Beyond Google and Meta – How One Agency Embraced Programmatic | Josh Eliseuson

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, marketers, media buyers, and business owners. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Josh Eliseuson, President and Founder of Jubilant Digital Marketing. Josh has over 18 years of experience building and running digital campaigns for over 1000 different organizations, ranging from larger clients like McDonald's and USAA to smaller local businesses like restaurants and dentists. Jubilant is a Google Premier partner, member of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, a five-time Web Excellence Award winner, and the recipient of multiple American advertising awards. Jubilant offers SEM, programmatic display, SEO, social media, website development, marketing optimization, and content marketing services. Wow. Josh, welcome to the Simpli.fi Leadership Series. Josh Eliseuson: Oh, thank you for having me. David McBee: So Josh, you and I go way back to a time before social media and programmatic, a time when we were really just cutting our teeth doing Google AdWords, and that was really the digital strategy of the day, right, having a website ranking on Google. Remember those days? Josh Eliseuson: Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I miss those days. David McBee: No kidding. A lot has changed since then, right? How has Jubilant kept up and how are you able to offer so many different services to your clients? Josh Eliseuson: Well, so we've tried to keep up just as things change. So like you said, 10 years ago, or maybe even more recent than that, five years ago, Google was the workhorse of any local business, major national businesses. That was how they got their customers. And so whether it was from organic strategies or paid search, they were relying heavily on Google. Well, because more advertisers were on Google, Google has said during their antitrust litigation that they actually put CPC minimums in place and things like that, so their costs have gone up. So we have HVAC clients that paying $5 a click three years ago, they're now paying $50 a click. So as those costs increase, the ROI and ROAS don't make sense sometimes. It's simply the math does not work to continue advertising on Google for certain campaigns or for certain clients. And so we've been forced to by our clients because our job is to get them leads, to get them sales if they're an e-commerce site. And so in order for us to survive, we have to adapt. And so we've generated new strategies like programmatic and paid social. Luckily, programmatic targeting is much better than it was 10 years ago. Paid social targeting and ad formats are better than it was 10 years ago. So as Google's gotten more expensive, people have caught up, essentially. And so now there's a great opportunity for some lead gen and sales to happen outside of the Google ecosystem. David McBee: Yeah, I was talking to someone recently that said they felt like that same thing happened or is happening with Meta, right? Like Meta was the solution to the problem you just described, but now Meta has the same experience because everyone is advertising on Facebook and Instagram. And so I'd love to pivot to programmatic media. I'm glad you brought it up. Tell me how your clients are benefiting from programmatic. Josh Eliseuson: Yeah, so really like I said earlier, it's like the targeting capabilities with Simpli.fi and just programmatic generally, it's just getting better and better. So we use a lot of custom intent audiences, addressable geofencing, behavioral targeting to try, for us, it's really trying to emulate the intent that we loved with Google, but that intent targeting that we had with Google is now very expensive. So with programmatic, we're able to emulate it. The targeting capabilities and through custom intent audiences and things like that are on par with what we had with Google five years ago, but for a fraction of the cost. So we have campaigns that are lead generation focused that are finding success with programmatic. We have brand awareness campaigns that are able to get very low cost targeted traffic to their sites and foot traffic in the doors for geofencing campaigns that we're running. And so that alternative is kind of manifested with our programmatic buys. David McBee: Gosh, I feel like when I got hired at Simpli.fi, I was pulling you towards programmatic and you were hesitant to say the least, right? Was there a moment, was there a specific campaign? What kind of made you realize, hey, there's something to this programmatic? And maybe 10 years ago it was just different technology, so it might be that the technology has improved, but is there an example that you have that like you really embraced it? Josh Eliseuson: No. Yeah, so we have, different industries kind of benefit from it, but one of the industries that we're finding the most success is tourism. And so we are working with a DMO, a destination marketing organization that is essentially buying targeted demographics and behavioral targeting across different regions and trying to get those people, I can't say what DMO we're working with right now for NDA, but trying to get people to their attractions and their destination and their city. And so they're targeting regionally, but they're not just targeting, oh, I want to target all of this state. They're targeting multiple different types of people that would be interested in the different things, the different activities and different attractions that they have in their market. And so what geofencing does and what the technology does is we're able to actually put some ROI against that when 10 years ago, it was hard to. It's just like, I can't convince this client that hey, CPM is great. We got a lot of impressions, but now with addressable geofencing, we have that conversion fence and we're able to say, okay, hey, we showed this ad in this city three hours away, and now we have these visitors that are visiting our attractions. We put addressable, conversion fences, sorry, put conversion fences around kind of the major attractions that are really kind of funding the DMO. They're the ones that are helping fund that DMO. And so when we put those geo fences around there, we can actually see the foot traffic from the campaign. Other people that saw our ads in X state, or X city, this number of people actually came into this attraction. Now, obviously, some of those people might have traveled there anyway, so we're utilizing Simpli.fi's lift capability to show lift of those campaigns of those that saw our ad versus those that didn't. And there are three to five times more likely to come to that city because they saw our ad. So we're able to kind of put a money amount to that and show the client that this campaign had 1000% ROAS basically in that particular instance. So yeah, that's just one example. And as we move more into our lead gen tactics and things like that for other clients and we do a lot of home services and they did a lot of radio home services like HVAC, plumbers, they did a lot of radio, they did a lot of TV, broadcast TV back in the day, and those CPMs have gone up and so, but we were doing with them is like, hey, connected TV and things like that are a lot more affordable with Simpli.fi. And so we're able to purchase that inventory and kind of get the same program, the same quality of programming and content, like it'll be like a prime time spot for half the cost if we were to buy it directly from one of those stations. So that's kind of another tactic we're using for home services. David McBee: I feel a little validated that you've drunk the Kool-Aids. So when your client comes to you brand new and they ask for search engine marketing, they ask for social media, how do you bring up programmatic? How do you explain to them what the rest of the internet is and how it works? Josh Eliseuson: Yeah. Sometimes these days they kind of get it theoretically, like you see the ads that follow you around. I just said that this morning when I was getting my haircut. They were asking me what I did for a living. I said, "I'm the guy who buys the ads that follow you around." And so everybody kind of gets that. So that's a lot of times, but how do we choose what creative follows you around and when to show that ad to that user and when to do that? And so we kind of work with clients to kind of know truly what their goals are, what their target audiences are, what they're trying to achieve. Is it lead gen? Is it e-commerce? What type of lead gen? Is it a novel product? So we're trying to get awareness, so we're trying to kind of do light lead gen, like, Hey, download this piece of content. We're trying to join our webinar, things like that versus yep, I'm ready to hire a plumber. So it depends on that, what kind of that lead gen is. And we build out that model of, okay, we know what these CPMs, we know what the conversion rates are on programmatic. We know, and like I said earlier, is a lot of times why we're moving budget from paid search to programmatic is paid search for that particular client's probably really expensive. And I show them that and say, "Hey, this is the average cost per click on Google right now, is the average cost per click on Bing. This is what we could get on programmatic. It's a lot cheaper. This is what we can do to target." So it's still going to be very, very relevant. Some cases it's like, okay, that person looking for that particular need in that moment is more relevant, but if it's $50 a click and programmatic is a dollar a click, it's not 50 times more relevant. And so the ROI is actually better on programmatic. So yeah, that's kind of how we explained it to them. It's just this is better. It's our job to be a fiduciary for our client's media budget. And so it's, in our opinion, a programmatic buy is better in these types of circumstances for that particular business. David McBee: Well said, my friend. Well said. Why don't you let people know how they can learn more about Jubilant or get in touch with you personally? Josh Eliseuson: So probably the best way to get in touch with me personally is to go to my LinkedIn profile. So just search for Josh Eliseuson. I'm the only Josh Eliseuson on earth, I think, so which is fun. That's a fun thing, having a unique name. And that's probably the best way to get in touch with me personally. Obviously you can go read about Jubilant services on our website, jubilantdigital.com. But yeah. Yeah, that's probably the best way. David McBee: That's awesome that you're the only Josh Eliseuson on the planet. Just for fun, because there's about four David McBees, but I destroyed them on the search page. They must absolutely hate me. All right, Josh, thanks so much for being my guest today. I appreciate you. Josh Eliseuson: Yep. Nope, not at all. Happy to be here. Thanks. Thanks David. Bye-bye. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching Simpli.fi TV. Please help us out with a like, a share, a review and be sure to follow or subscribe to be informed about new episodes. Simpli.fi TV is of course, 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.