Data has a new seat at the table at iHeartMedia. Lainie Fertick becomes the company’s first-ever Chief Insights Officer and joins its StratCom leadership team, a promotion that puts insights work across the entire company in her hands.
iHeart Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman and President and COO Rich Bressler made the announcement in a company memo obtained by Radio Ink.
Of her work at Critical Mass Media, the company’s research firm, Pittman and Bressler wrote, “Lainie was our Programming team’s ‘secret weapon’ – building our leadership position in the industry by helping our programmers, talent and stations gain deeper insights and understanding of their consumers than any other radio or media company could.”
Fertick joined CMM as an intern in 2004 and rose to President and General Manager. In 2024, she also became President of iHeartMedia Insights, extending her research to advertising and marketing partners.
Fertick will continue to report to iHeartMedia Chief Programming Officer Tom Poleman. She also plays a role in AudioGraph, the data and programmatic platform iHeart launched with Triton Digital in June.
Fertick is responsible for iHeart’s annual white paper studies, including The New American Consumer, done with Malcolm Gladwell; The Ignored Consumer; The Human Consumer, which examined people’s relationship to technology and AI and led to iHeart’s Guaranteed Human positioning; and, most recently, Unlocking the Community-Driven Gen Z Listener.
