Episode Transcript
Elise Stieferman:
All right, so today we have Ryan Green, who's the Vice President of Coegi joining us to discuss a recent 2023 ANA media conference that was held in Orlando in mid-February. So thanks for joining us, Ryan.
Ryan Green:
Thanks for having me again, Elise. Good to see you.
Elise Stieferman:
So I'd like to start off with asking about what were some of the key themes that you heard coming out of this year's ANA conference?
Ryan Green:
There were several, and this is the second year that I attended. So a lot of this is built on what the industry's been talking about for a while. Last year, the theme was really around diversity and inclusion, so they made a conscious effort to focus on that. And instead of making that a major part of the series, they just embedded a lot of discussion around diversity and inclusion in particular around publishers. Several of the major advertisers that were up there were talking about the how having diverse advertising is just advertising now when you have a plurality, the United States, the way that it is demographically but making sure that they had authentic voices and collaborators from the production companies all the way through strategy to bring a highly diverse set of voices forward.
You were able to see that really with the execution that Ford was able to do for the new truck that they have that they had come out. They released that only on mobile. That built Ford tough is tattooed on many rural Americans arms and is a point of pride about buying American, and that is an important part of their audience. This new truck that they had was really featured more towards women, more towards urban communities, more towards millennials and Gen Z. And they were able to exceed expectations in reaching those more diverse communities while still having and attracting that 47 year brand of the Ford F-150 being the best selling truck in America. So I thought they did an excellent job of not just showcasing a diverse commitment, but making that practical and making that actionable and putting their money where their mouth was.
It's hard for a company like Ford to do so, really encouraged to see see that coming forward., certainly a lot of discussions still about the loss of signal around cookie deprecation and measurement and all of that, all the things that, that that meant. I was encouraged because that's something Coegi has been thinking about for years, and I'm still pleased that our agency is certainly at the forefront of the thought leadership and discussion around that. Cause that's not where CMOs and chief brand officers and even chief media officers are as well versed as our clients are with that., so that, that'll be something that, that's certainly continuing.
Elise Stieferman:
So obviously measurement, like you just said, is something that Coegi has been talking about for a long time, talking about incrementality over attribution and things along those lines. I believe I read in an article that came out after the conference that there was a plan to present a kind of new thinking around measurement in 2024, maybe a new measurement solution. Could you speak a little bit about what that discussion was entailing and anything that we should be thinking about for our clients in terms of application?
Ryan Green:
Sure. The ANA has, I think, reacted to the changing landscape and is trying to be proactive in setting a standard across a variety of measurement options to unify what that measurement can look like. Part of this discussion started with retail media networks, where Albertsons came up and said, hey, we don't mind working with our frenemies and our competitors to decide what attribution software we should all use as an industry to help garnish higher percentage of media budgets to retail media generally, right? Whether that's using that everybody agrees they're gonna use as their standard for viewability as an example, right? There was also a discussion around this, even just with like reach. The walled garden state of play and digital makes it hard for even a company like P&G that has a goal of increasing their reach from 70-80% targets to 90-100%. How can they actually measure a hundred percent reach when you don't have unified identity between walled garden areas. And there's more and more of those happening, especially with retail networks essentially acting as walled gardens as well. So the ANA does have an incentive to pressure publishers to have a unified mechanism to be able to to transact in a unified way. It's honestly why the Nielsens of the world still exist. We know that there's flaws in Nielsen's methodology from the traditional side but it's everybody being on the same sheet of music, and that makes it a lot I think, for not the media folks, but the CMOs, CEOs and CFOs to be able to have a baseline understanding of what's going on in the media environment.
Elise Stieferman:
So it sounds like everyone has a hunger to just be on the same page with how to evaluate if media's being effective, using the same, like you said, sheet of music to interpret what's effective, what's not. I feel like, like you said, that's a very difficult problem to solve. Was there a lot of discussion around things like unified ID or other other identity solutions being that solve, or are they thinking there's gotta be something more to be able to get to that future of measurement?
Ryan Green:
I don't think the conference went that deep, as far as talking about something like a U I D. The Trade Desk was mentioned a couple of times, but I think they were looking at it in broader strokes. There's additional conferences that we will be going to now as an ANA member ourselves that I think are going to get to more of that detail. There's one for data analytics and measurement that we'll be attending as well, that I think is going to get into the weeds and the details of that. I think that it's good to have these broader set of marketers first to talk about what they're seeing from a very high level. The Mark Pritchards of the world don't necessarily need to understand interoperability of measurement solutions, but it is the devil’s in the details on a lot of this stuff, and we're excited to see where the industry goes in subsequent conversations.
Elise Stieferman:
So basically diversity and inclusion as well as measurement were the key themes that you saw coming up over and over. Were there any presentations or any discussions that you felt were surprising that you weren't expecting to hear in early this early in 2023?
Ryan green:
Well, this is a trend that I've seen happening, but I was surprised at how blatantly it was talked about, was how many CMO roles are starting to get filled by people with media backgrounds. The CMO of the NBA, for instance, came from Paramount, the CMO of Cadillac is Michelle Grady, an old ad tech pioneer from the .com bubble era, for instance. And there was a lot of discussion around the media's height isn't just getting to the chief media officer, but being the one that's gonna be overseeing marketing. Overall this was echoed by Jay Patel's conversation, his presentation was that seems that media is the flywheel of marketing, meaning that the center of where all these diverging areas comes together, it's where data comes together. User experience, diversity and inclusion in a lot of ways, creative and content, even PR, social, measurement, all of these functions, really. Media touches all of those.
So in a lot of ways, media is where things both start and end and are a part of the most broad and specific discussions in what makes a modern marketing engine. So because of that, it shouldn't be a surprise that the generalist roles like a CMO come from some of something that was considered a very specialty specific area. And a lot of those are coming from digital too, right? Digital represents three quarters of total ad spend, 289 million or billion dollars of the US spend where TV is only at 62. So it shouldn't be surprising that people that have their foundation from digital marketing, from digital media are able to lend themselves to some of the highest marketing positions at a number of these brands.
Elise Stieferman:
Do you feel like that's been emerging as a trend because of what you mentioned earlier that the devil’s in the details and these individuals have the background to understand those details and lead their team towards broader brand goals?
Ryan Green:
I think so, having your foundation in those details, in the media math, in activation, and being in the trenches I think allows you to be a better generalist because, you know what could be hiding behind the corners. You know what it actually takes to run a multi omnichannel campaign, how many ads sets it takes, where the best inventory is, where fraud exists, and it is rampant at. Having that base, I think, allows you then to also be closer to understanding what messaging works, because a lot of times you have been either yourself or your team, the ones that are actually loading up creatives and serving them, getting the data back on what messages are working. So you understand from a communication perspective about what's effective and you're intimate with the audience.
I think that's really what the key is. You have put forth the strategies of what and understand not what makes an audience tick or, or what the difference between those broader audiences and micro audiences are. You've been able to find those insights of pockets that have really popped and worked. So being on the front lines of that, I think it makes it straightforward to be able to take that up a couple levels and to be able to explain to your counterparts on the C-suite what what effective marketing is and how to explain it in a simple way, because of how complex understanding all those complexities being able to ladder that up I think is a function of being a really good practitioner.
Elise Stieferman:
Was there anything you heard at ANA that you found to be a bit controversial or something that you have a hot take on?
Ryan Green:
So the most controversial discussion was from a research analyst that advises Wall Street on what they see as the future of digital. The CEO of the ANA had put some bullish predictions up. He had a alternate take, his presentation was called The Reckoning, so I think he was trying to be a little bit bold, but he was comparing what's happening now to the .com bubble that he went through. He really called out a lot of ad tech underneath for having undisclosed take rates playing both the buy and sell side, which we see Google getting sued for. But you see other ad tech starting to dive into lack of transparency, I wouldn't say that it was anything that was necessarily surprising. We've seen contrarian opinions quite a bit. The truth of course is of where digital is going is somewhere in the middle between the cheerleaders and the contrarians. I'm always glad to see both of those points of view presented, but Richard definitely had an agenda and I think was coming and saying that 50% of CMOs spin goes to ad tech vendors is probably not actually true there, and at some level isn't particularly useful in moving the conversation forward. With that being said, there are challenges with take rates that adtech have, and it's something that Coegi is very cognizant of too. The devil is in the details on a lot of these things, and being a practitioner means understanding where you can get hosed. Having that background or having a solid agency relationship that's representing brands in that ecosystem is going to be important because automation's not going away.
The headlines of AI driven everything aren't just marketing ones. We have been working with AI on the marketing side for a long time. Being able to wield that as a tool is something I don't think that we want to get rid of. We do want transparency and more direct relationships in a lot of ways when those make sense. We wanna have many tools in our tool belt and throw your hands up and saying, Jeff Green's taking 50% of a CMO is a budget, and every time you put a dime in programmatic’s budget, a nickels gone, those are particularly useful for moving the conversation with Ad Tech forward.
Elise Stieferman:
So as you know, to wrap us up, Coegi’s goal is to transform what's possible for our brands. What did you take away from this conference you think is going to transform our client's strategies as we continue on in 2023?
Ryan Green:
I heard several clients talk about taking the rigor that they use to analyze media and using that to analyze messaging. Johnson and Johnson talked about building basically a scorecard like we promote. They called it a best practice index that they hold everybody in their marketing ecosystem to, from publishers, to their agency, to the creatives, the creative and the messaging themselves. There's a lot more creative testing that's happening, messaging, headline, different types of content. Holding ambassadors and influencers responsible for performance as well. Performance media has that mindset perpetrating not just to brand media dollars, but to the messaging and to the qualitative side of the coin as well, and that's something we're leaning into. I think that's something that's really important. If media's the flywheel of marketing, you can't plan your communication strategy without content in media coming together, without knowing what you're going to say and how you're going to promote it, without knowing who the audiences that you're talking to are, and what your plan is to make quick optimizations and when not to over-optimize and take a slower approach. So that performance mindset is not just your SEM specialist anymore, it's not just in the domain of programmatic and automation. It's everywhere. I think over the nine years that we've been in business, we've cultivated that mindset and that's going to extend into other areas on behalf of our clients.
Elise Stieferman:
Well, great. It sounds like you were able to get a lot of really good information from our fellow ANA members, and we appreciate you sharing your insights and hope our listeners were able to apply some of this thinking to their strategies.
Ryan Green:
Thanks, Elise.
Elise Stieferman:
Thank you for listening. Coegi is an industry leading performance marketing agency based in the Midwest. We've learned a lot since our founding in 2014 and started The Loop Marketing podcast to share some of our hot takes on marketing trends we're following, best practices we've discovered, and actionable tips for improving your digital strategy. We'll see you next time.
