Teaching Marketers to Navigate the New Digital Ad Business

Forget Mad Men. The world of advertising and marketing is nothing like that these days, observes Gene De Libero and Perry Drake, two of the expert faculty in the NYU-SCPS digital media marketing program. From Google and YouTube to those little TV screens in the back of New York City taxis, it’s a different business today, increasingly dominated by digital media.

Gene De Libero, founder and CEO of Digital Mindshare, a digital media think tank, has taught at NYU-SCPS since 1999. He points out that traditional media—TV, radio, and print—have been losing ground for years. As audiences become increasingly fragmented, it is harder for advertisers to know if they’re reaching their target prospects.

“There’s a huge demand for advertising that produces measurable results, where the ROI [return on investment] can be seen,” De Libero says. “With digital media advertising, we know who sees the message, where they see it, and how they respond to it. We know if it’s working.”

Enrollments in the Certificate in Digital Media Marketing program and digital marketing courses have been surging in recent semesters, and De Libero says it’s no wonder. The economy may be floundering, but this field is growing and constantly changing. “It’s different even from what it was six months ago,” he says.

De Libero’s colleague, Perry Drake, agrees, which is why he begins each class reading news clips from publications, such as Advertising Age, Direct Marketing News, and the New York Times. Drake says it is vital to keep up with what’s happening in the virtual marketplace. An adjunct professor, he’s also vice president of Drake Direct, a database marketing consulting firm that specializes in direct response modeling, Web metrics and analytics, and database mining—all subjects that he teaches at NYU-SCPS.

“Students who are comfortable with numbers gravitate to things like pay-per-click modeling,” Drake explains. “But if they’re not, they can pursue the creative and design side of digital marketing.”

The creative side was what appealed to Andrea Soares Berrios. A former copy editor at Folha de Sao Paolo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, Berrios was strictly a words-and-pictures person. But when she moved to New York as marketing and communications coordinator for the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, she quickly realized she needed training in digital media.

So Berrios signed up for the NYU-SCPS professional certificate program to learn best practices and the latest trends. Was it helpful? “Absolutely,” she says. “Immediately. We did marketing projects in groups and discussed each other’s work. I learned new ideas and insights that I could take to my boss the next day!”