Latest / Talk Commerce / AdRoll Is Shaping the Future of Full-Funnel Advertising With AI and Intent Data with Vibhor Kapoor
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:01.432) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Vibhor Kapoor. I think I almost got that. Vibhor, go ahead and do us much better introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions. Vibhor Kapoor (00:14.212) Absolutely. Nice to meet you, Brand. And thank you for hosting me. Vibhor Kapoor, I'm the Chief Business Officer here at AdRoll. So in my role, I oversee product management, partnerships and marketing. And we are a marketing tech platform. So my role is in many ways unique. We build the product, we take it to market, and we learn from what's working in the market. We use it in our own marketing. We drink our own champagne. and are able to bring the best of that to our customers, both brands and agencies. And you said one of my favorite things or pet projects, I hear that? Passion? Passions? Music. Music is really important for me. It's one of the most important things in my life, I would say. Playing music, listening to music, multiple genres. That's the one that keeps me going. Brent Peterson (00:56.891) Yeah, what a passion. What? Yeah. Brent Peterson (01:05.601) Awesome. Brent Peterson (01:12.142) I can see your guitar in the background. I used to have a guitar in my office previous and I always say I play piano not guitar but it's hard to get the piano up on the wall behind me so the guitar looked better. Vibhor Kapoor (01:26.89) Yes, that is totally true. I sometimes move it around and when they move them, people notice and say, so you did play last night. means. So yeah, it's happening less often than I like, but it's still less happened. Brent Peterson (01:36.878) That's great. Yeah, perfect. So, Vibhor, before we get started, you have graciously volunteered to be part of the Free Joke Project. I'm going to tell you a joke you just gave me a rating 8 through 13. So here we go. If you think swimming with dolphins is expensive, you should try swimming with sharks. It costs me an arm and a leg. Vibhor Kapoor (01:52.951) Okay? Vibhor Kapoor (02:05.124) I think that was pretty good. Kind of a feeling like a dad joke. So I would give, I'll give it a 10. Brent Peterson (02:13.378) All right, thank you. I appreciate that. I was going to preface in the green room to make sure you have all your arms and legs, but then it would kind lead into what the joke was. So I took a chance because I saw you using your hands. Anyway, so let's dive right in. So AdRoll, give us the 10,000 foot view of AdRoll. Most people think you're just an ads platform, but you're more than that, right? Vibhor Kapoor (02:21.284) You Vibhor Kapoor (02:39.798) That is correct. So if you look at our heritage and where we came from, were founded about 14 years back. In our early days, we were really focused on retargeting, which is a core capability as an advertising platform. But over the years, we have evolved ourselves into a full funnel multi channel platform. And what I really mean from that is whether you're doing upper funnel marketing, are you doing performance marketing, that you're doing it on display or on connected TV, or you want to understand performance of your campaigns on social, we help do that for brands and agencies. And the way we describe ourselves as a connected advertising platform because we deeply integrate with a lot of the CRM systems, the e-commerce systems, so that we can make great marketing happen across both B2B and B2C contexts. So it is either you buying that sweater from an e-commerce site or me trying to buy a cybersecurity solution, hypothetically speaking. for AdRoll, those are both contexts we work with brands and agencies in solving. Brent Peterson (03:59.246) So a couple of things there, and I guess a lot of people don't think B2B is going to be a component in that, so that's really interesting. So let's dive into that first, and then I do want to kind of go into where you think the state of ads are going, and we did talk a little bit about Chachipiti and forplexity in the green room. But let's start with B2B, because I think most users don't associate ads with B2B. Vibhor Kapoor (04:24.738) Yep, absolutely. So we saw this several years back. We saw the fact that, you know, at whether you are a CMO, technology professional, you have two facets to you. You have the personal facet and the business context. And what we have realized through our work as it comes to the personal context is that To drive influence with something meaningful that you have, whether it's a message or a product or a technology, you need to be present. You need to give the nudges, right? So the same concept applies here as well. And that's why what we decided to do was to take our advertising platform. and apply it into an account-based context. What do I mean by that? In a B2B decision-making process, you often have committee-based decisions. There are multiple people that make that decision, less so in a household, for example, if you're buying a personal product. So we built the capabilities for us to be able to target accounts with relevant messages. using advertising and then we built a bunch of capabilities in our platform for doing what we say is go to market orchestration. Connect deeply with your CRM system, whether it's HubSpot or Salesforce. Understand your audience, identify the ICP and be able to engage them through relevant messages on both say LinkedIn on connected TV and on displays so that whether you are on CNN. or you're on MLB.TV, you are getting relevant messages that matter to you. So that's how we broaden the best of our advertising capability to the B2B context using account-based marketing. Brent Peterson (06:22.286) Yeah, and I guess just to kind of explain account-based marketing, it's more that you're targeting users or employees of the company, right, or influencers of that company to help in the decision-making to buy a product or service that you as the merchant or the supplier are selling, right? Vibhor Kapoor (06:41.164) Absolutely. And the decision making there can be more complex, right? Because you have different kinds of buyers and you can think of them as the facets of you in an e-commerce or a personal purchasing situation. You have the economic buyer, you have the technical buyer, you have the decision maker, you have the user. And in an account based context, you have to engage them with personalized messages because what I may care about as a chief information security officer versus a VP of procurement versus a cyber sec engineer, right? Different things matter to me. And it's a very high involvement and high engagement purchase. So personalization of messaging and reaching the right audience with the right messages across all the different contacts inside of an account becomes very important. And that's one of the things we do certainly on the B2B ABM side as we say. Brent Peterson (07:46.476) Yeah, so I think the next thing is leading into not just, well, I believe the next thing will be ads inside of our chat windows for ChatGPT. We're already seeing ads in perplexity. Where do you think that's going for paid ads? And I'm not going to say, it's not going to say if it is when that's going to happen, right? Vibhor Kapoor (08:08.29) Yeah, absolutely. don't think it's a matter of if we are already seeing it, right? And it's a matter of when and how in many ways. I think at the simplest level, one thing I have always believed in is attention drives audiences and audiences drive advertising and advertising drives action. And what do I mean with this? Whenever there is audience, it typically ends up being where advertising tends to happen. And advertising's goal is to drive action, right? Which in the case of e-commerce is, I want to add something to the shopping cart and purchase it. So the massive user base. OpenAI or Gemini or any of these platforms, including Perplexity have, they basically are calling for, hey, advertising should happen because you have audience's attention there. So the same concept flows. We've even seen this outside in other platforms. If you think about any of the other platforms which have a massive user base, they are actually we call them retail media networks or commerce media networks, right? They are where there is audience attention. You think about your Uber app, you think about Nextdoor when you, they all have built a business model around audience and around advertising. So it's really a matter of how that this is going to happen. As you said, perplexity is already doing it. We had some recent developments with OpenAI where you can now do commerce. And you see the early versions of that. And we know how about the new cycle and innovation cycle is I also learned that perplexity also has their pro plan where you can now do commerce from inside it. So it's going to be a very interesting world in the future where I absolutely see the growth of both advertising and e-commerce inside of these. Vibhor Kapoor (10:24.548) AGI platforms. Brent Peterson (10:27.822) Yeah, I'll admit that I was very skeptical when a lot of people were talking about the death of the regular website and maybe we would only be looking at a chat type of environment for a website. And then I saw some of the renderings of what it might look like to have NLM actually render the whole site for you within their own platform. And it does bring out an interesting idea that we're going to be moving into this next era of both websites and ads, right? You're going to, there's going to be a different way of delivering ads and you're going to deliver ads directly into that LLM. I think the other portion that we haven't talked a lot about, or people are talking a lot about that we haven't seen action is the agents. We've seen the agents on the site, but I believe there's going to be agents that are going to go and actually buy things for you. And as an advertiser, Do you have a way of then talking to the agent to help them understand where to go? Vibhor Kapoor (11:30.277) Perhaps. I really believe there is this whole wave of evolution in terms of how destruction is happening on e-commerce is like a sandbox. So the first thing any of the players have to do is to play in that sandbox and experiment and learn. I see this going back to the fundamentals of human psychology. And let me unpack that for you. I think that I could see a world where there is a certain class of products where commerce can happen through agents. And I call them as products that are low engagement product. If I'm buying a commoditized product, it's going to be a quick and easy decision for me. And I really care about a frictionless commerce experience. I could see that to be an agent forward experience. However, I also think that there is a certain class of products which I call they are high engagement products. There is more intention involved, there is more value associated with it, there's deeper interaction. And I question how much of that experience is gonna move. to my agent talking to someone else's agent trying to do the commerce. And why do I say that? Because if you go back to the human psychology, there is a certain level of emotion evolved in exploration. That's why, right, if you just go back to the fundamentals of shopping, right, you wanted to be walking around, discovering, exploring. getting that sensory experience of experiencing the product perhaps. And a lot of that has moved online. But we still see for high engagement, high intention, high value products, that there has to be a non agent oriented experience. So I really believe, and I'm really curiously observing right now, how much of the experience there is going to Vibhor Kapoor (13:49.397) move to be a digital first experience, right? Because I think we all have this urge in many ways to explore, to discover, to fire our curiosity, which an agent first experience could help, but could not fully take over. So I think it's going to be a dual world. High engagement products will still have a much more diverse experience where you may go into an online retail location. You may go to a website you want to go through. rich media experiences, you want to experience them in different channels, whether it's TV or this web or elsewhere. But then there is going to be some things where I really don't care. And I say, hey, let my agent replenish this at the best price at this point in time. Yeah. Brent Peterson (14:41.294) Yeah, I think that's probably where B2B really pays off, right? Because people aren't necessarily, they're just buying the same thing over again. Agent makes really a lot of sense in B2B. Vibhor Kapoor (14:52.162) Yeah, what will though become more relevant is we've seen that there is more discovery that happens on these these platforms and the value of someone's authentic opinion is one that the engines, the the chat, GPDs and perplexity of the world are putting more emphasis on. So certainly what's important as a marketer is for you to create an authentic following and endorsement, whether it's on Reddit or discord or otherwise, because I think the value of those as the LMS optimized for is much greater. So I think the shift is going to happen in terms of being very thoughtful about what's your product, what's it solving for? Is it a commodity products? What's the level of engagement in the decision making? And then trying and going and busting the friction away, right? And this goes back to again, very strong core fundamentals that you have to think when you're launching a business, when you're building a brand or anything. Brent Peterson (16:05.772) Yeah, you know, do you think there's gonna be an arc? Like there was this content creation arc when ChatGPT came out. Everybody thought that it's gonna replace people. We don't need marketers anymore. And then, you know, recently at the last, think, shop talk or whatever the last big e-commerce conference was, they were saying how we really need some authentic conversations in our, in our media and our branding and our advertising. Do you think that same kind of arc is going to be for ads where we might have some maybe more driven ads from AI and agents and things like that? And we're going to come back to what you're talking about more of a mixed human. approach where we have to kind of help one really serves the other and vice versa. Vibhor Kapoor (16:56.652) I think so. I'm a big believer in AI being an enabler and great content being one that is, I would say AI assisted, but human led. And I've always seen that authentic content performs much better than just, you know, low quality, high velocity content that some of these platforms help us create. I think the real value of these platforms is helping us synthesize insights, which would be humanly impossible. So I think if you understand that, let's say in ad copy, set of words, a certain font style, a certain CTA, a certain color pattern works, I think that is... very hard for a human to do in a scalable manner. But if you can leverage that insight with, let's say, great storytelling that authentically talks about what you stand for and why someone should pay attention, then you basically married the best of both worlds. And that's kind of how we take our perspective, I often write for articles on blog posts. I've said, I've believed that whenever I write from my heart, it always gets greater engagement. But whenever I maybe overuse the tools, the level of engagement I get from on social channels is low. And I'm just intrigued, you know, that's it just reinforces the value of being human. And I think that's going to I think we always tend to have technology swing the pendulum too hard in one direction. I think it's going to come back a little bit to the mean. Brent Peterson (18:52.982) Yeah, I think that there's some intent data there that AI is great at. So I do want to like draw a parallel between what you've just said about the engagement of humans for human content. And humans are recognizing AI content very quickly. But then the ability for AI to measure the intent of a buyer from the analytical back end standpoint. And maybe, you know, we can kind of finalize or we can talk a little bit about how the intent, how maybe you're able to measure that intent better to serve ads better for merchants. then obviously, as you said earlier, to give them a richer buying experience and then put the products that they really want in front of them rather than things that they're never gonna use, like a sweater with a cat on it. Vibhor Kapoor (19:44.257) Yes. So one of the things that we've done in our B2B platform, as well as even on the core AdRoll platform, is that we are great in capturing intense signals. And what does intense signal really mean? It's basically the little digital footprint that you're leaving everywhere when you interact with a certain product in a shopping cart. Or when you read an article that demonstrates interest that you have in a certain subject. Or when you spend the time scanning a QR code on a connected TV ad. Those are all little digital footprints that you leave. And what we do is we mine all those intense signals and we are able to apply. machine learning and our own custom algorithms to create audience profiles. And I think that's where we believe actually that's a good thing because you're able to bring much more relevant messages. I would care about a new John Mayer PRS guitar on a Guitar Center website, but I probably don't care as much about NHL Jersey for a certain team, right? That's where relevant advertising matters. And I think the beauty is that now you actually have digital footprints that you can deeply understand and apply AI algorithms and machine learning to be able to deeply understand that. We've been in the industry for about 15 years. One of the things we do really well is we make a lot of predictions about the propensity of a buyer to do a certain action. And the scale and velocity of those brands are to the extent that we make more predictions in a day than New York Stock Exchange. And you may say like that sounds bizarre, but think about the amount of intent data and intense signals, I would say, that exist out there, which help us do this. And that gives us the ability for us to connect brands with sort of the audience that they want to engage. Vibhor Kapoor (22:00.384) So I do think that there's tremendous opportunity in terms of intent signals, how you discover them, how you make it personalized, and the combination of those intent data, the data-driven models that you're able to apply, and the ability for you to create more personalized messages using generative AI. I think that's fantastic. That gets me excited because I think at its core, you want to be where your customers are, your prospects are. You want to have all your messages connect to each other. I call it sort of connected personalization. And you want to have seamless commerce. You want to just take friction away. If you don't do those three things well, I think there is no reason why you should not be able to meet your objectives or be successful in your pursuit. Brent Peterson (22:55.277) So this episode will probably come out around Christmas or a little after. What is your prediction for Q1? What do you think we're gonna see in terms of technology for ads and some more innovations that maybe people are just talking about or are gonna come out? Or do you have any secrets you can tell us that we can see for quarter one? Vibhor Kapoor (23:15.416) I do not have a crystal ball and I don't have any secrets, but as I said, I'm very deeply observing the uptake of commerce inside of the different AI platforms and what it shows. I think that's one I'm keeping a close eye on. I'm also very curious on how certain commerce platforms are going to operate in this world because I think certain commerce platforms will say I do not want your agent to communicate with my commerce platforms. So there is principles and philosophy about whether you want to be a closed system or open system and there is work that needs to happen on legislation around it. How fast legislation moves. How do you understand a company's DNA, whether you want to be a walled company, you want to be an open system. I think the DNAs of several players in the industries will be revealed. I am closely observing that I would say. I'm also excited about new channels, I would say. When I think about audio, I think about connected TV. I think there's going to be greater interactivity in all of these platforms. And this was the year where streaming TV and the time spent on streaming TV went past linear TV, which is a pretty interesting turning point. And of course, this is the period where a lot of Online time is spent in front of a screen with our families by ourselves So I'm very interested to see the data in terms of what shifts have happened in both commerce and User engagement in these emerging channels in this Q4. I think that's what I'll be looking for Brent Peterson (25:19.436) Yeah, and I think it's exciting. My kids are grown, and my kids don't necessarily watch a TV. They watch a lot of time on the, just watch on their computer, which gives an advertisers the perfect opportunity to kind of cross sell the users because they're not stuck on a, like you said, a linear cable channel. I don't even know what that, I haven't had cable in like five years. I don't know who uses cable anymore. But I think that you're spot on in that. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens. And it's really going to be interesting to see how we start seeing ads inside of our GPTs. I think that's going to be some of the most exciting things. The poor, have a few minutes left. As I close out, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. What would you like to plug today? Vibhor Kapoor (26:01.326) Yeah. Vibhor Kapoor (26:09.444) interesting. Shameless plug. I would just encourage your audience to think, as they think about their marketing, to think full funnel and multi-channel. It may sound geeky, but it's as simple as thinking. Don't think about your audience as being in the same stage, whether it's awareness, research, or consideration. good marketing strategies are holistic, which means you meet the buyer, you meet the audience where they are in their journey. The second thing I would say is that back to what you were saying in terms of pendulum swinging too fast, right? We tend to believe in the industry that, this is the coolest trending channel. This is where I need to be. I need to be only on social media. Forget web, forget TV, forget anything else, forget even Digital out of home forget billboards, right? I think it's important for great marketing in great commerce to think Omni-channel multi-channel and that doesn't mean that you have to be in all channels, but you need to know where your audience is and Prioritize those channels, but don't be one channel to channel because I do not believe in that So if I had a plug I would say think across channels Think across the stages of the funnel and make your choice intelligently. Brent Peterson (27:38.176) Yeah, I mean, we have to close there. is some fantastic thought leadership. I'll put it right there. Vibhor Kapoor, Chief Business Officer at AdRoll. Thank you so much for being here today. Vibhor Kapoor (27:46.084) Yeah. Vibhor Kapoor (27:54.891) Absolutely, pleasure was mine, Brian.