Deep Dive: RV Paid Search

Josh Leibner started at Red Ventures in 2009. Since this article was published, Josh joined our sister company, RVO Health, to help lead their Growth Marketing team.

Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, cycling, and putting those burned calories to good use at Charlotte breweries. Keep reading to learn more than you ever wanted to know about Josh, including the answer to the age-old question: "Does that guy really have a paid search tattoo?" 

Q: When did you first get into digital marketing?

I first became involved in digital marketing during high school, creating viral websites that spread via the social/messaging platforms of the time, such as AOL Instant Messenger & MySpace. Once those sites started spreading, I co-founded a web hosting company so I could scale my own sites flexibly, while also opening up another revenue stream. That exposed me to both the publisher side of the digital ad business for the viral sites, as well as advertiser side for my hosting company. Those ventures were sold before I went to college, but the digital marketing experience didn’t end there.

After freshman year of college, I started interning in search and affiliate marketing for a small agency based out of Princeton, NJ. Starting at a small firm (8 full time employees & 3 interns) allowed me to get a lot of hands-on experience quickly, and also introduced me to a performance-based marketing model. How does a small agency compete against the big names? They align their goals with their clients and work non-stop to deliver results, even on mature accounts (sound familiar?). The digital marketing expertise and performance culture I learned early on were extremely relevant – and helpful – when I started at Red Ventures after college.

Q: What do you do here at RV?

I work with a team of analysts to run paid search, paid social, display, re-marketing, and native ads for a handful of our newer partners. Our team takes the basis of the traditional Red Ventures model, and looks for new ways to execute it in new industries. New relationships and new media sources make this work challenging, but also a lot of fun.

Q: As someone who has been at Red Ventures for a while now, how has paid search at RV evolved?

Aside from the team growing nearly 10x, the biggest changes have been the sophistication of our technology, and the granularity in which we segment and optimize. As we have been able to create deeper integrations between our search campaigns, website testing tools, and our sales teams, it’s opened up levels of detail we couldn’t have imagined years ago. We’ve gone from fairly high-level of optimizing keywords and ads, down to optimizing for the user. This requires close alignment across all of our teams, and it's a great advantage for Red Ventures that we have all of these functions in-house.

Q: Is it true you have a paid search themed tattoo?

No, but it is true that my brain automatically calculates the quality score of offline advertising. I cringe any time I see a billboard with small, unreadable text on it.

Q: What’s your biggest pet peeve?

Superfluous questions at the end of blog interviews.

Say no more! (We won’t either…)