Company News and Culture / December 15, 2015 / By Erin Martin

Meet Kyoo: Mixpo's Chief Revenue Officer

Mixpo is excited to announce former AOL and MSN executive Kyoo Kim as Chief Revenue Officer. Kyoo (pronounced just like the letter “Q”) brings more than 20 years of sales and general management experience in the media and digital space. As CRO of Mixpo, he is excited about the opportunity to bring effective and efficient marketing solutions and technology to help both publishers and advertisers achieve their goals.

“I’m excited to join Mixpo because of where I see the industry going. With mobile, video, and then social being at the heart of that, Mixpo is right in the middle,” said Kim. “Those value propositions, the ability to address mobile-first, video-first and social, that’s at the heart of what Mixpo does. So from a product standpoint, and a services-offering standpoint, and market relevancy standpoint, I feel very fortunate to have a product and a brand that I could talk to potential clients about.

“I am also excited to join because of the people. When I met the exec team during the interview, I really saw a team that was really working hard on driving cohesiveness, and really dealing with hard decisions, and really making decisions to drive the company forward. And then, ultimately, the opportunity to work with Charlie Tillinghast, who was one of the best bosses I ever had in a previous life, was too good to pass on.”

Learn more about Kyoo and his fresh approach to the industry in our video interview below.

Video Transcript

Mixpo: Why did you join Mixpo?
Kyoo Kim: Couple big reasons why I’m excited to join Mixpo. One, where I see the industry going. So when I talk about mobile-first, video-first, and then, of course, social being at the heart of that, Mixpo is right in the middle. Those value propositions, the ability to address mobile-first, video-first and social, that’s at the heart of what Mixpo does. So from a product standpoint, and a services-offering standpoint, and market relevancy standpoint, I feel very fortunate to have a product and a brand that I could talk to potential clients about. Secondly, it’s all about the people. When I met the exec team during the interview, I really saw a team that was really working hard on driving cohesiveness, and really dealing with hard decisions, and really making decisions to drive the company forward. And then, ultimately, the opportunity to work with Charlie Tillinghast, who was one of the best bosses I ever had in a previous life, was too good to pass on.

M: What are you excited about in 2016?
KK: One of the things I’m really excited about for 2016 is that, for a long time now, people have been talking about this video-first, mobile-first approach, but now, with all the things that are happening within the industry, I feel like 2016 will be the year where we truly see that happening, both from a publisher’s standpoint and from an advertiser’s standpoint. They need to really think about how they approach their solutions, marketing tactics, strategy, with that mobile-first, video-first mentality. Case in point, consumers are already there. They’re demanding the type of behavior that we’ve seen. So, for example, on Facebook, nine billion video views per day, that’s crazy. So if the consumers are already there, we need to follow suit. The industry needs to follow suit and make sure that we’re doing all we can to drive that kind of a video-first, mobile-first approach. So really excited to see how that’s going to kind of play out and how that’s going to come to fruition.

M: What predictions do you have about 2016?
KK: Three predictions that I have about 2016. First, I think content marketing will continue to grow as advertisers and brands realize that they can’t just put standard ads out there. They need to create content that’s useful and engaging and attractive to consumers so they can capture their interest and really start to engage them. So we see brands such as L’Oreal, Marriott, actually creating their own content studio. Many advertisers are obviously working with publishers to create unique content, but some brands are actually creating their own content, and that, of course, has its own challenges. Once they create the content, how do they distribute it? But that whole idea of content marketing to really engage and attract users and consumers, I think, will continue to grow. Second, I believe that because of this emphasis on content marketing, native advertising will continue, also, to grow because native advertising is a way to distribute some of that content and branding content.

However, over the last couple years, there’s been a plethora of native ad technology, services, etc., and so I also see the beginning of consolidation within that sector. And then third, scale, efficiency, and ease of doing business will continue to be more and more important as our world gets more complex. So programmatic buying and ways to effectively use data to target audiences will also grow, and operational efficiency, demand for operational efficiency, will be even more in need.

M: What is the number one issue the ad industry needs to tackle?
KK: There are a lot of hurdles or issues that this industry needs to tackle, but I would say the number one key thing is simplicity. I think we, as an industry, have really overcomplicated how we get business done and how we enable marketers to get their work done. So if you ask any marketer today how hard their job is, it’s amazing that anything ever gets done because of all the complexities and all the variables involved. You only need to take a look at a LUMAscape chart to just see how crazy complex our world is. So if we can find ways to really simplify, both from an operational standpoint, from a go-to-market standpoint, from a marketing solutions standpoint, I think there’s an opportunity there.

M: What is the most exciting advancement happening in the advertising industry right now?
KK: There’s a lot of things happening in the advertising industry that excites me. One of the key advances that I think we’re just starting to get a hold of is this idea of the people-based marketing. When we can figure out how to consistently and effectively reach users, not necessarily via cookies, but we know who they are, that’s the holy grail, across platforms and screens so we can follow them across. One of the challenges that I had in my previous job at Microsoft was, we had the goal of trying to put together kind of a holistic, kind of a people-based marketing plan between MSN which was primarily desktop, XBox which was primarily kind of set-top box, Skype and Hotmail, which a lot of it was in a mobile.

And the problem was, we have some good cookie-based data on MSN, less so in mobile, and no cookie-based data in XBox. Now XBox did have kind of first-party data, but because of security or privacy issues, we couldn’t fully leverage it. So that challenge, being able to connect using that kind of people-based foundation, and get that quality and fidelity in terms of the data that we need to make sure that we’re reaching the right people will be key. And we’re starting to see some of that, especially with folks like Facebook and others who are really leveraging that first-party data.

M: When have you been most satisfied in your life?
KK: Some of the happiest times in my life, and where I felt the most satisfied just as a person and as a human being is when I’m with my family traveling. I think, of course, I love being with my family in other times, but when you’re traveling you’re experiencing new things together. It also provides an opportunity to really focus on each other because you’re not around other local friends or community. You’re traveling just as a group together, experiencing new things, potentially discovering new things and learning, also, things about yourself when you’re stuck in a car, especially for several hours. And so, I’ve been fortunate to have done a lot of travel, take some time off even during parts of my career to travel with my family. Just invaluable, and at times that has been precious to me.

M: Who is your role model, and why?
KK: For a long time I think my role model was my father, who was a… He grew up as a journalist in the professional world. He was the equivalent of a White House correspondent in Korea. Great storyteller, he loved to tell stories, and I would say he was almost a journalist-slash-philosopher. He always had an opinion about everything and insight into everything. And then later in his life he became a Presbyterian pastor. Kind of a 180 from a kind of a hard core journalist life where he was probably out there drinking and doing all the hard core journalist stuff, but he became a pastor, and he got another avenue and a channel to tell stories. And so I grew up with all those stories, and I really enjoyed seeing him and his perspective of life, and that really shaped me. And so, I would say that’s my role model.

M: What is your spirit animal?
KK: Boy, my spirit animal, probably, would be something like an eagle or a falcon. I love the idea of flying high and seeing the landscape and the perspective, a perspective that very few have, and just the different ways to see the world.