Marybeth McGaugh on Staying Close to the Work as an Adtech Leader

Index Exchange Chief Customer Officer Marybeth McGaugh joins the conversation on building a career across adtech without losing touch with the work or the people doing it. She shares her player coach approach to leadership, why honesty and authenticity matter as responsibilities grow, and how her experience across the buy side and sell side shapes the way she operates at Index Exchange.

Highlights:

• The player coach mindset behind Marybeth’s leadership style
• Staying connected to clients and teams as responsibilities scale
• Building trust across every level of an adtech organization
• Leading with honesty instead of adopting an executive persona
• Bringing buy side experience into her role at Index Exchange
• Why reinvention has been a constant throughout her adtech career

TRANSCRIPT

Adam Katz
Welcome back to Breaking Through the Mayhem for episode 64. Super cool. We have our friend and a legend, Marybeth.

How are you?

Marybeth McGaugh
I'm great. How are you doing?

Adam Katz
You know, we figured out that we cross paths at work along the way, which is super cool and look at where we both are now. It's so cool. I mean, I was, I was checking out your background.

Wow. Really cool. Really, really cool.

Like I think what's amazing about your background, I would love you to talk a little bit about it. A first off, let everyone know kind of who you are, your title, but like, I think what's so cool about you, which is why I'm so excited for this episode is that not only have you risen in an organization and led people, but you've pretty much played every position on the field, right?

Marybeth McGaugh
Yeah.

Adam Katz
I think that's so super valuable while you kind of lead. So tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, where you work. I know you're at Index Exchange.

It's so cool. Everyone should know who it is, but tell me a little bit about Marybeth.

Marybeth McGaugh
Sure. Well, thank you, first of all, for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I grew up in the Midwest, which I feel like is always, people always think I'm from Connecticut and I'm trying to decipher what that means about me, but I grew up in Kansas City. I've been in New York for 20 years and I wanted to be a lawyer when I grew up. And so I went and paralegaled for a year at a law firm in downtown New York after college and was like, this is the worst experience of my entire life.

No joke. And I was like, at a party or, you know, basically like hanging out with people and they're like, you should want to tech. I was like, okay, long story short, I ran into Kelly McConnell.

That's a fun story for another day and got into ad tech and started at Pubmatic and been in ad tech ever since. So right now I'm the chief commercial officer at Index Exchange, so I oversee basically all of our customer success, our services business, some of our operations teams, our support teams, and kind of our data vendor ecosystem, marketplaces, etc. And then prior to that, I spent 10 years at the trade desk on the agency and brands team, leading the entire client services team on that.

So that's kind of my background and where I came from.

Adam Katz
That's awesome.

Marybeth McGaugh
Yeah. Oh, and to answer your question, I came up kind of a very linear path. So I started as an account manager at The Trade Desk and just slowly worked my way up and I think what really blew my mind as I went through kind of each level and learned so much was how much you don't know.

And I hate to say like fake it till you make it. Cause that's like a really, you know, like I don't love how that sounds, but in some ways what I quickly realized is like when you're a junior and you feel like everyone knows everything and they're, they're kind of like, you're like, Oh, this is so planned. This is so clear.

And as you get more senior, what you quickly realize is like, we're all just doing the best we can every day. We're making decisions fast and it's imperfect, but we're trying and you're trying to make it as smooth for the people below you as humanly possible. And so I feel like a big part of kind of what I realized as I played every role is like, there's so much uncertainty.

So just like literally like get all the facts on the page, learn as much as you can, and then try as much as you can to make it better for both the people below you and for the next person, like document everything, make everything as easy as possible. And I think I've tried really hard to do that and to coach that as I've coached different people coming up through the organization. And that's really seen to help kind of make people feel, realize that like there's no secret answer.

Like you make senior director and suddenly this comes into play. It's like, no, no, no. We're all coming into these roles, especially in ad tech where everything's changing every year and a half, two years.

Like we're coming into all of this with so much uncertainty and so much scatter everywhere. And so it's really making sense of all and then trying to make it as smooth as possible for those around you.

Adam Katz
I love that. You know, basically what you basically just told me is you're humble, you're always learning, and you're always thinking about how to help the person coming up, do what you've been able to do before.

Marybeth McGaugh
That's comfortable.

Adam Katz
Yeah. Right. So ultimately when I hear that, I start to say to myself, who helps you then?

Marybeth McGaugh
Yeah.

Adam Katz
You're doing all this coaching.

And then the second thing that I think about a lot is like, how do you keep yourself out of playing now when you're coaching? Right. I find that to be the hardest balance.

Marybeth McGaugh
That's the hardest balance.

Adam Katz
So those would be my opening thoughts that I'm thinking.

Marybeth McGaugh
I love those questions. Like hit at the, hit at my, at my true heart here. So I'll start with the second one first, which is, I say this at least once a day to somebody that reports to me, which is like, it's so hard to find the balance of what do you own?

What does your team own? Where do you almost player? Cause I believe like deeply that we're all player coaches.

That's like a huge part of my leadership philosophy. I think I have worked for people that did not take a player coach mentality. And it was really hard because I would go in with like, you know, I go to a one-on-one and be like, I have this huge problem with, you know, I'll pick on Samsung's measurement solution, blah, you know, isn't blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And they would just stare at me blankly. And they would just be like, well, I guess you can ask, um, engineering and I'd be like, okay. And so I quickly realized as a leader myself, I never wanted to be the kind of leader or manager where I couldn't at the very least brainstorm with people around me, like what we could do to solve it.

And part of the brainstorm might be, we should talk to engineering and we should talk to them about what they think about this or that, that might be part of it. But to have like a, a complete, like on, you know, a complete inability to understand what I'm even saying, it was like such a struggle for me. And so I believe we should all be player coaches, but in that, what's the balance?

Um, and for me, it looks mostly like probably right now, 25%, um, I would say player, which my, on my career has gone up and down all the time. Um, I mean, I, my lowest point was probably when I was running a very large team at The Trade Desk, I was probably like 8% player at a point in my career. Um, which was really hard for me because I love sitting with clients and like talking through what, what, what they need is Sightly the right thing.

What's Sightly going to bring to the table. How does that play with the SSP? How does that play with the DS?

Like, I love that stuff. Like I get so excited. And so for me to be 8% of my time in the room with clients was like so tough.

Um, but the team needed me and more of an operational capacity. And, and that was, that was what was needed. But now I'm probably at a 20, 25%, uh, place.

And that feels really good for me. So I have a really good amount of time that I spend out in the market with clients, thinking about what's next, spending time with our CEO, Andrew, and, and I really enjoy that piece. And then the rest is, is really thinking about the rest of the team.

And, and so I'm constantly asking my directs where, where are you in that, in that spectrum, where do you think you should be and where do you think you add the most value, because I think it changes throughout both every role. And even within the year that can change up and down when we were going through a lot of our AI implementations to think about how do we want to use AI very smartly internally, that was a time where I was probably spending more time internal than I normally would, because I was like, I want to get this done. Um, and then once it's done, it's like, okay, I can kind of pull back on that.

Um, so it's something I'm talking about all the time. And the second piece is to your question is where do I kind of get all of this? I love mentorship and coaching.

So I am a, I am a huge executive coach person. Um, to the point where my friends are like, if you recommend a coach, I'm gonna kill you and I'm like, I know, I know, but it's so helpful because I think having that outside perspective and someone to come in and hear all the pieces and be like, okay, here's what I'm seeing. Here's what I'm hearing and help you brainstorm and reimagine.

Is this role right? Or could you think about it this way? Or is it better if we did this?

Both on the tactical and in kind of your own life in the big picture, that's been invaluable for me, especially when I was at The Trade Desk and we were scaling so fast that like my, my manager was amazing. He was an amazing human. He did not have time to sit down with me and be like, let's talk about Marybeth's dreams.

That was just not on the agenda. And I get that. I mean, he had, he had a lot on his plate, but I think for me to find people that could do that for me, allowed me to really grow and really invest.

And I will say like a lot of it was my personal money too. Um, you know, when The Trade Desk didn't have the funds for things like that, I would just go and be like, listen, I think it's worth the money to invest in my own career and get this perspective. And I think it will pay me dividends in the future.

Um, and so, and then from a mentorship perspective, I've had so many, I'm so lucky I've had so many amazing, both women and men who throughout my career and ad tech have sat me down and been like, I love what you're doing here. I think you could do this. I love what you're doing there.

Also say like, I think you missed the mark here. I was a, imagine this. I was a very intense IC who wanted to control everything.

When I first became a leader, I know no way. Right. And I remember had my manager sat me down and he was just like, so it was like, you're doing great, but like, you're not using your team.

You're not delegating at all. You've got to shift or you're never going to get out of this, this, you know, this IC mode and you're not, you're not going to be able to scale. And, and so I think having those relationships with people in that mentorship capacity to help redirect you in different ways, both positively and negatively is just, I've been very lucky.

And I, and I also think I've always been very open and receptive to feedback. So like, instead of, you know, even if you're internally freaking out to be able to be like, that's super interesting. Tell me more.

It makes it more open for them to then come back to that and be like, I know she's now open and receptive to feedback. I feel more comfortable sharing with her. That creates kind of almost like a circle of trust.

I think that's true with clients as well, as an aside, but it creates almost like a circle of trust. And then I think they're more willing to invest in you when some of your peers may get feedback and be like, that's not true. I delegated five times last week.

And then, and then it's like, okay, this is a waste of my time. Like they're clearly not ready to take on any feedback right now.

Adam Katz
I love that. And you know, obviously you're now joining this show and what, what makes you want to be out there? What makes you want to tell your stories?

Marybeth McGaugh
I think there is this perception, especially as like a working mom, that if you, you have to really not be yourself in order to like get to very senior roles. And I can honestly say in a very great way, like I've been able to lead teams and to do the things I want to do while truly, I think being kind of who I am, bringing what I think I bring to the table and doing it in a really honest and authentic way. And my, one of my big leadership, for lack of a better kind of sayings, which I stole from an amazing book called Scaling People.

So credit where credit is due, but “say what you think you cannot say” is like one of my big mantras. And so I think there's this perception that basically like you have to almost like try to be a man and shine it on and pretend like nothing else is happening. And I think I've tried to really bring, bring together and bring out kind of more of an aspect of like, be who you are and say what you think you cannot say and just do what, do what's right.

Or what you think is right in the moment. And I think it will work out for you. I don't think you have to constantly try to assert that you're, you know, assert some sort of persona.

And that's the only way that success can really work.

Adam Katz
Yeah. It's interesting. I think you're hitting on one side of how I'm thinking about it for you, but I'm thinking the other side.

Marybeth McGaugh
What's the other side?

Adam Katz
I don't think any of that's not the reason you even have to tell your story, right? You did it no matter what.

Marybeth McGaugh
Sure. Like you mean internal drive and kind of motivation?

Adam Katz
Yeah, you would have done it no matter what.

Marybeth McGaugh
Of course.

Adam Katz
So I think ultimately one of the things I hear when you speak is that you're going to find the end zone.

Like that's what it sounds like to me. And I think if you start to tell it that way, it's even better because the truth is like, I agree with you. I have two kids, five and two.

Marybeth McGaugh
Oh, good ages.

Adam Katz
It's hard.

Marybeth McGaugh
Mine or four and one. So I’m right there with you.

Adam Katz
It's hard. Last night, my son was up to 3:30 in the morning, right?

And I was with him. And, but ultimately I don't think it's a thing of like wearing a different feeling or whatever. I think ultimately I hear like, you're just going to find the end zone.

Cause like everything I've heard so far in this opening is like, I ran into this person that gave me a chance. I reinvented myself. I then reinvented myself again.

I then had all the roles to get to the top and now I'm coaching everyone to think like that. And then I'm reinventing myself always by learning more. And now I'm in a new persona, mom, right?

Four in one. And I'm reinventing myself again and teaching people that reinventing themselves is all good. And being able to speak to that.

And that's what I hear when I hear from you.

Marybeth McGaugh
Absolutely right. And I think, I guess part of the coaching conversation, it does really come down to like having advocates help you reinvent yourself and think of ways to do that, that you haven't thought of. I think that's huge.

Adam Katz
Um, so I told you, we need the people around you, right. To appreciate that you're reinventing yourself, not above you, but even below you, I've learned like, as you go through these evolutions, right?

Marybeth McGaugh
Yeah, no, that's right.

Adam Katz
You have people that love you below you in an organization and they feel good about what you did. They support that evolution.

Marybeth McGaugh
And they trust you, right? Like, I think a lot of, a lot of the great work I was able to do for all the years I was at the trade desk was because I built, I built real trust with like my team from the beginning. And I think even as, you know, I would ascend, I would always come back to the core principles of like going back and being like, is this working for account managers?

Like, is this, is this, you know, whatever we're rolling out or whatever we're talking about, like, how is this feeling in market? Like, of course I talked to more senior folks, but like, when you're an AM talking to a trader at Omnicom, like how is this feeling? And I think when you're able to build that kind of trust and because I played all those roles, I know how it is to like get the, get the brief and have to figure out how to make that work.

I think always looking for feedback from every level, top and bottom was also a huge way for me. And I'm trying really hard. I've only been at Index a year, but I'm trying really hard to also build that trust at Index as kind of the new person, which is a fun, a fun new role for me.

The new person and trying to understand with the team, like here, like what is it, you know, that's working, what's not working? And like, tell, I want to know, like, so we can find the end zone. I want to know like, what are the things that like crush and what are the things where like we could, we could do better.

And, and, and building that trust with the team here has been really fun as well.

Adam Katz
So shifting gears from you personally, your persona being a legendary C-level mom, the, what's Index Exchange up to that you're excited about?

Marybeth McGaugh
Yeah.

Adam Katz
What do you think is happening? I mean, I see Index Exchange just doing things everywhere. So what, what's going on?

Marybeth McGaugh
Yeah.

Adam Katz
What’s some inside baseball over there.

Marybeth McGaugh
I think one of the reasons I was so excited to join and continue to be excited to be at index exchange is sell-side decisioning is huge, right? So I think of the legacy model, basically the DSP owns all of the decisioning, all of the power. And I think we probably as a, as an industry over index on the DSP has everything in the sell side, it's just aggregating publisher supply.

What I think the real model probably should have been from the beginning is more so audiences are probably better off on the sell side because think of it this way, we have everything in the world to look at and then we can narrow and then send to the DSP and then we can look at frequency and we can look at, you know, pacing and budget risk constraints, but we've really already determined our audience and made sure it's the right audience and qualified it before it ever went over to the other side. And so when I was looking for kind of my next role, you know, connecting with Andrew Casale and hearing his vision of sell-side decisioning, and I was like, oh my, it was just like something in my brain was just like, oh my God, of course we should have done it this way. That is so smart.

And so coming to index and seeing all the growth of sell-side decisioning, all the growth of marketplaces, places like Sightly and all of the really cool data targeting that's being done and giving more money back to working media, right? The DSPs have a really nice deal of kind of upcharging on a lot of different ways on data where a place like index, we don't have to do that. And so in that way, we're able to give more to working media and see a much larger scale on audiences, but still using any kind of DSP or what the client prefers, whether it's a lightweight DSP, whether it's a full service DSP, using whatever DSP to really make sure that the transaction goes all the way through, but that we're having that audience quality that we didn't have before.

Adam Katz
I love that. I mean, you have so much passion for all this. It's awesome.

Marybeth McGaugh
I mean, I think it's cool. I think ad tech is fun to me because there's something new always happening and new ideas coming to the front. I think it's, you know, almost like I'll talk to people in law or finance.

Like I have friends in finance who are like, their job hasn't changed in 15 years. And it's mind boggling to me because I'm like, I'm literally talking about something new. It feels like, I mean, now with MCPs and we won't even get into Agentic, but like, I feel like every, what, 12 months I'm talking about something completely different that I didn't even see coming the 12 months prior.

And that makes it really fun.

Adam Katz
Yeah. And you know, for me also, I think what's cool about your role is just how many partners you work with. So you're always thinking about like how to, how to collaborate.

Yeah. I think that, that collaboration and bringing a beautiful thing together is always fun as well to reinvent. Yeah.

Marybeth McGaugh
I love that's like my favorite. Because it all interconnects and sometimes we don't always appreciate, I think, how much it all interconnects. And so being at the middle of kind of the marketplaces and the data and publishers and, you know, agencies and brands, like bringing now, like an index, we're really getting into measurement, which is like, I love that.

Cause like I spent a lot of time on measurement in my previous role as well. And so bringing all of that together is so fun because it's like, I get to pull from all these different parts of all of my knowledge. And I think at Index, we get to bring that together and really help figure out for our clients where everyone wins, right?

We want an outcome where everyone feels like they won, that we see the brand growing in the way they want, that we see the data vendor being used in the way they want to be used, etc. etc.. And so that's been really fun. And I guess a different use of my knowledge than in my previous roles where I was really focusing on just agency and brand outcomes.

Adam Katz
Oh, cool. Well, what would you say is next for you, right? Index and yourself, kind of move, like, you know, it's hard. You get to a certain level.

Marybeth McGaugh
You know, it's, it's funny. I feel like what I, what's next for me right now is two things. I'll just be honest.

As you mentioned, I am always learning the App ecosystem is something that is one of the rare places that like I haven't spent, I mean, I I'm a little bit dangerous on it, but I haven't spent real time on app. And so I'm actually spending time right now getting really strategic on what is Index and App look like for 2027. I'm very excited about that.

And then Index Cloud is another piece of the business that is incredibly technical. So it's really pushing my technical chops and in a smart, good way to, I'm like, whenever I talk about Kubernetes, I'm like, don't I sound so smart? My husband's software engineering.

You do not sound smart. But I think I sound smart. And, learning about cloud and infrastructure and data costs and what that all means and what that looks like for the future of the industry.

So I would say that's like from an Index perspective, from a reinvention of myself. I, I don't know. I mean, I feel like I've just been so heads down the last year and in this new role in a new company.

I haven't really come up from air yet. I'm hoping, you know, my four-year-old likes pre-K that's kind of where my, my mom brings that, but yeah, I'm, I'm excited to continue kind of the Index journey and, and figure out what, what the next year looks like for Index.

Adam Katz
I love that. You know, I always like to ask this question. If you could go to dinner with one person, not in your family, that has to be alive.

Who would it be?

Marybeth McGaugh
Has to be alive. I think this is going to be a weird answer, but this is the first thing came to my brain, Barack Obama, because I think it would be incredibly from everything everyone's told me who's worked with him.

And I I've met some folks who are kind of on his staff and in different places. From what I've been told, he was incredibly smart and incredibly hardworking, but also incredibly. Like he challenged his staff and his team to come up with the best solution and think about how to execute things brilliantly.

So it was like a rare government leader who was like truly actually thinking about strategy and execution. And I think it would be so interesting to hear kind of, you know, like the inside baseball on all the decisions he made and like how, how hard that must have been and how, like, how do you find leadership? Like, how do you live leadership in like the most senior role in the world?

I think that would be really interesting.

Adam Katz
And if it wasn't a politician?

Marybeth McGaugh
if it wasn't a politician

Adam Katz
We’ve had a bunch of Barack Obama's along the way.

Marybeth McGaugh
Wait, really? Yeah. I was being super unique on that one.

Now I'm really embarrassed. Oh gosh. Probably someone like Martha Stewart or something.

Like I think he would be super. So she went to my college. She, I watched a documentary on her a couple of years ago and like talk about reinvention.

That like, I feel like her entire, she's basically the OG influencer and the way she kind of basically took being a suburban, not housewife, but a suburban person and turned that into an empire. Then went to like jail for fraud and then came back and was like, I'm going to be even better than before. Like very few people can pull that off.

And I think she, she really seemed to make that work for her. So she would probably be someone that's really interesting to talk to.

Adam Katz
Well, based on that, like what, what are you, you have two kids. It's been crazy. Right.

Are you like into like interesting documentaries based on Martha Stewart? Is that like.

Marybeth McGaugh
I just caught one. I don't know if there's many, there's one on Netflix that I watched that I just thought was incredibly, incredibly interesting because I honestly was not a big, like Martha Stewart fan. Like, I wouldn't say I'm someone who like was into any of that.

Um, but I, I caught it and I was like, Oh my God, she was like influencing before any of us ever even knew what that was. And now I feel like I can't walk four steps without someone like in casual Claude language telling me I really need this brand of coffee. It's, it feels like it's infiltrated every step of our lives.

Adam Katz
All right. Well, so she was the, the start of the annoyance. So you really want to, you want to interview this?

Marybeth McGaugh
I want to dig deeper on that with, with, with cool Martha. Yeah.

Adam Katz
Cool. I respect that. It was a lot of fun having you here.

Marybeth McGaugh
Yeah.

Adam Katz
Thank you a lot about leadership, Index, decisioning, coaching, teaching people, coaching yourself, being in different walks of life. And I, and I hope you had a lot of fun.

Marybeth McGaugh
I did. Yeah. Thank you for having me. It was so great to catch up.

Adam Katz
Thank you Marybeth

Marybeth McGaugh
All right.