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Bonus: CTV for DTC: How Cantrip Drives Measurable Growth with Vibe.co’s Audience‑First Strategy
00:39:06
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- [00:00]
A
What really differentiates Vive from any other player is our ability to hyper target.
- [00:05]
B
We also have a certain amount of data that exists on our audience via other tools that we have. So I can tell, like, who's the ideal demographic, what type of job do they have, and we can target a surprising amount of that in Vive.
- [00:16]
A
When people see you on tv, that creates a lot of trust.
- [00:19]
B
How do you justify going through like a single network CTV platform when something like Vive exists and you have basically like 250 networks that you can advertise through at the click of a button?
- [00:30]
A
When you want to do performance, you want to have as much, much inventory as possible and as much transactional data as possible. And Vibe as today has the largest footprint in terms of inventory. Most of the solutions that you'll find on CTV buy inventory first. Vibe buys identity first.
- [00:54]
C
Welcome to the DTC podcast. Today we are having a CTV bonanza. Talking about Vibe, talking about, about Cantrip. Adam, Artur, welcome to the DTC podcast. Start with a little introductions maybe here. Artur, why don't you tell the audience who you are?
- [01:11]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Arthur. I'm the CEO and co founder of Vibe. Go. We have pretty much built the meta ads of streaming TV or CTV for the ad tech people. And we're turning television into a performance acquisition channel for performance marketers.
- [01:28]
C
And Adam, you are a performance brand using Vibe.
- [01:31]
B
That's right. I run Cantrip, a THC beverage brand. We make THC products derived from hemp and sell them at liquor stores, convenience stores, grocery stores, and direct to consumer all across the country.
- [01:43]
C
I just did a podcast that'll come out next week with Wink, with the founder of Wink. So, and I'm just curious, where did streaming come into your marketing mindset when it came to growing Cantrip? Has it something you did right from the beginning or like, talk to me about your journey to use tv?
- [01:59]
B
Yeah. So Cantrip has had an e commerce website since the end of 2022, which was kind of unexpected when I founded the brand because we were originally like a marijuana brand, which meant that we could only sell into dispensaries and you weren't delivering things to people's doors. And then in 2022, we switched to making it from hemp we could sell online. We dabbled in meta ads for a long time. We were one of the first advertisers on Twitter, and it was earlier this year that I found out that you could even run a TV ad. We saw a couple of our competitors that were Advertising on Vi Cycle, a couple other beverage brands. And, you know, I reached out, we got set up. And the, the cool thing about Vibe for a cannabis brand, and the reason that I say on Twitter that pretty much every cannabis brand needs to be on something like Vibe is because on Meta, I can't say that there's THC in the product. I can't say there's weed in the product. I'm using plant emojis for everything. Everything is sideways. It has to run through a scrubbed landing page. So it's an extra step to conversion. On Vime, I can just run an ad that says, hey, I sell weed. Come to my website and check it out. I put it in better terms than that. There's a couple parameters. We want people to know that it's a 21/ product. But being able to reach people like that is just astounding. And I can't tell you, I get text messages all the time from people I know who, like, I saw your ad on tv. And even though we don't spend as much as many other advertisers, we're still a very middling size brand. It really gives the effect to people that we're much bigger than we are when they see a TV ad. So I can't say enough good things about working with Vibe, to be honest. So I'm happy here to do an ad for them, basically.
- [03:34]
C
Yeah, well, I think people are interested. It's definitely a platform. People want to know more about the fact that you're not spending huge numbers, still having really good results. How do you know you're having really good results is my question.
- [03:46]
B
They have a really good performance dashboard. So we run meta ads with. I use a third party agency to do it. It's like, I tried to bring it in house. It was very challenging because running restricted ads, like, there's a lot of tricks to it. You kind of have to have multiple accounts and then like, I don't know the meta backend very well. And it's really complicated, frankly, to understand the meta backend, especially when you're running that many ads and so on Vive, basically I'm running like three campaigns at any given time that have multiple ads inside them. And like, the performance dashboard will pretty much pull any metric I want. Like, I can look at it, you know, the way it should be, which is like a retargeting campaign will automatically tell me roas, that's like the key metric. But if I want to look at the roas for my awareness campaign, I can Click over to that too. Which I appreciate because like I like to look at roas for traffic even though our traffic, like our middle of funnel is not the focus for roas. I want to know what that is. Ultimately. I want to know what the blend of my roas is across all the different campaigns that I'm running. And Vive makes that pretty easy to see from like a dashboard perspective. And then they have pretty good customer service to help me understand like any of this. Like I can't stress enough. Like I'm like not a CEO native to direct to consumer. So like I didn't come into this industry pre built with the knowledge of like what CPC or CPM meant. I had to learn a lot of that over the last couple years. And so having some people, you know, who are qualified and can help me understand things, they also allow like built in custom audiences which has been a real cool tool which I'm sure Arthur will talk more about later. But there's you know, there's been a lot of functionality and while like performance is varied week to week, as you know things always do, I can see a lot of different stuff broken down. Like I could see different creative performances. It's actually pretty easy set up. Originally I had like seven campaigns set up because I had one different one per advertisement. I realized that was not necessary. So yeah, to answer your question, performance dashboard actually functional and I don't need like a third party built platform like I do for meta just to understand what my daily spend and roas is.
- [05:45]
C
And are you mainly driving people to store in regions where you have a good distribution set up?
- [05:50]
B
So we drive people to our direct to consumer website. I'm hoping I'm also driving people to store. Most places that we sell on the ground, we do sell direct to consumer as well. But the our business is actually only like 10% direct to consumer. Like we do 90% of our stuff at brick and mortar retail. And while I don't have any CTAs in these ads that specifically say go to store, we we probably will experiment with running some of those in the future because like certain GEOs we have like incredible concentration of brick and mortar locations and certain geos we they're a lot sparser. So where it's sparser typically I'm trying to run more of a order through our website ad and certain geos all I will run campaigns that focus more on its availability in store. But usually I'm only doing one or the other in ads. The thing is like driving people to store Much harder to tell how that's performing. And so like I am usually hesitant to run ads like that just because you, you don't actually know what the performance is. At least I haven't found a way to do that yet.
- [06:47]
C
Artur, what makes Adam and Cantrip like an ideal customer? What are they doing with the platform that you think is, is right on?
- [06:55]
A
Yeah, from a like general like view, what really differentiates Vive from any other player is our ability to hyper target. So we have buyers profiles basically we don't use third party data or anything like that, solely our own data that we build. And we have just like Meta like a buying history and that allows us to do some pretty strong recommendation based on all the campaigns that we have running. We now have like thousands of campaigns running in power. So it's really like being an ecom brand at the end of the day and recommending like the right product, that's what makes us very different, allows us to be hyper targeted. And that's what works really well for Cantrip as well. It's like making sure that we're targeting people who are buyers of those kind of products. And then there is a specificity for THC brands, of course thc, there is a reason why like Meta and Google don't want to advertise these kind of brands because it's a, it's more sensitive and it's what we call a sensitive category. And so by basically Vibe works directly with all broadcasters and like streaming apps and all this kind of thing. And very early on we could tell of course that there was a massive opportunity for us to let THC brands have advertise on tv. And so very early on we set up like specific deals with specific inventory with all those publishers, streaming apps and those campaigns to be able to run those kind of campaigns. And I mean Adam, that would be a horrible experience for you to go toward like every single streaming platform to negotiate like just being able to give them money basically. Whereas like we've done that work and that's why we've of course been successful in that sensitive category as well.
- [08:40]
C
And I like your approach. We were talking in the pre interview about our histories with DSPs and whenever this is way back in the day, but whenever I was working with like large amounts of inventory from a bunch of different sources, they were always asking me to spend. You got to spend across all these channels, you got to spend across all these platforms and then we're going to see what hits and we'll really drill on that. But by the time you've done that, you've lost most of your budget. It hasn't worked. So you guys have a different approach where you're sort of like hyper targeting. Adam, I'm interested from your perspective. You don't have to give away your whole targeting profile. But what, what kind of stuff are you like, how are you finding THC lovers on tv?
- [09:14]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, it definitely depends on what kind of, what kind of product profile you are. Right. Like you said you had wink on the podcast a few weeks ago. They're a slightly different position brand right there. A lot of the brands are pushing towards health and wellness, but cantrip win were mostly sodas, so we were pushing a little bit more towards like we have a really high quality flavor profile. People really love like the, the actual quality of our product more than just the effect of it. And so that kind of buckets for me really well into the craft beer audience. People who are more focused on something a little bit stronger that is really focused on a high level of quality that goes into the product. You know, I'm an engineer by background, so I do all our formulations too. I've been doing that for a long time. So people really, that resonates with a lot of people. The other thing is we also have a certain amount of data that exists on our audience via other tools that we have. So I can tell like who's the ideal demographic, what type of job do they have? And we can target actually over a surprising amount of that in Vibe. You know, it's funny as I just onboarded applovin as like because they just opened to the public and I went in. It's like targeting options for that is literally just geography. Like I can't even put age on there. And I had to email them be like, guys, you can't be serving my ads to 13 year olds. Like, let's make that very clear. And even if they got one, by the way, they can't buy it because we have age getting on the website. But the I don't want them seeing the ads because that's just a waste of inventory. Right. So the, you know, the targeting in Vibe goes down to like, you can target people who have like, what specific occupations, specific income ranges across multiple networks. And so we look for a lot of lookalike audiences. And then Vibe was, was kind enough to build a THC beverage audience for their THC consumers. And so that one pops in. But like the default for most is like I said that health and wellness channel we decide to target other channels because we're not as health and wellness oriented as other THC brands might be. And that allows us to have like a little bit clearer of a lane. And I mean there's even like Vapor. Vapors is like an audience there and then they have a lot of retargeting options because Vibe integrates directly with our Klaviyo. So we can also trigger certain events. We can put people who are on our email list who have seen a Vibe ad onto a specific list and then retarget them with tv like hey, about that THC drink you saw on tv, that type of thing. So there's, I mean, tremendous functionality above and beyond like a lot of other platforms I've seen. And like to be honest, I'm managing it right now, which means we're underutilizing it by a lot. Like we need to hire somebody who understands this stuff better. We're working on bringing a person in house. So, you know, for listeners out there who are interested in dtc, check out our job boards upcoming soon because we need someone who can really maximize this.
- [11:50]
C
And because there is like you could be spending a lot more. Like what? Like what are the. I think, you know, people talk about meta all the time because it's just this absolute workhorse platform that you can just scale, you know, to the moon. What, what does scale look like on ctv?
- [12:03]
A
Arser really depends on the, on the sizes. Would love to tell you that we can scale as much as meta working on it but basically we have like clients spending like millions a month without too much issue. It really depends on also the budget, of course, the geo you want to target because at the end of the day we're hyper targeted as well. So we try to avoid running super wide campaigns and we always recommend our clients to scale very progressively. CTV is new for everyone at the end of the day, even for us, but as for everyone. So figuring out the right strategy for your brand, there is no one playbook that works for everyone. Everybody has to experiment. That's why we always recommend to start with retargeting. Because as Adam said, like when people see you on tv, that creates a lot of trust about your brand and that also gives you retargeting. Will give you a lot of insights of like where are my conversions coming from? Are they coming from this or this specific channel, this specific audience geo, et cetera. And that allows you to build a larger targeting to scale your budget. And so you do that progressively. What we've seen is not client. I hate when client. That's going to sound so cliche, but I hate when clients come and say like, oh, we have a million dollar budget, you know what? Like, don't spend that million, like keep spending that on meta starts with 50, 100 grand. Let's like scale progressively and then we'll see because I mean, it's pretty like our business model is pretty straightforward. There is no commitment. So people stay if they're happy. So I'd rather have them find success rather than like just burn money. And for most of them, it's the first time they advertise on tv. So don't burn more money. Start progressively in scale, just like you would do actually, like with Meta.
- [13:49]
C
We're in this interesting time right now too where people aren't used to TV ads being as hyper targeted as the ads on the Internet are. So it's like while people aren't in that mindset yet, there is that opportunity to have a bit of arbitrage there where you could be doing more localized ads or things to drive and people would be kind of impressed by that because you say there is this TV is the prestige platform. It's the rectangle we look at when we want to relax. We have rectangles we look at at all other stages of our life. But it's the big rectangle, which we love. Why is tv? Why do you think TV so, so good, Adam?
- [14:22]
B
Well, like Arthur said, it builds that level of consumer trust. I mean, there is like a sense, right? Just like you said, there's like people don't necessarily expect targeting, so they just assume you're running some big national campaign. Right. That's going to change. I guess as time goes on. People understand that almost everything they do now is more targeted and things get more targeted and more AI involved. But there is like also you can do some stuff like if you're sitting on a couch watching a tv, you're not getting up off that couch or flicking away the way that you do on Meta. Right. Like Meta, I almost never run anything that's more than like 10 seconds long because people aren't usually going to stick around for that. Depending on the type of content, the CTV, it's really 15 or 30 seconds and I've actually found that our 30 second ads perform much better than our 15 second ads because there's a lot more opportunity to keep the brand on screen. There's a little bit of a disadvantage in like, you know, you're not clicking directly to it, but then again, you can throw up a QR code. There's some interesting tools they have we haven't really used yet that allow you to, like, take viral content and turn that into an ad. It almost looks sometimes a little bit like the, like, if you've ever seen ads at like a gym, like a lifetime or something, where you have like rotating stuff and they have QR codes, but there's like some functionality and some more like, cinematic element to it. I mean, so far, almost all of our ads I've generated with AI and a lot of effort into those AI ads, but we don't have the budget to like, produce like a $50,000 spot most days. So, like, there is, like, there's a different level of what you want to put on there. But I, you know, as I talked through with my account managers, they've also pointed out a lot of, like, UGC stuff can also be successful. So there's a lot of experimenting we still have to do in generating content. But it's got that gravitas that other things don't right now. And how long that'll last, I don't know. But the interesting thing, if I could ask a question I'm interested in, I'm confused in some extent because there's. Paramount has been targeting me on Meta to try to get me to advertise on their platform. I don't think they would allow me to, first of all, but even if I tried, how do you even justify going through a single network CTV platform when something like Vive exists and you have basically 250 networks that you can advertise through at the click of a button?
- [16:35]
A
Paramounts are great partners and, like, really appreciate it. I think it's just. It's just a different audience like Paramount has and should keep. That, by the way, has some capabilities that they'll never give us or anyone else, like, you know, targeting Yellowstone or specific shows, those kind of things. Now they have just announced, I think today that they can now sell guaranteed placement for five days on specific shows, which I think is great. But it's a very different approach to advertising. It's not like performance marketing. This is more like for branding larger advertisers. We're looking for like, you know, brand money, brand dollars, however they call that. It's just not made for performance like Paramount. When you want to do performance, think about, like, Meta. You want to have as much inventory as possible and as much like data, transactional data as possible. And Vibe, as today, has the largest footprint in terms of inventory, but same as some competitors. But what we have that they don't is like the largest transactional data set and that we provide to our clients to make recommendation in the right targeting and therefore delivering roi. But yeah, Paramount is just. Paramount Ads is just a very different. It's just a very different platform for a different use case. And yes, they would likely not allow.
- [17:57]
C
But as you said, you can show up alongside those programs and have the same prestige even though you're not buying the Yellowstone premiere or whatever.
- [18:06]
A
Right.
- [18:06]
C
People don't necessarily know.
- [18:07]
A
You don't. You don't need, like, who cares? Who cares? Like, you don't need to buy like, an ad during Yellowstone. Like, you'll pay huge premium for that if it's the right person, sure. But if it's not, like, doesn't really makes. Makes a lot of sense. That's the whole thesis. Like, Vibe buys identity first, whereas most of, like, the solutions that you'll find on CTV buy inventory first. And that's a big, like, that's a big difference in terms of philosophy and how you drive and how you drive performance.
- [18:38]
B
Right. Well, you would have to know that your audience really likes Yellowstone before you bought that ad. Right. It's more like traditional TV advertising where, like, you pick a program based on who you think your audience is, whereas you guys are buying audiences and then redirecting brands back into them. It's just sort of like an inverse. You know, there's also like the. So, like, the only other platform I know of that allows me to advertise THC directly is Twitter X. And we were one of the earliest people on there, which was greatly to our disadvantage because the early days, they basically said, you can advertise cannabis now, but all you can really say in the ad is learn more. And then they kept revising those policies and forcing us to start our ads over, which meant we lost all the algorithmic learnings. It was very expensive. And I got into some Twitter fights with the woman who was running that program. Anyway, the point being that, like, I've gone back to it since and like the infant, I'm sorry, but the inventory there is just garbage. Like, I could run, I could get a lot, like, really low cpm, but it's just not bringing back any customers. And like, the bounce rate is just insanely high. So it's like the ability. It's not just the ability to put the letters THC in your ad. It's also like, the quality of that inventory and who it's targeting.
- [19:51]
C
Adam, can you walk me through what, like, the path to pay dirt? Like, how Long. How much did you have to spend before you knew that this was going to be an incrementally valuable channel?
- [20:01]
B
That's a good question. I'm trying to think. I don't think we started with CTV until May or June this year and I'm pretty sure within like a few weeks we were seeing like 3 to 400% ROAS. Now it's not as high right now. Like I said, it definitely fluctuates. We need to cycle in. New creative is a big part of it. But I can see like it's basically performing about as well for us as Meta or better in some cases and like that. The Meta thing I have managed by a third party agency. So mostly stuff that I've made and put up myself in a, in a less than most professional format has led to some decent roas. Which is why I know that putting more spend in, you know, once I get more content, putting more spend in is going to work out for us. I mean another part is like look as a T as a small growing brand. I have to emphasize this because we also stopped running Meta ads for about four months on our earlier this year year because we moved agencies. We weren't really getting much out of it. I figured what's the point in running these ads if we're not running profitable? Like we're not putting contribution margin back. Right? But there is a point in running advertisements besides contribution margin. It's not just brand awareness but it's also like excitement and feeling like there's an effort going on from your team, your customers, your retailers, your even your distributors who, you know, retailers and tributaries complain about direct to consumer a lot. But they also do want that ecosystem to exist. In fact, most of them, when you speak directly and not to their trade lobbyists will say that they do want some amount of like meta advertising and whatnot because that's how people see ads now. Like running a print campaign or big out of home campaign doesn't do as much as like the billboard effect you get from running Meta ads. So when I started plowing, you know, 20k a month into Meta and another, you know, 10 to 15 into Vibe, my staff was more excited, my retailers more excited, my distributors are more excited because they're like, you guys are everywhere. When I open my app, I don't have the heart to tell them it's because they're already in the funnel because they talked about Cantrip out loud. But the point being that like they get that effect and it's not, it's not Just the gravitas. People see these advertisements, they're like, this brand is out there doing something and, oh, they're big enough to actually spend on doing something. So, like, vibe matters, if only for that reason. For us right now, the ROAS is nice, but we have a lot. We still have a lot of work to do. But I also know that, like, you know, I've talked to every hemp beverage brand. Is every other hemp beverage brand. I've talked to all of them. Most of us I've talked to are doing very well on ctv. So the. I don't know that any of them are doing badly because weed is pretty. Is a lot easier to sell when you can say there's. It's weed.
- [22:25]
C
Wait, did you just say. I don't want to sound paranoid, but did you just say my TV's listening to me?
- [22:29]
B
Yeah, I don't know if the TV is, but your phone sure as hell is. And then, like, your phone is going to tag you in a funnel that puts you right back in everything else. Like, everything leads, like, I don't know all the pathways, but everything leads to everything. You pass by a billboard that I serve you, I'm going to get an ID back. We're running a rideshare advertising campaign in Jersey City right now, and all of those IDs get fed back into a system that then gets served. Serves them programmatic advertising. So any exposure at all to a brand is going to put you in their funnel somewhere.
- [22:59]
C
Can we talk about creatives a little bit more? You mentioned using all. Are you talking. Sora, Are we using sort of.
- [23:05]
B
Well, so I have to use a huge mixture of things to make anything worthwhile. Like a lot of ads I've created and we use some of them on Meta. We use a lot of them in. In CTV exclusively. But a lot of it is actually vo. I do a lot of the initial generation. Usually the flow is something like SORA to create an image, and then that is either animated by midjourney or uses a frame into vo. Sometimes they do create things whole cloth via veo. I also animate a lot of our product photography using midjourney. And so, like, a mixture of all these things alongside a concept will help. Actually, the best performing creative we have right now is something that I think was most almost entirely created on vo, which is like an ad I made of a magician who goes to pull a rabbit out of his hat, but he accidentally pulls a possum out instead and the crowd boos. It's like, you know, there's an easier way to add magic to your life. Try Cantrip. And I guess people are noticing that like his goatee changes halfway through a shot when he goes to take a sip of the product. But that one's performing really well. There's other more obvious AI ones that people tend to hate if it's too obviously a. Which is why I almost always avoid dialogue in any of these. So, like, you just don't want to get the people to speak. Once the people speak, it completely ruins the. The effect for most people. But Sora's video. I saw the Sora 2 videos and frankly, none of them are as good as quality as VO3 is, even on their face, especially the audio. But the, you know, as these tools develop, like every time a new model comes out, it usually is the hot thing for about two and a half months. And then, you know, someone, someone else comes out with something.
- [24:42]
C
And again, we're in that little bit of awareness gap right now. Specifically where people aren't always aware that it's AI they don't have. Not as many people have the AI revulsion or the uncanny valley aspect that people might have eventually. Archer, what are you seeing from other brands in terms of creative that's working well?
- [25:00]
A
So what works well 100% of the time it's ads that talk about the product, show the product. I think a lot of marketers tend to forget about that. You can be super creative and spend half a million on a creative and that won't work. Whereas you can spend almost $0 or 100, 200 bucks with VO3 and have something that talks about your product, highlights free USPS and then has a clear call to action works. But yeah, it's the most simple and straight to the point. Creatives tend to work the best for like, especially if you're looking for performance. So that's always what we, what we recommend. One format I'm especially a fan of is testimonials. I mostly agree with you, Adam, on you don't want people to talk. But for everything testimonial, like, you know, kind of an interview format like VO3 tends to work really well because it's not a dialogue. Exactly what you said. Like when you have people going back and forth, like, it's horrible, but just people saying, I like, since I've been drinking Cantrip, like my life has been so much better. That works super well and performs a lot and you can do that very easily.
- [26:19]
B
There's definitely some rappers out there too that focus on just making that UGC testimonial content. Those tend to perform a little bit better because it's really when you try to get people having emotion in those, in those videos. I feel like I don't like Scorsese sitting on Seth. I just want to scream at these like non existent people to emote more or remote less as the case might be. But I'll have to try some more of those.
- [26:41]
A
That definitely is like very, very strong. And we've seen, we've seen that like performing more and more. Like that's something that we're seeing more and more from marketers and that just.
- [26:51]
C
Works Basically perfect storm of all this generated AI video with the ability to reach people on this prestige platform where you can create content that's great punches way above, you know, in terms of quality and the way it looks, production value that we ever would have been able to in human history. What's your hot take on AI generated ads in the next 12 to 8 months?
- [27:12]
A
Artur, 95% of the ads that you will see on TV will be AI generated. Basically creative generation is becoming a commodity. The next step will be scale, especially because DTC brands are fluting like right now into into ctv. And what's going to happen is that they'll generate like hyper personalized creatives for each and every single product. So let's say you're a fitness brand and you want to sell like you have like shoes, like tops, like leggings, those kind of things. You can create one creative for each and then for each and every single person. So like if you're selling to like working moms, if you're selling to like students, all those kind of things, people more interesting in outdoor activities, like more trekking than running, those kind of things, you'll be able to create like one ad for each and every single person, for each and every single product. So there's going to be a demultiplication of creatives, especially on the testing side because that's what like basically will allow you to figure out what works best and what does not. And that will end up being like all the ads that you see on TV will be AI generated. And that's coming in the next 12 to 18 months. 100%. 100%.
- [28:26]
C
And you guys have the same level of data that mailers have, like, like for like you have household level data, is that right with tv? And that's like. Can you just talk about that a little bit? Like what, what the data landscape looks like for tv?
- [28:40]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So one thing that is a Bit tricky compared to like when you're meta or when you are mobile. Like ad platform is that we're talking about households. There is an household and in that household there is lots of like devices. And so our graph is we, we tie back to identity and people can be connected in the same household. And so that's where you will basically connect people, connect their devices. So we know like that, like id, that vibe ID is that phone and that computer. And so in a household there are like several, several IDs. So that's how we create that and then we connect all the, all the data to them. But we also have as Adam highlighted before, revenue income information about the house, the household. We have like how many people are living in there are. Their kids will not show cantrip ads if there are kids in the household, for example. So all those kind of, all those kind of things as well.
- [29:41]
C
Eventually you could have household level ads in a way, right? Everyone's in there. Like, I think that's the vision with Sora, right? Is that we won't need TikTok, we'll just each have our own endless feed of things that we want to watch.
- [29:53]
A
I don't think that's, I don't think that's coming in the next 18 months is mostly because of like cost of production and like shortage of GPUs. But that's coming. That's like the ads that you'll see on TV but on the online as well will be like generated live based.
- [30:11]
B
On that and throw something in there. I mean, I think when it comes to like, there's a reason that it makes the most like, I think AI video. Like the most clear business use case for it is advertising. Like because it doesn't need to be like a work of emotional art. And there are definitely ads that have come out over the last 50 years that have been like works of emotional art. But the extreme volume of content that you need to cycle in and out of these platforms these days, even if AI didn't exist, I would be constantly paying people to make new crap because like your ads get stale after like 30 days. You can run a set of 10 creatives and after 30 days they're not performing anymore because they need to be refreshed and to do that and constantly be cycling new people. The other part is like UGC content, these video testimonials. I mean it's like the most kind of inane garbage you could possibly watch. Just to put it like, it's just the fact that somebody is saying to Camera. I like this product. Whether they've actually tried it or not. That makes it more likely to convert. And so why do you need a real person to be holding up that camera? They're not doing anything creative. Like, I think, I don't know if like Sora is going to fully replace TikTok because I think there's genuine, true creativity going on. TikTok that is going to be harder to replicate by AI. The same way I don't think all AI is going to take over script writing or cinema, although it's going to affect how things, these things are produced. But to create, like to come up with a story that I can tell about my product and then use vo and honestly, I've almost never been able to make something with just one AI. I usually have to use like five or six of them cobbled together because you don't want to like do everything anyway. The point being that like, to be able to create a constant cycle of it, like that is necessary. As Artur puts. When you get more hyper targeted, I can give you an example of exactly how hyper targeted it's going to get. We run an AI called Outer Signal, which sits on top of our Shopify. Outer Signal will tell us about every single customer that orders from us. Their age, their gender, their likely income range, how much their house costs, how many social media followers they have. Basically doing a total public records lookup on each customer and then we can retarget them with like, if they're a doctor, I can actually set Vibe to like target one specific ad for people that live in New Jersey that are doctors and like retarget the crap out of, you know, individuals that already come through our Shopify. So like the amount of bottom of funnel to middle of funnel stuff you can do, and then put that back in your top of funnel and say that's what my audience is, is just like if people can start to figure out how to automate all this stuff, it's going to get kind of crazy.
- [32:45]
C
So if you're listening, you probably got to get on Vibe co and start innovating. You said you're like your growth story has been kind of crazy. Ardor, can you just give me a little like in a nutshell, what the Vibe growth story has been like?
- [32:57]
A
Yeah, yeah, we've started so really operating. We've built the platform in 2022 and we launched it in January of 2023 and 2023 we did 16 million in revenue. Last year we did 46 million and we'll do a bit more than 100 million. We're currently at 140 million run rate. So. Yeah. And the reality is, I mean there is no trick in it. Like, you know, my clients, again, like they stay if they're getting results. So that's pretty much like 100 million results. Like, you know, like there is no commitment. No, like it's just people spending because they're getting roas from their ad campaigns. And we're super proud of that.
- [33:39]
C
I just did a podcast I was telling you guys with Stella. Hey, Stella. Hey. A media mix management Media mix modeling platform for clarity and performance marketing. And I asked him what the, what platform punches above its weight the most in terms of incrementality. And without hesitation he said streaming. He said the ctv. So it's like it's an idea whose time has come. And like we were talking about, there's a, there is even another halo effect that's happening right now as people don't realize how targeted these ads are, how you know, how much power you have with, with AI. So now is really the time for ctv.
- [34:13]
A
It feels like an mmm or incrementally is a great way of also assessing the exact performance that you are getting because there is direct performance, but then there is the impact that you are getting on your meta campaign, on your search campaign, on your influencer marketing campaign, on pretty much anything. And so yeah, like TV has that halo effect, as you said. And so incrementality allows for measuring the full value of tv. So for us it's the perfect timing because CTV and streaming TV is ready to be hyper targeted. We're enabling that. But there's also that new wave of incrementality measurement from DTC brands that actually shows that CTV and streaming TV drives like actual performance and actual return on ad spend. So for us it's the perfect momentum.
- [35:00]
C
And then Adam, what's your. Obviously it sounds like you want to hire someone. So first of all, shout out to anyone in the DTC audience, what are your main action items even following this for Q4 in the TV space?
- [35:12]
B
Yeah, I mean we got a lot of, like I said, content that we need to generate to get up and start running more top of funnel stuff as we get closer to Black Friday. The funny thing is, like I said, we're only a 10% direct to consumer company and we're pretty limited because we don't ship to every state. So New York and California and Colorado and Arizona, like for the biggest states in the country are off the table for us. And so we have to be a lot more specific about where we ship to and when we run. But our biggest things right now are get more ads up, really start dialing in that A B testing and making sure we're getting all the right audiences set up and that we're incorporating better flows into our email marketing. Like we have. We have a whole ton of work to do on email. This job role is going to be a lot of, like, all of, you know, somebody who's really good at a B testing sets across either email or Vibe, or also looking at our meta, just making sure that we're optimizing every aspect of that and then refreshing creative. Just constantly, constantly, constantly. There's probably going to be an entirely separate role that I make for like an AI content generator. I mean, that the role doesn't so much exist on its own today, which is why I mostly do it, which is I'm not like the graphic designer or creative on my team, but I don't. That doesn't neatly fit in any box yet. But we're gonna start to see a whole new role, I think, like ongoing in the next few years for people instead of graphic designer, it'll be AI Creator. Creator might not be the right title for that, but you get what I'm driving at. Like somebody who's really well versed in these tools and is keeping up with all the changes to maximize the utility because, like, for a thousand bucks a month in subscription fees across a couple different platforms, you can be constantly making that much content. We already have, like, certain AI services that are offering enterprise tools to do that, and so we're taking a look at some of those. But yeah, that's really what Q4 is going to be a lot for us. A lot of staging for next year. As we wrap up, we have a big launch product we're doing right now for a large format called Elixir, which is like a spirit but for thc, which we're going to get a lot of play on CTV once it hard launches this Friday and I'm really interested to see how these ads do. I'm having full new 3D renders done by First North Media out of Sweden. It's going to be. We're going to see a lot of interesting performance. I'm going to be on paternity for most of November, so this will be my team's problem.
- [37:23]
C
Oh, nice. Well, congratulations on that. That's super exciting. Artur, what do you recommend people do? The D2C audience wants to get involved. Just go to Vibe. Cool.
- [37:32]
B
Yeah.
- [37:32]
A
Go to Vibe, co book a call, say that you come from this podcast and you'll get 50% credit match on your first month spend. That's a risk free, sweet like offer for anyone to test anyone who's interested.
- [37:48]
C
That's a great deal.
- [37:48]
A
And one thing that Adam said, but we know CTV is new, so of course we're a self serve platform. But we put a lot of care and we invest a lot in making sure that you have the best possible account management with you. So you'll be guided. We'll tell you exactly what's the best strategy for your brand, how to get started. We'll give you best practices on the creative. We can look at the creative that you have, select them, tell you exactly what to edit. I mean the service that comes with it as well. We try to make it as great as possible.
- [38:21]
C
All right, well, thanks for coming on the podcast today, guys. This was really interesting. Adam. Well, I'll look forward to following your journey here and you'll have to come back on and tell us how all these cool renders do to.
- [38:30]
B
I'll have to tweet more about our CTV journey. I'll make sure to tag you guys. Artur?
- [38:34]
C
Yeah, I'll throw your handles in here. Are you on LinkedIn or Twitter there as well?
- [38:38]
A
Artur? Yes, absolutely. Arthur K will Q U E R O U as well.
- [38:41]
C
Nice. All right, thanks guys.
- [38:43]
A
Cheers.
- [38:50]
C
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now and @directtoconsumerall. One word co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.