1123 Presents
1123 is an advertising agency based in Omaha, Nebraska. We are constantly learning and evolving, not just for ourselves, but for the brands we champion. Join us as we delve into a multitude of subjects related (or adjacent) to the world of advertising.
1123 Presents
3. Beyond the Click - The Human Element in Advertising w/ Tracy Koeneke
Prepare for a journey through the dynamic world of advertising as Tracy Kenneke, our esteemed media director, joins us to dissect the tapestry woven by decades of industry evolution. Say goodbye to the days of guessing games in marketing as we unveil the transformation from the blunt instruments of billboards and TV spots to the scalpel-like precision of today's AI-driven digital ads. You'll gain a rich understanding of how ad personalization has grown eerily accurate, making every click and scroll a breadcrumb for marketers to follow.
Later, we navigate the minefield of regulations and the quest for marketing effectiveness amidst heightened data privacy concerns. We'll explore the delicate balance between the power of targeted advertising and the potential pitfalls when personal data falls into the wrong hands—like that time Target's ads got a little too personal. Discover how the California Privacy Act, GDPR, and ad-blocking technologies are reshaping the strategies advertisers use to reach their audience. It's an insightful trek across the digital landscape where being seen by the right eyes is both art and science, and we're here to share the map.
Hey everybody, welcome to 1123 Presents. Once again, it is great to be with all of you. Thank you for listening. First of all, and second of all, we have a great episode here ahead of us. We are looking at all things targeting audience behaviors, lots of fun stuff and joining us today is Tracy Kenneke. She is our media director at the agency and she has a lot of really fun insight and cool data to share with us about. We'll talk about the history of targeting audience measuring and all of that good stuff in just a minute.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, tracy, let's, let's go way back. I can remember a time when I was little where advertisements were not targeted. There weren't even devices to be targeted on, except for the old school way, which was they would measure audiences yeah, TV, there'd be billboards, you just they would decide, they knew where their audience was going to be and what their needs were, based on the product, and they would pop up a billboard or there would be a TV ad or a radio ad. That goes way back. I mean, I guess in the early 20th century there was, you know, like I read, that there were mailers from Sears that were sent, and that was the first. You know, one of the first things Is there anything further back than that that you saw?
Speaker 2:I mean further back, I am not sure, but yeah, definitely direct mail. I mean, obviously you're gaining somebody's name, your address, as a first point of you potentially know who is talking to you at that particular time, or you've collected that data in some way shape or form, versus blasting out through a megaphone on radio, or you know even the broad audiences of TV.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, no. And then you know, fast forward, like I think Nielsen measurements started in, like the 40s or 50s, basically like that, yeah, when TV really started kicking and it was even media math.
Speaker 2:I mean, I have research and information dates back to the 70s on media math and it hasn't changed since. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Okay, so calculations might have stayed the same a little bit, but the media types are different. You know, once we hit the 90s I mean we the internet emerged.
Speaker 2:This explosive use of computers, mass integration into homes where before you used to only have one or two Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I remember that. I remember really obnoxiously, horribly made banner ads popping up and seeing that AOLcom and the facts noise. Right the facts.
Speaker 2:I was going to say we'll start everybody, but no, you go ahead.
Speaker 1:It's a great interpretation. So when it comes to like, let's say okay, we fast forward. The internet hits, targeted ads, become an idea, a thing, an execution. You know where was that first? How was that? What was? What were the mediums used? You know?
Speaker 2:most of them were websites and people were, I mean, literally building ads and word because they could use the fun at the time clip art versions. It was a quick way to upload them into somebody's email address and so obviously you've got that captive audience because they're sitting right in front of one screen checking email, perusing the web, doing whatever they were going to do. I mean, we were seeing ads from like AT&T and some of the telephone companies because they were trying to figure out okay, how do I capture somebody, versus just a landline phone to things like hotwirecom.
Speaker 1:Hotwirecom.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, Some of the first banner ads and you think even like the travel industry and things like that, where they're trying to capture. Okay, how do I preemptively get a hold of these people before they make these plans?
Speaker 1:Right, right, so that, yeah, I mean gosh hotwire what a flashback. So we'll jump ahead a little bit as far as, like, personalization and things. But I mean the approach here. I mean it's very scientific. I like to think that, like because I'm in the creative department, chief creative officer, and you're media director, you have like all of this knowledge that we can lean on for ads for our clients and it is. It's astonishing how deep all this goes. And now, right now, with like the advent of AI and everything like the personalization stuff, nothing is one size fits all with an ad and it hasn't been for a long time, you know.
Speaker 1:have you ever seen an ad for sneakers after browsing online on a store and been served what you were looking for, you know, days later? Tell me a little bit about that. Like there's even voice recognition stuff happening. Like what's the breadth of this? Like how big brother do we want to talk about this?
Speaker 2:Let's scare everybody for a second. I mean, it can go real, big brother. You think about the devices that you have connected between your phone, your computer, heck, even your TV smart devices in your home the Alexa's, the Google Home's, that kind of thing. All of these have Bluetooth capabilities, and this is kind of the root of where a lot of this started is in that Bluetooth, because it's listening to you and there are technological advances that you know. If you're saying just in general conversation, people have had this happen before where they were talking.
Speaker 2:I think the biggest one that comes to mind is some of the cruise liners. So if somebody's talking about a vacation and they happen to mention one of the cruise lines, then pretty soon you're going to start seeing ads show up in your social feed on the website. Because that's literally what they're doing is they're using the Bluetooth in your device that is typically always on. If you think about, you know you have to have Bluetooth on to listen to your headphones or music choices that you make, and so what people are doing then is they're collecting all of these digital fingerprints or touch points that you have and using that data to then relate or target next to you. So that's how we, as media buyers, can get a lot of that data.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that is astonishing. It's amazing how far we've come in I mean even 20, 25 years in advertising. I mean, since the internet came along it's just exploded. As far as, like how specific you know who you want to reach and how specific you want to do that. Do you think that too much of that is a bad thing? Do you think trying to be too granular is a bad thing? Like we have a lot of clients that will look at us and be like I want to find everybody named Joe who has a bigger right toe than I mean is this, is this?
Speaker 2:there's a point where you don't want to go down right. Yeah, there's definitely scalability to this.
Speaker 2:And so you know, kind of your rule of thumb is you want to have at least a decent size audience. You can't, and even some of the privacy policies and things that are in act or states governments are working on it gives you that opportunity to kind of like okay, you still have to go a little bit broader, broader approach, because you don't want just one single person that's not going to move your products or services forward. You want to have at least a collective group of people that have some of those same ideas, yeah, thoughts and behaviors.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, you want to too granular, otherwise it's not going to. It's going to just limit your results.
Speaker 2:There's points, even from a media standpoint, like if you get too granular, your ads won't even run, just because it's trying to find or figure out. Okay, how many of these touch points do I have to make and at some point in time it just gives up because it can't?
Speaker 1:Right, right. So when it comes to that, I was thought about this. There was a funny situation where we were actually in a boardroom with a client and I made a joke that, because we were talking about targeted ads and we had a lot of questions about that pertaining to a specific campaign, and I actually sat in the room and looked around and I'm like, how many of you guys have your phones? Okay, you've all got your phones out, all right. Your Bluetooth is probably on because you use it hands-free in your car or whatever, like you were saying yeah. So I'm gonna sit here and a few times I'm gonna say like you know, brand new Jetski, and see how many of you guys get a C-Doo ad in about three days.
Speaker 1:The funniest part is I don't even know what happened with that, but I got one. I got a water, like a water vacation sort of thing. At a few days later, my phone sent me an ad like on Instagram for like a. It was like a, it was like a vacation thing or like yeah. So that's terrifying but also really effective. Um, you know, when it comes to that, it's very big brotherly and it feels kind of. It's really effective as a practice. Is there a limit to this? I mean there's regulations out there, right? I mean we.
Speaker 2:There's regulations out there. Most of the regulations right now are against or have to do with that personal, identifiable information. So, like you were talking about, you know, you see, or if you're talking about a product or a service, they're never going to name you specifically. It's not going to say hey, dave, guess what? Now you get an ad for a CDU. But based on those digital behaviors, your conversations, that is where this industry is trying to pick up and kind of hone in on you. Know how do I narrow the scape a little bit so that we're just not blasting everybody and we really kind of drive people down to okay, when are you in that moment of need? Is this just a casual conversation, or are you ready to physically purchase something? I mean, even if you think about the grocery stores, you get those ads all of the time. They know when the last time you purchased spaghetti sauce was, or they'll make those recommendations based on either brand choices, They'll make purchase history. How often?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then even some considerations like hey, have you tried this in the past? You may like it, you may not.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and that, when you said grocery stores, that brought something else to mind, is another little piece of history. As far as Target at ads go, there was back in 2012,. There was a digital I guess reveal for a teen girl who really didn't want it. Target actually had some ads that revealed that she was pregnant before her parents knew about it, and it caused a little bit of a controversy Like, oh my gosh, just you know, do we really want this happening? And that's isn't that kind of how the California laws came about, and like the GDPR, isn't that? I mean, you tell everybody what that's about. I guess I'm using acronyms here.
Speaker 2:So the California Privacy Act was basically an opportunity for the public within California or the state of California to say, hey, you need to let me know when you're collecting this type of data, especially personally identifiable data such as your name, your age, your household income, things like that. So there's regulations on. You know what you can use or what am I actually opting into. If you think about the number of times you'll just randomly get an email for something or potentially served an ad and you're like I didn't, didn't want this, I never signed up for this, I didn't want to be a part of this. It's trying to kind of mainstay, or at least protect users so that they've got a little bit more of a voice in. You know what products and services do they want, which is invaluable to us as marketers, because then we can use that and say, okay, is this person really want the information that I'm sharing about clients or their products and services?
Speaker 1:Also, I guess, the iOS 14 that hits, and then you have that starts doing like the ad blockers.
Speaker 2:Even Chrome, as of last month, started doing more or heavier beta testing with some of the ad blockers. So even I personally have noticed recently, like if I'm using Chrome as an example and Safari actually did this back in like 2014, they started blocking some of this, but you'll load up a website, I would say a great example would be like my local news source, and so I'm going on there, I'm checking for the weather. I know that there's typically three or four banner placements that show up and they're all blocked out with an X, and so that's something where I mean they're even testing some of these, like companies that are using triggers that are not owned data by that company to then block these advertisements from potentially harming somebody, or even if it's not intentionally harming somebody.
Speaker 1:We're just like accessing too much data. You know, when it comes to that, we've talked a little bit about, obviously, the risky, negative sort of regulations and safeguards side of things. Though how does this? I mean, let's turn it a little bit to the positive, like when this practice is done and you follow the rules, you know how effective can this be for a client? I mean like for a large or a small client, like what's the benefit?
Speaker 2:I mean it can be super effective and it can help you minimize some of that media waste, because if you're broadcasting to tons of thousands of people when you're only only needed to reach maybe 2,000 people, then it helps you to easily scale that budget and then you don't have somebody like myself coming in and saying you know, I really can't do this, it's gonna take me 10 grand, when I realistically only needed a third of that budget.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, and with all the different styles of mediums we're like you know, back in the day we did have online video. We had banner ads and digital ads, but then we have, you know, I think, the types of short form video that we can choose now or the way we can do. You know we can boost ads. There's a lot of options out there to help target things. And, yeah, because before it was just carpet bombing, I mean you were just looking for, here's a big chunk of people that I think some of them may be in this interest group. You know way back in the day, and now it's a lot easier to target those folks, not in a bad way, but to find what they're interested in and be like hey, I have what you're interested in, check this out.
Speaker 2:Well, and it also helps with just the proliferation of channels Like it'll help.
Speaker 1:What was that?
Speaker 2:word I'm like. Don't ask me to say that again.
Speaker 1:Was it? Was that proliferation? Oh, I did hear that. Sorry, I did hear that.
Speaker 2:No, that's okay, I'm trying to use better words, but it just. It helps with so many channels and so many touch points now that you can actually scale it so like what is going to, based on your goals, your objectives and this additional layer of putting that human element in your targeting. How do you effectively then choose or select the right channels without having to say, okay, now I've got to be on meta, now I've got to be on TikTok, now I've got to be on Snapchat, TV, radio, billboard, Like you can see where all of those will effectively just blow up a budget in a minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'll erase it and it's overwhelming and probably not even that effective anymore. Do you have any like examples of real world? I mean, give me something that like is there a campaign that sticks out where you're like, man, that was really done well or like they did? Do you have any inside data on like the end of a campaign that maybe was national and was like oh man, this was really executed well?
Speaker 2:I mean, even some of our current clients. I can think of a few where a market really demanded like one specific product and the company we were working with was trying to push different products into the market and it just wasn't selling as well as they thought they would. And the second that they were able to kind of shift that creative messaging a little bit and really kind of focus in on the products the customer wanted. I mean sales increased like 40%.
Speaker 2:So, there's definitely opportunities to really kind of hone in on. Your customers are gonna tell you what they want, when they want it. You just gotta listen.
Speaker 1:Right for sure. The system and the science of it is one thing, making it human, relatable. How important is making this, these things, this information, those ads, human centric?
Speaker 2:I mean you definitely don't wanna sound like a robot up there. I mean, most people can. Even with AI being integrated, a lot of people can still tell the difference when you're being trustworthy, authentic, versus when you're just flat out telling a BS.
Speaker 1:And I'm completely AI.
Speaker 2:Right now You're insulting me being able to really kind of connect on those buying habits and even focusing in on what is some of that deeper motivation or potentially a desire that somebody has. It's gonna take you a lot deeper than just a age, gender, household income, any of those kind of baseline demographics or even psychographics.
Speaker 1:And that's that makes me so happy, because, with everything going the way it is, there's so much more automation, there's so much AI and programmable whatever the targeting, stuff is super effective and we're in that industry. But, like for me, I love the fact that there still is room. There still has to be room made for. Do you sound like a human? Are you really talking to people Like? Are you appealing to emotion here the right way, or a need, the right way to where you don't sound like it popped out of some machine or like a factory? I love that. We've seen with the absolute explosion of AI usage in all kinds of different areas. There's a risk for that. There's a risk for the information, the messaging to sound robotic or sound overly verbose when you're like we don't need to say all that. This is a great framework, this is awesome, but let's pare it down, make it sound like it's. Let's use our voice right.
Speaker 2:Well, what a lot of people have to realize is AI is still learning, and so think about even you're like your childhood. When you're learning something, it takes time and a repetitive knowledge or understanding of what that is before you truly grasp whatever that concept is. And that's where, over time, yes, ai is going to get better and better, but you can still easily catch mistakes, errors, and that's what it's looking for. It's looking for you to tell it when it's not appropriate or when it's going completely left field, for example?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Do you want to talk about some things in the toolbox that you use on a regular basis, Like if somebody's looking? At Without giving away trade secrets, without giving away nothing in the secret sauce, right. But I mean, are there pieces of the toolbox that are pretty common that you're like, yeah, I mean, this is stuff you have to use. This is a normal everyday thing.
Speaker 2:I would say for most companies, some sort of analytics software. Google is going to be your primary kind of analytics software, but that has given marketers and advertisers the opportunity to really come in, and even you can create what you want within it. You can understand not only the types of audiences that are coming to your website. As an example, you can create certain events, triggers that you want somebody to take action on. So those kinds of insights are invaluable when it comes to having somebody understand either products or services you offer, or maybe you want them to sign up for something. Those kinds of insights will tell you whether people are doing it or not.
Speaker 1:I'm reminded of the like we've worked with the amusement parks in the past. The forecast, the temperature, you can do weather triggered ads.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you can even get into types of keywords that people use when they're online. With going again, this is probably a little bit more big brother, but even your phone, because you're constantly radiating a geolocation at most points in time you can look at like footfall data, going down even to like social media. If you have something like a Sprout social, it'll give you what people are interacting talking about online. You can even drill down farther with additional tools or accessories that they have to get brand sentiment. So even if somebody doesn't mention a brand in particular, you can kind of learn or understand some of the context of what they're writing in that post, just to try and understand a little bit more of where that deeper recognition is what do you think the biggest mistake people can make when they're advertising or an advertiser can make when it comes to targeted ads?
Speaker 2:Probably getting too narrow. It is still kind of a shiny object syndrome, almost. So you know if somebody is thinking about targeting, say, pizza for example, they're like, well, I want pizza and tenders. And then I want all this demographic data and I want sports and tenders and this and children in the household and you know like maybe their favorite beverage that goes along with the pizza, whether it's like a pop of soda, beer, you know whatever. And by the time you start layering all of those on there, then most of the technology is going to freak out because there's not necessarily a way where they're trying to ensure accuracy of your data, to pinpoint every single thing. So you do kind of want to test and learn a little bit, like what are maybe five triggers that somebody has before you start seeing products being sold, or more interaction versus okay, let's layer on 100 and nobody's going to meet all 100 of those data points?
Speaker 1:I'm excited because you said pizza, tenders and beer. If we say that about three more times, it'll probably come up on my phone later and I'll have a great it.
Speaker 1:Maybe a great new place will pop up in an advertisement for me. So in that vein, this whole conversation did not. I did not plan for this to make me hungry, but now I am, so maybe we should wrap it up there, tracy, thank you so much for digging in a little bit on analytics and audience and all of the fun stuff. Really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2:No problem, thanks, all right.
Speaker 1:And for everybody listening. Thanks again for listening. Please like and subscribe as usual the whole spiel. Like subscribe, follow and all the good stuff and we will talk to you next time.