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Ben Kartzman is CEO and co-founder of Spongecell, a New York-based company that transforms standard banner ads into dynamic flash ads with rich media-like functionality. He is responsible for managing the growth of the business and oversees its sales and marketing efforts.

Under Mr. Kartzman's leadership, the company has moved from pre-revenue in 2008 to multi-millions in sales by 2010. The number of ad campaigns run by Spongecell has grown from 10 in 2008 to over 1,000 this year. The company staff has more than quintupled in that time span.

Mr. Kartzman has emerged as one of the leaders in the creation and management of highly usable software products through his experiences at Accenture, Morgan Stanley, Intel and several venture-backed Internet start-ups. He is an expert in interactive advertising and in global team building and development.

Before founding Spongecell, Mr. Kartzman was director of product management at Guidester, Inc. (now Searchandise.net), an ad service company that helps advertisers increase ROI by better targeting customers with meaningful and relevant marketing messages. There, he led the re-development and re-deployment of the company’s corporate Web site and successfully created affiliate relationships that yielded new sources of revenue for both the affiliate partners and the company itself.

Prior to Guidester, Mr. Kartzman worked at global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing giant Accenture, where he led the sales and delivery of high-value management consulting engagements for a number of Fortune 100 clients including Morgan Stanley. Before Accenture, Mr. Kartzman was a senior consultant with Bridgeline Software. Within 18 months of joining, he increased the company’s sales by millions of dollars and helped build cross-functional teams that created next-generation portals for global clients including The Bank of New York.

Mr. Kartzman graduated with honors from Carnegie Mellon University with a double major in Information & Decision Systems and Human-Computer Interaction. He was awarded the prestigious Merck & Company, Inc. Fellowship and a Capital One Scholarship.

More articles by Ben Kartzman





Features

Chameleons Reach People Where Live Online

Written on
Apr 28, 2008 
Author
Ben Kartzman  |
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Chameleons Reach People Where Live Online

influencer_small.jpgADOTAS EXCLUSIVE — Consumers are spending more time online than with TV or any other media, and every day interactive marketers are searching for the right strategy to capitalize on this growing opportunity. And the digital world has opened new lines of communication between advertisers and consumers because the Internet isn’t passive like the mass media of the past. Marketers can actively engage consumers online, so the defining question for marketers becomes, “How do we reach consumers where they live online?”

Make your message relevant

Technology advanced in relevant delivery gives marketers unprecedented access to niche, highly targeted audiences. In order to tap into consumers’ needs and wants, marketers first need to know where their targeted audience is visiting and how they are interacting with different media content. Online tools collect valuable information about how a consumer interacts within their online environment. This interactive data allows marketers to learn not only who is engaged, but how they’re engaged and use the information gathered to send targeted follow-up messages.

User-created actions over user-generated content

Traditional mass media like TV and newspapers required advertisers to deliver a monologue; but online we have the tools to go a step further and engage consumers in a dialogue with relevant messaging. Forward thinking marketers should be facilitating user-created actions, not just user-generated content. Providing consumer’s with an action (i.e. sending an e-mail or SMS to a friend or adding to a social network), enables personal endorsement that aligns the consumer with the message and organically extends the message’s reach.

Allow your message’s delivery to be chameleon-like

Whose recommendations would you trust more than a friend? Marketers now have the tools that allow communicating messages in your audience’s preferred medium:

-E-mail
-SMS
-Social Networks
-Blogs
-Web sites
-Calendars

The overriding strength in advertising online, is the ability to deliver targeted messages relevant to an individual consumers’ wants and needs. So whether you’re a massive brand or corporation like Nike or McDonald’s or a small independent blog, everyone has the ability to reach a given audience with relevant messaging, in their preferred medium, where they live online.





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