Mastering Programmatic Advertising | Matt Bailey

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 Matt Bailey, Lead Instructor and Founder at SiteLogic. Matt teaches digital marketing and communications to the world's biggest brands, and at the most recognized universities. From developing real estate websites in '96 to starting his own digital marketing agency in 2006, creating more than a billion dollars in revenue for clients, Matt has been at the forefront of entrepreneurship and digital marketing. In 2015 though, he pivoted from his agency business to focus full-time on training and has since trained over one million marketers, that's a big number. He now offers one-on-one career training and courses for those who want to be the next generation of digital marketing leaders. Matt, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Matt Bailey: Thank you, David. It's a pleasure to be here. David McBee: I have to confess, as a trainer myself, I was immediately excited when I saw your profile. I hoped that you would be a good fit for the show. And then you mentioned that you have a class called Intro to Programmatic Advertising on LinkedIn, and I knew you were a perfect fit for our audience. So can you tell us a little bit about that course, please? Matt Bailey: Absolutely. I mean, it's a foundational basics course. Just walking through a lot of the terminology, concepts, and I would say the anchor of the course is understanding how the programmatic system works, who are all the players, what is the flow of an ad request when it hits the exchange, how many people can get in on the request. Because in the feedback, that is probably the number one part of the feedback is I never understood how it all worked and how it went together. So that was a lot of fun to put together. And the big surprise though was that I walked away after completing that course at LinkedIn thinking this is going to be way too basic. People are going to take it and they're going to be like, "Oh, I knew all this stuff already." It was exactly the opposite. People have raved about the course. And most surprising to me is when I saw their titles that these weren't entry level people. These were people in media buying in the programmatic industry that were taking the course and saying, "I didn't understand everything and this helped bring it together." So that kind of alleviated the fear. Because you know as a trainer, you go in with one level of expectation, this is where the audience is, and sometimes you get surprised. David McBee: Well, plus the programmatic landscape is quite complex, especially compared to Google AdWord or social media. I mean, it is robust. There's probably a lot of basic stuff in there that people just have no comprehension of, right? Matt Bailey: It's a difficult course to put together, and I would say of all the courses I put together, this is one of the most difficult because of all the players, and there's no rules. You can say, well, this is kind of how it happens, but then this happens. There's so many caveats. There is so much of a... I don't even want to call it a structured system, that's what makes it difficult. So I was telling my kids, when I was putting together, I'm like, this one, it took more study. It takes more making sure you say things properly in order to explain it because you don't want to say the wrong thing because it is so complex. And on top of everything, this isn't stuff we learn in school. This is for most people I think in programmatic, it's on the job training. David McBee: One of the things I've discovered, and tell me if you've experienced this as well, is when you create a basic course and an advanced person goes through it, even though they knew some of it, they walk away from it with lingo that they can use to explain it to advertisers. Has that been your experience? Matt Bailey: Yes. I tell you one of the best responses I got is that it was refreshing to hear someone train on programmatic marketing who doesn't love programmatic marketing. That was one of the best compliments, and they said, "Because I felt like I was getting a balanced, understandable approach, and the biggest thing was it helps me explain it to others. It helps me explain it. It gave me the words, the concepts that I could use in communicating it." So those were some of the fun responses. But yeah, absolutely. When you hear someone else communicate a complex subject, it gives you more of that arsenal that you can then use. David McBee: Yeah. So what would you say are some of the most common misconceptions that advertisers have about programmatic media, and did you address those in your training? Matt Bailey: Absolutely. I mean, the number one misconception is the set it and forget it. I think you're the same age as I am, you get that reference. David McBee: Yeah. I always call it the rotisserie chicken model. Matt Bailey: Yes, yes. That's it. It's the set it and forget it. I set my audience, I set my budget, uploaded creative. Now just watch the impressions roll in. And so there are probably the two biggest misconceptions, which is you set it up and you walk away and then you measure by impression. That's just the two biggest things. And a lot of that, again, because this isn't taught, it's assumed, so much of the information is assumed and it's assumed based on the masses, the masses of information that's being published or read. And so, when it's a minority of the industry saying, wait a minute, it requires much more hands-on, it requires much more analysis, it requires much more analytics to dig in and find what's working. It's hard sometimes to get those messages above all the noise. David McBee: Well I just think a course like yours is so important because you have these agencies or brands that are real familiar with Google AdWords and social media, and then they're trying to look for something else and they discover programmatic and they run a few campaigns and they don't have success because of what you just said. They set it and forget it, or they aren't using all the tools that are available to them. So I just applaud you for creating a training like that. What would you say is the most important skill a person should develop when they're running programmatic media? Matt Bailey: Oh, it's analytics. I mean, no question at all. The best people that I have worked with in different companies that truly are, I love to say, just wringing out the responses, getting the most out of programmatic, are people that have a strong analysis foundation. They are clear on organizational goals, clear measurement metrics that are not just for them, but also what they need to do, their analysis, but also what is the next level need as far as reporting success? What does the C-level need to see? Understanding how to gauge their responses and their communication appropriately. And then that active approach, just the ability to sift through mountains of data, analyze it, test a couple hypothesis, find causation is probably one of the biggest things, and then make meaningful recommendations. Analytics is the number one thing, and it's also going to be the primary tool to work against fraud. I had found many times just looking at your analytics is going to be better than any IVT report, any domain report. Just look at your analytics. That is the number one skill always, and that's a lot of what we focus on. David McBee: I'm so glad you brought up the fraud element. I've heard of these DSPs bragging about super high click-through rates. And I always see a high click-through rate as maybe there's something wrong with that app or that website, because people don't generally have high click-through rates on display campaigns. So if you have one, that might be something to look for. Would you agree? Matt Bailey: Oh, absolutely. So we had the Intro to Programmatic course, and I was actually just at LinkedIn a few weeks ago redesigning the course, and just in four years how much I had to change it. But the way I kind of developed the intro course was, here's how programmatic works, here's the promise of programmatic, and here's the problem of programmatic. And because I felt like I have to present a very balanced view because it's not just going to be agencies that are taking this, this is probably going to be advertisers, business owners who are responsible for budgets. And so you need to know what's going on. And fraud, unfortunately, is a huge part of this. And so understanding those areas. Example, I saw something today where someone posted a sleep app on the App Store that's ad supported. How many of your ads do you think are going to be shown on a sleep app that humans will actually see? So it requires some critical thinking as you're developing these campaigns and choosing where your ads are going to run. I'm glad we're on video, David, your face is, it's just perfect. David McBee: Yeah, I just have no words for that. That's awesome. Do you have any success stories where programmatic training really impacted the overall performance for a team or their understanding of the medium? Matt Bailey: Oh, absolutely. I mean, teams and... Probably the best one, I can't say who they are but it was a known worldwide brand with regional offices internationally. I was able to go to many of those regional offices and we did full day training on multiple methods of digital, but we were primarily like a half a day on programmatic and understanding analytics, targeting, campaign development. So we did a base level training. The next layer of that was then looking at campaigns that were run either nationally or locally, and finding the best of. And from that created a library of the creative, the campaign settings, the results, the full analytics from it that other areas could pull from and learn from. And really, allowing the local regional offices to come up with some pretty creative stuff from the brand level, there's some creativity, but locally they had some freedom to work. Overall from doing that, then putting together that library of campaigns, and as people learned how to do that, across the organization the ad spend dropped by about 20%, but an 8% increase in revenue simply by focusing on contextual, local, and retargeting. It was just within a year getting that kind of change was a major shift in their marketing, but also their reporting. That was one of the main areas of feedback that got back to me was the reporting was so much better, it was more efficient, cleaner, managers understood what was happening. So that's probably the biggest one I can point to as far as just an entire organizational change of understanding how to use programmatic, measure it properly, target it properly, and get some great campaigns out of it. David McBee: That is a great story about how you training actually impacts someone's bottom line. Why don't you share with the audience how they can learn more about your training and what you offer and how it can benefit them? Matt Bailey: Well, you can find me at sitelogicmarketing.com or even sitelogic.com, I found the shorter version, and of course on LinkedIn as well at Matt Bailey, SiteLogic. Those are the two easiest places to find me. David McBee: And who should be reaching out to you? What do you offer them? Matt Bailey: Well, I have online courses for anyone that wants to learn about digital marketing, whether you want to go broad and learn the different areas of digital marketing, we dive into analytics, SEO, paid search, paid media, but then also heavy into content marketing as well. So if you want to broaden out. Main reason I find a lot of people are doing that is because they want to get into management roles and understanding how to manage these different areas as they grow in an organization. Also have certification courses, and also, I've got a lot of people that are just mid-career wanting to make a change. So it's a great way... What distinguishes our training is it is hands-on and it's coached. You're not just going to sit and watch videos. You get assignments, and then you have to present those assignments. David, being in an agency, it's not just what, it's how you communicate what you know that gets people to buy off on things. So we focus a lot on the hard skills, the soft skills of presentation, persuasion that enables you to grow in your organization. David McBee: That all sounds fantastic. I really appreciate you being my guest today on Simpli.fi TV. Thank you so much. Matt Bailey: Oh, thank you, David. It has been a privilege. I really appreciate it. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching Simpli.fi TV. Please help us out with a like comment, a share or a review, and be sure to follow or subscribe to be informed about new episodes. 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 Simply.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee, be awesome, and we'll see you next time.