Maximize Your Ad Spend

In this episode of Torch Talk, Lindsey Chupp sits down with Jordan Ray, Digital and Local Sales Manager at WKYC and TEGNA Media, to unpack the rapidly changing world of advertising, streaming television, and data-driven marketing.

As media consumption becomes more fragmented, Jordan explains how businesses can navigate the growing number of platforms, target the right audiences, and make smarter marketing investments. From streaming TV and attribution tracking to branding and lead generation, the conversation offers a practical look at how modern marketing strategies are evolving.

Jordan also shares insights into how businesses should think about balancing short-term lead generation with long-term brand building, and why understanding your customer journey is more important than ever.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• How streaming television has changed the advertising landscape

• The difference between building brand and driving leads

• Why audience targeting matters more than ever

• How businesses can use data to make smarter marketing decisions

• The role attribution plays in measuring campaign success

• How AI is helping marketers analyze and optimize performance

• Why marketing works best when multiple channels work together

• What business owners should consider before investing in advertising

This episode offers a practical look at modern marketing strategy, especially for business owners trying to understand where to invest, how to measure success, and how to build a brand that lasts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Go often tracking everything. Go ahead and already have the already know.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

I know it's always, I always say the same thing. It's always very troubling as a citizen, but then as a marketer, I want that animation.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

My husband, like, set up his new life on the new ways. Welcome back to Torch Talk, the show where we spotlight bold leaders growing businesses and communities with grit and purpose. Today's guest is Jordan Wright, digital and local sales manager at WKYC TV and Techna Media. In this Torch Talk episode, we'll explore how to approach data-driven marketing and take a deeper dive into how businesses can drive traffic, build stronger brands, and solve real challenges using digital media strategies. Welcome to Torch Talk, Jordan.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Thanks, Lindsay. Thanks for having me. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

We finally get to dive into all the things that you guys do, which is very dynamic. We've worked together for quite some time.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

A while now, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

I was trying to remember, I don't actually have any number.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

I mean, it's been at least five, six years because I've been here eight years.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

We have had, well, Fierce will be five years this year. Oh, okay. So it'll be I mean, for the entire time of Fierce, but I think you know, I've worked with WKYC even prior to that year. So a really great relationship, and we appreciate the partnership with you guys. So why don't we tell everybody a little bit of what it is that you do? Because they don't know what they're listening to right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

So WKYC is the NBC affiliate in Cleveland, but we also do streaming television through a company called Premion, which Tegna also owns. And that is really where we've seen the most growth in the television space. And you know, like when I first started eight years ago, the streaming space, you had to convince people to think about advertising within the streaming space. And I remember being at Launch and Learns, and people would say, but what about live sports? What about news? And admittedly, even at that time as a consumer, I had Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO, but none of them were ad supported. So even as a consumer, it was like, well, it's out there. And there was, there was a lot of inventory. There was Sling Television, there was network apps, um, but the consumption wasn't huge. Like, so for example, if I was talking to a car dealership, for instance, I could maybe do auto intenders in the entire DMA to have scale. And now, if you fast forward to present day in 2026, if you did auto intenders in the entire DMA, it'd be a lot of money. It would be a ton of money. And unless you were spending $100,000 a month, it would be a raindrop in the ocean. So what's happened is consumption's gone through the roof. No one is asking anymore about can you watch sports on Twitter?

SPEAKER_02 3:02

It's actually probably the opposite. Most of the time you have to convince people to go on broadcast television. Like, why would I do that?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

You're exactly right. It is, it's crazy. The problems that we had, you know, eight years ago are not the problems we have now. We have different problems. And it's almost the space is just too crazy. And as a consumer, you know, like I have to Google where can I watch the calves tonight? And that's the problem now.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

It really is kind of crazy, especially if you're I mean, even with TV shows, I'll get advertisements for TV shows, but you have no idea where to go watch them.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

And so yeah, you have to like look that up. Scrolling the guide is no longer a thing or just knowing where to go, like for my Browns or Cavs or what Indians, Guardians, whatever it is. Like you just it could be on Amazon one night and it could be on your channel the next.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Well, exactly. This space is so fragmented, yeah. Which is is a it's a challenge, and it's a challenge as an NBC affiliate as well. But also on the other side of that, it's a huge opportunity because we have this thing called Premion, which is a streaming aggregator where we can reach all of these things.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Which what so that for people that are listening, what does a streaming aggregator mean?

SPEAKER_01 4:13

So basically, you know, first just to back up a little bit, Premion started in 2016. And like, so even take yourself back to 2016, 10 years ago, there was network apps, sling television, like streaming space wasn't this Goliath that it is right now. But what a streaming aggregator does does and did back then is we went to each one of those locations, networks and different partnerships, and bought that inventory. And we bought it directly from each one of those providers, and we touted that as well. I mean, we would go out onto the street and say, Hey, we have direct inventory, meaning our ad stack aligns right with their ad stack, we're server-to-server integrated, and that's how we get our inventory. And we also are buying just the inventory at the very top of that waterfall. So we So that means higher quality, higher quality, higher viewership rate, meaning I always take it back to the a consumer perspective. If I'm starting a program, I'm way more likely to watch the commercials at the beginning of that program versus the end of that program. Because that's when people bail off. So we were touting that. We were touting high video completion rates. Beyond that, we didn't have much analytics back then. And so now in 2026, what it means to be an aggregator is there's no longer this server-to-server integration. It is all through demand-side platforms, which also has made the space way more commoditized. I mean, I'm sure all of your partners sell streaming television now and have access to you know some sort of demand-side platform.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

They do, but they're not all at the same quality of what you guys sell, which is why honestly we love the premium product as well. So from a quality standpoint, from a targeting standpoint, there's a number of reasons why we would choose Premion. And I have tested uh multiple other local um partners to you in Cleveland or competitors to you in Cleveland, but also just um because uh you know you can go buy direct on Hulu yourself if you want. You can buy directly through Spectrum. Like there's different um streaming vendors out there that you can try, but we get the best results when we work with you.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Well, I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

I'm that's just the truth. I'm not trying to sell sell what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

It's no, I know you want to you of all people would not buy us. You would send us a Christmas card still, but you want to buy us. Um and so, yeah, so we take that world of streaming and try to package it up for our clients and our agencies and their clients so that we're reaching geographically where they want to hit, and then demographically, and then audience segments that they want to hit. And then also to your point, our why buy is it's safe, fraud-free, brand safe inventory. And we have layers within the technology that does that as well, that identifies fraud because once again, digital medium, there is a lot of fraud.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

What is like that's a question. I will say that when I'm talking to people that you're fraud safe, but give us examples of what that looks like.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

So an example could be that you have all of these supply side platforms, so SSD or SSPs, and what they are trying to do is buy inventory so that they can resell at a higher rate. So especially if you ask your system, your DSP to say, I want the cheapest inventory as as possible so that I can resell that for and get a higher margin, then I'm just looking for that rate. And a company could mimic, like instead of a Netflix, you could change a letter and it'd be say Netflix. And I could put imaginary inventory on that, and it's fraudulent. It's in in and I sell that to the supply side dashboard, then it goes to a demand side uh platform, and then the commercial goes to nowhere.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

And they get fake analytics saying that it was reported and everything, and they really don't know. Impressions delivered. Their commercial was never actually seen by real people.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

And that's the challenge within the streaming space in general, is because on traditional television, I can tell you if you're advertising in the 7P news, I can tell you what time to turn TV on, um, and you're gonna see your commercial. Yeah. With with digital advertising and streaming, you don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

If you're not in the right demographic and you're not targeting yourself, yeah. Geo gra geographic area, you might not see the commercial.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

You might not see the spot. So there is this level of trust, which is also another thing that we tout, and we don't take it lightly that our clients trust us. So we push our company like to make sure that the inventory that we're providing is not the fraudulent inventory. And so we have these certifications from a company that takes it very seriously. It's called TAG is the acronym, Trustworthy Accountability Group, who monitors all our inventory to make sure that there's none of that fraudulent inventory. But fraud could also take take the place of, you know, I'm gonna deliver on the Fireplace app during Christmas time. It's not necessarily necessarily a quality commercial, but it's gonna be incredibly high video completion rates because people put that fireplace app and they just keep it up. Yeah, yeah, they're not watching it or pet TV. Yeah, like if my dog sees a commercial, like it's a hundred percent video completion rate, but it's just not a quality impression. So fraudulent inventory runs the gambit and it's changed and took taken many forms throughout the years, but it's something that all companies should be aware of, and it's it's a problem. But I think with artificial intelligence, we're gonna minimize and see minimal supply side dashboards or supply side platforms and more just direct to network inventory, which is where the where everything started, but it'll be more streamlined. It won't be so much um like you where you have to plug into that actual ad stack.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

So if I am a service contractor and maybe I have bought directly through one of the platforms that we're talking about, how could I, what could I look at maybe in my reporting or what are the indicators that that could possibly be fraud?

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Every you know, streaming company has a dashboard where they're gonna show delivery. And at this point, it should be table stakes that you're gonna show every impression to every network and provider. So take a look at those providers. Make sure that one, they're spelled correctly, make sure that there's no NAs. Um, because honestly, sometimes that does pop up where we have to go back and identify what that actual network or provider is. Because, you know, it could be something as simple as, hey, we didn't know where to to attribute that impression, whether it would be like Hulu or a network on Hulu, or it could be fraudulent inventory. If they can't find an answer to that, where it's like, no, we just don't know what that inventory provider is, that's a bad sign. Okay. And we do see that. Um, and we see that within competitive reports, where we'll ask the question, hey, figure out where this inventory is coming from. And in the streaming space, there is a there's a ton, hundreds of legitimate, legitimate streaming providers.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

And half of them we haven't heard the the names of then get desensitized to, oh yeah, that's just some random. It's just something. It's a free one out there that somebody has, but if the commercial is being seen, then you just kind of get desensitized to trusting that it's being delivered.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Exactly. So, like, have an AI engine be your friend, have Google be your friend. Just if I don't know a provider, and this still happens to me, where it'll pop up in the top 10, and I'll be like, I don't know what that provider is. And so I'll have to Google it and learn a little bit about the company, but take that time to do that. Also, um, you probably have different points of attribution that that streaming company is utilizing. Match up your website attribution delivery to your actual delivery. Because chances are those are two different companies that are measuring your website visits from people who saw the commercial and then went to the website to the actual company that is the demand side platform that distributing your ads. Those should match up. And that's what I like to point out to my clients is say, hey, look at the top 10 of your delivery on our just normal premium report, and then look at the top 10 in website delivery, and it should be the exact same. And it's two different companies.

SPEAKER_02 12:37

So, but in order to measure the website delivery or attribution, they would have had to place a pixel or code on your website in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah, so as of right now, yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

And would they do the fraud companies even try to do that? So that could be a trigger to me, even if you have bought from a platform and they haven't even requested to put a pixel on your website, then that could be a trigger to they're not even trying to track it.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

That's a great point, and that's actually a good segue, not only to fraudulent traffic, but also companies mixing in different types of ads within their streaming campaigns. So especially if a company is buying directly through like a YouTube TV, they're using a platform called DV360, which is fine, and that's a great platform, but they could be delivering pay-per-click ads through that. They could be delivering YouTube through that, they could be um delivering display through that, which could give you a click-through rate. Well, with connected TV, we shouldn't see click-through rates, at least with our inventory. Our inventory is mostly a connected television, meaning it is on a TV-like program. It's nothing that you can click. So that checks the box of getting fraudulent clicks. We're just tracking through IP address. So if I deliver a commercial to your house and you have an internet connection, you have an IP address. And then if that same IP address then goes to my website, I match those two things up. And that's where we get a website transition. And that's not fraudulent because it's just it's literally just matching IP to IP.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Let's talk about IP addresses while we're here. Yep. So there has been a lot of movement in the marketing world in the last five years of owning fierce when it comes to privacy, security, uh tracking on Google ads and Facebook ads, it's wild. I mean, I'm looking at we were we did 2025 annual performance reviews, and I had some clients have a 30% increase in unknown traffic. Yeah. Because people are opting out, even on my team. I'm not calling anybody out, yeah, but I'm on a team of marketers and I probably got 50% of people who are wanting to opt out of being tracked because they don't want they don't want the ads themselves. So we understand the world you're all living in.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

It's Vale's very big brother.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

But it's different. Yeah. How you track and identify people is a little bit different because you're you're going directly through IP addresses. So talk us, talk to us about that.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah, so if you are a household that has an internet connection, has Wi-Fi, then you have an IP address. Now, you could have several different IP addresses through the lifespan of that Wi-Fi. But what we're trying to do is match that IP address with an IP address that we're actually delivering to. So even if the IP address changes, if we deliver to an IP address and that same IP address then comes to the website, we know that that match happens. Now, tracking has become tricky. Uh, when we first started, actually, we could track the devices within those IP addresses, and we could, I don't know if you remember this.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

You used to be able to say there's how many TVs and phones within. Yes. So then you knew if the IP address was watching on a TV or an iPad or a phone. Yeah. And really a combination of all of those.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

I mean, and it was crazy. And and also if one of those devices then went to my brick and mortar location, I could track that as well. And then all of the things.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yeah, but I have clients who really wish we could still do that.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Hey, me too. Yeah. But rules and regulations, and you know, with all of the opt-ins, we the sample size wasn't big enough to track. And so there still is some assumptive data out there that you can get. Um, we used to go through a company called Foursquare, but we just decided to get out of that space because, you know, it was like one in 20 homes that were actually where we could actually track. And it just wasn't enough data to paint a picture that we felt was closed loop attribution.

SPEAKER_02 16:36

So how how do you track or identify, let's say, and I'm gonna get to the targeting in a second, but let's say you're looking for a 45-year-old female with who lives in Wayne County. Yeah, I'm not 45 yet, but that's within the age demographic. Um how does how do you find that person through the IP? Like, what is do you know what I'm saying? Like, how do you find the people?

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah, so it so there's a mix of first party and third party data. So the third party data I'm gonna get from census information. Okay. So you've identified through census information that your age, gender, people in the household. So then we can say, oh, they have kids in the household. So then maybe I can a college can hit me up at some point and say, Hey, I know you have kids in the household when you're thinking about universities and college plannings, or maybe a financial company can hit you up and try to get you on to start, you know, put money away for your kids' college fund. So we have that information just through third-party data, and that's really easy. And financial data is the same way. You know, we could be going through Fidelity, we could be going through a lot of different companies that have data on those individual households. And so just remember that you give up so much information about yourself when you buy a home.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yeah. So opt into tracking everybody. Go ahead. They already have the information.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

They already know. I know it's always I always say the same thing. It's always very troubling as a citizen, but then as a marketer, I want that information.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

My husband like set up his new iPhone and he clicked and no, and I was like, what are you doing? That is my livelihood right now. Turn it back on.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Yeah, it's it's getting as close to the target as possible. And that's where we can say that we can help a client build brand with television type advertising, or it is television advertising, but you can also help drive traffic because we are trying to get as close to the consumer, our client's consumer as possible. And so that's where we kind of blur the lines between building brand at a higher level versus actually driving traffic and getting that lower funnel customer.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

So, what's the first party data look like then? That's just another layer added on top of that.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Yeah, so first party, first party data could be just website data that you know you have search history, that you're also, let's just stay on the college motif. I'm I'm also searching universities. And that could also fall in line with, oh, this person is they have college age or high school age kids in the household and they're looking for universities online, and that's where that first party data is.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

And then you use all of that information to match an IP address to the physical address so that you know you're delivering to a TV. Yeah. Most of the time, what percentage of streaming commercials would you say are delivered on a TV like device?

SPEAKER_01 19:30

So with our inventory, yes, and I just looked at this the other day, it's it's about 98% actually show up on a connected television. Now, with that being said, we have clients that say, I want a hundred percent connected TV. So we'll do that, and that's really easy for us. But you know, I mean, like 2% of the time, like if I'm traveling, I'm watching television on a laptop or a phone.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Same.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Um, so like there is that opportunity to catch that consumer. So we have clients that still want that little fragmentation, but for the most part, our why buy is always connected television. Now, the universe, I mean, a lot of people, you know, I just had a client ask me the other day, because they're buying live sports from us, like how much of this inventory? I'm worried that this inventory is gonna be mobile or desktop inventory. And with our live sports product, 100% of our inventory is CTV. It's actually you don't even have the option. But you can buy CTV, or I'm sorry, you can buy streaming on mobile, you can buy streaming on desktop. It is more affordable too.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

But if you are in that situation, if you're targeting the sporting event, do you really care what device they're watching it on? Are they more likely to skip a commercial? And they're non-skipable, the things that we do with you. But if you're watching, I mean, my husband might be watching the bronze game on his phone because we're at a kid's event. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, exactly. Is there a difference between the two?

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Just the difference in if I deliver impression to you, whether that's a phone or on a television, that's one impression. That's it. But if you deliver to a TV, the statistics are that you're hitting three people instead of just one person on a phone.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

So there is that's especially with a sporting event that would be relevant.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

There's some economies of scale there. And then, you know, you could show up on a bar, you could show up in all these different situations where a TV's just you're gonna get more bang for the buck as far as an impression goes. And and honestly, that's our company, we own, you know, 64 different TV stations throughout the country. So we that TV's in our blood. So even though we're a you know 50% of a digital company, we're still geared more towards a TV like audience.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

So okay, let's talk about targeting then. Yeah. So the ability to find somebody and really find their audience and and even be able to afford to market to them through streaming television, I think that's what has opened the conversation for us with a lot of our clients. We are a geographical Geographically positioned between two big TV markets.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Near fringe market.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

We a lot of our local contractors that we work with might not they don't want to work in downtown Cleveland or downtown Columbus. And so they st they avoided the broadcast market because why would I market to 17 counties when I can only serve the bottom four? Yeah. But now they have the ability to say, Oh, I want to hit Wayne, Medina, Tusk, Holmes, whatever, whatever area it is, and their uh who the person is and follow that person around no matter what they're watching. Yeah. That's evolved a lot over the last couple of years and really opened doors. Um, so tell us what you see often when it comes to targeting and how you help partner. Because somebody might come to you. I know we go and come to you and we're like, well, this is what we think, and we kind of have to wrestle that out a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

We go to the drawing board a lot. Yeah, like I know Mary Alice and the account management team, we go back and forth quite a bit on audiences because we are trying to find that sweet spot. So typically, you'll say, Hey, we are targeting these geographic areas, and that might take the form of just a list of zip codes. You might want to just do, you know, county-based targeting, which is fine. Because, you know, like I said earlier, you know, when I first started in this business, the scale wasn't huge. And then post-COVID, scale is there's scale is never a hindrance.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

And it's, I feel like grown a ton in just the last year.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

It's grown a ton, which has made, you know, the scale has created opportunities to apply data to that so that you can get a scalable audience with your exact consumer. Now that might take the form of people that are looking to put a roof on their house, or people who are looking to replace windows. So we can apply those targets. And those are just the audience segments. So you could say, hey, I want to be in just Tuscaroris, and um I just want to hit people who are looking to replace windows, and they also had their home built before 1990. And that could be a target audience. And you know we could find that audience, and we could find scale there too, and that's the big thing. And then once we start delivering ads to those people, we can see how they behave. Now, you know, one thing I've always told you and and all of our other agencies is we don't believe in single source attribution. But what we can say is I delivered a commercial to this household, and in the home services side, they may or may not have gone to the website. But another thing that's evolved is our your clients can then give us the physical addresses and of what have sold, or even if they want to just measure the leads that came in. Because home services, the nice thing about them is they're gonna have the physical address of their client. We can then convert those physical addresses to IP addresses and see if we delivered a commercial to that IP address. So now we have two places to go. We can say, hey, this is the creative performance based on website performance, and this is the creative performance based on, you know, people who actually made a who who converted, who actually bought a Windows or a roof from you. And what's been really interesting about having those two different forms of attribution is sometimes they don't align. Meaning, a creative might have done better on website, but did poor on actually converting to a sale, and vice versa. And so we have to wrestle with that as well and say, hey, in most cases, we're gonna put sales before website performance.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

We we wrestle with the same thing in all areas of marketing. We want to compare what's happening, not just look at our numbers. We want to compare what's happening with them in real life and then say, okay, was this working? Was it not working? And what needs tweaked? Maybe maybe the targeting needs tweaked just a little bit. If you have a low quality, maybe they're a commercial with great views and website traffic, but low sales conversion, then there's a disconnect. There's a disconnect. So how do we refine the targeting to actually find the person who really is intending? I know a couple of years ago, if we added too many layers in, you used to be like, okay, we only we want zip code, we want household income, and we want gender or age, but we get much past that and we're really refining too much. But I feel like with the scale increasing, we have the ability to now add in more layers. Is that accurate?

SPEAKER_01 26:24

We can add in more layers as long as there's scale foundation. I mean, being, you know, my background is more digital, even though I've been in the TV space for about eight years now. I am more of a digital person, so I do tend to want to add more targeting. You do have to be careful of that.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

Because you don't want the audience to be too small.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

If you get too small, and then you might also be taking somebody who's low funnel to out of the funnel. Like they are so low, they've already made their purchase. And that's stuff that we've had to think about too. If there's more data about a low funnel customer, chances are they've made their decision. So we're trying to find that sweet spot of someone who has entered that lower funnel, who is in the decision-making process still, and are still looking at other places to go to make their purchase. So we want to be in that sweet spot. So when you add too many layers, sometimes you just take yourself out of that customer's journey altogether because they're out of the funnel already. Yeah. But also, too, it's economies of scale. Like you still need a big sample size. As as efficient as we can make this media, we still need that sample size. I think a good conversion rate is, you know, let's just call it 0.1%, which may not sound that great, but I think that's good. To get to that 0.1%, you still need scale, or you're you're not going to have enough inventory to actually make the conversion.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

So a lot of our clients, um, you know, we love the streaming product because it's kind of a blend between the branding campaign and a digital campaign that can be measured. Branding um is a great investment in the long-term longevity of a business, but that is something intangible to build, and a lot of times it just feels so expensive and unmeasurable, which is where your broadcast really comes into play as a partnership.

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

But we have had um, we've had a number of clients that we've worked with you on, and the thing that they really like is that we're able to, you know, place that pixel, track what is working, what's not working while still building the brand presence. What we will tell people is we almost always see an increase in traffic. Um, even with the streaming campaign. Yeah. I think we have had some examples where we've gotten too refined on the targeting, and like what you were talking about being too much at the end of the funnel. Yeah. Maybe we kind of miss the opportunity. So there's there's got to be some tweaking where you can kind of find that sweet spot where you're at every stage of the buyer journey. And we also see a big difference depending on what the client has done. You know, somebody who has laid the groundwork. You might take two roofing companies as an example, and the one has invested in yard signs and some magazine or paper advertising and really getting their name out there.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Build a brand.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

They slow and steady, low and slow. That's why I like to say though over a long period of time. And then you have somebody else who's very similar in size but has no brand presence really. They've done it a different way. And then you take both of them, and what I think that this is true, whether you start with streaming or with like a paid Google campaign, we see better success with the one who has done the low and slow method, has really invested in the brand. And that's always the testament to how branding works. Like you have to step out and trust a little bit that um, like you said, that's a low conversion percentage, but overall you have to look at other numbers, and that's where I think you and us as partners to these businesses can help say this is what these are the numbers you should pay attention to. We're always willing to tweak and optimize and make sure things are working better. Are we targeting the right person? But sometimes you have to be okay with just driving traffic, driving awareness and trusting that eventually you're gonna get that sale, the conversion.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

Yeah. Most of our clients they come to us or we, you know, start that conversation and we need to prove ourselves quickly. And so we are gonna do a highly targeted campaign, and we will try to build as many leads as possible to prove ourselves. But our goal is the same as your goal. Like, we want that brand conversation.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Well, you want to work with somebody for the long run. You don't want clients in and out and in and out, and we don't either. It's too much work.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

It's too much work.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

To build those campaigns, to build the energy. And I always say it'd be easier to like let's start with something small. If I know that that's something we can build rather than like, I'll try to sell you the biggest package there is. I where where are you the most comfortable?

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Well, and the nice thing about attribution is it is attribution. We can say, like, and it's closed loop. We can say that someone, if it's just website, we can say someone saw a commercial, then they went to a website. If it's actual conversion, we can say someone was delivered a commercial and then they actually made a purchase. That's nice from an attribution level. That makes the client feel good, that makes us feel good. But also it adds another layer of conversation to have with the client. We can then say, Hey, I noticed this zip code way outperform this zip code. Can we shift money from the bad zip code into the good, fruitful zip code? And that's when a client feels part of the conversation. They feel like they're proactively managing their campaign. And that's where we've seen the most success. Because eventually what happens is the ROI is good enough to say, hey, I want to grow this campaign. And that could mean I want to grow it geographically, or it could mean, hey, let's add another target. And that way we have two targets and we can compare them against each other, just like we're comparing geographies against each other. And so, yes, it is great for attribution, but I gotta tell you, like the attribution that we are using now, it's been so helpful to optimize campaigns, and it's only getting stronger with AI's help.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

So that's that's really interesting. I was gonna ask how AI is impacting your world. So you're you utilizing that to kind of interpret the data and help you see like what are the patterns here and what do we need to lean into to optimize or change a campaign.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

So with our biggest clients, it's been the most helpful. And I'll tell you why.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Because you get the most data. They're spending the most money. It's not a lot of data.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Get the most data. And it's it's funny too. Um, I mean, you know me, and you know, our team with Mary Alice, we're not necessarily revenue motivated, we're performance motivated. And if it took 3K to get the best out of your campaign, we would just that's the easiest sale ever. We would just go do that over and over and over again. But our clients that get the best results are the clients that are heavily invested. And as you invest, you also get more of these attribution software companies that we can add into the fold. And so we had a client who is a performance auto parts client, and they were spending enough to get a brand live study. So we we we performed a brand live study for them. We gave them website measurement, this which is most of our clients get that, and then we got the conversion as well. So we can show you, you know, not only the people that see the commercial and go to the website, but the see the commercial and then make a purchase. And so we have these three different data points. So it's too much data, too much data to interpret. I mean, we even break these things out in Excel, and it's just like I don't know how to connect them out.

SPEAKER_02 33:35

I'll start blending. They're just blending together.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

And so you dump those things into your favorite, you know, AI engine, whether it be ChatGBT or whatever, Claude. And you can say, like, hey, connect the dots for me. Like the actually the command that I give is what do you what consistencies do you see? And it'll give you performance consistencies. And you have to, and one thing I will say about AI, double check it. Like you have to. It's not to the point, it's not foolproof. But give me the consistencies. That's a pretty th easy thing for AI to identify, both on the positive side and the negative side. And so we were making optimizations just on that basis. And when you're using a long-term um attribution software like brand lift, where you're actually getting to see where you're making it a brand impact versus you know a lower funnel impact with a sales conversion or a website conversion, is gonna tell some interesting stories and it's gonna give you a good strategy of like, this is where you need to put your dollars if you want a lead or a sale. This is a better place to put your dollars for the longer term cycle where you're actually investing into when people think of X, Y, and Z, they're gonna think of your brand.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

A brand lift study, because I've talked, I've worked with a few vendors, I don't know that they're all created equal. So explain what that looks like exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

So typically how we do a brand lift study is and we we partner with a company that does this. And so what they will do is they will take our IP address delivery and they will send out um questionnaires and surveys to those same IP addresses. And there's a level of statistical significance that we need to reach, meaning we got to make sure that the people who saw the commercial filled out surveys, a certain percentage of that uh market filled out surveys so that we can say we have some semblance of statistical significance. But if we start to see consistencies, where if, you know, medical is an easy one to talk about too. When you think of hospitals, what brand do you think of? And we can give that assisted question where we actually give multiple choice, and even more impactful, we can give that unassisted. So if people just fill in the blanks, if you have people start filling in the blanks on your brand within your segment, you've won.

SPEAKER_02 35:59

That's the brand recall you're looking out there. And that's what ever honestly, every c company wants to know that. Yeah, the problem is to get that from you, they have to spend a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Yeah, spend a lot of money. And so, so we have so just so you know, and just so your clients and and viewers know, not every client's gonna be spending that much money. So we do a microcosm of that with a lot of our clients. A lot of your clients, we do that with. And so what we're looking at attribution, but we're also asking for feedback. Like, what's going on? Because I can give you the best website data ever, but if you're not making conversions in store, or if you're not selling roofs, if you're not selling windows, then it's all for not. And that's what soured a lot of people on marketing is like, you show me all these metrics, but they don't mean anything to me. So we're more interested in ROAS, that return on ad spend. We're more interested in having that conversation because that conversation will actually lead to a better relationship for us.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

I I love those conversations too. Unfortunately, I still have a significant amount of clients that are barely tracking anything at all, let alone.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

I know.

SPEAKER_02 37:08

I know they know how much money they're spending on marketing, but they don't even they're not tracking their client, their sales wins. There's so it's very interesting to talk about AI and all of these technologies in a world where you're like, okay, clients, like 50% of you, I got to get you into 2026. Come on.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

I know. And and and you're talking to someone who's in the TV business. So a lot of like 50% of our clients are traditional clients that have neither never touched digital media ever. And so we have to have these conversations. But it always comes back to just marketing in general, which is if I see a brand in a positive light for long enough, then I'm going to think of that brand. And so it's all about for me, I always think about attention arbitrage. Where are the eyeballs at? And right now it's it's digitally focused, whether it's television with streaming television, whether it's like people's Google still has a stronghold on search engines. So you're still needed to be do have a heavy pay-per-click budget. You're still needed to have a good SEO strategy if you want to build that brand and answer your consumers' questions. And so it's all strategy. And so you have to dive in. And AI hasn't figured out a way to to at least I haven't figured out a way for AI to really, you know, take on those man hours of putting in the effort to get that data and then getting and putting the effort into interpreting the data to create some actional um results.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

How do you see clients partnering to transition a little bit to your other world? So you guys still do broadcast television, it is a part of the market of what you sell. Yeah. How do you see streaming and broadcast work together in the best way?

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Well, I have seen uh we have clients, especially Cleveland clients, that if they are targeting the Cleveland DMA from a streaming perspective, we they have to be buying television because television is still the most affordable and efficient way to buy media. It still is, especially if you're buying an entire DMA. Now, a client on the fringes, it's not, it's not as efficient for you because you're just not going to have that DMA appeal. Um, but for our clients that are just doing television, they know they know already because all you have to do, and you've been to the lunch and learns that I've been a part of, is just ask people how they consume media and what they're watching. And the majority of what they're watching is streaming television. So it's not like you want to base, and a lot of we as marketers make this mistake is we base, you know, what we're doing marketing-wise on who we are as a consumer. But the when you have a room full of people and everybody's watching different shows on different streaming providers, that paints a picture of like I need to be a little bit everywhere if I want to have any impact at all. So, you know, pre-COVID, it was a trickier conversation, but now it's it's a lot easier.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

It's so fragmented. I mean, it's fragmented on our end too. And really, even like, you know, we s we do offer heavy or we can handle any level of paid advertising campaign and PPC SEO, but SEO is fragmented. Now people might go directly to TikTok and search for a service versus just going directly to Google. And so you can be missing huge, huge segments if you're not on all of those channels, which is very overwhelming if you're a business owner and you're just like, Well, how do I do all of the things and all of the places and get the visibility? I'm curious if you have any statistics around how many times a message has to be seen now. You know, you hear little tricklings, it used to be a lot less, and now with attention spans getting shorter, in order for somebody to have that brand recall and remember you, how many times would they need to see you?

SPEAKER_01 40:55

Well, you know, especially you, we talk about frequency all the time. Yes. And when we're going through the planning stages, I know, especially for some of your clients, you're trying to hit a sweet spot of frequency. On the connected TV side, I say three to five all day long.

SPEAKER_02 41:12

Per month.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Per month.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

See your name three to five times per month.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

But that's on a television.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Now, if I was to start delivering display ads three, five times a day.

SPEAKER_02 41:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 41:21

Because you are on your phone all day.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

You're distracted.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

I'm on my phone an embarrassing amount of time. I see it every week on Sundays when I when I get the update. And it really is a shameful experience. But it also reminds me that attention arbitrage, people are looking down their phones all the time. Which is also why on all of our pitches to you guys, we include that OTT retargeting.

SPEAKER_02 41:45

It's my favorite part.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Yeah. So that I can deliver a commercial and then the next day, and for 30 days after, I'm gonna be sending them display ads. But on a television, we still need to think about frequency in terms of a TV like viewing audience. Because everybody also has that, you know, show on Hulu that they watch where they see the same ad 20 times in an episode. So you have to reel that in because people get annoyed too.

SPEAKER_02 42:11

Oh, yeah, that is really frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

And then also just one more thing to think about consideration is what's your brand. Now, that example you used earlier about the two roofers, the one that's invested in their brand may not need to have a higher frequency as the one that hasn't. Meaning, the person who has done billboards, the person who has done mailers, TV, radio, et cetera, where they have some semblance of establishment in a market, they can get away with a three times frequency.

SPEAKER_02 42:38

Whereas Well, and what's tricky with that person is that's actually not measurable hardly at all. So they were like throwing things out there, really having no idea whether it was working, but truly the test to show that it was working is when you turn on digital and you see a better result.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

So that's kind of like the indication of oh, what I was doing all of those years kind of worked, you know, it worked to get me where I'm at. And we, you know, love all things digital. I love to be able to track and get data, but we recommend off digital things as well because they work the best together. Yeah, broadcast and streaming works the best together, but it also works really well if you're running social media.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

If you're if you have a great website, because you can't have a bad website if you're gonna be running. Why invest and all of that money into TV if you're just gonna send them somewhere that it looks awful and is a bad experience?

SPEAKER_01 43:25

And I think you can be strategic now too. Like that client was throwing stuff against the wall, and I get that, and you could have done that years ago. Now you can do that with a little bit more direction. So instead of you can do all these traditional things, but instead of just throwing it at the wall, maybe find out who that audience is on the traditional side too. And that way we can say, Hey, I can deliver a mailer to this house, and then I can deliver a CTV commercial to that house, and then I can deliver a message to all of their phones in that house, and now. I've got a really good omni-channel approach, a good frequency. I'm not being overtly annoying yet because I'm not over-delivering on one medium, but that household now knows me. And then if you can execute on the SEO side where you can answer people's questions.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

And, you know, and not sell them something, and I think that's a win. So but it's tricky and it's tough. And that's why agencies like you exist.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

Yes. And then the key is when they actually call you to give them a great experience and follow through on everything you're we're promising on the marketing side.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Yeah. Well, AI hasn't replaced operations. I wish in some cases it has, but we still have a lot of QA that quality assurance sometimes still becomes an issue where we have to make sure that we cannot sit it and forget it and rely on AI yet. I mean, I almost I can't wait till I replace some of those jobs, but it's just that still exists. We have to operate a campaign.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

So Jordan, I really appreciated the conversation today. Just in final thought, if you could leave a business owner listening to this and is like, wait a minute, what just happened? Because we just talked a lot of very technical digital jargon. I know what's one thought or a takeaway that you would give a business who's considering, you know, trying to figure out how to implement streaming or broadcast into the marketing strategy, give us a takeaway.

SPEAKER_01 45:21

So I think you have to be really honest with yourself and ask yourself, do I need to build brand right now or do I need to drive traffic right now? And if the answer is I need to make the cash register ring right now, then it is what it is. And then you're going to do more of a search, digitally focused campaign. But if you're that client that says, all right, we have some consistent workflow, I need to really invest in my brand, then it's okay not to get that immediate, you know, shot in the arm that lead-generated platforms give you. Because what that's gonna pay is dividends and time when your brand is known throughout your communities that you serve, and that you're actually being an asset to that community where they're gonna come to you instead of you having to constantly find customers. So that's the difference between those two entities. Um brand has always been a bad word when you talk to clients. And and the great thing about digital products, especially us having digital products, like that low funnel streaming and geofencing and app targeting and all those things, is we can say we can do both. But once again, we recommend that bigger overall branding strategy with some lead gen as well. But think about what you need right now because chances are you don't want to dive full body in, you just need to do what's gonna get you to the next month or next quarter or next year and invest there because it is super fragmented and marketing, you can throw a ton of money away at it. So try to be really smart about those dollars.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

I would say I would encourage a business owners who are listening who to consider the investment in brand because we often feel like it's a really big price tag and they don't know what the payoff is going to be. But like you said, it does pay off in dividends in the long run and you're setting yourself up for success. And if you're not out there watching your competition, yeah, like you know, there there is a we live in a world of abundance, there's enough business out there, but you can be left behind if you're not proactively doing the things to move ahead. And that's where investing in brand early can help set you up for you know, we're in some pretty competitive markets, specifically in the service-based industries. And so if you're not doing it, your competitors are probably going to be, and you need to be thinking about that. So yeah. Um well, we have worked together for a long time. So if somebody has questions, we're gonna include your contact information in the notes here, but you can also just um reach out to us if you'd like to get connected with Jordan and the WKYC team. If you're interested in learning more about streaming, broadcasts, any digital product that will help um expand your brand, then uh reach out to us. You can reach out to Fierce Crave Solutions, you can reach out to us on the Blaze Network, or you can reach out to Jordan directly.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

Awesome. Thanks, Lindsay.

SPEAKER_02 48:19

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