The Power of Programmatic | Sophia Ho

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, brands, marketers, and media buyers. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Sophia Ho, Brand Performance Marketing Group Director at the TRG Agency. Sophia has been providing clients with data-driven strategies for over 18 years. Her clients span across all verticals from consumer electronics such as Samsung and LG, luxury brands such as Estee Lauder and Forevermark Diamonds, to CPG clients such as Dove and World's Best Cat Litter. She has worked with both holding companies such as GroupM, Omnicom, Publicis, as well as independent agencies such as TRG. She's also a self-proclaimed data nerd and loves this ever-changing industry. Sophia, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Sophia Ho: Thank you, David. Thank you so much for having me. David McBee: Thank you for being here. Sophia, I know that this world of agencies, the majority of them put the focus of their attention on Google search, and walled garden social media channels, which I know TRG takes care of those things as well. But your agency, and you specifically, are a big fan of programmatic advertising. Why do you feel so strongly about programmatic? Sophia Ho: Well, besides the fact that it's my entire career, programmatic help advertisers reach audiences where the walled gardens is not able to. We all feel like we live in the Google world. We all feel like we're just on social media browsing content. But, we also do exist on other media channels and other websites. How about streaming? We're all streaming contents on our TVs. How about surfing for different products or reading news, reading blogs, and different apps that you do not want them to track you across other apps? How about using Safari or Firefox on your computer or your phone? People do exist everywhere beyond the walled gardens, and we want to help the advertisers get their messages everywhere, whenever that is appropriate. That's why I feel like programmatic is such an important tool for an agency to master and leverage for their advertisers. David McBee: At TRG, what percentage of your campaigns would you say leverage Google search, social media, as well as programmatic? Most of them, I assume? Sophia Ho: Most of them, because they're serving different purposes. If you use it right, you can use them at the right places at the right time. David McBee: Do you have any programmatic best practices that you have learned over the years? Sophia Ho: I would say go back to the basics. Audience, and this audience is so important. In my eyes, I think there are three kinds of audiences. One, is the client audience. When we work with a brand, we need to fully understand what their customers are, who they're trying to speak to and their business objectives. If we are not aligned on who we are reaching for the advertisers, then we're not achieving their goals for them. The second audience is the people that we are reaching for the particular campaign. We need to make sure that we know exactly what we're tasked to do for this campaign. We may be asked to be delivering brand campaign, or maybe we need to drive a DR response for this campaign. But if we are not a hundred percent in agreement with the client and in our setup, then we're not going to achieve the goal. Finally, but it's also one of the most important thing is, as a programmatic strategist, you need to really know the data that you're using for your campaign. For example, do you know where your auto intender come from? You need to know where the data is sourced. Don't just use a data that you buy from a third party. You need to know where they gather data from. Really ask the question, is this unique? Is this available from whatever source that's important to you? So these are the three things that I will always check first. David McBee: I really liked that last one because I've checked my own data several times and I found out that I was in the haircare audience, which I knew was a mistake. But what about KPIs for your clients? Is there anything specific that they ask for, or that you provide? Sophia Ho: Definitely ask questions, understand what the final expectation is from the client, and then you can assess, is the KPI doable or not? Make sure that when you are setting up strategies, pick the ones that can help you. For example, if we're trying to get a direct response goal delivered for the campaign, but the client doesn't have a strong brand awareness in the market, make sure that you layer in a brand awareness tactic, or at least a tactic that can get people to be interested in the brand. Otherwise, just running retargeting is not going to meet the KPI. David McBee: All right. So, it's using a blend of different tactics. We have the world of Google, we have the world of social media, and then we have the world of programmatic. But in the world of programmatic, there's a whole lot of little worlds underneath it as well, right? Sophia Ho: Yes. I like that, how you describe it, a lot of little worlds. David McBee: All right. So, what would you say is TRGs superpower? What makes you guys so special? Sophia Ho: In 2023, we launched a new approach to media planning and strategy. We call it a whole human approach. Not one person is the same as the next, and everybody's purchase behavior, thought process, internet viewing behavior, is all different. We're looking at our clients/customers from a different lens. We look at them as one person, individuals. So, how are we going to reach these audiences from different media, and how are we going to use a different media format, media channels, and creatives, and brand message to reach them effectively? That is what we call the whole human approach. As a media team, as a whole team, we come together and discuss the strategy, and we assign budget based on the discussion, and we will create a tactical plans based on these high-level strategies. We do discuss how we want to spend the client budget and, oftentimes, we joke that we can individually spend the entire budget in its entirety, but we don't do that because that's not responsible. We are using the budget, in different channels, reach people efficiently and effectively, and we play nice. We're friends. David McBee: I can almost imagine those meetings where you're fighting over who gets the money for programmatic, or social media, or search. That'd be funny. Do you have an example of one of these whole human audiences? Sophia Ho: Yes. Recently, we put together a plan for a casino client. They always obviously want people to go to the casinos and spend money there, and it's fun, but they want to reach beyond their core audiences. Who's their core audiences? The people that know of the casino and are going already. But we're trying to find people that can be interested in going as well. For example, people that are planning a bachelor or bachelorette party, people that are planning a fun weekend away, people that want to use their nice spa and pool facilities. So we have different media combination to reach these potential audiences. It was fun. It was a very different thinking process. I'm not going to lie, it was breaking down how we typically think about planning, and we are all thinking cohesively. Because we used to think in our individual channels, and now we're thinking for the brand, as a team. That was a very refreshing process. David McBee: I like that. I actually hear a lot of guests talking about getting away from the siloed approach, and more of an integrated campaign. So, that's good to hear. All right. Before we go, I just want to ask, do you have a favorite podcast or a book that you feel has been instrumental in your success? Sophia Ho: This podcast that I started listening to this year is called On Strategy Showcase. It's really cool. It's covering a lot of the strategies applied by other advertisers and agencies, and it really broadens my view of how other people are seeing media, and great discussion among my colleagues, and really provide a lot of thought-provoking topics when we are all together. David McBee: Perfect. What is the best way for viewers to learn more about Sophia Ho? Sophia Ho: LinkedIn? Just search for Sophia Ho TRG, and I'm happy to make connections. David McBee: Well, Sophia, thank you so much for being my guest today on Simpli.fi TV. Sophia Ho: Thank you for having me. David McBee: 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 Simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.