Joey Lowery, Digital Marketing Specialist at Media Shark

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Joey Lowry, digital marketing specialist at Media Shark. Joey is a seasoned expert in the programmatic and behavioral targeting space. With years of experience and a deep understanding of the industry, Joey has made significant contributions to the field. His involvement in the Digital Summit tour has provided him with incredible opportunities to educate and inspire others about the advantages of behavioral strategy, enabling faster ROI through targeted ad recommendations. Joey, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Joey Lowry: Thanks, David. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. David McBee: I'm really excited to have you here. I want to start by telling listeners that you have some great educational videos on YouTube. I've spent a little bit of time over there. Some of my favorites include what is a demand side platform? What is OTT and CTV advertising? And programmatic advertising explained. So Joey, thanks for creating those resources. Joey Lowry: No, absolutely. I think I did it halfway even trying to discover it more myself too, and you learn a lot when you start putting yourself out there, especially getting feedback and stuff. So it's been a pleasure and it's definitely a fun little adventure to be on. David McBee: A hundred percent. Well, for today's interview, let's assume that the guests who are watching are familiar with the world of programmatic advertising and CTV, so we don't have to do any basic, basic stuff. Can you share with our listeners some of your best advice for working with advertisers using these kinds of strategies? Joey Lowry: Yeah, the first thing is don't assume you're the expert. That's one of the biggest pieces. I see it all the time when I talk to brands. I mean, we've worked with, I mean, shoot, fortune companies all the way to, we call them [inaudible 00:01:56] your local mom and pa type lawyer, dental office, things like that. Budgets from let's say $5,000 to $700. I think the highest we've had in a month was... A single client was $785,000 in a single month. And all programmatic in that regard. But the worst thing you do is come in as an expert. And the truth is there's probably no true expert out there, but assuming that whoever you're working with is going to do the correct thing is kind of what you want. But at the reverse side, you don't want to come in with all these expectations know thinking that you're going to get the exact result you're hoping for because you heard a friend did it, or you see your competitors doing it. So kind of coming in with an open mind. The other thing too that I think is really overlooked when programmatic is everybody's so focused on what networks they're running on, what's kind of the overall data that's going on, but we kind of get lost and forget about the artwork and having consistent artwork is probably one of the biggest home runs. I mean, it's a billboard on the side of the highway, and if you just leave that billboard up the entire time and you don't take a step back and actually wonder, "Hey, are people, in a sense, pulling over and clicking and calling me? Maybe it's not necessarily that it's the programmatic that's failing, maybe it's my artwork." And so those are probably the two biggest piece of advice I could give anybody wanting to either dive in or let's say explore a little deeper into the world of programmatic. David McBee: I love that that was one of your answers. Some of the folks over at Simpli.fi who optimize campaigns tell me all the time that the number one piece of optimization is the creative itself, and we have no control over that often since we're not a creative house. Right? Joey Lowry: Yeah. David McBee: And then I'll tell you another quick story and then, but I've just got to share this. We were working with a husband and wife insurance team, and they had kind of a low CTR on their campaign, which isn't really the goal of programmatic a lot of the times, but they had given us two pieces of creative. One had his face in it and the other had her face in it, and her ad was getting lots and lots of action, and he had a 0.0000 terrible clickthrough rate. And so of course we eliminated that ad and the entire campaign improved. So oftentimes it can be the creative that is the biggest element. So thank you for sharing that. Do you have any examples of clients that you're able to share with us that had some success with programmatic or CTV? Joey Lowry: Yeah, I can't name them due to the NDAs, but I definitely have the statistic behind it. So the thing with CTV I think we have to be careful with too is that it's a wild wild west still. And so we're not jumping into necessarily same old broadcast news, same type of listeners, and the numbers, in my opinion, are so much better on CTP than what you're getting anywhere on the television side from traditional. So whenever we're kind of comparing what we get with broadcast and traditional to CTV, a lot of times we're blown away ourselves in the sense of performance just because again, we're comparing to, let's call it a dinosaur type number sometimes. But, yeah. So we had a school that we were... Or recently worked with, their budget was probably right around about $17 to $16,000 a month. And so we ran display programmatic and then also CTV as well. And we saw a landing page increase about a... Well, I'm sorry, the submission apply now, increase about 181% in a period of four months, which was huge. I mean, especially from a school standpoint. Then we've also seen e-commerce has been very heavy, and I think there's a big mix right now where businesses, they keep using the word programmatic and they don't understand it quite yet. And so I call it problematic to the newer businesses. But we increased... One of it was a local online brand. We increased their e-commerce rates up to about 300% or by 355% in a matter of six months. But again, that was one of those things where they had never done programmatic, they trusted us with the artwork, and a lot of it came down to, "Can you guys be okay passing the reins over to us, let us do what we do? And get the programmatic rolling." The other key though, with programmatic, if I can repeat one big thing is consistency. You can't turn it off, can't turn it on and just play that hot, cold game. This is a diet and exercise situation, so you want to see long-term effects. You're not taking steroids or Hydroxycut and you're eating healthy and you're going to the gym, and that's what programmatic really needs to be all about. David McBee: Great advice. Since those are such good success stories, what about the opposite? What are the mistakes that you've made or you've seen agencies make with programmatic? Joey Lowry: Yeah, so that's the one thing too that I think when you're looking for a good team is that you're willing to talk about those as well. And so we've definitely ran into a fair share of ours, and whether it's myself being involved in the campaign itself or [inaudible 00:06:42] my team, but a lot of it goes into thinking that one road is too perfect. So we would maybe focus on a certain network a little heavier just because it looked good, or maybe we were kind of sold on it, or for whatever reason, we got too hung up on our own opinion. It's almost like when you go to the casino and you just know that, "Oh, man. This is my machine." And it isn't, you just got lucky. And so sometimes when you're in the programmatic buying system, that's definitely one of those things where you get too hung up on a certain path. Another thing too is telling clients, and this is something that a client has to come to a conclusion to as well, same with agencies. A client may not actually fit in the programmatic space. That is one of those things where unfortunately, it's not for everybody, and I'd say 90% it is, but there's also a situation where maybe it's client ignorance, agency ignorance, maybe budgets, maybe expectations are not there, and maybe they're asking for the entire field, and really all you can afford is just a corner piece, and that just isn't going to work for them on the programmatic side. So we've made some mistakes where we've taken on a client because they said... Great budget, their expectations were there, but man, when it came down to, and we started launching, we realized that what they really wanted wasn't a programmatic route. In fact, they wanted gold and they were giving us bronze. So that's one of those things too, where it's just... You don't know until you start, but having clear expectations, what you're going to get, how we should run this campaign, and what I need from you as a client in the sense of expectations definitely needs to be established. So that's definitely one of those areas. David McBee: What advice do you have regarding blending programmatic with other tactics like SEO, paid search, social media? Joey Lowry: Yeah. No, it's a home run. I mean, here's one of the... Going back to mistakes, one of the biggest mistakes that people make in programmatic is they start running and targeting keywords, and they don't even rank for them on an SEO standpoint. And so you're driving traffic to your competitors and you don't even realize it because someone sees your programmatic ads, they're clicking on them, and then they go back to search you and whatever related search term that is on Google, and next thing you know, you're not even showing up on that first page. And they always say, "The best place to hide bodies, that second page of Google." So SEO is a home run, in my opinion, but also too, when you're running these ad words, you're also doing some even let's say Facebook, social display, YouTube, or even just going into TikTok, even. All of this is going to basically be one big dinner, and if you're starting leaving out certain courses, you're not going to have the same type of opportunity to let's call feed the clients. So it is definitely a mix, and I don't think there's any one home run out there because the people that spend all their money on SEO, usually their business goes out before they can actually start reaping that because Google's so slow. But then if you go blow all your money on programmatic and you just pray that it's going to turn out, sometimes it doesn't. So it definitely needs to be a good mix, and you definitely have to have those... Call other pieces to compliment each other because that's what's going to matter in the end. David McBee: Solid advice, buddy, solid advice. And great use of analogies. I mean, dinner, casino, health and fitness, all good stuff. Well, just real quick, do you have a podcast or a book that you feel has been instrumental in your success? Joey Lowry: Yeah, so favorite one My First Million. I'm big fan of those guys. And honestly, when it comes to books, I just pick a book every month, just get on there and go to Amazon, find a used book, something related to psychology and sales, and just dive into a bunch of different ones. But podcast, definitely My First Million. David McBee: Awesome. And what is the best way for folks to reach out to you if they want to connect? Joey Lowry: Yeah, so Instagram, That Marketing Guy, weirdly enough. And then also you can contact us at mediashark.ai or just joey@mediashark.ai. David McBee: Right. Perfect. Joey, thank you so much for being my guest today. Joey Lowry: Yeah, David, thanks for having me, man. I had a blast. 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.