Canadian Board Interview Series
Ted Boyd, CEO of 58Ninety, Inc., has been
involved with ABC/ABCi since the mid-1990s
when he joined an ABCi advisory committee.
He has since gained a wide range of experience in digital
marketing with some of the top companies in Canada
and as the founding president of the IAB Canada. Boyd
is currently a member of ABC’s North American board.
We caught up with him to get his perspective on the
digital industry and his role in its evolution.
ABC: How did you become interested in digital advertising?
Ted Boyd: I fell into the digital space by accident in 1995.
I was working at AC Nielsen Canada, which had a partnership
with a U.S. company called Internet Profiles. I was asked
to lead its Canadian component. We found very quickly that
digital advertising was going to be a major factor in trying
to monetize any movement by publishers trying to build
an online presence. I was then recruited to lead Young &
Rubicam’s digital group in late 1995 and built that group out
over the next four years. So since early 1995, I’ve had a love
affair with digital advertising and digital media in general.
ABC: Your digital agency today is 58Ninety. How did it get its name?
TB: The Internet is a different beast. Consumers use
it to distribute things like music files and email, while
marketers use it to interact with consumers. We purposely
built ourselves to help sort through those
opportunities and challenges, so 58Ninety
is named for two dates in Internet history.
The first date, 1958, was the year President
Dwight Eisenhower set up ARPA, the
Advanced Research Projects Agency, which led
to the underlying data channel of a communications system
designed to allow redundant communications. That structure
gave rise to a network that was used by academics and the
military for many years. On top of that, Tim Berners-Lee
wrote the http protocol in 1990, which is the graphical sub
network of the Internet.
ABC: What is your typical day like at 58Ninety?
TB: A day starts at 8 a.m. There’s usually a staff meeting on
a project-by-project basis first thing in the morning. Around
10:30, I call a standup where we go around the room and
everyone talks about what they’re doing that day. Then the
balance of a day is phone calls with clients, calls with new
business prospects, usually lunch at my desk, usually a couple
cups of coffee. The last person is out of here usually between
7 and 9. I’m typically one of the last but not by any means
always the last. Then its home, dinner, an hour to field a few
emails, then get up the next day and do it all over again. It’s a very busy, fast-paced, hectic, but enjoyable place to work.
ABC: How is the digital industry different today than it was 10 years ago?
TB: In 2001, the bubble had popped in the first Internet go-around.
The industry was sober. If you looked at it from the
point of view of a publisher, manufacturer or advertiser in
2001, the Internet didn’t deliver on the promise it generated
in the mid to late ’90s. Fast-forward to today, I think the
Internet has definitely delivered on a lot of its promises from
the ’90s. Take the way cars are sold. Ten years ago, people
would go to car lots four or five times. People now spend
so much time configuring a car online that the decision is
nearly made. That’s just one example of thousands of how
technology has fundamentally disrupted the way things were.
The second big change is the rise of the social Web. The power of one voice online can generate ripples across many groups of people and change outcomes for companies, politics and public policy. It’s remarkable and I think we’re still at the beginning of understanding the power of the social Web.
ABC: You serve as chairman of the Canadian Digital Advisory Committee. What are the top-of-mind topics for the committee?
TB: I’ve always had an interest personally in helping
the industry find its footing in a very fleet-footed time.
The CDAC is pushing for conversation around how to
achieve better collective outcomes in the marketing and
communications space. It’s an open, collaborative group that
addresses the things we deal with every day. We’re not going
after new standards of measurement, but we will talk about
them. We’re not necessarily going after new ad formats, but
we will talk about its implications. The conversation helps
ABC create new products and services that the market needs
to bring sense to this medium. I have a longtime affiliation
with ABC’s digital work, and I’m a real believer in the long-term
value of the third-party, objective role that ABC brings
to conversations between buyer and publisher.
ABC: One of those new products is the CMR. What is your opinion of this report?
TB: I’m a huge fan of the CMR. If buyers look at the
publisher’s total footprint, they get a better sense of the
value the publisher can bring to their customers. There are
so many extensions and ways of interacting beyond the core
publication. It’s a more comprehensive, consolidated view
of all the ways readers and consumers interact with a brand’s
content. That is a story that needs to be told and ABC is
the right organization to tell it. And it’s consistent with the
prominence and history of the organization. The CMR is
really a brilliant evolution of the ABC product, service and
role within the industry.
ABC: What advice would you give to publishers who might be considering a CMR?
TB: My counsel would be to embrace it, explore it and try to
understand the ways to better shine light on areas of brand
interaction that aren’t always readily apparent to the buyer.
That’s a huge opportunity, even if revenue models aren’t
evident in the short term.
ABC: What do you see as the future business model for publishers’ digital/mobile content—ad supported, subscription supported, a combination?
TB: I think it needs to be both because the costs of evolving
into a serious online content provider are not insubstantial.
The digital publishing ecosystem is interesting because it
offers revenue models that aren’t readily apparent today.
I would not at all be surprised if shrewd publishers and
motivated buyers are coming up with new ways to improve
each other’s outcomes. That might be hybrid-advertising deals or closer relationships between publishers and advertisers
when it comes to marketing and communications. We’re
already seeing some examples of that where print publishers
are now broadcasters and video broadcasters are now
publishers. That colliding of business models provides a lot of
interesting opportunity long term.
ABC: What other organizations are you involved in?
TB: Besides the ABC board, I sit on the board of CBC
Radio-Canada. I’m also a big supporter of the Children’s Aid
Foundation, a national organization that enriches the lives of
children in the care of Children’s Aid Society Canada. I sat on
the board for six years. We do pro bono work at the agency
level because we believe in the organization deeply.
ABC: Last year, you completed the Director’s Education Program at the Institute of Corporate Directors. Why was it important to complete this program?
TB: Corporate governance is the proper running of
a corporation in the interests of the corporation, its
shareholders and its managers. This can be done, but as we
know, it isn’t always done. I did an MBA at the Rotman
School at the University of Toronto 15 years earlier and went
back for this degree because the ICD has a partnership with
Rotman. I think it’s important for anyone to consider the
importance of governance. If you’re a private corporation or
a not-for-profit organization like ABC, governance matters.
And I will say ABC is a very well governed organization.
ABC: You also teach classes for the Association of Canadian Advertisers. What does your class entail?
TB: I teach a digital marketing course there twice a year.
It’s one day and we focus on the differences between more
traditional media marketing and the digital space because
there are things that digital agencies do that are significantly
different than traditional agencies. Teaching is something I
really enjoy and take pride in because it’s a way of getting out
and having a conversation with people in the industry.
ABC: So you run a successful digital agency, sit on two boards, and serve as a mentor in the industry. What do you do with all your spare time?
TB: I value Friday nights because I get to spend time with my
family and just quietly revisit the day. But I pretty much work
all the time—it gives me great pleasure. My family is a very
busy family, and we all need downtime. But I really love what
I do, and I’m so blessed to be able to work in an industry that
I love and at a job that I love. So not having a lot of spare time
is not a problem for me.
ABC: What trends do you think we’ll see in the media in the next year?
TB: The big opportunity is content. Publishers, being in
the content business, can help advertisers, who are now
getting into the publishing business with content calendars
and looking to distribute different assets across different
channels. They have so much more in common than 15 years
ago. There’s a huge opportunity for discussion that drives
more integration between the brand’s editorial calendar and
the publisher’s editorial opportunity. I’m not in any way
advocating the weakening of editorial policy—it is a way to
provide additional value to the reader, better monetize the
publisher’s content and deliver on the advertiser’s objectives.
ABC: What is ABC’s role in that environment?
TB: ABC has a big opportunity to help that conversation
unfold. The CMR is an example of a leading-edge tool
from ABC that is really the blueprint for that conversation.
Broadcast video, audio, text, user-generated content—it’s
all colliding in this digital space. We’re in the most exciting
juncture of all media ever in the history of the industry. And
with that comes some disruption and some challenges, but
it’s really a meeting of all roads right now. It’s an enormous
opportunity in front of everyone.
