Unlock the Power of Frndly TV with Programmatic Guaranteed on Simpli.fi | Natalie Ulfig

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 Natalie Ulfig, Advertising Business Development Manager at Frndly TV. Natalie started her career working at an agency in New York on the media planning side of things. Later, she left New York and moved to Colorado where she discovered Frndly TV and started working there a year after it launched. She has been exposed to most of the jobs at Frndly TV, including tasks related to product, advertising, finance, and customer experience. Natalie, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Natalie Ulfig: Thank you. David McBee: Natalie, before we discuss the topic of streaming TV advertising, just tell us all a little bit about Frndly TV. Natalie Ulfig: Yes, absolutely. So Frndly TV is a paid subscription, CTV streaming service. We're based in Denver, Colorado and we launched in October of 2019. So we're still a relatively young company in comparison to some of the other CTV providers. As a company, our primary focus is to provide an underserved market with access to premium and affordable CTV. So our subscription plans start at $6.99 per month. From a content perspective, we really focus on that feel-good and brand-safe entertainment piece. We're consciously non-news and non-sports oriented, which also helps keep our subscription costs low for our subs as well. You'll see that we have networks like the Hallmark Suite of Networks, the A&E Suite of Networks, Heroes and Icons, Great American Family. We have about 50 channels on our service at this point and we insert advertisements on roughly 40 of those. And from an advertising standpoint, we really help brands and advertisers increase their reach to this unique audience. David McBee: So I want to tell everyone I installed Frndly TV to prepare for our interview today and found some of my old favorites on there. I found NCIS, Magnum PI, Home Improvement and one that I grew up with and I'm going to really age myself with the Lone Ranger. So a lot of those classic, like you said, feel-good things. I really enjoy the content that you guys have on there. Natalie Ulfig: Great, I'm glad to hear that. David McBee: All right, so here on Simpli.fi TV, we talk a lot about the benefits of advertising on streaming TV. Do you have any thoughts on why now is the time that advertisers should truly embrace streaming TV advertising? Natalie Ulfig: Yeah. I think there are a lot of key benefits to streaming on CTV and for advertisers specifically, there's the ability to do some precise address ability. So with that, you can ensure that you're eliminating waste and reaching your target audience. Marketers obviously spend a lot time and energy understanding who their customers are. So by using some of these targeting features, you can ensure that you are reaching the audience that's most relevant for your brand. And then in addition, I would say on CTV, you have this high level of control over your delivery. So that goes hand in hand with targeting to some extent, but you can include exclusions for your particular campaigns. So let's say you wanted to ensure that you were running on highly brand safe content, I know on Frndly TV, you can ensure that you don't run alongside let's say PG-13 content or you exclude particular channels so that you can ensure that your advertisements are running on that brand safe content. And along with that, you have the ability to make some in-flight optimizations. So at Frndly we move extremely quickly. If an advertiser has a request to make a change for a campaign that just isn't working, we could swap a creative within that particular day and that way, they're not wasting spend on a particular campaign that just may not be working for them. David McBee: Man, I bet the linear TV guys over there are like, a day. How do you do that? That's amazing. Natalie Ulfig: Yes, absolutely. We found that really is one of the benefits that we offer our advertisers. David McBee: I love that. And of course you mentioned targeting as one of the benefits. It's usually the biggest differentiator of streaming TV compared to traditional TV, but it comes with some danger of over-targeting, right? Natalie Ulfig: Yeah, absolutely. So I have one funny story where last year, we had someone reach out and they wanted to target mothers age 25 to 34, with kids age three to seven. So that's obviously a super granular targeting model and on our end at least, it was super limiting to the scale because one, again, that's a very small audience, and then two, maybe there's not enough information present on that audience because I don't know how often the availability of information for people to have kids like three to seven are. It's just not there. So it's not super realistic to assume that you can reach a lot of people on that front. So with that, it's super limiting from a scale standpoint. In addition, I think they were missing out on this incremental audience that may not necessarily fall within that primary target they were looking for. So I've got two nephews, one's six months old, the other's three years old. Granted, I'm not their mother, but around the holiday season I could be looking to get them a toy or something like that. So if they had just opened up their scope a little bit, they may have found that there's some of this incremental audience a little bit outside of their target that they could be impactful towards. David McBee: Let's talk about that for a minute, because I see advertisers who are... They come from the digital space and the digital world is very, very big. We spend seven hours a day on our screens and they're used to really, really targeting tightly, like you just mentioned. But I think sometimes, we forget that there is an entirely different market out there that may also want to buy our products and TV plays a role in getting that top of the funnel audience interested in the first place. So that was a really good example. Thank you for sharing that. Natalie Ulfig: Yeah, of course. David McBee: Okay. I do want to mention to our viewers that Frndly TV is available to purchase on the Simpli.fi DSP and we sell it via private marketplace deals. And our latest offering CTV Choice, which is an inexpensive CTV offering that delivers on a pre-approved list of high quality publishers. So Frndly TV is pre-approved at high quality. And of course, we have it on our programmatic guaranteed. Natalie, tell us a little bit about why advertisers should be excited about programmatic guaranteed specifically. Natalie Ulfig: Yes, definitely. So from an advertising perspective, it enables you to be proactive with your planning. So I think when you're just running on a non-programmatic guaranteed campaign, you have an idea of the delivery and the scale that you could reach, but you're not super positive about that. From the programmatic guaranteed opportunity, you have the ability to converse with the publishers and determine the exact scale that you'll be able to reach within your particular targeting goals. So then you can ensure that you're delivering on that ask from the advertiser perspective, and from a cost perspective, you're meeting those particular goals. David McBee: Yeah. So it takes away some of the unknowns that go along with programmatic media. It's like this is exactly how many impressions you're going to get. This is exactly what you're going to pay for it. That's probably very comforting to a lot of advertisers. Natalie Ulfig: Yeah. There's a lot less guessing. And then again, people's expectations are set at the very beginning, so they're not surprised in the end when let's say you under delivered by a million impressions or whatever it may be. David McBee: Yeah. Nobody likes it when that happens. All right. All right, well do you have a favorite show on Frndly TV? Natalie Ulfig: I really like the 48 Hours shows, some of that true crime content. It's always good. David McBee: True crime, I can't say it either. True crime's a real hit these days, isn't it? Natalie Ulfig: Yes, definitely. David McBee: All right, well I do like to ask all of my guests if they have a favorite podcast or a book that they feel has been instrumental in their success. Do you have one of those? Natalie Ulfig: Yeah. One I've actually been listening to more recently is called Acquired. So it talks about some of the Fortune 500 company's backstories. Being in business development, sometimes you're having a slow day of sales and whatnot and it's really reassuring to listen to some of these stories and it shows you that there's a lot of work and energy that gets put into the making of these really successful companies. And it didn't just take some luck for these companies to take off. It was a lot of hard work and it makes you want to send that last email, reaching out to a brand or advertiser trying to get them to run on your platform. David McBee: I love that. I'll have to check it out. Natalie Ulfig: Yeah. David McBee: All right. Natalie, what is the best way for viewers to learn more about you? Natalie Ulfig: I would say I use Instagram the most from a social posting standpoint. My name's just Natalie Ulfig. It's one of the benefits of having a uni class name. From a professional standpoint though, LinkedIn is always a good way to get in touch with me. David McBee: Perfect. Thank you so much for being my guest today on Simpli.fi TV. Natalie Ulfig: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching Simpli.fi TV. Please help us out with a like, a comment, a share a review, if you liked it. 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.