Navigating Whiplash: How Real-Time Brand Lift Helps Advertisers Thrive in Uncertainty | Behind the Numbers
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Hey gang, it's Friday, June 6th. Evelyn, Max, Steph and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, a new marketer video podcast made possible by Synth. I'm Marcus and join me today. We have senior analyst, our senior analyst covering digital advertising media based in Virginia. It's Evelyn Mitchell-Wolfe.

Hello, Marcus. Hi, everybody. Hello there. She said there's an ice cream truck going by. So at any point, if it cuts back to her and she's got a vanilla crunch bar in her hand, don't worry about it. Okay. Don't ask questions. Yeah. Also a gent with the same title, different location. He reluctantly calls Philly home. Shots fired. Max Willans. Yo. Hello there. And also we have with us the director of product management at Sint living in Seattle. It's Steph Gore. Hey, everyone.

Hello there. Welcome to the show. Whenever we have an external guest on, we start with a speed intro to get to know our guests a little better. Let's do it. First question. There's only two. What do you do in a sentence, Steph? So I, as mentioned, the Director of Product Management for our Measurement and Data Solutions products. My team builds products to help brands and marketers measure the impact of advertising on attitudinal brand lift.

Okay. And what three items would you take with you onto a desert island if you had food, water and shelter covered? The essentials are covered. I think I'd start with my e-reader, probably full of downloaded library books. That would be essential number one. Such a good answer. I said I was thinking book, but I was like, that's going to run out real quick. You read a bigger. I don't know how long I'm on this island. There are questions here. All right. Number two.

So kind of be prepared. Number two, probably my Stanley water cup. Pretty obsessed about staying hydrated. And I think that would be especially important. Cheers, Steph. Perfect. See, on the same page. And I think the third thing would be my Tevas. Very practical sandal. Great for the water. Good for the sand. Just seems like an important, you know, an important essential to have. It'll be comfy.

Well played. All right. Very nice. Evelyn didn't know that she was supposed to answer these questions. So she's coming up with these off the cuff. Well, I had questions about like, do I have electricity? Because like I was also going to say my e-reader, but then, well, it'll run out of battery. So I definitely, Steph would also, if I could bring it, I would just load it up with as many books as it could hold for time purposes, but eventually it would run out of battery. So like,

I mean, can I plug it in? Do I need to also bring a battery pack? These are important questions, Marcus. I should have asked. Max, I should have just gone to you. Let's pretend there's electricity. Okay. Yeah. E-reader would also be my... Go on. I know. I mean, what are you going to do, though? So that would be my first one. I think I would also...

I was thinking about music and I guess maybe my record player. Yeah, if we have electricity, I would just say my record player and it comes with records. It inexplicably just comes with all the records that I would need. And I guess the third thing would be...

a washing machine okay refrigerator to keep food good for longer i feel like food's covered matt we've got to move on max this is terrible what have you got for us this is glamping in the extreme um i mean i'm gonna cheat a little bit i i would also bring an e-reader um i i just love having i don't know what would be available on the desert island uh

library system via Libby. But so I would do that. And then I'd probably also I'd bring a banjo. I don't know how to play one, but I got to do something. Oh, you'd learn. Yeah. Exactly. And great idea. You know, the banjo is one of those instruments where even if you have no idea what you're doing, all the sounds you make are great. So it was just you. That's right. So I would be able to put up with my endless mistakes and, you know, it would be great. All right. Very nice.

I thought guitar. NBA Jam arcade game, since there's electricity. We are so cooked. We're bringing Super Nintendos. We're bringing refrigerators. We got our readers. And one player board game. Oh. Yeah, I know. They do exist. Just play Go Against Yourself forever and ever. I wasn't thinking Solitaire. Maybe a pack of cards would have been better. Anyway, what I'd actually bring, Bucket, Spade, Beach Umbrella.

come on okay yeah someone on reddit answered international airport plane and pilot i don't think that's in keeping with the spirit of the game take my down votes yeah i do i feel like maybe the the rules of engagement here should be like you have to be able to reasonably carry it and that would also throw my refrigerator out the the back door here but uh okay

That would be helpful. Or the rules could be don't get Evelyn to play. That's true. I'm too practical for my own good. I mean, I pick sandals, so, you know. That's true. We're all over the map. Anyway, today's real topic, how real-time brand lift measurement can thrive in uncertainty.

So, speaking of uncertainty, consumer confidence has fallen every month this year, according to the University of Michigan's index, reaching what folks had hoped would be the floor in April of 52 points. But a reading in mid-May suggested that the number was now closer to 50. Fast forward to the end of May and things are looking a bit rosier. Jeff Cox of CNBC writes that the conference board's consumer confidence index leapt to

to 98 points, a 12 point jump from April, different indices, but still positive as consumer optimism got a much needed boost on hopes for trade peace between the US and China. And Evelyn, we were talking yesterday a bit about this and you had said that advertisers aren't just navigating uncertainty, they're navigating whiplash. Tell us a bit more about this concept. Yeah, I mean, I

I guess I'm coining a new concept here. I mean, I don't think it is really that new. It's just that the headlines are telling a different story week to week. And I think it is a reflection of reality, right? Nobody knows what's going on here. Consumers are trying to figure out how to budget when they don't know what the price of their

essential items is going to be in the near future. They don't know what the price of their more discretionary items, consumer electronics, like all of this is completely up in the air. Consumers don't know what they're going to be able to do with their money. And that, of course, has huge implications for what advertisers are going to be able to, you know, what they should be messaging to their consumers, how much

how much marketing budget they're going to have if it'll impact their sales and their revenue. So there's a lot of questions in the air and it feels like it's not just, we don't know how the next few months are going to go, but we're also getting signals that are saying it's going to be really bad. It's going to be okay. It's going to be great. So it's really hard to feel confident in making plans that are going to have staying power. I think agility is really the name of the game right now. And

Measurement is a huge part in figuring out what to do next. As long as you have your light on your feet, then you need to have some sort of truth or information that you're able to figure out what your next step is, even if you don't know what the finish line, where it is or what it looks like right now.

Yeah, Steph, what's your take on the changing attitudes and sentiments during this time? And there are other times as well, but this time in particular of great uncertainty? I would agree. I think consumers are dealing with a lot of changing information and that obviously impacts consumers.

kind of their outlook and their confidence in making certain purchases, whether it's the everyday or something more significant like a car or, you know, taking a vacation. Are they comfortable making those choices? And, you know, what are the things that are influencing their decisions? And how can brands and advertisers help to, you know, create

messages that are really kind of cutting through all this noise and like what is connecting? What is providing their customers with the confidence to go out and potentially buy or invest in their product in a time when

They're not sure what's going to happen next week, let alone next month. Yeah. And consumers are also seeing these headlines, right? They're seeing, oh, I guess everyone else around me is freaking out too. Maybe I should be freaking out more. I don't know. So as marketers are trying to interpret all this and consumers are trying to interpret all this, the headlines that are being brought into consideration for

for marketers also are actively working on consumer behavior and attitudes as well. Yeah. And the pace of it, the pace of it is really just, just astonishing. Right. I mean, I think that the, the day that the, that headline came out about the rebound and the, you know, explanation of that rebound being the prospect of you know, a, a,

basically a ceasefire, you might call it, between China and the United States in their trade war. We had the headline that all of Trump's tariffs might actually get thrown out the window by that Court of International Trade. And that's probably still in limbo. You know, we will see what happens in the next however many hours it takes between when we tape and when this goes live. But, you know, so just the...

amount of agility that's required is really pretty head-spinning. The good news, I guess, just for the advertising community at large is that even though there aren't a ton of parallels between the pandemic and the current kind of instability that we've been discussing, but marketers did get a bit of a crash course in how to be in an environment where

what is acceptable or what the outlook is, is changing on a week-by-week basis. And you saw that a ton in advertisers and publishers getting a lot better at communicating more, at optimizing and fine-tuning the way they were working together more. And you saw also lots of vendors step up and really fill this gap of being able to

respond to and gather up signal that will allow for those rapid responses. So even though it's definitely a lot more work and all the people who are, you know, in charge of optimizing this stuff are going to be a lot busier. They do have the tools it seems to, to, you know, roll with the punches as they come in. You mentioned agility and also the pandemic. And I was going to bring up the pandemic, not for that reason, but because the pandemic really fragmented everybody's individual, um,

lives and now experiences even more so than before. Before it was nine to five, you get up, you get commute, you go to work, maybe go out for dinner in the evening or do whatever there and then you commute back and then you watch. And now everyone's life is can look very, very different. And so you're not only having to be agile as an advertiser, but

customers, I think, are thinking about things very, very differently. Some do have savings from that time. Some people don't need to commute anymore. There's so many different scenarios that consumers are facing. And we've seen that just because their confidence is lower doesn't mean necessarily they're going to stop spending. Maybe they'll spend a little bit more now because things are going to get more expensive later. So everyone is so, so different. Consumers

budgets being watched more closely. I think that's probably common across the board. Another thing being watched closely are advertisers budgets. Steph, how do folks prioritize and get the most out of ad measurements with a limited budget?

Yeah, so I think just thinking about consumers and it depends on the target audience that you have and kind of where they are. We get these sort of broad numbers across the entire consumer sentiment, but depending on who your target audience is, their situation could be very different. So I think it is important to have data and information on consumers

What are the attributes that are most important to your particular target? Is it cost? Is it trust? Is it quality? And this can vary, obviously, by different types of consumers, but also, obviously, by the impact of what's being reported in terms of changing policy in the news. So on the consumer side, I think that data is really essential to give advertisers the information they need to make decisions based on data-driven information.

When we're thinking about tightening budgets, I think the most important thing is making sure that all of the advertising dollars that are being spent are accountable. So the importance of measurement, I think, just continues to increase. Those advertisers want to know if they're making the right investment decisions because those budgets potentially are getting tightening up.

And they need that information, that real-time information in order to do so. They can't afford to wait until a campaign ends to have information on what creative was most effective with my customers, what media tactics or what ad platforms had the most impact.

They really need that information while the campaign is still running, kind of as soon as possible to make those sort of agile decisions in order to kind of maximize the dollars that they're spending. And this is especially true, I feel like, in an era where the landscape is as fractured as it is, right? I mean, it's not just spending in one or two places. It could be, you know, a dozen and, you know, waiting for all of it to wrap up, as Steph just said, of

is just not a tactic that will cut it at this current moment. So it'll be interesting to see how much marketers kind of move in the direction of being able to adjust the plane's trajectory while it's still in the air.

Yeah, it's about agility and also about proving the impact to maintain those budgets, right? Like if you have a set budget for a given quarter, that's great. It seems like it's going to be more of a luxury though to feel confident in the amount that you will have to spend over the course of a given time period as things change so rapidly. And so having the proof to say, okay,

This media is worthwhile. It's driving more sales. You can see the incremental impact. You can see that consumers want to hear from the brands right now because they're trying to make decisions too. All of that information is incredibly important, like up and down the advertising decision-making process from where you're going to put the money to even having the money to spend in the first place.

Yeah, I feel like that last piece is especially, you know, we've talked a lot about the sort of instability of it, of the current environment, but there's also just the reality that, or the knock-on effect of that instability and the sort of stakes involved. Like earlier, I think it might've been, you know,

It was in the middle of May, Nielsen released a study that touched on a lot of different marketing topics. But as a sort of table setting question, they asked their survey respondents what they thought was going to happen to their ad budgets in 2025. And close to half of them said that they thought that they were going to go down. Now, obviously, a lot could change if China and the United States kiss and make up, if everybody rallies.

you know we could see that that changing quite rapidly as well but in this this kind of pessimistic environment it really really ramp ramps up the necessity of being able to point to evidence that says this works right like this is a valid investment and a good use of our resources and so it just sort of reinforces what we've been discussing already yeah the real time piece uh

incredibly important. I mean, it kind of even just an example of we were just talking about the consumer confidence indices and the one from the confidence, the conference board, which took a mid month reading and showed what was happening mid month. You know, a lot of times you have to wait for numbers to come out at the end of the month. And I think even just taking that mid month reading helped people understand where the trajectory of

of where things were going. And if you can get that stuff real time, that's even better than every two weeks. Max mentions ad dollars being in a lot of different places. Talk to us a bit about the importance of, you guys refer to it as kind of integrated, holistic, kind of cross-platform media performance measurement.

Yeah. So one of the kind of pillars of our product value is being able to provide measurement across an entire sort of media plan. So if you're an advertiser, you don't want to have to go to 10 different vendors in order to, you know, aggregate your, you know, the performance of your campaign. So I think one of the,

One of the things that we've really focused on is being able to include kind of all screens and all channels through which advertising is delivered. And whether that's through, you know, our own tagging or working with partners, you know, we focused on digital, linear TV, NCTV, as well as emerging channels such as Digital Out of Home and podcasts.

and sort of hard to reach and trackable ads within walled gardens. We've also developed partnerships and methodologies to make sure that the holistic campaign can be measured. And that's what customers really want is it all in one place with sort of a consistent reporting framework, reasonable methodology that they can have confidence in and using that data to make those decisions on million dollar budgets and ad campaigns. Yeah.

Right. The more places you have to go to try and piece together what's happening, the harder it is to, the longer it takes to make strategy decisions, right? And we're talking about the importance of agility, the importance of staying on your toes and being able to make quick changes if necessary, even just the time it takes to go to 17 different platforms to get a finger on the pulse for everything that exists across your investments.

That isn't practical in these times, I think. Or at least it can be a pretty huge speed bump that can eventually cost in terms of revenue, not just in terms of time and in terms of resourcing. Everyone loves a dashboard.

Yeah. I'd say we've even further empowered our customers with a kind of a do-it-yourself option. So we now have, we call it Study Creator, and it allows our customers to jump in at any time and set up their own brand lift studies. So instead of having to go back and forth with a vendor over emails and days of review, customers have really responded positively to the ability to just go in and within a few minutes, really,

three-step easy process, set up a brand list study and get that launched as soon or whenever they need to in order to gather those additional insights to help drive those decisions they're trying to make.

And that's live now, you said? Yes. Yeah, we released it last year and really seen it gain a lot of momentum. I think it's really the empowerment of the customer to be able to do it themselves. And also, you know, there's a little price efficiency when you're, you know, doing DIY. So in kind of both ways, it kind of lends itself to being, I think, really impactful at this current time where folks are trying to kind of, you know, tighten budgets and understanding, you know,

what that does to their ability to work with different vendors. Let's close with this. What's next for Synth? What's on your roadmap that you can share for the rest of the year or something maybe you're working on this year for next year? Sure. Yeah. So in terms of kind of what's coming, we're continuing to kind of utilize AI to pull insights out from the data that we have. We have a really rich data set, thousands of campaigns, hundreds of thousands of data points.

And so our goal is to kind of harness the power of all of that data to provide both insights on the campaign level, but also contextual insights, trends that we've seen over time. It's really a data set that lends itself well to using a large language model. Another area, I guess, that we're focused on is sort of exploring new ways to help customers connect the dots between campaigns.

what people say and also what they're actually doing. So we really focused on attitudinal brand lift, but we know that there's a desire to understand, you know, not just the answers to questions, but also, you know, how consumers are behaving, what actions are they taking?

and finding ways to build that into our product suite that provides the most value to our customers and that maybe we can uniquely deliver given our scale and our ability to reach a lot of human respondents. Excellent. Well, that's all we have time for for this episode, unfortunately. Thank you so much to my guests for hanging out today. Thank you to Max. Always a pleasure, Marcus. Thanks. Yes, indeed. To Evelyn. Thank you, Marcus. Thanks, everyone. And to Steph.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thanks to everyone for listening in to Behind the Numbers, an eMarketer video podcast made possible by Synth. Make sure you subscribe and follow and leave a rating and review if you could. We'll be back on Monday talking about attitudes towards AI, happiest of weekends.