Behind the Screens with Christine Yang: Where Strategy Meets Real-World Impact
Christine Yang isn’t just the VP of Planning at Digilant. She’s the connective tissue between departments, campaigns, and people. From media strategy and activation to analytics and operations, she collaborates across every corner of the business to help clients move smarter, faster, and more strategically.
What makes her approach stand out is how deeply grounded it is in reality. Christine started her career in activation, so she knows what it takes to turn a good idea into something that actually works. Her job isn’t just to plan. It’s to build strategies that hold up under pressure, evolve with the market, and bring the right people to the table from the start.
No two days are the same for Christine, which is exactly how she likes it. In this edition of Behind the Screens, she shares how she tackles complexity, adapts to change, and leads with connection—turning ambitious goals into practical outcomes, one smart decision at a time.
🎥 Want the full conversation? Watch Christine’s Behind the Screens video interview to hear her perspective on planning, strategy, and the future of smarter media.
Inside Christine’s Role at Digilant
Christine describes her role as “a bit of a moving target,” but in the best way possible. As VP of Planning, she collaborates closely with teams across Digilant, including activation, analytics, partnerships, ad ops, and operations. Some days she’s troubleshooting campaign performance with activation. Other days, she’s deep in analytics dashboards refining advanced reporting or brainstorming new process improvements.
Through it all, there’s a single throughline: solving problems and linking decisions together to create strategies that last. Christine thinks of her work as building a flexible foundation that supports both clients and internal teams, helping them scale quickly while staying grounded in data-driven insights.
Planning That Goes Beyond the Plan
For Christine, planning isn’t about picking a set of tactics and hoping they perform. It starts with asking bigger questions: What is the client trying to achieve? What does success actually look like?
Her team works backward from those answers to shape strategy, using audience research and modeling to decide on the right mix of channels, tactics, and measurement approaches. By starting with business objectives, the planning process creates space for flexibility — adapting when something isn’t working instead of sticking to a static blueprint.
And because planning at Digilant is fully end-to-end, Christine and her team stay involved beyond the initial strategy. They’re there for campaign setup, activation, ongoing performance analysis, and post-campaign learnings. That continuity allows them to carry insights forward, building smarter strategies with every new initiative.
Prefer to listen instead? Catch the audio version of Christine’s full conversation on the Digilant Podcast here.
From Activation to Strategy
Christine’s career began in activation, and that experience still drives the way she approaches planning today. Having managed campaigns herself, she knows the reality of what happens when a strategy looks great on paper but falls apart in execution.
“Because I’ve been on the execution side, I plan with feasibility in mind,” she explains. “Every decision I make in strategy connects back to how it’s actually going to run.”
That operational mindset has built trust across teams. When Christine hands off a plan, activation knows it’s not just thoughtfully crafted — it’s designed to work, ensuring the strategy is both ambitious and executable.
Prefer to listen? Hear Christine’s full Behind the Screens episode exclusively on Spotify.
Building Smarter Campaign Strategies
When Christine develops a new campaign strategy, she starts with one central question: What problem are we solving? Once the client’s goals and challenges are clear, she works backward to define success, build audience models, and select the tactics that will best achieve their objectives.
This approach puts outcomes before channels, which gives the team the flexibility to adapt when performance shifts. If a tactic isn’t delivering, they make targeted adjustments rather than reworking the entire strategy. In an industry where change is constant, Christine’s ability to pivot without losing sight of the bigger picture is critical.
Rethinking the Approach
One recent client project pushed Christine and her team to completely rethink how they approached local market planning. With a brand spanning over a thousand store locations across more than 100 DMAs, they needed a smarter, more precise segmentation strategy.
Instead of treating every market the same, Christine and her team built a tiered framework that considered store density, population nuances, and growth potential. This opened the door for hyper-local activation at scale, creating strategies tailored to each market’s unique needs.
“It wasn’t just a planning shift,” Christine explains. “It changed how we structured campaigns, measured success, and delivered reporting that clients could act on in real time.”
Why Full Ownership Matters
Christine stays involved at every stage of the campaign lifecycle — from the initial plan to launch to post-campaign analysis. That end-to-end ownership makes a difference not only in performance but also in client relationships.
By staying close to execution, Christine and her team can spot trends early and apply learnings immediately. It also builds trust with clients, who know the planning team is invested well beyond kickoff. As Christine puts it, “When clients see us there every step of the way, they know we’re as committed to outcomes as they are.”
The Digilant Difference
When asked what sets Digilant’s planning team apart, Christine points to the people first. “This is one of the smartest, most collaborative teams I’ve ever worked with,” she says. “We interrogate ideas, not each other. That culture creates space for creativity and problem-solving at every level.”
She also highlights the company’s consultative approach. Digilant doesn’t offer cookie-cutter strategies; every plan is built to reflect the client’s unique goals, challenges, and brand guardrails. From brand safety protections to advanced reporting, the planning team sets a foundation that gives clients peace of mind while driving measurable impact.
What Excites Christine Most Right Now
Christine is energized by the pace of change she’s seeing in the industry and with clients. “I’m seeing a big shift,” she says. “Clients are becoming more open to testing, trying new tactics, and responding quickly to market factors. That kind of flexibility makes us all better.”
She’s especially excited about opportunities in streaming and connected TV, where innovation is moving fast and data-driven strategies are unlocking better ways to connect with audiences. Between evolving client needs and Digilant’s growing capabilities, Christine sees plenty of room to keep pushing boundaries.
The Conversation Doesn’t Stop Here
Christine’s approach to planning reflects what sets Digilant apart: a commitment to collaboration, flexibility, and driving real results. Her ability to connect the dots across strategy, activation, and performance keeps campaigns grounded while creating space for innovation.If you enjoyed this feature, catch up on our Behind the Screens spotlight with Julia Holland to see how other members of the Digilant team are shaping smarter media strategies.