Mo 6/19 - Hallucinating Growth | Dupe Culture Helps Brands | The State Of State Of Advertising

It's Monday, June 19 2023. It's time to nerd out.

The ad nerd podcast delivers ad industry news weekdays we are the go to source for people who spend money on advertising, covering Big brands, small businesses, and of course the latest marketing trends. It's me Spanky Moskowitz, the show's host and a nearly 40 year vet of the ad industry. I've made ads for Budweiser m&ms, Frito. Lay the NFL and NDA, I've created over 100,000 ads generating hundreds of billions in client revenue. If you're in or interested in the world of advertising and want to stay up to date with the latest news. The ad nerds podcast is the perfect place to start.

And this week, the ad nerds podcast comes from this beautiful very blown out you can't see it behind me setting of the commitment summit in beautiful Costa Rica, JC and Karen height, kind enough to invite me to speak to a few 100 agency owners. And I'm going to be speaking about mastering ridiculously creative ad copy and I am thrilled to be here. Let's go.

The world of programmatic ads, it seems to have a bit of a leakage problem, and I've been talking about this for years. A recent study conducted by the Association of national advertisers the AMA has uncovered that advertisers are bleeding out about 23% of their programmatic ad dollars. Now I think that number can easily be doubled. According to the study, most of the waste is down to advertisers ending up with low quality websites and information asymmetry, and it's prevalent in the field. Just go back to my June 2 episode with Gary Vee we talked about this.

Now let's get a closer look at that term information asymmetry. It's a fancy way of saying some players in the advertising game have access to more or better information than others. So the imbalance often results in effectiveness and in ad placements and ultimately, a lot of wasted dollars. But this isn't just about buying bad real estate on the internet. It's about a lack of transparency and accountability that plagues the entire programmatic supply chain. And a study points out that the lack of transparency isn't just costing advertisers billions in wasted dollars, but it's also hampering their abilities to fully optimize investments and drive greater business growth. To combat this, ama suggests instituting corrective solutions, and industry standards that provide long term sustainability. Their aim is to make the Digital Media Supply Chain more understandable, more transparent, which will in turn Empower marketers to make better decisions and reduce waste.

In the rapidly evolving ever changing advertising landscape, there's a game changer quietly making its presence known presence known as generative AI. This is the high tech tool that is adding a new twist on the industry's creative process. And it all comes down to something called AI hallucinations. Now, this might sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but it's an innovation that has the potential to deliver substantial benefits to brands and marketers. So let's talk about these AI hallucinations. They're not quite like what they sound rather they're like trippy visions. These these hallucinations are entirely new image concept sounds and concepts that generative AI can create. These AI dreamt up ideas often appear surreal or otherworldly. We've all seen them right? Tapping into aesthetic realms that human creativity might not naturally venture into. The challenge is the usual notion of what's possible, making them a unique tool for brands wanting to make an impression and stand out from the crowd. The application of this technology isn't just a novelty though, the utilization of generative AI hallucinations can provide valuable insights into consumer behavior and marketing trends. By feeding the AI system vast amounts of data, it can produce unique outputs that really they highlight unseen connections for under explored avenues for marketers and brands. This ability can help identify new opportunities and guide strategy. You know, as the saying goes, the only limit is your imagination. And with generative AI, even that boundary is being stretched. Coming up how your small business can use these AI hallucinations to grow your brand

Alright before the break, I was talking about these AI hallucinations. And small businesses can really leverage these and use generative AI to their advantage to boost their digital marketing efforts and reach larger audiences and increase your customer engagement. So here are a couple of ways to do that. First, creating unique content. Generative AI can help small businesses produce unique compelling content like images, soundtracks, even marketing copy to capture the attention of your audience. This original content can set the business apart from the competition and attract more visitors to its online platforms increase engagement, right, all the things we're looking for all the time, gaining insights into customer behaviors the second one. By feeding generative AI with relevant customer data, small businesses can gain valuable insights into their customers behavior, their preferences, the AI can help identify previously unforeseen patterns or unseen patterns and opportunities which can be used to tailor marketing strategies more effectively. Number three, automating your marketing efforts, generative AI can automate some aspects of a business's marketing efforts making it more efficient. This can involve automating content creation, social media posts, email marketing, even customer service responses all using chatbots. This automation can save time and resources and allow small businesses to focus on other important aspects of their operations.

Next is personalizing your customer experience. Generative AI can be used to personalize the customer experience and increase. You know, it's a really important factor if you think about it for digital marketing agencies, you know by using digital by using generative AI to customize your content. It offers more opportunities to have interactions based on customer behavior, and preferences. Small businesses can really increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Number five, increase reach through new platforms, generative AI can create content for new and emerging digital platforms. Think about that. So like you could set up virtual reality or augmented reality environments opening up whole new avenues for customer interaction and brand exposure. The context of this is that digital transformation is happening now. And in an era where the internet plays an indispensable role in consumer decisions, and given the need for small businesses to differentiate themselves in the face of huge competition. The potential applications of generative AI are immense. AI can provide a small business with innovative tools that enhance your online presence, meet customers where they are and offer unique and engaging experiences.

Tic TOCs become the new frontier of strange cultural phenomena known as dupe culture, where copycat versions of famous brands take center stage, okay, but hold up. We're not just talking about like unsanctioned mimicry that we're used to seeing, we're talking about the sort of thing that at first glance, it could throw original brands under the bus. But in a twist of fate, this copycat culture is actually working out to the benefit of the OG brands in incredible ways. So you might be scratching your head thinking to yourself, how could a knockoff possibly do any good for the genuine article? Right? Well, let's break it down. You see tick tock. The dupes are mainly popular with younger demographics who might not have the budget for the real deal, yet they want to follow trends. So when they share these dupes, it actually amplifies the reach and the recognition of the original brand. Essentially, it's all about visibility. And in the ad, world, visibility equates to brand value. So the moral of the story, the landscape is changing. Brands might be finding value in the unlikeliest places, even in the hands of those replicating their products. But instead of tarnishing the brand value, these dupe culture kids, they're giving the brand's value, they're giving them an unexpected boost and becoming an unintentional ally in the grand scheme of things, especially in the brand promotion side. So this could be the dawn of like an entire new approach to how we understand brand engagement and consumer interaction. It's like a whole new world right? I want to break out and sing the song but then people We're going to look at me like, why is he singing? Anyway, it's an ever changing game and the game just keeps evolving.

Coming up the State of the State of advertising halfway through 2023.

Even as traditional media have, well, they're having a bit of a tough time, you know, the global ad market is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, it's growing. And it's growing fast. So newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, they're all struggling right now to keep up with the digital onslaught. But ad spending worldwide isn't taking a hit. And it's on the rise. So this is largely thanks to the shift towards digital right. So here are the numbers and they're going through the roof, by the way, with their projections showing digital advertising to reach a massive $679.8 billion by the end of this year. Now, the big player in this game, surprisingly, still in 2023 environment is search advertising. Right now they're poised to command a market volume of $279.3 billion. And guess what most of that ad spend is being generated in the United States hitting a mind boggling 271 point 2 billion. But let's not forget about the role of brands and marketers in this revolution, as the landscape evolves, that they're harnessing new ways to drive growth amid really today's uncertainty, shaping global marketing trends as they set their sights on future priorities. So what are we seeing here? It's a fascinating blend of change and resilience. The global ad market is transforming. It constantly transforms. It's challenging traditional formats and breaking boundaries every day. But it's also demonstrating the underlying spirit of the ad world. Its innate ability to adapt to innovate and thrive. Remember, in your business, you're either growing or you're contracting, thriving or dying. Which do you choose? I know what I choose.

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