Lauren Weinberg - CMO Scorecard

What Do CMOs Really Care About? | A Candid Conversation with Lauren Weinberg

What does a CMO actually look for in a media partner? And what publisher metrics matter... or don’t?

In this exclusive interview, James Deaker (The Yield Doctor) sits down with Lauren Weinberg—former CMO at Square and Peloton, and co-author of Self-Made Boss—to explore how top marketing executives make media investment decisions.

Lauren shares tactical insights on:

✅ How CMOs evaluate publisher performance

✅ What drives budget shifts mid- and post-campaign

✅ The role of MMM, MTA, and incremental ROI

✅ Why impressions and CPMs may not mean what you think

✅ What actually sets a media pitch apart

Whether you're a publisher, ad tech pro, or just trying to understand how to win a marketer’s trust, this is a must-watch conversation.

🔗 Connect with Lauren: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenweinberg13/

📘 Her book: Self-Made Boss

Chapters

0:00 – Introduction: What CMOs value in publishers

0:56 – Audience fit and planning considerations

2:22 – Metrics that matter: Performance vs. brand campaigns

4:48 – How brand media impacts lower-funnel performance

5:30 – Mid-flight vs. post-campaign optimization

7:49 – Decoding MMM and MTA

8:30 – Publisher metrics: What’s meaningful vs. table stakes

10:14 – Disconnects between CMOs and publishers

12:03 – Do CMOs care about “premium” publishers?

13:06 – Custom ad formats: Barrier or opportunity?

15:10 – A winning pitch: Peloton × Twitch case study

17:30 – CPMs vs. ROI: What really matters

19:05 – The reality of measuring incremental ROI

20:25 – Wrap-up and how to follow Lauren