Latest / SHeCOMMERCE / Ep 46:m Sparkling Sips: The Signal Era — Kait Stephens, Brij; Why Smarter Advertising Starts with Better Data

Transcript

Ep 46:m Sparkling Sips: The Signal Era — Kait Stephens, Brij; Why Smarter Advertising Starts with Better Data · SHeCOMMERCE

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, we're coming to you live from Advertising Week, New York, where everyone is talking about AI, every conversation, attribution, algorithms, retail media, measurement, all the things, basically every acronym that marketers can think of are happening here, squeezed into one building.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: So naturally, we thought this would be a perfect place for a sparkling sip.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And welcome back then to SHE-Commerce, where we talk about people who are changing the industry, the ideas that are challenging it, and the stories that everybody is talking about.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So what are what a better, not a better place to talk about that, but here in the middle of it all in New York City?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're going to tackle one of the biggest questions underneath all the noise here at Advertising Week.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Are we actually giving advertising platforms the right signals to make our media work harder and better for us as companies and brands?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because we can have the smartest AI.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: We've heard a lot about that in the last couple of days.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: But if we're feeling it's incomplete, like an incomplete picture of that consumer, of you know the full story and incomplete in terms of even the measurement, what we're getting for it, etc., we probably shouldn't be surprised when the results are incomplete as well.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um this is exactly why we wanted to have this conversation with Bridge.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: For anyone who doesn't know Bridge, they help brands connect what happens in retail and marketplaces back to the digital uh customer journey.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let me see that again.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: For anyone who doesn't know Bridge, they help brands connect what happens in retail and marketplaces back to the digital customer journey.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Think about the fundamental problem.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: A consumer sees your ad, your meta ad, walks into Target or Walmart three days later, buys your product, and as far as the advertising platform is concerned, that customer may have just disappeared.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So Bridge helps close that gap by turning verified retail and marketplace purchases into usable first-party data signals that can flow back into platforms like Meta, Google, TikTok, etc.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of your algorithms learning from just the people buying on your own website, they can start learning from a much more complete picture of who is actually buying your brand.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And for CPG companies, where the overwhelming majority of our sales are happening somewhere outside of DTC, that's a pretty important value add and distinction.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And joining us to break this down is someone who's been obsessed with solving exactly that problem.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: So Kate Stevens, CEO and co-founder of Bridge, also the host of Omni Channel Marketer, her own podcast, and a recognized voice, a very uh very recognized voice, I'll say, in Omni Channel Commerce.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: You're also a Harvard Business School alum, a former investor turned technology founder.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you've built and raised capital for multiple startups, not just bridge, and now you're spending a lot of your time helping brands figure out how to grow through retail without completely losing the customer relationship along the way.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not to mention a mother and road warrior.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're just talking about your crazy schedule.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Kate, welcome to F-Commerce.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Christina.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited to be here.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're excited to have you.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the chaos of advertising week surrounding us.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is certainly chaos.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, let's start with the big picture because you've been using the phrase that I think really captures what's happening right now, the signal error.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you may have coined that or take credit for it because I I have only heard it from your you.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we're here at Advertising Week, and everyone's obviously talking about AI, measurement, the different signals, um, the future of media.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: When you say you've entered the signal error, what does that actually mean?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And like, how did we get here?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: So basically the way advertisers used to spend media is they were doing things very manually.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: So they'd pick the audiences, they'd be making adjustments to campaigns.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: The way that we've really shifted in terms of how you allocate your media is really driven by AI.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: So Meta, Google, TikTok, you know, ad platformer of choice has incredibly powerful algorithms that are now doing that for you.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: They know the best audiences they can target automatically based off of the signal that you send them.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so what that requires is the better signal you send to them, the better the algorithms get and the more efficient they can be in targeting.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: The other reason that we got here is there's been privacy changes and um like CCPA and all of these different ways in which uh we traditionally a brand would pixel their website, which you know, they still have pixels, but the ability to get data from the website customer is more challenged.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so thus the ability to give uh those ad platforms better signal is um is harder than ever.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: On top of the fact that uh the consumer is really demanding like an omni-channel journey.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're shopping in more channels than ever.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: And a brand cannot give the ad platforms historically, cannot give the ad platform signal from the Amazon purchase, the Ritual purchase.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how we got to this signal era.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: I gotcha.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, definitely technology, I'd say, is these platforms are smarter than ever.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And they're sending us a lot of those signals, you know, data feeds, etc., but not always making sense of it, or we are left to make sense of it, connect the dots, and then fill in a lot of these gaps that exist to your point.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so this is where I think it gets really interesting for consumer brands because that customer journey doesn't politely stay in this one ecosystem.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, like we said, someone may discover you on TikTok and then Googles you, sees a leather display add, etc., but then ultimately buys you in brick and mortar at Walmart when they pass by.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is the giant blind spot that you have really narrowed in on.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so for CPG brands where so much of that purchasing is still happening in stores in brick and mortar through retailers or even marketplaces that the brand doesn't own, uh, why is getting that conversation information back into their own ecosystem so critical?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, what you're describing is exactly what we're seeing, the the omnichannel consumer journey.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and in order for a brand to be efficient at acquiring new customers, uh, is they need to know who their customer is.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so the more omnichannel a brand is, i.e., the more retail or wholesale they sell through, the more marketplace they sell through, the less visibility that they have on who their customer is to feed back to those ad platforms.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: They have that loss of signal.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, take a brand that's like 80% non-D2C, 20% D2C.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, historically, they're just basically feeding the ad platforms 20% of their customer base.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so no matter how good the AI is, the algorithm is at targeting customers, it's only learning about its D2C customer.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: So they don't know about the Walmart customer, the Amazon customer.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: You could unlock providing that signal.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: It has massive advantages for one, understanding what campaigns are affecting sales in those non-D2C channels.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then two, better signal to improve those algorithms.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: And as you just mentioned, you know, as a some kind of DTC are going after a different consumer than brick and mortar.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: For example, uh, you know, in my past life, I know we used DTC more as like a gifting occasion or premium personalization so that we actually weren't competing in store, which to your point, may that shopper may actually not be the consumer if it's gifting, et cetera.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we're almost learning about the wrong person if we're that's who we're trying to retarget.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: So the customer might be different.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's incredibly powerful if you can start feeding these algorithms who your retail customer is, you know, maybe even so specific as to who your Walmart customer is, who your target customer is, who your Amazon customer is.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: They look different.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: And they look different, they often look different.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you could feed that signal back to the um algorithms to acquire new customers that look like that Walmart customer, um, that look like that Amazon customer, that is incredibly powerful to the brand because they can learn about who their customers are, but you know, perhaps more importantly, acquire them more efficiently.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: So reduce their cost to acquire that customer.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So it it sounds like there's two problems here.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: One is the measurement, right?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: You may be underestimating um what your advertising is actually driving.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the second is that optimization, right?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: That we've talked about the algorithm is learning from an incomplete customer view.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, how material materially different can performance become when you start feeding those retail buyers back into the ecosystem?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh extremely material.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: So again, the larger your basically there's like two key levers.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's like percentage of data that you're sending as signal to begin with.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: So the larger uh your non-D2C, the larger data set or pool of customer that you could be feeding it.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: The second is in how much data can you collect?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so what's that take rate?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and the that combination, but you know, one of our customers was seeing a 50% reduction in cap.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: So extremely significant.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's very significant.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it does it start changing things like look-alikes then as well and suppression and yeah, exactly.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: Look-alike suppression.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we were talking to a customer who uh basically they have a like a product and then a consumable component of their product.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so they only want to retarget someone who has purchased that product with that consumable, but they want to suppress anyone that has purchased that like that main product.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: So absolutely all of the like growth-driven mechanisms, look-alike suppressions that you would do on D2C, you can now do with your non-D2C customer base.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Super valuable.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um, I want to talk about the way you explained, Bridge, because marketers can make the subject incredibly complicated, you know, uh, and and do that very quickly as well.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you've boiled the value kind of proposition down to two pretty simple ideas here.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Prove it and improve it.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Which which I love.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's so simple.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so break those two down for us.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: So prove it is the measurement challenge that you were referencing.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and you know, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of like really powerful measurement tools out there: MMMs, MTA, incrementality.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: We are complementary to that.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh those those tools are using probabilistic data.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: What Bridge Signal is bringing in is deterministic data, real time at the campaign level, that can help you understand how your ads are affecting sales in retail and Amazon.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: And what that does is one, if it's working, it helps you double down and spend more because you can prove that it's working.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Or two, um, perhaps you actually weren't seeing a campaign that was working because you're only judging it by T2C.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we've seen both of that.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the prove it piece.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: The improve it is, okay, now that you have this attribution, you have audiences from your offline customers, and this new signal, how can you improve your CAC?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so there's two key ways that you can improve it.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: One is because you know how this attribution at the campaign level, you can make spend adjustments.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: So um, you know, we were underinvesting in demand gen because we only saw um, you know, X number of conversions on D2C.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: But when we added the bridge non-D2C events, we were able to see actually it was 12 times more powerful than it was.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: So uh you can adjust ad spend accordingly.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's one.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: The other is the algorithm improvement.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: So the more signal that you can send the algorithm, uh, and we have all different playbooks as it relates to what you're optimizing for and how you can use that new signal.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: It can be an omnichannel optimization, it can be a D2C optimization, it could be a retail optimization that effectively use like using that signal improved your algorithm.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And depending on the objectives, do you give guidance on which of those signals are going to be most important to bring in?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the problems like deselect, there's so much.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so we've we basically have put together what we call a playbook.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: And based off of your objective, we have different tests and different campaigns that you can run based off of these events that we're sending in the additional signal.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So prove it is show me what my recount, what my media is really done, and then improve it is give me the right information so I know where to spend my next dollar.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: When do you think brands are where?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, not when, but where do you think brands are leaving the most money on the table today?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Where are they leaving the most money on the table?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, we were talking about this earlier today, uh, you know, just from we're chatting.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think that brands have not fully adjusted the org chart in terms of how they think about what is going to drive the most revenue for the business the most efficiently.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I think most brands that are scaling rapidly today need to be omni channel, whether that's in you know, physical retail or on TikTok or D2C, Amazon, like the consumer is demanding it.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: But the incentives need to be aligned so that you're thinking about what drives revenue for the entire business.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I think misaligned incentives of someone who only cares about D2C sales versus only cares about retail sales versus only cares about Amazon, I think that's where the most money can be lost up on the table.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: I completely agree.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Not a shortage of data, just that it's disconnected across 20,000 different places and that becomes really hard to activate on.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all right.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you were sitting in the CMO or chief growth officer, so you were just talking about this, what would you be asking your media team or agency after hearing this conversation?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I would be asking them where we should be spending our next dollar and why.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what is the like what is the fastest way for us to grow most efficiently?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I would be thinking about that across the entire um, you know, opportunity set that we have to like both media channels and sales channels to reach our customers.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'd also be asking them, you know, obviously I'm a little bit biased here, but how are we thinking about non-DC signal to inform our algorithm and our targeting?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, important.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think that drill down on the why is so critical that it's self-ness step, actually.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: All right, well, we could stay in this signal architecture discussion all day, but um I would like to pull this out of technology for a minute to kind of talk to the other side of the story, which is the she and she commerce.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you build bridge in a very technical corner of commerce, um, data and advertising, all the um combination of that.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: What did you see in the market that made you say this needs to exist?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm gonna bet on this.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: So, prior to starting Bridge, I was investing um out of Pymco's private equity fund, uh, and I covered retail for the firm.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I was spending a lot of time looking at retail, uh specifically malls, and thinking about what is the future of the in-store shopping experience.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: And at the time, like e-commerce was starting to really improve from a personalization perspective.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I thought the offline world was so not that um and so uh not improving at the same pace that I saw e-commerce was.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I started just thinking about and becoming frankly obsessed with the offline to online and how does this become a better holistic experience for the consumer.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in doing you know, discovery was talking to some brands and learned that when they sell through wholesale, they get literally no data on the end consumer.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that is fundamentally flawed with the consumer journey who does not care where they're purchasing a product.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: They align with the brand that they've purchased, but they don't care if they bought it from Amazon or retail or DC, uh, whatever is most convenient for them.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I think that this is like a fundamental problem that uh like needs to be fixed.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that's like really where I feel passionately.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, you're also building this company while raising a family, fundraising, selling, leading.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all the things.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: You're also a very public face of the business and influencer and thought leader.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: How has being a female founder changed?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: How you've had to show up as a leader or how how you may have navigated raising money and selling into this more male-dominated tech industry?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, um, I mean, one as a content creator, I actually it has been a wonderful mechanism for me to um help identify like where I feel strongly personally as a leader, as a founder, um, as a like, you know, like mom.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: It I like literally am writing it down, articulating it.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so that has helped me both communicate it to my team to the market, but then also understand it for myself by like really like forming opinion from like a fundraising perspective and just like being a female founder, uh, I definitely I've recognized I have some of the weaknesses or inherent um, you know, la strengths or lack of strengths that sometimes women have.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Specifically, I would clam up when asking for money with fundraising.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so what I needed to do was just like understood what I was good at and what I was not, um, and shut down that imposter syndrome that was telling me that I wasn't, and you know, got really freaking good at fundraising.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I like basically conquered that, but it was a very much known gap.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: But then I also benefit from like a lot of the incredible uh benefits that women have just more naturally.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: So the empathy, the like understanding balance, and and and frankly, like my public persona and my views here has been a wonderful talent attractor.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like the people who work for Bridge, you know, have often been following me before they joined the company and they feel very passionately.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: So many of them are moms or women and feel like love the idea of ordering for a woman.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: So it is like very much part of my identity as a founder.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And they believe in the your passion and your vision and your authenticity.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um so before we let you go, one very advertising week question.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: There are a thousand predictions being made here this week in this building.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Give us one thing marketers are still getting wrong about the future of advertising.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that TikTok is one of the biggest uh channel arbitrage opportunities.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it is undeniably demand creation.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: And what I think they are doing wrong, or many marketers are doing wrong, is they're only measuring it as demand capture on TikTok shop.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: And the reality is it is creating demand that is being captured across retail, Amazon.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that's difficult to measure.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually a problem that Bridge helps solve, but it is undeniably a massively growing channel that I I you have to like dedicate a lot of resources to get right, but I think is a huge opportunity for marketers.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I I agree.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so it's so interesting to hear that in person back because sometimes people say the opposite that you know they're forgetting about the retail side and only looking at the media side and TikTok.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting to hear that perspective.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, okay, this was fantastic.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the the takeaway is actually pretty simple.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: The next error of advertising isn't just about smarter algorithms, it's about better inputs and a fuller picture with all those signals to make sense of it.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly right.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Christina.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Prove it and then improve it.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.