Stephen DiMarco Joins Tubular As Chief Strategy Officer

Tubular Labs, a social video content and audience measurement company, today appointed Stephen DiMarco chief strategy officer, effective immediately. As the company furthers its efforts to be the de facto ratings service for comparing TV with premium social video, DiMarco will lead product and the execution of Tubular’s go-to-market strategy selling to brands and agencies.

More than 6 million U.S. households are estimated to have cut pay TV subscriptions in 2020 — the most subscribers ever in a single year, according to eMarketer. With the pandemic accelerating consumer behaviors toward more digital and ad-supported video viewing, measurement providers have struggled to keep up. This comes at a time when industry forecasts predict that U.S. social network video ad spending will grow by nearly a third to more than $19 billion in 2021.

“Tubular is one of the only measurement companies advancing at the speed of consumer behavior, and we are uniquely suited to address the rapidly changing digital video consumption habits facing media owners and advertisers,” said DiMarco, who has spent his career working closely with publishers, brands and agencies as they navigate digital media disruption. He also has spent years serving on the board of trustees for the Advertising Research Foundation.

While Tubular has historically helped media owners and content creators demonstrate the reach and engagement of their audiences, DiMarco is tasked with directing product and go-to-market efforts at the buy-side where agencies and brands are scrambling for better data-informed offerings that can help justify digital video investments. DiMarco will report directly to Scott Ernst, who was appointed Tubular CEO in February 2021.

“Stephen is a recognized leader in media measurement with a deep understanding of the dramatic shift in consumer mindsets and what it means for media companies, agencies and brands,” said Scott Ernst, CEO at Tubulars Labs. “I’m excited for Stephen to lead our product innovation with a focus on bringing together media buyers and sellers as Tubular sets its sights on becoming the content and audience ratings authority that empowers confident investments in social video programming and advertising.”

Tubular delivers audience and time-based engagement metrics for social video. The company’s Tubular Audience Ratings provide the second-by-second minutes watched data for social video. These video engagement tune-in analytics are combined with de-duplicated unique viewer data across Facebook and YouTube to provide a common ratings system through which social video can be evaluated and transacted against.

In his most recent role as chief digital officer at Kantar, DiMarco was responsible for the digital transformation of Kantar’s offerings and services, as well as raising measurement standards industrywide. DiMarco led Kantar’s Project Moonshot, which specifically focuses on building advanced measurement tools without the use of cookies, and ensures CCPA and GDPR compliance. Additionally, he led the launch of Kantar’s non-linear TV campaign effectiveness measurement tool; and he also led the development of an attribution solution helping optimize media investments based on brand and sales outcomes as well as creative quality.

“Media research companies have a responsibility to provide modern, inclusive content measurement and audience insights to advertisers, publishers and agencies,” added DiMarco. “In order to fairly focus on business and culture impact, we must strive to remove biases from media research. We’ll be taking careful consideration to ensure all enclaves of humans are reflected in the source data we’re analyzing.”

DiMarco began his career in marketing at Comedy Central in 1992 before moving into a sales and marketing role at FX Networks in 1994. He made his first mark on the digital marketing and measurement industry as a founding management team member at Compete, where he helped drive the go-to-market strategy resulting in the acquisition by WPP’s Kantar.

After Millward Brown, DiMarco went on to become the chief digital officer of Kantar in 2018.