Measuring Streaming TV Ad Campaign Impact | Will Gaffney

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 Will Gaffney, who is the Principal Product Manager here at Simpli.fi, and Will is here to talk to us today about measuring the impact of streaming TV ad campaigns. Will, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Will Gaffney: Thank you for having me David. David McBee: Should we confess to our audience this is our fifth attempt at recording this interview? Will Gaffney: Well, judging from you already gave it away in that question, I guess we are. The answer is yes. David McBee: I didn't give you much choice, did I? Will Gaffney: No. David McBee: All right, well let's just jump right into it. I actually invited you today because we had a listener request and this person wanted to know what are the best ways to measure the impact of streaming TV ad campaigns? You up for talking about that? Will Gaffney: Yeah, let's dive on in. David McBee: All right, perfect. I think that a lot of advertisers who are new to streaming TV who come from a digital background specifically, these are advertisers who kind of hope to be able to measure their campaigns in the same way that they measure their digital campaigns. I know there's a lot of that, but obviously you can't click on a CTV ad. Let's start by talking about what can be measured. Will Gaffney: Yeah, one of the really interesting parts about just this rise in CTV is it's kind of blending together the new and the old, or like you said, there's a lot of digital strategies out there where it's got CPA, the cost per action of measuring if somebody sees an ad, goes to the website and actually does something, click through rate, those are all very definitive paths forward. But with CTV, it's really bringing in a lot of new just reporting types and ways to be able to tell the story of how your marketing dollars are having their benefit. That's really by taking a lot of linear strategies and then just using digital reports to be able to do the same things that they've been doing for decades. You have things like just plain location reporting, which was more of just kind of like, hey, this is a curious insight for digital, but it's also something that for CTV you can show how many zip codes did you reach. What was your overall penetration into your market? Because the television represents such a larger just scope of who you're trying to reach, that becomes a very powerful just reporting strategy to be able to discuss and it's incredible to be able to have that information. By having the overall granularity of information that comes only from digital, it enhances a little bit of that linear strategy and what you're able to discuss effectively with your client. That really fuels the biggest thing of reach is what we get communicated to about. That's what clients are wanting to tell their narrative. That's how they're wanting to validate the importance of the dollars that they're putting into digital buys and that's taken straight from linear. That's one way that you can do that is by counting the number of devices that you reach and then bringing that into location reporting. That's kind of one of the nice parts about having this digital granularity is taking these linear strategies that have been very probabilistic, and it's more, by that I mean it's just you're trying to scale out due to a limited data set of what's actually happening. Because we still have the granularity of every single impression is encountered for, and we have all these insights on every single digital served impression, you can mix and match a lot of these things. We can talk about reach, you can bring reach into how many people did you reach down to a very specific zip code, DMA, and you can kind of combine all these different elements. Another aspect of linear that's come over is frequency also, and a lot of times reach and frequency tend to go together because it's just how many people am I reaching and then how often am I showing them that ad. Really, really powerful insights, but that's all things that exist today in the simplified platform to be able to really put those insights out there. Then it goes into some more elements that are a little bit inherent to what our platform at least has kind of been its bread and butter for years now also. Going into addressable and keywords so that you can see what are people searching for, where are they, and how am I going to be able to define my audience in terms of what demographics that they have from credit bureau data and other publicly available sources. All of that tied into just the usual publishers and domains are also still available, and it just creates this level of granularity that I don't think fully existed in linear before. Right now it's just kind of a little bit of a free for all. While we have a lot of ways to talk about performance, there's also still things that are being ironed out as just kind of the industry matures. That in particular has been a really important thing for me to be diving into a lot more, to better understand. It's taken a lot to get out of my digital way of thinking to try and understand how linear and more traditional TV buying was actually working. David McBee: I think it's interesting that you spent so much time on reach and who the audience is seeing the commercials, right? Because even though that comes from linear, that really isn't something linear can actually provide. It's all guesses and estimates based on Nielsen ratings, right? Will Gaffney: Yeah, completely. Over the past couple of years with our different acquisitions, we've gotten some thought leaders and just different technological and product folks that were, Wes Bewick on that, I know that you've interviewed on other CTV podcasts. Poor guy has had to have a lot of patience with me where he has to explain the linear process for everything. Most of the time the Slack message or the Zoom meeting is just going, "Really, that's it? That's the formula behind all of this?" It's overly simplistic, but at the same time it's just that's what they have and where the most granular you're able to go down is, what is it, a zip zone list, which is a grouping of zip codes together. Being able to target on that fact and attribute with only a certain level of granularity really showcases how linear has been more of just like a sledgehammer type approach where it's going to be very effective because it's a big mallet. But digital is much more trying to be very scalpel precision and going into that and how we can blend those together where it's not quite as scalpel precise as what we are used to with digital, moving into something that's still a little bit better than a full sledgehammer is going to allow our clients to be that much more lean and mean with all of their ad campaigns. David McBee: I love that analogy. Since we can't click a CTV ad at this time, who knows what the future will bring. I noticed that a lot of advertisers are leaning into QR codes. They seem to be popping up in all kinds of commercials both on streaming television and traditional TV. What are your thoughts? Do these QR codes work? Will Gaffney: To a point. The QR code rise was always so funny because that was the joke of the industry of just, yeah, you can't click on a CTV ad. You'd even like, I think there was even one client demo, I went up and physically tried to tap the TV to prove a point. Then that year was the year that Coinbase did their Super Bowl ad where it was just the QR code going around. I just remember sitting in my kitchen thinking, damn it, now we have something at least so I can't do that anymore. But even then the QR codes, I think it provides a way to create some interaction points with customers and gives them something to actually take action on, which is very valuable. But I myself, whenever I've seen QR codes, a lot of times a commercial comes on, if I see a QR code, I'm not instantly thinking like, ah, a QR code is in front of me, I must scan now, but it's something I've got to still be sucked into the ad. At that point it's probably about 20 seconds into a 30 second ad and I'm already clumsy as it is and I can barely ever get my phone out in fast enough time to actually get the QR code. I think that there's some value to it because it does provide that direct attribution where a lot of QR codes are able to do a little bit of a man in the middle type thing where whenever you scan the QR code, it actually pings a web URL to track exactly where that QR code came from and then sends you where you need to go. By being able to have that type of attribution, it is something that is very interesting in the industry, but I don't think it's necessarily the end all be all where I think what is going to be truly, how the industry moves forward is going to be something a little bit more linear ask of being able to translate how much more activity did our website have after different impressions ran in different areas. But how we find that different fine line is really where we're going to be landing out. Long answer for overall I think interesting insights, but QR codes I don't think are exactly going to be the way of the future. David McBee: Yeah, I feel kind of the same way about QR codes as I do to the click through rate of a normal display ad, which is about one in a thousand people are click and display ads. For the advertiser to say, oh, well I only got this many clicks, that's all the campaign did, I think is really unfair because those other 999 impressions did something even if they didn't inspire a click. Right? I recently interviewed our friends over at Nova and he said the average scan through rate that they're seeing on QR codes is around 0.005%, which came out to one in 20,000 people will scan a QR code. Will Gaffney: Yeah, exactly. Honestly, it made me feel better because a lot of clients always laugh at the standard click-through rate of 0.1% that we have for display ads, but it makes that look really pretty good in comparison to the QR code. But like you said, it's not the full indication of if you don't get your phone out in time, if you fumble on the QR code scan but you still brought your phone out enough to try that, you're most likely going to take the time and be like, ah, well I missed it, but let's just put this company name into Google. At that point it's going to look like organic traffic, but the only reason that it happened was actually because of the commercial. David McBee: I think one of the things I want to warn digital advertisers as they dive into CTV, is that I would just want to remind them that CTV is interruptive. The person that you're targeting is sitting there watching their show. They're not shopping. For you to create a commercial that is so compelling that's going to break them out of their relaxation and entertainment mode that they're in to get them to go shopping, I think that is very challenging. Not to say there isn't value in that branding and that message interrupting them, but unlike for example a paid search campaign where the whole point of it is to click the ad. Right? Nobody goes to Google and doesn't click. I just want digital advertisers who are new to CTV to realize that it's an entirely different way of advertising to their clients. Will Gaffney: Yeah, that's a great point David. David McBee: All right, so let's talk about targeting. Now with the traditional TV landscape, most targeting is based on programming. You want to reach women, you target dating shows or whatever. You want to reach men, you target sports. That's so generic and so politically incorrect to even say, especially if you're trying to target me. You better be targeting the rom coms if you want to reach me. If you're targeting sports, you're probably reaching my wife at my house. But it's really different in the CTV environment, isn't it? Can you go into that a little bit? Will Gaffney: Yeah, it's very, very different. I always love that example that you bring up of just the pure candor of exactly what your viewing habits are. It's just like, "Did you just assume my viewing habits?" That's what generally the linear industry has been, but what we're able to actually do with CTV is get a little bit deeper into exactly, essentially just validating if that's actually true, instead of leaning on some other company to say this is the audience and this is where they skew heavily. Even if they do skew heavily, that's great. You can still take that type of information to be able to do that type of targeting. But where CTV really excels is again, being able to peel back the layers of that onion a little bit more of just you can understand exactly who this TV show is really skewing towards, but ultimately that doesn't mean that they're exclusive to that audience, and it doesn't mean that that audience is exclusive to that TV show. You can really slice and dice everything in exactly where, the example I went into earlier where linear TV is just a sledgehammer of just like you have to hit this entire audience no matter who they are, who you want to get in front of or not, you're hitting them with your sledgehammer. CTV allows you to be a little bit more precise and get only the people that you're actually trying to get in front of. Then even whenever that audience is watching some show that is not exactly what you thought they would be watching, we have the data to show you who it is rather than what they're watching. That's really kind of the biggest key pivot in how you think about purchasing ad spots between linear going to digital of we're already talking about who your audience is and we're defining them outside of their viewing habits. Previously that was all that linear had to do is the only change that you could make is where you were going to show your ads. Viewing habits were absolute king and everything to be able to say, this is how you do your targeting. But that wasn't ever how anybody talked because you weren't ever saying like, man, I really need to reach those How I Met Your Mother viewers, which I might be dating myself since that shows off the air. But you were speaking about your target audience as the people that you want for your business. CTV really allows you to continue speaking in that same regards without having to be locked into defining them by the shows that they watch. David McBee: I love that. All right, so I'm going to really challenge you with this final question in 30 seconds. Will Gaffney: Oh no. David McBee: What would you say to an advertiser who says, Will, how do I know if my CTV campaign is working? Can you even take a shot at answering that Will? Will Gaffney: If your business goes up is the best way. That would be the most concise that I could say. There's a lot of different ways that we can try to get some direct attribution into your business, but overall business success is going to vary from advertiser to advertiser, and so the best thing that you can identify is what matters to you and why are you advertising? That becomes your success metric. What were the changes before and after advertising? If there's a minor change, that's something that you can attribute to your advertising campaigns and especially your CTV campaigns. Even if it doesn't change, understanding who you were in front of and being able to take some insights allows you to kind of continue testing out new things. Because the biggest thing is if you don't ever test and you don't ever try and put your name out there, you're never going to experience any adjustment in your business. But overall, find out what matters to you and then the best thing that digital can offer you is an overabundance of data on how you can report and really judge the next steps to really move that needle. David McBee: I love that answer. That was a great answer. In fact, that's the right answer for really any marketing campaign, right? Will Gaffney: Yeah, exactly. Digital just gives you an overabundance of data to really justify any strategy that you're going to take. David McBee: Yeah, good stuff. All right, Will, before I let you go, is there a good way that people can get in touch with you? Will Gaffney: Yeah, so just either by reaching out through Simpli.fi. If you're a current customer, happy to talk. Otherwise, LinkedIn. Sometimes I'm not always the best at checking my LinkedIn, so if I don't reply for a couple of days, I do apologize, but those are generally the best ways. David McBee: Well, nobody's going to blame you for not checking your LinkedIn because you're making Simpli.fi a better company so we appreciate that. Thanks for being on the show today. Will Gaffney: Thank you very much for having me, David. 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 Simpliy.fi and follow us on LinkedIn for future episodes. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome and we'll see you next time.