About Us
Our history
In 2008, The Economist conducted in-depth studies of its audience and what they discovered surprised them. What they have in common is the way they think. They are intensely curious, they think globally and they enjoy the debate. We call them Ideas People.
Ideas People Media was launched to aggregate this influential psychographic audience into a fully transparent platform for brand advertisers to reach them at scale.
Launched in Q4 2010 as a business unit of The Economist Group, Ideas People Media manages four distinct vertical advertising networks:
Ideas People Channel is a fully transparent vertical network of 50+ sites identified by the readers of The Economist as their favorite online destinations for topics on business, globalisation, innovation and culture. Our award-winning publisher partners include Technology Review, International Business Times, Washington Examiner and Kiplinger. Reaching 24.8 million unique visitors in the U.S and 38.3 million worldwide today, the Channel is used by advertisers to amplify their brand campaigns.
Ideas People Advocacy Network is a subset of Ideas People Channel – premier publishers of U.S Political content including CSMonitor, The Weekly Standard and Talking Points Memo. The Advocacy Network delivers more reach than Huffington Post and Politico and is the perfect tool for any advocacy campaign aimed at political influencers who are active on both the national and local level.
Ideas People TV is a video network providing advertisers access to an audience of engaged, targeted, and educated consumers through professionally produced video content distributed across Ideas People Media properties. We are able to serve over 50 million views per month.
Ideas People Mobile is a mobile network providing advertisers access to our portfolio of publisher's mobile traffic (both in-app and mobile web). Currently we are serving over 3.3 million mobile impressions monthly and growing.
Management Team
Stephane Pere, VP - Head of Ideas People Media
Stephane Pere is based in New York. Pere joined The Economist in 2007 and previously managed online advertising sales for Continental Europe, Middle-East & Africa.
Prior to joining The Economist, Stephane had a diverse career within the advertising industry, which included managing online display advertising for Yahoo!, heading a TV and Print network for Canal+, and working with Bloomberg Television in international ad sales.
Stephane holds a Masters in Management Science from E.M. Lyon Business School, as well as a Post Graduate Master in Intellectual Property Law and a Masters in Contract and Business Law both from Pantheon-Assas University in Paris.
Maggie Wells, Global Marketing and Operations Director
Maggie manages the publisher partnerships and oversees marketing and network operations. Prior to joining The Economist Group in 2010, she had been managing digital properties since the launch of Netguide.com in 1994. She co-founded Women’s Financial Network (wfn.com) in 1999 and was CEO of Homeportfolio.com in 2005.
Maggie holds an engineering degree from the University of Rochester and an MBA from the University of Chicago. She is an adjunct professor of Marketing at NYU and Baruch College.
Ben Rabunski, Global Sales Director
Ben is based in the New York office. He joined the team in 2010 to lead sales efforts for this new business and generate new sources of digital advertising revenue for The Economist Group.
He graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and brings high energy to the team as well as a strong digital sales background with companies such as Yahoo!, CBS and AdGent Digital. In addition to his passion for marketing and advertising, he also performs regularly with the New York Repertory Orchestra.