We are so excited to have Cary join our growing Advisor Collective and have her years of leadership experience in digital advertising, both from the brand side at Ford Motors and the agency with WPP and GroupM.
Each member of our community expands our collective network, enabling us to learn, collaborate, innovate, and create access to companies, agencies, and partners to accelerate our ability to scale.
FOLLOW CARY on Twitter | LinkedIn | Her Website
Tilds currently serves as general manager at MNTN (pronounced “mountain”), developer of the Hardest Working Software in Television™ and noted trailblazer in streaming TV advertising whose backer and chief creative officer is famed actor, Ryan Reynolds.
She leads the expansion of the award-winning firm’s reach to local businesses where MNTN helps drive measurable conversions, revenue, site visits and more through the power of television. MNTN Performance TV is the world’s first and only Connected TV advertising platform optimized for direct-response marketing. Its self-serve technology makes running television ads as easy as for search and social.
She previously served as chief strategy and operations officer at Frameplay, an award-winning, global intrinsic in-game advertising platform. Also, co-founded Web3 Marketing Association, the world’s first marketing community dedicated solely to helping brands and businesses navigate Web3, including blockchain, DLT and NFT.
Tilds earlier served as SVP of digital strategy and SVP of corporate strategy at FordDirect, where she led its digital technology, analytics, business intelligence, and data strategy teams. She developed audience and business intelligence capabilities that drove better outcomes for Ford Motor Company and its dealer network, and served as the executive co-chair of its machine learning and consumer data platform.
She has also served as chief innovation officer at WPP’s media investment group, GroupM, where she was responsible for identifying consumer technologies and applications for evolving digital media consumer and platform strategies.
She served in a number of senior roles at Mindshare, a global media agency network, including as SVP of digital strategy where she led macro digital strategies for Unilever North America.
She is also founder and CEO of Cary Tilds Consulting, and was appointed to Google’s first customer advisor board. She began her career as a paid and organic search expert and started the first search practice at PHDiQ, an Omnicom agency.
Tilds honors and awards include:
- IAB Service of Excellence Awards – Outstanding Contributor, awarded by IAB, January 2023.
- Digital Innovation Award – Marketers Choice Winner by DMR Index and Luma Partners, November 2014.
- AOL Distinguished Professor Series Inaugural Professor.
- Advertising Women of New York Working Mother of the Year award by AWNY, February 2012.
- Search Engine Marketing Committee Chair, appointed by American Association of Advertising Agencies, January 2008.
- President’s Award from Entertainment Publications, May 2004.
At Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), she served as IAB Games and eSports Committee co-chair and IAB Dynamic Committee co-chair – Dynamic Content Ad Standard.
She has been a guest lecturer at UC Davis Graduate School of Management, speaking on AdTech, and has published a number of papers about changes and challenges in the industry.
Why I wanted to join the collective
We have seen yet another seismic shift over recent years in how consumers engage with digital technologies in their work, play, and overall life. Entire generations have experienced the world differently because of the availability and shift in technology and content capabilities as well as macro forces which caused them simply to reassess and change. New ways to find information and engage with digital content, new ways to communicate and share, new ways to create, and new ways to consume are all disrupting the status quo.
Privacy regulation is amping up, catching a ride on this seismic shift, and forging an even greater gap in the advertising industry’s ability to pay for the “new” by reaching and re-reaching consumers via “old” methods. Many of these “new” content channels are walled gardens, untouchable to the rest unless you enter the approved interoperable door. Often, the odds aren’t even. Interoperability is offered, but often there’s always a price or at the very least, a long line to wait for resources. Who gets priority?
My career as an executive leader in the Marketing and Advertising industry has been working on transformative business strategies for Fortune 500 as well as startup companies including GroupM/WPP, Ford, Unilever, FordDirect, Target, Frameplay, MNTN, and many others. The common theme in writing the winning strategy is learning to collaborate with the industry. The advertising industry has grown because of collaboration. It doesn’t exist without it.
In times of extreme change, the winning strategy is to lean into forward-thinking, deeply experienced groups like those Peter Bordes has assembled. I am humbled and honored to share my deep understanding of digital advertising, media, and data analytics, with domain expertise spanning automotive, consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, gaming, and entertainment. I look forward to continuing to bring my experienced and trusted voice to the conversation.
The future of the industry (from your perspective and experience in the industry, finance, building companies, etc)
The future of the industry must redefine the consumer and advertiser value exchange. What do I mean by this? I reflect from 2015 on the foreword I wrote to the book, “Personalized Digital Advertising” by Diaz Nesamony. Part of the foreword reads as follows:
We must understand how to paint brand messages in new ways. This will prove to be challenging in our existing systems as the “tools and processes were built with the assumption of a static ad that remains the same through a campaign” (as Diaz noted). Development of a dynamic creative is challenging because the dimension of variability must be considered. However, if we look at other models to understand how to handle variability,we might be able to stretch our creative palette to its potential.
What if we applied the thinking behind a popular coding site called ifttt.com (If This Then That), where the tagline reads: “Put the Internet to work for you”? This messaging is profound. What if we let the Internet works for us, rather than be a resource drain to us?
Here’s how it works: The site helps create useful combinations of coding functions into one statement called a “recipe.” The recipe has two functions: a trigger and an action. The trigger helps us understand what something did. The action helps us program what we should do about it. Pretty simple, actually. By applying the notion of recipes to the concept of dynamic creative, we have a message fabric and a mechanism to reach people not just on new screens but also in new functionalities within those screens.
The thinking behind ifttt remains strong but it must evolve to consider redefining the customer value exchange in context of disrupted and growing channels with increasing privacy expectation and regulation. I am still on a mission to let the Internet work for us, rather than be a resource drain to us; all of us, including the consumer!
Knowing what you know now. What are 3-5 things you would tell your younger self.
Many people answer this question by telling their younger self to better balance work, family, and personal health. They may obsess about how they should have worked less, not taken so many business trips, or made different career decisions. They may judge themselves for not exercising enough or not being as good a parent as they could have been.
When I was younger, I worked very hard. When I graduated from college I really didn’t know what I wanted to do in life. I just kept moving forward. I didn’t find my niche in the advertising industry until 2005, when I was a paid and organic search expert and started the first search practice for PHDiQ, an Omnicom agency. By 2007 I was honored to sit on Google’s first customer advisor board, and from 2007-2010, led both digital media operations for Team Detroit (Ford) and at the same time was the Digital Strategy Leader at Mindshare for Unilever. I had two jobs (TDI and Mindshare), two Blackberries, two assistants, two little kids, an incredible spouse and a village who helped me succeed. There was no remote work policy and no one wanted to do video calls with me. I did have to sacrifice my own time with my family to show up to work.
Looking back now, would I tell my younger self not to work so hard? I don’t regret how hard and smartly I worked. I am very proud of that to this day. That time was explosive, challenging, and game-changing. I regret having to give up my family time.
If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would be to speak up and ask for more balance. But is that realistic during that era? I don’t think so. It was a different time. The professional culture is changing for the better. Speaking up and asking for balance is possible.
Most importantly, I don’t find looking back and judging myself being a healthy exercise. Rather, I like to think about what I am doing now, in this moment, that makes me proud. I like to think about how I show up today and what I am doing to show up tomorrow. I still work hard. That has not changed.
Tilds is an award-winning digital advertising executive with 30 years of experience driving digital strategies, marketing, technology and innovation for Fortune 500 media giants that include WPP, Mindshare, Omnicom, and Ford Motor Company.
“Cary is an extraordinarily experienced media strategist and talented leader who shares our vision of offering to the world a revolutionary advertising and media platform that solves the many challenges facing our industry today,” said Collective Audience CEO, Peter Bordes.
“She brings to our growing Advisor Collective invaluable knowledge and insights gained from leading teams engaged across marketing, digital media and analytics, business intelligence and data strategies. Cary’s success in bridging the advertising and ad technology industries complements our mission of bringing together publisher supply, brand and agency demand, together with unique audience data, into a unified cloud platform.”
Since the formation of the Advisory Collective late last year, its members have provided Collective Audience strategic guidance and invaluable access that has helped support the formation of several key partnerships and joint ventures with major industry players, including Insticator, Reset Digital and Genesis, as well as transformative acquisitions underway that include BeOp and DSL Digital.
These major wins have supported the recent launch of AudienceDesk™ powered by AudienceCloud™, the company’s innovative new AdTech infrastructure platform it officially unveiled last month.
The AudienceDesk powerful dashboard and underlying AudienceCloud infrastructure empowers brands, agencies and publishers with audience-based performance advertising and media solutions that unlock unrealized value. Its modular infrastructure and APIs enable rapid integration with third-party AdTech platforms and applications which deliver a new level of integrated collaboration with technology, media, and digital asset partners like Insticator, Reset Digital and Genesis.
Cary Tilds – MediaLink CES 2020 Panel – “The Rise (And Rise) of Immersive Technologies” where she represented the FordDirect team.
According to Tilds: “In times of disruptive industry change like we are undergoing today, I have found the winning strategy has always been to lean into forward-thinking, deeply experienced teams like those Peter has assembled. They have been extraordinarily responsive to this change, as demonstrated with the launch of AudienceDesk and the phenomenal strategic partnerships they have developed.
“I believe this innovative solution will help bring much needed interoperability to the industry, and I look forward to sharing my experience and understanding of digital advertising, media, and data analytics with the Advisor Collective and Collective Audience.”
