Business Insider spotlights KPM programmatic product leader in “Rising Stars of Adtech"

Business Insider announced its first annual list of up-and-comers who specialize in advertising technology, including the product leader behind the new Kroger Private Marketplace, Mario DiMercurio.

The list includes early- and mid-career professionals who are not part of the c-suite but are “working behind the scenes to develop cookieless technology and solutions for advertisers, new data models, and approaches to digital advertising,” according to Business Insider.

DiMercurio, 31, was recognized for spearheading a new media capability from Kroger Precision Marketing that unleashed Kroger’s first-party audience data in the programmatic environment. For the first time, brands can now reach the most relevant consumers across the web, using their own DSP of choice, and then optimize performance against actual retail sales.

Kroger Precision Marketing, the retail media business of Kroger, hired DiMercurio in February 2021 to create programmatic advertising solutions for brand and agency clients. DiMercurio implements business growth strategies, coordinating across internal and external stakeholders, to influence media accountability and meaningful customer experiences.

DiMercurio showed keen leadership by identifying gaps in the programmatic marketplace to cast the vision for what was needed, a solution that would:

• Reach the right consumers with first-party data

• Transact seamlessly in existing agency tech stacks

• Guard data privacy and security

• Enable agencies to optimize against product sales and ROAS.

“I’m grateful for the recognition from Business Insider, but I didn’t do this alone,” says DiMercurio. “To lead the build-out of Kroger Private Marketplace, I partnered with internal engineers, data scientists, and operations at Kroger Precision Marketing – and identified the best external media tech platform partners. I also consulted agency and brand partners to inform development throughout the process – from concepting through beta launch and into product release in December.”

The Kroger Private Marketplace was publicly announced in October 2021 at Advertising Week with major agency partners from Publicis on-stage.

“DiMercurio’s work is truly transforming the ad industry’s expectations for media,” says Michael Schuh, VP of Media Strategy for Kroger Precision Marketing at 84.51°. “The solution marries self-service programmatic capabilities with the accountability of real business outcomes such as sales, household penetration, and ROAS – but transacts within an agency’s existing tech stack.”

Kroger Precision Marketing hired DiMercurio because of his expertise in the media and ad tech space. His previous experience included the discovery, deployment, and enablement of marketing technologies at PHD. Prior to that, he managed ad technology deployment at Annalect, collaborating with agency teams, clients, operations, and ad technology vendors. DiMercurio also started in the advertising industry within Starcom, focused on Programmatic Strategy and Media execution.

Read more about the rising stars of ad tech at Business Insider.