Mitch Grummon

Too many people have asked me to weigh in on the upcoming IAB ALM from a publisher perspective, so I can't ignore it. I'll say that Scott Messer was the first person I saw comment on the ALM agenda before Andy Batkin lit a match yesterday, and Ruben Schreurs pulled me into this. I'll say this also comes on the tail of Pesach Lattin's article about the ROI of industry events and saying some nice things about Beeler.Tech. The IAB has evolved in part because it had to. At first, it was to get people in a room to have this industry taken seriously, and it did. That got the money flowing, and, in my opinion, the role it plays today is to keep it flowing our industry's way. It is therefore going to chase where the money is going. That doesn't serve everyone equally, but it makes sense that CTV will get more attention than display. IAB ALM, to me, plays the same role. It's more of a showpiece of how hard the industry is working to show we are serious people (who know how to have fun, so hang with us). It's not a work-the-problem event. It's a we've-been-working-on-creating-amazing-opportunities event. So, yeah, my expectation before ever seeing the agenda would be that it would be agentic this and agentic that. The speaker list would include people whom other events and groups wouldn't have a chance of getting, but rarely are they people I need to hear from. In fact, I signed up this year before I even looked at the agenda. There is always some relevant content, but it isn't the agenda that's going to make me attend. It's the networking. Like CES, IAB ALM is the watering hole where all the animals on the safari migrate to. If you aren't there, people might think you're extinct. But the frustration I'm expressing, and that of many people in our community, is that networking and peacocking aren't enough. Many in our industry will not be back at the watering hole next year. Right now is a moment when we need to band together and figure things out, and it's a missed opportunity since so many of the right people are in the same place at the same time; we could focus on addressing some real issues. Instead, the majority of the conversations I expect to have on site will be about what we do about the state of our industry AFTER the event. So the ask is this: Seize the moment. No doubt marketers want to know what's new on the agentic front. But marketers also like to consume and want to market in-and-around human-created content. They should be a part of the conversation on how to move forward. Let's talk about the things we need to talk about – just like the old days.

154

29 Comments

There are very few people in the world who can do this job well. For real. If you have the slightest inkling you might be one of them, it could be your counterfactual impact goldmine.

3

Rezi got exclusive access to 722K users by becoming the official resume builder of r/careeradvice. The mods were drowning in spam. 10-15 AI resume writing posts every day that they manually removed. Their automod was catching 5x more than that. Rezi approached them with a partnership... make us the official tool, and we'll solve your spam problem. The mods agreed. Now when someone asks about resume help in r/careeradvice, Rezi is the endorsed answer. Becoming the official tool of a subreddit gives you three things: 1. Access to everyone in that community without fighting for attention. 2. Credibility because the mods endorse you. 3. A moat because once you're official, competitors can't spam their way in. Here's how to replicate this: Step 1: Find subreddits where your ICP hangs out. If you built a project management tool, look at r/projectmanagement (176K users), r/productivity (2.9M users), r/entrepreneur (3.8M users). Fitness app? r/fitness (10M users), r/bodyweightfitness (3M users), r/loseit (4M users). Freelancer tool? r/freelance (582K users), r/upwork (161K users). Step 2: Identify problems the community or mods face. Spend time reading posts. Look for patterns. What do people complain about repeatedly? What questions get asked over and over? Also check what mods are dealing with. Spam? Low-quality posts? People asking for tool recommendations constantly? The problem doesn't have to be spam. As long as your tool solves a real problem that the community or mods face, you've got an angle. Step 3: Position your tool as the solution. If the community keeps asking "what's the best tool for X?" and you built a tool for X, you're the answer. If mods are tired of removing spam posts about a topic your tool addresses, you can be the official recommendation that stops the spam. Frame it as helping the community, not promoting your product. Step 4: Approach mods with a partnership proposal. Message the mod team directly. Don't post in the subreddit asking to partner. That's spam. Your message should be short and focused on solving their problem: "Hey, I noticed the subreddit gets a lot of posts about [problem]. I built [tool] that solves [problem]. Would you be open to making it the official recommendation? It would cut down on [spam/repetitive questions/whatever their pain is] and give the community a vetted solution." Don't pitch features. Pitch the outcome. Step 5: Become the "official" tool. Once mods agree, work with them to implement it. That might mean: - A pinned post recommending your tool. - Automod removing posts about that topic and directing people to your tool. - Sidebar link or wiki entry. - Mods mentioning your tool when relevant questions come up. Rezi could also apply the same playbook in r/resumes (178K users), r/jobs (473K users), r/GetEmployed (69K users). P.S. If you want to acquire subreddits for $0 and become the official tool in communities where your ICP lives, DM me "SUB."

3

Does AI change what people actually trust? We looked into it. Turns out the answer is more complicated than the hype suggests.

5

If news is a product—with users, value propositions, and a job to be done—then a nagging question is: how are we marketing it? Long before I worked in news, my career centered on brand strategy, marketing, and research. That perspective always makes me pause at how often this question goes unanswered in the news industry. Some fresh insights from Press Forward (via Nieman Journalism Lab) sheds light on what works—and what doesn’t—when connecting local news to audiences. Worth a read for anyone thinking about how we position journalism in today’s crowded attention economy. https://lnkd.in/gXGxkWbZ

19

2 Comments