{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/integrated-digital-marketing-strategies#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/integrated-digital-marketing-strategies"},"author":[],"headline":"Integrated Digital Marketing Strategies","datePublished":"2024-02-28T07:40:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:35:09+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/integrated-digital-marketing-strategies"},"wordCount":3346,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/integrated-digital-marketing-strategies#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240522105241/pragya_sharoff_stackadapt_podcast_s4e12.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","keywords":["multi-channel","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"Learn how to mix different advertising channels with paid programmatic advertising to create effective integrated marketing campaigns."}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/strategies-for-holiday-advertising-success#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/strategies-for-holiday-advertising-success"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"John Carvalho","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/john-carvalho","jobTitle":"Director, Client Services","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Quick Strategies for Holiday Advertising Success","datePublished":"2023-11-22T15:42:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:36:06+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/strategies-for-holiday-advertising-success"},"wordCount":6075,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/strategies-for-holiday-advertising-success#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240429112200/john_carvalho_stackadapt_podcast_s4e8.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","keywords":["holiday","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiscussing strategies and tips that will supercharge your holiday advertising campaigns, driving the results you want.\n\n\n\nJohn Carvalho | Director, Client Services, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nAarjav Thakore | Senior Product Manager, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Just trying to get people through the upper funnel is what's really important here. As you kind of look at this time of the year, specifically, we're trying to break through a lot of ads that are happening right now making things that are a little bit more tailored to the individual might catch their eye. And when you start taking into account weather data, when you look at having geo in there, look at time of day, the images that are being used copy that's being used on all that getting tailored and highly focused on specific things is going to drive your end results and maybe get that click get someone to site that makes that purchase later on.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:27)But then you think about the social landscape. The research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:00:54)It's a common misconception is that last-minute shoppers might be disorganized. But as it turns out, they're just waiting on the best deals. With this in mind, now is the perfect time to reach prospective customers at this buying stage during the holiday season. As we all know, November and December are two of the biggest months in terms of sales volume, with January kind of trailing closely behind with post-holiday discounts. Producing yet another sales peak, now is the perfect time to ramp up your holiday campaigns and win more customers in the coming months. So how exactly are you going to do this? You have come to the right place. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. I'm your host Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. With me, I have programmatic experts John and Aarjav, welcome and thanks for being here, John and Aarjav. I'll pass it over to the both of you for an introduction. Let's start with you Aarjav. Tell us about your areas of expertise and your professional experience so far.\n\n\n\nAarjav  (00:01:54)Absolutely. Hey, everyone. My name is Aarjav. I'm the Senior Product Manager here at StackAdapt. I've been within the programmatic industry for about two and a half years, I've been working in different tech companies in Toronto and London, but recently with StackAdapt have been working around some of the reporting and targeting features. And most recently, and most important to this podcast weather targeting. So work with some of our engineers to bring out the first-ever weather-targeting feature for StackAdapt. We've seen a lot of success. We've seen a lot of great comments, and a lot of happy customers using this feature, and pretty grateful. And I'll pass it on to my colleague, John.\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:02:33)Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I've been in the programmatic space for, I'm gonna say, almost 10 years now, which is crazy to say, joined StackAdapt, about five years ago. And since then I started as an account manager and worked my way through and now Director of Client Services here. So leading our account management team, and our Client Services team overall. Prior to this, I was in a owned and operated space, but still programmatic, spending a lot of time doing weather executions. So definitely was leaned on a little bit for that project, and really happy to be part of this podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:03:07)Awesome. That's a lot of experience and expertise that we have on the show today. So thank you so much, both of you for joining us. And if I can start off with my first question, right, both of you mentioned the weather targeting, which I think is an intriguing tactic. And for someone who's never heard of this, could you explain how exactly it works, and perhaps highlight a specific instance, where it made a significant impact, especially on a holiday campaign?\n\n\n\nAarjav  (00:03:34)Absolutely. So weather plays, I would say, a huge role in the success of a campaign. So as we learn that it has a massive influence on consumers, it dictates like what they do, where they go, what they buy, what they eat even and how they feel. So it's, I would say the second biggest influence on consumer behaviour. So after the first one being like the state of the economy, so it's a pretty impactful tool to have on our hands powered by weather information, and have a platform like StackAdapt that provides our clients with the opportunity to use it further to improve your campaigns. So the goal at the time of like our team, on building this feature was to build a solution that allows our clients to show the right ads to the right people at the right time, using real-time weather data. So to put in simpler terms, like in the back end of this feature, we integrated with one of our weather partners called Open Weather, which is I would say a London, UK-based company who provides us with very granular level of weather data at a frequency of one hour, every day. So we get about 24 files of weather data for different countries, different regions, different cities on our platform, and we store them in a database. And on the platform we have built a very simple and intuitive UI for our clients where they can specify where the triggers such as conditions like clear clouds, rain, thunderstorms, snow, etc. And we also added some unique weather elements such as specification, UV index, air quality wind because the client list that we have is very tight diverse, they have lots of different types of businesses and products they want to sell. They want to use a lot of different weather tactics. And weather tactics, I would say conditions can be set up in three different steps. So the first one is you choose your geolocation. So what are the users you want to target? Like, where do they reside? Where do they want to like target to second is to choose your weather condition triggers. So for this example, you can set up a weather condition such as, when weather hits above 10 degrees Celsius, I want to start showing my ads. And then the last one is okay, you want to start showing ads, but which ads so our clients set up different types of weather ads that resonates to that particular client or the regional demographic, but they only want to show that when a temperature or a condition meets like the requirements. So that's three simple steps that you can set that up. But once we receive like a bid request for that region, we will check in our database in real-time to see the last received weather data for that geo region. So for example, if the weather tactic is set up as if weather temperature in Toronto goes below zero degrees Celsius, then I want to show this ad promoting like a hot beverage, for example. So when that trigger, like you know, when the bid request comes, we check the weather data for Toronto. And if it matches the condition that set up on the UI, that is a success. So then the platform will in like microseconds will serve that specific act to that specific user, making sure that we're reaching the right people and influencing their decisions. And that's pretty much how like the whole weather conditions weather tactic feature is set up on the platform. And clients can use that in lots of different examples in showing like, you know, for a restaurant or for beverages, or for apparel, brands and stuff. But if there's like an apparel brand, who only wants to show like, you know, summer dresses, but in hot conditions, but they also make jackets, they can show those jackets in a colder region, but using weather tactics. So when a certain colder part of the country hits, like a certain temperature, they will be shown jackets, but another hotter part can be shown, like in a summer dress, or T-shirts and stuff. So there are lots of different ways you can use that. But this is how StackAdapt is set up. But the weather conditions and weather factors on a platform. So it's easy to use and very impactful.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:07:10)And with the increasing emphasis on personalization in marketing, right, how can programmatic advertising be leveraged to create highly tailored and relevant holiday promotions for different customer segments?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:07:25)Yeah, I mean, other targeting is only one way you can get personalized. And I think, as you kind of look at this time of the year, specifically, and I think you called it out or earlier on it's, you're trying to break through a lot of ads that are happening right now, whether it's in the digital out-of-home space, whether it's on TV, and linear, CTV, through programmatic, like we're offering, making things that are a little bit more tailored to the individual might catch their eye, that might be the one that breaks through the, you know, 5000 messages that they see a day. And doing those little things is what's going to be really important. So, like Aarjav was saying earlier, being able to serve the right creative at the right time is so important. And when you start taking into account, things like weather data, that's just one way you can be personalized. But when you look at having geo in there look at time of day. The other piece too, is just the content you're putting out there. And then when you talk about a display or a native ad, the images that are being used, the copy that's being used, all that getting tailored and highly focused on specific things is going to drive your end results and maybe get that click that gets someone to site that makes that purchase later on. You know, just trying to get people through the upper funnel is what's really important here. And you know, different ways you can do that in your in your holiday promotions. And not just that. But beyond that, and you're always on strategy is using some of these tactics. The other piece too, is just talking to better customer segments. So whether that's using our page context AI to be directly on-page with relevant content, that's one way to speak to it as well. I recently ran a study about a year ago. And the congruence effect is super important when it comes to ads being on-page and being able to see you know how much that recall is more when it's on-page with relevant content versus not. So it's just those little tiny tweaks you can make in your campaign and use kind of the tactics that we have built into our platform and make it really easy, that can tie it together and make your campaign more personalized for an individual.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:09:26)Amazing. Thanks for that. And in terms of marketing technology, what tools or platforms do you believe will be instrumental in driving holiday sales for this year in particular in 2023, and how do you think businesses can effectively integrate these technologies into their strategies?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:09:46)Yeah, I think going back to what I was talking about a little bit earlier, there's a lot of messaging that's happening right now. So I think any good marketer is going to sit there and want to look at a full funnel approach. You have to have your upper funnel, you have to have your lower funnel but it goes beyond just that it's, you know, how do I make sure that my programmatic, my social, my TV, my CTV, my digital out-of-home are all speaking to each other? And how can I make it that that one message is going out? And then on top of that, how else can I start driving results? You know, it's really easy to look at sales data, it's probably going to be up for most retailers during the holiday season, that's natural, you know, are we up year over year? That's one way you can look at it. But you know, is there offline attribution models that you can use, such as foot traffic attribution? Are people going to store? Are they making their way there? Is my message really pushing them? And then on top of that, too, you know, looking at things, if you're using, you know, Google Analytics, for example, site traffic, is it up? What's the bounce rate look like? Am I seeing more conversions coming in? And even going one step beyond that, and looking at is there assisted channels that are really driving those conversions, because it's not just that one touch that last touch that's important. It's, how's this whole funnel working together? You take a really basic approach to this. It's like, okay, maybe I saw a Facebook ad, a couple of days later, I got targeted through a programmatic ad, I saw it, I clicked through this site, then I got retargeted, by that programmatic DSP. And then from there, you know, what I finally realized, oh, yeah, I did want to buy that jacket that I saw four or five times beforehand. I then go in and I use my search query, I go through, I click on a pay for social ad, or sorry, pay for a search ad. And I go in and make that conversion. It's not just that last touch on that paid search ad. But it's that whole funnel that goes through. And that's where those assisted conversions are super important. If a channel is placing itself on a high-assisted piece, it means it's really driving as part of that funnel. So just making sure you're leveraging all your tools you have available. And then on top of that incorporating a couple of new ones, like foot traffic, maybe even weather triggering, when it comes to it, maybe not so much from an aspect of being able to see conversion data, but from trying to test out different messaging to see if it'll drive different regions. You can't use a blanket approach when you're looking at Canada or the United States, or even anywhere in the world. Just because you know, there's such a vast difference in between southern and northern climates.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:12:16)Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Thank you. And lots of holiday campaigns have already taken off. So what are some of those last minute additions or changes one can look to make to go that extra mile in terms of reach and conversion?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:12:32)Yeah, I can definitely take that one too. You know, I think a lot of them are probably taken off. And they're and they're in sound judgment of things they've done in the past. But I think what you can do is start to look, if there's any of like audience expansion analysis that we have in platform, is there certain audiences that are more likely to be clickers on your ads? Is there certain audiences that you could potentially test out to see, if you can get net new users to site, it's really easy to in this time, especially around this, this area, where it's, you know, the end of the year, you're trying to get the last bit of sales, when it comes to your e-commerce brand or any size of that it's, it's really easy to just default back into the norms. But if you can drive more net new users to site, that's where you're really going to see the return. You know, one of our clients has always said, you know, if you're not prospecting, you're not going to get retargeting and you're not going to get conversions. And trying to drive as many net new users to site is definitely one way to do it. And you can do it really simply, you can put a pixel on site, gather those users and actually use them as an exclusion audience. So once a user gets the site, I no longer want to serve them my prospecting ad, they can be part of my retargeting campaign, but then you're just driving net new users. If you have a CRM list, for example, we have an integration where you can add it right into the platform, it'll be matched within a couple of hours. And you can go live same-day with a campaign. And with that, you can actually target the CRM list, negatively target the CRM list and add audience look alike expansion. So essentially saying, Here's my list of customers that I already have, go find people that have the same browsing and internet behaviours, and target them so I can drive more net new users to site. And then the other one that I mentioned is foot traffic. You know, maybe you're not able to show all the online sales. I don't know about you guys. I like to shop in person for my holiday gifts, it's a little bit easier, sometimes. Maybe something catches your eyes. So you know, being able to track that person that's going to the mall or going to a store or going to some of the big box retailers. It's definitely a really good way to be able to see you know, is my ad driving people to store and then from there, you can actually see a lot of cool things inside the platform in terms of reporting. Is there a lift in that performance? Am I driving more people to store because of this? That's kind of just a couple of cool things you can see when you add something like foot traffic into your campaign.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:14:53)Amazing. Thank you. And on that note, we'll pause here and take a short break, but don't go Anywhere we will be right back. When we are back on the other side, we're talking about lessons from 2023 and programmatic beyond the holiday season. So stay tuned.Welcome back, you're still listening to the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I'm Sneha. With me, I have Aarjav and John, programmatic experts. And we are talking about holiday marketing and Aarjav and John, could you share a case study or a specific example of a holiday marketing campaign that stood out due to its innovative use of programmatic tactics? And what lessons can other marketers draw from its success? \n\n\n\nAarjav  (00:15:43)Absolutely. I can take this one. So when we first launched weather targeting there were a lot of exciting clients who wanted to use this functionality, first off, and one of them was a Miami-based holiday travel company who owns like a few resorts and wanted to do some holiday marketing, asking people to visit their locations, what they wanted to try out where the targeting is that they wanted to try, they wanted to reach to people who are in colder regions, and trying to like entice them to visit like a nice warm location, like Florida, which is not so cold that time of the year. So what like we work with that client and trying out different techniques, and one that set out was, they tried to reach out to users in four different cities. It was New York, Boston, Toronto, and Montreal, relatively cold regions, as opposed to like Miami at the time of the year. So were the tactics that we set up on the platform, were pretty straightforward, very intuitive, where they used a combination of weather conditions and temperature to target people in that region at the right time, and showing very personalized message. So they set up a few different creatives, which had a personal touch for New Yorkers, for like know, people in Montreal people in Toronto, and they had some general ads that can be shown to everybody in that region. And they set up some weather conditions in that if Toronto temperature range is between, like, you know, five degrees Celsius to minus 10 degrees Celsius, which is very cold. And when it started snowing, I want to show this ads of like promoting this nice Miami Beach sort of resort, which is much warmer at that time of the year, as opposed to what the users is currently feeling at their home base. And that's pretty much the like, I would say the goal was and then set up these kind of tactics for people in Montreal, people in New York and Boston. And they've seen really good results in I would say, impressions, conversions, and people actively booking the results with it. Because if you think about it in the users like an end user situation, if you pull up the curtains at six o'clock in the morning, and it's snowing, gloomy dark outside, and then you pull up your phone and see this nice looking ad from like Miami resort, where it's 30 degrees Celsius, nice and warm, you are more enticed to click on that ad as opposed to like, you know, seeing at a random time of the day or something. So, like we said before, timing is everything and trying to reach out to right users is also a really good tactic. So we did use those kinds of conditions with that particular client. And using one of our reports, which is called Audience Insights, mid-campaign or after the campaign, they tried to look into who are actually engaging with their ads, because our report allows you to actually drill down into your audiences, and see from those four cities, who are the users will actually I would say, engaging, if New York is engaging more or Montreal's not engaging. So we might want to pivot some of the strategies there. And they saw that people were also interested who engaged with the ads, were also interested in NFL, were also interested in soccer and stuff like that. So this kind of cross targeting, I would say efforts that some of our teams driven saying that, hey, the people who are actually like, you know, reacting to your weather ads can also be found on web pages that contain like, you know, soccer and NFL content, so might want to show ads over there too. So this kind of way, we combine like, you know, smart weather tactics with our Audience Insights report, trying to know your audience better and trying to find more users who are like more willing to engage with your ads, and that those few campaigns are really good results in what they wanted to achieve. And with using lots of different techniques and technologies on our platform, we can actually drive more results. And that's a pretty good example of using weather tactics for like a lot of holiday campaigns.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:19:15)Perfect. Thank you. You know, now that we've covered off holiday campaigns, is there a way you can use weather triggering, in an always on campaign as we move into 2024?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:19:28)Yeah, I mean, besides some of the examples that we use, I think weather triggering can really offer unique opportunity for clients to be able to speak to their end users. One example that I have was from a QSR restaurant kind of specializes more in like the coffee's of the world. And when you start looking at that, obviously there's different types of drinks and beverages that people want at different times of the year based on what it is outside. You know, you have your diehard coffee drinkers that are obviously going to have that all year round, but I know for me when it gets a little bit warmer out I'm more of an iced coffee or a cold brew. So what they did was they actually set up a kind of a creative web when it comes to their weather triggering, in which case, it's like, you know, when it's between a certain temperature, we want to serve certain beverages. So when it's colder, we want to serve our warm beverages. Maybe when it's kind of in the mid-temperature, we kind of serve maybe our frappuccinos or something like that. And when it gets hotter, we start serving our iced coffees and cold brews. So looking at that, and putting it all together, they're able to speak to their customer, not only from a month-to-month standpoint of the different drinks that they want to drive. But then on top of that, you can also set it up that every single day, it's serving based on those weather triggering. So maybe when it comes to a fall season, you wake up in the morning, it's a little bit cooler, I'm going to get something that's like, oh, come and get you, your warm coffee. But as the day kind of goes on, maybe it gets a little bit warmer, it's you know, changing what it's actually serving and showing me something different. The other piece you can use too is dayparting along with the weather triggering. And what they did is they know that like most people want to have their caffeine in the morning, typically, that's kind of the way that they wake up. And in the afternoon, it's you know what we got to serve different beverages. So kind of becomes a two-prong attack, you have your morning serving where it's really pushing caffeinated beverages, along with the weather-triggering tactics. And then in the afternoon, it's pushing, you know, refreshers, or, you know, ice teas or different things like that, that they can serve from their earpiece. And you can even take it one step further and serve food if you wanted to. As part of that. The other example that I have is from more of a sit-down restaurant location, the way that they use it is, you can imagine if you have a beautiful patio overlooking water, you probably want to serve like, hey, come to the patio. But nothing's worse than seeing that on a rainy day. And you're like, well, I'm not gonna go today, and then you forget about it. But they also have the takeout options. So it's putting in there where if it's raining or gloomy, I want to make sure that I'm serving my takeout option. Hey, you know what, have dinner on us tonight, or you have to pay but have dinner from us tonight. And then on the other side of it, it's you know, if it's beautiful and sunny, showcase that patio and say hey, why don't you come out, enjoy the night out on the patio, compound dinner. So it's just kind of taking a very simple tactic, but changing your message. And there's a lot of research that actually comes behind that where if it's, you know, rainy, if it's not great weather, if it's snowing, people tend to order in more, so why not take advantage of your weather triggering and be able to change your messaging, instead of just having a blanket message that covers everything at one point in time.\n\n\n\nAarjav  (00:22:40)And just to add on top of what John mentioned, that's another exciting example. And what our UI on the platform really allows you to do is you can mix and match a lot of other conditions with other targeting. So you can add like, time of the day, or you can mention like a sequence and stuff. But what you can also do is select the device type. So it could be mobiles, tablets, and I would say desktops. And for the situation where like you have a restaurant like what John mentioned, and you have a beautiful patio, you want to show like ads inviting people to come and sit in on a sunny day. So if the day is sunny, pretty warm, you can use those conditions on the weather metrics, and you expect that people are going to be out and about on a you know, they're not going to be at home. So they might be using more of their mobile and tablet devices. So you can select like, hey, show ads more on mobile and tablet devices that might reach out more users as opposed to, if it's a rainy day, if it's snowing people might be in might be using the computers more. So you might also want to divert ads to that device. So you can mix and match and do a lot of things to make sure you get the best out of it.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:23:44)Awesome. And if we can talk a little bit about attribution, how can brands leverage a full online and offline attribution in programmatic beyond just the holiday season?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:23:56)You know, one of the biggest things that I think a lot of brands are facing right now is trying to prove what their media is actually doing from a, whether it be sales perspective, or driving in-store traffic, whatever it might be from that piece. And I think, you know, one of the big things that you can really do that sets you up for success is making sure that those things are turned on when it comes to your attribution. So if we're looking at this, it's, you know, do I have the pixels in place where I need to track things, you know, more tracking is always great, the more pieces that our platform can get in, the better the machine learning algorithm is going to be. So if we're checking form fills and we're tracking, email submits if we're tracking purchases, making sure that we're passing back you know, any add to carts, things like that. Really understanding where the funnel and where it's being dropped off. You know, that's just one part of the online strategy, but being able to see like, you know, if that's not working, can we pivot and see a good story when it comes to foot traffic, you know, maybe it's just that retailers want to go buy this in store. One of the big things that I can use for this is, you know, if you're an auto dealership, I don't know many people at this point in time that are buying their cars over the Internet, it's still something that people want to go in, they want to it's tactile, you want to drive, and being able to see like, you know, if someone's, you can still book a test drive online, they can still maybe book their service appointment online, that side of things is always going to happen with those users that actually go into the dealership and the next little bit, that's kind of the one piece that you really want to see. And then from there, it's, you know, how long was that person inside the dealership? Well, we know service appointments take a little bit longer. So if their dwell times longer than chances are, they went in for their service. And if it's a little bit shorter, and maybe they had, you know, multiple visits in the same day, they probably went in talk to one of the salespeople, then went out went for a test drive came back. So you can tell a really good full funnel story when it comes to both online and offline attribution, when you kind of partner them together. That's kind of the nice little benefit when it comes to adding FTA for offline attributions. And then on top of that, too, you know, just being able to see if there's anything else that's coming from it, are you driving Lyft? Are you being able to see any success from certain ads? Is there anything that's really kind of driving that just different key data points that you can get is going to make an overall strategy. And then from our side on the StackAdapt, Client Services, we're really looking at all of those touch points to try and give you a full story. So when we look at it, and we're actually looking at those online object attributions, if we have every step of the way covered, we can tell you where your users are dropping off, maybe that conversion journey might be a little bit too long. And we can see, you know what they're getting to step two, and then they're falling off, maybe we can try and tighten that up and help your team on that side. And same when we look at offline attributions, we can also say like, hey, maybe we're not getting the online piece, or driving a lot of in-store traffic, you know, what are you seeing from an agency on your side, when it comes to point of sales when it comes to that side of things. And when you kind of marry the data together, you really get this multi-touch attribution model that everyone's after. There's no perfect solution when it comes to multi-touch. But I think the more data that you can gather, the better informed you can be from a growth marketing perspective.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:27:26)Awesome. That brings us to the end of this episode, John, and Aarjav thank you so much for joining us, loved learning about why the targeting those were some really solid examples and insights you shared. And thanks to you, the one listening to this whoever you are marketer, brand, agency, I'm sure you had a lot to take away today. Again, great to have the both of you here and to you, the one who stuck around till the very end listening to this, make sure you subscribe to the podcast to listen to the new episodes right when they drop. And if you like the podcast, share it with your teammates. It could be a cool resource to post on your work chat as a recommendation. So go ahead and do that. And if you want to get in touch Write to us at academy@stackadapt.com That is academy@stackadapt.com. We have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesday. So stay tuned. Until then, this has been the how agencies type podcast. See you in the next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:28:22)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/navigating-challenges-in-b2b-saas-marketing#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/navigating-challenges-in-b2b-saas-marketing"},"author":[],"headline":"B2B SaaS Marketing: How to Navigate Unique Challenges","datePublished":"2023-11-08T17:47:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:36:37+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/navigating-challenges-in-b2b-saas-marketing"},"wordCount":5853,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/navigating-challenges-in-b2b-saas-marketing#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240429125911/preetish_p_stackadapt_podcast_s4e7.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","keywords":["account-based marketing","b2b","podcast"],"articleSection":["Martech"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUnpacking the intricacies of B2B SaaS marketing and offering strategies that will help you nurture leads in extensive sales cycles. \n\n\n\nPreetish P  | Marketing Director, Bettermode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)What kind of alternatives your customers would have if your product did not exist? And what's the end benefit you're delivering to the customer? And who exactly is your customer? The final piece is the category itself are you going after an entire category or are we choosing a smaller pie in an existing category and then trying to expand and at the end of the day, your positioning should be designed to carve space in the mind of customers so that they would consider your product is one of the best solutions when it comes to solving a particular challenge.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:29)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:00:54)B2B SaaS marketing. That's what we're talking about today. Simply put, this is about marketing your software as a service. This is a little different from any other regular products because SaaS purchases are most likely to be subscription-based. This means you have to keep up with the competition, release new features, improve user experience, make product updates to keep the user engaged, and provide value, and also do this consistently. So in today's episode, let's dive a little deeper into this. Welcome to the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I'm Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. And today, we're chatting with Preetish from Bettermode, about B2B SaaS marketing. Preetish, hello, and welcome to the show. I'll now pass it to you to introduce yourself, you know, your professional experience so far and your areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nPreetish  (00:01:49)Thanks, Sneha. Thanks a lot. Glad to be here. So my name is Preetish and I have been working on product marketing and growth marketing for close to 10 years, mainly focused on SaaS products. I started my career as a software engineer, and then I moved to my marketing and business side for that. And I am currently working as a Director of Marketing at Bettermode. And what we do at Bettermode is we bring together different customer engagement tools into one platform. So for example, discussing forums, Q&A, events, Resource Center, Help Center ideas and roadmaps. Change logs into one centralized all-in-one committed platform so that you can streamline the customer experience, centralize all your tools and build better customer relationship. So that's what we do at Bettermode.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:02:47)Amazing. Thank you so much, and very glad to have you here. So my first question to you is about B2B SaaS marketing itself, which can be quite different from B2C marketing. Right? So what do you see are the key distinctions and unique challenges that marketers face when promoting software products to other businesses?\n\n\n\nPreetish  (00:03:10)Yeah, I really love that question, because that's a really fundamental question about B2B SaaS, but I believe at the end of the day, to begin with, we have to be human to human, we need to look at what's the unique pain point that we're solving what kind of benefits we're providing, that requires a deep understanding of our customers. And, of course, that applies to both B2B and B2C. But that said, there are of course unique challenges. So one point that you previously mentioned during the intro is that B2B businesses are primarily subscription-based businesses, right, which means you have to keep on improving your product, invest a lot on customer success, to make sure that your customers are constantly getting value, they're realizing the investment that they're making, and what kind of output they're getting from the product. So investing a lot on customer success, that is one of the key aspects there. But in terms of purely from marketing and sales side as well, you are predominantly selling to a team than one single person, right? So there is a person who will be using that product. But there is another person who would approve the budget. There is this legal team, who is trying to make sure that in terms of regulations, they're safe. There is this technology tech team, or data security team that is making sure that their customers data is secure. So there is a number of push and pull going on in a B2B SAAS purchase. And you have to be context you have to see everything through a different contexts. So what kind of motivation each team member has, and you need to fulfill that. So that's one of the key challenges. And apart from that, depending on the kind of companies you're targeting, say, for example, it could be a smaller company, it could be mid-market company, it could be enterprise company, depending on that the sales cycle could range from, you know, a week, two weeks, a month to a year as well. And because of that, you need to be constantly in touch with your customers, of course, throughout the sales cycle, but after that as well. And in terms of the kind of content that B2B SaaS produces is kind of different than B2C. So it involves things like white papers, research papers, case studies, demo sessions, which might not be that common on in B2C side. And then you have to essentially build your listenership, right. So right from the stage of discovering and getting in touch with the first prospect to closing the deal, and then making sure that you are in touch with them throughout their journey and making sure that they are realizing the value. So that's a constant process. So yeah, so I believe, selling to a team of buyers, looking at their unique challenges, linear sales cycle, these are some of the unique challenges that you will encounter in B2B SaaS.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:06:35)Right, so you know, you spoke about sales cycles and B2B sales cycles can be lengthy and also involve multiple decision makers, like you said, so how can marketing automation and lead nurturing, helping maintain engagement and guiding prospects through the sales funnel? And what are some of the key metrics to look at here?\n\n\n\nPreetish  (00:06:59)So, yeah, just in terms of marketing automation tools, I believe, one of the most common use cases would be around lead scoring and pricing. So, based on the ICP, or ideal customer profile, that you have defined, using that as a base, you can score different kinds of leads that are getting channelled into your funnel. And based on that score, you can prioritize the deals and then let your sales team know that this lady is matching with our defined ICP, and we should be able to close them. So that is a production process that is getting impacted with marketing automation tools. And another key area is segmentation, right? So based on all the data that we're collecting, you need to be able to segment your customers or all the leads that you are having in your funnel. So based on their demographics, their peruses firmographic data, all that can be used to segment your customers. And that's also a key driver for personalized messaging. So these are some of the two key areas in which marketing automation helps. Apart from that, like I mentioned, inherently, the sales cycle could be longer, could be manual, it could range from one month to a year. And toward that period, you need to make sure that you're constantly engaging with the prospects. So like sharing testimonials, company news, or even if you're releasing any kind of case study. So all that could be channelled through the marketing automation tool, and you can use that to communicate with your customers and on and off course, like I mentioned, you need to use that segment to personalize your messaging. Apart from that, these days, all of most of their marketing automation tools have sophistication built into that so that you can capture different kinds of intent. For example, are they using certain features in our product, you can channel that here, automation and capture that if they are not taking those actions or those behaviours that you want them to pursue. You can use your communication to guide them in certain way. So those are some of the areas and also in these days, the marketing automation tools, they're adding a lot of different channels to help you communicate just not emails or messaging it could be you could reach them or to other channels such as SMS or WhatsApp and all that. So multi-channel messaging can also be utilized here, and apart from that, it's just not about you know, communicating with your customer through a one-way channel, it's about, it's also about opening up that channel and receiving feedback from the customer. So, using your marketing automation tool to reach out to the channels in which your customers are active and, and getting feedback from them is also crucial. So, these are some of the areas and apart from that, you can look at what kind of pain points that they have described during the interaction with your team, with your teammates or sales team can utilize that to communicate with them. And apart from that, then you have a say for example, they are utilizing some kind of integration, or maybe they have activated some tool that your platform offers. And in that moment, you can send certain helpful resources, what are the best practices, how other companies are using those integrations? So those kinds of behavioural activities can be tracked. And you can, of course, communicate with the customers and see and make sure that they're getting the best value out of the product. So yeah, that's how I would mainly summarize it.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:11:32)Okay. You know, you spoke about messaging a lot and have a question about messaging, right? B2B SaaS products have complex features and benefits, most likely, but how do you create compelling and informative content that communicates the value proposition clearly to potential customers? And can you also throw light on product positioning here, when it comes to messaging? And how are you showcasing that value?\n\n\n\nPreetish  (00:12:01)Yeah, absolutely. So again, I believe, when it comes to communication, and explaining complex topics, it's primarily about having a deep understanding for customers, their pain points side. So it begins from there. So again, you need to have a clear view of your customers develop your buyer persona, look at the industry challenges, goals, what is their preferred content format? How are they consuming content, have a clear view of that, understand your customers, first of all, and then whenever you're building out any kind of content, it should have a lot of visuals. So for example, if you're, if you have a blog, post, infographics, diagrams, flowcharts, that these things could be used to explain complex topics. And then you need to be able to demonstrate using examples of case studies of how, how other companies are ordered best practices of using our product. So that also gives a lot of clarity. So that is also tied to storytelling. How can you let your most satisfied customers talk about product, their experiences, and utilize that to communicate your purchase vision, and what kind of features you're building, and also talking about the vision and journey, whenever you are releasing any kind of new feature or talking about any kind of value that you're offering, try to see if you can tie in your larger mission and vision as well, that also creates a lot of trust. And then there are some other common tactics that I can talk about, like for example, not using complex jargons, using simple words, emphasizing on what kind of return you're providing to your customers based on their investment. And these days, a lot of interactive demos are also trending. So your website itself could host a lot of interactive demos of your product that also explains how they can click through different areas of the product and see how it works. Without even talking to a sales team or even watching a video they can actually play around with your product and and talking about videos of course that's one of the key channels a key content format as well to expand any kind of topic because inherently it's visual and your grasp those topics in a really easy way. And then you need to also do just get feedback from the customers as well like what kind of content you are, what could be improved. What are you missing? If there is certain topics that your customers will learn who would like to learn? Can you cover that? Can you have live walk-ups or webinars to help the customers directly through one-on-one interactions? So these, one-to-many or one-to-one sessions can be utilized to, you know, decipher your products, complex stories, and then use them to simplify the message and talk about it. But then coming to positioning, I believe it's a really, I believe this is one of the most fundamental aspects of motion that can make or break your product. So, it's a really complex topic as well, I believe we can have an entire podcast dedicated to just positioning. But yeah, positioning mainly stems from you're missing. So missing, that translates to your positioning? And then you use the positioning, procured your messaging. But for positioning itself, they're the primary five components, I would say. One is that, what kind of alternatives your customers will have if your product did not exist? So what kind of alternatives that they can choose? And what's the end benefit you're delivering to the customer? And what's your unique solution? That's one thing, and who exactly is your customer? And apart from that, the final piece is the category itself. What kind of category you're building? Are you creating a new category? Are you going after an entire category or are choosing a smaller pie in an existing category and then trying to expand? So all these five components, all builder positioning, and at the end of the day, you're positioning or should be designed to carve special space in the mind of customers. So that they would consider your product is one of the best solutions when it comes to solving a particular challenge. I will also suggest April Dunford, she has written a lot about positioning, I think she is one of the best. When it comes to designing positioning. I think everyone should sort of look at the resources that she has put out. I believe there is this podcast as well as newsletter. It's called Lenny's Podcast and Lenny’s newsletter as well. So there she has written a lot about positioning in one of the issues. So check it out. Yeah, I would just like to say that once you have narrowed down your positioning, and it may not be absolutely crystal clear in the beginning, I know that, at least in early stages, it can change as you move towards product market fit and look at different components of the market. But at least start with a minimum viable positioning and utilize that to create different messaging, your battle cards, reasons to believe valuable isn't all this.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:18:39)Amazing, very insightful. Thank you for that. And so Preetish, my next question for you is about Account Based Marketing (ABM). Right. It's gained popularity in B2B marketing. So how can SASS companies implement ABM strategies in the digital world to personalize their approach for high-value clients?\n\n\n\nPreetish  (00:18:59)Right. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the most trending topics in the B2B space. So we're happy to talk about it. I believe the whole buzz around ABM started picking up around, I would say, seven, eight years back, maybe around 2016. Around that time. So even before looking at ABM, I would say that, first you need to see if your company would benefit from that. There are a couple of markers that you can choose to first see if your organization is first of all suitable for ACV or not. So look at your annual contract value. So if it is generally around 25k 30k, then that's a really good signal as well, that it could be a good fit for you. But if you have a smaller ACV might not be the right fit and also When it comes to larger content values, inherently the sales cycle is also higher. Not always. But inherantly it is. So if that is also the case for you, if it takes maybe months, six months, five months, a year, something like that to close deals, then ABM will be perfect for you. Because you will be dealing with multiple stakeholders on a larger timeframe. So Account-Based Marketing will be perfect for you. So these are the markers that you need to look at. And then you need to start your ABM program, I would generally suggest that companies that are starting with ABM, they can come across a number of different tools that it's, you know, quite complex to look at all these different tools and put them together. But I would suggest that just start with a pilot program, you know, just select 10 accounts, and assemble a small team, try to see who will be working on what kind of activities, what will be the different project ideas, and then establish your KPI so it could be meetings, works, booked, number of opportunities created things like that, and then look at your timeframe, and also agree that you meet certain number of metrics based on the KPI that you have selected. And then you start running your ABM program. But when it comes to just starting with the pilot, I would say that work really, really closely with your sales team to first prepare that list of account. If you're going after 10 people an account, or maybe just 10 accounts work with the sales team to find out who would be your ideal customer, even you can also look at your CRM to find out some of the cold leads and just try to reason with them, you can utilize that to build your list. Or you can look at if you have a subscription to Apolo Zoominfo, maybe CrunchBase, or even LinkedIn itself, you can utilize that to build your account list. When you're starting with a pilot program, you don't need that big, large lists, you can just use LinkedIn or CrunchBase as well. And if you're targeting SASS companies, you can utilize a site called Get flatcar.com. The site itself has a lot of SaaS company list for targeting B2C, direct-to-consumer companies, or E-commerce companies, then you can look at Charm, it's a database of E-commerce companies. So you can look at all these different tools to identify your target list. And then try to research look at their LinkedIn profile and try to map out different decision makers, their roles, their plans, what could be, who could be potential influencers, can you also get warm intros based on your existing network, because that will help a lot if you can secure a warm intro, apart from building the right list and mapping out the decision makers, you can also need to look at what kind of content assets you have already created. And of course, you can reutilize them but you need to try to make sure that those content assets, those ebooks, white papers or case studies, there is a lot of personalized because you're starting with really small number of accounts, you need to be able to personalize those accounts even you can personalize the landing pages as well. So invest in that really personalize the content, personalize the experience, then try to reach out and make sure that the marketing message is in tune with what the sales team would say, want those opportunities, opportunities are created. And they're actually demoing the product and trying to pursue the prospect to you know, become a customer. And as you expand your target list, maybe you start going to 50, 100, 500, you need to utilize multiple different channels as well as it can utilize LinkedIn for targeted ads. Even I believe StackAdapt also has some kind of integration with Bambora. We can use those intent signals to run different kinds of targeted ads for target accounts. Of course there is email campaign. You can also use offline channels to send some kind of personalized gift or any personalized message to them. There is this tool called Instantly, which has email warmups, and email sequences contact database built into one single platform kind of similar to Apollo as well. And very cost effective can utilize that to run your campaigns, if you're just starting out. And then yeah, and finally, you need to look at what kind of metrics you were able to achieve, based on that defined pilot period. How many opportunities we created, how many demos you booked with the sales team? And then try to see based on that success, that learning ,that feedback, try to see how can we expand your ABM program to more number accounts. As you scale, as you try to get larger number of accounts, I would highly suggest that you utilize intent signals. There are a lot of intent, vendors, you can even utilize due to crowd. They also provide intent signals based on what kind of category or competitors are your own product that buyers are searching for, you can utilize that to be more targeted and be more precise in terms of the kind of people you're reaching out to the kinds of messages you're putting out. So that's how I would I would approach ABM, I would first start with a pilot program, then try to expand it. And when we're doing a pilot program, just start with low number of accounts, start with 10 accounts, personalize your content, reach out to them. And from there you iterate and scale.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:26:40)Awesome. Those are very specific suggestions and great insights. And you talked about scaling. Right? So how can digital marketing strategies be adapted to say, scale and target international markets and overcome cultural and language barriers?\n\n\n\nPreetish  (00:26:57)Yeah, there are I mean, it's definitely complex, it might seem that it's quite kind of straightforward to just localize your content and try to go up to different markets. But there are a lot of nuances to it. You need to first understand, if you're really deep into winning localized market, you need to understand again, how what kind of specific cultural nuances or specific geo-specific problems that your customers have, understand their market landscape or their local competitors, what kind of value they provide, and what kind of unique solution that you can provide that local market. That's one of the key areas. Again, so understand your customer. Do thorough research based on that geo. And then you plan your content. Like I mentioned, you need to, of course, localize your content, you need to invest in high-quality, translation services to make sure there is accuracy. And also, there are certain things that could be sensitive in some areas, like for example, maybe some words, some jargons, some way of saying things could mean entirely different in different countries. So you need to be sensitive to that and make sure that you're working with experts to make sure that your content doesn't have any kind of sensitive material based on the market that you're targeting. So that's one of the key areas, you'll need to of course, localize your success story, so can you have some kind of local success stories from that specific geo or based on that demographic, that quote resonates really well with that market. And, again, you're supportive sources could be I mean, your support resources need to also match that market and the knowledge base, the help centers, even customer success, support reps, if they're not able to speak that language, then there could be a lot of bottlenecks there. So investing in that area. The timeframe as well. If you are in the States or in North America and trying to target maybe Southeast Asia or something like that some other geo that is far from your local time zone. Can you have some kind of team that can cater to the customer from that area and make sure that they're getting the right kind of experience and support based on their timezone? So, all these things need to be considered. And again, the distribution channel also plays a lot. I mean, it plays a crucial role. So utilizing channels such as you might be utilizing TikTok, or maybe Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, depending on what kind of content you're putting out and what kind of market you're serving but for example, in China WeChat is really popular. So depending on the local market are we able to utilize different kinds of distribution channels, apart from the regular ones. So that is another key area, then localizing our pricing, payment options as well. And another key area is your data regulators and privacy regulations, making sure that you are compliant with those local areas. Even California has CCPA. And we all know about GDPR in the European region. So making sure that legally, customer experience-wise, marketing-wise, you are in tune with the local market is just really crucial for expanding into interesting market.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:30:50)And as we look ahead, what trends do you foresee shaping B2B SaaS marketing in the future? And how should companies prepare to adapt their digital marketing strategies to stay ahead in this evolving landscape\n\n\n\nPreetish  (00:31:07)Right, really, really good question as well as I believe there are a lot of thoughts going on around artificial intelligence. So I must use that word from the beginning of my answer. So there are I believe, I mean, there is now a large, large scale, utilizing of different kinds of AI tools. And it is going to definitely change the way we work, the way we market even the way we build products. So I believe that with AI, the level of personalizing will also increase a lot. And right now we are using, for example, lead scoring based on the former graphic and demographic, and some kind of product user's data. I believe with time there are also current solutions as well right now, which can predict at a much better level, what's the probability of closing certain kinds of deals based on external factors as well, not just the data that we're collecting? So that would again, be democratized, I believe more companies would have access to that kind of tools. So I believe personalizing and utilizing these kinds of tools to see and prioritize the deals that are getting that could be more efficient. And then content production, the kinds of content that you are creating. It can be scaled a lot using artificial intelligence, large language models, even mostly, all the tech marketers are, when you're working with athletes in the tech space knows about ChatGPT and have, everyone has played around with it. So utilizing these kinds of tools to scale your current production be more efficient, in terms of the kind of content, you can create, that would rapidly increase. I believe, smaller teams will be more efficient as well, they can produce more compelling content, without requiring large team members. That's something that's going to happen. And I would say that, I believe there will be at least in the B2B SaaS phase, there will be more PLG product lead growth companies with time than sales lead growth companies, they are there, I saw this report that was put together by an investment firm VC company that said that post-pandemic and before 2023, some of the sales lead companies did actually well in terms of retaining customers and selling higher contract value deals. But I believe with time it will die, that tool that would save more towards PLG, because more and more number of people have access to different kind of information they can see and understand what's happening with the market, what kind of market dynamics what kind of alternatives everyone has. And 90% pretty soon is already getting made before even reaching to the customers. So to that will accelerate a lot. And we will see that mainly companies will lean towards PLG. And in terms of preparing for upcoming challenges or sips in technology, I believe one key area is to look at your communities right. So as a marketer, stay in touch with your community. So that is, for example, if you're a growth marketer or content marketer, there's this really good community called Demand Curve. It's a Slack channel, and join in there. There is really good communities for product marketers. PMA has a product marketers, Slack community, join in their stay in touch with the community and try to understand what kind of new tools technologies, best practices, other teams are using, that would help you a lot. And just invest some time in learning more about the newer tech. The newer technologies, new apps, new tools, new strategies. So for example, dedicate maybe 20 to 30 minutes each week, and just go through producthunt.com, where different new tools are getting launched. Right. So that will also give you a sense of what kind of new technologies, new companies, new thoughts that are coming out. That would help you a lot, maybe improve some of your investing process, bring in more efficiency. Apart from Product Hunt, you can also look at maybe Hacker News. You can check out the new tools as well there. And finally, I would say that, try to plan different scenarios. Because that's also really crucial. Say, for example, in the SEO space itself, search is a negative experience is going to come out. So what how would that impact your business? If you have a lot of lead acquisitions? I mean, if you're acquiring a lot of leads, from search engines, either through organic search, or maybe through PPC campaigns, how would that impact your funnel? Because I read this really good report that was put together by this VC firm called Insight Partners, you can also search, they have laid out this idea that there will be more number of zero-click searches once the generative search experience is rolled out. So generative search is essentially you are searching for something or prospects are searching for something but then not clicking on anything and just getting the result directly from the search engine. So as we roll out more number of our as we experience more number of generated search results, that could accelerate a lot. And how would that impact the real estate that your company already has, on the search side? Both in terms of the organic results that you have, as well as the ads that are available on the search result page? So looking at that, do you need maybe another distribution channel? Maybe you need to start building your community? Or maybe look at social media? Can you utilize that to compensate some of the decline in traffic that you're going to experience? So planning out different scenarios, how that would impact? Getting together with a team brainstorm, how that would impact what are some of the weak points what what are some of the quick wins we can have? Those things can help you a lot. So yeah, I believe in terms of the new technologies, AI, I'm just summarizing, AI in terms of personalizing and being really good at predicting opportunities, looking at new trends, staying in touch with the community planning different scenarios. These are some of the key areas, marketing teams and in general companies can focus on.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:38:52)Amazing. That brings us to the end of this episode. Preetish thank you so much for joining us. I loved how you pointed to specific resources and really got into the details. Extremely insightful. So thank you once again for joining us. And thanks to you the one listening to this. Whoever you are, marketer, brand, agency, I'm sure you've had a lot to take away. I definitely learned a lot of new things here. And that's one of the best parts of hosting the show. Again, great to have you here, Preetish. And to you the one who stuck around till the very end, make sure you subscribe to the podcast to listen to new episodes right when they drop. If you like the podcast, share it with your teammates. It could be a cool resource to post on your office work chat as a recommendation. So go ahead and do that. And if you want to get in touch, write to us at academy@stackadapt.com. That is academy@stackadapt.com. We have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesday, so stay tuned. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:39:52)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPodcast Banner Title"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/how-to-harness-ecommerce-trends#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/how-to-harness-ecommerce-trends"},"author":[],"headline":"Cart to Conversion: How to Harness E-commerce Trends","datePublished":"2023-10-26T17:44:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:36:22+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/how-to-harness-ecommerce-trends"},"wordCount":4444,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/how-to-harness-ecommerce-trends#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240429135048/henry_marshall_stackadapt_podcast_s4e6.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","keywords":["conversion","ecommerce","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLearn how to leverage personalization to enhance customer experiences and drive conversions for your e-commerce business.\n\n\n\nHenry Marshall | Founder, Silvertip Digital\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction  (00:00:00)Just assessing kind of what the different options are within each of the different platforms and then having a mix of okay, what is the sensible thing where you're going to invest in touchpoints, and clicks that are going to drive that revenue for your business versus the how you're going to make sure that this is as incremental as possible, because ultimately, if you just invest in the bottom of the funnel, you're not going to meet new people. And eventually, clicks that you're able to acquire at the bottom of the funnel are going to start reducing, because no new people are aware of your brand less people are moving down that purchase consideration funnel.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:34)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:00:53)In a world where clicking a button can bring products from around the globe to your doorstep, e-commerce has become a powerhouse of opportunity and innovation. From startups to industry giants, businesses are continually adapting to meet the demands of an increasingly digital savvy audience. Today, let's dive deeper into the world of e-commerce marketing where strategies are reshaped, challenges are conquered and innovations are celebrated. Our guest is no stranger to the scene. With a wealth of experience and insights. He's been at the forefront of this transformative journey. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. I'm your host Sneha Suhas and joining us is Henry Marshall, Founder and Managing Director of Silvertip Digital. Thanks so much for joining us, Henry we’re excited to have you on the show. And now I'll pass it to you to introduce yourself, your areas of expertise and your professional experience so far. \n\n\n\nHenry  (00:01:53)Thanks Sneha, thanks so much, really happy to be here. Yes, I'm Henry, I run Silvertip Digital, which is a sort of bespoke digital marketing agency based in London. I set Silvertip up in 2017. So, since then, we have experienced quite a lot of change in the world of E-commerce and quite a few global events as well, which have been quite an interesting scene to navigate. So yeah, really happy to be here, and really excited to talk about e-commerce and Silvertip digital.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:02:26)Awesome. Thank you so much, once again. So my first question to you is about the rapidly evolving e-commerce landscape. In your view, what are some of the most significant changes that have shaped the E-commerce industry's digital marketing strategies in the past few years?\n\n\n\nHenry  (00:02:47)Perfect, there's been lots of change over the last couple of years, as I've mentioned, I think the key things that have kind of really changed the way that we operate within e-commerce and digital marketing as a whole is privacy and the respect to individuals privacy online is so much more paramount to you know how things operate online, which is obviously perfect for what we want as individuals. And as people, I think that's a really important thing. But it does mean that the world of digital marketing is a little bit more difficult to keep a measure of and track the sort of, you know, effectiveness of some of the campaigns that we're running. So there's been lots of sort of developments in terms of how we're able to track, which platforms can track where methods of tracking all of that sort of thing. And basically, it just means that the amount of revenue that you can associate each of your campaigns is a lot lower. And if you can't associate the revenue to the campaigns, then you are reticent to invest in those campaigns. And, you know, put media spend into them, not really knowing if they're going to make as big an impact to your business as before. And then second to that. And related is attribution. So, you know, where if you've got your business revenue, and you can see your business revenue, and then you've got all of your different marketing channels, and you've got your media spend in each of those marketing channels? How do you attribute that revenue to individual channel media spend? And how do you ensure that that marketing mix is correct? And I know we're going to talk a little bit about marketing mix in a sec. But how do we make sure that that's correct in order for you to drive the most amount of revenue for your business? So I think that's really a real big piece as well. And then the third thing I would say, is cost of living. So the kind of things that are happening around us in the real world are impacting massively the performance of digital marketing campaigns and digital businesses online. For example, if you've got a product, which is you know, super expensive, or you know, potentially quite a fair outlay of money for consumers, then that's going to have a massive impact in terms of your conversion rates and how many prospective customers there are out there to purchase it. Conversely, during the pandemic, when lots of people were at home and didn't have to spend money on travel, commuting to work and you know, sort of day-to-day costs that are associated with kind of going out and about, you know, they had lots of money to spend online, and therefore, you saw a massive boom in terms of the conversion rates and the performance of these online campaigns.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:05:22)Henry, as you mentioned, if we could move a little and talk about the media mix, you know, with the rise of multiple online platforms and touchpoints, could you paint a picture of what the media mix should look like with paid social search and programmatic?\n\n\n\nHenry  (00:05:37)Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's still definitely a place to invest in each of the different channels, each channel has their own sort of benefits and risks associated with implementing marketing budget in each. But I think you can still get performance marketing data. So you can still see revenue and sales associated with different campaign types and different campaigns and that sort of thing. So you can still to a point, invest your marketing in your marketing budgets in each of these different platforms. And, you know, you can kind of get by in terms of some of the data that you're getting from each of those different platforms. What's key, though, is understanding kind of how your overall business performance looks with when you're looking at a specific marketing mix. So for example, if you've got X revenue, and you know what your marketing mix is, in this month, maybe if you invest in, for example, more top-of-funnel activity like programmatic or PPC, generic or something like that, where you know that that traffic is relevant to your business, and you're serving a nice message, and you've tried and tested that message in terms of its effectiveness, then you know, that the traffic that you're acquiring with that change in media mix is going to have a positive impact in your business. The way that you measure that is by month by month is looking at what your top-line revenue does. And if you've got data in terms of your customer acquisition, if you've got data in terms of, you know, if you've got different customer cohorts that you can track over time, then you can start to say, right, okay, well, these are the customers that we acquired with this media mix. These are the customers that were acquired with this media mix. And how do they compare? Are we, you know, is investing in programmatic and PPC, generic and YouTube and all these sort of top-of-funnel activities? You know, are we getting that incremental benefit of appearing in front of the new audience outside of things that we were doing before, sort of, there's a lot more trial and error, because there's less data for you to see the direct impact of, you know, some of the campaign types in these platforms. But there's still a lot of different ways that you can kind of measure the overall impact. And you know, the fundamental thing that's really important for every business is what the top line is, what the bottom line is, and how your marketing mix changes to affect the changes in both of those metrics\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:08:09)Would you like to add anything about certain channels being suited better at different stages of the funnel? Basic question, if somebody is just starting off, you know, trying to market their e-commerce brand, or what would you say to them? Like, how do they approach the funnel?\n\n\n\nHenry  (00:08:27)As I said before, like each channel has their own merit. So for example, with Google ads, you can see you have like bottom of funnel campaign type. So that's when you're bidding on your own brand term. So you're bidding on your brand term plus product or your specific product names or things like that, if people are searching those terms than they are in other mind to purchase from you. And then you've got more top-of-funnel activities such as generic keywords, where people are searching, for the type of the product, that they're not necessarily thinking of your brand, or they're not necessarily thinking of, you know, the materials or the qualities or the benefits of your specific product, but they are in the market for that product. So you can look at each channel. And you can say, right, these campaigns are going to drive more return on ad spend. Because those people are more likely to purchase having like navigated to your business via those touch points. But you're also not going to that's going to be the least incremental way of like implementing your advertising. So if you want to get in front of as many new people as possible and grow your business that way, then you need to look at things that are top-of-funnel. And you can do that with every channel. So PPC, we've used that example. But you've also got things like programmatic where you've got prospecting activity versus the retargeting element. In paid social, you've got something similar where you can kind of Prospect based on different targeting methods like interests and things like that, versus people who have been on the website or interacted with your ads interacted with your page, that sort of thing. So I think just assessing kind of what the different options are within each of the different platforms, and then having a mix of okay, what is the sensible thing where you're going to invest in touch points and clicks that are going to drive that revenue for your business, versus the how are you going to make sure that this is as incremental as possible, because ultimately, if you just invest in the bottom of the funnel, you're not going to meet new people. And eventually, those, the clicks that you're able to acquire at the bottom of the funnel, are going to start reducing, because no new people are aware of your brand. And therefore, a sort of move, less people are moving down that purchase consideration funnel.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:10:43)Wonderful. Thank you. And if I could move away from that, and bring the focus on personalization, which has become your cornerstone of successful e-commerce marketing, I think contextual could play a big role here. So if you could elaborate on its role in enhancing the overall customer experience and also driving conversions? What do, you know, what do you have to say about contextual in general? And do you think programmatic or any other channel here has an edge?\n\n\n\nHenry  (00:11:14)Absolutely. So there's a lot of channels online, that kind of utilize contextual marketing. So that is targeting, you know, specific ad placements based on, you know, the context of that individual. So it might be interest targeting, it might be keyword targeting, if you're talking about programmatic, it might be sort of in-market audiences, that sort of thing. So that a lot of these platforms use contextual marketing. But the thing that I would say, is, people are very sort of isolated in their specific channels. So someone might just continually use Instagram, or they might use Facebook, or whatever it might be. And so any adverts that they see in their Instagram feed or in their Meta feed, or whatever it might be, they are going to see them in conjunction with all of the other ads that they see. And it's really easy when you kind of fall into one of these buckets that is meant to be contextual, and personalized to you. But really, so if I click on a bike post, and I fall into a, you know, a road bike bucket, in terms of advertisers targeting me, you will start to see like five ads in your newsfeed of bikes. So the contextualization of those ads is not as clever as the individual advertiser, selecting, you know, all these different interest targeting or in market audiences to show their ads to that person, because the person is going to see loads of ads of the same product, and therefore it's going to become like not, you know, the personalization element of it becomes almost like the negative as opposed to kind of the purpose of what it's trying to do, where you can kind of get round this is by using a lot more kind of algorithmic targeting. So based on lookalike audiences, of existing customers, where it's not just necessarily one element of their social footprint, but there's, you know, it's a combination of different factors, which means that the adverts that they see in their feed, are less likely to be as kind of jarringly similar as other advertisers. But the other thing is, you know, outside of these silos of each of these different platforms sits, obviously the internet. And you know, kind of there are people who still surf the internet and look at content online. And, you know, they still browse websites. And that's still obviously a fundamental part of how people interact with the Internet. And programmatic is such a key part of tying all of those silos together. And what we've seen anecdotally is, you know, all of the platform performance in Instagram and Google and all these different platforms, we actually see improve, if you tie it all together with a programmatic strategy, where basically, you know, your kind of the context is, you know, becomes a lot wider than just, you know, someone's scrolling their Instagram feed or whatever it might be. So yeah, contextual advertising is, you know, it's a big part of how digital marketing works. But it's almost become a little bit too, you know, facile to, to sort of implement these strategies and kind of think they're going to be effective. And it's much cleverer and much, you know, it's so important these days to make sure that you've got a much wider strategy that incorporates, you know, targeting people who are not necessarily just in each of these different platforms.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:14:43)Amazing. Thank you. And I wanted to ask you about earning customer trust, which is vital in E-commerce, which is quite a cluttered space, if I may say so. You know, what strategies do you recommend for building credibility online, with customers having numerous options, and also a lot of concerns.\n\n\n\nHenry  (00:15:05)So, trust online, is vital, because, you know, there's so much that happens when someone comes on to a website and, you know, having navigated via an ad that they didn't, you know, in some cases, they didn't choose to see that ad, but they've been, you know, targeted through contextual marketing or, you know, different methods. So, if you click on the ads, and they come through to the website, then there's a real sort of, there's a key moment for you to kind of capitalize their interests and make sure that they're kind of happy, you know, to continue on this journey, and in this interaction with your brand. And fundamental to that is the product and the quality of the product, the value of the product. And it's becoming so much more important these days, to ensure that your marketing your product, you know, as it should be, in terms of, you know, it's got to be something that adds value to people's lives, it's got to be good value, it's got to, you know, there's a real environmental edge into a lot of, you know, what people sell online these days, you know, there's a big kind of, you know, waste issues and plastic issues and things like that, which are, you know, quite top of mind in terms of, you know, people's consciousness of how they kind of make these buying decisions online. So you have to make sure that your product or your service adheres to a lot of these values that people place right, so the price of the product is only one element of the value that people get from that. So that's fundamental. So gone are the days where you can just market pretty much any product online, and you can just sort of get the, you know, run a load of keywords in PPC and get the value from the data that you're sort of able to get from there. Because it's a lot more kind of algorithmic and because there's a lot more privacy concerns, and therefore there's less data, you have to lean into the quality of your product, you have to sell the value of that product in terms of it actually being valuable and actually being something that people are going to want to buy, you still obviously, there's still a place for you know, lower price products, and obviously, like Amazon have kind of cornered the value market and the sort of convenience market in terms of their delivery options, all that sort of thing. People know that that's going to be a seamless experience online. But so in terms of like, as an individual as a DTC brands, you know, you can use Amazon as a channel and you can use, you know, various different marketing channels, but the quality of your product and having the you know, being able to convey the value of that product to your consumer is has become a lot more important. And especially in sort of, kind of the last couple of months and years where there's been a cost of living crisis, like people are a lot more careful with their budget and a lot more careful with money that they're spending. And so, you know, that product really does have to make a make a, you know, a difference to our lives.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:18:01)Awesome. And if I could, you know, ask you about any challenges and trends that you see in the near future, what would they be with respect to e-commerce, digital marketing?\n\n\n\nHenry  (00:18:16)Yeah, so I think there's definitely, there's going to be more privacy issues, I think there will be, you know, there's talk about how Apple are going to start stripping out like tracking parameters and things from URLs. And so there's going to be a lot more sort of shift in terms of how we can measure the performance of these campaigns. And also, I think, you know, we're seeing massive fluctuations in terms of the cost of the traffic that you can acquire through these different platforms. Because advertisers keep reducing their spend, and then increasing their spend based on kind of how competitive the market is. When it's more competitive, the price goes up, and people's return on ad spend. And their cost per acquisition starts to decrease, decrease in performance. Whereas when there's less competition, all the traffic becomes a bit cheaper, and then you're able to kind of invest a bit more because your return on ad spend is that little bit better. So we can add as there's more of these privacy issues, unless there's more kind of buffeting of, you know, the robustness of these different platforms, we will continue to see these sorts of variances in performance from each of these platforms in terms of the effectiveness, but ultimately, you know, people, like businesses still need to purchase traffic online, because to get organic cut through these days is a lot more difficult. You know, it's a lot, you know, it's not so easy to go viral on Tiktok or whatever it might be like and your organic reach on Instagram is not nearly anywhere near where it used to be. So you need to be sponsoring sort of listings to get traffic to the website, but it's just going to be you know, against the backdrop of continued privacy issues. And the other thing as well, automation. So we've seen in Google massive changes in terms of their shopping campaigns where they've become performance max campaigns. So but the lack of control that you have over, you know, what traffic you're actually able to target from those campaigns is, it's really difficult for an advertiser to kind of have any real impact on that, there are some technical bits that you can do to optimize those campaigns. But in terms of the levels of insight that we had, from these campaigns versus previous campaign types, it's just not anywhere near. So understanding what your channels are actually doing. And what that traffic's actually doing is going to become potentially a bit harder. And also being able to influence what that traffic is doing in terms of the optimization that advertisers can do is going to become a little trickier as well. But there is still a need for these for businesses to buy traffic online. So it won't be necessarily sort of a situation where we're, we're eradicating performance marketing, it will just be a little bit of how we kind of flow with the times.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:21:07)Awesome. And last question, before I let you go, you spoke about, you know, understanding. And this requires a lot of consumption of information and content and keeping yourself updated pretty regularly. Right? So if someone's starting off, or if someone's actually been in the industry for a few years, what do you recommend as sort of the go to places to get information from? How does the marketer stay updated?\n\n\n\nHenry  (00:21:35)Brilliant question, I think the best way is, from the platforms themselves, like Google have a Google blog, and they go into huge amount of detail in terms of what the changes to their platforms are, as a practitioner, and you know, someone who spends all day every day in these platforms, there will be times where you'll log into it one morning, and it will look completely different from what it did yesterday. So just keeping on top of you know, that's just the interface. So some of the settings and some of the ways that these campaigns function beneath the surface change as well. So all of these things are super important to keep on track of, on top of, there's so much information about sort of digital marketing practitioners practice in online. So it's just about making sure you're reading as many sort of resources as possible. But I think that the main one is looking at the output from from the channels themselves.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:22:36)Amazing. I definitely learned a lot of new things here. And I hope the listener did, as well. It's one of the best parts of hosting the show is getting to talk to people like you with so much expertise. And yeah, thank you so much.\n\n\n\nHenry  (00:22:52)No worries, it's been my absolute pleasure. It's been, it's been awesome.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:22:55)Thank you and to you, the one who stuck around till the very end listening to this, make sure you subscribe to the podcast to listen to new episodes right when they drop. If you like the podcast, share it with your teammates, it could be a cool resource to post on your work chat as a recommendation. So go ahead and do that. If you want to get in touch Write to us at academy@stackadapt.com. That is academy@stackadapt.com. We have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesday. So stay tuned. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:23:55)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAdapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPodcast Banner Title"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/global-trends-in-advertising-spend#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/global-trends-in-advertising-spend"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Karan Saggi","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/karan-saggi","jobTitle":"Director, Client Services","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Global Trends in Advertising Spend (2023)","datePublished":"2023-10-11T18:36:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:36:25+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/global-trends-in-advertising-spend"},"wordCount":3917,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/global-trends-in-advertising-spend#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240429144211/karan_saggi_stackadapt_podcast_s4e5.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","keywords":["audience data","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUnpacking year-over-year growth in ad spend across global markets and breaking down consumer behaviour trends influencing ad spend.\n\n\n\nKaran Saggi | Director, Client Services, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nSamantha Allison | Director, Client Services EMEA, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nLouise Hutley | Senior Manager, Client Services, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Two insights that the marketers shared: US adults spend 7% of their time on Meta, marketers spend about 19%, almost a fifth of their ad budget on that app. That's a discrepancy of 7% time spent versus 19% of your money spent. On the flip side, audio is an underutilized channel, US adults spend 11% of their time with audio or video, marketers allocate 2% of their budget to that. That's a disparity between 11% time spent and 2% budget spent.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:32)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:00:52)Last year in 2022, we got discussing global trends and advertising spend across EMEA, APAC and North America. This time we're flipping the script and exploring the intriguing aspects of year on year growth and ad spend. We link where money is dwindling, which channels are seeing unexpected declines, and delve into the reasons behind these shifts. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. I'm your host Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. And we have three experts joining us from different regions. We have Karan from North America, Samantha from EMEA, and Louise from the APAC region. I'll pass it to them to give an introduction of themselves and talk about their professional experience so far in areas of expertise. So let's start with you, Sam.\n\n\n\nSamantha  (00:01:43)Everyone, yeah, my name is Samantha. I've been at StackAdapt coming up on five years, which is crazy. The first two of those were in North America. So I was based out of Toronto, and then in 2021, moved over to London, and kind of helped with StackAdapt expansion into AMEA. So yeah, talking about this kind of like different regions and how things work differently in different markets is something that I feel very passionate about, and something that's close to my heart. So really excited to be here.\n\n\n\nKaran  (00:02:14)we have some really good questions and trends to go over in this discussion. So I'm really looking forward to it. As a reminder, I've been at StackAdapt for about three years now. And I've worked in programmatic for over six years. So it's been it's been quite a ride, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. I'll pass it on to Lou, for introduction.\n\n\n\nLouise  (00:02:40)Thanks for having us back on the podcast, really excited to be here. My name is Louise, I currently work for StackAdapt of our Sydney office across the APAC region. I was originally from UK. So I have quite a bit of EMEA experience as well. I'm really excited to see what that landscape looks like now versus what I experienced seven years ago.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:03:01)Thank you for the introduction, and so glad to have so much experience on the show. Very excited. And I'm going to start with my first question. So just looking back at the last episode, we talked about spend in the regions of EMEA, APAC and North America and where the money is going for this time. I want to flip that around a little bit to look at year on year growth and ad spend. Can you tell me where the money is dwindling? And what channels have gotten less spend than expected? And what is the reason for this?\n\n\n\nKaran  (00:03:35)I can speak to that question for the North American market as well. This is a year where we can look at the size of the ad industry, specifically in terms of ad spend as glass half empty or glass half full. Because there is year over year growth and ad spend overall and growth will continue for years. So the market is not slowing down in any sense. Forbes cited an estimation that global ad revenue will grow to over 833 billion this year. That's a billion with a B and as of April, we've hit a quarter of that mark already in the US alone. If you want to look at the glass as half for we look at display and CTV formats as they continue to grow at a healthy pace. For example, if you look at the last five years since 2019, days before the pandemic CTV in the US has seen a steady growth compounding year over year back in 2019. CTV was about 6 billion going up to the year 2023. It's forecasted to be near 29 billion. That's a jump from six to 29 billion. That's a five fold increase. On the flip side, seeing why the glass half empty in 2023 came with economic uncertainty, there were layoffs across the board, at least in the first half of the year. As of this year, we're inching closer and closer to cookied application which is coming in 2024. As of now And then we're also dealing with applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning. And on the flip side, we're moving further or further away from lock downs of COVID. So there's enough turbulence to shake things up. One channel where the money is slowing down is video. Again, monetary growth. In this video, if you look at dollar for dollar, it is growing, however, the percentage growth year over year has slowed down. So looking at that year over year growth from 2022, to 23, to 2024, and 2025. We're going from 17% year-over-year growth to 16% to 15% to 14% by 2025. So there is a visible decline there.\n\n\n\nLouise  (00:05:42)I'm representing a pack and a pack is projected to see 4.4% growth this year compared to 1.9 and 2.9%, in EMEA and the Americas respectively, so we're actually still experiencing a really strong locket over here. And this is also the prediction of Magna who suggested growth and APAC will be led by India at 12%. And Pakistan by 11% is absolutely huge. Saying this, we have definitely seen growth. So the total advertising expenditure increasing at around 9.1% versus 36%. That was reported in 2021. And TV spending continues to decline as media formats continue to shift to digital. By 2027 Magnet predicts linear TV budgets will represent just 12% of total advertising budgets here in APAC, which is a big change compared to recent years. In addition to TV, and in the last episode, we talked a bit about untapped opportunities and gaming continues to be one of them in this market. According to a recent study by the IAB in Australia and New Zealand, while experimentation increased, only 18% regularly considered it as a part of regular activity, versus 25% that was reported in 2022. And the outlook for the next 12 months is a little bit more positive, with 72% intending to increase activity, and some of the reasons contributing to slightly lower than expected adoption rates or brand safety concerns, measurement limitations and audience suitability.\n\n\n\nSamantha  (00:07:09)Yeah, I mean, those are some tough answers to follow. I think, you know, Luke kind of already touched on what that growth percentage looks like for me as well into 2023 and 2024. So yeah, I think for what we're seeing, just to kind of flip it back for a second, I think we're seeing very similar patterns across EMEA. Everything that Karen had touched on, you know, is things that we're taking into consideration as well. Same with Lou. I think with EMEA right now we're in a place where channels like CTV, are gaining more popularity and familiarity with the region. Also something worth noting that according to Insider Intelligence, CTV as a channel has grown globally by over 13%, which is massive, I guess on that same positive note, before we get into kind of the decrease of your question is 87% of CTV inventory will be transacted programmatically in 2023. So I think that is fantastic for that channel, and fantastic for this region. Because I do think, and those numbers, just to clarify, were globally and not specific to EMEA but I still think obviously has a major impact on a region like EMEA, and wonderful because like I said, in the previous episode that we did, EMEA was slow, more slow to adopt CTV and didn't really have as much of an appetite. So to see that shift this year, and to continue on into 2024 and beyond, has been a really, really positive thing. Now, contrary to that, echoing what Karan said, we have noticed, and it is noticeable by the stats that Karen had just presented to us. That video is slightly steadying, you know, I want to be careful on the fact that yes, it has decreased statistically. But I think when you think of programmatic as a whole and the kind of channels that we run at StackAdapt, I don't necessarily think it is slowed down tremendously. I think it just really depends on the overall strategy. And taking into consideration these emerging channels, like CTV, are in some cases digital as long as well.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:09:20)Moving on to the next question, I want to ask about consumer behaviour in your particular region. What is dictating ad spend from advertisers? And are there any unexpected trends or surprises in the span patterns?\n\n\n\nKaran  (00:09:36)This is an interesting one, because how audiences and consumers engage with certain ad formats, devices, or placements that does evolve over time, such as the nature of technology. And you'd think as marketers and planners we adapt to that. One strategy to hold an effective ROI consistently on your spend is to pay attention to this evolution and audiences consume numbers and how they engage with these different things. One question we can ask ourselves of consumer behavior is where do audiences spend most of their time and their attention? Because as marketers, we want more of that attention for ourselves and our brands. So for an example, let's compare percent of the time you spend online, or the audience spends online versus the percent of ad spend that we spend towards those specific platforms. Of course, this is not an apples to apples comparison. But if you look at percent for percent, there are some interesting insights that come about, because at the very least, for upper funnel tactics and prospecting, you as a marketer, you as a brand, you want to be aware that net new target consumers. Two insights that e-marketer shared, that I can put forth here first, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram gets far more ad spend than audiences spend time on it daily. US adults spend 7% of their time on Meta, and yet, marketers spend about 19%, that's almost a fifth of their ad budget on Meta. So that's a discrepancy of 7% time spent versus 19% of your money spent. On the flip side, audio is an underutilized channel. US adults spend 11% of their time with audio or radio. And yet marketers allocate 2% of their budget to that. That's the disparity between 11% time spent and 2% budget spent. So that said, this study may vary for region to region, the stats I shared were for North America, for global agencies or brands, this is a point of differentiation to look into.\n\n\n\nLouise  (00:11:45)Yeah, I tend to agree with Karan, on this one. I think it's inevitable as marketers, we are always trying to reach our consumers with relevant valuable messaging wherever you are. So it makes sense that the money is following the consumer. And this can differ quite a bit across APAC markets. And I'm sure globally, as an example of this in Japan, we actually continue to see strong growth in digital driven by search and video content. TV continues to have overwhelming reach and is effective in raising awareness. And it remains popular for live sports ,news dramas and a variety of programs and following a forecast of a 2.4% decline in 2023 TV advertising spend, it's actually expected to grow 1.4% in 2024. This is also proven to be the case in Australia with SMI reporting that the Matilda's performance and the recent FIFA World Cup or Women's World Cup resulted in huge growth in TV streaming ad spend and a win both for advertising and for women's sport. This says not all formats or contexts are equal or suitable for all messages. And whilst brands should follow the audience's attention to be seen and cut through, they should also consider consumer mindset in these content environments and ensure that message continues to add value to that consumer. For this reason, we continue to see spend follow safer or more tested platforms rather than emerging channels such as in-game.\n\n\n\nSamantha  (00:13:13) Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with both Karen and Lou I think, you know, that is across the board. And I think when it comes to consumer behaviour and stuff, that's definitely always at the forefront in terms of how we, you know, reach those people. I think just building on Lou's kind of sport, call out: One thing in EMEA, specifically, that is really going to impact that kind of consumer behaviour—this is looking a little bit into 2024, mind you—but there is the Euro World Champion and the World Cup in terms of football. So I think that is really going to drive kind of like consumer behaviour and the types of messaging and kind of just general interest, I guess, in that region. So I think that's definitely a big one to look out for. Kind of pivoting a little bit. I think one thing that we've been talking about a ton in EMEA, and across the board for sure, is just how evident it is that digital out-of-home, and eVOD, and streaming services, and streaming platforms, and digital ad spend are on the rise or, you know, expected to increase, which bodes well with, you know, the ever-changing landscape. And then how do you tailor that message to the consumer, right? And how do you make sure that you're always following them in this ever-changing landscape? And although there is need for more caution and consideration when, you know, looking at these new kind of emerging channels and what have you, I think this positive trend really does indicate promising opportunities for advertisers looking to reap the benefits of a multi-channel strategy. And to make the most of this opportunity, brands should be really prioritizing efficiency. By leveraging tools, such as AI, and optimizing their campaigns for better ROIs, of course, and striking that right balance between cost and engagement is really, really key. And I think something that obviously StackAdapt always has at the forefront. And then I think we will continue that, of course into 2024 and beyond.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:15:20)What’s a new and exciting topic in digital in your region that you can share with us?\n\n\n\nKaran  (00:15:26)There have been predictions and decisions that have yet to take effect, say with cookie deprecation when that kicks in and 2024 as planned, will our solutions hold and evolve outside of what is known and what we've prepared for another emerging trend to keep an eye on is the use of artificial intelligence. It's been in use for a while, but it's really proving to be a Swiss Army knife of when it comes to how to use it and where it can be applied. For agencies, for example, it could be an efficient way to save expenses for brands, it could be an intelligent way to automate things, saying creative testing, optimizations, things like that. As a group talking about what's next and what's coming, we tend to have a bandwagon effect, and we tend to look where the next shiny thing is. What is worth keeping an eye on is for me is regulation and measures around the use of AI. I can share two examples with you first, a study by DS Cujo called HI over AI said that more than half of the US adults trusted human-generated content more than AI-generated content, where your subset of consumers skew in that scale is worth looking into and worth being aware of. The second example I can share as a brand is keeping an eye on copyright laws for AI. US court in Washington ruled that a work of art created by AI without any human input cannot be copyrighted. So as a brand or creative agency, you may want to be aware of that and see how that limits your use or application of AI.\n\n\n\nLouise  (00:17:06)Yeah, I'd say with it, say the similar thing in this market. Also, as Karan mentioned, the adoption of AI is accelerating. And this is hugely exciting for our markets for our consumers, and for the kind of broader digital media industry more broadly. But we are starting to tackle new issues around copyright on the data used to power these tools, and issues around ownership. So there's definitely a lot of growth and learning that we need to do in this area, like tools like Mid-Journey and ChatGPT have huge potential, but only now we're just beginning to uncover the value that they bring to our roles and how to really combine these with human thinking, to retain competitive advantages, I think, above and beyond this, like similar to the US and likely to AMEA, we're still having big conversations around topics that we've talked about for a couple of years now, these being privacy, attention and measurement. And we're starting to see many brands, particularly global brands, pay more and more attention to corporate responsibility, in addition to this, which includes not only carbon emissions and sustainability, but also tackles issues around diversity and ethics.\n\n\n\nSamantha  (00:18:14)Yeah, so I think definitely AI, ChatGPT and GDPR. And how all of those are going to work together. And you know, withholds the privacy and protection that is so you know, deeply ingrained. And kind of like AMEA advertising. And what that looks like, I think is definitely a conversation that is consistently always happening. And you know, the conversations always moving as things evolve and stuff like that. So I think that would be a really big hot topic here for sure.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:18:48) Amazing, thank you. Let's look at projections 2025. A little before that maybe and a little beyond that. So what can we expect will trend and what will slow down?\n\n\n\nLouise  (00:19:00)We've already touched on this already. But driving efficiency through AI and automation will likely be on a lot of CMO's minds as we plan for 2024 and beyond. Open AI’s ChatGPT has been in the news lately as a powerful machine learning tool that's challenging people's understanding on what AI might be able to offer, there's a good chance that that support chat rep that you're already talking to, is actually already a machine and that the hype that has surrounded these platforms over the last six months has already challenged companies to find ways to work smarter and not harder. This in turn enables humans to focus their time on ideas and thinking that differentiates their company, agency or brand. There is still also a huge amount of growth remaining within digital and APAC in particular the adoption of digital out-of-home, in-game, and audio, and CTV as mentioned earlier in in regards to the EMEA market, but it's going from strength to strength here in APAC also. There has never been so much choice for consumers and then we continue to see On Demand platforms such as Foxtails binge and in this market trial ad-supported subscription tiers to diversify their income streams. As for digital out-of-home, improvements in workflow alongside increased inventory and data access will help drive adoption of this channel. Finding ways to measure and attribute value to all stages of the purchase process will become even more important as we move towards a company's future and adopting a multi- channel approach that values upper funnel tactics will be key to drive long-term brand consideration and growth.\n\n\n\nKaran  (00:20:31)We touched on this earlier for North America as well in terms of ad spend expect growth and dollar volume of the industry. However, some channels like video may have a slower pace looking at percent year over year. What's interesting, is looking at the future projections by vertical, the largest ad spenders are retail and CPG for this year, and that's not a surprise, they will continue to dominate for the next two years at least, eMarketer forecasts and both to grow the most. Retail will grow 14% from this year to the next, and CPG will grow 13%. So both have over 10% growth year over year in ad spend, which is massive. On the bottom of that list, if you rank all verticals, there's telecom growing at only 5%. But again, that could be linked to how we measure return on ad spend. With that vertical and where marketers see most value being brought back. To give you an idea of scale, retail is projected to get 84 billion and spend as the top spending vertical. And Telecom, which is the bottom of the list is projected at 17 billion, which is the lowest spending vertical for the next year.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:21:42)That's amazing. And this brings us to the end of this episode. Karen, Lou, Samantha, thank you so much for joining us from different regions. It was really exciting to have you and to you the one who's listening to this who stayed back till the very end. Thank you so much for hanging back. And if you found this podcast useful, you can share it as a resource on your Work Chat. Tell your teammates, your colleagues about it. And make sure you subscribe, you follow the podcast to catch the episode right when it drops. We have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesday. If you want to reach us, you can write to us at stackadapt.com. That is academy@stackadapt.com. For now, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Thank you so much.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:22:30)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPodcast Banner Title"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/audience-segmentation-strategies#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/audience-segmentation-strategies"},"author":[],"headline":"Audience Segmentation Strategies With HubSpot","datePublished":"2023-09-27T20:02:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:36:29+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/audience-segmentation-strategies"},"wordCount":4208,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/audience-segmentation-strategies#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240429161108/kelly_sarabyn_stackadapt_podcast_s4e4.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","keywords":["audience targeting","podcast"],"articleSection":["Martech"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe explore audience segmentation strategies that enable marketers to personalize content and create a consistent brand message. \n\n\n\nKelly Sarabyn | Head of Product Partnerships Enablement and Advocacy, HubSpot\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction  (00:00:00)Being able to get the ICP audience out of your CRM and then connect it to a DSP where you can then send targeted messaging. It's so powerful for companies of all size to be able to combine those tools. And then you see what works. And then you can bring that back into your CRM, technology is enabling businesses of all sizes, you want to change the content, but also the channel and the timing. And something like a DSP can help you deploy segmentation in a way that's really powerful.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:26)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:00:51)According to a study, segmentation makes firms 60% more likely to understand customers' challenges and concerns, and 130% more likely to know their intentions. Segmenting based on personas provides 90% of firms with better knowledge about their audience. Now what I'm trying to say is audience segmentation is super important. Let's find out more about the how, what and why of this with the expert joining us today. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. I'm your host Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt and with me, I have Kelly Sarabyn from HubSpot. Welcome to the show Kelly, thank you for joining us today. And I'd love to know more about your professional experience so far your areas of expertise and also tell us more about HubSpot.\n\n\n\nKelly  (00:01:48)Awesome. Thank you so much for having me today. So at HubSpot, I oversee a team that runs our tech partner enablement and advocacy. So the enablement side is getting our tech partners to work with our sales team, our CS team and our solutions partner team. And the advocacy side is a kind of two-partner marketing role. So how do we attract new partners? How do we engage our current partners through marketing events and community. And prior to this role, I was running marketing at an early-stage startup called Pandium. And HubSpot is a CRM platform. So we have marketing hub, sales hub, service hub and CMS hub. So businesses can really if they want to run their whole front office off of HubSpot. And we have more and more customers who are doing that because our platform is built on a common data model. So it's very easy to work with all these systems because they were built as one from the ground up instead of by acquisition where things start to get more cobbled together.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:02:55)Awesome. Great to, you know, have a person with so much experience today. Let me start with a very basic question. What exactly is audience segmentation? And why would you say it is crucial for the success of any modern marketing campaign? And why should the marketer give this attention? And how much attention should this be given?\n\n\n\nKelly  (00:03:19)Great question. Well, I think for me, segmentation is looking at the total audience that you're trying to speak to. And, you know, foremost, that's probably going to be your prospects and your customers. But it could also include your partners, and other stakeholders. And I think that segmentation means really breaking up that audience into different personas so that you can better connect and personalize your messaging and reach them. And I think that segmentation is extremely important right now, for a couple of reasons. One thing is, as everybody knows, marketing budgets have been kind of pulled back a lot given the top macroeconomic conditions. And so I think segmentation is an excellent way to take the data that you already have, and the tools that you already have, and the budget that you already have, and really improve your ROI on your campaigns. And it's something that really all-sized companies can do today. And then the other reason I think it's important is, you know, things have gotten really noisy. Buyers are more skeptical of vendors. There's a lot of content out there, right, that's already proliferated where people are getting hit with emails, with ads with social media posts. And we're just kind of drowning in noise. And I think AI and generative AI is only going to accelerate this trend, right? Because now it's even easier to create more content. So brands are going to be putting out more and more content. And so I think the question for businesses is how do you break through the noise? How do you form those personal connections when everyone's being bombarded with messaging and I think segmentation is key to doing that because it enables a level of connection and personalization that you don't otherwise get when you try to keep it generic and to be all things to all people in your audience.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:05:09)You spoke about messaging. So when it comes to audience segmentation, how do you strike a balance between creating personalized content for specific segments while still maintaining a consistent brand message throughout?\n\n\n\nKelly (00:05:23)I love this question. And prior to my last company, the company before that I was working at a branding agency. So we would go in and kind of help companies, mostly B2B SAS companies come up with their core brand story, and then kind of have a six-month engagement, where we would say, okay, here's how you execute it throughout your organization. And I would definitely recommend a similar methodology to businesses in the sense that, make sure you have a clear understanding, and you don't necessarily need to have a brand marketer, you could have a product marketer to do this, or even just your director of marketing. But make sure someone put, you know, the metaphorical pen to paper and really understands what your core brand identity and messaging is. And you want to have that be pretty high level, right, and you have that document and say, hey, this is what we're gonna stand for. This is who we are. And a lot of businesses make the mistake of trying to be very generic. That really doesn't resonate with people and people don't feel a connection to that kind of corporate land way of presenting yourself. So have understanding of your identity at a high level. And then when you go down a level to execute specific campaigns stay within those guardrails, right. So if your brand is going to be presented as like happy, peaceful place to be able to go to recharge and relax on a high level, if that's kind of core to your brand, then you want to make sure even if you are targeting people who in their individual persona might also respond to something that's darker, then you need to stay within those constraints and make sure that your message is personalized to them, but yet stays with your overarching brand. And I love the question, because I think this is something a lot of companies miss because they get dialed in to the segmented audience and they just think, hey, what is going to work best for this audience, it might be a little bit different. But you need to stay in your brand. Because ultimately, word of mouth and your brand being consistent is what is going to drive more business for you in the long run. And it's a really bad idea to have a short term gain, but then have very discordant sort of images and content out in the marketplace coming from your brand.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:07:37)Alright. And you mentioned B2B, right? So on those lines, if a marketer is approaching audience segmentation, do they have to keep something in mind if it's B2B versus B2C brand they're working with?\n\n\n\nKelly (00:07:51)Yeah, I think it's an interesting question. And especially when you have smaller companies, B2B is often in a tougher spot, and they don't have as much data, right. So usually, consumer purchases tend to be easier to scale, they tend to be a lower price point. Now, not always, you do have some very high-end luxury purchases, that you might be in a similar spot. And I think that it makes the job tougher for the B2B business because you don't have as much data to run and say, you can look at what your deals close, which ones closed most fastly, and try to get a persona out of that. But you might not be working with as much data. And so I think that's definitely a key difference. And I think that when consumer brands, they have usually very high volume and also repeated purchases, they can sort of tweak their messaging more quickly, and iterate more quickly on what works for different personas. I think it is worth calling out though, that, you know, B2B decisions are made by people too. And so I think a lot of times that's forgotten. So the persona work is really just as important to understand their paying points. But the other thing with B2B, as you might often have, say, eight to 10 people who are key to a decision. So within one purchase, you might have to segment your messaging and campaigns, which is usually different when you're looking at the consumer purchases, not usually driven by committee. So I think that's really going to be the biggest differences is the amount of data that you're working with and how consumer brands can pivot more quickly. But all the more reason for B2B brands to look for consumer brands for inspiration. I think you can see what's working for them and not all of what's going to apply but you can definitely see lessons on what works and what doesn't work.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:09:47)And how do you think technology and data analytics has transformed the way marketers approach the process of audience targeting and segmentation and would you like to make a connection here with how different technologies like a CRM and DSP can come and work together?\n\n\n\nKelly  (00:10:08)It's so powerful for companies of all size to be able to, for example, combine those tools, right, like being able to get the ICP audience out of your CRM, and then connect it to a DSP where you can then send targeted messaging, and then you see what works. And then you can bring that back into your CRM for say, in B2B for like the sales process all the way through. So I definitely think that technology is enabling businesses of all sizes to really deploy segmentation in a way that's really powerful. And I think a DSP is another good example, right? Because segmentation, you want to change the content, but also the channel and the timing. And something like a DSP can help you to do that, right? Like maybe the place to reach your, your target is going to be on the radio, or it's going to be through on TV, or it's an everything's not a display ad, right, like that works well with some personas, but not others. So I think using those tools, to find out from a programmatic sense, which works and which works well, is what you want to do, because you're not going to be able to figure that out on your own. And there are essentially these tools enable you to leverage their data, and also their machine learning, right, and sometimes AI. Of course, there's a very fine line between those two buckets. But I think you want to use that to understand what's resonating and pull in all the data from a lot of different sources. Because when you pull it together, so in your CRM, you can have third-party data, you can get second-party data from your partners, you'll have first-party data from your interactions with your customer. And you can build those audiences. And put those into the DSP, right, so like making sure that you're leveraging all the data at your fingertips and that it's super cool. We live in a time now where even small businesses can use these tools, you don't have to be an enterprise company to kind of leverage all these data sources and the programmatic analysis that runs on top of it.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:12:07)So Kelly, where can people go wrong with segmentation? And what would you tell a person who is just starting off? Or tell someone who is overwhelmed with the options available to pick and choose to go about segmentation?\n\n\n\nKelly  (00:12:22)Yeah, I think I would advise someone to start slow and iterate I think, you know, one big mistake we kind of touched on is which is veering off your brand new message, which we kind of already covered. I think another big misstep is not using data, just having an idea in your head, and not really thinking through how important that particular persona might be. Because if you want to really optimize your resources, you need to do analysis of your own data to kind of find out, hey, which persona is gonna close the fastest purchase the most and really drive the highest impact. And that's where you want to start, right? So I think you can really flush out your segmentation campaign so that you're going after any number of personas. But when you're just starting to, you know, walk down the road, really get an understanding of which persona, most needs your product or service, which one is most open to converting less quickly, and really flush out what they look like and then design the campaigns. The other thing is to experiment with different channels, right? I think that personas react differently, as kind of notorious for like people who sell to developers, they're really against the typical type of ads, but you can be more creative, there are things that resonate with them. And that goes into that research component of making sure once you've understood your persona with the data that you also understand which channels are going to resonate, when you're going to send these, and what the sort of omni channel campaign is going to look like all the way through. And I think that's the best place to really start. I do think another misstep is really not taking enough time to develop the messaging around the segment, like companies will identify, hey, this is a valuable segment, but then they really just barely modify the content they take. They take a pre-existing campaign, they make little tweaks in the text, and then they call it a day. That's not going to bring you transformative results. You really have to do more. And I think the more that you can work in the appearance of personalization, to different segments, the more you're gonna have success. Well, that definitely takes some time and research and really persona understanding.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:14:40)Yeah, thank you for that. It was very informative and talking about startups or smaller businesses with limited resources. What are some of the practical tips for getting started with audience segmentation and how can they effectively use data even with a very small customer base?\n\n\n\nKelly (00:15:02)Yeah, I think that's a great question. And the first thing I would say is kind of use the tools that you already have. And whatever those might be, they're gonna vary. But I think you want to use the tools that you have and the data that you can pull out of those tools. And as we kind of discussed, when you have a smaller customer base that you're going into, you might not have enough data. So you want to lean into some qualitative interviews, which is good for small businesses anyway, right to get closer to their persona and understand, make sure that you're asking your CS team, you know, what they're hearing to really flesh out who's happiest, essentially. And that can really help create the persona. I think, just for example, HubSpot sales hub, right? So your B2B, you even if you don't have a ton of customers, and your pipeline is not huge, you can still pull out all the companies very easily, that close the fastest and close for the most, and then take that qualitative look and say, hey, is there anything about these companies, and a product like how SWOT already provides kind of that basic enrichment, so you know, the company size, you know, the company industry, and really looking at those parameters to see if there's anything that can be used. And so, once you kind of hone in on who you want to segment to first, I think the other thing you want to do is use the tools that you have to try out some of the basic segmentation. So within HubSpot, for example, our email builder has smart content. So you can take lists that you create, which could be for example, from industry, or company size, or persona. And then you could send the same email, but you take certain sections, and you just change the content. And it's super easy to do. And I think that that's a great way to start and kind of test out, hey, did this work? Did people click on what was in this box that we changed? Was the conversion rates higher? And then I would say, you know, test those out and look and see what works. And the same thing is, you know, building those custom audiences, if you're going to be doing ads, for example, take what you have, in your CRM and off your website. And you could do retargeting, right, I think that those are the first steps to understanding who these audiences are, and what kind of messaging is going to resonate with them. And when you're just starting out and you're smaller, you're not necessarily going to have the granular level of detail that larger companies have, but that's okay, it's still going to drive results. If you're paying attention to the data, I think the other thing is, do look for tools that have great segmentation built into them, but that you can afford. So I think, you know, certain ad tools might let you set those filters. And then you can run with that on your own and see what's working. And look for ones that have that machine learning or AI built into them. So they're doing a lot of the work for you, right, they're going out and saying, hey, this is what resonated, this is what got you the best rate. And that tells you something right, whichever filters, you are using a lot of these tools, you don't have to spend, you know, $100,000 a month to use them, you can spend less and you can still get leverage their larger database to understand how your product resonates with different filters that you choose through the tool. So I highly recommend doing that. I think that that's an affordable data point that can help you go back to your CRM and then say, to your Salesforce, hey, we found out that like running these ads that honestly people in the health care vertical, we're clicking, you know, 10 times more than other verticals. And then you can help your sales team to then target those that segment in that persona. So it's a great time for small businesses in the sense that these tools have become more affordable, and they really have very robust datasets and technology that you can afford to leverage on your own.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:18:59) Yeah, that sounds great. And for someone starting off, or someone who's also been in the industry for a bit, do you recommend any resources, anything that they can consume as content to keep themselves updated?\n\n\n\nKelly (00:19:15)Obviously, a little bias here, but I'll say HubSpot Academy has a ton of great courses on all marketing topics, and it's constantly being updated. So I would definitely recommend checking out those resources and kind of seeing which one appeals to you right now with your business needs. And honestly, I think there's a ton of great marketing content out there more broadly, whether it's something you want to do like there's a Product Marketing Association, and that is your persona. That's what you're doing and focusing on I think joining those groups, you can really stay up to date through your peers, but those are the people that are going to be able to tell you hey, here's the latest and greatest and all these communities share content. So that's another channel I would recommend going down.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:20:00)And last question. Do you see any trends and challenges, say in the next 12 to 18 months when it comes to audience segmentation?\n\n\n\nKelly  (00:20:11)Yeah, that's a good question. I think, to me, probably, you know, while there's an upside to the AI, I do think that it could potentially cause challenges, well, when it's baked into pre-existing tools that can often give you potentially better data, but I think it's all very new. And I don't know, you know, as people who have used it themselves, it's not always accurate. So I think there's gonna be a lot of noise and a lot of analysis that is on top of noise, right, as more and more people put out AI-generated content. And I think that it's definitely something to watch and see in terms of, is this actually accurate? Is this actually driving better results, because I don't think we fully know yet. And I think in the long term, it will be driving better results. And it will be providing us with better data than we could ever get on our own. But I think it's been released. And a lot of companies have been quick to jump on top of it and to deploy it in their tools. But there's still a lot of unknowns and a lot of uncertainty around that. So I do think that's just something to be very intentional and conscious about and make sure you're looking at your own data. If you introduce new tools with AI, and your data sources to make sure that it's still accurate and is still driving better results.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:21:36)Awesome. The future looks exciting. And thank you so much for joining us, your information, your insights, they were all great. And to the one who's listening to this, whatever, whoever you are, marketer, brand, agency, I'm sure you had a lot to take away. I definitely learned a lot of new things here. So thank you so much, Kelly, for joining us. And to you the one who stuck around till the very end, make sure you subscribe to the podcast to listen to new episodes right when they drop. If you like the podcast, share it with your teammates, it could be a cool resource to post on your office work chat as a recommendation. So go ahead and do that. And if you want to get in touch, write to us at academy@stackadapt.com.That is academy@stackadapt.com. We have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesdays. So stay tuned. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:22:30)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPodcast Banner Title"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-and-programmatic#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-and-programmatic"},"author":[],"headline":"AI and the Power of Programmatic","datePublished":"2023-09-13T13:05:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:36:31+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-and-programmatic"},"wordCount":5573,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-and-programmatic#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240430091012/zeynep_akkalyoncu_stackadapt_podcast_s4e3.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe dive into the exciting world of AI and programmatic advertising to learn about the advantages of AI-powered platforms.\n\n\n\nZeynep Akkalyoncu | Lead Data Scientist, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nArthur Faisman | Lead Data Engineer, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)A very important concept in AI is called transfer learning, a model can gain knowledge in one field and then apply it in a completely different field might have been some kind of numerical optimization targeted towards a KPI like conversions, it might have been a contextual tool, like our own page context AI that will help you display your ad in the relevant context. But it's really important to work with a highly regarded DSP that has that in house knowledge, because it's very difficult to kind of transfer that expertise to maybe external AI.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:32)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:00:53)There's so much discussion around AI these days, and that's only because of its increasing significance. And today, the focus is going to be on AI in digital marketing, and specifically AI in programmatic. Programmatic advertising, as you may be aware, is a system where advertising space is bought and sold through automated auctions. The use of machine learning AI algorithms, enables them to learn and adjust their actions based on new patterns they encounter. This adaptability makes them extremely well suited for the dynamic nature of programmatic advertising. AI algorithms also possess the capability to quickly process large amounts of data. Now, with all of these factors combined, AI has a significant impact on numerous facets of programmatic advertising. Let's learn more about this from the AI experts Zeynep and Arthur. But before that, thank you for tuning in a big hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. I'm your host Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. And I will now pass it to the guests to introduce themselves, their professional life so far and their areas of expertise. So let's start with you Zeynep.\n\n\n\nZeynep  (00:02:08)Hi, thanks so much Sneha. So my name is Zeynep, and I'm a lead data scientist at StackAdapt. I've been working here for almost three and a half years now. And for the past year or so, I've been primarily leading architectural efforts, as the industry is moving away from behavioral targeting to some extent, as there are concerns around user privacy. We've been investing a lot of effort into natural language processing and information retrieval. And that's what I've been up to.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:02:32)Awesome. Welcome to the show. And thank you for joining us. I'll pass it to Arthur.\n\n\n\nArthur  (00:02:36)Hey, thanks for having us. Yes, I'm Arthur. So I've been with StackAdapt for about a year and a half now, I've been mostly focused on the lookalikes audience expansion project. While I've been here. Prior to that, I worked at an investment company on their data science team for about a couple of years. And prior to that I worked at InLogic, which is basically kind of like Nielsen ratings for Canada. So we did TV and radio audience analytics. And I was there for about four or five years, and I was their point person for algorithm developments.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:03:09)Awesome. Thank you for joining us Arthur. And a question for you. AI is a very popular topic right now. And it's been a large part of the conversation when it comes to programmatic advertising for quite some time now. So to break it down. How would you say, AI differs when it comes to programmatic advertising? And in what ways? Is it similar to the conversation that's currently ongoing?\n\n\n\nArthur  (00:03:32)Yeah, I can take that. So AI is a pretty broad term. So it's kind of hard to say exactly which specific technique is AI or is not. Broadly speaking, you call something AI, if the problem that you're trying to solve is so hard that software developers are not able to individually write the little bits of code that actually solve that problem. So programmatic is one such problem. So when we implement programmatic bidding for a particular campaign, it's a vast amount of decisions that need to be made behind the scenes. So there are billions of auctions that are processed per day, like many billions, and each of those auctions needs to be considered individually, and the decision needs to be made, what is the proper data amount, the campaign needs to be considered behind the scenes to make sure that it's pacing properly, to make sure that, you know, the proper targeting options are applied, that the KPIs are being maximized as much as possible. So it's obviously not possible for any individual to actually, you know, go through those decisions. And it's also not possible for any individual group of individuals to write code that optimally processes all of that data and makes all those decisions at once. So at this point, what's typically done is a technique is applied called machine learning, which is, in some cases, you consider synonymous with AI. So again, AI is kind of broad, it's hard to say exactly, what everybody calls AI, but I'll call AI as something that's a problem that solves a technique called machine learning. So what is this technique? So the technique is, instead of writing those individual rules of code, which in this case is not feasible, what you do is you feed a huge amount of data through the system, and you allow this system to learn automatically, what works and what doesn't for each individual use case. So even though I personally and no individual has, you know, gone through a bid, each individual bid of requests, like, what happens is the system figures out what works and what doesn't on this large volume of bid requests, and makes those decisions there programmatically. And that's kind of the only way you can really solve this huge, huge data problem and huge complexity problem you get with programmatic advertising, and real-time bidding. So the main similarity with a lot of the conversations about AI there is that since, no individual has full understanding of what's going on with this system. And which kind of needs to be the case, for these really complex systems. You have a similar kind of question to ChatGPT or you know, ChatGPT, famously, you give it a query, like write me an essay on Darwin, and you don't necessarily not necessarily sure whether the essays actually on Darwin or on somebody else, or what's actually going on. And whether it's completely accurate, because, you know, no professional has actually gone through and edited this essay, right. So similarly, in programmatic advertising, that same problem that we just described. So I think in this case, the two problems are kind of similar from the point of view of people who are kind of looking at from the outside and trying to understand what's going on here. But programmatic advertising is more mature industry, then ChatGPT, which is what half a year old. Now, little more. So in programmatic advertising, we have given people a lot of tools to solve this kind of problem, specifically, for the tools include, like attribution, and tracking and audience insights, as well as you can get a sense of what's going on. So that problem is kind of the same, but the industry is quite a bit more mature than ChatGPT, which is like a baby, basically, right now. And before just trying to figure out what to do there.\n\n\n\nZeynep  (00:07:17)I think that was a great response, I think maybe like, I would take that to kind of a higher level, conceptual level, and say, to a non-technical person, I think of AI as kind of a hybrid of individualized solutions for each user. So maybe, like, let's go back to the beginning of the advertising industry, like, right, so it might have been possible at that point to, you know, individualize and individualize creatives, targeting strategy, talk with each client one on one, and then come up with a specific solution. But that's obviously not the case anymore, especially in programmatic. We have lots of clients, sometimes wearing goals, sometimes multiple goals, not to mention millions of users, that we can bid on with different preferences, you know, different ones. So that's where the AI that Arthur was talking about comes in. And then we can make those numerous tiny decisions with machine learning. So that's why this makes it an ideal solution for programmatic advertising. I would say maybe the differences are that we need to be a bit more careful about the laws and regulations, compared to AI at large, it's important to comply with regional and federal laws. And these are not necessarily embedded in the existing models. So that's where the domain expertise comes in. Right? This is perhaps true of many, many other fields, but especially so of programmatic advertising. We don't have strong pre-trained models that capture those industry trends or laws. So it's important to have the people that kind of work together with the AI models, to deploy them to the people.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:08:54)When it comes to programmatic technology. What are some of the benefits to working with a DSP that leverages AI and machine learning? For example, audiences insights, this is a question from marketers perspective.\n\n\n\nZeynep  (00:09:10)Yeah, I can maybe take this one first. So as we separate the previous question, definitely, like hyper-individualized personalization, but also massively parallel personalization, if that makes sense. So the thing to always keep in mind with AI is the high dimensionality, right? So as human beings, we are fantastic at intuition. But we can only hold four thoughts at the pace at the same time in our minds, which is definitely not enough to handle the scale of the data and the variety of data that comes in with programmatic advertising. So I think like I said, for the previous question, it's important to kind of pair the human intuition with the high scalability and high dimensionality of AI models. And kind of to add to that as well, I think explainability is a very important point especially in programmatic advertising. So we should be using AI models, or we should be maybe working with DSPs, that leverage and models that can be used to explain the decisions they have made. So they can maybe tell you what factors went into making the end conclusion, what features were the most important, what features perhaps were not as important. And sometimes it's just difficult with generative models. So I think, first of all, it's very important to keep up to date with the latest happenings in the AI world, but also keeping the limitations of the programmatic advertising industry. And these changes are sometimes not as transparent to marketers or agencies. And I think that's why it's really important to work with a DSP that has that kind of in-house expertise and both.\n\n\n\nArthur  (00:10:50)Those are really good descriptions. So one thing I'd like to sort of contrast that with, is like, so if you use a DSP that leverages AI, or machine learning versus one that doesn't, so it's like, if it just does not leverage AI and machine learning, it's basically dead in the water. Like, imagine, imagine you're bidding on billions of these auctions. And like humans constructed all of the rules that are made to make those bidding decisions. So again, the humans are just not able to delve into the data to the extent that a machine learning or AI process is able to, so they are just not able to identify which of the users are like, perfectly actually appropriate for your campaign to bid highly on versus inappropriate. So we should just bid a little low on them. So if you are using a DSP that somehow just avoids using any AI in any machine learning, you're kind of like bidding something that would be like, I don't know, let's imagine like some simple like flat rate bidding or some really simplified bidding process, you'll be looking at a user, you won't really know what how much to bid on it. And you'll be getting outbid on users that are actually very valuable for your vertical by other DSPs, which have recognized using machine learning that this user is super valuable. So they'll be picking up that user. And conversely, you'll be bidding too highly on other users, which others DSPs have realized are actually not useful for your vertical and you'll be picking them up and you just won't be converting on them. So this is just a space that's way too complicated for humans to effectively construct rules, without machine learning or AI to effectively compete in this space.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:12:32)Okay, so what would you say are some of the limitations when it comes to the use of AI and programmatic advertising? And, you know, how does the ongoing innovation help bridge those gaps?\n\n\n\nArthur  (00:12:44)One of the main limitations is also the advantage, which is that the AI is taking control over a lot of the decision-making. So this advantage is that it can do really well. The disadvantage is, as I mentioned before, is that well, you don't really necessarily have full insight into what it was doing. So you could be kind of like worried. So okay, so I set up my campaign it's doing this unpredictable thing. They tell me there's this intelligent machine in the loop. But I don't really know there's no person that's signing off on a decision that it's making for me. So what do I do? And how do I bridge this gap? So the nice thing is, though, about programmatic advertising is that because there's so much data volume, and there's so much data features also available on what is going on is that you can do pretty good attribution, on what actually happened in your campaign. So the data is more complex, and, but you also can track it far better. So even though your campaign is doing something a little bit tricky, so I would definitely like say, set up your campaign with, you know, concrete KPIs that you are tracking, I would say, you know, talk to your programmatic strategists about various campaign options that might help you, I would say set up your conversion pixels, track that attribution, and try to find a an option that actually works for you well, so this isn't something that you will be able to figure out at first go so there are many different options that you can use to set up your campaign and this podcast has covered different techniques for setting up your campaign in different situations very well previously, so I won't go into that into detail. But the main idea is you should try different things think like a scientist experiment. Some of these strategies which you know are kind of black boxes a little bit like they for you, they won't work perfectly. You do need to try different custom segments you need to try whether it for your particular campaign contextual keywords work, try whether browsing audiences work. Try whether retargeting works best for you. And then after you iterate, pick a strategy that does work for you because you are able to track that attribution far better than you are outside of programmatic. So definitely take advantage of that.\n\n\n\nZeynep  (00:14:59)I think so I would also add, maybe first of all, human in-the-loop systems. So they have been around for a very long time. But they're only like recently gaining attraction with more popular generative systems like charging ChatGPT. But the goal here is to kind of inject that human intuition that we referred to earlier and collaborate with the model to produce better results. So these, this can happen in more of a friendly way, or a more adversarial way, with the goal of improving the results of the model or making them more intuitive or closer to what we would expect with our domain knowledge. And the other thing is continuously monitoring the model that we have deployed. So you don't just train a model and put it out in the world and expect it to perform splendidly. So when we, as a data scientist, when we were deploying a model, there was actually a lot of historical back testing on past data points. And then we can say, with 100% accuracy, that these models will actually do well in production. So what we do is, after deploying them to a small percentage doing beta testing, we actually compare their predictions to the actual performance. And then we always go back and update the models accordingly. So I guess there's a recurring theme of Yes, working with the model is kind of very important, especially when we are kind of catering to people in this industry.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:16:18)It makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that. So jumping into the next question, what would you say is the biggest difference to the use of AI and programmatic now versus say, five to 10 years ago? Can you draw a picture of the evolution?\n\n\n\nArthur  (00:16:36)I can give some high-level descriptions of a lot of the features. And those of the audience that have been involved programmatic will have seen the evolution over time. So I mean, a couple of main things that have changed over time is firstly, like, a lot of the targeting options that you're able to use, and a lot of the custom segments available have expanded. So for example, at StackAdapt, we rolled out page context AI, just a couple of years ago. So if you were targeting 5-10 years ago, we would absolutely not have this kind of option. Similarly, we've expanded the efficiency of our browsing audiences. And the efficiency of lookalike expansion as well, 10 years ago, this was not available. So just if you literally go into the UI, you will be able to see more options year over year over a year. And after 10 years, like for you, as a user, there's just far more targeting options available. There are also far more insights that you can get into the users that you actually have targeted than you able to get 10 years ago. So this is kind of apparent to anybody that signs in into the platform and just sees this change over time. Another change I'd like to highlight though, as well is there's also a lot of invisible changes behind the scenes that you really don't see as a user. So if you were on the exact same campaign, couple years ago, versus now you will get better return on investment, generally speaking, given the exact, you know, given the same targeting options, because behind the scenes, we continuously make a lot of improvements that are invisible to the user to find the individual bids and auctions that will absolutely benefit your campaign to bring your return on investment up. And there are just tons of optimizations that we make behind the hood. And this is very, like apparent to me, because like my bread and butter every day, like most of the features that I work on, don't bubble up as like, you know, new buttons that you click in the UI they actually see. So I work on the look-like-expansion project. And if you click look like audience expansion, now it's a button, you click it, the audience expands. So from the point of view of the user, is that kind of the same thing that was there a year ago, it looks kind of the same, but behind the scenes, there's been a ton of improvements to try to figure out what is the ideal look alike audience for your campaign? How can we best expand it? How do we make sure that you still have the scale without losing the accuracy of bidding on the proper users, and there's just a lot of work that goes on there. And this is I feel something that's kind of underappreciated by someone that just logs in every day and sees the same thing. It's not the same behind the scenes, there are a ton of changes, and a lot of people that work with are really involved in making these changes on a day-to-day basis.\n\n\n\nZeynep  (00:19:16)Yeah, definitely. I definitely agree with that as well. I think we can also take a step back and look at AI or the evolution of AI in general in the last decade, it's a very important concept in AI is called transfer learning. So it's quite straightforward, as the name indicates, but it means a model can gain knowledge in one field and then apply it in a completely different field. So basically, there has been a lot of work in transfer learning in the last decade, even across like seemingly unlikely pairs of fields. For example, a model might learn to play chess, and then you can ask the model to kind of do my math operations and they will do significantly better after gaining that expertise and Chess. And this is now possible because first of all the availability of the data on the internet, there's just so much that we put out that models can learn from. And secondly, the evolution of the physical machines as well that can handle that scale of the data. And that's why we now talk of these generative models like GPT, that are trained on all sorts of data on the internet. And then they can be adopted in their niche domains, like programmatic, for example. And we always find that their kind of newfound general knowledge will make them more powerful in these niche domains. So that's kind of exciting. And that's what exciting to everyone, I guess, because it's unclear what we can now do with that general knowledge and what specific areas we can apply to.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:20:43)You know, from an advertiser marketers perspective, because it is such a hot topic right now, we know even from a product marketing perspective, terms like AI and machine learning algorithms can be a big unknown for some marketers or advertisers, especially when it comes to automating ad spend and making campaign decisions. So what advice would you give to an advertiser who is apprehensive about adopting this technology?\n\n\n\nArthur  (00:21:12)It's all about like, what are your options? Right, so an alternative to programmatic, which contrasts with it quick, significantly, that I'm familiar with is linear, traditional TV and radio advertising. So a question that you might ask is like, well, do I allocate my ad spend on you know, TV, or in programmatic. So I just kind of want to say so, it's fairly interesting to contrast it to because the TV doesn't have many of the advantages that programmatic has. But it also doesn't have many of the disadvantages, because it has disadvantages. They both have advantages. The advantage of programmatic is that you're letting go of control over individual details. So for TV, the way that you typically organize your spend for a campaign is you do research on which programs or day parts contain a particular target audience that you are interested in,  and then you plan that spend, you make your contract your purchase decision  with a particular network, and then your ad spots run. And then when they run you kind of retroactively when they run you check up on the viewership. And the audiences that watched a particular program or daypart that you had your ad spot run. And then you look at your particular KPI of interest. So, oh, an ad spot ran yesterday, did people go to my website after did they purchase, you know, my product today in the store? And that attribution process is like, really hard. Like, it's really challenging to say whether an ad spot yesterday leads to conversions, sorry not conversions and TV, you might just like, say, but yeah, a conversion, whether an ad spot leads to conversions for your store purchase today. So I've worked with some of this data before, it's just it's really, really hard because you don't have that user-level information. So you're looking at volumes of purchases, and you're hoping that that volume goes up significantly after ad spot, and unless it's the Superbowl, it's probably not. So you don't really know if you have a return on investment from your ad spots. So but conversely, you do have certainty in terms of what's going on. So as a human, not a machine, you've made a very simple decision, I'm placing my ad, at this time on this program, you know exactly what happened, but you don't know the impact. So, even though you gain some you lose some. So which world would you rather work with? I mean, I can't make that decision for any marketer. And many marketers, you know, kind of hedge their bets and allocate budget into both worlds, let's say from my perspective, like coming from the TV data, and now working with programmatic data, we would have loved to have the verticals and the user level information that we have now in programmatic, we would have loved to have that back in my TV days, like we dreamed of this kind of data, and we just did not have it. So the types of attribution that you can do in programmatic now are just so so powerful, so much more powerful than anybody could have dreamed of in the TV days.\n\n\n\nZeynep  (00:24:24)Yeah. Also, like another perspective we can offer is so sure, we have been talking about AI recently, a lot. You see it in your news feed in the morning, you see it in TV shows, but it's not exactly new as a field of study. So put it in the context of the first AI program was actually written in 1951. So chances are if you've ever worked with a DSP, it's quite likely that you have in the garden some ad spent our ad revenue from some form of AI so it might have been some kind of numerical optimization, targeted towards a KPI like conversions and might have been a contextual tool like our own page context AI that will help you display your ad in the relevant context. But the point is that it's not new, you've probably used. And you've probably seen a lot of improvements over the years, as Arthur said, as well. So the exciting part is, obviously, the AI has come a long way, as we've talked about, you know thanks to data availability, better machines, and we can absolutely do completely new things that were maybe unthinkable a few years ago. So I would say, this is not so much a question about whether to use the AI, we absolutely have to, as Arthur said, I don't think it's quite a choice. But it's really important to work with, you know, a highly regarded DSP that has that, again, in-house knowledge, because it's very difficult to kind of transfer that expertise to maybe external AI, AI workers as well. So it's really important to work closely with like marketers, data scientists, data engineers, as well as people that have expertise in setting those campaigns up, and maybe even vertical-specific knowledge as well.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:26:08)Amazing. Thanks for that. And looking into the future, where do you see AI in programmatic heading by, say, 2025? And will we get into the territory of generative AI for ad creatives? Or do you have anything? You know, far more exciting than that that you see?\n\n\n\nZeynep  (00:26:28)So I think anything we say about this will be pure speculation. We don't know we have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow. But yes, I think generative AI for ad creatives is definitely on everyone's mind. So maybe we will be able to create on-demand creatives to complement the user's interests, or we are already working on very powerful internal tools, that with the goal of, you know, saving companies, hundreds of worker hours, that we can hopefully invest those in more creative pursuits that are better suited to human beings, and perhaps builds, you know, highly complex predictions with models that enable multiple KPIs at the same time. Again, going back to the theme of like high dimensionality. But, you know, looking back on this podcast, in 2025, we will probably have a completely different perspective on this. And I don't think anyone can claim to know what will happen in programmatic in the next couple of years.\n\n\n\nArthur  (00:27:27)Yeah, I definitely agree with Zeynep. This is one of those questions that you just can't, you don't have that crystal ball. So you can't see the future, especially when it comes to things like policy changes, or like new AI developments, like ChatGPT came out of nowhere, like half a year ago. So even you know, experts in the industry did not expect this level of accuracy from a chatbot. To come out like so soon, right. So it's very hard for anybody to predict the future. So I won't try to do that. But I'll give kind of like a day-to-day view from let's say, what we are working on, which I know for sure was happening, which is again, that invisible, but very important improvement, and in the overall accuracy and efficiency of your ad spend. When you are running that same campaign, from last year to this year to next year to the year afterwards, that same campaign will find your users and will manage your targeting better than it did previously. So working on many optimizations, and I can't speak about any of them. But they are all behind the hood. And trust me, we're very, very hard at work picking out those users trying different techniques. This one works, the other doesn't pick it up again and try another one. What about this machine learning model? What about the other one? What if you segment users this way, or the other way, it's all proprietary, but we're all very, very hard at work on trying to get your KPIs up, and your CPA down every day.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:28:57)Always fun to hear informed predictions. So thank you for that. And I think whatever you share today was super useful. Both of you made the topic of AI and machine learning very approachable for marketers out there. So thank you both for joining us. And to you, the one who stuck around till the very end. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast or listen to the new episodes right when they drop, like the podcast, share it with your teammates. It could be a cool resource to post on your office work chat as recommendation. So go ahead and do that. And if you want to get in touch, write to us at academy@stackadapt.com That's academy@stackadapt.com we have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesday. So stay tuned. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:29:40)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAdapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPodcast Banner Title"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/art-of-entertainment-marketing#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/art-of-entertainment-marketing"},"author":[],"headline":"Lights, Camera, Digital: The Art of Entertainment Marketing","datePublished":"2023-08-16T13:38:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:37:39+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/art-of-entertainment-marketing"},"wordCount":6336,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/art-of-entertainment-marketing#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240425160813/amanda_au_stackadapt_podcast_s4e2.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","keywords":["arts and entertainment","audience targeting","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at best practices in entertainment marketing, creative approaches to draw in audiences, and emerging trends. \n\n\n\nAmanda Au | Co-Founder, Anti Agency Group\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)We've seen entertainment branch off into so many different variations. We've seen a lot more creative marketing in the space. So you have to be so smart with your content because there are just some really brilliant creators out there who don't have any budget, but they're racking up 10s of 1000s of views and minutes watched. And that's what you have to compete against. And all of that is free compared to your ticketed download or your ticket purchase.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:25)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:00:49)Earlier, we had simpler ways to keep ourselves entertained, like watching a movie, catching a play or going to a concert nearby. But now, if you're in entertainment, you're competing for the user's attention among so many things, television channels, switching between this OTT or that one, binge-watching your favorite YouTuber, scrolling endlessly on social media. And of course, podcasts like this one. According to Statista, total revenue for entertainment is expected to show an annual growth rate of 10.5%, resulting in a projected market volume of 48.7 billion US dollars by 2027. Now that's a lot. And we need an expert to cut the clutter and get right to the chase. Let's find out what's happening in the world of entertainment marketing. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. I'm your host Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. And joining today, we have Amanda Au, our head of Marketing Strategy and Client Services, also co-founder at the Anti Agency Group. Hi, Amanda, thank you so much for joining us. Please tell us about your professional background, your expertise and also introduce your organization to us. \n\n\n\nAmanda  (00:02:10)Yeah, I'd love to. So thank you for having me. I started my career on the big agency side at one of the large holding groups hired fresh out of college, I was a social strategist on the OMD Warner Brothers team. So that's really where I got my start, I was very lucky to have been placed on such a large account. Working with movies that I got to watch growing up and continuing to work on products that you get to see on the big screen was really exciting and glamorous. And from there, I've gone to other large agencies and also client side over at Amazon, joining the Prime Video team when it first started, I think I was employee number 19 on that team or something like that. And really seeing the inner workings of a studio, how a show really goes from script to the big screen and everything in between. And now as an agency co-founder, we work with a lot of entertainment studios. And nowadays it looks so different that it could be, you know, working with a large studio like Universal Pictures all the way down to, you know producers, indie films, things that go straight to VOD, but you know, still star your favorite actors and actresses nonetheless. And so the landscape has really changed. And anti-agency, we've been lucky to kind of work with a really good mix of people that have really grown and evolved with the changing entertainment landscape. So you know, we've really stuck our guns with theatrical campaigns all the way to streaming clients. And now even broadening our horizons with live entertainment. So working a lot with off and on Broadway as well. You know, so we're very lucky, we get to work with a very interesting product, stuff that you know, our friends and family engage with on a regular basis. And it's a very exciting subject matter. And also, from an industry perspective, you know, one that gets to test out a lot of first market betas, you know, and has very interesting creative that we can do a lot of testing with. So we've been very fortunate in this space to kind of see that change, especially in the last I think decade where we've had social evolve. And then also really now with the streaming wars happening, and really being front and center with that.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:04:25)Amazing. You've brought so much experience to the table. I'm really excited to talk to you. And I want to start off with this first question about the journey of marketing entertainment itself, right. First part is about the product itself. Like I mentioned earlier, we had limited options, you know, this movie or that, but now it's evolved so much and there are so many options to choose from, for what we consume as entertainment. And for the marketing part of it. It's evolved right from maybe, you know, out-of-home, television radio, to digital marketing. So where is it at today? Could you paint a picture for us?\n\n\n\nAmanda  (00:05:04)Yeah, I mean, it's really changed so much. I think the word entertainment also has just so broadly defined. If you ask 10-15 years ago, really, we were talking about, you know, theatrical movies and TV shows. And now it's really evolved to what you said earlier, it could be anything from YouTube to creators on social, the competition is really intense. And I think because we've seen entertainment branch off into so many different variations. We've seen a lot more creative marketing in this space, and a lot of competition, because a lot of times now, you're marketing against content that is a direct competitor, you know, to what you're pushing out there. And so you have to be so smart with your content, because there are just some really brilliant creators out there, you know, who don't have any budget, but they're racking up 10s of 1000s of views and minutes watched. And that's what you have to compete against. And all of that is free compared to, you know, your ticketed download or your ticket purchase. And so it really depends, I think, on what branch of entertainment you're really talking about. I can start from theatrical right, which is where I started 10 years ago. And that looks so different, because at that time, you know, we were really focusing a large portion of our budget on traditional media, really pushing awareness as the first and foremost KPI. And so you were looking at a lot of out-of-home, in all the major DMAs, the splashiest billboard you can buy in Times Square, you were looking at Superbowl spots, any TV spots against prime time, and even radio at that point was a huge get. And now you've seen the transition, obviously, there's still a lot of money flowing through traditional placements, but really understanding that people are spending time in other places. And so as we've seen consumer behaviour turn, we've really seen that money follow along with it. And so, as us as consumers adopted mobile devices, we're spending our time elsewhere, especially within social media, we've seen a huge explosion in dollars moving towards the digital space. And there's just so much more ground to cover. I think in general, it's interesting how we see kind of the talks about how advertising spending either goes up or down. And it's they tried to make it about this fight between I think traditional and digital, but really the amount of screens, and I think places that you can buy advertising has just exponentially grown. And that really should be the focal point of the conversation. You know, it's less of a fight nowadays, between should we be spending money on this large TV spot? Or should we push that money into digital and buy more social, but really, it's about where we can even buy where we can target, and then really being smart about it, because you have so many more options than you did a decade ago. And so I think that's really where the shift has happened. It's because of availability, and the potential that has really evolved in the advertising industry, that has led to all of these strategic shifts in where people are spending their dollars. So you 100% still have a lot of money being invested in traditional placements, and they do work. I think we're big believers of using that when it makes sense. But now you're also seeing a lot more money, being invested in digital, in audio, in digital out-of-home even now, right and really being open to testing more things. And I think we're also seeing dollars, that traditionally were thought of maybe more as PR dollars, and now being invested in influencers in brand partnerships and affiliate marketing. So again, there's just a lot more channels for us to invest our advertising dollars in. And really that's I think what caused a major shift in marketing behaviour, more than anything else is just this bigger opportunity to spend your dollars. And so we've depending on what we're talking about, you're still going to see you know, your fancy bus shelters and bus wraps and whatever, for theatrical but now you're probably seeing an explosion across social media and and it's probably becoming hard to differentiate, you know, did that last TikTok that you saw? Was that actually an organic post? Or was it actually a paid post? And, our peers are just getting so smart with it. And I think that's really what we want to see from everyone. Right? It's kind of this double-edged sword where, you know, yes, we want consumers to know, and be smart and aware that what they're seeing is an ad. But we also as advertisers want our ads to be so good that they just think it's you know, authentic content. And so there's this interesting fine line that we're walking right now, between our media investment and creative investment. And I think a lot of it has just been a lot of experimentation, especially post-pandemic, where, again, consumer behaviour has shifted and really understanding what works. And I don't know, if we've necessarily seen very strong trends come out of the pandemic just yet, I think we're still kind of trying to figure out what that looks like. But in the last 10 years of how quickly things have evolved, and grown, I think it's just going to be a constant moving target, and those that don't try to adapt are gonna get fallen behind.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:10:42)Yeah, you spoke about a lot of opportunities and a lot of experimentation happening right now. And there's also a switch to programmatic social search from traditional media, like you mentioned. So I'm guessing there could be gaps in education on this. So what are those things that marketers or clients could generally go wrong with in terms of executing or even asking?\n\n\n\nAmanda  (00:11:09)Yes, I think one of the biggest things that we tend to see is programmatic being treated as a substitute for meeting minimum that direct publishers usually require, right. So you know, rather than having to put all their eggs in one basket with one publisher, in their minds, programmatic is this open network where they can try out multiple sites at one go, but they're still very specific about what sites they want to be on, I think a lot of them are still stuck in this mindset in that there are very premium placements. So you know, they're used to buying like, whatever the Yahoo homepage, there used to buying those, you know, the premium skins across deadline.com. And so those are the things that they're really thinking about. Moreso it's the context of the site that they're on, because in their mind, it aligned with this premium audience that they're trying to reach. But I think we've forgotten how big the Internet has really gotten. And there are so many sites out there depending on one person that you can visit. And so sometimes I think they fall into this pitfall of trying to cherry pick a lot of where they're trying to run their inventory, because they're treating it again more as this buffet of premium sites and less so thinking about the consumer that they're trying to reach and all the overlays they can do from a behavioural standpoint. And so I think that's one of the biggest pitfalls we see, especially when we're trying to introduce programmatic to a partner. And we understand, you know, it is a big scary world out there on the internet, there's so many nooks and crannies, there definitely is a little unsavory things out there, too. And like how do we help educate clients to understand that we can work with partners like StackAdapt, who have kind of this built-in safety net for brand safety, and how we can additionally layer things on to kind of guarantee that we are reaching, you know, active and quality users on the other side of that screen. And so I think that's been the biggest piece. It's evolved from this conversation of oh, like, the whole internet is just bots. And you know, how do we guarantee and verify that traffic to now trying to understand like, oh, we can trust you know, the technology that we're really using a trust all the targeting segment, and be diligent about AB, testing a lot of this, so that we can help ourselves improve in the long run, but still utilize how the industry is evolving for the better. So I think that's one of the major pitfalls. And then I think the other side is, you know, for clients that have become a lot more comfortable, there's so much room for growth. In terms of utilizing programmatic, I think many clients probably just tend to really scrape the surface when it comes to what they can do. But understanding how all the different channels within one ecosystem can really help each other. And why it is beneficial to run programmatic audio, digital out-of-home, display all together in one ecosystem, and what that can do for them in the long run in terms of building a stronger retargeting strategy, in terms of defining more insights about the consumer journey, I think a lot of that is barely touched by a lot of clients, especially newer ones. And a lot of it does stem from I will say entertainment campaigns tend to be a little different then say, CPG or retail, they're very short. Right? So you have these very short life that are no longer than maybe, I mean, four to 12 weeks at best, right? And unless you're building a large franchise, where you're going to guarantee to have 10 Fast and Furious movies, you're likely not going to be able to reutilize the retargeting data to a tee in the future and so really keeping that in mind thinking about what your slate looks like, how can you build audience segments that are going to be applicable to another film, you know, what is your studio's general slate strategy and how you are thinking about the films that you're acquiring or producing, how that latter back up to kind of one holistic audience that's going to really speak to your particular studio. So things like that kind of stem back up to a greater strategy within the studio itself. But having your marketing team be aware of that so that they can play into it is so important. And not a lot of times, does that level of transparency kind of trickle down that way, a lot of times, I think in entertainment, they need to really think about, you know, how it's going to trickle down, and affect longer-term strategy, how it's going to affect that next film, and really thinking smartly about that. So that the programmatic strategy can work in the long term and big picture for a studio. And a lot of times, unfortunately, that information doesn't trickle down to the team. And so a lot of entertainment marketing can feel very short-sighted in that way, because you're only planning for that one release weekend. And then after a theatrical film is done, you kind of move on to the next one, especially when you're working with bigger studios who have you know, 20 plus films coming out in a year, they move at such a speed and then consumer behaviour also, on the flip side changes so fast that what you did a year ago was almost non-applicable anymore. So I think that tends to be also a bigger struggle, as well, with some of the entertainment clients.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:16:37)That’s interesting and, you know, talking about movies, and if we had to specifically focus on an ad for a movie, you know, say the call to action would be watch now or book tickets, these are things that would need a lot of time and a commitment to a certain appointment as well. Right? So the customer journeys might not be linear. And if we take the example of a film like we did, we need to watch the trailer, hear our friends speak about it, read reviews, and then make that decision. So what channels within programmatic? And even outside of it, would you recommend for different parts of the funnel? If you could also give us a breakdown of what each part of the funnel is that would be great.\n\n\n\nAmanda  (00:17:24)Yeah, I mean, and this is where, you know, we still say traditional plays a huge role, because it does really need to establish that initial awareness. And there's a reason why trailer-type content works really well for the entertainment industry. And so there's a very strong skew towards video placements across the board, whether it is on the big screen in these linear spots, or when we start looking at YouTube TrueView, or when we're looking at social video as well. And so I think that's when it becomes really important to start thinking about frequency, right, and frequency used to be really built upon display and social because they were the most cost-efficient channels. And so we used to see a lot of money gathered there. And now it's really expanded because as a consumer, your behaviour has also really changed. And so now when you're out and about your day, I mean, you check your phone, probably upwards of 50 times a day, but you're using a ton of different apps, you're also going to either see billboards, or you're checking your email on the computer during your workday. And so I think, because there's so many different digital touch points, that you can really find someone in a single day, there's so many more places, I think that we have now kind of advise the client to really think about, but it's also less about really the exact placements, but also how you're guaranteeing that you are reaching the same person, time and time again, to build up that frequency. Because usually, there is limited number of dollars, right? And so being really smart about that. And knowing that if you can only realistically reach 20% of your target audience at a frequency of say, 10, how do you make sure you're actually building that average frequency with that same group of 20% people, right. And so that's really what we ask, you know, our clients to think more about, rather than really how many places they can really run. And again, that's why it goes back to being in a single ecosystem is really great, because you can really track their behaviour. And so, you know, when we're working with programmatic, you know, starting out with digital out-of-home, and then kind of working our way all the way down from audio and then to display to really make sure that we can retarget each from each channel and really build a much more holistic look at a single person's consumer journey to match back up to that frequency and then also being really smart about how we're using off channel retargeting strategies too. So one thing that we really love doing, especially with StackAdapt, is we'll build a meta pixel. And we'll hand that off to our StackAdapt team so that we can retarget people who are engaging with our ads through the StackAdapt ecosystem. And again, we know that meta and StackAdapt sit, you know, clearly in two different ecosystems. And this is our way to kind of bridge them to talk to each other so that we can continue to build up that frequency. So there are awesome tricks like that, that we love to use, and really think about, again, how one person is going from one device and one screen to another. And really more about that experience from a consumer end. Really more than what specific channels or tactics makes sense. For this film, it should be really what specific tactics and channels makes sense for this target audience. And then the film should kind of fit into that right, it should fit into their natural journey already. Yeah, so that's how we more so think about it. And again, that includes multiple ways, I think, where now we have more advantage from an advertising perspective, to be more specific about the partner and the channel that we do choose. And a lot of it comes down to the targeting capabilities, that's going to be offered by these different platforms and channels, it's also going to be dependent on the type of creative that you can run to, and what makes a lot of sense. So for instance, like audio, we find it really great from a frequency-building standpoint. But if it doesn't have that initial awareness, maybe the title of the film is not unique enough. It doesn't have any actors, maybe that would ring a bell, and it needs more of a visual element that we might recommend against it, and switch it out with say, more cost-effective video. And so there are different tactics like that, too, that we really take into account. Because, again, the product is already existing for us in the entertainment world, it's already created, it's already done. You know, there's very specific value ads that we can go ahead and put out there. And so really thinking about how that fits in to the target consumer and what resonates with them, is the key thing that we try and think about, you know, as we talk about which tactics and channels that we're really going to utilize here.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:22:21)So, Amanda, we spoke about a host of things, you know, campaign tactics, what's happening right now with traditional media versus digital media. So could you tell us how we can measure the success of campaigns?\n\n\n\nAmanda  (00:22:37)Yeah, so in the world of entertainment, it's usually very easy to decide whether or not we were successful. It's all about either butts in seats or sales. And so there's a lot of markers, I will say, where in the past, we've tried to really guess you know how a films going to do, there's been millions of dollars invested into programs to try and predict the success of film based off all of these different KPIs. But the core KPI at the end of day is just about how much money that these studios are going to make back, right. And that's generally what most businesses track back to. And there was a very interesting phenomenon, I think, early on, in the theatrical space, particularly because a lot of the ticket sales were happening either through Fandango, you know, they were being bought through Fandango.com. And that was about I would say, probably like 30% of sales. And then all the other sales are basically made at the movie theater itself, right. And this was before, when you can pick seats in the movie theater, you literally just showed up with your date, you looked at the big screen, you looked at the times on the board, and then you decided really right then in there, what you were going to watch. And so a lot of that purchasing decision was made in a place where we couldn't track. And so that's why also I think a lot of the bigger entertainment campaigns tended to be so awareness heavy, obviously, TV operated slightly different you're trying to drive tune-in, there are different metrics that you're trying to amount to. But at the end of the day, you wanted your movie or your TV show to be popular. And so if we really tried to, I think, look at a different measure of success outside of sales, because that's just so obvious, then I would really say and maybe I'm a little biased because I have a social background, but it really is that social chatter that we really really strive to generate. Really putting your movie into the zeitgeist is what a lot of studios and production companies really strive for. It makes it feel like it is everywhere. It's talked about, it's that watercooler conversation that creates the FOMO that all of these studios are really looking for. And that's why I think also there was the ability to kind of shift really into that social space and be where those conversations were happening. It's definitely a double-edged sword, right, because it's also the most public of conversations that were happening. And so, you know, my background a lot, especially for Warner Brothers, was really measuring a lot of the social conversation. And while it was really remarkable to see how there is a correlation to how much social chatter is happening, compared to whether or not I think your film was going to be embedded in the zeitgeist, I won't even talk about sales, particularly because I think a film can be very popular, but not have great sales, because it was just the wrong weekend, for it to come out, right, but it's still probably going to make dollars back in terms of video on demand, licensing, you know, being sold to a streamer, there's other ways for the studio to recoup their dollars back outside of now, just opening weekend. And all of those social metrics are really going to help close that deal after that. So a lot of times now we're really looking at how popular a film is based off how much social buzz that we're seeing across it, right. And, it's kind of a double-edged sword that I say, because social conversation is the most public, it's the only one that you can measure. So obviously very hard to see if something is going to be talked about literally at the watercooler, you know, in these offline conversations, but using social as that proxy, is really what we saw a lot of studios tend to gravitate towards, and it's still something we still see very important to them to this day, because again, it's the thing that breeds franchising. It breeds sequels, right, it breeds better licensing deals for all of these studios. And so I think that's going to be another huge marker for it. And so we're seeing studios now try to be more embedded, I think, in pop culture, and relevant conversations. So and that even starts with a lot of like casting decisions, right? It stems all the way from when the movie is being produced to to the marketing itself. And I think the best marketing, entertainment campaigns that we've seen, have really acknowledged what's happening in these live environments, and what conversations are taking place in finding relevant ways for their movies to really kind of mesh with that. And I think that's why we also see kind of a shift towards influencers as a proxy for having those relevant conversations, basically, being plants, you know, for these studios, and also huge shifts into brand partnerships as well. Relying on brands that have built in audiences, so that they can kind of ride off the wave knowing that, you know, a theatrical campaign is probably too short to really build that large of an audience unless you're going to be I don't know, like a Barbie, right where it's been anticipated for over a year. So you've had over a year to kind of really build that audience. Otherwise, if not, you have three weeks to make someone fall in love with you. And it's much easier to use the power of a friend in the form of another brand to kind of help you do that through brand partnerships. So I think there's going to be a lot more of that too. Just because they have to get smarter on how to get you to pay attention. And I think it's again, it's all kind of stemming back from this. It's like a new way of word of mouth, right? Social for sure is, I guess, the most basic form of word of mouth, that basically trying to fake it till they make it through brand partnerships through influencers and finding other ways to really build brand equity in such a short time, I think is going to continue to be the key that we see because us as consumers, we're just we're getting really really smart, we can see through it, we're really, you know, there's too much information on the internet about actresses, productions, directors and whatever, right. And so it's becoming harder and harder to kind of fake it in that way. And so your trailer is just no longer going to cut it. And so finding all those other angles, whether it's below the line or above the line to really engage consumers with the show or the movie you have is going to be the next key I think, to being really successful here.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:29:03)If a marketer right now is just starting off, or maybe working with a smaller organization, on a smaller budget movie and promoting a smaller budget movie, or something, which is not so large scale, may not be a movie but an entertainment piece. What would you know, what are your suggestions for them? What approach would you give them at this point?\n\n\n\nAmanda  (00:29:27)Yeah, I think the first key is to really be realistic about your resources, and to plan from that perspective, because if you're at the core of it, a smaller film or you just don't have the resources of a larger studio, but same tactics that work for them just realistically aren't going to work for you. And so making sure that you have a game plan that's realistic for your budget, I think is very, very important. And I think a lot of times when we've worked with smaller studio audios or even filmmakers directly. You know, there's this very glamorized, you know, purview of Hollywood. And they want that. And of course, we want that for them too. But just being very realistic about, you know, the resources that we have. And knowing that, you know, if you're going to spend all of your money buying one TV spot on linear with zero support, otherwise, it's most likely just not going anywhere. And so I think that, to us, is really the key thing that I would remind anyone is just being really realistic with the budget that you have at hand and trying to make the best of that. And I think there are other places outside of just spending media dollars that people can be a lot smarter with, you know, we get a lot of requests for asking for things to go viral. And if I knew how to make things go viral, I would be an influencer right now, and probably rolling in dough for a couple of years. But like, clearly, I don't know what the secret sauce is, and I don't think it exists. And so really trying to understand, you know, that it doesn't, going viral just isn't necessarily a very strategic thing. Sometimes it just happens, right? And the best way for it to happen is to be very adventurous and authentic and bold with your creative, really understand the target audience that's really going to clamp on and ride with what you're saying, you know, become those advocates on your behalf and utilize them. I think, because communities now are so smart, they can really see through your BS really easily. And so, you know, approaching communities authentically and really working with them and having them work as free advocates on your behalf. I think is going to be a much more powerful play than, you know, buying a Super Bowl spot, for instance. And so really thinking about all the avenues that you have at your disposal, and not just really the more traditional advertising channel that you tend to see larger films go about, and really just a lot more AB testing, I think. We tend to have a very interesting challenge within entertainment in that, you know, the film or the TV show itself is also your creative. And while obviously there's very smart manipulation happening, there are these very very brilliant people, brilliant video producers who are able to manipulate that into a very great and convincing trailer, there's a lot of other content that you could be working with, like in terms of making means in terms of cutting scenes and clips, or using even the actors and directors at your disposal to produce content, I think that's a little less traditional than what you see in the space, you know, really deviating away from the 1530 and full trailers, and trying something new. And knowing that the cost really is the cost of creative production, but just putting it out there really doesn't cost anything to you. And so trying, I think new ways to talk to your audiences with the content that you have and putting a little more elbow grease in so that you can kind of quote on quote, go viral there instead of waiting for your media to help amplify that. So I think there are a lot of different avenues to take. Just don't take the avenue that was, you know, paved for someone with a very, very different budget.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:33:21)Amazing. Thank you so much. Super exciting insights. And I'm sure whoever you are marketer brand agency, you had a lot to take away, I sure it. And it's one of the best parts of hosting the show. I learned a lot today. So thank you so much, Amanda, great to have you here. \n\n\n\nAmanda  (00:33:41)Yeah, great. Thank you for having me and happy to come back. This was a lot of fun.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:33:44)Amazing, amazing. Thank you. Definitely hope to have you back really soon. And to you the one who's stuck around till the very end. Thank you so much for sticking around and make sure you subscribe to the podcast to listen to the new episodes right when they drop. And if you like the podcast, share it with your teammates, it could be a cool resource to post on your office work chat as a recommendation. So go ahead and do that. And if you want to get in touch, write to us at academy@stackadapt.com That's academy@stackadapt.com. We have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesdays. So stay tuned. Until then, this has been how agencies Thrive podcast. See you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:34:40)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPodcast Banner Title"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-funnels-demystified#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-funnels-demystified"},"author":[],"headline":"Marketing Funnels Demystified: Strategies for Success","datePublished":"2023-08-15T14:41:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:37:46+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-funnels-demystified"},"wordCount":4279,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-funnels-demystified#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240430104445/chris_barr_stackadapt_podcast_s4e1.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","keywords":["full-funnel","multi-channel","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLearn how to build a full-funnel marketing strategy and optimize your marketing funnels across platforms and industries. \n\n\n\nChris Barr | Programmatic Media Supervisor Add3\n\n\n\nAdam Ansoff | Programmatic Media Supervisor Add3\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction  (00:00:00)In terms of industry trends for programmatic so far this year, the first thing is just leaning into more channels that have become digital that used to be more traditional people moving from linear to CTV. Same thing with digital out-of-home. I think a lot of brands are comfortable with traditional out-of-home are starting to better understand the advantages of digital out-of-home and looking to test that as well testing a lot of contextual targeting solutions where we don't have to rely on a third party cookie to reach relevant customers.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:24)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:00:48)There's no doubt that the world of marketing moves quickly. And as a marketer at any level, staying updated with these changes cannot be easy. Keeping your brand relevant. And doing this consistently, by keeping up with the trends will help you stay ahead of the curve. And that's why we have some industry experts joining us today to give you the latest scoop on what's happening right now in the digital marketing landscape. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I'm Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. And with me, I have Adam and Chris, both from Add3, a digital marketing agency. Welcome to the show, firstly, and let's do a quick round of introductions with your areas of expertise and experience so far. So let's start with you, Adam.\n\n\n\nAdam  (00:01:38)Yes, I am a senior digital programmatic Account Manager here at Add3. I have been working in Add3 for about five years now. And I guess in overall marketing and advertising for 10 years. And I've done everything all the way from traditional ads, buying radio and TV all the way down to you know doing retargeting in the digital space.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:02:05)Awesome. Thank you for joining us. And welcome to the show over to you, Chris.\n\n\n\nChris  (00:02:09)Yeah, thank you. And thanks for having us. My name is Chris Barr. I'm also a senior programmatic Account Manager at Add3. Adam and myself, oversee what's called Add3 Connect, which is the awareness arm of Add3, primarily programmatic buying, but also some direct buying as well. I started at Add3, just a few months after Adam. So been here, just about the same amount of time I've been in the industry for close to seven years, prior to working in the agency world worked more on the arbitrage side of things. So a little bit different world but always been in the digital media space. Really excited to be here today and discuss what's going on in digital advertising with you guys today.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:02:53)Great. So nice to have both of you on the show. Welcome once again. And let's start with the basics. Could you define the different parts of a funnel in a marketing strategy?\n\n\n\nChris  (00:03:04)Sure. Yeah, I can take this one. So I think everyone's probably seen the image of a marketing funnel before. But going through the different parts, we have the top of the funnel, which is focused on awareness. That's really where Adam and myself and our team come in. This is really looking to make people aware of your company, recall your ads, and really set the stage for the rest of the funnel. This is the entry point in the customer journey. Down from there we have the middle of the funnel. This is typically where from our end on programmatic we have things like retargeting, but more predominantly, we have things like paid social, which are really geared towards educating people who are now aware of your company on what you do and what your expertise says, and really nailing home what the value of your company is. So you're not quite at the point of the purchase, but you're really letting people know that you know what we're talking about and that you have something to offer. And then the part of the funnel that the top two are really trying to feed and get people into is the bottom of the funnel, which is really geared towards some sort of conversion, whether that be a purchase, sign up, whatever that goal may be for your particular client. This is where the end goal comes to fruition. This is where you're trying to drive them to your site and complete that action. This is mostly done through search, but the other channels social and programmatic can play hand in this as well.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:04:34)So you spoke about the funnel and if we could connect this to customer journeys, customer journeys may not be linear. And customers may be aware and they may make a purchase in an instant. But sometimes it will take ages despite a lot of engagement from the prospect. So how do you understand which part of the funnel applies where and to whom? And if you could give an example that would be great.\n\n\n\nAdam  (00:05:02)Yeah, so the funnel does, you know, a good job of explaining that user journey. But as you mentioned, it does a poor job defining of how quickly that journey occurs. We definitely see the biggest discrepancy here, when we're comparing, you know, a B2C or business to consumer versus a B2B business to business transaction, where the B2B transaction is gonna take a lot longer, have a lot longer path, and the B2C is going to be much shorter. Awareness, as we mentioned earlier, is really there to help consumers be aware of your brand, but also with brand recall. So this top of the funnel is really driving people to get make sure your brand is within their consideration set. So it might not be the time of purchase, or there might not even be considering purchasing. But awareness is really to make sure that when the time comes that your brand comes to mind, even in the process, because when someone's making a purchasing decision, usually it's very, it can be very quickly in the moment. And if you're not in the consideration set you've already lost. So as we kind of continue down the funnel consideration is when you know the customer is in the decision-making process. But usually, as I mentioned, it's it can be very quick, but sometimes it can take a little bit longer. Sometimes there's a fact gathering information-gathering part of the process. And this is where consideration is really key. So using paid social ads, native ads, that drive to, you know, information pages, blog articles, more information, that sort of thing can be extremely helpful in driving home, your expertise in your vertical. And then kind of as we continue down the bottom of the funnel is really where you want to be there when they're making that purchase. So this is where brand search really shines. You know, in digital marketing, we obviously you know, brand and paid social always are kind of the golden child when it comes to return on ad spend, CPA and all of these metrics, but it's really because it's capturing all of the efforts that you've done at the top. So the top of the funnel tactics that you're using aren't going to be driving direct revenue or conversions. But your bottom-of-the-funnel tactics or your net that is capturing everything that you're doing at the top.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:07:38)You mentioned something about B2B and B2C customer journeys being different. So could you highlight some key differences here and the approaches to using the funnel and also understanding the customer journey when it comes to B2B and B2C?\n\n\n\nAdam  (00:07:53)Yeah, so B2B. So I guess we'll start with B2C because B2C is your, the purchases you're making are a lot lower value, so you're buying hydration capsules, or you're buying makeup, or you're buying you know, shoes, right. So those purchases are, while important to you are lower overall value, and you can make those decisions much quicker understanding that, because those purchase cycles are a lot shorter, we, you know, need to make sure that our advertising is you know, very targeted, we have a lot more information on who we're going after, we have a lot better customer profiles, and there's usually also a lot more customers available. So to the people that are trying to buy shoes, a lot gonna be, there's gonna be a large number of people buying shoes, so we have a lot more opportunities to make that sale. When it comes to B2B, however, you're a lot more, you have a lot smaller pool of people that are making those buying decisions because those purchases are worth a lot more, there are a lot higher value. And so when you're doing b2b marketing, you have to, you know, look at your funnel a little differently because your top of funnel is going to be the actual funnel piece is going to be much smaller, you're starting off with a much smaller group of people. And you're also dealing with a much longer decision timeline. Businesses move a lot slower than people, individual people do. So whereas a consumer if I make the decision go through the entire funnel within a day, a business might take three months to get a lead. So really understanding the timing it takes and how much. This is like in B2B. The consideration phase is definitely massive because making sure that you provide the articles and the value add and all of the value props for your business to make other businesses keen on buying your product. It's a lot more important, whereas in the b2c space, the middle of the funnel is going to struggle or not struggle, but it's gonna be a lot quicker of a process. There they went, there's some times where they'll go straight from the awareness once they're in the consideration set when they go to make the purchase. They just make the purchase. So there's definitely a big difference and how the B2C and B2B look in terms of the funnel.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:10:33)Have you noticed any changes in the general media strategies that marketers are using? When it comes to social search paid, programmatic across the board? What are your thoughts?\n\n\n\nChris  (00:10:47)Yeah, definitely. There's a few things that I think that are going on right now. Some of it is new, some maybe as a leftover of the last couple of years. Starting with the challenge. I think this is something that has been pretty widely reported and shared across a lot of different brands and agencies. But overall marketing budgets are a bit lower this year, or at least slow to be released, we're seeing a lot of budgets released towards the end of Q1, as companies are trying to figure out how best to spend those marketing dollars. In terms of just industry trends for programmatic so far this year, I think it's nothing new necessarily. It's a lot of what we've been talking about for the last couple of years. The first thing, it's just leaning into more channels, let's say that have become digital that used to be more traditional. By that I mean, people moving from linear to CTV, CTV is still a huge discussion for all clients. Not that clients are abandoning linear TV, but definitely looking to lean more into CTV. And it's an initiative from our end as well to grow the CTV side of the business. Same thing with digital out-of-home. I think a lot of brands are comfortable with traditional out-of-home, but are starting to better understand the advantages of digital out-of-home and looking to test that as well. And I look at both of CTV and digital out-of-home as things that will probably continue to grow. In addition to those two channels, we're also still seeing a lot of cookieless targeting solutions being tested, you know, Google Chrome continues to push back their date for when the third party cookie is going to be deprecated. Who knows when that will happen, or if it will happen at this point because it gets pushed back every time you turn around. But that doesn't change what we need to do as marketers and continuing to test in that ensuing period. So we look at specifically trying to use first-party lists, clients CRM lists to find new customers off of those through similar audiences or reengage current customers depending on the client. In addition to that, testing a lot of contextual targeting solutions where we don't have to rely on a third-party cookie to reach relevant customers. Outside of the programmatic space. We're seeing a proliferation of SNAP-paid social media channels, I think, at least at our agency, a lot of social dollars had gone to Meta in the past and maybe Meta Instagram, but we're starting to see those budgets get split up between Meta and Instagram. And in addition to that channels like TikTok, which, of course is huge right now and Pinterest are starting to see a bit more investment. So we're seeing additional social channels that maybe we weren't seeing as much investment in the past. And then search is actually from our end starting to see a little bit of disruption, which is interesting, since that's a channel that at least from my outside programmatic point of view has seemed pretty regular for a while. But with things like AI and ChatGPT we're seeing some changes. And that's kind of twofold on one end, that's the you know, and this might not affect necessarily directly the purchasing or conversion side of things. But in the consideration phase, if people are trying to look something up where maybe they would arrive on a brand's page to learn about a certain topic. Now they can learn that via AI. So maybe they don't go to your customers page to learn about what they're searching for. On the other side of things we're seeing, you know, the ChatGPT can be a help in terms of efficiency if you need to create a lot of new ad copy. You know, I saw an article recently where someone actually not only got creative copy for search from ChatGPT, but also was able to establish parameters for the testing. So ChatGPT was actually able to pass that back why they put together version A versus version B, which is pretty interesting. I know a lot of people like to write their own copy but you know, sometimes it is good to get an outside perspective. Even if it's not a human. So it's interesting to see how that might change things as well. But those are the big trends that I'm seeing so far this year.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:15:09)Wow, that's definitely a lot of things changing. And keeping all of these changes in mind, if you could, you know, give us top five ways to optimize a full funnel strategy across industries, platforms, and channels, what would they be?\n\n\n\nAdam  (00:15:26)Yeah, I think the number one thing that I think is extremely important when you're looking at a full funnel strategy, is to establish your KPIs. And by this, I mean, you're gonna have different goals across your funnel, and you need to make sure that you're not judging the different parts of the funnel on one specific metric. And what I mean is, return on ad spend is probably the king metric for all anyone that has revenue in their campaigns. But when you're looking at the difference between CTV and brand search, you're not going to be able to compare both of those the same way like your CTV is not going to be driving the CPA return on ad spend, your brand searches, you have to understand what is success look like for top of funnel? Does that is that gonna be you know, reaching frequency goals? Is that a brand list study, but you really have to determine between you and your client, what does success look like for top of funnel to make sure that you're going in the right direction. Same thing with middle of the funnel. Like are what kind of KPIs are you looking there? Because you're not looking to drive conversions yet, you're really just trying to drive that traffic and that information gathered. So is that going to be time on site? As I can be in, you know, how, what is the bounce rate on your page, like a lot of these, you know, your Google Analytics metrics there, I find are extremely helpful for middle of the funnel. And then bottom of the funnel, or you know, pretty much all the metrics that we like to use already. So return on ad spend, CPA, things like that. I think so just going through and establishing all of your KPIs with your client at the outset, will really help to ensure that you're continuing to drive success and then can help add dollars to top of funnel, middle of funnel because you're seeing the success there. And then, you know, tracking like, okay, now that we've seen success at the top, in the middle of the funnel, are we also increasing and improving our efficiencies at the bottom of the funnel at the same time? So just understanding the different KPIs but also looking at everything in conjunction. So I guess that's the first thing I guess another thing would be to align your messaging and your creative with your objective. So I see a lot of times, because creative, it takes it's a lot of heavy lifting to do. It's extremely difficult sometimes to stratify your messaging for upper funnel and bottom of the funnel. But we do want to make sure that when we're doing ads to top of the funnel that you have messaging that correlates. So things like learn more versus buy now can be a very simple way to change what your call to action is on your messaging. But you want your top of funnel to be more, this is our brand, this is who we are. And then as you go down the funnel, you're adding unique selling propositions and things of that nature to really drive home, why they should be buying. And then finally, bottom of funnel is just very much just like a lot of the times we see things like doing percent off or sales or promos are really helpful at the bottom of the funnel where you don't want to start those messaging at the top of the funnel, because then you just are become the sales kind of brand. I guess the next thing would be to continue AB testing different tactics to make sure that you're using the right tools to hit your established KPIs. So if we go back to the first point, you know, you're setting the KPIs by part of the funnel. As you're running different tactics, you want to make sure you're continuing to test to make sure that you're hitting the KPIs with your different tactics within the funnel. So by that I mean if you're doing awareness campaign, and you're running you know CTV versus digital out-of-home, really understanding like okay, you know, what within CTV is driving the metrics, what within digital out-of-home is driving the metrics? Are we getting, you know, the right reach and frequency? Are we seeing the brand list studies improve? So just continuing to AB test, I think is extremely important, especially in digital marketing, where we're able to get this really quick feedback I think just testing and digital marketing is always going to be. And I guess, the next thing that I would want to talk about in terms of optimizing is, you know, as I've just mentioned, for top of funnel is leveraging brandless studies for upper funnel, this is something that we've seen emerge, especially from a tech perspective from a lot of our partners is this has become a lot more turnkey than it has in the past. So I know things such as like YouTube and Facebook, you have to hit certain spend thresholds to get studies there. And so they run those very well and very efficiently. But in no partners that we've run with from StackAdapt, and Trade Desk and other things, they've made it very turnkey to run these studies in platform and you actually get the results in fairly real time in platform. So it is an upper funnel technique, or testing technique that you're able to use. It does take a lot longer than your standard conversions and clicks and things like that. But it is something from a technical standpoint that has been made much easier. And definitely would recommend leveraging to help optimize your full funnel campaigns, kind of one final thing is an invite sounds silly, but be patient. I think one of the things that we really want to do as digital marketers is, you know, we have our weekly calls with clients, we want to show like, hey, we're making this change, we're making this change, look at all the cool things we're doing. But when it comes to looking at the full funnel, I really push that you need to have patience, because there's times when we look at our consumer journey, especially like we'll run like have campaign manager and we're able to look across all the different touchpoints sometimes it takes 12 to 14 days for someone to you know, initially see an impression, and then they convert. And these are, and I've seen this for you know, very quick part like things that we naturally think are quick purchases, e-commerce purchases, 30% of their conversions will take will take at least 14 days. So, that's just the quick purchases. So there's a lot of times, especially with the attribution windows that we're used to using in top of funnel and programmatic, the 30-Day view and click windows. Sometimes it takes you know, the 30 days for you to be running for you even know what's working and what's not working. So while I know I said earlier that you always want to be testing and optimizing. That's definitely always going to be the case, I do think that stressing patience is also key to just making sure that you're not changing direction when you just don't have enough data.\n\n\n\nSneha  (00:22:58)I think whatever you share today can be super useful to not just people starting off right now, but to people who have been in that in the industry for a really long time. So thanks so much for all those tips and tricks you shared. Great to have the both of you here. So we've come to the end of our conversation. Thank you once again, for joining us and to you, the one who stuck around till the very end listening to this, make sure you subscribe to the podcast to listen to new episodes right when they drop, share it with your teammates, it could be a cool resource to post on your office work chat as a recommendation. So go ahead, do that. And if you want to get in touch, write to us at academy@stackadapt.com. That's academy@stackadapt.com we have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesday. So stay tuned. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:23:45)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPodcast Banner Title"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-funnels-demystified","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-funnels-demystified","name":"Marketing Funnels Demystified | StackAdapt","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#website"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-funnels-demystified#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240430104445/chris_barr_stackadapt_podcast_s4e1.webp?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1","datePublished":"2023-08-15T14:41:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:37:46+00:00","description":"Learn how to build a full-funnel marketing strategy and optimize it for your marketing campaigns. Listen to our How Agencies Thrive podcast.","inLanguage":"en-US"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-e-commerce-campaigns#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-e-commerce-campaigns"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Winning E-commerce With Programmatic Campaigns","datePublished":"2022-08-17T15:27:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:19+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-e-commerce-campaigns"},"wordCount":3707,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-e-commerce-campaigns#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502112323/praveen_victor_stackadapt_podcast_s3e1.webp?fit=600%2C600&ssl=1","keywords":["ecommerce","retail"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiscover the latest e-commerce trends and find out how digital marketers can leverage programmatic advertising for their e-commerce campaigns.\n\n\n\nPraveen Victor | Head of Growth, Clutch\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)It's high time, marketers should think about adapting to a full-funnel strategy because focusing on a low-funnel or mid-funnel silos are not going to help anyone to accelerate their growth. Keep all your top-of-funnel investment more addressable, create a shareable KPI between teams, work on your media mix, model and create focus groups within your team.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:25)But then you think about the social landscape, the research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints. So that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales,gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting and really is what's going to set you apart if you're tuning in, you're tuning into the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:49)A lot has changed post-pandemic in that light marketers have had to adopt new strategies to keep up with the changing digital landscape. Now the world has progressed so has advertising. Today we're exploring how agencies and brands can thrive in the post-pandemic world. We're joined by leaders in the industry to discuss the ways in which the digital marketing landscape has evolved the disruption that's been brought on by seemingly irreversible changes to the advertising industry, and what digital marketers can expect moving forwards. In this episode, we have Praveen from Clutch and he brings in years of experience in the digital marketing space with a focus on e-commerce. The most exciting part about this episode is the inside scoop that we're going to get by looking at the impact and growth that's been possible with the inclusion of programmatic is a critical part of their digital marketing strategy. As always, thank you for tuning in and enjoy this episode of How Agencies Thrive podcast. So welcome, Praveen. Great to have you on the episode, as we always like to do, we want to pass it over to our guests to tell us a little bit about themselves. So in your case, tell us a little bit about Clutch your experience in the industry and some areas of expertise that you have.\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:01:58)Thank you, Matt. I'm head of growth and performance for Clutch. I've been in the industry for almost 15 years, primarily working on the e-commerce space in the last six to seven years. And Clutch, I joined Clutch around January of this year, it's about six months, six amazing months, I would say Clutch is the first and largest online car retailer with 1000s of quality pre-owned vehicles available to be purchased online and delivered directly to your door. And we also like you know, kind of change the way how people buy cars, and sell their cars in Canada. So super excited to be a representative of Clutch, and really tells a great story about like, you know, how we are completely the disruptor in the industry, which Clutch has been pretty stagnant for years.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:48)Awesome. Well, it's great to have you on this episode. And, as we were chatting before, what we're going to do is we have about four main questions that we're going to cover, and halfway through, we'll take a quick break, and then finish out strong with some trends and strategies that advertisers and brands can be using. So to start out, I wanted to know, you know, and you can go as broad as you'd like to on this. Let's talk about some trends in the last year that you've noticed in the e-commerce automotive space.\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:03:16)Yeah, I think like, you know, one of the biggest change, I've seen as people start to adapt to the concept of buying a car online, as like any other e-commerce business, like, we need to have a study on mindset and understanding around how someone can buy some of a big bucket items online. For example, when Amazon was launched, like, people, I don't know, like how people perceive that as part of the concept of buying things online. I think that's the same story happened in the automotive industry as well. But that has changed quite a lot over the last 12 months, I would say, especially like Canada, US audiences like to adapt to it like pretty quickly. But for Canadian market, like it's fairly a new concept, the more and more credibility we have created over the last 12 months. I think like people's consumption around like, you know, buying a car online kind of changed. And there is going to be an onward and upward journey going forward.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:18)And I'll throw you a bit of an audible here. I guess from the consumer perspective, is this something that you've noticed that consumers have actually liked and found that it makes it a little bit easier compared to, you know, your traditional process of going into a dealership or going into like a used automotive car lot? Like is this something that consumers have been pretty warm to or is there still kind of that competition of the brick-and-mortar retail experience for buying cars?\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:04:48)Yeah, 100% I mean, like in a recent study, which we conducted, more than 76% of people said they prefer spending less time visting dealership to find the right car and from a brand perspective, like, you know, we ensure Clutch ensure a complete peace of mind for each car buying, we offer them like a 10-day money back guarantee, we also offer comprehensive warranty coverage. So I mean, like, you know, the more and more assurance and more and more customer obsessive service, we started giving, I think like, I think that number is keep on growing. One good example is like, if you check our customer rating on some of those revenue review platforms, we always get like more than 4.5. And we have more than like, you know, 1000s of reviews online as well. So it adds a lot of credibility to the service we are offering. And it's yeah, as I said, like it's onward and upward joining from now on.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:47)Yeah, that's great to hear. And one final question I had on this was, you know, we've looked at, especially on the programmatic side, we've looked at how, how the pandemic impacted kind of online industry, you know, how e-commerce platforms seem to develop and how the pandemic was almost a blessing for a lot of businesses. And it seems like online, purchasing a vehicle would have been something that benefited greatly from the pandemic, because people didn't have the luxury of going into a dealership like they traditionally did. So it's, well, if you need a car, you have to figure out a way to get one in a way that at the time was going to be very safe. And it was going to be reliable. So is this something that Clutch, you know, really benefited from? I know, you said that you joined Clutch in, you know, just the last six months, but kind of going back candidate before your time, was this something that they've benefited from a lot?\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:06:44)Absolutely. I mean, like in a world where inventory demand are super high. And availabilities are super low, I think like that whole persona around, you know, where am I gonna get my car, like, you know, I'm in need of a bigger car for my family, like all those important decision-making steps. I think like, it is critical for us to be there. Whenever people think about the next big purchase, apparently, it's a second biggest purchase in, in Canada, right, like, so, I think, in this post-pandemic, or, yeah, in the post-pandemic world, it is important, we make a brand we are making, you know, we are improving lives and earning trust by delivering the driving needs of our customer in a greater scale. One good example is like we are almost serving all of the provinces in Canada, except Manitoba right now. And we are planning to expand it to almost like 90% of Canadians by 2023. So it's a testament of how futuristic we are thinking about this industry, and the opportunity in this industry is like, quite large.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:07:56)Awesome. That's really great to hear. What we'll do now is it shift gears a little bit more because you know, as we all know, StackAdapt is a programmatic DSP want to talk a little bit about how you've leveraged programmatic and how it’s benefited, you know, building awareness and driving conversions for Clutch. So, you know, with respect to to measurement, what has your experience been with, with programmatic as opposed to, you know, a traditional social media strategy that a lot of brands were running before?\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:08:30)It's always tough to attribute to full-funnel model, especially like you know, if you're starting investing around a lot of brand activities, like it's always a tougher attribution to achieve so, I think like what StackAdapt brought into our table this year especially is it creates addressable top-of-funnel media investment for us like we started leveraging some of those, you know, really strong conversion and cross channel, and cross-device conversion paths to identify some of our early stage customers who are still in awareness and consideration stage and leveraged StackAdapt, you know, different type of tactics and strategy to target them throughout the different stages of the funnel. And it also helps us to, you know, move them away from an awareness stage into like a consideration and all the way down to purchase decision stage and the biggest success for us is we will be able to measure all of this within the platform. So number one addressable top-of-funnel, media investment and number two is like the shareable KPI and also the number three years It also allows us to create a media mix model where we can tap into this user cohorts in whatever journey they are and whichever stages they are.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:09:52)And I am curious though, with automotive, is I would assume the sales cycle is actually pretty long. So it's important to continue to engage with customers at every single stage. Is that fair to say? Is that something that you guys have experienced? Because you did say, you know, it is the I've heard that too, that it's one of the second biggest purchase decisions that people make. I think the first biggest is probably their house. But you know, it's not like people are just going and picking a car off of Amazon and having it shipped to you the next day. It's something you have to research and make sure you're making the right decision for your needs.\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:10:32)Yeah, absolutely. But you will be surprised to see, you know, the purchase cycle is a vastly different depends on individual user persona and user cohorts. For someone who are in market for car generally, like they start the research process about like two to three months before they making their purchase decision. But some also make some immediate, trigger-based decisions. For example, let's say if you're moving away from from downtown, you're moving into suburb, and then you realize, like, you need a car, or let's say, like, you know, you're about to have a baby, and you realize, like, you need a bigger car. So those are like, you know, lifestyle, and life changes even, which also triggers a lot of car purchases. So for those users like that's ideally like a shorter purchase window for someone who is passively looking, I think it's important for us to be omnipresent wherever they are, like whether they are in market right now, or whether they will be in market in the next six months. So I think that having a full-funnel programmatic strategy allows us to be in that space and effectively, like communicate and engage with those user cohorts throughout their journey.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:11:50)Perfect. And we had a second part to this question, it was more around, you know, how advertisers and brands can find success in their media mix, it seems like, you know, Clutch is using a lot of programmatic, but for someone that is, you know, traditionally using social and they're trying to kind of transition into the programmatic space, or even mix the two and reach different personas and different platforms, is there any kind of secret to success or any best practices that you found doing this?\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:12:22)I think like you can measure this in two different ways. Like, one is through the platform and the tools available through those platforms. The other way is using some internal data to really like up our media mix model analysis, we actually tried it both ways, like one is through the internal studies, like you know, Brand Lift, measurement, social measurement, and any organic or direct growth left. So that's like number one, which we internally run. But we also work with external party to really understand what is the impact of those, you know, full-funnel-modeling and full-funnel activation? One good example is, we also try to understand what is audience propensity scoring, and what is the incrementality multiplier for each and every cohort, which really helps us to understand how impactful it is and what is the point of diminishing return for us, if frequencies is a big priority for us in some of those campaigns. This also helps us to be more efficient, like when we spend this marketing dollar, in the different parts of the funnel.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:13:34)Perfect. And in this half of the episode, what we're going to be doing is talking about how to connect the dots in a full-funnel strategy and look at some best practices for creating a really solid customer journey online. Additionally, what we're going to talk about is the future of the automotive vertical, the future of e-commerce and what trends some advertisers should be looking out for. So Praveen, what we'll do here is start with a question, you know, to a marketer who's listening to this? How would you recommend that they connect the dots from the upper funnel to the lower funnel using various digital marketing strategies?\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:14:11)Yeah, I think like there are, I would rank four areas of focus if you really, really like to connect the dots, from top-of-funnel to bottom-of-funnel. One is like I think like all marketers, we all agree that marketing funnels are not linear, right? Like it's not linear anymore. Could be linear back in the 1980s 1990s. But marketing funnels are not linear anymore. It's a messy mix. So it constantly urges all the marketers to be omnipresent, and in each stages of the funnel, so I would rank a top four area of focus if you're really really looking forward and measure success in a full funnel model. One is like you know, create an addressable top-of-funnel media investment, right like, there are like a lot of digital solutions like CTV, audio, which now we are able to measure impact on it even on like a transactional metrics, right? So try to create that addressable top-of-funnel media investment, and also create a shareable KPIs. You know, a lot of these companies like brand team and performance team always work in a different functionality, but creating a common shareable KPI between those two teams like, you know, really helped you to navigate through all those hurdles in between, especially on the measurement side. And really understand and try to plan your media mix model like why it's important to create that media mix model and, and what are those user cohorts you're targeting in each channel through each stages of the funnel, which will again help you to understand audience propensity scoring, and also like any incrementality, multivariable will be able to measure as well. And the last one is like operating model, I think like, cross-functionality. And cross-functional collaboration is like always a key and this especially like, you know, if we are tracking some of those measurements, studies, lift studies, or even, you know, like improvements studies, it's very important that you constantly collaborate with your product engineering team, because the cross-functional team collaboration is like, really, really important. Even like, you know, to some extent, if you can create a focus group, it would be also helpful for the team to start addressing all this measurement and analysis back into  the company or back into the owners.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:16:33)Awesome. And to tailor this question, I'm also interested to know, you know, what are some best practices for creating a really solid customer journey? You know, how can we build more trust? How can we make consumers more comfortable during that purchase process, especially when it comes to a vehicle?\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:16:55)Identifying those customer personas is like the number one part like, you know, we need to have absolute understanding around who's our customer who's our target audience and where they live, what kind of platform they engage, what's their go-to place if they are in a research mode. So understanding that is like the first thing, and identifying, you know, the budget allocation for each stage, and how important is for you to achieve your, let's say, in-period goal versus like long-term goal, having a solid balance between achieving your period in-month target, but also trying to build and nurture long-term, like long-term cohorts for your business is also important key metrics. Because the end of the day, like if you're too focused on low-funnel and your in-period target, then you're missing out targeting users who you might be easily convert in the next two months, or next three months. So always try to have a balance between those two. But again, I think, the end of the day, like having a solid understanding of our core audience will really guide us to pick the right channel. And that will open up you know how efficient we can scale and gain efficiency and maturity across all those platforms and channels as well.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:18:12)So getting to the last question here, Praveen, I'm interested to know what the future of the automotive verticals going to look like and the future of the e-commerce vertical. And what trends advertisers should be looking out for and paying attention to as we head into the latter portion of 2022 and into 2023?\n\n\n\nPraveen (00:18:35)In a world where you can order food at a click of a button or watch pretty much anything you want from your phone. There are a lot of people who are still haggling over price and pouring through the mountains of paperwork to buy a car what Clutch is doing right now is like we are just simply modernizing the car buying process and giving Canadians a better way to buy cars. So I think like this trend will continue and evolve and grow into a real disruptor in the auto industry market. Once you try one of our service, you will be surprised and will be a partner. To be honest, a lot of our customers who bought through Clutch, there's a huge word-of-mouth, and they shared their experience with their friends and families. And that's how like, you know, the popularity of our brand kept on growing and growing. So it adds a lot of trust and credibility to who we are and what we do right now. It's high time marketers should think about adapting to a full-funnel strategy because focusing on a low-funnel or mid-funnel silos are not going to help anyone to accelerate their growth. Like if you are looking to grow your business. You know, year over year, I think marketers has to adapt to a full funnel strategy. And all those more full-funnel strategy has to have the four pillars I mentioned in your previous question like you know, again, I'm repeating it but it's very, very important like, as a market as we have to think through this one as, again, keep all your top-of-funnel investment more addressable, create a shareable KPI between teams, work on your media mix model, and create focus groups within your team. If one team focused on media buying the other team always constantly run rigorous experiments around those channels. So those are the four things I would again, reiterate people should think about. When they think about like, what's the future of e-commerce in the space.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:20:35)Just want to give you a quick thank you for joining us on the episode. We appreciate your insight on all the questions and to all of our listeners who are in the automotive space and in the e-commerce space. We hope that you took as much away from this episode as I did. And until then, this has been How Agencies Thrive podcast and we wish you the best of luck.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:20:57)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you liked what you heard, then there are three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can find us at stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/score-big-with-in-game-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/score-big-with-in-game-advertising"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Score Big With In-Game Advertising","datePublished":"2022-08-31T16:16:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:20+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/score-big-with-in-game-advertising"},"wordCount":3372,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/score-big-with-in-game-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502121436/aditi_ramesh_stackadapt_podcast_s3e2.webp?fit=601%2C600&ssl=1","keywords":["in-game","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Advertising channels"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe break down what in-game advertising is and explore ways advertisers can benefit from this exciting and emerging programmatic channel.\n\n\n\nAditi Ramesh | Director of Programmatic, Anzu\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)I do have five handy tips that can probably get you started. If you're familiar with building out of campaign strategies, these steps are really, really going to feel familiar to you. First thing, create your advertising assets in all the common sizes. So you have, I have a piece of paper here that shows me, like, you know, you have your 300 by 250s, you have your 40x480 by 320s. These are ad sizes that you're familiar with. And you can probably understand and identify those creative sizes. Two, ensure your ads are informative and self-explanatory. Three, make your ads messaging short and precise. Four, keep your video content super brief and five, cast a wide net with your possible games list. So think about scale and think about opportunity.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:47)But then you think about the social landscape. The research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:11)A lot has changed post-pandemic and because of this, marketers have had to adopt dynamic strategies to keep up with the changing digital landscape. Now if the world has progressed alongside the ways in which we advertise, now's the perfect time to talk about an emerging programmatic channel that's making waves and pushing boundaries. This channel is in-game. Today we're exploring how marketers and agencies can thrive. And we're joined by leaders in the industry to discuss the ways in which the digital marketing landscape has evolved. The disruption that the post-pandemic has brought with irreversible changes to the advertising industry, and what digital marketers can expect moving forwards. In this episode, we have Aditi joining us from Anzu, where she brings in her expert take on the in-game industry and its place within programmatic advertising. We're really excited to have you on this episode Aditi. And as always, what we like to do is bring our listeners up to speed, into the fold by learning a little bit about you. So what I'll do is pass it over to you tell us a little bit about yourself, your experience, and most importantly, what Anzu does.\n\n\n\nAditi (00:02:17)Thanks so much, Matt. And, thank you StackAdapt team for having me on the podcast today. It is very exciting. My name is Aditi Ramesh. I am the director of programmatic for Neymar markets here at Anzu. Anzu is the most advanced in-game ad solution for mobile PC console on Roblox. I manage our DSP partnerships here at Anzu. So hence our relationship with StackAdapt. Previously, I worked at companies like Bit Switch, Triple Lift, and also I was hands-on keyboard at a company called Ad Roll. That's where I started in ad tech. And so I get really excited talking to advertisers talking to DSPs, and talking to brands and agencies, about all things in-game. And thanks so much for having me here today.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:03)Awesome. Well, it's great to have you. And to let our listeners know how this episode is gonna go. We have five main questions. But to get started, I wanted to gauge your expertise, learn a little bit more about this format. So for someone who is learning about in-game for the first time, this is their first time exposed to this format. What is important to know, and why is it something that's on the rise and becoming a lot more popular in these recent years?\n\n\n\nAditi (00:03:33)This is a good question. So to set the stage, in-game ads sit natively within gaming environments on 3d objects like buildings, billboards, around pro sports stadiums, and they mirror ads that you would expect to find in real life. So the placements are non-intrusive, and they're designed to complement the gameplay, putting players first and then enhancing the actual realism of the experience. So let's talk about, you know, it's important to understand who benefits from in-game advertising. And in-game advertising, it's emerged as an advertising format that we believe benefits all parties, the advertiser, the developer, and the gamer. So breaking it down from an advertising perspective, you can reach an extremely wide, so their scale and then diverse audience. So to put it into perspective, there's almost 3.2 billion gamers worldwide in an environment where your audience is incredibly engaged. So that's interesting for brands and agencies. From a developer perspective, by including in-game ads or ads in within your game, you can benefit from having a reliable and consistent revenue stream that takes nothing from the gaming experience itself. From a player's perspective, you can enjoy the games for free or a fraction of the cost of what would happen if there was no ads to be in put in that game to begin with. That also makes many gaming environments feel more realistic since you'll start to see real ads from some of your favourite real-life brands rather than fake ones. Some game developers, they end up using fake ads, especially in racing and simulation games, to add a sense of realism. Moreover, you know, we've found some evidence that gamers actually might like this and want this. So putting players first is extremely important to us. And last year, we created, we had a study, a research study to understand how US gamers felt about in-game advertising, and we found some interesting results. For example, 70% of gamers are positive or neutral towards gaming in-game advertising. 50% of US gamers say that it's more important to see their favorite brands in games, and two-thirds of US gamers would welcome more in-game advertising within that environment. So all of these things are incredibly important to understand if you're a first-timer. Here are some tips that you could probably follow.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:06:06)Perfect that definitely sums up question one, I think, when I was learning about in-game, and we're working on some of our academy content, one of the big things was that, you know, it's it's non-skippable, it's like right up in your face really great for brand awareness, so. And you also mentioned that it adds a sense of realism to the game, it feels like you're actually in that environment. You know, we're used to seeing ads, so why wouldn't we see them in the gaming environment? So, that's all really good. And I think that that sums up the format really nicely. Moving on to question two here kind of to center in, let's talk about the key benefits of this. And mainly, you know, what kind of benefits does this serve for advertisers when it comes to the types of audiences that we can target and the type of reach that we can achieve through in-game?\n\n\n\nAditi (00:07:02)Sure. So, at Anzu, we've consciously built a flexible full-stack solution that offers innovation and then namespace so our core asset is our battle-tested, secure SDK, which can connect and support all major gaming engines otherwise, where people make games, including unity, unreal, cry engine, and proprietary engines. Another significant product that we've been able to patent is a 3d ad tracker that allows for measurement and tracking within ads in-game. Our in-game advertising technology deploys ads directly into gameplay. And ads are blended into games through basic integration that allows us to access the game in game engines, textures, physics, and geometry. While textures are updated to present, the ad content, physics, and geometry are used to print measure ad viewability. So our blended ads are designed in a way that they deliver high performance with a small footprint. Also, it's important to note that in the coming future, you will be able to add different types of vendors, like Lotame to your ad campaigns and be able to target specific audiences through that.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:20)Perfect. So what I think our listeners are typically very receptive to, you know, taking that kind of the important pieces to get up to speed on the format. And then how can we make that a little bit more practical? You know, how can they start using this in their campaign? And how can they get into that frame of mind where they would use this in their campaign? So what we were hoping to learn from you today was some of those best practices. So think about the advertiser that is just getting started on this for the first time. What do they need to do? What's going to set them up for success? And, you know, are there any success stories that you would want to share? You know, you don't have to name clients or anything like that, but just some, you know, examples where someone or some campaign has really benefited and succeeded from using in game advertising.\n\n\n\nAditi (00:09:15)Sure. First thing you have to understand is, like any other format, there's no secret recipe to success, right? So there's a lot of trial and error to understand what sees and works and resonates for your particular audience. Saying that I do have five handy tips that can probably get you started. If you're familiar with building out of campaign strategies, these steps are really, really going to feel familiar to you. First thing, create your advertising assets in all the common sizes. So you have I have a piece of paper here that shows me like, you know, you have your 300 by 250s. You have your 40x480 by 320s. These are ad sizes that you're familiar with, and you can probably understand and identify those creative sizes. Two, ensure your ads are informative and self-explanatory. Three, make your ads messaging short and precise. Four, keep your video content super brief and five, cast a wide net with your possible games list. So think about scale and think about opportunity. So let's talk about creating advertising assets in common creative asset sizes. First, make sure that you have all the common creative sizes. These will be your standard banner ad sizes, like I mentioned, either created from scratch, or they can be repurposed from current creatives using display campaigns elsewhere. By providing more ad sizes and creative sizes, you're going to be able to be featured in more impressions and it is going to increase your brand awareness for your campaign. So you should be able to utilize your existing assets, while also being able to make those assets work for the wider range of sizes that are provided in-game. Two, ensure your ads are informative and self-explanatory. So picture yourself in the gamer's shoes. They're not purposefully playing the game to look at your ad. They're simply just there to enjoy the gaming experience, right? So for instance, if they're playing a racing game, the player is going to be focused on the track and in the car, so and as a result, you might only have a few seconds to get your brand's message across to them before they've moved on from your ad placement. So make your brand messaging brief, impactful and memorable. As clicks in this is a really important thing to think about as clicks aren't available within in-game advertising. Your goal as an advertiser should be to focus on the ad's creative design and stand out and elicit brand recognition from gamers that see your ad. So consider using noticeable marks and logos that stand out to keep any textual designs and your ad creative short and to the point, the bigger the clearer, the easier to see or read your ad, the better. Make your ads messaging short and super precise. That's number three. So as we mentioned before, short and precise messaging is better. Point blank, when it comes to choosing a call to action or CTA for your ad. Make it short and simple. Avoid descriptive flowery messaging and flavour. That's something that gets your audience do exactly what you need them to do \"Now available, next company\". So that's a good example for you, Matt. We changed \"Shop now\" to \"Now available. New sneakers now available at www.buymysneakers.com\" Use the same principles that we use to apply to a display campaign. But bear in mind that the viewer won't actually be able to click through to your website. This is important. Remember that when a user is playing a game and your ad is inside it, you know you don't want to overwhelm them with unnecessary text, and they won't even read it. Keep video content brief. So I mentioned this, they're playing a game, you see a billboard, you're going around a roundabout, you know, the best length for an in-game video ad as recommended, is six seconds. This gives the player enough time to view the ad and retain the relevant information while also allowing for enough real-time measurement of impressions. However, that doesn't mean that for all your videos should be six seconds. And that's it. Experiment with different timings. Any videos up to 15 seconds could also work well, depending on the gaming environment, should it be a static game, but 30 and 60 second videos are not recommended. So as your user sessions might be shorter in these they won't completely finish washing your ad. And last cast a wide net with your possible games list. Recently, there was an advertiser who had a very small games list because those were the only games that were available to them to target last year. Come this year, you want to be reviewing your games list, especially as new in-game partners are coming about. And you want to reach larger audiences for your in-game advertising. So we were able to propose, hey, look at this list. We have this many monthly active users for these specific games that are within your contextual audiences and the client was very happy to add them to the whitelist. And so they were casting a wide net with the possible games list to increase their reach, and a targeting those audiences they're interested in. There are 3 billion gamers in the world so your target audiences are bound to overlap with a wide range of players. So don't only focus on one type of game, or platform, or genre, you might miss out on more valuable audiences along the way. Also, you don't want to forget and test and take learnings. For many brands gaming can seem like an unfamiliar space but by testing, trialing and optimizing your brands, you'll be able to find the perfect combination that works for your brand.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:58)Perfect. So, there we have it—five best practices for leveraging in-game. So, Aditi, what would you recommend for our listeners who are looking to add in-game to their media mix? How do they get started?\n\n\n\nAditi (00:15:14)Like all other ad formats in-game advertising can help round out your media plan and can complement your other advertising efforts. Many of the brands we work with use in-game advertising to help them reach audiences that they're struggling to reach via other platforms like Gen Z, people are spending a lot of time gaming more than they have been ever before. But it's not the only thing that they're doing. They're also going out there streaming shows, they're listening to music, and they're scrolling through social media, they have lives. Having an all-encompassing campaign with different touchpoints that stretches across multiple platforms can be extremely effective depending on your campaign schools. At Anzu, we know that being cross-platform is extremely important in an age where players are jumping between devices and screens all the time. That's why we have built out a cross-platform offering, meaning that you can reach platforms where wherever they're playing, regardless of whether that's mobile, PC, console, or even Roblox.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:16:15)So to tie things off here. Let's think about, you know, the immediate future. So the latter portion of 2022. But let's look at the end of 2023. What does in-game look like, you know, a year, year and a half from now? What are some trends? What are things that are coming up? What are things that advertisers should be weary of pretty much anything? You know, in-game, advertisers should be thinking of what does the future look like in this format?\n\n\n\nAditi (00:16:47)As more ad dollars start to move into gaming, and advertisers start to understand the massive opportunity that exists here. There will be probably foolproof media plans, and they'll need to be formed based on campaign goals. So that's step one is first example of a brand might want to use in-game advertising to spread brand awareness. As the user moves down the funnel they might offer them sponsored or in-game items to help build brand affinity and maybe hit them to make a purchase. It's also important to note that we're continuously looking and comparing gaming to other ad channels to help facilitate the shift and make the space feel familiar. So for example, we find an easy way to help those who don't understand in-game advertising is to explain in-game advertising, such as virtual out-of-home split placements. So as brands become more familiar with the space, new ways to reach consumers is going to emerge, which won't be constrained to ad practices of the yester years, gaming is still huge and extremely exciting environment full of possibilities and ways to reach consumers, which is not entirely possible and a lot of other linear based channels. And the prospect of the metaverse still looms, that word is still a buzzword. It's still looming, we all still working in 3d, the industry continues to grow, and advertisers continue to realize potential there is that exists within gaming. And there's never been a more exciting time to be a part of the industry.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:18:20)Perfect. Well, Aditi, this has been fantastic. I definitely feel like I've learned a lot more about in-game. We were talking before that, you know, as a part of our way to support our release and showcase some of our partnerships. You know, we put up many modules in the Academy to help people learn more about in-game and I feel a lot more informed now that you and I have had a chance to sit down, well virtually sit down and talk through this podcast. So to our listeners who are either working in-game or just getting started or thinking about getting started, we hope that you took away some valuable insights. And until then, I wish you the best of luck in your upcoming campaigns. And this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Thanks so much for listening.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:19:09)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there are three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can find us at stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/reach-voters-with-political-ads#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/reach-voters-with-political-ads"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Reach Voters With Digital Political Advertising","datePublished":"2022-09-14T16:49:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:20+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/reach-voters-with-political-ads"},"wordCount":6131,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/reach-voters-with-political-ads#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502125825/todd_van_etten_stackadapt_podcast_s3e3.webp?fit=601%2C600&ssl=1","keywords":["audience targeting","podcast","political"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at how programmatic advertising and strategies can drive political campaign performance and reach the right voters.\n\n\n\nTodd Van Etton | Chief Digital Strategist, The Herald Group\n\n\n\nNathan Saxman | Senior Account Executive, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Here they are with their family, they are cute, cuddly and pathetic. Here they are being tough on X, Y, or Z issue. That paints a much more colourful picture of a politician, which is always the goal. You know, in persuasion, you start with something like introducing the candidate, you try to make them human first. You try to say, here's how they got into this business, because they care about X, Y, and Z, just like you do, here's how they're gonna fight for you and why they deserve your vote.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:21)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints. So that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to lead to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results and audience targeting, and really, is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:46)A lot has changed in the last few years. And because of this, marketers have had to adopt dynamic new strategies to keep up with the changing digital landscape. Now, if the world has progressed, so have many of the ways of advertising and reaching your target audience. Depending on where you are in the world right now, you've probably noticed a lot of political campaigning and full swing. And if you're interested in peeling back the curtain, then we have a great episode for you today. In this episode, we have Nathan from StackAdapt. And Todd from The Herald Group, Todd brings in years of experience in political advertising. And with the election season in full swing and picking up lots of momentum, this episode is sure to help you gain a better understanding of the landscape as well as the rules to play by, and how to get an edge on competition with programmatic. So what we typically like to do with these episodes is give our audience a sense of who's on it. So what we'll do, Nathan, we'll start with you, you know, a little bit of an understanding of your experience, areas of expertise, how long have you been in the landscape, and then Todd we'll pass it over to you with the same questions. But if you could also tell us a little bit about The Herald Group, then we'll go ahead and get started. So starting with you, Nathan.\n\n\n\nNathan (00:01:56)Awesome. Thanks, Matt. So I'm Nathan Saxman. I'm an Account Executive at StackAdapt. I've got close to a decade of experience in politics started as a field organizer, and jumped agency side, originally working in fundraising and now shifting over into media buying, and I've been working with StackAdapt for a little over a year now.\n\n\n\nTodd (00:02:17)My name is Todd Van Etten. And I'm the Chief Digital Strategist at The Herald Group. I've been here for eight years, and I oversee digital advertising creative, and kind of the fun stuff that we get to do when running campaigns. I got my start in politics at the RNC, way back in 2005, when there were conversations about, you know, what is this Facebook thing? What is this Twitter thing? And does politics deserve any place on those platforms? I was firmly in the no camp, but I lost that battle. I was the RNC director, a digital director till about 2012 and then helped start a company with two former bosses called Crowd Verb that did large-scale semantic analysis, listening to conversations online and putting together public affairs campaigns based on the composition of, you know, how certain audiences we're talking about things in certain ways. From there, I went to Burson-Marsteller, a big global ad agency, where I was for about two years, and then I spent two years at a smaller PR firm. And before founding The Herald Group, kind of a good Goldilocks move of big to small to just right. But yeah, happy to talk politics today. It is in my blood. It's what we do. So excited to dive into it.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:32)Fantastic. Yeah, Todd, I didn't know you had been in it that long. But that's cool to see that. You know, you were there in the early days where social media was kind of the question of, hey, is this something that's going to work? Funny enough of how things have turned out today. And, you know, we'll get into it a little bit about how programmatic has really helped political advertisers in the bit of the drought that we've seen with social media. But you know, this episode is split up into four main questions, I'm sure there'll be a couple of things we find along the way. But we'll go through the first half, take a quick break, and then jump back into it. So starting out, and I'll leave the floor open to both of you to address this. But political is very unique as a vertical because unlike other verticals, your product is people, it's ideologies, it's a platform. That's not something you typically see with other verticals, because it's it's pretty intangible sometimes. And in that vein, with political advertising naturally, there's this idea of persuasion. So to both of you, how does political persuasion typically work? And what are some of these rules you know, whether they're written or unwritten that you can play by, and what lines should you avoid crossing with with political advertising?\n\n\n\nTodd (00:04:58)Starting with the second point of course, you know, lines being crossed, there are legal distinctions with what you're able to do. You know, if you're working for a PAC, or a C3, C436, the nature of the entity that you are is going to inform the types of messages you're able to put out there, whether it's direct advocacy, whether it's issue advocacy, that kind of stuff. There are different legal distinctions, which means different reporting requirements for each of those things. But I think, you know, political persuasion generally is one of the big, probably the biggest bucket when you talk about segmenting your audiences, and your messages and your campaigns in political advertising. Generally, you know, you could put them into four big buckets. Persuasion is moving people, that is a whole bunch of testing and test learning grows, is what we'd like to say, there is, you know, an absentee early vote bucket, which is usually separate. One might move from persuasion to be AB/EV, or EV. But the idea is, you know, can you decide if people are going to be early voters, that is, people who are going to vote before election day, or vote by mail, you need to treat them separately as a universe for the final phase of a political campaign, which is get out to vote. You know, before you could go heavy before the first Tuesday in November, and say, Everybody get out the vote on Tuesday. You know, let's help you find your polling place. Do you need a ride? How can we make sure that this is a done deal? It is much more different. Now, I think in 2020, we saw lots of the rules change, all of those things means that the dynamics of the campaign has changed. For persuasion. You know, it's funny, I had a political science professor in college, talk about how campaign, political science is not like, you know, it's not beakers and Meyer Flynn, flasks and other things like that, I probably got that wrong. I'm not a science guy. But it's not done in a laboratory. You know, it's much more hearts and minds and things like that. But in many ways, I have always found that digital advertising is a lot like a science, where the testing, the little dab of this little dab of that, what is the fruit that comes from that all of those things, it is amazing, the immediacy with which you can get responses, the quantifiable nature of just about everything online, whether it's polling, whether it's obviously election day, that kind of thing, the movement of audiences through a persuasion campaign, the way that you are able to learn about all of those things on the internet. And test assumptions is pretty amazing. So generally, you know, you'd start with the voter file, which are up kept by generally the parties, although the third, you know, 3rd-party companies do have them. It's a general list of who is registered, who's not many states have partisan registration, they have their primaries, and you can kind of get a sense of who the high propensity voters are, who the high propensity Republican or Democrat voters are. And based on that you can amalgamate, you can add many different pieces of information, and derive models to say, okay, these are the low propensity voters, these people only make it out in, you know, presidential election years, what message can we put in front of them, to make sure they're going to come out in this off-election year, for this ballot initiative, or for this primary, that kind of stuff. That model is then going to say, you know, this is your universe of people who are persuadable, we generally know they know how to vote, they generally vote the right way, when they do, they just don't do it in the primary election. You know, let's go up with here are five major issues that are in the zeitgeist, let's figure out which of those messages appeal to this person the most. And then you get in front of them as many times as you can. And you generally see through things like polling through things like, you know, brand surveys, favourability, any the kind of quantifiable metric, if that person has moved, you know, ideally, you want them to come to your website and say, yes, I am excited about this candidate. And I'm going to show up on this off-election cycle. Here I am. Short of that, you could obviously see if they did at the end of the campaign, but generally that's how persuasion works. It is that testing methodology, it is getting in front of people a lot of times with different varying creative and seeing if you can get judging your receptivity for each of those messages and figuring out which one is going to help them do the right thing on election day.\n\n\n\nNathan (00:09:41)The only thing that I really want to add to that is you know, Matt, you alluded to some of the differences between other verticals and political that to Todd's point. A lot of that iterative testing takes place in other verticals. The key difference is how rapid it is. The iterations that you put forward the different messages that you're testing in such a short timeframe, because you have things like hard deadlines, ie elections, that you need to make sure you're getting your effective messaging out before that point. That's really what drives political. And Todd, you alluded to some of the tools that are available in the programmatic space, you know, we always offer our lifts studies, where you can very, you know, in a customizable way, offer a question to your audiences and evaluate how your messaging is influencing their propensity to vote, or how receptive they are to certain messaging that you're putting out there. And that always complements outside polling that political organizations are doing as well. So lots of different measurement tactics that are in that space, that just make sure that your evolution of messaging is much more rapid before those firm deadlines.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:10:58)Fantastic. Well, thank you to both of you for such a strong start to the episode. It really brings us into the second question that we had, I mean, to think about comparing, last year where we were at last year with political advertising to not just where we are now, but where it's going. And further to that, you know, what kind of role has technology played? So if we think of things like audiences, identity, attribution, how has that started to transform the political advertising space?\n\n\n\nTodd (00:11:36)Colossally is the answer. So much, so that it's hard to stay on top of that stuff and keep up a day job of helping our clients and then actually executing on on campaigns. I mean, I think that the general shift that we've seen, obviously 2016 was probably the biggest inflection year where people realize the power of data and the power of external data, which caused in the walled gardens know your Twitter's and your Facebook's to greatly limit what you're able to bring to the platform or take from the platform. All of those things, I think, have pushed the political advertising industry and I think all legit industries, more toward network advertising and things away from socials. You know, before, I think it was great that Facebook knew everything about your targets. I say that flippantly knew a whole lot about your targets, and could help derive personas, hey, I want to reach unregistered voters here who care about this. Facebook knew exactly who that was. But Facebook would not give you any information about who they are, how to reach them, that kind of stuff. They'd say, give us your ad dollars, give us your creative and we'll show it to those people. You obviously get quantifiable things from those if you're looking for clicks, if you're looking for signups if you're looking for donations, those would come from there. But you don't get any information. You can't use any of that targeting to inform other segments of your ad campaign. And knowing that the political walled gardens are the walled gardens generally are finite. Obviously, you want to use similar big analytics to inform other parts of your advertising. So I think, you know, the prevalence of 3rd-party data vendors who were able to do the really complex modeling to help drive how you target means that then you can do a lot of your analysis offline, derive your models, either one-to-one or you know, zip plus four zip, somehow get a list of people who you think are going to be right for your message, and then onboard them through a tool like StackAdapt, where you can hit them with any number of advertising channels. What role has technology played an audience, Nathan and I were chatting before this. And I think this goes into a bit,  of the next step to obviously the amount of channels has increased greatly. The maturity of the channels has greatly improved. So things like CTV, which is much more mellifluously integrated into your other digital campaigns in a way that before it wasn't. It's no longer a you know, a separate vendor who needs a separate line item who's going to build things and report on things entirely separately, you now have kind of an apples to apples, at least in the efficacy of a separate channel like that against something like digital video, different pricing structure, obviously different occasion to use them. But you can generally get an apples-to-apples, I understand when I see metrics from this platform, how it compares to this. And because of that, as a political scientist, as a strategist, I know when to utilize one and not the other or one or the other in a way that was really hard before. So I think when it comes to technology, the planning tools that are out there, where I can start with an audience and say I would like to persuade this group of people in this state, you know, the technology exists to say generally, that segment is interesting, Todd, here's the best way to find them. For persuasion, you're probably gonna want these channels. Here's the ideal meal media mix that you'll employ to hit them with the requisite reach and frequency ahead of a campaign. And of course, in that, like we mentioned before, you throw in a few different creatives, and you see if one gets more engagement than another. It's all of that stuff, I think is worlds different than what it was in previous cycles. And it's also only going further, I think, you know, CTV is probably the biggest one, I think I heard this year that CTV is taking up more ad dollars than any other medium. It has surpassed cable this cycle. I mean, that's an amazing stat, I think, when it comes to where it was even two years ago. But I think with planning tools, you know, integrating things like radio, digital radio, podcasts, broadcast is kind of on my list for dreams. But that's probably a while off from that, just to bring it back, technology helps us say I'd like to hit these people, where are they? The abundance of tools out there that can say, this is the best way to reach them. And I think that's, that's new this year, for sure.\n\n\n\nNathan (00:16:25)And Todd, I'll add just one thing to that as well, you know, the identity question, is huge in the programmatic space. And I think that, you know, platforms like StackAdapt, are well suited to use some of the 1st-party data that political organizations maintain. So you know, your fundraising lists, and also, your general voter contact files, I mean, that's going to be golden, as the identity question online continues to be in flux. So something where you're able to campaigns are well suited to have those first-party data sources on hand and activate them across all of those channels in a great way. So really just kind of tossing in there the idea that as identity continues to be an open question: what are the most effective ways to find people online? That the political organization, 1st-party data is really a treasure trove?\n\n\n\nTodd (00:17:24)That's exactly right. I think that's a nice, I mean, there's, that dovetails, just the question of identity more generally, people have been talking about the death of the cookie for a long time. And, you know, oh, gosh, we're all going to be out of business. It is amazing to me the forward thinking that has been going into that question for a long time following up on it, I think contextual targeting people understand in the abstract, but just how sophisticated you can get with contextual targeting, is surprising. And I feel like, you know, it's the kind of thing where I'm going to start employing it now moving away from cookies myself, because the contextual is so powerful, you know, the idea that I can hit people on certain domains, or certain, you know, articles that have keywords around content that matches these other things that are in me, in a way, it does take a lot more creativity and a lot more forward brain power to say, what else do I want, surrounding my content. But the idea to customize based on that concept, is super powerful. So I think one of the things we're excited about doing this election cycle is really utilizing that giving hard thought to that question and then seeing if our frequency is higher, if the receptivity or if we're able to, conclusively say this person took an action, and they were only touched because of these ads on these sites, as opposed to we blitzed them over here and got our frequency as high as possible. Did those two different use cases have a different path to the right outcome? That is one of the many tests that we are employing this this cycle.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:19:04)Political advertising on social media platforms can pose a bit of a challenge. So let's shift and talk a little bit more about how programmatic has helped political advertisers accomplish what traditional social hasn't. And, you know, on top of this, to both of you we're wondering, are there any successes, any success stories, you know, you don't have to name names or but experiences that you've had in the last few years within this cohort of shifting from social to programmatic where you've seen a lot of success.\n\n\n\nTodd (00:19:38)There is no doubt that the socials have at their own whim changed the way you're able to engage with politics online, for better or for worse. I think it's justifiable the steps they took. I think they just announced yesterday. We're recording this in mid-August. They just announced yesterday that again, they're going to institute a ban on new ads eight days before the election, here in America. So if your ad is not approved, which itself, you know, could take three or four days, if your ad is not approved by, I think, November 1, they will not approve it for new advertising. A lot can happen in politics in eight days. There is a lot of nefarious stuff that could happen, but also a lot of stuff that would be relevant for reaching new people. All of those have pushed people toward, as I mentioned before, I think 3rd-party data external sources. That is to say, you know, the programmatic angle, reaching people wherever they are, and allowing ad platforms to say, yes, we know who that person is, and we know how to reach them. It is a more difficult transition. I think, you know, when I started at The Herald Group in 2014, 2015, it wasn't a big part of what we did. It is now the biggest social, you know, when we, at The Herald Group, we do a lot of advocacy advertising, you know, a lot of reach your congressman here, that kind of stuff. Social is the dominant place to do that kind of stuff. If you are looking for just direct outreach, and direct response kind of stuff, we have found that to be very successful. When it comes to persuasion, I think what, you know, the new tools from things like programmatic are, yes, you can identify individuals and hit them with branded ads. But it's things like native advertising, which, unless I'm mistaken, I think is kind of the bread and butter of what StackAdapt does. Native advertising allows you to, you know, if someone's reading National Review, or someone's reading slate.com, see a headline that maybe imparts a message that then links to a subsequent article that has more information about that, all without introducing who is trying to promote that message to that person. That is incredibly powerful. When it comes to the persuasion angle of campaigns, someone may have a bad taste for Republicans, or for Democrats, or for libertarians, or for independents, or some political stripe, where if they see an R next to a name, they're gonna say, you get away from me. But if you can start to introduce messages that say, you know, this state of the country is questionable, and you know, when I'm not sure the exact cause, but it may be due to these policies, if you can start to introduce headlines like that, and find someone who's clicking them more often than not reading that Wall Street Journal op-ed, reading that National Review opinion piece, reading that news article about the increase into this or that bad thing, you can start to say, ah ha, I've got a lead here, I've got someone who maybe the data said was firmly in one camp. But I feel like because of these, you know, this issue, in particular, we may have an entree to get that person to start to think the right way. And from that, start to introduce more and more, you know, different issues. Maybe then you come in with some solutions. And then maybe then you come in and introduce candidate who espouses all of those positions and is going to fight for them and fight for you and make the world a better place. That sort of stuff. I think, you know, with the transparency that things like Facebook and Facebook have instituted, Facebook and Twitter have instituted, it explicitly removes that angle from advertising, because it's all about here's who the organization is, that is targeting you, and here's why you're being targeted. And here's how to learn more about them. So not nefarious in any sense of the term. But, or in the sense of the term that it could be.\n\n\n\nNathan (00:23:45)Yeah, and Todd, actually, if I can jump in here, that the effectively what you've done is then you've primed your audience for action, right? And so then when they inevitably open that Facebook app, or wherever it is, you can use tools like uh, you know, StackAdapt has a social retargeting pixel where you can populate a retargeting audience on Facebook and then you know, the people you're serving your social ads to have already been exposed to those native campaigns that you've been running. So, it's a way to seriously tack on some data that is no longer available in some of those social platforms and augment your kind of action-driven campaigns on those social platforms. So coupled together, it makes a very strong funnel towards action taking.\n\n\n\nTodd (00:24:39)That's totally right. I mean, it also just introduces another angle of creativity, of testing. You know, Facebook is a platform where you want to see pictures of your friends' puppies and your friends' kids in that order. Just kidding. You know, you want to see kind of the more thoughtful family stuff. That's where pictures of the candidate and his wife and a barbecue go. That's where the Forward Thinking messages go, you know, you can utilize the network or at least utilize different methods, different deals or different white labels or different segments, to then maybe take a harsher tone on these types of websites. So it's the same candidate. But you can introduce these things over here, you know, it's possible that someone is they'll make the connection between the two, they will see a much fuller picture of a candidate. Here they are their family, they are cute, cuddly, empathetic, here, they are being tough on X, Y, or Z issues that paints a much more colourful picture of a politician, which is always the goal. You know, in persuasion, you start with something like introducing the candidate, you try to make them human. First, you try to say, here's how, they got into this business, because they care about X, Y, and Z just like you do. You know, here's how they're gonna fight for you and why they deserve your vote. That is awfully powerful. When it comes to strategizing about how to reach change minds.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:26:06)Fantastic. Well, this puts us in a great spot for our final question about succeeding in the vertical, I think we've already addressed a lot of this in the episode, but from both sides, you know, from Todd, from you at the agency. And Nathan, from you at StackAdapt. You know, what does it take to succeed in this vertical, and what are some best practices or trends that people should be paying attention to, as we head into the coming months?\n\n\n\nTodd (00:26:35)Curiosity about how to reach people in politics is almost more important than ideology in many ways. You know, there is a plethora of issues that are going to move somebody in some direction. And if you are, you know, pro-life or pro-choice, or you're super pro A, you know, pro-Second Amendment or anti-Second Amendment, knowing the issues that is going to move someone in your direction, is going to be most important. And you may be, you know, figuring out exactly where they are. And how they're going to persuade people, is what it comes down to. That kind of curiosity of which of those messages on which platform in which cadence, at what frequency, when in the campaign, all of those things, you are able to test, you're able to throw in new forms of advertising. As planning gets more sophisticated, you're able to know more ahead of time, which in many cases, makes choices harder, because when you know when you eliminate this or that variable, because the data told you so, you then say, Aha, what if we do this or that all of those lead to different use cases, different ways to approach different solutions, and ultimately, more fun, I would say the other thing is, you know, having a team around you that is similarly curious. You know, we talk about curiosity, creative, the fun side of this stuff, too. But there's a whole lot of empirical data that comes into it, making sure that you are sober about how to read empirical data, how to read ad reports, and how to read different metrics that come from different platforms, is very important. Spreadsheets run my life, spreadsheets are the foundation of my team's lives. Figuring out how to get an apples-to-apples, how to report to client, all of that stuff, is really, really important. So you know, I say curiosity, but it's not, you know, curiosity, I think, leads you off into the world of possibilities. You do also need to have a firm grounding in what is doable? What is quantifiable? And if it is quantifiable, how can we do so in a scalable way? Where it's not, you know, great reporting now takes 25 hours. And we learned a whole bunch of stuff, how do you, you know, test the specific about variables that are being tested, keep everything else the same, as much as possible. And use those results to optimize a campaign to make yourself smarter to make the client smarter and, ultimately, to have a favourable election come election day.\n\n\n\nNathan (00:29:13)From my perspective, I like to think that curiosity is driven by a kind of humility and understanding that you are not necessarily in the heads of all of your voters, you need to seek that out, you need to find the ways that they're going to be moved to vote for your candidate or your support your legislation. Because, at the end of the day, that is really the metric of success. Right? Come election day. Do you did you win or lose? Right? Did the legislation pass, they did not. Right. And so that's what you're measured up against? It's that curiosity that takes you there. I'm curious. You know, Todd, and maybe I'm adding another question in here. But when it comes to kind of some of the best practices you have for finding those new tactics and engaging that curiosity, what are some of the things you and your team have found are most effective and in keeping you learning as the election season goes on?\n\n\n\nTodd (00:30:13)There's any number of, I think, to your first point, Nathan, I think, you know, nothing gets me more delighted than being proved wrong by data. If I say, this message is going to work 10 times better than the one you silly client think is going to work. And I am proved wrong, I did not get mine gets less clicks or less receptivity. I have no problem eating Club Crow. It always ends up being fun anyway, that's powerful, that's a part of what we do is proving assumptions wrong. You know, we eat, live, breathe, and do everything in online advertising. So it's hard to stay away from it in some ways. I think StackAdapt does a fantastic job of both introducing tools, but then also keeping clients abreast of those tools. You know, there's industry pieces out there. I don't know if there's one or two, you know, publications or places where I'd stay to stay on top of it is also, you know, Google is your best friend in this world, too. As you start to ideate and say, how can I do this, or I have an assumption, I have a feeling that this is going to work, inevitably, you'll reach a place where the current tools that you have cannot do that. And you say, oh, shoot, I thought there was something out there if you Google it, you will find a tool that fills that hole that does that niche that performs this one operation, that then means great, here's another license I have to manage. But it does mean that I get to test this assumption and derive value from it in a way that, you know, I was limited over here. Now there's this new thing, great, the amount of times I have gone down that road and found a vendor. You know, I was not too personal with StackAdapt. I found StackAdapt because I saw a native ad that was gorgeous. That was just wonderfully flowed into content on another site. And I kind of reverse-engineered it, looked at the URL was pointing to, saw StackAdapt referenced and reached out. That's how my engagement started. So it was that curiosity of that's a gorgeous ad, I need to know how and who is doing that led to a relationship that's been now, four or five years in the making that kind of stuff. I encourage my team and others at The Herald Group, constantly. If you see something interesting on the internet, let me know, if you take an advocacy action, if you sign up for a newsletter, donate to a political campaign. And you had a good experience or a bad experience. Tell me about it. I want to know what you liked, what you didn't like. Anyone listening, please look me up and shoot me a note about an ad you liked or didn't like, and we will geek out over why it was effective or why it wasn't all of that stuff, I think makes us smarter in a way where there's you know, it's infinite opportunities to grow infinite opportunities for introducing new ways of doing things, and ultimately infinite ways of getting to election day with a favourable outcome. That's why this world is so fun.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:33:16)Fantastic. Well, you know, that puts us just about at our time, I wanted to say thank you, Nathan. Thank you, Todd, for joining us on this episode to all of our listeners who are operating in the political vertical. We wish you the best of luck in your campaigns. And we hope you took a lot away from this episode. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and thank you for listening.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:33:40)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-in-ad-spend#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-in-ad-spend"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Karan Saggi","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/karan-saggi","jobTitle":"Director, Client Services","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Global Trends in Advertising Spend (2022)","datePublished":"2022-09-28T17:36:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-03-18T22:29:16+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-in-ad-spend"},"wordCount":4652,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-in-ad-spend#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502133546/samantha_allison_stackadapt_podcast_s3e4.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["adtech","campaign planning","multi-channel","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe unpack global marketing and advertising trends, including insights in agency spending and consumer behaviour in markets around the globe.\n\n\n\nKaran Saggi and Samantha Allison | Directors of Client Services at StackAdapt\n\n\n\nLouise Hutley | Senior Manager, Client Services at StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Inflation is pinching everyone. People want value for their money. And so it's important that with every odd, we're able to get in front of the right people at the right time when they're ready is purchasing, market customization is definitely a trend that we've seen, you know, contextually relevant or relevant in whatever capacity that is to the user, things are always changing. And with the current market, we need to make sure that is at the forefront.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:23)But then you think about the social landscape, the research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, or tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:48)Hi everyone, and welcome to this episode of The How Agencies Thrive podcast. This week, our topic of choice is an inside look at ad spend around the globe, and more specifically in North America, EMEA and APAC region. In this episode, we're going to be doing a special roundtable with experts from StackAdapt. On deck, we have Karan Saggi, from North America, Sam Allison, from EMEA and Louise Hutley from the APAC region. We're going to look at programmatic budgets, consumer behaviour, buying signals, trends, and everything else that's going on around the globe in advertising. So as always, before we get started, I'd love to hear from our guests to talk a little bit about their role, their experience and areas of expertise that they have in the programmatic space. So let's get started with you, Karan, tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience in programmatic.\n\n\n\nKaran (00:01:39)Thanks, Matt. Everyone, this is Karan. I'm a manager of Client Services at StackAdapt. I've been at the company for about two years, been in programmatic for about six years. Really happy to be here to chat with you about the North American market.\n\n\n\nSam (00:01:55)Yeah, my name is Sam. I'm also a manager of Client Services, based out of EMEA. I've been with StackAdapt for about three and a half years now. I actually started off in North America, and in January of 2021, moved over to London, to kind of kickstart the expansion of StackAdapt within EMEA.\n\n\n\nLouise (00:02:19)Cool, and my name is Louise, I am also a manager of Client Services for the APAC region. I've been with StackAdapt for around five months now. So I'm the newest member to the team here. Previous to that I worked in agency holding groups in a digital capacity for about 12 years now. I think my experience with programmatic dates back to 2011, when programmatic was officially the buzzword, whilst I was working in the London office, so excited to still be part of that journey.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:50)Perfect. Well, what we'll do for this episode, as I mentioned, we're chatting ahead of time, we have a couple questions, you know, talking about budgets, consumer behaviour, all things programmatic across the globe. So what we'll do is we'll start with those first two questions, take a quick break, and then jump into the latter portion of the episode. So starting out, we'll pass things around the table here. What is the current spend in each of your regions? So EMEA, APAC, North America, you know, where's the money going in the programmatic space? And what are we seeing some trends in?\n\n\n\nKaran (00:03:26)Great question, Matt, I can kick this off for the North American market. Looking at programmatic specifically, the ad spend last year in 2021, was approximately $158 billion. This is specifically for display and video formats. Display took a larger piece of the pie there, with about $106 billion of the $158. And the remaining going to video that ad spend is actually forecast to grow year over year as it has over the past few years. The entire size of the pie is forecast to grow, from about $158 billion to $196 billion this year. And 2022 of that $196 billion displays forecast to grow at 22% year-over-year and video to grow a little bit more aggressively at 28%. Again, this is strictly looking at programmatic. If we zoom out a bit and look at overall digital, we're looking at even higher spend levels. That's about $249 billion. Because we're now factoring in search primarily, that also pulls in significant investment in addition to display and video. And if you look at what industries are investing here this year, it's mostly retail, CPG, and consumer products in the North American market, and which is why the upcoming holiday season should be quite interesting this year.\n\n\n\nLouise (00:04:56)Yeah, it's a similar story in APAC. 2022 ad spend is forecast to reach around $250 billion. That numbers in USD up 5%, from 2021. With digital inevitably fueling much of this growth, the spotlight is really on India, with some recent estimates expecting 16% growth in this market alone. And a lot of that is coming from emerging industries such as ad tech, FinTech, gaming and crypto as well as key sporting events and some general elections that we've had in a couple of the APAC markets. Similar to the US, we're seeing an increase in time spent online, particularly video consumption, which grew significantly over COVID. We're also experiencing inflation, which means the same dollar investments aren't going as far. And despite this, we expect video to continue to gain momentum across the region. However, the measurement challenge needs to be better addressed to justify the investment, particularly in non-clickable environments, such as connected TV, if it is able to take a chunk out of the significant linear TV spend, we continue to see in the APAC region.\n\n\n\nSam (00:06:05)Yeah, and then just shifting over to EMEA we're actually seeing slightly lower than other markets in terms of spend. So we're seeing anywhere when looking at programmatic from above that 75 to 80 billion mark, the leader in that spend actually does come from the United Kingdom followed would be Germany, France, and Italy, who have the highest ad spend within that region. I think a key consideration here is to know where the majority of that spend is coming from. And right now, we're seeing about 60% of that spend coming from mobile, across various channels like display and video, but using mobile as the primary driver of the inventory source. And then very similar to the other two markets, actually, we are seeing an increase within video. In a post-COVID world, we're also seeing, you know, the travel vertical increase, but specifically marrying the two both travel and video, within EMEA, we are it is projected to see that the video spend within travel goes up by about three times in 2022. Within EMEA, one of the things that's consistently at the forefront of every conversation is GDPR. I would say that's the biggest point of difference when comparing to other markets. Obviously, you know, privacy and data and all that is very important in the other markets as well. But within EMEA, it very much is under a microscope of consumers understanding how and why the data is collected. But not only that, they're very interested in the quality of inventory and where that ad is exactly being placed. So I think that's a major factor as well, when considering, you know, ad spend and projections and all that kind of thing.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:07:51)Fantastic. Well, this is definitely taught me a lot already at the beginning of this episode. I mean, when Sam, you and I started working at StackAdapt, a couple of years ago, we were really only working in the North American market. And then there was buzz about GDPR. So it's interesting to see how big of an impact it still has. But you know, with all this in mind, you know, understanding where the spend is going some of these channels and verticals. I'm interested to know from all of you when we talk about consumer behaviour, and what's actually happening with individuals that are living in these regions or individuals that we're targeting, you know, what are we seeing happening? And what would be your informed guess on how this is going to shape the market in the future and hopefully drive more spend or shift spend into different areas?\n\n\n\nKaran (00:08:43)That's a good question, Matt. Because consumer behaviour and where the consumer chooses to engage does shape the market and that is a little bit out of our control as advertisers. Recently we're seeing an affinity towards mobile and the North American market similar to what Sam is also noticing in the India market. And the numbers speak for thatm two-thirds of programmatic video spending here in this market goes to mobile. And we know why that is, ad dollars go where the impressions are, where the ad impressions are, and where the engagement and return from the consumers is. So one shift we do see in the industry in the North American market, especially with video is the increase in connected TV adoption. This year, programmatic connected TV spend will increase by about 39%. This follows an impressive increase of 82%, which happened last year, and CTV spent programmatically specifically from an agency and an advertiser's perspective. That's very exciting. Because CTV gives you the opportunity for having your brand present on a larger screen. More or less 100% ad your real estate on that screen. In and presumably in a personal ad home space where a consumer owns a CTV device. Not only that your brand message is presumably playing next to higher production content that has high production quality and its longer form content. It's a win for brands in that sense. And from the consumers’ perspective, this affinity to connected TV is driven by just how user-friendly that technology has become, and the booming CTV content, thanks to the pandemic, especially even the large studio-driven content, say from Disney Plus, or even Netflix now they're becoming ads supporting publishers themselves. So this growth, I don't forecast it will slow down anytime soon. To your question specifically about how this will shape the market? Well, the blueprint for that stays the same, it's the same as what has shaped the market before. Ad dollars will continue to go where the impressions are. So where the consumer is, and where the consumer chooses to engage with your brand and where you see the return on your advertising.\n\n\n\nLouise (00:11:07)Yeah, and I think to build on what Karan's just said, you know, ad dollars do where their impressions are and consumers are more educated and are in the driving seat. And that time and attention continues to fragment across platforms. And changing regulation means that brands can no longer push their message on to consumers in the hope that they will take action. Taking the time to create meaningful value exchange with consumers is going to be key in driving future success. Consumers are willing to exchange data in return for something that is valued to them. In fact, they'd probably rather do this than actually pay for content and a lot of cases and, you know, the success of brokerages TV platforms have had has proven this. And they've done a great job over the past few years building their people-based data assets. Another kind of interesting area is specifically for APAC, and probably globally to is emerging technology. We're all familiar with QR codes, there's been no escaping them over the past couple of years. But there's a lot of untapped opportunity. And in gaming, audio search or augmented reality that is yet to be discovered. And consumers are spending more and more of their time with these devices and platforms. So it's only a matter of time before the ad dollars start to follow in there.\n\n\n\nSam (00:12:20)I couldn't agree more with both of your points, I think it's very much the same thing across the board here. I know I previously mentioned this, but within EMEA, consumers are hyper-aware of not only where they're being targeted, but how they're being targeted. So I'd say there are two major trends that we're seeing because of this. The first one is utilizing contextual targeting. So we're all aware, we've all heard, you know, the kind of death of the cookie. But on top of that, when looking at contextual advertising, it actually allows that consumer to be in the driver's seat, and have them have ads shown to them that are contextually relevant to them, which really speaks well to us in this market, of having that full transparency of exactly where your ad is going to be shown in a contextually relevant environment. This is something that Karan also spoke about, but CTV we're seeing a big spike in CTV within EMEA. Historically, CTV was always a little bit behind. For example, I came from the North American market, and you know, CTV was quite big. And then, when we came over to EMEA, that was something that kind of took a backseat. And in recent months, we're seeing it pick up a lot more and having users utilize it way more than they were even this time last year. And now we're it's noted that about 60% of users within the UK are using CTV as their primary means of watching television. So I think those two things are definitely trends to look out for.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:00)If you could point at a few buying signals and trends that you're noticing within your regions, what would they be? I mean, you can think about things that have kind of emerged post-pandemic or things that are on the rise, but a few buying signals from each year would help our listeners sort of wrap their heads around how they can best emerge into these markets.\n\n\n\nKaran (00:14:23)One trend that I can point to Matt is the consumer-brand relationship. I think that's more and more in the spotlight now as Lou said, consumers are becoming more aware. So thinking about how you build that consumer brand relationship, say navigating around privacy data, especially in the North American market, where that is now in the spotlight. How do you maintain that relationship once you've forged it? So how do you keep engaging with your consumers? And then finally, how do you sustain that relationship? Say brand loyalty in the long run? How do you ensure that? One buying signal I can speak to is strategic investment in both prospecting new consumers and engaging with the existing ones. In both of these, the key to what makes advertisers or brands successful, is generating confidence in your brand from a consumers viewpoint. So if you look at your marketing strategies, and you look at all the tactics out there, what it really boils down to is how does my ad or my campaign remind the consumer about my brand? Does it build their trust? Does it build their confidence in my brand? Will I be top of mind when that consumer makes a decision? If the answer to all of those questions is a yes, then your marketing strategy has a shot. If the answer to any of that is a no, then it's time to fine-tune that a bit more.\n\n\n\nLouise (00:15:48)Yeah, and I think all of that applies for the APAC market as well. I guess the one thing that is quite distinct in this market is that it's very cost-sensitive. And clients here are not just focused on the cost per acquisition or action, but also the cost of media driving these results. And this poses a challenge in itself as we navigate inflation across many facets of our lives, including the cost of goods and services for the consumers that we're trying to convince to buy, not just in advertising. And this is like the true of all global markets. But the race to the bottom is particularly evident in Asian markets. And this teamed with increasing challenges and targeting attribution and measurement, means that every dollar needs to be invested with care. The other buying trend we're seeing more and more appears clients desire to centralize their buying into one partner, you know, programmatic has the ability to address to deliver addressable ads across a multitude of channels. And not only does this support single-source reporting and measurement, but reflects the resource shortage a lot of our agency partners are experiencing in a post COVID world.\n\n\n\nSam (00:16:59)I totally align with both of those points. And I think, ultimately, because consumers spend mass amounts of time online during COVID, for example, we are now at a stage when the ad is being served to a consumer, it has to be more relevant, right? I think it's the consumers more in the driver's seat, they're more aware, they're smarter now that it has to be relevant in order for it to make an impact. So I think because of that, we always need to be taking into consideration the so what factor with each ad that is served to the consumer. So I think things like dynamic, creative optimization and weather targeting are at the forefront of conversations, because by tailoring the ads to each and every consumer, you are effectively answering. So some a piece at least of that so what factor and I think that gives the actual consumer who's seeing the ad, peace of mind because it is tailored to them. So I think, yeah, just customization is definitely a trend that we've seen, you know, having it be contextually relevant or relevant in whatever capacity that is truly user. On top of that, and I think echoing Lou's point is inflation. Inflation is pinching everyone. So does that mean that relevant and targeting advertising is more important than ever? I would say so. Because people will want value for their money. And so it's important that with every ad, we're able to get in front of the right people at the right time when they're ready to purchase in market, because, as Lou mentioned, and Karan, you know, things are always changing. And with the current market, we need to make sure that is at the forefront is timeliness, essentially. And then actually just one more thing, adding on to that, centralized tracking, and cross-channel targeting are all elements that I think are going to help clients plan better reach, have more reach and overall impact through various different angles when it comes to their media planning, whether that's ad relevance, ease of use, use of data, and just overall costs as well.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:19:11)Fantastic. Well, what we'll do here is we'll go to our last question, and then do some of those rapid-fire questions I mentioned earlier. But going around the table, in our typical order that we've had in over the last 20 minutes. For each of you. What is one tip that you would give somebody who is either listening from or spending in these three regions? What's the best way to succeed, in your opinion?\n\n\n\nKaran (00:19:42)It's a tough question. And obviously this answer is going to be the ultimate one. I can share one tip, paying attention to where the industry is headed is great, but I think paying attention to where the mindset and the headspace of your target consumer is also really important, just understanding where that sentiment lies, so that when the ad impression hits, it sticks, especially in the North American market, there's increasingly more awareness among consumers about where they're being targeted with ads, how they're being targeted, what data they're providing back. So it's an important time to be aware about that. One way to understand the consumers mindset and how they feel towards your brand, is through 1st-party data or zero-party data. So if you have the means to collect and own that data, that's something you should be doing. There's also a lot of movement out there, with changes in programmatic and us having to adapt to newer methodologies, and targeting and attribution and measurement, you name it. And with that change comes a change in investment as well. So, not losing sight of the messaging you're putting out there. How that hits or sticks with your consumer, and how emotionally intelligent that messaging is. I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind.\n\n\n\nLouise (00:21:04)You know, I actually find it quite difficult to generalize when taking APAC as a region as it is so important to tailor that messaging and understand your audience, you know, in a range of diverse markets. However, the biggest piece of advice I have for any client is really understanding what you are trying to achieve and matching that to your budget to set realistic KPIs. We work really hard with our clients locally to educate them in the role that programmatic plays in their overall comms strategy, and help them identify where their media dollars are spent best. As an industry, we've talked a lot about the eventual demise of the cookie. I know Sam touched on it earlier as well. But more needs to be done to identify and leverage existing datasets to drive marketing efficiency. I've already touched on this, but clients should be focusing on building their own 1st-party data assets to future-proof their marketing efforts and ensuring this data is collected in a safe and compliant manner to ultimately enhance their consumer experience for good.\n\n\n\nSam (00:22:06)Yeah, you know what, very similar across the board and EMEA, like if you look at Norway, for example, versus Italy or Germany, there's going to be differences in those countries of how, you know, each campaign should be run. So it is hard to kind of have a blanket statement. But I think this could go back to my kind of roots. Being from North America, one of the things that I was so very interested in when I first came over here is obviously, as I mentioned, people are very concerned about where their ads are being shown. And that is sometimes the primary KPI for them, you know, they have these, you know, conversions or CPC-based campaigns. But at the end of the day, they really want to see exactly where the ad is being served. And I think, to look beyond that, I think would be a really great thing. And understand why is that this domain, or this inventory source, actually going to move the needle on my campaign just because my ad was served there? Or should I be utilizing things like audiences, and different types of targeting, to really bring home that brand perception and brand awareness of the audience. So I think, ultimately, of course, inventory, and where your ad is being placed is super important to your campaigns. But there's other elements that need to be factored in there as well. And I think that is a big education piece that our team really tries to focus on with our clients in various different markets across the media. And you know, exactly where programmatic sits, and kind of the beauty of programmatic and how they're able to get you on all of these other inventory sources, and to really utilize what programmatic is all about, while also, you know, keeping in mind GDPR, and brand safety and all of those things, of course.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:24:00)Well, Karan Louise, Sam, let's end on a fun note here. I have one final question that each of you go around the table here, whether it's a marketing season, that's past or one that's coming up in each of the regions you're working in, what is your favourite marketing season? And tell us why?\n\n\n\nKaran (00:24:23)For me, keep speaking to North America, it has to be the last quarter of the year. It's the big holiday season. It's festive from a consumer's perspective. And it's competitive from an advertiser's perspective. And I think that competition for advertisers and brands keeps them on their feet with their strategy with their messaging. And making sure they stand out among the crowd. So for me, it'll be Q4.\n\n\n\nLouise (00:24:48)Yeah, I think similar for me, except for I'm going to focus on Christmas. Well this is a Christian celebration. KFC is advertising in Japan made fried chicken at Christmas is celebrated event which I personally loved. And it's also fun to see the difference between the northern and southern hemisphere ads, nothing really quite prepares you for that sunny Christmas day.\n\n\n\nSam (00:25:10)Yeah, I mean, I think Q4, across the board, is always, you know, a big one in advertising, regardless of where you are. So similar trends here. And you know, EMEA has really adopted that Black Friday sale kind of festive holiday season in that way as well when it comes to advertising. So very exciting, and lots going on with that. But I guess personally, one that I love now is clearing dates in the UK, which sounds if you're not familiar, because I, for one, was not prior to moving here. But essentially, with universities and things like that, they have different dates, and different kinds of like requirements, and the way that they, you know, get those users or get those students I should say, into the university. So we run a lot of clearing date campaigns, within the higher education sector, which for me, have personally been really fun just because, you know, it's a whole new thing versus how it is done in North America. So just in addition to Q4, I would say that is one of my favourites.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:26:13)Very interesting. Well, to the three of you, thank you so much for joining the episode, to all of our advertisers and brands who are listening whether you're in North America, EMEA, APAC, we hope that you took away some key insights from this episode. But until next time, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Thanks so much for listening.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:26:36)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-in-ad-spend","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-in-ad-spend","name":"Uncover the Global Trends in Advertising Spend in 2022","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#website"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-in-ad-spend#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502133546/samantha_allison_stackadapt_podcast_s3e4.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","datePublished":"2022-09-28T17:36:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-03-18T22:29:16+00:00","description":"Unpacking global advertising trends including insights in agency spending and consumer behaviour. Listen to How Agencies Thrive.","inLanguage":"en-US"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/creatives-that-convert#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/creatives-that-convert"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Leveraging Programmatic Creatives That Convert","datePublished":"2022-10-12T18:10:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:20+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/creatives-that-convert"},"wordCount":3828,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/creatives-that-convert#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502141009/farzin_ghayour_stackadapt_podcast_s3e5.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["creative","creative studio","interactive ads","podcast"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe explore why creative is king when it comes to digital advertising, and what it takes to build creatives that lead to conversions.\n\n\n\nFarzin Ghayour | Manager, Creative Studio, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Bring in any sort of motion of element so you don't have to hire giant choreographers and sets and crews and do million-dollar productions. We're such a digital-first kind of society now we're always on websites and always on our phone, bringing that slight bit of movement or animation or video just helps pull the eye naturally towards that direction. And towards that ad, it could be small things, but something that just constantly is moving on that frame is the most important thing to have.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:30)But then you think about the social landscape, the research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:52)Hi everyone and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Matt and I work on the Education Development Team at StackAdapt. And today, we have a very special episode. Now this isn't the first time we've covered a topic like this, but programmatic advertising moves fast and on top of all of this is creative strategy. So naturally, the theme of this episode is how you can develop creatives that will convert. So without further ado, I'm happy to welcome in the guests for today's episode Farzin, who is a manager of our in-house Creative Studio. So welcome Farzin. To kick things off, let's get a brief overview of who you are. Tell us a little bit about your role and some of the areas of expertise that you have.\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:01:28)Hi, thank you for having me. As you heard, my name is Farzin. I am a manager here at the Creative Studio with StackAdapt. I work alongside our amazing team of creative strategists, production designers and video team to help elevate create, and drive performance through design and creative tactics. Prior to that, I've lived in many of life working as a photo editor here in publishing in Canada and leading a creative team of producers across the globe, and launching creative tactics for such brands as Nespresso, Honda, and MasterCard.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:59)Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us on the episode Farzin. What we'll do is we will go through a couple of questions today, we have five for you that we've prepared. And in the middle, we'll take a quick break, and then we'll finish off with the final two. So starting out, traditionally, what we see when we talk about creatives, or think about creatives, is this whole phrase of “creative is King” is the thing that you need to be thinking about, that's what's going to drive your ad campaigns. So naturally, a lot of value is placed on the visual elements of ads. Why do you think this is?\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:02:33)Creative is pretty much your first impression you have when you are, you know, presenting yourself to an audience. If you think about it, if you take the creative away, all ads kind of have the same kind of structured company logo, some selling features a CTA and a call to action. So creativity is the life it kind of gives the viewer an insight of who your brand is, understands the personality of who you are, and kind of gives you that ability to speak directly to them. It's kind of like your first impression on a date, you really want to put everything out there for them and give them a look into who you are. When you think about creativity and visual presentation, we are a visual people. That's the first thing we kind of look to, even when you think about chefs, right? When they're dressing up a plate. They're not just throwing everything on there, they're making sure it looks visually pleasing. And that's why creativity plays a big part in this right? If it's not visually pleasing to the eye, no one wants to interact and engage with it.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:27)Now, do you think there's more weight on the actual visuals? Or do you think that the copy of those creatives has another, you know, a key factor to play in getting people to click through and engage with your ads?\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:03:39)I think visual is kind of like the top of it all, right? If your ad isn't stopping someone's eye to just even land to read on it, the copies would be secondary. So I say visual is number one, and the copy kind of leads up after that.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:54)So with that in mind, you know, in this day and age, we know that the attention span, especially as people are online, it's relatively low, you know, you only have a certain amount of time to make that first impression, as you said, so, you know, how would you recommend that advertisers get people to notice and engage with their content right away. So what are some best practices or things that they should be doing to get their ads noticed as soon as possible?\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:04:23)I would say nowadays, especially with, you know, people becoming more visually blind to static assets video is kind of your go-to right now. With the boom of TikTok and everything moving. If you're not incorporating video assets into your ad campaigns, you're really missing out, and I'm not talking about you having to do like a full video production with current golfers and dancers and things like that, but always incorporating some sort of elements of motion that could be copied coming in slight shifts of colour in the background, carousel units that are kind of constantly rotating within the ad itself to kind of highlight multiple products. I think this is kind of your best bait way currently to stick out and make sure that your ads are being noticed, especially when people are just going kind of eye blind to it all, because, you know, we're used to seeing things on Instagram and scrolling through so many feeds. And within social units themselves, you're seeing that change where now there's reels, there's stories, so video is definitely playing a heavy part in it. I also think another big thing is just making sure you're not falling within the ad fatigue bucket, even though your ads might be running for X amount of time, always doing subtle updates and creative changes to that is really helpful to just kind of breathe new life into your ad and to your units. So then that way, they're not falling behind, or people aren't, you know, constantly, like been there done that seen it all.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:43)Absolutely. And it's funny, you mentioned video, because it's kind of tip something off in my brain about an episode we did last season, when we're talking about driving the first click with creatives. And the guests that we had on, he mentioned, you know, with video, it's almost less important now to have like such high production value. And I think you just said, you know, you don't need to go out and get like a full studio full crew, like produce something that looks like a Superbowl commercial, but you need to have something that gets your message across. And it's almost a better play for advertisers sometimes to be a little bit more organic and a bit more authentic in the video content, so that it doesn't just scream out that, hey, this is an ad, we have designed this to convert you to the product that we want to sell. So, you know, do you find that that's a trend that in terms of creatives and production value, it's almost better to go with something that's a little bit more in the middle versus really, really high production value?\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:06:43)One-hundred percent. I think the biggest element is still think true to your brand. So you don't want to create a video just for video's sake, I think making sure that what you're creating still resonates with the brand itself. And within the client. I just want to say, like bring in any sort of motion of elements, right? Animation, colour shifts, things like that, when we're looking at these pages nonstop, right? We're such a digital-first kind of society now, right? We're always on websites, we're always on our phone. So bringing in that slight bit of movement, or animation or video just helps pull the eye in naturally towards that direction and towards that ad. So as we said, it doesn't have to be anything big or fancy. You don't have to, you know, hire giant choreographers and sets and crews and do million-dollar productions, nowhere. It could be small things, but it's something that just constantly is moving on that frame, I think it's the most important thing to have.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:07:34)Absolutely. And you know, being a part of the Creative Studio, I know a lot of your teams were besides making incredible creative assets, is that consultative process and working with StackAdapt clients. And, you know, similar to the last question, but maybe a little bit different here about, you know, how do you drive the first click? How do you combine the creatives and the copy to create one cohesive package that's going to get people to, you know, go to that landing page, cut through the noise? What are some things that you typically recommend, and for anyone who's kind of just getting started with their creative strategy or trying something completely new, you know, what's a good starting place to get off on the right foot as quickly as possible?\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:08:19)Yeah, my golden rule for all of this is, keep it simple. I think once we started thinking about creating an ad, or creating some sort of creative advertisement, people want to throw everything in the kitchen sink in it. I know we've already talked a little bit earlier about how you know, we only have so much time to kind of stop someone to look at it. So the last thing you want to do is create an ad that's overcrowded, has too much copy, has too much going on, that kind of almost puts someone off from actually engaging with it, right, there's nothing more scary, there's nothing more difficult than an ad that's overwhelming and doesn't, you know, no one wants to interact with it. So keep it simple. We talked about having almost six seconds to kind of capture someone's eye. So keeping the copy really tight, keeping it precise. And making sure you're kind of getting the key elements out there, I think is kind of your best element to have when you're kind of creating these ads. I'd also say never be afraid of making bold statements and speaking directly to your viewer, spark interest. You know, you don't have to give them the whole selling feature, but give them something that gives them enough interest to click through, right? So make those bold statements, speak directly to them, make sure you're capturing their interest to then get them to go to the landing page where they can kind of dive in and go a little bit more into it. And the last thing I would say is and then you kind of brushed about it a little bit is just making sure you're authentic to your brand. There's nothing more off-putting than a brand trying to be something that they're not. And as it being your first impression, making sure you're true to yourself and what the customer will expect kind of going through to your landing page onto your secondary site and kind of learning more about you.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:09:51)Absolutely. And you know, on the topic of brand, I think that is really important because if you see an ad that has that brand logo but it doesn't it doesn't feel like it's a part of that brand. And maybe they're trying to do something that's kind of trendy and won't, you know, won't stand the test of time, it's definitely important to stay true to that brand. Because that's a long-term goal, right, and to build good brand recognition, and how people feel good about the product or service that you're offering, you know, for, for some newer brands, you know, how do you help them stay on track with their creative strategy? Like, is it more about kind of looking at the core values of that brand and working your way out, when you consult on creative strategy, or were there some specific tactics that you would use when you're helping build out these ads to stay on brand?\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:10:43)I think for them, the creative plays a big role of staying on brand of what the look and feel is, so making sure with whatever we're creating, whether it be a CTV, an online video, audio ads, display, native, just making sure that the brand's true through and through it helps create a cohesive line. It also helps build a little bit of brand recognition, right? So if someone's looking at a CTV unit, and then it serves a display, they kind of recognize it instantly, whether it be color palette layout, things like that. From there, I would say, depending on what the brand is trying to do, our strategies shift dramatically from either being brand awareness to more down-the-funnel return on ad spend, things like that. So working with them closely and making sure that we're keeping the visual language through whatever strategy we're doing. I mean, it's a key aspect for a new brand trying to place itself out there in the world.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:11:33)Farzin, ae there any trends that you're seeing in terms of ad formats? And most importantly, what's working? And what do we think we're gonna see a lot of?\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:11:42)For sure, I think this is where I'm gonna start sounding like a broken record. But as we talked about before video, right now, it's hot. And I don't think there's any chance of a cooling down it's kind of our next big shift when it comes to visual ads out there. Another big thing, and I think this plays directly within the whole programmatic ad space is getting dynamic with your ads, there's a lot of things we can do now weather targeting, you know, dynamic city, things like that. So using the tech within the ad format itself, to kind of get a little bit closer to the viewer and what your advertising gives you that leg up gives you the ability to kind of reach the person a little bit more direct, and kind of serve them an ad that kind of connects with them a little bit stronger than just kind of a generic ad that would pop up here up on the page. The last thing I'd always say, and I think this is something that's just always going to be you know, a trend is always making sure you diversify your ad units. And don't just stick with one thing. You shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to serving ads in a programmatic way. And making sure that you're at least having one or two different units in mixin, or with well, gives you the ability to kind of diversify your messaging, just in case gives you the ability to, you know, create an audio ad that maybe can speak to a different viewer audience, it can create a video ad that you know, maybe can put a little bit more oomph into it, compared to any of them and display. So those would be kind of my big, three trends that I think we'll kind of keep running us through 2023.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:13:10)Closing things out here, before we get into a few bonus questions, we're at Q4 by the end of this week. That means it's a really fun time for advertising. We have all the holiday ads that are going to be coming out. What do you think is going to be popular this season? And what are some creative trends that advertisers should be looking out for?\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:13:33)For sure. This is where I would put on my creative hat and just put a Creative warning out to just say, always plan ahead, especially during this time of year. We know when these holidays are creeping up. So I think the best thing is always to be prepared. Make sure you have your ad units ready to roll when it comes to these times. One other thing I want to say is always don't just think about the holidays, think about the seasonal shifts, right? The holidays are just one part of this, when we kind of roll into Q4, there's some big things happening right? Days are getting shorter, people are moving in more, people are going to be online searching for ads and things like that, and gift guides and things like that of that nature. So keep that in mind of how you're going to serve your programmatic ad displays, right? People are going to be in malls more trying to find you know, gifts for family and friends. Maybe you want to launch more digital out-of-home. We know that people are going to be you know, wanderlusting for travelling to new destinations because it's going to get colder and you know, gray and gross. So this is maybe a great time to use that weather targeting ad displays that we talked about to kind of you know, work off of these emotions that happened during these times. For the holidays, I think a big shift is kind of going towards more of seeing the honest advertising. I think TikTok has kind of opened the door for us to you know, kind of take away that Norman Rockwell illusion of what a family holiday looks like and what they really are. So people are looking for kind of that honest representation, right? Holidays can be hard holidays, can be fine. The holidays can be annoying. Speak truthfully to people and make sure that your product kind of matches that which is kind of like a good starting point. And I think also people are more embracing kind of creating memories instead of just gift giving, right? So working off of that as well. What can your gift do? Can is this something that builds a family moment? Is this a puzzle that you're going to spend creating over a fun cup of cocoa during the holidays, whatever it may be, instead of pushing the product, I think it's more pushing the memories are made around it?\n\n\n\nMatt (00:15:34)Well, I think with that said, we can go into the bonus section of this episode. We chatted about this a little bit ahead of time and gave you some time to think on it. So Farzin, what is your favourite ad of all time that you've seen.\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:15:53)This is probably going to age me, my favourite ad would probably have to be, I also love an ad that has like more than one. So this kind of works into our sequential messaging that we were talking about. But I was a big fan of the Gap ads where they would have all the people like singing, dancing, so to like the “Mellow Yellow,” and things like that. I connected voice through and through, they were fun, they're entertaining, and they kind of took you out of the day-to-day. So that was probably one of those advertisements, live in my head rent-free to this date.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:16:21)Now, if we look at the present day, think about some of the brands that you've seen this year. You know, who has been really creative? What would have been the standout brands for you that you've seen in the wild?\n\n\n\nFarzin (00:16:33)I think one brand that always does it right and never really has had a chance to stumble and fall has been Nike, they've always been very authentic and true to who they are. They're never afraid to kind of work off of hot ticket items. And you know, stating their stance of where they are. They're also really good at collaborating and kind of pushing themselves into the forefront. Whether it comes through print ads, video ads, they're cohesive voices, definitely traveled through all of it, and have always been a standout for me.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:17:05)Fantastic. Well, Farzin, this has been awesome. It's really great to have time to, I'd say sit down with you. But we're sitting at opposite computers in different areas. This is a virtual run podcast. But this has been a fantastic episode. So thank you so much for your time, and for any of our listeners out there who are interested in creative strategy and are interested in, you know, making their ads really stand out. We hope that you took a lot away from this episode. So until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. And thanks so much. Thank you so much for tuning in.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:17:39)This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/creatives-that-convert","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/creatives-that-convert","name":"Ad Creatives That Convert | StackAdapt","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#website"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/creatives-that-convert#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502141009/farzin_ghayour_stackadapt_podcast_s3e5.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","datePublished":"2022-10-12T18:10:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:20+00:00","description":"Learn why ad creative is king when it comes to digital advertising. Listen to the latest How Agencies Thrive to discover how to build creatives that convert.","inLanguage":"en-US"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/driving-performance-b2b-marketing#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/driving-performance-b2b-marketing"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"How to Drive Performance With B2B Marketing","datePublished":"2022-10-26T18:49:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:21+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/driving-performance-b2b-marketing"},"wordCount":5517,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/driving-performance-b2b-marketing#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502144856/mohan_ram_stackadapt_podcast_s3e6.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["b2b","full-funnel","multi-channel","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"Learn tactics for driving B2B marketing performance, how to define a full-funnel strategy, and programmatic strategies for B2B campaigns."}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/driving-performance-b2b-marketing#primaryimage","url":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502144856/mohan_ram_stackadapt_podcast_s3e6.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502144856/mohan_ram_stackadapt_podcast_s3e6.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","width":601,"height":601,"caption":"Illustration of Mohan Ram, Head of Global Field Marketing at Digital Ocean"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/what-is-footfall-attribution#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/what-is-footfall-attribution"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Footfall Attribution: From Digital Ads to In-Store Traffic","datePublished":"2022-11-09T20:28:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:21+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/what-is-footfall-attribution"},"wordCount":3885,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/what-is-footfall-attribution#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502152845/jean_philippe_guay_stackadapt_podcast_s3e7.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["attribution model","foot traffic attribution","retail"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEver wondered how digital efforts can lead to in-store conversions? We break down how digital efforts can drive traffic to a brick-and-mortar location, and how to measure results with footfall attribution.\n\n\n\nJean-Philippe Guay | Account Director, North Strategic\n\n\n\nAllie Shaffer | Account Manager, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Impressions, clicks, and videos are not necessarily measurements that are tied to business results. They are great engagement, but it's not because you watch a video, or it's not because you click on an ad that you'll buy a product. So we really need to understand better the attribution we need to integrate data with online purchases with in-store conversion. So we can overlap how many people went in-store, and what is the in-store conversion to better understand the shift in behaviour and being able to optimize for the real business results.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:29)But then you think about the social landscape, the research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:53)Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Matt, and I'm the Education Development Manager at StackAdapt. And today, we have a very special episode centered around marketing attribution, and specifically football attribution. So if you've ever been curious as to how you can relate campaign impressions or conversions to actual store visits, this episode is for you. Joining us today is JP from North Strategic, a Canadian PR firm. And of course, StackAdapt's very own Allie Shaffer. As always, we're going to have our guests introduce themselves. So starting with you, JP, we'd love to hear about North Strategic, what you do and some of your areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nJP (00:01:33)Yeah, sure. So I'm JP, Director of Digital at North Strategic. And North Strategic is a full service PR agency with digital paid media and content capabilities. So we are coast to coast in Canada. And as you can hear from my accent, I'm from Montreal, the French part of Canada.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:53)Fantastic. Now, JP, what are some areas of expertise that you have in your space?\n\n\n\nJP (00:01:59)Yeah, so basically, I just evolved throughout the marketing landscape in the past 10 years, and added several practice to my expertise.\n\n\n\nMatt  (00:02:11)Fantastic. Now, over to you, Allie. Let's hear a little bit about you and your role at StackAdapt and some of your areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:02:20)Great. Thanks, Matt. Yes, my name is Allie Schaffer. I've been with StackAdapt coming up on two years now. My role is I'm an account manager team lead on our Client Services team. As far as areas of expertise, I was lucky enough to have a background in not only retail, but also agency work that I did prior to joining StackAdapt. So I have a lot of insight into the retail space, as well as CPG and other verticals like that. But right now am working at StackAdapt. My, you know, my work and expertise spans a whole bunch of different verticals, which is really great for me to be able to have my hand in.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:57)Awesome. Well, it's great to have both even on the episode. So jumping into it. As I mentioned at the beginning, the theme of this episode is marketing attribution, and more specifically, we're gonna be talking about footfall attribution. Now from both of you, to help our listeners best understand this concept, how would you describe footfall attribution? What is it and why is it something important for marketers to be paying attention to?\n\n\n\nJP (00:03:23)Yeah, if I may start so footfall attribution or some people refer it as foot traffic attribution is a measurement that refers to the number of people who visited a specific location, such as a shop at car dealership or restaurant after seeing an ad. And I think like, it's great. And traditionally, we referred to impressions and online conversion. But sometimes you have some clients that have only actual stores brick and mortar, and it helps to understand how digital ads contribute to their business results when you are able to track foot traffic in a brick and mortar location, especially when, you know, with all the rewards program that exists in this world, sometimes you are able to digitalize your footprint, but sometimes it's harder for some client to be able to fully track the conversion. And that's a great way to be able to measure the ROI of your campaign in the real world.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:04:32)Awesome. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think the only thing that I would add to that is that you know, as we're seeing the trend happen currently, in like the retail space, for example, a lot of what people are doing still does happen online, and a lot of that I know trend wise is moving more towards online. But the last metric I recently saw looks like still 80 to 90% of retail sales happen outside of being online. So this is just another tactic and tool, but by being able to tie an actual visit to the media that you're running, to be able to really get that holistic view of how your media efforts are impacting not only people on the internet, but also people that are, you know, going around living life and are aware of your brand outside of the digital space.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:17)Awesome. Now, as you mentioned that Allie, I have a question that we didn't we didn't discuss ahead of time. But thinking about the last couple of years with the pandemic, and sort of what happened where everyone went from shopping in-store to then having to shop online, not having the option to go in-store and then going back in-store, was there a huge kind of uptick in people wanting to use footfall attribution or other types of attribution studies to now measure this new lift that they were going to be discovering? I know that there was some talk about this last year during the holiday season because this was one of the first times that people could actually go back in-store and start shopping, is this something that you both saw happen in the industry?\n\n\n\nAllie (00:06:02)I know on our side, yes. Like, you know that when I was working during the pandemic, in the agency, and at StackAdapt, I did see a lot of that obviously fall off and wanting to look into other options for attribution since we were no longer able to really track people actually going to stores. I think the exciting piece here now is being able to take this data as we are slowly coming out of this global pandemic, more or less, and be able to see how some of that attribution actually changes. And if we're seeing upticks in traffic, if we're seeing objects and people engaging with media, and then going into a store or actual location, but curious to hear JP’s thoughts on that, too.\n\n\n\nJP (00:06:42)Yeah, so I think that going out of this pandemic, consumers are still super attached to brick and mortar store shopping more than ever. We see like different behaviours. So some people prefer online, but what we see is that the experience as a physical showroom is still important for many shoppers. I think, like I saw data from Nielsen the other day, and it was like 75% of grocery shoppers still visit like, physical location. And I think that 51% of people consuming online said that they still want like the in-store experience. So as an advertiser, we need to understand that mother and omni channel consumer. And we also need to understand like the behaviours and true foot traffic attribution, we are able to understand what's the percentage of people who go in-store to shop and better understand like the importance of modern showroom.\n\n\n\nMatt  (00:07:45)Awesome. Now on that note, and kind of jumping back to today and how things are what can footfall attribution tell us about how your audience is showing a response to your advertising effort?\n\n\n\nJP (00:07:59)Well, I see three topics here. So I think there are like their real world and business results. So what we discussed earlier, impressions, clicks, and videos are not necessarily measurement that are tied to business results, they are great engagement, but it's not because you watch a video that you will buy a product or it's not because you click on an ad that you'll buy a product. So we really need to understand better the attribution then there are like consumers patterns. What I mean by that is that we need to integrate data with online purchases, that are made thinking like in-store conversion, so we can overlap, how many people went in-store and what is the in-store conversion to better understand like, how many people we need to drive to store and also we can also overlap with other data such as average spend in-store to better understand like, if there was like a lift in average spent in-store, and last but not least, would be footfall lift. And this is like an offering that we really like with StackAdapt because it allows us to better understand are we driving consumers that are already loyal to the brand, or are we able to add new consumer to the mix? So are we driving like from upper funnel down to lower funnel, new content, new consumers? So those are I think that three great patterns. And if I can add a fourth to it that would be being able to better understand shift in behaviour and being able to optimize for the real business results.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:09:41)Yeah, so I think everything that you said completely is applicable and like that's why I think this is another really important piece for marketers to consider. Because like we said, like I had mentioned earlier, it's really that holistic view. So like JP mentioned, being able to really understand if you're seeing a lift from the media that we're runningg because you know, we can always assume or think that this medium might be wasted, people are already going to go to, you know, large retailers certain-stores that they're familiar with. But this really does drive home the point of what are we affecting, when you're being able to basically compare a group of users who have not seen an ad to the real users who have seen an ad and whether or not they're actually visiting the location. And this is really valuable information to provide to our clients. Since we're able to, like JP said, drive home those business use cases and continue to tweak as we go along to make that even better if the ultimate goal is to not only drive online conversions, but also visits to a certain location.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:10:43)Fantastic. Well, I think now that we've got a clearer idea of what footfall attribution is why it's important how it can impact your campaigns. Zooming back in here, Allie, JP, I know you both have a lot of experience within the industry. So I'm interested to know, you know, whether you want to provide names or not, what are some examples of this technology working really well? And what are some, you know, good use cases for this type of attribution technology?\n\n\n\nJP (00:11:13)Yeah, sure, I'd like to share the story of a client, I won't name this client, but they have multiple retail locations across Canada, they were not able to track accurately offline or brick and mortar conversions. So we decided to, like I said that previously, measure footfall attribution and then be able to overlap on top of it, the average spend per visit and the offline conversions or in-store conversion rates. So how many people walk in and spend so after the campaign we got from StackAdapt, the data, so how many people walked in, etc, we compare the performance of our display campaign to the historical data. And basically, the report suggested that the consumer driven in-store spend 20 times more than it costs to drive them to property. And there was an increase in sales lift during that campaign. So it was quite interesting for them because it was outside of key retail moments. So we were able to better understand the value and also the impact of the display campaign outside of traditional retail moments, such as Christmas, Black Friday or back to school. So they really got interesting data on the impact of their brand campaign during that period.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:12:42)Yeah, no, that's great. I think, for me, the best, you know, something that I always recommend here is consistency, right? Because this is another approach that's very holistic, like I've mentioned before being able to really see a full view of what you're impacting. So when I say consistency, I mean, the best success that I see is when we're able to continue to run, you know, something like an always-on type campaign, maybe we make some tweaks here and there, and maybe we're making some adjustments. But as you continue that always-on approach, you can start seeing those efficiencies come through in terms of the reporting that we're providing to clients. So you know, for example, you know, the first poll of the data after just maybe a couple of weeks of running, or, you know, even a month, as we all know, everybody has a different journey as a customer into actually like visiting a store. So it may take a little bit longer than just that time period to actually drive them in. The great thing about it is that, as we continue to pull these, most of the time, I'm always seeing more efficiencies, lower cost per visits, and bigger lifts. Because we're making those adjustments consistently for the campaign over that period of time, to ensure that we are driving the best success we can for our clients. And you know, consistency, always on approaches, I will always, you know, support those because that is where you're really able to compare, make some of those really good, you know, really good analysis on all of your data to see like how you can just make it better. And then you have that solid piece of data for the future years when you're planning as well know what changes impacted what and how you can do better going forward.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:16)Fantastic. So to end things off here, I want you both to think ahead. I call it 15 months. So between now and then the end of 2023. Not that much time, but thinking about current trends or even any speculative thoughts that both of you had, what does the future of attribution and this type of marketing technology look like?\n\n\n\nJP (00:14:44)Yeah, I think it's really hard to speculate. You know, with the privacy challenges and cookie apocalypse, the landscape changed quite suddenly and in other conversion tracking methods, but I think like full footfall lift and the audience and sights we can get from foot traffic attribution will become like essential because like I said earlier, the behaviour changed quite a bit. And also, it's, I would say, it becomes a must to prove that we can acquire net new consumers and drive like loyal consumer to stores. But also, it's, it's better to prove how we can increase ROI to our clients. And when it comes to insights from foot traffic. Attribution, the example I mentioned earlier, if we're only going after a lower CPM when we analyzed like the audience that converted the most, we realized that it was not the cheapest audience. So basically, when we were able to better target, it was more expensive, but we drove a higher quality audience and we had like a higher conversion rate. So instead of spending for nothing, we were able to adjust and be more agile.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:15:59)Yeah, no, I definitely agree with JP, I think it's difficult to speculate, I do see some challenges on the horizon. And obviously, some shifts, as we all know, we continue to talk about the 3rd- party cookie, the possibility of it being deprecated, and how that will impact all kinds of different things. Also, just more user awareness about what people are tracking, or were able to pull off of their phones, which is, of course, important with football attribution, it's related to our devices. So as those things change, I think it's going to only start to become a little bit more challenging to drive direct attribution, which is something that we're always constantly trying to figure out, as, you know, marketers is, how do we attribute the money that we're spending every part of the funnel towards the eventual goal, whether it be a conversion of like a purchase a walk in a lead, whatever it may be? I think as this continues to, you know, we move a little bit more into focusing on privacy away from cookies. I think things like football attribution, will have to be tweaked, obviously, in terms of some of those privacy concerns. Not that it's not, you know, a private, it's definitely a transparent approach. It's just we're having a lot more people are having a lot more control over their phones. But like I said, I think it's something where these types of attribution studies are going to be more important than ever, to continue to attribute the importance of digital marketing, and how it is impacting a user's entire journey through the funnel. And so yeah, I think hopefully, we just continue to grow new ways to attribute media and really tell that full story.\n\n\n\nJP (00:17:36)And if I can also add one other prediction, I think real-time optimization will become a thing in the future. So right now, most of the DSPs rely on third-party partners to get after the end of the campaign data. And I know some DSPs work on proper retiree tech, and will be able to track in real-time very soon footfall attribution. So that will allow us to better able to optimize during the campaign versus waiting for the next campaign.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:18:11)Yeah, I agree. I think that direct integration, I know that StackAdapts been working on that too to bring it in and productize it more within the platform. I think that, like you said, will be huge, because yes, you can make more decisions in flight, as opposed to having to look back at a prior campaign and make only forward changes.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:18:27)All right, well, JP, Allie, before we close out, I'm gonna throw both of you in audible. For any marketers that are listening to the podcast, we always like to know from our guests, what are some resources that either of you would recommend, so it could be a podcast, a blog, any kind of content that can help them stay on top of trends and be more forward-looking as marketers and advertisers.\n\n\n\nJP (00:18:53)I will be totally honest with you, I usually reach out to my sales reps and try to digest the information they share with me. So in the last few years, talking to many reps, including Mike at StackAdapt. Hi, Mike. I hope you're listening. It was great because like you get insights from what is in development and you are able to then like fact check if it's good for your clients. So I feel like most of the blog and podcast are based on past experience versus sales reps are usually more forward and allow you to be ahead of the curve.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:19:32)I'm a big fan of Ad Age and Ad Week. Both of those offer like a one-pager email that you can get in the morning I believe they're called like a wake-up call. I love those simple digests. I use them also from like New York Times even just because I know we're all super busy. It helps to have like a quick review of like what's going on in the world and in advertising to really keep up on the trends. But then otherwise, I think really connecting with you know, clients, whether it be, you know, for us, like us with JP internally with people that we work with hearing what's going on in their world, what their clients are concerned about, what we're trying to solve for in the future. You know, just be curious, I think is the biggest piece. The more curiosity you have, the more that you're going to learn and be able to continue to, you know, serve your clients better in the future, and be able to work internally to solve some of these upcoming issues.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:20:29)Absolutely. Well, I don't think we could have scripted a more perfect answer that was great. I think the key there is staying curious to stay on top of things within the industry. And you never know what you might learn on a day-to-day basis. Because as we know, marketing and advertising moves at lightspeed, things change very fast, Allie (20:48)Always changing, all the time.Matt (20:51)Well, to both you this was a fantastic episode. It was great to have both of you on, get your expertise from both sides of the coin from the agency perspective, as well as the you know, StackAdapt perspective. To any of our listeners who are working in marketing, advertising, looking to get a better insight on attribution technology, we hope that you took a lot away from this episode as much as I did. So thank you to our guests. And thank you to you for listening. This has been How Agencies Thrive podcast and we'll see you in the next episode. Take care.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:21:31)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can find us at stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/basics-of-programmatic-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/basics-of-programmatic-advertising"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"How to Add Programmatic to Your Marketing Mix","datePublished":"2022-11-23T21:31:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:21+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/basics-of-programmatic-advertising"},"wordCount":4475,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/basics-of-programmatic-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502163438/helene_parker_stackadapt_podcast_s3e8.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["multi-channel","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLearn how to add programmatic to your marketing mix, how to scale with programmatic, and best practices for programmatic ads.\n\n\n\nHelene Parker | Founder and Chief Programmatic Coach, Helene Parker Consulting LLC\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction  (00:00:00)The number one question when it comes to the platform is how many DSPs should I use? You can start a campaign the same way, which is entering your advertising campaign budget flight, and then your tactics in all DSPs no matter what, and what exactly is non-negotiable for your team inventory. Measurement transparency, tracking, targeting capabilities, creative upload I think it's one of them that you should consider user interface friendliness, resources from the DSP. If it's hard to get in touch with your DSP support team, I think that's something that should help you make a decision.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:29)But then you think about the social landscape, the research data is hugely significant when we combine all these different touchpoints that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast. \n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:58)Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Matt, and I'm on the Education Development Team at StackAdapt. And today, we have a very special guest and a very special episode centered around building the next-gen Media Team. Now typically, we showcase agencies that work with StackAdapt, or partners that we have. But in this episode, I'm really excited to welcome in Helene Parker, who is an independent consultant, an industry vet, and most importantly, a programmatic guru. As always, we're going to have our guests introduce themselves. So Helene, please tell us a little bit about yourself, your experience and some of your areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nHelene (00:01:31)Oh, my gosh, well, Matt, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. This is exciting. I'm a big fan of StackAdapt content in general. So for those who don't know me yet, thank you for having me. Thank you for spending some time with us. I'm Helene Parker, and I've been working in the programmatic advertising industry for about close to 10 years. I started way back when as a trader, and my expertise is definitely trading media buying activation, building up a department from scratch. And then of course, over the years, when you work with fantastic agencies, you get to wear multiple hats, and some of the hats I've worn have been adding up, saying search paid social, you name it. So they're different skill set that you get to acquire along the way that is a benefit right on a resume. But my expertise is definitely programmatic media trading and buying. So in the last three years and a half, I went ahead and started my consulting business where we offer training and workshops. So what I mean by that is that you're probably listening to this, you might be an agency, you fit into two categories, you either have a handful of traders that are coming up to speed, different level, and you really want to be efficient. Then you hire somebody like me, we spend a day together like boot camp style. And then we assess different topics like optimization, or how to upsell how to create a media plan efficiently, things like that, just to plug in on the efficiency for you and your client that you're servicing. And the second category is like, I just hired this employee from scratch, I really just don't have the time to bring him up to speed, you hire me. And then I bring them up to speed on your behalf. Again, one day, a couple of workshops, type of style. And then we go through things like the fundamentals to how to meet what our media placement, what's the difference between guaranteed versus non-guaranteed. And so that's where my heart is now, you know.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:27)Fantastic. Well, you know, what, when I think of passion in the programmatic space, it's Shiv. For me, you have digital, and you and so it's awesome that you know, in our bonus episode, we had Shiv and Shiv's been working with StackAdapt quite a bit this year. So it's awesome to have you on the episode and pick your brain a little bit about you know how agencies can move into that next-gen move into that next year and really succeed. So what we'll do for the episode, we've got four main questions, I'm sure we'll have a few other questions that are offshoots of this. But to start out what I'd like to know from you is the role of the agency, you know, how is this changing? And what should an industry vet or even a beginner in their career, know about what the agency looks like today compared to what it was even five years ago?\n\n\n\nHelene (00:04:23)Well, like five years ago, an agency was a one-stop shop, right? Like agencies offered full services, programmatic search, creative, PR, you name it. I think in the last couple years, we've seen more agencies really niche down onto you know, one or two services and then partner. So if you had to ask me where the agency world is going, I would say just that. I think it's important for us as clients or as partners of agencies or agencies partners ourselves, to understand that this market is shifting dangerously, and we need to be adaptable. And what I mean by that is that agency needs to understand that partnering outside of that agency is really important for their own success. So if you're listening to this, and you're like, what is she talking about? I'm full-service agencies, that simply means that there's going to be a point where you're going to blow up in business, right? I'm gonna throw this in the university, you claim it by now say amen, or whatever you want to say. But let's say, you have business development, a big project that came in and now you need staff, normal agency will go out and hire right away. The reality is that we're not missing of talent, we're just not as strategic in hiring that talent. So if you're in this position where you need to hire somebody, then this is the time to level up your partnership as an agency. So StackAdapt, for instance, partnership with StackAdapt, if you're doing self-service, maybe you should add a you know, managed service to help you stay afloat with your team or consider staff augmentation, there are a lot of great staff augmentation agencies out there. So here are two things to remember, you have to be adaptable. And that all that means simply, you may have to step out and partner with another agency, or partner with something like a staff augmentation. And just so we're clear, because I know we understand terms differently. Staff augmentation is basically an agency that allows you to tap into their strategists tap into their traders account management, to really help you bring an expert right away. And it's short-term commitment, usually. And if it's long-term commitment, then great, right? Great for that person, but it can help fill in the blanks faster and more efficiently. So it's time to normalize this. It's time to as an agency to normalize. I know we like to work to white labelling, but it's time to normalize the transparency that we have this big business, we had to partner up with a digital X media A. We are rosy as SMB consulting, a, I don't know of work reduce, you know, all of those are great options for staff augmentation. So I would say that's where the agency world is now, normalizing and really reaching out to those external partners that are going to help us just look better in front of the agency, because now instead of turning things in two weeks, you can do it in five days or three days. And then also, you're not overloading your core employees with additional tasks, because you know, they're overworked, underappreciated. Now you get to really empower them to lead in a team and maybe get involved in that partnership, right? So that's how you want to look at where the agency world is. I am all for partnership. I think partnership is like a hidden secret in our industry. That's how we like it's like a hidden success, right? So if you're listening to this, and you're trying to get into the industry, I would say definitely be aware of what's happening in the agency world. But I will also say, you know, don't be afraid, don't be afraid to take risks. Don't be afraid to work for an agency. Working for an agency is a great way to acquire that skill set, that knowledge, they like this, right? Because you get to wear those multiple hats, you get to get your feet wet in different piles of water, puddles of water, I would say. So it's a pretty, it's definitely an exciting time for agencies. I will say this, and hopefully we won't get any death threats from this. But if agencies are not flexible and adaptable from what I was referring to, I don't think agency is going to be around for a very long time. So I think it's a dangerous statement, but I'm gonna own it. Okay, because when I talked to Brent In-House, their biggest thing is that, you know, their agency is not transparent enough. You know, there's a trust issue, there's a dissent that, you know, it's kind of shady in the back end. So, as an agency owner, as an agency team, you want to make sure that transparency and trust is there 1,000% That is making sure that you understand what's missing, and fill in the blanks from what's missing. And staff augmentation might be one, training might be one, increasing your partnership with StackAdapt, one of the DSP might be one. So that's that's what I would say.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:09:34)Absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned those in-house teams. And we do have a question later on about that a little bit more. But for now, I want to dive a little bit deeper into more of what you do. And when we were talking in our kickoff call a week or so ago leading up to this episode. We talked about kind of that roadmap or framework that you provide that would help an agency achieve success. So I think it was the three P's for an agency, and they'd love to hear a little bit more about that. And how you normally break that down when building out a successful team.\n\n\n\nHelene (00:10:10)Thank you for asking, yeah, I play on words, they're the three P's of programmatic, right? So, every clients that we work with, whether it's an agency or a brand in-house, or a tech, I've had a handful of like SSPs adtech reach out to me, we teach a framework. So it's a programmatic activation framework. And we focused on the three P's, which is the platform, the process and the people. And so I'll go on into each really quick and tell you what exactly we teach and why it's important. The biggest thing about this workshop, for instance, is that the end of the workshop, the teams are much more efficient, they understand, One, how to handle the platform or how to maximize the DSP partnership. Two, they understand that they are lacking of automating like internal automation or internal workflow efficiency, that could be fixed with like a process that can you process like a media map or something. And then the people is like, literally, the most important because we keep the last, the best for the last. The people section is literally just on understanding like how do you first hire that perfect that programmatic ninja? How do you onboard them successfully? And how do you retain them? And so those three Ps are, you know, and they said, like a couple hours type of workshop. And we go over this framework with all of our clients, because we don't only go over like fundamentals or optimization, best practices, those are definitely paths. But after going through that framework, or after going through that programmatic activation session, they're able to really put everything they've been doing into like into perspective. So as painting the picture, as an owner of an agency, as a part of the department head, you're really able to understand like, oh, well, I know that we have processes down. We have maybe people found like most of our traders stays for two or three years, which I don't know any company, maybe that has that long of a trader. But now we have to focus on the first, which is platform. And where are we lacking? Again, there's a lot of things you want to understand you want to maximize your platform. So you might be thinking right now saying, okay, three P's. Pretty cool, whatever. I think I got it. But let me go through maybe a couple key points that Copan Seco takeaways with each of those three P's for you. So let's address the platform one, I think the biggest misunderstand, the biggest the number one question when it comes to the platform is how many DSPs should I use? I don't know, if you get that, Matt, on your head or maybe not right? You can start a campaign the same way which is entering the advertiser campaign budget flight, and then your tactics in all DSPs no matter what. What I would say is that the biggest difference is what exactly is non-negotiable for your team? So for instance, if user interface friendliness is the most important for you, then definitely stack it up. Right? Definitely the Trade Desk? I don't know. Definitely, I don't know basis, right? If creative upload is one of the many things you need to have in bulk, then maybe you might want to consider other DSPs, right that I mentioned. Because the other DSPs take a while like maybe a DV 360. If you want to consider omni-channel reporting, and you're already running, SA 360, then definitely DV 360. So look at the three or five things are non-negotiable, inventory, transparency, and measurement and reporting. Okay? Because transparency is non-negotiable. If a vendor is not able to give you what you need, you should run, don't work with them. I don't care. So what I say inventory, measurement, transparency, tracking, targeting capabilities. Creative upload is I think it's one of them that you should consider because it can take a lot of time and can lead to a lot of human error, UI friendliness. And then I'll end with resources from the DSP. If you're, if it's hard to get a touch with your DSP support team, I think that's something that should help you make a decision. Because Matt and his team at StackAdapt know StackAdapt the best period. If you're walking through the DSP, like say, StackAdapt, and you have a question or you're really stuck in terms of performance, they're the first person they're the first people you need to reach out to, because they know their technology, the best period. So having that support team is really important. So just to recap, when you're looking at your DSP, if you're thinking about how many DSPs to get, just think about those things, you know, go back to those that I just mentioned, make sure that the top three are checked from new DSP and if that's the case, then cool. If that's not the case, then if you need to niched in, then maybe you should consider another DSP like simplify, started with mobile and geofencing and addressable, right? So, and I'm just throwing DSPs out there those are as example, they're not sponsoring me. I'm very, very agnostic when it comes to the DSP because I want to, I want to prioritize your need versus the technologies offering, because they have a lot to offer for you. So that's the beauty, right? It's the beautiful working in our industry. So we'll move on to the process part, which is the non-sexy conversation literally, process is like, we come we have to go through this like, process can be like this. In order to understand if you have efficient processes, you need to understand your internal workflow, but not you only as a manager, your whole team, brother, your whole team says, you need to make sure that everybody on your team understand who is the creative designer, who's the reporting analysts, who is the programmatic ninja, okay, who is the account executive, and things like that. And some companies are really great, some agencies are a really great way to kick off costs, internal kickoff calls to go over those details. That's great. But how do you standardize the process? So do you have one document where you hold all the magic, I like to bring up the media map, do you have a media map that maps out everything you need to know to activate this media to launch the campaign to whatever you need to do. And also, does anyone on the team understand their role or is confused about their role? So that's where a process needs to be implemented, and the same process have to be implemented everywhere. So that's why I call it like the non-sexy part because it's just like, it's tend to be boring, because it's repetitive. But trust me, six months from now, you're gonna go back into that media map, you're gonna go back into that internal workflow, review your notes, and see oh, this is why we did that three years from now, when you're pitching the client again, or upselling them, you're gonna understand, oh, that's what we did. So that's why this process needs to be standardized. And once you standardize the process, there's always a way to automate something. So that's just an exercise we go through with the clients to help them understand like, oh, actually, you spend a lot of time in emails, how about you invest? Or maybe you should consider a project management tool where everyone on the team get to see that comment. Okay, because it's pertained to that one client for the sake. And you don't have to repeat yourself email and then be harassed. In your Slack, be called and texted on your cell phone. So that's what processes are about.\n\n\n\nMatt  (00:17:42)Helene, I'm interested to know in, you know, the first half, we talked about those three P's, the framework for programmatic and the framework for agencies, let's zoom in a little bit on people, because as we mentioned in the first half, that's the foundation that's what you need to run the effective agency and the platform and the processes don't happen without it. So I'd love to dive a little bit deeper on that. And any additional thoughts that you have?\n\n\n\nHelene (00:18:08)And of course, people I mean, people is pretty straightforward is how do you hire what are the soft skill set you need to look for when you hire programmatic ninja, because technical skill set can always be taught. But some of those soft skills don't always come very naturally. And then the onboarding part is again, going back to some of those processes. What can you standardize, because employees like agents, companies with poor onboarding processes are 74% more likely to lose their employees, right? And this is from a Lorman Stats, a study I pull from Lorman. So it's great. 74% of who's not going to last more than a year and a half, because they're so confused about boarding or they had such a bad experience. So it starts with that, like in order for you to service your client correctly, you have to make sure your people will also servicing your client, or taken care of.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:19:07)Fantastic. Now, we're just about at time with the episode, but I wanted to ask, in terms of the agency, you know, at the beginning of the episode, we talked about the past and how things have changed, moving up to the present. What does the future look like? I've been asking guests recently, you know, think 15 months in the future, that would put us at the end of 2023. What does that agency look like? And how can that agency set itself up for success in the future?\n\n\n\nHelene (00:19:37)I love that question. I would definitely say partner, I would definitely say go ahead and be flexible in your offerings and their services. So my one-minute thing about about this topic would be adaptable. Make sure you have partnerships set in stone set in place. Consider staff augmentation, encourage your team to grow and to go learn and to do trainings, you know, hire me to help you do your training. Because in the future, if the agencies are not adaptable, if agencies are not able to provide transparency, trust and efficiency for their clients, I don't think we're gonna see a lot more agency. So, I think the future is definitely like the agency is going to become very niched into a couple of services that they're going to become expert at. And they're going to stop partnering with other experts in other niches, and build partnerships like that to service one client. So be adaptable, it's a lot going on, but it's always gonna be a lot going on this is programmatic, but understand that things are shifting, employees are shifting, our media shift shifting, you know, client, like the consumer is shifting, so you got to shift with them. And you got to be maybe two, three steps ahead. By being two, three steps ahead is really, like I said, partnering up with others, and really investing in education, like you guys do.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:21:02)Awesome. Well, this puts us right about at the end. But before we started recording I had mentioned you know, think of a resource that you would recommend to anybody who's listening to this, it could be your own newsletter that you put out, which is really great and very informative, or any other websites, blogs, podcasts, anything that can help programmatic advertisers stay on top of what's latest and what's trending.\n\n\n\nHelene (00:21:30)Oh my gosh, I love this question. So yeah, I do have a newsletter, and you can sign up on LinkedIn or on my website, heleneparker.com, okay, y'all, but don't call me Helene in the streets, just call me Helen. But I would say I also have a podcast called Programmatic Digest Podcast, and we just cover that. We cover like industry trends, and we discuss like, what's the latest thing you need to learn about? And I have a course. So if you're listening to this, and let's say, you want to learn more about programmatic activation, it's available on my course you can learn on your own, or you can hire me to you know, teach it to your people efficiently. I would say external resources I love  AdExchanger. I love Digi Day. I definitely love U of Digital's newsletter, y'all, you need to tap into that because Shiv does a great job in recapping the top, I think five trends that you need to know in a week, and really demystifying what it means and adding his professional opinion to it. So definitely look into U of Digital's newsletter. I think my podcast is a great resource for people that learn audibly. And, of course, I have a newsletter for that and, you know, tapping to StackAdapt resources. So you do all of this to make sure you're empowered. So you know use some of this work, maximize this partnership, they're doing this because they want to make sure you have options out there, you know what's up. So definitely maximize your partnership by tapping into their resources, their newsletter, listening to those type of podcasts, but you have to do one of them, you have to continue educating yourself. And that goes by reading articles, talking about it, listening to podcasts, or like attending webinars or things like that. But you got to do one of those things very often and consistently.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:23:20)Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining. This has been an awesome episode. For any of our listeners who are in this spot in their careers looking to move into programmatic or looking to build that next gen agency team. We hope that you took a lot away from this episode. But until then, we'll see you in the next episode. And this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:23:47)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/basics-of-programmatic-advertising","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/basics-of-programmatic-advertising","name":"Basics of Programmatic Advertising | StackAdapt","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#website"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/basics-of-programmatic-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502163438/helene_parker_stackadapt_podcast_s3e8.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","datePublished":"2022-11-23T21:31:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:21+00:00","description":"We unpack the basics of programmatic advertising. Listen to How Agencies Thrive to learn how to add programmatic to your marketing mix.","inLanguage":"en-US"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/basics-of-programmatic-advertising#primaryimage","url":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502163438/helene_parker_stackadapt_podcast_s3e8.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502163438/helene_parker_stackadapt_podcast_s3e8.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","width":601,"height":601,"caption":"Illustration of Helene Parker, Founder and Chief Programmatic Coach of Helene Parker Consulting LLC"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/weather-targeting-campaign#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/weather-targeting-campaign"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Forecasting a Successful Weather Targeting Campaign","datePublished":"2023-01-11T22:03:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:21+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/weather-targeting-campaign"},"wordCount":3840,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/weather-targeting-campaign#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502170756/bobbi_whyte_stackadapt_podcast_s3e9.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["audience targeting","podcast","weather targeting"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLearn what weather targeting is, weather targeting strategies, and how you can leverage this tactic to tap into the influence of weather.\n\n\n\nBobbi Whyte | Senior Paid Media Manager, BIG Partnership\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction  (00:00:00)There was a study done into box office sales in comparison with weather. And it found that when the weather was really cold, tickets for feel-good films, rom-coms kind of rocketed. And that's really meaningful and say if you're someone like Netflix for what kind of titles you're going to promote, if you're using weather-based targeting, then creative that resonates with the current conditions are going to perform best.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:23)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints. So that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart you're tuning in, you're turning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:48)Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Matt, and I'm on the Education and Development team at StackAdapt. And today, we have a very special episode centered around weather targeting, and mainly how you can leverage weather data to make your programmatic campaigns hyper-relevant to your audience. On this episode, we have Bobbi Whyte from BIG Partnership, which is a full-service agency based in the UK. As always, we're going to have our guests introduce themselves. So Bobbi, it's great to have you on the episode. To help our listeners understand who you are, we'd love to hear a little bit more about you, your agency, your role, and your areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nBobbi (00:01:24)Thank you for having me. So yeah, I work for BIG Partnership, as you said, and we're a full-service marketing agency. And when I run an integrated agency, we work across PR and creative digital. I work within the digital team, and I am the paid media manager. So I take care of all kinds of digital advertising, any sort of advertising that you pay for your placement. So all things across social, YouTube, Google and programmatic, which is kind of what we'll cover today. And I've worked here for three years, before that I was in-house, but most of my experience from digital comes from working here at back in service and our kind of a wide range of clients from third sector corporate consumer coverage, a little over three years have been here.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:13)Fantastic. Well, it's great to have you on the episode. It's kind of cool to see. Because when when I first started working on the podcast, and two years ago, we were only working in North America. So it's awesome to have somebody from the UK joining the episode. So for anyone that listening to this, the general structure of the episode will go through a number of questions, we'll take a break halfway through. But let's go ahead and get started. So, Bobbi, just to bring everybody up to speed for somebody who's never heard of this, who's never heard of weather targeting? How would you define this technology? And what do you see the key benefits being?\n\n\n\nBobbi (00:02:53)Yes, so weather targeting is just another form of kind of refining what your ads are seen. So anyone that works in digital marketing will be used to refine and that based on audience targeting, if we do that based on kind of browsing behaviour and interests in location-based targeting based on geography, we even do like ad scheduling for when the ads are shown. So where they're targeted is just kind of another layer to that to allow you to define when ads are seen based on another element, which is the weather. So that means you can show different creatives for different weather conditions, or you can only serve your ads in certain weather conditions. Or it can offset your ads in certain weather conditions. And this is kind of great since it has come to digital I think traditionally we've seen out-of-home quite a lot. You'll see that with like supermarkets and things. They've kind of changed their billboards that are outside their stores. If it's for in the summer, that will be like a slowly suncream things like that, even when it's winter or drizzly weather that changes to you know, conference and things like SIP. So it was great to kind of see this now and been able to do digitally, and where we can reach a kind of a much wider mass while also applying other audiences targeted matrix.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:09)Yeah, well, you know, when we've been talking about weather targeting on our side, there's definitely been a lot of data around how the weather impacts consumer moods. And as we've watched, programmatic growth over the last couple of years, this wasn't something that even I had thought about. But now that this technology is out, and it's thriving, it's so straightforward that this is a great tactic for anyone to use to serve hyper-relevant messaging. So what I am interested to know is, you know, your experience using weather targeting, you know, how has it been a part of your overall strategy and some of the campaigns that you've been running on your side?\n\n\n\nBobbi (00:04:47)Yeah, so it's fairly new to us as well. And as you see, there's kind of loads of ways that we're the targeting can be relevant in terms of how it affects us psychologically and things like that. And the most recent time I've used it as part of a sort of larger campaign that we were doing before the charity called Northwest Cancer Research. So every summer, the attention sort of switches to skin cancer. And with the reason being that if you're from that part of the UK, you're 27% more likely to develop skin cancer, which is pretty surprising, because they're notoriously is kind of, whether they're sort of notoriously un-summer like, you know, it fairly translates. It's not, we're not in like parts of Europe, where we usually experience what we kind of associate with sun tan and things like that. So with that people can allow into this false sense of security in regards to sun safety. So our sort of objective of this campaign was to sort of turn up the volume on UV protection, sun safety and sort of kinds of incentives for skin cancer because of this fact. So as an agency, we ran as I say, it was a much larger campaign, we had PR net of home elements, we done like a sun cream cartoon across the UK. We love the Blackpool Tower, and we went into schools and things like that in but we also can realize that we need to activate this digitally due to its kind of ability to reach people at mass. So that's when we used StackAdapt. And I've recently heard about the weather-based targeting and naturally, this is quite a good fit for it based on how skin cancer develops. So we use this as like a digital display campaign using weather-based targeting. So we didn't have a great deal of other audience targeting, apart from an ash region and the northwest of England. But because then cancer can affect anyone other than that audience targeting was really wide to anyone. So that's where we played and where those affected instead. So that allowed us to kind of upscale our ads when the weather was really sunny. So this year, we had multiple heat waves. So that was really good, and allowed us to kind of dial that up a really strong message, a really high frequency of ads being served at that time as well during the heat waves in but it also let us kind of tap into this false sense of security with a cloudy weather and change our messaging for using the cloudy weather. So kind of messages like you can still burn through clouds. Even if you don't burn, you can still be affected by the sun. And the ability to do that really, it's just kind of speak to the audience where the charity recognized that was a reason that people kind of neglected sun safety was because of the weather. So that should be hyper-relevant with the weather that we're currently experiencing. And speaking to that about why sun safety was so important.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:07:32)Awesome. Yeah, I remember reading about this specific campaign when we were getting started on a case study. And I think it changed things for me in the way that I look at weather targeting, because I was like, this is probably one of the most straightforward and impactful ways that I've seen it being used. Just because on the academy side, you know, we look at features, almost theoretically, but then looking at it in practice with a campaign like this. It was really interesting. So what I am interested to know about is kind of expanding on this campaign a little bit. You know, you mentioned some of the strategy and kind of what you assumed going into it and how everyone responded. But what was the general response? Were people very receptive to these creatives? Did it help the brand, get their agents to get their messaging across? And kind of what was the general consensus on how the campaign went?\n\n\n\nBobbi (00:08:26)Yeah, totally. And I think what you're seeing as well with those other campaigns, and it's maybe a more sort of theoretical, psychological almost use in the way other people can draw better comparisons of movie sales rising, when the usability is targeting well as the objective of this campaign is obviously different than that there's no sort of conversion orientated goal in terms of sales or, you know, striving signups or anything like that we weren't looking for an action in the whole point of it was to raise awareness and educate. So with that, as well, it's a little bit harder to measure because, you know, there isn't a metric that you can pin that on. But we were really happy with the results and thought that weather-based targeting aligned so well with the campaign being directly related to weather and the research that the charity knew about people's thoughts with weather and sun safety. And, you know, we tried it with our form elements as well, when we would and the initial sort of planning stages of it, we can consider choosing our home billboards and things like that. And there was just so much logistical and cost implications of that. We weren't able to implement it. And I think that would have been otherwise disappointing, but because we were able to do it digitally. And that really helped us kind of drive up the awareness that we were really able to deliver. And in the end, we reached hundreds of 1000s of users with a really kind of fairly small budget as a charity. So it's a finite budget and that we had and the frequency and the sarafan that we were able to use over them over the heat waves were so beneficial as well, even something that aligned so closely with our clients’ goals. So yeah, really, really happy with the results. And so as the client, as I say, not as tangible to measure with things like uplift, because we're talking about such a large topic of sun safety. But we were really pleased and looking at things like the engagement. And that was all really positive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:10:21)In your experience in terms of creatives and formats, what has worked best for a weather-targeting specific campaign?\n\n\n\nBobbi (00:10:29)I think if you're using weather based targets, and then creative that resonates with the current conditions are going to perform best. So any sort of marketing messaging that can relate to what a consumer is currently experiencing, is going to have the most sort of impact. So for example, if someone's outdoors and it’s snowing, and you're advertising for a new type of jacket, you can kind of focus on the warmth and properties of that. Obviously, retailers are going to be advertising things like jackets and winter anyway, seasonally, but with the weather-based targeting, you can kind of make that even more relevant to the conditions that are experiencing so snow, there can be snow featured, and the creative can mention the snow that we are currently experiencing. And the kind of properties or benefits of the jacket that directly relate to your warmth or waterproof can be used as part of the conditions. And I think that's always where you're going to get the most sort of benefit from using this as a format is to really tap in and be hyper-relevant to what the user is experiencing. In terms of formats, I've not really found one that I would say is definitively better than the other. There will be data out there for that. But I think with this is always going to depend on your audience, what you're promoting, what the objective of the campaign is. And I think you'd always best just to test and kind of work with as many formats as you can and refine it down. Rather than try and work off other people's datasets. As I say, for the one we spoke about was display, but that was more born out of it worked better with our creative ideas, rather than with the weather-based targeting. And I think if you look at it from more of a holistic view, that's where you'll get the kind of better answer there. In terms of actual kind of ad formats.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:12:24)Awesome. Now, in a more practical sense of a listener who might want to get started with weather targeting, I kind of want to pick your brain a little bit on not only what some of the best practices would be for getting started, but also any limitations and kind of the best way to mitigate those limitations so that you can succeed with this format.\n\n\n\nBobbi (00:12:47)Yeah, I think there's no point in using technology for technology's sake. So we spoke about you mentioned at the start that there's loads of examples where weather influences behaviour and things like that. So always use those kinds of data points to steer what your campaign messages will be. For example, I've seen a brand, and luckily, I can't remember the name of the brand, because I probably shouldn't name and shame them. But they've kind of done a campaign that was like a rising discount with rising temperature over summer and the product have nothing related to weather or anything like that. It was just a sort of, to me, it felt gimmicky, that it was just like a marketer knew that the feature had discovered this feature and and made use out of it, and also slightly in bad taste, considering we're going through the climate crisis. But that didn't see me see meaningful or good use of data for weather-based forecasts. But that being said, like you said, I wouldn't underestimate there'll be no link with weather, other than the state of the economy as the biggest influence on consumer buying behaviour. So it affects if you know, you're going to walk into town or get a taxi, if you're going to go out to a restaurant, or if you're gonna order takeaway, you'd be where you're picking holidays and things like that. And I also read that there was a study about when we can have that physical need for warmth, when it's colder. We also have a psychological need for warmth. So there was a kind of study done and to box office sales in competitive with weather. And it found that when the weather was measurable, and windy and cold, the tickets for kind of feel-good films, rom-coms, all kind of rocketed. And that's a really meaningful and say, if you're someone like Netflix for what kind of titles you're going to promote, and that's maybe not so obvious and safe, but there is a clear link there in that. So it's vocabulary in your consumers and working with your data and finding those data points where they are not just using it as a sort of gimmicky feature because if you can cause it's available.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:54)Yeah, so it's almost not even about kind of objectively looking at the weather and how that might impact things it's really about going into the weeds with the consumer psychology and understanding based on how the weather is where people are going to be at, what are they going to need? And it's yeah, it's definitely an interesting piece of technology. And it's unique to some of the things that we've seen in the last couple of years. So what I wanted to do is was asked you, you know, it might not even be a campaign that you've personally worked on. But in terms of a unique use case for this technology. I mean, you just mentioned a great one about box office sales, and, that psychological need for warmth, but are there any other ones that you've seen that have kind of been a standout as a really cool use case for this technology?\n\n\n\nBobbi (00:15:46)Yeah, one that I've seen that it's maybe not, you know, the most out of the box, but I think it works really well. And it had really tangible results. And that was in the Egyptian Tourism Authority. So they've done a big case study with Google actually, was that they use the kind of third party tool in for the weather targeting. But basically, they wanted to look beyond their sort of usual tourism campaigns of things like the pediments that they're so famous for, and they wanted to draw upon the fact that they're one of the sunniest countries on the planet. And that was specifically aimed to British travellers, again, kind of play an antic. In fact, we have measurable weather here. So they made the focus of the campaign, their temperature, their climate. And they didn't want them to kind of, and the juxtaposition that against the UK's weather. So in a similar way, they use the current weather conditions and cities across the UK. So the drizzle, if it was drizzling in London, they would show a drizzling creative, all other creatives powers there and that one was enabled to kind of coincide with the weather conditions there. And then that was offset against in sort of sunny skies of Egypt that they would experience in at that moment, as well. And kind of West, all the familiar into the spots at the pyramids and things like that. And that kind of tapped into that escapism, and again, the psychological or practical and that's the way that you've experienced it, as that sort of psychological doesn't that look much nicer there what you'd experience right now if you're an agent compared to what you're experiencing right here in London. So I thought that was really clever, and kind of different from the traditional. And looking at the results from that they had a really tangible result, which was that the searches for holidays to Egypt from the UK, were up 134% year on year, which I think is just a really amazing result as a clearly a direct result of that campaign.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:17:43)Fantastic. Well, Bobbi, I'm not going to try to put you too much on the spot at the end, because this question is a bit of an audible, but for anyone listening who's looking to stay on top of trends and tips for success, pretty much anything programmatic. What are some resources that you personally use and some resources that you would recommend for anyone who's trying to stay on top of the industry?\n\n\n\nBobbi (00:18:08)I think staying on top of trends button is the main thing. There's kind of this move, I think, with consumerism in general to these sort of deep communities, rather than this sort of trying to reach the masses, which is often mean done, because people want to reach a large number of people, you know, they're always going to go for mass. But more and more that's not the weekend, consumers are moving with things. If you look at things like TikTok and, you know, Twitch and Discord and things, all these sort of platforms are becoming more and more popular due to the kinds of the deep communities that are being cultivated within them. So I think that is where the kind of future is headed for consumerism. And I think brands just now should be looking at kind of speaking to these multiple communities in different ways and given these communities different experiences, rather than the kind of usual appealing to the masses.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:19:03)Fantastic. Well, Bobbi, thank you so much for joining. For anyone who's been listening to this episode, we hope that you took away some key insights on weather targeting, we hope you have a much better understanding of how this works and what some of the benefits are. So again, Bobbi, thank you so much for joining. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast and we'll see you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:19:25)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/connect-with-audio-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/connect-with-audio-advertising"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Hit the Right Note With Audio Advertising","datePublished":"2023-01-25T23:58:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:21+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/connect-with-audio-advertising"},"wordCount":4789,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/connect-with-audio-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502185639/kevin_linger_stackadapt_podcast_s3e10.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["audio","podcast"],"articleSection":["Advertising channels"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow marketers leverage programmatic audio advertising to connect with listeners? Learn what programmatic audio is, how it works, and how to reach quality audiences.\n\n\n\nKevin Linger | Digital Marketing Manager, Xero\n\n\n\nLiban Ahmed | Sales Director, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Audio provides incremental reach opportunities when added to a campaign. Looking at audio specifically, it comes down to that additional reach looking at completed listens, which is a metric we would often use when evaluating audio campaigns, it can be significantly cheaper than a click. So we can still get engagement with our ad, figure out what creative is working and decide on how our audience wants to receive messaging, and then do that more efficiently in some cases with audio compared to some of the other mediums that we're considering.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:27)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints. So that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt  (00:00:52)Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Matt, and I'm on the Education Development Team at StackAdapt. And today, we have a very special episode centered around programmatic audio. And mainly what we're going to be talking about is how advertisers can effectively leverage non-skippable highly engaging audio ads in their campaigns. In this episode, we have Kevin from Xero, which is a technology company specializing in cloud-based accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses. And we have StackAdapt very own Liban. As always, we're going to have our guests introduce themselves. So Kevin, we'd love to hear a little bit about Xero yourself and your role in some of your areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nKevin (00:01:32)Hey, thanks, Matt. Glad to be on the show. Yeah, I'm Kevin, a digital marketing manager. Here at Xero based in Canada. My role is really focused on Xero’s performance online in the US looking at a combination of digital media, search engine optimization, advertising, website performance, and working with a big team of specialists here. And abroad. Xero is a cloud accounting software, we're looking to grow really rapidly here in North America, excited to be here. And we're always testing and learning and trying out new formats like audio.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:08)Fantastic. Now, Liban, I’d love to hear a little bit about you.\n\n\n\nLiban (00:02:13)For sure. My name is Liban, and I'm an account director here at StackAdapt. I've been here for nearly four years now. But my career started back in 2014, going through the agency route, having spent some time at PhD media wave maker, and even M net, which is a programmatic trading desk. So I've been programmatic around my entire career, and found myself a StackAdapt, where now we are selling that solution. But I'm glad to be here. And thanks for having me.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:43)Fantastic. So as mentioned, the theme for this episode is programmatic audio. So, Kevin and Liban, just to bring everybody up to speed, maybe some of our listeners might not be totally familiar with this format. But when we when we think of audio ads, typically, what comes to mind would be your traditional radio with ad breaks. And now, with podcasts, personalized music, audio shows, and programmatic ads, things are obviously very different. So for any of our listeners who are looking to kind of wrap their heads around this subject, what's the definition of programmatic audio? Kind of what is it and how does it work?\n\n\n\nKevin (00:03:21)Yeah, I love to keep things simple with my definition. So just starting with like an audio ad, I would say an audio ad is any sound on advertisement. And then you can build in deeper definitions from there. So obviously, like you said, Matt, there's traditional radio and then looking to online audio. There's programmatic, which has like all the great targeting abilities that we've got, reaching people, listening to podcasts, checking out the newest DJ track on SoundCloud, catching up on some music, listen to radio shows online or offline. And it captures like a huge diversity of content through an audio-only means.\n\n\n\nLiban (00:04:04)Yeah, for sure. I agree with Kevin here. I like to keep it simple. And audio advertising is simply the delivery of ads in an audio format across any online streaming platform. So if we're looking at it specifically in the programmatic lens, really what we're doing here is we're automating the process of buying and selling audio within an ad space. There's a lot of opportunity to target the right audience at the right time with programmatic audio ads, in comparison to traditional audio ads that we're used to from traditional radio, because a lot of the time there, it's not specifically buying around the audience but rather buying around the contextual relevancy of the show or program that you want to be on because you would at that point, back in the day, what they were thinking is, our audience is listening to this. So let's place it on here. But what we're able to do now is we know your audience is listening to this and let's place it there.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:01)Awesome. And I liked the mention of contextual relevance because this moves us into our next question where we want to know a little bit more about targeting. So when someone's targeting with audio ads, you know, how do we know the number of people that this has reached? And how do we even get started when we think about who we might want to target with certain audio creatives? And on what inventory?\n\n\n\nKevin (00:05:23)Yeah, I'd love to just start with from two. So we went from that contextual relevance that Liban spoke to where it was just like, hey, this is a local area that my audience might be in let's blast radio. And now we've got all these layers. So in addition to the demographic and geographic targeting, that we've been able to use in the past, like age, gender, city, we've also got behavioural, what am I looking at? What am I reading about? What content am I gauging with around the web, and that can inform a really great persona of who that person is in the B2B space. With CRO and accounting software, I mean, we're not looking to say everyone in Idaho is our target market, for example, we really want those accountants and bookkeepers, or those small businesses, decision-makers. So seeing people that are engaging with content online relevant to that, like accounting today, or trying to learn more about getting their finances together. That context is really great for tailoring audio to our audience. And that's something we can do through programmatic. Liban, I know you're an expert in the tracking space. So I'll leave it to you to catch the second part of that.\n\n\n\nLiban (00:06:39)So, yes, thinking from the StackAdapt side of things, we can definitely qualify the number of people you've reached in a variety of different ways, and a lot of targeting is available to you. So outside of our cookieless targeting solutions, which include page context AI and keyword targeting, all other targeting capabilities can be leveraged for running an audio campaign. Why is it that page context AI and keyword targeting are not available there is because both of these types of targeting tactics actually need to be displayed near content, whereas a lot of the audio medium, are within music, streaming platforms, podcasts, so on, so forth. So with that we're relying on non-cookieless targeting solutions. Thereafter, how do we qualify the number of people you've reached? Well, StackAdapt will always be able to provide an analysis across demographic characteristics and interests of the listeners, we reached the customized targeting further, here at StackAdapt, we determined that unique users reached in order to qualify the total number of people, this would also include any sort of deduplication. So that way we can really qualify, this is your total unique users that you've been able to reach. And then finally, as we've been harping on this floor, there's the ability to quartile completion, retarget your audiences, the ability to really amplify audio reach across programmatic formats to reach your audience.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:07:59)Awesome. Now, again, Liban, you're giving me a great transition to the next question here. But, you know, when we think about programmatic audio, it's often in that conversation of hey, what's the multi-channel strategy? How does it size up against other programmatic channels that people might be familiar with? And we'll look at this from kind of two sides of the coin. So Kevin, I'm interested to know from you, what kind of value programmatic audio has had in some of the campaigns that you've been running, and then Liban, I guess we can look at it more holistically from, you know, some of those best practices or even channel strategies, where audio might be effective. So, Kevin, we'll start with you from kind of the Xero lens and then Liban, we'll go to you from StackAdapt lens.\n\n\n\nKevin (00:08:45)Yeah, there's two things I like to consider on this. There's a lot of available research around the impact on ad recall of people being exposed to messaging through multiple mediums. So for example, if I'm just exposed only to a TV ad, I'm not as likely to remember the brand is that I'm exposed to TV and print, or like social and offline. The second thing to consider is audio. And other audio provides incremental reach opportunities when added to a campaign. So maybe with the display ad, I can reach 80% of my audience. But to get that last 20, I need another channel to do that. And audio can help me get full coverage of my audience. So looking at audio specifically, it comes down to that additional reach. There's additional users I can talk to that maybe I didn't have a way into before. And the opportunity to improve on recall with that extra layer of messaging back to programmatic audio is so much more valuable for us now that it's digital because we can reach people that are interested in our topics that might not have been identifiable before through just geographic or demographic targeting. And like a bonus on top of that is looking at completed listens, which is a metric we would often use when evaluating audio campaigns, it can be significantly cheaper than a click. So we can still get engagement with our ad, figure out what creative is working and decide on how our audience wants to receive messaging, and then do that more efficiently in some cases with audio compared to some of the other mediums that we're considering.\n\n\n\nLiban (00:10:27)Cool, awesome. And then, just to jump in from the other lens, on the StackAdapt side of things from what I'm seeing, and what my experience with audio ads when it comes to the value of an overall marketing strategy is, I like to position audio as an awareness driving format, best use in the top of a marketing funnel in order to be that first or early impression for your advertisers efforts. Although audio is primarily leveraged to for brand awareness, we do see a huge value, leveraging audio for conversion goal campaigns, which we've done similarly, on the Xero side. But on our side, what we're seeing here is similar to connected TV and online video format, advertisers are getting much more out of adding audio into the initial part of the marketing strategy, allowing us and its time really back to what I was saying earlier, being able to speak to people with other formats, being able to quartile retarget them and being able to develop messaging based on assets that they have previously seen, which will allow for a creative messaging strategy to push the audience down the funnel in the right manner that you're looking for.\n\n\n\nKevin (00:11:37)And Liban just like to add a couple more to that too, when we're using audio as a component of our marketing mix. The first is, you mentioned audio being a great brand driver and absolutely agree. One thing that's always awesome to include is a retargeting component, as well then taking advantage of the people that have shown interest with the audio ad, then using other tools to drive them through the funnel to ultimately purchase. The other piece and you'll see why in a second that's really important for Xero is making sure our branding is really present since we don't have the same visual prompts that we might see in other mediums, it's important to bring branding into the messaging. So a lot of our audio ads, instead of just saying Xero, which you might think is the number, we would say Xero with an x, so you know exactly what we're talking about. And then the goal behind that is to really empower someone that's interested in the message to go and complete maybe like a Google search for Xero afterwards and have like the right information to be able to do that properly.\n\n\n\nLiban (00:12:46)Yeah, I completely agree. Touching on that. The creative the use for audio should not sound like obnoxious promotional radio ads, we've become accustomed to rather, the approach with audio ads should be like having a conversation with your audience considered to testing different styles, voices and tones within your creative to learn what resonates most with your listeners.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:13:07)Kevin, from your side, we want to look at this from the B2B SaaS lens. And then for the band, we want to look at this from just general verticals that you're seeing and ones that you've worked on. But our question here is, what verticals are best suited for programmatic audio? And how can each vertical benefit from this format?\n\n\n\nKevin (00:13:30)Yeah, so before Xero, I also worked in advertising. And I've had the opportunity to work on a number of different clients and a lot of different verticals, which we use audio across, they're in industries as varied as like CPG, e-commerce, legal, etc. And none of them on the SaaS side, this is another vertical, where audio is a part of the media mix. From my experience, I don't think it matters as much which vertical you're in for targeting, it matters a lot more about who you're trying to reach and who that decision-maker really is. So, you know, if you're an auto-company, or a Bread Company, I think both can have success with audio. And the same goes for SaaS. Cause it really just comes down to can you reach that person? And I think the reality is, especially post-2020 like we live in a digital world where decisions are made in a combination of offline and online. And even if you're someone that's say like a farmer in agriculture, or you know, maybe you're a plumber or another small business owner, you're still going to do things online that are essentially putting your hand up and declaring your interest. So, you know, a farmer might google how to, you know, get a short-term loan, until like their next season of selling their crops comes by to Xero, that could be an opportunity to say, hey, there's someone here that's looking to improve their cash flow. Let's start speaking to them in a way that's organic and can really offer some help and insight for them to improve their business. So I really think just to sum up, I think any vertical can see success. In audio, it really just comes down to what's your goals? And what's your ability to develop creative that fits the medium in a natural was?\n\n\n\nLiban (00:15:27)So, personally, we've observed success across audio campaigns here at StackAdapt, across many verticals ranging from B2B to B2C. We touched on earlier that audio can be an asset for driving awareness and engagement as well as conversions. So altogether, this ultimately expands your campaign reach on premium inventory. For this reason, audio can be suited for all verticals. And we prefer to consider the type of audio inventory that we're reaching based on the unique needs of each target audience. So an example here would be leveraging audience data in order to find individuals wherever they may be engaging with audio programs, or podcasts or music platforms, in order to be able to display the right thing in front of them. Now, I don't think there's any specific verticals where I would say, no, you shouldn't do audio. Where have we seen the success that really comes to mind? A lot of retail, a lot of e-commerce, a lot of travel, B2B really works out well. I do think there is a place for audio across all verticals.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:16:32)Awesome. Now, what I want to ask both of you, as we get to the end of the episode is more kind of present and also forward-looking. So what I want to know is, what kind of trends are we seeing today with audio? And where is audio headed? And what should advertisers really be thinking about when it comes to this format and using it in the future?\n\n\n\nKevin (00:16:59)Yeah, I think there's two things I'd like to point out when considering audio. The first is creatively through the rise of the influencer economy, we're seeing a huge surge and more organic messaging coming out and appealing to audiences. And I think the thing to consider with audio, onto Liban's point earlier, is you don't want to try too hard sometimes to sell. You want it to fit the medium, you want it to feel natural, you don't want someone to feel like you're screaming at them with like, a sign yelling at you, you know, they want to be drawn to you. And they want you to really pull them in a way that's enjoyable for them to have that experience. And the second is, we're really seeing the digitization of traditional advertising accelerate. And I think one of the hottest mediums in advertising last few years has been connected TV. And I think audio is really just likely to follow that exact same path where advertisers are saying, Hey, we have this medium. In the case of CTV, it's not connected TV, it's video. And what I want to do is be able to give someone a message in a video format, and make sure that I'm giving that message to the right person at the right time. And audio with programmatic has got the exact same opportunity in front of it. And that's why you're seeing so much growth in that market because it's like, hey, the medium is sound, it's audio, it's exclusively a sound on message. Before with radio, I might not have been able to use this, but now I've got the tools to make its mark. So I think I see audio really parallelling CTV and growing as we continue to see the digitization of marketing. A couple other trends, I think to note are just more tools coming out for conversion tracking to tie the impact of upper funnel messaging, whether that's audio or video, or whatever that might be with like the lower funnel acquisition piece. So the other thing I think we'll see is an increase in the ability to track the impact of audio. And as more tools come online, we'll get a better understanding of how audio can impact acquisition and can sales deeper down in the funnel. So you know, search lift and brand lift and conversion lift studies are all pieces in there to show if someone hears an audio ad, they're this much more likely to convert or they'll convert if this discount deeper the funnel, which I think is really important for businesses to stay really focused on their margins with their marketing. And the last piece I just like to say on audio is during the recession, which we may or may not be already in or coming up on brands usually pull back on their marketing spend. And there's a lot of studies out there that show the brands that continue to focus on building themselves investing in awareness during the recession, tend to have long-term success. So for businesses that can weather the storm in the short term and continue to invest in brand-building channels like audio, it could be a really effective strategy to set themselves up for the long-term.\n\n\n\nLiban (00:20:13)Yeah, I completely agree with Kevin here. On the other side of the coin, where we've seen current trends, let's talk about the inventory that's available. Right now we have audio content available across streaming, in terms of podcasts, audiobooks, music, and playlists. One thing that we are seeing is more opportunity for inventory, a lot more opportunity for inventory placements over the last few years. Because audio is rapidly growing. On our side, I was able to find an EMARKETER report from earlier in 2021, that was actually projecting that audio listeners would be projected to increase to 73.1% by 2024, in the USA. So we are seeing a lot of adoption here. But it's not just because the inventory and the ability to reach them, it's more so also because of the adoption of things like rapid, or the rapid adoption of things like smart speaker adoption. Having those devices and opportunities to hit them in that medium where it's meant for that medium is increasing rapidly. So we are seeing a lot more opportunity to hit individuals that we want to, while we're using the right targeting in order to identify them across these devices, and these inventory types that are making themselves available now.\n\n\n\nKevin (00:21:29)Liban, I love the note on expanding inventory. And I have a really good example, one of my favourite podcasts is the Raptor Show with, Will Lou, shout out Scotty Barnes. But he's got a TV show on Sportsnet. And to be honest, I think it's at like two o'clock Eastern in the afternoon. I don't really watch it very much. But I love that I can listen to the podcast, that's everything he covered in the show whenever I want and take it with me. And as an advertiser, if I wanted to go after someone that was interested in sports, that's a really great signal that would be the right target for me. And something that used to be only available through traditional linear TV has now been cross-posted to an audio means. And now there's all of that inventory with all of that available data for advertisers to use to make sure that they're reaching the right person.\n\n\n\nLiban (00:22:23)Absolutely. And there's the two sides and reaching those individuals maybe you now know, that's a sports program, you know, the type of audience that'd be listening to it. So you can actually place your ad there knowing you'd be in front of a sports audience. But on the other side of things, we can use audience targeting to identify the people that you want to be speaking to, and they happen to be listening to that, then we can reach them from there in that angle as well.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:22:46)Awesome. So Kevin, and Liban, I'm gonna throw you both a bit of an audible, the end of the episode here. We ask all of our guests this. But in terms of resources that are out there, for anyone who's, you know, whether they're interested in programmatic audio or anything programmatic, what are some resources that each of you would recommend someone check out. So it could be a blog, could be a podcast, could be really anything that's available that can help you stay on top of industry trends.\n\n\n\nKevin (00:23:15)There are a variety of different ways to always capture information within this medium, and especially in emerging mediums such as audio, and really educate yourself. So that way, you're armed for success when you're looking into planning anything within audio or just being able to talk to it. I think a lot of the newsletters that are available right now, especially within our space, help out a lot with highlighting emerging trends such as Marketing Brew. But on the other end of things, any sort of information may be needed, I find a lot of the time is already captured by things like EMARKETER or Statista. If you're ever looking for any sort of qualification of trends, or qualification of the format in general, outside of that, I'm a big Reddit fan. And there's a lot of different pages around that. So there's programmatic there's ad ops pages, but yeah, just scouring there. It really just is a lot of individuals within this industry that are having conversations. And then from there could be thought starters for you in order to identify something you want to research further.\n\n\n\nLiban (00:24:15)Nice. Yeah, I'm also a big fan of EMARKETER and Statista as well. Three more that I'll mention. First being MarTech Today, it's really a resource for all marketing, technology, trends and guides. So everything from choosing the CRM software to emerging trends and advertising to new tools for analytics and conversion tracking and MarTech Today, covers all of that it's really a great way to stay on top of the leading edge of the changes in marketing technology. The second is Search Engine Journal. I think the origin of this one is like just in search advertising, but obviously there's so many digital mediums and tools in a marketer's toolkit. And Search Engine Journal, covers them all, and talks about everything from like social to web to display, audio, video, and back to search again. And then the last is a newsletter I get every day called The Morning Dough. That's dough, d-o-u-g-h. Spell it out since we're in an audio medium here. And this is really a list that goes out with all the top stories. Really for like the digital marketing space of the day. Everything from like new product announcements to changing to consumer behaviour to like the rise of like international demand for different social spaces. So yeah, three really good resources for me. MarTech Today, Search Engine Journal, and Morning Dough.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:25:51)Fantastic. Well, Kevin, and Liban this has been a great episode. Thank you so much for joining. For anyone who is listening, we hope that you took a lot away from this and hope you're feeling a lot more comfortable with programmatic audio as a whole. So, as always, this has been How Agencies Thrive podcast. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:26:14)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-trends#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-trends"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mark Shannon","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/mark-shannon","jobTitle":"Director, Client Services","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Unpacking the Latest Digital Advertising Trends","datePublished":"2023-02-23T00:58:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:22+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-trends"},"wordCount":5275,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-trends#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240502200036/brandon_langevin_stackadapt_podcast_s3e12.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["ctv","dooh","multi-channel","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe’re checking the pulse on all things programmatic and chatting about the latest digital advertising trends. We also explore emerging channels in the programmatic space.\n\n\n\nBrandon Langevin | Director of Sales, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nMark Shannon | Director, Client Services, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Proactively working against a fear of a recession is causing large brands and advertisers to be a lot more cost-conscious. And like we saw when COVID started, marketing dollars are usually the first thing to be cut. As a result of that, I think the biggest challenge that we're going to see this year is how advertisers are approaching the topic of waste and efficiency, whether that be through more customization and personalization, or really prioritizing channels that have measurable and tangible results.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:34)But then you think about the social landscape research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in, you're tuning in, you're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:55)Welcome to the final episode of season three of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Matt, and I'm on the Education and Development Team at StackAdapt. And today, we have a very special episode joined by two very special guests. As a way to end off the season right, we're going to be doing a pulse check on programmatic with none other than Mark Shannon and Brandon Langevin over from StackAdapt. And in this episode, we'll cover the latest trends in digital advertising, talk about emerging channels, technology, and so much more. So welcome, Mark and Brandon, you both been on the podcast before, great to have you back. What I wanted to do just to get our listeners up to speed on who you are, in case they haven't heard from you yet. Starting with you, Mark, tell us a little bit about yourself, your role at StackAdapt areas of expertise. And you know, tell us how long you've been in programmatic. And then Brandon we'll pass it off to you and do the same.\n\n\n\nMark (00:01:52)Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having us on. So my name is Mark Shannon, and I'm a Director of Client Services here at StackAdapt. I've been fortunate to be on the StackAdapt team for almost five years now. And in that time, I've seen a lot of change in innovation, not only with our platform, but in the industry as a whole. So I work really closely with our Client Services teams comprised of our account managers or programmatic strategists. And the short version of what we do is we take incredible executions, and make them perform wonderfully well, and work very closely with our agency and brand partners to ensure a high level of collaboration. And really to make sure that everything goes off without a hitch.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:37)Awesome. Thanks so much, Mark. Now, Brandon, tell us a little bit about you.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:02:41)Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having us on, Matt. It's it's fun to be back. And for anyone listening that I have yet to meet. My name is Brandon, and I'm a Director of Sales here at StackAdapt. I've been here for just about six years now. And obviously, it's been pretty exciting six years for as far as the company is concerned, going from 30 people when I when I joined on to over 1,000 now globally. My role is fairly straightforward. I work in tandem with Mark and a number of other amazing people at StackAdapt to ensure that all of our clients are being serviced the best way possible, through our account executives and account managers, and continue to provide best-in-class support and strategy recommendations to ensure all parties working with StackAdapt, including ourselves are successful in the long run.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:34)Fantastic. So as I mentioned at the beginning, what we're going to do is really do a pulse check on programmatic, talk about what's happened in the past what's going on right now and what the future looks like, we figured this would be a great way to end off on the season. So what I wanted to do is jump back, travel back in time a little bit to 2021. Thinking back to when I started hosting the podcast, this was the beginning of our second season. And we were still in the height of the pandemic and the height of all this uncertainty that was happening in the world. And we discussed how the digital landscape was evolving some of the silver linings that had happened out of the pandemic, and really how the advertising industry had changed. So I wanted to ask both of you, if you can think back that far, what were some things that either of you kind of predicted would happen in the future, back in 2021? Or some things that you were totally spot on about, what were some things that you weren't spot on about that you kind of missed the mark on and then what were some things that totally surprised you that you hadn't thought of?\n\n\n\nMark (00:04:44)Well, I mean, right off the bat, hindsight is always 2020. Right. So looking back, it's nice to be able to say well, I was always very right about this. But something that's always kind of been on the forefront of my mind is attribution. You know, I've had lots of conversations about it with clients, with our Client Services team individually, you know, I've been a huge proponent of the fact that, you know, things like UTM, or you know, identifiers or cookies or different ways to essentially attribute the performance of a campaign back, you know, the platform, or the individual line item, that drove those conversions or those actions as incredibly important. And, you know, we've always worked to anticipate discrepancies before they happen, work with our measurement partners, and proactively, you know, work to address those. And, you know, I saw that there was gonna be this shifting landscape, you know, we've always recommended that people worked with our StackAdapt pixel, because it can track events very reliably on an event basis, instead of just looking at session data, such as, you know, other analytics properties. And you know, we're seeing things like Google Analytics, moving from their JS analytics to GA4 which uses event-based data, it's that session-based data, and it provides a lot more capabilities and integration possibilities with media platforms across the board. So you know, it's nice to see that something that I've been a huge advocate for a couple of years ago, is actually taking a little bit more of a center stage moving forward. Now, on the other hand, something goes absolutely wrong about the success of short-form video. And, you know, brand partnerships with companies such as TikTok, I'll be honest, having a start in social media myself, and you know, seeing the evolution of online conversations, you know, from Twitter, to Facebook, and you know, there are others across the board there I was, I was very bearish success of TikTok. And I was definitely a late adopter. I don't know if this is just, you know, highlighting the generational differences and the blindness I have to that. But much like Jon Snow, I think that proved that I know nothing. And I definitely need to develop a better understanding of that. Something we got surprised about, honestly, 2021, you know, as I mentioned, was an uncertain and difficult time. And it was really difficult to look optimistically toward the future, you know, turn on any news channel, and we're just bombarded with bad news stories about the global pandemic. And, you know, I thought we'd be stuck at home a lot longer than we have been to be honest, so with traveled opening up, you know, we've seen a significant rise and things like, you know, foot traffic attribution, and, you know, relying on travel and visit metrics, especially as travel and tourism campaigns have started to pick up. So I'm surprised with the speed at which they did pick up and success we've seen, you know, so soon after coming out of this global pandemic. And, you know, just being here to support that renewed demand is kind of in our mandate.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:07:55)Mark, you're showing our age by talking about how bearish we were on TikTok, but I'm right there with you. And I think to add on to that, I've never pretended to predict the future. And I really tried not to do it during the height of COVID, obviously, with so much uncertainty and feels quite nice to be hopefully on the other side. But something that I was very surprised that in looking back, I don't think I should have been, but their resilience of our industry as a whole, to bounce back and be able to capitalize on the regrowth of advertising as a whole as things started to get better, was a very pleasant surprise. We, like everybody else obviously saw quite a few budget cuts and restructures in not just a programmatic landscape, but marketing as a whole, I think most businesses throughout the height of COVID, were looking to cut cost and try to be as efficient as possible. And a lot of time, marketing budgets were the first ones to go. But looking at our industry now, I don't think it's ever been stronger. There's obviously quite a few big changes coming in the digital space over the next months and years. But in terms of how digital advertising is bought and executed, I don't think we've ever been in a better position than we are now. And given how uncertain everything was two years ago, it was quite a big surprise. And obviously a surprise for the better, especially for us on this call and everybody listening and yeah, really excited to see what the rest of 2023 has to bring.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:09:34)Now on that present note staying there. I'd love to get both of your thoughts on two areas. Number one is emerging advertising channels. And number two is emerging technology in the ad space. So we'll start with emerging advertising channels.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:09:50)Yeah, I think within the programmatic space specifically and talking with StackAdapt in mind, we were trying to follow as many dominoes as we could in terms of inventory access and ways to buy programmatically. I think, for us, one of the last dominoes to fall earlier in 2022 was digital out-of-home. And we explored the possibility of buying on digital out-of-home platforms pre-COVID, and pre-pandemic. But there really wasn't a ton of consistency or inventory available, or even back-end infrastructure to buy at scale. And think with COVID, and obviously, way less people spending large amounts of time outdoors, it gave all those inventory providers almost an extra two years to develop stronger technology and stronger inventory that you can bid on programmatically. And for us, as recently as last year, we made the decision to start running and buying digital out-of-home inventory. And I think that's only going to increase over the course of the calendar year and into 2024 and 2025. As that backend infrastructure continues to develop, but what we're starting to see is sort of similar to the CTV wave we saw around 2019, but more so in 2020 and 2021, in that kind of the latest and greatest channel. And we're going to be marrying that native exposure you would expected in an outdoor environment, whether that be a billboard or a bus stop, add in, you know, a local town all the way to a full takeover of Times Square or Piccadilly Circus, and marry that with the targeting sophistication and measurement side of digital advertising. So, for us being able to invest in that and start offering it to clients has been really exciting. And with advancements in measuring attribution through things like device IDs and exposure, and then moving those users down a consumer journey through various screens, whether that be in their home, office, on the way to work coming back from the gym, or on the way to a restaurant in the evening, through again, any screen you could think of is only going to further empower marketers to make sure that they are where their target audience is, and exposing them with relevant messaging. So long story long, very excited about digital out-of-home and how quickly it's increasing and backend infrastructure sophistication. And it's going to be really interesting here.\n\n\n\nMark (00:12:33)And I mean, to add on to that, like speaking of, you know, reaching users on any screen, we can think of an endgame that, I think, is going to be something that really hits the mark, for a certain subset of audiences. So we're already reaching them on those screens, but now we have different ways to reach them on those screens with in-game. And as a gamer, myself, this is near and dear to my heart. You know, quite often I've played, whether they're free roam games, or racing games, or, you know, even some of those sports games, where you have advertisements around the billboards in a real-world setting. Even before programmatic advertising, I would play those games and always wonder, you know, where did those advertisements come up, or come from, you know, when the developers built the game, and they would just come up with these fake brands, but now we can actually put actual real-time advertisements programmatically served in in-game possessions. And it's, I think, another avenue for us to get eyes on our brands, and to really introduce people to you know, some new campaigns and some new journeys that we want to send them on. The great thing is that, you know, building the technology into a platform like StackAdapt, we can really do things like retargeting those users with other channels, and ensure that, you know, we can have that full attribution through their entire user journey, from start to finish, performing whatever event that we want. It's something that, you know, we've just really introduced not too long ago, and I see a lot of potential for this in the future, as more and more providers and publishers and the technology, you know, really starts to develop. I think we can, we're gonna see big strides there.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:14:14)Mark, I think you're spot on. I myself, I'm not the biggest gamer. But I have been watching The Last of Us on HBO every Sunday. And I think that in itself speaks to the overall dedication and admiration for online gaming, whether that be through consoles connected to television, or gaming on your mobile device. And I think it's important to almost contextualize in-game advertising as different from what people might think of in the in-app advertising space, where we're actually talking about buying advertising space within real-time gameplay. And as more and more of that infrastructure continues to be developed. And we see more inventory become readily available. Personally, I think it would be really appetizing for a marketer to be able to align a specific audience and games, they're playing with messaging that's both contextually relevant, and exposing a user that they've long been going after. So really exciting stuff.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:15:21)So the second part of that question is with more of like emerging technology, so thinking of things like targeting what has really come out in the last couple of years, that's been changing the industry?\n\n\n\nMark (00:15:34)So I mean, one thing that we've been preparing for, as I mentioned earlier, is this cookieless future. And, you know, trying to ensure that we have ways to still, you know, address our users, but in a way that you know, doesn't rely on the cookie to store that data about our audiences. And, you know, one of the big things that we've seen come out is contextual advertising. You know, in the early days of programmatic, contextual advertising was pretty huge. And, you know, then we saw a lot of audience-based things. And it's kind of coming back, you know, there's a heavy reliance on this, to ensure that we're putting the right message in front of the right user at the right time, in a way that is completely compliant with their personal information. And, you know, isn't storing too much data about that user as well. And, you know, as we see a lot of these regulations coming out across the board, we've got CCPA and GDPR. And, I mean, we haven't seen the last of them. You know, I think this is going to be even more important than utilizing things like AI. So for example, our page context AI, you know, is a great way to ensure that, you know, we can really take advantage of these new tools in a way that is consistently adaptable in real time, and is compliant.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:16:50)Yeah, it's almost the advancement of new technology is a dependent variable on the deprecation of old technology, which is the loss of the 3rd-party cookie. So it's, yeah, it's romantic almost this year, you know, things that we were using five years ago, six years ago, are now coming back in full force and proving to be very effective. So I couldn't have said it better myself, Mark.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:17:18)Awesome. So what we'll do is we'll move on to our third point here. And I guess the way we've been running the episodes, so far, we're in the mindset of alright, we're in 2023, what's currently happening? Let's jump forward to 2024. And in that time in between now and then, what are some challenges that marketers might be facing? Some hurdles to overcome? And what's the best way for these marketers to stay ahead and stay savvy in the times ahead?\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:17:51)Yeah, great question. And I think there's one major topic that's been on everybody's mind to start this year. And that is in the event of a marketing pullback, as fear of a recession, and proactively working against a fear of a recession is causing large brands and advertisers to be a lot more cost-conscious. And like we saw when COVID started, marketing dollars are usually the first thing to be cut. So that obviously presents a challenge to our industry, because that's what we rely on to be effective and growing. But as a result of that, I think the biggest challenge that we're going to see this year is how advertisers slash brands, agencies, and even, you know, the four of us in this room are approaching the topic of waste and efficiency. And I think, being able to really hone in on that, and limit the amount of waste that goes into all marketing buys, whether that be through more customization and personalization, or really prioritizing channels that have measurable and tangible results at any stage of a marketing funnel, whether that be at the very top or at the very bottom, helping our brand and agency partners really focus on the idea of less waste or less inefficiency is going to be a challenge, but something that we're definitely prepped for and are already very actively approaching.\n\n\n\nMark (00:19:27)Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. I think one of the things about personalization in particular is that, you know, our audiences expect this to happen, you know, they expect three-quarters of our audiences expect that companies are going to understand, you know, their very unique needs, and then they're gonna tailor those ad experiences and those ad journeys to them. And I think that's going to be a huge challenge. You know, for the next year or two and something that if you could stay ahead of, you know, you're gonna win those customers, not just the first time but you're going to continue to win those customers. And it's going to be very important to ensure that, you know, we don't really alienate the customers by delivering the ad at the wrong time to follow up to what I said about delivering the right ad at the right time.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:20:14)Awesome. Now, I wanted to ask you both a hypothetical question. As we get to the end of this episode here. Thinking about the future, still, assuming that the possibilities are endless. What are some wishlist items that you want to see whether it's like a feature or capability and programmatic trends in the advertising industry? If you had the ability to make it happen, what what do you wish would happen to the industry and its technology?\n\n\n\nMark (00:20:43)Okay. Good question. I guess I'll start, I mean, okay, I'm gonna go with, I'm gonna start off with, you know, the biggest pie in the sky thing that I'd love to see, programmatically served drone swarm advertising fly bys, we should probably start working with our product team now on that, and you know, see what they can do. It's just, you know, it's something that I think it's grown in popularity, just those drone swarms in the last little bit, and how cool would it be, if you could, you know, buy out your own programmatically served drone swarm. But realistically, you know, more down to earth, I think literally something that I'd really like to see, you know, speaking of AI, more AI-based intelligence and, or ad creation, I'm going to caveat that with an asterisk, with respect for artists, you know, there's been a lot of controversy with, you know, the latest AI things where they're basically iterative works, or copying from, you know, the existing works of either photographers or painters, or, you know, writers, you know, you say, create this in the style of, and I think that's something that's always going to be around, but, you know, to incorporate something that, you know, is respectful and responsibly uses that to essentially replace our creative teams or our copy teams, but to really enhance the role to give more points of reference and more points of inspiration to build, you know, award winning ad copy and award winning campaigns, that, you know, really drive performance. I want to see that really leveraged. And I hope someone does leverage that.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:22:27)And Matt, can I can I ask how close to reality does my ask him to be as far fetched as you'd like it to be?\n\n\n\nMatt (00:22:33)I'm just interested to see what both of you thought about that. Because there's, you know, there's always so much speculation about where the technology is gonna go. So, yeah, again, it's a wishlist item, assume that the possibilities are endless on this one.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:22:51)Yeah. Well, I would say I'll start with kind of the the pipe dream. I wish we could tell the future and know, when everything will be resolved with Alphabet and Google, both on the deprecation of the 3rd-party cookie, along with impending lawsuits that will likely result in divesting of their supply side, I think that entire topic as a whole has created quite a bit of uncertainty with how everything's gonna look 12 months from now, and 24 months from now, but maybe my wish is that, you know, obviously can't can't tell the future. But have everyone within our industry kind of come up with one universally accepted new identifier, instead of seeing, you know, dozens and dozens of players trying to plant a flag in the ground and say, This is what we're going to use moving forward and leaving a ton of advertisers who have mass amounts of 1st-party data kind of scratching their head terms of what's what's going to happen, you've got, yeah, I'd say probably two dozen strong and reputable organizations across our entire industry saying this identifier is the future. And this is what's going to be adopted by everybody. And they're all sort of butting heads. And yeah, my wish would be a little far-fetched for right now. But having one universally accepted new identifier that is not controlled by anybody within the ecosystem on the demand side or supply side that doesn't have any sort of financial interest in that. Be applied universally and use universally, I would say, if we're talking about things that are more likely to occur, something that we've really been looking for and seeking for a long time now specific to that connected Television. Some space would be more consistency. At the level of data we get within the bitstream. I think connected television as a whole has really come leaps and bounds from when it first really hit, hit its popularity in 2019, and 2020. But if we could get to a place where every bid request within a bitstream, in the connected television environment has parity, in terms of data that they're passing through to a bitter, whether that be from an SSP, or a DSP, or anybody else. So we can know exactly where we're buying and what we're buying down to a show level, every single time, I think would would just empower both the advertiser the buyer and the seller, and make every advertising by just a little bit more efficient. Hopefully, we get we get there sooner than later. I know, it's way better now than it was several years ago. But we still have some strides to make before we can confidently say every every bid request we get has the exact same data.\n\n\n\nMatt  (00:26:07)  Absolutely. Now, what I wanted to end off on and ask both of you about is resources for anyone who's listening to this episode, what are some resources that either you're personally using to stay on top of the programmatic industry, digital advertising as a whole, or even some that you would just recommend that you know, are great resources for anybody in the industry. So Brandon, I’ll start with you, and Mark, I will end with you. But what are some resources you recommend to our listeners?\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:26:39)Yeah, I think Mark and I were kind of joking about this a little bit. Before we jumped on. And yes, surprise, we did have a few topics outlined already. But we were kind of giggling here. And I said, I think our peers are enormous resources. I mean, I'm speaking as someone way smarter than myself, within StackAdapt. Right now, Mark, we've been working together for close to five years. And I learned something new from him all the time. And I think that same thing applies with everybody we work with, and whether that be within StackAdapt, or client partners or inventory partners, I think it's really important to speak with as many of your peers as possible, because everybody has a slightly different area of expertise. And I wouldn't know 99% of what I know now if it wasn't from, you know, the consistent support and open dialogue between us and everybody else that we work with every day. And it's it's really helped to stay up to date on, you know, current trends that are going on within the industry, best practices, and anything else you could think of.\n\n\n\nMark (00:27:47)I mean, I couldn't agree more Brandon, I am an adamant believer that I am never the smartest person in the room, especially when you're in the room with me. Likewise, I'm constantly learning something new from you. And I yeah, I agree, you know, your peers are often the best people to really fill in the gaps in knowledge that you might already have. There's also this really great podcast, you might have heard of it, it's called How Agencies Thrive. I think that's a really great resource, to you know, to learn a little bit more about programmatic in the industry, to be a little selfish and self-promotional, we do have to StackAdapt blog, and we got there various external webinars that we do. I think those are really informational, and constantly learning from our peers that are putting those on. But there's other resources, you know, there's things like digital ad, or a marketer insider intelligence, that, you know, I'm always subscribed to things like marketing proof, I know they've got their own podcast, you don't have to compete more to compliment you know, there's there's constantly new ways that you can pick up information. You don't just have to rely on, you know, a random Google search or, I don't know, even if there are programmatic books, you can grab crack open now, but there are a lot of great resources. And really, if you don't know where to look, ask someone and they'll probably be able to point you in the right direction. I think as we move into the next couple of years, and you know, we start getting out of our homes and maybe seeing people in person and collaborating more real time. It's, it's going to be really important that we lean on each other to see support in this industry, or to see performance and improvement in this industry.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:29:25)Well, Mark, I appreciate the endorsement of the podcast. And to both of you this was a fantastic way to end off season three. I couldn't have thought of any better guests to have on this episode. So it's always great to have both of you. So to our listeners, we hope that you found these insights very valuable and from us at StackAdapt. We're looking forward to seeing what you can accomplish in your upcoming campaigns. So this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast and we will see you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:29:58)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-and-pr-landscape#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-and-pr-landscape"},"author":[],"headline":"Programmatic and the PR Landscape","datePublished":"2023-05-17T14:18:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:22+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-and-pr-landscape"},"wordCount":3941,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-and-pr-landscape#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240503101748/glenn_frates_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s3e1.webp?fit=600%2C600&ssl=1","keywords":["communications","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe unpack the traditional media landscape, look at how PR has evolved in recent years, and how PR can complement a digital marketing strategy.\n\n\n\nGlenn Frates | Regional Vice President, Cision\n\n\n\nBen Brodie | Director of Corporate Development and Channel Partnerships, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)More and more communication pros are reporting directly into the C suite. And that really demonstrates the need for all of these teams more than ever to work together. What's good for paid is good for PR is good for social, you never know where you're gonna get your audience right whatever channel paid, earned, owned a good PR message translates across all three and hopefully resonates and is picked up good content has good content no matter what channel you're hitting.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:33)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:00:50)Did you know that 59% of PR professionals believe that technology will be key in driving industry transformation? Well, PR has come a long way from traditional media for reputation management, and strategic communication. Public relations can now benefit in a number of ways from technology by doing things like identifying media outlets, making the right contacts and monitoring brand mentions. Thanks for tuning in. And welcome to the first bonus episode of season three of the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I'm Sneha Suhas, the Education and Development Manager here at StackAdapt. To kick start this series of episodes, we have Glenn Frates from Cision and Ben Brodiefrom StackAdapt. If you haven't guessed it yet, in this episode, we're trying to understand all things. br I'll now pass it over to the experts in the industry to introduce themselves before we get chatting on specifics. So Glenn, can you tell us a little about your professional experience so far, and also introduce yourself?\n\n\n\nGlenn Frates (00:01:59)Sure, absolutely. Thank you for having me today. It's great to be here and chat about all things, good content, and PR and how it relates across I think, all channels. My name is Glenn Frates. I've been with PR Newswire Cision for 20-plus years now, I run North American operations for the distribution team. And Cision is a pretty fantastic company. I'm a little biased, obviously, in regards to really being able to connect a communications pro across the entire spectrum of what they need to do in regards to their day-to-day job, from distribution to monitoring, to really having just a great impact on getting in front of audiences across different channels. And I think that's going to be the main theme of what we're going to discuss today. So again, thank you for having me.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:02:55)Thanks so much for joining us. I'll now pass it to Ben.\n\n\n\nBen Brodie (00:02:58)Yeah, thank you, Sneha. Glen glad you're here, we're certainly really looking forward to you espousing that wisdom that you had in your very long and tenured career on the dualities between paid media, and now how PR and kind of communications is molding both of those together. My name is Ben Brodie, obviously, I'm part of the StackAdapt crew here, I work on both the corporate development side as well as the channel partnerships world. And really our mission in these two departments is to figure out the right types of alliances and partnerships, to move both StackAdapt as well as the industry forward in providing the right types of solutions for advertisers, brands and agencies. And, and this is why the partnership between decision and the StackAdapt is so exciting, simply because in today's world, of all of these different touchpoints, extremely fragmented types of communication is very challenging to get across to consumers. And so with both of these really, industry forces combining it provides a really valuable solution to all that that needed.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:04:07)Thank you so much. Great to have you both on the show. And thanks for making time for this. Starting off, I'd like to know how you could define ber in today's terms we had and still the have the traditional media like radio, print and television. But how does digital marketing take PR beyond this? And can you give us a quick overview of this in terms of paid, earned and owned media?\n\n\n\nGlenn (00:04:36)Sure, I'm happy to jump in. You know, PR has really changed from the days of when I started in regards to at the end of the day PR is a type of you know, it's brand reputation, right? It's it's trying to control the narrative in terms of what you want to get in front of media in front of traditional journalists, as well as what you want to know when you're targeting other audiences like analysts investors is, and then obviously consumers, it really crosses over all paid, earned owned, in terms of a good PR message translates across all three and hopefully resonates and is picked up, right if you have a good blog, and you have a great executive quote, for example, and you're gonna push it and you're pushing it out to analysts and investors, you're also hoping that you can repurpose that great executive quote, and get in front of earned, you know, earned media coverage, and get good pickup from, from whatever, you know, whatever industry pub, whatever trade is following your company, and hopefully, you can, you know, really get that message out there across, you know, really all three of those main large bucket.\n\n\n\nBen (00:05:46)And I completely agree. And I think, at the end of the day, we're all in the same business here, earned and paid. Whatever other buzzwords you want to put to it, we're under this umbrella, that of communications, we're all we're trying to do is communicate a certain message to an end individual. And the vehicles in which we do that, which have historically been siloed, in burned, owned and paid are now having to come together, and the truly effective strategies employ all of these, these pieces as one synergistic approach versus having all these different communication vehicles be siloed and stretched, and in different teams, so on and so forth.\n\n\n\nGlenn (00:06:34)That's exactly right. You know, from, you know, I work and talk to clients, weekly, from the smallest to the largest brands. And that is a great point in terms of yes, those traditional silos have definitely broken down. And you know, when I jump on a client call, for example, we'll have multiple teams on that call marketing, will have their product team on the call will have their SEO team on the call, good SEO best practices translate across all t, right, in terms of having that great engaging headline, having a good piece of multimedia, you know, really trying to embrace Google's high-quality content perspective and what they see as high-quality content that obviously translates to pay. And that's why I think, you know, we've partnered with StackAdapt, for that very reason, we realize, you know, the traditional PRN network is fantastic, right? Obviously, I'm gonna, you know, it's it's, it's abroad, it's great, we can target really well in terms of getting your content into specific trade pubs and online, getting into specific websites that cover a specific industry. But now with our partnership, we're broadening the visibility of that same great piece of content, and getting it in front of a channel in front of an audience that we weren't able to previously get it in front of.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:07:55)I think that's a great transition to my next question about where programmatic comes in here. So where does programmatic fit in here? And how does it help build the earned and owned media space for a brand? And what channels within programmatic would you recommend for this?\n\n\n\nGlenn (00:08:15)I can answer the first part, I'll let Ben answer the second part in terms of recommendations just because I think that's more his wheelhouse, you know, in terms of how it relates and translates into, you know, going from PR to paid programmatic, it absolutely is a perfect synergy in regards to we target really well, in regards to the PA, you know, for the PR and network and distribution, we target really well again, industries, and we get it in front of, you know, a specific editor that's following a specific industry. Now, when you move into, you know, your side of the world in terms of advertisement and good content, we have a great ability to offer our clients, hey, we can also then target very specific trade pubs in a different channel, you know, it's getting, I can the PR and network feed is great, but it doesn't have the same channel access that for example, StackAdapt has, so it just really goes in, I can't emphasize this enough. Good content is good content, no matter what channel you're hitting. So I think that's another thing that really translates well into programmatic in terms of PR, that good image. And I'm always going to tell you no good lifestyle photography. That's great for the press release. We embedded it in the press release. That's great for your blog post. And then obviously, it's great for any potential paid channels. Well, yeah, absolutely.\n\n\n\nBen (00:09:47)And it's all about those two things that they were talking about Glenn, which is reaching large swaths of the right audience, and being able to do that in a high engagement format with that high engagement outcome. And that's where the duality of certain tactics fit really, really well with PR. Ultimately, when you kind of look at traditional PR placements, and kind of the new age of what we call high engaging advertising. From a display standpoint, you look at things like native display, which is really kind of blending both of those together, where you have these articles, or these basic content, snippets, if you will, being placed in highly contextually, highly relevant areas, within other articles. If you've ever seen those sponsored by or Content Widgets, in an article that you just read, that's very, very relevant to what you're looking for. That's effectively a blend between PR and paid advertising, coming together to now put the right message in front of the right person across the right content, and drive that really high engagement back to another piece of syndicated content.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:11:11)How do you put all of this together? There's traditional media, there's social media, your walled garden space dominated by Facebook, Google and Amazon, then you have the open internet, where programmatic thrives. So how do you pull this all in for a great PR strategy?\n\n\n\nGlenn (00:11:32)My advice, for anybody representing you know, a good brand ambassador, my advice, and it really matches with our recent global comms report from decision is teams internally need more than ever to work together, you know, in terms of like, how you put all that together, what the what is a good strategy? You know, we see more and more in the feedback we got just again, in that recent great survey and white paper that we posted in January, more and more communication pros are reporting directly into the C suite. And that really, I think, demonstrates the need for all of these teams more than ever, to work together to again, and you know, it's been as mentioned, I think, a couple of times, it's all about, you never know where you're gonna get your audience, right, whatever channel, Instagram, Facebook, a sponsored placement post on the front page of USA to that an analyst looking at Yahoo Finance, on and on and on, right, hundreds and hundreds, the Bloomberg terminal, you name it, right? You never know where you're going to capture that good audience. And that engaged, you know, an audience that you want to engage and get follow up from in terms of follow up engagement. That's all important to click through. And so I think it's really important for teams to strategize together on what is their output, right? I do hear also on those client calls that I mentioned that I joined, some PR teams have no idea what the paid team at their company is doing. And they really can't, you know, they need to work together and fall under, I think, the same leadership more than ever, because what paid is churning out or what social the social team is churning out in regards to content, and it's good engaging content, absolutely translates to PR, and, again, across all channels that you mentioned.\n\n\n\nBen (00:13:21)Yeah, 100%, I mean, mission-critical. You got a and I've said it before, and I'll say it again, which is we're all in the same business of communication. And with Glenn, just as you said, more and more communications professionals are rolling up into the CEO, this now creates a function of things that can't be siloed simply because we're all just different vehicles. So the communication professional now has to think about all the different avenues associated with communication and to them, like, let's let's just take the way we behave out in the world today. All multichannel. We say it's a buzzword, but it's true. We're always on. I think the latest stat that I saw was we are engaging with digital, over eight hours a day, eight hours a day straight. That's an incredible amount of time and an incredible amount of information. That is just being Firehose that you are on top of that the average household laughed at. I saw 22 different connected devices. So when you have all this, this fragmentation of all these disparate communication channels, you have 1000s and 1000s of messages and pieces of content and people squawking at you from all different angles. It has to be cohesive. Instead of thinking about things as touchpoints, we have to now start thinking about things as journeys. And not only the journeys in terms of oh how does a customer buy but journey He's in terms of how people think, how you think how you behave, how you become influenced. And that's where all of this comes together. And why the partnership is so exciting. Because just as Glenn said, historically, things have been siloed, scission, and StackAdapt are trying to bring things together.\n\n\n\nGlenn (00:15:18)Oh, I liked that reference from touchpoint. To journey, I think that's, that's a great, a great description in terms of, and it's also going to add to that it's all about efficiency. Again, you don't want to be siloed, and have all these different, you know, out, like you're putting out in terms of content, you want to be able to, you know, I like to use the phrase repurpose good content across all the channels. So why wouldn't you do that, what's good for pain is good for PR is good for social, repurpose that good image, right? And to your point to about, it's a little scary, right? I know, my house probably matches that number pretty well with my kids and family. And yeah, you again, I think you just never know exactly where you're gonna potentially find engagement from, you know, the audience that you want engagement from. So I think it's important to just take it all in one big picture view of lights, you know.\n\n\n\nBen (00:16:17)That's the golden key right there, and be able to have technologies and solutions to help facilitate all that mission critical, because trying to do that on your own and, and piecing all that together will make your head explode.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:16:32)Now, it was interesting to hear that we have 22 connected devices per household. That's, that's quite a lot. And it's a good number to think about. But if you think about ads, we have conversion metrics, like CPC, CPMs. Can you also throw light on how the results are measured? For PR, would you say PR, has now become like ads, thanks to the digital landscape.\n\n\n\nGlenn (00:16:59)For sure, it has ventured in and it is absolutely because of the digital landscape. And I think, you know, it's been influenced a lot the last, oh, at least 10 years, in regards to really, you know, PR, I don't think 20 To 30 to 40 years ago, demanded the same type of ROI on the metrics front, and that didn't even exist, you know, 20 years ago, probably. So that said, I think the number one piece of ROI, if you will, is still you know, earned coverage. And, you know, the media contact, getting a call getting an email from that press release, certainly. But more than ever, you know, in terms of reporting, and what a company is looking for what a brand is looking for, is also related to views on page and click-throughs. You know, it's really important to have good click rates in regards to and painfully we still see it sometimes in a press release, go out without a good website to good transparent URL. And it's not very often but it still comes up, you know, day to day in the 1000s of releases that we distribute. But yeah, then we offer and give reporting from you know, whether it's a free report or much more advanced nicer reports from decision team, you know, click through rates are really important. And then on page read time, you know, did somebody stay 10 seconds? Or did they stay that great, fantastic number of you know, one plus minute engaging with that page before they moved on in their, their life, their day, their headline cues, you know, if they're a good writer, Spot desk editor, whoever. And I'm gonna say that I'll leave it at that. So earned coverage, certainly URL click through rates, headline clicks, and then just overall paid the actual story page view.\n\n\n\nBen (00:18:52)From the paid media side, there's a variety of different tactics, that decision and StackAdapt employed to boost enhance in obtain those exact things. For example, time on site readership, or, you know, another word for that as quality traffic. There's there's certain buying metrics and certain algorithms that both Cision and StackAdapt employ, to go out and find individuals who are more likely to spend 15 seconds or more on a piece of content. And that's really powerful, especially when you're out there trying to create these strategies where you have to pay for them. But you're also really looking for those that right traffic, the right type of individual, for your money. That becomes a really interesting opportunity for you.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:19:44)Thanks. Yeah, that brings us to the last question. Do you have any tips to share for any person starting out just right now? Any trends they should look for? Any changes anything that to foresee in the next few years.\n\n\n\nGlenn (00:20:02)You know, once upon a time, I think columns teams, paid team social teams that companies again, decently siloed, 10 plus years ago, I think my one is, specifically for somebody just starting out, I think you need to learn as much as you can across all of these areas of expertise. I think a company and a brand will find great value in somebody who knows, good SEO, good multimedia, what makes content engaging across again, all channels, and then being concise, you know, one of the we still see headlines, 200 plus characters, and nobody's reading those last 100 characters. So I think a tip in regards to creating this content, I think, as quickly as you can engage that audience with a great first lead that headline, and then as soon as they get you get that engagement, and they open up the body of the story, then you know, that additional click, dolt, then bore them, you know, you got that click, now keep that engagement at a high level, keep that content as high quality and relevant and seasonal and timely as you can make it I'll stop there. I can talk about content for a while longer, but oh, look, your podcast is gonna, you know, you don't want to go an hour, then what do you got for us?\n\n\n\nBen (00:21:28)I think that point you made about learning is so critical. Because it was 10-plus years ago, it was a lot easier. It was a lot easier. Today, you know, all those stats that we talked about, it just creates a very interconnected web of communication and how people think. And, to your point, Glen, if you don't learn enough about at all, you can have a very difficult time trying to either advise clients build these journey type strategies that are really moving business forward in an ultimately doing what we all want to do, which is provide value in the form of communication to somebody receiving that communication. So learning is so important in putting it all together and knowing that there are no more saw silos, and everything is interconnected. And if and if we should probably play a game, how many how many times we said interconnected, you have to take a shot, or siloed. I think both of us like that one.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:22:40)That's really great input. Thanks. Thanks so much. And that brings us to the end of the first bonus episode. Lots of great input from Glenn and Ben today. I for one learned a lot of new things. And I hope you as the listener did too. Thank you for tuning in. And thanks for joining us, Glenn and Ben, we have episodes releasing on alternate Wednesdays. So make sure you follow the podcast, catch the episode, right when it drops, subscribe, follow or drop us a line at academy@stackadapt.com. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:23:20)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/power-of-personalized-targeting#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/power-of-personalized-targeting"},"author":[],"headline":"The Power of Personalized Targeting","datePublished":"2023-05-31T15:02:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-25T15:50:08+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/power-of-personalized-targeting"},"wordCount":3570,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/power-of-personalized-targeting#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240503110935/rebecca_damiani_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s3e2.webp?fit=601%2C600&ssl=1","keywords":["audience targeting","creative","creative studio","interactive ads","podcast"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss what personalization is in the context of ad creatives, and how personalized ads can drive programmatic advertising success.\n\n\n\nRebecca Damiani | Senior Manager, Creative Operations, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Google is phasing out their third-party cookies on Chrome, we need to start thinking of alternate tactics. So way that we can do that is with contextual advertising based on, you know, the places and spaces your consumer base shows up, you can look at that type of inventory and make sure that your brand is also showing up. This is a great way to cast a wider net, and being able to target folks that might be on like the cusp of your audience pool or even outside of your audience pool.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:26)But then you think about the social landscape, research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints with that long-term loyalty, and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:00:50)Did you know that 90% of US consumers find marketing personalization very or somewhat appealing, and here’s a more shocking one you may have to be wary about: 63% of consumers will stop buying from brands that use poor personalization tactics. Thank you for tuning in, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. In today's episode, we're discussing the power of targeting with personalization and some practical tips on how to execute this well. I'm Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. And today, we're joined by a creative expert Rebecca Damiani. Firstly, welcome to the show. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us. excited to have you here. And I have so many questions for you. But before that, can you please introduce yourself and tell us about your professional experience so far?\n\n\n\nRebecca (00:01:47)First off, thank you so much for having me, I'm really excited to be here. And my name, like you said, is Rebecca, and I'm one of the creative studio managers here at StackAdapt. So for those of you that don't know, StackAdapt does have an internal creative team, we actually don't work on any of StackAdapt creative, what we do support on is all of the client creative. So whether a client needs support for the full creative process. So that's ideation, that strategy building, that's creative development, and production. Or if a client just needs support at one of those areas in the process, we really act as an extension of our clients creative team, to make sure that you know, they're getting to market on time, and also putting out elevated creatives that perform. So that's really the function of the creative studio team. In terms of my background, I actually don't have experience in programmatic or tech prior to StackAdapt. My experiences in traditional advertising and branded partnerships. So in my work experience, I've worked on a wide array of clients. So that's Cadillac, Canada, that's Loblaws companies, a fria as well as oh, gee, and there's been many different smaller brands and nonprofit brands that I've been able to work closely with. So coming from a traditional advertising standpoint, and coming into the programmatic space has been really interesting, especially from a creative perspective, right? Because I'm able to kind of understand how messaging resonates with different types of audiences in the different types of spaces and places they show up. So it's been really interesting to kind of get both sides of the coin for my experience.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:03:27)That's interesting. Sounds like a really fun job, actually. And let me dive into the first question I had for you. Could you define personalization? And when it comes to creatives, where does personalization start?\n\n\n\nRebecca (00:03:42)Yeah and you know, personalization is so important in any marketing strategy. And I do want to say that personalization is not just about adding, let's say, the consumer city to your creatives. So let's say you're running out of home, and you want to put Hey, Toronto and all the billboards that are running in Toronto, or let's say you're running in email marketing strategy, and you want to make sure the consumers name is at the top of the email. I don't want to discount these tactics, because I do think that they're really important. But when we talk about personalization in marketing, this means that we're making creative decisions that are rooted in all the data that we've collected. So personalization, is all about data collection, leveraging those insights, and making creative choices based on them. It's all about being able to reach the right person with the right messaging at the right time. So it's kind of that really fine balance of being able to make sure your messaging is really resonating with those audience members. And in terms of where personalization starts. It can really start at any different stage of the funnel, as well as it can start from the audience insights you gather from previous campaigns. And it can also start from real time insights. You don't need to always have all of the research done beforehand, you can actually learn iterate in real time. So that's something that's really important to consider.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:05:06)Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned stages of the marketing funnel. So when it comes to hyper-personalized ads being used, when or at what stage of the funnel, do you think these work best? And could you also tell us about some of the best channels for this?\n\n\n\nRebecca (00:05:25)Yes. So like I said, when it comes to a full funnel approach, personalization can and should happen at every single stage. A common mistake I see marketers make is that they think personalization can only happen with lower-funnel tactics. And the challenge with this thinking is that in order to have a successful lower funnel tactic, you need to have an engaged audience. And how do you have an engaged audience? Well, you have them hooked right at the awareness. So right at the top of the funnel, so kind of what I mentioned earlier, most marketers will have the research and the consumer insights, let's say based on previous campaigns, but some of the marketers that we work with, maybe they're a brand new brand to the market, they might not have that, you know, wealth of information. So something that you can do as an upper funnel tactic is to test test to see what works best and what resonates with your audience. So something that I always recommend as an upper funnel tactic is to produce something that's fairly easy and quick to get out into the world. So think of the channel like native you have your messaging as well as your imagery. I know for my team, this is definitely the fastest channel to produce. So you can get out to market fairly quickly. And when you put this on, let's say the platform, if we're thinking about this to the programmatic lens, let's test different combinations. So different imagery against different coffee, and we'll see which ones perform as the winner. Now, you will have your assumptions, and you will have your insights that guide you to your messaging. But I always tell the clients that we've worked with, be prepared to either be validated or disproved once you're in market, because you can have all of that research done, and you can still get it wrong. So this is such a great way to number one, get out in the market fairly quickly. And number two, get real time insights that you can bring into the rest of your campaign. So for this native example, we're adding all these combinations, we're seeing which one performance is the winner, if we have multiple winners, we can put more budget behind them to optimize these creatives further. And for the ones that aren't performing well, we can just pull them right down. And there you have it, we're able to bring these insights into the rest of the campaign into the rest of the tactics. So that's a really great way to get the information as fast as you can, and bring personalization into all the different creative executions that you might have in a full funnel strategy. So that's kind of one way. And you know, when we talk about other channels, you can personalize with any channel. But I would say the channels that you can maybe do the most with from a tech perspective would of course, be display. We love display. It's truly the workhorse of programmatic. There's a couple of different formats that work really, really well when it comes to personalization. So the first one I'm going to mention is called a discovery ad. I really like a discovery ad. Because we're putting the autonomy into the user, we are asking the user, what do you want to see more about? And we're letting that user kind of create their own personalized journey. So what a discovery ad does is it will ask a question, have a series of answers and based on what answer the user clicks on, they'll then be placed in a retargeting pool, and then be retargeted with content that suits their needs. So really great for personalization. Another one under the display umbrella would be dynamic retargeting. And I think we've all been victims of dynamic retargeting, really great for CPG, and retail. So let's say you're online, you're looking at sweaters to buy, you look at a sweater, and you abandon your cart. Let's say later in the day, you're trying to read a publication, and you are just seeing that sweater that you looked at before time and time again. And if you're anything like me, this is highly successful in pushing and encouraging conversions. So that's a really great way again, to personalize and just act as a bit of a reminder to those consumers. A couple other ones in the dynamic space would be a dynamic city. So dynamic ads are really great if you're in events, entertainment or travel verticals. And what it does is it uses the user's IP address and based on their location, it will pull in their city name into the creative so that's a really great one. And lastly is dynamic weather. So I love dynamic weather. I think it's really great for advertisers that span across vast GIOS and when I always like to say is, you know, I'm from Toronto, it's March. I have not seen the sun it feels like in six months. So you would not target me from Toronto with like a sunscreen or any Anything that revolves around weather, warm weather, sun, anything like that, however, you would target me with things that meet my needs. So maybe an umbrella, maybe a parka, maybe a happy lamp, things like that are very contextual. And they'll suit my needs. And suit someone may be down in Florida as needs very differently. So those are a couple of different executions for display. And then lastly, I'm going to use another channel as an example digital out of home is one of our newer ones, we absolutely love it, you can do a lot of interesting things with contextual digital out of home. So I'm going to give you an example. Let's say there's a conference happening in Toronto, let's say so any folks that are flying in, we can target them at the airport, we can really use our inventory to our advantage, we can run digital out of home in rideshare programs and cabs to target those folks again, and then in the places and spaces outside of the convention. So there, like I said, the limit does not exist with what channels you can personalize with. There's so many different ways to slice it. But the biggest thing I want to get across is that's really use the tech to personalize as well as the creative tactics. I think those two should go hand in hand.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:11:12)Rebecca, my next question to you is, how do you ensure that the prospect does not feel like too much of their data is out there? How do you personalize in a way that is not creepy for the prospect? For example, if I see an ad about something I really remember searching for, and especially if it is the exact same brand and model, it makes me a little uncomfortable. And this happens quite frequently, I'm sure for everyone else as well. People even claim getting ads for things they've spoken about, you know, what is the line we can draw for this audience then online?\n\n\n\nRebecca (00:11:50)I think this is such a great question. And I do encourage all marketers to make sure they're having these conversations both internally with their company, as well as with any external partners. So whether that's your DSPS, whether that's your advertising agencies, or any, let's say, third party, data collection agencies, make sure you're having these conversations. And as a brand, make sure you have a firm stance on this. I think that's something consumers want to see a lot of. And like you said, I do think as marketers, we need to find different solutions to of course, make sure that our ads are data driven, and personalized, but also balanced that to make sure we're not compromising personal data or user privacy. So I'm going to give you a couple of different tactics that I think all marketers should keep in mind when they're putting the campaign together. So the first one and this is from like the brand perspective is you can do a couple things to really build trust with your audience. And I think that is really important from also a brand affinity perspective. So some things that you can do is, like I said, have a stance on data and privacy and predominantly display that stands on your website. So make it known, this is what you're doing with the user's data, I think that's a really great way to start building trust and just being very transparent with your consumer base. Another one is to give your clients the freedom to customize their data and cookie setting. I know a lot of different websites have this. So that's something that, you know, we can really encourage our marketers and brands to do. And then the last one is, let's make sure that we are also encouraging users to give their data, I think that is a really important tactic. Another way we can do that is really encourage our consumer base to provide their own data. So again, let's give the autonomy back to the consumers. And a couple of different ways that we can do that in the programmatic landscape would be through our tactics. So by running something like a discovery ad, we're asking the consumer to tell us what they want to learn more about, and then placing them in retargeting pools accordingly. So there's a couple of different ways that we can do that a brand lift study is also really great, we're able to get first hand feedback from our consumer base. So these are tactics that should be in any marketing strategy. As well, more privacy regulations are coming into place. For instance, as I'm sure most of us know, Google is phasing out their third party cookies on Chrome. So we need to start thinking of alternate tactics to be personalized to make sure our ads are resonating. But again, also balancing the data privacy compliance that is coming into place. So whether we can do that is with contextual advertising. And I love contextual advertising so much, I think it is so great. And there's a couple of different ways that we can do this. So based on you know, the places and spaces your consumer base shows up, you can be able to look at that type of inventory and make sure that your brand is also showing up in those same places as well. I would always say think about your adjacent audiences. So this is a great way to cast a wider Net, and being able to target folks that might be on like the cusp of your audience pool or even outside of your audience pool. So again, really great way to target folks without any of that data collection. And I think we're going to be seeing a lot of this moving forward. So those are some of the different ways to do it. As always, I would just make sure you're following the most up to date privacy and data compliance policies, that's the best way to go about it. And you know, just to reiterate, let's make sure that we're encouraging our consumers to tell us what they want from us. And that could be feedback as well, it is so important to listen to our consumer base, and be able to be flexible and adaptable and kind of adapt to the ever changing landscape of technology. \n\n\n\nSneha (00:15:42)Talking about the changing landscape of technology, what would you say are some of the differences when it comes to personalization of creatives in the programmatic landscape versus how it's done for social media?\n\n\n\nRebecca (00:15:56)Yeah, of course. So as we know, social media and programmatic are two very different places, and marketing strategies should be different for each, it's just a different consumption pattern for our consumers. So I'd say the biggest difference is with social media, you're really limited to the type of inventory you're providing. So although you can have some of that audience data pulled from social, you can have your target markets, you can have your personas that you're speaking to, that said, you're only going to be speaking to them in predominantly two ways. So with static posts, or video posts, the great thing about programmatic is you're able to really use the inventory to your advantage. And you're able to kind of personalize based on the channel. And you know, something that I always like to say is, think about your own consumption habits. I know for me, I don't really resonate with video ads. So that could be on social or online video. They for whatever reason, they just don't work for me. But I do really like native ads, even before I knew what a native ad was, I was typically engaging with them. So if you're only running one or two types of channels, you're going to completely limit your audience pool. And you're going to completely remove the folks that, you know, maybe those channels don't resonate with them. So I would say that's kind of the biggest difference. And when it comes to programmatic, we can be a lot granular with our targeting, it opens up a lot more opportunity. And we can also add on that contextual layer. So again, we can show up in the places and spaces our consumer bases are consistently going in. So I would say those are kind of the big differentiators between the two.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:17:41)Yeah. Rebecca, those are some great insights, some thought provoking details for anyone listening to this episode right now. Thank you so much for joining us. And that brings us to the end of this episode. We have episodes releasing on alternate Wednesdays. So make sure you follow the podcast to catch the episode. Right when it drops. If you want to get in touch with us, you can write to us at academy@stackadapt.com That's academy@stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:18:12)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/healthcare-marketing-strategies#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/healthcare-marketing-strategies"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Carly Foy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/carly-foy","jobTitle":"Director of Sales, North America","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Top Strategies for Healthcare Marketing","datePublished":"2023-06-28T15:59:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:23+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/healthcare-marketing-strategies"},"wordCount":6187,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/healthcare-marketing-strategies#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240503120036/katey_watkins_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s3e4.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["healthcare","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe unpack the dynamic world of healthcare marketing and offer top strategies for healthcare marketing campaigns that drive brand recognition.\n\n\n\nKatey Watkins | Group Director, Health, Lever Interactive\n\n\n\nCarly Foy | Director of Sales, North America, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)A lot of times I think everybody wants to focus on the bottom of the funnel. They want patients to walk through the door, they want a new sale. But you can't always focus there. If you're not bringing more people in and you're not looking at your brand awareness, your broader reach channels, your bucket is going to continue to get smaller because somebody else is going to figure it out. And they're going to be there. First, take a small part of your budget, test something new, see how it works, try it, if that doesn't work, use something else, maybe pull it out of some of your ROI to figure out what's going to bring in and what's really going to have an effect that aligns with your ultimate goals at the end of the day.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:33)But then you think about the social landscape combine all of these different touchpoints that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks leads to sales gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:00:54)The first thing you do when you're not feeling too well is to type out your symptoms and do a search about it on the internet. This is obviously not the best thing to do but you're not the only one about 5% of all searches online are health-related. If you look at the trend, healthcare digital advertising spend overtook healthcare TV ad spend for the first time in 2021. And healthcare digital ad spend in the US is projected to increase by 10% this year. Experts expect this trend will continue in the coming years as well. Talking about experts we have two people with a ton of experience. Joining us today. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I'm Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. Today we're diving into the world of healthcare or medical marketing and joining us we have Kate Watkins from Lever Interactive and StackAdapt. Very Own director of sales. Carly Foy. Firstly, thank you so much for joining us. And before we jump into more intense questions, Kate, let's start with you. Could you please run a quick round of introduction telling us about your professional background, your area of expertise, and also introduce Lever to the listener?\n\n\n\nKatey (00:02:09)Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. My name is Katey Watkins. I am the Group Director at Lever Interactive emphasize with an emphasis in healthcare. I've been in the healthcare marketing space for about 15 years, started off working in an academic medical center providing the health system I had there for the past 10 years, I have been working at an agency doing omni-channel strategy with the emphasis on Medicare and under 65 health insurance. And then the past two years I've been working at lever. So a little bit about lever we're full service marketing agency specializing in digital experiences and offering comprehensive services across all channels. We've been around for about 17 years and have a strong reputation for service their clients and really personalized way back in 2016, we acquired coming of age and really expanded our capabilities to focus on that aging audience, as well as bringing some offline channels. So this has made us a very versatile agency that allows us to meet our diverse marketing needs of our clients, and especially those in the healthcare space.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:03:08)Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Over to you, Carly.\n\n\n\nCarly (00:03:12)So yeah, Carly Foy, just in case you missed it, but I'm here the director of sales at StackAdapt. Previously, I have worked exclusively in the programmatic space first at a Holdco agency and then moved over to a smaller trading desk where I left the team. I specifically worked actually with healthcare insurance in the US, even though I'm based in Canada, and then I made the move over to StackAdapt. And I've been here for about five years working on clients such as Katy, I've known her for quite some time now specializing in healthcare, both B2C and B2B as well.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:03:43)Wow, that's a lot of experience that both of you bring to the table. And it's great that you could give us your time excited to get this conversation started. So my first question to you is about defining healthcare marketing. So how would you define it and what does not come under, you know, health care or medical marketing, but does not consist of it? And what would you say are some of the rules and regulations that are governing this?\n\n\n\nKatey (00:04:10)Yeah, so for me and how I look at healthcare marketing, there's really three different avenues. So you have your provider health system, and then you've got your insurance side, but on the third side, you also have your pharmaceutical and your medical devices, which is where a lot of your B2B, but you still have some B2C aspect within there. So I think most of the time people really focus on the provider and the health insurance and you know, the unique challenges of that but it really to me includes all three of those things. So I think also, what is not health care marketing are your supplements, your things that are told is your health, your beauty, your wellness, that is not if it is an impulse buy, it's not really healthcare, marketing, healthcare marketing. It is a long game. You never know when someone is going to need the services and you need to be President throughout, if you're waiting until they need it, you're probably too late to the ballgame. So from the legal side, each one of the different areas, it has different governing bodies. So I would say everything under health care, we're all familiar with PII, health care as in the layer of pH I in brings upon HIPAA and all the requirements. So I would say definitely one thing is just you have to be careful, you're very your list are important, but they have to be stored correctly as an agency, or you need to be looking for high trust and just making sure that you're meeting all of this HIPAA requirements, because even from the agency side, a mistake on your end can affect the client. So they can get penalized fines, all kinds of stuff. So you really want to make sure that you're really following the rules and laws that govern that. But at the same time, all of the clients read roles differently. And this was very surprising to me, when I started, you have one set of rules in four different companies or their legal teams are going to take different interpretations, some are more conservative, some are more loose. So you really have to lean in and know your clients, the ultimate expert, understand the box, understand your limitations, but trust and go with what their legal team says. So even from a creative review standpoint, that's on each individual's legal team, what they're comfortable saying against the laws, because they are ultimately the experts at the end of the day. High trust is a big thing you'll hear a lot talk about that allows insurance agencies health systems to actually share their first party data with you which we know the future of the cookieless world and third party scoping going away the really the importance of this first party data. So knowing the high trust, and honestly being willing to go through that process, it is a very lengthy process to get high trust certified. But it does give an extra where it's much easier to get the clients to get those less so you can really, you know, have the best marketing there and most targeted disclaimers, you have to think about your disclaimers, it does no good to do a radio spot, if 27 seconds of a 32nd spot are disclaimers. So understanding what's required even within the channels that you're picking, and what's doable and not doable. So there are different types of legal boards. So the FDA is where your pharmaceutical medical device is really set. You have your State Department of insurances and CMS, the Federal is really for basically just your insurance. And then for your providers, it is all different types of laws, their state government, their state boards, federal, everything that applies in there, I will say on the provider side, the most the legal concerns, stop providers for marketing. They don't want to deal with it, they don't understand it. So it stops them. But ultimately, those that choose to go into it really do see success, which is why a lot of times you'll notice one physician or one health system when they market a ton. It's because they've seen the success with it. And they were willing to figure out what the laws around it were.\n\n\n\nCarly (00:07:52)Katey, I think you bring up an interesting point as well. I remember all the time opening up a magazine and seeing a four page ad for a new medication and two to two and a half pages were just disclaimer, all the information that they had to share. So it does present quite an interesting challenge, especially when it comes to approaching digital marketing as a whole. So I think a lot of the times too, and we talk healthcare with clients, specifically, we're looking for more custom HTML five units that we can use where we actually do have that scrolling capability. So they're able to see all the fine print. Is it 100% readable? I would hope so. But at the same time at least we have that disclaimer in place to follow the compliance that is set out by the client. I think Additionally, you mentioned targeting. That's a big one here. Because specifically, like when we talk about targeting, not everybody has access to first party targeting. So I think as we continue to see the cookieless future, we're gonna have to go into contextual, which is so old school to think of because that was like the big thing 10 years ago. So are you seeing a lot of your advertisers also geared towards contextual when it comes to targeting?\n\n\n\nKatey (00:09:03)Yeah, and I really think that's kind of going to be where we see the future. Because I think one of the things and I mentioned this kind of briefly is you don't know when somebody's going to need it, you never know when somebody's going to have a diagnosis. And also, unlike other products, we're not looking for a female, aged 20 to 25, that's going to buy a teeth whitening or something along those lines, right? Every single person is a potential patient. And when you're talking about healthcare marketing yesterday about customers, but at the end of the day, most of the time these people are patient. So it's everybody and anybody. So it's not your normal demographic income. It's a lot more of where people are at this phase of their life or what has happened. And I think that's where you know, the StackAdapt platform and your targeting really helps with that and contextual is going to come into play. If your product is some type of cancer. Well, you've got to find where are those people? Where are they because they're not just on your normal website. So really figuring out how to target that audience based on their unique condition, diabetes is going to be somewhere completely different than cancer. But yet at the same time, if your health system, those are all patients that you're trying to reach out to. So yeah, I really think contextual is coming back. And I think a lot of the things that we used to see, old school is coming back, I think you're gonna see patient testimonials, people are wanting more humanized content, they want to feel they have all of this information. And everything is so overwhelming, that seeing someone else talk about going through a similar experience. That is key, you know, within a lot of medical conditions, people are looking for the others message boards, Facebook groups, social, it is so important to know that they're not alone. And so those are the areas where the people are, and that's are going to be how you have to reach them, you know, yes, they're going to be doing Google searches. And that's always going to be there. And SEO is unbelievably important as people are trying to educate themselves. But you've also got to find where they're spending the time and looking.\n\n\n\nCarly (00:11:03)I think that's also an interesting point. To talk about targeting too, you have to toe the line, because it is sometimes a sensitive moment in a person's life that you don't want to be outright, saying, Hey, we heard that you have this diagnosis, go to our product, or go to our health center. So I think that's absolutely key when you are thinking about your creative strategy as well, like that line of empathy, because people don't want to be alone, inherently, we are very social creatures. Personally, I'm an introvert, but you know, I do like to talk. So it's always key to have that support system. And a lot of the time too, you're gonna find people maybe not having that support system at home. So it's really interesting that you brought up that whole idea of the community and Facebook, maybe even Reddit, for example, and talking to other people who are experiencing this because it can be pretty isolating. So I love that approach that you mentioned from a creative strategy leaning towards empathy, because I think that's absolutely key as a healthcare marketer.\n\n\n\nKatey (00:11:57)And I think empathy is great, but also taking it to the next level, what are these people, it's overwhelming, it is a language, they don't understand. Doctors and physicians have spent years in school, and I am just an average person trying to understand they're looking for a way to fill in control, because right now they are out of control. How can you empower them? Because that's what a lot of time they're looking for is how can they have some control and some say and what is happening to them. So it's giving them those tools and those resources, and, you know, building them up, education is huge. And that's something that honestly, in the past few years has changed. COVID force, health insurance and banking to finally come up to speed with everything else. Those are the two industries lagging behind, they are now going okay, we have to figure out how to be online how to be digital. And education is one of the biggest things. Another change that we're seeing as healthcare is becoming politics, which is a very different space. It's never been brought together, people have their own ideas, they have their own opinions. And they're looking for doctors and physicians that match up to that, that believe and agree on their approaches. So it's becoming so much more that you've got to have information out there, people have to learn if you are hiding and being like, I don't want to offend, I don't want to do this, I'm not going to have an online presence, you're just going to be left behind, it's time to roll with the changes. You have to do the way things worked five years ago is not how it's gonna keep going. And with that, you've got to be willing to test you can't just sit there and focus. You know, a lot of times I think everybody wants to focus on the bottom of the funnel, they want to do patients walk through the door, they want a new sale they want. But you can't always focus there, if you're not bringing more people in and you're not looking at your brand awareness, your broader reach channels, your bucket is going to continue to get smaller because somebody else is going to figure it out. And they're going to be there first. So if you don't have a huge but take a small part of your budget, test something new, see how it works, try it if that doesn't work, use something else, maybe pull it out of some of your ROI, to figure out what's going to bring in and what's really going to have an effect that aligns with your ultimate goals at the end of the day.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:14:13)I was saving this question for later. But I think in context of what you just mentioned, it makes sense to bring it up now. This is about healthcare campaigns targeting those who might be experiencing an emotionally difficult time in their lives. How do you keep this in mind and still be empathetic with your campaigns while hyper-personalizing and targeting these individuals? Can you share some practical tips on campaign tactics or campaign creatives?\n\n\n\nKatey (00:14:43)Yeah, I think you've got to be there before. You know it's there is a major brand awareness brand portion. When somebody gets in that emotional spot if they've never heard of you, they're a lot more critical. It's going to you've got a lot bigger hill to climb. So branding being the are being persistent. So someone knows who you are. But then yeah, it's just how do you help them feel in control? Are there tools you can give them? Or is there anything? You know, a lot of times healthcare marketing is really Legion-focused, because there's so many people involved in that final decision, right? You're not making a decision about talking to your doctor, friends and family are involved or on the health insurance side, there is usually brokers, friends and families from the medical device, I would say is a one that is the most straightforward and the most similar. But there's so many people within that. So most of the time you're looking at getting a lead, what is it that you're going to use to get that lead? What is that payoff? How is that going to help the person? Because, yes, we want an email address. So we now have first party data that you can target. But why is somebody going to give that and how does that help them where they are right now. So I think really just thinking that through and fully understanding the best you can have what your patient is going through, if you are a health provider, putting this together, talk to your patients, you will be shocked that the cancer patient, this is their their entire life has completely changed. And they are now they are forever and always be a cancer patient. And that is what they're going through a heart patient is going to react completely differently. A lot of times heart patients think, Oh, I could have done something there's, they kind of want to almost forget it happen if or how they can get back to their past life. Well, that's two very different approaches. So you're gonna have to think that through. So it's just, I love data, any data you can get. So if you can meet with patients and figure out and set up focus groups, and really hone in on what matters to them, that's going to where your campaign is going to be the most successful.\n\n\n\nCarly (00:16:39)You actually mentioned something interesting, and it's totally a very great point to have. People interact differently depending on the diagnosis. So like, for example, like, if you are like a heart-specific hospital center, would you say that from awareness perspective, because obviously, unless there's a heart condition I might have, or alternatively, that knock on wood, that I don't have any condition like a stroke or a heart attack. Basically, at the end of the day, like, to your point, they want to forget about that happening. Right? So when it comes to awareness, like for a heart patient, for example, just use them as again, the key would you say like, for example, the messaging for awareness to get your brand out there still is maybe on preventative care, how can you work towards heart health?\n\n\n\nKatey (00:17:28)Yeah, I think it is, I think, very preventative, because with a heart attack will throw stroke in there as well. seconds matter. And so it's also being aware of what the symptoms are. I mean, we've heard it a heart attack for a man and heart attack for a woman, woman, the symptoms are very, very different. So you can't you've got to educate and try to get that out there. And, you know, knowing the signs, how can you from a social perspective partner like these are the things you're looking for? Do you realize putting these signs together could mean that you're about to have a heart attack, or you're possibly are, because you've got seconds to decide, and getting to the right location is important. You know, if you're in an area, there's multiple hospitals, well, you know, this health system has a special cardiac unit. That's ideally where you want to go. But that's where the branding comes in play right? In the awareness. You've taught people what to be looking out for you told them to come here, because that can matter. And I mean, it's terrible. This is life and death situation. So that's where that's where you can't be late to the ballgame.\n\n\n\nCarly (00:18:29)You want to be out in front. That totally makes sense. T for that example, I thought that was like a perfect key example of how we can bring awareness into play because I think also to to your point, yeah. Like, people are like, Well, why would I care until they actually need me, it's very important to obviously have them care before they need you. It also, like your point, life and death right at the end of the day. So I think that was a really awesome point. Thank you, Katey.\n\n\n\nKatey (00:18:54)Oh, you're welcome. And I mean, I'll say also part of healthcare is veterinary services. Let's not discount them. I have a dog that is too weak out of major surgery because in the middle of the night, we had a major episode. What is the first thing I did? I started Googling, what is this mean? Little did I know when I call the 24-hour vet, he was going to be in surgery. So it's the same type of thing, right? I mean, it was two o'clock in the morning, so I only had one option, but luckily that was a specialist that I needed to see.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:19:26)So how did the healthcare industry see changes in the past few years? And what would you say are some of the KPIs for a successful healthcare campaign?\n\n\n\nKatey (00:19:35)Yeah, so I think the past four years and in healthcare COVID changed a lot. COVID changed so much. One of the biggest was telehealth. It is now it used to be something a few places offer and it was kind of looked at oh it's a nice to have. But I think the latest numbers I've seen is 50 per 60% of people are utilizing it especially in the younger generations like it is very sought after it is now just kind The most standard thing, especially if you have a cold, you don't want to go sit in a room and you just want to get it handled. So telehealth has been huge. And just technology wearables are big, you know, are just coming up more honestly, medical devices are now becoming technology that can communicate with your physician and tell them how you're are you actually doing your exercises, have you gained weight, like all of this information, physicians can now get real time. So that is definitely a big change. I think we mentioned earlier politics, and healthcare, very different change. And so, you know, that is just something that you've got to be aware of. And now that it's out there, in education of the audience, as the audience has their own views, or whatever, they are continuing to be more and more educated primarily due to Google, and at home searches, but looking things up themselves, go maybe going into the office, and sometimes instance, they're like, I think I have this, the physician is like, Wait, we've got to check all of this, right, but you've got people doing self-diagnosis, and that whole space where doctors have to feel how do they get some of that control back as well. So I think those are some of the biggest challenges.\n\n\n\nCarly (00:21:05)I was just gonna say, I'm totally guilty of the self-diagnosis. My doctor probably resents every time I book an appointment.\n\n\n\nKatey (00:21:13)It has and in some instances is great. I mean, I know some people that I've seen stories where they go in and they're like, I went and kept going to doctors until they tested me for this, because in some ways, you know your body better. So it's figuring out how to build a partnership. And I guess healthcare in some ways, is trying to become a partnership with your doctor and feeling like they're really listening to you. And that empathy we're talking on the creative is the doctors expressing that empathy as well. Because, you know, location boundaries have changed. This is not the way it was 30, some odd years ago, where you had one doctor, and you really didn't have choice. You have choices. Now, especially with telehealth, if you want to go see a doctor that's in a different city, and they offer telehealth services that can now start becoming your primary care. So you can start finding the doctors that you feel comfortable with, and that you're like, This is who I want to provide my healthcare. So locations have changed, you don't have that holding you down anymore. From a success standpoint, and healthcare marketing, it's some of your really traditional metrics, you know, you're looking for leads, you're looking for responses, you're looking for awareness impression. Sometimes your time on site, it's a little more in some ways old school, because there's so much that happens between the time of sell, and I hate using that word of healthcare, but the top the time they come to the patient, they choose to go forward with a procedure. There's so many external factors, that marketing can't input. So marketing can get you into the door, it can get you in the consideration phase, but these external factors in the relationship with the physician or the family members, that's what ultimately affects the sale. So I think it's a real hard time to always say, hey, marketing, you're responsible for the sale, when 50 other hands are going to touch it from the time marketing has become a lead.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:23:02)Yeah, that's a lot of changes. And I'm sure what changes you had some challenges. So if you could highlight some challenges, and also talk about some trends to watch out for in 2023. And a little beyond that. And also, if someone's just starting off in this industry, what would be some of the tips you'd like to share with them?\n\n\n\nKatey (00:23:19)I think one of the biggest challenges everyone in the digital space experience is what's going to happen as third-party cookies really phase out? How are you going to find it? How is contextual advertising going to start to be your key? Like what is going to be that allows you to use programmatic and things to help build those audiences that you can target other channels? What is that going to look like? So I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges, kind of going off a little bit on the KPIs attribution, that continually because so many hands do touch it, how do you go back and really attribute what brought this person in to show how the marketing is working within healthcare. Education is always going to be around here, I'm talking about patient education. So you can't just have you know, does your website educate the patient going back to empowering if somebody's coming to you, because that website is constantly empowering them, they're starting to see you as a trusted source. That's going to play huge, you cannot forget about SEO, SEO is going to be the key because everyone will forever and always be Googling their symptoms. So understanding SEO and how that plays into it, competition. In the insurance space, there are more and more plans every single year people are inundated with choice. So what makes you stand out? You know, there's a set things everybody offers, but what are your differentiators? Are you able to clearly explain it to them? You know, they say typically if it's online, it needs to be at a sixth-grade reading level. In healthcare. The words alone put it at a college reading level most of the time. So are you breaking it down so that your audience truly understands it? So that's that's a big challenge. that we've been focusing in that will continue, that's not going to change. We mentioned this a little earlier for providers. Now, just because you're the only hospital in a small city doesn't mean anything, you know, people will go other places for health care, and they're expanding out. And they're looking and being more active in their health and in what's happening with them. So I think those are some of the big things their retention and engagement. No, are you considering how your offline your online? How all of that works? Together? Are patients using your patient portal? How is that affecting them? Is it a positive experience? Is it a negative experience is really looking at the entire journey, not just through, hey, we got them through the door, but what happens once they get through the door? Easier to keep somebody than it is to bring somebody in New? And then are you reinforcing? That? Is your marketing still reinforcing? Why are they there, so really kind of closing the test, or closing the loop on that journey. And then I'm still gonna say a big thing is, you've got to be willing to step out of what happened in the past, and what was working last year is not always going to be the same test, grow, test and grow. If you're not testing and all you're just gonna get left behind, because somebody else is gonna step into that space first. I'm somebody that's kind of starting out. These are kind of what I tell pretty much you know, people when they start are, you're never going to know everything, and it's okay not to know something, you are much better off within your clients to say, I don't know, rather than telling them something wrong, right, you're gonna build a lot more trust to say, Hey, let me check on that. Let me reach out to the experts. I cannot tell you how many times I said, Hey, let me check on that. I have sent Julian an email and be like, hey, the guys are sorry, that, hey, what are y'all tell me about this? So I knew what I was telling them was correct. And that is okay. It honestly it builds trust, it makes you better. Ask questions, when the client tells you something, and you're not sure continue to ask until you truly understand and not just go, okay, that's what it is, you need to know why. And this goes to things that you're doing, you know, constantly understanding why because if you know the why there may be a better way to get to it, there may be a better way to figure it out. If you understand what you're doing versus just accepting it. Ask questions, constantly. Don't put yourself in a box. Think outside of the box. You know, we have laws, we have rules. Yes, we have. But there's different ways to approach it. Look at the problem from the other side or rephrase the question, constantly look at it and constantly challenge what you're seeing there. If you can find a good mentor, and it's not just oh, this is the person that's in the exact job I want. It's a good mentor is somebody that you see yourself in, at least for me, it's somebody that could see myself and know, we have a similar style, I don't have to change who I am and how I'm working to kind of step through that. So really look for that type mentor that you can kind of grow with.\n\n\n\nCarly (00:27:54)I think one other thing too, I'd like to also say if you're new to the industry is if you have partners that are also helping you guys out, please like absolutely reach out to them. I remember when I started off in digital marketing, I had no clue what I was doing. And I always say jokingly for about eight months, and then it finally clicked one day, but I was able to leverage my partners I was working with to be able to understand the product more to be able to understand the solutions I was focused on building for my clients. So I think that all of that is absolutely fantastic. And that's just my one ad because Katey, you nailed it.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:28:27)So, we are just about to close. So thank you so much Katey and Carly for joining us and giving us your insights on so many things. And to the one who is listening till the very end. Thank you so much for staying back and listening to the entire episode. It looks like you might have found some value in this. So make sure you follow and like the podcast, share it with your friends or people in the industry who you think we'll find value in this. And if you want to get in touch, you can write to us at academy@stackadapt.com that is academy@stackadapt.com we have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesdays so make sure you catch the episode right when it drops. Don't forget to subscribe. I will see you in the next episode. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you soon.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:29:19)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/financial-services-marketing-strategies#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/financial-services-marketing-strategies"},"author":[],"headline":"Strategies for Success in Marketing Financial Services","datePublished":"2023-07-12T16:37:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:23+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/financial-services-marketing-strategies"},"wordCount":7170,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/financial-services-marketing-strategies#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240503123705/daniel_allocca_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s3e5.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["financial services","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe explore trends shaping the finance industry and share strategies for marketers to apply to their next financial marketing campaign.\n\n\n\nDaniel Allocca | Partner and Head of Digital and Integrated Marketing, Prosek Partners\n\n\n\nAlli Van Spankeren | Vice President of Digital and Integrated Marketing, Prosek Partners\n\n\n\nSam Jensen | Manager, Client Services, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)It's like the classic if you have nothing to say it takes longer to say, and some brands are saying too many things and therefore get no push through. And I actually think this is where digital gets weaponized because it's like I can take this message and send it to a bunch of different audiences and have as many variants as I want and test them. But in that you can lose the lead a little bit, right, but what's the strategy? Oftentimes, I think the data being used as a negative outcome is when people look at a report and make a lot of assumptions about what is without thinking about what isn't there.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:27)But then you think about the social landscape. The research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints. So that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart if you're tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:00:52)Lots happening this year. Economic changes vary in demographics and innovations in technology. But these are all areas financial services brands will need to address with their marketing efforts. We have experts from the field of financial services marketing joining us today, and we're going to discuss how brands will need to demonstrate their value to stay and grow their businesses. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I'm Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. Right now joining us we have Daniel Allocca, Partner and Head of Digital and Integrated Marketing from Prosek. And Alli Van Spankeren, Vice President Digital and Integrated Marketing, also from Prosek. With them, we have StackAdapt’s very own Sam Jensen Manager Client Services. Firstly, thank you so much for joining us. It's great to have you here. And secondly, I will pass it to you for a round of introductions. Please tell us about your professional background, your area of expertise, and also introduce Prosek to the listener. I'll start with you, Alli.\n\n\n\nAlli (00:02:02)Yeah, definitely, thank you for having us. I think we can start with Prosek. So we're, you know, a financial services focus firm, I think they've started as a PR Agency. And, you know, we've really kind of turned into a full services marketing firm with you know, we have our digital and integrated marketing capacity, you know, content, creative brand, kind of the full spectrum. And definitely focus within financial services. But I have clients kind of in all different verticals throughout. And I've been at Prosek for about three and a half years. And I'm the vice president on the digital and integrated marketing team, and really focus on our paid advertising clients. So leading the paid media strategy, planning, you know, execution campaigns, reporting, all that jazz. And prior to Prosek, I worked at an online reputation management startup. So really focusing on how we can kind of manipulate SEO to help with you know, reputation management.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:03:00)Now welcome, Alli. Once again, thank you so much for making time for this. And I will pass it to Daniel.\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:03:06)Yeah, thank thanks so much for having us. So, my name is Daniel Allocca, I run our Digital and Integrated Marketing Practice at Prosek. We really focus on three things. One is helping brands through organic and paid strategies on social social management. The second is really helping executives do that, and getting their voice out on social and the last. And obviously, what we're going to talk about the most today is paid media. And we're an advertising agency of record for a number of brands in the financial services space, as Alli mentioned, but professional services more broadly, where we're really helping brands build an enhanced reputation, drive revenue, and the like. So thanks again for having us. Look forward to the chat.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:03:47)Welcome to the show. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. I will now pass it to Sam.\n\n\n\nSam (00:03:52)Sure. Yeah, thanks, Sneha. And yeah, super excited to have Prosek partners here. My name is Sam Jensen. I'm a manager of Client Services over a StackAdapt. So I head up a team of account managers here. I was an account manager myself working on the Prosek account for I think, since late 2021. So it's been just a little over a year and a half with the partnership. And I've also been in space for the better part of a decade doing a mainly B2B programmatic strategy. So really excited to be here. And I think at this point, I've, I've experienced a ton of financial services related campaigns on both the consumer and the business side. It's very interesting to just see how they differ so kinda excited to dive into the niche audience targeting and executions that Prosek really specializes in, especially with the B2B vertical.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:04:46)That is a lot of experience on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us. I am going to jump right into the first question we have what consists of financial services marketing, how would you define it? And could you also tell us about some rules and regulations regarding this?\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:05:05)Yeah, sure. So I mean, the financial landscape is definitely very commingle with the regulatory landscape. And everything we do, we have to be considered of the laws, rules, regulations, you know, like many industries, I think that's the case. And like many industries, the role of branding is very, very important in the financial services space, I think most financial firms are ultimately having to sell trust, you know, it's a relationship that they're building for the long term with clients. And therefore, they want to make sure that their brand is known and understood by clients and prospects, and also that their capabilities and products are understood to the extent relevant. So I think in that sense, it's like all other marketing, I think where our roles get a bit unique, we're doing highly targeted marketing, and in some cases, to very, very small populations of people. And we like to joke around that if you if you can figure out how to market in our space, you could probably almost market to anybody, anything anywhere, because we've gotten so good at doing that highly targeted work.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:06:08)So what would you say are some of the performance benchmarks you'd look at to measure success? If one could say that B2B financial services marketing have longer sales cycles? And how do you set expectations for this?\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:06:23)Yeah, I mean, for us, it's usually about building brand and building brands, always a long term proposition. And because of that, the best brands we work with, I think, understand and recognize that and set up brand health tracking, to really make sure that we're tracking over the long term, so many brands are using third-party research that show them how their brand attributes are trending with their target audiences, or subscribing to other custom research that helps show them very specific attributes. So that's at the highest level in terms of measuring brand also relates that it's customer experience, and perception studies that really, really strong brands are doing that, that we partner with. And then naturally as we start to move kind of farther down the funnel, we start to care a lot about impression quality impression, click through what happens when someone's getting to our clients' websites. And we love it when we can get conversion in a B2B campaign, like subscribing to something, download a white paper, looking at product pages, and to the extent those are part of a campaign, we'd absolutely prioritize and pull those through throughout.\n\n\n\nAlli (00:07:33)I think, too, because it's such a long sales cycle, I think we have to act more as you know, like a function of an actual company than sometimes I see. I think I'm, you know, consumer where it's easier to just say, you know, this is what we've done, this is what we got back and it's more transactional, I think we really need to be integrated into everything our clients are doing, you know, have alignment with their Salesforce, how are they messaging it? What do they do with, you know, what we're doing? And because of that, we just need to be fully in lockstep it kind of every decision if, if we're going to have a successful campaign, because it's such a long sales cycle.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:08:11)You already mentioned some challenges. But if I could take this in the direction of the impact of AI on marketing, financial services, what do you think some of the challenges are? And the second part is, what are the tips to overcome them? And maybe even see this as an opportunity?\n\n\n\nAlli (00:08:30)Yeah, I think, I mean, we did talk about some of the challenges long sales cycle, I think the educational component is definitely there, I think, sometimes there can be a bit of a resistance to new technology or just a, you know, it takes longer to get it onboarded to understand it to see how we can, you know, use it as a value and, you know, addition for our work. I think, as far as the impact of AI goes, I mean, I think a lot of companies have been using or, you know, leveraging AI powered content for a few years now, it's definitely just more in the forefront. And I think, you know, for us, we think about it as any other tool like in our tech stack, it's something that we definitely want to have at our disposal to make us more nimble, but kind of think it's, you know, as helpful and useful as, you know, you as a user can make it and I think for us, you know, an area where I see it being you know, another tool is when we think through personalized content. And because we have such, you know, niche targeted audiences, it's really important that we have smart messaging to each of these different groups because they can be so different and respond to different things. And, you know, I think that's an area where AI can be really useful and you know, analyzing those audiences those data what makes up those groups and thinking through, you know, how we can offer more tailored messaging to reach them.\n\n\n\nSam (00:09:55)For sure. Yeah, and I'm no stranger to you know, contextual tools that a lot of DSPs, especially in a programmatic space, tout a contextual tool of some kind where they really prioritize serving users, while they're in the mindset to maybe receive an advertisement. And what I often see there and kind of going back to the long sales cycle pieces, you might not get a direct click through when somebody's you know, in the zone reading through an article, they're on Investopedia, for example, or maybe just reading the news, you might not see a click-through necessarily right away, but being able to track like you guys said, site activity after the fact, you can tie that back to those contextual plays to say, okay, like, are we showing up at the right time for a lot of these users.\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:10:44)No, I agree with you entirely. And, you know, I think, when we talk about challenges, I think it's actually challenging. All advertising and marketing more broadly, is the advent of digital and improved measurement. I think it's also created a little bit of a false narrative that everything being measured is everything. There's all these other things that happen, that really drive outcome. And oftentimes, I think the data being used with mal-intent, but nonetheless, sometimes has a negative outcome is when people look at a report and make a lot of assumptions about what is without thinking about what isn't there. And that's one of the things we talked about challenges that I think we spend time dealing with, with clients as well.\n\n\n\nSam (00:11:29)Yeah. Would you say that you find clients, you know, because the attribution is so advanced, and the targeting is so nuanced on a lot of these digital platforms, do you find that the client tends to micro-focus on a specific channel, for example, to deliver some type of real ads or, or overall revenue? Because, just for context, I think that's something that we run into a lot just in terms of expectation setting. And what I always go back to is sort of the fundamentals of marketing, right? Like, though the times have changed, and the mediums and the vessels through which we deliver ads have changed, the concept stays the same. We want to get in front of users across as many channels as we possibly can, and deliver some sort of continuity between them. What I see is people, you know, with the advanced measurement, they start to say, How can I tie this back to a dollar? I gotta show my boss that there's revenue in this and maybe not see the full picture.\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:12:30)First things first is, I agree entirely that the fundamentals have not changed, you know, since the beginning of time, the need to like sell and market was there the beginning of commerce, and I think the fundamentals are identical. It's just, there's more tools and ways to do it now. So conflating the two is dangerous. And yes, we definitely see clients who see things like, you know, search, as driving clicks into a website, therefore the most valuable and if driving sales within a group of people looking for your product is the most important, then absolutely no argument there. But that obvious starts to get into direct conflict, then when goals are finding new clients, building a market for a product where clients maybe don't even know you exist, yet, you're trying to create need, that's obviously where you have to start moving up and out into all sorts of other channels that are much less measurable, much less likely to drive a click, because you're having to build brand and compel over time. And that's where I think a lot of counseling education is needed. And sometimes even the most disciplined and well, sort of educated marketers struggle with that, because they also stakeholders, they have to kind of keep happy as well, right?\n\n\n\nAlli (00:13:39)Yeah, I think another thing too, when there's so many, like, there's almost so many things we can do in different tools and different ways to go that can excite people, which is awesome. But also, I think it can lead to like a brand continuity issue where people almost want to do too much. And they're like, well, we want to be known for this and known for this. And we'll do this here and this year and this year. And it's like, what are we actually doing? And sometimes I feel like it sort of backfires. And then, you know, we've done so much, but you know, at the end of the day, like what was the goal? And are we really known for any of it? Or do we just have, you know, all this noise, and I think there's a lot of competition in the space and like needing to find that white space is important. And it's it just the brand consistency can sometimes get a little crazy, because there's so much like we could do. Yeah, I totally agree with that.\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:14:30)Yeah, I think it's like the classic if you have nothing to say it takes longer say and some brands are saying too many things and therefore get no push-through. And it's something we see a lot and I actually think this is where digital gets weaponized, right? Because it's like I can take this message and send it to different bunch of different audiences and have as many variants as I want and test them but in that you can lose the lead a little bit of like, right but what's the strategy and big picture if I had to put this thing on TV, old school or on the cover of the newspaper, old school, what's it going to be? And, you know, I think the death of that like madmen of marketing, some bad things happen. And I think that's definitely one of them without question.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:15:11)On that interesting note, it is time for a short break. We'll be back soon. And in the next part, we are discussing customer journey for financial services, scaling and some emerging trends in the financial services industry right now. Stay tuned. We'll be right back. Welcome back. And thank you for staying tuned. You're still listening to the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and we were talking about financial services marketing, as promised, my next question was going to be about customer journeys. So jumping right into it. Daniel, Alli, Sam, could you tell us about the customer journey for financial services marketing? How difficult or easy it is to scale and maybe throw light and personalization throughout this journey?\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:15:56)Absolutely. Yeah, we tend to build our journeys starting from the bottom up. So we try to figure out, what does conversion look like. And that can obviously mean a lot of different things, depending on the use case. But once we have that in a good place, we start there. And we start to fan out that kind of classic marketing funnel bottom up of saying, what are the channels and messages that we want to communicate to educate clients on what we do, engage clients in what we do and how we do it and then reach that conversion stage. As we all know, it's a long sales cycle. So conversion doesn't typically happen on visit number one. So we really like to use a lot of retargeting tactics to make sure that we stay in front of clients. And we really, really like to use sequential messaging tactics across, not just our programmatic display, and video, but all of our channels so that we can kind of continue to tell our brand story on a sustained basis. The other thing we really like to do is, if you think of a funnel, we kind of use this hourglass funnel methodology. So it's like, what are all the things you do with the users you already have? So we with long sales cycle clients think a lot about cross-selling, getting them in the next product, using CRM data, in those sorts of strategies as well.\n\n\n\nSam (00:17:11)All right, well, yeah, I think that's spot on Dan. And a lot of that goes back to what you were just saying prior with clients wanting to maybe throw too much at you at once. The challenge almost becomes, okay, like, what is the goal? Is it a conversion? Are you trying to fill out a form, have somebody become, you know, a marketing qualified lead, eventually sales, qualified lead, and working out from there some important things that I see, at least in the programmatic space beyond not testing too much at a time to really get insights on where to optimize. But another thing that I see a lot of with customer journey is continuity between channels. And that's something that you know, I see Prosek doing you, you, you run across multiple channels, like you said, your cross-selling in the video, static and animated channels. And what I think that actually allows you to do is build sort of a funnel, where you can conceptuAllize it just like you wouldn't traditional marketing. Video is sort of your initial introduction to a user just like a commercial would be. And using tactics like retargeting people who complete the videos, or people who skip the videos with static channels in order to encourage them, not just to hear your message, but maybe actually take another step and go read a blog, or go click through an ad, right? And it doesn't happen right away. It happens with repeat messaging over time. So that might look like your awareness message at the video channel, you might shoot them a blog post via native to get them to interact again. And then your display campaign might just literally be your strict call to action, you know, sign up?\n\n\n\nSam (00:18:52)So that's how that's how I see it structured, oftentimes, at least in the B2B space.\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:18:57)Yeah, no, you know, we talked about challenges around this. I think one of them for us sometimes is, we love when we can control the whole strategy in the in own this entire kind of lifecycle that we're talking about. But sometimes we don't. And we're often given creative that doesn't necessarily naturally Alligned with the stated goals. Right. So like, like you said, building brand and getting known, like, video is amazing. But sometimes we might be handed assets that aren't that. And I think one of the things we've gotten really good at is trying to find ways to use what we get to really deliver on goals that clients have and try to get creative and and how we do that. And Alli spends a lot of time doing this as well.\n\n\n\nAlli (00:19:35)I do and I was gonna say it's funny, Sam, I feel like we have this framework that you said is exactly what we think through if we do control of it. It's like, you know, how do we inform we like video, how do we educate? Is there content or blog and then how do we convert like, how do we get them to click-through and I think something else we run into is, you know, if if we do want to get a lead and generate that, you know, if we click through have a website? Is it set up for success or are we just, you know, pushing something through, and we'll lose them right away. And I think that goes back to how we, we really need to be integrated into a client's you know, entire department there to think through every stage of it. And it's like, if we've done 98% of it, and then we get them there. And, you know, we lose it because of, you know, kind of user experience on the site, which may not be something that we, you know, control or not our mandate, but it's like something we have to think about and account for, and figure out how to be a good partner to that client. And, you know, making sure we can kind of do the full cycle.\n\n\n\nSam (00:20:36)And one thing I really want to touch on, before we hop to the next question is how does this continuity look across platforms? How do you guys utilize insights, maybe from a programmatic buy to inform a LinkedIn buy, for example, because that's another thing we see often going back to the siloed performance pieces, you know, should I choose one or the other. And what I always recommend is both the insights you can use from LinkedIn could fuel the top of your funnel and vice versa.\n\n\n\nAlli (00:21:03)Yeah, I think it everything informs each other. And I think we have, you know, there are platforms we like for certain things, and tactics that we use, depending on the goal, like for programmatic is great for us to scale and generate awareness, and then, you know, we maybe move to something else where we're looking for, you know, if we have a long-form piece of content, how are we going to use that, like, LinkedIn is really great for us, because you know, we are in the B2B space, you know, it's a platform, we know, and trust people more accurately enter their information, and we're able to target by job title and get really niche there. And so we definitely have, I think, you know, there's a time and a place for each sort of platform and tactic. And I think, like you said, you know, both when they all work together is, I think when things are the most successful for us, when we're able to reach someone at multiple points throughout their day on, you know, the sites they go to naturally, instead of just one is always, you know, going to work out better for us.\n\n\n\nSam (00:22:05)Yeah, I just want to add one more piece to this. But what I think a really great example of this, that I see, often, and then I think Prosek does this a lot, too, is you know, for example, you're running some type of B2B, targeted or ABM campaign, you might get that list of accounts you want to target from LinkedIn from, from what you've seen on the platform perform. And like you said, you want to scale to other people at that company who have the same job title. And it can work in reverse, right, you could target a whole bunch of businesses within an industry broadly, and see which ones are driving the engagement metrics. And then that informs your LinkedIn campaign on how to be, you know, more nuanced with your targeting or refined.\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:22:48)Definitely, this goes back to the context piece, too, I think, in the role that the channels play, psychologically. And I think that's another thing that often gets forgotten about is, what state of mind is the person most likely and when they're engaging on all these channels, right? And we try to think about that, when we start to guide the creative process. So you're, you're reading the news, you're an information gathering mode, you're sipping your cup of coffee, you're on social media, you want to see what's going on with your network, with your friends, with the companies, you follow. And I think because of that, we have to think about the format of the content that performs well there. And then the nature of the content, too. So is it time to sell? Is it time to educate? Is it time to get people to engage. And I think a lot of times that gets forgotten at the creative step of this big idea is made. And it's a great big idea. But people haven't sat down and thought about how's this thing going to come to life in a way that matters? Because exactly zero people wake up in the morning, thinking about your brand. Zero people wake up in the morning, you know, wanting to do business with yet another partner. So we often think about how do you get someone to stop you or interrupt their day. And to do that, you have to really be respectful of that time and get to the point. So that's a lot of counsel we provide to clients is that is no not just know your audience and know your concept, but know where they are and how they're thinking to produce a really strong media plan.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:24:19)So what are the emerging trends right now in the financial services industry? And it'll also be great if you can maybe give an informed prediction about what's gonna happen in the next 18 months. And looking at these trends. What are some of the channels you'd recommend within programmatic? And how would you fit this into a full funnel strategy with paid search and social? Also, is there a formula you'd recommend for this? Because that would be really great. And I know we discussed contextual so would you like to throw some light on maybe going cookieless and focusing on contextual options? What's that looking like?\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:24:58)The cookieless piece is obviously a mega trend that affects everybody. And in some ways, I think it affects us in a positive way. Because it, it forces us to actually think be more thoughtful in how we plan. I think unquestionably a mega trend in the financial space is moving more and more away from linear channels and more to programmatic channels, you know, inclusive of connected television, obviously, more programmatic audio and podcasts. And I think what we're seeing a lot of is the desire to use education more and more as the main driver for for building brands. So we see a lot of interest in sponsoring things being part of the content, whether that be audio or written content, and therefore contextual Asana rise more and more as an area of interest. So how do we get our content in places where we know people are interested about that content? I think the great news is it's a level playing field for everybody. In terms of the cookie list piece, I think the harder news for a lot of our financial clients that work with really, really small and niche audiences is certain channels might become, I don't want to say less relevant, but less targeted, and they may have to get comfortable with that or not. I think that's one of the things that we're going to be working through together. I'll get your thoughts there as well.\n\n\n\nAlli (00:26:15)Yeah, I think, I mean, on the cookie list thing, I think for us, I mean, we contextual targeting, I think that was always kind of what was most important for us and what we were doing. I mean, definitely can rely more on first-party data there as well. But as far as trends go, I think something we're seeing, and we're doing a lot of Prosek to is, you know, a lot of influencer work, which I think is, you know, has been in the financial services realm, but it's, you know, might not be on tick tock but definitely something that we're we're seeing more as far as I think trust is really important, building trust with these audiences. And, and doing that kind of even, you know, through what Dan said, where it's being more integrated in sponsorships being seen as cohesive versus, you know, we're paying money to sponsor this, but it's we're part of the conversation, you know, we're with these people that you know, and trust, and kind of using influencer work or more kind of those creative partnerships as a way to do that.\n\n\n\nSam (00:27:13)Yeah, I love that. I think what it sounds like and not to paraphrase, but at a high level, old things are sort of becoming new again. And like I said, well, the medium of which we're delivering it has changed a lot of the stuff like sponsorships, testimonials, contextual plays, serving on connected television, all of those things are not new things, right. But with the debt, the impending doom of the cookie, we're sort of going back to that and realizing there is value in that. And there is a reason people spend, you know, clamour over each other to spend money on commercials, I would say that, that's sort of a big piece that we're seeing. And, and one thing I want to add to that is, a lot of marketers right now are panicked about the cookie going away, which can sometimes lead to paralysis by over-analysis, right? The cookie is not gone yet. It looks like we're going to be having it into 2024. So with the signals and the capabilities you have at your disposal now, what can you do to prove yourself in the future, right, you still have the signals and data points available to you now. So I always recommend, you know, sure, we can move to a cookie list strategy now. But why would you do that when you still have all the capabilities in front of you to be highly targeted? Or?\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:28:32)Absolutely, yeah. And I mean, as you know, there were brands that did that two or three years ago, and I'd argue, left tons of enterprise and business value on the table, because they put themselves at a disadvantage before they had to. And who knows what's going to happen next, right, these dates moved. So many times that for all we know, it'll move again, I think to the playing field is going to be level for every brand, every marketer, every technology, every agency. So I almost view it as a neutral point. It's not like one's going to have something and someone else's not. And that's why what we've done on the tools front is, for us, it's about working with platforms where we feel like we get great service and that are adapting. And it's not about having every single tool in the truck. It's about having five or six tools that you know how to use really well, because at the end of the day, you're being paid to like build the building, no one cares how it got built on the client side. And that's how we think about all these things. And the role of data and the role of the cookie and the role of the platform is there tools. And outcomes is what cheques get written for. Right. So that's what we're trying to spend most of our time.\n\n\n\nSam (00:29:47)Yeah, that said, it will be very interesting to see how those, you know, how measurement and performance will change over time. I imagine that there'll be a lot more internal data modeling going on. or some type of estimation of like, if I drive a user to the site, just getting a net new user to my site? What is like the average value of that? You know? So I imagine that we're going to see a lot more like data science internally, with a lot of agencies and trying to figure out how do we ascribe value when we no longer can?\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:30:20)Absolutely. And I mean, in that sense, in many ways, it's like, the more things change, the more they say the same. I think even the most advanced data and analytics models now struggle to deliver on that. Did this drive truly? Can we take credit for sale? Yeah, so I think it's an evolution there for sure.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:30:40)Wow, change is constant, for sure. And that is a lot that you have to keep yourself updated with. So if somebody is entering the field right now, what are some of the recommendations that you'd like to give them in terms of how they can stay educated? Stay ahead, maybe stay ahead of the curve? What is your recommendation to them?\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:31:01)I think like any discipline, understanding the fundamentals is so important. So like we talked about earlier, the fundamentals of sales and marketing have not changed, really, ever they come down to deep-rooted human psychology and how people buy things and trusts and all those behaviours are just moving online. And you know, who knows? Where will the move next. So I think understanding that is super important, because it gives you then a foundation to translate all these new things that are coming your way back to something very concrete. You know, we hear we spend a lot of time talking with vendors like, like you guys, I think you're at the forefront, and it helps us stay current. We're watching, you know, videos, and YouTube and all that sort of thing, too. But we're also taking a lot of guidance from clients, because they're asking business questions that put us in that tough spot of like, Wait, we don't know the answer. I'm going to do a lot of research there. Because we're hearing need and demand. So I think that's another place to challenge Alli, I'd love to hear from you too on this.\n\n\n\nAlli (00:32:00)Yeah. And I think it can be hard to working in digital and being on all the social platforms. It's just constant updates, news, different opinions. I mean, I was 20 Vernors. Like, I feel like there's always something different. And I feel like I get exhausted keeping up with it. And it's like, I need to keep up with it to some extent because it's my job. But sometimes I just, I feel like, being inundated with information isn't helpful. And the same thing where we're like, clients trying to do so much I don't do anything. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know what's going on, because I just see too much. So for me, I think, you know, it's about having, you know, one or two sites or newsletters that I trust, and I'm like, This is what I'm gonna read, I'm gonna formulate my opinion, ears are open, but I just I, I can't take in every single thing. And you because it just moves too fast. And I just I find like, I get overwhelmed, and it's not helpful for me. So I think being cognizant of everything that's happening, but also taking a step back and kind of watching things play out and formulating your own opinion and how that affects, you know, your clients, you know, the platform's your business, I think is is really important.\n\n\n\nSam (00:33:13)Yeah, there comes a point where things move so fast that almost everything someone says it's true, like there is validity to a lot, I see that in programmatic all the time different takes about oh, Metis failing, Oh, Matt is doing fine. It's a perfect example of things that I see all the time and in the digital world. Oh, Google is gonna get rid of the cookie. Oh, no, they're not. So I agree, it's more or less, there is validity to all things. And you just have to keep that in your back pocket. So when a strategy doesn't work at the campaign level, maybe you could test the other side of that theory, and go against your initial opinion.\n\n\n\nAlli (00:33:49)Definitely. Yeah, I think it's easy to make, like snap decisions, even with the cookie thing, you know, the people who pulled out too early, it's easy to just make that decision. I think our job, as you know, being strategic partners to our clients is, you know, having an opinion and giving our counsel, but also making sure that, you know, we don't get hyped up in the news of what's happening at that hour, because three hours later, something could shift in the point of view, and our recommendation could shift. So definitely, like giving time and making sure that, you know, we're thinking through what the future is going to look like and not just like what's happening at that very minute.\n\n\n\nDaniel (00:34:26)I think to like the role that we play in the value chain, with clients, we always have to keep in mind. We're practitioners, we're not engineers. And I think it's like, we need to make sure we let the right people worry about the right things. This is what you guys are here for right to think about. Where's the platform need to advance and how's the technology changing and we need to worry about all those things. I think it's like if you think about what you guys do is like engineering the car like it's our job is to drive the car, and that's what we try to get really good at is Is that part of the value chain? And I think a lot of digital practitioners get way too lost in trying to know everything about everything. And then therefore know nothing about a lot of things. And we try to avoid that trap I think a bit.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:35:13)And on that note, we have come to the end of this amazing episode. Lots of information, so many insights. Always great to have experts on the show. Thank you, Daniel, Alli and Sam for joining us today. And to you, the one listening thank you for sticking around till the very end. We have episodes releasing on alternate Wednesdays so make sure you subscribe and follow the podcast to catch the episode right when it drops. If you want to get in touch Write to us at academy@stackadapt.com That is academy@stackadapt.com. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. See you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:35:56)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-attribution-data-driven-success#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-attribution-data-driven-success"},"author":[],"headline":"Decoding Marketing Attribution: Data Driven Success","datePublished":"2023-07-26T17:29:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-08-14T21:14:46+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-attribution-data-driven-success"},"wordCount":7278,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-attribution-data-driven-success#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240503132922/ryan_mcclurkin_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s3e6.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["attribution model","audience data","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLearn how new technologies are shaping marketing attribution and how to select an attribution model that aligns with your marketing efforts.\n\n\n\nRyan McClurkin | Chief Analytics Officer, Jewelry Television\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)A lot of companies are still stuck in a last-click attribution world, right? There's an old-school metric. It's been around for 2025 years, and it attributes the conversion event to the last impression or last click click-based attribution specifically last click, it creates some serious challenges, stuff that is real low in the funnel is gonna get all the conversion value, and the upper funnel would never pay out like you will never measure the upper funnel efficiently using last click conversion, I'm spending money here, but I can't measure its effectiveness because all of the conversion values getting attached to a lower funnel.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:30)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, so that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:00:53)Marketing efforts today use the most number of channels and platforms to reach prospects than they ever have before. So naturally, there's a lot more data available. So how do you as a marketer, working with a brand in an agency or an independent consultant, make sense of things, and make data work for you, instead of drowning in numbers? In short, how do you make attribution work for you? Let's talk to an expert and find out more. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I'm Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. And joining me, we have Ryan McClurkin, chief analytics officer at Jewelry Television. Thanks for being here excited to pick your brain about all things attribution, before that, I’ll pass it to you for an introduction. Please tell us about your professional background, areas of expertise and also about Jewelry Television.\n\n\n\nRyan (00:01:48)Yeah, thank you for having me. You know, first off, I'd like to say do or television, we're the kind of the largest non-bridal jewelry seller in America, we're a home shopping network, that's how we started. And if you want to think about that as a QVC, or HSN, but we sell primarily jewelry in that space. And like I said, kind of the largest non-bridal jewelry website in America and just seller of non-bridal jewelry, that's kind of our expertise is in color gemstones. And we sell a lot of jewelry in that space. So you know, give you some background on me. I've been I've been in the industry about 12 to 13 years in the analytics space. And, you know, we cover all different kinds of verticals of analytics when it comes to retail. We cover everything from you know, what I'll call financial, financial forecasting, different types of retail analytics, as it relates to sales volume, customer analytics, we do a lot of customer lifetime value modeling. And then one of the you know, in a lot of merchandising Analytics as well, you know, what sells? Well, what doesn't sell? Well, at any given time, we'll have about 40,000 active skews. So we do a lot of pricing Analytics as well as dynamic pricing. So all kinds of different verticals of analytics. But one of the most interesting ones for me personally, because I've also a background e-commerce is the digital media side, digital advertising and e-commerce, e-commerce media. Very interesting side for me is when we are well-developed in that space. You know, we started this journey back in 2016, and 17, to really kind of bring what we'll call our digital media analytics to the forefront. And we've come a long way in that space. So that's a really interesting space. For me personally, I'm passionate about that space, and excited to talk to you about it today.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:03:32)Thank you, it's great to hear about your journey and your experience. So far. So excited to start this chat with you. To just start off, I wanted to ask you about attribution. How would you define attribution?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:03:47)Yes, what do you think about attribution, you know, you know, there's, there's a lot of different, what I'll call attribution models in the space. And, you know, when we get though, to just the theory of attribution, you know, and that's where we had to kind of go in 2017. But when you think about the theory of attribution, it's really any type of impression that leads to an order, I'll just, I'll just, if you want a real broad definition of how we think about it, it's it's any impression marketing or advertising impression, that leads to a conversion in order. You know, and, and everybody's different in a retail world, we're looking for orders and customers, right. But you could think about it as if you were running a newsletter as a sign-up or, you know, any type of conversion events. So any type of impression that leads to a conversion event is kind of broadly how we think about attribution. And that's important that I say that broad definition because I think we're gonna end up talking about you know, all the different attribution models like last click attribution, or first click attribution and, and some of the flaws associated there. But generally speaking, we're gonna define attribution as any impression whether it's a display or a click, or you know, I hear it on the radio it's, it's a it's a brand or or impression that leads to a conversion.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:05:02)And what would you say? Are some of the old school attribution practices people still kind of stick with? And what are some of the new ways to approach this?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:05:13)Yeah, I think when you look at the space, it's, it's, it's still amazing to me with modern analytics, how undeveloped the space is, in terms of the attribution methods. So, you know, when you think about what a lot of companies still do, you know, I'll go to different trade shows and whatnot, and you'll see a lot of companies still stuck in a last-click attribution world, right? This is this an old school metric, it's been around for 2025 years, right? It attributes the, you know, the conversion event to the last impression, or last click. Specifically, if you talk about clicking click conversion, there's, there's some challenges with click conversion in general, because I think there's a lot of brand impressions that happen outside of a click, that create conversion. So we have to be careful of that. But that's, that's critical. But when you when you think about some of the old school practices, I think some of the canned what I'll call the canned attribution models, such as last click, or even first click or linear attribution. There, are there issues with it. And when you're dealing primarily with first-party data, which a lot of companies deal with, right? Are they run through their, you know, canned attribution models inside Google Analytics or Adobe analytics, their click-based start? I think that's, that's one of the challenges. You know, like I said, I think when you study, attribution in general, in, you know, with StackAdapt, for example, when you when you study display conversions versus click conversions, you'll see, you know, 80% of your orders happen in the display world, from a conversion perspective versus just click. So if you're dealing with click-based attribution, specifically last click, it creates some serious challenges. One of those challenges is actually in the upper funnel, right. So when you've talked about last-click conversion, the first problem you're dealing with is the fact that you're only using a click versus using clicks and displays. But the second problem is, is that last click conversion, which is the most common attribution methodology in the marketplace right now. It always has been, I think there's some challenges with that, but it's going to attach all of that conversion value to the things closest to the order. So you're talking about retargeting events, email, you know, brand search, you know, stuff that is real low in the funnel is going to get all the conversion value. And so when you think about companies out there trying to build, you know, let's say you have really low unaided brand awareness, for example, you're trying to build your brand awareness, which, ultimately, you want to conversion out of that right, especially in the retail from a retail, but I'll talk from a retail perspective, right. But from a retail perspective, you know, the reason we spend money in the upper funnel is to generate brand impressions, and eventually a new customer, right? Like, at the end of the day, it's, you know, you want those dollars to work for you. So you're spending money in that upper funnel to generate brand awareness, new customers, and that's ultimately what you want. But when you try to measure that, especially the upper funnel on a last-click conversion basis, you have these massive challenges, because you can't, you will never measure the upper funnel efficiently using last click conversion. And when you think about television journey in that space, you know, I'll talk about this, this journey that we've had, over time, when we go back to 2017 16. And 17, we started to make some material investments in our digital media space. And one of the biggest challenges that we had was last-click attribution. We came in, we came in and we said, Okay, we want to we want to increase our digital investments substantially. And as the executive team we came in, and we said, Okay, I came and said, How are we going to measure it? Right? And, you know, we had Adobe, or Omniture analytics, and we had this last click conversion reporting. And, you know, we'd come in, we'd sit down, and we'd say, Okay, well, how much do we spend last week? And how much do we generate? And what you ended up with was all the value going toward these lower funnel? All the value goes into all the lower-funnel campaigns and tactics, right? And when you think about that, and the challenges that it creates, is we couldn't balance our portfolio, we would say, okay, yeah, spend more money in the lower funnel, then also know when scale like you wouldn't get the scale you needed, right? And it's because you're not feeding the funnels properly. And it became really challenging as an executive team to spend in the upper funnel, when you can't measure the efficiency in the upper funnel properly. Right? It would never pay out like when, when you're using last-click attribution that some of the old school attribution models, the upper funnel would never pay out, like you sit there and you go, Okay, I'm spending money here, but I can't measure its effectiveness because all of the conversion value is getting attached to a lower funnel. And so, you know, we after about a year, we said, you know, I stepped back and said, Okay, how do you define attribution to start? If we, if we say, you know, an ad theory, it should be any impression that leads to an order, right? But we're not measuring it that way. Right. We're measuring all this all this conversion value being attached to Do lower funnel tactics. And that's not the right way to think about it. Okay, so we step back. And if we look at basic ad theory, we kind of identified three major areas of concern. The first being attribution, which we're talking about, right? The second being what I'll call the ad dollar journey, which I think we'll talk about next. And then the third being some old school metrics. I think, when you think about row ads, for example, revenue on ads, better return on ad spend, right? Or er, expense to revenue, just the inverse of that. There are also some challenges in the different funnels with using kind of old school metrics. But, you know, from an attribution perspective, we really had to evolve out of that last-click attribution, to evolve into being able to make business decisions to spend money in the upper funnel and elsewhere.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:10:51)What were the mixes looking like in terms of upper funnel and the lower funnel? How would you say programmatic played a role in all of this?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:11:01)Yeah, so you know, at the time, like I said, from an executive standpoint, you know, in a lot of companies face the challenge, they're not going to spend money, where they can't measure the value. I mean, in today's world, you want to go spend ad dollars, you want to spend money, you better be able to show return on that investment, right? Especially with, you know, as data analytics and reporting has gotten just bigger and bigger. And there's a huge demand for, you know, companies and executives aren't willing to spend money in places that they can't measure, well, let's just start there, right. And that's just, it just becomes a fact. Like, you need to be able to measure return on investment, and you need to be able to show the benefit of the dollar you're spending. It's especially true at our, our company culture, we try to measure almost everything, right? And we're almost to a fault in a way. And so it becomes really challenging when you're trying to say, okay, you know, you've got a marketer coming in saying, you know, we're probably spent, we're underspent in the upper funnel, like, we got to generate some brand awareness, and then you got to spend those dollars and you can't, you can't show return on that investment. That creates a massive challenge internally, right? Where your CFO sitting there going, you're not generating a return on this investment you like, like, prove it to me, right? And then we'll spend the money. And so when you think about evolving out of that space, you evolve into what I'll call like, the multi-touch attribution space, okay. And that's what we did, we evolved out of kind of this last click attribution or canned attribution models, we said, let's read, you know, I said, Let's redefine attribution, right? Like, like, when you think about it, in general, an impression that leads to an order, let's step back and go there. And we came to our different providers, and we said, Okay, we, you know, we need some data feeds, right, we need, we need, if your pixel is picking up an order, I want to see all the impressions that lead to that order, okay. And whether it's display, whether it's click, we're not going to differentiate, because the decisions we've been making for the last year haven't resulted in the growth that we really want. So we're going to go back, and we're going to reevaluate how we're measuring this thing. And we did that we went through this process of developing what I'll call kind of an in house MTA model, you know, we would consider kind of a world-class measurement system. And what we ended up with was that we found we were we were way under-spent in the upper funnel, when you step back, and you get outside of last click attribution, and you go toward, you know, what I'll call including display impressions in your attribution model, when you go to a cost base accounting type of attribution model, where you're not allocating all of the benefit to the last click, but you spread it across clicks, right? in sort of a linear cost based attribution model, what we found is that we were all a way underspend our our portfolio was way out of balance. And We made adjustments to that. And from there, we've just seen tremendous results from it, you know, when we started to be able to balance the portfolio, but in order to be able to do that, like I said, you have to be able, you have to be able to show the benefit of the different funnels. And until you can do that it will be almost impossible from a cultural standpoint of a company that wants and that needs to show return on investment, to be able to invest that way. Right. And and, you know, I think that's, that's the one of the biggest challenges is how do you show the benefit of the ad spend. Attribution plays a role in that, and then I'll call, I'll call what we call the ad dollar journey plays a big role in that as well. The ad dollar journey is wildly important. There's a huge misconception that happens inside of of marketers were under some of these canned attribution models, and some of these canned measurement systems. Advertising is one of the only places that I see the return on investment being measured against a cost that did not generate the return. And I'll give an example I'll come in. We did this every week. We have a with digital marketing every single week. We come in and we'd say, give me the last week or last 14 days of results. What did I spend In the last 14 days, what did it generate? For me? The reality is when you step back and think about that theory, so this was another part of this process, right? We said, attribution is one piece. But then let me step back. And like, if I'm going to have all my measurement system, I'm going to think about advertising theory. In general, when we spend advertising dollars, it does not generate an order today, or even in the next seven days, it generates a future order. There's a future order stream, when I spend $100,000. It's a future order stream that I'm looking to generate, or a future customer stream, or future conversion stream, if you want to think about it like that, right? It's your spending dollars today to generate future conversions. And they may not all happen in seven days, they may not all happen in 14 days. In fact, only a fraction of them happen within seven to 14 days. Right? And so when I sit here, and I met and I come in, and I say what did I spend in 14 days, what did I get as my return in 14 days, or even seven days what I spent last week, versus what I generated last week, it's really a miss your it's totally just misinformation. The dollars I spent last week didn't generate the orders that I generated last week, the orders that were generated last week, or the conversion events that were generated last week, are a function of many previous weeks spends, okay. And in reality, if you take it from a financial point of view, I should measure my return on investment against the cost that actually generated the orders. And it becomes really important in two cases, okay, if you have a long-term sustained spend, that's pretty stable, it kind of equals out, okay. But when you're testing new campaigns, I'll give you two cases where it kind of Wildly Important. The first one is when you're testing new campaigns, if you're testing new campaigns, and you're ramping them up, let's say I decide to turn on, you know, to take an extreme example here, right, I decide I'm going to I'm going to turn on a campaign at 50,000 a week, I'm gonna just turn it on. Your CFO is going to be breathing down your throat in two weeks, or three weeks to say, how is my my spend doing how's that new, I've spent $150,000, how's it doing? If you try to measure the return on that investment in the first three weeks against $150,000, and spend, they will tell you to turn it off almost 100% of the time. But the reality is that money you're spending generates a future revenue stream. So So you better do a cost allocation, that you're only measuring part of the benefit that will actually occur, okay. So it's, it's a fraction of the benefit in that first two or three weeks, it's a fraction of the benefit that will actually occur. So you better adjust your cost accordingly, you're not getting $150,000 worth of benefit in that first two or three weeks, you will long term, but not in the first two or three weeks. And so when you're when you're presenting in your executive team, you're in your marketing teams, right? Trying to measure against that full cost, you're going to turn that thing off. So that's one case is wildly important. The second, the second case was actually more relevant in today's world, you start to get into, say, a recessionary environment. And everyone's looking at cutting budgets, right? They're looking at cutting budgets, they're saying, okay, you know, let's, an easy place in a corporate world to attack is marketing budgets. So it's, it's just simply put, it's just an easy place, because it's very flexible. You can turn things on and off really fast. It's easier than headcount. It's easier than long-term contracts. Right? And there's always this, I'll say that sometimes there's this overarching doubt about the effectiveness of marketing, am I really getting the incremental dollar, right? So one of the places that gets attacked is in a recession environment is marketing dollars, it happens every every single time. When you reduce budgets, this encase when you reduce budgets, if you are under traditional old school, measurement and attribution models, you're going to look like a genius for the first six to eight weeks. Because if I come in and say, What are my results for this period of time versus the cost in this period of time, and let's say I had a million dollar a week marketing budget, and I'm gonna cut it in half, and I come in the next week, and I spent $500,000. And I'm gonna say, I'm gonna measure my results against that $500,000. That's those first few weeks of results, it's going to look amazing. You're gonna say, Oh, I'm I'm spending half the money, I'm still getting the same amount of orders, I'm still getting the same amount of conversions. But in reality, those conversions are driven off of a higher spend level, like the cost that generated the conversions when you've cut your budget is not the new budget, that's gonna hit you in six to eight weeks. It's the old budget that's generating the order still today. And so when you don't have your cost allocation, right, in your in your attribution, right, what starts to happen is in a recessionary environment, I start cutting budgets. I look really smart for a period of time. And then it hits me and six to eight weeks. I wonder what happened? What happened to my business? Why why is my business struggling now? Well, you looked really smart because you were measuring the return on investment against a car costs didn't generate the investment. And when you cut your budget, it makes you look really smart. But in reality, what's happening is you have this delayed impact in your business, that you're not really accounting for upfront. And so, you know, that's a critical piece, I think in this in this, you know, attribution is one piece, what I call the ad dollar journey is another piece, trying to allocate your cost correctly, so that you're actually measuring the return on your investment against the cost that generated the investment is critical, especially to case when you're ramping up campaigns, and when you're cutting budgets, because you can cut your foot off without even knowing that you've cut your foot off and marketing.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:20:38)And I have a question very specific to attribution models and how somebody can make a choice for their particular business. What is the method to approaching an attribution model that fits your business? And how would you go about this, especially if you're just starting off?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:20:57)Yeah, I think I think when you in the marketplace, when you, you know, if you're, if you're like me, and I need to evolve out of out of my current methodology, right? I think the most important thing is to think about AD theory. So when you think about advertising theories, such as attribution, and you say, okay, really attribution should be defined as any impression that leads to an order. Because there's really no hard data out there that says the display is less important than a click, or my hit my, my view through on a CTV, for example, is less important than the click, or my hear through if I'm doing radio is less important than a click right? If you think about, you should think about AD theory in general, such as attribution, you should think about AD theory as it relates to cost allocation that we talked about. And the third piece is the return on your investment, how you're measuring the return on investment. There's some business theory behind that, that I think we can get into next, but you should really think about those three pieces, and then say, How can I build a marketing measurement? And attribution model that matches? Those the closest? Or how can I start to get to that environment? Right? Like, if I'm a heavy, like, for example, if I'm a heavy radio advertiser, or, you know, how can I build a hear through model, right? Like, for example, can I partner with my advertisers and say, you know, I need I need to see when you have hear through, you know, hear through attribution, and you're seeing orders, like, How can I go measure that, right? Like, how do I how do I do that, versus the last click, I see on my website, right. Or if you're in the programmatic space programmatic plays a huge role for us, when you're able to measure the upper funnel correctly. You know, programmatic is a lot more beneficial than what people give it credit for. And it is because they're trying to measure this, you know, this kind of thing on a last-click basis. But when you think about, if you're a heavy programmatic buyer, like we are in the digital space, you know, how can I partner with my advertiser, for example, and get the true attribution feed, so I can start to study that and get it closer to matching ad theory. Right. Last-click attribution is very far from matching ad theory. And I think you have to be able to take the steps and what it all depends on your capabilities as a company as well, like, what resources do you have available? Do you have an analytics team? For example? Can you partner with somebody to help you get there? Right. But I think you have to, you have to think about the steps necessary to get as close to to matching the ad theory as possible, right? A utopian environment would be you match at theory perfectly right across all your providers. That's, that's probably not realistic environment. But you can certainly get there closer by partnering with your advertisers, such as StackAdapt, for example, we have great partnership. And we have some great data feeds that go back and forth, for us to be able to measure this and be able to get closer to advertising theory, then last click attribution, or some of these canned first-party models. I think if you're using just first-party data, you're you're limiting yourself tremendously, and being able to measure advertising the right way. You know, I think I think the third piece, which I'll talk about a little bit more about the business theory. So in the in the business theory behind what companies are trying to do. So this is especially true with b2c, but it's really true with almost any model, whether you're a SaaS model, whether you're b2b, really the end goal, the utopian environment for any company, what they're trying to achieve, is maximizing and incrementally increasing their customer lifetime value. Now, I'm using customer very broadly here, for StackAdapt. It's going to be b2b, right, like, they have a customer, the customer is the different clients, they have the different retailers. And what you're truly trying to do is maximize the lifetime value that somebody spends with you, right? In a retail environment, our customer actually individuals buying jewelry, and we're trying to maximize the customer lifetime value that somebody spends with us. Right. And I think, you know, every single almost every single business serves the client, right? They serve a customer. And what you're really trying to do is maximize and grow the total lifetime value of the business, the lifetime value being defined as the kind of that future book of business that I have available. Right. And, you know, I think this a great example, like why Amazon grew for so many years without actually making a profit, really, what they were doing is just building this gigantic, gigantic customer lifetime value base, which eventually they're gonna be profitable on, right. But for for two decades, you know, they showed almost no profitability, and then engine, but really what they were doing is just building and building and building this gigantic total customer lifetime value. And in business theory, that's the ultimate hedgehog metric. Like if you can show that you're growing and incrementing, your lifetime value, that that, that puts you in a really nice place as a business, right. And there's all these secondary metrics such as revenue, and gross margin, and all these, there's all these secondary metrics, but really, at the end of the day, the hedgehog for every business, if they're going to be profitable, and they're gonna grow, and they're gonna have investors and they're gonna, they're gonna grow their equity as a company, is to maximize and grow lifetime value. So when you think about that as business theory, now, let's think about that, how that applies to advertising. Right? The reason you advertise is to grow your lifetime value, right. And, in the most utopian environment, you would be able to track changes in lifetime value to advertising spend, right? The reason people do retargeting, for example, it's a very lower funnel metric, generally targeting existing customers. It's really a retention play. Retention plays a critical piece and lifetime value. Right, the more engaged you can get your existing customer base, the higher the lifetime value, right? And so that's why people do retargeting. Generally speaking, we measure retargeting, with a return on adspend, generally speaking, right, your, your, that's your proxy for I'm increasing or decreasing lifetime value, like my efficiently generating a return on my investment, the lower funnel, what you're really doing is you're saying, hey, if they come spend with me, I think they're going to be worth more in the future. Now, whether your company can directly measure that impact and how much it actually increases lifetime value is a different thing. But that's a lower funnel, when you think about the upper funnel is actually where I see the biggest impediments in measurement. So even if you get the attribution model, right, even if you get your cost allocation, right, what is your return on investment metric in the upper funnel, a lot of companies still go back to row as they tried to measure all their funnels with a row as what you're generating in the upper funnel, if you want to think about it. Most companies spend in the upper funnel for brand awareness and new customer growth, what you're really generating is a future revenue stream. When you generate a new customer, you're generating a future revenue stream, you're not generating. You're not You're not consuming existing revenue stream, you're generating a new revenue stream. So let's say your average order price point as a retailer, say, $50, right? We've got a $50 average order, order price point, in the upper funnel, when I haven't conversion, am I really going to say, What am I willing to spend for $50? Order? Like that's your return on ad spend? Right, I see I see $50 come through, and I spent X amount to get that $50? If you were to ask a team of executives, what are you willing to spend to generate an order, there's a very, there's a very big difference between what I'm willing to spend to generate a $50 revenue, video, I'll order versus, say, a $500 revenue stream. Really, what you're generating is a new customer, which is worth a certain amount of money, right? And they're worth a certain amount of money in the future. And so ask a team of executives, what are you willing to spend for $50? Order? Or what are you willing to spend four or 500 on revenue stream, they're very different answers, I might be willing to spend 200, or $250, to generate that $500 revenue stream, there's no way I'm willing to spend $200 to generate a video or order. And so until you adapt your measurement in the upper funnel, your return on ad spend, the return should be measured off of lifetime value, not the order value that gets generated. And I think that's a critical piece. Like I think as you as you as marketers out there start to explore, like how they evolve from their current measurement and attribution models. Try to get to where you're matching ad theory and business theory. Right and think about it as from a theoretical standpoint, from a conceptual standpoint, what would be like this utopian what what should be my end goal, right? My end goal should be when I generate new customers, how do I measure multiple lifetime value bases? There's a lot of problems associated with just you know, cost per acquisition or cost to acquire customer you know, CPA or cost to acquire customer because you're not taking into account what they're actually worth. You know, companies may say, Hey, I'm willing to spend $100 per customer. Well, what are they actually worth? Right? Like lifetime value is actually a better metric than, than, say, cost to acquire. And so, you know, I think you got to get to a place where you're getting closer to add theory, and you're getting closer to business theory. And I think that's, that's a critical piece is, is how do you get to where you're matching, if you can get to a place where you start to match out there, and you start to match business there to start making a lot better decisions with your ad spend, how its allocated, how much you're invested, etc.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:30:33)That sounds like a lot of things to consider, and it's probably easy to go very wrong. Especially if there's a lot of data available. How does the marketer know they're not looking at the wrong side of things?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:30:44)Yeah, I think a critical piece, a critical business, you know, when you start to get a lot of in, they are large datasets, right, you start talking about display impressions, you start, you start to increase your, your dataset. Massively, right. The other thing about digital media is big tangled web, right? There's, there's all these different impressions across all different tactics that lead to an order and they go, Okay, well, I'm spending here on the order I'm spending here on the order, I'm spending all these different multiple places on the same order, right. And it can get it can start to get confusing, I think a critical piece and trying to get through that confusion is trying to measure incrementality. Okay. So at the end of the day, you're spending these ad dollars to generate orders, right? And testing fluctuations in spend is critical. That really helps you measure and current data, once you have your measurement in place, and you feel comfortable with the measurement model, you know, I would suggest that you test incrementality, right? Verify spend, increase it, decrease it, increase it, decrease it, and start to try to get a sense of what is the incremental benefit I gain? Because it's not necessarily just about hitting some efficiency metric? It's not, it's not just, oh, what's my row as in the lower funnel? For example, like if I'm in a $5? Row as in the lower one? Oh, that's great, right? But what happens if you double your spend? Is it scalable? For example, if I double my spend in the lower funnel, and I've got a really nice measurement system in place, does my $5 Roll has dropped to 250. And I generated no incremental orders? Or does my ro s stay at $5. And now I just generate a whole bunch of incremental business because I'm doubling my spin, right. And I think once you get a really nice measurement system in place, start to test new things. Don't be afraid to test things. If you've got the right measurement system in place, you can test things without over allocating the cost and turning it off too soon. Right? Test things and try to measure angles and think about increment, I would say, think about incremental measurement theory, right? And how do I, how do I know if I spend more money on generating incremental orders? And try to do that that'll help cut through some of the confusion? Because there's gonna be a ton of confusion around? Oh, well, there's always these debates that happen like, well, I'm spending over here and they generate an order this, this providers claiming the same order this provider is claiming the same? Which one, it actually leads to the order? Well, you'll never know. I mean, like, literally, you don't know, because you don't know, oh, if I just cut one of those people out, do I still land the order? Or were they the important impression that leads to the order, but you can start to test that by scaling spins, and testing increments and measuring incrementally? You know, I would test the scale of your campaigns and measure the incremental benefit coming from those campaigns. You know, if you double the spend, do you get less efficient? Or do you get more efficient? Do you stay the same? Right? Are you generating incremental business? I think I think that's a critical piece, too. It's not just about, oh, I'm hitting this really nice, you know, efficiency metric. But as I scale it, does my efficiency metric hold? Am I generating, incrementally efficient benefit to my business? Awesome.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:33:44)That's a lot of expertise speaking and just curious about how you keep yourself updated? What are the resources you consume, and maybe even recommend these resources to somebody who's been in the industry for a while? Or maybe even somebody who's starting off?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:34:00)Yeah, I think I think, you know, I would do I do quite a bit of trade shows and just learning about what people measure what's out there. You know, I think just general research on on what is available in the space to measure and just really, no, I would say, just really studying out there like, go, go read about advertising theory, if you don't have a background in it, and kind of how it should work. Be up to date on all the different ad units that are available, so you don't get left behind. Right. Like, there's constantly new ad units and new ways to reach individuals. You know, you have this proliferation.\n\n\n\nSneha (00:34:36)Amazing. Thank you so much, Ryan, your expertise, your experience, it just comes through when you speak. I'm sure each and every single person listening to this has taken a lot of insights away from this episode. I for one learned a lot. So thank you so much for joining us and giving us your time. And to you the one who stuck around till the very end listening to this. Thank you for staying. And if you found value in this podcast, share it. And you know, tell your teammates about it. It could be a cool resource to share on your work chat and subscribe to the podcast, download our episodes. If you haven't listened to the previous ones, and we release episodes every alternate Wednesday. So stay tuned, and I will see you in the next episode. Until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Thank you for listening.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:35:30)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/about-how-agencies-thrive#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/about-how-agencies-thrive"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Welcome to How Agencies Thrive","datePublished":"2020-05-06T16:50:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:24+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/about-how-agencies-thrive"},"wordCount":2281,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/about-how-agencies-thrive#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAdd Vitaly Pecherskiy, Co-Founder and COO of StackAdapt, explains the journey of making How Agencies Thrive podcast and who you can expect to hear in future episodes.\n\n\n\nVitaly Pecherskiy | COO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction  (00:00:00)I'm curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape to How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:00:32)Hello, and welcome to How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Vitaly, co-founder of StackAdapt. And I'll be your host for this podcast. This episode is episode zero. And as we started calling it internally, the origin episode, here is where I will tell you why this podcast exists. And who is it made for. So we we've been thinking about this podcast for easily over a year. But we finally decided to launch it when I started working with my good friend Jay over at Podcast Your Brand agency. So they were instrumental in helping us get getting this podcast to market. But even though we we got a lot of help from them, the amount of work that went into making this podcast was still very substantial. So I'm very happy with the way it came out. And I really do hope that you will get value out of it too. Ultimately, the reason why we wanted to make this podcast is because the theme of this podcast is very closely aligned with our company's mission, which is to help agencies thrive. And this is why this podcast exists. Right now at StackAdapt. Hundreds of agencies and brands use their product to achieve their marketing objectives, be that content distribution, or lead generation or driving sales, we've grown to work with all major supply and data partners. So we can truly support our customers across any channel be that native or display advertising connected TV or digital video. And I feel incredibly fortunate about where we got to in the last six years because we have evolved from a single point solution to something that agencies and marketing teams within brands can truly build their entire paid media strategy on top of. But looking back, it wasn't always like that. I remember, you know, the early days of the company, we were very obsessed with reading growth hacking strategies. And like many companies tried to try to build something like, like a Dropbox model where you had clients come in, they sign up, put their credit card down, if they want to get some free storage. In the case of Dropbox, they invited their friends. So it was very viral in distribution model. And this, this sounds amazing. But I think it was also fairly deceptive because all the case studies that you read about the successes, they're really outliers. And for most companies, that doesn't work. And we were one of those companies and we were wrong about how we can get to market. I remember the moment it hit me that we're doing something wrong was when we had an an email from one of our users who turned out to be an elderly lady who was running a small cupcake shop in Bulgaria asking for help. And as much as I would love to be able to help her, I realized it would be incredibly difficult for us to scale our business on customers like that, because they're simply too early in their growth. So to me, you know, I think of advertising more like adding gasoline to the fire. For small companies, there are just so many things that they need to nail like supply chain product quality business operations, well before they start investing in advertising, so So we as a company, we chose to focus on really building enterprise grade software that would solve complex problems for larger businesses. However, it still took us another two years to real to realize that how you software is incredibly important. Take for example a CRM like Salesforce, it's useless if you don't, if you don't have any sales process or input emails, of your contacts with mistakes. And the same thing goes for advertising software. You can have access to the most sophisticated software in the market, but how you use it matters a lot. And and that's why over the last year, we've been putting so much emphasis on building out our our solutions and analytics teams, working with our customers to help them strategize better, investing in our product marketing, and most importantly, education of our customers. And this podcast is the extension of this effort. The reason this podcast exists is because we want to give more tools to our customers to be successful. While this podcast is called How Agencies Thrive It's really suitable for both brands and agencies. So whether you're a marketer, the large, mature fortune 500 brand, or you work at a medium sized agency, this podcast is for you. Many of our customers are internal champions of programmatic technology, and they're very data driven. They are innovators. And if this describes you, then you should definitely keep listening. If you're someone who doesn't believe that digital will be the dominant advertising channel in the future, and if you're okay with that status quo, you're not hungry for knowledge, then this podcast is probably not for you. It actually took me a few times to record this episode, because I really wanted to make it clear, who would find this podcast hyper valuable, because I believe that career growth really comes down to the knowledge and unique insights that sometimes randomly you come across. I was incredibly lucky to have stumbled upon certain knowledge at the right times of my career. But you know, when I was starting, I was also incredibly lost. My career began when I moved to Toronto about 10 years ago from Ottawa when I was where I went to university to study finance. And I was looking for a job in investment banking, when I moved to Toronto, so I was frantically applying to a ton of jobs online, and nobody was getting back to me. So about two weeks into my job search, I thought, this is just not working fast enough. So what I did is I started going to office buildings downtown, and I just rode elevators. And every time I saw a respectable person walking into the elevator, I was I was wearing a suit, I had my stack of resumes, my business cards, I would walk into the elevator with them, give them an elevator pitch as to why they should consider hiring me for any job, for that matter. So definitely sounds very crazy looking back. But one day, I stumbled into a small office of a startup that was advertising their job of an account manager. And I asked to speak to their CEO who was obviously very surprised to see some random guy walk into their office asking for a job. I told him, I know nothing about advertising, but I'm willing to work 24/7. I had no friends, no girlfriend, I just moved to the city, I was ready to work 24/7. He was impressed enough by my hunger at the very least. So he gave me a document. It was like a five page document with all kinds of terminology that I've never heard of before CPM, CTR, CPA, many different companies I needed to research. And he basically told me, let's see how much you can learn over the weekend. And he invited me back on Monday. I had one class in university on marketing. And I remember absolutely nothing at that point, even after graduating, and I was trying to get advertising degree in two days. So on Monday, I came in, I sat down with him, and I guess I did well enough for him to offer me a job. And on Tuesday, Tuesday morning, I brought my own laptop. And we we started started working. So I joined this ad tech startup. And they happened to be one of the early partners of Facebook. They had an API integration, the timing couldn't have been better. This was right before Facebook really blew up. And I couldn't believe the job was was real. I was mostly promoting games, we had a chance to play them even develop some tiny banners to promote them on Facebook. So the the idea back then it was pretty simple. You know, we were, we were helping customers optimize their paid media strategy on or paid media acquisition on Facebook, by optimizing keywords and images to drive conversion rates up. So every single day, we experimented with 1000s of ads to make our campaigns perform. And if you remember, back in 2011, daily deals, websites were really popular. So we had one of the one of them as our client, we experimented a ton for them. I still remember great images that worked. So one of them was a woman eating this gigantic taco, which is actually a pizza folded in half with a lot of toppings. There was this image of a house that looked like it's upside down, but it's actually normal house inside and also an enormous waterslide. So it was really fun to see what ..what type of images people resonate with online.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:09:34)Once this startup got acquired later that year, I went on to pursue my next opportunity and I joined a big holdco. I joined their trading desk as one of the first people in Canada and I was put on some large really large accounts of fortune 500 accounts, which was really different from the types of companies we worked with before, which were digital only companies they only did digital advertising And, and now I was exposed to these really large companies that did a lot of traditional advertising, they did digital. And for me, it was a big transition. And there's a lot of things I learned at that time. So first of all, most of these brands were really new to digital advertising. And they're still doing it as an afterthought. Second, I realized that I barely knew anything outside of digital. So my formal education in finance, me getting my first experience in digital only advertising. I came in, I had to learn a lot from my colleagues. But I also realized that I had, I could bring a lot a lot to the table because I started with, over and over and investing in my digital knowledge, I knew that there's a lot of opportunities for brands to do their digital better. And I knew back in 2013, when I met my co-founders, Ildar and Yang, that digital will only continue accelerating. Over the last seven years, the market has evolved dramatically. It went from big focus on mobile native to focus on privacy, data, connected TV, and it will probably continue to evolve into something else. But one thing is for sure, and something that we still see consistently is that many brands still struggle with nailing their digital strategy. For us, we knew that there's a, there was a clear need for a new age software that leverages automation, technologies, like machine learning to drive results. And that's ultimately how we get started, I think there's likely never going to be a silver bullet, or a magic button that you press, and they will just make advertising work. There's just so many moving pieces within each business. In order for them to be successful online, there is the brand and how it's perceived in the market talent that you have on your team, technologies you use, timing of your marketing initiatives, and so much more. And that's why software is not the only thing that we do when it comes to enabling our clients. A big part of our mission is education, and empowerment of our clients with knowledge. When we work with our customers, or think about products we really want to need to build, I tried to think of it through the lens of what can we do to help our customers get promoted. With this podcast, we really hope to bring forward ideas, people, companies that we think are doing incredible work in the space and help share their knowledge and know-how with our listeners. So hopefully, we can help accelerate your career growth. And with that, I really want to say thank you for taking the time out of your busy day, and choosing to listen to our podcast. And I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:12:49)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-today#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-today"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Digital Advertising Today: StackAdapt Roundtable","datePublished":"2020-05-12T17:09:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:24+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-today"},"wordCount":8911,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-today#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["campaign planning","podcast"],"articleSection":["Advertising channels"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss the challenges facing agencies, budgets, brands, messaging, and advertising channels in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.\n\n\n\nVitaly Pecherskiy | COO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)I think a great learning example from this is the Philippines Department of Tourism, actually. And it's not a current learning. It's actually what they what they did in response to the 2013 typhoon hyena hits, what they actually did was they use a campaign called It's More Fun in the Philippines, where they asked Filipinos to share their version of the country, in Instagram photos and another content. So by eliciting this avalanche of free content of when that typhoon actually hit, they leverage that to help curb the potential impact on the tourism industry. And I think the interesting thing to note here is that consumers are actually ahead of advertisers right now. Consumers are looking forward and most messaging is looking back.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:55)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape to how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:23)Hello, and welcome to our first official episode of How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Vitaly, the host of this podcast. And today I have a few people from StackAdapt joining me for a roundtable discussion on the topic of digital advertising today. Hello, everybody.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:01:37)Hey, how's it going?\n\n\n\nPam  (00:01:38)Hey, Vitaly.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:42)So as you probably heard, there's five of us. So five people in the podcast is that too much?\n\n\n\nChristian (00:01:47)We'll find out shortly, I guess.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:51)Well, we have to make it work. Because as you probably figured out, were recording this episode entirely virtual.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:01:58)So this is the best we can do.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:02:01)Again, thank you all for joining. I think it's going to be a really great chat for us to kick off the season of this of this podcast, we're going to have 12 episodes within the season. So this is episode one. I think maybe before we actually dive into discussion, why don't we do a quick round of introductions so that listeners know who we have here today. So Pam, why don't we start with you?\n\n\n\nPam  (00:02:23)Thanks for tally. I'm excited to be part of this podcast in this roundtable. My name is Pam McBride and I am part of the marketing team here at StackAdapt.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:02:32)Awesome, and I'm Eli Barkoff. I'm a Sales Director at StackAdapt. Working with clients from you know, a wide array of verticals, from political to CPG, to healthcare to you know, you name it.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:02:43)I'm Meredith Henschel. And I work with Kristian on the solutions team here at StackAdapt. So really, our team sits between, you know, all things product and partnerships and all things sales. And you know, we're here to create solutions for for our clients are StackAdapt.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:03:01)Cool. And yeah, so my name is Christian St. Louis, and I am on the solutions team as well, which Meredith mentioned, and I have more of a focus on the data side of things and the data partnerships that we work with. And as you'll see, in a later episode, I have a chat with with John Shaughnessy from live ramp, which we'll talk about a little bit later.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:03:23)Cool. Yeah, thanks a lot for this introduction. So as you as you have gathered, we have a well, a very good representation of people from all sides of the business. So from data and inventory, solutions to revenue and marketing. So hopefully, we'll be able to give a pretty good macro view of the industry and what we're observing when we'll work with our clients. And hopefully, that will be a good basis for people to think like what what kind of learnings we can, what kind of learnings they can take away from us and potentially apply to their business. So Pam, and I actually started conceptualizing this podcast, probably when maybe six months ago or a year, probably around 2019.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:04:02)I think we started talking about it, and now just seem to be the ideal time to get it off the ground.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:04:11)Yeah, so we're, as we're about to kick it off. We went to work remotely. So we thought, well, we don't know when we're going to come back to the office. So we may as well keep going with it and launch it. So I think from we have at this point six episodes recorded and I thought they were all incredible. So I'm very excited to actually get this out to market. And if anything, the timing is even probably better now because there's been so many changes in the business for businesses since mid March. And and we really want to be to have that platform to share knowledge and help our customers and other companies navigate through these changes. So I think the basis for today's conversation would probably be the work that our team has been putting into researching changes into the in the market. We've called this research project managing through uncertainty. And we've packaged our research around certain verticals that we would do a lot of business in. And today's discussion will be largely focused around changes that we've observed in the industry, and some of the insights that we really would would love our listeners to take away from it. So we'll probably start with question. And I, to be honest, I have a huge list of questions for the team. Why don't we start with you, Christian? Obviously, your experience is very heavily weighted on the data side and data solutions. And you worked closely with the team to engineer solutions for our customers. And when you worked on managing through uncertainty reports, you you did a lot of work in the b2b vertical. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about some of the key learnings that you took away from from this work? And are there anything? Are there any specific things that you would want listeners to take away from, from our today's conversation?\n\n\n\nChristian (00:06:01)Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a bunch of key takeaways, specific to the b2b industry, within advertising. And I think one of the things that stands out the most and is highlighted in our managing through uncertainty series is with the disappearance of, or the lack thereof, for human human interactions and things like conferences, live events. And you know, just any in person interaction that might lead to a sale or, you know, qualified lead to put it in b2b terms, that's kind of been shut out over the last month and a half. And E marketer released a stat that said 53% of us b2b marketers consider in person events and trade shows a very effective channel for conversion. And so reaching decision makers in a digital manner has been kind of a big strategy and tactic shifts to help replace some of those leads that were human and in person driven. And one of the key things that we focus on and what we've noticed, with partners like LiveRamp, and other data providers, decision makers are obviously still working. And they're just working at home. And there's no reason why a lot of those in person leads can't be converted to digital leads, you know, with different innovative strategies. And so that's one of the main focuses of the b2b industry is understanding how can you reach that same audience that's now working at home, but still has to make those those b2b decisions on, you know, potentially buying a subscription to a company like Dropbox or like a, you know, large software provider, they're still those decisions are still being made at companies all around the world.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:07:45)And I think maybe, to your point, you know, with b2b or software companies, it's different than a consumer company. Like if you take an example an airline, once airlines open up again, you know, if you want to go to Europe, you get on the plane, and you get there, there's really not that many alternatives. When it comes to b2b sales. On the other hand, the buying behavior may change forever. And if if companies have been delaying changing their strategy towards more digital focus, lead generation away from maybe in person, like conferences or in person visits, they might be at a huge disadvantage potentially for years to come. Would that be fair to say?\n\n\n\nChristian (00:08:28)Yeah, absolutely. I think that. And once, you know, this is kind of a catalyst for change in the b2b realm, and the marketer released another stat that was kind of lends itself to that. And that 25% of b2b marketers said that they'll reinvest, reinvest the impacted, tradeshow budgets and conference budgets into digital advertising. So I think a lot, this is really being a catalyst for change, for b2b driving towards more of a digital approach. And I think there's, that's also proven. With our chat with LiveRamp. We talked about kind of like, what the percentage of different data requests look like, and they were seeing the highest percentage of requests coming from b2b lately. So I think there's it's really a catalyst for change, and that will spur change going going forward into the future. And there's actually a study that I had a stat here about a study that, let me see where it is. Yeah, so there's a study that was done by the European Journal of Social Psychology back in 2009. That said, it takes 66 days to form a new habit. And, you know, we're around day 50, I think now in Toronto of sheltering in place. And the fact that, you know, the people staying at home will take more than 66 days likely, in certain areas of the world, new habits will form and it's likely that you know, for b2b and consumer like a lot of these habits will be taken into will be kind of become the new norm for years to come.\n\n\n\nChristian (00:09:55)Yeah, Christian to your point on that. I think right now for b2b marketers, you know, like all marketers, right now, there's an opportunity to help people transition to the new normal, as you mentioned, you know, we're in around a day 50, or something like that sheltering in place. So I think for b2b marketers, especially, you know, if they have a tool that can help the millions of people who are now working from home or learning from home, you know, now's the time that they can really break in and help people with this transition, and potentially, you know, after things start to ease up, you know, the, it could have a lasting impact on the way that businesses structure or like, you know, which products are now considered essential for a new business to use on their daily basis. So I think, you know, some of the recommendations we've been seeing are giving is, you know, allow, give your clients like some sort of Free Trial or reduced pricing or something like that, to let them test your product to see if it's a tool that can help them out during this time, because that's really what it's all about.\n\n\n\nChristian (00:11:02)Yeah, for sure. And I think one indicator of that alone is just if you look up zooms, stock price, that's all you really need to know, is it like, you know, the change is huge when it comes to, you know, the digital workforce and digital education, and zoom, really, the stock price really highlights that trend.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:11:21)And there's I there's probably a lot of businesses right now that think that they will not be affected, obviously, for example, education, yes, their summer semester, but I think the big bet for them is that everything will go back to normal in September. What if it doesn't, and people still have to take majority of their classes online, so that will probably spark a huge new buying cycle for these institutions that have been just waiting it out a little bit longer.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:11:52)I think on the on the flip side of that, you'll also see companies that have realized they're, they're able to do business remotely as well, which I think, you know, companies like zoom and other, you know, b2b companies are technology companies that cater towards that and facilitate and make that easy, easier, at least, you know, we'll likely see some sort of surge and, you know, potentially adapt their messaging to, you know, cater potentially this entirely new, you know, remote workforce, as potentially companies kind of start to, you know, not necessarily adapt to, you know, the current situation, but potentially make plans going forward as well.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:12:29)For software companies right now is just would it be fair to say that it's a land grab it because it's so scalable?\n\n\n\nPam  (00:12:37)I think that's fair to say. And I also think that typically, b2b sales cycles tend to be longer than b2c sales cycles. And I think what most b2b companies are going to realize is the value of promoting themselves online and promoting themselves digitally, as opposed to the other means of out of home or event based marketing that they used to do. So. I think it's also going to place a greater emphasis and greater value on actually finding people online, and, you know, promoting their products and services to them, which is typically been a very strong b2c play.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:13:17)Speaking of b2c Pam, obviously, you were very closely involved in making our managing through uncertainty reports happen. And when people think about verticals that have been the most impacted by by COVID, and pandemic is, it's traveling tourism. So seeing that, knowing that you've done a lot of research in in that specific vertical, how are our advertisers, they're adjusting to what's, what's happening now and what sort of Outlook they have for the rest of 2020.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:13:51)So that's interesting, because many industries or sectors have actually been impacted by the current climate but perhaps known so much, not so drastically as travel and tourism, because it also spans several areas that includes transportation because like you said, I need to fly somewhere I need to take a train. I need to go on a cruise and in in, you know what involves accommodation, even events and attractions, think of Coachella or Disneyland. And even though today's particular impact is on a total global level, to be honest brands in the tourism sector have not been immune to experiencing disruption in the past it for most tropical locations, it's called Mother Nature. So there have been several ways that they can learn from the past and most of them look to building brand equity today that they can use for tomorrow. So if it today the most we can say is if you start investing in communications, then you will be well placed when a disaster strikes. You will not be immune to hurricanes typhoons, cyclones etc. Unfortunate Li, but you know, investing in some form of communications can help cushion you from potential impact. So I think a great learning example from this is the Philippines Department of Tourism, actually. And it's not a current learning, it's actually what they what they did in response to the 2013 typhoon hyena hits, what they actually did was, they used a campaign called It's More Fun in the Philippines, where they asked Filipinos to share their version of the country, in Instagram photos and another content. So by eliciting this avalanche of free content of when that typhoon actually hit, they leverage that to help curb the potential impact on the tourism industry. And I think the interesting thing to note here is that consumers are actually ahead of advertisers right now. Consumers are looking forward, and most messaging is looking back. So as Christian mentioned, employees are now working from home. And that means they're actually banking their vacation hours and saving them for better days. Some are even in the planning stages, or maybe just browsing. But it's really important for travel and tourism to keep their offering or their destination, or their service top of mind right now, because it's going to be key when travelers are ready to get going again, and I'm sure there will be a number of them. E marketer did a survey, and they actually asked how people plan to spend the money they save from their canceled trips. And 33% of them said they plan to rebook their vacation on another date. And even though this has been a critical impact for cruise for the cruise industry, and on the cruise market in general, cruise complete.com did a survey and they've actually had more people interested in booking cruises and have actually seen a 40% increase in bookings for 2021 Compared to 2019. So it's really interesting because people are, as we think that people are not looking towards the future, they actually are and advertisers are messaging backwards. So if there's anything we can give to the travel and tourism industry, it's you know what message for the future people will be back traveling. Most of us that are sheltering at home are actually anxious, and probably a little stir crazy to get back on a vacation. And maybe the one thing you want to look at is domestic travel, because that might be the thing that's most popular with travelers right now. 60% of travelers said they would travel within their own country, while only 19% said they would travel potentially outside the US for example. Maybe this is a trend that's gonna you know, that is reflective of several factors including maybe economic uncertainty, the continuation of global travel restrictions, and a desire to support their local economy. So as much as I'm dreading or or sad about my canceled trip to Spain in May maybe check in my own backyard come September you know to the Maritimes might not be a bad thing to help Canada and you know to help your respective country get back on its feet.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:18:32)Maritimes are practically the same thing as Spain anyways, right?\n\n\n\nPam  (00:18:37)Yeah. Very, very close. There was water. Yeah, there was a body of water. So yeah.\n\n\n\nChristian (00:18:42)I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. And I think if anything that kind of present, prevent, sorry, presents travel brands with a new opportunity to you know, pivot and be able to, like, show consumers that they can rediscover their backyard like you're saying, Pam, I think that can be kind of fun. So I think and like you're saying, I think we can all relate to the feelings of anxiety of you know, getting out there and then exploring a little bit but doing it in our backyard could be a good opportunity as well.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:19:11)Definitely. And I think that perhaps those travel restrictions being being lifted might coincide with the same time sports, sporting events or attractions are going to relaunch so you can think of what that costly battle for audiences limited in tension will be at that time if you aren't currently. I'm going to say marketing opportunities to them today. That's awesome.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:19:40)Meredith, your work within managing through uncertainty reports was a lot largely focused on media consumptions and changes in media consumptions for the consumers. And I think that's almost like the foundation to what to what brands should use to plan a as their advertising strategy for the rest of the year, what sort of trends have you observed? And what? What are some key takeaways?\n\n\n\nChristian (00:20:07)Yeah, I mean, we could spend a lot of time talking about media consumption trends on this podcast, because people are spending a lot of time online specifically as they're sheltering in place. And I think all of us can kind of relate to that, you know, seeing our screen time, creep up every day, and potentially watching shows that we never normally watch. I know, Eli's a pretty big fan of reality TV, and he's been watching quite quite a lot of that. And I don't think he's alone in that. So, you know, in general, consumption is up. But what we're seeing across, you know, our platform and in our inventory partners platforms, is especially a spike in streaming content. And I think that intuitively as a consumer makes sense, right? Like, you're born at home, and you're streaming shows and videos, and potentially like how to videos and cooking channels, and whatnot, and fitness apps. So it's really, you know, those types of trends, we're seeing that it's fairly intuitive. But I think when you throw some stats behind it, it becomes even more staggering for marketers. So for example, you know, from Nielsen, when consumers stay at home, their media consumption rises nearly 61%. So that just speaks to how much more time we're all spending online. And on our own platform, you know, we saw a spike in CTV avails up to 40%. So that begs the question, you know, what are people actually doing when they're increasing? All this time and hours spent online or streaming content? So, you know, we're seeing a lot of interest on news and government sites, obviously. But something interesting that we've noticed is, you know, as the situation kind of unfolded, in the middle of March, news sites, traffic on new sites was spike, were spiking, and government health sites, whatnot, were spiking, but now it's kind of leveled off. And I think people are getting a little bit tired of the Daily News, there's a bit of fatigue that I mean, it's still up considerably from, say, this time last year, that we're seeing, like record numbers of people on new sites. But I think now we're kind of past that initial phase. And we're starting to see people seeking out new content and new ways to stay engaged and, you know, try to make this make the most of their time at home. So we've seen, you know, for example, fitness apps have the installs for fitness apps have increased by over 45%. Worldwide, from January to March. And and that's just one of the types of things we're seeing. There's also been a lot of streaming and children's content. And I think the parents who are listening to this can relate to that. We've seen up to 60%, more streaming of children's content, because kids are at home as well. And they're seeking to stay entertained. So I mean, from a media consumption point, that's kind of what we're seeing. But I think the more interesting thing is to think about which of these trends will kind of persist over the few months, this coming months, and potentially, you know, as people are, I don't want to say the word release by once we're, you know, allowed to kind of go back out there, you know, which of these trends will really stay, you know.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:23:29)Something that's really interesting to think about. And I feel like I'm going on a bit of a monologue, but again, I have a lot to talk about. And so I'm not sure if anyone has anything to add to that that piece so far.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:23:43)You know, Christian said it takes 66 days to form a habit, but it only took me two or three days of reality TV to become totally obsessed.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:23:52)It's different for everyone.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:23:55) We’re baking bread, I think during those 53 days, where you...\n\n\n\nChristian (00:23:59)Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, it's interesting, that the last point that Meredith brought up, I think is one of the more interesting ones is, you know, obviously, things are changing right now. But when things do go back to normal, and, you know, seemed to have a semblance of what they were, you know, back in 2019, or at the beginning of the year, like which one of these habits are here to stay. And I think it's interesting to think about that. It's hard to predict. But I think that one of the effects that may last and you know, it's still, it's all, it's all it's all tough to predict, but I think that one of the things that may last which is what you were talking about is that CTV, OTT subscription and the absence of the live sports hiatus. The fact that people can't watch live sports on on cable TV on linear TV anymore has maybe, you know, caused them to stop paying for those services and move over to a Netflix or prime or a sling or what have you. And you know, when things go back to normal and live sports start to resume again. How many of those people will move back to live sports, you know, likely a lot, but there might be some that linger and stay with their subscription services, which could put a lot of pressure on the big broadcasters to invest more dollars in CTV and OTT formats and potentially present a lot more live sports and that way. Again, it's hard to predict but that, you know, that would that's definitely something that's been hugely impacted.\n\n\n\nChristian (00:25:24)Yeah, actually, I was tuned into a webinar that Sandra put on, I think it was yesterday, the days are starting to blur together a little bit. But they talked about how, you know, we talked about sports being canceled. So where are these sports fans? What are they doing right now of sports on on? What are they watching. And they actually mentioned that the average consumption time for sports fans has gone up, compared to like what they would normally watching. And it's a higher than most people because they don't have that kind of set TV time, like that date with a specific, specific game. So they're streaming more, and they're actually streaming more reality TV, compared to other types of content. So maybe it has a similar type of pull that sports does.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:26:10)But I think, you know, when we talk about sports, pay TV subscriptions is usually the last thing I'm sorry, linear live sports is the last thing tying people to their pay TV subscriptions. And a lot of people up to 30% of users said that they would cut the cord if they knew they could stream that content elsewhere. So I mean, I think we'll see a shift there. And I think as users are become accustomed to being able to stream what they want, when they want to watch it, you know, sports providers will have to kind of shift and follow that as well. There's also been like a huge uptick in eSports. And I personally am not a gamer. But I know some people on this podcast are so they can maybe speak a little bit to the gaming aspect of things. But something I find really interesting is that NASCAR actually put on an Esports broadcast with iRacing, and Fox, and they got pro NASCAR drivers to do like an eSports. Race on and then they streamed it. And in March, I drew over 1.3 million viewers, which is like pretty staggering for people watching video games. And I think, you know, we're seeing this trend with eSports kind of exploded, this was happening before the current situation. And now I think it's just going to be exacerbated by you know, the cancellation of live sports. So I think that's really interesting.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:27:37)I mean, I think you're referring to me as the gamer on here. But I, I actually, funnily enough, have not been really tuning into any eSports. And what I've been replacing, I think my sports consumption with, if I look at myself, as a consumer is definitely more streaming. A little bit of reality TV for sure. You know, there's some interesting stuff on Netflix. But I've been, it's been 48 days since the English Premier League was canceled, so I'm counting the days. It's not it's not canceled yet. It's it's still only suspended. So there's hope there, but not 10 days. So that's a habit. It's close. And you know, I might never go back. It's hard to say. But I think one of the one of the major forms of content that I've been consuming, and this might just be me is like a lot of like memes and you know, following like the former sports stars that you had been watching and like seeing what they're up to, and like that kind of different types of short form content, which is often on social media, but even like new platforms like quibi, I believe it's pronounced I don't I, I might have mispronounced that. But I think that like that's kind of an interesting thing that's been rising up lately. And who knows if that will continue on normal production comes back.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:28:47)I think the interesting thing here to note, though, is that there was so much emphasis put on a live event, which, you know, is understandable. But I think the sports brands and they are brands, right? Teams are brands, the NHL is a brand the NFL is a brand. I think the interesting thing here is that they're discovering that their content and their library of content has a role to play online. I find myself consuming all the NHL classic games that are being shown I even go back into my NHL game center online and watch the old games. And I think it's this just has proven to potentially the sporting industry that their brands don't need to be live all the time. And I think that people are also getting really creative to your NASCAR eSports example Meritus f1 just did the same thing. Not to mention the f1 drive to survive episodes on Netflix, which was a remarkable branding strategy that they did even before the pandemic hits. So I think it's an interesting thing landscape for them now. And I think there's a lot of creativity and learning that, you know, has come out of it as a result.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:30:08)I just gonna say so some more emphasis on like creating a content library, because you know, you mentioned drive to survive like that, that turned me into an f1 fan. Yeah. So if other leagues and other brands had created things like that, there's content that, you know, is year round, right. It's not just during the season, it's not, you know, just the trade deadline or, or the draft. It's really a branding play that, you know, steps aside steps away, I suppose, from, you know, the traditional game.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:30:39)Exactly. And speaking of draft, that NFL draft 2020 was the most viewed draft ever in the history of the NFL.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:30:47)Well, people people are starved for content. That goes, that goes.\n\n\n\nChristian (00:30:54)Well, it's pretty clear that you know, people are looking for this content. So what does that mean for advertisers? Because, you know, the spring sports season alone? The the advertising budgets, there are over like, $2 billion, right. And then with the cancellation of the Olympics, as well, I think there's a stat there that NBCU was standing to lose over I think, was $1.25 billion in advertising commitments. So these are massive budgets. Right. And so now, you know, obviously, there are people are being conservative and saving costs, but you can't just save all of that money and not funnel anything into and to advertising. So where does that really leave advertisers who had made some of these commitments? And now there's no content to advertise on? I think that's something that maybe we should we should chat about a bit, because I think, you know, with budgets like that online, it's going to create competition between advertisers as if everyone's trying to reach the same types of users. And they're only kind of focusing on reaching them on these NFL draft events, or, you know, these old games or whatever, you know, it's gonna be quite competitive. So, as advertisers like, how can you decide what budget should go where and still stay competitive and not pay like a premium for these specific slots. So I think something worth mentioning here, I don't know, there's two points here that I'd like to talk about, I think, like we're seeing from this conversation, sports friends are found everywhere. And you can kind of find them across different channels and use different audience strategies to do that, right. So you can find the Eli's of the world who are now watching reality TV by, you know, targeting a sports fan audience across different channels. Or if you're trying to tap into those, you know, high highly competitive events like the NFL Draft, or some of the old sports games, or whatever it may be using leveraging tactics like programmatic guaranteed to kind of secure that inventory, away from your competitors, and make sure that your brand is staying top of mind to these sports fans who are clearly hungry and ready to come back to you. Once this is all over.\n\n\n\nChristian (00:33:02)Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think like one of the one of the underlining subjects of that is, you know, whether or not you should be advertising right now. And I think that when it comes down to it, I had a chat actually, with this reminds me I had a chat with John Shaughnessy, who was you'll see in one of the episodes coming up. He's the head of data strategy at live ramp. And his number one point was along those lines, it was don't stop advertising. Perhaps that that's wishful thinking. But the numbers that he gave me really back it up. And I'll just talk about a few of them now, because it was one of the key things that I took away from the chat. And it's very relevant to what we're talking about right now. So dating back a century, studies found that those that keep spending on advertising actually come out ahead. So the Harvard Business Review, said that during the recession in the 1920s, companies that maintained advertising or increased advertising, saw their sales grow by 20%, coming out of the recession, while those that reduced or stopped their spend saw 7% decline. And then in the 1980s, when you had the recession, in the late 80s, McGraw Hill research found that b2b companies that maintained or increased advertising saw sales increase of 275% in sales for the next three years, you know, which is really significant. And it's not really saying, you know, it's not really a selling aspect, but it's really just the insights that are being drawn throughout history, that pulling back on advertising seems to be a common default. You know, because it's a cost. And, you know, when companies are in financial trouble or in a recession, they want to focus on on saving on costs. But as history has shown, advertising is like directly correlated with sales. And so, you know, pulling back, say, in a scenario where you pull back a million dollars in advertising, that's also potentially pulling back 2 million in sales. And so although the intent is good, and the, you know, the reason for doing it is strong, it often actually has a negative impact. And there's the last thing I'm gonna say is there was for me In reasons that John brought to me, and you'll hear this on the podcast, but I, I just thought they were great points. The first is the noise level drops when competitors cut back spend. The second one is the cost of advertising drops, which yields better deals. The third is that advertisers are projecting stability and a difficult time, you know, if you're not advertising, it kind of, they might raise eyes, unfortunately, about about, you know, how that how that brand is doing. And then the last one is that the share of voice really leads to share market. And, you know, it's really what the data the data backs up. And I think that that was like the main thing I took away from that chat. And it's a tough question that really changes brand new brand.\n\n\n\nChristian (00:35:38)I think though, to that point, Christian, you know, it does change brand, a brand, if you want to decide, you know, if this is the right time for your brand, but I do think that this will, you can't you can't be advertising today, like nothing has transpired. I think, you know, you have to update your messaging and your strategy to kind of follow not only the consumer trends, but just to stay, you know, on tone not to be turned off or anything like that. And I think this kind of lends itself to, it kind of presents an opportunity for brands to get a little bit creative. I know Pam and I were sharing yesterday. Yeah, there's some advertisers, it seems like some of the ads right now all have the same tone of we're in this together. And, and, you know, the sad piano music kind of playing and, you know, like, let's do let's manage through this. But I think, you know, there's, there's definitely a need for that type of advertising. But I also think there's room for innovation here. And, again, bringing it back to more tangible things that brands can do to help consumers and putting those things for, like, you know, back to the travel example, hotels right now are putting up health care workers on the front lines and doing those acts. And, you know, creating some sort of messaging, but that actually saw a dove campaign yesterday, talking about hand washing, and they said, you know, we don't care what type of soap you use. And this is a dove, right? That we don't care what type of soap you use, we just care that you care, and it was promoting how to wash your hands and making sure you're doing it for an appropriate length of time. So I feel like those types of ads, you know, really forcing brands get creative and providing like tangible information for consumers. That's something that you can consider doing right now.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:37:27)Yeah, that's awesome. Meredith Actually, your you know, to your point of competition, I absolutely agree. You know, you kind of have a twofold challenge here. Because if every brand has more or less the same message right now, and they all stuck advertising within one basically channel, which is digital. So how do you really stand out? And I think, you know, that's where that's where they have to over invest potentially, in, in creativity, that they put behind the ads that they actually promote, because otherwise, everything just becomes very bland, very much the same. And combined with the notion that Christian was saying that, if you're not advertising, people start questioning, is this brand even relevant? Do they even exist anymore? So you kind of stuck with that balance where you want to continue advertising, but you have to really, really reinvent yourself? But Eli, I had a question to you specifically around how our advertisers have been adjusting their media spends in relation to the changes in media consumption, for example, connected TV, obviously, you know, we've seen a huge spike in in people using that channel, but have advertisers really jumped on that opportunity.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:38:40)Yeah, you know, I feel like it comes in in phases. So as you know, reading a study, actually, by pixelate that it was comparing the first week of March the last week of March, and it actually showed, you know, a 14% drop in, you know, OTT and CTV spend throughout the month, which I thought was interesting, because, you know, my personal experience has actually been, you know, it almost makes sense, people are home, their TVs are on more, you know, the kids are home, they might be watching educational content or children's programming, it makes sense that there actually be a, you know, a rise in CTV spend. And I feel like that, you know, 14% drop was probably indicative of, you know, the uncertainty of the beginning of the pandemic. And, you know, I know, at least on StackAdapt, we've seen an increase, you know, since then, as things have started to, not necessarily normalized but the current situation has become a little more normal, in the sense that everyone has kind of realized that, you know, we have to be in market. CTV is a channel that makes sense from from a logic standpoint, you know, like I said, people are home screens are probably on more than ever. So definitely have seen that. That was probably the most frequent question I actually got at the start of, you know, say Shelter in Place was, what have you seen when it comes to CTV? And you know, The answer to that would be, we saw it we saw it drop initially, just as anyone would see. And then it started to steadily rise, you know, throughout their, from their sorry.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:40:10)You know, obviously, you know, we're seeing changes in, in, in where agencies are deploying their the brands budget. But what sort of sentiment? Have you heard, just overall from from brands and from agencies? I would imagine that obviously everybody's business is impacted. So are there any positive sentiment that that you've been hearing? Are there things that people really looking forward to? Coming out of this lockdown?\n\n\n\nEli  (00:40:39)Yeah, so can really only obviously speak to the digital component of things, but I think everyone, you know, times are tough for everyone. And that goes from technology partners, to agencies, to brands. And I think everyone's, you know, cognizant of that, but, you know, some of the things that are interesting that, you know, at least I've seen some conversations, you know, circle around, and, you know, I think Pam, Christian, and Meredith actually all kind of touched on this was budgets, shifting towards digital. So, you know, when I speak to digital buyers, that's obviously something that's, you know, of interest to them, where, you know, all of a sudden, your billboard, you know, at the busiest intersection, downtown means a little less when, you know, the foot traffic isn't there the same way, you know, conferences, and, you know, out of home budgets, in general shifting towards, but towards digital as being like, the primary channel to reach people is, you know, obviously, something that's exciting for any digital buyer. So I think that is something that people have been, you know, fairly focused on. And that's kind of, at least from the digital sphere, like some sort of bright light, I suppose. But then also incorporating, you know, cool and interesting strategies, you know, based off of the current situation. So like, we've been working with Nielsen and comScore to do you know, linear TV retargeting, which I think is a great extension of, you know, broadcast television, like broadcast isn't going away anywhere, but anytime soon, at least. But being able to retarget people who saw, you know, a specific broadcast program, or a specific broadcast ad, whether that's, you know, a competitor, or your own digitally is potentially a great use of, you know, some of this newfound budget from out of home.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:42:20) Very interesting. Pam, with respect to agencies, and I think this question would be really relevant to you, because you, you led the research project last year, around around producing the report called blueprint for growth. What sort of changes do you do you expect for agencies in the coming in the coming months? And what should be what do you think they should be really focusing on, on the short term?\n\n\n\nPam  (00:42:46)So it's interesting, because actually is around this time last year, where we surveyed marketers and agencies about 200 them in Canada and the US, and we really focused in on mid market agencies to help uncover how they can thrive, you know, in the ever changing ecosystem, and provide actionable insights. Well talk about an ever changing ecosystem. It they're in, they're in, they're in the throes of it right now. So when I look back and think back to that research, there were three key takeaways that really stood out then that still applied today, especially today and in the long term. So, marketers, you know, we uncovered that marketers believe my market agencies offer more access to lean years, you know, to senior leadership with more stable teams, personalized service, and agile responses to client needs. So there is that advantage of being perceived as a partner rather than a vendor. And I'll stress partner right now. Marketers see mid market agencies as having a unique value proposition was the second key takeaway. They provide a feeling of once again, partnership that emerges through cultural alignment, transparency, trust and ever important today communication. It's not only held by marketers this perception, mid market agencies were twice as likely to perceive themselves as partners to their clients. So key takeaway number two, still focusing on partners. And the one thing right now that is, I think critical is those mid market agencies tended to prioritize retention, over and renewal of existing accounts. So if they prioritize that retention yesterday, then they should be seeing it come out in spades today. fundamental to the success of that brand agency partnership once again, sorry, it's it's becoming a very well used word is that they have a feeling that both sides have skin in the game. So right now, there is a whole lot of skin in the game for a lot of brands and their respective agency. Just so, you know, basically, marketers highly value those agencies that are proactive, and that come to the table during their homework, right? And that they can take time to look forward and identify potential pitfalls will right now there's huge pitfalls. So what is it that you're going to bring to the table? And how are you going to demonstrate to me that you have skin in the game as my partner, so it's a partnership factor in spades. It's what we uncovered, then it's what's coming through today. And it's what's going to carry them in to the future. As much as agencies are looking for answers from their partners, like US brands are looking for answers from their agencies. And the bottom line is, if agencies can't make their clients win, then they can't win either, not just today, or in the short term, but I think for all time, so I think one thing is crystal clear. Don't abandon your clients, keep that relationship close. Encourage your clients to keep or your brand those brands to keep customers close. There's a sense of partnership and a sense of, as I mentioned skin in the game, knowing that nobody's abandoned each other at this at this juncture. And I think that's going to really drive things home for agency for the rest of 2020. And definitely going into 2021.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:46:27)You know, you'd like you had some interesting examples of what businesses currently do to stay relevant to reinvent their business model, maybe it would be interesting for you to share them.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:46:37)Yeah, definitely. I think that relates to you know, Pam's point of you know, seeing yourself as a partner, like you said, things aren't ideal. And, you know, we have to kind of figure out a way to overcome and, you know, stay relevant together. So I've seen things like, you know, catering companies that do weddings and conferences, you know, switch to, you know, food delivery at home, where they deliver, you know, raw meat and veg and produce and whatever it may be, for people to, you know, cook almost like becoming their own, you know, chef's plate. You know, on the flip side, I've also seen spin studios, you know, advertising that, you know, bikes are now for rent, which to me is unbelievable way to, you know, pardon the pun, but adapt, because of things like that, and, you know, creative and innovative ideas, where you can say like, this is our business, it's kind of on pause for now, because of the current situation. But overall, there's still something here that we can, you know, not necessarily I don't want to say capitalize on but we can stay active with, you know, make sure that we keep the lights on, at the very least.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:47:37)With agencies, perhaps, you know, understanding the dynamics of the media consumption, maybe they could potentially pivot into other offerings. So, for example, to our point that there's a huge surge in digital, so if the agency has historically been very focused, maybe on traditional channels, this is an opportunity to accelerate that transformation into more of a digital focus type of agency. Maybe there's opportunities to heavy up on creative services to help brands quicker, adapt to changes within the market. So there's probably a lot of opportunities for agencies in the market to, to use this as a as a growth opportunity.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:48:17)You know, the transition from say, traditional media to digital media, I think is, is probably the most obvious or apparent, one of the bunch. But it extends exactly into that point. I was saying where it's, you know, we have this brand who was transition, you know, how this brand does business for the time being as well, right. It's not just the channels. It's also just the essence of the business that points.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:48:41)Well, team, I feel like we could speak here until Friday, end of day, which is in two days. It was very enlightening for me to hear these perspectives. I really appreciate your time, today, and I hope whoever is listening has gotten value out of this. So thank you all so much for for joining and taking your time out of the busy schedule. And yeah, I look forward to seeing you in person at sometime in the future.Awesome. Thank you very much. Thanks, Tyler. Thanks, everyone.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:49:16)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/political-advertising-challenges#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/political-advertising-challenges"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eli Bardikoff","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/eli-bardikoff","jobTitle":"VP of Sales","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Managing the Challenges of Political Advertising","datePublished":"2020-05-14T17:04:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:24+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/political-advertising-challenges"},"wordCount":8827,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/political-advertising-challenges#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast","political"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss how agencies are overcoming the challenges of political advertising and delivering political ad campaign strategies quickly and efficiently. \n\n\n\nJeff King | VP, Advertising Arena \n\n\n\nNicholas Guistino  | Director of Digital Media Buying and Operations, Arena Mail+Digital \n\n\n\nEli Bardikoff | VP, Sales StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)So there is a lot of data out there, that helps you make very good predictive models. I think the more difficult part is finding those people online. And as I mentioned, you know, using that first party data to actually hit those people with digital ads. And that's why we use first party data as much as we can we max it out, because the models are so good. And they are, if we can get those people, they are absolutely the audience that we want to talk to. But we also recognize that we're going to hit a with our first party data, where we can't match any more than we have. And we can't reach those particular people. We've matched any more than we are. And so we have to use other tactics. And really, we have a whole bag of targeting tactics and you have to use the whole back. You can't rely just on first party or just on third party or just on demographics, or just on contextual you have to use them all and attack your audience, so to speak from different angles in order to really reach them completely.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:01:04)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape that How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:32)Thank you for joining us today. My name is Vitaly, and I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Through our work at StackAdapt, we have learned that political advertising is very different than corporate advertising. And there are many things that marketers in each one of these industries can learn from each other. In this episode, we've invited arena, a political consulting firm to speak to both challenges and opportunities in the political advertising space. The conversation covered many great topics. But what really stood out to me was just how dynamic the nature of political advertising is. What I found fascinating is the speed at which they operate. Often there's a time to go to market within hours, and maybe only run campaign for a few days. And what I found interesting is the importance of having in house programmatic experts who have hands on keyboard to take advantage of constantly evolving market opportunities. I think there's a lot that marketers from other industries can take away from this episode to find creative ways to respond to market changes and competition quicker. Coming up is our interview with Jeff and Nick from arena.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:02:31)Thanks for joining us today. My name is Eli Barkoff. I'm the Sales Director at StackAdapt. And I'm joined today by our guests Nick Guistino and Jeff King from Arena. Today's episode is going to be focused on digital advertising and politics, how it differs from traditional corporate advertising and the challenges that advertisers face when planning and executing political campaigns. Jeff is the vice president of arena, a digital and direct mail agency that specializes in political organizations and clientele. He started his career working directly on political campaigns work in several different roles before moving into the media and advertising consulting space, where he's been focused on digital political advertising for 10 years now. Nick is the director of digital media buying and operations at Arena. He possesses a comprehensive background in digital media management and strategic planning with over 10 years of experience. Nick started his career as advertising career in New York City, later moving to Salt Lake City, working on clients ranging from healthcare to government CPG and financial verticals. I appreciate you both taking the time to join us today. When I was initially asked to host StackAdapt political advertising podcast, there was no doubt in my mind that YouTube would be the perfect guest. excited to have you guys share your thoughts and experiences within the political vertical.\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:03:43)Well, we're glad to be here. This is awesome. We're excited. Awesome.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:03:46)Yes, very excited, amazing, pumped for a great conversation. So I guess, you know, without further ado, I think, Nick, this first question, I'll just kind of direct to you given your background, I'm curious to hear a little bit more about the differences in running political campaigns and corporate campaigns. And, you know, coming over from, you know, the more traditional corporate media space, you know, what adjustments you had to make, when moving into that political vertical.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:04:10)I would say the biggest adjustment is just really timing. In the more traditional space, you have more lead time to plan for a campaign say as healthcare, you have months to plan because you know, enrollment is four months away, or you know, your Christmas seasons coming up. So that's when you're going to get your holiday campaign ready. But Jeff, and I will get campaigns in terms of doing a media plan, and it's due tomorrow, and you have to do all of this research, and you have like two hours to do it. Whereas typically, I used to have three months to do more research. So it's just very fast pace, which is something I expected, but I couldn't believe how fast things moved, and then how accurate we still are in terms of planning, getting everything going approvals and then executing and then it's over a week later, potentially with a campaign.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:04:54)Yeah, no, that makes sense. I'm curious, does that change based off of like the type of campaign within the political space So we're in April of an election year. You know, we've even spoken about a couple of campaigns for the upcoming cycle. But is it certain types of campaigns where you're afforded a little more runway compared to you know, others?\n\n\n\nNick  (00:05:10)I think it depends. Jeff could probably speak to this a little more than I can. But you know, if different polling data comes back, or whatever organization is working in that specific state, or congressional districts see some sort of movement, they may want to get a campaign up sooner or you know, as, as in right now, we know 2020 is a major election year, there are some proactive pieces we can do in terms of reserving inventory across different channels for the fall election. But it just really depends on what data is moving things, it really can depend.\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:05:38)Often, even though it's not right before an election, there are fundraising, reporting deadlines, or other kinds of initiatives that political organizations are working towards and have set, you know, some kind of deadline. And we have to be responsive to that. And frankly, there's also just just how political organizations function all the time, even not necessarily during an election period, or the few months right before an election, is we move quick and how and how Nick described it is absolutely the truth. Everything happens so quickly. And you have to be thorough, but also you have to understand what is essential to include and what can you basically jettison right, what would be nice, but you don't need it. And you have to let those things go. Because if you're going to move quickly, you can't do everything you would love to do you had a month or even several more weeks to plan and prepare.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:06:37)Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. And that's been my experience with pretty much every single political client I've ever worked with. So that's that's exactly what I've experienced as well, I guess, touching, expanding on that point, you touched on it a bit at the end there. But curious, other than the lack of time, like what other challenges does, you know, the fast pace of political advertising posed to you guys as marketers, Jeff, if you want to give this a shot?\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:07:01)I think that we have challenges that other advertisers have that or not in the political organization. I mean, we of course, have challenges on attribution, we can't go and for good reason, we can't go and say, Oh, this voter voted for this candidate. Right, your your vote, and the way you voted is private. And so how do we attribute what our advertising efforts are doing towards what success is being experienced? Or is happening? So that is a huge difficulty that we find challenging. And I think, from my understanding that a lot of advertisers find challenging no matter what your advertising, I think that, you know, there's a lot of scrutiny on political advertising to and how it's being advertised, and what can be said or not. And that's not exclusive, of course, to digital advertising only, and print advertising and TV and radio advertising, political, TV, and print and radio advertising have been scrutinized since their inception. But digital advertising, of course, provides a lot of new tools, especially as relates to privacy. And so those are other challenges that we have to keep in mind, and help our our clients and our end political advertisers we work with navigate properly in view of the audience they're trying to reach.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:08:21)Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I got actually a couple follow up questions based off of a couple different points that you mentioned there. You know, obviously, you're not afforded the luxury of, you know, true attribution in the sense of saying, we reached this person with an ad and, you know, they voted for person XYZ. I'm curious what what metrics do you guys fall back on in the political space? When true, say like sales lift metrics that might be afforded to you and other verticals aren't available?\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:08:48)First, I think that it's important for us to look at the overall goal of what is what political advertisers are trying to do, and that is primarily to win elections. And so ultimately, even though we can't attribute one specific media channel or one specific tactic over another, as leading people to vote, and leading to election victory, we really do try to look at that. And so tools that are that are used, of course, in electoral politics, like other industries are, is polling, you know, did a message move the audience and if the message moved the audience, can we tell where they saw it or what combinations of places they saw. So that really is important and other, you know, going down the funnel. Other tools that help us of course, are studies that help us see if we saw a lift in brand awareness or a lift in persuasion movement favourability for or against a particular client, or candidate. So those big picture tools really can help us understand if we're being successful or not, even though we can't It specifically say oh, hey, this person saw this ad and then that the next step they took was they went to a polling location and voted or they mailed in their ballot and voted for us. We of course, can't get that level of data. Because no one can you. It's private information.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:10:17)Make sense. Nick, anything to add to that?\n\n\n\nNick  (00:10:21)Yeah, building on what Jeff said, you know, we, we also try to really help clients understand, like a narrative in terms of the data we can report. So when we're looking at reaching frequency, you know, explaining to them that it's built over the course of a campaign, or some of the formula that we have, where we can equate our digital reach and impressions to grips, which helps them understand holistically how the campaign fit into their overall campaign that may have included TV or radio. So adding those type of pieces in there. And then, like Jeff said, building on those lifts, type studies, seeing how those performed, because we can't even look at your typical, you know, website analytics, and a lot of ways like, yes, we have Google Analytics. But if I'm trying to get someone to vote for Jeff, and I'm pushing out messaging that's telling people what he's about, they may not necessarily go to the website. So we really have to tell that story to a client. And it even affects how, you know, we're doing other types of targeting and things like that. So we really depends on the campaign. But yeah, we do have to tell a story in a in a different way versus, you know, 10, people bought this product, and then they did this, or we, you know, we can't measure foot traffic, like Jeff said yet, whereas, you know, you can measure if someone went to your local grocery store after seeing an ad. So it's definitely a little more technical, even though it's awareness in a lot of ways.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:11:38)Yeah, no, interesting. Probably more more so than any vertical political campaigns, you actually see net out to, you know, a real life effect. And that, like, as Jeff mentioned, is, you know, the actual election and the results, you know, building off of that first question about the challenges you face as a political American, or you mentioned something, Jeff about, you know, scrutiny over political advertising, you know, more so recently than, than ever, you know, even leading to several platforms, introducing new policies and restrictions on the types of campaigns you can run and the targeting tactics you can use to reach your audience. A little curious to hear from both of you. We'll start it off with Nick, how this is changed your process from both applying and execution standpoint? And what challenges do you guys face in trying to navigate regulatory policies that you know, oftentimes even differ state from state or platform to platform.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:12:25)I would say it definitely keeps us on our toes. You know, every day, it seems like a different platforms coming out with new rules or regulations, but our team is very well versed on every platforms changes, and we make sure we are able to fully digest the changes, and then we brief our company as a whole internally. And then we educate all of our clients on what that means. And that's by again, us really ingesting, what was told to us working with our reps, and then ensuring we're laying out the plan moving forward on how to bring all of our clients up to the latest requirements that any of these platforms may have. And then also, we try to anticipate any future changes they may have, in terms of planning, it does change some channels and how we do certain things only in terms of like, if it's a quick timeline, if a campaign needs to go live today, it's like, Oh, are we able to get these guys registered and get everything verified for Facebook right now? Or, you know, if, if we're going to run on this DSP? Do they have requirements? Now? How does this change how we would normally do things, but you know, like I said, the team is very well versed. And we're able to rapidly respond to any changes that happen, you know, just been around since the beginning in terms of watching all these regulations come into place. But that's just kind of my snapshot and seeing how our teams are able to take something ingested, and then really go out there and make it happen literally overnight, if they have to, even if it's moving a mountain to make sure our clients can run on all the different platforms that have changed their rules.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:13:53)Interesting. Jeff has a field to be referred to that has been around since the beginning of political advertising.\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:13:59)Well, that's that's obviously not true. But I mean, I've been around and have seen, especially, you know, with platforms that we are all familiar with, as members of our society, like Google and Facebook, we've seen those platforms change in so many ways and how they're used. And of course, that affects politics, and how political advertisers use those platforms. And there, those platforms, as we've all seen in the news, are very responsive to the public and how the public perceives them. That's their business. So yeah, there has been a lot of changes. And I want to emphasize what Nick pointed out. If you're a political advertiser listening to this, the biggest takeaway I would hope you take away is that it does require a lot of attention and a lot of practice, being able to understand ingest, and then relay all of these policy changes. And these policy changes happen sometimes within weeks of the last policy change. So We at Arena have built a very robust, specialized team of ad buyers and ad ops professionals that are familiar with all of these platforms, they're in these platforms every single day, they know the exact policies for each of these different platforms. And they understand when when a change happens, exactly what that will mean what what the nuance of that change will mean for our political advertisers. I think that the people who suffer the most from all of these policy changes, and frankly, how quickly these changes happen are those who don't have professionals in their corner who are helping them navigate all of these changes. You don't have someone who is doing this day in day out on every single platform and every single digital media channel, it is very difficult to dive into in the middle of it.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:15:54)And I would add even one other thing, like Jeff was saying how we have all these experts on the team who can rapidly respond to these changes is that they are such experts that they're able even to go to the platforms and be like, hey, has your team thought through this piece, because we're running into issues here. And the platforms will come back and be like, Wow, we actually didn't think of it that way. Like that is really great feedback that you gave us were, as you were doing this by yourself, like Jeff said, and you were having issues, they would just be like, oh, we'll look into this for you. But our team has so much experience and it has worked with these platforms for so long, they really do have some weight behind any recommendations they may have in order to make sure these no rules work in terms of like, oh, I can't upload this. Why is this happening, and the platform may go, Okay, we're seeing that error on your site, thanks for the suggestion to make that run smoother.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:16:38)That makes a lot of sense, and can certainly attest to how large and knowledgeable the arena team is when it comes to navigating the landscape. Curious if there are specific things that make you guys choose whether to use one platform or another, you know, given how many you do work with.\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:16:57)I think that one thing, which is so incredibly important, is having a very responsive team of representatives from the platform or vendor that we are using. So as we just discussed, we have a large team of experts who know exactly what they're doing. And all of these different platforms don't need someone to manage the process for them. But when we run into a problem, we're running into a hurdle, we have to respond, as we've talked about with with local advertising very quickly, we can't wait one day or two or three days to get creative reapproved or to figure out why we're not scaling, getting enough inventory. Because we may only have one week to do an advertising app. So having a very responsive team is extremely important to us, when we choose partners to work with. You mentioned, you know, two, three questions ago about different attribution tools.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:17:53)And you know, what you guys use to measure sentiment and see if there is a change or a lift in perception. Interesting point, I think, especially relevant given that, you know, digital advertising is rapidly evolving space. Seems like every couple of years, there's a new attribution or verification tool or a targeting method, or, you know, even different inventory types that kind of surge to the forefront. curious to hear where political advertising stands when it comes to innovation, from the political clients I've worked with, it's always felt like campaigns have been highly technical and, you know, fairly cutting edge to add on to that. And is political advertising, in your mind, like on the forefront when it comes you utilize a new technology? Or do you think it follows suit when following where the corporate method goes?\n\n\n\nNick  (00:18:45)Yeah, I would say it's definitely at the forefront, just from what I've seen, in terms of like coming from the other side of the table. You know, there's a lot of money in politics. So you can naturally try out new tools. But also you need talented people to one recognize these tools and how they work with their clients. And to be able to implement them a lot of clients are, you know, looking at using Nielsen products, whether that's their total ad ratings, or their digital ad ratings, they're looking at using different brands, study tools, from YouTube and other vendors there. And then they're even getting very creative or our team is getting very creative in terms of like different retargeting strategies, you know, since like I mentioned previously, we're not just driving someone to a website and retargeting them off that. So the way we handle different audiences and do different retargeting models off of that is, I think, more complex than what some companies are doing now on the more traditional advertising side, and even handling data, you know, we're starting to target audiences, you know, beyond the the cookie and a lot of ways because we're the first industry truly getting that taken away from us, you know, in terms of using first party or certain cookie level data there. So we are at the forefront in many ways in terms of how our campaigns are planned and then and then how they're executed in that very Fast moving timeframe.\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:20:02)I love this clip. And I've thought about this question. Often throughout my career, as I've spent so much time helping political advertisers, I've thought How do their circumstances differ from the circumstances of other types of advertisers. And honestly, I've come to the conclusion that I think, in some ways, and in many ways, the political industry, the political advertising industry is cutting edge and doing things like Nick just explained that other companies are not doing and they're doing it in response to the circumstances they're placed in, they have to do it, they're forced to innovate using tools that are not necessarily custom made for their purposes. But they have to take something that might be made for, you know, some kind of brand lift study or audience segmentation that's made primarily for other types of advertisers, and just make it work for them. And on but on the other hand, the political industry, sometimes we suffer, our political advertisers suffer from not having a lot of time to plan things out over quarters and years and make these massive investments. You see some political organizations doing that, you know, presidential campaigns, and large political action committees can often do that. But many times, advertising clients, or political advertisers really only exist for a few months. If you begin a campaign. By the time you end that campaign, you might have only had one year or less go by. And so sometimes we were not able to do things that larger, ongoing brands can really invest in. But again, as Nick explained very well, there are so many things that we are forced to do by circumstance that really help us lead.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:22:02)And I think that a lot of other advertisers could look into, and gain a lot of insight about what political advertisers are doing with the imperfect tools in hand expanding on that point, as well, because they're a, you know, third, like a third party attribution tool or targeting tool that you guys have kind of molded to fit your purposes, that's, you know, worked really well for you guys.\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:22:17)We use, I mean a plethora of different tools. Again, nothing has been there's no one solution that really has solved all of our problems. We've mentioned a few times we've referenced a few times in this conversation, different types of studies, often referred to as Brand Lift studies, we have used tools, from organizations or companies like Nielsen and cantar, to help us understand our digital reach and frequency across multiple channels that can help us attribute what we're doing to end results. But none of that none of these solutions are perfect. And so and I want to go back to what Nick was was talking about earlier in this conversation, where we need to provide a narrative to our clients. And I think this is obviously true of all advertisers, and all agencies and all consultants, not just political advertisers or agencies like ours, but we have to take all of these different elements and stitch them together to get a picture of what's happening and and help our clients understand what that picture mean, what is the narrative of what's happening here. And so those are some of the tools that we use. But certainly, I want to emphasize that you bring all those together, you understand you evaluate it and try to understand it the best you can and then help it put it into a narrative for your clients.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:23:42)Yep, that makes perfect sense. It's interesting, the parallels there, you know, between the political space and you know, even the corporate or branded side of things where, you know, at the end of the day, I feel like every single marketing campaign at the end comes down to that narrative and how you can make sense of what you're seeing online and how people are interacting with your message. So something that came up a little earlier, as we were chatting was, you know, targeting so we just chatted a lot about attribution and different third party verification tools that you guys kind of mold and adapt to fit your needs. But I'm curious to hear a little more about targeting because that's obviously a hot topic of conversation, specifically when it comes to political advertising. But I think, you know, our industry as a whole is changing how we how we view privacy and how we view you know, the right to reach certain people based off of whatever attributes it may be. Curious what tactics you guys find most effective and, you know, you leverage most often for your political campaigns. Nicholas, start with you on this one.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:24:43)I would say what we see clients want to use the most is first party data, you know, they they work with state parties, local parties, you know, they they know who's voting. They know the models that say if we get this segment out, it may increase voter turnout, so they want to use first party as much as they can, but with certain players in the space like Google and Hulu, and some others, even, you know, DSPs, kind of talking about changing certain things, we're starting to see a little bit of given that. So their first instinct is to use first party. And that's what we'll use a lot of times. But then we've worked with partners such as StackAdapt, to also see any overlap. If we are using a third party segment, if we're targeting, say, Republicans on a third party segment, we want to see what the overlap looks like with a first party segment. So we'll use that as a secondary piece there to help us expand our audience, but also see like where there's overlap. And then on platforms such as Hulu and YouTube, you know, we will utilize their quote unquote, first party that they built internally, based off of their own data, whether it's people watching certain shows on Hulu, or what people content people are consuming on YouTube. So that's another piece that we will use there. But I would say just to wrap up, my thought is we use we utilize first party data the most and then we'll go into that blended if we can, third party and first party as long as the match rate is ensured there. And then the third piece that just kind of floats around there is when we have to we'll use Google and Hulu segments where needed. But that's pretty much how it breaks down.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:26:21)In terms of what audiences were using the most targeting, yeah, makes makes sense. And something I think is interesting, if we could potentially expand a little bit more on that is, I find when I speak to, you know, most clients outside of the political space, when they talk about first party audience, oftentimes, it's like a CRM list that they're uploading, you know, obviously, politics doesn't necessarily use the CRM space. And you know, as Jeff alluded to earlier, you can't necessarily see who's voting for who and rightfully so. But you can see who's voting through the voter file, because that is public information, open to learn a little bit more about the types of models that you guys, you know, work with to determine which way someone may be leaning based off of whether they voted or not, Jeff, is, you're able to chime in on that.\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:27:07)Yeah. And then Nick nor neither Nick nor I are data scientists, we're not these models. But of course, we are familiar, we work with the data scientists and analysts who do make these models. And they use 1000s of attributions to come up with their models, towards how likely is someone to actually just show up to vote? What kind of ideology and where are they on an ideological scale, or partisan scale, these are all different things that they're trying to predict, as well as, I mean, when you think about it in an election, and as you said, Eli, you can tell how many people voted. And of course, you know, the end result, you know, which percentage voted one party or another party or one candidate or another candidate. And so there is a lot of data out there, that helps you make very good predictive models, I think the more difficult part is finding those people online. And as Nick mentioned, you know, using that first party data to actually hit those people with digital ads. And that's why we use first party data as much as we can we max it out. Because the models are so good. And they are, if we can get those people, they are absolutely the audience that we want to talk to. But we also recognize that we're going to hit a with our first party data, where we can't match any more than we have. And we can't reach those particular people. We've matched any more than we are. And so we have to use other tactics. And really, I think Nick explained this, well, we have a whole bag of targeting tactics, and you have to use the whole back, you can't rely just on first party or just on third party or just on demographics, or just on contextual, you have to use them all, and attack your audience, so to speak from different angles in order to really reach them completely.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:28:59)Tickets. That's fantastic. I really couldn't agree more, you know, from my own experience, which is much less experienced than you guys, when it comes to political campaigns. I've always been impressed with like the level of sophistication and thought that goes into, you know, creating these audience tactics, whether they be first party third party, or you know, some other source for these political campaigns that we've run in the past. Nick, I got a question for you as well, just given that you mentioned that political is like the first vertical to see the cookie go away. And I think that's going to happen pretty much across the board, especially with Google's announcement of phasing out support for third party cookies over the next two years. What effect do you think they'll have on political advertising? How does that change how you guys leverage first party data or targeting in general? curious to hear your thoughts there?\n\n\n\nNick  (00:29:49)I definitely think it will change things a lot. One being that you know, clients may start talking to the Googles and Hulu's of the world and really asking them, What is the makeup of this data? I think that will be the big thing is they're not going to be hesitant to use it. But they want to know like, Hey, does that even look like the audience we're trying to get into? So I think that will be a major piece there. And then another piece will be, how well did they scale? You know, we want to see like, can we scale this in this small congressional district in Illinois, or in this other congressional district in Texas where things like that, because from our own personal experience, it seems like there are going to be some growing pains with the scalability of these audiences that YouTube and Hulu have put together. So I think that will be the big thing. I don't think people are afraid to use it. They're just kind of skeptical. Like I to be honest, I'm totally skeptical, because I want to know, like, is this the audience I truly want to reach? Or how are they modeling it because like Jeff said, our clients have data teams that really put a lot of time and effort and money into modeling these audiences, you know, whether they're speaking to the oil and gas industry, or someone looking for solar or someone to vote for, or specific candidates. So I think that's going to be the piece that hopefully the platforms will open up more about, you know, they don't need to tell us that this is Eli, but they need to tell us all the attributes they use to build out this audience versus you know, just trust me. So more transparency overall, into the models that people are creating on their end. Exactly. Awesome. Jeff, anything to add? While we're still on the topic of audiences?\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:31:22)No, I think that Nick explained it very clearly, we deal with a lot of those challenges. And I think that all advertisers should be thinking about these challenges and look to the political industry, or some indication of where the headwinds are.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:31:38)Makes perfect sense. Another thing I was hoping to learn a little bit more from you guys from is, you know, broadcast television has historically been a staple of all political campaigns, and it still is curious to hear a little more about how, you know, the explosion of CTV has changed how you reach your audience and plan your campaigns, you know, would you say that broadcast still is this gigantic force that it always has been or as CTV kind of pushed that to a little more digital, given that you're able to leverage those models and those audiences that you create a little more effectively through CTV than kind of like that shotgun approach you use with TV?\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:32:14)Well, I think that, and this come and this is coming from me as a digital specialist, that, of course, the depth of TV is often overstated. TV is still very powerful. And we find that with our political advertisers, when we are coordinating our digital efforts with TV, that is when it works the best and is the most effective TV is still incredibly effective. And connected TV or over the top Ott, that is very important inventory for advertising. But it's still maturing. And we have to realize that the large majority of connected TV or OTT content is not ad supported. And we've been actually struggling with really understanding the entire ecosphere, you might say, of Ott, and really helping our clients understand that. Yes, OTT is exploding, but and CTV and OTT are exploding, but we can't advertise on Netflix, or HBO, or Amazon Prime, etc. Right? And so we have to still properly contextualize the ad supported OTT and CTV that we are dealing with. So I guess what I'm telling you is, it is really important, but I don't think that CTV and OTT can replace traditional linear, or addressable TV right now.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:33:42)Yeah, that makes more sense. For sure. I think, in you know, at least in my opinion, where I, where I see it going is as less people, you know, as more people begin to cut the cord, perhaps TV overall will change, which will become more connected, I think, inherently and, you know, with that you might be able to, you know, target potentially more effectively based off of subscriptions to specific channels or networks, which are, you know, I guess, connected television, in theory, but it's more akin to, you know, traditional cable subscriptions, but definitely, I don't think TV is going anywhere anytime soon, that's for sure.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:34:21)Yeah, I would. I would agree with that. And I feel like OTT is another tool in the tool belt, really when you think about it, because even some of the traditional buyers I've worked with and I still keep in touch with when we talk about it. It's really like another tool in terms of like, oh, okay, we're coming up into a political window in my state. I'm going to put more on OTT because cable and TV are very expensive, you know, because they still they know how to think holistically when looking at the campaign. They're not just like, oh, TV and radio, these are my dollars. So it really does boil down to being that tool. And then you know, from our side like Jeff said, it's there's still a lot to understand it. It very much is the wild west in ways because you're trying to get clients and you In your own self educated on, OTT is not just on your television, it's on a mobile device, it's on a tablet, or you know, what is full episode player?\n\n\n\nEli  (00:35:08)What's this type of inventory? You know, how does this SSP come into play? Who are the publishers and everything? So we're still constantly figuring out everything in this, you know, with this new product and how it's evolving as it gets more and more attention, whether it's from Ad Week or Ad Age, or, you know, these other advertising sources there. No, that makes perfect sense. And I think the you know, adoption of CTV is something that obviously, that's relevant to political, but it feels like, you know, regardless of the advertising vertical urine, it seems like everyone is trying to learn and adapt how to leverage CTV and you know, how to make it, you know, work in tandem. You know, as Jeff mentioned, what works the best is when you work with your, your TV buyers, and you incorporate the television aspect into your digital strategy. I feel like that's a common growing pain that pretty much every vertical is going through and trying to figure out what strategy works the best when trying to allocate, you know, dollars, kind of segwaying into other verticals and other another marketing channels. Curious if they're aspects of, you know, political advertising, that you think are most valuable or applicable to those running, you know, more traditional brand focus campaigns, you've spoken a lot about, you guys kind of been on the forefront of innovation and kind of having to work with the tools that you got, whether that's the platform, or the third party verification or attribution tools that you use, are there elements of you know, what you guys do day to day that you think, you know, would be beneficial from the corporate or branded side of things.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:36:41)So I would say, you know, one of the most valuable pieces for brand focus is, you know, really looking at your audiences and seeing how you can evolve them from there. You know, even if you have your own internal data, if you're a brand, you may want to look at different segments or other psychographic ways to break things down, kind of similar to how political is moving beyond just looking at first party data, you know, we're looking at psychographics, and pieces there. And then I think, understanding that, you know, some brands are doing this, where they're looking at their campaigns holistically, but you know, moving more in that direction to understand like, hey, you know, Facebook may be doing really well, but it's because of all this traffic coming in from your native ads, or other pieces that are working in that funnel there. And then I would say a big thing, too, that we're looking at is really just how different ad units work here, you know, we're utilizing native a lot more for with political clients, I think there's a real opportunity there, because native can be a very high quality unit that could work well for brands, especially how you can buy them on engagements there. So I would say those pieces are something that could translate over but overall, you know, with political versus traditional, you're still using the same marketing principles, and then your advertising principles when executing. So I think it's just it's some of those small tactics that can move over there. Awesome, Jeff, anything to add to Nick's point there?\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:38:06)I think that, as you mentioned, all advertisers, regardless of their political or a big brand, or even just a mom and pop store, or service in your neighborhood, are using, and rightly so, using a lot of the same tactics, I think what you some that are not political advertisers could learn from what political advertisers are dealing with is to focus on the big picture, don't get bogged down with your click through rate or, you know, view completion only. Those are important elements that you can take in combination with other signals to see if you're being successful. But don't get bogged down in small key performance indicator details really focus on are my efforts, resulting in success in the big picture. And if it's not winning an election, if it's selling more shoes, or movie tickets, or getting more people into your hair salon, focus on that and try to relate the money that you're investing directly to the result as a holistic picture. Instead of trying to parse whether your Facebook ads or your Google ads or your native ads on some other supply exchange. Were the ultimate reason why you you are successful. With advertising. I think we're all aware that it's a combination. People need to see advertising and be exposed to advertising in different ways and in different places over a period of time in order to really make a decision and I think that many of us in the advertising industry have tried to make everything boiled down to eggs accurate and precise formula. But we do that without having half the equation available to us. And so it's a fool's errand. I think that we've learned that in political industry that we really are focused on the big picture of, we're trying to win an election. So let's see if our holistic efforts combined are contributing to the success of winning an election.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:40:21)Yeah, I love that big picture approach, it kind of all comes back to that that narrative and, you know, actual final outcome in the real world, not necessarily, you know, point 1% on your CTR increase or decrease, right? Yeah. We've spoken a lot about, you know, politic political campaigns, and you know, how you guys approach them and the challenges that you guys face, which is great, but I'm curious to hear a little more about something that's, you know, fairly topical, as of now. So obviously, over the past couple of weeks, you know, the emergence of COVID, 19 has changed, you know, advertising overall, we've seen, you know, verticals like travel and tourism come to, you know, effectively a screeching halt. Curious what effect the current climate has had on political advertising, you know, what your prediction is, for the next couple months, given that we're in an election season? Right. So that's something that is just widespread, that affects just how people, you know, interact and move around. I'm curious to hear how you think this will affect digital campaigning overall?\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:41:22)Yes, thank you, well, I, I would be lying. And I think anyone would be if they could really definitively say or think they know what's going to happen, things will change course. And I think what's important to understand is that once we get out of this pandemic, and this phase of life, where things have changed so dramatically, we will, really, as a country, and as an electorate to care about this election. Of course, I think what this shows all of us is that elections really do matter. And who gets elected really does matter, and can affect our lives in our society. And so political advertisers who are going to spend money to message around this election, as well as the audience who is going to be tuning into this election and hearing and consuming these messages are, are all going to be engaged in. So I think political advertising is definitely not going away, and might be more intense and more important than ever, this election cycle cycle, then, you know, even a typical presidential election, which is, of course, incredibly intense, typically. So I mean, how with something's changed, of course, messaging is going to change, we have a new issue that wasn't on the table, just a few months ago, all campaigns, all political advertisers are going to have to take into account this issue and all of its many different consequences when it comes to elected officials and policies, and things like that. Also, it can, in a tactical way, can change a lot of things, right, some messaging may happen more digitally than in person, or, of course, sports and live TV has changed. And so that may affect where we're trying to advertise and message to people, we'll see what happens. But the one thing I do think is important to recognize is that this election is not going anywhere, that people are going to care about it. And because people care about it. The political advertisers who are trying to reach those people will be advertising.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:43:31)Yeah, very, very well said. Nick, anything to add to just one?\n\n\n\nNick  (00:43:37)Yeah, I think it's been interesting seeing how politicians and then Super PACs, and everyone's handled this whole situation, because you're not going to just go running negative ad on a candidate out there. Because it just looks very tone deaf. But it's interesting seeing some senators in some tough battleground states still use their airtime and put PSAs out there. So it's, they're still getting that brand recognition, while you know, being very in tune with the pandemic that's going on right now. So super interesting to see that. And then, to your question, if there's going to be more of a shift to a digital focus strategy, I think you're gonna see people have to create more content that is more engaging, whether it's ads, or, you know, if we're trying to read about a candidate and things like that, because people are spending more time on their computers, but they're also spending more time listening to their radios, to watching television and just engaging across other devices, I think content will still be king in that instant, you can't just put boiler plate spots out there and buy some ads, I think you're gonna have to cut through a lot more clutter, the longer this goes on. And then like Jeff said, the election is not going anywhere. So you'll see people just keep stockpiling inventory and refining their strategy over and over again, same thing with their audiences.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:44:50)So now it makes make sense, you know, I guess in some kind of this pandemics kind of change everyone's lives. It makes for perfect sense that would also change, you know how we launch marketing campaigns, how people interact with them. And, you know, regardless of the vertical for that matter as well. That's pretty much wraps up all of the questions that I had, guys, anything else that you want to share? Before we sign off?\n\n\n\nJeff  (00:45:16)I will just want to say how much we appreciate talking with you about these things, Nick, and I talk about these questions in our own time, all all the time. These are things we think about all the time. And if there's anyone out there who's listening to your podcasts who's interested in discussing these things, of course, they're absolutely welcome. Reach out to Nick and me. And we love talking about these things with everyone.\n\n\n\nEli  (00:45:45)Perfect, and I'm happy to point those people in your direction as well. Appreciate you both taking the time to join us. This was super interesting and engaging and you know, hope that people listening to enjoy it as much as I did. Great. Thanks, Eli. Take care guys.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:46:02)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things, subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/from-linear-tv-to-ctv#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/from-linear-tv-to-ctv"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Why Advertisers Are Gravitating From Linear TV to Connected TV","datePublished":"2020-05-20T17:14:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:49:21+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/from-linear-tv-to-ctv"},"wordCount":8772,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/from-linear-tv-to-ctv#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["connected tv","ctv","linear tv","podcast"],"articleSection":["Advertising channels"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe dig into all things TV–OTT, CTV, and linear TV. Plus, we look at the endless advantages of advertising on connected TV.\n\n\n\nJeremy Smith | Vice President, Sales Engineering, Telaria\n\n\n\nMeredith Henstchel | Vertical Strategy Lead, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)CTV is a bigger ecosystem. desktop and mobile really have two players and each, whereas CTV has many more. So you've got Roku and Apple and Google and you've got all of the TV manufacturers. So the standardization is still coming together, but it's getting better by dial. And the same concept of mobile where you've got a device ID exists in the CTV world. So now buyers are getting more sophisticated and leveraging those device IDs, to understand the consumers better and be able to more effectively target and reach that intended audience versus again, with linear you're just buying a particular show and hoping that the audience aligns with your your intent, whereas with CTV you can say, I have a pretty good feeling based on some data that that user is looking for a new vehicle so I BMW want to reach that particular consumer.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:01:03)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape that how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:31)Thank you for joining us today. My name is Vitaly Pecherskiy. And I'm the host of this podcast. connected TV is a new a very fast growing digital advertising channel. For consumers. It offers the user experience of watching traditional TV and for the advertisers. It gives audience buying and measurement capabilities that of programmatic advertising. I think this is an excellent episode to understand both the fundamentals because it starts with discussion about the basics of CTV, but also gives a great deep dive into more complex topics for those who want to level up their CTV game if they're already buying it. What I found interesting about this episode is the discussion about programmatic guaranteed where you can reserve inventory ahead of time, and also how real time signals can be used to optimize CTV campaigns mid flight. We're very excited to welcome our special guest for today's episode, Jeremy Smith from Telaria.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:02:21)This is our first podcast with Telaria. So just a brief introduction to myself. My name is Meredith and I work on the solutions team here at StackAdapt. So prior to joining the solutions team, I was on the inventory team working with all of our suppliers, including talaria, managing data and relationships but also building new products. And I was working really closely with talaria on building out RCTV offering, which StackAdapt rolled out last year. So I was really closely looped into that. And then from there, you know helping to work with engineering to get things going. The product team to make sure that everything worked on our platform, but also running education sessions on CTV for not only our clients, but also our sales team. And we really leaned on talaria as they're the experts in the space forgotten and Sarah, we use a lot of their resources and their advice on how to roll this product. So I'm excited today to talk to Jeremy Smith, who is the vice president of sales engineering at talaria, who has been with the company for over 10 years, and is really an expert in the CTV space. So you know, for someone who's been working on this product for about a year now, I'm really excited to get his insight on the CTV space and the CTV offering and I hope that listeners will find value in this conversation as well. So Jeremy, thank you for joining me in this podcast. We I mentioned just before the call that I'm sitting here, in a closet in my parents house recording this, which is kind of funny. So you know, we're excited to do this podcast right now, this time. So I think just to start off, Jeremy, if you could tell us a little bit, you know about your role at talaria and how you got there. And really what Tiller yet does as a company who you are as a company and how you work with partners like StackAdapt we can get started there.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:04:15)Yeah, first and foremost, Meredith, thank you for having me. Super excited to chat with you today. And I'm not in a closet in my parents house. But I'm also home today. So interesting times but really appreciate you guys putting this together. So as you mentioned, I've been with talaria which was formerly tremor video and prior to that tremor media for about 10 and a half years in a number of different roles. But over the past five or so years, my focus has been on pre sales engineering, so really consulting with buyers and sellers of premium video content to help them understand activating premium video supply. More recently on connected TV The Vision. Prior to my time at at talaria, I was at a company called the feed room. The feed room was a very early software platform for live digital video. So we offered tools to companies like the New York Times, and General Motors, and even government agencies like the State Department to stream video online. So I oversaw the sales engineering team at the feed room, again, that dates back about 10 years. So I've been in this space for a while. And, you know, again, I go out on a day to day basis and really spend time with not only our premium publisher partners, but our our DSP, partners like StackAdapt, as well as agencies and brands to really help them understand the opportunity that that exists with video and again, specifically on connected television, just to kind of give you a little bit of background of talaria. So to Laura is a supply side platform, an SSP, if you will. And we provide tools to help video publishers like Sling TV and Pluto TV and Philo and others to manage and monetize their video inventory. And this really encompasses all screens and all devices that are IP connected. So think desktop, mobile connected television, we recently merged with the Rubicon project. So we are now the world's largest independent sellside advertising platform. We're super excited about bringing these great technologies together, obviously Rubicon massive scale on the desktop and mobile side for video, and, you know, RCTV expertise kind of coming together to provide buyers and sellers this great omni channel solution. And really we provide, you know, buyers, the single source for reaching OTT viewers, along with things like targeting capabilities. And we do this in every US market as well as in global markets. And just to give you some context, on our software, we have what's called a video management platform or a DMP, I'll try to stay away from the acronyms today because I know we get a bit heavy on that. So our VMP allows demand side platforms, agencies brands, to buy premium inventory across multiple publishers. And we're integrated with about 50 demand side platforms globally, including yours. And really, we give these partners tools to access things like real time reporting, really deep insights on on how they can optimize their budget and, and you know, their targeting strategy.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:07:39)And you know, having working, having worked with talaria over the past year, I can say that, you know, Tillary really, they are experts in what they do. And I find it to be really helpful. But it's funny that you bring up the VMD acronyms because something that I find, especially in the CTV, OTT space is all of the TL A's, or three letter acronyms, and I think that's something that, you know, can be really confusing for buyers, especially if they're just entering this space. So, you know, just to kind of start things off. I'm curious if you could define maybe some of these acronyms for listeners, Ott, CTV, VOD. And you know how how to Laurie defines these acronyms compared to some of the other industry partners?\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:08:23)Yeah, that's a really great question. And again, it is a challenge in our space that we do have all these acronyms, specifically three letter acronyms. To kind of define how to Lauria thinks about CTV versus OTT. So CTV we think of as premium long form TV content delivered through an internet connection through some sort of streaming device. Now that can look like a physical device like a Roku box, or a Apple TV, or even a stick, right, a fire stick or a Roku stick, or more, you know, more commonly, I guess now smart televisions where they're IP connected. So really, the ad experience for viewers is big screen, and it's non skippable, and it's very similar to Weiner linear TV. When you think of Ott, we think of it as a broader definition, kind of an umbrella term that covers any app or website that provides streaming content, again, via the internet that's viewable across any screen including desktop, mobile, tablet, and television. So really anything that bypasses a traditional set top box, ie your cable or satellite subscription.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:09:44)Yeah, I think that's a really important distinction to make. I think when I talk to buyers about OTT versus CTV, they I think it makes sense you know, as a consumer what it is, you know, if I'm streaming content, I can watch that on my phone. I can watch I don't have a computer, or I can watch that on a larger screen, like a TV in my living room, right? That's something that we're all really familiar with. But when it comes to actually setting up campaigns, how does that differ between, you know, how I'm, what my strategy should be and and which devices I should be focusing on? So I think we're aligned in this in the sense of, you know, these definitions. When I talked about OTT with our clients, it's really that content that's being streamed over the internet. And that's the video content that we're all really familiar with, whereas CTV are connected devices is just one of the devices that you can stream this OTT content on. And I think, you know, the CTV aspect of it is especially interesting for advertisers because like you said, it does provide that sort of similar leanback TV experience, because you are watching it on a bigger screen. But, you know, something that I get asked all the time is, okay, that makes sense. But what is my ad actually going to look like on a CTV device in the wild? So, you know, I'm curious if you can speak to what some of the key differences are between a CTD ad compared to that traditional traditional, like linear TV ad? And how those two really stack up against digital video ads in general?\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:11:16)Yeah, great question. I think there's really kind of two different buyer silos right now, right, you have the traditional linear TV buyers, and you have the the newer digital buyers that are familiar with desktop and mobile, and obviously some buying CTV as well. And I think what what we try to focus on is helping marketers understand what are the similarities? And what are the differences in these different environments. So, you know, again, you've got those two separate silos. So I guess, when you ask about the actual viewing experience, see TV ads, and linear TV ads are pretty much identical. They're non skippable ads, they play on a big screen, they're a long broadcast quality television, what you get with CTV is you get this environment that has less channel surfing, this concept of ad pods, so ad pods, meaning that traditional commercial break between content, they tend to be shorter, so people are more likely to see the ads compared to that linear TV environment, where maybe users are switching channels, or on a DVR experience. They're fast forwarding to the commercials. So a lot of it is education, right for us to help the buying community to understand why these two experiences are very similar. There's obviously differences in terms of measurement, and targeting and reporting, control, etc, that we can get into. But I think those are kind of the the core focuses of our core focus of the differences between the linear and connected TV environment.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:12:57)I agree, I agree with you on that one. I think also, you know, you're bringing up the topics of measurement and targeting. And I think that's something that we should spend some time on today. Because I think for both linear buyers, and for traditional digital buyers, the way that they target these ads is very different. So I'm just curious if you can talk about, you know, as a linear buyer, how does my targeting change with CTV and OTT? And also as a digital buyer? Can I target the same thing? So what does targeting really look like on a CTV campaign?\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:13:30)Yeah, let's start with C. Sorry, let's start with linear. So with linear TV, you think of it really as a content marketplace, which means buyers go and approach particular publishers, and they're really looking to buy spots within certain programs, right, and they want to buy within certain programs so that their viewers line up with the intended audience. So give me an example you've got female di wires. To reach that audience, you may go buy fixer upper on HGTV, for example. The difference with CTV is that you're actually buying the audience and you're doing it really at scale. So CTV inventory reaches only those desired viewers because it's based on that audience targeting that you're applying. So really, you're reducing waste because you're reaching that intended consumer that female di wire. So if you wanted to reach that audience in a CTV environment, you can do that by layering on that data. And again, reducing waste versus that linear only kind of program schedule. So really from a from a targeting perspective, CTV offers data rich targeting that digital buyers are used to right on desktop and mobile. Whereas you know, linear TVs typically been used to achieve top of the funnel metrics. CTV can really kind of dive in on full funnel so not just bringing brand awareness Bonus, but also helping users engage with that brand beyond the ad exposure. And you know, when you think about addressability, because I know that that's a term that gets thrown around a lot. It's historically meant household level targeting on cable connected televisions. But now that people are watching VOD video on demand across multiple devices, so many different screens, the targeting opportunities from a data perspective have expanded significantly, the scale has expanded significantly. So by combining very verified audiences, so with partners like Nielsen or data partners like live ramp, these consumer viewing segments from content providers are much more effective, right? They these advertisers that are looking to reach diehard basketball viewers are more effective in their approach on connected TV because of that one to one relationship.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:16:02)And for digital buyers, I think, you know, they're used to having that kind of control over the audience. So are they able to use the audience strategies they would employ on digital campaigns on a CTV campaign as well.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:16:17)They can, yeah, so when you think about desktop and mobile desktop, we've used cookies for many years. So so obviously setting cookies and using that information to target users, mobile uses, you know, mobile ifas. So ad friendly identifiers to determine that that particular user on an iPhone is a male 18 to 25, and they're looking for a new vehicle. The same concept applies to CTV, right, CTV is a bigger ecosystem. desktop and mobile really have two players in each, whereas CTV has many more. So you've got Roku, and Apple and Google and you've got all of the TV manufacturers. So the standardization is still coming together, but it's getting better by dial. And the same concept of mobile where you've got a device ID exists in the CTV world. So now buyers are getting more sophisticated and leveraging those device IDs, to understand the consumers better and be able to more effectively target and reach that intended audience versus again, with linear you're just buying a particular show, and hoping that the audience aligns with your your intent, whereas with CTV, you can say, I have a pretty good feeling based on some data that that user is looking for a new vehicle, so I BMW want to reach that particular consumer.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:17:49)And something else that I'd like to call out is, you know, when we're target digital audiences, on the CTV space, you know, CTV is a cookieless environment. So we are targeting on an IP level. And we can still use these audiences that we have with digital through cross device matching and find them on on the CTV space. But what are some limitations with using IP targeting in this way?\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:18:17)Yeah, so IP targeting is really interesting, I think, you know, from a very relevant standpoint, you've got new privacy concerns, CCPA, and, etc, that are actually preventing the use of some of these data points. So I don't think IP is necessarily the best metric from a targeting perspective, I think the adoption of a standard Isa A, again, a device ID across these different screens, will allow a more consistent experience, but also give the end user the protection that they need. So when you think about IP address, yes, it does reset from time to time in most cases, that can be days, it can be months. But the device ID if it's built into the native device, like a Roku device, the consumers in control. So if I go on my Apple TV, I can go in and reset my isa at any time and recreate that profile, just like I'm used to doing on my desktop computer and clearing my cookies. Right. So I think what we're trying to do is use standards from you know, folks like the IB to ensure that we're creating a safe environment for the consumers while also providing the buying community really rich data to transact on enrich the right consumer.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:19:41)That's really interesting. I think that's something that yeah, we can definitely spend more time on. But I'm curious, you know, we're talking about the data that we can get from a standardized approach to the industry. So currently, as it stands, what are some of the metrics that advertisers can report on And where are some of the gaps that we might be missing due to a lack of standardization across the CTV space?\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:20:07)Yeah, so from a reporting standpoint, to me this is what's most exciting about digital and about CTV, especially when I'm out talking to, you know, traditional linear buyers is the real time nature of reporting and access to data. So through TL Arias platform, we actually provide a Reporting Suite to both publisher partners, but also buyers to get data in real time, meaning within seconds, so rather than on a linear TV campaign, you you spend the money and then you get data afterwards, you get reporting afterwards, and then you shift your budget for next time. With CTV with digital in general, you get access to our platform to that live information around performance. Now, you mentioned KPIs, what are the things that buyers are measuring and, you know, it's it's some of the traditional digital metrics and some of the traditional video metrics. So impressions and fill rate and quartiles and completion rate, making sure that the users consuming the ad, it's making sure that the intended audience is reached, if I'm layering on that auto entender segment, I want to make sure that the the match rate is very high there on that I'm reaching that audience. But I can do that all again, in seconds, I can go in and actually evaluate performance and shift strategy mid campaign, I think that's what's most interesting is, I may find that that hyper targeted segment of auto intenders didn't have enough scale. So I've got this big budget, but it's not spending because I don't have a big enough, you know, pool of users to reach that, that fall into that segment. So by understanding that in real time, you can also understand environment based information. So things like the size of the video player, when you think of desktop, what is the actual video player on the screen? on CTV, we know it's that TV like big screen experience, what device am I serving to? Is it a Roku device? Or is it a tablet, so understanding that in real time as well. So traditional TV buying just doesn't allow for that real time optimization. So I think when what you're finding with with CTV, along with that, that sub second recording is that you can act quickly.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:22:26)I agree, I think that CTV really provides a benefit for linear buyers in that sense, especially the flexibility I know that, you know, like we're upfront, and, you know, commitments in three weeks in advance or whatever it is, and you can't really shift budget if it's not doing what it's intended to do, or even change your messaging, depending on what's going on doing some AV testing and whatnot. But I think for digital buyers, if we could speak to that a little bit, you know, digital buyers are really used to end up metrics. And I think, you know, in a CTV environment, we're missing things like clicks and engagement. So, you know, if we could speak to some of the maybe the gaps in reporting for CTV and how we could potentially overcome that as digital buyers. Just curious on your thoughts there. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer there. But it is something that we run into at StackAdapt being you know, more digital focused, DSP.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:23:24)Yeah, so I think on the engagement front, obviously, CTV is different than that kind of immersive handheld experience on mobile or tablet. So CTV you know, living room sit back experience, maybe you have the remote, likely you don't. So it's more about this non skippable environment where the whole ad is consumed. And it's surrounded by premium content. So the idea of those interactive units while they do exist, there are partners like, you know, bright line and others innovate that provide interactive, CTV experiences that that we can help power. It's ultimately much less applicable to CTV today than it is on on desktop and mobile. You mentioned clicks, right? So clicks is the same thing. You know, if I'm on an Apple TV, and I'm in my Sling TV app, so dish is a partner of ours. And I click on the ad, there's no element of clickability there, it's not going to launch a browser, on my, my device. So those kind of digital concepts today aren't as relevant for CTV. But you do get a much different experience, right? You get that premium linear, like experience broadcast quality content. And I think what's interesting from a from a metrics perspective, is you're also getting more TV content reporting. So one of the things that we do for our partners is we provide them tools, again, on both sides, buyers and sellers to share information about what the user is consuming. So Not only that they're they're watching on, you know Philo and that they're watching a live sporting event. But also what's, what's the actual game? And what's the metadata associated with that is there? If I'm watching on Hulu, is there a genre that would be associated with that, or a series show, maybe even a TV rating that's applicable to me as a buyer that I may move away from? So you're getting more information about the actual content, which, again, linear buyers are used to because they're buying their audience within the context of that program? And I think digital buyers are finding that really interesting, because it's long form as well. Right? So it's interesting on digital in general to know, where's my ad gonna run? Before After, but on a short news clip, maybe less interesting than a user who's engaged with an hour episode.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:25:55)I think I agree with you in that sense. And, you know, for digital buyers, I think something that we've talked about a lot in StackAdapt is really shifting the focus of what the CTV aspect of your digital buy, will accomplish for your campaign. So, you know, shifting away from the engagement metrics, like we're talking about that aren't possible, but really understanding the value in the awareness play on a CTV environment, right? Like users are choosing to engage with this content. It's not like pay TV or cable subscriptions, where you're flipping through something trying to find content that's, you know, that you're interested in, you're actually going to a video on demand provider and choosing content that you want to watch, where you want to watch it, you know, in the uncomfortable confines of your living room. And inherently, because of that, you're more engaged with that content, and more relaxed and potentially more receptive to the messaging. You know, one of the things I want to focus on, though, is talking about that deeper level of reporting at the show level, because what we're finding at StackAdapt is that this information is not always available consistently across all partners and all publishers. So I know that within the bid request, there are fields, you know, for example, for genre to be passed and to get that show level data. But it's not always filled by the publishers. And I'm just wondering, you know, from a supply side, if you could provide more clarity on that piece, because it's something that we do run into quite frequently. And our buyers are asking for that show level reporting, and we want to be able to provide it to them, but we can't always get it. So it's a big roadblock for us. And I'm just curious, from a supplies perspective, you know, how that all works, and why you could potentially see those limitations.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:27:43)Yeah, the TV content reporting is, is super interesting, and it's evolving. So I think to your point, there's kind of a couple of steps in this process. The first is for our publisher partners to expose the data to us. Sometimes there's business rules around that sometimes there's just technical challenges and getting that metadata that content metadata into to Lara's platform. The second step of that process is for then us to expose it to you. And in some cases, there are business rules that still prohibit that. So in some of our virtual MVPD partners, their network agreements allow our buyers to understand that they're buying ABC, but they don't get to know that they're buying a particular show on ABC. Now, sometimes that's from a targeting perspective, sometimes that's from a reporting perspective. So what you're getting at is that you're not always seeing that content object in the bid request, populated with information. And, again, that can happen because we don't have the information, we don't have the metadata, or we actually give publishers tools to protect it if they choose. Now, what's really interesting, and some of our buyers are starting to leverage this, you know, a lot of our publishers won't expose it in the bid request, because they don't want you targeting or excluding particular content, but they're willing to do it as part of our reporting offering. So for your buyers, while they may not know that it's a particular genre, at the time of purchase, they know the publisher, they know the app, they have all of that transparency, they may not know the exact show or series or genre, but they might be able to get that right after the fact meaning the next day they may be able to log in and understand. Alright, within this publisher, I ran within these shows and within these genres. So that's something to keep in mind when you think about CTV is that some data is targetable. Some data is reportable and understanding those nuances and I again, I think it's it's changing day to day it's kind of the chicken and egg situation where buyers ask about it and publishers say we're going to give you that level of transparency, it's going to cost more that kind of back and forth. And we try to help educate and share that message between both.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:30:10)I think coming back to the targetable versus reportable data, I think that's really interesting. And I'm wondering how to Laurie out helps buyers like StackAdapt. And, you know, our end brands, from a targeting perspective, you know, how can we work with you to ensure that what we're actually buying is the content that we want? And potentially, you know, from a brand safety perspective, we're not running on shows that we, you know, even if we're wrong on ABC, and that's a reputable source, we might not want to run against a certain show. So how can you help buyers in that sense from a targeting perspective? Before we even get to the reportable piece?\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:30:48)Great question. I think brand safety obviously is paramount to, you know, moving more dollars from linear or more dollars, you know, activating on on digital supplies, specifically on CTV, you know, we get to laria have a very strict onboarding process for our publisher partners to ensure that it is premium brand safe content, that they are providing as much data around the experience as possible. And that we're as transparent as possible to you the demand side platform, as well as you know, agencies and brands to understand as much as possible about what you're buying. Now. desktop and mobile, you typically buy on the domain, right? So you're buying cnn.com, and you know, you're buying a a warner property. And maybe you get a little bit more, maybe not. The same applies to CTV, you are getting what's called a bundle ID. And the bundle ID is really a unique data point that identifies the application. So it's Hulu on an Apple TV, so you know that you're buying that experience. And then you may as we talked about, get additional metadata around the actual show that you're purchasing. So that's the level of transparency that we provide you We also partner with vendors like white ops, from a pre bid perspective, we partner with pixelate, these are companies, if your audience is not familiar, that kind of analyze all of the inventory that flows through our pipes, and in some cases, blocks it before it even reaches the buying community. So with white ops, it's a pre bid solution, meaning if we see something that they might find as fraudulent, or they're a little bit uncomfortable with, we block it before we even send that bid request to StackAdapt. So there are certain measures we take, again, in vetting the supply, there are certain measures we take in onboarding, and ensuring we're transparent as possible, and to a point where our publishers are comfortable. And then we employ technology to help police that going forward, underserved.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:32:55)So coming back to the show level reporting and metadata level reporting. The first thing you mentioned was that, you know, the first piece of this is that the publishers have to be willing to expose that data. And there's sometimes reasons why they don't do that. But something that StackAdapt and Tamara had been working really closely on over the past few weeks, is our programmatic guaranteed offering or PG. So I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that offering and how that could potentially help to overcome this barrier? And maybe, you know, let publishers be a little bit more willing to share that, that data with their buyers.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:33:38)Yes, so the programmatic guaranteed opportunity, which we've been working on with you guys for a while until ARIA supported this, this deal type for a bit now. And we're super excited about rolling this out, just to set the stage. For those that aren't familiar, programmatic guaranteed deals are one to one programmatic deals. It's based on a guaranteed volume of impressions. And it's done so at a fixed price via a deal ID. So think of it as a one to one relationship. You have guaranteed volume. In a lot of cases, you're getting a first look at that supply that maybe you wouldn't otherwise have access to via the open market or during times of high demand. So those are deals that you can enhance really that traditional direct buying process by combining the control of the programmatic technology, but also with the automated buying process. So again, you know, a lot of our CTV supply doesn't necessarily exist in the open market. So if I'm a buyer that's that's transacting in CTV, I may have to go on those one to one deals with publishers I may choose to transact in an automated guarantee. But also what we do is we can provide I tried deal IDs that gives you scale. So I think that's another thing for those linear buyers to understand is that, you know, if they were going to 10 different publishers today to activate those linear buys, you can do that programmatically through one deal ID. So one deal ID and StackAdapt can get you access to 20 Different premium CTV publishers with full transparency of who and where you're buying, but with much more operational efficiency, access to that real time reporting so that you can pick and choose who you want to work with. So it's just a much more efficient process. And the programmatic guarantee, obviously gives you a bit more control on that.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:35:45)Yeah, and I think, you know, as we talk about it, setting up these one to one deals with specific publishers, they might be a little bit more willing to share, you know, that level of data that show level data that people are often looking for. And then coming back to the point you mentioned, about reserving this high priority and premium inventory, especially in competitive times. I think this is an important piece ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that a little bit, and how CTV can really work with a vertical in the political space for the upcoming election.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:36:23)Yeah, so I think with the US presidential election coming up, we have a lot of interest in in CTV from political advertisers. And really, that started really ramped up late last year in 2019, and into the beginning of 2020. And I think there's a couple of different reasons why those, those agencies are leaning in on CTV, I think, first CTV offers a really flexible environment for executing those campaigns across the funnel, which makes it a really effective channel to reach, say, undecided or persuadable viewers, or excuse me, voters throughout the different phases of the political process. So those different stages, I think the other thing is, is that addressable CTV, it's vital for political advertisers, because it allows them to target that right audience. So we talked about that earlier in the conversation, again, finding the right context, but also reaching that right audience. And with linear TV. Again, if I'm going out and trying to reach a particular political affiliation, I would buy within a particular program, and I would have waste whereas with CTV, I can really leverage contextual information, just like I'm used to, but also layer on data. So there's a lot of DMPS, or data management platforms that now have segments of users that align with political affiliation, or again, align that with voters who are undecided. And by leveraging that data, the real time reporting, those political agencies can really reach that audience and understand performance.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:38:03)And just to your point there, you know, something else that we can do with partners like Telara is leverage audiences from you know, that we've potentially served an ad to that you've served an ad to on linear TV and collect those audiences and transform them into a digital audience, and retarget them with a CTV campaign. So what that means for political advertisers is that you could potentially, you know, take a group of people that have seen your ad or your competitors ad on a linear TV environment, and then to your point, target them across, you know, a more focused channel like CTV, so that you're cutting out that waste and really speaking to the right people at the right time with with the right political message. So I think that's really powerful. Another point on the presidential politics space is that, you know, to speak to young voters, we typically see that audience skew towards CTD. This is the you know, typical cord cutting or cord, never, you know, population. So I'm wondering if we can maybe shift towards some of the trends that we see on the CTV space in terms of the demographics and the types of people that are watching CTV and how that's really changed over the past years. And you know, what, we're seeing industry wide in this space with regards to consumption trends and demographics.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:39:27)Yeah, so we actually did a study with Sling. So dish, one of our partners for a long time around research into young voters and habits of media consumption. And I think one of the really interesting things that we found was that I think it was almost half of the voters between 18 and 29, relied on CTV so relied on streaming live television, to watch events around political information. So to watch debates etc. And what we also found from that group more than half 66% actually found that the ads were relevant and informative. And more than half actually preferred the ads that they saw on the CTV over traditional linear ads, they typically find that the CTV ads tend to be less disruptive, they tend to use as we spoke about AD pods earlier, they tend to be shorter. So the the length of the overall commercial break tends to be shorter. And I think they, they typically tend to be more relevant, because you have that data component and CTV, where if you're trying to reach that particular male 18 to 25, and BMW is trying to reach them, it's an interesting ad, it's reaching that user who's who's looking for a new vehicle. So I think the data play to that, and again, seeing more of these kind of younger audiences, the Gen Xenial audience, lean in on CTV and to find the experience to be positive is is really exciting for us.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:41:10)And I think also, you know, a lot of these voters or, you know, just more generally, these consumers who are spending time on CTV, they might not, you know, that could be the coordinator audience, or the cord cutters where you can't actually reach these people and less CTV as part of your spying strategy. So in order to speak to those people, especially voters, right, if you're trying to reach this crucial group of people, and you don't have CTV, as part of your media mix, you're gonna miss out on that audience. And, like you're saying, this is an audience that is engaged with the content, really receptive to it, and they're, you know, they're choosing to watch a specific show, the ads are more relevant. So really, you know, it's a loss if you're not capitalizing on that and really speaking to those people. And in my opinion, at least.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:41:59)Yeah, and that's exactly what we see, Meredith, I think we know that more than a third of the US households can't be reached through traditional pay TV. So I think that metric alone, that data point alone is really interesting. And then when you layer that Gen Z and Millennial audience on to that, it's just the way that you reach those consumers now is they're not, you know, they're to your point cord, nevers or cord cutters, were they They just naturally kind of started with that CTV experience and not that cable box or that that satellite subscription. So completely agree.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:42:36)And I think another interesting point here is, you know, with live TV, and live sports, especially is usually the last value proposition that ties consumers to their cable subscriptions. Right. So, you know, I think we can't have this discussion without talking about, you know, in light of the current situation, the COVID-19 situation, and the cancellation of a lot of these live sports and live events. You know, I'm wondering if this could be the final push that some consumers need to finally cut the cord, you know, without live sports, there's no real need for them to have these cable TV subscriptions. And so they might cut the court as a result of that. And, you know, as they're trying to seek to stay undertand while people are staying at home, you know, they might subscribe to more video on demand providers and and become accustomed to consuming content that way. So just on that point, I mean, how do you see TV subscription trends changing over the next few months?\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:43:39)Yeah, this is a really interesting topic. I think. without discounting linear TV, I certainly don't want to come off that way. I think we have seen a decline not only in overall linear television consumption, but also really that 18 to 49 ratings kind of decreasing. Over the years. The research we've done around why people are cutting the cord, the top reason is cost, right, the unsub unsurprising in terms of you know how much it costs to maintain that cable or satellite subscription, and that they can get everything that they that they want to consume through streaming channels. Now, I think one thing to make very clear is that live television, live sporting events, news, political debates, are all already accessible through CTV so you can get those through Sling TV and from Pluto live sporting, you can get through fubo So these are partners that are truly live today and and have a very TV like experience and that those audiences lean into. There's also a huge array of VOD content so Video on Demand content that they can go back and and view you know, a game that aired last week very easily without a big clunk. DVR that you had to remember to set up, right. And again, this is that TV, that TV experience, I'm in the living room, I'm on a big 60 inch LED. And it's just like I'm watching that, that traditional TV. There are certainly a lot more streaming services coming online. I think we all know that. So you've got, you know, HBO, and recently with Amazon and with Disney. So there are a lot more subscriptions supported services. And I think there are implication for implications for advertisers with that, I think we're seeing a lot of them debut is ad free and subscription only. But we expect that to change, we saw that with Amazon Prime streaming service, where they move into different models where they have free services that are ad supported, so that they can achieve scale, right, the more eyeballs on this content, the better the the cost to producing the content doesn't change. So the more viewers, the better. So I think, you know, we're going to see more of the streaming services incorporate ad based revenue streams without hurting the subscription model. So again, what's great about CTV is you get all of that live content, you get live sports, the quality is often really, really strong as well, because, you know, from a user experience perspective, some of the things that talaria focuses on are around the quality of the actual creative, the quality of the ad, not only from a, a bit rate, kind of an encoding nature, meaning it has to look really good on a big screen, but also the audio level. So we do some things around audio normalization, so that when you're watching the game, and that Budweiser ad comes on, that that transition from content to ad is very seamless, it's not jarring, the ads not super loud, we've all seen that. In the early days, we see that on TV, still the local ads come on, and they're at a different level. So we provide tools to our publishers and our buyers, around user experience. And again, I think that leads to, to assist if I'm gonna watch the game on, you know, on linear TV or on connected if I get a better experience a better ad experience, quality is better. That's where I'm going.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:47:18)I totally agree with you. I think this whole conversation is really centered around user experience, right? Like, the reason why we're seeing such an increase in supply on TV channels is because that's where the users are going. It makes sense. I think, as a consumer, you know, if I'm able to choose the content I want to watch, it is great quality, you know, the ad experience is great. I have that level of control over my environment and and the programming. That's where I'm going to shift towards, you know, so I think even as we talk about the streaming services, and how, you know, new ones seem to be popping up all the time. They also sort of called streaming wars, I think that really just speaks to, you know, where consumers are going and how businesses are shifting towards what consumers actually want. They're shifting towards this user experience where they are in control of the content that they're consuming, how much they want to watch event when they can watch it. And, yeah, I think it really just speaks to those trends. Like we're following what the users want here. And I think as advertisers, it's important to work with our consumers and and provide that level of experience that's going to keep enhancing, you know, the the overall CTV ecosystem.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:48:37)Completely agree. And I would just reiterate like for your buyers, right when when we do that research, and we find that the younger audiences, as I mentioned, actually, like the ad experience, they there's studies that we've done, we've done in house research team that find that users are willing to watch the ad more than once. And I think when you have that level of experience, it's obviously great for the consumer. So publishers are happy. But it's great for the brands. So it's not about, you know, just brand awareness. It's that lower funnel where they're actually engaging with the brand beyond that first exposure. So it's pretty exciting.\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:49:15)I totally agree. I think, with user experience, top of mind, I think there's a lot that can be done in the world of CTV to continue to customize and really work with the consumers to just make it an overall great experience. So I'm excited about that as well. I think you know, I think I've learned a lot from you, Jeremy from this conversation. And I hope that our listeners have as well. I'm just wondering if there's anything else you'd like to add to the overall conversation today. Before we wrap things up?\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:49:49)Yeah. Again, appreciate you having me on and really excited on some of the initiatives that Laurie and StackAdapt are rolling out together. I would say if I could leave your audience with anything It would be that we help make it easy. You know, there's a lot again, a lot of acronyms, and there's a lot of differences in the different screens and the shift and linear to CTV. What we try to do in partnership with you guys is we want to make it as easy as possible, do what you need to do in terms of reaching the audience and hit your KPIs, but not overwhelm you with this new kind of ecosystem. So that's our main goal. And I think our tool set accomplishes that and will continue to evolve and build tools that make sense for our publishers and our buyers. But if there's anything that I think about on a day to day basis, it's how do we dumb this down a little bit and just make it more relevant and easy for buyers to transact?\n\n\n\nMeredith  (00:50:46)I agree with you on that. I think it's all about understanding and education here. So hopefully, that's what we've left our listeners with today's a little bit of education. And again, thank you so much for doing this podcast, and speaking with me today. And I'm looking forward to chatting with you in the future. So thanks. Thanks again, Jeremy.\n\n\n\nJeremy  (00:51:05)You as well stay safe and healthy. Thanks so much. You too.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro  (00:51:10)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-b2b-digital-marketing#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-b2b-digital-marketing"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Current Trends in B2B Digital Marketing","datePublished":"2020-05-27T18:22:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:49:12+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-b2b-digital-marketing"},"wordCount":11079,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/trends-b2b-digital-marketing#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["b2b","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss the latest trends in B2B digital marketing, reveal the biggest opportunities, and share insights on what mistakes to avoid in your next B2B campaign.\n\n\n\nNick Rennard | Director of Paid Media & Search Engine Marketing, Digital Reach Agency\n\n\n\nAndrew Seidman | COO, Co-Founder, Digital Reach Agency\n\n\n\nAlex MacArthur | Account Director, Team Lead, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)You know, companies are in different positions. So like some companies might have like a lot of money and they're like, you know, if you're a huge enterprise you might be this is kind of like a blip for you in the near term. And you're still thinking about like, what your overall like two year goals look like or something. If you are a, you know, a smaller, like a funded startup whose all their revenue just dried up, and their runway, just shorten from two years to three months, you know, like leaning into the paid curve might not really work out very well for you if you just need to be alive in six months. And so I think for anyone that can I think Nick's advice is great, like, lean into the curve as much as you can, because there actually is a bunch of opportunity available right now a ton of people are online, a ton of people suddenly have business problems they need to address very quickly. So like you have, you know, if you're selling a solution to those like this is a good time to market so I think there's there's something to be said for that.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:01:02)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape that How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:31)My name is Vitaly Pecherskiy, and I'm the host of this podcast. Today we have a really great episode for you. Business to business companies are forced to rapidly reinvent how they go to market, obviously with lock downs due to COVID-19. It means that b2b companies can do business or attend conferences in person which affects how they generate leads. And aside from this fact, how business decision makers buy has already been rapidly evolving over the last few years. Increasingly, they're more stakeholders involved. Often software is adopted first by the line employees and then being pushed out to the management rather than the other way around being bought by the management and push to the line employees. And with increased competition buyers just do so much more research before they buy it. In this episode, Alex McArthur from StackAdapt sat down with Digital Research Agency to work with many software and b2b companies to discuss strategies companies can take to grow despite these new market dynamics. What I found really cool is that DRA is an entirely virtual company already. So they first share some really great insights based on their own experience into how to adapt to the new norm going forward and incorporate remote work. And then the rest of the episode they discuss Account Based Marketing, attribution methodologies, and how to build a holistic marketing funnel strategy. I couldn't be more excited for this episode. And now it's time to welcome Nick and Andrew from Digital Reach agency.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:02:51)All right. Hey, everyone. My name is Nick Renard. I'm the director of paid media here at digital reach agency. I manage a team of strategists and texts, to help companies with their paid media marketing strategies. We focus primarily with b2b clients, the platforms that we utilize the most, but certainly not limited to Google LinkedIn ads. And then we also do a lot through programmatic and DSP technology.\n\n\n\nAndrew  (00:03:23)Hey, everyone. My name is Andrew Seidman. I'm the co founder and head of operations for digital reach. I have a fair number of different responsibilities. But one of my key focuses is on Account Based Marketing, both from a martech stack perspective as well as from a strategic perspective. So yeah, looking forward to talking about that, how programmatic affects ABM and much more. So happy to be here.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:03:51)Hey, I'm Alex McArthur. I'm an account director at StackAdapt had been there for around two years. You know, I come from a background of mobile, programmatic and publisher direct kind of deck desktop stuff. I guess partway through the career, I wanted to merge my two passions, which was advertising and technology. So a DSP that's an omni channel, covering all areas of the web, make the most sense. And then I've been fortunate enough to be able to work with Nick and Andrew for some time now. And they've been teaching me lots about how programmatic can be tied into ABM strategies. I mean, the elephant in the room COVID spin a hot topic. As of late I mean, I've been stuck at home quarantining, we've seen so much of an impact economically on small businesses, large brick and mortar operations. Financial markets, obviously been affected by that and some emotional response. I mean, we're here today to talk about b2b advertising, especially when it comes to you know, programmatic and funnel position. In terms of SAS and tech in the b2b realm. Those are in a pretty unique position. And now I know you guys are Jira, you guys focus primarily on b2b. And SaaS and tech make up a big portion of that. So, in turn in times of uncertainty like we have right now, like, What's your perspective on b2b marketing?\n\n\n\nNick  (00:05:13)Yeah, I think there are, in terms of how COVID has affected businesses, I think that it's easy to look at that by narrowly in that, there's sort of like two categories, there are some people that are really devastated by what happened. And we've already seen a lot of small business and retail and stuff like that, just straight up, go under right away. There are when you mentioned that certain companies like SAS and tech and whatnot are a little less affected, I think it's a dangerous statement to say that they're not affected. I mean, it's easy to look at digital reach, for example, and say, Oh, they were already a remote company, they work with a lot of b2b, it has a little direct effect on them on them. But there's a large, indirect effect on us in how that affects our clients and their customers as well. So there's really no one that isn't affected by this. I think one of the important things to think about in terms of the impact of COVID. And how we are reacting to it is, even if you are in an industry that is quote unquote, fine or, you know, not not devastated by what happened, you're still going to have to make some moves with you strategically to adapt to what has happened.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:06:25)Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, a lots changed. And it'd be kind of short sighted to say that business can carry on as usual. But I mean, with a pivot and strategy and maybe a refinement of messaging, I think there's still an opportunity for success. In terms of like working remotely, I know you guys have been remote for so long now always just working from home. What's that been like? And have you noticed, like your clients reaching out for tips on how to kind of handle the current situation like.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:06:57)Yeah, it's interesting that you've read it right when the COVID thing happened. I know as it started ramping up, we started making announcements with our team, Andrew did a really good job of sort of like helping keep our team educated about what was going on. As we talked about digital reach was already remote. We have been full time remote for almost a decade now. So started. Yeah, since since the dawn of dra. So there, we released a blog post I know about trying to help clients that were making the transition. I think that kind of going back to what you mentioned previously, about how is that affecting other companies, I do think that even of the companies that are the industries that are not as affected or not devastated by COVID, that the fact that their whole teams are going to work from home. Now, I think that's one of the biggest transitions that people are going to have to adapt to because some people are very good at being able to do that. Other people really struggle with the level of like self discipline and whatnot, it takes to just be self driven enough to work 40 hour weeks without being in an office setting.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:08:09)Yeah, I mean, I've definitely experienced a bit of a groundhog day kind of situation, it's hard to get used to the change in routine. But you know, now that I'm settling into a groove, it's definitely been a lot easier to stay motivated and focused. Yeah. And you guys are pros at that.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:08:28)So, Andrew, I know you were sort of like monitoring the whole COVID-19 giving updates and whatnot to our team and sort of keeping up with that. I don't know if you have anything you want to add in there.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:08:39)Yeah, for sure. First, to answer Alex's question of our clients and things reaching out for tips I wish they did more often. We have like a huge wealth of experience and extra some great documentation out there, from Zapier, which has been an all remote company from their beginning as well, I think online like it's a whole guide they wrote to how to run a remote company. So I think that's, I wish that they came to us for more advice. Because we have so much experience doing this. There's a whole bunch of technologies that companies can leverage from like we use Asana for task management, obviously, Zoom is stock has like tripled or quadrupled since this whole thing started. There's a ton of tech stack stuff that you can do to make this stuff work. And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of organizations didn't return from the work from home thing, fully two offices after they build this infrastructure. Because in a lot of ways work from home is more efficient. You don't have the overhead of large offices you have actually one thing I find valuable is you have a written record of everything. So like you know every communication request documented in Asana or in Slack or whatever it might be. You can find everything super easily. So you actually have a lot less information loss. There's a little bit less dynamism in working remotely. You can sort of like get some energy from being in a room with someone But the thing that I would note, just in addition from this, for what Nick said is that in our hiring over the years, we've really seen a pretty binary situation, in terms of working remotely or working from home, that like some people really thrive in that circumstance, and other people don't. And it's been very, very binary. So we usually look for people who have like some kind of really significant reason to want to work from home, like a family or a pet, or, you know, like a hobby, or traveling or whatever. They love doing. Yeah, some kind of a passion. And so that kind of passion, I think, helps sort of settle people in there. So we, we thought a lot about what it means to work from home. So it's kind of crazy that everyone else is getting forced onto the on the bandwagon.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:10:47)I think drilling into that even just sort of like, I don't know, on a psychological level to in terms of why that is, because I've spent a lot of time in terms of there have been some people that I've had to let go from my team where I didn't, I didn't let them go, because they weren't confident they weren't good at their job, it really was that when you put them behind a desk where no one was micromanaging them, their productivities, productivity levels tanked. And I think that part of how the sort of normal progression of how we grow up in society where even from a very young age, you have teachers and coaches and parents and bosses and managers, and etc, that are constantly pressuring us to act when we're not acting. I think that that habit is going to affect a lot of companies that are trying to make that transition to work from home in a negative way. And going back to what I said about adaptability, I think that's where managers really need to come in and implement a lot of the things that Andrew was mentioning of like, having a task system that's intuitive and stuff like that, to be able to adapt to the new metagame where the level that you can micromanagement people is significantly lower.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:11:57)Yeah, it's definitely a new meta, it's a great term. So I mean, I guess from like a b2b marketer standpoint, obviously, productivity at the workplace is directly intertwined with performance, you would get from like a b2b campaign, people need to be pushing through, like discovery and adoption of new technologies in order for, you know, b2b marketing campaigns to kind of convert, so they need to be an online taking action. So you guys finding that this shift in workstyle is affecting the performance of campaigns?\n\n\n\nNick (00:12:33)It's a little early to really tell the long term effects like we've been running in quarantine for about a month. And the results are as many things with lots of data are a little bit murky. At this point. Campaigns, or certain clients have actually performed like way outperformed past history. So we've done and there's some reasons for this, I think like number one is, there's a ton of engagement surrounding COVID as a subject itself. So like, we're here talking about it on the podcast, like we're running webinars about it. Everyone is basically online, trying to learn about how this big black swan event is affecting their business. And so all of the COVID related campaigns that we've done, have, like had unbelievable results, in terms of getting people to think about how your problem or your product rather, might solve their COVID related problems. And so I think there's something really valuable there. On the other hand, a lot of our clients exist in industries that are getting hammered by this whole thing. Like, it doesn't matter how effective your marketing is, if you sell airplane tickets, or, you know, restaurant food, or and we don't really work with a lot of like restaurants, but like we work with some travel oriented b2b companies or things like that. If anything, I view it as kind of a great opportunity for a lot of accounts to basically prove out definitively that digital campaigns outperform non digital ones, which I think is like likely to be true in most cases, and has been something digital marketers have been harping on forever. But But yeah, I would say it's a little too hard to say at the moment. If it's like definitively like a terrible thing, or a good thing that's probably more like, you know, by criteria depends. But people are definitely spending a lot more time online than they ever have been before. So it can't be all a loss.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:14:22)Yeah, no, I mean, I think it'd be short sighted to go either way on that question, in terms of like a benefit or a loss. But it's definitely an opportunity to really prove out digital because I know that so many strategy pivots are happening within these organizations that have a 360 kind of plan for their b2b strategies. And the channel that is active and growing right now is digital people are spending so much time online. I mean, I know on our side, we've noticed a giant spike in inventory and a reduction in CPC CPM. And that's based on just there being more available inventory. supply and demand. There's more out there and you're competing against less.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:15:04)Yeah, I would echo what Andrew said on the, the kind of the, the analogy that I would draw there is that when we run campaigns for clients, let's say we're running a campaign that's supposed to spend $10,000 a month, if you ask me three days after the campaign launches, what's the performance? Like? How are things doing what's good, what's bad, it's just too early to tell, we're going to need to let it run for a little bit, we're going to need to adapt to some of the metrics that we see, I think that's a similar analogy to what we're dealing with COVID, that we're sort of making some predictions with the information that we have. But we will have to see how this pans out and adapt from there. One thing that I wanted to this is sort of a tangent on your question, but kind of relating back to what we were talking about in terms of like managing your teams, I do think that one of the big shifts that is happening with this crisis is that people in general, are not spending as much like social time with each other. That much is obvious. One of the things that I think is important, I know that we value a very highly foundationally culture is a huge thing for us. And so I think that it may sound silly, but I think setting up like even like game nights with your team, we do something that we call fam chats where we randomly pair people with other people to get them to just chat for 30 minutes casually about their lives and what's going on and stuff like that. I think that that void that people are having socially with not being able to go out, and whatnot is sort of an opportunity for us as managers to set up events like that to help our team feel that like, you know, our company is sort of part of filling the gap for them on that. So I think that's something that you can help enhance your the morale of your team, the culture of your team by implementing little things like those, even though you know, that's sort of outside the spectrum of like a b2b marketing strategy or something like that. So that that's as a manager, like some of the things that I focus on.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:17:04)Yeah, I mean, I definitely have experienced this weird gray area between Sunday and Mondays. Typically, I get into the office on Mondays and I get that rush of I'm at work, it's time to go. Like, let's get this ball rolling. But now there's not that social kind of stimulation of getting in there and seeing everyone after the weekend. So it's harder to pick up and go on Mondays. So I mean, social kind of scheduled time like that, between employees definitely helped boost productivity.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:17:35)You know, like you when you were a little kid and you were playing video games all day, and your parents would yell at you. It's like, now we're forced into that situation. Now, we have to find ways to like make ourselves as adults, difficult to do.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:17:48)That's funny. Definitely, I've experienced with that.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:17:54)Did you know that 94% of b2b buyers conduct online research searching for solutions anytime, anywhere at any way they want? Here at the how agencies Thrive podcast, we are obsessed with helping marketers level up their digital marketing strategies by focusing on how they can help their clients drive business results with the highest performing digital marketing strategies. That's why we have created a guide specifically for reaching b2b audiences in the most innovative, effective and efficient way. There's a guy.stackadapt.com/b2b guide to get your comprehensive guide to b2b marketing. That's go.stackadapt.com/b2b guide.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:18:31)I liked the you mentioned analogies before because I mean, the purpose of this podcast is to really touch on, you know, ABM or Account Based Marketing, attribution measurement and funnel structuring. You've always had this great analogy that talks about the shape of a funnel relating to sports. I was wondering if you could drop that on us.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:18:56)Yeah, this actually came up originally, like, I think I was in a weekly lecture, and I just started rambling about it. And then it just kind of stuck. But I was talking about a the difference between a good sort of like holistic marketing strategy versus some of the common pitfalls and where people have like failed holistic marketing strategies. I related it to a soccer game, and it could really be any sport, it could be lacrosse, or whatever. But if you look at a little kid soccer game versus an adult soccer game, in a little kids soccer game, everyone chases the ball, and it's a huge cluster around the ball. Whereas in an adult game, it's much more like zone defense where everyone's kind of like playing their role on the field. We have. I would say that in the little kids soccer game, the analogy that I drew there was that there are a lot of directors of marketing or marketing managers, whatever, that get pressures from their CEOs to say, I need more opportunities in my pipeline. So a lot of times they react fearfully that if they don't pump more opportunities immediately that they're going to get fired. So what they do is they line up all of their campaigns, they sort them by which one has the best cost per opportunity. And then they invest all of their money into that one campaign that has the best cost per opportunity. And that's a problem. Because when you're doing that you're essentially cluster it's like the little kid soccer game where you're clustering all of your resources into that, that one part of the funnel. But a successful holistic marketing strategy is not about just doing one thing. It's not there's it's not, there's not one secret sauce element that you invest all of your resources into it. And that's what makes it successful. It really is like a team game where everyone sort of has to play their zone, you have top funnel assets, that are focused on awareness and getting, you know, engagement, stuff like that. You have mid funnel stuff that incorporates remarketing and nurture. The sales team gets involved as you start getting closer to bottom funneling and closing it. And you start using more aggressive assets like free trials and, and demo requests and stuff like that, rather than trying to serve them free content like you would in top of funnel. So that was sort of the analogy that we drew of the little kids soccer game versus the adult soccer game.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:21:13)Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. Just playing purely hockey for so many years, you get a lot of out of position stuff. And when that starts happening, you start losing the game. Andrew, I mean, we were talking earlier this week, and you really mentioned some interesting stuff about, you know, account funnels and lead funnels, I was wondering, like, how is Deray tackling this topic and kind of bridging that knowledge gap with b2b marketers?\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:21:39)Yeah, so the the kind of initial frameshift. That is, I think, fundamental to Account Based Marketing is that sort of traditional, and you can see this in the way that like Salesforce or other CRMs are built, they're all built around the lead model, like the leads are the individual people that you're trying to, to make relationships with. And then ideally, you progress from those leads into Contacts, the contacts work at an account, and then you kind of like work your way from the bottom up. In an Account Based Marketing, you're actually thinking about things from the top down, like you're thinking about what's important to the account on the whole, who are the different players in that account, how does like an account make choices rather than an individual make choices, ultimately, you still will be interacting with individuals like accounts, and people are all part of the same ecosystem there. But when we set up like an account based funnel, for example, we're looking at a lot of those qualifications on the account level. So we're rolling up scores from individual leads to like create an account score, we're using that account score to create like an account lifecycle. So often, if you have like a lead lifecycle, it's doing something like, you know, going from prospect to lead to MQL, SQL opportunity, customer evangelist in accounts, you can have the exact same thing, you can have an account that goes from being a unengaged account, like a prospect account, to a engaged account, to a marketing qualified account to a sales, qualified account, and so forth, which basically kind of reflects the same things as being like the sum accumulation of their parts. And so I think this sort of can relate to, even in a more complex way to more sophisticated way to a NICUs thing, which is like, within an account, you might actually have people at varying stages. So you might have some people who are really like in the information gathering phase, you have some people who are, who are like even not even aware that they have a problem or that you have a solution for their problem. And then you may have other people who are already champions who are trying to like buy your product now. And so rather than trying to, you know, act like these are all independent actors, you sort of attack the account on the whole, but fit the content that you need to those individual experiences. So that kind of like progress. The whole accounts with a funnel is one big unit. And that's that's usually the strategy that I tried to report on in ABM is to say, like, our KPI is how are the the accounts themselves moving through the account funnel? Rather than like, how are the leads moving through it, if that makes sense?\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:24:09)Yeah, that does make sense. I mean, Nick, in terms of like, activating or executing on some of the overarching strategies that Andrew works, to kind of build out a plan for like, what are some tactics that you've been using to kind of engage accounts as a whole? And Andrew, I mean, if there's anything on your side as well, just just unique kind of strategies, tactics? datatypes. Like, what's that looking like for you guys?\n\n\n\nSpeaker 1  (00:24:38)Yeah, I mean, Nick, I think you should jump in and talk to us about pay for a second because paid is like the most dynamic and flexible all of these mechanisms. And then I can talk a little bit about some of the other other mediums that we use.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:24:50)Yeah, I think I think a lot of the Andrew what you were talking about, there are great questions for people to be asking themselves about their own company. They are their own sales funnel in terms of I think a lot of people start looking for agencies to like manage their Google ad spend or something like that without even knowing the answers to the questions of like, how are leads being nurtured from one stage to another, asking those kinds of questions and figuring that out. And understanding sort of where the bottlenecks are in your funnel is extremely important. If you figure out that all, you know, maybe you're pumping a ton of leads into your funnel from a campaign that you're running on Google or LinkedIn, or whatever. But you don't have anything in place to sort of catch those leads as they're going down into the mid funnel, and you're having, you know, massive drops in conversion rates and stuff like that. That's something that you need to identify. And I think that, um, you can kind of see that in the structure of if you look at like the, the lifespan of digital reach when we first started, we first started as just a paid media company. And we slowly started branching out into doing SEO and web dev and design and marketing, automation, and CRO and all this other stuff. And the reason we did that was because we realized exactly that, that to nurture all the way through the funnel, and these long sales cycles for you know, b2b, SaaS, tech, etc. We really do need to be able to address those issues on a lot of different levels. So everyone knows about Google search, that's a big focus of ours, we invest a lot of research resources into Google search. So that that's something that is definitely a strategy that we utilize a lot remarketing. And a lot of different forums on a lot of different platforms is also a strategy that we implement a lot, I would consider both Google search and remarketing to be very low hanging fruit. So if you're just starting to ask those questions about your company, maybe you're sort of revamping your marketing or onboarding new directors of demand gen and stuff like that for your company. I think that those are, those are good questions to sort of ask yourself, and if you're restructuring your campaigns that you're using, those are good places to start. Stuff that's been working lately, for us really well. So one of the pain points that we've had with a lot of clients is landing pages, landing pages take, they take good designers, and not everybody really has access to those. It also if you want to hire a good designer, that's typically pretty expensive. And also creating it and getting the content for it. And everything is generally a relatively time consuming process. So LinkedIn recently rolled out with what they call lead gen forms. And I know they're rolling out on Google and some other platforms as well. And what those are, is, instead of clicking the link and going straight to a landing page, you know, where you insert your URL, the form just pops up on the page itself, where you can submit your information and you can capture the lead that way, it's much it's much simpler. Now, with paid media, the typical best practice for a landing page is to put the call to action right in the person's face as they're landing on the page that form submission needs to be above the fold. I'm sure a lot of people already kind of know the best practices of landing pages they have experienced with it. This is sort of like the quintessence of that where it's like, that's literally all it is, is the form. There are some complications with that we've ran into with being able to attribute those forms into people's CRMs. It is doable, but since it's relatively new technology and the way depending on the CRM that you're using, there can be complications there. But we have seen in terms of being able to capture leads, Legion forms have been something that we've been having extreme success lately, Andrew and on. On some of the accounts that have been working with you on we've we've been running those for clients, and the conversion rates are insane. I don't I don't know if you have anything you want to add into that?\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:29:02)Yeah, for sure. I think lead gen forms are like at the forefront of effective new technology, especially in alleviating the bandwidth issues that a lot of companies have to get their web development teams up and running and make great landing pages and manage them and tie them into the form handlers and apart marketing automation side of things. And there's a lot going on that a LinkedIn lead form or another Google lead form, whatever can alleviate, which I think is like super, it's super amazing, as well as just making it a better user experience for the client or for the prospect. Like they just want to access that piece of information from you. Now they can just get it you know, right on their platform that they utilize already. Rather than otherwise, there's sort of one downside to it. There's a little bit of a lower threshold of qualification. You know, when somebody comes to, you know, goes to your site fills out the form, they're like they tend to be they often are going to be using their like business email address, whereas like somebody On LinkedIn is often using their Gmail address or something like that. So there is some qualification there. But I think it's kind of hard to argue with the lead quantity and the low cost per acquisition are pretty strong on this thing. So I definitely say that's part of it. I would also just note, outside of paid or paid media, it's been interesting during COVID-19, how it's affected our ability to do like multi channel marketing campaigns. So you know, in the past, you would include something like direct mail, well, direct mail, no one's in the office, like you can't really mail something to an office where no one is, and expect it to actually get to where it's going. There's, you know, Field Marketing is a huge component, like one of the some of our clients have been dumping a ton of extra money into paid media now, because they can't run their multimillion dollar conference that they were going to run, or they can't send their their field marketing and sales teams out to these places. So you know, with those reduction of possible outlets of marketing touches, basically, you really see it focused more on this array of email, paid to degree organic, but organic is a lot harder to target in the near term, like you can build organic, but you can't really be like, Oh, we're going to drive 10,000 Organic leads, you know, for this campaign that we're gonna run for three weeks. So you know, you can do like organic, long run, but really, like paid email and social are like common, the only ways that you can, you know, COVID land that you can, like, quickly connect with your prospects. And so I think those like, between investing in those things, if you need to keep the leads coming, and then investing honestly, usually, in this time as for like architectural purposes, there's a ton of architecture problems that prevent people from having good ABM or good multi channel campaigns, like problems on the website, like problems on the, you know, within the marketing, automation, or CRM or your data set, or like, is your data clean? Or when's the last time you actually sat down and looked at your content gaps and so forth? So there's a ton of architectural things I think people can use the time to improve on but from a campaign perspective, yeah, paid is kind of like, gotta carry a lot of the load here that plus like email and social.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:32:09)Yeah, I mean, emails is going to be huge in the near future, and is already quite an effective tactic. I mean, for people that have built up large CRM files that contain like 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of like, segmented emails, that are just like broken out into exactly who they want to target. Leveraging first party email targeting, whether it's direct email or through like, syncing and matching with the audience graph has to graphs to make them targetable through programmatic channels, that's something that's incredibly valuable to a marketer, and just owning your own data, from that sense is, is the strategy that a lot of people hopefully are working on getting in place now. Or just working on collecting as much as they can. I know, there's just been a huge shift in things you mentioned, like field or conference marketing, and as well, any sort of like direct mail, like mailing stuff to actual addresses, those channels, I guess, are effectively gone until people are back in the offense, or they're allowing conferences to happen again. I mean, I know in our side, over at StackAdapt, some of the IP or ISP, Internet Service Provider targeting we've been doing for corporate IPS just isn't as effective right now, people are just not there. And then as well, like physical conference, digital support, so like, kind of pie in the sky, targeting these large b2b conferences with either geofencing or geo capturing has been like a historical tactic that's worked really well. Fortunately, I mean, a lot of the geo capturing that we've done is still available, and advertisers can still use those stored segments based on historical presence at a conference. But the geofencing aspect is gone, because there's no, there's no actual conference happening. So it's definitely an interesting shift. In terms of like, keeping things going, Yeah, I think the the channels you mentioned earlier, are going to be extremely effective during this time.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:34:13)Yeah. And I think that's a great example of sort of when we were talking about adapting your marketing strategy that that's a great you ask the question about, like, what's working right now, talking about what's not working as well. That's a good example of like, okay, so let's say we're investing X amount of dollars per month into the strategy like that, how are we flexing those dollars? And where are we flexing those dollars into other strategies? I do think that what I have seen is I think a lot of people with their marketing strategies, since there's been a big scare with COVID. A lot of people are just tightening up and cutting those entirely. I think that if you are in the spectrum of companies that is not devastated by COVID that I would encourage people to, rather than just cut all of your expenses. And tighten up, at least have the discussion of like, strategically, how could we reallocate those funds into another sort of like, Next Level meta strategy? With our marketing? I do think that's a healthy thing to consider, rather than just kind of reacting out of fear and just trying to sort of hoard your money.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:35:19)Yeah, I mean, I know that some of the like, the premier b2b data providers are likely rejoicing right now a lot of people who are having to pivot away from those traditional physical, or even IP based strategies are going to be looking towards like a Bombora, or Dun and Bradstreet, to use business record data to reach people on the devices that they've taken home because they're no longer at the office. So I mean, there's definitely still tactics available, it's just up to marketers to sit down, kind of do a, I guess, even like a SWOT analysis of what's possible for them right now. And if there's an opportunity for them to continue to see success during the like the pandemic times, break it all down and spell it out and look to where you can spend and deliver intelligently.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:36:11)Basically, I will, I will say just quickly that, you know, companies are in different positions. So like, some companies might have like a lot of money and they're like, you know, if you're a huge enterprise, you might be this is kind of like a blip for you in the near term. And you're still thinking about, like, what your overall like two year goals look like or something, if you are a, you know, a smaller, like a funded startup whose all their revenue just dried up, and their runway, just shorten from two years to three months, you know, like leaning into the paid curve might not really work out very well for you if you just need to be alive in six months. And so I think, you know, for anyone that can, I would read, I think Nick's advice is great, like read, you know, lean into the curve as much as you can, because there actually is a bunch of opportunity available right now a ton of people are online, a ton of people suddenly have business problems, they need to address very quickly. So like you have, you know, if you're selling a solution to those, like this is a good time to market. So I think there's there's something to be said for that. But it really it really happens on like a kind of like a case by case basis. And then also, like from the you mentioned, kind of IP targeting, I really do feel like right now is the time for like device targeting to really like surge to the forefront. You know, somebody like Bombora, who is has an amazing intent service intent data service, like is relying a lot on, you know, how on people to be filling out forms from known IPs. And when you lose the known IP factor, people, you have to get creative in this kind of targeting. So now, I am confident the market is pretty flexible and very sharp and very intelligent as to solve some of these things. But it's definitely kind of, at least in the near term, kind of a new horizon for how we provide the best possible targeting. That said, it's still like any kind of like really high level programmatic targeting is still going to provide like way better targeting than any sort of like untargeted, or medium targeted, like classic Google display. So there's kind of a spectrum here. And generally, I'd recommend, like, if you have the money to spend right now, you probably should spend it because everyone's online looking for looking for how can I solve my business problem in the age of?\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:38:27)Yeah, I mean, absolutely. In terms of spending intelligently? Like if you can do it, definitely do it. I mean, once let's say like, there's no playbook right now. There's no set guideline that you can put in place that's going to blanket cover your business, it is definitely up to marketers and people like yourselves to help marketers understand how they have the best chance of success. But let's say you've you've carved out a pretty good plan and, you know, it starts to take get traction and start working in terms of like measuring and attribution, like beyond just like a cookie based conversion from a lead gen form, like what type of like attribution or marketing technologies are you guys utilizing to sift through like the bulk data and understand how performance is occurring at like, an account level at a quality level? Like what's that look like for you guys?\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:39:25)Yeah, I'll jump in for that one. First of all, there's lots of different like attribution methodologies that you can utilize to, to get a picture here. I tend to think that like, the distance between zero and one is much greater than the distance between one and two, which is to say the like having no functional attribution is so much worse than, you know, having like, let's say first and last touch, relative to the difference between having first and last versus like robust multi touch. So I would say for most people, if you look at this and you're like, I don't have a super clear picture of Like, let's say the key touches of my closed one or my opportunity pipeline, than just getting anything installed is such a victory that it's worth it. It's kind of no matter what level you are at in the marketing department, like, if you're on the director level, and you're trying to report this, like, this is the report you need. If you're like a tactician and trying to, you know, optimize an account, like being able to see what actually generates pipeline is way more valuable than being able to see what generates leads. And so, you know, there's, there's a lot to be said, for just getting any kind of attribution. But if you are at that level already, and you're looking sort of into the future, real credit is way better applied via multi touch systems, like you can get from visible or lean data or many other providers. But the idea of that being like, you know, okay, let's say that, like Nick said before about the soccer field analogy, right? If you are just focused entirely on the bottom of the funnel, like you might just be looking for these like converting touches, you might miss the fact that, you know, a huge percentage of the overall touches, you know, occurred via organic, right. And it's just like, oh, really organic is driving 70% of your valuable touches. And it's just like this last one that comes in through paid, you get a clearer picture of how that works. And then I ideally just like roll this up to the account level, and be able to say, what were the key touches as the account. But what caused the account to go from being an unengaged account to an engaged one will cause them to go from to an MQ M QA, market marketing qualified account to like an S QA, and be able to say, okay, these key transition moments align that these touches, like that's kind of the the overall attribution plan, if that makes sense. But it's not easy to set up like I kind of noted before, you really need some architecture, in your automation and in your data to be able to actually report on that kind of thing.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:41:51)Do you have any recommendations of someone who maybe feels like their company is at a zero and trying to go from zero to one of how to address or implement that?\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:42:00)Yeah, I mean, like, first and foremost, like, find yourself a CRM, and or a marketing automation admin, who knows this stuff, I'd say probably the most common problem that you get on attribution, actually stems deeper and happens because people assume that Salesforce or you know, Marketo, or Pardot, or whatever, are like plug and play software that you can just like sit down in and get started with no experience, or with minimal experience, actually, kind of amazing people will spend like $50,000, on Marketo, and then give it to their intern, it's, it's like very, kind of crazy. And so just finding somebody that actually understands how these systems work, the actual setup of an attribution system isn't very hard. If you're somebody with any experience in it, like you literally click some buttons, you install a piece of software that you either buy from, you know, a provider, like visible or that you, you get from like a an agency like ours, we have our own attribution software. But like, you know, you basically have somebody who knows how to set this up. Once you have that piece of code. It's literally just like you, you create some fields in your CRM, and then you plug in this code, you run a test, and it's good to go. But if you don't have that pre existing expertise, it's really hard. So yeah, my advice for if you don't have the attribution you need is you probably just need to bite the bullet and get some professional help. Like if your car, you know, started making a squealing noise and smoking. Like, if you're not a mechanic yourself, like you probably need to take it to a mechanic who knows what's going on. And I think that that is true of of like all these technically challenging things, including getting attribution setup.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:43:40)Yeah, I'm from personal experience, like I obviously I use Salesforce and beyond like some of the reports that have been provided to me building out some of my own custom reporting dashboards has been a lot of Google searching on like, very deep threads within forums, to understand the right formulas that go into place. And in terms of like your guys's proprietary, like attribution script. Like, I know you guys have developed one. I don't obviously know what comprises it. And I wouldn't expect you guys to explain that. But in terms of like, building that, like, how is it like an ongoing process? Like how long have you guys been doing that for us? Definitely unique that you guys have your own script.\n\n\n\nNick (00:44:22)We've been doing it for many years. It actually was like super core to our business. The most common thing you get in b2b is just like, Okay, but how do I show that this actually makes money? And if you can't answer that question, then you're pretty liquid to get fired. And you can't answer that question without attribution. So in b2b and b2c, you can just look in Google Analytics and see hey, like we ran these paid campaigns that lead to this much money, but it's more abstract and b2b like Nick can run your next team can run like a beautiful campaign that you know, creates, like hundreds of form submissions that are very cheap rate or whatever it is 1000 means, and somebody might still be like, where's the money, you know what I mean? Or they might, let's say, have gotten five opportunities this quarter, and they were expecting 10. And they're like, this is total garbage. But then like, if you have attribution, you look and you see that all five came from paid. This is like, oh, maybe paid is actually the only thing that's working for you. So a bit sort of mission critical part of our business to get that up and running, it actually is pretty easy to explain how it works. Basically, what happens is like, when someone submits a form on your site, they, you know, enter, like some fields, right? They enter their name, their email, address, their company, their title. But when they arrived on this site, Google and a few other cookies on your browser are tracking too much information like that's where analytics is getting its info is like, you know, What page did I come from, and how did I get here, and so forth. And we basically just take all that information, and then add it to the form in a hidden field. So when they hit enter, not only do they submit their email, they submit the medium that they came from, but they never have to see that or it doesn't disrupt the the flow of their user experience. And then all that info just comes attached with the lead into the CRM. So you can see oh, there was a touch here from this person that came from this medium. And so like, if we want to see how our StackAdapt campaigns are doing on a client, we can just look and see this based on the UTM criteria, like, No, this is a StackAdapt form submission that came through at this time via this page via that campaign. And then we can sort of track it all the way through to get not only just like, how much how many leads? Or what's our cost per lead, but also like, what's our value per lead? Or what's our value per opportunity? Because we can see exactly how many, how many dollars we won, based off of a StackAdapt influence, for example. So having that kind of transparency, I think is like, it's fundamental to what Nick does fundamental to what our SEO and other teams do. I think it's just like, a critical piece of the puzzle.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:46:45)Absolutely. Extremely important. It's, I mean, what's the point of collecting all this information if you're not set up to be able to like, analyze it, right? So in terms of like, the martec piece, it sounds like, you guys have that covered from like, zero to one standpoint, and then one to two, what what would really I mean, mentioned multi touch, like what's involved in one to two.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:47:08)So you can think about the example I just gave, right, like the first and last touch are basically being saved as like these fields on on like a specific person. So like, oh, Andrew showed up, and he started off here, and then his most recent one was there. And that's all the information you get, there's like when you install some, like more advanced software, and get it running, you basically get to see each individual touch that gets saved there in kind of like its own custom module that the like, let's say, like lean data, for example, is going to track for you. So in this case, you can get a sense of you could run like a bi touch report. So you can basically say like, show me all of the organic touches no matter who who did them, you could I think the most valuable thing for me is to be able to when you get that data is to see like a like, assume like an even value touch model, like where do the majority of what like what percentage of my touches come from each medium, and be able to get a sense from that, there's like literally infinite number of possible models that you can use the probably like 10 really popular ones for doing this kind of thing. So that like really heavily weighed first or last, I think like, it's probably like, what's right to do is something like a slightly higher weight towards probably the highest weight towards first touch. And then like a collection of kind of like middling values, like average middle value, and then like a little bit more for the last touch, but like doesn't really matter that much. The idea being to see, you know, what are the ratios of how often people are engaging with different types of mediums. And so you can really kind of see where your investment is best suited, and ideally, like, even down to like the keyword level. In fact, like, these keywords are driving the majority of our touches, and then filter that data back the rest of your team ever. Salespeople know that kind of thing. And then you get into like the ABM world where everything has to be totally aligned. But I think that just with that kind of data, you can do really cool stuff.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:48:57)Yeah, it sounds like an incredibly complex, I guess, balance of information and strategies all kind of intertwining into one. I mean, you're you're talking about like MQL is opportunities, SQL is what type of scoring, like how does scoring occur and sort of keep picking your brain on this? Your knowledge is so far advanced compared to mine?\n\n\n\nNick  (00:49:20)No, I, I think that all of this is extremely relevant to all of the clients that we work with. So and I know, Andrew, this is very much your expertise, I believe that you were actually involved in writing that original script that we use. Yeah. And so you're a good candidate for talking about this, for sure.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:49:35)And actually, I'll tie scoring into kind of what Nick does as well, because I think that it's underutilized in a lot of ways. So scoring, you know, ideally on a leader or prospect level, is designed to show you engagement, right it's designed to show you quality or value of a lead. I think there's always like default modules in the marketing automation platforms like HubSpot or Pardot whatever they have these, like, out of the box scoring systems that are all like, pretty busted, in my opinion.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:50:06)They're like a little 50, grand, 50. Grand. Exactly.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:50:09)So I always prefer to do these things at least partially customized. And so the idea is that, at least like in the model that I set up usually is you have a mix of water, someone's pre qualification. So they're like demographic score, which might be based on their title, their industry, something like that. And those don't change, those stay static. And then somebody's behavioral score, which is a measurement of their engagement, like what forms do they fill out pages, they visit, things like that. And then those things end up getting summed to sort of like whatever your current active score is. And then the engagement score is decay. So like, if I visited a page A month ago, that score stays for awhile, and then goes away. So ideally, your salespeople look at a ranked list of highest to lowest scores of their MQL is, let's say, and then they can sort of prospect in order of highest value. This has some problems on an account based level, because like, you might have 10 people from a Microsoft buying committee, who all have 10 points, and one super fan who's got like, 1000 points, and you might think she's more valuable than your Microsoft team. But on an account score level, you could look at this and see like, oh, well, Microsoft has a lot of points right now, like these guys are pretty engaged. So that's from a scoring perspective, like how I usually set it up, it does require some know how within the CRM and marketing automation to do, but the part that I think is really cool is when you have those scores, which are isn't like quite literally scores of someone's qualification or someone's quality, you can then pull those over into remarketing lists. So like, you know, for someone who's like running display advertising, or match lists, like being able to say these 1000 people are our highest score people, and then these 5000 people are like the next tier of scoring. And so what, so there's like a time with paid in scoring there as well, for sure.\n\n\n\nAlex  51:59Yeah, I mean, being able to target those high score people directly or even create local lakes is definitely like, a huge win, especially, you know, right now, and a lot of traditional strategies are kind of on hold, right. So, I mean, being able to see into that, it's definitely a little bit beyond me, just from lack of experience with working with such advanced tools. But sounds like you guys have an incredible handle on that.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:52:24)A lot of it, I know that a lot of this is like seemingly advanced. And I would say that for sort of a lot of people entering into this for the first time, it sounds very complicated. I do think that in terms of where we're at with attribution, in general, for being able to track this kind of stuff, I think that marketing is still sort of in the development phases of developing attribution. Obviously, when Google Ads was first released, we were measuring conversions. But with people who are using using longer sales cycles, measuring just conversions is not nearly enough, we'll always tell clients, or really anyone something that we preach is that if we invest money into paid media, without some form of attribution, that's typically going to be wasted money, we can't go spending a quarter million of a client's budget with a one year sales cycle. And then after a year goes by of spending that money on, you know, monthly or quarterly basis, not being able to tell them how many leads and opportunities and stuff that that's converted into. I do agree with what Andrew said that sort of what zero to one is more of a vital step and one to two, I do think that like, what I'm hoping if we're looking like five to 10 years in the future, in terms of how we attribute things in, in marketing in general, is that we're not really debating about whether to do first touch and last touch, but that we've developed more elaborate models that do take multi touch into account. What we've seen with leads and what we know about nurturing leads through long sales cycles is that they often have like 10s, or hundreds of touches between organic and paid and everything. And so there are a lot of things to give credit to how we develop an algorithm to be able to track that and give the proper amount of credit is still sort of up in the air, I hope is that in the future, we're talking less about like, Oh, you want to run a campaign on x, let's set up conversion tracking, but more that we're talking about as part of the basic setup, being implementing that full scale attribution for anyone on any platform. I think that would be a really cool tool to see. I just I just don't really think that we're there yet. So we do have to use a lot of these sort of like, third party vendors and software's and stuff like that to be able to strategically craft this together to be able to show it to our clients.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:54:48)Yeah, the industry always changing. I mean, I'm not going to get into this topic, but I think as because it's just a whole nother can of worms, maybe another episode of this but as we transition more and more towards like a universal tracking ID for all devices, all users. I mean, privacy aside, like whatever happens there happens there. But if there is a solution that comes into place that still respects the privacy of users, we may see that kind of leap from zero to two all the time, sort of just zero to one is the starting point. So yeah, I'm definitely like excited about the future with what's going to happen with cookies, IP device IDs, even like desktop device IDs. I heard that might be a thing. Who knows, though? But yeah, I mean, we touched on a lot. This has been fantastic. From COVID to know ABM funnel strategies, the legendary soccer field analogy, and then martech to close it out. I'm super happy with this, guys. And I really appreciate you guys jumping on. I know you guys have lots of clients to get back to you. So I guess we can just call it a day.\n\n\n\nNick  (00:55:56)Yeah. I appreciate you having us here.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:55:57)Thanks so much, Alex. I appreciate it. Yeah.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro  (00:56:01)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find at www.stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/changing-consumer-habits#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/changing-consumer-habits"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Harnessing Changing Consumer Habits to Reshape the Future","datePublished":"2020-06-10T19:19:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:49:05+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/changing-consumer-habits"},"wordCount":9792,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/changing-consumer-habits#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the advertising world where some businesses have stopped advertising completely, and others have increased it. \n\n\n\nJohn Shaughnessy | Regional Vice President, Data Marketplace, LiveRamp\n\n\n\nChristian St. Louis |Director of Vertical Strategy, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)So this combination of COVID plus an expected economic slowdown, I think, begs two questions. One, which new habits will remain, and to which older ones will vanish. And our friends at the Lassus data provider within our marketplace shared a really interesting stat that over 50% of respondents to a recent study, expect to adopt new shopping behaviors as part of their routine in the future. To have a 50% chance to influence somebody to do something different than what has been their autopilot way of doing it up to now is pretty exciting. And so we hope that folks will think about which habits they can take advantage of which habits may be dying a little bit and where they want to jump off the ship before Coast out.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:01:00)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape that how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed a forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers when in the rapidly evolving digital landscape time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:28)Thank you for joining us today. My name is Vitaly, and I'm the host of this podcast. In this episode, we'll take a deeper dive into the topic of data orchestration, and how changes in media consumption impacts verticals like travel, consumer goods, or retail. What really stood out to me in this discussion is really the topic of the automotive industry. Specifically how to find that new balance when people are hesitant to purchase big ticket items. Yet social dynamics push people to own private vehicles because they're hesitant to use public transit. Christian and John discuss different data strategies to reach market consumers. And importantly, the idea of suppression and how to not target people who just drove the car off the lot. Without further ado, here's the episode with John Shaughnessy from LiveRamp..\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:02:12)Alright, welcome to the podcast everyone. Today I'll be talking to John Shaughnessy from from LiveRamp where we'll be talking about data orchestration, the current advertising climate and specific verticals where data orchestration works really well. So thanks so much for hopping on. And joining me today, John.\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:02:31)Christian, very excited to be here.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:02:34)Awesome. So before introductions, just wanted to talk quickly about the definition of data orchestration, because I know it's not necessarily an intuitive phrase, but it's a combination of data identity and machine learning. It's a cohesive strategy that really allows DMPS like live ramp and DSPS like StackAdapt to be successful together by creating like very personalized audiences that are created within the DMP, and then passed over to, to the DSP to execute on all types of digital media. So I'll quickly introduce myself. So I'm on the solutions team at StackAdapt. I partner with the sales team and the technical team teams to empower marketers, basically helping them build unique advertising solutions and drive the growth of the business. So that's kind of a fancy way of saying it, but it's really consider the solutions role to be kind of a translating role between the revenue side of the business and the technical and product side of the business. And so John is the head of data strategy programmatic at live ramp, where he manages the commercial strategy to grow programmatic data buying from the LiveRamp data store marketplace. And he helps live rams partners adopt and scale third party data strategies. And before LiveRamp, John was a management consultant and founded an advertising agency. So with that being said, John, if you can maybe talk a little bit more about how you got into advertising and and how you ended up with live ramp?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:04:07)Happy to Yes, so the transition into advertising was a fortuitous one, when I was a management consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. We helped some media companies, including Viacom on strategy and tactics to help win in their prospective space, and just really became enamored with the industry. So when a college friend tapped me a couple years later to be a co founder for a boutique ad agency. I hopped at the chance as a way to get to learn more and really bring some of the data background I had from my consulting days to this industry, and there was a lot of fun in terms of live ramp before moving to the Bay Area recently I was working in a V. C, in New York City. And this seed stage fund focused on marketplaces. And the LiveRamp data store marketplace was a really fascinating business model for me, that has been growing quickly and helping to balance supply and demand. So data providers, and then on the demand side brands, agencies and platforms, and I thought that would be a fun way to kind of continue my career on the backs of some of the really interesting things that live ramp is doing around identity addressability, et cetera.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:05:36)Cool, thanks. That's super interesting. So I'm curious, how did you find being a co founder of a boutique agency? How did that go?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:05:44)There were good days and bad days. But we had a lot of fun grinding it out. You know, the thing that I think I take away from it most is the responsibility and the ability to wear many hats. That means focusing on, you know, strategy for the agency, elements of marketing, where can you find your niche business development in terms of signing new partners and helping them grow and be successful? And then a data analytics function? Which is how can we find insights to make those who work with us better than they were yesterday? And there's a lot of management and leadership elements as well, as you're looking to hire first employees, figure out who will run certain parts of the business, and hope that you're doing more good than holding people back, as you know, a first time executive?\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:06:41)Yeah, that's super interesting. Again, I come from a similar background in terms of analytics, and data analysis. Originally, I was into data science and transitioning into advertising just seems to make sense, especially in terms of digital just because of the plethora of data that that's out there. And it's available. Super interesting to dig into. awesome to hear. So with that being said, so a lot of people might see who may not be too familiar with LiveRamp might see it as a DMP, where you can, you know, onboard first party data and have that push to different platforms and have a vast third party data store to or marketplace to pick from. But obviously, there's a lot more to it than that. So could you explain kind of like what live ramp does today?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:07:29)You bet. So think of live ramp as providing the data connectivity platform, leveraged by brands and their partners to deliver innovative products and exceptional experiences. And I would say in times like these, we could all use some more exceptional experiences. And so live ramp is powered by four core capabilities, data accessibility, identity, connectivity, and data stewardship. And so live ramp exists to make it easy to connect the world's data people and applications.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:08:00)Awesome. Thanks. Very nice, structured response. So where exactly would you fit into that equation and what area you focused on LiveRamp today.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:08:11)So I work in our data store, which is a marketplace that combines data sellers, so about 150 data providers, spanning all kinds of data types, verticals, and media, and data buyers, who could be brands, agencies, platforms, publishers, and in some cases, data providers as well. And so we are not quite DMP we think of ourselves more as a marketplace, because we're not cookie based DMPS actually, our clients, and what we're doing is focusing on taking the identity work that is core to live rams product suite, and matching it with ethically sourced data, so that people can get the most out of their first party, third party or a combination of those two.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:09:01)That's great. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people may not know that. So that's, that's super, super insightful. You know, the definition of a DMP gets thrown around, and it's good to understand where live rent fits in that equation.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:09:14)That's right. And then we work with partners, like StackAdapt, who are DSPs, who can help those data buyers activate across a variety of platforms and reach the target audiences in the places that they're most influential.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:09:32)Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's kind of like what the definition of data orchestration is, is coming from, you know, maybe first collecting the offline data or working with the original data provider and then working with LiveRamp to kind of address all of that onboarded model that whatever whatever it may be, and us kind of like the identity portion to make sure that audiences addressable as possible, and then how that executed through a DSP to through media.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:09:59)That's right. Yeah, it's a it's a big effort. But fortunately, we've got good partners like, like StackAdapt to help make it easier for folks to find what they need the audience's they need and then be able to reach them.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:10:14)Yeah, absolutely. So that being said, what are the main focuses for for 2024? Live ramp in particular?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:10:24)Yeah. So I'll come back to some of the broad live ramp things because I'm sure we'll want to talk a little bit about Google's cookie deprecation and what it means for the advertising industry going forward. But in our world of the data marketplace, we're really focusing on three things. The first is reprioritizing business outcomes, which I hope to come back to in just a sec. The second is balancing supply and demand across the marketplace. And within various verticals, some of which are high fliers right now, some of which are struggling a little bit. And then third is to help our partners with back end investment they can be doing, not only to help them in these tough times, but to prepare themselves to be better coming out the other side.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:11:10)Cool. Yeah, I mean, that it's interesting that that you bring up, you know, working with both sides, because until recently with, with Google Chrome's announcement, which I think we'll get into a little bit later and in more depth, but working with DSPs, and both SSPs is fairly interesting, I think. And so could you just describe a little bit how you kind of fit in terms of working with DSPs, which we we've already talked about a little bit, but also working with the exchange SSP side of the business?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:11:39)Yeah, for sure. So we want to be kind of that catalyst that makes those connections, right. So one thing we can talk about here in a little bit is a big initiative for LiveRamp this year, which is called authenticated Traffic Solutions, where we're trying to help publishers be able to get a replacement for cookies in the bloodstream. And so that is one unique focus that we have, where we're trying to create this situation where there is a better value exchange. And by that, I mean, if we can help publishers have better content. And then we can incent consumers of that content to show trust by authenticating, then we can come up with a much better way to allow for the ecosystem to work seamlessly, even as cookies take a step back. And that's something that's really important to us, and something that we are throwing a lot of investment and colleagues at.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:12:51)Yeah, definitely. I think that's a super interesting side of the business that it's kind of on everyone's minds in 2020. And we'll Yeah, we'll get we'll get into that in a little bit. But I think that's a great transition to the second, the second section of what we're going to talk about. So this section is really meant to focus on what is happening in the industry today, in the advertising industry. And the first thing, of course, it's always on everyone's mind, including likely both of ours is, you know, with the human tragedy of COVID 19 ongoing, and its effect on the economy. There's impacts that are far reaching, you know, both personal and, and business wise. And so I just wanted to touch on the topic on how LiveRamp sees media consumption trends changing and how, how LiveRamp sees the effect, I guess, on the entire advertising industry in general, from the perspective of, I guess, the data side, but, you know, working with both SSPs and DSPS really seeing the entire tech industry.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:13:54)Yeah, absolutely. I think you bring up a great point. First and foremost, we hope that all the listeners of today's podcast are safe, healthy and sane. It easy to I think get caught up in the disruption to an industry or to the broader economy. But we do need to realize and harken back to in these times that this is impacting people. Right. And so I think a lot of what we will try to share today is trends and insights that reflect what we are seeing, but also what the impact is for individuals and verticals and the economy at large. Because I think one of the big takeaways is we need to still be able to reach people, the right people in the right places with the right messaging. And getting those things right may require a little bit of a change in our approach. Given the sensitivity of this time, and so many things being brand new. So, maybe to start with some of the media trends, we got some great insights from our industry friends at IAB, they pulled about 400. media planners, media buyers and brand leads. About 75% of those respondents were VP or above, and three quarters said that buyside Coronavirus will have a greater impact on us ad spend then the financial crisis when ad spend dropped 13%. And as a result, we've already seen that 24% of marketers have paused all ad spend for the rest of q1 and q2. And then another 46% are adjusting their advertising spend through June. And so far, we've seen digital ad spend down about a third and traditional ad spend down about 40%. Now those Christian that are still advertising are adjusting their in market tactics, and are actually increasing and in many, many cases doubling down on audience targeting, OTT and CTV device targeting and programmatic buying. So our friends at comScore shared some insight that they've seen 29% year over year growth in OTT households for CTV, and 43% for streaming boxes, most of which benefits the Big Four, but Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime and Hulu. And then additionally, we have seen that social use is just absolutely exploding. Alliant one of our data partners, reports that daily social media activity is up 70%. And to put some context around that there was a smartly i o study in November of 2019, where 52% of retail marketers said that they plan to spend more on social advertising in 2020, then in 2019, and 50% of them were planning to spend at least half of their annual marketing budget on social media advertising this year. So a 70% increase in usage probably means that there is still some supply that is available to be purchased and to reach people who are spending more time at home on their devices and looking for distractions in this time. \n\n\n\nChristian  (00:17:30)Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting to hear your perspective on that. And we actually ran a webinar last week, addressing similar similar topics, kind of giving insights and trends really as much data as possible to tap advertisers and marketers to you know, help understand how that affects their business. And one thing we we definitely noticed is, you know, as people are staying home, like you mentioned, there's just an increase in supply naturally with with seven year like you said, 70% of people being on social media, and people watching more CTV and OTT content as their you know, sheltering in place. So it's it's interesting that you know, there's there's been articles and research done on you know, the creation of a buyer's market as some marketers reduce reduce their spending or you know, switch media types and the supply is ever increasing. So, that being said, you know, the, the numbers are their supplies is up, demand is a little bit down. Of course, that changes for every channel, but, so, what are your thoughts on advertising during a pandemic? You know, in a buyers market, like like there is, would that involve, you know, expanding strategy and tactics or, you know, would there be kind of like the most important being pressed on the on the messaging part on having very empathetic messaging and really understanding the human aspect.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:18:57)I think you're right on all of them. If I had to pick one, shout it from a mountain top piece of advice, it would simply be don't stop advertising. Dating back a century Christian studies find that those who keep spending come out ahead. In the 1920s, Harvard Business Review revealed that those who continue to advertise during the recession of 1921 to 23, saw a sales growth of 20%, while those who reduced their spend fell to 7% decline. In the 80s. McGraw Hill research found that b2b companies who maintained or increased their budgets grew 275% More during the recession, and for up to the next three years. So, in every recession, one of the first things companies do is pull back on advertising. But as I'm sure that you've seen in some of the stats, you've researched and shared with your friends in the industry. Pulling back prevents advertisers from taking advantage of at least for benefits Number one, the noise level drops when competitors cut back spend to the cost of advertising drops yielding better deals. Three, advertisers are projecting stability in a difficult time, and probably most importantly, for Share of Voice leads to share of market, which leads to increased profits.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:20:23)Determining audience identity has become increasingly vital among advertisers as they face the complexity of challenges when trying to engage with audiences in a meaningful way. Here at the how agencies Thrive podcast, we are obsessed with helping marketers level up their digital strategies by focusing on making better decisions for activating audiences to ensure their digital marketing strategies to succeed each and every time. That's why we have created a guide specifically for reaching consumers across multiple touchpoints in the most engaging manner, visit go.stackadapt.com/audience Guide to get a copy of making better decisions for activating audiences. That's go.stackadapt.com/audienceGuide.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:21:02)Yeah, that those are those are great points. And they all you know, there's, I think it really depends on the on the industry as well, in terms of, you know, if it's what type of advertising to do, but it sounds like most of the statistics lend to saying that, it's not a good idea to stop. Hell, right. But for example, like if you put yourself in the shoes of a travel and tourism advertiser, where they're not able to necessarily run campaigns, where conversions, at least the in the natural sense of the word, word conversions being, you know, people signing up, or people booking hotels online, or, or visiting different tourism sites, or booking cruises and things like that, you know, it doesn't make sense right now for for any of that to happen, as you know, traveling is being put on pause. And so with that respect, I feel like there's kind of two approaches. The first one being the return on adspend approach, which may not make sense for, for example, for a travel and tourism advertiser. But then the second one is the is the brand health approach, and having a very empathetic message that still keeps that brand in the minds of consumers and helps potentially gain trust and confidence with them. So So what are your thoughts on the different types of advertising? Obviously, industry dependent right now?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:22:23)Sure. So I wanted to follow up on your point about maintaining that share of voice but reconsidering a different style of messaging for these times, because I think it's spot on. The IAB also gave some insights here, saying that 63% of marketers have already changed their in market messages. 42% are increasing mission based marketing. And so a couple good examples that you may have seen or could easily google it. The first is Walmart's retail heroes. The CEO crafted a video thanking 1 million frontline employees for dedication to its customers. And then no doubt many of us have seen Miller lights virtual tap virtual tip jar, I should say, campaign that donated $1 million to a bartender relief fund. And the ads encourage patrons viewers to do the same. And then the IAB also found that 41% are increasing caused related marketing. So an example here is dubs courage is beautiful. It highlights mask wearing health care workers. And then they donated 200,000 masks to New Jersey hospitals. McDonald's in Brazil, redrew the two sides of their iconic brand M to signal social distancing. So there are some brands. And I would argue this is across all categories to your point where you can continue to make a connection with your current customers. Maybe acquisition is not the best use of marketing dollars. But there have been some really strong opinions from consumers that appreciate brands that are going out of their way to deliver relevant and timely information. In fact, 87% said that is top of mind for them. So even if the approach is not to go gung ho to try to anywhere from stop the bleeding to gain market share, there is this human connection we've talked about before, especially with current customers, to be able to let them know that a brand is trustworthy. A brand is looking out for them and will be there for them once we inevitably move out of this time.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:24:37)Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, that speaks to really the type, the type of brand that that's running the advertising is that it really may not make sense to run certain acquisition based campaigns. But then on the flip side, if you think about CPG, for example, and potentially smaller CPG brands that may have been on the backs of the shelves or A little harder to reach for consumers. Those are potentially, you know, open now as people are shopping online and are, are less concerned potentially about the brand, but just about, you know, receiving the product that may that may help the consumer. So I think it's really the decision of the consumer at the end of the day, which will then help inform the brand on how they can move forward.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:25:21)Well said, and I think actually to build on that a little bit. One thing that I think is important, regardless of whether you go down one of those two paths, or perhaps a third is awareness by advertisers, that they can harness changing consumption habits, we're at this inflection point, which very rarely off very rarely happens to be able to change behaviors in a significant way, as if to totally reshape them. So let me tell you what I mean. 2009 study in the European Journal of Social Psychology, prove that forming a new habit takes about 66 days. That study debunked a 1960s, one that claimed it's closer to 21 days. And I think as we are talking here today, on April 15, or quarantine could certainly last 66 days. And so this combination of COVID plus an expected economic slowdown, I think, begs two questions. One, which new habits will remain, and to which older ones will vanish. And our friends at the Lassus data provider within our marketplace, shared a really interesting stat, that over 50% of respondents to a recent study, expect to adopt new shopping behaviors as part of their routine in the future, to have a 50% chance to influence somebody to do something different than what has been their autopilot way of doing it up to now is pretty exciting. And so we hope that folks will think about which habits they can take advantage of which habits maybe dying a little bit and where they want to jump off the ship before Coast out.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:27:13)Yeah, very well put. I mean, I appreciate all the statistics that you're throwing out there. It's very, very informative. Yeah. So that. That being said, I mean, yeah, there's, there's changes that were, that you mentioned, that are really potentially long run, habit changes for consumers, for everyone. And one that comes to mind kind of going off off topic a little bit here. But one that comes to mind is with with linear TV and live sports consumption, you know, the with the live sports hiatus for any sports fans out there, it's obviously not an easy time not being able to watch your favorite teams play and, and it's really a hole in the TV landscape in terms of content, but also in terms of, of ad spend, is there's you know, billions of dollars that would have been spent on March Madness, will the combination of March Madness, the NHL, NBA Playoffs, international soccer, etc. And the question is, will that be will that be a big influence in terms of cord cutting, and people who may unsubscribe in the meantime, while they're not able to watch their live sports and become comfortable with an Ott, CTV can subscription and will not put pressure on the bigger networks to potentially focus more of their time and effort on on providing that content that live sports content on on smart TVs? And envious subscription. So, you know, that could be one of the lasting effects as well.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:28:38)I agree, I was brought to tears as you were describing all those sports leagues that have been postponed or, or perhaps canceled for the rest of the season. And one of the biggest trends that we have seen data buyers in our marketplace, reaching out to our audience Solutions team, which is our resident experts on data providers and data segments is exactly for what you're describing. How can I reach sports fans, now that I don't have the stalwarts to go to and so it has kind of reinforced the importance of audience targeting and being able to find these folks where they are and where they are now might not just be, you know, home versus at a bar, but it's also on what mediums they're now devouring, you know, content and obviously, all the trends that I've seen, it sounds like you have to just point to OTT and CTV can some consumption going through the roof. And you know, in the meantime, IAB was noting that 73% of these media planners, media buyers and brand leads believe If Coronavirus will impact TV up fronts and spend by up to an average of 20%. And you know, as it is right now, these upfront presentations aren't taking place and a lot of content production is being halted, right, which is even, I think impacting some of the, you know, HBOs, Netflix, etc, that are trying to pump out as much new content during this time as they can.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:30:23)Yeah, absolutely. And then you see, for example, other types of platforms that that are producing more short form content that doesn't require that production level of production, increasing in popularity as well.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:30:37)Yeah, you've probably seen adverts for this platform called quibi. Qu IBI, which is short for quick bites, they raised by startups standards and incredible amount of money, and are enlisting celebrities largely to do I think content that's always less than 10 minutes. And while there's been some mixed reviews, I think from viewers, it hasn't stopped the amount of money and resources being pushed into it. So I think that's one example right now of where people are trying to strike while the iron is hot.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:31:15)Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna mention. I just to be honest, I didn't know how to pronounce the name.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:31:21)So no worries. And you know, it's interesting, too, I think you were mentioning a little bit about CPG. To me, and I think most of our audience could probably associate with this. There have been a lot of interesting findings that point to some of these habit consumption tipping points. So I don't know if you fall into some of these buckets. But I know we have at my house. IRI noted that buyers are reversing long term trends towards organic and natural products favoring stronger cleaning products. So they're basically saying I'm concerned about Coronavirus. The fact that it can live on hard surfaces. I can appreciate things that are good for the earth. But right now I care to protect my health. Right. And so that seems to be bringing us back to a time where maybe more abrasive, maybe more chemically infused products are having a little bit of a renaissance, right.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:32:25)Yeah, I mean, on the flip, this isn't, doesn't really have anything to do with advertising. But on the flip side, you see the changes in the environment that are occurring, due to people being at home, as well, which is, you know, super interesting. I remember going really off topic here. But I remember seeing a video from Cancun, in the in the resort town, where there were, there was a video of a Jaguar and of alligators, like roaming in the pools of the of the resorts, just really, really peculiar times.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:32:56)And in general, it is it's a little bit of an indictment that when we stay home, you know, you can see the Himalayas in India for the first time that, you know, ozone deterioration is that it's like 20 year or 50 year low. But yeah, I mean, there, there are some I guess, as hard as it is to say this and beneficiaries in this time. Another thing that I've seen that I thought was pretty comical, but absolutely describes me to a tee. IRI also reported that consumers are returning big time to comfort brands. So for instance, Kraft mac and cheese saw a 67% increase in new buyers versus traditional times. And I know that, you know, in my first hoarding run to Trader Joe's, I bought three or four boxes of mac and cheese after not having had it for years. And that is one thing that I continue to replenish, even as it's clear that I'll be able to get my hands on mac and cheese for the foreseeable future. So I don't know if you've had any or or seen any examples of that, where we're kind of going back to maybe some like nostalgic tendencies.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:34:10)Yeah, for sure. I think that, like when you get into, or at least I think it's slowed down now as as you see from different like foot traffic reports that are provided by, you know, companies like factual, recently acquired by Foursquare and cubic and these other foot traffic companies, you see that huge spike, I guess, a month or a month or so ago now where people were getting out in large numbers, you know, because it was so uncertain, but I think that's really fallen off lately. But in that in that original surge, I think, you know, I experienced that as well. And I think people are, we're just throwing things in their cards that that were more comforting, comforting and they wouldn't have, you know, really thought of purchasing like a month before.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:34:51)That's right. And the last thing that I'll mention, which actually speaks to the more things change, the more they stay the same. McKinsey did a study where were asked folks about their expected consumption over the next two to four weeks, and alcohol spend was projected to be about 25%, lower. So this kind of suggests that there's a disconnect sometimes between buyers intention and their action, right. And that's something that as marketers, we're always trying to bridge that gap between what folks might say they want to do, and then the voting with their wallets. Anecdotally, it feels like I've been invited to more happy hours over the past three weeks than over the prior three years. So I doubt that consumption is going down. But it does point to the fact that some changes might actually not be happening, or happening in the way that we anticipate.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:35:46)Yeah, I mean, and again, like we were talking about before, it's it's really different depending on on every industry that you're looking at, whether it's alcohol, you know, food and drink, or alcoholic beverages, or whether it's travel and tourism or b2b, there's, there's all these different changes that that are affected by this. And so, transitioning to, to that topic. Are there specific verticals that are standing out, from live rands perspective today, either positive or negative? What? What are the main trends that you've you've observed in those industries?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:36:20)Yeah, so I think CPG is experiencing tailwind travel, as you've mentioned a couple of times, is struggling. ADARA, one of our data providers reported that travel searches for the week of March 23, were down 80% year over year, and bookings were down 87%, year over year. The good news, I would say, in all of this is that after both 911 in the financial crisis, international travel to the US increased dramatically by about 10% year over year in each case. So there's something to be looking forward to. And again, probably a reason not to totally shut down advertising budgets and simply sit on the sidelines. But across travel, the impact has been huge tourism economics predicts a $400 billion hit to us travel spending. The World Travel and Tourism Council has warned that COVID could cut 50 million jobs. And that's doubly impactful because the tormin tourism industry accounts for about 10% of global GDP. And experts in that field are saying once the pandemic is under control, it could still take up to 10 months for the sector to return to normal levels. So I think that there will probably be some deals to incentivize people to travel. But as long as restrictions exist, it's not even really on the menu of options.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:37:50)Yeah, what? Sorry, go ahead.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:37:55)I was just gonna say what I think is an interesting third vertical is consumer finance, because this one really goes back to what we were talking about earlier, your really salient point about, we have to remember that we're all humans being impacted before. It's a vertical before it's it's an industry before it's an economy. Right. And so it's kind of no news at this point that there have been historically high jobless claims in the United States, and in many other countries. TransUnion did a report, where they said 61% of Americans are being financially impacted by Coronavirus. And that's up about eight points from just a month ago. So the impact is coming quickly. And affected consumers report a budget shortfall of about $1,000 and are saying within six weeks are not sure that they're going to be able to pay their bills or their loans. What is good news, and what I hope has been a result of the consumer finance industry's efforts to reach out to its clients is that 14% of impacted respondents don't have a game plan to pay bills, but that was 42% earlier in March. So what we've seen is a trend of folks reaching out to lenders, and those lenders often giving payment options about two thirds of the time to defer or otherwise make them more amenable and I think this is a really good example of how we need to focus on yes, we want to sell more things. But we do need to be very cognizant of folks livelihoods and not just the financial stress but the mental stress and how can there be me be more reassurance by brands that things will be alright, and that brands can help be part of that return to normalcy in short order?\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:39:54)Yeah, yeah, very well put. And I think that obviously the healthcare industry plays a big role in that But to your point, the consumer facing financial services industry really has an important job to do in in helping consumers as much as possible. And taking kind of a backseat to, you know, potentially selling credit cards or other different things that they may be used to when when the economy is up. But more being in a support role and having their their mantra and their advertising and their messaging, kind of circling or orbiting around that that empathetic point.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:40:34)Absolutely. That's going to be key, I think, in times of crisis, financial services organizations, and I was working at JP Morgan, during the financial crisis, take a lot of reputational hits, and some of that is obviously very well deserved. So hopefully, they are being even more sensitive to the need to be empathetic in this time. Because it's the right thing to do.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:41:01)Yeah, completely agree. Okay, well, so we've spent a lot of time on that topic, which makes sense, it's on everyone's mind, including both of ours. But speaking of other trending topics, in particular, I guess starting back in January, about the announcement from Chrome, in that they were going to discontinue the support of third party cookies. So I'll just describe the announcement to give all the listeners context quickly. So back in January, Google announced it will join Safari and Firefox and blocking third party cookies in its Chrome web browser. And their head of engineering said it'll happen approximately in two years. So roughly the beginning of 2022. So John, over to you. How do you think LiveRamp is approaching Chrome's announcement of discontinuing third party cookies?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:41:53)Sure. So this announcement was pretty much in line with our expectations, Christian LiveRamp has been planning for a world without third party cookies for the last several years. The other thing that I'd want to emphasize is we're prepared for these changes. So lab ramp has launched its open and neutral authenticated Traffic Solutions, or ATS for short, as you might read in the press, or maybe hear your industry friends discussed in launch last year, and it can be leveraged by brands, agencies and publishers today to buy inventory without the need for a third party cookie. And so far, those addressability solutions have been kind of lovingly embraced by the industry, who's been telling us at least for a couple of years now that they welcome a simple standard and an unbiased solution. I believe we've now signed on 39 publishers globally that reach 16 billion daily impressions across 1000 websites. And then on the other side, identity link and enabling buying and measuring on IDL, as we short phrase, our identity Link has also been implemented or is being adopted by 34 DSPS and 15 SSPs. So we talked a little bit earlier about how we work with both sides. And we're trying to make sure that the concept of bidding on ideal is something that both sides of the ecosystem are fully embracing.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:43:23)Great explanation, and I think it really is an issue that will impact everyone in the ad tech industry. So maybe to help everyone understand a little bit better in the eyes of including myself in the eyes of a publisher. How would identity link and you know this a solution like identity link help publishers, day to day efforts with with the disappearance, assuming the disappearance of the third party cookie happens as Google says.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:43:55)So I think that live ramp remains a leader in consumer privacy, and really strongly believes that everyone should have control and choice over their data. But that doesn't have to be at odds with helping publishers succeed. In fact, we kind of feel that this new improved infrastructure can help to create better trust between publisher and consumer, and consequently, consumer and marketer. So the way that we look at it, and there was a great article penned by Travis cleaner, our SVP of adjustability on Digiday. And I think he summed it up best by kind of saying, the whole point is to enable publishers to create experiences that provide value. offer consumers a method to express trust through authentication, and avoid having to rely on unsustainable solutions, like fingerprinting, insecure, universal IDs or hashed emails, which I think a lot of folks have pushed back on in the industry for a variety. Do you have concerns?\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:45:01)Yeah, that's, that's great. And I think it's there's definitely a balance that needs to be struck in terms of finding the middle ground between personalization and privacy. And I think, you know, as, as people continue to work and collaborate on these on these issues that that will be found. And I think identity link is obviously, an awesome solution, which we're leveraging at StackAdapt, as well.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:45:26)Thank you for the vote of approval there. Christian, we always appreciate that.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:45:31)Yeah, absolutely. We're really excited about the launch of, of the product that we're going to be leveraging identity link for. But you can talk about that another time. So what other alternative solutions do you think could work? You know, whether it comes from Chrome or other other players in the industry? And what is your point of view on that live ramp?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:45:54)So not to poopoo other alternatives? I think we are just focused on doubling down, being really committed to enabling a open, healthy and competitive ecosystem. It's at least our point of view that industry shifts like this kind of underscore the importance of our approach. And as we see that Google's announcement to phase out third party cookies, is an opportunity to further accelerate this ETs that we've talked about. And we're trying to do everything that we can to position that as kind of the gold standard going forward that all parties can benefit from and find value that they desire.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:46:41)Great. Yeah, I mean, that we talked about the the publisher side and the, on how SSPs would work with work with identity link, and identity solutions in general. And I think the the key side that, that we didn't talk about is the buyer side, which is, you know, we experienced very much at at StackAdapt, being a DSP. And I think that as identity solutions pop up, it really will just enhance the ability for people to Target and bid as, as more essentially a more private, balanced identity form of identity, like identity link, will allow advertisers to target at that level, except with with an advanced state of privacy, and opt in, etc. And I think that, if anything, the, you know, the cookie being the the very old technology that it is, I think it's really a step forward for could be a step forward for the industry. Again, it's all it's all speculation at this point, as we don't know exactly how things will unfold by 2022. But if you look at if you look at recent technologies, like mobile phones, and smart TVs, connected TVs, set top boxes, etc. None of those involve cookies whatsoever. And the targeting is very, is very one to one and effective. And so I think having these alternative solutions for the internet, and the open web was only natural to come.\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:48:15)Well said.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:48:16)Thank you. So yeah, I think we've I think we've discussed the the cookie, the disappearance of the third party cookie, as people as people put it, to good point. But we're always happy to both StackAdapt and LiveRamp. Talk to anyone about about the uncertainty of the cookie. And with that, we can move on to the last section here. We kind of touched on a few of these topics. So we're going to talk about automotive CPG, and retail, and how things are changing. Right now, for those three industries. We already touched a little bit on CPG. But we also wanted to talk about in general, how LiveRamp can help support those, those different verticals. And what our tried and true solutions from a data perspective that work in those industries. So for the first one that we didn't really talk much about is is automotive. So again, jumping back to the topic of right here right now, how do you see the automotive industry being affected by by the economic downturn and Coronavirus?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:49:29)It definitely has been impacted. I think one of the things that trans Union's reports shared was that folks are deprioritizing big ticket purchases. Vacations are the first things that get pushed back but then it's auto purchases and home purchases, right. And so you've got that kind of financial squeeze. In addition, around most parts of the country. It's not very easy to go to a dealership right now and I Walk the lot, and we'll in deal. And so there definitely has been an impact. I don't have a lot of stats on hand. But I know that has been an industry that is that has seen a hit. I think in terms of strategies Christian that we've seen be useful for auto historically, I think the first is just leveraging kind of auto providers who enable targeting based on purchase and ownership data. There are three or four very strong ones that we work with each utilize different data points, so maybe just a quick blurb on each. There's V 12, who has Vin level ownership database, that's a leading source for kind of identifying customers who own a certain type of vehicle. And they use service reports. So that also can include secondary owners, those who have bought used, Hulk is a very strong brand, they have one of two sources of DMV sales match data segments are predictive, but based on a deterministic transaction, data asset experience as the other source of DMV sales, match data. And then a new comer to the live ramp data store is urban science. So they control one of the leading new car purchase data assets. And in a little bit of a twist versus V 12, pokin. Experience, they believe the best use case for their data is actually suppression, they can turn off advertising for buyers who convert even faster than the OEMs. Can. So that's a great way to make sure that continued ad spend does not target somebody who just drove a car off the lot yesterday.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:51:47)Interesting. Yeah, that sounds like some very innovative companies in the in the automotive industry in particular, that I'm not necessarily as familiar with. So thanks for elaborating on those. And I just remembered, actually, I think we had a discussion the other day, where we were talking about the the auto industry, and the fact that public transportation is a little bit, probably taking a downturn, at least we've experienced that up here in Toronto, as people are staying home and limiting person to person contact. And so that this is completely speculation, because I don't have any stats to back it up. But I would feel that the automotive industry has seen potentially seen an uptick as people are staying in their own cars and looking for other methods to get around that are a little more isolated.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:52:31)I think there we've hit this point for a couple of different industries. But we know that there is a lot of advertising spend to buyers of a certain brand reassuring them that they have a safe car, they have a fast car, they have a durable car. And I'm sure that some of the money that might typically go towards acquisition is being recalibrated to building those brand relationships, because those are so important in the run up to the two or three or four times in your lifetime where you make that big purchase.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:53:07)Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And the big purchase is something that you mentioned that, you know, is likely taking, taking a pause right now, but it's still very important to be to have that brand health and to partner with consumers in in a feel good way, especially in a time like we're experiencing right now. So that being said, the last industry, I was going to talk about CPG and ask you a few questions about that. But I think we covered a lot of it naturally in our conversation about 20 minutes ago. So the last the last thing I wanted to talk about was was the retail industry. So with businesses that involve face to face interaction, closing down, how's LiveRamp worked with retail focused customers during this time?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:53:51)Yeah, so I think there's a couple things that we're focusing on AI. The first I would say is helping to drive customers to EECOM. So combining identity resolution with third party audiences to find retailers customers, and drive them to buy online. The second is supplementing location data that buyers might have historically purchased with purchase data. Retail loves location data, right, who visits your stores and your competitors stores. But transaction data can help fill those current gaps. That said, some of our close location data providers like factual and cubic and place IQ, are producing some really interesting insights and trends right now about where people aren't going. And so putting that together with other pieces of the puzzle, you can figure out where maybe foot traffic has come to a standstill, eg moles, and where you might be able to recover some of that lost revenue online. And then wanted to mention a new provider and The Data Store precise target. So they have 5 billion SKU level customer transactions provided by retailers to create 400 million consumer taste profiles for over 11,000 brands. And so there are folks who are coming in looking to create kind of retail coops of sorts, modeling audiences, but based on deterministic seeds to help retail brands survive and hopefully flourish on the other side.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:55:35)Yeah, and I think one, I think one point you brought up, that really rings true. With me, as well as that, it's what where people aren't going or what people are not consuming. Now that, you know, consumer habits have changed, and media consumption has changed. You know, people aren't going to live sports games. Which means, you know, if you were to advertise that those live sports games, or, you know, whether it be digital out of home, whether it be billboards, or whether it be simply advertising, you know, on TV, and for live sports, there's other ways to still capture those audiences. And, you know, potentially find them across social, digital, etc, and still engage with, with your consumers that way. And instead of taking a pause, and just kind of giving up. And, and with that being said, I think it's also seen, one thing that I was thinking about the other day is in a b2b industry, you know, a lot of sales is driven through in person events, conferences, kind of face to face interactions. And with that being paused as well. The question is, you know, do as an advertiser, do I do I? Do I pause? And do I wait for a time when when I can engage in those events again, and simply forget about that portion of the sales pipeline, or, you know, given, depending on the financial circumstances of the advertiser, do I, you know, find another way to find that audience and potentially engage with them in a digital manner. So I think that that really affects both retail, b2b and any other industry that's super focused on on face to face interaction. And like, one strategy that came to mind was, if you're planning on attending five different conferences, and you know, the companies and the people roughly that we're going to be at those conferences. Well, you know, with technology the way it is today, and through partners like live ramp, you can still activate those audiences and reach them with a digital message. So I think it's all about really shifting, shifting a mindset.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:57:36)That resonates with me very much. In fact, we find that a high percentage of our requests to our audience Solutions team, our resident experts on data providers, and segments are for b2b. And I think that's been even increasing in this time, as folks are trying to find those alternative ways that you mentioned, to reach decision makers, because they don't want buying cycles to close, you know, right now, people are working in different places, and maybe not able to go to some of those conferences and events that you mentioned, but they're still working. And so I think that there are lots of ways to be able to get to those decision makers, those check cutters, and still present, you know, the value proposition of, of your particular business.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:58:24)Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, there's definitely a huge shift that everyone's, you know, everyone's trying to get accustomed to, and I think as people, we're very, very persevering. And I think that, you know, as everyone, everyone continues to get used to their, to their circumstances, that in everyone, the human race, in general, to be, to be, to have a bit of a hyperbole is, is gonna persevere and that I think, that I think business and the economy and we'll all follow suit as well. And that's, that's the that's the second or third time you brought up the the audience solutions desk. So I just wanted to I don't know if Sam will listen to this, but I wanted to shout out to Sam, who we we work with, at our at these I myself work with, on a daily basis. Shout out to him for being an awesome and awesome counterpart of live ramp.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:59:17)Oh, he'll be thrilled to know that you gave him a shout out. Yes, Nick and Sam and Andy and our audience Solutions team can be reached on our data store at live ramp.com aliased and are both very smart people to work with, and some of the most fun people you'll interact with in the course of a day. So again, at a time like this, where there's some uncertainty, and I think we're all taking a little bit of a hit. It's great to be working with people who really lighten your day and those three certainly do it.\n\n\n\nChristian  (00:59:52)Certainly and, and it's been great chatting with you as well, John and wanted to call out that. I had a really great conversation today and I hope that everyone enjoys listening to our conversation. So I wanted to thank you again for taking the time to chat with me today. It's much appreciated.\n\n\n\nJohn (01:00:09)Oh, Christian. My pleasure. This was such a fun chat learned a lot from you guys. And so appreciate your partnership. StackAdapt and LiveRamp have been doing some really fun things. And I know we're only getting started.\n\n\n\nChristian  (01:00:20)Yeah, absolutely. And we've got some really exciting things to announce in the near future. So thanks again, John. And thanks to everyone. Thanks, everyone for for listening as well. Stay safe, healthy and sane. Yep, stay stay safe and healthy everyone.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (01:00:36)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/crisis-management-strategies#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/crisis-management-strategies"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Go-to Strategies for Crisis Communications","datePublished":"2020-06-17T19:27:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:48:56+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/crisis-management-strategies"},"wordCount":7086,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/crisis-management-strategies#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe examine important distinctions between brand and crisis communications, and offer tips on how agencies can communicate a brand's message during a time of crisis.\n\n\n\nLanny Cardow | VP, Head of Digital Strategy, NATIONAL Public Relations\n\n\n\nBrandon Langevin | Senior Sales Director, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nAmika Evans | Sales Director, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Even within this month, you know, we've seen a lot of change. And you can say it's happening every day. But it's one of the incredible risk and danger for brands right now. We're communicating, it's certainly not an all or nothing. There's no easy way to say, you know, don't do this rebars. But it's what were mindful. This is essential mindfulness of tone, mindfulness, public anxiety, mindfulness to where people's heads are at right now. We subscribe to the Angus Reed daily tracker, which is a wonderful email product, by the way. And the latest one said that 64% of Canadians in their panels said it was important to advertise right now. Now, does that mean that 64% of people are going to take up pitchforks? No, of course not. They see 1000s of ads a day and people might even remember some of them. But it's, it certainly means that there's a strong vigilance in the public right now.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:01:00)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape to How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:29)Thanks for joining us today. My name is Vitaly, and I'm the host of this podcast. This episode is going to be all about public relations and crisis communication. I've really liked the way Lanny explained the difference between advocacy communication and brand communication work, what I learned is that there's a big opportunity for brands to align their messaging around some key trends and fundamental industry shifts. Ultimately, using this advocacy as a thought leadership tool can be a very strong vehicle to build brand awareness. Additionally, what I like about this episode is the very tactical know how on how to be in market during sensitive times, and how to navigate challenging times to build stronger relationships with consumers. Now it's done to get some deeper insights from our guests for today's episode, Lanny Cardow, from NATIONAL PR.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:02:14)Well, thank you everybody, for joining and listening to StackAdapt Podcast. Today. We'll start by introducing both hosts. My name is Brandon, and I'm one of our sales directors at StackAdapt. So my role is primarily overseeing the digital media strategy and execution across one of our sales teams. And I'm joined by my partner in crime, Amika.\n\n\n\nAmika  (00:02:35)Yes. Thank you, Brandon. My name is Amika Evans, and I'm an account director at StackAdapt. And my role primarily is to be of assistance and work very closely with our clients.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:02:47)Lastly, we're joined by our guest today, Lanny Cardow, who's the Vice President and head of digital media strategy at NATIONAL Public Relations in Toronto. So Lanie, let's start by talking about yourself a little bit. Why don't you let everybody know what you do? How long you've worked in the industry, and what you would consider your strongest area of expertise?\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:03:05)Sure. Well, first of all, thank you very much for for having me on today. And we're looking forward to this. And I really looking forward to our chat. So to your question, I guess I come from a bit of a political background myself, I was kind of a political staffer before I was involved in. In digital communications, I was a early adopter, you might say, of bringing digital technologies to politics, I was working on the conservative side of the fence back then in Canadian politics. And I think it was just a matter of good timing more than anything, just being a young staffer bit nerdy, perhaps, who understood the tools that were available at a time when they were just coming online and, and figuring out a way to incorporate those into work as a political staffer in Ottawa, and did that for a lot of years, actually, and didn't move into private sector communications until doing that for quite a while. And I made that jump into more of a public affairs style effect communications firms for quite a while. And using those same kinds of digital skills in that context for client services in that way. And then a roundabout long way, maybe a couple more detours and stops in Ottawa and Washington DC along the way, and ultimately ended up arriving at National Public Relations here at Toronto, big agency for the first time in my life and my career, and using those same kinds of digital tools as they exist now and 2020. The world's changed a lot since since I started but in this stuff, but it's, it's exciting.\n\n\n\nAmika  (00:04:39)Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that rundown, Lani. It's very cool that you started off in politics and now you are the digital guru that I know you to be.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:04:51)You never really leave politics. It's like Hotel California, right? You check out but you never leave. So you always keep one foot in it and you know, you might get the phone call Call now and then to to help out this thing or that thing. So it's, it's kind of a lifetime. lifetime deal, I think.\n\n\n\nAmika  (00:05:08)Fantastic. So I like to get to know just for listeners, you know, just a little bit about, you know, what are you up to a national PR day in the life of yourself or your colleagues?\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:05:19)Sure, absolutely. Well, it's been, it's been one heck of a fast year. And my one year anniversary at the firm, I think happened just as, as the world was in its last week of kind of operating normally about a month ago, this being recorded in April, we, you know, as I mentioned, it's my first time working largely, and this is an eye opening experience. The team is absolutely fantastic that I lead here at this at this office, the length of national might be similar to that of the other big agencies in the sense that, you know, it's a fast buzzing place. There's a lot of people, I've been to your office before mica, and it's kind of a similar vibe, as you guys haven't StackAdapt You know, this big open concept office, everyone works in everyone works in practice areas, everyone is, you know, well, I mean, from my perspective, it seems like everyone's so young. But they're, you know, they're least in the digital team. They are and extremely tech savvy, very, very fast workers. Everyone just does remarkable amount of work in a day. And everyone's it's it's quite services. And so everyone, everyone has a variety of different clients that that they're working for at any given point in time. Most of our team is specialized in the sense that we have people that work a little bit more on the content side of the spectrum, people that work more on the technical side, ad buying, SEO, SEM, that kind of work. And then we have people who, who specialize more in certain types of work, maybe more brand communications, maybe more. On the side of Public Affairs and Advocacy work, which we don't we're gonna get around to talking about today. It's so it's, so it's a big office. And you know, one of the nice things about working in digital and the way we've structured our team at national and certainly the way that other firms have tended to be doing this as well, is we use the digital team as a bit of a hub that serves the whole organization, when you have a little cluster of specialized skills like that, one of the ways a lot of the same way that people structure creative teams, in agencies as well. Whether it's our Capital Markets team, or whether it's our healthcare team, or whether it's a consumer team, they can draw upon the skills, the specialized skills with the digital team to build into their work, because it's pretty rare in 2020, that you don't have an RFP or an engagement of some sort that doesn't require digital in some way, shape, or form, whether it's a content calendar, or advertising or, or maybe something else all together, but so we sort of, we sort of operate as this little hub, what it means for us is that day to day, no two days or like, it means we get a really wide variety of clients, we get to work on in digital, which is really fun. In addition to that, it makes you a better consultant. Because when you have, you know, a dozen different client clients to serve, you learn a lot about the different kinds of needs that are out there, and you get a chance to try everything. So it's nice.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:08:21)Yeah, absolutely. And we both really appreciate the insight there. And we're both curious, we want to get your take on it. Given your long history in both the political and public relations space. Let's talk about it a little bit. So from your perspective, and you mentioned it a little bit earlier for you, what do you think is kind of the biggest difference between crisis communication versus brand communication? Or like you mentioned, more advocacy work versus brand work? And is the one you prefer doing? Or how differently do yourself and your team approach each of those scenarios?\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:08:59)Oh, those are great questions. And I look forward to getting into those. So I mean, this is this has been one of the biggest changes moving out of that political space and into a firm that, you know, involves clients that involve everything from, you know, food and beverage, to consumer goods to personal care and beauty, like, the last year I've spent with some really interesting, different kinds of clients that I've never had before. And so I'm starting to have a much better understanding of the way to answer this question than I had before. And, you know, my current, you know, we never play favorites with clients, but one of the one that I'm absolutely having the most fun on right now is is a major food and food producer. In the end it's completely consumer work and not a shred of it is political. And it's a it's just unbelievably fun. So, I guess brand and advocacy, I guess as a distinction between the two. Some people like to say that brand communications, it's almost like a very strictly aligned one way sort of offering. It's a lot of about consistency and repetition and, and keeping things together in the sense of what you're what you're saying all given times, advocacy, I likened to thinking more like a two way dialogue, or actually better described, like maybe more of a 360 degree view. So you might, you might want to be comfortable when you're doing advocacy, communications, entertaining dialogue around an issue, including voices that aren't necessarily yours, perhaps you're bringing in third party speakers, you know, maybe maybe external advocates, you're, you're trying to have that entire conversation. So I mean, you know, if I was going to, if I was going to just make a really gross oversimplification, you know, that brand version of the communication might be download our healthcare app, and the advocacy version of that might be learned about how apps will drive the future of self service in healthcare or something like that. So again, you're it's more of a, you know, accuracies involving a lot of thought leadership these days, it's involving a lot of, to engagement with on a topic, and you have to be willing to have it get a little bit messy at times, whereas I think of, I often think of communications as very streamlined, consistent, orchestrated, but more one way in nature, I don't know if that's making any sense. But that's, that's one way to think about it. Another and maybe just another short version, you know, a mentor of mine once said that, in brand communications, you want the categories to succeed. But in advocacy, communications is a lot more of a zero sum game in the sense that there's an app and you you need something of whether it's government or, or some target like that, and it is very much a zero sum in its competitive environment. Whereas in brand, you want the category to succeed, you don't want the category to fail.\n\n\n\nAmika  (00:11:47)Yeah, that's a very good way of putting it. I'm Lenny. So I think for myself, I've learned a lot just between brand communication, advocacy, communications from that realm. So thank you just wanted to dive into our next question. And, you know, it's kind of a good segue, actually. So given the current circumstances, in your opinion, how should brands be shifting their message accordingly? And is it okay to keep pushing your product? I'm also interested in your opinion, you know, because I caught wind of a campaign that ran in for McDonald's in Brazil. So I'm interested in your opinion on how major brands have reacted so far outside of that, and with that one as well.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:12:27)Oh, absolutely. And so, you know, it merits saying that we're recording this in mid April. And so we're, you know, we're a month into this new world right now. And even within this month, you know, we've seen a lot of change. And you can say it's happening every day. But it's one of the incredible risk and danger for brands right now. We're communicating, it's certainly not an all or nothing. II, there's no easy way to say, you know, don't do this rebars. But it's what were mindful. This is essential mindfulness of tone, mindfulness to the public's anxiety, that mindfulness to where people's heads are at right now. We subscribe to the Angus Reed daily tracker, which is a wonderful email product, by the way. And the latest one said that 64% of Canadians in their panel said it was important to advertise right now. Now, does that mean that 64% of people are going to take up pitchforks? No, of course not. They see 1000s of ads a day, and people might even remember some of them. But it's, it certainly means that there's a strong vigilance in the public right now about what's being perceived to be, quote, unquote, you know, opportunistic, which is, you know, a huge red flag right now or, or insensitive to that move. So, I think it's, it's going to be risky. It's not to say that it's it's not to say that you should, it's not to say that everyone should, because, you know, while you still have to do both things that I mentioned, Tony, and also the most, I mean, you know, showing an ad with a large crowd of people right now, even if you shot that ad, you know, last year, it still looks weird in the context where we're getting messages from our health officials and government saying, Don't congregate, don't socialize in groups, it would be strange, and we look inappropriate to have an ad that had that kind of visual. So again, mindfulness, but let's say you were a manufacturer of at home exercise equipment or something, right. I mean, this is your time to shine in the sense that there's a massive and surging demand for what you're making. Does it mean that you have to completely you know, opt out of out of advertising at this moment when people are in fact searching for your product? No, it doesn't, but it does mean that you have to be especially sensitive it does mean that you don't have you know, a Corona sale right now, you know, it doesn't, it means that you have to be sensitive to the fact that you know, maybe you should play this one a little more flat not equally. Be careful about your about what you might think might be a creative and fun way to build off If this situation is probably not, people will probably react negatively if you get too cute if it's too on the nose. So I would say that, you know, you have to, you have to just be extremely cautious, but recognizing that there are people that have to advertise right now. And while some campaigns might be better to defer delay, or alter, in some way, shape, or form or move, you know, move budgets here and there. It's certainly a big red stop sign for everybody.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:15:29)Yeah, thanks a lot, Lanny. And I think something we've done as well, from StackAdapt approach to handling how you know, brands are changing their messaging appropriately. We've had a lot of our clients come come up to us and ask us what what should they do. And I think, you know, although there is some, some small variance by vertical, ultimately, our message is remaining the same, where if you are going to continue to advertise more than anything, be genuine, be empathetic, and be tactful, and you know, if your brand is continuing to run, if you are an essential service, help your consumers, update them on your supply chain, let them know how you can continue consuming an essential product from the safety of your home as opposed to being tone deaf. And, you know, just trying to sell people new banking credit cards at a time where not only is it a social pandemic, you know, we're kind of on the verge of another financial crisis where the markets are equally down, in part as a result of this. So just from from StackAdapt point of view, and we actually had a webinar about this last week, not only talking about the digital media trends we're seeing as a result of this, but ultimately, you know, it's more than ever, the right time to be genuine, and just be empathetic and mindful to who you're speaking to. Because, like you said, there's a lot of people who are saying you shouldn't be advertising at all. But ultimately, we know that's not going to be the case. So if you are going to continue to advertise, be mindful of how you're communicating your message and alter it in a way that's genuinely going to help people as opposed to just trying to continue to sell your product.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:17:06)Oh, absolutely. Empathy is so essential right now and putting yourself in the shoes of audiences, for your product or service. It's just so essential right now, more than ever, I mean, it's always essential to think of how your your, your message is going to be received by somebody who might be for instance, hearing him for the first time. But it's even more essential now.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:17:29)Yeah, totally. And not to, you know, not to put a highlight on any brands individually. But one piece of content that I personally have really resonated well with has been Nike, where, you know, they're getting involved and telling people, you know, stay home do the right thing, but they're doing it in a way that's also almost empowering their audience, in a way with their messages. You know, if you want to play for millions, now's your chance stay at home. That's one that I personally quite like.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:17:56)I don't know how you guys are, if your mind readers, or what might be the case. But the two examples that I brought in my head to speak about today, were Nike as a positive example of their, their take home message that they had. And, you know, they're playing inside play for the world, which is I just thought so perfect, and so authentic to their brand. Because, you know, they're this like, this aggressive, hard driving brand normally, and, and they managed to actually take a COVID-19 friendly message that's still authentic to their brand. With the hashtag play inside play for the world. It was fantastic. And the negative example I was going to use of just sort of hollow virtue signaling and empty gestures was the McDonald's, Brazil separate the arches and social distancing message, which was kind of like the 180 degree wrong way to go about, you know, like, recognizing this environment. So, you know, between you guys, you guys completely must have stolen my notes on this one. But that's, those are those are perfect examples of sort of how to and how not to.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:19:05)Yeah, that's awesome. And a mica from your end. I'm curious when you've been working with kind of your your roster of clients, Lani included here. Curious to know, have any of the brands or agencies you're working with taking a particularly interesting approach to this pandemic? Or has it been sort of in line with everything we've communicated so far?\n\n\n\nAmika  (00:19:25)Absolutely. So. So with regards to the pandemic, a lot of the clients and agencies and, you know, bear in mind, different verticals, for some have taken quite different approaches. So, from a travel standpoint, obviously, we all know that that is one of the hardest hit verticals in this pandemic, but a really unique thing that some of my clients have taken it with this approach is, you know, again, I think the really key thing right now is just the shift in messaging and being tactful, so you know, working with we're collaborating in the sense. So working together, trying to find the right messaging, you know, regrouping, and really putting forth a really strong strategy that's going to get out there. And be tactful in light of the situation that's going on right now. You know, I'm happy to report that we don't have any red flags with regards to any sort of messaging that's going to mark it on my end. And we'd like to keep it that way. Absolutely. To wetland his point was, so yeah, that's, that's basically what it is on my end here.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:20:29)Yeah, that's great. And then a question out for Lani, just because he's so involved this, you know, how can PR agency, you know, like national or any of the other ones pivotal role during the current pandemic, that that we're going through? And then I'm also curious, more, more internally, just for national PR in itself? Have you seen any drastic shifts in how you're conducting your business? I guess, both internally and with your clients?\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:20:59)I'd be curious to hear how how you guys are handling that as well, actually, I'm looking forward to hearing you discuss that. But to the first part of your question, I think, when you look at client services in general, and you look at the companies that are consultants and providing advice, I think you always go to your clients to being an objective sounding board. One of the advantages of having a consultant in the first place, going to agency in the first place is that you're free of the internal blind spots that you might have, you're free of the internal pressures that you might have within the organization, you know, the way we've done things, or perhaps internal politics, that sort of thing. So one of the nice things about being a consultant is that you're always able to provide objective advice, honest advice, you can be a sounding board for your clients during this time. And all those sensitivities we talked about before empathy, and understanding public anxieties at this moment, and having that experience of having a dozen other clients that you can draw from in the back of your mind in terms of, you know, the way that the mood of the public is right now. You can bring all that knowledge and wisdom to your clients and be sometimes a tough, tough love kind of advice for them, perhaps in cases like this, and maybe maybe it is a case of having to say listen, like, I really don't think that this message is, you know, is going to go over very well right now in this climate. So, you know, I think that agencies in general can, can certainly can certainly play a role. At the same time, they also I mean, you know, in a positive sense, you know, it's a wonderful opportunity for thinking creatively and thinking of what you can do and thinking of what might be a good opportunity. You know, and I think there's lots and lots of opportunities for corporate social responsibility right now, in corporate leadership. You know, we've all seen those wonderful examples of, and they don't have to be big to be wonderful. I'm gonna preface this by saying that they don't have to be large scale, small fashion shops in Toronto, who are making masks, and they're not making a lot of masks, they're not going to serve an entire nation. But they're making some and they're doing that within the capabilities and talents and skills that they have. And, and that's, that's, you know, a real contribution when when rolled out the right way, it's good for people to know that their clients and stakeholders and all the rest. You know, we saw the hand sanitizer, work that was being done, from distilleries and things like that, like wonderful stories. So there's opportunities for creativity, right now in this. And it doesn't have to be all fun. And games can be serious in talent. But I think that consultants have a good role to play in, in identifying opportunities for that sort of thing as well. And again, just having that longer view as well, because at some point, we're going to be coming out on the other side of this, and that preparation has to happen at some point. And another opportunity for consultants are to think of that past as well. Because when you're in the middle of this, it's all consuming, but we are going to be coming out on the other side of it.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:24:08)Yeah, 100%. And I think, kind of StackAdapt from a value standpoint, is equally aligned, where we still have to conduct a business but more than anything, we're treating this whole situation and our relationship with our clients the same way we're doing internally, you know, we're we're still going to be there and make almost consultants ative recommendations as everyone's vendor. But more than that, you know, we're we're trying to do more to care about all of our clients as people and really look to your resource for them as people first before we get into helping with them with all their strategy. So the same way we're doing everything we can for our internal employees to make sure they've transitioned as smoothly as possible to the work from home life. We're trying to do with all of our external clients as well and and so far, I'm really positively Not surprised, but almost not getting either. But just very happy to see how everyone we're working with both internally and externally is making the most of this situation and understanding that yes, it's, you know, might be a challenging time right now. But we are going to come out on the other side. And when we do everyone like is going to be better equipped to handle the change in messaging or when we get back in, as opposed to kind of what we're doing right now. Absolutely.\n\n\n\nAmika  (00:25:29)Yeah. That's a really good point Brandon. And I'm just to piggyback that I almost felt, you know, one thing that I've learned, I've learned how to pivot very fast. And so I almost took, you know, going back to that consultancy role, I almost had like a PR hat in mid of crisis. And, you know, going back to the education piece and teaching the clients and, you know, being there for them, you know, with any questions that we may have, it wasn't so much selling, it was more so hearing, understanding, getting on, or Google Hangouts or Zoom conferences, and, you know, putting a face to face, you know, familiar face, and you know, just doing regular tech, and so, yeah, which actually is, you know, a good segue to my next question, because I want to shift back to crisis management. And I want to understand, what are your go to strategies when responding? And how do you isolate the problem, Lanny?\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:26:21)Oh, sure. Well, crisis management, you know, especially from people that come out of politics and end up in, in consulting. I mean, it's one of the things that politics does prepare you fairly well for is crisis communications. But, you know, I think I think the that's, that's certainly a fun part of agency work, too, is that there are opportunities where you're in those kind of, you know, stressful, but exciting, but important moments, consequential moments where you communicate in a crisis. And so I've, you know, I'd be a poor crisis communicator, if I didn't start by saying that the best time to prepare for your crisis communication is well, before it starts. You know, you dust off that plan that you've been revisiting regularly and updating and identified all those folks, people and your plan, right, you have those right. But, of course, in reality, we don't always have the luxury of, of having those plans made in advance. And I think every time crisis strikes an organization, it's often the impetus for maybe creating the the crisis plan for next time. But anyway, it's once you do find yourself in it, you know, it's of course important not to think of crises as and your response to them rather as like a monolithic thing, it's not a one time deal, one and done, it's a process. You, you need to start right away with identifying your various audiences and figuring out which, which audiences near you need to hear what messages what they need to be hearing, at that moment, prioritize that. You have to put yourself in their shoes and understand what they're coming into in terms of having knowledge of the situation and tailoring that develop your message to element to that, in developing those messages, you need to be direct, they need to show leadership, you need to lead with empathy for the situation, you need to gather all those facts, wrangle them from wherever that you're getting them from, start with what you know, and not speculate. There. There is a chance, of course, that that further negative elements might come down the line later, you should foreshadow that, because people can handle bad news, but they can't handle surprises, as I like to say. And of course, then, as you begin to message through the crisis, developing a regular update schedule, sticking to it religiously. And as you start to think about your your media strategy, you should of course, think of the tools that are at your disposal, those instant mediums like Twitter, and Facebook and how you can use those during this as well as official record sources. So you know, that's kind of your initial wait through as you come out of it. It's also important people people sometimes forget monitoring, and and of course, a recovery strategy and a brand building or a brand rebuilding, I should say strategy coming out of it too.\n\n\n\nLanny (00:29:09)So, you know, most crises follow that general path, even though every crisis is distinct. And it's certainly one of the most thrilling parts of either political communications or agency communications to be to be part of a team that that's helping either client or a politician or, or someone through that. Yeah, that's, that's great. And actually kind of begs the question from my end just because I'm a bit removed. I'd love to learn from both of mica and yourself. How you typically work with StackAdapt to piggyback off of crisis management would love to learn more about you know, the day to day working relationship between yourself and the entire StackAdapt team? A mica included and maybe scenarios where, you know, you typically rely on StackAdapt for quick turnaround in a time sensitive crisis management situation.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:30:00)Well, you know, I mean, and I won't, I'll try not to limit this to crisis in, specifically, but I'll certainly work from that mindset, you know, I guess, on the platform side of things, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be on this podcast if I, if I didn't really believe in what, in the service you guys offered. I've had nothing but good experiences so far working with you guys. And so so first of all, I'll start with that. But what on the platform side, I mean, the the fact that it's kind of that blend of self serve, but assistance is available is great, because sometimes during a crisis, or in the aftermath of one, that assistance might become very, might become very valuable. You guys are always really responsive, which is great. But sometimes you're just you're just strapped for resources and and the self serve platform is, is pretty easy to work with. But you know, if it came down to needing that extra half an hour back in your day, the fact that you guys have reps to help out with that, with that setup work is, is fantastic. Likewise, the creative studio, depending on the size of the organization that you're working with, maybe you're maybe you're a small company, your sole practitioner, maybe you're a small company that doesn't have a house creative team, having that creative studio that can help make the ad look right and formatted properly is a huge value add in times of limited, limited time. And just the ability to draw recorded data out of the platform at any point in time, and update it at 11pm. With data that is accurate as of 11pm. You know, no and no phone calls need to be made no requests or emails need to go in, I can just login and draw that data out whenever the check in time is. Having that full reporting platform is really fantastic. on the administrative side, and, you know, it's things that are just as important that you don't think of, but having a simple and straightforward billing process that doesn't, that doesn't require a ton of paperwork and complicated approvals. And everything can be done pretty quickly with you know, click and sign online forms and everything. Again, those minutes add up, right, so 15 minutes during a crisis to straighten out an IO and a purchasing system is those minutes matters. And having that having that access to your team is fantastic for that as well. So that's, that's all stuff that I appreciated, the faster the pace of the business. And maybe it's not either crisis, maybe it's just a, it's just a really busy week, and having the those kinds of resources just fantastic.\n\n\n\nAmika  (00:32:49)Yeah, thank you, Lenny. And for our listeners, I just want to let you all know that I did not pay Lani to say all those things.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:32:58)That's true, that's true.\n\n\n\nAmika  (00:33:00)That is from the heart. Just to kind of bridge up what you were saying, Lani. Another thing, especially I think that is very successful. When we run, you know, be in crisis campaigns or campaigns that just need to go up very quickly, from an audience standpoint is then what I also like to lean on, when providing some strategy is our custom audience segments. So being able just to input some key words and key phrases based on you know, the topic at hand, I'm using the browsing behavior, to identify the users that are reading about that topic. And then the look back window is very powerful, right. So, you know, if I'm just going back to the, you know, the topic of crisis, you know, perhaps that crisis is really something that's in the news for X amount of days, let's say, you know, three days, and I only want to collect the users for that time, it's very powerful, and only and owning in on those users that have read about that topic, in that past three days. So I think that's something that is very measured to be such a successful execution when it comes to, you know, campaigns going up very quickly be a crisis or just regular brand campaigns on that side as well.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:34:09)Right, I didn't even get into the into some of the advantages of of the, the targeting systems and everything you guys have in place. I, you know, being in Canada, we, you know, we have privacy laws that are what they are, and they're, you know, we're good for good for consumers in the sense that they offer a bit more protection than, than our neighbors do in the States. But it does mean that sometimes the, you know, the the audience targeting available and Canada's not quite as specific as, as some of our colleagues in the states are used to. But you guys have some really pretty, some really good have some really good options for us that we've, that we've enjoyed using in terms of finding those niche audiences there.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:34:51)And I think from there, you know, we could we could probably transition to a lighter closing topic, but first I really want to thank both Lani and mica for participating here. And Lani. I've got one final question to you as we sort of wrap up. In our in our planning call over video I noticed about eight bikes in your apartment. They see any trail bikes there were they all rode bikes and I typically like to ride with Toronto.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:35:20)Yeah, no, you definitely saw a trail bike. I do road gravel and mountain and with kind of my original love being mountain biking and I can't answer that question because I don't like to ride in Toronto, I, I actually do everything I can to ride outside of Toronto. So my favorite, my favorite places, and the Don Valley is a fantastic trail system. I just I just like to get out of the city. And so I generally tend to go up to Palgrave Albion Hills for kind of like a faster ride. I love going to Dagmar sometimes, hydro cuttin KW is fantastic. And I'm from Guelph. So I love Wellfleet the trails there are wonderful as well. And a few of the little favorites here and there that that I that I get to I get to keep quiet because they're they're my favorite undiscovered places.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:36:21)For all our listeners outside of Toronto, those are all places that are within two hours, we're in a pretty metropolitan city with my opinion, not enough green space to go biking. So those are three, I'm a pretty avid biker myself, we should go.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:36:37)We should go some time we will make after this podcast, we will make plans to go for a ride some time.\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:36:42)That would be great. Love that. In any case, again, I wanted to thank both of you for participating. This was great. And we look forward to speaking together soon and continue working together.\n\n\n\nLanny  (00:36:55)Great. Thanks. Thanks.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro  (00:36:58)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn.If you have questions or feedback, if you’d love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-in-finance-industry#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-in-finance-industry"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Digital Advertising in the Finance World","datePublished":"2020-06-24T19:38:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:48:47+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-in-finance-industry"},"wordCount":9150,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/digital-advertising-in-finance-industry#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["financial services","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at the digital transformation in the financial services and banking industry, and how it accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. \n\n\n\nRob Assimakopoulos | CMO, CIBC \n\n\n\nShare Ryan | Account Executive, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Messaging sort of has to move at the speed of culture. And I have not seen a time when in such a short window we had to go from, you know, first of all, just be there as a brand and show that you care to urgently provide messaging on benefits of support and things like that, to providing messages of utility and highlighting benefits of your brand that are particularly useful to people. So moving to the utility, and now sort of people are starting to look at stores opening and things like that. So now what is the message about is it about recovery and prospering and prospering in a new way?\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:46)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape to how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:14)Thank you for joining us today. My name is Vitaly Pecherskiy. I'm the co-founder of StackAdapt. And I'm the host of this podcast. Today we have a very special episode because we're welcoming Rob Assimakopoulos, Chief Marketing Officer over at CIBC bank, one of Canada's largest banks. This is one of our longer episodes, and we'll cover a wide range of topics from the idea that some products are being bought, while other products are sold. And how to think about the marketing strategy when your product falls into either one of those categories. To insights into how CIBC is team uses media mix modeling to connect traditional and digital channels to understand how brand building translates into bottom of the funnel outcomes, and how it builds lasting brand that is defensible against economic downturns and competition. In this episode, there's a wealth of relevant insights for marketers outside of the financial industry. So I urge you to continue listening. I truly think marketers in any industry can take away so much from this conversation. I can't be more excited to welcome Rob Assimakopoulos from CIBC for today's episode.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:02:16)Hi, and welcome to another episode of How Agencies Thrive, a StackAdapt podcast. My name is Cher Ryan. I am an account executive here at StackAdapt. And today we're joined by Rob Assimakopoulos from CIBC. Today's episode is going to be focused on digital advertising within the finance vertical how data and measurement play a role within the changing landscape of banking, and the generational perceptions of banking that affect the financial verticals marketing messaging. Rob Assimakopoulos is the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of CIBC, as well as being a board member on both the Canadian Cancer Society as well as the Canadian Marketing Association. Rob has had a long career spanning across verticals such as automotive CPG, and sports entertainment, before finally arriving at CIBC. I appreciate you joining us today, Rob.\n\n\n\nRob  (00:03:06)Glad to be here.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:03:09)Just to kind of start off, I know that when we originally connected the world seemed quite different, which seemed I think it was about a month ago. And we were smack dab in the middle row following the shelter at home guidelines, which has since changed, but 2020 has definitely proven that things can change quite quickly and the financial vertical is no stranger to that. So how have you seen the financial vertical undergo a digital transformation in the past two years? Five years? 10 years?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:03:35)Yeah. How about this last few months, though? Thank you. Yeah. Well, over the past decade, the financial vertical and more than a decade, financial vertical has been undergoing a digital transformation. That has been, you know, I would say at times, very quick, at times gradual, I suppose it is sort of followed the pace of technology in many ways. But what we've seen in the last few months, is is something that I don't think any of us would have predicted the necessity to change became quite urgent in the last few months. And what was kind of astounding to see, at least in our places, how quickly and how capably technology was stood up to serve people. When you think about people needing access to money, not getting the same access, they had to some of the physical presence that that, you know, the banks have, we needed to move much more quickly than I think we were ever accustomed to doing. And what was incredible is when a government program is going to be stood up in let's say, a week, you need to get a form built. It's got to be right. It's got to work. It's got to connect with, you know, with other partners that that are fulfilling, fulfilling some of these benefits and and it's got to be reliable. So what's what's really encouraging is to see like technology is complicated. So when you have to when standard technology in any context, you have to test and retest and things like that. What was incredible is all the steps were done so quickly on such a compressed timeline. The tools are there now, when the will is there, the speed of change is absolutely astounding.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:05:21)And do you find that, you know, in the digital space that was obviously such a massive, very quick pivot? Do you find that in an entire marketing mix where there is traditional and there is, you know, other forms of media that you can use to sort of reach your audience? Did you find that, you know, those forms of marketing media, were also able to pivot quickly? Or did you find that digital had a different sort of nuance to it that allowed it to pivot so quickly?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:05:51)Well, I think, you know, the urgency that's been created in the marketplace, forced everyone to change quickly. You know, when we're when we've been executing a broad set of marketing plans across all mediums, and I guess I found, whether it was television, or print and news media, or digital, everyone moved quickly. Trafficking, you know, physical assets, was quicker on compressed timing. And of course, there was technology to help facilitate that. I think the speed of change everywhere was astounding and quick, I mean, even go to places like right now, a small variety store will all of a sudden have a plexiglass wall, at the cash register, within minutes, because they need to keep going. And now everywhere you go this plexiglass wall. So the speed of change isn't limited to technology, for sure. What is obviously prevalent in technology is the tools and the ability to pivot are probably more present there than they are anywhere else.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:06:54)And do you think that, you know, post COVID? A lot of conversations right now are sort of around what post COVID, the post COVID era is going to look like? Do you think that you know the speed at which we sort of moved during the crisis? At least in the thick of it? Do you think in post era that that momentum is going to stay up? And what are really the factors that are going to help keep that momentum going?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:07:20)You know, the only reference point I would have is probably referencing previous crises, or previous events that catalyze change. I think it truly people are creatures of habit. So I think people will settle into more moderate speeds, and things things of being more deliberate. taking more time to think things through, I always say that work expands to fill the time. And so an urgent climate will create a different set of circumstances than perhaps a climate where enough things are less urgent. It's not even just about technology, and change. It's about fundamental human behaviors. Today, you know, you see people doing things that they never otherwise would have, you see people washing their hands, you see people wearing masks, you see people avoiding each other. And you see people making very quick decisions at times with less regard for, you know, could happen if this is wrong. I see a lot of people leaning into decisions quickly. And I think it's part of the climate post COVID I think things will settle down. But I think some of these habits will be enduring. And I think given the extent of this crisis, what will happen is technology will become more important, because doing business out of proximity, has become much more of a concern for people.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:08:44)Oh, that yeah, that's definitely true. We've definitely have seen that it, you know, in terms of like the work from home and the changes in way, organizations are sort of keeping teams safely apart. But during the COVID, you know, in the thick of the crisis messaging was such a huge concern across every single vertical. And when it comes to the financial vertical, you know, messaging was, it might have been sort of taken on a different approach, versus sort of the post COVID era. And what kind of messaging was sort of important, what kind of things did you think about when you were, you know, in the thick of things in terms of how you were going to speak to your customers? Because it seems like, you know, before then the messaging was very brand related. And then during the COVID situation, it seemed like a lot of advertisers were confused and a little lost about how much to sympathize how not to patronize and so what was sort of important in the financial market to reach your consumers in a meaningful way?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:09:47)Yeah, it's a great question and it continues to be debated messaging sort of has to move at the speed of culture. And I have not seen a time when in such a short window, we had to go from, you know, first of all, just be there as a brand and show that you care to urgently provide messaging on benefits of support and things like that, to providing messages of utility and highlighting benefits of your brand that are particularly useful to people. So moving to the utility, and now sort of people are starting to look at stores opening and things like that. So now what is the message about is it about recovery and prospering and prospering in a new way, all of these sort of, you know, I described sort of four different windows. And each and every one of them has been relevant. There's a little noise out there where some pundits start to lob in, you know, their opinions on what brands should be communicating. But I would not listen to the pundits brands should be listening to their customers. And if brands are confused, it's because they're not really they don't have a finger on the pulse of their customers or their clients. The way we handle it is on a pretty regular basis, in many cases daily. In other cases weekly, getting are getting a good understanding of what people are concerned about. Looking at the trends of those things is they're concerned about financials trending down or up, is they're concerned about health trending down or up. What do they care about now at this red hot moment. And the beautiful thing about some of the tools we have in place is we can pivot our messages, we can put out a message on our get on our social channels, organically. So our clients see what the most relevant message is, and what the most relevant benefit is for them today. So I'll give you an example we have this, we have this benefit on our credit cards called paste it. And you know, typically, to put an ad campaign together, it will take a few weeks, within three or four days, we had ads out there on CIBC pacer and emails to our clients. Why? Because the pace at capability means you could take certain purchases from your credit card and put them on lower interest installment payments, so you could smooth out your payments, you know, that is a form of deferral. Now, that's something that we launched last year, and anyone could do at any time. But in this red hot moment, that item became relevant. And it was a piece of a useful service that our clients could take, take hold up. So pivoting on messaging to have utility using the digital tools that we had to put that messaging out quickly. And making sure we serve them that and hang on, you know, you can't can't exhale yet because tomorrow, they're concerned about the next thing. So that's sort of in the pace of, of the pace we've been working at. Hopefully that gives you a flavor for what it is we see in the marketplace and how we adjust our messaging. And of course, the tools they follow. And you know, you can tell we have optimization that makes sure that the message gets out to the right people at the right time. And you look at some of the diagnostics to see whether or not people are actually consuming that message. Because as soon as they start to soften on the message, it's time to go and rethink what you're going to share with your clients.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:13:09)Interesting. Yeah. And that kind of brings up a point about data, right, were one of the biggest things that we've seen, you know, during this crisis was that data was shifting, and everybody in the industry was really taking a look at where this data was shifting and how it was shifting, as well as why that was happening at a very nuanced low level. So you know, when you're kind of speaking about these different financial products that you know, exist, and suddenly certain ones become more relevant, more important and significant to these to, you know, your customers, your consumers who are now thinking of thinking differently during this crisis. And then, you know, sort of understanding the diagnostics of the data that was rendered from that. And under using that to sort of pivot. When you're looking at sort of a digital media mix, and you're looking at your traditional media, and you're trying to look at everything that you're using to get that messaging out there. You know, how do you really sort of put all that together, piece it all together in a way that makes sense, so that you fully and holistically understand whether a product or financial product or the messaging is working?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:14:18)Well, you know, that's a great question. I think, I believe that the best marketers make good use of a holistic data set that comprehends the, let's call it they stitch a sort of a golden thread from mental availability to physical availability. Those those brands and companies who are sort of vertically integrated, that that own that own their own distribution network, have a wealth of data that they can use to determine whether or not a message way at the top of the funnel lead to an outcome at the bottom of the funnel. I think the mistake There are a couple of mistakes people make when it comes to data. First of all, they only look at one part of the picture. So, for example, if you only look at your upper funnel data, like you know whether or not someone recalls your television ad or engaged with a social post, and neglect whether or not they actually change their behavior or change their point of view on you, you're not seeing the whole picture. So it's equally important to make sure a message or a stimulus was received, accepted and understood by your customer, as it is to understand was their journey to an ultimate, you know, purchase or outcome? Was it seamless? Did it happen? As you would expect, people make mistakes on data. By only looking at lower funnel data, looking at clicks, looking at actions. And assuming that that's the whole universe we do is we, we use media mix modeling, to make sure that we understand the intersection between traditional and digital media, and the effect of all of our media mix on outcomes and sales. So to oversimplify things, we know that for certain products we need to use, we need to use advertising more than for other products, some products are bought, some are sold, some of our services are consumed in a way that means they need to hear about them first. So we use media mix modeling to tell us to a very high statistical correlation, is there an outcome from this media and what media mix produces the most, the best and most efficient outcome? So we use that at a strategic level, you can do media mix modeling every day, we use that to set plans at a strategic level. And then on a daily basis, we use digital metrics to determine whether or not you know, we're we're performing as we should. So you know, for example, you'll keep guardrails around your cost per acquisition for some of your product advertising and you look to stay within those guardrails and you make sure that you, you link that to what you have determined in your media mix model to be optimal performance. So that's how we use it. And but I think I can't stress enough that people tend to fall into these rabbit holes to say, look at all the clicks and engagements I got it was a successful campaign, or look at the recall I had in a TV ad, it was a successful campaign, or my cost per acquisition was really low. So it was a successful campaign. That's not the whole picture. And that's where I find the mistake happens, because look, when digital data became so readily available, we fell so in love with it, we ignored what was happening in the world around it. And so I can't stress enough how important it is to look at everything.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:17:56)So, you know, you were kind of mentioning that you were referring to sort of this low funnel activity, you know, the most clicks the most conversions. And, you know, oftentimes when, you know, when you're when you're buying and training sort of on the on digital media, that that is often from one perspective, sort of the keys to success. And and I think it's because there's a there's a huge emphasis on return on adspend. And, you know, how exactly are products being sold? Given, you know, what we're investing in the media, and in cases where brand awareness and brand based marketing versus product selling? And you know, those two different marketing activities exist in the same world? And attribution seems to be sort of this esoteric experience, how do you really sort of justify the return on adspend? When attribution is really challenging at a very upper funnel brand marketing level?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:18:56)Yeah, good question. There is a wealth of secondary data. And you can collect primary data yourself to do this. There's a group in the UK called The Institute of practitioners in advertising. There's a great study that was done by that organization called the long and the short of it, they collected data from 1000s of companies globally. And they were able to prove that brands that leveraged very balanced media plans with strong use of good storytelling mechanisms like television, and print, balanced very well with a digital media mix. Brands that had 60% of their messaging or their advertising, selling the brand selling benefits, not trying to close them not trying to push them in the funnel, but literally selling brands and benefits. They had higher market share. They had more favorable pricing, and they were more profitable. We ourselves through our media mix modeling have determined very similar proportions. So a healthy set of messaging to give your brand attractiveness and mental availability to tell customers why you're here. And what you do is is is, is paramount brands that overcorrect to sort of by now convert now kind of messaging underperform dramatically. So again, when I talked about performing media mix modeling, we collect all that data and can determine what the efficient frontier is of our spend. So we know where we get the maximum ROI at what level of total spend, we also know which products respond better to advertising, which don't, we know to a high statistical correlation, how much business we get, how many account opens we get from different forms of advertising. By knowing that, and knowing the profitability of your business, we can put a very fine point on the return on media spend return on adspend. So it comes down to data. Now people will often if they don't have that kind of data, they'll measure sort of circumstantial outcomes, you know, I'll put out a campaign in August, and my sales in August in September were up, you know, 4% versus year ago. And so all attribute that to the advertising, media mix modeling and doing some doing sort of multivariate regression analysis is necessary, because you need to factor out economics, you need to factor out seasonality, you need to factor out pricing anomalies, you need to factor out offers that may have been in play. So you got to factor them out to get a pure read on your media, in order to get a good return on adspend data points.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:21:51)Right. And you, you have your you know, you briefly touched on sort of identifying a brand, and its values to customers really pinpointing sort of what makes your brand your brand in the market. And so, you know, value is obviously key for customers, everybody's always looking to figure out, you know, how this is going to serve me if I'm going to pay for it, I want to know what I'm getting in return. And, you know, when you're looking at the financial vertical, there's a lot of regulatory things that are established in that vertical specifically, that can make sort of, you know, being a differentiator a little bit challenging. So how does data sort of help you understand, you know, where your value is differentiating yourself in the competitive landscape?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:22:41)That's a good question. I don't know if data helps me establish differentiation in the marketplace among financial institutions. I'm a big believer in brands, whether anywhere because it's not just financial institutions that are undifferentiated, it's actually virtually every category that does not have a patent, or a specific product attribute that is unique. You know, if you look at, look at something as simple as the smartphone category, ostensibly, before you actually experience any of those things, if you list the qualities of an iPhone and an Android phone, they're virtually identical. They are in differentiated. If you list the qualities of a one burger joint to the next burger joint, they're virtually identical. So how do you differentiate yourself? Well, part of it is experiential. So it looks, feels, smells tastes differently, how you serve it. The biggest thing you can do to differentiate yourself in the marketplace, is to establish a distinctive brand identity that's rooted in a purpose. I'm a big believer in brands that are very clear on who they are, why they exist in the role they play in people's lives. So there's a reason why Nike stands above many other shoe brands, because they have led, they have been a purpose based organization. Nike believes that if you have a body, you're an athlete, and their purpose is to inspire and enable the athlete in all of us. So, you know, if you look at Lloyds Bank, in the UK, they're very clear. They their purpose is to help Britain prospects. A lot of brands, state their purpose, but not many of them are as mind opening is the two brands I just described. Walmart's purpose is to help you save money so that you live better. And so that's how you distinguish yourself by actually being very clear about the role you play in people's lives. Now, of course, when you wrote tests that you wrote, test, all kinds of messages and stimuli and Things like that, that will or will not resonate. That's where data comes to play. So, you know, in the advertising space, you have to Plan Do Check and act, you have to plan it. Well make sure you understand your, your clients mindset, you execute, you check and make sure that it got through. And that it was understood that main messages were understood that you had a reputational bump. And you act to countermeasure, if you see any of those metrics, swaying off of your, your objectives going in.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:25:31)And it's interesting that you mentioned sort of the apple, you know, Android, I guess, brand war that exists, because it truly, you know, people who are Apple fans are almost diehard Apple fans, and people who are Android fans are diehard Android fans, and, you know, the crossover in the switching over is, you know, very oftentimes minimal unless, like you said that there is something that is a massive differentiator in the market, but oftentimes, you know, in that, in that scope of things, we're seeing, you know, an extra camera, an extra zoom, a portrait mode, right, and they're just kind of competing against each other, sort of climbing through their marketing. And so when you're looking at, you know, what this really seems to highlight, to me anyways, is this, this idea of brand loyalty, and, and sticking with a brand that really means something to you. And banking oftentimes does have a very personal experience with people, it has a very emotional experience for people because it's their money, right? The black and white of their money, and it's not just transactions that you make, it's, it's really about an entire level of trust, it's an entire level of what that bank stands for, and how you stand with them. And how the bank stands with you, frankly. So when you're looking at sort of generating this, this loyalty, and you have an existing customer base, oftentimes in in a generational perspective, you know, young people, you'll see that because they have, you know, not a lot of financial independence, and they're sort of developing that financial investment in themselves. And their future. They're, they're more willing to be, you know, switching and their brand loyalty hasn't yet been established. And then you have, you know, sort of the older demographics who are very brand loyal, because they've already invested in their bank, they've had a lifetime to grow and develop and build their future with that bank. So, you know, how do banks really, you know, keep that brand loyalty and speak to those different generations that are looking at banking in through their generational perspective?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:27:36)Yeah, you know, there's so many things that came to mind as you were, as you were describing loyalty in that context. As far as I'm concerned, you either have fans or hostages, okay? And hostages are people who are so invested. And, you know, can't be bothered to move or have too much invested with you, and had been there a long time and why bother, but I'm still not happy. You know, fans are people who are there, because every step along the way, even when you had to say, No, you were really nice to them, you respected them, you know, and, you know, of course, you know, when you look at a new generation of consumers, you know, you can point in some cases to a different mindset, which is like, you know, they, you know, some people make the mistake of calling, you know, a younger generation millennials and Gen Zed disloyal. I dispute that, you know, I dispute that I think that's a lot of, you know, Boomers and Gen Xers looking at the youth of today saying, why can't you be more loyal? They have choice, right. And when you have choice, you don't have to stick to an experience that doesn't fit meet your knees. It's not that they're disloyal, it's that if I don't like this, then I'm gonna go over here. And by the way, to unravel a banking relationship, which is basically a deposit account and a credit card is not that hard to do. Now you look at a more mature, you know, banking client, who might have investments, mortgage, a couple of credit cards, several bank accounts, joint accounts, and things like that. That's a pretty intertwined relationship. So now you've got to look at that franchise and go, What do I have here? Do I have hostages? Or do I have fans? So a lot of a lot of brands, including ours, on a very regular basis, measure whether their clients are satisfied or promoters. And if you're a great brand, you make sure you dig into things like what are they complaining about? Or which part of this experience really sucks? And what can I fix? And the good ones just make that big list of things and they start chipping away? Hey, guess what? You know, for example, it could be a service gesture that is very be rigid? And you'd say, well, no, you don't qualify for this credit, goodbye. So you could say it that way. Or you could say, let's work on a plan to get to where you want to get to, if not today, in the future, those are two different service gestures. What are people complaining about? So sometimes many of the things people complain about in banking, our fees. So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to help people understand the fee better, because that's often a great way to eliminate complaints about fees is sometimes people we've seen in our research, people will pay a fee, if they know they're getting value back. But if they don't understand the value, and they get, they incur a fee, they ask questions. Maybe in other cases, people will complain about, you know, wait times, on a on a, you know, on a call center? Well, do you have a message on the IVR, that provides enough information for somebody that they can actually self select a solution, or understand why they're why they're on hold. So I think, you know, when it comes to brand loyalty, it's, it's not big, grand gestures, it's small gestures, it's those little daily things that you do to make them fans, I tell I use this analogy all the time. Brand relationships are like human relationships, you don't make friends that you don't build relationships with other people, because they did one wild thing to you, or they incentivize you to your best relationships, I'm certain are ones where those daily little moments of truth are always fulfilled. With are the most fulfilling things for you and that person you engage with, it's no different from brands, in fact, relationships are built in the same way.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:31:50)I never really thought about it that way. Actually, I've never really thought about a brand messaging being akin to an actual human to human relationship. Oftentimes, brands are, are seen as over there, or they're seen as sort of this entity as opposed to almost like a person, which when you think about it, and messaging, and and is really just coming from, you know, a bank is kind of like someone speaking to you as a person. But I guess what that then makes me wonder is, you know, with the different generations, the delivery of that message, is very different. Because you see, sort of the older generation, you know, there's an idea anyways, that the older generation wants to continue with retail banking, they want to be in store, they want to go see someone face to face, they want to have someone to talk to, and then the younger generation, may or may not want that. And but they may or may want other options at home. So you know, and that's, that's totally fair, because that's, you know, the world is very different from how younger generations are growing up versus what, you know, older generations have experienced. And so when when you take all that into account, how does your messaging the delivery of your messaging change? Is that is that in? Is that something that's significantly thought about? When you are sort of talking to these different age groups of people in different mindsets of people?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:33:15)Yeah, you know, it's funny, I think mindset is more important than age in certain circumstances. One enduring truth, one enduring truth. Sort of a, that, I would say, transcends generations is everybody wants on in person, human touch, everybody does. Everyone wants a tactile experience in retail, to some, to some extent, it's why Amazon opened up physical stores, because they recognize that, you know, it doesn't matter. If you're 75, or 25, everyone wants a human experience. Now, younger generation, still intends to and wants to walk into banking centers, but they want to do so for different reasons. They want to do so so that an expert can help them just kind of unpack, how to think about their lives and their financials and things like that. So that's why they that's why they want to visit and they want an in person experience. So we've seen that older people want to go in because they're creatures of habit, in some cases, I'll point to my mom who, you know, I've tried to get enrolled into digital banking. But you know, as a as an immigrant Greek woman who never grew up with technology. She's never been comfortable with it. Right? And for her having a piece of paper is what what she wants. Now, at the same time, she also has an iPad and goes on Facebook and does those other things, but for certain things, habit has kind of taken taken root, so to speak. So it's just what it does. It's not necessarily bound to age because there are a lot of older Canadians who feel that I don't really need to go to a banking center to pay a bill, I can do this off my phone. So I would we try to follow the mindset more than we try to follow necessarily the sort of birth certificate and, and adjust, you know, adjust our business model to meet those needs in that way.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:35:18)And what's interesting, I think about what you said is that, you know, your mom, right, she, I'm sure that there was a point in time, and I know this with my parents as well, at a point in time, the idea that they could log on to, you know, their Facebook account and use whatsapp and all these different technology tools from their iPad, or, or whatever the case their tablet in bed and do these things or pay a bill online or do an E transfer that was incredibly foreign to them, while it was maybe something that was seemed sort of a natural progression in younger people's lives. But but they have adopted that, and a lot of people have sort of taken that on. As technology changes, though, you know, the usage of it changes and the adoption of it, the rate of adoption between these generations is also going to change. And, you know, how does a How does a bank sort of stay ahead of that curve and start to predict and forecast sort of, this is the new wave, this is what you know, is about to happen, and we need to sort of get ahead of it. Like, for example, tick tock, people have been talking about tick tock for a very long time, before tick tock became incredibly, you know, this massive behemoth that it is now, and it could have been in part because of, you know, COVID-19, and everybody staying at home and looking for entertainment, and whatever the reasons may be, it has sort of picked up steam, you know, within younger generation, and then again, older generation very, very quickly. So how does, you know, how does a bank really stay ahead of these changes in the way different generations are going to be adopting new forms of technology and new forms and ways that they think about banking?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:36:58)Yeah, it's simply by building your bank and building your service around consumer needs. Digital adoption, spiked up big time during the COVID crisis. Why? Because my banking center is currently closed. And it's too far for me to go to another banking center. I'm applying for a government benefit, which if I am enrolled in digital banking, I can receive my money in three business days. So you think about the extent of this crisis, the need to get access to your money more quickly. All of a sudden, this technology was fit for purpose for a need that emerged. So it's really difficult. Not impossible, but difficult to predict how needs will change. Because if you're wrong, you start building technology for needs that don't exist. So, you know, I remember launching a product, it was called. I'm not sure if I can talk about this. I'll try to be cryptic about it. Okay. I remember, I remember launching a product that was a fabric care product, right that we thought it would help you. It would help you eliminate ironing. So if you ask somebody, Hey, do you like ironing clothes? No. Okay, well, here's something that will help you not have to iron clothes. Great. I love it in concept. And then you go and you put it out there and all of a sudden, while you have to kind of still manipulate the garment. You got to tug it and smooth it with your hands. Now your hands are wet. Well, I know I don't like ironing, but I know I don't like this. So let's say for argument's sake, someone says, Hey, wouldn't it be great if we built a tic tock video into our banking application? Because people like Tic tock and that's an emerging need and people need to be entertained, okay, so you invest in that. And it turns out, it's a bad idea. It ruins the experience. You're talking about something like tick tock. It's not about tick tock. It's like people like to be entertained, right. And people like people like to people used to like telling jokes. It would take you know, 20 seconds to tell a joke and make someone laugh, but like no one tells jokes anymore. Yes, they do. They make tick tock videos or, or they write tweets. People always tell jokes. I mean, follow anyone clever on on Twitter, people are telling jokes all the time, and arguably way more than they used to. So it's just that technology is now filled that need in a different way. So to me, I think it's staying in touch with needs, I don't believe people's needs. They're really most basic needs change. How we fulfill those needs, though, can change. So the ingenuity of technology recognizes, hey, you know, people, people need to laugh. Well, here's an interesting, neat new way to make them laugh. I'm going to put a filter over this picture that makes you look like a dog I'm going to give you an opportunity to send your face to somebody else, dog face. I used to dress up and do that physically, people used to put on wigs and masks and stuff. And now you could do that with technology. So I believe that technology needs to meet people's needs. And people who are great at it understand what people want. We talked about Apple and Android in the 90s, personal computing was about a choice between an IBM Windows machine or an Apple iMac. And, you know, like Apple personal computers were in the low single digits in terms of market share, because people believed, you know, computing is serious business. And these aren't toys, right? Apple believes that computing should improve people's lives, and they should enjoy their life, through personal computing, look at look at what, what emerged as the most as the most true of those two ideologies today.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:41:03)We're when we're talking about sort of these enduring brand values, or enduring values, human values that we have, you know, like, the telling of the jokes, and, and how technology has just changed the way in which we do those things. You know, what are some of the enduring values people hold about their, their banks? Because I feel like right now, there's risk is is a major word, you know, amongst the words like vector and prices and unprecedented risk is a huge sort of topic that everyone is talking about. And a lot of brands and advertisers aren't afraid to take different risks, especially right now. But generally speaking, you know, matching those risks of a product or a shift in brand messaging to sort of align with consumer values and what they value in banking. You know, how does a bank really go about truly understanding the nuances, the deepness of, of how consumers value their banks, and what they're valuing about their banking experience?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:42:10)A whole bunch of different ways. I think, we're always collecting data on how our clients feel about us. risk in a bank is interesting, because risk is what underpins a bank's strength, right? You lend money to people, are they likely to pay it back? You know, so, banks, banks are very, when it comes to risk? I think what banks do is they take risks by lending money, what people want is they want banks to take, take a risk on them, because they believe in themselves. And so now, I suppose in the past, that used to be quite a binary relationship. You know, if you don't pay back I foreclose. Today, we have so many ways to determine, you know, how much risk can I take on a on you as a client. So for example, if you say I want $100,000 credit card limit, a bank would say, you know, based on what we think we know what someone like you, you may want to start with something like this. And you, you come to a mutual agreement, in a very friendly way on how much risk you're going to take on a client. People expect banks to be reliable. People expect, if they want, if they have to pay their rent on a Friday, the same day, they got paid their paycheck, they expect the bank to receive that paycheck, and to release those dollars, so they can pay their landlord, they expect that if for any reason, they can't, because the bank hours at the branch are too restrictive, or God forbid, your technology fails them, and they can't eat transfer their landlord this month rent, that is a huge source of frustration for people. So you have to be reliable. The other thing people expect from their banks is they beliefs. They believe that when they entrust their lives and their money with a bank, they believe banks should be grateful for their business. And the banks that are grateful for their business are the ones that create better relationships with them. It can be very easy to get into a transactional mode, right? Deposits come in, the payments go out, you know, you borrow the money, you pay it back transaction transaction transaction, where you keep customers is in those moments in between. And so every bank has a mortgage. Every bank has rules. Every bank has a deposit account. Every bank has the same stuff. But not every bank serves people the same way all the time. And the bank that figures out and takes massive complex business, all of its touchpoints human and technological and makes them line up so perfectly. That this experience CES consistently great. Well, when I'll point to Apple again, whether it's interacting with them online, you can get them on the phone to actually talk you through your tack. Or you can go to one of their stores, it's the same brand. It's the same personality, it's the same thing. They have been able to stitch straight through the line. The virtually the same experience, and it's not about the look, yes, they look the same. Okay, that's, that's important. And it's, it helps with the whole experience, but it feels the same. Okay. It's why McDonald's is a great brand, by a quarter pounder in Kitchener, Ontario, or in Paris, France, although I think it's called The Royale with cheese there, according to the pulp fiction. Dialogue between Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. But it's, it's the same thing. Right? That's what, and it's good.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:45:58)So when you're talking about, like, for instance, in the Canadian market recently, we've seen, you know, the, the sort of prominence of Challenger banking, which is, you know, as we had spoken before, its banking, its banking, but delivered differently. So, when you're talking about sort of a brand personality, that brand relationship, oftentimes with technology, and and exclusively our relationship with technology can sometimes seems very transactional. It's very, you know, this is what I do here. This is what you provide me through, you know, this tool, how in the world of challenging challenger banking, where it's mobile app, only banking, how does a brand sort of keep their their values, keep their sort of relationship and, and build that personality? And I guess, where does digital and marketing sort of mixing into that?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:46:50)Well, I mean, they digital and marketing, they deliver the service. So challenger banks, they deliver a service that's fit for purpose, for their customer base. So you look at brands, like, you know, tangerine, and simply financial, wealth, simple. You know, in some of these others, like EQ Bank, they deliver a fit for purpose, you know, service for, for their customers. What's interesting is, again, it's not binary, there are a lot of people who are both simply financial clients and CIBC clients. Because they, they served, they serve different purposes. You know, in some of these smaller challenger banks, it's often you know, you'll get a mix of people who use it as their regular daily bank. And you'll also get a bunch of fairly cash rich, affluent people parking big cash, because the interest rates are pretty good there. But they also have perhaps wealth management relationships with other big institutions. So what these things are doing is, as it is, as it is, in any category, you look around on the marketplace today, they're getting in, they're able to distribute a service very quickly, in some cases for for, you know, for customers who are saying, This is my only bank. And other cases for people we're seeing, yeah, this will, this will be one of my circle of brands that I choose to consume a long time ago, I mean, you only had a few choices for breakfast cereal, or beer, or a certain few choices for automobiles. So these challenger banks are doing nothing, nothing different than what many other categories have experienced, which is other brands come in and meet other needs. And people bring them into their circle. So marketing and digital, you know, they they play a role, because you can get to market really quickly. Now, as a challenger, particularly in banking with the digital universe, you don't have to build expensive bricks and mortar. But, you know, the question I have about them is what is their upside, because eventually, to grow, you need to proliferate your offering. And then you start to look a little bit more like the big banks beside you.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:49:03)I guess, sort of, you know, to kind of wrap this up, what, what does the future then? Because, you know, you had mentioned that, you know, as things develop and change, they need to proliferate their offerings. So what does the future of banking, with technology, with the marketing mix with the data that we're we have now have access to, what does that look like, in the next five years?\n\n\n\nRob  (00:49:26)Great question. I think, you know, I talked about how people really want a personal interaction. I believe, we're going to find and develop technology that gives you both service at a distance and a human interaction. You know, today, you know, we were one of the first in Canada I'm going to brag with CIBC to to launch a remote mortgage origination process so you can get your mortgage remotely entirely. I mean, And that was, and we really accelerated that to market and we got it there, it became very useful for people who needed to really close their mortgage, buy their homes urgently, at a time like the COVID crisis, rather than having to go in and, you know, fuss with papers that are banking center and things like that. So that personal interaction was still there. But you could do it at a distance. Obviously, the whole big, there's so many memes about zoom calls and things like that today, right? Think about how zoom, which was kind of a create all these awkward sort of conference call moments became how people socialize. And so sometimes you get you accelerate into these new norms through these little crises. And it's, it's sometimes takes either the advent of an exceptional technology, or an outstanding circumstance to accelerate people into a new way of being because people are stubbornly creatures of habit, why would I do this trinket if I don't have to? Well, now I have to now have done it. Well, now I kind of like it. So it's going to become part of my habit. You know, it's one of two things, either the environment changes, and technology is going to have a challenge to go and meet the needs of the environment. Or, as what happens with so many of these great disruptors in our world, somebody is going to have a vision, and they're going to build something, and they're going to say, this is a better way to do things. And they're going to work that into through to the marketplace, that way, the bank, you will have to change. And we'll have to continue to provide service, you know, in multiple different ways. But I think the biggest thing that can accelerate the next, the biggest innovation that banks could and should come up with is how to leverage technology to enhance the relationship building and interpersonal interactions that I described earlier. That are those daily, brilliant moments that build relationships between the bank and it's quiet.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:52:07)Wow. Well, this has been incredibly enlightening for myself and inspiring, actually. So I just, you know, want to thank you so much for your time. I think this has been incredibly informative. And, you know, I really, really appreciate you taking your time to jump on our podcast here.\n\n\n\nRob  (00:52:27)Yeah, well, thanks for listening to my babble.\n\n\n\nCher  (00:52:30)No babble at all. It was amazing. I'm really, really happy to sort of hear some of the human elements of banking. I thought that was a that was something I don't think a lot of brands are thinking about as much anymore, but it was great to hear.\n\n\n\nRob  (00:52:43)Yeah, well, thank you. Thanks for Hope you have a good day.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro  (00:52:47)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn.If you have questions or feedback, if you’d love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/measurement-and-attribution#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/measurement-and-attribution"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"All Things Measurement and Attribution","datePublished":"2020-07-08T19:46:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:47:49+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/measurement-and-attribution"},"wordCount":6079,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/measurement-and-attribution#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["attribution model","measurement","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at how market research and advertising go hand-in-hand, and discuss in detail the benefits of using Comscore solutions for measuring ad performance.\n\n\n\nRachel Gantz | GM, Activation, Comscore Inc.\n\n\n\nMichael Shang | Director of Partnerships and Product Solutions, Stackadapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)For us, for 2020 It's really been all about building for the future. And the future of advertising is cookieless. And connected TV plays a really big role in it. So we have spent this year so far launching solutions to make sure that advertisers have cookie free ways to reach audiences based on TV and OTT viewership. With all of the unique data assets that Comscore has, honestly, it feels like Comscore was sort of built for this moment. So we're putting these assets together in cool new innovative ways, and have already launched solutions to help bridge that contextual and audience targeting together so that when cookies do go away, none of our clients skip a beat.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:51)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape that how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:19)Hello, everyone. This is Vitaly Pecherskiy and I'm the host of this podcast. For this episode, we're joined by Rachel Gantz, general manager of activation products over at Comscore. This is a truly excellent conversation for those who enjoy technical discussion on CTV trends, measurements within CTV and OTT environment, and want to understand how linear TV can work alongside internet connected TV devices. What I learned in this episode is that marketers tend to overestimate the importance of linear because they look at number of people who are cord cutters, and not cord Nevers, those who never subscribe to linear and go directly to digital. And that number is going up. In this episode, we also touch up on CPG retail and auto verticals. So if you're interested in the topic of connected TV, or over the top TV advertising, this episode is for you. Now it's time to welcome Rachel Gantz from Comscore.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:02:13)Thanks for joining us today. My name is Micheal Shang and I'm the Director of Partnerships and Product Solutions at StackAdapt. And I'm joined today by our guest Rachel Gantz from Comscore. Today's episode is going to be focused on cross platform measurement in programmatic advertising, and the challenges agency face in the marketplace when planning and executing their campaigns. We'll dissect this two topics from two different angles, we'll look at by entry channel and advertising verticals. And specifically, we will discuss analytics and optimization solutions in OTT in the jury channel. And for advertising verticals will focus on CPG and retail. And although now a little introduction about Rachel, Rachel is the general manager for activation solutions at Comscore, where she oversees Comscore as programmatic business ratio brains to the side to this row over a decade of experience in market research, media measurement and consumer insights. Rachael is doubting from her home outside of Boston today, where she hopes her husband, two toddlers and dog can keep quiet enough for the next 45 minutes to avoid a starring role in this podcast. And may I say this, Rachel, if they ever decide to join the podcast and possibly join programmatic advertising? Well, welcome. Welcome them with open arms. Thanks. So Rachel, you started in consulting, maybe? Talk about your journey from consulting to advertising?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:03:56)Sure, yeah. I loved strategy consulting. I know that's not the response. Many former consultants give up for me. It's true. I thought it was fascinating. I learned a ton. And I constantly found myself advising CEOs for really important business decisions. But for me, what it lacked, at least at that time was access to real granular data by which to make those decisions. And that's what drew me to market research and then advertising honestly, it was the data. When I started working in this industry, I focused on consumer journey work, and which touchpoints are the most influential to consumers on their path to purchase which really naturally led me to focus on advertising. The the ability to make and influence real business decisions with such vast amounts of granular data is really powerful. This industry, at its heart is really just a bunch of geeks like me who love data when it comes down to it.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:05:01)If that makes sense, programmatic certainly is no lack of data. And I think one of the challenges actually is to deal with so much data and more importantly, incomplete data. I think we will, throughout this podcast will dive into that topic a bit more. And I want to talk about Comscore a little bit. I think many, many people know Comscore because of its rating services. For example, people when when people talk about Comscore, they say, Comscore top 100 publishers when it comes to our top 500 publishers, maybe you can you just give the audience a little more insight into Comscore as core solution groups?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:05:41)Sure, so at its core Comscore is an audience measurement company that supplies the majority of the advertising industry with planning buying a measurement solutions, really across any device with a screen. So let me break that down. What does that mean? So to give you an example, if General Motors is looking to reach people who are in the market to buy an SUV, they can one use Comscore planning data to figure out which digital and TV properties are the best for their target audience and place a direct buy, then to they can also leverage comm scores activation segments in StackAdapt, or any DSP to programmatically reach, say cord cutters, or heavy Netflix watchers who might not see their linear TV ads. And then finally, three, they can measure whether that delivery happened successfully. And if their ads worked by linking Comscore ad exposure data to things like that they visited a Chevy dealership or they went to chevy.com. And built a suburban etc. Within Comscore, I focus on Comscore as activation offering. And we're really excited about just connecting all those dots to help brands in a more comprehensive way.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:07:07)That's quite exciting, I think, to be able to map out the entire journey and measure, I think the data from the top of the funnel to the bottom and then have that feedback loop is extremely important. But as the GM as activation, what are some things you are focused on right now?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:07:25)Yeah, so for us for 2020. It's really been all about building for the future. And the future of advertising is cookieless. And connected TV plays a really big role in it. So we have spent this year so far launching solutions, to make sure that advertisers have cookie free ways to reach audiences based on TV and OTT viewership. With all of the unique data assets that Comscore has, honestly, it feels like Comscore was sort of built for this moment. So we're putting these assets together in cool new innovative ways, and have already launched solutions to help bridge that contextual and audience targeting together so that when cookies do go away, none of our clients skip a beat. The The second major initiative has been all about connected TV, we launched a new solution, a market that enables us to offer contextualization of CCTV content. During a time where there's just a ton of turmoil in the world brand safety and its next gen iteration brand suitability are just more important for brands than ever. We're enabling that contextual targeting for real video and CTV content in a way that's never been done before. It's pretty cool stuff. We're really excited about it.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:08:49)I look forward to discussing that in the next section, but just the, from the sound of being able to translate the show into contextual categories. How has that helped Comscore its business overall in the activation from the activation side?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:09:08)Yeah, I mean, if you think about how a lot of that has been done historically, I think I'm almost embarrassed to say that as an industry, I think we've fallen down a little bit and only been able to contextualize video, based on metadata or based on the content surrounding a video on a web page. It's just really insufficient. And when you think about it, in the context of CTV, where some of those things are not even available, that doesn't negate the need for the solution. So this has been a really big move for us to be able to take CTV advertising partner across publishers, across brands across agencies, really to that next level and apply a lot of the tools that folks have become accustomed to.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:09:58)Yeah, I can definitely echo on that, I think just a few months back when advertisers or agency clients have reached out to us, us and whether they can buy on specific show level. And the answer back then was that if you wanted to buy on the show level either we have to work with somebody who has ACR access more will have to buy this primarily through the programmatic guaranteed workflow. And I think come scores product on the contextualization product on the CTV side. Certainly, that's going to help a lot of agencies, I think, during the planning and execution phase, and I look forward to diving into this topic a bit more later. We want to take a look at what has really transpired in the past few months. And look at the changes in data over say the past two quarters. What do you foresee is here to stay? And how will that change as we move forward to into 2021 and beyond?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:10:58)Yeah, I mean, the pit of the pandemic has really had a big impact on CTV consumption in particular Comscore just released our state of OTT annual report. And I took a little bit of a sneak peek just before this conversation to share a few insights. The CTV consumption in particular is really astounding. The hockey stick that we see beginning in early March, with a peak in the last week of March is crazy. I'm approximating, but we essentially saw roughly a 25% increase in both the number of hours and number of households consuming CTV content. And the fascinating part for me is how steady those figures have been. Since that peak at the end of March, we've seen the sustain levels up including through the first week of June. So to your point is, is this here to stay, no one obviously knows for sure. But with states reopening and with warmer weather coming for summer, we do expect these figures to cool off a bit. And what's actually kind of interesting, so we took a look at local linear TV engagement during the same time period. And were able to compare the engagement levels for markets with stay at home orders versus those without. And there was a noticeable difference in the levels of engagement being higher in those markets with stay at home orders. But even with the declines due to nicer weather, and folks venturing out due to ease shelter in place restrictions. For the remainder of 2020 and 21, we really do expect to see CTV consumption, a solid step change above where it's been in the pre pandemic days.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:12:48)And to some to some extent, one would also think this is a like a catalyst and actually forcing people to stay at home a catalyst to move for the traditional TV industry to move their inventory from linear to CTV as much as possible. Would you say that's, that's something where some trends we're observing right now as well.\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:13:14)That's part surely true. But I think there's also components, where it's not necessarily about shifting dollars from linear to CTV or from digital to CTV, the biggest thing is that there's just flat out more video being consumed period. So a lot of the the nuances that have come about because of the pandemic have really given more opportunity for experimentation and more options for advertisers, as they're seeking to reach their target audience.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:13:45)Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, just because I think if we consider the 24 hours as a complete loop of user journey now, which was what you're saying, Now, user are just spending much more time of their journey on the CTD device. And I think this is a a great opportunity for marketers who either have to ICTV or half not to ICTV to possibly experiment and see how CTV can play a role in their media media planning process. So maybe with that said, What are your thoughts on advertising for advertisers or agencies during this uncertain time?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:14:24)Yeah, the impacts of advertising have been pretty interesting. For starters, I think the sheer volume of content on COVID and advertisers reaction to having their digital ads run alongside it really highlighted how insufficient existing popular brand safety solutions were to help brands and publishers frankly, navigate this difficult time. brand safety itself, blacklist keyword blocking, where content is either brand safe or it isn't COVID really just exposed how outdated that content sectors, we quickly pivoted our business to brand suitability especially for COVID content, and expect that to be a big trend that continues in advertising. The other major one has been around CTV. So with the massive increases in CCTV consumption, the pandemic really accelerated the adoption, we saw the see TV advertising. Even when brands were sometimes pulling back on display advertising. Many were following the trends in engagement and following those consumers to see TV. But what I thought was pretty interesting. So if you had asked me six months ago, how far away the industry was from better targeting measurement solutions to meet the demands from CTV, I probably would have said minimum easy of a year. But when COVID hit that timeline just rapidly vanished. And I think we've come further in the last three months than anyone would have expected. Comscore is actively partnering now with DSPs SSPs, publishers and brands really across the full ecosystem to bring better CTV solutions to market. And I don't think that collaboration really at this pace would have happened without COVID.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:16:21)Right, I think, maybe a segue to work from home a little bit. I think that the extra three hours people put in or average two to three hours from some stats I've seen, because everybody's now working from home, therefore they put that many extra hours in, I think that certainly helped with that industry cross, I think of cross collaboration piece. And I think it's very interesting now, especially also with a brand suitability piece you talked about. And we've seen a lot of blog posts, a lot of Twitter and Facebook posts about ads being blocked on New York Times, and just essentially showing the cloud. And that I think that was the inflection point that from the buy side, we realized that maybe we should talk to our clients, but more in terms of how you want to show up on that specific side, given the fact right now majority of this majority of the content now are related either to COVID, or current events or current topics that may not be, I think, desirable to some brands to show up. And therefore I think the concept of run suitability is a very important one for us to continue to hone in going forward. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think moving on to the to the next section, I really wanted to talk about the specific product solutions within the CTV OTT inventory channel. And also I want to dive into the vertical specific product solutions that are more. But I think the first thing I want to say is advertising. Really the fundamental promise of advertising is the return on investment for advertisers, which essentially translate to a lift in revenue or a set of KPIs that is critical to their business operations. We've been talking about the concept of cross platform measurement for many, many years. And there's always been consortiums on unified IDs to even strengthen this effort. I guess the question is, why is cross platform measurement really important now? And how does that affect agents, advertisers and agencies during their planning process? Maybe we can talk about that in the OTT or CPB workflow specifically.\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:18:41)At the end of the day, advertisers and agencies need to know if their advertising works. If they can't be sure that every screen and their media plan is delivering results, then they can't funnel money towards the screen. Simply put, the increase in CTV watching has led to this increase in CTV advertising. But for that to sustain advertisers need to have confidence in their cross platform measurement. The cross platform measurement, it's really critical for understanding what's still really the fundamental and key components of advertising, reach and frequency. planning and buying and measuring platforms in isolation really just presents the risk of over delivering a brand's message to a consumer and causing fatigue. When it comes to measuring ROI. It's important that all platform exposures be counted for proper attribution to take place.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:19:37)Yeah, I agree. 100%. I think the reach and frequency concept is under the programmatic scope has been largely taken for granted. And I think when it comes to reach and frequency, what people sometimes don't understand is that in order to do the proper reach and frequency, first and foremost, we need to understand the Anonymize identity If I have the user first, which alludes to the point of cross platform measurement, otherwise, we will be just flat out guessing, I guess, in this case and apply certain key ratios to kind of consolidate that to a guesstimate off return frequency. And really hone in on this point. I think that's one of the challenges still. And to have those, those things added with the key risk factors. We're also observing right now, for example, the disappearance of cookie, the elevated concerns regarding user privacy's and more. I guess, that really leads to the question, how important now is the first party data versus third party data? Specifically in the context of targeting and measurement?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:20:52)I mean, I think first party data is becoming more important than ever. But third party data isn't going away. It's just changing. Advertisers still want their first party data enriched with insights beyond what they directly have visibility into. And that could be offside digital behaviors or interactions with other brands. And the the industry still wants third party providers to be able to validate and measure ad campaigns without bias, person level audience measurement, it's still going to be required. And that's why in our new world, consumer panels become the keys to Kingdom Comscore, US deterministic panel assets really have always been our truth sets and will continue to enable that for broader market in the future.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:21:39)It's very interesting. You talked about consumer panel in a first first party environment. Maybe Why is consumer panels so so differentiated in programmatic because we've all know consumer panel to be the product of the last decade or last decades, when people would just be handed a remote or a click button to essentially let the marketers understand how they react to certain stimulus or stimuli. So maybe you can talk about the consumer panel and what kind of role they play in the programmatic ecosystem?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:22:14)Yeah, when it comes to programmatic, I think the role that the consumer panel plays is still at its core, the same, and that's insight into behavior. So through consumer panels, you can see all kinds of behaviors, that from traditional audience targeting perspective, things like age and gender, you know, it just goes far beyond that. And when every dollar counts, and every brand is looking to be able to reach an in market audiences, being able to leverage that type of visibility into actual behaviors to then create audiences at scale, at the core insights driven from that panel, that's where I think from a programmatic standpoint, a lot of this can really come to life.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:23:04)Yeah, I think that makes sense and powered with vast amount of data in programmatic? I think what we can do is really to use that data as a truth set and try to test based on that. And more importantly, not definitely won't, we don't want to mention this is that the consumer panel is privacy centric, meaning everybody has fun has already opted in, to share their data. 100%. Yeah, I think as GDPR and CCPA becomes front and center in this discussion, because fundamentally, they would impact the measurability and advertising, we want to make sure we not only adhere to the regulations, but also still deliver value to our clients. So maybe let's talk about the analytics and optimization solutions in OTT in the tree channel. So we talked about some challenges in terms of targeting, and we talked about some challenges in the, in the measurability when it comes to identifiers, will be some major challenges you have seen on your side for agencies during the planning process or the execution process.\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:24:11)Yeah, I think as advertisers have increased their spending on OTT inventory, they they've we've talked about this a little bit before, but they've become accustomed to a set of optimization tools for linear TV and digital that frankly, really until now have just not existed for CTV. So that has been you know, if you think about for CTV in a world of 24/7 news, or with heavy topics like COVID Being so present, things like brand safety, that's probably less of an issue historically on the linear TV side, but certainly one that's been quite prevalent on the digital side. And a lot of the solutions in place for religious things like app level, brand safety. or, like I mentioned before contextual targeting based on content around the video, but not based on the video itself. Like as an industry that sort of embarrassing that we thought that that would be sufficient for a brand to make decisions off of. And I think the same has been true and measurement to your point that the metrics that folks are using, in many ways depend on where they're routed in from, from whether it's from the TV side of the house or the digital, and advertisers want better cross platform person level measurement period. So customers are working really hard to improve solutions to meet these needs. And we've been pretty encouraged by the positive feedback that we really continue to receive on them.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:25:47)That's great to hear. And I just really want to say I'm personally excited about contextualization solution, because I think that's the the thing of CTV advertisers one because they just want to be able to target the show on a contextual level, rather than target that exactly to your point on an app level, because that will be going back to the linear days, that is no longer we can only target the audience by the hour, we air that ad. And I think in programmatic, we can do a bit more. So I guess, as we see the demand, and also the supply and OTT and CTV increasing significantly, how does that how does that really impact the demand in linear TV? I guess more of a controversial topic that is being discussed right now is that is upfront going away this year?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:26:45)Yeah, we get this question a lot. Are the upfronts going away? I obviously don't have a crystal ball. But I personally would not bet on it. From our view right now, we talked about this a little bit. It's really less about OTT taking away from linear and more that people are watching more video. And how, what do you do about that? You know, how does that change the world from an advertising perspective? So according to some recent research that we've done, from Comscore, the current OTT penetration, it's about 70 million households, of which 58% Also subscribe to cable or satellite. Now you have about 21% Are cord cutters. And this really has been a concentrated threat to linear, but that number has been stabilizing. It's the other 21% that are cord Nevers, and those are the ones I think we really need to pay attention to. This for now, linear still accounts for 75% of the average American households premium video consumption. So I think the question is a little bit of different in that it's how do we make this work? And I think the industry just needs to figure out a more elegant way to package OTT as another major channel and fold it into the upfront format. Honestly, just like the industry did with premium online video 10 years ago, I don't think the upfronts are going away. The industry really still needs a futures market. And most people agree with that. But I think the timing, the flexibility of the upfronts, that's going to evolve, and I think they're going to become a little less rigid than they've been in the past.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:28:35)Fascinating. And I guess, with that said, a lot of agencies still have two different teams focusing on one linear planning on one OTT planning, I guess, are there's anything we can do what what solutions should we introduce to make that planning process a bit easier for the agency folks?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:28:58)The mechanics of planning, buying and measuring linear versus OTT are pretty different. But there's a ton of overlap. from a consumer standpoint, Comscore is working to solve for the problems that media fragmentation causes, with our solution called Comscore Campaign Ratings or CCR, which really aims to measure reach frequency and impressions across all screens, and all screens really being the key point there. If measurement is unified, then the agency approach can finally start to be unified as well. Then it's really just more about selecting the next best media property on the best screen to reach the consumer.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:29:44)Right. That makes sense. I think a lot of times we're so focused on inventory. We're so focused on screens or different property types. And we we don't really think about it from audience standpoint, I think end of the day is finding the journey or finding a path to the audience. And therefore, we should always use audience as the core anchor to do any planning, and therefore that kind of made the plenty of execution stage more, I think synergized.\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:30:15)Yeah, I mean, I think it's what we've been talking about for years and years. But I'm encouraged that with solutions that can finally put that together in a single place, that that will help move the conversation forward to making that perspective, a little more of a reality.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:30:35)And we touched on this earlier, we was asking about what advertisers really should do during this uncertain time. And now we want to dive deeper, three core verticals and talk about some trends and solutions that are important for agencies to know during this during their planning or execution stages. And we want really want to focus on CPG, retail and auto. So maybe you feel my Rachel, are there any specific trends you're seeing under CPG? And retail and auto respectively right now? And what are some recommendations and solutions that you think are really important for agency folks to know now?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:31:17)Yeah, from from a big picture perspective. Across all three, actually, many brands have pretty significant marketing budgets set aside for sports sponsorship this year, that haven't happened because of the pandemic. And the results of that has been pretty interesting and that some brands had some extra marketing dollars lying around, that they can start to do things like test out some new formats, and that has partially driven some of what we've seen with CTV advertising. So take auto, for example. So with auto Auto has been doing a ton of advertising through CTV, but auto manufacturers have really had to change their messaging and approach during the pandemic. So one of the key historic KPIs for auto brands has always been about driving foot traffic to the dealerships. That has been the key focus of the vast majority of auto advertising. But with so many dealerships closed for prolonged periods of time, this has really changed that metric and the core messaging so you're starting to see things like delivering new cars to your home cleaning cars, financing options, those are clear focus, and with it being far easier for brands to adjust the messaging for digital and CTV advertising. Compared to traditional linear ad campaigns, the emergence of CTV has really helped to alleviate this. It's been a pretty different dynamic though the what we're seeing from a retail perspective, with so many businesses having to close their doors over the past few months, I would say overall, that retail, really more so than auto or CPG, has pulled back on advertising. And in many cases, we're still really waiting for that to reemerge. Those companies though, with strong e commerce presence, or partnerships, new partnerships with things like Instacart, they quickly pivoted their messaging to focus on those channels, and offers such as delivery or curbside pickup, sort of where they could. The last one CPG on the other hand, CPG has been really interesting. There's a lot of cool new things going on within this vertical in that so many CPG brands had to pull back on advertising during the early days of the pandemic, largely because in many cases, people couldn't always find their goods on the shelf. So this is lessening, the supply chains are flowing. And while we saw a big drops in advertising in April, many have begun spending again in May in June. And as far as CTV is concerned, there have been a couple of interesting dynamics that started to play out. The first of which being if you think about CPG companies, right? They are powerhouse advertisers. They have years and years and years of data from past advertising. So when a new channel emerges like CTV, there isn't a ton of back data to fuel their models to help make these decisions. So we're seeing some experimentation to try to discover what impact if any of these ads are having. And for many brands, their TV and digital teams are still really siloed in internally, we talked about this a little bit before with, part of the result of that, is that a, it's tougher to sort out when it comes to CTV who gets to make the decisions and be, depending on who quote unquote wins that battle that dictates the measurement metrics. The point you raised earlier about GRPs versus more digitally oriented metrics that are cared about when it comes to CTV environment. So every brand seems to be handling this slightly differently. And I think this is definitely a dynamic to watch, as it plays out for the remainder of this year.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:35:44)To your point, it's, they're adding a new channel or a new device to their media mix. So I mean, they need to go through a market sizing analysis for that specific new device to figure out their total addressable market. So end users, and how to find their users accordingly. I think that's a that's a really interesting dynamic to see that is unfolding. And I was just going to ask about your experience, or what you're receiving on your site in terms of the core product solutions being asked the most often to help them to address those key challenges.\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:36:21)Yeah, from our perspective, it so far is truly a mix. That when it comes in some ways, it depends on what the content being targeted from a CTV standpoint is, I think premium CTV content is often treated like linear TV and the asked to us is along the same lines of standard TV tools. But I think as you start to move down beyond those the top premium, then you start to get more into folks treating it a little more to like digital, and reaching for those tools that the digital teams have been relying on for a long time. So it's a little bit of both. But I'll be interested to see that for the majority of brands sort of which side ends up winning out? Or if one does, or it ends up being sort of a combination of both.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:37:20)Yeah, if you have to place a bet, which one would that be?\n\n\n\nRachel  (00:37:25)I'd like to think that it's honestly going to be the best of both worlds. Like I think the industry has an opportunity here, where there are things that I think are superior from a digital perspective, in terms of the data that's available and the data that can be used for decisioning. There are also components from the linear side that are superior when you think about the simplicity, the ease of buying how straightforward it is in in the world of premium content. So I'm probably not answering your question. I know that but I think it's going to be an ultimate blend. And it's going to evolve both in ways that will likely have impacts to their respective silos. So that might have impacts on a long term basis to linear and on a digital standpoint.\n\n\n\nMichael  (00:38:19)I think, just to think that the linear folks will just let the CTV folks take all of their budget, I don't think that's a fair assumption. Because exactly to your point, the present present or the linear buying presents some of the advantages. And certainly they will do everything they can to advance their technologies to accommodate or produce product solutions that will be advantageous for buyers to buy to linear environment. And I think it's definitely going to be the best of two worlds. And we're just very curious to see how we can incorporate more product solutions from I think, from our partnership and try to make it work for our agency clients. Thanks, Rachel, for joining and sharing knowledge. I really enjoyed our chat and appreciate your taking the time. Yeah, thanks for having me.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:39:10) Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn.If you have questions or feedback, if you’d love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/strategies-to-revive-travel-industry#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/strategies-to-revive-travel-industry"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Creative Strategies to Protect and Revive the Travel Industry Post-COVID","datePublished":"2020-07-22T20:01:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:47:41+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/strategies-to-revive-travel-industry"},"wordCount":12849,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/strategies-to-revive-travel-industry#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast","travel"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe travel industry was hit especially hard during COVID-19 pandemic. We share insights into how to both protect and revive travel in these challenging conditions.\n\n\n\nMikey Sadowski | GM, Global PR & Communications, Intrepid Travel\n\n\n\nJason Laronde | Sales Director, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Our marketing was very much like that one, your last go collect stamps, you know, not, nothing's all that and now we're just like, hey, we're safe. This is a safety stamp like, and then people like need it. That's the thing. It's about not being so rigid and, and being able to adapt, but also, as with everything in marketing, it's not about what you want. It's what your customers want. So by for us understanding what the customers want and being able to deliver that effectively. That's the crux of effective marketing. So I think that's just where everyone's at is not. It's not what you want to tell your customers. It's what your customers need to hear.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:35)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape to how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:04)Hi, everyone, my name is Vitaly Pecherskiy, co-founder of StackAdapt, and the host of How Agencies Thrive Podcast. Today we have an incredibly fun and enlightening episode with Mikey Sadowski from Intrepid Travel. What I loved about this conversation is like his deep understanding of the dynamics within the travel industry. He points out that travel is an important tool for wealth distribution, and cultural exchange. And it's really a two way street with every person needs to ask is not only am I ready to travel, but also is the community ready to welcome me. Both Jason and Mikey are passionate travelers and passionate marketers. And I love hearing them banter, share stories of their travel and their insights on what travel and travel marketing will look like during the industry recovery and post COVID Now it's time to welcome them.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:01:56)Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining the StackAdapt podcast How Agencies Thrive. My name is Jason Laronde. I am a team lead account director here at StackAdapt. I've been in industry for about seven years variety of roles there started as programmatic analyst and work my way up to more of a sales focused role. But I've seen industry evolve. And I've never seen something like COVID-19, especially for some of the verticals I work in. So I'm very excited introduce my next guest today. Mikey Sadowski, or st kowski. Mikey is the North American Marketing Director and Head of Global PR and advocacy for Intrepid Travel. For anyone doesn't know,Intrepid Travel is the world's largest adventure travel company, writing sustainable small group tours in over 120 countries in all seven continents. So I'm very excited to introduce Mikey and have him on board. So thanks, Mike, for joining us.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:02:41)Thanks so much, Jason. It's great to be here.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:02:43)Perfect. With that said, Mikey. You've been on target for about seven years now. You started as a marketing coordinator major way up to your current position now, how has the transition been from being the entry level position where you started to where you are today leading marketing efforts for a more strategic approach?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:02:59)Yeah, I mean, it's it's been a little bit, but an amazing journey to be honest. Yeah, just celebrated seven years back in January. I guess just I can give a little bit of insight into my kind of career path. I mean, I grew up in, in Toronto, and I studied actually at Ryerson University doing hospitality and tourism. And when I left that program, I was kind of really set on working in luxury hotels and kind of filling, fulfilling a little bit of like that Grand Budapest Hotel type dreams and became a concierge at a luxury hotel in Toronto, and I loved it like you know, as a 20, something just getting started in the industry, you know, got to kind of brush shoulders with a lot of celebrities and all these really cool things and, you know, was kind of on a very different path to becoming a hotel year. And then I actually went on a trip with intrepid travel before I started working there to Peru. And I was doing kind of as part of my academic research around sustainable tourism and community based tourism and the impact and intersection of local communities and tourism. And, you know, I just kind of fell in love with the whole concept of intrepid travel and what intrepid traveler stood for as a business. So I, you know, came back to Toronto after that trip to Peru, and I, I actually applied for the for the marketing coordinator job, and I didn't get it. And I was like, Oh, well, you know, that's, that's annoying. So I kind of call back and I was like, oh, like what happened? And they were like, oh, like you didn't have any marketing experience. And I was like, oh, like Fair enough. I guess that's how jobs work. So I actually ended up asking to intern for the marketing coordinator. So that actually got started one level lower than that. And that was in January 2013. And you know, from there it was it was really just kind of letting my passion kind of fuel myself right. Right, you know, right for those first few years really starting to understand marketing and understanding. You know what, what our products stand for him, but because I had that kind of alignment personally, I found it really kind of, you know, really easy to put that added effort in to think really critically about or to pitch it and you know, started working up through our PR I had the opportunity to start our Instagram account, you know, had the chance to work on some of our really big first stories in the new year. or times and things like that. So, you know, it was a very kind of natural progression. And then for me it was, it was kind of at a time when we were fairly small in North America. So over the past seven years, as we've been growing, growing, growing to a point where as a 31 year old business up until COVID, we were growing at about, you know, 30%, year over year in North America, a lot of it is really just been, you know, finding, finding kind of ways to tell our brand story into, you know, what I saw on intrepid so many years ago, and let that passion kind of come through in our marketing and our storytelling.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:05:30)Well, that's awesome. And kind of funny to think about starting as an intern for a marketing coordinator. When I started as a marketer, I would have loved work I did not want to do just a funny story overall. But let's talk about that in trumpet. Let's pretend you're explaining the company as if you're explaining to a five year old, how would you go about describing it and convinced me it's, you know, the best way to travel?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:05:51)A five year old? Great, yeah. Well, I just like as you know, as a precursor, I would just, you know, intrepid travel is the world's largest adventure travel companies, you kind of know that. And we're also the world's largest travel B Corporation. So you know, B corpse are businesses that kind of use their platform as a force for good some of the big C corpse like Patagonia, you may know and, and that's a really key part of our ethos. But we've run kind of small group tours for an average of 10. Travelers in over 120 countries on all seven continents. And, you know, our kind of value prop is, is, is rooted in our mission to become the best travel company for the world. So we're all about creating incredible experiences that are good for the people and good for the planet. If I were to kind of distill that down for a five year old, I would, I would probably go the route of kind of asking them like what they love most about their city or their town or wherever they live. And, you know, from them, you'd probably get, you know, thinking of a conversation with a five year old, you know, maybe their favorite ice cream shop, or their favorite playground or their favorite museum. And, and I'd kind of go back to them and said, Imagine you were in a brand new city. And what if I told you there was a way that you could find all of those places the second you got there, because you know, with Intrepid, all of our tours are led by local guide, who's walk who's essentially a walking talking guide book, you get to truly experience the destination, like a local, you kind of have a group of 10 friends, and it provides such a meaningful travel experience that you could never really have if you were just kind of going at it alone.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:07:12)That's perfectly fine rule inside me. With that said, though, I'm kind of curious, you know, you mentioned Peru as the first experience, but have you had any more experience? And what's would you say is the best travel experience with the company?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:07:25)Yeah, so it's an amazing kind of perk for all employees that intrepid travel, we actually get a five weeks vacation and a free trip every year. So we kind of, you know, operate under the mandate that a well traveled team is actually good for business. And, you know, really making sure that we're living and breathing those values by experiencing it. When I guess when they first kind of rolled out this program, the first kind of trip I took in terms of like our kind of like free trip employee incentive program was a 15 day trip to Mongolia. It was a three week trip kind of I was in I was in Mongolia for three weeks, it was a country that I knew pretty much nothing about. It's one of the least densely populated countries in the world. And we were there for something called the natum Festival, which is kind of like Mongolia's Super Bowl. So you know, it's in this big stadium. And they they celebrate, you know, the three the three ancient sports during the gangers con Dynasty, which is wrestling, horse racing in archery. And it's just, you know, a completely intense kind of culture, shock and experience. And it's something so, so different to what you'd experience in North America. You know, you'd see kids on the streets, kind of riding their horses to go play basketball, they'd be on their iPhones, or riding their horses, like a, like a country that's so rooted in their culture, but you know, still making that transition to the modern world. So, you know, for me, it was just a place that I knew so little about and was a place that was so different from home. And also a place that I feel like I could have never ever traveled to on my own. So it's definitely an experience that kind of holds a very kind of special and unique place in my heart.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:08:53)That's awesome. Yeah, I would never think to go to Mongolia is top of my list, but I just sold me on that one again.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:09:00)And a lot of people that's the thing with the kind of there's a higher barrier to you know, it's like, right, we're talking about places like you know, Antarctica use Becca Stan tent, like I did a cycling trip across Tanzania, like, these are places that for the average person, you'd never really think about just you know, going to air Canada's website, booking a trip there and then just freaking out when you get there. Like there's a very high barrier to some of these places. But with kind of like that kind of softer landing, it really lets you kind of get in and explore some really cool and untouched parts of the world.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:09:28)Oh, and I can imagine how that local tour guide is perfect for that because they give you that more. I hate to say the word again, but local experience that you wouldn't get if you just looked at TripAdvisor and try to find the best tourist destination, right?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:09:41)Yeah, and when I like when I was in Mongolia, I saw like independent travelers that were trying to like hitchhike their way around, they didn't speak the language. They looked miserable. I was like, wow, like not exactly jealous of that experience. So it's Yeah, to each their own but I just think I'm it's certainly a style of travel that lends itself so well to to a lot of people.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:09:58)That's awesome. I didn't want to kind of ask you and I think a lot of people tuning in will be curious about this and the elephant in the room is COVID-19. recording this in the middle of a pandemic, travel has been one of the many industries that got hit incredibly hard. When the lockdown started, I'm just kind of curious, what is some of the things your team has been doing with the uncertainty in the market?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:10:19)Yeah, I would say COVID has certainly impacted international travel in a way that we've never really seen before. I mean, just to even kind of paint the context of this like, and again, this is a bit of a moving target in terms of the the kind of stats and numbers behind it. But, you know, we look back at some of the major events over the past 20 years and how they've impacted travel, I mean, the terror attacks and a 911, which created you know, a very real kind of fear around flying mobility, global tourist era, international tourist arrivals that year were flat year over year growth. So 0%, essentially that year, during the SARS epidemic in 2003. slight decline if it goes negative 2%. Year over year, during the global economic crisis in 2009, international arrivals were down 4% year over year. And right now, in terms of what the United Nations World Tourism Organization is looking at scenario planning that the COVID 19 pandemic will likely impact international arrivals by negative 78%. So 00, negative four, and then negative 78. So that like, it's kind of hard, like people that are throwing the cliche word around unprecedented, like, in truly every way, shape, or form, this is not even close to anything we've ever seen before. So yeah, that it's kind of, there's no getting around, and it's had a massive impact on travel. So, you know, for us and for me, and for marketers, and people who are kind of going through this, you know, there's there's kind of like, you know, it's a little bit of like a choose your own adventure, it's like, what path do you want to take to try and rally through this right now. And for us, it was kind of, you know, there was a very real, I guess, workflow that we kind of worked through. And this kind of first thing was, I guess, to kind of focuses, so one is like, kind of looking at our customers and community. And then the second step was kind of looking at our product and purpose. So, you know, as a values led organization, for both customers, and the communities where we operate, you know, we had to make, we had a commitment to make sure that like, everyone was safe, you know, and we were taking care of them. And then from our community, like making sure that we were kind of, you know, going in and making sure that we were engaging with our travelers like, hey, we can't travel now, but people are still missing a sense of, of that connection in the world, and people who like you know, who are used to being on a plane every three months, or even going on an amazing bucket list trip every year. So we really wanted to make sure that we had been kind of engaging with kind of our customers in that way. And then kind of as as things started to normalize, and we started kind of, you know, as normal as they could possibly bleep be, then we started thinking is like, Okay, well, how do we live our brand values and stay kind of relevant right now. And that's when we really started looking at more of our product and purpose. So we started, you know, innovating on our products, talking about our purpose, we really kind of rallied around this value prop that, you know, travel can only rebound stronger, if it rebuilds more responsibly, and started really putting out marketing and messaging that helps kind of enable a healthier tourism industry in the future. So you know, focusing on healthy relationships within your value chain, focusing on more quality tourism versus quantity, tourism, and really kind of leading with that stance as a way for not only as marketing that we could stay kind of Top of Mind, but also really, really keep our value and brand prompt, you know, front and center. In terms of being you know, as we said before, the mission, I'm trying to be the best travel company for the world. So it's, it's like what the kind of the overarching thing? Well, we talk a lot about in our marketing team is like, this idea that like everything is a story. And it's so important that when you kind of distill everything down and you create the narratives like Okay, so what's the story you're telling right now, and whether it's you know, whether it's a campaign or it's, you know, if you're in retail, and you're doing like the winter line versus the summer line, wherever, all you you start at your story, and then everything else in marketing is how you tell that story. So for us, it was kind of two things. One, the first story that we were telling was with our kind of beat together campaign was, you know, how do we help combat physical distancing with online community, and we're going to really enable kind of UGC and storytelling as a way to kind of bring people into our brand. And then the next story we were telling is travel can only rebound stronger if it rebuilds more responsibly. And with that as our value prop, how do we then do that? So we've started developing things around, open sourcing our animal welfare policy, open sourcing our climate data, doing webinars that kind of speak to a healthier and more sustainable travel industry. So we've kind of just really, really set the framework around the narratives around the things that we can control, really, really listening to the market, and then making sure that we're telling a really, really concise story and not trying to do too many things.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:14:40)Oh, that's awesome. And I think you're right messaging is key right now. It's not showing off like, how am I gonna be profitable during this? It's like, How can I care for the people that are going to continue using my service? 612 18 months down the road? And based on what I've seen from Intrepid, it's exactly what's going on? Yep. Yeah. And really we're kind of curious though, Um, you know, as we're talking about this and our as we're talking about COVID, and the pandemic, and how it's been unprecedented, there's been some restrictions that have been lifted. And we can use Ontario and Toronto as the example where we're moving into a phase system where phase two, we can start, you know, start doing groups of 10, people can look at more localized travel. And I'm kind of curious from you, and talk a little bit about which markets could be anywhere in the world. Are you trying to restart your marketing efforts in?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:15:28)Yeah, so it's interesting, because, you know, when this all started, and this, I think, for anyone working kind of in more of a global marketing role and has a lot of global scope within their businesses. When it all started, everyone was in the same boat, global lockdowns, global shut down to international borders closed. And that was kind of easy, because you're kind of doing all your planning, you know, in line that everything is going to be happening at the same kind of pace and cadence and flow. And now what we're seeing, just to your point, like, you know, even in Canada, BC has been much further along than Ontario, and Australia, as an example, Melbourne has gotten back into lockdown now after a recent outbreak, so the rest of the country is more open. But now Melbourne is back in lockdown. And then London has been building air bridges, and they can start flying to other parts of the world. So for us, we kind of like, you know, we're keeping things fairly aligned, but then really had to get get fairly tight and regionalized, in terms of acknowledging that the world was just going to be very quickly in a lot of different places. So now for us, it's kind of, you know, at the very, very top level, we're kind of shifting our marketing around, I guess, to things that the product innovation, and then the 2021 bucketing, so I speak to product innovation, in the sense that we have to really understand how people are going to be traveling in the future and making sure that there's products that actually align with that. I think, you know, Airbnb is a company that does this really well, I think, you know, but companies that really adopt good design thinking build very strong bridges between their product and their marketing teams. And for us, we've we've always really, really, really valued that relationship. So our product team has really been working on a product called intrepid retreats, which is essentially this idea of, you know, one central location and doing a lot of really cool and local and authentic experiences from from kind of one home base. So, you know, in a normal kind of, you know, situation with an intrepid ship, you know, you'd go, let's say to Morocco, you'd go to, you know, Marrakech, then you'd go to the Sahara Desert, and then you'd go up to, you know, Casablanca, so, but in these kinds of instances, it's like, actually, people are going to be a little bit more comfortable, unpacking one's kind of being in a little bit more of that familiarity is going to be a really big value. So we're talking a lot about getting our marketing efforts around product, that's actually going to be you know, a really strong fit. And then the other the other issue was the core product, and how we're going to go, they're going to sell our product, and what kind of the runway and lead time is so so you know, in a normal booking environment, we're looking at, like 100, day lead time, on average. And now for our for our core product, we're looking at, you know, 300 days, or 400 days where people are looking a lot more to 2021 bookings. So a lot of our marketing is around how do we kind of promote and talk about 2021 bookings. And when we look at the kind of categories and products focus is, what we're really seeing right now is kind of, I guess, these three things, there's, we're kind of categorize them as wilderness, travel, wellness, travel, and slow travel. So the slow travel kind of prescribes what we just talked about is a little bit slowing down to the pace, a little more control, you know, not necessarily doing as much and seeing as much and really just, you know, feeling like you're really comfortable in your environment. You know, wilderness travel speaks to places that have a deeper connection with the natural world. So places like Antarctica, places like the Galapagos places where you're not necessarily in you know, the downtown Tokyo or Beijing or you're in, you know, massively massively densely populated cities and urban centers. So people are really, you know, curious about how Antarctica you know, a place with no permanent human residence, a place that's, you know, always kind of given way to the natural environment is, is kind of really appealing right now. And then wellness, like, you know, places where we can kind of discount or discredit to the, you know, the toll that this has taken on so many people, you know, myself included, and a lot of people aren't in our industry, for the need that, you know, we do need to look after ourselves and take care of our well being both mentally and physically. And, you know, there is, you know, when people are thinking about their travel experience, the idea of, you know, doing something like around like a cycling trip or a yoga trip, or something where it's a little bit more like reconnecting and slowing down with their mind, body and spirit, I think, um, there's a lot of appeal to kind of those experiences as well, which is awesome.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:19:21)And you know, it's funny, you mentioned Antarctica, like, it's some places you never think about going before, especially when you have opportunities, like you said, major city centers like Tokyo or Marrakech, some places that you can really find more experiences than you would in Antarctica. When you go there. There's really nothing to go.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:19:39)Honestly, I was lucky enough to go on a trip to Antarctica, one of my first couple years I didn't try but it is like one of the coolest things that you can possibly do. Like you gotta go down to the southern parts of Argentina. You're living in like, you know, mountain towns in southern Patagonia. And then you literally hop on a ship for two days on what's called the Drake's passage and it's where the, the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean meets the roughest waters in the world. And you literally go on an expedition to a continent that's, you know, not overrun, it's occupied. And their permanent residences are penguins and orca whales and seals. And it's and you know, giant mountains and calving glaciers, and you kind of go down and you're like, holy, like, you know, as the US, as a society have essentially built over every piece of vacant land in, you know, six continents. And this is one where it kind of is like, what happens if we just let nature kind of take over and let nature kind of thing. So it's such a rare and amazing thing. But, you know, just, you know, in addition to kind of the point I was saying before, I think when we're talking about is, you know, going to Antarctica next, or going to Peru, or going to Morocco, or going wherever, a lot of the conversation that we just need to keep in mind for everyone is that we're so focused on like, when Canadians can travel, we're so focused on like, when Europeans can travel or Americans can travel, but we have to really, really keep this critical conversation of like, when communities are ready to have travelers, it's kind of like this, this idea that like travel is very much a privilege. It's not a right. And this idea that, like, everyone's like, Oh, I can't wait to go to the Taj Mahal, like, does anyone even know what's happening in India, or like, I'm so excited to go to Machu Picchu because I don't even know what the COVID status is improved. So I think this is also really important recalibration of understanding that the, you know, travel is such an important distribution of wealth, and it's such an important invaluable exchange of culture. But people are really starting to see that like, oh, like it is a two way street. Yes, it's about where I want to travel. But it's also making sure that these communities are ready to host travelers and that you're actually going to be doing good by visiting.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:21:31)It's funny, you mentioned that it's so true. I never really thought about the community itself. And you see articles every time now where it's like Europe is now open to Canada. So July 1, and Europe is an open for localized travel, but you never really think about, it's like, oh, well, am I having a big impact when I actually land there versus you know, what I'm bringing back? Yeah, it's kind of focused on making sure they don't bring something back to their own country, they never really think about what they're leaving there. Yeah, so very interesting way of looking at that. And I kind of appreciate it now, a little more than I was before. Awesome. And I kind of want to tie back a little bit, you mentioned this very quickly of a messaging. And it imperative, right? With no matter if it's organic, or paid based on how you present yourself to the end user. It's, it's more important than ever nowadays, you see some brands that might not do it well enough and taken the wrong way, or whatever might be We even saw back in the day where COVID first started, a lot of brands were changed their logo to show show social distancing as a kind of a cool thing. Yeah, everybody, it's like that, and everyone rushed with it and more of a meme now. But I want to pivot back a little bit and talk about generational profiles. So especially for travel, you can have anybody in the world traveling at any age group. So what you say to a baby boomer isn't necessarily the same thing you'd say to Gen Z or Gen X, or in my case, a millennial, you need to be careful nowadays with how you say it, just for the same mention or reasons I mentioned before. Do you guys have any strategies in place to you know, accurately talk to the generations at large? And kind of talk me through that line of thinking?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:23:03)Yeah, so the, the idea, I mean, for us, like very much your point around travel is such, you know, travel is for everyone. And we really believe that, you know, we believe that travel at a healthy travel industry is one that's inclusive, both from you know, race, body image, everything beliefs, like, like a travel industry is literally built on inclusivity and cultural acceptance. So, you know, for us, our focus around our kind of target segment is really around a psychographic profile. It's people who have innate and innate curiosity about the world who you know, love authentic food, who want to travel in a way that celebrates local culture doesn't commoditize it. So, you know, for us, we've kind of always been focused on the type of travelers that we're after. Now, there's kind of an added layer now with the pandemic, because what you're kind of seeing is, you know, the kind of question that a lot of people are saying, in the travelers, like, who's going to travel first, you know, who's that first traveler, that's gonna, you know, you know, going to kind of lead us out of this and really do it and there is a very real sentiment that it is going to be that younger generation that that kind of like, you know, that younger millennial, and even below traveler who's, you know, feels like there's a little bit more appetite for kind of not necessarily risk because I don't think there's ever going to be a situation where people should be promoting travel when it's not safe. But we're, you know, just statistically, like, there's certain health concerns that are very much prevalent in the older generations. And I think there is kind of that, that kind of mindset. So there is those little small those smaller pivots, were kind of thinking about okay, what kind of price point are we are we going to start leading with some of our products are we going to start like, you know, there's kind of more wins to be had about going stuff that's a little bit more accessible and affordable in terms of our product mix, um, things that in terms of our imagery, like, are we going to kind of position younger travelers and some of our imagery and how we're going to project our kind of brand image right now, acknowledging which kind of conversations and then that kind of also ladders up to the types of stuff we're talking about. So like, right now, as we're looking at, you know, more immediate bookings. We're looking at potentially Europe bookings, we're definitely looking at you know, the rest of the year type thing. That's when we're kind of skewing, you know, a little bit younger speak into that kind of younger generation, that adventurous generation. But, you know, we're but by no means losing sight of, you know, the 2021 bookings, and who's booking our Antarctica product in the future and things like that. So, you know, we've always, really, really built a brand on very inclusive marketing and speaking to everyone acknowledging that there is, you know, appetite for kind of risk and adventure and excitement in every kind of age and kind of demographic level. But there is a very real kind of underpinning right now that in especially in traveling in all markets, you have to identify kind of your rebound roadmap and say, Okay, who are the customers that are going to drive us out of this first, and then who are the customers that are going to get, like, keep us ahead in the future? I mean, once you kind of identify that you can really start building a lot of your visual identity and your your kind of marketing around that.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:25:44)You know, it makes sense and say good graphics, I think you're right. Or kind of the way the future now that we can have a lot more data points on you know, whether they are more risk or more of a risk averse to travel versus, you know, whatever it might be there. But I'm kind of curious for like an average travel group that would participate in intrepids outings? Do you have a wide variety of, you know, people in age and gender? Or do you kind of have that typical user base that likes to participate in the travel?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:26:13)Yeah, I mean, we do have, so we have different product categories, like we operate on over 1100 trips. So you could imagine like, within that, there's a little bit of, you know, something for everyone type thing. But you know, we have an 18 to 20, nines, dedicated product range, that tends to be, you know, a lot more kind of budget, hostel type camping, camping Safari, instead of lodge safaris, things like that. So obviously, that's a younger skew. And then we kind of have our more comfort product, which is a softer landing, lot more forest, our accommodations, all private transportation, and that tends to skew to people with obviously a higher average household income, generally, people who are more retired age who don't want to be, you know, changing locations every day and going on. It's really like our like, long adventure and overnight trains in India and all that stuff. So it is a mix. I mean, at our core, we're looking at an average age of around 39 years old. And we tend to skew about 65% female in terms of our trips, and about half of our travelers actually solo and independent travelers, so people who really, you know, and it's a really interesting subset of releasing group that a lot of people maybe outside of the travel industry don't really see. But, you know, for me as an example, like, I've worked in a travel company, and you know, something I'm really passionate about, but it's very hard for me to find a friend who wants to go for three weeks to Mongolia, when they only get three weeks of vacation. I'm like, why don't you take all of your vacation and come to, like, it's a, it's a bit of a tricky value prop. But for some people, you know, they they want that experience. So for me, I went to Mongolia by myself, but I was never by myself, I was with a group of people that I met who were from all around the world. And it's really interesting, because I probably had that same mindset where, you know, I was looking at the travel kind of the group before we go, and I was like, oh, cool, like, a 27 year old from Australia, they're gonna be my best friend and all this person they're gonna be, but then, you know, I remember from a recent trip in India, you know, the my best friend, one of my best friends on the trip ended up being like a 68 year old woman who was from New Zealand, who used to be like a runway model. And she was like, teaching us how to like catwalk on the on the rooftop and new diaper. And I was like, In what world? Would I ever be traveling with this person. So, but it was like, it was awesome. And you learn so much. And that's kind of when you like, open up, you're, like, open up your mind and open up yourself a little bit more to, you know, understanding and meeting new people where I think you have such amazing experiences. So yeah, I mean, we do have that kind of, like core demographic as well. But I think for us, like, the best kind of stories are from people who maybe no normal circumstance, whatever find their way in a chip together and ends up making kind of memories for life.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:28:32)And that's just amazing, we can kind of remove all sense of, you know, prejudice, and, you know, this person shouldn't be traveling here and just take them as the person, they are elites. It's just some amazing experiences. And you know, that story about your, your New Zealand friends. I was actually in Vietnam, and you know, same kind of style, where we were just traveling on our own doing our own thing there. But a lot of people there, you wouldn't even imagine seeing there, you know, there was a lot of, you know, people, my parents age that were traveling, you're walking on high end, and you know, doing the same kind of stuff that I would do, and we were chatting with a couple that were in their 60s as well. And we had an amazing conversation with them and just understand their life journey, how they decided to get there and, you know, not be able to step into my comfort level, I would never want to do that normally, and you know, seeing these people because kind of inspirational right that I hope I can do the same thing when I'm their age.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:29:21)Yeah. And I think and like, I think that's one of the most special parts of travel. And I think that's also, you know, what, what really is, is is hurting like right now for a lot of us. And I think, you know, especially and we won't get political here, but talking about obviously, the political climate in the United States and things like that. Like, I think one of the worst things about this is the fact that people aren't crossing borders. People aren't, you know, meeting other cultures to the same level people aren't, you know, learning and creating that cultural acceptance. And I think one of the worst things obviously beyond beyond obviously, the massive health, you know, tools and concerns is that fundamentally people aren't aren't seeing each other anymore. We're not meeting each other. There's not that new experience. We're very insular weren't thinking very much within the framework of our own borders. And I think that's gonna be a really, it's a really sad byproduct, I think it's probably one of the most important things of traveling. So when people start thinking about it is getting out there and making sure that the world knows that we're all like, you know, all part of the same team here. And I think it's just an important thing that we don't really talk about in travel.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:30:16)Yeah, and, you know, speaking with Canada, very inclusive culture, and we have a lot of people from all walks of life. So I sometimes think we take it for granted, too, that we have a lot of people from different varieties of life that we can chat to and get their experiences. But while countries don't have that level of immigration, or what have you, so I can imagine it's it's definitely someone missed on a lot of times. You know, we are a marketing podcast, so it'd be killed if I didn't ask you some marketing questions. And really, we would talk about kind of how you're handling your marketing strategy nowadays. And the main thing being that there's most likely a major decrease in tangible returns on your paid efforts or even your organic efforts. With that said, have you guys been pivoting your strategy based on the current climate?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:31:00)Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like, I mean, not, you know, we always have to kind of just find things to grasp at straws to keep us like engaged and entertained, and fun things like that. So I think for us, like, there's obviously a really fun silver lining on some level that we've kind of got to market without that like hyper hyper pressure and pressure of like performance right now. And really kind of focus on our brand hygiene and getting a lot of our really like, you know, getting all that storytelling stuff done. So like so for us, I mean, I was kind of speaking to it a little bit before. But you know, the very first thing that we kind of did was acknowledge that, like, the hard sell was gone, the hard sell was like completely out the window. And we really just had to focus on our current customers, and even buy any base level of customer acquisition that we could. So a lot of that what has defined our marketing over the past 234 months at this point in time, has been kind of putting our customers at the front of their brand experience. And I'll kind of go into I guess a little bit what that means. But you know, our first campaign that we launched was something called be together. And D together was essentially a way for people to kind of share their kind of memories via kind of online letter writing and share not only in their memories and their experiences, but share letters to, you know, their tour leader that they met in, you know, Ecuador, or you know, their fellow group mate who's on the other side of the world who they met on a tour last year, and just a way that we could really bring the art community and our existing travelers together to keep them kind of engaged and excited about travel. So we started publishing those letters, I guess, you know, in marketing speak, we could call that UGC. So we really kind of, you know, leverage our kind of UGC content and, you know, and that way, when we were talking about, you know, I remember, like one of our people were talking about a trip that she didn't India, she was an 80 year old woman with amazing story. It's on our Instagram page. But, you know, for us, we're not going out and being like, oh, like, do you miss the Taj? Well, soon, you'll be able to book our Taj Mahal trip and blah, blah, blah, we were, we were letting her tell the story and telling a brand story through the her eyes. And there are many, many instances of that. But we felt the way that if we had kind of handled our brand and our accounts over to our customers, then they would be the ones talking about our product, and they would be the ones doing it. And that was a really good way for us to kind of be very sensitive to the climate, and not make it about us. So we kind of kept that value prop going around, how do we kind of do this kind of on other people's kind of terms. And, you know, we've been really starting to kind of use kind of reviews into things and everything like that. So now we've kind of entered, as we've mentioned, briefly into our next campaign, which was be responsible, and that was really around our brand values. So really saying, Okay, our product is what it is, people know that travel is not really an international travels in our thing right now. So we're going to talk about everything that's kind of around our brand, but again, it's not going to be about us. So what we're going to do is take a lot of our resources that we have and start talking about them. So we're gonna, you know, we're doing a lot of like PR pitching webinars, we're doing a lot of like kind of social posting around a responsible business around giving other companies the tools to rebound with a climate policy and giving them the tools to rebound with an animal welfare policy for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. So we're kind of coming out here and talking about our values, but under the lens of together, we can help the industry rebound more, more sustainably, and more responsibly, which has been great as well. So now, we're kind of, I guess, entering this third phase, which is kind of like the product and the conversion side of things and where we kind of do things. So for us, like our kind of conversion, you know, rough kind of breakdown of where our customers come from, you know, we're getting, you know, like around 35 40% type coming from Google, like for straight from Google Search kind of thing. So right now, we're obviously making sure that, you know, we're not going full spend and on the Instagram on the Google side of things, but we're making sure that in critical places, like we're talking about for where there is appetite for trips, you know, Europeans going to Greece, potentially Americans booking Antarctica 2021 We're really like honing in on our top destinations and making sure that we're kind of optimizing there. And then the other big source for acquisition is through kind of referral word of mouth. So making sure that we're building out really strong and tight, you know, programs within our CRM within our mailing list, making sure that we're starting to engage putting people on journeys, get people like understanding where they're clicking through and things like that. So A lot of it right now is the game Wu talked about before is looking at the world looking at the globe, where are the travelers going? Where are the interests, start understanding their like click journeys and things like that. And we're kind of building very individualized and pertinent journeys that will kind of get people to a point where we know that we have a lot, we have early opportunity to get people in London, traveling to Italy, and we have an opportunity to get people in Australia traveling domestically within their own countries, and then to New Zealand. So it's very, very hyper targeted. And it's very much less necessarily about kind of the catch all like travel everywhere in the world, it's we know that these places are kind of we know that these are safe, we've kind of built our safety policies around it, we know that the borders are open. So instead, it's distilling our 1100 trips, and 120 countries to maybe like top 10 trips in the top 10 countries, and just trying to create that focus and kind of win at a few things.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:35:50)Oh, and that's awesome. I think, you know, you guys were ahead of the curve there when you started relying on your user generated content to push you know, their own message forward. And it really brings together like you said, that value prop that intrepid has of being that togetherness and understanding that, you know, we're all in this together kind of thing. You know, excuse me, I kind of style it really isn't.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:36:12)And it is and you know, I speak to I talk a lot about storytelling and marketing. It's like a huge platform. And like, I think that there's no separation, like storytelling is not just like content in blogs, like, everything is a story like from digital performance and everything, you just have to like really, really hone in on kind of the story. And but when you talk about kind of your creative and your brand and positioning, people, people need that reassurance of what other customers are doing. There is a very real kind of follower culture and in, you know, American consumerism, where, you know, it's why it's the reason why influences work. It's the one reason why we use by people care about reviews by reviews are one of the most important things for so many companies in their product journey. So the next step that we're really gonna be focused on anything else, is we need to actually tell the stories of these people who are traveling, like, Hey, this is someone she's, she's 30 years old, she's lives in London, she's now on a trip with us in like Italy, she booked like, we need to really humanize the brand and really humanize the context. Because right now, everyone's there's so much confusion of what's actually happening. And we need to distill it down and be like, this isn't us telling you to book this, we're just we're facilitating the information. And these are people that are already traveling, having amazing experiences and things like that. So it's, you know, same thing with kind of, like, you know, even at a small local scale, like restaurants, like what is the story of the restaurant? How are you? How are you like, going to ensure safety and all these things in the restaurants that have really come out, use their channels be like, Hey, we're this restaurant, we've put up these barriers, we've worked on these hours, we have these sanitation, these things, that's great. Like, from a customer point of view, it's like, Oh, that's great. And then I see other people aren't going and I see it around on Instagram. And I see you've made your due diligence, like, like that whole ability to tell your story around kind of your safety. And your product right now is ultimately what's going to get people kind of more inclined to book first.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:37:49)Yeah, and, you know, I was actually going to ask about that safety kind of thing there. And it makes sense, right? Because when people see that, they're, you know, some of that's almost exactly like them is doing that same travel that they thought they could do, they find that they can, okay, I can start doing myself, I'm not as worried anymore. And they find that they're able to, you know, least push out to everyone else and say, You know what, I'm going to travel and I'm going to probably go domestic instead of international, I'm gonna try this new thing I've never would have done before, because I'm seeing people just like me doing that exact same thing.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:38:19)Yeah. And that's and that's like, sometimes it can be like the less sexy kind of marketing and stuff like it's like the technical like products, but it's really important right now. And, you know, for us like our founder, he's on you know, the the Executive Committee of the World Tourism, Travel and Tourism Council. So it's this huge global governing body for tourism. And he actually helped develop the W TTC safety protocols, which obviously intrepid travel has very much been a signatory of and founding member of so for us, like, like, we have that stamp. And for us like that, we love chatting about like amazing trips, hiking, the Inca Trail, cool things like that. And now we're just like, hey, check out our safety stamp, you know, we've kind of gone from like passport stamps to safety stamps, were like, our marketing was very much like that one or less, go collect stamps, you know, not things, all that and now we're just like, hey, we're safe. This is a safety stamp like, and then people like need it. That's the thing. It's about not being so rigid and, and being able to adapt. But also, as with everything in marketing, it's not about what you want, it's what your customers want. So But for us, understanding what the customers want, and being able to deliver that effectively. That's the crux of effective marketing. So I think that's just where everyone's at. It's not, it's not what you want to tell your customers. It's what your customers need to hear.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:39:26)Oh, and I love that. And, you know, I completely agree. And I really want to actually dive into that point about, you know, people that are, you know, either looking to travel a bit more domestically or national. Have you seen any really trends knowing that international travel is basically zero, as you said, minus 70%? Or whatever number it is, are you finding more people are now looking to book domestic travel within their own country? Or is it still just, you know, flat across the court?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:39:52)Yeah, so that's a huge piece. I mean, like when we were kind of talking about this in the early days, and when we started building it, like we built a whole range of new products. on, you know, closer to home, and it's like our kind of localized traveling. And we also do day tours and things like that. But, you know, when we were when we were like, you know, situation planning, I mean, if it didn't exactly take like us, you know, a scientist or an epidemic, like, like someone who's like specializing in epidemics to understand what's happened here, like we were like, okay, so everyone's at home in quarantine. Okay, so then the next step, you can maybe go walk around your neighborhood. And the next step is maybe you can go visit your, you know, your mom or brother who lives 10 minute drive away, then maybe you'll be able to travel within your province and maybe be able to travel your country, and then you're going to travel the world. So for us, we were sitting at the very, very end, right, so we kind of, you know, there was that whole thing around Yes, travel will rebound domestically first. And the thing is, especially in Ontario, and, you know, in much of Canada, like we don't really identify, like going up to a buddy's cottage is domestic tourism, but it is like, you know, spending, spending tourism dollars in businesses that rely on tourists, you know, think about Muskoka as a really popular tourism destination, no one really thinks about as a tourism destination, but their lifeblood happens in that Muskoka summer. And you know, the businesses really, really rely on that. So there is a lot of things where people, like will travel locally, I think where we have the opportunity, and it's not necessarily our remit, but you know, for more local tourism businesses is, is actually framing that people coming up and traveling to Collingwood, or, you know, calling into Muskoka or the court that's that actually is local tourism. And that actually is helping the the economy rebound. And if people actually knew that a cottage weekend was like, you know, we could create some Savior ism culture around that being like, you can come to a cottage and it would actually really, really help our community like, oh, well, yeah, call me Mother Teresa. Like I'm in kind of thing. So it's, that's the marketing aspect where we need to kind of shape the story that the rebound. And it's critical that we need people to be traveling locally, because that's actually going to help these economies rebuilt. So from a trend point of view, absolutely. It's the local tourism side of things, it is traveling closer to home. And then beyond that, I think we spoke to it earlier before it's it's destinations that offer a much deeper connection with the natural world and less much less about major urban urban centers and urban environments. And I think as well, what's kind of come to a head is, is really, really this focus on quality tourism versus quantity tourism, because we're not going to go back to a model where, you know, we're going to have millions and millions of people on Santorini huddled up like sardines in a tiny little island, we need to start recalibrating on what healthy tourism looks like and quality tourism. You know, it's funny, because we talk about all these tourism destinations that are overrun with tourism, over tourism all throughout Europe. And then we kind of learned about physical distancing. And suddenly, it took like one week and everyone knew how to properly queue outside a grocery store, create six foot distance, we can easily queue people and create space. And we're just like, like, that's not the issue. We do know how to do these things. It's just enforcing it and creating better restrictions around that. So I think as well, like there will be a slower reopening globally. And I think one of the really amazing byproducts was will be a shift to a more quality tourism industry instead of one built on quantity.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:42:56)Oh, and I absolutely love that. And, you know, I find nowadays it's much safer for like, when February, January when I was planning on going to Vietnam, we were actually looking at you know, non touristy areas is something things we would Google and make sure that we didn't spend our time in a place that you have to wait around for, you know, just access to get a picture of a certain…\n\n\n\nMike  (00:43:16)Yeah, yeah, right. But and literally what you're speaking to like that from Utah, going back to marketing podcasts, we can talk about marketing stuff, but like that's, you know, the digital kind of currencies like when the prolific like rise of influencers, an Instagram started like that was what travel marketing could be, all you have to do is, wait, how can I get you to take this absolutely fire selfie outside of Machu Picchu or something like if your company can facilitate that, that's great. But now when you think about distilling it down into search into how you're optimizing your website, how you're working your SEO, what you just described non touristy places in Vietnam, like before that three years ago, four years ago, the opposite would be best Instagram photos. So there is kind of like a maturity of the traveler where like, and that's kind of where I think it's a healthy thing where this has kind of brought that to a head where people can start thinking is okay, who is the traveler? I'm going after? How do I go after, you know, the healthier travel to create a healthier travel industry? And how is your business optimized to facilitate experiences that now aren't, you know, everywhere and are actually offering some unique and authenticity?\n\n\n\nJason  (00:44:19)Oh, and I'm excited to see the Antartica Instagram selfies that are going to come out.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:44:24)I'm for sure fire I don't I don't even remember. That must have I think there's definitely was no Wi Fi on the boat. But I was like, it's so funny because it's such like a travel flex and it's so funny. Like sometimes you just like have to just embrace it and it just, you know, whatever. It's obnoxious, but like, there's like there was nothing that wasn't obnoxious about me just like casually posting an anti like, we were like, we were like cross country skiing across Antarctica. And I was like, you know, I think the caption was like, oh, like great day in Antarctica. I'm like, this is obnoxious. There's nothing about this. It's it's kind of like hilarious and fun and honestly but like that's that's the thing. It's like there is like, you know, we talk so much about travel like how The tourism industry and quality on thing, but like travel at its very base level is one of the most fun things you can do. And as long as you know, we're facilitating an amazing and fun experience while doing it in a way that like helps people on the planet. Like that's kind of our sweet spot, right?\n\n\n\nJason  (00:45:12)Oh, absolutely. And, you know, you pivoted perfectly into that last question I want to ask you, which was about the mission statement for Intrepid. And it's come up a few times during this conversation. And, you know, it's almost imperative nowadays for brands to have some type of mission for why they're in business and why they're providing the product they do. You mentioned a couple of already, but Patagonia century where we Parker all have these niche and give him back some certain ways, whether it be you know, planting 10 trees, if you buy a product, or you know, we're donating to a specific charity, or we're providing, you know, glasses for someone that needs to be able to see how important is it for you particularly to have that message like similar brands? And by extension, how important is it to even market that message to those users that might want to actually learn more about a transmission?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:45:58)Yeah, like, it's everything. So I kind of, you know, we spoke to a little bit before, but yeah, you had mentioned Tentree, Patagonia. Both of those are B Corp organizations, intrepid travelers, a B Corp, so you know, that certification, which has been really important thing, it's really made us a better business. But, you know, I can speak to a few examples. 2014 intrepid travel became the first global tour operator to ban elephant rides, at the time, and still very much to this day, unfortunately, like elephant rides is a popular activity, you know, people who think that going to Thailand or Southeast Asia and riding on the back of an elephant, it's a good thing. And to a lot of them, they're just travelers who just don't understand and don't have the wider context of how this is completely bad. Elephants are not domesticated animals, the ability to take a wild elephant and to make them domestic requires, you know, torture and a lot of really terrible things that most tourists don't understand. So for us, we were making money on elephant rights in 2013 2012, etc. But we realized that we actually had a responsibility and obligation to do you know, as part of our brand ethos was to put a stop to this and we had to go first. And, you know, there's that quote, the first through the wall always gets bloody. And sometimes you just have to go first and kind of see what happens. And so So for us, we lost, we lost money, like we got, we lost all that revenue that we were making for an elephant, right? We lost it. But our idea was that we are actually going to evoke change. And we're going to educate travelers and because of that people are going to build trust with the intrepid brand. And know that intrepid travelers responsible tour operator, you know, Fast Forward one year to 2015, the Nepal earthquake happened, you know, a devastating earthquake rocked the entire country I country that's very much built on their tourism culture through, you know, Everest region and Annapurna region, we came out pretty much the week, the week that had happened and said that we would donate all of our profits for all trips to Nepal for the next year, right back into helping earthquake recovery. That was our commitment. And we got people booking the poll, everyone wanted to kind of be part of that story. And it maybe wasn't necessarily profit in that short term. But in the longer term, that's just kind of the expectation, you know, 2020, this year, we were getting set to after become after being carbon neutral for 10 years, which, by the way, costs millions and millions of dollars. Yeah, we were getting set to become climate positive. So we're actually going to offset and reduce more than we produce it the business. And, you know, the running theme here, I'm not here to like, you know, celebrate our accomplishments, what I'm here to kind of say is, all those three things were incredibly profitable decisions. Because doing good is good for business, and leading with purpose has actually been the most profitable thing we've ever done. And, you know, I've been speaking a lot to this, you know, taking it back to the marketing lens is that, you know, everything is a story and the best story wins. And when, for us, we aren't just one of 100 tour operators that can take you to get an amazing selfie at the Taj Mahal. But we can do so in a way that's provide solar energy to rural villages in India that provides economic empowerment through very, very localized experiences outside of the main tourist trail. And we actually can lobby the government in India for better gender reform and gender equality and tourism and get you the fire selfie at the town hall. It's not an either or type thing. So for us as a marketer, when I'm saying, if you're searching, you know, I want to go to Vietnam, I want to go to the Sahara Desert. For us, we we have to tell this story, one step below the product, and the story is the brand. So for us, when you when you're looking at 100 places and 100 operators that you can go to the Taj Mahal and you see they just take me to the toilet, they take me the Taj, they took the Taj, but intrepid takes you to Taj, and does all of that. That's really where you're getting your differentiator. So for us, leading with purpose is not only the right thing to do, but it's the right thing to do for our business. And it's the right thing to do for the world.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:49:23)Oh, and you know, I love it. And when able to attribute that tangible profits, the reason why you, you know, the original reason being you want to do good for the environment, and then but at the same time, it's good for the profit margin. It's just a win win, right? And you don't have to do either or to be profitable or just to be good for the world. It can be both, and I think a lot of people just especially companies that are looking to make a difference. don't really see that as that opinion. And it's great to hear that for you guys. Specifically. It's worked very, very well.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:49:52)It's worked extremely well and it's a huge part of the retention piece. Like I say this to a lot of marketers and people who are trying to get buy in for more kind of social advocates See, and, and purpose work where, you know, when we first started doing like deeper customer research around how sustainability and responsible travel plays into our customer journey, it was oftentimes one of the, you know, 678 reasons someone booked with us for the first time, but it was always one of the top three reasons they booked with us again. So you know, now the consumers I think are demanding it a little bit more, I think you'll definitely see sustainable responsible and you're kind of policies around purpose being a top five reason people book in the first place. But when you talk about the life, the lifespan of the customer and the long term value of a customer, that's where you're getting repeat, because people understand and people have no reason to take their business elsewhere, because they found a place where they own literally love the product, but they love the mission, and they love what they're doing. And that's when you turn an average employee into a loyal or an average customer into a loyal customer. And then when you turn a loyal customer into a loyal advocate who's actually growing your business for you. So I think there's a huge bit on the acquisition side of things, but even a bigger side on the ability to scale and grow your business from a retention point of view as well.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:51:00)And absolutely, and you know, some most travel companies are looking for ways to retain customers. And I think it is answered for a lot of them. Just being that brand for them there. With that said, Mikey, we've been talking for about almost an hour now and you know, talk for three or four hours more about this, because I'm really conversation, you know, we've chatted a lot about building that story building that user generated content to make sure that people understand that you're there for them when they need to be there and not just there for when they ready to book you're there. 24/7 and all the you know, the stories behind why you do the marketing you do. And the result of that. So I think we've had a lot of good talks here, I want to throw it right back to you. If there's anything else you want to add on about where that'd be introverts mission, where you guys are doing or any suggestions you have for travel companies out there that are kind of looking around and have zero idea what to do. Do you have any advice for those travel marketers that are looking for an answer?\n\n\n\nMike  (00:51:51)Honestly, just for all travel marketers right now my advice really would just be to hang in there, like it's been a really, really tough road, I think we're starting to see some some, you know, some level of normalcy returning right now. But honestly, the biggest thing is to kind of look after your people look after your team. And the biggest thing is also just to think about kind of the communities that you're traveling to and making sure that you're telling a very complete story. I think right now, like the best thing that anyone can do marketers in the travel space or beyond, is really, really have really strong focus around what you're doing, understand how your brand adds value, adds value to the world adds value to your customer. And I think if you can create kind of focus around that and define your value prop, you can, you should be able to really make it out of here. But make sure along the way that you're taking care of yourself and taking care of your team.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:52:36)Mike, I love it. I think it's a great way to end the podcast. And I really appreciate you taking the time today. I think a lot of people can relate to what you guys are doing. And you know, you've made intrepid customer to me just based on this conversation. So I'm excited when I can traveling Antarctica and take that selfie.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:52:51)Awesome. I can't wait. And thank you so much. I really appreciate the time and it was a great job.\n\n\n\nJason  (00:52:56)Awesome. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.\n\n\n\nMike  (00:52:58)All right. Thank you.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:53:00)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn.If you have questions or feedback, if you’d love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/colleges-marketing-strategy#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/colleges-marketing-strategy"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"How Schools and Colleges are Pivoting for Today and Tomorrow","datePublished":"2020-08-12T20:05:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:47:35+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/colleges-marketing-strategy"},"wordCount":7235,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/colleges-marketing-strategy#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["higher education","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at how Vermont Law School pivoted its marketing strategy during the pandemic and expanded its curriculum online. \n\n\n\nPam McBride | Director of Product Marketing, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nJohn Miller | VP, Enrollment Management, Marketing and Communications, Vermont Law School\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)One of the benefits of my position that oversees the departments that I do is that I make sure that nothing happens in isolation. You hear a lot of talk about silos and higher education. Well, that doesn't happen, because there is a feedback loop from the admissions counselors directly to the marketing team. And if a strategy is not producing prospective inquiries, if the language doesn't seem right, that gets right back to marketing, and adjustments are made without a good CRM, customer relationship management system. Without good reporting capabilities, you know, that's not going to happen as easy. So of course, I had to make sure that all of that was in place before I went down this path, but you know, that feedback loop, and that kind of collaborative effort is so important to make it work and also determine your return on investment.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:00:53)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape that How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:21)Hello, everyone, this is Vitaly Chesky, co-founder of StackAdapt, and the host of this podcast. Today we sit down with John Miller, Vice President for Enrollment Management, Marketing and Communications over the Vermont Law School to hear firsthand how they run their marketing team and how they've been adjusting to the new norm. In this episode, I found very interesting how they have built their in-house marketing team to handle all marketing that pivots very quickly and makes truly data driven decisions. What I thought was really cool is how they built a feedback loop with the admissions office where they can in real time adjust the messaging to increase ret\n\n\n\nPam  (00:02:03)Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining the StackAdapt podcast How Agencies Thrive. My name is Pam McBride and I lead the marketing team here at stock that I was very excited when we decided to embark on this podcast journey. And I'm equally excited to be talking to John Miller today. John Miller is the Vice President for Enrollment Management, Marketing and Communications for the Vermont Law School. Vermont Law School, a private independent institution is home to the nation's largest and deepest environmental law program. BLS, as it is known was ranked a top environmental law school by the US News and World Report in 2020. With that said, welcome to the podcast, John, and thanks for joining us.\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:02:48)Oh, thanks so much for having me.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:02:50)I think we're gonna I think we're in store for a great conversation. So John, let's start by talking a little bit about you. You've been at Vermont Law School for nearly 12 years. And it seems you do a bit of a dual role. You're an adjunct professor, as well as the Vice President of Enrollment Management and Marketing Communications. Tell me a bit about your roles and your path to where you are now.\n\n\n\nJohn   (00:03:13)Absolutely. So my role at Vermont Law School is certainly unique in some ways, especially to a lot of different places, other institutions, and it has evolved over these past 12 years. But when I think about that, it has really been parallel to the changes in higher education and certainly legal education. My career, it began in admissions. And when you consider the factors that have affected enrollments, and certainly as institutions have struggled with enrollments, and you think about what impacts that is financial aid, its reputation of an institution, it's the programs that you offer, and how you offer them, for example, online on campus, or some combination of both. It's how people find you, which is marketing, advertising and your website. And it's the experience that a student has with your insist institution from first impression, either with an ad or with an admissions counselor or an ambassador. And then through graduation and beyond this future donors. I'll never forget attending a conference where a speaker said to me that the future of higher education administration is this like, chief experience officer. And at the time, that was interesting, but I feel like that's really becoming true, because as demographics change, as the value proposition of higher education changes, the focus on institutional strategy, right, so institutions, why are we existing, the positioning of institutions within the marketplace, what we offer and who do we offer it to? And just this idea of, of general innovation of an institution, how we do it and how we respond to this disruption that has been happening, is really critical for an institution to persist over time. And I find that for me, this is where my efforts continue to evolve and move towards the strategy in this innovation. Now, on top of that, yes, you mentioned that I'm an adjunct professor of law. And I teach two required courses to our masters students and our joint JD masters students, and then also our law students can take my classes for electives. So I have a pretty full plate.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:05:21)Oh, you definitely do. So how you described the entire experience in the chief experience officer, I assume that role has has sort of surface because post secondary education is also a very competitive industry, so to speak, and that you need to attract students to your own educational institution versus having to go elsewhere. Right. Yep, that's right. Yeah, so Vermont Law School has been recognized for environmental law amongst other aggradation. So what makes Vermont Law School unique?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:05:59)Vermont Law School, as you mentioned, is the premier environmental law school in the United States, and we have the largest program and offer the most faculty classes and clinics in that area. What makes BLS unique is that we are this private, independent law in graduate school with a social justice mission. We're committed to developing the next generation of leaders who will tackle these complex social justice issues that impact the evolution of our civilization. Climate change is certainly a big one. Another one is restorative justice and criminal justice reform. We have master's and certificate programs and classes in that and that's actually the area that I teach in access to legal services and public interest law. And the intersectionality of all of those issues, is really what makes Vermont Law School a very unique kind of niche institution. And I also mentioned that we're a lot and we're a graduate school that's also unique for a law school. Right. BLS has been a law school with master's degrees since the 1980s, which we have only expanded over time. And about approximately 10 years ago, we went online with our graduate degree programs, in which we offer six different entry points each year for those programs, which as you might imagine, has allowed us to significantly grow that population, and provides opportunities for the law students to earn joint degrees, but also to take classes online. So we look. And the programs that we offer are very different than many law schools. And even just being an independent institution without an overarching University, is also very unique. And to me, what that says is that we're really able to stick to our core mission, build programming off of that core mission, and really become innovators and disruptors, and quickly change to any, any of these challenges in the marketplace, whether it's for higher education more generally, or for legal education. And it's one of the reasons why I have stayed at Vermont Law School for so long. Because to be able to, to recognize this as to firmly be rooted in our mission, certainly, personally, to build a team who is passionate about that. And it's just been such an incredible experience that even for me, I'm just committed to making sure that Vermont Law School continues. You know, the excellence that it has created over these past 40 years at the institution has been in existence.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:08:25)Wow, that's interesting, because I don't think I've ever reviewed law through the lenses of how you describe VPLS and the programs that you offer. So I definitely see how the uniqueness is part of your value proposition and the quality that stands out. So you also have one of the largest online student populations in the country. And we all know, given the current climate, other institutions definitely did feel a significant impact from COVID-19. Did you?\n\n\n\nJohn   (00:08:56)Yeah, so of course, because everybody did. But you know, I'm very proud of how Vermont Law School pivoted to all online instruction this spring when the pandemic really hit. And I absolutely credit that to the experience that we have had in the delivery of online education. You know, since pivoting in the spring, we also had to tackle this idea of offering a really expansive summer program online, which we offer over 30 different courses. Typically in South Wales in Vermont, well, that wasn't going to happen with the pandemic. So this was a bit of a feat to pull off. But a lot of law schools canceled their summer programs, because they just were unable to either have them in person or be able to pivot to online. And for us, this ended up being a little bit of an opportunity to open it up because we made that decision to go online with it and then to advertise to other lawn graduate students who could take advantage of our curriculum and not have to move To Vermont at all, so take it from their home or wherever they are. It ended up being a huge success for us. And we recently announced that we would hold the fall semester online. One of the reasons you know why we did this was the reality is that Vermont Law School is a national school. So we draw students from all over the world, but all over the country, in many areas that are being hit pretty hard with the virus, and especially right now. So those important to us when we were thinking about, you know, the spring, the summer, and now the fall that we're able to offer the best experience, and the most consistent experience for all of our students. And, and going online was really the best way to do that. And we've even for the fall, staggered classes to accommodate many of our students in different time zones, we fall climate people from places like Texas and California, and there and there are even some people who will move here will will come to Vermont, and of course, will have to follow the health and safety guidelines, including quarantine requirements. And the school does plan to offer some services like the library and study spaces and maybe some food options, as soon as it is safe to do so. But, but you know, I think we made the right decision to continue with, with online and virtual instruction throughout the fall. And in June, if you're paying attention to the news, you're seeing more and more schools do the same. And some school even walk back on where they said they were going to open residentially or on campus. And now they've given the conditions around the country, they're not going to do that. But yeah, I absolutely think our experience in having online programs, and then delivering the online education and the dedication of our faculty, especially in our staff, to make that happen has been highly successful for us. So of course, it impacted us. By drawing on that experience with online education, we were able to do it quickly and efficiently. And the outcome has been, you know, students have been satisfied with that experience, including the my own students that I've had in my class, and my class will be virtual online in the fall.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:12:09)Wow. So it sounds like you took part of your pivot was around your curriculum and your curriculum offerings and the timing of that. But I assume you had to pivot your marketing strategy as well and maybe adjust your messaging and who you chose to target. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:12:26)Oh, absolutely. The marketing communications was so critical in all of this, and we had to move very quickly. And it really was a campus wide effort. The first thing that was that was really important was just to communicate, right, we had to communicate what was happening to our current students, obviously, but also to our prospective students, the students are in our pipeline, and in the various stages of the application and commitment process. So gathering all that information, determining the different constituencies that we need to reach the message, the tone, and then of course, making sure that it's distributed in the proper channel, which for us was a variety of, of email and website and social media. And then what we had to do, you know, recruitment doesn't end, I mentioned the six star terms for online, but you know, our residential or on campus, recruitment was still going. And we were still receiving applications and getting and generating inquiries from our different advertisements. So we had to quickly create assets for the admissions team, and our website to accommodate this. And everything was sort of in flux, because this has been such a wildcard the pandemic for for admissions and enrollment efforts. And we obviously have, you know, a serious goal, you know, objective to mitigate the impact of enrollment, and more importantly, allow our prospective students to have access to all the same information to make an informed decision about where they want to go. And the thought was, you know, we had to create a really robust virtual experience to reflect what someone would see and feel as if they were coming for a campus visit. And if you talk to admissions people, you know how important the campus visit experience is to the yield rates for the people who ultimately accept. So we had some of that already, of course, because we are in some remote area of Vermont. But now it all needs to be accessible online. And we have to continue communicating and updating our current students on and admitted students on what's going to happen, whether it's for the summer and the fall, all at the same time. So there was just a lot going on. There were a lot of webinars happening. There were a lot of town hall style virtual meetings, to update and just answered questions. Just being available is so important. And it also showcase one of the best aspects of the Vermont Law School community is that we are a community and that we're in this together. So that's a little bit about the communication piece. But there's this entire kind of marketing piece. Right. So the next, the opportunity here was now that our entire curriculum is online. This is an opportunity for us to really amplify what we're doing. And I mentioned that some schools maybe were not able to offer summer programs, or did not have the capacity to go on to go online. So again, this is an opportunity. So the marketing communications team, the mark comm team worked with the academics to create a series of advertisements that would be sent out over email on listserv through AdWords display and social. And it was really impressive because what we did was we set up weekly meetings to discuss enrollments in specific courses. And then we drove ads towards the really interesting kind of Hot Topic courses, but then also to the under enrolled classes, and that worked amazingly well and significantly improved our summer enrollments. And we're even able to enroll a lot of students from other law and graduate schools, which allowed them to continue their education where they might not have that had that opportunity at their home institution. So it can just really showcase the campus coming together. And the expertise of the mark comm team to help mitigate the impact of COVID 19 on our campus operation enrollments.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:16:07)I find it interesting that you mentioned that you met weekly to look at at where I would say where everything was performing. So you took a very data driven approach. It appears to your your marketing strategy with respect to your messaging, and what was working and what wasn't. Did you adjust the cadence of your campaigns at all I envision most post secondary Institute institutions will heavy up just as you're going into what used to be the new normal of on campus classes starting in September excetera. Are you always on now?\n\n\n\nJohn   (00:16:42)We're always on. And I mentioned that, you know, we have the online programs. And I think if you talk to anyone with online programs, you're always on, you never stop. So but I do think it added an additional dimension to everything we're doing. We were doing. Because absolutely we we wanted to, we saw an opportunity to offer our curriculum to more and more students. And we had to act very quickly to get it out there. Because again, whether it was the spring, the summer and now the fall, you know, everybody around the country is hedging their bets a little bit on what's going to happen, because we just don't know. So to be able to say, Okay, we're making a decision, we're offering everything online marketing go. So, so yeah, we absolutely had to ramp up very quickly. And then we had to meet you know, we met with the academics, you know, once a week, but then the internal team was meeting at least twice a week to look at how the ads were performing. And do we need to make any, any adjustments? Okay, you know, we, you know, we were trying carousel ads on Facebook for a little while, wasn't working back, right. So we switched it back to the single display. And so just like really watching that, and seeing what people were interested in, and I didn't mention this, but there during the summer, there are four four start terms in just in the summer alone, because they're shorter classes. So we're constantly switching to the new term and just deploying more ads. So yeah, absolutely. Summer was crazy. But you know, I have a team that that lives for that they love that. And it was also it was, it was a bonding experience. It displayed teamwork. And ultimately, at the end of the day, you know, the enrollments were, were incredible, and it helped the institution.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:18:32)So you talk a lot about your team. So it seems to me, I have insight knowing that you set up a next generation mercom office at WBLS. Tell me more about it. So why did you decide to bring everything in house?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:18:45)I am extremely proud of of the mark on team that is currently in place. And I'm so grateful that I've had the you know, I have had and currently have a president and a board of trustees that believe and support and indulged, you know, my vision over the years and continue to do so we initially started with an agency, and that was incredibly helpful to kick kick it off and kind of move us into to this century with marketing. But you know, law schools are notoriously bad at this stuff. And typically, because they leave it to the main University, and they might get a little budget to place a few ads, but it's really not something that they have historically, of course, this is all changing and has been for for years now, but really, historically have been very deliberate about. And I mentioned that, you know, we're private, and so we don't have a main University, and that we had to adapt, and we had to and it's up to us to get the message out. And my general strategy. So you know, and the agency was was great, but it wasn't. What I found was that I wanted to do more. And my strategy has been, you know, content, distribute, amplify We have to generate the content, we have to distribute it through whatever the channels are, whether it's emails, social, or website or, or what have you. And then we want to amplify it through advertising. So and that's what I call our machine at Vermont Law School. Like, we just need to keep feeding the machine. And with an agency, I just wanted to do more, I wanted to, you know, I wanted to try new ad placements, I wanted to get us on YouTube, if I if we found that copy wasn't working, I want to change that quickly, I want to create a campaign when we see an opportunity. And that just wasn't going to happen. And it wasn't really happening with an agency who had other clients, you know, we were we were we, you know, just one of the many clients that are being served. So, you know, the Director of Communications at the time, and I were strategizing about this, and, and I made a pitch to the board and to the President that, you know, let us, you know, fund fund this initiative for us. And let us start building this, this this mark, calm office, that was about five or so years ago. So we hired a marketing manager who helped us build our first advertising plan, who happens to still be with me today, and now runs the marketing side of the house. And that that got us kick started. And then over the years, we've really built this amazing, dedicated and passionate team. And they're just so talented. And we have someone who specializes in multimedia production, ad placements, creative design, social strategy, web content, digital communications, and in and as I kind of mentioned in my other responses was that this really is allowed us to pivot on a dime, and come together and create the content, place the ads, share them, share it as appropriately, check on the conversions, make adjustments as necessary, in real time, you know, and that is so incredibly important. And I also think one of the benefits of my position that oversees the departments that I do is that I make sure that nothing happens in isolation, you hear a lot of talk about silos and higher education. Well, that doesn't happen. Because there is a feedback loop from the admissions counselors directly to the marketing team. And if a strategy is not producing prospective inquiries, if the language doesn't seem right, that gets right back to marketing, and adjustments are made. And without, you know, without a good CRM, customer relationship management system, without good reporting capabilities, you know, that's not going to happen as easy. So of course, I had to make sure that all of that was in place before I went down this path. But, but you know, that feedback loop, and that kind of collaborative effort is so important to make it work, and also determine your return on investment. There's definitely, you know, it's easy to spend a lot of money without getting any return. And that just can't happen at Vermont Law School, we need to be very careful about that.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:22:58)Yeah, for sure. I'm glad you brought up the return on investment, because it sounds like just based on the amount of data driven, you know, adjustments that you make that that would probably be core to what you look for and look at, and just based on the breadth and depth of what you cover, I'm not sure you could actually have afforded to get away with functioning in silos, because it just would not have made you as successful as you are today. So we definitely know what those benefits are, Did you face any challenges? I know a lot of a lot of people, when establishing in house teams find that sometimes the challenges tend to overcome the benefits and kind of give up.\n\n\n\nJohn   (00:23:40)Absolutely. It hasn't been without bumps in the road. I would say the three things for me on challenges are people systems and software. You know, you need the right people with the right expertise. And that takes time, always floored by how long it takes to find the right person for a position. The other with process, you need to have good processes in place to make sure we use our funds wisely. And as I mentioned before, you know to make sure that there are feedback loops in place for making sure that if there's adjustments that need to be made, or if something's not working, but just general process about how we go about doing things, how we place ads, how we spend our money, how, you know, and just how we operate as a department, which is always evolving. And then finally, a software. And this is so incredibly important that I do a lot of consulting on this and free consulting, mostly, you know, to other colleagues in the industry, who tend to say, Well, I'm thinking about this, can you talk to me about it, but you know, so whether that's, you know, the CRM type software's that are out there, whether it's Salesforce or slate or others, and then it's also using platforms like StackAdapt Right, and AdWords and Analytics and marketing on Automation Systems, and all that. So you search for and that actually was the first step was making sure that we had the software, because I was not interested. And I was, quite frankly, scared to build this type of an office and to start spending the type of money that you spend on advertising, without absolutely being able to say, this student entered our pipeline through this advertisement. And this is the net effect on the budget. I absolutely, that was priority number one for me. And that way, also, its credibility, its credibility for me, and it's credibility for my team, to say that what we do has an impact to the success of the institution. So those would be my challenges. And of course, they still happen every day, you know, this, you can't really get away from it. But you know, we work through them. And I can say right now that I feel like I have one of the best teams, and I'm so incredibly grateful.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:25:59)That's amazing. So if you could go back in time to the start of COVID-19. With none of us really want to balance you out. Now. Would you do anything differently about your marketing approach? Or do you think you'd stay the same course?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:26:16)I think I would stay the course. And the reason because this has been so unpredictable for everyone, we could not predict just how much this pandemic would impact all sectors of our economy. And you can always do something better and more efficiently, right? We're human, we make mistakes, we're flawed. But I have just been so proud to work at an institution like Vermont Law School, where we have really all come together as a community to ensure that we're able to provide this experience for our students and even help other students continue their education. And you know, just that our dedicated faculty and staff, and certainly my staff who believe in the important mission of the school, and really has done what it has taken to amplify that out into the world. And I also think that one thing that we really did well as a community is communicate. And I think when you talk to people, especially in crisis communications, and we didn't talk a lot about sort of media relations and public relations, which is also in my repertoire. But but you know, when you talk about crisis communicating, it's about communication, you just have to be honest about it. And you need to communicate often and thoughtfully. And we really did that. And I mentioned having the town halls, and it was it, whether it's with our current students, whether it's with our alumni, whether it's with our admitted and prospective students, and it's just just being there. And we held, we actually have the senior administration on calls with admitted students and applicants, just answering their questions. And I remember hearing from a student saying, like, I'm just so thankful that the President and the Vice Presidents and the academic deans took time out of their evening to talk with students who some of them haven't even committed to the school, just to answer their questions about how you're operating, and what they can expect, given everything that's going on. So I've just been so proud that that we've handled this the way we have, again, it's not perfect, and I don't think it can be perfect, but I think we did it from from the heart. And we did it in the way that our community shines, which is collaboratively and transparent.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:28:26)So having those two additional things in your repertoire, repertoire, the crisis communication and the PR, I assume that you put that to good practice with your messaging for your your campaigns. I know that several industries weren't sure what to do at this point in time, and a lot of them went dark or went off the radar because they just really weren't sure how to adjust their messaging. But I'm sure those two elements played really well into the communication aspect, not only across your institution, but also with the messaging that you put forward with your campaigns.\n\n\n\nJohn (00:29:05)Absolutely. And I have to give a shout out because on this on the media relations, specifically, we work with a wonderful PR firm that has helped us immensely and has taken the kind of media relations working with reporters off my plate, mostly. And they've been incredibly helpful in this as well. So and that's the one area that we do get some help in. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it's been absolutely has, you know, helped everything that that we do in terms of communicating how we're handling this.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:29:40)For sure. I know that other industries are are actually closely observing changes in consumer behavior. Just based on the current situation where we are sheltering in place or sheltering at home consumer behavior has changed quite drastically. Not many people are sure if it's going to To be what that consumer behavior will be like in the future. But can you talk about the trends you're seeing with students enrollments and with higher education in general?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:30:11)Absolutely. I think, you know, especially regarding right now, during the pandemic, you know, people are hesitant to commit and make a decision. And I, and that's just reflective of the uncertainty that we're seeing everywhere right now. I mean, people are hesitating, going on vacation. So I think that in terms of the responding to the current times, I think that that has been difficult. And we responded a little bit to that by offering a spring start for students who just want to come to the school and just weren't sure. And they didn't necessarily want to take start with online classes. We've had a small handful of students do that. So I think this sort of uncertainty and an inability to want to commit is certainly out there. I think, you know, it's going to be interesting for us to see what post COVID looks like, you hear a lot of people saying, you know, pretty COVID, Kurt COVID, post COVID, and how consumer behavior changes after that. And one of the things that I anticipate that we're going to see is that more and more people actually adopt online learning, because we're sort of forced into right now having to consider that. And we have seen, our online enrollments are online and only enrollments. So not not the pivoting to online, but the actual people who are enrolling in our online only degree programs, seeing that rise, not just the interest, but also the enrollments rise fairly considerably. This summer, and now we're seeing a similar trend for the fall. So So I think there may be, you know, a more of a rapid adoption of online learning. And I think, especially as the technology has changed, and become more efficient, and much more user friendly, over time, and I think more and more schools are going to be interested in making sure that they offer online programs. So I think that that's that you're going to see that. I also think that cost is a continuing struggle. And a lot of this comes back to the value proposition of higher education, what can that degree do for me? Right, what is the outcome? And I think that again, with people whose jobs have been impacted with whether they were fully laid off or, or businesses that went out of business, I mean, think of all your, your restaurant workers struggling. So I think that costs will continue to be a sensitive topic, and maybe even more. So after, you know, post COVID. It's gonna take time for the economy to adjust. And we really just don't know, the length of this, how much longer is it till we get a vaccine? And what does that mean? Does that mean more people might want to continue with online education while they're home. It's just sort of unclear This is such a wild card, but but I would say those two things, the, you know, online education, cost sensitivities. The other thing that I would also mentioned is this, this additional need for skills based learning and thinking about credentialing a little bit differently. And whether that means more certificates, microcredentials badges. And again, with the prolific proliferation of online learning, are there opportunities there for schools, and for people to, you know, to adopt new skills that will help them whether that's their current job, because you think about all the people who may already have degrees, but may need some training to advance either in their career or to get a different type of job, and they don't want to go back to school again, money. They don't want to move, you know, given the virus and all these things, but is there some way to reach those people to provide them with the opportunity to get a different type of career that may have been impacted?\n\n\n\nPam  (00:34:11)Based on the way you've described, the experience that you and your team has put forward to the market in general, I'm assuming that you've probably influenced several people to potentially even change career paths. So someone that might have been looking to pursue a degree in something other than LA may have been positively influenced just by the experience that you and your team had brought to market? Absolutely, absolutely. So no one no one has a crystal ball, honestly. But given a given experience, some have been able to predict what the future can hold for their industry. It sounds like your team has got a good strong, solid blueprint of how to respond and how to message and how to communicate. And I know we touched on post COVID But just in In general, what do you think the education in 2021 and beyond will look like? And I'm saying beyond and do you think the shift to online learning learning might just be the new normal?\n\n\n\nJohn (00:35:12)I do. And I absolutely do. And I think that it's a good time to be a company that delivers online education right now in terms of the software. Right. So So, I mean, whether your resume, you know, whether you're Microsoft Teams, whether you're some of these learning management systems, because the adoption is so incredibly fast right now. And so I absolutely do, I think we were heading that direction anyway. And I think what I think is likely to materialize, and especially with how widely use the video conferencing has been, is more of what you've probably heard before, it's called a blended classroom where you can you could do it, you know, where you get a little bit of both? Because I absolutely do think there is criticism from students who don't learn well online. That's me, as someone who's involved in in enrollment, you hear this? Well, I don't want to start online, I don't learn well, in an online format. But again, when you think about everything that's happening, and people, you know, everybody's comfort level around traveling is, you know, especially unless we have a vaccine, but maybe even with one is going to be very different. So this idea that schools have to adopt to accommodate because all schools right now are suffering from most schools, right, from enrollment challenges and demographic changes around this country. So how do you continue to reach new audiences to deliver your educational experience. So I think that schools are going to have to adapt to that. And they're going to have to be open to accommodating a variety of different learning styles. And one way to do that is with this kind of blended learning where you have some of it is online and asynchronous or kind of at your own pace. And then there might be one or two sessions that are alive, or at Vermont Law School, we call it live virtual, where you're using kind of a video conferencing software, but you meet at a certain time. And I actually do this in my class, it's not mandatory for my fully online class, where I have one session a week, where I'm happy to deliver a short lecture or answer questions in a live format at a certain time, and people can come in. And we can do that. And the students have responded very well to that, because it accommodates that need of being in the classroom. And there are so many students that want that. So, you know, I mentioned that I also mentioned this idea of skills based learning. And to me that's online, or, again, in some sort of a hybrid format. But this idea that, you know, if anyone that's been studying demographic changes in higher education knows that there are less students, right, there are less students graduating from high school, and therefore there will be less students, for undergrads. And then there'll be less students in graduate and professional schools because the birth rates have been in decline for a long time. So that Tibbets then just say, if you plan to exist, how do you then reach the different populations and one of those populations is adult learners, who either need a career or want to change a career. So I would say that, when I think about education, 2021 and beyond? Absolutely, I think the online learning is the new normal, and then I OT, but I also think that thinking about credentialing differently and reaching these different audiences are going to be incredibly important for institutions to to really survive, but you know, to continue on the mission and, and mission, you know, an educational mission is an important mission to carry on, we're educating our civilization, we become a better society for it. And I'd like to think that schools like Vermont Law School where we exist to literally make the world a better place, and our graduates embody that in the work that they do. You know, I want that I want to hand I want this school to keep handing the torch over to the next president and the next board of trustees to continue this really important mission, you know, throughout time.\n\n\n\nPam  (00:39:36)Yeah. So that's interesting. It's interesting you call it a, what did you call it a classroom, you call today?\n\n\n\nJohn  (00:39:42)The blended classroom, a blended, blended or flipped classroom and there's a lot of like different terms that people throw out for describing this sort of mix of synchronous, which is live and then the asynchronous which is on kind of at your own pace?\n\n\n\nPam  (00:39:56)Yeah. When since we started working from home we've now I called it the hybrid office. Yes, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So like the blended class. John, this has been an interesting and enlightening conversation. There was so much ground that we covered in it felt like we were just getting started. I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. I am sure our listeners are really going to enjoy this episode.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:40:22)Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. It's really been a pleasure. Thanks, John. Take care. Thank you.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:40:29)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/agile-ad-agencies#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/agile-ad-agencies"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Why Agile Ad Agencies are the Need of the Hour","datePublished":"2020-08-26T20:14:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:47:25+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/agile-ad-agencies"},"wordCount":5182,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/agile-ad-agencies#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss agencies' reaction to the pandemic, how one needs to quickly adapt to market conditions, and changing consumer perceptions. \n\n\n\nAshley Shuey | Media Director, Allen & Gerritsen\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)We saw a lot of brands that desire to stay silent, right and decided to wait it out and didn't predict, you know, that this time would be different. This is you know, everybody keeps saying it's a movement, not a moment. And so as an agency, we decided to speak out very boldly on social media supporting Black Lives Matter, you know, offering anti racist resources, educating on the social media boycott with Facebook. And you know, not only did we not get any pushback on this, but we got so much praise for it. You know, the New York Times reached out to us last week or the week before about, you know, our Facebook boycott imagery. The Philly ad club has reached out to us you guys have reached out to us so you know, brands that are scared or uncertain about how they should really be a part of this. I think our key takeaway here would be take a stand. Don't be afraid to be bold and vocal and then you know, people are going to notice and it's going to be nothing but nothing but positive.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction  (00:01:00)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape. The How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:28)Hi, everyone. This is Vitaly Pecherskiy, co-founder of StackAdapt and the host of this podcast. We are approaching the end of our first season of how agencies Thrive podcast, and we only have two episodes left to share with you. In today's episode, we spoke with Ashley Shuey and media director at Allen & Gerritsen. To learn more about how agencies can help brands pivot their messaging in the rapidly changing environment driven by global pandemic and social issues. What I liked about this episode is the conversation about diversity and inclusion, and the behind the scenes look at how Allen & Garretson agency thinks about DNI issues. Here's the conversation with Ashley Shuey from Allen & Gerritsen.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:02:10)With current events, agencies have had to dress and pivot their clients strategies to adjust the new cycle. Today I'm talking to Ashley Shuey. Immediate director at Allen & Garritson. Ashley is a media expert and fun fact, she's been the recipient of not one but two innovation awards in her career. Her quick thinking and analytical skills are only surmounted by her passion for the topic we're discussing today. Ashley and the Allen & Gerritsen team have embraced change with open arms. They've committed themselves to inclusivity and diversity while leading a charge for how agencies should educate and ensure their clients quickly adapt to the new normal while navigating through these uncertain times. Ashley, thank you for joining me on the podcast today.\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:02:51)Thanks for having me, Carly.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:02:54)Always a pleasure. One thing I want to have to applaud you and your team on is how quickly you pivot messaging based on current events. When Coronavirus first hit as a tech partner, we saw several campaigns in a state of flux. But your team quickly swapped out creative messaging. Can you take me through how as both a media and creative agency you approach the discussion with your clients?\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:03:18)Yeah, of course. So obviously Coronavirus was top of mind both personally and professionally from the very beginning. I know I got no less than 800 emails from brands like explaining, you know how they were going to handle COVID. So like, if I got one more email from an airline, being like, Hey, we're gonna wipe the seats, promise is probably going to explode. So we did make a point to do a lot of listening at first as a team and just make sure that, you know, we're developing content that's relevant and worthy of consumer consumption because it was really overwhelming. I don't know if you felt that way. But um, the the information in flux was, was really crazy. So we didn't, you know, we didn't want to be generic. So we did, you know, dive in a little bit deeper and just recognize and understand where consumers were getting their information, what was making them feel overwhelmed versus what was really resonating with them and then kind of just go from there. So I think our clients really looked to us to help facilitate these actions and be proactive about it. So you know, staying in front of the situations we could be agile was really the key to our success in the COVID landscape.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:04:32)And like coming from like a personal background to like it does affect like overall from an emotional standpoint. It can be very overwhelming. So like to pivot the message based off of that, and kind of elaborating a little bit more on emotional based and sentiment based advertising. From a client standpoint, this can actually still be a relatively new topic to them. Given the current social climate as well. Is your team proactive with recommendations for creative change and media Your placement. And on that note, what has been the average client's reaction?\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:05:04)Yeah. So I mean, we definitely have great partnerships with our clients. And being that, you know, we really sell ourselves as a fiercely independent business. Our clients are really not just businesses to us, they're really, their success is our success. So the emotional based planning, I think, is super interesting. And it really just takes us to take a step back further and say, you know, how does our audience feel right now? How do they feel about certain mediums or publishers? When's the right moment to connect with them as people? You know, for example, ABC 123 website has a million unique views a day. And normally under efficiency buying, we would say, you know, let's buy the best CPM, let's get the most impressions that we can for our dollars. But if a reader doesn't trust the source, and then you're aligning your brand with that source, you know, what's that really accomplishing at the end of the day? And you're also thinking about ad formats, right? So if the ad is disruptive, if the UX on the landing page is poor, those factors really weigh heavily on brand perception as well. So it's just it's been for us about remembering that there are actual people behind the pixels. And just focusing on their state of mind versus purely buying on mathematical efficiencies.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:06:22)That totally makes sense. And then in terms of like, the creative standpoint, like you mentioned, people are behind the data at the end of the day, when it comes to like creative changes, you probably have to be a little bit more agile in that regard when it comes to the current climate. In terms of like the recommendations for your clients. They've been receptive to that overall.\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:06:45)Yeah, 100%, I think that we've done a lot of decisions based on just testing, right. So we think we know based on our historical data, what images are going to work and what creative messaging is really going to resonate. And one thing that we did this year with Karen treatment centers was was test emotional based advertising, right. So like an attention grabbing piece versus like a nurturing piece versus whatever and then put those in the out in the environment and see, which would perform better with different audiences. And to our to our surprise, I would say, there were some astounding differences in the audience's and the imagery, something as simple as changing out an image made a world of difference. So it's been a really educational for us as well, to be agile.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:07:32)For sure. And then, to further on that point to like, you guys, were doing that. Even before I think Coronavirus happened, we were looking at more of an emotional base and sentiment based advertising for a creative standpoint. Yeah. So that's great like to hear also to you guys pivoted and you're like, Okay, well, we're already doing this, but how can we make a simple change to then reach a user during this very overwhelming and scary time?\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:08:02)Yeah, absolutely. And I think, from format changes as well, from from platforms, right, like, we knew that there were a lot of changes with consumption, in general, and information sharing. So we did turn to a lot of native, we did a lot of social knowing that a lot of people do get their views, as scary as that might be on social channels alone. And we found out that, you know, being being, as as we'll RSVP, recall it politely relentless, was really successful for us, which is basically, we wanted to be a resource. And we wanted to be a comfort when it comes to new and relevant content, because we obviously want that to be successful for for our messaging and for our brands to be relevant and not just be disruptive.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:08:53)I totally agree. I think polite, relentless is probably my favorite, saying. I'll pay him royalties every time I use it in an email. That said, though, talking again, on the data's perspective, I mean, we're in the landscape of digital media data drives most if not all, the choices that we make as media buyers, for this type of messaging, and assuming how quick you need to act, what is the process? Like?\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:09:23)Yeah, that's a really, really great question. Right. So I think it's definitely been a challenge for all agencies. And it's forced all of us to be more agile than we. And we already thought we were agile, right? And then this situation comes along, and we're like, well, we have to be way more agile than we ever had been in the past. So I think we really had to lean on, you know, the strategy side of our brains and populate proprietary data on top of our data source partnerships. So we needed to have a true and real understanding of who our audience was and how their identities behaviors perceptions are fluid, and constantly changing. And this has always really been the case. But now more so than ever. So, you know, if we don't have that true understanding, then we're really using the past to inform the future versus being on the flip side and saying, you know, we want to predict future changes and plan for them. If that makes any sense.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:10:22)No, it totally does. It's, it's kind of in a way like you, you look at your analytics, and you make a lot of your decisions for future based planning off of that. But when it comes to like social climate, and Pandemic climate, you can't really make those decisions based on the past behaviors. Because this is a wild west situation. It's never, by here, unprecedented one more time. But that's really what it is. So I mean, as much as I hate that in an email, it's, it's truly unprecedented. We don't have a standard for this. I think what was really interesting too, is a lot of providers were like, here's what we're seeing in terms of a data perspective, here's what we're seeing in terms of like, where people are shutting off and where they're pivoting to, and like you said, people are turning to social for their news, as scary as that can be. I think that even ties into our next question from an analytics perspective. I'm sure clients also want to understand how changing the message can affect the brand's perception. caveat, we are still really early on in this situation, and we won't really fully understand the effects of it probably until 2021. But has there been any initial analytical data that has helped showcase this? Has it highlighted a better brand perception at the end of the day?\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:11:39)Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So all of our brands are obviously really impacted by COVID. And also by the BLM Movement, and our agency, you know, is one of is one of those brands that definitely wanted to have a voice upfront. The thinking about analytical perspective, I think the first thing that comes to mind is what we did when we produced a set of COVID articles for WebMD, with care and treatment centers, and we saw, you know, an immediate spike and engagement for this content. And we also noticed a lot of geographical shifts, right. So COVID cases slowed down in markets like Philadelphia and New York when they started to spike in West Palm Beach. So we were really able to use that data and, and push those messages into that market and really use dollars effectively and use that current, you know, real time data to show that the consumers were valuing that information. When maybe months ago, when this all first started, it was a more popular content piece in the Philadelphia or the New York market. So it's honestly been pretty fascinating to watch the shifts in real time. And now we're in a landscape where we're making daily decisions about what about where we're spending our dollars, and what content makes the most sense in which geographical market.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:12:59)I think in terms of understanding, like, where your dollars are going, it's almost like you guys are being more conscientious of okay, West Palm Beach, we're seeing a lot more COVID cases, specifically here in New York, Philly, it's dying down, we're going to push more of our dollars towards that specific market at the end of the day, and make sure that those who are consuming our content, or are getting the content that they need, really, you did mention BLM also having an effect and I think tying into an emotional based advertising as well. I've also noticed how socially conscious your agency is, what has Allen & Garritsen done internally to address diversity and inclusivity?\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:13:38)Well, first and foremost, we're thrilled that you've noticed some of our DNI efforts, because that just means that our communication efforts are really making an impact. And you know, as brand communicators, I think it's it's our duty almost, to use our channels to help share these values and really educate our industry. So we definitely have been dedicating a lot of our space on social media, and on our website as a resource and really focusing on things like the Facebook boycott, and showing people where they can donate and just lifting new voices and showcasing our diversity. So. So the past several months, have definitely been full of conversations. You know, we've had a lot of open forums that include everyone from, you know, our CEO, Andrew Graf, all the way to our summer intern who's amazing Jordan. And these are open transparent dialogues about, you know, how we not only as like individuals, but also as a full independent agency can improve our efforts, because while you said like, oh, wow, we've noticed a lot of a lot of socially conscious things that you're doing, we still have work to do, just like everybody else. So now's the time to kind of improve our efforts and create more diverse and inclusive environments, not just like for, you know, the agency itself but also for our clients and our business partners and the communities you know, We have two offices in two in two major cities. And so it's really, you know, our duty to, to foster that. So I think, one, you know, one big takeaway I can say that we've done this summer is launched our ag advocates program, which I'm a part of. And that's to drive our collective efforts. And we basically create policy change in our agency. And so we're, we understand that, like, all these conversations are great, they should have, you know, they should have been happening all along. But what really is going to drive change in our industry specifically is, is, you know, keeping our leaders accountable our clients accountable and creating actionable benchmarks that are actually going to measure our progress in the space versus just checking boxes. We don't want to be, we don't want to be doing this because we think we're supposed to be doing it. We're just a really passionate group of people who, who are just glad this is a conversation now I'm glad that we can be a part of this movement. So, you know, our first step was, was building out the brand's best self, and sort of uncovering our diversity statement. And so I thought this was a brilliant line. I think it was, maybe Erin, or Derek one of our Derek obviously, our VP and Aaron's one of our copywriters. But she said, you know, we really sell ourselves on, we're building a brand's best self, but we can't build a brand's best self, unless we're all free to be ours. And I just thought that was such a, you know, my draft statement. I loved it. I thought that was like, very, very inclusive of our language and our passion about this project.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:16:34)That's like an extremely powerful statement.\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:16:38)I love it. I just really loved it.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:16:41)Yeah, it really makes you think, too, as you were saying, and I was like, wow, that that's huge. I think like you said to, AMG has always been a very passionate team. And to hear what you guys are doing, I think is amazing. And leading those conversations. So I am definitely going to keep an eye out for additional things, and actually building on that. What diversity and inclusivity initiatives are on the roadmap as we continue to move forward.\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:17:09)Yeah, I think we have a lot of a lot of things that were long standing relationships. So a G has a long standing relationship with Big Brothers and Big Sisters. And so we have the kids come into the office and once a month and eat pizza, and they're so cute. And so you know, excited to be there. So that's been something that we've had going on for a long time, as well as, you know, some educational partnerships with Bentley University and Boston College and But moving forward. So far, Andrew has already been in the race ahead, which is the the moving together panel moving forward together panel, which is really exciting. So he's definitely stepping up and being, you know, representing our agency in this space really well. And then, I think from like a pillar standpoint, for DNI specifically, you know, talent is obviously a huge thing. So we want to increase our hiring pool, and career pathing and really casting a wider net for talent. And that includes, you know, training and development, we want to, we want to have a dedicated budget and leadership, training events, calendars continue with our monthly open forums. And then from a financial support standpoint, we even went to think about, you know, our suppliers, and like, when we have like a big party or whatever, are we getting catering from the same three places? You know, can we do something with annual scholarships? Can we do something where we were really diversifying the people that we're supporting in our community from a business standpoint as well?\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:18:39)That's even really thinking outside the box. I think a lot of the times when we are focusing on DNI, you're probably looking more internally. And to even think from our perspective of what businesses are we supporting when we do have events, that's definitely something I didn't think of either. So to hear that, too. And also, again, I had no idea about the Big Brothers and Big Sisters program. I think that's absolutely amazing. Once a month, like I'm sure they're really adorable, too. But I'm also kind of jealous that I'm not there for the pizza. So that said to I think we actually talked a while back and we discussed how the DNI initiative is something else that you guys have been showcasing to your clients when it comes to even pitch decks. Can you talk a little bit about that process and what the overall response has been?\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:19:33) Yeah, so we did have, you know, a relatively large pitch in the last couple of months and diversity was obviously top of mind. And I think the exercise for us was really about redefining diversity, which I thought was just really cool, you know, because everybody thinks about diversity in one lane, right? It's either their skin color, their religious background, their you know, and it's really just so much bigger than that. So we looked at things like physical and and emotional and mental disabilities, right? So that could be considered, you know, a diverse, underserved segment. And I thought that when I went to the 3% conference, which was virtual this year, so I went to my living room to safely watch the seminar. And I went all the way the living room, there was no topic, but the 3% conference had two women. And I feel so badly via that, but I forget the name of their company, but they were working with Nike. And they identified that, you know, Nike does a lot of things with there's a lot of things really, really Right, right. So they, you know, they, they showcase different types of people and their ads and whatnot. But they didn't realize that the physically disabled audience is actually using a lot of their sports related products, like their gloves, their jackets that zipped from the bottom so that when they sit, they're not, you know, putting strain on the zippers and all this kind of stuff. And so it's like, rather than featuring those people in their ads, you want to target them with your ads, you know what I mean? Which is two totally different things. And I just thought that those two women were so well spoken. And so it just made a lot of sense to me. And it's one of those things, it's like, well done, how come nobody's thought of this yet, you know, so I loved that I loved 3% conference, it was really impactful this year, and talked a lot about diversity change. So So for us, I think it was just about redefining what diversity looks like. And not saying like, you know, we're gonna make three print ads, and there's going to be one African American family, one Asian family, one white family, that's not diversity in your advertising. It's really thinking way, way, way deeper than that, and thinking about people's experiences, and how you can make messaging and place ads where and when it's relevant to them. versus, you know, trying to just diversify the imagery in your ads.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:21:52)That totally makes sense. I think, like, a lot of the times, we're just trying to check a box to say we did it. And like you said, it goes further than that. It's understanding the consumers experience, whether they're a part of a marginalized community or not. But like, it's about understanding and speaking to them on that level, and reaching to them when it is relevant, versus just saying, Oh, this is what we've done. But what can you do to hold yourself accountable? Yeah, exactly. I think on that note, too, what is the one key takeaway from like, the past five months that you and AMG believe has lasting momentum?\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:22:30)Yeah. So I think that if I only have to pick one more, you know, we saw a lot of brands that desire to stay silent, right, and decided to wait it out. And didn't predict, you know, that this time would be different. This is, you know, everybody keeps saying it's a movement, not a moment. And so as an agency, we decided to speak out very boldly on social media, supporting Black Lives Matter. You know, offering anti racist resources, educating on the social media boycott with Facebook. And, you know, not only did we not get any pushback on this, but we got so much praise for it. You know, the New York Times reached out to us last week, or the week before, about, you know, our Facebook boycott imagery. The Philly ad club has reached out to us, you guys have reached out to us. So you know, brands that are scared, I think, are scared or or uncertain about how they should really be a part of this. I think our key takeaway here would be take a stand. And you know, don't be afraid to be bold and vocal. And then, you know, people are gonna notice, and it's going to be nothing but nothing but positive.\n\n\n\nCarly (00:23:42)Yeah, I think like, a lot of the time with the hesitation, it can be understand it's very overwhelming thing that we're dealing with right now. But I think education and taking a stand isn't the best thing you can do. And you might not be 100%. Right, but you might be close to 95%. Right? And then you learn from there, and you continue to evolve forward.\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:24:05)Yeah. And it just it showcases just trying right. You know, I mean, like, we're not perfect, we're gonna, we're gonna absolutely make mistakes. And I think that it's just creating an environment where like, yeah, if I make a mistake, I want you to tell me about it. And I want to be better. And I want to be able to still be bold. So I think that for brands to understand that you don't have to be perfect to be vocal, I think is like a really key point. You know, you don't have to you don't have to say the perfect thing. You just have to try to participate in the conversation at this point.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:24:36)Perfect. That's, I love that. So, on that note, before we wrap it up, what do you believe the rest of 2020 looks like and what are your expectations for 2021?\n\n\n\nAshley (00:24:51)I think that's a hilarious question. Who knows right now? I think that 2020 As much as everybody has said like This is such a throwaway year, I completely disagree. I think there's been some really beautiful things that have come out of this year. And I think, you know, humanity is one of them. So a lot of brands might have needed this wake up call, just to remember that, you know, we're people in this business, and we're marketing and advertising to people not pixels. And one of like, the most beautiful things that I that I've seen come out of this with all of our vendors and whatnot, is this all in this together mentality? Right. So like, and I hope that continues, right? Because it's been something that has been just like, really powerful as an industry, like all of us coming together and trying to, to be better together and help each other out. Knowing that, you know, it's been, it's been unprecedented, Carly.\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:25:53)But, um, you know, I think, as far as expectations for 2021, like, we just really want to continue to be a part of the community. And I'm personally really excited to watch, you know, small businesses get back on their feet, families go back to whatever this new normal is, we obviously have a huge election here in the States coming up in the fall. So there's a ton of things on the horizon. And I guess I'm saying that my expectations are that the good things that are that are going to come out that have come out of 2020 will stay true, and that humanity space, if that makes, if that makes any sense.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:26:34)Yeah, I think like in terms of like, 2021, it'll be interesting. And I think the momentum that at least Alan and Garretson has started will continue onwards. And I look forward to seeing what you guys put up on those social media channels. And I look forward to hearing more about what you guys are doing internally. Ashley, thank you again, for joining me today. It's really, really great to hear what you and the team have already accomplished and what you guys are looking to accomplish in the future. And I'm sure you've absolutely sparked some ideas for those listening today.\n\n\n\nAshley  (00:27:05)Yeah, Carly, thank you so much for having us. I mean, to be asked alone with this is a great thing that you guys are doing with this podcast. And we were so honored and humbled to be a part of it. So really appreciate your time and for the invitation. So we had a lot of fun.\n\n\n\nCarly  (00:27:18)Perfect. Well, thanks again, Ashley.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:27:28)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/building-innovative-agency#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/building-innovative-agency"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Building Agency 2.0","datePublished":"2020-09-09T20:20:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:46:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/building-innovative-agency"},"wordCount":7081,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/building-innovative-agency#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240514131948/stackadapt_podcast-season-1_stackadapt_podcast.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe sit down with Alex Panousis, CEO of Carat Canada, and discuss building agency 2.0 in the challenging pandemic environment to ensure continued growth.  \n\n\n\nAlex Panousis | CEO, Carat Canada\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)I think agencies weren't in the best shape. You know, this is a low growth, lower margin industry. But the good news is, it's the perfect time for change. So as we talk about the digitization of everything, what does that mean from an agency perspective, both in terms of delivery and also in terms of, you know, the skill set, the kind of people that we have, the systems that we're putting in place? How are we really becoming more effective and efficient and helping clients drive growth? I think that's one of the biggest opportunities now, it's not even about advertising, like, what does that mean building awareness building? It's like, how do you survive? And how do you drive growth? Right? So those of the things that I think are definitely in the forefront of our clients, whether they're retail or whether they're, you know, kind of a traditional bricks and mortar industry, legacy industry, new retail, I mean, I think they're all kind of going through those two changes, how are they going to survive? And how are they going to grow? And how are they going to pivot to the new consumer behavior?\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:01:01)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape. The How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:01:29)Welcome to How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Vitaly Pecherskiyi, and I'm the host of this podcast. Today's episode is the final episode of our first season. And do we have a guest for you! Today we're welcoming Alex Panousis, CEO of Carat, Canada. Alex has previously held roles as president of Hawas, and spent a decade as CEO of Starcom. She's a passionate educator and serves as a community director of marketing TO, so I can't think of a better person to join us for our closing episode and her. Alex, welcome to our podcast.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:02:00)Hey, Vitaly, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:02:03)Great. Well, Alex, you're definitely joining us at an interesting time, you know, when we're conceptualizing this podcast, in the beginning of the year, I would, I would have never thought that we would find ourselves in the middle of global pandemic. So a lot of things have to change. And, you know, being in summer 2020, everything is changing and evolving as we as we go. So, I'd love to maybe before we dive into kind of the meaty part of our podcasts, just to hear from your perspective on how pandemic affected your clients, how your business is evolving during this time, and any interesting insights that you may have taken away from it.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:02:38)Yeah, I mean, look, I think, as you said, there's no playbook for this, for this time in the world, right? This is a pandemic, I've never lived through a pandemic, I've lived through some recessions, but I don't think the past necessarily forges the future. What I think is interesting is how quickly things changed in particular, you know, in the media world, and, and also, you know, with clients, when people stopped going to work, they stopped buying things, they stopped eating out, they stopped buying cars. And so there was, you know, we saw some massive shifts in, you know, purchase behavior, way more online, e-commerce than we've ever seen. And one of the things that I think is interesting is how much of that behavior is going to stick post pandemic? Because it's like, did we build, you know, our usage of tik tok? Was that just like for validating? Or is that going to stick? Are we going to constantly be looking back at this time? Are some of those things going to change? I think our clients, there are lots of really broad categories. I think there is no same story auto, I think has gone through a difficult time. I think they're bouncing back. CPG, I think is is doing, you know, better than expected. I think QSR is pressured? I think there were some service industries and businesses that have done well. There's some luxury brands that have gotten, you know, a bit more buoyant with some revenge shopping. I guess that's the word of agency, agencies. Look, I think agencies were weren't in the best shape. You know, this is a low growth, lower margin industry. But the good news is, it's the perfect time for change. So as we talk about the digitization of everything, what does that mean from an agency perspective, both in terms of delivery and also in terms of, you know, the skill set the kind of people that we have the systems that we're putting in place? How are we really becoming more effective and efficient and helping clients drive growth? I think that's one of the biggest opportunities now. It's not even about advertising, like what does that mean building awareness building? It's like, how do you survive and how do you drive growth? Right. So those are the things that I think are definitely in the in the forefront of our clients, whether they're retail or whether they They're, you know, kind of a traditional bricks and mortar, industry legacy industry, new retail, I mean, I think they're all kind of going through those two changes, how are they going to survive? And how are they going to grow? And and how are they going to pivot to the new consumer behavior?\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:05:17)Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You know, this is definitely the time for for change. And, you know, the companies that would probably lose in the long term are the ones that just waiting it out. I think the companies that have been really rapid at responding, they're ultimately winning, you know, their businesses that are doing even better now than before. COVID. Not necessarily, like B2B software, for example, that kind of powers this digital workforce, for example, but even some categories where you never thought they will be performing so well, like they do today.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:05:51)Yeah, I mean, Bloom zooms, market cap is greater than the entire automotive category. I mean, it's a pretty astonishing shift, you know, when we kind of think about that fourth, dimension, fourth, you know, industrial revolution of information, and how quickly we've seen. If you look at the last year, just even the velocity of the downs and the ups and the companies that are winning, versus the companies that are challenged. It's a fascinating time.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:06:18)Yeah. You know, the really, the topic of this episode is sort of building the agency to point out. So for the main part of our discussion, I'd love to take a deeper dive into the business of agencies and maybe speculate of what that model will look like in the future. But to start, maybe, let's imagine you're talking to somebody who's been on the remote island for the last five years and had no access to the internet, and they were a marketer before they left. So what would you tell them now about sort of the state of agency business and how it has changed over the last five years?\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:06:56)Yeah, it's a great question. Look, there's good news. And there's bad news. Here's I'll start with the bad news. I think that there has never been more commoditization of agencies than there is today. Like we essentially, you know, media today is such a commodity as an industry, we've eliminated the differences amongst the outputs of our competitors. So whether you're agency a or agency B, at the end of the day, there is very little little difference, like true difference, true differentiators. And I think that's a challenge. So I think that's one big issue, the differentiation part. The other part is growth for agencies, and margin delivery is harder to come from today. So thinking about, but what that looks like moving forward is a real is a real challenge. Whereas I would say, even five years ago, there were there was more buoyancy in the marketplace. Now, you know, the growth is, you know, what's the latest report like we're sort of the industry is growing at less than 4%. It's certainly not robust. And in order to really kind of show velocity, you've got to move into different areas. So what's the good news? The good news is that there are opportunities and vertical integration, there are opportunities in different sectors, the opportunities for data, lead media, creativity, offer up done right, offer up a significant way of having clients understand, you know, the return on advertising investment, the return on capital investment, if it can drive growth, and I think those are the things that agencies need to really kind of focus on. Whereas in media, you know, we used to be all about kind of buying and buying precision. Now, that seems to be table stakes, right? Pricing seems to be table stakes, we've got to get into industries that are consulting, we've got to get into tech and digital and enablement. We've got to get into more of the what's the idea that's going to help us grow, not the technology that will get there, what's the actual idea? And then how can you through an end to end delivery system show up to the consumer in a way that's actually going to drive the business? I think that's that's the good news. And I think we're moving into a time where the talent pool that is now succeeding on the agency side is really you know, doubling down they're doubling down in digital with W down in tak they're recognizing that they need to learn skills like design thinking they need to take some of the kind of the things that some other industries engineering as an example has standardization and start to use that in a more systemic way in the advertising and media industry. So you know, I am nothing but optimistic. And today Vitaly, especially today because Ontario and Toronto Toronto specifically we to stage three, so I think, you know, the idea of restart. And the idea of, you know, kind of moving forward is, is a big theme.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:10:08)Yeah, you know, Alex, I would love to come back to the topic of talent low later in our discussion, because I think it's incredibly important. But to your point about kind of data driven creative, I think, you know, in, in the past few years, especially with perhaps virtualization technologies, there's been a lot of promise around pure data driven creative that drives results, that maybe in some ways automates sort of intervention from humans. But at the same time, that ultimately leads to potentially very similar predictable, creative, that a lot of brands like, it doesn't really resonate with a lot of brands that have historically been really investing in really outstanding kind of meeting innovation. So yeah, where do you find that balance between really data and creative? And in our previous call, call, you mentioned the concept of the\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:11:11)Yeah, I mean, I think the last few years, our industry has focused on kind of short termism, right. So the idea that a brand will show up right person, right place, right time with a message that, you know, it's like five o'clock, it's dinner time, you know, is that enough to inspire someone to actually go to Popeyes? Or do you need to have a more kind of holistic, more, I don't know, I wouldn't say interesting, but more kind of creative message, take some of the things that Burger King is doing. And so I think the we went too far into the data and nuances, lost a bit of the big picture. And then I think, to your to your point, some of the stuff that we used to talk about, like that was supposedly possible we really actually weren't really activating against. So I think today, we're now in an opportunity where the technology is there, we are able to personalize messaging, then the question becomes, what's the right message to serve. And so thinking about that is really important. You know, data is only as good as the data you have. And I don't think we've always had perfect data. I also think that the way that you motivate people to take action is an art. And so finding humanity and kind of building that bridge from what you say and how you say it. And where you say it is as important as looking at technology and data and delivery. And, and I think we're now it's almost like we as an industry, we were sort of toddlers, and now we're maturing, and as the industry matures, we know better, and bringing that humanity into the numbers, the meaning in the math, right, I think is going to be a bedrock of how our industry moves forward, and delivers more value.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:13:01)So spend a lot more time probably with the end customer and really understand what is the what is the problem that the brand is solving? And really try to find it, how you solve that consumers problem in a way that's definitely unique, but also in a way that really would make your brand stand out.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:13:23)Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think, look, I mean, we know more about people today than ever before, like, in a nanosecond, we can understand where they are, we know what their preferences are, we have a sense of behavior, we know what they liked before. And they tell us more things about themselves. Right? So taking advantage of that, but in a way that actually demonstrates that we actually really understand them as people, you know, because, I mean, it sounds pedantic, but advertising, you know, we're not, we're not talking to Martians, we're talking to people. And we've got to make sure that those messages are human. Even when I look at DTC brands, and, you know, just even some of the interesting ways that they're showing up in, in various areas and social media, you know, they're scratching an itch, they're, they're focusing on something that is, you know, to your point, a problem, and they're offering a solution in a really interesting way. And those are the brands that are winning.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:14:23)Can you think of a couple brands that really stand out to you?\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:14:26)Well, I mean, you know, to me, Harry's is a great example. I think the ordinary is a great example. I think revolution is a great example clothing line. There are many, I mean, even I guess an older brand Allbirds Tesla, you know, Tesla doesn't spend money in marketing like here's a great example, right? They compete with GM and that whole and Toyota and Honda and what they do is they have a charismatic CEO that tweet something on, you know, on Twitter, and then that gets shared around the world and creates demand excitement and velocity. I mean, who would have ever thought that we could go from this legacy category of automotive to Tesla having more market cap Tesla's bigger than Toyota? Like, it's incredible. And I think part of that part of the digitization, or like the kind of what's happened is more as possible. And those brands that have taken advantage of that are the ones that are winning.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:15:28)But do you think so to the point about Tesla, you know, with them, I mean, I've, I wish I had a Tesla, I've driven Tesla before. It's amazing. But you know, in their case, it starts with amazing product, right? So do you think marketing team in general spends enough time with the product team, to really make sure that the product itself actually delivers on the promise, then ultimately, if you know, repeat, purchase, it all comes down to product actually solving the problem really well? Like if you, if you will, in the case of Tesla, maybe you don't buy it every year, but you know, if you buy something more trivial, like Yeah, I don't know, garbage bags, but they you know, they didn't rip, the repeat purchase comes from really product itself.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:16:23)I think your points an interesting one. I mean, look at Tesla's issue is it doesn't have the level of recurring revenue you say that Netflix has or even a peloton like some, you know, you have three modern brands that are succeeding today. But you know, I think they've just started. So if I look at Tesla, to me, I look at, okay, who's buying a Tesla? And what else can they buy? What services? You know, do birds of a feather flock together? I don't know, is Tesla the kind of company like can you start a dating app with Tesla users? Like I you know, I don't know. But I think there, could you start a Content Network for Tesla users, they're forward thinking, they're revolutionary, what's the next TED Talk infrastructure that will appeal to a, you know, a group, a community of Tesla drivers that I think will be really unique? I think that those are the kinds of problems that we have to now solve in new and different ways that are, you know, to me, those are the the interesting, modern challenges. And I think, you know, our agencies doing that. I think the competition with consultancies is real. I think, to a certain degree, they are more capable of answering some of those questions, because some of the solutions aren't media or advertising, they're broader business. And so being able to understand the end to end offering from, you know, what your consumers looking for? How do you fulfill a car and what that experience is? And then what do you do next, after they purchased one, I think is a really big opportunity for us as an industry to kind of wrap our heads around.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:17:52)Yeah, and I think that's, that's ultimately, what I'm observing that more brands are looking really for sort of, you know, help across the board, right, they don't need help. Only with messaging, they, they really want to tie everything together, you know, all their systems, they want to make sure that it really all this work on the marketing and properly funnels into their revenue projections. And, and I think that's ultimately why consultancies have been successful. But I imagine there's still so many things that agencies, marketing agencies can do better than consultancies, from your perspective, where what would be, you know, a strength of an agency that for consultancy would be really hard to replicate?\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:18:37)Yeah, I mean, I think two things, I think the first one is really the the way that agencies think about solving problems and and looking at idea first, media lead idea, creativity, I think is different coming from an agency and the way that we approach it versus the skill set that a consultant would have. I also think as much as they're moving into areas of delivery and actual media execution, I just don't see the scale there. So they may have, you know, a team of I don't know, 50 you know, search experts at Deloitte and the Deloitte Media Group, you know, but we have, you know, a density you have, like 10,000 that are global footprint. And so the ability then to inject and to learn and to iterate and to kind of understand best practices, I think is stronger. But you know, I mean, it's, it's fascinating, right, like Drogo, five got sold to Accenture, like people are like the things that are that are happening today are really changing the landscape. So I think the modern media agency, the modern agency has got to really double down on what's the idea that's going to drive growth through a client. And if you can come up with that in a really fresh, interesting way, using data and technology, digital, and everything that's available to you, you're gonna win.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:19:56)Yeah, I think you know that that has always been a philosophy for us. that StackAdapt You know, we've always looked at 8020 rule and double down on things that produce, you know, exponentially more outcome for the input. So with with agencies, I feel like because it's fairly easy to add services, what is the next hottest platform? Okay, Pinterest, let's start. Let's spin out Pinterest consulting arm. At some point, you just doing everything, it's really hard to differentiate yourself from other businesses because you you end up offering everything. And then you obviously cannot double down on one thing where you can probably recruit the best in the business. And really, really carve out that niche and really own it.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:20:45)Yeah, I think that's the challenge, right. But if you look at a market like Canada, one of the things that we have, we have a lot of great agencies like the bar is really high. What I'm looking to do at Karis specifically, is to start to elevate their point of view in areas like content in areas like commerce, in areas like content, where we're able to offer our clients a very distinct point of view in categories where we have expertise, automotive, retail, CPG, and we're able to use that view on the landscape to help them differentiate from their competitors and grow. You know, so concepts like brand is commerce, I think, you know, that's not just about Pinterest, it's not just about Amazon, it's also about how to use legacy media, like television and out of home to drive that conversation. So instead of having, you know, kind of, we're doing a brand idea here on the left hand side, and then we're going to do, you know, drive action and drive sales on the right hand side, we're starting to think about that ecosystem in a more fluid way. I think, to your point, or to our discussion earlier, that does require a different skill set, it requires people that can come into media, that are also really versed in, in business, and that they understand how the sum of the parts come together, as opposed to just doing great job, you know, we're 10 years ago, we were doing a great job buying GRPs or buying impressions, you know, we're no longer outcomes are no longer the, the bar, we actually have to have to get beyond just the the clicks and the stuff in the, you know, the ways that we're buying to actually really helping clients. Transform the business.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:22:27)Yeah, and, you know, on the topic of talent, I can speak about myself, you know, when I was early in my career, I, maybe I was not properly explained, during university, that when you join a company, it's, it's really, in many cases, not about just doing that one thing that you hired for, but rather, it's like you're doing that one thing, but the best path for career growth is really have deep understanding of what the company does, and finding ways to translate what you do to like the business growth. So speaking about talent, what have you seen younger staff look for in their job over what they look for in the past?\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:23:11)I mean, the challenge advertising used to be, you know, it was like the place for the cool kids. And now it's no longer the place for the cool kids, right? The if you're the cool kid, you're going to tap if you're a cool kid, you're going to places where the industry has more of a career accelerant. And so now that I think meat, you nail that advertising, you know, we've we've kind of, you know, kind of like we did it to ourselves, right? We weren't investing, we were kind of milking the brands, we were sort of, you know, squeezing out the margins, and we weren't kind of investing back in the business. Now we're going back and saying, okay, so what do what does an entry level person wanting a career in advertising? Well, they want great training, they want great management skills. They want to learn how to solve problems. They want to know how to connect the real hard skills of how to actually connect with clients and come up with ideas. So part of that is very technical. Like I'm a big believer in badges. I'm a big believer in like, ensuring that the core competencies are there. And then it's about learning the soft skills. It's about learning, you know, how to be human and how to how to use technology to elevate ideas, and what is a great idea? And how do you differentiate between a good idea and a great idea and a great business building idea? And so our competition isn't just other agencies or competition now is Google when I was at start calm, I lost more people in digital to Facebook like I have, I probably had like 1212 of my like, they come we train them, they would do an incredible job and then Facebook would call them and there was nothing I could do. I could there's no way I could compete against Facebook. But what I wanted to do was I almost use that in some ways to my advantage is that listen, more of my people have gone to face spokesman we're doing something right, retrain them in the right way we're giving them and it's like recognizing that they're not going to come in like they did before and do 20 years at your firm, they're going to come in and do you know, three to five, hopefully. And then I think that's what we haven't prepared for. And that's another area for talent, like bringing them in showing them career acceleration, recognizing they're gonna leave. And then instead of managing just the front end, manage the back end, I want to create alumni groups, I want people to know that, you know, when they've spent three years with my agency, that they talk about that as the best experience they've ever had, and that I am able to give them that experience in exchange for the value that they're going to be bringing to our clients.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:25:47)Yeah, that's awesome. I absolutely love that. I think that's a that's a great way to thinking about it. Because you're absolutely right. You know, nowadays, people want to get a lot of different experience, recognizing that there's a lot of value that they can create and investing in them, despite the fact that they may leave three years later. Yeah, I think it's incredibly important. To the topic of education, do you think universities and colleges are doing a good job producing this young talent? Or do you think they're their areas of improvement that they can do? Like, anything stands out to you?\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:26:23)Yeah, look, I don't know, I teach at Humber in the postgraduate program. In media, I think education is about is broader than just having a skill. And the problem today is it's the expense of the practical reality. You know, if you're going in and getting a liberal arts degree in something, and you're coming out, you have, you know, you don't have any skills, like you're gonna have to decide like, what, what job are you going to do? And so I think we are shifting a little bit from this. And I think both sides are important, like, I want people to love the arts and, and and think about anthropology and philosophy and push us as a society, I think we're better for it. But I also feel that there, there's a grave need for technical skills, like hard skills, and those technical skills, whether they're, you know, learning to code or knowing how to traffic an ad, like when you're coming into an agency and an entry level job, there are some things like I think you need to have you need to be Google certified. I think you need to know how to traffic an ad, I think you need to understand the media ecosystem and be able to be fluid around it. I remember doing a session at marketing to on social influencers. And there was a there was a brand leader that said, well, the whole reason why we hire influencers is only because we ourselves don't know the platform's we don't know Tik Tok. So we're not hiring people, because we think it's going to drive the business, we're actually trying to learn on the backs of that talent. So I think that's also interesting, right? It's like, go into an organization and like, be an expert in Snapchat or tick tock or, you know, really understand how like, how do you like launch a Facebook campaign, like, it's crazy how many people in digital today don't know how to do that, like, literally take a small business, put them on Facebook do or something as simple as it's simple, but you know, something is as critical as understanding how to, you know how to do schema, and managing the back end of SEO, those are skills that are critical today, as a leader, you need to understand them, because you need to be able to look at the you know, what's available, and be able to make those connections. But as someone that's going in, I think having that background, so as much as I think university, and College is great. I also think brain station is great. I also think some of the very sort of technical skills that you can get going to like a college like like a Humber or centennial, where you're going to learn some of those things. And then the other thing that I wish was more buoyant, were internships where you're actually mentioned, like a plumber, right, you're interning to learn how to do something. So like, internships that actually teach you some of the fundamental basics of our industry is also an area of opportunity. And I think we're getting there, but I think there's ways away from production.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:29:13)Yeah, I think you're right, you know, for for universities or colleges. It's, it's, it's hard to adjust the program so quickly, to keep it relevant with today's for example, technologies or tools. That's why these programs like or schools, like brain station, like discontinuous, continued education are so successful is because there's always something new. And I think maybe that's an opportunity for for companies is really to almost think of themselves as that platform where a young talent can come in, and they whenever they leave, they will always look back thinking like that's when that's where I really honed my skills.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:29:52)Exactly. I think even myself like I like this year I took a product management course at brain station personally. If it's just before COVID Everything Alex, I wanted you to, you know, to me, it's like because I felt that there were areas of the language of that, like I ran a boss at the time. And we were an end to end agency. And so I had some exposure to it. But I didn't know a deeply. And now that I know it deeply now, but at the exposure that I had the ability to work at best in class models, learn from people that it was the top of the game, like some incredible leaders in that field, right. So to me, that is what having a vital robust career really is like being able to find the space, learn something new, and then apply it to the solutions that are presented in front of you every day.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:30:40)That's awesome. I, I'm sure a lot of people are inspired by by your career and everything that you do. You're just you have your hands everywhere. It's incredible. So, um, I My next question is really around. Maybe it's somewhat an introspective question. Do you think media agencies are doing a good job reflecting today's society? And maybe you can tell me more about that?\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:31:09)Yeah, I mean, I look, I don't know, I think we have, I certainly think the agencies that I've worked at, we have tried really hard to be diverse, diverse at every level. So in skill set, and the way people look and the way they show up and come across and different backgrounds and not hiring each other is it has been a theme. Do I think we're there? No, we're definitely not there. Is it perfect? No. But I think you know, Sunshine is the best disinfectant. The best thing, one of the best things, I think that's happened during COVID. The conversations around Black Lives Matter the conversations around diversity, I just did a marketing to with a woman. Her name is Jessica, Joan Richards, who talked about look ism. And you know, is there a beauty bias in, in the industries that we work in? And the reality is that, you know, we are not perfect advertising was, you know, for the longest time a bunch of white men, if you think about Mad Men than a few women joined, then we had movements that said, women were being paid less than men. You know, there was a big movement a few years ago, less than 3% of creative directors around the world were female, let alone women of color. So I think we as an industry, we are we've got to recognize that when we have a problem. And then too, we have to figure out ways to attract and, and, and get people to join the industry that are more diverse. Look, I think I'm optimistic that we are better off now than we were a year ago. And I think that the issue can only make us stronger and more reflective. We also know that industries that are more diverse, tend to do better on the s&p tend to have better ideas tend to grow faster. In technology, that diversity of views allows us to make products that service more people because we have perspective, right? So I think all of those things, for me are positive. And I think agencies are becoming more aware of some of the gaps that they have.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:33:20)Do you think some of these protests translated into somewhat of a longer term conversation within brands? Or do you think it was more reactionary when they kind of addressed it back in June? Or do you see that more of them still discussing it? And actually taking steps to bring change?\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:33:43)Yeah, here's my hope. We used to believe that, you know, performance comes at any price, like I could buy whatever audience I want, whatever, longtail whatever, you know, it didn't matter. So if I was a serial brand, I remember this story really clearly. My father was dying of cancer. And I was on a whole bunch of blogs, looking about looking at stage four, lung cancer and knowing I was a woman in my 40s and I was you know, I guess my behavior suggests that I was dieting you know, I don't know. And I was getting these ads for like, diet cereal or more protein in my cereal here I am on a site where I'm reading about you know, someone dying and you know, a stage four test, a medical test, and I'm being served ads that are looking at my behavior now my intent. So that's ridiculous, right, that that is and so as an industry, we've learned that, you know, that's just not the right way of moving forward and then that that then creates a question of, you know, does media have meaning are you able to make a choice? That may not necessarily be the cheapest place to buy an audience but more more effective place to buy it on? Its we know that that's today, we know that that's the right thing. You're better After paying more to get the right context to reach your audience, the Facebook question or the question around hate that's been kind of brewing, you know, Facebook, and frankly, all social media that is consumer created, I think has caused brands to to step up and take a pause. It's like, what's the line we're willing to tolerate? What's the line? What's good enough? And the only way that we can do that is to understand that we have less control in some of these environments, right? When, when social media is being curated by individuals, you can't control content. So I think that's one thing, despite the safety precautions, it's not ever going to be 100%. And then, are you willing to use your dollars to make a statement? And we've seen many brands and many clients that are willing to do that? Whether that will be sustainable? You know, I'm not sure. But I hope it creates some really good conversations, both with agencies and with clients about what the future means. I've always said to clients, my classroom and people that I know, it's just because you can doesn't mean you should, you know, just because you can doesn't mean you should and I do think, I don't know, maybe I'm not like the full capitalist that I should be. But I do think that that there's certain things that matter. And and I believe in a value based, meaningful way of reaching people. And I do think there are environments that you can do that in despite the challenges that we have in front of us today.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:36:29)Yeah, I think it's, it's a very important and certainly very difficult topic. You know, I would love to have more brands, not only introspectively ask themselves, like, what are they doing internally to actually bring change, aside from maybe supporting some causes on paper, but maybe even challenge vendors that they work with around like, what, what do they do to support values that they have? So I guess, time will tell what that future looks like. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, Alex, I think this is a great way to wrap up the podcast I I feel definitely inspired talking to you. I think you have so many great ideas. i I'm sure listeners of this podcast will will find your career, your views. Very enlightening. And I I'm very grateful that you joined us for for today's conversation.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:37:30)Well, right back at you. I think you guys are doing a great job at StackAdapt. You're one of the you know, highlights, Canadian unicorns, you're just really changing the marketplace, and really adding a tremendous amount of value. Thank you for taking the time to do this. And, you know, at the end of the day, I think these conversations just elevate our industry. It's like good for us to talk about these things. It's good for us to have points of view. We don't have to agree. It's great that we're able to debate and and I think that helps all of us. Move forward.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:37:59)Yeah, thank you very much, Alex.\n\n\n\nAlex  (00:38:01)My pleasure. Thank you. Cheers.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:38:03)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/navigating-new-normal-2021#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/navigating-new-normal-2021"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Navigating the New Normal in 2021","datePublished":"2021-08-18T20:44:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:27+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/navigating-new-normal-2021"},"wordCount":6934,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/navigating-new-normal-2021#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240516163842/nadine_tull_stackadapt_podcast_s2e1.webp?fit=601%2C600&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLearn how the digital marketing landscape has evolved during the pandemic, and what digital marketers can expect next.\n\n\n\nChris Kane | Founder, Jounce Media\n\n\n\nNadine Tull | Director of Growth Strategy, Mirren\n\n\n\nVitaly Pecherskiy | Co-founder and CEO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)When you really think about the last year and a half, not only is it a global pandemic, but then you think about the social landscape and everything that we have been through. And I almost think that was harder for brands to navigate from an advertising standpoint, because, you know, everything is real time. And you know, headlines are hitting the news today and you've got an AED cow that's scheduled for post three days from now, and none of that's relevant, you know, with what's happening on a day to day basis. So I absolutely underestimated the number of times that we would have to kind of as an industry come together and figure out how to pivot.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:44)Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape that how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt  (00:01:12)Since the start of the pandemic, marketers have had to adopt flexible, fast-changing strategies to keep up with the changing digital landscape. Now, as many of us settle into the new normal, it's time to talk about what the new normal actually looks like. Today, we're exploring how agencies can thrive in the new digital marketing normal. We're joined by leaders in the industry to discuss the ways in which the digital marketing landscape has evolved, the Silver Linings that the pandemic has brought to the advertising industry, and what digital marketers can expect moving forward. What you'll find interesting about this episode is the unique perspective that each of the guests has in this roundtable. And what I really liked is that we weren't able to just reflect on the unprecedented year and a half that we just had, but see how positive of an impact this has had on how we communicate with consumers through effective advertising. As always, thank you for tuning in and enjoyed this episode of The How Agencies Thrive podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome to today's episode. My name is Matt. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, I'm joined by three guests, Chris Kane from Jounce media, Nadine from Mirren, and Vitaly Pecherskiy from StackAdapt. To kick things off, I'm gonna hand it over to today's guests to tell us a little bit about themselves. Starting with you, Chris, why don't you tell us about what you do? How long you've been in the industry and what you consider to be your strongest area of expertise?\n\n\n\nChris (00:02:40)Yeah, my name is Chris Kane, I lead a consultancy called Jounce Media. And we are very focused on putting some math around the programmatic supply chain. We work with marketers and publishers and tech platforms, and rigorously track spend across any open Internet media property, which works out to be about a million websites, half a million mobile apps and 50,000 CTV apps. And on top of that data set, we think we can help all of the participants across the supply chain make more thoughtful choices about how to drive efficiency in the in the supply chain.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:17)Next, Nadine will pass it over to you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.\n\n\n\nNadine (00:03:21)Thanks so much. So my name is Nadine Toll. I'm a director of agency growth strategy at Mirren. We're training firm focused on organic growth and new business. I have been in the industry about 20 years I got my start at agencies directing accounts, Taco Bell T Mobile, most recently before Mirren Washington's lottery, and I've been at agencies like Publicis and Draftfcb. I was in the WPP network. And my area of expertise now is truly organic growth. We help agency teams the tools, the skills, the methods to increase their share of their clients' marketing spend. In fact, we partnered with StackAdapt to conduct a study on justice topic recently. So I'm really happy to be here to share some insight today.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:04)Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Nadine. We're glad to have you here as well. So, finally, we'll we'll pass it over to Vitaly. So, Vitaly was the host of last season. So, Vitaly, just for our listeners if we can have a quick refresh review, and then we'll get started with the questions.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:04:19)Awesome. Yeah, so my name is Vitaly Pecherskiy. I'm one of the co-founders of StackAdapt. So I've been in the industry for about 10 years, just over 10 years. So I started my career in performance advertising. So I was a part of a startup AdParlour. So they were one of the first companies to integrate with, with Facebook through their ads API. So had a lot of fun there. Once they got acquired. I went on to work at one of the hold coasts where I met my co-founder. And for the past seven-plus years we've been building StackAdapt To be honest, I think of myself as as a person, like kind of a jack of all trades. So I know a little bit about Maybe things. So naturally, I think I'm good at connecting dots. So, hopefully I'll be able to weigh in on the conversation today.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:08)So as mentioned, this episode of the podcast will be a roundtable discussion on navigating the new normal in digital advertising. And the really, the goal of this episode is to explore how the world has changed since we faced a global pandemic over a year and a half ago, and how this has made a lasting impact on the digital advertising industry. So let's start things off. I'd like everybody to think back to March of 2020. This was when the entire core of every industry had the rug pulled out from under them. And, frankly, digital was no exception. So at the time, how did you think that this would impact digital advertising?\n\n\n\nChris (00:05:48)Sure, I was pretty pessimistic last March, and felt like marketers, by necessity, we're going to have to slash budgets. And that, you know, that was going to affect everybody across the supply landscape was going to affect, of course, publishers, it was in effect, all of the tech platforms, it was going to create a big headwind for the agencies are going to create a big headwind for our business.\n\n\n\nNadine (00:06:11)Yeah, something in I have to say I was a bit short-sighted, also had a bit of that pessimistic slant, but I was thinking, this is going to be a two-week disruption, we're all going to be back at it. Before we know it. You know, we do a lot of research with clients. Even when we were looking at the short term, what I was thinking short-term impact, we were looking at client verticals. But quickly, you know, with the new direct to consumer opportunities that brands were facing, there was a huge opportunity for digital that kind of initially.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:06:46)I just hadn't really considered there being a platform through which, you know, we see 1000s of brands advertising in that those last two weeks of March, because we, you know, we're just in general obsess over data. So being able to look at dashboards and just see how different verticals are basically buying advertising across the web, you know, in real time seeing the impact of lockdowns. And over those last two weeks in March, it was it was definitely scary. You just refresh the dashboard. You're like, oh, wait, more spenders dropping people are pausing campaigns. And it's, it was very, very intimidating. And I think in the back of my mind, I thought, Well, if that if, like, in theory, yes, like advertising, they all say that advertising is kind of like the first budget line that goes in the cost-cutting effort. But I think, you know, somewhere deep inside, I thought, Okay, well, digital has to stay like if, like companies still have to grow somehow. And for many of them, advertising is kind of a blind line. So I thought, you know, if, if anything, digital will probably bounce back faster. And I think in that sense, I was not wrong. But you know, those first few weeks was definitely scary. And I, I was, I was thinking, you know, being an advertising space, where you basically make money when the advertisements are bought, and if no advertising is being bought for the platform, then you're obviously not making money. It's it's the same model as maybe Uber. And at that moment, I thought it would be great if we had some subscription revenue. But truth be told, you know, even in that time, companies that have subscription revenue, and all the customers came to them started basically asking to pass their contracts. And reality is, in that kind of moment of crisis, I think everybody was on the same playing field, regardless of your business model everybody was in the mall to to try to help their customers while trying to survive. But I think all things considered, you know, we, we bounced back so fast, much faster than I anticipated. But being still at home, in some ways, you know, we've we already are operating in a new norm.\n\n\n\nNadine (00:08:59)Vitaly, you probably know better than than us. But some of our clients were telling us about their, their own client roster, and now they have, you know, multiple verticals, but they are dropping 95% overnight, like, and they just it's so when they looked at their revenue, you know, that was even one of the big questions is how do we forecast but that first few I would even say the four weeks everyone just like went to pause. So it was it's very true that there is a lot to react to just with that very first time period there.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:09:34)Yeah. And I think in the in that, you know, that first week or second week, it just became apparent that there's going to be some companies that are just going to blow up big time. You know, you saw how rapidly Zoom stocks you know, rows and and width. I immediately start thinking like, what is going to be the next growth opportunity for us? And to be honest, I think I was not in touch fairly accurately with respect to, like, what actually is going to grow? You know, some segments they basically had, like they, in digital specifically, they almost had no impact, you know, verticals like healthcare, B2B actually started growing faster as the segment because of the pandemic. So some of these changes definitely would not have been anticipated.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:10:26)Absolutely, yeah, that's, that's all very interesting. And it's funny, Nadine, that you mentioned kind of that two-week mark, because I think when everything initially shut down, we thought it was only going to be a couple of weeks. And it was just going to be this little hiccup. But here we are, you know, over a year and a half later.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:10:44)Yeah, I think actually, the reason advertising bounced back so quickly, it was, it's, you know, it was not a, it was not a company level cost-cutting effort, where the, you know, maybe think of, you know, we bring new management or launch a new product, and then we'll go back on the offense, but it's one of those survival moments when, you know, the whole industry is getting uprooted. So I think, for me, for many companies, it was just all or nothing, they had to find this new way, new areas of growth. And truth be told, a year and a half later, you know, for many of these companies, like for many of these industries, you will never be the same. So whoever was able to adjust quickly and quickly pivot into new growth areas. And when that share of mind from consumers in the new consumption mode or a new in the new buying behaviour, these companies are thriving.\n\n\n\nChris (00:11:41)Vitaly, that rebounding, you're talking about, I think, may have, you know, benefited StackAdapt More than other companies. What things looked like on our side, certainly, as you know, that two weeks shock and Nadine, you were talking about, yes, like everything is just sort of the world's on pause for some period of time, and then things start to come back. But when things started to come back, it really started to become clear what marketers consider to be discretionary spend, and what they consider to be cost of sales, or just sort of essential investments and actually helping them move product off shelf. And, you know, where that's really easy to track is, is performance marketing platforms, in the walled gardens, there are publicly traded companies, you know, Facebook did just fine. Because marketers don't think of Facebook as discretionary spend parts of the open Internet did just find as well, and, you know, happy to hear that StackAdapt, you know, saw a quick recovery. Because parts of the open Internet have demonstrable business outcomes, you know, like you, you put money into this machine, and you sell more product. And that is a very easy thing for marketers to justify, continuing to invest in, even amid some, you know, economic uncertainty, but there's like big chunks of the open internet, that where it's just hard to prove that an investment creates a business outcome, and that that got hit pretty hard for a long period last year.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:13:00)Yeah, and I think parts of that market will probably never recover. You know, I was looking at some stats for traditional TV, it dropped by about 15%, while connected TV grew 50%. And now I was just looking at this morning on a marketer stats about the forecast for traditional TV, and it basically stays flat for the next three years. So we kind of had that shock, like that rapid drop, and then basically stays flat for for foreseeable future. So it's kind of like, yeah, it definitely accelerated the change in many ways.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:13:36)Absolutely. So with that in mind, now that we're over a year and a half later, and the world starting to open back up, who here can say that they were right, and who here can say that they were wrong?\n\n\n\nChris (00:13:47)I was definitely too pessimistic. And I, Nadine, I share your point of view that's bottom, maybe I'm maybe I'm not captured correctly. But mine was like, Well, you know, we're gonna have a couple of difficult weeks here. And you know, like a year and a half later, the world hasn't fully rebounded to where it was advertising has. And so, in that sense, it's been a very pleasant surprise. But I think I significantly underestimated just sort of like the duration of how things would sort of change and Fatale, kind of to your point, how things wouldn't completely sort of like bounce back to the way they were that this was an accelerant for a bunch of long term market trends that are playing out over the course of a couple of months, rather than a couple of years.\n\n\n\nNadine (00:14:27)Yeah, you know, what I really didn't anticipate is the number of times we were gonna have to pivot. And when you really think about the last year and a half, not only is it a global pandemic, but then you think about the social landscape and everything that we have been through. And I almost think that was harder for brands to navigate from an advertising standpoint, because, you know, everything is real time. And you know, headlines are hitting the news, too. Day and you've got an ED cow that's scheduled for post three days from now. And none of that's relevant, you know, with what's happening on a day-to-day basis. So I absolutely underestimated the number of times that we would have to kind of as an industry, come together and figure out how to pivot. Like, okay, the economy is reopening. That's some great opportunity. Oh, just kidding. We're coming back, you know, or this, like, really big headline is happening now? And what is our role? And so that is something those new kinds of moments that I really, I thought it was gonna be kind of that Alright, well, we've, you know, made the switch to remote, and then eventually we'll make the switch back. But it has felt like in near constant pivot, I would say, and I really didn't see that coming.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:15:46)Yeah, for me, I think I was surprised by the resiliency of the travel industry. Obviously, in those first months, it was hard, it was hit very hard. But now we're starting to see these new segments, specifically around domestic travel that is just, it's so big, because people just people want to go to places. And, you know, for example, I'm currently in British Columbia in Canada. And it seems like every friend of mine has visited British Columbia in the past few months, because, you know, it's, for many of them, even for people who live in Toronto, it was the first time coming all the way across the country. But this was an amazing reason for them to explore the country that they live in. And it was interesting to see just how consumer trends are shaping around more exploration around local tourism, or, you know, domestic tourism. And I think I was definitely surprised by not just how quickly that will, that will bounce back. But like, just how big it can become a part of, like, just a normal, like, people actually make plans around domestic travel now a lot more than an international, I think that's probably going to stay.\n\n\n\nNadine (00:17:04)You know, it's funny, too, because with the changing, it's like changing consumer behaviour. And brands are behaving so differently, too. So even now, and kind of across the board with our clients, you know, late 2020 started ramping up and, you know, as people are finally realized, we got to do something, right. So, in general, we're seeing growth trends, for sure. But, you know, we see scope creep, as clients are looking for a this is the strategy needs to shift. So you need to replan all of this out, and then put the execution together. All within the original scope, we see compressed timelines, delayed payment terms. So it's interesting how a year and a half later, even the nature of the business is different than it was 18 months ago.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:17:50)And I actually want to ask a question to Chris, since you obviously, so closely work with companies on the supply side. Talk to us a little bit more about the connected TV, and how how that really played out last year. And what do you see on your end with respect to grow that channel into going into 2022?\n\n\n\nChris (00:18:15)CTV it's so interesting. CTV is like the upside-down image of web and mobile app business dynamics in so many ways. You know, its supply constrained, it's still very early in its transparency. The companies generally on the sell side of the market have a lot more leverage than they're accustomed to having in the web. So anyway, what I think is basically happening, or what has happened over the last year, and CTV is sort of like a bit of a point of tension between the most premium sellers who sort of recognize that connected TV and in particular, programmatically traded connected TV advertising is likely to be a very core part of their business over the next decade. So you know, think about like the major media companies, both distributors like, you know, sling and Hulu, and content owners like NBCU and discovery. They're watching very closely, but are still kind of selling the old-fashioned way, particularly the content owners. And then on the other side, you have a bunch of opportunists who I won't name but you know, a lot, a lot of companies who were sort of rushing into the CTV space without creating a whole lot of value, either acting as supply chain intermediaries, or as you know, very, very low-quality publishers, and trying to soak up ad budgets were, you know, for the supply-constrained campaigns. And so what that all the way that all plays out for the buying community is it's very hard as a marketer, or as a platform that supports marketers. Um, to sort of take full advantage of this CTV opportunity, which really is very powerful and criticism, amazing outcomes for marketers, while being, you know, very sort of cautious and disciplined about making sure that, you know, you're not trading with the opportunists that you really are working with sort of innovative companies who are in this space for the long haul.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:20:18)Yeah. And what sort of dynamics Do you see with with respect to upfronts? I've been reading that, you know, with, with the Olympics, slightly indexing lower on the expected viewership. Advertisers haven't been getting as much of a reach, do you expect connected TV will go? It will become more of an open nitrated inventory? Or do you think it's going to be going in a direction of more of TV where it's going to be a lot more around upfront and direct deals?\n\n\n\nChris (00:20:54)At the moment, there have to be large, upfront commitments. And I think, you know, you see this from even like public earner earnings reports from, you know, companies like discovery, they've got more demand than they know how to handle. And so to the extent that, you know, discovery, or Viacom, CBS, or you know, some other premium content owner, you know, has the opportunity to lock up a premium price commitment in upfront, how could they turn that down? What I think is really interesting is that there are there are sort of non-traditional buyers in the upfront all of a sudden, who are saying to the content owners, I'll pay you right now for your inventory. But then I want the right to go and sell it programmatically. And that's a pretty, a pretty big bet, you know, a company's potentially laying out lots of cash to just secure sales rights, and then making that inventory available programmatically. There's only a handful of companies who have sort of like the balance sheet to do that. But that is really exciting for me, for me, I presume, for everybody on this discussion. But you know, just for like the programmatic buying community in general, because it does create a bridge to bringing some premium supply into auction-based markets.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:22:11)That's very interesting. Matt, I'm sorry, I was hijacking the conversation. I was just so curious about the trends in CTV.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:22:21)No, no worries, you know, it is a roundtable discussion. So anywhere it goes through, or it goes. So we're just about at the time for the break. But I did want to ask one final question. Before we get there. Nadine, you mentioned a little bit about these changes in consumer attitudes and behaviors. And I'd be interested to hear from everybody else. And Nadine, feel free to jump in as well. Not more. But how do you think these consumer attitudes and behaviours have changed in a positive way? Or a negative way throughout the pandemic?\n\n\n\nNadine (00:22:56)Well, I'll jump in first, just to say, you know, it's very little exaggeration to say that just about everything is different. Right? And Fatale, you mentioned about people in the way that they're traveling these days more locally than long distance. And, you know, we heard a little bit about just some of the industries that are growing home services and retirement, like, the way that consumers think about things is totally shifted, and their behaviours have shifted, and, you know, is a huge opportunity for agencies if you think about it, because clients are craving insights, like what is the purchase behaviour, how has it changed, and truly what was accurate 12 weeks ago has probably changed. So we see pretty big disruption and brands is who their target is who they're, you know, how people are using their brands? So there's, there's been a lot shifting since the pandemic, I think it's all kind of on the table at this point.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:23:50)Yeah, I think a segment I would personally I would like to call out is B2B. We've seen so much change in that segment, because the way software is being sold has changed so much in the past 18 months, with people not being able to attend conferences or traveling to do business, everything is shifting towards Account Based Marketing demand generation, and that will likely stay so I read a stat from PwC that only 6% of people want to go back to the office and 34% of people feel more productive than they felt before the pandemic like I certainly feel that way myself. So naturally, the way will work now for for for for B2B will likely stay like that for for years to come. And you don't have to look for I'm sure everybody has seen ads from Monday.com, one of the largest advertisers right now, and I think that's such a big opportunity for B2B marketers, because companies are going through digital trends. formation across the board. So for anything like virtual collaboration, human resources, software and infrastructure, they're trying to play a catch up game in many ways. And there's a lot of discussion we spend happening around buying new software. So I think B2B is one of those segments that will just continue growing really, really rapidly.\n\n\n\nChris (00:25:19)From our perspective, the main, the main consumer change is, or as it relates to advertising, is marketers are just realizing that there are huge and very important populations that are just unreachable through traditional channels. And I found just to sort of make this, you know, specific and anecdotal, like the language we hear from clients for years was, they would think of online video as reach extension, you know, like, the main way they want to reach people with video is through televisions, and then they would use online video as a mechanism to extend that reach into households that they couldn't reach through TV, it's upside down now, you know, it's sort of like, sort of TV's on in the background, and I can get some mass reach there. But like, the main way that I'm going to reach my consumers is through digital devices through web mobile app and CTV advertising. And when that happens, it kind of reorients how marketers think about, you know, planning and measurement, because, you know, it used to be like, Okay, well, I've got, you know, target rating points for my television campaigns. And now, I need some similar metric so that I can create apples-to-apples comparisons on the efficiency of my online video campaigns. It's sort of the opposite now. It's like, Hey, I measure real outcomes for my digital advertising. And now I want to put a bunch of pressure on the traditional TV companies to, you know, stop talking about TRPs. And help me understand the business outcomes of my television investments.\n\n\n\nNadine (00:26:48)You know, Chris, one thing to add to that just a personal thing that I love so much, is how online offline there used to really kind of be a generational divide between that. But now, families are trying to keep in touch, and the only way that they can do that is in the online world. We've really seen the generations kind of merge together in their usage of different platforms. And I think that's a really kind of wonderful bonus that has come from all of this.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:27:16)Perfect. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you, Nadine. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Vitaly. We'll take a quick break. And we'll be right back to talk about winning strategies and how the industry has continued to change as we head into the new year.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:27:38)You know, your advertising should be multi-channel. So why isn't your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native display video, connected TV and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers, as if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform. According to G2, it's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:28:13)And we're back. As mentioned at the beginning of this roundtable episode, we're joined by three experts in digital advertising. So Chris, Nadine Vitaly, as people who sit within the industry but not directly in the chair of those working on an agency or brand-direct side, what were some winning strategies that you witnessed that helped agencies thrive in the new marketing normal that has evolved?\n\n\n\nChris (00:28:36)I can start on this one, I think it sort of links to what I was saying before that, you know, digital channels are becoming sort of like the primary vehicle to reach consumers. And as marketers, you know, significantly grow their investment in particularly the open Internet. What I see the most 14 agencies doing is getting much more organized on having a really rigorous understanding of what is in the supply chain. That's not that hard to do for Facebook, or for YouTube or for Amazon, like, I'm sure agencies have a whole bunch of headaches about those platforms, but they don't have any uncertainty about what they're buying. You just kind of know the ad product, cuz you're a consumer there. That's really hard to do across one and a half million different properties that are each designed and monetized uniquely. And it's sort of it's been this like intractable problem for years. But there are a bunch of new tools available. And I think we are now seeing the most 14 agencies get really organized on making sure that they have a very detailed understanding both like a data-driven understanding but also just like a user experience understanding of the inventory that they're buying on the open Internet.\n\n\n\nNadine (00:29:51)We also work with a lot of agencies and you know, in the digital space and kind of outside of that as well. And But what we're really finding number one is agencies, like I said, we did this research report recently, and agencies are doubling down really on, how can we mind our current client roster for new projects and revenue as opposed to kind of chasing new business, in the pitch setting, and even in prospecting, right, like we've really found this focus on, where's the growth potential, the revenue potential with our current clients, and then, you know, we're kind of digging in with that, as well. And what we found is there are a lot, certainly organic growth is on the mind of most agencies, but a lot that just kind of sit back and wait for new assignments. And of course, that's not the way to go, you're not going to be methodical or consistent with that at all, you can't get that predictable growth. But those those agencies that were really seeing the most success, had detailed planning, and they were bringing forward strategic insight. Now, you know, Chris, is you're talking about all the different platforms and technologies and like, clients don't really know their way forward. So as agencies are able to bring insight forward, now, they crave insights we just talked about, you know, how much has changed with consumer attitudes and behaviours in the last 18 months. So those agencies that can bring forward research and insight or, you know, even here's the customer journey model, and how it's changed and how we can impact them as platforms. So that's really where we're seeing the greatest success is really coming forward with new projects grounded in new insights that they can share with their client teams.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:31:39)Yeah, I have to agree with Nadine, I think the biggest opportunity for agencies is really around that organic growth is and finding ways to deliver more value to their existing customers. You know, if, if the listeners are stocking up customers, they probably know how much we're obsessed over surveys, and we would collect so much data, and that all that information is being deployed to be actually taken very seriously to, to improve our product, enhance our offerings all across the board. And I think, you know, going back to that report that you brought up in it and that gene. Interestingly, you know, when we asked agencies, what prevents them from bringing forward new ideas to the to clients, about a quarter of them said, that it's the concern that the client will say, Well, why don't you bring this idea in the first place? And I think, I think it's all about positioning really yourself as being there together on this path of discovery and experimentation. Because, you know, nowadays, there's so much uncertainty and the onboarding new client, there's, it's, there's no necessarily a formula that will work for everybody, I think, it all has to be started with a very clear expectation that it's you, you're coming in into this project as a partner, and you will, you will succeed together, and you fail together. And with that angle, you can a lot better be a lot more justified, bring forward your ideas, and because inevitably, new ideas will emerge as more data becomes available. So I think it's really about helping existing customers succeed and continue evolving in these uncertain times.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:33:27)Absolutely. Thanks, Vitaly, for that. Now, we're just about out of time. So I wanted to throw one final question out to our guest today. There's an old expression that every cloud has a silver lining. So when we think about everything that we've discussed today about the past, the present the future of digital, how do you think that the last year positively impacts the industry as we head into the latter portion of 2021 and into 2022?\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:33:54)I'm personally incredibly excited for that acceleration of digitization of the economy. You know, I for the first time, tried telemedicine in the past 18 months. And now, in most cases, whenever I have a question, I just use one of the platforms. I don't think actually started buying more stuff on e-commerce, I just started sort of buying less stuff all across the board because I don't leave my house. But and you know, even when I do, I can't remember the last time I touched cash, for example. So all of these changes are inherently really good for programmatic advertising, because adoption of digital technologies across the board helps our business without a doubt. But I think from with respect to industry trends, I think there's a lot of opportunities to rediscover that new norm. So for example, I was thinking more about travel industry and what positive outcomes could come from this reset, and because more people work on, because more people work remotely, because people are trying to avoid crowds and have more privacy, we can potentially see a lot more travel happening offseason. So not all of a sudden, everybody travels around end of August and around Christmas time. But people may travel and really odd times and explore those destinations during months that nobody else does. So, that presents a really great opportunity for travel marketers where they can really build up their business all throughout the year versus building it only around certain peaks of consumer consumer travel. So yeah, lots to be excited about, from my perspective. I know that these are still really challenging times. And I definitely feel fortunate that we're in an economy that's booming and evolving so rapidly, which I can definitely feel really grateful for. And I think there's a lot to get excited about.\n\n\n\nNadine (00:36:08)Yeah, I'll jump in, I think they really kind of stepping back it. It's such a wonderful opportunity for agencies to lead the way because nobody has the answers. And I feel like two years ago, there's a sense of like, Oh, it's a big brand. And the clients have all the answers. And we'll do as we're told, but now, everything has changed with the way consumers are behaving, and the way that we're connecting with our target audience and with each other, and behaviours and attitudes are changing. And so, really, when you're thinking about the role of an agency partner, it has become such a that that we can figure it out together, right. And there's such a great opportunity in that to truly be partners to your clients, as opposed to just kind of this digital vendors. And I think that's a really exciting development. As again, we're all just sort of trying to figure this out together.\n\n\n\nChris (00:37:00)From my point of view, you know, the theme of the silver lining all of us is we did have the sort of moment in time to challenge, you know, what is a good use of resources, time, cash, whatever, like, are we spending our resources well, and you know, on a personal level, you know, doing a commute into New York City every day didn't meet that list, and it worked out just fine. You know, like, we've learned how to be more productive by removing just some sort of like, unnecessary things from our lives that weren't actually creating much value and tend to be a headache. And I think there's something similar to be said for advertising. 2020 was a real reality check for a lot of companies on the sell side of the market, who realized that they weren't creating enough value to justify ongoing investments, you know, and back to the rebound that Vitaly and Nadine both talked about, like when the rebound happened, it wasn't even. And I think that was great, that created a lot of accountability on the sell side of the market to, you know, ensure that your company, whether you're a media company, or technology or your company, is really creating value for marketers, because marketers have now had the opportunity to turn everything off, and then be very selective and what they turned back on, and I think that will be a long term positive for our industry.\n\n\n\nNadine (00:38:21)Yes, true. Like, when you really have to add, like, investigate it, it gives you a chance to evaluate, what do we change? What do we keep doing? What do we grow? And this absolutely was such a great opportunity for marketers to do that.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:38:36)Well, with that in mind as we head into the not-so-distant future, this concludes our episode. So, on behalf of myself or listeners Chris, Nadine, and Vitaly, thank you so much for your expertise and insights on navigating the new normal in digital marketing. This has been how agencies Thrive podcast, and we can't wait to see you succeed in your upcoming campaigns. Thanks for listening.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:39:01)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/future-of-travel-marketing#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/future-of-travel-marketing"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"The Future of Travel and Tourism Marketing","datePublished":"2021-09-01T20:48:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:27+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/future-of-travel-marketing"},"wordCount":8495,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/future-of-travel-marketing#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240516164931/jim_reagan_stackadapt_podcast_s2e2.webp?fit=601%2C600&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast","travel"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSince 2020, nearly every aspect of the travel and tourism industry has had to adapt. We reflect on the industry impacts and look at what the future holds for travel and tourism marketing.\n\n\n\nJim Reagan | President, MediaOne North AmericaJason Laronde | Sales Director, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)For our destinations, you know, again you get to the consumer and okay experiences are available, and speak to those and make sure that you are paying close attention to the research and data, what people are responding to. And it's pretty interesting. It's not always what you think it is. People are looking for ways they can enjoy safe experiences. And so you just have to tell them how they can do it with your destination.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:30)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape to how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:58)Since 2020, nearly every aspect of the travel and tourism industry has had to adapt. With strict travel regulations stay-at-home orders and plans put on hold. Marketers have had to embrace challenges to navigate the waters ahead. In this episode, we're joined by Jim Reagan from MediaOne North America and Jason Laronde from StackAdapt. To reflect on consumer trends impacts the industry and the future of travel and tourism marketing. Where you'll find interesting about this episode are the insights on how the need for safe travel has vastly impacted the messaging and marketing campaigns. What I liked about this episode was the idea that now more than ever, travelers are discovering destinations right outside their doorstep that don't involve getting on a plane. Things like driving to a local attraction, landmark or even a hotel are becoming an exciting way to break out from the daily routine that we've all experienced over the last year and a half, and also represents huge untapped potential for marketers. As always, thank you for tuning in and enjoyed this episode of The How Agencies Thrive podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome to today's episode. My name is Matt Everard. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. And I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, I'm joined by Jim Reagan, the president at media one North America, and Jason Laronde, Sales Director at StackAdapt. As a tradition with every episode of the podcast, I'd love to hear a little bit about each of our guests before jumping into the questions. So starting with you, Jim, why don't you tell us what you do? How long have you been in the industry, and what you consider to be your strongest area of expertise?\n\n\n\nJim (00:02:36)Okay, well, thank you. Appreciate that work. I'm Jim Reagan, President, again, as you said of MediaOne, North America, and we are a media all across the performance company. So we work with agencies and clients, helping their digital media create their digital media strategy, execution and optimization, and then robust data and analytics to continue the conversation and build the lifetime value of their customer. And, you know, tourism was just as information I began, I've had about a 30-year career in marketing and advertising. And for some reason or another, maybe it's because been located in the southeast in Atlanta, and the area, tourism's a big part of what I do and what we do as a company. We currently work with about 50, little over 50, different tourism, destination marketing organizations, hotels, resorts, attractions, from southern Canada to Florida, and all points in between. I got my start in television, local television, and did work in tourism, and then went to work the vice president of a publishers rep firm back in the 90s, located in Atlanta, so we would, there were magazines such as National Geographic Traveler, to Fox now travel holidays, I was in the publishing industry, Forbes, magazine, National Geographic, all these different publications that I worked with destinations. And again, hoteliers, etc, helping them develop their marketing strategies and advertising in the magazine. So my, my experience goes way back. And so I've kind of felt like I've grown up in this industry to some degree, and AMC just watched his growth trajectory to where back in the 90s people you know, you had traveled to vacations or something you did a couple of times a year and you just went to a certain place stayed there, and then went home. And now it's become more of a part of who people are a part of their identity and, and usually travel is something that is almost like our birthright people go on vacation. And that's something that that's that Everyone's vacation, before they'll do a lot of other things, because that's just a part of who they are. So I think it's, it's interesting for me to have watched that evolution. And you know, see it kind of come, you know, grow into now, but it's a robust, billion-dollar, multi-billion dollar industry. So that's my background sort of started with the publishing industry. And then, at about 2003, pivoted over to digital, digital media, and then with, you know, again, still record representing people, and then went to work with a startup at a Denver, Colorado, spot exchange Spotnitz, I was employed 23 out there. And my job when I came in, was to help develop and grow the tourism industry and create a strategy for them. And then they, when they sold to RTL in Germany, took my little bit stuck in what to work with another company for a short time, and then decided I want to do my own thing again. And so started MediaOne in 2015. And we have just incredible growth. And I'm very grateful for that, and having the chance to work directly with a lot of friends and clients all across the country. So I hope that's not too, too much of a winded answer. Sorry for the speech there. But that's my background.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:06:32)No, it's really good to get a sense of where you come from. I mean, you've definitely seem to have grown up with the industry seen a lot of ebbs and flows of how things have gotten emerging tech, things like that. So we're definitely very excited to have you on the episode. So just to round things off, Jason, I'd love to pass it over to you get a bit of insight into your experience, from StackAdapt and within the industry.\n\n\n\nJason (00:06:59)Yeah. Thanks, Matt. So Jim, obviously great to have you on here. And I'm excited for this conversation, because I think you bring quite a fair bit of knowledge that I'm actually excited to learn about today. Since I've been in the industry for about seven or eight years. Now I'm losing track of time, but not as much as 30 years. So it's a little bit shorter of an explanation here. I've been in the programmatic my whole professional career, focusing a lot on the sales side. So I started as an analyst, learning instead of campaigns, DSPs, SSP social platforms, etc. and moved into more of a consulting approach with the sales side of things. So my specialization in verticals or expertise, I would say is actually travel. I've worked with a lot of travel brands and clients throughout my tenure, focusing on various areas like loyalty, within some of the major airlines and hotel chains have also worked with hotel chains themselves. So I've seen quite a fair bit of the industry. But I'm also very excited for this conversation today and hear more about what Jim has been doing in the past year and a half.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:03)Perfect. Thanks again, Jason. So as mentioned, this episode of the podcast is going to be an in-depth discussion on the future of travel and tourism marketing. And the big goal is to give our listeners a much better understanding of the lasting impact that the pandemic has had on the vertical, and also how travel, marketers can prepare for this surge in demand for travel. As the world continues to transform into this new normal and open up again, over the course the episode will cover about five questions, give or take. And we're looking forward to the insights that both of you bring to the table. So to kick things off, I wanted to ask when the travel restrictions began to be enforced back in 2020. So think back to q1, right when you know, the new cycle began. And everybody was sort of in this frenzy of what they would do. What was the number one thing at that time that was on your mind?\n\n\n\nJim (00:09:05)Well, I was looking at it. For me personally, I hadn't had a mother and father who grew up in the depths of the depression in the 30s and their youth, my my thinking was, oh my gosh, we're getting ready to go through a world-changing event. But there were so many unknowns that I think we just had to, you know, pause and look at it and say, Okay, how can we first, you know, take care of our clients and their needs, they were obviously a lot of them and in full panic mode and all varying degrees of that. So we looked at ourselves as guides, people who, you know, provide just no different than an attorney or for an accountant would in legal or financial advice. We're here to help them with their marketing. And so we had to look at it and say okay with the end loans, you know, we don't want to turn everything off, because no marketer ever wants to do that. But we need to certainly pump the brakes and what we considered a part of the loan approach initially. And you know, but you were concerned about the welfare and personal welfare, it's a very personal thing for all of us. No matter where you were in the world, as it just just, you know, like a wildfire went across all continents to think, Okay, where's this gonna end? And, and it's like any, anything that's cataclysmic like that you're first things you're shocked. And then you say, Okay, you have to employ what's my father called him in commander's intent. And that's you have all these great strategies and plans. And soon as the border goes down on the beach, your plans as a military leader, sometimes just go right out the window, and you have to think about what the end goals and objectives are, and how you can adapt, think adaptively to get your people from where you are now to where they want to be. And so for us, the first thing is a god is we wanted to be a resource of all kinds of information information. So we aggregated data of all of our travel advertisers using Google Analytics and whatnot, engage them, trends or things that we're seeing across the board and across all travel advertisers, and try to empower them with their stakeholders so that when they're having conversations with either the boards of directors or their industry stakeholders if they're a destination or state tourism entity, we're helping them really be able to give them insight as to what, where things are going and how they can possibly navigate.\n\n\n\nJason (00:11:48)Yeah, and, Jim, I think you bring up a great point there that there was a lot of confusion, right, we're at an unprecedented time, which I know that word was that a lot. But, you know, it's a global event that, unfortunately, is impacting every single from your day to day to actually your travel plans. So a lot of clients in the travel space, at least came to me, and I'm curious to see if this thing with you. They just came into this, what do we do? Right hotel bookings are down flights are incredibly down. Is this a short-term pain that we need to solve right now? Or is it something that is actually going to be changing our marketing strategy moving forward? I think a lot of the time the communication evolved, where we started off saying, you know, we don't know what this is. And we're going to be following the basic idea that we're going to see what everyone else is going to do. And if everyone else stops their campaigns, and everyone else does this, we're going to follow suit and see what the overall ecosystem does. And unfortunately, it got to a point where a lot of people decided, you know, what, better safe than sorry, let's completely go dark. And, you know, focus our budget elsewhere. And Jim, as you know, as well as I do, when any kind of executives looking at where to save money, unfortunately, marketing budgets are very easy cut for them. And they don't realize the overall impact it's going to have on their bottom line, but it's a very easy budget to cut. So I'm curious for you, Jim, when you're talking to your clients, what was really the main thing you were trying to tell them? Is it more about, you know, stay the course? Is it more about you know, adapt to the change? What was going through your mind when you have these conversations with your clients?\n\n\n\nJim (00:13:21)Yeah, I mean, so. And again, it's very interesting, we had not necessarily by design so if you look at the key market, that the key segments of travel and tourism, you got that meetings and conventions, group tours, group travel, like we call it bus tours, etc. Those, as you know, just shut down about he wanted to illegal liability, or the health liability of having people in the meeting. So we had just tons of, I mean, a number of our destinations who were just hammered by that. And if they were heavy into those markets, very painful situation. On the other side, here in the southeastern United States, we had places like the Great Smoky Mountains, Florida, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, North Myrtle Beach, some of these destinations that were you know, a lot of their focus was outdoors and if you're going to the beach or the mountains, you can get out and kind of socially distance and have a good time. So those folks were wanting to get as active and as quick as they could. The on the lessor side. You know, so, from that standpoint, we had to navigate another thing is that you had a lot of stakeholders, hoteliers, locals who were like man, you know, we don't want to import COVID. And there was one situation in Florida when we're one West Coast, Florida destination, put some big ads in some of the Miami media area trying to talk to people in Miami about coming over Spin weekends ended up getting some people terminated because, you know, there was a big uproar about, hey, look, we don't want, we don't want people coming here who could possibly stick and make an our, our situation worse, right. So that was something we had to look at that. So I say that to say there were a number of our destinations, like one of them severe Nashville, Tennessee in the Great Smoky Mountains, their occupancy, hotel occupancy was at 72% for 2020. Now that was after Q2. But if you if you take the second half of 2020, they just were bet right back histones to some degree is business as usual, there were some inside, like restaurants and attractions might be a 25% or 50%. But they had the ability to accommodate people. And so that gave us a lot of different things to consider. And we had to kind of tell some of them, Hey, man, you got to, you got to think about the sensitivities of the consumer. We'll get a little more into this later on. But you know, what you always, when we say begin with the end in mind is the consumers experience that you have to think about. And in the case of travel, it's also, you know, you're inviting people to your home. And so you want to be considerate of your constituents too. So, right. So yeah, so we had to navigate that that was threading the needle, in that, you know, there were times we had to tell people, let's let's pump the brakes a little bit. And, and let's look at the elements and the places and the experiences make sense. We'll stay away from those that could be, you know, a political lightning rod or, or a health lightning rod and let's see a wave and kind of dive in into a little bit.\n\n\n\nJason (00:16:50)You know, over a year ago, when it was still in the heyday, you know, as a first line of defense, what were you testing out there? And what kind of strategies were you working with your clients? And we'd love to know what worked, what didn't work in, you know, if you've learned anything from there that you can actually share today?\n\n\n\nJim (00:17:11)Yeah, we, we looked at, you know, a lot of native and content-driven marketing that would talk about the experience, if you come to this destination, or if you come there's hotel, here's some of the things we're doing to keep you safe, to help you have that great experience. And to really so changed, and it was much more subdued, not a, you know, anything that was, I think, exhilarating, you know, showing, like, you know, carefree experience that you've seen in 2019. But more paid here, you know, because we want you to come here and have a good time. But we want to make sure you do that. So we employed a good bit of native and content and you know, different things easy video to really tell their story, utilizing those those tactics and strategy.\n\n\n\nJason (00:18:04)And, you know, within that, I know a lot of times I was reading a marketing report earlier today talking about that a lot of travelers were just hoping they could socially distance when they're actually getting there was a big part of the marketing, you guys were doing. Focused along those states precautions, er, was really just saying, don't worry, we're good. Get us here. And we'll be good.\n\n\n\nJim (00:18:23)No, I mean, it was it was definitely that had to be a component of it. Because you didn't I mean, you have to be responsible. And obviously, we wanted to make sure that our destinations and our clients, were they ever sensitive to that none of them wanted to just go whether somebody wanted to, but they were like, hey, we want to make sure people are totally aware. One of the things that happens, especially here in the southeast, is we call it the triangle, you had the Great Smoky Mountains, which is America's most visited national park, the South Carolina beaches in Florida, specifically in the North Carolina, the Outer Banks, because people couldn't travel out of the country. Right? It really created. There was some blowback locally for some of these folks about just how many people were coming. So that was the we had to be very, again, I got used to the term threading the needle, making sure that we are media. So we would have to that point, we'd have one strategy that was a BDC going out to the consumers. And we did a lot of what we call day trip and itineraries. So those are people that might drive two and a half, three hours at max, mostly two to three hours that at most where they could come spend the day, enjoy the destination and then go home. And then the second one was a strategy locally talking to the locals about how the industries what things they're doing Want to make sure that the traveling public is tested to their needs and, and then also advertising locally to get people who live in a destination to come do some of the things you can do, you know, if you can come eat at a restaurant that has outdoor dining, social distancing, come. And so, you know, we did what we could to try to it's that balance of trying to protect people's rights, you know, an ability to keep their business owners and people employed with that health concern. Yeah, again, you know, each destination was a little bit different, because as you guys know, that got very political and still is. And so you have to have the you always every destination and every Gosh, come to church, from Canada, Mexico, anywhere you go, you have both sides. So you have to really pay attention to this product that's going to change for a while.\n\n\n\nJason (00:21:00)Absolutely. And I think there's another good point there, you know, there's a lot of noise, besides health and safety. Besides, you know, what we need to do to make sure people feel comfortable or politicized issues. You know, a lot of times brand messaging is kind of top of mind for many marketers in this travel space to make sure, you know, your brand is actually first and foremost, and not the issue that is plaguing people on a day-to-day basis. So I'd love to know, from your experience, you know, are there any strategies out there that have helped you and your brand stay relevant in the era of a lot of noise and a lot of misinformation.\n\n\n\nJim (00:21:34)So we did some things kind of interesting. I thought that one obviously, we did a number of podcasts and Zoom meetings with our collectives with our clients and their constituents, helping answer their questions, giving them insights, giving them research, that's one thing that we did. A second thing we did was kind of, we did a direct mail campaign to a lot of our clients, where we actually purchased a big supply of blankets with our logo on it, and sent a note or a letter out to clients around and encouraged them to take that blanket. And you know, when it's cooler weather this winter, sort of the marginal time periods when it was actually in the fall or, or early spring. And going down support your local restaurant that stays warm uses us to one blankets, phrases, that sounds, that was a pretty cool thing that people really seem to respond well to, is it you know, sit in those blankets out and, and that sounds. And that's just a little thing that we did. But we really did try to keep a lot of regular conversations. And we didn't do it with just email, there was a lot of emails and a lot of, I think, that type of call it noise. And there was a lot of that going all over the place. But we did it with regular telephone calls, touchpoints, and old old-fashioned thing that I used to do, where you cut something out of a magazine or newspaper or predict from an online article, and rip it off, put it in an envelope and actually use the old snail mail and send it to people, it really was a note attached. And it just kept you top of mind. And then we began meeting with our clients collectively. And after about that, well, we started doing that we went to the second quarter of last year and kind of sheltered in place, but then selectively began seeing our clients in in places not in their offices. But in I mean, we'd do bag lunches out in a park or we do different things where we'd be able to talk to our clients and, and they love that because nobody else was really doing that it gave him a chance to you know, just kind of get away from all the garbage and actually, or, or some cases, get out of their own homes and actually see another human being another adult. So if they just need to really appreciate. So those are those were some just low-tech strategies that we did seem to work?\n\n\n\nJason (00:24:15)Well, I think you brought up a good point where it's actually a personal touch. And when you everyone went back home, you're seeing anyone just on a zoom or Microsoft Teams screen and you don't really get that human connection, any little thing like that, you know, really does make a difference in my opinion. And I think people are now more appreciative of that more than ever, when you lose it. And you have to focus on online only. But, you know, before we go to our ad break, I wanted to quickly ask you a little bit too, about the marketing strategies for your clients that either wanted to pause or continue. What did you find worked well for you and your clients in, you know this period of uncertainty?\n\n\n\nJim (00:24:51)Well, and again, each one of them is different, but their strategies to again, utilize US digital media. And where we would be very, again, don't use words to do, but we did campaigns that, you know, again, focused on that experience for the consumer, and how they could utilize their destination or what their did, it really did diving in to see what their destination we could offer that we could do, that the consumer would enjoy safely. So it's really about so marketing strategies were more for them, or were us smaller campaigns. Not not full on just pedal to the metal. But again, branding, you know, to your point what you said it was more of a branding focus, and really trying to make that continue that emotional connection that they have with their, their consumers, because with tourism, and you guys may have this, you know, we all have our happy place. And our happy places, a lot of times those places that we take vacations, and so if you can make sure that you're out there in front of your people that there is no, no, just I think that the consumer wants to know that you're there. And they can you can come and when you can come. So I think it's important that you really, with honesty and transparency, talk to your consumers. And again, lastly talking to him via digital media, to let them know what's going on in your destination, what, what they can do and when they can come. So that's those are some of the things that we have that kind of love, which What's your thinking?\n\n\n\nJason (00:26:41)Yeah, I think that's perfect because I think a lot of times, when people see times of uncertainty, they cut and they go dark. But I think you bring up a good point that we need to make sure that hey, while we're not can visit, you're right now we're still here. And when we can go back, we'll be ready. And I think that's a really good message to take away from here. Is that kind of what you were pushing with your clients as well.\n\n\n\nJim (00:27:03)Yeah, and again, one of the things we talked about, since we we've worked with over 50 different destinations, we would aggregate that media and index that media against what they were doing and how they were doing. And we would be able to say to because you know, there are I'm not saying clients are there people. So they always want to know what other people are doing without sharing a this is what this destination is doing or that destination is doing, we would provide some case studies and examples, but it by aggregating a lot of data and what people were doing, like with the among our clients, and clients that that are in your segment, so if you're a destination that say from a tertiary destination that might be not Myrtle Beach, but North Myrtle Beach or not Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, or not Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, but some smaller destination intensity, or, you know, it's somebody who's not the most recognized brain in that region, you know, we want to, we try to make sure that those folks looked again, at something that they could do that was unique, but by showing them what other people were doing, it allowed them to have some confidence and going okay, we can continue to spend money, because these other destinations are doing the same thing. And that gave them some political cover with their stakeholders and constituents to continue marketing. And that worked really, really well.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:28:38)Perfect. Yeah. Thanks again, Jim. These things and buts have all been really good. And Jason, thanks again for keeping the conversation going. With this in mind, we're going to take a quick break. And then, when we come back, we'll talk about what the world to travel and tourism is going to look like. As the world begins to open up in how consumers are shaping the direction of future campaigns. So we'll take a quick break, and we'll see when we're back.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:29:09)You know, your advertising should be multi-channel. So why isn't your ad platform? StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native display video connected TV and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers, as if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform according to G2, it's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:29:43)Welcome back, everybody. As mentioned at the beginning of this episode, we're joined by Jim Reagan of MediaOne North America and Jason Laronde of StackAdapt to talk about the future of travel and tourism marketing. So as we head into the latter portion of This episode, I wanted to talk a little bit about how important you think it is for travel and tourism marketers to take cues from consumers, when it comes to shaping the direction of campaigns. So things like messaging and how valuable it is to have the right messaging or the right creatives that are really going to speak to your target audience. As these travel and tourism companies start to open up, more trips, things like that.\n\n\n\nJim (00:30:26)Yeah, I mean, for our destinations, you know, again, you get to the consumer, and we'll try to experiences are available and speak to those and make sure that, that you are paying close attention to the research and data of what you know. And again, you guys know this, what people are responding to, and it's pretty interesting, it's not always what you think it is, again, people are looking for ways they can enjoy safe experiences. And so, you know, you just have to tell them how they can do it with your destination of the creative doesn't have to be as in my mind, you do want to continue to brand. But the branding also has to travel as experiential right now. And I think it's that element of it is going to continue to grow. So, you know, I had a discussion with a European marketer, and he was, you know, his view of the European market was, you know, they go on holiday, and that may last a long time, and they just go and they're gone. And then they come back home after several weeks. And I talked to him about here in the United States. You know, they there's a lot of folks that do, you know, they take they go mountain biking for their vacation, or obviously golf there, but kayaking, hiking, biking, all these different things. So you have to really, I think, be specific about what those experiences are they can do and how they can do it. Do they have to have their own equipment? Can they rent that? And I think that's where content marketing and great storytelling has been very beneficial for our customers. Just great, tunnelled site and engagement, again, with great storytelling\n\n\n\nJason (00:32:16)Yeah. And I think, Jim, there's some interesting insights in there, because there was a marketer stat. And they asked people back in October of last year, when would you feel safe to travel again, in pretty much the majority of every single region, they asked, said Q3 of 2021. And I think that is really the time when people's vaccination rates are up, and it's getting nice weather and people starting to look inside there, they've built up a little bit of a nest egg that they can then spend on. But you know, what you said early in this episode was that a very domestic focus travel. And it might be because people are a little more cautious to avoid crowds, they aren't as comfortable with air travel as they're driving a car or an RV. And while those safety concerns are, you know, maybe a little bit waning, the price concerns are still there. And, you know, really I found what was efficient was we're traveling budget travelers that are going for close-to-home getaways. And they're looking to you know, rent an RV rent a car to actually get to that location. And it worked very, very well, for some of our clients that were trying to capture an audience they normally wouldn't get. Because, you know, a lot of times, especially up in Canada, we look at international travel is a big part of our market segment. And when borders closed, and different things happen like that, a big, big marketing push was explore your own country. And I think it was a very, very successful avenue for a lot of our travel boards that weren't expecting that big surge in local there. So I found a lot of times that you know, this was the time when people started testing mentioned messaging around that whole idea of being local, being more discounted and explore your own country. And personally, for me speaking, we had a lot of success there.\n\n\n\nJim (00:34:01)Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, we, we had an interesting thing with one of our destinations, which was on the Canadian border in northern Minnesota that had a unique problem. And that to get to the Lake of the Woods is called, you have to go up into Manitoba, and around and then come back down into the United States to get to their actual destination. And it's one of the only places I think in North America where that's true. And so, you know, they do their, their big thing is fishing on those beautiful lakes. And so they actually had to employ testing with that Ice Road Truckers mentality and figure out ways to get people coming across the frozen lights, which is kind of interesting, but that was not fun. That happened but you're right. That's the same thing. I think one of the things we saw here in the United States was so many people were you know, there's so much pent-up demand. Yeah, so much frustration among, you know, in front of a lot of people. And I always like to look at things in quintiles. And by that I mean, you know, while the reasons when you have any sort of I used to do totally agree, somewhat agree, neutral, somewhat disagree, totally disagree or whatever, how you want to say it, you have to look at marketing, and especially in the tourism sector, in the same way, there are people who, who were just so frustrated, you know, asked to be damned on going somewhere, and you can shoot me, but I'm gonna get to that. And so, you know, we had a, we had a lot of scenarios where, I mean, destinations, especially like, I was in Florida in May, and it was just, almost, there was a couple of places just overrun to the point where I was gonna, you know, I'm gonna go somewhere else. It's too many people. Yeah. And so yeah, so you're right. I mean, but it was the same thing. People stayed locals, stayed in the country. And, and, and had because they didn't, they're not spending as much money on clothing, and gas, commuting back and forth to work. Oh, for sure. Yeah, getting money. So they had cash. And I'll give you an example I was talking to back in May, I was at a conference in Florida and one of the, the executive director of the Convention and Visitor's Bureau at Amelia Island plantation, said that the Ritz Carlton there normally went for about 250 to 300 American dollars a night. And they thought well, and they were just so sold out at that point that they decided just to keep raising their rates. And at $1,600 a night, during the week, they were still sold out, wow. People were just wanting to get out of their homes, get out of their hometown and just go somewhere and cost became irrelevant. We have one client in the Smoky Mountains, that they projected a $1.3 billion expenditure by consumers. And they ended up at 1.8 billion. And for the month of July 2021, this last month, they had a 93.4% occupancy rate for all the hoteliers in the county combined. And that's basically stalled out. That's just an in that there’s a way. I mean, if you count, you know, somebody stays Friday to Monday, and then somebody else comes in Thursday and stays to the next Sunday. Those two days, you really can't really be more sold out than that. So it was insane. So I think that's we're having to deal with and that again, instead of a little bit of backlash among the locals and people that are invited you here but too many of you. So it's changing. And we'll get into some of the dynamics, I think marketers approach going forward. We'll get into that when you're ready.\n\n\n\nJason (00:38:06)Yeah, I think the economics of it get very interesting when you start comparing where these challenges are coming from, how much they are willing to pay? And, you know, will this also be replicated locally? Yeah, during the week and stuff like that. I know, personally, for myself, there are some places in Canada that are actually incentivizing locals to, you know, join there by offering different discounts. There are places in Niagara Falls, that were normally suffering, during this time, they're offering some very good incentives just to get people back there and get back into that mood of, you know, it's safe to be back here, it's safe to enjoy the era that it is. And we'll give you a little bit of a bonus, whether that be, you know, discounted rooms, from credits on food, or whatever might be if you show that you're a Canadian resident. So I noticed there's a lot more benefits and discounts that were being offered to get people there. So it's a little bit different than, you know, jumping to prices up there. But typical tourist destinations that people used to go pre-pandemic are now, I think, a little bit on the west side, because people are now exploring more within their own little area. So, you know, which brings me to this next question that I thought would be very interesting. And that's one thing I'm wondering about recently, because we follow trends all the time, we follow forecasts and reports, and we're coming out of an area that was again, unprecedented, but as the travel restrictions start to ease off, are you seeing any trends in either the travel or tourism area that you're most excited to see emerge in the coming months in the year?\n\n\n\nJim (00:39:33)Yeah. Thanks, Jason. Yeah, the things that I'm seeing are with remote working and remote learning, there are a lot of, you know, people that that's just opened up, travel, because you have again, I live here in Chattanooga, Tennessee, our company is based in Atlanta, but it's not that far away, actually. So many people here who come and stay a month or two, license tax from all over the country, Washington State, California, people that you normally wouldn't have an area here, we're more of a regional, about 85 90% of our tourism in this area, and in the southeastern US tends to be draft travel. But you're seeing people who will, you know, get their kids their family and go spend the summer in a horse spend a month or two, working and, you know, learning remotely in destinations. And that's a trend that I think it's, I don't think that you're gonna have, you know, there are a lot of folks, a lot of companies that are saying, Okay, let's go. We don't want to be a remote organization, it doesn't work for everybody. But I think as you look at even big companies like Google that said, they're gonna do that at 60/80 plan, where 20% of the people will be there all the time in their offices, and 60% will be, you know, two or three days a week and the other 20%, totally remote. Well, those people now have incredible liberties to travel, take advantage of weekday opportunities. And so that's what I was talking about when you use quintiles, you look at segmenting out some of these people and having creative and different focus to talk to those, you know, because those are, those are great opportunities for you to get people to say about the state for welfare state. I mean, those are short business that can be pretty extended.\n\n\n\nJason (00:41:27)Well, absolutely great point because I actually just got an email, I think, a couple days ago from the Royal York and Toronto, and they said, you know, change up your work-from-home view. And it said, basically, spend x amount of dollars to get a free day pass to all the amenities stay in the room there, and basically treat it as a home office there. And you're 100%, right, that's a completely untapped market, that no one would have thought it would be a big market segment. But I think as people are starting to get more flexible, able to work multiple hours, our entire job is online now. It allows a lot more freedom and mobility for people to actually explore all these places. And that's just down the street from me, I can only imagine some of these tourism boards that are going to offer some discounts, deals, incentives for me to spend a week to three weeks, even a month there, instead of in my own home office during the same wall, I'm looking at every single time. Are you finding that that's going to be a big thing for some of these places? Or is it more of an isolated trend recently?\n\n\n\nJim (00:42:24)Absolutely. I'm sorry. Yeah, definitely shouldn't should pay close attention to that, because that's going to be important, you know, people, you know, were made for connection and were made for, you know, to be around each other. And it's important, I think that we have that opportunity and travel presents that opportunity. And so you really want to speak to those folks that are at home because they want to. I mean, that's a huge segment. Again, one of the things I have is, you know, travel is predicated on leisure travel is predicated most of the time on discretionary income. And you can save a lot of money on these photos, on our money on clothing and commuting costs. The one thing that was a little disturbing early on as they were saving money on deodorant and some other things. I was like, man, let's let's come back to us. For sure. That's a good thing. But yeah, I think that's, that's awesome. And, you know, if we take just a second and look at some of the trends with the meetings and conventions market that was talking to one of our clients, Pinehurst resort, actually one of my colleagues on my team, which is, it's called the home of American golf, Pinehurst, the resort itself, was notice dementia, few trends and corporate meetings, as they're coming back, we're starting to see now our company's example. I had, we had our first we continue to have our team meetings, but not as often we did one in the mountains. Actually, the interesting thing, it was a farm and a barn that was committed into a kind of boutique hotel. So we were able to socially distance and have a meeting and do that. But what they're seeing is where in the past a lot of you'd have a lot of sales meetings or, or corporate meetings where people would just, you know, go to a hotel, in the conference room, they'd be there all day, then they may go out and eat and do some golf or whatever. But now he says where they're seeing is an interesting trend of where they do have people come, they'll spend a little bit of time in the conference room, then they'll try to find a place outside where they can meet and kind of do team building. So it's that dynamics changing a bit. So whereas they're still having the meetings and their meetings are coming back, they're coming back, like everything, I think, a little bit different.\n\n\n\nJason (00:44:53)I think that's, you know, again, expanding this market to travelers that wouldn't have an impact normally, and I know for airlines, business travel was, you know, absolutely massive for them. And while that might change the way they think you write that people still need that human connection still need that feeling of being part of a team, and this is the time to start doing it there. So, overall, I think these trends that we're starting to see, are going to continue on. And personally, for me, I've been doing a lot of proposals with a lot of my clients talking about that specific market segment. And I think you're right, I think we're in a really good area to move forward with a new targeting idea alongside the other local or international, whatever the statement is out there. So I think this had been a great discussion.\n\n\n\nJim (00:45:39)And we looked at it, I like to talk to our clients and our own team, we talked about operating in a cone. So whereas in the past, you may have a linear strategy, we do a business plan or a strategic plan for the next year. And we like to forecast out what we think we're going to do and where we're going to be, and how things gonna work. But as we can see, right now, you know, even with this, as the pandemic continues, you know, there are hotspots and ebbs and flows and flares and new iterations of the virus to change things. So the column strategy allows us to have an overarching strategy, again, that Commander's Intent, looking out to the future and saying, here's where we want to go. But you're operating in that if you think if you can visualize a cone, that you may have to migrate either to the top of that count at the bottom of the column, as you move through in each of those might integrate different various tactics that would make sense based on where you are within that column as you wish to continue moving forward. Again, using the military, do you know you don't want to, if you sit still, usually, you perish. So you got to continue moving and learning how to do that. So that's something we'd like to talk about so that we can have our clients build that column and then and then continue to move forward.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:46:58)Absolutely. So, you know, with that in mind, this actually concludes the episode. So, on behalf of myself and our listeners, Jim, Jason, thanks so much for your expertise on travel and tourism. We hope our listeners took away some valuable insights from this episode, and we can't wait to see how everyone will succeed in their upcoming campaigns. So thank you, again.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:47:20)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share a podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/b2b-digital-marketing-strategies#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/b2b-digital-marketing-strategies"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Strategies to Succeed in B2B Digital Marketing","datePublished":"2021-09-15T20:56:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:27+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/b2b-digital-marketing-strategies"},"wordCount":6175,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/b2b-digital-marketing-strategies#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240516165955/robert_brigdens_stackadapt_podcast_s2e3.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["account-based marketing","b2b","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at why B2B marketers are shifting their focus to digital strategies, like demand generation, and account-based marketing. \n\n\n\nRob Bridgens | Head of Paid Search & Affiliate Marketing, Reflect Digital\n\n\n\nBrandon Langevin | Senior Sales Director, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Is hugely significant and I don't see us ever going back to the way it was. I mean, face-to-face is never going away. And you know, it will be a preferable way of dealing with people. But what this last 18 months has given us is the opportunity to actually demonstrate what is possible without these traditional conferences.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:25)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape that how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win and the rapidly evolving digital landscape time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:53)Without conferences and business travel happening in the last 18 months, B2B marketers have had to shift their focus to other strategies like demand generation and Account-Based Marketing. In this episode, we're joined by Rob Bridges from Reflect Digital, and Brandon Langevin, from StackAdapt to discuss how B2B has embraced digital marketing tactics, and how marketers can thrive in this new landscape. Now, I really liked this episode, because it's interesting to see not only how significant the pandemic has been in transforming this vertical, but how certain unprecedented roadblocks lead the entire industry to innovate and develop new solutions that will benefit digital marketing for years to come. As always, thank you for tuning in and enjoy this episode of The How Agencies Thrive podcast. Everyone, welcome to today's episode. My name is Matt Evered. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. And I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, I'm joined by Rob Bridgens, the head of paid media at Reflect Digital and Brandon Langevin, a Sales Director at StackAdapt. As a tradition with every episode of the podcast, I'd love to hear a little bit about each of our guests before jumping into the questions. So starting with you, Rob, why don't you tell us a little bit about Reflect Digital, what you do as head of paid media, how long you've been in the industry and what you consider to be your strongest area of expertise?\n\n\n\nRob (00:02:17)Yeah, great. Well, thank you very much for having me on the podcast. So yeah, I'm the head of paid media at Reflect Digital. We are an agency that specializes in digital advertising, digital marketing. So I head up, obviously, the paid side of things, but we also have a specialist team on the organic side. Our sort of area of specialism is really looking at applying psychology and human behavior to marketing. I've been in the industry myself for about 11 years. I've been with Reflect Digital for almost six of those. And personally, my area of specialism is within PPC search, specifically, sort of Google and Microsoft, and the use of remarketing within the display space.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:14)Perfect. Thanks, Rob. Well, we're very happy to have you on the episode. Brandon, I'll pass it over to you tell us a little bit about yourself. \n\n\n\nBrandon (00:03:21)Thanks, Matt. And thanks, Rob. My name is Brandon Langevin. And I'm a Sales Director at StackAdapt. And I've been here for about four and a half years now and have gone through a number of roles within the organization from when we were, you know, really small niche DSP of about 35 people all the way to where we are now. And in my current role, I would say it's split pretty evenly across a variety of responsibilities. But a major part of it is helping with media strategy and execution across some of our key accounts, with a wide variety of verticals. That being said, StackAdapt, myself and the broader team have had a lot of exposure to running B2B campaigns within the digital media world. And it's been an interesting, almost two years now of seeing how to address to more of a digital-first and remote marketing plan for B2B organizations. And I'm excited to chat a little bit more about it today.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:22)So as mentioned, in this episode, we're talking about all things B2B. So that includes how the shift to remote work has impacted marketing efforts, tactics that have been successful over the last year, trends and Account Based Marketing and overall what the future looks like, for this vertical. So to kick things off, I want to ask both of you at the beginning of the pandemic. So Brandon, as you mentioned, it's almost been two years. How did you think the shift to working remotely would impact B2B marketing?\n\n\n\nBrandon  (00:04:53)So I think, you know, right away, there was a lot of uncertainty about know what the future of our industry would look like, especially in the early weeks and months of adjusting to, you know, a new working life with with COVID-19. But some of the immediate indications that our marketing strategies and programmatic execution would change within the B2B space was that first of all, there's no longer going to be any in-person conferences, obviously, a big part of a lot of strategies is geofencing, and creating audience based tech, and segments for conferences and people attending different events and targeting them afterwards. So right away, we were seeing, you know, a big loss of qualified users to then activate within a broader space after the fact, I think that was definitely an adjustment for not just us, but everybody within the B2B space that we would work with. And then secondly, with everybody working in an online capacity, and no longer having the ability to meet people in person, or get to know people over conferences and live presentations, obviously, our strategy when executing B2B campaigns had to adjust as well with being able to more accurately identify the right users for a variety of B2B campaigns and engage with them entirely remotely, without any, you know, peer to peer human interaction. So it took a little while for, you know, the industry as a whole to catch up to that. But I would say, as of now, we're in a pretty good place.\n\n\n\nRob (00:06:29)I would echo that last sentiment there. Like, at the beginning, we believed it was going to have a terrible impact. A lot of our clients at the time, obviously, they had no idea of what to expect. So they were contacting us to ask for pauses on contracts. And, you know, just until the dust settled, and, you know, that was something that we, you know, we granted to everyone that asked for it. Because, you know, we want to support people for the long term, and thankfully only took a month or two to really kind of see where the shift was going to be. And I think the flexibility that we gave to clients at their beginning point really, really helped us in the long term. Because once the dust had settled, it was really clear that there was going to be lots of pots of budget opening up that were previously earmarked for those impersonal events, like you were just saying, and, suddenly, we had clients coming back, who were looking to test new things that they wouldn't have ever done before, because that money would have been pegged away. And more importantly, where, if face-to-face meetings were difficult to organize, we were actually winning new business, off of word of mouth, based on, like, the good relationships that we had, we had fostered by giving that flexibility at the beginning. So whilst at the very beginning, we thought it was going to be doom and gloom, we ended up with, you know, it's been our best eating months ever, you know, we had quarter after quarter of, of best earnings, we've won awards for clients. So it's actually turned out to be one of the best things that happened for us as an agency, as horrible as it is to say that that came out of, you know, a global pandemic. But yeah, I think a lot of lot of companies have tried new, new B2B strategies that they never would have done.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:32)That's interesting that both of you say that there is this big shift from having that face to face time with clients. Because I know for a lot of businesses that are operating in the B2B space, that's really important, especially when you're building those early relationships or, you know, meeting people at conferences or trade shows or things like that. So I'm interested to know in terms of tactics that you either use within your agency for observed in the industry, you know, what did you see that was really successful, and what were some things that were tried that didn't necessarily work out and that you learned from.\n\n\n\nRob (00:09:12)There were obviously a lot of new things being tried. And some of that was not necessarily new to us as an agency but for our clients, them suddenly having that sort of budget financial flexibility for us to actually carry out discovery research. Because everyone you know, wants to have everything all their all their ducks in a row before you start any campaign, but that is not always a luxury that you have. But yeah, we were able to, to work with clients really take a sort of zoom out and look at things in a holistic way. Look at the whole marketing mix, and then identify, you know, which channels were actually working in which we should move with how we can make those both paid and organic. Excited things work together better. And as I said in the intro, one thing that we really try and work on as an agency group is we focus on psychology and, and human behavior. But importantly, we actually focus on the humans that we're marketing to, rather than seeing them as just conversions. So really having that chance to look at who the customer is, where they can be found, and how we can link the client to it. And, you know, we were able to spend time and money doing actual customer research, you know, doing surveys speaking to real people, and putting together, you know, strategies that wouldn't have been possible before the pandemic because that time and, and budget wasn't available. You know, all of that kind of stuff is, you know, people listen to this listening to this might think that's just normal activity. But yeah, it's having that luxury to be able to actually sit down and put out a real, decent strategy. The other thing we found was with everyone moving online, outside of the grip of their business IT departments is they're able to use Facebook and other social media platforms a lot more. So suddenly, we had a whole new audience of people that we could target across these other channels. And by combining social and display retargeting, we were able to really kind of make sure we had a good presence across that whole messy middle. And, you know, the upshot was, in almost all cases, increases in conversions. As far as things that necessarily didn't work. I, this sounds like rubbish, but I can't think of one off the top of my head there had a that didn't work perfectly well. I don't know if I'm passive. Do you, Brandon? And I'll have a think.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:11:58)Yeah, no, I think you made a bunch of great points there. And two things, myself and StackAdapt as a whole could probably relate to really well, especially in the past year and a half is, number one, finding a good balance between paid and organic media in the B2B space is always a challenge. Because marketing for a B2B product, let's say it's a payroll product targeting a payroll manager is very different than targeting a consumer for the latest gaming console device. I think they're, you know, apples and watermelons from a comparison standpoint. And I think the second thing that really resonates from what you said is taking a step back and looking at who we're targeting as people instead of conversions and leads is especially important, because above marketing for a product, you're targeting real people, and you have to get more insight into who they are beyond just their role, what's the best way to reach them and actively communicate, you know, the benefits of the software, or the product you're trying to market to a person who's live is probably at the beginning of COVID, just as flipped upside down as yours were, most of us were adjusting from working in the office every day to work in completely remotely with a very different environment and in the workplace setting. But I think we, we found a lot of a lot of different things that worked really well for us. One thing that I could say off the top of my head that maybe didn't work so well, as we found when we were reintroducing programmatic channels to a variety of B2B clients. If we were to compare, you know, different media channels, apples to apples. So let's say we're talking about programmatic display in more of an upper funnel, prospecting capacity versus very bottom-funnel search, which sounds like you, you know, very well, the performance is often going to be very different. And we found that anytime we were being compared apples to apples to a much lower funnel strategy as a whole, it didn't tend to shine very well on programmatic as a whole compared to what you could see in an isolated fashion, just reading search, but being able to change that narrative a bit and show how programmatic social and search could all work together to identify you know, users that would benefit from whatever B2B product or solution you're selling. And moving them through that conversion journey using more top-of-funnel channels like even CTV video and programmatic display, nurturing them, exposing them to really relevant content and then retargeting that user on social search LinkedIn, whatever it is, we saw that, you know, the injection of programmatic into a much larger media strategy tend to work really well. But I think gone are the days where you can show a payroll manager one display banner and expect them to click through and sign sign up for a very expensive product. And it takes a lot more nurturing and lead time for a marketing team to do that effectively. And it's something we we went through a lot of education with with a lot of our clients. And that, you know, you can't just rely on on programmatic media on its own, and you can't just rely on search in social on its own. And it's, it's the combination of all channels working together, that really helps move the needle when it comes to, you know, B2B lead gen in an online environment.\n\n\n\nRob (00:15:34)Yeah, it's interesting that you say that, because when it comes to the remarketing side, that both Google run and programmatic run, we did see that, you know, campaigns and strategies that were Joe running along very well before the pandemic, or across the board for a lot of clients dropped in in conversion rate, you know, cost per acquisition rose. And we did, you know, have to change tack, and the campaigns that weren't successful was where we introduced more touch points across more channels. And I think it is, you know, people were just doing more, they were spending more time considering their purchase. And as you say, gone are the days where someone will see one remarketing ad and then be tipped over the edge, you've really got to keep working with them to identify what their pain points are, and show your your product or services is the one for them. But yeah, that happened across a lot of our a lot of our clients.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:16:38)Rob, I wanted to jump back to a point that you made earlier, you were talking about this idea of observing the psychology of customers, when you were building ads, during the beginning of the pandemic was, you know, the idea of being empathetic and careful about your messaging was that something that was top of mind when you were building out your campaigns?\n\n\n\nRob (00:17:00)Absolutely. And obviously, with all of the restrictions, you can't directly, you know, address, you know, COVID, or the pandemic in your ads, but you can, you know, be empathetic, as you say, in your tone of voice in the way that you're approaching people. So, you know, with our, with our strategies, we, you know, we use a number of different tools to base our work on. So we do some bits with like fire o theory and ocean. But ultimately, it boils down to, when we're creating ads we create, we test against three different user drivers. And so not everyone is approaching a product or a service for the same reason. And everyone has different contextual, rational or emotional reasons for why they would want to buy something. But we did definitely see that the emotional ads, like took a front front seat there. And the ones where people are talking about sort of safety, a feeling of being part of a community trust, those kinds of messages, definitely had a bigger impact after the pandemic struck than they had ever done before. Prior to that, you know, we would have said, although there was an even mixed, but people who are more rational, you know, in their purchases, they want to know, facts and figures, costs, you know, reviews and things like that, that that dropped a bit. And so we will definitely, yeah, those empathetic emotional messages were where we saw a lot of focus.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:18:51)Absolutely. So before we head off to our break, I have another question that I wanted to ask both of you. And I mentioned this to you before we hopped on the episode, but there was a survey that he marketer put out, and they found that 74% of individuals believe that Account Based Marketing has now become this really critical part of a marketing mix for B2B. So I'd like to know how significant do you think that ABM is as we head into the coming months, and why so things like capturing your ideal customer profile, maintaining ROI, things like that? How valuable is ABM in the future of B2B marketing?\n\n\n\nRob (00:19:35)I think it's incredibly important, you know, those customer profiles, you know, allow a marketing team and a sales team to really kind of coordinate and make sure everyone is driving towards the same goal. And you're able to tailor those those ad messages to the kinds of business that you want and it does ultimately drive a higher ROI. The thing that we've seen with ABM though is, you can't forget the wider, more generic advertising. You know, like, you can have those really tailored focused ads. But if you're not visible in that marketplace elsewhere, then the effectiveness is, is a little bit weaker. And the other thing is, you know, if you don't have the time to really get out there and do proper research with the actual customers, sometimes what your client thinks is their target audience. It is, we have had some clients who have been very surprised by, you know, at the end of the campaign, like the people who are actually buying their product, or not the ones that they fought with the demographic that were there after. And, and so if you go full bore into account-based Marketing, you can miss that opportunity. And like I said earlier, the thing that really worked well, within the pandemic was having that time to actually do that research, which potentially that budget might not have been available for before. But yeah, it's not going away. And it’s going to be a really big part of the mix going forward.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:21:12)Yeah, and I mean, Further to that, and Matt, not to put you on the spot. But even looking at stack apps, internal marketing, we're obviously very focused in the B2B space for when we're looking to generate leads, and new customers. And I think, based on everything we've talked about, and we've seen, ABM continues to be a really important part of the StackAdapt strategy, where we're fairly familiar with our standard media buying profiles and where StackAdapt has been built to best serve, agencies and brands needs. But that being said, you know, even looking at the release of our commercial in June, which was just an awesome splash and our rebrand that wasn't just ABM targeting, it definitely was a broader, broader push to make sure that we're out there because, you know, we don't, we don't always know who's going to be using StackAdapt, outside of our very defined audience profile. And working with the common combination of the two is has always been a pretty important part of StackAdapt internal marketing strategy, and shifting focus and looking a little bit to, you know, the customers we work with, ABM when we are working in the B2B space is always an important part of our recommendation, but not the only one where, you know, if if we are going to be leveraging an ABM portion of our campaign, we would probably look to an awesome audience provider like Dun and Bradstreet, who works really well in the space, or even working with Bombora and their search products to identify the most relevant people possible, you know, engaging with relevant content online. But as we move forward to more of a cookieless and IDFA. media world, it's important that we're still honing in on ABM strategies, as best we could, as a strong complement to a broader marketing message were similar to different channels, working with the two in tandem, in our experience often yields the most positive results.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:23:12)Brandon, that's interesting that you mentioned that because that's something that especially within our marketing organization, and StackAdapt, you think about constantly is how can we provide the most relevant information to the people that we're marketing to? And how can we get them excited about the product? And how can we give them ideas and have higher level conversations. And I think for a lot of B2B marketers, that's really what they're looking for is to get potential users or potential customers excited about the product and that comes through providing things that are very relevant to them. So with that in mind, I think what what we can do, and Brandon, you mentioned IDFA, we will be talking about that after the break. So we'll take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the future of B2B marketing and some key insights that marketers can use going forwards.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:24:08)You know, your advertising should be multi-channel, so why isn't your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native, display, video, connected TV, and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers as if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform according to G2, it's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive\n\n\n\nMatt (00:24:42)Welcome back, everybody. As mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we're joined by Rob from Reflect Digital and Brandon from StackAdapt. For this half of the episode, let's talk about some trends in B2B. And before we headed to the break, Brandon, you mentioned IDFA. So the identifier for advertisers, and on the heels of this, there's been a lot of speculation about this notion of an identity crisis for B2B marketers. So with everybody being very particular about how users are tracked, and publishers need to be more transparent about how user data is collected and used, how do you think this impacts the stages of the advertising cycle from planning, buying optimization and reporting? \n\n\n\nRob (00:25:28)From my side, it's the whole IDFA situation has been, it has been hugely disruptive. And obviously, it's impacted a lot of our data acquisition. And, you know, the things that we assumed and planned before it happened, you know, went out the window. So, things that we enjoyed, like how the very detailed look alike audiences and, and the ability of the Facebook algorithm to make very good choices for us on bidding for 50% of the market with the Apple devices going just going away. It, it did, yeah, it did have a big problem. But, you know, without wanting to sound like a shill. That is, that is why we actually, you know, approached and started working with you guys at StackAdapt. Because we were able to, you know, see the opportunity with the tools that you had. So the ability to use the pixel to tag all of the programmatic display. And we were using that to basically supercharge our, our user lists and, and filled them with, with more users that we could use, you know, the full Facebook suite of tools for obviously, it made no change on the Apple users, but it meant we could fill that audience list with more Google devices. And we've seen a big uplift in performance since it does mean that yeah, all of the reporting and, and things need to be you have a massive asterix on it, whenever we're talking to clients now, which is, you know, it gets a little bit tiring sometimes, you know, having to explain that every time. But, you know, we are back to seeing good performance through through Facebook. And ultimately, you know, we work in a world where, you know, entities such as Apple, Google, Facebook can make a change at a whim. And we are completely out of control of that. And you know, that won't change. And it's been there in the past and icon and organic side, all of the different algorithmic changes from Google. And it's just about being adaptable, and you know, not being too stuck in one way of working. So, you know, it breathes a, you know, a breath of fresh air into, into the, into the strategies if we look at it that way. And, you know, we always like looking for new opportunities.\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:28:03)I think when we try to look at the adjustments and changes that come within the industry as a whole from some of the major players like Google, or Apple, or even Facebook, in some instances, it's as marketers that work in the digital media space, sometimes it's hard to take a step back and understand why the changes are in place. And it's important to put your consumer hat on and understand why, you know, a decision, like Apple’s, is being made to enhance, you know, their user base and trust in their privacy, while at the same time balancing, you know, what we do for a living, which is selling programmatic media strategies to improve performance for a variety of marketers we're working with, it's really hard to be kind of stuck in the middle of work, we're consumers too. But we need to find ways to, you know, enhance our performance when you do get delta crutch like IDFA 2.0, or Google's announcement that cookies are going to be going away, even though they pushed it back a year that's still coming. So as I can, I can speak more specifically to stack it up as a platform. And we've been able to pivot fairly strongly to using more in-house audience solutions that don't rely on user identifiers that will be or already have gone away in the long term has allowed us to continue to excel in the targeting space within the industry as a whole. But having to adjust sometimes very quickly, is obviously a hand that not everybody can work with on such a whim. And I think it entails a lot of trying to look into the future to assume what's next. We're at StackAdapt Very We're very comfortable with where audience targeting and cross-device solutions are today. I think it's about trying to identify what's to come tomorrow, we already know cookies are going away. We already know, device privacy is going to continue to grow and enhance user privacy. And it's how do we adapt and adjust to what, you know, the market is going to look like two years from now to continue being able to provide support and performance to partners like Rob and his agency where they still have mandates from their clients on, you know, lead volume, lead generation, all the way up to brand awareness, affinity and cross-device tracking. And, yeah, it's been, it's been an interesting ride so far. And I'm sure over the next couple of years, we're going to see a lot more privacy implications come into play that impact how we're structuring our campaigns. But I think overall, as an industry, it's it's still really exciting to see, you know, what, what these new regulations do in terms of innovation and product development. And if you want to look at it from a positive, it means that you know, technologies like ourselves, and agencies, can, you know, their homes like Rob, have to continue to adapt and innovate not only to survive but to excel in a space that's consistently changing.\n\n\n\nRob (00:31:18)I think one of the most important things you touched on there is, yeah, just acknowledging that it is better for consumers in the space. And it's easy for us to get a chip on our shoulder as marketers, but we shouldn't lose sight of, you know, the reason why I completely agree with what you said.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:31:34)Absolutely. And this puts us just about at our time for the episode, but I think the general consensus after speaking to both of you is that we can all agree that the way the whole B2B space is operating, and the way that businesses operate, going forward has changed significantly throughout the pandemic. And the key to success has been being adaptable, and also, you know, pivoting where you need to pivot. So, as we move away from this notion of the old normal and and we look forward into the latter portion of 2021, and even into 2022, with this, you know, remote first hybrid business world. How significant Do the two of you think the last 18 months have been? Do you think that as the world reopens, we'll ever revert back to what pre-pandemic B2B marketing looked like? Where do you think things have changed forever?\n\n\n\nBrandon (00:32:34)I would, I would say, it's extremely significant. I mean, it's tough to speak to the B2B space as a whole, because every organization is different. But I think if anything, the past year and a half has really forced people like Rob, people like myself, and you know, broader tech as a whole to, like my previous point, innovate and identifying new and more efficient ways to, in the B2B space, generate lead volume, or generate awareness that maybe wasn't being leveraged to its full capacity beforehand. And I know, a big part of of B2B as a whole, from our experience, has always been conferences and big in-person events. And we're starting to see that come back a little bit. But I'm of the personal opinion that I don't think it will ever reach the pre-pandemic levels of people on conference tours and event tours all across different regions on a week-to-week basis, I think, the past year and a half, if anything has shown us that, you know, in the B2B space, marketers can continue to execute on large and broad campaigns and innovate in a way that takes away from the requirement of being present at every conference, every massive event and still yield the same, if not better results as beforehand. And the other big piece over the past year and a half outside of just how you know, the change and workflow has impacted us as, as people that work at various organizations, it's also come with a lot of new privacy laws like we just talked about that has also forced us to pivot. So I'd say the overall the past year and a half, almost two years, has not been insignificant in any capacity and has really changed and pivoted the way B2B marketers are executing their media, and I would say hopefully, hopefully, for the better.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:34:24)Rob, what are your thoughts?\n\n\n\nRob (00:34:23)It’s hugely significant, and I don't see us ever going back to the way it was. I mean, face-to-face is never going away. And you know, it will be a preferable way of dealing with people. But you know, what this last 18 months has given us is the opportunity to actually demonstrate what is possible without these traditional conferences, especially for more sort of like conservative industries like big corporates, getting a marketing or sales director to, you know, to not go to the conference that they've gone to every year for the last helping, you know, 1015 years, or whatever it may be, and say, you know, spend your money online, and you'll probably see just as good performance that would never have happened. And, you know, we've had lots of industries have been able to demonstrate that, that isn't, you know, the same for every industry. Obviously, it's a very broad brush deep, but many have seen that happen. But even for things like conferences, like there's, there's things that are changing for them for the better as well, they still have the face to face version of it. But they have digital aspects where that is delivered to like now a wide global audience, who would never have had the opportunity to be involved before, everyone's much happier being on a video call or digital presentation. Whereas I think 18 months ago, most people would have recalled the idea of being, you know, being seen on a video. And so I think there's just lots of exciting opportunities moving forward that, you know, are now possible because of what's been tested over these last 18 months.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:36:06)With that in mind, that pretty much puts us at time for the episode. So on behalf of myself, our listeners, Rob and Brandon, thank you so much for sharing your expertise on this episode, and to the B2B marketers that are tuned in. I hope you took away from this episode, and you took away as much as I did. So we're really looking forward to seeing everyone succeed in their upcoming campaigns. So thank you, everybody.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:36:32)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things, subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/planning-2021-holiday-campaigns#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/planning-2021-holiday-campaigns"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jessica Uttley","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/jessica-uttley","jobTitle":"Senior Director of Creative Services","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"How to Plan Your Holiday Marketing Campaigns","datePublished":"2021-09-29T21:06:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:27+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/planning-2021-holiday-campaigns"},"wordCount":7570,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/planning-2021-holiday-campaigns#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240516170931/jessica_uttley_stackadapt_podcast_s2e4.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["creative","creative studio","ecommerce","holiday","podcast","retail"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss how consumers' shopping habits have changed and offer strategies for holiday shopping campaigns as we head into the year’s busiest retail season.\n\n\n\nSam Jensen | Account Manager, Team Lead, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nJessica Uttley | Director of Creative Services, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nAanchal Bajaj | Manager, Solutions Consulting, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)We also need to think about combining a story across audio, video, native, display. When we combine all of these different touchpoints. It really allows the user to get to know the brand and the product. And again, it's these multiple touch points that are ultimately going to converge into that conversion that we're looking for, especially in the e-commerce space.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:26)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape that how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:54)Last year's holiday season was defined by uncertainty and limited in-store shopping options, and online shopping taken the spotlight. In this extra special episode, we're joined by three leaders from StackAdapt to help you gain a holistic view on campaign planning, creative execution, building a winning audience strategy and attributing success in the upcoming retail season. Let's face it, e-commerce is here to stay. And as the 2021 Holidays are rapidly approaching, retailers alike have had to re-envision how they approach not only their marketing, but how they can create immersive experiences online and offline, all without missing a beat. Not only under perspectives in this episode incredibly unique, but you'll find that there are many strategic takeaways that will help you take your campaigns to new heights in the near future. As always, thank you for tuning in and enjoy this episode of The How Agencies Thrive podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome to today's episode. My name is Matt Evered. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. And I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. This episode is all about winning strategies for the upcoming 2021 holiday season. And it's a very special roundtable discussion because I'm joined by three other stack adapters to share their insights. In this episode, we have Sam Jensen, an account manager and an expert in B2C campaigns. Jess Uttley is the director of creative services and an expert in building winning ad units. And last but not least, we have Aanchal Bajaj, a senior analyst on our solutions team and an expert in all things audience identity and attribution. Overall, I'm very excited for this episode. And before we get started, I'd love to pass it over to our guests to hear a little bit about their backgrounds. So starting with you, Sam, why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience in the programmatic space? How long have you been in the industry, and what do you consider to be your strongest area of expertise?\n\n\n\nSam (00:02:48)Well, Matt, thanks for that awesome intro. By the way, this is Sam. And yes, you are correct that a lot of my background is in B2B but also have dabbled in some B2C. So prior to StackAdapt. I was actually working at ABM-focused DSP. So a lot of my strategy there, I was leading a lot of strategy across National Book. And I did that for about four years. So I kind of worked my way up starting in Ops, and built my way to strategic advising for a lot of these B2B brands. But that said, Matt, I do have some B2C knowledge. And that's kind of the focus of this podcast. So I'll be sure to to shift the focus for this.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:38)  Thanks, Sam. We're happy to have you on the episode. Jessica, I'll pass it over to you next. Tell us a little bit about yourself.\n\n\n\nJess (00:03:44)Thanks, Matt. I'm Jess, as you mentioned, leading up our creative studio team here at StackAdapt. My background is heavily rooted in design and marketing, which I've been doing for over 10 years now. And been in the programmatic space for just over two and a half years where I've been able to shift the focus from design to more of the strategy, hence creative strategy. And that's really where our team here at StackAdapt thrives is being able to blend technology design data in order to create these these winning ad units. So I'm really excited to talk about how we can bring that into the holiday season.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:24)Awesome, Jess, thanks so much. And last but not least Aanchal could tell us a little bit about yourself and your work on your team.\n\n\n\nAanchal (00:04:32)Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Matt. So my background is more, so you know, from the marketing side, working with brands I worked closely with before StackAdapt. I work closely with healthcare brands in the marketing teams. But ever since you know, I have shifted towards the programmatic space at StackAdapt. I've been working really closely with a lot of retail and CPG brands as well as some you know B2B brands as well but to really hone in on custom targeting so lotions, you know, measurement solutions across different industries and verticals. So really happy to talk a little bit more today about some audience targeting options and measurement in the retail space for holiday.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:13)Absolutely. Thanks so much. And as mentioned, in this episode, we're talking about the 2021 holiday season. And the area we're going to focus on is what we learned during the unprecedented retail season of 2020. How consumer habits have changed and how the shift to building an immersive online shopping experience for consumers over the last 18 months will impact 2020 One's biggest shopping season. Really, I'm interested to hear the unique perspective that each of our guests brings from a campaign perspective to an audience's perspective keeping the creatives perspective, to start things off. I'm interested to hear from from each of you. If we think back to 2020. You know, almost two years ago, the majority of businesses had to change their efforts to support online shopping, especially for the past holiday season. How well do each of you think the industry adjusted?\n\n\n\nSam (00:06:07)You know, I think it definitely varies, Matt, because if you remember when the pandemic started, there was that initial shock wave and scaleback of budgets, and I saw that across a lot of teams. But over time, obviously, whoa, as we adjusted, you started to see bigger retailers succeed. I think Mom and Pop retailers did pretty well, kind of adjusting to the increasing supply of like, you know, social advertising opportunities, but big retailers succeeded you look at the Nikes and Under Armour as the targets and Home Depot's this whole pandemic kind of thrust them into a digital strategy that they were already planning. And now it's kind of made them a little bit rest, less reliant on things like wholesalers. They're a lot leaner with a direct-to-consumer strategy. So I think there were some definite winners, smaller businesses, it was kind of in between. But overall, I think, you know, everybody eventually was able to pivot their messaging and become more efficient. In terms of their operations.\n\n\n\nJess (00:07:16)I actually just wanted to jump in because you mentioned messaging. And I think that's where there was a big adjustment, especially on the creative side. And I think we're you saw people want when was where the advertisers took their messaging from such a sales heavy pushing sales focus, to a focus on positivity connection, how can we help. And I think that's one way that advertisers did a really great job last year. And I think that's something we'll continue to see into 2021 as well.\n\n\n\nAanchal (00:07:46)Yeah. And just to add on, and echo a lot of what Sam was saying, I think in general, compared to other industries, retail is definitely one of the industries that's a lot faster at adapting to change, especially in this last year, as you know, shoppers were switching to e-commerce platforms, retailers, and brands, were also quick to adopt a lot of new solutions. So obviously, you know, the giants like Amazon and Walmart, that were already on digital channels, those did continue to do great, but a lot of retailers that adopted, you know, innovative solutions, like click and collect or curbside pickup, you know, offering better payment solutions, like buy now pay later was huge in 2020. So, you know, any brands that were able to kind of keep up with these digital solutions kind of fared really well and are going to continue to do so this year and beyond as well.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:32)Absolutely. And I have sort of a secondary question for everybody. And it has to do with this notion of how uncertain things were in D think that this notion of uncertainty impacted campaign strategies. And, you know, if we think back to it, especially in Canada, balls were intermittently open, most stores were doing curbside pickup, and a lot of consumers had to start their shopping early to actually accommodate increased shipping time. So with, you know, how uncertain things were, do you think advertisers had to inform a campaign strategy that could sort of just to both scenarios, if things were going to be open, or things were going to remain closed?\n\n\n\nSam (00:09:17)Yeah, definitely. I think you started to see teams planning a lot sooner. To your point, Matt, obviously, with increased delivery times means that kind of pushes your your campaign timelines forward or back, however you look at it just earlier in, in the cycle. So yeah, I think that was that was one of the big things you highlighted there.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:09:38)So moving on here, I'm interested to know, you know, still staying in the frame of mind of the 2020 holiday season. What surprised everybody the most about this season? And more to that what were some campaigns that either you worked on firsthand, or you observed from afar that you know risk drove a lot of impact and wondering this uncertain time.\n\n\n\nSam (00:10:03)A few things that surprised me. Not so much the evolution of messaging but how certain companies adapted, and one of the more interesting campaigns I can remember from the 2020 season was that Miller Lite campaign about the no more awkward holiday work parties. I don't know if any of you recall that campaign. But it was, you know, you saw you started to see a lot of creative messaging, pivot towards togetherness and valuing your family. But with everybody doing that messaging, how do you stand out so Miller Light actually took like, a more humorous tone to the whole thing, and a lighter tone. So it was surprising to see the ways different advertisers, were conveying that same message of you know, we're all in this together. We're all going to get through this type of thing. It didn't always have to be this super dramatic Coca-Cola commercial, you know.\n\n\n\nJess (00:11:01)Yeah, say, I totally agree with you there. And yeah, we definitely saw some creative executions from a lot of different advertisers. And part of that is part of what surprised me was just the creativity and the willingness to adapt. And on that same token, I was actually surprised by the amount of advertisers who are willing to try different channels like CTV, for example, we definitely saw a huge uptick in CTV creatives and CTV campaigns, when we're trying to create that emotional connection, as opposed to creating a sale, you know, from pushing promotions and that sort of thing. So, you know, that ad from Miller Lite, that you mentioned, Sam, that was a video campaign, and those were the types of things that people were interested in consuming for entertainment, to escape from their current situation, to dream about what the future could be when things, you know, change for the better, hopefully. And I think that's, that's what really surprised me, it's just the way that people were able to adapt so quickly, and they were willing to do so. And I think that also speaks to how so many advertisers were able to continue to be successful. I think it's the ones who were able to, to make those quick changes. That saw a lot of success.\n\n\n\nSam (00:12:15)Yeah, Jessie, I want to build off that really quick. And it kind of goes back to Matt's point about uncertainty. There was a lot of uncertainty around TV during that time. I think that as a channel was probably the most Question one, because you think about it. q4 is the highest, you know that that's the time of year for linear TV. So with no sports, nothing being scheduled programming was just not stacked. You saw a lot of digital channels start to surface. And now this year, I think we're going to have TV, this could be a very deciding moment for linear TV. But you're starting to see publishers hedge their bets by doing these blended type of deals where they're not just selling linear TV, but also, you know, CTV, any type of OTT option. So I'm glad you brought that up. Because I think Q4, it'll be really interesting to see what's going to happen to TV and what the future will hold for it.\n\n\n\nAanchal (00:13:17)Yeah, for sure. You know, it was there's a lot of like, change that happened last year. But I think what was to me, anyways, kind of a surprise was actually how well the holiday season did in general, like from a high level industry perspective. You know, despite what a lot people might think, holiday sales actually shot up about seven to 10% in 2029, in 2020, a lot of which was obviously driven by e-commerce. But the thing that was a little bit unique about last year is how long, the holiday season kind of dragged out. So you know, usually, when you think of holiday shopping, it's really centered around, you know, it starts around that cyber week, time and drags into late November, December. But last year, what really changed the game was kind of how Amazon Prime Day got moved to October. And so what that really did is, again, kind of echoing what Simon just were saying, the whole industry adapted really quickly. And you know, sales started dragging on started much earlier discounts were starting much earlier and kind of carrying on with that trend of early shopping. So I think that's going to persist this year as well, to be honest, because a lot of customers kind of realize that, you know, shipping delays are still continuing to happen and things like that. So starting to shop for their holiday presents. And you know, holiday shopping earlier on in the year is definitely a change that we saw last year that I think will continue this year as well.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:33)That's actually a perfect transition into the next question that I had sort of talking about this role that in-store shopping is going to play as well as online shopping. And leading up to the episode, there is a document that StackAdapt has called evolving beyond the crisis for CPG marketers, and there was an interesting notion in there from Adweek that says that the roles of have stores and digital are actually reversing, meaning that digital advertising is becoming increasingly immersive these online shopping experiences are becoming a lot more intuitive than they used to be. And delivering that customer experience is almost happening more at home now than it is in store. So without in mind, I'm interested to know, do any of you agree with this disagree with this? Or do you think that in-store shopping, despite everything still holds this really important place for the retail experience?\n\n\n\nAanchal (00:15:33)I think I definitely do agree with as to you know, to a certain extent, a lot of retailers have realized that, you know, this digital trend is here to stay. And it is kind of the new normal going forward. And while in person shopping still does provide that unique experience. Many shoppers even post-pandemic are going to continue to you know, prefer online just because it's more convenient and provides a wider range of options. So it's important, now more than ever, for retail brands to kind of start adopting more omni-channel solutions, to try to provide that seamless shopping experience even online. So, for example, a lot of brands have adopted, you know, things like augmented reality for virtual triathlons, or social media has become a big kind of central theme here, you know, live streaming and shoppable content, or shoppable, creatives start to become a lot bigger. And so from a targeting perspective, it's really important for marketers to kind of start adopting these more cross channel strategies so that you're reaching your shoppers where they're spending most of their time. So, you know, for example, the drastic change towards digital channels, you know, incorporating things like inventory, like mobile, CTV, digital, audio, and even things like in-game are, you know, really creative ways to kind of start effectively, you know, having these upper-funnel awareness and prospecting strategies. So yeah, I think in-store has its place, but this e-commerce shift is definitely, you know, going to be huge going forward.\n\n\n\nJess (00:16:56)I think, to your point, Omni channel is the key word here, where we make the mistake is when we're talking about digital and in-store as two separate pieces, where I think the way that we need to shift our thinking is that they are one whole experience for the customer. In that, you know, thinking about buying online and pick up in-store, I don't think that's going to be going away anytime soon. If anything, it's just increasing the convenience for the consumer. And that's ultimately the name of the game. Now its convenience, its speed, its reliability. But where the change is shifting, as Matt, you mentioned in your question, is that the roles of each are shifting a little bit where in the past discovery of products and brands used to happen in-store more and more of that is happening online, I think there will always be people who prefer to shop in a physical space. But I think that a lot more of that product and brand discovery is happening online. And we've seen that a lot with the creatives that are being developed even over on the StackAdapt platform. We're seeing things like interactive display ads that allow users to explore products in detail, immersive video and audio that provide guidance and how to use we're seeing CTV ads that you can actually engage with instead of just view passively. So I think that's where the shift is really happening is in that discovery and research phase where that's happening digitally. And then, you know, the sales or the actual purchase itself, the transactional part of the journey is happening more so either digitally or physically, it just depends on what the user is looking for.\n\n\n\nSam (00:18:30)Yeah, there's, there's so much to unpack with it. Because yes, I agree with that challenge, yes, that this experience is going to be one experience, you have to view the customer journey as a bunch of touch points, and you have to connect those touch points. So the in-store experience might just be kind of like viewing a billboard, there is something special to holding a product and interacting with the product. So maybe, I think you're starting to see a lot of like DTC brands have stores that are inventory lists out front, but you can interact with the products, and it's a continuation of that digital discovery experience. And, Jess, you know, on a, to your point creatively, I think we're going to see, you know, a lot more of our recommendation-type creatives as well. Maybe suggesting, like dynamic retargeting campaigns that suggest combinations of gifts that people often buy that they wouldn't even expect. We wouldn't even expect them to be like combinations of products that people would buy. So things like that are going to be important as well. But I just want to say that the in store experience, I don't think it's going away. I think it'll just be almost like advertising for the actual like, digital store where people do all the research.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:19:56)It's a really good point, Sam because one store that I can think of that as you, as you called it, inventory lists in, in Canada, we have struct tube and you go in there and you can check out different pieces of furniture. But you know, at the end of the day, you have to place that order and get it either shipped to the store or have it shipped to your house. So I agree that, you know, for consumers, it's very important to go in and actually have some hands-on time with the product. But it's almost this hybrid situation now where you can give customers those experiences, but you can also, you know, really focus on the e-commerce strategy and drive sales that way. I guess on that note, I think we should take a quick break. And then when we come back, we can talk a little bit more about what the 2021 season is going to look like and some strategies that each of you have for marketers to use to win.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:20:57)You know, your advertising should be multi-channel. So why isn't your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native, display, video, connected TV, and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers. As if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform. According to G2, it's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:21:30)Welcome back, everybody. As mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we're joined by Sam Jensen, Jess Utley, and Aanchal Bajaj. For this half of the half of the episode, I really want to shine a light on some of the biggest trends we've seen in the last year. And that's e-commerce. And we talked a little bit about this before the break. But because the retail environment has become this hybrid of in-store and online shopping, do each of you think that e-commerce will still dominate this year? Yeah, 100%.\n\n\n\nSam (00:22:03)I don't think it's going anywhere, I think the pandemic just accelerated a trend that was already on its way. So you're gonna see, even small businesses start to go towards e-commerce, you're gonna see more verticals, becoming shoppable. Online, you're gonna see like, you know, common sense would say, if you're going to buy an expensive product, like a car, you're not going to do that online. But nowadays, it's entirely possible to do that, because of just how much information is available. And on top of it, it's just way too cost-effective for companies to not prioritize e-commerce. Like I said, Nike and Under Armour shut down a bunch of like these, or they closed the doors on a bunch of their wholesalers to kind of lean on a direct-to-consumer strategy. So it's much leaner for companies in terms of operating costs. And, again, it closes the loop because that's where all the traffic is, in 2020. It was a record number of app downloads, people are spending their time on mobile devices, people are spending their time browsing. So you can't ignore that. And I'm sure Jessie and I tell my echo that. But yeah, curious to see everyone's thoughts.\n\n\n\nAanchal (00:23:23)Know, for sure. E-commerce is not going anywhere, it's definitely just going to continue to grow. And it is, you know, kind of the future of retail for sure. But kind of just echoing what we were talking about earlier to similarly, like in-store shopping is also not going anywhere, anytime soon. I think the piece that is super important that was mentioned earlier, too, is kind of trying to optimize that online to offline, holistic customer experience. And with this, like boom, in e-commerce, the thing that's becoming really important is for marketers to adapt more, you know, like online targeting and marketing strategies. The one unique thing that you know, a lot of marketers are struggling to adapt with right now specifically is kind of this change in the privacy landscape. So you know, with cookies potentially going away in the future changes to in-app targeting, and all of these different things, to kind of keep up with that personalization piece. With this e-commerce boom, a lot of marketers are, you know, putting a lot more effort in gathering their 1st-party data, you know, doing more personalized targeting strategies that are able to continue that effect that efficacy that e-commerce targeting was bringing last year into this like future of you know, privacy, like no cookies. So I think like, with e-commerce continuing to grow, marketers need to continue to be adaptive with these new strategies and stuff as well.\n\n\n\nJess (00:24:39)And just to echo my colleagues couldn't agree more. Of course, e-commerce is here to stay. I think to Sam's point, the pandemic really just accelerated what was already coming. But I think what's interesting about it is, I don't want to say people were forced, but people tried things that they may not have otherwise tried, you know, speaking anecdotally My own parents and grandparents were never really interested in shopping online. And now that they have, and they see how easy and convenient it is, it's something that they're going to continue to do regardless of whether they can shop in-store or not. And I think that's the case for a lot of people when it comes to 2021. Now, I think where the challenges lie is that last year, we were talking about what surprised us. And you know how so many advertisers have more, so the bigger advertisers or bigger brands were able to shift and adapt, I think this year, more of the smaller and mid-tier, companies were able to now also adapt. So it means the market is very crowded for e-commerce and retail in general has always been fairly crowded. But I think the challenge this year is going to be twofold is going to be standing out, you know, making sure your offer is known people know they can go to you and get those convenient things that they're looking for. Whether that be money-back guarantee, free shipping, buy online, pick up in-store, that's going to be key, and making sure people know that you have those things available. But I think also the other trick is going to be the supply chain issues that we've been seeing. So making sure that your consumers know that you have stock available or maybe even driving urgency to shop early. I think those are where we're going to see opportunities this year. And yeah, definitely, I think standing out, of course, I think creatives are the way to do that. But I will be interested to see what advertisers are coming up with this year and how we can help them. But already we've seen holiday campaigns ramping up.\n\n\n\nSam (00:26:38)Yeah, that convenience factor, I think is going to be huge. Even in the in-store sense. Like we talked about how stores will evolve, I think it's going to be centred all around that convenience aspect. And until hinted at that with like a lot of their automated, you know, checkout processes or, you know, they have like automated kiosks that basically know who you are, and they can suggest products. And Jess, I think with creatives this year, you're going to see a lot more of decision-making being done for people, recommendations, again, of combinations of products, or gift guides or things like that, that really inform and kind of push us towards a decision because I think Indecision is one of the biggest plagues of the holiday season. I never know what to get my parents, for example. And the other point you brought up that I wanted to talk about quick was don't sleep on the older crowd. They do, actually, they have become a little bit more tech-savvy during this pandemic, so like you mentioned, even my parents, they're there, they fall in the retirees crowd. But they're doing a lot of their shopping online now too. So don't miss out on those age demographics when you're running a campaign because they're online, too.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:27:58)Now, before we got to the break, everybody touched a little bit on strategy. And in this half of the episode, I'm interested to know that, from each perspective, what advice would you offer brands looking to focus their efforts online this year? So I'm all I'm interested to know is your thoughts on the solutions perspective, just from the creative perspective. And finally, Sam, looking at things from a holistic campaign perspective.\n\n\n\nJess (00:28:22)Sure, I can kick it off. So from a creative perspective, I mean, there are so many different routes to take. So it really can be brand-specific. But to get on more of a generalized level, I would say, be creative and stand out, we there are so many different ways to be interactive and engaging with your advertising, especially in programmatic. So I would say look for those opportunities to go outside of the box a little bit. And definitely thinking about not just pushing sales. But as we as we've talked about that discovery phase is really becoming a digital piece now. So I think it's important to think about how people are discovering your brand, and then your products. So taking them through all the way from beginning to end telling that story. I also think it's important to note that it's more than just product features that people are interested in, especially now. What about your social impact your environmental impact, so thinking about what makes your brand stand out? I know it's kind of marketing 101. But I think this holiday season with so many products in the digital space in front of consumers, those are going to be the things that make a difference. But even on top of that, I think they're you know, as Sam said, though, that personalization, those recommendations, those are going to be key as well. Being able to help guide shoppers a little bit again in this very crowded space. If you're able to take a little bit of that decision fatigue away whether it be through dynamic retargeting through gift guides, I think that will be super beneficial. But ultimately, it's just don't sleep on your advertising saying that it's the brands who are out there that are going to be noticed.\n\n\n\nAanchal (00:30:02)Yeah, and I think just segueing off of that measurement and attribution are going to be really huge. And, you know, I think it's important, especially as we continue to kind of navigate this hybrid landscape of both e-commerce and in-store, measuring the impact of your campaigns, in both places, is going to be super important. So you know, from e-commerce, for example, like pixeling, your checkout pages, or you know, your pay now buttons to kind of really determine the impact your campaigns are having on things like requests, but also for offline sales. People are going back into stores and malls and things like that, measuring foot traffic and measuring in store visitation. obv is a really great way to understand kind of, you know, your customers behaviours, and then adapt your campaign strategies accordingly. And another thing that really was impacted throughout this last year with e-commerce is the fact that because now, it's a lot easier for people to explore different products and brands, things like brand loyalty have been dwindling a little bit. So as you know, marketers are putting a lot of effort into these, like awareness and, you know, branding campaigns, measuring brand, lift and brand perception are also is also a really great way to kind of go beyond that generic, like impression and clicked level KPIs, but also measuring your brand success through perception. So yeah, measurement and attribution are definitely like huge pieces that I think it's important for marketers to incorporate into their strategy.\n\n\n\nSam (00:31:29)Yeah, and I think you both just kind of rolled up what I was gonna say, from a high level is, you know, closing the loop creatively with a story, you have a TV ad continue that, you know, digitally, things like that, you know, in terms of optimizations you would make from a campaigns perspective or setups? I'd say the same rules still apply. And the big difference, again, is what channels can you leverage to stand out? How can you be convenient for the client, and your timing is important, and how you're pivoting the messaging, again, because it's going to be all about standing out, people are going to be spending a lot of time on mobile devices. Maybe you look into things like rewarded video or some other type of high-impact media that's friendly with phones, maybe you look into targeting owners of certain apps to determine behaviour, because of the increase in mobile traffic, and app downloads and things like that, that's really expanded the ability to like, deliver across segments that are related to mobile, and then you can kind of capture that interest that way. So as Jess and Charles said, there's really creative ways to kind of, to think outside the box a little bit.\n\n\n\nJess (00:32:46)Sammy just touched on such an important point that I failed to mention. And that is, oftentimes, we're thinking about you know, which channel is best? Is it CTV? Is it display? Is it native? And I think we forget that all of these channels should really be working together. You know, we've been talking about digital and physical spaces in terms of omni channels. But I think when it comes to programmatic strategy strategies, multi-channel is really where it's at. Not everybody consumes digital content in the same way. So if you're really trying to reach as many people as possible, and have as many people engage with your brand as possible, then you need to reach them in multiple ways, as Sam mentioned, whether that be mobile, or desktop, but beyond the devices, I think we also need to think about combining a story across audio, video, native display, when we combine all of these different touchpoints. It really allows the user to get to know the brand and the product. And again, it's these multiple touch points that are ultimately going to converge into that conversion that we're looking for, especially in the e-commerce space. And then of course, speaking to kind of programmatic opportunities here. We were talking a little bit about uncertainty earlier. And I think there's something to be said that there still is some uncertainty this year. And I think where programmatic shines is the ability to quickly toggle ON, OFF, pause, change your creatives at the click of a button. And I think that smart advertisers this year will have multiple creative executions at their fingertips so that they can switch them out as needed, depending on where things end up.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:34:29)I do have another question for everybody. And we talked about a little bit earlier in the episode but this notion of empathy and building messaging around that. Do any of you think that even 18 months, almost two years later, it's still for marketers really about showing that you understand the situation that everybody's going through and not you as a brand are there for your consumers during the holiday season? Is that something that's important now, or have we kind of moved away from that now that the world is starting to open up?\n\n\n\nJess (00:35:03)I can speak to that a little bit on the on the creative side especially. So I will say it's not exactly like it was in 2020. I don't think we have to tip-toe quite so gently as we did last year. But I still think that there is room for empathetic messaging. And there are still people who are suffering and who have been through so much because of everything that's been going on. So I think that there's no harm and it's the safer route to use that empathetic messaging. I think it still has a space today. But I will say I think there is some pandemic fatigue, where we're just kind of tired of talking about it. And we do kind of want to go back to normal. So while I don't think it is necessarily the best strategy to go back to the way that we were pre-pandemic, in terms of our messaging, I think it's important to take a lighthearted tone. And to think about, you know, where people's mindsets are now, I think we need to be sensitive. But we can push the envelope a little bit more this year, where we were kind of walking on eggshells last year, this year, I think there's a lot more room for humour for things that aren't pandemic related and can step outside of that box a little bit.\n\n\n\nSam (00:36:14)Yeah, I want to build on this really a lot. I think, you know, that sensitive messaging, again, is definitely relevant, Jess, but it's kind of like hanging out by the shark coterie boards at the at, you know, the corporate party like you'll be safe there the whole time, and you'll probably enjoy yourself. But there is fatigue to that you you definitely kind of want it. That's the comfort zone. Right. So one thing that I think will evolve this year in the messaging is people will capitalize on emerging trends. I think a lot of people picked up new hobbies over the pandemic, there's a whole lot more hikers and golfers out there, for example, those are just two examples. But I think you're gonna see messaging kind of start to pivot towards those hobbies that we picked up even during this time, or, you know, lots of new homeowners, for example, maybe there's room for a Home Depot to advertise, do it yourself projects and materials for that's again, just examples. But that's going to be, I think, the key in 2021.\n\n\n\nAanchal (00:37:18)Yeah, and I will just add on to that and say, you know, throughout the pandemic, there was a lot of, you know, people were going through a lot of like financial changes and like kind of turmoil. So there is like a notion of kind of revenge shopping right now, people are looking to kind of treat themselves and, you know, spend money that they have been saving up over the last year, either because, you know, they were being conscious about their spending, or just, you know, people weren't really buying things because they had nowhere to go or nothing to do. So I think a lot of messaging around kind of spending on yourself. Splurging, treating yourself are a lot of narratives that we are seeing with a lot of retailers as well. So I think kind of shifting towards that, again, kind of, um, happier. Narrative is definitely going to be more important, I think.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:38:03)Absolutely. Well, thanks, everyone, for this, I think, a great way to end this episode, because we've you know, we've talked about the past, we talked about 2020, talked about the present 2021, the upcoming season. Now, I'm interested to know about the future. So if we think about, you know, the 2022 holiday shopping season, do you think that the impact of the last two years will be lasting? Or is it more of a footnote and things will just go back to the status quo once the world is fully opened up, fingers crossed? Or do we think that this is going to continue to impact the way we market during the holiday season?\n\n\n\nSam (00:38:45)I think this strategy will definitely change, Matt, the retail strategy, obviously becoming more digital. And we've kind of harped on the messaging thing. But I think what's really going to be interesting to see again, is how, like, those traditional channels kind of rebound. I'm, I'm going to be watching TV. And by that, I mean watching the state of TV and q4 Because that's really going to determine where it's going to go from there. And where advertisers are going to start taking their dollars. And I keep up with I'm a TV guy I came from, you know, I worked at NBC Sports for a while. And I know that on the big shows, they really negotiate high ad prices and to deliver well on these ad price increases, you're starting to see major networks start to encompass the digital realm as well. So that's kind of I'm excited to see the impact on like traditional channels like that and how that's going to evolve as well as, you know, how stores might change too. And we talked about that as well.\n\n\n\nJess (00:39:50)Yeah, I'd say there's no going back now I definitely don't think we're going backwards at any point. Wait now that people have, again, we've talked about this a little bit. But now that people have realized that convenience and the options and the fact that consumers are seeing that brands will adapt, I think what we can expect for the future is very high consumer expectations, which will drive high innovation from brands. And I'm really excited to see what that looks like in 2022. I think the digital experiences, again, talking about brand and product discovery online is just going to continue to expand and become even more immersive and interactive. And yeah, I just think that, again, not going backwards, we're only going forwards. And I think if there's one thing we can take out of all of this stuff that we've been through is that there's a huge drive in innovation, and that we will persevere through it all.\n\n\n\nAanchal (00:40:48)Yeah, I mean, just to echo all of that, brands that are going to continue adapting are the ones that are going to thrive. So just kind of what we've seen last year, and this year, that that change towards digital is going to be the new normal. So for sure, not going backwards. Just more growth in e-commerce from now on, for sure.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:41:07)Well, you know what I think this puts us at time for our episode. So on behalf of myself and our listeners, I wanted to thank you three, again, for sharing your expertise. And I'm definitely excited to see what creative campaigns come out this holiday season. And for any marketers that are gearing up, we hope that you took away some valuable insights from either the campaign perspective, solutions perspective or even the creatives perspective. So until then, thanks, everyone for tuning in. And thanks to our guests for joining.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:41:43)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you liked what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/financial-services-marketing#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/financial-services-marketing"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"The Greatest Assets for Financial Services Marketing","datePublished":"2021-10-13T21:24:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/financial-services-marketing"},"wordCount":5246,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/financial-services-marketing#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240516172747/jennie_anderson_stackadapt_podcast_s2e5.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["financial services","podcast","regulated industries"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at how financial services marketing has shifted strategically during the pandemic to help build consumer trust and foster growth.\n\n\n\nCash Meyerhoffer | Media Director, thomasarts\n\n\n\nJennie Anderson | Media Buyer, thomasarts\n\n\n\nZach Van Kerrebroeck | Sales Director, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)I think just with COVID and everything, we saw a huge shift in how people are consuming their information and their entertainment. So I think just, you know, if budget allows shifting budget to those tactics, CTV, or, you know, streaming services like Pandora or Spotify, I think that's what people should be looking to do. You know, we still want to stay relevant with our audience, and people are going to continue to use these subscriptions as they've now become more comfortable with using them. But yeah, definitely, including those tactics as part of the media plan.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:36)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape. The How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:04)Hey, everyone, welcome to today's episode, my name is Matt Evered. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. This episode is all about how marketers in the financial services vertical can thrive in their upcoming campaigns. Today, we're joined by none other than Jennie Anderson, and Cash Meyer Hoffer, from Thomas Arts, as well as StackAdapt’s very own Zach Van Kerrebroeck to share their expertise on this vertical. I'm excited for this episode, not just because I've had the opportunity to work with the Thomas Arts team in the past on a few case studies. But because their team has seen a ton of success in this vertical throughout the pandemic, especially when it comes to driving awareness for their clients. But don't just take it from me. To get this episode started. I'd love to hear from each of our guests. So starting with you, Jennie, tell us a little bit about your experience and some areas of expertise that you have.\n\n\n\nJennie (00:01:55)My name is Jennie Anderson, I have been a media planner for almost five, six years now. And I'm just my experience, I have a lot of experience in digital media, obviously social and then traditional as well. I've been at thomasarts for over almost three years now. And so what can I say about ta um, I mean, there's a reason why I've been here for almost three years. It's a great atmosphere, highly knowledgeable team, especially our media team. Sure Cash can speak to this, you know, we have a lot of people with there that can bring their expertise to the table. And it's a very collaborative ad agency, we do have quite a diverse portfolio of clients, the ones we're going to be talking about today. So our financial banks that we focus on, that are regional, to our area. And then we also work on some larger clients, but really focus on some senior senior consumers. So we'll leave it at that.\n\n\n\nCash (00:02:56)I’m Cash Meyerhoffer, I'm the media director here at thomasarts, I have been in the media space for for almost 10 years now. It'll be 10 years in the next spring here of 2022. I've been a TA for just short of five years now as well. So half of my career I've been here at TA and Jennie did a really great job of of introducing the really great teams here at TA. We're a full-service ad agency located just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. So we do creative strategy, media analytics, we have a full development team as well. So we have a really good plethora of different teams here that do really just a bang-up job. I talk about our media team as being the center of excellence within ta because we have so many great team members that have just a wealth of knowledge. That is really awesome. So it's been a really great place to be part of.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:58)Thanks so much. And Zach, a little bit about you.\n\n\n\nZach (00:04:01)Thanks, Matt. And Thanks, Jennie, and Cash both for joining today. My name is Zach Van Kerrebroeck, I'm a Sales Director at StackAdapt. I've been here for about four years. And I've held a few different roles on the sales team. But my current role is primarily focused on media strategy and execution. I've been lucky enough to work across a variety of advertisers. But I've spent quite a bit more time in a subset of verticals, and financial services is one of them. So I'm really excited to be a part of the conversation. And, as always, I'm looking forward to hearing from Jennie and Cash given their experience.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:39)Thanks so much. So, to start the episode off, I want to draw to the fact that in this industry in financial services, the last two years have been, for lack of a better term, disruptive for businesses that were offering financial products as well as you know the entire economy with people losing jobs, changes to income moving all kinds Two major decisions being made, as everything began to unfold, you know, thinking back to the beginning of the pandemic, what were thoughts that all of you had as marketers working in the space?\n\n\n\nJennie (00:05:13)Kind of just to answer your question, and you know, how we supported our clients, I think it was just a major time of uncertainty, you know, not just for our clients, but for ourselves, you know, our office we sent us were sent home for about two weeks, with the plan to come back to the office after those two, that two week period, kind of similar plan with our clients, a lot of them just went and worked from home for two weeks with the plan of coming back into the office. And I'd say it was probably around week three or four that, hey, this is going to be a lot longer than what we thought, and this isn't going away anytime soon. So quite a few clients ended up just kind of pausing their campaigns, you know, just kind of want to see how things played out with the news in COVID. But I would say probably most of our clients did, you know, just look at their messaging, just making sure that they were not being irrelevant or insensitive to the news and things that were happening in the world during that time. So I'd say a lot of them, it was just more of like, “Hey, what are we doing? Let's pause and then plan for the future.”\n\n\n\nCash (00:06:22)Yeah, I'll jump on to Jay's point there. We really were in like a wait-and-see approach early on in the early days, I think we were all thinking that it was going to be a couple-week period, the two weeks to slow the spread was really the big initiative here in the States. And so we were really in that holding pattern throughout that time. There was also really some talk amongst, you know, the administration at the time, as well as Congress, that they were going to push out more stimulus packages, you know, that would be able to help help people. I mean, it was it was kind of crazy, from just our own perspective, wondering whether we would have opportunities to work with our clients, because there was so much uncertainty. But then as we started to get a better feel for the financial impacts that were taking place, and maybe some of the things that were going to come out of the Cares Act, which is what was one of the first legislative pieces that came out, we started to really buckle down and be able to say, “Okay, well, we're gonna have jobs.” Now we need to help and make sure that other people are going to be able to do that. And so with those early dollars, I think there was like a trillion dollars that were given to businesses, we stepped into action and really started putting together plans for our financial clients, that we're allowing them to be able to push out and start talking to their clients and make sure that they had the peace of mind that we were starting to get as, you know, as members of TA.\n\n\n\nZach (00:07:45)Yeah, I think my input would only add to what both Jennie and Cash had mentioned, I think everyone took a pause in March 2020. And regardless of the vertical, you know, businesses, but also consumers need to just take a step back and sort of assess the situation. I think, marketers were left with two key challenge challenges. So the first one being budgetary, you know, marketing budgets are often one of the first to get slashed. But I think the more interesting one is what actually what Jennie picked up on in terms of messaging. I just remember in 2020 Ad Age called the year, you know, the year of tone deafness. And I think we can all remember examples where that was the case, I think the funniest one I saw was, was KFC, prior to lockdowns had launched a campaign with their slogan, you know, finger-licking good. And obviously not something you want to be promoting at the time. So the timing was everything. And for financial services, I think marketers really had the goal of trying to inspire confidence in consumers. And, you know, that was a challenge, because both marketers and consumers had no idea what was going to happen day to day. So navigating that uncertainty was really my goal at the time. And I think to a certain degree, still continues to be a goal with the teams that I work with.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:09:03)Absolutely. Thanks so much. Jennie, you mentioned something that was kind of interesting. And you said that, you know, what ta wanted to do at the beginning of the pandemic was to act as a resource for the clients and sort of be that go-to for, you know, not only information on what was going on within the vertical, but how they could, you know, pause a campaign or make adjustments to a campaign. Were there any specific resources that the agency was providing to their clients at the time that sort of helped with that, you know, empathetic understanding approach that a lot of agencies were taking?\n\n\n\nJennie (00:09:40)Yeah, I think just kind of, I want to say availability. So you know, just being right on the fly ready to go, especially with the financial, you know, as Cash mentioned, with the Cares Act, I'd have to say speed was definitely an important part of the campaigns that we ran Um, for the financial institutions that we represent, you know, our CEO was able to work with the other CEOs of these financial institutions, and was able to secure quite a substantial amount of budget. And, you know, the banks were excited, we were excited. And I think Cash can speak to this too, you know, these Finance, Financial institutions, they have to go through so many drafts of our campaigns, whether it's through creative, the media plan, you know, just making sure that they're compliant, that messaging is lining up. And I think having, you know, the development team on our side, the analytics, the creative, the media, all in-house, we were able to execute on these campaigns in as in a six week time, if it was even that I think it was even shorter than that. Right? Cash. Yeah. Just the urgency was there.\n\n\n\nCash (00:10:50)Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It was it was, it was a six-week campaign that we ended up really launching with it. But the key pieces of the campaign came together within a weekend, we were able to really pull in a lot of agency resources to Jennie's point, and a TA with us having everything in-house, it became really easy to start pulling in some subject matter experts from all the different teams within TA, even ones that maybe don't even work on financial services, especially like from our creative teams, they were able to start talking to, you know, other teams and see if they had ideas, and start being able to push a lot of different ideas out there early on, so that we could, you know, push the campaigns live a lot quicker and a lot with a lot more opportunity. So I mean, I can think back to you know, that weekend, and I was I personally, I was on the phone with a lot of digital and traditional media partners, trying to see if we can get plans in place with those dollars, what we could have as far as a media plan. And through those weeks, it felt like I was probably doing a new media plan daily, just as we were trying to get that launched and out the door. So it was it was a real effort for us to try and bring so many of those teams together and give our resources 100%.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:12:10)Yeah, and Cash. That's a perfect transition to the next question that I had. Because what I'm wondering is, you know, during this time as a media team, how often did you have to adjust the strategy for your campaigns, and you know, doing things in real time to adjust to the changing landscape during the beginning of the pandemic? Was it, you know, almost daily that you had to do this? Or were there some strategies that were a little bit long-term that played out?\n\n\n\nCash (00:12:39)Yeah, so we really were on probably more of a daily basis looking at how can we change things because we had, so I'll step back and say we initially started out with this paycheck Protection Program style campaign where we wanted to reach users or potential clients with information regarding the paycheck protection loan and the money that came out of the Cares Act. And then we started morphing additional campaigns out of that we did a restaurant campaign where the banks were giving, giving credit card additional credit card points to people that actually just went to local banks. So there was there was that so new initiatives came out of that. But then additionally, just within those campaigns, those longtail campaigns, we were in there daily, looking to see what the metrics, the KPIs that were performing best. So if we were, you know, trying to get more users to the landing page, we were trying to engage more click through rates, we were looking at conversion. So if people are actually signing up for loans and pushing budget, I think on a daily basis to, you know, different things, whether it was, you know, a TV or a lot of cases, it was really trying to leverage newer opportunities like CTV, in streaming audio, where we knew that there was more people spending more time on a daily basis there.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:02)Absolutely. And, Zach, I'm wondering for you from a more holistic sense, with all the campaigns you've observed through StackAdapt, over the last two years, what were some adjustments that you noticed happening, especially in the financial services vertical?\n\n\n\nZach (00:14:17)Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, speaking to programmatic, you know, in my eyes, the biggest benefit is efficiency, both in terms of reach and performance, but also in terms of speed. So we saw people, you know, changing campaigns daily, very often, and I think, you know, DSPs are perfectly suited to that challenge. That sort of, you know, takes care of the how, but the question we always end up asking is sort of when and what, so what are we looking to change? Is it the messaging or the creative? Is it the channel? Is it the audience, I think all of those things changed in one shape or another across across the platform and across our clients. But it. You know, the other question would be like, how quickly do we need to action on that change? Have we really given our current tactics a chance to perform and what is it we're looking to test against? So, obviously, it's hard to set benchmarks when the world has been flipped on its head. So I really think it's our job to just keep communication as open as possible and provide clients with all the tools that they need to make sound business decisions.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:15:24)Absolutely. Thanks, Zach. Now, I want to draw on something a little bit different here. When I was doing research for this episode, there was an ebook that had been published, it was on the state of financial services marketing. And there's this interesting quote that said, to succeed in today's hyper-competitive financial services environment, brand marketers need to adapt to big changes in consumer behaviour and how they find and choose businesses. So from that, I'm interested to know from the three of you how important you think it is for marketers in this vertical to not only develop, but understand these customer profiles and how that impacts the campaigns that they run.\n\n\n\nZach (00:16:07)I think when you think about understanding the customer, this, first again, speaks to the importance of messaging. I think it's important for marketers, especially brand marketers, to understand their audience, and what's likely to resonate with that group. But secondly, from the lens of media strategy, I think it speaks to the importance of channel and where you're looking to execute, sort of as Cash at alluded to, you know, media teams need to know where people are spending the bulk of their time and, you know, allocate efficiently. And probably the most prevalent example that comes to mind is sort of looking back at CTV, you know, three years ago, marketers were only dipping their toe into connected TV. And, you know, that might have been far and few and far between, despite, you know, momentum from consumers sort of shifting their attention and cutting the cord. But now, there are so many more ad-supported OTT providers, and consumers are getting to the point where it's getting harder and harder to justify subscription-based services. So, you know, almost every team I speak with now lists CTV as their largest growth opportunity. And in my opinion, the biggest reason for this has to do with the industry catching up to consumer attention, which is really, you know, a product of understanding your customer. So I think the channel really fits into that puzzle.\n\n\n\nCash (00:17:28)Well, I was just going to touch on what I think the really interesting thing to think about is that financial services is always really behind the eight ball as far as maybe innovative marketing tactics and techniques. It's with compliance, we've already talked about it, there's things that we have to make sure that we do we also need to protect individuals' information. I mean, it's not easy to say that, you know, a user came in and put a bunch of dollars into their bank account, and we need to push out a message to them, we need to be really thoughtful with that it's completely different than maybe retail, which, you know, if somebody comes in and buys a shirt, we can say, Oh, well, they're really interested in large shirts, we should be able to do that and put that customer into, into more narrow focus style campaign. So really, we have to think about really full channel opportunities to speak to people so that it doesn't, of course, appear creepy or anything. But also, we need to leverage some of those digital tactics like CTV, live streaming audio, which saw some growth during the pandemic, and be able to reach people that we know, have interest in our products.\n\n\n\nJennie (00:18:43)Yeah, I'll add to Zach really quick, just kind of the CTV. So the two financial institutions that I worked with, they love traditional media, they love prints. And what was really interesting was that this was the very first campaign that working with these clients, they did not want to do print. And that was actually because there was some underlying concerns of how COVID was spread. And, you know, people who are receiving the newspaper or magazine in the mail, you know, there's just some concerns there. So we actually didn't do print for the very first time. And as the alternative as people, you know, people are still seeking the news, no matter what age native was actually. We tried out native for the very first time with these clients. And it's been a staple in their campaigns ever since they've been very happy with those results, especially with that their target audiences, you know, high-consuming news users, we call them. So yeah, that's definitely been kind of one of the changes that we've seen, and how our customers and consumers kind of adapted to the new digital space.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:19:53)This has all been great. On that note, I think we can take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll talk strategy and look at future trends that financial services marketers should be looking at as we head into 2022.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:20:10)Did you know that 94% of B2B buyers conduct online research searching for solutions anytime, anywhere, any way they want? Here at the How Agencies Thrive podcast, we are obsessed with helping marketers level up their digital marketing strategies by focusing on how they can help their clients drive business results with the highest-performing digital marketing strategies. That's why we have created a guide specifically for reaching B2Baudiences in the most innovative, effective and efficient way. Go to stackadapt.com/b2b-guide to get your comprehensive guide to B2B marketing. That's stackadapt.com/b2b-guide.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:20:45)Welcome back, everyone. As mentioned, I'm joined by Jennie Anderson and Cash Meyerhoffer, from thomasarts and Zach Van Kerrebroeck from StackAdapt. In this half of the episode, we're going to focus on strategy and future trends in the financial services vertical. So to our guests, compared to pre-COVID world, if we think about areas of campaigns such as audience targeting creatives, etc, what are some key strategies that marketers in the financial services vertical should be taking into consideration for future campaigns?\n\n\n\nJennie (00:21:18)I think just with COVID and everything, we saw a huge shift in how people are consuming their information and their entertainment, especially with, like, online video, huge subscriptions, and, you know, Netflix, Hulu, and then just like how Cash had mentioned with, you know, Pandora, or Spotify. So I think just, you know, if budget allows shifting budget, shifting money budget, to those tactics, see TV, or, you know, streaming services like Pandora, or Spotify, I think that's what people should be looking to do, you know, we still want to stay relevant with our audience, and people are going to continue to use these subscriptions as they've now become more comfortable with using them. But yeah, definitely including those tactics as part of the media plan.\n\n\n\nCash (00:22:05)I'll piggyback on Jennie's thought here that, I mean, there's the idea that the pandemic pushed us ahead about 10 years, and I'm sure we're all experiencing it, you know, we're still going to restaurants now where you're, you're scanning QR codes, you know, any type of option to use your devices and digital devices is being taken. So really leveraging digital as a channel, I think growing out of that, with the growth of some of those traditional pieces inside of digital, so whether that's a, you know, connected TV or over the top, but one of the strategies that TA has been really trying to push in the last probably year just as we have been able to see this is we call it stalking impressions, which is the opportunity to use CCTV or audio streaming audio through StackAdapt. And take users who have either listened to that watched it or engaged and then having some type of follow up whether that's you know, a retargeting banner, you know, pushing into somebody into a sequential message. That's the type of benefits that we've had with our relationship there. And being able to leverage that. And that I really see as being the future of the mediums is we're really wanting those to work together in an omni-channel opportunity. Now we actually get to be able to build those journeys out in a really constructive way.\n\n\n\nZach (00:23:29)Yeah, and I completely agree with both of those points, I think that data is really the brand's biggest asset now and regardless of how digital identifiers sort of present themselves over the coming years, I think marketers need to use the tools available to reach their ideal customer. So digital provides so much flexibility to tailor messaging to segment and target and to provide a fuller picture when it comes to attribution and reporting. And so I think moving forward, brands really need to work to organize and to action on their data in ways that are obviously safe and compliant.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:24:07)To close out the episode. If we look at the last 18 months, I think it's it's almost universally agreed that this is a time in our history, when everybody reevaluated certain aspects of their lives. So you know, where you choose to live, how much you're saving, how much you're spending and on what, and making these key decisions. What do you think the future of marketing looks like in the financial services industry? If we look at, you know, 2022 and beyond, you know, keeping in mind some of these trends that are up and coming and, you know, strategies that you just mentioned that marketers should be paying attention to?\n\n\n\nCash (00:24:48)Well, I would say with financial institutions, they've always really, or in the last probably 20 to 30 years, have focused on those that that have money already, and I think there is a shift of saying, well we need there is a groundswell of talking to everybody and having more opportunities to, to reach out to a young student and get a student, you know, checking account and started so that you have that, that opportunity to start building that relationship and that the relationships really matter. That's one thing that really came out of our paycheck protection loan campaign where so many people didn't know where to turn, those business owners didn't know where to turn our our banks really did a tremendous job of having really good relationships with with their clients. And so there is that relationship building. And so shifting some of those opportunities to speak to the younger generation and actually focus on them. And I think that that can be done through digital channels, as well as any, so maybe shirking some of the, you know, suit and tie kind of atmosphere and really leaning into like a younger demographic with that, I think, is a big deal. And then also, really speaking to more of a diverse and inclusive environment. And I know that our banks are very thoughtful in that and in that way, and wanting to, to really showcase that there are so many people that the bank can reach out to and be part of. And so I think that that's just that, that type of being all-inclusive, and being, you know, thoughtful is going to be a big piece and how we do that, in addition to the channels that we've talked about.\n\n\n\nJennie (00:26:33)Great. Yeah, and to kind of add to what Cash has said, I think just also putting out more products that are more online, you know, seeing how everything can almost be done through your phone through a car loan, and our Well, I wish to house loan, but that takes a lot more paperwork and probably needs a computer. But, you know, making sure that these services are available to you know, not just millennials and knowing about them. But you know, also the older generations, especially as they've turned more to their phones, so, you know, marketing tactics that are going to be more educational, so that, you know, we did change from going into the bank and depositing our checks. Well, now we're doing it just through our phone by taking a picture. So I think the messaging should be very, very clear as well, as we shift to a more online online world.\n\n\n\nZach (00:27:26)I completely agree with Jennie's point, I think the future really relies on innovation. And, you know, as Cassatt caches had mentioned earlier, you know, timelines are going to be tough because it's a regulated market, but you look to the growth of FinTech and digital payments. And you can really point to convenience and access is a huge deciding factor now and in the customer journey. So, you know, with that said, I think marketers need to echo that sentiment, and they need to push their organizations to not only provide but then demonstrate the convenience and accessibility as core tenants of their product offering.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:28:04)Well, Jennie, Cash, Zach this puts us at our time. On behalf of myself and our listeners, I want to say thank you again to three of you for sharing your expertise on this episode. And you know, I had the benefit of going through this live, but after the episode, I feel like I've learned a lot, and I'm definitely confident that our listeners who are operating this vertical will as well and apply some of these strategies to their upcoming campaigns. So until then, thank you to our guests for joining. And thanks for tuning in.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:28:32)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/healthcare-marketing-strategies-2#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/healthcare-marketing-strategies-2"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"The Right Prescription for Healthcare Marketing","datePublished":"2021-10-27T21:35:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/healthcare-marketing-strategies-2"},"wordCount":7204,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/healthcare-marketing-strategies-2#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240516173617/alex_romero_wilson_stackadapt_podcast_s2e6.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["healthcare","podcast","regulated industries"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss how the pandemic has driven innovation in healthcare marketing, from unique strategies to healthcare compliance.\n\n\n\nAlexander Romero-Wilson | Manager, Communications and Brand Marketing, Eko Health\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Digitally, I'm investing more. Again, looking back, I'm more in endemic partnerships, right direct buys, or partnerships with industry outlets, influential blogs, websites and organizations, which were things that kind of not really died away. But people were moving so much more into this programmatic social space. And with the competition, we kind of forgot that these influential places where people are still consuming and the trust is much more there. Like the trust, especially for us in health care. When you say partner with an organization that mirrors a segment of your audience, is going after they're more likely to trust if your brand is associated with that, and then, like a Facebook ad.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:48)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape that how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:16)Hey, everyone, welcome to today's episode. My name is Matt Evered. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. And I'm also the Education Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, I'm joined by Alexander Romero-Wilson, who is the marketing manager at Eko Health. Alex, great to have you on the episode today. Before we get started with the bulk of the content. I was hoping you could give us an introduction by telling us about Eko Health, your role as the marketing manager, and what you consider to be your strongest area of expertise.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:01:46)Thanks, Matt. Happy to be here and excited that you guys invited me on your podcast. Thank you very much. As Matt said, my name is Alexander Romero-Wilson. I'm a marketing manager at Eko. I've been with Eko for almost two years now I was a second full-time marketing hire, and is working in a startup. I wear many, many hats. I run our advertising, social media and community, a lot of our brand building, PR and comms and for fun. I love mine and everything to do with it. So I run our team wine tastings, and it's definitely a fun place to be, you know, very, very fast pace. Before Eko I was the West Coast paid media lead for FleishmanHillard. And I've been working in marketing for about a decade now in many different roles, everything from media analytics to what I'm doing now, which is just being a Swiss army knife for everything that needs to be that a startup requires. Just a shameless shameless plug for StackAdapt. I know I love what your platform has been doing by disrupting the programmatic advertising space, you know, from native despite audio. We've been a StackAdapt customer for four years, maybe even more than that. So just, you know, much kudos, congratulations on your continued growth. It's really, really awesome to see. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, and so a bit about Eko. So we are a Series C healthcare technology company. We're focused on cardiopulmonary, so that's heart and lung, primarily health. We elevate the way healthcare professionals detect and monitor cardiac and respiratory disease by bringing together advanced sensors, patient and provider software, and automated disease detection with a suite of FDA-cleared, AI-powered machine learning algorithms. So that's like our boilerplate. So putting in more layman's terms. Eko is a stethoscope technology company. Our technology powers the best stethoscopes in the world. Our two main products are the core and the duo, and our machine learning algorithms act similarly to Shazam, sometimes we like to car call ourselves, the Shazam of heart sounds. As our algorithms are trained with hundreds of 1000s of cardiopulmonary recordings. Again, that's heart and lung recordings, and which then with our app, and we have a platform with a 15 second recording of a patient's heart sounds, we can identify specific disease states such as afib, and murmurs, with an accuracy is close to or as better as you know, a trained professional such as a cardiologist. So in a nutshell, we're really working to democratize the detection of heart and lung disease at the point of care. By detecting these disease earlier, patients can be treated earlier. And then costs are typically lower outcomes are better, and they are more likely to retain a better quality of life. We know that appropriate patients can be referred to specialists for care when they need it. Were we really using technology to provide greater health equity by improving upstream care for patients from the doctor's office to a patient's own home, from in person to anywhere. So from a business perspective, we kind of our two, two main lines of business so we sell our stethoscopes and platform directly to healthcare professionals. So that's anyone that uses a stethoscope from nurses to physician assistants to medical students to cardiologists, and we operate very much like a traditional direct-to-consumer e-commerce driven company. We sell directly to healthcare systems, large and small, even private practices and EMS departments, and also to healthcare service and technology integration partners in this fashion, you know, we operate very much like a traditional medical device and software B2B company, you know, powered by our amazing sales team.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:16)Absolutely. And it's, it's great to have you on the episode. For our listeners, we've actually done a case study with Eko Health, and we worked with you on this last year. So I'm interested to see sort of how things have changed since we last spoke about some of the campaign tactics. And really the theme of this episode is to focus on healthcare and how advertisers have thrived through the pandemic. So as an overview, we're going to cover key areas like how the pandemic has driven innovation in healthcare marketing, looking at unique strategies to navigate healthcare compliance. And, overall, Alex getting your insights on what the future of this vertical looks like? Absolutely. So to start things off, we've got a couple of questions that we wanted to ask you. But as always, we'll see where the conversation goes. And we'll definitely uncover some unique insights. So if we look at all the verticals across the board, I would say that healthcare was impacted a ton during the pandemic, and it was definitely disrupted a lot. And before the episode, we pulled the stat from a center that said that 97% of private healthcare practices were financially impacted in some way due to the pandemic. So Alex, I'm interested to know, back in March 2020, when everything sort of started to unravel with the pandemic, what was the number one thing that was on your mind as a marketing manager for a healthcare brand, many, many things.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:06:51)I'll try to stick to one. But so that goes and customer is the health care professional, our entire community was, and continues to be impacted due to COVID. The number one thing not only on my mind, but on Eko's mind was how we can be a partner to our community of healthcare professionals who are on the front lines. And I, you know, I really continue to ask myself this question every day. COVID is far from over. Around the world, frontline providers are selflessly putting their lives on the lines to save others. And we really needed to act on this. And we and we knew we had a place to really make an impact. So at the time, we knew that our stethoscopes and our platform and app enabled Bluetooth wireless functionality, but we initially thought it would be a less important feature. But with the onset of the pandemic, we noticed a high volume of new customers coming to our website and purchasing our devices, really mainly from the initial COVID hotspots around around the US and into Canada. And so, you know, we have an amazing customer support team who reached out to these customers to learn more. And lo and behold, these customers were buying our stethoscopes, mainly the core for this Bluetooth wireless functionality that could really stream heart and lung sounds in real time from their stethoscopes to wireless headphones VR app. So while they're under PPE, to keep themselves protecting their patients safer, they could stream the sounds in real time, it was really a an interesting use case that we were able to discover kind of in the beginning. So from a marketing perspective, understanding what our customers are actually using our products for. During COVID. We really went all in as a company from staffing up or warehouse to support the huge influx of orders to putting 100% of our marketing resources, both from the b2c and b2b side, to address the provider pain points as COVID. We from infection control to telehealth, which I know we'll talk about later, we made explainer videos clinical guides from our clinical team, our chief medical officer if we really did it all. And you know, beyond our paid marketing channels, since our customer base is all her health care professionals, we're able to use our large organic reach using our email lists our newsletters, you know, we basically have a database of our 100,000 healthcare professionals, our blogs or social media, to be transparent and to tell the firsthand stories of our frontline providers to give them a voice that they might not have on their own channels or where they're working.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:09:25)What I'm getting from that is pretty much at the beginning of the pandemic, it was more of a play to throw absolutely everything you had at healthcare providers and provide them with the education and the resources. And one thing you said that I really liked was to act as a partner for these healthcare providers. Because this was a time when everything was thrown into a spin. Everyone was scrambling the healthcare systems we're trying to adjust in the best way possible to accommodate patients. So I think it's really interesting that you bring that up that educating providers and we're really honing in on what the use case was for your product was a really important thing to adjust your messaging and make sure everybody knew the best direction to go.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:10:10)It was a really crazy time for everybody. And really the partnering was that really nails on the head listening to our customers listening to what their needs are giving them a voice. And then being able to provide both education materials, our customer support team, like on the phones with people who are like, how do I use this? Like, how does this actually work? Like this looks like an amazing piece of technology that can really help me. And like we did. You know, we spent so much time again, just being that partner and being a resource to this community of professionals who are just in it, saving lives selflessly.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:10:47)And as a, as a marketing manager at the beginning of the pandemic, was there a bit of panic? Or what did you guys adjust pretty well, pretty quickly, with some of the marketing efforts that you had.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:11:59)No one really knew how long this was going to go on for, right? At least, unless you, I mean, even work in the industry? I don't I don't think people really knew, you know, is this going to be, as the media would put it, will this be week or, you know, a month. It's funny, at the Monday, when I lived in San Francisco, the Monday that we went into lockdown, was the Monday we were supposed to open our brand new Eko headquarters in Oakland, like that opening never happened. And we're like, oh, maybe it'll be in two weeks, maybe it'll be in a month. And then none of that happens. So for marketing, we were like, lists, it's spending so much time listening to our customers at the time, because we were like, Okay, well, we were pushing this other narrative, we just launched some new products. So it kind of keep that going. And then as soon as we, as time went on, and we were learning from our customers that this is how they're actually using it and the needs that our technology is addressing, we went 100% And I think we were 100%, in what after like week three, because we knew this definitely wasn't going to end, you know, tomorrow. But we're a really small marketing team. And so with that, we're able to adjust very, very, very, very quickly. We can change basically our entire marketing mix. And our kind of creatives and messaging we put out, you know, in less than a week, so we can be very nimble, which is which was kind of to our benefit, at the time, and even now.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:12:26)Yeah, and I think within every industry and especially within healthcare, making those adjustments, sort of on a dime, and being really quick about it and listening to what was going on. Because as you said, we didn't know how long this would last and it's it's still technically going on. And for I was definitely in the same boat, as you were, you know, at the beginning, it's okay, well, will it be two weeks? Will it be a month will you know Will this be over by the beginning of 2021. And it wasn't, and it was important to just listen to listen to the news, listen to healthcare experts about how we should all be managing the pandemic and staying safe. So I think that that would have had a really big impact on some of the messaging for campaigns. And, and making sure to always adjust and not just stick to one thing that might have worked previously, but but didn't work in this in the current global state. Alex, I'm interested to know, and you kind of touched upon this a little bit earlier about reaching healthcare providers and some of the audiences that you use, and I'm interested to know what direction you've taken with your team to sort of best optimize your advertising efforts and drive the greatest impact to your audience. So you did mention, you know, educating that audience and having the right messaging. But one big thing would be healthcare compliance, how has Eko Health navigated the compliance regulations and stayed strategic in reaching its its audience throughout the pandemic.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:14:06)Starting from a compliancy angle, all of our technology on both the hardware and the software side is all FDA cleared, and saw HIPAA and compliant and cryptid SOC 2 compliant, you know, we have that box checked from day one. So, from kind of that angle, it wasn't an issue during the summer, especially working with professionals and providers, right, who want to make sure their customer, their customers, the patient, data is secure. So we've always had that box checked, and we always do. But at that time, you know, in even today, it's just making that message very prominent. So on our website in messaging, just as kind of like making them feel that sense of security. And even so backing up, kind of like to the beginning of how we've often miser campaigns and different things that we might have done. So like our business, we grew tremendously during the pandemic on both our b2c and b2b side, you know, we even closed our Series C in November of 2020. Like I was higher 40 ish, and now we're close to 150. So growth happened. And it is difficult to say, I mean, it's a weird thing for me, just because hundreds of 1000s of businesses around the world really took a hit due to COVID. And, you know, it was just an interesting blessing in disguise that we were able to act and be that partner and then kind of provide our technology to benefit professionals around the world. And so as I mentioned, before, you know, 100% of our marketing was focused on helping this professional on the frontlines. All of our advertising emphasize our wireless stethoscope technology, the ability to screen patients safely while wearing PPE and protective equipment. And yes, as we talked about, for like, we missed his chest, like every other day, like we were throwing out tons of different messages to see what resonated, being super helpful and transparent. But something that we really unlocked net new during COVID was content marketing, we were fortunate to have a handful of customers on the front lines that were willing to be interviewed for marketing collateral about their experience working during COVID, and how our technology has helped them. Our blog went from being kind of this passive place where some people kind of hang out, but really not really, too, with content marketing being one of our top five revenue drivers and traffic drivers for e-commerce business. And so we were able to use new platforms and placements, you know, speaking to StackAdapt, I mean, the native display ads to really drive performance of our content marketing efforts to our provider audience, and also paid social does well, specifically when it comes to content marketing. And then also beyond that, you know, partnering with some organizations or doing more endemic things can blogging, co-thought leadership, using influencers and ambassadors to our to be able to kind of help educate and show these messages of safety and how our technology helps them screen patients.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:17:13)This idea of thought leadership, and doing that through blogs and telling customer stories, was that something that was, you know, always a big focus for your team, or was that something that you've really honed in on now, and you've seen a lot of impact driven from that.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:17:30)We've been fortunate at Eko to have a really strong clinical bench, from our chief medical officer to the clinical team in the medical affairs team. And they have and continue to be an amazing marketing asset to us. Like we have weekly meetings with our clinical team, because we're always trying to be, again, that partner, that educational resource to providers who have to use a stethoscope and who have to Oskol taping is what it's, you know, the buzz is where the medical term that's called to, you know, listen to the art of listening to patients body sounds. So it always was kind of an ongoing practice. But with the big increase of our business around COVID, and moving forward, thought leadership and educational content and kind of owning this category of auscultation is something that we're putting a lot of resources behind, you know, everything from improving our SEO rankings in Google and on our website, to using these resources outside of our own properties and being able to partner with industry entities, not to do in the weeds again, too much. But auscultation is kind of, you know, they don't really touch on that for a little bit in medical school, but not as much as needs to be and kind of, were championing the art of the physical exam and how important it is, and continues to be for being able to properly evaluate, diagnose patients.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:19:05)That's actually a perfect transition into the next question mentioning, you know, the value of in-person exams and obviously, throughout the pandemic, that was something that a lot of healthcare providers had to adjust, and a lot of healthcare providers went online and started adopting telemedicine solutions because people didn't have the luxury of going to see their doctor all the time. As you know, a lot of those appointments were reserved for people that were in a more dire situation with their health given the pandemic. So I'm interested to know from you on the topic of of telemedicine and the fact that it's had such an upward trend over the last year and continues to grow. How do you think telemedicine changes healthcare and healthcare marketing going forwards? And do you think that telemedicine has established a sort of norm for post-pandemic? Or do you expect that things will go back to normal? In the future?\n\n\n\nAlex (00:20:11)I love this question. And there's a few different angles I'm going to try to approach this with, and I'm probably gonna go a bit human behaviour and philosophical with this answer, but bear with me, it'll be fun. So, yeah, telehealth, you know, kind of the larger sphere of technologies and everything from the actual telemedicine visit to using telehealth and education. Yes, I mean, telemedicine has become an established norm, Norm post pandemic. And I'll get to that more. So, and yes to the other part of your question, that pandemic has changed healthcare marketing, well, all of marketing for that case moving forward. So why COVID changed human behaviour around the world in an instant, people are staying home more people aren't going out and doing things, they're not commuting to work, seeing friends, in person, etc. You know, there's a bunch of things people are, are doing and what happens when people stay home more. I mean, well, beyond parents going insane balancing work from home and childcare, you know, people spend more time with themselves with their family, more time reflecting on what's important, people discovering new talents and hobbies, you know, yes, I can cook now I don't need to go to the gym, I can workout from home. And there's many examples like these. And so with the individual consumers, you know, spending more time at home advertisers, you know, we must reach our audiences at home, we have to now. I mean, look at the growth of Amazon and HBO and Disney+ and Hulu, and even like this last Black Friday, and Cyber Monday was the biggest ever, and the vast percentage of that shopping was done online. Also, with, you know, the financial implications of COVID, the average consumer has and does have more money to spend in their pockets than ever before. And so how did this impact advertising again, not only from health care, but larger marketing, you saw things like out-of-home inventory prices dropped in most metropolitan areas, you know, no one's really walking in the streets, no one's taking buses, that inventory kind of was sparse. Where's all that money going? I mean, it's going to Ott, connected TV, audio, social media, and even back into just digital display and programmatic display, which kind of was I think losing interest and now is gaining interest. So, back to telemedicine. Yes, it is an established norm. And there will be much continued innovations. You know, humans don't like doing anything that requires more effort than necessary to complete a task. Going into the doctor's office is one of those things. I mean, it's come on, it's a pain, you have to drive somewhere, but a bunch of paperwork, sit in a waiting room with other sick people, you meet with a nurse, you wait for the doctor, I mean, it's like truly an awful experience. Most of the time, it's kind of like going to the DMV or something. It also usually takes additional money outside of what your insurance covers. But you know, we had to do this, it was required, it was the only way we could get health care, especially in the States. But now we don't, you know, now we can meet with a doctor right from an app and less than a minute. But the experience of that visit currently is far from ideal. And this is where I think we will see continued innovation. I mean, back to this physical exam, you know, your routine checkup. It's difficult to do this remotely right now. Sure, you can have a skill to wear way yourself, you can measure your height, you can get a blood pressure cuff. You can give all the information to the doctor on the other end, you can have a q&a with the clinician for them to you know, do their deductive reasoning about all these things, your symptoms, what's wrong, patients honestly expect to be listened to, during their visit with their healthcare professional and their doctor, not only with words, but their body with their heart and lung sounds. You know, this may be my shameless last plug for Eko, but with Eko you can with telehealth and telemedicine are stethoscopes can send body sounds from a patient to a provider, and a real time from anywhere.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:24:13)Pretty much one in three people are looking for or are using at-home diagnostics. So there's all kinds of technology that's coming out that has sort of that feedback and connection to telemedicine. But as you said, there are still certain things that can't be done remotely. But there's a lot of innovation that's happening in healthcare, and we're getting a little bit closer as the years go by. With that said, I think what we can do is take a quick break. And then, when we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about what the future of healthcare marketing looks like, as well as some key strategies for what marketers can use going forwards. We'll take a quick break, and then we'll be right back.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:24:56)As you know, your advertising should be multi-channel. So why isn't your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native, display, video, connected TV, and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers as if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform, according to G2. It's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo@stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:25:32)Welcome back, everybody. As mentioned, we're joined by Alex Romero-Wilson from Eko Health to discuss how healthcare marketers can thrive in the months and years to come. So Alex, looking at the healthcare industry, there has obviously been a huge uptick in digital ad spend compared to what the previous years have looked like. What do you think the contributing factors have been to this? And what are some areas that you think healthcare marketers across the board can focus their efforts on to maximize the impact of their digital ad spend?\n\n\n\nAlex (00:26:08)Yeah, thanks, Matt. Not just healthcare again, but across all industries, digital ad spend has increased in growth year over year, I mean, looking even back at a marketer 2019 was the first year when digital ad spend surpassed 50% of a marketing mix. And everyone was kind of freaking out, like, oh my gosh, and by 2024, you know, digital is expected to be almost 70% of an average marketing mix. And really, I mean, as a marketer, and as a healthcare marketer, I'm not as all surprised. attribution model has gotten better. ad platforms are more sophisticated ad formats are much more engaging, really to match native environments. And, not only that, consumers are spending more and more of their time online from Pandora to TikTok. And as advertisers, we want to reach our consumers where they're spending the most time you know, at the most fundamental level, we're all competing for mindshare. And as marketers, we're constantly evaluating our mix and looking for channels to reach our target audiences that are cost-effective and reach and driving performance. And now, with digital channels being in such demand, we're seeing a much more competition these days. And, as a result, cost increases. Search and paid social are really main culprits. CPCs and CPMs are at record highs. When I look at Google, I'm like, Oh my gosh, what happened, but everyone's competing for this. So fortunately, you know, there's also constantly newer digital channels like video, audio and connected TV that are really appealing to marketers, you know, they kind of are much more cost-effective now, especially as kind of our out of market, prospecting audiences, even like direct on marketplaces, like Amazon, especially if you're a consumer-driven business are really fantastic and driving direct sales. And even looking back on older channels, such as native and display are really becoming very appealing again. And as a healthcare marketer, and performance direct-to-consumer marketer, I'm really looking forwards by looking backwards to old playbooks I'm looking into out of home, like I said, inventory prices down with COVID. And it's still down, it's still at record lows, I mean, you can buy a billboard for not that expensive these days, or bus wraps. Also keeping in mind that people are driving and moving again. So not only are these inventories kind of more cost-effective, there people are seeing them again, now it's kind of the time to act. Also, beyond that, I'm looking at creating in person experiences, of course with COVID-controlled environments with safety in mind, you know, to bring our products to the market, think small pop ups, demo stations and such. I was reading the week, which is one of the weekly magazines that we get in our household and there was a little feature about Amazon, you know how they tested their kind of brick-and-mortar stores. Like within malls, they have kind of like small little pop ups in some malls around the country. And there's kind of like the Amazon Go store and Amazon's actually putting a lot more investment into building these brick and mortars. Because from you know, everything from like return policies, it's kind of the reason they're doing it, they save money, someone comes to the store or try something in person. They know they want it and they know they're spending that money on it versus like online. They're like, maybe if I don't like it, I can return it and return costs for a brand are insane. So it's a little a little in the weeds there but If there and then digitally I'm in, I'm investing more. Again, looking back, I'm more in endemic partnerships, right direct buys, or partnerships with industry outlets, influential blogs, websites and organizations, which were things kind of not only died away, but people were are moving so much more into this programmatic social space. And with the competition, we kind of forgot that these influential places where people are still consuming and the trust is much more there. Like the trust, especially for us in health care. When you say partner with an organization who mirrors a segment of your audience is going after, they're more likely to trust, if your brand is associated with that, then, like a Facebook ad. So it is pretty interesting of kind of how we're moving and investing much more into this space.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:30:48)One additional question on that, because you brought up the point that certain channels are either getting a lot more expensive, or a lot more accessible to spend on, were there any channels that really surprised you over the last year and a half that now Eko is utilizing and finding a lot of success with podcasts and programmatic audio?\n\n\n\nAlex (00:31:08)I've been wanting to test podcast and programmatic audio forever, then it was kind of, you know, in the, in the beginning, it was expensive, and it's kind of when it came to be and you'd have to kind of pervert you know, partner directly with a Spotify or Pandora and you had to be a big brand with a lot of money. You know, it wasn't really accessible. And so and especially with Eko when our products and our technology, and we have an interesting sound demo on our website, sound is our everything, the sounds that matter. So with audio, we're able to create a really engaging audio experience for people to really hear and this early feel what the differences of using our stethoscope technology, like we basically play a real recording of someone using a stethoscope with ambulance noise listening to heart sounds, and you hear like, oh, the ambulance sounds there, I can't really hear anything. And then with the flip of a switch in the shows, like you can hear active noise cancellation Come on, and all of that background noise is gone. So using audio has been really awesome. And it's really not that expensive from a CPM perspective. And what's been surprising is, especially with StackAdapt, we're able to kind of tracked everything from people are visiting our site from hearing the with a look back window to conversions, and it's performed really well. And even beyond that, that direct sale line, our organic search traffic has gone up hugely. And when that happened when we started doing audio, so it's been definitely a really exciting net new channel for us that we were able to unlock.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:33:01)Yeah, and especially with with what Eko is offering, you're almost getting into that experiential territory with programmatic audio, because you're, you know, you're catching listeners, right when they're engaged, but you're also demoing the capabilities of the product, which is, which is pretty cool, if I caught that correctly. And that's what you've been doing. That's, that's a really interesting strategy. And would you recommend for other healthcare marketers to really hone in on things like connected TV and programmatic audio? Would you recommend that as a strategy for somebody in this vertical as well.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:33:39)I would say it would depend on who the healthcare brand and marketer is trying to reach. We're an interesting business that we have a direct e-commerce side of our company and we sell a physical product directly to physicians and physicians by them. So in healthcare in general and in health technology, that's it's a pretty interesting and rare there's not a lot of companies out there who sell both directly to providers of technology that the provider themselves actually buy, they always buy their own stethoscope and then also has a software SaaS b2b side. So you know, if you're a health technology company and you're selling more enterprise audio, you know, may not be the way to go, maybe it will I mean, even today, a customer as a customer, because really, if you want to maximize your impact and your channels that key is to really understand your customers their wants needs pain points as much as possible. Looking at like, who's buying now? What community segments do you understand most and where are these segments? Where are they consuming media? Where do they look for to trust? Where do they are they getting their information from? And then you you cast your line and you fish where the dashed line where the fish are biting and go deep? Um, it's pretty interesting. And you really kind of need those go-to-market light strategies for all of your segments, because there'll be different for us audio is great, because we have, like, you know, there's so many nurses and providers out there. And we know that audio and podcasts are a place where they really can actively consume content, which, you know, for us, it makes a lot of sense.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:35:18)One thing that you mentioned a little bit earlier was, especially when informing your marketing strategies, sort of looking back to look forward and look back at what channels worked in the past, look at what ones are gonna work in the future? What would you say, with all this in mind are the biggest takeaways from the last year and a half that healthcare marketers can learn? And further to tha, how significant of an impact do you think the pandemic had on how healthcare marketing can thrive in the future?\n\n\n\nAlex (00:35:53)Yeah, I mean, the pandemic has changed everything, and will continue to change everything, as we kind of talked about before, consumer behaviour has changed. And we're seeing that even in places that are opening up more, you know, my wife and I, we live in Texas, which is very different from California and San Francisco. And even here, those consumer tendencies has changed, people are spending much more time at home and on their devices. And I think we'll continue to see much more of that as technology continues to be much more of an integrated piece of our life. And people are spending more of their time online, from their phones to their computers to consuming content. So I have some buckets. So my biggest marketing takeaways from the last year and a half, the first bucket is really regarding customers and community. Actively listen to understand, from the beginning, we were able to quickly pivot our marketing, because we listened. And we understood the immediate pains and the needs that frontline providers needed. And with that, be a partner as the brand, you're not just selling something, you need to really partner with your communities. And as that give a voice to your customers and your community, as marketers, we, especially internally, but we are our customers greatest voice or their loudspeaker, their advocate, customer-centric marketing has never been more important than it is now. If you are a brand and you come across in a Deaf tone, then it's not a good book, and it will not go well for you. So kind of regarding marketing strategy, it's really about for us, you know, go where the fish are biting and cast or line deep, go to your customers, communities that you understand most. And focus your efforts there to really drive performance and drive a better brand affiliation with your brand to those customers. And then also beyond going deep, go broad more to understand, to be able to test to be able to gather data, and then apply those learnings, again, to your kind of go deep segments and then you continue to expand those go deep segments don't go into a segment you don't know just because it's there, you know, focus where you need to focus regarding advertising, diversify, diversify, diversify, diversify your mix. Sure you've had some great channels, but continuing to look and explore. And what's next from a marketer doesn't always mean what's new. Right? There's always new things like tick tock and clubhouse and this and that, which are exciting. And there are brands specifically like large consumer brands that can use those channels successfully. But for people who work in healthcare, and for me who work with providers, I mean, to be honest, the targeting is terrible, or it doesn't exist really at all. And so, again, why I say those are new and shiny. But for me, that's not so what's next. I mean, for me, what's next is, again, looking back to old things like out of home creating experiences. Because by going deep, we know that when someone when a provider professional tries our technology in person, that they really don't hesitate to buy it. So we do experiences, we look at things like out of home, we look back at buying endemically and through partnerships. And then the last biggest takeaway, I mean, even looking more at myself and behavior, it's, you know, take nothing for granted. We in the beginning, we didn't think this would last long and it's kind of changing reality. We've lived in San Francisco for a decade, and we relocated to Texas because we can work remote and be closer to our families. And we know that really evaluate and things that are important. And also, you're spending more time with yourself and your family and more with you, and know that you are your greatest ally. And then the last kind of takeaway, you know, again, not marketing, but regarding life, as, you know, be present, it's so difficult, especially many of us, many of us listening to this podcast, probably work remote. And it's very easy to with Zoom fatigue, or Google or whatever anybody uses and to, you know, be on a meeting and multitask on another monitor, and you're going from thing to thing, and everything just seems much more transactional these days. But it doesn't have to be, you know, be present be like you're in the office. It's a mindset, just because your environments changed. And the behaviour of working has changed, doesn't mean that the relationships you create, even virtually have to really be that different from how they would be in person and just be present.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:40:54)This pretty much puts us at our time for episodes, I think that was a great note to end on. And on behalf of myself and our listeners. Thank you for joining us on today's episode. And to any marketers who are working in the healthcare space or looking to test out this vertical, we hope that you took away some key insights that will help you succeed in your upcoming campaigns. Until then, thanks for listening.\n\n\n\nOutro (00:41:18)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/cannabis-marketing-campaigns#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/cannabis-marketing-campaigns"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"How to Cultivate Thriving Cannabis Marketing Campaigns","datePublished":"2021-11-10T22:48:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/cannabis-marketing-campaigns"},"wordCount":5515,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/cannabis-marketing-campaigns#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240516174247/peter_reitano_stackadapt_podcast_s2e7.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["cannabis","niche marketing","podcast","regulated industries"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at how advertisers can create winning campaigns in sensitive industries, like cannabis marketing. \n\n\n\nPeter Reitano | Founder, Abacus Agency \n\n\n\nAmika Evans | Sales Director, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Cannabis is no longer just cannabis. It's genuinely a lifestyle product in the same way that any other lifestyle product people want to showcase their personal identities through. And so that consumer-oriented approach demands a bit more sophisticated communications and marketing strategy and plan. So find those demographics, build that long-term loyalty, and build out the brand growth.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:31)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape. The How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:59)While cannabis is a highly regulated industry, in 2020, sales grew by 67%. In this episode, we're joined by Peter Reitano from Abacus Agency and Amika Evans from StackAdapt. To learn how using compliant tactics and leveraging emerging technology can help advertisers thrive, even when working in sensitive verticals like cannabis. Hey, everyone, welcome to today's episode. My name is Matt Everett. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. And I'm also the Education Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, I'm joined by Peter Reitano from Abacus Agency and Amika Evans from StackAdapt. To talk about all things related to sensitive verticals, Peter and Amika, it's great to have both of you on to kick things off. What I'm going to do here is pass it over to the two of you to tell us a little bit about yourself, including how long you've been in the industry and what you consider to be your areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nPeter (00:01:51)So my name is Peter Reitano. I've been building products and brands for the better part of 15 years, either through my agency work or through companies that I've started external to that a lot of kind of nutraceuticals functional health products. Most recently, say over the last five years, I've done a lot of work in cannabis. My agency Abacus was lucky enough to get involved with cannabis pre-legalization here in Canada. And we work with all of the major LPs. And then we span out a company called High Noon, which was a cannabis CPG company, you know, producing a variety of different skews all in the Canadian market. I'm also part of a company called Dodi, which is a US California-based brand with Marshawn Lynch, we sell blunts in the state. And then I'm also a part of a company called Gwella. And you can find that through meetgwella.com. And that is a company that's producing consumer brands in the psychedelic space. So I do a lot of work in the, you know, heavily regulated emerging markets world, which creates a lot of interesting challenges given you can't market and brand in the same way that you can if you were just, you know, if you had another standard CPE, CPG, or DTC product that you're advertising on Facebook. So my career has definitely gone in my background is marketing branding, kind of acquisition for, you know, all sorts of brands, e-commerce, but I've got a particular kind of specialty in heavily regulated, kind of quote-unquote advice industries like cannabis and psychedelics.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:40)Yeah. Thanks so much, Peter. Amika, a little bit about you.\n\n\n\nAmika (00:03:45)My name is Amika Evans. I have been working in the programmatic space for about 10 years now. It found me, I did not find it. But I love it. I love programmatic. Keeps me definitely on my toes here. So, of course, I work at StackAdapt. I've been a StackAdapt for three and a half plus years. So I hold an area of expertise in a few verticals. One of them, of course, being cannabis. Otherwise, I would not be on this call today, I would think. But you know, I'm a fully-faceted type of individual. I would like to pride myself on just having expertise in several different verticals. And yeah, so that's basically who I am in a nutshell.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:30)Thanks so much for Amika. To kick things off. Peter, I want to pass the torch over to you because back in 2020 pre-pandemic, almost like a month before everything happened, you and I had a chance to sit down at StackDay in Florida, and we were talking about the present and the future of the cannabis industry and one thing that you mentioned to me at the time was that the industry was sort of going through this slump as cannabis companies were closing or being bought out. So kind of in hindsight Looking at February 2022, even in that first year of the pandemic, how did you see that cannabis companies and the cannabis industry as a whole was reacting to these changes? And did the slump continue? Or did a lot of these companies have to adapt with the pandemic?\n\n\n\nPeter (00:05:17)Yeah, I mean, at the time, it was, and there are two parts of this, looking at the industry, right, there's the kind of public markets, which is where the vast majority of capital was raised in Canada, and then there's, you know, just private businesses, and you know, what's going on in both and what's going on in the consumers mind, you know, so I think that common was largely around the public markets, we'd seen a huge kind of hype cycle, these kind of enormous valuations and tons of money being raised. And then, you know, massive consolidation, and frankly, the rubber hit the road where these businesses had to start making money and making brands and they couldn't just, you know, build out enormous fields of cannabis and kind of promised future revenue, they actually had start making it, which is, you know, where, where we saw the kind of the some somewhat of a backlash in the public markets, but I think it was, it was enormously healthy, and for the businesses that were, you know, producing brands and doing things that consumers liked, you know, that only got better. We're seeing great brands, and, you know, a lot of interesting moves, you know, some brands, for example, Canopy has been busy buying out a lot of the top brands, so they just got bought out Ace Valley, which, you know, is was a pretty big brand, that they bought it up for a lot of money in it, you know, essentially signaling the Canopy as a big bank balance that can't build their own brand. So they're, you know, buying, buying people's brands, who can build brands like Ace Valley. So there's still a lot of kind of room for growth. And a lot of interesting kind of moves being made a lot of a lot of great brands that have actually have intrinsic value, like an Ace Valley, you know, there'll be a bunch more purchases and consolidations like that, and there's still a bunch of great people in this space, I would say as well, like, you know, over the last couple of years, focus certainly on the public market side is switched away from Canada into the US now we're seeing more and more kind of liberalization, we've seen more states come online, New York. And so tremendous amount of excitement, and, you know, kind of new businesses popping up and all of these states, so tons of growth potential, south of the border, and that's, you know, we're talking 10x opportunity, just from population size. So tons of growth, tons of opportunity, we're seeing kind of Europe come online, more and more, the European market is largely medical, but it will shift to wreck some of the continent, Portugal, places like that. So we're really still in the first innings of cannabis, you know, cannabis kind of had its hype cycle, but there's just an enormous amount of growth to be had, as the rest of the world comes online, and we start to see like real quality brands being established.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:14)Peter, another point that I wanted to ask you about is, you know, again, in that conversation that we had, almost two years ago, you mentioned that a big play for a lot of these brands was focusing on awareness, and you know, really just building the brands getting in front of consumers as much as they can, rather than focusing on driving conversions. Has this changed at all in the last two years? Or is it still sort of the same case, in your opinion?\n\n\n\nPeter (00:08:38)It's just hard to drive for conversions when you've got it certainly in Canada, because you're either buying through the OCS or in-store. So there's limited ways you can track all the way through to purchase, you know, we do a bunch of stuff, we you know, we obviously run ads on StackAdapt native networks, we do a lot of Snapchat, you know, which allows for cannabis advertising. There's a boat. So there's a bunch of stuff within those platforms, but it is largely kind of consumer awareness building kind of content marketing style advertising versus, you know, driving to a location and, you know, tracking a conversion all the way through to the end. It's just, it's just very difficult in the space to do that.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:09:27)And, Amika, I'm also really interested to hear from you. And, you know, I'm wondering what kind of changes did you notice in the industry from the beginning of the pandemic to now and how well do you think some of these brands that you've worked with have adapted over the last two years?\n\n\n\nAmika (00:09:43)Yeah, so from my point of view, as you know, being a part of a DSP, what I've noticed was that at the beginning of the pandemic, the change was real. And, basically, what I mean there is that as a result of the consumer habits shifting in the industry, the industry itself had no choice but to react. And they did such, I think, pretty well. And pretty smoothly. So what I've observed in the last year just being you know, on this side of the pole, as part of a DSP was that SSPs were rapidly increasing their supply, to be able to yield and just garner some more of that, you know, that budget, and just have a play in the cannabis industry. You know, with the stay-at-home order. Let's be really frank, people were gravitating to things that were, you know, just recreational at this point, if it was not medicinal, it was recreational. So it was really cool to see such a rapid shift and a really impactful pivot.\n\n\n\nPeter (00:10:48)Yeah, I'd echo that. I mean, we, I think the, the sales statistics speak for themselves during the pandemic. I mean, we definitely saw growth from the, from the consumers, people consuming more, more recreationally people consuming different types of skews. So, you know, I think that was the general trend anyway with kind of cultural normalization, there's, you know, high consumption, but certainly being locked at home, we saw vice purchases, kind of go through the roof alcohol, as well, obviously. But you know, cannabis definitely, definitely benefited from that.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:11:22)You know, I was gonna actually ask both of you next about some of these biggest areas of growth that you've noticed in the industry, but I think both of you kind of hit the nail on the head there. So I think what we could do is shift a little bit and talk more about really what this podcast is about is advertising trends. And I'm interested to know from both of you, what advertising trends you've observed with some of these brands in the cannabis industry over the last two years as it's continued to boom, so yeah, Peter, I'll start with you about some of these trends, then a Amika, I'm interested to hear your thoughts as well.\n\n\n\nPeter (00:11:55)Yeah, I mean, you know, aside from the the stuff that I think we talked about last time, there's some really interesting plays going on that I like, there's a cool platform in Ontario, I think it's expanding out called toke text that leverages SMS. So basically, the value prop is, by the way, used to by, you know, off your dealer. And so you can you get a text, you want to try this product, it's, it's synced up with your local store, you can say, yes, you can go and pick it up. It's kind of it's very seamless. So there's lots of little platforms coming up like that, you know, aside from this, there's in-store stuff going on where, you know, you can walk into a store, and you know, on those kind of informational panels, you can buy sponsored posts on there, things like that. But you know, it's, we're not seeing any traction on Facebook, still a Google, these are all still completely off limits. So in terms of digital platforms, our spend is largely kind of native programmatic, Snapchat, some Twitter, but you have to be an LP to be able to get on Twitter. And then some kind of cool, we've seen a lot of brands do some cool, interesting, organic plays on TikTok, because their organic reach is so high there. So you don't need to advertise. You obviously need to be careful about what you're doing the type of content or the regulations still apply. Your tick tock you even see like fully Green Market operators on there, which is interesting. There's kind of a little bit, there's a little bit of a gray zone, which I think is probably going to shut down. But, certainly, from a reach perspective, if you can get the content, right, TikTok seems to be a pretty decent platform for people within the regs. So yeah, that's generally what I'm what I'm seeing in terms of channel mixes.\n\n\n\nAmika (00:13:54)So it goes without even saying that the shift in consumption as a consumer was also something that, you know, cannabis retailers and brands also have to consider. So, you know, just moving away from those traditional means, such as, like, out of home and print, some linear TV for that matter, and going up just to echo what Peter just said, you know, more into digital programmatic, and some social channels as well. This is exactly what we've observed. And some of the trends that you know, the in the vertical itself is taking on as well. What's really interesting is that I also to echo what Peter was saying just about some of the other, you know, just little niche companies popping up. I find that, you know, they're trying to make it as such that cannabis users are not kind of blacklisted anymore, but instead kind of embracing you know, the consumption that is King Cannabis and coming up with, you know, products and services to support that. And, you know, it's funny that we're having this conversation today because my cousin, he actually has a blog called blunt talks. And, apparently, there's a company called IX experience high b&b. And what this company is, is effectively an Airbnb is a company that sources Airbnb that are cannabis friendly. So it's very interesting and how the shift has been taken on, you know, of course, from our perspective in what is advertising, but also from a larger perspective, to just kind of, you know, except and make, you know, cannabis a lot more acceptable.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:15:41)That's a good point, and Amika that, you know, kind of the the feeling around cannabis and cannabis advertising. It's definitely lightened up a lot. Especially since legalization in Canada. You know, it's not as he said this blacklisted things like a lot of businesses are starting to adapt to it. And people are a lot more friendly to it as well. And one other question I did want to ask kind of on the on the advertising note is something, especially StackAdapt, Amika, I'm sure you've you've been in the loop on a lot of this as well as is this notion of emerging technologies and contextual advertising, especially with its use case in sensitive verticals like cannabis, it's much more comprehensive and, and safer for advertisers to utilize this technology. So I'm interested to know, from both of you what role you think that these new solutions that are coming out, have in the future success of advertising in a sensitive vertical like cannabis, and does technology help us navigate compliance better?\n\n\n\nAmika (00:16:44)That's a great question. So with regards to, you know, the emerging technology, and some of the solutions and how we can help navigate compliance, you know, I think anyone in the industry, you know, when it comes to online market and such, everyone just wants reassurance, whether it's the brand, the DSP, this the SSP, what have you. So what I've observed is that, you know, compliance packages are, you know, the most clutch thing right now. And I think that's one thing that, you know, us as a DSPS stack that we do very well in ensuring that we have these preset packages for verticals, sensitive verticals such as cannabis. But Further to that, you know, people love the idea of a private marketplace deal because, you know, prior premium inventory, be you know, it's the placement of the ads the N-word again, were reassured that you know, the ad is placed on a placement that is acceptable for the output to the consumer. So, these are some of the ways in which I see the emerging tech and for, you know, a sensitive verticals such as cannabis.\n\n\n\nPeter (00:17:57)Yeah, I love the use of the word clutch. And, you know, I echo the same thing. I mean, it's, you know, it's all about risk mitigation, especially in a vertical like this. I mean, if you're advertising a new, you know, advertising to the wrong age group, etc, etc, if you do get pulled up, there are quite serious ramifications to it in, in cannabis. You know, forget about fines, you can lose your use, if you're an LP, you can lose your license. So, you know, the ability to target age groups and all of that kind of stuff. And, you know, look, locate all of it helps, you know, mitigate the risk of running ads, which you know, there are a bunch in cannabis.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:18:40)Perfect. If you know what, I think with that in mind, this is the perfect time to take a quick break. And when we come back, I think it would make sense for us to look at the future of advertising for sensitive verticals like cannabis and really uncover new strategies that advertisers can use to win in this industry. So to both of our guests, thank you again, and we'll take a quick break and when we come back, we'll speak to the future of cannabis advertising.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:19:10)You know, your advertising should be multi-channel, so why isn't your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native, display, video, connected TV, and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers as if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform, according to G2. It's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:19:43)Welcome back, everyone. In the second half of the episode, I'd really love to provide our listeners with tactical strategy that they can apply to their upcoming campaigns. cannabis sales are increasing legalization movement is growing stronger. So Peter and Amika, what are some tips and best practices that you can recommend for advertisers in this space, whether we're looking at things like audience strategy, creative optimizations?\n\n\n\nAmika (00:20:08)What have you, when it comes to audience strategies, especially in the realm of cannabis, and you know, being that is such a competitive vertical? I think, you know, we have to have an informed them to build a really strong awareness strategy, right? Get the consumer to connect with the brand, build brand recognition and affinity. That way, word of mouth, of course, I'm guilty. And yeah, and really just build that upper funnel very well, further down the funnel, you know, getting into consideration, you know, getting people to understand different product types, what's available out there, what can help. And then, of course, you know, we want to convert, get them to the store, capture them, attract them to make an online sale to get into the store, build foot traffic, and what have you there to really kind of tie in the full funnel strategy when it comes to this vertical.\n\n\n\nPeter (00:21:03)Yeah, I mean, I like all of those tactical kind of recommendations. I mean, really, the way I think about cannabis, now I'm trying to be much, you know, like, there are limitations in cannabis. But, you know, generally, it's a CPG product, and you need to kind of think about it in a CPG way, you need to build something that consumers, you know, love and speak their language, find them in the places where they, where they exist. And, you know, of course, there's kind of platform restrictions, and all of that kind of stuff and things we need to think about from a regulatory standpoint, but I think people get a little bit carried away sometimes with you know, the hacks rather than just building quality, you know, I can think of a few examples off the top of my head of quality brands that you know, have been building for like three years and now they're reaping returns because they've stuck with specific they've identified a consumer they're built something that they love and they've kind of built out content around that consistently. Like there's a retail chain in BC called Burb, amazing branding, amazing partnerships, amazing collaborations, all with the consumer in mind, that's, you know, somewhat lifestyle artsy music in Toronto. Superette, I think, stands out from a retail standpoint, incredible visuals, they know who their consumer is, they speak their language, you know, they kind of talking on Twitter, in memes. I mean, it's, it's, it's just quality is quality marketing, you know, quality, visuals, quality content, working out how the consumer is, and you know, building that relationship over a long period of time. And then you kind of you take that thinking, and you then deploy it through the channels and the kind of tactics that, that you that you're able to which, you know, America did a good job speaking about that kind of, you know, cannabis is no longer just cannabis, it's not like just weed, it's genuinely a lifestyle product, you know, that, you know, in the same way that any other lifestyle product, people want to showcase their personal identities through it. And so that consumer-orientated approach demands kind of a bit more of a sophisticated communications and marketing strategy and plan. You know, so find those demographics, build that long-term loyalty, build out the brand, growth, all of that kind of stuff is really, you know, we'll see influence we're seeing influencers more and more come online in cannabis. Now. I mean, that was somewhat impossible. And people didn't really do that before in the influencer world, but now you can, you can partner with influencers, you can do brand new collaborations. So we're seeing all of these kinds of opportunities, open up in a more in a more meaningful way. So, you know, a lot more kind of, of the, I don't want to just word traditional, but a lot more of those tactics are kind of coming online. To your point before, it's, you know, a lot less in the shadows a lot more mainstream. And so that comes with it, this kind of, you know, this consumer orientated approach that works in every other category.\n\n\n\nAmika (00:24:14)And to touch on that point, Peter, I love that you kind of lightly touched on creatives because we have to call out, you know, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable and we've observed in the last couple of years in the space, right, so what I find is that it's such a complicated behind the scenes cannabis is so complicated, you know, just the regulations, the sanctions, etc. But the creatives are just so simple, you know, for that matter, because that's what regulation deems, you know, to create an environment when we are promoting cannabis are digitally that it is a very simple imagery and copy, you know, delivery available same day, you know, we're not, you know, a record store, stuff like that very simple and stuff to avoid, you know, attempting to influence adults are not consumers to try it, having the product in there having people in the imagery, all of these things, you know, are deemed as unacceptable in the realm of creatives when it comes to, you know, the cannabis.\n\n\n\nPeter (00:25:23)They are, I would say, though, as well, you know, they are, but they like there's a gray zone there. And it's sometimes it's kind of Who Dares Wins. And obviously, I'm not encouraging people to kind of break any rules. But, you know, there's some people on Instagram that have a man, you know, obviously not going to call anybody out, but there's some amazing Instagram handles that definitely have lifestyle pictures, even though you're not meant to, and they're verified, so they kind of get away with it. But some of the profiles that get blacklisted for for, you know, seemingly no reason. So there's, there's still this kind of weird shifting territory, with cannabis where rules, like certainly on the platform side, you know, aren't very evenly applied, and some people can take risks and get away with it, some people don't. So there's a kind of like, you know, risk appetite assessment that every brand wants to take, and some people will want to be completely by the books, and some people will have a bit of flexibility there. I remember one campaign we did a year and a half ago, where we, you know, obviously we can't ship we, you know, we were not allowed to do kind of lifestyle, people. So, but we want to kind of look to hint at it. And so we we did a campaign with a brand that was talking about people's experiences with cannabis, and we kind of blurred them out we pixelated the person and made them these big kind of pixels instead of a person. But you had the audio coming through kind of also talking about this weird stigma, kind of highlighting that stigma but, you know, getting it through in a clever, but within the regulations way. So stuff like that. There's a bunch of there's a bunch of people out there kind of thinking in interesting ways to push push the creative envelope without kind of breaking any rules.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:27:13)Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much. I think that Amika, you brought up this point that, especially on the creative side, there are a lot of things for these advertisers to navigate. And I was actually speaking with somebody else within the industry. But last week, they were talking about this notion of driving the first click and piquing curiosity for your consumers. And I think a lot of cannabis advertising, it's truly about that is just piquing the interest and having something that it's so subtle, and yet it could, you know, it's going to drive them to that landing page, and it's going to get them interested in that product, because they want to know what it's about. Because the language, you have to be so careful with it, you have to be so careful with the imagery, you put in those ads, that it will, you know, inevitably drive people and drive awareness for your brand.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:28:06)So I think, you know, based on where we're at in the episode, I am interested to know, as we close this out, you don't how as the industry continues to grow in the coming years, I mean, we're still at the very early stages of this booming industry. What do each of you think the future looks like for advertisers navigating in this space? And are there any key takeaways that you can offer to our listeners and things that they should be paying attention to, as we head into 2022 and subsequent years as this industry grows?\n\n\n\nPeter (00:28:41)I mean, I kind of alluded to it before, I think we'll see less and less kinds of restrictions, and more and more acceptance. Now. You know, in the meantime, you have to think very kind of, you know, within this tactical kind of box, but, you know, we'll see more and more states come online, eventually, we're going to see complete federal legalization in the US and that that'll be the signal to, you know, every platform, Facebook, Instagram, whatever, you know, allowing these types of ads. And so, you know, over time, I just think we'll see more and more liberalization and more and more options, and this treated like it should be treated, which is like any other consumer, recreational slash medical wellness product. You know, we're now seeing sports stars talk more openly about it. I mean, the one we're working on with Marshawn Lynch that, you know, is one of the first athletes to openly talk about cannabis and launch a brand and so we'll see more and more of this type of stuff. You know, come online, more and more acceptance and more and more, more and more options.\n\n\n\nAmika (00:29:44)Yeah, Peter basically took the words right out of my mouth. I couldn't agree more. I think that, you know, we're gonna get a little bit more lacks as an industry. It's booming. I think the recognition that people read Can I didn't see that. But from a technical standpoint, it'd be really interesting to see, you know, some of the brands and marketers and agencies alike leaning more into their CRM list. Because a lot of these sites are deemed for people to sign up, log in, what have you. So leaning into that a little bit more and doing audience look alike expansion for that, for that type of tactic. So this is how I see it going in the future from a technical standpoint, but totally agree with everything Peter said, he nailed it.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:30:32)That pretty much puts us at time for our episode. So I wanted to thank both Peter and Amika for your inputs over the last 30 minutes and 20 marketers who are working in this space or looking to test out on this highly regulated vertical. I hope that you also learned a lot today and will take this strategy into your future campaigns. So until then, thanks for listening.\n\n\n\nOutro (00:30:56)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/driving-the-first-click-with-creatives#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/driving-the-first-click-with-creatives"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Driving the First Click with Creatives","datePublished":"2021-12-01T13:30:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/driving-the-first-click-with-creatives"},"wordCount":8203,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/driving-the-first-click-with-creatives#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517083206/denis_melnik_stackadapt_podcast_s2e8.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["creative","interactive ads","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss innovative ways marketers can drive the first click on their creatives, from engagement tactics to creative strategy.\n\n\n\nDenis Melnik | Head of Growth, JC+CO Growth Accelerants Inc.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)And then diving into measuring from first click standpoint and elite ROI standpoint, to understand which campaigns are the best and driving that initial click that we talked about. And then which ones are driving a better lead form submits that then become buyers. What is really the relationship between the clicks to leads to sales to repeat sales, and knowing what your conversion rates are, what your optimal costs are, and that's super important to know your metrics.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:37)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape to how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:05)Hey everyone, welcome to today's episode. My name is Matt Evered. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, I'm joined by Denis Melnick, from JC+CO Growth Accelerants to talk about the very exciting topic of how marketers can more effectively drive the first click with their creatives. Denis, you've been a longtime friend of StackAdapt. And it's great to have you on the episode today. Before we get started with the bulk of the content, though, I'm wondering if you'd help our listeners get a little bit of background on you. And, you know, get an understanding of your experience and areas of expertise within the digital advertising space.\n\n\n\nDenis (00:01:45)Hey, Matt. Sure, thank you for having me. It's my first ever podcast. So I should say I'm a bit nervous. But let's try it out. So a few things on me, I like to say that I've started. I've started from the right-hand side, back in 2011. So, myself and Vitaly, who is a co-founder of StackAdapt, we're actually colleagues from an agency called Ad Parlor. And this was my first gig out of university. I knew nothing about Facebook. I don't think I even used it. But I knew there was something going on on Facebook where people advertise on the right-hand side with those little, I think it was 100 by 100 pixel, little images. So I joined the agency, knowing very little about the the metrics and how to run ads. But they basically taught me everything. And so the tally was more one of my colleagues, as I said, and few years later, he he left and he said he was going to do something else. And I think I heard about the word programmatic from him. He was the first person that I've heard the word programmatic from. But anyways, back to just things that I that I do. And currently, I'm at JC and I’m the head of performance and analytics. We work with D2C, e-commerce brands, primarily who use Shopify platform, but not necessarily, but most of them are. We're Shopify Plus, partner, we're also Klaviyo Gold partner. And we basically help companies with three main pillars of execution and growth. So we work on a platform site, so we help them with the website, the setup, the configurations of all the different apps, make sure the site is great on mobile, that it works well. It's fast, responsive, and so on. And then the second pillar is email, lead gen, SMS. And then third one is paid media. And so those are the three main pillars that we focus on. And we kind of serve as an agency arm slash consultants in the space. So it's very partnership-based relationship that we have with our clients. So we're not very traditional agency model. In that sense. We take on a lot of execution, not only consulting, advising by actually executing and so I lead all the paid side of things plus a bit of creative.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:21)Yeah, it's definitely interesting to that's actually a new piece of information on the, I guess the history of StackAdapt. And where, you know, Vitale was before, and it's, it's cool to hear about that, but it's also, you said 2011, I mean, jeez, that's, that's been, what, 10 years to see kind of the progression of programmatic to being this, you know, media giant that it is now. So it's probably been kind of interesting to watch, watch play out in the last 10 years. So, but yeah, you know, we're really happy to have you on the episode and you and I were talking a couple of weeks ago, and I think we landed on the fact that you had come to the StackAdapt office, you know, pre-pandemic and 2019. And I got a chance to meet you in person then. But you know, here we are on today's episode. And with today's topic, you know, we're going to be talking about what it takes to drive that first click for advertisers and sort of in sequence of the podcast, we, in our, in our previous episode that we did on cannabis advertising, this actually came up quite a bit to talk about, you know, how do we build creatives that are eye-catching, and you know, ones that are compelling speak to your larger brand. And this really gets me thinking about, you know, what that psychology is behind building an impactful creative, that not only speaks to your brand, but causes users to really opt into the service or product that you're offering, and then inevitably convert, because most of the time, that's the goal that a lot of advertisers are going off, too. So with that said, you know, I do have a number of questions I've prepared for today, but I can already tell the conversations going to gonna get really interesting, and I'm very excited to get into it. And with the focus being on, you know, talking about things like measurement, attribution, best practices, and as always unlocking as many insights as possible to help our listeners on the podcast, take away key strategies that they can apply to their upcoming campaigns and truly thrive. So, you know, again, very excited to have you on the episode. And I think a great starting place here would be the the first question that I had prepared was this notion of pain points, I think that's always a starting point. And, you know, there's two sides of the coin, when we talk about pain points, we talk about, you know, number one, the pain points that are experienced by the advertisers themselves, when they're, you know, trying to figure out the best way to build these creatives that are going to be eye-catching. But further to that. And number two is, you know, how advertisers once they don't want to crack the code, how they can best address the pain points of the audience, and that creative to start to get some clients. So I'd love to get your initial thoughts on this. And then we can take the conversation from there.\n\n\n\nDenis (00:07:13)Yeah, sounds good. So I'll start with the first one. pain points by advertisers. So I think there are at least three major ones, which I think a lot of listeners could probably attest to. And, I think first one is speed, speed in terms of how fast can we move from the idea sparked by other somebody's gut feeling or somebody is looking at data, and they think that we need to move quicker with this type of creative with this type of approach with this type of concept. So speed is number one. The second one is the need to have variety of messaging angles, probably done towards to the three main customer segments that are identified by the brand or advertiser. And there's also a multiplication of consumer journey stages that you want to appropriately funnel those messages to. And third one is, you also want to test variety of formats, and platforms and channels. So maybe the platforms and channels is also like another, you know, a multiplier that gets added to the complexity of this. But I think the speed, the variety of messages and variety of variety of Journey stages, and then a variety of formats are the three main ones. But Let's also not forget about just the general objectives of what those creatives should be doing, because I feel like this is a main, you know, complication, sort of with creatives is that I see that a lot more brands and people when they, when they create something, they try to squeeze so many things into one. And they try to really make sure that this creative, works as effectively as possible, meaning like yields positive return on adspend, or, you know, it not only drives the clicks, and not only drives the views, but also drives the sales and lead form, you know, fill out. And so it's it's also that come to complexity of not only identifying the objectives, the stages, the formats, but also, you know, the different angles of messaging and that something that we can kind of talk about in a few moments, I think, because that's addressing the question number two, which is, what do you what like, I think you asked like how, you know, advertisers can best address the pain point Have their audience. So, like, how did they actually do it? I always think of it as like, I tried to simplify things. And I always, you know, try to draw stuff on paper or using some kind of like mind mapping. So it wasn't I always think of it as a matrix. I think you start with two or three key segments, in by segments, I mean, not only your just general concept of these other people in certain age group, they have a certain household and like income, and they have like kids or no kids, but you kind of think of segments as, what are those people's main pain points? And how can you maybe put them together and bundle them. And then the pain points are also can be explained as, you know, their pain point can be functional, but they're also other pain points can be emotional, there can be status related pain points that you're trying to solve? You can. A lot of it is lifestyle-specific. And a lot of brands say, Well, we're like a lifestyle brand. But what really is the lifestyle brand, like we're real pain point is solving is status, prestige, you know, feelings off something, I like to think of pain points is also like, what do you want, you know, your segment to feel at the end of the day, when they use the product? Like, what is it feeling that you want to elicit. And then for, for the pains, you also have some like things that are gonna like drive the game for them, like you cannot solve the pain, but you also have to, you know, generate certain gain for them, when they use a product service, whatever it is, and you want to be able to communicate that somehow. And then finally, you move on to a segment-specific, ideal state of solution or like, you know, what are the current blockers for them to have the outcome that they want, they cannot get with the other alternatives, because there's probably millions of other alternatives, some are cheaper, some are costlier. But there's no lack of options in the world today. So you also have to keep in mind, like what is really preventing them from obtaining this ideal state of outcome with other solutions. So that's like what I started the matrix with these two, three key segments, and you really flush out them by pain points, the gain drivers and like the some ideal state of solution plus blockers, because you're going to need to be addressing all of these buckets, in either your creative, but most likely, in your creative and also in your offering. And what you're going to show on the landing page is what you're going to talk about in emails, because without that, I don't think you can, you know, convert people into buyers and convert them into loyal buyers and commitment to somebody who will be referring your business do somebody else? Once you complete the list of things that you know, need to be shown to people, you then start thinking of, well, how you're going to route them through all those things. What are the more important ones to show first, to talk about first, what are the least important ones to show first? What is the most important one in the consideration stage when they choosing something? versus what is it that you really need to show to close them off? Like to get them into a trial stage, you know, or to retain them after? So if you talk about retention problem, and then yeah, like that is the matrix at this start. But there's always another one that's up top, which a lot of performance brands and smaller brands, I think always have, as a cloud have been thinking about, well, how do we also generate awareness if we're not as well known? And what is that real brand intro going to look like? What is that emotional connection. However, from just purely tactical standpoint, most of the brands like we work with, and JC+Co. And most of the brands that have worked in the past, the old one can a jump straight to performance element to conversion, they don't want to have their dollars going to work, reach objectives, or like even video view objectives or anything like super shallow, super high up top, like they want to jump right into measurable outcomes. And basically, they want to have their typical path link to conversion be really strong down to as little touch points as possible, if that makes sense.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:21)Yeah, absolutely. And there's there's a lot that was said there. And I think that one of the big things you touched upon was the idea of really knowing your audience and having that kind of inform what your strategy is because, like with anything that we do in marketing, it's not random. It's it's very calculated. And the more we know about the audience, the more we know about what their pain points are, the easier it becomes for a brand to sort of have their message resonate with that audience. And this kind of brings us to the second question that I had for you today was really talking about that relationship between the audiences that we're targeting and the creatives that we produce? And, you know, is it kind of this symbiotic relationship between the two, where one sort of informs the other where, you know, without our audiences, our creatives don't have a strong message and vice versa? You know, which one would you say kind of impacts that relationship in greater ways that are the audiences or the creatives that need to kind of come first?\n\n\n\nDenis (00:15:29)Yeah, that's a good one. I would say the main aspect here is that, can you actually properly assign and sort of reward the creative for the function it's supposed to perform in the first place? Because as I said, there's an I'm purely talking from my observations, and actually working with very creative minds and creative directors, I'm not talking about all this, pretending that I know a lot about, you know, creative direction, or creativity in general. This, I'm purely in a different function. But what I always try to think is like, well, we can manipulate what people see how they see it, what do we buy media, you know, in order to have what kind of response and we kind of know how to measure it. But knowing what, what and how we're going to reward the creative for, again, for the outcome, that is the most important one is fundamental. So that's, that should be done in the first place. And then give you an example like, should we expect, let's say, an intro hero video, or a carousel or a GIF, to drive massive sales? Have a positive return on ad spend? Should we validate those on how well they drive click to site? Or, you know, how, as we call some stuffing, they are like, how do you put a value towards that? And how do you actually measure that properly. Because the journey really starts there, from them seeing these things and clicking on them. And then later on, we need to be able to accurately measure how things fall into place after such as you know, somebody becoming a lead subscribing to a newsletter, they often into a contest. And then in after certain amount of touch points and other interactions with some other content and messages that we probably get them within different channels. How do we drive the sale, but like, we need to know where they started from. And we also need to know how well how much we paid for that starting position for the starting event for the starting response. But then also be able to measure across all the other touch points that are going to happen and measure it accurately in order to say, Yeah, you know, like this, this creative that we just made for this audience did work. But it didn't work for this, it may be work for them getting to a lead stage. And we're going to reward them by maybe doing more of the similar creative, but optimizing toward lead form submit or something. But it didn't work for us closing sales. So maybe we have to rethink something. Or maybe we just have to, you know, appropriately change the creative and messaging in order to get more sales. But maybe that's not even the goal. Maybe the goal is to drive them to an opt in stage. And then from that point, emails take off in like retargeting at stake off. The other part, want to touch on this? The problems that many scrappy businesses and in startups and those or on a short budget, they do really try to shorten those paths to conversion. And that's the challenge, Jim, it's kind of too much into one piece of content, usually. And the idea is that it performs produces instant results. Yes, it's, it's kind of evident to anybody can check it on there. And like, what's the sale velocities for many brands like 60 to 70% of transactions occur, you know, between probably one to two days, but sometimes we kind of think of like, okay, most of them are going to close within a week. It all really depends, but I'm just really like, making it just the case for most of the Econ brands. So you know, things that are fairly understandable. It doesn't take a long time to educate a client, a customer on all the benefits and also the, you know, the price tag is not high enough for them to be thinking for months, whether they want to buy this or not. But it also doesn't mean that if we're converting everybody within two days, it doesn't mean there's only one touch point and that Everybody converted for one click. And that's why it's important to understand that your creative, like you are creating a pass to conversions, and therefore you need to show different aspects of it, you need to show different aspects of it your proposition at different stages. And then you probably going to have to do it multiple times and pay for that click to have people return to the site again, or maybe opt in on the second click into a form after they saw a video that you introduced the brand with. But you cannot really squeeze all of those expectations and performance objectives into a single creative, which I think kind of happens a lot.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:20:45)Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's all. That's all really good. And I mean, one thing that that I did want to touch upon, and I think we, we kind of had a little bit of it in some of the earlier questions. But you know, before when you and I chatted leading up to the podcast, you talked about the value of experimentation. And you know, kind of once we've cracked the code on the creatives at first, you know, experimenting and figuring out which ones are going to work, which ones are going to resonate, that's a very important part of the process. And one thing that you did say to me before that really resonated was the notion of kind of what a good AB test looks like. And often, the ABX test that we see with creatives, it's, it's really just an aesthetic thing. Okay, do we change the color of this button? Do we add a slide or whatever, it's, you know, what's going to resonate more, but it kind of goes a little bit deeper than that. And I'd like to know, from you with, you know, with your experience with creatives, you know, how do we test variable messaging? And moreover, how do we prioritize the messaging that's going to drive that initial click in the best way possible?\n\n\n\nDenis (00:21:56)Yeah, like, the notion of A/B tests and experimentation, and like, what really makes up an experiment like what makes up but true experiment. I think it's a bit misinterpreted, or maybe misunderstood by a lot. Yeah, like putting a white background versus black background images in the single like asset and showing it to kind of the same audience or audience that gets split. And if you do, like a proper AV testing, really want to do in a scientific lift on it. I don't think that was what really what people should be focusing on, like their efforts. I think the a, like, the angles have to be really different. And I think there's like at least seven buckets of content, which I can kind of identify, that makes sense to experiment with and like to absolutely to just create in the first place, like, there's like big creative buckets of you know, you need have a spokesperson video, like, you know, treat it as you like, but like what is going to be the spokesperson video you can have like, you know, a celebrity talking about you know, your product, you can also have a founder talking and introducing a brand. You can also have one of the you know, maybe best customers talking about your product or showing but like when they get on the camera, and they talk about it and they say these are the reasons this is why this is you know, why I partnered, this is why I chose it. This is why I tried to that's kind of Council's like spokesperson videos and in our view, the second one is a lifestyle you know, demo so you want to appeal to you know, having some affinity to people's lifestyles and be like okay, I can kind of recognize that this model or this person using this product in a certain setting in a certain use case like that is what I also do, so I can relate to it. So that's number two. The third one is product in use like a demo. Like actually simplifying it and showing how do you actually use it like what do you actually do with it? What does it actually make, you know, make you better with like, do you run faster by using these shoes do you are you able to like I don't know fix your like health problems are you able to make you know food faster, eat better like just actual product in use demo. And then again, I also think the video is the best way to do it because motion is kind of emotion. So that motion will drive the emotion and I think that's key unboxing super popular piece in the reason why I'm boxing has to be done I think is like it builds the trust that hey, like in fact you we are a legit company you can order from us. You will get At the actual product, and in your house, and this is what it's going to look like. And a lot of times, a lot of the, you know, DTC brands these days, they actually put a lot of effort into making unboxing very special, they throw in all these cool goodies. And there's been a lot of experiences recently that I've had with brands that sell, you know, sportswear that is non-Nike, but they do a much better job than the Nikes of the world do. And they put a lot of effort in unboxing, I think recording that and showing it to a potential audience when you advertise is very important, because it takes off that, okay, confidence done, okay, I'm confident and I'm excited to be in that position. Because there's also packed to the notions when you unbox case study. So a lot of products have a lot of, like, you know, they claim a lot of outcomes that are going to, you know, be that you're going to be able to experience by using it. And I think a lot of the times, it's it's just a claim, you know, written as a caption in AD, which is, which is fine. But I think anytime you can show it, the proof, and you show the functional benefit, you can show the actual solution. And you can show how it fixes something, you can show how it removes something, how it protects something, and you actually find a very, maybe simple way to do it. And you don't have to be super creative, but you actually show it to people that it can be done. And you know that it actually works a certain way that you claim it to work. I think it builds trust again, and so about that trust, social proof. And I think, finally, is the reasons why that social proof is common. Like, you know, there's many ways to build a social proof, the five-star reviews like you know, populating the content from people putting in your feed, you know, you can tag, you know, content creators and say like, Can we use your stuff. So like social proof is more of like, you know, when they're just ready to convert, and they need to be sure that you're not going to take their money and run away, and they want to see other people who've done similar behavior, which is they bought from you, we kind of rely on social proof is more of a conversion element at the bottom funnel of our consumer journey. And the reasons why content pieces like super simplify way of here's my elevator pitch, here's the three reasons why buy in, I think, a lot of brands that go in this creative distances of hey, we're doing it this way, we didn't this way, but like nobody just does it in like a simple way of like a 15-second video, or like a Karass Union be like, here are the three reasons why you need to buy from us and like reason why reason to reasonably.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:27:53)Yeah, doing a lot of video content, I think about that a lot, because you really don't have that much time as a brand to make a first impression. And as you said, Yeah, and it's very hard. I mean, even if you have like 15 seconds, you have to say everything that needs to be said, and with video, especially I always say to people, you know, you can say everything that you need to say, in 10 seconds. And you can say absolutely nothing in 10 minutes. And a lot of a lot of companies, what they do is they really kind of focus on on the flash of it all and say, Oh, we're gonna go on and on about how great we are. But we're going to kind of ignore that important messaging to the customer. Because at the end of the day, the only thing you have to do, well, maybe not the only thing that you have to do, but one of the most important things you have to do is you've got to resonate, you have to tap into something with your audience that they said, Yeah, I'm interested, I want to learn a little bit more, and then you can continue to give them information and get them down the funnel. But it's very hard. But I mean, there are brands out there that definitely do it. Right. And they understand that, as you said, you know, with with something like an unboxing. You know, they consumers want proof that they're gonna get what they're paying for. They don't want to feel like they're being scammed online or anything like that. So it's very important to just be transparent as a brand. I do have before we head to the break, I had two kinds of sub-questions to this, but the one I'll ask you about is kind of return on spend because I know that's one of the number one things that's on the minds of agencies is are we making the most effective use of our budgets with experimentation in your creatives? Is that part of the equation for a favourable return on ad spend and making the most out of your budget?\n\n\n\nDenis (00:29:50)It is if the experimentation is done on the own, not level where If you are experimenting with something that is intended to convert people in the first place, and you can say, and you are applying, let's say, last touch of full-funnel like impact, you know, return on ad spend model, like if you're measuring it properly, then yeah, you can definitely go in and say, Well, I have these warm audiences, or these people who opted in my list, and I'm going to show them. And I'm going to try to figure out what will really make them convert at the stage. Because you can do a social proof ad, you can have an offer, you can do on offering million ways you can have a, you know, a gift with purchase versus, you know, a discount code, versus, you know, buy one get one free or something like that. So you have so many different ways of how you're going to convert people and what you actually meant to generate as far as the revenue because the conversion rate will be different, and the ARV will be different if you just simply do a social proof, but you don't give a code that you know if a percentage is 1%, or not, probably not 1% Because it's retargeting. If 4% of people clicking on this ad convert at an AO V, that doesn't require you to discount, then you got to have a, you know, a return on ad spend measured as one like, you know, one number. But if you are testing heavily, the discount codes or the offers or you know, gifting with purchase, your return on ad spend will be different, your cost per acquisition probably going to be different, and your expected conversion rate will probably going to be different. So it all comes down to what are you measuring for that specific create what that security is supposed to do? If it were moving up funnel, and we're testing all of these seven categories, or some of the seven categories of content that I that I mentioned, you need to ask yourself like, is it what I need to really measure here? Is the return on ad spend that I need to measure? Or is it that I need to measure how far people going to go in, you know, in a conversion funnel? And how many of them will reach Add to Cart stage? How many of them will reach an opt in stage where they're going to have to submit their email? Because I think it will be more interesting in measuring that for those creatives that are more upper funnel, versus really trying to figure out which ones of them convert people into us the sale right away.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:32:31)Yeah, absolutely. I think on that note, I think this might be the perfect time for us to take a quick break. But you know, Denis, when we come back, I'd love to hear from you more about kind of these tangible strategies related to building creatives, as well as how you think that we can best measure and attribute success in this area of the funnel. So we'll take a quick break, and then we will be right back.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:33:00)You know, your advertising should be multi-channel. So why isn't your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native, display, video, connected TV, and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers as if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform, according to G2. it's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo@stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How agencies thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:33:34)Denis, in this half of the episode with everything mentioned before about audiences targeting experimentation. What do you think are some key strategies that marketers should be focusing on when it comes to achieving desirable campaign results? So talk about creative best practices, optimization, best practices, etc?\n\n\n\nDenis (00:33:55)Sure. Yeah, I think I'll run through some of the main elements of what we're doing at GCM Cole right now. And then I'll touch on some of the areas that I've just experimented with in the past. I think the first one is starting with a model that projects desired business outcomes, when it relates to DTC brands or like e-commerce brands. So a model could look as simple as projections on Traffic Conversion rates, costs, you pay for media and average order values, and then also not forgetting about how much of it will be paid, how much of it will be organic and how much of it will be through email. Email is pretty big for us. Not sure if it applies to everyone but for most of the brands that we work with in the fashion industry. Rolling a subscription-based businesses in the food, food and drinks industry, email is a big chunk of revenue. And so we we try to make our model work in a way that at some points, we don't have to be continuously buying girls, we want to unlock the girls through other methods and email is one of them. So start with the model is number one. Second one is be ready to measure properly. And I'm not talking about just setting up and queuing up pixels or, you know, connecting lead forms to clay vo or setting up conversion goals. And you know, GA, I'm talking about your attribution and just the measurement practices and philosophies that you're going to have for your company. I don't know if I'm a lab, but I would love to shout out wicked reports and say that we use them as a holistic measurement tool for many of our clients, they added tremendous value to us being able to see things differently than what platforms are reporting. So they're really independent tool for attribution and measurement. And they have a very distinct way of measuring things based on the first click the opt-in, and the sale. So with that, I think the second one is you need to find a solution that goes beyond just trusting in platform measurements, you know, attribution models and stuff. Third, which we touched on is building segments and knowing who your customers are, and defining them from, you know, Pain Gain, sort of like they're accustomed, like, they're just day-to-day jobs that those people perform, and desired outcomes they would have, versus, you know, defining people by just demo income and household type. So segmentation exercise is pretty important. So you kind of know where to get those people where, where, where do they exist? What are they use. Fourth one is filling in the creative package with those seven key creative buckets that are kind of mentioned, spokesperson lifestyle demo product and use unboxing case studies, social proof, and reasons why, or reasons why to try us. The first, as you know, don't be married to a typical Google Facebook combo, when you start costs are rising on those platforms, tracking is becoming a bit of a mess. Unless, again, you use an independent measurement solution, which you know, then opens your eyes to measuring Facebook and Google and any other number of channels differently and in the more I'd say, more accurate way, but I'd say you need to be prepared to just have, you know, things move quickly between channels, platforms, you know, campaigns, ad sets, and even creatives. So my advice would be to have your programmatic setup with stack it up as one of the solutions that you can add easily activate on it and you know, have it in the mix, Pinterest, Snap, TikTok, any anything that we're you can drive it and do a bit of testing on without any limitations, I'd say it's good to have it on. And in case of if you all recall what happened with Facebook, when they were like pretty much down for a day. Like you know, if you have to move a certain amount of traffic and you have a projection for the day, a certain amount of volume needs to happen in need hit certain revenue from, you know, the targets that hey, you can't allow yourself to just sit without Facebook for a day. So you have to shift quickly to other sources. So diversifying the platforms that you play on is important and I think programmatic is definitely have to be in it. Because of how performance oriented it also is these days. This sixth one is a notion of just optimizing for what you really care about. I have never been a fan of optimizing for clicks traffic objectives and or you know using like, not even using awareness and reach. For most of the brands that we work with, it's too far out of what you know, they count as a desirable outcome by investing in lead gen as your top of funnel layer, something that we do a lot. But then everything after that moves down to website conversion events, you know, making sure we we know which ones we pay for and make sure we know what the conversion expected conversion rates are But then again, like, you know, you get what you, you get what you like, basically ask the platform's to deliver to you. So if you optimizing things for landing page views, you're gonna get a bunch of landing page views, but don't really expect cards or initiate checkouts or sales from those campaigns and from those audiences, and then go back to measuring things holistically. So you know, determining which channels work from, we use as a full-funnel impact attribution model that's available, and we can reports and then diving into measuring from first click standpoint and elite ROI standpoint, to understand which campaigns are as the best and driving that initial click that we talked about. And then which ones are driving a better lead form submits that then become buyers. And you know, what is really the relationship between the clicks to leads to sales to repeat sales, in knowing what your conversion rates are, what your optimal costs are, and that's very, super important to know, your metrics. And I think the final one that I will just close on on this list is like, you know, following the creative best practices, so all I would know, is to say, I think shifting their attention to video and animated assets, rather than pumping out a million of polished images of product and model, I think that will be a smart way to go these days. And then also keeping the goals of your ads in mind at all time. And what am I really trying to achieve here? Like what you know, make, how do I make people pay attention and click through? Or do I want them just to admire my great photography, and maybe remember the name of my brand, but do nothing really, with it? So like, you need to weigh in on your expectations and like, really decide what do you want the response to be? And what do you really want? Are you really building the creative for not forgetting about the emotional connection, because I think we're still humans, despite the fact that we maybe don't go to the offices often. But we still are driven by emotion. And so building for sound off environment. But keeping in mind, the full plethora of senses that we can appeal to was, you know, sight, sound and motion. And it's really difficult to achieve, oh, there was still that's why I think I always try to deprioritize statics and you know, photography, that's just like showing beautiful imagery, stills a good to send reminders to keep you're focused on the offer, when you're really already aware or interested and showing desire and intent to convert, but not when you're really starting to engage with someone new. As I said before, I think motion is emotion. So those are probably going to be my eight points.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:42:59)Absolutely. Yeah, I think there's a lot there definitely for the listeners to take away. And, you know, as you mentioned, you gave us eight, eight points. So I think there's, there's a lot there. And I did kind of want to end on this note. And this one's a little bit more speculative, because, as far as I understand, and as far as you and I had chatted before about this, actually measuring what it takes to drive the first click. That's, that's a challenge in and of itself, because that involves a ton of experimentation, a ton of insights, information you may not necessarily have at the beginning of the campaign. And, you know, you find that out later on. But, you know, what do you think the future looks like for measurement and attribution at this stage? You know, before your users click, you know, what does that measurement and attribution look like for the successful creatives? And how can you know, advertisers get there even sooner to drive the first click more effectively?\n\n\n\nDenis (00:44:05)Yeah, that's probably one of the most difficult questions to answer. Because what I think the world where I play is, it all kind of starts with a clip. And I know that there's lots of schools of thought on, you know, how do you build the brand and then do impressions even matter? Like how do you build things, just buying billboards on the road matter? Like, you know, this advertising, different places matter? So I don't think I'm educated enough for an expert on that front to you know, say it matters or it doesn't. But I do think that at the end of the day, if we are not I'm trying to win creative contests here or to win, you know, prizes that we can say that we made the most creative thing in the world. And if we really strictly talking about performance advertising, I would say, the only thing that matters is what creative or a combination of them drove the initial visit, to the site, where at that point, all of the data is 1st-party data. And then I think that thick, I want to make clear that like it is, if we're talking strictly about, like, the performance elements of the journey, because there's, there's a lot of elements that happened before that journey starts with how you build awareness, PR, you know, like, a lot of different activations and like, partnerships influence through work. Like, I don't want to discredit any of that, I just want to simply say that, from a true measurement standpoint, and like true validation of like, what is my return on ad spend? For performance brands, I think your journey and your measurement really starts with a click, and how much of creative thought gets put into initial batch of ads that people will see and gonna start responding on? That? That is a question for the creative, folks. But as far as I see and observe, and what we've had on when I worked on the abacus agency side, and what we do at JC+CO, the creative teams that are performance-oriented, and not winning the prizes of the creative, world-oriented type, they do listen to media people to analytics people. And they sit with them closely, and they do invent creative packages that are primarily driven to, you know, do performance work, and not that the beautiful photography that you know, you know, everybody admires, but nobody clicks on. So this is also changing. And I think the whole measurement of creative will change as well. Because the two teams are now becoming one day, they work in tandem, rather than one side buys the media and they look at data and they see horrible things, or they see great things about creative and the creative team just lives in a bubble, and they just output creative things that don't measure well. I think that's changing, I think that's the most important part. And there could be a lot of education on one side, and it could be a lot of education and sharing of best practices on the other side. And so I don't know if it answers your question.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:47:52)It definitely did. I think on on that note, I mean, that's the perfect stopping place for the episode. So, on behalf of myself, on behalf of our listeners, Denis, thank you so much for joining us today. I think this was the perfect way to close out the 2021 episodes on a strong note, and to any marketers who are focusing on their creative strategy. We hope that you took away some key insights from this episode that are going to help you succeed in your upcoming campaign. So until then, this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Thanks so much for listening.\n\n\n\nOutro (00:48:32)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things, subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-contextual-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-contextual-advertising"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Vitaly Pecherskiy","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/vitaly-pecherskiy","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CEO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Yang Han","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/yang-han","jobTitle":"Co-founder and CTO","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Ned Dimitrov","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/ned-dimitrov","jobTitle":"VP of Data Science","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Driving Performance With Contextual Advertising","datePublished":"2022-01-12T13:41:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-contextual-advertising"},"wordCount":7341,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-contextual-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517084409/vitaly_pecherskiy_stackadapt_podcast_s2e9.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["contextual targeting","cookieless targeting","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss current contextual advertising technology and the bright future of contextual advertising in the programmatic landscape.\n\n\n\nYang Han | CTO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nVitaly Pecherskiy | CEO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nNed Dimitrov | VP of Data Science, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Contextual advertising really gives marketers more of a peace of mind about what data they use when they do targeting and topic of contextual advertising is especially relevant now because it's gotten to a point where it can drive on par or better results in audience targeting. So naturally, it's in the spotlight, where it can deliver results and also address the topic of privacy.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:27)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape. The How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:55)Hey, everyone, welcome to our first episode of 2022. My name is Matt Evered. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. And I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. To kick off the new year, I'm joined by three guests from within the StackAdapt organization. And let me tell you, I have definitely learned a lot from them over the years. On Deck. We've got Ned Dimitrov, the VP of data science, Yang Han, our CTO. And, of course, Vitaly Pecherskiy, StackAdapt coo. Now, for anyone who's been following our company for any amount of time, I'm sure you've heard from at least one of our guests in the form of a blog post a webinar or any other thought leadership content that StackAdapt has put out. But for those who haven't, I think the best way to kickstart the episode would be to go around the table here and get each of our guests to briefly introduce themselves. Give us a look at their experience and how long they've been in the programmatic industry. So starting with you, Ned, if you could, tell us a little bit about yourself. We'll get started from there.\n\n\n\nNed (00:01:55)Thanks, Matt. Hi, everybody. My name is Ned. I'm VP of data science at StackAdapt. I joined StackAdapt in 2017. And I've been heading the AI and data science effort since then. So what that means is basically all the decisions that are involved in creating performant advertising campaigns. And there's many decisions that have to be automated in programmatic advertising, because there's just too much data for an individual to sift through it and make the decision. So that's why we need to automate computers to do these things. And so those are the things that I concentrate on here at StackAdapt. Prior to joining StackAdapt, I was a professor for about a decade. I worked in two universities. One was the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. So University inside of Department of Defense in the US, where many of the students are mid-career military officers who later go on to be analyst for the Pentagon. And, after that, I worked at the University of Texas at Austin, which is one of the top engineering schools in the union in the United States, before joining StackAdapt.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:53)Fantastic. Thanks so much, Ned. Yang, over to you to tell us a little bit about yourself.\n\n\n\nYang (00:02:58)Yeah, I helped co-found StackAdapt. Initially, I built the initial platform. And now, obviously, it has grown to encompass a lot of different teams and departments, including platform engineering, backhand, and infrastructure engineering, data team undernet, as well as security support QA, so a lot of different functions to help the team innovate and function in terms of, you know, our, our product and the day to day processes. Yeah, I'd say my expertise lies more on the backend side initially, you know, I used to build financial software as well as mobile app software. But yeah, now day to day, you know, we have to cover all the different areas to make sure that you know, we continuously innovate as a platform.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:47)Thanks so much. Now, Vitaly, you were actually on the first episode of the season. So I think we could probably do a quick refresh for our guests who maybe didn't tune in at that point. But just tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your history in programmatic.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:04:02)Thanks, Matt. So unlike Ned and Yang, I don't actually come from an engineering background. So I studied finance at the university. And I ended up in tech pretty pretty much by accident. So in my first job, I was an account manager at an ad tech company. So there I was doing a lot of performance based advertising, primarily for game developers, actually, but that was even before mobile gaming, so even that was about 11 years ago. So since then, obviously, the space has evolved so much. And I had the privilege to see it grow from very rudimentary to where it is now. So prior to launching StackAdapt, I had extensive experience working with marketers and really understanding their challenges. So I really think of myself now as a person who connects the dots across the company to find new ways we can deliver value to our clients, and just new ways to grow.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:59)Thanks so much, Vitaly. Now today's episode is definitely a very exciting one. Because back in 2021, when we were at the drawing board, you know, looking for topics to kickstart the New Year with, it was pretty obvious that there was one that we should be focusing on in the new year, and that was contextual advertising. So, without further ado, in this episode, we're going to do a deep dive into the future of contextual advertising and uncover how it's paving the way for a bright future in the programmatic landscape. You know, we'll look at available technology, industry trends and other things to look out for in the new year. As a brief housekeeping note, you know, while I will be here facilitating this fireside chat, Vitaly is also going to be leading the charge. So as always, Ned, Yang, Vitaly, we're very excited to have you on this episode. And let's get started. Starting out, I'd love to hear from everyone here and get some initial thoughts on contextual advertising and really ask the question of, from the perspective of privacy. Why is contextual advertising more important now than ever?\n\n\n\nYang (00:06:06)So basically, there's been a number of changes in the industry in recent years. So this includes both government legislation changes as well as technology changes. So when it comes to government regulation, there has been introductions of new laws such as GDPR, in Europe, in which you must get client opt-in, in order to store as well as access user data. And this includes, you know, all the historical user data that ad tech is used to using in order to perform their accurate behavioural targeting, as well as for different platforms to share data amongst themselves. Another major change recently is with technology changes, and these includes the deprecation of cookies, starting with both so far is browser, and Mozilla's Firefox. So historically, 3rd-party cookies allowed platforms to easily share browser-related data across the board and synchronize them. But with the deprecation of this, these companies have had to find out tentative solutions, such as universal identifiers. Chrome has also painted that great third party cookies in the future. So with these replacements, unfortunately, typically, they will not scale as well as the historical 3rd-party cookies. So there will be access to less data overall in that is that you can use for user based targeting. In addition, this data may also get less and less accurate, as more countries will attempt to also model data in order to supplement the loss of the scale. However, there's also there's also a push in the industry to get more accurate data through by synchronizing a CRM-related data when it comes to universal identifiers. So overall, in general, why is contextual more important? Well, because now you have two worlds when it comes to advertising one world where you have access to historical user data, and you can perform user-based targeting. In another world where you do not have additional information on the user, all you know is, you know what page and device the user is currently on. But no data prior to that, and no data from other platforms. So with this, you're limited to the information on what is currently on the page. However, the page typically also contains a lot of rich information contextually, if you are able to understand exactly what the user is reading about exactly what their state of mind is in. So if you could leverage this as much as possible, and also take into consideration all the different pages a campaign is able to look at an overall performance of the campaign. You can devise very strategic optimizations and targeting solutions in which you can perform very well and reach your campaign objectives.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:09:11)To add to Yang’s point, aside from these operational challenges, there are obvious challenges related to risk. So I was just reading a new study published on Digiday. That talks about the recent study that came out where a company evaluated how many of top publishers actually drop cookie before consent, and they concluded that about 92% of publishers drop at least one cookie before consent. That's obviously quite problematic. The study doesn't talk about the brand side so it's unclear how many brands or advertisers do something like that, but I suspect quite a lot. And I also suspect that it's not always done intentionally as well, obviously, with the study, we have to take it with a grain of salt. But nonetheless, it's pretty apparent that right now, the industry doesn't have a good grasp on on how to actually implement legislation using technology. There's a lot of challenges related to its implementation, because ultimately it it's up to people that you have on your team to handle this implementation. And very few people know how to do it right, then there's a question of me maintaining it all around, it's difficult. And it's, it's becoming apparent that if it was so easy to implement, it would have been done already. So contextual advertising, it really gives marketers more of a peace of mind about what data they use when they do targeting. And and I think the topic of contextual advertising is, is especially relevant now. Because it's, it's gotten to a point where it can drive on par or better results in audience targeting. So naturally, it's in the spotlight, where it can deliver results and also address the topic of privacy.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:11:05)So the second question that I have for everyone here is with contextual advertising, I think the general sentiment is that it's incredibly promising. It's a great solution for the future of programmatic. So with that in mind, why do you all think that this method hasn't been used in the past? And why has it had sort of this rapid turnaround of being an emerging technology, now that we're in 2022?\n\n\n\nNed (00:11:28)I think contextual has been a classic type of advertising since basically the beginning of advertising. And the reason for that is that a natural way to place your ad is around relevant content to that particular message that you're trying to deliver to the user. But the way that contextual has been done in programmatic historically has been a little bit programmatic. So let's take a look at the two classic ways of doing this. So one way is through categories of contexts. So Bing has an entire category tree of contexts, that publisher could say this article is in this category, this article is in this category. And then the advertiser would sort of place their ad in all articles that are labeled as being in part of the particular ad category that they selected. So this is programmatic for a number of reasons. So first, there is an incentive from the publisher and to place the article in as many categories as possible. And this is because they want to get as many advertisers bidding on the article as possible. And so that's one problem with it. Another problem is that the categories are just fundamentally not very specific. I mean, think about even the biggest tree that you can imagine the biggest category tree, what would it have, like 1000, nodes, like 2000 nodes. And if you think about the large variety of advertisers that are out there, there's just way more advertisers and more products and more contexts that can be defined, then can be fit into a single category in being exhaustive is just a losing game. The second major way that contextual advertising has been done in the past is through key phrase matching. So in key phrase matching, the advertiser specifies a set of phrases, maybe 100, maybe 400. And the machine basically scans through articles that contain those phrases. And if the article contains that phrase, then the advertisement might be placed on that article. So this is probably problematic, because defining the context is very difficult. It's very, very difficult for an advertiser to collect these 400 potential phrases that they want to use to identify the articles that they want to their ad to appear in, is very time-consuming, it's very error-prone. And ultimately, you might include a word like Apple, let's say, in your list of phrases, but that'll put your advertisement both in context with Apple, the company and digital contexts and apples that people eat. And so the key phrases really don't capture the meaning the context that the advertiser wants their article to appear in. So this is one of the major reasons why contextual in the recent past, hasn't been seeing as much play as behavioural advertising.\n\n\n\nYang (00:14:21)Yeah, there's another problem with the static lists method of targeting where, you know, the context of a certain topic may change over time. So for example, if I want to target electric cars, well, new models of electric cars are being released pretty much every quarter now. So traditionally, client would have to manually modify their targeting list to add new models of electric cars constantly. But if the system were to know that you're trying to target electric cars, then Ideally, you would want a system where it would automatically know what models of electric cars are out there, even when new ones are introduced. So you'll automatically be able to be, you know, timeless, essentially, as campaign runs over, you know, a duration of time, especially if the campaign is a very long campaign, or if it's a campaign that you want to run continuously. It requires a lot of manual effort to keep these up to date, especially when things change.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:15:30)Thanks so much, Yang. Thanks so much, Ned. There was something you actually touched upon, you talked about kind of these classic methods. And there was another question that I had here, which talked about these classic methods and sort of from then to now, what's sort of new and emerging with this technology, and what have been the major changes that have happened to make contextual advertising a lot more viable today for programmatic campaigns.\n\n\n\nNed (00:15:58)So what makes contextual advertising different today than it was a few years ago is basically the application of many new AI technologies. So computational power has gotten a lot larger. And a lot more tools have been developed to do natural language processing, to basically capture the meaning of things as opposed to their raw string text. And that's what makes contextual advertising very exciting today, because now it's possible with just a few phrases to capture the meaning that the advertiser has in mind for their content. So just going off of the example that Yang had in terms of electric cars, maybe the person puts in things like electric car charger or electric car, and then the system automatically identifies things like Tesla, Audi EQC, or Mercedes EQC, the Audi e-tron, the Porsche Tyco, so on and so forth, and then places your ad, in all of these additional pages, that you didn't have to go and research yourself, it just the AI automatically identified that this is what you meant, and filled in all the details for you. And thus, was able to find you fantastic contacts, without you having to constantly put in the manual effort to try to do that yourself. So this helps both with scale and with specificity, like both of the two problems that the classic methods had. So now we can be very specific, because you can have, you can dream up any topic that you might find online, and enter a few phrases to describe that topic. And the AI is able to take your meaning and find the relevant contexts that fit that topic. And it's able to scale because it's not just dependent on the words that you entered, but it's dependent on all the related content that's out there related to the context that you specified.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:17:51)Actually, I have a follow-up question for you. Obviously, when we talked about contextual targeting, we generally mean the words on the page. But I've gotten the question several times about whether we analyze images on a web pages to do contextual targeting. I don't know to me, it sounds pretty difficult, because images can be so generic, but what are your thoughts on this?\n\n\n\nNed (00:18:13)So there's definitely the technology to do that exists. So there's things that would take an image and sort of translate it into the content of the image, like this image has two smiling people on it, this image has a desk on it, and so forth. But that content is generally a lot less specific. I mean, think about images with like two smiling people. Is that really like a context? Is it sufficient for his brand? Yeah. Is it? Is it strong enough? So when you take a look at the, for example, the contextual technology that we have at StackAdapt, we make sure not only that there is context, but there's sufficient context, that we can say that with a strong enough certainty that this matches what the advertiser meant. And an image might not be specific enough or strong enough to sort of relay that image. But the technology to do that definitely exists. And definitely I see in the future, a lot more contextual information being relayed with things like online video in streaming, CTV type content for to enable contextual advertising.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:19:25)So it's more of a question of finding really strong intent signals and just with images, a lot of the times they just there's a very loose connection with intent.\n\n\n\nNed (00:19:36)That's right. And the images oftentimes are not necessarily what determines the intent, though, of course, there might be cases where the images particularly strong, but those I think, are much less frequent case.\n\n\n\nYang (00:19:51)I’d say there's also two areas of innovation when it comes to contextual not just related to the accuracy and performance of it. One is the transparency of it, as well as it being able to auto-adjust and learn. So, you know, there are several contextual providers out there that have been out there for a while, and that claim to be improving their contextual algorithms. And that may be true, however, typically, it's a black box of what type of pages to target, what type of pages they are targeting, and how well it's performing. So the black box causes a very large problem, because when you input what you want to target, contextually, you're not able to quickly double-check if this is actually accurate, or if it's going to work well. So there's a huge advantage of contextual being tied to the actual platform that is executing the media. In that case, the platform would also know and understand well, what's the performance metrics of my campaign utilizing this contextual, then the system could auto-adjust to contextual algorithm. Order matches itself in order to make it perform even better in order to hit KPIs because at the end of the day, when you execute ad campaigns, your goal was to reach an objective. The input is just the initial learnings to help the system know, you know what type of contest you should look for. But in an ideal world, a true AI is a system where there's a feedback loop, and it can continuously learn in order to ultimately just be hands-off and adjust itself to reach your objectives.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:21:29)Thanks so much. You know, I think on that note, this is actually a perfect point for us to take a quick break. So to all of our listeners, stay tuned for the second half of the episode when we do a deep dive on the future of contextual advertising and look at some key takeaways for your upcoming campaign strategy.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:21:49)You know, your advertising should be multi-channel, so why isn't your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native display video connected TV and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers as if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest rated programmatic ad platform according to G2. It's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:22:25)Welcome back, everyone. Let's kick off this half of the episode by looking at the role that contextual advertising plays in the future and more specifically, Ned fatale. Yang, I'd love to hear from the three of you about how you think contextual advertising should be a part of an effective media plan and why you think that this is important for those who are running campaigns in the programmatic space. We'll start with you, Vitaly.\n\n\n\nVitaly  (00:22:54)  Yeah, so to me, it's all about performance. So if contextual advertising works for your brand, and it fits your business, then go for it. I think audience targeting is, is here to stay, I think it will change how it's done. But truth be told is that there's never going to be one strategy that fits fits every brand. So I think as long as marketers experiment in in a proper way to see how contextual could work alongside audience or what sort of results it can drive. I think they will be they will be in the in a good shape. You know, when it comes to planning, I always found that alo laughable when when people aren't sure at least split up the media plan, you know, 15% through retargeting, 20%, that contextual, and actually execute all the way through with those numbers in mind. And a lot of that a lot of it is kind of pointing finger in the sky. To me, these should be just placeholders from where you adjust after depending on the performance of different tactics. And obviously, you can use also machine learning strategies to automatically allocate budgets based on performance of different line items. But I think contextual to me, is only viable if it if it actually works.\n\n\n\nYang (00:24:13)Yes, Vitaly said each brand and situation is different, you know, contextual and user base behavioural targeting are not mutually exclusive. In order to maximize your potential, you most likely want to have both. Because for example, let's say you only stick with user-based targeting over time, as more technology changes, as well as government legislation, the universe of people that you can target will shrink, because there's going to be less consent and permission to target those users. So you're not going to be able to scale your campaigns. And you'd be missing out if you were not using a contextual strategy that could also reach the performance that you're looking for for a campaign. So In order to cover both worlds where you have your access to use your basic data and don't have access to it, you would want both strategies side by side in order to really maximize it. And then you can monitor to see how well each is doing and then adjust accordingly.\n\n\n\nNed (00:25:15)And another thing I would add to that is a little bit more to think about what a contextual strategy brings to your media plan that a behavioural-only plan doesn't have. And basically contextual has an aspect to it that no behavioural strategy can match, which is it delivers your brand message when the user is in a particular frame of mind. Because your ad is appearing next to specific content that you've specified, you're able to deliver your brand message when the user is thinking about something specifically. So for example, if you're an athletic shoe company, you might want to deliver your shoe message when the person is reading about running online or something like that. And even so, that is vastly different than what a behavioural strategy offers where we would target runners, regardless of what domain they might be appearing on online, or what content they're currently consuming. And this makes contextual, it gives contextual, the ability to be highly performant. And it brings something to your media plan that no behavioural strategy can bring.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:26:29)I do have a follow-up question for everyone as well, because I think at the beginning here, we talked a little bit about performance data. And I'm interested to know a bit more about what role performance data plays, especially during campaigns, and how does the future of this technology impact enforcing privacy for users?\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:26:52)I think it's at the end of the day, it's up to every company to work with their legal counsel to make sure that they're compliant with law. And I don't think just doing contextual advertising alone is addressing all these questions related to privacy. I think it's one of the pillars, but it's certainly not one thing that you do, and then all of a sudden privacy consideration goes away because there's a lot of things that happening. Also, on your own website, that are kind of independent from from contextual advertising. I would be hesitant to comment on how using contextual. It translates into the enforceability of privacy laws.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:27:32)In this last part, I do want to know from all of you talking a little bit more about the future, really, really looking ahead on this one about kind of what these future challenges look like for contextual. And how can advertiser expectations align with the performance of this technology.\n\n\n\nNed (00:27:52)So, I can start there. So one thing that I say is over the past year, so StackAdapt, debuted our contextual AI tool in January of 2021. And since then, we've had a long time to collect real world data on this to see how it actually performs in practice. And we found that there's a good fraction of campaigns where contextual campaigns either meet or beat the performance of some top behavioural strategies. So, for example, a top behavioural strategy that you might compare against is retargeting. And specifically site retargeting where the user has already been to the brand's website and knows about the brand. And we're looking for some conversion action afterwards. So it turns out that in about 23% of comparisons, that's more than one in five comparisons that we had on our platform, and textual performed better than retargeting in these comparisons. So this is very strong evidence that contextual can be a real player in performance. But going back to in terms of aligning expectations, that doesn't mean it's going to knock it out of the park for every single advertiser. The context matters, the message matters, the product matters, all of these things matter. But the data has shown that it can be a very performance strategy. And it is really worth adding to the list of things to try when you're going about exploring different performances for your brand.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:29:29)So I think one of the challenges for contextual advertising in the future is probably related to its brand. I think contextual advertising is still thought of as more of an awareness type of play. I think many marketers don't realize that it can be driving results that Matt was just talking about. But aside from that, I think there's probably a lot of things we still don't know about the challenges through contextual advertising. We'll have things perhaps, as more marketers adopt, there'll be new market dynamics that may be translated into pricing or some new power dynamics that we're not aware of yet. But as of right now, we've seen incredible adoption of contextual advertising, especially in certain segments of brands. So to me, for the next couple of years, it's going to be it's going definitely to become a staple for for any marketer. But how exactly will change? You know, over the last 10 years, in my career, I've been proven wrong so many times, so I'm hesitant to predict anything at this point.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:30:36)Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, Vitaly, I was about to actually just ask, if we think about 10 years into the future, what do you think things are going to look like, from a technology standpoint?\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:30:49)You know, if we talk about advertising technology, if he asked me that question, maybe three years ago, or four years ago, I would maybe be in next camp with respect to AI, and how, you know, we'll have engines that are so good at predicting people's intent, and, you know, deliver messaging almost without any friction. But I think now, it's becoming apparent that there's a lot of resistance from users related to privacy with respect to processing data, there's legislation related to privacy. So perhaps what we'll see in 10 years, is going to all around, it'll get more streamlined, more automated. But in the last couple of years, I've changed my mind about this, you know, AI that just makes decisions for everybody almost, to something more closer to what we actually have now. And still, maybe walking the line between, you know, user privacy, automation. And I think in 10 years, it's going to be a lot more advanced than what we have now. But I think, probably not much more advanced. I'm not sure what you, Ned, and Yang think. You're the technologist.\n\n\n\nNed (00:32:12)So in terms of technology, I agree with you Vitaly, that there are some things that I would have a very difficult time replacing. So for example, when it's your brand, and you have only this budget to spend for your first advertising campaign, there's no amount of AI that's going to substitute the kind of personal intuition that a marketer has, in terms of what the message should be terms of who they want that message to be directed to, and so forth. So there's a lot of one time decisions, where there's maybe not a lot of historical data on, it's very difficult to collect historical data on it. And maybe the historical data is not relevant. And maybe there's not a sufficient budget to sort of try many things at once and do a data driven optimization approach. So these kinds of decisions, I think, will never go away from the hands of people. But at the same time, I do feel that especially in programmatic advertising, the amount of data is just huge. There's so many websites out there so many opportunities on which website which user to place the advertisement, where on the website, the advertisement should go, that a human decision maker just simply can't handle all of those decisions, there's too many of them for a human being to do. And that's why I believe that there will be some mixture of these human decisions that are based on insight based on gut feelings based on directions and messaging, and AI-driven decisions that help us optimize all of the things that a human being can't actively do throughout the day, by optimizing all the minutiae of delivering programmatic advertising campaigns. At the same time, going back to the original question of how I feel, advertising or contextual being in 10 years, one of the things that I feel is going to happen is when you look at the possibilities of where to advertise, as user data becomes scarcer, because of legislative moves because of privacy moves based on consumers and so forth. I believe that contextual information should walk in there to fill the void, we should have more information about what is the actual content so that we can deliver more accurate advertisement based on the content as opposed to based on the user because ultimately, the publishers are not going to be able to sustain their content without the kinds of revenue that advertising brings in. And given the absence of user data. The only thing that is left is contextual data on which to make the decision.\n\n\n\nYang (00:34:51)If you see how a campaign is executed today, there's still a lot of manual effort, you know, they're still, you know, clients still like to optimize manually make changes manually, I would like to see that all go away, you know, even before 10 years, and have the human focus more on the creative aspects, the strategic aspects, even when it comes to creative, there's a lot of manual testing and optimizations that can be automated. But I think as time moves on, the human will be needed and more of a high-level scenario. And a lot of the auto manual execution should be able to be automated in especially anything that involves data, or that involves testing things. Computers are powerful enough to do and learn all that on their own right now, it just takes, you know, effort, and a lot of precision for someone to design this accurately, such that it can perform to the level that you know, we expect it to perform.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:35:56)Now, I do have a kind of a practical question to ask all of you as we bookend this episode. And that's more about the role that this technology and contextual advertising plays in helping out emerging areas in the programmatic space. So looking at something like connected TV, or gaming, or even kind of my favourite example, when talking about contextual is how advertisers navigate sensitive verticals. So I'm interested to know from the three you what can be said about these emerging areas, and how the technology is really helping each of these areas thrive.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:36:34)I'm going to try to take a stab at this one. You know, to me when I think about these verticals. And granted, we don't do contextual advertising with CTV or I think it's important to, to think of what contextual advertising actually means in those environments. So if you take gaming, for example, gaming, you know, there are some some big broad categories of gaming, for example, casual gaming, or, you know, or action games or RPGs. What does contextual advertising actually mean there? Is that the gameplay is it? Is that the category of the game? How does that actually fit all advertisers? And I suspect that, you know, if you look at gaming advertising advertising, right now, it's dominated by other games. So I'm, I'm struggling to, to make a connection of how, for example, gaming contextually, would satisfy requirements for full advertisers in any category, there's obviously, you know, these VR Worlds, and we're in where you can have these virtual billboards. But obviously, they're I question the scalability of these initiatives, because to me, you know, I don't own VR headset, I don't know how many people own one or regularly use it. So it sounds exciting, but I haven't really crossed that, you know, mental mental barrier, over envisioning of how exactly will work in a scalable way.\n\n\n\nYang (00:38:08)So the possibility of contextual advertising or even any other type of specific targeting for these different verticals or channels, comes down to what data is available out there and supported. So, for example, connected TV, contextual advertising is actually possible in certain cases, if you imagine and connected TV episode that, you know, is on a schedule, there's actually transcriptions out there of the actual, you know, words of that episode. And that can be targeted contextually, certain providers support this already. But it's a matter of having, you know, more access to this more support for this in the ecosystem. So it's all a function of scale. So the more partners and providers can support, you know, transcribed connected TV episodes, then the more possibility platforms will be able to support in terms of more sophisticated targeting such as contextual on these channels.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:39:15)Again, would that ad be delivered during the ad slot? Or would that ad be delivered sort of like an in-screen while the video is playing?\n\n\n\nYang (00:39:26)When you use connected TV, there's going to be breaks for advertisements, kind of like when you watch a regular TV? So it's during the episode, yes.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:39:37)Yeah. So that's where I think I personally struggle to envision how it would work because you know, taking obviously, there's some context, some some content will be pretty easy to target, right? If it's Top Gear, for example, about cars, but if it's, for example, a lot of TV shows, for example, Friends or The Office. What sort of contextual advertising information? Could you pull from that to determine the ad that you want to deliver? Right? So I think at that point, you kind of have to fall back on audience targeting.\n\n\n\nYang (00:40:12)Yeah. Or you could try to locate specific brands or types of products being mentioned, in the dialogue, you know, of those shows essentially. So yeah, there's a lot of different ways you can utilize the data, depending on what's available, essentially.\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:40:32)Yeah, so, potentially, that's something we'll see in 10 years.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:40:34)Vitaly, you perfectly transitioned to sort of this, this ending question that I had for the three of you, it doesn't necessarily have to be related to contextual, but, you know, imagine possibilities are endless. Any technology can come out what's that's something that each of you think should exist in the advertising industry, right now, that doesn't, sort of this wish list item that you'd like to see?\n\n\n\nVitaly (00:41:02)I won't reveal too much. But this topic is really exciting. To me, it's actually related to creative. So there's obviously a lot of talk about, you know, for years about how creative and media come together, maybe at an agency level or on the platform level, and how they work together. But actually, I think there's a huge gap and a huge opportunity related to both of those. So I won’t reveal anything beyond that. But it's related to creative, I think that has some of the biggest opportunities. So stay tuned.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:41:36)Ned, Yang, anything that you wish existed that hasn't quite come out yet?\n\n\n\nYang (00:41:42)Well, for me, I wouldn't say it's one thing. But in general, in the advertising world, it's a very fragmented marketplace, you know, you have different partners, and data providers doing their own thing. So to achieve scalability in any one, you know, technique can be difficult. So, ideally, you know, I would like to see more universal standards, when it comes to working with partners, whether it be data partners, whether it be, you know, by side sell side, that would make it a lot easier and faster for the whole ecosystem to innovate and to integrate together. And to leverage each other in terms of, you know, all the different pieces, because, you know, in advertising, it's very difficult for one player to do everything. If you do that, then you just become a walled garden center, and you're doing your own thing. But obviously, there's so many of these out there now, such that, you know, it's really hard to scale across the whole internet. Because everything everyone is, you know, more and more. There isn't a universal standard. And so, in order to innovate, you have to work across so many different partners in the ecosystem today.\n\n\n\nNed (00:43:00)Yeah. And to echo a little bit of what Yang said, what I would really like to see is a more global approach to privacy. So we have a lot of regional approaches, with various countries and continents taking action. In terms of privacy legislation, we have various technology platforms taking action in terms of enforcing privacy. But this makes it very difficult for advertisers and advertising platforms to actually do our business. I think everybody in the industry recognizes that. Privacy is a really important thing for users. And everybody agrees that we want to deliver that. And so we'd like to see a little bit more consensus around the technology, and the methods that we can use to deliver that privacy, while at the same time being able to still advertise the products and reach the consumers that the brands like to reach.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:43:52)Absolutely. Well. You know what, thanks so much to all three of you for joining. This has been a fantastic episode. And I can't think of a better way to have started the new year than with this topic and this roundtable discussion. So I'm sure all the listeners who have tuned into this episode have taken away as much as I have. And this has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast and I want to thank everybody for listening. Thanks, everybody.\n\n\n\nOutro (00:44:21)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you liked what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-vertical-marketing-strategy#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-vertical-marketing-strategy"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Leveraging Programmatic for a Vertical Marketing Strategy","datePublished":"2022-01-26T13:55:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:29+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-vertical-marketing-strategy"},"wordCount":5999,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-vertical-marketing-strategy#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517084921/maz_tannir_stackadapt_podcast_s2e10.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["communications","industry","niche marketing","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe discuss innovative ways that programmatic advertising technology can be used for niche industries and offer best practices.\n\n\n\nMaz Tannir | Media Director, WS\n\n\n\nAnup Patel | Director of Intelligence & Performance, WS\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)It shows us the true reach. It shows us what is really happening behind the scenes that transparency has become quite vital for media buyers and performance managers to understand what's really going on. And with digital audio and CTV I think they're still in their infant phases in some places. And I think it's transparency that's going to help them grow to where we see display or native or video currently.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:36)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape to how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:04)Hello, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode. My name is Matt Everett. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, we're joined by Maz from WS, an agency based out of both Toronto and Calgary that's highly accomplished in advertising for growers, producers, food, pharma, sports, entertainment, and more. With that in mind, we couldn't think of a better agency to showcase on this episode as our theme. Today, we'll be diving into innovative ways that programmatic advertising technology can be used for niche verticals and showcase best practices for campaign performance. Now, before we get started, I think a great way to kick off this episode would be to hear from both of you, Maz and Anup. If you could tell our listeners, you know, a little bit about yourselves, how long you've been in the industry areas of expertise that you have, just so we can get a little bit of insight before we get started on the episode.\n\n\n\nMaz (00:02:00)Yeah, thanks, Matt. Thanks for the introduction. Like you said, I'm Maz I've been with WS for just shy over eight years. But I've been in the industry for a lot longer than I care to admit on a podcast to be honest. My role at WS is twofold. One is I had the media department, as well as the communications department, which covers the performance team as well as the content team. I've worked quite extensively in the digital space. Even though a lot of the the agriculture industry is still getting into it. I've had the luxury of working on a number of different brands within the the digital landscape. And that's where my interest in programmatic has peaked over the years. And I've really been able to dive quite deep into it and understand it and know what it can and cannot do for for our clients. I think that's the best way to describe it. I love where it's going, though. And I love a lot more of the transparencies that we're starting to see in the digital space. And that's thanks to people like a new pool who have that their hand on the pulse when it comes to performance and measurements. I'll pass this over to a noob to introduce himself.\n\n\n\nAnup (00:03:28)Awesome. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for having us. Yeah, my name's Anup, I've been in a lot much younger than Maz, I don't have quite the experience. But I've been in Israel for about eight or nine years now. And with WS for the past four. I didn't start my journey in the analytical performance space I'm in now I was more sort of on the strategy side of things and kind of naturally progressed into analytics. And obviously, nowadays, you know, there's so much more we can measure and track and with digital and weapons. So, you know, it's made my job a lot more interesting. We're able to do a lot more stuff in this space. And I think there's more demand from the client side as far as reporting and KPIs and understanding the performance of marketing campaigns go. So. Yeah, it's been a space I've been kind of, in the last few years now. And experience with digital, I think, you know, as I started, like, digital has been around and we've seen it grow exponentially over the past few years, especially programmatic. And, again, a lot of its related back to demand not just from our clients, but from their customers, their, their users. And so more people are going online or using their phone or the different mediums and channels that we're able to be available on. The more we get ourselves involved into digital and so there's been sort of this natural kind of progression, with demand from our audience of using digital and again, on my side of things, it just makes our life A lot easier because natural, there's a lot more we can measure from digital. I should say, actually, there's challenges. And there's advantages. I think, you know, sometimes it's misinterpreted. And there's a lot of expectations that come out of digital, from a measurement perspective. But as long as you're managing that and handling those expectations.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:18)Absolutely. Well, you know, thanks so much to both of you for being on the episode. And I think to speak for everyone, when we say that we're We're definitely excited. And for any of our listeners who tuned in, we were actually joined by your agency back in late Q3, we did a StackAdapt webinar on the versatility of programmatic. So I think using that as sort of a reference point for this or a jumping-off point, we can definitely dive a lot deeper into the topic of really how this technology can be used for some of these niche verticals that aren't necessarily are traditionally served with programmatic. So, Matthew, you said something during your intro that kind of is a perfect transition into this first question. And you you said, you know, there's sort of these limitations, you know, what this technology can and what it can't do for your clients. And I know that, especially in recent history with StackAdapt, and WS and how we've worked together, you were looking to offer programmatic for your agriculture clients that you're working with. And to that, I'm interested to know, what was it about programmatic advertising that sort of stuck out to you as an agency as this more comprehensive and better solution for some of these clients to help them meet the goals that they were coming to you with.\n\n\n\nMaz (00:06:39)So a lot of the time in the past, in the agriculture industry, the clients, they would focus a lot of their attention on what today we refer to as direct display. So they would go to certain publishers, they would use their websites, they would use their first party data, and they would advertise to their customers through that channel. And what we wanted. And the reason we were very keen on the whole programmatic part is, we have to stop and recognize that a farmer, or a grower, or an economist and a consultant are human beings too. So they have their trends, that they have their habits, they have their browsing habits, and it was almost ignored, pre programmatic when people were advertising to them. So as an agency, we focus a lot on the actual customer. That's, it's not about what crop there is, or what we make assumptions on, we want to understand what the customer is doing, where they're visiting, what they're browsing, and programmatic has really allowed us to take that leap, and move away slightly from working with publishers directly, and moving into their behavioural and contextual digital journeys. That's really been one of the greatest benefits of the programmatic realm. And what that ends up doing is once we start understanding where these visitors are seeing our ads and engaging with them, we start to learn even more about the customer. So not only do we know that they live in a certain area, or they're growing a certain crop. Now we're understanding their outside of agriculture behaviour, through through this programmatic channel. That's really been a great focus for us when we're looking at the data that we have. And I know a new VP sees it from a very different light than mine. But for me, it starts with that behavioural ability and really getting to understand the digital journeys that these customers are taking.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:52)Yeah, thanks so much, Maz. Now, I think for the next question that we had here, we can almost a new FBI can kind of tap you on the shoulder a little bit, because I'm interested to know kind of with this transition into programmatic. What has surprised you the most about using it for your clients? I mean, you could even speak here to kind of a performance perspective, what's been surprising, what have you really learned? And kind of a secondary question to that is if we narrow our focus a little bit on the last two years, and how this whole shift in more people being online, more people being engaged with content, what what are some things that have surprised you about using this technology?\n\n\n\nAnup (00:09:35)So it's an interesting space that, you know, most of my work with as far as our clients go and being on the agriculture side of things primarily, which has definitely been more traditional media print, radio, digital programmatic, especially as being a little bit of an innovation or a new medium where I think what surprised me most is just clients being open and willing to try it out, test it out, knowing that they probably don't see as high of engagement rates online. And as other sectors, I think what we've seen over the last few years is that growing, especially amongst growers and within agriculture, and so a new medium and channel where we can advertise and reach growers on as delphinium exciting, and surprising to see that, you know, that level of engagement through that channel, I think just the ability to measure and track things aren't necessarily that's kind of changed over the last couple of years. But that's kind of what programmatic introduced to us is, it's easy to see from the, I guess, from mass perspective on the buying and targeting side, there's efficiencies and whatnot bid, you know, there's a lot of new information that we're able to collect on the tracking and measurement side of things through UTM, and pixels and the platform itself. And so, you know, we have the ability to capture a lot more information and data and understand about the user better, which kind of just helps us optimize campaigns further and makes the overall campaign much more effective. I'm not sure. During the pandemic, I don't know, if we really saw much, obviously, there was more engagement online, and we did see a shift of going online. And so yeah, I don't know if it was a cause of the pandemic or vice versa. But, you know, as far as digital advertising goes, and programmatic advertising goes, that engagement kind of still maintained itself online through the pandemic as well, which is great to seek is there's obviously a lot of other channels and sectors and things like that that got hit hard from it. So, you know, we still saw the same levels across the board.\n\n\n\nMaz (00:11:34)Yeah, I do want to add to that, we weren't really shocked by anything when the pandemic hit. And that's not to say we're not talking about life in general. But in the agriculture industry, it really is pandemic-proof because we still need to produce, growers still need to sell people still need to eat. So we continue to see a lot of engagement with the advertising that we're doing. The benefit from the digital space, programmatic included, was we started to see a lot more engagement. So we were starting to understand a lot more about how they're consuming their media, without using some of the offline tactics like print or radio, for instance. So there wasn't really any big shockers for our industry. But yeah, that's really how we've tried to take advantage of this change in behaviour that we saw.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:12:31)That's really good. And I was going to ask, because in some of the previous episodes, when we were speaking to agencies, a lot of them said that with some of their clients, there were sort of this mass panic, especially as budgets need to shift channels needed to shift for WS. Were you finding yourselves acting as a bit of a resource for clients kind of giving them some best practices to say, Hey, this is what we can do now that people are online, here's how we can shift budgets. Was this something that you were doing kind of in having a role of educating your clients or as you said, you know, in the agriculture industry, there really wasn't too much panic just because people need to grow, people need to eat it, it still has to run. So as an agency, what were some things that were kind of going on, or was everything kind of calm and collected the entire time.\n\n\n\nAnup (00:13:24)It was never calm, nor, for that matter, one thing that we did see a big change in. And we're very fortunate, our clients are incredibly open-minded and ready to try things. But one of the things we wanted to ensure is that we realize that there was a larger uptake and people visiting online. And so from a content standpoint, we had to make some pivots over there to make sure the sites had the information that they needed. People were able to get straight access or direct access to more information or even to purchase or speak to a consultant. Because a lot of the time in the agriculture industry, it was very brand awareness based. So you put products, you'd showcase certain solutions, and the growers and the farmers would reach out to their retailers or their agronomists, and they would take action there. So with COVID, and seeing the uptake in digital experiences and journeys, I think one of the few things that we did alter and speak to our clients about was okay, let's make sure these sites are really set up. To capture that engagement. Let's make sure that these growers that are clicking on ads or showing some interest or searching forests are getting the answers they need online, and that way, we can nurture them and move them into the next part of that funnel.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:50)You know what I think what we'll do here is I've got another question, and then we'll we'll head to a bit of a break, but I think I wanted to start here with a stat that I found. So I was on an adage the other day. And there was a stat that said that right now, about 70 cents on the dollar of digital ad spend is going to programmatic channels. And it's expected by 2025, that that number is going to jump to about 90 cents, which is very significant, especially for programmatic and how rapidly it's growing. One thing I did want to get your point of view on though is talking about some of these emerging channels. Because normally, when people think of programmatic, it's kind of, “Alright, native, display, video.” But we've also got connected TV and programmatic audio, that are these two big emerging channels that are really great for reaching people when they're most engaged. And I know from from speaking to some of the folks internally about some of the brands that you guys are working with, there is some use in in CTV for some of your clients. So I'm interested to know what your thoughts are on the role that you think these emerging channels and technologies have on not only the future of programmatic advertising, but the future for these verticals and how they can continue to succeed in their programmatic campaigns.\n\n\n\nMaz (00:16:08)So I'm going to focus on what the future is going to bring because I do believe a lot of the clients that we work with have very key interest in CTV and digital audio, they like the idea of using this behavioural and contextual methodology, and incorporating it into their digital media planning. Currently, it comes down to data and what we can find and what we know about the certain growers and users. And we haven't seen a lot of research coming out about usages of digital audio and CTV amongst growers, specifically in Canada. As far as the US is concerned, we do have access to a lot more data over there. And that's where we've started to test it with StackAdapt using connected television to see okay, are we using the right datasets that we already have with our existing clients to target CTV and digital audio? What are we seeing as the you know, the completion rates? There is still a bit of that whole measurement component when we're trying to educate clients about it. And clients want to understand how can we measure these things differently from standard television and standard radio that they have been accustomed to in the past? So there is a bit of a learning curve for clients to come on board. Our clients have taken that step with us and said, Okay, let's try it. Let's see what it means. Let's see where it goes. And that's why we've started to build it into our existing media plans. I think down the line is we learn a lot more about CTV and digital audio, and we may be a little bit behind other industries. But I think the more we learn about it, the easier it's going to be to not only convince clients to run it, but convince clients to build and develop the creative that could run on these channels. Because I also don't believe that any video can work on CTV it has to be thought of as a standard television buy.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:18:16)Yeah, I think that's definitely a fantastic way of looking at it. And you're right I mean creatives cannot always just be kind of retrofit across channels, and to have something on CTV, especially when people are very engaged in habit, really speak to them, and speak to what the brand is offering is is very important for the success in that channel. So I think what we will do, we'll take a quick break. And then when we come back, we'll focus a little bit more on some of the practical side of this, we'll look at some campaign execution strategies, as well as you know what the future looks like in the programmatic space and how this technology truly is for any advertisers operating in any verticals. So we'll take a quick break, and then we'll be right back.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:19:09)Another ad. Too bad it isn't yours. Your brand could have been here, but instead, it's us. StackAdapt. StackAdapt specializes in native, display, video, connected TV, and audio ads. Request a demo today at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:19:28)Welcome back, everybody. As mentioned, we're joined by mass and Anup from WS and welcome to this half of the episode. So jumping into to the next set of questions here, a lead in by saying that at StackAdapt As many know, our primary focus is helping agencies and brands plan, execute and analyze successful campaigns. That's really what we're here for. And previously, we had done an episode back in late 2021. I'm on creative strategy. And as experts in the space of more niche verticals, I wanted to ask both of you, what are some best practices or learnings or anything that you have when it comes to informing a winning creative strategy as well as a winning audience strategy for campaigns.\n\n\n\nAnup (00:20:17)I can jump in there. For me, it's structure, just having a solid framework that's measurable. And something we do WS is where we begin with is really understanding the audience and connecting that to the goals of the campaign. And once you know, what drives your audience, and the decision-making steps they take to achieve that goal or need that they have. You've established or that what, where, when, why piece of it. That's where you can kind of start developing the creative strategies and the messaging. And you can get a little bit more detailed and targeted on how you're going to reach a specific user or segment. And for us, what's worked is not putting all our eggs into one basket and running with that. Having more than information, understanding the audience upfront allows us to kind of play around with different types of trade or different types of messaging. And as long as we're approaching a switch to strategically, you know, we can try and do some testing, so maybe testing and put a little bit of the messaging out there and see what works for getting engagement. If we're getting hits, then we can run with that if we're not seeing much, you know, we can go back to the drawing board and kind of tweak and optimize. And so as long as we've built in ways to measure through that, through the campaign, that allow us to do that, and then optimize as we move forward. So obviously, that's probably some of the biggest learnings we've made is just making sure we can design frameworks and strategies that that are measurable. And once we can optimize throughout, it's not always easy to do, you know, it's, you try and you want to make sure that creative that mastering hits right out of the gate. And unless your audience has stayed the same, and the environment, say the same year over a year, which is very rare, you know, you'd have to take some chances. And I think that's something that the programmatic platforms allowed us to do is, we can do that testing easy enough, it's flexible enough to go in there and understand and learn our audience, and then be able to apply those learnings to other mediums.\n\n\n\nMaz (00:22:22)We have also worked quite extensively with the creative studio at your company, they've given us access to not necessarily different sizes, but let's refer to them as higher impact ads. So when building out these awareness plays and digital ads, we're trying to use as many of these tools as possible, not to prove a point that programmatic works or not. But to really get in front of these audiences that we've spent a lot of time learning about and understanding what their habits are. Because it also comes down to these multiple touchpoints. When these growers are purchasing the products, they're not buying one container, they're buying them by the gallon. And so the decision isn't made instantly where they see an ad, and then they react to it immediately. This is a process, it's also a thing where a lot of the growers will take a certain amount of product and use it only on one section of their farm. So you have to continue the engagement with them. on a very regular basis. These, are when we look at multiple touch points. In the past, we'd say oh, we have to hit them five times seven times, before they've made a decision in agriculture, it's actually a lot longer. So the creative has a very big play because a you don't want to keep showing them the same materials over and over again, nor the same sizes for that matter. So again, understanding that audience and what it takes to engage with them at the right time in the right place when they are growing or harvesting or going into the field. But also making sure that the creative that you're putting up in front of them is a impactful be relevant. And then the experience when they've clicked on to that site is completed with the right content and the right information that they are willing to go down that funnel and choose your product in the future.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:24:24)Yeah, thanks so much to both of you, and I think that that perfectly transitions into the final question that I had was for agencies like WS ones that are working with clients that are a little bit more unique, and that buyer journey looks a little bit different. What's some advice that you can offer to those who are looking to get into programmatic for the first time, or you know how they can best leverage this technology? And sort of to bookend that question, what's something that you wish you knew at the beginning about programmatic that you now know?\n\n\n\nMaz (00:25:04)I'll start with that. I think first and foremost, the team that's going in front of the client, be it, the client partnerships team, the media team, the performance team, the team themselves need to have a thorough understanding of what programmatic is. So my first piece of advice is you yourself, go get the education that's necessary. And there's a lot of great courses out there that are done by the IAB. You guys have a fantastic learning platform as well. First and foremost, the team selling it needs to understand it. And that's what's going to give your clients confidence by saying, Okay, I've heard a lot about this thing. If you feel strong and committed to it, then you know, let's go in and work on it together. The other thing that I saw that helped me a lot when I started getting into programmatic was not running on the self-serve basis. And by that, I mean, take the option of managed services, because it's, it's incredible how much more value the back end developers and the account executives at the DSP are going to help and how much more insight they're going to provide both our immediate buying side as well as the performance side. So there's a lot more insights that you can get from them. So I said this during the webinar, and I'll say it again, the hand-holding part in programmatic. And even now after years and years of doing it, I still rely very extensively on Matt Sheldon and StackAdapt, for example, to really guide me in terms of what they're seeing from their side, that could be done better. That's something that I would recommend to everybody is a get an education and be, don't try to run it yourself. Get your team involved from the DSP, because they have a lot of value that they can add. And what I wish I knew, I wish I knew how flexible programmatic was, before we started, I think I was one of those that said, Okay, this is another digital platform that we can use, but its versatility. And the way we can move things around on the goal was something that I really didn't understand enough of at the beginning. And I think had I known that ease, I probably would have shifted more dollars towards it right from the start. That's my personal take.\n\n\n\nAnup (00:27:39)I was just gonna add on to what you said, if you're thinking about programmatic, I say just go for it, it's probably one of those channels is there's less barriers to get into it. And the nice thing is, you know, you don't have to commit a lot of budget towards it. So start off small and learn from it. And be afraid to make mistakes, because you can afford that with the platform like programmatic, that makes the flexibility allows you to do that. Right? So go on there, start small learn from it and grow. I think there's a lot of potential. And from our perspective, like we said, you know, we never thought it would be as effective as it has been. And we're fully prepared to just use it as a platform, maybe just to learn about the audience and maybe test out messaging and still use more than traditional channels to monitor the budget. But yeah, so you can use it purely just from an ad or an audience understanding. That's awesome. But yeah, I think there's there's lots of different, there's lots of potential from programmatic. We're seeing at least on our end.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:28:41)Of course. I think on on that note, I'll ask sort of this bookend question that I have. And I like to ask this to all of our guests to maybe even step outside of the theme of the episode and just look at sort of the bright future that we're seeing in programmatic audio, I mean, things like or will not programmatic audio, but programmatic in general. You know, we're seeing contextual advertising, we're seeing new channels emerge. What are you both excited about? What’s some technology that hasn't quite come out yet that you hope to see in the future?\n\n\n\nMaz (00:29:15)I tell you what, I think the concept of programmatic, if we go back to what it really is, it's a software. And I'm excited about the fact that I think, in my personal prediction, all media in the future is going to be bought through a programmatic platform. I don't think we're going to have a lot more of these walled gardens. I think a lot of that is going to open up, and I hope it does, because I think it allows us that flexibility we were talking about earlier, but also really gives us a much larger picture in terms of how ads are put forming against each other and where we can make those alterations. So I do hope, and I do predict that in the near future, we're going to start seeing a much larger part of the businesses becoming programmatic purchase. I also have seen over the years, the amount of transparency that's changed within the programmatic platform. We rarely talk about it anymore. But I think that's something that's growing and becoming a focus point for a lot of the platforms like yours, in terms of really showing the true numbers. It shows us the true reach, it shows us what is really happening behind the scenes that transparency has become quite vital for media buyers and performance managers to understand what's what's really going on. And with digital audio and CTV, I think they're still in their infant phases in some places. And I think it's transparency that's going to help them grow, to where we see display or native or video currently.\n\n\n\nAnup (00:31:14)What I'll add to that is, it's kind of exciting. But the better, the more effective we get with programmatic and digital advertising, the more pushback, I think, you know, we're going to see from users and then so there's going to be this level of transparency and education and learning on the user side of things. So people are already thinking that they're more apprehensive of going online and, you know, wanting to have blockers and things like that, because they're more skeptical, I guess, of marketers, and ads. And I think if what excites me most with programmatic is that potential for being creative and engaging users. And so the more we can blend that line between, you know, collecting information, being that Big Brother type thing, and doing it from a bad perspective, it's we want to add value to your lives. And the more that users can understand that, you know, they're gonna realize that as technology gets better, as we can understand who they are and what they want, and reach them quicker, that it's actually helping them, as opposed to us interfering in in their lives and doing things and fiercely or, you know, with not the best intentions. And so, yeah, it'll be interesting to see kind of where that takes us. I think as devices become smarter, you know, people are able to engage with the more, though, almost get more creative with the ways we can add value.\n\n\n\nMaz (00:32:32)Yeah, and I think even growing from connected television, we're gonna start seeing a larger usage of even technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality. And I think there's a place for programmatic to play in those areas a lot more extensively. And again, making it a part of the experience rather than something like, you know, in-your-face kind of methodology. So it's exciting to see where it's going. And I do predict that all formats are ultimately going to be bought through a programmatic software.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:33:06)You know what, I think that's a great closing point for us. And to all of our listeners, the key takeaway here, especially the one that I found is that programmatic truly is for everyone and for every vertical, and there can be a lot of success, you know, using WS as an example, a lot of success in this space. And whether you're, you know, B2B or B2C brand, and you have something that's a bit outside of the traditional verticals, programmatic advertising can can help you get in front of the right people at the right time when they're their most engaged. So on that note, Maz, Anup, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast and we will see you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nOutro (00:33:55)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you liked what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/higher-education-marketing-strategies#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/higher-education-marketing-strategies"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Certified Strategies for Higher Education Marketing","datePublished":"2022-02-09T14:03:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:29+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/higher-education-marketing-strategies"},"wordCount":8336,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/higher-education-marketing-strategies#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517090448/alison_baumann_stackadapt_podcast_s2e11.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["higher education","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at how education marketers have adopted new strategies to stay relevant and competitive in a rapidly changing climate for higher education institutions. \n\n\n\nAlison Baumann | VP of Marketing, TCS Education System\n\n\n\nBen Masters | Sales Director, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)Having that strong brand foundation, which then translates into a strong brand message really is what's going to set you apart. And in an industry when so many of us are doing the same thing, the same programs, you really have to take a deep look at what is the value that you bring to that potential student.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:28)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape? The How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:56)Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode. My name is Matt. I'm the host of How Agencies Thrive podcast, and I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, we're joined by Allison Baumann from TCS education system, and StackAdapt very own Ben Masters to do a deep dive into all things marketing for the higher education vertical. Now, before we get started, I'd love to hear from both of you to bring our guests up to speed on your experience in the programmatic space. So starting with you, Allison, tell us a little bit about TCS, how long you've been in the industry and what you consider to be your largest areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nAllison (00:01:32)Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Matt, for having me. I really appreciate it. I am Allison Bauman, the Vice President at TCS education system of marketing. TCS education system is a system of colleges and universities, nonprofit across the United States. We are made up of five communities cluster system office, and we work together collaboratively really to bring together each other's expertise, systems together, working together from marketing it human resources, and really use our economies of scale and that expertise to advance student impact. Our system office works to ensure that the schools have the ability to focus on the students. And we really come together in some amazing ways. Our schools across the country consist of the Chicago school. They have locations all across the United States, Pacific Oaks College. They're located in Pasadena, California and online. The colleges of law in Santa Barbara and Ventura, California, Saybrook University. They are actually an online university, one of the first ever who've just celebrated their 50th anniversary, and Kansas Health Science Center, home of Kansas Calm, our first osteopathic medical school in Kansas, and we'd love to be in a community together.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:04)Fantastic. Thanks so much, Alison. Now, Ben, you and I have known each other for a few years now, back when StackAdapt and all the employees could see each other in person. To bring our guests up to speed on your role at StackAdapt, could you just tell us a little bit more about what you do on the client-facing side, how long you've been in the industry, and some of your areas of specialization?\n\n\n\nBen (00:03:26)Yeah, thanks, Matt. As you noted, the before time was fun where we used to be able to see each other in the office, but much like yourself, I've been at StackAdapt for three years now or over three and a half years. I've worn a few different hats at StackAdapt, first starting in the campaign management side of things then working my way into the account management side of things, the account executive sales side, and now I'm presuming the role of sales director so overseeing a team of account executives here at StackAdapt that are in charge of fostering relationships with brands and clients much like TCS and throughout my time at stacking up, I've really touched a whole bunch of different verticals, whether it be higher education, health care, CPG all those wonderful things. I've really found a home in higher ed having worked with TCS now for just about three years. So I've been able to absorb quite a bit of knowledge across all these verticals, but higher education has really been something I've enjoyed working with into.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:29)Absolutely, thanks so much, Ben. So now that everyone's been properly introduced, I think we can dive into the episode. Now. I'm personally very excited for this one, because of all the verticals that were impacted over the last couple of years, marketing for education has definitely seen a major shift, largely in part to the fact that you know a lot of institutions had to entirely pivot their offerings in order to cater and most importantly, staying competitive both online and offline in their offerings. In Season One of the podcast last year, and this was during the height of the pandemic, we had the opportunity to do an episode with the Vermont Law School. And this was right as things kind of hit really hard in a lot of these industries. So I'm eager to see, you know, as time has passed from both of you what your thoughts are, on how things have transformed over time, and what we can look forward to in the future for this vertical. So to get started, sort of with the first part of this episode, I like to kind of shift our minds to, you know, reflecting a little bit on the last few years, and this is a bit of a three-part question. But from both of you, I'd love to know, you know, what was your initial reaction in 2020? When everything happened? And what did you assume was going to happen with the higher education vertical? And then, moreover, to you, Allison, I am interested to know, you know, what was the most major impact to the institutions that you were working with under the umbrella of, of your company? And then, you know, what was your role, especially as a leader in marketing to support these teams during this during this time, and, you know, provide them with the strategy and the know how of how to navigate?\n\n\n\nAllison (00:06:13)I think, like many, the first reaction was, oh, now, how do we do this. And you know, that, of course, from a marketing perspective, as well as an employer, and an educator, all of it really coming together at once. Luckily, we quickly immobilized several different things across the system to ensure first and foremost that our students were taking care of the first thing to do, of course, is how do we ensure that students are continuing to be served continuing their education in the in the safest manner? Luckily, many of our schools were already online. So the transition to online was seamless. However, of course, you are taking into consideration how do you take what is aground currently happening on ground onto online? You mentioned a law school, our small colleges of law was not yet completely fully online. So they utilized our team at the system office to help bring their coursework online very quickly, without much much disruption to the students. Of course, then how do we then do this as a team? As a bunch of marketers coming together? How do we collaborate? How do we come up with, you know, great, great services and solutions? That normally we do together? I think you guys even mentioned, you know, what it was, like just going from office to office to talk to each other? So I think like, everyone, we figured out, how do we continue to do our work remotely. And luckily, you know, we are a bunch of problem solvers in general. So the team pulled together and, and solve problems and utilizing technology. We use, of course, chat quite often now between Slack and Microsoft, we definitely are probably talking more than we ever have in the past. But as marketers, the question was, what's what's going to happen? And what we did start to see was something that we all really didn't quite expect. And our schools actually saw some great gains in terms of student interest as the pandemic started. Our programming is specialized in helping communities from psychology and health, etc. And we saw a very large uptick in interest, which I think the country saw, as people really looked to help each other. And so we also had the fact that people were home, people were at their computers, people were absorbing media and information. Very quickly, very often. Some people were on their phones until one 2am, who might not have been before. And this really created an opportunity for us to communicate and get our message to individuals who might not have had the time before. And so I think that change really took us back at first. And I think one of the most difficult things over the last two years is the prediction of what that then showed us. You know, we saw an uptick, is this going to be sustainable? Is this something that is going to continue? What we learned was that it was not, and just like everything else happening in the country, ups and downs ebbs and flows, really our marketing efforts, our recruitment efforts, saw the exact same thing, just like the rest of the country. A lot of highs and had a lot of lows, a lot of response, a lot of engagement, no engagement. And that's really what we've been seeing over the last two years, it's been very difficult to make predictions. But it has also taught us that we need to be nimble. And we need to be very, very much in tune with what is happening not only with our potential student, but in the country, and at any given moment, it can change. So my role really to ensure that I am leading with an open mind, and ready to predict any changes that we might have to make. The team itself has become, as I mentioned, more nimble than ever. We have been more flexible, and have really started to think outside of the box now, not only in what is going to happen tomorrow, but what do things look like in five years from now? What do we have to do to prepare? If what we think is going to work tomorrow doesn't work in five months. And that really can make a difference in how you decide to deploy your marketing tactics or build a marketing plan. It really forces you to think differently. And forward, for sure.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:11:23)Thanks so much, Alison. Now, Ben, from your perspective, kind of on the StackAdapt side with a large book of higher-ed clients, what are some of the things that you notice were happening with these agencies? And what was your role, you know, working on the buy side to sort of educate and put everybody's minds at ease?\n\n\n\nBen (00:11:42)Yeah, it was, much like everything. It was all up in the air for a little bit of time. I have some clients that have physical higher ed, campuses, and course offerings and things like that. However, working with TCS, we knew that it was the majority of the time online, which really came came to their aid quite a bit. So when it came time to discuss with TCS, what was going to happen, it seemed like we already sort of had this great plan in place the offering was ironclad, the infrastructure was sound, and it kind of seemed like it was business as usual for TCS and StackAdapt. And then when we started to sort of measure and watch the wave of, of people out there, take a second and actually think, “Okay, well, you know what, my job can now be done fully online. Or maybe my job isn't what I thought it was going to be now that I'm working from home, let me refresh, let me restart and let me go and secure a diploma or a certificate or achieve a different level of education.” And that sort of really played into the success of TCS throughout the past couple of years is people were taking more time to invest in themselves. And that was something that we honed in on, and that was something that we tailored, our structure and our campaign strategy toward is to really help those people level up and invest in themselves throughout the pandemic. And the results spoke for themselves. So at first, it was a bit of, Oh, my goodness, everyone's running around. But it seems like TCS was really built to flourish in this time.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:13:32)Now, still, in that frame of mind of looking back at the last two years, I'm interested to know from both of you how you think the industry reacted to this shift of, you know, having school pretty well in person most of the time, and, you know, had that supplementary online offering to then having little to no in-person offerings to now being sort of in this hybrid of online or in person, you know, depending on where you're located and where that access is. Do you think the industry was even well equipped to handle this? Or was it a huge shift for everybody to kind of scramble and get these offerings up to spec?\n\n\n\nAllison (00:14:12)One of the things about this industry that is special. You know, I've been I've been doing it more higher ed marketing for over 20 years now. And I've been with several different types of institutions. It's a huge industry that is very diverse, and very diverse in everything from of course programs and offerings to size, capabilities, history, how they do things, how they want to do things, how they can do things, resources that they have, etc. So when you really take a step back and look at it as a whole, how did the industry react? I would say very similarly in very diverse ways. There were some that were pretty cared, there were some who had the resources, and were able to turn on a dime. There were some who had no resources whatsoever and unfortunately, are in situations of closing, we've seen many close closings more than anybody would want to see, of course, and some, some stood still. And some have recognized the need. But also standing still, it's one of the hardest things to do in higher ed is mobilize and prioritize you when you think about the industry and what they had to do during the pandemic. First and foremost, they had to focus on the students. And a lot of that in some instances, our schools don't have dormitories. But many colleges and universities across the country who are housing students, one of our first thoughts was, you know, what do we do to keep the students safe? Do we send them home? Do we keep them here? So there was a lot that the industry was faced with as a whole. However, I think that many rose to the occasion sort of say, and really started to push through new things that I believe it's been a long time coming in higher ed, higher ed has been on this kind of ledge of do I stay? Do I go? Do I stay doing what I've been doing? Do we go towards the new and in a way, a lot of our K through 12 has, whether it's innovated or taken the new times, you know, I have two kiddos, myself and during the pandemic, the technology's at their fingertips. And to think that the younger generation is now growing up with this technology, they'll be moving into colleges and universities, before we know it. And as an industry, are we where we need to be? And I think that's been a question for a very long time and the pandemic and the last few years really have forced that question. And more importantly, forced a lot of action for change.\n\n\n\nBen (00:17:13)I agree with you, Allison there. And it's funny that even you know, if we think back 567 years ago, when we thought of online education, it was a for me personally, I'm speaking areas, University of Phoenix that was just sort of the name that came to mind. And everyone whenever you thought of education, higher ed or post-secondary was physical in class, that was it. And anything else was sort of new and uncomfortable for people to think about. But then it takes a massive global event to sort of get people to snap into focus and say, Okay, well, we can actually execute this in any number of different ways. And then all of a sudden, online education really came back to the forefront and prove to everyone much like with a lot of jobs out there, that we can do these things from home. And it was a really exciting time, I think for people that were trying to juggle doing a job and also further their career by taking a night class or something like that, and, and everyone all at once sort of rediscovered how powerful and efficient online education can be. And then it was up to the institutions to actually come in and beef up their offering or double down on what they already had. And that's what we saw with TCS is they actually really cemented their, their courses and their schools and provided people across the country with opportunities to increase their their knowledge and actually take that step forward. So it was an interesting sort of blessing in disguise, I guess, that really helped push online education back into the front of people's minds.\n\n\n\nAllison (00:18:58)And in addition to online education, I'd probably add more diverse flexible options, right? Our schools have even continued they were before but now even more. So looking in different types of stackable degrees. How do we offer courses that people can take at certain times? And how does it transfer to other courses and other schools, and how can we build curriculum that is flexible, you know, higher education, the product that the degree, the coursework, the curriculum is very complex in within a university, how it's built, where it's taught, the timing that it's taught. The, you know, goodness, I look at the academic experts, and they're amazing. It's almost sometimes like putting a puzzle piece together. When you think about all the courses a student has to take in a certain amount of time and and how that matriculates throughout the years and summer, you know, one right after the other, etc. And so building flexibility is not something that higher education has done much of and the work to do that can be immense. And you really need the expertise, the support, the focus, it's one of the things I think, you know, Ben, as you mentioned, that TCS had done so well, and was able to just even magnify that for our schools, we have accreditation experts on hand. So when the schools are focusing on the coursework, we can help them in how to ensure that what they're building in the course, is going to be able to be then submitted to the accreditor appropriately, it takes a lot of work, whether it is online or building that flexible program. So it's something that is not an easy switch within, you know, product development, and one that takes quite a bit. So to be able to do it with as much support. And a quick amount of time as society is looking for quick changes, can be as big of a challenge. But but one that we're happy that the system provides to our schools.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:21:18)You touched on something that kind of perfectly transitions into this next question. And that was the idea of sort of the perception of online schooling. And I mean, now it's becoming something standard, that is, you know, equivalent to going in person and having that sort of real higher education experience, rather than, you know, something that was just seen as online, or maybe less than, but when I was researching questions for this episode, kind of about the higher ed vertical as a whole, one of the big tips that I found in a number of articles or guides or things, was talking about this idea of having a really firm grasp on your branding, and how, you know, as an education marketer, how your branding resonates with that target audience, especially as the space has become, you know, more and more competitive as the years go on. So, for both of you, I'm interested to know how you think that establishing a strong brand or having that, you know, correct brand messaging, has that truly become one of the most important things to be focusing on as a marketer during these times.\n\n\n\nAllison (00:22:27)You know, branding, branding means so many different things. And I think you said two things that really hit home, establishing a brand and the correct brand messaging, short answer both continue to be extremely important. It's something that without a solid, brand Foundation, first and foremost, as an institution, you won't know where to go. So when all of this change is coming, and student behaviour is changing, and demand for different programs are changing. Without a solid brand foundation, you as an institution will not know where to go. But with that solid brand Foundation, and what that means is we know who we are, we know what our differentiators are. We know what product and programming we can give a student to be successful. Knowing that information will give the institution a really strong roadmap on what new courses to develop, how to offer the best programming and flexibility, and how to help serve the larger community and society as a whole. Once these graduates leave the institution, and get a job and provide whatever they're providing back to society, that is a strong brand Foundation. And without that, you will continue to struggle, especially in times like these, a brand foundation, then, of course, moves into your brand messaging. And yes, extremely important because now then, more than ever, the noise, the additional competition, which is a whole other topic. It's thick, it's heavy. And people are just like in any industry getting bombarded with tons of messages right now. And when you add in the last couple of years, they're getting bombarded with political messages, health, public Matters, and then advertising just as much and having that strong brand Foundation which then translates into a strong brand message really is what's going to set you apart. And in an industry when so many of us are doing the same thing. This same programs, you really have to take a deep look at what is the value that you bring to that potential student. And in something like higher education, everybody's looking for a job they want they they want their degree to lead towards something, the majority. But now even, you know with with how things have been over the last couple of years, people want something a little bit more we're finding, they want to help, they want to feel good, they want to contribute something different. I think, as Ben mentioned, this was a time of reflection where people I can, I don't have to do what I was doing before now is my opportunity for something else. And it is the brand work the foundation work that really then will carry through advertising. In short, you can't advertise something that then when that student either hits your website, or walks into your building, or sits on their first class, it all has to say the same thing. And so that brand message is not just about that advertisement, or the radio spot, or the banner that they see online or your social media posts, it's truly the experience that they have, once they decide to engage with you, and that ensuring it's consistent, and ensuring that you're giving them value is really important.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:26:29)Allison, there was something that you just said there where you're talking about that sort of that experience and how they engage. And Ben, I'd love to hear from you about this as well. But as far as I understand, when everything happened, there was sort of this mad dash for institutions to kind of up their game with their technology. So making sure that that landing page is up to spec or maybe offering virtual tours or ways that people can engage with the brand without physically being there was this, you know, something you saw a huge uptick with was this something that that TCS sort of dove into on the technology side to engage with potential students.\n\n\n\nAllison (00:27:10)So yes, I think that we were very lucky that in advance of the last few years, we were already looking towards engaging our potential students in technology. Years ago, when I started at TCS in 2013. Our content was predominantly sitting in magazine publications, printed publications, right. Over the last few years, we've created blogs that all of that printed content has gotten moved into, that have been extremely successful. And that they're not just blogs that people that sit there for people to wait and come and read the content. But we very much use it in our advertising and directing individuals back to the content that they're looking for in that help educate them, you know, whether they are thinking about going to further their degree in those topics of the content, and or if they're professionals in the industry and want to continue to stay current on what people are talking about with the content. You mentioned landing pages, virtual tours, we've had virtual tours in our website platforms for some time. But I also did see of course, an influx in them. But one thing that we saw a big change in is events, right? So people whether they're admissions events, or orientation events, or seminars that used to be very much on campus events moving online. And we even have, we have several international programs, TCS brings our schools together to, you know, have some internationalization. And we even had a large study abroad where multiple individual students and facilitators and professors went overseas that now saw as an event online, and those online events, whether, like I said, admissions all the way through seminars, we saw greater attendance online than we ever would be able to see on ground one, it opened it up to a much larger audience, someone who might not have wanted to driven the California highways during rush hour. Now just was able to jump on a Zoom. So events was very interesting in change, you know, of technology. I think that in addition, we're seeing more and more as the months go on the need for different types of technology to continue to even evolve. And that is something that we at TCS in the marketing department is spending a lot of focus on how are individuals interacting now in comparison to how they did two years ago So two years ago, when things were already changing, technology was becoming very, you know, popular and more frequent. Maybe an institution had a really strong text messaging program, right. But now, individuals have spent so much time in their homes, on their computers, other industries have adapted to speaking with them in different ways using technology. So someone didn't have to see someone, right. But health care, health care, we don't go into the doctor's as much anymore. Even if you are healthy and your doctor's offices open, you have an option to have a telehealth visit. Or I just spent two hours talking to Delta Airlines via chat, two hours all on chat from problem to solution to booking. So what does that now mean for higher education? How does someone who is interested in furthering their education learn about the information that they want, speak to admissions representative, maybe even apply, and let's take it even a step further register for their courses and take their courses, all from one seating in their home, just like they might do with any other industry. And that is something that I think higher education is still, we still need to do some research, we still need to find new technologies, and really see how does the potential student want to be engaged with all the way through? So taking it in that step first, marketing? How do they want the information? How do they want to obtain the information that kind of give me the information about your institution or your program, but then even taking it a step further, and old ways of maybe speaking to someone or walking into a building really might be of the past now?\n\n\n\nBen (00:31:56)Yeah, Allison, you bring up a ton of really crucial aspects there. And in focusing on the marketing side of things, that's where that's where we've seen a huge shift. And at the end of the day, now it's it's in the hands of the consumer or the applicant or the student to, to pick what they want. And they really have a buffet of options at their disposal. And it's really up to the brand to differentiate themselves, like you mentioned. And that's where developing incredible content like I know TCS does. That sort of differentiator is what allows brands like TCS in their schools to really set themselves apart. And then when you marry that with a well-tailored marketing plan and approach, that's where we start to see institutions separate themselves from the pack. And that's sort of where we've noticed this shift occur. It's marrying content with sound strategy to really give students an idea of what you have to offer instead of just information overload, which is something that we've all been subjected to in our daily lives, whether it's picking a meal, a meal kit, delivery service, or trying to figure out what shoes to buy, or where to go to school, it's just there's so many messages coming at you from all these different angles, and trying to cut through the noise and figure out who's going to give you the best opportunity is is pretty difficult. And that's where we rely. We rely on partners like TCS to really give us that information and make and make it easy to provide students with such an easy choice.\n\n\n\nAllison (00:33:49)You know, Ben and to piggyback on that, and what TCS, our marketing team, where we look for that information are those who know it best, and it is a good sound practice to never shy away from speaking to your subject matter experts, we have amazing professors who have worked in the field who are still doing work in the field, who still see you know, patients and are very in tune to what is happening in their industry. And so, our content, we look to them, and we are very open, and you know, patient to anytime they can give us to spend with us to discuss and or whether they go straight or we write for them and interview with them, you know, because that content is it is so real and relevant and what is happening. And you know, we have professors who are, you know, part-time professors who still work in the field somewhere and are able to get really great perspectives and stories directly from them that really to your point, and it's what our potential students are looking for on when you can bring that thread all the way through, and then be able to hand it to a partner like StackAdapt is saying, hey, get us into the areas that we need to be so that our potential students can see this content is a win-win for all.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:35:23)Fantastic. Well, thank you to both you I think now is a perfect time, we'll take a quick break. And when we come back, I think we can transition into talking more about strategies and key takeaways that marketers can be employing in 2022. As you know, as these prospecting campaigns start to ramp up for the upcoming academic year, so we'll take a break, and we'll be right back.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:35:49)You know your advertising should be multi-channel. So why isn't your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native, display, video, connected TV, and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers. As if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform, according to G2. It's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:36:23)Welcome back. In this half of the episode, let's talk strategy. Allison and Ben, starting with awareness-based campaigns, what are some strategies and tactics that you both would recommend that education marketers focus on in the coming months?\n\n\n\nAllison (00:36:39)So yeah, you know, I think I think you mentioned from from a brand brand awareness perspective, I think that it's important to have a nice balance of multiple tactics right now, I think very much. So digital is, is definitely the place where our eyeballs are, it's where people are really consuming the majority of their content, whether they are shopping, or they are reading the news. And I think that what might have been a position to billboard for me in the past is definitely going to be more of a billboard online. I think that in addition to really ensuring that individuals see content where they are, ensuring that remarketing is something that we also really think is going to be important over the next year, as things continue to get more competitive. And individuals are going to at least in our industry hear from a varied amount of colleges and universities all vying for their attendance at their location. Nonetheless, online, it's really important to ensure that your prospective student doesn't only see your message once or twice, but multiple times. And the message needs to ensure it's tailored to where they are in their process of moving forward with higher ed. So retargeting digitally is something very important, at least to us. And that is, again from anyone who has landed on your web page. And it's just thinking about it all the way to so who someone who might have already spoken to an admissions counselor or applied, ensuring that they continue to see our message, we will continue to really look at other traditional ways of advertising as we have in the past. But our first priority, which I think many should be is definitely in the digital space where everybody is consuming their content.\n\n\n\nBen (00:38:53)Yeah, I would tend to agree, Allison, and when we're talking about awareness, the thing that that seems to be lost is a lot of people opt for this spray and pray approach, where they're just saying, “Okay, this is an awareness-based campaign, we're going to go out, and we're just going to turn the fire hose on and see what comes back to us.” And in some cases, you know, for the Cokes and the Amazons and the Nikes of the world, yes, you can do that. More, we're talking awareness but of course, for a lot of other partners out there, you have to be a bit more cognizant and conservative with your dollars and when we're talking when we're talking about sound advertising and marketing. Your strategy is only as good as your audience profiles and your audience targeting, and I think that is a huge reason why TCS and StackAdapt have worked so well together over the past few years is both sides of the equation have come together and shared So many great ideas on what the prospective student looks like, okay? Well, we can find those prospective students here and there and show them this message across these different channels, X number of times, at different days and sequences to really deliver that sound message. So people hear the word awareness, and they and they kind of get excited, but there's a lot more that goes into it. And it really does take quite a handful of people to put together a thorough and intensive plan to ensure that your dollars are really being put in the best places at the best time to be seen by the right people.\n\n\n\nAllison (00:40:36)Ben, you hit on a really great point, you know, as a nonprofit, organization and schools that are relatively varied in size, you know, budget is something that we were always, you know, has how at top of mind there, right now everyone needs to be smarter about what they're doing. And you're very right, that takes a lot of great different minds together. There, there has been that past approach it especially when it comes to brand as the more eyeballs the better. But that doesn't necessarily always produce the results, the way that that we all can either afford or really want to ensure that you're getting your message to the right people. Right. So agreed. I think it's wonderful when you can have a partner, who can bring your set of expertise and knowledge into a room, and they can throw back theirs as well and really pull together something that is really poignant and targeted.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:41:42)Ben, I've got a question I wanted to direct over to you. But you know, you've talked a lot about the relationship that StackAdapt and TCS have had over the years in terms of programmatic as a whole, you know, what do you think in terms of programmatic being widely adopted throughout the higher education space? And, you know, what are some benefits that you could speak to, that are related to this vertical, you know, for overall campaign strategy?\n\n\n\nBen (00:42:08)I think now, in 2022, more and more people are adopting programmatic, especially when we're going down the chain, looking at medium and smaller smaller-sized institutions, I think there was a time when programmatic was sort of gate, gate kept from people, and it was only for those that had the time and resources to expand into it. However, that's sort of where StackAdapt came into play. And, really, I guess, took advantage of that market inefficiency, we were able to provide that access and seat at the table for for anybody who wanted it. And I think now programmatic has, of course, become an integral part of any diverse and intensive marketing plan. So when we're talking about higher education, programmatic is, it's a stalwart, it's a pillar of these plans, because a lot of people leverage search and social and things like that. However, those are more mid to lower-funnel tactics where you're, you're grabbing the low-hanging fruit, but what happens when you've exhausted all of those leads? Well, you need a partner to go out there and to qualify a highly set of vetted users. And that's where perks like StackAdapt can come in, and really make life easy for a TCS or another higher ed institution, is because we have that ability to not only qualify users, but also provide reporting back on that and tie into an existing reporting function with the actual education institution like TCS, and then when we're talking about seeing your message and ensuring brand is aligned and thorough. That's where having the ability to say okay, well, we have podcast ads going here, and then we have CTV, and we have display and native and digital out-of-home all tied in together being shown to the right people. And then retargeting users and creating sequential messaging, that's really where programmatic starts to set itself apart from other channels. And then when we feed things in simultaneously to then serve up those users to the mid or lower funnel channels. That's where we start to really understand the true value that programmatic brings to the table.\n\n\n\nAllison (00:44:26)And Ben mentioned one word that many of us, definitely, marketers, but probably how you read marketers like qualify, the more qualified potential student that you can be able to get into a communication flow within the university is that much more valuable? Everybody's time is tight, maybe people don't have the staffing that they used to have. And whatever resource may be right, being able to deliver inquiries who, who have been targeted to who we know, have a really high potential of conversion. And matriculation is very important for so many reasons. And definitely to Ben's point, one that I see programmatic can bring.\n\n\n\nBen (00:45:27)I agree with you, Allison, on that. And that's this was something that we've spoken about in the past is, there are only so many people that you can have calling and following up on leads. And there's only so many times that someone wants to see their phone ringtone from a recruitment counselor, or something of that ilk. So being able to work with a programmatic partner who can work off of specific sets of data that say, Okay, well, we've reached these people, they've shown interest. However, they haven't actually submitted any sort of information or a financial deposit. What else can we do to remind these users of the brand that they've already engaged with? And that's where programmatic really, once again, is able to widen its stance and strengthen its position is that we're able to, again, work with our partners to say, Okay, well, we have this data set. Let's leverage this tactic. Okay, well, we've actually shown display banners and videos to users at the top of the funnel, X number X number of users have actually shown interest, and either filled out a form or spent 25 seconds on site, let's go ahead and retarget them with a native advertisement that is traditionally tailored to them that has a fully customizable message that says something much more intense and direct than the actual banner or what the video does. And this is all, once again, what programmatic does so neatly and tidily. And that's where we've really created this sweet spot with TCS is developing these these intensive plans that are directly tailored to different users at different points in their journey. And that's how we've been able to see such great success.\n\n\n\nAllison (00:47:07)You know, one of the things that I think also stands out different in higher ed, and how programmatic can benefit in comparison to other you know, industries, we all have in our industries, you know, very different consumer profiles. And the potential student, definitely to one brand, can be so many different individuals, when you think about how many programs a college or university offers, and whether even degree level within that, right, so if I, I might have 25, we have more than that at the Chicago School at 25. Programs, I have a master's and a PhD, the profile of each one of those potential students by program can be so different, and so complex, and how each of them are consuming media, what they're watching, how long, what time they're watching, etc. So being able to work a tactic that can make sure that we really are getting the data for each one of those consumer segments is really important, and in higher ed, you can have hundreds, hundreds, if not more, really even just working towards one, one start, you know, one, one academic start.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:48:30)So thanks so much to both of you for that. And, you know, this pretty much puts us at time. And as we close the episode, I want to end on this note of getting some thoughts or opinions from both of you on what you think the future is going to look like, for higher education. You know, we could start with, you know, the 2022 2023 academic season and feel free to go beyond that. But what do you think will have the biggest impact on successful marketing for higher education marketers? And you know, further to that, are there any emerging trends that marketers should be paying attention to in the coming years.\n\n\n\nAllison (00:49:10)I think the future of higher ed is going to look very different. I think institutions as a whole will look different from our earlier point of how many students are on campus versus on the ground, and why they then come to on ground. That doesn't necessarily mean the on ground buildings will not be there, but what they come to those buildings for will be different. I think the biggest impact, you know, from a successful marketing campaign and in plants are continuing to really understand the potential student and Research and consumer insights more than ever. And the way to obtain that information, you can obtain it through your results. The information gathered through very, very much a benefit of digital marketing and or additional research, always having your finger on the pulse of the communications, what people are saying, reviews, social media, and how they're responding. I think that having that information, real time and frequently is really going to be what makes or breaks your future campaigns and initiatives. And I think from marketing, what else is out there? What's coming next, I think, continued digital AI and technologies that engage quickly. And again, meeting the potential students where they are, nobody wants to go looking for information anymore. Everybody expects to see it. So as a marketer, you have to be prepared to show it and be ready. So that it's there when someone doesn't realize that it's going to be there in front of them.\n\n\n\nBen (00:51:14)I think as you've mentioned, Allison, earlier, the adoption of new techniques and new tactics and new placements is going to continue to develop, whether it's moving away from linear TV and diving directly into CTV and OTT, or even the reemergence of out of hope is coming back, we're starting to see that. And that's something that we're paying attention to it StackAdapt as well. People are really interested in actually emerging with advertisings these days, and being immersed around it, and we're starting to take notice. At the end of the day, marketing advertising is always going to be present, it's always going to be around, but it's being able to efficiently tailor it to the right people and deliver it at the right time. And the proper cadence is going to continue to be the biggest challenge, finding the balance between not being annoying and being just enough, is going to be crucial for advertisers. And that's why we run things like brand lifts and ad effectiveness studies to actually get an idea of what our users are telling us and how often they want to engage with advertisements and where they want to engage with advertisements. So being able to develop and distill insights down in a matter of seconds to deliver hard-hitting facts is going to continue to be what provides institutions like TCS that competitive edge to move forward and continue to provide the best-in-class experience to their students.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:52:54)Perfect. Well, thanks so much, Alison. Thanks so much, Ben. It's been fantastic to have you both on the episode here. And to all of our listeners. I hope that you found this episode as insightful as I did, and on behalf of StackAdapt, we wish you nothing but success in your upcoming higher ed campaigns. And, as always, we'll see you in the next episode.\n\n\n\nOutro (00:53:18)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-for-political-ads#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-for-political-ads"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Katrina Moore","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/katrina-moore","jobTitle":"Sales Director","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"The Power of Programmatic for Political Ads","datePublished":"2022-02-23T14:15:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:29+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-for-political-ads"},"wordCount":7023,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-for-political-ads#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517091024/ryan_horn_stackadapt_podcast_s2e12.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["podcast","political"],"articleSection":["Programmatic advertising"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe look at how political advertising is evolving, and how programmatic technology is helping agencies run political campaigns that thrive.\n\n\n\nRyan Horn | President, Bullhorn Communications \n\n\n\nKatrina Moore | Senior Account Executive, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)The beginning of every planning process should be imagining yourself as your target voter, you start out relatively unknown. And your goal is to get, you know, 80 or 90% of the people that are going to go vote to be aware of, you know, a little bit about, you know, your name and try to get 50% plus one to buy. Consultant partners and clients that we work with and agencies themselves need to always remember that creative is king.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:31)Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape? The How Agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward-thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:51)Hey, everyone, welcome to this week's episode. My name is Matt. I'm the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and I'm also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, we're joined by Ryan Horn, the president at Bullhorn Communications and StackAdapt very own Katrina Moore to do a deep dive into all things related to political advertising. Now, before we get started, I'd love to hear from both of you to bring our guests up to speed on your experience in the programmatic space. So starting with you, Ryan, tell us a little bit about Bullhorn Communications as an agency, how long you've been in the industry and what you consider to be your largest areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nRyan (00:01:36)I've been in and out of the political advertising industry, or the political industry, per se, for about 20 years. I've been in the advertising industry for about 15 years. And so, my path to political advertising is different than I think most people in that space, and I learned the advertising business in the commercial world. And then came over to to political advertising. I started my career in politics, I was very excited about the conservative movement and politics generally. And then, at the age of my late 20s, I decided to make a career change and went into the commercial world, the corporate world and worked inside Walmart. And then at a regional agency, here in Omaha, my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. And then I just got a little bored with, you know, a potential lifetime of writing ads for Taco John's and Nachos Navidad and mattress ads for Nebraska Furniture Mart, nothing wrong with that a lot of people listening to this, this podcast, I do a lot of commercial work like that. And I certainly respect it. I just felt like I needed, I wanted to take my advertising skill, and try to apply it towards making our country a better place, which is always something I've been interested in.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:00)Now, Katrina, over to you to tell us a little bit about sort of your role at StackAdapt, what you do and how long you've been in the industry and some of your areas of expertise.\n\n\n\nKatrina (00:03:10)Thanks so much, Matt. Yeah, so my name is Katrina, I am an account executive at StackAdapt. I've been here a little over a year, this will be my fourth political election cycle. So I started in 2016, during the presidentials, and just really fell in love with it, when I was based in DC. Currently, you know, I handle all sorts of programmatic sales, with political advertisers from you know, list building, to fundraising to persuasion, and oh, you know, work with candidates PACs, advocacy groups, nonprofits, that's really my specialty.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:42)Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Katrina. Now that everybody's been properly introduced, I think what we could do is dive into the episode. For those who don't know, this is actually the last episode of season two. And I can't think of a better way to close things out than by covering political advertising, especially for our listeners in North America. 2022 is going to be a big year, with the midterms coming up, as well as some general elections happening in Canada during the summer and fall. So let's dive in. Starting out, I'd really like to get our listeners up to speed on the whole notion of political advertising. So as a vertical that's deemed more sensitive, and can be nuanced and requires strategic advertising solutions to reach its target audience. How would both of you define political advertising? And how does this compare to other verticals such as B2B and B2C? So what are some of those key differences within the political space?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:04:40)I want to defer to Katrina, one of my great friends and partners in the industry. But, you know, I think the biggest difference, you know, and like I said, I started my career working in commercial advertising. For a long time. I think the biggest difference between commercial and political advertising is just the Scale of reach that is required and the speed with which you are challenged to achieve it. Right. You know, when I was working in commercial advertising, you know, most of our clients like if we could have gotten, if we could have gotten 11% of the residents of Omaha, Nebraska to buy a taco at Taco Johns once a week, we would be heroes for life, our account would never go into review ever, they would build statues at the corporate headquarters to us. Okay, in political advertising, 11% is nothing that's embarrassing, right? Most of our clients in political advertising start out relatively unknown. If you're running for State Senate or legislature or you or even US Congress, Mayor, you know, you start out relatively unknown. And your goal is to get, you know, by election day, more, you know, 80 or 90% of the people that are going to go vote to be aware of, you know, a little bit about, you know, your name, and try to get 50% plus one to buy. There really is nothing else like that in commercial advertising, where you have to achieve so much reach, and you have to close that sort of sale, you got to get 50% market share in a matter of a couple of months, starting from a brand that doesn't exist, to put it in commercial terms. And it's a very unique challenge, intellectually very challenging, and I kind of love it.\n\n\n\nKatrina (00:06:25)Yeah. To add on to that. Yeah, it's mostly a speed thing, right. So commercial advertising, you don't have necessarily as strict of a deadline, as you do with political, there's an election date, or there's a bill that's trying to pass or, you know, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that you're trying to get people aware of. And like Ryan said, you have to get the majority of people who might rally behind whatever your causes, you have to get them aware of these issues very quickly. And by that deadline, whatever that might be.\n\n\n\nRyan (00:06:56)Absolutely. It's, you know, it's a little bit like, imagine if McDonald's could only sell french fries, one day a year. Right, their ad campaign would be very different than their marketing campaigns that we see today. Right? And that's a little bit what it's like, I mean, in America, and most places, it's not one day a year you have absentee voting, but it might be you know, it might be 15 days, or it might be 30 days at the most. So yeah, that timeline element is really what makes political advertising unique.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:07:30)Fantastic. Well, yeah, that definitely helps our listeners kind of wrap their head around the differences. And what I think we could do here is shift gears to talk a little bit more about the agency side. And Ryan, I'm interested to hear what you have to say here. And, you know, as we established in the intro, the elections that a lot of advertisers are focused on right now in North America. I know they're a few quarters out, but that deadline is coming up. And there's a lot to be done. In the meantime, you know, to start strategically thinking about how you can drive success and drive the highest amount of success to both of you. What do you think agencies can do to make sure that they're prepared for the upcoming elections? And more specifically, Ryan, for you on the agency side? How are you best supporting your clients to kind of keep them informed as to what direction they should be going as this deadline comes up?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:08:24)Yeah, you know, I think, to your point, things are really getting underway. You know, the Texas primaries will be the first in the nation this year. The first primary is March 1, and the runoffs follow in May, then you've got a whole slew of May primaries, Nebraska, and a whole bunch of other states. So they're coming up very quickly, I think you've got, again, two things to think about as an agency, if you are an agency that is already into political advertising, and you have political clients. That's one thing, if you're a more of a commercial agency, and you're thinking about trying to maybe get into some political work and do some of that business, you're probably too late for this cycle. I know that might sound kind of shocking, depending on what type of agency you are, if you're more of a niche agency or a specialized agency, there may be some services you can provide to other political agencies. But in terms of becoming a full having full-service clients, you're on the verge of of becoming too late. So you need to you need to really jump into that marketplace with both feet if you want to try to get in there at this point in time. I think there are a couple of things that we focus on in this time of the cycle, which is one capacity, right? Because we know that it's going to ramp very, very quickly. The amount of the workload is going to ramp very, very quickly. There are always clients that you know, that come in at the you know, I decided to run for this and I need to have an ad you know, I need to have an ad campaign up In seven days, like that always happens. And so making sure you have the capacity to handle and being able to project well what that workload is going to be so that you can make a good informed decision about about capacity. So, do I have enough full-time staff? Do I have enough freelancers? Do I have enough creative partners? You know, we're we are known for having very sophisticated and effective creative. That's our niche in the business. So making sure we have top-level graphic designers, animators, shooters, making sure we have our a team all in place to be able to handle that capacity is what we focus on. The other question you asked about, okay, what do we how do I what do we need to inform our clients about is really, that, to me, that comes to the media side. And that is that just the changing media environment, the changing nature, of how people consume entertainment, and media and where their eyeballs are, is changing very quickly. And so keeping our clients who are most of our clients are, you know, who are running for office are not, they're not sophisticated advertisers, you know, that's one of the other differences with the commercial world, in the commercial world, you're working with a vice president of marketing is probably your day to day contact. This is a person who usually understands advertising at least a basic level and has some training in marketing, and you speak the same language. And they are watching these kinds of trends. With political candidates, not so much, right? And they can really vary a lot in terms of their knowledge and awareness of platforms, like CTV, and what does OTT even mean? And do people really watch this stuff? And, I mean, I can put an ad on my on somebody's phone, right? I mean, these are, so helping our clients understand that fast-changing world of media is a big part of what we do.\n\n\n\nKatrina (00:11:58)Yeah, Ryan's hitting the nail on the head here. But what I always advise agencies, and they know this, anyone who's done political knows that this is how it works. But you have to use the off cycle to prepare for the on cycle. Number one. Number two is even when you have all your processes in place, you have your partners in place, you think you have a good projection of how the political year is gonna go, in my experience, it's always going to be more than you think. Yeah, Ryan’s probably familiar with that. So you just need to have a process in place that can handle that sort of overflow, or you have the partners in place that can help you with it, because it's going to be so much work in a very fast, fast-paced deadline. And then, you know, what agencies can do just like Ryan is saying, a lot of the candidates just aren't as informed. They don't know about these emerging platforms that you can use. And so you really have to make sure you're putting the client's best interest. And I think that'll lead to the next question. But for example, like Ott, a lot of that's where I've found a lot of the political advertising to be over the past few cycles, but there are, there's always going to be a new, a new way to reach different audiences, especially, you know, you're trying to reach that key demographic, whether that's, you know, women voters, suburban moms, young people, and they're not necessarily just on, they're probably not even on cable TV at all. So you do have to find them where they're at. And that usually does require educating your client.\n\n\n\nRyan (00:13:25)Absolutely. You know, and I think a good media agency in the political world, I think, has to understand all of the changing dynamics, not just digital, right. So you have to understand what's happening in the radio market, you have to understand what's happening in the cable markets, you have to understand how satellite is bought and sold, how interconnects work, you have to really look hard at household penetration and changes in terms of you know, subscribership, and you have to be able to have access to that data, to understand that data, and to really break it down and make the best possible recommendation to your clients.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:13)Katrina, you actually, yeah, you perfectly transition to this next question, because I wanted to ask both of you about sort of these emerging channels, you know, something like OTT, CTV, programmatic audio, things that are kind of replacing or supplementing these traditional channels that we've seen used in this vertical. I'd like to know starting off, you know, what kind of impact does this have on those traditional channels that we've seen utilized, such as broadcast? And are these emerging channels proving to be you know, a more comprehensive solution as this audience becomes a little bit more broad and you need to really narrow in on your targeting to reach them in the right place at the right time?\n\n\n\nKatrina (00:14:57)Yeah, happy to Jump in. Thanks for that. Great question, Matt. Yes, so, you know, CTV the big thing that that's a more recent trend. CTV wasn't that big when I first started in political but now it's exploded. And you'll see a lot of news articles talking about cord cutters. That's the main reason. And to be clear, you know, linear is not going away, you still definitely need linear in your plans to reach people, I would say CTV is more of a complement to that, you know, CTV you normally see, first of all, it's measurable, which it's a little bit harder to measure linear TV, but CTV we can tell you exactly how many impressions served what the video completion rate was. And usually, you're gonna see that 99% plus completion rate on CTV, which is great, it means that people are seeing your ad, usually completely watching the ad versus, you know, a little bit harder to tell on on linear, but I would say, definitely a compliment. Definitely the number one thing that's always the first thing on a plan from an agency, it's CTV, followed by video and then display afterwards.\n\n\n\nRyan (00:15:56)No, I agree. I, you know, I think there's a couple things going on here too. And I talked about how to be a good advertising agency for a political client, you have to understand all of the advertising platforms and how they fit together. One of the ironies that that I see here is this shift away from traditional bundled packages of cable and satellite into more OTT, and more streaming TV, there's a couple little ironies that I think people should understand. One is that it has made broadcast television more powerful, not less. And the reason for that is that a lot of people when they when they switch away from their cable subscriber, they still want to watch they still want to watch the Cornhusker game on, you know, and it's running on the ABC affiliate, right. And so advertising on that, you get that you're if you buy that broadcast spot, you're going to get your ad in front of people's eyeballs when they're watching the Cornhusker game, almost no matter how it's getting into their living room, right. So it's allowed broadcast TV to maintain its household penetration, while cable and satellite household penetration has decreased due to lack of due to the diminishing subscribership. As people move away from the old bundle packages, and towards more and more streaming TV. That's number one. And number two is, I think, the way to think about CTV connected, which we'll loosely call CTV, we can call it a million different things, streaming TV, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is just people watching TV. And it's on a big TV, and it's in their living room, or their bedroom, or whatever. And last month, they it came in through a cable, and this month, it comes in over there a router, but it's the ad the experience to the viewer is the same, right. And so we need to look at it that way. And consider it that way, when we're looking at when we're talking about CTV, CTV and OTT, which is to say we need to look at a kind of the way advertisers and ad is looked at broadcast TV versus cable TV, a certain percentage of people had cable TV, it was a growing segment, you had to start to buy there, but you had to understand the limits of its of its household penetration. Now we're kind of in the same situation, I think. So TV is king, it always will be we're going to come up with different names for it based on what wire it goes in on or what not wire, it doesn't go but you know, with his wireless, whatever. But the combination of motion and video and sound is the most emotional way for humans to communicate with other humans. And that's not going to change.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:18:41)That's a really good point, Ryan, that, you know, there almost has to be that sort of emotional connection or some type of connection that somebody running for any type of office needs to make with their voters. And you know, fortunately, reaching them on some type of television is often a good solution for that. And before we head to our break, Katrina, I wanted to tap you on the shoulder one more time to address the idea of technology coming from your side where if we look at, you know, this notion of running attribution studies, you know, measuring any kind of lift in political campaigns, do you have any thoughts on sort of what weight that holds in the future in this vertical?\n\n\n\nKatrina (00:19:24)I definitely have a lot of thoughts on this. So, you know, usually political advertisers, especially for these big races, but almost all the time, you're gonna have polling, either external polling, or you're gonna hire someone to do polling. You know, you get texts, you get phone calls, you're getting blasted with these ads, but you want to know how people what the sentiment is, are they feeling good about this candidate? What did they like about it? Do they like your policies? Are they going to vote for your candidate? Very important information to know and adjust because you're on this quick timeline of the election. So what I would say is we offer something called Brand Lift studies, which is a great way to measure attribution and voter sentiment on the digital landscape. So very similar to polling. But, basically we can serve a survey out to you to the people who have seen your ads and the people who haven't, who might still be in your audience be potential voters for your cause. We can ask things like, how do you do? Are you planning on voting? Are you registered to vote? Do what issues do you care about? And then you know, the, the useful thing that we can do is that we can retarget users based on how they answer or we can suppress them. So for example, if they're not planning on voting, or they're not registered, and they missed the deadline to register, Fine, let's let's suppress those users. And let's make sure we're retargeting users who say I'm interested in voting. I'm interested in these causes. Let's retarget them with a CTV ad basically saying like, “here's more information about the causes or a display ad saying like, don't forget the election is on this date. Make sure you get out there.”\n\n\n\nRyan (00:21:01)Yeah, I think this is gonna be a great tool for political advertisers. And it's something that we're looking at, that we that we're going to be using more and more for, for our clients. I think for a couple of reasons. One of them hits on what we were talking about earlier, which is just a great greater uptake of digital video usage and platforms, right. So we've seen this anecdotally that there's been a noticeable shift really in the last year or two, where you've, you know, we would launch, when we launch a digital video campaign, we typically launch pretty full barrel, between programmatic video and CTV, and we really commit to it. And we put a lot of frequency. And we really focus a lot on getting right good reach and frequency on people who are streaming TV viewers we talked about earlier, as well as people that consume video on their phones and in apps and things like that. And I can pretty much guarantee you that within two or three days after a digital video campaign starts for one of our clients, our I will get an email or a text from our clients saying, I went to my kids swim, swim meet this weekend, and two people told me they saw my ad. And that was normal for TV. It was not the case for digital video until very recently. And it's anecdotal. But we also see it in polling lift in projects that I've been doing recently. So I think it's very clear that we are starting to hit a critical mass of devices in people's homes, and people are consuming media and this way, and we can reach, we can get reach and frequency with video digital video quickly in ways that we couldn't before. And I think Brand Lift studies will be a very important part of showing that attribution.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:22:48)Fantastic. You know what, I think that's a perfect stopping point, just for a quick break in this episode. And what we'll do is when we come back, we'll look at more in-depth strategies and takeaways that marketers can employ for the upcoming elections and other political campaigns. So we'll take a quick break, and we will be right back.\n\n\n\nStackAdapt Ad (00:23:12)You know your advertising should be multi-channel. So why isn't your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native, display, video, connected TV, and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers. As if that wasn't enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform according to G2, it's time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How agencies thrive.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:23:45)Welcome back, everyone. In this half of the episode, let's talk strategy for our listeners, Ryan, and Katrina. What are some strategies and tactics that you would recommend political marketers focus on in the coming months? And, Ryan, you and I were discussing this beforehand, but because your agency focuses so much on sort of that top funnel awareness, you know, what are some tactics that should be prioritized to really make the most effective use of your advertising dollars that are going to drive the optimal results?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:24:17)Yeah, I mean, I think well, there I think you have, you know, you have two things to think about broadly, right? You have to use a commercial advertising term, the creative, right, which can translate that into political talk would be the message, right? What's the message going to be? And then the media side, which is how are we going to deliver it to people? And so I think, you know, one thing I think all advertisers, political advertisers really need to think about is some of these political creative tropes that have become recycled over and over are they really effective anymore, and I would say that they're probably Not and I'll give you an example. Because you've seen this, like 100 times, you know, the political candidate staring off into the distance in slow motion. But your candidates, not Chuck Yeager. All right. So putting them in slow motion doesn't really make them heroic. It just makes your ads slow and boring, right? That's just one of many of these sorts of tropes. So I think people need to political advertisers need to take a step back. Let's learn who our candidates are. What's good about them? What's the best thing about them that voters would like to know? And then let's construct that story in video. And then let's let's construct it in video that fits the inventory that we are going to advertise on. Right? Well, one of the trends that we see a lot is these, you know, two-and-a-half or three-minute videos, it's very fashionable right now, primarily, because it's very profitable for agencies that make poor videos, they tend to be very boring, they would be great. If they stopped after about 45 seconds, they tend to throw the kitchen sink into these things. And they don't fit any ad inventory, from an advertising perspective, usually completely worthless. And so I think we need to, you know, agencies need to think about creative, right, we spend a lot of money on telling the positive side of somebody's story. And I see way too many political ads that don't make me think positively about a candidate because of poor production, because of poor scripting, because people just didn't put the necessary thought into, how are we going to construct the story? What's the best thing about this candidate as our product, like an advertiser, like a commercial advertiser would? So that's the first thing. And then obviously, when you're thinking about okay, well, then how do we make our story fit at inventory? Then you need to think about, okay, what's our advert? What's our media strategy? Do we need a you know, just does a two and a half minute video? How much inventory for that? Is there? How are we going to get it in front of people? Yeah. Okay. Is it only going to go on TV? In which case it should probably be 30? Are we going to do digital? So we need to create, you know, fifteens, we need some, you know, what kind of content fits this? How are we going to tell the story of who this person is. So you need to be addressing messaging, creative, try to break the mould a little bit, try to get through all the noise of all the other advertisers. And do it in a way that is integral with the overall media plans.\n\n\n\nKatrina (00:27:24)Yep, yeah. And just following up on that, that's a great way to summarize it, Ryan, the media and then also the creative on the creative front. It's hard to fundraise for candidates often, but even on the smaller budgets, you have to put the budget into the creative because ultimately, that's what your voters are seeing. So you know, always make sure you have, if you can, high-quality creative, but on top of that, and this is more of a pet peeve of mine that I've been telling a lot of clients, not everyone knows when the election is, especially if it's a primary or if it's some sort of bill that's being heard, and they need to call their senator or something like that. But even even you assume people know when the general election is, that's not always true. So I always recommend remind people when the election is, put that in your creative. And then on the media side, you just need to be everywhere. You need to be on linear, you need to be on programmatic, you need to be on social, you need to be on search, and all of the other formats mail, because people receive not everyone is on every single format. Some people you know, have AdBlock on and they can't, they can't see a display ad. But they're watching Hulu, and they don't have that on their TV. So you can reach them that way. And some people throw away their mail, when they when they get any sort of political mail ballots, and some people don't have cable. So you need to make sure you're trying to reach people in every possible format and persuade them to vote.\n\n\n\nRyan (00:28:47)Yeah, you know, Katrina hit on a couple of really important things there. I think for agent ad agencies to think about. One of them is good creative, right? There is a tendency in political advertising to treat creative, like a commodity, and media inventory. Like it's not a commodity, when like data treat data, like it's something special that everyone doesn't have access to these days. That's about 10 years ago, right? I mean, there's really great modeling available if you want it to just about everybody, right? The creative is so important. And as a thought experiment, when people asked me about this, I say, well, let's let's do this thought experiment. So you know, everything, everything that you put in front of your voter needs to be persuasive. And if it's not, it doesn't matter that it's cheap. If you didn't pay much for it, you still wasted all the money. You just paid them because it doesn't persuade anyone. And there is a tendency for candidates to always be looking to cut corners and cut the budgets and things like that and both consulting partners and clients that we work with an agency themselves need to always remember that creative is king. It is what it is how you are presenting yourself to your voters. It's how you're trying to persuade them. It's how you're trying to motivate them. If it's bad, it doesn't matter that you only played 6000 instead of 12,000. It's still bad. So that was the first one. The other great one that Katrina hit on was understanding that people consume things in different platforms, right? To just put yourself one of the things that we do at bullhorns that I learned from my time in the commercial industry is, you know, the beginning of every planning process should be imagining yourself as your target voter, right? And imagine, like in 2020, and in 2018, both the target battleground voter was 60%, female, affluent, suburban, right? So imagine yourself in her life, right? Like, what kinds of things does she watched as she read her mail? You know, what other kinds of does she when she gets into a car? Is she listening to talk radio, or she listened to digital audio or some combination thereof. And when you do that process, it really forces you to really think about how people actually live their lives. And that enables you to put together a more sophisticated media plan along the lines of what could Katrina describes, right? You take an example, like connected TV, you know, we're up in America, somewhere, probably between 20, and 25%, are just total cord cutters. And Katrina probably knows that data a little bit better than me, maybe that's even a little bit dated. But then you have a much bigger group of people, that stream on ad-supported streaming networks, that we can target with CTV, but they also have cable, or they also have satellite. And they kind of do both. And they also vote by mail, and you send them a mail piece, and they kind of save it for when they're filling out their ballot, right. Most people live life in this fluid combination of channels that they pay attention to. So being able to kind of layer impressions on people is really the critical element of a really good, effective, cohesive political campaign.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:32:13)Well, I think what we can do is head into our last question here, and I'd love to hear from both of you and look forward to, you know, 2022, 2023, subsequent years, you know, what are some trends that you're noticing in the political advertising space? And moreover, what are you focusing on and preparing for, that political marketers should be aware of? And finally, what do you predict the future is going to look like for political advertising? You know, especially with all these things that are emerging today? What does the future look like?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:32:50)What Katrina, which one of us should go first on the, please predict a future question? I mean, we're both we're both pretty cool, but I don't know if we can predict the future, exactly.\n\n\n\nKatrina (00:33:00)Do you want to take this on?\n\n\n\nRyan (00:33:01)Okay, I guess.\n\n\n\nKatrina (00:33:03)Throwing you under.\n\n\n\nRyan (00:33:06)I mean, you know, I think I think we probably know, a couple of things with a fair amount of certainty. And one of them, let's say two things, let's think about TV. In particular, one of them is that streaming television is going to continue to grow in the television marketplace. And the reason for that is very simple, that is a superior product, it is more convenient, and it is cheaper. Although all the different streaming companies trying to compete each against each other and charge you $7 and $9, you know, separately, it's all of a sudden becoming maybe not quite so much cheaper. But that said, you know, you just walk into a Walmart, go back to the electronics section, every single TV on there's gonna have a sticker on it that says, you know, wired for Hulu, Amazon Prime, Roku, firestick, all included, you know, right. They all every TV sold in America pretty much these days is a smart TV. And when you take it home and you plug it in, it is easier to connect it to your Wi-Fi router than it is to call the Cable Guy and pay them $100 to come out and wait for two days. You know what I'm saying? Like, it is a superior product. That's number one. So the usage of that is going to continue to grow. I think number two, the cable companies are not going to and they are not sitting around just watching their business model die. They're not just sitting around waiting to go out of business. Right? So if you look at big players like Comcast, right, they own streaming services, they're buying more streaming services, right. So there's going to be this very volatile marketplace as as not only the different companies compete, but the infrastructures that they are tied to compete in As an advertiser, if you're doing a good job for your clients, and you want to win your races, and you want to give your clients that extra edge, you better keep up on it, you better understand you better understand the limitations of traditional cable and what satellites good at and where you can buy it where it doesn't make sense, better understand penetration rate, you better really, you know, get away from focusing so much on points and really look at combined reach and frequency and impression stack. Right? I think that's, that's what were those two things are really driving how we advertise what abroad, they call television and video into the future.\n\n\n\nKatrina (00:35:32)Yeah, I'll actually take it in a different direction. And just from the programmatic and digital perspective, you know, Google announced that they're getting rid of the cookie, they're going to be doing some alternate solutions to that, you know, that's a little bit down the line, that's a couple years down the line. But you know, everyone's worried about that, especially in political because political is all about, like, targeting, you know, likely voters using those 3rd-party data partners to make sure that you're targeting likely voters, and if the cookie goes away, then how are you going to target people? So CTV is going to be even bigger, CTV is one way to to make sure you can still target based on device ID, for example. And then on top of that contextual solutions, or at least you're going to need to find partners in the digital space that are ready for the decline of the cookie. So targeting, can you based on what people are looking up online, targeting them on specific URLs, like let's say you're you're trying to target for a mayoral race in a certain city, you'll just try and find a way to hit those URLs that are specifically like this city's mayoral race, like any sort of news article about that you want your ad to show up there. And we're already doing things like that. StackAdapt. But I do you think contextual targeting is going to become a much bigger deal. And then finally, voter lists. So voter lists are already huge and political. But especially with the decline of the cookie, we're gonna have to find different ways to match those users online, and voter lists and CRM data is going to be probably the next big thing. It's always been big, but it's it's gonna have a resurgence.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:37:04)Well, thank you so much, Ryan. And thank you, Katrina. That was fantastic. And you know what, it's been great having you both on the episode. And to all of our listeners. I hope that you found this episode as insightful as I did. On behalf of StackAdapt. We wish you nothing but success in your upcoming campaigns. And we'll see you in the next episode of The How Agencies Thrive podcast. Thanks so much.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:37:31)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-data#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-data"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mark Shannon","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/mark-shannon","jobTitle":"Director, Client Services","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}},{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Using Marketing Data to Impact Your Campaigns","datePublished":"2022-06-15T13:18:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:30+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-data"},"wordCount":3757,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketing-data#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517093350/mark_shannon_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s2e2.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["audience data","crm data","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe dive into a discussion on marketing data, how to decipher it, and how to leverage data to drive campaign success. \n\n\n\nAlex Billington | ARB - Community Growth Manager, Funnel\n\n\n\nMark Shannon | Senior Manager, Client Services, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)I think segmentation is incredibly important. It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. And you know, with that in mind, I recommend to everyone on my team and all the clients that I work with, you know, to segment the data at the very start at the outset, to ensure that it can be broken out later. Because you can always break out well, segmented data, but you can't really create segments where none exist.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:21)But then you think about the social landscape. Research Data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints, that longtime loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales gotten to a point where it can drive better results of audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart if you're tuning in. You're tuning in, you're tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:45)Hi, everyone. My name is Matt, I'm the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. And welcome to this bonus episode of The How Agencies Thrive Podcast. Today, the topic of choice is marketing data, and mainly how to decipher and leverage powerful information on your campaigns to help you drive success. In this episode, I have Alex Billington from funnel and Mark Shannon from StackAdapt, to share their expertise on the topic. As always, this bonus episode will be made up of short, rapid fire questions. But to kick things off, I'll pass the torch to our guests to tell us a little bit about themselves and their experience in the industry. So let's start with you, Alex.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:01:22)Yeah, so a little bit about me, I'm the community growth manager here at funnel, we're based in Stockholm, and also office in Boston as well. And we're a marketing data hub that allows that allows marketers to collect all their data from various different platforms, transform it to get it ready for analysis, and then send it to wherever they need to whether that's a data visualization tool or or data warehouse. And so yeah, I'm happy to be here. And I hope we're gonna have a good conversation.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:51)Absolutely. Thanks so much, Alex. Now, over to you Mark, a little bit about yourself.\n\n\n\nMark (00:01:55)Yeah, thanks, Matt. So my name is Mark Shannon, I am a senior manager of Client Services here at StackAdapt. I've been on the StackAdapt team for about four years. So I've seen a monumental amount of growth, especially a lot of growth over the last couple of years, I work very closely with a team of account managers, really, my mandate is to help empower our team to provide world class support service, and to launch some pretty awesome campaigns.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:21)Thanks so much. So as mentioned, a couple rapid-fire questions for everybody. But to start out, just for our listeners who might be unfamiliar with the concept, starting with you, Alex, then we'll go over to you Mark. Let's sefine marketing data. So how would each of you define this term marketing data?\n\n\n\nAlex (00:02:44)Yeah, I would say marketing data is what I will call kind of aggregated information that either could be useful to inform your marketing efforts, but also information that's being created as a result of your marketing efforts. I have a thing where I sort of say there's data being created at all times all around you. And it's kind of up to you whether you use it or not. So, I think, in a short definition, that's how I describe marketing data.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:12)Awesome. How about you, Mark?\n\n\n\nMark (00:03:15)Yeah, I think to you know, to expand on that a little bit informs really what we know about our target audience are potential users. And this comes through market research by analyzing trends and personas, it can come as the result of previous campaigns or similar market executions. And ultimately, you know, when we're launching campaigns, and you know, trying to find out exactly who to target and what to do for these executions, it's really useful to identify not only who to target, but what to target, when to target, what messages resonate, and so on and so forth.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:46)Fantastic. So further to that, I think what we could help our listeners understand are some of the benefits. So, what are the largest benefits that both of you have seen from leveraging marketing data? And further to that, how can this benefit agencies and help make them more competitive?\n\n\n\nAlex (00:04:06)So I mean, just to sort of give a little bit of background like, for me, modern marketing now is all about hypothesizing it's about testing and analyzing and learning to basically try and understand like, what is driving what what causes this performance to go, Well, what works and doesn't? And how can we improve on what we're doing? How can we, how can we iterate. And then if you if you look at sort of marketing data, being the crux of that marketing data is the thing that facilitates you being able to do all of that. And for me, the benefits, I mean, all of our customers that are using, that are really leveraging their marketing data. They're the ones who are striving ahead. The companies that were in early, are doing super well with that data, but in terms of like, how agencies can get sort of be more competitive. I think the big one for me is empowering account managers to be able to work with their data. I think some agencies have these sort of what I would call like inflated data teams, and the account managers have this kind of request process and they request hey, I need this. And the clients asked for this, can you do it? Can you can you get me this data? Can you slice it this way? Can you pipe it here. But there are tools out there like ours and orders that actually can allow and empower account managers to work with that data? Because I think at the end of the day, and from my time agency side, clients always want their agencies to do more, I don't know what you think more, but they always want more analysis, they want more testing, more results, like they're never satisfied with like, oh, yeah, we're just waiting for the algorithm to figure things out. They want more. And in fact, they even want answers to questions they sort of didn't really know that they had. So I think I would say that clients want that productivity, they don't want to constantly ask for things they want to feel taken care of. And I think, account managers who are empowered with their data, they can go away, and they can perform independent analysis. And they can sort of report it back to the client, and have this much faster feedback loop with the with the client, it's sort of less waiting for things, less apologies to the client, so sorry for the delay and more like, Hey, I've just pulled this really cool analysis for you. You know, what do you think of this? Or have you seen this before, or, Hey, this is what we think is happening with this, this is where we'd like to shift budget, etc. I think it's sort of Yeah, empowering account managers to be modern marketers and work, you know, with their data with the with the client's data with marketing data, that's when account managers can kind of go above and beyond and get their own ideas and kind of yet proactively suggesting that to clients, I think that's when you see clients being super happy.\n\n\n\nMark (00:06:43)Alex, I couldn't agree more. And I probably couldn't have said it better myself, but I'm going to try, or at least to try, to give my version there. But absolutely, you know, empowering our account managers, giving them more actionable insights, and you know, things that they can actually do with the data. It ultimately, you know, if you think about it, time and money are kind of the lifeblood of any business. And, you know, being able to analyze and understand the marketing data from your campaigns ultimately saves time and money. It provides you with that ability to skip or contract those initial initial learning stages of a campaign before, you know, the measurable performance is really attained. But even then, once you do have that measurable performance, it gives you a lot of intelligence, you know, that you can then provide to your end user, right? So a lot of the time, you know, for our agencies, they end users are either those those clients, or, you know, if you're a brand direct, they could even be the stakeholders within the organization. If you can more effectively communicate the impact of your marketing or advertising efforts, it helps you to really secure those those future investments with which much with much higher confidence, really also, you know, all throughout, it ensures that you're targeting the right product to the right person at the right time. And honestly, I'd be remiss to say, you know, this is also super helpful mid campaign as well. You know, one of the great things that you mentioned, Alex is, a lot of our clients, they want us to be able to act fast and provide those those really useful snippets of information and insights, even in the middle of a campaign. So, you know, analyzing this data mid-campaign as well allows you to make those on-the-fly optimizations, whether you know, you have a message that isn't resonating, or an audience that may not be right for who we're trying to reach just really gives us a lot of power there.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:32)Fantastic. Thanks. Thanks to both of you. They're now moving on to our next question that we wanted to answer for our listeners is, you know, on the topic of best practices, so what are some best practices that either of you would recommend when it comes to not only, you know, collecting this data, but deciphering this data and making these powerful decisions to impact your campaigns?\n\n\n\nMark (00:08:58)Well, Alex, I'm gonna start with something and say, you know, I don't know if you would agree, but I think segmentation is incredibly important. I always say, you know, it's better to have it not need it than to need it not have it. And, you know, with that in mind, I recommend, you know, to everyone on my team and all the clients that I work with, you know, to segment the data at the very start at the outset, to ensure that it can be broken out later because you can always break out, well, segmented data, but you can't really create segments where they don't exist. Have you experienced that yourself?\n\n\n\nAlex (00:09:29)Yeah, if you're referring to sort of UTM best practices and different types of segmentation, I think that getting that data, planning to use that data, even if you're not going to use it is super important. Don't assume you don't need it, like, plan to use it. And then, if you don't end up using the segmentation, you don't end up using the granularity that you've created. That's definitely fine. But plan to use it for sure.\n\n\n\nMark (00:09:55)Absolutely. You know, in the StackAdapt platform, one of the things that I recommend to all of our users is that, you know, we break out campaigns by audiences or tactics, so that you have a lot more control when it comes to reporting and analysis, you know, to make those quick decisions and on the fly choices based on how you analyze that marketing data. And it really, you know, gives yourself an opportunity to understand that data from the outset. And rather than trying to make sense of how it can be broken out, and then having to guess afterwards, based on what you think you suddenly was set up as.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:10:33)Yeah, for sure. And I think like, just a quick note on data collection, I'm not going to get too technical here, because obviously, it's a little bit of our bread and butter, as well. But I think the big thing for me is, once you start collecting, you need to make sure you get it all in the same place. Different words, you use centralization, consolidation, collection, whatever, but you need to get it in the same place, so that you can actually start making sense of it. So you can start transforming it, preparing it, cleaning it, mashing it—all of those buzzwords are kind of related to getting that data to a point where it's actually useful. And not just 1000s of rows of data, because any marketer will be a bit intimidated by just 1000s and 1000s of rows of data. So yeah, getting into a platform where you can, where you can really do it and like for for agencies to kind of like just go back to that sort of point on how the agencies then create this modern marketer, how do they kind of facilitate account managers, I think, like, you're trying to get agencies to kind of move away from these inflated data teams. So they're not spending too much time on these big requests, kind of lists of requests, and then also training the marketers to become comfortable with that data. And then obviously, give them the technology they need to kind of explore it. But also, I think, shift the role of those data teams from like facilitators to strategists themselves, like give them that bigger remit to work on more value, add scalable data projects, instead of this, like, Hey, can I get this one thing? Yes, it's gonna take me this amount of time and give you back, kind of get rid of that backlog and get them working on these big projects where they can go to, to the account team and say, Hey, we've just done this amazing, scalable analysis that's going to be relevant for you, here's a program to do it, here's some code to do it, etc, etc. So, I think that's important when it comes to best practice. Oh, and actually, one more I just thought of, I think it's that I forgot to mention, it's to kind of create group analysis time in account managers calendars where they can like, just spend time digging into data with no clear objective. This is just like time to explore data and dream up new hypothesis without really worrying too much about deliverables. I think, one of my colleagues referred to it as sort of exploring with data as a compass, sort of like no pressure, look through the data, see what you can kind of dig up. So yeah, those are my kind of best practices.\n\n\n\nMark (00:13:03)That's a really great tip, I think I'm happy to take that one back to my team and encourage them to do that. You know, but on the topic of training, where you mentioned, you know, I always say like, don't be afraid to ask questions, there may be, you know, those on our team or on other books of business that, you know, have a good understanding of how to analyze certain sets of data, and really, to determine the meaningfulness of it. And I find that, you know, as account managers, sometimes we miss the forest for the trees, we're so close to everything that, you know, we really do have to take that time to step back and look at the data that we've generated. And either, you know, try and find those analyses, you mentioned, Alex, you know, taking the time to really aimlessly kind of wander and see what you can find, or to leverage the expertise from those who have worked with that type of data before and really, you know, have a quick response there. Another thing, you know, one thing that you mentioned earlier about, you know, iterating, and I know, it's an age-old mantra that our data science team uses, but test, iterate, repeat, it's something that I try and encourage my own team to really look at, because that's really the only way that you can take that scientific method and, you know, find better performance and find better subsets of data and different ways to do things.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:18)Awesome. So we're just about at the end here, and for both of you, I always say with this last question, you know, feel free to get as speculative as you'd like to because what I'm interested to know, and what I'm sure listeners are interested to know is from both of you, what's an emerging trend in the marketing data space that people should be looking out for in, you know, the coming year.\n\n\n\nMark (00:14:46)For me, you know, okay, so I mean, I'm gonna go back to the whole thing that, you know, I know that I'm going to be served ads regardless of what I do and what regardless of what trends or you know, policies are happening out there. So, for me, I'd much rather those ads have some relevance to my interests. And, you know, despite efforts around limiting or neutralizing data collection, I think, you know, we're gonna see this not going away anytime soon. And, in fact, it inspires, you know, kind of workarounds; it inspires ways to really still be able to collect and use that marketing data. So you know, if you look at the StackAdapt platform, you know, contextual advertising is a big thing. And it has been a big thing for a while. But, you know, things like page context, AI, lets us serve ads, when the content on the page is of the highest relevance to those users, regardless of whether or not we know anything about that user prior. And I find, I think that, you know, we're gonna see a lot of trends of platforms and you know, different tools like this, really trying to find the best way to reach those audiences, without always having to rely on all those signals that we get at the very beginning. But kind of the ones that we generate throughout.\n\n\n\nAlex (00:15:58)Yeah, for sure. Definitely. I think I'll try to, I'll try and be quick, because I know we're nearing the end. But for me, I'll just, I'll just to touch on, I think this this general switch from lead gen to demand gen. For those who aren't familiar, it's kind of seems like it's the is the big thing that's changing the kind of performance industry and or the growth marketing marketing industry in general. But this sort of switch to a kind of longer more sustainable look at things versus lead gen, where you're paying to create something that turned into a sale or an email or meeting right away, it's more about kind of creating value, and that that goes for like paid and organic, you know, it's I think agencies will start becoming more kind of strategic partners to in house teams as well, and extensions of them so that they can work share insights, and kind of figure out like, Okay, what holes do we need to fill where, you know, which channels should we use to deliver more value in which stage of the funnel but not having to necessarily rely on not necessarily having to rely on you know, immediate lead gen and immediate results and trying to find this balance between kind of short term and kind of long term sustainable growth. And I think we're seeing that with like, a big shift of brand awareness, and people starting to really try to track branded search as well. And, you know, there's a lot of community building going on and etc, etc. And on gating content, too, I mean, people, you know, brands, companies, a lot of what we're seeing in the B2B SaaS space is people want to give now give, give, give, give, give, and then and then build it that way. So yeah, I think that that general shift from lead gen to demand gen, and if you haven't, kind of read a little bit about that and watch some for some videos that support cast, I think it's well worth diving into.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:17:48)Well, Alex and Mark, thanks so much for joining us for this bonus episode. To our listeners, we hope that you took a lot away, and we look forward to sharing more helpful tips and tricks in future episodes of How Agencies Thrive podcast. Thanks again for listening.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:18:07)Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there's three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can find us at stackadapt.com Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/escape-the-walled-gardens#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/escape-the-walled-gardens"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"How to Escape the Walled Gardens","datePublished":"2022-05-18T13:25:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:30+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/escape-the-walled-gardens"},"wordCount":3297,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/escape-the-walled-gardens#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517092238/shiv_gupta_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s2e1.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["multi-channel","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe unpack the shift in advertising beyond the walled gardens and discuss how agencies can use programmatic in their upcoming digital campaigns.\n\n\n\nShiv Gupta | Managing Partner, U of Digital\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)But what's interesting is some of them, I'd say like the middle class, walled gardens are maybe not growing as fast as you'd like to see. And some of them honestly are not growing as fast as digital in general. And I think that's an interesting area to kind of hone in on, right? Because I think what we're seeing is marketers are saying, Listen, if you're Amazon, or if you're Google or Facebook, you know, you're somewhat of a must buy right now, because consumers spend so much time there. There's so much scale in those platforms. But if you're a walled garden, kind of like hovering around in that middle tier, and you've made life hard for the marketers, right, by putting up those walls and making it difficult to transact in those environments, well, are we better off going elsewhere?\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:43)But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints. So that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales have gotten to a point where they can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:08)Hi everyone, my name is Matt, I'm the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. And welcome to this bonus episode of The How Agencies Thrive podcast. Before we head into the third season of our show. In this short series of episodes, we'll be covering high-level industry tips, tricks and insights to help you succeed in the programmatic industry. Today, we'll be covering the topic of programmatic versus walled gardens. And we're joined by none other than Shiv Gupta from U of Digital. Before we get started with our questions here, Shiv, I'd love to hear a quick overview of yourself, you've digital and your experience in the industry.\n\n\n\nShiv (00:01:43)Thanks for having me, Matt, really excited to be here today to talk to you about this super exciting subject. A little bit about me. So as you mentioned, my name is Shiv. Been in the ad tech industry. My whole career, I was at AOL for about 10 years, for those of you out there that know what AOL is. And I was mostly on the programmatic ad platform side of their business. And then I was at a company called Criteo, for a couple of years, mostly in sales. And then four years ago, I started this company called U of Digital, and our mission, our vision, our goal is to help bring some clarity to this crazy space, through structured education, right, like it's a very complicated space, it's changing fast. There's always jargon and acronyms, and all sorts of just information constantly to sort through. And it's our job to help distill that information, curate the information into bite-sized kind of educational chunks and touch points, so that individuals and companies in the space can learn. And, you know, we're super excited to be partnering with tons of great companies in the space like Google and Amazon and tick tock and also StackAdapt. So really excited again, to be here on the podcast today and talk to you about, you know, agencies and how they should be thinking about programmatic versus the walled gardens and all of the things that kind of get wrapped up into that.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:58)Awesome. Yeah, thanks so much. We're glad to have you on the episode. So let's get started with a couple of rapid-fire questions, and we're really interested to hear your thoughts on these. So the first question that we had for you is, you know, in the last two years, what kind of shift Have you noticed in terms of advertising within walled gardens versus advertising on the open internet?\n\n\n\nShiv (00:03:20)Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting time, Matt, right? I think that, you know, walled gardens, you know, let's call it how it is, are more important than ever, for marketers, because they capture so much user time and attention. And they create really interesting sticky experiences for consumers. And so, you know, marketers, I think, you know, they kind of have to be there, it's kind of like a, it's almost like a necessary evil in a way. Now, on the other side, it's hard to work with these walled gardens, right. It's all very well documented that the walled gardens, you know, let data come in, don't let data go out. They're very closed ecosystem. So it's hard to bring in, you know, external parties to do things like measure or, you know, monitor, you know, your campaigns within those environments. And so there's a little bit of a love-hate there. What I think is interesting, if we think about kind of the net result of all of that is, you know, again, you can't deny the numbers, the walled gardens are capturing more and more of share across the ecosystem, particularly of you know, particularly the big walled gardens, right? So the Googles, the Amazons, the Facebook's of the world. But what's interesting is, some of them, I'd say, like middle class, walled gardens are maybe not growing as fast as you'd like to see. And some of them honestly are not growing as fast as digital in general. And I think that's the interesting area to kind of hone in on right, because I think what we're seeing is marketers are saying, Listen, if you're Amazon, or if you're Google or Facebook, you know, you're somewhat of a must buy right now, because consumers spend so much time there. There's so much scale in those platforms. But if your walled garden kind of like hovering around in that middle tier, and you've made life hard for the marketers, right by putting up those walls and making it difficult transact in those environments Well, are we better off going elsewhere? Right? And that's where I think we're starting to see a bit of a shift towards open programmatic. Because I think programmatic gives marketers a ton of opportunity to capture user attention, but do so in a more diverse way. Right? Do so more with diversified sets of data, do so more in different types of mediums and through different channels, do so with different types of canvases of creative. And I think that's fascinating, right, and I expect to see kind of more of that evolution in the coming years.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:31)It's interesting that you mentioned that because it's, you know, perfectly transitions into the next question, because leading up to the episode, we did some, some research, and we said, okay, you know, what kind of data is there on something like a click-through rate, you know, what are the click through rates, like on social versus programmatic, and there's some stats out there that are saying that click through rates are dropping. And, you know, you said this perfectly that walled gardens have almost made it more challenging for advertisers, you think about something like political advertising on Facebook, I mean, that's just, you know, not something that's really possible. So what it's done is it's created this great opportunity for programmatic to shine through and I'd like to know from, from your perspective, you know, what ways has programmatic kind of become this unsung hero for digital advertisers?\n\n\n\nShiv (00:06:23)Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, you know, the CTR point is really interesting. You know, I think it definitely has to do with some of the sensitivities, right, that the walled gardens have created around advertising, like you said, I also think a lot of has a lot of it has to do with supply and demand, in the sense that, you know, there was just like, this gold rush into some of the walled gardens, most notably Facebook, and if you talk to marketers, you know, let's say, over the last six months to a year, prices in those environments have gotten pretty onerous, right. And so, you know, if you're looking at click-through rate in a vacuum, and click the rates going down, that's a problem, right? But also, if you're looking at things like cost per click, and you're factoring price into that equation, I would imagine the math is even worse, right? It makes those platforms look even worse, because CPMs, and prices have gone up in those platforms. Right. So I think at Google, you know, that's been an issue with Google search for a long time. And so So yeah, I think you're right. I think programmatic can kind of be an unsung hero in some of these situations where marketers can say, Listen, is there an opportunity for me in open programmatic to find pockets of users and inventory that are maybe under-indexed a little bit maybe not as saturated as let's say, you know, a Facebook or an Instagram or something like that, where I can have success, right, I can get scale, I can get performance, and maybe do so in a slightly different way, right through a slightly different medium, maybe in a different, slightly different part of the consumer kind of journey or funnel, but I can still kind of achieve the business outcomes that I'm looking to achieve, right. And I think the benefits of programmatic versus the walled gardens are obvious, right? It's, first of all, it's that data and data outright, you can tell a more holistic, seamless story with other media platforms, kind of in the mix alongside programmatic because they are more open, more open ecosystems in general, there's more flexibility, right to reallocate and move things around change, you know, what part of the funnel you're focusing on, as opposed to kind of being boxed in by a walled garden. And at the end of the day, as I mentioned, I think all of it kind of comes down to these, this notion of like, the programmatic ecosystem potentially offers greater scale, and more pricing efficiency, frankly, than some of these oversaturated ecosystems and walled gardens.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:36)You know, talking about that shift. What kind of recommendations do you have for, you know, say, an agency or a brand? Or anybody who's doing any kind of advertising? You know, what kind of advice do you have for them, when it comes to making that shift from perhaps being a business that is traditionally spending on social to now shifting over to programmatic? You know, what are those first steps? What are those best steps that they can make to to make the most out of the open Internet?\n\n\n\nShiv (00:09:05)And the first thing I'd say, and I highlighted this briefly in my last response, is understanding the nuances and the differences in the mediums, right, like, I think we have a tendency sometimes to kind of apply things very broadly, whether that's KPIs, whether that strategy, whatever it might be, we try to, like we try to apply those things broadly across all of our channels, all of our partners, etc. Right? I think it's really important as you go into, let's say, you know, programmatic buying and open market buying to understand, hey, this is fundamentally different than my Facebook buy, or my tick tock buy in these very specific ways. Right. And I think that's the first kind of step that I think a marketer needs to kind of wrap their head around and adjust their strategy accordingly, adjust their KPIs accordingly, so that they're setting themselves up for success, right. You don't want to necessarily use a medium in a way where you're setting it up for failure. Right. So I'd say that that's the the most important thing is understand that open programmatic advertising is just not the same thing as a, you know, Facebook-sponsored ad in feet, right? And let that then kind of trickle down into everything that you do. And then beyond that, I think it's really important to kind of take a diversified approach, right. I think, you know, putting all your eggs maybe in one basket, when it comes to programmatic is not necessarily the right way to go. You know, we see that marketers use multiple platforms, multiple programmatic solutions sometimes. And you know, in the past, I think that's been a little a little bit faux Paul, right of like, Oh, why are you using multiple platforms to kind of do the same exact thing? Well, the key is, it's not all the same exact stuff, right? It's not all the same data. It's not all the same inventory. And so I think taking a diversified approach is, is interesting and important. And then last, but not least, I think, again, we have a tendency in our industry, sometimes to like chase after the shiny object, right? When it comes to, you know, whether it's walled gardens or programmatic, like, we tend to just gravitate towards what's hot, and what people are talking about. There's a lot of good stuff out there, honestly. And there's a lot of tech out there that, you know, marketers, I think, should be thinking about and vetting and asking tough questions to their partners to understand how these things are differentiated. And really, I think marketers should be more comfortable with saying, listen, here are my needs, how can you solve them, as opposed to kind of saying, Okay, well, I've heard of this programmatic solution, this has to be the right answer. I'm just gonna go in that direction. I think marketers should be a little bit more open and kind of let their guard down potentially, to hear what's out there.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:11:35)Closing out. Let me ask you this. Think into the future 5, 10 years from now? What's happening in the industry, especially with walled gardens? Where do they stand, you know, what's the benefit that they're still providing? You know, are they going to be phased out? Are they going to have adapted over time? What do you think is going to happen?\n\n\n\nShiv (00:11:55)That's a great question. I have to I think I have two thoughts for you there. My first thought is, I think it's gonna be really interesting to see what happens with subscriptions. And what I mean by that is, you know, everything right now everyone's talking about Elon Musk buying Twitter while Elon is anti-advertising and pro subscriptions. And hey, listen, Elon may not buy Twitter, eventually, he may back out of that deal. But even if he does, I do think that Twitter is going to get more aggressive around subscriptions. And I think that's going to be an interesting moment for the walled gardens. That may kind of set the stage for a lot of copycatting, right, like a lot of walled garden saying, Okay, well, ads have been tough. They're not necessarily engendering the right type of content on our platforms. And so let's go more towards subscriptions. And hey, by the way, we've seen that all play out in streaming, right, like, we know that you have the Netflix's and the Hulu's of the world that are kind of this hybrid ad-supported and subscription model. So one of my predictions with social media and walled gardens in general is, I think, in the future, it's going to be a lot more of that hybrid ad-supported and subscription type of model. And I do think Twitter's going to be an interesting case study to set the stage for that. My second prediction is, I think, you know, right now, especially from an advertising perspective, we're seeing this mass proliferation right now of walled gardens, right, every company wants to be a walled garden, whether it's, you know, the obvious ones, like Snapchat, and Twitter and Pinterest, and tick tock, et cetera. But then also the less obvious ones, right, whether that be Samsung, or Walmart, or Best Buy, like, like a lot of the retailers. So everybody wants to be a walled garden right now. And ultimately, we see this play out in a lot of industries, right, where you have initially like a proliferation of of solutions, especially when there's like a hot new market. And that's frankly, like, that's what the addons industry is, right? It's still early, it's still hot. And so you're seeing this proliferation of copycats of the Facebook's and the Googles of the world, but long term, we know that marketers are not necessarily going to want to have direct relationships and buy directly from all these walled gardens. It's not efficient, it's not scalable. And so, over time, the market will dictate a consolidation, frankly, right. And what that means is there will be winners, there will be walled garden winners, and there will be walled garden losers. And I think, you know, ultimately, the walled garden losers, which honestly will probably be most of them, will end up selling their inventory and their data programmatically through programmatic marketplaces. So I do think long term, you know, you'll have some winners, the big guys will probably win, you'll have some losers. And I think the losers ultimately just become part of the programmatic ecosystem, which is kind of another feather in the cap, right of programmatic platforms like StackAdapt, or, you know, like, like other major DSPS and ad exchanges that are out there. So I think it's I think it's pretty exciting to think about it in that way. When you're thinking about when you're thinking about programmatic versus walled gardens and kind of where things are headed.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:14:55)And you know, this is this is the media industry. Unpredictable things happen and predictable things happen. Listen Shiv, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. And to our listeners. We hope you took as much away as we did from this bonus episode. So stay tuned for more episodes and we will see you next time. Thanks so much.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:15:18)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things, subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-advertising-trends#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-advertising-trends"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"Trends in Programmatic Advertising","datePublished":"2022-07-13T13:41:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:30+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-advertising-trends"},"wordCount":2408,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-advertising-trends#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517094256/pierce_mcmanus_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s2e3.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["cookieless targeting","multi-channel","podcast","programmatic advertising"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLearn today’s top three programmatic trends, and why advertisers should be paying attention to them.  \n\n\n\nPierce McManus | Sales Enablement Specialist, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)I think the most interesting one right now is probably what's going on with Google and antitrust issues. This has a downward effect within the industry. So right now, they're being scrutinized, and there is a bipartisan proposal coming out that might make them actually divest or change up their business model.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:20)But then you think about the social landscape. The research is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points so that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to lead to sales gotten to a point where it can drive better results and audience targeting and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:00:44)Hi everyone, my name is Matt, I'm the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt and welcome to this bonus episode of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Today, the topic of choice is trends in programmatic advertising. In this episode, I have Pierce McManus from StackAdapt to share his expertise. As always, this bonus episode will be made up of short rapid-fire questions. But to kick things off, I'll pass things over to Pierce to tell us a little bit about himself and his experience in the industry. So, over to you, Pierce.\n\n\n\nPierce (00:01:17)Hey everybody. Yeah, so as Matt mentioned, my name is Pierce McManus, so I've been at Stack Adapt here for a little bit over a year. I've been in programmatic advertising to getting close to half a decade. I used to be an account executivehere, working with agency partners and brand directly, but now I've kind of pivoted into more of an enablement role so helping our internal people keep an eye on trends. So it seemed like a good fit for this podcast. Long time listener, first time contributor, very excited for this one.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:44)Thanks so much Pierce. So let's get started with our question number one. Pierce, we wanted to know what are the top three trends that advertisers need to be paying attention to in 2022 and beyond?\n\n\n\nPierce (00:01:58)So, I think the biggest thing that's kind of changing the industry right now is looking at all the different advertising channels and data sources that are coming out. One indicator of this is the in-game advertising trends. So Sony and Xbox have come out saying that they're going to be building in game advertising for a lot of their publishers. The marketing behind it is saying it's going to support the publishers themselves, but we'll see how that actually shakes out when they actually start doing their advertising and what percentage they'll be taking themselves. Another thing that's of interest is people trying to monetize their data. So Marriott just came out saying that they are going to be building their own ad exchange with Yahoo as their partner. And I expect this trend to continue as people have their 1st-party data and a strong source of 1st-party data with the way that the industry is going and Identifiers online kind of disappearing, I think more and more brands and companies will be trying to do this. We have seen this reflected across other brands and businesses like Lowe's and Home Depot that are trying to monetize same with Best Buy. So that's definitely one thing that I'm keeping track of. Another aspect is definitely attribution right. With the cookie going away, people need to be kind of thinking about future proofing their attribution in their campaigns. Realistically, the standard attribution bottles really aren't going to be working in the foreseeable future. So there are a lot of different attribution sources out there. I think the one that's going to probably take most precedent is going to be media mixed modeling. Unfortunately, this requires a lot of data, so we'll see how many brands are able to adopt this. But we'll definitely need to be keeping an eye out for different attribution of models and trends as things kind of progress and the cookie starts to finally fade away. The last thing that I'm keeping track of, and it's not the most fun conversation to have, is inflation and where the market is currently going. So when you're trying to advertise to consumers, if the dollar isn't going as far as they're used to, consumers are probably going to start pinching pennies and probably won't be purchasing products that they're being advertised to at the same rate we've been seeing during the pandemic when people had stacks of cash because they were saving or weren't traveling or weren't commuting. So I think marketers are going to be really need to be creative when it comes to reaching their audiences and driving home the message as to why they should be purchasing from them or why they should be considering their brand. An additional aspect of this is actually speaking to our partners. So with the economic climate being uncertain at this point in time, a lot of companies are being more hesitant in the way if they spend money. Historically and unfortunately, typically marketing and advertising is the first thing to get cut when companies are cutting back and that's going to be our job as a partner to educate them on the detriment of doing that. There's a variety of studies out there that say the brands that continue to advertise during down periods and the economy actually see the longest growth or the largest growth when we come out of that quote-unquote recession, which arguably I don't think we're there yet. But that's always something we have to discuss with our agency partners. With our brands directly. Just making sure they understand if they do cut. There's a detriment to that and realistically. They should still be investing even when it's not the same economic climate we've been used to for the last few years.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:21)Definitely. And you hit on something there that we talked a lot about in earlier episodes of the How Agency Stripe podcast where we said that during the pandemic, there were a lot of sensitivities for consumers. And it almost seems like we're on that other side of the coin where instead of just leaning into the fact that people are stuck at home and budgets are limited or people have a surplus of cash. Now. It's like. Okay. We have to cater to consumers who maybe don't have that much money because life has picked back up again and things are getting expensive again and there is inflation. So I wanted to ask you, Pierce, moving on to our second question here. It could be one thing, it could be multiple things, but what's changing the face of programmatic advertising right now, kind of going beyond these trends?\n\n\n\nPierce (00:06:14)I think the most interesting one right now is probably what's going on with Google and antitrust issues. This has a downward effect within the industry. So right now they're being scrutinized and there is a bipartisan bill that is coming out that might make them actually divest or change up their business model. So I'm really interested in seeing what that effect is going to have on the advertising industry. If the government says that Google needs to break up, do they shoot the cookie faster or does it benefit for them to hold out a little bit longer and maybe push that 2023 timeline down the road a little bit further? Another thing that I'm looking at as well is kind of what Apple is doing to try and destabilize the advertising ecosystem. They are going very privacy first and trying to talk about how they're beneficial to customers by not monetizing their data, which is a little bit of smoke and mirrors tactic because realistically Apple is just anonymizing things and then creating their own advertising business behind the scenes. But they have done that and done it so well that it's destabilized Facebook quite significantly. And that's something else that I'm following is we've seen a lot of advertising dollars come from Facebook to programmatic advertising, which is beneficial for us as a whole. And the reason behind that is just Facebook's performance isn't what it used to be. And realistically, I don't see Facebook being able to solve this issue. If we look at the history of Facebook's business model, typically, what they do is acquire businesses versus building stuff internally. And given the way the governments are looking at these big advertising companies, Facebook will probably not have the ability to purchase any companies because of the antitrust issues. So realistically, they're going to have to develop stuff again for the first time in a long time versus going out and going with that M and a business model where they just buy the biggest competitor added to the platform and monetize that data. So, those are a few things that I'm looking at, but those will all have major effects on the advertising industry and changing programmatic going forward.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:13)For sure. And this brings us to our next question, Pierce. One of the first things you led with is that your role at StackAdapt and in sales enablement and how you sort of navigated the industry over the last five or so years is just staying on top of trends and understanding what's going on and the impact that this is going to have for our listeners. What tips or resources, what would you recommend they check out or where would you recommend that they go to also stay on top of these trends and things that are changing in the industry?\n\n\n\nPierce (00:08:52)Yeah, I mean, there's so many resources out there. Realistically. I am a huge fan of the digital newsletter because Shiv, who's on the previous podcast has these great opinion pieces in addition to all the news articles that are coming out. In addition to that, I don't really do anything too complex. I just make sure I look for advertising news every single day, every single week, and that can come from a variety of sources. I'm a big fan of using Google's News. I also use Google Updates for specific competitors that I'm looking to keep track of or people that are making moves within the industry. So that's definitely one. Another thing that I like to do is I still, even though I'm not technically facing brands, I follow advertising a lot, so I will go and watch ad supported content. So I'll go to like a YouTube, for example, watch one of our streaming providers and just see what kind of ads are out there and see if there's any noticeable trends in terms of how people are trying to reach their audiences, the creatives that are in market. Something that I think was discussed in a previous podcast is the importance of creative. And I really think that's something as well that we kind of need to be focusing on going forward as Attribution goes away. We have to be focusing on the messaging we're using to reach our customers and how imperative that is for a brand to create that relationship.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:10:05)Awesome. So just closing things out here. Pierce, a final question we had think five years from now, what does the state of programmatic advertising look like in your opinion?\n\n\n\nPierce (00:10:20)Flying cars in the clouds, skyscrapers, utopia? No, for programmatic advertising, I think what's going to happen is we're going to see more and more of these channels flesh out from different providers that are trying to monetize their data. Now, this can come from examples like Marriott that we already discussed, but I also see this happening as more and more devices get connected to the internet, internet of things. There's a great book called Quantum Marketing that talks about how people are starting to be advertised with everything that connects to the Internet. So smart home devices, Alexis essentially going to be able to reach somebody no matter where they are in their day to day in a very unique format. So that's definitely something I think will happen here within the next five years. The challenge that comes with that, though, is attribution once again, right? So if I'm advertising to somebody across multiple channels, how do I get a cohesive view of the people that I'm reaching? And that will be a challenge that, realistically. I don't think anyone has quite honestly solved yet, but that's what I really think programmatic advertising is going, is we will reach people no matter where they are, no matter what device they are, and then hopefully a meaningful impactful way that drives those relationships with brands.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:11:34)Fantastic. Well, Pierce, thank you so much for joining us on this bonus episode. And to our listeners, we hope that you also took a lot away, and we look forward to sharing more helpful tips and tricks in future episodes of the How Agencies Thrive podcast. Until then, thanks so much for listening. Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us if you do these three things subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable, please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback or would love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/programmatic-advertising-trends#primaryimage","url":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517094256/pierce_mcmanus_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s2e3.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517094256/pierce_mcmanus_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s2e3.webp?fit=600%2C601&ssl=1","width":600,"height":601,"caption":"Illustration of Pierce McManus, Sales Enablement Specialist at StackAdapt"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/avoiding-ad-fatigue#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/avoiding-ad-fatigue"},"author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Evered","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/author/matt-evered","jobTitle":"Sr. Manager, Education & Development","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"StackAdapt"}}],"headline":"How to Avoid Ad Fatigue","datePublished":"2022-07-29T13:53:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-04T16:10:30+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/avoiding-ad-fatigue"},"wordCount":2609,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/avoiding-ad-fatigue#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517095329/allison_hobbs_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s2e4.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","keywords":["creative","creative studio","interactive ads","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe sit down with a creative expert to get advice on ad fatigue, how to avoid it, and what creative techniques work best for digital campaigns.\n\n\n\nAllie Hobbs | Senior Manager, Creative Studio, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEpisode Introduction (00:00:00)There are some really simple and effective techniques that can be employed to avoid ad fatigue. One of the best is really A/B testing. So you know, having two ads with just subtle variations between them, and AB testing them to see which one actually performs better. So this could include changes to copy, you know, maybe the call to action is slightly different, or a different colour, you know, you could potentially, depending on what the vertical of the brand is, use lifestyle images versus still live images and seeing if, if any of those sorts of creative approaches are making the difference in terms of engagement with the audience. So, this is such a powerful tool in extracting data-driven decisions on what creative is performing the best, and how to, you know, sort of iterate on those successes on future campaigns as well.\n\n\n\nHow Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:49)But then you think about the social landscape. The research and data are hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints that long-term loyalty and then dive into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what's going to set you apart. You're tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:01:15)Hey, everyone, my name is Matt. I'm the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. And welcome to this bonus episode of The How Agencies Thrive Podcast. Today, the topic of choice is how to avoid ad fatigue. In this episode, we have Allie Hobbs from the StackAdapt creative studio to share her expertise on this topic. As always, this bonus episode will be made up of short, rapid-fire questions. But to kick things off, I'll pass the torch over to our guests to tell us a little bit about herself and her experience in the industry. Over to you, Allie.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:01:45)Hi, Matt. Thanks for having me. My name is Allie Hobbs. As you mentioned, I'm a Senior Manager with the Creative Studio team at StackAdapt. Our objective within the company is to really elevate creative and drive performance through design and creative tactics. Our very talented team of strategists and production designers are experts in the programmatic field, and are always pushing the boundaries and trying to be at the forefront of innovation. Prior to that, my experience for about 10 years was in photo, video, audio production. So all elements that definitely factor into creating high-quality creative with exceptional production value.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:02:24)Perfect. Thanks so much. So let's get started with these questions. Number one off the top. We want to know, you know, as somebody who works on the creative side of programmatic advertising, how would you define the term ad fatigue? And why is this something that, you know, poses a potential problem for marketers during their campaigns.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:02:45)Ad fatigue, in my opinion, is something that occurs when there's an oversaturation of a particular ad. And really, it just becomes white noise to its audience. They see it so frequently that they stopped seeing it at all. You know, you can track this through performance monitoring your campaign, and you'll really see it as you know, dropping click-through rates and lower performance. And generally, if an ad, you know, is just being used so frequently, on many landing pages, people really do just stop seeing it. So obviously, that's a problem. In terms of engagement with your audience, you have the opposite of the intended effect, which is to have highly engaging, you know, interactive experiences with your audience. So overusing the ad design and running it too frequently really results in them, you know your audience ceasing to see it and ceasing to engage with it.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:03:37)And I guess there's also something to be said about wasted media spend, right? If you're just throwing a ton of ads out that aren't resonating, then that's also a big problem for marketers, if you have ads that just aren't aren't getting that intended effect, as he said.\n\n\n\nAllie (00:03:52)Yeah, 100% and banner blindness is obviously something that is top of mind for any marketer who's in the programmatic space. Not only is there a risk of it, sort of blending in with everybody else's, and becoming a wallpaper that nobody sees, you know, the pattern on. But yeah, truly, you know, budgets are tight, you want to maximize your investment and like I say overusing something is really detrimental to the return on your investment for your advertising dollars.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:04:19)Of course, and you just sparked something in this might be a little bit of a curveball, but with ad fatigue, banner blindness, all these things that can negatively affect those creatives. Do you think there's any kind of effect on the brand? And I guess the quality of the brand if you're just seeing the same ads all the time?\n\n\n\nAllie (00:04:38)Yeah, I think truly the key to success in any creative is that it's sort of outside of the box and elevated, you know, so a brand that just starts to become sort of background noise on any landing page. You know, obviously that doesn't tell the story of an elevated for, you know, on the forefront of creativity, you know, pushing boundaries, and consumers generally are looking for trendsetters, not trend followers. So, you know, I think that would all yeah lead to that to that brand, not necessarily being viewed as, you know, a disruptor in their industry or an innovator in their industry. And I think these days, and clearly programmatic is such a technical form of advertising, brands who are leveraging that really need to be mindful of, of sort of the overall impact of their advertising and their design choices, in terms of how it is going to sort of be on brand with them.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:05:37)And now that we've defined ad fatigue, we've talked a little bit about it, from your perspective, what are some of those best practices that advertisers can use to avoid ad fatigue, you know, thinking on the topic of high level, creative strategy, messaging, etc, what are some things that you can offer to our advertisers that are listening to this, that they might want to test out to avoid that, that inevitable banner blindness or ad fatigue?\n\n\n\nAllie (00:06:07)Yeah, there are some really simple and effective techniques that can be employed to avoid ad fatigue. One, one of the best is really AB testing. So you know, having two ads with just subtle variations between them, and AB testing them to see which one actually performs better. So this could include changes to copy, you know, maybe the call to action is slightly different, or a different colour, you know, you could potentially, depending on what the vertical of the brand is, use lifestyle images versus still life images and seeing if I any of those sorts of creative approaches are making the difference in terms of engagement with the audience. So this, this is such a powerful tool and extracting data driven decisions on what creative is performing the best, and how to, you know, sort of iterate on those successes on future campaigns as well. Another simple, simple way to avoid fatigue is to monitor your campaign closely. And if it's underperforming, you could change the ad format. So you could explore which units perform best in your vertical, or by your campaign goal, you know, whether it's an awareness campaign or a conversion campaign, that can also really contribute to the continuous improvement of your marketing goals. And it's a really useful tool for agencies in particular, because they typically work with multiple clients across a variety of industries. So just changing up that ad format, you know, it's in, it's very quick and very tangible to see, you know, if one is a better fit for the goal of the campaign. And then a third very simple approach that could be taken is to just change a copy, change your colours, change your call to action, you know, use just really like snappy, concise phrasing, colours that pop and align with the brand being advertised just subtle changes there can really, you know, just change that sort of white noise approach. And, and you just sort of just mix it up a little bit, whether it's the messaging or the visuals, you know, just simple changes, can really make a huge difference in audiences. Realizing it's a different ad, it's not the same thing that they've seen over and over again.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:08:13)And that's a really good transition into the next question that we had. So for any listeners who have been tuned in for quite some time, in season two of our podcast, we did an episode on driving the first click with your creatives. So, Allie, I'm wondering, are there any additional tips around that notion of driving the first click whether it's, you know, making your ads visually engaging, or having messaging that's going to resonate with your audience? Is there any additional tips that you can offer? For advertisers that are looking to just, you know, start that process of getting potential customers into the funnel sooner and get them to at least click through and start engaging with your content and your brand?\n\n\n\nAllie (00:09:03)Yeah, I mean, coming from a creative background, my tip is, you know, and I feel very strongly about this is elevated creative, is the best secret weapon in driving first clicks. You know, we've talked about banner blindness, we've talked about AD fatigue, really, you know, having creative that is next level and just jumps off the screen, you know, whether it's mobile or web, it just really, really makes your ad stand out from from the crowd. So play design approaches that stand out, you know, very clear messaging are. And I think it's important that it be effective in all sizes, because, you know, you can have extreme pan skyscraper ads, you know, the formats can be quite extreme sort of aspect ratios. So also being very mindful that the designs work in the space that's available, so that people can actually read and digest the information that's being shared in a beautiful package. And then, you know, in choice of ad units, interactive ad units, there are so many of them now out, they're such an excellent, excellent way to drive engagement, they sort of gamify the experience, you can include things like polls to sort of, you know, get insights from your audience and segmented, you know, units that have hotspots where you can sort of mouse over and have additional information about a product, sort of pop up carousels, where you're clicking through different pains, you know, all of this really lends itself to getting good results and having your audience you know, like I say, actually engaged with that ad. And then in terms of, you know, sort of production value bells and whistles that you could put on ad design. Animation is a great tool, using video, anything with motion, sound, you know, those creative elements really make it a full sensory experience and capture the attention of your audience and really take your creative to the next level.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:10:47)Amazing. So this brings us to the final question that we have. And for the episode, we were chatting a little bit and you said you had a couple of things you wanted to talk about here. But let's let's look at some emerging trends. So what are emerging trends in creative advertising, that marketers should be paying attention to whether it's, you know, this next quarter or this next year or long beyond that? What's what's happening in the industry that people need to be thinking about, as it informs their creative strategy?\n\n\n\nAllie (00:11:19)Sure. Well, in general terms, I think outside-of-the-box creative is absolutely essential, you know, being innovative in terms of ad units, you know, the functionality of them sort of dynamic ads, where you can actually populate information, like weather targeting, for example, it's really become very sophisticated the capabilities that exist within programmatic. So really, the creative options are endless in terms of how to leverage that sort of technology. More generally, in terms of types of media, connected TV, continues to be a huge growth area. And I think, again, this is taking us off of devices and laptops and into, you know, big television screens where you know, 400, or sorry, 4,000k, High Definition, video is something that can be leveraged. Now, there's a lot of live events, you know, in terms of inventory, where ads can be shown, you know, you think of the Superbowl, for example, to think that perhaps a connected TV ad could be the next award-winning spot, versus something on cable television, which historically has been, you know, all eyes are on Superbowl ads, right. So there's opportunity within, you know, programmatic now to actually be playing in that sandbox. And, of course, you know, I think a lot of people today are using streaming services versus, like cable television. So that opens up just a whole other world of audiences, you know, families watching TV together, you know, every demographic imaginable are, are really, you know, streaming has sort of taken over as the go-to way to digest, you know, entertainment, so a huge opportunity there on a creative level. And something that is newer, and I imagine it's going to be growing exponentially is mobile gaming advertising. So, again, I think best practices are currently being developed in that segment, and I think we're going to see a lot of really innovative, you know, sort of animations, you know, CGI, 3D, all of these things, I think, are just going to continue to grow and mobile gaming to me is such a place for technical innovation in terms of, you know, visuals. I think it's gonna be really interesting to watch where that goes.\n\n\n\nMatt (00:13:42)Absolutely. Well, Allie, thank you so much for joining us on this bonus episode. And to our listeners, we hope you took a lot away, and we look forward to sharing more helpful tips and tricks in future episodes of The How Agencies Thrive Podcast. Thanks so much for listening.\n\n\n\nEpisode Outro (00:13:59)Thank you very much for tuning into this episode today. If you like what you heard, it would mean the world to us. If you do these three things. Subscribe to the show and leave us a review. If you're listening to this and know someone who would find this episode valuable. Please share it with them. And finally, please share it on LinkedIn. If you have questions or feedback, we'd love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/avoiding-ad-fatigue#primaryimage","url":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517095329/allison_hobbs_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s2e4.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/2/20240517095329/allison_hobbs_stackadapt_podcast_mini_series_s2e4.webp?fit=601%2C601&ssl=1","width":601,"height":601,"caption":"Illustration of Allie Hobbs, Senior Manager, Creative Studio at StackAdapt"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-ad-targeting#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-ad-targeting"},"author":[],"headline":"The Cookie Crumbles: How AI is Changing Ad Targeting","datePublished":"2025-03-26T08:54:30+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:34:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-ad-targeting"},"wordCount":2123,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-ad-targeting#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205140733/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-2.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["artificial intelligence","cookieless targeting","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"With 3rd-party cookies disappearing, the digital ad industry is at a turning point. But while cookies crumble, AI is stepping in to fill the gap, offering smarter, privacy-friendly ways to target audiences."}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-ad-targeting","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-ad-targeting","name":"How AI is Changing Ad Targeting | StackAdapt","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#website"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-ad-targeting#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205140733/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-2.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","datePublished":"2025-03-26T08:54:30+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:34:28+00:00","description":"Listen to our podcast and learn how AI is transforming ad personalization without relying on 3rd-party data.","inLanguage":"en-US"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-for-creatives#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-for-creatives"},"author":[],"headline":"Generative AI is Reshaping Ad Creation","datePublished":"2025-03-19T08:52:42+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:34:21+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-for-creatives"},"wordCount":2518,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-for-creatives#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205140803/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-1.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","creative","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"Can AI be truly creative, or is it just remixing the past?\n\nIn this episode, we dive into how generative AI is revolutionizing ad creation, from automating copy and visuals to reshaping the role of human creatives. Hear how AI is enhancing, not replacing, creative storytelling."}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-for-creatives","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-for-creatives","name":"AI for Creatives: How Generative AI is Reshaping Ads","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#website"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-for-creatives#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205140803/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-1.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","datePublished":"2025-03-19T08:52:42+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-19T00:34:21+00:00","description":"Listen to how generative AI is revolutionizing ad creation, from automating copy and visuals to reshaping the role of human creatives.","inLanguage":"en-US"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-for-creatives#primaryimage","url":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205140803/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-1.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205140803/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-1.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","width":626,"height":313,"caption":"Cover of The AI Advertising Podcast"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-in-ctv#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-in-ctv"},"author":[],"headline":"AI in CTV: Smarter Targeting and Seamless Buying","datePublished":"2025-04-09T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:13:35+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-in-ctv"},"wordCount":2509,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-in-ctv#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205140703/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-3_David-Wells_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","connected tv","podcast"],"articleSection":["Advertising channels"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Podcast\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs streaming platforms continue to dominate, connected TV (CTV) is becoming one of the most powerful advertising channels. But how can advertisers ensure better targeting, seamless media buying, and smarter ad placements in this evolving landscape? The answer lies in AI.\n\n\n\nDavid Wells | Industry Principal, Snowflake\n\n\n\nGreg Joseph | VP, Inventory Development, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nJohnny Tan | Senior Director, Inventory, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Think about the last time you watched a show on a streaming platform. Did you see the same ad again... and again... and again? Or maybe you noticed something strange—your favourite streaming service has started serving you way more relevant ads. This is AI at work. Connected TV or CTV is one of the fastest-growing advertising channels, and AI is transforming how brands buy media, target audiences, and measure performance in real time.But how exactly is AI reshaping CTV advertising? And what’s coming next? To find out, we’re talking to Greg Joseph, Vice President of Inventory Development at StackAdapt, and Johnny Tan, Senior Director of Inventory at StackAdapt—two experts at the forefront of AI-powered CTV. We’ll also hear from David Wells, Industry Principal at Snowflake, who will break down how AI can manage audience segmentation and ad frequency like never before.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:07)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:21)AI is already transforming digital advertising, but its impact on CTV has been a game changer. Traditionally, TV advertising was a static, bulk-buying process—brands would purchase ad slots in advance, hoping for the best. But Greg Joseph explains how AI is revolutionizing media buying on CTV, making ad placements smarter, faster, and more effective.\n\n\n\nGreg Joseph (00:01:49)Traditional TV is just a static buy. You go to a TV broadcaster and you say, I'm going to buy impression one through a million. And they're going to be instance instances where performance are good. And they're going to be instances where performance is bad because you're buying supply in bulk.I'll use a bag of M&Ms. There are instances where I could buy a bag of M&Ms and there are some pieces that are not shaped the best. If I had the chance of picking which pieces I want and only getting the best pieces, I would.The value of programmatic or programmatic and what we're seeing with the evolution of AI and programmatic versus like the legacy way of buying TV is the legacy way of buying TV, you have to take what you got. And if the performance was bad, there's really nothing you can do.In the world of automation and AI and programmatic, you can adjust things in real time. You no longer have to say, I'm going to buy inventory from impression 1 through a million. I can actually say I'm going to buy Impression 1, Impression 10, and Impression 100 because they're the most valuable to me and it's going to allow performance to be consistent versus the like-see way of buying. You really have to take what you got and if performance wasn't great, there was nothing you could do. Unlike what we see now.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:58)That’s a huge shift. Instead of wasting ad spend, AI-powered DSPs (like StackAdapt) analyze real-time data from premium publishers—think Disney, NBC, Paramount—to identify the most high-value audience segments. But AI isn’t just helping brands buy smarter—it’s improving how ads are measured.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:24)One of the biggest challenges in CTV advertising has always been measurement. Unlike digital ads, where you can track clicks, conversions, and attributions, CTV is more complex. But Johnny Tan says AI is closing that measurement gap.\n\n\n\nJohnny Tan (00:03:41)AI is really just a tool that depends on like what what is there underlying. So will AI help with measurement and attribution in a vacuum? Probably not. How would AI help with measurement and attribution? It's really like having strong signals, having a strong product behind the scenes. So the work that we're doing for martech initiatives, where we have a lot more oversight into the entire process from the delivery of the campaign into like how users specifically action off of different tactics within a campaign, having that data is what will power AI better, but it's an intererative iterative process, right? Like if anybody had a blueprint to do it, then everybody would be able to do it really, really well. AI is just simply something that we need to continue to watch, manually oversee and optimize, just as the experts of the thing. And over time, I think it definitely will play a role in reducing the manual inputs so we can get performance faster. But I think it's going to be a longer standing like process.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:41)By analyzing millions of ad impressions, AI can detect patterns in audience behaviour and optimize performance at scale—without requiring advertisers to be hands-on every step of the way. This is critical because marketers today don’t just use CTV—they run campaigns across multiple channels. Which brings us to AI’s Role in cross-channel orchestration.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:11)AI isn’t just improving CTV campaigns—it’s helping advertisers manage campaigns across multiple channels, including digital out-of-home, audio, display, and native ads. Johnny Tan explains how AI is becoming an orchestrator that connects the dots between different ad formats.\n\n\n\nJohnny Tan (00:05:33)The best way to put it is, like CTV is great. It's easy to imagine where your ads are going to be played. Everybody's seen a television commercial, but it is one part of the overall marketer’s toolbox. Performance is really driven through the whole like the whole funnel. It's a mix of all of the different campaigns. CTV is a part of like you know, digital out of home, audio, video, native, the email marketing and stuff. So I think once you start adding so many different tactics and channels to reach your audience, the role that AI will play is to orchestrate all of them together in a more effective way. So you're not just like going in and trying to optimize CTV alone, going in optimizing like audio alone, because that's where you lose a lot of time. So being able to do it holistically and cross channel will be I think for me at least the most effective role of AI so that we marketers can really focus on like top line items instead of like going into the weeds and having to pick and choose like where your CTV ad is playing or which audience is to use like when you're able to dump a lot of information and then just call out top line performance objectives with a polished and well-trained AI it should be able to allocate the most effective performance tactics across all channels. So CTV is just one part of it all  but it really depends on like the reach of the different channels like the um integrity of the data for the users that are being like targeted and so on and so forth.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:10)This means less time manually tweaking campaigns and more time focusing on strategy and creative. But AI isn’t just streamlining media buying—it’s also changing how audiences are segmented and targeted.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:27)One of the biggest advantages AI brings to CTV advertising is smarter audience segmentation. In the past, targeting was broad—brands would rely on demographic data, hoping to reach the right people. But as David Wells from Snowflake explains, AI is creating hyper-specific “super segments” that improve targeting and ad relevance.\n\n\n\nDavid Wells (00:07:50)I think that AI will one, it'll happen upstream of the activation platforms, right? it will It will help with some of the segmentation. It will help provide some of the connections of the different identity linkages, right? You know, creating a super segment or a federation of identity that underpins the platform, like we have a partner today that actually will normalize different identity linkages into a super segment. And then you can go in and you can actually create your own subset that is unique to you and you can use it to power your ad platform. That's a AI use case. And then you have that managing greater frequency or more, I would say, efficient frequency on inventory types like CTV.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:38)AI-powered super segments aren’t just making targeting more precise—they’re also solving one of CTV’s biggest problems: ad fatigue.\n\n\n\nDavid Wells (00:08:48)So I think the thing about CTV today is that oftentimes it's a very powerful interactive ad unit and and channel in which to target. However, some people think that they're overwhelmed with the same ad over and over again. And then you as a marketer, you're not accomplishing what you want. Yes, there's recall, although maybe there's some negative sentiment with that recall. If you're using AI and to create this super segment and manage your frequency, then you know we need to hit David once ah during the week and then once on the weekend, and that's going to spur him to have that powerful association with that brand and you know actually make a purchase.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:30)So where is all of this heading? Greg Joseph believes AI will play a huge role in dynamic ad placement—where AI-generated creatives seamlessly integrate into live content.\n\n\n\nGreg Joseph (00:09:43)When you think about live sports and the dynamics of live sports and some of the things that are possible. So one of the things that we've seen already in some of the companies that we're talking to is the ability to have in-game advertising. So if you watch NBA playoffs or NBA basketball, one of the things you'll know is when watching the game and looking on the center court, you'll see a board that sometimes manually changes ads. We’ve started to talk to companies that actually have the ability to overlay ads on top of those boards via the stream, the live stream. And so they're using AI technology to understand what's in the stadium and then say, rather than going to commercial break, why not like just layer ads in the stream of the content to create better experiences?We're also seeing this for other partners we're talking to when we think about our partnerships with TripleLift and ShareThrough as well as others, Cargos, a great partner of ours as well, is how do we leverage what we're seeing in the stream of content outside of live sports to potentially add in advertising for that. And you've had companies like TripleLift doing very, very well doing that. You've had others excelling. And all of that is utilizing AI. It's scanning the content, understanding what the content's about, and then figuring out ad placement for that content. So if a family's watching TV on a stream of content, and I'll use like Modern Family, is there an ability to kind of have an ad or have like a consumer product on the table where the family is eating. That's possible today. So I think a lot of that is coming in the future. Right now, we're having a lot of these preliminary discussions to understand what is actually possible. We're hoping with some of our partnerships with the likes of Curve and others, we're gonna see a significant ramp up in how AI is utilized, not only for live sports, which I think is probably the next best opportunity but for all streaming content, how do you get there the right ads in the right place? And maybe that is not a commercial break. Maybe that's within the content itself.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:41)This blending of AI, CTV, and creative automation will redefine how brands advertise on streaming platforms. Meanwhile, Johnny Tan sees AI continuing to reduce manual work for advertisers—allowing them to focus on high-level strategy.\n\n\n\nJohnny Tan (00:11:59)Whenever I work on stuff, I call it the North Star or the blank check, right? Like what do we need to get to in a future state that would essentially work me out of a job? I think the easiest way to imagine that is an advertiser comes in and they say like, I want maximum site visits for my specific brand. Create me a plan that will do that and tell me what sort of budget is required. I think there is a future that's possible where Gen AI is able to like look at the historical data sets, look at the information that we've been able to digest and create like some sort of structured plan. It's never going to be a one-size-fits-all all. There's likely diminishing returns as you go through different buckets. Like for example if there's 10 people in one audience, three of those are probably higher more likely to convert than the next two people. So like you as an advertiser are you trying to be effective with your budget and you only want to target the three that are what's called the lowest hanging fruit or are you willing to spend a little bit more so you can, you know, increase your conversion from that three easy converters to the next five, which might be a little bit more um more difficult to convert or even extend it further. The future that I imagine is you put in a couple of prompts and then we could provide kind of different plans based on your willingness to ah invest a little bit more, so that way you can like really choose the options that are right for you.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:27)AI is already reshaping how brands advertise on CTV. But this is just the beginning.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:36)So what does this mean for advertisers today? Here are three key takeaways:One, AI is making CTV more precise – Smarter targeting, better segmentation, and improved measurement.Two, AI is optimizing across multiple channels – Helping advertisers orchestrate campaigns holistically.And three, the future of AI in CTV is immersive – AI-generated creatives and real-time ad placements are on the horizon.If you’re in CTV advertising, now is the time to embrace AI.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:14:13)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-vs-humans-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-vs-humans-advertising"},"author":[],"headline":"AI vs. Humans: Is AI Taking Over Advertising?","datePublished":"2025-04-23T08:42:05+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:13:28+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-vs-humans-advertising"},"wordCount":2439,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-vs-humans-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205140631/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-4_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","artificial intelligence","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Podcast\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIs AI replacing marketers and creatives, or is it simply a tool to enhance their work? As AI continues to automate tasks in advertising, the question remains: who’s really in control?\n\n\n\nYang Han | CTO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nDavid Wells | Industry Principal, Snowflake\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Is AI taking over advertising? Will machines replace creative teams, media buyers, and strategists? Depending on who you ask, you might hear wildly different answers. Some say AI is automating everything—that soon, it will generate entire campaigns without human input. Others believe that AI is just a tool—powerful, yes, but still dependent on human creativity, intuition, and strategic thinking. So what’s the truth? Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on AI’s role in advertising—where it excels, where it struggles, and whether humans are still in the driver’s seat. To help us break it down, we’ve brought in Yang Han, CTO at StackAdapt, who explains why AI is designed to assist, not replace. For now at least. You’ll also hear from previous guests like David Wells, Randy Newman, James Targett, and Te’Shawn Dwyer. Let’s dive in.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:04)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:18)When people think of AI, they picture robots replacing humans—but in its current state, AI isn’t ready to take over marketing teams. Its best use is to automate tedious tasks so humans can focus on higher-value work. Yang Han puts it simply.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:01:38)There's a lot of different areas in which you can use AI for advertising, obviously ensuring that you're reaching the right KPI goals that you're buying on, you know, brand safe traffic, you're using the right targeting strategies. But If we think about the vision, I mean the goal of AI is to take as much away as possible for the human to automate their work, to make their life easier, right? To mimic the human as much as possible. That's what the goal of AI is, right? Currently, humans are needed to guide AI, to tell AI what to do, right? To say we want to, we should be reaching this goal, that we should be targeting these relevant users. AI can do a lot of the rest under direction. But I'd say this is more of a consequence of the current state of things today. AI is not at this moment, smart enough to do all this stuff for you, but I'd say, it is getting there. And I think, overall marketers would want to be comfortable, having AI do more for them, but also be understanding of the limitations of AI. It's not like we want the human to be there as much as possible, but it's because in certain cases, the humans should be there to make sure that AI is being utilized effectively in certain cases. But over time, you want to be comfortable and find tools that can do more and more effectively, and to be able to test those tools.Especially as you bring in more first-party data. For example, is very effective in letting AI learn what's already successful so it can mimic it. So, if AI can understand what works already, it can be able to copy it. But otherwise there's just too many options for the AI to start. You have the code start problem. In which you need a human to direct.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:33)That’s a huge distinction. AI is not always a decision-maker—it’s a powerful tool that needs human input. Think of it like a supercharged assistant—one that processes data, makes predictions, and optimizes campaigns faster than any human could. But AI isn’t perfect. And that’s why the human element is still essential. This is something James Targett from StackAdapt’s Creative Studio emphasizes as well.\n\n\n\nJames Targett (00:04:03)When it comes down to ah replacing creatives, I think maybe some of those fears are actually a little overblown because I know we've had this conversation as a society before when we went from, you know, doing art and creative in a very physical way. Right? Like the tools we were using were pencils and art brushes and all kinds of different manual design tools. And then we went into the world where we were using desktop tools. We were using software. We started using Photoshop and Illustrator. And I think we had that conversation back then, you know, and probably similar reluctance. And I think that what it comes down to is that AI is just a tool, right? It's a tool, like a paintbrush is a tool. It's a tool like software is a tool. And that when it comes to marketers and agencies and they have clients, well, the tools are all out there, right? Like right now a marketer could hypothetically open up Photoshop or Illustrator and design their own ad but they don't. And the reason that they don't is because the people who are doing that, the agencies and the marketers, they have a lot of experience right, using these tools. And it's not just the tool, it's the person who uses it. So I think likewise, AI tools, the people who use them and the people who have the expertise in them will be doing the same job that they're doing now, but just using better tools, right, and being ah more efficient with it. And probably even generating better results.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:39)Exactly. AI is a tool that enhances human creativity and decision-making, but it still needs direction, intuition, and innovation—things only humans can provide. And that’s where personalization, storytelling, and creative strategy come into play.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:57)AI excels in areas that involve massive amounts of data and repetitive optimization. David Wells from Snowflake explains how AI is revolutionizing programmatic ad buying and targeting.\n\n\n\nDavid Wells (00:06:10)I think the targeting, if you're talking about segments to target, it's providing more accessibility on the creation of those segments and getting those segments into the platform of record that will serve those ads. I think to some degree it's also powering the decisioning, right? So people not only want to activate segments, they also want to use rules or custom algorithms to dictate the way that people are served an ad. So, yes, you can target a segment that looks like David or includes David. But you can also train a model, you know, with AI where you can sort of match past exposure logs to outcomes and over time create a model that dictates the way that media is purchased. So you know and on the one hand you have let's target David and other people that look like him with a segment or you can say, ‘You know what, I want to target these device IDs on these channels and these DMAs at this time on this inventory type. And I only want to pay this much.’ And you can send those rules into a demand-side platform. And that will govern the way that media is purchased. So ultimately, the AI is predicting the behaviour based on the marriage of past impressions that were served and past outcomes as a result of those impressions. And so what it's doing is it's predicting and surfacing those rules that say, ‘purchase inventory this way because our learning over that that those past impressions that were served and the outcomes that were rendered, that's going to help us to dictate what's going to lead to future outcomes like transactions.’\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:53)That’s a game-changer. Instead of waiting for users to take action, AI anticipates their next move—helping brands deliver ads at the perfect moment. But what happens when there’s no data? What about brand storytelling, emotional connection, and creativity? That’s where humans still dominate.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:08:11)In advertising, we can bid on millions of opportunities every second. If a human were to decide what to do in millions per second to shift through the data and come up with a manual trading algorithm. Of course, it's going to be inefficient. So anything that involves more data to make the right decision, you want AI in. But anything that's more on not data-driven. Let's say a more creative side. Is more human driven but generative AI is changing that—still needs to be human guided. But who knows what the future might be, right? You have to look at the type of problem. Is this a heavy data-driven decision in which I have previous examples of how to do it? AI is perfect for that. If there's no available information and I'm just trying to come up with something initially, then you need that human guidance first, right?\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:03)Randy Newman, CEO of the digital agency Colour, thinks human creativity is still needed.\n\n\n\nRandy Newman (00:09:09)Marketing is you know one of the more creative areas of business at large, right? It's more creative than finance or accounting or general management. So just with that notion that marketing is you know at its core creative, the creativity pieces is something that I think AI is gonna take longer to master, right? Because the way Gen AI works is it looks at everything that is being creative and it kind of almost gives you an average, right? In in record time, so that's why it's efficient and and and effective. But at the same time, it's pulling from you know all the data that already exists. Whereas sometimes from a campaign strategy perspective or even from a targeting perspective, what's needed is innovation or to do something that hasn't been done yet. Given what my limited understanding of how LLM works, it's not going to come up with something that's never been done. It's going to summarize everything that has been done.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:15)That’s a critical point. AI tends to generate content based on patterns—but what makes great marketing is innovation, risk-taking, and emotional storytelling.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:29)One of the biggest advantages of AI is its ability to automate tedious, time-consuming tasks—freeing up humans to focus on bigger-picture strategy.\n\n\n\nTe’Shawn Dwyer (00:10:39)When I think of my AI, I'm pretty optimistic about it. I see it at least for creatives becoming more of a hybrid.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:46)That’s Te’Shawn Dwyer, from StackAdapt’s Creative Studio, who’s been testing AI tools with his team for ad creatives.\n\n\n\nTe’Shawn Dwyer (00:10:53)So you're using AI as a tool to sort of do all the work that you don't want to do, right? And start leaning it into more things like strategy, more things that are are more bespoke, and then using AI to iterate a lot and really focus on like more high high-level strategic things. I think what will happen, though, is a lot more of the kind of like lower end work, that is just really simple, that's really redundant. A lot of that stuff is going to go away and be replaced by AI, but a lot of the stuff in the mid to like higher level will kind of stay true and at least have some of human involvement.I don't think we've fully reached the kind of end game where I can sit back and do like, oh, it saved me like half of my day, but in certain aspects of like my role, I've seen that like a task I would usually take 30 minutes, now it takes five, which is a huge time saver, right? So a lot of those things and a lot of that time that I'm getting back, I can just invest it in doing to like more strategic things.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:58)That’s the real value of AI—not taking over jobs, but giving marketers and creatives more time to focus on innovation, strategy, and storytelling.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:10)So, what’s the future of AI in advertising? Will AI eventually replace humans altogether? Yang Han believes AI’s role will expand—but humans will always be involved.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:12:21)An effective AI shouldn't always need human to override it And make adjustments, right? The best AI is not meant to operate like a human, it's meant to operate in real time. Something in a human cannot do, understanding what the human limitations are essentially and where it needs to guide.\n\n\n\nDavid Wells (00:12:39)The truth is is, you know, AI has a big brain and it can process all of that information in a way a human is not able to. However, humans have heart, right? And there's something sentient about humans that they're able to feel that maybe AI is lacking. And I think that's still an incredibly valuable emotion. And the ability for marketers to leverage AI as a compliment as opposed to a replacement is where we as an industry want to head.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:07)That means brands need to rethink their approach. Instead of seeing AI as competition, marketers should see it as an opportunity—a way to free up time for strategy and innovation.Here’s the bottom line: AI excels at optimization, targeting, and data processing. Humans are still needed for creative direction, branding, and ethics. And finally, the future isn’t AI vs. humans—it’s AI plus humans.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:37)So what’s the key takeaway? AI isn’t replacing humans—it’s reshaping their roles. To stay ahead, advertisers need to embrace AI for automation—let it handle the repetitive tasks. Also, focus on creative & strategy—the things AI can’t do well. And third, stay flexible and adapt—AI is evolving fast, and so should your marketing approach. AI is a powerful partner—but it still needs a human touch.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:14:09)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-predictive-analytics-targeting#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-predictive-analytics-targeting"},"author":[],"headline":"AI and Predictive Analytics – The Next Step in Targeting","datePublished":"2025-05-07T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:13:08+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-predictive-analytics-targeting"},"wordCount":2556,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-predictive-analytics-targeting#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260211225029/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-5.jpg?fit=801%2C801&ssl=1","keywords":["1st-party data","AI","artificial intelligence","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat if you could predict exactly when and where your next customer will convert? AI-powered predictive analytics is making that possible, helping advertisers shift from educated guesses to data-driven certainty.\n\n\n\nIn this episode, we explore how AI in advertising is revolutionizing audience targeting, media buying, and budget optimization.\n\n\n\nCarole Lawson | Chief Data Officer, MarketStorm\n\n\n\nYang Han | CTO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nNed Dimitrov | VP of Data Science, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)What if you could predict exactly when and where your next customer will convert? Sounds like marketer’s dream, right? But in advertising, AI-driven predictive analytics is making it a reality. Every ad campaign is a bet—on the right audience, the right moment, and the right message. Predictive analytics is helping advertisers shift from educated guesses to data-driven certainty.Today, we’re diving into how AI is revolutionizing predictive targeting, media buying, and audience segmentation with three leading experts: Yang Han, the CTO, StackAdapt, on the role of AI in predictive modeling and personalization.Ned Dimitrov, VP of Data Science, StackAdapt, on how AI predicts auction outcomes in milliseconds.Carole Lawson, Chief Data Officer, MarketStorm, on real-world applications of predictive analytics.From smarter ad spend allocation to real-time consumer behaviour insights, AI is transforming how brands reach their audience. Let’s get into it.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:13)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:26)We hear the term predictive analytics all the time—but what does it really mean in the context of digital advertising? Yang Han breaks it down.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:01:36)Advertising plays a role across the board for brands to just help drive their growth, right? And the advertising ecosystem has a lot of components to it to make that work. It also deals with a lot of data from the publisher side, the advertiser side, and so forth. And so, there is a lot of areas in which whenever there's data, there's AI, right? So there's a lot of areas in which AI has to play a role to make sure that the entire process end to end is as intelligent, smart, and ultimately drives growth as much as possible.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:14)Simply put, predictive analytics turns data into foresight. It helps advertisers identify who is most likely to convert, determine the best time and place to reach them, and optimize budget allocation for maximum return on investment. And the data sources fueling AI’s predictions are key.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:02:38)The most important data is probably the data from the advertiser itself because every brand is unique. Every brand has different scale and historical data that it can leverage to become more intelligent and learn from it. So a brand's first-party data is probably the first and foremost, the most important to drive the most meaningful results.And then there's third-party data in the ecosystem, data that may be derived from other sources, third parties, and the quality of that may vary. So there's a lot of due diligence that is involved when it comes to working with different partners and different verticals to understand where the data comes from, how scalable is the data set, how accurate is the data set, and how it can best be used in conjunction with and the rest of the data you have.And then this data that can be accumulated and generated as you know advertising is ran from historical results and as you run, you know, your advertising, you also want to assess the performance of it relative to, you know, what inventory and what publishers and what sites you're running on as well.Site intelligence and general fraud detection, brand safety is also very important in the ecosystem because in advertising itself, you're connected to so many different, you know, pockets of inventory, different parts of the internet, and you want to make sure that what you're buying and where you're buying on a has high quality users, has legitimate users, has content that is legitimate, especially in the world in AI where a lot of things are automatically generated.So you have to also use AI to help assess that essentially, as well. So quality when it comes to what you're running, but then you also have to marry that with the unique trends and data points of the brand itself.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:23)But predictive analytics isn’t just about better targeting—it’s reshaping how ads are bought and sold.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:33)Imagine this: an ad auction happens in milliseconds—and AI has to predict, in real time, whether a bid will convert into a sale. That’s where machine learning meets predictive analytics. Here’s Ned Dimitrov.\n\n\n\nNed Dimitrov (00:04:47)Machine learning has a big part to play in getting advertisers return on their investment. So, a company like StackAdapt participates in billions of ad auctions every day. And each client has their own specific goals for the advertising campaigns that they have. So one of the things that happens is whenever we receive an opportunity to participate in an auction, the machine learning models have to evaluate how likely is the outcome of that auction—likely to turn to something positive for the advertiser. Like, is it going to turn into a click? Is it going to, after the person clicks, is the person going to stay on the website for a while and read what's on there? Is it going to turn into a sale for the advertiser?And so we have many machine learning models that predict at bid time what the likely outcomes of the auction is, so that we can determine how valuable the auction is for the client advertiser. And we can bid accordingly in the auctions. One of the things that makes this particularly interesting in the advertising space is that the time for these predictions is very small. Typically, you have about a millisecond to do the prediction. And so the machine learning models are highly optimized. They're not sort of the large language models that many people might be used to where they take six or seven seconds to come up with an answer. They have to be very both very fast and very accurate to really give return on investments on the advertisers.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:19)This is a game-changer for advertisers, as AI can now bid more aggressively on high-probability conversions, also avoid wasted ad spend on low-value impressions, and optimize ad performance in real time. But it’s not just about winning auctions—it’s about winning the right auctions.\n\n\n\nNed Dimitrov (00:06:39)Making sure that the inputs to the models are accurate is a very difficult problem. This is especially because of the previous fact that I mentioned that the predictions have to happen very, very quickly. And so what typically happens in a system like ours is there's sort of one software system that trains the models offline. And another software system that actually executes them at bid time. And there often can be disagreements in the way that the information is presented in the offline system and the online system. So a company like StackAdapt has to build very complex verification software on top of the models to make sure that all the information going into the models matches between training and execution and is as accurate as possible. And so we have ongoing daily reports that say, like, what the match rates are between the information. If there's a mismatch, we start investigations about why there's a mismatch. Because it's very easy for there to be a small bug in the software that makes the ML models essentially produce noise as opposed to accurate predictions. And so verification is a key part of having the systems work well in production.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:53)But what happens after the bid? AI doesn’t stop working there.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:00)The moment a user sees an ad, AI is already predicting what they’ll do next. Carole Lawson, a data scientist who works with small and medium businesses, explains it better.\n\n\n\nCarole Lawson (00:08:11)It's really huge. It's not just in targeting the right customers for the clients. So, for example, we do a lot of work with data that maybe people don't work with the same way. We'll take the conversion journey. We'll calculate how many ads over how many days. We can do predictives against the number of ads over the number of days so we can see the timeline changing, the decision timeline for the customer. That helps us advise the client related to budget or what they can expect for revenue. And of course, you can't be absolutely precise, but you can give an idea. So we're seeing this percentage of change in the timeline it takes and the number of ads it takes for someone to make a decision, which translates into that decision is going to come two weeks later than it might have previously.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:57)AI is helping advertisers move beyond basic audience segments by creating dynamic, behaviour-driven personas.\n\n\n\nCarole Lawson (00:09:06)So the predicting of the consumer behaviour is not as clear as many of the companies would want you to believe. What you really have to do if you're going to predict consumer behaviour is get to know your consumers, create that baseline, and then watch what changes. And then use your AI tools if you have them available. And for us, it's things like Cortex because we use Snowflake. Take a look at what's changed over time. And as things have changed over time, ask your AI, what are what else has changed. I see this has changed. What else has changed? And then you'll start getting a sense for what levers start moving what wheels. Once you start understanding that, it's kind of a process. I mean, you don't just jump in and there's this magic AI. Once you start understanding that, then you'll begin to look at those little levers and be able to ask smarter questions as you go along.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:03)Predictive analytics also helps answer critical questions for marketers, like: how many ads does a user need to see before they convert? What’s the best time of day to run a campaign? How does weather, location, or device type impact engagement? Not only that, but it’s reshaping ad budget strategies.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:10:25)Once you understand which pockets of, you know, the channels you're utilizing is driving more growth, then you would tweak and allocate effectively across the different ad channels. So we try to do this obviously within the channels we support in our system, which we have algorithms to auto-balance the budget, depending on your KPIs. But there is continuous work in the whole ecosystem to get better at this because, in reality, a lot of different channels play a role that you cannot simply just easily see just looking at you know high level data and correlations. There's a lot of sequential causational relationships, that is also happening behind the scenes. And so even though one channel may not look good with certain metrics, but if that channel gets turned off, sometimes what happens that, you know, brands will see their end result declining. And so there's lot of sophisticated relationships going on. And I think there's a lot of experimentation that brands need to do right now to really figure out you know, the right allocations that is really maximizing the growth of their business essentially.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:34)Which means AI isn’t just optimizing ads—it’s optimizing entire marketing budgets.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:42)Predictive analytics is already transforming advertising—but where is it heading next?\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:11:47)There's a lot of room for it to continue to grow and evolve. I think, brands have a lot of data when it comes their first-party data, when it comes to understanding what their customers are doing, understanding the quality of different customers and their actions. And this varies by vertical. For example, an e-commerce store, you know you really want to get deep insights into what customers are buying in what locations and whatnot. It can get really granular. And on the B2B front, you really want to understand what leads are the most important that you want to invest the most in and so forth. um But the paradigms are quite similar to in the sense in which you're trying to understand the patterns of what makes your business successful, right? So that you can try to replicate as much as possible. A lot of times that has always been quite a manual process, where brands are, you know, manually trying to understand this and then come up and replicate strategies that align with that. But, especially as brands accumulate more data, like AI can really start to automatically understand this and automate this end to end when it comes to the whole spectrum, being able to understand what drives success within your business, understand the ideal channels to allocate and target in, and then be able to continuously optimize so that you drive as much incremental growth as possible.So this whole flywheel right now is quite, there's a lot of manual elements. There's it's It's quite a bit fragmented still, but there's a lot of opportunities for AI to really understand the end-to-end and bring it together. That's why I feel like for AI to really succeed, you need a platform that can integrate as many solutions as possible rather than stitch together like a fragmented ecosystem where everyone is working in silos. Every platform has a limited view of the data because without a broader view, you know, how can AI really understand and go strategic data there and make the right choices and recommendations, right? So it all starts with being able to bring everything together so that there's the full line of sight of what is working and what isn't.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:52)The big takeaway? Predictive analytics isn’t about replacing human decision-making—it’s about enhancing it. The brands that embrace AI-powered targeting today will have a serious advantage in the future.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:08)So, what should advertisers do next? Here are my three recommendations. First, leverage predictive analytics to refine your targeting strategies. Second, use AI-driven insights to optimize ad spend across channels. And third, stay ahead of the curve by testing new AI-driven tools. In the end, Predictive analytics is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s a must-have for brands that want to thrive in the future of digital advertising.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:14:41)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-tools-marketers#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-tools-marketers"},"author":[],"headline":"AI Tools for Marketers: The New Martech Stack","datePublished":"2025-07-02T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:12:17+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-tools-marketers"},"wordCount":2773,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-tools-marketers#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205135738/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-9_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","artificial intelligence","martech","podcast"],"articleSection":["Martech"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe martech landscape is changing fast—and AI is at the center of it. But with so many new tools launching every week, how do marketers know what’s worth their time? In this episode, we unpack the AI tools that are making a real impact for creative teams, media buyers, and marketing strategists—and where the tech is heading next.\n\n\n\nScott Brinker | VP of Platform Ecosystem, HubSpot\n\n\n\nAmélie Moritz | Technical Product Manager, StackAdapt \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)What’s the top tool marketers are using right now? That question used to spark long debates—nowadays, the answer is almost always the same: AI. But AI tools aren’t just another shiny object in the MarTech stack. They’re reshaping how marketers think, create, and execute—sometimes radically.In this episode, we’re cutting through the noise to explore which AI tools marketers are using today; which tools are changing the game for advertisers and creative teams; and what’s next—beyond the hype?We’ll hear from Scott Brinker. He is the VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot. Also from Amélie Moritz, Technical Product Manager at StackAdapt. And some regulars from this show, Te’Shawn Dewyr and James Targett, from StackAdapt’s Creative Studio. Let’s get into it.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:00:49)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:02)To kick things off, let’s take a step back. AI has shifted beyond niche curiosity to a mainstream must-have. But what’s actually changed for marketers on the ground? Scott Brinker from HubSpot has been tracking the growth of the marketing tech landscape for years, and what he’s seeing right now is… different.\n\n\n\nScott Brinker (00:01:24)Yeah, I think it is a pretty massive wave of innovation. I mean, it's interesting because there's certainly dimensions of AI that have been steadily growing inside the martech stack for more than a decade, you know. Traditional machine learning, like helping us understand cohorts and segments and churn propensity and you know all these wonderful capabilities that we've been leveraging through traditional machine learning.But this sort of next wave of AI, the generative AI, LLM engines, definitely were the catalyst for… It is pretty remarkable because it's changing so many different dimensions of what we can do with martech. This ability to have these new user interfaces that allow us to interact with software, whether we're, you know, like a marketer or an end customer, using natural language as a way to interact with these systems is unlocking so much power. I think generative AI and being able to dramatically accelerate production, particularly content production. But also now you know we're seeing this emergence of true AI agents, this ability to, you know, have these new kinds of software you know that are leveraging AI intelligence to be able to operate more autonomously, to be able to make more decisions. And this isn't like replacing the existing martech stack. In many cases here, this is augmenting the existing martech stack, but it's dramatically accelerating the sophistication of what's even going to be possible and how we run our marketing organizations and what sort of interfaces and touch points we present to customers. So I would say it is the most exciting time I have ever had in the history of martech.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:09)Scott’s right. One of the most transformative shifts is how AI allows marketers to interact with data and tools in plain English—you no longer have to be a data analyst to get answers from your data.\n\n\n\nScott Brinker (00:03:23)We're starting to see like people leverage these generative AI tools to be able to democratize more analytics and data exploration. So I don't have to be a data analyst to be able to ask a question in natural language and have the AI help look at my data and help me find that answer. I mean, marketers, I mean, this is one of the superpowers of marketers, in my opinion, is they always have these like, you know, great questions, you know, that they want to get the answers to as insights to drive their strategy and their campaigns. But there's often been a pretty significant delay between, oh, I have this question, what's going to be involved in actually getting it answered? And to me, one of the most powerful things we're seeing right now is this wave of AI technology shortening the distance from someone as a marketer, not a data scientist, but as a marketer having a question and being able to get an answer to it.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:16)While AI tools are transforming back-end workflows, they’re also showing up in the most hands-on part of marketing: the creative process. To understand how, I spoke with Te’Shawn Dewyr and James Targett from StackAdapt’s Creative Studio. These folks are building, testing, and adapting ad creatives every day—and they’re seeing real benefits from integrating AI into their work.\n\n\n\nTe'Shawn Dewyr (00:04:39)Tools like the Adobe CC Suite where they've just started to implement all these AI tools in it. It's interesting because these are tools that designers, motion designers, our graphic artists already use. So now they've got a whole field of AI capabilities to use along their existing work, right? So I may be working with an ad that My image is a little too small. Now in Photoshop, I can jump in there, generate that background to cover that whole new canvas I have. Now, I don't need to ask the client for a new image. I don't need to source any stock photo. I'm good to go, right? So I think a lot of the traditional tools we have that are implementing those AI tools are definitely going to make big waves in the future.\n\n\n\nJames Targett (00:05:26)Yeah, T's definitely, definitely right about that. Actually, when I use these tools recently, they really surprised me at how good they were. And they're just built into things that designers and marketers are using every day. In addition to those, I would actually say that the one, I guess, like one of the original ones, most people have heard of this is Midjourney, like Midjourney was a really impressive um image generator. I would say it was probably the leader. It might still be, I haven't been checking up on them recently.And the interesting thing about Midjourney to me is that it has a default preference toward really pretty images, like really strong compositions, really beautiful things. So I think maybe that's part of why people were drawn to it so early. But the challenge with a tool like Midjourney is, and again, I don't know if they've changed this recently. But to generate images through them is you would actually have to go through Discord. So you would be in a Discord channel and sort of like run your request through there. So when you look at leveraging this as a marketer or an agency or even a team such as ours, it's like, how do I set that up in a production pipeline? Like there's a couple extra additional steps that kind of make ah the underlying technology a little bit inaccessible.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:43)The takeaway here? AI tools are getting better at saving time and scaling design work—but they still need to be seamless to be useful. The more they integrate into tools marketers already use, the bigger their impact will be.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:02)Now let’s look at something that’s flying under the radar: AI as a true assistant—not just as a content or image generator, but a tool that helps you interact with your own data. At StackAdapt, this has taken shape as Ivy—an AI-powered assistant that helps marketers manage and optimize campaigns without endless clicking and spreadsheet wrangling. Here’s Amélie Moritz, Technical Product Manager at StackAdapt, on what makes Ivy different.\n\n\n\nAmélie Moritz (00:07:27)Ivy is our AI-powered assistant. So, today Ivy can help with obviously answering general questions, right? So if you're wondering, you know, oh, how do I launch a campaign on StackAdapt? Oh, hey, I'm interested in this HubSpot integration. How does it work? Or what are the capabilities? Ivy can do that. But I think if you're looking broader than just a chatbot, we're also providing additional value by allowing you to talk to your data. So that's how we call the feature internally. It's called talk to your data, but it's basically having the ability to ask Ivy about your own campaign data instead of having to browse through your reports. So let's say you launch a campaign and it could actually be a live campaign, something that's still running. And you're obviously wondering, hey, is everything pacing? Is everything all right? Or what's my eCPM or what's my CTR? Is this on par with what I'm expecting? Today, you probably have to go through our reporting tab and you have to find the right report and then you have to find the right metric, make sure it's for the right campaign.But with Ivy, you can ask this directly in your natural language. So you can ask, hey, what's the CTR of my life campaign? Or show me what's my top-performing campaign with regards to CTR, for example. The third one would be, again, bouncing off ideas. So being like, hey, I'm willing, I want to run an awareness campaign and my goal is to target the top of the funnel and I'm thinking of running a programmatic campaign on native. Is this a good idea? And my industry is e-commerce. Ivy can provide recommendations and say, hey, actually, you know what? Perhaps consider this channel or perhaps make sure that you include this in your strategy. Or... even more technical stuff. And this would probably be for perhaps more, I guess, both more experienced users, but also people who are new to the platform. And you can ask, hey, I have to set up this pixel. What are the steps? How can I configure this? Oh, hey, I have this macro. Can you make sure that this is actually correct before I go implement it? So again, going back to that assistant idea where you know you know that you have this kind of yeah, side person who can always, you know, help you if you have a question or if you need to kind of double-check something.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:01)That’s where AI shines—not in replacing marketers, but in helping them do the high-impact work faster and with fewer roadblocks.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:14)Alright, we’ve seen what’s working today. But what about tomorrow? What will AI tools look like as they evolve in the next few years? Will we all become prompt engineers? Or will AI get smarter about understanding what we want—without us needing to spell it out? Amélie and Scott both had interesting takes on where AI tools are heading.\n\n\n\nAmélie Moritz (00:10:36)With the current Gen AI tools, it's a lot about how you prompt that Gen AI tool, you know, and how you craft your prompts. So make sure that you provide enough context, make sure you're specific enough, or make sure you frame it in a certain way to get a certain output. But I don't think people, especially marketers, I don't think they want to be trained or have to learn something new to be able to use those tools. I think they want to be able to think in terms of outcomes. Here's what I want to achieve. And behind the scenes, instead of perhaps having just, and I don't want to say a simple model, but just having a generic model, you're going to have agents. And so, Gen AI is going to be able to think on its own if you want. And okay, here's the outcome. And here are the different building blocks or blocks I can leverage. Which one should I leverage to reach this outcome? And this puts the complexity not on the users, but rather behind the scenes. And I think that's probably what's going to be the strength of the future product that include AI, because it's no longer going to be just about branding a feature or product as AI powered is going to be about the ease of use and whether it's actually solving the right problems.\n\n\n\nScott Brinker (00:11:52)Again, one of the reasons this is the most... just fascinating time I've ever seen, not just, you know, in the history of martech, but, you know, in the history of technology that I've come across is it's changing and evolving so rapidly that I'm, I don't think I'm in a position to even like predict accurately, like, oh, well, what will this be in five years? I honestly don't know. But I do know that there are steps we can take that get us in the right direction, you know. And again, this is like designing both our tech stack and our organizational operations to embrace change, embrace adaptability, embrace agility. I think we know that our data infrastructure, our data foundations are key to really being able to effectively leverage AI. The data was always like, you know, crucial to us before this whole AI wave. But I think with AI, it's you know maybe like a 10x, the value of really getting our data infrastructure and our data you know processes strongly in place. And then, yeah, the third thing is you know, hands-on and experimenting and learning and trying to figure out, oh, what what can I do with this? You know, so I think if you're like leaning into that agility, adaptability, if you're leaning into good data investments, if you're leaning into empowering people to experiment and learn, I'm not sure exactly what the future is going to be five years from now, but that feels like the path to get there.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:22)And there’s a big future ahead for personalization at scale, too.\n\n\n\nTe'Shawn Dweyr (00:13:26)When these tools evolve and mature more with, you know, increased automation and customization, especially when we talk about like AI personalization, that is going to be huge for people and they'll start seeing the effects of that, right? So when I can make, let's say a single ad and select the markets that I'm running in. And then having that translate my headline for, let's say, Texas versus New York, I think that will be huge. But also when AI has the capability to kind of tap into more of the data and insights. So if I wanted to reference things like a different competitor or a different product that's similar, once I can start automatically putting that stuff with my prompt. I definitely think that is going to change the future.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:12)From creative production to campaign management to personalization—AI is not just a trend. It’s a transformation.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:22)So, what should marketers take away from all this? First, AI tools are already saving time in creative and campaign workflows. Second, the best tools are becoming invisible—they’re showing up inside the platforms we already use. And finally, what’s coming next is even more powerful: tools that understand your goals, personalize at scale, and make decisions based on real-time insights.To learn more about using AI tools like Ivy in your advertising campaigns, head to stackadapt.com and book a demo. The marketers who lean into AI now won’t just work faster—they’ll think bigger.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro  (00:15:03)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-personalization-privacy#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-personalization-privacy"},"author":[],"headline":"AI, Personalization, and Privacy: Striking the Right Balance","datePublished":"2025-06-18T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:12:24+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-personalization-privacy"},"wordCount":1669,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-personalization-privacy#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205135816/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-8_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","page context ai","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nConsumers expect personalized ad experiences, but they also demand stronger privacy protections. So how can advertisers deliver relevant ads while staying compliant with evolving privacy laws?\n\n\n\nNed Dimitrov | VP of Data Science, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nYang Han | CTO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nCarole Lawson | Chief Data Officer, MarketStorm\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Consumers want relevant ads, but they also want their privacy protected. Can AI-powered personalization find the right balance?Personalization is a cornerstone of modern advertising. AI has made it easier than ever to deliver hyper-relevant ads based on behaviour, context, and predictive insights. But with privacy regulations tightening worldwide, advertisers face a challenge: How do you personalize without overstepping boundaries? In this episode, we dive into: how AI is enhancing personalization in a cookieless world, the privacy risks and ethical concerns in data-driven advertising, and practical strategies for balancing personalization with compliance.Joining us today are three industry leaders:Ned Dimitrov, VP of Data Science at StackAdapt, on AI-powered contextual personalization.Yang Han, CTO at StackAdapt, on privacy regulations and AI-driven targeting.And Carole Lawson, Chief Data Officer at MarketStorm, on ethical data use and privacy-friendly personalization.AI is rewriting the rules of advertising, but where should we draw the line? Let’s find out.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:15)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:30)Personalization has always been a key advertising goal, but the way we achieve it is changing. With the decline of third-party cookies, brands are rethinking how they deliver relevant ads without tracking users across the web. Ned Dimitrov explains how AI-powered personalization is evolving.\n\n\n\nNed Dimitrov (00:01:48)When you think about today's people's interactions with technology, it often happens on multiple browsers and multiple devices. Like you might see an ad in an app on your phone or while you're browsing a website on your phone, and that ad might stick with you in your mind. And then later you might go to your laptop or your desktop and go and do the purchase.And so cookies are fundamentally not useful in a situation like this because they can't track the user across devices and across browsers. And the industry has had a long time shift towards these multi-device tracking capabilities that allow it to be more holistic in its approach to advertising performance and attribution. So one of the innovative products that StackAdapt has created is a tool that we call PageContext AI. So that tool allows an advertiser to specify an arbitrary niche context that they want their ads to appear in. So for example, let's say that I'm Nike, and I want my shoe ads to appear on running shoe websites. So with our tool, you can specify running shoe context and the tool will look for all of the websites online that talk about running shoes and display the display the Nike ad at the running shoe website.So this is a very contextual way of going about delivering ads because the ad is showing up on the website, not because of information that you have about the user, but because of the website's content. That is there because the website talks about running shoes and not because of some interest that you've recorded about the user in running shoes. Now, this turns out, based on our data science studies, to be highly effective in getting the brand message into the user's mind. Because they're reading a content about running shoes, that Nike ad really sticks with them when they see it on the website. And so PageContext AI has had a really fantastic performance when it comes to conversions because it gets the brand message into the user's mind, and then the user goes and converts later to purchase the product.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:55)Instead of tracking individual users, AI now analyzes page content, browsing context, and behavioural trends to match ads with the right audience, without relying on personal identifiers. This approach respects privacy while still delivering relevant ads based on context. But is AI-powered personalization enough? What happens when brands need more granular insights?\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:25)While AI-driven personalization improves relevance, it also raises ethical concerns. Consumers are becoming more aware of how their data is used, and regulators are responding with strict privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:04:43)Privacy regulations do vary depending on vertical or certain verticals like healthcare that are a lot more strict. And so brands have to navigate that a lot more carefully. It also depends on the geo and the jurisdiction in which these brands are advertising as well. um As a company at StackAdapt, we try to make this as easy as possible, so advertisers have to worry about it less because at the end of the day, our platform is responsible for doing the targeting in different jurisdictions. And so, for example, we try to understand when a brand runs a campaign, you know, what vertical are they running in? And then we see what geo they're running in and we may provide different guidance essentially, or we may automatically do different things internally to make sure that we're following all the guidelines when it comes to their verticals. So it's very important for the brand to also understand what they can and can't do and various limitations when it comes to their strategies. Ultimately, it's also up to us to try to guide and educate our brands as much as possible as well.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:42)StackAdapt and other adtech platforms are implementing built-in privacy protections, such as: Geo-based compliance settings that adjust targeting based on jurisdiction; first-party data strategies that prioritize user consent; and automated safeguards that prevent data misuse. But privacy challenges don’t stop at regulation. Ethical concerns also come into play. Here’s Carole Lawson.\n\n\n\nCarole Lawson (00:06:07)As a matter of fact, we don't use Google Analytics for that reason. So we use a platform called Netrix. It's based in Matomo. And so people you know who are familiar with the different analytics platforms will understand that. But it's total data ownership. We can do things with data. We can see data with more granularity because the data is owned. When you're thinking about privacy, you have to think about, what is going to happen to the data when this privacy plugin, for example, is implemented? And then are you going to say, well, why can't I see people? Why can't I see the cities people are from? That's because the tool you're using has blocked that. And so if that's something that you need, you either need to find another tool within the law that still gives consumer choice, or you need to find a platform that can collect that information within the law. And so it's a constant dance and it makes the data that we work with very difficult because you can't report on what you can't collect.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:01)This is a critical decision for brands. Some tools prioritize ease of use but come with privacy trade-offs. Others require more work but provide greater control over data. This raises an important question: Are there limits to how much personalization should be allowed?\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:22)So where does AI-powered personalization go from here? Advertisers need new ways to tailor ads while staying compliant.\n\n\n\nNed Dimitrov (00:07:30)So we've seen advertisers really care about the privacy concerns. There's multiple ways to address this. So one way is through the contextual advertising that we talked about before, which basically doesn't use any user data in the targeting. It just uses the website content. But the second way to do it is to make sure that the clients that you're personalizing and collecting information for have opted into that information collection. So for example, laws like GDPR in Europe have various consent mechanisms where the user can say, yeah, it's OK to personalize my ads. I prefer to get a personalized experience. And it's important for advertisers and advertising companies like StackAdapt to follow those rules and those opt-in criteria to personalize the ads for the users that want that personalization.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:22)Opt-in strategies ensure consumers actively agree to personalized ads, creating a win-win for both brands and users.\n\n\n\nNed Dimitrov (00:08:29)I think it's very important to be compliant. Customers really care about their privacy, and that's why we have these various privacy laws coming up in various geographic regions. But in addition, it's just general bad business to invade the privacy of your future clients. It can make them unhappy and view your business in a negative way as opposed to a positive way.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:54)In the coming years, AI-driven personalization will focus on three key areas:AI-powered contextual ads, targeting based on content, not personal data. Predictive modeling; forecasting behaviour without tracking individuals. And transparent opt-in personalization, giving users control over their ad experience.Personalization and privacy don’t have to be in conflict. With AI, advertisers can deliver relevant ads while ensuring consumer trust and regulatory compliance.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:27)Three key takeaways from today’s episode:One, AI-driven contextual targeting is a privacy-friendly alternative to third-party cookies.Two, advertisers must balance personalization with ethical data use.And three, transparency and consent are key to building consumer trust.AI is redefining personalization, but it’s up to advertisers to use it responsibly.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:09:52)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/martech-adtech-convergence#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/martech-adtech-convergence"},"author":[],"headline":"Martech Convergence: The Future of Full-Funnel Marketing","datePublished":"2025-05-21T09:05:04+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:13:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/martech-adtech-convergence"},"wordCount":2727,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/martech-adtech-convergence#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205140157/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-6_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail-1.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["adtech","AI","martech","podcast"],"articleSection":["Martech"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"The marketing tech stack is undergoing a major shift—from fragmented tools and isolated data to unified platforms that support a full-funnel view of the customer journey. AI is the catalyst, but convergence is the destination."}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketers-use-martech-adtech-ai#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketers-use-martech-adtech-ai"},"author":[],"headline":"How AI Is Changing the Way Marketers Use Martech and Adtech","datePublished":"2025-06-04T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:12:32+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketers-use-martech-adtech-ai"},"wordCount":2640,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/marketers-use-martech-adtech-ai#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205135859/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-7_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["adtech","artificial intelligence","martech"],"articleSection":["Martech"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAI is no longer just a new tool in the marketer’s tech stack—it’s transforming the way we use the stack itself. From campaign planning to performance insights to creative production, generative AI is changing how marketers interact with martech and adtech platforms every day.\n\n\n\nScott Brinker | VP Platform Ecosystem, HubSpot\n\n\n\nWinston Zhu | Director of Platform Engineering, StackAdapt)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)AI isn’t just transforming what marketers can do. It’s changing how they think, how they work, and how they use the tools they rely on every day. Whether it’s launching a campaign, writing a headline, pulling performance data, or planning a multi-channel strategy, AI is reshaping the marketer’s relationship with martech and adtech. In this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast, we explore how AI is changing the way marketers interact with platforms, collaborate with teams, and build strategy. We’re joined by Scott Brinker, VP of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot and editor of ChiefMartec, and Winston Zhu, Director of Platform Engineering at StackAdapt. Today, we’ll explore what the next generation of marketing tools looks like, and how smart teams are using AI to do more with less friction.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:00:51)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:05)Let’s kick things off with a closer look at how AI is reshaping the martech landscape, not by adding features, but by introducing a new kind of intelligence that behaves differently than anything marketers have worked with before. Let’s hear from Scott Brinker, who has spent years mapping how marketing technology evolves. He shares a powerful perspective on why generative AI requires a fundamentally different mindset.\n\n\n\nScott Brinker (00:01:31)Here's the thing. This technology introduces some very different dynamics into martech. I mean, one of the things about these LLMs and the generative AI engines is they're not perfectly deterministic. You can ask the same question of the same generative AI engine 10 times and get 10 slightly different answers. Even if all of them are correct to some degree, they're different—and they differ in subtle ways.I think also this idea of having more and more of these agents that operate with a certain amount of autonomy and interact with each other… between those two things, you're talking about introducing almost a new kind of complexity to the martech environment. And I mean complexity in a very scientific term. It’s these multiple independent parts that have interaction effects with each other. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if we actually harness it properly, it can be a really powerful thing.But it is a very different way of having systems operate than what we’re used to. Everything used to be rule-based, very deterministic—if you put X in, you got Y out. Now, you put X in, and you might get Y, or Y-prime, or Y double-prime. And I think that’s going to require us to rethink not just the architecture of martech stacks, but even more importantly, it requires us to think how we manage these martech stacks, and how we adapt our digital operations and customer engagement strategies given these new capabilities. So there’s a lot to learn.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:09)This shift challenges some of our long-held assumptions. Instead of building systems that respond the same way every time, marketers are now working with platforms that learn, evolve, and sometimes surprise us. That creates more complexity, but also more potential. It’s a new kind of martech stack—one that’s adaptive, flexible, and built to operate in environments that don’t always follow predictable patterns.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:40)At StackAdapt, Winston Zhu is leading the engineering teams building Gen AI directly into the platform, from campaign setup to creative execution.\n\n\n\nWinston Zhu (00:03:49)The most direct impact is really the assets because GenAI people use it to generate assets. Assets means videos, audios, images, text, all of these are assets. So if we can use this to generate assets personally, then StackAdap can also empower GenAI to have advertisers to generate their assets and be used directly. So now we empower users to generate their videos, do background replacement, do image croppings, like offcropping and also multi-sizing as well. So basically, users can upload any type of images to StackAdapt and then StackAdapt will customize their images and all type of assets based on their brand profile, based on the prompt they enter. So like we'll give them a more modernized, you know, creative for their product or for their brands.Second one, which is more like behind the scene, is really to use our generative AI to improve their performance of their advertisement campaign. So a campaign can have many, many dimensions that control the campaign. It can have a goal, it can have, you know, how to spend their budget, it can have a timeline. It can have like specific bidding prices and targeted bidding range as well. So all these are configurable. So if you have generative AI that consistently looking at their campaign performance for the last, let's say, like two or three years, then they can start to use this to change the campaign that's currently on the flight, which means currently running and to see how we can give the user suggestions to fine tune their campaign so that their campaign can gain a lot of performance.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:29)This evolution isn’t just about features, it’s about changing the role of the user. AI is taking care of the repetitive tasks and giving marketers more space to focus on strategy.\n\n\n\nWinston Zhu (00:05:40)Overall, there are kind of two extremes. So one side of the clients, they really want a fully automated campaign. They are usually like large brands or enterprise customers. They want to say, okay, I want to... run a campaign on a specific product, I define my goal, I define my about budget, then you know I don't want to care about I run it between 7 to 9 a.m. or i just run it full day. They say, okay, the algorithm can take me there and they optimize on this and I truly trust the algorithm.However, there's another extreme of clients, usually are like the agencies dealing with very complex combination of their customers or you know small business clients. So what they want is they want very granular control of their campaign. They want campaign to break down as much as possible. They want to control their campaign to a very specific dimension.We want to serve both so both clients. So what we're going to do is we're going to have our campaign editor at the other side of the platform, be enterprise-driven but also self-serve. We’re going to strike a balance in all of our future products, and make our platform AI-driven behind the scenes. But how we serve to the clients, we might give users different levels of control or interactions to work together with the AI models that we have for the clients.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:09)Winston’s team has also focused on speed and scale: marketers expect results in seconds, not minutes—and across hundreds of variations.\n\n\n\nWinston Zhu (00:07:18)We don't want users to wait for 30 minutes to generate the image. We don't want the user to wait for like two minutes to generate a new AI-generated video for their product, which was actually where we were when we first built the model. It was like two minutes that we did the demo. The video was perfect, but the latency or the throughput is something we keep working on. Now it's like within 20 or 30 seconds for like a full 50-second video.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:49)As AI becomes more deeply embedded into marketing platforms, it’s changing the way work gets done, but not always in the ways you might expect. To understand where AI is driving the most value—and where human marketers are still irreplaceable—I asked Scott Brinker to share his perspective on how the division of labour in martech is evolving.\n\n\n\nScott Brinker (00:08:10)I think we are looking at greater and greater automation, particularly when it comes to tasks that have a certain, have an algorithm you know, to how they work. I think where we don't see taking over is sort of on two ends of the spectrum. One end of the spectrum is the actual creative and strategy. I mean, you can leverage AI in helping develop that strategy and creative, but I still think the actual strategy and creative, there's a lot of subtlety and complexity into that, that, you know, human marketers with deep experience really are the best poised to, you know, be the ones leading.I mean, as a company, you want that sort of governance and ownership and leadership, you know, from a human marketer. The other place I actually think you also see you know tremendous human-led marketing capabilities, is actually on managing the martech- adtech stack itself. You know like, again, it's great to have all this technology that can do all this wonderful production work for us, you know but somebody needs to make sure that the actual architecture of how these pieces fit together and how the data is being managed throughout them, you know that that is properly architected and operated. But in between those two poles, when you talk about things that are largely more, again, sort of machine-like, you know, in how they operate. Not saying they don't need any human supervision, but a lot of the work is something that could get, you know, boiled down into playbooks or more mechanical steps. I think that's the place where you're like, wow, okay, AI seems very likely to be able take large portions of that part of the process and just be able to automate it for us.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:55)So while AI is automating more mid-level tasks, like campaign optimization or asset generation, it’s human decision-making that still shapes the stack and defines what success looks like.That’s something Winston Zhu thinks about every day. He shared how StackAdapt is embedding AI into the platform as a smart layer that drives results behind the scenes.\n\n\n\nWinston Zhu (00:10:20)For our kind of model, so we don't serve it directly to the clients, meaning we let them to do on the application level, you know, for example, we optimize their campaigns, we generate their creatives. So it's different from like how users usually think from a ChatGPT perspective, where I need to see and need to give an answer and I need to know how the answer is generated. But here, the user less care about the answer, the user cares about the actual results of their campaign. So what we do is actually we want to find a balance of letting the user give feedback and also let the user see how their campaigns are being optimized based on what reason. I'll give you an example. For example, if I'm running a CTV ad, but I want this ad to be run so fast, I want to spend my budget immediately. I just put $100 CPM for all my CPS, which, you know of course, will spend your money correctly. But is that the right thing? It's probably not. It's not achieving your goal that you really want to solve. So our GenAI model will say, okay, based on the bidding data that we run this campaign for one day, okay, your bid price or your bid price guidance is a little bit too high. So we suggest you put, you know, $25. We won't make the decision for users. We're least worried about how this $25 was generated, you know, we'll use historical data, but the thing we care about is how the user leveraged the results. Because we're not talking about a chatGPT level of conversation where even if you gave you a wrong answer, no consequences. We're talking about users spending $100,000 in a campaign that we need the user to have awareness of the results, not to bombard them with, okay, how we calculate this $25. Probably the user doesn't care. What the user cares about is what is the result. Where is the result generated from? And I'll make the decision based on my name. I might still want the $100 CPM just because I'm running a prime day or I'm running a rush sales. But it's all and to end up to the user and we want to respect our user's decision as well.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:34)And that’s the shift: as more of the execution gets automated, the role of the marketer becomes even more strategic. Choosing when to trust AI—and when to override it—might just be the new competitive advantage.\n\n\n\nScott Brinker  (00:12:52)Well, we're in an environment where things are changing very rapidly. So if I were going to future-proof anything, in almost a somewhat abstract way, I'd say you want to focus on your ability to change. There are actually things you can do. Like when you think about how you're designing your martech stack and which products you're adopting, are they open? Do they have open APIs? Do they allow it to fit into an ecosystem where you can add new things or remove new things relatively easily? Because even if you don't necessarily know today what you're going to want to add and remove a year from now, you can be pretty sure there are going to be things you're going to want to add or remove a year from now. And so if you've designed your stack in a way that makes that easier, I think that is a true competitive advantage.You know, so, I mean, there's also the way we think about, you know, from a management perspective, you know, we don't talk a lot about agile marketing or agile management anymore, but really a lot of those principles, you know, are as applicable now as they ever were, which is how do we run our teams in a way where they can possibly learn and adapt much more quickly in this AI environment than they ever could have before? so and don't know, sort of leaning into the ability to change and react to change quickly. think one of the best ways to future-proof your business.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:12)The future stack is leaner, smarter, and more intuitive. But it still needs humans in the loop to guide the vision, ask better questions, and course-correct when needed.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:25)So here’s where we land: AI is changing the way marketers use technology. It’s breaking down complexity. It’s speeding up decision-making. And it’s creating new expectations for how tools should work.Don’t wait for a new platform, look at the AI already inside the tools you use. Shift from task-based workflows to outcome-based thinking. Let AI handle the friction, so you can focus on the strategy.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:14:51)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-workflows-marketing#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-workflows-marketing"},"author":[],"headline":"Building AI Workflows That Actually Work","datePublished":"2025-07-16T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:12:09+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-workflows-marketing"},"wordCount":2638,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-workflows-marketing#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205135657/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-10_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","artificial intelligence","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMore than 80% of marketers and creatives are using generative AI in advertising today—and 40% rely on it from start to finish. But for many teams, AI still feels like a gimmick, or worse, a source of friction. Why?\n\n\n\nIn this episode, we unpack the real reasons AI workflows fail—and what it takes to build ones that actually save time, improve quality, and scale with your business. \n\n\n\nMatt Travers | Managing Director, BRAIVE\n\n\n\nDan Sanchez | Senior AI Marketing Strategist, Social Media Examiner\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)If you’ve ever tried to “add AI” to your marketing workflows, you’ve probably run into one of two problems. Either it felt like a novelty with no real business impact, or it worked for a while, then broke when the process changed.Why? Because we’ve been treating AI as a bolt-on tool rather than a system-wide design question. 80% of marketers and creatives across industries like advertising, education, and HR are already using generative AI in some part of their workflow, and 40% are now relying on it from start to finish, according to Wondercraft’s AI in Content Creation 2025 report. These aren’t just one-off tools either. Most creators use at least three genAI tools to move from script to final video, tapping platforms like ChatGPT, Canva, ElevenLabs, and VEED.Today, we’re diving into how marketing teams are using AI workflows to streamline operations, boost creativity, and make smarter decisions. Our guests are two leaders who are building these systems in real-time. Matt Travers, Managing Director at  BRAIVE, an AI advisory and implementation firm based in Australia. And Dan Sanchez, Senior AI Marketing Strategist at Social Media Examiner and host of the AI-Driven Marketer podcast. So let’s get started.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:26)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:40)Before we dive into workflows and automation, we need to address something that’s confusing a lot of marketing teams right now: the AI landscape is noisy. There are shiny tools everywhere—each promising to revolutionize your marketing. But behind the glossy landing pages, many are half-baked or too narrow to deliver real value.Matt Travers has seen this up close while advising brands on implementation. He says the AI industry has done a great job selling the dream, but not always delivering the reality.\n\n\n\nMatt Travers (00:02:13)The AOI industry, if you will, has done an incredible job at marketing itself. But to a fault. So all these flashy tools and shiny products are coming out left, right and center, but a lot of them are undercooked. So all of these marketers and advertisers and media professionals, you know, often will sign up to them being sold the dream, integrate them with their tech stack… but then once they get under the hood, the tool isn't really fit for purpose, or it only kind of does 10% of what they got sold that it does.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:46)That’s why it helps to zoom out and get clear on what AI is actually good at today—and how to think about its role inside your team. Dan Sanchez breaks this down with a simple but powerful framework: five types of AI for marketing. At the centre is your “co-pilot”—a tool that helps you think, ideate, and get unstuck. Everything else builds from that core.\n\n\n\nDan Sanchez (00:03:11)I find that there are five different types of AI marketing. There's co-pilot. There's for content creation. There's hyper-personalization, conversational marketing, and analysis and forecasting. Those are the five types. The most important one is your co-pilot. Everything else is really an extension of that one in the center. If you were to make a diagram of it, the one is surrounded by the four. But having that co-pilot to get you unstuck, because obviously you can use a co-pilot for all kinds of things, and you can use it to create all kinds of content too.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:43)So before chasing new tools, ask yourself: Do I have a co-pilot in place? A thinking partner that helps your team move faster, make better decisions, and stay strategic? Because in this AI moment, clarity beats novelty every time.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:01)AI is a powerful tool for reclaiming time. But knowing where to start is key. What do you automate first? I asked both Matt and Dan to break it down.\n\n\n\nMatt Travers (00:04:12)A really good question is, what's really painful for you? That's typically where there's smoke, there's fire kind of vibes. And you can go down the path of unlocking that and figuring out why is it painful, where it hurts, kind of pressing it, seeing where it breaks, where it doesn't break, and then going down that path of helping them automate that. They typically are very narrow use cases depending on the business, which is not a bad thing by any measure, but there's equally a lot of things that can apply to any business or a majority of businesses that people are still kind of doing the stone age version of. So I think contracts, think invoicing, think, you know, even elements of marketing. So that's kind of the area of AI hygiene, helping brands get up to, but then looking at various narrow use cases of this business has process X, Y, Z, which takes them currently, you know, four hours a day, maybe. How do we get that four hours down to four minutes for them?A recent client that I worked with surveyed their entire organization. And it is interesting because people on the front lines delivering and doing the actual work have very different conceptions around where AI should be integrated than the C-suite. But an example would be there was a process that about 10 of their staff had to do each week, which took them... 10 minutes per time they did it, but they did it 75 times in a week. So you do the math on that, it's roughly about 11 hours in a week or somewhere around there. We implemented some automation, a combination of off-the-shelf and some custom-built solutions, which took that 10 minutes per process down to one minute. So, then over the course of a year, that unlocks roughly about three months of time for them.\n\n\n\nDan Sanchez (00:06:06)There's two things that come to mind. One is what's the biggest bottleneck for you personally, or if you're working in a team, what's the biggest bottleneck for your team? Cause that's where the highest ROI is going to be. Cause if you can figure that out and have AI solve even a piece of it, man, that's to be good. I mean, but that was true of automation in general, right? So like, that's not even unique to AI, but AI… Like there's only so many things automation can do. AI has opened up automation, do all kinds of new things. Like I was a huge Infusionsoft guy. Like I freaking automated a whole college admission systems with that app. It was nuts.But there's a point to where you can only like use variables so much in the automation. You can only Madlib your email so much to be personalized. With ChatGPTs stuck into your CRM, all of a sudden, there are whole new possibilities of automatic analysis, of customization, of new workflows that are possible for you.So start with the biggest bottleneck. Or just start with the thing that it's, maybe it's not a bottleneck, but it just takes a lot of time. Like how much time can you get back if you're not having to do that one thing every day or every week, if you automate that, it frees you up to work on some crazy stuff.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:11)Dan points out something we can all relate to: much of marketing is repetitive, mechanical, and ripe for automation. And with the right AI setup, even high-value workflows like podcast content creation can be streamlined.\n\n\n\nDan Sanchez (00:07:25)Like one thing that I hated… because podcasting is kind of a, there's a lot of steps to podcast and you got to go recruit the person. Sometimes you do a pre-interview, sometimes not, sometimes you just jump on. You've got to record, you've got to edit, you've got to publish. But after that, after you record it and schedule it, maybe you spend some time on the thumbnail. You're like, okay, well, it published. Now I got to upload it to YouTube. Now I got to slice it into clips. Now I got to, you know, turn it into a blog post because the transcripts is so powerful. If I plug it into even just some custom GPTs, but then even if you can build a custom GPT that takes your transcripts and turns it into blog posts, it's so much copy-paste work. And I feel like in ah marketing, so much of our time is like data entry. Have you noticed that as a marketer? Like we're all data entries. Like we have a little bit of strategy and then it's a lot of data entry, especially with AI. We're like copying and pasting everywhere. But I made an automation to like take my podcast. And as soon as it hits the RSS feed, uploads it to YouTube, sets the YouTube thumbnail graphic, adds it to the playlist, takes the transcript out Zencaster, writes a blog post, uploads it to WordPress with the YouTube video on top. And then the blog post underneath actually sets the right category there. Actually takes the transcript and then turns it into multiple social show posts that get loaded into a database for me to come grab later. I'd like it if it posted automatically too, but I find that those need more checking. The blog post does. But I love that that automation happens for my podcast. I don't even have to think about it. I wake up in the morning, the podcast is out, blog post is done, everything's published, everything's looking good. Now I don't have to think about that process anymore. It's been automated. Distribution is done.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:00)In summary, effective AI automation is about identifying the biggest drags on your time and energy. And ironically, that still requires some human strategic thinking.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:13)Once marketers understand what they want to automate or accelerate, the next big question is: what tools should we use? Should we buy something off the shelf? Build something custom? Or are we missing capabilities in the tools we already use?It’s a bigger decision than it looks. Matt says that while off-the-shelf tools can be fast and easy, they’re often too generic. If you’re solving a narrow, high-value problem, custom might actually be quicker and more effective.\n\n\n\nMatt Travers (00:09:43)There's no one size fits all. In terms of tools in the language model space, there's a bunch of categories that all the language models are scored on. So depending on what your role is, creative writing compared to coding, for example, would be a very different answer in terms of which LLM you use, but then you need to sift through the the noise of the industry because every day, there's hundreds of headlines about which LLM is better in which category often at times published by themselves. So you need to really dig through and sift through the noise about that. I would buy in regards to, depending on what your resource is and budget, because a lot of people have a misconception that AI is free and AI is very quick to implement. If you buy off the shelf, that seems somewhat more true, not so much the free part. But the buying off the shelf a SaaS based product or something typically is one of those problems that applies to a lot of different businesses, whether it's, you know, automatic contracts or invoicing, whatever it could be. Very rarely have I found an off-the-shelf product that is going to solve a very narrow business problem. So that's when I would consider building because by the time it takes you to build it, test it, iterate and launch is almost always going to be quicker than, emailing for the 29th time your account rep, when is this on the roadmap? When is it going to get released?\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:07)That’s a common trap: defaulting to off-the-shelf because it feels faster. But Matt’s point is worth pausing on—if a tool doesn’t fit your workflow, the cost isn’t just money. It’s weeks—or even months—of misalignment, workarounds, and endless emails to product support.Dan offers another take. He says many marketers are chasing shiny tools, when the most powerful AI feature might already be in the tools they’re using every day.\n\n\n\nDan Sanchez (00:11:35)People aren't looking in the right places. They're chasing fancy. Fancy will just get you lost. That's a never-ending chase. Fancy is where people burn out because fancy is usually not incredibly useful. Sometimes it is, but usually not. I think what's most underrated right now is an AI tool, whatever marketing and CRM you use. If there's an AI tool built into their journey builder, or their workflow, whatever their automation tool is called in that CRM, that's probably the most underrated place for AI right now. Personally, I use HighLevel. They're really pushing hard into this AI thing. But like HubSpot like can do this stuff too. If you can inject AI into marketing automation tools like that, then you could be doing a lot more there, with your contacts for your contacts.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:19)In other words, don’t overlook the obvious. Your CRM or automation platform may already have AI baked into its journey builder or email workflows. And if you’re not tapping into that, it doesn’t matter how advanced your stack gets.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:36)Before you add another AI tool to your tech stack, pause and ask: What’s the real problem we’re solving? The most effective AI implementations start with friction—those tasks that are time-consuming, repetitive, or inconsistent. That’s where automation delivers the highest ROI.Second, think systems, not shortcuts. A co-pilot mindset—using AI as a thought partner, not just a task-doer—can help your team move faster and stay strategic. It’s not about replacing your team’s creativity, but amplifying it across workflows.Third, don’t overlook what you already have. Whether it’s your CRM, email platform, or automation suite, chances are there are underused AI capabilities already sitting in your stack. Start there before shopping for the next shiny tool.And finally, remember that AI workflows aren’t one-size-fits-all. Some solutions require off-the-shelf simplicity. Others demand custom builds. The key is alignment between the problem, the process, and the people using it.Building effective AI workflows isn’t about doing everything with AI. It’s about using AI to free up your team to do the things only they can.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:13:54)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-workflows-marketing","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-workflows-marketing","name":"AI Workflows for Marketers | StackAdapt","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#website"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-workflows-marketing#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205135657/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-10_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","datePublished":"2025-07-16T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:12:09+00:00","description":"Learn why AI workflows fail and what it takes to build ones that actually save time, improve quality, and scale with your marketing.","inLanguage":"en-US"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-brand-safety#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-brand-safety"},"author":[],"headline":"AI and Brand Safety: What Marketers Need to Know Now","datePublished":"2025-07-30T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:13:52+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-brand-safety"},"wordCount":2651,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-brand-safety#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205135556/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-11_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","artificial intelligence","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs generative AI transforms the way we create and distribute content, it’s also reshaping the brand safety conversation. If you’re a marketer, media buyer, or brand leader trying to balance innovation with integrity, this episode is packed with insights you can use today.\n\n\n\nMatt Shapo | Director of Digital Audio and Video, IAB\n\n\n\nConnie Yan | Director of Platform Quality, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Today, brands are expected to show up everywhere their audience is, but the risk of showing up in the wrong place is higher than ever. From misinformation and synthetic content to cultural misalignment and inappropriate placements, brand safety has never been more complex. At the same time, generative AI and machine learning tools are helping us make sense of content at scale and build smarter filters. But how do we strike the right balance between protection and performance?Today, we’re diving deep into brand safety in the era of AI with Matt Shapo, Director of Digital Audio and Video at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), who’s at the forefront of educating and mobilizing the industry around standards and innovation in ad-supported media. And Connie Yan, Director of Platform Quality at StackAdapt, where she leads a global team of brand safety analysts.Let’s get started.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:00:58)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:14)To start, I asked Connie how she defines brand safety in today's landscape and how it has evolved in recent years.\n\n\n\nConnie Yan (00:01:22)In today's ecosystem, brand safety is really about just making sure your ads don't show up next to content that could harm your reputation. So, whether that's hate speech, misinformation, violent content, or maybe just stuff that's off-brand. But brand safety is also becoming more nuanced. So it's not just about avoiding content. It's about aligning with the right kind of content and finding that positive alignment for your brand values.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:47)When we talk about brand safety, what we’re seeing is a shift from simple binary decisions to brand suitability, which is a more customized, strategic approach to risk. Suitability acknowledges that not all brands have the same tolerance for risk or the same cultural touchpoints. What might be edgy for one brand might be the perfect environment for another. That means tools and processes need to be flexible.\n\n\n\nConnie Yan (00:02:14)Advertisers can kind of customize these brand safety tools to reflect their brand values and maybe even adjust them for different campaigns. So, for example, like a sports brand is probably okay with more edgy content and then a healthcare brand, prefers not to touch anything controversial. But I think what's important is that tolerance levels shouldn't be assumed. You know, once again, they're like common sense things that brands want to stay away from, but as you know, risk tolerance can vary. So testing is key. And then I think, of course, like brand suitability isn't always about like what you want to avoid. It's about identifying positive alignment to the content. So that could be the tone, audience dynamics that really reinforce the brand's values.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:00)From IAB’s perspective, brand safety is changing in today’s advertising environment. Here’s Matt Shapo.\n\n\n\nMatt Shapo (00:03:07)Like so many things in digital advertising right now, I would describe what has historically been referred to as brand safety and suitability as being in a period of really tremendous flux and transformation, right? I think a lot of what I'm seeing personally and what I think we're seeing across the organization generally at IAB is that there is a very welcome focus on sort of greater transparency across all forms of media And most importantly, I think what we're seeing both internally and within our membership and even outside of our membership is a general desire to take more of what you would describe as an inclusion-based rather than exclusion-based approach to analyzing media environments on the part of advertisers right? That I would say that is probably the biggest single trend or or shift that I'm seeing at IAB for a long time now and certainly other industry organizations and then you just many stakeholders across the industry the big conversation has been really for years now, how do we stop you know, walling off gigantic pools of potential advertiser inventory, you know, with sort of outdated blunt instrument keyword block lists that, you know, sort of over, overblock, you know, inventory that advertisers would actually really like to be a part of? And how do we get to more of a strategic surgical scalpel-like approach to making sure that sure, brands are still able to protect themselves from that extremely tiny percent of media environments where there really might be some risk to their brand reputation. But you know acknowledging that that tiny, tiny percentage exists, start to do a much better job of embracing the large percentages of inventory that are currently avoided because of these overly broad keyword blocking schemes that have really dominated the implementation and the practice of brand safety and suitability for so long.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:12)One of the most promising areas of innovation for brand safety is in AI. But how exactly are these tools being used to detect risky content and align ads with brand values?\n\n\n\nConnie Yan (00:05:23)We can first start with natural language processing. It's really great for understanding text-based content. And within natural language processing, large language models are proving to kind of particularly be powerful. So really their ability to understand context, nuance, and even sentiment in text, they can kind of do this at a much deeper level. And this allows for more accurate identification of potentially brand-damaging content.So this goes beyond simple just keyword matching. And then other technologies emerging like computer vision, that those help with detection of images and videos. And then machine learning kind of ties it all together. So, you know, learning learning these patterns and then getting better over time at spotting risky content for us.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:13)That kind of semantic depth is essential when you’re trying to differentiate between satire and hate speech, or spot emerging misinformation trends. And now with AI, we can spot that type of content faster and at scale. As director of digital audio and video at IAB, Matt Shapo has seen first hand the impact of AI on brand safety.\n\n\n\nMatt Shapo (00:06:35)One of the things that I'm very excited about when it comes to AI and brand safety is that in the area of podcasting, for instance, we're starting to see an incredible amount of deep dive, granular analysis of podcast conversations because we have these transcripts that we can analyze. So AI is being deployed across the board in podcasting right now and increasingly embraced by buyers to really parse podcast transcripts and understand content at a level that allows much greater opening up of advertiser investment than had previously been considered. Because if you can actually use AI to sort of go through hundreds or thousands of shows and tens to hundreds of thousands of individual podcast episodes, then you suddenly have a brand new ballgame, because you're no longer asking an intern to sit down and listen to every single podcast episode to make sure that it is safe or to make sure that it’s aligned with your particular brand. That's not possible to do at scale when you're talking about individual human beings. But when you can bring AI to bear and allow it to do all of the transcription analysis that a person can never do across hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of shows, it makes it a lot easier to really understand where the opportunities are. And we're seeing the results.The returns are tremendous. Again, in the media center where I work at IAB, I'm watching a lot of brand advertisers go from a state of investing in let's say two hundred, three hundred, four hundred podcast shows, now they're investing in thousands of shows and it's all brand new inventory that they would have originally thought was a little too risky for them but now they can actually verify that it's not too risky for them because they're using ai to go through these transcripts and understand what your content.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:21)Beyond this particular use case, AI is helping interpret meaning, tone, and visual cues, and then feeding that data into programmatic buying decisions in real time.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:34)That brings us to one of the core themes in both conversations: the importance of human review.\n\n\n\nConnie Yan (00:08:40)I think AI is definitely getting better, but it has caveats still. So, I mean, like things like satire are even misinterpreted by humans still, you know, cultural norms really can change quickly. And that happens, especially online. So AI still needs that level of human oversight and cultural input. And like the time relevance is really important for that too. You know, news changes quickly and what may have been called culturally relevant yesterday, could change the next day.So I think what's important to note is like we always go back to our roots here at StackAdapt, which is just human verification and, you know, eight years ago, we just started with a team here of essentially using humans to assess all content and determine what does look risky. So there are, of course, common sense things that every advertiser wants to block. And then over time, our team really has developed their expertise to kind of catch this. And that's something that we still hold true to today. We just use tools to make this process more effective, more efficient, but ultimately, we really kind of rely on humans to make that final decision.\n\n\n\nMatt Shapo (00:09:48)There absolutely is still a role for the human dimension. And so I shouldn't, I should be careful to add that even when advertisers use AI to help them do things like parse podcast transcripts for the purposes of finding suitable environments, they are nevertheless always keeping a human being. And so that validation that occurs is always sent back in a report to the advertisers. And they're really able to understand, oftentimes through trick pixel tracking, that their ads really did show up in the episodes that they thought were going to be most suitable for them. So there always is human review. It's just that by taking a human being and adding um you know the AI component, it makes them much more efficient much more productive and able to vet and analyze a much wider pool of content than they could have.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:37)Whether it’s through manual audits or collaborative work with DSPs and publishers, brands are recognizing that hybrid models offer the best of both worlds: speed from AI and judgment from humans. This is especially true for measuring effectiveness.\n\n\n\nConnie Yan (00:10:55)Effectiveness is mostly measured through accuracy metrics. Advertisers can run post-campaign audits, brand lift studies, and then they'll monitor false positives and negatives. So over time, success would look like fewer incidents, really consistent brand alignment, and like a minimal loss of reach. But advertisers can also design messaging that thrive in specific environments. That way ads aren't just protected, but they're also optimized for resonance and return.False positives mean you're blocking good talk content and losing reach. And then false negatives mean bad stuff is slipping through. So, you know, really what's the solution here is a really strong feedback loop. Advertisers need to audit, they need to flag errors, and then let AI learn from their mistakes. So, you know, a hybrid model is really best here. It's AI plus human review. That's really still the best setup.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:54)I asked Matt what the biggest knowledge gaps are regarding brand safety and what IAB is doing to educate the industry.\n\n\n\nMatt Shapo (00:12:01)One of the important conversations that we had there over the last several months of last year and in the first couple of months this year is what can we do as an advertising community, to allow advertisers to feel more comfortable investing in a genre, namely news, where we know there's incredibly engaged, highly attentive audiences, right?Many people in the advertising community are hesitant to invest in news because there's sometimes hard stories that are there. There's sometimes you know difficult topics. And there's this longstanding assumption that, oh, I don't want to be there because there might be a negative association if somebody's reading a controversial or a hard news story with my brand. And so one of the things we talked about with Pover Council is we all know that actually, many times, super consumers of news not only don't penalize brands in their minds for being a part of the news environments where they're consuming content, they sometimes actively support those advertisers because they appreciate their support of these environments and even if there're more of a neutral approach what often happens is that they're more engaged. You know, we had folks like Jack Marshall from Double Verify on talking about how internal Double Verify data indicates that when you do actually advertise in the news, they've noticed that there tends to be 10% higher engagements. When you advertise in the news they're seeing got anywhere from 8% to 9% better performance on KPIs across the board. This kind of education, you can never do enough of it.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:26)So, where do we go from here? What does the future of brand safety look like as AI continues to evolve?\n\n\n\nConnie Yan (00:13:32)AI is really bringing a whole new level of sophistication, I think. Looking ahead, I think we'll to start to see even more advanced AI tools that can actually start to understand deep cultural nuances and like even help brands define what brand safe really means to them. However, I don't sophistication is not the only goal. What really matters is how these capabilities get applied and whether it can be done transparently in places where media actually runs. So technology is here. So the next phase is really operationalizing it and translating that capability into like consistent and visible results for advertisers.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:20)Let’s wrap up with some key takeaways:First, brand safety is no longer binary. It’s about suitability, and that means tailoring controls to each brand’s values and tolerance for risk.Second, AI enables scalable detection. Tools like NLP, computer vision, and machine learning help flag risky content faster and more accurately than ever.Third, human oversight is essential. Cultural nuance, satire, and emerging social trends still require a human touch.And fourth, feedback loops improve effectiveness. Audits, measurement, and collaboration between brands, DSPs, and publishers help refine AI models and campaign strategies.Before we go, I invite you to check out StackAdapt’s Resource Hub for more content about brand safety and AI in advertising. You can find the link in the show notes.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:15:13)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/build-ai-first-company#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/build-ai-first-company"},"author":[],"headline":"AI and Culture: What It Really Takes to Build an AI-First Company","datePublished":"2025-08-13T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:11:52+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/build-ai-first-company"},"wordCount":2763,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/build-ai-first-company#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260205100705/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-12_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","podcast"],"articleSection":["Strategy and leadership"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat does it really mean to be an AI-first company? And how do you bring your team and your culture along for the ride?\n\n\n\nIn this episode, we have three industry leaders who are building AI adoption from the inside out:\n\n\n\nAshwin Navin | Co-founder & CEO, Samba TV\n\n\n\nVitaly Pecherskiy | CEO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nRyan Nelsen | CMO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)In a recent survey published by StackAdapt, 39% of advertising agencies said AI is now a core part of their workflow, and those with deeper integration report significantly higher satisfaction with their tech stacks and stronger campaign performance overall. The survey results show that AI transforms more than just workflows—it transforms the people who use it, the teams who adopt it, and the leaders who champion it. This episode unpacks how AI is reshaping company culture, from experimentation and leadership to hiring and performance. I sat down with Ashwin Navin, Co-founder and CEO of Samba TV; Vitaly Pecherskiy, StackAdapt’s Co-founder and CEO; and Ryan Nelsen, CMO of StackAdapt.Each of them brings a unique perspective on how AI adoption intersects with company values, strategy, and people. Let’s hear what they have to say.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:00:59)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:13)Creating a culture that embraces AI doesn't start with software. It starts with leadership. Here’s Ryan Nelsen on how he’s building a marketing team that embraces innovation through AI.\n\n\n\nRyan Nelsen (00:01:24)We try to create a culture of learning, a mindset of curiosity, and we hire for that as well. I want to make sure that we're bringing in individuals who are naturally curious, naturally great learners, fast learners, and have a curiosity to be better at what they do. I think it's fun. We're doing something on Fridays, called AI coach that we just kind of named it that. And we're bringing in external speakers, internal speakers. We're having the team members talk about what they learned over the last couple weeks that has made them better at their job, what's helped them make a bigger impact as a marketer. So, we're starting to crowdsource some of this learning. We're starting to bring in different sources and just trying to do our very best to take a little bit of time to pause and say, \"Okay, what is truly making the biggest impact?\" So, I'd encourage you all to do the same. Get with your teams. Talk about what you're learning on this podcast or other podcasts. Talk about what new tool or download that you gathered the last couple of weeks that really changed your perception or paradigm of how you work. And then share that knowledge. And those that are sharing knowledge are going to be the ones that hold a lot of the future in terms of where we're going.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:36)That openness to curiosity becomes even more critical when navigating uncharted territory. Ashwin Navin from Samba TV says embracing risk and experimentation is key.\n\n\n\nAshwin Navin (00:02:46)For our business, there's an intersection pretty much at every step of our product development process, in our go-to-market, in the way that our partners are interacting, engaging, integrating with us.So it's multifaceted for us. It's sort of impacting everything we do. Every individual at Samba is empowered with tools. Every product manager, every salesperson, every engineer, has sort of an opportunity to imagine, reimagine their day-to-day lives, the work that they're doing, and to be able to not only get support and assistance from the company, but also to be able to celebrate it and share it within the organization. So that's sort of the internal view. We noticed that the rate of evolution of tools and workflows was accelerating. And the only way that our people could keep pace, both managing and juggling their day-to-day, as well as being able to keep abreast of all the new tools was to actually have support.And so we treated it like another support organization,  just as we have IT and HR and a variety of tools available. We actually created an AI task force. We don't, overstate what AI does. I think that the industry his a fault and is prone to hyperbole. For us, it's just about like how can you do what you're doing better, faster, with more time to devote to the more strategic and creative aspects of our job.The tool proliferation is very, very significant, like rapid to the point where there's a new flavor of something every day. The rate of change is so dramatic. It's a tough call. We being AI optimists, erred on the side of adoption, proliferating new tools quickly to see what they could offer us. We did not jump on the brakes and say, okay, we gotta vet every single thing through some kind of process.I think we're now at a point now where there's there are so many tools in our company that we're in the process of um whittling down to the ones that we think have the most potential, the most resource behind them, the most IP protection, thinking about tools not from a pure consumer angle but also from an enterprise angle. Like that's happening right now. And we've always had a strong sort of posture towards data privacy, data protection. So we're vetting these tools to make sure they comply with our policies and procedures and making sure that they're aligned before we put any of our sensitive data, user data or partner data. We're not going to put any of that at risk.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:11)Culture can empower AI adoption, but systems make it operational. Leaders need to build workflows that support testing, learning, and improvement. Here’s Vitaly on how to approach implementation of AI inside your organization.\n\n\n\nVitaly Pecherskiy (00:05:26)The way I think about it is that, like you cannot just have a blanket approach to saying, you have to use AI, it's going to become part of, you know, your performance reviews and so forth. Because the truth is, every function is very unique. And it has to be treated with a fair amount of attention. Because if you're just forcing people to use AI… it needs some thought put into it. You know, like proofreading grammar, to me, that's not an AI case. Like if a team says, oh yeah, we use AI, you know, we do spell checking. To me, that's not a tremendous value. It's a distraction.So I think it does require a thoughtful approach of implementation of AI. So for example, you know, you take a team, you need to first and foremost understand, how do you measure the output of that team? What constitutes a good output? And then can use of AI, first of all, increase the output and also not increase the error rate, for example. So defining exact, sort of a scorecard for how AI should be evaluated, I think is very important because if you give a blanket direction to use AI, without the right sort of framework, I think it can go sideways pretty quickly. So the way we're thinking about it is just taking incremental steps and focusing on certain functions or certain key areas of the company, maybe with the largest team or the largest use cases, and try to solve for that.Make sure that people have a very clear understanding of how AI is going to increase their productivity or output, be able to actually measure it. Without that, I think, you know, it's just gonna be very soft in a way that people can articulate the value of AI.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:17)While many companies are using AI as an efficiency play—that means saving time and automating processes–there’s also the opportunity of using AI as an innovation catalyst.\n\n\n\nAshwin Navin (00:07:28)Everything has an opportunity to be reimagined with an AI acceleration, an AI amplification. So I'll give you a few examples. Often people, when they think of Samba, they think about the video analysis that we've done over the years. The fact that we monitor thousands of linear networks, hundreds of thousands of shows, millions of ads. We're doing that in many countries now, 24/7. We wouldn't be able to do that without AI. Imagine a human-only effort to do that.Machine learning has been built into the company's history from day one. What we're able to do now, given the evolution in the models, is actually go deeper into the video and understand it in new ways that we didn't have the ability to even three years ago or two years ago to be able to monitor millions of ad creatives and know what are the messages in market from every industry, every advertiser in multiple countries and languages. To be able to provide that insight back to any one stakeholder, whether that's the media agencies that are trying to support those brands, the brands themselves were trying to differentiate themselves against their competitors and really understand where they stand in terms of share of voice and their level of investment and reach compared to the industry and their competitors.These are all things that we can generate, in real time, with no um actual manual effort at this point because we've instrumented that monitoring infrastructure and extracted a lot of value and meaning from the video that's out in the world right now.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:58)The real advantage of AI comes when teams move beyond just using it to thinking with it.\n\n\n\nRyan Nelsen (00:09:04)I think the very best marketers, they know their audience better than anyone and they understand how their products and solutions add value to that specific use case. And so with AI, I'm very excited about the personalization, incredibly excited about the speed and the ability to speed up the creative process specifically, I think it's a really powerful area, where we can then spend more time making decisions and having AI push us insights, data, results, and then spend more time connecting with humans and people to make decisions that are going to make the biggest impact possible.So as a marketing leader, it's fun. At StackAdapt, we market to marketers and so we understand, have empathy for what you're going through. And ultimately, at the end of the day, you're trying to build impact, you're trying to drive conversions end-to-end in the funnel and a lot of times marketers take a lot of heat because leads is the end outcome of… we generated a leads but the end of the day leads in B2B company is just the beginning step. And we certainly want to get to MQLs and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) and beyond that into opportunities and then seeing visibility and using AI tools to be able to manage and watch the optimization and the conversion path through each area of the funnel is where I think we're going in a bigger way. And I don't think we've gotten there yet as most marketers. We're getting sort of monthly reports or even bi-weekly or weekly reports on, hey this is what's working or this is what worked three weeks ago. We need to get much faster much better at being proactive with AI insights to go drive daily and hourly decisions. I think that's where the sweet spot is.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:54)That shift in mindset also separates leaders from laggards. Ashwin says your organization’s future depends on how willing you are to be fearless and take advantage of the opportunities AI offers.\n\n\n\nAshwin Navin (00:11:05)I think we, as humans, as leaders, as managers, have to be optimistic. And our industry right now is in a state of fear, almost paralysis. We've been monitoring the sentiment among our organization towards AI. We've been monitoring the industry's sentiment and feelings about AI. And there's a lot of fear out there. And now is not the time for leaders to play the clickbait game of painting dark and ominous futures. Like we don't have to be Pollyannish, we don't have to be unrealistic, but at the same time, people don't produce great work when they're in fear. They aren't gonna be their best selves. And every organization needs every human operating at their highest potential, as much as we possibly can inspire them to be their best selves.So that, in my mind, is a sort of management necessity that, let's just take some comfort in the fact that humanity has faced like sort of the ominous threat of technology putting us out of work for centuries. This is not a new thing. We've always had a fear of new. And if we think about it like the economic growth will present new opportunities, and humans have an amazing way of fulfilling those opportunities with their own ideas and solutions.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:21)With the rise of Generative AI and the promise of General Artificial Intelligence, there’s a new phrase making it into the mission of many tech companies today: Being an AI-first company. I asked Vitaly about his take on this trend.\n\n\n\nVitaly Pecherskiy (00:12:35)There's no doubt that AI will continue transforming and disrupting industries and businesses and functions. It already does. I think value in putting, going out and saying we are AI first is in part aspirational for so many companies. You need to in some ways, in order to for organizational transformation to happen, you need to have some kind of North Star for the organization to work towards.So I would not necessarily look at companies that say AI-first and imagine that everything they do suddenly is AI, and suddenly they've gone through this transformation and they're ahead of everybody else. I think for most organizations, it's a bit of a North Star to try to move companies to think in a way of how businesses in the future will operate.By that logic, I would sort of expect most companies to be AI-first companies at this point or in the near future. But it doesn't mean that, you know, if you look under the hood, you know, they don't have people and it's all like artificial general intelligence doing everything. It's just more of sort of guiding principle for how they want to continue evolving.I could see the world in which, in the very near term, nobody's going to say I’m an AI-first company because it will just be every company. Right? It's, you know, just look back 10 years ago and everybody said, well, we're cloud-based. Nobody says that. It's sort of the assumption. So I think it's going to be table stakes, if not now, in a very near term.Again, AI is just a how. AI first doesn't automatically mean it will create better value for the customer. It doesn't automatically mean that. so So I think in the near term, a lot of that terminology will start fading towards what is that the company does that is valuable to the customer?\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:38)Let’s pull together a few takeaways. First, culture sets the foundation for successful AI adoption. It’s a people issue before it’s a tech one. Second, leaders must model curiosity, experimentation, and transparency. Third, systems should support fast feedback, experimentation, and integration. Fourth, mindset matters more than the number of tools. Being AI-first means rethinking how your entire organization operates. And fifth, AI can speed up execution, but only if teams are empowered and aligned.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:15:14)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-search-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-search-advertising"},"author":[],"headline":"AI Search and the Future of Advertising","datePublished":"2025-10-15T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:11:13+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-search-advertising"},"wordCount":3133,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-search-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260209145729/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep1_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","artificial intelligence","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs AI Overviews begin to dominate Google search results, marketers face a stark new reality: fewer clicks, fuzzier attribution, and a fundamental shift in how users discover and engage with content. \n\n\n\nThis episode unpacks the rise of AI-powered search and what it means for the future of advertising.\n\n\n\nGreg Boone | CEO, Walk West\n\n\n\nMichael Shang | SVP of Advertising Technologies, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Welcome to Season 2 of The AI Advertising Podcast, the show where we pull back the curtain on the world of AI-driven advertising. Before we dive into today’s episode, I want to tell you about something exciting—StackAdapt’s Innovation Forum, happening October 28 in Toronto. It’s your chance to see how StackAdapt is transforming the future of advertising. You’ll get a first look at new features, hear what’s coming next, and join some incredible panel discussions with industry leaders. And if you can’t make it in person? Good news—on-demand access will be available starting November 13. Don’t miss it!Here’s some data that should rattle every performance marketer: Only 8% of Google search sessions with an AI Overview, result in any click to a website, compared to about 15% for searches without an AI Overview. And since AI Overviews now appear on about 18% of all Google searches, this zero‑click phenomenon affects nearly one in five queries. Even more telling: Users end their browsing session entirely 26% of the time after seeing an AI summary, compared to 16% when only traditional listings appear.In today’s episode, we’re unpacking what this means for advertisers, publishers, and marketers trying to reach their audiences through search. To explore this, we’re drawing from two perspectives:Greg Boone, CEO of Walk West, who’s sounding the alarm on the structural changes AI is bringing to the marketing discipline.And Michael Shang, SVP of Advertising Technologies at StackAdapt, who’s tracking real-time shifts in traffic sources and experimenting with AI-native ad placements.Ready? Let’s go.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:57)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:13)AI has introduced a new layer in the digital attention economy. Content is no longer evaluated by human audiences, but rather filtered, interpreted, and ranked by machines. Greg Boone puts it this way:\n\n\n\nGreg Boone (00:02:28)The fundamental thing is people have to acknowledge that this is not just an algorithmic shift, it's an entire business model shift, right? For Google to disrupt their own ad business to go this path, I always tell folks, I'm like, what was their choice? They had a Blockbuster meets Netflix moment and they had to meet the market where it was. As folks started to, you know, really embrace what it is to have a conversational, I don't like to call it search 'cause it's not, I'm having a discussion with AI. I'm having a conversation. I wasn't searching for anything. Right? I was, I always tell folks I don't AI search, I do AI research. It's a much deeper level of engagement, and I think that's really hard for the marketing folks out there to really understand and grasp, not just marketers, business folks in general, right.All of the metrics that we've looked at historically, don't actually line up the same way in the age of AI. And especially when things move to AI overviews and AI search is starting to, you know, become more prominent, the way that folks are, are trying to gain information. So we do have to think about marketing in a very different way.I would say that we should have been thinking about marketing in a different way for the last decade. Right? And moving away from so many of the vanity metrics, like, yes, I get the leading indicators, but really trying to get at the heart of what does business need. You know, a lot of times it's, and I'm not trying to diminish what we do as marketers 'cause I think it can be very strategic, but I think at times we've kind of lost our way.And AI is kind of revealing us. AI will reveal you. And I think what it's revealed is that we have become more of a process-oriented culture. And now we have to figure out, alright, the process has changed, the workflows have changed. How do we speak to a different set of audiences? Oh, by the way, not all of them will be human. And that there's like a mindset shift that has to happen quickly with marketers even beyond the algorithms.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:16)That deeper engagement means users are asking more detailed questions, getting richer answers, and often stopping there. For marketers, that’s a problem. You’re not just losing visibility—you’re losing the opportunity to convert.Michael Shang is seeing this shift in real time. AI tools are now major players in referral traffic—even if the clicks don’t always follow:\n\n\n\nMichael Shang (00:04:42) Basically, what's happening with LLMs now is that instead of having you people go through the traditional gatekeepers, now there's one new interface and potentially how people have been thinking about is that potentially this can become an operating system.And people can just simply go through that one simple user interface and be as generic as possible and then discover very personalized content to what you're liking. And we are seeing this happening I think in terms of people migrating from search to LLM in specific categories such as writing, editing, help, learning and tutoring, trip planning and recipes. I think people can relate to that. Careers, resume help, writing business cases, research analysis, and so forth. So that is the kind of things we have seen, the migration from search engine to LLM. So to a certain degree, people would, distinguish those two things as one of them being the traditional search engine and the LLM being the do engine and that helps you do things.You have specifically two motions. One of them is more of a push motion where you push ads to the content people are consuming and the other the other one is more of a pull motion, which is highly relatable when it comes to search. That is when you're searching something you're pulling information and therefore the most relevant kind of product or content will be surfaced to you in that fashion.So if we believe that people continue to consume content, then we believe advertising push environment will continue to thrive.Now, it's more about the composition, about push and pull in the specific case and the how the dynamics shifting. Overall, advertising, we believe that advertising is a function of the GDP. Just as long as you have an economy, advertising will be quite important. The composition of which is shifting and we're paying close attention to that. And there's a new gatekeeper being introduced, but how that's going to turn out is still yet to be seen.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:01)All of this is already showing up in traffic reports. Publishers like Wikipedia and even The New York Times are watching organic and referral traffic slip. Boone sees this as part of a broader crisis.\n\n\n\nGreg Boone (00:07:14)The only way that you're gonna get picked up by these large language models, it's not gonna be just because of your blog. Other people have to be talking about you, right? You have to show a level of authority, right? We have what, you know, I described this whole era as the lead flow crisis. And it's the combination of what you, you know, you're describing with the AI overviews and AI search. But it's also, I tell folks, cold email you probably will never convert me. I said, there's two forms of cold email to scam and spam, right? And if you're spending all of our time trying to figure out which one of those two things, it's gonna be very challenging, right? And so you have to learn how to get picked up, not just by AI search, but you still need to do the traditional things.I don't know if you're familiar with the CloudFlare data that came out recently. It used to be for every two pages that Google scraped, you got one visit, right then it was six pages to one visit. Then in the last six months, it's been 18 pages. Now you move over to the AI search side of things. ChatGPT was what? Every 1500 pages scraped, one visit. And then I think Claude was even worse, like 6,000 to every one visit. The point being, even if you show up there, right, it's gonna be very challenging. So you're gonna have to flood the zone with a lot of relevant content, hyper-personalized content. So we think about strategically some of the things that we need to do. Now we actually have tools that can do that. Now, do we have the stomach and the stamina to be able to deliver on this vision? I think the marketers and the organizations, the growth companies that can do hyper-personalization at scale are gonna win in the age of AI and specifically in AI search, because you're gonna just have to have more relevant content more often.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:46)It’s no longer enough to write for humans. Your content must speak fluently to machines, using structure, intent, and natural language cues that large language models can parse and prioritize.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:03)So what does advertising look like in a world where AI handles the top of the funnel?Boone’s answer? Visibility is the key. And visibility comes from trust signals—third-party validation, citations, and brand authority. He has even created a four-pronged framework for this.\n\n\n\nGreg Boone (00:09:23)It's kind of a baseline that we use, I call it our four P strategy, which is podcast, partnerships, paid media, and public relations. And I think of it as a unified comms framework. And what I try to get across, and so I break it down for folks, I'm like the podcast, what that really is about is the perfect medium for personality-led growth, right?At the end of the day, 49% of your brand is directly tied to your CEO's brand, your executives' brand. And the smaller your organization, the larger that percentage is. So the reality of what I'm trying to get at here is that your personality matters. It used to be, you know what, you know, then it was who you know now, it's who knows you, right? And a lot of bigger brands have a lot of brand equity, so they don't have to play the same game that, say a middle market or lower company needs to play. So the podcast was really just about personality-led growth.So whether that's you're doing webinars weekly, it's consistently getting a face and a voic,e an evangelist out there talking about your brand, your products, your solutions, right? And it also gives you an opportunity to be cited by others to then show up in the AI search. The second P is partnerships. Partnerships is really around what I describe as community-led growth, right? I always use the same adage of, hey, the ocean that was Google that we all fished in has dried up. What ponds are you gonna fish in now? And so what I'm trying to get across to folks is you have to have your own newsletter. You have to have other communities. Affiliate market. You have to have partners in communities that have their own ponds to fish in. The third P is paid media, right? I fundamentally believed last year and going into this year, people are going to gravitate towards that 'cause they have greater control, they have better understanding of how paid media works, right? It doesn't get as caught up and gobbled as it relates to, you know, the AI search and the AI mode, AI overviews. So now the challenge that's gonna create is everybody's gonna gravitate there. We'll be great for your business, right? But at the same time, it'd be very challenging with everyone's trying to compete.And then the last P is PR or you know, public relations. I've seen people not use this to their advantage. Again, go back to seeing heard and cited. You need to make sure that you're showing up in other outlets. You need to show up in places. A lot of times people are using PR just for crises, right? You need to be talking about all the great things and as marketers, I always call marketers out, it's like we do a terrible job of the great things that we are doing and the great things that a lot of our companies are doing, and we're waiting for this big bang thing, right? Take a drop marketing approach and put out things every two weeks. Make sure that they're, you're making the headlines so that you can show up and be seen, heard, and cited.\n\n\n\nMichael Shang (00:11:55)I think the logical assumption is associated with where users spend the most amount of time. Let's say you can divide your attention, that 24 hours attention to certain platforms. Which platforms has the most amount of your attention?When you look at that specific analysis, then you realize that it's quite important to occupy as much attention as possible with the highest quality of ads or highest quality of information to make sure people are interested.So when we think about where we spend the most amount of attention, how much time we spend on ChatGPT or LLMs versus how much time we spend on TV? It's very simple. And then how much time can we spend in the TV commercial environment? And then becomes much more complex, obviously, when we get into the funnel building process. But fundamentally, this is about how we can get user’s quality attention.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:56)In a fragmented landscape, measurement becomes both harder and more essential.\n\n\n\nGreg Boone (00:13:01)Attribution for the next two years is gonna be the greatest challenge every market is gonna face, It is about as fuzzy as it can be to tie together the actions that we're taking. Now you're talking about, you know, traditionally people talk about marketing in this funnel.That's a misconception, right? We're not in an era of a funnel. It's more like a highway where people are coming on and off throughout, right? Different exits in there, coming through different channels. But I think folks need to understand that attribution is gonna be increasingly, you know, more challenging. But we are all trying to figure this out in real time. What I would say is you have to break down, if I look across my four P strategy. I have to break it down by those sources, right? And see what that ROI looks like. And I have to constantly be deliberate. So if I'm looking at podcasts. You know, was there some direct or indirect revenue? Because, you know, someone was a guest on our show. Podcasts are great unlock, webinars are great unlocks. We start talking about the partnerships in communities, more challenging. The paid media's a lot more straightforward. The PR is probably the fuzziest. It's probably people don't, but it's also one of the lower-cost things if you're doing it right. There's no silver bullet, there's no magic bullet, whatever the phrase you want to use. Every true marketer that is late on the cutting edge of this will be open and honest and say, ‘There's no way right now to fully, you know, give attribution with these KPIs.’ And all the KPIs are gonna have to be reracked pretty quickly here.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:23)Michael Shang believes the changes are more subtle.\n\n\n\nMichael Shang (00:14:26)I don't think the metric we're tracking will change. The most important one won't change because people spend money on advertising to drive sales. So the measure will always be revenue or sales. How you want to maybe break down that revenue, because revenue is price times quantity, right? So how you want to break down the P and the Q might be different.I'm not sure how different that will be, but yes, there could be new nuances as in how it relates to LLM. But let's go assume for any brand or any publisher, they have two environments. That's the web and the app environment for now.So I think we can still look at the same thing, even for web environment, we understand exactly where LLM is driving results. From a referral traffic standpoint, how much is contributing to referrals, so on and so forth. So I think it's changing, but also at the same time, the ground is really now shifting much.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:15:20)The solution? Start with what you can measure. Tie performance back to your four Ps. Optimize for both brand lift and AI lift. And most importantly, shift your mindset.If you’re still running the 2022 playbook, you will get replaced.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:15:40)So what do we take away from all this?First, the age of AI search is here—and it’s reshaping not just how content is found, but whether it gets clicked at all.Second, organic traffic is becoming harder to earn. Showing up in search results isn’t enough; you have to be cited, trusted, and machine-readable.Third, ad strategy must evolve. That means understanding how LLMs perceive your brand and exploring placements inside AI interfaces—not just around them.Fourth, attribution is messy, but not impossible. Focus on visibility, relevance, and repeatable outcomes across diverse channels.And finally, mindset matters. Learning, adapting, and upskilling aren’t optional—they’re the baseline for staying competitive.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:16:38)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-search-advertising","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-search-advertising","name":"AI Search & The Future of Advertising","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#website"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-search-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260209145729/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep1_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","datePublished":"2025-10-15T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:11:13+00:00","description":"This episode of The AI Advertising Podcast unpacks the rise of AI-powered search and what it means for the future of advertising.","inLanguage":"en-US"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-supercharging-digital-out-of-home-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-supercharging-digital-out-of-home-advertising"},"author":[],"headline":"How AI is Supercharging Digital Out-of-Home Advertising","datePublished":"2025-10-29T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:11:04+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-supercharging-digital-out-of-home-advertising"},"wordCount":2601,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-supercharging-digital-out-of-home-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194149/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Season-2_Ep-2_300x150_Podcast_Content-Thumbnail-1.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","artificial intelligence","dooh"],"articleSection":["Advertising channels"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDigital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising is having a major comeback—and artificial intelligence is the reason why. \n\n\n\nThis episode explores how AI is transforming DOOH into one of the most dynamic and measurable ad channels today.\n\n\n\nCristiano Winckler | Director of Operations and Digital Marketing, Somebody Digital\n\n\n\nNick Ortega | Director DOOH and Emerging Channels, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Digital out-of-home advertising, or DOOH is one of the fastest-growing channels in the ad industry. According to eMarketer, Digital out-of-home will grow at a rapid 7.6% compound annual growth rate over the next four years. And here’s the kicker: audiences like it.A study found that 73% of U.S. consumers view Digital out-of-home ads favorably—that’s higher than video ads at 50% and social media ads at 48%.Even more importantly: Digital out-of-home drives action. In one study, 51% of people who saw a Digital out-of-home ad with directions to a nearby store actually visited the business—and 93% of those visitors made a purchase.So the opportunity is clear. But what’s making this channel so powerful today is artificial intelligence. AI is transforming how Digital out-of-home campaigns are planned, bought, measured, and optimized.To unpack how this works, I spoke with two experts: Cristiano Winckler, Director of Operations and Digital Marketing at Somebody Digital, a full service digital agency in the UK And Nick Ortega, Director of DOOH and Emerging Channels at StackAdapt.Let’s get into it.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:18)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:33)First, let’s hear from Cristiano Winckler. He explains why Digital out-of-home’s rapid growth wouldn’t be possible without AI.\n\n\n\nCristiano Winckler (00:01:40)Without AI, I don't think digital out of home would be so successful, and I think that's what's impacting this fast adoption that we see of digital out-of-home. Number one, it allows us to measure things more accurately, which was very, very difficult to do with the traditional out-of-home channels before, right?You can use mobile advertising IDs and based on a one-to-many meaning, it is not to the actual ID, but, but when you group certain IDs, when you have many IDs, you can build profiles of audiences that have actually seen your ads on different locations, right? So that measurement and tracking is quite important.With that in mind, once they're able to measure and track that, you can then create audiences for retargeting campaigns and an omni-channel integration. You can build those audiences. You can then transfer that data to other channels, the traditional ones, social media, or you can do CTV. So it allows you to continue to engage with the target audience on a much more sophisticated way.On top of that, AI allows a hyper-personalized experience. You can build campaigns and change creatives and adjust campaigns based on time of day, weather, geographical location, traffic, anything interesting that happened, any news that happened at a particular point in time that day. You can dynamically change the creatives and the ads to  follow those trends.It helps us bid more efficiently. Once you are able to analyze very large data sets with all this information, you can then build more efficient bidding strategies based on types of day, different types of ads, locations, and et cetera.So, without AI and without all of these dynamic algorithms that help us optimize campaigns, I don't think digital out-of-home would've been so successful. And I think that's one of the main reasons why it keeps growing. And there's a massive forecasting of being one of the main channels, from all, all out of home channels, digital out-of-home is the one that is growing the fastest.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:48)Nick Ortega from StackAdapt agrees. He’s seen how programmatic technology has made Digital out-of-home campaigns more measurable and integrated than ever before. One particular case was a campaign using the Sphere in Las Vegas.\n\n\n\nNick Ortega (00:04:02)There's one factor that brings challenges to digital out-of-home and that's the fact that the screens aren't owned by an individual user. They are owned by a media owner. So it becomes really challenging to be able to identify exactly who those users are who are being exposed to ads. So you can imagine the sphere as being  kind of like the anchor media owner, something unique, interesting. And then we had many different media owners around the sphere in Las Vegas at the time of AWS reinvent, which is an opportunity for our client at the time. What StackAdapt brought to the table there was not only the ability to tap into the sphere, but also the programmatic inventory around it, as well as the ability to actually do some measurements. So we did brand lift measurement. So being able to measure the impact of this campaign from a brand lift standpoint. We also did retargeting, which is a capability which allows our advertisers to retarget exposed customers to the digital out of home ad on their mobile devices, whether that be mobile, CTV, display. And that's really where the connected tissue I think is between digital out of home and more omnichannel based campaigns is you can retarget exposed digital out of home users on your other channels. And then you could also use your other channels as a way to understand where audiences are physically and be able to look at digital out of home inventory around those physical locations and say, look, this is where you know we're seeing our audiences aggregate around Boston,  and it looks like a lot of them are going to TD Arena. So there's like a lot of tie-ins back and forth. But yeah, there's there's been a significant advancement, I would say, in programmatic digital out of home over the last eight years or so in just making the inventory available and more actionable, measurable, and dynamic in terms of what you could do from a targeting perspective.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:02)So how does Digital out-of-home fit into today’s buyer journey? Let’s hear Cristiano’s perspective.\n\n\n\nCristiano Winckler (00:06:09)The funnel as we traditionally imagine a top, middle, bottom where the funnel has changed already. So we have a trigger action that will get the target audience or the visitor or the individual to join the funnel. And they will be constantly jumping between evaluation, trying to get themselves educated on product, services and features until they actually have an outcome, which is either purchase or submitting a form. They will constantly jump in and out of that funnel. Evaluating and exploring, which are the two main, consideration stages that you're gonna have in that funnel.And digital out of home plays a massive part in bringing that audience back to the funnel on different touch points. Because you don't get restricted to online activities anymore. You now capture the user intent and interest when they're walking, when they're out and about on the street, on the shopping center in a supermarket.You can speed up that process of bringing them back to the funnel and help them with the exploration and evaluation stages. So it plays a massive part and allows us to do things that we were not able to do before because we would need them to go to a website or pull their mobile phones. You can now do that in a different way, exploring other means.So it plays a massive part in the omnichannel integrated approach because it opens a new door that allows us to reengage with the target audience.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:34)That’s the value of digital out-of-home—it captures attention outside of digital screens and brings audiences back into the brand journey at key real-world moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:47)Cristiano also shared a great example of how AI and Digital out-of-home combine to create real impact.\n\n\n\nCristiano Winckler (00:07:54)We had a campaign that we ran for a distillery company in the UK to sell gin. And part of that campaign was to show gin recipes on outdoors and digital out-of-home screens, right?If the weather was rainy, we would then show recipes for a rainy day that would be more suitable for a rainy day. If it was a little bit colder, okay, let's try and share recipes of warmer drinks that you would typically drink during winter time. If it's sunny outside by all means, we should share recipes of refreshing drinks, as an example. So it allows yo to do that, and that's only possible with AI. All those hybrid personalization elements that we can add to these campaigns.It was quite a complex campaign, so we had to rely a lot on AI, for many elements of it, from conceptualization to execution, we had to rely on AI. So the mandate was… we had to sell two bottles per store on average, but we're not talking about only the stores that we targeted. In general, and we're talking about lots of stores for Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, right.When we get the list of stores, number one job was to use AI to narrow down the actual locations for the ones that we would consider to have a higher footfall, a higher chance of reaching our target audience. We could not spread our budget too thin and target absolutely every store. So we had to focus on what we would, uh, theoretically consider to be the best performing one.So we used AI to analyze that data and come up with the suggestions for the best stores. Once that was done we built our campaigns. The vast majority of the budget went to digital out of home. The strategy revolved around… we wanted to target… we came up with our target audience. We used first party data to build lookalike audiences, and then you need AI for that as well. To build lookalike audiences, you have to rely on algorithms that will cross-reference data and we'll build that, that lookalike audience for you. That's an in platform AI capability, but still AI, right? And then another algorithm that once you build those, lookalike audiences, how can we utilize the same audiences on other platforms, social media, Google, and so on and so forth.Once we start going after the target audience, lookalike audiences, if we see, if we identify that certain mobile advertising IDs saw our ads, and we strategically placed those screens and the ads at particular times of day where the target audience was supposed to go to the supermarket, no point in doing that at 3:00 PM for example. They're coming back from work, they're going to the supermarket to buy their groceries. So we had specific times of day that we believe would be more likely to get engagement in conversion. Also relying on AI data, exploring different possibilities and building different scenarios there. And that's why we placed, those ads within one or two kilometers radios of certain stores. Once we detected that certain mobile advertising IDs saw our ads and those mobile advertising IDs were part of our target audience, we could then build remarketing audiences with that and retarget those individuals in real time. We will track which individuals could potentially enter the store. And this is not necessarily real time data. We have to use some probabilistic data there. But then retarget those mobile IDs, right? Advertising IDs with other campaigns. And then we're talking about either CTV, we could do it late in the day, but inside the store, we could target them with display, banner, ads, programmatic, native programmatic, and so on and so forth.So it was crucial. We also used that data once again for dynamic ad creation and personalization. And then we played a very, very important element in terms of measurement and building different scenarios on how is this campaign performing.Purchasing data usually comes after 30 days. We had to run this campaign. We had four weeks to run this campaign, so we had a month. That means we would only get sales data after the campaign ended. So we had to think about what are these, what is the solution here? What metrics could we potentially utilize to measure or try and identify success and optimize campaigns accordingly?Then we had to rely heavily on AI for that. We came up with a few benchmarks, for example, frequency. We know, as a rule of thumb for, for this industry, benchmarks specifically that individuals need to see or need to be in front of your ad five to seven times before they take action. So we were capturing that plus footfall. If we see that on a particular day, we had individuals that,were exposed to our ads nine or or 10 times, and the average in this campaign was seven, 9.7, but also had a footfall, meaning that followed a visit to the store. That's gonna be likely to generate a sale. So we can isolate certain audience segments and certain ad segments that helped, that led to that store visit and do more of that, basically double down on, those specific times of days, audience or ads as well.So that was a very important success metric for us. Avoiding guesswork and using a little bit of probabilistic stats to be able to measure success. I'm happy to say that that actually worked because what we thought would happen in terms of engagement and the subsequent sale, was confirmed once we got the sales data, we were able to hit the targets.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:29)The result? AI helped personalize the creative, maximize foot traffic, and validate results even before sales data came in.\n\n\n\nNick Ortega (00:13:40)Digital Out of Home offers advertisers really like unmatched visibility on screens that consumers see throughout their entire out of home journey. So think billboards, transit ads, digital displays in malls, ride shares and tops of taxis.And these are all high-impact channel boosts for brand credibility. It really complements digital campaigns with like mobile friendly interactions or being able to retarget like we were talking about before or being able to provide that precise targeting and performance measurement, really thanks to the evolution of programmatic digital out of home. So like incorporating your multi-channel strategy helps you to maintain like the top of mind awareness and drives conversions both online and offline and delivers a seamless brand experience that resonates with this like on the go audience.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:36)Here’s what we’ve learned today:AI is powering Digital out-of-home’s growth—enabling better targeting, personalization, and measurement.Digital out-of-home isn’t just awareness—it’s a bridge in the consumer journey, pulling audiences back into the funnel.And in an omnichannel world, Digital out-of-home acts as the connective tissue between physical moments and digital engagement.With AI driving innovation, Digital out-of-home is becoming one of the most powerful tools for advertisers looking to combine scale, context, and impact.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:15:13)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/audience-intelligence#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/audience-intelligence"},"author":[],"headline":"AI and Audience Intelligence: Unlocking Hidden Segments at Scale","datePublished":"2025-11-12T12:04:24+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:10:56+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/audience-intelligence"},"wordCount":2296,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/audience-intelligence#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194134/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Season-2_Ep-3_300x150_Podcast_Content-Thumbnail-1.webp?fit=626%2C273&ssl=1","keywords":["audience targeting","contextual targeting","podcast"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow do you discover audiences you didn’t even know to look for?\n\n\n\nAI is transforming audience intelligence, making it faster, more precise, and more predictive. From probabilistic modeling to clean room collaboration, today’s experts break down how brands and agencies are redefining how they understand, segment, and engage with their customers.\n\n\n\nJeremy Lo | Managing Director, AlikeAudience\n\n\n\nKaran Saggi | Director of Client Services, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)What if you could predict which customer segments are about to emerge—before your competitors even see them? That’s the promise of audience intelligence powered by AI.For decades, we’ve grouped customers by broad demographics or surface-level behaviour. But those days are fading. Now, we have machine learning, large language models, and real-time optimization, all working together to generate deeper insights and smarter campaigns.In today’s episode, we explore how AI is advancing audience intelligence, from segmentation and data quality to predictive targeting and creative personalization.Joining me are two voices driving innovation in this space: Jeremy Lo, Managing Director at AlikeAudience, a data science company building mobile-first solutions for the cookieless world in APAC. And Karan Saggi, Director of Client Services at StackAdapt.Let’s get into it.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:01)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:17)Audience intelligence is evolving fast. What once involved surveys and focus groups now includes billions of behavioural signals processed by AI. Karan Saggi gives us a look at the tools driving this shift.\n\n\n\nKaran Saggi (00:01:30)There's supervised learning models for customer segmentation and prediction. There's also Gen AI models, which you may have heard of. These are for creating personalized content or experiences that are more tailored for defined audiences. There's also natural learning processing or NLP models for understanding customer sentiment and their intent through text. The more commonly known might be machine learning. This is a subset of AI and deep learning, which is a subset of machine learning. You may be using one of these. You may be using multiple, but they're all meant for different purposes.Back in 2018, in fact, this reminds me of a survey that eConsultancy did. They asked advertisers how they are using AI. And the top-ranking answer was using AI for audience targeting and for audience segmentation.Over 80% of respondents said that they were already using AI or planning to use AI for this. And mind you, this was back in 2018. So we've come further since. The reality that's now quickly settling in is each org must ask themselves, is AI a must have or is it a nice to have? And what the right place for AI is within the org.For us, we're enhancing the very core of advertising strategies with AI. From real time campaign optimizations to uncovering new audience segments, which we'll touch on a little bit, machine learning optimization models are really turning what was once guesswork or more probabilistic into a lot more precision these days.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:04)Jeremy Lo, coming from a data science perspective, explains how AlikeAudience processes more than 20 terabytes of mobile data each month—requiring far more than spreadsheets.\n\n\n\nJeremy Lo (00:03:15)We have over 3 billion mobile IDs globally, offering partners like Stack Adapt and DSPs and SSPs access to our audience or our data pool.In terms of technology, what we do is, you know, in the past it's really sourcing a lot of that data, applying our proprietary data modeling. So we use, you know, in the past past two years, generative AI and LLMs. Large language models to process our data. So if you can imagine, you know, it's a lot of data we're talking about. And, in a sense, it's around 20 tbs of data that we process monthly. You know, Word and Excel will not get that done. So for us, in terms of technology, we've been deploying, you know, advanced models, and also applying, you know, I know AI gets thrown a lot, but from a generative AI perspective, help us process that data for efficiency in terms of give us that bit more power and speed because as you know, in data, we need to keep everything fresh.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:15)We’re talking about a new level of agility here. And that brings us to the foundation of any AI model: data.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:25)Sophisticated AI models don’t matter if the data feeding them is fragmented or outdated. Marketers today face a major challenge in unifying diverse sources of audience data.\n\n\n\nKaran Saggi (00:04:37)AI is only as good as the data it learns from. So data hygiene can be a challenge. Say if your data is being collected from multiple sources, like your CRM list or your email, your website, pixels, social media, surveys, and so on, the format and quality of audience data can really differ. It can really vary.So struggling to map that and unifying everything can be a challenge. The other challenge relating to data as well can be the freshness of it. How real time is it? How relevant is it as your audience evolves and how the consumer evolves?Plus, you may also be running into data governance issues or compliance issues. This is more common in certain verticals or certain regions of the world where we have different laws around them.ACM Interactions actually published a paper back in 2022 called Data Excellence for AI, where they advocated for this exactly. They advocated for data quality, for data hygiene, because the efficacy of machine learning really depends on that.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:37)At AlikeAudience, Jeremy emphasizes that data integrity starts long before AI enters the picture.\n\n\n\nJeremy Lo (00:05:44)We believe it's noncompromised in terms of being compliant. So that's the number one importance. AI, or no, AI, I would've put that straight, is for us is, is that's number one when we're dealing with data. You know, there's zero tolerance. So for example, we wanted to, um, be compliant in terms of, you know, internationally different privacy laws, GDPR, for example, in Europe we need to be compliant. Other ways, we actually apply the opt-in, opt out for our audience. So for us, it starts from the source. So rather than before the AI. AI is more of a, in terms of the analysis and activation, but for us, it starts with the source. So when we source our data, when we collect our data, that is the steps and the process in place to make sure we're definitely compliant. For example, PIIs, right? you don't want to be collecting emails and phone numbers. That's a big no-no. So that everything, in short, all those requirements come actually before the AI piece as well. It comes from the source.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:40)Clean, compliant data is the fuel. But what can AI do once the engine is running? That’s where discovery comes in.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:50)Marketers often focus on their existing audiences. But AI is expanding the lens, helping brands find new customer segments they wouldn’t have predicted on their own.\n\n\n\nKaran Saggi (00:07:01)Think of it like giving your strategy peripheral vision. As marketers, you don't just see who's in front of you, but you also kind of want to peek behind the curtain. You kind of want the big picture. Today, the latest AI models can allow for a lot more granularity in audience segments that are richer, that have more nuanced personas.In practice, marketers can use AI to find more net new customers, more net new consumers based on their first-party data than ever before. At Cannes last year, this reminds me of a campaign that Monks presented. They ran this campaign for a wellness company called Hatch. And they used AI to help generate three key audience personas for this campaign. They call them the stress professional, the biohacker, and the wellness enthusiast.So cases like these show how brands are going after emerging audience segments that they may not have thought of or may not have thought of with that level of granularity.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:55)For Jeremy and his team, this kind of discovery hinges on blending deterministic and probabilistic data.\n\n\n\nJeremy Lo (00:08:02)When we define data, I think deterministic data, it's really about the precision, right? So it’s more exact and it's more verifiable. Tends to be sourced from individual, but not necessarily, but very likely.So for example, I'll give an example would be in term when we say, you know, deterministic data, it's really something you can determine, right? Like a custom ID, for example. You go to the supermarket, custom ID. Email? email address for example, credit card details, but it gets a little sensitive when it gets more PII stuff, right?You don't wanna identify. So that's get a little sensitive in terms of identifiable data, but, you know, compare that to probabilistic. I think it's more, you know, I, I'd say more patterns we want to find. So different types of data sets, different usage, but I think it, it provides different types of, you know, value.It's important to have both, you know, deterministic and probabilistic in mind to activate against, right? There's pros and cons. So, for example, a downside of deterministic, the scale. It's not necessarily scalable, so you have your own segments. But what if I'm looking to do more, you know, model and I want to build on those segments? What can we do? So that's what something like AlikeAudience, we see value in terms of third party data with more sizable data sets that can, you know, predict, you know, certain trends or attributes and build on those deterministic data. So that's what we're, you know, third party identifiers come into play. That gives us a bit more scale, for example, in terms of products would be, you know, built lookalike modeling on top of certain data segments to, for, you know, advertisers or brands to build against or to target against. That's always something that we we're trying to fine tune, um, and to drive performance.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:52)Understanding your audience is only half the equation. The next step is getting your message in front of them at the right time, in the right context, with creative that resonates.\n\n\n\nKaran Saggi (00:10:01)At StackAdapt, we actually patented a technology called PCAI or Page Context AI. This reaches people when they're in the right receptive frame of mind for your brand. AI finds the right context first and then places the ad within it to get in front of the audience.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:18)Jeremy sees this kind of intelligent activation growing across emerging channels like audio and programmatic out-of-home—but attribution is still a puzzle.\n\n\n\nJeremy Lo (00:10:27)In terms of multi, you know, channel, you know, for us is making sure the IDs are relevant first and foremost. Specifically, we're talking about, for example, CTV. We're talking about different channels. Different channels work differently. At the end of the day, that's the holy grail of programmatic, right? But that's the catch, because there's no single source of truth from an attribution perspective on an ID perspective, if you face out cookies, for example, there's no ID specific with CTV.But you could use emails, right? Hash emails as an identifier. So now as an industry, we tend to move towards more preferred, IDs to activate, I guess cross channel. Um, and also we've got technology, DSPs that actually have more in-house or in platform ID graphs that connects built on data providers, and then that can activate across multi-channels. For example, using emails. Hash emails through the ID graph to power multi, multi-channel campaigns because they have a better view of certain audiences. As a data play, I think that's what's exciting is we're still growing that piece because other channels are quite new, but we're definitely seeing growth in specifically in the US but also in the past six months, more conversation around, how do we activate, how do we smart about program out of home? What about audio is coming? So I think that's the bit that 's getting everyone excited. But I think the key takeaway here is not necessarily just the targeting piece, but the attribution and the measurement.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:08)Let’s bring it all together with some clear takeaways:Audience intelligence is deepening thanks to AI—marketers can now see not just who people are, but how they behave and what they care about.Data quality and privacy compliance aren’t optional. They’re the foundation of any effective AI model.Emerging segments can be found and activated faster using real-time data, lookalikes, and AI-driven modeling.Creative and media execution are evolving too—AI personalizes content and optimizes it across new channels like audio and CTV.As AI takes more of the heavy lifting, marketers need to level up in new ways. Less data crunching, more insight creation and decision making.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:12:53)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-authenticity#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-authenticity"},"author":[],"headline":"AI, Creativity, Authenticity & The Human Edge","datePublished":"2025-11-26T11:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:10:49+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-authenticity"},"wordCount":2676,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-authenticity#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194108/2025_he-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep4-1.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","artificial intelligence"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs AI floods the marketing world with faster content, scalable workflows, and voice clones that sound eerily human—one big question remains:\n\n\n\nCan AI create work that actually feels human?\n\n\n\nIn this episode, we dive deep into that question with two guests on the front lines of AI-powered content:\n\n\n\nLee Odden | CEO of TopRank Marketing\n\n\n\nShaun Benoliel | Creative Straegy Lead, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)We’re in the golden age of AI adoption. The market’s worth nearly $50 billion. 88% of marketers are using AI daily. And yes, AI can make things faster, more scalable, and often, more efficient.But there’s a different question emerging: can AI make content that feels?Because in our rush to scale, we risk losing what makes creative work…well,  work. Voice. Emotion. Relevance. Soul.Today, we’re exploring that tension with two guests:Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, a B2B strategist who’s spent two decades building content systems rooted in thought leadership. And Shaun Benoliel, Creative Strategy Lead at StackAdapt, who helps brands push creative ideas forward using AI tools daily.Let’s jump in.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:00:57)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:13)Let’s start with a foundational truth: AI is not a magic wand. It’s a mirror. Whatever you bring to it—your clarity, your tone, your strategy—gets reflected back at scale. So if your brand voice is dialed in, AI can help you scale it. If not? You’re just scaling noise.Here’s Lee Odden.\n\n\n\nLee Odden (00:01:35)I think one of the important takeaways or observations I've had about the advent of AI as it relates to marketing is that it just makes you more of what you are, at least right now, the way the platforms are. What I mean by that is, you know, there's this hopefulness that exists with people who aren't maybe necessarily as skilled as they'd like to be in marketing, and they can feel like they can use AI tools to level up. But really, you know it's the people that are most imaginative, the most creative, the smartest people who understand context and prompting that are going to get the most impact and output out of these AI systems. Because when you put mediocre in, you're going to get mediocre out. You're just going to get more of it. But when you bring brilliance in and insightfulness and thoughtfulness into an AI platform, into the workflows that you're trying to automate and all those sorts of things, the outputs are commensurate with that quality of input.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:33)AI makes it easier than ever to ship 10 versions of a campaign in the time it used to take to make one. Shaun thinks that just because we can move faster, doesn’t mean we’re moving with more intention.\n\n\n\nShaun Benoliel (00:02:47)It’s so funny, we're in this weird place right now where brands and agencies can make more than ever before. But I'm finding that, that doesn't always mean that more is better. There's this weird tension between output and intention. And I think the best brands and the best creatives are thinking with a storytelling mindset. And when speed becomes the metric, you kind of lose that storytelling aspect.While AI can really crank out those headlines in seconds and optimize what those headlines are saying, I think it's really important for strategists, for creatives, for agencies to pause and ask, you know, why does this matter? What's the why behind this? The challenge really is like keeping the heart in the work while everything around you is pushing for faster turnaround.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:38)AI should not replace your instincts, but respond to them instead. And that’s where creativity becomes the real differentiator.\n\n\n\nShaun Benoliel (00:03:51)When we think about all these LLMs being trained on so much of the same stuff. We hear the word AI slop so much. And I think that how you train your AI is super important and being able to help it find your tone, your language, you know, training it on previous campaigns. So then you are able to have it, you know, speak in the right way and obviously mimic your style, but still having that human in the loop to gut check everything. You know, AI, like I said, can mimic your style, but it can't read a room. doesn't get subtext, humor, or like cultural nuance. So being able to tune it and have it reflect your brand's soul, but keeping that human element to push it further and make sure that there's… you're not just putting out the same kind of AI slop.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:42)So what stands out now? The stuff that doesn’t feel auto-generated. Lee Odden has developed a framework to train AI assistants and help his team create quality content consistently.\n\n\n\nLee Odden (00:04:56)So we developed this best answer marketing system. It's based on six pillars and it's a full funnel solution or paradigm or system as it were. When you have a system like that articulated and well-documented and you have that available to team members you know who are still getting up to speed, it's pretty amazing. It's like having a person that is always on tap to answer questions about what they're working on now. How does that reconcile with the system? You know, according to BAM, you know, how might I deal with this SEO/GEO thing? Or if I'm working with public relations and media relations, how does that fuel into the trust engine of BAM? And what are the experiential content opportunities? And you can ask questions and get really useful information very, very quickly. And the magic there is the context.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:56)Here’s where things get interesting—because it’s not all risk. Used well, AI can be a creative force multiplier. The key is knowing where to bring it in, and where to leave space for human taste.For example, Shaun has seen success using an AI voiceover for podcast ads.\n\n\n\nShaun Benoliel (00:06:15)There's definitely one campaign I worked on  and, the voice was indistinguishable from a human, even though we used an AI voice and the way it was able to land with nuance, you know, tonality and warmth was a really strong identifier of like, wow, okay, we can really bridge the gap between human-created, but reducing the lift with AI, not having to go to a platform, hire a voice talent, re-record. The opportunity to just tweak the platform and be able to change the tone and subtle tics in the voice nuance was able to to really optimize it to make it sound superhuman.So the client was thrilled with that. As these voice clones and AI voice platforms become stronger and trained more on human voices, it's just we're going to just see more of that. And it's going to be hard to distinguish from what on the radio or what on the TV,  the voiceover spot is AI or human sounding.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:22)We’ve talked about how AI affects creativity and content—but how do you actually integrate AI into your workflow without losing control or consistency?Lee Odden offered a great window into what that looks like inside TopRank Marketing.\n\n\n\nLee Odden (00:07:36)I initiated an AI adoption sort of program with our agency earlier this year. And, you know, we have been encouraging our team members to experiment, of course, while simultaneously providing a little bit of structure and direction. And so, you know, people are like icebergs in a way, meaning that a lot of times when they're at work, you know, they're using 10% of their capability and there's so much under the water.And what by allowing experimentation, it really taps into that under-the-water, the rest of the iceberg capability of a person because there they can go ahead on their own terms and at their own pace, start to understand how to solve problems using technology. So on the creative side, obviously, you know, there are fun things like Firefly and Adobe, because we use Adobe products. And so being able to input specifications, color hex codes and brand guidelines and all that sort of thing and being able to put that in as context and then be able to create derivative assets very quickly, permutations of one thing very, very quickly, which might have otherwise taken many, many hours.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:49)That metaphor is powerful. AI isn’t just about tools, but about unlocking more of what your team already knows how to do.\n\n\n\nLee Odden (00:08:59)Anytime there's a workflow that's already identified, you know that's an opportunity for automation or at least AI assistance. So, everything from, you know, doing research, to you know creating ah custom GPTs or GPT folders, for example, in the case of GPT or projects, in the case of Claude, and being able to upload context information about a particular initiative, let's say a tone of voice, examples of writing, objectives and persona, and then being able to gut check ideas against that from time to time. You know, kind of like having a peer that you can gut check when you're ideating something. Obviously, data analysis is a huge, huge opportunity. Using MCP to connect HubSpot or other CRM to ChatGPT or Claude, allowing you to ask conversationally questions about what you know, what segments are yielding the greatest revenue or what you know what's happening here, what's happening there in a conversational way.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:02)But how do you decide which tasks to delegate to AI and which tasks to be human led?\n\n\n\nLee Odden (00:10:09)In our case, it's always human-led. There's no fully automated thing per se. And if there's something that is over 50% automated, then there are checks, you know, because like hitting a golf ball a little bit off, it's, you know, 300 yards or meters down the road, faraway, it's way, way off course. And that can happen, especially with hallucinations and other issues. So ,it's always human led in our case. That's a good full philosophical sort of or question to ask about how AI is implemented strategically in an organization.  Are we creating agents to automate entire tasks?In our case, we're not doing that quite yet. But what we are doing is identifying those elements within a process that make sense to add a level of automation or AI integration as it were. You know, so a simple example would be creative. If there is one version of a thing that's made and you know we're going to deliver five or six versions to a client, we can quickly create those derivatives you know using an automation feature within Firefly, for example, or Firefly powered automation element within Photoshop or whatever, InDesign or whatever tools being used, right, for example. And so making the decision is... driven by opportunity, you know where does it make sense? Where's there a pain point that could be solved for efficiency or effectiveness by adding an AI capability? That's probably the first thing.And then obviously we look at other dimensions too, like where can we innovate in ways that, more quickly, you know, so you have one human brain, but plugged in to their own capability to create prompts and engage with an AI platform, they can create many, many, many variations of a creative idea or campaign structure or whatever, versus just doing it on their own. And it's too important to let the machine decide by itself, at least at this point.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:13)This hybrid approach—automation for speed, human for strategy—is what separates experimental dabbling from strategic orchestration.And for agencies wondering how to begin: start where Lee did. Identify pain points. Look for repeatable workflows. Encourage structured play. Then scale what works.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:38)So what will separate the winners from the copycats in the AI era? Not the tools. Everyone has access to those. It’s how you use them. The taste you bring. The questions you ask. And the story you’re trying to tell.\n\n\n\nShaun Benoliel (00:12:53)While we go towards this, like this hybrid world, AI is running the operations, humans need to shape the meaning. You know, right now everybody really has access to the same tools. And what's going to separate those brands and those marketers that are leading is taste and storytelling. Efficiency, I think soon is going to stop being a brag. It's just going to be expected. And the real differentiator is going to be things like creative judgment, like emotional intelligence, and then storytelling, obviously.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:21)For marketing agencies, the AI landscape is forcing them to evolve and rethink their business models.\n\n\n\nLee Odden (00:13:29)Seeing the real or perceived commoditization of content creation, because of technology broadly, not just AI, certainly warrants a shift for agencies and understanding how can they best create value for their clients. And so in our case, it is more of a focus on, in some cases, strategy. Like, you know, there's a very large social network, we'll say, that we provide SEO strategy for and have for many, many years. And, you know, we're not implementing SEO for that company, we're providing strategy and it's data informed strategy, right? And it does touch content, but it's informative of content. It's not execution of content in that case. And I think that's a direction where a lot of agencies that want to create value in this world work. Content, again, real and perceived, commoditization of content is resulting in things being brought in house or changed where an outside resource isn't used in the same way. I think it's really important, you know, overall for any agency or consultant to always be gut checking, how are they best providing value to their clients. Otherwise, what's the point? You know, you're shortening your lifespan if you're not doing that. So, strategically, creatively, you know, ability to use data, you know ability to help optimize from a workflow perspective and help that company scale, help them hit those numbers, help them hit those outcomes, not just outputs. Agency game isn't an output game in the future. It's an outcome game.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:15:09)It comes back to something simple: don’t just ask what can AI do. Ask: why does it matter? And is it still saying something worth hearing?\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:15:23)Let’s wrap up with a few key takeaways:If your strategy, brand voice, or creative clarity is weak—AI will only scale the noise. Start with intention. AI makes you faster. But creativity that connects still takes time, thought, and emotional nuance.Polish without personality is forgettable. Use AI as a tool, but let human taste be the filter.Let AI assist, not replace. Voiceovers, scripts, ideation—AI can handle the heavy lifting. But the storytelling still needs you.Finally, taste, not tools, is the differentiator. Everyone has access to the same AI. What sets you apart is your judgment, your strategy, your ability to move people.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:16:13)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-agents-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-agents-advertising"},"author":[],"headline":"AI Agents & the Future of Advertising","datePublished":"2025-12-10T11:20:42+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:09:38+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-agents-advertising"},"wordCount":2521,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-agents-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194050/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-6_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","campaign planning","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAI in advertising is entering a new phase of autonomy. \n\n\n\nThis episode unpacks what agentic AI really means, how Ivy™ is evolving into a true marketing agent, and why the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is quietly becoming one of the most important technologies in ad tech.\n\n\n\nYang Han | CTO at StackAdapt\n\n\n\nLee Odden | CEO at TopRank Marketing\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Marketing is entering the agentic AI era—and the numbers are staggering. According to the Martech for 2026 report, 90% of marketers say they’re already using AI agents somewhere in their workflow, but only 23% have those agents in full production use. Most teams, a full 67%, are still stuck in pilots, experiments, or very narrow use cases.At the same time, customer behaviour is shifting even faster. Half of consumers already use AI-powered search, putting 20 to 50% of traditional search traffic at risk.So while AI agents are rapidly becoming the operating system of marketing… Most teams are still figuring out what these systems actually are, how they work, and how they’ll reshape campaign strategy, creative workflows, and media execution.That’s why today’s episode matters. We’re going to break down what agentic AI really means, and what marketers should prepare for next. Joining me is Yang Han, CTO of StackAdapt, who’s been leading StackAdapt’s investment in agentic systems, including the development of Ivy, the platform’s marketing AI agent. We’ll also hear from Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, and his take on AI agents from the agency side. So let’s start at the very beginning.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:24)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:40)There’s a lot of noise in the industry about “agents.” Some vendors call every chatbot an agent. Others say only fully autonomous systems count. Here’s Yang Han.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:01:50)There's certain capabilities that have to leverage predictive AI that works behind the scenes, that's more of a black box. These types of AI are complementary to what AI agents can do. So both of these types of AI need to be used properly in the right situations. And if so, they won't conflict. And in fact, they can complement off one another. So AI algorithms that occur behind the scenes that are more black box are suited for solving like a very specific problem that's more deterministic. And it typically involves, especially in our industry, high volumes of data in real time that has to be processed very quickly in a matter of milliseconds. And it has to happen at low cost, essentially. So real-time bidding environments are ideal for this because we need to make decisions on millions of data points per second in a split second. And also historical data has to be available to train these algorithms so they can solve a specific task. So this might include like optimizing towards a KPI, calculating specific but complex analytical metrics as more of a part of an overall result.Agentic AI systems, on the other hand, they can handle more dynamic interaction and inputs in flexible environments. So these are more suited for broader and general purpose applications, especially problems that can allow different types of outputs depending on what the inputs are. So anything that can mimic, let's say, a human interaction or provide guidance to people, execute workflows based on dynamic situations. Oftentimes you can use agentic systems to also operate a series of black box AI algorithms to execute a broader task and a higher level problem you're trying to solve.The key difference of agentic AI versus other forms of AI is you can directly interact with it and it can continuously adapt to complex situations and environments with varying external inputs. So whether it be inputs from humans or even other AI agents.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:57)That part is important: adaptation. Traditional AI models give you answers. Agentic systems take actions. And Yang explained that Ivy, StackAdapt’s agent, is already evolving along that spectrum.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:04:10)Ivy started out as an LLM, but we have developed capabilities now where it's beyond just a standard chatbot. It can do reporting, visualizations, measurements. It can take in inputs to generate forecasting, planning, and various other capabilities. And we are also developing IVY to be able to interact with other agents as well. So it is evolving from just an LLM into something that can be plugged into a workflow that can execute its own workflows and so forth.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:44)So think about the difference like this:. Old AI = “Give me an answer.”Agentic AI = “Understand the goal, gather inputs, make decisions, and take action.”And that evolution is reshaping creative production, optimization, and cross-channel orchestration.But even with all this promise, there’s a real question: Are marketers actually ready to use agents?\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:12)If you’ve been listening to this show, you know that adoption is often slower than innovation.In Martech for 2026, one of the most striking findings is that only 8% of organizations feel fully confident in their AI governance. That tells us a lot—this is as much an organizational shift as it is a technological one.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:05:32)I think education is key. I think on our platform, we are starting to see more and more adoption. The results are really promising when it comes to our own AI agent internally. But there is still a lot of capabilities to build out in the AI agent to be able to execute autonomously end-to-end the entire platform. Right now, there's different capabilities the AI agent can do. So that's always, in the near term, provide certain limitations for, let's say, complete adoption. But that's going to change every single year, we're going to see more and more capabilities supported on the AI agentic framework on the agentic platforms and we hope to see agents being able to integrate with one another. That will make it very powerful once integrations get supported where we can get the intelligence from one agent into IVY that can execute something very holistic and very strategic end to end.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:26)To add another perspective, I turned to Lee Odden, who is implementing AI at his agency. I asked him whether AI assistants will eventually evolve into more independent agents.\n\n\n\nLee Odden (00:06:37)I do believe there are absolutely use cases for that in an agency environment. And maybe even someday there will be a BAM agent, a Best Answer Marketing agent, right? That, I mean, initially that would be something that our own team members would use, but inevitably I could see something like that that our clients could use, you know, so sort of as an on-demand resource for them to get insightful information according to a pair ah framework that will then be continuously fed with best, you know, performance data. I know what's working, what's not and that sort of thing. And that would be limited to our clients, obviously. But yeah, I absolutely see that there's an opportunity for, agents to perform certain tasks. And I think the obstacle is, or not obstacle, it's just the consideration is that where can we have confidence of accuracy? Where can we have kind confidence in consistency of output from these agents? When we solve for consistency and quality and you know that continuity that we need in our work with an agent, then absolutely, why not rely on that resource?\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:39)So the moment we’re in is the shift from curiosity to experimentation to trust. And trust is built not just through better AI, but through better infrastructure.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:54)Here’s the big unlock: For agents to do more than answer questions—for them to act—they need a way to interact with other systems, tools, and even other agents. This is where MCP comes in. What is it?\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:08:07)MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It's basically a standard for AI to communicate with another service or another AI, essentially. So if we think about how AIs can integrate with one another to create a greater workflow to solve a greater problem, MCP is the protocol and integration method to enable that.Stackdap uses MCP internally and also as an offering to our clients. So some background Stackdap has IVY, which is our marketing AI agent. Historically, that lived within Stackdap's platform. It's an agent that you can communicate with to help you solve problems, analyze data and whatnot. But we really wanted our customers to leverage IVY even in their normal workflows and day to day in their own systems. And so we developed an MCP integration in which customers can utilize IVY and call IVY from their, you know, ChatGPT, or Claude, their favorite LLM, and then incorporate StackAdapt’s, data, planning capabilities, strategies, and whatnot into their greater workflows in a seamless flywheel, essentially.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:22)Let me add context here: Before MCP, integrating systems required engineering work — APIs, custom scripts, weeks of development time. Now two AIs can simply talk to each other. So what does this look like in real campaign execution?\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:09:39)What MCP and AI offers is a lot of, by nature, a lot of the fundamental pieces here and there. The complex part when it comes to the end marketer is really stitching it together to come up with a comprehensive flywheel from the planning phase that feeds into the execution phase, that feeds into the data measurement and uses that to learn. Because the power of AI isn't AI in isolation. You know, talking with one AI, you can get some value, but it's limiting. The power of AI and MCP is really when it all comes together so that you have multiple AIs and you figure out how they can collaborate with one another. They all have their own goals and missions. One informs the other and so forth, and you can then close that loop so that the system is ever learning. The end goal is to get to a learning system. That's the purpose of AI. Otherwise, it's just like any other system. You want to set things up in which the system can seamlessly learn on its own without, with how or little human intervention. And the only way you can do that is to have multiple AIs that can flow as inputs and outputs to one another. But to configure this, that is where a lot of the… it's open ended right now. And that's where companies are figuring out how do we piece it all together so you can create this very powerful flywheel. And I think that's an ongoing evolution every company is trying to figure out.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:14)This is the beginning of true autonomous orchestration. Not real-time bidding — that still requires millisecond-level systems — but strategic decision-making at scale. And now that agents can talk to other agents, the flywheel becomes possible: Planning → execution → measurement → learning → back to planning. That’s the future we’re steering toward.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:42)What about the rising consumer-side agents like shopping agents, recommendation agents, and conversational commerce? These systems will reshape how people discover products and how brands show up in the AI ecosystem.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:11:57)There's a lot of synergies between shopping agents and advertising as well because as people ask these agents to buy the right products for them or recommend the right products, you know, marketing is always going to play a role in terms of being able to show something that could be relevant to them as well. And to make this work, it's really important for brands to ensure that there's relevant information about the brand and the products available on the web for LLMs to suggest. So you want to ensure it makes it to the output of the LLM.And LLM optimization is very much a concept now, similar to traditional SEO. And going forward, as the agent-to-agent ecosystem continues to develop, even though this is a relatively new concept, brands should prepare to have information accessible to other agents, such as using the MCP, so that suddenly there's information shared across the board in terms of the whole digital ecosystem, so that agents can be very intelligent to recommend something really relevant when it comes to shopping purposes for a customer.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:13:11)If we look in the future, there's no doubt that agents are going to be able to do more and more. But the hope is that as agents develop to be able to handle more tasks, it will allow them like marketers and just you know humans in general to focus on more human tasks, more things that involve human to human. Because I think in general, regardless of your role, I don't think any person really enjoys the robotic and mundane part of their jobs. But the reality is that in many roles today, there's still a lot of like repetitive, pretty mind-numbing tasks that tend to take up people's times. And those are going to be ripe for disruption anyhow.And it's true that AI can do basic critical thinking on behalf of people too. But when that does become the norm, there's going to be a greater need, I think, for like true human interaction, right? And deeper interpersonal development and communication among people itself. And so the hope is that by elevating humans to get closer to one another, instead of us just interacting with machines all day, we can let machines talk to each other. You know, it will be better for like, I'd say human society overall, because we can produce more harmony, mutual understanding between people beyond like the artificial boundaries and hopefully it will bring the, you know, people in general societies closer together.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:36)That’s the heart of it. So here are the three big takeaways from today’s conversation:1. Agentic AI is already here. But adoption is uneven. Teams that invest early will gain a real competitive advantage.2. MCP is the hidden breakthrough. It’s what allows any agent to access tools, coordinate actions, and learn from multiple systems.3. The human marketer becomes more valuable, not less.Execution gets automated. Insight, strategy, creativity, and empathy become the differentiators.This is the era where marketers shift from doing everything to directing intelligent systems that work alongside them.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:15:19)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-agents-advertising#primaryimage","url":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194050/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-6_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194050/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-6_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","width":626,"height":313,"caption":"Yang Han in the AI Advertising Podcast"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/how-ai-will-orchestrate-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/how-ai-will-orchestrate-advertising"},"author":[],"headline":"How AI Will Orchestrate Advertising in 2026","datePublished":"2026-01-07T11:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-17T13:51:23+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/how-ai-will-orchestrate-advertising"},"wordCount":2728,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/how-ai-will-orchestrate-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194035/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep5_300x150-1.webp?fit=627%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"According to StackAdapt’s new report, The State of Programmatic Advertising 2026, the next phase of programmatic won’t be about incremental optimization. It will be about orchestration: unifying data, creative, channels, measurement, and AI into a single, intelligent system.\n\nIn this episode, we sit down with two industry leaders to unpack what that shift really means in practice."}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/full-funnel-marketing-ai#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/full-funnel-marketing-ai"},"author":[],"headline":"Balancing Brand & Performance: Full-Funnel Strategy and AI","datePublished":"2026-01-21T11:48:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:09:22+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/full-funnel-marketing-ai"},"wordCount":2622,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/full-funnel-marketing-ai#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194015/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep7_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.jpg?fit=626%2C314&ssl=1","keywords":["artificial intelligence","full-funnel","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMarketers have long been obsessed with performance—but is it costing us long-term growth? \n\n\n\nThis episode explores the growing tension between brand and performance marketing and the role of AI in helping marketers finally see the full funnel. \n\n\n\nBecky Tasker | VP of Growth Marketing, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Today, we’re exploring a fundamental tension in marketing: Performance vs. Brand.In a recent survey by StackAdapt and Ascend2, we found that 80% marketers prioritize performance marketing over brand building. And for many, it pays off. Top performers are three times more likely to focus heavily on performance.But there's a hidden cost. 88% of marketers say poor measurement undermines their confidence in channel performance. And 42% point to cross-funnel measurement as their top challenge.That’s what we’re calling the Orchestration Gap. And our guest today has a lot to say about it.Becky Tasker is the VP of Growth Marketing at StackAdapt. She’s seen how an over-reliance on performance marketing can backfire—and why brand building is no longer optional.Let’s get into it.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:00:58)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:13)For over a decade, marketers have refined attribution models, optimized spend, and zeroed in on ROAS. It’s made performance marketing incredibly powerful—and incredibly dominant.\n\n\n\nBecky Tasker (00:01:28)Performance marketing has really become the default because frankly, it's one of the easiest to measure now. So as marketers have really focused on things like attribution and channel performance over the last decade, we've gotten really good attribution models like first touch or last touch, or maybe it's an influence model. For some of these channels that are further downstream. But I think what has happened is we've rotated into performance marketing and proving dollar for dollar every value that we actually enact. We have lost sight of the full marketing funnel.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:06)But Becky says this narrow focus on measurable outcomes has led to a dangerous side effect: funnel shrinkage.\n\n\n\nBecky Tasker (00:02:15)When you focus on something like last touch attribution or, again, rigorous performance marketing, typically what you are looking for is that dollar for dollar return and basically being able to say, OK, if I put a dollar into one of these marketing channels, I know that I'm going to get six dollars of pipeline or six dollars of revenue in return. But what happens is you're working these folks or consumers that are always ready in the funnel. You're putting your efforts there, you're converting them. But if you're not building your top of funnel and you're building awareness and interest in getting people into work, Essentially, that funnel can dry up. And I think what some companies are starting to see is that their performance marketing, while it's still performing, it's getting tougher to perform, it's getting less efficient. And it's likely because there aren't as many warm consumers or leads to actually work.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:09)In other words, we’ve become so good at optimizing the bottom of the funnel that we’ve stopped filling the top.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:20)42% of marketers say cross-funnel measurement is their biggest barrier. And Becky agrees: the way we track impact is siloed.\n\n\n\nBecky Tasker (00:03:29)I think the biggest mistake is really focusing on the last piece of the funnel. So bottom funnel, downstream efforts where you are looking for that direct conversion. We should always be looking at that, but that is only a piece of the consumer journey. As a marketing leader, I definitely want to look at the holistic full funnel. I want to know how we are generating awareness and are we actually moving our consumers or our accounts closer to the businesses and that they're interested in? And are we actually able to capture that interest? So I would say making sure that you're looking not only at your bottom funnel or kind of last click attribution and measurement, but building out your pieces of the pie. So it has brand and awareness in it too. And you're looking holistically across the funnel.It's really uncomfortable when you're launching awareness or brand awareness campaigns and your KPIs or your metrics don't directly tie into that form fill, right? Or that purchase that you're looking for. It makes it uncomfortable because you don't have those direct results. What you need to do though, is again, take a step back, look at the full funnel journey and recognize that, okay, maybe my brand marketing is more based on impressions. Maybe it is more based on getting accounts to warm up with us or consumers to warm up with us and readiness and building that into the way that you are measuring.There is a ton of data out there, but measuring this type of impact, I think is relatively new. It's getting better and it has gotten better in the last couple of years. But now marketers should consider adding things to their toolkit like media mix modeling, where they can actually look at how they're investing in these upper channels and then do some statistical modeling and see how it's impacting downstream results, maybe three to six months later. They can also do kind of first touch attribution, multiple attribution models to get more data here. But again, you kind of have to think of your journey in different stages and different metrics for those stages.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:32)So, the answer lies in stitching together that journey. That means layering in things like media mix modeling and multitouch attribution. But as Becky points out, this shift requires more than tools. It requires trust—and alignment.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:54)So can AI help solve the measurement crisis? Maybe.\n\n\n\nBecky Tasker (00:05:58)I think one of the things about AI right now is that it's really, really great at maybe some contextual optimizations or helping us find campaign efficiencies within a campaign when our data set is really predefined and where we've got really rigorous structure behind it. I think where we still need to see AI grow and again companies grow is with a holistic infrastructure and data set, to help a marketer look at the end-to-end funnel. I always say for AI, it's as good as the base data that you give it. And so if you are operating in silos or your data structure is different, again, for upper funnel awareness marketing versus your performance marketing downstream, AI right now will have a hard time stitching it together. So a marketer does need to think about their infrastructure and data quality to fuel AI to get those results. So if we can get that infrastructure correct, I think AI can do a lot for us and really automate a lot of this at the end of the day. What I have seen though is you know marketers venture into some new measurement methods or again, MMM modeling that I mentioned earlier, and sometimes they can struggle because of the data integrity that they um actually need to clean up and you know make perfect to be used.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:18)But there’s another risk: blind trust. Becky cautions against treating AI outputs as gospel.\n\n\n\nBecky Tasker (00:07:26)You want to be careful with your AI outputs, because even if I as a marketing leader go and do something contextual with AI, not even data driven, and but you can get your AI algorithms or responses to hallucinate and start inferring what you're trying to get it to say, instead of it giving you the real results. So I think you have to exercise caution.My advice here is to always take AI with a grain of salt and validate it, until you feel really, really good about the output. And so this could be in the form of iterative testing, giving it new data, new data sets, giving it the same data set over and over again, right, and giving it different questions and seeing how it responds. But I do think there's an art and a science behind how we prompt our AI generative tools to get the right results. And so right now, again, exercise caution, absolutely use it. And I do think in a future world, we'll have something that's offering more and more benefits even quicker than it is today.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:33)If performance marketing is the short game, brand is the long game. And Becky is betting on both.\n\n\n\nBecky Tasker (00:08:40)I think one of the big things that I'm focusing on and recommending is to take a bet on awareness marketing. And so what that means in my life is we're actually dedicating our, you know, performance or our growth marketing budget in ratios of how many dollars are we going to dedicate to brand marketing and how many dollars are we going to dedicate to performance marketing. In order to do that, I had a lot of internal conversations, a lot of executive alignment, a lot of team alignment, because it can be you knowm a risk. And this is something that I would love to see marketers leave behind in 2026. It's definitely a risk for somebody like me to move all of, not all of my dollars, but some of my dollars from performance marketing, which again, I know is a dollar in and a dollar out into brand. But I am taking a bet and a belief that if I do move my money from some performance marketing channels into brand marketing, that I'll go back to that rate rising tide raises all ships concept. And we will begin to build our upper funnel and our awareness and warm leads. So our performance marketing has more to work from. I'm leaving behind just the short-term game for marketers. And I'm venturing into playing both short-term and long-term in marketing.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:05)StackAdapt’s survey data backs this up: 38% of marketing leaders now believe that aligning brand and performance will unlock the greatest long-term growth. And Becky sees it as a necessary evolution—especially in B2B.\n\n\n\nBecky Tasker (00:10:19)B2B marketers, again, for the last decade, have really thrived in building engines that anchor in performance marketing. And I do think that that is rooted in an obsession to prove every dollar that we spend as a B2B marketer has a direct impact to the business. You know, most of my B2B network or colleagues or mentors that I talk to don't spend a lot of time in brand and awareness marketing. And I do think, again, in 2026, I want to see them make that leap to get more into brands and to get more into being top of mind for consumers. There's research out there today that basically says for a B2B buyer, they are not in a purchase cycle 90% of the time. They only talk to companies when they are in a purchase cycle and they want to do most of the research themselves before they even talk to anybody in sales. So truly using advertising and programmatic and brand marketing to capture the attention, 90% of the time that they aren't in market will truly become an imperative because that dictates what companies the consumers are actually going to go to and talk when they are ready to purchase or in that 10% of their time.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:40)So what’s the one thing marketing leaders should do this year to future-proof their strategy?\n\n\n\nBecky Tasker (00:11:46)One thing that marketing leaders should invest in again, as upper funnel and brand marketing. The reason that I say this, and again, it's harder to prove out if you're comparing it to performance marketing, but if you invest there, what you're going to start seeing is more brand presence. Brand presence also equates to how is a company getting picked up in the new LLMs, right? We talked about AI a little bit earlier, but how is the company getting picked up in all of the LLMs? How is your brand presence not only bolstered through the placements you directly go and coordinate and manage with your teams, but how are they influencing where else your company shows up? You do have a belief that if you're not investing in brand marketing today, others are, right? And they will go capture the share of voice, they will capture the presence and they will be top of mind for your consumers when your consumers enter the purchase cycle. So again, it's a longer term game, but we are competing now in a world where it's more about presence and share of voice and being the top of mind for consumers and making sure we're in their hearts when they go to make a purchasing decision.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:00)And if you’re wondering whether the future is brand or performance?\n\n\n\nBecky Tasker (00:13:04)The future is both brand and performance marketing. Marketers will always have to play in performance land and make sure that we are driving results that can be directly attributable that do relate to our efforts. I think it's a balancing act of how long do we stay in performance marketing or how much do we invest in performance marketing and how do we take steps into brand marketing and awareness and upper funnel and what is a logical shift that we can bring a company on. So recommendations here are if you're dedicating something like 100% of your budget to performance marketing, try investing 20% of that into brand, and see how it goes and treat it as an experiment. Make sure you have everybody internally aligned that we're going to do that. But again, start playing both the short term game or the short game and long game.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:57)The message is clear: the marketers who win in 2026 won’t be the ones who go all-in on either side. They’ll be the ones who build a bridge between both.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:11)Let’s recap, the best marketers don’t just measure more. They orchestrate more.The bottleneck is not measurement anymore, but execution. Most marketers already have enough data and visibility. The real advantage now comes from how you use that data to make unified, cross-channel decisions that drive growth. It’s not about better attribution—it’s about better alignment.Here are 3 moves you can make now:Audit your funnel orchestration: Map how your teams and platforms work together across the funnel. Where are the handoffs broken? Where are signals siloed?Rebalance for long-term growth: Shift at least 20% of your performance budget into brand. Track downstream impact over time—and align your team around both short- and long-term goals.Invest in operational alignment, not just analytics: Make sure your data, creative, media, and messaging are working in sync. AI can help—but only if your foundation is connected.The marketers who win in 2026 will be the ones who act in unison.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:15:27)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-marketing-automation#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-marketing-automation"},"author":[],"headline":"AI, Automation, and the Real Edge in Marketing Ops","datePublished":"2026-02-04T11:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:09:13+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-marketing-automation"},"wordCount":3143,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-marketing-automation#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210193955/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep8.jpg?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","artificial intelligence","email","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAI in marketing automation has reached an inflection point. The tools are powerful, budgets are rising, and AI now touches everything from campaign planning to personalization. But outcomes are still inconsistent.\n\n\n\nChris Bentley | Director, Marketing Operations and Analytics, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n Wayne Coburn | Director of Product, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)AI in marketing automation has reached an inflection point. Advanced capabilities are widely available. Budgets are growing. And AI now supports everything from planning to personalization. Yet results remain uneven.StackAdapt research points to a structural problem: 66% of marketers say up to 30% of programmatic budget is wasted due to siloed or fragmented execution. Adoption has moved faster than coordination.AI in marketing automation no longer delivers advantage through features alone. Performance now comes from consolidation, integration, and activating AI as a shared intelligence layer across fewer, more powerful systems.To unpack this, I’m joined by two StackAdapt leaders who sit on opposite sides of the same challenge: Chris Bentley, Director of Marketing Operations and Analytics, and Wayne Coburn, Director of Product.You’ll hear them together across the episode, because the point isn’t “ops vs product.” The point is: automation breaks when teams run AI in silos. And it gets powerful when AI becomes a shared layer underneath the journey.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:21)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:35)Let’s start at ground level. What are marketers missing right now? Wayne says it’s not that the ideas aren’t there—it’s that tool abundance and complexity is getting in the way of effectiveness.\n\n\n\nWayne Coburn (00:01:49)There's a lot of stuff people are missing. It's just because the tools are kind of hard to use or there's a lot of tools out there, but trying to to get them to be effective can be kind of hard. And where I see the most benefit is helping marketers figure out who to target. So the audiences they want to go after, and then coupled with the messages trying to go out to them. There is some stuff out there right now in the market that will allow you to do some of those things. But I think the really cool innovations are coming. And so it's less about missing things because they're not there and more about we're sort of on the cusp of some really cool innovations that allow marketers to do their job, just be a lot more effective at their job, have much more efficient use of their budgets.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:40)Chris comes at it from the ops side. For most of his career, the word was automation — efficiency, workflows, moving data. But AI changes what automation can mean.\n\n\n\nChris Bentley (00:02:53)I've been in marketing operations for over a decade now. And I'd say, you know, until the last few years, if people asked me about my job, I would have oriented on the word automation, right? That's really the center of a lot of what's going on. How do we just get efficient with our processes, you know, move, move data to and fro and and keep things running smoothly. Over the last few years with AI kind of changing the norm.There's probably two areas where I broadly see AI making the biggest impact in my work these days. First, you have a greatly improved ability to structure and categorize data. So before AI agents became the norm, when you wanted to enrich your data set, you know, you would have to go to kind of universal data sets that most companies want to use. And so think about company location, industry, employee count, things where there's like a clear answer and then we can all kind of align on our definition. That's always been a limiting factor, right? There's a lot of things that a business cares about in terms of structuring and classifying their data that might be more unique to them and you're not going to be able to go out and find a data set that already exists. Now, with agentic orchestration businesses can much more easily structure data in those unique ways. Take StackAdapt, for example, we care a lot about our customers' advertising habits. And that's something that you know we want to group our audiences by that. That just always isn't available. With AI agents, you can start to build unique prompts and empower them with the research that allows you to get a pretty good idea of how people fit into your models.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:36)This is the pivot: AI isn’t just an execution engine, but an intelligence engine—that is, if you can structure inputs and connect outputs across the journey.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:51)When adoption moves faster than coordination, you get what I’ll call automation debt. It shows up as: underused capabilities, redundant tools, broken handoffs between paid and owned, and a system that can’t learn because outcomes aren’t connected back to decisions. Chris warns that AI can scale the wrong thing very fast.\n\n\n\nChris Bentley (00:05:16)I think across the board the risk is bloat. So you have you know you start measuring every single signal that you can imagine, just hoping that you're going to find something like you know throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. And then what happens is, you know, you start to ask AI to generate messaging at scale, like I mentioned for the sales team, but you're not putting in the upfront work to actually provide enough context and framing to get a good output. And then what you're happening, you know, then what you end up with is just a proliferation of data that is not particularly useful and starts to create a lot of noise rather than helping you find the signal.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:55)Wayne describes the human reality of that debt: when acquisition and retention operate separately, the customer experience fractures and performance suffers.\n\n\n\nWayne Coburn (00:06:06)Ultimately, it's all about the conversions at the end of the day, right? You have something that you are trying to do with your marketing automation. You have some sort of goal. You want people to buy something you want to generate a lead. And I would definitely be looking at those. I mean, those are lagging indicators, but that's ultimately what you're, what you're trying to drive. And so I'd always keep an eye on that. I'd also try to figure out what some leading indicators are, like visits to websites and things like that, that you can say, okay, this is showing that things are healthy even before we have a conversion, monitor those. And if you see drop-offs, if you see issues, then you know that you have a problem. um If you find that you've made major automation more complex, but none of these numbers are changing, and then obviously you've done something that is not helping at all. Or if the numbers, like you make a change and the numbers go down, like that's even worse. So always keep an eye on that. um I'd also try to make sure that my advertising and my retention marketing, my email marketing are connected in some way because you're acquiring customers and what a lot of brands do, well, they'll they'll have an acquisition team, pay for advertising, acquire a bunch of customers, throw those customers over a wall to the retention team to go and try to retain them. And, you know, the retention team really has very little control over where these people are coming from. They don't, they aren't necessarily the people they want to be marketing to. And so you need to have really good connection between the acquisition and the retention to make sure that you're retaining your your most valuable people and you're growing people with the most potential growing the LTV and you know, whatever you're trying to do is you're getting, you're doing it in a way that is intelligent. You're pulling the right people through the funnel. And I think that's where the biggest disconnect usually is, if you have this wall of, you know, so I'm advertising, someone shows up on a website, they fill out a form, great, I have an email address and now I'm starting to email them. I don't necessarily know what ad took them to the website in the first place. Maybe I know, maybe I don't, maybe I'm making some assumptions. And so now I'm hitting them with these emails that maybe have a different call to action and the whole thing falls apart and they don't end up actually so you know signing up for a demo or or buying something.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:28)This is exactly why feature accumulation doesn’t create advantage anymore. If your stack is fragmented, you don’t get compounding learning. You get compounding complexity.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:43)In this episode, when we say marketing automation, we’re not talking about one channel. We’re talking about AI-driven orchestration across paid media and adjacent owned touchpoints. Wayne explains what orchestration looks like in real life.\n\n\n\nWayne Coburn (00:09:00)So the orchestration piece is, you know, you have a customer journey or multiple customer journeys that you're trying to get someone to walk down. And the most common example of this is a welcome series. So someone signs up for your service, you send them a welcome email, and then maybe a day later you send them another email. And then you see if they've logged in, um And if they've logged in, you send them email A and if they haven't logged in, you send them email B to try to bring them back, et cetera. And so you have decision forks and trying to, you know, delays and forks and things like that where you're trying to figure out what to do. I think some of the coolest things that are out there are going to help you route people intelligently through these orchestrations and say, okay, well, intelligently, instead of me having to say, if then else to determine whether or not I'm going to send someone Ad A or Ad B, let's have the AI figure out what's the propensity of someone going clicking on Ad A versus Ad B, and then showing them that one and taking them down that fork versus another fork.And so I think there's some really cool stuff out there that will help help us that decisioning and help tune these orchestrations to the individual person that's moving through them as you layer in both programmatic and an email if you have it, and make sure that you're giving everybody an experience that is tuned directly to them as opposed to something that's based exclusively on some sort of logic and actions or inactions that people have taken.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:32)Chris brings it to the sales handoff: AI can package the context — research, touchpoints, product relevance — so sellers act with speed and precision.\n\n\n\nChris Bentley (00:10:44)A large B2B marketing team is generating a lot of qualified leads for sales. And we have a vested interest in making sure that those leads get followed up with well and that our sellers are successful in reaching out. Providing context is how we boost that success rate. This has always been true, but I think with with AI agent steps, you you have a lot more power at your fingertips to be able to package up all the information you have, any company research that has been conducted, um you know all the summary of marketing touch points, as well as any product data for this particular customer segment, and provide all that to the seller so that they get all the prep work they need right at the moment that you're asking them to work a lead. And in many cases, we can even provide them with sample messaging to make that first outreach easy.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:29)That’s orchestration: one journey, one intelligence layer, fewer gaps.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:38)Now here’s a subtle but critical distinction. The best AI automation today isn’t fully autonomous. It’s AI as an intelligence layer beneath the workflow—identifying what’s working, surfacing what isn’t, and guiding better decisions. Wayne puts it plainly.\n\n\n\nWayne Coburn (00:11:57)AI can really help you identify problems that you need to solve. AI can help you with your visual data visualizations and show you what things are working, what things are not working.  So it can help with the execution piece of it, but yeah, it can really help you in understanding what's going on and give you hints on what you need to do to improve it. That's a really good use of AI right now.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:24)Chris adds a key point: AI can reduce human bias in qualification, especially when marketers over-index on engagement and miss fit.\n\n\n\nChris Bentley (00:12:34)When evaluating the quality of a lead, we all have bias, especially marketing, because we have a you know vested interest in qualifying lots of leads for a sales team. And I think typically when you're scoring the lead, you are looking for some combination of the fit and their engagement. you know So how much do I believe this person is actually who we want to sell to And you know what's the likelihood that they're going to respond to us? Are they actually paying attention to us?And I think marketers can over-index on engagement. We are, you know, excited to see leads downloading a white paper or registering for a webinar. And we want to say, hey, this person's qualified, you know, get them get them moving in the funnel. When in reality, maybe they're just learners, you know, maybe they're just kind of interested in a more abstract way in what we're doing. And, you know, a seller will tell you right away, this person's not going to buy. So I think the benefit that AI can add in analyzing these signals is really reducing bias in qualifying for readiness.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:44)Let’s talk about consolidation. Because if AI becomes a shared intelligence layer, your stack can’t be twenty separate brains giving you twenty different answers. Chris talks about evaluating tools with discipline, looking for capabilities that truly move the needle, and being wary of big “one-stop AI” promises.\n\n\n\nChris Bentley (00:14:08)I think for me and my personal evaluations of tools, I try to think small. We're at a moment of great AI brainstorming where there are so many ideas of how AI can be applied in a tool. We're not at a point where you're getting really rock solid universal solutions. So I try and look, does this AI feature set unlock a new capability that's really gonna move the needle for my work today? And if it is, and if I can justify that, then I'm comfortable you know layering it on. But I do try and be leery of you know complete overhauls with ah with a tool that promises it's AI everything across the board and your one-stop solution.\n\n\n\nWayne Coburn (00:14:51)I've talked to a couple different people from different companies and they talk about how in the race to AI-fi everything, they end up with multiple processes, multiple AI stacks inside their companies. And even with the knowledge bases being exactly the same, because the stacks are different, depending on where the employees go, they're getting different answers. And that is a problem and they need to consolidate. And so I guess this is another place where going faster isn't necessarily better if you have a lot of duplication. LMS and AI are inherently non-deterministic. And that's part of it's part of the beauty and part of what the power is. But because it's non-deterministic, if you have multiple systems internally, all trying to do the same thing, giving you different answers, you know your employees are going to be like, I give up.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:15:42)Let’s make this actionable. Here are practical steps you can take in the next 30 to 90 days to reduce automation debt and turn AI into a shared intelligence layer.Step 1. Map one end-to-end journey—paid to owned—and call out the handoffs. Pick one motion: programmatic ad, then a site visit, then a form fill, then nurture, then sales outreach. And just follow the baton. Where does it get dropped? Where does the next system have no idea what the previous one already learned?Step 2. Pick a few signals that actually mean someone’s ready to buy. Don’t score every click. Look for a combo: it’s an ICP account, they’ve hit your pricing or demo page, and maybe you’re seeing competitor research. That’s buying. A single whitepaper download? That’s learning.”Step 3. Since you can’t consolidate the whole stack in 90 days, consolidate decisions instead. If two systems are scoring or labeling leads, pick one owner and one source of truth. Decide: where does the official lead stage live? Where does the official score live? Then make every other tool consume that definition, not invent its own. You can keep multiple tools for now — just stop letting them disagree.”.Step 4. Put AI where it can guide decisions, not just generate output. Use AI to highlight drop-offs, diagnose underperformance, and recommend focus areas—not just produce more creative.Step 5. Do a weekly lead review with sales. What converted, what didn’t, and why? Then update the scoring, prompts, or routing rules so next week’s handoffs get sharper.The main takeaway of this episode is this: AI in marketing automation no longer delivers advantage through features alone. Performance now comes from consolidation, integration, and activating AI as a shared intelligence layer across fewer, more powerful systems.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:18:13)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-retail-advertising#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-retail-advertising"},"author":[],"headline":"AI in Retail: Relevance at Scale and Incremental Growth","datePublished":"2026-02-18T11:01:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:09:05+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-retail-advertising"},"wordCount":2252,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-retail-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260218094730/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep9.jpg?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","ecommerce","podcast","retail"],"articleSection":["Digital advertising trends"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs AI reshapes retail advertising with real-time optimization, faster creative testing, and new ways to reach shoppers across CTV, the open web, and commerce environments—one big question remains:\n\n\n\nCan AI actually deliver relevance at scale and prove what’s truly incremental?\n\n\n\nDana Karlin | Head of Commerce, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Retail marketers are feeling the squeeze. Budgets are tighter. Reporting doesn’t always match across platforms. And leadership keeps coming back to one blunt question: did this drive new sales, or just take credit for sales that were already going to happen?The industry is spending fast. WARC expects global retail media spend to hit $196 billion dollars in 2026—about 16% of all ad spend.Meanwhile, product discovery is changing. Adobe reported generative AI traffic to U.S. retail sites was up 4,700% YoY in July 2025.So how do retail and ecommerce marketers win when shopping journeys happen everywhere, not in a straight line? And how do you prove what’s truly working?Today I’m joined by Dana Karlin, Head of Commerce at StackAdapt—previously part of the team that helped build TikTok’s retail vertical. We’re going to unpack what’s stressing retail marketers right now, how to make relevance actionable across channels, and the real impact AI is having on commerce marketing.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:25)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:40)Retail marketers are under pressure to grow sales and show clear ROI.\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:01:45)Q1 is supposed to be our break, but it feels like lately within the last few years, we haven't had much of a break. So I would say the biggest thing that are keeping people up at night is the pressure to prove incrementality. We have shrinking budgets and really fragmented consumer journeys. So retailers are being asked to do more with less, while shoppers are moving more fluidly than ever across channels. They're discovering on social, they're researching on CTV, they're converting on retail media networks. So the funnel hasn't necessarily disappeared, but it's collapsed. And shoppers are not necessarily moving in stages anymore. They're really moving in moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:30)When shoppers move in moments, it changes the boardroom question from “what performed?” to “what actually drove new demand?”\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:02:40)The biggest question that we get is how we're generating demand and not just capturing what's already there. CFOs and financial folks want to see more testing than ever. They want to see lift studies. They want to see incrementality testing. And they want proof that media spend is actually generating demand and not just intercepting existing intent. The challenge is especially acute for e-commerce brands specifically that are over-reliant on search and bottom funnel tactics. Search is capturing demand. It's not necessarily creating it.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:20)So, if you need to generate demand, then you can't just pour everything into the bottom of the funnel, and hope for the best.\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:03:33)Three key places are where we see spend wasted. Overinvestment in bottle bottom funnel tactics without upper funnel support. That's something unfortunately we see a lot. um This leads brands to harvest demand but not create it as I've said, which is super important. um And then that's immediately followed by a media spend reaching diminishing return. So I would also say number two is channel silos that create redundant targeting and frequency waste across retail media networks, programmatic and social. And then finally, the third thing I would say is treating all first party data equally. so recency and context matter enormously. Automating noise is easy. But automating relevance is the real challenge.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:23)That last thought—automating relevance vs automating noise—is the entire game. But to do it, we have to understand where decisions are starting to form. This is a topic we discussed in a previous episode with Becky Tasker, where we talked about filling the upper funnel so the bottom funnel doesn’t dry up.Now, it is said that retail is everywhere now. But “everywhere” doesn’t mean “spray and pray.” I asked Dana what she thinks this means.\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:04:54)I would say research and validation moments that happen away from point of sale. So think product review, comparison shopping on publisher sites, social proof from creators, contextual moments like recipe content for CPG or home improvement articles for furniture. for furniture if you don't own the checkout, you have to own the moment is something that I always like to say.At StackAdapt, we see shoppers engaging with contextual content showing a much stronger purchase intent than those that are just browsing retail purchase categories.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:29)Those moments are spread across retail sites, the open web, social, and streaming. Each platform measures success differently. Privacy rules and signal loss make it harder to connect the dots. So marketers end up with a bunch of separate reports—and no single story.That’s why measurement standards have become such a big deal. Groups like the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC) are pushing for clearer, more consistent ways to define and measure retail media across onsite, offsite, and even in-store.So if the shopper journey is scattered—and the measurement is scattered—what’s the system that can connect signals to activation, and activation to outcomes?\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:23)This is where the idea of relevance at scale really matters. By that, we mean showing the right message to the right person at the right time—across all the places people discover and shop. And the argument is: AI helps you figure out what “right” looks like in real time, but you still need a system to activate that relevance across the open web, CTV, and retail environments—and then measure what actually drove new sales. Dana breaks this down with a concrete commerce example.\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:06:58)So let's say a shopper abandons a cart for running shoes. That signal gets ingested into our platform within minutes. Our AI identifies intent earlier by evaluating that commerce signal alongside contextual predictive signals. ah That serves personalized creative while bidding higher when that user appears on premium fitness content. So AI thinks in moments, programmatic moves in real time. So within 48 to 72 hours, we can see conversion lift and feed that signal directly into optimized bidding and creative in real time.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:36)That’s the loop: signals, context, creative, bidding, outcomes—then learning. So where is the real impact right now?\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:07:46)Bidding for sure. That's something that really matters and AI is having a big impact because commerce moments are multiplying and machine learning models can process thousands of signals per impression. So adjusting bidding base on time of day, device, contextual targeting, proximity to purchase signals and inventory. At StackAdapt, our bidding algorithms consistently learn, which combines predictive conversion and adjust in real time. So we're actually seeing 20 to 30% efficiency gains.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:22)And it’s not just about optimizing within one “screen.” It’s about orchestrating across the whole journey.\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:08:29)Programmatic provides scale and AI provides the ability to have intelligence. So human planning can't keep up with the number of moments that are happening across the fragmented consumer journey. um And really what programmatic does is it gives the ability for AI to decide when relevance matters and programmatic comes in and decides where your brand should be showing up. um So we can make bid decisions in mid milliseconds across display video, native, audio, and CTV simultaneously versus obviously social is just one screen.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:08)This is where AI stops being a headline and starts showing up in innovative retail marketing strategies. People are using new tools to discover products, validate choices, and narrow down what they want. So the number of moments that shape a purchase keeps growing. And marketers have to stay relevant in all of them. Which is why creative—and how fast you can adapt it—matters more than ever.\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:09:35)Dynamic creative at true scale is something that's been unlocked recently and is changing the industry. So we can now produce hundreds of variations and test them all simultaneously. AI enables creative to adapt content, intent, and environmental issues in real time. A product ad next to a recipe article highlights cooking features while the same product on a fitness site emphasizes health benefits. So AI turns creative from a static asset into a dynamic experience and programmatic delivers the right creative at the right moment.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:14)But with generative creative comes risk—brand safety, weird outputs, pushing brands beyond comfort zones.\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:10:25)When we first launched AI creative at my previous employer, we had a lot of issues with the generative AI creative. And there were some things that were launched that brands were not necessarily comfortable with. It's very much pushing brands outside of their comfort zone and what has worked in the past. So I think it's something that we're all figuring out together and it's something that we all really need to like to lean into testing together. It's new to consumers as well. So I think it's something that... keeping brand authenticity at the center of everything that we're doing is absolutely crucial so that brands can remain authentic, but also bring users along. And we all understand that AI is the center of conversation right now. Like if you watch the Super Bowl, what percentage of the ads were AI related. So humans understand that this is coming, that it's going to be a big part of their life. So I don't think that we're going to see as high of aversion to it as I think we originally guessed. But that testing framework is just so crucial. And AI truly gives us the ability to optimize in ways that we never have before. So it's definitely a positive for me.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:47)When commerce is everywhere, relevance isn’t optional. AI makes relevance possible at scale. Programmatic makes it actionable—across channels and in real time—a proof layer. Dana defines “relevance at scale” in a way that connects directly to incrementality.\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:12:05)So talking about relevance at scale, to me, that means that we're delivering the right message to the right shopper at the right moment across every channel that they use with measurement that proves it drove incremental purchases, not just capturing existing demand.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:21)Now, two practical questions retail marketers should always ask are: How do we prove incrementality quickly? And, what’s the one move we should make this quarter?\n\n\n\nDana Karlin (00:12:34)I think brands being able to prove incrementality is becoming BAU, right? And it's something that we must do consistently. So I would say geo holdout testing or audience-based holdout testing is where we can truly prove incrementality. So take 15%, 10% maybe of your audience, completely suppress them from your campaign, and then compare conversion rates and purchase frequency between the exposed and holdout groups over, say, 30 to 45 days. Pair that with multi-touch attribution that goes beyond last click and credits upper funnel and mid funnel touch points. For example, at StackAdapt, we help clients set these tests up so that they can measure lift across both direct conversion and assisted conversion. The goal in 60 days isn't perfect attribution, but it's credible evidence of incremental impact.If I were to give a retail leader one piece of advice this quarter, it would be to start layering contextual targeting on top of your audience targeting and then measure the lift.Take your high performing audience segments and test them in contextually relevant environments. home improvement content for home goods, lifestyle and wellness for beauty, recipe content for CPGs, you'll likely see higher engagement, better conversion rates and stronger brand lift measurable within six to eight weeks. When commerce is everywhere, relevance isn't optional. AI and programmatic make it actionable.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:10)Here are the practical takeaways for your next planning cycle:First, anchor your strategy in demand creation—not just bottom-funnel capture.Prove what’s real: run a simple, defensible incrementality test (geo or audience holdout) over 30–45 days.Treat signals like signals, not noise: prioritize recency and context, not just “more data.”Let AI do what it’s best at today: real-time bidding and optimization across thousands of signals per impression.Build creative for automated relevance: keep it modular, test lots of variations, and use clear brand guardrails so personalization stays on-brand.And, finally, win outside the checkout: show up in the research and validation moments, especially if you don’t own the point of sale.In a world where retail is everywhere, the brands that win are the most relevant, in the moments that matter, with proof to back it up.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:15:23)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-retail-advertising","url":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-retail-advertising","name":"AI in retail: Delivering relevance at scale and incremental growth","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#website"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-retail-advertising#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260218094730/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep9.jpg?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","datePublished":"2026-02-18T11:01:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:09:05+00:00","description":"AI is reshaping retail advertising with real-time optimization, faster creative testing, and new ways to reach shoppers.","inLanguage":"en-US"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-retail-advertising#primaryimage","url":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260218094730/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep9.jpg?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260218094730/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep9.jpg?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","width":626,"height":313,"caption":"Dana Karlin"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-targeting-for-sports-fans#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-targeting-for-sports-fans"},"author":[],"headline":"AI Targeting for Sports Fans Ahead of the 2026 World Cup","datePublished":"2026-03-04T11:40:15+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:08:57+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-targeting-for-sports-fans"},"wordCount":3325,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-targeting-for-sports-fans#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260304090220/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep10.jpg?fit=626%2C314&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","contextual targeting","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe 2026 FIFA World Cup will be the biggest ever—48 teams, 104 matches—and it’s the ultimate test of reaching the right fans at scale without intrusive tracking. \n\n\n\nThis episode breaks down how AI-driven contextual targeting separates intent (not just interest) to reach both hardcore soccer fans (tactics, lineups, odds, analysis) and culture/moment fans (national pride, watch parties, travel, lifestyle/celebrity), with different creative, timing, and KPIs.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter | Regional Agency Development Manager (LATAM), StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)The FIFA World Cup is the biggest attention market in sports—and 2026 will be the biggest edition ever. FIFA’s official schedule confirms 48 teams and 104 matches, running June 11 to July 19, 2026.To appreciate what that means for marketers, look at Qatar 2022: FIFA reported around 5 billion people engaged with tournament content across platforms and devices, and the Final reached close to 1.5 billion viewers. FIFA also cited Nielsen data showing 93.6 million posts, 262 billion cumulative social reach, and 5.95 billion engagements.If attention is the scarce resource, the World Cup is the biggest attention market in the world—so the question is: how do you target the right fans at scale without relying on intrusive tracking?Most TV and CTV buyers get lean-back—that means, the sit-back, big-screen moment. But lean-forward is what happens around it: the same person grabs a phone to search, scroll, chat, or shop while the game is still on, and that’s where contextual targeting can do a lot of the work.Today’s guest is Martin Perelmuter, Regional Agency Development Manager for LATAM at StackAdapt.We’ll talk about how AI—especially contextual intelligence—helps brands separate intent, plan omnichannel, and measure lift in a way executives trust.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:45)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:00)Most plans still start with a single audience label—“World Cup fans.” But that approach breaks the moment you try to scale it globally.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:02:10)So I feel that the first misconception and what I believe something that we as marketers need to make sure we understand is that the World Cup audience is not one audience. And it's important to understand that the hardcore soccer fan differs very much from someone who's not hardcore or someone who's really not interested in the actual game itself, right? if you buy And the issue is that if you buy one segment of hardcore fans, you're deluding the relevance among other ah audiences and also the creative impact, which is a big problem. So the real opportunity is segmenting and the real opportunity is really to find the intent and not the interest.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:45)That “intent vs. interest” line matters because the World Cup is not a single media moment—it’s 104 separate matches, plus pre- and post-coverage, plus culture and celebrity conversation that takes on a life of its own. So when we say “hardcore,” we’re really talking about what people consume—and what they do next.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:03:07)So hardcore fans. We consider them for what we are bringing to market. Someone who consumes tactics, lineups, transfers, what are the odds of one game versus the other, fantasy game, for example, or really deep analysis. Those are the users or the users who really follow the qualifiers, they follow the game, they follow each, even if it's their own team or someone else's team or or or country, and they do it throughout the, before, during, and even after the tournament. So for those, they expect performance-driven campaigns, and then it's very important to do utility-based messaging.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:42)And then there’s a second, massive cohort: people who show up because the World Cup becomes culture.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:03:49)Meanwhile, we have, for example, what we could consider cultural or moment fans, which are more engaged around nationalism. So they care about what's going on with their country. For example, Mexico's playing against someone else. So they're going to be involved if they're Mexicans in this specific game. They're going to go to watch parties. They're going to travel, they're interested in fashion, celebrities.Those users tend to consume soccer content closer to match dates, or specifically on the day off or during the game. So the double screen, or right before or right after watching the you know what's going on with the game before, or our what the goals that they that they made after. And they respond more to emotional, they're more of a community-based storytelling. They're a little different than the hardcore fan.So mainly the difference in the two are the context clusters, the timing window, like I said, and also we need to really differentiate the KPIs. One is more performance-based and the other one is more of a brand building opportunity.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:55)Here’s the practical issue: the same names, teams, and keywords show up in wildly different types of content. A player, like the French star Killian Mbappe, can live in tactics coverage, and also in lifestyle coverage. So if you’re using old-school keyword targeting, you’re going to blend audiences that should stay separate.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:05:18)So, when we talk about contextual targeting in this case, we're using it in a very precise way. It's not just about identifying a keyword like Mbappe or Messi or football or anything like that, but it's more about understanding why this person or this topic is being mentioned or what those signals about the audience. For example, if the context is breaking down Mbappe or Messi, like we said, any of those people or topic, or names, performance, analyzing tactics, discussing the 32 goals he scored, or even if it's previewing the match or reporting on an injury, that's one type of user. That's a performance-driven fan who's deeply engaged with the sports, the sport itself, but if the context is about Mbappe, in a lifestyle context, for example, what he's wearing, where he's vacationing, what kind of car he drives, what kind of shoes he wears, or even the way he cuts his socks in the back, that's completely different audience. It's a broader audience, more cult driven and often more entertainment focused. So Page Context AI allows us to distinguish between those nuances. It classifies intent, sentiment, and thematic relevance. We are able to understand whether the conversation is tactical, cultural, commercial, and it adapts dynamically, picking up on evolving slang, memes, and trends, that's so, that's what's so important about it. It keeps us aligned with what the context actually means in the moment.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:48)That “dynamically update” point is a big deal during a tournament because language changes fast: nicknames, chants, memes, and storylines shift match by match. Meanwhile, brand teams are trying to stay adjacent to the conversation without stepping into the wrong one.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:12)Even without cross-site tracking, there’s still a strong signal stack available: contextual signals, first-party audiences, and the moments people raise their hand through behavior—search, planning, and real-world mCup scale, the hard part is keeping relevance without shrinking reach.Now, if you’re listening and you’ve got first-party data—site visitors, CRM, app behavior—the temptation is to make that a hard gate. But for the World Cup, gating too hard can cut you off from the “World Cup curious” audience that only appears during peak moments.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:07:48)We need to first start with a contextual cluster that's very broad, right? And then what we do is once we know that this is our universe, what are we gonna do to then go specifically into our audience with first party data? So we have a contextual cluster we created. We know these are the different signals that we want to have within the audience or within the cluster. And then we overlay first-party as a prioritization layer. It's not a restriction layer, but more prioritization. We want to first hit these users, and then we want to inform creative sequencing, for example. We want to not over limit delivery. And then we want to create tiers, right? Like first tier, maybe first-party plus context.The second tier, maybe just context only, right, for scale. um And then the idea is to maintain and scale ah size while we can continue being relevant. So we want to use first party data really to layer on top or maybe to start from, but always create exponential reach, whether it be lookalike or whether it be through contextual expansions and so and so forth.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:57)World Cup attention isn’t just “what you watch”—it’s how you watch. FIFA’s own recap of 2022 describes an ecosystem of platforms and devices; that’s a polite way of saying: fans bounce between big screen, mobile, and social constantly. So omnichannel is the only way to match the behavior.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:09:18)The second screen or the idea of being on the phone while watching something is not new. That's something that's been happening even since the past World Cup or maybe even one and a half, two World Cups ago, like eight, 10 years, right? The other day I read that there's production companies who are really making sure that the overall message of the movie they're producing resonates three times in the movie because people are not really paying attention, but they're with the phone. So the same thing happens when you're watching a game, when you're watching TV. So the CTV captures an emotional lean back moment. But then you you want to leverage your phone to maybe reach out to a person, reach out to your friend, or so on and so forth. So we need to make sure that we capture both the emotional and also the active um lean forward behavior that the person has with the phone. So during matches, it's important to have an impact ideally on the TV, but also on the phone or maybe on other screens. right Really, this omnichannel approach is super important during the World Cup times. And not only during matches itself, but during the whole time. Because like I said, people may be watching a repeat of the game, or they may be watching the analysis that they're doing about it. And the goal is to really use contextual targeting during those mobile synced moments, to really engage with the user and reinforce the CTV message with a tactical port opportunity with the phone. right So the context will ensure that we are aligned with what they're trying to capture from the game or from what they're watching. And this double this double ah approach or this double opportunity will really resonate a lot stronger than just doing one or the other.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:11:01)And 2026 adds another layer: physical movement. Three countries, multiple host cities, airports, transit—this is one of those rare tentpole events where digital plus real-world context can be planned together.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:11:18)Digital performance is going to play a big role within this World Cup in different ways. It will, of course, all depend on where the user is based. There's three countries right now during the World Cup. So it's going to differ whether you are in the market in the country or if you are, for example, in other parts of Latin America or in Europe, we're just watching it, right? And also will depend on what time of the day the games happen. So the strategy will be different depending on where you are or what you do or what you see or who you're targeting. But we need to consider that now we have access to programmatic transit hubs, airports, right You may be a brand from Europe, from Latin America, but you want to impact those users who are going to the World Cup. So you want to show out-of-home ads within the airport, right, whether it's when they leave or when they come back, whether it's on the, right? So it's important. Also in stadiums, fan zones, retail corridors, bars, hospitality districts, and that's going to help us really connect with the user.So what we're going to see, ah of what i or i for what I foresee that we're going to end up seeing is that sure targeted exposures are going to create audiences, and then we're going to sing the message across mobile, CTV, digital out-of-home. We're going to use geo-leaf testing to prove incremental impact. We're going to be able to measure the impact not only in terms of the number of people reached, but also what happened after. Did the person ever go to the store? Did the person ever go to the dealership to buy a car because they saw the ad? So we're going to be able to really create this omnichannel campaign uh of course based on the strategy so it's very hard to talk about specifics that will really allow us to measure and take action in life.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:00)Now, creative is where campaigns usually underperform at big events—because brands try to run one message for everyone, for the entire tournament window. And that’s where Dynamic Creative Optimization or DCO becomes a serious lever. DCO is basically the system that helps rotate and tailor creative variations based on signals like audience, context, and timing, so you don’t burn people out with the same ad 40 times.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:13:30)A lot of times we think that something such as DCO is only for a retailer or someone who has a very big broad number of products, right? But sometimes we want to really make sure that we understand that one message does not fit everyone or one ah one is not for all, right? And also we need to make sure that we understand that over frequency during a short period of time, this will come to not be what a month, month and a half.Maybe we add a little bit of time before, a little bit of time after. If we show the same creative or the same um campaign during the whole time, it's going to create more frequency, right? We're going to show it too many times to the right user. They're going to ignore it. um And that's not what we want. So not rotating creative based on context is also an issue. So we want to make sure that we leverage things such as DCO. That could be a good way or really like shifting creatives across the times that we are... delivering the campaign, understanding who we're using this creative for.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:52)One of the traps of tentpole events is reporting like it’s a normal campaign: CTR, viewability, maybe completion rate—and that’s it. But the World Cup is where you should expect a mix of outcomes: brand movement, engagement movement, and in some categories, real conversion impact.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:15:11)We need to make sure that whatever we do impacts the overall company strategy and we need to align with that. So we need to make sure that we measure everything. We need to make sure that we do brand list studies. If it's an awareness campaign, for example, or that we focus on an engagement lift. If you're looking for a behavioral change and act accordingly during the campaign and not when it's over and we just report it, we can look into conversion lifts wherever applicable and wherever we can do it in terms of whether it's an opportunity. Understand really like Is the effort that we made really make a difference in terms of sales? Can we do this test? We can also do a geo-based incrementality test. And ah really another one that I think that we're gonna see a lot of is the pre, during, and post readouts. Understanding who the user, before the World Cup, understanding who the user is, understanding who our customer really is, or what is it gonna look like during the World Cup.During the World Cup, really leveraging the previous campaign's data that we have and tweaking it to make sure it performs correctly. And then at the end of the day, when the World Cup's over, leverage those insights to continue throughout maybe a month, a month and a half, because that's gonna continue happening. So really understanding the ultimate economic or business goal, will really help us go beyond just a click or CTR or viewability metric, which end up being metrics, not really performance goals.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:16:43)And there’s one more piece marketers can’t ignore during the World Cup: volatility. When the conversation shifts—politics, controversy, tragedy—brands need controls that protect them without wiping out the scale they came for.\n\n\n\nMartin Perelmuter (00:16:58)So there are concerns. These concerns always exist in different ways. Now it's politics. It used to be many other things. It's like, for example, with airlines, when there's an accident, they don't want to be showing their ads next to content that's related to that, for example. That's a very well-known old trick. But what we're going to do is we're gonna use AI to stay close to relevant conversations and avoid hard explosions that eliminate scale, right? We're going to make sure that we use AI and use contextual AI to really understand what the context of the page is, really understand if you're talking about politics, what kind of politics is it? Is it local? Is it international? Is it negative? Could be positive, right? They could be talking about politics. the government's building a a park, and it could be a positive thing. So really understanding that and monitoring the volatility in real time will help us really update context clusters dynamically, be able to shift from one place to the other, block or not block the content, and really leverage targeting capabilities and technology, especially in this world of AI, like we were just saying, to understand what the user is consuming online.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:18:10)Let’s turn this into a plan you can actually run.First, don’t buy “World Cup fans.” Build at least two intent cohorts: Hardcore and Culture fans.Second, make contextual intelligence your default spine. At World Cup scale, it’s the cleanest way to stay relevant without creeping people out.Third, treat first-party data as a priority layer, not a hard gate—so you don’t miss the “World Cup curious” audience that shows up mainly during peak moments. Plan omnichannel around behavior: CTV for lean-back, mobile for lean-forward, DOOH for physical moments.Fourth, use Dynamic Creative Optimization to rotate creative by cohort, context, and tournament phase, so frequency doesn’t turn into fatigue.And fifth, measure like it’s a tentpole: lift + incrementality + pre/during/post readouts. The goal isn’t to win a CTR chart—it’s to prove business impact and learn fast while the world is watching.\n\n\n\nPodcast Outro (00:19:24)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-targeting-for-sports-fans#primaryimage","url":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260304090220/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep10.jpg?fit=626%2C314&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260304090220/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep10.jpg?fit=626%2C314&ssl=1","width":626,"height":314,"caption":"The AI Advertising Podcast with Martin Perelmuter"}
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-healthcare-marketing#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-healthcare-marketing"},"author":[],"headline":"How AI is Reinventing Healthcare Marketing","datePublished":"2026-03-18T07:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:08:40+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-healthcare-marketing"},"wordCount":3646,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/ai-healthcare-marketing#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260317150349/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_S2_Ep11.jpg?fit=626%2C314&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","healthcare","podcast"],"articleSection":["Digital marketing strategies"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHealthcare marketing is “hard mode”: strict privacy rules, heavy regulation, and measurement limitations that make the usual adtech playbook fall apart.\n\n\n\nThis episode explores how AI is changing the way healthcare and pharmaceutical brands reach both patients and healthcare professionals—while balancing relevance with privacy and staying compliant.\n\n\n\nJerrad Rickard | Senior Director & Product Leader, IQVIA Digital\n\n\n\nJasmaan Panesar | Senior Manager, Verticals & Performance, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDisclaimer: StackAdapt does not access or store patient-level data and operates exclusively using privacy-aware, de-identified audience signals activated through vetted data partners.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Healthcare marketing is one of the biggest—and most complex—ad categories. EMARKETER estimates pharma spent $19.4 billion on online marketing in 2024, about 88% of healthcare industry digital ad spending.And at the same time, AI adoption is moving from experiments to operations—McKinsey found 65% of organizations report regularly using generative AI.So how do you use AI in healthcare marketing without being intrusive, non-compliant, or ineffective? And what happens when AI becomes the infrastructure that connects planning, activation, and measurement inside one compliant ecosystem?Today, I’m joined by Jerrad Rickard, Senior Director and Product Leader at IQVIA Digital, and Jasmaan Panesar, Senior Manager, Verticals & Performance at StackAdapt—bringing the AI-powered orchestration and activation lens.Let’s get started.\n\n\n\nPodcast intro (00:01:06)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:22)Most industries want personalization. Healthcare has to earn relevance—without crossing a line. Here’s Jerrad Rickard on why healthcare marketing is one of a kind.\n\n\n\nJerrad Rickard (00:01:34)I think a lot of the things that you and I would desire out of a normal marketing journey like that the person trying to sell to us or advertise to us really understands our needs takes on a whole different lens when you come at it from a healthcare care perspective.And so it becomes important that the patient in particular kind of leads that journey by looking for that information first. And and unlike that use case where you're looking at it from like a retailer packaged goods scenario where there are a ton of potential right options for solving the needs are very specific you know what I mean and very nuanced at times so you know if something I would look at that like if I'm looking for a dress shirt there could be a thousand options for a dress shirt for me. But if I have a specific condition, there might be only one proper therapy. So the information that you give is very different in that kind of scenario. You have to have a deeper understanding and at the same time not expose any of that data.Because of that, there's also been a lot of legal constraints and applications, you know, from a governmental perspective or, you know we operate primarily not IQVIA as a broad entity operates in 110 different countries, but IQvia digital's focus is in the US and in the US, each state has their own governance on privacy. And so navigating that ecosystem becomes extremely complicated because you basically have 50 different unique sets of laws, everything from basically there's nothing to very you know constrictive laws that have to do with you know exactly what data you're allowed to use and how you can expose it and how you process opt-ins and consent and what is justified as consent is very different state by state. And then the final thing is that, you know, like a couple other regulated spaces, I think about automotive and I think about finance, the pharmaceutical industry is probably the most regulated, but you have to be very cautious as there are guidelines for how you state things, when you're allowed to say them, if you say certain things and you have to say certain other things in order to, you know, meet the standards, you have to have things like the important safety information included in the the marketing materials, or at least links to them. And so, things that again, in the retailer packaged goods space are done all the time, like dynamic content become a lot more complicated in this ecosystem.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:04:03)So if patient-led journeys and privacy constraints are the baseline… what does “personalization” even mean in this category? Let’s hear from Jasmaan Panesar.\n\n\n\nJasmaan Panesar (00:04:13)The first thing that we need to acknowledge is that true one-to-one personalization, although it might be very doable in other industries like e-commerce, for example. In healthcare care advertising, it's very difficult when we're trying to deal with patients. And in many cases, like we actually shouldn't be trying to do so just to not be invasive to like someone what tell you what someone's like health conditions may be. um But in spite of that, there are many tactics that we could run. I would say like in terms of personalization, like I think one idea of personalization is like making the message contextually relevant. In a situation where like we don't know someone's condition or like if they're undergoing some procedure, if they have a prescription, but we can take it to the context of the page in which they're visiting and then show ads relevant to that page, which allows us to essentially be brand safe while also still personalizing the message and create it in some way.I think another way that we can do it is by taking other signals that are privacy safe, but like just more... at a cohort level versus the individual levels. Think about leveraging, let's say, a DCO product for geography or seasonality or like weather signals that can help us inform messaging if certain regions are likely to be experiencing flu activity rather than like knowing if somebody has a flu.And then the final piece of the puzzle is obviously just like our third-party partners. So the way we operate is we don't actually receive healthcare care data. What we receive is like privacy compliant audiences. And then all the healthcare data is managed by data companies. And then they actually take that data, model it out, and append other like demographic level data so that we're actually able to reach people who are likely to have a specific ailment without actually getting that data and knowing who actually has that ailment. So I think like all these things kind of play together to have that privacy safe messaging, although like I'd say one-to-one personalization is not possible, we have ways to still make sure that the best message is in place for patient campaigns.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:58)That’s the “relevance playbook.” Now let’s add IQVIA’s data infrastructure side—how do you build audiences without mixing sensitive datasets?\n\n\n\nJerrad Rickard (00:06:09)On the direct to consumer side, we launched a product in the fall last year using synthetic trend data. So artificial intelligence creates synthetic trend data in a federated model. So one of the complexities, again, we talked about all the legal implications of bringing sensitive data together in a consumer world, when we're looking to target direct to consumer audiences, there's a bunch of different methodologies for doing that in a privacy safe way.One of them would be to to use healthcare care data or health data, you know, you're what you've been prescribed and what kind of treatments you've been given, um information from your doctor's visits, and then injecting a bunch of noise into that audience to create enough information privacy safety so that you could launch that audience. That has never been something that IQVIA would entertain, that just injecting you know additional people into that audience to make it so that you're not identifying the patients specifically.So instead we used artificial intelligence to run through all of the data and create synthetic trends. And then we have those synthetic trends and we marry that up with the healthcare data. And then we create an audience off of that, that is not identifying the actual patients.Some of the patients are there, of course, you know, again, it gets to the same sort of thing, but you end up with an audience where You know a large portion of them are potential patients for this therapy, but some will not be. But that's all done without ever bringing the actual healthcare care data into the same realm as the audience data. So they're handled in a federated manner. And only what comes out of the healthcare data is synthetic trend data. And that synthetic trend data is then matched to the audience data. And we actually see those audiences perform largely better than the other methodology, which is, you know, marrying together the real health data with the audience data and then injecting noise into it.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:04)Privacy-safe relevance can still perform—and sometimes outperform. Now, where is AI creating real day-to-day leverage? That’s next.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:19)In healthcare, speed matters—but approvals and complexity slow everything down. AI is showing up in places that reduce friction.\n\n\n\nJerrad Rickard (00:08:28)I think the number one is smoothing out a lot of the workflows. So It's a very time consuming process to take a piece of, especially pharmaceutical content from you know kind of that genesis of your you're writing those materials using the brand um guidelines and and sales materials that they've put into the print ecosystem or other parts of the digital ecosystem. Taking that and turning into a piece of digital content is a very long process.Again, it has to go through lots of rounds of approvals. And then you have to queue it up and get it sent out in the market. And that's just to do something in a broadcast way. But if you want to, you know, bring some intelligence into that kind of flow and create something of a trigger journey where you're actually meeting the needs of the health care provider or the patient, there's a, that could be a six, eight, 12 month process in the past. So, you know, leveraging AI to make smarter decisions about what are the five pieces of content we need to generate from this?What are the areas of interest overall for the different segments in your target list so that you know exactly what types of content you want to generate means you can do those things much quicker and you can prioritize better.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:09:48)On the programmatic side, the question becomes: can AI help you target and optimize without relying on crude shortcuts?\n\n\n\nJasmaan Panesar (00:09:56)Keyword targeting alone can be pretty misleading. Like a page might mention a disease or a negative, unrelated context and related to that disease, but AI helps understand what the actual intent and subject matter is in the page, which improves both brand safety and campaign performance. The other area I would say is bidding and optimization, which I would actually say is pretty much in line with measurement. The idea here is letting the AI ingest campaign performance data and like it's actually giving you real-world context or real-world context into like what actually the report means. And then you can take that then actually have AI further ingest that data and actually help that it like bid and like provide suggestions into how you should optimize your campaign.Then at StackAdapt, we do that through Ivy. So just Ivy being able to be like an AI agent that you can use to help understand your campaigns better. And then the key benefit there as well is it kind of makes things closed loop and it kind of reduces the amount of decisions that a human needs to make, um which is always going to be like a beneficial way that technology is growing. And then I would say the final thing and probably the most exciting for data partners and like how we work with data partners is we're seeing a lot of LLMs getting introduced into audience modeling. So think of a scenario where instead of marketers needing to know exactly like specific ICD codes or CPT codes to target a DTC segment, they can actually describe their ideal audience in natural language. Something like, for example, patients recently diagnosed with asthma who were exploring treatment options. And then the system can actually translate that into the appropriate healthcare codes, which would then query the underlying claims data, and then would actually generate a model audience that can be forecast and activated very quickly in real time.And this is is very powerful because in the industry today, like when we're thinking about audience planning, it often takes like four to five business days, there's back and forth with data partners, there's a lot of manual intervention involved versus like leveraging AI as like a data partner is now giving DSPs direct access to query claims data without having to actually ingest the claims data, um which isn't be insanely important for healthcare. And it just increases the speed to activation and includes our ability to optimize audiences and just test doing different audiences out.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:02)So AI is accelerating planning, improving contextual precision, and speeding activation. But then the reality of compliance rules hits, limiting creativity.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:18)Healthcare can’t always “generate and ship.” A lot of creative has to be approved. Even dynamic creative optimization or DCO has some constraints.\n\n\n\nJerrad Rickard (00:12:28)You can't just have AI generate content for you at will, it has to have gone to the FDA and been approved. So that kind of dynamic content gets interesting to say the least. And a lot of the newer advancements from a creative perspective, may not apply to the pharmaceutical industry. Now we did pilots last year, with email, where we worked with a dynamic content company and trained the artificial intelligence on the brand guidelines and what needs to be said. And we made some significant strides in getting some, you know, good dynamic content, but we had to put a lot of constraints around it.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:13:06)How do you run better tests in programmatic when even changing a color can trigger review?\n\n\n\nJasmaan Panesar (00:13:12)We've explored the approach of essentially creating every single permutation but of a creative that we would think so that we can bring it in the MLR process ahead of time so that when all these all these creatives do get approved, then when we're actually running ahead of our strategy, we have much more to work with and then we can actually explore some DCO options. Another key caveat for DCO, and obviously StackAdapt has a DCO offering, is that not every healthcare campaign is going to be like that heavily regulated. So like I think that's more specific to pharma, but there are use cases, like for example, like OTC drugs or even kind of just like awareness campaigns where like we might not necessarily need to go through that spending process and then DCO still might be readily available. Then we can do things like for example, even awareness like around flu season, for example.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:14:01)Let’s talk about the patient journey across channels. How do you make it feel helpful and not invasive?\n\n\n\nJasmaan Panesar (00:14:07)In healthcare, sequencing really starts with respecting how people naturally learn about a condition, especially for sensitive health topics. You want to begin with education and awareness and before moving toward more specific messaging around that specific drug, right? So channels like CTV or like connected TV and video are great for the first stage because they allow you to introduce a condition or treatment area in a broader educational way.And it helps maximize reach because you're not reaching a single person, or person you're likely reaching an entire household that's engaging with that content. And one tactic there that we could use is actually CTV retargeting based on ad completion. So if someone actually watches a video to completion, that's a strong signal that the content resonated and you can thoughtfully continue that conversation on other channels like Display or Native where you can dig a little bit deeper and deeper into like what the drug is and provide even more further education down the line without it being feeling like an invasive process.And then digital out of home is another interesting example, just because I'd say it's naturally less invasive. If I were to see a digital billboard that has a pharma ad on it, I obviously don't think that that's specific to me or I'm being tracked.So that's just because of that, it's naturally less invasive. And it's a public awareness channel, so you're not targeting individuals at that moment. So if someone is exposed to DOH placement and a ladder appears like on their mobile device in that same area, it also still creates the opportunity for us to continue the message later in a more personalized environment like display or native. so I would say focusing on the kind of sequencing that allows you to introduce a topic broadly and then reinforce it in more digital environments that are zoomed in into the individual can actually like help move patients along the funnel of like symptom awareness, exploring options, and then actual condition management versus just starting off on the bottom and like spamming specific i like identifiers online with with ads.And then I would say another really important thing that I probably haven't touched on is is frequency management as well. So with healthcare campaigns, it's probably of utmost importance. um There's a lot of emphasis on making sure that your messaging is not um overly aggressive and you're not essentially like reaching the same individual multiple times or like... like over the course of like a specific day. So you want to be very deliberate with how you frequently tap your campaigns just so you make sure that it doesn't feel like it's invasive and like they're seeing it spaced out instead of like all at once.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:16:23)And then there’s measurement. In healthcare, you’re often not getting clean conversion signals the way you do in other categories.\n\n\n\nJasmaan Panesar (00:16:31)I would say there's multiple things that we're seeing as a platform. So one, I would say, problem area for pharma advertisers has always been that placing a pixel on a page is extremely difficult. So they're often limited to top line metrics like CTR and CPM. There's also other metrics that pharma advertisers use like leveraging prescription-less solutions or audience quality. The issue with these solutions historically has been that typically it takes like a lot of time to receive this level of reporting, so it makes optimization very, very difficult, but we're seeing data partners make really, really meaningful strides in terms of like providing us with that data much more frequently, talking about like weekly reporting and like monthly reporting. And what that gives us the opportunity to do is, even if it's on a cohort basis, it lets us optimize our budgets and shift them into like the more meaningful channels that are actually giving us those results. So we're not just getting an end of campaign report, we're actually able to optimize in real time and help guide and conversions down the pipe.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:17:29)Alright—let’s turn this into a practical checklist.First: design for “relevance with privacy” from the start. Use context, broader audience groups, and compliant partner audiences to stay within healthcare rules—and treat healthcare professional audiences as their own track, where more tailored outreach is often possible.Second: use AI to speed up the stuff that usually takes forever in healthcare. Things like planning, building segments, choosing which messages to run, and learning what’s working sooner. The bigger shift is having AI-powered platforms that bring your data, your media, and your measurement together in a compliant way.Third: be realistic about testing. If creative approvals are slow, plan ahead: get more variations approved upfront. And if you can’t test creative quickly, test what you can move faster—like channels, formats, sequencing, and frequency.Fourth: set measurement up for the world you actually live in. Pixels and perfect tracking aren’t always an option in healthcare. So build a measurement plan that works with privacy-safe signals, partners who can help, and faster check-ins—so you’re not waiting a month to find out you backed the wrong horse.And finally: get the foundations right. Clean data, strong partners, and tools that let you pivot quickly—because that’s how you stay both compliant and competitive.If you’re a healthcare marketer right now, the opportunity is huge—but the teams that win will be the ones who can move fast without crossing the line.\n\n\n\nPodcast outro (00:19:14)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/can-chatgpt-ads-beat-search#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/can-chatgpt-ads-beat-search"},"author":[],"headline":"Can ChatGPT Ads Beat search? What marketers need to know now","datePublished":"2026-05-20T06:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-18T18:08:19+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/can-chatgpt-ads-beat-search"},"wordCount":2272,"publisher":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/can-chatgpt-ads-beat-search#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194050/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-6_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","keywords":["AI","artificial intelligence"],"articleSection":["Advertising channels"],"inLanguage":"en-US","description":"About This Episode\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs advertising begins to enter ChatGPT, marketers face a new question: how should they think about AI conversations as a place for discovery, influence, and performance? \n\n\n\nIn this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast, we explore what ChatGPT Ads are, what marketers know so far, and how brands should approach this emerging channel.\n\n\n\nYang Han | Co-founder and CTO, StackAdapt\n\n\n\nMichael Shang | SVP of Advertising Technologies, StackAdapt\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:00:00)Search advertising was built around a simple idea: when people type a query, they reveal intent.But inside ChatGPT, that signal may be richer. Instead of a few keywords, users share context, constraints, goals, preferences, and follow-up questions. That is what makes advertising inside ChatGPT so interesting — and so uncertain.What we know so far is still limited. Early tests suggest engagement is promising. At the same time, pricing is in flux, measurement capabilities are beginning to take shape, and the full-funnel playbook is not here yet. In this episode, you’ll hear about an emerging channel that marketers need to understand early. LLM advertising.You will hear two perspectives from Michael Shang, SVP of Advertising Technologies and Yang Han, Co-founder and CTO at StackAdapt.The question before us is, can ChatGPT ads become a real new layer of commercial intent?Let’s find out.\n\n\n\nPodcast Intro (00:01:07)Welcome to the AI Advertising Podcast, brought to you by StackAdapt. I’m your host, Diego Pineda. Get ready to dive into AI, Ads, and Aha moments.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:01:22)ChatGPT ads seemed like the inevitable next step in the evolution of Large Language Models or LLMs. But as an emerging channel, there are many unknowns. So, why does this matter now for marketers?\n\n\n\nMichael Shang (00:01:36)Well, that’s where the people are. So you want to follow where the people are and certainly you want to cater to their behavioral demand. That is, if they do want, for example, I mean, not sure how you use ChatGPT right now, but for example, let’s say I, who I’ve been really into playing hockey, and I want to go buy a pair of skates.An LLM has the power to actually know quite well about you because you will actually, as part of the interaction process, you will say, hey, I got super wide feet or I have really large volume in terms of the height of my feet or I have this kind of feature about my feet. It captures all that nuance, right? And then basically recommend you pretty much exactly the pair of skates you want to buy. I think you will see quite a successful conversion rate on those purchases because the recommendation will be so good.So that was the initial promise of search-based advertising. That is, if you’re searching for something, you’re disclosing intent. So an LLM is no different. You’re disclosing intent with way more information or continuation of understanding of the user.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:02:41)That is the core shift. Search captures a query. Conversation may capture intent with more depth.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:02:48)This goes back to the conversation of like, does AI compete with search or social? I would say it probably competes more with search. Because in social, people browse more not to discover information, but more for social aspects. But definitely it does compete with search.We do believe, obviously, Google has their own AI solution, OpenAI is still heavily utilized when it comes to a standalone AI solution as well. And there could be a world in which both coexist. But definitely, I think the expectation is for OpenAI to become a performance-driven channel based on the data it has, based on the contextual relevancy.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:03:44)If ChatGPT ads are closer to search than social, what actually makes them different?\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:03:49)AI and LLMs have a lot more potential to go way deeper. First of all, they have history, right, on your conversations, where search tends to be just in real time. So AI has context and history and deeper concepts. Usually you have a conversation with an AI, whereas in search, you just have like a few words or keywords. It’s not even a full sentence, right? But with AI, it can go a lot more deeper in terms of understanding intent.What is the user actually trying to look for? And if you have data over time, you start to understand what’s unique about this individual. And then you can anticipate what they might need next or what could provide them the most value. So there’s a lot more potential, I’d say, in the long run. Search is already known as a pretty well-performing channel. But this can go deeper than search and also deeper than social. Because social is a lot of indirect associations based on what you’re browsing, what you’re engaging with. So you still have to do a bit of a correlation.But with AI, there’s a lot more deterministic, but you have the history as well. So you kind of get the best of both worlds. So I think when it comes to advertising and marketing, and this as a growth channel for brands, it has way greater potential than any other channel we’ve seen on the market, essentially.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:05:12)That is the upside case in one answer: more context, more continuity, and potentially a much stronger understanding of intent than either search or social can offer on their own. Michael gets there from a more advertiser-centric angle.\n\n\n\nMichael Shang (00:05:29)It’s one of the first places that an ad opportunity exists. So when you think about the user behavior, and we typically call them the gatekeepers, basically that is large platforms where users go through to interact with content or the web.And this is one of the largest gatekeepers in the world without ads. And they’re introducing that. And typically at that specific inflection point, as an advertiser, you start to see efficiencies because no advertising exists on this platform.If you were to be the first one, you can expect it to perform super well. You’re capturing undivided attention from users, right?So that’s why it’s a super experience. Number one is because this is one of the largest gatekeepers of user traffic in the world without an opportunity. Number two is that they’re opening up.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:06:26)Now here is where both guests get practical. The promise is big but the unknowns are still bigger.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:06:32)It’s still early. We’ve had some tests. Overall engagement looks good. They already have keyword-based hints for you to attempt to match as relevant as possible to the queries. But it’s going to be a journey for them to continue to optimize it, tie it to performance and have that whole flywheel essentially.New capabilities are being added almost every week. They’ve been adding new targeting capabilities, tracking capabilities, pacing budget and whatnot in very short order. So hopefully, in a not too distant future, later this year, we’re going to see a much more comprehensive solution end to end that will be competitive with other platforms out there like Meta and Google, let’s say in a year’s time or so.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:07:15)OpenAI has now launched conversion tracking, which gives advertisers an opportunity to start measuring outcomes and understanding how ChatGPT fits into their broader marketing and advertising strategy.\n\n\n\nMichael Shang (00:07:28)I think there are many variables. For example, how does the planning look like? What does the UI look like? What does the CPM look like? What are my requirements when it comes to creative assets? All those things, right? There are so many ifs and buts.But fundamentally for advertisers, this is about efficiency. Am I spending money to make money? Am I doing that efficiently?If I can spend a dollar and make — for example, ChatGPT is pricing their ads, for simplicity, let’s say $60 CPM — if I’m spending $60 CPM, but I’m getting massive ROAS on all the things I want to push out, well, I’m happy to spend that $60 CPM.So I would say that’s the uncertainty: whether or not this will perform for me as an advertiser. A lot of this has to evolve.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:08:38)One of the most useful parts of Yang’s perspective is that he does not see LLM ads as only upper funnel or only lower funnel. He sees them as eventually flexible across the journey.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:08:49)I mean, in theory, you can do it across the board, right? If you’re introducing something new to a user, you always start with an awareness. And then as you hook people’s interest over time, you’ll go deeper into the research phase, and then you want to close them, right?So I think it depends. Let’s say I’m an individual and I’m already actively — it’s already in my mind — to, let’s say, buy a new laptop. I’m already deep in that. Then you want to identify users in the later stage of this purchase journey. So you want to execute more of a strategy to close them, essentially.But let’s say I completed this purchase and maybe there’s something else I may need next, such as a new keyboard, for example. You want to start with the likelihood based on what they’ve completed already, based on what they might need next. That’s more of a brand awareness. You’re starting to put that interest in your mind.And then as they start to prove that yes, this is something I want to do more research on, that’s when you go hit them harder, essentially, to try to close them. So people are always at different aspects of their journey. It’s about first wanting to identify that.And that’s where the strategy and the creative and the messaging has to differ based on that for every individual.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:19)That is a more nuanced view than just saying “this is the next search ad.” The long-term opportunity may be that conversational AI can support awareness, research, and conversion — but with different signals and different messaging at each stage.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:10:39)Even if ChatGPT becomes a major ad environment, it should not be managed in isolation.\n\n\n\nYang Han (00:10:45)Well, I think a DSP will allow you to have a much more holistic strategy, right? So let’s say in the future, OpenAI does have first-party data capabilities, personalization capabilities that the DSP can hook into.If you could just run only on OpenAI or run OpenAI and other channels independently, but they’re not going to talk to each other. You have the age-old problem of everyone attributing the same user, right? You don’t have really good visibility on where your results are actually coming from.With the central source of truth, with a DSP that is hooked into every single channel, you should be able to, in one place, have much more holistic strategy, to push consistent audience strategies to all these different channels, drive personalized creatives across all these channels, and then have strong visibility.You want to have seamless and integrated models when it comes to measurement to figure out where the results are actually coming from. Then you can optimize across all these different channels and allocate the budgets effectively across the board.So you always want to start from a higher view because the users are always going to be across different channels in different places across the board. And the age-old problem was you don’t want to execute in isolation. You want to execute holistically.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:10)That is the orchestration argument. AI is just another high-intent environment inside a broader system.\n\n\n\nDiego Pineda (00:12:22)Recently, StackAdapt announced it’s offering access to advertising within ChatGPT, giving advertisers a way to start testing this new format through its platform.So what does that mean in practice?It means marketers have a chance to start learning how ads work inside ChatGPT while the space is still new. They can see how people respond in these conversational moments, what kinds of messages make sense there, and where ChatGPT might fit alongside search and the rest of their marketing mix.The smart move right now is to test with a clear purpose. Use budgets that give you room to experiment. Look beyond last-click results and pay attention to signs like engagement, follow-on actions, and whether your category feels like a natural fit in these conversations. This is also a chance to start learning what kind of creative and messaging works best in an AI environment.What StackAdapt’s access really offers is the chance to learn early.And right now, that may be the biggest advantage.If search helped marketers understand what people were looking for, AI may help them understand what people actually mean. And if that proves true, this will be more than a new ad format. It could become a new way to shape how people discover and choose.\n\n\n\nPodcast outro (00:13:46)Thanks for listening to this episode of The AI Advertising Podcast. This podcast is produced by StackAdapt. Visit us at stackadpat.com for more information about using AI in your advertising campaigns. If you liked what you heard, remember to subscribe, and we’ll see you next time.\n\n\n\n\n[jetpack_sharing]\n\n\n\n\n\nYou May Also Like"}
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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https://www.stackadapt.com/resources/podcast/can-chatgpt-ads-beat-search#primaryimage","url":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194050/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-6_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https://i0.wp.com/d343x6qscsp61h.cloudfront.net/sites/3/20260210194050/2025_The-AI-Advertising-Podcast_Episode-6_300x150_Podcast-Content-Thumbnail.webp?fit=626%2C313&ssl=1","width":626,"height":313,"caption":"Yang Han in the AI Advertising Podcast"}