Could Programmatic Solve Google's Zero-Click Initiative? | Charity Huff

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I am David McBee. Our guest today is Charity Huff, CEO of January Spring, a digital marketing and advertising agency that works exclusively with niche publishers. Charity has designed and delivered multimedia sales programs working alongside 5,000-plus sales professionals from the media and tech industries over her 25-year career. She and her team have built a proven model of third-party vendor offerings to include offsite digital using a combination of geofencing, device targeting, household targeting, paid social and search marketing. Charity sits on the board of several privately held companies, including Questor, previously known as Swift Communications. Charity, thanks for joining us on Simpli.fi TV. Charity Huff: Thanks for the invitation. I'm happy to be here. David McBee: So I think I said 25 years, but I'm pretty sure I meant to say 25-plus years in digital. That means that- Charity Huff: You don't need to age me any more than I already did myself. David McBee: Well, like me, you were doing digital when digital wasn't even cool yet, right? Charity Huff: That's right. David McBee: What would you say is the number one skill you've developed in that time? Charity Huff: I will say this, I graduated with my undergrad the same year Google was invented, so I really have been at this my entire career. But alongside that, what I have developed as my core skill is being able to take and translate all of this digital stuff into something that's really easy for a local or small, medium enterprise to digest and understand how it's going to apply to their business. Because local is a heck of a lot harder to do than big brand national advertising, in my opinion, because everything is hyper-targeted. David McBee: And you feel like you have to take some extra effort to explain things to those advertisers? Charity Huff: Well, you have to do two things at once, which is explain it to them in a term that's related to what's going to happen, who are you going to reach and what are they going to get out of it, what's their ROI, without over-complicating and getting into the technology and all of the ways in which you're going to do that. So it's a balance of both, because you've got to give them enough confidence that I understand how to do this. I'm going to be able to build and execute a really good quality campaign for you without overwhelming them to the point that they're like, "I have no idea what you just said to me, so there's no way I can say yes because I'm unsure." So that's why, to me, that's a superpower to be able to do that and be able to deliver on exactly what they heard you say. David McBee: Right. It's finding that balance between I'm going to explain this to you like you're a third-grader, but I'm going to sound like an adult, like I know what I'm talking about. So that is definitely challenging for a lot of marketers. Charity Huff: Indeed. So 25 years of doing this across many different channels, I think I'm pretty good at it now. David McBee: Well, I hear from a lot of my guests that it can be challenging to hire and build a great agency with individuals coming and going. What would you say is your secret for building culture at January Spring? Charity Huff: I love that question. It's definitely building in some empathy for the end client. Again, having everyone from the marketing coordinator to the media buyer to the sales director and the finance people to understand we're talking to a business owner who is super busy doing way many other things, not thinking about us all the time. And having some empathy for how they may communicate with us, how they may understand something that we're doing for them, and being able to step back and go, "Wait a minute. I am here in my techy, marketing tech world. Let me stop and reset and then engage with a question that somebody's asking me, so that I can be of service to them." And that has been a big thing, because we'll tag team a lot where somebody will be like, "I tried and I didn't say it in a way that worked for this person. Is there somebody else on the team that can jump in and help me with this one?" And so just having everybody understand the mission and the focus and really understand who it is we're servicing is how we built our culture. David McBee: I love that. So in a conversation that you and I had the other day, you mentioned that zero click is half of all searches. Can you explain what you mean by that? Charity Huff: Yeah, and it's something that has been quietly evolving inside of Google. It's certainly a strategy that they have been executing against. So when you go to Google to do a search for whatever it may be, let's say it's "What's the best click- through rate for programmatic display advertising?" That might be a question that you ask Google. Google is going to do its very best to find the answer and give it to you within the context of the Google search results page. So no longer is Google referring you off to the blog or the YouTube video or the best source for that information. Google is stealing your answer and giving it to the user. They're still attributing it to you and giving you credit for it, but it has changed how we consult and advise businesses on their SEO strategy as well as their SEM strategy and their video strategy. David McBee: How so? Can you share an example? Charity Huff: Yeah. So for the most obvious example, we do a lot of sponsored content with our publisher partners. So when you're structuring a sponsored content piece, you need to write it in a way that answers those questions that people are asking of Google, so that you will be picked up organically and you have an opportunity to be the one answer that Google says, "This is the authority. This is what you should do in Hilton Head this weekend according to Local Life Magazine." David McBee: But that's not happening with AI, is it? Charity Huff: Yeah. So then here comes all of these AI applications, and it's throwing everything out the window. So as I have been talking to publishers this year, I show them every time, "Here is some of the best content that you have that has always been well ranked for you or sponsored content that you're doing for a client. And here's it in ChatGPT with absolutely no attribution." So ChatGPT and probably Bard just the same are going out and coming back with results and answers that they're scraping from Yelp, they're scraping from newspapers, they're scraping from magazines and sharing with the user with zero attribution as to where they found those answers. David McBee: So Google, it's giving credit, but it's not sending users to the website where it got the information, and AI is not even giving the website any credit. Do you think this makes a case for programmatic media being a part of every campaign? Charity Huff: Oh my God, yes. That is brilliant. Part of the job of programmatic is to create that brand awareness with reach frequency. So if you are continuing to put a business's brand in front of somebody everywhere they go across the web, we see this already today where we see a lift in overall traffic to the website because people are seeking out the brand by name. So that would be a really smart near-term solution to combat both of these situations. David McBee: I love that. That is- Charity Huff: Me too. David McBee: We just had a moment, didn't we, Charity? Charity Huff: Yes. High five, David. David McBee: High five. Virtual high five. All right. So final question. Do you have a mentor or a book that has inspired you and helped you become successful? Charity Huff: This is what I am currently rereading, which is The Great Game of Business. I love this book, and I love this approach to how you build out culture. Back to the things we were talking about earlier, where having everybody understand how the business works, who it is we're servicing, and everybody benefit from the good work that we do together. We at January Spring call it sharing the growth. Great Game of Business has different ways you would do it, but it is profit sharing and truly having everybody in the organization benefit from the work that they do. David McBee: That's terrific. I'll add it to my list. Charity Huff: Do. Definitely do. David McBee: Well, this has been really wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today. Charity Huff: Thank you for inviting me. It was nice to see you. David McBee: You too, Charity. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry-leading, media-buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.