• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, October 12, 2020

When asked to cite the best piece of career advice anyone gave her, Fiona Salmon, newly appointed VP of partnerships of EMEA at Captify, said: "'The harder you work, the luckier you get', which my Dad has on repeat. I carry that with me."

While it's not specifically career advice, the saying continues to "ring true" in all parts of her life. 

Salmon recently joined search intelligence company Captify, bringing with her more than 20 years of data-driven marketing and strategic partnerships experience to the company.

In her role, Salmon will focus on helping publishers pull value from their onsite search data and improve on the company’s position as a privacy-first, programmatic partner as publishers prepare for a post-cookie era. She also will lead data partner acquisitions for the company across Europe, Middle East and Australia.

What’s the draw to Captify? “I’m quite obsessed [with] creating a strong culture at work,” she said, which could explain the types of books Salmon likes to read.

“I’m reading The Good Samaritan by John Marrs,” she said. “It’s pretty dark and has nothing to do with my career, but I enjoy reading for leisure on topics beyond the scope of my day-to-day. I also just finished Powerful by Patty McCord, the former chief talent officer at Netflix, which explores how to motivate and create great teams.”

A love of environmental science previously landed Salmon as the director of data and digital innovation for EMG Health. As a child in grade school she wanted to become an environmental scientist, but after an interview at The Environment Agency, she decided it wasn’t for her.

Salmon also previously served as the managing director, U.K. for data management platform 1plusX, a high-tech software-as-a-service business that provides a platform for data-driven marketing. Prior to that role, Salmon spent more than a decade at a number of blue-chip media owners, including Trinity Mirror, Bauer and News International.

Captify built a dataset by partnering with more than 1,300 publishers to access search data from across more than 6 million websites, which engage with consumers programmatically.

Through a suite of search-powered, privacy-first solutions and technologies, publishers have access to the tools to expand audiences, grow ad revenue and build businesses.

Salmon’s list of goal to accomplish this year gets pretty extensive. She wants to build on Captify’s search data network by growing partnerships to support the company’s expanding global footprint, and empower publishers to do more with their onsite search data.

Think of it as a “first-party dataset that offers deeper understanding of audiences and media to increase revenue and deliver better outcomes for advertisers,” Salmon says. “This is often a blind spot for publishers, yet an extremely powerful source for real-time audience analysis.”

She also wants to lead when it comes to making Captify a privacy-first programmatic partner for publishers globally, and put the company’s new publisher platform into their hands to drive greater yield and audience growth, without the reliance on third-party cookies.