Ad Blocking, Cookies, Free Internet, and the Future of Online Advertising

[00:00:00] Kelly: the stuff that comes from your talented journalists and your talented content creators and your people who really should be compensated for the work that they put in for what you care enough to consume has to get paid for,as any, again, economics system would work, we just got used to it being subsidized by advertisers being the one that says.

[00:00:20] Kelly: Hey, this is where eyeballs and attention and time is being spent. I will pay for. Peeling off a little bit of that in order to create outcomes that help my business

[00:00:57] Kelly: Hey everyone, Kelly McGuire with Bougie Day Digital, excited to get into today's topics.

[00:01:02] Todd: Good morning. we're recording on a different day this week. it's Valentine's Day, Friday, February 14th. Happy Valentine's Day, Kelly. Do you remember as a kid writing those little cards and stuffing envelopes in your sixth grade class? I

[00:01:16] Kelly: I, I do, I do.

[00:01:18] Todd: do remember that as well. I

[00:01:19] Kelly: the shoebox things for them to all go into.

[00:01:21] Todd: Oh my God. That's right.

[00:01:22] Todd: We used to make shoe boxes for that. That's right, man. I wonder if kids still do that today. You'll find out soon because you have a young daughter who will be you. In school soon for that. so I was just thinking about holidays and reflections and I was thinking about what we could talk about today and I was reading an article.

[00:01:37] Todd: It's a few months old But it really struck a chord with me and it was, the, article about celebrating the 30th anniversary of the banner ad. so that really took me back to my first job, 1998 working for a newspaper who just launched a website. And when I sold newspaper advertising, print advertising, we gave away a four 68 by 60.

[00:02:01] Todd: Banner ad at the top of the website. That was the only ad position. It was just that one and we gave it away as a value ad. That was 30 years ago, roughly. and now here we are. So I thought we'd talk about that today. And there's a few questions that I want to ask you to get you to talk about what you think about.

[00:02:20] Todd: the first one is just the quiz of, the first banner ad was 30 years ago, as of. 2024. So 1994, do you know what the first banner ad was? Who was the first advertiser to publish a banner ad on a bulletin board?

[00:02:38] Kelly: I usually know these trivia type things that when I don't recall, if I had to guess, I would have guessed it would have been some kind of a news outlet or it would have been Yahoo yet. I don't think would have been one of the wouldn't have been a search engine. I don't know

[00:02:54] Todd: AT& T. And the

[00:02:55] Kelly: that would make sense.

[00:02:56] Kelly: Yeah,

[00:02:57] Todd: ad was something about, you're not, click, look to click here. If not, you will soon. And it was AT& T, that ran the first banner ad, or at least that's what's been published in the archives of, ad advertising journalism is, is that's who they call out. anyway, so that first banner ad also reported a 40 percent click through rate.

[00:03:21] Todd: Imagine running a banner ad with a 40 percent click through rate.

[00:03:24] Kelly: power of novelty.

[00:03:27] Todd: well, yeah, it was the first one, right? so early success or anomaly. I think it's more about the obsession with CTRs. and maybe is that distracted us from what the banner ads original purpose should have always been about. And so that's a little bit what I want to talk about today.

[00:03:44] Todd: is it really more of a. Akin to an out-of-home billboard where it's a branding ad, or a print magazine ad where it's all about branding and it should have never been about direct response. I think that's something we can talk about. So, the first thing I wanna talk about is, is that, and what is your opinion or what are your thoughts on the idea that.

[00:04:05] Todd: A banner ad and a click through rate became sort of the thing that went together and should it have ever really been that or should have we stuck to our laurels with, their, their originations of advertising and accepted that it was not about the click. It was about me seeing it. Acknowledging it maybe for a second or two storing that in my memory banks and then going back to traditional advertising, methodologies of ad recall and things like that.

[00:04:34] Todd: Do you think it should have been a clickable unit or that we should have ever relied on that? Do you think that that matters today? What's your thoughts?

[00:04:43] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, I think it's I think it's nice that we're thinking about it over the course of a 30 year anniversary period because I think it's evolved tremendously. Yeah. And I think it's it's a more complex answer than just yes or no, that that's the right metric. And I think the way it's looked at right now is very different than it has been over different periods of time.

[00:05:03] Kelly: So, early on, I think. It was likely just a, we don't know what the right thing to look for is, but we know if we're going to spend money, we want to see an outcome of it. That's the point of all advertising, right? Is whether it's branding, whether it's performance or whether it's anything in between, you do want to spend dollars to create some kind of shift.

[00:05:24] Kelly: Of some kind. Now, does it always have to be the last touch before an action is taken in order for it to be worthwhile? Or can it simply just be exposure that creates a memory or top of mind awareness? That's the ongoing debate. But I think for a long time, click through rate became far too expected and relied upon as the only indicator of value.

[00:05:45] Kelly: and I think what got lost in the side of that is the likely the most likely human interaction and behavior. And where the banner ad fell in someone's experience and journey online. We've had to tell this story. We don't have to tell it as much anymore. People have gotten away from how important they think click through it is.

[00:06:05] Kelly: But for a long time, we had to tell the story around what a true human experience likely is, right? If I'm on a website and I'm engaged in a video, or if I'm engaged in an article, the likelihood of me. Being so intrigued by the message on a banner that I'm going to completely divert my time and attention from what I've specifically gone to, to consume content wise, it's a pretty big ask barring certain elements that are able to drive you there.

[00:06:33] Kelly: So thinking that that is the only value you can get by being there was very skewed in why you should be spending those dollars. And again, I think people caught onto that. They, they ultimately understood. I don't see click through rate. These days being really talked about even that much, let alone being the main driver of, of expectation.

[00:06:53] Kelly: It is a lot of view through and it's a lot of component, but it's not, it's also not as simple as just getting rid of that either. Like anything else, it should be well thought through what you're trying to achieve with the messaging you're putting in place, the environments you're buying in the ad formats that you're using.

[00:07:10] Kelly: there should be a strategy around if we're going to get high impact, high visibility exposure that we don't think will drive a click, a click case in point streaming TV, connected TV. That's oftentimes not clickable. What do we want to nurture after that? Once someone's been exposed, we can know who's been exposed.

[00:07:30] Kelly: How do we take them through the next steps? How do we have more control and not just leave it up to chance? This is where we look at things like video event retargeting and being able to say, okay, this person, we know that they've seen 50 percent of our video, or they've seen these two different video ads, or they've completed these ones.

[00:07:46] Kelly: There's a targeting bucket. Let's follow them with a call to action. Let's get some recall on what they now have seen and carry that story through the next step. So I think the answer is click through rate is not the end all be all by any means. And we finally gotten away from that being the pure expectation.

[00:08:02] Kelly: But there still needs to be overall thinking about what you're trying to achieve when you buy these placements, who you're connecting with, what the message is, and what you're hoping to come out of it and understanding that there's a journey to that different ad formats shouldn't be clicked on. Some need to be followed up to create the click.

[00:08:20] Kelly: Some need to be remarketed to because you're going to be delivering an offer or an act now or a timely message. All of those things have different objectives and different expectations of what people are realistically going to do.

[00:08:31] Todd: Okay, so I'm, I'm going to put a pin and come back to a couple of things you just talked about, like video event retargeting and remarketing and like all these things about where now we're being challenged with the cookie deprecation and, the ability to track People online. So I'm going to come back to that.

[00:08:49] Todd: Cause that's a big piece of what I want to talk, talk to you about. So thinking about the banner ad rib, basically any advertising, if, if you want to lump it all into one, but certainly banner ads and then the more disruptive era of. Pop up windows and all those things all being sort of this disruptive, disliked, ineffective or annoying, advertising thing that we all have to

[00:09:13] Kelly: the guy who invented the pop up ad has said he deeply regrets doing it.

[00:09:18] Todd: I have read that. So I think the question in there, in there though, is. We still see reports, the ad industry reports that talk about programmatic advertising, so display dominating and still growing a large portion of the ad spend. And so if click through rate is no longer really an effective measurement and people are annoyed by advertising, how, how, what's the value prop then?

[00:09:46] Todd: Right? So if that's still happening, we're still seeing it growing. Advertisers are still spending more money there. The consumers largely say it's annoying. Those two things seem at odds with each other. Don't you think?

[00:09:59] Kelly: Yeah, I almost feel like that attitude is almost like a default. Answer. I think people are more used to advertising and it's more part of their everyday lives. Then they really give the time and credence to sit there and think through when they, when they go through that. I mean, of course, you don't, if you're watching a show or something, you don't want it to be disrupted or, there's certain things that it's not ideal, but in the grand scheme of things, I don't know that it's as.

[00:10:25] Kelly: impactful is people like to just kind of complain about I mean, look at look at the Super Bowl, right? The commercials have become part of the experience in the event and all of those things. it's cultural and when there's really good commercials or there's really good advertising, really memorable things.

[00:10:40] Kelly: I mean, remember the All of the love around the Dollar Shave Club video and how great that was and like so good ads and things that really inform you. And, and I think that's the funny thing that we've talked about is really good advertising. If it's done the way it's supposed to be doing, it should not be exploitative, it should not be annoying.

[00:10:57] Kelly: It should connect a consumer who, a, a product, or a good or a service has been developed to improve their lives. Most people. I would say start companies, clothing companies or product companies or anything to say, Hey, I've got a great product that some people, some group of people are going to love or enjoy or want to purchase and creating that awareness, creating that understanding, creating the offers and the promotions and things like that, there could, there can be an enrichment to it.

[00:11:26] Kelly: Obviously we're a consumer. Driven society. And there's a lot of capitalism and things like that. And so we can get lost in a lot of secondary thinking, but I do think that advertising at its core is to make people aware, to give you information that allows you to explore and understand and get new things.

[00:11:43] Kelly: I mean, even way back. remember forever ago there was like things like the Sears catalog, right? you'd be sitting in your prairie home and you'd get this thing and this is how you ordered things. This is how you got goods. Well, that was advertising is how you learned about things.

[00:11:54] Kelly: This is things that make my life better. It gives me a stove. It gives me something that makes my house work better. So. Again, the fact that people are exposed to 10, 000 ads a day now makes it a bit problematic and, and, and crosses over into those lines. But it means that you still have to be mindful about what you're trying to achieve when you invest those dollars and trying to be as useful and helpful to the people that you're spending dollars to develop that communication with as possible.

[00:12:21] Kelly: I say all the time when we work and try and go through strategy with our clients is, oh, it's easy. It's very, very easy for us to sit and say, what do we want the consumer to do? What? What business KPI do we want to achieve? But what is very often not thought about that I think is very beneficial, especially in certain journeys you're trying to create, is what value am I offering?

[00:12:43] Kelly: And this comes up a lot when we're trying, when one of the outcomes is we want someone to fill out a form or to give us their information. And I always try and position it as, We are asking someone for value. We're asking them for time and attention and sometimes personal information, name, email address, some kind of signup.

[00:13:01] Kelly: If I'm asking you for value, I need to think to myself, what value am I offering in exchange? Now that can be everything from a simple sweepstakes and giveaway to a charity giveaway, to information, to an infographic, to data, something. But I think sometimes it does get lost in. What am I offering for what I want in exchange?

[00:13:23] Kelly: And again, it could also be a symbol is just being funny and entertaining someone for 10 seconds in your ad if it's good enough, but there's got to be some kind of value exchange in it.

[00:13:31] Todd: Can I challenge that comment real quick? Because conversely, a lot of people do go looking for products or services on the internet, in which case they then find themselves saying. I need that, and in order to get to the next step, I've got to give them information to get to the next step. So, I don't always think that the brand has to be the one giving first, because a lot of times consumers need what the product or service is, and so they are purposely and proactively giving their information so they can get to the next step.

[00:14:05] Todd: And the value prop that you discussed is whatever problem. That product or service solves for the consumer. So I don't know. I think, yes, there's a lot of probably more often than not. Most cases that we get into seem to suggest that, gosh, we've got to like incentivize people to give us this information.

[00:14:27] Todd: But I also think like, I know when I've really needed something,maybe a repair or. I really want to buy something. I don't need to be incentivized to get my name, email, and phone number, my

[00:14:42] Kelly: you're talking about the difference between push and pull messaging, right? So, pull messaging is a lot easier than push messaging, right? If you're solving an active need, if you're tapping into what someone is looking for, this is why, this is why search advertising.

[00:14:56] Kelly: Tends to be one of the most invested in and one of the most performance focus, right? Because you're simply directing people who are actively hand raising and actively seeking versus again, trying to pivot someone's attention in mind onto something in an environment where they're open and receptive to it.

[00:15:13] Kelly: there's a big difference in those types of things.

[00:15:15] Todd: agree. all right. I want to talk about, cause I've got several more questions I want to get through, I always say this to people when they ask me what I do and they're like, Oh, I hate ads on the internet. And I always tell them, you understand that's why content in the internet is free, right? Like you get information on the internet because of advertising paying the way. The interesting part about that is, and this is going to spiral into the series of questions I want to ask you about, is data privacy, ad blockers, the advent of removing the cookie and ad tracking and all this, and is that going to force us to sort of come full circle back to what a lot of the advertising Capabilities were 20, 30 years ago where you didn't have all that data.

[00:16:00] Todd: And so it really was about the, the old principles of advertising about branding and about recall and about creativity, being so good that it captured somebody's attention. And they told their friends, Hey, did you see that funny ad or commercial? So the trade off, that we're dealing with, I think, is interesting because advertising is what keeps content free and the internet free.

[00:16:24] Todd: Advertising being able to be effective, to your point, is why advertisers spend money on it and continue to spend more and more money on it. if ad blocking and privacy and all that makes that so hard to do makes me wonder what's what is the evolution of that going to look like if we can't target this goes back to your comment about remarketing and all that kind of stuff.

[00:16:47] Todd: Well, that requires data in order to do that. It requires us to know that that browser viewed that video and now we're going to go back and serve that. Well, if all that gets taken away from us. What's the trade off,

[00:17:03] Kelly: Yeah, it's really interesting. all got spoiled and used to, for lack of a better term, a subsidized experience, right? The whole reason that people spend the time and the energy and the effort that goes into what we consume and what we enjoy and the whole reason that we like the Internet. It's because somebody's paying for it, right?

[00:17:23] Kelly: Time and energy and effort put in anything has value. And so the really good stuff, the really, the stuff that comes from your talented journalists and your talented content creators and your people who really should be compensated for the work that they put in for what you care enough to consume has to get paid for,as any, again, economics system would work, we just got used to it being subsidized by advertisers being the one that says.

[00:17:51] Kelly: Hey, this is where eyeballs and attention and time is being spent. I will pay for. Peeling off a little bit of that in order to create outcomes that help my, my business. And that came in so early that and it creates scale. I mean, one of the reasons why you wouldn't charge or want someone to have to pay for your service is.

[00:18:13] Kelly: That creates a huge barrier of entry. It's why freemium mobile games came up, right? It was a lot easier to give away games and try and monetize it after the fact, then convince people to pay even 99 cents and take that risk. Your attrition rate, once you put in that barrier of entry is like 90 percent plus.

[00:18:30] Kelly: And so it's just this balance between scale and availability and quality of content and. Who's paying for it, but ultimately it's an economic system that has to be fueled by dollars coming from somewhere. And unless consumers want it, want it coming from them, then they, they want to be subsidized in it.

[00:18:46] Kelly: and again, I, I find it really funny that we're in this space because the habit is there. You expect the Internet's free. It would almost be impossible for there to be a world where the Internet was no longer free. And have that kind of take over the behavior in that it makes me think of a very funny story or learning that I just came about of why why free refills are known and expected in the U.

[00:19:13] Kelly: S. And where that came from. And it's not common around the world. And I learned that it actually came from a Taco Bell and Pepsi promotion. I believe in the, in the eighties or nineties, where Pepsi was trying to, to overcome Coke and make a market share. And so they worked with Taco Bell to create a free refill promotion.

[00:19:32] Kelly: And it was such a runaway, huge success that every time Taco Bell tried to take it away, there was rebellion and no one would accept it and it wouldn't go through. And it became such a normal cultural thing that it has taken over. And everywhere we go in the U S. Refills is a free refills is just a known natural expectation.

[00:19:50] Kelly: It's a behavior that it would be insane to take away. Cause I like, I've been to restaurants rarely where it's not free refills and it is a shock to the system. Like, wait, what do you mean? So imagine something as small as that at the scale of the internet, something that we enter in cage with and work with every single day and every so much of our day.

[00:20:10] Kelly: So again, I, I find it as important. And then, we've talked about this before. If you accept the fact that advertising is the subsidy that makes what we want work, then you might as well get the best advertising you possibly can at that point, right? Why, why be annoyed? Why be bothered by things that don't matter?

[00:20:29] Kelly: I see, we've talked, we've talked about this. Recently, I keep getting Spanish ads on things like how much wasted money and time and annoyance is that on that? Like if I'm going to see it, like why not let advertising,

[00:20:41] Todd: is that because of a broken, is that because of a broken system of the privacy that this is my point. Like if you're going to see advertising, you should at least want to see advertising that's relative as relative as data targeting can make it why on earth. Would you want to get rid of that?

[00:20:59] Todd: And I guess the question is there's been so much, or the comment is there's been so much fraud and hacking, take place now with people because our lives have moved digitally. That people don't want the exposure anymore. They don't want to be, they don't want identity theft. They don't want,

[00:21:16] Kelly: think that I think that's so silly. I mean, just, just because advertisers have a harder time getting to you. It's your data's out there. There's no putting that genie back in the bottle. Like people are going to know about you, your data

[00:21:27] Todd: really the case

[00:21:28] Todd: though?

[00:21:28] Kelly: a hundred percent. It's not going,

[00:21:30] Todd: with all the new ad blocking, the cookie stuff, potentially going away, all those things. Do you think, the youngest gen, the Gen Zs, the very youngest consumers now, let's take it like teenagers

[00:21:43] Kelly: it's really, it's really

[00:21:44] Kelly: funny about where you're going with that. First of all, the answer to your question is yes. I, I, I've told you like. Taking away the cookie and the default out of it has actually awoken the giant, like people are doubling down on, okay, well, all right, now we really got to think about how we're going to capture it and they get even more aggressive on it.

[00:21:58] Kelly: The funniest thing about the generation that you're talking about is that's the same. I'm going to stereotype here at scale, but I think it fits. That's the same generation that is being threatened to have tick tock taken away. And in exchange are like, I don't care. Take my data. I want my, I want my service.

[00:22:11] Kelly: Don't take away my service. They couldn't care less about sharing the data or having it taken from them. As long as they get their free platform that they love and want, want to go through there. So, so yeah, I mean, I think the other side of it is interesting because again, I think the idea that. The starting point of all advertising is bad and evil and wrong and annoying.

[00:22:31] Kelly: I think that's the wrong thing. And I think that that's a by product of people abusing and using it the wrong way. Because. If advertising was done perfectly, it is entirely possible for there to be value in, in it. You can get exposure to cool things that you might not otherwise know about that you would really want to buy that you'd want to get through to you.

[00:22:50] Kelly: If it's connecting, right, and it's using, right, there can be value received in getting that advertising. Again, I'm going to use this example again. People now love the Superbowl commercials. They don't look at those as an annoying distraction of the game, or even oftentimes a chance to go to the bathroom.

[00:23:05] Kelly: People don't want to miss them. There's entire articles about them. People go on to YouTube after the fact to voluntarily go and watch these commercials because they can be so entertaining and fun. Advertising can bring value. It's not just this evil view. You have to accept it, put price to pay to get to what we want.

[00:23:25] Kelly: It can be done right and there can be value. And so again, if you, if you operate from the, it gives me value that it makes me not have to pay for what I want and that I can even enjoy it, it can be positive. Then, that's a much better way to be able to operate and go around versus the idea that somehow, again, we can put that genie back in the bottle and I can protect all my data and no one's going to be tracking.

[00:23:46] Kelly: I mean, they say data is the new oil. So I would liken this to being like, okay, we can get rid of oil reliance in our kind of like, it's just not possible at this point. Like, it's a pipe dream to think about anything like that.

[00:23:57] Todd: So you don't, you don't think that what you're saying is you don't think ad blocking and the cookie going away or any of those things are really ever going to Take a foothold of a movie of users by any stretch of the imagination. It's going to be some minority percentage that just doesn't even impact advertising effectiveness.

[00:24:15] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, the, the layers in which it would have to go through, it's just, it's not practical. First of all, we know that almost everyone takes the default options available to them. So even if you have ad blocking, most people don't bother to go through the process to learn it. So the, the few minority that do bother to do that, there are people that probably weren't going to respond to your ads anyway.

[00:24:33] Kelly: So they might just be saving you money on not wasting time to target them. And again, even if cookies went away, there's going to be some way to work around it. It's going to be subsidized. It's going to be to be on there. So I just, yeah, I don't see a world in which any of that truly gets disrupted.

[00:24:50] Kelly: I mean, you, you've seen it with, with GDPR in Europe. I mean, there's still plenty of advertising digitally there and they, put it down. It's just there's different solutions and there's different ways to continue that engine running. and like I said, even if you, if you went to the extreme and said, yes, you could fundamentally or deeply disrupt that and get rid of a lot of the advertising.

[00:25:12] Kelly: One of two things is going to happen from there. Either you will start getting charged to get to content that you want to see. And I've experienced this. There are articles that I'll click through on sports sites where I'm interested in the topic. It's the teaser, the little preview. I'm like, I want to read this article.

[00:25:28] Kelly: I get there and it says, Oh, you got to pay a dollar a month to get access immediately gone. It doesn't matter how interesting that article was to me or how much I wanted to read it, not paying that. It's just, it's not the behavior that I've gone through. I'm not going to get to do it. So the loss of that.

[00:25:41] Kelly: Would be tremendous. And now, now, if the content producer of that good piece article can't get people to pay for it at scale, and it's not subsidized, probably not going to see much good content coming out. And so the Internet is going to get a lot less exciting and valuable pretty quickly in that case.

[00:25:56] Todd: Yeah, I think a lot of the publishers that tried to go paywall in the last five to 10 years, I think some of them had to reverse it because they couldn't get enough people to just pay a monthly subscription for good editorial content. They'd rather have the ad supported version to your point. yeah,

[00:26:14] Kelly: I'll go through Flipboard or the Google articles and I'll click on something. And as soon as it says, like it's blocked. Nope. All right. Onto the next one. There's somewhere, somewhere else that I can get something similar or it's kind of good or the same topic, but I don't have to pay for it.

[00:26:27] Todd: yeah, I, I really don't get, again, I've never had my identity stolen or something that might make me really question whatever data is available about there about me out there. But, for instance, and this is. Why I think advertising works, I no longer have TikTok because I deleted it in my,

[00:26:47] Kelly: Now you can't tell.

[00:26:48] Todd: I couldn't, I couldn't update all my apps at once because TikTok was blocking it.

[00:26:53] Todd: So I just removed TikTok. I didn't know that I wasn't going to be able to reinstall it. So now I don't have it, which interesting antidote. yesterday I started, I had never gone to YouTube. And just started going through their feed of stuff and I find it to be identical

[00:27:09] Kelly: Oh, the shorts.

[00:27:10] Kelly: Yeah, that's the same thing.

[00:27:12] Todd: And I am seeing the same Creators and the same content on youtube that I was seeing on tiktok So now i'm like, what's the difference between tiktok and youtube?

[00:27:22] Todd: Like I don't know. But anyway, that's not my point. My point was I was scrolling through my Instagram feed, where what I follow is very akin to what I like. It's the sports that I'm interested in or the hobbies that I'm interested in. And as I'm a motocross rider. And so I'm a very specific bike.

[00:27:38] Todd: And I got an ad for this, this thing that helps will help me change the oil in my bike without having to take a bunch of pieces off. It's a, it's a little tube and it connects to things. Anyway, I saw that it was like, it's 1499. I didn't even think twice. I'm like, that will make. That will shave 10 minutes off my ability to change my oil and make it so much easier.

[00:27:59] Todd: It's stupid I went I clicked on the ad went straight to buy now Bought it and it's being shipped to me like I didn't

[00:28:08] Kelly: And there you go. There's, there's the value.

[00:28:09] Todd: great advertising. They got me They know me and they got me

[00:28:13] Kelly: And that's the value, right? You, you, you maybe didn't need that product. You probably weren't searching for it. There wasn't a poll to be

[00:28:20] Todd: Nope. Not at

[00:28:21] Kelly: once you got the benefit of knowing it existed and easily being able to convert, now you have something that's making your life a little bit better than if you had never learned about that without advertising, that might've existed in the world and you would have gone maybe forever, not knowing that you could have had something that was a little bit

[00:28:40] Kelly: more

[00:28:40] Todd: would have never known about that unless one of my buddies had one. And I'm like, Oh my God, where you got that now? Here's, so here's the great thing. So they, they served an ad I converted on the ad. So now they have a real time row ads from that ad for my 1499 plus shipping. Now I'm getting more ads from him about other products.

[00:28:59] Todd: They make that don't, I don't need them and they don't match my bike

[00:29:03] Kelly: but, but think about the importance there, right? Let's just run that through again, not thinking about the, how are you bothering me, but the real human value that's behind that there is a company who spent time thinking about a problem, R and D, a product and creating something that benefited you. And okay, so now you said now, now they know about me and they know that I exist, but the fact that they now have a user base and a customer base.

[00:29:29] Kelly: Encourages them to say, what other cool things can we create? What other nice things can we spend the time and the energy and the expertise to develop, because we now know that if we do that, there are people that we can get to that will buy it. And again, there's an economy for it. There's something that makes it worth spending the time and energy versus if they didn't have that and they didn't know that that was in there.

[00:29:52] Kelly: They may never develop the next cool thing that will make your life a little bit better. So the fact that you're the customer of a company. Should not immediately inherently be considered a negative, bad thing. It shouldn't be a, you stole my data. You're exploiting me. You're, you're, you're, you're taking advantage of me.

[00:30:10] Kelly: It should be a, you have expertise that might build things that I like. And so I want to support you. I want to be part of your ecosystem because you are in an industry in a field that I like. Again, the fact that there's no ability to think about what we do. Positively. And as a benefit just goes to show how broken and how far down the wrong path, a lot of things has taken it.

[00:30:33] Kelly: I,

[00:30:34] Todd: I would agree. Well, on that note, I think we both agree that advertising is a good thing. it works when it works right. and it adds value and Is in service of, of consumerism and what we all like to buy or need to buy or need to have as a service. So, thanks for debating that with me, on Valentine's day.

[00:30:53] Todd: I, I I'll, I'll wrap up on the idea of everything that we've talked about here. I think. It very much represents the opportunity that brands have and and honestly, it should be the opportunity that that agencies and the people responsible for making these decisions in these investments have is to find a partner or be a partner that thinks about it in this way that that has the ability to take the step back and think about, okay, we have a budget.

[00:31:19] Kelly: We have the dollars. What do we want to accomplish in the market? And who is it that we are borrowing time from and engaging with? And how can we deliver value? And how can we nurture journeys? that type of thinking, I think, is where it hits on a lot of topics we've talked about before, where it's the difference between just simply buying ads on Facebook and Google with simple targeting, but actually having creative, critical thinking and going through what are we accomplishing and what's the journey and how can we match that and what's the messaging.

[00:31:51] Kelly: Again, the more thought and care that goes into Those investments, the better it is for both sides of the fence, the better it is for the consumer that you're actually buying that time and energy from, because you're making better decisions, not serving Spanish ads to people that don't speak that language.

[00:32:07] Kelly: And it's better for the client spending dollars. Who's not wasting dollars on ads, going to someone who you're just being an annoyance and a disruption to. So I think that represents a huge opportunity, that people should be able to take the step back and really. Approach it from the we're not just exploiting people.

[00:32:24] Kelly: We can actually make a positive impact if we go about it in the right way.

[00:32:30] Todd: yeah, I agree the right advertising for the right reasons and the delivered the right way.

[00:32:34] Kelly: But that takes time and energy and expertise and skill and care to go about it that way. That is not the fastest, simplest. easiest way to make media decisions. That's not a simple blueprint media plan that says, okay, you have a million dollars. I'll do this on Facebook and this on Google. And I'm just gonna let a machine go run it.

[00:32:52] Kelly: Now you need people thinking about it, going through it, challenging those things and evaluating it. it's just a different approach.

[00:32:58] Kelly: well, I'll throw this thorn in that conversation for the public and guess what that costs more. So if you want more, you got to pay more. that goes back to time cost money, right? Whether you want someone's 10 seconds in an ad, you pay for that time, whether you want it. A few more hours of a very talented, if you, the person that costs more, it costs more if you pay a good lawyer, the more they charge by the hour, like time is what's money, right?

[00:33:23] Kelly: And so again, yes, you could just throw some money in a machine and spend 15 minutes doing it and hope that works. Or you can spend someone to spend hours to critically think about something and then make those decisions. Time. Time is always the currency when all things are said and done for the most part.

[00:33:38] Todd: Pretty much. All right. Well, we'll wrap up, tell your wife and daughter, happy Valentine's day for me. And I will talk to you next week.

[00:33:45] Kelly: Sounds good. Thanks, everyone.