“I like startups,” says Craig Johnson, Accordant Media’s Group Account Director in the company’s Chicago office. “It’s far different from working for large, established businesses or corporations. Although Accordant is 60 plus people across four offices, we are very much thinking like a startup.”
Accordant Media helps marketers organize and analyze their customer data and develop sophisticated targeting strategies through programmatic media channels. The evolution of media buying means that technology now automates the buying, placement, and optimization of media inventory, replacing human-based methods. When Art Muldoon and Matthew Greitzer launched Accordant in 2010, they felt that independent ad agencies and marketers needed a programmatic solution aside from ad agency trading desks. “In their opinion, there was no solution that was able to provide both transparency and cost efficiency,” says Johnson.
Though Accordant was founded in New York, the company now has offices in San Francisco, London, and Chicago. The Chicago office opened in Novel Coworking’s 73 W. Monroe location in November 2014, and Johnson has helped create what it is today.
Building and establishing a company is something that Johnson has plenty of experience with. Right after college, he opened and owned two coffee shops. After that, he worked in the advertising and media industry, moving all across America to work for large companies. He was ex-cited to receive the offer to become a part of Accordant and establish its Chicago office. Combining his coffee shop experience and knowledge from working with larger companies, Johnson is ready to build Chicago’s team of four employees to ten within the coming year.
As the team grows, so will their client base. Johnson stresses, “We can work with any level of investment.” Their clients range from global companies to small online providers. “People hear programmatic media and often say they don’t have the budget for it, but that’s just not true,” he says.
Accordant builds partnerships with their stakeholders and ensures most of their investment is in media. They provide reports for buying, tracking, and reporting where money is invested. Clients appreciate the end-of-campaign documents that Accordant provides because they can track the viewability of their ad as well as what percentage of ads were seen by a human.
Accordant Media is proud to remain honest and open with their clients. According to Johnson, many of their competitors keep clients in the dark so they have no idea where their money is going or how they are achieving end results. “It’s easy to do with digital marketing,” explains Johnson. “Accordant, on the other hand, builds partnerships, and we remain 100 percent transparent with our clients.”