CTV Measurement Unpacked: Incrementality, Attribution & Holdout Testing | Tom Rathbone

Tye DeGrange (00:01.401) Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast. I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and I'm really excited to talk to Tom Rathbone today. Tom, how are you, Tom Rathbone (00:12.426) I'm excellent. How are you doing? Tye DeGrange (00:14.755) I love that. love that. Got a little time to take care of some stuff yesterday. We were talking about the weekend. You got some things accomplished yesterday in your free time. Tom Rathbone (00:25.398) Yeah, yeah, I was fortunate enough to be able to take the day and just bundle it all and just go down the to do list and I got halfway through it. But that's pretty good. So I got that monkey off my back for a couple of things. Yeah. Tye DeGrange (00:34.755) Yeah, it's the best, man. Sometimes you got to do it. Just take a day. And it sounds like, you know, I talk about cowboy code and some of the ranch lifestyle stuff. You've had some experience around horses and that lifestyle yourself, which is pretty cool. Tom Rathbone (00:52.13) Yeah, we grew up with them. I grew up with a horse and working like my first jobs are all down at the stables. and yeah, we live out in pretty much horse country here too. So it's, I love the animals. I can't stand them. They're idiots, but I love them. So, hopefully we never get one. Yeah. Tye DeGrange (01:03.917) Awesome. Yeah, that's hilarious. It's like we were saying, you kind of know too much sometimes around them, knowing that is good, very cool, man. A lot in common. It's a small world. So for those of you don't know, Tom is an amazing resource, affiliate leader, partner marketing leader, analytics product leader. Tom Rathbone (01:21.922) Yeah, for sure. Tye DeGrange (01:33.613) and guests on the pod and we're excited. It's going to be a good one today. So right now you're focused on product at TV Scientific by Pinterest. And prior to that did some really interesting things in agency measurement and product development. So you've got some good experience to bring to what's been a good roster of folks on the pod. Thanks for coming on. Tom Rathbone (01:55.542) Yeah, I'm so excited to be on here. Tye DeGrange (01:58.267) Heck yeah, man. So you've seen years and years of this space in affiliate. You've seen some amazing, like the always be testing pod is perfect for you because you've seen so much measurement, testing, experimentation, you've seen scaling programs. What's a big learning that sort of changed how you think about affiliate marketing? Tom Rathbone (02:23.586) Yeah, think there's a lot, I'll kind of back into this one, I think. So you see a lot of feedback in the space about affiliate marketing, not being a set it and forget it channel. And we don't need to harp on that. But I think a lot of that comes from relying on really simple measurement. If you're going to use last click single touch point measurement as a metric for success, and that's it. in my opinion, it's just not productive. think you're going to end up with a program that ends up being a call center and a time suck and all these things, but it's not actually producing growth for your business. And I think the biggest learning for me that kind of came into that was when I started throwing away, last click just entirely and started looking at, the nuance in marketing measurement and trying to scale that nuance. let's scale the. the look into a linear attribution model or a first click or compare sessions to clicks and see what we learn from there and try and scale that. And I think when you start doing that, you, really peel back the onion in a nice way. And then you start getting into really productive conversations on a like per partner basis. Like what are they doing? Where are they falling in a customer journey? And how can we get more of good stuff and less of the bad stuff? And, and ultimately just have more, more productive conversation that leads to growth and not just, um, a lot of. Tye DeGrange (03:28.399) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (03:50.936) frustration at vanity metrics, you know? Tye DeGrange (03:52.089) Yeah, yeah, I love that. It's such a philosophical alignment to help people unpack where the value is happening, where the measurement is happening, where you should be focused and not just looking at it from a myopic, one lens perspective. And I think that's what you're bringing to this, is, and you have brought to it, which is really fantastic for people. Tom Rathbone (04:17.119) Yeah, I find that there's a lot, the best data analysis that I've seen usually has a really strong storytelling component to it. It's not something you can just put in someone's, in front of someone's face and say like, here it is, good or bad. There's a narrative, there's a story here that we have to kind of unpack because I compare marketing to economics a lot. It's like a dismal science. People do stupid, irrational things, myself included. Tye DeGrange (04:44.727) Is it? Is it? Tom Rathbone (04:45.705) And we're not trying to understand like perfect intent all the time. There's a story underneath the data that we need to uncover to get to the more productive decisions. Tye DeGrange (04:55.545) Yeah, I love that. The economics is a fun discipline and one with tons of corollary to marketing, right? I love that. You you've gone through so much in measurement in your career and now you find yourself in TV measurement with TV scientific and Pinterest. How is it different? Tom Rathbone (04:59.885) Yeah, totally. Tom Rathbone (05:19.999) It's a lot different. especially like historically, you know, TV was probabilistic to a pretty extreme degree with Nielsen boxes and things like that. And fortunately with CTV, we've gotten so much closer, but we're still relying on, trying to tie together and add view to something down the road. And I think that TV measurements really tricky because a, you are relying on more view through attribution. So. Tye DeGrange (05:30.82) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (05:49.743) There's no clicks in the TV, at least not to any significant degree right now, like that consumer behaviorism hasn't caught up. And then it's also like, are upper funnel behaviorisms. People discover brands and see TV. And there's often another device in play as well. So I think we're trying to tie together more of, are we introducing, we? Tye DeGrange (05:56.443) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (06:10.275) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (06:16.086) reaching new customers are ultimately converting, we hiring the funnel? And then try and use all the rich data we have in TV to do a better job of that. One of the cool things about CTV is that there's a ton of data signal in as well. You can get a ton of signal from some of these providers for on a content basis, on a viewership basis that is really, really strong data that you can't really get elsewhere. You don't really get that from other Tye DeGrange (06:18.767) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (06:27.259) you Tye DeGrange (06:33.691) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (06:44.048) Yeah. Tom Rathbone (06:45.41) like on the publisher side, the affiliate publisher side in the more traditional affiliate marketing. So it's nice to have tie into more upstream data sources. Tye DeGrange (06:49.221) Sure. Tye DeGrange (06:55.129) Yeah, I love that. think there's, you know, I was on a panel with your teammates years ago and like our team has just really jumped into this world and been a big advocate and seen some of the value that you guys are providing. And I think to be able to. I think there's also, and I don't know, not to get too far afield, but I feel like there's this trend of sort of this convergence of brand and performance that's happening a little bit. And I think that. And I think it also is the trend of recognizing that affiliate as we know it is actually an enablement of like so many other channels like connected TV. And I think there's this weird misnomer of the name of affiliate. And it's not like we can just easily slap another name on and assume it's gonna be understood, but. Tom Rathbone (07:40.782) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (07:53.859) It's really cool to know that you can get access to that. It's one of the things we really enjoy bringing to brands. And it's so fascinating to hear how that performance and how that measurement's landing for your stakeholders and your clients and your brands that are on ConnectedDB. Tom Rathbone (08:10.958) Yeah, I we can, I'll get, I'll get, I'll join you getting too far afield. Cause we can get pretty philosophical about this, but I feel like for, yeah, for, yeah, for a decade plus, like brands, the agencies alike have all been clamoring for upper funnel influence, you know, anything beyond what LastClick really measures in the, in the technology, the industry, like nothing is really caught up to that. I feel like. Tye DeGrange (08:15.867) Let's do it. The world's our oyster. Tye DeGrange (08:29.211) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (08:37.388) because we've had lot of entrants like TV Scientific to the space, but even more recently, the change in paradigm that AI is bringing in GEO to the mix, now there's more pressure to measure things, upper funnel and other signals that we're getting like a knock-on effect in affiliate, and we're seeing those things actually pick up pace now. And I there's more... interest and more accessibility and more direction on a product side towards measuring those more, you know, influential touch points that are growing businesses and not just pushing conversions over the line or latching onto something that was going to happen anyways. Tye DeGrange (09:03.749) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (09:10.992) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (09:16.272) Yeah. Yeah, and I think like it's not all and you might, I know you'll have some strong opinion on the measurement side of it, but I feel like from my knowledge, the IP based information is just so helpful. And to be able to see halo effect, some performance, some brand impact within your ecosystem of connected TV, it almost. Again, this is a little bit of a leap here, but it almost feels like there's a flavor of what MMM is attempting to be. And that goes into a whole other measurement question. But I just think there's some of that is why, do you think some of that is why it's really catching fire in a good way? The measurement, the measurability of something that used to be very unmeasurable, like less measurable. Tom Rathbone (09:51.788) Hmm. Tom Rathbone (10:08.838) Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think that there's a lot more technology around measuring upper funnel impact. I think there's more appetite and more acceptance of those not being perfectly deterministic all the time. I feel like in the affiliate channel, everything has to be so auditable to like a pure deterministic effect historically. Tye DeGrange (10:16.378) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (10:23.844) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (10:31.919) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (10:34.958) Um, which is, is great, but it's also an impediment to growth. Uh, it's not always productive to be able to do that. And if we can get something that is very, very reliable, but not perfect all the time, then I think we can, um, we can grow more and we can test more and we can learn more and hopefully grow a business instead of, um, you know, trying to find something that has a margin of error of zero. Yeah. Tye DeGrange (10:41.199) Yep. Tye DeGrange (10:52.153) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (10:59.479) Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you got to think a little bit bigger. You mentioned deterministic and I think you've obviously lived and breathed measurement. For those in the audience that are maybe not as familiar with some of the terminology, can you maybe just share a little bit more of what you mean by deterministic for folks that are not as measurement-centric? Tom Rathbone (11:20.032) Yeah, that's actually a fair question because sometimes I see it used a bit differently. So deterministic will be if we can trace an individual touch point that happened to an actual purchase with very strong data signals, with a very high confidence, know, a perfect confidence, a perfect deterministic will be like, if we could tie it to an individual email address that they put in, right? Like that is really hard to, to to argue against probabilistic will be more of like, well, we saw like this fingerprint, this device ID or like earlier in the funnel or a household IP or the business IP. And we saw a lift down the road. These are more correlation, maybe really strong correlation, but not perfect causation. So I think they think the bleeds over, you you get, as you get more Tye DeGrange (11:50.618) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (12:13.135) Yeah, I love that. Great. Tom Rathbone (12:17.719) As a probabilistic gets better and better at some point it becomes kind of deterministic. So there's definitely a gradient there. Tye DeGrange (12:24.675) Yeah, what a great description, Tom. Thank you. That's super helpful for people. Yeah. And like, it's fascinating to think about how you, I think another piece that I find to be really compelling about what TV scientific and what you, the team has been able to do is not only have a measurement lever that's pretty, you know, as you said, pretty viable, but also be willing to test, you know, obviously the theme of the pod. And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about, you know, just some of the things that you view as how does that measurement work for people that are not less familiar, kind of setting it up for true success? How are you kind of seeing folks counsel and do it the right way? Tom Rathbone (13:21.611) Yeah, it's tricky. We've got to make sure that because we're tying together a view on a device, this is cross device tracking, a view on one device with a sale on the other device. We've ultimately got to make sure that the tracking is universal and like rock solid. Tye DeGrange (13:35.655) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (13:43.674) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (13:43.76) We don't want scenarios where we're conditionally firing tags or they're a little buggy or they're slower on the slow on a load order. Um, we've got to be able to see all of the data coming in because, um, sometimes brands will try and engineer attribution upstream because they see certain signals that they feel are indicative of it coming from a certain partner or a channel or something like that. But in this case, they don't see that they don't. Tye DeGrange (14:05.199) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (14:11.947) We see the stuff upstream, those views, and we need to see what happens. Sounds like you're to be able to connect the dots. And that has to be like very, very tight. And we get into trouble when it's not, when there are gaps, when people think, brands think they have a, tag deployed universally, but actually they don't, or they have some conditional firing logic they didn't know they had because, you know, one of the web devs has a certain policy, uncertain tag and loading orders and things like that. So we want to make sure that. Tye DeGrange (14:16.187) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (14:21.903) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (14:41.273) that's like in a really good place for the data in perspective. And then you kind of get into like, all right, data from the actual test model, you know, what else, what are we gonna be testing and how you kind of structure that overall test media plan, I think has to be pretty strong as well. So you're gonna have a good model of like, all right, what are we measuring against? What's our control, et cetera. And that's gotta be, that's the other half to it. That has to be, you to be pretty, Tye DeGrange (14:58.969) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (15:05.913) Yeah. Tom Rathbone (15:11.138) specific about. Tye DeGrange (15:12.579) Yeah, and maybe like just taking that and riffing on it a little bit. It's sort of related to our next topic. But do you do you think brands take advantage of Like the holdout testing opportunity enough? Do you think they get enough signal that as they should generally speaking from your perspective? I find it kind of fascinating of, you know, obviously they have to prioritize and think about resource and time and cost. Those are not insignificant things. but curious to know what your perspective is on like, do brands really take advantage of the testing capabilities as much as they should? Tom Rathbone (15:54.708) I don't know if it's as much as they should. They certainly don't as much as they could. I think we often run into that challenge of, know, is it going to be productive? Or are we getting too academic with it? And I think that it is often a trap to want to overtest sometimes because you want to know the answer to it. Tye DeGrange (15:59.727) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (16:12.379) Totally. Tye DeGrange (16:17.455) Yes. Tom Rathbone (16:19.779) and there's like some anxiety for future budget and you want to protect it. And that's all very valid. but if you overdo it, then you're just, you're, you're stuck trying to answer questions that aren't actually going to move the needle. So I think it's trying to strike a balance of like, what are we testing and what are we going to do with it when we do test? And if we can have a good perspective on that, then I think then you're in, it's worth it to test more. Tye DeGrange (16:24.741) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (16:31.396) Agreed. Tye DeGrange (16:37.881) Mm-hmm. I love that. Tye DeGrange (16:44.559) Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I've seen, I've seen brands get too much minutia there for sure. And I think there is a happy balance. And I think like that's, that's the magic that I think it's hard to strike. I don't see it always struck just right often enough. Tom Rathbone (17:01.751) Yeah, like if you're going to say, you know, we have a budget of, Hey, we're going to spend 50 grand in this campaign over the next year. And we want to spend 30 grand testing or something. That's like, know, obscure example, but like, it's always not going to be worth it. But if you're saying like, Hey, we've got a $10 million campaign in the line. We want to take a beat and do a quick early test on like a 50 grand study just so we can feed that into the model. Like absolutely makes sense. You should do it. it quick. Tye DeGrange (17:09.199) Yes. Tye DeGrange (17:13.079) Yeah. Yeah. Tye DeGrange (17:26.329) Love it. Yeah, fail fast, learn fast, scale, all that fun stuff. What are some of the missed numbers you see in testing and missed? Obviously, you've seen a lot. I'm curious to hear your perspective there. Kind of dovetails into what we just shared. Tom Rathbone (17:30.255) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tom Rathbone (17:46.741) Yeah, I think often the studies will come out with some sort of a lift. But is that lift one that's worth chasing? Is this lift going to be something that's going to grow the business? And is it statistically significant enough to do so? And I think that often we'll kind of get stuck in that minutiae, as you said. Tye DeGrange (17:58.704) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (18:21.034) And started looking at that and started to be like, okay, we have a moderate confidence in this moderate lift that was moderately going to grow the business if we scaled it. And I think we kind of, or it can be that we're going to have a low impact in the business, a high, you know, high, a high confidence in like a low lift. You know, there's like those things where we can just get stuck on the Tye DeGrange (18:33.947) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (18:41.413) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (18:45.326) Mm-hmm. Tom Rathbone (18:50.256) the confidence rating of what we're measuring and we kind of lose sight for why we're doing the thing that we're doing. And I always fall back on that. Like, all right, what's the point of what we're doing here? Are we gonna make an impact with it? And I think that there's also just so much, I'm definitely an acolyte of Dr. Augustine Faux and all his great content out there. I there's just so, oh yeah, I mean. Tye DeGrange (18:53.377) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Tye DeGrange (19:01.306) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (19:05.091) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (19:15.237) Great, great reference. Tom Rathbone (19:19.042) Side note, what an absolute like content machine he is. But there's just so much junk data out there and junk measurement. And it doesn't make sense when you dig into it a little bit too. And I think that that's when it comes to testing, there's such a data fidelity problem and you've got to have such control around your inputs and your outputs and feel really good about those so that the signal you're going to get is one you can bank on. But yeah. Tye DeGrange (19:28.656) Mm-hmm. Tye DeGrange (19:36.026) Yeah. . Tye DeGrange (19:46.981) Yeah, I guess I also like the theme that I think you're, I'm picking up what you're saying around kind of standing me checking the direction and the human element and the qualitative element, which is what it's come up a lot on the pod recently around the topic of testing and the old, think Pezos made it famous and a few other people talk about it a lot of like, you you run an experiment, the qual and the quality are kind of, you know, tying up or not really decisive. You tend to like lean into the human element of it or sort of like what you set out to do as opposed to like reading too much into the data. You know, obviously there's various ways to approach something like that, but I don't know, just sounds like you're taking a pretty common sense approach to it, which I think is pretty refreshing. Tom Rathbone (20:37.86) Yeah, I think I definitely like even in my personal life, I have a bit of a productivity complex. So at some point, when we start getting a little academic, I start getting a little like, I get a spider sentencing going on. And I'm like, hang on, like, why are we doing what we're doing here? Guys? Are we getting lost in, in like the smarts of it all? And it's really hard. Like I work with so many brilliant people, much, much, much smarter than me. Tye DeGrange (20:55.801) Yes. Tom Rathbone (21:07.26) but sometimes we get stuck on the smarts and we get start drinking our own Kool-Aid. but it's, we've lost the productivity signal on it. We need to back up for a second and, and re-center. Yeah. Tye DeGrange (21:08.837) Love that. Tye DeGrange (21:13.327) Mm-hmm Tye DeGrange (21:20.153) Love that. One of my dad's famous cowboy quotes, as I'll call them, is, don't mistake motion with progress. I think you said it as well, which I think is awesome. This is a good one around the testing topic, which could be more appropriate, deciding what to run, what test is worth doing, what kind of guides you and what's the framework you use to think about experimentation? Tom Rathbone (21:29.744) That's a great one. Yeah. Tom Rathbone (21:50.449) I mean, so you asked what guides me. So I'll take like a personal perspective on it because it's certainly not like the right perspective, but I tend to like, I tend to like bigger swings. Um, so I want to have a plan for what are we doing after this? Like, where are we looking to go? What's the thesis that we're looking to prove and how far are we looking on that? If we're looking to do something kind of Tye DeGrange (21:55.867) Sure, sure. Tom Rathbone (22:17.548) optimization or increment incremental improvement level. Like, okay. Then sometimes it's nearly not worth doing, but I want to have a plan for like, we, we want to do this, take this big swing. Let's backtrack and build out a model for what that swing needs to be. And then here's our, our core model that we're going to start feeding data into with that testing. So we, we want to have a means to that end. is that end compelling enough to justify all the work that ladders up to it? And if I don't have a good, not like perfect, just directional plan on like what this is going to look like and what we're kind of going towards, then I'm probably not going to look for something else. That's going to be more compelling. It's going to be easier to get resources for because it's more exciting and there's more upside. And then it's going to be worth the squeeze down the road. Tye DeGrange (22:58.139) Yep. Tye DeGrange (23:08.667) Yeah, I love that. I, I spoiler alert. think that is the Tom approach is the right approach on that one. Cause I think you have to have enough juice there to justify all that effort and time and energy. I just, yeah, I think, I think you're on the lot of. Go ahead. Tom Rathbone (23:14.352) Nice. Tom Rathbone (23:23.448) Yeah. But it's also got, it's, kind of have like a plan for what you're going to do with it too. You'd get it, not like a perfect, we don't have to design the whole product around it, but just the worst thing is when you have a vague idea of something and then you do a test and the test is great. And then, and then you're stuck at like, now what you don't have a plan for like where you're going after that. And then you just get the excitement wears off. gets deprioritized and just, it gets relegated to the world of academia then. You just get stuck in like this cool thing that you did, but the business is all looking at other bright shiny things because you weren't ready for then what, then then what, then then what. I think you need like that phased approach. We're gonna get the data, we're gonna feed it into the model. That's gonna justify this next level of investment where we do these new things and build these new things and kind of have everything ready. Tye DeGrange (24:08.004) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (24:13.113) Yeah, I love that planning and prep and we've instilled and talked about that a ton around, you know, the hypothesis documentation and then like if we, if this does prove out, then what do do about it, which I think you're totally highlighting. Tom Rathbone (24:29.134) And are we ready to do that too? Because you don't want to test too early. Otherwise if you test, then six months go by and then you're ready to build something. But gosh, right now six months is freaking eternity. Like everything has changed. So you got to test again. Tye DeGrange (24:40.539) That's a really good point. That's amazing. Obviously, measurements are your strength. What do you think you're bringing to the Pinterest team and the TV scientific team around principles of measurement, if you will? And I think you've touched on some of those themes already, but I'm just curious. Tom Rathbone (24:47.831) Yeah. Tom Rathbone (25:07.088) Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of great, people here that measure that are just brilliant minds in measurement here. It's just a pleasure to work with them. think one thing I'm bringing, which I've always kind of brought around with me wherever I was is my, and we talked about earlier too, or I did talk about earlier that like getting away from these single touch point measurements, especially last click type measurements, and then trying to Tye DeGrange (25:13.445) Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Tom Rathbone (25:36.413) focus on broader attribution models, even first click, but then more linear, more fractional models, just where are we contributing? Where are we driving growth? And how can we kind of measure that and get away from these more like classic affiliate vanity metrics? And given that TV scientific and falls into kind of a affiliate ish right on the edge there, sometimes depending on the brand more than others. we can get kind of get stuck on those single touch point measures of success. And that doesn't do a good job of measuring whether or not this partnership is productive. And I want to always focus on, even if it's not our measurement, even if we're integrating with a, an MMM or an MTA partner, having that data there and understanding it and learning to storytell with it so that we can have like, a better growth strategy with that. brand longer term and as opposed to a one-off campaign that was a good or bad, we can say, well, here are all the signals we saw from it. It's across the funnel like halo. We had a great halo. We got beat out by, you know, these other lower funnel touch points. That's fine. but we contributed in these ways. think that kind of tells a story of like, now where do we go next quarter? What do we change? How do we invest more? Tye DeGrange (26:36.901) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (26:44.315) Yeah. Tom Rathbone (27:04.28) more budget and do something differently on top of that. Tye DeGrange (27:07.675) Yeah, you mentioned MMM a little and it reminds me of some conversations I've had around affiliate and connected TV sort of separately, ironically based on our previous mentions. But in the context of. like a CMO, fractional CMO, heavy measurement approach, like very rigorous measurement and holdout testing and incrementality testing. And a lot of very smart, objective individuals that are looking across multiple channels, but also have some expertise in connective TV and affiliate, many of them found, and it's not always going to be the case with every test or every brand, but. really positive correlation and positive view on the incrementality of affiliate done the right way and connected TV. So I think it's kind of, it's not always the case. It's not always gonna win every time, but I think there's just a really good body of evidence to support what essentially we're both doing in a way that's like, we wanna put these things up to the test. We don't want them to. claim they're the winner when they're not. And in fact, they're frequently coming up as an incremental lever for brands. So I figured you have some thoughts on that point, but I just think it's so nice to see it being able to be put up to the test. I like to see that, know, I think you and I are aiming for that for the industry. Tom Rathbone (28:42.754) Yeah. mean, CTV's benefits from some of that in a lot of those like more CMO level conversations and MMMs, they build upon impression level data. And that's what CTV uses. One of, think, boy, we can get philosophical real easily on all of these. think one of the biggest disservice is that the entire affiliate channel has done to itself over the last decade is not prioritizing impressions and just accepting it and not pushing harder for that. And like, I understand technically why they don't exist and are unreliable, but these are choices we made. And that has resulted in lower spend and lower trust and confidence over time. And had we 20 years ago put the basis on like, we need to make sure impressions are always there, think the conversations over the last 20 years would have been a lot different. Tye DeGrange (29:28.955) Yep. Tye DeGrange (29:32.803) Yeah, amen to that. That's spot on. We're moving and counseling people there quickly. it's, you know, there's a lot of things that make it tricky, as you know. Tom Rathbone (29:44.849) Yeah, I mean, it definitely opens the door to like crappy impression data, right? And that needs to, we need to have a solve for that, but that is a very accessible solution there. There's technology and platforms, a ton of them out there that can help you validate that data as being legitimate impression level data. Let's use that. Tye DeGrange (30:04.645) Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. We talked a little bit about redesigning or how could you think through affiliate and it's sort of, you kind of touched on a great one around impressions and exposure, but if there was something else that you think you could expand on redesigning affiliate ecosystem, what would you consider making changes to or would you suggest? Tom Rathbone (30:34.888) besides getting rid of like the last click thing, which everyone talks about a lot. thankfully people are talking about it more because I feel like I've been screaming into the void for a long time on that one. but I also, yeah, I also feel like, one of the better things that when I've worked with brands direct and the better things we could do more productive things we can do is to stop using affiliate network data as your source of truth for performance. Use it as your source of truth for costs. Tye DeGrange (30:43.771) I'm with you. . Tom Rathbone (31:04.272) it is. But like look elsewhere, look in, look in GA4, you can do a great job with it. You can get a lot more out of that than you probably are. But then look at other great platforms like Triple Whale, like Northbeam, like Rockerbox, whichever and start looking at it on a per partner basis outside of that network. Do the things tag it appropriately so you can do that, that's like table stakes. But you've got to pull out of using those affiliate platforms as like the measurement for success because invariably it's only, you can do a lot with these networks. I know you can measure a lot of channels in them and you can do a lot more, but those are edge cases. Most brands aren't set up to do that. it always has a narrow view and it's not productive. not gonna be able to scale the nuance that the data can provide for you in other platforms if you're just using affiliate hour. Tye DeGrange (32:06.191) Yeah, it's amazing to me, similar to what you're saying, how many people are overly reliant on last click, how many people are over-reliant on the network. And like you, I mean, we absolutely love diving in and looking at data, in-house data, other platform data, doing some real proper comparison around that, because like you said, it's not telling the whole story, which is really unfortunate. Tom Rathbone (32:32.176) Yeah, I think it does everybody a disservice. think there's a lot of, on the brand side, lot of affiliate managers who are managing the affiliate channel. And before they came on board, success was measured based on the data from the affiliate platform. And then they came on board and they're just kind of continuing that because that's what the, that's what the, company kind of the structure of it demands. But I don't think it does them a service because I think you're going to someone's going to come in that room and question the actual growth that's happening and you're not going to be able to defend it because you don't have that perspective outside of that. So you've got to almost retrain the business around you and I think that's where you're to lead out and get more productivity out of the channel. Tye DeGrange (33:04.133) Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Tye DeGrange (33:23.003) Yeah, yeah, nailed it. Tom, this has just been amazing. It's been awesome to have you drop knowledge, have you come in and chat. We always have such good conversation. Just coming down the homestretch to get to know you a bit better. What's something that people might not know about you? Tom Rathbone (33:45.009) This is like a really hard question because I'm like privileged to have a lot of really great friends in the industry and those friends love to pick on me and embarrass me incessantly. So I feel like everybody knows everything about me because I just feel like everyone's little brother sometimes and they just kind of rat me out of my embarrassing things. So I don't know. Tye DeGrange (33:45.837) on the spot. Tye DeGrange (33:57.455) Ha ha ha ha ha. Tye DeGrange (34:05.883) I love that. I need to step up my game and giving me more shit. That's my takeaway. Tom Rathbone (34:12.592) Yeah. Oh, there's a, there's a whole bunch of bullies you can join in with. I, I, feel like it's also tricky because I'm, I'm a bit of a hobby, like a hobby hoarder. Um, so I've always got something going on, something new that I'm working on or building or, or dealing with my hands. I think that's just kind of like me outside of, outside of work, um, is, is still kind of work, but I, I just like to move things forward and, and test and learn and whether that's building something or. Tye DeGrange (34:29.124) Love it. Tye DeGrange (34:37.199) Yeah, that's cool. There you go. Tom Rathbone (34:41.872) I've been doing a lot of painting lately or black backpacking or something like that. just tends to be, yeah, a hobbyist collector, I think is the thing that people may not realize about me. It's a problem. Tye DeGrange (34:45.826) Awesome. Tye DeGrange (34:52.891) I love that. I love that. you know, you join the ranks of dads. Congratulations. Tom Rathbone (35:01.988) Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. She's we just had our four month appointment this morning. she did great. She did great. She did not like the shots. They were, they were tough. She, was a new scream we discovered this morning. but, but it's been, it's been a great journey. I love being a girl dad so far. Yeah. Yeah. Tye DeGrange (35:08.709) Good. Tye DeGrange (35:14.811) yeah. Tye DeGrange (35:20.185) Yeah, that's amazing. Nothing better. That's so cool. Anything that surprised you or you thought about that was maybe better or worse or just any takeaways from the four months so far? Tom Rathbone (35:35.249) I talked to you about this one, but I'll repeat it because I'm still like flabbergasted by the time paradox that is the first few months where I can't believe it's only been two months since we were back in the doctors because it seems like it's been a year, but it also has flown by at the same time. I don't understand how things can seem so long and so short, so fast and so slow at the same time. Tye DeGrange (35:56.11) You Tye DeGrange (36:03.427) Yeah. Yeah. Tom Rathbone (36:04.62) It is an absolute like, yeah, it's melting my brain sometimes. And that has been very, very interesting to realize. I understand that it'll go a lot faster. It'll fly by soon. Like that's gonna pick up speed, especially now that she's moving, she's rolling around and stuff. But for now, I'm just kind of enjoying the mind melts that is the time paradox. Tye DeGrange (36:13.136) Yeah. Tye DeGrange (36:19.056) Yeah. Yeah. man. Tye DeGrange (36:29.531) That's awesome. I couldn't agree more. It's like you don't know what's up or down or how quickly or slow things are going and it's like joyous and then it's hard and you're sleep deprived and it's been a wild one for us too. Tom Rathbone (36:30.703) Yeah. Tom Rathbone (36:41.209) Right. Tom Rathbone (36:44.834) Yeah, it's been fun. I mean, I don't know about you, my second job is definitely like a baby photographer now. I spend like so much of my time. I have to look back. I passed pictures from months ago to realize how far we've come because when she was like a little tiny peanut on my chest, that feels like yesterday. It also feels like last year. But I have to look at physical evidence of that to realize how Tye DeGrange (36:52.181) I know. Tye DeGrange (37:05.701) Yeah. Yeah. Tye DeGrange (37:11.929) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. Congratulations and yeah, it's awesome, man. More good things to come. Tom Rathbone (37:12.73) Big she's gotten in just four months. Wild. Tom Rathbone (37:19.93) Thank you. I'm happy to join the DAG club that you've been in for a while now. It's great to be a part of it. Tye DeGrange (37:28.153) Yeah, welcome. It's so much fun. It's the best thing in the world, as you know. thanks for sharing. Thanks for coming on, Tom. I think this was a great episode on, it just totally nailed the theme of the pod and your measurement experience is a phenomenal fit. And just thanks for coming on, man. Appreciate you. Tom Rathbone (37:32.496) Yeah. Tom Rathbone (37:48.272) Like literally anytime it was a blast. really really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me Tye DeGrange (37:52.987) Heck yeah. Talk soon. Thanks everybody. Bye. Tom Rathbone (37:54.821) Later, Ty.