From strategy to CEO: Ruben Schreurs to lead Ebiquity through industry change

Schreurs steps into the role at a critical juncture. Ebiquity has evolved from offering point solutions to providing always-on services spanning media management, auditing and technology. Yet, this shift has yet to translate into a commensurate boost to revenue. In fact, revenue for the first half of the year fell by 6.7% on the previous year — a drop the business has linked to reduced budgets from its larger clients.

Nevertheless, Schreurs remains optimistic about what lies ahead. While acknowledging the uncertainty, he recognizes that marketers are striving to navigate this complexity — even with tighter budgets — and sees Ebiquity as uniquely equipped to help them do it.

Digiday caught up with Schreurs to discuss how he plans to make that vision a reality.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

On the state of Ebiquity he takes over

Schreurs: “The business has shifted from operating mainly on a project basis, handling one or two media reviews a year — to providing always-on solutions. Now, we gather data largely automated from all the relevant platforms on a monthly basis. This allows us to be much more agile and forward-looking when it comes to our clients’ media investments. That agility proved essentially when the pandemic hit four years ago as well as when Russia invaded Ukraine two years later. In both cases, marketers needed to be hands-on with their investments, and that level of responsiveness requires access to the most current and robust data. That’s the big shift: we’ve moved from only looking back at what was done over the past year to being more forward-focused.”

Digiday: This was the plan four years back when Ebiquity bought Digital Decisions, the company Schreurs founded. At the time, Ebiquity had lost its way, having stretched itself too thin by trying to operate a broad marketing consultancy in areas where it didn’t have strong propositions. That’s no longer the case. The same goes for its relationship with agencies, which was contentious in the past. Ebiquity was once perceived as a strict arbiter, quick to lay the blame on agencies for media spending woes. Now, the relationship is more collaborative with Ebqiuity working alongside agencies to better service clients.

On the growth areas for Ebiquity moving forward

Schreurs: “The U.S. and Asia Pacific are significant growth areas for us, particularly with our newer, more effective and forward-looking solutions that align well with those markets. Beyond geographic expansion, there’s an enormous shift happening in channel investment around retail media. According to eMarketer, global retail media spend was $50 billion in 2019, and this year, it’s forecast to surpass $140 billion. And that growth isn’t just from incremental spend; its also driven by dollars shifting from other channels into retail media. Whenever there is such explosive growth in our industry it presents a major opportunity — and challenge — for us. Our clients our increasingly looking to us for that extra pair of eyes to help them navigate this space with due diligence. This includes evaluating the data they received from retailers and ensuring the metric they measure against truly driver performance.”

Digiday: Incrementaility — determining the incremental ROI of running pad retail media ads — is a prime example of this for Schreurs. Much like what happened with search and programmatic, CMOs are now spending at the deeper end of the funnel and risk pouring money into reach people who were already inclined to buy. Schreurs and his team aim to help clients crack this code — understanding the true incremental ROI or uplift from their investments to make smarter decisions about where to allocate their dollars and which retail partners to engage.

On Ebiquity’s role in a market littered with significant opportunities and pressing challenges 

Schreurs: “My core mandate centers on delivering Effective and Responsible Advertising (ERA) for our clients. We’ve long been focused on this mission, whether through pitch management and audits, contract compliance and effectiveness work, or marketing mix modeling. What I’ll be doubling down on is how we bring that all together to help our clients drive business growth by investing in ERA. Put simply, every investment must translate into meaningful business impact and performance. We’re done with vanity metrics and poor advertising practices. Our stance on this will be clear, and it will guide our contribution to standards and best practice for effective advertising.”

Digiday: Schreurs’ response underscores a key misconception about CMOs. It’s not simply having fewer ad dollars that keeps them up at night — they know that budget contractions are often inevitable given broader and structural economic forces. The real challenge is ensuring that every dollar spent drives hard-working, growth-orientated results for their business. In this regard, Schreurs’ vision builds on the foundations set by his predecessors. Remember, both Michael Karg and Waters positioned Ebiquity as a trusted advisor to CMOs, but Schreurs aims to take it further by emphasizing a more holistic approach — providing comprehensive solutions for every aspect of media investment for drive the biggest impact for its clients. Evolution, not revolution, will define his tenure as CEO.

On why being responsible is more important than ever to CMOs

Schreurs: “Responsibility has taken on even greater importance for CMOs, but it’s a complex principle for marketers to fully embrace. It means avoiding unnecessary waste, whether by improving carbon efficiency or ensuring their ad spend doesn’t fund distributors of hate speech, harmful disinformation or other irresponsible content. These considerations carry weight. Advertising investments today are more than just spend; they’re a form of economic empowerment.” 

Digiday: Part of Schreuers’ message here is that being responsible with ad dollars doesn’t have to come at the expense of effectiveness. On the contrary, the two can reinforce each other. When executed well, aligning ad practices with values such as steering clear of misinformation and disinformation ensures marketers aren’t inadvertently fueling wild conspiracy theories or propagating false narratives about conflicts. For CMOs, responsible advertising isn’t just an ethical necessity, it’s also a strategic advantage that can drive meaningful impact to businesses. Schreuers wants Ebiquity to lead by example and show CMOs how to achieve this balance. 

On what ‘Effective and Responsible Advertising’ means in practice

Schreurs: “A great example of this came last month when we teamed up with Lumen to release a study that, as far as I know, is the first to definitively show how optimizing toward attention metrics can directly impact sales. Sure, there’s a lot of buzz around these metrics right now, but we always ask ourselves if these trendy terms actually deliver results. In this case, the attention metrics proved their value. We collaborate with clients and Lumen, delving deep into the sales data and using applied econometrics to scientifically prove the correlation between strong attention metrics performance and sales uplift.”

Digiday: With so many bandwagons to jump on, it’s essential that CMOs know which ones to follow and where they’re going to truly end up. This is especially true in media buying, where the stakes — and budgets — are high. History has shown this time and again, from pouring into the latest buzzworthy platforms to failing to establish adequate checks and balances around programmatic strategies. Being discerning in advertising is a critical but often undervalued skill, partly due to the myriad conflicts of interests in the space. Ebiquity has consistently identified these conflicts as both a significant challenge for marketers and a key opportunity for its business. It’s why the firm is able to have open, frank conversations with clients about their media investments. 

Schreurs: “We can ask our clients why they’ve invested in certain areas and analyze whether or not it was ERA. We’re then able to work together with them and their agency partners to move the dial so that their business returns grow as well as their efficiencies. We can do that because we’re the only independent media consultant, at least to my knowledge, with a large in house team and capability around marketing mix modeling, contract compliance and the management of media models and strategy.”