One of Radio’s Best Friends.

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Doug Ray has been in the media business for nearly 30 years. He started in 1992 as an assistant media planner at a mid-size integrated ad agency. Today Ray is the Chief Product Officer for Global Media at dentsu America’s. He’s one of the many speakers at Forecast tomorrow, and, he’s on the latest issue of Radio Ink Magazine.

After his first ad agency job Ray worked at a startup agency where he was a partner for five years. He wore many hats, predominantly in media, but he also over-saw integrated marketing services. He then landed at Carat — now dentsu — and has been there ever since. For the last 17 years he’s worked his way up the ladder, taking on the Procter & Gamble business in 2004. He rose to running Carat as a CEO for the U.S., and a few years
after that became the first ever global president and CEO of Carat.

Then it was back to North America, where he became CEO of the Americas media business. At the beginning of 2021, he took a role that’s more about helping the company create solutions for clients and finding ways to leverage the products and services dentsu has across all of its agencies, as well as simplifying the way clients interact with
dentsu and making sure the bigger business challenges clients may be facing are addressed.

Doug Ray has forward-looking ideas about how the media landscape is changing — and how radio will fit into that ecosystem. Here’s a sneak peek at our cover story interview with Ray which appears in the most recent issue of Radio Ink.

Radio Ink: What’s the state of the advertising industry today?
Ray: We are at a massive inflection point. There’s more that’s changing now than there ever has been, even when you go back to the birth of the Internet in the early ’90s. That was the digitization of media over the course of the late ’90s and early 2000s — it was massive, and we didn’t simultaneously have the regulatory environment or the social platforms that are having to deal with issues related to challenges like the spread of misinformation, bullying, etc.

We’re facing enormous change in the regulatory environment, the social con text, and some of the fundamental infra structure. The deprecation of the cookie is changing the way clients think about their technology stack. Not too long ago every client was racing to be able to acquire a DMP, a data management platform, and now they’re moving away from that to a CDP, a customer data platform. The underlying identity on which much of the industry operated is going away. It will no longer be the currency by which we trade media. That is accelerating and complicating where we are. It’s an incredibly exciting time.
If you’re a student of this business or a curious marketer, it’s never been more exciting. But your day can be quite chaotic as you can be pulled from topic to topic because there are so many things conflating at the same time.

Radio Ink: Is everything moving toward digital and away from traditional media?
Ray: Yes. We envision a world where nearly 100% of consumer engagements are digital. That’s enabled through the accelerating use of data and technology. We like to think things will be data-led and technology-enabled going forward. If we are leveraging data and using technology to replace some of the things that were done by people — you are seeing AI replacing some of the simple analytical work analysts were doing previously, and automated platforms replacing some roles as we move to a more digital future — it doesn’t mean we’re going to completely move away from non-digital terrestrial radio, linear TV, etc. There will still be a role for them to play, but it will be diminished over time.

Radio Ink: Your answer sounds like bad news for radio.
Ray: Yes and no. With the explosion in podcasts, streaming radio listenership is at its highest levels. Radio is still the best way to reach many audiences across the country at scale. Terrestrial radio is still a strong and thriving medium. We are just adding to that. We’re giving more opportunities to connect with consumers through that medium.
I’m incredibly bullish about audio. I remember back in the late ’90s, the number of dot-com brands we launched on the back of radio with incredible success. We were able to test and learn. We did test and control markets, and radio was immediate. We built Hotwire.com, and did it entirely through radio. We had incredibly strong live-read radio advocates working with the major personalities.

I think radio is thriving. We have more tools in our toolkit now to leverage. Streaming audio and podcasts are areas marketers will be exploiting far more going forward.

Subscribe to Radio Ink Magazine in time to receive the latest issue, which includes our interview with Doug Ray, by clicking HERE.

Register for Forecast 2022 HERE.

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