Life At Nexxen with Dominik Weber

Welcome to the latest edition of Life at Nexxen, a series spotlighting our employees – from their career journeys and go-to advice to the rituals and activities that make up their days here at Nexxen.  

For this installment, we spoke with Dominik Weber, Senior Creative Project and Insights Manager for Nexxen Studio Insights team. Dominik breaks down the process of generating insights for clients, the skill that helps the most in managing multiple projects, and what he enjoys most about living in London. 

At a high level, what is your role and its responsibilities for Nexxen Studio? 

I manage the day-to-day projects for the Studio Insights team, from the survey set-up all the way to the client delivery. It’s a mix of project management and data integration, touching a lot of product development tasks. A rather broad role, but the day-to-day work is very project related.  

For your research for the surveys, what platforms do you use? 

We use multiple partners. We have a partner that supports the survey set up and a different partner who helps us get these surveys to the right audiences.  And then we have a facial coding partner that enables us to gather all the facial coding data. The reporting, however, is handled entirely in-house. Currently, we’re exploring the idea of bringing more AI features into our survey. We’re working closely with Open AI or the AI tools that Amazon is offering, like AWS recognition, which helps with AI video analysis to gather more data about current and historic videos we’ve already tested.

Can you describe what the process is like, generating insights for a client? 

The sales process is led by a team member from our Commercial team, who are all well versed in which product is ideal for their client thanks to our thorough product documentation. If the client decides to move forward with a campaign that includes a Studio Insight solution, then we’ll begin working with the Commercial lead and the Studio Creative team. We’re always part of the bigger campaign – the work itself is never isolated.   

Ideally, we will test the client video before it even goes live. After testing, we give feedback to the Creative team on where we see areas to optimize. We’re looking at it from the lens of “How can we make this video get the maximum results for the client?”   

To give a specific example, if a car manufacturer is targeting an audience of people who have a driver’s license, around age 25, with an income of $100,000, that’s a good starting point. In our insights, we pinpoint demographic traits like if these people are parents, what other content they are watching, and what other interests they have. And we can do this for each client video, finding those the content is most relevant to. 

And how did you get into this line of business, did you study data science or project management in university?  

I earned my Master’s degree in International Politics and International Business. I’ve always had roles in project management or product development. The data elements I’ve picked up along the way, and I’m still learning thanks to the wider team.  

After university – undergrad or Master’s – what kind of jobs were you working in? 

After my undergrad, where I majored in International Business, I worked in London for a year as a digitalization manager for a facility management company. I handled the innovation projects, making sure the innovations were driven forward and rolling out new products. After a year, instead of continuing to work there, I decided to pursue a Master’s degree instead. I studied for my Master’s in Australia, while working for a real estate company in the digital marketing sphere. And then I came back to London, where I started working at Unruly soon after. 

When it comes to your role at Nexxen, what would you say that you enjoy the most?  

I enjoy working with different teams with different mindsets across all our offices. I love working with my direct team, but we are entirely UK-based. My role has me interacting with sellers, Operations, Creative, and other data analyst teams. 

What is a strength or a skill that really helps when you’re managing multiple projects? 

Being organized helps, but personally, it helps a lot to be quick on my feet. I’m able to see when change is needed and to respond quickly, without fear of causing unnecessary disruption to the project.

What is your biggest accomplishment from this past year? 

The team has been really busy for the last few months, but we delivered 100% of our projects on time this year. Even better, we haven’t had a single client asking for anything to be redone after delivery. 

The collaboration has been really great and that’s something that we can be proud of. I’m never that individualistic that I can claim a certain win for myself, because it’s always a team effort.  

In your day-to-day, what are your rituals? How do you start or end your days?  

I usually have a quick coffee and cycle into the office right away, to hopefully beat some of the traffic. And it being London, on a Thursday after the work’s done, the team can stay for half a drink or two. We can also play squash in the office, and that’s a great thing to do with colleagues because it’s a quick 40 minute game.  

Are there any hobbies that you like to do in your free time? 

I enjoy a lot of sports – football, tennis, squash. I like to snowboard, ski, or surf when I can. 

One more question – what is your favorite thing about living in London?  

That’s a difficult one, because the city has everything to offer. There’s every kind of amusement you could think of – a new restaurant opening or a new show to watch. The downside is the weather, but there’s still plenty to do. Also, the city has five airports, making it really easy to fly to a beach for a long weekend. London has such a variety of offers for you to enjoy the city.