MiQ, an omnichannel media partner, has announced Rob Linton’s promotion to Chief Revenue Officer, expanding his remit to lead all UK commercial operations.
Linton steps into the role after 13 years at MiQ, where he began as a trader in Manchester and most recently served as Managing Director, Regions. The new role will now encompass all of the UK sales operations, as Linton looks to drive further growth across all agency groups, independents and brands. Central to the role is accelerating the integration of Sigma, MiQ’s AI-driven advertising platform launched in June 2025.
New Digital Age recently spoke with Linton to find out more…
Congratulations on your new role – what sort of things do you anticipate will take up most of your time?
A big priority will be to stay close to our clients, prioritising new relationships and high-growth opportunities, which is what makes me tick.
To help support our client growth, I’ll be immediately hiring our new Group Commercial Director, a really exciting role that will be pivotal in driving our relationship with holding companies forward.
Alongside that, a big focus will be on empowering our team to use MiQ Sigma, our ever-evolving AI technology, to help agencies drive true omnichannel outcomes.
And I’d be remiss not to mention, I’ll probably be spending more time on the trusty Avanti West Coast line… although I’m already quite a regular.
What are the big priorities for MiQ this year from a revenue perspective?
Our headline priority is always growth. We operate within a growing market, and we always want to be ahead of the curve.
This year, we have a big focus on omnichannel (who doesn’t, right?). But for us, it’s grounded in our agnostic, ‘whole of market’ approach to programmatic. That means we can offer clients an unbiased and genuinely omnichannel opportunity. Making sure we’re delivering that message properly will go hand in hand with driving more consolidated, omnichannel revenue.
We’re also seeing strong growth from international markets outside the UK, as well as from B2B clients, so those are areas we’ll continue to double down on.
In what ways is AI disrupting traditional revenue streams right now?
Big tech platforms are now AI native, which means there’s been a shift in the agency revenue model, becoming more strategic vs executional. Hand in hand with that, those platforms can command more share of voice than ever, even though we know differentiation is still vital.
Generative AI has also fundamentally shifted the value of content and creative, and that’s undoubtedly having an impact on publisher revenue streams. At MiQ, given the calibre of
agencies and clients we work with, we’re probably yet to see the full effect of GenAI on creative, but we know there’s more to come.
And then there’s the fact that AI itself will become a revenue generator. ChatGPT testing ads is just the start, and as you’d expect, we’ll be first in line to test that and any similar developments.
Are there any noticeable trends right now in relation to particular media channels or the balance of channels within an omnichannel campaign?
A trend that sticks out to me is that people have stopped talking about cookies. Advertisers now appreciate the value of connected signals, which are often born from outside the traditional digital ecosystem, like TV viewership or in-store retailer data. These rich and diverse signals can now be applied across any media channel we operate in. What that does is create real confidence that you can accurately and efficiently reach your audience with one consistent targeting (both online and offline) and measurement approach. At that point, ‘omnichannel’ just becomes the ability to execute that across all of your audience’s touchpoints.
What one piece of advice would you offer digital marketers for the next 12 months?
It’d be daft if I didn’t say “get on board with AI”, right?
I was talking about this at a conference just last week. We already live in a world where marketers and advertisers have more access than ever before. Access to channels, access to data, and fundamentally access to speak to their customers in different ways. AI only enhances all of that. So if I had to boil it down to one line, it would be: embrace the access.
