MarTech Interview with Luiz Felipe Barros, Global CMO at Channel Factory

Luiz, you’ve had a remarkable career leading up to your role as Global CMO at Channel Factory. Can you share some highlights of your professional journey and what brought you to this position?
I started my career in Brazil, where I was born, working on the agency side. One interesting aspect about Brazil, especially when I began, is that agencies often combined both creative and media functions. This was incredibly valuable for me, as it allowed me to learn about communication holistically, rather than being confined to a specific part of the process.

In the early 2000s, I became fascinated with data and made what was, at the time, a radical move: I left the agency world to work for a data company. I wanted to gain an insider’s perspective on what I believed would shape the future of the industry — and it turned out to be a defining moment in my career.

Following that, I had the opportunity to lead operations at a mobile app startup. This experience gave me the confidence and knowledge to take a further leap and start my own business — an influencer marketing company that used data to create content and products for creators’ audiences beyond the internet. It was an intense and incredible journey. My company became the largest in terms of revenue and audience in the creator economy across Latin America and was eventually acquired by a media group.

After selling my business, I moved to the US to work client-side. I had the amazing opportunity to lead the transformation at Anheuser-Busch InBev, where we brought data and analytics to the forefront of how we deeply understood consumers, built brands, and leveraged media to drive business growth. During my time there, we were recognized as Creative Marketer of the Year for two consecutive years at Cannes, the most effective marketer by Effie and WARC, and the second most innovative company in America by Fast Company.

That experience opened my eyes to the fact that the industry is in need of major transformation. Media is still often viewed as a cost, rather than as a growth driver. CMOs struggle to demonstrate the impact of marketing on the company’s topline to CEOs, CFOs, and boards. My next challenge is to help drive that transformation.

I shared that with a close friend in the industry and he said that he needed to introduce me to Tony Chen, the founder of Channel Factory. He said that I’d be impressed by his vision and what he built at the company. That was an undertaking. I already knew Channel Factory and admired the company, but after the opportunity to know more about its technology and how they leverage it to deliver better media efficiency and measurable business outcomes, I knew it was the opportunity I wanted to help more companies to understand media a growth driver, both for the topline and for the brand reputation.

Google’s recent news on cookies is generating a lot of discussion. How do you see these changes impacting digital marketing strategies, especially in terms of targeting and personalization?
Google’s recent decision to delay third-party cookie deprecation has sparked significant discussion. However, it’s crucial to address the bigger question: should advertisers rely on third-party cookies anyway?

Third-party cookies often lead to low-quality audiences due to data inaccuracies, unreliable models, and outdated profiles. While this extension empowers consumers to control their data, the reality is that more effective and privacy-compliant solutions already exist.

At Channel Factory, we have long advocated for a shift toward contextual targeting to respect consumer privacy and drive higher ROI by aligning ads with relevant content in real-time. This adaptation supports evolving privacy standards and enables advertisers to enhance targeting and personalization by embracing more accurate, scalable, and sustainable strategies. Ultimately, proceeding with cookie deprecation is better for consumer privacy and crucial for the future of effective digital marketing.

With the shift away from third-party cookies, what opportunities do you see for brands to innovate in their approach to audience segmentation and engagement?
Brands need to focus on what drives results. Period. Innovation in audience segmentation is important as long as it drives better media efficiency and business outcomes. The industry has a tendency to either overcomplicate or oversimplify. When overcomplicating, it adds layers of hidden costs with unreliable data, technology, and middlemen that are impossible to offset with incremental performance. When we oversimplify, it tends to focus on cheap CPMs, which bring a lot of inefficiency through media waste and deliver ads in inventories that represent a huge reputational risk for brands.

There are enough studies proving that contextual targeting and first-party data outperform broad targeting and third-party data. The challenges with first-party data for most brands are the ability to scale and remain privacy-compliant.

On the other hand, context matters, and I’d argue it’s more important than ever before. When brands focus on the context in which their ads appear, they can engage with their consumers in a more meaningful and relevant way.

Contextual targeting also allows brands to account for consumer privacy and enables more dynamic, responsive advertising that adapts to real-time content and consumer sentiment.

We’re encouraging brands to finally end their over-reliance on third-party cookies and explore new forms of data, such as first-party data combined with contextual insights, which create richer, more personalized experiences.

Ultimately, brands can deepen their relationships with consumers, foster greater trust, and drive higher engagement by delivering content that truly resonates with their audience.

Brand safety has always been a critical issue. How is Channel Factory addressing the challenges of brand safety in today’s digital landscape?
Brand safety and suitability are paramount for brands. The key challenges are that the traditional on-the-shelf solutions available on the platforms fall short by over blocking and excluding valuable and diverse content, while they also do not address individual needs that each brand have to reflect their values and specific requirements that their industry might have. An alcohol brand has very different needs in terms of brand safety and suitability than an automotive one has.

At Channel Factory, we have developed a more nuanced approach, which goes beyond avoiding harmful and illegal content. We leverage the combination of our multimodal AI-based technology and human vetting to analyze and categorize data to develop custom-made targeting solutions that addresses our clients individual needs.

This approach ensures that we avoid bad content in one hand and include wrongly excluded audiences and content in the other. This does not only help to protect brand reputation, but also eliminate inefficiencies and media waste driving higher campaign performance and ROI.

Channel Factory’s categorizations offer a type of segmentation that’s not available on other platforms. Can you explain how this works and the benefits it provides to advertisers?
Segmentation available on the platforms can be really powerful, but they are the same for every brand and category and not created to address your specific needs.

Thanks to our granular data analysis and categorization, we can create custom-made segmentations that are tailored to address each brand individual needs in terms of performance, brand safety and suitability together, without compromising on any of them.

We combine the first-party data from the platforms with the right context to ensure better performance, reduce inefficiencies and deliver the best cost-benefit.

As a global marketing leader, what personal strategies do you rely on to navigate the rapidly changing digital landscape?
The most important strategies for me are critical thinking and focus on the evidence-based fundamentals. Every other day there’s a new trend that emerges. It’s our responsibility to evaluate and test them, but not to pursue it blindly just because it’s new and everyone is talking about it.

A culture of continuous learning and improvement always pays better dividends. Compound interests is what made the world largest fortunes and the same is true for advertising performance and business growth. Innovation is a critical lever for continuous improvement, but we can never forget the fundamentals. We tend to overestimate the impact of innovation in the short-term and underestimate in the long-term.

What advice would you give to marketing professionals looking to adapt to the evolving world of digital advertising, particularly with the upcoming changes in data privacy?
For whoever wants to adapt to the evolving world of digital advertising, my advice is to learn the fundamentals, prioritize evidence-based approach, be obsessed about learning and deliver with excellence.

Regarding data privacy, my advice is pretty simple and straightforward: respect the consumer. I doubt that anyone likes the feeling that technology is listening to what they are saying in private. At the same time, I can bet that many people would willingly share data in exchange for benefits. Be transparent with consumers and give them control over their own data and rely on privacy-centric approaches like contextual targeting. It’s good for your campaign performance and your brand reputation.

Finally, is there anything else you’d like to share about the future of digital advertising, Channel Factory’s role in it, or any other thoughts for our readers?
CMOs have a hard time to prove to CEOs, CFOs and the board of their companies the impact of Marketing. That, many times, leads to embracing technology without a clear purpose or objective.

Marketers must deliver business impact. Be clear on what business impact means for your company. Technology is one of the means, not the end tool for that. Partner with companies that can help you to deliver short-term business impact and drive sales, but that can also at the same time help you to build your brand for the long run.

Everything we do at Channel Factory leverages technology as a means to deliver media efficiency, cost savings, and helping brands to deliver a positive impact and a healthy digital ecosystem. Brands should see those things as interdependent. That’s how they build a sustainable future for themselves, for the industry and for society.