Technology
Basis Platform
Advertising Operating System
Communication Portal
Intelligent Collaboration
All Channel Activation
Activate Media on Every Channel
Consulting
Resources
For nearly two decades, third-party cookies have helped advertisers understand audiences’ behaviors, create personalized advertising experiences to meet their needs, and measure the impact of their campaigns. But recent years have brought an increased focus on consumer data privacy—spurred by regulations and consumer demands alike—and third-party cookies are on the way out.
These pressures are likely to heighten in 2025: Even though Google says it will no longer deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome, its new “opt-in” plans are expected to have the same impact on advertisers. The fact that almost 90% of browsers are estimated to become cookieless in the long term presents a particular challenge to CPG marketers, who are already contending with highly saturated markets, the explosion of private-label goods, and a variety of other challenges.
To help CPG advertisers navigate mounting signal loss, we spoke to Vanessa Allen, Basis Technologies’ VP of Integrated Client Solutions. Read on for her top insights for CPG advertisers to consider as they invest in and implement privacy-friendly advertising solutions.
Vanessa Allen: As signal loss increases, CPG marketers must focus on identifying who their target audience is and determining how they’re going to reach them in ways that respect consumer privacy. First-party data is critical for this, as it allows advertisers to tap into audiences who are already interested in their products. As such, it’s important for CPG advertisers and brands to ensure they’re collecting that data in a privacy-compliant manner and storing it in a way that makes it easy to use.
It's also important for CPG brands and advertisers to focus on researching and understanding consumer behaviors. Once they have those insights, they can adapt their campaigns to meet audiences’ distinct needs. That might look like leaning into opportunities with user-generated content on social to connect with younger audiences, or it could involve highlighting product and service offerings focused on convenience, since more and more shoppers (millennials, in particular) say this is a key factor that influences their purchasing decisions.
VA: As mentioned earlier, first-party data is crucial in a number of different ways. Many CPG brands—especially larger brands—have a ton of this data already and are well-positioned to use it to connect with audiences in personalized ways. They can use this data not only to focus on retaining audiences who they know have bought their products in the past, but also to push out new products to those audiences to drive trial.
Contextual targeting is another key tool to leverage, especially for more niche CPG brands. For instance, let’s say you’re a brand that offers direct delivery of toilet paper or paper towels, and you do it in a way that minimizes waste. So, you’re cutting down on how much plastic and extra packaging you use, and you’re offering a way for customers to get your products in a convenient way. Since many of your customers might be interested in sustainability or eco-friendly options, you might target display ads to websites that talk about green products and/or being a more environmentally conscientious consumer.
Another option is tapping into retail media networks (RMNs) to take advantage of their proprietary data. But it’s important to take a balanced approach to RMNs, as brands also need to be building up their own data so that they aren’t entirely reliant on these walled gardens. When it comes to leveraging RMNs or using other platforms’ second-party data, it’s important to incorporate them as part of a holistic media mix.
In terms of attribution, traditional CPG brands are already accustomed to using third-party brand lift studies to measure the results of their ads (i.e., household lift, awareness, sales lift), since they can’t measure footfall traffic. As we shift towards a privacy-first approach, these studies are going to continue to play a major role. For direct-to-consumer brands, it’s going to be pretty seamless for them to connect the dots on their website using first-party data they’ve collected.
VA: Absolutely! Let’s imagine you’re working on a campaign for an organic pet food. This product is pretty niche, so it’s going to be critical for you to understand your target audience and home in on where they’re spending time and consuming content. Most likely, your target customers are going to be doing research on the best pet foods, and using contextual targeting to place ads based on relevant keywords is one effective way to reach them. Additionally, you might determine that people who have pets who are sick are more likely to turn to different, specialty pet diets. To connect with those audiences, you might also target pages that discuss specific pet conditions that necessitate a different diet.
As another example, let’s go back to our earlier eco-friendly paper goods brand. In addition to leveraging contextual targeting, advertisers for this brand could use promotions (for instance, free shipping) to incentivize consumers to share their first-party data. Then, they could use that data to follow up with targeted, more personalized ads and recommendations based on this opted-in user data.
Though cookie loss will continue to change the game for digital advertisers, CPG marketers are well-positioned to reach audiences in privacy-friendly ways. By researching their consumers and adapting to meet their needs, leveraging first-party data, and using contextual targeting intentionally, CPG advertisers can connect with audiences at key moments of impact, drive conversions, and bolster brand loyalty.
—
Mounting signal loss isn’t the only trend set to shape digital advertising in 2025: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of CTV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media will also change how brands engage with consumers, allocate budgets, and measure success. Check out Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report to learn more.
Cannabis advertisers have long had to navigate a maze of industry-specific federal, state, local, and platform-specific digital advertising regulations. On top of all that, they’ve had to adapt to signal loss across the digital advertising ecosystem, driven by factors like privacy-focused digital advertising regulations, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency on iPhone, and consumers’ data privacy demands.
This year, it’s likely they’ll have to grapple with yet another complication: While Google no longer aims to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome, their plans to give consumers an “informed choice” over cookie-based tracking will present the same challenges for advertisers. It’s a tough gummy to chew, but by understanding and investing in the cookieless solutions best suited to cannabis brands—and doing so as soon as possible—cannabis advertisers can gain a competitive edge in the privacy-first world.
To better explore these solutions, as well as the most important privacy and identity considerations for cannabis advertising, we spoke with cannabis marketing expert Jane Frye, VP of Integrated Client Solutions at Basis Technologies. Read on for her top insights on how cannabis advertisers can adapt to signal loss.
Jane Frye: The good news for cannabis advertisers is they’re already used to navigating limitations, so they’ll have an advantage over many of their counterparts from other industries. Advertising cannabis in the digital space is very challenging—first you have to understand the matrix of regulations, and then you have to get creative in order to really get your brand out there in a way that resonates with audiences. As a result, cannabis advertisers already have a wealth of transferable skills and knowledge that will help them to navigate the cookieless and privacy-first world.
Beyond leaning into those skills, cannabis advertisers will want to take the lead with clients in terms of educating them about privacy-first marketing. At the same time, it’s important to set realistic expectations for campaign success, as the performance benchmarks clients are used to will change as third-party cookies go away. So, it will be critical to communicate early and often about the implications of cookie loss and what’s possible in this new era of digital advertising.
For cannabis brands, my biggest piece of advice is to select the right partners. The most successful brands will be those who have carefully selected partners who are digitally savvy, experts in the cannabis space, and have a thorough understanding of the privacy landscape and cookieless solutions.
JF: The three that should really serve as cannabis advertisers’ bread and butter are first-party data, contextual advertising, and purchase or point of sale (POS) data.
First-party data is a no-brainer: It comes straight from people who have already spent with you or who have demonstrated some interest in spending, and it’s privacy-friendly to boot, so investing in the collection, organization, and maximization of that first-party data should be a priority for cannabis advertisers. Investing in something like a customer data platform (CDP), which can help not only with targeting but also with measurement, might make sense for your team if you really want to prioritize this.
Contextual targeting is also key. Cannabis advertisers are already quite familiar with this tactic, as it’s a regulation-compliant form of advertising in many areas, and there are some prominent, high-traffic cannabis sites such as High Times, Leafly, Weed Maps and Jane that offer fantastic opportunities to connect with customers who want to learn about or purchase cannabis.
Finally, POS data can be used in the same way brands have historically used third-party data for targeting and attribution. If you’re not familiar with POS data, this is data gathered at dispensaries at the point of sale itself, such as when a customer enters their email during check out. It’s elective, so it’s privacy-friendly, and you can work with partners who anonymize that data and match it to a household ID. Using that household ID, you can then more accurately target people in different audiences—for example, people who spend over $300 per month on cannabis, people who buy edibles, or people who buy smoking devices. And once advertisers have that POS and household ID data at their disposal, they can also use it for measurement and attribution in the same way they are used to using third-party data.
One other example that I wouldn’t categorize as a “bread-and-butter” solution, but definitely something worth experimenting with, is geotargeting at big events where folks will likely be consuming cannabis. For instance, you could geotarget cities that people fly into when they’re headed to events like Coachella or Burning Man. Even things like yoga retreats or certain conferences could be ripe for location-based targeting.
JF: There are a ton of startups in the cannabis space, so let’s begin with one of those as the first example. As I mentioned earlier, first-party data, contextual, and POS data should all play into your strategy. For startups, however, contextual is a particularly attractive solution, because there are a lot of very affordable and impactful placements you can buy. Advertisers should align their brands with large, high-traffic publications: They’re the first ones that come up when you search “cannabis” online, and they offer placements in email, display, and homepage takeovers. This is particularly great for startups, because it’s important for these brands to place themselves at the beginning of the consumer journey when people are trying to educate themselves.
Next, let’s dig into an example for brands who are more established in the cannabis space. Again, first-party data, contextual, and POS data will be your foundation. However, for brands who have a bit more money to spend, you could experiment with contextual placements that cost a bit more, like host-read podcast ads. Podcasts are a really impactful advertising opportunity, especially host-read ads, because podcast listeners are very engaged and tend to trust their hosts. Because of this, consumers are often more likely to consider brands they hear about via a podcast.
There you have it: By investing in first-party data, contextual targeting, and POS data, cannabis advertisers can set up systems that will pave the way to success in the privacy-first world, while honoring consumers’ privacy demands.
—
Mounting signal loss isn’t the only trend set to shape digital advertising in 2025: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of CTV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media will also change how brands engage with consumers, allocate budgets, and measure success. Check out Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report to learn more.
In recent years, digital advertisers have grappled with widespread signal loss as a result of factors like Apple’s App Transparency, new digital advertising regulations, and increased privacy demands from consumers. These issues will only heighten in 2025, especially once Google moves forward with its “opt-in” approach to third-party cookies in Chrome. While the tech giant no longer plans to fully deprecate cookies, their new plan will have effectively the same consequences for advertisers. For B2B companies already navigating the complexities of transitioning from traditional to digital advertising channels, this escalating signal loss presents even greater hurdles.
To help B2B teams amidst this transition, we turned to Natalie Lowe, Basis Technologies’ VP of Integrated Client Solutions, for her top recommendations on how B2B advertisers can navigate signal loss and continue to connect with the right businesses, on the right channels, with the right message.
Natalie Lowe: For B2B advertisers, it can feel like everything is changing at a whirlwind pace. There’s already been a huge shift from traditional to digital channels in recent years, and as investment in digital has grown, so too has reliance on third-party cookies and their attribution capabilities. So, within the B2B space, there’s been a lot of uneasiness and unrest as we’ve encountered signal loss and moved towards the cookieless future.
That said, we’re starting to see a shift now, and B2B marketers and brands have begun to reframe and rethink their advertising strategies in the context of this larger signal loss. Teams are realizing that there’s an opportunity to lean more deeply into connections with target audiences, and to focus on quality of leads over quantity of leads (which is, admittedly, a hard shift to make). B2B teams often already have a relatively narrow audience they’re trying to connect with, since B2B software and service offerings are quite specific. Within the context of Google’s plans for cookie-based tracking in Chrome and the larger signal loss taking place throughout the advertising industry, it’s going to become even more critical to lean into first-party data, ensure that data is collected and organized in a clean way, and then segment that data to create personalized advertising experiences for the most qualified leads.
NL: When it comes to targeting, contextual relevance will be key. Getting ads placed alongside other content that B2B brands know their key audiences are consuming will be crucial for ensuring their message is reaching the right people when they are in the right mindset. Additionally, leveraging first-party data to get customized messages in front of the right audience is going to be critical. Finally, B2B marketers can lean on using others’ first-party data (aka, second-party data)—for instance, by tapping into social media sites or premium publishers that have proprietary targeting capabilities based on user-entered information. As the industry moves towards a privacy-first advertising model, B2B marketing teams are going to need to strike a balance between using second-party data and building up their own first-party data.
Attribution, on the other hand, is a whole different ballgame. If B2B marketers don’t already have lead generation on their website, now’s the time to set that up so they can collect that info. Beyond that, there’s going to have to be both a shift in mindset and an acceptance that attribution isn’t going to be as precise as it once was. Third-party lift analyses can help measure things like brand awareness, and for companies that have loads of data, media mix modeling can be useful. But, ultimately, B2B brands and marketing teams will need to recognize that attribution is going to look different and adjust KPIs to this new cookieless landscape.
NL: Sure! Let’s take, for example, a SMB (small or midsize business). If they’re starting a campaign focused on awareness, they might decide to tap into LinkedIn to make the most of the growing trend of using social media to capture the attention of audiences in a personalized way. On LinkedIn, they can use the platform’s proprietary data to do job title/description targeting. They can also take advantage of the brand lift studies that LinkedIn offers to measure the impact of their ads.
Or perhaps there’s a software company focusing on collecting first-party data. They could consider a content-based strategy where they publish a whitepaper on a relevant topic, use contextual targeting to market that whitepaper in relevant places, and then require a form-fill to download the content, meaning each person that downloads it is another de-anonymized lead for future marketing efforts.
Navigating signal loss poses challenges for all marketers and is likely to prove especially tricky for advertisers in the B2B space. However, by homing in on first-party data collection, leveraging cookieless targeting approaches like contextual, and resetting expectations around attribution, B2B companies can effectively navigate the challenges presented by signal loss and succeed in this new era of advertising.
—
Mounting signal loss isn’t the only trend set to shape digital advertising in 2025: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of CTV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media will also change how brands engage with consumers, allocate budgets, and measure success. Check out Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report to learn more.
After not one, but two delays, Google pivoted yet again in 2024 when it announced it would no longer deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome. But Google’s new plans, which involve providing Chrome users with an “informed choice” experience around cookie-based tracking, don’t actually change much for advertisers: Cookie loss will remain the effective result.
This, along with the signal loss advertisers have grappled with in recent years—thanks to factors including Apple’s App Transparency, increased consumer demand for data privacy, and the continuing wave of privacy-related regulation—make the situation an urgent one. Automotive advertisers, in particular, will need to act quickly: Having invested heavily in digital advertising for over a decade, they are especially reliant on the targeting and attribution capabilities that third-party cookies have historically provided.
To learn how automotive marketers should approach this shift and what strategies they should invest in to set themselves up for success in a privacy-first world, we spoke with Jim Zabel, Basis Technologies’ VP of Agency Development – Auto, and a 25-year auto marketing industry veteran. Read on for his insights on how auto advertisers can adapt to a privacy-first model.
Jim Zabel: The auto industry is in a particularly interesting position because of the degree to which they’ve invested in digital marketing over the past 15 years. Even small and mid-sized auto businesses were early adopters. As we move towards a privacy-first advertising model, the biggest question for brands and dealers is this: Can you accept the fact that cookie loss will lower the performance benchmarks you’re used to seeing? I think this is going to be a big challenge to overcome. Companies will need to redefine success, and that’s going to require a significant mindset shift.
To use a non-cookie-related example, sometimes we’ll see clients want to stop a display or video campaign because they’re not seeing the same metrics as search. But performance for those channels isn’t comparable: Search is a lower-funnel tactic where you can see the conversions roll in, and the higher-funnel brand awareness achieved via display or video isn’t trackable in the same way. But that doesn’t mean those tactics aren’t revenue-driving and critical to a well-rounded campaign.
Similarly, without third-party cookies, brands and dealers won’t have access to the same depth of performance metrics. However, that doesn’t mean that their tactics and strategies aren’t driving revenue. For agencies working with dealers and brands, educating clients early and often on this point will be especially important.
A lot of auto brands and dealers are likely to want to stick with the status quo and prioritize short-term success and the maintenance of previous benchmarks, even if that means embracing cookie-like solutions that don’t fully honor the spirit of what consumers are asking for. But the brands and dealers who embrace the shift towards privacy-first advertising, and find new ways to measure performance, will have the most success in the long run.
JZ: A handful of solutions come to mind here.
First, defining audience segments specific to the channels you’re advertising on is key. Advertisers need to really understand where their customers are consuming media, and media mix modelling can be helpful here to identify the highest value tactics in your campaigns. Automotive marketing teams should also up their investments in audience research and develop highly defined, channel-specific audience segments to enable their targeting. Of course, this goes along with investing in the collection, storage, and extension of first-party data—in a cookieless world, first-party data is king.
Contextual targeting will play a major role as well. Contextual allows advertisers to get very specific about who they’re serving ads to without directly relying upon third-party user data, thus respecting consumer privacy. Investing in partnerships with publishers who provide specific content and have a deep understanding of their consumers will be incredibly valuable to automotive dealers and brands.
Also, walled gardens have a big advantage because of all the first-party data they have access to. As we lose more and more signals, I think it’s very plausible that those walled gardens will use that advantage to oversell their value to advertisers. That’s not to say that advertisers shouldn’t take advantage of walled gardens—they’re a smart choice for enabling that targeting. Even more, the omnichannel nature of programmatic can help extend those investments, because advertisers can use data from those walled gardens to target other channels where targeting on its own is going to be a lot harder to do. At the same time, it’s important not to overinvest in walled gardens: For most marketing teams, your own first-party data should be the priority.
Leveraging a customer data platform (CDP) to organize and leverage that first-party data can also help advertisers on the attribution side, because CDPs allow advertisers to track a user across various touchpoints, and to see how each tactic contributes to the eventual conversion. Advertisers should also reprioritize brand lift studies and cookieless conversion attribution tools to assist on the attribution side.
JZ: Let’s start with dealerships as the first example. Dealerships are sitting on treasure troves of first-party data, and there’s a massive opportunity to harness that data for their own marketing. To do so, dealerships need to make sure they have data hygiene protocols in place to make sure their first-party data is valid and deduped. At the same time, as data modeling becomes more accessible, there’s a real potential for dealerships to coordinate targeting and digital media tactics with brands, and vice versa. Many dealer groups are adopting CDPs to increase their ability to organize their first-party data into relevant segments and use it for audience modeling as well. I’ve seen a lot more appetite to get those sophisticated capabilities in-house, and I think that’s a smart choice for dealers of any size.
Next, let’s explore the brand side of things. Overall, brands need to rethink their data strategies, both in terms of collecting and maximizing their own first-party data, and in terms of coordinating with dealers to make the most of the wealth of data they can offer. Getting proactive about gathering that data from dealerships and setting up systems that ensure that data is being shared in privacy-compliant ways is my biggest recommendation for advertisers working with brands.
As the digital advertising industry shifts to a privacy-first paradigm, automotive marketers are at a pivotal crossroads—pun very much intended. Brands and dealers can either cling to the old status quo, or they can overcome signal loss by prioritizing consumers’ demands and embracing data privacy, as well as the new benchmarks for success that come with it. Those who play the long game—identifying new ways to measure success and investing in audience research, first-party data, contextual targeting, privacy-compliant programmatic, and cookieless attribution tools—will have a competitive edge going into the privacy-first future.
—
Mounting signal loss isn’t the only trend set to shape digital advertising in 2025: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of CTV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media will also change how brands engage with consumers, allocate budgets, and measure success. Check out Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report to learn more.
As we step into 2025, the marketing landscape continues to evolve at a breakneck pace, presenting both challenges and opportunities for brands. From the shifting sands of technology and regulation to the ever-growing need for transparency and data-driven decision-making, staying ahead in this dynamic environment requires proactive adaptation, and the most successful brands will be those whose strategies are grounded in flexibility, foresight, and collaboration.
Here, we explore three trends that are set to shape digital marketing in 2025, examining their implications while providing actionable predictions to help brands thrive in an unpredictable future.
In 2025, marketers will be operating on markedly uneven ground.
Google’s “opt-in” cookie pivot in Chrome will expedite already-increasing signal loss…but the tech company’s recent decision to allow advertisers’ use of IP addresses for targeting (aka fingerprinting) shows a “one step forward, one step back” approach to user privacy that leaves marketers—and consumers—guessing. Meanwhile, the broader regulatory map differs from platform to platform, browser to browser, and country to country (not to mention from state to state), leading to further fragmentation across marketing activities. And with AI-powered search growing in prominence, how can marketers adjust—and capitalize?
TikTok in the US is still a thing…for now, its fate now in the hands of nine robed Americans. What will happen to those ad dollars if the app is banned? And will those users migrate to Snapchat, Reels, or YouTube? Speaking of social, is X really dead? Is the Bluesky buzz for real? Where does Threads fit into all of this? And how are advertisers supposed to balance their social spend across all those channels (and effectively measure the results)?
CTV is officially a beast, with streaming viewership soaring past linear to become Americans’ favorite way to watch video. With increasing viewership and new advertising opportunities on CTV, should brands finally shift the bulk of their video budgets over to streaming? And how can they measure that performance in the context of a larger campaign?
Then there’s retail media, which is out to prove that everything is, in fact, an ad network. But which of those networks are worth the money, and how can brands harness their own data to better leverage the network's?
It all adds up to fragmented, unpredictable marketing sphere, and in this kind of environment, agility will win the day. Brands and their agency partners need the ability to quickly and seamlessly direct (and redirect) ad dollars and assets from one channel or platform to another, seizing on what’s working and better identifying what isn’t.
PREDICTION: With growing fragmentation and an uncertain future, marketers will look for ways to turn the noise into harmony. Expect a run on technology that unifies point solutions and gives marketers a clear view of their media performance, allowing them to better identify winning trends, develop successful strategies, and foster more efficient and effective collaboration with their partners.
With apologies to Desiderius Erasmus, for marketers, “In the world of the cookieless, the brand with the first-party data is king.”
First-party data allows brands to better target, retarget, measure, and attribute results across just about every channel. It empowers advertisers to craft campaigns that are more relevant to high-value audiences, identify and reach new audience segments, and derive stronger insights from their reporting. And, of course, it opens up new opportunities to better leverage resources like data clean rooms to engage in privacy-friendly marketing that drives higher ROI, curbs wasted spend, and boosts conversions.
But it also gives brands something that has become increasingly hard to find in today’s fractured and fickle marketing world: control. Owning your data means owning your relationship with customers and prospective customers, providing insights into target audiences, buying patterns, sales tactics, conversion attribution, and an array of other benefits. However, to fully harness that data requires technology like customer relationship management systems (CRMs) and customer data platforms (CDPs), as well as advertising automation platforms that unify campaign planning, performance and reporting to get a holistic picture of all campaign data across all channels.
PREDICTION: Brands will no longer cede control of their campaign data to their agencies. Instead, they’ll seek out partners that provide a more collaborative and brand-focused approach to data ownership, while adopting technology that brings more of the benefits of that data in-house.
For many marketers, transparency has been a digital advertising white whale, one they’ve been hunting for the better part of a decade and that, despite best efforts, has only seemed to grow worse in recent years. Programmatic’s promise of precision across both targeting and measurement came with ambiguity around ad fraud, brand safety, and performance. Hidden fees, opaque fee structures, inconsistent pricing, and a lack of supply path optimization (SPO) have converged to create a general sense of suspicion and mistrust, which in turn can breed resentment of agency partners, walled gardens, monopolistic tech giants, and the system itself.
Compounding this is the steady emergence (and grudging acceptance) of a new class of AI-powered tools such as Google’s PMax and Meta’s Advantage+, which purport to offer increased ROAS as long as you agree to give up control over exactly where your ad dollars are going and, of course, stop asking all those pesky questions about transparency.
But the situation has reached a tipping point, and with the increasing importance of data and steady fragmentation of the advertising ecosystem, marketers are growing tired of the endless black boxes.
PREDICTION: When it comes to transparency, brands will start to ask of more from their partners—and, unlike previous efforts, they’ll make some progress in doing so. New platforms make it easier to track every aspect of the campaign process, and with agencies eager to showcase their differentiated power of their technology (and to win trust from their clients), brands will gain new levels of clarity and insight across their digital campaigns in 2025.
Enter the New Year with confidence: Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report provides actionable insights on the trends set to shape 2025, examining the latest innovations in commerce media, CTV, AI and search. Explore key ways advertisers can bridge the disconnect between expectations and reality, while maximizing the potential of new innovations to drive impact with their campaigns in the year ahead.
In the ever-evolving world of digital advertising, programmatic has proven to be a reliable mainstay—and a dynamic space for innovation.
Despite overall ad spending forecasts suggesting slower growth ahead, programmatic advertising remains a bright spot, with global spend reaching $595 billion in 2024 and projected to approach $779 billion in 2028. In the US, it has accounted for more than 90% of digital display ad dollars since 2023 and is forecast to see double-digit growth through 2026.
Expanding opportunities in retail media, contextual targeting, AI, social search, and beyond are creating new programmatic possibilities, offering the potential for more precise targeting, greater efficiency, and deeper connections with consumers. Yet, challenges persist. Signal loss continues to be a pressing concern, despite Google reversing its plans to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome and instead allowing users to “make an informed choice” when browsing. And low quality AI-generated and made-for-advertising (MFA) content has further complicated advertisers’ efforts to ensure effective and meaningful ad placements in suitable environments.
As the industry navigates both the challenges and opportunities at hand, staying informed on the latest programmatic trends will be critical for maximizing the potential of these advancements. The ability to integrate new innovations into existing strategies, while also balancing this innovation with practicality, will define success in 2025.
What a difference a year makes. Headed into 2024, advertisers were bracing themselves for an imminent spike in signal loss, with Google planning to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome by year’s end. Coupled with the previous loss of Firefox and Safari data and increasing privacy-minded regulations, most teams were preparing for the shift by exploring alternative targeting and measurement solutions.
Then, of course, Google walked back its formal cookie deprecation plans, pivoting instead to a user “opt-in” approach that’s set to take place sometime in 2025. And while it’s no longer the “D-Day” many in the marketing world had feared, signal loss will only continue to increase in the months and years ahead.
To continue to adapt to a (mostly) cookieless world in 2025, advertisers must focus on strengthening their first-party data strategies, ensuring data is collected and organized in a clean and accurate way. This is an especially pressing need, given that marketers cited data quality and accuracy as the leading challenge to meaningfully leveraging data in the years ahead. Maintaining large, clean pools of first-party data will allow teams to personalize and target ads based on individual users, use look-a-like modeling to tap into new audiences, effectively retarget ads, and leverage data clean rooms to enrich and extend their data, thus optimizing their programmatic campaigns and driving performance in a privacy-first environment.
Beyond prioritizing first-party data strategies, teams can implement other privacy-friendly targeting and attribution tactics within their programmatic campaigns, including contextual targeting and geotargeting, alternative identifiers like RampID and UID 2.0, additional use of premium and curated inventory, and media mix modeling for measurement. Given that less than 20% of consumers say they always accept when given the opportunity to opt into cookies, adapting to signal loss now—rather than clinging to cookies until the bitter end—will position advertisers for success in the year ahead.
Contextual targeting is experiencing a renaissance and renewed interest, propelled by both signal loss and new AI-driven opportunities.
As signals from third-party cookies continue to decline, using context to connect with consumers in relevant ways will grow increasingly important. Research shows that 72% of consumers feel the content surrounding an ad can influence their perception of it, and 60% report they are likely to remember a contextually relevant ad. As the programmatic space evolves, leveraging the power of contextual is becoming increasingly essential for effective audience engagement.
Additionally, advancements in AI are taking contextual targeting to new heights. Large language models (LLMs) enable advertisers to parse vast amounts of data and make placements with even greater precision than they could have in the past. For instance, in the digital audio space, these models can now be used analyze large datasets (such as podcast transcripts) to deliver highly relevant ads. This ability to drill down to such a precise level of content opens up new opportunities for more personalized, impactful ads.
To make the most of contextual advertising in 2025, advertisers need to focus on deeply understanding their audiences to ensure they are advertising in the most precise and relevant contexts. Though contextual targeting doesn’t rely upon personal data, first-party data can be used to enhance it: Some platforms allow teams to leverage this data to identify patterns in how and where audiences consume content and to then use those insights to inform contextual targeting parameters. Additionally, teams can embrace AI-powered advancements to improve their contextual strategies, utilizing newer tools that allow for more granular and dynamic ad placements.
While forecasts call for robust growth in the programmatic space, much of that growth is being powered by direct and private paths to publishers, rather than spending on the open exchange. In the year ahead, more than 91% of total US programmatic display ad spending will go towards private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic direct. And though spending on the open exchange will only increase by approximately 3% in 2025, PMP spending is expected to grow by nearly 13%.
This shift reflects a growing focus on inventory quality and curation, with advertisers turning to PMPs and direct buys to ensure greater transparency and precision over their media buys. These more controlled environments offer access to premium placements and the ability to bolster their own data with publishers’ proprietary data, thus enabling more precise targeting in a privacy-conscious era. They also help mitigate the risks of wasting ad spend on low-quality sites, which has become a growing concern. With MFA impression volume increasing by 19% YoY in 2024, there is a pressing need to ensure ad spend is going to high-quality inventory. By prioritizing PMPs and direct buys, advertisers can safeguard their budgets, reach key audiences, enhance campaign effectiveness, and deliver meaningful engagement in 2025 and beyond.
In 2025, programmatic non-video ad spending is projected to reach $65.21 billion in the US. Programmatic video ad spending, on the other hand, will surpass $110 billion, accounting for nearly 75% of new programmatic ad dollars from 2024 through 2026. Though this surge in video spending is not necessarily a new trend, recent AI-driven tools and enhancements present new opportunities in the space.
Advancements in dynamic content creation and enhanced contextual targeting capabilities, in particular, hold significant potential. Though contextual targeting has long been a key tactic within video advertising (think: running home improvement store ads within HGTV programming), LLMs are making it even more impactful. Since these models can process huge amounts of information and data rapidly, they can be used to analyze and categorize video content more precisely—down to the individual scenes in TV shows. Generative AI is also powering dynamic content creation in the video space, allowing teams to personalize ads to individual viewers without having to create variations manually. For example, a travel commercial could be dynamically adjusted to feature destinations that are family-friendly or adults-only based on a viewer’s preferences and viewing habits, or a car commercial could be altered to match the tone of the content a viewer is watching—lighter for a comedy, or more serious for a drama. By embracing these AI-driven tools, teams can ensure their video ads are personalized, impactful, and effective.
The search landscape is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by the rise of social search and AI-powered chatbots. In fact, by 2026, traditional search engine volume is predicted to drop by 25% as tools like AI chatbots and other virtual assistants become more mainstream. This shift will undoubtedly impact programmatic search and available inventory, and marketers will need to adapt to new, evolving platforms to maximize their search spend.
Social search is rapidly growing, especially among Gen Z and millennials. These younger audiences are increasingly turning to platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to explore products, services, brands, and ideas, rather than traditional search engines. This shift marks a significant change from older generations, who still overwhelmingly rely on search engines as their primary discovery tool.
As such, advertisers will need to rethink how they allocate their programmatic budgets and, specifically, how they balance traditional search with social platforms’ native search functionalities. This shift will require advertisers to refine their targeting strategies, tapping into new opportunities for engagement and discovery while ensuring they’re meeting those consumers where they are spending time and seeking out new information.
Meanwhile, AI-powered chatbots and search engines are reshaping how people find information. Google’s AI overviews now often place AI-generated answers first when users search the web, and OpenAI recently rolled out a search feature that is embedded within its existing GPT framework. With 61% of Gen Z and 53% of millennials saying they are using AI tools in place of search engines, marketers face new challenges in reaching audiences.
As AI tools become a more widespread (and, perhaps, preferred) search method, it’s likely that monetization opportunities will decrease for traditional search inventory. For programmatic search, this could mean a shift in how and where ads are placed, as new search experiences like conversational search evolve. While these shifts have yet to provide meaningful opportunities for programmatic buys within AI search tools, advertisers will need to stay agile and explore alternative inventory within AI-driven environments as they become available. This could include experimenting with branded content, sponsored responses, and other AI-powered advertising solutions that align with the conversational nature of these platforms.
In 2024, programmatic retail media display ad spending grew by 41.7%, and it’s projected to leap another 29.3% in 2025. By 2026, RMN spending is forecast to exceed $30 billion, representing nearly 16% of all programmatic display. This surge is driven in large part by the wealth of consumer data that retailers hold, as well as new partnerships that make this data more actionable for advertisers. Major retailers are increasingly partnering with adtech platforms, enabling advertisers to leverage robust customer data to create highly personalized and effective programmatic campaigns.
Take, for instance, the partnership between LiveRamp and supermarket chain Albertsons. By leveraging LiveRamp’s robust identity framework, Albertsons can connect and analyze their first-party data to paint a fuller picture of the consumer journey across multiple touchpoints. This data is then connected to other advertising platforms through secure data clean room integrations, allowing for seamless activation and meaningful measurement. This approach allows advertisers to deliver highly targeted, personalized campaigns using rich retailer data—all while maintaining privacy standards.
This type of collaboration signals a growing trend of retailers and adtech companies working together to unlock new, privacy-conscious opportunities in the programmatic space. However, retail media isn’t without its challenges. Before diving into retail media, advertisers must first ensure their own data is clean and organized, and then carefully vet potential partnerships to ensure the media networks with which they’re partnering also have clean, reliable data and that they adhere to privacy-compliant practices. And, given that many of these media networks are walled gardens, advertisers must also navigate the complexities of data integration and ensure they can still measure campaign performance across these closed and deeply fragmented ecosystems. As these media networks expand, advertisers will need to adopt a flexible, data-driven strategy to utilize them while ensuring appropriate transparency and privacy compliance.
Artificial intelligence has always been foundational to programmatic advertising: Machine learning powers real-time bidding (RTB), enabling split-second decisions on ad placements based on available data, and other types of AI are critical to optimizing bids, targeting ads, and measuring performance. However, in 2025, it’s generative AI that’s dominating the conversation.
If 2024 was defined by advertisers’ experimentation with generative AI’s capabilities in programmatic, then 2025 will likely be defined by advertisers meaningfully investing in and implementing the technology. Though 92% of advertising agencies say they currently use the technology in some capacity, only 44% of marketers and advertisers say their employers currently pay for such tools. This disconnect between usage and investment signals an opportunity for marketing teams to close the gap and fully harness generative AI’s potential.
Whether by enhancing contextual targeting, automating manual tasks, generating ad variations for better personalization, analyzing large datasets, or assisting with media buying strategies, generative AI enables teams to unlock new levels of creativity and efficiency in programmatic. And, by freeing up marketers to focus on high-level strategy and problem solving, it can help reduce burnout (a challenge that has long plagued the industry). Of course, simply investing in these tools won’t guarantee success, especially given the risks that come along with gen AI. A strategic approach—prioritizing tools that align with organizational goals and ensuring a clear plan for implementation, training, and managing risk—will be essential for realizing their full potential in 2025 and beyond.
From tackling challenges like signal loss and low-quality inventory to embracing opportunities in video, retail media, and contextual targeting, advertisers are poised for an exciting yet complex year ahead. By embracing key programmatic trends and maintaining adaptability, marketers can optimize their programmatic ad spend and create meaningful, personalized connections with audiences—ultimately driving high engagement and results.
__
Searching for deeper insights into the trends set to shape advertising in 2025? Our report, Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report, breaks down the key innovations and opportunities to watch in the year ahead.
Ah, AI.
Few innovations have sustained as much buzz in the advertising industry of late. With 82.4% of agency leaders believing that AI will be the most influential trend to shape digital advertising in the next 10 years, and more than 90% of marketers and advertisers saying they use generative AI as part of their digital marketing efforts, the technology has already reshaped advertisers’ approach to their work.
Yet, alongside its immense potential, AI brings significant challenges. From brand safety concerns, to evolving regulatory frameworks, to risks related to algorithmic bias and discrimination, marketing teams must approach AI-driven solutions with intention and care.
To help advertisers navigate this complexity and prepare for 2025, we’ve rounded up all the resources we published on artificial intelligence this year. From a report unpacking AI’s impact on marketing, to podcast episodes breaking down the AI revolution, to blog posts exploring AI’s regulation and how organizations are investing in the tech, these pieces will help advertisers stay up to date on recent developments in AI and make the most of this ever-evolving tech in the year ahead.
Since ChatGPT’s public release in 2022, conversations around generative AI have flooded the digital advertising ecosystem. But how do advertisers really feel about the technology? Is it actually driving the levels of efficiency and innovation marketing teams are hoping for? And what of the risks? For this report, we surveyed marketing and advertising professionals across top agencies, brands, and publishers to get a pulse on their AI usage, sentiments, and perceptions around its potential to shape the industry moving forward.
More than 87% of marketers believe AI will radically transform digital advertising in the next three to five years. Yet there’s tension between marketers’ desire to adopt the technology and their uncertainty around how to do so effectively. Case in point: Only 44% of marketers and advertisers say their employers pay for generative AI tools. Here, discover how marketing leaders can evaluate the benefits of paid AI solutions, understand AI’s risks, and make informed investment decisions.
AI and automation hold significant potential for advertisers. These technologies can maximize efficiency, improve workflows, reduce redundant and low-value tasks, and allow teams more time to innovate and be creative. In this episode of the AdTech Unfiltered podcast, Eric Mayhew, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Product Officer of Fluency, breaks down the benefits of automation and AI.
Amidst economic and financial challenges, many media agencies are looking to AI to drive revenue and increase profitability. In this article, we unpack how AI can help make campaign planning and optimization more efficient, as well as how it can contribute to overall workflow automation that saves time and reduces manual workloads for marketing teams.
With its ability to clone voices, write poetry, compose music, synthesize huge amounts of data, and more, generative AI offers seemingly endless opportunities. However, along with these benefits come concerns surrounding its appropriate usage and regulation. For instance, can AI-generated content be copyrighted? Should all materials created using generative AI be watermarked? And how are governing bodies approaching its regulation, particularly given the issues that have already been identified with algorithmic discrimination? In this article, we explore everything we know so far about generative AI regulation—as well as what it means for advertisers.
Though AI has long been a cornerstone of the digital advertising world, powering programmatic capabilities and allowing for machine learning-driven optimizations, generative AI tools offer new and exciting opportunities for industry professionals. Embracing such tools can help drive efficiency, grow revenue, and ensure teams remain at the cutting edge of innovation. At the same time, they come with significant risks that leaders must understand up front. Here, learn about these risks, particularly those related to brand safety, consumer perceptions of AI, and legal/regulatory considerations.
Though AI has caused quite a stir recently, it’s been foundational to digital advertising for decades. In this episode of AdTech Unfiltered, Alex Castrounis, founder and CEO of Why of AI, breaks down the recent AI revolution and shares how organizations can incorporate AI in a way that aligns with their organizational goals.
Generative AI is transforming many components of digital advertising, including the search landscape. Many users—particularly Gen Z and millennials—are turning to AI-powered chatbots over traditional search engines; search engines are incorporating AI-driven components that are changing how organic results are presented; and some AI chatbots are even rolling out internet search features within their existing interfaces, further shifting consumers away from traditional search engines. Here, dive deeper into generative AI’s potential impact on the search landscape and how advertising leaders should prepare.
As generative AI revolutionizes the search landscape, it is also transforming the world of social media advertising. From the explosion of AI-powered advertising tools in the social space, to heightened concerns around brand safety as AI-generated content grows more prevalent on social platforms, to AI-driven targeting for social advertising, learn all about both the opportunities and challenges emerging in the social space thanks to this disruptive technology.
Though many agencies, brands, publishers, and others across the digital advertising ecosystem are experimenting with AI, few have adopted it at the scale necessary to truly revolutionize their businesses. In this piece, we explore key takeaways and insights from Advertising Week New York on how leaders can leverage AI and automation to truly transform their organizations.
Much like at AWNY, AI was quite the hot topic at this year’s Possible in Miami Beach. Attendees were buzzing with discussions about their experiences leveraging AI, the technology’s benefits, and strategies to mitigate potential risks. From opportunities to drive efficiency, optimize data, drive better campaign outcomes, and provide enhanced personalization in advertising, check out some of the top insights from this year’s event.
__
Interested in digging into the trends that will shape 2025? In Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report, we explore the trends and opportunities that will drive impact in the year ahead across commerce media, CTV, search, and—you guessed it!—AI.
2024 brought a variety of twists, turns, and evolutions for everyone in the advertising industry—but for agency leaders, it was a particularly bumpy ride. Agencies confronted mounting signal loss, the rise of AI (and clients’ expectations around its usage), ongoing media fragmentation, and a variety of transformative regulatory developments all against the backdrop of significant economic and financial pressures. Indeed, as one agency CEO put it, “The business of agencies right now is staying in business.”
Of course, as agency leaders know, many of these challenges can be reframed as opportunities. By understanding the conditions and forces driving these changes—where they come from, why they matter, and how to adapt—leaders can guide their organizations toward an evolved agency model, one that delivers differentiation and resilience in a competitive landscape.
To that end, we’ve put together a list of seven resources that provided agency leaders with the guidance and insights they needed to thrive in a year of constant change, highlighting lessons from 2024’s defining shifts to set the stage for a successful 2025.
For this report, Basis surveyed agency professionals across the US to identify how they feel about their work, their agencies, and the industry as a whole. The findings paint a clear picture of the biggest challenges facing agencies today, including AI, client relationships, investment priorities, emerging trends, and more. With insights segmented by leaders and non-leaders, this comprehensive resource offers a clear-eyed view and actionable takeaways from today’s agency landscape.
Five industry veterans who have collectively witnessed decades of change in the agency landscape share their insights on what industry leaders need to know about this moment, and how they can guide their organizations towards positive change. This conversation focuses on four key trends: The shifting landscape of online search, the maturation of connected TV advertising, evolving sentiments around AI, and the rise of commerce media.
Creating an evolved agency requires embracing a modern martech and adtech stack. To effectively adapt to shifts like the rise of AI, increasing signal loss, and new digital advertising regulations, agency leaders must take stock of what aspects of their tech stacks are working, what aspects aren’t, and what new technologies are needed. This article explores how leaders can approach this transition, diving into the importance of interoperability, robust training and resources, and automation in service of increasing efficiency, driving revenue, and reducing team burnout.
Of course, even the perfect tech stack can only take you so far, and the best agencies rely on a phenomenal team of advertisers to implement that tech in innovative and creative ways. In an industry with particularly high rates of employee churn—especially when it comes to junior-level employees—talent retention remains a key focus for agency leaders. And with a whopping 70% of agency professionals feeling that their jobs are more difficult now than they were two years ago, agencies should focus on reducing points of friction and finding ways to meet their teams’ evolving needs and expectations. Here, we explore the three key strategies for achieving these goals.
Close to half of agency professionals say their agency’s relationships with their clients are more strained today than they were just two years ago. In this article, Basis EVP of Client Development Michael Olson, Group VP of Client Strategy & Insights Kelly Boyle, and Client Strategy & Effectiveness Lead Lauren Johnson share strategies for fostering more trusting, fruitful, and longstanding client partnerships.
Commerce media is on the rise, social media continues to fragment, and the convergent TV landscape is transforming, bringing new layers of complexity to an already complex media environment. At the same time, clients are seeking expert guidance around which platforms to invest in, how to maximize their first-party data across disparate platforms, and more. In this episode of the AdTech Unfiltered podcast, host Noor Naseer and guest John Lods, CEO of agency Arm Candy, explore how agencies can navigate this complexity to accurately and efficiently assess emerging technologies and provide data-driven strategies that drive success for their clients.
2024 was defined by a significant amount of hype surrounding AI—particularly generative AI—and its applications for advertisers. Still, only about a quarter of businesses across industries are finding and scaling value from their AI tools. This piece explores proven applications of AI, with a focus on planning, optimization, and workflow automation, as agencies strive to unlock greater value from AI in 2025.
—
Want to gain a competitive edge for your agency in 2025? Reality Check: The 2025 Advertising Trends Report details four major trends that are set to shape the industry in 2025 while providing insights around how advertising leaders can navigate them successfully.
In this episode of AdTech Unfiltered, Beau Davis, seasoned mobile sales leader and co-founder of Futureproofd, shares insights into the challenges sellers face in today’s advertising ecosystem.
Davis explores strategies for overcoming these obstacles, from longer sales cycles and less face time with clients to growing skepticism from buyers. Together with host Noor Naseer, he discusses what sellers need to know before securing meetings and how to better connect with ad agencies, particularly holding companies.
Noor Naseer: Hey, this is Noor Naseer for Adtech Unfiltered. Beau Davis has nearly two decades of experience as a winning sales leader for numerous mobile ad platforms including Greystripe, Verve and Kochava. For the last seven years he's brought those skills to Futureproofd, the consultancy he co-founded to help sales organizations better achieve their sales goals.
Beau talks to me about the challenging climate in today's advertising ecosystem that sellers face when trying to sell something, including dealing with longer sales cycles, less facetime with prospective customers, and buyers questioning seller knowledge.
Beau shares what sellers can be doing better, what they need to be informed about when heading into a meeting, and more. While Beau frames this conversation around approaching ad agencies in particular, especially holding companies, a lot of his reflections can apply to anyone selling something into the advertising world. Let's dive into this episode with Beau right now.
NN: Hey everyone, it's Noor. We're about to get into a great episode but first a quick mention about the sound quality. My guest Beau sounds very good. My file could be better but it's still a great episode and we hope you enjoy it.
—
NN: Beau, I figure that there are more people who are in the ad sales business working specifically in adtech now than ever before. And you specifically being in a position where you're out there educating salespeople and sales teams, you've probably seen an evolution. The first question for you is: How has the role of the salary evolved in adtech across, let's say, the past decade?
Beau Davis: Yes. I think it's gotten harder in all honesty, Noor, and we see this quite a bit with a lot of the firms that we're working with. Primarily in the adtech space, we do some things outside of adtech but the vast majority of the problem or the pain that we're working with on sales teams is the head of sales or maybe it's a head of marketing who will come to us and say, “Hey, things have gotten harder.” Deal cycles take a lot longer. The amount of people that we have to talk to—there's a lot more people involved. Procurement gets involved. We used to just take the media supervisor out to lunch and they signed the deal right there. And so, everyone is looking for a way to adjust or honestly what we think they're looking for is to go back to the way things were: “Hey, it used to be a lot easier to do this. Can you help us make it easier?” The short answer is: No, things have gotten significantly more complex and there's a variety of different reasons for that. But I think a lot of it is that the buyers have a lot more information at their fingertips now. So it's not just the internet, there are companies and platforms that have been created so that these buyers now are very educated on your offering and the overall offering and ecosystem that you may be playing in whether you be a CDP or a DSP or just a straight up ad network. They used to have to take your word that you're better than the other one and maybe they like you more. By the way, that's still very important. Buyers come into these meetings now significantly more educated than ever before, and they have already formed opinions about those sellers which again, even 10-15 years ago, wasn't happening. Their first interaction was when you walked in the door with them, other than the emails you sent them relentlessly to get that meeting.
I think that's been really hard for a lot of organizations to wrap their head around—"How do they already know this or how do they already have an opinion about me?” And a lot of times you can't even get that meeting, because the folks have had that opinion. I'd also say that more money is being spent with fewer players and so it used to be like “Well we'll sprinkle the money around to a variety of different partners and we'll compare them against one another and then we're ultimately going to choose the winner and continue to work with one or two of those types of partners.” But the “FAANG” companies (I don't know if that's still an acronym we're using in the investing world these days) but those folks are getting, depending on what you read, like 92 cents of every dollar. So the pool and opportunity for a lot of the folks who are not in the FAANG is significantly smaller and there's a lot more people competing for those eight cents on the dollar so that makes it significantly harder.
I think the other thing that has happened is you do need to be more technical. So, I do believe relationship-based selling works, I'm not saying that it doesn't. It's just that you have to be really good at relationships and know a little bit more or a lot more about the technical side of the business because it has become significantly more technical. It has moved greatly towards software in a lot of ways where the buyer has the control and their hands are on the keyboard. And they do want to know about your algorithm and the queries per second and your first-party data and the data matching process. Whereas before, that was more or less outsourced to the vendor that you chose. Like, “Okay, I'm going to cut you an IO, you go ahead and run it on the back end for us and send me the reporting and I'll feel good about it if the results are good.” Now, the buyer is the one who's managing a lot of that technical execution. And they want to work with partners and people who are technical and understand the nuances of those little things that make a big difference in leveraging that software. I don’t think that was a succinct answer but there's quite a few ways that this has changed.
NN: I heard you mention of course a bunch of things that are visible challenges right now, where you're dealing with the fact that there's a much steeper learning curve. You're never going to know everything. There's always something else you need to learn. You're upvagainst a much more sophisticated buyer. There isn't a single buyer, there's multiple levels of bureaucracy to deal with especially in larger organizations. So just naming a couple of the things that you mentioned a moment ago, where do you primarily see buyers going wrong? You would hope that they have the foresight to appreciate some of what you've mentioned but I imagine that they're challenged by some things. People are making some mistakes out there.
BD: Absolutely. I think this goes across industries, but I think it's particularly bad in the adtech/martech industry, which is that most sellers are extremely feature-focused and not solutions- or storytelling-focused. So, the vast majority of companies that we work with, the vast majority of pitches that we've seen in our life regardless of whether we work with those companies or not, it all leans on like the what and the how of who they are. ‘Oh, our algorithm. We were founded by Sequoia Capital.” And really there's not that much difference to an algorithm unless you can explain the value and translate how that algorithm is going to make a meaningful impact on the buyer's business. The vast majority of sellers lead with stats and facts and figures of their business and why they're so great and so wonderful. And then they have a case study in the back about how they solve some business problems. I do think that's pervasive across industries, but it is particularly bad in the adtech industry.
In the several dozen companies we work with, only one has ever led with compelling insights and data about the business problem up front in their natural sales deck, their core sales deck. Everyone else leads with “Let me tell you all about us and how wonderful we are.” And then they will have some storytelling in the background, but it gets lost because you've already basically killed that buyer with facts and features and they're sitting there going, “Oh wow, your queries per second, okay,” and they've already tuned out. So, I think that's one of the biggest issues we see across the board.
Then, it depends on if you're going client direct or agency, and I think there's a lot of talk on the type of agency you're going to. So, whether it's a holding company or some of the smaller more independent shops and then the clients themselves, people do not customize their approach for the individuals that they're speaking to. Holding companies care about very different things than independent agencies, which care very differently about what the client directs care about. They all ultimately have the same goal: “Oh, I want to be able to buy media more effectively and efficiently and get the best rates and I hope you're not marking things up.” But the general pitch and the lack of customization for understanding who is sitting across from you and what that individual person—not the company—thinks about and cares about and the pain that person is trying to solve; very rarely do we see organizations customize it for that individual. Maybe they throw a logo of like the person they're talking to or the agency but they're not thinking about the problems that a holding company has versus independent versus a marketer direct and so I think that's the other big thing.
Again, you would think that this would be something that everyone's doing because this is not impacted by the changes in the martech ecosystem. These are things that you think we would have been doing for the last 20-30 years, it's just that people forget that and I think because of the commoditization of advertising and the competitiveness, they want to start with themselves and say, “This is how we're different than so and so because we already know you're working with this direct competitor and I want to explain to you how we're different.” You still have to hook them up front on the business problems and challenges that you solve for them and the pain that that individual is facing and buying and selecting media vendors.
NN: I'm surprised that this is still such a big issue. I think back—just to contextualize my own experience—being someone who's sat on the buy side for a decent period of my own career. I remember specifically 2016, ’17, ’18, ’19, ’20, when I was sitting in a lot of those types of meetings, exactly what you described, where somebody is taking up over 50% of the meeting of a lunch and learn and going on and on about the history of their company and not getting to the meat that people are actually concerned about. And they will not derail from their plan of action which is to talk about that. Maybe that comes from their history working in the business. Maybe they've been advised to get into that because there's this lack of commitment to understanding exactly who it is that you're talking to. So that feels crazy, but maybe also shouldn't be surprising because there's so many people in the business and they're being instructed in different ways in how to approach those initial overviews or calls with prospective clients.
BD: Just to add to that, if we wanted to add another problem—and it's a general problem, but not a new problem—people stick to their decks for the most part: “This is the script I've been given. This is where I feel comfortable.” You, Noor, were a great media buyer. You were smart, savvy. You may ask something that is three or four or 30 slides ahead because some people have way too long decks for a 30-minute meeting but they will not deviate. So that's another thing we see over and over again is this inability to pivot and think on your feet, and I think some of that is lack of education. ”Oh they asked me a technical question that I don't know the answer to. I will ignore that and hope that it doesn't come up again” I also think there's just too many people who are not comfortable being able to think on their feet and address things in real time. So, I highly recommend taking an improv class at Second City where it does make you think on your feet, listen in real time, and adjust on the fly versus being so stuck to a script.
NN: Do you think a part of that has to do with the lack of technical knowledge that people can't break away from because they can't think about things? They're not able to zoom out and see the big picture and say you're curious about this thing and that relates to something? Do you think that's what the struggle is?
BD: I think that's a big part of it. I will say I think people who are starting in ad sales and media sales today may have an advantage over the old dogs. They don't have the Rolodex. They don't have relationships; which again are probably the most important part of it because it's your ability to get in the door. However, the old guard didn't have to be technical because things weren't as technical.
Even in today's modern sales environment, if you're working for a company, luckily working for a company that has subject matter experts, sellers rely too heavily on these folks who are the subject matter experts on data, the subject matter experts on the DSP UI. I guarantee you that Basis has those folks in-house. Basis has subject matter experts because I do believe and we at Futureproofd – Carrie, my partner and I – you should have one to two layers of knowledge on the technical side. So, if you're talking about an onion the outside layer maybe one layer deep because it builds credibility you're not going to be like “Oh, let me get back to you. Oh, let me get back to you.” We've all been in those meetings. The deal's done if the buyer can't get the information that they need out of the meeting. They took the time to meet with you and they finally want to be able to say, “I'm going to make notes on whether or not this is an organization I want to be partnering with and consider for my media buys.” And if you can't give them information in that 30-minute meeting it's kind of a waste of their time; however, I don't think you need to know the queries per second and all the integrations and how the technical backend works. But it's one of two things that either don't want to learn like I'm a relationship person, I'm just going to go in there and open doors and bring in my subject matter expert or they rely too heavily on those folks and you can see the confidence and that actually breaks relationships down where the buyer’s going “Why am I even talking to this individual who set the meeting up? I'll just go talk to the subject matter expert because this person is worthless.” They literally don't know any of the questions so they ultimately end up not trusting that individual, they may trust the organization and we've seen it. I've worked at places where the subject matter expert is the reason deals get done because they're so good and they can save it but it's not enough. People need to get a layer or two deep and when it gets so technical just say, “Hey I can't go to this level but I can set up a follow-up meeting.”
The only other thing I will say, Noor, is most sales reps instead of having all of that knowledge because again I don't think they need it they should be able to ask, “Why are you asking these questions?” Most salespeople are trained (and there are rubrics we work with companies that have like objection handling) – if they say this you say that, there's some “if statements” like in Excel, if this then that. It's a Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys book like “Oh, Choose Your Own Adventure: but they've memorized it very much like they've memorized their sales pitches where “Oh, they said CDP. Yes, we have integrations with these four CDPs.” They don't get to the why of it. “Why do you need this CDP?” And if you start peeling that back and that's their real value is getting deeper and getting to that emotional rationale for the buyer why do you need this?’ “Oh it's the only one that we have integration with.” ‘’Oh so you can't work with other CDPs?” “No, we can't work with other CDPs.” So I can't work with you if you don't have this integration. “Okay that's interesting, why did you choose that partner?”
You get into those details as a seller then you're going to be able to move the conversation a lot more and at least go back to your organization and say, “Hey it's make or break for us” versus “Oh yes we have that.” “No, we don't have that.” And then the conversation's over and the seller may not know it but the buyer's like “Oh you don't work with ours. It's over.” But they just take things at face value. They don't do enough empathetic listening. They don't prod a bit more. And whether they want to use Chris Voss's book of Labeling and Mirroring which by the way we highly recommend and train on because it does get to that deeper level – that’s the real value sellers can have in addition to being able to have one to two layers of technical capabilities to build that trust with that buyer.
NN: I was thinking about that kind of rigidity of only knowing frequently asked questions and bringing those up or trying to back into a space around what you know about as opposed to actually answering a question. And going back to your analogy of knowing at least the outer layers of the onion, so that you can build that rapport with somebody. I think that can also become inevitably a challenge when you're trying to build that relationship where the person, especially if they're savvy, they'll say, “Actually I think I kind of don't like you because you're not bringing a lot of value to this meeting” then you're setting the wrong tone for future interactions with that team.
BD: 100%. And I mean it's a million years ago, Noor, that I was a buyer but I had enough of those meetings where what's the point of this. You email me 12 times to get this meeting. I finally relented and said yes because I did see something. “Okay maybe there's something here” and then you waste my time for 30 minutes shoving the history of your company and the algorithms that you built down my throat versus answering the questions I have. And actually helping me understand whether or not you can make a meaningful impact on the client that I represent business. And it happens all the time and I wish it wouldn't but it's just the nature of a lot of the sellers that are out there today – (they’re) very rigid, very focused on if this, then that, and they can't deviate and improv on the fly.
NN: Let's say you're a little bit more of a sophisticated seller, you've been around for a little bit, you're putting in the time and energy to be agile in the presence of these different potential buyers or clients. You're still going to face so many objections. Going back to so many of the points that you made earlier on. What are some of the key obstacles that people are encountering the most regularly in the adtech space?
BD: The number one, in my opinion, is when folks are trying to get in with “hands on keyboard” teams. The number one objection they hear is - because they're used to this old way of like “Well where's the IO? Like let's do an IO. Send me an RFP, we'll get an IO.” And the vast majority, particularly at the holding co, but certainly coming from the independent agencies as well, the vast majority of media buying today is done programmatically where an individual has access and hands on keyboard and they want to do it through a PMP, programmatic guaranteed, you name it. If you do not have those capabilities, that to me, we hear this all time, “How do we get out of this PMP?” Because we have no control over it. People spend a dollar, then they spend $50, then they spend $500. Then they turn us off. How do we get them spending?
The margins a lot of times on those businesses aren't as high. and so that's where a lot of these other adtech companies are now really looking at saying, how do we afford all this because the margins aren't what they used to be when we're getting these PMPs that are not the same spend as a guaranteed IO for $50,000, $500,000 whatever it may be. So that to me is one of the biggest challenges.
The other thing we hear all the time is just we work with three to four vendors. Goes back to the agencies having less time than ever and client directs. A lot of the in-housing with clients they don't have the staff that agencies do. They in-housed to cut costs so they're not going to go replace it with the same number of people that they're outsourcing to. So, they work with FAANG or they work with three to five vendors and those are the ones that perform for them and they don't have the bandwidth to add new partners and test them and see if they work. So that comes up all the time like “They've got their tried and true and they just want to give me a chance.” And so that's a really, really hard thing I think for people to get their heads around. There's not a ton of things you can do to coach other than continuing to show, work with those three to four. If you add us we're additive when you get those responses. It's not you versus them, you're never going to win that game. It's “yes and.” It's absolutely keep working with those three to four, most clients we work with are working with those three to four and they should be. They've added us to the mix and we perform XYZ better or we're driving more registrations or better you know viewability. Whatever the KPIs that you're talking to you have to be able to justify and have proof by the way that you are additive to the mix, and you're not taking away from those core vendors. So those to me are some of the biggest.
Then the last one I'd say, particularly at the holding co, is unique to holding cos and maybe some of the client direct is they're doing deals at a macro level across the holding co and it plays very much into we only work with three to four vendors. But if Publicis or Omnicom or WPP has a holding company agreement with certain partners and a lot of times those are the FAANG companies. There are a ton that are outside of FAANG that they have those relationships with. And it's an apples-to-apples comparison but one has a relationship at the holding co and the other does not – that spends going to the (partner) that they have the relationship. So you need to have sellers that can get in at a certain level at the holding co and do deals that are valuable and the holding cos want to do with you where again you're additive but you're guaranteed a certain amount of money. And then you can break through that barrier of “Oh, we have a holding co relationship.”
NN: I see there being once upon a time it was the challenge of saying, “tell me what campaigns you're working on and make me one of the line items on that plan.” And now it's very much moving so I also need to understand, what is moving you? What is your incentive to work with any partner? And it may not be your personal choice to your point earlier if you're working at a holding company or whatever institution you're working for, there may be these internal deals that are also not being brought up in the meeting. You kind of slowly have to figure that out by talking to the right stakeholders inside of that organization and having that uncovered. There could be plenty of people in the meeting who either don't really think about it, don't really think that that's valuable for you to know and they also don't feel incentivized to share that information with you. So I think that that's another really complex challenge.
So maybe to push harder into that specifically as a follow-up: What do you do when you're in that meeting you're having that conversation but you feel like there is a wall between you and the people that you're talking to? It sounds like they're listening, that they're seeing an advantage, but you sense that there's a lot of information that's being concealed. What does that secondary conversation look like that goes beyond the scope of maybe what intended to present about your offering?
BD: I think you have to be bolder. I think a lot of sellers take things at face value like we discussed and then they go back to their organization like, “Well they're not going to work with us. I don't really know why but it's very clear they don't want to work with us.” You have to, in that meeting, if you sense it say it, or challenge, where it's like “I'm going to challenge you” because it's exactly what you said, Noor. It's not being said it's what's being unsaid but you can sense it you feel it say, “Is there a holding co deal here that I'm not aware of?” Come out with it because you finally got the meeting it took 12 emails to get it which by the way that's the other thing we hear all the time is like “If no one wants to meet anymore I used to send four emails.”
The average by the way to get a meeting at this stage post-Covid is like 12 to 14 touch points. You finally get that meeting and you're not going to ask them whether or not there's a real opportunity here. You're going to present do your whole dog and pony show and feel really good that they're nodding their head but not ask the fact when you sense like there's something that they're not telling me, you need ask it. Literally say, “is there a relationship that you have existing for a partner that's similar to us that we should know about? Because I'm getting the sense that no matter what we say you like the offering but it's not going to happen because it seems like there's something else here.”
I also think you need to start asking—this is another challenge that we're seeing is that the holding co have bought their way into technology. It's less so at the independents but certainly there are some independent companies that maybe outsource their buying. But the holding co have their way into these technology – they’re actually technology companies – now. At Publicis we hear all the time (sorry for all my Publicis friends) but people are like “They only work with Epsilon. I can't work with them because they want to send everything through Epsilon.” Well yeah, it makes a ton of sense they spent billions of dollars on a technology. They want to make sure that their client's media spend is going through that because they make more money when it goes off of their technology. But you have to be able to ask it and just put it out there.
There are going to be times where you are literally going to be stonewalled, and you are not going to be able to work with that individual brand within that company and that's okay. That's another thing I think a lot of sellers do not understand that it is better to hear no in a “hard no” way—not like, oh the thing that you sense but you didn't say and you don't really get the no. Ask and be told no, “We're never going to work with you all because we have to run anything Epsilon or we have a partnership with a direct competitor of yours and we're not going to do additional partnerships. We will never work with you.” Get that, cross them off your list and move to the next one. There are a ton of other companies to go call on. So many sellers, it takes them so long to get to this meeting, they're emotionally invested into it and they have to get the buy and they'll keep chasing a deal that will never happen. So, ask the question, be bold about it and then if you get that hard no, and you got to make sure it's a hard no walk away from it and say, “Okay this is never going to happen” go report it back to your CRO. You know, plenty of fish in the sea go to the next one and there's opportunities there.
NN: It sounds like selling is kind of like dating. To your point you're not just wasting their time trying to make something happen that may not flourish. You're wasting your own time that you could be spending elsewhere. And as we all know, like sellers they're on the clock and there's an expectation that within a very certain time frame that you're turning around dollars and all of your explanations for why those dollars have not come to fruition only lasts so long. You're on kind of a short leash.
BD: 1000%. I'm kind of smiling because we have a whole slide about how sales is like dating and swiping and then you obsessively stalk them, and text them too much and share too much information, then you freak them out and they're like “Whoa, whoa you came on way too strong.” A lot of sellers try to close on the first night and basically get too excited they're and that's really intimidating. But you're 100% right Noor, if you see that the date isn't going well where the person's not interested in you why would you continue to text them after. Just get it over with. Like life is short. Move on with it.
I laughed because it is based regionally like the Midwest. God bless us midwesterners, but we are way too nice and the buyers especially it's like “You know this is really interesting thank you so much for coming in and presenting to us.” Why would you say that if you have no intent? New Yorkers will let you know pretty upfront “Yeah this is never happening bro we've got a relationship with someone else. See you later. Bye.” But even they have gotten a little nicer, believe it or not over the years. So you need to ask those questions and your time as a seller is every bit as valuable as the buyers. Most sellers feel subservient to the buyer and that's just like a weird relationship thing. There could be a really interesting sociological experiment around the way sellers feel indebted for the buyer meeting with them. But your time is super valuable. So if that person isn't going to give you the time or it's a one-and-done date, move on to the next one, tie that bow finish it off and say, “Doesn't seem like this is going to be a fit for us.” If they give you the head. “Yeah we're never going to be able to work.” You: “Cool. Appreciate it.” Literally go down the hall to the next team within that organization because again it's just one team saying that and see if you can get something going with another team within the holding co or within another independent partner of that agency.
NN: There's a ton of EQ work that any seller needs to do and that clearly is such a big part of being successful as a salesperson. I wanted to bring it back to something we lightly talked about earlier. We want you to know about your product, where it is thinking about it at a higher level and somewhat in a more detailed way, but you know you have your limitations. You're not going to be a technical expert, you're not a SME.
What about other things that are happening in the industry? Right now, AI is obviously super hot in ‘23 and ‘24. We've been talking about AI technically in the adtech space because of machine learning, algorithms, and any ways in which we may want to frame AI being relevant for adtech. How important do you think it is to be talking about AI right now if you're an adtech seller?
BD: So I think if you want to be buzzy and sell shiny objects (which I love)—I love the hype and things to come—by all means you should know quite a bit about it and what the potential impact will be. I think that's more on the solution side of what AI will do for automation and machine learning around media and advertising campaigns.
I do believe wholeheartedly that in a very short future (this is not five years away) all those optimizations that take place where a lot of times human beings are logging in and they're dialing the knobs , going to be automated by a machine. You have to program it ahead of time and prompt it to say, “This is the outcome I'm looking for so make sure you're optimizing it.” And that's going to come to any DSP and I think we all can agree to that and that is going to cost jobs. You're not going to need as many analysts on the hands-on-keyboard side logging in and doing that. You could argue that's a good thing because then people can do more strategic work and they don't have to do the minutiae of logging in and doing that.
I think like from a business solution standpoint you should be talking about the ability to leverage AI in the future of advertising to drive outcomes for your business. Sure there's other parts about varying creative, that's another big hype around like “Oh, we can create 1 million versions of the same ad based on human intent whether it's the green dress or the red dress.” That's been around for a while but really that is more automation and I think you want to get clear on that. There's a very big difference between automation and artificial intelligence, and so that applies on understanding it on the business side like well what is automation? What is actual machine learning you're leveraging artificial intelligence to automate or and enhance campaigns? But I also look at it on the tools that sellers can leverage to get smarter about sales. And that's a big focus for what Carrie and I do at Futureproofd is like understanding the technology that's out there today. Can you leverage it from a salesperson? Can it help you enhance your prospecting, your objection handling, your email writing? And there are a lot of tools that exist today that I'd say are more on the automation side than on the true artificial intelligence side; however, you're quickly seeing a lot of artificial intelligence integrate into these automation tools.
Everything, Noor, from understanding people's personalities that you want to email so you literally know how to pitch them and they'll auto-write an email for you based on that—maybe you're a motivator, Noor, you're gonna speak to Noor very differently than you're going to speak to Beau because we care about different things—and it will auto-write an email based on your persona. Those are really interesting things that a lot of adtech sales companies don't know about.
Our theory, (and it's not necessarily a theory anymore because we've seen it) is that adtech companies, in general, not all, but adtech companies are three to five years behind true SAAS software companies in leveraging tools and technology to enable their sales forces to be smarter and automate a lot of the manual tasks of sales. So getting really smart about what tools enhance and make your small teams much more mighty are really important for startups whereas like the bigger companies like on Meta or Amazon, they're already leveraging tools. They understand, they're using artificial intelligence in their core platform. So they probably don't need it as much. But if you're a startup, you have to punch above your weight class. There are tools out there that will help you automate as well as leverage artificial intelligence to make you smarter about it.
I think it's twofold, Noor. It's what's going to do for the industry but then what's it going to do for your sales business.
NN: I see to your point being the two sides to it. There's a ton to know out there and there's a lot of curiosity. But there could be a much bigger world in terms of how much a potential buyer wants to learn about adtech that goes beyond the scope of what it is that you're offering and then pulling it back to what are internal tools you can use that really your client does not care about and you will not talk to them about. And then what actually shows up inside of your technology itself that you could justify as being some derivative of AI which I think is probably the fair way to position it. Most tech companies (and I'm sure some people would disagree) they're purporting that they're offering something that's truly AI and really it isn't. I think slowly but surely we're going to see more organizations come out and say like “Yeah whatever we were talking about back then is not exactly AI.”
We have some AI in the language of some product marketing that we're doing these days. Again, it can be justified, but is it going to be the AI that we're going to see in the next couple of years? It's not. It's just not.
BD: Completely agree, I think that's why sellers again going back to one of the things I said earlier like they need to ask the question, “Well why are you asking this?” There's always going to be that person in a meeting that throws the bomb like “So what do you think of Sora's new large language model?” It's like what, why? Why are you asking? Like what's the relevance to this there's always people who want to throw their grenade into the meeting and walk away but really understand at the core like well why are you asking this are you leveraging AI? Are you curious about AI? Are you trying to automate things or are you actually trying to leverage a large language model to create ad copy? There's so many different use cases. And I highly recommend having a growth mindset and taking some of these free online courses. Google has a really great one which by the way is like super-super hard and I could barely get through it. But if you're nerdy about it and you want to learn things at a surface level to understand the difference between neural networks and large language models and all of these different things, you should at least again have a surface to two layers deep of what is it out there in general, and then how can you apply it to the advertising and media world, and how can you apply it to your sales practice, and what tools exist there.
NN: So final question: We talked about the obstacles that inevitably you face as a salesperson or any salesperson faces but then there are also objections that sometimes are not fair. You're dealing with somebody who believes, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it.” How do you deal with somebody who has misconceptions about what it is that you're bringing to the table? How would you advise a salesperson to overcome those misconceptions from somebody who's really deeply rooted in believing something that isn't true about you and your organization?
BD: It's really hard to change someone's preconceived notion. It happens and you have to be very thoughtful and pragmatic about the way you go about it. And as we talked about earlier, Noor, you as a seller should be walking into every meeting thinking that you're a step behind or you have to dig yourself out of a ditch; I do not think that's the case 10 years ago. I literally think 10 years ago you knew more about the space as a seller than the buyer in front of you. But like we said, the democratization of the internet and data and information is everywhere now.
So those buyers already have a preconceived notion of who you are as an individual but particularly about the company and the offering that you have. It's a lot of reasons by the way why you never get the meeting in the first place because like “Ah I read about this company. I looked them up on seller crowd. I read about them in G2 and they have low-star rating. I'm not going to even take a meeting with them because they can't do the things I need them to do.” And that is a fact.
The reality is like you need to ask them why they think that way. You need to be able to use social proof so case studies but like real world results on how you have overcome those obstacles. Like, “Yeah we totally hear this all the time everyone thinks we're this we're not this but let me explain to you a couple of clients that gave us an opportunity and how things changed.” It's the reason that there are these—everyone's like, “Oh you know it's so hard Facebook, Amazon, Google they get all the money.”
There are competitors that come up every single day that make tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars because they do have something unique to offer or their story is unique enough to offer maybe the same thing in the back end as everyone else. So, you should walk into every meeting thinking that that person knows more or they think something about you that is not necessarily true.
The reality is this though; that individual on the buy side, they are paid to know a lot about a little. None of those buyers know as much about you and your company as you do. So you should always have the confidence and swagger to be like “I don't care what they've read on the internet. No one can know more about my solution than me because I work here and I understand it.” And your job then is to ask them why they think the things that they think, have them give you examples and then it's basically like a fact checking mission. Going back to the internet and social media like you are the fact checker—and don't be rude. I'm awful on the internet by the way on fact checking people on politics. Don't be me in a sales meeting. Try to put yourself in their shoes and why they think that way and be empathetic to that and believe it or not you'll find a middle ground most of the time as long as you are not going to be like “I'm going to win them over. I'm going to prove to them that they're wrong.” You have to understand where they're coming from, why they're thinking that way and then be able to have real life examples of how they are wrong without rubbing it in their face. And that to me goes a really long way and gets people over the hump of like their preconceived notions.
NN: Motivate them to think differently because the change in the way that they think it's up to them to make that change.
BD: You can lead the horse to water, Noor. I mean that's your job, ultimately. The biggest thing I've learned in sales over the last few years (especially now being more of a student) is people buy emotionally and they justify it rationally. So going all the way back to one of your first questions, the biggest mistake we see people make is that they rationally and go “Queries per second. We have more data partners blah-blah-blah-blah.” No one cares, like they emotionally want to know whether or not your product is going to make them look better and make their job easier, and if it does then they have to back it up with all the facts and figures. So, I'm not saying those aren't valuable but especially when someone has a preconceived notion you have to appeal somehow to their emotional mind.
People are biased. People may have had an experience or their boss had a bad experience with you and your company at your last place, and you're never going to get the deal simply because of a mistake that happened years ago. You have to be able to uncover that. Then to your point make them emotionally realize like “Oh well this person isn't so bad. Going to give them an opportunity.” And all you can ask is for an opportunity. If it doesn't deliver, you’re SOL. You're just looking for an opportunity to prove yourself. I don't think enough people think that way. I think they think like it's them against the other, and it's really just like I'm looking for an opportunity, a shot and if it doesn't work it doesn't work, and we can go our separate ways and I appreciate you giving me that opportunity.
NN: Well I love that you made time to talk us through at least a couple of different things for salespeople to be thinking about. Frankly, I think they’re things to think about even if you're on the buy side as far as how you're reflecting on how salespeople are coming and approaching you in the adtech or digital media and advertising space. So, we'll leave it at that for now but thanks for the time Beau.
BD: Thank you, Noor, for having me.
—
Thanks to Beau Davis, co-founder of sales consultancy Futureproofd for his perspective on how to better sell into agencies. As market dynamics between the buy and sell side in advertising continue to evolve it's important to have dialogue around the shifts and stay informed on smarter ways to approach asking for the business.
If you want to learn more about Beau’s organization, check him out on LinkedIn or go to his website futureproofd.com. that's the word Futureproofd with the ‘D’ on the end just a ‘D’ futureproofd.com. That's it for this episode. I'm Noor Naseer. We have another really great episode right on the heels of this one coming out in just the next few days.