S2

Episode 1

Navigating the New Normal in 2021

Illustration of Nadine Tull, Director of Growth Strategy at Mirren

About This Episode

August 18, 2021

Learn how the digital marketing landscape has evolved during the pandemic, and what digital marketers can expect next.

Chris Kane | Founder, Jounce Media

Nadine Tull | Director of Growth Strategy, Mirren

Vitaly Pecherskiy | Co-founder and CEO, StackAdapt

00:00

Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

When you really think about the last year and a half, not only is it a global pandemic, but then you think about the social landscape and everything that we have been through. And I almost think that was harder for brands to navigate from an advertising standpoint, because, you know, everything is real time. And you know, headlines are hitting the news today and you’ve got an AED cow that’s scheduled for post three days from now, and none of that’s relevant, you know, with what’s happening on a day to day basis. So I absolutely underestimated the number of times that we would have to kind of as an industry come together and figure out how to pivot.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:44)

Curious to know what industry leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever evolving digital landscape that how agencies Thrive podcast by StackAdapt is dedicated to helping the new breed of forward thinking savvy, lean and mean marketers win in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Time to thrive.

Matt (00:01:12)

Since the start of the pandemic, marketers have had to adopt flexible, fast-changing strategies to keep up with the changing digital landscape. Now, as many of us settle into the new normal, it’s time to talk about what the new normal actually looks like. Today, we’re exploring how agencies can thrive in the new digital marketing normal. We’re joined by leaders in the industry to discuss the ways in which the digital marketing landscape has evolved, the Silver Linings that the pandemic has brought to the advertising industry, and what digital marketers can expect moving forward. What you’ll find interesting about this episode is the unique perspective that each of the guests has in this roundtable. And what I really liked is that we weren’t able to just reflect on the unprecedented year and a half that we just had, but see how positive of an impact this has had on how we communicate with consumers through effective advertising. As always, thank you for tuning in and enjoyed this episode of The How Agencies Thrive podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome to today’s episode. My name is Matt. I’m the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and I’m also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, I’m joined by three guests, Chris Kane from Jounce media, Nadine from Mirren, and Vitaly Pecherskiy from StackAdapt. To kick things off, I’m gonna hand it over to today’s guests to tell us a little bit about themselves. Starting with you, Chris, why don’t you tell us about what you do? How long you’ve been in the industry and what you consider to be your strongest area of expertise?

Chris (00:02:40)

Yeah, my name is Chris Kane, I lead a consultancy called Jounce Media. And we are very focused on putting some math around the programmatic supply chain. We work with marketers and publishers and tech platforms, and rigorously track spend across any open Internet media property, which works out to be about a million websites, half a million mobile apps and 50,000 CTV apps. And on top of that data set, we think we can help all of the participants across the supply chain make more thoughtful choices about how to drive efficiency in the in the supply chain.

Matt (00:03:17)

Next, Nadine will pass it over to you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Nadine (00:03:21)

Thanks so much. So my name is Nadine Toll. I’m a director of agency growth strategy at Mirren. We’re training firm focused on organic growth and new business. I have been in the industry about 20 years I got my start at agencies directing accounts, Taco Bell T Mobile, most recently before Mirren Washington’s lottery, and I’ve been at agencies like Publicis and Draftfcb. I was in the WPP network. And my area of expertise now is truly organic growth. We help agency teams the tools, the skills, the methods to increase their share of their clients’ marketing spend. In fact, we partnered with StackAdapt to conduct a study on justice topic recently. So I’m really happy to be here to share some insight today.

Matt (00:04:04)

Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Nadine. We’re glad to have you here as well. So, finally, we’ll we’ll pass it over to Vitaly. So, Vitaly was the host of last season. So, Vitaly, just for our listeners if we can have a quick refresh review, and then we’ll get started with the questions.

Vitaly (00:04:19)

Awesome. Yeah, so my name is Vitaly Pecherskiy. I’m one of the co-founders of StackAdapt. So I’ve been in the industry for about 10 years, just over 10 years. So I started my career in performance advertising. So I was a part of a startup AdParlour. So they were one of the first companies to integrate with, with Facebook through their ads API. So had a lot of fun there. Once they got acquired. I went on to work at one of the hold coasts where I met my co-founder. And for the past seven-plus years we’ve been building StackAdapt To be honest, I think of myself as as a person, like kind of a jack of all trades. So I know a little bit about Maybe things. So naturally, I think I’m good at connecting dots. So, hopefully I’ll be able to weigh in on the conversation today.

Matt (00:05:08)

So as mentioned, this episode of the podcast will be a roundtable discussion on navigating the new normal in digital advertising. And the really, the goal of this episode is to explore how the world has changed since we faced a global pandemic over a year and a half ago, and how this has made a lasting impact on the digital advertising industry. So let’s start things off. I’d like everybody to think back to March of 2020. This was when the entire core of every industry had the rug pulled out from under them. And, frankly, digital was no exception. So at the time, how did you think that this would impact digital advertising?

Chris (00:05:48)

Sure, I was pretty pessimistic last March, and felt like marketers, by necessity, we’re going to have to slash budgets. And that, you know, that was going to affect everybody across the supply landscape was going to affect, of course, publishers, it was in effect, all of the tech platforms, it was going to create a big headwind for the agencies are going to create a big headwind for our business.

Nadine (00:06:11)

Yeah, something in I have to say I was a bit short-sighted, also had a bit of that pessimistic slant, but I was thinking, this is going to be a two-week disruption, we’re all going to be back at it. Before we know it. You know, we do a lot of research with clients. Even when we were looking at the short term, what I was thinking short-term impact, we were looking at client verticals. But quickly, you know, with the new direct to consumer opportunities that brands were facing, there was a huge opportunity for digital that kind of initially.

Vitaly (00:06:46)

I just hadn’t really considered there being a platform through which, you know, we see 1000s of brands advertising in that those last two weeks of March, because we, you know, we’re just in general obsess over data. So being able to look at dashboards and just see how different verticals are basically buying advertising across the web, you know, in real time seeing the impact of lockdowns. And over those last two weeks in March, it was it was definitely scary. You just refresh the dashboard. You’re like, oh, wait, more spenders dropping people are pausing campaigns. And it’s, it was very, very intimidating. And I think in the back of my mind, I thought, Well, if that if, like, in theory, yes, like advertising, they all say that advertising is kind of like the first budget line that goes in the cost-cutting effort. But I think, you know, somewhere deep inside, I thought, Okay, well, digital has to stay like if, like companies still have to grow somehow. And for many of them, advertising is kind of a blind line. So I thought, you know, if, if anything, digital will probably bounce back faster. And I think in that sense, I was not wrong. But you know, those first few weeks was definitely scary. And I, I was, I was thinking, you know, being an advertising space, where you basically make money when the advertisements are bought, and if no advertising is being bought for the platform, then you’re obviously not making money. It’s it’s the same model as maybe Uber. And at that moment, I thought it would be great if we had some subscription revenue. But truth be told, you know, even in that time, companies that have subscription revenue, and all the customers came to them started basically asking to pass their contracts. And reality is, in that kind of moment of crisis, I think everybody was on the same playing field, regardless of your business model everybody was in the mall to to try to help their customers while trying to survive. But I think all things considered, you know, we, we bounced back so fast, much faster than I anticipated. But being still at home, in some ways, you know, we’ve we already are operating in a new norm.

Nadine (00:08:59)

Vitaly, you probably know better than than us. But some of our clients were telling us about their, their own client roster, and now they have, you know, multiple verticals, but they are dropping 95% overnight, like, and they just it’s so when they looked at their revenue, you know, that was even one of the big questions is how do we forecast but that first few I would even say the four weeks everyone just like went to pause. So it was it’s very true that there is a lot to react to just with that very first time period there.

Vitaly (00:09:34)

Yeah. And I think in the in that, you know, that first week or second week, it just became apparent that there’s going to be some companies that are just going to blow up big time. You know, you saw how rapidly Zoom stocks you know, rows and and width. I immediately start thinking like, what is going to be the next growth opportunity for us? And to be honest, I think I was not in touch fairly accurately with respect to, like, what actually is going to grow? You know, some segments they basically had, like they, in digital specifically, they almost had no impact, you know, verticals like healthcare, B2B actually started growing faster as the segment because of the pandemic. So some of these changes definitely would not have been anticipated.

Matt (00:10:26)

Absolutely, yeah, that’s, that’s all very interesting. And it’s funny, Nadine, that you mentioned kind of that two-week mark, because I think when everything initially shut down, we thought it was only going to be a couple of weeks. And it was just going to be this little hiccup. But here we are, you know, over a year and a half later.

Vitaly (00:10:44)

Yeah, I think actually, the reason advertising bounced back so quickly, it was, it’s, you know, it was not a, it was not a company level cost-cutting effort, where the, you know, maybe think of, you know, we bring new management or launch a new product, and then we’ll go back on the offense, but it’s one of those survival moments when, you know, the whole industry is getting uprooted. So I think, for me, for many companies, it was just all or nothing, they had to find this new way, new areas of growth. And truth be told, a year and a half later, you know, for many of these companies, like for many of these industries, you will never be the same. So whoever was able to adjust quickly and quickly pivot into new growth areas. And when that share of mind from consumers in the new consumption mode or a new in the new buying behaviour, these companies are thriving.

Chris (00:11:41)

Vitaly, that rebounding, you’re talking about, I think, may have, you know, benefited StackAdapt More than other companies. What things looked like on our side, certainly, as you know, that two weeks shock and Nadine, you were talking about, yes, like everything is just sort of the world’s on pause for some period of time, and then things start to come back. But when things started to come back, it really started to become clear what marketers consider to be discretionary spend, and what they consider to be cost of sales, or just sort of essential investments and actually helping them move product off shelf. And, you know, where that’s really easy to track is, is performance marketing platforms, in the walled gardens, there are publicly traded companies, you know, Facebook did just fine. Because marketers don’t think of Facebook as discretionary spend parts of the open Internet did just find as well, and, you know, happy to hear that StackAdapt, you know, saw a quick recovery. Because parts of the open Internet have demonstrable business outcomes, you know, like you, you put money into this machine, and you sell more product. And that is a very easy thing for marketers to justify, continuing to invest in, even amid some, you know, economic uncertainty, but there’s like big chunks of the open internet, that where it’s just hard to prove that an investment creates a business outcome, and that that got hit pretty hard for a long period last year.

Vitaly (00:13:00)

Yeah, and I think parts of that market will probably never recover. You know, I was looking at some stats for traditional TV, it dropped by about 15%, while connected TV grew 50%. And now I was just looking at this morning on a marketer stats about the forecast for traditional TV, and it basically stays flat for the next three years. So we kind of had that shock, like that rapid drop, and then basically stays flat for for foreseeable future. So it’s kind of like, yeah, it definitely accelerated the change in many ways.

Matt (00:13:36)

Absolutely. So with that in mind, now that we’re over a year and a half later, and the world starting to open back up, who here can say that they were right, and who here can say that they were wrong?

Chris (00:13:47)

I was definitely too pessimistic. And I, Nadine, I share your point of view that’s bottom, maybe I’m maybe I’m not captured correctly. But mine was like, Well, you know, we’re gonna have a couple of difficult weeks here. And you know, like a year and a half later, the world hasn’t fully rebounded to where it was advertising has. And so, in that sense, it’s been a very pleasant surprise. But I think I significantly underestimated just sort of like the duration of how things would sort of change and Fatale, kind of to your point, how things wouldn’t completely sort of like bounce back to the way they were that this was an accelerant for a bunch of long term market trends that are playing out over the course of a couple of months, rather than a couple of years.

Nadine (00:14:27)

Yeah, you know, what I really didn’t anticipate is the number of times we were gonna have to pivot. And when you really think about the last year and a half, not only is it a global pandemic, but then you think about the social landscape and everything that we have been through. And I almost think that was harder for brands to navigate from an advertising standpoint, because, you know, everything is real time. And you know, headlines are hitting the news, too. Day and you’ve got an ED cow that’s scheduled for post three days from now. And none of that’s relevant, you know, with what’s happening on a day-to-day basis. So I absolutely underestimated the number of times that we would have to kind of as an industry, come together and figure out how to pivot. Like, okay, the economy is reopening. That’s some great opportunity. Oh, just kidding. We’re coming back, you know, or this, like, really big headline is happening now? And what is our role? And so that is something those new kinds of moments that I really, I thought it was gonna be kind of that Alright, well, we’ve, you know, made the switch to remote, and then eventually we’ll make the switch back. But it has felt like in near constant pivot, I would say, and I really didn’t see that coming.

Vitaly (00:15:46)

Yeah, for me, I think I was surprised by the resiliency of the travel industry. Obviously, in those first months, it was hard, it was hit very hard. But now we’re starting to see these new segments, specifically around domestic travel that is just, it’s so big, because people just people want to go to places. And, you know, for example, I’m currently in British Columbia in Canada. And it seems like every friend of mine has visited British Columbia in the past few months, because, you know, it’s, for many of them, even for people who live in Toronto, it was the first time coming all the way across the country. But this was an amazing reason for them to explore the country that they live in. And it was interesting to see just how consumer trends are shaping around more exploration around local tourism, or, you know, domestic tourism. And I think I was definitely surprised by not just how quickly that will, that will bounce back. But like, just how big it can become a part of, like, just a normal, like, people actually make plans around domestic travel now a lot more than an international, I think that’s probably going to stay.

Nadine (00:17:04)

You know, it’s funny, too, because with the changing, it’s like changing consumer behaviour. And brands are behaving so differently, too. So even now, and kind of across the board with our clients, you know, late 2020 started ramping up and, you know, as people are finally realized, we got to do something, right. So, in general, we’re seeing growth trends, for sure. But, you know, we see scope creep, as clients are looking for a this is the strategy needs to shift. So you need to replan all of this out, and then put the execution together. All within the original scope, we see compressed timelines, delayed payment terms. So it’s interesting how a year and a half later, even the nature of the business is different than it was 18 months ago.

Vitaly (00:17:50)

And I actually want to ask a question to Chris, since you obviously, so closely work with companies on the supply side. Talk to us a little bit more about the connected TV, and how how that really played out last year. And what do you see on your end with respect to grow that channel into going into 2022?

Chris (00:18:15)

CTV it’s so interesting. CTV is like the upside-down image of web and mobile app business dynamics in so many ways. You know, its supply constrained, it’s still very early in its transparency. The companies generally on the sell side of the market have a lot more leverage than they’re accustomed to having in the web. So anyway, what I think is basically happening, or what has happened over the last year, and CTV is sort of like a bit of a point of tension between the most premium sellers who sort of recognize that connected TV and in particular, programmatically traded connected TV advertising is likely to be a very core part of their business over the next decade. So you know, think about like the major media companies, both distributors like, you know, sling and Hulu, and content owners like NBCU and discovery. They’re watching very closely, but are still kind of selling the old-fashioned way, particularly the content owners. And then on the other side, you have a bunch of opportunists who I won’t name but you know, a lot, a lot of companies who were sort of rushing into the CTV space without creating a whole lot of value, either acting as supply chain intermediaries, or as you know, very, very low-quality publishers, and trying to soak up ad budgets were, you know, for the supply-constrained campaigns. And so what that all the way that all plays out for the buying community is it’s very hard as a marketer, or as a platform that supports marketers. Um, to sort of take full advantage of this CTV opportunity, which really is very powerful and criticism, amazing outcomes for marketers, while being, you know, very sort of cautious and disciplined about making sure that, you know, you’re not trading with the opportunists that you really are working with sort of innovative companies who are in this space for the long haul.

Vitaly (00:20:18)

Yeah. And what sort of dynamics Do you see with with respect to upfronts? I’ve been reading that, you know, with, with the Olympics, slightly indexing lower on the expected viewership. Advertisers haven’t been getting as much of a reach, do you expect connected TV will go? It will become more of an open nitrated inventory? Or do you think it’s going to be going in a direction of more of TV where it’s going to be a lot more around upfront and direct deals?

Chris (00:20:54)

At the moment, there have to be large, upfront commitments. And I think, you know, you see this from even like public earner earnings reports from, you know, companies like discovery, they’ve got more demand than they know how to handle. And so to the extent that, you know, discovery, or Viacom, CBS, or you know, some other premium content owner, you know, has the opportunity to lock up a premium price commitment in upfront, how could they turn that down? What I think is really interesting is that there are there are sort of non-traditional buyers in the upfront all of a sudden, who are saying to the content owners, I’ll pay you right now for your inventory. But then I want the right to go and sell it programmatically. And that’s a pretty, a pretty big bet, you know, a company’s potentially laying out lots of cash to just secure sales rights, and then making that inventory available programmatically. There’s only a handful of companies who have sort of like the balance sheet to do that. But that is really exciting for me, for me, I presume, for everybody on this discussion. But you know, just for like the programmatic buying community in general, because it does create a bridge to bringing some premium supply into auction-based markets.

Vitaly (00:22:11)

That’s very interesting. Matt, I’m sorry, I was hijacking the conversation. I was just so curious about the trends in CTV.

Matt (00:22:21)

No, no worries, you know, it is a roundtable discussion. So anywhere it goes through, or it goes. So we’re just about at the time for the break. But I did want to ask one final question. Before we get there. Nadine, you mentioned a little bit about these changes in consumer attitudes and behaviors. And I’d be interested to hear from everybody else. And Nadine, feel free to jump in as well. Not more. But how do you think these consumer attitudes and behaviours have changed in a positive way? Or a negative way throughout the pandemic?

Nadine (00:22:56)

Well, I’ll jump in first, just to say, you know, it’s very little exaggeration to say that just about everything is different. Right? And Fatale, you mentioned about people in the way that they’re traveling these days more locally than long distance. And, you know, we heard a little bit about just some of the industries that are growing home services and retirement, like, the way that consumers think about things is totally shifted, and their behaviours have shifted, and, you know, is a huge opportunity for agencies if you think about it, because clients are craving insights, like what is the purchase behaviour, how has it changed, and truly what was accurate 12 weeks ago has probably changed. So we see pretty big disruption and brands is who their target is who they’re, you know, how people are using their brands? So there’s, there’s been a lot shifting since the pandemic, I think it’s all kind of on the table at this point.

Vitaly (00:23:50)

Yeah, I think a segment I would personally I would like to call out is B2B. We’ve seen so much change in that segment, because the way software is being sold has changed so much in the past 18 months, with people not being able to attend conferences or traveling to do business, everything is shifting towards Account Based Marketing demand generation, and that will likely stay so I read a stat from PwC that only 6% of people want to go back to the office and 34% of people feel more productive than they felt before the pandemic like I certainly feel that way myself. So naturally, the way will work now for for for for B2B will likely stay like that for for years to come. And you don’t have to look for I’m sure everybody has seen ads from Monday.com, one of the largest advertisers right now, and I think that’s such a big opportunity for B2B marketers, because companies are going through digital trends. formation across the board. So for anything like virtual collaboration, human resources, software and infrastructure, they’re trying to play a catch up game in many ways. And there’s a lot of discussion we spend happening around buying new software. So I think B2B is one of those segments that will just continue growing really, really rapidly.

Chris (00:25:19)

From our perspective, the main, the main consumer change is, or as it relates to advertising, is marketers are just realizing that there are huge and very important populations that are just unreachable through traditional channels. And I found just to sort of make this, you know, specific and anecdotal, like the language we hear from clients for years was, they would think of online video as reach extension, you know, like, the main way they want to reach people with video is through televisions, and then they would use online video as a mechanism to extend that reach into households that they couldn’t reach through TV, it’s upside down now, you know, it’s sort of like, sort of TV’s on in the background, and I can get some mass reach there. But like, the main way that I’m going to reach my consumers is through digital devices through web mobile app and CTV advertising. And when that happens, it kind of reorients how marketers think about, you know, planning and measurement, because, you know, it used to be like, Okay, well, I’ve got, you know, target rating points for my television campaigns. And now, I need some similar metric so that I can create apples-to-apples comparisons on the efficiency of my online video campaigns. It’s sort of the opposite now. It’s like, Hey, I measure real outcomes for my digital advertising. And now I want to put a bunch of pressure on the traditional TV companies to, you know, stop talking about TRPs. And help me understand the business outcomes of my television investments.

Nadine (00:26:48)

You know, Chris, one thing to add to that just a personal thing that I love so much, is how online offline there used to really kind of be a generational divide between that. But now, families are trying to keep in touch, and the only way that they can do that is in the online world. We’ve really seen the generations kind of merge together in their usage of different platforms. And I think that’s a really kind of wonderful bonus that has come from all of this.

Matt (00:27:16)

Perfect. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you, Nadine. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Vitaly. We’ll take a quick break. And we’ll be right back to talk about winning strategies and how the industry has continued to change as we head into the new year.

StackAdapt Ad (00:27:38)

You know, your advertising should be multi-channel. So why isn’t your ad platform StackAdapt offers multi-channel advertising solutions across native display video, connected TV and audio with access to all of the major exchanges and more than 55,000 publishers, as if that wasn’t enough. StackAdapt is also the highest-rated programmatic ad platform. According to G2, it’s time to elevate your digital ad campaigns. Request a demo at stackadapt.com. StackAdapt. How Agencies Thrive.

Matt (00:28:13)

And we’re back. As mentioned at the beginning of this roundtable episode, we’re joined by three experts in digital advertising. So Chris, Nadine Vitaly, as people who sit within the industry but not directly in the chair of those working on an agency or brand-direct side, what were some winning strategies that you witnessed that helped agencies thrive in the new marketing normal that has evolved?

Chris (00:28:36)

I can start on this one, I think it sort of links to what I was saying before that, you know, digital channels are becoming sort of like the primary vehicle to reach consumers. And as marketers, you know, significantly grow their investment in particularly the open Internet. What I see the most 14 agencies doing is getting much more organized on having a really rigorous understanding of what is in the supply chain. That’s not that hard to do for Facebook, or for YouTube or for Amazon, like, I’m sure agencies have a whole bunch of headaches about those platforms, but they don’t have any uncertainty about what they’re buying. You just kind of know the ad product, cuz you’re a consumer there. That’s really hard to do across one and a half million different properties that are each designed and monetized uniquely. And it’s sort of it’s been this like intractable problem for years. But there are a bunch of new tools available. And I think we are now seeing the most 14 agencies get really organized on making sure that they have a very detailed understanding both like a data-driven understanding but also just like a user experience understanding of the inventory that they’re buying on the open Internet.

Nadine (00:29:51)

We also work with a lot of agencies and you know, in the digital space and kind of outside of that as well. And But what we’re really finding number one is agencies, like I said, we did this research report recently, and agencies are doubling down really on, how can we mind our current client roster for new projects and revenue as opposed to kind of chasing new business, in the pitch setting, and even in prospecting, right, like we’ve really found this focus on, where’s the growth potential, the revenue potential with our current clients, and then, you know, we’re kind of digging in with that, as well. And what we found is there are a lot, certainly organic growth is on the mind of most agencies, but a lot that just kind of sit back and wait for new assignments. And of course, that’s not the way to go, you’re not going to be methodical or consistent with that at all, you can’t get that predictable growth. But those those agencies that were really seeing the most success, had detailed planning, and they were bringing forward strategic insight. Now, you know, Chris, is you’re talking about all the different platforms and technologies and like, clients don’t really know their way forward. So as agencies are able to bring insight forward, now, they crave insights we just talked about, you know, how much has changed with consumer attitudes and behaviours in the last 18 months. So those agencies that can bring forward research and insight or, you know, even here’s the customer journey model, and how it’s changed and how we can impact them as platforms. So that’s really where we’re seeing the greatest success is really coming forward with new projects grounded in new insights that they can share with their client teams.

Vitaly (00:31:39)

Yeah, I have to agree with Nadine, I think the biggest opportunity for agencies is really around that organic growth is and finding ways to deliver more value to their existing customers. You know, if, if the listeners are stocking up customers, they probably know how much we’re obsessed over surveys, and we would collect so much data, and that all that information is being deployed to be actually taken very seriously to, to improve our product, enhance our offerings all across the board. And I think, you know, going back to that report that you brought up in it and that gene. Interestingly, you know, when we asked agencies, what prevents them from bringing forward new ideas to the to clients, about a quarter of them said, that it’s the concern that the client will say, Well, why don’t you bring this idea in the first place? And I think, I think it’s all about positioning really yourself as being there together on this path of discovery and experimentation. Because, you know, nowadays, there’s so much uncertainty and the onboarding new client, there’s, it’s, there’s no necessarily a formula that will work for everybody, I think, it all has to be started with a very clear expectation that it’s you, you’re coming in into this project as a partner, and you will, you will succeed together, and you fail together. And with that angle, you can a lot better be a lot more justified, bring forward your ideas, and because inevitably, new ideas will emerge as more data becomes available. So I think it’s really about helping existing customers succeed and continue evolving in these uncertain times.

Matt (00:33:27)

Absolutely. Thanks, Vitaly, for that. Now, we’re just about out of time. So I wanted to throw one final question out to our guest today. There’s an old expression that every cloud has a silver lining. So when we think about everything that we’ve discussed today about the past, the present the future of digital, how do you think that the last year positively impacts the industry as we head into the latter portion of 2021 and into 2022?

Vitaly (00:33:54)

I’m personally incredibly excited for that acceleration of digitization of the economy. You know, I for the first time, tried telemedicine in the past 18 months. And now, in most cases, whenever I have a question, I just use one of the platforms. I don’t think actually started buying more stuff on e-commerce, I just started sort of buying less stuff all across the board because I don’t leave my house. But and you know, even when I do, I can’t remember the last time I touched cash, for example. So all of these changes are inherently really good for programmatic advertising, because adoption of digital technologies across the board helps our business without a doubt. But I think from with respect to industry trends, I think there’s a lot of opportunities to rediscover that new norm. So for example, I was thinking more about travel industry and what positive outcomes could come from this reset, and because more people work on, because more people work remotely, because people are trying to avoid crowds and have more privacy, we can potentially see a lot more travel happening offseason. So not all of a sudden, everybody travels around end of August and around Christmas time. But people may travel and really odd times and explore those destinations during months that nobody else does. So, that presents a really great opportunity for travel marketers where they can really build up their business all throughout the year versus building it only around certain peaks of consumer consumer travel. So yeah, lots to be excited about, from my perspective. I know that these are still really challenging times. And I definitely feel fortunate that we’re in an economy that’s booming and evolving so rapidly, which I can definitely feel really grateful for. And I think there’s a lot to get excited about.

Nadine (00:36:08)

Yeah, I’ll jump in, I think they really kind of stepping back it. It’s such a wonderful opportunity for agencies to lead the way because nobody has the answers. And I feel like two years ago, there’s a sense of like, Oh, it’s a big brand. And the clients have all the answers. And we’ll do as we’re told, but now, everything has changed with the way consumers are behaving, and the way that we’re connecting with our target audience and with each other, and behaviours and attitudes are changing. And so, really, when you’re thinking about the role of an agency partner, it has become such a that that we can figure it out together, right. And there’s such a great opportunity in that to truly be partners to your clients, as opposed to just kind of this digital vendors. And I think that’s a really exciting development. As again, we’re all just sort of trying to figure this out together.

Chris (00:37:00)

From my point of view, you know, the theme of the silver lining all of us is we did have the sort of moment in time to challenge, you know, what is a good use of resources, time, cash, whatever, like, are we spending our resources well, and you know, on a personal level, you know, doing a commute into New York City every day didn’t meet that list, and it worked out just fine. You know, like, we’ve learned how to be more productive by removing just some sort of like, unnecessary things from our lives that weren’t actually creating much value and tend to be a headache. And I think there’s something similar to be said for advertising. 2020 was a real reality check for a lot of companies on the sell side of the market, who realized that they weren’t creating enough value to justify ongoing investments, you know, and back to the rebound that Vitaly and Nadine both talked about, like when the rebound happened, it wasn’t even. And I think that was great, that created a lot of accountability on the sell side of the market to, you know, ensure that your company, whether you’re a media company, or technology or your company, is really creating value for marketers, because marketers have now had the opportunity to turn everything off, and then be very selective and what they turned back on, and I think that will be a long term positive for our industry.

Nadine (00:38:21)

Yes, true. Like, when you really have to add, like, investigate it, it gives you a chance to evaluate, what do we change? What do we keep doing? What do we grow? And this absolutely was such a great opportunity for marketers to do that.

Matt (00:38:36)

Well, with that in mind as we head into the not-so-distant future, this concludes our episode. So, on behalf of myself or listeners Chris, Nadine, and Vitaly, thank you so much for your expertise and insights on navigating the new normal in digital marketing. This has been how agencies Thrive podcast, and we can’t wait to see you succeed in your upcoming campaigns. Thanks for listening.

Episode Outro (00:39:01)

Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there’s three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcast on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback, we’d love to learn how agencies or brands work with StackAdapt, find us at www.stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.

S2