Ep. 84 Hype vs. Reality: Tom Goodwin on Fixing What’s Broken in Advertising

Summary

AdTechGod Pod: Ep. 84 Summary

Title: Hype vs. Reality: Tom Goodwin on Fixing What’s Broken in Advertising
Host: AdTechGod
Guest: Tom Goodwin, Founder of All We Have Is Now
Release Date: June 24, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 84 of the AdTechGod Pod, host AdTechGod engages in an insightful conversation with Tom Goodwin, a renowned marketer and public speaker with extensive experience in the advertising industry. The discussion delves into the prevailing issues within modern advertising, exploring the gap between marketing promises and consumer experiences, the overreliance on metrics, and the diminishing role of creativity in brand building.

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Tom Goodwin’s Journey into Advertising

Tom Goodwin shares his unconventional entry into the advertising world, highlighting that his path was somewhat accidental. Initially working in a temporary role for a TV company, he was encouraged by his boss to pursue a career in advertising. Despite early setbacks in securing positions at major agencies, Tom eventually found his footing and developed a passion for the industry's technological advancements.

“I got here by mistake... I sort of failed upwards. I was pretty terrible almost at every single job, but people sort of liked me and thought there was something about me.”
— Tom Goodwin [02:24]

Tom's fascination with technology began around 2006, during his collaboration with Nokia. This interest propelled him into discussions about the future of advertising, where many of his early predictions, such as user-generated content and microblogging, were validated over time.

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The Disconnect Between Advertising Promises and Reality

The core of the discussion centers on the disconnect between the lofty promises made by the advertising industry and the actual experiences of consumers. Tom expresses frustration with the current state of advertising, emphasizing a loss of ambition and innovation.

“I now feel quite embarrassed almost to be part of the industry... It seems to be kind of missing its ambition, it seems to be missing its innovation.”
— Tom Goodwin [04:31]

He critiques the overemphasis on precision targeting and data-driven strategies, which often result in irrelevant and intrusive ads. Despite sophisticated technologies, the execution frequently falls short of creating meaningful connections with consumers.

“Everyone seems obsessed with short termism, everyone seems obsessed with measuring everything, even if it doesn't matter.”
— Tom Goodwin [07:29]

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Branding vs. Performance-Oriented Marketing

Tom distinguishes between brand-building and performance marketing, highlighting a trend where companies prioritize immediate conversions over long-term brand loyalty. He observes that while some brands excel in creating unique identities through consistent messaging, others focus excessively on short-term metrics, undermining their brand's enduring value.

“Brands are built on weird things like consistent messaging that doesn't change over time... but their ability to reach new people or launch new products... has diminished.”
— Tom Goodwin [08:22]

AdTechGod adds that many brands effectively position themselves in the market, leveraging social media for brand building. However, this success is not universal, as some brands neglect the importance of cultivating long-term loyalty in favor of immediate sales.

“A lot of brands are ignoring the importance of building that brand and that loyalty, and rather they're focusing on conversions and performance.”
— AdTechGod [07:29]

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Obsession with Metrics and Short-Termism

A significant critique revolves around the industry's obsession with metrics and short-term results. Tom argues that the relentless focus on measurable outcomes leads to strategies that prioritize immediate sales over sustainable brand growth.

“We've become so good at measuring things precisely and cheaply that about 50% of the advertising world kind of thinks they can see Everything.”
— Tom Goodwin [11:43]

He laments that this metric-centric approach often neglects the intangible aspects of branding, such as emotional connections and cultural impact, which are harder to quantify but crucial for long-term success.

“Marketing has been the study of how weird humans are and how illogical we are... It's exploring and taking advantage of the fact that we make strange decisions in strange ways.”
— Tom Goodwin [14:15]

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Impact on Consumers’ User Experience

The conversation shifts to the consumer experience, where both hosts agree that modern advertising often feels intrusive and manipulative. Tom describes advertising as becoming "insidious," where ads are seamlessly embedded into content in ways that disrupt rather than engage.

“Advertising has moved from being a big part of the culture... to being the thing that gets in the way of the stuff we want.”
— Tom Goodwin [25:57]

AdTechGod echoes this sentiment, pointing out the eerie precision of ad targeting that can make consumers feel "watched" and uncomfortable.

“There is a sense of, okay, this is scary. Now if that creative or if... you, don't make it so creepy that you're following them everywhere they go.”
— AdTechGod [28:40]

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The Role of Creativity in Modern Advertising

Both hosts emphasize that creativity has taken a backseat to technological advancements and data analytics. Tom criticizes the reliance on AI-generated ads and automated processes that prioritize efficiency over emotional resonance and aesthetic quality.

“If 80 people shop for cars based on the monthly payment rather than the cash payment... why don't we make the ad appear really nice?”
— Tom Goodwin [19:23]

AdTechGod concurs, suggesting that the shift towards digital channels has complicated the investment in creative development, often resulting in ads that lack the emotional depth and consistency necessary for effective brand building.

“I'm not sure if there's Enough investment happening on the creative side... it's not as big of a focus as it used to be.”
— AdTechGod [19:23]

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Possible Solutions and Future Outlook

When discussing solutions, Tom advocates for a balanced approach that marries data-driven strategies with creative integrity. He suggests that marketers need to invest in long-term brand building while still addressing immediate performance goals.

“The role of a CMO today is to effectively be watering the trees at the same time as harvesting some apples.”
— Tom Goodwin [21:10]

He also calls for a cultural shift within the industry, urging advertisers to value the unmeasurable aspects of branding and to resist the pressure of solely valuing trackable metrics.

“It's important to build Brands for the future, because otherwise our future is terrible.”
— Tom Goodwin [21:10]

Both hosts express hope that the industry will gradually return to valuing creativity and emotional connections, citing the enduring impact of memorable campaigns like Coca-Cola's polar bears as examples of successful long-term branding.

“I hope we go back to a point where I say I really love those damn polar bears from Coca Cola... 20 years later I'm still drinking Coca Cola, not Pepsi.”
— AdTechGod [35:22]

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with a shared optimism that the advertising industry can recalibrate its focus towards meaningful brand building and creative excellence. Both AdTechGod and Tom Goodwin emphasize the necessity of balancing immediate performance metrics with strategies that foster long-term consumer loyalty and cultural relevance.

“I think our big takeaway here is how do we aim for relevance but not personalization, and how we aim to be helpful and considerate and somewhat, somewhat sort of highbrow in a way where we draw people to us.”
— Tom Goodwin [32:40]

AdTechGod thanks Tom Goodwin for his valuable insights, reinforcing the podcast’s mission to explore and address the critical challenges in the advertising technology landscape.

“Tom, thank you so much for being here. I hope we can chat again soon.”
— AdTechGod [36:18]

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Transcript

[Ad Tech God]

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[Tom Goodwin]

Thank you very much for having me.

[Ad Tech God]

On question for you. I start every POD the same way. So I wanted to ask you, you know, you've become a brand, you're top marketer on LinkedIn, you do public speaking. But how did you get into the advertising industry, particularly with the agencies? And what brought you to your point today?

[Tom Goodwin]

I got him by mistake. I mean, I think many people are in this industry for that reason. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was a very sort of curious, lively person, which I think means, you know, pain in the ass. And one day I was doing a temporary job for a TV company. And my boss at the time said, you'd be great in advertising. So I wrote to many large advertising agencies for their graduate training programs. Didn't get into any, but three years into a kind of large blue chip training program for a big pharmaceutical company. I kind of couldn't help but notice that advertising people seemed to be having a good time. So I wrote to all of the people that declined to give me jobs before, and one of them let me in and then I sort of failed upwards. I was kind of pretty terrible almost at every single job, but people sort of liked me and they thought there was something about me that would be valuable just for. Not for them right then. So I sort of morphed from a terrible account manager to being a pretty bad strategist. And then over time, I got more interested in technology. I got fascinated. This was sort of 2006 time, you know, so I was about five years into the industry at this point, and I was working a lot with Nokia. And it was very apparent that we had these things called mobile phones that could do more and more, and they were going to have a really big impact on the way that we lived our lives. And I got asked into lots and lots of conversations about the future. At the time it was called the 2020 Working Group because 2020 was always a long way off. And we would just discuss, you know, it was called user generated content. It was called micro blogging. You know, we were talking about the sort of impact of these devices on our lives and we were kind of right, actually. It sounds a bit arrogant and a bit unlikely, but many of the predictions that we made about the future turned out to be correct.

[Ad Tech God]

So we were chatting before the pod and we talked a lot about just the modern advertising, the modern marketer, and how, like, there seems to be such a big disconnect between the promises we hear in the market and what the actual experience is for consumers. I'd love to hear your opinion. And then, you know, I'll chime in too, on this pod. I don't mind. Where do you feel that disconnect is and why do you think that is?

[Tom Goodwin]

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, I'm using this podcast as free therapy because I'm really frustrated, because I really care. So I came into the industry in about 2001 and advertising was amazing, and it still is amazing. And it's full of remarkable people who work really hard and they're really curious and they are obsessed with people and they're obsessed with sort of connections and they're obsessed with ideas. I now feel quite embarrassed almost to be part of the industry. Like, like somehow it seems to be kind of missing its ambition, it seems to be missing its innovation. I think we need to remember that to work in advertising is somewhat of a privilege. I used to have, my boss a long time ago had a T shirt which said advertising helps me decide. And I thought it was amazing because it was kind of funny, but it was kind of true. You know, like when you go shopping in Japan, it takes you a really long time and you don't feel that good about what you're about to eat because you're not sure what it is or if it's going to be right. You know, if you try and buy a sort of T shirt in a, in a mall in Peru, you know, you don't really know what the brands mean. You don't know whether you're being a sort of loser by, by purchasing a certain type of jeans. And it kind of occurs to me that brand building and advertising is probably becoming more and more important. Helping people make decisions in a world of abundance, helping people feel better about the decisions they make, telling people about things that they might not otherwise know about, it's unbelievably important. And the environment that we're doing this in is amazing. I mean, you could not invent a better device for marketing than a mobile phone. You know, whether it's the high resolution screen, whether it's the ability to have sound, Whether it's the 5G connectivity, the fact it's got your mobile wallet attached to it, the fact it knows who you are, it's unbelievable. And then the sort of promise of advertising is amazing because you go to all these sort of conferences and you see these extremely charismatic and well spoken people talk about, you know, intent based marketing or conversational platforms or some new AI IQ system and you think, fuck, you know, I bet I'm going to leave this event and have these seductive, beautiful, relevant, personalized ads served to me. And instead what you get is beyond a joke. I mean, the, you know, I'm one of those weird people that doesn't have their ad blocker turned on. And the most common form of advertising that I see is something that's designed to be precise but quite wrong in a way that makes it useless. And we've become obsessed with this idea that we can be ultra sophisticated. So I can, you know, I can track my run on Strava, you know, and then I'll be served an advocate or aid or something. Or, you know, because I visited McDonald's, you know, burger King is going to send me an ad to a burger just as I'm in McDonald's. And we've become obsessed with the sophistication and the intelligence, I think is almost entirely wrong. I think it's not working and I don't think anyone seems to have noticed or they don't care. And therefore I'm here to sort of discuss why it's not working, if it's working, and what we can do about it to make it better.

[Ad Tech God]

You know, you touched up on the branding part, I think. I think some companies are doing a really good job with positioning themselves in market, making their product unique, make people interested in buying it. I mean, if you take a look at, I would say, you know, based on my kids like the trends that they see that they love and the products that they love, they do a great job promoting it and brand building it. But the delivery method has changed. Like a lot of what they learn from is no longer a TV ad, although that happens. A lot of it's happening on social media. And I think as someone who's active on social media, brand building continues to be important. But I'm not sure all brands are doing it the right way. I think a lot of brands are ignoring the importance of building that brand and that loyalty, and rather they're focusing on conversions and performance and that's actually impacting their brand negatively rather than positively.

[Tom Goodwin]

I'm not in the industry and therefore it means I don't know as much, but it also means I get to see things quite holistically. And what seems very apparent to me is probably the most interesting question out there is what has changed in the last 20 years and what has not changed in the last 20 years and what should we be doing about it? And broadly speaking, and again, I might be completely wrong here, but broadly speaking, I think there's two tribes. There's the kind of big brand building, kind of mass media buying sort of tonnage business. You know, this are the likes of Unilever or automakers or Samsung, and they're probably a little bit reluctant to really accept how much the world has changed and the degree to which they're not measuring the right things and they don't really know what they're doing. And then there's this sort of other tribe of sort of growth marketers that have been used to pretty limited budgets, that are launching things from scratch, that are perhaps not trained marketers. And this sort of tranche of people has Done an incredible job of scaling up, but have never really sort of learned the sort of mystery of advertising and the patience of advertising and the sort of seduction of advertising. And they've, they've become completely obsessed with kind of hourly trackers and attribution. And the weird thing is now these companies are spending a fortune. I mean, you'll have companies like, I think it's Ridge Wallets that are spending $50 million a year on Facebook advertising alone. So these are heavy hitters, full of people that do sort of know what they're doing, but I think they've become incapable of understanding what they don't know, which is that actually, you know, brands are kind of built on weird things like wastage. Brands are built on weird things like consistent messaging that doesn't change over time. And therefore they've become very, very good at sort of immediately getting people in a limited pool to straight away spend their money with them, but their ability to reach new people or to sort of launch new products or to do something which happens over a period of time. Yeah. At the end of the day, if you take a step back and you say, what new brands have we seen launched from digital media in the last 15 years? The list is surprisingly short. And most of those things are really products rather than brands. You know, it'll be someone like Airbnb, where people like the platform rather than thinking that the brand's particularly good.

[Ad Tech God]

You know, I feel like the consumer behaviors change a lot too. I think this, this need for instant gratification, the ease of purchasing products like that, drove a lot of the marketing strategy behind these products in market and how they market it. But the brand building is, as you mentioned, slow. Like it takes time and consistency. I know with building my brand as building ad tech. God. And it took me three years of making no money and focusing on just what I'm delivering on, fine tuning my messaging, continuing with that on the way through, and then turning it into something that became into a media company. But I feel that branding overall has turned into clicks and purchases, and that doesn't necessarily live long term. I think you, you, you live by the click and you die by the click. So the second you pull the plug on media budgets, your purchases drop substantially because there's no real love for the brands in market.

[Tom Goodwin]

The, the degree to which, you know, it sounds a bit like the McNamara fallacy, but the degree to which we've become so good at measuring things precisely and cheaply that about 50% of the advertising world kind of thinks they can see Everything. And they think that everything they can see really matters, which is one thing, but then they don't seem to have any interest or ability to see any value in anything that can't be tracked. And I think that means we're entering a kind of weird environment where again, about half of the market is out there, are still using the old fashioned playbook. And I don't think it's really working. You know, I personally will never watch TV that sort of broadcast to me and therefore the ability of these companies that used to place ads in magazines and newspapers and tv, they just can't get hold of me. But at the same time, if I go on a platform like Facebook or Instagram where I'm actually continually amazed by how well targeted most of the ads are, you won't see any traditional brands there. You won't see sort of Nissan talking about a new car. You'll see a kind of class action lawsuit for mesotheliomia or something. And it's sort of utterly bizarre to me and I'm not being miserable here, but considering the potential we have, no one seems to be getting it right. Everyone seems obsessed with short termism, everyone seems obsessed with measuring everything, even if it doesn't matter. Everyone seems to go into these meetings where they'll look at a spreadsheet all day rather than actually look at the ads that we're showing people. You know, once I, I sort of bought an ad campaign for myself on Meta and it was amazing to me that the one thing that the process didn't seem to care about at all was the actual ad that I created. And now we see sort of movements towards, you know, AI driven advertising, you know, where the, the kind of hope is that you can just upload a few crappy pictures of a pair of shoes and press a magic button and then perfectly adequate imagery comes out of it and then gets placed automatically. And then you can spend all of your time looking at numbers in the spreadsheet. It seems completely removed from people's lives and what builds allure and what gets people to think that something's beautiful and what makes someone unreasonably attracted towards something. You know, for a long time, sort of marketing has been the, the study of how weird humans are and how illogical we are. It's, it's almost the sort of opposite to economics. It's basically exploring and taking advantage of the fact that we make strange decisions in strange ways.

[Ad Tech God]

Yeah, it's, it's funny because you mentioned, you know, the, the lack of, I guess it would be emotional attachment to a AI generated image or AI generated ad. So a, I think I'm bullish on AI generated ads, but probably more for smaller businesses that don't have the budget for creative agencies, but larger brands. Like, you know, if you have a car dealership that wants to promote their, whatever their used car sale tomorrow and you want to be on TV or you want to buy on the web, you don't have the resources or the marketing department to do it. Great. Like AI generated ad works, come visit us on the corner of Main street. Like we're here to sell you a car. But for true brands, I don't know if it's scalable and I don't know if it's the right angle. I also think there's a massive lack of emotional attachment. I think people are genuinely emotional. I think they want to feel whatever the ad is delivering, whether that's joy, sadness, urgency, whatever that emotion is that your brand wants to deliver on, has to be delivered. I don't know if AI will do that. It might, but I don't think AI will do that. And I feel that a lot of brands out there are missing out on an opportunity to really touch onto something that will make people loyal to their brand and have them go by and instead they're just so focused on short term, honestly earnings rather than focusing on long term brand building and loyalty.

[Tom Goodwin]

I mean, I, I appreciate your, your stance on this and your nuance because you, you seem to sort of understand both worlds because we, we do have the kind of data and algorithm solve everything tribe. And I kind of think that if you upload things and then you just automatically optimize and you run continual experimentations, then you get to the best result. And I don't think that's right. But then there's also the other side that sort of believes in filmmaking and the art and the sort of mystery and the magic and they're ignorant to the fact that if one ad does appear immediately to be performing better than the other, then you're probably an idiot to sort of override that. You know, we need to find a way through this sort of middle ground. And again, this is a hypothesis, but I do wonder if we're not making everything way, way, way, way, way more complicated than it needs to be. I've recently done a huge project for a huge sort of car company and I was looking at their dealer advertising. So it's interesting that you should bring that up. And there's, there's a lot of research that shows that even when people are buying new cars, they want to see the actual car, that's the real car shot by a real person in the showroom. And that research and that very sort of hard metric drives about probably about $200 million worth of photography fees every year. The problem is all of these ads look absolutely shit. So. So, you know, you go on any sort of platform and you see the actual, you know, Honda Camry from 2025 with a roof rack or something and it doesn't look like an attractive car. And then you'll see something for kind of lucid or for Polestar or a direct to consumer brand and it'll look really, really nice. And you do sort of wonder, I don't know, maybe let's ignore the data a little bit. Maybe let's just take a picture of a car that looks really nice. If 80 people shop for cars based on the monthly payment rather than the cash payment, why don't we advertise the lease price and why don't we just make the ad sort of seem quite confident and bold? Why don't we, you know, click to a landing page where, you know, it shows the phone number to phone up and the email address quite clearly? You know, I kind of wonder if we haven't got so obsessed with the sophistication and the precision that we haven't realized that actually, you know, making a car look good is probably more important than anything else. You know, the conversation about AI and generating ads is quite interesting to me because most of the time, about 15 to 20 times more is spent on media than production. And therefore the idea that you can go to a company and say you're still going to spend $15 million on media, you know, but now the ad is only going to cost, you know, $50 to make rather than $10,000. It seems to me that you might as well make the very most perfect ads if you're going to spend that much money on media behind it, I feel like.

[Ad Tech God]

Well, first I agree with you. I think the balance is off. I think what was a heavy creative and then media was the delivery method because it was simple. Like we run in a newspaper, there's, we're going to use automotive, we run in a few localized newspapers, magazines, et cetera that are distributed to your home or in your mailbox. And we're going to run on radio and we're done, maybe a billboard. And now with connected television, traditional television, all the digital channels, mobile, social, it gets complicated. And I'm not sure whether there's Enough investment happening on the creative side, it's obviously having a very negative impact on the agencies on where the money is going and how that money is being allocated. I just don't know if creative is as big of a focus as it used to be. And I think it's not the right move. I just not sure how we could reverse it.

[Tom Goodwin]

I think one has to acknowledge that the agencies have done a very bad job of arming themselves for these conversations. So I think what you describe is absolutely true. I just think that most agencies have tried to win this argument by being kind of aloof or arrogant or saying, you don't believe in the, the magic of my pencils, you know, rather than saying in a more robust way, you know, here are five case studies. You're measuring the wrong things. You're being sold on technology that you don't need. You know, that, that question of, you know, if you had a new TV launch in 1999 and you had to do the same kind of thing this year, what would be different? I always find that a fascinating question because we do tend to kind of obsess over the complexity. And we look at the Lunascape and we think that the solution is to have, you know, some sort of DMP that's uploaded with all these other numbers and then we have all these, you know, cookies that are everywhere and then we track everything and then we align that with another customer data platform and then we retarget. And you do, you do sort of wonder, well, you know, if it's a really nice TV that looks good on the wall and it has digital art, you know, maybe, maybe kind of everyone should know about that. Maybe it's not a terrible thing if an 8 year old grows up thinking that LG TVs are a little bit better. You know, you do, you do sort of wonder to what extent are we losing a lot of money in a kind of technology tax that actually doesn't grow the pie?

[Ad Tech God]

Well, what in your opinion would fix it? Like, what's the right move? Is it investment in better creative? Is it a shift of budgets away from performance and towards branding? Is it the combination of those two? How do you think it can be fixed?

[Tom Goodwin]

I think there are a very small number of extraordinary marketers out there and what they have done is they have demonstrated to their peers and to their stakeholders and to the trade as a whole that they get it, that they get technology, that they're not these sort of dinosaurs that fell asleep on the watch of the Internet. And it's like sort of Picasso, you know, Picasso can do abstract art because he learned how to draw, you know, realist art first. Therefore he had this sort of confidence to subvert it. And I think when you can demonstrate to people that you know what you're doing and you've got good judgment and you have the kind of, you know, the, the cultural permission, you can then say no to things. And you can then say, I'm going to invest in some media and some platforms and some creative that will look good in a spreadsheet. And then I'm going to do some things that create results over a much longer period of time. And you're just going to have to believe me that I think the role of a CMO today is to sort of, it's to effectively be watering the trees at the same time as harvesting some apples. And if you spend so much time harvesting the apples, you just screw over the person that comes into your job in four years time. And if you only water the apple trees, then you don't get any apples. And I think that balancing act is, is the job. But it takes a lot of confidence because ultimately, and I talk to a lot of CMOs about this, ultimately, the, the sort of CFO and the CEO are increasingly. Well, they've always been quite ignorant to advertising. And if you go into one meeting one day and say, look, you know, we spend 52 million and we had a return of ad spend on 6.1, after that point, it becomes almost impossible to justify anything that doesn't have a trackable return on ad spend. And it also becomes impossible to justify almost anything that's below that number, because they just keep on thinking, well, why don't you do the thing with the bigger number? There are exceptions. You know, for some reason, companies are very happy to spend money on event marketing. They're very happy to spend it on sponsorship. But I think we, we live in this world, which, I don't know if it's my term or if I'm borrowing it from Rory Sutherland, but it's, it's like the sort of arithmetocracy where essentially every single conversation that we have has to be backed up by numbers. And I'm not arguing for some kind of ignorant, removed from reality suspension of belief kind of argument, but I'm just saying, you know, one should be able to go into a meeting and say, don't look at the sun, you know, without showing a case study of people that are being blind, one should be able to stay. It's important to build Brands for the future, because otherwise our future is terrible. And also there's wastage that happens in ways that lead to good things that we can't track. One should be able to say quite reasonable things without having to get out an Excel spreadsheet every time.

[Ad Tech God]

You think we've been distracted by the.

[Tom Goodwin]

Metrics, I think even more than that, and I mean this with the greatest respect, ad tech people are really good at selling and they do this amazing sort of dance of the. The fun and the sort of, you know, taking clients out for a good time. They do an amazing job of kind of whipping up a sense that you're missing out. So unless you've got, you know, 153 different technology companies in your ad stack, then, and unless you've done sort of integration tests, you know, unless you've done all that wizardry, then you're an idiot. So they sort of create the fun and the allure, the sort of fear of missing out. They pull the wool over people's eyes and then they provide amazing data to show that it all works. I mean, you know, when I worked at IPG in their media lab, it was my job to create experiments to show that technology companies had products that worked. And no one seems to realize that while these results are kind of robust in inverted commas, they have been designed to get the response. So every car dealership these days has about 27 different plugins attached to their websites because they've all been sold on a technology by a vendor. And trust me, they had a good case study and they. And it sort of appears to be true that a chat bot sells more cars, but it doesn't pass the test really, you know, this idea that someone's going to walk away with a BMW 7 Series, you know, because a website and a chat bot, you know, we need more sort of confidence in our conviction, I think.

[Ad Tech God]

On the flip side, how do you think it's impacted consumers? We're talking about the advertiser side, the focus on metrics, the focus on tech, maybe less of a focus on creative. How do you think the digitization, if we want to call it of advertising, has impacted the consumer with their user experience?

[Tom Goodwin]

I would actually enjoy spending more time understanding modern consumer attitudes towards advertising. I haven't done the research myself, so everything I say is a sort of theory. You know, there was a time when we grew up when TV ads would be on TV as TV shows, you know, be the 25 best ads of the week or something, or the funny ads. And when the Oscars Come around or the super bowl come around. We love advertising, we love looking at them, we love seeing all the celebs that are on them. They become part of the culture. And I think advertising has moved from being a big part of the culture that sort of created and reflected culture and was part of a shared sense of culture. You know, it's a bit different growing up in the uk, but we'd have sort of infamous ads. We had one called the Tango ad where two people sort of slapped each other and it got banned in schools because kids were sort of copying the slap from the ad. You know, we used to feel kind of big and glamorous and now we've become the kind of shit that gets in the way of the stuff we want. You know, we, we, by and large we are now the thing to swat away. And one of my sort of trends that I talk about when I do my keynotes is, you know, advertising has now become insidious. So it's become, you know, influencers will kind of suddenly start talking about a new type of pet treat, you know, halfway through their review of remover luggage. Like advertising has been sort of snuck in like the sort of broccoli in a kid's meal. And I think these days most people have a pretty disdainful attitude towards ads. They think the ads are the thing that gets in the way of the stuff they're trying to watch. They think that the ads are the things that get their kids to buy stuff they don't need. And I don't think it needs to be like that. You know, like if we're all spending quite a lot of money and we all need help on knowing how to spend that money in a better way. And for me to know that there's a new route that's opened up between Miami and Rome, you know, on ITA Airways, that's not a terrible thing to know about. And I think this, this sort of drive towards ever more aggressive, ever more micro targeted, ever more cheap looking scam, like sort of slightly fraudulent feeling ads. It sort of dirtied the water to every, for everyone. And I think brands increasingly feel like they need to sort of use that playbook. And what I would love them to do is to do the opposite. You know, it's to be a bit grander and bigger and more premium and more elusive and more vague and just say something beautiful like, you know, Samsonite luggage, it looks as good as this. Or, you know, Honda, you know, the power dreams, you know, just, just we need a sort of counter reaction to the kind of precision and the science and the sort of warfare, I think, of modern advertising technology.

[Ad Tech God]

Yeah. One of the, one of the things I get the most, because I tell people I work in advertising, I don't tell them I'm like a deity, but I do tell them, I do tell them I work in advertising. And, and, and the biggest thing for them is like, you know, why did I get this ad? And it's really weird. And I visited a site and now I'm getting retargeted. And I was just looking because somebody mentioned the shoe, but now all I see is that shoe on this ad everywhere I go. And I just, I usually just say, well, we're watching you, you know, and I creep them out a little bit. But, but it is a, it is a creepy feeling. Like if you don't come from the industry and you don't understand why you're getting served this ad, everywhere you go there is a sense of, okay, this is scary. Now if that creative or if, let's say you, you, you looked at a Nike shoe, like it's okay to not target them with the same exact shoe. Maybe they are in the market to buy a shoe. So show them an ad, but don't show them that specific shoe. But the metric show, no, if you show them 57 times, they're going to convert. But the reality is like, maybe you try a different product. Like maybe, maybe you mix it up a little bit. Like, don't make it so creepy that you're following them everywhere they go. Give them an experience. Use that as an opportunity to brand build. Maybe they're not sold on Nike as the shoe of choice. Maybe they love Adidas and maybe what they're trying to do is explore other options. So don't keep showing them the same shoe. Show them something different, like get them engaged and attached to your shoe brand without making them feel weirded out and creepy.

[Tom Goodwin]

It seems weird because again, there's so much sophistication, intelligence and sort of passion. And I can't help but think, you know, the thinking that shows that every time we send out the newsletter again, you know, another 1% of people will buy something, means that ultimately you end up with 99% of people starting to unsubscribe after a couple of hours because you've just been inundated with, you know, Nordstrom telling you it's Father's Day. Again, I've been there and, and for every person that counts that the incremental sort of money from every email, I don't Know, if there's anyone counting the number of people that unsubscribed, or the number of people that blocked, or the number of people that got pissed off, or the number of people that, you know, feel differently about that brand now. And I do, I do wonder if we're counting every single positive thing and never counting the cost of doing stuff that's quite harmful to people and this idea that we all have enough imagination and empathy to think, you know, what, like, if someone's just bought a toaster, you know, let's not tell them five other toasters to buy. You know, maybe tell them about kettle, you know, a sort of a TV screen that sits on the fridge, you know, maybe they've got interested in tiling or plants at the moment. And it's remarkable to me that no one seems to sort of go around with this level of thoughtfulness based on the idea that actually, you know, if you, if you ask people if they like being tracked, they say no. And if you say, what some of the worst things about modern advertising, they say, I hate how targeted it is. And then if you ask them what they dislike most about advertising, they will also say, well, they don't like irrelevant ads. So I think our, our big takeaway here is how do we aim for relevance but not personalization, and how we aim to be helpful and considerate and somewhat, somewhat sort of highbrow in a way where we draw people to us. I think modern advertising has become obsessed with let's, let's insert ourselves amongst a group of people that are interested in this and then when someone does something, we're going to take all the credit. You know, if we can find ourselves in the journey of someone buying a Kia, then we can say that it was our ad that made them do that. And actually that desperation to be part of the process, I think, is leading to us completely misunderstanding how advertising works. And the fact that, you know, it was a friendly dealer that we went to six months ago that remembered our mum was sick, you know, that's probably the reason we bought and not the sort of ad that jammed itself in the way right at the last second.

[Ad Tech God]

Company is very good at taking credit. I actually posted a meme about that this morning and it literally says, when your campaign wins an award for attribution, but you have no idea what contributed to the, to the conversion. And it's true, like, very, very good at that. It's a common thing that everybody's like, well, it's because they saw it here or saw it there. And you know, measurement is still a challenge.

[Tom Goodwin]

Do you think there's any hope in the industry taking a bit of a step back and rather than getting closer and closer to the point of purchase and ever more targeted and ever more personalized and ever more numbers based, is that within your sort of vantage point, a movement the other way to just go, you know what, people on mobile phones and we can make fantastic ads and maybe it's okay if someone didn't buy something immediately as a result.

[Ad Tech God]

Yes and no. I, I think that there are people who agree with, with you and, and I, that, that there needs to be some sort of change in just a strategy. Overall, I think it's, it's converting those brands and, and the people that are managing their budgets. When when a brand says we want to move $10 million of toothpaste, well, the goal now is to get people to buy toothpaste today. And so then the budgets shift towards that particular KPI or towards that, you know, RFP that they got and market just saying, you know, buy this toothpaste, buy one, get one free, buy one, get a free toothbrush. Hey, here's some mouthwash. Also here's a 50 cent coupon. And, and that just becomes the strategy behind it. So I, I, I think that in general, like the ad tech industry and who I can kind of speak about is focused on better messaging and better delivery. But I think when it comes down to, to brands, they want, they want conversions and then we want to fulfill that requirement so it turns into tech that's built to convert and not built to build a brand or to entice people to, to love a brand. So yeah, I mean, I think there's some hope and I think there's a lot of companies doing great creative stuff and not just AI creative, but how to optimize around creative, how to measure and understand what's happening and the emotion behind it. So yes, but I think it's just a slow learning curve. But I hope we go back to a point where I say I really love those damn polar bears from Coca Cola, because that was years and years ago and I still love it. And it's bizarre to me that out of all the ads that I look back on, I love that Coca Cola ad as an adult, it's nostalgic for me. I loved those polar bears. I thought they were cool. I think I even had a stuffed animal that was a polar bear. So to me it's like build that brand and that love and what do you know, 20 years later I'm still drinking Coca Cola, not Pepsi.

[Tom Goodwin]

That's the crazy thing is the timescale. I mean, if I was to open up every cupboard in my apartment right now and look in the doors, the things that I am buying now are a result of, of if you had to sort of somehow scientifically plot it and you couldn't, they'd be ads that I got when I was 6 to 15 years old. You know, that that's the payback period. You know, the toothpaste is actually a very good random example for you to choose because it's very hard to launch a new toothp because people need to trust it. You know, anything you stick in your mouth that's slightly sort of medicine youl need like the recognition of a big brand behind it. And no amount of free floss or free mouthwash or 50 cent off coupons is going to make most people buy a toothpaste brand they've never heard of. But in this current environment, it will look like that activity that happened at the last second that created the success and not the fact that, you know, in 1987, Colgate did a massive TV campaign about dentists recommending their products.

[Ad Tech God]

Right. Amazing. Tom, thank you so much for being here. I hope we can chat again soon.

[Tom Goodwin]

It's been a pleasure. Thanks very much for having me on the show.

[Ad Tech God]

Same here, Tom, thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the AdTech Godpod, a podcast for the people about the people. Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of ad tech. Don't miss out on the latest updates. So follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.