Both Sides of the Data
Christopher Hogg is Chief Revenue Officer of Lotame, the independent data collaboration platform whose European business he built from a one-person London outpost into a global operation. He arrived as one of the platform's first European customers, crossed over to set up its EMEA office, and now runs revenue worldwide. He has worked both sides of the data ecosystem, supply and demand, customer and company, and recently spent a year covering marketing alongside sales, which showed him how quietly the two functions can drift apart. His through line is constant: help clients grow through the value of their data, quicker, smarter, faster.
You could quite easily spend all your money in the walled gardens, but you're missing out on two-thirds of the attention on the internet.
Christopher Hogg is the Chief Revenue Officer at Lotame, the independent data collaboration platform, where he oversees global revenue operations after more than a decade shaping the company's growth from a one-person European outpost into an established international business. A former customer turned company builder, Chris brings a rare perspective that spans both sides of the data ecosystem.
Chris began his career in digital advertising operations and ad technology, holding roles at Independent News and Media and France Telecom, where he worked across Wanadoo and Orange UK. It was at France Telecom that he first encountered Lotame, bringing the platform in to manage audience data and becoming one of the earliest adopters of what was then known as a data management platform in Europe. That hands-on client experience proved decisive: when Lotame decided to establish a European presence, Chris crossed over to set up the London office and build the EMEA business from the ground up.
Eleven years on, he has progressed from Managing Director for Europe to Chief Revenue Officer, a role that now spans global sales, partnerships, and temporary oversight of marketing while the company recruited a new CMO. Under his commercial leadership, Lotame has remained relevant through successive waves of industry transformation, from the rise of audience management platforms to the emergence of data collaboration and clean room technology. The company today serves publishers, brand marketers, and agencies across the open internet, helping them deploy data faster and smarter in an ecosystem complicated by privacy legislation, platform decisions, and an ever-expanding array of marketing technology.
Chris has restructured Lotame's marketing function into three focused verticals: demand generation (encompassing SEO, search, SDR activity, and content distribution), creative (managing PR agencies, content production, and brand design), and product marketing (handling competitive intelligence, go-to-market positioning, and new product launches). A notable strategic move has been the decision to ungate all content, removing barriers that forced prospects into premature pipeline stages and instead allowing the company's digital properties to take visitors on a journey that naturally leads to sales conversations.
With more than seventeen years of experience in digital ad technology and a career that has included senior management roles across multiple markets, Chris brings a global perspective shaped by practical experience of adapting go-to-market strategies to different levels of regional maturity. He is a regular contributor to industry publications including Digiday and Econsultancy, and a frequent speaker at events across the digital advertising ecosystem.
It's another salesperson, it's a shop window to our business.
Let's ungate everything. We can't force people into a pipeline, they need to get there on their own steam. So the only way we can do that is to actually take them on a journey. And if the first stage of a journey is gated, and you're asking them for lots of information, then potentially you're not setting the right tone.
Lotame once put everything behind a gate, on the logic that a form was the way to collect email addresses and feed the pipeline. Chris reversed it. A gate at the first step, he argues, sets the wrong tone and tries to force a decision the prospect has not reached yet. So the company ungated all of its content and rebuilt its digital properties as a journey, letting visitors arrive at a sales conversation under their own steam rather than being pushed there. The gate, in his view, was a blunt object standing in for trust the content had not yet earned.
It's not just a "I'm going to buy a piece of software for advertising." It's a "I'm going to buy a piece of software that touches consumer data." So I need my data privacy officer involved. I need my legal teams involved. I need my procurement teams as well.
Buying data technology is no longer one person buying software, Chris points out, because the software touches consumer data. That pulls the data privacy officer, the legal team and procurement into the room alongside the marketer, and a single sale now needs consensus across three or four stakeholders who each see the decision differently. His answer is content built for each of them. A legal reviewer knows their own business inside out but may not know the digital advertising ecosystem, so part of the job is bringing every member of the committee far enough along to understand what is being asked and why. The contractual stretch, he notes, can now take as long as the sale that precedes it.
I think I worked very closely with marketing before, but it's really taught me that I didn't and I need to work more closely. So it's very interesting. That is definitely a place for people to start to look at: are you working with the marketing teams as close as you think you should be?
Covering marketing as well as sales for a year taught Chris something uncomfortable about his own assumptions. He had always believed he worked closely with the marketing team. Holding both functions showed him he did not, and that the alignment he took for granted had gaps he could not see from the revenue side alone. He turns it into a question every revenue leader should ask honestly: are you working with marketing as closely as you think you are. For him the honest answer was no, and the fix was proximity.
The first thing I look for is attitude. Has this person got the right attitude? Does he present the brand values that I'm looking for? It's so easy to go and build a team that looks exactly like yourself. You know, if you did that, surefire for failure. You need a good balance.
When Chris builds a team, attitude comes before the skill set. He looks first for the right disposition and for someone who carries the brand's values, then for what the team is missing rather than what it already has. The easy mistake, he says, is to hire people who look exactly like you, which feels comfortable and is a reliable route to failure. A team that solves problems well needs a spread of characters and instincts, not a set of copies. Skills can be trained, particularly in more junior hires; the balance of temperament is what he selects for.
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