics team is positioned to keep uncovering cutting-edge insights to improve how we can best serve our business and our publishers!
