Conversation With Darren Herman of The Media Kitchen

Last week I had the chance to sit down with Darren Herman who recently joined NY-based The Media Kitchen as the group director of digital media. The Media Kitchen is part of the kirshenbaum bond + partners family. You might already recognize Darren as he has authored several popular articles here on CenterNetworks.

Darren oversees the digital media group internally and all external strategy as well. The Media Kitchen manages approximately $1.9 billion in media spend annually. They work with clients such as Mike's Hard Lemonade and Panasonic. And I am sure you are asking why I am covering this on CN. It's simple. Darren's company is looking for quality startups to spend those $1.9 billion in ad dollars on.

Darren thinks of his job as "corporate entrepreneurship" where he gets to invest ad dollars into startups. Most media companies take Comscore reports, pick the top x number of sites and spend their client's advertising dollars on those sites. Because Darren understands the startup world (he's been through several), he can help clients join the conversation and help expose them to sites and services earlier than other (larger) media companies.

If you have a startup that is advertising-based for revenue creation, what ad networks do you use? Have you considered using an ad partner like The Media Kitchen? Or are you using Google AdSense or a typical ad network including Burst, Tribal Fusion, Casale, etc?

Lastly, Darren asks that you contact him via his blog if you looking for advertisers for your startup.