Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast where
Speaker 1: we speak with some of the brightest minds working in
Speaker 1: the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety. May
Speaker 1: is a month with a lot of fronts in the
Speaker 1: media business. We've gone from the new fronts to the
Speaker 1: podcast up fronts and soon enough the traditional TV upfronts.
Speaker 1: With all these different brands pitching themselves to marketers, there's
Speaker 1: no better time to check in with Brian Weezer, global
Speaker 1: president of business intelligence and media agency Giant Blue N.
Speaker 1: He knows the number side of Madison Avenue about as
Speaker 1: well as anyone, so I'm looking forward to hearing from
Speaker 1: him at an interesting time for the advertising business. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Strictly Business, where I'm talking with Brian Weezer
Speaker 1: blu N about the state of the advertising business in
Speaker 1: the thick of the so called upfront season. Good to
Speaker 1: have you with me, Brian, Uh I say, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting time primarily because of the overhang of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: which I think we can at least characterize as being
Speaker 1: in a light at the end of the tunnel stage.
Speaker 1: And I want to start with how you see where
Speaker 1: we are with COVID impacting the state of the economy globally,
Speaker 1: but more so in the US because the economy impacts advertising.
Speaker 1: The course, Yeah, well thanks for having me here. Uh. There,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of living parts in answering that question.
Speaker 1: I mean, the first thing is to consider the what
Speaker 1: we'd call it easy comparable if you will, when you
Speaker 1: look at one over and it's just going to distort
Speaker 1: numbers for for so much of the economy when you
Speaker 1: look at things on a year of your basis. So
Speaker 1: that's maybe the first part. But even if you start
Speaker 1: to look at the trends that uh compared to say,
Speaker 1: two years ago, you have a number of conditions going on. First,
Speaker 1: we've created a new plateau against which e commerce is
Speaker 1: growing and sustaining pretty rapid pace of growth, far faster
Speaker 1: than would have been true have there not been a pandemic. Um,
Speaker 1: we have massive new business formation, which maybe overlaps with
Speaker 1: that ecmmerce point. It certainly is catalyzed by the pandemic.
Speaker 1: But the fact that there are so many new businesses
Speaker 1: being borned h it's the best illustration of creative destruction
Speaker 1: you can find. Um. Lots of businesses went away and
Speaker 1: truly being replaced by new ones, and that's having a
Speaker 1: different distorting effect on the overall ad market, primarily skewing
Speaker 1: um spending into digital media. And that's what we saw,
Speaker 1: I think, in part in certainly first core results from
Speaker 1: the lakes of Google and Facebook. Um. And then you
Speaker 1: get just general inflation because when when we say it's
Speaker 1: a hot market, we mean hot in terms of an
Speaker 1: economy running hot. We have a lot of juice up
Speaker 1: demand from a lot of consumers with a lot of
Speaker 1: extra money to spend um stimulus driven in many cases
Speaker 1: um at least collectively, because we really do need to
Speaker 1: remember that a lot of people are still struggling, but
Speaker 1: on average, people in the economy are very very able
Speaker 1: to spend money and very willing to do so, and
Speaker 1: that's creating inflationary conditions at a sort of general economy level.
Speaker 1: So what does history tell us about how the ad
Speaker 1: business is typically affected by major events like the pandemic?
Speaker 1: Did the pandemic fit that pattern? Has everything gone as
Speaker 1: you expected? Well back when I was working at the way,
Speaker 1: there really isn't anything to compare to in the United States,
Speaker 1: you know, Actually you can look at uh at what's
Speaker 1: happened you know, Hong Kong Stars or other markets. But
Speaker 1: it's it's almost it's not not big enough to provide
Speaker 1: an apt comparison. Um even a war is not an
Speaker 1: apt comparison, because even during wartime, even in economies with
Speaker 1: total war, you may still have kind of life going
Speaker 1: on in the middle of it in a way that
Speaker 1: wasn't true during the pandemic. For for a few months,
Speaker 1: I mean, things ground to a halt in ways that
Speaker 1: that just doesn't normally happen. So it's really hard to
Speaker 1: compare to anything, certainly in modern history. UM So what
Speaker 1: we can do, though, is we can look to some
Speaker 1: general principles. It's almost too easy, shorthand to point to
Speaker 1: something like economic growth and then try to correlate that
Speaker 1: to advertige that it does correlate with advertising, but it's
Speaker 1: more coincidental because, as I said before and applied before,
Speaker 1: creative destruction is the most important factor that drives advertising growth.
Speaker 1: The very fact that a business that emerged this year
Speaker 1: has a different profile than a business that emerged ten
Speaker 1: years ago, or twenty years ago or forty years ago
Speaker 1: goes a long long way towards explaining what's happening with
Speaker 1: advertising and if you think about the fact that a
Speaker 1: business that formed in say row forming would have been
Speaker 1: incrementally different, right, but a business forming in versus a
Speaker 1: business forming in could be radically different in terms of
Speaker 1: every aspect of what they do and how they do it.
Speaker 1: And so when you think about how that plays into
Speaker 1: marketing and media, I mean, we know that the average
Speaker 1: company allocates are known one percent of their revenue to advertising,
Speaker 1: But what if the new generation of business is being
Speaker 1: formed is more like two something like that is happening,
Speaker 1: and all that extra money is blowing into Google and
Speaker 1: Facebook and Amazon. Yeah, you mentioned those pretty astonishing first
Speaker 1: quarter results. You've mentioned the rise at of e commerce.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like the shelter at home lifestyle
Speaker 1: spurred a quantum leap in terms of how central e
Speaker 1: commerce became in the average consumers lives. Though, as you
Speaker 1: also pointed out, e commerce wasn't exactly obscure before. So
Speaker 1: am I actually overstating the e commerce effect? No, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's accurate, Although sometimes we stay e commerce and
Speaker 1: really we're we're just using something really tangible for a
Speaker 1: looser concept of business transformation, right, I mean business transformation
Speaker 1: meaning you know, how businesses are adapting to a world
Speaker 1: that's ever more connect did to the internet. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: the e commerce is just the most tangible example most
Speaker 1: of us can point to. But if you think about
Speaker 1: like digital ordering, right, I mean, just as a constable,
Speaker 1: you know, um, you know the idea that we can
Speaker 1: now call a store or you know, we can arrange
Speaker 1: for the specifics of a transaction and then pick it
Speaker 1: up with that every setting foot in the store, and
Speaker 1: we're using our mobile devices to alert the people in
Speaker 1: the store that we're there. You know, all these different
Speaker 1: elements of using digital technology to drive how we do
Speaker 1: what we do and drive how businesses interact with us.
Speaker 1: All of that accelerated over the last year. E commerce
Speaker 1: again just the most superficial, most tangible thing we can
Speaker 1: point to. Sure, I mean, look, all all signals signals
Speaker 1: are that there's this sharp rebound a foot here. But
Speaker 1: are there any flags on the field. Are there anything
Speaker 1: that could steer the economy or advertising? Uh, in an
Speaker 1: unexpected direction? Oh? Sure, Well we learned nothing from the
Speaker 1: last you know your in event, it's an unexpected things
Speaker 1: can occur. Um. I think that the in the in
Speaker 1: the short term, one of the bigger risks that we're
Speaker 1: certainly mindful of. Is this whole semi conductor shortage issue. UH,
Speaker 1: the idea that almost every free company who's making electronic
Speaker 1: product has a real problem right now because of this shortage. UH.
Speaker 1: And so you pair that with other supply chain issues,
Speaker 1: pair that with input cost inflation, and there are some
Speaker 1: real challenges in the near term. Now the semis issue.
Speaker 1: If I'm not a semi conductor analyst, but certainly UM,
Speaker 1: every automo manufacturer that's reported so far this UH this
Speaker 1: quarter has talked about how it will disrupt second quarter production,
Speaker 1: but they do expect things to even out as your progressives, right, UH,
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily impact longer term planning. UH. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, things like input cost inflation is an issue,
Speaker 1: but a manufacturer can always find ways to, you know,
Speaker 1: change how they do what they do. UM. They can
Speaker 1: find ways to certainly raise prices consumers and create inflationary conditions, yes,
Speaker 1: but all else equal, those manufacturers might be just as
Speaker 1: well off. But there's an interesting question to be raised.
Speaker 1: And this is sort of you know, an issue that
Speaker 1: I think Wallster is debating is just how temporary will
Speaker 1: higher inflation be and by the way, are we talking
Speaker 1: about a percentage point or two or something more robust?
Speaker 1: And once you get into a path of inflation being
Speaker 1: out there, do we actually create a sustained levels of
Speaker 1: elevated inflation? So those are arguably potential risks to be
Speaker 1: aware of. Well, we'll have to keep an eye on
Speaker 1: on those issues. Let's let's dig deeper now into this
Speaker 1: new front, up front, old front madness that we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of. I'm curious, you know, every year seems
Speaker 1: to be like a different narrative in terms of these marketplaces.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that's jumping out of you in terms
Speaker 1: of well, this is the year we're learning X. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's that's not a bad way to
Speaker 1: try to look at it. Um, I would I would
Speaker 1: tend to focus on things like power marketers using television
Speaker 1: and context of other immediate and how that's changing. Um,
Speaker 1: what is the role of television going forward kind of
Speaker 1: in a longer term sense rather than you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a point in time as opposed to something
Speaker 1: that reflects a longer term trends that marketers are are
Speaker 1: working around. And let me just elaborate a been on
Speaker 1: that we're going into a period where consumption of television
Speaker 1: in its traditional form is following a pretty dramatic club
Speaker 1: right now. Um, and you and I talked for a
Speaker 1: long time and those of me for a long time
Speaker 1: and known that I you know, back in the late
Speaker 1: two thousand's, early two thousands tens, there are people calling
Speaker 1: me a TV bowl. You know, as an analyst, It's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not a bowl. And just observing that the medium
Speaker 1: still growing. It's like consumption holds up generally speaking, it's
Speaker 1: not nothing is getting in the way of of that.
Speaker 1: Those trends that we were seeing last year, something got
Speaker 1: in the way. And it wasn't just the pandemic. It
Speaker 1: was the very fact that you had all all the
Speaker 1: streaming services finally committing to spending billions and billions and
Speaker 1: billions of dollars on original programming. That is a meaningful
Speaker 1: difference between what we saw ten years ago or five
Speaker 1: years ago. And to a UM, all those concerns about
Speaker 1: you know, member back in the early two thousand's that
Speaker 1: where of all the young men gone like men in
Speaker 1: eight thirty four are playing video games, says Massive, the
Speaker 1: video game company, and that became these dominant narratives. Right, well,
Speaker 1: there is never anything to that. Um, this is real
Speaker 1: and because we know, you know, you can roughly estimate
Speaker 1: that globally there's something like a hundred fifty billion dollars
Speaker 1: of spending on uh TV or professionally produced content in
Speaker 1: a year, and Netflix is going to be fifteen billion
Speaker 1: dollars of that. It's not unreasonable to think that they'll
Speaker 1: get about a tenth of ball viewing. And it's not
Speaker 1: like you it goes up by ten to account for it.
Speaker 1: It comes from somewhere, and that Netflix viewing is not
Speaker 1: as supported, it will never be out supported. Then you
Speaker 1: get you know, Amazon Prime, they are going to be
Speaker 1: some number in the high single digit billions on Prime
Speaker 1: Video specifically. And then you look at and there will
Speaker 1: be any adds. They're not many, at least Disney Plus,
Speaker 1: thank Deal, and you go on, well, there will be
Speaker 1: some ads and some certainly Whlue remains that supported, but
Speaker 1: there'll be these uh some of the able oard services
Speaker 1: inside of this UH this realm of content, the available
Speaker 1: advertising inventory is compressing in a pretty meaningful way. And
Speaker 1: that means that the capacity for a marketer to accomplish
Speaker 1: the reach and frequency based goals that they had in
Speaker 1: the past is pretty meaning they altered. So when I
Speaker 1: think about the upfront and I think about the decisions
Speaker 1: that marketers are making, I think about it more through
Speaker 1: the lens of marketers having to figure out what the
Speaker 1: role of television is more generally in their marketing dgics.
Speaker 1: And it seems though as if a big part of
Speaker 1: the pitch from the traditional TV players will be, Hey,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be all about linear. We've got
Speaker 1: your back marketers on connected TV. We've got all this inventory.
Speaker 1: Um to me, that seems I mean, while certainly not
Speaker 1: a new trend, uh, it's now sort of in a
Speaker 1: in a more prominent way that I mean, do you
Speaker 1: think it will be sort of transformative? Well no, because
Speaker 1: I mean my my point is that the available at
Speaker 1: support inventory in what most people would reasonably call television.
Speaker 1: Most people meaning consumers, meaning there's no meaningful distinction between
Speaker 1: connected TV linear TV. From a typical consumer's perspective, that
Speaker 1: available inventory is shrinking because if you think about a
Speaker 1: total Internet connected device based viewing is some number like
Speaker 1: all viewing and rising still at twenty or percent a year,
Speaker 1: of that inventory call it half is a third is Netflix,
Speaker 1: another is Amazon Prime, and another five percent is Disney.
Speaker 1: Right there, that's this just take away half of that inventory,
Speaker 1: you know, so you've just lost, call it fifteen percent
Speaker 1: of all available consumption, and then YouTube is that TV
Speaker 1: or not. Those advertisers would still say it's not really
Speaker 1: that comparable. Okay, lop off another five of that available inventory. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've just taken out consumption, right, total consumption in agory.
Speaker 1: It didn't really grow that much. It was eroding. All
Speaker 1: this viewering was going towards and burns which were either
Speaker 1: at supported or not comparable to traditional at base television.
Speaker 1: And so while it's great that a traditional TV network
Speaker 1: owner has some ad inventory in these environments, and let's
Speaker 1: put aside of the measurement issues. Let's put aside whether
Speaker 1: or not you're getting unduplicated reach and all that fun stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: the reality is there's just a lot less television and
Speaker 1: based inventory, uh with which to reach consumer. We'll be
Speaker 1: back in just a little bit with more with Brian Weser.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Strictly Business, where I'm talking with Brian
Speaker 1: Weezer or group and about the state of the advertising
Speaker 1: business in the thick of the upfront season. Brian, I
Speaker 1: hear what you're saying about all these alternatives, but there's
Speaker 1: also to be and Pluto TV and Peacock streaming inventory
Speaker 1: that you know, the traditional TV companies are making available.
Speaker 1: So that doesn't solve all their problems. No, because I
Speaker 1: mean that's included in the numbers of sting. Oh that's
Speaker 1: my boy, got it? And what about the I'm just
Speaker 1: curious what you think about the so called free acid
Speaker 1: free ad supported streaming options like to be in Pluto TV.
Speaker 1: Do you see these as as being viable, you know,
Speaker 1: to define five years in the future, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be a permanent part of the landscape in general. Yes,
Speaker 1: I I think that the way I think about viability
Speaker 1: from a consumer perspective is spending on content. There should
Speaker 1: be a rough relationship between share and spend on content
Speaker 1: and share of viewing and again just dealstrate to take
Speaker 1: Netflix right, I can roughly estimate, depending on how you
Speaker 1: want to make assumptions about what the right connations between
Speaker 1: cash accounting expenses. If Netflix was some number like five
Speaker 1: billion dollars on programming in a country where by my
Speaker 1: estminsters around seventy billion dollars of spending on programming for
Speaker 1: the US, that's about seven right, Well, what's their total
Speaker 1: share of viewing? It's about seven percent. If you spend
Speaker 1: if you show up today with let's say one point
Speaker 1: four billion dollars of a TV budget of the budget
Speaker 1: for programming, I would bet you probably will get to
Speaker 1: to percent audience. Sure all those people. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: really good, you can find ways to do it cheaply
Speaker 1: and get a lot of audience. But on average you
Speaker 1: need to spend up to get the viewing. It's not
Speaker 1: I don't think it's that hard hard to understand. Why.
Speaker 1: It's a spaghetti theory of programming. Right, you throw it
Speaker 1: up against the wall, something sticks. On average, you know
Speaker 1: that some percentage will. So if you're whether you're Pluto
Speaker 1: or to be oring these others don't. Hey, they may
Speaker 1: end up being very efficient forms of getting the viewership. UM.
Speaker 1: That remains to be seen. They are going to spend
Speaker 1: more on original programming, and certainly we've heard um. You know,
Speaker 1: Fox really talked about that the other day their next call, UM.
Speaker 1: And I think we'll see that more often from the
Speaker 1: pure a body aggregators UM that don't today have a
Speaker 1: lot of original but in general, the viewing share will
Speaker 1: go to where they're spending a share. I don't think
Speaker 1: that should be rocket science, can't are had estimated national
Speaker 1: TV ad spend in was down about pent of at
Speaker 1: fifty billion dollars. Uh, So what do you see for one?
Speaker 1: How big a swing could we see in terms of
Speaker 1: money moving to digital? Well, I mean, let's I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, I guess we could say on our
Speaker 1: numbers that's not too far away from where Groogum's estimates
Speaker 1: are for two thousand twenty. You have to be mindful
Speaker 1: when you're looking at the year of your media and
Speaker 1: our ad revenue, or at spending trends. It's really important
Speaker 1: to be conscious of the role political advertising, which really
Speaker 1: distores the numbers on a year of your basis um.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you wind up with on an
Speaker 1: underlying basis, one can grow by college nine percent or something.
Speaker 1: But is that very meaningful in context of the decline
Speaker 1: that we have last year and not? Really? The right
Speaker 1: way to think about it, as as far as I'm
Speaker 1: concerned is to think about flatish kind of overall business,
Speaker 1: maybe a lightly declining one over time, and it comes
Speaker 1: back this creative destruction issue. If the kinds of companies
Speaker 1: that are predisposed towards using television are less prominent in
Speaker 1: the economy, that will lead to less spending on television.
Speaker 1: Right you see some of those advertisers, Uh, the average
Speaker 1: large brand advertiser incrementally reduces their spending on television with
Speaker 1: every passing year. That's been true forever. They get replaced
Speaker 1: in part by new marketers who show up because it's
Speaker 1: satisfies a goal better than an alternative for that new
Speaker 1: advertiser who shows up. But the combined effect is that
Speaker 1: you get a flat kind of number to slight decline
Speaker 1: in terms of the available spending that's out there. That's
Speaker 1: independent from the available inventory. Right now, this is something
Speaker 1: that a lot of people miss. There is there's no
Speaker 1: law that says a change in supply causes the change
Speaker 1: in demand at So just because audience trends go one
Speaker 1: way or the other doesn't tell you anything about demand.
Speaker 1: Those are independent To point on, you know, shifts to
Speaker 1: digital show that is happening because the nature of marketers.
Speaker 1: Businesses are adapting and evolving, and we can argue, rightly
Speaker 1: or wrongly that a marketer whose business is increasingly oriented
Speaker 1: online will increasingly allocate money to digital media, the pure
Speaker 1: play you know, digital platforms. Um that tends to happen,
Speaker 1: whether it's right or wrong. I could argue the best
Speaker 1: allocation of resources a market could make is first invest
Speaker 1: in brand, second, invest in creative, third, figure out the
Speaker 1: bed afterwards. That's not how market there's actually make decisions though.
Speaker 1: Um So, television will still have an important role for
Speaker 1: most of those marketers, but it's with every passing year
Speaker 1: there is on average there's a bit of a shift
Speaker 1: for the like for like marketing. Another way that TV
Speaker 1: is going to try to close the gap on digital
Speaker 1: is to sell Madison Avenue on its capability to target
Speaker 1: with addressable advertising. Oh what do you think of where
Speaker 1: the state of addressable advertising is right now? What are
Speaker 1: the obstacles to this, you know, becoming a bigger deal
Speaker 1: for TV? Yeah, well so I've I've been spending time
Speaker 1: understanding addressability for twenty years almost, which feels like a
Speaker 1: long time. I know there still have been out longer.
Speaker 1: Um and it it from the earliest days where I
Speaker 1: looked at this, I thought the whole trying to sell
Speaker 1: you know, running at for for dog food to dog
Speaker 1: owners sounds great in concept, but it feels like it's
Speaker 1: a pretty small market, And sure enough, I think that
Speaker 1: is a very small market, is not where the ultimate
Speaker 1: opportunity is for addressability. Where the ultimate opportunity for adjustability is,
Speaker 1: as I see it is in helping marketers accomplish what
Speaker 1: they really need, which is cost effective reach extension, meaning
Speaker 1: how do you find that of a target audience under
Speaker 1: a broad definition? Because keep in mind, if you're using television,
Speaker 1: it's probably because you want to reach everybody. How do
Speaker 1: you make sure that you're actually managing you're reaching frequency
Speaker 1: the way you intend to eight percent reach with an
Speaker 1: average of eight times frequency and making sure that only uh,
Speaker 1: nobody gets more than ten exposures and no one gets
Speaker 1: less than six, you know, balancing a load of frequency
Speaker 1: that is not commonly done or not commonly doable with
Speaker 1: television the way it works today, I think addressability offers
Speaker 1: UH an amazing opportunity to actually help markers accomplish those
Speaker 1: reaching frequency goals that they have. And sure then you
Speaker 1: can start to incorporate variability, like maybe you identify that
Speaker 1: a certain kind of profile of a consumer is more
Speaker 1: likely to respond to a certain kind of message versus another.
Speaker 1: But it's all very incremental in terms of its impact
Speaker 1: and very difficult to prove with any certainty. So I
Speaker 1: think that that's where the greatest opportunity is um for
Speaker 1: for addability in the medium, and it becomes a reallocation
Speaker 1: of reason versus not a source of new resources. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I think there is some opportunity
Speaker 1: to help bring some marginal advertisers into the medium. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a large amount of money, but it's the
Speaker 1: idea that if you're a marketer, would say a five
Speaker 1: million dollar budget, you think that television would work for
Speaker 1: you if only you could use it in a very
Speaker 1: precise way. Yeah, there's some extra money to be had
Speaker 1: from that kind of a marketer, but they don't know
Speaker 1: that that's necessarily a need mover. Well, it also wouldn't
Speaker 1: be up front season if we didn't have some sort
Speaker 1: of controversy around measurement. And we're seeing the networks claiming
Speaker 1: Nielsen is under counting TV viewing during the pandemic. Uh,
Speaker 1: what what to make of this? Is just just sort
Speaker 1: of like a new variation on the same old theme
Speaker 1: of the networks, you know, working the refs so to speak,
Speaker 1: or or do they have a point? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are definitely some issues that based with respect retombishment
Speaker 1: during the pandemic UM mostly pretty understandable in terms of
Speaker 1: not being able to you know, send people into homes um.
Speaker 1: But you know, you could argue the other the the
Speaker 1: numbers are distorted in lots of different ways through the pandemic.
Speaker 1: For example, because they didn't turn over the homes in
Speaker 1: the panel as frequently as they normally would have. UM,
Speaker 1: they didn't bring in new homes, which would have biased
Speaker 1: the panel towards traditional pay TV subscribers rather than court cutters,
Speaker 1: rather than BMVPD subscribers, which would have had uh at
Speaker 1: the effect of reducing consumption or as measured right. So
Speaker 1: there's lots of living parts and you can see this
Speaker 1: in their data where there's the normally, Nielsen's data is
Speaker 1: probably the best single metric in terms of tracking total
Speaker 1: pay TV subscriptions. And you know, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: different number than if you compare it to say, add
Speaker 1: up Direct TV and Charter and Comcast cable stubs and
Speaker 1: just add them all up and you wind up with
Speaker 1: a different number versus what Nielsen has and The reason
Speaker 1: is Nielsen wouldn't have any double counting in the way
Speaker 1: that the mvpd s do. There's other history factors when
Speaker 1: you look at the public company reportings, but there is
Speaker 1: a huge gap between that total pay TV number UH
Speaker 1: and what the what the actual distributors were reporting through
Speaker 1: the pandemic until this most recent quarter, arguably because of
Speaker 1: this issue, and that would have had the impact of
Speaker 1: because it's a boosting viewership of television and in particular
Speaker 1: booststing cable viewership. So there's moving parts and UH, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily favorable. It's not favorable unfavorable on that basis
Speaker 1: necessarily it's hard to know. Um, Obviously we're talking a
Speaker 1: lot about video based advertising. I don't want to give
Speaker 1: other forms short shrift. I mentioned you know, we've got
Speaker 1: podcast upfronts going on, hearing more talk about video games
Speaker 1: as a place for advertising. What are what are certain
Speaker 1: some of the meaningful trends that you're seeing that we
Speaker 1: should keep an eye on in terms of advertising in
Speaker 1: in in non video formats. Well, you know, there's what's
Speaker 1: happening and then there's what should be happening. UM, what's
Speaker 1: happening is uh beyond television. It is Facebook, Google, and
Speaker 1: Amazon's world and we're just living in it, right. Um
Speaker 1: uh and so it's really you know, all these other
Speaker 1: platforms are important, but and and market will talk about
Speaker 1: these things, and they allow kay resources to these things,
Speaker 1: but not in a meaningful way. UM. It's safe to
Speaker 1: say that the typical large brand, to be clear, we're
Speaker 1: talking about advertisers or like network TV TV. So if
Speaker 1: you think of that cohort of brands, typically they're allocating
Speaker 1: just under of their budgets to television, but probably allocating
Speaker 1: for to digital and everything else gets about something like that. Um.
Speaker 1: And so sure, something like podcasting has tremendous interest. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is the sizzle that drives the stake of radio,
Speaker 1: so to speak. But it's not like collectively radio is
Speaker 1: going to grow right beside the year of your comparisons
Speaker 1: which are easy, but I'm saying beyond this year. UM.
Speaker 1: Outdoor advertising lots of our too, very impactful, probably greatly
Speaker 1: under appreciate for how much it could be used even
Speaker 1: during a pandemic environment. UM. You know, that probably gets
Speaker 1: back to something resembling normal growth and single digits for them. UM.
Speaker 1: Print you know is a great example where print is
Speaker 1: only going to grow if they invest in contents. Where
Speaker 1: you see a media owner investing in content, there will
Speaker 1: be a lot of interest upon the marketers to spend
Speaker 1: money as advertisers with those publishers. But where you see
Speaker 1: publishers disinvesting in their properties, trying to hardest the assets,
Speaker 1: so to speak, um, there won't be a lot of
Speaker 1: advertiser interests. I would be remiss in in not asking
Speaker 1: about the third party cookie situation, where obviously big changes
Speaker 1: afoot on the Apple and Google platforms, changes in how
Speaker 1: audiences are targeted and measured. Um, what is is you
Speaker 1: more sense of it? I mean, this is sort of
Speaker 1: a drum that has been sort of, you know, approaching
Speaker 1: crescendo for a while now, and it's I'm kind of
Speaker 1: losing track of when I'm supposed to truly focus here. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it depends on which vantage point you're you're
Speaker 1: looking at this issue from. I think if you take
Speaker 1: a step back and look at the bigger picture about
Speaker 1: what it means for marketers. Um, what we saw from
Speaker 1: GPR in Europe was kind of the tell about what
Speaker 1: marketers needed to do. What what GDPR was essentially saying
Speaker 1: to marketers was deer marketer. If you cannot persuade a
Speaker 1: consumer to part with their data, you probably don't deserve it.
Speaker 1: The California law that ccp A was not dissimilar, maybe
Speaker 1: not as as aggressive as as GDPRE, but definitely going
Speaker 1: down that same direction. And every law that's you know,
Speaker 1: been considered basically trying to get to the same kind
Speaker 1: of place. And so when you see what what Apple
Speaker 1: uh is starting to do right now, and what Google
Speaker 1: is going to do as well, and the whole deplication
Speaker 1: of their pretty cookies as we've done it, it's all
Speaker 1: consistent with this broader trend. Deer marketer, if you cannot
Speaker 1: persuade a consumer to part with their data, you probably
Speaker 1: don't deserve it. So the bigger issue than from a
Speaker 1: marketer is all right, you need to invest in figuring
Speaker 1: out how to persuade consumers to part with their data.
Speaker 1: What makes it truly worth their while. Don't assume that
Speaker 1: they actually love advertising, don't assume that they love your brand.
Speaker 1: Make sure that they actually have a reason to want
Speaker 1: to care UM and that could mean that there needs
Speaker 1: to be a good value trade off that the consumer
Speaker 1: actually understands UM and it's not. Then you know, marketers
Speaker 1: need to kind of work within this world where they
Speaker 1: can build their brands over time. At least that should
Speaker 1: be the goal. Um. Certainly, if you want to differentiate
Speaker 1: yourself over the long long term, a strong brand is essential.
Speaker 1: And if not done then you know there's al sorts
Speaker 1: of other ways to make a living. Oh, that's just
Speaker 1: one of many big issues that needs to be followed
Speaker 1: on the advertising front. Brian Weezer, thanks for taking some
Speaker 1: time out to walk us through all this. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be an interesting to pay attention to. Thanks Matting. This
Speaker 1: has been another episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next
Speaker 1: week for another helping of scintillating conversation with media movers
Speaker 1: and shakers, and please make sure you subscribe to the
Speaker 1: podcast to hear future episodes. Also, leave a review in
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