The Future of Media is Data-Fueled: How Future PLC & Bombora Are Rewriting the Rules of Revenue

[00:03:00–00:04:00] Opening + guest intro Heather Holst-Knudsen restarts the intro and welcomes listeners to the Revenue Room Podcast. She introduces the guests: Allison Markert (VP, Global Head of Strategy & Ops at Future B2B) and Jaime Schultheis (Head of Global Data Partnerships at Bombora). The episode will focus on their partnership, how they unify audiences with data, compete in an AI-driven world, and measure advertiser impact.

[00:04:00–00:06:00] Allison background Allison shares she began in investment management at State Street Global Advisors. Not feeling passionate about investing long-term, she switched to media, building a 20-year career in commercial/operational roles. She frames her current leadership as turning strategy into action, serving as strategist, builder, and servant leader.

[00:06:00–00:07:30] Jaime background Jaime describes 25 years in media with brands like Hearst, Tribune, Gannett, and McClatchy. She grew up in the newspaper business in Oklahoma, giving her deep respect for journalism and community impact. She has always worked around first-party data, evolving from physical distribution targeting to digital audience targeting.

[00:07:30–00:10:30] Partnership overview: why Future + Bombora Heather tees up their RevD Up conference session and asks about their collaboration.

• Allison: Publishers often hold narrow assumptions about their audiences. Bombora’s intent lens helps Future see broader behaviors outside its properties, revealing trends and interests they couldn’t see alone.
• Jaime: The co-op/intent model lets publishers understand what’s happening beyond their “four walls.” Future uses these signals across content, sales, and measurement to stay ahead of emerging topics. Allison adds Future’s 200+ brand portfolio means valuable B2B audiences show up in unexpected places (not just core tech titles), creating new monetizable white space.

[00:10:30–00:15:30] Advertiser maturity + sales enablement Heather asks how advertisers react to this audience-based model and the sales training required.

• Allison: Advertiser sophistication varies widely by sector and size. Future “meets clients where they are,” often bringing product, client success, and technical teams into sales calls. Education is ongoing for both sellers and buyers.
• Jaime: Industry-wide gap: many sales teams still sell brands, not audiences. Publishers need structured training to go to market with whole-portfolio audience solutions, and she sees a big opportunity here. Heather praises Future’s cross-functional customer approach as revenue-critical alignment.

[00:15:30–00:21:30] How activation works (use case) Heather asks for a “how it works” walk-through.

• Allison: Future builds custom audiences around target account lists. Programs run full-funnel: awareness → nurture → conversion. Media kicks off early, then retargeting with thought leadership/webinars/assets. Multi-touch and multi-asset engagement help identify buying groups. Typical cycle is ~3 months to align with long B2B buying journeys.
• Jaime: Bombora tagging across Future’s entire portfolio enables precise targeting at scale across many sites, not just B2B titles. Shared taxonomy ties the signals together. Heather underscores this as audience-over-brand selling.

[00:21:30–00:27:30] Enriched first-party data + privacy/cookies Heather asks Jaime to explain “marketing magic” from enriched first-party data.

• Jaime: First-party data is the “bread and butter”; enrichment makes it the “whole feast.” Enrichment layers intent, firmographics, titles, interests, and context onto publisher data to build complete profiles. This raises targeting quality and CPMs. She says the value is rising because privacy rules and cookie deprecation force advertisers to rely on clean, permissioned publisher data.

[00:27:30–00:33:30] Efficiency + channel preferences (webinars example) Heather emphasizes enriched data improves advertising efficiency by focusing spend on accounts actually in market and matching channel/time/content preferences.

• Jaime: Publishers should act as expert guides—expanding or refining target lists based on signals.
• Allison: Audience members have strong channel differences (newsletter lovers vs. live-event loyalists). Meeting people where they prefer to engage is essential. Heather shares a 4-type webinar behavior pattern (live attenders, partial attenders, registrants who only want on-demand, and readers who prefer transcripts). Both guests agree registration/consumption itself is an intent signal, and post-event measurement should track research lift in registered accounts.

[00:33:30–00:37:30] “Show me the receipts” measurement shift Heather asks how reporting expectations have changed.

• Allison: Clients want more than impressions/clicks—they want evidence accounts are moving through pipeline. “Sales-qualified leads” take multiple touches, so measurement must tell that story and guide optimization.
• Jaime: Performance era demands accountability, but also creates opportunity to show full-journey impact—awareness growth, research lift in target accounts, and new in-market accounts discovered through data. Heather notes customer success becomes more critical to sustain these educational, outcome-based conversations, and Allison confirms Future is strengthening CS leadership.

[00:37:30–00:44:30] AI competitors: threat vs catalyst Heather worries AI makes it easy for new “media” competitors to appear overnight.

• Jaime: AI-generated “fake media” siphons ad dollars, but lacks depth and soul. Legacy publishers can win by using AI for efficiency and freeing humans to create trusted, distinctive journalism.
• Allison: Future treats AI as a catalyst, anchored in trust and quality. They have an AI working group and editorial guidance, and they partnered early with OpenAI. She highlights “Ad Genie,” an AI product that rewrites client newsletter creative to boost performance. Heather calls this AI wrapped around existing products to improve outcomes.

[00:44:30–00:50:30] Pitfalls: tech stack + change management Heather says companies can’t win with data/AI unless their data house is in order.

• Allison: Biggest pitfall is rolling out new tools without fully landing the “what + why.” With Ad Genie, they had to retrain after adoption lag. Timing is another risk—projects usually take longer than expected.
• Jaime: Praises Future’s discipline in rapidly unifying tech stacks post-acquisition to avoid siloed data. Unified stacks allow publishers to monetize as “data-as-a-service.” Heather agrees and vents about calling data “exhaust” instead of fuel. Allison reiterates fast unification enables portfolio-wide segment activation across many sites.

[00:50:30–00:56:30] Leadership lessons in constant disruption Heather asks about leadership during nonstop change.

• Jaime: Two lessons:

  1. Over-communicate strategy while accepting tactics will change fast due to AI.
  2. Lead human-first—acknowledge fatigue, be transparent, and build trust.

• Allison: Focus on true north and noise reduction; resilience comes from teams supporting each other. Leaders should form “squads” to tackle hard problems, set deadlines, and empower innovation to turn friction into acceleration.

[00:56:30–00:59:00] Rapid-fire + close Heather asks what’s on their nightstands:

• Allison: West With the Night (Beryl Markham memoir), inspiring persistence and daily discipline.
• Jaime: Jane Austen’s Book Club, a mid-read historical look at Austen’s influences. Heather plugs RevD Up 2026 registration and closes the show.