Unlocking the Potential of ACR Data in CTV Advertising | Will Gaffney

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 Will Gaffney, principal product manager right here at Simpli.fi. In the mid 2000s will embarked on a journey in web development and explored diverse affiliate marketing approaches. And this passion drove him to pursue a degree in business information systems and entrepreneurial management with a leadership emphasis at TCU. This led him to iProspect, a global agency where he managed structured data initiatives for major brands like Adidas, Bass Pro shops and Gap. Simpli.fi Was lucky enough to add him to our ranks in 2014 where he has contributed his expertise to the ad ops and product teams all while tearing up the annual Christmas party with his killer karaoke licks. Will, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Will Gaffney: Appreciate you having me, David. Are you doing okay? Your voice sounds a little rough. David McBee: I appreciate you saying that. I definitely sound like a frog, but I'm feeling much better. Can you make me sound better with a weird voice or something like that? Will Gaffney: I can do what makes my kids feel better and it'll make you look normal by comparison. We can just do the rest of the interview in Elmo voice. [inaudible 00:01:27]. David McBee: I don't know if we should do the whole interview, but that was fantastic. Thank you for that. All right, let's dive in. I love talking to product people at Simpli.fi. I always feel like I get a look behind the curtain. So Simpli.fi has obviously been leveraging behavioral data, location data, demographic data for years now. But now with the introduction of our latest CTV product ZTV, we're now talking about using ACR Data. Would you talk a little bit about that? Will Gaffney: Yeah, the ACR Data, it's incredible information that we're seeing and it's really kind of fascinating thinking back on how long this technology has been available because it's just a chip in every single TV that has been manufactured since about 2010. And so somebody thought to put it in there a long time ago and now everybody's freaking out about it. How can we best use this information? And it just took 10 years of industry adoption to finally understand where this could really be applicable. But now we're taking all this information that makes a huge panel size of viewership information and essentially what it's able to do is it digitalizes what Nielsen has been doing for the linear industry since the beginning of time, since the beginning of their whole company history. And it provides that level of insight with an even bigger panel size to glean the same insights but for CTV. David McBee: All right, so let's go to the very basics of it. It's a chip in Smart TVs and it is doing what exactly? Will Gaffney: It's essentially just saying this is what's on the screen that's being played. It's not dependent on any certain cable box, any Apple TV, any Roku device. It's just embedded in the TV. So even if it's over the air, as long as it's being shown on the screen, it's like a dynamic capture of this is what the viewer is actually watching or this is what has been shown on the screen and then it shows the information on that of just what advertiser was this, what show was this? And it becomes a particular value where we can really be able to actually make the profile and get the same signals that we do on all of our display ads for user signals and where they've been in terms of websites. But taking that into the TV realm. David McBee: So an ACR chip in my house would quickly discover that I'm a big fan of anything Star Trek and lots of reality TV. What would we do with that kind of information? Will Gaffney: Well, it kind of allows you the interesting bit where it's not completely, and so where ACR data comes from, it's not as ubiquitous as the amount of programmatic data that comes out there. And so programmatic data enables us to be able to focus on a single user. And ACR information is still really kind of siloed according to the manufacturers that put the chip into their TVs in the first place. And so you don't get a full one-to-one picture of it, but allows you to give that insight of this is kind of what's available. And so for your specific ACR chip and your TV, yes it would pick up on all of your viewership habits and then send that off so that it can be aggregated amongst everybody else. And so we won't necessarily see this is David McBee or this is this user ID that watches this, but we can be able to aggregate all that together of this zip code, this DMA tends to watch this at an above average rate. Or if we have any more insights about those zip codes, we can be able to bring that in of saying this type of demographic that this zip code represents, watches more Star Trek, watches this. And so being able to pair together those data sets so that we can begin to make more inferences is where we see a lot of the value with ACR. David McBee: And we're leveraging ACR Data right now mostly to determine if someone's watching linear or traditional TV versus streaming TV. Is that correct? Will Gaffney: Correct, yes. So that's the initial use case for it. So it helps us to identify and not even necessarily identify, but really to quantify where users and where our clients can see the best bang for their buck. Everybody knows you need to start investing in CTV, but it really doesn't make a lot of sense because depending on which article you read, the amount of cord cutters is going to change according to the research. And so this really puts it at a granular level all the way down to the zip code level. What is that viewership of who's watching linear versus who's actually streaming more of their content? So that this zip code tends to be a little bit more streaming heavy versus this other zip code, even if they're both part of my target demographic. And so it allows you to place your ad dollars where they're really going to be best spent digitally. David McBee: Do you have any examples of why a zip code would be heavier streaming than another zip code? Will Gaffney: Sure. So some examples come down to age range, some come down to income. We kind of just see a lot of different variances. So the age range, a lot of the general stereotypes that are also proving true with the data that we see, the younger the audience, the more streaming heavy they tend to be. They don't want to get involved in any linear contracts. So especially if we see some big cities that are a little bit older but not college towns, they tend to be much more focused on linear size. But then if you do have a college town, especially the zip codes where that college resides, you're going to see a lot higher streaming rates because you're getting into college students. So in addition, you also have household income where a lot of the higher income households, even if they are making the kind of a dip into streaming and cutting the cable, it's not quite as common for them. But in terms of the lower income households, a lot of them just out of necessity or having to cut the cord just so that they can get the free AVOD supported platforms that are really just growing like crazy right now. David McBee: Awesome. Well thanks so much for working so hard on ZTV. We're really excited about it. Will, you're a product guy and our audience, our customers, it's agencies, it's people who usually deal with campaign managers or salespeople. What golden nuggets of wisdom does a product guy have for that audience? Will Gaffney: The biggest thing looking forward into the next 12 months is really lean into expanding that media mix and understanding how things really work together. I can only see things becoming increasingly more complex than they already are. And it's also, it's a weird dynamic where it's complexity with consolidation and the main people that are going to be winning are going to understand how the various channels that you have to use to reach the totality of your audience, how do those play together and how can I best tell that story to my clients to communicate our own value? And that's something that we're really investing from our own product side of things to really make that a lot easier for our clients. But also for our clients, start leaning into that now and understanding that your audience is fragmented. You're not going to be able to look to one channel to be able to reach them everywhere. You have to really open up the idea of what's my social strategy, where it's my CTV strategy and even with my CTV strategy, which CTV audience am I wanting to get and what's the reality of where they are? For the example earlier with high income households, you can do Pluto if you want to reach the totality, but your audience, you've got to open up to some programmatic deals and that's going to be more expensive because they have the money, they're going to pay for the non-ad supported subscriptions. So you have to be able to reach them in that type of model as well. And so how can I bring in PG and PMP deals into my overall campaign strategy so that I can really get the biggest bang for my buck that I'm expecting? David McBee: Great advice. Now Will, before I let you go, do you have a favorite podcast or a book that has been instrumental in your success? Will Gaffney: Not really a podcast or a book, sadly. So it's a lot of the podcast and everything that I do listen to, it kind of keeps it a little bit more high level, which is good to know, but really diving into a lot of the different Subreddits and everything that are out there where you really anonymously get tuned into other product people or ad ops people at other DSPs is really where you get to see the most of it. And you get a lot more of the honest opinions about everything where podcasts, books, everything, it's all overly rosy and then you get somebody venting on Reddit about this is actually a bunch of bullshit and it's a little bit therapeutic, but at the same time you get some real information. It's honestly helped a lot of different investigative work that we've done on our side of just realizing, "Okay, this is how everybody else sees it." This kind of points into a bit of reality where the client is saying that this absolutely has to happen and then it kind of helps us to empirically prove this isn't actually how it happens, and then we're able to have a more honest conversation. But going into that, really diving into the nitty-gritty weeds of all those different Subreddit is really the biggest golden nugget in my opinion. David McBee: I like that. I like that a lot. All right, now, if someone wanted to get in touch with you or follow you on social media, what would be the best way for them to do that? Will Gaffney: Just LinkedIn. So feel free to look for my name, send me a message, happy to connect. Always love brainstorming. I'm not always the best at checking it regularly, so if it takes a day or two, I do apologize in advance, but would love to connect with anybody. David McBee: All right, perfect. Well thanks for being my guest today. Will Gaffney: Yeah, thank you very much for having me, David. Hope you feel better. David McBee: Thank you. 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 Simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.