CNET Hires Condé Nast Chief Data Officer to Build Out Its Performance Advertising

The sprawling media company Red Ventures, home to dozens of publishers including Bankrate and Lonely Planet, announced on Thursday that it has hired Karthic Bala as its first-ever executive vice president of data product tech for CNET, a move that signals its desire to enhance its already sophisticated marketing strategy. Prior to joining Red Ventures, Bala served as the chief data officer for Condé Nast, where he helped transform the legacy publisher into a data and consumer-centric operation. He began his role at CNET June 17. Along with competitors like Dotdash Meredith and Recurrent Ventures, Red Ventures has pioneered a performance advertising model that relies on interpreting clear signals of intent from web searches and serving those users relevant contextual ads, Bala said. For instance, if someone searched a description of a medical condition, they might land on an article from the Red Ventures title Heathline describing the illness, alongside a pharmaceutical advertisement featuring a relevant product. This approach, combined with its lightweight website design, has quietly turned the media company into a juggernaut. In 2021, it had 4,500 employees, generated $2 billion in revenue and reached 751 million readers per month, according to reporting from The New York Times. From Books to Bookings: Lonely Planet Turns Travel Operator Under Red Ventures In his new role, Bala will be tasked with improving this methodology, starting with CNET and the Red Ventures Media and Commerce division, which includes related titles like ZDNET and Metacritic. To do so, Bala plans to improve the information architecture of the division so that its brands can draw on data from across the Red Ventures family of websites. In this way, by stitching together insights to serve readers the most relevant advertisements, content recommendations, editorial packages or commercial products, Bala hopes to improve the consumer experience. “A lot of organizations have data in silos,” Bala said. “But this opportunity is unique because we can leverage all of the data that Red Ventures has, across all of the stages in a person's life that it touches, and integrate that together. That's what got me excited.” The hiring reflects a growing trend among publishers to strengthen their advertising offerings in light of the coming deprecation of third-party cookies. Even Red Ventures, whose contextual model does not rely on the technology, is taking steps to more intelligently use its trove of first-party data. CNET wants to serve readers more relevant products While Red Ventures has already honed its system for serving relevant contextual advertisements, the media company hopes to complement the model by improving its ability to serve relevant products based on browsing behavior. Where a reader browsing CNET today might encounter a curated list of the best new televisions, for example, Bala aims to create a system that can serve that reader an ad or editorial recommendation that takes into account their activity on other Red Ventures sites. Bala recently served as the chief data officer at Condé Nast before joining Red Ventures. Thanks to the size and scope of the Red Ventures portfolio––it includes publishers offering financial services, travel inspiration, medical advice and more––the company believes it can paint a highly accurate picture of a reader by better understanding their interests holistically. For example, someone reading an article on the Red Ventures brand MyMove gives a clear indication that they are planning to move soon. That person might then read an article on CNET comparing internet-service providers and mortgage lenders. By stitching these insights together, Bala hopes to make Red Ventures more relevant to every segment of the consumer journey––in this case the process of moving. “Red Ventures has been in the business of performance marketing for over 20 years,” Bala said. “But by matching data from across its titles, we can build a product that is specific to their personal needs.”