158. Mastering TV Advertising: Balancing Traditional and Programmatic Strategies with Haley Wiaz

So my day-to-day role really is to oversee the digital team in our practices, help build out client strategy and test different tech partners, evolve our audience strategy and things like that, and really bring a lot of innovation to our clients' media strategies.

And so if you really had to explain, like, let's say, traditional media and programmatic media to like a five-year-old, what would you say to them and how would you define the differences between programmatic and traditional to a five-year-old, but also in a sense of what you do on your day-to-day?

but you know, everything is a lot more fast paced, a lot more automated, targeted things like that. I like to say, try to explain it to my dad too, instead of a five year old making sure that we are hitting you instead of you know, like everyone, and things like that. So we can really refine our media mix. But what we have found at scale is that everything complements one another and works better together.

So it's not traditional or digital, it's how do we, how do we elevate and use both of these mediums together to really, you know, have that mass, mass reach and kind of cover the market, but then also refine and hyper target the individuals that we're trying to go after for our clients' business.

So a big thing of what you said was when we first talked about it, I was super impressed. I was super. I loved first, I loved your energy, but also, like I was super impressed about how you guys were able to use traditional media to your advantage and then mix it in with some programmatic and use what you learn in traditional to implement programmatic plus some. So let's talk about the differences First. Let's talk about, like, the differences between traditional and programmatic.

So OTT is kind of I like to say that umbrella term. So that is just referring to the content that is delivered via the internet. And then CTV is a form of OTT, so it is the actual hardware, it's the smart TVs, it's the connected devices like Roku and things like that that allow us to stream our favorite television shows and movies and things like that.

So they have their core customer is 35 plus and really more of that 45 plus target demo. And so the older demographic is still really leaned into traditional mediums. They might be adopting to, you know, the streaming platforms and things like that and they like to go onto Hulu for a certain show maybe, but they're still leaned into the traditional mediums and you they can be reached on both.

So we try to figure out how to compliment one another and so, whether that is using our connected TV dollars to really hyper target the young, younger demo base for them. Like we know that 45 plus is probably covered with traditional, we can reach them with cheaper CPMs. How do we use connected TV that is hyper-targeted and does come at that more expensive CPM to really hone in and build up that younger demographic that'll eventually turn into their core customer at one point?

We have some clients where their demo still is just really leaned into the traditional environment and they're hard to reach on connected TV still. So we'll still test it and we'll still, you know, we'll use it for linear suppression. Let's say so like it's kind of like a safety net of anyone who wasn't exposed on linear. We can reach them on connected TV with ACR data and things like that.

But then we have some clients who targeting really, really matters and traditional just doesn't make sense. The network CPMs are way too high for the amount of waste that we're going to get by running untargeted, and so those clients we really lean into the CTV world of using that one-to-one targeting, making sure that we are not running wasted impressions and we're really getting the most out of every dollar.

Some of them have ACR as well, and so what it does, it uses fingerprint, fingerprinting technology to pick up on what is actually being viewed on the glass itself, and so what we're able to do is, if someone saw one of our clients ads through a cable channel, because we send those partners our creative that's running, they're able to actually pick up on the brand and the creative and either suppress it, so anything that we run on the streaming side, we will basically be

suppressing those households that were exposed to a linear ad. Or you know, there are sometimes like where you can conquest um competitors and things like that, or do sequential messaging from your linear ad exposure to your streaming ad exposure, so if it's almost like a sequential messaging, like a retargeting play, something like that, um, we've tested a few of these different methodologies, whether it's from suppression to conquesting.

Again, it doesn't like not one size fits all, but we have tested these different strategies and we've really found some effectiveness in it, especially from the conquesting play.

So the beauty of that, and I'm thinking why it's such a success, is because now we step away from creative fatigue. Right, there's this term that used to be used back in the days, at least, where we referred to creative fatigue, which is, if you haven't changed your uh creative in a minute, it could look like a month, a quarter. Unfortunately, some creative be out there for a long time, way too long. It can create some type of fatigue.

And the best example for you and I can close this this, the small loop with this is that on LinkedIn, I scroll down on those sponsored ads and of course, linkedin can be, arguably, whether it's programmatic or not, always a social media, but on linkedin I'm always seeing the same damn ads on linkedin and I'm like, why am I still saying this? Like I this is not even relevant to me, but I have this particular agency right that I follow. It's been the same message all freaking year, like all year.

Like when I say all year that's 12 months of that person I am seeing the same creative. Yeah, how annoying it is. There's some cases where bad pr is not always good pr, like like any pr, is not always like good pr. Right, it's like no, no, no, sometimes it's just bad, don't do it.

So, with that said, to lead into the next point is that you also referred to oem. When she I'm gonna be, I'm gonna tell my, I'm gonna tell my truth right now, I know some of y'all gonna giggle like like hayley's doing, but when she mentioned oem, I thought she was talking about open exchange marketplace. If you, if you are me, just DM me and let me know I'm not alone. But it isn't, it isn't, and so I think I think so. What is OEM?

Again, cause you said it at least twice to me and I still know original original equipment manufacturer. Okay, like the Visio, the LG and wait. That used to be called something else though OEM. It wasn't called OEM before. Yeah, when was it called um? Ah, anyway, it's going to come back to me, but anyway, okay, so let's move into based on that let's move into the conversation of what is considered premium content nowadays. what is considered not premium content content.

Excuse me, is that worth it? I mean, in our intro meeting I mentioned the differences between open exchange, which I thought was very you know, open exchange marketplace versus like private marketplace, for CTV specifically. So like, what's your take on? How do you define like oh, this is premium content, I'm going to pay premium prices for this and I know it's going to perform? Like what's your take on that or the definition. Yeah, I would say it's going to perform like what's that?

So of course, those, those partners and that type of content does come with that premium price point, and what we have found is that you can't run everything there. It's just not going to work. You're not going to have enough reach, you're not going to have enough impressions in market unless you have, you know, all the budget in the world, which you know would be nice as a marketer, but that's not the case.

But so it is really finding the right mix between that premium content and leaning into, like when live sports are happening or you know cultural moments and things like that and the shows that people are watching on Hulu and Peacock and Paramount, but also mixing in with that OEM inventory. We have found a lot of great success with almost manufacturing.

Mass reach is like kind of how we'd like to be talking about it with our OEM partners and so there's a lot of deduplication across them and so you're able to really stitch together you know several different buys, whether it's a P&P, pg deal, going direct with these different partners, okay, and really using the force of both of them.

So having this mix of you know the fast owned and operated channels from the OEM partners, that really is kind of like a linear esque viewing and then also complementing that with the premium CPMs with you know the Hulu's, the Peacocks of the world, know the who is the peacocks of the world.

creation to my needs, or to at least my advertisers needs, and so, along with that, what is the amount of partners that what's like? You have 25 of them. Do you have a good select of five that you tap into automatically? Or do you have like, oh, we have three just for pharma and we have two, four, I don't know, cpg, whatever. So what's the right amount of create of those direct partners that you're referring to, whether it's oem partners, whether it's a something else?

Uh, and I think a lot of times, because we have access to all these partners and this is sort of getting into some of the best practices to like, because we have access to all these great partners out there, it's like, oh, like, well, we were super targeted.

We have, like, our audience, like that we want to hit, like let's reach them anywhere, but, like we know, the space is so fragmented and so, yeah, is it better to hit someone you know at a really healthy frequency on one app continuously over a month, or do we want to reach them everywhere, no matter where they're viewing? And there's challenges with both. There's pros and cons.

I would say I try to like guide my team and saying like, let's not, let's not overcomplicate it, let's get to a really healthy reach and frequency on a few, like a handful of partners and if we feel like we can expand and still get some incremental value out of adding another partner to the plan.

Great, we've been doing a lot of measurement on trying to understand where the duplication is across partners and if there's unique reach in across these partners and we're still reaching a healthy reach and frequency, then great, let's add more partners to the plan. Let's reach these people wherever they are consuming content. But but of course I mean it's just going to depend on the client and the geo that you're in. Is it a one market campaign or is it a national campaign?

What does the budget look like? How targeted is it? Are we trying to reach everyone or is it a hyper, hyper targeted campaign? And so I think all those factors play a role. And also understanding, like where can these people be reached? So like doing the research of understanding, like you know, if you have a target audience, where do they index highest for Are they on Peacock, are they more?

Just like watching that linear, like viewing within the OEM, so doing some of that consumption research too, to really guide your plan. And then I think you can start to say, okay, you know we can. We can have a healthy reach and frequency across four partners, or maybe we can have six, but kind of teetering, and that's where the trader's job is. So important is you know making those observations and testing and you know if you see some negative impact for a few weeks.

I think that's a good learning. I think we're so scared to, like you know, make performance like go on like a downward trend, but like you still learn something and then you know you can revert back and try something new after the fact.

But I really want to encourage everyone to keep testing and not be afraid of failing, because I know for a fact that teams that we train and I'll take like 30 seconds to explain to the listening here what we do is that we work closely with ad agencies, agency trading desks, brands, in-house and programmatic. Now, very recently, like SSPs and ad techs are hiring us to train their team. Right, what is, what does it take for a trader or buyer to make this decision?

How can we make sure that our deal are prioritized or inventory prioritized, things like that? And so I talked to a lot of buyers and ad ops and sellers and they're all down to we want to be careful with how we're implementing things because you know we don't want to lose this opportunity. But at the end of the day, I feel like if you don't have the courage to test things that are going to feel scary or feel different or see the numbers going in red first versus like where you want it to be.

I feel like that's the the authenticity that we're missing in some of those partnerships like we're not, we're scared of doing this because then budget's going to be taken away.

And on the other side, like on the buyer side, on the agency or the brand side, it's like oh, if a partner, give the partner a second chance, right, like this. But you could easily see and I'm going to refer to what you said is that when you have those strategy implemented with those specific partners and they start failing, your trader can start seeing the sign fairly early and they can start like oh, in the first week or so, this is, this ain't working, let's try. Oh, it's still not working.

Well, let's pivot completely after week two issue right. So in the first three weeks you can help the partner makes different definition and optimize and give the partner those feedback, because they're supposed to do it on their own as well. Like, put them to work, but you need to give them strategic and tactical insight to help them, help us, because if it doesn't work, it it doesn't work right, but at least you've tried.

So don't be afraid of like just have that courage to try with those partners and give them the benefit of the doubt on things and give them second, third chances, because they can't perform fairly well if they're given a chance I mean, some partners just sucks. But does it suck because it's not performing or does it suck before the inventory is not there, which leads into underperformance, things like that.

So, in recap of some of the best practices, I heard you say quite a few things right, and so I'm going to try to recap what you said, because there are a lot of gems, so correct me if I'm wrong. So have strategic partners aligned with your strategy. Strategy means KPIs, goal targeting, which include audiences, and then messaging. I heard you talk a lot about messaging. Y'all Listen to Haley. Messaging is just as important as all of the other four I mean three mentioned.

So align those partners with them. I also heard you say quite a few times and I think if we were playing a drinking game that would be the drinking word is that well, words is that not all sides fail is like don't just assume that. You know Tebow is going to work with everybody. It's probably not, and so make sure you track these performances, make sure you start your own. You've some of the listeners have referred me say to this. I mean refer to to this as like spo toolbox.

Like make sure you open your toolbox of suppliers and say, okay, this supplier we tested at x amount of budget and it worked really well for this about this audiences, but not for this one. Right, keep track of those suppliers. Like I feel like this is exactly what hayley has brought into us. Is that, yeah, you can have as many oem partners as you want, but like remember that the specific one works well here and there and that's part of what we're supposed to do anyway.

Right, like provide you have to be reactive at some point, which is part of the optimization. Right, right, the campaign is launched, but I am going to encourage everyone listening to be proactive. It's like start reaching out to those partners before you even start meeting them, because most likely, you already needed them, but you didn't know, and so just just talk to them and always ask what's under the hood, like how is your audience build package? What makes sense?

Do we have leverage over the cpms? Do we have leverage over the audience and things like that and allow them to do their stuff. Like if a partner comes back, if in mobi comes back and say we're going to implement brand safety on the back end, like, allow them to do that and test.

Like because, like dsps and and ssps don't always communicate the same language and so that hinders our performance a lot, because we want to add all of those filters in our DSP because we're supposed to right, but then if it's a direct or curated deal or something that was discussed outside of the DSP, then allow them to do their magic. That's how you maximize the stuff.

But at the end of the day, it's like if they have it on their end and it's one place and, like you said, it's super cost effective for everyone, everyone, um, and I think that's one of the biggest challenges that when I take, or like on the sell side, when they hire us, like when a publisher hire us to, to understand, um, the decision making, it's it's their biggest um challenges is to go back and discuss with the trader, like yo, remove some of those filters that are, you know, hurting our

inventory more than it's helping. You know, and obviously, if you're listening, you're like wow, that sounds scary, like how would we know if it's actually performing? You know you're, you're, you're tracking this. You can pull a report and see is this for real, is not for real, and then make decision faster. Right? That's the whole point of what hayley was saying. You got to go back and check on your work, absolutely for sure.

Okay, so one last question before we go into our closing segment is that I'd like to ask you if there's two, maybe three things you definitely want them to implement when it comes to ctv ott best practices, when it comes to deciding on your premium partners. When it comes to how to reach out to those partners, what is three things you want everyone to do today, or maybe remember to do?

They have a treasure trove of first party data themselves and so if we can find them in that way without having to add six layers of and statements in the DSP, I can almost guarantee it'll probably perform better. But don't take my word for it. Test it Like. I would say that's like.

The second thing is like continue to test, test different partners, lean into OEMs, lean into those premium partners, test it against some of the run of network deals in the DSPs that we have access to and see what works well.

And I think, like we were saying earlier on, no two plans are going to be the same, and so it's not going to be like a cookie cutter plan across all of your clients and campaigns, markets, anything like that Really understand, like what works well for this, for this brand for this market and make sure you're taking notes of those things because obviously having that data trended over time will help you in the long run, save you time in the future.

Um. And then last thing I think is um really at least from from like my experience we get we get a lot of clients um who are like well, the cpm is really high and why is our cost per lead so high on ctv? And it's like if we held ctv to the same degree as some of our lower funnel tactics, like retargeting and paid search and things like that, it's never going to look as look as good.

Um and I think it's almost funny to me is like on the linear side we don't hold it to the same like 10th degree Um. So I'd say, obviously in a respectful way, put like push back a little bit. It is, it's an upper funnel channel. We have to build that top of funnel awareness to make our lower funnel channels perform better.

It all works together cohesively and so, keeping that in mind, I think, especially as a trader, when you see high cost per is in the platform against CTV, you're like quick to cut it and shift budget to maybe display or retargeting or whatever it might be but it is doing. It's doing its job. We know it's a very high like highly engaging, leaned in environment, and it's going to be all view through conversion.

So we're not going to see the immediate impact, but I would say, set up some other guardrails in place. Even if your main KPI is a purchase or a lead form or something of that nature, set up some other conversion tracking. So, are we seeing a lift to site traffic? Are we seeing more engagement on a certain blog post or something like that? You have other indicators that you can say CTV is working. Push people down the funnel and bring those insights to clients.

If we're not able to show them a really healthy cost per purchase or something of that nature, what can you show them? Because at the end of the day, every client brand is going to want some indicator that their dollars are working for them. So what can you show them as a proof point um, to really like show and prove out that ctv is an important part of their media mix that's like I couldn't have ended this podcast any better than this.

And then they got, came back, pushed back, and said, no, you did not listen, diplomatically, obviously, because we're the client, and so we ended up continuing. So we ended up testing two things within that budget. It's like a deal that they control audience and all of the above right, including geo, and so in our DSP it looked like a run of exchange, but it wasn't for real.

And the second one was still the same deal, but we we lifted up some brain safety, we opened up the geo a little bit, and so this this first one where we had more control over targeting spend a little bit more, but not as much, as we didn't see the, the result that we wanted versus the actual deal that we allow them to curate, to control everything else. We saw a lift instantly.

We started spending um, and then we I think it was for, uh, a university, was it for edu, was it for this former brand, I can't remember uh, but we instantly saw some conversion happen. And conversion for, for you know, edu is, is the application, but most of the edu don't have applications. So we, just we, just we just uh, page view, you know, like a page on the actual landing page um but um.

But thank you so much for sharing this, because I've been spending a lot of time with publishers and they're all begging the same thing Like we want to reach out directly to some of these companies, some agencies, and help them out. We are able to help out. We are not all MFAs and I believe that as well. It's like go back to that definition right, like is it defined? Is it checking this box or not?

Um, so I encourage anybody on the call to just practice what um hayley's preaching and practicing on her own. It's like to establish those direct partnership but also allow them to do their magic and it's less work for you anyway, it's like you're more efficient in our work, okay, so one last question and then we'll wrap it up.

Um, if you had to leave us with a word of wisdom, right, if you had to share something you wish you knew when you first started in the industry as a freshman in programmatic and ad tech, what is something you wish you knew then that you now know Could be one thing?

I think that's something that I've like always carried with me and continue to do every day is poke holes in things and ask, ask questions. And no, no question is a bad question.

Yeah, you're not afraid of asking the questions, whether it's hard or not, and you're not afraid to implementing and trying new things or receiving when you need to receive. So thank you, haley, for dropping by. If anyone wants to reach out to you for anything, how can?