For a company that has spent years helping publishers understand their audiences, Permutive is now trying to understand a rather different audience: the people who buy advertising.
The adtech firm, which built its reputation providing technology to the sell side of the digital media business, announced yesterday that it had appointed Eileen Kiernan, the former chief executive of IPG Mediabrands, to its board of directors. The appointment signals what the company is calling a repositioning — from a publisher-focused platform to one that also serves agencies and advertisers directly.
Ms. Kiernan, who left IPG Mediabrands in 2023 after leading the media buying operation through the pandemic years, said she saw an opportunity to guide the company through what she described as a pivot.
"It is a really interesting time for this company to be pivoting in the way that it is, and I can help it breakthrough in the way it deserves to," Ms. Kiernan said. She added that there was "a sense of urgency" behind the new direction.
(One imagines there usually is, when a company decides its existing customers are no longer sufficient.)
The move reflects a broader pattern in the adtech sector, where companies that once served one side of the media transaction have increasingly sought to plant flags on the other. For Permutive, which was founded in 2014 and has counted publishers like BuzzFeed and Condé Nast among its clients, the challenge will be persuading agency holding companies and their clients that a platform built for sellers can credibly serve buyers.
Ms. Kiernan's Rolodex — and her years navigating the peculiar folkways of media agency procurement — would seem to be precisely the point.
Whether the pivot succeeds may depend on how quickly Permutive can learn to speak a language it has, until now, only overheard.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Permutive Recruits Former IPG Mediabrands CEO to Board in Buy-Side Push"