21
SAMANTHA
LEVINE ARCHER
DIRECTOR, CLIENT
TECHNOLOGY AND SOLUTIONS,
HEARTS & SCIENCESamantha Levine Archer dove deep into data
during her four years at Annalect, the nerve
center of a sprawling Omnicom operation
that birthed the industry’s hottest new media
network, Hearts & Science.
“When I explain what I do to my parents, I say,
essentially, problem solving,” says Archer, 29. “It’s
like cheerleading and being a boss at the same time.”
When Hearts & Science offi cially launched
after winning P&G’s 2015 media review, Archer
became director of client technology and
solutions, an ambitious new role that requires
her to oversee the agency’s Agile practice.
During the March brand safety freakout that
led major advertisers to pull their ads from
YouTube, she led a “Special Forces” unit that
used guerrilla tactics to solve clients’ problems
with near-surgical precision by running “dark”
tests and wading through thousands of hours of
offensive content.
As clients’ transparency demands grow,
Hearts & Sciences aims to stay ahead of the
game. Archer describes the agency as “a special
starfi sh growing into a larger octopus” driven by
“dramatic changes in what a traditional media
planner and buyer can do.” —Patrick CoffeeNITHYA THADANI
CEO, RAINIt’ s been “a whirlwind of a year” for Nithya
Thadani, 34. After being hired as president of
digital consultancy Rain in September 2016,
she was quickly fast-tracked into the CEO role,
which she assumed this past January. Since then,
she’s focused on “bringing tech and development
capability to the forefront,” and evolving Rain from “a
digital creative agency to an emerging tech-focused
innovation company.” Her current role has been
“eye-opening,” she says, as her team is “pushing the
boundaries of where we can go as a company.”
Thadani is especially proud of Rain’s position
as “one of the fi rst players in the voice space,”
creating over 30 voice experiences in the past year
for brands including Marriott, Warner Brothers’
Dunkirk, Hellmann’s, Campbell’s Kitchen and
Sesame Street (one of the fi rst such experiences
aimed at children)—a number that Rain hopes to
double within six months.
“We’ve barely scratched the surface of how this
will impact marketers,” she adds. —E.O.ANDREW CASALE
PRESIDENT AND CEO, INDEX EXCHANGEFew established ad-tech entrepreneurs could claim that their careers
started as a teenager. Index Exchange president and CEO Andrew
Casale is an exception.
At 15, Casale started helping his father run Casale Media, designing
websites and eventually building an ad network to make money from
content. After rebranding as Index Exchange in 2015, Casale began
constructing the tech pipes to power programmatic advertising for
publishers including Time Inc. and Condé Nast while growing the company to
more than 300 staffers.
“You can’t lose sight of the realities of being a publisher, and I think that’s something that a lot of
ad-tech companies get wrong,” says Casale, 31. “The reality of our customer base is that they’re a little fed
up with ad tech.”
Index Exchange’s focus on header bidding has increased revenue by more than 100 percent year
over year for the past three years. Today, more than 3,000 domains use the company’s header-bidding
technology. —Lauren JohnsonJILL FRANK
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND HEAD OF
CONTENT PRODUCTION, EPSILON AGENCYBefore landing in the agency world, Jill Frank spent nearly a decade
working with the Queen of All Media, Oprah Winfrey.
“I do kind of feel like a bit of an outsider in the ad industry, and I
don’t think that’s a bad thing at all,” says Frank, 35, who connected
with Epsilon chief creative offi cer and Chicago agency veteran John
Immesoete while looking for new opportunities after 10 years at Winfrey’s
Harpo Productions. “I feel like we are in the midst of a huge sea change, and
Epsilon is on the forefront,” she notes. “I wanted to be a part of it.”
Frank now produces a wide variety of content for Epsilon clients ranging from Del Monte to the San
Diego Zoo, and also serves on Epsilon’s internal diversity and inclusion panel. “After working for an
African-American female who owned what is perhaps one of the world’s most successful production
ARCHER: KRISTINA VARAKSINA/PETER BAILEY NY; THADANI: COURTESY OF RAIN; FRANK: MARC SLOBODAcompanies,” she says, “my standard is pretty high for what this industry can be.” — P.C.