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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hey, this is Norna Seor for AdTech Unfiltered. There's always room to be a more savvy media buyer and planner. So to discuss the topic, we're joined by Derek Lee, VP at Media Planning Platform Guideline for a dive into how media planning and buying are evolving right now. From the acceleration of in house planning and the adoption of smarter software to the realities of retail media growth, the state of CTV and more. Derek brings clarity to where brands and agencies should really be focusing their time and attention. We'll also explore some of the misconceptions around retail media, how non endemic advertisers are fueling its next wave of growth, and how the role of AI is beginning to play in turning overwhelming amounts of data into actionable insights. Let's talk about where media planning is headed and how to prepare for what's next with Derek now. So Derek, thanks for joining me.
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B
Thanks.
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A
I wanted to ask you to just kick things off. What are some of the most significant shifts that are happening in media planning and buying that professionals really need to be grasping right now?
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B
Yeah, and I think right now is a crucial time to answer that question because there are a lot of changes happening. I'll answer it with two separated questions on planning and then buying. On the planning side, I think the one biggest trend we're seeing is that more and more of the media planning process is being brought in house. And I think a lot of that has to do with ownership and accountability. I think more and more brands want to own that. They want to be able to have the ability to optimize and the ability to own the entire process from start to finish. And so what they're doing is they're leveraging more technology, more software, more platforms so that they can own that process, the full management, the approval process, all of it. I think they want to own more of that. It's also the data side, right, is more and more data is available from multiple partners on the success of the media plans and to ingest that, to be able to optimize. I think brands and advertisers and agencies that are using planning software have, have that capability to ingest that and be smarter about their overall media planning process. So I think that's the biggest trend is it seems obvious, but you still have so many plans that are just managed by Excel. And in the last two, three years we've seen the acceleration towards tech and software to help with managing the media plan. On the media buying question, I would summarize with three major trends that we have seen on both in our data, but also conversations. The first trend is just overall what we're seeing from retail media is that there has been continued growth in retail media. But I think what would come to some people's surprise is that we're not going to see double digit growth this year. The next one is more around the CTV side. So we've been seeing a lot more capabilities drive CTV spending in the market and it's had a lot of evolution in the last five years. And I think the, we'll call it the hype train has continued for CTV and it's because of these capabilities. The third one is just overall media buying I think is going to change around data and ingestion of data. So being able to leverage data and be smarter about making decisions with the data. Again, we're seeing so much data available to our hands and you know, the agencies and brands are trying to figure out what to do with it. The suppliers are trying to figure out what their share of wallet is and how they're competing in the space. Leveraging that data is going to be a big trend moving forward. So I want to touch on the second point just a little bit more around ctv. I think the growth in CTV capabilities to target and to leverage ad lengths and different special ad formats, we're seeing a big growth in that space and that's what's helping accelerate the spend past the shift in streaming from consumers using linear to streaming. I think we're seeing that grow a lot faster because of the capabilities in advertising that have lend itself well to ctv.
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A
What are the biggest measurement challenges that are in today's landscape that can be actively addressed differently now than they have been in the past?
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B
Yeah, it's a great question. I think the biggest challenge that has been kind of hindering the entire industry has been cross platform measurement. And I truly think that we are in a better position today than we were previously. There's still a very big contingent of not knowing who to go to to measure which platforms. I think that will continue and I think that's healthy for the industry is we need multiple measurement solutions out there, providers of measurement to be able to answer the questions. I think all of them have a unique capability to answer the cross platform measurement question. And what we're finding is that when retail media exploded in the last couple of years, go back five years, 10 years, and still to this day we have a challenge in the walled gardens and the big tech companies where it's been hard to measure success of your campaign. In the holistic view of your entire media efforts, I think we've started to make some breakthroughs in that. And a lot of these capabilities come from collaboration in the industry, sell side publishers, working together with others. I think the growth of programmatic platforms has helped bridge all of it together into one. And then just the availability of data has allowed more and more collaboration that allows you to understand what is each media channel and within digital, all the digital media channels, how are they working together to, you know, result in the outcomes that you're looking for. So cross platform measurement, not just traditional and digital, but also digital in itself, I think it's allowed us to see better capabilities when it comes to cross platform measurement.
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A
And then you also had mentioned retail media networks, which have been rising part of the conversation in recent years. I think even more acceleration as of late. But what is it about retail media networks that is allowing it to gain momentum in ways that maybe go beyond the scope of the way that somebody may traditionally think of something that is, has the word retail in it?
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B
You know what I think the typical, if I was a retail media supplier, I think the typical answer is right place, right time, right, and you have the shoppable experience happening right there in front of you and you're hitting them with the message. I think that's what has allowed it to grow so well and give the outcomes that, you know, and we're talking about performance outcomes and conversion outcomes that many marketers look for. So I think it's that environment that has just allowed it to make the most sense from a consumer standpoint. The one thing I would say though, that is very different about the growth rate that we're seeing with retail media, so we're seeing it slow down a little bit, is that a lot of outcomes today are still driven around engagement and, you know, brand awareness and just overall, just the fact that consumers are striving for entertainment when it comes from advertising. And if we don't have those capabilities in retail media, I think that's what's slowing down the growth. And what they've recognized, and many have recognized is bridging that gap with retail and CTV and, and being able to leverage the quality first party data that retail media provides and bring it to other digital media channels. And that's what CTV can do for retail media. I think we're in the early years of that capability to bridge the strong capabilities of retail media and the first party data and bridge it across the entire digital strategy. However, I think it's still early days before we start to see real scale come from retail media and the growth that those platforms are already getting, but will continue to get in the years to come.
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A
What do you think are the biggest misconceptions around leveraging retail media networks?
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B
I think when it comes to retail media, one of the biggest misconceptions is the nature of your data just being in one place now for a lot that is the reality is that within the platform, the media outlet, you have one set of outcomes and results that are coming from your campaign. But I think, and I alluded to this earlier, is now the integrations with programmatic platforms and retail media is going to allow a lot of the brand advertisers to see the results of their retail media campaign across retail outlets and retail media networks. So I think the biggest misconception is that we can only live in one place. And when we're trying a strategy, you need to do it here first and do an A B test with the other retail media network over there. I think what we'll see more and more is that misconception is busted when we think about the programmatic strategy that allows you to see it across retail media networks.
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A
I think you've already spoken to this a little bit, just kind of marrying multiple points you've made. How can agencies and brands who leverage retail media networks measure beyond the scope of last click attribution in this retail media forward world?
- [10:24]
B
Yeah, I think it, it really comes back down to what are you trying to get out of your retail media dollars? And I think there's still a question mark for many people is where's the budget coming from? Sometimes it's still coming from shopper marketing dollars. Maybe it's a new incremental budget that you're trying to test versus some of your other media channels. I think it comes down to what are your outcomes and what are the results that you're looking for. I think when it comes to retail media, and I'll say now, overall commerce media is that, yes, that is still the number one metric that we're looking for is that click that last click attribution and thinking about how that drove the benefit to actually converting the consumer. I think one thing that we're seeing a lot more of is a little bit of a blurred line between those performance metrics and branded campaigns and being able to understand the long term effects of metrics like engagement and brand awareness and that value you get from, you know, a branded campaign. Retail media networks do allow for that. And I think that's partly what's Allowing them to go beyond just, you know, measuring the clicks and paying for it based on the click as well. So I think technology and data has allowed more and more capabilities for the retail media networks and commerce media networks to go beyond just the last click.
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A
What types of outputs should agencies or brands be receiving from their campaigns so that they really can better, better optimize and build long term strategy from their campaigns, whether they're retail media oriented or beyond?
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B
You know, similar to the last question, I think it comes down to the outcomes that you're looking for. It really takes a team to think about those outcomes properly and to attribute it back to the data that you can get from a campaign. So I'll give a specific example to retail media. For example. One thing that's really growing in the retail media space is the growth of non endemic advertisers on retail media. So that would be something like an airline advertising on Amazon, Target, Kroger, you know, you wouldn't be able to get an airline ticket necessarily from one of those. The growth of the non endemic advertisers has shown me, and you know, our organization, why there is such a big growth in non endemic advertising on commerce networks. And that type of data allows you to understand why there is a certain trend that's happening with other competing media companies that are trying to fight for their fair share of wallet. They've always fought for endemic advertisers. And now this growth in non endemic advertisers and being able to see from the data who is spending or which categories are spending has made it very valuable to again dissect the data and understand what your outcomes are. You know, obviously you want growth from your endemic advertisers, but a big opportunity for commerce networks is those non endemic advertisers.
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A
You shared the airline being an example of a non endemic advertiser. And I do think there's still a lot of skepticism around retail media networks being truly accessible for many advertisers that fall outside of the retail space. Are there any other categories or industries that you have seen success from a non endemic standpoint in these retail media spaces?
- [14:05]
B
Yeah, I think the obvious one is automotive. We've definitely seen or imagined automotive to be a non endemic advertisers because you're not buying a car from Target or even Amazon, but today you can't. So you can go look at specific automotive manufacturers on Amazon, for example, and you can browse a showroom. And I think it's led to a lot of innovation in retail media where they're thinking about how can we create this environment for non endemic advertisers to succeed in being able to browse a showroom, an automotive showroom on Amazon is, you know, one capability and there are many more. You could do the same. You could look at seat selection on a flight and in the environment of a retail media network. I think those two are probably the most prevalent in the non endemic category. I think another one that might be interesting is just like restaurants, it's an interesting one because you're not, maybe you can shop for gift cards on a retail media network, but the restaurants, I think Those ones, the QSRs, there's an opportunity to create that environment and it requires some innovation. And I think we're seeing a lot of that innovation come through because there's so much opportunity and so many dollars to go after on the media side, to go after on the advertisers in those categories.
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A
Yeah. How do you see the intersection of the work that you do coming together with artificial intelligence? Does it help to accelerate the work that you're doing and in what ways is that happening?
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B
Yeah, absolutely. So the biggest thing as a data company is a lot of the work that I do is leveraging a lot of data that comes from a deterministic data source. And there's so much signal coming in. You know, whether you take it from a media planning software, you take it from an agency billing system, a lot of data comes from that. And what we're finding is that the need to leverage, it's not even, you know, the option to leverage. It's a need to leverage and be able to ask an agent, for example, like, what is the trend in the last three months? What is the trend just in the next three months that I should be aware of as a retail media network or as a CTV streaming platform? We're finding that in the ad space there is a little bit of a squeeze on budgets around what we can do with the people we have, a lot of our clients and partners. What they're finding is that when it comes to data, to leverage it, to understand it and to implement it, in your strategy, you need a team to do that. And I think what AI is allowing you to do is build a foundation of some insights that can help a team of human beings leverage what the next step is. What do you do with that? What are the trends that we're identifying and then allow the humans to think about. How can we be innovative in answering those trends and being on the winning side of the equation when it comes to those trends.
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A
Well, we'll leave it there for now. Plenty more things to learn about the space that you've been focused in on. Appreciate the time.
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B
Thank you so much. Noor. Have a great day and thank you for having me.
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A
That's a wrap on today's episode on media planning and buying. A big thank you to Derek Lee from Guideline for sharing his insights on what's happening and what's to come. If you're a fan of At Tech Unfiltered, please follow and subscribe. Subscribe and tell a friend we have a ton of new episodes coming up this year. I'm norn is here more coming out real soon.