To round up a wonderful year, we are interviewing KMG's COO Abid Masood. Abid co-founded KAU Media Group when he identified a niche in the Digital Media landscape, with the aim of providing an enterprise solution to small and medium sized businesses. At KMG, we call him the Absassin; He is an established entrepreneur who has held a number of high profile roles within Financial Services spanning over 15 years. Could you explain a little more about your position as COO at KMG? My role at KMG is to oversee the ongoing business operations of the company. What does that mean? That means being involved in business strategy, planning, forecasting, managing payroll, managing VAT returns / HMRC submissions, cost management, invoice management, contracts with suppliers and commercials, client communications, prioritising deliverables for our technology stack etc In a nutshell, its my job to make sure we have more coming in than we have going out through the doors! That’s the underlying principle of any successful business. What has been your favourite milestone for KMG as a business? There’s been so many great milestones we’ve hit as a business since our humble beginnings at KMG! When we started operating as a business, getting paid by our first client was a great moment. It showed someone believed in us and the results we would deliver for them. Then we grew very quickly both in terms of client business and in our office headcount. It meant we had to find bigger premises to operate from. Moving into our current offices was a super milestone! Winning ‘Top Performing Agency, UK and Ireland’ by Google was an incredible achievement. And then in 2018 we made the finals across Europe for ‘Search Innovation’, competing with over 25,000 other agencies. We’ve just hit the ten million mark in terms of all time client revenues since inception. That’s another amazing milestone for what is still a young but well established business. What has been your proudest moment in 2018? Proud moments get incrementally better every year at KMG. Making the finals for the ‘Search Innovation’ award made us all super proud. To be recognised amongst the best across Europe cannot be understated as an achievement. But if I was to pick the proudest moment for 2018, it would have to be listening to an employee saying there was no better place to work than KMG. That brought about a huge smile. Can you tell us what's on the cards for KMG in 2019? 2019 is going to be our best year to date! We are continuously looking at ways to stay ahead in the industry and develop our service offering. To that end, technology clearly plays a large part, so we will be introducing more tools to ensure we can deliver even better services and results for our clients. We will also be introducing new channels of business. For example, there are rumours Whatsapp will start advertising in 2019 so watch this space. There are over 1.5 billion monthly users on that channel alone, so just imagine the opportunity for our clients. Where do you see KMG in 10 years? Gosh. 10 years feels like a long time away, especially with the speed of change in technology. Let’s not forget, we barely had iPhones in our hands 10 years ago. And now you cannot imagine life without your smartphone. I can see artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality picking up significant pace over the next decade, and advertising would naturally plug into that growth. I can see KMG being at the forefront of Performance Marketing across numerous advertising channels, old and new, globally, throughout that timeframe, with multiple offices, international expansion, and cutting edge technology to ensure we stay ahead of any competition. What are you excited about in digital at the moment? Growth. The pace at which we advance in the technology space is just so exciting. As the number of connected devices grows exponentially, we are continually experiencing ways to improve our way of life. There are currently over 20 billion connected devices in the world. This number is expected to grow beyond 75 billion by 2025, globally. That will create numerous opportunities along the way, as we consume more and more data along the way. It’s also very exciting to see how Artificial Intelligence continues to take major strides forward in development. If you didn’t run the fastest growing agency in the UK and Ireland, where would you work? Great question. My background is in finance and banking. But if I wasn’t running KMG, I would be running KMG’s no.1 competitor. There is no other place I would rather be right now. Outside the media and advertising industry, I develop properties in large scale with development partners. I’m currently working on developing 47 flats in Luton which as a town has seen amazing growth and development over the course of the last few years. The demand for housing continues to grow, especially in more affordable commuter zones outside London. Give us an interesting fact about yourself. I was a lead singer in a band for a period of 4 years during my youth! Clearly it didn’t work out, otherwise you would have seen me on MTV by now! And Finally, in 3 words, how would your friends and family describe you? Responsible, Visionary, Ambitious