The Platform Myth: Why Audience Matters More in Programmatic | Skip Wilson

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, and our guest today is Skip Wilson, CEO of DRAFT Advertising. Skip is a seasoned advertising professional with over two decades of experience. From his early work in digital media at CNN to leading iHeart Media's digital division, Skip has continuously pushed the boundaries of innovation. As the founder of DRAFT Media Partners, he now helps businesses achieve predictable, data-driven results through cutting edge marketing strategies. Skip, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Skip Wilson: Yeah, thank you for having me. David McBee: Happy to have you here. Excited to chat with you a little bit about programmatic media today, if that's all right. Is that an okay topic for you? Skip Wilson: Man, that's like my passion, so yeah, that sounds great. David McBee: There's not that many people in the world who can say that, so I'm glad you're here. All right, well let's just jump right in. I want to ask, what do you see as the most significant shift in programmatic media today? And on the second half of that, how can businesses really position themselves to take advantage of targeted advertising and streaming television? Skip Wilson: So I think the biggest shift, I mean, it's really been happening for the past five years, but there's just this explosion of new platforms and different ways. And for most businesses, even large businesses, I feel like they really struggle with what their right media mix should be and all those things. The flip side of that is I think the programmatic platforms have gotten better about being on the channel, and I think that that's a trend that's going to continue, is that eventually there's the solution for being able to buy many different platforms all with a single goal and those things. And that's why I like programmatic so much, is because it does allow you to ... You don't have to, I remember the days where it's like, okay, well you're a roofer, let's find 10 different local news sites and then reach out to them about getting on their site. And those days went away a decade ago, and that's the kind of thing we're going to continue to see. I think even broadcast buying and all of it is going to continue to get rolled up programmatically. David McBee: All right, so do you have any particular favorites? Are you really into high quality websites and high quality streaming TV, or do you care if it's on something lesser known, like a Pluto TV or a random website? Where do you feel like advertisers should be placing their ads? Skip Wilson: So when I think of advertising in general, I think of everything as math. You can't read it over here, but behind me is a whole bunch of math formulas that aren't really math formulas there. I break business concepts down into math formulas, which is why I have, I think, a passion for programmatic. When it comes to advertising, it's all about getting a specific message to a specific audience to get them to do something. So I care a lot about the audience I'm reaching. I don't really care about where I'm reaching them, obviously with the exception of you want things to be brand safe and all of that stuff, but as long as it's a brand safe environment, in my opinion, it doesn't matter whether it's a Super Bowl commercial or whether you're in a 1992 episode of SNL on Pluto. Who cares? It's you're reaching somebody who's in market for your product or a target audience for your product. So with the exception of some, I mean some brands, with everything, there's always exceptions. If you struggle with low prestige or something like that and you're trying to increase the prestige of a brand maybe, but for 99% of advertisers out there, no. I care about what the audience is, not so much what the platform is. David McBee: Right. Here at Simpli.fi, we actually use a couple of terms to define that. We call it inventory shaping or audience shaping. Do you care more about being on Hulu and Disney+ because those channels are important to you, or do you care about reaching a male who has been on a Jeep dealership? And I always use old Star Trek, because that's one of my favorites. I'm like, who cares what he's watching, or she, it could be a she, right? Because a lot of women buy Jeeps as well. So we are kindred spirits in that respect. Skip Wilson: Exactly. To me, the only nice thing about having the ability to target platforms is that it helps you get the clients. I really don't think, in other words, it helps with client acquisition to be able to be like, "Hey, we can get your ad on Hulu," because they're not going to know the long tail stuff, even though they watch it probably. I see that as a client getting strategy, not so much as an actual advertising strategy. David McBee: So how do you navigate that? Do you say, "Hey, yes, we can get you on Hulu," and then when you get them in the door you're like, "Here's why you don't need to be on Hulu." Is that a conversation you have? Skip Wilson: Yeah, exactly. Any time you say platforms like this, this, and this, and then you just give the caveat of, "But to be clear, we typically are what we call platform agnostic. We're just trying to go after this audience," and then you make the case for it. David McBee: Great. So what are some of the biggest mistakes you see advertisers make when they first get into programmatic media? Skip Wilson: I would say the most common mistake really is creative messaging mistakes or not thinking through what the actual funnel of the campaign is. An ad, regardless of whether it's delivered programmatically or not, an ad really can only do one thing, and so you have to be very clear about what that one thing is. And I think usually if a campaign falls down, it's because you're running ads for an insurance firm and you ran in a campaign that said, "Schedule an appointment." Well, I don't want to schedule an appointment with an insurance person unless I'm deep in market. So you're running an ad that's going to appeal to maybe an eighth of a percent of the market. Whereas if you said something like, "10 ways to make sure you're protected from flood," and run that ad, you're going to get 10 to 15% of the market to respond. Then you can retarget using programmatic with the schedule an appointment now that you've established the brand. So I think it's just not thinking through the actual strategy of the campaign. You're putting too much on the ad to try to sell an appointment. That I would say is the most common problem. David McBee: Yeah, I was working with an advertiser once and we had pulled every lever, every dial, frequency, targeting, audience, everything, and then somebody looked at the creative and said, "Guys, this is the most important part of the whole campaign, and this creative is not great." So it's so funny. It should be the very first thing we think of, and yet sometimes we get into the data and it's the last thing we think of. Skip Wilson: That's spot on. I mean, that's one of the dangers with programmatic, is because you can get so detailed on who you're targeting that it becomes very easy to start thinking, oh, well then it must not be the right audience, when a lot of times it is the right message. Or it's, like I said, you're just trying to get that message to do too much lift for you. So you need to split it into two campaigns with two different goals because often it's the audience, but it's I would say more than half of the time the creative. David McBee: Yeah. Let's revisit what you just said about the purchase funnel because I really like that. I like the idea that at the top of the funnel that's an awareness play. And so the creative should really be all about making people aware, and then when they show some interest through their online behavior, then we retarget them. Or maybe that's where we do kind of a search retargeting play and then retarget them as they get lower in the funnel. Am I reading that right? Skip Wilson: Yeah, exactly. Anytime you're selling something that most of the market isn't immediately in need for, I think that's the play. Even for a, we have a client, we do ad buying for a client that is a coffee, it's a $25 coffee. And for that, you can often sometimes run an ad that is literally just selling it because people know what a coffee concentrate is and they know what the ... And like most of our clients, I can't name drop them, because most of our clients are white label. So that's the downside of our business model. But anyway, so we can't directly go for it. But even with them, where you think you could go directly for the sale, we still get way more sales by doing a more top funnel, how to choose the best coffee concentrate campaign, and then using the retargeting ads to do the selling, even at a $25 price point. David McBee: That's a really good example. Thank you for sharing that. So let's talk about measurement. A lot of people have very high expectations of digital, but obviously very few people click on display ads and no one's clicking on streaming TV ads. So if there's no CTR metric, how do you prove that the campaign is effective? Skip Wilson: There are tools. Not to do a shameless plug, but we have a tool that does de-anonymize web traffic from a household basis, and then we use the ad logs to figure out which households were exposed. So there are tools like that where you can say, it's not necessarily causal, all you're really saying is that these people that bought something or scheduled something were exposed to these ads. It doesn't necessarily mean that's why, right? But there are tools that help with that. But even outside of that, the main thing you want to look at is, okay, if I'm running a campaign that is OTT campaign where they can't click it, what happened to my direct? Did I see an increase in direct site traffic? Because the only thing that could be driving an increase in direct site traffic would be if people knew to go directly to my website, which means that they had to have heard about my website. So there are very easy ways to check those things, even if you don't have cool sophisticated tools. David McBee: People who are regular viewers of Simpli.fi TV are going to think that you are a plant really, because you and I are, you're saying so many of the things that I've said over the years, and I'm just so grateful that someone else thinks this way. Are you able to really create effective campaigns in a way that advertisers embrace programmatic? Because I've found that people really lean so heavily into social media or SEO and paid search, that programmatic is often an afterthought, and I am so passionate about programmatic, I don't think it should be in the back seat, it should be in the front seat. So how do you overcome that mentality? Skip Wilson: One easy way to do, so I'm a big believer in you make your best recommendation twice and then leave it up to the client. So oftentimes if we are in a situation where they're pushing hard for one platform over another, if they're pushing hard for just social instead of programmatic or something like that, we run it. It's like, okay, well then let's split it and let's test both. And then you can start to show, okay, well we are actually getting better, cheaper traffic from programmatic, social media is great for retargeting, and those types of things. So that's a plan B way to do it. But the easiest way, when you start talking through the targeting abilities of programmatic, there's really not a better way to determine who's seeing your ads because you just have so many more data points that's available on any social platform, especially the TikToks and LinkedIns of the world and things. You're very limited, unless it's B2B on LinkedIn, but still. But any time we do a LinkedIn campaign, for example, you're paying eight or $9 a click, and your cost per lead is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to a hundred bucks, depending on who you're trying to get a lead with. Whereas we can take that same audience, even export, even create that audience and target those same people using programmatic and get it for a dollar or two a click and a $20 cost per lead tops. And so the results speak for themselves, I guess is the short answer. David McBee: Awesome. Okay. Well, I feel like I'm a fan, Skip. I'm definitely excited that we met today, and I'm looking forward to following you on social media. Can you share with our viewers how they can follow you on social media or reach out to you? Skip Wilson: Yeah, so the best way to reach out, just reach out to info@draftmediapartners.com. That will go to me. That'll also go to the team. I'm a curmudgeon as far as social media. My social media is LinkedIn.com/in/skipwilson. But I don't know, I'm a curmudgeon. The best way to reach out to me is through our site, draftmediapartners.com. David McBee: All right, sounds good. Well, thank you so much for being my guest today. Skip Wilson: Absolutely, man. Thank you for having me. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching Simpli.fi TV. Please help us out with a like, a share, a comment, a review, and be sure to follow or subscribe to be informed of new episodes. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping to maximize relevance and multiply results with our leading media buying software solutions. For more information, visit simpli.fi. Thank you for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.