Mode Media Reviews

Fact: no organization is without its warts. I preface the rest of my review with this statement to dispel any impression that what I'm about to say is founded in a "grass is greener" perspective or delivered out of spite. To the contrary. This isn't so much a platform for complaint as it is a service to others who may be considering working at Mode. Bottom line, if you make informed decisions, it's hard to make bad ones. Read the other recent reviews and heed them. This job was, bar none, the worst of my career, which is unfortunate as I felt good about being there when I started. Things were unusually rough at first and I didn't think much of it but at about the four-month mark I started to realize that something was terribly, fundamentally wrong with the place and that time alone wasn't likely to ameliorate the problem. I should have followed my instincts and left then. (I didn't.) There are a few core issues that plague the organization that is Mode. I'll try to distill them down to the largest and most significant. First, the business model. Whatever the label they might have slapped on it, bottom line, Mode is an ad network with bloggers (and not even very good ones). When Mode was founded, blogging was just becoming a thing and it was innovative and smart to be able to bring together smaller blog sites for the benefit of advertisers who needed both engagement and scale. It was a good idea then, when display advertising was king. But a decisive shift in the industry away from banner media toward custom programs, coupled with more rigorous standards for the display media brands do run (e.g. NHT, viewability, etc.), have exposed Mode's weaknesses and hastened its obsolescence. Mode only owns one site (Mode.com) and the rest of its programs are built across its thousands of partner sites. In an age where brands like to have control and are armed with tools that allow them to chart performance (or lack thereof) from the outset, this does not bode well for a company built the way Mode is. All told, it is very much a smoke and mirrors ad operation. Even programmatically, it is struggling because so many of its larger, junky sites (the ones it gets all of its traffic from, as it happens) have been blacklisted for NHT and brand safety. Bad. Second, senior management. There are two culprits here, really - the CEO and the CRO. The CEO operates at a level of delusion that is alarming (albeit unsurprising given the Silicon Valley backdrop). He maintains a dot-com era lifestyle and continues to put on airs about an IPO that is, I'm here to tell it to you straight, never going to happen. He is completely out of touch with the challenges facing the company yet wields significant influence on decisions that affect the day-to-day operations of the company. Disturbing. The CRO, meanwhile, was hired to fix many of the problems that have ensued but is, ironically, prevented from doing so by virtue of the CEO's involvement. He is also from the Old World of media, a Condé Nast and Meredith print veteran at his core. He rules the company with an iron fist and treats people poorly. This, paired with an understanding of the digital landscape that can best be described as simplistic, has further contributed to Mode's demise. Because of the leadership (if it can even be called that), great people leave on the regular, and the ones who stay behind are doomed to failure because the leadership doesn't understand what they need, nor will they listen to the people who do. Never heard of Mode? Neither has anyone else. This stems directly from the fact that top management lacks the heavyweight digital world connections necessary to be considered for large-scale deals. Third, lack of staff resources. The only way this organization makes money is via advertising, but you'd never know that given the way the company is structured. Departments operate in a vacuum, bickering amongst themselves and doing "what's right for them." In the interim, the salespeople, who at this point are selling programs that are entirely custom (read: requiring more support than the pure-play display media campaigns they were running 4 years ago), are a more slim team than ever and are essentially left to fend for themselves. The quality of the proposals is low, the quality of campaign management is low save for the company's top three or four accounts, and renewals and customer satisfaction are low as a result. To compound all of this, miscommunication, mediocrity, and complacency are prevalent in every facet of the company's daily operations. And that should come as no surprise - people are unhappy because they are overworked and unappreciated. Add to this a decided lack of any identifiable culture and there you have it. It's a formula for disaster - one that you can watch unfold without having to work there. All told, you deserve better.