AI in Advertising and Marketing: Hype or Reality?

[00:00:00] Kelly: there's always this new latest and greatest bell and whistle and magic bullet that is supposed to solve all this amazing stuff. And I think people have the best of intentions usually when they're building an offering. And This thing, and when I say this thing, and that is intentionally a placeholder, because it is usually to solve a problem of this thing, and you can kind of plug and play and we'll come to that.

[00:00:52] Kelly: I'm Kelly McGuire, co founder of Vujaday Digital. Excited to talk about today's topic,

[00:00:57] Todd: Everybody, this is Todd Kelly's partner and co founder and cry. I'm a digital. Wow. Today we're going to talk about ad tech and I don't even know where to begin. Other than you and I have a lot of opinions about that.

[00:01:10] Kelly: term ad tech.

[00:01:12] Todd: Yeah. The biggest, probably one of the biggest umbrella terms out there. One that you and I have.

[00:01:18] Todd: I think formed a lot of how we do business around or not around one that we've had very, I don't know what the right word is. Opinionated opinions about ad tech from everything in terms of how it empowers or enables agencies to do better work or just simply do more scalable and efficient. Work that makes the agency just simply more profitable to you know, just less people doing more.

[00:01:47] Todd: That's a whole lot of things. What ad tech is. So there is probably some perceptions and optics that exist out there in the industry that we can talk about today. And of course, you're the expert in the space. So I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions about ad tech and sort of Where it started and you had your early start in some of the earliest ad tech Mr.

[00:02:07] Todd: McGuire with the programmatic and DSP trading desks way back when they first came out. And I think a lot of your perceptions over the years have been informed by your early sort of witnessing of what that was for, and then ongoing how it evolved and sort of what you've seen unfold, which. We would argue and you and I would probably point our finger at the industry and say, it probably hasn't evolved in the best way.

[00:02:37] Todd: And in a lot of cases for the client, the advertisers best interest it's probably advocated a little bit more for the agency's best interests. And again, in terms of operational scale and efficiency and profitability. So, I guess we can start there and talk about the perception. Of ad tech maybe you can talk about what you felt like the perception was When you first started working in it, I don't know, 10 plus years ago.

[00:03:04] Todd: And what you think maybe are common perceptions that are maybe fair or common perceptions that are not correct and potentially false or misleading.

[00:03:17] Kelly: Yeah, this is a really, it's an interesting topic for me because I love ad tech or the concept of ad tech. But I feel like during the course of this, I may come across as a little bit jaded in it, and I think , that'll make for a good exploration here because you used the right term there with perception, because where I formulate my opinion on ad tech is the perception versus the reality, and where I struggle with it is what it can be versus what it tends to be.

[00:03:51] Kelly: Because going back as long as there is, as long as we've been doing this, there's always this new latest and greatest bell and whistle and magic bullet that is supposed to solve all this amazing stuff. And I think people have the best of intentions usually when they're building an offering. And This thing, and when I say this thing, and that is intentionally a placeholder, because it is usually to solve a problem of this thing, and you can kind of plug and play and we'll come to that.

[00:04:20] Kelly: I think where , there's this spectrum of outcome where. I think a lot of ad tech is sold speculatively as almost vaporware, where it's a promise before it's really ready to try and fund it and R and D your way to it. And a theory I think , where I have the biggest struggle with. ad tech is this idea that it is a magic bullet that you just, you pay for it and you apply it.

[00:04:43] Kelly: And it just magically solves your problem versus what I really think I get excited about when I see what seems like a cool new technology, which is what does it unlock and what does it enable someone to do better? And I think the really important lost piece in that sentence is the someone part where I think that good ad tech.

[00:05:09] Kelly: empowers a person to go further or do more or unlock something that they didn't otherwise have the ability to, but far too often it's positioned and sold as taking, you know, making something simpler or more efficient or more cost effective or easier being done in a vacuum. And I think that's where it often fall fails to fulfill on that promise where if someone champions a tool and a technology and pushes the envelope and really explores it and applies it to bettering what they do on a day to day basis.

[00:05:42] Kelly: I think there's a lot of value to be had in it, but that takes a lot of time and effort and investment and energy to do that. That's not the promise of you pay for this tool and it's going to save you a bunch of time and money. It's actually going to create a lot more work and create a lot more upfront investment in order to yield long term better results.

[00:06:02] Kelly: And I, just so often see that be the downfall of things up. Someone will go and buy a tool, and then it just sort of gets orphaned within an organization because no one has the time or the energy to the bandwidth or the billable hours that it takes to turn it into something. And so again, from a top level, that's where I struggle, why we've seen so many ad tech come and go, where it promises to solve it, it doesn't solve it very easily, no one can take it and figure it out, so then it sort of gets orphaned and then it gets lost and then it's on to the next thing.

[00:06:33] Kelly: And it's just this, air of immediate gratification that when it's not served, it just sort of tends to go by the wayside. And then the next hot buzzword we need to solve for this thing comes along. And it just creates this sort of cycle of never quite living up to any of the promises.

[00:06:52] Todd: Yeah, I think the interesting thing about the perceptions are And I'm generalizing here and there are brands out there and CMOs who are probably not going to like what I'm going to say, but that there's a perception that it makes our job easier. And if our jobs easier, it should be faster. And if it's faster, it should cost them less money.

[00:07:12] Todd: it should somehow reduce the fees that we charge. And with the ad tech that. And, and just recently our head of search came to me and said, Hey, I want to demo this ad tech tool and here's why, and it wasn't the, why wasn't it's going to make us so that we can onboard more campaigns with the team that we have and run more billable work with the teams we have, it was all about, it's going to allow us to investigate, understand, iterate and make our campaign smarter and better.

[00:07:46] Todd: All the while requiring us to do a lot more work. So the ad tech in this particular situation isn't about scale and efficiency. It's about better. and it requires us to do more work. Yet I think the common perception out there is, Oh, it should make your job easier and faster. Therefore, it should make your service cheaper.

[00:08:03] Todd: And all I have seen today is the ad tech actually, including AI, which we've talked about previously. It's simply just making people have to work more. There's more tools to use. There's more learning, sophistication application of these tools to be performed, which. It's taking more time. It's not taking less time.

[00:08:25] Todd: It's taking more time, but the output seems to be getting better, which that's really all I can sort of keep my eye on is, is the output better. I don't care about the time or the cost first I care about is the output better. So I think you're right. I, those are, those are. A lot of common perceptions.

[00:08:43] Todd: And

[00:08:44] Kelly: Well, I think, yeah, I mean, again, I think that that's where. Where I've seen ad tech work the best is when you do have sort of an organizational champion, someone who's like, I love this thing and I'm going to learn it inside out and I'm going to advocate for it and I'm going to showcase it and I'm going to get people to do it.

[00:08:59] Kelly: Otherwise, if you don't have someone who's personally passionate about it and willing to take on the time and the energy to find the application for it, I see it often just comes across as a burden like, okay, someone's making me use this thing. Someone's making me learn this thing. It's yet another thing that I have to add onto my plate and do this and do that.

[00:09:18] Kelly: And, you know, so it's, it's hard to create that where again, if it doesn't make things faster and easier, everyone, everyone. Yeah. I believe most people in our industry probably tend to feel a little overworked and a little overwhelmed and a little, a little overburdened with, with how much they have. So adding more into it and having to learn it and go through it, if it's not the thing that you've brought in, it can be a bit of a challenge on those fronts.

[00:09:38] Kelly: And I also think that there can be a bit of that overselling and over promising. I mean, we've seen a few of these things in the AI space. I mean, you've brought a few of them into me where on the surface, they seem really great. But of course that comes across that way in the vision, in the pitch and the sales pitch sounds great when you dive into it, doesn't, doesn't always come across exactly as you want.

[00:09:59] Kelly: And then when you don't quite land on it, now you have to reiterate on it. And then you have to kind of go back and train on it again. And then you have to, and again, you start to go down this rabbit hole of, are you losing that efficiency in the process of getting to where you want to be and is it just another skillset that's in there?

[00:10:16] Kelly: So, yeah, I think there's a lot of pitfalls in the process of it. I think there's a lot of that over promising and that. Idealization of what, what things can be. And but on the flip side of that, I don't want to be totally negative. And I sort of preface this on there. There are some really cool things that ad tech can enable and unlock.

[00:10:33] Kelly: And, and when you do get a person who gets excited about it and sees the possibility out of the outcome and they want to creatively apply it to what they're doing, it can do really cool things. I mean, I think our philosophy and something that we push our teams for heavily. Is to have a cutting edge knowledge base on all of the possibilities and the things that are out there to have a Rolodex and an understanding of these kind of ancillary tools that exist and pop up to do the demos to understand them, because what I find most often is ad tech does not usually apply a sweeping benefit to everything that someone does.

[00:11:13] Kelly: It's usually a very niche opportunity that fits a specific client need or, or brings to the table, a cool thing that fits a really specific campaign or a budget parameter that's worth exploring. And if you really have this ecosystem of knowing all of these cool little things that are out there, when you go to plan and you go to say, okay, I'm now responsible for spending dollars for my client and I need to achieve an outcome, I'm generally going to have the core things that I'm going to consider and apply and do that with.

[00:11:42] Kelly: But now how do I mold the edges? How do I bring some creative things in? How do I test a couple of cool things? How do I look at what can be done? And that can be everything from, you know, playing with device measurement and offline data sets, consumer behaviors, AI production. Creative nuance. Like there's all these things that, you know, an ad tech can say, Hey, I can do this thing that might be very unique in your healthcare space or your finance space.

[00:12:08] Kelly: Or I can identify users based on these behaviors that become very beneficial there. So I think knowing what's out there and having the patience and the curiosity to say, Hey, here's an opportunity that's come to me with this client need and this brief. I remember this tool that I've been waiting for the right opportunity to apply and to test and go through.

[00:12:28] Kelly: Now's the right time to explore it. let me take the ownership of bringing this added extra value on top of just my simple meta and Google and programmatic ads. And let me see what this can do and let me test it out and let me see if it's scalable. But again, that requires a passion and an ownership from the person To care enough to go that extra mile, to, to have that demo that they did two months ago and to remember it and know when to go through and reach out to the rep and get the proposal.

[00:12:55] Kelly: All of those things is extra work and energy and effort that you have to be personally motivated to bother going through, because if you don't do any of those things, No one's ever going to know, no one's going to call you out for it and say, why didn't you do that really fringe unique thing that is out there.

[00:13:10] Kelly: You can get away with never doing any of it, but you want, you have to want to say, Hey, I brought this really unique, cool thing that no one was asking me to do, but I heard about it and I'm excited to try it out and I'll put in the little extra effort that it takes. To go outside of the norms of that.

[00:13:25] Todd: you could be motivated and work for a company where the operational model doesn't even allow you to do that. And that's, we've talked about that in the past, that agencies as a business need to find ways to, let people do those things without it always being tied to billable hours and profitability and things like that.

[00:13:41] Todd: I guess the Google 20 percent model, right? Where Google told its employees, take 20 percent of your time and go. Do your own thing and ideate something. So

[00:13:51] Kelly: I w

[00:13:51] Kelly: I would argue the, the large company model inherently, not always, again, not a sweeping statement, but I would say more often than not naturally stamps out the motivation to do those extra things. Cause again, it's, it's hard if you do it, maybe you get a little bit of a kudos. Like it's not that bad.

[00:14:07] Kelly: Like it's just, you're, you're such a small piece of such a big machine that it can be kind of hard to. To find, you know, obviously there's going to be superstars everywhere, but one or two superstars in a company of a thousand. Is that, are you going to be the lucky client that got those assigned to your, to your team?

[00:14:26] Todd: That's sort of my point. All right, let's talk about what you have seen as far as limitations with ad tech and or not limitations where ad tech's actually made a difference. what sort of limitations do you think commonly exist? Again, with ad tech, and these may be practical, hands on limitations with campaigns I think your frame of reference would be more probably centered around programmatic or, or social or maybe some search, because we used to run bid management tools and things like that on top of Google ads.

[00:14:59] Todd: But what sort of limitations do you think exist with ad tech typically? Vice versa, what sort of things do you see ad tech actually help with?

[00:15:09] Kelly: Yeah, I would say the biggest limitation, and I think we're uniquely positioned for this. Point of view here is a lot of time ad tech is, is again, it's built in a vacuum, it's built in an idealistic state, which means it's oftentimes built for massive clients and people who have huge budgets and huge data sets and the ability to collect information and have huge customer databases and the ability to map the whole journey and have tons of media and market at scale and all of that.

[00:15:40] Kelly: And then when you go to apply it at not that massive scale, you start to reach up against limitations in terms of, okay, well, does this client have access to enough of their history data? Or can they even map their full journey? Or can they even get that that conversion piece? Applying a lot of the ad tech in a more common client profile versus your Coca Cola's in your Starbucks I think is most often the limitation that comes in.

[00:16:06] Kelly: They tend to be built at scale and honestly, the pricing structures often come in, right? You know, whoever are indeed this ad tech to build it isn't really going to make up a lot of their money on a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars a month contracts, right? They need the six figure contracts that come with the giant players in the space.

[00:16:23] Kelly: And so being able to apply that capability and that technology creatively to both just be able to afford it and work it into the budget parameters as well as making sure the fuel for the engine exists, if you will, so that you're not just buying something that sputters along and can't actually, you know, deliver on its promise outcomes.

[00:16:41] Kelly: I say that's probably the biggest limitation. In addition to what I said before, which is also having the Human capital applying to actually making full use of those investments and getting those full yields. Again, it's very rare you buy a tool and you flip a switch and it does all the work for you.

[00:16:58] Kelly: Once you buy the tool, you actually have to spend the time to use that tool. And again, that, that can be a huge limitations on getting, getting that time and energy built through. Anything from just the people wanting and being motivated to do it to the corporate structure that allows them the bandwidth and the freedom to do it because a lot of that work might not be billable hours.

[00:17:17] Kelly: And things like that can be a challenge on that front. Conversely, where I've seen it very, very beneficial, as you asked one of the things that I'm seeing a lot right now is, as you know, we're getting less and less access to data and information from clients. It's getting more fragmented, everything from iOS to, to all of these GDPRs and all of that.

[00:17:37] Kelly: So filling in gaps that exist and, and ad tech's ability to identify and. Recoup some of those losses on the data side and the insight side of things is really good, as well as the measurement, you know, getting correlated models, being able to measure offline activity and engagements. So being able to plug those gaps in those losses in data and being able to fulfill on the promise of what is the impact that what I'm buying and having, I'm seeing a lot of promise on those fronts as much as anything else right now.

[00:18:08] Kelly: I know AI is supposed to have all this creative, generative opportunity. I think we're a ways away from that still. And I know that there's a lot, we've, some of the things that we've seen a lot is the ability to use AI to dig in and find insights and analyze things. I'm still seeing too much ambiguity in the outcomes there to, to, to really trust it enough and something that that's, that's that important, but being able to guide.

[00:18:32] Kelly: AI to chart data or to map comparison to be able to use language to ask for an outcome. As long as you know, the very specific parameters to give seeing a lot of opportunity there in terms of ad tech and being able to speed up those things. Again, it's still driven by. The output's only as good as the input, and the input comes from the people that use it.

[00:18:52] Kelly: But when you do that, I see a lot of opportunity in where that's coming through. I mean, we have, we have some people in our organization that are making incredible use of AI and repurposing some of the pitch stuff and the language that we repeat a lot, and being able to learn from that and create a brand story and to be able to apply it so that it's not a person having to repeat it over and over again.

[00:19:12] Kelly: We're seeing big strides on that front, so it's not all doom and gloom. But you know, again, it's also not. the magic beans that come through and just make everything happen.

[00:19:21] Todd: Yeah, it's not all doom and gloom, but I think I, I would agree with you large part. , the full advantage of it is not being leveraged or exploited. And I think in the right way, I think it's still being used to create scale and efficiency for the sake of price pressure and margin pressure and things like that.

[00:19:36] Todd: I don't know that it's being used for better purposes. So one of the roles you're tasked with in our organization is the mastermind of strategy and go to market sort of. Plants. I'll just bucket that under strategy, business strategy. How has, or has not, or do you think or believe any sort of ad tech?

[00:20:00] Todd: And I guess, I don't know that I think today if there's separation between AI and ad tech is AI ad tech is a gun. It is a part of ad tech. I'm not really sure how those two things coincide together. Maybe they're part of each other in certain cases or certain technologies from. From a strategic point of view, if it were, and you could be client side or agency side, I don't really care.

[00:20:21] Todd: But if you're the person in charge of the strategy, the business plan, the strategy, is there ad tech or AI infused ad tech that you've seen yet that has Has it helped you and you personally think about a strategy or a go to market plan for one of our clients any differently? Has it fundamentally changed anything?

[00:20:42] Todd: Has it made what you've thought of better? Has it validated anything that you were thinking? Have you seen, have you used anything yet? That has helped you do what you do.

[00:20:55] Kelly: Yeah. I mean, I have a couple of examples not huge ones, but, but promising ones. I, I mean, I've used the standard kind of GPTs to speed up some of the things that, that I have to kind of recall that I don't do regularly. So I use it for some Excel formulas and I use it for some, some graphing and. You know, some things that that allow for that.

[00:21:15] Kelly: But again, that's just kind of speed up things that are rusty tools that I have to go back and remember when it comes time to use them versus I can just describe what I want. It reminds me a lot faster versus my guess and check method I had before. I definitely have used it to explore data sets to compare data sets.

[00:21:32] Kelly: So one of the things where I might have to have my four screens that sit in front of me and I'd have to have different spreadsheets amongst each other and try and look at it and map it out. You know, being able to say, okay, you know, find this set of data here and compare it with this one and find an anomaly in a, in a standard deviation amongst these and point it out.

[00:21:47] Kelly: So a lot of that thing. So it allows me to explore some things that maybe I wouldn't have the time or the energy. And, and I, and I say that from there's, there's times where I have to use it and I know I need that outcome, but there are times where I'm just more curious where I'm like, I don't know if. If I were to explore the data in this way, what the outcome would be, but I am interested in what it could be, but if I don't know that it's going to add value, I don't always have the time to go down that rabbit versus if I have this tools comparison, I can say, you know what, I can very quickly ask a couple of questions, have it compare, and it can give me enough of an indication if that's a rabbit hole worth going down.

[00:22:27] Kelly: Or to be like, okay, it's not there, move on. And so it gives me that a little bit more validation on where to go, where to guide me, where to try to spend that extra time and find that added value. So I found a lot of value on that front that I've liked. And then on the research side of things, you know, one of the challenges that you and I have talked a lot about is, is I tend to operate with knowledge in my head and not always loving to kind of show my work and sometimes, you know, delivering things in a take my word for it kind of way.

[00:22:53] Kelly: And that doesn't always present incredibly well. And so being able to. have strong conviction in what I'm saying is the right thing, but then being able to use some of the tools to find the validation and kind of back it up and, and kind of create that confidence and that visualization of what it's in there.

[00:23:08] Kelly: And so I think that's been very helpful. So if I, if I think that there's an audience worth going after, that it's a good fit for a client, I can then go and validate and say, Hey, Can you find the data and the information that validates that this is true or that it's not? And then we can kind of show, yes, this is in fact the right audience that we should be tailoring ourselves towards, or this is the right geography that is a higher indexing for what we want to reach, which is why we want to focus on this market instead of this market.

[00:23:32] Kelly: Whereas before it might've just been, we should do that because I'm telling you, we should do that. And you should believe me kind of thing. So those things have been very helpful.

[00:23:40] Todd: Yeah. We've pondered this idea in the past. Or this concept or notion. Will AdTech, maybe now it's AI infused AdTech, or I don't even know what the right nomenclature is, or lexicon to call it anymore, but Some version of AI ad tech, I don't know, think about a bid management software or something like that relative specifically to digital media is what I'm speaking about and sort of the stuff that we do. Do you think it's going to get to the point where we hear people sort of ruminating about now about, Oh, it's going to take my job or, you know, an in house marketing team having ad tech that becomes so good. Yeah. They don't need a media agency, for example, like us, to actually do the execution on Meta, on Google, on programmatic.

[00:24:34] Todd: , do you believe or wonder or hope, or do you just hope opposite against the fact that ad tech could ever get that good, that it actually does? Not require much human input at all.

[00:24:49] Kelly: hard to answer that in a long timeline because I don't know what five or 10 years is going to look like. I wouldn't have guessed we'd be here if you had asked me this question five years ago from this point. But in the reasonable short to medium term, What I see, I see two outcomes likely with what AI brings to the table.

[00:25:08] Kelly: I think where there's a risk to us and people in our field is I think that AI can allow decent, mediocre, kind of good. Talent or, or workflows to get to pretty good to, they, they can elevate those into where the gap between excellent work and not excellent work is a smaller gap than it was. And that's going to create some value pressure there and some squeezing in terms of, again, you get what you pay for.

[00:25:42] Kelly: And we talk about this a lot. So the, the gap between it's good enough versus, Hey, this is clearly valuable in there might get pressurized a little bit in that, in that usage. Yeah. But that leads me to where they're, I think the other step up is going to be is that is right now the people that are already putting in the time and the energy and effort to be better than the mean than the average.

[00:26:02] Kelly: Those people, if they take the initiative, can now take this tool, they can use it to replicate or automate some of the things that become a time suck and create inefficiencies in them, and it unlocks even more energy and ability for them to now take that. And apply it to the next greatest thing and the next best thing in the next problem solving thing.

[00:26:21] Kelly: And there's a certain percentage at that upper end of what I would call the spectrum that will take that and will benefit it. And now that will, that will stretch the gap out again. So I think it's going to move the baseline forward. It might shrink the gap between how big that spectrum is, but I still think there will be a median outcome and an excellent outcome for the right people.

[00:26:43] Kelly: And it'll just simply shift that over time.

[00:26:45] Todd: We shall see in another 10 years. I'll ask you this question again and see where,

[00:26:50] Kelly: I don't know that it'll be 10 years. Like I said, we may, we may all be robots and all of that by then or all of that.

[00:26:56] Todd: who knows any final closing thoughts about ad tech?

[00:27:00] Kelly: Yeah. I mean, I think for me, the overarching thought, and it kind of goes off of what I just said in terms of that upper echelon taking that next step where I see ad tech and I get the most excited for it is. Again, there's two ways to apply it. I would say most often ad tech gets used to solve a specific problem.

[00:27:19] Kelly: Some client comes up with an ask or some problem exists in the agency and then you go and you say, okay, I'm going to go solve a problem. I'm going to go find some solution to this. And that's great. It's amazing that it can do that. But where I get more excited and where I think your average agency, you're at what I would call that upper echelon of execution that I was describing, where they're going to really go with it is.

[00:27:42] Kelly: That added value aspect that no one asked me to do this, maybe things are good enough or there's, you know, the, if it's not broke, don't fix it. But there's that ability to be like, man, I got exposure to this really cool thing. And even though I don't have to do it, even though there's nothing wrong with my campaign as it is.

[00:28:00] Kelly: I really want to see what this can do. It's really exciting. It's really cool. So I think yes, use it to solve problems. That's great, but pay attention and be open to some of the evolution and some of the cool things that are happening and be thinking about how can this better my business? What cannot this do for a specific client?

[00:28:20] Kelly: Where's the right time to test this? Where can I bring in that added value in that next thing? And Is nerdy as it is to say, like generate some personal value in the excitement of, I tested this cool thing and look what it did and how exciting and fun that is like, get outside the norms of just the regular, we do this, we do Facebook ads, we do Google ads, we do this, but like.

[00:28:39] Kelly: Let me do this offline data measurement in this correlation where I can do a cohort and remarket and see where that is like, you know, again, it's not a hobby necessarily, but it can be kind of fun to, you know, have a hypothesis and test it out and see the outcome. And so I think using it in that kind of let's find a way to test this and bring added value is a lot more fun and exciting and ad tech versus, man, I have a problem.

[00:29:01] Kelly: I can't solve it. Let me just go find a tool that does this. Both are valid. Both are good. But I think where you go from that median of execution to that upper tier of execution is when you go with the latter. You kind of keep that Rolodex. You keep an open ear and an open mind. And even though there's not a need for it right now, you keep it in the back of your mind and you say, I'm gonna, find the right time to bring this to the table and really, really offer something cool.

[00:29:25] Kelly: Cause that'll be fun to try.

[00:29:26] Todd: Well, Like I said, we'll see in another year, another five years, another three years. It's all going to change again.

[00:29:33] Kelly: I'll say, and I'm going to add this in there. I know we're in there. Don't take these ad tech tools right out of the box. Talk to your reps, push the envelope. The best value I've ever gotten out of ad tech tools is when I have challenged the technology provider and said, can your tool do this?

[00:29:47] Kelly: Can it do that? What if we tried it this way? What if we applied it that way? And actually going back and forcing them to think about things they didn't actually think about. To solve my needs of my unique clients and to push those boundaries. I always end up with better outcomes when I try and take the tools available in slightly different directions than what they tried to sell me on them.

[00:30:07] Kelly: And then we get into, okay, that was cool what you told me, but if we can do this thing with it, it'll be really cool. And now it's really applicable to my client. But that, again, that takes the passion and the care and the energy to take the time to do that versus just being like, okay, you have this tool.

[00:30:21] Kelly: I'll find a way to use it. Versus you have this tool. I have some ideas on what that actually could do. Let's talk and let's explore that. That's always the best outcomes I've ever had.

[00:30:31] Todd: yeah, I mean, look, we know that that's been validated. We've won some awards this year for using a tool and, and maybe less than the way it was designed to be used. And we actually found some some significant value in that case that stood out amongst our peers. And we've recently made investments ourselves our company and some new AI ad tech that's out there that we'll talk about maybe some point in time in the future.

[00:30:54] Todd: So I guess you and I are placing bets there as well that we think it's, it's going to do something valuable in terms of adding value to the business. Last thing I'll ask you before we go is what I always ask you. Can you remember the last ad that you saw recently?

[00:31:13] Kelly: You know what? Honestly, the one of the ones that notice and this is because we have a client in the space is I've no, I noticed more and more of the like the roadside billboards and things that are up and kind of the difference on those.

[00:31:22] Kelly: So we have some casinos that are out by us and looking at the different competing ways that they do that and the turnover on those types of things. I find that, you know, that kind of drive by thing. And I find myself thinking about how that has not changed a lot in a long time, but also some of the cool technologies that go with where you can read people driving past.

[00:31:40] Kelly: So, you know, I think for me that the biggest, yeah, the biggest ad that I remember right now is either the personal injury attorney things or the casino billboards that just basically are littered alongside my, my drive to and from my house in my area.

[00:31:54] Todd: Yeah, there are still a lot of those. I will say that I am, I am completely perplexed at whatever data is being collected about me out there because all I see in terms of ads now when I am watching Apple TV, whether it's, Hulu or Fubo or whatever streaming service I'm watching that is ad supported and I do not pay for the non ad supported because I actually want to see the ads because I'm in the ad business.

[00:32:21] Todd: All I get now are either A, ads in Spanish, I have no idea why I get ads in Spanish, there's nothing about my data signal that should suggest I should be seeing ads in Spanish, so that's somebody not doing a very good job. And all I see are drug commercials. All I see are commercials for all of the drugs for all these terrible things in life that you can get and how the drugs seem like they actually could be worse for you than solving the, you know, the problem.

[00:32:46] Todd: the problem. So, I don't know what's going on with that, but somehow my, my data profile suggests I'm older than I am, and I need a lot of medication, and I speak Spanish, which is rather interesting.

[00:32:56] Kelly: so your answer actually, I have to change my answer on this. I know it's the end of it, but like it just highlighted out the crazy experience that I had. So we are in political cycle time, right? Political ads everywhere. That was one of the biggest hitting home things I noticed is I was on vacation recently, not too far from there.

[00:33:12] Kelly: And I was with my family and things. And so we had a different streaming service that we were looking at. And all I noticed is every single commercial break, it's just flooded with political ads, but there was no consistency to it. It's political ads from both sides, attacking one side, saying the other one on there.

[00:33:29] Kelly: And I'm just like, there's no even attempt at profiling in this. There's no even attempt at trying to serve this up in a meaningful way. Cause I'll literally get. one ad attacking the left and one ad attacking the right on the same one. And it's like, are they just like throwing it against the wall and just hoping that one of them, like, That you're getting in there.

[00:33:48] Kelly: And then it just made me, it dawned on me. I was like, how much money is being thrown at just blanketing and consistency with no targeting. And it was mind blowing to me when I thought about it from that perspective, but it was so unregulated on frequency capped and unstructured in terms of you'd literally get one attacking one.

[00:34:08] Kelly: And right after the other, I was like, How do, like, how do you even go where you're that opposite sides of an argument back to back in a certain way like that? It was, it was crazy to me how unstructured it was.

[00:34:18] Todd: Yeah, I, I don't know, but I'm tempted to call these drug companies and ask them if they know who's running their advertising because I got to tell them that they are just blowing it. And their data targeting big time and spending a lot of extra money that maybe some ad tech could help them out with.

[00:34:32] Todd: I don't know. With that note We said a lot as always. It's good to say a lot about what we like to talk about. Hopefully people are listening and find it interesting and somewhat enlightening and educating. And if not, maybe the next topic we talk about will be exciting or more exciting. So I'll leave it at that.

[00:34:48] Todd: Good to see you. Good to talk to you. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and opinions on this stuff as always. I appreciate it.

[00:34:54] Kelly: Thanks everybody.