Mark Vandegrift
Welcome back to another episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me for today's topic are two very special guests from our media department, Alyssa Laubacher and Lauren Moses. Alyssa is our media and digital marketing manager, and Lauren is our media and digital marketing specialist, and they are joining today to discuss their knowledge and insights on a media area or grouping that we call programmatic advertising. But before we get started on that, let me have Alyssa and Lauren introduce yourselves. Alyssa, why don't you go first?

Alyssa Laubacher
Hello, my name is Alyssa. Kind of a little bit about what we do in our department. We touch on everything from traditional to digital media. So for example, on the traditional side, we place billboards, print, broadcast, radio, et cetera. And then on the digital side, we work in social media platforms, programmatic, which we're going to be talking about, paid search, SEO platforms, and essentially anything else digital that you could think of.

Lauren Moses
And I'm Lauren. Alyssa and I work hand in hand with the majority of our responsibilities, including stuff like media planning and buying, collaborating with other departments, executing campaigns on all the different channels that Alyssa mentioned, and then reporting on campaign performance.

Mark Vandegrift
Awesome. Well, welcome to the Brand Shorthand podcast. So Alyssa and Lauren are our dynamic duo here at the agency, along with Lindsey and some others. And given their roles and experience in media and digital marketing, we thought it'd be great to bring them on to talk about today's topic of programmatic advertising. But before we jump into that, Lorraine and I, as you always know, we talk a little bit about a brand update. And I wanna kick off today's episode with a recent update on some brand news. So just a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Poppi and Olipop and the newest player that we really focused on was Coke's Simply Pop. And how they're, I guess you would call it battling out for the healthy soda space. They're known as prebiotic, healthy sodas. So we talked a little bit about that and we also mentioned how Coke had considered acquiring Poppi, but they didn't do that because of the legal challenges that Poppi was facing around having their health claims. So the news update, dun dun dun, is that the CEO of Pepsi just announced March 17th, so a week ago, that Pepsi has agreed to acquire Poppi. So I thought it was kind of interesting that out of nowhere, Pepsi, Poppi are now going to be part of the same company. So I just thought I should throw that out. If you haven't seen anything on it, check out our positionist view that will drop tomorrow, the 25th of March, that talks about Coke and Pepsi and all the healthy soda wars that are going on right now. It's kind of fun because if you're old enough like I am to go back to the Coke and Pepsi generation and the Cola Wars, it kind of feels like now we have the healthy soda wars. A lot of fun. Anyhow, let's dive into today's topic so that we can start to hear someone else talk. The digital marketing industry has changed rapidly. Technology just continues to evolve. The amount of global internet users keeps climbing and all of the consumer behaviors are shifting. So with these technical advances, it's important for advertisers to adapt their marketing strategies to, I don't know, to stay ahead and keep up with the audiences. It doesn't change the positioning strategy, but the way with it we consume the messaging that comes from the positioning is really important to understand. So with the expanding internet landscape, we have like the MarTech 10,000 now, which gives all of our advertisers this huge platform, one of the major ones known as a grouping called Programmatic. And advertisers can more efficiently tackle the complexities of digital marketing. So before we get too far in this, Alyssa, do you want to explain to our audience when we say programmatic what that all entails because it's a grouping of channels, if you will.

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah, sure. So I'll kind of go over it at a broad angle. I won't get too too in the weeds because as you start to get into it, it does get more expansive like you were saying. But within programmatic advertising, it utilizes channels such as connected TV, which is what your audiences would see on, say, a smart TV like a Roku. There's online video, which is just any type of video that you could see if you're scrolling on a website, an app, that sort of thing. Streaming audio, which is going to be more on, say, your Spotify or your Apple Music. That's where you're going to hear those sorts of ads there. And then display ads, which those are your normal pop-up ads that you get on websites as well. Utilizing all of those channels allows us to reach users at various points of their journey on the open internet through any device. So whether that be laptop, smart TV, like I mentioned, tablets, mobile phones, you name it, we can reach them through these programmatic efforts. It allows us when we're putting together plans, we can implement a more holistic approach when planning out our campaigns and for our clients to help take targeting to another level. So overall, as a marketer, it's a valuable asset to have within your marketing library for sure.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, definitely. Well, I think what prompted our discussion on programmatic was its incredible rise in the number of users, et cetera. This past November, there was a research company called Polaris Marketing, which published a report that focuses on programmatic and the different advertising platforms. And it really shows just in that report how much global expansion is happening with digital advertising and therefore the rise that we need, the demand that's growing for programmatic advertising platforms. And there were a few key takeaways that I want to kind of highlight so we can talk through those a little bit. The first is the programmatic market drivers includes the adoption by small and medium sized enterprises we call those SMEs and social media platforms emerging as an essential channel for digital advertising. So basically what's that saying is small businesses, medium sized businesses that may have stayed away from this in the past, they're like adopting it at an amazing rate. It's really fun to see because It's been so effective. Most of our clients have adopted these channels. The second point was the global programmatic advertising platform market is projected to grow... You ready for this? 13.77 billion this year to 117 billion by 2034. So I know that most of our listeners that are not really good with math, but if we're at like 14 billion today, and it's gonna be 117 billion in nine years, that's over 100 billion growth. And the way that works is every year then from now until 2034, we end up with about a 26 to 30 % average growth rate every year. So that's huge for any medium. The last point we wanna pull away from the Polaris Market Research Report that came out is that the global programmatic platform market based on ad format is segmented into display, video, mobile, and native. In 2024, the video advertising segment accounted for the largest market share. But because we have all these various types of programmatic, you're going to see this hyper growth happen in every single segment that we just listed. So, Lauren, we'll have you talk now. Do you want to explain the benefits of using a programmatic platform like what we use?

Lauren Moses
Absolutely. So as Alyssa mentioned earlier, programmatic advertising is a valuable tool for a variety of reasons. It's not surprising that so many people and businesses are adopting the use of this platform and channel just because of all the advantages that it encompasses. So one of the biggest ones is their targeting capabilities. This really allows advertisers to pinpoint users through demographics, behaviors, interests, but it also allows precise historical and real-time geographic targeting as well. So with both of those combined, you can really reach your target audience in a way that a lot of the other channels maybe don't offer as well. We're able to utilize a multitude of placements and private contracts as well within this platform. And we ultimately have the ability to maintain consistent and effective messaging across various channels. So like we talked about earlier, we can reach people anytime, anywhere, which is really positive. And you can use a mixture of all of these channels, but also just focus on one as well. And then through all of these capabilities, we can really meet a level of scalability and reach that isn't replicated by a lot of the other tactics.

Mark Vandegrift
Okay. Well, you mentioned targeting as one example, and I always try to explain it this way. If we were targeting a CEO, they could both be watching ESPN live next to each other, and the CEO could get an ad that we served up. And if the guy next door is, let's say he's, I don't know, a mining, underground mining technician, he wouldn't get that same ad. Is that the right way to explain it to someone?

Lauren Moses
Yes, absolutely. We can target at a household level, at an individual level, within 100 meters all the way to thousands of miles.

Mark Vandegrift
Okay. Very good. Well, we use The Trade Desk, which is a DSP known as a demand side platform. And that allows advertisers and agencies to buy digital advertising inventory across like tons of channels and devices, right? That's basically the way I understand it. So Alyssa back to you. Do you want to explain a little bit more about how The Trade Desk works or even just programmatic in general, or why did we even pick The Trade Desk as our platform?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah, sure. So I'll kind of take the route because we do offer full service. I guess the best way to compare it is looking at traditional media versus programmatic because traditional cable buying has been around for so long. So like Lauren had previously mentioned, programmatic advertising allows advertisers to achieve that exposure that other methods like traditional advertising wouldn't be able to recreate. So for example, with traditional media buying, you are limited in what you can and can't do in terms of campaign customization as that campaign goes on, such as targeting, fine tuning throughout the duration. It's kind of a set it and go in the beginning with those more traditional buys. So with programmatic in general, you just are reaching more users. However, those impressions can be wasted on traditional because of the broader targeting that comes with it. Reporting metrics are also slim to none when it comes to traditional because the nature of it is just more focused on overall awareness. So when you look at programmatic advertising, you're able to hone in on all three stages of the user's buyer journey, whether that's awareness, consideration, and then completion of a sale or product there. Not just that top of mind awareness, which you also get, but you're getting all three of them where it allows the combination of that real time bidding and automation for the campaign to efficiently be optimized throughout its duration. So that helps to maximize its overall effectiveness to the target audience there. Like Lauren said, we can get super, super granular with the targeting. So that allows for less wasted spend on those unqualified impressions. And then with Trade Desk, we do have these tracking capabilities within the DSP that allows us to report out on various metrics. And then we're able to then provide valuable performance data after the campaign ends. So that way we can report out on that to our clients and make sure that they're seeing the results that they wanted.

Mark Vandegrift
Very good. Now, one of the ways that I try to explain it to clients when I'm just having a casual conversation is if I were to call up, let's say, channel three news in our area, WKYC, and say, want to buy a TV spot from you, I'm basically required to get their entire viewing audience, right? So let's say, to make it easy, let's say there's a million people watching WKYC I Run an ad and let's say out of that ad only 50,000 are my potential audience Okay, so I basically wasted nine hundred and fifty thousand impressions Right every time I make an impression About that percentage is going to be bad. So I'm really only ever making a five percent good impression. With programmatic, because I can target my audience, I don't even have to have one wasted impression. Is that, am I explaining that right, Alyssa?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah, essentially it mitigates that wasted impression space that you're getting with cable. And that way you're able to effectively just hit your exact target audience without having to worry of, it's almost like throwing out a net and casting and hoping you catch something with traditional, whereas programmatic, you know you're going to catch at least something there.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, we always like to say you're shooting with a rifle instead of a shotgun, right? I guess it just depends how good your aim is. Anyhow, so why did we pick The Trade Desk? What do we know about The Trade Desk and why did we go after it? And not every advertiser can use it. You have to be able to buy media at a certain level. So why The Trade Desk?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah. We had heard it was a highly ranked DSP when we were first going into the space. It allows us as an agency to have all of our clients live within the account so we can easily monitor and switch back and forth between them. We've been able to get good deals within the platform because of the partnerships that we have with Trade Desk. So it allows us to effectively spend the client's media budget so they're getting those optimal performance metrics that they want to include in there.

Mark Vandegrift
Lauren, can you maybe explain the different types of programmatic, like with a little more detail? So give us a sense for display, digital out of home, connected TV, video ads, native ads, maybe go through each one a little bit so that our viewers can understand what that means when we're talking about the universe of programmatic.

Lauren Moses
Sure. So connected TV, as Alyssa mentioned earlier, is really going to hit people on some of those streaming TVs. So we're going to get Netflix, Hulu, Roku, all of those so that those people who maybe don't utilize the traditional cable, they utilize those areas instead. We can reach them. They're going to be those ads that really annoy some people but pop up in the middle of your show and aren't skippable that we know that you're sitting on your couch, you're watching it, you're actively listening, and we're hopefully gonna capture you while you're at home. When we look at streaming audio, we're also trying to reach those users who maybe aren't on traditional radio as much and are using some of those other streaming platforms such as Pandora, Spotify, and those types of things. So we have a lot of podcast listeners. That population continues to grow but we also have a lot of streaming music as well. So we're again, trying to reach people who are actively listening in those spaces, whether they're at home or maybe on their way to work or another event. So display you're reaching people when you're moving through different searches, it's going to pop up on the side. So maybe you're scanning through, you're scrolling through different articles. They're going to pop up right next to you and hopefully initiate a click. Then we move to digital out of home, that's when it's kind of like a billboard outside, which is going to be if you're maybe at a bus station or you're looking at a gas pump. They're going to be some of these ads that are serving in an area that you can't necessarily interact with them, but we're ultimately just trying to build a lot of different awareness. And then online video, as Alyssa mentioned earlier for that one, basically any device that you can watch an online version of a video on, that's where we're going to reach you.

Mark Vandegrift
Now, native is one we don't use very often, but explain native a little bit and maybe one or two reasons we might use that.

Lauren Moses
OK. When it comes to native video, these are going to be pop-ups that kind of look like they're embedded in content. So it's more streamlined. It looks more natural. It looks less like an ad. So it kind of seems like it's more related to the content that's being served. So you don't feel like you're getting that advertisement interrupting any of the content or the video that you're watching.

Mark Vandegrift
Very good. So from the sense of how programmatic works, give us a little understanding of we go into a platform and then what happens from there, Alyssa.

Alyssa Laubacher
So essentially, it's similar to a lot of other ad-based platforms where you're going to build out your campaign like you would in any other ad platform. However, with Programmatic, there's a lot more additives, I guess, that you're able to add to the campaign to customize it. With some of the targeting options, like we had said, there's anywhere from Weather triggered ads, which means we can add a targeting segment that maybe when the weather hits a certain degree, the ad will show. It also allows for us to see real-time reporting in there as well. So then we can kind of make optimizations on the fly to make sure that we're not missing anything within the campaigns.

Mark Vandegrift
Give us a sense for like you as a person managing the campaign. What, what settings am I going through? Like I have an idea of what I'm going to advertise, but how do I do my selects and how do I decide how much I'm going to bid or how do I know where my placements are? Give us the mechanics of programmatic.

Alyssa Laubacher
Gotcha. So when you're setting up a campaign, whether you're looking to do a connected TV campaign or an online video campaign, the platform is going to give you prompts that are related to the channel that you're wanting to utilize. And as you work through, once you get to where you want those ads to show up, we utilize what are called private contracts. So these are deals that are brought into the platform from suppliers such as Hulu, Spotify, some of your big brand names, some of your other DSP providers. That is where we're gonna see where it's available. So if there's any availability within those placements, we can see that the cost for those placements, that's where we're gonna start seeing what we're able to bid, where we want to adjust our bids based on how many times we wanna show in those placements. It'sgoing to allow us to reach the audience on different channels so we can pick multiple ones. So say we want to show up on Hulu, but we also want to show up on Netflix ads and we want to show on Fubo ads. We can pick all those different placements and utilize them. So it's going to see the target audience that we've built. It's going to take it and then show to those people who are on those platforms as well.

Mark Vandegrift
So if I wanna pick just Hulu or just Netflix, that's an option we have. That correct? And if I only want CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, like what level of targeting do you get to pick from when you're selecting?

Alyssa Laubacher
Correct. Yep. A lot of it will take into consideration their interest targeting. We're able to do demographics as well, so age, gender, the normal. But it will be interest-wise, people who have watched this certain show or have interacted with these certain things. So it takes a lot of the user attributes to put into targeting so we can kind of hit a broader area within our target market.

Mark Vandegrift
Okay, good. Well, we know that programmatic is on the rise and we're starting to get a lot of success stories. Do one of you want to share a success story that you've read about or that, you know, we've had, of course, a lot of successes, but maybe one that our audience might recognize as a bigger brand.

Lauren Moses
so the Amanda foundation, it's a nonprofit organization that cares for dogs and cats who are in need of a home. And they recently used behavioral and geographic targeting to pair a pet to a specific individual and hopes that these animals would be adopted. So I, although we don't have necessarily particular results on these, this campaign as a whole, I think really showcases what programmatic can do. So ultimately you can take that audience that Alyssa was just describing and then also take into consideration some of those geographic insights and all the other targeting capabilities that are available and ultimately reach users to provide specific messaging to really make a difference. And I think that that really is a success and shows the capabilities that The Trade Desk and other DSPs and programmatic advertising as a whole can make.

Mark Vandegrift
That's pretty cool. I was reading about Coke, think it was, that has Share a Coke campaign, and they're using Programmatic to send people personalized ads with their name on the bottles. Did you guys hear about this?

Mark Vandegrift
Well, we know in the world of human interaction, the most beautiful word that anybody can hear is their own name. So it's neat that they're personalizing it with someone's name. That's neat. I think the other popular word is free, free, free, free, but everyone loves to hear their name. So another example I had read about was Spotify. And that's actually one of our delivery mechanisms, of course. One of the platforms that is requested for streaming audio. But they were doing something with analysis of user data. Alyssa, maybe you want to speak to that?

Alyssa Laubacher
Yeah, from what it looks like they did is a form of retargeting, which we utilize a lot within Programmatic. It's just another extra hit to our audience to make sure that message gets across. So what they can do essentially is build an audience from users that have seen their past ads, which is how they're getting their users, top artists, songs, genre. So they're going to create an audience based off of that and then filter it again, the customization, personalization aspect of it, and then send them back based on their listening habits. So I think with that, the retargeting aspect was important for them because yes, they might have already seen something before, but then hitting them again with a similar but different message is really going to help drive their cause there.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, we see exciting ways that brands are using programmatic and you know what you just said about Spotify. It makes me think that someday if I know that all my audience members love, let's say grunge music, right? I could go after them in these platforms and I wouldn't even have to know who they are because the platform knows. And so it serves up my ad anonymously. And the platform has also identified them as a grunge listener, but they don't even know their name or anything because of the ID 2.0 standard of privacy. So it's kind of neat to know that we're talking way beyond demographics. We're talking firmographics, which is, you know, the business data, like titles, size of companies, types of companies. And then you also get the psychographics, like that interesting music. So it's neat to see that coming down the pike and we can do most of that now. What is coming that you've read about either on The Trade Desk or other programmatic platforms that makes you guys really excited? Lauren, I think you're up.

Lauren Moses
So, programmatic advertising really takes the use of data-driven insights to a higher playing field. Through programmatic efforts, businesses can now have the ability to actively target users like never before. They use audience-based buying solutions found in these DSP platforms, and more and more inventory like that Netflix and Hulu, Spotify, and those sorts of inventories are becoming available as the demand for programmatic advertising continues to grow. So Alyssa and I are really excited because they're also unleashing some of these new measurement tools and they're developing, rolling them out pretty much weekly to enhance decision-making and ultimately provide more in-depth campaign insights so that we can make better decisions for our clients or businesses can make better decisions for their campaigns as a whole. And then lastly, AI is a big topic around marketing and it's also being incorporated in programmatic advertising. So it can streamline some optimizations, but also pick up on trends that maybe the human couldn't have picked up naturally. So all of these improvements really present an exciting future for advertisers as we continue in the space, but also as people maybe want to enter.

Mark Vandegrift
that's interesting. So they're using the AI to basically process all that big data they're getting back in a constant stream so that we get better insights and can target better then. Is that what you're saying AI is doing?

Lauren Moses
Yeah, and The Trade Desk also allows you to kind of have as much or as little control as you want. So you can actually, if you don't want to use AI at all, we can say, no, I only want this to be a listen, I'm managing it and we can turn those off or you could do the opposite. Usually we like to have a mixture because it is important to have a human eye on it. But also it is important to analyze some of the trends that might've been minusculed, but also super important.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, it's amazing how often I see AI generated something or other and it's so off. It's not even funny. They say it's only a year away that the AI will be smarter than the average human, but I don't know. I haven't seen proof of that quite yet. So that's that's really exciting. Well, thanks for joining us today and we'll have you back again soon. Maybe some others from the media team just to talk about some of the other media trends that we have going on. mean, if we have the MarTech 10,000, there must be some other platforms that we can come up with to talk about. So let's wrap up today's episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. Thank you to our listeners for joining us again this week. Lorraine will be back next week and we will be talking current brand news as we always do, as well as some other principles of positioning. So as you have an opportunity, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share with your friends. And until next time, have an amazing day.