Commentary

Engineers Become 'The Pretty Girl At The Ball'

Apparently these days it has become difficult to find qualified engineering to build out what Boost Media CEO David Greenbaum calls a "creative optimization platform." He said optimizing the creative in the advertisement remains fundamental to the success of a campaign, but finding engineers to help build the vision continues to present  challenges.

"It's like the engineers are the pretty girl at the ball," Greenbaum said. "We're looking for the most sought-after engineers, like everyone else."

Boost is recruiting to hire engineers in up-and-coming tech hubs throughout the country including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Austin and its home base, San Francisco. The company has been working to build out a creative optimization platform it can expand from search engine marketing into display, social, mobile, landing pages, and email subject lines, so marketers can better understand the messages that resonate with consumers.

"It's a fundamental piece of the industry -- and frankly, and until now it has been an afterthought," Greenbaum said.

It might seem like a no-brainer that the best engineers go to work for Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, making it difficult for a small company with 95 employees (although that number will grow to 150 by 2015) to hire the brightest minds. Quartz, actually offers up some good ideas starting with "good engineers only want to work with people smarter than they are, so show off both what your engineers can do and have done," and "go to hackathons and meetups, ask tech friends if they know anyone working on interesting things and find ways to get involved and add value to the engineering community."

Finding the talent means standing out in the crowd. Boost Media continues to define a new category, calling it creative optimization. The industry learned how to tell who, when, and how often to target consumers, but forgot about the message that compels consumers to take action. So the company's is building out a cross-channel creative optimization platform.

In November, Boost Media raised $19 million in Series C funding for a total of $31 million. The new round was led by Battery Ventures, with Battery's Roger Lee joining the board of directors. Previous backers Javelin Venture Partners, Pinnacle Ventures, and Webb Investment Network also participated in the latest round.


"Engineers" photo from Shutterstock

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