Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup
Join us on the DTC Podcast as we delve into how BYLT Basics and Tatari are redefining the role of TV advertising in the digital age. Spencer Toomey from BYLT and Greg Kalin from Tatari unpack how TV ads are not just about broadening awareness but are crucial tools for profitability and growth. Discover the strategic insights and analytics that make TV a powerful part of BYLT Basics' marketing arsenal.
Work with Tatari: https://www.tatari.tv/
BYLT Basics: https://byltbasics.com/
Key Episode Points:
Strategic Celebrity Endorsements: Learn about "The Gronk Effect" and how BYLT uses well-known personalities to target specific customer segments.
Data-Driven Targeting: Insights into how BYLT iteratively determined that football audiences were ideal for their campaigns, enhancing the effectiveness of their TV ads.
Airbnb’s Influence: How lessons from Airbnb's targeted advertising strategies influenced BYLT’s approach to demographic targeting with TV ads.
Creative Strategy and Execution: Exploring how creative content tailored for TV can drive direct response and support digital marketing channels for a cohesive brand experience.
This episode is a must-listen for marketers and business leaders seeking to leverage TV advertising for not only brand awareness but also for driving tangible business results. Tune in to learn how integrating traditional advertising channels with modern analytics and targeting strategies can elevate your brand’s market presence and profitability.
Schedule a Demo with Tatari:
https://www.tatari.tv/schedule-demo?utm_campaign=DTC%20Podcast&utm_source=DTC%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Podcast
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
02:00 - How Built leverages TV advertising for brand growth
04:20 - Key performance indicators (KPIs) for TV ad campaigns
06:30 - Utilizing ambassadors and creative strategies in ads
08:50 - The role of data and technology in optimizing TV ads
11:10 - Challenges and solutions in TV advertising for DTC brands
13:40 - Future trends and advice for brands considering TV ads
Hashtags:
#TVAdvertising #DTCMarketing #BrandGrowth #MarketingStrategies #DigitalMarketing #Tatari #BuiltApparel #AdvertisingTips #MarketingPodcast #Ecommerce
Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup
Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise
Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse
Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter
Transcript:
Greg Kalin: [00:00:00] On Facebook, it's super easy, right? Yousee the ad and usually you're going to click through on the same device. So theattribution there is fairly simplistic, but with TV, you're watching on yourscreen and you're probably responding on your phone. So you need to build thisvery strong device graph where you can connect all the data points around tounderstand who's who.
So that's where we use 30 million smart TV devices, a hundredpercent IP pass back from every streaming publisher. We use a pixel on yoursite, which ingests over a hundred million events every day across all of ourclients, right? Through this, we're able to build holdout groups. And providethose results on a next day basis, you can rely on those results to make thoseintro campaign decisions.
And so again, if you don't have that deficient tech stack anddata, then the metrics are going to be looking at are not accurate. Andtherefore you're going to be making faulty optimizations. That doesn't happenat Atari.
Eric: I want towelcome our DTC podcast today. I'm really excited. I've been talking [00:01:00] about for at least the past six months orso I've been talking about this concept of true top of funnel. We're talking toa lot of brands who are finding success with TV. And today we have theopportunity to go super deep with one of my favorite apparel brands built,who's seeing some incredible results from TV using Tatari.
Why don't we kick it off? Spencer from built, uh, you're,you're leading growth over there at build. Why don't you just give us a littlebit of background about what brought you to your current position and, uh, andwe'll go from there.
Spencer Toomey: Yeah.My name is Spencer growth marketer over here at built basics, premium menswear.
We just got into women's as well, but really trying to target,Go getter transitional clothing. So think you go to the gym, you go to work, goto date night, go out for drinks, you should be able to wear the same thing,uh, pretty much all day. And, um, yeah, my background started off in DTC, learnfrom some really smart people out in Venice beach.
Um, really scrappy agency ended up going over to cannabis techwhere I worked in growth, uh, which was a lot of out of home, a lot of CTV, [00:02:00] a lot of out of the box ideas, um, movedover to the client partner side, revenue, sales engineering side. And then,yeah, I got super lucky to land over here. I built this past year, um, justgetting back into DTC.
And, uh, been pushing really hard here on Upper Funnel.
Eric: Very cool.
Spencer Toomey: Uh,and then Greg,
Eric: talk to usabout your background, uh, and how you came to Tatari.
Greg Kalin: Yeah. Um,well, let me, let me talk a little about Tatari, I think, first. Uh, my, mybackground maybe isn't quite as interesting. But, um, I, I lead our clientdevelopment team, uh, here at Tatari.
Tatari is a platform for buying and measuring across the wholeTV landscape. So think linear streaming and online video. Um, I've been withthe tire for about six years. I started out on our client services team was wasone of our first people on team ran campaigns that have worked with all ourbiggest companies.
I've worked with small disruptor brands, uh, large upfrontadvertisers, uh, pretty much everything between, um, being really hands onrunning their TV campaigns. And so now my, my [00:03:00]role with the company is, um, bringing a new business and, and, and helpingthem kind of see their path onto TV.
Eric: Now, BuiltBasics is a brand I've seen just so heavily on meta for so long, such a, suchan aggressive presence on meta for so long as a, as a male who lovestransitional clothing and exercise and going out and such.
But what brought you, Spencer, to be like, okay, we got to getonto TV as an apparel brand. What, what, what brought you to that conclusion?
Spencer Toomey: Yeah,I know it's, it's a great question and I'm so blessed to come into an org thathas built such a crazy machine on meta and some of the other channels. But, uh,something else I noticed when I got here.
That just blew my mind was the retention was just so strong.High income male coming back all the time, always buying the next drop. So forus, getting new eyeballs was super important. We had started diversifying alittle bit, uh, into some other social channels, uh, search things like that,but to really legitimate, like make the brand legitimate, we wanted to get ontoTV, reach mass eyeballs and our brand and our team in [00:04:00]general has just been crushing creative.
So we knew it was a perfect place for us to go next.
Eric: And you hadthat retention aspect kind of dialed in. So you've kind of had the confidenceto know that if you could kind of fill your boat, you'd be able to convert itdown the line, especially right with such a strong brand and product.
Spencer Toomey: Yeah,exactly.
And we have like such large sales periods as most people know.So really just making sure that we can prime that funnel and get as manyeyeballs seeing the brand and just being able to target them based on where wewant them to see themselves was super important to us. What was your
Eric: biggest kind offear going in?
Cause I think TV for whatever reason, I think people feel likethey can set up right away on meta Google, get your ads running within a couplehours kind of thing. But I feel like for a lot of brands who kind of masteredsocial in their heads, there's a little bit of a roadblock as to, as to gettinginto TV.
So what were your fears about getting into TV before you did?Although I look back at your, at your history, you already had a lot of historywith like real top of funnel efforts in your previous. But what were your [00:05:00] hesitations or fears going into TV?
Spencer Toomey: Yeah,I think in general, any growth marketer fears, not being able to tracksomething that's direct response, you know, we're an e commerce brand first.
So that is the scariest thing. I think to anybody upstairs,anybody in management, anyone who's been here for a long time, whole share ofwallet. Away from meta or direct response channels is scary, but if you do itthe right way, you have the right partner and the right tracking set up. It'sdefinitely going to move the needle for you in a big way.
Eric: And then justfrom your, from Bill's experience too, do you see TV as a fully additive thing?Like when you're looking at your budgets, are you adding more budgets to do TVor are you moving budgets away from other platforms that, that may or may notbe struggling?
Spencer Toomey: Imean, that's kind of a hard one. I think to start, it's definitely anincremental budget.
You know, we don't want to hurt efficiency when something'sworking really well. We don't want to pull share of wallet away from it just togo prove out TV. I'm not going to break, you know, break what's going on withmeta. It's more of dang, we've been making, you know, good cashflow for sometime now. We need to reach new eyeballs.
We see retention strong. [00:06:00]Uh, let's get that incremental budget to start. But then over time, as you'reon TV for a while, yeah, you're going to have that share of wallets set and itmight, I guess the percentage might be pulled down from some other places, buthopefully we're always scaling budgets across all channels.
Eric: Greg, why don'tyou elaborate a little bit more on why brands decide to get into TV as far aswhen they come to you?
Greg Kalin: Yeah, youknow, we have a lot of these conversations, obviously. Um, and I can just tellyou there's a bunch of different reasons. Um, you diversify from otherchannels. Um, you've got diminishing returns.
Maybe on a particular channel. We see we've got a lot of metaprivacy concerns. I mean, brands even have to worry about a tick tock ban. Um,you know, these days, right? Um, and so one thing I can definitely say is ifyou're spending around 250 K a month on somebody's digital channels, uh, it'sdefinitely time for you to come to TV.
It's very likely you'll find a cheaper customer to acquire.I've also said, you know, TV can kind of work for anybody. It's the oldest.Marketing [00:07:00] channel, the oldest andmost effective, right? There's a new flavor of the month every couple of yearswhen it comes to digital and, uh, and it's the most time tested channel, right?
It's always worked. Only now can you measure it as if it's aperformance channel, right? And that's always been the goal with Tatari to makeit accessible to everybody, um, and to really democratize that TV space. Um,and so generally we encourage brands to start with like a four week test. Usingroughly 10 to 20 percent of their marketing budget so they can kind of getenough physical significance and make sure they're actually moving the needlein some form or another and getting enough learnings to turn into scale of thechannel.
But yeah, that's that's my case for TV, right? It's it's alwaysworked. It's just a little bit of a different approach than what you might takeon on meta or or a social channel.
Eric: I think mostpeople are aware of the different kinds of TV you can buy, but Greg, just walkus through how people should be thinking about the different categories of howyou buy on TV.
Greg Kalin: Yeah. Um,it's super important when you go into TV to have access to the entire universe [00:08:00] of TV viewers, right? That's kind of thepoint. Of coming to TV is to untap that scale. Um, and, and unlock thatstorytelling. Right. And so right now, viewership is sort of split betweenlinear and streaming, right?
Everyone's got a different way of consuming content, right? Andthere's all these different options out there today. Um, but what I can tellyou right from the viewer standpoint, they don't sit down and say, well,tonight I'm going to watch linear or tonight I'm going to watch streaming,right? They just kind of go find.
What program they want to watch, wherever it is. Right. And solet me give you an example, just to kind of tangibly understand what linearstreaming online video is. Right. Let's take shark tank as an example. Um, soshark tank, you might watch the first run episode on ABC. It's going to be airat the same time, and everybody's going to watch at the same time.
Right. Um, you do that through your cable box or broadcast, um,whatever you're using here for sort of general TV setup, and then maybe youmiss it. Right. Uh, maybe you don't catch it in that time slot is you're gonnawatch on demand on something like Hulu. That's, that's streaming, right? [00:09:00] Or maybe you don't even care about 75percent of the episode.
You really just want to see one brand's pitch. You go look itup on YouTube. Well, that's where the online video comes in. And so at Tatara,right, we're really focused on accessing that entire landscape of video,getting on the big screen and be able to measure across. All of them tounderstand which is most effective for you from an acquisition standpoint.
Eric: So Spencergoing into it, how much had you done TV advertising before with, with otherbrands or was it new to you with built?
Spencer Toomey:Linear was new to me, but I had done streaming.
Eric: Talk a littlebit about how you thought about setting up your first campaign. How did it workwhen you came to Tari setting up that first campaign?
Spencer Toomey: Yeah,totally. I think linear and streaming was going to be super important for uswith that mix to Greg's point. Of how consumers aren't really thinking about,do I go on Hulu or do I go on YouTube TV or do I go to YouTube? Like they knowwhat type of content they want to watch and they're going to find it as quickas possible.
And, uh, something that I did with linear first was we reallyjust wanted to target a specific audience with a specific creative. And [00:10:00] the thing we talked about earlier thisweek, Eric was just the Airbnb CMO on how they go after TV, which I just lovethis. And this has always stuck with me since I've read about it, but.
Basically, they noticed that their highest LTV and theirbiggest social moments, everything was when multiple families, whether relatedor just neighbors, would all go on vacation together and stay in one big house.And just how awesome that trip was, um, that was a lot of the feedback thatthey would get back.
So what they did was they picked huge moments in sports, notjust regular games. They were picking like Super Bowls. NFC championships, NBAplayoffs in certain cities. So where people were actually going to bemultifamily in a house, maybe having a party watching a game. And then theywould play that commercial of showing the pain point of, damn, we're all in ahotel, but we're in a separate room.
We're all going to bed at the end of the night later, like tothese separate rooms, but instead we can all be in this one big house, um,having this great moment. And I just thought that was super powerful. Um, soit's something app built that we've been doing ourselves, at least on [00:11:00] linear. And then for streaming, we'regoing after just straight up performance.
So like with the help of Tatari looking at their cost peracquisition, their cost per unique visitor, um, with their IP tracking back, itreally helps us get deep in the funnel to actually see, is there somedirectional evidence here that we can compare cross platforms? And this hashelped a ton as a growth marketer.
And then just in general, like all channels, like we'retriangulating as much as we can. So. That's going to go down into my postpurchase surveys. And to our MTA if possible, and then definitely intoincrementality as well. So it's all triangulating different things there.
Eric: I love thatAirbnb example. Cause it's like, you think of that kind of specificity with theweb and when you're, when you're doing, you know, met, you can target nurses orwhatever.
If your apparel gets loved by nurses with creatives andeverything, but you don't always think about that in, in the TV space, youthink of it more as a, as a broadcast channel. So it's cool to think of thelevel of targeting that you can achieve with it. What, what was the level oftargeting that you guys set out for?
To, to aim for with your campaigns.
Spencer Toomey: Yeah.So for linear [00:12:00] specifically, we weresuper lucky to sign Gronk. Um, he actually came to our office. We shot with himfor multiple days. He, the, the content's really funny. He actually pretendslike he's an employee. So like our consumer can try to kind of somewhat putthemselves in his shoes, but in a comical way, um, he tries on a bunch ofdifferent products.
So we have different cuts we can use across all channels. Andthen, um, with Tatari, we were kind of diving into like, all right, where isthis built, this built guy at, where are this AOV, um, this type of income,this gender, and that it all led to sports, right? So Gronk was kind of thatperfect fit. And so we started targeting tons of different sports channels withthis Gronk creative, and then after we ran that, not only did we see goodresults in platform with Tatari.
But in our post purchase surveys, we saw a five times lift ofasking people, have you seen an ambassador from one of our ads? Uh, Gronk hadfive times any other ambassador. And then when we drilled down to people thathad heard about us through a commercial, um, that was eight times. [00:13:00] So it was just super awesome to see thatwe could use someone huge, like Gronk, which we were already kind of nervous.
To use. He's awesome. Great athlete. I love him personally, butlike obviously it's saturated as well, but still definitely resonating with theright people on the right channels. So
Eric: it was, it wasreally cool to see. I really want to go to one of Gronk's cruises. I've heardhe just runs these insane party cruises.
So if you, if you, if you know him, maybe you can get me aninvite, but I love that you mentioned post purchase surveys there. Cause Ithink that's something we talk about on the podcast a lot. How else, like whatother KPIs are you using to measure the success of these campaigns? Yeah.
Spencer Toomey: Well,yeah, definitely incrementality.
So we have our partners over there that we're looking at and wecan see pretty high incrementality. If you just go strictly MTA route, it'sreally hard with TV, right? It's not like you're going to see what that click,that last click from other things. And if you just went off MTA, you'ddefinitely be like, Oh, TV doesn't work.
This isn't, this isn't good. And then with Tatari as well, withtheir IP tracking and just their UI in general, I'm able to go in there and see[00:14:00] a cost per acquisition from theirend. Um, as well as a cost per unique visitor and just cost per view. So thoseare huge to me. And then one at the top of the funnel that I don't think a lotof people think about Eric, but just coming from an area where I boughtbillboards for like a year straight, um, is CPMs, right?
Like at the end of the day, if I can compare a CPM from acommercial to a billboard. To meta to Google, and then I can actually comparethose channels to each other, whether it's peacock to a purchase on PGA, itjust really helps me identify what type of value are we getting here. And it'snot that I won't pay for an expensive CPM, right?
Like if I'm going to get Gronk and it's going to be the Mondaynight football, yes, I will pay for that expensive CPM if we believe that it'sgoing to get the yield. But at least it's a metric that I think it's overlookedsometimes. Um, from D to C companies and TV, like definitely still take it intoaccount.
Eric: That'sinteresting. Is it like a, a walk, like because the returns are inherently alittle bit longer or like how, how do you look at it as a true top of funnel?Channel or do you [00:15:00] look at it as adirect response channel? And then my, my, my question is, do you have like awaterfall of sort of metrics that you're looking at?
So like out of the gate, you're looking for a certain thing.And then two weeks later, there's like a, there's another metric that kind ofkicks in so that you can kind of gauge throughout the consideration funnel, howmuch it's working.
Spencer Toomey: Yeah,absolutely. So the beginning is going to be that CPM, that cost per visitor,that cost per acquisition, uh, partnering super close with Tatari on that.
post purchase survey. I'm usually looking at a month to twomonth lag, just to see if there's any movement on how would you hear about us?If TV comes up, see if that, that needle moved. Uh, if they did pig TV, whatchannels did you see? What streaming platforms were you using and see ifthere's any movement there from the dollars we've actually spent in there.
Um, and then the ambassadors, right? If we're running aspecific ambassador, that is recognizable. Um, not just somebody from socialmedia, that's more of an influencer type. I'll see if that moved as well. Andthen we can literally match that back to the dollars. So like, I'll be like,how much did we spend to how [00:16:00] muchwere people saying they recognized us and are we light in that area or are weheavy?
And that goes across all channels as well, Eric, but reallyhelps with TV the most. And then incrementality, of course, that's the one thatI think is really important for people to look at, which we've been doing.We've seen good results there over your traditional, like MTA, but MTA couldwork as well.
Eric: So that's multitouch multi touch attribution.
What, what platform would you be using for that? Is that wouldbe a third party?
Spencer Toomey: Yeah,we use, we use a third party over there. Um, North beam. But uh, with that,basically you're not going to see a ton of, a ton of value directly from thereunless you were to take like, uh, for example, which like this is, this iswhere it gets hard with the lag.
But what you could do is take a correlation graph. To organicrevenue to your spend on any channel. You can do it with any channel and lookat org, like just spend in general from meta to your, uh, organic revenue. Andusually those correlations will sit pretty tight. If you're a meta buyer. Yougo on TV, um, you might have to look at a lag on that.
So it's just, it's a little more [00:17:00]tricky, but you'll definitely still see a correlation. I think it's a, it's agood part of just triangulating everything to see if it's working for
Eric: you. Supercool. And then Greg, TV has been around a long time. Even streaming has beenaround a long time, but I feel like the tech stack when it comes to provingincrementality, proving attribution is probably where a lot of the developmenthas come in.
Can you talk a little bit about to Tariq's outcomes, focusedmeasurement.
Greg Kalin: Yeah. So,you know, first of all, I'll just say, I think any smart marketer is going totriangulate a bunch of different data sources to figure out what channels areworking best. And what really, what is, what is happening with my overallbusiness, right?
Is this overall mix having the impact that I wanted to use? Ifirst of all say, I fully encourage that. And, and also we allow you to exportall of our raw data into those MTAs and those MMMs so you can us Run thatanalysis with your TV data very, very easily. Um, but I know we kind of went tothe ground campaign, but just to kind of walk you through, right, how we wouldthink about getting there.
Right. So, so we're going to test across all these differentchannels, right? Um, we're going to say, okay, let's test [00:18:00] CNN. Let's test ESPN. Let's test Hulu.Let's test Netflix. Right. And let's just see which of those works the best,right. Based on response and conversions. And so early on in your campaign,you're going to be looking at, right.
Where is those strongest response metrics coming in? Um, andfor the built guys, right, that was obviously sport. So we continue to doubleduck down there and double down there. Right. And that's really how this turnsinto a digital channel because we're able to provide that data on a next daybasis. And then in turn, make those agile optimization.
So every week you should be running an efficient campaign rightnow, people are going to sell you on that and pitch you on that. Right. But toyour point that that path. And the ability to do that is really only effectiveif you have the right data and sufficient tech stack, right? So on Facebook,it's super easy, right?
You see the ad on Facebook and usually you're going to clickthrough on the same device. So the attribution there is fairly simplistic, butwith TV, you're watching on your screen and you're probably responding on yourphone. So you need to build this very [00:19:00]strong device graph where you can connect all the data points around tounderstand who's who, right?
And so that's where we use. 30 million smart TV devices, 100percent IP pass back from every streaming publisher. We use a pixel on yoursite, which ingests over a hundred million events every day across all of ourclients, right? And through this, we're able to build holdout groups andprovide those results on our next day basis.
And you can rely on those results to make those intra campaigndecisions saying, okay, Pluto is driving a stronger or more efficientincremental acquisition than Hulu is. Right. And then you're, Allocating budgetaway from Hulu into Pluto or into sports and built case. And so again, if youdon't have that sufficient tech stack and data and the metrics are going to belooking at are not accurate and therefore you're going to be making faultyoptimizations and you're going to reach this point in your TV campaign whereYou start to turn up the spend levers and you're like, well, wait a second.
Nothing's really happening here. That doesn't happen at Atari.Um, because of the tech stack that we [00:20:00]leverage, um, and our ability to consistently update what's going on in yourbaseline on a minute by minute basis, so on and so forth.
Eric: And I think it's a good point too, because there's a lot of brands listening that might belike, Oh, I can't.
I can't get Gronk if Gronk's the secret weapon, but what you'retalking about is what builds to that. You basically, so when you were running,when you were starting those campaigns, you were using, you know, othercreative product focus, creative stuff that you know, had worked from socials.And then from there through the data, you see where it's working, Oh my God,it's working with sports.
It's working with men. It's working with this. And then itmakes your ability to invest in something like Gronk on a lot more stableground because you have all the data that backs that, okay, this is likelygoing to work. 100 percent right. Yeah. And everyone loves Gronk as previouslymentioned.
Specifically then, uh, Spencer, when it like, so you've gotyour Gronk creative, you've got your, your more, your, your brand creative.When, when you think about a linear streaming and like a web TV, essentially,how are you thinking about structuring that campaign or how are you thinkingabout your creative across these channels?
Are they [00:21:00] the same?Are they different?
Spencer Toomey: I mean, they can, they could definitely be different. I think linear And evenstreaming these days to definitely premium, right? We always go back and forthwith any here. Like, do we put a QR code on it? We put a code in general. Um,we usually opt against it. I don't, I think it's like very specific to yourbrand, but we're just going for just really premium quality ad and then using,uh, stronger CTAs on our, our paid social channels.
Um, but another thing that we did with streaming was, um, Wejust launched our bio short. Anyone who's listening to this definitely get bioshort. You can use it for literally anything transitional for swimming, hiking,working out, uh, just going out for the day. I'm getting a great product. A lotof my friends hit me up and they love it.
But one of the things with us and a lot of brands have problemswith is just this high skew count. Any channel, we could start running an adand we're like, this ad is killing it. And we're just, we're just pushing ithard. And our finance inventory guys hit us up and they're like, Hey, likeyou've spent way more money on this ad than we're actually selling thisspecific unit.
And we're like, yeah, but like, [00:22:00] The ad itself's making good money and they'll be like, all right, cool. Keeppushing that ad. But like, let's make another one. Um, so we wanted to use aspecific skew and our video team and a brand team over here. They're awesome.Made an amazing ad montage action sports adventure with one of our actionsports athletes.
And then working with Tatari, we're able to target male demoacross. The peacocks of the world, Pluto's who lose, um, and really push thatad. And the one thing that we've seen, uh, just all around from a business isthat from the amount of money we've put into that product across channels,it's, we're actually pushing that inventory hard.
Um, and one of the main differences was streaming. So we dofeel pretty strong about that aspect of it. And I think that's kind of the twodifferent strategies we have right now, like pushing specific product drops. Orworking with recognizable brand ambassador and going for just an overalleducation of the brand.
Eric: And you thinkabout that. Yeah. Top of funnel with the Gronk stuff, education about thebrand, and then [00:23:00] it's much lower midfunnel when you're pushing an actual product and act like an actual productthat, you know, resonates with this specific audience. You're probably seequicker conversion metrics from something like that.
Spencer Toomey: Yep,exactly. And it was a, it was a new product drop. So like we felt confident andlike, Just getting it out there in front of a lot of our customers.
Eric: Very cool.Greg, one of the things we talked about in the pre interview was this idea ofconvergent TV. You've got these three major different streams of traffic.
Why is it so important to be able to access all of them on oneplatform?
Greg Kalin: So Iwould say the first thing, right, is if you go to someone that's just buyingyour linear TV or just buying your CTV. And they're, they're grading it. Right.Well, they're naturally going to, they're going to tell you to buy more CTV orthey're going to tell you to buy more linear, depending on what their incentiveis.
Right. Um, whereas we don't really care where you allocatethose dollars. We're just going to optimize towards what's efficient for you.Right. And our goal with every campaign is to turn to an evergreen channel.Right. So you should feel like every dollar you're putting in is netting out inan efficient customer acquisition costs for your overall goal.
Right. [00:24:00] Um, and if wecan, Leverage the entire landscape to do that, right? It's just moreadvantageous for us. Um, but if you're styling those two things out, it's goingto be really hard to understand which channels better for you when we'retalking about linear, talking about streaming and talking about online videobecause a, the measurements not uniform and be, you're going to have a partner.
That's Probably upselling you on, on any one of thoseparticular sets of inventory.
Eric: I'm, I'mwondering, Spencer, have you measured any, one of the things we love talkingabout is halo effects of, of, uh, retail and Amazon, things like that. Whenyou've got, when you're reaching this many new eyeballs on, on thisprestigious, you know, rectangle as the TV is, uh, do you notice sort of haloeffects across any of your other marketing efforts?
Spencer Toomey: Yeah,we definitely see downstream. Lift across other metrics as we're spending moreon TV. I think, yeah, at some point we've, I mean, we launched TV late lastyear. So at some point, of course we have to do a, do a holdout. And see if wesee that we can actually truly test that halo. But yeah, in our gut, we do feelconfident that [00:25:00] we're seeing thosespikes
Eric: from TV.
Super cool. And then Greg, I guess the other part of aconvergence is that you've, with all the device mapping, you're, you kind of,you're taking that user on a journey, no matter what device they're onpotentially. So it's like any, anytime you're in a consideration funnel and yousee a Facebook ad, and then you maybe see a TV and the next thing you'rescreaming, You see another, it just has that effect of being able to followthat sort of like users thread more carefully, which I would imagine is anotherreason that it's important that you can access all three of these, these kindsof inventory on one platform.
Greg Kalin: Yeah,that's correct. I just want to emphasize too, right. Our focus isincrementality, right? So if you see a Facebook impression and then a TV ad,we're probably not going to take credit for it. Because we don't feel like TVis the sole contributor to that conversion. Right? And that's really the goalwith our measurement is to, is to parse out the incrementality and make sureevery impression is the sole driver of, of a particular conversion that we'reattributing back to.
Eric: Spencer, whenit comes to actually like managing TV as a platform, what does that [00:26:00] look like on a day to day basis? Are youin the spreadsheets and picking which, which channels you want to be on, whichyou don't like, what does it actually feel like day to day when you're spendingsignificantly on TV?
Spencer Toomey: No,it's a great question.
I'm super lucky, obviously with Tatari and what we do is manageservice. So I have two great reps shout out, uh, Brandon and Moses. Um, andwhat we do is. We show them all of our reports. So all the stuff we'retriangulating, everything that I'm seeing, they're showing us everythingthey're seeing. Um, we've been obviously working together for a little whilenow, so they know exactly what we like.
They show us the split between streaming and linear. They showus which channels they're going to recommend for us to keep going on. Um, andwhich streaming platforms we're going to keep going on. Which creatives we'reseeing better response with. Uh, we're always going to push back on each other.It's a great, it's a great team.
Like we're really lean over here. Um, so we look at all of ourpartners in general. It's kind of an extension to the team and then back to alot of like the Airbnb style targeting, right? Like I'm always asking them ifI'm like, we know we have a her for him pushing. [00:27:00]I'll be like, Hey guys, what's up with the season finale of the bachelor.
And they'll be like, okay, this is the cost. I'm like, Whoa,that's a big one. Um, What's, what's the age demo. And they tell me, you know,excuse female, this age range. And I'm like, Oh, that seems a little bit tooexpensive, you know, but they're always coming to us with like, Hey, we justgot this fire sale. Do you guys want this NBA placement?
Hey, do you guys want to be in this UFC prelim? And we justfind that super valuable to have that team to be able to kind of give us thatskeleton of a campaign. And then for us to go in and build, cause they reallyare, you know, they're, they're the experts. Then they're every single day.And, um, I think the UI of everything just feels so native to a growthmarketer.
It helps us so much more when I was buying CTV back, um, atweed maps, it was almost like, I felt like someone faxed it to me, right? Likeit came on like this big clunky paper, like I was buying billboards, but now Ihave to Tari opened up pretty much all day next to my Meta, my Google. Uh, myTikTok. So like the platforms are all open right next to each other with Tatarithere.
So I can always go in there, see the media plan all clean. Ican have [00:28:00] on Slack with them. We meetonce a week.
Eric: Yeah, it'ssuper great. Very cool. And then Greg, you've also got a full self serveplatform for people that really want to twist, twist the knobs themselves.
Greg Kalin: So thenice thing about having a lot of data, right?
Isn't just the measurement, it's the planning side of things.And so a lot of brands, right? They might come to TV and think, well, there'sso many inventory options. I don't even know where to start, right? Should Istart with linear? Should I start with streaming? Should I start with onlinevideo? Should I be buying programmatic?
Should I go direct to these publishers? Should I be buying upfront or guaranteed inventory? Can I stick with remnant, right? So all thesedecisions you have to kind of think about, right? And that's where Tatari'splatform is able to aggregate all this different information, right? So we havenetworks and publishers updating pricing every week into our platform.
And then through that smart TV data, we're able to project whatthe viewership is going to be. And then we have. You know, hundreds ofthousands of lines of historical orders that our algorithms will sort throughand determine what that optimal bid point is. Right. And so that's why Spencersays, Oh, we're able to get access to [00:29:00]these crazy discounts and buyer sales.
You know, I'll give you one example. We had like a spot lastyear in the NBA finals and I think was 70 80 percent off and it drove 20, 000visitors to one of our client sites in a 30 second span. Right. Um, so thatinventory becomes available and how do you know what to go after? Right? It'sall that data you have in front of you.
So we've coupled that experience data with the IP level tounderstand who's watching what, when we can look at things like similarinventory at the IP level. So we know if ESPN is working well for built, we cansay, okay, well, what are those other IPS or similar IPS? Where else are theywatching? Are they watching Hulu?
Disney plus that's going to inform our next test. Right? Um,and so the brick to Spencer's point, you know, you can do this on a managedservice basis. You can rely on our team of experts that have a lot of TVexperience, but all of this is also you have the ability to do it ourselves.Services where you can basically put in your planning metrics that I want totarget this audience.
This is my, this is my KPI. Benchmark, [00:30:00]find me the most effective media to run this. You click the button and we'regoing to spit out a plan. And oftentimes, right, that algorithm is beating thehuman media buyer in terms of pricing by like 30 to 70%. Um, so the efficiencygains are, are, are tenfold in that sense.
Eric: The remnantthing is, is interesting because I guess with linear TV, it's like a newsletterin a way where we, when we send a newsletter that doesn't have any ads in it,it gets burned in a way. So you're going to get all of these opportunities forremnant opportunity, remnant inventory, uh, because if it doesn't go out withads, then it doesn't have ads in it essentially.
Right.
Greg Kalin: Yeah. AndI think remnant gets this like sort of dirty connotation around it, but it'sreally just, Open inventory that the network has. And so the, the, because it'sunsold, they have, you know, it comes at a discount. Right. Um, but you'resaying there's a viewer, you don't know what remnant versus upfront inventoryis right.
Your whole goal is the advertiser is just be in that momentassociated with those brands. It's a very powerful thing. You can't, [00:31:00] you can't meet on other channels.
Eric: What is thebarrier to entry with TV at this point? Like for the brands that are listening,we've got a lot of brands in that, like, you know, 1 million to 5 million, uh,level.
Like what did the brands that have the most success on TatariGreg come to you in terms of budgets to start out?
Greg Kalin: I think,you know, like I said, about 10 to 20 percent of your marketing budget, uh, isa good place to think about starting a test. Ideally, right. We like to start abrand that. 150 K over six weeks.
And so we'll test different networks, you know, each, eachweek, the first four weeks, and then optimize weeks, five and six. But where Isee brands get tripped up the most is with creative, you know, they don't knowwhat to run. They feel like it's a high production value or nothing. Right.But, um, I think the important.
Thing to do there is just gather learnings as quickly aspossible. Um, go with the social creative, go with the UGC creative, whateverhave available, start to collect where the response is coming in. You caninvest more over time. Like I don't think built started with the Gronkowskicreative. Um, they probably started [00:32:00]something from Facebook, right?
And so don't let creative be a barrier. There's a ton ofsolutions out there. We even have partnerships. AI services that can, can dosomething for free. Um, and then, yeah, you know, I know I mentioned a hundredK number, but we don't really have minimums at Atari. Um, we try to look ateverything on a case by case basis and say, what does this brand need to, tostart on TV, to really feel like it's a success and to feel confident in theresults.
So we see brands start as low as 5k a week. Um, you could evenstart lower if you just want to do retargeting. Um, you can do retargeting onCTV. Um, but. That's, that's a long and short of, of how I'd answer that.
Eric: When it comesto meta advertising, a lot, a lot of times, you know, we're at pilot house,we're a, uh, like a performance agency.
So there's always, there's sometimes a battle on the creativebetween scrappy creative, like really working well and like high polishedbranded creative being more what the brand wants. And it's funny, I waswatching the Superbowl this year and I saw, what was it? It was Kanye or [00:33:00] Ye's ad that was just like, Go to mywebsite.
Everything's 20, but it was just filmed on his phone. Like wespent all of our money on, on this spot. We had no money for our creative.What's the, what's the status on like scrappy creative or, or like, like yousay, like UGC lower budget creative on a platform like TV. Is it, is it a goodsort of like a switch up in a way when you see something that's lower producedon TV or do you generally want to have something that is produced to the higherstandards of TV?
Greg Kalin: Weliterally see everything work. So we have. Tons of brands running UGCcreatives. We have tons of brands running very expensive creatives that arehighly high production value. Um, and again, that's my point around 2 things,right? Don't let creative be a barrier. We see these UGC creatives that justclearly.
You know, explain the value proposition who they're goingafter, right? What their differentiator is. That's that's the key. Can you dothose three things in your creative in 15 to 30 seconds? Um, and a lot of timesthose creators can run for a very long time. [00:34:00]But the more you can test right and actually measure those creatives againsteach other, the more you're going to understand what's working for you and alsocreating.
Scalable options for you, right? So, so built says they've gotdifferent creatives for different products, but you also might want to do afemale skewing creative and a male skewing product creative right now that nowyou've doubled the amount of media you can spend on TV or maybe you want to goafter an older audience with one of your creatives and a younger audience whenyou're creative.
So there's so many different routes you can take. The firstthing to do is just get something up and running and get some learnings,understand where your audiences are responding, right? And then you could buildsomething. Towards those audiences, if you need later on, once you've provenout the channel,
Eric: one of thebiggest issues on, on social advertising is creative burnout.
What, what does creative burnout feel like on TV? Does it docreatives tend to have longer legs per impression?
Greg Kalin: Theycertainly do. And, and part of that may just have to do with the, with thesheer reach of the channel, but we see. Creatives, you know, [00:35:00] continue their efficiency, you know, forover a year running on air.
I know I could take calm, for example. I don't know if you guyshave seen the calm at it. It's just raindrops. They've been running it myentire time at the Atari, and it's never been dethroned. They have tried 100different things. It just goes to show I, at least it comes as far as TV goes.I think this, this idea of creative burnout can be a myth.
It more likely means your audience is saturated.
Eric: Very cool. Andyou, you see the same thing on, on your bias, Spencer.
Spencer Toomey: Yeah,for sure. I think, yeah, to your point, even like thinking of UGC or thingslike that on TV. Um, I think that is a great pattern, like pattern disruptor,as I would call it going on to TV with UGC.
But for us, like, Going back to, you know, we're a premiumbasics brand. We want the creative to be premium in premium spots. We just wanteverything just to flow and be cohesive across that. But I do think for somebrands, yeah, like UGC would be amazing. And even for us, like we're so luckyto have so much data and high, uh, creative [00:36:00]volume from just an awesome in house team.
That even on meta, like we were testing hooks, we're testingaudio hooks. We're testing formats. We're testing different models. We'retesting millions of different variables. That we're pulling up in ourdashboards that we can place these bets with more confidence in
Eric: what would yousort of final word, Spencer, what would you say to the, to the brands out therein that like 500, 000 to 3 million, 5 million level thinking about getting intoTV?
What would be your advice?
Spencer Toomey:Definitely just use your best gut on what your brand is and who your audienceis. Where do you want them to picture themselves? When do you want them to seeyour brand? And then also, even though we don't do the QR code and, and, uh,coupon code route as much, there's some crazy stat, like 70 to 80 percent ofpeople nowadays have their phone in their hand while they watch TV.
So like, there's so much opportunity there. Definitely stillthink about good hooks, get their attention. A lot of us, even me and mygirlfriend, we always will catch each other just like on our phone while we'rewatching a show gun, like the best part. [00:37:00]And one of us would be like, Hey, put your phone down, you know?
So there's a lot of opportunity to be had. Um, but yeah, just,just lead with conviction and you know, they know their brands better thananyone else.
Eric: So. Greg, I'mglad you brought up the Calm example because that's such a, I often thought ofthat if you, you know, when you go to the movies and you're playing all thosecommercials before the movies, I always just wanted to buy a commercial and belike, hey, we know you hate the commercials before the movies, so we just madethis one 10 seconds, in a way, and that's what the Calm app does, in a way, itgives you like a 30 second, you know, moment to breathe in, breathe out.
It's such a unique sort of activation. And Spencer's alludingto the fact that there is a great opportunity to do these more uniqueactivations with QR codes. Are there any other unique activations that you'dlike draw people's attention to, to kind of inspire them who might belistening?
Greg Kalin: First ofall, we can do the movie thing.
If anyone's interested, we can buy the spots. But, um, youknow, I think one thing, We didn't talk about that. I think it is an importantstrategy to discuss, and maybe it's not exactly what you're alluding to, butit's kind of the first thing that popped in my mind is just, and I know this isbig for Bill, but [00:38:00] Black Friday,Cyber Monday, right?
How you approach that period, because on average, our clientssee an increase Conversion rate by 50%, right? So you're now able to take onmore expensive media. And Q4 happens to be this great time on TV where you'vegot all these live sports. You've got all these show premieres going on. You'vegot different integrations.
You can do, um, you can sponsor. You could sponsor Shogun onHulu if you really wanted to, right? Um, but the important thing is using datato make these decisions, right? So we're not going to ask you to dive right inhead first with these big splash opportunities. We're going to prove out alongthe way.
We're going to say, okay, This little spot had a good response,right? Let's move up the next year, right? Now this sports spot had a goodresponse, right? Okay, we're getting more and more comfortable here, right?And, and, and so if you're able to do that, going into that Black Friday, CyberMonday period, it unlocks this huge opportunity to really blow it out and seesuper efficient performance.
Um, and I think that's, [00:39:00]that's the biggest thing.
Eric: Yeah. And Ithink, and as you iterate those placements, as Spencer's example, you caniterate the creative as well. Iterative performance is, is kind of the secret,the secret unlock to this space. So it's cool to hear how iterative you can geton TV these days. If anyone's listening and they want to know more about Tatari,you can go to tatari. tv. There'll be a link in the show notes here. Where canour listeners find you guys if they want to reach out and ask other questions?
Spencer Toomey:LinkedIn. Yeah. Easily LinkedIn. Uh, Spencer Toomey, easiest place. Yeah.Thanks. So just slide into my DMS and I'm always down to, to chat shop.
I mean, Eric, thank you a ton for having me on the show, man.It was great to meet you this week and a super fun having this conversation. Soanytime on air, off air, definitely hit me up.
Eric: Nice. That'sawesome. I'm going to get a pair of these shorts too. I know I'm, I'm, I'm lowon shorts this summer, so I'm getting a pair of the bio shorts.
I think you sold me.
Greg Kalin: Perfect.Nice. How about you, Greg? LinkedIn is probably the best place to, my name'sGreg Kaelin, and I'm happy to, to just look through and talk through yourbusiness and your marketing strategy. See if TV is a fit, see what might makesense. If any guys want to, want to DM me, [00:40:00]you can also, like you said, visit tatari.tv. I do again, want to thank you too, Eric and Spencer. It'sbeen a great conversation. Time chatting with you. Um, I'm a huge built fan.Uh, I love their products. So I'll even say you guys should go buy built. Ifyou haven't, I'm happy to do this. This is a lot of fun. Sweet. Thanks guys.Have a great
Eric: weekend.
Spencer Toomey: Havea good one guys.
Eric: Thanks so muchfor listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter,you can do that right now at direct to consumer all one word. co I'm Eric Dick,and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.
