How brands and creators are fighting for your attention — and your money

Support for this show comes from Adobe. The all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio is reimagining how we use and interact with PDFs and the powerful impact they can have for your business and personal projects. And with their AI-powered PDF spaces, you can collect files, synthesize information, and even chat with an AI assistant for fast insights. It's time to do more with PDFs than you ever thought possible. And you can do that with Acrobat.

Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. That's adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair. Oh, yikes. Or for getting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education and human help when you need it. Learn more at Schwab.com.

I'm NFL linebacker TJ Watt, and this is my personal best. YPB by Abercrombie is the active wear I'm always wearing. That's why I reached out to co-design their latest drop. I worked with designers to create high-performance activewear that holds up to my toughest workouts. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in-store, online, and in the app. Because your personal best is greater than anything.

Hello and welcome to Decoder. This is Hank Green, the co-founder of Complexly, where we make SciShow and Crash Course and a bunch of other educational YouTube channels. I'm back in the Decoder guest host chair for another couple of episodes while Neelai is out on paternal leave. Today, I'm talking with Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi, who runs a major marketing and ad agency. You might remember Amy. Neil, I interviewed her for Decoder Live at an event in New York City almost a year ago.

But Neelai, who runs what might be called the last website on Earth, has a very different perspective on the world of digital marketing than I do. So as a career YouTuber, I had a lot of questions for someone in a position like Amy. I've been making videos on the internet for close to two decades now, and all the while, I've relied on advertising for a healthy chunk of the revenue my channels take in. I also run an e-commerce site, good.store, and of course, my big

online educational brand complexly. So one might think that I'm a marketing and advertising expert. But this stuff is really, really complicated. Almost like they're trying to make it that way. And frankly, there's a whole lot of it I still don't understand. For a lot of us, I suspect the world of digital marketing is a bit of a mystery. So...

I was happy to have Amy really break down how some of this works and why her industry feels like it sits at the center of almost everything that happens on the internet today. On the surface, this all sounds pretty simple. You build a brand. You try to create a story around your brand so people associate ideas and loyalties and all sorts of other warm, fuzzy feelings with the brand. And then you show them some ads to sell products or experiences or subscriptions or whatever it is you sell.

But I know from my own experience that that is far from the whole story. And as you'll hear Amy say, that old school Mad Men style of advertising is really a relic of the past.

Today, marketing and advertising is increasingly digital and diversified, spread out across a lot of different channels and coming in all shapes and sizes. The ads you see are different from the ones I see, and the ways brands market themselves online... can involve everything from brand deals with creators like me, big TV and movie promotion tie-ins, and then really analytic driven algorithmic tech stuff that can feel almost impenetrable to the average person.

And yet, as you'll hear Amy lay out, there's still a huge expensive draw for what you might call a collective shared experience. Something that resonates with a lot of different people all at once. Like, say, a Super Bowl commercial that plays. on TV, even if more people might watch it after the fact on YouTube.

There's also the AI of it all, which really seems like it's on a collision course with both the creator economy and the entire economic structure of the open web. I know this because Neil, I can't stop talking about it on Decoder. So I also had Amy walk me through what a modern...

digital marketing company really does, how different kinds of ads operate in this ecosystem, and how she sees all this changing in the future. Also, one of the things I've noticed about Amy is that she very rarely uses the word influencer. So I got to pick her brain about that. and the difference between an influencer and a creator, because I don't think that debate's dying anytime soon. Okay, Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi, here we go.

Amy Lanzi, you are the CEO of Digitas. Welcome back to Decoder. Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be back. I've been on Decoder. It's kind of scary. Is it scary sometimes? It's not kind of scary, but it's good scary because it makes you, I don't know, really be with it on what you're going to be talking about because we know the audience is very with it.

They're very with it. I was just talking to your colleague before you showed up. We were saying, hey, if the questions aren't hard, you don't get a chance to look smart. So, we have faith that you're going to look smart. I have a question, though, that's going to be maybe a weird one. I did a deep dive on your whole career, and I want to ask you a question. For most of my...

I had assumed that the number of seats on an airplane determined the number of tickets sold for that airplane. And now I have in front of me a person who can tell me why that is not the case. So, of course, we all have heard that our airplane is in an oversold situation and they start giving away free things in order for people to not take the not use their ticket. And you used to be part of that system. How does it work? And back when you did this decades ago.

What was the algorithm? How did you decide this? Well, it was at a time when it was really all human, which is interesting. We did have models. It was my first job after college. I went to SMU and I was a yield management analyst at American Airlines. And basically that job is how do you extract the most yield out of each flight? And the assumption is all seats are sold at the same price, as well as you can only sell the number of seats that exist. But have you ever missed a flight? I have.

That's why there's this whole team called yield management. And so you essentially look at the patterns of a flight. So I was assigned to Dallas to LaGuardia. Oh, that was like your, you had like one flight? Yeah, we would get assigned different routes. Or not a flight, but like a route. Yeah, you'd get assigned different routes. So I'll give you two. points here. The first was LaGuardia to Dallas. And so you assume a lot of business travel.

Someone may, you know, like you or myself now, okay, I'm on the 6 a.m., I'm maybe on the 7 a.m., or my meeting's running late, so I'll get on a later flight. So therefore, you get to make some assumptions on how many... how much you can overbook this flight. It's route specific. This makes sense. So if it's like a bunch of families going to Orlando, much less likely that they're going to miss their flight.

Yes. So as a kid, I really didn't pick up some of those consumer triggers as we would today. And I was assigned Dallas to Albuquerque. I didn't really think much about it, but that was also when it was the hot air balloon festival. I did not calibrate accordingly. And we had a gigantic oversold problem.

Because everyone showed up because this is a big sojourn for many. Yeah. I totally missed it. People like there's like a takeoff time. You have to make it. I miss the people who are traveling and planning to go from Dallas to Albuquerque to make the flight. And they weren't going to risk it like you and I might risk it if we're going for a business meeting or whatever it is.

And so then you get into that oversold situation and then you're the one that's figuring out how you are basically burning the profitability of this flight because you're prompting people to get off a plane for a planned trip, which is very different now if you're getting off for. a business trip, for example.

What was great about that job also was right out of college, it was non-revenue travel. So you could fly for free in the places that were a low load factor. So if they, you could just basically pay for the taxes on it. So we would play gate roulette. And we would pick places that we could all go to. And for the weekend, we went to like Des Moines, all kinds of weird places you wouldn't plan.

I love a weird accidental travel trip. Like, you know, you get stuck in Denver for 48 hours and you're like, I guess Denver. Sure. It's got stuff. We're going to Meow Wolf. I guess. It was great. And, you know, I...

My thing, too, is just, wow, I learned I had a front row seat to customer service and what that means. I bet they don't do that anymore. I bet they don't because I read this that they that they also like were like, and now you have to go and actually do the job of telling people that they're that they're fine.

is over assault yes well i did so they america was great about this they had us go work at a airport so i worked in miami which that's then all of a sudden you're like hi hank i see you're super whiz bang traveler and you're oversold and I'm not going to get you on this flight. And then you're calling the people. You're like, oh, do me a solid. I got to get them on the flight. So, yeah, it was great. It was a reminder of customer service.

Everything matters. Decisions you make in one place have a real impact on other people, even if they are invisible to you in the moment. It was a fantastic experience. Well, now you're the CEO of Digitas, which is an advertising agency inside of an advertising agency inside of an advertising agency.

agency, as far as I can tell. Something like that. Is that right? Something like that. Yes. And your parent company has been around for a hundred years. Next year is a hundred years. Wow. Oh, wow. That's real. I was guessing. No, that's real. Next year is 100 years. Yes. My God. So I have to say, I don't understand advertising. And I know that you also don't all the way, because what a mystery it all is to try and change people's behavior with messages that are paid for.

But I want to explain something else that I have never understood and I really want to know. So you've told me about how...

overbooked flights work. So help me with this. I've been part of the advertising industry for 20 years now because I make stuff and then I sell ads on that stuff. It feels like magic, though, like how any of this... works I guess how does it work like what it what are you doing that's a big wide question how do you how do you explain it like I don't know it feels it feels like it's all sort of like obvious and everybody's sort of seeing it all the time but like

Like I'm in it and I still am very confused. Yes. A couple of things. First, I would say there's a bit of a reframe from advertising like the Mad Men days where. You were in a room and you made a thing and then you watched. ABC, NBC, or CBS, and you saw this, or you saw a bus, like in New York, it's great to go see the auto home that was inside of a bus. And those were the only things. We lived in a very static world.

There's so much now. It's so fractured now, which I feel like maybe is, is that good for you? Well, so for me, it's Digitas is really a modern marketing agency versus an advertising agency. So that's a, that's a shift. Because the job is really building out a capability versus just the wallpaper you see so that I can figure out how I know much more about you through data. And I can magically surprise and delight Hank.

By understanding, I think I can get Hank to do the one more thing, whether it's buy a confectionery brand, book a trip to wherever, because I know a little bit about you because I'm picking up on the signals that you're putting out there. And then I'm... able to create one, create a relationship with you, but to get you to do the thing that I think will make you better, faster, stronger. That's how it works.

But in a previous, so 100 years ago, right, it was much more static, right? You had a story, you saw a thing, and most people did that thing. Now everyone is so distributed. You talk a lot about this in terms of distribution when you think about where you and Neelai speak. This is really about understanding how to make meaning. around the machines. This is what has become very hard.

So that if you are constantly just trying to win that algorithm, that gets hard unless you really stand for something in the world of AI. So you need to actually sort of make the market for yourself before you're just trying to. bid through terms to be able to beat the algorithms. It's very difficult to do that. So you have to really break through with real stories.

But then you also have to be very smart about being in tune and picking up those signals to then say, okay, I see you. I see that you're interested in something, and now I'm going to stay with you along that path to purchase or path to loyalty or whatever.

The job to be done is from the client. This sounds extremely personalized. Like you're going for for for me specifically talking about like my story and how you like like how do you connect with Hank Green, which is wild. Of course, you're like not. Theoretically, marketing to like any individual, though, with certain products, it feels like maybe you're aiming for like a total of 25 people who make decisions, but whatever.

Well, you know, there are cohorts that exist that then enable us to do this in a scaled manner. It's a very good question. That's where the magic of media and creative come together. So I can start to understand, okay, there's a group that's a sizable group. I'm not going to be weird. And I also, no one can afford to go find 25 people to be able to say like, okay, how do I do a better job with?

first-time expectant moms how do i become the brand of choice for first-time expectant parents how do and that's the way to think about it and there's a lot of people that and we think about ages and stages are in similar spots to create like these big frameworks. So then you can start using the power of all the data and technology that's in the market to be able to fine tune those messages to feel relevant to you. And follow me through that. Can I ask like a...

I got a YouTuber specific question and then I'm going to zoom back out. Sure, please. So imagine that there are two ways to advertise to show a 15 second spot. And one of those ways, it lets you target people with a ton of specificity. There are relatively fewer ads per minute of content. It's newer. It's a hipper place. It has higher value demographics.

has really good analytics for you. And then another place, you have no idea whether the people are watching the ads. The targeting is really broad. You're often only able to meet people, like hit people over 65 years old. Your ad is going to be sandwiched between like five other ads. Which one of those would you think would have higher CPMs? Which one of those would you think I would be getting paid more as a creator on that platform? I would think that the first one.

Yeah. And yet I feel as if, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I get paid less per advertisement by a lot than somebody who's making content on cable TV. I think this is where you get into the definition of, first of all, the way in. Did I find you on a creator platform or did I find you because I went through and did a deal with one of these?

previously known as broadcast networks or whatever. So now the entry point is much more around a media approach versus I really want to find people that are into Hank. Those are two different ways in. I'm confused by the difference between those two things. So let's say I want to do something on one of those major cable networks.

I might go in because I'm going through the media partner that represents those assets that are on that cable network. Okay. And I'm going to do a media deal that also enables me to have access to one of their stars. Oh, really? You're like buying, it's like part of a package deal and one of their stars is like, you know, a property brother or something.

Yeah, potentially. So you're leveraging your position to be able to then create a special integration for the brand they're representing. That's one way to do it. That's a different pricing mechanism than I go into a creator platform, which is like for us, we have influential. And I want to find someone that is very into someone like you. I'm talking about like buying just on YouTube, like buying through YouTube.

Well, it's the logic is a little similar in terms of how it happens, where YouTube is a whole different process in terms of the engagement model on how you're able to think about. buying within that world. I'm going to act like a little baby and ask you to tell me what an engagement model is. I don't. I'm so confused. That means in terms of how I go out to the market and buy certain things. Right. Right. So I.

If you're asking about why is one, the market kind of controls what is priced at what level. Aren't you the market? You're the buyer. So you determine what the price are. You determine what you're willing to pay, right? Well, it's a big market, first of all. But you, the advertising industry. I would assume it's worth more to you to advertise on TV than it is to advertise on YouTube per 15 second spot. I know that because you pay more for it.

Why is it worth more to be on TV? Do you think that the people in television are just better at selling you stuff? Like they work with you more. It's not an auction. I think it's just a different, like that's what I mean by engagement model. So the model is different in terms of how we are able to buy things from different partners. Just like it's different when you buy something at.

Walmart versus somewhere else. And so that's why I'm saying the engagement model is different. And so biddable spaces are different. There's so much more dynamic activity that's happening. on digitally native platforms versus some of the other ones, although they are starting to converge with the rise of CTV. So you are seeing these worlds more blurred. But that doesn't mean the commercial models have converged.

Models and measurement for each of these are different. So there's a little bit of on how you are making all of those things work together. Right. Because they're not exactly all the same. But there is the you know, some companies use certain analytic modeling that is also favorable for certain channels.

So it's not as simple as it seems in terms of how you can really, you know, put money in a calculator, put it in like it's a calculator and voila, this is what happens. That's not how it works because they're all not the same. Some are brand new.

TikTok is relatively new versus some of these other partners you're talking about. And so they're all not exactly the same. Every impression is the same, I guess, is the way to think of it. And they're all not measured. For sure. Yeah. Well, that's I mean, that is that is a real mess.

of like, how do you measure an impression and like the sort of, to me, I mean, maybe we should get into this for a second, but like, how do you think of a platform where everybody can skip the ad? instantaneously and have been trained by the platform to skip the ad. So like with all these swipeable platforms, there's no like ad that you hit that you can't swipe away from. Does that pose like even like some kind of threat to you? Like it's wild.

And what you see is then on those platforms, what you get is just a preponderance of ads for things that you can really tightly measure how much you spend versus how much you make. And so it's a very sort of home shopping network kind of experience. Yes, it is a threat or it's how do you compare that to someone that is watching a more traditional experience and they have their other phone in front of them. And so they're passively.

paying attention right it's like that that suggests so that so in one way you're actually legitimately measuring did someone skip or not if you think about it versus if your team is if you're like my mother's phrase I live my TV on for company. Yeah. That's also a whole other thing that I don't think we talked about. Which is like, that's kind of an amazing thing that makes me feel like YouTube is a really valuable place to advertise, not to rep my home base here. But like...

It's a lot harder for an unskippable ad on YouTube or YouTube reports whether or not someone skipped a skippable ad. You know that that person is there. They could mute their phone or their... monitor TV or whatever, but like they aren't probably for the most part. And, you know, maybe some of those, those mid roles, uh, people could be in the other room. They're using, leaving YouTube on for company, just like they did with TV, but it just feels like.

At this point, YouTube is TV. And it's surprising. If I was an advertiser, I'd be like, why would I ever, ever, unless I was trying to reach a very specific demographic, go on TV, where it remains more expensive? Depends. If you're in sports. That's an interesting place. There are some moments that push you to be not on YouTube. I am a big fan of YouTube. Many of my clients love the YouTube experience. You can search, shop.

social, all of those things coexist in one place. And it is the most watched thing that is horizontal in your living room. Yeah. You know, if you watch, you know, if I look at my 11 year old where they spend time watching Minecraft creators on YouTube in our living room when I would have watched. whatever show that was on. Right. So I agree with you, but you know, sometimes you're not going to get things like the Superbowl. For sure. We need to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

Support for this show comes from .tech domains. Naming your business can feel like naming a child. Of course, one of the main differences is that there could be a lot of different Johns in the world. But if someone already has the web domain you want, you're out of luck. With a .tech domain, you can secure the startup name you really want. No compromises.

Even better, using .tech signals to customers and investors that your business is tech-focused right from your domain. Just look at some of the companies already on .tech. CES.tech, the world's largest consumer tech event. And 1x.tech, an open AI-backed startup, are just a few of the hundreds of thousands of tech companies worldwide. And it's not just about having a name. It's about standing out. A .tech domain shows that your company is innovative,

forward thinking, and part of the global tech community. Whether you're launching a startup, a new product, or an online service, having the right domain is the first step to making your mark. You don't have to waste another minute compromising your business. Just go to GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, or wherever you buy domains and get your .tech domain today.

I'm Scott Hanson, host of NFL Red Zone. Lowe's knows Sundays hit different when you earn them. We've got you covered with outdoor power equipment from Cobalt and everything you need to weatherproof your deck with Trex Decking. Plus, with lawn cameras. from Scott's, and of course, Pit Boss grills and accessories, you can get a home field advantage all season long. So get to Lowe's, get it done, and earn your Sunday. Lowe's, official partner of the NFL.

Support for this show comes from LinkedIn. When you're a small business owner, your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place.

LinkedIn's new features can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote. Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. at the end of the day the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates and with linkedin you can feel confident that you're getting the best based on linkedin data 72 of smbs using linkedin

Say that it helps them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash partner. That's linkedin.com slash partner to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

We're back with Digitas CEO Amy Lanzi. Before the break, we were talking about why the advertising industry still puts such a premium on traditional television. But now I wanted Amy to walk me through what her agency might do if they were managing an e-commerce brand. like mine. To help me understand what Digitas does, and I think that Digitas is a very interesting piece of the advertising industry, to...

Really get nuts and bolts. Can you imagine for a moment that you are approached by a brand? They do about $10 million in business a year. They're small. They donate all of their profit to charity. They sell a variety of products. The idea is they're a store. Maybe it's a good dot store.

thing that I run. They have coffee and they have soap, and they're trying to figure out how to do marketing. If they approached you and were like, we're going to go big, we've got some money, we're going to try and get into this space, what would Digitas do? What services would they provide? How would they start? How would we start working together? What does that look like? Sure. So first we would think about how we describe what is the value prop of this company.

What is your right to win? And how do we start to tell our story? My right to win? Yes. God damn. That's why you're in this business. My right to win. I deserve your money. I deserve to destroy my competition. Yes. So what is the single thing that we, this consumers are going to rush to your connected ecosystem to?

make a purchase and tell everyone about it. So how, what do we stand for? How are we going to tell our story to the world? Part one. Second, how are we investing those dollars you might have to recruit and retain consumers? What makes sense? Are we spending all of our money on YouTube? Sounds like that's what you would like to do. But that's, you know, maybe I may not agree with that. I've had success on a variety of platforms, but I don't think that we're going to hit.

Hit HGTV anytime soon. So then we think about how are we going to be able to both recruit and retain the consumers you want so that you can grow. Third. And I'm guessing, but this feels like a very socially relevant type of organization, as well as the value prop you're putting out there is something we might want to have creators that are also.

loving this and wanting to make the market for you. That's something we call social as a system. So now I'm going to go out and say, we know that people that have cat video makers and people that make cooking videos and travel videos, those that follow those types of creators are also going to want to come and buy something from our store. So we're going to co-create with them so that they are then able to bring more.

understanding of our offering as well as eventually drive more sales, as an example. It's interesting, and I like this, that you talk... about the role of marketing in acquisition of a customer, but also the retention of that customer, which I completely agree with. I often find that when I'm working with marketing agencies, it's very sort of, you know.

acquisition cost focused and not much thought like retention sort of like is on us. We think about retention and that's not really sort of integrated into our marketing strategy. To me, I grew up on the 80-20 rule. In this context, what is the 80-20 rule? That 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customer base. So...

When you're obsessed with acquisition, you might not be getting incremental out of your core. You also might be losing them because you're doing things to drive acquisition that may turn off your core audience.

So you should be thinking about recruiting and retaining always as a way to think about creating your own brand flywheel. Yeah. Well, thank you for my free consulting. No problem. So tell me about Digitas. I guess we should decoder it. You've been here before, but how is Digitas structured? We are a modern marketing agency. We have five different practices.

that work together to deliver what we call networked experiences. That means how do I build experiences to be able to get Hank to move from like to love to loyalty with the brands that we represent? The practices are creative experiences, integrated media, CRM, commerce, social transformation.

We are powered by data and analytics. Okay. I got to make you define all those terms now. Okay. So you asked me creative experiences. So you asked me about this mythical company. That means what do I sound like? Like, what do I look like? What are the types of creative that I need to be able to engage with the consumers? Integrated media. How am I able to take the money that you have to spend in media and I'm going to tell you where to spend it? CRM.

This is loyalty. How am I SMSing you and sending you emails so that you do more things with me and like me even more? Commerce, how do I make sure that I'm showing up in easy ways and seamless ways for you to buy my things? And then the last one is social. How am I using creators? How am I showing up in social so I am making the market for myself? So Digitas refers to itself, describes itself as a networked experience agency. Yes. Again.

I got to ask you to define the terms. There's so many words in that order. I'm not quite sure. I think I actually, having done a little research, I think I know, but please tell me. Sure. Networked experience is essentially how we're delivering an experience around the consumer. so that we earn our way into your networks. You can't just put comms out there and put any communication out there and think that consumers are just going to take it. They are very hard to find.

And we are in an attention battle. So I have to earn my way in as a brand that you go to and you pay attention to. That comes from a combination of the things I talked about, which is like, what do I stand for? How am I going as a brand to make you faster, smarter?

stronger? How am I going to find you in the places you're spending your attention, whether you're watching sports or whatever that is? And then how do I bring in some of those other services I talked about so that I'm continuing to drive growth for the brands we work with? We have also noticed.

and our background research that things at Digitas are described as unicorns. So Digitas AI is the unicorn of AI operating systems. SWAT is run by our team of social unicorns. The headline on your careers page is unicorn.

Welcome. I was just talking to your colleague and in the background, there was an inflatable unicorn. Yes. So our people, our people are unicorns. Okay. And the people power the offerings from Digitas. Part of this, like it's a weird thing. So Publicis has a bunch of different agencies inside of it. So you're kind of, are you, I assume to some extent you're competing with your colleagues for business.

We are not competing with each other. So this is that's a very good question. Does it ever feel like you are? No, because the culture of publicist group is very much around we have the promise of the power of one, which is what. My boss's boss's boss says to our clients, which what that means is we are committed to bringing the very best talent and solutions to clients.

And those come from all different types of agencies, not just one agency. We're not biased by the one agency perimeter. This is very true. This is not true for every holding company. This is very much the core publicist group because we don't otherwise it's bad for clients. If I'm in a fight on revenue for me versus my sister agency, that's just not good for clients. That's a distraction. Yeah. You know, for me.

Digitas, when we think about ourselves as unicorns, the culture of Digitas is we're fearless, inventive, and generous. And our role is really... Finding those new inventive things that clients that come to us want and expect, that's a little different than some of where my sister agencies sit and where they focus on. So I'll give you an example. We worked with Reddit. to build out their Community Insights AI product. This is something that we co-created with them.

So that because we found so much of our strategic planners were coming in looking for unique insights around what's going on in Reddit. How are people talking about these brands? What can we find that would help me understand my right to win? See, I used it again. And so then we said to Retta, like, let's make product because this is something that we can do more with.

That's a little bit of the things that a Digitas would do for some of the other agencies may not focus on that. And then we build that into our value prop to clients. It also might be something that we give to other clients through that power of one model. So and that can you explain that product to me? So it's if I have a if I have a brand, if I have a candy, are you as like Reddit preventing you like kind of reports of the.

the buzz of communication of what's going on with M&Ms. That's exactly right. And it's basically, what can I learn from the chatter on Reddit that bubble up into insight so I can learn something that may not be expected, but is showing up in.

You know, Reddit is kind of the chat box, is like the gossip channel of the internet. A lot of it, yeah. And so this is a place for you to be able to look for those insights that might be the edges that then help you break through for that confectionery brand, for example. And then you can do like a Harry Styles flavored Oreo because that's what everybody wants. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Like I'll give you a real example. Okay. When we were working on Rivian.

Uh-huh. We were pitching their business, and Rivian is one of the most talked about brands on Reddit as an auto brand. Yeah. Kind of, you know. You would think just because they're an EV and they're not as giant as some of the other brands you might think of, but because the core of Reddit is really... quite tech-oriented or the original, you know, power users of Reddit make sense. So this is a place where... First adopter place.

Yeah, this is a place for Rivian. You may not spend more money on Reddit. You may spend more money on other places because they're trying to get moms to buy their product. So don't fish where you already have won the people. This is your recruit and retain story. Interesting.

So that was an example. And so we had a couple of those come our way. And then we said to Reddit, hey, we think this could be a really interesting product for us to build together so that we can get to these insights faster for our clients. Have you thought about doing that with other platforms, Twitter, YouTube? It seems like there's a lot of insight, a lot of...

A lot of buzz happens in comments in various places. We have different engagement models and products with different partners. When TikTok, four years ago, we built the TikTok community commerce. This was really before TikTok understood the power potential of TikTok shops. Oh, I mean, I think they understood it because. In the U.S. This is a U.S. story.

So what does that mean if a brand wants to do something on TikTok shops? What does TikTok need to do? What do I as a brand need to do to be able to stand that up, et cetera? So we worked with them to build that out. And then part of it is being able to get the connection so that you're able to understand what's possible and also is it moving? What insights are driving that assortment I should be selling on TikTok shops, for example?

And is that like a revenue generator for Reddit? Like, are you paying for that insight? No, it's not something like that. It's more that the more you use a product like that, therefore, more partners want to do more things with Reddit, whether it's more media investment or more.

you know, content they're creating specific to Reddit. So it's more of, think of it as like a more of a lead gen opportunity for Reddit. Right. And that's something that you helped Reddit build internally? Yes, we helped them on the product roadmap. Interesting. Weird.

We're talking about AI. We're talking about AI. Everybody's talking about AI. We've brought up AI several times already. Yes. I don't know. First, is there a threat there? Is there like a world where a lot of this work is just... being done by machines? This is the big hot topic in my industry. And of course, there is a threat that there is a CMO that decides they're just going to feed. pick AI partner and dump everything into that and let the robots take over.

But I think we've also determined that humans matter. Humans matter to be able to come up with actually creative ideas, not just content. It also matters when you think about brand governance and brand safety, right? When you think about, you know, AI to creative. And if you're familiar with programmatic and the amount of brand safety that's required to make sure that you are putting places in the right areas as well as that's the right content, all of that is even more important.

So there's governance that's required so that brand is holding up to the integrity of what the brand should be and what it stands for. And that's still humans that need to be able to do that. To me, the future is around how these things work together. As you mentioned, Digitas AI, for me, we've been working on that for two years. And it really is, how do we create agents to minimize low-value activity that our clients...

don't care about, but we need to do. So then you're freeing up your time to do things that are human-based and more strategic, and that's more valuable to them. Yeah. Right. So like reporting, pull the report. Sure. We did the report. Great. The insights around the report come from your brain. So let's make sure that we are.

either whether it's through automation or it's through agents, to be able to get to that level of output, but then be able to take the brand and our clients to the next place they should based on what we've learned from. this assessment, because we've done that much faster. I'm of the opinion that this transition happens more slowly than we might expect that it otherwise would, because people have relationships with people.

Ultimately, Digitas, an advertising agency, might be able to introduce some efficiencies, but ultimately... A lot of what I would be paying for, if Goodstore was working with Digitas, would be like someone who I trust. who can explain the choices that are being made with my money. And then, like, you know, sort of starting...

from a place of a little bit of trust and working towards a lot of trust. And I guess I could probably develop that with an agent at some point. But I feel as if that is going to take a lot of time, especially, you know, ultimately, a lot of CMOs. I don't know, maybe. You let me know. Maybe not actually the most innovative thinkers. I'm sorry. I feel me saying that. No, no. I think it is a people business. You know, clients call me because they say, I don't know what to do. What should I do?

And that sometimes is a technical question. And to your point, CMOs need to now be full stack operators. And that means you now need to be technically advanced to be able to choose between all these AI products that are coming at you, which is not really the core of most of them. It's not that they can't get there. It's just that they don't have another.

you know, a new set of a new team as well as a whole, you know, that's a full other day job to be able to determine all of that and sort of the modern tech stack. So the promise of it is great, not to mention. Brand managers aren't trained in business school to figure out how to use the Adobe or Salesforce AI products. Yeah. So let's pretend everything turns over. Then all of a sudden they graduate and they suddenly get out of business school or whatever and they go to CPG XYZ.

They don't know how to use that. They don't know how to use Adobe Journey Manager. It goes very technical very fast. And it's important because we want to have where we started the call around greater personalization. You're a busy person. And so I would hope the communications I send you are more on par with what you need versus waste. But that doesn't mean we don't need to thoughtfully think about

the brand, what it stands for, what you want to engage with through culture, what you don't, what kind of new products you want to make, that takes time. And so I agree with you. I think it's a... It's an important thing to bring into the fold, but I don't see it completely just collapsing in the next quarter. We need to take another quick break. We'll be right back. Bye.

Support for this show comes from Adobe, who are introducing the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio, now with AI-powered PDF spaces. Look, I'm sure when I say PDF, you have a very specific thing in mind. And I'm guessing it's an email attachment. Certainly not a dynamic asset that can help elevate your business. But Adobe Acrobat is changing that. It's time to do more with PDFs than you ever thought possible.

Need AI to turn 100 pages of market research into five insights with a click? Do that with Acrobat. Need templates for a sales proposal that'll close that deal? Do that with Acrobat. Need an AI specialist to tailor the tone of your market report to sound real smart in real time? Do that with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio. It's time to reimagine and rethink what a PDF can actually do. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. That's adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat.

For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac extra value meal for $8. That means two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun, and medium fries, and a drink. We may need to change that jingle. Prices and participation. Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One.

It's $15 a month. Two, seriously, it's $15 a month. Three, no big contracts. Four, I use it. Five, my mom uses it. Are you playing me off? That's what's happening, right? Okay. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month plan. $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See MintMobile.com.

We're back with Digita CEO Amy Lanzi discussing the modern landscape of digital marketing and whether she thinks her job is getting harder and more complicated because of the state of the internet. Can I hit you with an assumption and you can tell me where my assumption lies in your view of the world? So there's this kind of narrative maybe that this has all gotten really hard for advertising agencies because there's like...

you know, it's very fractured. It's very hard to, like, there's so much more data. So instead of... sort of vibing and being like, well, this is the kind of advertisement that would resonate with me, so maybe it's going to resonate with other people, that this has made it much more difficult for advertising agencies. But I think that while that might be true, my assumption is that this is...

better for advertising agencies, because when things are more complicated, people are more likely to need a partner who understands that world rather than trying to figure it all out themselves. So two things. It's an exciting time to be in an agency because all of the complexity enables us to see what actually worked. Because we have so much data, the core of Digitas is data and analytics.

It was born to compete with the more traditional creative agencies that were just making ads for TV. And it was born on the promise of direct marketing. If I know more about you, I can think about what I should be sending to your house. So now when you think about what's happening, it's like, I can tell you, no, no, no, your question earlier around, did this perform? Is my investment in YouTube performing harder than my investment in other places? When we think about closed loop measurement.

I can pretty much start to figure out what's working and what isn't. Gotcha. So that's pretty exciting. And if you're okay with following the data versus wanting to put out things you think are cool, you're in the right business. And I think that's a change in the market where you need big ideas, but the ability to be humble to say, well, that didn't work and we need to do something else faster.

Do you feel like on the scale of sort of like quant to creative that you are more in the quant part? I'm a quant. My dad was a physicist. Okay. Yeah, I'm a quant. I don't know. I mean, I grew up in finance as an analyst. Yield management and American Airlines. But then you're managing a lot of creative people. Sure. And how does that go? Is that ever a source of friction and conflict?

No, because the business is really about balancing the art and science. So there's, you know, the founder that I worked for. at an agency that was eventually acquired by Omnicom, he would say there are people that are linear thinkers and gut thinkers. Know the difference. And you need to be able to walk right down the middle. So if you're always leaning on the data, you may do nothing that's very interesting, perhaps.

But if you're always focused on that gut feeling, I think this is cool, whatever, that may not be the thing that breaks through. So you have to be able to harness both to really do something that's going to deliver breakthrough thinking and growth.

That's the nice thing about being a creator in this day and age is that you can make something and then get direct feedback from an audience very quickly. And I assume that that is also the case for the creators that work for Digitas making things with brands. I wanted to ask also, so there's Publicis and there's Omnicom, which are two giants in this space. And there's like a ton of smaller agencies that they now have gobbled up and they are part of them.

When you get down to it, it's basically just two very large companies controlling a lot of this world. What else is the competition for y'all? The competition is wider than what I'll call the hold codes you've identified. So there's Publicis, there's Omnicom, there's WPP, there's...

There's a handful of them. I think there's about six that you would look at in terms of hold costs. Then there's many independents that come in with a point solution that are fantastic at creative product or they're fantastic at CRM. And there are many of those that may be part of a holdco or might are more independent. What is the advantage of the holdco? Can you articulate that? So what's the scale advantage? Just having HR and...

No, it's like that Reddit example is because they're a gigantic partner of ours. So I'm able to work with them because we are a scaled partner and I'm able to make things because of that scale. That is really important. So in my world, if and if I don't have that and a client calls me and says, I want sports consulting.

That is not what we do. I can say, great, I can call agency X and I'm going to bring my friends into this session. They're trusted partners. I brief them. It's much faster for the client. They don't have to worry about all the other things. And this is such a complicated and multifaceted world with so much expertise necessary. It sounds like it would be very difficult to compete as a smaller agency.

You need to be very good to compete as a small agency. And if you're very good, you can do well because most skilled clients also have. determined a partner that's large that can do the big things like media, like your media partner. So then that sort of enables some of these smaller players to come in and out because someone else has solved the big infrastructure need in the marketing world.

Okay, last question, maybe a bit of a piggy. I was listening to the last time you were talking to Neelai, and you talked last year about advertising. is a thing that usually runs with some other kind of media. So it runs against a YouTube video, against a TV show, against a print magazine. We are, I think...

It is a transitional moment, a bit of a crisis moment for media, I think. Media is getting passed over by Google. Those page views aren't coming in because we've got a lot of different ways that Google is eating up that. It's had revenue eaten by platforms like Facebook and Google for like, you know, over like going on decades now. Where does advertising go when there like isn't a media left for it to be placed upon? This, you know.

Every brand has a different version of this, depending on... Every brand, like a partner, like someone you're... partnering with. Yeah. Like think, you know, a retailer versus a packaged good brand versus a travel partner. Okay. And that, so the, you're, some of them are more dependent on paid than others. So if you're a brand today, you have to really be thinking about how do I get closer to my consumers so that I can act as a brand, as a publisher. So think about...

Certain brands, you might have downloaded the app and they're already in your phone. You already have a relationship with that brand. And then therefore, I'm not as dependent on investing more dollars in Meta or Google or whoever, because I have you. I've won the battle of the storefront on your phone. That is a battle. Especially in the world of...

search and AI, this is an interesting thing when you're watching that shift. So you as a brand really have to be the answer for something. So then I know, oh, this brand is the answer for this. And then how they're going to help me be a better runner, how they're helping me going to be a better parent. I'm not dependent on what is fed to me through search platform, whatever.

And I'm going to make that decision. Oh, I know that this brand is going to be my brand. You're probably thinking of certain brands you just automatically go to. Yeah. And you need to be able to figure out how you're balancing out your need for paid to.

basically engage with those that are your fans and then you keep them to be your super fans. I mean, what you just described is making content, right? Brands need to be content distribution systems. to be able to play within and out. Do you think that the bigger part of that will be partnering with, you know, influencers and creators and stuff? Or will it be themselves being the...

Like internal content creation. I mean, I think that creator collabs are a must for modern brands. Bringing creators in is like bringing in a series of best friends. we all follow creators that they feel like they're your friend. And then all of a sudden you're- But even that is very fractured. It's not like there's a Michael Jordan anymore. Like if we're working with creators on Instagram-

In a market that I'm super interested, like science communicators, there might be somebody who has 100,000 or 500,000 followers that I have never heard of. And like, that's my business. So that, like, it's crazy how much... work that can be. And I assume that you've acquired or built a big thing like that internally. Yes. So we acquired Influential, then Captivate. This enables us to have access to 15 million creators globally. That enables you to quickly find these micro...

influencers or creators, whatever language you want to use. We had a lot of debate about this the last time. Yeah, actually, I wanted to ask you about that. My position is the same on it. And I, you know, every time I hear it on a, see a client brief, it's wildly, is it a creator or is it an influencer? I would say creators don't want to be treated as influencers, but they all really want to be Hollywood stars eventually. So it is a very interesting fluid space. I'll push back against that.

So Influencer is a big pet peeve of mine, and I have appreciated that you don't... sort of default to that term. And I think that like, there are definitely people who are influencers. I think that we maybe use that differently though. Do you sort of, what I hear you say influencer tends to mean that it's a larger, a person with a larger following. Yes. Is that sort of how you consider it? That's how I consider it. And it's almost, to me, the future is collaborating with creators, big and small.

And your brand has to show up with a place and a point of view so that creator feels connected to it authentically. And then you co-create what makes sense. And then the community can feed back on how do I make the next product extension? What is that thing that I should be doing? The creators are, the community is fantastic at feeding your pipeline.

And I think the more you have a fluid relationship with creators, the more you will be successful because consumers see themselves in creators before they see themselves in a brand. Agreed. Yes. And this is why creators are creating brands, because it's easier to draw the line for your audience from...

this is me to this is the thing I made than it is from this is me to like, this is the thing someone else made that I like. Yes. But then I think some creators have, that's their hope and dream is to create this. a brand, but also you get into supply chain dynamics. Oh, yeah, it's hard. It's hard. It sounds great, but it's hard. No, it is. Yeah. I mean, it's not something I would have gotten into if I hadn't had 15 years of messing around in the space before. Of course.

But I'll hit you with my influencer definition, which is that the reason I don't like it is because it defines my job as what I do for you rather than what I do for my audience. So my job isn't to... as in to influence my audience. My job is to make... things that they will like. And then I am paid to influence them by companies sometimes. So my job is an influencer. My job is a creator. But absolutely, I see that the job that I do for...

You know, when someone buys a brand deal on Hank's channel, the job that I do for that person is influencing. But the job that I do for my audience is... Delighting and educating and having a good time and, you know, giving them something that they're a part of and having fun with. Yeah, I love that distinction. I'm going to steal it.

Great. The reason I don't like influencers. This is the whole reason I agreed to do this for Neil Eyes so that that would happen. I'm starting it today. But I would say that like the one of the main reasons I stay away from using the word influencer is when I watch my.

daughter that's in college react, she's like, oh, she can tell. Right. Well, that's the thing is that the people who really their whole job is working for marketing companies is like, oh, they're not making very authentic content. Right. So. I don't love the influencer concept. I like the idea of creators informing.

Again, being a brand's best friend and saying like, hey, maybe you should do this. That's how I think of creators and how I counsel our brands and how creators are a meaningful part of their, almost their marketing organization, really.

Okay, last, last question. Is advertising getting easier or harder right now? I think it's getting, I think it's the same. That is the hottest take I could have imagined you having. Everything feels like it's changing so much right now. Right, but it's always been changing. And here's why I think it's the same. My orientation is around, did this drive my client's business?

So if that's always been your orientation and you're using the data to say, did this sell more things? Did I recruit more consumers in? It's the same. If you're holding on to... what you think it used to be which is we're setting culture everyone will do exactly what we'll do what we want them to do then it's really hard but I've never I grew up in a different

Again, I'm a quant. The founder that I work for picked people that weren't really marketing and advertising people. And he trained all of us to have this point, a consulting point of view. The only thing that matters is if you're surprising and delighting consumers and if they're buying more things. So if that's always been your North Star, it's the same. Well, but is it not harder to get people to buy more things? I guess not.

People are buying stuff. So now you can also – so what's harder now is what's the single source of truth and how do you measure that? That's hard because there's a lot of new ways to get at that same North Star. Do you mean the truth in terms of the message you're getting to consumers or the truth in terms of? No, like there's when you think about all the different.

Data and tech partners, everyone comes in with, it did this, it did that, it did this, it did that. And to our previous commentary on different media partners and how they measure things, it's all not the same. That's got to be so frustrating. That part is hard. Who's the worst at it? Who do you trust the least with their data that they show you? I can't. I'll get in trouble if I answer that. But there's somebody in there? Of course. Yeah. And my thing is that.

You can't trust any of them. You need a healthy, unbiased partner to look across. To be able to really have the right point of view on what happened in the market. And again, sales matter. Sales is a pretty good outcome of did we sell more things? That's the easy one. Versus.

brand favorability or some of these other looser things that do matter, but it can be a little squishy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wish there was more sort of a brand favorability kind of advertising in my world. I feel like I'm really... sales focused. Like the partners that I work with are very much like, I don't really care. I don't really care how you did as long as we made more money than it cost us to

Advertise with you. That's all we care about, which is understandable. But I sometimes I just wish I could have a big old Toyota sponsorship or something. Well, brands need both. You need to be thinking fast and slow because if everything is focused on buy now, do this, then you don't remember that brand. So you do need to create these emotional structures with consumers.

Well, keep me in mind is all I'll say. I'll keep you in mind. I've got a whole company of educational media. It's very brand safe, good people doing interesting things, big halo around it. You can help make the world better. with complexly okay okay all right i'm into it send me your stuff oh well of course all right amy thank you so much thank you for coming on decoder i learned so much it was awesome thank you thanks for having me you

I'd like to thank Amy Lansley for taking the time to speak with me, and thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like to let us know what you thought about this show or what else you'd like us to cover, drop us a line. You can email the team at decoder at theverge.com. They really do read every email.

email or hit me up directly on threads or blue sky decoder has a tiktok and instagram you can check those out at decoder pod they're a lot of fun if you like decoder please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts decoder is a production of The Verge and is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Stat and edited by Ursa Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. See you next time.