OAri Lewine, BSBA ’09, co-founder and chief strategy officer of TripleLift, was recognized for his innovative contributions to the advertising industry with over-the-top (OTT) marketing.

Lewine was named a Broadcasting & Cable 2019 Digital All-Star for his work at TripleLift. The 12 All-Star executives have not only made a great impact over the past year, but also blaze a trail for the future.

During Advertising Week in September, Lewine was featured in the Native Disrupter series. He spoke about how brand integration, specifically with over-the-top marketing, can combat ad-free experiences within on-demand subscription services such as Netflix.

“People are used to an ad-free experience, but the cost to produce content keeps going up, so the big challenge is to create program and brand integration, to get the brand message into content,” Lewine said in an interview with B&C. “We want to use new technology to create ads relevant to viewers.”

TripleLift uses over-the-top market tactics to bring new ways of advertising onto screen. “Overlay” ad techniques place relevant ads in the corner of the screen during programming, while “brand insertion” techniques insert ads onto blank space, like a billboard, during programming.

Lewine sees the future of the advertising industry focusing on the needs of individual consumers.

“We’ve gotten really good at understanding who our customer is, how we can reach them, and how we can see whether ads are working,” said Lewine in an interview during Advertising Week. “Now the question is, now that we’ve found that person, what are we actually delivering? What is the message? What does the message look like?”