Claire Wang
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Adam Benaroya, Senior Manager of Global Media, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, New York  (40.7° N, 74.0° W)

Adam Benaroya is the senior manager of global media at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) in New York City. He earned his degree in mathematical economic analysis at Rice University in 2009 and then completed his MBA, with specializations in strategy and marketing, at the NYU Stern School of Business.

Prior to his position at HPE, Adam led the media analytics practice for the New York and Atlanta offices at Mindshare, a global media and marketing services company. In his current role at HPE, he still leads a media analytics practice, but, more broadly, he also leads the core digital media practices globally, translating global strategy into executable, market-level campaigns and making decisions on investments across different media channels.

Something that really interested me during my conversation with Adam is the challenges and rewards of working in a rapidly changing industry. Whether it’s digital capabilities and data analytics, which have advanced so much in the past decade and are continuing to evolve, or the recent buzz around data and consumer privacy, there is always something new to learn and keep up with, on both the technical and regulatory sides. For some people, a fast-changing landscape provides excitement and motivation, while for others, it might be the exact opposite. Before talking to Adam, I had always thought of marketing as a job only for super creative people, such as the designers behind the flashy advertisements on the giant screens in Times Square. Learning about the advancements in technology that permeate the field, as well as the strategic side of marketing, has opened doors to possibilities in this industry that I’m excited to explore.

An important lesson that I learned from our conversation is not to be afraid to explore a field that you’re passionate about, even if it is outside of your major. When Adam was searching for jobs, he didn’t even really know that this particular marketing space existed, but he had a general vision for what he was trying to do: find a way to combine his interests in media with his quantitative background. Through interviewing and getting to know people in the field, he was eventually able to land a role that fit what he was looking for. While it may be scary to venture into an industry with an unrelated degree, you may be surprised at the opportunities that could arise.

Highlights from the interview

How did you come into working in digital media analytics and strategy? I saw from your bio that you majored in math econ and managerial studies, so what influenced you to make the switch?

I’ve always had a quantitative background. I explored the computational and applied mathematics major and statistics. I loved math in high school. I was looking for something a bit more applied than just theoretical mathematics. I eventually settled on the combined math/economics major, which was great.

Even though I am not using pure economics in my day-to-day job now, the quantitative and the general problem-solving background that I got from that was something that certainly benefitted me.

In addition to my educational background, I was always interested in television and media in general. During my summers in college, I started looking for internships I could do outside of the economics field. One summer I was at a small marketing research firm; a couple summers I spent at Viacom and MTV. One summer was programming and scheduling; the second summer was in production, so very outside of the economics and math background. Between the major and some of the summer internships, I was looking for some way I could combine those two sides together. As I was graduating, looking for jobs, I looked at a number of different media companies, broader marketing companies, and finally got in touch with the agency that I eventually joined. Based on my conversations with them and my background, they encouraged me to look at their media analytics department, which ultimately was a really good marriage of the two sides of what I was interested in. Then from there, I continued the analytics front but also some broader areas within media strategy as well.

Now you are the senior manager global head of performance media. It’s a pretty big title. What do you do day to day?

This is my second job out of school. I was at the agency group for about six years, and I’ve been at this company for almost four years at this point. The whole time I was at the agency, I was part of the analytics groups. When I left, I was leading out their media analytics practice for both of their east coast offices in New York and Atlanta. One of the things I was looking for in a new job—I loved the analytics space, but I was also looking for my own personal development to expand out into the broader media and marketing space. So, to answer your question of what I do now, I still lead our media analytics practice for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, but I’m also leading our broader part of our media practice.

So performance media, there are all sort of loose ways to refer to some of the digital media programs that we do, it’s not just performance. It stands from awareness all the way through to, more truly, performance types of programs. I lead globally our core digital media practices, whether that’s programmatic media, which is more like the data-driven side of buying audiences and targeting campaigns to audiences. Our paid service campaigns with Google and Bing, as well as our paid social practice across…all the different social platforms that we’re operating on. So what that means, as far as what I am actually doing, is we have an agency group that we partner with to execute all the campaigns that we’re doing for the organization. A big part of the role is the strategy and the planning, leading up to each of our starts where we get input on how much media budget we’re going to have, how we make decisions on what is the most effective way to allocate our investments across different media channels and campaigns that we know are important for our business. So a lot of that is upfront planning, and from there it starts to break out into more practical-level decisions on “All right, we’re going to execute these search campaigns…or these display and video campaigns. What partners do we want to work with? What types of media formats or channels or creative decisions do we want to incorporate into our campaigns?” 

Given that my focus is on these digital programs, there’s a lot of data and analytics that comes in through there. It involves making regular optimization decisions, like how do we incorporate new business parities or challengers into the plan itself. So it’s a regular cycle of planning these campaigns, but it’s very real time in making decisions. It’s a global role as well. A lot of that means…translating the global strategy into ones that are relevant or feasible at the market level.

What do you wish someone would have told you before you started this career? 

That’s a great question. When I was at Rice and looking for jobs, I didn’t even know that this space existed. I knew I had some of those media internships like I said, but it was a bit more on the traditional side. Most of my time was with MTV. I got a good sense of different types of roles that sat in that space, but until I started interviewing and hearing from the teams directly, I didn’t necessarily know exactly what I was getting myself into. I just wish I had more awareness of the different ways I could be looking for that first job out of school.

What’s the biggest reward of your job, and what are the downsides?

I’ll give you two. One is the industry itself is changing very rapidly. When I started in this industry 10 years ago, it was so different from what it is now. The digital capabilities, the data and targeting capabilities, have advanced so much. Programmatic advertisement, which is more of the automated ways of buying advertising—that didn’t even exist 10 years ago. So even now I expect in 10, 20, years into the future, there’s always something new to learn, so many different partners to talk to. Whether it’s on the platform side or the publisher side or the data side, there’s dozens and dozens of different companies that I get to talk to on a regular basis. I get to continually learn different points of view on the industry and how that’s changing. And how the most topical example of that is around privacy and data privacy and consumer privacy and how that’s impacted marketing and advertising businesses substantially. So it’s a very agile and educational experience on a regular basis. It’s very fluid. And then the second one—on a more personal level, I manage a team at HPE. I did it at the agency as well. So bringing on people who are new to the industry or new to the company and getting to participate in their own development from more than just a people-management standpoint—I find that very rewarding as well.

Regarding the challenges, I think one of my challenges is that the space does change so quickly. Something that I personally enjoy, but it’s not something that everyone does. I think there are some people who do want a bit more consistent experience over time. But for those people who are looking for a more rapid experience, something that does change, this definitely is an industry that speaks to that. But the challenge upon that is that you really need to be dedicated, so making sure that your background, your understanding of the different concepts across industries or partnerships across different companies—you need to make sure that it stays fresh. Otherwise, you could very quickly become a bit out of date. So that’s definitely a challenge.

Working within a large organization, the process to get through all the different teams that you need to influence and the people that you need to sell your ideas to…it can be challenging. Even though the industry itself is very fast-moving, from an internal organization standpoint, it can still take a lot of effort and time to actually make change and see the impact of what you’re doing. But it does happen. It just takes more time than if I was working at a startup environment.

Could you elaborate a little bit more on how technology in particular affects the work you do?

I can give one example to start. So one project that we’ve been working [on], almost since I’ve started, has been thinking about our own internal data. We’re a business-to-business organization. We’re selling to other organizations. Compared to some other marketing industries, we actually do have a very rich internal data set of who our customers are, what companies are we selling to, what individuals are we talking to in those accounts, and different levels of engagement that we’re having with those customers known and unknown over time. But it’s not a one unified data platform. There’s dozens of different internal data sets that we have access to, not to mention any third-party data that we might work with, that could help complement what we know about our customers indirectly. So one of the big initiatives was to unify that data foundation together and then start to use some newer methodologies around machine learning and AI. Once we have that data foundation, how can we start to use machine learning or broader AI methodologies to actually use our own data to determine who is the best audience for us to be reaching with our campaign activity. So we work with a number of different data science teams, internal, external, that are part of this initiative where we’ve taken this combined data foundation across media data, website data, sales data, and other third-party data, and then start to build look-alike models on top on that to use AI truly to determine who we should be talking to, what message should we be delivering to them. So that more automated way of putting advertising into the market but also using AI to actually get better informed [about] what advertising we’re giving. That’s something that just hasn’t existed until recently because these digital platforms, technologies, haven’t been built to maturity until very recently.

So I’d say that’s one really clear area where technology is influencing [my work]. But on any part of the media program that my team is responsible for, whether it’s search or social, those technologies themselves are continually adapting as well, whether it’s on some of the privacy topics, say with Facebook and Google…and, really, any new technology companies are top of the mind of how many regulations in Europe and the US in the upcoming years…that’s kind of a niche topic within the tech space. Those privacy regulations very much change the fundamentals of what we do from a digital advertising standpoint. We have to start thinking about what data are we sourcing to target individuals—do we have their consent to target them with advertising? Not to say that privacy hasn’t been a relevant sphere within the tech space until now, but with GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] and Europe a couple of years ago, and with California and other states launching their own regulation in the US, that kind of lens on technology will fundamentally change how we need to approach our jobs, and that’s very much not solved yet. It’s coming in pieces as that regulation is coming out, so that’s going to be a big part of the industry conversation in the next 5 to 10 years.

Going back a little bit to your background, I also saw that you earned an MBA at NYU. What made you decide to pursue an MBA, and how did that affect your career?

It was something that I had been thinking of when I was at Rice. I had considered taking my GMAT right out of school, but I wasn’t convinced right away. I loved my experience at Rice, but similar to what I was saying, I wanted to do something that was applied [rather] than theoretical. I wanted to really experience the industry firsthand with having a job…and doing it was definitely what I was focused on. I started to rethink it when I wanted to go back to school. I guess it was around two to three years after graduating, and my supervisor at the time, at the agency, she had her masters in statistics. She was very supportive and just talked to me about my future, and via conversations with her, I was convinced that I should be rethinking going back to school. I knew that if I wanted to go back to school, I’d probably pursue an MBA versus a degree in statistics or something that might be a bit more theoretical. I decided on doing my MBA part-time. I didn’t want to leave the work place entirely, so I found a program where I could do my MBA part-time at Stern and still continue with my full-time job, which is time-consuming but ultimately something that I think worked well for me.

I think for an MBA, in particular working in the media and marketing space, there are some areas in the marketing industry where having an MBA truly is required…There are certain companies that require their brand management teams to have an MBA, but then there are other parts of the industry where it’s not a requirement at all, and so that’s what I was going back and forth with. Do I truly need this? Do I want to do something unnecessarily? So given that uncertainty, I decided that if I was going to go back to school, I was going to go back to learn something new, and I wasn’t just going to do it because I felt like it was a requirement for my job. So based on that, I did something slightly different than the math/economics background. I wanted to do something that I hadn’t explored at Rice, so I delved further into marketing specialization, strategy specialization. Not to say that they weren’t quantitative, but it was definitely a different line of learning than what I was doing in the math and economics space at Rice. I wanted to make sure that I personally got something out of it. It’s hard to say whether, when I applied to my current job, if that was a decision point on them hiring me. There’s plenty of people at this company who don’t have their MBAs, so it’s something I did more so for myself and for my personal education and development versus knowing for sure the industry was going to require me to have something like that.

Could you tell me about why HPE in particular? What makes it stand out as a good company to work at?

I think from a business standpoint, we’re doing some very exciting things. Kind of at the forefront of the enterprise tech space. We have our own AI products. There’s the product innovation of what HPE’s been doing…has been really interesting to learn. It’s not something that I knew as much about before I started here. When I was at the agency, I was working more on consumer brands versus business-to-business brands, which is what HPE is. But from a marketing standpoint, the one thing that stood out…I don’t know how familiar you are with HPE’s history, but when I joined roughly three and a half years ago, HP was actually splitting into two companies. So there’s the consumer side, which is more of what you associate HP with—printers, laptop computers. And then the group that I joined, which is the enterprise tech side. So the company was literally divided into two, two different publicly traded companies. From a marketing standpoint, we had the legacy of Hewlett Packard, but it was a new company itself, launching its new brands. So it was an exciting time to join the company, to have that marketing challenge of how do you launch a new brand that’s in this very unique position of splitting from this large company that everyone knows…building new websites, building new media tech platforms. There’s just a lot of different challenges that I was able to join into and experience that with the team.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I love what I’m doing right now. I definitely see myself staying in the marketing and media space. I think whether this happens in the short term or long term, I’ve had experiences now on the agency side and the marketer side; the one part of the trio that I haven’t experienced is more on the publisher and platform side. Like say, a Google or Facebook or someone who is a tech company that’s offering up their platform for advertisers to partake in. I still have that in my mind. I would love to experience the industry from as many new viewpoints as possible before I completely settle in and decide where I might want to spend the rest of my career at. I’m still in that mindset of just wanting to learn as much as possible, so I think I can see myself doing that, whether it’s at Google or Facebook or more of a smaller company. Maybe more of a startup environment that I also haven’t experienced as much yet.

What advice would you give a student who is interested in marketing? What would help them stand out?

I think what would help them stand out is some demonstrated interest in the area, but it’s not only marketing or communication backgrounds that are going to get roles in this area. I came from an economics/math background. A broad spectrum of background truly can be applicable and find a role in marketing. But I do think it’s important—whether it’s in your educational experience or your internship experience or even just extracurricular experience in general—have something that you can talk to that makes it understood why you’re looking to get into marketing versus someone who’s just looking for any job out of school. I think that’s important, to have some vision of what you’re trying to get into. Like I was telling you earlier, I don’t feel like I had as much knowledge of the different parts of the marketing industry that I could be applying for, so I was coming into parts of it a little blind.

I think I felt starting at an agency group…I feel like it was the right place to start for me. The benefit of an agency is you’re going to have so much broad exposure across different marketers that you might be working on within the agency. Obviously you’ll be talking to all the different publishers and tech companies that sit in this space. So, from an educational standpoint, I think it’s probably the fastest way to learn a lot. Versus if you go to a marketer directly, entry-level out of school, you might be a bit more narrowly focused on what one marketer is thinking of and—not to say you won’t learn a lot. You’ll have a great platform to do that on a marketer side, too. It just might be a bit narrower; it might take a little bit more time to see everything that is happening in the space. But with that said, definitely…looking at what I consider the trifecta of the different parts of the media marketing space—agency, marketer, advertiser—and then the publisher and tech space…I think even just having conversations and interviews, potentially across a broader spectrum of opportunities, you’ll learn a lot just within that regardless of where you might end up within your first job. I think similar to what you and your program is doing, I really welcome students to look on LinkedIn, find people who work in the space, and have some of your conversations to learn a bit more before you even start to go for a first interview.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.