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Who am I?
A journeyman advertising analyst and incrementality measurement zealot, I currently lead an agency analytics team for a client that spends way too much money on ads. I’ve worked both on the brand and agency sides, mostly with Fortune 500 businesses within finance, travel, telco, and retail. That’s not a flex, just trying to frame my perspective: I generally work in large org structures, with established brands that are fighting for market share, and who distribute their products via online and offline points of sale. If you run a performance marketing program for a DTC brand that relies on one or two channels for acquisition, your experience will be different from mine!
You remember Gary?
Gary is from the 2018 film ‘Bird Box’ (starring the lovely Sandy Bullock). The amount I think about Gary is not commensurate with the quality of the movie, because I think about Gary a lot. If you don’t remember, or are unfamiliar, the movie is about ‘Monsters’ who showed up out of nowhere, and caused anyone who saw them to go insane. You never see the monsters; the camera is usually trained on our protagonists, who go to great lengths to cover their eyes when they are vulnerable.
But not ol’ Gary. He tricks Sandy and her group of survivors into thinking he was like them: an innocent victim running from the same threat. In reality, Gary saw the Monsters and secretly became a champion of oblivion. Just when he gains enough trust, he strikes, forcing his compatriots to behold their demise:
LOOK AT THE MONSTERS!
I am Gary among throngs of brainwashed marketing managers and agency holdco shills (said lovingly, not spitefully - I’ve been, and sometimes still am, both of these people). If you know what to do, you can produce substantial evidence that an enormous share of advertising budgets at mega cap corporations is being shoveled into a furnace. Line item budget allocations mean that marketing dollars are baked into capex, and are use it or lose it. If you are an ad budget owner, there's no incentive to raise your hand and say we should spend less money because what we spend now is inefficient, so we don’t worry about proving causality with the results, and instead worry about spending all the budget because it needs to be spent. I don’t know if that will ever change entirely, I just want the marketing managers to SEE what they’re doing.
LOOK! IF YOU BUY BANNER ADS ON THE OPEN EXCHANGE YOU MIGHT AS WELL SET THAT MONEY ON FIRE, THE WARMTH IT WOULD PRODUCE IS BETTER VALUE!
IF YOU RUN A CONVERSION LIFT STUDY AND THE RESULT IS THAT THE ADS PRODUCED NO LIFT, IT DOESN’T MEAN THE STUDY IS WRONG AND YOU CAN IGNORE IT!
BRAND SEARCH ADS GENERATE CLICKS BUT PRODUCE NO INCREMENTAL TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE!
AUDIENCE TARGETING IS BASICALLY VOODOO THAT DOESN’T IMPROVE ANY OUTCOME!
RETARGETING SHOULD BE CATAPULTED INTO THE SUN!
YOUR CTV FREQUENCY IS OUT OF CONTORL, NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES YOUR REPS TELL YOU IT'S WITHIN THE ALLOWABLE CAP!
How to reach me:
My Twitter DMs are open if you want to chat. I’m willing to chop it up about stuff you see here, or spitball ways to test something you’re trying to figure out.
Thanks for stopping by!
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