← Next in Media
Next in Media
Stop Buying Video in Silos: A New Playbook for Brands
00:20:21
Tinuiti Chief Product Officer Sean Odlum, joins Mike Shields at Cannes to break down why YouTube requires its own media classification, how clean room technology is unlocking deterministic measurement across connected TVs, and what it takes to crack cross-platform attribution.
Loading summary
Transcript82 lines
- [00:01]
Sean Odlum
This is, you kind of got to treat it as its own thing and, you know, almost in the literal sense. I know we have like a, like most people do. We have our, our official taxonomy internally. And you know, I remember years ago, the debates, like, is, you know, what channel is this? Is it video? Is it streaming video? Ultimately we just said it's YouTube.
- [00:20]
Mike Shields
Let's talk about your video strategy for a second.
- [00:22]
Podcast Host
We all know the media landscape is incredibly fragmented right now, but one thing is absolutely certain. To win, you have to engage audiences on YouTube. It is the undisputed number one streaming platform and no video strategy is complete without it. But here's the challenge most brands face. YouTube often sits completely separated from the traditional television and streaming ad buys. That's why you need to check out Kaiden View Planner. Katon. View Planner allows you to connect YouTube directly to your CTV and linear campaigns because they are an official YouTube partner. They bring advanced contextual, creative and outcomes driven intelligence to your YouTube strategy and your total video strategy. Stop buying silos. Connect YouTube to CTD and linear with KDENT view planner and start driving real performance across every screen. Head over to kaden.com YouTube advertising to see how they can maximize your YouTube investments today. This week on Next to Media, as part of my ongoing series on the YouTube ad ecosystem with my partners at Kden View Planner, I chatted with Sean Odlem, chief product officer at Tenuity. We shot this one of the very cool PayPal Studios in Cannes. Thanks PayPal. Where Sean and I talked about how to look to build proprietary products aimed at helping brands find the right creators and better track their impact on roi. We also talked about short form versus long form, walled garden data challenges and what's on Sean's measurement wish list. Let's get started.
- [01:35]
Mike Shields
Hi everybody. Welcome to nexty Media. I'm Mike Shields, my guest. We are. This is part of my special series. We're live in Cannes with my partners at CA View Planner. I'm here with Sean Odam. He's a chief product officer at tanuity, the cool PayPal studio in Canneshone. Welcome. Thanks for being here.
- [01:49]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, thanks for having me.
- [01:51]
Mike Shields
So I think your title is interesting for what we think of it. You guys are performance agency, media agency. What does a chief product officer do? Tell us about your role. Yeah, sure.
- [02:01]
Sean Odlum
So formally I oversee our core product engineering. So software engineering and econometrics teams like that at tenui. That is really what constitutes product. You know, I think this is, is reflective of where, you know, businesses in our space, in our industry. Are now, right. You know, sort of the core legacy agency functions of, you know, buying media. Right. The actual activation piece build a lot of stuff. Mrs.
- [02:29]
Mike Shields
Early.
- [02:30]
Sean Odlum
Right, exactly. You know, and those are important and necessary functions, you know, but you know, the activation, the reporting, right. You know, reporting out of audience, things like this, these are kind of the base of the pyramid, right. That is sort of taken for granted. That is table stakes now. And what we and certainly others in our space really are doing and have been thinking about and are building toward is like embodying ways of doing things. Right. Sort of smart applications of approaches to certain problems in systems and technology just to put like a very broad framework around it. So yes, as chief product officer, that is really my role across everything that we do in video and audio. So search and shopping, Social commerce is to build the tools for, you know, things like measurement, things like optimization, things like audience insights, intelligence that allow us to be essentially smarter stewards of our clients dollars.
- [03:23]
Podcast Host
Well, speaking of that, this is all
- [03:25]
Mike Shields
part of my special ongoing series about the YouTube ecosystem which touches on TV and commerce and video, of course. How do you guys approach YouTube? I know that's, that's a broad question, but you know, I think a lot of eight season brands are struggling with it. Is it extension of my television? Is it a commerce opportunity? Is it something, is it a social video thing? Is it something in between? How do you guys look at it?
- [03:46]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, I think, you know, this is, you kind of got to treat it as its own thing and you know, almost in a literal sense. I know we have like a, like most people do, we have our, our official taxonomy internally. And you know, I remember years ago, the debates like is, you know, what channel is this? Is it video? Is it streaming video? Ult. Ultimately we just said it's YouTube, right?
- [04:09]
Mike Shields
It's big enough, it gets to be its own thing.
- [04:11]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, it's big enough. And it really is kind of sui generis, right. It's a streaming video platform. It's also kind of a commerce platform. It's a social platform. Right. It is hard to categorize because it is so protean. But you know, we look at that as really a good thing, right. Because it can serve many functions. It can serve like the real kind of hardcore performance functions. It can serve reach, you know, reach functions. It can serve reaching niche audiences. Right? So it's like kind of this Swiss army knife that it can be many tools depending on the situation and the application.
- [04:43]
Mike Shields
Does that mean probably, probably the one tool the agency can't really Own it. Like everyone, everyone ends up interacting. I would think.
- [04:49]
Sean Odlum
I would think so, yeah. Yeah.
- [04:52]
Mike Shields
Okay, so tell me about. You have something called the YouTube Intelligence Suite. What is that all about? What are you trying to solve there?
- [04:57]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, sure. I mean this really relates to the last point, right? That you know, YouTube is so many things. I wouldn't say that there is a playbook for YouTube that you would give to, you know, a large CP, a large automotive, a D to C startup, right? Like it really, really have to tailor it to, to those points, you know, coming at it from the product perspective, which is, you know, where it's my job, I would say it's really two things. Right. So our bliss point, intelligence week for YouTube, part of it is about planning. It is YouTube planning. And you know, I think of this in the cold start sense, right? That's a tiny bit of jargon from the ML world. But it's, you know, when you're just starting out, right, like that like sheet
- [05:37]
Mike Shields
of paper kind of.
- [05:37]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, yeah, the blank sheet of paper. And like you theoretical, you know, advertising space is so large, so many. Yeah. There's so many creators, so many channels, so many audience. It's just like this vast, you know, kind of bubbling ocean. Like where do you start? How do you begin? Intelligently, right. You know, you don't want to just brute force it. Let's like spray dollars kind of everywhere and then eventually we'll learn. You want to start out in an intelligent space and then learn iteratively. Right. So a big part of it is these planning tools. So taking what we know about our brands and especially taking their first party data, right? Really what they know about their customers, fusing that with YouTube platform data so that we can really make tailored recommendations to. Again, it could be a large cpg, a D to C startup. This is how you ought to get started on YouTube, right? This is like the running start. And then two is certainly optimization, right? Like measurement and optimization. Because optimization is really predicated on being able to measure. Well, this is, you know, candidly a really difficult problem on YouTube. A lot of brands, a lot of agencies have really struggled with this for a whole bunch of reasons. One, you know, we're going to keep coming back to this theme. I'm sure. It is so many different things, right? Yes, it is tv, it's a streaming platform, it's a commerce platform, it's all these.
- [06:56]
Mike Shields
There's so many different use cases for consumers, so many different mindsets that you're trying to. It's. Right.
- [07:01]
Sean Odlum
And in particular Though, you know, in the last few years, you know, I would say this has largely been a big success story for YouTube. But so much of the consumption has migrated to the connected tv. Right. To the biggest screen in the living room. So, you know, you're not getting that, you know, kind of lean forward on the phone, you're not getting a lot of click through data. Right. Is a lot of view through.
- [07:21]
Mike Shields
Yeah. It's sort of a double edged sword. Right. You lose a lot of that interactivity.
- [07:24]
Sean Odlum
Right, Right. So the second half of the YouTube intelligence platform that we have built is, is about bringing best in industry measurement to all of those use cases. And again, this is really rooted in brands first party data. I can elaborate on this, we can get deeper into this, but it is about, you know, developing the best possible solutions to measurement so that given a smart cold start, we can then get into this optimization feedback loop.
- [07:53]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [07:54]
Mike Shields
On that note, with the, you talked about the, how many. Just the YouTube talks about how many productive creators there are. It's in the millions. That's not an easy ocean to boil to begin with. And you're taught by nature, it seems a little, a little bit harder to apply data intelligence to.
- [08:09]
Sean Odlum
Yeah.
- [08:10]
Mike Shields
How do you, is there a way to kind of, can you streamline that process and make. Bring a little science to it by also. But also recognizing that it's so vast and ever changing?
- [08:20]
Sean Odlum
Yeah. You know, we try to remind ourselves that, you know, our power, even with the best data and algorithms, our powers of prediction are kind of inherently somewhat limited. Right. You know, they're never going to be perfect. So ultimately you do need to generate data and learn from data. But certainly like the planning tool that I referred to earlier, like YouTube Select. Right. Which is a pretty good way to get your brand and your content aligned with this, you know, top, you know, pretty thin slice of creators. Those are good ways to start. But you know, I think we have seen for all the major platforms over the years, certainly from YouTube, you know, think about, you know, Facebook and Instagram, like all the, the major scale platforms like that, they've gotten very, very, very good at the like sifting of this massive amounts of data. Right. On the content side, on the consumption side, on the interaction side.
- [09:09]
Mike Shields
Yeah. They kind of left it to others in the beginning and then, and then how they really take an active role.
- [09:13]
Sean Odlum
Yeah. So you know, they've generally gotten pretty good at threading that needle, I would say. Yeah.
- [09:17]
Mike Shields
All right. So you can, you can find, you can find the right folks and figure out where your Brand maybe wants to activate outcomes on YouTube. Again, you were talking about such a vast array of tactics and ways of working with them. But is it, you say it might not be. I wonder, is it easy to easier in some ways because there is a low level of interactivity. But then as you mentioned, it's increasingly on the big screen where you're always on your phone, which is more television. Like, like what is that? What does that landscape look like right now?
- [09:48]
Sean Odlum
A couple of things. So you know, when you're running a genuine performance campaign. Right. You know, and I would, I would argue that, you know, all media is performance media just depends on what performance. But you know, in the vernacular sense of performance, right. We're trying to measure some sort of a KPI. We have staked out the position that we really want to root everything that we are doing in ground truth CRM data on the client side. In order to do that, we are taking advantage of YouTube's tool as data hub. Right. So this is YouTube's clean room technology. It is not the most turnkey solution in the world, I will be the first to admit. But we spend, you know, a good 18 months now, maybe close to two years co building infrastructure with YouTube to make this feasible for brands to do the kind of measurement that they want to see.
- [10:40]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [10:41]
Sean Odlum
The measurement that they just get every day from, you know, running their performance campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. Right. Or running their search campaigns on Google. Right. That is what a large class of advertisers are really craving for YouTube and just haven't been able to figure out themselves or the last few years, you know, and what a lot of them have kind of defaulted into is demand gen campaigns. Right. Which are great.
- [11:06]
Mike Shields
Yeah, that's a big thing YouTube has been pushing.
- [11:08]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, for sure. And you know, they're fantastic. Nothing wrong with demand gen campaigns. They do skew very heavily mobile. Right. I mean, cause of the lean forward interaction, clickability, that's a mixture of measurability. So it is a little bit of the problem. And you know, you see this, you know, once you start to look for it as a marker, you see it everywhere. The looking for your keys under the lamp light problem. Right. It's like, well, okay, we can measure here, so let's, let's do more of this. But as we said before, so much of the consumption, and especially like the deeply engaged consumption is going to this ETV and you don't want to wall yourself away or you don't want to wall yourself off from that, right.
- [11:45]
Mike Shields
That's a, that's a great audience, big opportunity theory, right?
- [11:48]
Sean Odlum
Yeah.
- [11:48]
Mike Shields
For different behaviors.
- [11:49]
Sean Odlum
Exactly. So what we're aiming to do with our product is bring that high quality measurement that brands have been accustomed demand gen campaigns to every YouTube surface. Right. So you're running an, you know, an awareness campaign, a brand campaign, a reach campaign. It is you know, consumed heavily on connected TVs. Let's bring the same kind of high quality, high precision measurement to that kind of viewing experience as you get with the more mobile heavy experience.
- [12:18]
Mike Shields
That sounds like you're doing like you're almost applying the rent demand gen principles to the rest of YouTube.
- [12:24]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, in a sense. Yeah. I wouldn't say it is identical to demand gen. Right. So you know demand gen is typically. Yeah, it's a specific product and it's going to use Google's dda. Right. Data driven attribution. So it's their own proprietary multi touch model. What we are bringing to YouTube though is deterministic measurement based on really the strongest signal that there is on the Internet today in terms of identity which is the hashed email. Right. And so we can see see on both sides or I shouldn't say see in a literal sense in a clean
- [12:55]
Mike Shields
room, not seeing it.
- [12:56]
Sean Odlum
Right, right, right. Should be careful about that, you know but the association between exposures and conversions, some, some sort of an outcome. However advertiser defines it based on this very high quality, durable signal of identity. Again this has been something that really has not been turned key over the last several years on why we invested a couple of years developing the infrastructure to make it just simple. Just, just say go essentially for a brand, a client of ours, an advertiser to say you don't want to sacrifice,
- [13:30]
Mike Shields
you don't have to have the trade offs and to give up what you're.
- [13:32]
Sean Odlum
Exactly.
- [13:33]
Podcast Host
Stuff.
- [13:33]
Sean Odlum
Exactly.
- [13:33]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [13:34]
Mike Shields
Interesting. So sort of related. I wonder if you may be thinking because of the nature of YouTube's viewership. I'm sure they would like to. They would like to be in the same conversations as TikTok shop. They've gotten so much attention the last couple years.
- [13:47]
Sean Odlum
Yeah.
- [13:48]
Mike Shields
Are Ken, do you still. Do you see the same kind of product pushing. There's tons of products discussion on YouTube for sure. Yeah. Is that, is there. Can they. They have the same kind of potential for shopping or is it is just gonna be inherently different?
- [14:01]
Sean Odlum
No, I mean I think the potential is there for sure. You know YouTube and TikTok are different platforms. Their audiences are. Are they overlap but they're somewhat different. Different nature. Yeah. The engagement model of users is a little bit different. Right. So I don't think it is necessarily sort of fighting over fixed pie necessarily or like a winner take all kind of the situation. I look at YouTube just given the nature of the platform, the content, the audience, the consumption as being more suited to that really highly considered kind of a purchase. Right. You're going to buy a car, you want like a new or not Apple Center.
- [14:42]
Mike Shields
It's not the spot spontaneity purchase.
- [14:44]
Sean Odlum
It's doing research. Yeah. It's not necessarily the impulse. Like I saw this, you know, you know, 20 second video, like a YouTube short or you know, TikTok video or something like this and you know, whether it's cosmetics or something like that, where you're like, oh, I, I see that, I want to have that or I need to have that. Right. Which is very much a thing like that is a category, you know, you want to. Yeah. That you, that you want to cater to for sure. You know, but the more highly considered purchase, right. That is where the special like their YouTube rabbit holes and the proficiency of the platform in serving niche audiences and serving them very deeply. Right. You know, people who are interested in health and wellness, people who are interested in fixing old cars, people who are, I mean, just can come up with a million examples here. Right. But you can really build your own content ecosystem, especially around like these trusted experts in those areas. Right. You know, I have many examples of this from my own life. You probably do as well, right. Where you know, you don't even necessarily think of them as influencers, but it's just like somebody, you guys, a guy
- [15:48]
Mike Shields
I follow, that helps me get into what. Get into what I'm into.
- [15:51]
Sean Odlum
Right, exactly. So I think that's where the big opportunity is for YouTube eCommerce, especially when you pair that with just the breadth of the network and the capability of their AI systems for things like automated product tagging and things like that. Yeah.
- [16:06]
Mike Shields
What about, you know, we kind of hinted at this. Do you generally you and your brands, do you view short form either? YouTube shorts, TikTok reels, is it as, as valuable as, as TV? Is it just a kind of different.
- [16:22]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [16:23]
Mike Shields
Attention span kind of media that you use for different tactics. How do you view different. I guess is video all video?
- [16:29]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, that's a good question. I, you know, I would say they're not completely interchangeable. Yeah, like, you know, I would say on some level, videos, video. I do think of short form as more of like your upper funnel, you know, kind of awareness building. Kind of, kind of content. Right. That is where you're going to get the person who hasn't necessarily gone down that rabbit hole yet on, you know, fixing up old cars or something like that.
- [16:54]
Mike Shields
Right. They're entertaining themselves or.
- [16:55]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, yeah. So you know, like it is a way to do some kind of low commitment sampling in a way. Right, right. And then you know, people will see that product or see that creator or see that idea that they then want to go deeper on. Again. I'm sure we could both tell stories here of like I watched this one video one time and then all of a sudden like you know, 100 videos later, this is like a major interest of mine. Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think they play different roles. Right. Again, this is back to that, you know, kind of top of funnel and then bottom of funnel. Like you know, YouTube people are watching three hour videos on YouTube.
- [17:32]
Mike Shields
Yeah, right.
- [17:33]
Sean Odlum
You know, especially like your long podcasts and that is where people have some of the most like the most intimate relationships with creators is in the podcast form. Tell me about it. Long form content, highly trusted experts in their fields, whatever it might be. So, so that, that is definitely a different kind of a viewer experience, user experience than your TikTok videos and your YouTube shorts.
- [17:59]
Mike Shields
I guess. Lastly, if you're a product guy, if you have a wish list from either,
- [18:04]
Podcast Host
what are you, what would you, what
- [18:05]
Mike Shields
are you missing from this space? You know, everyone wants different measuring tools. What's out there that you would love to see?
- [18:10]
Sean Odlum
Yeah, I mean I got to go with something in the measurement space. You know what I would love to crack, you know, before I call it a day, you know, is sort of the inter walled garden operability. Right. You know, so for example, I know the dream dashboard.
- [18:29]
Mike Shields
Yeah.
- [18:29]
Sean Odlum
I mean, you know, I know from introspection again, like I, you know, I can, I can project outward and you know, we all know that this happens, right? That you know you saw something on YouTube and you went and bought it on Amazon. Right. Wouldn't it be nice to know how frequently that is happening? And you know what the return on that kind of investment is. Right. Because you know, you can certainly just imagine if you are looking at YouTube as sort of a closed ecosystem. Right. I'm going to run ads, organic content on YouTube and then I'm going to get some sort of a click through purchase, which that just doesn't happen very much.
- [19:02]
Mike Shields
Yeah.
- [19:02]
Sean Odlum
Or best case like D2C, you could, you could do that math and so you do it perfectly and you say this doesn't pencil out. This doesn't meet our threshold. Right. It very well may be the case. This is again, this is the keys under the lamplight problem that you're driving a ton of business through your Amazon store. But ads, Data Hub and Amazon Marketing Cloud don't speak to one another. Right. There are, you know, I certainly understand, you know, the imperatives and the incentives of the walled gardens and the privacy imperatives as well. Right. You know, there are, you know, multi party compute ways that this could be done in a perfectly practical manner.
- [19:42]
Mike Shields
We're a place where that is not impossible.
- [19:44]
Sean Odlum
Right. Yeah. So, you know, technically it is not impossible by any means. It is just a question of do the players want to come together and make it happen.
- [19:52]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [19:52]
Mike Shields
Yeah. Well, maybe, maybe from this podcast that'll they'll get a conversation going, the Wall Gardens will come together.
- [19:58]
Sean Odlum
Oh, maybe by the end of this week we'll have persuaded enough people.
- [20:02]
Mike Shields
What a great candidate to be. Awesome conversation. Charlotte, thanks so much for your time here. Yeah, my pleasure.
- [20:07]
Sean Odlum
Thanks for having me.
- [20:08]
Podcast Host
Thanks again to my guest this week, Tenuity Sean Odlum and my partners at Caden View Planner. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next time for more on what's next in media. Thanks for listening.