Could AI Replace Media Agencies?

[00:00:00] Kelly: you simply cannot have a world where every single product and brand Has the exact same access to the exact same data and ability to translate because people Because human beings only have so much resource And so the competition for who gets that resource has to continue to be influenced some way And again, I go back to the fact that We are getting less access to people's privacy and personal data and the things that drive that.

[00:00:26] Kelly: Again, you saw this with Facebook. They were very good at, for lack of a better term, manipulating people's purchase patterns and behaviors. There was a whole direct to consumer boom that exploded around this, and brands that really benefited from it. And then it all went away overnight and no one was prepared for that

[00:01:11] Kelly: Hey everyone, Kelly McGuire excited to get into today's topic.

[00:01:15] Todd: Hey, everybody. This is Todd, Kelly's partner. And, today I have an interesting topic for us to kick around. and this will probably be the headline. Do we think AI is going to put our business out of business in the next five years? Do we even have a media agency five years from now is the conversation I want to have.

[00:01:34] Todd: And it started with reading some things over the last few months about how LLMs and GPTs are all sort of trending and where they're going and how smart they're getting. And then I've been talking to several folks in the M& A community. And a couple of people somewhere along the road have said, media agencies are commoditized service based business.

[00:01:56] Todd: You're not even going to have a business in five years. AI is going to automate all of that. And you won't even exist. I was like, that's a pretty bold statement to tell me that an industry I've been working in for 25 years is not going to exist in five years from now, which could be true. stranger things have happened.

[00:02:13] Todd: I'll set it up for you. So conversation went like this. Is it possible that some AI engine, and I'll just use that as the, sort of macro term, but AI engine going to have the capability to connect to all the media, digital media ad platforms, such as meta, such as Google, such as YouTube, such as the trade desk or any other DSP like system, all of which largely have had API.

[00:02:44] Todd: Connectivity, for data systems to connect to them. Think about funnel dot IO, our data structure. We pull in through API integration. So imagine the future. if your job was no longer a media planner or buyer. Imagine if your job was I'm a media prompt strategist, and I'm simply going to go into this AI engine.

[00:03:10] Todd: And I'm going to tell it what my company is. I'm going to give it my website URL so it can look at everything that I sell, if you will. And then I'm going to tell it, I have a budget and I have this objective and I want to execute an advertising campaign. That's full funnel across all the major media platforms, including all major media ad types.

[00:03:32] Todd: So everything from connected TV to podcasts, to display mobile video, high impact search, social. You name it, and I want you to tell me the exact campaign I should run. And then once you tell me that, and I approve it because of the connectivity and because of how these media platforms are also building sort of automated systems that allow a media buyer to sort of check a bunch of boxes, right?

[00:03:59] Todd: . Their platform will actually do a lot of the campaign management. Imagine if that was fully capable from soup to nuts, and I could just press a button and put it in my credit card information and this AI engine will now dictate to all those ad platforms, exactly what to run, how to run it.

[00:04:17] Todd: What the goals and objectives are of the campaign. Maybe it gets smart enough that you even prompt it on optimizations and it goes and does all that stuff. And, you're off to the races and you no longer need a media agency because one person can prompt one AI platform that can talk to all the ad platforms to do everything for you.

[00:04:37] Todd: Is that a reality that you think is even possible? in the next five years, do we have a business? Are we out of business in five years?

[00:04:47] Kelly: I mean, look, I'm not going to be naive enough to dismiss anything as possible, but I see a lot of flaws and a lot of hurdles to getting anywhere near the picture you just painted. And I'll try and go through as many as come to mind as possible as I go through there. With the backdrop of I absolutely think I will be disruptive and change a lot of things, but I don't think it will get anywhere near the apocalypse that you just painted.

[00:05:11] Kelly: And it ranges everything from look, a lot of the platforms we work in are already trying to to bring in a I bring in their algorithmic learning, but they're also competing with each other and they don't play friendly together. Right? And so when you think about a holistic take. media plan the idea that a single system would be able to operate across all of them and get the necessary Access and get the necessarily decision points and variables.

[00:05:37] Kelly: It's not impossible But I don't I just don't see google and meta and tick tock and trade desk and everything Being open enough and friendly enough to have a single entity navigate all of that without major obstacles and hurdles and problems along the way because again they Each one of those are fighting each other for the maximum amount of dollars Why would they open themselves up to have those dollars spread across when it wouldn't come to them?

[00:06:02] Todd: It seems very unlikely to me on that front. Maybe the ease of, of just simply the implementation and the spending, just to pause you on that one comment, could it be that AI makes it so easy? That now anybody can do it. And so the barrier to entry is less. And so more people do it, which means more money for them. I don't know.

[00:06:22] Todd: That's one hypothesis. Okay.

[00:06:24] Kelly: so I mean that That's going to take me into what I think the bigger overarching Kibosh to that is in my mind, but I'll get into more of the details, but I mean, I think it immediately takes me there's Even if you were to set aside all of the things that i'll cover is why I don't think we'll get there Let's just say you do get there Let's say that does somehow become possible and you can have the easy button in a marketing world.

[00:06:46] Kelly: All you've done is Change the playing field in such a way that everyone now operates at the same space and you'll have to find a new way to break through because the consumer doesn't have infinite dollars to just simply buy with the platforms, promote to them and get them to buy products and brands have to break through and prioritize themselves.

[00:07:10] Kelly: Amongst the consumer's thought process and decision making so that they get their share of that consumer's finite dollars. If everyone can just press the easy button and have a marketing campaign, how is any one marketing campaign for millions of different products and brands and purchase decisions going to compete for that same finite resource amongst the consumer?

[00:07:31] Kelly: So now you

[00:07:32] Todd: on, hold on. Put a, put a, put a pause there because I want to, I want to comment on that.

[00:07:36] Kelly: Yeah,

[00:07:36] Todd: how has that done today? It's done through creative, right? any new or existing company, how does it create awareness and interest in their product? Right? We're talking about marketing one on one aware of the funnel, right?

[00:07:47] Todd: Awareness consideration purchase. Well, they do it by coming up with clever, attractive, interesting, creative messaging, creative storytelling, right? Whether it's a, whether it's a great ad or a series of great ads or a commercial or whatever it is, right? That's, I mean, that's what's happening today. Every brand.

[00:08:08] Kelly: There's your answer to the question. Well, we have a company in five years. Someone's going to have to do that on the, in the new reality, but the new thing, someone's got to rise up.

[00:08:15] Todd: that's the creative side. I didn't say that this was going to automate the creative side, although that's where it's actually

[00:08:20] Kelly: be more disruptive

[00:08:22] Todd: I know that's where it's starting first, but my point, but that goes back to my point, you're saying you don't think you think if that made it a central level playing field, how would anybody differentiate?

[00:08:32] Todd: I mean, think of the, think of. Think of the speed and the creative sort of flexibility that marketers can have with generative AI versus hiring a creative agency to write a brief, to write a script, to produce a spot, to do all these that took weeks on weeks on end, millions of dollars to do. They can prompt generative AI engines now to do that in minutes.

[00:08:59] Kelly: everyone can do that. There's a, someone is going to have to figure out the next breakthrough. You, you cannot have every brand and product operating at the same, even playing field. And and have any ability to break through again, consumers ability to spend is not going to go up. They're going to have the same finite resources that can only go so far.

[00:09:19] Kelly: And so when you're the whole point of marketing isn't to say, Hey, consumer, go find more money to spend on my product. It's Hey, consumer, instead of buying that other thing you could buy. I'm marketing you to tell me I'm better and you should buy me instead.

[00:09:35] Todd: Isn't that the, isn't that what agencies get hired to do today? How is it different if AI is doing it or an agency is doing it,

[00:09:42] Kelly: Because an AI is not going to be able to compete itself. And if everything is operating in the same mechanisms, there's no differentiator, there's nothing that's going to spend out. So what I'm saying is, is the agency will have to evolve with the new realities to bring, to bring that differentiated value.

[00:09:58] Kelly: And whether that's using different tools or approaching it differently or doing different creative or different targeting or something, there's going to be a place Where human decision making has to come in. And honestly, this is the other point that comes through to me, which is you're making a really big assumption in that question that the art of marketing is as simple as put in a couple of variables, spend a couple of dollars on some ads, get someone to buy.

[00:10:24] Kelly: And there's a lot, lot, lot more human. nuance and decision making and marketing that goes into that. How do you know how much to spend on branding before you ask for conversion? How do you know how much to spend on nurturing in the middle funnel before you ask for the conversion? How many different touch points you have to bring them through?

[00:10:41] Kelly: What is the experience you have to expose to? What's the value proposition? Like there's so many things that aren't known that a an AI engine relies on known variables to come with outcomes. But a lot of it is It's speculative. It's it's a high hypothetical.

[00:10:57] Todd: but I'm assuming. I'm assuming the AI, so we've talked about this as a business plan in the past. I'm assuming in this scenario, maybe this is not a good assumption, but I'm assuming the scenario that the AI. Has access to large data sets. We're like, what if, what if in the planning phase, the AI is able to look at, let's say it's a shoe company.

[00:11:19] Todd: What if the AI engine is able to look at that as data on shoe companies over the last five years, and it can go and scour everything that's run in the last five years and say, well, these types of ads. With this kind of product photography and these kinds of colors and these kinds of offers and these kinds of value props.

[00:11:39] Todd: These are the ones that work best. So I'm going to recommend that.

[00:11:42] Kelly: about a scenario that already happened. We're going the opposite direction That happened with facebook and everyone printed money for it and then they all pulled up in congress and shut down for it Like that's been in it and we're going the other direction, the, the inputs and the data and the variability and the ability to have the knowledge that drives that AI that's getting less available, not more available.

[00:12:02] Todd: Well, be that as it may. Okay. So continue on. I just I've got to jump in on these where you're talking about things because I think this is where the debate can be. Is that. Why can't this stuff be possible? Why you're saying it wouldn't know that I'm saying, why wouldn't it know that?

[00:12:18] Kelly: because we don't know, there's no way to, because there's no definitive answer. It's not a black and white scenario. It's not a zeros in one some game, which machine learning relies so heavily on. It is, it's experimental and it's cultural shifts. It's zeitgeist. It's what's happening in the moment. It's different based on those things.

[00:12:33] Kelly: That's. That's why that creativity, that's why that human behavior side happens where at any given time, you may need to be able to react to a cultural moment that can draft off of you can have a political environment. There's all kinds of things that can change these things in real time and knowing what to have in market and what not to what I think could happen is, I think that.

[00:12:54] Kelly: You have a brand or a company that has huge amounts of dollars to deploy at any given time, it can have every iron in the fire and it can have every piece of data that it needs to do this. But if you're not operating at that level playing field with that level of resource and that level of money in market, that level of data and understanding and clarity again.

[00:13:14] Kelly: You're I just don't see enough fuel for those engines to go through again. I could be wrong I don't know how things are going to change in a few years but I just see a scenario where it's not likely that the that the engines get that sophisticated to know because Marketing isn't that black and white if it was just easy to say if I these five ads to this person They would definitely buy my product Our job would be a lot easier than it is.

[00:13:37] Kelly: It's not that simple to kind of know how that human behavior shifts and ebbs and flows and changes in very dynamic markets that are very unpredictable in those ways. And that's all part of having someone that understands the brand and product and can react and can flow and can come up with good ideas and shift and mold with it.

[00:13:56] Kelly: That's why you have good marketing cycles and bad marketing cycles and the ability to, to be able to know what's going on. Yeah. Again, if we were just a media buying company that simply Decided how to allocate dollars and place it into channels I'd be a lot more worried than being a very detailed marketing consultancy That thinks about brands and thinks about the evolution and thinks about the future and future proving and all of the things that go into it and yes at some point at any given moment when we make those decisions and those heightened beliefs of what should and shouldn't work We deploy campaigns and dollars to prove or disprove that.

[00:14:31] Kelly: I, I'm a lot less worried with that skill set than I am. Simply you give me money. You tell me targeting. I buy Facebook ads within the system that will get more automated. It's already getting more automated. The platforms themselves are making that a lot easier and simpler and taking that control. But universal marketing as a whole, not just the media buying end of the road are very, very different things to me.

[00:14:57] Todd: Let's talk about the pros and cons for agencies. What and the org chart, what do you think, given that scenario that maybe we could sort of futuristically imagine, let's say some of this that we're already seeing that you just described in the platform. And some of what I'm hallucinating about is possible does happen.

[00:15:15] Todd: Let's assume some of it happens. What do you think the org chart of a typical. Media agency like ours looks like. And five years from now, do you think it still consists of an account manager and a media strategist and media planners and buyers across the different ad platforms and an analytics team and a creative team and a content team?

[00:15:36] Todd: Like, do you think that org chart changes radically? Like if, and especially if you say the sheer functional buying, like again, let's take the trade desk, and some of their automation tools that they have in it. Have to do all the work that we do. We could just very simply check some boxes and press the go button and walk away and let it do its thing and move on to the next one.

[00:16:01] Todd: We don't have to apply the labor that we apply. We do it because we know it generally produces better outcomes. And I guess the argument is, do you think that org chart is still required in four or five years from now? And do you think that that part of the process is so commoditized that a buyer isn't really any better than an AI?

[00:16:27] Kelly: Yeah, I mean, I think that that takes me down the road of the argument that I have a lot when I talk about I hear things like, oh, it's going to eliminate this job or, change the workforce and labor forces. I don't think it's going to eliminate things per se. I think it's going to. Make people sort of adapt and evolve and hopefully enable human intelligence to be applied in more valuable ways getting rid of the minutiae getting rid of the Grunt work if you will getting rid of the difficult parts that aren't as valuable And I think what the labor force will have to adapt to is what can the human bring in That the ai can't necessarily account for and how can we have more time and bandwidth to start applying more value?

[00:17:10] Kelly: And that's what I think a good company and a good agency will have to evolve towards Will be what can our people bring in and in control whether it's that prompt engineering whether it's the ability to Dive into data and be able to eliminate some of the hallucinations and some of the problems that that happened in a I to be able to create dynamic exposure within the a I where it can't figure those things out or translate a brand's needs and nuance or cultural components in a, in a machine friendly way that empowers those things, right?

[00:17:40] Kelly: AI is still going to continue to be as good as what's put into it, and that's still going to be driven by a team and an understanding and an outcome. And that's how I think you'll rise above. You mentioned it already. The barriers of entry to media buying on Facebook or Google or any of those things is pretty low.

[00:17:57] Kelly: And so you still have a spectrum of, you could just go in and press the easy button and there's a wizard on there that'll let you run a Facebook ad pretty quickly. Now, is that going to go as well as our team going in and thinking about and going through and all of that? No, you're going to have a spectrum of outcomes.

[00:18:13] Kelly: Maybe that one's good enough. Maybe the other one's really good. All of those things in between. I don't think that spectrum is going to go away, that it may raise the playing field. It may make the lower end even better, but that just means that the higher end has to continue to get better and understand it.

[00:18:27] Kelly: And so I don't know exactly how the job titles or the experience will change, but I don't see it fundamentally changing where, The human element will always be responsible for the nuance and the human behavior side and the translation side and the inputs and making sure what you know that it's good in good out instead of junk in junk out is still going to be driven by the people that are responsible for this.

[00:18:50] Kelly: Maybe there's some efficiencies that get created. Maybe you can handle and take on more at scale with with some other labor forces. But I don't think you can totally automate this way. It's not like having an assembly worker that's truly replaced by a robotic arm and there's nowhere left for the assembly worker to go.

[00:19:07] Kelly: I don't see it like that. I definitely see that you can level up and you can bring more value. And I think if you're doing things the right way. What this should allow you to do is redeploy the hours and the bandwidth and the human creativity and intelligence that gets wasted on the minutiae in much better, more valuable ways that you can level up even further and continue to create that differentiation.

[00:19:30] Todd: Well, hmm, should we bet on this?

[00:19:35] Kelly: I mean, I hope I win because it's the future of our company amongst a lot of other things. I

[00:19:41] Todd: Yeah. I don't know. I think it scares me. I think, maybe the unknown scares me. Maybe if you're right, it just redistributes the labor force and it retrains the labor force because like you said, it's not likely in an assembly line. There's a robotic arm. That's going to just actually take the place of a human arm reaching in and changing parts and pieces.

[00:20:03] Todd: but. I'm more bullish now based on what I'm seeing and reading that I think it is going to have a much bigger impact than I've thought about in the past. So I'm worried about that. I don't know.

[00:20:15] Kelly: like asking the question, like, are you going to need a lawyer or can AI do it? Are you going to need a, like, yeah, there's things that AI can do, but there's still a nuance to it. I mean, It's going to be disruptive. I don't know how far to go, but I think there's a lot of other industries that I, I would see being disrupted a lot faster.

[00:20:32] Kelly: You named one of them. The creative industry is something that I would be a lot more, hyper aware of. but again, I, I've talked to people in that field too, and they have a point point of view of what machines truly will be able to do versus what humans can do on that side. So, yeah, it'll be disruptive.

[00:20:46] Kelly: I'm not naive enough to be like, oh, no, it's not going to be a big deal. But I do think that Completely taking over and being able to have a an even playing field again in a worst case scenario where that happens You you simply cannot have a world where every single product and brand Has the exact same access to the exact same data and ability to translate because people Because human beings only have so much resource And so the competition for who gets that resource has to continue to be influenced some way And again, I go back to the fact that We are getting less access to people's privacy and personal data and the things that drive that.

[00:21:23] Kelly: Again, you saw this with Facebook. They were very good at, for lack of a better term, manipulating people's purchase patterns and behaviors. There was a whole direct to consumer boom that exploded around this, and brands that really benefited from it. And then it all went away overnight and no one was prepared for that And we've been dealing with the blowback of people's expectations being set against that for years now And so it's it's cyclical,

[00:21:49] Todd: I think some version of that's coming back though.I think some version of that's going to come back around. I mean, look, the cookie depletion thing is part of it, right? Like that's supposed to go away. It still hasn't gone away. Google has still said, not yet. No, we're still going to leave those cookies there in Chrome, which is 70 plus percent of the browser share.

[00:22:08] Todd: Out there. So I, I do think something like that is still going to come back around. And I, the comment that you make about the world can't exist where every brand can have the same level of, of sort of autonomy with doing that. I disagree with, I think if the technology gets there, The only thing to your argument, to, to the pros of the human race, the only difference will be the human intuition and knowledge to prompt and program how the automation does what it does.

[00:22:42] Todd: That might be the only

[00:22:43] Kelly: What i'm saying is is you can't we can't reach a marketing ceiling where everyone is even if everything gets raised to that level The good brands and the brands that want to invest in breakthrough Will find humans that will find a way to rise above that new plane and you will find some skill set That will somehow be able to let brand a be better than brand b And that's where the agency comes back around.

[00:23:07] Kelly: Someone will hire people To say, Hey, I don't want to be marketing it the same way as a, as brand B. I want a team that can figure out a creative way to be better for me. And that's what the agency has to adapt to and find ways to continue to be better than the next baseline thing, which is going to be what the AI can do on its own.

[00:23:26] Todd: All right. So I have a different spin on this. we can go down a little bit into, and maybe this is for another discussion, but we can get into this a little bit.AI recommendation. It is now becoming I read today that open ai is going to try and launch a AI powered browser to compete with Chrome and Google.

[00:23:45] Todd: Can you imagine that? I don't think anybody ever thought anybody could not Google down, but there may be a contender coming to market.AI tools like perplexity, now have shopping recommendations and things like that built in. So thinking about a brand advertising and trying to detect human behavior and human nuance and all the things that make us consider and aware and buy and all these kinds of things.

[00:24:09] Todd: Now we're going to have. A lot of our searching done either on purpose or by prompt telling us what to buy, not no, no longer. Here's an ad become aware of something. Maybe think about it. It's cool. I want to buy it. It's going to be. I need new shoes for running and I run. 80 percent street, 20 percent trail.

[00:24:35] Todd: I have an extra wide foot and I weigh this much and I have a, I have an elongated gate when I run. one of the best shoes for me. All of a sudden now these AI shopping engines are recommending, well, here's the shoe you should buy. Like what's driving that?

[00:24:56] Kelly: Well, I think there's a difference in that purchasing behavior, right? There's what you just described as a very specific point of need. I have a problem and there's the best product to solve that problem. Not every purchase is driven that way. What makes two brands of t shirt any different? They both cover your body.

[00:25:11] Kelly: They're both good There's a there's a human what's cool. What's not cool? What's brand? What's not brand? What do I mean? What do what do my friends think is is good looking versus what's not good looking? And so there's there's still again a human element in what is there so point of need absolutely if you need a very specific Product to solve a problem.

[00:25:29] Kelly: There are the there's the ability to match a product that solves that problem Very very clearly without a lot of ambiguity, but a lot of purchasing is done with them ambiguity And uncertainty and taste and opinion and timing and other things and so yeah, I think that it'll change discovery It'll help drive some of those things I mean, it's kind of what Google has always done though.

[00:25:51] Kelly: Google is very personalized. It looks at what you search and engage with, and it determines what to show you and share with you and personalize your experience. So it's not a lot different from those things. I still think you will need marketing and advertising to get people to prompt the right searches, where they get the results from AI that tells them what to buy.

[00:26:09] Kelly: You still have to drive that activity again. Otherwise you have brands that are just. You'll never have a brand that can break through and introduce themselves if they can't have a way to come to market And get momentum built up.

[00:26:21] Todd: Yeah, I think where this leads us, and maybe again, we unpack this with more research and evidence to inform a conversation later, what I'm thinking of might be happening is that us marketing folks, brand side, agency side, whatever we may be faced with in the next couple of years, not marketing to humans, marketing to AI engines, because just like, this is like the new version of SEO is sickly what I'm talking about.

[00:26:48] Todd: And so we may find ourselves having to market to. The AI engines in order to be part of their recommendation when somebody goes and searches for something, and they're looking for an AI driven recommendation, which is would be arguably much more intelligent than a Google search currently is. But this is, hey, this is going to happen.

[00:27:11] Todd: I mean, perplexity has it now. They just rolled it out. It's, it's crazy.

[00:27:14] Kelly: Yeah I mean look this is the last thing that I think I can say on this topic is I know there's a lot of other Things but my overarching thing on this is all of this is true, but it's also new and novel I I very much see a world where once this becomes Cast the new and novel and starts to become I can see an entire world where a generation starts to think anything that ai Recommend recommends isn't cool.

[00:27:36] Kelly: So i'm gonna ignore it like That don't tell me what to buy i'll figure out what to buy like there could be a complete blowback in the other direction with this development Once people kind of get in there, right like okay Well now if ai tells me I should buy that that automatically discounts because that's not a cool brand anymore I want to find the I want my own brand.

[00:27:54] Kelly: I want the grassroots brand We've seen the complete other side of what can happen in this type of thing. Now we've seen things like fake reviews driving things. We've seen things where SEO driven and the top of it, gets blow back once people get wind of it and understand it. Like there's a whole other side where this thing can turn upside down and work against itself.

[00:28:12] Kelly: I'm not saying it will happen, but to discount that it's just AI is going to drive everything forward and there's no other possible outcome is, it's a very narrow view. It's being driven by a certain level of uncertainty and excitement of what could be versus You again, if you go back in history, you can see all these things that Didn't end up quite the way everyone thought How long did it take for the year of mobile to come through?

[00:28:37] Kelly: how what what are you seeing with virtual and augmented reality and Wearable tech and all the things that everyone thought was the next greatest thing They never quite came to the level of disruptionally thought I would agree that ai is probably at the top of what could be disruptive but just to assume All of those outcomes are going to go exactly how we want.

[00:28:56] Kelly: And there won't be anything left for anyone else to participate in. It's a bit apocalyptic beyond what I think is very likely to end up with.

[00:29:04] Todd: Okay, good. I feel like I can keep my job then. Hi Kelly, you made me feel like I'm safe for the next five years. That's wonderful. Thank you.

[00:29:12] Kelly: I now look, if you asked me to predict 20 years from now, we might have a very different conversation that I don't know so much,

[00:29:19] Todd: Well, you're a lot younger than me, so you might have to worry about that in the workforce. I'll be. Retired and dead by then. all right, let's wrap up. , well, look, this is a crazy discussion. it's just one that was burning a hole in me today when I started thinking about, why won't AI engines be able to talk to add platform APIs?

[00:29:35] Todd: And at some point in time. The ad campaign at this point in time from the generation of AI driven creative to the goal setting objective outputting and planning and buying of campaigns could all be done in a single AI prompt platform, I think is more of a reality than you do, but maybe we'll put 5 bucks on it and see who's right.

[00:29:56] Kelly: I bet you what you'll see first is the brand that tries to completely either marketing and they completely get alienated by consumers who backlash

[00:30:03] Todd: Well, it's already happened, right? That's some of the create generative AI commercials that have recently come out have already hit that backlash point. And so I think we're seeing that from the creative standpoint, we'll have to see if it happens in the campaign advertising campaign side of things. as I ask you at the end of every conversation, What's the last ad you remember seeing?

[00:30:24] Todd: And then I'll tell you mine.

[00:30:26] Kelly: Last ad. I mean, I'm starting to see the Christmas things come through quite a bit. and I'm starting to do research for my daughter and and getting through there. So what I'm seeing right now is a lot of the retargeting ads off of Amazon things. And,if you will. And honestly, one of the things that caught my attention is I'm starting to see the household level ads that come through where I can kind of get a sense of what my wife is searching for and looking at because I'm getting exposure and that whole type of thing, which is really interesting.

[00:30:52] Kelly: Thank you. when you think about that, and I remember years and years and years ago, the backlash behind like Facebook beacon where gift ideas were being, secrets were being given away and surprises were being spoiled and that I'm not seeing that that type of stuff as much. But, yeah, I don't have 1 specific experience on it, but just the overall experience of.

[00:31:10] Kelly: Black Friday, Cyber Monday and shopping and buy this and reengagement and, and act now type stuff. It just gets ramped up so much during this period that it's very noticeable.

[00:31:19] Todd: Yeah, I feel like I'm getting just absolutely blown up by already pre black Friday, this pre black Friday that I'm like, I think we're going to start celebrating black Friday shopping in like August,

[00:31:30] Kelly: Black November, black Q4.

[00:31:33] Todd: but I will say, there's some brands I follow that I accepted the, enter your phone number for like the 20, 20 percent off or 10%.

[00:31:41] Kelly: just did that before this call and I did not want to, but I wanted to discount,

[00:31:45] Todd: I wanted the discount, but now I'm sort of regretting it because there's two merchants that I did that with in my God, they blow me up every, probably every day or every other day. I'm getting a text message from these merchants saying. Discount on this discount

[00:31:59] Kelly: yeah. I'm immediately unsubscribing after I, after I use this code because they're not respectful about the experience.

[00:32:06] Todd: that's interesting. I wonder what their sales show when they start to send out as many sms messages But anyway, the ads I remember right now are the ones that are blowing me up from an sms standpoint I like them because it does remind me to I could get some things on sale. but boy, the frequency of them is I think I could deal with once a week, not every other day or every day.

[00:32:26] Kelly: I think that's really interesting, right? Because not to go down the rabbit hole here at the end, but, that's part of what I think that marketing challenge is where it's not just a matter of push, push, push, but really considering the ramifications and the outcomes and. And what value are you offering in exchange for that information?

[00:32:45] Kelly: What respect do you show in that process? Like, I, it's a hard balance and this is where I think you need to have people putting in those thoughts. Whereas AI might say, if I send a thousand text messages to this person in the next hour, they're more likely to buy. So let's go ahead and do it.

[00:33:00] Todd: Well, to that point. So I wonder who's responsible on the marketing side, either agency or client side for the SMS strategy and execution for one of these, merchants that I'm getting. And I wonder if those people think that they like getting a text message from merchants they subscribe to every day or every other day.

[00:33:22] Todd: I don't know. Maybe I'm sensitive to it because I'm getting pounded all day long by Slack messages, by email messages, by text messages, maybe I'm just more hypersensitive to it, but I, I do wonder. If there is somebody on the other side of this, it's going, yeah, it's okay that I'm sending these,

[00:33:36] Kelly: you buy even one time, they win and you, you confirm the strategy.

[00:33:41] Todd: have bought, I bought more than once.

[00:33:43] Todd: It's probably part of the problem. Why I'm probably in there. They're high purchaser frequency, SMS campaign or something like that. All right. Well, I'm getting a lot of SMS ads. it's shopping time, holiday time. You're seeing kids stuff on Amazon, which be careful because your wife's going to see what you're shopping for as well.

[00:34:00] Todd: great conversation, have no idea where it's going, but I guess our jobs are not going to be boring anytime soon because we're going to contend with the evolution of technology faster than we can probably

[00:34:11] Kelly: We just got to keep being great at our jobs.

[00:34:14] Todd: Well, thank you for being wonderful at your job. You make my life easier. I will talk to you next week.

[00:34:20] Kelly: Thanks everyone.

[00:34:20] Todd: a good day.