Strategies to Drive Campaign Performance

Audio File Transcript David McBee: Hello, and welcome to the Simpli.fi webinar series. I’m David McBee, Director of Training. It’s December 2021 and I’m coming to you this month directly from Simpli.fi’s headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. Each year, we gather as a company to take a look at what we learned throughout the year and make plans for being successful in the next. There’s a lot of expertise in this room, and since you can’t be here in person, Anne and I will be conducting several brief interviews with some of our most successful people. We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get right to it. Ann Kraus: Okay. Tell me your name and your title. Jake Ponce de Leon: Jake Ponce de Leon and I’m a sales director in Atlanta, Georgia. Ann Kraus: Okay, great, Jake. So what’s your favorite campaign strategy and why? Jake Ponce de Leon: I would say mine is addressable geo fencing. There’s just a lot of flexibility around it. You can use a first party list. So if your client has rich first party data, you can activate that and attack the entire household. And if you don’t have any first party data, we actually have a curation tool so you can build out households that match who your ideal client is. And there’s just so many variables in that planning tool, that it’s super easy to go in and kind of handpick who your audience is. It’s kind of fun to see all the circles pop up and give you the estimated devices and how many households. So I like the flexibility. Also, I like to just see the household counts that come up on our estimation tool. Ann Kraus A lot of people think that OTT CTV is just TV commercials on streaming TV. And that’s just like linear TV. What do you want them to know? Jake Ponce de Leon: Yeah, I think there’s two big things. One, with linear TV, there’s only a finite amount of commercials that can be put on linear TV. Because if you’re watching CBS News, there’s the commercial break and there’s so many users that are watching that. Whereas within the digital realm, there’s almost an unlimited amount of possibilities and impressions to be won. So the pricing can be all over the place. Jake Ponce de Leon: And then the second one is with linear TV, you’re buying on a context or a show basis. Whereas with CTV, you’re are buying more on a data-driven approach. So one is that the pricing can be very different because of how the inventory is sourced. And then again, the other one being, it’s more of a data-driven approach as opposed to a contextual or show buy that you’re probably used to in linear. Ann Kraus: Okay, great. Thanks Jake. Jake Ponce de Leon: Thank you. David McBee: Tell us who you are and your title. Paul Enriquez: My name’s Paul Enriquez, and I’m the Director of Sales for Simpli.fi in the Northwest. David McBee: All right. So, Paul, what’s your favorite campaign strategy and why? Paul Enriquez: My favorite campaign strategy is when a client can efficiently and effectively apply their data or many different sources of data to their campaigns in a way that’s structured so you can optimize with the data and make your campaigns better. David McBee: So using their own data, that’s your favorite? Paul Enriquez: It’s one of my favorite ones, because it’s an asset that they have and a lot of them aren’t capitalizing on the asset. David McBee: Okay. Can I have an example real quick? Paul Enriquez: Sure. Anything that’s in a CRM system that clients have, perhaps they do direct mail and they have the addresses. Well, we can actually match that through our addressable geo fencing product at a 90+% rate for free. And now they have an amazing way to target these people that they used to only use with direct mail. David McBee: Now, let me ask you this. If you were training someone to manage a campaign, what pieces of advice would you give them? Paul Enriquez: That’s a great question. The first I would say is to really identify your KPI or your success metric. Can’t go any further in building a campaign until you know what that is. Paul Enriquez: The second would be let the campaign simmer before you mess with it. Don’t get too anxious. Let the data build over time. It’s crucial. Paul Enriquez: And the last one is, optimize on the data and not on your assumptions. Let the data guide you. David McBee: I like that term, simmer. That’s good. I haven’t heard anyone say let their campaign simmer before. David McBee: All right. So you’re talking to an advertiser, who doesn’t personally watch streaming TV, or maybe they only watch some of the non-ad supported services. How do you convince them that what we provide through the AVODs is a good fit for them? Paul Enriquez: That’s actually one that I deal with all the time now, because CTV is so big with Simpli.fi. As we’re going to our clients, they have this notion of what they think CTV is and based on their own experiences, their own watching habits, and maybe they go to CNN, maybe they go to ESPN. Well, what happens if that’s what they know and that’s what they watch. They end up accidentally doing vanity buys, which is targeting themselves, and they may not be their target audience. So I try to introduce them into what the real environment of connected television is. Paul Enriquez: And one of my best examples is to go onto Pluto. Pluto.tv in a browser show them right then and there what actual ad-supported CTV looks like that the majority of people right now are actually going to because it’s ad supported and it’s free. That’s where a lot of the cord cutters are going, to pluto.tv because it’s a great platform with a lot of content. Paul Enriquez: It really supports what you’re trying to get across and no longer is it hypothetical or a theory in a PowerPoint. This is actually something that’s there and it’s tangible. It’s extremely valuable. David McBee: Perfect. Thank you very much. Paul Enriquez: Thank you. Ann Kraus: Okay. So first start out and just tell us who you are and what your title is. Gargi Bhakta: Hi, my name is Gargi and I’m a sales director on the Southeast team. Ann Kraus: Okay. Gargi so tell us when it comes to campaign strategies, what do you recommend to advertisers? Gargi Bhakta: I think the first thing is just be super clear on the goal and then work backwards. A lot of times people come in with a set idea of how they want to do a particular campaign, but oftentimes that doesn’t match the goal. So I like working backwards. And then I also like asking what other channels they’re running on so that we know we’re doing things consistently across everything. And then when a brand is launching, for example, it makes more sense to do brand awareness and then switch to a CPA goal. So it really depends on the goal and making sure we’re aligned before we go into the exact tactics that we recommend. Ann Kraus: Okay, great. And what are some strategies for managing a campaign after it’s been built? Gargi Bhakta: The number one thing is just consistent communication. So I think consistent communication in terms of what our team is doing. So optimizations, what we recommend in terms of changes and then also feedback from the advertiser because we may not know exactly how the advertiser is feeling or what kind of performance the advertiser is seeing. And so just that and then performance on other channels. Again, if they’re seeing increase in performance on other channels as a result of our campaign, Gargi Bhakta: And then the other thing I like to say repeatedly to all my agency partners is that we’re a team working together on the end advertiser’s goal. So as long as we’re very, very open with each other and consistently communicating with each other, we’re going to be set up for success. Ann Kraus: Thank you. Gargi Gargi Bhakta: You’re welcome. Ramon Brayan: My name is Ramon Brayan. I’m the director of sales in the Southeast and I’m based in south Florida. David McBee: All right, great. So Ramon, what targeted advertising strategy do you see helping advertisers the most in 2022? Ramon Brayan: Got it. So I feel like there’s a lot of different things that we offer really well, but I think the big differentiator for next year is going to be CTV sequential retargeting. We know that CTVs exploding, more and more people are watching their favorite shows and movies on connected TV devices. But now we have the power and the ability to not only serve them a 30-second or 15-second commercial on their big screen TV, but then we can follow up with a different type of ad on their mobile device or on their laptop or on their desktop. So what it’s doing is it’s driving consumers down the purchase funnel, which is like the holy grail of advertising: give them the branding and then ask them to do something. So I think that’s going to be phenomenal in 2022. David McBee: Agreed. What is your best advice for increasing the performance of a campaign that is already up and running? Ramon Brayan: Got to have creative that resonates with people. So I think if you take the five standard display ad sizes that we have, have several different iterations of it, so that it resonates with that customer you’re looking for. So change the background color, change the font, be diverse in the audience that you have in there. Have a female, a male, a black person, an Hispanic. Ramon Brayan: And in addition to that, run some gifs, some HTMLs, so run display ads and HTML ads and see which one of those resonates for. David McBee: I think it’s amazing we’re in 2022 and we’re still talking about creative and how important it still is. Ramon Brayan: Yeah. David McBee: What do you think is the main reason more advertisers have not adopted OTT CTV and what advice would you give them? Ramon Brayan: So two things, one is they’re scared. We know the old adage that change is hard. A lot of people are accustomed to linear TV and they’re scared of this big, bad CTV world. Ramon Brayan: The advice I would give them is 1) to engage with it. We talk about Pluto TV. It’s a phenomenal product. Download the app, watch some CTV and see basically the benefits of using the power of sight, sound, motion and emotion on a connected TV device. And I think as they consume it more, they will understand and embrace it more. David McBee: Totally agree. Thank you very much. Ramon Brayan: Thank you. Lauren Elliott: Lauren Elliot, Director of Sales. Ann Kraus: Okay. So Lauren, when it comes to campaign strategies, what do you recommend to advertisers? Lauren Elliott: I always recommend using a blend of tactics. I think it’s always beneficial to target people in a variety of ways, a mix of location-based targeting, a mix of behavioral targeting, maybe some retargeting. That way you’re approaching people from a variety of kind of their day-to-day behaviors. Lauren Elliott: And then afterwards you can make optimizations based on what is performing best from there. You also can provide your clients with even more data and performance data. And we all know that they love to kind of learn more and more about what’s working, why people are engaging with their ads, why they’re converting. So I always recommend a blend of tactics and our platform is super intuitive and you can kind of make adjustments once the campaign starts as it moves forward. Ann Kraus: Okay. So talk to the person who has been managing programmatic campaigns for years, but is so new to simpli.fi platform. What do you want them to know? Lauren Elliott: Well, I want them to know first and foremost, not to be scared. It’s very, very easy and intuitive. And once you get in, pretty self-sufficient off the bat and you can really follow along pretty easily after a single training, I feel. Lauren Elliott: Also in addition to that, if you’ve ever done paid search, the keyword targeting is very similar to paid search. So you can optimize at a key word level just like you can with Google. So that should be a little bit less scary. Lauren Elliott: And in addition to all of that, it’s very basic. I mean, you can see at a quick glance when you’re in the platform, how campaigns are pacing. So really that’s all you need to look at is the initial metrics, the performance metrics and pacing, and then optimize based on what tactics are performing well. You can go in once a week, you can go in a couple times a week based on how busy you are. We have our own algorithms running in the background that’ll help you when you’re busy and then you can go in day to day and do those hands-on adjustments based on some of those just quick glance metrics that you see when you open the platform. Ann Kraus: Okay. So tell me who you are and what is your title? Bill Clifford: Sure. Bill Clifford sales director in New York. Ann Kraus: Okay. So Bill, when it comes to campaign strategies, what do you recommend to advertisers? Bill Clifford: Yeah, so kind of my rule of thumb has always been to work backwards from the primary KPI, figure out, ask the question, what does a successful campaign look like? And then, start recommending strategies based on what would be best to get there. So, if it’s online actions, we’ll probably start talking about some sort of an online tactic. If they’re looking for foot traffic, then we could start talking about geo fencing. So really kind of getting a feel for where they’re looking to finish up, what success looks like to them and then making recommendations based on that. Ann Kraus: Okay, great. What are some great strategies for managing a campaign after it’s been built? Bill Clifford: Sure. When I think about a question like this, we’re in the communications business first and foremost, and I think communication is just key both internally with client success and account managers as well as communication with the client. So, whether that’s setting up some sort of a weekly call with CS to make sure everything’s running properly, checking in on performance, things like that, and then communicating that to the client and getting an understanding with them on what works best for them in terms of that communication process. Do they want a monthly call? Do they want a weekly call? How long is the flight and kind of adjust from there, but I just think communication is key throughout and making sure you’re staying in touch and everyone is connected. Ann Kraus: Okay, great. Thank you, Bill. Bill Clifford: Yep. You got it. Kari Quimby: I’m Kari Quimby and I am the Southeast sales manager. Ann Kraus: Kari, did you work with any successful OTT CTV campaigns this year? And can you share any success stories? Kari Quimby: Yes, I actually had a couple of OTT CTV campaigns. One of which was a college savings and then a college application foundation and what they were looking for was they’re looking to get people to sign up, to apply to college, and it’s typically in the fall. So what we did is we actually ingested a list of 2022 graduates, and we were able to target them with our addressable geo fence and serve to their CTV devices in their households. Kari Quimby: And what we saw was a huge response of people that were going online and applying for college. We were able to track those conversions back in. It was a huge success for the campaign. We also were able to use keyword contextual. So we were able to target people who are researching how to save for college or how to apply for college, deliver them with ads through their CTV, and then be able to track that attribution back online. Ann Kraus: Where do you see OTT CTV going in 2022? Kari Quimby: I think that it’s continually going to go more towards a direct response. I think typically people think of linear television and maybe even OTT CTV as more of a brand play, but I think it’s actually becoming more direct response, especially with the attribution that we have, especially for offline and online attribution for these campaigns. Ann Kraus: Okay. Say you’re talking to an advertiser who doesn’t personally watch any streaming TV or they only watch non-ad supported services like a Netflix or an HBO Max. How do you show them the value of advertising in this space? Kari Quimby: Well, first of all, we are exactly like our clients. Of course, things that we watch may not be the same things that they watch, but I think in general, people aren’t really loyal to platforms. They are not even loyal to networks these days. They’re actually very loyal to the shows and the content that they want to consume. So half the time they might not even know how they’re consuming this content or where they found it. They’re going to just take the path of least resistance to get there. Kari Quimby: People also don’t like to pay money for things. So I think if people can find content and they can consume this content on ad supported, however, it may be, we’re going to put the right message in front of the right person. So we are going to target them with the message, regardless of what platform they’re consuming this content. If they fit the targeting and they are the right fit for your message, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to put it that in front of them, regardless of what platform they’re watching. Derek Standifer: I’m Derek Standifer with the Southeast, sales director. Ann Kraus: Did you work with any successful OTT CTV campaigns this year? And can you share any success stories from that? Derek Standifer: Yes, my client that is a flooring company, they actually started working us just before the pandemic hit. They wanted to use our platform to test being able to reach an audience via the OTT platform and compare that with their strategy on linear. And they used our platform and was able to find out that they were actually able to increase sales on OTT platform at a lower cost than they were doing with their linear buys. So that was a great example. Derek Standifer: And then also during the pandemic, they were also experiencing some issues as a lot of clients have from a standpoint of internal resources with employees. So they were able to use our platform to kind of make quick adjustments to their media plan: dial down, reach in frequency in certain markets where they were having problems with filling their orders and increase in other markets. Ann Kraus: Okay, great. Thank you. David McBee: I’m here with Paul Harrison Simpli.fi Chief Technology Officer. Now, Paul, you and I spoke a few months ago about Apple iOS and cookies and all that. So what is the latest news on Google and their attempt to eliminate cookies? Paul Harrison: I have to find the article, but essentially Google cut a deal with the EU that they’re not going to make any changes to cookies until all of the various use cases are addressed. And they also said that what they’ve agreed to in Europe will apply globally. Paul Harrison: So what happened was, is the EU was meeting with Google over the fact that the sandbox that they were trying to implement did not take into consideration enough use cases. Some of which we actually do, some of which others do. We’ve hedged against that for a long time, but it’s an interesting situation that has developed because now they have to take a pause and re-look at all of those use cases and take into consideration a lot more. I suspect companies like Critio and others probably raised some concerns in the EU. And so that led to that kind of position that they’re in right now. Paul Harrison: So I’m not anticipating any major changes in Chrome browser or in Android for the time being. I think it will still eventually happen. I just think we’ve kind of pushed this out instead of a year or two, I think we’ve pushed it out multiple years, because I think it’s going to take some time to actually make those changes happen. David McBee: What about iOS? Are you seeing many impacts of the iOS location data changes? Paul Harrison: We’re certainly seeing less. We’re seeing a lot of fragmentation in data coming from various apps off of iOS and we see fewer mobile IDs with flat long information, precise flat long information. So there’s certainly less of it now, but overall there’s still more than enough to provide the services that we provide. Paul Harrison: Our match rates and everything are still higher than they were prior to the changes largely because we continue to add additional data in our cross device. And that cross device is leading us to have better match rates. For companies who did not have a meta graph and were just going at it directly, they probably saw some more significant impact. Paul Harrison: Now what’s interesting is you see companies like Facebook and others putting in their earnings report that the changes iOS made were impactful to them. Well, all that means is, is that they are now having to play at the same level that we play at because they can no longer match outside of their apps in an extended way like they were and they had an unfair advantage on some of the PII data that they were matching up against internally. David McBee: Interesting. Paul Harrison: So now we’re sort of on the same playing field. For us, it hasn’t had really any kind of attribution or financial impact, but for a company like Facebook, it was impactful. David McBee: What changes should we look for in 2022? Paul Harrison: I think for us, we’re going to continue to import more data and use more and more device graph. I think that people are going to pivot off of using say browser information to inform everything else and they may be using more CTV to inform the other way, just because there’s so many interesting signals that come off of CTV. David McBee: Like what, for example? Paul Harrison: Well, you get IPs, you get IDs. You also, depending on if who you’re integrated with, from a data perspective, you can also get hashed IDs that are unique user IDs for targeting purpose. Paul Harrison: So an example would be like a block graph for targeting purposes. David McBee: Is that like if I have a Peacock account and my wife and I and my children each have our own little individual logins, you get that? Paul Harrison: Well, it’s more like instead of sending us an IP address or instead of sending us something like a mobile identifier or an Android ID or whatever it may be, we would get just a standard ID that they come up with and that’s how we continue to track that user. So we have to utilize their lockbox data in order to re-target those users. So it’s kind of an interesting approach and many of the cable, the closed system, companies are going about targeting that way. And we’re in a great position for that. Paul Harrison: I also think the big changes are going to be largely in attribution. There are a number of companies that are suffering on the attribution side. We seem to be in a very, very good position for that and we’re continuing to invest in that area. Paul Harrison: We’re also trying to get more net reach type approaches on all of this. So that means we’d be looking at linear information, CTV information, as an example, and trying to tell you what the net reach is across those. David McBee: Oh, that’s interesting. Paul Harrison: So I think that is sort of the big frontier. I talk to a lot of people in the industry. I just had some calls with folks this week and they’re still trying to figure out how to do all of that. We seem to be much farther along than our peers in the space. David McBee: Well, there you have it. Advice from the experts here at Simpli.fi headquarters in Fort Worth. Thank you for joining us. If you’d like more information about Simpli.fi’s products and services, or you’d like to chat with an expert about best practices for building and maintaining campaigns, reach out to us at hi@simpli.fi. I’m David McBee and I’ll see you next time.