Isaac Rudansky - The Structures of Commercially Profitable Omnichannel Ads Strategies (Part 1)

Speaker A: You have to establish transparency with your clients and your advertisers. And we're looking at what we call a marketing efficiency ratio overall at the highest level. Are we profitable after accounting for all of our advertising and marketing dollars?

Speaker B: Welcome to the Marketing Leadership Podcast brought to you by Listen Network. Join your host, Dots Oyobulu, as he learns from CMOs, agency leaders and business leaders about the state of performance marketing, plus insights on strategies, campaigns, and intelligence for commercial impact. Connect the dots and enjoy the latest episode.

Speaker C: Hi, marketers, this is Dot. And welcome to the Marketing Leadership Podcast. With me here, uh, is Isaac Rudansky, CEO at, uh, Plenture Media Group. We will discuss the structures of a commercially profitable omnichannel ad. Uh, strategy. Lots of advs there. Well, stay with me, guys, and let's do it. Welcome, Isaac. How are you doing?

Speaker A: I'm doing great. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me. It's going to be fun.

Speaker C: Yeah. It's an incredible honor having you. I know people will say you tell your guest this all the time, but I've been a fan. You really sit at the very top. So tell us about that journey. Tell us about yourself. Tell us about your background, how you've built. According to my research, one of the top 10 PPC agencies in the world.

Speaker A: I appreciate that and, uh, I appreciate the opportunity to talk to your audience about my journey, which started 10, 12 years ago. Around that time, I had just been married and my wife was working as an accountant and, uh, making very little money. And I was an artist. I was trying to sell my artwork all across Long Island, New York, which is where I grew up. And I was struggling because I was not easy to sell artwork. And, um, while I was generating a few sales here and there, it wasn't enough to, you know, be it be considered, uh, an income. And one day I decided I would make a website and I would try to sell some of my artwork online. And I heard an ad on the radio for a company called Squarespace. This was back when Squarespace was big and they were only advertising on the radio. Now Squarespace is advertising the super bowl every year, and it's a big deal. And I spent a good 20 hours in a recliner. I don't think I got up once, and I made a website for my artwork, and I was really excited. It was like this really awesome feeling of, like, wow, I have a website. And I wasn't. I didn't grow up around computers. I wasn't tech savvy in any way. And um, this website and this idea that anybody in the world could find my artwork and I had a working stopping cart. It was really exciting. But then after my mom and my sister came to the site, my question was, how do I get other people to come to the site? And that question is what introduced me to Google AdWords? And up until then I didn't understand or realize that Google was an advertising company. And I spent the next few weeks really learning everything I could about Google AdWords. It was fascinating to me but the, the intersection of immediate results, creativity, data, uh, it just was very appealing to the way I thought about things and the things that I like to do. And I started running campaigns for my artwork. But while that was getting going I figured like, let me, let me do. I learned a lot about Google AdWords. I know that there's people out there who charge for, you know, Google AdWords support and optimization and management. I said let me, let me see if I can make a business doing that. And I made a new website on Squarespace and it was just myself in my apartment in the beginning. And that's the beginning of the agency. That's how it started.

Speaker C: Wow, wow, wow. What a great story. Squarespace. If you are listening, you need to collect. We uh, call it bride price, parent price from Isaac. Just kidding. But yeah, what an incredible story. And I like the fact that you're able to leverage your creativity into what you do right now. Happy to even explore that with you in another episode because I think some of the things I have prepped there are more technical in a way. But yeah, it's really, really awesome to be able to go through that transition and be able to still take some learnings from what used to be an artistic career to digital marketing. So that's really, really awesome. Okay, so looking at going back to the technical side here, we're starting to hear this the world about contextual advertising. I think when people used to talk about this before now it was about what they defined as context, where keywords, topics and um, those things. But now it's gone way more than that. It's now encompassing, uh, online browsing behavior of users you want to target and uh, and everything in there. Now it's coming at an age of AI and automation where efficiency is the name of the game. It's less, it's more. Uh, now you are constrained to build ads, uh, like it's a quick five minute wizard, uh, and again another day to talk about the benefits and issues around that. But my question is that what are Some of the opportunities to look out for, for those listening or watching with this whole new world of contextual advertising and, you know, being able to use that for automation and being able to scale.

Speaker A: I think it's interesting because contextual advertising isn't really so new. It seems new. But when advertising on the Internet really launched in earnest, all advertising was contextual. So let's define what we mean by contextual. If you're selling, if you're selling Rolex watches and you decide to take out a billboard by Beth Page Black, which is a really expensive and world renowned golf course in Long island, that's contextual advertising. Because the context around that billboard location are people who might be interested in a Rolex, they have certain income, they're playing golf on the weekends. Uh, how, what's contextual advertising on the Internet? So contextual advertising on the Internet is. All right, well here's, here's on my desk is a, is a leather journal, a leather notebook, and I'm selling leather notebooks. I might decide to take out an ad on a website that talks about pens and stationary and typography. And that's contextual advertising. Because I'm guessing or I'm assuming that the context around my ad, if I take out a 500 pixel by 500 pixel image ad on the side of that post, my guess is that the context around that image, which is content discussing stationary and typography, might attract readers that are also interested in buying my leather notebook. So that's how, that's how advertising was done. Because before behavioral targeting, before cookies, everything was bought based on context. So if I sold golf clubs, then I'm going to go to ESPN and I'm going to see if I could advertise on their golf subsections. And that's contextual advertising. Now behavioral advertising came around, came along and said, wait a second, we have a much better way of doing things with cookies and uh, being able to track people's activity throughout the web. And Google and Meta with their big data, they came and said, you don't need to, you don't need to worry about contextual advertising. If you're selling leather notebooks or you're selling golf clubs, it doesn't matter where your ad appears. What matters is who the ad appears in front of. And instead of just guessing that this, you know, subsection about golf on espn, instead of just guessing that some percentage, some percentage of those people might be interested in golf clubs, we could actually only show your ads to people who we know are interested in golf. Clubs, Whether they're reading a movie review or they're buying. Buying a car or they're reading a political blog, we could show them an ad for golf clubs, because we know that they're in the market for golf clubs based on the Facebook pages they're a part of, based on credit card data, based on GPS data, based on Google search history, based on YouTube channels that they've watched. So that was the big promise of behavioral advertising. Behavioral advertising. And it made sense in theory, right? Like, why should I buy an ad contextually guessing the interest of the readers, when I could just show ads to the right people at the right time every time. That was the. The whole, let's say, advent and boom of behavioral advertising. But the problem was, and the problem is, it never really worked. And there's a bunch of reasons why it never really worked. 1. Well, I'll give you some of the reasons why it didn't work, and then I'll tell you why I think the biggest reason why it didn't work, in my personal opinion.

Speaker C: Yeah, okay.

Speaker A: Everything got much more expensive. So, so many tech companies and data companies started inserting themselves between an impression and a click that the price of these impressions became much more expensive to advertisers. And of course, price matters because advertisers ultimately are looking for a return. And if they're not seeing that return or it's harder to generate those returns, they're not gonna advertise as much. 2 Is it actually is not so easy to understand what a person is in the market for. Our activity online, the things we look at, the things we associate with, are, uh, oftentimes only loosely related to what we actually want to purchase. Third, these. The data firms that are tracking and creating these sort of behavioral profiles end up thinking you're in the market for everything. If you go to Omnicom and you download, um, you can actually download a cookie report based on the pixel on your browser. On your hard drive, you'll see 15 pages. It'll say, okay, docs, you're in the market for a Porsche, and you're in the market for a Toyota. You're in the market for hot cereal, you're in the market for cold cereal, you're in the market for baby toys, you're in the market for a new gym membership. Like, basically everyone is in the market for everything. Now. Some of the behavioral technology did become a lot better, and it helped serve more relevant ads. And it's true. So if I'm, um, on Instagram today and I'm scrolling through Instagram, there's no question that the ads are relevant. So I'm in the process of doing work on a house, and I'm, um, following a lot of accounts that talk about porcelain tile versus marble tile, outdoor lighting fixtures, hardwood floors. And I'm getting really relevant ads. There's no question about it. But over the last year, two years, we see Google making moves to sunset the use of cookies. And it's going to really make a lot of this traditional type of tracking very hard. Google Meta are all coming up with sort of new ways to maintain the relevancy of advertising. And I believe that they will. They don't need cookies to maintain the relevancy of advertising. But the number one reason why I think behavioral targeting never really worked well is because context actually matters. I'll give you an example. Let's say I'm in. I am in. Okay, what am I in the market for? I'm in the market for a book about advertising. Okay, let's say I'm in the market for a book on advertising techniques. And all the big tech companies know that I'm in the market for a book on advertising techniques. Now, let's say das, you and I were having a conversation about, I don't

Speaker C: know, we went to.

Speaker A: We both went to go see Oppenheimer, the movie. And we're talking about it, right? Like, we're, like, excited. We're talking about the movie, we're talking about the characters, the actors. And then somebody comes over and says, hey, by the way, here's this book on advertising headlines and advertising techniques. I'm in the middle of a separate conversation. It's disruptive. I'm not, uh, yeah, yeah, I do want to buy one, but, like, I'm not doing that right now. This is what happened with behavioral targeting. When they said context doesn't matter, it said, we'll show users ads for the products they're in the market for, irrespective of what they're doing now. So if, um, I'm on Rotten Tomatoes, reading a movie review for Top Gun Maverick, and I'm being blasted with ads for white sneakers, I'm not engaged in that activity now. So I believe, in my opinion, context matters a great deal. But if I'm reading a blog about how to clean white sneakers, the best ways to clean white sneakers, and then I see an ad for white sneakers, there's a much greater chance that I'm going to click and have a positive experience with that message, because it's, it's what I'M what I'm doing now. Uh, so I think context does matter. Now you see a lot of firms releasing technology, talking about contextual advertising as a totally new thing. And I think it'll be get better because using generative AI and using machine learning, these companies, these publishers and advertisers are going to have a better understanding of the context of a page. So now it might be not all blogs about golf and not all pages talking about white sneakers are the same. Maybe with what's coming with AI, advertisers will be able to better m target messages around certain types of contexts. Maybe they'll be able to combine behavioral targeting and contextual targeting, which is something which has been done for a long time. And I think that is effective because ultimately people have to remember that a, uh, brand ad is disruptive. There's only one place in the entire world in my view that in advertising is not disruptive and that's during the super bowl where people want to watch the ads. Any other time, no one wants to see your ad. It's annoying. They're disruptive. So it has to be done in a way that's as seamless, pleasant and relevant as possible. So I feel context has always mattered. Um, and that's sort of my take on the topic.

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Speaker C: well, broken down, I must say. Well broken down. Um, we stalk our guests a lot. Of course. I had to stalk you a little extra and I saw, I looked at, uh, a post you made about a company trying to sell HubSpot to those in the airport. And I think there was this Google term about, I think it's called in moment. I think now they call it multi moment whereby it's important to get people at the right moment. You know, a very basic example that worked is if you're selling B2B software or B2B services, there is a big chance that you will not convert. Well, during the weekends there's because people are searching for these solutions. Maybe after a work meeting where you are supposed to find vendors and you are in that, at, uh, that time you are in there. So you're right. I think the combination of behavioral and contextual can elevate contextual in general, uh, and hopefully is able to get much, uh, better but in order to even get better we as uh, businesses also need to do better in the way we safely collect data and the kinds of data that we collect as well so that we can use some of the own data to optimize whatever initiative that we are, initiative that we are looking at. I just keep this name now. His surname is Fishbone of uh, the market tonist. He talks a lot about this as well. Why sometimes we feel we've got everything figured out but we are still interrupting customers instead of communicating to them. Uh, the one I'm even more interested in when it comes to this kind of communication is the uh, is the communication where people not search basically. I know that sounds like search. When you're searching for something you've got an intent behind it and then you find a brand related to that search. But when you are searching content in general, whether it's on social EU and any other channel and searching for that content and then you are finding it at that point you are laser tagged on that problem and a solution comes up, then it makes sense. Which is why you know all the, all the other kinds of content format these days that adds value helps and being able to use paid ads to target those in a way whereby people are just zoned in and uh, wired in, you know, as Mark Zuckerberg would say in that session and being able to target them with those I think is something that is really, really important. So this is a two part episode because we try to make this as ah, educational and as entertaining as possible. So we are doing this for the first time. Don't be annoyed. Isaac is very special to me. Think I've said that like four times now. So we'll go to the second and last question and then guys will just stay tuned for the part two because I want this much detail in the feedback. Another thing I've been thinking about is again we are looking at omnichannel advertising strategies. Measuring the impact of that is becoming darker, right? Dark social, dark search, direct traffic, you know, things that you cannot pixelate. If we, if I were to use the word, that word, you know, I think people are starting to understand that that's okay. Uh, if they can do some sort of correlation to, to measure impact. Some people still don't care. They want the, they are attribution focused even though whatever they attributing to might be inaccurate. You know, tags tell us something else, the human beings tell us something else. So in your own world how have you been able to measure campaigns in a way that you can say this campaign has supported, you know, what we call end metrics. So in this case end media revenue. We mentioned, uh, Superbo the other time as ah, well like I believe that those running these kinds of ads have a system to be able to track those kinds of activities towards some end revenue. Again, you don't have, it doesn't have to be super bowl this recorded uh, in February. But in general, how do you attribute dark paid traffic to the bottom line and keep stakeholders doing this over and over?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good question. And you have to start off by really identifying the goal of a campaign because not every campaign has the same goal. Certain campaigns, the goal is sales. Another campaign, the goal might be getting traffic to the site. Another campaign might be the goal. The goal of the campaign might be generating awareness for the brand. So depending on the goal there's going to be different ways to measure. So let's say you take a television or print. Even within those formats or mediums there are different goals. So you can have a print advertise advertisement, the goal of which is to generate awareness. You could have another print advertising that, that advertisement that's very direct response generated. For example, I was looking at the Wall Street Journal, I don't know, this was a year, year and a half ago and I saw an ad and it was a very direct response ad to sell a certain type of cooking knife and with a big number to call and a discount code and a QR code. And it was like the. Clearly the purpose of that ad was to get you to pick up the phone and call, which I did because I re, I thought the ad was phenomenal and I bought the knife. So that's direct response. Most print advertising you see in magazines, their, their goal is not to generate phone calls from that ad. Their goal is at some point for their company for their brand to be in your consideration when you're looking for outdoor lights or a landscape artist or a new computer, whatever it might be. So you have to identify the goal of the campaign. So, and there's different ways to track and report. So for example, with tv, a lot of firms are looking at a uh, lift in brand search on Google. This is just one example, a lift in branded search on Google after a, a campaign, a TV campaign where you're not able to track any direct results to a site. But are we seeing a lift in the public conversation about our brand? And is that, is the sentiment positive? Oftentimes our clients that are running connected TV or radio, that's one of the Metrics we'll look at do we see a lift in brand search? Another way to potentially track or get a sense of these results is using matched marketing testing systems where you'll pause all other forms of advertising in, uh, one location, you'll keep the other advertising going in the other location, and then you run a new campaign type and then you're able to measure to what extent you know there's different ways of setting up a match market test. I'm not an expert here at setting up a match market test, but you then isolate some variables and you run a campaign that's either traditional. You could write any of these dark, dark advertising campaigns and then get a sense of lift in website traffic. Did traffic, was there a statistically, ah, relevant difference in website traffic in a location where we're running local TV versus a location that we're not? And of course you have to set up a test where you're getting enough data and you're running a campaign for enough amount of time. Um, but you don't necessarily have to be tracking direct clicks or direct clicks or results from a specific campaign in order to get a good sense that the campaign is working. And lastly, I would just add that you have to establish transparency with your clients and your advertisers. And we're looking at what we call a marketing efficiency ratio overall, at the highest level, are we profitable after accounting for all of our advertising and marketing dollars? We might not know exactly how much of that revenue is attributable or should be attributed to each individual channel. But that's the second question. The first question is, what is our marketing efficiency ratio? Are things working? Are we getting or, uh, do we have more money in the bank now than when we did previously? And from there we start looking at, okay, well, we can get a sense of Google, we can get a sense of meta, we get a sense of organic and direct traffic. Where do we think that those campaigns are coming from? With social media and TikTok and meta and word of mouth, all these things get very complicated. Exactly where is a lead or a sale coming from? By using proxy metrics, by trying to see, are we, are we we getting a lift in website traffic? Are we getting a lift in brand search from certain campaigns? You can start getting an anecdotal idea whether or not certain things are working and worth investing more in.

Speaker C: M Interesting, interesting. I like that market one that you mentioned there. But definitely having to use test to verify hypothesis is something that also helps look at those correlations as well. And the value of those dark markets as you call it. Just to add here before I close is the value of common sense. I am a strategist. I have been making two two kbrs a week for the past two years. So I know a thing or two on, on what strategy looks like. Strategies are supposed to be these guys that are numbers based, obsessed with numbers, how many grains of rice are in my plate before I eat it, you know, and crazy stuff like that. But what I would say or you know, recommend is also be able to apply some level of common sense to it Based on traffic that you're driving to this market. It is expected that this is how things work. Based on something that has happened in the past or something currently happening with your data. It makes sense that this is working the way it should. If something doesn't make sense, you can dive the pine tweet, uh, to again, you know, verify the correlation. Right. Uh, something recently happened like that whereby, you know, we're running out for a podcast using Google Ads of course based on our attribution ad tech. But we also see traffic from Facebook as well on the hosting level. So my colleague was like maybe somehow Excel is overlapping on the Google side with the Pixel and the app ad tech on the Facebook side. And I felt well, does that make sense? Maybe, maybe not because it's different platforms and you know, they are not very good at sharing data with each other. And we run tests, we did something close to that market as well where we were somewhat able to verify that they are different. And then of course we, we looked at, we worked with tech team to verify this and they saw that there was nothing meta in the ad tech, you know, traffic, uh, attribution software that, that ah, that was firing the Pixel. So I, again there's going to be a part two of this because I, I, I love the detail I Isaac that you're putting into it. Uh, so where can people find out more about, where can people learn from you? I'm going to ask this in part two as well because it's not the same.

Speaker A: No problem. Yeah, I'm looking forward to part two. Yeah, we just, I feel like we're just getting started. We have a, there's a lot more we can talk about so people could find our agency@adventureppc ah.com adventureppc.com that's where you can learn more about our work, our clients, our case studies and uh, some of the managed services that we provide. And if you're looking for education tools, resources, downloads, guides, you can go to learning.adventure ppc.com learning.adventure ppc.Com that's the adventure Academy. Um, and it would be great if, uh, you go and check that out.

Speaker C: Yeah. Thank you so much guys. Please continue to share this. Share Part 1 Share Part 2 this is very, very special exclusive episode. Uh, we try to dive deep into uncommon questions and answering uncommon questions to common topics. So it helps if you share this episode and that's all I'm really asking. And if you want to see more of these from great guests as well, please go to my website, do loves marketing.com and make sure to subscribe. If that's what you prefer, just search Marketing leadership on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. I'd like to thank Desk Creek Digital Network and Content Allies for their support to part two.

Speaker A: Thank you. Looking forward.

Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Marketing Leadership Podcast brought to you by Listen Network. There will be links to resources mentioned in today's show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five star review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.