Exploring the Evolution of TV Advertising | Jennifer Tullar

David McBee: Hello, and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, brands, marketers, and media buyers. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Jennifer Tullar, one of the newest team members here at Simpli.fi. Jennifer has spent nearly 20 years in the Atlanta media industry. She's committed to helping advertisers reach their target audiences to boost their business. After earning her degree from the University of Georgia, Jennifer has held roles in telecommunication sales, PR for movies, agency, media, negotiations, and both national and local multimedia sales. She has managed sales for cable and streaming and currently serves as the Sales Director at Simpli.fi. Jennifer, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Jennifer Tullar: Thank you so much for having me. David McBee: So happy that you are here and excited to talk to you about your TV career and how that's transitioning. Let's jump right into it. You spent two decades in traditional television advertising. How do you perceive the shift in audience engagement and ROI in the transition to connected/streaming TV? Jennifer Tullar: Well, David, when I first started in this business, we were faxing insertion orders and Grey's Anatomy on ABC was posting 15 ratings in demo and was the hot topic of mid-morning water cooler conversations. We've come a long way. I think that at least a few things have happened, whether you're talking about sports team broadcast leaving regional sports networks, or the steep decline in news viewership that's been happening since 2020, or more cult-like primetime TV shows like Grey's Anatomy being produced to air exclusively on specific platforms. To speak more on the topic of news and sports specifically, research has always shown that the average viewer is more engaged when watching sports and/or live news. Well, what happens now when news is offered literally everywhere and anywhere, and you have a network like CNN whose new CEO, Mark Thompson, declared that his own network is too dependent on traditional TV and "nowhere near ready for the future"? Direct quote, by the way. The sports genre is becoming increasingly interesting as well with the looming deterioration of regional sports networks, which is resulting in sports leagues like MLB this year forming their own media groups. As a very busy consumer myself, I personally believe that people want more control over what they're going to invest their time in doing or viewing. And the streaming services offer just that, creating your own video consumption schedule, whether that's watching last night's episode of The Voice at 1:00 the next day while you eat your lunch or watching a breaking news story on your mobile phone while in line at the grocery store. It's just mind-blowing to see how it has all evolved and taken shape over the last 20 years and what publishers, networks, and content distributors are doing to evolve with it. David McBee: Watching The Voice at lunch, is that a personal confession? Is that how you spend your lunch? Jennifer Tullar: That will be appointment television for me at 1:00 today because apparently the battle rounds last night were amazing. David McBee: I'm addicted to Big Brother, so that's where I spend my extra time. Jennifer Tullar: Nice. David McBee: Let me ask you this. As you've transitioned from selling traditional TV and now you're selling the streaming services, what have been the most significant challenges? On the flip side of that, what are the unexpected opportunities in this new landscape? Jennifer Tullar: Well, as you mentioned, been in the business 20 years. Even so, I'm feeling much like a freshman at a top Ivy League college, thanks to the amazing opportunity that is this sales director job at Simpli.fi. There's so much to understand when it comes to CTV, such as where does first party and third party data come from? How much of the CPMs are data versus inventory? What about offline attribution? Something that most brick and mortar marketers so desperately want to measure. When you speak to addressable, who are you addressing? What's the scale there? Are you addressing 30 million households in the US or all of them? It's all here at Simpli.fi, and that is the opportunity. I'm excited about the products that this company has to offer agencies and brands. With nearly one-third of our workforce being engineers, we're literally never going to run out of solutions for our clients and we'll continue to evolve at the speed of light. Every morning, I log onto my computer and I begin my day, instantly reminded that I'm on the right side of history as it pertains to CTV or streaming advertising. David McBee: I love that so much. I actually heard a television rep in your shoes tell me once that back when he sold regular old linear, traditional TV, he wasn't held to a very high standard of success. There was no way of measuring it. Now that he had the measurement tools, he could really tell if it wasn't working. Does that play a role in your life today? Jennifer Tullar: Absolutely. Just like you want to know that you're getting quality with a dollar you spend at a retail store as a consumer yourself, agencies and brands, they want ROAS, or return on ad spend, and they want to be able to not only measure that and prove that out, but even be able to sort of optimize in real time on that. That's just something that linear or traditional television cannot do in most cases. David McBee: The question is, do you like being held to this higher standard? Jennifer Tullar: Yeah, I do. We're able to put our money where our mouth is, as the old saying goes. It really brings a level of confidence to this role. I can really get behind what I'm selling. 20 years ago, as you mentioned, when I started fresh out of college in this business, I was actually on the media side and sat at an agency, spending my client's dollars on advertising at the time. It would've been wonderful to be able to then go back to that advertiser and say, "Hey, this is what I bought and this is what you actually got for that money. This is how it's measured," and that the proof would be there in the pudding for that brand or that marketer or advertiser. That's something that I'm able to do now working at Simpli.fi is actually prove out to the agencies and brands what it is that they actually paid for. David McBee: That's great. It's like being a personal trainer and finally having a scale. "Here, step on this, look what we did." Jennifer Tullar: Exactly. Exactly. David McBee: All right, so these streaming platforms, they're all over the place. We've got on-demand content, we've got SVODs, we've got AVODs, we've got FASTs. Where do you envision the future of TV advertising heading? Jennifer Tullar: Well, after the first couple of years of ad-supported streaming being a part of the video ecosystem, I can recall a time when we saw about 15% of all video consumption taking place on those streaming platforms versus traditional or linear television. At that time, the recommendation was for marketers' budgets to shift accordingly to align with that specific fragmentation measurement of viewership. So, 15% of your budget should go towards streaming, for instance. But then more streaming platforms, services, and devices entered the scene, and the gap between linear and streaming viewership has narrowed drastically, and that is coming at the cost of traditional linear TV viewership. Matter of fact, it was just in the spring of 2023 where Nielsen reported that less than 50% of households in the US subscribe to a pay TV service. The outlook as far out as 2027 is even bleaker with a projection of less than 35%. Some markets are already there. For example, Atlanta, which is where I sit, has a mere 34% of TV households subscribing to cable. Before I came to Simpli.fi in 2023, I was selling both linear and streaming video, as you mentioned. I will tell you, I saw firsthand the shift that was happening in budgets from linear to streaming at all of the sophisticated agency clients that I worked with. Some budgets had shifted as much as 70% from linear to streaming. Quite frankly, that was my wake-up call that I needed to jump with both feet into the future, and the future is Simpli.fi. David McBee: I think we are so lucky to have you. You're very passionate about this. I'm so grateful that you're with us. That's awesome. Thank you. Jennifer Tullar: Thank you. David McBee: All right, so before we go, I always ask my guests if they have a favorite podcast or a favorite book that they feel has been instrumental to their success. What do you got? Jennifer Tullar: Well, I've got I guess two, really. One's a podcast and then one's a publication. But for fun, I tune in weekly to a podcast by Peter Kafka called Recode Media on Spotify. His topics and guest speakers are just interesting and they run the gamut. It's everything from journalism to entertainment, but it's MediaPost that keeps me abreast of changes with agencies and brands, Nielsen and Comscore updates, industry news, and so forth. I highly recommend adding MediaPost newsletters to anyone's RSS feeds. David McBee: That's great. What is the best way for viewers to learn more about you? Jennifer Tullar: Well, I'm very active on LinkedIn and you can find me by simply searching my first and last name, Jennifer Tullar. David McBee: And that's T-U-L-L-A-R, so people can find you. Jennifer Tullar: That's right. David McBee: All right. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for being my guest on Simpli.fi TV today. Jennifer Tullar: Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it. 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, 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.