EP49 - 2025 The Year of Choice and Control for Advertisers with Jon Finnie

Speaker A: Are you looking to fine tune whether for your business, your job, your team or yourself? In each episode we will be discussing different ideas and opinions using real world examples to help you see opportunities, innovate and succeed. Hi, it's Corby Fine and welcome to finetune.

Speaker B: So it is 2025 and uh, it is time for me to relaunch my podcast. I am so excited to have my first guest of the year and the new season who is someone I have crossed paths with, uh, many times in the Canadian marketing advertising martech media environments. John Finney, who is currently the head of international sales for Yahoo Ads. I've known him for quite some time. He is responsible for driving revenue across all of Yahoo's consumer properties, which includes Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, where I might participate in a few fantasy pools. I don't do very well. Yahoo Finance, the DSP programmatic advertising data platform. There's so many things that Yahoo does and I know it's one of those names synonymous with all of our beginnings on the Internet. Both from a consumer, ah, content consumption as well as a marketer and an advertiser. Prior to Yahoo, John had different, uh, senior roles, multiple brands, Diageo, Virgin Media, Chorus Entertainment. Progressively growing his career and now leading an incredible iconic brand in the Canadian market. John, welcome to the podcast today.

Speaker C: Thank you. That's quite the opening. Absolutely the pressure to deliver. But great to see you again. Great to connect and um, as you stole too late to say Happy New Year.

Speaker B: No, we're good, we're January.

Speaker C: Happy New Year, mate.

Speaker B: Thank you. John, you've seen a lot of change in this industry. You talk to different brands, agencies and marketers. One of the things we've always had to deal with is this notion of ambiguity. None of us are magic fortune teller, you know, fortune teller oracles with crystal balls, knowing where things going. But from your perspective, as you look at the next year and moving forward in this world of ambiguity, what do you see as steps or things that the overall industry should take when it comes to enhancing transparency for marketers, measuring success, the things that we always just don't fully understand and we put so much trust in the ecosystem.

Speaker C: Yeah, thanks. Yeah. For me it's uh, several things, Corby. One is about giving buyers control. The industry should be prioritizing, empowering buyers with more control over their campaigns throughout the entire buying process. And it's essential for buyers to maintain control, give them flexibility to choose their own data sources, curate supply, making decisions that align with their specific brand goals. Um, on supply, curation supplying data are very important. Marketers manage supply, they can manage premium purposes, channels, formats that are best aligned with objectives. To give people the flexibility to make their own informed choices is much better than having that forced upon using uh, our dsp for example, you want to allow choice and control for the advertisers to access the supplier where they don't want to access it using the data, they want to access it. Not have somebody grade their own homework but use third party um, companies to validate success of a campaign um, so that we're not the one saying oh this campaign delivered X, Y and Z. It's amazing, let's invest more, let's have somebody else be the arbiters of what's successful and allow the advertisers to run like we'll chord themselves.

Speaker B: So to follow up on that, I guess with all of the new privacy concerns regulations coming in, whether it's uk, California, Quebec, some normalization at some point I assume lowest common denominator. What do platforms, media platforms like Yahoo plan to do to empower the marketer with the control and the choice in spite of all of these regulations and this perpetual shift to a cookie less environment?

Speaker C: Yeah we have a very privacy centric approach to Yahoo as part of our evolution we were once owned by telco brands, probably very familiar with that. Uh, um, Corby, um, very, very risk averse particular about how we manage privacy. So that's kind of part of our lifeblood. Like we want to be very careful about how we utilize our data. Now we are a global company so all of the regions that you mentioned, we need to make sure that we are adhering to every single rules and regulations globally and we feel that we do a really job of that. Where it comes from, uh, a DSP perspective is how do we ensure that the advertisers can use a DSP that is regulated, understands privacy and control. They feel confident that the data that they're getting from our data has been vetted and is legal. Their uh, data the same and any third party data that they want to use within our DSP has the same rigor and regulations with which they manage their own data set.

Speaker B: So coming back to the fact that Yahoo has all of these different content verticals and channels of interest and then talking about privacy control, what are you seeing then in terms of this mix between that ultra niche targeting and audience based versus maybe a little bit of. Let's go back to 1999 and start to talk about contextual placements. What are you seeing given the Fact that Yahoo does have so many different content angles and channels.

Speaker C: Yeah, so like 8 in 10 Canadians, you visit Yahoo each and every month. Could be one of the 11 million finance users, could be one of the 5 to 6 million sports users. You can say to yourself you're a fantasy user. We have unique access to consumers coming to our properties each month. With Top 5 news, lifestyle, entertainment, top 3 in mail, we have a search property. All of this information, um, content allows users to come and engage with us on a regular basis. And um, because we have access to that content, we have information on those users that allows us to target users both on and off our network and equity privacy centric approach. We have our solution called Connect ID, which is the combination of the 7 million logged in users in the Canadian market space, um, and utilizing that data to access those users regardless of where they are. We also have privacy centric access. We can also have make informed decisions based on user behavior. So the content that they're looking at, the location they're in and using that contextual relevance to target those users off our network because we have access to that information, obviously users both on and off, which really helps us to drive success. We're seeing a much greater focus on contextual relevancy than we've ever seen before as we shift to Chromageddon where we lose all crickets, which at some point will happen maybe this year, maybe next year, maybe even next ten years. Um, we see a prevalence of marked as looking to reach contextually engaging and safe environments. And we feel best placed at YA to offer them there on our consumer properties but also utilize that data to then find their duty across the entire ecosphere.

Speaker B: Chromageddon, love it. I think that's now in my lexicon. Two letters AI, the big two letters. So I as a marketer, I as a consumer, I as a podcast editor, as someone trying to help edit my kids university and high school papers, have become uh, an astute user of prompting in different tools. But that's simple stuff. What I'm seeing from the marketing, advertising, content generation, analytics, uh, exercises where AI is starting to play a part is seemingly monstrous in terms of its impact. What are you seeing right now and what can you talk about in terms of AI being embedded within Yahoo's ecosystem? Dynamic creative campaign optimization, audience targeting, analytics. Where are you guys going with AI?

Speaker C: Yeah, we see more agencies are seeking AI driven solutions to reduce costs and increase the speed of output. Um, around 81% of Canadian advertisers are experimenting in some way, shape or form with AI tools. Advertisers uh, are using AI driven tools to streamline workflows, enhance campaign precision. But not all AI is created alike. We'll see an increase in the usage of AI tools but also an increase in scrutiny over what these tools do and how they're used. At uh, Yahoo. We have a couple of ways that we're utilizing AI. First is Yahoo Blueprint which is our version of an enhanced AI model that uh, delivers superior outcomes and enhances campaign efficiencies and provides new AI powered features. The advanced AI algorithm reuse drives incremental efficiencies and significant performance um, improvement to advertisers throughout decisioning, supply curation enabling advertisers to achieve their goals more efficiently. One of the things that we consider at Yahoo use of AI is putting the choice and control back to the advertiser. So even though we have Yahoo Blueprint that does improve campaign efficiencies and we have campaign objectives like Porter, A uh, great example of we've shown uh, lowering of CPA goals based on utilization of Yahoo Blueprint. We don't feel like we should automatically put that across all campaigns. Across our DSP we allow the advertiser to say I like this feature. Uh, we choose to opt in or out of that offering. We have uh, our dynamic creative optimization tool. One of the few DSPs that allows people to utilize DCO within the DSP both on and off uh, our DSP uh, and that utilizes AI to decision the right ad to the right user to the right time. Depending upon the content they've used, the behaviors they've seen, what's most likely to convert. But again choice and control, it's up to the advertiser if they wish to participate in that part of our offering or if they choose to bring their own in house offering within the dsp.

Speaker B: The choice of which ad, ah, and the optimization using the AI engines is quite interesting. I have had some personal experience with creative optimization within not your platform, another one to test and yeah I can see how some brands from a um, comfort and control perspective wouldn't necessarily like some of the output. I have yet to see substantial gains in terms of a ah, combination of AI driven optimization plus creative manipulation we'll call it in real time. I think there's a long way to go there in the creative process. That complete end to end content supply chain is still done in house or within an agency. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on there from your perspective on the media side taking those different versions and forms of asset output and then letting the engine help optimize is is a really interesting two stepper where it gets merged together as interestingly downstream. How can Yahoo take pieces of assets recompile in real time and essentially say it's actually this combination of headline image placement, size, audience, day, time device etc. I don't know how close we are to that. I don't know a lot of brands, including maybe some that you worked in the past that would allow for that. But that's an interesting potential future.

Speaker C: Absolutely, yeah. Uh, DCI in itself is still in its infancy even though it's been around for a while. And I think AI is only going to further allow it to increase in scope. You're going to get efficiencies in terms of how campaigns are set up, how campaigns are tracked and monitored. To allow a plethora of ads to show not just like two different ads in a good campaign, but hundreds of thousands of ads to any given user at any given time is a great opportunity for advertisers to tweak and monitor campaigns. Now it's uh, a brand manager's worst nightmare to have all of those assets out there and change and create it because we know everything needs to improve. But if you can allow yourself that flexibility to change the ad format to drive conversions, um, I think it's a great opportunity for brands to embrace and um, to see the true uh, evolution of both DCO and AIT Apple.

Speaker B: So you talked earlier about on the Yahoo, uh, platform as well as off the platform. And so when you think about cross channel measurement, optimizing campaign design and deployment, what do you see? Because I think uh, you know, most media players say something similar. They have extended networks, different data sets. What's the competitive edge that you guys really hold to and believe in? In this crowded landscape of different media options? As an advertiser's got tons of choice, what is Yahoo offering that really differentiates it from the other platforms?

Speaker C: Well we see Yahoo as being in the Internet. Uh, We've got over 30 years of experience in the field. We've connected hundreds of millions of people around the world to the things they love most in our best practices like search, news, mail, finance and sports and a sophisticated DSP on top of that, our reach. We have 8 out of 10 Canadians use Yahoo. 94% of Canadians trust the Yahoo brand and name. Our DSP recently ranked number one DSP for performance in customer service as part of the Digital 2024 Awards. Very few companies out there that have the legacy experience that we do that reach that many people on any given month in a global way like in the US we reached 9 out of 10Americans which is just huge given the size of that market. We have our backstage offering which is direct to publisher offering that allows customers to tap into supply without going through several SSPs. And so to find efficiencies to access supplier directly is massive. We have Blueprint which is powered a trusted authenticated Yahoo Ads data. Decades of experience in forming our tools and algorithm to drive the strongest performance. We feel we have a lot to offer. We feel we have a solid uh and vast experience and the fact that we're keeping up to date with AI allowing Trojan control to use third party validation. We just announced agreements with JEPS and Pier 39 and step three. These are all companies that do a very good job in their ticket space. We're saying look, use our dsp, validate with these third parties that you have the choice and control and access to supply and let them determine how we've been successful versus we're telling you how you've been successful and not everybody does that. Um, probably enjoy uniform.

Speaker B: So I loved the 30 years we are the Internet line. And just for fun, having just gone back in the Wayback machine online and taking a look at 2-10-1998 Yahoo CA homepage, the top links, outside of the fact that it was still mostly a directory structure at the time were Valentine's Day, RRSP Spotlight and the Nagano Winter Games. Just for context, I think you guys should bring back the social science category with anthropology and sociology as the top two uh, links and the cool links. I wonder what was on cool links back then. But that's a whole other conversation.

Speaker C: I will pass your feedback onto the powers of me problem. See if we can make this happen.

Speaker B: The reason I went back was because then if we look back we have to look forward. And when we think about the future, I'd love to get your take. Put on your magic hat. And as we look into the rest of 2025, we've got a whole year ahead of us. What do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for marketers in our digital advertising space?

Speaker C: Um, yeah, 2025 is shaping up to be the year of growth and innovation. With the rise of AI, retail media and ctv, it's a great time for brands to take control and find new ways to succeed. A few challenges and opportunities coming up. Navigating the Criclist feature, the car to cookies phase out. Advertisers will need to adopt privacy first strategies focusing on contextual advertising, first party data and alternative identity solutions. Now we've been saying quickly's future for a while. I feel like we're back in the year of mobile from years ago now I truly am data myself probably where uh, every year would be the year of mobile. But clients and advertisers, they just use nature on the standard that cookies will be going away in some way, shape or form as users look to have a more privacy centric approach to their browsing habits. And being able to work with brands and technology that allows you to reach and engage users is going to be a priority as those start to disappear. Diversification of ad spend across platform with increased scrutiny of major platforms and the rise of new channels, advertisers will look to spread their budgets across multiple platforms, including smaller, more transparent ones to mitigate risks. Retail media will continue to rise as a key growth engineering offering advertisers more control over targeting and data syncing across platforms. Challenges for that full region reader regards to reach frequency measurement because there's just a plethora of opportunities out there. CTD Read continues to have massive growth expected 10% growth to 1.3 billion in Canada by the end of this year. Our AR is a catalyst, uh, as a creative catalyst at least. We've heard and spoken about how AR has changed the uh, pretty flash new the proliferation of AI into the ecosphere and what that means. I think on the creative side it will continue to transform the creative processes campaign optimization and it'll help advertisers to improve efficiency and reduce costs. The caveat is you just need to be careful what data uh you're allowing any active access to so that it's pretty managed and running a privacy centric way.

Speaker B: You didn't say I was going to win one of my hockey or football pools. I felt like you're missing some predictions.

Speaker C: I thought you said predictions, mate. I didn't realize we were about fantasies.

Speaker B: Is that. Yeah, fantasies.

Speaker C: Fantasy sport.

Speaker B: Yeah. Any tips and tricks are helpful. So just last question on something you said. The retail media space, love to get your take on what you see as the evolution of that. And what's Yahoo doing in that space? Are you partnering? Are you empowering? There's a lot of noise. There's some existing incumbents, there's a lot of people trying to get in, you know. What's your 32nd take on that space?

Speaker C: We want to partner uh, with people. We want to ingest wechel data uh into our platform, ingest advertiser data into our platform utilize, you know, the millions of kittens that we see each day on the, how they're browsing within our dsp. The combination of all those data sets within our dsp, um, should allow them to get what they need and achieve those objectives versus using other technology platforms to try and somehow reach that one data nirvana that everyone's kind of pushing as the, as the best thing ever. So I'd say growth consolidation, we feel like Yahoo. By partnering and giving choice and control to clients and by working with those retail brands, you know, data sets and ingesting that into our dsp, we feel we're best placed to be the place for advertisers to go to to reach

Speaker B: and engage with those consumers as a buyer fully aligned. I appreciate that. John Finney, head of international sales for Yahoo Ads driving revenue across the Yahoo Network. I really appreciate you spending the time giving us a little bit of, uh, insight into your personal and organizational growth and opinion. Have a great 2025, both personally and for Yahoo.

Speaker C: Thank you. Appreciate you. Nice to me on the show. Wish more success. Good luck in your fantasy programs.

Speaker B: I'll send you my user ID later. See what you can do. See what you can do. Thanks, John.

Speaker C: Take. Sam.