Melissa Hillard, Director, Product Marketing

Melissa, our director of product marketing, describes a typical day in her life in Magnite’s New York 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 of the industry?

Product Marketing sits at the intersection of the Marketing, Commercial, and Product Management teams. Our superpower is understanding what keeps our clients up at night—whether they’re publishers wanting to generate more revenue or buyers needing to invest their media budget more efficiently—and positioning our products to solve those problems. We frame product innovation through concise messaging so that our commercial teams can effectively explain the benefits to clients. This is how we deliver against our team’s mission statement to “Make Magnite’s Technology Matter to Clients.”

What are the primary responsibilities of a Product Marketer at Magnite? 

In terms of deliverables, our Product Roadmap work consistently has the highest visibility across the organization. Each quarter, we collaborate with the product team to understand Magnite’s priority investments and work cross-functionally to develop a polished presentation with sales collateral for all relevant client segments. 

Another tentpole that Product Marketing owns is a monthly internal newsletter and live meeting that highlights recent and upcoming product releases for our global commercial teams.  

Regarding ongoing support, we lead product launch trainings and work cross-functionally on corresponding sales enablement, such as press releases, one-sheets, blog posts, pitch decks, external comms, and FAQs to arm our commercial teams in market.

All of these deliverables and ceremonies enable our commercial teams with the latest on Magnite’s product innovations and service offerings for our clients.

How does your team support Magnite? Who are your closest collaborators in other departments?

I feel like Product Marketers are the conductors of a giant symphony. All of the teams we work with have their own instruments, but we’re the ones who ensure everyone reads from the music page together to create the song.

While all projects can vary, my initial go-to department is typically Product Management. Gearing up for a launch, we’ll discuss the product positioning and core messaging, which client segments will benefit from this release, and corresponding timelines.  

We’ll then work with the commercial team to understand go-to-market needs and map out the sales enablement they’ll need to support client conversations. 

Finally, we sync with Marketing to ensure our messaging can be woven into our owned and operated channels for an industry megaphone. It’s essential to ensure everything we produce reflects Magnite’s tone of voice and meets the quality and finesse our clients expect.

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

My day starts with catching up on ad tech news to understand the day’s industry conversations and how they affect Magnite.

A big part of my day is cross-functional collaboration. Product Marketing requires a lot of curiosity and ongoing connection. For example, when working on a product launch, I might hear a U.S.-centric perspective, but I’ll also check in with teams in JAPAC and EMEA to see if the challenges differ for their publishers or buyers. It’s about pressure-checking assumptions and gathering diverse insights to ensure we’re solving the right problems.

Once I’ve collected all the information, I aim to synthesize it into a clear, concise output. Ad tech is notorious for information and acronym overload, and the last thing we want is to overcomplicate messaging for our clients. Ultimately, it’s about understanding what problem we’re solving and how it helps publishers make more money or enables buyers to spend their media dollars more effectively.

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

I’m most proud of the recent launch of our first-ever unified Magnite Help Center. Our clients needed a self-service portal where their questions about the platforms could be answered in real-time. We launched our Magnite Help Center to coincide with the launch of Magnite Streaming and now have in-depth hubs for all of Magnite’s platforms (DV+, SpringServe, and ClearLine) with a Data Onboarding section launching this year. I compare the Magnite Help Center to “always on” account support. Seeing the traction and fluency of people speaking about the Help Center as a resource has been a great testament to its impact. 

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I love working with such bright, enthusiastic, kind people. At every meeting I attend, I feel like there is a mutual appreciation for everyone’s role and perspective. No matter what timeline or project we’re up against, there is always a sense of optimism and thoughtfulness moving through the Magnite walls.

What’s your go-to hobby to unwind and recharge outside of the office?

I love to travel. I’ve been to over 50 countries and 35 states. And I try to get my 10,000 steps in daily (mostly walking around Manhattan)–even when it’s very hard, like on cold winter days!