What to consider when engaging with a new agency.

All right, welcome back to Paying for attention today, we will be talking about paid media and how it isn’t going anywhere. Today, we have our host with us, Keegan Brown. And I am Daniel Dannenberg. And we are going to go ahead and get started. Hypertension. All right, Keagan, so today we’re talking about paid media and how it’s not going anywhere and there’s a lot of people out there who think that maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.

But there’s a lot of talk about that. And so tell us, why isn’t it why is it not going anywhere?

Thanks, Stan. Yeah, so to be, you know, fair, this this hasn’t really started training yet. Nobody’s really been talking about that paid media is dead or anything like that. But just like over the last decade, as I’m sure you’re fully aware, people have been doing this for SEO and email. And most recent one that I’ve seen, especially on LinkedIn, is Maxwells and how you shouldn’t be doing that. And I just have a feeling that in the industry the people are kind of scared or don’t really understand, are going to be saying the same thing about paid media soon.

And since we’re kind of entering this kookiness world and and all these privacy issues and it’s just it isn’t true, I don’t think paid media is going anywhere. And we have a lot of reasons why.

Do you think it’s one of those situations where it’s kind of like every year something comes out, content’s dead or like a print. When digital came out, it was like not coming out, but digital, like it was making larger presence. And then people say, oh, it’s going to die, it’s going to die. And clearly it hasn’t. You still get a lot of that. But it seems like it’s more like attention grabbing headline situation.

Yeah, yeah, it definitely is. Attention grabbing. I know. Getting started in the industry. You know, when when we started to hear, you know, CEOs that it was kind of like, oh, what’s going to happen? Are we going to lose our jobs? Why do we shift? And I think what we’ve learned is that, you know, every time Google, especially early on, every time Google kind of released a penalty or, you know, any algorithm updates, you know, it was that’s what, you know, people were saying.

And ultimately, it just means you have to adapt. And that’s that’s one of our key points today. So.

So tell me tell me why why not? Why is it not going anywhere?

Yeah, I think I think the biggest one is, is people are still going the need need to search. So Google ads, you know, that’s the big thing, right? People are searching for a solution for, you know, a doctor nearby, you know, shoes online, anything like that. And digital still here, right? Digital isn’t going anywhere. It may be shifting. It’s shifted from more desktops to our phones. It’s shifted more from TVs to now, you know, connected TV and streaming.

Right. So digital is not going anywhere and neither is advertising. And what that means is that paid media is isn’t going to go anywhere, still need ads. People are still going to be using digital devices and companies are still going to need to get their name out there and drive revenue that way. So I think that’s the biggest and most foundational piece here, is that that the medium and the need is still going to be there. It’s obviously some some changes are going to happen, but the foundation is still there.

So it’s just evolving in a weird way. It’s just growing that way. So what about let’s talk about cookie Lisse ads. Yeah. And how that’s freaking people out a little bit. So, yeah. Tell us about cookie ads.

Yeah. So you know. Google and and Facebook, all the big kind of advertising platforms out there, are having to adjust the way that they’re tracking people and tracking for advertisers due to privacy concerns. Recently, Apple just kind of launched the iOS fourteen point five, which really makes it difficult to track Facebook ad, you know, Convergys and purchases because of the Apple II was fourteen point five update, basically allowing people to say, I don’t want to be tracked.

And again, just for privacy. And so Google is kind of soon to follow that with getting rid of third party cookie tracking. And and so what’s happening is these these platforms know that this is extremely important to their revenue, because if as advertisers we can’t track conversions, it makes it very difficult for us to justify large marketing budgets going into these platforms and not being able to optimize and make sure we’re getting a good ahli and optimized for that. Again, we’re just not going to put our budget there.

And so these these these, you know, Google, Facebook being LinkedIn, they’re not stupid. They’re going to have to find a way. And what they’ve done is they’ve already started talking about more anonymization and aggregation of this data instead of having such, you know, detailed targeting information on an individual level, as I’m sure you know, and people have seen. And it’s everyone jokes about you think of a of something that you want to buy. And Facebook shows you can add five minutes later.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s it’s individual level tracking and some of that. Yeah, it’s it’s a little creepy, but it’s not it’s not so much going away. It’s going to be tracked differently from their site and the data that they give to advertisers. And we’re going to have to, you know, target a little bit differently based on that. But essentially, it’s going to be the same thing to some degree. It’s like saying, well, you know, Diet Coke doesn’t have sugar, but there are some things in there that are pretty much sugar anyway.

I mean, it’s kind of common sense. So you can’t get rid of all types of tracking. Don’t replace it with some other form of tracking. If you get rid of all forms of tracking, then you’re going to just hurt that type of ad and then people won’t buy it and then there’s going to be no money behind it anymore. This is just like that. So why people are really freaking out about it, though, seems right. Yeah.

Yeah, people are. I mean, this is this is definitely, I think, one of the bigger changes over the last few years that these platforms have really seen. Because, you know, the big benefit that paid media does provide is the ability to track that data rather than something like organic or email. So this is something that you can really utilize to your benefit within your marketing. And and again, people are freaking out. And, you know, there’s definitely been some moments where, like, OK, how is this going to work?

But, you know, again, kind of going back to the Google and Facebook and their overall goal, you know. Fifty seven percent of Alphabet’s revenue, you know, the parent company of Google, their revenue comes from comes from paid search. And seventy one percent of Google’s ad revenue comes from paid search. So that’s a lot of money. And it’s been growing every year over the last decade. So it’s it would be unwise for Google to not come up with a way and invest in a way to track this to where it eases those privacy concerns, but still allows advertisers to target their their audience in the best way possible and track and and be able to measure our way with that audience.

Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see, because if you know what Cookie Lisse adds and how Google treats that and, you know, there’s other search engines out there, I’m curious to see if they’re jump on the bandwagon, start to see more advertising be shifted towards them, which who knows, duck, duck, go. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t really know that many people use that too often, but it’ll be interesting to see what is next, that’s for sure.

So. With that said, some takeaways, right? Tell us a little bit about how we can overcome this type of situation.

Well, just like just like in Nescio, when Google releases these algorithm updates, you know, you see how it impacts your your clients or your organic rankings, right. And you you understand what they did and you adapt and you change your strategy. And I think that’s going to be a big piece of what paid media has to do. And and there’s been several changes over the last few years within, you know, Google and Facebook with in regards to attribution as well as, you know, Google ads taking away average position and, you know, changing the ad formats.

So, you know, you just have to evolve. And this is going to be maybe a bigger, you know, hurdle for paid media over the next couple of years. But but really, it’s you just got to understand, adapt and evolve your strategy. And I think, you know, if you weren’t already thinking about this, I wouldn’t say you’re too late, but I would definitely start thinking about it now.

Just to interrupt and add on to kind of some of the takeaways, but you said to kind of adapt and update kind of your strategy, evolve as a company. What’s the best way for someone to do that? What’s the best way to stay completely up to date with all these changes so they know, oh, my goodness, you know, calculous tracking. How do we overcome that? What’s the best way to get that? My news feed.

Yeah, so, I mean, I think, you know, listening to us, obviously, than paying for attention, I think, you know, keeping peace, keeping up to date with with, you know, the leaders in the industry, when you look at who puts out really good content, p0 dotcom is a good one, search engine land, you know, other other experts out there that are talking about how to deal with this rather than the you know, the industry experts saying that, you know, everything’s dead every other year and just trying to drum up some some.

Yeah. So, you know, I think I think just, you know, the same ones that you’re probably already subscribed to if you’re not. Again, PC hero, search engine land paying for attention. A lot of those I think are good. But I think, you know, as a as an organization or even especially as an agency, but is is investing in technology and being able to to find your own ways of tracking. And, you know, there’s there’s already some things out there.

And, you know, megadose has actually developed some technology that does first party first, first party cookie tracking. So it eliminates a lot of these issues and and helps actually track, you know, everything that you’re currently doing within Google and Facebook and all that and kind of eliminates this need. But there’s a lot of other technology out there that you could be investing in or building to to solve this for unique situations for some organizations or again, at the agency level, being able to just kind of say, hey, we have 40, 50, 60 clients that this is all going to impact.

You should start looking into that now and how to how you’re going to be able to measure that impact as well as overcome it.

Yeah, I mean, that’s a good point. I mean, with megadose, we have an edtech engineer, right. And he basically codes everything and does it himself. So you could see that almost or do you see that going more that way of companies having a personalized, customized kind of tracking area like we have our dashboard.

Yeah, yeah, definitely, I think, you know, years ago, this this kind of little bit got started when Google really started pushing a lot more A.I. and automation within within Google ads. And, you know, that’s why we did hire, you know, an engineer two years ago to get started and be ahead of the curve when all this started to happen. Because it’s it’s. It starts to more blend technology when we’re looking at things like, you know, tracking, you know, without cookies and with automating certain things within Google ads, where Google has itself is already kind of a technical marketing skill in a marketing department.

Right. So and why it’s typically outsourced to agencies like megadose is, you know, it’s already a pretty technical skill to have within marketing that this is a whole nother kind of level of of skills that most paid media specialists don’t have, you know, including myself. I’m not a I’m not a, you know, a programmer or anything. So, you know, that’s why we started investing that early on, because, you know, it’s it’s been kind of coming that this is going to be needed over the next few years.

So if I could add one more takeaway away, and we mentioned this in a lot of our podcast as a take away, and that comes down to testing. You know, we talk about adapting to the changes, evolving with that. And for me personally, part of that includes testing. When something does change, when tracking does change, jump on the bandwagon, so to speak, you know, or just be up to date with it and do testing.

So what are your thoughts with that? Like, regardless of just just to see.

Yeah, I mean, testing, this is going to be difficult for sure. But I would definitely say, especially when you’re investing in technology, whether you’re building yourself or you’re paying for for another software, is taking a portion of your of your paid media using it and testing how it’s tracking versus your actual data, whether it’s, you know, having a separate product page with that’s solely for paid media and using the tech on that. And does it actually match up to what your Shopify or WHO Commerce Store says you’re actually making on that page or on Legian making sure it’s a separate set of landing pages, that you have a controlled environment with controlled campaigns and using this and.

OK, how many leads do we get this month? How many leads does this technology say we got? And using it that way, doing some, you know, control testing and experiments, that’s going to be key to making sure that you, you know, you can move forward with anything and it actually overcome the kookiness world within ads.

Yeah, absolutely. Make sure that you’re adapting the right way. Great. Well, this is all been good information and we are really grateful for all the information that has been dropped today. And we are thankful for those who turned out. And we look forward to seeing everybody next time on the next episode of Paying for Attention. Thanks.