Meet Paula Chiocchi

Today we’re excited to be connecting with Paula Chiocchi again. If you haven’t already, we suggest you check out our prior conversation with them here.

Paula, we are so thrilled to be connecting again and can’t wait to hear about all the amazing things you have been up to. Before we jump into all of that, some of our readers might have missed our prior interview, so can you take a moment to reintroduce yourself?
Since 1998, I’ve made a name for myself as an award-winning B2B marketing innovator – and the driving force behind the world’s largest small-to-midsize business (SMB) database. My company, Outward Media, Inc. (OMI), is a business built around data. We mine it, manage it, and invest in it by keeping it fresh and continuously cleansing it. We then license and sell it to businesses – mostly Fortune 2000 firms – segmenting and customizing it to enable them to reach the right prospects for their products and services at the right time in their buying journey.

At OMI, our clients matter. Their success means everything to us, and that’s why we continue to outperform our competitors when it comes to data quality. We want our clients to continue to turn to us for the data that empowers them to meet and exceed their campaign goals. To prove confidence in our data, we pioneered the industry’s first 95% email validity guarantee, which we continue to offer today, even as other leading providers no longer offer one.

Together with our talented team of data specialists, we are in business to give our customers an effective way to connect with targeted buyers, decision-makers, and influencers and, ultimately, convert more prospects into customers.

On a personal note, I find that running a business is exhilarating but also filled with challenges. So, sharing my expertise and the lessons I’ve learned is important to me. I take every opportunity to mentor new entrepreneurs and those just getting started in their careers–to give them advice and encouragement and guide them on a path to success.

Alright, so our main goal today is to give our audience an update on what you have been up to since our last conversation. We’d love to hear how things are going and what you are most looking forward to or excited about these days.
For the past several years, as digital ad fraud has skyrocketed, enterprise marketers have faced unprecedented challenges, including not being able to accurately measure campaign results and performance or even reach the right target audiences. This chaos created a turning point for our business. We doubled down on making clients aware of our ability to deliver real data, real results, and invaluable advertising reach to real people — not bots.

The word “bot” is short for “robot.” It refers to a software program that can perform automated tasks, often mimicking human actions online. In online advertising, bots are associated with fraudulent activity and misleading audience engagement metrics. They can generate fake clicks, impressions, and website visits to manipulate ad performance data, leading advertisers to waste budget on non-human traffic.

This year, as the advertising industry is experiencing an accelerated push around achieving a return on investment (ROI), we’re very excited about the way big brands are shifting to performance advertising, which is a service we offer at OMI. It is characterized by accurate tracking, measurement, and results. To make performance marketing work, today’s brands need to lean into digital. But here’s the catch: you need a trusted agency partner to guide you in your media choices while assisting you in avoiding the pitfalls of ad fraud and poor audience data. We are that partner.

The reality is that digital channels offer better tracking than direct mail, standard TV, or radio. People use unique phone numbers to track calls, but there are no clicks or opens to measure activity across those channels. With OMI’s data-driven custom audience-building services, however, our clients can track activity across multiple digital channels (not just advertising). As an example of the measurement capabilities of performance media, take a look at connected TV (CTV), which provides:

– Conversion tracking: Identify website visitors and determine which ones made a purchase after viewing an ad.
– Footfall attribution: Measure how many viewers visited a physical location following an ad exposure.

Measurement capabilities like this make it easier to calculate ROI and refine future campaigns, ensuring that every dollar delivers maximum impact.

Other innovations and services we are excited about offering this year include:

– Precision Targeting: Precision audience targeting is a key performance advertising advantage, but unlocking its full potential requires strategic targeting skills and assembling and leveraging the right audience data. OMI is a recognized leader in this area, with Fortune 2000 firms and other organizations already turning to us and our massive B2B database — consisting of 145 million manager-, director-, and professional-level and above contacts with email/hashed email (HEM), social URL, and other attributes — to perform custom audience building. Our audiences can be used for media activation, email acquisition marketing, CTV, programmatic, social, and other omni-channel campaigns. We deliver the largest reach into the SMB marketplace with our data while also offering high match rates to Trade Desk and the top social platforms, with up to 15 total platforms available for matching. We aim to provide our clients with custom, highly-targeted audiences made up of comprehensive prospect profiles that can be leveraged to elevate digital advertising personalization, relevance, and, ultimately, campaign ROI.

– Increased Transparency: Bots and ad fraud continue to haunt marketers, presenting misleading performance metrics. As part of our performance media services, our team actively works to eliminate non-human activity or non-human inclusion within our audiences, meaning that your performance metrics will no longer reflect “fake” activity driven by bots.

We have now arrived at one of our favorite parts of the interview – the lightning round. We’ll ask you a few quick questions to give us all some fun insights about you.

Favorite Movie: The Queen’s Gambit

Favorite Book: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Favorite TV Show: The Americans

Favorite Band or Artist: U2

Sweet or Savory: Savory

Mountains or Beach: Both

Favorite Sport (to watch): Basketball

Favorite Sport (to play): Volleyball

Did you play sports growing up (if so which ones): Volleyball

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up: The president of a company

French Fries or Onion Rings: French fries

Favorite Cartoon growing up: Bugs Bunny

Favorite Childhood movie: The Wizard of Oz

Favorite Breakfast Food: Yogurt and berries

What do you want people to remember about you and your brand? What are some of things that you feel are most important, unique, special, etc?
We want people to remember that we are all about bringing trust and transparency back to marketing. We want marketers and advertisers to regain their ability to accurately measure and report campaign results, achieve greater transparency around payouts across the advertising ecosystem, and engage their most optimal target audiences. Data quality is also at the core of all of our services. These are our priorities at OMI, and, most importantly, they are designed to drive success for our clients.

Website: https://outwardmedia.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outward_media_inc/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/outward-media-inc./posts/?feedView=all

Other: https://bsky.app/profile/outwardmedia.bsky.social