From Social Media to CTV: Leveraging Regenerative AI | Matt Crenshaw

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, brands and media buyers. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Matt Crenshaw, CEO of Nova, a leading provider of creative automation between digital ad channels. Matt has been leading media and technology organizations for over 20 years, spanning digital media and television. Prior to Nova, he ran the US business for Outbrain, helping build native advertising into a channel for agencies, brands and publishers to build their revenues. Matt also spent seven years at Discovery Communications where he ran digital marketing, analytics and business development for all of Discovery properties. Matt, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Matt Crenshaw: David, it's good to see you. David McBee: It's good to be seen. All right, so there's a lot of talk about creative automation and AI and a lot of the interviews that I have obviously in the news. How much of it is real and what's something that agencies can do right now to take advantage of it? Matt Crenshaw: Yeah, so that's a great question. It's hard to believe it's only been about 15 months since we all got our hands on ChatGPT and the idea of AI really became real, something we could put our hands on and we could see and say, "This feels like magic." And so I think when we talk about AI, a lot of agencies and people in marketing, they're thinking about generative AI because that's where all the press is going. And generative AI, basically typing in a prompt and creating any type of media, is exciting, but it's still fraught with problems. It's still something that requires a ton of human oversight. There are safety issues, copyright issues that have to be worked out. So it feels like we're in this in-between. We can kind of see a fuzzy picture of what's coming in the future, but it's not quite here yet. In terms of what's here now, there's a different way to think about AI that has much more immediate and practical applications. And that's AI that can take one thing that's working and make it work in new places. And that's what my company, Nova, does effectively, as you said, sort of automating ad creative in one channel into another channel. So making it seamless, moving from a social post to an ad that is on a publisher site and online video, CTV, which we're going to be talking about. So yeah, we think of this not as generative AI, but almost like regenerative AI. So how you can bypass all the short-term challenges with AI by focusing on regenerating what's working in one place into another space instead of inventing stuff from scratch. Which is exciting, but still brand new. David McBee: I like that term, regenerative AI. For people who are unfamiliar with what we're talking about, let's just drive right into the basics. Imagine I'm a client and I want to reuse a social media post that was really effective. How does that work? Matt Crenshaw: Yeah, it's a great question. So what happens is brands are putting all of this money, all of this attention into social media. In your example, you're a client who has a social media post. It's gone through all the approval channels. You love it, you've gotten great feedback on it. You can see all the metrics about what works so well. What Nova allows you to do is in under two minutes convert that social post into an ad that can run on desktop, it can run on mobile, it can run an online video, it can run on CTV, it can run on digital billboards. So making it super easy to take that social post and bring it to life with new audiences in new places, that's never been possible. We tend to think of social as it happens on social. We're changing that definition, thinking about social as a type of content that you can put anywhere. David McBee: So I can pretty easily imagine that in a display environment, but let's talk about what that looks like on CTV, especially considering most social videos are vertical video. So what does that look like on a big screen? Matt Crenshaw: Yeah, great question. So the idea behind social CTV is it's simple enough. How do you take a social post, put it on the big screen, but you talked about this with vertical video on big horizontal screens. It's not always a one-to-one fit. So what we've done is on top of our technology that automates the creation of the CTV ad, and we're talking about production ready TV ads on the big screen, is created a bunch of different templates so that you can pull in square videos, horizontal videos, vertical videos often with a QR code on one side, a caption, brand information, some kind of call to action. I think we've all seen these vertical videos on our TVs as we're watching streaming services. So there's a lot of potential, even though it looks like a challenge at first blush. A lot of creative potential to take vertical video and bring it to CTV. The technology's there. The only challenge now is finding building great designs and great templates that users love and advertisers feel like tells their story. David McBee: You mentioned QR codes with CTV and that's kind of a hot topic as well. Does it work? Do people really scan those things? Matt Crenshaw: Yeah, it's a great question and so much as it looks natural, like as marketers we think about there's a call to action. That's got to be a good thing. It's turning this ad into a direct response type of ad. We're not seeing a ton of engagement. And if you think of scan rates being an equivalent of a click-through rate on a digital ad that you'd see on your phone or on desktop, the scan rates are nowhere near those numbers. That said, it's something a lot of clients lean into. They like that there's a sense of users having to take action. It puts users in the frame of mind of leaning in and thinking about getting more information. And of course some people do scan, but it's not something we see strong, consistent behavior around. David McBee: As someone who's been in the display world for a little over a decade and display ads don't get really super high click-through rates either, especially compared to Google AdWords, I'm always cautious about talking about CTR as the metric on which to base the success of a campaign. I can't imagine. Well, I imagine having to really educate an advertiser to say, "Sure, we can put this QR code in there and it will generate some results, but it's not how you should measure the effectiveness." Is that the conversation as you see it? Matt Crenshaw: It's actually the opposite. David McBee: Okay. Matt Crenshaw: So no, what you're saying makes perfect sense to me. I've been around a lot of different forms of advertising for many years and display as well. People feel like because it's available, it's something they should run. And any scans still feel kind of like it's more than zero. So it's something, even though I think it's clear that the engagement of the ad is not entirely a function of the scan rate. So people feel like, "Look, if I can build the ad cut out production costs, it looks good. It's exciting." Not everybody's going to scan, but anybody who does scan, it's kind of a nice extra. So I think the expectation is just different than what people are accustomed to with display ads. David McBee: That makes sense because QR codes are new to the world. Clicks are old school, so they kind of expect clicks, but I get it. Okay, so the QR code is kind of an extra. Do you have kind of a generic scan through rate? How many people are scanning these things? Matt Crenshaw: Yeah, the answer with any kind of user behavior number is it depends. But to put us in the ballpark, we see about 0.005%. So below click-through rates on standard display, we do talk to ... I know, it's a lot of zeros. It's like we're ... David McBee: No, I was just trying to figure out how many. Is that one in 20,000? Matt Crenshaw: Yeah, so it's very, very few. But you think about how you watch TV and it's probably not too surprising. So yeah, those numbers relative to other types of ads in terms of just lean in direct response engagement are still pretty low, but it varies a lot. We're still in the very early days of this I think in terms of how users engage their TVs, but also we see a huge jump in scan rates based on different calls to action. If there's some kind of incentivized call to action, something beyond just learn more or shop now, which are kind of the new basics. Something that's a little bit more exciting, more tailored, more clear on how users are going to get value by scanning, that drives the scan rates up. David McBee: So maybe entering a contest or getting a discount? Matt Crenshaw: Exactly, exactly. Those are two great examples we've seen that you can drive up scan rates quite a bit. David McBee: Also, I'm just going to throw in a pet peeve here, is when I see that QR code in the last few seconds of the commercial and I'm trying to get my phone out and it's gone. Do you suggest that the QR code exists the entirety of the commercial? Matt Crenshaw: If not, the entirety. It obviously depends on the length of the commercial, but we do talk to people about you've got to leave it on the screen for longer. And sometimes people look at it and go, "Yeah, but it's clear that it's there. People know what to do with it." And what you're describing, you're not the only one. Yeah. David McBee: So generally speaking, what advice do you have for agencies and media buyers and brands when it comes to getting their social outside of the walled gardens of Meta and TikTok and Snap and placing them in these environments like the rest of the web and streaming TV? What general advice do you have for folks? Matt Crenshaw: Yeah, general advice is one experiment. Most brands have a ton of social content. We make it easy to create lots of versions of an ad to import multiple, multiple creatives. A lot of people do it once and say, "Wow, that's great. I'm running a social post on the open web," to your point. And it's like, "No, no. Put 10 in a campaign. See what works." There isn't a clear line between exactly what engages people on social and exactly what drives click-through rates or brand uplift on the open web, so you have to experiment. But we see that the social icons, the social formats, that level of familiarity and seeing something surprising in a new environment, which is what happens when you see a clear Instagram video, but it's on a publisher website, let's say, that grabs people's attention, which is what we're all about in advertising. So knowing that just to experiment and test and see what works. David McBee: All great advice. This has been really, really terrific. Matt, before I let you go, I like to ask all of my guests if they have a favorite podcast or a book that has been instrumental in their success. Matt Crenshaw: As I think about books, I go all the way back. There's a book, the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. I think it was written in the '70s. I think about this a lot. With all the technological change we're going through, it seems like the rules of human psychology and marketing are more bedrock than ever, so it's a good way to get back to basics. So highly recommend that book. Somebody could read the entire book in an hour, so it's not a huge time investment. David McBee: I love it when my guests bring out the old school stuff. And some of the best stuff came out of the '70s, let's be honest. Matt Crenshaw: Not just books. David McBee: All right, so what is the best way for people to reach you? Matt Crenshaw: Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Just go to search me, Matt Crenshaw, CEO of Nova, and that's the best way to get in touch. David McBee: Perfect. Well, thank you, Matt, so much for being my guest today. Matt Crenshaw: David, thank you. 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 Simply.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome and we'll see you next time.