February 6, 2026
Alex Studer (BS ‘17, advertising) is the director of web strategy at Peacock. He joined the streaming service in 2020—playing a key role in its launch—and now leads all major web initiatives and experimentation strategies across PeacockTV.com. Previously, Studer worked in the advertising industry as an account executive at Deutsch NY, where he supported the ACUVUE account, and later at Ogilvy NY, where he led client workstreams for Gerber and Nestlé. Studer has received multiple industry honors, including a Sports Emmy, Webby nomination, and three Webby honorable mentions. He has also been recognized as a 2023 MAIPer to Watch and was honored as an ADCOLOR FUTURE in 2019.
1. What is your current role at Peacock?
Currently, I’m the director of web strategy on the growth go-to-market team here at Peacock. I’ve been at the company for six years now and have been one of the key acquisition and experimentation leaders who have helped launch and grow the business. Put simply, my team runs our website (PeacockTV.com). We are responsible for everything consumers see when they come to our site, and we run experiments to try to get new users to sign up as efficiently as possible.
2. What do you find most challenging and most rewarding about your career?
The fast pace at which the marketing/advertising world moves is both a challenge and a reward for me. Each year, there are new advancements in technology, evolving consumer sentiments and values, and shifting company structures (e.g., mergers) in the industry that all result in a need to think into the future to stay ahead of it. This can for sure be daunting but also is satisfying as it challenges me to keep learning, adapting, and evolving alongside the industry.
3. When did you first realize advertising was the career path you wanted to pursue?
I started my journey at the University of Illinois as a pre-med psychology major. I spent my freshman year exploring different majors in the STEM world (electrical engineering, calculus, physics, and chemistry, to name a few), but everything changed my sophomore year on Quad Day when I stumbled upon the American Advertising Federation booth.
I’ll never forget my first AAF meeting and how inspired I was when learning that careers in advertising/marketing existed. The idea that you could have a career in a field where you analyze consumer behavior and use creativity to influence it really made an impact on me and motivated me to one day break into the industry. After getting heavily involved in AAF throughout my sophomore year, I was elected to the executive board my junior year and ended up running AAF Illinois as president my senior year. AAF is the reason I was able to finally discover a career path that felt more in line with my passions and interests. It’s also the reason I fell in love with NYC, thanks to our industry immersion visits here.
4. What advice would you give to students trying to break into the advertising industry today?
The biggest piece of advice I would give is to fully maximize and learn how to talk about all your past experiences to help land your future ones. Even before I started gaining industry experience, I was able to gain relevant, transferable skills through my involvement in student organizations, which later helped me land internships.
Once you start to compile your own set of experiences, I’d encourage students to focus on networking with those who are in the advertising industry, and to seek out professional organizations that can help further your career. For instance, I was fortunate to land my first ad agency internship at Bailey Lauerman in Omaha, Nebraska, after meeting a senior leader during an AAF Illinois campus visit.
My senior year, I decided I wanted to start my career in NYC, but recognized I didn’t have a strong network outside of Chicago. I applied to the Multicultural Advertising Internship Program and became a finalist, which gave me the opportunity to move to NYC after graduation to intern at Saatchi & Saatchi NY. My career in NYC wouldn’t have been a possibility without these prior experiences as I was able to finally start building my network and career here!
5. You were part of a campaign team that earned the Sports Emmy for Outstanding Interactive Experience for the 2024 Paris Olympics. What was your role for that campaign and what was it like to receive that recognition?
My team was responsible for the website acquisition and experimentation strategy to garner as many new subscribers as possible for the Olympics. For all organic traffic and paid media, our website served as a destination to learn more about the Olympics and helped consumers sign up for Peacock as seamlessly as possible to start streaming.
If I’m being candid, receiving this recognition didn’t feel real until I opened the (heavy!!) box the Emmy came in and saw my name on it. Early in my career, I was given valuable feedback from a mentor that I don’t take the appropriate amount of time to celebrate my wins and instead immediately look ahead to the next one. I challenged myself for this award to start to shift that and will definitely incorporate more celebration and reflection into any future awards/recognition my career brings me!
Receiving an Emmy was without a doubt a career highlight so far! It doesn’t feel like an “all-at-once” type of recognition, and instead feels more like a culmination of all my past wins, failures, lessons learned, etc. I feel fortunate to have this under my belt, and every day feel reminded of the accomplishment when I walk past the statue at home.
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