• by Ray Schultz , September 25, 2022

MadTech Advisors, an adtech company that helps publishers and programmatic advertisers with monetization, has appointed Heather Macaulay as president.

Macaulay will work with MadTech co-founder and CEO Bob Walczak to oversee revenue growth, marketing and product strategy.

The new president is excited by the emerging digital landscape. “There are challenges, but opportunities, too.” Macaulay says, adding, “It has always been complex but never as complex as it is now.” 

One challenge for companies is privacy. 

“The privacy-centric world may be painful, .but there are major infrastructure and knowledge gaps that must be invested in,” Macaulay says. “How can we have relationship with consumer and deep understanding without third-party cookies?” 

“With GDPR and CCPA, the shift is coming to a first-party data environment,” Walczak notes.  MadTect seeks to help firms with “privacy, identity and compliance and in helping to understand the new tool set,” he adds.

Macaulay and Walczak agree that publishers need more forms of authentication than email, which now delivers only 20% and serves only as a one-signal solution. 

Among other posts, Macaulay has served as head of revenue, programmatic & data strategy at Publishers Clearing House. During her six years at PCH, she worked to build a programmatic media business and create new revenue streams for the old play-to-win company.  

“PCH was ahead of its time,” in recognizing the need for new sources based on first-party data, she says. 

Macaulay has also worked as Global Head of Ads Monetization at Zoom. And she and Walczak worked together at PubMatic, accelerating the company’s growth to a run rate of more than $100 million by the end of 2014. 

What’s in store for publishing now? For one, changes in job roles. For instance, the 

chief revenue officer “used to be head of ad sales,” Macaulay says. “Now they’re having to start looking at other revenue streams.” These would include subscription- based services and affiliate programs.  

She adds that “you’re going to see non-publishing entities start to emerge. Any firm that has consumer attention will have to figure out how to monetize that attention,” she continues.  

MadTech helps firms with monetization, vendor selection, platform development, executive search and other tasks.  

“It’s a combination of consulting and development on every engagement,” Walczak says. 

The company has roughly 30 employees globally, with about 15 specialists in the U.S. and 15 on the development staff in India. Recently, it moved three staffers onto a systems integrator team.  

Macaulay is thrilled with the new job.“I’m energized by the constant transformation in the industry. But we have to future-proof it as well,” she concludes.