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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you. This episode is brought to you by the Weather Company. You likely know them best for the Weather channel app and weather.com or as the world's most accurate forecaster. But for marketers, they're a powerhouse of scale, reaching over 330 million people every month. They're proving that when you lead with trust and precision, you don't just reach an audience, you move them. Hey there. I'm Allison Schiff, managing editor of Ad Exchanger, and you're listening to Ad Exchanger Talks. My guest this week is Ty Ahmad Taylor, the chief Product officer of data analytics company Kantar, which he joined last year after stints at Snap and Meta. Kantar's business is to measure what people watch and what they buy and turn that into clear guidance for brands to help with their advertising, their products and their growth. We'll talk about that and lots of other good stuff, including delicata squash recipes, how different measurement methodologies can conflict and muddy objective reality. It's heady stuff. What it really takes to do full funnel cross platform measurement in practice, and how AI, attention and creative effectiveness are changing the way that marketers plan and spend. But first, do you have your ticket yet to convergent TV world? It's taking place on March 5th and 6th in New York City. It's going to be a good one. Convergent TV World is the new name for our CTV Connect event. We're bringing together top notch speakers from the worlds of linear TV streaming, CTV gaming, retail media and digital out of home to help you tackle the challenges of measurement attribution and cross screen storytelling. Podcast listeners get 10% off the price of their ticket when they use the code POD10. So get your ticket today and see you there. Hey Ty. Welcome to the podcast.
- [02:22]
B
Thank you.
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A
What's one thing about you that not a lot of other people already know? Favorite question.
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B
And I love the question. And I thank you for the opportunity to be able to speak to you and into your considerate, thoughtful and worth, well, well, well educated and immersed audience.
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A
They're gonna love you.
- [02:45]
B
Yeah, well, you know, I try. The one unusual thing for me is that I took, I took a year off from work to go to cooking school. And I'm, I'm talking to you because I'm doing some work abroad. But I, I went to Cooking School 26 years ago in London at the Prules Cooking Academy. And it was before Pruleath was like A known entity, and it was myself. And I was the only man in the class. There's a bunch of people who had newly become married and decided that they wanted to cook for me. I was trying to demystify cooking and demystify the act of cooking so that I understood what it took. If you sauteed something for too long or not long enough, does that ruin the meal? And what you learned very quickly is that cooking is much more art than science. Baking, however, is just direct science. But the, the, the, the not so funny or unusual outcome is that Pruleath has become famous over the years for being on the Great British Bake off, which is a series that's on Netflix. And, you know, she wasn't she, she was of lower repute when I, when I took her course. But I'm thankful and I still cook to this day. And my kids, you know, appreciate, I think, some of the things that I make for them. So that, that's good.
- [04:01]
A
I do have to ask, what's your dish? Do you have a go to?
- [04:04]
B
Oh, well, I. Favorites based upon sort of like what I would call in the measurement industry as, you know, last touch attribution. So the last thing that I've made and so the last thing that I've made that I really enjoy is delicata squash with apples and pumpkin seeds and some sage and thyme. And so I'm enjoying sort of refining that recipe over time. But I can do complex recipes or simple things. And the thing that I do on a most regular basis is a bouchon bakery, salt, brine chicken, roasted chicken.
- [04:39]
A
So I do want to brag a little bit. I grew up not cooking at all and know nothing. But I've been learning recently because my fiance cooks and I want to help. So I, I learned how to par, boil. I par boiled vegetables for the first time. I had to Google it. It was in a recipe and it said to parboil the vegetables. I'm like, I don't know what that is. And then I made it happen and the dish came out well and it was, it was delightful to serve food that someone actually wanted to eat that wasn't ramen.
- [05:10]
B
But I think we both can agree that the. All the YouTube videos that are about parboiling have to be the most boring collection of YouTube videos on the planet, like if we're measuring attention and things of that sort. But I'm sure there's a large collection about how to the cooking technique.
- [05:25]
A
So I was looking at your LinkedIn and I want to go Way back for a second. Because another fun fact about you is you were a reporter back in the day. It was nearly six years at the New York Times back in the 90s, which is so cool. And I just want to hear a little bit about that and then how you made the transition into the advertising world.
- [05:45]
B
Sure. I'll give you the short version, which is probably preferable. It was the first job that I had out of school. I was working as a temporary worker at various companies. And I understood that the Times was looking somebody with cardiographic experience. And when I was interviewing for that role, meaning the ability to make maps, they determined that I had an economics background from what I had studied at university and offered me a role that wasn't publicly available. So, you know, that's a lesson to all of us, to seize the moment and also to speak broadly about our skill sets when we're interviewing in case that there are other fits that are more appropriate for somebody with, with, with the skill sets that you bring to bear. During the course of an interview and during my time there, I came to the conclusion that I didn't know enough about journalism because it's not something that I had studied in at university. I was the editor of my high school newspaper, but I don't think that counts. And so I got a master's in journalism while I was working full time. And people often asked me if I was from the Caribbean because they're like, you work really hard. Are you from the Caribbean? I was like, no, I'm from San Francisco. But. And during, during that time, sort of, you know, I was doing infographics. So it was basically explanatory journalism. And the Times was very forward looking in terms of sending people out in the field. So I like, I was in Oklahoma City three and a half hours after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1994. I covered subway shootings, Long island railroad shootings. I did a lot of the death and destruction beat. But it was very formative time in my career. And the last year that I was at the paper, I was covering technology. And rather than do it, I wanted to, rather than cover it, I wanted to do it. And so I was given the opportunity to join a startup called the At Home Network. And I was the 43rd employee there. And it was backed by Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield and Byers, which, you know, is a, you know, widely respected venture capital firm. And they, they allowed me to be effectively the head of product, but allowed me to sort of get my sea legs under me and learn on the job, you know, the technology side of the house, which, which was new to me, you know, 30 years ago.
- [07:56]
A
You contain multitudes. Cooking and cartography and then one more look back in the past. But I'm going to use it to bring us right to the present and stick with me. I noticed that you went to Haverford College, which was founded as a quaker colle the 1830s. And I know of it because our senior editor, James Hercher also went there and he has all of these really interesting stories about how it's run on a very strong honor system. Like if there is a take home exam, everyone is trusted not to break the rules, not to take extra time. And I am going to draw a connection between that setup and how measurement has developed among the walled gardens. Because you came to Kantar in October, from back to back stints at walled gardens, you were the VP of Product Marketing at Meta for more than five years and you were the VP of Product growth at Snap for a couple of years. And the walled gardens have opened up a bit over time from a measurement perspective, but in a way they have asked marketers to operate on an honor system of sorts like trust our numbers, trust that we graded our own homework correctly, and don't get a peek behind the curtain so much. And so my question is, now that you're on, I don't know if it's fair to call it the other side, but I just will for convenience and sake. Now that you're on the other side, what do you see as the most like realistic path to a more like verifiable shared source of truth for measurement for marketers? And do you feel like the walled gardens have, have opened up more in, in recent years?
- [09:28]
B
Yeah. And at both Meta and at Snap, I think that we were really, at both companies we were really deeply dedicated to, to providing objective truth to marketers. Because if it came out that you were inflating your numbers, you know, that would, that wouldn't work out well for anybody. And so I, but I think that the different measurement methodologies can sometimes be in conflict with one another. Like Multi Touch attribution and last click attribution. Optimizing for both is hard to do and they sometimes can yield differing views of objective reality. And if, if you, if you saw an ad on, on a platform a week ago and you were thinking about, you know, maybe I, maybe I do want to buy that Delta airplane ticket to Greece, and then you saw the ad again on a different platform and converted and bought the ticket, who ultimately gets credit and you know, that's, that's not an everyday occurrence, but it's not a rare occurrence that someone would see similar ads on, on the different platforms. And then you have a question of like, who gets credit for the down funnel conversion, even if it takes place on a, on, on, on a third party website or on the, on the client's website, as the case may be. And so as I think about the objective reality of the situation, I think that the conversion funnel muddies outcomes quite a bit. And I think that the platforms that I've worked for have tried to have really aspired to objective truth in this space. And I think as long as GA Google Analytics is sort of dominating a lot of what is considered validated measurement, you're going to see optimizations for last cloak attribution, but also optimizations for things that make sense on the individual platforms themselves. And so it's a hard problem to solve.
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A
So how would you solve this problem? You just mentioned buying a plane ticket to Greece. It is minus one real feel in New York City right now. I am seriously considering going online after we finish this podcast and buying a ticket to Greece because it's freezing in a situation like that. I know that's kind of a joke, but like how. Oh no, how do you determine the credit? I mean this was fully random word of mouth right.
- [11:52]
B
Right there. And therein lies the rub that's hard to think about. For some reason, whenever I think of advertising, I always think of Delta Airlines. And I don't even fly on Delta. I fly on a competitor and I think of Delta ads degrees. And that's the mental model that I have for awareness, consideration and conversion. Nonetheless, I think I would get credit for it.
- [12:19]
A
Okay, you should. If anyone's listening and I end up going to Greece, Ty should get something for that. Well, I'm sure that pretty much everybody listening to this podcast knows what Kantar is and what it does, but I think it would be useful for you to give me the brief spiel on Kantar anyway. And also how you're evolving away from what I think of as like a classic market research company with a legacy of doing surveys and panels to live in a more like platform focused world, a data focused ecosystem. AI of course.
- [12:50]
B
Yeah. So what we do is our primary product is brand guidance, but we also allow people to do brand lift measurement and brand lift studies with our Lyft products. We also allow people to understand how media spend affects sales directly with our Lyft ROI product. We've got a product called Link AI, which, that's the first mention that I'm making of AI, but we have AI deployed broadly throughout the enterprise that essentially helps you optimize creative using Kantar's intellectual property around creating ads that are meaningful, different and salient. And so it analyzes your creative material to understand if what you're putting forth, either video or still ads, is measurable across those vectors to provide a positive brand experience for your target consumer. And so the company has come together through the merger of companies like Millward Brown and Legacy Market Research Companies and is now in a consortium of services that basically help companies think about their brand, how to grow their brand and think about, give them brand guidance around how to deploy brand effectiveness across multiple channels. The reason for that is that the top of the funnel plays a direct role in the, in the bottom of the funnel. And most importantly is that the strongest brands have the ability to charge more on a price basis because the brand, the brand value is such that, that you can do so. And the strongest brands historically on a correlative basis, outperform the rest of the, the s and P500 and the stock market. And so the strongest brands do well from a financial standpoint, but also do well from a price performance standpoint as well. Does that make sense?
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A
I mean, it makes perfect sense. And it's always been so bizarre to me that there's such a separation between brand and performance mindsets because a funnel is a funnel. There's a top, there's a middle, there's a bottom. Right? You got to come in at one point and then you work your way through.
- [15:08]
B
And, and what I found is that the companies that have historically been performance brands, like there's some large travel brands that are, that have been performance oriented are now spending money on commercials and money on, on brand marketing because they realize that they need to drop more people on top of the funnel. And they're, they're really hardcore performance marketers. And companies that are, that have been brand markers are, are thinking about lower funnel performance as they try and link their, their spin to measurable outcomes. And, and so there's this awful phrase that I use for a while that I'm trying to get away from, but brandformance, where you're thinking about, you know, pulling people through the entire funnel. And, and I think that the, we're in the infancy days of being able to measure that accurately, but that's, or there's, there's nothing but opportunity in terms of the measurement there for full funnel outcomes.
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A
Brandformance reminds me of a word I've heard people use here and there, but thankfully, it's fallen out of favor. Like digital, physical and digital.
- [16:03]
B
Oh, right. Or global. Yeah, global. Local. Yeah, you sound, you. You've uncovered that you're a work person like I am, so I appreciate that.
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A
I do love a portmanteau.
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C
Yes.
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A
Well, what is your mandate at Kantar right now, and how is that, like, shaping the kinds of products that you want to build for marketers over the next couple of years? You know, the problems you're trying to help marketers solve, which are perennial problems.
- [16:29]
B
So the others who are smarter than I have come up with this phrase that, you know, we want to work at the speed of culture. And so culture is like understanding that a painkiller brand may have been recently in the news for reasons having to do with the. The Department of Health in the United States. And that brand may want to know about its brand equity and how its brand performance changes or. Or is altered as a result of the news. But the, the bottom line is, is that I think that whether it's the Chief Insights Officer or the CMO or the CEO, they, they want to know and get insights into how to run their business in a much more timely fashion than what you've historically seen from a market research perspective. And so my, my real mandate is like, how do we get results into the hands of our clients as fast as possible, and how do you leverage artificial intelligence, whether it's LLMs or agents, to orchestrate the analysis of the, of the massive amounts of data that we. That we provide on behalf of clients to provide deeper insights, faster insights, and more complete insights? And from my perspective, you know, the framework in which we envelop those is really through jobs to be done. So thinking about client needs, what is their measurement methodology, what is their business, what is their set of business goals, and what are their marketing goals? Combining those to then deliver insights faster. And that's really the simplest way that I can put my remit.
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A
And I do know Kantar has a product that does something along those lines. Right, the cultural vibrancy framework.
- [18:15]
B
Correct. And which is. Which is a product that I'm getting acclimated with in my third month.
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A
But yes, because, yeah, I mean, the, the example that you gave, we don't have to name the brand. They've been through it enough. But there's that trying to deal with, you know, the vicissitudes that you can't control that are negative, and then there's hopping on trends that are positive and great and you want to be able to take advantage of them in the moment. Otherwise you look like, I don't know, like you don't understand how to move at the, the speed of culture if you're too late, you know, you look like a grandma. Even were at the heart of some, you know, fun TikTok trend. You have to hop on it right then or it's not good anymore.
- [18:59]
B
Correct. Which, which underscores the, the, not just the strength but the, the, the needed set of insights that are in a, that, that sit in the creator economy, which is still, it's, it's, it's a well established market. But like the, the marketing, the marketing measurement of the creator economy I think is, is not where it needs to be. And that, and that's still lagging, unfortunately. Which, and the creator, creator economy does move at the speed of culture. To be clear. It's a culture creator, so to speak.
- [19:31]
A
So, so to speak, you can speak.
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B
Yeah. Use the word creator too many times.
- [19:37]
A
There's, there's no rule. You, you just can't use the word leverage anymore instead of use. That's. I want to put a moratorium on.
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B
Okay, did I. And forgive me if I've done so.
- [19:47]
A
No, that's okay. I do it all the time too. I want to talk a little bit about cross platform measurement. You know, stitching together a real view across like linear and CTV and social feeds and retail media and just all of that because it's really tricky to do that without double counting. It's like the bazillion dollar question and I know there's no perfect answer, but when a marketer comes to you and says, I want help with holistic measurement, like, what do you say to them? How do you get them started? Is it a mindset thing to begin before it's a technology thing?
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B
Well, first, you know, I'm, I'll be frank in stating that I may be getting out a little bit over my skis on this, but my sense of what you're talking about is, you know, governed in part by the changes to digital privacy rules both in Europe and in the United States and in the state of California with CCPA and with GDPR and you know, with the changes to, you know, ATT on the Apple platform. And I think first, a marketer who's looking for a whole, a whole picture has to understand the limitations that are in place. The second is, you know, you have to assess their comfort levels with probabilistic understanding of customers as opposed to deterministic understanding of customers for deduplication efforts and for rationalizing that the person on CTV is the same as the person on walled gardens, is the same as the person on the web, is the same as the person who's, you know, seeing outdoor, outdoor material. I think, I think you were that we're still at the beginning days of it. But as most of advertising spend has shifted to digital, or as a lot of advertising spend has shifted to digital, these things become easier to do. But getting down to a single person within a single household is hard. The thing that does work is that insofar as somebody's on a mobile phone, which most most, not the entire world, but a lot of the world is, it does make some of these measurement vectors easier to reconcile. But I don't think that there's not 100% truth. So what we can get is that we can get at it as an approximation if the person is willing to accept certain constraints on your ability to measure across platforms, if that makes sense for sure.
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A
And one more quickie before. It's actually not a quickie, but we'll make it a quickie before we hit our break. Is directional enough, right. Do you really need to know exactly, you know, how many people did a thing? Putting conversions aside, if you're trying to decide on your channel mix or whatever, you don't really need like exact, exact numbers. You need to know like where to put your spend.
- [22:50]
B
That's correct. And, but then the question becomes can you, how quickly and how timely can you do that? So that's where speed comes into play and you know, mtm, MTA assessments and MMM assessments, there's, there's increasing pressure for those to be much more timely and not to be quarterly, not to be monthly, not even to be weekly. And I think therein lies the rub. But the, the amount of compute capabilities that are, that are being brought to bear in advertising ecosystems make speed and the return of the results much more easier, easy to achieve.
- [23:24]
A
All right, well, we're going to take just a quick break to hear from our sponsor and then we'll talk about creative effectiveness. I have some questions about first party data and clean rooms. So yeah, stick with us. Hey there. I'm Alison Schiff, managing editor of Ad Exchanger, and I have with me here Adrian Beck, head of marketing insights and analytics at the Weather company, where she focuses on the development and application of consumer and customer insights for marketing and advertising, as well as understanding weather's impact on consumer behaviors. So Adrian, your team at the weather company, which includes the Weather Channel Digital Platforms recently completed some first of its kind research called Wired for Weather. What can you tell us about it?
- [24:20]
C
We've long known that weather is the biggest external factor influencing daily life. How we feel, what we do, what we buy. We wanted to dig into that and uncover how marketers can use weather data more effectively. So we partnered with the neuroscience firm NeuroInsight to prove improve. How does weather impact our subconscious, which is where 90% of decisions are made? And then what does that mean for marketers? We found that weather literally rewires our brains, changing how we process emotion and memory, which are two of the biggest drivers of purchase decisions. Basically you have to feel it and remember it if you're going to buy it. But maybe most interesting for marketers is because of that rewiring power. When brands use weather as a contextual signal, they can improve ROI by 10 to even 20%.
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A
Well, how does weather change our emotion and our memory?
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C
We've uncovered that weather creates distinct but universal mindsets based on brain activity. And that feels like set of weather conditions. So in other words, when it feels cold, regardless of who you are or where you are, our subconscious response is really similar. And because we can predict the weather, we can help predict those mindsets. So an example would be when it feels like the start of a new season. So think about that first spring like day coming out of this winter weather we're experiencing now, the memory and engagement parts of our brain are really active. That makes us open to trying new brands and trying new products. We're ready to engage with the world. We're optimistic and social and creative. We're more likely to start a new health routine and to make impulse purchases. But on the other hand, when it's rainy or snowy, our brains activate in a way that means we're more emotional and sensitive and pragmatic. Still high energy, but in a problem solving mode. So we seek out things that comfort us and remind us of happy memories. That creates a really important role for marketers.
- [26:31]
A
Well, tell me what it actually means for marketers.
- [26:33]
C
Ultimately, brands can use weather data to anticipate these mindsets and deliver more effective campaigns. Our weather targeting solution enables brands to dynamically connect with and influence these weather driven consumer mindsets throughout the digital ecosystem. At any given time, any or all of the four weather driven mindsets that we've identified through the study could be happening across the country. But weather targeting takes into account that relative nature of weather. At a zip code level, a 40 degree day in Chicago means something very different than it does in Miami. These signals can be always on and that reduces media waste and can boost performance for all marketing channels, whether that's ctv, display, search, audio or others. And that means that brands can easily get their message in front of the right mindset at the right time. If you're curious, check out weathercompany.com thank you, Adrian.
- [27:34]
A
I wish I was in Miami.
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C
Me too.
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A
Great insights.
- [27:39]
C
Thank you so much.
- [27:57]
A
All right, we're back and I would love to talk about creative effectiveness because I in preparing to chat with you, I was reading a bunch of Kantar blogs and recent press releases and Kantar has been talking a lot about new signals for short form video to gauge creative effectiveness. Things like emotional response and micro engagements like pauses or rewinds or hover overs or saves, that kind of thing. And even neural data like eye tracking and brainwaves and facial expressions. So very cool stuff, a little futuristic. Even though people have been talking about that kind of thing for a long time. I don't know how real it's been. How do you stack those up against traditional TV metrics? And I don't know, is a hover over a reliable sales lift predictor? Are they better predictors than old school GRPs and reaching frequency and all of that jazz?
- [28:54]
B
Well, this is just a matter of math. And so my sense is first off, what is the determination between what is causing sales and what is correlated to sales? And so again, going back to something that we spoke about in the first segment, the computational ability to understand the linkage of these things to actual effectiveness I think has never been easier. And so the more that we can measure, the more that we can determine what actually yields superior outcomes and what doesn't from both a creative standpoint and as well as a user interaction set of paradigms. And so rather than say, you know, the traditional measures of television viewing like some of our competitors in the field versus sort of the interaction paradigms that you get with digital ads, that one's more valid than the other. I would say that what matters is what what what we what we can absolutely link to causation and that therein lies the rub. But more data is typically always better. But determining the data that matters is where the winners come out.
- [30:08]
A
And what about attention? How important is attention? And how do you define attention? Because I'm going to give you a weird, very personal recent example. My fiance Franklin has a habit of his relaxation is to sit in his chair and watch like really kind of mindless TV and play this number game on his phone. He's like barely watching the television, but it does need to be on. That's part of the experience. He's not really watching Rizzoli and Isles, even though that's what's playing, it's there. He's not paying attention to the ads at all, but they're playing and they're part of his experience. I don't know how they're registering neurally, but he's second screen. He's hardcore second screening when he's watching this stuff in air quotes.
- [30:57]
B
So I think that's a case where, at least from a Kantar perspective, we've been able to, we believe, cut through the clutter by providing deterministic insights about attention, by combining attention and viewability with brand lift to actually understand if there's an uptick in brand lift, despite the fact that somebody might be multitasking or listening for ASMR reasons and not paying full attention. And I think the correlation of those two, the intersection of brand lift in attention viewability, yields insight into whether somebody is paying attention or not and whether or not you should view that as being causal, correlative or something to throw out as not being material.
- [31:47]
A
As a total side point, I read a really interesting article recently about how streamers, including Netflix, are purposely creating content that requires less active attention because they have second screeners in mind. So they don't want something you have to focus on too much. And it's so interesting too, because there's that as a strategy. At the same time, there's so much foreign language content where you have to read the subtitles. So it seems like two extremes.
- [32:16]
B
Well, so I was unfamiliar that Netflix was generating low attention content for viewers.
- [32:23]
A
As a strategy.
- [32:24]
B
As a strategy, but somewhat related if you'll allow me to be slightly more expansive. So lo fi for me is a musical genre. Is a genre of music that started in the 90s. It means something else completely now. But it's basically, it's basically ASMR for Gen Z. And what I didn't understand, what I came to understand, is that there's a bunch of Gen Z authors who are using AI tools to generate lo fi music which they're uploading to Spotify, creating seven to eight hour lo fi playlists that Gen Z uses to study or to otherwise use as background noise and then making money off of marketing those playlists on the social platforms. And so one Gen Z are brilliant marketers out of the box to, you know, none of these tools are available when I was in college. So I think that that's a That's a wonderful encapsulation of sort of the entrepreneur, entrepreneurial spirit of, of, of the, of the generations that have come after me. And, and three, I didn't realize there's such an appetite for lo fi music to get work done. But I have a coworker here at Kantar who uses it on a regular basis when, when he needs to focus and get work done. And so that was, that was my first expo. And he's. I think he's a millennial by. But that was my first encounter of lo fi usage in the wild. In the workplace.
- [33:47]
A
I was going to say. And I'm reaching over to get my phone because I'll tell you what the playlist is. I am very, very far from Gen Z, but that is what I do to concentrate. Especially when we go into the office as a team on Tuesdays we get together for our editorial meetings in person and we have lunch and then everyone starts chit chatting and that's important for team building. But I can't concentrate, so. So I have a playlist that I listen to. It's the same like 15 songs over and over again. So it's not seven hours of music, but really helps me. It's called background music for working or studying. It's very helpful. Can recommend. Okay, so it feels sort of retrograde to talk about cookies after talking about all of this, I don't know, like, cool future stuff. We touched on AI, we talked about neural signals, but I feel like cookies are still there. They're still kind of hanging around even though the world is moving on. Where do cookies come into it? I mean, I don't really want to talk about cookies. I spent so much time writing about their supposed demise, but they're just like the cockroaches of Signal. So are they still part of your mix for measurement?
- [34:58]
B
Absolutely. And I think that the, you know, the. There was a trend away from them when Google announced that they would kill them and then they backtracked and they said that they wouldn't kill them. And so now I think that they still play a role in the ad ecosystem. Again, some of the generational differences here I think are important to note. My children, I have a child in his 20s and I have a daughter in her teens. They caught wind of me accepting all cookies on a site that I was visiting and they're like, what are you doing? This is a year ago. And I said, well, I sort of don't. Like, I don't. I'm not overly concerned about being tracked. They're like you have to say no to all of that stuff. And, and, and their perspective generationally is quite different than mine. I now say no to everything, of course, because my, my children have scared me. But I, I think from our perspective it's just, it's just another measurement vector. And again, if it's determined to be, if we determine causality, then it, then it factors into the mix.
- [36:01]
A
So if everyone just says no to everything, what does that mean for how.
- [36:04]
B
Measurement has to develop a shift into more probabilistic estimates of what's going on? And so the people who have the most data now will be better off than the people who had the most data before att was implemented. IOS 14.5 are going to be better off than those who are starting from scratch. And so what it does is it creates moats around incumbents that become harder for the startup to conquer. I don't think that's a, I don't think it's a blocker for startups, but it does require some rethinking of their approach and the vectors that you take to understand audience measurement.
- [36:42]
A
And that's where AI comes in too, right? I mean machine learning and AI. I went to, well, I didn't go to, it was virtual. But I listened into a very interesting workshop that the FTC hosted recently about age verification and they were talking, talking about how just asking someone for their age is kind of useless because people can very easily lie because you just want access to a platform or whatever. But there are new tools and new methods for looking at click behavior and looking at how someone engages with a site and using that to determine their likely age, whether they're above or below 13. And it's an AI powered approach.
- [37:21]
B
I think that's exceptionally smart and something that I wish it would was around when my, when my children were younger I didn't monitor their website visits and things of that sort. But I, I think it would have made some of the things that I viewed to be a distraction to be less of an issue. I think, you know, at, at previous employers we had the ability to impute age based upon who you were associating with. And you know, the, I think if I recall correctly, the age that people most lied about was saying that they were 21 to 25. And so you had younger people saying that they were older for reasons that we all can discern and you had older people saying they were younger for reasons that both of them I'm slightly skeptical of. But that was the age cohort that was artificially bloated by people spelunking into the age cohort.
- [38:13]
A
I would love to spelunk into the 21 to 25 age bracket. Oh my God. What about first party data? Talking about all of these privacy shifts happening, it seems like first party data has to become more central and then also the use of clean rooms.
- [38:30]
B
Yeah. So we have a partnership with Snowflake and they provide data clean rooms for marketers to basically allow for data to be used in very specific ways that allows for, you know, hatched matching across points of contact, if you will. And so we use that for, for measurement purposes. We did the same. I've done the same thing at previous employers, both on Snowflake and with other providers. But I think that that's a wave of the future. What you find from a client perspective is that they often don't want to contribute to what they view as a larger pool of advertising data for concern that competitors might prospect. But what you find ultimately is that no one provider can dominate any market segment. And so that concern, while understandable, is, you know, unfounded, I think. Unfounded. Yeah. Thank you. I was looking for the right word without offending, but yeah, it's, it's perhaps unfounded. That's correct.
- [39:37]
A
I'm curious what you think about this. So James Hercher, who I mentioned at the top, who also went to Haverford, he wrote a story for us recently. It was one of our end of year pieces, like looking back and looking Ahead, that by the end of last year his supposition was that data clean rooms had pretty much faded from the discussion in ad tech at least, and they've started to become almost like invisible commoditized infrastructure, like a layer embedded in broader cloud based data collaboration. And we saw a bunch of clean rooms get acquired and that fits into that theory. But does it feel really more like a feature than a standalone product these days or is there a need for feature?
- [40:23]
B
It's a data exchange mechanism is broadly thinking how it's thought of in marketing science circles.
- [40:32]
A
Okay, so it just kind of went through its normal phase of, ooh, cool thing, standalone company got bought up and now it's a feature.
- [40:40]
B
Correct, Correct. That's my sense. Not to depress the values of DCR facilities, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's just a feature of data exchange.
- [40:52]
A
And as we kind of near the end here, this one went really quickly. I want to zoom out and talk about like in house and what, like what measurement, like mentality marketers have to have themselves. Right. So in terms of the talent and maybe org changes that brands and agencies need to make internally to actually operationalize advanced measurement beyond just buying the tools. Right. Because you can, you can buy a thing and then not use the thing, or you can have a resolution like I'm going to go to the gym and then you go twice like I did. So just to be honest.
- [41:31]
B
No, I appreciate the honesty. I think for brands, for companies who are thinking about measurement and what to do, they really have to think about where are they buying, how are assets labeled and what the future holds for advertising. One of the things that you and I have been talking about is the advent of AI and the creative process. But there's also the advent of AI in the media planning and the budgetary and the allocation process as well. All of that can be controlled. And one of the things that a former employer has said is that they want to get to the point where you give them the name of your company, you give them some money and then you get out of the way and they'll determine where and how those funds are spent against what audience that drives, you know, real business results. I don't think that we're that far away from that. The question becomes is then, do you, do you trust the measurement methodologies that any individual company puts forth? I'm suggesting that the companies that I've worked at have a vested interest in making sure that that's as truthful as possible. So there's, you know, I don't foresee any issues there, but I think that as a media buyer and as a brand, I think that you have to get to a place of comfort with being much more hands off the steering wheel with regards to where and how your budget is spent. You can determine the outcomes and you can determine the ad spend, but the, the mass customization at scale is here today so that different people see different ads with different messages that can be on brand, which is part of what we help with and, and, and convey the right message to the right person at the right time, which is the purpose of advertising.
- [43:25]
A
Yeah, it's kind of just like give me the assets, tell me what you want to achieve and get out of the way.
- [43:29]
B
And it may not be the assets, it may be. Just tell me the name of your company.
- [43:33]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. We'll pull stuff from your website or something. What do you think of like Meridian and Robin? So Google's MMM solution and Meta's MMM solution, although they're quite different from each other, I think it's interesting that they both have one.
- [43:53]
B
As I said, I think there's a lot of pressure on MMM to deliver more results faster. And I think that those two publishers have such scale that they can both give you the heft that you want in terms of understanding depth and breadth of funnel penetration, but they also can turn it around much faster because the amount of compute that both companies have is, I think we can safely say is unparalleled or, you know, is on par with what the other FAM&M companies can bring to bear. But, you know, is, is basically at the top of the market.
- [44:30]
A
So we're recording this at the very end of January, but it won't publish until the first week of February. So can I still ask you a question about like looking ahead and trends for the year or is it like too late to do that?
- [44:45]
B
No, no, no. I think someone's saying this is the last day that you can say happy New Year still to someone that you haven't seen for the month. But I, you know, okay, so I.
- [44:54]
A
Just got in under the wire.
- [44:55]
B
You're under the wire.
- [44:56]
A
So we'll take a little peek into the future looking. I'll do it this way not to make you have three different answers and maybe you don't have three different answers, maybe it's the same answer. But looking one year from now, say like three years from now and five years from now, what are the biggest disruptions that you think will hit ad measurement and market research? So we'll start with, you know, let's say you and I get together again on January 30th of next year. What, what do you think will have been the biggest disruption?
- [45:33]
B
I think, I think the incorporation of retail media networks results as being highly valuable. Insightful media planning, changing budgetary allocation, changing variables I think will be much more concrete and cemented. I don't think that anybody avoids them now, but I just think it'll just be a regular part of the ad of the, of the brand planning, conversion planning marketplace. So I would say a year from now RMNs are just going to have a larger role, I think in terms of how people allocate spend.
- [46:14]
A
Three years from now my hair is more gray. And what is disrupting the ad measurement ecosystem?
- [46:22]
B
I think that's funny. I've spent my entire life thinking about the future in, in the measurement space. I think it's harder to tell because of the regulatory environment, is, is harder to predict. But I, I, I would suggest that, you know, there may be an opportunity in the, in the not in the digital space, but in the outdoor space to offer more personalized and customized ads. I think that with, with AI, we're, we're getting closer to some of the things that you saw. I have to be trite and refer to Minority Report, but in, in Minority Report with customized advertising and outdoor, in outdoor spaces. But I, I think that that, that has the potential three years off and.
- [47:11]
A
This is so unfair. But okay, so five years from now, like my hair's totally white. I'm taking Waymo everywhere. And what, what is the big disruption at that point? Or maybe something. Flip the question a little bit. What's something we'll have solved for by then?
- [47:26]
B
I think optimized ad spend allocation in real time across, across channels will, will very much be in vogue in three years out, five years out. I, I expect the problem to be solved.
- [47:40]
A
All right, well, I need to, I.
- [47:42]
B
Need to drive X amount of sales in this amount of time. I'm going to make a spend and then it just happens.
- [47:47]
A
So I'm going to hold you to all of these. And yeah, I mean, I, I'd also love your delicata squash recipe if you don't mind sending it to me. And that'll be my, my weekend work. But Ty, thanks.
- [48:02]
B
It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
- [48:14]
A
This. This episode was sponsored by the Weather Company. From the number one most downloaded weather app to sophisticated enterprise data, they're helping people and businesses build a more resilient privacy. First, future, head over to weathercompany.com to learn how their insights can weatherproof your marketing strategy.