The first-ever Chief Insights Officer at iHeartMedia has been announced, and it reflects the promotion of a woman to the company’s “StratCom” leadership team — a move that puts insights work across the entire company in her hands.
Getting the Chief Insights Officer role at the audio content creation and distribution giant is Lainie Fertick. Company Chairman/CEO Bob Pittman and President/COO Rich Bressler made the announcement in a company memo obtained by Streamline Publishing’s Radio Ink.
Fertick is widely known for her work at Critical Mass Media, the in-house research firm at iHeartMedia. She also plays a role in AudioGraph, the data and programmatic platform iHeart launched with Triton Digital in June.
Fertick is responsible for iHeart’s annual white paper studies, including “The New American Consumer,” done with Malcolm Gladwell; “The Ignored Consumer;” “The Human Consumer”, which examined people’s relationship to technology and AI and led to iHeart’s Guaranteed Human positioning; and, most recently, “Unlocking the Community-Driven Gen Z Listener.”
In the memo, Pittman and Bressler wrote, “Lainie was our Programming team’s ‘secret weapon’ – building our leadership position in the industry by helping our programmers, talent and stations gain deeper insights and understanding of their consumers than any other radio or media company could.”
Fertick joined CMM as an intern in 2004 and rose to President/General Manager. In 2024, she also became President of iHeartMedia Insights, extending her research to advertising and marketing partners.
Fertick continues to report to iHeartMedia Chief Programming Officer Tom Poleman.
