Subscribe


Join 7k+ Subscribers

The 7 ad signs and a hard question.

Read Time: 3 minutes

I’ve been buying media since 1995, and I love it so much that I teach a class on it at UNH.

I’m worried about the new mix of factors that are killing brands.

Here are 7 things that are making your job, of reaching the right person at the right time with the right message, harder:

ON YOUR RADAR 👀

1. Ad Fraud. It’s real. It’s larger than you think (I just had someone tell me yesterday that they were shocked by the % of Ad Fraud in their Google Ad account).
   Learn More > $84 Billion in 2023, It’s 19% of CTV too, Ad Fraud peaks in Q4
2. Consumer Privacy laws led by lobbyists hurt you, do little for the consumer, and let the big media platforms win.
3. Google Analytics 4 sucks compared to its predecessor, and our general ability to measure has gone down. We know less and must infer more.
4. Google Search Traffic is going down and will get double-digit worse next year.
5. TikTok may get banned, but it will likely get sold by Jan.
6. Bing is not going to save us. 🤣
7. AI and Algorithms are mostly black boxes, so it’s hard to understand what worked and why for Ads.

What CAN WE DO?

• Channel Diversification to De-Risk

  • More Linear TV. Yep, at sub $7 CPMs vs $10.27 Avg CPM for Meta its 30%+ Cheaper and no fraud.
  • More Digital Audio: Spotify, iHeart, Pandora, and Podcasts have good CPMs, targeting, and ROI.
  • More YouTube: 81% of the US population uses it, for 48 minutes monthly, and even your Mom spends time on it.

• More Testing to Prove What’s Working

  • Creative Testing
  • Channel Testing
  • Geo Hold out Testing
  • Incremental Testing
  • A/B/n Landing Page Testing

• Using Generative AI to Lower Ad and Content Costs 40%+

  • Creative Ad Pipeline
  • Video Pipeline
  • Landing Page Pipeline
  • Content Pipeline

• Better Data as AI Needs Good Signal

  • Capturing all of our 1st party Data: Website, Mobile, Email, SMS, ChatBot, Calls, etc.
  • Buying Data 3rd party Data that we can append easily
  • Partnering for Unique Data. I’ll send to my email list if you will send to yours 🙂

Media buying is changing. Gone are the days of an Excel sheet and some quality bargaining with ad reps.

You need to think like an AI. What data can I feed it? Where can I get that data? How do I do a statistically significant test to see if that Ad/Channel/Partner adds incrementally to my sales? How would I rework my production pipeline to scale this?

And please get on top of your Ad Fraud. It’s likely over 20%, today.

[elementor-template id=”26839″]