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- [00:07]
Noor Naseer
How can marketers make smarter choices when it comes to evaluating partners and technologies? I'm Noor Naseer for AdTech Unfiltered. Claire Liston gives authentic guidance on how to explore data measurement and platform dynamics for modern media strategy. At the time of Recording, Claire was leading media and audience strategy at Discover Financial Services. She's since transitioned to an executive director role at WPP Media. We dive into the gap between what's measurable, what's meaningful, and how platform incentives shape outcomes and why even sophisticated teams can fall into false confidence and what to do about it. Claire offers a clear look at the tough questions that need to be asked and what marketers should be challenging more directly. Let's get into this episode with Claire now.
- [00:48]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Well Claire, thanks for joining me today. Of course, you and I were two former Starcom Chicago gals now working in marketing in differing capacities. You've done a bunch of different things across different industries. If you can give me a 10,000 foot view of what you've been doing both today and historically, sure, that'd be great.
- [01:06]
Claire Liston
As you said, I'm your typical media industry vet. Started on the agency side working across a handful of different businesses that taught me so much about multiple categories and verticals. About seven years into my media career, was asked to come client side to help establish the media function at Tyson foods in about 2016. And when I was there I held the primary responsibility for guiding multiple brands and their P&Ls on the media front and making sure that the media investment that we made was prudent and effective. So learned so much there in the seven years I spent there. Cut my teeth in cpg, started to understand how impactful media and the spend is to a greater business outcome. From there I went to Discover so Discover Card, Discover Financial Services and I've been working at Discover for the last two years on their media and audience strategy. So in a similar capacity, making sure that this investment is productive is impactful and also too we can translate what we're doing across a really large team and a lot of publishing partners and a lot of technology making sure that this investment is as effective as it can be and that our teams know how to operate with that investment.
- [02:19]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
You just mentioned it a moment ago. Martech and Adtech are so centered around the marketer's responsibility today. So, so that's what we're really going to lean into for our conversation is how do you find the partners that are worthy to be working with you and you know you're getting the most bang for your buck. So I'm going to kick things off with just understanding what your process is when assessing new ad tech or martech vendors. What's your mode of operation? How do you go about deciding who you're going to evaluate? And just tell me a little bit more about that.
- [02:50]
Claire Liston
The evaluation fundamentally changes for me based on if I'm coming at it from a proactive sense and just curious and learning more about what a new vendor in the marketplace has to offer, or if I'm coming at it from a reactive sense, which means that we have a serious problem to solve. Ultimately, I feel like most tech adoption comes from the reactive place. If you know the problem you have to solve, you have to find the technology partner to help you solve it. At Discover, I feel like one of the things that I've been really mindful of and really noticed and it's kind of stuck with me all these years, is that like, really great sales representatives and really great teams don't sell phony things. When you actually talk to the people and you look these people in the eye and you clock who's in the room, who did they bring? Who's the one who talks about the tech? Can only one person actually speak to the tech and do the demo? Or is the entire team contributing? If I see an entire team inclusive of salespeople, inclusive of client leads, tech leads, if everyone can contribute and talk about the technology, that gives me a really good credibility check that the technology is something that they all believe in and something that they can all actually utilize and teach others how to utilize ultimately in an organization. If I can't pull back and explain how the technology would benefit those who utilize it, I can't effectively get it sold in. So to me, I'm always. Even though the technology is oftentimes like shiny and incredible, I'm still looking like the humans in the eye to see if the team can talk to it. And that's usually like my first test.
- [04:24]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Yeah, I think gut check wise. Yeah. If people have energy around what it is that they're doing, then they're inherently going to be more knowledgeable and that's going to show up in the room. It's hard to be phony about that. You just used the word shiny a moment ago. It's this time where now we're seeing a lot of both authentic new innovation, but also there's been a lot of iterative, sometimes not so valuable innovation that's out there. How do you really decipher between. When you're looking at something that's a shiny object versus something that is actually valuable in you for you.
- [04:54]
Claire Liston
Yeah, I'm just, you know, this is going to sound like too quick, but when someone who is talking to me about the technology is using too many fancy words, I like, instantly lose faith in their product. Because if they have to have all these fancy words to explain what it is their technology does for real business application, if they have to use the fancy words and they can't unuse the fancy words, it just tells me that they have. They're too deep in the cell and they're not actually a user. When I'm looking at these shiny objects and they are shiny, some of them are very cool. And the people you know, it's not just the big words when they're doing the demo and they're taking you through it. I get a lot of what I understand about the technology from curiosity. Right. Like, if I don't have the need for it right now, could that tool be used for this? Have you seen other industries ask for this tool to be used in this kind of case? What other case studies have you had? And asking really specifically questions about other clients and industries and verticals that this technology has applied to? I ask them, like, straightforwardly, who are you competing with? Like, who else am I going to hear from that has a similar technology and why is yours better? And I feel like that actually is an energizing question. Sometimes some people, like, may get on the defensive when you ask them really directly, like, how do you make money? Or like, who's your competitor? But it's that directness that I think helps people also to tell you what they really want to tell you. And when I get those answers and the clarity from the team that I'm talking to, more often than not, I have a lot more faith in whatever we're going to go buy.
- [06:24]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Yeah, I think the confidence with which you can say we think these folks are direct competitors or they're even indirect competitors, but we know where we sit in the lumascape, let's say, then that is a powerful way to say you, again, are informed about your technology. And also the point that you made about just marketing terminology versus jargon, if it's not rooted in the foundations of marketing, which is the work that you actually do, then your time's being wasted. So there's a lot of value in that mention as well. People are not always ready to jump in with both feet and instantaneously, especially a big commitment, whether it's big dollars or it's going to Take a lot of integration, work, labor on the part of your team. How much does proof of concept play into or testing? Testing prior to making a full blown commitment look like for you at Discover or just in your, you know, history as a marketer?
- [07:12]
Claire Liston
Yeah, it depends on the organization you're in. But I discover by the time that you're testing something and have done all the paperwork to get it tested, you should probably be pretty sure that it's the solution you want to use. There's so much red tape to get through just to get a new partner live and like compliance oriented and make sure that they've gone through all of the, the checks that by the time you get to the pilot phase, I want to be able to make sure that this is a furthering product and the pilot is really for the partner to make sure that they can prove themselves. But by the time I'm doing that, it's like you're in. I think that in other organizations when you're moving more quickly, making sure that you have input from every stakeholder as you start these pilots. So like in this instance, we brought in a technology partner and my team was the first ones to use it. But we wanted to make sure that it was available for adoption across all the other lines of business once it rolled out in that process for us to make sure that it was something that the other lines of business would use. What we learned and what we did well was we got their input early and on what we were doing and we got their input often. Okay, so this is how we're using this. This is what this tool is doing on our campaigns. Is this how you foresee yourselves using it on your campaigns? And oftentimes the answer is yes, but sometimes the answer is like, well, actually this would be a way that this tool could really help us. And so we make sure that we, in that proof of concept and that pilot phase, we adjust how we're using the tool for this test case so we can answer the questions of the lines of business. Because when you're in like a media center of excellence, you want to make sure that what you're doing is something that if you're selling it into the other lines of business, is like a unified solution, they can ultimately get the value that they need from it.
- [08:51]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Clearly an extensive vetting process. Right to your point you're doing so much pre work to get to the point where you're doing any type of testing. Regardless of what happens moving forward, is there ever a circumstance in which you see things being More turnkey, being able to be more nimble? What are the circumstances in which you are able to be more agile or move on something more quickly?
- [09:10]
Claire Liston
Yeah, number one, very much depends on your organization and how much different partners need to be go through different departments and hoops and contracts before they're enabled. What I feel like is like was something that, you know, the last time I worked with basis, the swiftness with which the partner could get the output of the reporting stood up was what I found to be like the most compelling part of the offering. Yes, getting the data in is extremely important, but no one cares as much at that phase about the data going in. It's the partners that can really quickly get to the output and then assess like okay, this feels right. This one's kind of like, and really like work backwards from what you know, the results and what you need to see to make decisions will be because at the end of the day, if it's in the dashboard, if it's in the technology and the interface that people are using, if that's where the answers lie, if people don't understand how to glean answers from that technology or that platform, it will not be utilized and therefore it will not be valuable. So I really feel like that to me is a real, like a real test is how quickly can a team that knows very little about tech and maybe isn't used to being hands on keyboard, how quickly can their questions be answered from the output of this machine?
- [10:20]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Some telling signs there for sure. So let's shift over into talking about something every marketer is concerned about. Return on investment. I do think so much of what we've already discussed there is a inherent ROI concern. But how do you consider ROI when you are doing analysis of any of these ad tech or martech partners?
- [10:39]
Claire Liston
It's tough, right, because every organization has a different appetite for what they're willing to spend on data, what they're willing to spend on technology and how much of their working investment should be funding that. As I think about onboarding new partners and thinking about different technology implementation, one of the first questions I think about and ask is like, who is going to be paying for this and how will we be paying for it? What's the cost model that the partner provides? And with that it's, you know, how are you, are we thinking about this as like a bulk cost that is funded from multiple lines of business together or is it part of your working media cpm? Most of the solutions that like I feel like get implemented the most swiftly are those that are based on a working media cpm. And for me that's easiest because I'm constantly looking at those costs and saying, how much can we bring this up? Could we bring the cost up and still be as effective as we want to be? Do we need to bring the cost down to give ourselves like better statistical opportunity to be successful? How do we balance the cost of the media that we're buying? And does layering this technology into that cost, is it helping us or is it hurting us? And if based on proof of concept, based on pilot if, number one, if there's space in your working CPM to add technology, oftentimes that is like, for me, like a leading opportunity. Okay, we're already clearing at really low prices. I think that we can add another dollar, still be in marketplace benchmark and this technology will pay for itself. How does it pay for itself? To me, I go back to the problem, like, what was the problem we were setting out to solve? Does it save us time? Does it give us clarity of insight? Does it, you know, help us remain in brand safe places? Does it give us better opportunities to reach audiences in unique places? Because there's a checklist of things for me that in my mind, those things will ultimately result in more value for the end consumer. If the technology helps us put our ads in better, stronger, more contextual places, if the technology makes our ads pop off the screen, whatever the technology is that you're buying, if it at the end of the day makes the user's experience better, then the cost will not matter. If the impact of what you've spent does a better job of communicating your goals.
- [12:52]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Said you have a checklist in your mind, how much of that has also become institutionalized? Are there hard frameworks that exist for other people to lean on when Claire Liston isn't available or you need somebody else to lean in, what does that look like?
- [13:06]
Claire Liston
I mean, again, I look at like cost like first and foremost, like, if we're thinking about this as like a cost based model, is a percent of the total, is it a flat fee, a straight cost? And then like based on the cost of everything else you're doing, does that make sense for you and for your organization? But in getting to the cost question, make sure you know what your organization's appetite for that cost is. And then I think about it as like, okay, will in some way this technology make the consumer experience with our brand more effective? Right. Is there an effectiveness opportunity, whether it's viewability, whether it's like frequency management, any of Those. Does this technology give us a chance to find a unique audience? And does this technology save us time? All of those places, I feel like. And also do. Does it offer opportunity for swift, sharp insights that we can action on? Right. So if those five things is like my quick checklist in my head, if those things are true, then I'm usually like, okay, this. This is something that's pretty easy to get to leadership on, right? We can either get to market faster, our team spend less time doing real work. Those are things that resonate with executive suites, and they're usually pretty on board with tools that help them do that. Sometimes there's just a surplus of tools and people get really overwhelmed and they don't understand the value that this one creates versus what they already have. And I think that that's a little bit of the challenge that we're in right now. If there's solutions that are present and sold in, a lot of what you want to bring in has to complement that solution or live alongside it or work in parallel. And that's actually harder to navigate than like, kind of like evangelizing a net new solution. I would much rather be like, we don't have one of these. Let's get this versus trying to make sure that you can exist alongside something else that already exists.
- [14:50]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
How often do you push an existing partner because you've done all this heavy legwork to work with somebody and you turn back to them and say, you know, I need to know where things are going from a roadmap perspective, because it's always on the table to go turn to an alternative opportunity. Sometimes you need to do it because like you said, you've got a lot of tech already in house. What does that questioning process look like to make sure that what you're using and what you have been using continues to take you into the future?
- [15:16]
Claire Liston
I always think about it too, like, if for some reason someone on the team who owns this contract wasn't like, they left the organization tomorrow and the contract just fell off. Like, who would be the first person impacted and what. What would they say and what would they do and what would their reaction be? So I come at it from like, more of like a defense place than offense place oftentimes, like, what would happen if we lost this technology? But I think that from like a future proofing perspective that's on the marketer to make sure that they understand what the tool can offer that's not employed. I had a vendor recently say, like, we're a buffet, and if you only Want to eat that part, that's fine. There's value there, but the rest of the buffet is welcome to you as well. And so I think that that's all part of like, if you are a vendor and you're a provider, making sure that the work that you're doing is keeping the buffet stocked, your partners don't need to buy everything, but potentially like, okay, would there be an opportunity in a multi year deal for that you guys to make a fee arrangement if they're only using this part of technology and they pay up front? Like, there's lots of ways to negotiate the value there that aren't just like, hey, we need to move on to a different, like, I think that moving to a different vendor should be your last option if the partner you've worked with has delivered on your expectations and capability for the time that you've been with them. There's a lot of competition in the technology space, so understand how that happens.
- [16:35]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Yeah, I know all about that part. I'll ask just one or two other questions about the future of ad tech and Martech. I know you try to keep a pulse on what's new and what's next to the extent that you can relative to everything else you have to do at Discover. Are there categories of tools that you expect you're going to need to be adopting as we move into the next couple of years of the future?
- [16:55]
Claire Liston
What do you mean by categories of tools?
- [16:57]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Are there areas of, let's say we have done away with cookies in many ways. So is there more responsibility to look into a variety of first party data tools that you aren't currently using? A lot of people have said historically, well, you know, our house isn't clean as far as making sure our first party data is ready. And I know you work in the financial services space, I mean, you've got a lot of first party data. So I don't imagine that you're in a really troubling place from a first party data standpoint, but some advertisers or marketers would be, and I think there's some other categorical spaces similar to that, but that's the example.
- [17:29]
Claire Liston
Yeah, I mean we are first party data rich, but oftentimes it's very hard to really lean into your first party data in regulated categories because that's where people feel like it's very creepy. Right. So a lot of our approaches and what we had to really push our teams to think about was is there third party and second party data out there that's just as Effective and just as impactful as what we would do with our first party. Our goal is to reach prospects, right? So our first party data is only as you know, a really huge asset for that goal. If we're modeling it to find more people like who we already have, we have the people we have, we want different people, we want new people and they're multifaceted. From that perspective, we thought about it as like finding people based on demonstrated behavioral insights that could tell us that what we offer really speaks to them.
- [18:18]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Going to have us land on One final question for our chat since the time is just flying by over here, but if you had to choose one area of your tech stack, martech and ad tech combined that you would keep optimizing, what would it be and why?
- [18:33]
Claire Liston
I feel like the running challenge that we're going to have, especially as wheel out algorithms to take the wheel a little bit. What I'm longing for is for my tech stack to have AI embedded so that in like the big waterfall, it can assess how many other competitive advertisers are bidding for the same person. Thinking of it as like a frequency score, but like a saturation score. I can keep tabs on how often I have communicated with one person. However, I have no line of sight to how often my competitive set has also competed for that person and created this sea of sameness from a user experience. At the end of the day, like if you click once on an ad or like blink at an Instagram ad, next thing you know you're getting just an onslaught of ads about the very same thing. And I don't think that as marketers were paying enough attention to that. I think that there's so much technology from like contextual AI and image based AI that we could be building into the tech stack to help advertisers and help our like the clients thwart that issue and stand out better or pay more for somebody who isn't as saturated.
- [19:41]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
I would suggest you bring that to the attention of some tech providers and see what they say. I don't know what the viability is,
- [19:47]
Claire Liston
but I mean I feel like. And then it's also too like competitive tracking tools, especially in digital are no offense to anyone, they do feel woefully behind. Sure, right. And it's because there's no competitive advantage, there's no money to be made in providing better competitive tracking. Not enough. At least not, not enough at the pace of like actual ad spend. So how do we start to bring that like legacy process and products forward as like a viable option alongside all these tech companies that are selling the same tools that could solve that issue as targeting options. So many ideas.
- [20:19]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
Yeah, I was going to say, Claire, you're a big ideas person, and I love that about you as a leader. So of course there's, there's always room for more conversation with you, but we'll, we'll save it for next time. Thanks so much.
- [20:30]
Claire Liston
Great.
- [20:30]
Interviewer (possibly a podcast host or colleague)
It's been fun.
- [20:31]
Claire Liston
Thanks.
- [20:32]
Noor Naseer
A big thanks to Claire Liston for bringing her candid and thoughtful perspective to the realities of analyzing partners and platforms for marketing and media campaigns. If this conversation sparked new questions or challenged how you're thinking about your own strategy, we'd love for you to subscribe to the show or tell a friend. We'll be back soon with more unfiltered conversations. Until then, I'm Norna Sear for Unfiltered.