Head of the week: The teaser
As Head of Sales at Tilllate Switzerland, Oliver Schibli is responsible for selling campaigns and ensuring they are successfully implemented.
It was extremely appealing to me to work for a company in which the Internet is the most important business area. In my previous jobs, something else always had priority," explains Oliver Schibli. So he didn't have to think twice when he was offered the chance to join Tilllate Switzerland as Head of Sales a few weeks ago. Schibli now leads a team of three sales consultants and four campaign managers and is tasked with further expanding the company's leading position among nightlife platforms. At tilllate.com, online advertising is the main source of revenue. "This excites me, and the trend of online advertising is increasing. I'm on the right train," says Schibli, who describes himself as an "online junkie."
At the age of seven, little Oliver got his first computer. "The thing totally fascinated me," he recalls. The first thing he did was copy out the introduction to the manual. Later, he programmed games himself. "I wasn't allowed to buy any games and was only allowed to play with ones I invented myself," he laughs. However, the fun was then limited. As the designer of the games, the later user also knew about their mechanics and knew the solution in advance.
Pioneer in the online world
Already after his apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory technician, Oliver Schibli started his own business. He designed video animations and was allowed to project them onto screens at major events for Parisienne or Sony. He was able to "make quite a good living" from this. He also learned all this technology for the shows "autodidactically". In addition, the young inventor constantly tinkered further, for example, how he could compress the images to produce the cleanest possible picture.
During all this time, it was Schibli's dream to be able to work in television one day. "But you don't get there if you're self-taught," he knows. But instead of burying his career aspirations, he said to himself, "Then I'll just make my own television." This is how Oliver Schibli became a pioneer in the ¬online world. As early as 1997, he founded Switzerland's first Internet television station. Schibli programmed a website together with a colleague. On it, he was able to make the images flow better and better thanks to the know-how gained from party films. "That's how we started putting videos on the Internet." That was around the same time that broadcast.com went "on the air" from Yahoo.
Schibli worked with Reuters for his channel. "For two years, we were the only website in the world that was allowed to show video news from Reuters." Schibli got this news on a VHS tape because he didn't have a satellite dish at the time. Later, technology developed step by step, and Switzerland's first Web TV also showed live broadcasts of fashion shows in Paris or press conferences of the soccer federation Fifa, for example. The ISDN lines, however, only allowed small jerky images. The network pioneers financed their experiment with advertising. At the time, however, this still worked in a very rudimentary way. "We sold advertising at a fixed price, mounted it around the news, and that was the end of the matter for our sponsor." Traffic developed fairly quickly, however, because Reuters regularly referred to the new medium on its news ticker. Nevertheless, Schibli realized in 1999 that he was still too early for an entrepreneurially interesting future with this advertising model. "So we had to approach it differently."
With a new business idea, he offered his technology to companies that needed filmed information in-house. He broadcast press conferences for Fifa. For Credit Suisse, Schibli and his team developed the first analyst call solution, which was used for a very long time. UBS then joined the company in a financing round, and Schibli was able to expand ITV Media to 35 people. His competence was subsequently business development. His next step was to develop software that made it very easy to put video content on the web.
When the imminent bursting of the Internet bubble made daily work increasingly tough, Schibli, who had been running at full speed for years at the time, saw the moment had come for a break. He enjoyed traveling all over Switzerland for nine months.
He returned to Bluewin. There, Schibli was responsible for the Bluewin portal in the Business Development department. He developed the toolbar and optimized various processes "to make things faster and easier.
When Bluewin was due for reorganization, the e-commerce division was freed up. Display advertising was added later. For the first time in his life, Schibli was allowed to manage sums in the double-digit millions and discovered that such responsibility brings him satisfaction. After five years, when he knew the Bluewin portal from all angles, the time had come for something new.
Better infrastructure than at Ringier
Schibli wanted to return to the media and switched to Blick. For the last 18 months, he was in charge of product management for the online portal, which meant he was also responsible for supporting agencies and agents in the sales department. From programming to sales? For Schibli, it wasn't a big change. "You constantly sell something in business. Even if I'm developing a new technology, I have to sell someone my idea," he says, explaining his relationship to the job.
The sales aspect has now become even stronger since Schibli took over responsibility as Head of Sales at Tilllate Switzerland. What attracted him to this nightlife portal was that tilllate.com has a very strong community and, above all, operates internationally. "An extremely exciting challenge. The company is very well positioned in terms of brand. And in terms of customer management, we could only have dreamed of such an infrastructure at Ringier," Schibli reveals.
His new task is to maintain and inform all agencies and marketers about what Tilllate can offer them in Switzerland. Following the re¬design, the platform has now been reduced to just two forms of advertising that are visible at the same time. The adjustment has already had a "very positive" impact on performance. So far, Tilllate has been able to report 500,000 unique clients and 35 million page views in Switzerland. Now the company wants to focus even more on performance and has also adjusted prices "so massively" that tilllate.com is now on the same price level as the big media sites and portals. "Now we first have to observe the behavior of our customers and users, give the development time and then introduce the appropriate measures," explains the new Head of Sales.
Andreas Panzeri
At the age of seven, little Oliver got his first computer. "The thing totally fascinated me," he recalls. The first thing he did was copy out the introduction to the manual. Later, he programmed games himself. "I wasn't allowed to buy any games and was only allowed to play with ones I invented myself," he laughs. However, the fun was then limited. As the designer of the games, the later user also knew about their mechanics and knew the solution in advance.
Pioneer in the online world
Already after his apprenticeship as a chemical laboratory technician, Oliver Schibli started his own business. He designed video animations and was allowed to project them onto screens at major events for Parisienne or Sony. He was able to "make quite a good living" from this. He also learned all this technology for the shows "autodidactically". In addition, the young inventor constantly tinkered further, for example, how he could compress the images to produce the cleanest possible picture.
During all this time, it was Schibli's dream to be able to work in television one day. "But you don't get there if you're self-taught," he knows. But instead of burying his career aspirations, he said to himself, "Then I'll just make my own television." This is how Oliver Schibli became a pioneer in the ¬online world. As early as 1997, he founded Switzerland's first Internet television station. Schibli programmed a website together with a colleague. On it, he was able to make the images flow better and better thanks to the know-how gained from party films. "That's how we started putting videos on the Internet." That was around the same time that broadcast.com went "on the air" from Yahoo.
Schibli worked with Reuters for his channel. "For two years, we were the only website in the world that was allowed to show video news from Reuters." Schibli got this news on a VHS tape because he didn't have a satellite dish at the time. Later, technology developed step by step, and Switzerland's first Web TV also showed live broadcasts of fashion shows in Paris or press conferences of the soccer federation Fifa, for example. The ISDN lines, however, only allowed small jerky images. The network pioneers financed their experiment with advertising. At the time, however, this still worked in a very rudimentary way. "We sold advertising at a fixed price, mounted it around the news, and that was the end of the matter for our sponsor." Traffic developed fairly quickly, however, because Reuters regularly referred to the new medium on its news ticker. Nevertheless, Schibli realized in 1999 that he was still too early for an entrepreneurially interesting future with this advertising model. "So we had to approach it differently."
With a new business idea, he offered his technology to companies that needed filmed information in-house. He broadcast press conferences for Fifa. For Credit Suisse, Schibli and his team developed the first analyst call solution, which was used for a very long time. UBS then joined the company in a financing round, and Schibli was able to expand ITV Media to 35 people. His competence was subsequently business development. His next step was to develop software that made it very easy to put video content on the web.
When the imminent bursting of the Internet bubble made daily work increasingly tough, Schibli, who had been running at full speed for years at the time, saw the moment had come for a break. He enjoyed traveling all over Switzerland for nine months.
He returned to Bluewin. There, Schibli was responsible for the Bluewin portal in the Business Development department. He developed the toolbar and optimized various processes "to make things faster and easier.
When Bluewin was due for reorganization, the e-commerce division was freed up. Display advertising was added later. For the first time in his life, Schibli was allowed to manage sums in the double-digit millions and discovered that such responsibility brings him satisfaction. After five years, when he knew the Bluewin portal from all angles, the time had come for something new.
Better infrastructure than at Ringier
Schibli wanted to return to the media and switched to Blick. For the last 18 months, he was in charge of product management for the online portal, which meant he was also responsible for supporting agencies and agents in the sales department. From programming to sales? For Schibli, it wasn't a big change. "You constantly sell something in business. Even if I'm developing a new technology, I have to sell someone my idea," he says, explaining his relationship to the job.
The sales aspect has now become even stronger since Schibli took over responsibility as Head of Sales at Tilllate Switzerland. What attracted him to this nightlife portal was that tilllate.com has a very strong community and, above all, operates internationally. "An extremely exciting challenge. The company is very well positioned in terms of brand. And in terms of customer management, we could only have dreamed of such an infrastructure at Ringier," Schibli reveals.
His new task is to maintain and inform all agencies and marketers about what Tilllate can offer them in Switzerland. Following the re¬design, the platform has now been reduced to just two forms of advertising that are visible at the same time. The adjustment has already had a "very positive" impact on performance. So far, Tilllate has been able to report 500,000 unique clients and 35 million page views in Switzerland. Now the company wants to focus even more on performance and has also adjusted prices "so massively" that tilllate.com is now on the same price level as the big media sites and portals. "Now we first have to observe the behavior of our customers and users, give the development time and then introduce the appropriate measures," explains the new Head of Sales.
Andreas Panzeri
Since the beginning of October, Tillate has had a new look in Switzerland.
