Lee Beale – Managing Direct at Crossmedia
What can marketers learn from Crossmedia’s data analytics guru Lee Beale?
How to make the right bets with your marketing budget and build your business.
From his early days with CPG brands to building Redbox into a world-class offering, Lee learned the only signal that matters in the marketing noise is the truth.
Lee Beale started his career managing CPG brands client side at Reckitt Benckiser and GSK in the UK.
In 2009, Lee moved to New York to work for Omnicom Media Group’s Analect data science division.
Since joining Crossmedia in 2011, Lee has been the brains and driving force behind Crossmedia’s Red Box data analytics practice.
He has been instrumental in making Red Box a world class offering that Crossmedia puts at the center of its approach to media planning and buying.
In 2017, AdWeek named Lee a media all-star, recognizing his talents overall and for helping translate for clients seas of unstructured marketing data into actionable business intelligence.
Lee also provides key support for the company’s new business growth.
Key takeaways:
[1:34] I introduce today’s guest, Lee Beale, and invite him to walk us through his career, from studying history to CPG, to today.
[4:43] Seeking truth may be one of Lee’s drivers in attribution, but his biggest task, as he sees it, is to ensure a smooth running long-term operation for both agency and client. He breaks down some of the moving parts in such an undertaking.
[7:20] Lee touches on what kind of resistance he faces in terms of adopting attribution as well as the tactics he uses to melt a cold attribution heart.
[14:44] I ask Lee to tell me how big of a mistake it might be only working with last click. He breaks down the amount most brands are overspending by — it’s MUCH more than you would think! — when they leave out multitouch offline data.
[17:44] I unpack some really interesting ROI information that Lee provided about non-brand search and the potentially high-cost/low value customers.
[20:40] Lee speaks to his experience of when there is a dramatic reduction in spend from certain social media vendors: some have come to his office to challenge his methodology, and some have even become more and more cooperative with their walled garden data in the hopes of getting parts of that budget back!
[26:09] Lee touches on how multi touch attribution can affect the fundamentals of advertising, even branding itself.
[27:53] Managing expectations with stakeholders may be the biggest lesson Lee has learned while working in the attribution space, he explains why.
[31:04] Attribution’s future according to Lee.
[34:37] Lee shares one thing that he knows that no one else knows: rethink your channels! I thank him for coming on the podcast and sharing so much of his experience.
Be sure to tune in for the next episode and thanks for listening!
Connect with our guest:
Lee Beale on LinkedIn
David Kaplan started his career with the Tribune Company as a sysadmin for a joint venture with America Online. In the early nineties, David became Director of Special Projects for SportsLine, working on some of the earliest sports websites such as Shaq.com and the San-Francisco 49ers. As digital continued its growth, David built out affiliate, paid search and SEO programs for TicketsNow and Discover Financial. In 2009, David took on all digital media responsibilities for Peapod, including aggregating multiple lines of business and integrating a multi-touch attribution platform to become the single source of truth.
As he enters his third decade in interactive advertising, Rudy Grahn recently joined Publicis as Executive Vice-President of Data Sciences.
Jane Clarke has more than 40 years of experience collecting and analyzing global strategic insights for Time Warner, Children’s Television Workshop, and National Geographic.