← The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
The Dave Gerhardt Show (from Exit Five)
Why B2B Marketers Should Be Running CTV Ads with Amit Sharan (SVP Marketing at Tatari)
00:44:51
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- [00:00]
Dave Gehard
Hey, it's me, Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by webflow. Webflow is a website platform for the agentic web, built for modern marketing teams to build fully custom sites that perform an AI search. No developer needed. Your website isn't just your homepage anymore. It's actually the first thing an AI agent is going to read about your company and from there decide whether or not to recommend you to a potential customer. Before a demo, before a sales call, before anyone on your team even knows that buyer exists. Which means if your site isn't structured to show up in AI search, you're not in the buying conversation. It's as simple as that. Webflow is the platform marketing teams use to fix that. You can build a fully custom site without a developer, optimize it for AI search, govern your content, and actually see how agents are reading and interpreting it all in one place. Make your website your biggest growth engine right now with Webflow. Check them out@webflow.com Exit 5. That's webflow.com for Exit 5. Hey, it's me, Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Markup AI. AI has made it really easy to produce a lot of content. But producing content fast and producing content that's publish ready are not the same thing. By publish ready, I mean it follows your brand guidelines. It sounds like you, and it's a good fit for your audience. I'm seeing a lot of marketers right now running their content through a bunch of different AI tools trying to get
- [01:20]
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You're listening to the Dave Gehard Show.
- [02:10]
Amit Sharan
Exit.
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Exit 5 Team Member
Exit.
- [02:17]
Dave Gehard
12212. All right, check this out. You can run TV ads for 50 bucks a day. Most B2B marketers have no idea that's even possible. You hear TV and you think super bowl and I can't possibly afford that or go and do it. Look, my guest is this episode is Amit Sharan. He's SVP of marketing at Tatari. They're an ad tech platform that lets you buy and measure TV the same way you buy Google and LinkedIn. Before this, he was the first marketing hired for startups including Live Rail, which sold to Facebook for 450 million. We get into everything you need to know about CTV heading into 2026. Why programmatic ad buying only touches about 15% of TV inventory. The move he says every B2B marketer should be running right now with TV. How and why to retarget your website, visitors on connected TV and the halo effect that lifts every other channel after your first campaign. He left me with a bunch of notes and making me feel like, man, we need to be running TV ads for Exit 5. So if you're tired of dumping more budget into AdWords and looking for new channels right now, this one's for you. Enjoy my conversation with Amit. Okay, so you've been first marketing hire at four startups including Live Rail, which sold to Facebook aka Meta for 450 million. Now you're at Tatari. You're kind of this like early stage marketing guy and you grow things but Tatari has been a good, a good little run for you. Can you just replay that? Let's, let's use that to set the stage of like you literally said, I'm not going to talk about Tatari. I need you to because it sets the stage for this. So you're SVP of marketing there. TV advertising platform for brands and agencies. When did you get there? Like just tell me about your run at Tatari and like what you've been doing and just to set the stage for our conversation.
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Amit Sharan
Yeah. So been in ad tech now for probably 10 plus years. I was at a early stage company called Live Rail. It was basically a video SSP to use some industry jargon to break down. What that means is when you go watch a video online, you press play, you see that pre roll ad or that mid roll ad. We were early in that game and 25% of like all online video flew through our platform. Meta at the time known as Facebook was, they called it preparing for winter. They said winter's coming and that meant that the.
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Dave Gehard
What year was this?
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Amit Sharan
This was 2014. So the inventory and news feed was running out. They were literally running out of inventory. They needed to create new services, they needed to be able to get their ads, be able to deliver their ads off of Facebook proper. And so they acquired Live Rail and we could spend a whole episode talking about what it's like to sell a company to Facebook. Got some juicy fun stories. But what that also morphed into is the Facebook audience network. So I also ran marketing for that billion dollar business unit.
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Dave Gehard
How long did you stick around after that deal?
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Amit Sharan
About four and a half years.
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Dave Gehard
Okay, wow. So you were a Facebook employee technically for four plus years.
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Amit Sharan
Yeah. And so I did that. I ran marketing in the ad tech part for Lyle and Audience Network for about half that time. And they were essentially trying to build DoubleClick. Right. Everything that Google acquired and put together into what, you know, what was what's known as their ad suite today. And, you know, kind of again, to maybe share some of the juicy bits of what happens after an acquisition. I think that would actually be a good podcast theme for you if, like all the people have had exits. Go talk about what happens after the exit.
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Dave Gehard
Yeah, I mean, my brain. So I don't always say these things out loud, but my brain instantly went to, I wonder how much money he made in that deal. Like, that's, that's only because I finally had. I had two companies get acquired in the same year while I was. So I had left one and I was at the other, and both of them in 2021 had liquidity events happen. And I thought I was the richest man in America. You know, I'm not, but it was like the most amazing thing to see money come into your bank account. And, you know, I spent 15 years before that talking to everybody. You just don't actually know. I don't know if you know Sam Parr, he runs Hampton, it's a, like, founder community. He has a podcast, which I think is a great idea called Money Wise, where you just bring on people who are like, willing to. Willing to talk about things financially. Because, man, there's so much that I learned through that process. I, you know, got screwed on this tax thing and I should have done this thing, and this thing didn't happen. And it's like, you only know what you know now. So. Yes, absolutely. That, that would be a great podcast. I mean, that should be a thing in our CMO council. It's like, you know, we had somebody a couple of months ago, I was like, yeah, I've been in my job for four and a half years. Like, I'm fully vested I think the company going to sell, but I kind of want to leave. You know, like stuff like that is just. That's the real stuff beyond the like is CTV a good channel? You know, so yeah, there's a lot there for sure. But we'll do that another time.
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Amit Sharan
Separate.
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Dave Gehard
That's a after hours podcast.
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Amit Sharan
So the back half of that time spent there was actually moving over to product marketing Org and what they call global business marketing. And I got to join a team that was called Media Monetization. It was a newly formed team and I was just like, hey, we need to create all these new ad services and we need a team that can bring this stuff to market. And so there would be consumer services that would be launched which stuff like Facebook Live if you remember that or Facebook Watch or Instagram tv. And then there was stuff with.
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Dave Gehard
I would do. I was so into the. All those social channels because my. One of my first jobs and right around this time like the 20. 2010-2014, I was working in PR at this company, Constant Contact or email Email provider. And they had made a bunch of. They were trying to like expand beyond email into social. And my job was the PR was a PR guy, had a full head of hair fresh out of college. I was the PR guy on their social media products. And so my job was to read TechCrunch every day. And this was like, you know, Buddy Media Wildfire. Like all these. There's so much social news feed. You know, Facebook used to have to have to like likes the Facebook page, like get access to the feed. And that was like my whole life for the longest time. And then I worked at HubSpot and HubSpot was very like trying just trying to do new stuff and remember like Meerkat, you know, it's like vine and Meerkat and like all these random little social apps would come out on product hunt and people would use. And that was, that was the time, man. Now, now you're just in Claude all day and there's nothing exciting.
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Amit Sharan
I lose a lot of hours to Claude.
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Dave Gehard
Yeah.
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Amit Sharan
So I got to work on some cool stuff and again marketing to marketers, you know, I'd have to. And this get kind of getting back to how I landed at Tatari. I would have to show up at what we call executive briefing center or partner center meetings. And it was kind of a dog and pony show thing where you bring in the largest Facebook advertisers and you'd share the roadmap of like here's all the cool things we're building and I'd get to go in there and talk about all these new services that are coming and how we're going to. And how there's going to be new ad formats against them. And as I started to kind of think about what's next for me personally, I was like, you know, I kind of want to get back to building. And if there's, you know, if there's a time and a place to go build a company and sell it again, it's definitely in the Bay Area. And so when I came across Atari, I talked to our founder, Philippe, and I said to him, hey, I've been spending the last four years kind of spreading the propaganda that TVs dead and mobile is king. I literally wrote the global pitch deck for Facebook and tv. And I was like, tell me why brands are coming to tv. And he kind of listed off everything I was hearing in those partner center meetings without knowing it. And it kind of goes back to like newsfeed slowing and people hitting the same audience over and over and just kind of hitting a general plateau on, on social and needing to find a new channel at scale. And the more I poked at the roadmap with Tatari and the vision, I was like, you got something here.
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Dave Gehard
Hold on. Didn't you tell me, I feel like you told me that the founder was the guy who created Shazam. Is that true?
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Amit Sharan
Yeah, that's true. That's a fun fact.
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Dave Gehard
Is that Philippe, is what you say?
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Amit Sharan
Yeah.
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Dave Gehard
So you, how did you meet this guy?
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Amit Sharan
Believe it or not, this was, I feel like this was like a. I don't know if you remember the website. I don't know if it's still around. I think it's angel list. Like it was more.
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Dave Gehard
Yeah. What do you mean? Of course I'm a big investor, man. I got, I got $5,000 in a bunch of different companies. My guy, don't you worry, early stage start.
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Amit Sharan
I mean like the website had had
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Dave Gehard
a dude angel list. Like if you were looking for like a real good job in, in like tech, in SaaS and marketing, you'd go find Angelus. Because Angelus was all of like the kind of venture backed companies, the YC type of companies. So you're saying you did, you. That's how you found you were just browsing angel list for jobs? Yeah, you got to be like, that's where the, like if you're the tech, the tech forward founder who's looking for a marketing person, you post that thing on angel list for sure.
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Amit Sharan
Yeah. And they Weren't looking for someone of my seniority at the time. I reached out, I just said, hey, I'd love to talk to you. I've been at Facebook, I've been in online video and ad tech. And, and we eventually we saw this would be a good fit. And he likes to say that he probably hired me a little too early in terms of, you know, bringing on a senior marketer, but I think it was the right move.
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Dave Gehard
And.
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Okay, so that was. What year was that?
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Amit Sharan
That was 2018. We were about, I think I was employee number 28 when I joined. We're currently around a little over 300 people. Profitable.
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Dave Gehard
Can you give me a revenue taste?
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Amit Sharan
I can't just because we're a private company. I do think I put Philippe on TVPN and he said, you know, we're well over 100 million in net. I think there's a lot of founders out there like to talk about gross, which is a much bigger 100 million net. Flex, which is a much bigger number on the gross side. But look, to give people an example of just kind of the, the scale of stuff that we're doing, because there's, I think there's a lot of companies out there that are, you know, they'll take your 500 bucks and they, they'll run a TV campaign for you. We put four brands on the super bowl in February of this year, right? So like, we definitely have a bigger spectrum of the types of clients that we work with. And this is kind of where it gets into B2B marketing, right? We've got your kind of SMB, we got your mid market, we got your enterprise.
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Dave Gehard
So can someone give you 500 bucks? It's like if you have a big budget or are you focused on those like four brands that are going to do super bowl ads?
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Amit Sharan
No, like I said, we've got brands across the spectrum, but to just point blank answer is no, like we're not going to take your 500 bucks because you're not going to learn. You're not going to learn from that.
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Dave Gehard
Okay, sorry. This is my podcast, which means I get to ask any questions that come across my desk. So over 100 million in profit of some kind of. That's what that means. That's the net. So you do your math on that. That's a good one. You said, I put Philippe on tbpn. How did you get him on tvpn?
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Amit Sharan
That actually just ended up being. Yeah, I tried the PR channels, I tried personal outreach and it just ended up having to be like you know, someone who knows someone.
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Dave Gehard
Did you try to like reach out to John and Jordy directly or producer Ben or. He tried everybody.
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Amit Sharan
Yeah, yeah. Tried it that way and then it just happened to be someone at the company knew someone again, I think it was their, their dad knew someone there and.
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Dave Gehard
Okay. And do.
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Did.
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Was there any marketing spike from being on TVPN or is it more of a who's who influencer crowd? You know, Silicon Valley crowd?
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Amit Sharan
Yeah, no, I can't say leads started flowing in from that. But look, I think of marketing as three buckets where one is the typical demand gen that everyone kind of thinks of when they think of marketing. I think of product marketing, product marketing team reports into me. But then there's a corporate marketing bucket and I think it's part of your job as CMO head of marketing to also build the valuation of a company and stuff like that. Tvpn, I'm leaving for Cannes tomorrow. That's a huge industry tentpole. But you know, yes, there's CMOs walking around, yes, there's a little bit of demand gen component, but part of that is definitely industry leading kind of company valuation.
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Dave Gehard
But don't you think this, those things anyway, don't those end up helping in the demand gen side any? Like if I've always had this argument, it's like if more people know who you are and you're just out there, more like you're going to. Your baseline of inbound is going to be higher.
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Amit Sharan
Well, I mean this, I have this conversation about TV all the time, right. If I said you could save 15% on your car insurance, you already know what brand I'm talking about and you're not in market for car insurance right now.
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Dave Gehard
My son is home today, he's six. He would know that. He would tell you that Geico, he would know the lizard, you know, So
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Amit Sharan
I mean this is kind of getting into the brand and performance type of conversation. But absolutely. I mean part of corporate marketing is building your brand.
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Dave Gehard
Yeah, but on the brand we'll, we'll. I have some other stuff I want to come back to, but just because we're talking about right now on the brand and performance thing though, people that are listening to this, they often like to, you know, they like to bucket thing. Okay, well Ahmed, tell me how much of my budget should be spent here or there or time there. Is there something you think about is like when brand things happen, you go and do them. Like the demand gen stuff is like we have a budget, we need this much traffic we this many leads, we need this much conversion rate. Some of the other stuff is harder to account for. How do you plan for that? How do you make sure you're doing it?
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Amit Sharan
Yeah. So, number one, you should be doing all of it. Right. It's not an either or. And I think where it gets into the it depends territory. Right. Is absolutely your budget, it's absolutely your goals. It's your stage of company. But I don't think it's ever too early to be building your brand, and you don't have to be spending a ton to do that. I like to think about it in terms of my own personal marketing for Tatari and B2B marketing as sometimes just even air cover for sales outreach. You want people to have heard of you when someone's reaching out or when they see you and they're comparing you against a competitive set. The other thing that kind of falls in this territory that we're talking about is I've heard some of our clients say, hey, our ad ran during that college football game, and my CEOs, my CEOs phone lit up from investors, from friends, from their just general network, and that we want to do that again solely for that reason. The other 99% of their campaign, they're absolutely looking at cost per acquisition. Right. But there are some things that are just good for building brand reputation.
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Dave Gehard
And how do you.
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How do you measure those things? How do you know? How can you tell Philippe that the reputation is improving?
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Amit Sharan
I mean, look, there's your classic share voice metrics. There's brand sentiment. There's stuff I think most of the listeners here know about how to measure your brand.
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Dave Gehard
Are you doing all those things now? Those are just part of your marketing machine?
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Amit Sharan
Yeah, I definitely look at, like, share a voice a little bit more. I think there's a lot, especially in this space where people are, yeah, it's a shiny new object, ctv. Everyone's talking about it. There's like a lot of analysts that kind of go around and we get kind of. We get results of some of these reports where people are talking about what companies are top of the list. I would say that the interesting part that's happening in my world as it relates to just brand awareness is that. And I think a lot of people can relate to this is that all of a sudden, everyone has flooded the market with a CTV solution. And so it used to be, at least when, you know, I first joined Atari, there was one of three companies you would think about working with if you were going to do TV Advertising. Now it seems like everyone, whether you're a direct mail company, a mobile dsp, everyone says they can get you on ctv. And so there's like a lot of nuance to that statement. I mean, you can get sushi at a gas station, right? It doesn't mean you should do it. I find myself having to actually educate people on TV in my marketing before I ever talk about a feature or a benefit of working with Tatari. And I have to remind my team
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Dave Gehard
a lot of, I've always said this is, that's the best B2B marketing playbook, at least in my opinion, is like to be the number one source of knowledge regardless of if someone's going to buy for you or not. Like, how can my brand be the resource people turn to and learn from? And then they, even if they decide to buy somewhere else. And I think it's a very old school way of like, no, we're only, we're not helping you. We're only going to help the people who are going to buy our thing. It's like I use the example of like HubSpot. For me, as like a junior marketer all the time, I had to present a budget plan or a marketing plan for the first time. I had no idea what I was doing. I'm like 24 years old. Like Google, you know this. I find a HubSpot, you know, thing, I copy it exactly, put our stuff in. And my boss was like, you little genius. And I'm like, yeah, you know, no big deal.
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Amit Sharan
Yeah, I look the, the other part to this angle of like competition and, and kind of maybe getting back to like marketing to marketers. I feel like marketing is kind of a distant cousin to sales in ways where when you take a sales call, you know what's happening, right? Like, you know, they're qualifying you, you know that they're like trying to hit on your pain points. Like, you know, there's a formula to what's happening in that sales call. I think it's the same thing in marketing where it's like, marketers respect good marketing and if you're doing stuff for like, you know, optimizing an open rate or whatever, you know, you've probably sat yourself at a conference and saw like just like a bad slide and thought about that. Like, that's a bad, like I could have done that better, right? Like, we're just wired to think that way. So I think what that, what I'm really trying to articulate here is like there's a sniff test with marketers and, and you have to be extremely authentic and honest. And in my world, I'm up against a competitor who's got Ryan Reynolds as a spokesperson. Maybe up until six months ago when kind of semi canceled, but was like the most likable guy on the planet.
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Dave Gehard
He was canceled.
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Amit Sharan
I, I hear, I hear some things.
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Dave Gehard
Look, I'll ask Claude after this. Claude, Claude, let me know. Did Ryan Reynolds get canceled? Look, come back to me.
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Amit Sharan
Look, I, I'm up against other like CEOs that are trying to be, you know, influencers and go viral and stuff. And so when I, our marketing, I go, hey, how do we stand out amongst this sea of all these new competitors? I think it's actually making marketers the star. And so like testimonials is not a new concept. Right. But I actually use marketers in my ads because I feel like if every month you're seeing Ryan Reynolds in an ad, whether that's on TV or digitally, but then you see me showing a different brand every month and their head of marketing talking about Tatari and we as marketers know how hard it is to get a case study. I feel like this is what's making us stand out. So I will.
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Dave Gehard
Well, it just feels real or it
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just, it just feels real.
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And I think anybody that's listening, whether you market to marketers not or, you know, sell to cyber security or whatever, you know, if you see the, the CISO of this company uses this product, you're more likely to be like, oh, that seems legit. I should go check this out. The marketing person at this company, that, that's a real person. That'. You're, you're just competing with it. The Ryan Reynolds angle is they're competing on like entertainment or funny. I think you have like many different plays that you can run and decide, okay, we're going to win on the like, ingredients and facts and we're going to, you know, I think that's a good approach.
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Exit 5 Team Member
I like that.
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Amit Sharan
Yeah, proof points. I mean, this is not revolutionary by any means, but I will go in, I will send a camera crew to your office because I want it to feel like your brand. I. We will do a interview with you. I will cut that up into a three minute case study, but then I'll cut it up into a 15 second and a 30 second and I will run it on TV. I will do that through linear, through streaming through.
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Dave Gehard
Well, the whole thing is like, how legit that seems. So part of our community, we run on this company called Circle and they wanted to Do. We're one of their top communities and they wanted to do a video shoot and they said, hey, Dave, can you give us an hour in Vermont? We will fly to you, we'll bring the whole people, bring everybody there. And I was like, yeah, how am I going to say no, that I don't really have anything? They're gonna do it.
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And it was amazing.
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Like, it was so high end, even though I was doing them a favor by being in the video is like if you curate that whole thing and you make it feel super legit. I ended up like posting a bunch of the clips. After I looked really nice that day, they gave me a bunch of the photos. Like, I don't, I didn't care that I'm basically just being in an ad for them. It was like they made it easy for me as opposed to, hey, can you send us a video like that? That's a great way to do that. Especially your, you know, your level of marketing.
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Amit Sharan
Yeah, oh yeah, I'll involve our CS team. They will, you know, hey, here's the story. Here's the thing that really stands out. Here's like a prep doc and you know, make it super easy for them to just show up and be the talent.
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Dave Gehard
All right, tell me about tv. Let's, let's teach these marketers. So one of the things people like about our content and our stuff is we teach them how to do something new, how to get better at something. You're an expert in ctv. Let's start at the top.
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What is this?
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Explain this channel for people in the, in the simplest terms of the average person listening, this is, you know, director of marketing at a B2B manufacturing company in Ohio doing, you know, $68 million in revenue. They're doing all the other channels, but they need new ideas. They need, they need new channels. They want to do something else other than spend more money on AdWords.
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Amit Sharan
I'll start at the top here and like I am going to explain just the landscape of what there is. And the truth is there is probably something different for everybody. But if you think about this in terms of a pie chart, all right, and we're just going to talk viewership right now and then we'll talk in about of like where the actual money goes for ad spend. Imagine a pie chart and it's split in half. Half of the country is actually still watching. You commonly refer to as cable, right? And that's linear or broadcast. And the other half is watching streaming. And so a lot of people refer to that as you know, ctv. And so that's one thing to just kind of understand that those are the two buckets.
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Dave Gehard
By the way, is there any data. I'm just curious, like where would you. If I go to my parents house even they, they're on all the streaming, you know, they have, they're on the Roku, we're on the YouTube TV. Do you have any like market sizing, you know, guardrails, like, should I worry about traditional TV or just worry about ctv?
- [23:46]
Hey, it's me, Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Optimizely. Optimizely is a platform built for modern marketing teams, helping you create content, run experiments, personalize experiences and optimize your website. All powered by agentic AI. Most of us are using AI to write faster copy emails, briefs. And honestly, that's fine, it's useful. But it's also kind of the boring part of what AI can actually do for a marketing team. The shift that's actually worth your attention right now is using AI to handle coordination inside your team. Not just content creation, but the routing, the flagging, the context tracking that eats up everyone's week. There's a better way, and that's what Optimizely's agent platform is built for. With everything going on in AI right now, building agents into your marketing workflow is one of the most useful places you could be putting your energy. And Optimizely is a great tool to help you do so. Plus, it's no code, so every marketer can create agents without developer dependencies. So if you're agent curious, but not sure what the next step actually looks like, Optimizely put together a resource that gets into real examples of teams using agents and what it could look like for you. Go and check it out and learn more about optimizely@Optimizely.com exit 5 that's optimizely.com exit 5 hey, it's me, Dave. Today's episode is brought to you by Walker Sands, an integrated B2B marketing and growth services agency. Here's something I see happen all the time in marketing. The team is busy pumping out campaigns, shipping content, managing channels. The list goes on.
- [25:15]
But when you zoom out and look
- [25:16]
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- [26:00]
Exit 5 Team Member
I love that.
- [26:01]
Dave Gehard
If your marketing feels busy but a little disconnected from the bigger picture, Walker Sands is worth looking into. Go check them out@walkersans.com exit5 to help your business drive measurable growth. That's walkersans.com exit5 well, this is kind
- [26:16]
Amit Sharan
of where you get into like where are the ad dollars going? So I'm going to maybe come back to that, Dave, but just to kind of explain a little bit about so the viewership side, there's the, there's linear and there's streaming. Now I may ask you, hey, if I'm watching a football game on Sunday through YouTube TV, is that broadcast cable, what we call linear, or is that stream? Well, before you answer, we're all watching the same thing at the same time, seeing the same ads and it's being pumped through abc, Fox, cbs. I think I've just given, given you the answer. It's actually linear, but it's delivered through an IP app. Right. So same thing goes for like Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime. Right.
- [27:03]
Dave Gehard
But don't I see local, don't I see local ads though during those commercials too though? Like you're going to see B area commercials. I'm gonna see, you know, skiing commercials
- [27:12]
Amit Sharan
out here sometimes, but most of the time, and you're probably just not maybe remembering this, but this might trigger your memory when you see like a moment of Zen brought to you by YouTube. Oh yeah, YouTube, right. Like they're covering up the actual local pod.
- [27:25]
Dave Gehard
Oh, that's what that is. I'm like watching the, I'm watching the golf and it's like five, you know, two minutes of Zen. I'm like, what is this is a wasted opportunity.
- [27:33]
Amit Sharan
Yeah, yeah. And so my point to this full anecdote is that the lines between linear and streaming are blurring because of how it's delivered. Now as we start to get into this ads part of this conversation, just to double down on this, we had like nine brands that were in the Major League Baseball, like World Series. All right. Even though you could watch that on streaming, those brands couldn't get in with A streaming or CTV buy, you actually had to buy that through the linear rep, through the network. Right. So there is a difference between viewership and ads. And then when you just as we get into ads here, if you think about the total time of ad inventory, it would actually be very surprising to you, right? Where you're going. Well, Netflix, everyone watches Netflix. How much ad ad inventory is on Netflix? Same thing with Amazon Prime. So that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It just means don't put all your eggs in one basket. One network, one streaming app. If you approach this just like any other channel, you would say, I'm trying to maximize all of it. An example I often give people, and this relates to programmatic ct, which I think a lot of providers are out there. If I said to you, hey, you know, we just started this company, here's a million dollars, $10 million, whatever, we need a paid social strategy. And you talk to an agency and they said we can only buy Instagram reels, you'd be like, well, I want Snap and I want TikTok and I want X, I don't know. Right. Like I want all of social media. I don't want just one sliver of it. That's kind of what happens when you're buying CTV. Programmatically, it's about 15% of what TV is in terms of total ad inventory. And so again, just kind of explaining that there's a really wide landscape. If you're trying to reach the entire TV audience. Now, B2B marketers, it's going to depend on what type of company you are. There's absolutely B2B brands running on the Super bowl and, and reaching 120 million people all at once. There's also brands which I think is a no brainer. Every, every listener should be doing this. Retargeting your site visitors on TV and specifically ctv. That is very cheap to do. These are people who are potentially already familiar with your brand because they've been to your website. They may not have converted. You may have segments on your website. Like I have a segment for brands, I have a segment for agencies, I might deliver a different message to those and that's something you can apply to your own website.
- [30:08]
Dave Gehard
What makes it a no brainer? Is it just because I see you in multiple places and my brain thinks you're everywhere, or is there like something else to it?
- [30:16]
Amit Sharan
I mean, I think where else can you get 15 to 30 uninterrupted seconds to tell your story, your product benefits, have someone you know A testimonial for me. I spent years telling advertisers, you got to make a creative that gets them to stop scrolling. It's thumb stopping creative. You got to have an offer or something within the first three seconds. Right. Like, this is kind of what you're dealing with in the digital world. You can be watching, you know, Love island, you know, at home.
- [30:50]
Dave Gehard
I'm a summer house guy myself, actually.
- [30:52]
Amit Sharan
Yeah, okay, there you go. You probably got, you know, a 60 inch TV on your wall and now you've got to get a really relevant message that you can't skip.
- [31:03]
Dave Gehard
And is it also the economics of like retargeting those people is going to be pretty cost effective?
- [31:08]
Amit Sharan
Oh yeah, it's extremely cheap. This is stuff that you can do, which we're, you know, we're talking like 50, 50 a day.
- [31:13]
Dave Gehard
Why is that? What is it?
- [31:14]
I'm an idiot. People leave me comments all the time. What is it about, like, retargeting a website visitor that's cheaper than if I just wanted to like, you know, shotgun. Reach a bunch of people through tv?
- [31:25]
Amit Sharan
I mean, I think that's actually it, right? It's the reach. It is. I am targeting a very specific pool of visitors.
- [31:32]
Dave Gehard
Oh, got it.
- [31:32]
Amit Sharan
So.
- [31:32]
Dave Gehard
So, because you're niching down to like, I only want to show this to these people that visited my site. And is there some number that that's meaningful there? Does it have to be enough?
- [31:41]
Amit Sharan
I'd say 10,000 unique monthly visitors.
- [31:43]
Dave Gehard
Oh, wow.
- [31:44]
Amit Sharan
It's probably like where you want to be at, dude.
- [31:46]
Dave Gehard
We got to put Exit 5 on TVs. We have like 13,000 monthly videos. Okay, I like it. People are, people are listening to this.
- [31:54]
Amit Sharan
Let's just say you're having an event in September that you're trying to drive attendance to. You want to share creative about.
- [32:01]
Dave Gehard
That's actually so true. I'm sending it to Allison after this retarget. And that's a good example because we already have the creative. But my next question was going to be, okay, so yeah, cool, we can retarget through ctv. And I guess, I'm sure, I'm sure this is why you're talking about this. Like, I'm sure you can do this in Tatari, but I don't have any experience here, so correct me if I'm but it seems like you can do this within LinkedIn now. Like, you know, just that platform on its own. You can do it.
- [32:24]
Amit Sharan
LinkedIn's great. I mean, I feel like it's kind of gold standard for B2B marketers in terms of the first party data. Right. The fact that you can do campaigns based on like title, revenue size, stuff like that. So I'm not sure if they have a retargeting solution. I think they might be a little bit more on the prospecting side. But yes, to answer your question, like there are a number of providers that can do retargeting for ctv.
- [32:43]
Dave Gehard
But what about the creative?
- [32:44]
Exit 5 Team Member
Right.
- [32:44]
Dave Gehard
We have a hard enough time picking like compelling creative for our static LinkedIn stuff. We just do these super on brand things that don't really convert well, don't perform well. They just look like ads. Don't I have to then your point? You have to make a compelling. If I have 15, how am I going to make a 15 to 30 second video that is compelling? Like what? Any guidance on the creative there?
- [33:04]
Amit Sharan
I think we can give lots of guidance. I think it always comes back to your brand, your message, stuff like that. I would say in general. Right. Some of the advice we give and this is also applies to B2C brands as well. First of all, don't discount your story. You know, why you exist. Some of the highest performing type of format ads we have are just what we call founder ads. It is the founder saying why you exist, the problem that you encountered, why you're solving it, why you're different. Looking straight at camera. We have a Tatari founder ad featuring Philippe that does that same exact thing. But as I mentioned earlier, I take video case studies and I chop them up into 1530 second ads. So while I have a creative version that actually features one specific brand, I also do mashups. Right. So it'll be like four or five brands talking about one specific thing, like maybe measurement and four or five credible people talking, talking about my product and something very specific that differentiates us. I would say a lot of people, for some reason, not that it's crazy, but they figure out what really resonates with people on social and then they come to TV and for some reason assume they have got to do something completely different. It's like I got to put my big boy pants on because I'm going to tv and sometimes that is warranted. And it's like, yeah, we're going to be doing college football placements, you know, or NFL or something, you know, I want to be in the NBA finals and I want to show up a different way. Go for it. But you found what works, you know, take that to TV as well.
- [34:32]
Dave Gehard
Hopefully. Yeah, if you have organic or just even just in our that example, I just made this note for ourselves. We actually have a bunch of video content from Drive. It would be pretty easy to come up with like a 30 second little highlight reel. And that could be a V1 of what we would use to, to retarget. You know, I would. If I'm really gonna do it though, I want to like, I want to go for it. I want to like, remember, like the. Will it blend video, like videos or like you need something like a sham. Wow. I want to get you. If you're going to get you on tv. I want to like put a handgun in a blender and, you know, see if that works type of thing.
- [35:06]
Amit Sharan
I mean, but that's also the beauty of kind of where TV has gone from, you know, over the past decade is you can test creatives the same way you would on digital. You can, you know, run through four or five of them. And you should always be trying to beat your best performing creative.
- [35:21]
Dave Gehard
And do you have a school of
- [35:22]
thought around like having an offer and you know, because if you listen to podcasts, you watch shows, it's like there's always, you know, the OGs was like, you know, stamps.com and there's a promo code and a discount. But I'm just trying to use a B2B example to be related. Okay, you mentioned super bowl commercial, right? Nobody runs none of the B2B brands. Like not none of them, but most of them don't have an offer. It's usually just a brand thing. Or I had the VP of marketing, Ryan from Rippling. That's a. They sell to hr. They had a Super bowl ad. I don't think it was like save 10% on rippling today. But without an offer, does it make it harder to track? How do you think about having an offer and then what you're trying to drive? Is it direct response? Is it show them lots of ads over time and then look at it after. How do you think about it?
- [36:08]
Amit Sharan
I think you're thinking about this the right way is like, what is our goal here? Are we building brand? Are we trying to drive direct response? I think you can have a call to action and it doesn't need to be an offer. You know, on, on our end cards, I think it's Tatari TV growth. And we land you on our other case studies. We want you to see the proof points or watch the full case study that I just gave you 15 seconds of. And that still is driving the behavior we want. We are driving you to our site. We are driving you to proof points. We can obviously drive you to just a landing page where we want you to schedule a demo. So I don't think you have to have an offer in there.
- [36:44]
Dave Gehard
Is there a way to like plot all of the touch points? Because I also figure like we see with our podcast sponsors who, who sponsor our podcast and do so over months, it's not direct response, but then people feel like they're hearing about them through us more. I wonder if there is there some element of TV also where it's just another touch point. Like to your point about retarget website
- [37:03]
Amit Sharan
visitors, I mean we call it the
- [37:05]
Dave Gehard
halo effect Surround sound.
- [37:07]
Amit Sharan
Yeah, we see making this number up, but it feels like 90% of our clients will turn around and say after their first TV campaign that all of their other channels are doing better, their quality scores are better, their click throughs conversions are better and they bring us the data that is in our case studies where it's like a 25% increase in branded search over the time that you're running.
- [37:28]
Dave Gehard
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, what else do people listening to this need want to know? If I'm in the car right now, I'm like Dave, you gotta ask him this about TV and what we should be doing.
- [37:37]
Amit Sharan
Well, I think when I was thinking about this podcast and looking at the previous episodes, Claude told me that I think maybe the past four or five episodes were all about AI and we probably deserve an award for getting this far in this.
- [37:51]
Dave Gehard
Without saying, I mentioned Claude like three times, but yes.
- [37:54]
Amit Sharan
Okay, yeah, you're right, you're right.
- [37:55]
Dave Gehard
Well no, my new thing is now is like remember how in Covid it was like in these unprecedented times. Unprecedented. Now it's like in the world of AI and we're trying to like we do two webinars a month and we're always like writing the copy for them. And they've all been recently like see how you learn about learn how to do demand gen in the world of AI. Learn how to do product marketing in the world of AI. I'm like we got to stop that.
- [38:18]
Amit Sharan
We were on the topic of creative and I think this is usually where people's mind floats. When you were saying like how do I make a commercial and video? And naturally I think people start thinking about AI generated video and maybe the cost of production and time of producing some of this creative has changed. And we have had clients who have had 100% AI creative. And so you know, examples might be like greenlight the kids debit card or fallicious which Is like a Vietnamese Fu Kalshi I think is probably one most people know of, you know, like the betting app. And I can't say that, oh, this is AI generated creative performs significantly better or significantly worse. It's just too real early, right, to like have some sort of determination on that. What I would say it's affecting the industry and helping marketers is that production time. So like in the case of, you know, green light, it was, hey, this, this shoot would have cost millions of dollars. If we wanted to like build a set that did this concept, we could do parts of this with AI. And in the Felicia's case, like he's running a sequential story and like kind of tying into parts of the year. Like I think he had a kind of Halloween themed creative and like just kind of continues the story. So I do think it's real. I do think it's part of it. But then you gotta now think about the consumer sentiment side of this. We actually ran a survey to our own clients and asked them like, do you plan on doing AI creative or you know, if you have, are you doing more? And I think the jury's still out on how people are reacting to it. And back to what I said earlier, right? When you're marketing to marketers and they appreciate good marketing, I think there's sentiment like that with consumers as well.
- [40:17]
Dave Gehard
Yeah, there's a weird thing like, you know the Puerto Rico song that's gone viral? You know that one?
- [40:21]
Amit Sharan
I don't think so.
- [40:22]
Dave Gehard
I'll have to play it. I don't know if I. I don't want to get this taken down, but I'll drop it to you. But it's like this TikTok trend and the song is about Puerto Rico and it's gone completely viral. And it's very catchy. It's insanely catchy. But I played it for my wife and she's like, oh my God, what type of. It sounds like an 80s, like BOP, right? But then I'm like, and it was made by AI and she's like, no. And it's like it's this weird thing with humans. I think that we're navigating right now. It's not. It's like sometimes you can't tell a difference, but once you know, it changes
- [40:52]
how you feel about it for some
- [40:53]
reason, which I think is an interesting thing to explore. Like, what if I found out like Drake's Iceman was actually not actually him is 100% AI generated? I'd be pissed.
- [41:02]
Amit Sharan
Yeah, I think I Think the jury's still out. I think it, I think it helps you move faster. I think you should try it. But I don't, I also don't think you need to be intimidated. Like with like I need to do a hundred thousand dollar shoot and B2B. I think it can help you, especially if you're just doing, you know, product shots and trying to swap things out.
- [41:22]
Dave Gehard
Yeah, let's like, let's be honest. Your job as a marketer, your job is to drive revenue for the company. You have to do a lot of things and you don't always have actors and designers. Like I think you, however you feel about AI, like I'm separating that as a marketer. Give me that. I can like write. I mean, we did a webinar a couple months ago and with the team at 11 labs and they just showed some of the cool stuff that you can do with video and voice and creative and tap into, you know, other markets without having to get translations done. And it's like, that's an amazing tool. It's like having the Internet but forcing yourself to do a, you know, be in person or something. I don't know.
- [41:57]
Amit Sharan
The other thing, just on the landscape side of things, if you're going to think about TV look, you have to think about measurement. I would say you want to look for partners that focus on incrementality. I think view through as a metric is kind of the standard and I think that's in tv, that's the almost the version that's very close to last click. And I think most marketers don't think last click is very effective. So I just want everyone to know that that's possible. Like you can track. It's typically using an IP address. It's closed loop. You know that the person saw your ad and then they took an action because of tv, not because it was the last thing that they saw. You can be running other campaigns alongside that.
- [42:38]
Dave Gehard
Okay, personal question for you. What you've done? Well, you've done, you know, this is your fourth or fifth marketing job. You got a good thing going. What keeps you motivated and interested and engaged. Now as a SVP of marketing, like what gets you fired up to go into work every day?
- [42:55]
Amit Sharan
I still get to try cool things.
- [42:57]
Dave Gehard
You know, like your whole job isn't people management.
- [43:00]
Amit Sharan
No, definitely there is a good chunk spent on that. I think we all know spending time in one on ones and removing blockers and, you know, making sure people are set up for success. Building bench strength is all an important part of leading a marketing team, But I think at least in the situation that I'm in now, we get to try new things all the time. And I think that's what still makes marketing exciting. I'm going to go back to an old school tactic here right now. But, like, I've never done a billboard. I'm doing a billboard in Cannes and I'm so.
- [43:31]
Dave Gehard
Oh, I was going to ask you, what's your plan for can. Do you have a hat? Do you have one of those hats? You have like a nice, like, hat, Like a South of France hat?
- [43:37]
Amit Sharan
No. Now, you know, you're making me feel like I should have had one. Got to go.
- [43:40]
Dave Gehard
Did you know what I'm talking about? Can you picture that?
- [43:42]
Amit Sharan
Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, like, I've never done something like that. We're going to, like, kind of be fun and what's on the billboard. So when I was talking earlier about how a lot of our competitors can really only access 15% of the entire TV market, I'm showing up with a fun way to say that. And actually. And so I'm doing it in a bunch of cool ways and physical ways. A bunch of different spaces, you know, ad age space, the digiday space.
- [44:10]
Dave Gehard
Oh, cool.
- [44:10]
So.
- [44:10]
So this is a whole thing. It's not just like, they're going, there's a big campaign you guys are doing there. Is it. Is it hard to get spots for creative? Because it's just like everyone who's spending money in the space is there.
- [44:20]
Amit Sharan
Yes, it's, it's, it's hard and then it's. It's expensive, but kind of just depends on what your goals are. Right. And I said, this is definitely a little bit more corporate marketing, but I do think it's going to turn some heads for some CMOs that are there too. Yeah, I get to try new things. I feel like marketing is constantly changing. I mean, you. You cover it all the time on your podcast. Yeah. You know, and so definitely keeps it interesting. I feel like one of the areas I didn't focus on that I think is coming back to bite me now is SEO. And, you know, early days, like I mentioned, there was probably one of three companies you'd go to if you're going to try TV advertising, a search ad or a search result where someone's got millions of dollars on the line, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars on the line to do TV advertising was. Was probably not what was going to win. You know, if you're the first person on the search result now the way people are searching. Right. Is through LLMs, and you gotta be mentioned. And so I feel like kind of having to go back and figure all that out.
- [45:16]
Dave Gehard
Yeah. But I keep. I mean, I have a cool job because I talk to. My job now is just like talking to people like you. And it is. It's like, it's. There's two. There's two tracks. It's like, yes, things are moving fast and things are changing a lot, which is. Which is interesting. But then also, I. If I look at the macro, I'm like, well, that actually never. That's actually never changed. It's always been about standing out and being interesting. And I try to sprinkle that as, like, the through line in all of our content. Like, don't let how fast things are moving take away from, like, oh, yeah. What are the. What are the principles of how people make buying decisions? My existential crisis. The fear is as long as we have jobs, the only thing I'm worried about is if it's like the company's AI agent is talking to the buyers. AI agent and like, a human doesn't matter as long as humans are involved. As long as you're trying to sell to marketers who want to, like, spend their TV budget, I think I know the right place to, you know, win their hearts and minds. But if that goes away, I. I think I'm going to be driving. Like, I'm going to. I already have a plan. I'm going to buy a fleet. Yeah, I'm going to buy a fleet of, like, robo taxis here in Vermont, and I'll just operate those, you know, own, like, you know, seven autonomous taxis, and that'll be my new job.
- [46:27]
Amit Sharan
You go leading into what the new future looks like.
- [46:30]
Dave Gehard
Who's going? A bunch of team. The team going to Canada or just you?
- [46:33]
Amit Sharan
Yeah, most of the executive team. Canada is an interesting place because it just feels like it's mostly strategic meetings that you're spending your time doing. There is a lot of content and stuff going on, but it's. There's so much to compete with, man. Like, I don't. I don't want to put someone on stage and then like, Paris Hilton is DJing at Meta beach and, like, or the Kelsey brothers are, you know, on stage somewhere. It's like no one's showing up to your thing.
- [46:58]
Dave Gehard
That's tough. Yeah, it's tough. All right, well, it's good to see you. I hope you have a good time over there. Safe travels. Thanks for doing this. And look, send us A note so you can, you know, we'll Link Tom. It's LinkedIn and everything, but send us a note. Any more questions about CTV advertising on tv? We could, we could cover that in a follow up, a follow up session. I think there's this, there's a huge appetite. I'll leave you on this. There's a huge appetite, I feel, of people investigating the kind of non core channels. I guess TV's been a core channel, but everyone's kind of like, I mean, you've seen it in our, in our CM group. So many people right now are questioning should I be spending all this money on AdWords when like search is changing. And so I think this is an interesting topic to explore where people are going to spend money in the future of marketing. All right, check him out. Tatari. Even though he didn't plug it. I will because he's a good guy. Oh, last thing put you on the spot. Do you have any lessons from B2B sales? Did anything about coaching high school lacrosse teach you anything about B2B sales?
- [47:53]
Amit Sharan
This sounds like the worst cringe LinkedIn post ever.
- [47:57]
Dave Gehard
That's why, that's why I said it.
- [47:59]
Amit Sharan
That's why I said it.
- [48:00]
Dave Gehard
Oh, man.
- [48:01]
Amit Sharan
Absolutely nothing.
- [48:03]
Dave Gehard
Okay, all right, we'll end it.
- [48:04]
Exit 5 Team Member
Goodbye.
- [48:05]
Dave Gehard
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna. You know, you're going to can. You can't be answering low class questions like that on your way out.
- [48:11]
Amit Sharan
Appreciate it.
- [48:15]
Dave Gehard
Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode. You know what? I'm not even going to ask you to subscribe and leave a review because I don't really care about that. I have something better for you. So we've built the number one private community for B2B marketers at exit 5. And you can go and check that out. Instead of leaving a rating or review, go check it out right now on our website, exit5.com our mission at Exit 5 is to help you grow your career in B2B marketing. And there's no better place to do that than with us at exit 5. There's nearly 5,000 members now in our community. People are in there posting every day asking questions about things like marketing, planning, ideas, inspiration, asking questions and getting feedback from your peers.
- [48:56]
Building your own network of marketers who are doing the same thing you are.
- [48:59]
Exit 5 Team Member
So you can have a peer group
- [49:00]
Dave Gehard
or maybe just venting about your boss
- [49:02]
Exit 5 Team Member
when you need to get in there
- [49:03]
Dave Gehard
and get something off your chest. It's 100% free to join for seven days so you can go and check it out risk free and then there's a small annual fee to pay if you want to become a member for the year. Go check it out. Learn more exit5.com and I will see you over there in the community.
- [49:26]
Hey it's Dave.
- [49:27]
Exit 5 Team Member
I want to give a quick shout out to Knack for sponsoring today's episode. Knack is a purpose built email and landing page platform and they're also one of our longest running sponsors. When I create our newsletter each week, I spend a bunch of time more recently with Claude, my friend Claude as my editor. But once I'm done editing the newsletter, it's not as simple as just getting my copy from a Google Doc and hitting Send. If you're a B2B marketer, you know that.
- [49:50]
Dave Gehard
So what happens?
- [49:51]
Exit 5 Team Member
Someone has to take that output and turn it into an actual email that renders an outlook, follows brand guidelines, and ships. You know this story the last mile still feels slow and manual NAC has made this a lot shorter. They just launched an MCP server that connects your AI assistant directly to their platform. So now you can describe the email you need and in Cloud or ChatGPT and draft it like normal. But it automatically starts building a knack for you. You get an email that comes out following your brand rules automatically. No manual cleanup, no broken HTML, and even better quality than anything your team built by hand. The marketing Ops team at OpenAI is actually running this workflow right now. They intake internal campaign requests from Slack, an AI agent structures it into a ticket nac, MCP generates the email and a marketer refines and ships. This is the future of marketing. You should go check it out@knack.com that's knocking.