The Advertising "Black Box" Myth: Why Your Ads Aren't Working (with Skip Wilson)

Kate and Sam sit down with Skip Wilson, founder and CEO of DraftMedia Partners, and former VP of Digital Media at Clear Channel/iHeartRadio, for a deep dive into paid advertising: what it actually costs, when a business is genuinely ready for it, and why most people treat it like an unpredictable black box instead of a diagnosable system. Skip pulls back the curtain on demand-side platforms (DSPs), the most underused ad channel right now (OTT/CTV), how AI is already reshaping search and influencer marketing, and a customer lifetime value case study that completely reframes what "ROI negative" actually means.

About our guest:
Skip Wilson is the founder and CEO of DraftMedia Partners, a full-service paid advertising agency that started life as a SaaS forecasting tool (Direct Response Advertising Forecast Technology) before pivoting into hands-on execution — much of it white-label work behind other creative and digital marketing agencies. Before DraftMedia, Skip was VP of Digital Media at Clear Channel, which became iHeartRadio. Website: draftadvertising.com

• 0:00  Podcast intro
• 0:17  Episode opens, Kate and Sam welcome guest Skip Wilson (DraftMedia Partners)
• 2:25  Today's topic: paid advertising, the channel people "either love or hate"
• 6:26  The two schools of thought on when to start advertising — and why Skip says wait until you have capacity and know your customer's entry point
• 10:36  How DraftMedia started as a SaaS forecasting tool before pivoting to full execution (and why two-thirds of its business is white-label)
• 16:02  What a DSP (demand-side platform) actually is, in plain English
• 21:31  The minimum ad budget rule of thumb: ~$1,000/month per tactic
• 22:59  The Bojangles case study: why a "$6 ticket" that looked ROI-negative was actually a huge win once customer lifetime value entered the picture
• 25:46  Is paid advertising coming to ChatGPT and other AI chat tools? (It's already here, and influencer marketing may get disrupted first)
• 30:09 Skip's favorite advertising platform: why OTT/CTV (streaming TV) is the most underutilized channel for small business right now
• 37:56  Apple Search and Apple Intelligence: why you'll soon need an "Apple Business Profile," not just a Google one
• 40:28  Are Meta ads about to get more expensive? Skip's take on pricing plateaus and Meta's wearables (smart glasses) as a future ad channel
• 46:54  Skip's closing insight: advertising isn't a black box, it's a series of steps, and why that reframe makes broken campaigns easy to diagnose
• 54:15 Outro

What you'll learn in this episode

• Why you shouldn't spend a dollar on ads until you can answer two questions: do you have the capacity to handle more business, and do you actually know who your customer is and how they first reach you (6:26)
• The "customer journey" framing Kate and Sam use with new businesses, and why advertising without it just scales the wrong thing faster (6:26)
• What a DSP (demand-side platform) actually is, and why DraftMedia calls itself a "DSP aggregator" that gives small businesses access to inventory (Hulu, Amazon's DSP, etc.) they'd normally be locked out of by high minimum spends (16:02)
• The rule-of-thumb minimum ad budget: roughly $1,000/month per tactic, and why running on two or three platforms means budgeting accordingly (21:31)
• The Bojangles case study: a $6 average ticket that looked disastrously ROI-negative — until customer lifetime value (a $300+/year loyalty customer) told the real story (22:59)
• Why Skip thinks OTT and connected TV (streaming) advertising is the most underutilized channel available to small businesses right now, and how it's been democratized away from being "network-television-budget only" (30:09)
• The real difference between YouTube pre-roll ads and YouTube TV (which counts as true CTV) (30:09–37:56)
• How AI is already showing up in advertising (ads inside ChatGPT and Gemini), why Google's move away from exact-match keywords is a response to longer, conversational searches, and why Skip thinks influencer marketing is the segment most likely to be disrupted first (25:46)
• Why small businesses will soon need to think about an "Apple Business Profile" the same way they think about Google Business Profile, as Apple rolls out its own search and Apple Intelligence (37:56)
• Skip's take on Meta ad costs plateauing, and the wildcard of Meta's wearables (smart glasses) becoming an ad channel (40:28)
• Skip's closing reframe: advertising isn't a mysterious black box — it's a series of steps, each with one job, and knowing that makes it easy to diagnose which piece is actually broken (46:54)

DraftMedia Partners: https://draftadvertising.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

They have over 30 years of business ownership between them and County. They are Kate DeYong and Sam Morris. Each week they work through what you earn, what you keep, how you grow, and how you lead a thriving business. This is the Thriving Business Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Thriving Business Podcast. I'm here as always with my wonderful co-host Sam Morris in Melbourne. Hello, Sam. Hi Kate. And very, very honoured today to have a special guest with us for the first time in about 18 episodes. We have Skip Wilson from Draft Media. Hi, Skip.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Hey, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

We're very, very excited to have you on. As I was saying before we started recording, Sam and I have just finished an 18-episode run of the roadmap to business success, where she and I talk through everything we've learned over the last combined 30 years between us on business building. And you are our very first guest following up that series. So very, very happy to have you on. Yeah. And for those who don't know Skip, he is based in it was South Carolina in the US. Is that right? That's right. So let me just give a little intro. Skip is the founder and CEO of Draft Media Partners. He was the former VP of digital media at Clear Channel, which became iHeartRadio. So he has a very impressive and strong back background in all of this wonderful marketing and advertising stuff. So iHeartRadio is one of the top podcasts. Would you call it a streaming platform? Or what's the technical name for it?

SPEAKER_03 1:47

It is, yeah, it is its own streaming platform. It's also a network of podcasts. Like it in other words, you can join its network as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yes. Yeah. So it's a very sought-after channel to put podcasts out there into the world. And Skip was the founder. So very impressive track record. Today the topic is something that Sam and I have so many questions about because it's not something we are experts in by any by any uh stretch. And it's the field of paid advertising. And I think Skip, you were saying you either love it or hate it.

SPEAKER_03 2:23

But exactly. Advertising either it always either gets a groan unless someone's in the weeds or so. It's always viewed as like the necessary evil of marketing, but it's uh it's my favorite part.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yeah. And also to me, the concept of if you earn three dollars for every dollar you spend, who's gonna argue with that? Do you know what I mean? Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

Exactly. There's no other like channel in a business where you can predictably and reliably like get those kinds of results. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Yeah. So Sam, I'm gonna leave it to you to ask the first question because I know you're bursting with with questions.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Oh, I I am, and I feel like it's an FAQ today because I've got so many random questions popping into my head. The first one, Skip, is I'd love to know because when we were chatting, you said you you started in this at 16 years old. Like so this has been your career. And you know, you want to know what what a fabulous expert you are. I would love to know what's changed from when you started at 16 to what it looks like today.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Well, when I first started, the you know, I was in I got into it because I want I thought of myself as a writer, right? And so I was like, oh, I want to be a writer and be a creative and all of those different things. Now, one thing that's changed is I know that I'm terrible at creative and that's not my strength, but still enjoyed some. But it's uh, but that was, you know, the but the big part of it, I mean, I got into web design right after that. At that time, it was convincing businesses that they even need a website. Like most businesses were like, why do we really need a website? Is this really gonna be here? Then of course, social media came around and everyone was like, you know, you either had businesses that thought, well, social media is gonna completely change our business and they were going all in on it, or you had businesses that were like, why on earth would we participate in this at all? And so, and even in my early days in the media space, it started off with, you know, you I remember the days when we would have to call up clients and be like, you wouldn't know till the end of the month how they were doing, right? And so their radio schedule would run or their TV schedule would run, and you would call them up and you were just sort of like fingers crossed, like hoping they had a great month, because you really didn't know anything about other than you know, you knew they ran commercials ran, but that was about all you knew. And so you were just sort of hoping that you get good response, and then so then that sort of transition into the digital age sort of coming in, like both literally with companies building out websites and those things, but then also the ability to track stuff and see what's working, what's not working. I mean, seeing that come and then the cookie apocalypse and meta's you know stripping off like capabilities and then seeing some come back and changes. So, yeah, there've been a lot of changes.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

That's I've never thought about that. The back in the days when you did TV advertising and and you actually had no way of tracking whether it was working or not, uh, other than how many customers are coming through the door before and after you do the capcom.

SPEAKER_03 5:26

Correct. And when and when you were on the sales, the sales side, like like I was at that time, like you like I said, you just sort of had to hope that they had a good month. And you you know, you have no clue whether that's actually related to your ads or not, right? Like it was might be I had a lot of card dealer clients at that time, and it might just be that you know there was a lot of good weather. If there's a lot of sunny days, they would sell cars, if it was a lot of rainy days, they wouldn't. And uh so you just had to sort of hope it was good weather all the time.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Wow, it's uh a little bit different now, isn't it? Being out of track and record every single click cost per click and cost per conversion and exactly, yeah, quite a quite a difference indeed. Yeah. Sam, any other burning questions? Oh, lots.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Like I said, I can go far beyond the time that we have today. I think that there's there's a lot of there's there's two very big schools of thought, I think, about the accessibility of paid advertising. And why one is get in early and just straight out of the gate, jump into paid advertising. That's the quickest way to grow your business. And the other is that you hear the so-called experts tell you is to wait until you have a proven business, business model and a proven product before you spend any money on advertising. I'd love to hear what your take on that is. Good question.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

I really don't think that you should spend until you have at least a few things ironed out. Like you should have your sort of people and the capacity to take more business, obviously. I know that sounds obvious, but you should one have the ability to take more business literally. Like your processes shouldn't be maxed out, your people shouldn't be maxed out, or why advertise? Because if it works, then you can make a lot of people frustrated. So those should be always ironed out. You also shouldn't advertise until you have a good sense of who you like, who you actually help, like who is your target audience, like who is your customer very specifically. If you don't know who that person is and also what that entry point is for them, in other words, if you don't know whether it's phone calls, form fills, online checkouts, or you know, a class that they sign up for or something else, if you don't know what that sort of low-level entry point is for someone who has no idea who you are, then you shouldn't advertise yet. You should keep experimenting and trying until you can figure out, okay, when people come to us, these are the kinds of things they ask. This is the kind of entry point for them. And then here's the type of person that we serve. Um, even if you're you don't have to have a hundred customers before you know that, but you should have enough, you should have done enough business to get a sense of why did they choose you? Like it should be somebody that's not friends and family, right? It should be somebody that had no clue you existed, they bought from you. You and then you should be able to ask them, Why did you buy from me? What those things until you do that, you have nothing really that you can advertise because advertising is just scaling that audience up, right? And scaling that messaging up. And until you know who you're talking, you know, who you actually help and what that entry offer is, you've got nothing that you really can advertise.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

That's right. And that's actually interesting because that's the work that Sam and I do with a lot of new businesses is getting to that point where they have I think you're referring to what we would call the cust customer journey, right? You have you have an entry point, you have a step A, step B, step C, and you can capture them, nurture them, and lead them through a process. And if you don't have that in place, there's nothing to scale.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

Exactly. You're just wasting money. The number of times that you have like an um, you know, an accountant that's running something like, you know, schedule a free consultation. Well, that's a pretty heavy lift, right? Like I'm if I'm not, you know, I don't necessarily I don't need an accountant until you need one, right? So you'd have to have a massive budget with massive reach in hopes that you're getting the small percentage of businesses out there that are currently in need. And so it's just much better to be able to have something that's like, yeah, free audit or something like that, yeah that that every appeals to everybody.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Because what you're referring to is is that concept that it's something like only one to three percent of people at any time are ready to buy. They're in you know active buying mode. And what you're saying is by offering that free audit, yeah, you're offering to give them something of value, capture them in your, you know, your orbit until the they are ready to to buy from you, but they also need in that time, you know, what do they say, seven to twenty touch points to build trust with you, that they see that you're actually someone offering value, giving value before they'll actually reach out for that call to to engage to work with you. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So does your does your company help people develop that process, or do you do you purely work with clients once they've got all that in place? And then it's about the scale and advertising.

SPEAKER_03 10:21

So we so drafts started off as a software as a service. Like our original, our original product back in 2020 was we had a dynamic response advertising forecast tool, which is what draft stood for. Where essentially, if you had a company in a particular geography and you were you were saying a roofing company in this geography, you would be able to plug in your numbers, and then it would pull what the cost per click and cost per thousand is in your area and build the media plan based off of your cost per lead. And our original, and I know I'm giving you the longest answer ever to your simple question, but the original idea was well, we'll sell this planning tool to agencies, and then and then life will be great, right? Like so they'll they'll be able to have better plans and all these other things. And after about eight months of trying to do that, we kept getting the feedback of, hey, this is a great plan, but we don't have access to Trade Desk, or hey, this is a great plan, but you're talking about a three or four-tiered campaign, and we only have two people that do ads, paid ads at our place. So after getting that feedback so many times, we realized, oh, that's actually what we should do. So actually, most of our business is the actual just hands to keyboard like planning and execution for creative and existing agencies. So most of our businesses do have that stuff ironed out beforehand. We can do it and do some of it for direct advertisers, but for the most part, we're like the nerds in the basement helping another agency, uh a creative agency usually like do the actual, we do the the pixeling and all of the all of the not fun part.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

All the mechanics, the lit, there's a lot that goes into it, right? Yeah. Exactly. And yeah, I think a lot of people might not realize the amount of setup that goes into doing advertising well. And pixels are so critical, aren't they, for understanding how many people are coming to your page, how many are converting, and and so could you just for the for the laymans out there that don't understand what a pixel is, could you describe that?

SPEAKER_03 12:20

It is well, it's exactly like what you'd think of when you think of pixels on a TV or anything else. It's it's a small dot. But what it means in the advertising world is it's a small dot that is then reporting back to something. So it's reporting back when an actual button on a page is clicked, or it's reporting back when an email is opened, or or any it's it's just a way of tracking things.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

It's a piece of code, right? That you put on a page, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

And so in that little one pixel square loads, that code fires off and then the information is delivered back. But in today's world, like to be able to run like omni-channel like ad campaigns, you know, I mentioned trade trade desk has like large minimums. A lot of outdoor companies have large minimums, and to be able to have access to some of these, uh like you know, what's a lot of times called walled gardens of stuff, you have to have a huge budget. And that's part of what we do is we we meet all those minimums because of our like, you know, all of our advertisers together. And so we just sort of democratize that access is the way we put it. We like we give everyone access to those things that they normally, you know, you probably wouldn't be able to meet, you know, who you know, this one advertiser probably wouldn't be able to meet the minimum on that platform, but we do, and so we're able to give them. Uh yeah, they can run 500 bucks on Hulu, but even though they wouldn't be able to do it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

I see. Okay. Yeah. So it's interesting that you say that you predominantly work with other creative agencies, meaning digital marketing agencies.

SPEAKER_03 13:51

We do, yeah. A lot of like web design agencies, digital marketing agencies. Um, a lot of it's white label, a lot though, which is interesting because we're in the stage right now where we're trying to build case studies, which has been kind of funny because we're like, well, some of our best case studies we can't tell anyone about, which is sort of.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Yes, yeah, because you're behind the scenes, and yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

Yeah. Downside of white label, but but yeah, a good two-thirds of our business is is exactly that. It's right. White label behind some creative agency. And yeah, mostly digital agency. We do have a traditional media buyer as well, but from I mean, vast majority of what we do is digital.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Yeah, and that's interesting because it because it is such a specialist field, it takes such a depth of knowledge and experience to be able to do advertising well that even digital marketing agencies who promise that they can run ad campaigns for their clients, you end up using you because it you've got the whole team of specialists there that can do it well and actually get results for them.

SPEAKER_03 14:47

Exactly. Yeah, because it's to be able to otherwise in today's world, you're having to pay for the data, you're having to pay for the person in the chair to actually run it and check on stuff and those things. And then you, I mean, you could have to pay for just reporting platforms, like all that stuff adds up. And so it's just easier for them to be like, okay, we've got this order, you guys do it.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Yeah, exactly. Take a cut, yeah. And I mean it's it is complex when you look at your website. You it you've said draft is a DSP. Can you just because I think you said draft stands for direct response, what was it?

SPEAKER_03 15:20

It it did. It it's still it's something still can. We can still, but direct response advertising forecast technology, right? So which was a or which still is the name of our software that allows us to forecast a cost per lead prior to.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Right. It's it's that planning that you mentioned wrapped up into a yeah, a tool that you can offer. And then DSP, what does that stand for?

SPEAKER_03 15:43

That's that's demand-side platform. So that is a uh essentially a way of uh which I know that's not helpful. That's one of those acronyms that even if you know what it stands for, still tells you almost nothing. But a demand-side platform is essentially just a way of combining a whole bunch of other things, like other websites, other blogs, like biggest DSPs are like you know, Google's display network, Amazon's DSP. So not just Amazon's website, but then the other sites that have Amazon ads on it.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:13

Um we are kind of a we're like a DSP aggregator, if you will. We kind of take several DSPs and combine them together.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Because under that, you've got native ad marketplace, social media and search ads, traditional media buying, media planning, direct mail and print, attribution tools, creative services platform, first and third party party data tools, all in one place. And like it's a lot, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:39

Correct, exactly. We tried to once we realized that no one's gonna pay us for our software, instead they just want us to be hands-on keyboard, then it was like, all right, well then we were like, all right, well, then we need to be able to execute every type of paid advertising. And so it became pretty clear what our expansion path was from there. So then it was just okay, well, how can we get enough going to be able to offer this now? And through that, and then mergers and acquisitions, that's how we sort of grew. We were like, hey, you're good at direct mail, let's buy you guys out, and then now we're good at direct mail.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

That's great. Right, nice, yeah. And it says that you do it all with no contracts, no retainers, and no platform fees.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

Exactly. Yeah, we don't do it because you know, getting most of the actual end advertisers are paying some other agency like a retainer or a cost so that's kind of the uh the byproduct, the happy bride product of our uh of our business model is that we can't charge these things. So everything has to be month-to-month and easily cancelable and all those things. So that's we are now experimenting with because one of the things that we got, we just did this big brand survey on our own stuff. Uh, because right now the brand is essentially like the from when we launched, it's like a hand from a handful of our heads. Now we've just reached the size this summer where we were like, all right, let's do an actual brand study and let's try to figure out who our target audience is. One of the things that came back is that draft for most people is either referenced with football, in this case American football, yeah, American football, or or beer. And so we were like, okay, well, that's fine. So one of the things now is that we're going to with advertising is like we put advertising on tap. Like we make it as simple as like you pull the handle, you get advertising. Brilliant. The minute you don't want it, you turn it off.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

That's so good. I didn't even think of that because the first thing I thought of when I heard draft was architecting architecture.

SPEAKER_03 18:28

Yeah. Same thing, same.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Which is funny because I love a good draft beer, but it just didn't even the same. I always thought of it in terms of engineering as well. And also in terms of like a rough draft of a plan, like so because it's constantly improving and all of those things. But in all of our little testing and brand, nobody got that. Everyone thought footballer beer. And that works for advertising. Yeah, right, exactly. You stumbled on the yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

It's worked out. But it's also a really good point to make about how you perceive your own brand can be so different to how the audience perceives it.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Yeah, exactly. Because I would have never, like I said, and it's funny because I love beer and football, but but but for those things, didn't even didn't even enter my mind. But yeah, and that messaging of also to our original thought, uh, and now I'm just spending way too long talking about our my own company, but the our original while you're here. All right. Well then the our original thought was all right, we'll be the we'll position ourselves as like mission control, like we're the nerds in the basement while you guys are going off and doing exciting things. And that that's kind of what you see in the imagery on our site now. Yes. But in actual testing, no one really cares about being cutting edge in in advertising. What they care about is ease and making it super simple.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

So getting and getting the ROI. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:51

Exactly. So the space stuff's going away, the mission control stuff's going away. And that's one of those things that I wouldn't have even thought about. I was, you know, it's to me, I was like, well, that that makes sense. We cover the like the nerdy, almost more tech engineering side of it while you guys focus on the creative stuff. But then in actual testing, it's like, no, really, what they want is just to be able to kind of mark, okay, yeah, this campaign's done, and then they don't have to worry about it. They know that it's in good hands. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

So the advertising is coming away. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Letting go of the original identity. Interesting. But whatever works, right? We've got to respond to market demand, and that's part of the the whole process. Yeah. So I I'd love to know because a lot of our clients and even us, Sam and I run, you know, we're launching a new group program soon. And the question is to us, do we invest in paid advertising to, you know, to launch or or or to recruit in in the future? And realistically, what is the sort of budget a company a business needs to look at to to dip their toe into the world of advertising?

SPEAKER_03 21:00

So you there is like sort of a kind of hard minimum in terms of if it's below this number, don't. And that would be about a thousand dollars per tactic. If you don't have about a thousand dollars per month per tactic, uh then it's probably not worth doing.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah. And what what would you define as one tactic?

SPEAKER_03 21:20

So like one tactic would be, for example, like search or social or and in social it would be each platform. So like you know, LinkedIn would be its own platform, meta would be its own. Yeah. So if you want to be on two or three platforms, you're looking at a minimum of around two or three thousand dollars a month.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's that's kind of um standard, isn't it? For it is for agencies.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

The and the easiest way too to figure out like what yours should be is in B2B, it's probably gonna cost you about a hundred bucks a lead. And so you just sort of do the math from there. That's that's kind of the the cocktail napkin version version of it is you know, you know, it's probably gonna cost you about a hundred bucks. So if you, you know, how many leads would you have to have? And then that can help determine whether or not it's worth it too.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

And knowing what the customer lifetime value is, too, because I think too many people associate the the advertising cost with the product cost rather than the customer lifetime value, don't they?

SPEAKER_03 22:19

Absolutely. One of my sort of embarrassing case studies. So in in the southeast United States, there's the a chain of restaurants called Bojangles, which is like a fast food biscuit play. It's basically fried chicken and biscuits. And very healthy. Absolutely. Yeah, they're they're all in on health for sure. And nothing like waking up with a nice like fried chicken biscuit, right? Like for breakfast. That's getting things started off right. But the but there's about I don't know how many locations there was at the time, but say 100, there's more than 100 locations-ish. Anyway, big case study. We did this big campaign, and it was one of my first ones where we were actually able to track like physical visits back. This was probably 2013 or 14 or so. So it was like right as geofencing was becoming a thing, and you could actually track, hey, this cell phone got your ad and showed up at your business. And I looked at the numbers and I was like, oh my goodness, their average ticket is like something like six dollars. So they're way ROI negative because it was probably a $20 or $30 customer acquisition cost to make six bucks. And I'm going, Oh, this is terrible. But then when we met with the marketing department, their marketing department, and presented that, they were they were thrilled. And that was when I was like, Oh, yeah, I'm an idiot. Of course. A new customer to them is not a six dollar ticket, it's you know, whatever it was. It was something like 300 something bucks a year or something like that. And I'm like, oh yeah, of course it is. And so you sometimes, some industries, it's very obvious, and sometimes you gotta think, you know, to just do that math.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Yeah. Yeah. And then the retention, how long? Yeah, well, that's the that's the customer lifetime value, isn't it? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Yeah, that's interesting. You're getting them in the door, but they've got to keep them.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Yeah. Right. Exactly. And thankfully they're a company that they had the stats uh where they had a loyalty program and all that stuff, which think about that. There's someone who's buying enough chicken biscuits to have be part of a loyalty program. But um, but yeah, so they thankfully they had all those stats and did that for me because I sure didn't think about doing the math. I was expecting a terrible meeting when I walked in that day. Oh yeah, I was expecting to walk in and be like, sorry guys, you made about a third of what you spent with us.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Yeah, but and they're like here's a year's worth of free chicken and biscuits for you.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

Right, yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's how I keep this figure.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

I I maybe I I may be a bit behind in what's going on, but I am wondering if you have any insight into how long it's gonna be before we're sitting in chat GPT, perplexity, and whatever AI you're talking to, and we are going to see paid advertising pop up first in in our conversations with AI.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

So the way it is right now, every company is doing a decent job of making it very clear. Like there's already ads in in Chat GPT, and Jim and I, of course, already has ads because I mean it's Google's product, so it had ads from day one. So, but it is making it, but it is doing a very good job of making it very clear. Like, here's the ad piece of it, and here's the content piece of it, which is everyone's worry was that is it gonna start recommending stuff purely because of the thing? Thankfully, not yet. And I don't think it ever will like ever is a strong word. I think it will be a long time before anything like that happens. But we are already seeing things like Google has, you know, about in their last little summit, I think it was eight or nine months ago, April, I don't know, whenever that was, April-ish, whenever however long ago, and their latest rollout, they took away the ability to change like headlines or to they or the ability to do exact and phrase match. And the reason they did that is because people aren't searching things like pizza place near me anymore. Now they're searching, you know, it's 9 p.m. on a Saturday, and I've got three small kids. Where's a place I can take, you know, my kids to eat pizza that's safe? That's the kind of search people are doing now, like much longer searches. And so the days of being like, here's my five or ten headlines, and I only want those to run are gone because Google wants to be able to take your headline and be like, here's a family-friendly pizza place that's open late at night and is okay. And you want, and as the advertiser, you want them to do that, you want them to have the freedom to do that. It is a little scary, like in some of our worlds where like we had a pest control company that was like, we don't offer a 24-hour service. Why is this head like, where's this headline coming up coming from? And then we had to do a deep dive to figure out I don't know where that's coming. We didn't put that in there, and so anyway, there's some nice little fun things like that where you have to go in and sometimes play like whack-a-mole with some of the headlines it's coming up with. Oh, but uh it is in a mostly good way taking creative license. And so those those ads, they answer your question. The ads are sort of already here, but I think they're gonna become I don't know, more and more present. The hardest part is what it's gonna do to like influencer marketing and and those things. I think that's the industry that's gonna be changed the most first, because it's gonna be nothing for someone to create a you know themed video of like let's like some famous influencer and have them endorsing a product, and that endorser will be fine with it because they're getting a small piece instead of getting you know ten thousand dollars for an ad read, maybe they're only getting a thousand dollars for an ad read, but it's an AI, so they don't really have to do anything. That's the that's the industry that I think is gonna get in the ad space most shaken up immediately.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Yeah. As fabulous as AI is, it's a bit worrying about how deceptively people can present themselves.

SPEAKER_03 28:40

Absolutely. And products too. I mean, there's like some spaces, like Amazon, for example, where you're essentially it's essentially on the product uploader to put upload their own images and all of those things. I think that's one of the spaces too where you're gonna be able to rely less and less on the actual images that you're seeing there as representing the actual product that you get. And you're also not gonna be able to rely on reviews as much because very easy to code out something that's just gonna make micro purchases and then return it and then leave reviews.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

On a more fun topic, I'd love to know your personal favorite uh advertising platform or or or mode of advertising. What what do you like doing the best?

SPEAKER_03 29:30

My favorite form of advertising, that's a great question, honestly. I have to say I am partial a little bit to like to OTT and video because so like connected television, those things, because I do think that that is like the most underutilized game changer for a business right now. Like it's you know, television advertising is of course a massive, massive sort of industry and sub-industry and still is, but OTT and CTV to me has it has about a third the amount of advertisers that it should have on it. And so I think right now that is like that's my favorite because you could you can tell a little bit of a brand story. Like as much as I love search campaigns and those things, very hard to tell like much of a story in like a search ad, right? Yeah. Um, but the but so I like that also too, uh audio. I mean, audio is the same way, but so like Spotify podcasts, those things. But anything there where you can sort of tell a brand story that's that I think is the greatest.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

For laymans like me, who I had to look up what OTT stands for. So it's over the top video, right? And that's and you mentioned another TT. What was the other one you said?

SPEAKER_03 30:43

Um or it's so CTV, like connected televisions, right? Okay, it's essentially like the way everyone watches television now.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Yeah, yeah. So I didn't realize that was a thing. Ot. Did you know that, Sam?

SPEAKER_01 30:56

No, no.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Oh, okay. Yeah, so so that's your favorite because you're saying uh what when you're you're talking about advertising through over-the-top video, which means streaming services.

SPEAKER_03 31:07

Um there's just not many, like if you think of the ads that you see when you're watching something, it's mostly big national advertisers. And that's because the local folks just aren't taking advantage yet. But they can, they should. Uh just not.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

See, my assumption is that it must be expensive because only the big names are advertising in that space.

SPEAKER_03 31:32

It's some platforms are expensive, but even that, I mean, shameless plug here. I mean, there's companies that do you know give access to even small advertisers, but also most of them, most of them aren't as expensive as they were. In other words, when they all launched early on. Yeah, exactly. You know, exactly. It's you know, yes, you know, like for Hulu, I think it was a it's a $5,000 monthly minimum, which is gonna knock out most, but there's draft and other companies where you can buy it for you know a for a fraction of that. Oh wow. And even Amazon's DSP now includes Hulu, and Amazon's DSP, it's a pain in the butt to get approved by their DS to be part of their DSP, but no actual hardcops to it.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

So it's so OTT leverages open internet connections instead of closed proprietary networks, which means it's it's basically democratized that kind of advertising, right? And exactly. And then so content sent by internet service providers to it. Sorry, I'm just um trying to understand what it actually does compared to traditional advertising. And then the user gets to choose what they want to watch and when, and then they're seeing the ads that are coming up as they're watching. And do you you're talking about creating brand stories, and that that's a really fun way. Is that part of what you do as well? Or do people typically come having all that um content created and you just put them on those platforms?

SPEAKER_03 33:05

Well, because because most of our business comes from creative agencies, we do very little of that.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:11

That most of what we do on our creative side, we do have a shout-out to our creative division, head led, which is led by Raquel, she's fantastic. But for the most part, our creative department's in more of the like resizing and recutting ads. So, you know, most of our creative work is a brilliant designer has made one, and then we do the other 20 or 30 sizes that need to be.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Exactly. So that's an untapped market for a lot of small businesses, then.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

Yeah, for sure. I think it's it's it it's it's usually not even in the conversation when uh when the small size business. And it's yeah, it's a huge untapped market because you really either the targeting is there, it's household level targeting. So it's a little tougher for like B2B because you only know like what that like what that household is interested in. But for a lot of decisions, they're household level decisions anyway. You know, in other words, like buying a new car is a household level decision, home repairs, household level decisions. So for a lot of businesses, it's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

So is is YouTube ads included is YouTube ads included in that category?

SPEAKER_03 34:23

So YouTube's interesting because there's two types of YouTube ads. There's YouTube, the you know, YouTube.com, like the actual app, and then the website, but then which is not that tech that would be video pre-roll, uh which no one would correct. Like it would take like a complete jerk to like actually correct you, like if you were to could refer to YouTube as uh CTV, but technically no, that's pre-roll, pre-roll and mid-roll. But YouTube does have YouTube TV, which is a way of watching live channels, and that is an OTT product.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Got it. So it's an actual it's it's not just yeah, any any content, it's actual stuff that's been produced as TV series or yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

Exactly. So if you're watching like you could watch, you could be watching like Shark Tank on the local, you know, being broadcast on like the local TV. When it goes to a commercial break, the ones that would have been reserved for your like cable provider or internet provider are now reserved for that, for in this case, YouTube TV's placement there. So even it's even in live television, there's ad breaks that are OTT and C TV.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Right. And is that going to eventually push out the proprietary networks? Is it all gonna become democratized eventually?

SPEAKER_03 35:44

Or it's part of why you see a bunch of those networks being like bought up. Like, I mean, that's why like you're seeing like you know, Comcast buying out like NBC, which is then buying out like so they're all kind of gobbling each other up instead of replacing each other. Trying to be big enough to not get taken over, uh sort of right, exactly. So yeah, they're all fighting, they're all fighting over each other, but but yeah, otherwise that's exactly what would happen. I mean, that would I I think eventually it'd be become very difficult to be able to charge. If I was like CBS or NBC or any sort of national broadcast platform, I would be very concerned about it. But because now those are all owned by also large OTT providers, they're not concerned about it because they're gobbling up their own inventory. So we're gonna plan B, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Fascinating. It's it's doggy dog out there in the world. That's right, exactly. But it sounds like you guys are really well positioned to have this doorway into a whole platform that previously was unavailable to small business.

SPEAKER_03 36:48

I think so, yeah. It's it because you know, for most small businesses, the kind of tools that they're reaching for most is search and social. And both of those platforms are getting to where there's you know YouTube, or not YouTube, sorry, uh Apple. Apple search is very small right now, but is about to become a massive player. Well next year. Apple search will be a huge will be very so Apple search is it's it's very small like I said, right now it's not even hardly available to anyone, but Apple's about to roll out their Apple intelligence to platforms. And so whereas if you were to ask Siri a question, she's going to search. Uh she's actually was gonna pull was pulling from Bing a lot of her answers or pulling from Microsoft's search. I love that you called her her, just saying that. Uh absolutely trying to be respectful of uh yeah, but uh mine is also a woman.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Yeah, anyway. So Siri used to pull from Bing as the main source, but now it's opening up to all the data sources.

SPEAKER_03 37:57

Well, now no, it's actually no the opposite. Now it's Apple's pulling from their own. So Apple has created uh their own version of essentially Google Business Profile or Google Maps. And so it's actually gonna be pulling from their own search results and search things.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Interesting. So now as small business owners, we're not gonna have to just set up a Google business profile, but we will need to have an Apple business profile.

SPEAKER_03 38:22

You'll have to have an Apple profile as well, which will be another place to get reviews that you'll have to fight to get reviews for and have content and those things as well.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Oh my goodness, it's forever.

SPEAKER_03 38:36

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And the the same thing's happening in social too. So, you know, search is getting to where it's not just one platform anymore. Social's getting to where you need to be on two or three different platforms. So it's harder for smaller businesses, but there's but then again, that does open a lot of possibilities. Yeah, there's plenty of I think we've all had the thought of, oh, I wish I had known about this platform, you know, a few years ago. Well, now there's new platforms coming along. Um so it's it's an exciting time, but it's also a frustrating time. But for like for us, I mean, yeah, I think we've tried to position ourselves in a way because you're gonna have to advertise on five or six different channels here in the next uh in the next few years to uh to be able to cover the same ground that you would on one channel.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

And you've got it all covered, yeah. Well, I think it's a very smart business model that you've got set up there. Um so meta-ads are becoming more competitive and expensive, aren't they? Do you see do you see that continuing? Is it gonna become more and more competitive, or will it reach a plateau, or will it get superseded by like yeah, what's your feeling on that?

SPEAKER_03 39:48

I think I do think that it's going to I don't think it's gonna get more and more expensive. I do think that eventually, I think it's probably about as expensive as it's gonna get, which is I I think the I mean, and all this to say I can totally be wrong about every all of that, but I believe it's about as expensive as it's gonna get. Because most businesses now, you know, most advertisers now aren't getting a return. And when that's when that's happening, they're not buying anymore, which drives the cost down. So, you know, your standard supply-demand economics, I think, have will keep it at the at the sort of current rate. Um the part that will be interesting is uh you know, meta's investing a lot in like wearables, like the the meta glasses and and all of those things. That will either flop, which is probably what will happen, and in which case, no change. Like meta's as expensive as ever will be. I don't think it'll ever be much more than that. Or if wearables absolutely take off and it's big, and let's say two years from now everyone's wearing meta glasses, in that case, I could actually see that becoming like an incredibly valuable channel, and then maybe the prices go up again.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

So just for those that don't know like me, um meta glasses, how are they going to what is what data is that gonna generate? Well what is what is the purpose of those?

SPEAKER_03 41:12

So the purpose of like so metaglass, which I actually have.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Well, I have some, but I don't I don't use them. Yeah, that's what I've got too.

SPEAKER_03 41:21

Yeah, I don't wear mine ever hardly either.

SPEAKER_00 41:24

But people listening, you'll have to jump on the YouTube recording and see what because you're are you about to show us what they look like?

SPEAKER_01 41:34

They're just Ray-Ban sunglasses, road bands.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

Yes, although I have the I have the prescription kind, so mine aren't even the transition. So we'll wear these sometimes. They're they're handy in events where like I need to act like I'm listening, like if I'm speaking at a conference or anything, but I don't really want to listen to what the conference are the other speakers. That's that's I think the number one use of these. Because I can I can be wearing those and sorry, I just hit the button. In your own little world. Yeah, correct, exactly. I can be listening to whatever I want to, and no one knows because it's not in your ear, like earbuds or anything.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

But wow, so you've got it's d driven by your phone and you can control what shows up on your screen on on your glasses.

SPEAKER_03 42:16

Exactly. And you can take pictures with it and those things. I didn't really use that, or I don't really use that. But then the but in theory, eventually, that could become again. Meta's betting a big on this, but that could become a place where it's like, oh, if you see like, let's say you're at a store and you see like a pair of shoes or something, and you're like, oh, that's interesting. I wonder if these are a good price, instead of Googling it or pulling out your phone or looking it up, you would say, you know, some version of, hey Meta, look these up and tell me if there's a cheaper place that I can buy this or something like that, which would be an ad-driven platform, which could be potentially valuable.

SPEAKER_04 42:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:55

I don't really see that taking off, having had a pair that I almost never wear. And I I don't see that happening, but I'm a soccer magic, so who knows?

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Maybe I'm just gonna buy yours, Sam. Well, well, I didn't.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

My husband bought them for me.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Oh, what was what did you think you would like about them?

SPEAKER_01 43:15

It's well, because they're tech and I love my gadget. So he got them for me. But yes, because I have to have prescription and they're not prescription, so I don't wear them. But you know, I did I did try them on and I listened to music and I was like, the whole world can hear what I'm listening to, as opposed to I I don't want everyone to be impacted by by my sound and like streaming to Facebook through your glasses, so you're streaming and everyone can see what you're looking at. Oh my gosh. So interesting.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

So it's like a GoPro.

SPEAKER_03 43:52

It's like always wearing a GoPro. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Yeah. Well, I didn't use that feature.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

I don't have I don't actually have a Facebook account. But so the the actual live streaming part of that, all of that, that that was lost on me.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

But that's so interesting that you as an advertiser do not have a Facebook account.

SPEAKER_03 44:12

I don't. As a matter of fact, at the beginning of this, when you mentioned uh my looking at my LinkedIn page, I had the brief moment of someone's updated. So that's that's how connected on social media I am. It's like uh Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

I don't think I have one.

SPEAKER_03 44:29

I'm not sure I don't actually do it myself.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

It's good to hear it because I think both Sam and I have a love-hate relationship with social media and don't love being on there, but it's kind of a necessary evil as we talk about, isn't it? And hearing another hearing a successful business owner say, I don't have a Facebook account is music to my ears.

SPEAKER_03 44:49

That's right. It is possible. It was, you know, it there is life uh apart from that. It tip it, you know, it takes a takes a little bit of time, yeah. But you know, if you're if you're intentional intentional about it, then yeah, you can get rid of those things.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

I mean, this is a fascinating conversation that we could go, we've got we could go deeper and deeper into it no, we could go for a very long time. Yeah, we're gonna have to wrap up, but any oh, I don't even know how to distill what we've talked about into, but I suppose one final question to like to Sam skip.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

I would love to know what is it that is well known about advertising that people ignore, and and that's you know, one of the key reasons why their advertising isn't as successful as they want it to be.

SPEAKER_03 45:38

So everyone talks about advertising being a like sort of robot channel or those things. What they usually tend to think of is they think of it like it's like a large black box or something like that. That I would say is the biggest mistake is because it's not, it's a series of steps and stages. And if you know what those steps and stages, and each one of those stages has just one job, it becomes very easy to see which piece is broken. So, like one of the you know, things that I hear a lot is like, you know, oh, a can't this campaign didn't work, or this campaign failed, or that platform failed. That's very like that would be like saying, you know, my printer, I might say jokingly, uh my printer just doesn't talk to my computer or something like that. But in actuality, no, there's some specific step that's broken there. So if you just sort of split it apart, like if people are clicking your ads and they're coming to your landing page, look at time on site. If your time on site is under 15 seconds, you probably have a lot of bot and fake traffic. If it's over 15 seconds, but that's not converting, then you just have a bad landing page. You know, it's when you look at each step with its one little job, it becomes very easy to fix a campaign. I I believe every campaign is salvageable if you just sort of break it apart and look at each piece.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

That's good to know. Yeah, every campaign is salvageable.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

Exactly. It might mean changing almost everything about the campaign, but the uh the you know, if you think of advertising in its basic form of a specific message to a specific audience to get them to do something specific, that can't break. Like that that should always work. Like that platform might not be as cost effective as this other platform over here or something like that. But if at its root, being saying something specific to some specific group of people to get them to do something, I mean, that's that's all that's all you're doing. So yeah, I I stand by that. Every campaign is salvageable, even if you have to change almost everything about it.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

It's just getting that process right, getting that specific offering to that specific group of people that compels them to take that specific action. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

And just doing that for each little step.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

How hard can it be?

SPEAKER_04 48:01

Yeah. And yet we know it's funny.

SPEAKER_03 48:04

Yeah, it's it's extremely hard, sort of, but I do think I mean there's really only two levers you can mess with. And so if you do break it apart and it stages, it's like, okay, I can change the message or I can change the audience. That's really about the only two things you can change. And so if you I really don't, I think it is actually simpler than most people make it. Like if you break it into its part, it's like one of these, like this is the piece that's broken, it's either the audience or the message.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

So I'll, you know, change those two. And when you say it's either the message or the audience, uh the the visual has an impact too, though, right? That um as part of correct.

SPEAKER_03 48:39

Yeah, that's the that's part of that message, right? Like when I say message, I mean sort of like holistically. So I mean if it's a direct mail piece, if it's everything from the paper that it's printed on to uh we know even the the the size of it, you know. So every little piece has its own, like that's all wrapped up in message, but yeah, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

It's fascinating to me when you do split testing, say, of ads, and you could have the same message on different visuals, and some get traction and others don't. And to me, it's like this mystery, and and I think the frustration we used to have in running ads to fill up workshops was that an ad that worked once really, really well doesn't work six months later, you know. Or and so it's not like I mean, every company wants that one ad that you can just keep putting money, keep putting money on to keep bringing customers in that it converts continuously, but it's so dynamic, things change constantly. So it's quite frustrating having to constantly test the market and and figure out okay, which message is landing now, which creative is messy is landing now.

SPEAKER_03 49:41

So I think of it as I always think of it like a good advertising system or a good advertising like plan. It's kind of like having like an old car, like a car that you have to sort of keep working on or keep you know, keep tuning up and those things uh to keep it running because I mean, yeah, there's there's no sort of okay, there it's done, I never have to touch it again because it's slowly decaying and rotting and changing and those things. So yeah, but that said, I do think it's changing. Oh the fundamentals like don't really change once you get those dialed in. It's yeah, really just sort of constantly going and checking each piece, being like, all right, it still starts, it still runs. Yeah, it's making a weird noise over here.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

Let me see what that's about. So yeah, I do have one client who has one weight loss ad that she's been running for about five years, and it's still she has it doesn't need to change it, it's she puts money on it and it still keeps bringing clients in. And I just think, isn't that where we all want to be? Just you have something that just works and you don't have to change a lot with it every time.

SPEAKER_03 50:43

Exactly. Although the nice thing about not having one of those is that it forces you to kind of make do because sometimes you can get like very like spoiled by one of those because eventually it might tire out, and then in other words, you never want to like become too reliant, even in business. Like you never it's just like you never want to become too reliant on your top salesperson, right? Like you always want to assume everyone's gonna leave, everyone's gonna, you know, that sounds very pessimistic, but like in a good way, they're all gonna go off and do great things, right? Yeah, so you always you always you know every ad is eventually not gonna work anymore, every platform is eventually gonna decay. So if you so you never want to become like reliant on those, you want to sort of constantly be testing.

SPEAKER_00 51:23

Yeah, correct. Yeah. And after saying, you know, what could be so hard about getting those three pieces right, we we know after this discussion that it's extremely specialist and and very deep. And getting it all right is virtually impossible on your opinion. And that's why someone like you is is there to help people that need need to navigate the the advertising world efficiently. Because I mean, I guess it's one of those fields where you can throw a lot of money at it and do and not do it well and just burn so burn your burn your cash. Yeah. Absolutely. So anyway, Skip, it's been such a pleasure having you on the show to share with us everything. Well, a small portion of what you know about the advertising world. And any final comments, Sam?

SPEAKER_01 52:12

No, I just I I'd love talking today, Skip. So thank you for your time. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

Yeah, no, thank you guys. And for those who would like, we'll put the link in the show notes, but the um Skip's website is draftadvertising.com. And I urge you to go check that out. And it sounds like a new rebrand is coming very soon.

SPEAKER_03 52:31

Absolutely. That's uh probably not as soon as I'd like, but yeah, definitely in the next month or so.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Oh wow. I mean it takes time to do that.

SPEAKER_03 52:40

Yes, exactly. It's the everything's been uh stood up and everything. So all of it's ready to deploy. We're just now testing it all.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Right. Ver as every good advertiser does, test the market, right? Exactly. Exactly. Very good. Well, Skip, it's been a pleasure. We thank you so much for your time and thanks so much, everyone, for listening. We will be back again in two weeks. That's it from us. Bye for now.

SPEAKER_02 53:05

Want help with your business? Join Kate and Sam in the engine room, the place where business owners go to get things done. Your first session is free. Head to thrivingbusinesspodcast.com to claim your spot. Thanks for listening to the Thriving Business Podcast.