As Director of Product Innovation, I managed product innovation execution across emerging (VR, Audio, and Connected Car) & growth (Commerce, Branded Content, and Native Advertising) within Verizon Media’s premium sales business. This role required the management of products across multiple departments (Demand, Supply, Publisher CMS) while working with teams of 50+ product managers, engineers, and designers extending across the organization to identify, develop, and deliver new innovations across Verizon Media's owned and operating publisher networks (e.g. Huffington Post, Yahoo Sports / Entertainment / Finance, AOL, Techcrunch, etc.)

I was so grateful to work with Phil during a part of his time at AOL and then Verizon Media. Phil has a rare and special blend of being equal parts creative, imaginative and thought-provoking, combined with analytical, organized and disciplined in his work."

— Uyoung Suggs, Director of Ad Creative Tech, Innovation Strategy & Ops

Core clients included:

  • Product: Managed product leadership across multiple departments to outline requirements ensuring we development products that were on time, on budget, and delivered measurable results.
  • Operations: Coordinated with operations leadership to identify and solve operational challenges that could inhibit scale while ensuring teams had the proper execution plans to activate and test new innovation programs.
  • Sales: Partnered with sales leadership to ensure our product innovations provided new opportunties to improve and/or develop relationships with agency clients and unlocked new revenue opportunities.

Problems I worked on:

  • How can we introduce and encourage a culture of innovation and collaboration across multiple departments and teams within the organization?
  • How can we build new innovative products with the capacity to operationally scale while ensuring each product is provided enough time/space to develop and grow?
  • How can we identify new opportunities for growth and innovation, specifically verticals we have the right to win?

Achievements:

  • Led successful new commerce collaborations with product teams across both Yahoo and AOL teams working with product management and development leadership within Verizon’s data insights, ad serving and publisher CMS platforms. One such initiative included tools for self-publishing products for sale within video content.
  • Led all phases from conception to launch of Verizon’s first location based mobile commerce ad format (Mobile Wallet), a new ad format that delivers offers and content directly into the consumer's mobile wallet. This new format immediately generated more than 500k of revenue for the company and led to significant client interest in other innovation ad formats.
  • Original co-founding member of Verizon Media’s Innovation Council, a team building an innovation pipeline for piloting innovative ad experiences for Verizon’s clients and brands.
  • Co-developed a product innovation scoring matrix to help reward innovation while avoiding unnecessary risk. Our scoring measured the integration and operational readiness of each new product prior to launch, including Verizon’s first mobile wallet and new video commerce tools resulting in greater network publisher compliance and demand from sales. This tool also helped Verizon Media to postpone or retool several innovation projects to help mitigate and manage risk.