Tencil Talks: Adrián Hernández Fernández

Adrián Hernández Fernández is a Senior Account Manager at mediasmart, based in Madrid. mediasmart delivers end-to-end self-serve solutions for Proximity Campaigns (including real-time footfall measurement) and for App Marketing, allowing advertisers to measure incremental metrics in their campaigns. Today we caught up with him: 

Q. You’ve worked at mediasmart for the last 2 years, but what made you work in the Digital Marketing industry?

AHF: To be honest, I had never heard about programmatic advertising before I arrived in mediasmart. I was working in Germany and I wanted to move back to my home country. When searching for a new job I discovered mediasmart and I started investigating programmatic. I found it really interesting and that’s why I decided to start a career in this area.

Q. Did your education prepare you for your current position?

AHF: Of course, everything that I’ve studied in University, etc. has helped me reach the position I am in now, but I didn’t have any specific training about digital advertising and very little about digital marketing. I think colleges and universities need to increase the time they dedicate to these areas as the internet is now one of the most important channels, and a company without a good digital marketing strategy is doomed to fail.

Q. How would you explain what you do to a complete stranger?

AHF: It’s not easy, I can tell you that. I’ve been trying to explain it to my mom and dad, but I wasn’t able to go beyond serving ads on mobile devices. But I think is much more than that, we are supporting the app ecosystem and particularly in mediasmart we are working hard to fight ad fraud. Sadly, in our market, there are some people that are eager to take advantage of both inexperienced marketers and users, distorting the market and creating a bad experience for the users. Our compromise is to be on the other side of this, and fight these bad practices by using our star product, the incremental metrics, which allow marketers to see the real impact of their campaigns and having a very strict auditing policy to ensure the best experience for the users.

Q. What advice would offer a young adult looking to learn more about digital marketing?

AHF: Like with any other new industry, the key is to keep on learning. The digital marketing ecosystem keeps evolving every day and it’s important to be proactive and prone to learning.
I’m quite new in the industry and at first, it seemed like an impossible task to learn everything, but once you start you get used to it and you’ll end up loving it.

Q. What do you like the most about working in Digital Marketing?

AHF: I love that it is an evolving industry. If for one second you decide you don’t want to learn anymore, you are out. It’s great to meet with clients, partners and competitors as I’m always learning new stuff.

Q. What are your goals for the next 5 years?

AHF: Keep learning and keep growing. Now we are living in uncertain times with the coronavirus crisis, but I’m confident that fighting together we will overcome this terrible disease. After that, our goal is to get on our feet again. Regarding mediasmart, we have been acquired by Affle and we expect a lot of exciting things from this partnership. We also hope that the market will each day be more and more aware of ad fraud, which is, in my opinion, the biggest challenge this industry is facing. I think that mediasmart’s solution to combat it, which is the incrementality approach, is the right one and hopefully it will become a standard in the industry.

Q. What is your favourite restaurant and why?

AHF: I’m a terrible cook, so I love eating out. Let me share with you some of my favourite restaurant picks in Madrid:

La Gaditana – For rice and fish lovers (similar to paella, but better in my opinion)
Alcaravea – Mediterranean food, it has one of the best lunch menus in Madrid
Bacoa – Best burgers in Madrid
Or just go to many of the Madrid food markets on the weekends: Mercado de los Mostenses, Mercado de la cebada, Mercado de San Antón, Mercado de San Miguel…

This article originally appeared in Tencil.co.uk