The Power of Native Programmatic Advertising | DJ Virtue

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV I'm David McBee. Our guest today is DJ Virtue Northeast Region Manager for our very own Simpli.fi. DJ is a New York native and a lifer in the ad tech industry with previous roles at Collective Media, Sizmek, Adelphic, Bidtellect, and now of course Simpli.fi. DJ is passionate about helping brands and agencies solve challenges Monday through Friday and catching as many fish as possible on Saturdays and Sundays. DJ, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. How are you? DJ Virtue: I'm doing great, Dave. Thanks for having me on here. David McBee: We're recording this on a Monday, so did you catch any fish this weekend? DJ Virtue: I did. I actually went out from Montauk and I caught some tuna, so eating a good amount of sashimi and poke bowls over the weekend. David McBee: That sounds good. That sounds really good. So DJ, listen, you are still pretty new here at Simpli.fi. You came to us through our recent acquisition of Bidtellect. How long have you been with us now? DJ Virtue: So nearing five months. Just about five months now. David McBee: Okay. So some people might be wondering why are we interviewing a guy who's so fresh at Simpli.fi? It's not a very long time, but in these last few months you have shown your expertise in spades. So I wanted to highlight that here on Simpli.fi TV. Specifically I'm talking about your expertise in native programmatic. So can you briefly explain what is native programmatic and what is so special about it? DJ Virtue: Yeah, sure. So native is a newer format compared to traditional formats like display banners, which originally monetized the internet. Native is very different in just the way that it appears on a publisher's site. If you think about a display banner, it's just going to be a static image that's hosted within a site. Native is very organic looking to the site itself. So Native takes some simple pieces of creative, which is headlines, copy and imagery. And then technology is dynamically rendering these assets across publishers' pages to make it appear organic and it's organic content on the site. So the look and the feel is looking exactly like the textures, the formats, and the styles of the publisher pages on which they appear. Native was really born in the realm of social. So if you have ever seen a LinkedIn ad or an Instagram ad where the ad looks like it's native to the page itself, that kind of follows suit with open web publishers and sites where they change the design of their sites to match the look and feel of those native ads. And now native ads can be bought programmatically. So because these open web publishers make their inventory available, we can now buy them through SSPs, DSPs and programmatic channels, which is what I've been doing for the last several years. David McBee: So Simpli.fi decided to acquire Bidtellect and we got you as a part of that deal. What else did it bring to us? DJ Virtue: So I think there's a whole slew of contextual targeting capabilities that came along with the acquisition of Bidtellect. If you think about native, these ads are immersed within content, they're immersed within articles. So the contextual alignment of these specific ads is so critical to reach these people at moments of intent. So if I'm JP Morgan, I want to reach people on real estate sites if we're pushing like a mortgage ad because that's a relevant consumer experience and you're reaching someone in that same mindset. Same thing goes for, say, Hilton Hotels, maybe advertising on travel and tourism blogs. So, Bidtellect capitalized on that contextual aspect and built a lot of proprietary contextual targeting or contextual alignment capabilities. And we've proven that it provides a lot of ROI for brands when we are aligning the right ads within the right contextual environments. Just to take that a step further, I think looking at the future of digital where cookies are going away, privacy is totally top of mind. I think contextual is certainly a targeting tactic that's having a bit of a resurgence because we're using the data that's available on the webpage opposed to audience data or user data. So it couldn't be a better time to think about contextual in a bigger way because of these privacy laws that are coming into effect. David McBee: Let ask you about the effectiveness of these native programmatic ads. I assume, and correct me if I'm wrong, that because we aren't interrupting a person with a random ad while they're playing Words with Friends or whatever it might be, and that we are showing them a relevant ad contextually on pages, maybe even while they're doing their research, are they more effective? DJ Virtue: Absolutely. So we've seen that in a lot of testing, especially versus other formats, and I think it's more effective for two sides of the coin. One, for the end user who's experiencing the ad. If you really think about it, we're so over targeted with ads right now and it's not a flashing banner, it's not a video that you're racing to skip. It's something that's resting organically on the page and you can decide to engage or not as a consumer. And then it's a win for brands as well because better consumer experiences are always better for brands and the people they're trying to engage with. And in terms of the full funnel performance that we've seen, anything from branding and awareness, any site engagement, content engagement, or even lower funnel actions, native is a strong contender versus other formats in this space. David McBee: Okay. So you've convinced me. Now I want to do some native programmatic advertising. What is your best advice to an advertiser or a brand who wants to take advantage of this tactic? DJ Virtue: Yeah, I'd definitely say lead with the context first approach, already kind of covered that, but I think one big thing that a lot of brands need to keep in mind is that you should have the creative itself be a preview to the content or the landing page that you're ultimately driving to. So I see a lot of brands often send creative assets that might be saying one thing and then they drive the user to a landing page that might be a whole different set of content or asking them to do something different. So, make sure that you're aligning your imagery, your copy, your call to actions with what you want that person to do when they land on the site. It's pretty key because they're already be in the right state of mind after saying, "Hey, I want to engage with this ad" and then engaging with a relevant landing page as well. David McBee: Thank you for that advice. There's nothing more irritating than clicking on an ad expecting it to take you to content that is relevant to what you were clicking on and it goes to a random homepage or somewhere totally, completely different. DJ Virtue: The worst. David McBee: All good stuff, DJ. All right, so before we go, do you have a favorite podcast or a book that you'd like to give a shout-out to? DJ Virtue: Yes, I'm reading a book right now called The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. It's a great book about leadership lessons from companies that he ran in the dotcom era. So check out The Hard Thing About Hard Things. David McBee: All right. And if someone wants to get ahold of you, what is the best way for them to do that? DJ Virtue: Yeah, feel free to contact me on LinkedIn. I'd be happy to engage and supplying information needed. David McBee: Awesome. Well, thank you for being my guest today on Simpli.fi TV DJ. DJ Virtue: Thanks so much, David. Appreciate you having me on here. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading and 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.