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Episode 10

Leveraging Programmatic for a Vertical Marketing Strategy

Illustration of Maz Tannir, Media Director at WS

About This Episode

January 26, 2022

We discuss innovative ways that programmatic advertising technology can be used for niche industries and offer best practices.

Maz Tannir | Media Director, WS

Anup Patel | Director of Intelligence & Performance, WS

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Transcript

Episode Introduction (00:00:00)

It shows us the true reach. It shows us what is really happening behind the scenes that transparency has become quite vital for media buyers and performance managers to understand what’s really going on. And with digital audio and CTV I think they’re still in their infant phases in some places. And I think it’s transparency that’s going to help them grow to where we see display or native or video currently.

How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:36)

Curious to know what industry-leading marketers are looking to achieve and the ever-evolving digital landscape to 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 (00:01:04)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode. My name is Matt Everett. I’m the host of the How Agencies Thrive podcast, and I’m also the Education and Development Manager at StackAdapt. Today, we’re joined by Maz from WS, an agency based out of both Toronto and Calgary that’s highly accomplished in advertising for growers, producers, food, pharma, sports, entertainment, and more. With that in mind, we couldn’t think of a better agency to showcase on this episode as our theme. Today, we’ll be diving into innovative ways that programmatic advertising technology can be used for niche verticals and showcase best practices for campaign performance. Now, before we get started, I think a great way to kick off this episode would be to hear from both of you, Maz and Anup. If you could tell our listeners, you know, a little bit about yourselves, how long you’ve been in the industry areas of expertise that you have, just so we can get a little bit of insight before we get started on the episode.

Maz (00:02:00)

Yeah, thanks, Matt. Thanks for the introduction. Like you said, I’m Maz I’ve been with WS for just shy over eight years. But I’ve been in the industry for a lot longer than I care to admit on a podcast to be honest. My role at WS is twofold. One is I had the media department, as well as the communications department, which covers the performance team as well as the content team. I’ve worked quite extensively in the digital space. Even though a lot of the the agriculture industry is still getting into it. I’ve had the luxury of working on a number of different brands within the the digital landscape. And that’s where my interest in programmatic has peaked over the years. And I’ve really been able to dive quite deep into it and understand it and know what it can and cannot do for for our clients. I think that’s the best way to describe it. I love where it’s going, though. And I love a lot more of the transparencies that we’re starting to see in the digital space. And that’s thanks to people like a new pool who have that their hand on the pulse when it comes to performance and measurements. I’ll pass this over to a noob to introduce himself.

Anup (00:03:28)

Awesome. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for having us. Yeah, my name’s Anup, I’ve been in a lot much younger than Maz, I don’t have quite the experience. But I’ve been in Israel for about eight or nine years now. And with WS for the past four. I didn’t start my journey in the analytical performance space I’m in now I was more sort of on the strategy side of things and kind of naturally progressed into analytics. And obviously, nowadays, you know, there’s so much more we can measure and track and with digital and weapons. So, you know, it’s made my job a lot more interesting. We’re able to do a lot more stuff in this space. And I think there’s more demand from the client side as far as reporting and KPIs and understanding the performance of marketing campaigns go. So. Yeah, it’s been a space I’ve been kind of, in the last few years now. And experience with digital, I think, you know, as I started, like, digital has been around and we’ve seen it grow exponentially over the past few years, especially programmatic. And, again, a lot of its related back to demand not just from our clients, but from their customers, their, their users. And so more people are going online or using their phone or the different mediums and channels that we’re able to be available on. The more we get ourselves involved into digital and so there’s been sort of this natural kind of progression, with demand from our audience of using digital and again, on my side of things, it just makes our life A lot easier because natural, there’s a lot more we can measure from digital. I should say, actually, there’s challenges. And there’s advantages. I think, you know, sometimes it’s misinterpreted. And there’s a lot of expectations that come out of digital, from a measurement perspective. But as long as you’re managing that and handling those expectations.

Matt (00:05:18)

Absolutely. Well, you know, thanks so much to both of you for being on the episode. And I think to speak for everyone, when we say that we’re We’re definitely excited. And for any of our listeners who tuned in, we were actually joined by your agency back in late Q3, we did a StackAdapt webinar on the versatility of programmatic. So I think using that as sort of a reference point for this or a jumping-off point, we can definitely dive a lot deeper into the topic of really how this technology can be used for some of these niche verticals that aren’t necessarily are traditionally served with programmatic. So, Matthew, you said something during your intro that kind of is a perfect transition into this first question. And you you said, you know, there’s sort of these limitations, you know, what this technology can and what it can’t do for your clients. And I know that, especially in recent history with StackAdapt, and WS and how we’ve worked together, you were looking to offer programmatic for your agriculture clients that you’re working with. And to that, I’m interested to know, what was it about programmatic advertising that sort of stuck out to you as an agency as this more comprehensive and better solution for some of these clients to help them meet the goals that they were coming to you with.

Maz (00:06:39)

So a lot of the time in the past, in the agriculture industry, the clients, they would focus a lot of their attention on what today we refer to as direct display. So they would go to certain publishers, they would use their websites, they would use their first party data, and they would advertise to their customers through that channel. And what we wanted. And the reason we were very keen on the whole programmatic part is, we have to stop and recognize that a farmer, or a grower, or an economist and a consultant are human beings too. So they have their trends, that they have their habits, they have their browsing habits, and it was almost ignored, pre programmatic when people were advertising to them. So as an agency, we focus a lot on the actual customer. That’s, it’s not about what crop there is, or what we make assumptions on, we want to understand what the customer is doing, where they’re visiting, what they’re browsing, and programmatic has really allowed us to take that leap, and move away slightly from working with publishers directly, and moving into their behavioural and contextual digital journeys. That’s really been one of the greatest benefits of the programmatic realm. And what that ends up doing is once we start understanding where these visitors are seeing our ads and engaging with them, we start to learn even more about the customer. So not only do we know that they live in a certain area, or they’re growing a certain crop. Now we’re understanding their outside of agriculture behaviour, through through this programmatic channel. That’s really been a great focus for us when we’re looking at the data that we have. And I know a new VP sees it from a very different light than mine. But for me, it starts with that behavioural ability and really getting to understand the digital journeys that these customers are taking.

Matt (00:08:52)

Yeah, thanks so much, Maz. Now, I think for the next question that we had here, we can almost a new FBI can kind of tap you on the shoulder a little bit, because I’m interested to know kind of with this transition into programmatic. What has surprised you the most about using it for your clients? I mean, you could even speak here to kind of a performance perspective, what’s been surprising, what have you really learned? And kind of a secondary question to that is if we narrow our focus a little bit on the last two years, and how this whole shift in more people being online, more people being engaged with content, what what are some things that have surprised you about using this technology?

Anup (00:09:35)

So it’s an interesting space that, you know, most of my work with as far as our clients go and being on the agriculture side of things primarily, which has definitely been more traditional media print, radio, digital programmatic, especially as being a little bit of an innovation or a new medium where I think what surprised me most is just clients being open and willing to try it out, test it out, knowing that they probably don’t see as high of engagement rates online. And as other sectors, I think what we’ve seen over the last few years is that growing, especially amongst growers and within agriculture, and so a new medium and channel where we can advertise and reach growers on as delphinium exciting, and surprising to see that, you know, that level of engagement through that channel, I think just the ability to measure and track things aren’t necessarily that’s kind of changed over the last couple of years. But that’s kind of what programmatic introduced to us is, it’s easy to see from the, I guess, from mass perspective on the buying and targeting side, there’s efficiencies and whatnot bid, you know, there’s a lot of new information that we’re able to collect on the tracking and measurement side of things through UTM, and pixels and the platform itself. And so, you know, we have the ability to capture a lot more information and data and understand about the user better, which kind of just helps us optimize campaigns further and makes the overall campaign much more effective. I’m not sure. During the pandemic, I don’t know, if we really saw much, obviously, there was more engagement online, and we did see a shift of going online. And so yeah, I don’t know if it was a cause of the pandemic or vice versa. But, you know, as far as digital advertising goes, and programmatic advertising goes, that engagement kind of still maintained itself online through the pandemic as well, which is great to seek is there’s obviously a lot of other channels and sectors and things like that that got hit hard from it. So, you know, we still saw the same levels across the board.

Maz (00:11:34)

Yeah, I do want to add to that, we weren’t really shocked by anything when the pandemic hit. And that’s not to say we’re not talking about life in general. But in the agriculture industry, it really is pandemic-proof because we still need to produce, growers still need to sell people still need to eat. So we continue to see a lot of engagement with the advertising that we’re doing. The benefit from the digital space, programmatic included, was we started to see a lot more engagement. So we were starting to understand a lot more about how they’re consuming their media, without using some of the offline tactics like print or radio, for instance. So there wasn’t really any big shockers for our industry. But yeah, that’s really how we’ve tried to take advantage of this change in behaviour that we saw.

Matt (00:12:31)

That’s really good. And I was going to ask, because in some of the previous episodes, when we were speaking to agencies, a lot of them said that with some of their clients, there were sort of this mass panic, especially as budgets need to shift channels needed to shift for WS. Were you finding yourselves acting as a bit of a resource for clients kind of giving them some best practices to say, Hey, this is what we can do now that people are online, here’s how we can shift budgets. Was this something that you were doing kind of in having a role of educating your clients or as you said, you know, in the agriculture industry, there really wasn’t too much panic just because people need to grow, people need to eat it, it still has to run. So as an agency, what were some things that were kind of going on, or was everything kind of calm and collected the entire time.

Anup (00:13:24)

It was never calm, nor, for that matter, one thing that we did see a big change in. And we’re very fortunate, our clients are incredibly open-minded and ready to try things. But one of the things we wanted to ensure is that we realize that there was a larger uptake and people visiting online. And so from a content standpoint, we had to make some pivots over there to make sure the sites had the information that they needed. People were able to get straight access or direct access to more information or even to purchase or speak to a consultant. Because a lot of the time in the agriculture industry, it was very brand awareness based. So you put products, you’d showcase certain solutions, and the growers and the farmers would reach out to their retailers or their agronomists, and they would take action there. So with COVID, and seeing the uptake in digital experiences and journeys, I think one of the few things that we did alter and speak to our clients about was okay, let’s make sure these sites are really set up. To capture that engagement. Let’s make sure that these growers that are clicking on ads or showing some interest or searching forests are getting the answers they need online, and that way, we can nurture them and move them into the next part of that funnel.

Matt (00:14:50)

You know what I think what we’ll do here is I’ve got another question, and then we’ll we’ll head to a bit of a break, but I think I wanted to start here with a stat that I found. So I was on an adage the other day. And there was a stat that said that right now, about 70 cents on the dollar of digital ad spend is going to programmatic channels. And it’s expected by 2025, that that number is going to jump to about 90 cents, which is very significant, especially for programmatic and how rapidly it’s growing. One thing I did want to get your point of view on though is talking about some of these emerging channels. Because normally, when people think of programmatic, it’s kind of, “Alright, native, display, video.” But we’ve also got connected TV and programmatic audio, that are these two big emerging channels that are really great for reaching people when they’re most engaged. And I know from from speaking to some of the folks internally about some of the brands that you guys are working with, there is some use in in CTV for some of your clients. So I’m interested to know what your thoughts are on the role that you think these emerging channels and technologies have on not only the future of programmatic advertising, but the future for these verticals and how they can continue to succeed in their programmatic campaigns.

Maz (00:16:08)

So I’m going to focus on what the future is going to bring because I do believe a lot of the clients that we work with have very key interest in CTV and digital audio, they like the idea of using this behavioural and contextual methodology, and incorporating it into their digital media planning. Currently, it comes down to data and what we can find and what we know about the certain growers and users. And we haven’t seen a lot of research coming out about usages of digital audio and CTV amongst growers, specifically in Canada. As far as the US is concerned, we do have access to a lot more data over there. And that’s where we’ve started to test it with StackAdapt using connected television to see okay, are we using the right datasets that we already have with our existing clients to target CTV and digital audio? What are we seeing as the you know, the completion rates? There is still a bit of that whole measurement component when we’re trying to educate clients about it. And clients want to understand how can we measure these things differently from standard television and standard radio that they have been accustomed to in the past? So there is a bit of a learning curve for clients to come on board. Our clients have taken that step with us and said, Okay, let’s try it. Let’s see what it means. Let’s see where it goes. And that’s why we’ve started to build it into our existing media plans. I think down the line is we learn a lot more about CTV and digital audio, and we may be a little bit behind other industries. But I think the more we learn about it, the easier it’s going to be to not only convince clients to run it, but convince clients to build and develop the creative that could run on these channels. Because I also don’t believe that any video can work on CTV it has to be thought of as a standard television buy.

Matt (00:18:16)

Yeah, I think that’s definitely a fantastic way of looking at it. And you’re right I mean creatives cannot always just be kind of retrofit across channels, and to have something on CTV, especially when people are very engaged in habit, really speak to them, and speak to what the brand is offering is is very important for the success in that channel. So I think what we will do, we’ll take a quick break. And then when we come back, we’ll focus a little bit more on some of the practical side of this, we’ll look at some campaign execution strategies, as well as you know what the future looks like in the programmatic space and how this technology truly is for any advertisers operating in any verticals. So we’ll take a quick break, and then we’ll be right back.

StackAdapt Ad (00:19:09)

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Matt (00:19:28)

Welcome back, everybody. As mentioned, we’re joined by mass and Anup from WS and welcome to this half of the episode. So jumping into to the next set of questions here, a lead in by saying that at StackAdapt As many know, our primary focus is helping agencies and brands plan, execute and analyze successful campaigns. That’s really what we’re here for. And previously, we had done an episode back in late 2021. I’m on creative strategy. And as experts in the space of more niche verticals, I wanted to ask both of you, what are some best practices or learnings or anything that you have when it comes to informing a winning creative strategy as well as a winning audience strategy for campaigns.

Anup (00:20:17)

I can jump in there. For me, it’s structure, just having a solid framework that’s measurable. And something we do WS is where we begin with is really understanding the audience and connecting that to the goals of the campaign. And once you know, what drives your audience, and the decision-making steps they take to achieve that goal or need that they have. You’ve established or that what, where, when, why piece of it. That’s where you can kind of start developing the creative strategies and the messaging. And you can get a little bit more detailed and targeted on how you’re going to reach a specific user or segment. And for us, what’s worked is not putting all our eggs into one basket and running with that. Having more than information, understanding the audience upfront allows us to kind of play around with different types of trade or different types of messaging. And as long as we’re approaching a switch to strategically, you know, we can try and do some testing, so maybe testing and put a little bit of the messaging out there and see what works for getting engagement. If we’re getting hits, then we can run with that if we’re not seeing much, you know, we can go back to the drawing board and kind of tweak and optimize. And so as long as we’ve built in ways to measure through that, through the campaign, that allow us to do that, and then optimize as we move forward. So obviously, that’s probably some of the biggest learnings we’ve made is just making sure we can design frameworks and strategies that that are measurable. And once we can optimize throughout, it’s not always easy to do, you know, it’s, you try and you want to make sure that creative that mastering hits right out of the gate. And unless your audience has stayed the same, and the environment, say the same year over a year, which is very rare, you know, you’d have to take some chances. And I think that’s something that the programmatic platforms allowed us to do is, we can do that testing easy enough, it’s flexible enough to go in there and understand and learn our audience, and then be able to apply those learnings to other mediums.

Maz (00:22:22)

We have also worked quite extensively with the creative studio at your company, they’ve given us access to not necessarily different sizes, but let’s refer to them as higher impact ads. So when building out these awareness plays and digital ads, we’re trying to use as many of these tools as possible, not to prove a point that programmatic works or not. But to really get in front of these audiences that we’ve spent a lot of time learning about and understanding what their habits are. Because it also comes down to these multiple touchpoints. When these growers are purchasing the products, they’re not buying one container, they’re buying them by the gallon. And so the decision isn’t made instantly where they see an ad, and then they react to it immediately. This is a process, it’s also a thing where a lot of the growers will take a certain amount of product and use it only on one section of their farm. So you have to continue the engagement with them. on a very regular basis. These, are when we look at multiple touch points. In the past, we’d say oh, we have to hit them five times seven times, before they’ve made a decision in agriculture, it’s actually a lot longer. So the creative has a very big play because a you don’t want to keep showing them the same materials over and over again, nor the same sizes for that matter. So again, understanding that audience and what it takes to engage with them at the right time in the right place when they are growing or harvesting or going into the field. But also making sure that the creative that you’re putting up in front of them is a impactful be relevant. And then the experience when they’ve clicked on to that site is completed with the right content and the right information that they are willing to go down that funnel and choose your product in the future.

Matt (00:24:24)

Yeah, thanks so much to both of you, and I think that that perfectly transitions into the final question that I had was for agencies like WS ones that are working with clients that are a little bit more unique, and that buyer journey looks a little bit different. What’s some advice that you can offer to those who are looking to get into programmatic for the first time, or you know how they can best leverage this technology? And sort of to bookend that question, what’s something that you wish you knew at the beginning about programmatic that you now know?

Maz (00:25:04)

I’ll start with that. I think first and foremost, the team that’s going in front of the client, be it, the client partnerships team, the media team, the performance team, the team themselves need to have a thorough understanding of what programmatic is. So my first piece of advice is you yourself, go get the education that’s necessary. And there’s a lot of great courses out there that are done by the IAB. You guys have a fantastic learning platform as well. First and foremost, the team selling it needs to understand it. And that’s what’s going to give your clients confidence by saying, Okay, I’ve heard a lot about this thing. If you feel strong and committed to it, then you know, let’s go in and work on it together. The other thing that I saw that helped me a lot when I started getting into programmatic was not running on the self-serve basis. And by that, I mean, take the option of managed services, because it’s, it’s incredible how much more value the back end developers and the account executives at the DSP are going to help and how much more insight they’re going to provide both our immediate buying side as well as the performance side. So there’s a lot more insights that you can get from them. So I said this during the webinar, and I’ll say it again, the hand-holding part in programmatic. And even now after years and years of doing it, I still rely very extensively on Matt Sheldon and StackAdapt, for example, to really guide me in terms of what they’re seeing from their side, that could be done better. That’s something that I would recommend to everybody is a get an education and be, don’t try to run it yourself. Get your team involved from the DSP, because they have a lot of value that they can add. And what I wish I knew, I wish I knew how flexible programmatic was, before we started, I think I was one of those that said, Okay, this is another digital platform that we can use, but its versatility. And the way we can move things around on the goal was something that I really didn’t understand enough of at the beginning. And I think had I known that ease, I probably would have shifted more dollars towards it right from the start. That’s my personal take.

Anup (00:27:39)

I was just gonna add on to what you said, if you’re thinking about programmatic, I say just go for it, it’s probably one of those channels is there’s less barriers to get into it. And the nice thing is, you know, you don’t have to commit a lot of budget towards it. So start off small and learn from it. And be afraid to make mistakes, because you can afford that with the platform like programmatic, that makes the flexibility allows you to do that. Right? So go on there, start small learn from it and grow. I think there’s a lot of potential. And from our perspective, like we said, you know, we never thought it would be as effective as it has been. And we’re fully prepared to just use it as a platform, maybe just to learn about the audience and maybe test out messaging and still use more than traditional channels to monitor the budget. But yeah, so you can use it purely just from an ad or an audience understanding. That’s awesome. But yeah, I think there’s there’s lots of different, there’s lots of potential from programmatic. We’re seeing at least on our end.

Matt (00:28:41)

Of course. I think on on that note, I’ll ask sort of this bookend question that I have. And I like to ask this to all of our guests to maybe even step outside of the theme of the episode and just look at sort of the bright future that we’re seeing in programmatic audio, I mean, things like or will not programmatic audio, but programmatic in general. You know, we’re seeing contextual advertising, we’re seeing new channels emerge. What are you both excited about? What’s some technology that hasn’t quite come out yet that you hope to see in the future?

Maz (00:29:15)

I tell you what, I think the concept of programmatic, if we go back to what it really is, it’s a software. And I’m excited about the fact that I think, in my personal prediction, all media in the future is going to be bought through a programmatic platform. I don’t think we’re going to have a lot more of these walled gardens. I think a lot of that is going to open up, and I hope it does, because I think it allows us that flexibility we were talking about earlier, but also really gives us a much larger picture in terms of how ads are put forming against each other and where we can make those alterations. So I do hope, and I do predict that in the near future, we’re going to start seeing a much larger part of the businesses becoming programmatic purchase. I also have seen over the years, the amount of transparency that’s changed within the programmatic platform. We rarely talk about it anymore. But I think that’s something that’s growing and becoming a focus point for a lot of the platforms like yours, in terms of really showing the true numbers. It shows us the true reach, it shows us what is really happening behind the scenes that transparency has become quite vital for media buyers and performance managers to understand what’s what’s really going on. And with digital audio and CTV, I think they’re still in their infant phases in some places. And I think it’s transparency that’s going to help them grow, to where we see display or native or video currently.

Anup (00:31:14)

What I’ll add to that is, it’s kind of exciting. But the better, the more effective we get with programmatic and digital advertising, the more pushback, I think, you know, we’re going to see from users and then so there’s going to be this level of transparency and education and learning on the user side of things. So people are already thinking that they’re more apprehensive of going online and, you know, wanting to have blockers and things like that, because they’re more skeptical, I guess, of marketers, and ads. And I think if what excites me most with programmatic is that potential for being creative and engaging users. And so the more we can blend that line between, you know, collecting information, being that Big Brother type thing, and doing it from a bad perspective, it’s we want to add value to your lives. And the more that users can understand that, you know, they’re gonna realize that as technology gets better, as we can understand who they are and what they want, and reach them quicker, that it’s actually helping them, as opposed to us interfering in in their lives and doing things and fiercely or, you know, with not the best intentions. And so, yeah, it’ll be interesting to see kind of where that takes us. I think as devices become smarter, you know, people are able to engage with the more, though, almost get more creative with the ways we can add value.

Maz (00:32:32)

Yeah, and I think even growing from connected television, we’re gonna start seeing a larger usage of even technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality. And I think there’s a place for programmatic to play in those areas a lot more extensively. And again, making it a part of the experience rather than something like, you know, in-your-face kind of methodology. So it’s exciting to see where it’s going. And I do predict that all formats are ultimately going to be bought through a programmatic software.

Matt (00:33:06)

You know what, I think that’s a great closing point for us. And to all of our listeners, the key takeaway here, especially the one that I found is that programmatic truly is for everyone and for every vertical, and there can be a lot of success, you know, using WS as an example, a lot of success in this space. And whether you’re, you know, B2B or B2C brand, and you have something that’s a bit outside of the traditional verticals, programmatic advertising can can help you get in front of the right people at the right time when they’re their most engaged. So on that note, Maz, Anup, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast and we will see you in the next episode.

Outro (00:33:55)

Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you liked 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.

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