Navigating Modern Media Investments | Kevin Planovsky

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 Kevin Planovsky, Principal and Head of Growth for Croud. Kevin co-founded VRT Digital in January of 2009 with two pals from UGA's New Media Institute with the goal of helping brands navigate the new world of mobile plus social media marketing. And 15 years later, he sold the business to Croud Inc. Along the way, Kevin joined up with multiple UGA entrepreneurs as an investor and advisor and helped them all raise millions in funding, close business with Mark Cuban, get a deal on Shark Tank, complete the TechStars program, and grow a business from nothing. Today, he leads growth at Croud's Atlanta office for U.S. focused marketing and growth and focuses as much of his time as possible on his wife and four, you heard me right, four daughters. Kevin, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Kevin Planovsky: Thanks for having me. Yes, four daughters. It's quite the juggling act. David McBee: I don't know how you handle four daughters and have a resume like I just read through. That's pretty impressive. Kevin Planovsky: It's all in the wife. You pick a good spouse, all kinds of things get unlocked. I have my wife to thank for that. She's amazing. David McBee: I am in the amazing wife club as well. I totally know what you're talking about. Well, let's jump into some questions about media. I want to know about media investment specifically. What would you say has influenced you over the years? Kevin Planovsky: Well, when we started the business in January of 2009, we weren't necessarily... We being my co-founders, Michael Lentz and Matt Griffin and I, but we really grew the media side of the business on the back of paid social, right? So we were doing a lot of early mobile strategy, text messaging, mobile websites, mobile app strategy, social media strategy, content development. And then in 2011, 2012, when Mark Zuckerberg launched paid ads on Facebook then, there was all this interest, right? If you remember back then. And so we rode that wave and we built a paid media practice around targeting, around first party data, and kind of went backwards and later kind of added in some of what you might call the more traditional channels, paid search, programmatic, display video over the years. So now what we find today is as part of Croud, spending and planning eight and nine figures across our whole portfolio, across the spectrum. Certainly, anything that's biddable, certainly anything you might call PPC, but it's more than that now. So interesting journey, but thanks to paid social for the way we got here. David McBee: That's interesting. I mostly talk to agencies who started in paid search and then expanded to paid social and then moved on to programmatic. So, I think it's interesting you started there and kind of went backwards. Kevin Planovsky: Yeah, we were really focused on what was new and different and innovative in order to get our feet in the door as truly an upstart amongst college buddies back in the day. And so starting with that was what got us the ability to make a name for ourselves. And then because those things already existed previously, we were able to find great talent to expand that alongside those budgets. David McBee: All right, so it's 2025. Let's look at those three as three different buckets, search engine, marketing, SEO, all those, kind of in a bucket, all social media, which there's definitely different buckets under that, right? And then programmatic, we'll call biddable, display ads, even streaming TV or video. How do you feel like those are stacking up against each other in 2025? And what should business owners and agencies be investing their time and money in? Kevin Planovsky: Analytics and attribution and AI and data science, because these platforms aren't stacking up, I would say, against each other at all. The only thing that's stacking up against are the humans that are bringing preconceived notions or beliefs or an addiction to a CAC number around a particular channel. So, I would say all three of those channels and then some are all table stakes, are all requirements of a modern media stack, regardless of your business model. And the way you tie that together is with some really smart targeting and segmentation, a heavy emphasis, investment and prioritization of first party data and a full circle approach to attribution and analytics. And the story will tell itself in terms of where to invest as long as you keep an open mind and you're not overly married to low funnel numbers. David McBee: Do you find that some perform better in some industries than others? And do you lead with those when you're talking to those kinds of advertisers? Kevin Planovsky: Of course. Our Atlanta office has a lot, a bit of a pedigree in the multi-location restaurant, food service, hospitality and retail space, as well as some more B2B, SaaS and technology, some higher education, more lead gen and footfall traffic driving channels. Our Croud New York office and over in the UK, heavy on retail, heavy on e-com and things of that nature. And so the mix is different. And there is more emphasis in certain areas, whether you call it PPC or search, your bid methodologies in relation to brand, protections in brand versus long tail industry. Like everybody has a slightly different relationship to these tactics and these numbers. And it really, I think it comes from leadership. It comes from C-suite level, chief executive, chief marketing officer, CFO, budget making level scenarios. And if you're a more heavy, transactionary client, like an e-commerce brand or organization and you have a more sales oriented culture, you're going to be hard pressed towards those lower funnel goals. And you're going to have to work extra hard to keep things in balance and keep an open mind and be smart about investing in awareness and branding up the funnel from a demand gen standpoint. Whereas others with some of our restaurant clients, they've been doing out of home, they've been doing regional cable buys and we're having to kind of approach the opposite direction and parlay those budgets over to some of these more biddable, even biddable digital out of home channels, CTV channels and translate that through to their leadership. So it's kind of a fun time and you can attack it in either direction. We started this as a digital marketing agency and while everything we do has data and I would say is digital in that nature, we're doing a lot of what you would call analog media still now. David McBee: Yeah. You mentioned CTV, also known as streaming TV for some folks. Where do you see that playing the biggest role for advertisers in 2025? Kevin Planovsky: Oh, my gosh. 2025 feels like the year that TV, whatever, however you want to call it, new TV, TV 2.0 is accessible and cleaned up enough. There's enough consolidation and clarity of inventory and trackability and that it should be on everybody. It doesn't matter big or small. I mean, if you're a three-location local nail salon, you should be on TV. You can be. And not a lot of people realize that certainly the biggest spenders in our industry have been investing in that. But I'm excited about sort of that democratization, that biddable nature of it, that self-serve nature of it. Who was it that just released an additional self-service login model? We see the dominance coming from like the Walmart and Amazon sets of data. So obviously, third party data sets, cleansing of data the way that you guys do and other DSPs and other partners do is so critical. And they all have different strengths and weaknesses. And you just need to vet those and find the ones that fit your business model, your audience profile, your goal set. David McBee: I feel like we've been talking about CTV for a while. Kevin Planovsky: Yeah. David McBee: And I found myself calling it the wild, wild west for years. And you're right. It does finally feel legitimate. What do you think made that happen? Kevin Planovsky: Kind of like mobile. I'll just offer an analogy. Like when we started the business in 2009 in Atlanta as Vert Digital, we were focused on mobile and social and riding that wave. And I mean, whether it was media or it was apps, it felt very much the same. Every year was the year of mobile or every year was the year of the likes or of social and it always takes a cycle, three years, four years, five years to truly mature, to kind of weed out the bad actors or folks who are just trying to make a buck on bad inventory. Some of the behind the scenes attribution and analytics and we'll just say complimentary technologies that allow you to kind of close the loop on that stuff. So, I think it's a whole lot of things. Retail media is involved in it. Even the pressures being put governmentally and legislatively on data is forcing people to just have better inventory. And I think the other thing that is happening is we've got so many devices and so many hours of inventory that's helping it. That's helping democratize. That's helping keep inventory in balance. And if you need, if you've got a premium brand that needs to be right up next to a premium streamed sports program or a hot show or movie, you can pay that premium. And if you're a nail salon with three locations and you want to work with Simpli.fi or another more accessible managed service partner, you can get on TV, too. That's cool. David McBee: I love that. I love that. And I look forward to the day when I am watching my streaming TV and the ads are not all Geico and Hyundai. Right. I want to see. Well, I don't need to see the local nail salon personally, but I'd love to see more local businesses advertised to me in my home. So, I'm hopeful that that's the direction things are going. Kevin Planovsky: Yeah. And when you pair what Gen AI video production and capabilities are doing, it's just the cost of producing true video content and of distributing it has just become so much more accessible. So, more demand will take some time. Again, I think the biggest impediment to this stuff is just human understanding and belief systems and organizations of all sizes. David McBee: Yeah, I think most local advertisers have thought that TV was out of reach for them for so long that it just doesn't feel tangible to them. And it finally is. Kevin Planovsky: Yeah. Pretty cool stuff. David McBee: All right. So how are you leveraging Simpli.fi services over at Croud? Kevin Planovsky: Yeah, so we, as I mentioned, we're balanced. We're partnered up here in Atlanta and our business is plugged into Croud's global mission. We're partnered up to grow the grow the heck out of the U.S. So, my counterparts up in New York and I work together. New York office last year just won some pretty sizable accounts, the most exciting being Nespresso on both the brand investment and the lower funnel performance investment side. And that was one from, you know, two agencies that had that independently. And we were able to pitch it and win it in such a way with this approach of multiple DSP is a democratized approach to media investment, a focus and a commitment to. Data, attribution and incrementality flying over the top of any one channel, any one bidding methodology, any one media stack. And that's made all the difference in pitches like that. And I'm just excited to adopt more of that and pair that with our services here in Atlanta and kind of spread it from sea to shining sea, because at the end of the day, we're more of a business consultancy strategy agency that is just the best in class at media that I've ever seen the talent here. So that's how we're using it. And we appreciate the strengths that you guys bring to market to make us more dangerous and have more tools to put to use for the right clients. David McBee: Well, we will endeavor to keep making you dangerous. I love that. Kevin Planovsky: Yeah, thanks. David McBee: All right. Well, can you share with folks how they can get in touch with you? Kevin Planovsky: Yeah. Kevin Planovsky, if you can spell my last name on the usual socials on LinkedIn, I spend most of my time on LinkedIn these days. And if you're interested in some enterprise level, mid-market and enterprise level, digital marketing strategy and services, Croud.com is where we live. And I'm here in Atlanta, part of the AMA here. So, if you're in the marketing and media community and you want to get involved in the Southeast, look me up. David McBee: Perfect. Thank you so much for being my guest today, Kevin. Kevin Planovsky: Thanks, man. It was fun. Appreciate you guys. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching Simpli.fi TV. Be sure to hit the follow button on Apple or Spotify or wherever you're watching your podcast so you don't miss out on that one episode with the golden nugget of information you've been searching for. And if you found this episode valuable, please rate, review and share Simpli.fi TV with your peers so that we can grow our audience and reach more people. I'm David McBee. Be awesome. And we'll see you next time.