AdTechEdge Interview with Deborah Kilpatrick, Co-Founder & VP Marketing, SourceKnowledge

Welcome, Deborah! Could you elaborate on your journey of running your own SEO & SEM consulting business, dSide Marketing? In what ways did this experience enable you to co-found SourceKnowledge? 

Having started my career working at a search engine, it was a natural transition for me to take the skills I had developed there to help companies efficiently run their online marketing campaigns and create search engine-friendly websites. It was a very rewarding time for me to see tangible results for clients and get them excited about online advertising.

As the VP of Marketing since inception, how have you shaped the marketing scene at SourceKnowledge? How do your role and the company’s dynamics differ now from 2009?

SourceKnowledge is constantly adapting to meet the changing needs of the market. We are in a fast-paced industry that is always changing — from acquisitions to data laws, as well as decisions that Google makes.

A key survival factor in this landscape is to be very attentive to the shifting sands in the industry as a whole while also listening to our advertisers and publishers and continually striving to innovate with our tech to bring them the very best solutions.

My role in the company has shifted in the last 5 years from an operational marketing role to more in product development and working closely with internal stakeholders to provide solutions for managing publishers and advertisers as well as the tools we develop for them.

Could you shed light on your recent launch, SourceKnowledge Domain Targeting, and explain how this programmatic affiliate is bringing about transformative changes for advertisers and publishers?

SourceKnowledge’s programmatic affiliate solution empowers advertisers and retailers to purchase high-converting traffic and enables publishers to sell their inventory — all programmatically.

Historically, affiliate and lower-funnel traffic has only been available to be bought manually through a platform or an API. SourceKnowledge Domain Targeting programmatic affiliate solutions streamline the approach to affiliate marketing, maximizing campaign performance and efficiency.

This model allows advertisers to make programmatic buys based on their RoAS or CPA goals. The platform is designed to prioritize these goals through its SmartBidder™ Technology and will not spend beyond them.

Conversely, if a publisher’s minimum bid rate is not met, SourceKnowledge encourages publishers to set up a Fallback URL, allowing them to send their inventory to a different platform so they don’t miss an opportunity to monetize their content.

In what ways does the SmartBidder™ technology empower advertisers to acquire traffic at scale and without risks, all while aligning with their Return on Ad Spend (RoAS) and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) objectives?

Our SmartBidder™ technology detects and rewards converting traffic in real-time, ensuring that our publishers are well compensated for their performance. This auto-optimization solution spends the advertiser’s budget based on performance. If the campaign target is not being met, the campaign automatically gets throttled so as to not spend to underperform. As a result, advertisers can acquire traffic in a risk-free way while staying in line with their KPIs.

Congratulations on SourceKnowledge’s recent recognition on the 2023 Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50™. What factors do you believe contribute to this success?

Our team at SourceKnowledge is one of the best in the industry. We are collaborative and innovative and are able to shift quickly to meet new requirements and opportunities.

With an office in Montreal and a global client base, how do you adapt your brand and communications strategy to effectively resonate with such a diverse audience?

We know exactly who our audience is for both advertisers and publishers. Advertisers who understand their attribution model and aren’t scared of the open web flourish in our platform and drive excellent RoAS. Publishers who know that they have the power to control the yield on their page and open their sites to different monetization platforms, including CPC platforms, do very well with us. We speak directly to these two groups through our marketing channels (trade shows, blogs, LinkedIn, and direct sales).

What, in your opinion, are the imminent challenges and trends in the open web digital advertising space? How is SourceKnowledge positioning itself for these approaching developments?

Data compliance is the biggest challenge on the open web. It’s not insurmountable, but it requires a clear understanding of the terms of engagement and being a responsible corporate citizen. Our recent acquisition by mrge has brought us a lot of experience with GDPR, since mrge is based in Europe.