Day in the Life: Evan Hurrell, Director, Strategic Partnerships

Evan, our director of strategic partnerships, takes us through a typical day in his life in Magnite’s Broomfield, Colorado, office. 

Magnite’s Day in the Life series dives into the various people and teams that make up the world’s largest independent sell-side ad company.

How would you explain what you do to someone outside the industry?

My role falls under the business development umbrella. I’m primarily working with other technology companies that can bring Magnite clients value and finding ways to enable that value on our advertising platform. The “can” part is exciting because I get to analyze and help decide who would be the best fit. These partners can help strengthen our position in market, make us stickier with existing clients, and help us win new business.

A few others on my team do what I do, so we each have our own focus. I cover off on companies that help us ensure brands are avoiding fraud, people can see their ads when they run online, and that carbon emissions are taken into account. Lately, I’ve been particularly excited about the work I do in sustainability and helping our clients manage their carbon footprint. 

How did you first break into ad tech?

Well, it all started when I watched way too much Mad Men when I was in high school. I knew that I wanted to get into advertising when I got to college, but it was when I started working summer internships at ad agencies that I found the spark. The tech side was moving faster and driving most of the decisions at the agency level, and most importantly, tech was hiring. I was beyond excited when I landed at a DSP as my first full-time gig, working in account management. I thought combining software with my interest in advertising gave me the best of two worlds. 

How does your department/team help support Magnite/Magnite’s clients as a whole? 

The most interesting part of the strategic partnerships team is how cross-functional we work. We could spend an entire day with product management or engineering on a new integration, and the next day, we’re hopping on calls to help our sales team explain a new offering to their clients. 

What does a typical day at Magnite look like for you?

It varies quite a bit, but primarily a mix of internal and external meetings. A lot of the partnerships I own at Magnite are most relevant in Europe, so I usually start my day chatting with folks in our London office or partners based in the U.K. or France. Outside of our friends across the pond, there are usually a few priority partners that will be my main focus for an afternoon. That may require time with Magnite legal to work on a contract, coordinating a new partner launch with our internal operations team, or prepping our sales leads on how to sell a new services offering. 

Talk about a recent project that you’re proud of yourself/your team for accomplishing.

I’m proud of some of the work we’ve started this year in sustainability. Magnite is in a great position to be a sustainability leader in ad tech. We have innovative partners who are experts in the space, premium publishers who are bought into making a change, and advertisers who invest significantly in these solutions. I was particularly excited to launch our partnership with Scope3 this year, a leading carbon emissions measurement firm in ad tech. 

What do you enjoy most about your role?

The exposure to new and innovative companies in ad tech. I cover a portion of the emerging categories in our industry, so a lot of the partners I work with are working on brand-new solutions and often pioneering a new category. Magnite is an industry leader on the supply side, so it’s exciting to help these teams launch their solutions to our much larger audience.  

Do you have any advice for people looking to learn more about ad tech/your particular department?

As far as ad tech goes, I think what helps me connect the dots in this overly complex industry is thinking about things from the consumer’s point of view. For example, I can read an article about frequency capping in AdExchanger and all the various reasons that make it complicated to solve. From the consumer and the advertiser side, they just want to make sure people don’t see their ad 80 times in a row. Something we can all relate to is watching TV at home. Keeping that at-home experience in mind is helpful for me to understand why something matters and its potential implications. 

When it comes to partnerships, you need to be OK without a lot of structure and enjoy both technical and sales discussions. I had a hard time nailing down whether I wanted to move into a more technical product role early in my career or follow the more sales-driven path I was on. Partnerships felt like a great hybrid of the two. It’s usually a small team, but there are always opportunities to connect with us 1×1 to talk through what we do and make entry points into the department.