iHeartMedia Names Lainie Fertick Chief Insights Officer

RADIO ONLINE | Friday, October 9, 2026 | 4:24pm CT

Lainie Fertick

iHeartMedia has promoted Lainie Fertick to the newly created position of Chief Insights Officer, placing her in charge of insights initiatives across the company and adding her to its Strategic Communications (StratCom) leadership team. The appointment was announced in an internal memo from iHeartMedia Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman and President and COO Rich Bressler.

Fertick has played a significant role in developing iHeartMedia's consumer research capabilities through Critical Mass Media (CMM), the company's in-house research organization. She joined CMM as an intern in 2004 and advanced through the organization to become President and General Manager.

In 2024, Fertick was also named President of iHeartMedia Insights, expanding her responsibilities to include research supporting the company's advertising and marketing partners.

Her work has included overseeing several of iHeartMedia's annual consumer research studies, including "The New American Consumer," developed with author Malcolm Gladwell; "The Ignored Consumer"; and "The Human Consumer," which explored consumer attitudes toward technology and artificial intelligence and helped establish the company's Guaranteed Human positioning.

More recently, Fertick led research for "Unlocking the Community-Driven Gen Z Listener," examining how younger audiences engage with audio and community-driven content.

She has also been involved with AudioGraph, iHeartMedia's data and programmatic advertising platform launched in partnership with Triton Digital in June.

In their memo, Pittman and Bressler credited Fertick with helping the company's programming operations develop a deeper understanding of listeners and their behavior.

"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," the executives wrote.

As Chief Insights Officer, Fertick will oversee insights work across iHeartMedia, bringing together research and consumer intelligence efforts that support programming, advertising and the company's broader business operations.