Benjamin Ard00:00 — Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Carissa. Carissa, welcome to the show.
Karisa Schroeder00:05 — Thanks, Ben. I'm so excited to be here.
Benjamin Ard00:07 — Yeah, Carissa, this is exciting. I personally have so many questions about today's subject. I'm excited to dive in. But before we do that, Carissa, let's get to know you a little bit for the audience, who you are, work history, all that kind of fun stuff so everyone knows who you are and who we're talking to today.
Karisa Schroeder00:24 — Sure. Thanks, Ben. I'm really excited to be here. I'm coming today from Media Radar. I focus there on GTM strategy. This is perhaps my ninth year in product marketing and tech space, but I've been a marketer for about 15 years. I'm well known in location intelligence as well as now the advertising space. So today coming on to talk to you about advertising, it's right in my wheelhouse and I'm excited to be here.
Benjamin Ard00:47 — I love it. That's going to be fun. So what's really cool is we're not just talking about advertising. What we have talked about and what we're going to go over is using ad intelligence as a window into what brands are actually doing, not what they're just saying. This is a kind of a new world. Like it makes perfect sense as you like you introduce this to me, but from the outset, I don't know if I've ever actually done this strategy. So let's kick it off. Let's dive into it.
what made you start looking at advertising as this well of information of intelligence rather than, okay, this is my ad, I push it, great, I get a little bit of data about what people interact with. like, how did you start to think about this concept that it's an intelligence network, not just an ad network?
Karisa Schroeder01:31 — Well, you're right. Like as marketers, we think, okay, this is how I'm going to push out my channel. This is how I'm going to push out my content. But when I think about advertising, I actually see a brand's identity. It's how they're showing up.
and how they show up, it comes in different ways. you did just refer, you know, you say advertising as a channel, but when we think about advertising, there's so many channels, and there's so many different ways to reach those audiences. For me, like getting excited about this and coming into this space, like being in the location intelligence space, a lot of that analysis was on segmentation and different behaviors and demographics across the US and how
You know, someone in the Northeast might buy something different than someone in the South. When you think about that in terms of marketing, we think about audiences and even further so when it comes to audiences and advertising, it becomes what channels to the does that audience actually participate in and where can that message resonate? So when we see advertisers out there across CTV, social, linear, live events, wherever it is they're showing up.
That's how they're signaling what their identity is. And for us, that signal is what's coming next from that business.
Benjamin Ard02:48 — Okay, I love it and it makes perfect sense. The idea that this company is spending dollars to get out a particular message. So there is something strategic behind it as opposed to everything you see organically and everywhere else. There's just something different when a dollar sign goes behind a message. You also hinted at something kind of right there at the end to see what's next. So you're using this to see a brand's next move.
Like what are you looking at to understand the next steps where they're going? What does this analysis actually look like in practice?
Karisa Schroeder03:22 — it's it's honestly it's exciting sometimes right because you think about data and you think about the being predictive in so many ways advertising is allowing you to be prescriptive it's like saying like this is what we are knowing where they're moving just based on what the narrative that they're sharing the conversions that they're pushing us against and all of that really comes down to the actual creative and yes spend
how much money we're laying against that creative is a big factor, but what is inside that creative? The story they're telling, the cultural touch points that they're seeking to make. We look at the call to action as well as like their pricing strategy. When you think about it in terms of market position and the location of which they are surfacing these ads.
Sometimes that pricing strategy is very different depending on where those ads are showing up, whether at a national level or if it's at more of a local standpoint. There's also opportunity to understand products. So more than just marketing, ads are also a signal for developing new products. And people are often looking to add to their competitors to say, what are the products that they've come out with in the last six months, the last five years?
What do we prescribe that they're going to do next from that? We also see execution signals. So where are partnerships showing up? What celebrities are coming into this? What sponsorships are there? And with all of that coming together, like that creative, as I shared a little bit earlier about my background, why this is exciting is it fuels analysis, right? It fuels intelligence. So we, as marketers often think of share a voice.
We say, competitively, where am I showing up? How am I reaching my target audience against my competitors? We look at share of spend to say, for every dollar spent, how much more am I getting back in return? Here with ads, we can expand that to also look at the share of message. And so that share of message is saying, for what matters most to me as a brand, whether maybe that's coming off as a value-driven brand or luxury or...
I want to make some sort of association here. Do I own that category? And if I don't, where is that white space that I can go forth and like claim it for myself? And I think what's really cool then is like, I get to build those tools every day. And like that to me, it's like, it's not only exciting to use them as a marketer, but then also turn around to build them. It's also just like, it's so cool. And it just gives me that energy.
Benjamin Ard05:47 — that.
I love that. That's awesome. So if I'm a marketer listening to this podcast today and I'm thinking, okay, here's a well of new information. Like I said, like you said, the analysis piece, I can now do a full analysis on these competitors. How do I take that and actually adopt it into my marketing strategy when it comes to maybe making my own advertising or my own messaging?
Wait, like how far should I take it when it also comes to like seeing what they're doing and imitating? How do I just adapt and ultimately use this analysis?
Karisa Schroeder06:35 — I think there's different ways to use it. And like a lot of it's gonna be from your own curiosity, right? And it's driving you to do that research for you to decide the game plays of what you need to do next. It's great for inspiration. So when I look at inspiration, I'm saying like, don't just look at your direct competitors. Like that's great to know what they're up to.
But if you only look there, you're going to kind of miss that bigger picture of what's out there. so oftentimes it's looking at that extensive category where you sit or also to look at brands that you wish to emulate or want to be more like. mean, 10 years ago, a lot of people were looking at Apple, right? A lot of everyone's like, I don't want to be like Apple. want to do what Apple's doing. And that's where we have this cultural trend of the minimalistic style take place. But now,
we see maximalism coming back where people are like, no, like I want energy. I want personality in my brand. How do I come out and stand out amongst other people? And so you start to see in advertising where those pockets of originality do pop up. And that to us as marketers is inspiring. It gets back to that again, that creative piece, that exciting piece of marketers that we all, you know, we want to have in establishing our
identity and how we go to market. I think you might have alluded to the imitation part of it and like a little bit, how do we make sure that like, we don't show up looking exactly like someone else? And of course, that's like my greatest fear is that I would go to market and someone says, that's already been done before. But when you're looking at the full scope, you're you're able to see those blind spots, you're also able to see the opportunity. And while imitation is maybe that
Benjamin Ard07:59 — Mm-hmm.
Karisa Schroeder08:19 — form of flattery that they say is out there, we have to figure out where that white space is, where things haven't been done before, so that we know, like, okay, this is where we show up. For me, I always tell brands that you want to be looking at, like, how do you create that community? And I refer to it as a party. I'm like, make it the party that people want to be a part of. And once you start to look at that community, you think about the party, you're like, I want it to be unique. I want...
I want to stand out. want people to want what I'm here to offer. so association plays a lot here. It's looking at what influencers do we need to bring into our communities so people think it's cool and they want to be a part of it? Which celebrities do we want to kind of endorse here? And you can look again to your competitors and say, they're going this angle with their celebrities. We can go this other way and capture greater space.
You can also look at sponsorships and how to differentiate that way. One of my favorite recent ones was the Winter Olympics. You have Airbnb, they're showing up in the Winter Olympics as a sponsor. And their sponsorship is the official sponsor of feeling at home. Now they could be the official sponsor of lodging, but they own that feeling of being at home. And that's where they show up. That's how they differentiate in the market.
and they can see all the other sponsorships coming through and they're like, how do we be different? And that's how they really shine.
Benjamin Ard09:48 — love that. And you're right, oddly enough, I didn't watch much of the Olympics. I do remember the Airbnb ads. I do remember them talking about showing the videos of these athletes that were in these cabins or unique places, talking about this is the opportunity for you to feel at home while you're not at home. I think that's so cool. Now you talked a lot about the story.
And how that all gets developed, how we're not imitating other people too much. We're using it as inspiration. Now in advertising, it's a little different though, because you have so many different platforms, screen sizes, opportunities, you know, out of home, digital, et cetera. And the story kind of has to adapt to all of those different places. How do you manage that? Like, how do you take the analysis, look at the opportunities and then adapt the story to fit?
kind of the right opportunities, whether it's location, platform, whatever it is, how does that all line up?
Karisa Schroeder10:43 — I think it really depends on your campaign goal, right? Like what is the outcome? We talk about outcomes a lot in advertising. It's like, gotta stop thinking, you know, you gotta stop thinking old school. You have to start thinking about what do you want people to do with this message? And then how do you connect with the channel? I think what is really troubling in the advertising space right now is that there are so many different ways, as you said, to consume the ads. So,
what we're looking for is that total market coverage. But what the reality is, is there's just data fragmentation. So that is the crux of intelligence is like only having bits and pieces of data and not all of it. But when we think about, how do I show up against that? Right? The national ads are going to be those bigger brand narratives. It's building that brand. It's showing up in those places of relevance over time.
where local campaigns, you can be more relevant to the people that it's unique to, and you can have those cultural nuances. I can recall an ad from T-Mobile this past winter where, you know, it depended on where they were showing their ad in the US, they were pulling in different celebrities. And in some ways, they had different pricing strategies, right? So it just becomes, who are you speaking to?
How are they going to identify themselves as your brand in the places where you're showing up? There's also a lot with the actual channels themselves, as you said, and trying to figure out like, okay, are some of these older channels dead? So like linear TV or like traditional broadcast TV, advertising dollars are still going there.
It's not all going to the Netflix's and the Hulu's of the world. It's still flowing in those ways. It's just to reach different audiences. And what's been really cool over this last year is seeing live sports pick up. You might have been just seeing it in general in your social content and everything that you're going with, but everybody is a part of sports now. And live sports are seen as like a huge opportunity in advertising.
to actually meet people where they have their full attention there because they're investing their time in that specific time spot. So it has that very unique opportunity to reach these audiences. There's also like so much more investment going into these spaces across Amazon and Netflix, YouTube, where suddenly,
these channels that we've grown up with are now becoming the place you go to watch those live sports. So that's one place to watch one place to look at brands and saying like, how are they showing up? Why are they showing up here? And just really getting into the heart of the movement of can I have a space to play here whether that's nationally, locally, digitally,
in person, however it might be, that's how your story is going to come out to your audience. So it really does matter the channel that you choose and how you reach people through those ways.
Benjamin Ard13:54 — I love that. That's so cool. All the different nuances, all the different varieties, understanding showing up and even the customization. Like you said, with T-Mobile, the ability to say, let's get the right message, right people, right influencers, all that kind of stuff for the audience. think that's so cool. All right, Carissa, we are almost out of time. One final question before we have to end today. As a marketer, someone listening to this podcast, thinking of myself,
I should probably start doing some competitive intelligence, looking at the advertising networks as a source of information so I can do this analysis. Where do I start today, tomorrow, this week to even kind of get any kind of value out of this? Where do I start and where do I kind of do things from here?
Karisa Schroeder14:40 — I always say for every marketer to start with your curiosity, exact curiosity is what's going to drive your research and ultimately your intelligence and your outcome.
For us, we have a lot of data, right? All marketers have a lot of data in our hands. And so I recommend starting with your first party data and looking at the channels that you're already advertising as a part of, because you're going to have some level of intelligence there in terms of spend, how you're showing up, who else is on those platforms.
but we often find that first party data is not enough. Like you can see that lens into your pocket of the market. So that's where you want to start looking at enrichment and start considering what other providers are out there that can give you that data lens that you need. It's that full picture that gives you the signal and it's when you have the right signals that you can make the confident decisions. So you have to be very,
subjective of the data you have and make sure you have all the right data. But once you do and you have those signals coming in, that's what's going to drive that intelligence and ultimately make you a better marketer.
Benjamin Ard15:54 — I love it. This has been amazing. Carissa, for anyone who's listening and wants to reach out and connect with you online, how and where can they find you?
Karisa Schroeder16:01 — I'm a big LinkedIn advocate. anyone that wants to connect, I'm always there. And I love meeting with people in the community and the space because growing together, that's what's important. So thank you again, Ben, for having me today.
Benjamin Ard16:14 — Absolutely appreciate it.
