OpenWeb, the premium community engagement platform serving more than 3,000 top-tier publishers and a pioneer in powering a healthier, safer web, today announced the launch of a new podcast series: “The Community Exchange Podcast.” The podcast premieres its first episode today and is available on all major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and is available in video on OpenWeb’s YouTube page. .
Hosted by Mitch Hansen, OpenWeb’s Vice President of Marketing, the podcast will examine the growth of the community economy—the emerging ecosystem of publishers, creators, advertisers and users on the open internet. Each episode will feature interviews with leaders in publishing, advertising, content and tech, plus contributions from OpenWeb’s team of media and technology veterans.
“Publishers, brands, users and online communities are facing rapid technological changes, new competition and a changing regulatory landscape,” said Nadav Shoval, Founder and CEO of OpenWeb. “Through The Community Exchange Podcast, we’re bringing together some of the brightest minds across industries to discuss these opportunities and challenges. We’re excited to create a platform for these important conversations, and hope they act as a catalyst for a more open, healthier web.”
The premiere episode will feature a conversation with Jeremy Hlavacek, Chief Commercial Officer at Experian Marketing Services. With his experience in data-driven advertising, Jeremy emphasizes the importance of data and ad tech capabilities to both brands and consumers, and the need to balance those capabilities with increased respect for users’ privacy.
“On the whole, the last 20 years of developing the internet and the open web has been unbelievably beneficial to the world […] We want to preserve the spirit that made the internet — and the open web specifically — such an amazing thing for society,” he tells Hansen. “But consumer protection is a real issue, and we have to find the balance in that.”
As part of that focus on consumer protection and data privacy, Hlavacek touches on the discourse around the impending ‘death of cookies,’ telling Hansen, “It’s not so much about cookies dying as it’s about channels that don’t have cookies growing rapidly [such as] streaming television and CTV. […] There’s [already] a world right now where there are no cookies.”
Additional upcoming guests include:
- Noam Bardin, former CEO of Waze, current Founder and CEO of Post;
- Angela Johnson, EVP and Global Client Lead at Dentsu;
- Peter Wang, founder and CEO of First Principles Studio; and
- Rose Jackson, Director of The Atlantic Council’s Democracy + Tech initiative.
The podcast premiere comes on the heels of OpenWeb’s impressive growth and recent funding rounds. OpenWeb recently raised $170M in Series F funding, bringing its total valuation to $1.5 billion and has expanded to serve more than 120 million active monthly users across more than 3,000 top-tier publishers.
