Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
00:10:32 · Jeremy Bloom, Kyle Spraker
[00:10:32] S1: So with that trifecta, let's also talk about the open web. Okay? If trends continue and publishers keep losing traffic, what does that mean for most of us sitting in this room? What does it mean for advertising? It's it's probably the question I hear the most amongst my team. And I'm glad I asked you the same question. [00:11:00] S2: You know, it's it's it's interesting. I... You could look at this and say this is a publisher problem. I look at this and say this is an industry problem. And and let's just kinda use an an example here. You know, publisher consolidation is likely to happen. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I look at it as kind of in the middle of... [00:11:20] S1: It's a it's a thing.
00:11:21 · Kyle Spraker
[00:11:21] S2: It's definitely a thing. But if but if you thought about it, you know, you've got a bunch of publishers, you know, the broadcasters and very high profile publishers that are out there that advertisers have built trust with. And if we start to consolidate and start to see new publishers arise from it, you know, a new conglomerate for some some odd reason here, I... Does that trust kind of get eroded? Do they start to lose transparency in terms of what publishers they're working with or what publishers they're not? And what's the role of AI, you know, ultimately layering on top of that? And I think that's, again, where this really, really gets interesting is what are the different types of insights we can start to see, you know, from a direct publisher if they do start to consolidate because that's likely the only, you know, route that's gonna kinda sit out there with with traffic going down. But at the same time, I... You know, it can create a direct relationship between the brand and that publisher that might not have been there previously. So do they open ourselves up to more and better and more quality content versus quantity? And I think that's kind of... But my marketer in the room, that's what I start looking at. I start to look at the quality that I get, you know, of content versus just the quantity. I... You know, and we start to look at that. And that's probably where we're gonna start to see some of the fee stuff come into play is is quantity worth more at less... Is quality worth more at less quantity? That's super relevant because we're talking
00:12:48 · Jeremy Bloom, Kyle Spraker
[00:12:48] S1: about mid funnel. So quantity makes sense if we're talking about performance or if we're talking about bottom of the funnel. When we're talking about mid funnel and we're talking about quality, if publishers do start consolidating, how will the trust and measurability look different for that mid funnel because of quality? [00:13:10] S2: Yeah. I think the the good news is is the measurement across a direct publisher, I would say, is is in a pretty good standing right now. Good. You know, as as you start to see consolidation happen, it's not like we have to create a whole new, you know, measurement foundation by any means, like what we do in in, you know, AI and LLMs and things like that. And so I think it's just a little bit more of making sure that you're on top of it and you're paying attention to it, not saying that nobody is. But needless to say, as as cons... Consolidation starts to come and you're starting to really look at that mid funnel approach there, you know, what publishers are driving, you know, the best performance there? Do we need to kind of rescan and reunderstand what types of metrics and KPIs we're yearning for, you know, within that middle funnel. You know, I've had a handful of conversations with different marketers that are actually getting rid of the funnel. They're sitting there saying, it's just one massive dump funnel here. We're not looking upper funnel. We're not looking middle funnel. We're not looking lower funnel. [00:14:08] S1: Get deeper on that.
00:14:08 · Jeremy Bloom, Kyle Spraker
[00:14:08] S1: Get deeper on that. [00:14:09] S2: Yeah. It's, you know, it's it's it's a new concept, I would say. But I think with the rise of AI here, you know, you kinda sit there and say, you know, our conversational LLMs upper funnel, or are they middle funnel? Do they start to get lower funnel? So I think it's a little bit more of, hey, how do we define our funnel? And I kinda mentioned this earlier. You've got, you know, a handful of marketers where certain things are probably gonna work the same if you're in the same vertical, but not always. And I don't think that that's gonna be the case going forward. And so it's almost as if a marketer is creating their own version or their own model of what that funnel is gonna ultimately look like in the future. [00:14:53] S1: You're working across hundreds and hundreds of different marketers as you're overseeing The Americas. You've been at IAS for what? A dozen years? Coming up. I mean, that's amazing. You've seen a lot. What are some trends? What are some things that are interesting you personally taking place in our ecosystem?
00:15:14 · Kyle Spraker
[00:15:14] S2: No. It's interesting. I... The the pace at which we're moving right now. You know, you you go back, and I'll just give a history lesson. I've been at IAS for twelve years, and I remember when I first stopped... Walked in the door, the only thing that we measured was a display ad. I've got a couple folks that were there with me at the front row here, but Oh, there we go. You know, it's it's, you know, there's so many different environments that a advertiser can buy in, and, you would think that you would go in and look at a pie chart and say, alright. Most marketers spend x amount in meta and x amount in YouTube and x amount across programmatic. It's all over the place right now. It doesn't seem like there's one specific thing that kinda stands out for a marketer. And I think that's what's kind of interesting right now is it's their own personal, you know, tailored approach to the way in which things work for them, their brand. And if you thought about a brand right now, you know, trying to gain attention of your audience, it's very difficult. Right? I think we've heard, you know, a human has less attention span than a goldfish, which is about eight seconds. Oh, look. A squirrel. So you've gotta capture that attention quickly, and you've gotta be able to do it across a broad set of platforms to reach a broad set of audiences from, you know, a young age to an old age, and that's gonna differ by brand. And so, you know, on our side, those types of things that we see, we wanna be able to provide insights and transparency to help make better informed decisions. And, you know, this rise of AI and what's gonna create trust there, that's a big component of it. If you can walk in the door to a marketer and say, hey, look how well we performed. Well, how did you do that? How did you perform so well? That's the question that we keep getting asked is, you know, the how behind it, not necessarily the what behind it.
00:17:00 · Jeremy Bloom
[00:17:00] S1: So let's switch this up a little bit. You have a different career background than a lot of other people in this room. You started as a professional baseball player. So for those who didn't know that, Kyle played Major League Baseball, and you played in college. As we had folks like Ian Schafer and Sarah Spain at Marketecture Live three in New York this past March. We had Tim Ellis, the CMO of the NFL. We had Allyson Felix, the most amount of... One of top Olympians who had the most amount of medals for an American female athlete with Lance Armstrong. The level of sports creator, influencer, and and the long term strategy that comes with it is we're talking about publishers, as we're talking about brand, we're talking about audience. Give us your take just being a former retired ball player.