Martin Roberts is sales director at Adform, a media buying platform.
With over two decades of experience, Roberts was previously head of media and data partnerships at Dentsu for Agency Trading Desk Amnet before moving into a commercial role responsible for all digital investment in Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, and Edinburgh. He also served as the head of programmatic, UK for Dentsu, where he managed programmatic and biddable teams for the UK market across iProspect, Carat, and Dentsu X.
Now, he’s currently responsible for scaling growth of Adform’s Manchester office, where the business is keen to build its footprint through client and talent acquisition.
With an appearance from his dog, Pablo, he shares a recent week in his life…
Monday
It’s a slightly slow start to this week. Partly due to my son, Louis, being home for the holidays, and partly due to a BBQ on Sunday that went on a little later than planned. But I’m up at 7am for a quick 30-minute class on the Peloton before walking Louis through our village to drop him off at his local holiday club. Then it’s back home to log on for 9am.
Mondays tend to be quite an admin heavy day. Up first is the Adform UK office breakfast huddle, covering off everyone’s weekend activities before going into topline business updates. This week it’s the UK revenue and account review with all the campaign delivery teams based across Europe also calling in.
Checking in on how campaigns are performing against KPIs, it’s also a great opportunity to connect with Adform’s cosmopolitan team. From London to Lithuania and Southern Italy – Adform, as a Nordic company, is very people focused (which is refreshing given some of the business cultures I’ve experienced).
On a Monday night, Louis is usually at the Manchester City Football Academy, but they are on summer break, so Pablo the Cavapoo and I head down to collect him from holiday club. We then sneak into the park for 20-minutes goalkeeping practice and some overhead kick work.
Tuesday
I usually hot desk on a Tuesday – alternating between the Bonded Warehouse shared office and the GroupM campus. It’s easy here to bump into people who cover the full range of the advertising ecosystem – from tech companies like Captify and GumGum to agencies like OpenPartners and Dentsu, as well as media owners like JCDecaux.
In the afternoon, I get under the hood of a couple of client proposals, including one for a luxury footwear brand that is looking at testing programmatic in specific areas of the UK. Along with one for a global gambling brand looking to expand into additional territories in LATAM.
On Tuesdays, I play football in Stockport as part of a ‘Man vs Fat’ community-based weight-loss programme, where you earn additional ‘goals’ off the pitch for losing weight, healthy choices and health improvements. Today, we (Borussia Munching Fat Lads) won 4-1 on the pitch, but unfortunately lost 6-8 overall due to some excellent work on the scales by our opponents, Inter Mi-Lamb.
Wednesday
Wednesday begins with me dropping off the little ones. Pablo gets a bit of pampering at doggy day care while Louis spends the day training at the Ethiad. From there I head to This is Digital’s offices where I catch up on the marketing and budget plan for the rest of the year and for 2025. I also take some time reviewing the latest goings on in the industry, whether that be in the trade press, LinkedIn, or a podcast.
Thursday
On Thursdays I’m usually back in This is Digital’s offices for a number of internal meetings with the Adform team. This includes a group catch-up with the global leads where we identify new clients, case studies and best practice within the big 6 agency groups.
For lunch today, I met with Dave Singleton, head of media at People’s Postcode Lottery. We talk a little bit about business and opportunities, but mainly about football (Man City for me, Stockport County for him).
Dave and I then meet Richard Johnston, head of investment at Carat. We all used to work together at Dentsu and despite it being three years since we were all in its office together, it’s like we have never been apart. After being in each other’s company for nearly a decade together, they are always honest, and it’s great to have them as sounding boards.
After a couple of drinks with Dave and Richard in our favourite sun-trap, it’s back home for a walk with Pablo, Gill and Louis. Thursday is the only day of the week where Louis doesn’t do any sport, so we try and do something together. As it’s a nice night we nip into the local pub for a drink before it quickly descends into a Dads v Lads football match on the green.
Friday
Friday is another WFH day where I begin first with an account strategy session for one of our fastest growing self-service Demand Side Platform partners, before another call where we plan some agency drinks Adform is hosting at the end of the summer.
On a bi-weekly basis we have our Adform product update over lunch, which I tune into to get a download on the latest game-changing innovations in our tech stack. As the leading end-to-end delivery platform, from ad server to measurement suite, there is always something eye-opening to take away from these meetings. Today’s update focused on our growing integration with Disney+ as well as some of our identity gurus’ views on Google’s U-turn on cookie deprecation, which by the way does not change anything for brands – they should all still think about getting in place a cookieless solution.
Then it’s a late lunch, followed by a couple of phone calls to tidy a few things up for campaigns ending over the weekend and a host of activity going live next week.
After a therapeutic inbox tidy, I slip out the back gate onto the golf course to work on my short-game ahead of the weekend’s golf competition, before heading over to the cricket club to help with the kids coaching. I say coaching, I’m mainly just supervising the BBQ with a pint of Cruzcampo.
