What Marketers Can Control When AI Changes Everything with Nick Wedewer, VP of Growth Marketing at Hims & Hers

Speaker A: To me, what is still going to be super powerful, I think we're already seeing it in the last couple of years, is the power of like long form content and content creators just in the data itself. Like I remember five years ago, like podcast, YouTube, uh, influencer, it was like a brand channel. I think that's changed. I think there is value and clear conversion opportunity, clear revenue driving opportunity now on those channels.

Speaker B: Foreign. Welcome back to the Partnership Economy Podcast. This is your host, Dave Yovano and I'm thrilled to introduce you to today's guest, Nicholas Wederer, VP of Growth marketing. At him and Hers. Nick's career actually started with a bad cab ride. Growing up in San Francisco, he watched Lyft turn an unreliable, unpredictable cab experience into something convenient and affordable, which convinced him the Internet was about to remake entire industries. That's how he ended up leading growth at Lyft, then at Gopuff, and now him and hers for the past three and a half years. Along the way, he's built a reputation for rigorous measurement and creative growth partnerships, including a memorable Mr. Beast collaboration during his time at Gopuff. In this episode, we dive into measurement pro tips including why relying on a single metric is a mistake and what it actually takes to build confidence in what's working. How, uh, partnerships have fueled growth at every stop in Nick's career and what today's marketers should be doing to get ahead of AI and shifting search behavior. Nick also shares some great career advice along the way. So stick around for that one too. You won't want to miss this one. Nick, how you doing today?

Speaker A: I'm doing great.

Speaker B: Awesome. No, I think it's going to be great. Especially when you look at the track record of companies that you've been at. Very fast growing, also consumer facing businesses. You've been at GoPuff, you've been at Lyft, you're now at him and her. So I'm dying to dive into it. First you want to understand for the audience like what drew you to these hypergrowth consumer facing environments.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. Um, I think in the year like 2010, 2011, you started to see this push for companies that were taking previously existing services and models and uh, they were trying to sort of improve the experience using technology and specifically the Internet. Right. And so for me, that aha moment was growing up in San Francisco, uh, riding cabs with my mom and dad when we know weren't taking the bus. Uh, the experience was suboptimal and this Company Lyft came out and was uh, offering ride sharing and the service was just completely different. The experience made you feel like you were getting a service that not only you needed but you enjoyed. That experience for me was like a light bulb effect that the Internet and mobile computing was going to change the way businesses worked from there. Just passionate about trying to grow companies that were creating better levels of service, more convenient service. And if you look at my track record of where I've been, I think all the companies line up with providing a better quality experience, a faster, more convenient experience for customers for things that they want, need.

Speaker B: But I think that is unique. You know, I think in your profile is just very innovative companies in very different spaces. You know, give us a sense of what you're running at. Him and hers right now. What's the scope of marketing in a healthcare focused E commerce business?

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, it's uh, it's exciting time to be part of hims and hers. I've been there now for three and a half years and I've been running uh, most of their digital marketing, um, and sort of advertising since I joined across all of their sort of conditional care categories. And uh, what I think is um, so awesome about the opportunity and why I'm so lucky I got it is the company was founded on an ability to offer treatments that people really saw the value in. And so when I joined they already had a thriving advertising business, um, that was driving a lot of customer growth. And um, one of my focuses when I joined early on was sort of ensuring we're diversifying that portfolio, launching new care categories. And so now I manage not just paid search and paid social, but um, what we would say is like sort of emerging channels like YouTube and Reddit, uh, also includes TV, um, online video, connected TV as well as things like growth partnerships and affiliate. So anything that really is investing dollars in some form of marketing or advertising is under my domain and I'm responsible for making sure that's running efficiently.

Speaker B: And so it's interesting. So you built uh, some of your um, early skills in SEM SEO that's been like the foundation in digital marketing for decades. Uh, obviously there's a lot of change underway right now and as you think about what's changing in our industry and in marketing itself, what do you think is becoming non negotiable for marketers to understand right now?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the big one for me and something I've um, had to deal with pretty much at all the places I've worked at is um, the Importance of feeling confidence in your measurement modeling. I think the non negotiable for me is one form of measurement just isn't enough. And I think this has been proven out by the sort of movement from you know, last click attribution to multi touch click attribution. And like each of these being seen as sort of like the savior for where data compilation and reporting needs to go and understanding how your marketing is affecting your primary business goals. I think for me with where things are trending with privacy, um, with uh, sort of not having the usual data that you once had. I actually think to me a non negotiable is having a measurement model that triangulates things, that uses different sources of evaluation to give you not a hundred percent confidence but more confidence that your true performance and make measurement and reporting more of a 3D map than a 2D. It's not just one number you see as an up and down over time, but rather there's multiple numbers kind of intersecting. And as part of that too I think measurement is going to be something that you have to constantly do, just doing a test one time and letting it sit and trusting that number. Businesses change, markets change, competitive dynamics change. And so really good measurement is built on having a process for consistently updating the data data points for that, that measurement. I think the most popular ones right now are like click data and then you have mmm, lift tests or incrementality tests and I think if you can combine those plus additional forms, you're going to give yourself the best results and have the highest confidence in what's performing and what's not.

Speaker B: Are you able to unpack that um, one level deeper and just give the audience an insight into your general like philosophy, approach, structure, framework towards measurement?

Speaker A: Yeah, I could probably spend an hour on this topic alone. It's one that you know, I spend a lot of time in my career. It's a complex one and I think the number one rule is like there is not a single form of measurement that works for every company because every company has different dynamics that affect your ability to actually have confidence in someone's propensity to convert and how that changes based off what they interact with. Right. So your click data is one that says I have some form of ad, um, or experience and someone clicks it and you're able to obviously track that right down, funnel into someone eventually actually converting. And that is uh, something that has, has worked well for companies and being able to have a higher confidence that their search ads or their meta ads are driving a direct Correlation to performance. The issue with just that form there is that it's dependent on the click. And a lot of channels people absorb it changes their decision making and they don't click on anything. I think a great example of that is like linear tv. No one can click an ad on that comes from them, from the tv, right? Or I guess now there's some smart TV stuff. But m, the majority of people see an ad and then recall it at some point and use another device or means of actually purchasing or uh, getting a service. And so to me you have to have alternatives that go beyond a click that has a UTM parameter that you can track. And I think the one that is most accepted universally is um, working for in some ways for every channel is, is mmm, right? Which is essentially building a model that looks at when you change spend on channels. Do you see a correlation on your primary metrics? MMM is a great way of putting some value towards when you change investments for certain channels. Do you see a correlation? How efficient is that correlation in things like purchases or conversions for your, your business? And then I think like when we talk about triangulation, you have your clicks, you have your mmm. I think the final piece there is lift testing. And this can be done in a variety of ways. Um, for some publishers you can actually do like user uh, level studies where they hold out a group of users and see if they converge. They don't see an ad. And you can kind of compare your performance between an exposed group and a control group. And then in some ways you can also do this with things like GEO holdout where you do the same thing, but you eliminate certain cities or states or countries and compare the performance of your ads where they were exposed and where they're not. And those studies are usually take longer and require a certain investment level. But that's a great way of validating sort of the overall lift of a channel on driving better business metrics like conversion.

Speaker B: And I think you're right. You know, another important point is every business is different. You're not, you're not just saying that like the way I would say businesses are different is the conversion type. One final question on this topic. How are you thinking about that last point in your business? I have to imagine it's on a lot of people's minds that listen to this podcast in marketing. How are you thinking about as a professional measuring in this kind of uh, you know, um, world where it's harder and harder to track things for a number of reasons?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a, ah, It's a great question. I, I think um, for me maybe one of the, the more challenging pieces is uh, I think there was a lot of opportunity when you had first party data to do like fast experimentation and get data points really quickly. Live A B testing. And I think especially like when I was at, at Lyft we were able to run a lot of tests and get a lot of wins that were stat 6 does they say significant like pretty quickly. And I think when you lose access to that, that user level data, um, what you run into is I think you have to be a bit more methodical and thoughtful with how you plan out your testing and it generally requires you to invest more to be able to read and get significant results. But when I'm thinking about holistically, especially around my overall marketing um, budget and how I'm investing um, our overall dollars into different channels and testing, does increasing this channel actually have a positive correlation, an efficient correlation and increased performance? You really have to build out those plans and to test them more methodically. You can't just increase a channel by 1% like you're just not going to see it in the throughput right if you're not getting that usual level data. Um, so you have to be making bigger bets. What if I increase this channel 20% for two or three weeks and see um, in certain geographies does it create lift? And so that planning function is actually can be very complex. And so it's not something that's like everyone can just easily do this. It takes an alignment between you, your analytics team, our data science team, um, obviously your leadership team because they have to be bought in on potentially the effect it could have if things don't go as planned. And so I think that's the big shift is like it's much more about making the right bets than making the most bets, which I think I feel like 10 years ago it was about finding as many wins as fast as possible.

Speaker B: All right, at gopuff, um, I know that you've had a dedicated growth partnerships team and that's not always the case. A lot of companies will uh, classify partnerships as a channel rather than as part of a growth function. Why was it set up that way at GoPuff? What kinds of partnerships actually move the needle for you at GoPuff?

Speaker A: Yeah, I can't take credit for that strategy. That is definitely on uh, the leadership team at GoPuff. I think early on they recognized that in that space there were these huge opportunities with these CPGs, these massive brands that had Food and beverage, uh, brands that they want into market, but maybe even more importantly, get data. It was hard for them to get first party purchase data right from the big supermarkets and things like that. And so gopuff sat in this unique position of being able to provide this first party data and to give these brands a lot of insights, especially with a younger customer base. Um, so gopuff, when I started, for those who don't know, was predominantly located around college campuses and the majority of customers were under the age of 30. And so for brands your biggest fear is not being able to grow into the younger demographics. And so they took advantage of that in the more sort of true classical partnership sense of like, let's partner, create a plan, we'll give you data, we'll get your products front and center and the platform. But also within that there was also opportunities with brands, um, and with other companies to focus more on. Is there an opportunity to drive customer growth specifically for GoPuff by leveraging sort of mutual opportunities for us to grow, but also for these brands or these partner businesses to grow. And I think some like good examples of that that were actually incredibly meaningful for customer acquisition. One was like credit card, like linked offers was uh, something that they really focused on and it was actually like a pretty massive source of growth for us. And so the idea there is these credit card companies want to be able to offer, you know, value to people who are credit card holders. So hey, if you use GoPuff, you get X dollars off. And those drove a ton of acquisition because people were getting free dollars to use on our platform. And we were able to showcase the experience and get people hooked on being able to get things delivered to them really fast to their, to their home. The other piece was like some of the newer brands and things that were coming out saw GoPuff as a way of growing the size of their business rapidly. So we can't get in the supermarkets for a while, but GoPuff can get their, prop their, our products into their facilities and we can work on a deal where like we drive acquisition of GoPuff and by doing that we grow our new business faster. And I think a great example of that was Mr. Beast actually launched a chocolate line. And one of our largest days for acquisition was when he announced it and told everyone to go to go to GoPuff to buy his chocolate bars. And this is a great thing for him because it like accelerated the growth of this chocolate bar company substantially because it was on the platform. We had it focused in the app and Then we got a ton of new customers from his followers who just wanted to try his chocolate bar and we could deliver to them in like 25 minutes. So it was quite an awesome user experience. But it was like really a mutual partnership that was built on growing each other's key values. Right. Which for us was new customer acquisition for him, which was sales of his candy bar.

Speaker B: Excellent examples. I love that. Do you want to just tell us a little bit more about Hims and what the brand stands for?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean the core tenet of Hims and hers really is to make people feel better, uh, through the power of health. Um, and so for us, that when I joined the company was really about doing that, uh, through sensitive healthcare conditions. So, uh, things like erectile dysfunction, hair loss, mental health. It was really a platform built on saying the experience of going to your primary care physician, hopefully being able to schedule it, get on the calendar, get time off work, and then potentially that could take weeks to months to actually get seen, was not the best experience. And they built a platform really on being able to take the same healthcare professionals, the same quality treatment there and get people quicker, faster, uh, access to that, uh, especially for topics that aren't going to, or conditions aren't going to be covered by your insurance anyways. And again, we're very much in the first stage of this evolution beyond treating, um, these sensitive healthcare conditions. But it's something that like I'm the super passionate about, only asked me about like what looks for in a company. I saw the healthcare space as one that has so much opportunity to offer people more preventative care than reactive care.

Speaker B: I love how as a brand, like knowing that you're kind of like almost uh, creating a new category or entering a new category, uh, in terms of just like the accessibility of certain treatments. I just love that about new brands like him and hers coming out, like meeting the consumer with the product at the place that they are with information is the point that I'm trying to make. Right. That's a very relevant, um, brand strategy, I think. But then, you know, tying that to expansion. So maybe you got your start in some of the, uh, sensitive, taboo sort of topics. Seems like now you're expanding into more general preventive care categories. How do you think about that expansion without losing what made that, that brand work initially? And when you think about partnerships and growth, how is that part of your growth strategy kind of evolving? Just as you, you know, enter, uh, kind of like the more general preventive

Speaker A: care, uh, categories, it's hard to move Away from a brand that, you know, that works. And so I think for us, it's taking some of the core tenants that were part of our. Have been part of our brand since the company started, but finding ways to evolve the messaging and to showcase the value. Because I think the other piece here too is like, there's people raising their hands looking for those care treatments that I mentioned before, sexual health and hair loss. And so there's a lot of hand raising. We kind of have to create that awareness, which I think is going to be, uh, a new challenge for us. And so I think you saw us tackle this a little bit, like with our super bowl commercial. Um, one of my favorite moments, and it's something that, like, I get when I do my blood panels is like, when you get the results and you see that, like, everything's clear. You know, that confidence that like, oh, inside of me, my blood gives details that I'm healthy and. Or, hey, there's some things that say I need to sleep more and eat better. And it's a great reminder that I have to focus on those things. I think our brand's gonna have to evolve to show the value of that preventative care and that investment in yourself. Right. Cause you're actually putting dollars towards yourself, um, versus a specific treatment. And I think that brand evolution is going to. It's gonna be challenging because we're now having to showcase, um, treatments and, um, services that maybe people aren't even aware exist or aren't really thinking about and raising their hands for. But I think it's an exciting opportunity to show people that there's better healthcare and better, uh, treatment options out there.

Speaker B: In terms of how you actually market the brand. Are there things that work in other categories that don't work in healthcare?

Speaker A: For example, the healthcare space is one where I think trust is so unbelievably critical. Uh, you do not want a service if you do not think the quality of that care is going to be high, is going to, uh, your, your primary care or, you know, your nearest hospital. And so for us, one thing that we're just so dead set on is the authenticity of our creatives. Making sure that the people, the messaging is, is what we truly believe in. And I think that's something that, like, in my other, you know, we're talking about online delivery. Like, I think authenticity, you can almost make fun of it in a sense. And I think Lyft was, you know, I wouldn't say it was inauthentic at all. Um, but we played around And I think, you know, um, we had people driving lifts that would never drive flips. Right. Cause it's like we wanted to catch people and get them engaged and see the experience and say, hey, if Shaq can drive a lift, I can drive a lift. Um, that doesn't really work with medical because it, people really care. Number one about is, is the care quality. If it's convenient, great. But if it's not quality, that's, that's an issue with me.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's real risk, uh, of harm, you know, if you will. Right. And so, you know, how do you like, I would imagine that you're working with different creators and things like that. For example, any work that you might be doing with creators, like how do you enforce compliance?

Speaker A: The big thing here is like when we approach talent, we're very transparent that there are certain requirements that have to be met. If you're going to speak about treatment, you either have to say, I've taken this treatment and it's honest, or say you haven't taken the treatment and that you're just recommending a service because you understand the value of what we're bringing. And a lot of our best performing, um, creator programs are based off real customers who've taken the treatments and can really speak to the value they provide. Uh, and it's tough because it also makes it so much harder then to find a talent. And so my team goes through a lot of effort to try and find that pairing of authenticity and then high value, high uh, reach, uh, uh, talent. Um, and so those, when those two things pair together really well, it's, it's meaningful. And I think we had a campaign for mental health, um, maybe six months into when I started and Kristen Bell was our spokesperson and she dealt with mental health challenges and she was open about using treatments to, to help her and that have given her an opportunity to break out of those challenges. And I think that authenticity played out in her ads. You know, we are always striving to, to find the right talent and sometimes that means you're not going to get maybe who you want because they can't speak to it. But in the end, to me that's just, it's critical.

Speaker B: Yeah. Back to the measurement conversation that we were having earlier on this topic. I can't help but kind of bring it back to AI because I have to imagine, you know, consumers are using AI to research quite a bit and find out about your products. Right. You've got AI and search just really fundamentally changing consumer behavior again. So how, how Are you thinking about that at hims? And especially knowing that a lot of the citations, the sources of information are what's being written by, call it the community, creators, publishers, not so much the brand, let's say itself.

Speaker A: It's definitely something I think about a lot because um, we're already seeing the impact of it. If you even just look at Google and their search results, um, it's not just the top paid listings, the top organic listings. There's Google Answers, there is now, you know, Gemini, you can expand to talk to Gemini. And so we talk about going back towards this idea of triangulation for attribution. I think that also plays into how you look at your organic traffic and search traffic. I think you're going to have to find new means of evaluating where you sit in uh, all the different uh, LLMs in terms of searches for key conditions and things like that. And the other piece too is like there's going to be all this long tail traffic, right. Like it's really interesting. The mobile movement almost made search terms simpler because more people were just entering simple things on their phone. Great example is like you might just enter weight loss in your phone, right? If you're on ChatGPT, you're probably gonna enter like what is the best way for me to lose weight? That or and maybe some modifier that doesn't require injections or that cost $99 or less a month. And that is a whole new world in the sense that like your companies are going have to figure out how to respond to specific long tail searches. But that also means there's more volume of things you have to look at. And so from an attribution perspective I don't have all the answers here but I think finding ways of evaluating how you're indexing and these LLMs for your primary core long tailed questions, making sure that you're indexing there is going to be important to track. As all of these LLMs start to get more and more, more volume of search. I think it really comes down to like the quality of content is, is one thing that I'm seeing when talking to experts in sort of this uh, AEO space which is essentially agentic. Right. Uh, uh, optimization and I think that's going to be super critical but I don't have all the answers. I think the key is being flexible and being able to use new sources of data to confirm or um, sort of adjust your perception as to where performance is coming from.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think someone like yourself, right, who started their career in uh, search Basically SEM SEO. That's a pretty profound statement that you're making. I don't have all the answers. I'm trying to figure it out like everybody else. And I do think that that's the, you know, the situation that we're in, uh, as a marketing industry, as I think about your challenge. So I appreciate you being candid, saying, look, you know, we're trying to figure it out just like everybody else. But are there any opportunities in AI driven discovery that you think marketers are overlooking right now?

Speaker A: Just in general, the big thing uh, for me is having an openness to testing, uh, like right now, um, even though the volume in the sort of ad space connected to um, LLMs or um, this agentic search opportunities are limited. Like we're working with some partners now where we're actually testing, running ads, um, in tandem with uh, agentic searches. And just the goal is not to drive volume right now, it's just to see what, what actually works, what performs. Um, and I think the benefit too is those companies are going to see what actually works in terms of advertising because the experience is different than traditional search. People are asking long tail questions like they don't want an ad that's completely divergent from what they're asking. And so for me, I think the big piece here is one, being open to tests and experiment and understand it's not going to perform probably right off the bat. What's maybe more valuable is learning and getting ahead of the curve on how to actually drive conversion right from, from these experiences. I think two is the rapid need to be able to personalize using AI. So like, I think right now when I talk about the long tail searches and people looking for more specific things, driving them to a general weight loss page when they're searching for various specific things is not going to make sense. And so then the question is how is it possible to scale with that? And I think the truth is we're going to have to use AI to build experiences that, that mold to what people have searched for. And then once they're on your site, what they're clicking, what they're engaging with and what they're saying. But now with AI there's this power to potentially do this in a way where you don't have to build the individual pages, you can make the experience optimized for whatever the person's looking for. Um, and you're building like a platform versus individual pages and individual conversion flows. I think that's something that we're starting to really look into. And lean into um, and I think that's where our dates going to have to go because again you want to be able to cater to the content, the experience, um, to the actual LLM. And then on top of that, like there's going to be a lot of, I'm sure, work in the future to bring those experiences directly into the actual platform that's being searched on versus a click to a site. Right. And I think being able to have a tight relationship with your product engineering teams to be ready for that world. Um, obviously it's going to vary. I think E commerce is like almost already there in bringing the purchase directly into ChatGPT or into Gemini. I think health and some of the things that are more protected and um, private are. It's going to be a longer path but I think starting to think through those and being prepared for that is going to be super critical.

Speaker B: Yeah, there was um, a bit of a failed test is the way I would rate it with ChatGPT, like apps inside of ChatGPT. The way I would summarize, um, the brand feedback is conversion rates were really low. Meaning, um, they felt like they kind of lost out on conversion opportunities if it were on its own, um, surfaces, if you will. And they did not want to give up control of their own services. They really wanted to kind of manage the consumer experience. I mean these are brands that have a brand and they care very much about having a direct relationship with the consumer. They didn't want to go completely headless. So that was kind of like my, my summary of the experiment so far. But like, obviously we're in very early innings and who knows how that's going to play out.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at a lot of the publishers who've been successful in terms of driving conversion for um, advertisers. I mean I think you look at like meta early on the ad experience, like no one wanted to click the ads. No one that they clicked the ads converted. You know, I think over time people get used to seeing the ads and used to the experience. And so that's just like one part of it and then two is like the actual publishers will get better in this case, LLMs and figuring out how to make the experience great for the end user. Um, but obviously for like in the health vertical, like there's certain privacy and regulatory things that like, you know, we're not in a rush to do that. Um, but I do think thinking about, at least on our side, the, let's say we do get someone driven like Making sure the experience is optimized for both the user as well as the crawling right from the different bots, from the different LLMs, I think is like going to be super critical.

Speaker B: Well, you're certainly in the eye of the storm of like transformation evolution here. I'm curious as to what you think the marketing job actually looks like. Call it in six months, in 12 months.

Speaker A: For me, I think about a lot is like I have to assume that more and more of what has been a media buyer's job or someone who's a strategist who's sort of more, um, you know, newer into the role, who's managing execution, like those things. A lot of things that used to take up a lot of time are going to be automated. I think the day of having team members who are 75% execution is their core focus. Like that's going to change. And so what does that mean? And to me what I'm excited about is it means really more time to be thoughtful about strategy roadmap for your channels and like what are we betting on? What are our experiments? To me the primary change is going to be um, I think focusing on what the human is going to still have such a great opportunity to affect. And for me like those places that I can think of directly are one, um, creator strategy, uh, for every channel, what can we do to move performance, to get people more engaged, spending more time on how creatives are unique to each channel and also be more aggressive in testing new things. If you think about it, AI is going to take what's working and to be able to reproduce it and do variations. It's not going to be as good at making the bets as to like, what's something completely net new that we can do? What's something that's going to catch your, your eyes on uh, a TV or in your social feed? And so to me, like every marketer is going to have to now be part creative strategist versus like having a creative strategy team that kind of tells you where you should go. I think it's going to be part of the marketer's job. I think the next piece too is I think you're going to have to be able to use AI and use data to inform your next bet and being able to take insights that drive change and experimentation. So uh, my team is already, I would say doing a wonderful job with doing this, which is like using Claude, using different uh, LLMs to take our data, digest it and to get insights that fuel opportunity. Um, so whether it's looking at creative performance and finding out like what's working or what's not or it's taking segmentations of data and asking, hey, are there places that seem like they're performing really well that we can double down on? You're going to find a lot of wins outside of the ad. Now the ad is almost so optimized by the publishers itself with all the automation, all the algorithmic bidding. I think being able to go beyond and think about the full user experience and working cross functionally to evolve and almost optimize that more than the ad itself is going to be the differentiator between a company that does decent marketing and a company that is continuously able to scale and beat its metrics each quarter.

Speaker B: Well, I got you. You know, one kind of maybe final question as you look out over the next couple of years. What would you say is a trend that is visible today? But um, you know, you think most people aren't even paying attention to just yet.

Speaker A: Agentic optimization is going to do a really good job of making small iterative improvements and finding wins, um, and sort of automating uh, very specific executions that you're doing and making them better, making small adjustments and tuning them over time and learning from you and learning from the. To me, what is still going to be super powerful, I think we're already seeing it in the last couple years is the power of like long form content and content creators just in the data itself. Like I remember five years ago, like podcast, YouTube, uh, influencer, it was like a brand channel. You invested in that because you had extra dollars and you were like, well this is supposed to help over the long term so I'm going to put dollars into brand and hopefully life. We see better awareness, um, you know, polling results, we see better upper funnel traffic and then like that overall this will be good for us. I think that's changed. I think there is value and clear conversion opportunity, clear revenue driving opportunity now on those channels. I think we're seeing it in him to hers. I think we definitely saw it a bit at GoPuff as well. And I think what that speaks to is people looking for authenticity and trusting sources of talent that they trust, that they like, that they find funny, that they engage with. And I don't think that's going to change with AI. I actually think AI won't be able to do this. And so for me I see this as something that people should continue to invest in is making sure you're partnering with the right um, authentic content and the right content creators. I think the other piece here too is like LLMs are looking at content with creators now to partially answer their, their questions, ah. And trusted sources of information. And so I think it's also interesting too because I think there's a world where this content is, is, is included even more so in the decision making and, and the answers. And so like, I think having places where people speak about your company and talk authentically about the service, the treatment, the goods and the, the good and bad things about it might be something that actually stands out within AI as well. Right. Um, and so I think we're really excited about continuing to invest there. We're seeing good direct results and I think we think long term this is a place that is going to be impactful and certainly based off my career, I don't see that going anywhere. And I see the content as being potentially more valuable than ever.

Speaker B: That's great. Well, Nick, this has been an awesome conversation. All right, well, thanks again, Nick. And that's it for today's episode of the Partnership Economy podcast.

Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks, Dave.

Speaker B: I really enjoyed this conversation with Nick. His run through Lyft, gopuff and now him and hers gives him a rare ground level view of what actually drives growth today. And it showed throughout this episode. A few things really resonated with me. First, his case for measurement triangulation. Nick was clear that no single method click data. Mmm, uh, or lift testing tells the whole whole story anymore. Especially with privacy changes in AI reshaping the way people search. Layering those signals together is what gives marketers real confidence in what's actually driving performance. From GoPuff's credit card linked offers in the Mr. Beast chocolate bar partnership. To him and hers collaborations with brands like MyFitnessPal and long form podcast partners, Nick's career is a great reminder that partnerships can drive real, measurable acquisition. Second, partnerships continue to show up as one of his biggest growth levers, even when they're not always labeled as such. From GoPuff's credit card linked offers and the Mr. Beast chocolate bar partnership, to him and hers collaborations with brands like MyFitnessPal and long form podcast partners, Nick's career is a great reminder that partnerships can drive real measurable acquisition. And finally, his take on what where the marketing job is headed. As AI takes over more of the execution work, Nick believes the winning marketers will be the ones who lean into creative strategy and proactively seek ways to continue improving. Thank you Nick for joining us on the Partnership Economy podcast and to our listeners, thank you for tuning in.