Ryan Derrow
Chief Media Innovation Officer
Ryan is an Adweek Media All-Star Honoree and leads one of the industry’s top-performing media teams. He drives performance-focused creativity and innovation across the Media Planning, Intelligence, and Technology teams. Ryan built the industry’s first fully transparent programmatic planning and buying solution, ClearTrade®, the next evolution of the fragmented agency trading desk model of the late 2000s. A self-proclaimed “data geek” and lifelong technology enthusiast, Ryan has a passion for innovating on the fringe and letting numbers prove what works. His experience includes Ashley HomeStore, GNC, Rust-Oleum, P&G, PetSmart, Famous Footwear, Michaels, and Sharpie.
Interview.
Ryan Derrow
What is your approach to transparency?
It’s called ClearTrade for a reason. Built on the foundation of transparency, we’ve made tremendous technical advancements that enable us to measure the true value of digital media using incremental lift measurement, not vanity metrics. We answer the most important question marketers are asking: how many incremental conversions did my campaigns drive?
Why are clients coming to Empower?
We build performance systems for our clients. Systems that understand the many different audiences a brand needs to win with in order to achieve growth. Systems that use adaptive creative to drive targeting and message relevance with each of those audiences. Ultimately, systems that build cross-channel and in-channel performance loops into them to continuously driver greater return.
I’m working on a scoring system to predict any city’s overall happiness
What makes you a data-geek outside of work?
One example. I’m working on a scoring system to predict any city’s overall happiness based on a series of publicly available data points. Sadly, I’ve not yet figured out a commercial application for this pet project. Maybe some day...
