Video Marketing Solutions with Shane Schmutz

welcome to the content supply podcast I'm Dallin need and each episode we bring you an inspiring brand creator or message to help you discover how you can experience success in your business as we unpack stories and strategies about all things content and growing a successful brand so this is just a hole discovery process for all of us we feature a variety different brands on the show from entrepreneurs caterers copywriters marketers coaches athletes to designers filmmakers photographers and many more all brand owners all creators so it's my belief as with many others that every company is a Content company and has to be one to stay relevant and competitive because let's be honest the internet is so full of brands that it can be very easy to get lost in the crowd so quality and effective content really separates you that's why content supply was created to supply brands with ongoing custom content so they can engage with their customers by providing value telling stories and making more sales and when we say content I'm talking about video and audio and written or image all and everything in between all those content creation and building a business is really hard you never finish the building and creating even after you experience some success you have to keep going on in the journey content supply was created to be resource a community and a solution to fill that large gap of content so thanks for joining the show now let's get to the interview so tell us a little bit about add tension yeah absolutely well first of all thanks for having me so add tension was started about a year and a half ago and it was started by one of my classmates from college I ended up joint going to the United States Military Academy at West Point and one of my class had started the company and it started really as an ad tech company and now we like to think ourselves as a ad tech slash smart tech company we really believe the two different areas are coming together to become one and the reason that he started add tension is because he was at an ad network company that worked with brands and agencies in order to run campaigns for them specifically with programmatic video and they worked a lot of ad network to ad network he was their director of operations the company was very successful and a few years ago it's sold for over 30 million dollars so he stayed on as the director of operations for a full year afterwards they on a 600 person sales team that they needed to kind of get up to speed on the product and the solution and so he stayed on and then once he left he started add tension we really feel that we can help brands and agencies help their brands tell the brand story an increased brand recognition so what we do specifically is we make sure that brands that have advertising videos now we're talking short videos usually 15 to 30 second videos can get distributed online so what we want is as many people that are interested in that brand to see that video now how do we do that we have lots of different types of integrations with data sources but we don't want to just show that video to everybody on the Internet we want to show that video specifically to people that might be interested in the product or service that that brand focuses on so for example say you're in the in the market for an engagement ring you're going to be engaged in the next three to six months we're able to gather that data whether it's demographic or location based or behavioral based based on the internet through we I think we have an integration with over 76 different data sources and then we specifically target those individuals on the web no matter where they're out on the web so that could be on mobile web just surfing their phones it can be on their desktop could be on mobile app could even be through apps on connected TV or social media as well specifically Facebook and Instagram so utilizing that data we really run targeted campaigns to make sure that these advertisers are having the best use of their advertising spend and it's not wasted on you know twelve-year-old little boys playing a candy game app you know there are not going to be engaged for several years so that's one example well and it sounds like to sum that all up it sounds like you guys basically tap into where some brands audience would exist online and you focus you hyper focus on that area of the internet to get content get their messaging get their story in front of the audience wherever they may be and it's not just social I think so many of us so many brands focus on just social media but there are so many other touch points that could be tapped into and I think something like attention to and why I wanted to pull you guys on the podcast is because so much of the come of the online entrepreneur world the brand world especially those who are starting out but who are doing fairly well are finding most of their success on social media because naturally that's where most audiences do live and spend their time but also in other areas of the internet yeah you've mentioned social media you mentioned there's also OTT right OTT platforms as well uh-huh and so like including Amazon well there's a mistake Smart TVs but down you know you said something really interesting and I know that we met a video conference in California that was specific to advertisers and influencers so what I mean by influencers is and you know because you were at the conference but people that really have built a following on social media so whether it's YouTube or Facebook or something like that and then advertisers are interested in utilizing those personalities because they had several million followers to maybe give a brand plug right and to bring and aware yes so oftentimes advertisers are so focused on social media but why limit yourself that's my question to advertisers why limit yourself to just social media why not focus more on where you're actually serving this content to who you're serving the content to so one of the questions that I get when brands our agencies want to work with us is Shane where is this content going to be shown specifically what publisher are you gonna go through and by publisher I mean website right so it can be cnn.com foxnews.com espn.com yahoo.com it's such a and my question is well what is more important to you is it more important where that content is show where that the person viewing that content regardless of where they're at on the on the internet or connected TV or mobile app or mobile web if they have an interest in your product or service so of course we can do something called creating white labels where we list the hundred websites and we say only sir that that's these websites we can also create black lists that say don't serve to these websites as well but my argument is for most campaigns for most brands it's usually more important to really serve those ads to the person that has shown the behavioural kind of footprint that we're looking for or the geographic location or zip code that we're looking for that's specific to your product or to your company location or where the products are being sold or the demographics you know women or pregnant women be between the age of 25 and 35 so there's lots of different ways that we can target I think I personally believe for most campaigns it's more important who you target than where you target but if you're just looking to social media you may be missing people that could be utilizing the web in a broader sense that aren't on social media or that don't come across your social media channels well you also have something very interesting there too in referencing the conference we did go to one takeaway that I have for my conference that relates to what you just said was the demographic er the audience that we tended pinpoint is oftentimes generalized to the platform that they live on let's say moms on Facebook that's such a big reach of a niche you're trying to get to versus owning less on honing in less on the platform and more on the specifics of like mothers pregnant mothers who live in this area of the country and I think it's I think it's a matter of specifying who your audience is exactly and not necessarily what platform uh they're on every time wait am I saying this how I want to say hold on one second and I may be reversing did you remember was I remember reversing the way I heard it I think it how was it said it was who you're serving the ads to rather than wicker those ads are being seen hmm now of course I do think down you have to worry about brand safety right a lot of these companies a lot of these agencies a lot of these brands that we worked with have worked really hard for years to build up this brand and the respect that this brand brings to their customers so of course you don't want it being shown like say adult content web sites or web sites that might go against your political leaning if it's a brand that that can be affected in that way so we do have integrations with kind of brand safety software as well as software that makes sure that actual humans are seeing this these video ads because in the advertising space and it's been this way for a few years is there's a lot of frog so there's box created that will go out and it'll act like they're watching these videos and then you get served these impressions and you pay for these impressions when really a human never saw these videos so what we try to do is really utilize and integrate with the top-of-the-line anti and brand safety software that exists in order to make sure that again that marketing spend is best utilized and as many humans are seeing that as possible yeah I got Auto sensor lights behind me so regarding that - what is your process to discover where those specific I guess areas of Internet that audiences do exist like let's say kind of step one you meet a brand who wants to user advertising services how do you fact find how you discover those areas of the Internet that's actually a great question so the first thing that we do is we have a conversation with the actual brand or agency the reason that we do that is because nobody knows that our brand or their customers as well as they do so the first thing we do is say well who is your normal customer what age range are they what location are they etc beyond that once we've had that conversation with them because we've ran so many campaigns and because my team that actually launches and optimizes and monitors the campaigns from a week to week and month to month basis and because we have over 57,000 different kinds of targeting data points sometimes we'll think of something that they haven't for example we were in recent conversations with bariatric surgeons now bariatric surgeons operate on the obese population so I'm talking about gastric bypasses gastric bands sleeve gastrectomy and lap bands so one thing that they may not think of is what we could do is target people behaviorally that have recently searched for or bought products for example Jenny Craig or any date white weight loss products or we could target people that have a propensity to look like they may have diabetes oftentimes diabetics are obese and have a high Oh enough that they would need bariatric surgery so oftentimes we can come up with some creative targeting as well and we usually start that targeting a little bit more like a shotgun approach and then week to week we optimize and we look at oh wow we're really seeing that mobile web scan you know higher click-through rate or higher few three rate rather than mobile app or desktop of connected TV or social media and so what we do is we optimize and we adjust that advertising Spence as to where we're having the best results which another question that I get is well how long do we really need to run our campaign and that depends you might be having might be a non-profit and you're having a big gala in February so you may want to just run it for three months to get everybody to know about your gala its awareness maybe it's in the city of Denver so you want it to everybody eighteen and older and in Denver and then you want to run that for three months we can retarget the people I've seen one video send them a second video so that they're continuing to get your brand story it's called sequential marketing sometimes we even have three four videos say for example for a car dealership we may send out the video of f-150s there's going to be a cell okay so people have seen that video we can actually tag those people that have seen that video and retarget them now with a series of videos that say oh well you may not have actually come into the dealership because you didn't you thought the APR was too higher you're not a you're afraid you won't be able to get approved for the loan and we don't actually say this the video speaks to some of those objectives objections to overcome them through sequential marketing so there's lots of different ways that we work with the brands but it always starts with meeting with them having a conversation about their customers coming up with a targeting plan together and then generally running that campaign we like to run it for six months it takes time takes several iterations for people to have touch points with a brand we have a click-through URL once they see the video they click on it it can lamb on their web page can land on a web page would fill out this form to have more in for me you should have contacts it's work can land on the web see right where the product services being sold so lots of different variables that come into it but that's how we start working with the brand and I'll stop there because it's getting a little bit lengthy but yeah no I totally get it so I was thinking that as you're talking about how it takes six months and particularly with us any kind of advertising takes time and patience and budget let's say I'm a brand and I come to you and I want results within a month and you know like big results I've got big expectations how do you reassure a brand that their budget and their required patience to see results could take much longer than one month you could take six months it can take a year or more so especially when working with smaller brands or companies that haven't been around as long and may have a smaller marketing budget oftentimes I'm asked the question well what are the exact results gonna be and what is the return on investment and it's oftentimes a difficult question to answer because there are many many variables what's your clip through URL what's your website look like what's your follow-up once they actually click through and they get to your website what if they do fill out a contact us form does that take you 12 hours 24 hours a week to get back to them you know how is your product or service priced within the market is it competitive is it less competitive are we targeting high income household low income households can the people that were targeting afford your product and that's part of our job to make sure that we can do that but also you know do you have a long term view are you looking truly to raise brand awareness and brand recognition if you're not then we may not be the best company to work with but also anybody who's ever been in sales for longer than a few months knows that I can't just call somebody and tell them about my product or service once generally that sale doesn't happen until I've for seven or eight eight interactions why would it be any different on the internet in fact sometimes it takes more because they're seeing this video but we believe in utilizing video the power of sight sound and motion to really help bran an agency's help that brand story but oftentimes people will just watch the video they consume that information it's in their head and they may not take action until Christmastime you know what I you know in three or four months that seems interesting you know Christmas only what six to eight weeks away right now yeah oftentimes you know they don't they don't have a reason to take action until they're ready for that so it may not be through a click through on that video it may be that they wrote it down or they remembered it or they saw that video ten times over a couple month period and then the next year they walk into your store where they go to your website and they make a purchase so you have to allow a campaign to have the time to not only get to the right people but also and most importantly for my team to be able to optimize it to get the it to the right people to serve it multiple times to that right population to that right target base in that right location in order to get them to move and to convert completely well and it sounds like - it's experimentation I would imagine at the beginning right I mean you don't know right off the bat correct me if I'm wrong as you kind of go through a brain discovery phase and figure out who the customer is what platforms or where on the internet you need to target these video ads and in content but you have to experiment with those customers and where exactly they are it is that what it you really have to do yeah experimenting seems like a little bit of a loose word yeah you know the people that are on my team that are running these campaigns and optimizing these accounts have years and years of experience running otally thousands of campaigns and so rather than experimentation I would say a and B testing so let me give you an example we worked with the nonprofit recently that was helping veterans and veterans families and and then we also worked with a company called combat flip-flops that cells not only flip-flops with some other clothing items too anybody any of the population they were actually on shark tank but they sell it mostly their target audience is veterans four households have veterans in them or the spouse of a veteran so what they did is they came up with two different videos actually the nonprofit did as well as combat flip-flops because specifically combat flip-flops came up with three we had a 30-second and two 15-second videos one was kind of product and then they also give back to their community so toward tour nations for example they helped women in Afghanistan get education certain amount of their profits so one was paid product and by the way we give back so it was kind of the whole brand story then one video focused more on product and then one video focused more on that giving back then we targeted those videos to not only veterans and veterans households in warm climates where they'd want to buy flip-flops because it's the end of the year but we also targeted some of those videos towards people that would be likely to donate to third-world countries people that would be likely to donate to veteran nonprofits we have those data sources right and so we can look at wow we're really getting a lot of gaygent with this video with this population but we're not here so we can adjust that advertising spend so there is I guess you could call that experimentation but generally we have a pretty good sense of who the customers are where the actual brand does and so we have a pretty good place to start but it does take every week our campaign gets better and better because we are continuously optimized well yeah it's definitely purpose filled yeah I mean experimentation like you said beat it being a loose term could be experimenting with not knowing what outcome you want versus a/b testing or something done with purpose you actually you know the outcome you're working toward so I totally get what you're saying with I mean you guys with user experience geared more towards you know having a purpose in mind and an outcome that you want from your testing it's it's a mix of science and art to be honest you know and really knowing our platform and how our how the results react because of our experience with the multiple campaigns of the brand so we know that if we're really optimizing for something called like the Avox cord that means audio and visual upon completion that that's a really high standard so there's the other standard that the IAB Interactive Advertising Bureau has us a standard for viewability right it means that half the video has to be on the screen for two seconds well to me that's a pretty low standard to count as a viewable like oh people have had the chance to view that although they did we really like to optimize towards higher scores so one hundred percent of the video on screen one hundred percent of the time with audio on and watch it all the way through so those are two different ends of the spectrum we've got lots of different ways that we optimize them for some campaigns different metrics are better to optimize two words but as you can see from this simple example it would seem that optimizing towards we want people to see the video all the way through would be the best but sometimes not that's not the best for every campaign sometimes it's it's different you know we have different media plus-sized players small medium large etc and all these variables are different whether it's on mobile web mobile app connected TV desktop social media it's completely uh and so with speaking about using video specifically versus other forms of content to target to customers how do you go about sourcing the right video and creating custom videos to then target towards those those customers you guys use your own agencies that in-house or do you usually contract based on the type of video that needs to be created so I appreciate you asking that question down because oftentimes during our initial engagement with the customer or client we can ask that question so we can work with a client in a multiple multitude of different ways and what I mean by that is if they already have video content there we have a 30 second video on a 15 second video awesome that makes it actually easier for us you know better or expertise is really that focusing on that video distribution and getting your brand story told to the right people but we do have the capability to either take content that you've created and you might have you know 30 40 minutes of content mixed content we can take that we can edit it down and create you know a 30-second and two 15-second videos for you or we can take a video that you haven't edit it and adjust it there's little tips and tricks so for example on three different platforms sometimes audio is automatically on sometimes you have to click it to get audio on so we always recommend making sure that subtitles are on the video or there's graphics that depicts exactly your brand story if the volume is off that's just one example also you want your little going to be in the beginning in the end you want some contact information up there you want your website kind of be on the bottom part so that even if people don't click on it or they don't watch it all the way through they still consume that information they don't have contact with you but we don't we do not do it in-house although you know if you go to our website it looks like we do we have very close network of partners that we work with on the video production side that you would work through us we'd have that done and in often cases you wouldn't even know that there's a third party involved unless you wanted to we could direct you link you up up directly depending on how complex that video production requirements are or or you can use your own video production team really we don't have a preference yeah well you know that's an industry thing too but video advertising is that the scale or production quality of you know the image or the video obviously it's important for professionalism purposes but you know you find so many campaigns that it doesn't matter how massive of a budget may have been for example like shot an iPhone's campaign series but on my Apple problem you know sourcing that content from their users their consumers probably wasn't that costly of a budget but it was the whole campaign behind it and get the backend and developing it and the advertising that went into it that made that campaign that more effective is that it was you one called collaborative with multiple forms of people involved in campaign but also it came down to the advertising and the ability to tell a brand story whether it was shot on the best camera available or shot on something simple it depends I think on the distribution I think I think so much and you talked about also the art and the science of things I think I may have brought this up too when we met at the conference but I think so many whether you're a brand or creator or supplier there's a disconnect oftentimes between wanting to focus too much on the art or focusing too much on the science and then trying to find a way to marry the two together to make them work more seamlessly but also oftentimes you have to put more of a focus on the science side because by doing that especially if you're operating in business you have to focus on the science and the data side in order to get results and an outcome and because you find I mean I'm I'm kind of a filmmaker storyteller first of formosus so I I kind of lean more towards that artistic side but I think the need to have the science in the data side in place that that side that actually drives results is completely necessary if not even more necessary than the art and you know you can put certain ratios of which side you need more but I think the distribution the advertising side definitely makes and breaks the results side or the sell side of a piece of content be that video absolutely in fact you remind me of something that we saw at that video conference in LA a few weeks ago there were two different presentations during the breakouts and one said if content is king then distribution is Queen and then another one said if content is king then distribution is the Kingdom which I found really interesting so sometimes I get the question asked what's more important my video creative do I want something that's so amazing that's gonna really just grab people's attention in 30 seconds and it's gonna go viral and everybody's gonna share it everybody's gonna click on it or do I want to make sure that it so let's just say we have a video that's ok but it's just routed to the right people that are in it really interested in my brand or my service or my product so I would make the argument that you can have the best video in the world but if it's hidden in the depths of the internet and the black caves of the internet and not many people are seeing it or the wrong people are seeing it then that doesn't have so much value to you then you can have an average medium kind of marketing creative piece of video and it's truly distributed to the right people at the right time there I want in the right stuff along their customer journey to really convert and purchase then I would say that there's potentially a lot more about you there so I believe that you know there's a lot of people out there that try to create this amazing creative that's going to go viral and I just think there's too many variables and that art is such an art that can be very difficult to do and can be very expensive and so you know depending on my brand or if I was the owner of a company and depending on my size I would say ninety nine out of the hundred times me personally I would go with the I would try to get my creative as great as possible but I'd really focus on that distribution and who's seen it along that customer churn completely particularly if you're operating a business you know let's say you're just the artist who carries just about the art and you know obviously you want some people to see it but you care more about like I'm doing this out of passion you know I'm gonna throw it out there in the internet but you're not looking for a business objective and by all means you can focus solely on the art side but I think if you're wanting to actually monetize and make it a business putting more focus on the distribution side is something that more and more brands need to learn but also tap into those skills and the professionals who do it like attention so anyways Shane we can wrap this up but I like I appreciate getting more of this there we go I yeah well we're using your video anyways we won't see me if this is a focus on on you and an ADD tension but I appreciate I appreciate you doing this podcast I think for more and more online brands to learn more about the advertising beyond just social but yeah in social included the attention provides services for is incredibly valuable I think tapping into more corners of the internet where customers exist could even increase profits you know the bottom line whatever you know sells whatever the buzzword is for for brands to really be profitable totally totally so I appreciate it we should definitely stay in contact because those advertising chops that you guys provide over there in New York and and add tension just all over would be incredibly valued for the brands that Condon supply supports I'm suing if anybody's interested in learning more about add tension again my name is Shane shoots schm you t'see I'm one of the co-owners and also the director of sales you can find more information on our website wdtn.com that's ad Tem tion comm and then our contact information is on there as well appreciate your time down thank you so we stay in touch if I can be helpful in any way reach out at any time and for sure Shane hey appreciate it so we mentioned content and brand building throughout this episode if you're overwhelmed with running your business and you know you need more content especially an ongoing constant supply of content that's custom all in order to take your brand to the next level then make sure to learn more and check out our website of content supply at content supply that I owe so thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.