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Transcript

The Future of Local Advertising: Building a Single Source of Truth · Leading Local Insights

• 0:34
  Rick Ducey: Welcome to the Leading Local Insights Podcast from BIA Advisory Services.
• 0:39
  Rick Ducey: I'm Rick Ducey, Managing Director here at BIA, and I'm excited to have you join us today.
• 0:43
  Rick Ducey: We have a fantastic discussion lined up with our special guest, Jay Loeffler, the Chief Deals Officer at Valpak.
• 0:49
  Rick Ducey: We're going to dig into some of the latest advancements in advertising, evaluation, and selection with him, a topic that's definitely on the top of mind these days.
• 0:57
  Rick Ducey: Also joining us is Senan Mele, BIA's VP of Forecasting and Data Analysis.
• 1:03
  Rick Ducey: Senan will share his insights on the current state of the local advertising marketplace and our forecasts as we edge towards 2026, providing great context for the innovative strategies that Jay you'll be discussing with us.
• 1:15
  Rick Ducey: In our last chat in May with Jay and Valpak, we explored how factors like unexpected tariff hikes and high interest rates were impacting the advertising landscape.
• 1:26
  Rick Ducey: Now, with 2025 almost over for us, we're eager to hear Jay's thoughts on the shifts in advertising data spending and strategies amidst these constant economic changes that we're all dealing with.
• 1:39
  Rick Ducey: So the advertising landscape, data spending, strategies evolving in response to all these things, that's what we're going to be talking about.
• 1:50
  Rick Ducey: So, Jay, let's just jump right in.
• 1:52
  Rick Ducey: It's great to have you back.
• 1:53
  Rick Ducey: As I've discussed, uncertainty can lead to opportunities, especially in the media world driven by data, which I know is one of your favorite themes.
• 2:01
  Rick Ducey: One opportunity emerging is that brands are increasingly seeking a unified source of intelligence to guide their spending decisions.
• 2:08
  Rick Ducey: What trends have you observed this year and how do you see this evolving?
• 2:12
  Jay Loeffler: Awesome.
• 2:12
  Jay Loeffler: Thanks so much, Rick.
• 2:13
  Jay Loeffler: Pleasure to be back here.
• 2:14
  Jay Loeffler: Thanks for having me.
• 2:16
  Jay Loeffler: So I think you know, one thing that we're noticing is data is starting to become the central intelligence hub for all media spend and optimization.
• 2:25
  Jay Loeffler: And the partners who could use data to help advertisers make informed decisions, pivot quickly, measure for measure efficacy, are the ones that are winning more advertising spend.
• 2:35
  Jay Loeffler: So we have a great purview because we have about 65,000 advertisers at Valpak Clip from national retail chains all the way down to the local pizza shop.
• 2:45
  Jay Loeffler: And what we're seeing is that was once was like a specialized, fragmented media landscape is starting to consolidate down a bit.
• 2:54
  Jay Loeffler: And data's really become the central point of that.
• 2:57
  Jay Loeffler: And to be clear, you know, data is not just buying lists, it's synthesizing the insights from existing customer records, sales data, lifestyle and life stage influence, behavioral triggers, creative impact, dynamic call to actions, offers.
• 3:11
  Jay Loeffler: There's a lot that goes into it.
• 3:13
  Jay Loeffler: It's an area that Valpak and Clip have been investing very heavily in for the past decade.
• 3:17
  Jay Loeffler: And we use our large data models and billions of customer demographics, insights, and touch points to really measure the impact for all of our partners, large and small.
• 3:27
  Jay Loeffler: I like to say we're kind of democratizing data and insights for all of our partners.
• 3:32
  Jay Loeffler: Again, whether you're a local pizza shop to a sophisticated national retail chain.
• 3:37
  Rick Ducey: And just um we'll we'll guess this, I think, but um I'm just kind of curious.
• 3:40
  Rick Ducey: So like the local pizza shop, what you're saying is fabulous, all this data.
• 3:44
  Rick Ducey: It sounds sophisticated, complicated, very powerful.
• 3:48
  Rick Ducey: But a pizza shop, how is a pizza shop gonna take advantage of this?
• 3:52
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 3:54
  Jay Loeffler: So what we try and do is scale confidence.
• 3:57
  Jay Loeffler: And in order for us to be effective, we need to really take all of the data and insights we have collectively between Valpak and Clip, it's over a hundred years of offer insights, data, consumer insights, uh, now adding what we call my blue insights in our data stack, billions of different touch points on every household.
• 4:15
  Jay Loeffler: So we know if you have a gravel driveway versus a paved driveway, uh, credit score modeling.
• 4:20
  Jay Loeffler: So what we do is when advertisers are smaller and not as sophisticated, meaning they don't have these sophisticated CRM systems, they don't have data lakes, we actually could take our aggregated data and insights and build out custom opportunities to go with them and say, we already have worked with thousands of advertisers in your category and know to optimize performance, you should be mailing these zones, leveraging this digital product, using this type of offer and this type of call to action.
• 4:50
  Jay Loeffler: So we're taking our aggregate insights and packaging it up so even the smallest of advertisers are getting large data insights to help make them really uh appealing from their first mailing or first digital experience with us, all the way through the lifetime of working with us and continuing to evolve those insights.
• 5:09
  Rick Ducey: So that is really fantastic.
• 5:12
  Rick Ducey: I mean, a small pizza operator can operate with the power of a Fortune 500 company with the kind of data intelligence that you're talking about.
• 5:19
  Rick Ducey: Um and it's working because I want a pizza now.
• 5:22
  Rick Ducey: Um Senan let's bring you in.
• 5:25
  Rick Ducey: Building on Jay's comments, what does BIA see in terms of forecasting?
• 5:30
  Rick Ducey: What are the major trends shaping advertiser spending?
• 5:33
  Rick Ducey: And could you give um it's tough the way things move, but also an honest assessment or the best assessment you can of the state of linear TV for 2026?
• 5:44
  Senan Mele: Um yes, Rick, absolutely.
• 5:47
  Senan Mele: Um so first of all, looking at uh the macro picture, what BIA noticed is that uh 2025 was defined by elevated interest rate, tight credit, and uh tariff uncertainties.
• 6:04
  Senan Mele: So all of this influenced the um the advertising landscape this year, making 2025 a sort of reset year.
• 6:14
  Senan Mele: Now, BIA expect 2026 to be a competitive year, especially because um we know that tariffs are going to be settled one way or another.
• 6:27
  Senan Mele: So if we change the angle a bit and look at things from a channel perspective, what uh we've noticed is that connected TV and digital art of home have been uh significantly growing over the past uh few years, and this trend is expected to continue um in the future.
• 6:48
  Senan Mele: So marketers are appreciating the fact that they can measure food traffic and lead generation through these channels.
• 6:57
  Senan Mele: That being said, um, it is important to point out that linear TV will remain um important and crucial, especially for broad reach and for building trust, because it's been um a cost-efficient way to reach large audiences using impactful video ads.
• 7:19
  Senan Mele: So while it's true that uh the growth has been somewhat slow and sometimes slightly negative for TV, it's still a go-to platform to reach large audiences um with with uh video ads.
• 7:41
  Senan Mele: Now, I want to change it, change the angle a bit and look at budget behavior.
• 7:48
  Senan Mele: Something else we've noticed is um that small and medium-sized businesses are moving away from front-loading their budget, which which is typically the way that traditional media, including broadcast TVs, but instead they are leaning towards backloading budget into channels um that provide near real-time proof of performance.
• 8:11
  Senan Mele: So it's a good idea for advertisers to keep somewhere between 5 to 10 percent of a budget flexible so that when opportunities arise where uh CPM is kind of lower, advertisers can capitalize on those.
• 8:31
  Senan Mele: Um so one last thing I want to say before um um I end my point here is that advertisers, especially small to medium-sized businesses, are really focused on efficiency and accountability.
• 8:49
  Senan Mele: So um multi-channel planning and activation is happening.
• 8:55
  Senan Mele: It's something that has been gaining ground in recent years, and digital plan digital advertising has been gaining traction as well, especially because of its ability to uh to target uh specific audiences and for the the way it can deliver performance metrics in your real time.
• 9:17
  Senan Mele: So that has led to a bit of a shift of um ad spend away from traditional media.
• 9:25
  Senan Mele: Um but again, those media still play a significant role in the advertising landscape.
• 9:33
  Senan Mele: So that's what the different trends that BIA has been um noticing in recent years and what is expected for 2026.
• 9:44
  Rick Ducey: No, it's not that's great.
• 9:45
  Rick Ducey: Um, obviously a lot to think about there.
• 9:47
  Rick Ducey: And Jay, um, definitely want to get your perspective on this.
• 9:50
  Rick Ducey: So one of the things about front loading, backloading, I guess with traditional media, um it has been the case where you'd you know pay for a campaign, plan and pay for a campaign months in advance.
• 10:01
  Rick Ducey: Uh with digital, you can be much more flexible, closer to um, you know, if it's if there's a sale coming up, um, you can have the ad campaign bought and executed, activated, you know, weeks or even days beforehand.
• 10:15
  Rick Ducey: You don't have to plan it up months in advance to get the inventory.
• 10:18
  Rick Ducey: That's one kind of thing.
• 10:19
  Rick Ducey: But there's some operational elements like programmatic.
• 10:22
  Rick Ducey: And if you're doing multi-platform advertising, to try to synchronize that among all the different providers that are helping you with your marketing activations.
• 10:30
  Rick Ducey: So, I mean, programmatic makes a difference.
• 10:32
  Rick Ducey: And then I know we've been talking about um this notion of single point of contact.
• 10:36
  Rick Ducey: If you have a campaign, and most of these are multi-platform campaigns, you know, that pizza operator, or even you know, a tier two regional um Autobuy, there's a lot of moving elements, and that's not their job.
• 10:48
  Rick Ducey: You know, they're trying to sell cars or pizzas.
• 10:51
  Rick Ducey: Um, but but you've been working with solutions that try to integrate that and automate it.
• 10:55
  Rick Ducey: So it's a lot more powerful.
• 10:56
  Rick Ducey: And then with digital media, um, you can track performance and optimization and make allocation changes among the different media channels, you know, right up to the day of performance that you're looking to drive the outcome for.
• 11:11
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, so I mean, I'd love to kind of just capitalize on something Senan said that I think is really interesting relating to CPMs.
• 11:19
  Jay Loeffler: Um, so talking about that because the trend that we're seeing is for years, the media industry, and traditionally it's been more traditional media, has relied on CPM or cost per thousand with an emphasis to always negotiate the lowest CPM.
• 11:34
  Jay Loeffler: And while cost is certainly a factor in the equation when you're measuring things like ROAS or cost per lead, the conversation is shifting more towards what is an effective CPM, meaning how much waste am I willing to essentially assume to achieve the lowest cost?
• 11:49
  Jay Loeffler: And I'll I'll give you an example.
• 11:50
  Jay Loeffler: You know, Valpack and Clip, we've advanced pretty heavily into the digital space, which is to answer the second part of your question there, with display CTV in a pretty meaningful way with a really strong unique selling proposition.
• 12:03
  Jay Loeffler: So I'll give you an example.
• 12:04
  Jay Loeffler: There's a garage door company in the Midwest that was using a company that specialized in mobile and you know desktop display.
• 12:12
  Jay Loeffler: When we evaluated the campaign and the zip codes being targeted, we realized really quickly that the CPM was low, but they were only targeting 45 to 50 percent of the impressions to households that could even act on their value proposition.
• 12:25
  Jay Loeffler: The rest were apartments, trailers.
• 12:27
  Jay Loeffler: So a $4 CPM with 50% waste very quickly became an $8 effective CPM.
• 12:33
  Jay Loeffler: So we were able to use our data to target only single family dwelling units with garage doors and serve targeted impressions to 100% of those households that can engage with the value proposition by IP targeting those devices and those households.
• 12:49
  Jay Loeffler: The result was a 7x engagement rate over the competition and a head-to-head test.
• 12:54
  Jay Loeffler: So I think that's where people are moving to now, which is not just what is the lowest cost, but what am I getting for that cost and what am I willing to accept in order to really meet the metrics that are most important?
• 13:08
  Jay Loeffler: So again, data is really driving the marketing conversation.
• 13:11
  Jay Loeffler: It's making media smarter.
• 13:13
  Jay Loeffler: And in this case, it's the right household and the corresponding devices that really eliminated the waste and ended up driving a more favorable result.
• 13:22
  Jay Loeffler: So I think that's one thing that's really starting to permeate across all channels.
• 13:27
  Jay Loeffler: It's not just digital or traditional.
• 13:29
  Jay Loeffler: It's it's really all channels are looking at the way that they measure the impressions that they're giving to an advertiser and then what is the meaning of those impressions on the back end.
• 13:39
  Rick Ducey: Yeah, I mean, that concept of effective CPM is so critical, but it's a bit surprising that sometimes people struggle with it.
• 13:46
  Rick Ducey: I mean, they're they're so used to thinking about CPM, but the wastage factor.
• 13:50
  Rick Ducey: And then I guess just uh briefly, I mean, the the waste, you know, we say waste, but um, the targeting does try to get those 50% of the people that could use a driveway, I guess.
• 14:00
  Rick Ducey: Um, but there may be word of mouth or something.
• 14:03
  Rick Ducey: You may hit somebody who who doesn't need a driveway, but I know you know the uh my friend needs one, so I'm gonna pass this along.
• 14:09
  Rick Ducey: So I suppose that waste isn't necessarily all waste, but still you want to hit your target segment, and you can do it much more efficiently with the methods you're talking about.
• 14:17
  Rick Ducey: And it's great to have those available.
• 14:19
  Rick Ducey: Um, Senan considering all of this, are you seeing similar behaviors in the broader marketplace?
• 14:25
  Senan Mele: Um yes, in in a lot of ways, yes.
• 14:29
  Senan Mele: And I I actually really agree with Jay's point on the power of looking at CPN CPM in a way that prevents waste.
• 14:42
  Senan Mele: Because another way um we think about it is like effectiveness versus efficiency, because if we're using uh CPM as a measure uh in general, yes, we can be effective in reaching a lot of people, but like um Jay said, it's a lot of it could be waste, but um using um some of the approaches that he just uh explained and went over, the advertising campaign can be much more efficient and targeted and can generate more return on ad spend for um for um for clients.
• 15:23
  Senan Mele: But uh one other point I want to mention here, which is uh something else we are observing in the in the marketplace, is that small and medium-sized businesses are indeed chasing efficiency and accountability across various channels.
• 15:42
  Senan Mele: And we've touched upon that a bit earlier.
• 15:45
  Senan Mele: Um, that's what's leading to the multi-channel planning and activation strategies, as well as um um multi-channel planning and activation strategies, anyways.
• 16:01
  Senan Mele: Um the over piece here is that we are facing challenges with inconsistent measurements across um across actually.
• 16:14
  Senan Mele: Let me start over.
• 16:15
  Senan Mele: So, something we are noticing in the broader marketplace is that uh advertisers are facing challenges with inconsistent measurement quality both within and across media channels, which can hinder growth.
• 16:31
  Senan Mele: So we've mentioned this earlier.
• 16:34
  Senan Mele: Digital is gaining traction primarily due to its better targeting and performance metrics, and that's causing a shift of ad spend away from traditional media.
• 16:46
  Senan Mele: So while we see a decline in um digital display CPMs, and uh Jay talked about this earlier, the downside of that can lead to issues like um oversaturations or lower engagement levels.
• 17:05
  Senan Mele: So what's important here is that creative quality and local relevance are becoming the real differentiation, um differentiators uh these days.
• 17:17
  Senan Mele: So AI can help and play a big role nowadays in production and buying, but let's not forget it's the human strategy that truly matters here.
• 17:30
  Senan Mele: Finally, there are ways to bridge some of the measurement gaps that are observed in the market.
• 17:36
  Senan Mele: And those initiatives involve things like media mixed modeling with monthly inputs uh from CRMs and point of sales, um, so that non-digital effort can get credited uh appropriately.
• 17:53
  Senan Mele: Something that does not happen uh often enough based on uh what's we've observed what we've observed.
• 18:01
  Senan Mele: And that's also one of the costs of uh um advertising spend moving away from traditional media.
• 18:10
  Senan Mele: Uh the last point I would like to make here is that um within the same industries and categories, um, there can be different um campaign results depending on the DMAs or market that we are looking at.
• 18:27
  Senan Mele: So local strategy is also very important here.
• 18:31
  Rick Ducey: And that's the thing uh between national campaigns and local campaigns, trying to infuse localness relevance into the campaign, because we know that drives lift from a lot of different kinds of research uh studies we've seen.
• 18:45
  Rick Ducey: And and Jay, so you've spoken to the power of data and integrating across platforms.
• 18:49
  Rick Ducey: Um, but you know, things like uh creative quality and local relevance feel more, I don't know, emotional, less quantitative.
• 18:57
  Rick Ducey: Um, how how is uh Valpak and Valpak Clip approaching that balance uh through data?
• 19:03
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, it's actually a really interesting question.
• 19:05
  Jay Loeffler: And it's one that I like to say that we specialize in because at its inception, I mean, Valpak was a franchised organization for many years and had 150 local franchisees across, you know, 160, 170 markets across the US that literally were so ingrained in the local communities that they would go to the softball games of their clients and go to the Chamber of Converse events.
• 19:29
  Jay Loeffler: So we built Valpak from its core to really be a hyper-local vehicle that aggregated up to a national media company.
• 19:37
  Jay Loeffler: So a lot of what we have, if you think about seasonality, you think about geography, you think about, you know, just different things that can impact the same business just at different times of year.
• 19:48
  Jay Loeffler: You want to promote a heating offer in the Northeast, but you probably don't need that in Florida.
• 19:52
  Jay Loeffler: So, how do we give the local insights to our partners to have a national campaign that acts local?
• 19:58
  Jay Loeffler: And you know, one of the things that we're seeing is I don't think the shift is as black and white as people are moving away from traditional and towards digital.
• 20:09
  Jay Loeffler: I think it's more a shift towards transparency, performance, and accountability, and away from the low-cost spray and prey.
• 20:16
  Jay Loeffler: So digital in full transparency has been much more of a leader of that space in in recent years, but traditional media is catching up.
• 20:24
  Jay Loeffler: And you know, some of the things that we do for our clients to just you know round out the question you asked, not only the years of local data and insights and offers and understanding local markets, but we're ingesting a ton of client data.
• 20:37
  Jay Loeffler: We're getting sales data, we're getting customer records, we're fully SOC2 compliant, we've built a great data business, but we are into recommending what to do as much as what not to do.
• 20:49
  Jay Loeffler: And so we will take one thing we found is the best predictor of future sales is are there current sales in that area?
• 20:57
  Jay Loeffler: So by being able to overlay that and build that as part of a composite index, we will say, look, you're mailing this area, and even though it modeled to look good, the sales aren't coming, or you don't have enough people in your call center to convert the leads.
• 21:12
  Jay Loeffler: So let's cut that circulation out, let's focus it in an area that might make more sense.
• 21:16
  Jay Loeffler: So we're making local decisions for our advertising partners in national campaigns to make sure they're getting the optimized results, the best insights, and the best offer intelligence to activate based on geography, seasonality, and then all things that are important to their business.
• 21:32
  Jay Loeffler: Do they have enough staffing?
• 21:33
  Jay Loeffler: Could the call center volume be handled?
• 21:35
  Jay Loeffler: All of that is taken into consideration when we build these campaigns for our partners.
• 21:40
  Jay Loeffler: That's great.
• 21:42
  Rick Ducey: Um, okay, so um Jay and Senan, we've covered a lot so far.
• 21:46
  Rick Ducey: Uh let me take a shot at summarizing some of the key themes.
• 21:50
  Rick Ducey: Uh the economy is challenging, but data-driven marketers thrive.
• 21:54
  Rick Ducey: And uh, Jay, I think you provide a lot of examples of how that provides um intelligence, insights, actionability, and the ability to optimize and manage campaigns to successful conclusions.
• 22:05
  Rick Ducey: Um, a lot of that's data-driven and some of this, even if we're looking at local relevance and creative, you know, we can have some measures of what quality means and drive towards that using the data and the different platforms we're talking about.
• 22:18
  Rick Ducey: Um the uh cross-media integration and simplification, single point of contact.
• 22:25
  Rick Ducey: I mean, uh the small pizza owner has essentially the same power that a Fortune 50, you know, CMO has with all the back-end data and all the services that you provide.
• 22:36
  Rick Ducey: So that is terrific for that small business and their clients because you know they know how to find the pizza that they love now.
• 22:42
  Rick Ducey: And quality over quantity and media and message is really concepts we're talking about, a CPM versus effective CPM.
• 22:49
  Rick Ducey: And Sun, you were touching on the efficiency of the aby as well.
• 22:52
  Rick Ducey: And that does draw back to that single point of contact.
• 22:56
  Rick Ducey: I mean, uh, if you're trying to do cross-platform and there's so many different types of data, um, having one kind of single source of truth and execution, uh, planning and execution activation um can make a huge difference.
• 23:08
  Rick Ducey: And then um uh I think I'll um borrow from you mostly um Jay, enrichments, three truths, data beats um the rate.
• 23:17
  Rick Ducey: Don't just look at the CPM, you know, understand what that means, especially from an effective CPM perspective.
• 23:23
  Rick Ducey: And all your experience with the markets and local uh performance that you were talking about, Jay, local beach generic.
• 23:30
  Rick Ducey: I mean, so you can have a national campaign that's maybe simpler and maybe cheaper on at least a CPM basis uh to plan and activate.
• 23:39
  Rick Ducey: If you don't have that local element, you're just not going to get the lift that's out there for you to get if you do it um kind of the right way.
• 23:45
  Rick Ducey: And scenario budgets uh beat fixed plans, uh move money weekly.
• 23:49
  Rick Ducey: So that long lead time that sometimes we see with traditional media buys is giving way to more agile kind of investments and reallocations as the campaign executes.
• 23:59
  Rick Ducey: And um yeah, one tool to adopt now, the um effective CPM, your shared planning currency.
• 24:05
  Rick Ducey: Um that about it, or any anything to add to that for takeaways?
• 24:09
  Rick Ducey: Um we'll start with you, Jay.
• 24:11
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, so I I think uh there's two things that I think are really interesting that kind of summarize everything we're talking about.
• 24:16
  Jay Loeffler: I think you did a great job summarizing it.
• 24:18
  Jay Loeffler: Um, you know, but as as we think, you know, one thing that I consistently hear dealing with hundreds of advertisers is the the question really shouldn't be how much am I spending on print versus digital or billboard versus SEM?
• 24:31
  Jay Loeffler: It should be more focused on the recipe of media tactics that drive meaningful sales lift.
• 24:37
  Jay Loeffler: So setting up test verse controls, looking at the customer journey and what factors need to be influenced to get them to purchase you when the need, impulse, economic, life stage decision arrives.
• 24:49
  Jay Loeffler: And that's really what the focus is here is I mean, everyone could look at zero moment of truth conversion and say SDM is driving 90% of my sales.
• 24:58
  Jay Loeffler: But the truth is, I don't think any advertiser out there is thinking to themselves that if I dropped every other tactic and just kept SDM, then my business would look the same way today.
• 25:07
  Jay Loeffler: So it's about the journey and what tactics influence the right meaningful lift to cause that conversion at the end of the day.
• 25:14
  Jay Loeffler: And then the second, the second point I just want to make is I actually listened to Jay Shetty's podcast and he had Daniel Pink, who's a kind of master authority on influence.
• 25:24
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah.
• 25:25
  Jay Loeffler: And he he said something interesting recently that I think everybody could take from, because I certainly did.
• 25:30
  Jay Loeffler: He said, We're at a critical time where we don't need problem solvers anymore.
• 25:34
  Jay Loeffler: Chat GPT has become a pretty good problem solver.
• 25:38
  Jay Loeffler: That in order to be really effective, you need to be a partner that identifies problems before they happen and come up with preemptive strategies to keep your advertisers a step ahead of the competition.
• 25:50
  Jay Loeffler: Oh, I love that.
• 25:51
  Jay Loeffler: So as we start thinking about how do we support our partners, not only in media, not only with the lowest cost, the effective CPM, all the things we talked about today, it's how do we learn the most about their environment, to be able to come to them with ideas that they may have not even thought of themselves, that their competitors are doing, emerging entrants or looking to do, to be able to give them intelligence that they haven't even thought to use from a marketing perspective and help them use it.
• 26:18
  Jay Loeffler: And I think that's one thing that I'm really trying to coach my teams on is let's be a step ahead and let's be true thought leaders.
• 26:25
  Jay Loeffler: We're not product salespeople, we're strategy sellers, and we want to be able to really accommodate what's happening in all of our partners' phases right now.
• 26:34
  Rick Ducey: I think that really reinforces the value that you're speaking to of the single point of contact because you see client campaigns and you see it execute planned and executed across multiple um platforms, and you've got that learning, you know, within a business category or something may even apply across business categories.
• 26:51
  Rick Ducey: So that I don't want to do the Wayne Kretzky or overdo it, but yeah, I mean, where things are gonna go.
• 26:56
  Rick Ducey: Daniel Pink I love.
• 26:58
  Rick Ducey: And I mean, yeah, you need to not solve the problem, you need to anticipate and pre-solve it almost.
• 27:02
  Rick Ducey: Yeah, I mean, that's fabulous.
• 27:03
  Rick Ducey: Senan I'm gonna ask you each to do a prediction for 2026.
• 27:06
  Rick Ducey: But so let me see if you have anything else to add to the um to the notion of summarizing what we've covered so far.
• 27:13
  Senan Mele: Um no, I think uh Jay actually uh made a really good point for advertisers.
• 27:21
  Senan Mele: It's going to be important to be um agile, plan ahead, and also being able to um, as Jay really beautifully said, um to anticipate uh how the market might move and take actions accordingly.
• 27:40
  Senan Mele: And this is also something that uh BIA has played a big role in doing uh with its data stack.
• 27:48
  Senan Mele: So um I know we wanted to talk about uh predictions as well, and yeah, go for it.
• 27:55
  Senan Mele: Um yeah, cool.
• 27:57
  Senan Mele: So what we're thinking um on that is that by Q4 2026, uh advertisers that are budgeting weekly against an optimized uh CPM will beat static plans by double digit uh return on ad spend, especially in election uh touched uh DMAs.
• 28:18
  Senan Mele: So it's important to not just um have a plan and just kind of forget about it and leave it be and just let it run solo.
• 28:29
  Senan Mele: It's important to keep track of what's going on in the market and as we discussed earlier, anticipate what might happen, look at what's going on using uh near real-time measurements whenever possible and respond accordingly.
• 28:47
  Senan Mele: And it's also a good time for advertisers to start planning ahead, especially with um 2026 being an election year, so that they can get the inventory needed and don't get coded out or have to rethink that strategy at the last minute.
• 29:07
  Rick Ducey: Right.
• 29:08
  Rick Ducey: Yeah, that's really interesting.
• 29:09
  Rick Ducey: Okay, Jay, um, what do you have for us for 2026?
• 29:13
  Rick Ducey: What's gonna happen?
• 29:14
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, I I think that it's already starting, but I I think you know data was once hoarded, right?
• 29:19
  Jay Loeffler: People held their data like it was gold, their CRM systems were untouchable, and we want to keep it really close to the best.
• 29:26
  Jay Loeffler: I think you know, 2026 is gonna really be a renaissance year for advertisers opening up their CRM data, APIing with a lot of their partners, letting their data lakes be used to help create market intelligence to optimize the most of their campaigns.
• 29:42
  Jay Loeffler: And I think media partners are gonna now have access to that, but they need to start rethinking the way that they go to market.
• 29:49
  Jay Loeffler: And they need to be able to use that to drive insights, strategy, dynamic pricing, all things that using that data is meant to do.
• 29:59
  Jay Loeffler: The worst thing that we can do is take in data from a partner and then just come back with a canned solution.
• 30:04
  Jay Loeffler: You need to let the data guide the insights, and the insights need to guide business strategy.
• 30:09
  Jay Loeffler: And I think that's going to be a really big shift going into next year.
• 30:14
  Rick Ducey: Yep.
• 30:14
  Rick Ducey: Okay, well, this is um you've you've got an offer, um Jay.
• 30:18
  Rick Ducey: I'll just call us out here.
• 30:20
  Rick Ducey: Um see how this works with your data.
• 30:22
  Rick Ducey: Uh Valpak uh will work with you.
• 30:24
  Rick Ducey: So if you go to Valpak, valpak.com/bia, bring a month worth of CRM data and And um, Jay and his team will map you out a plan.
• 30:36
  Rick Ducey: So, Jay, thank you so much for being with us here today.
• 30:38
  Rick Ducey: So, on thank you.
• 30:39
  Rick Ducey: We appreciate all of your insights, the data, the thoughts that you're sharing and advice and the um predictions.
• 30:46
  Rick Ducey: We always appreciate and value your time with us.
• 30:49
  Rick Ducey: Um, and again, um, details about what we're talking about here.
• 30:52
  Rick Ducey: This would be available on a recording um basis so you can download and share with people, transcripts and so on.
• 30:59
  Rick Ducey: And do check out Valpac, V-A-L-P-A-K.com slash B I A, um, to take advantage of that offer.
• 31:07
  Rick Ducey: Um, so go look up that website as soon as soon as you break from here and fit a little survey at the end.
• 31:12
  Rick Ducey: Um Jay, let's definitely connect again in early 2026 and same with you, and we'll see how the predictions are coming along.
• 31:18
  Rick Ducey: And to everyone listening and viewing us, thank you so much for joining us.
• 31:21
  Rick Ducey: We appreciate your sharing part of your day with us.
• 31:24
  Rick Ducey: If you do have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at uh podcasts@bia.com.
• 31:32
  Rick Ducey: Um, and we'll look forward to bringing you more insightful conversations and very interesting people like this in future podcasts.
• 31:39
  Rick Ducey: Thank you so much.
• 31:40
  Rick Ducey: Thanks again, Jay and Senan.
• 31:41
  Rick Ducey: Take care, everybody.
• 31:42
  Rick Ducey: Have a great day.
• 31:43
  Rick Ducey: Thank you.