Perry Di Iorio is a media and advertising leader who has spent more than two decades at the forefront of digital transformation, helping organizations turn audience insight and emerging technology into measurable growth. Fluent in English and French and conversant in Spanish, he blends an international perspective with a hands-on understanding of how consumers actually discover, evaluate, and buy. His professional arc spans publisher, agency, and ad-tech environments, giving him a rare, 360-degree view of the value chain—from brand strategy and content to programmatic execution and performance analytics. What distinguishes Perry is not simply the breadth of his experience, but the consistency of his focus: use data responsibly, tell better stories, and make sure the media choices serve the customer first.
Today, as Director of Business Development & Partnerships at Locala, Perry helps top retailers, restaurant groups, and automotive brands connect online intent to offline outcomes. He built and expanded Locala’s Canadian presence, catalyzing relationships with agencies and direct clients while evangelizing a platform renowned for geotargeting, drive-to-store measurement, and rigorous attribution. In a market crowded with tools and terminology, he makes complex capabilities understandable to business stakeholders and holds programs accountable to KPIs that matter—visits, sales, memberships, and lifetime value. His remit is part strategist, part educator, and part operator, and he relishes that blend.
Perry’s leadership style took shape during formative publisher roles where accountability was immediate and results were visible. At Rogers Digital Media, he helped integrate digital sales across newly combined TV and web properties, exceeding targets year over year while aligning technical, traffic, creative, and editorial teams behind shared outcomes. Those early years taught him how to translate creative ambition into operational discipline—how to connect a sponsorship vision to ad ops feasibility, an audience promise to analytics truth, and a quarterly plan to a daily scoreboard. The throughline from that period to the present is a comfort with complexity and a bias for cross-functional collaboration.
His move to Crucial Interactive broadened that mandate. When ESPN and Bloomberg secured Canadian digital rights, Perry helped establish the brands competitively against entrenched incumbents, crafting custom content programs around tent-pole events like the World Cup while opening new commercial pathways in Quebec and Eastern Canada. He learned to build beachheads—identifying the right partners, local nuances, and narrative frames that convert initial curiosity into sustained advertiser demand. This ability to seed and scale new business would become a hallmark of his career.
At Quebecor Media (QMi) and later TC Media, Perry led cross-platform, multi-city teams through an era when digital was no longer an add-on but the spine of the plan. He oversaw a significant portfolio, hitting budgets while launching initiatives that fused publisher content with client CRM and emerging ad technologies. He pushed into data-driven shopper marketing, e-flyers, and hyper-local activations, anticipating the retail media moment years before it became a boardroom buzzword. Just as importantly, he built processes and playbooks so that success wasn’t episodic—it was repeatable.
The Reader’s Digest chapter showcased his aptitude for reinvention. He partnered with research and social teams to reimagine evergreen content for digital environments, migrating the business from print dependency to a diversified, programmatic-capable model. The work spanned philanthropic campaigns with cancer and veterans’ foundations as well as university initiatives, reminding Perry that marketing is most powerful when it serves a human purpose. The experience deepened his conviction that trusted brands can translate legacy equity into modern engagement with the right data, tone, and distribution.
Perry’s agency-side tenure at Xaxis and Hatch64 anchored him further in the mechanics of programmatic and the art of custom content. At Xaxis—within the GroupM ecosystem—he drove new business across English and French Canada, advancing performance programs for e-commerce, B2B, B2C, and D2C clients. He helped launch and position native units and performance offerings, bringing the right combination of first-party data, creative formats, and optimization protocols to bear. At Hatch64, he represented tier-one publishers like The New York Times and The Boston Globe while leading integrated, KPI-anchored campaigns across OTT, CTV, OOH, search, and social. Those years sharpened his client advisory skills and confirmed his belief that content, data, and media must be orchestrated—not merely assembled.
A constant through Perry’s journey is industry stewardship. He has served with IAB Canada for nearly two decades—including as Council Co-Chair of the Ad Tech Committee—contributing to policy formation, education, and position papers that help the market navigate change responsibly. He engages peers on topics from brand safety and identity to measurement and AI, insisting that innovation and ethics go hand in hand. His involvement with the Retail Council of Canada reflects a complementary focus: aligning the evolving needs of retailers with the capabilities of modern advertising and analytics.
Perry’s philosophy of branding draws on both scholarship and practice. He subscribes to the McLuhan-inspired notion that mediums shape messages, and that each new platform initially imitates its predecessor before discovering a unique syntax. In a world where consumers are creators—where memes can redefine brand attributes overnight—he encourages companies to design architectures that are resilient, participatory, and measurable. That means honoring brand essence while embracing the democratized feedback loops of social, creator ecosystems, and direct-to-consumer channels. It also means building the analytics foundation to see changes early, test responses quickly, and scale what works.
Internationally, Perry’s experience and outlook have been shaped by Europe and North America, with particular ties to France through Locala’s roots and his bilingual capability. This cross-border lens helps him spot patterns that transfer and practices that don’t, an especially valuable skill as global brands localize and local brands globalize. He navigates cultural nuance with respect and curiosity, ensuring campaigns and partnerships resonate authentically in each market rather than relying on superficial translation.
Beyond the office, Perry brings the same craftsperson’s attention to quality that he brings to client work. He is a student of wine and watches, interests that reflect his appreciation for heritage, precision, and the patience required to get complex things right. Volunteering with a French daycare in the Greater Toronto Area deepened his understanding of not-for-profit governance, stakeholder communication, and policy implementation—experiences that underscore his commitment to community and to building organizations that are safe, inclusive, and sustainable.
Perry holds a Master’s degree in Public Relations from Mount Saint Vincent University, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Advertising from Université de Montréal, and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication/Sociology from Concordia University, where he served as president of the student association and led the independent film guild. This academic grounding in communication theory and public discourse complements his hands-on mastery of digital platforms, analytics, and go-to-market mechanics. Together, they equip him to bridge the philosophical and the practical—to articulate the “why” and deliver the “how.”
Asked why he now seeks to serve on boards and advisory councils, Perry is clear: the media, retail, and technology sectors are in the midst of a structural shift, and he wants to help companies navigate it with confidence. Having led teams through multiple waves—from specialty TV and early web to social, mobile, programmatic, and retail media—he knows how to separate signal from noise. Boards and founders value his steady judgment, his fluency across functions, and his insistence on aligning brand purpose, customer experience, and commercial impact. For Perry, governance is not an auditorium seat; it is a commitment to stewardship, challenge, and support in equal measure.
Character:
Perry operates with quiet confidence and visible accountability, taking ownership for outcomes and crediting teams for wins. He balances ambition with humility, listening first and acting decisively when alignment is clear. His integrity shows up in the details—transparent measurement, ethical data use, and promises kept to clients, partners, and colleagues.
Knowledge:
He brings deep domain expertise in programmatic, retail media, and audience analytics, coupled with publisher and agency acumen that few executives possess. His bilingual and international experience sharpen his market sensing and cultural fluency. He continually invests in learning, translating new technologies into business-ready strategies.
Strategic:
Perry connects long-term brand architecture with near-term performance, ensuring that today’s campaigns build tomorrow’s equity. He frames decisions with clear hypotheses and measurable milestones so boards can govern with clarity. His versatility across sectors—media, retail, auto, QSR, and nonprofits—enables pattern recognition that accelerates growth and mitigates risk.
Communication:
He is an educator at heart, making complex ideas accessible to non-technical stakeholders without losing precision. He builds trust by aligning narratives to data, ensuring that stories are as verifiable as they are compelling. In multi-party environments, he convenes, clarifies, and drives toward decisions that stick.
