Kate Hand didn’t come to OX8 with her usual tidy listicle. She came with a message: If your media company wants to survive in a post-AI world, it’s not about doing more — it’s about knowing more. Specifically, it’s about knowing your audience so well that you can show it.
That’s exactly what Gardner Business Media set out to do with Grow, their newly launched customer-facing platform built to visualize, validate, and monetize audience engagement.
Understanding the Audience = Future-proofing the Business
In 2020, Gardner faced the same existential questions as many publishers: How do we evolve? What do we become next? The answer, it turned out, was hiding in plain sight: the data. They were swimming in it—newsletters, webinars, print, events, digital—but none of it was connected.
Grow was born out of a need to make that data usable, not just for internal teams, but for customers who increasingly expect transparency and precision.
“So one of the things that we’ve dealt with at Gardner, and I’m sure that you guys are in the same boat, is that we don’t want to be in the game of trying to produce millions of impressions,” Kate said. “That’s not who we’re reaching, but we want to know exactly who we’re reaching. And anytime I get nervous about those click-through rates on our websites or web traffic that’s starting to plummet with the advent of AI, all I have to do is click into these known audience reports and see who it is that we’re really still reaching through all these different avenues. And you’re like, okay, this is what’s going to allow us to sleep at night and this is what’s going to allow us to move into the future.”
From Whiteboards to Warehouse
Back then, Gardner’s teams were running manual queries, hand-validating reports, and burning dev hours on duct tape fixes. The dream of a single source of truth felt like folklore.
In 2021, they partnered with Omeda and commissioned a dedicated data warehouse—a move that changed everything. Grow became the layer on top: sleek, fast, and powerful. Think Omeda but with extra filters for end-client usefulness.
Grow on the Inside: Tools That Actually Get Used
Internally, Grow gave Gardner’s sales and editorial teams real-time, actionable visibility:
- Editorial Dashboards for content planning, trending topics, and referral insights
- Audience Query Builder to instantly show reach into specific companies or industries
- Known Audience Reports that map real human behavior—not just impressions
- Sales Impact Reports that make the value of campaigns crystal clear for clients and their bosses
Kate calls it the “Boss Report,” but it’s really a credibility machine. It turns Gardner’s audience knowledge into trust—and trust into revenue.
Grow on the Outside: What Clients See Now
Launched publicly in May 2025, Grow now offers advertisers full transparency into campaign performance across print, digital, events, and social. They can see impressions, clicks, newsletter placements—even editorial mentions and republish reach. It’s not just data. It’s proof of performance.
And it’s all built on a tech stack the Gardner team controls—right down to their CMS and AI-powered sales assistant.
Watch the Full OX8 Presentation
The Takeaway
Most media companies are still trying to bolt together legacy systems and guess their way through AI-driven disruption. Gardner didn’t guess. They built. And in doing so, they turned their audience understanding into a competitive moat.
Grow isn’t just a platform. It’s a posture: Show your work. Know your audience. Be transparent. And give your clients the confidence they need to keep investing. Want to know where to start? Book time with one of our experts.
