Quigley-Simpson’s President of Media, Analytics, and Data, Jeff Ratner, Discusses CES Takeaways, 2024 Marketing Trends, the Transformation of AI, and the Implication it Has on Today’s Brands
Jeff Ratner recently joined Quigley-Simpson as President of Media, Analytics, and Data. In his role, he is responsible for overseeing the agency’s Media Strategy and Planning, Investment, Activation, and Analytics practices. During his 20+ year career, he has worked on both the client and agency side, including senior positions at GroupM’s Mindshare, Publicis Media’s Zenith, Hearst’s iCrossing, Sony Corporation of America, and Kaplan North America, a global educational services company.
The Continuum sat down with Jeff right as he returned from CES and learned it was the 25th time he’d gone to this annual event. We talked to him about his new role, how CES has evolved over time, and what marketers and advertisers were talking about in Las Vegas this year. (Unsurprising spoiler alert: it’s all about AI).
You’ve been in many agencies during your career, and your last job was on the client side. How does that help shape your perspective coming into this role?
If you look at my career and kind of the three legs of the marketing stool where you have client, agency, and vendor/publisher, I've seen all three. I think that gives me a unique understanding of the business challenges and opportunities on all sides of our business.
I think those of us in agencies often don’t have a great perspective on or empathy for the pressures that the CMO and CFO are under to generate business and growth. I was working very closely with the C-suite in my last role, and it gave me an appreciation for where they take risks and where they want to be conservative.
Agencies are often frustrated with the intense spotlight on performance right now. There was a time when you couldn't get brand marketers to even think about performance. You couldn't get creative people to think about performance. Everybody insisted that advertising was about building brand love and brand trust. Then, over the last 8 years, the pendulum swung all the way over to performance, and few CMOs wanted to sign off on anything that wasn't going to drive an immediate sale.
I saw this when I was on the client side, they have intense pressure to invest in short-term growth and optimize everything towards very downstream KPIs. Even big brands moved so much of their money into downstream performance marketing and programmatic so they could target the right person, at the right time, in the right place. All of that is important, but they took their eye off the ball about the next generation of growth. Over optimization shrinks a prospect population vs. creating growth.
Quigley-Simpson’s proposition is about building brand, as well as creating and capturing demand. I’m excited to help the pendulum swing back toward the center and be accountable to our clients for both brand and demand.
And yet, you’re a data guy?
I am. Though I think we all throw around that word in very broad ways. Data could be everything from consumer information, media usage, and finding out that the average consumer in your audience spends 20% of the time listening to podcasts. You have the media data—impressions, clicks, page views— that's representative of user behaviors related to an ad campaign or website. Then you've got business data like sales, future growth, ROAS, and profitability. These are all somewhat disparate datasets.
What we need to think about with data and analytics is how we connect those datasets into some sort of actionable insight or plan that can help drive the business forward. How do you take your consumer understanding and turn that into a media plan, a content strategy, or a creative brief? And how do you take consumer behavior like a click or a page visit and turn that into a business result, whether that’s a purchase, a review, a store visit, or advocacy that leads to someone else making a purchase?
I look at it all as working together, but again, it’s not just performance; it’s also about building a brand that motivates consumers to lean in.
You recently came back from CES and said this was the 25th year that you’ve gone to this event. Wow. How has it a lot changed over the years?
It’s definitely different. When it started, it was very much the consumer electronics show. It wasn’t for media, advertisers, or consumers; it was where technology companies would go to show their wares to retailers. Buyers from Best Buy or Joe’s Electronics on Main Street would go there to place orders for the next year and see the tech of the future.
Some of my earliest trips to CES were when I was on the agency side. I remember one of my assignments was to check out these new television sets that were coming out. They were going to be rectangular instead of square and were going to go from a four-by-three aspect ratio to a sixteen-by-nine. My job was to report back to the agency about whether we should start shooting commercials in sixteen-by-nine. Which, of course, the whole industry did eventually.
It’s different now. For one thing, it’s much less future-focused. Most of the stuff that vendors now have on the floor is already available or will be within a year or so. There’s some far-out stuff. This year, all of the electronics manufacturers—Sony, Samsung, LG—were showing cars. I don’t think any of them are anywhere near getting on the road except maybe Sony’s because that’s a partnership with Honda. But for the most part, the products are familiar.
“In the realm of smarter, well, that’s where AI comes in. Things are becoming more predictive of what they need to do with the goal of becoming more experiential in how they actually do it.”
So, you didn’t see anything cool?
Oh, I did. Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of cool stuff. At this point, you’re not seeing first—like the first flat screen TV—you’re seeing new products that are iterative of things we have.
CES this year, as is often the case, was about being bigger, faster, thinner, or smarter. There was a lot of refinement. Samsung and LG were showcasing these see-through TVs. When they’re off, you can look through it like a window. There were also bigger TVs, like 115 inches, and clearer TVs with better pictures. OLED has taken a backseat to QLED with dots, closer together, and better backlight technology.
In the realm of smarter, well, that’s where AI now comes in. Things are becoming more predictive of what they need to do with the goal of becoming more experiential in how they actually do it.
Mercedes showcased an in-vehicle technology that they're working on with Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas. One of the interesting things about the move to electric cars is that they don't make sounds. The electric engine is so quiet we’re not really aware of it, but drivers don’t necessarily see this as a positive. Will.i.am is working on what a Mercedes should sound like. Basically, AI pulls in inputs from acceleration and body position and turning and traffic to make sounds that reflect the driving.
What do you mean when you say that AI is moving from reactive to predictive to experiential?
Well, to stick with the automotive category, a reactive experience might have been turning the internal lights on your car from blue to pink to purple to reflect your mood or needs by pushing a button on the dash. The predictive version would be a car that knows you like it pink in the morning and blue in the afternoon and sets that up without you. The experiential would be a car that knows you’re having a bad day based on your email and your web searchers and tries to cheer you up so that when you get in the car, there are pink lights and uplifting music playing.
This could happen in your house too. You turn on your TV and it knows what you might want to watch before you’ve decided. Or look at smart refrigerators. We already have fridges with screens on them, but this can be amplified by AI. Now your fridge knows everything that’s in it and when it all expires. It can build shopping lists, send you recipes, and track a healthy diet. Health products were big at CES this year, powered by AI technology, making them more predictive with a focus on the experience.
Or look at today’s mattresses. We went from something completely passive to mattresses that we could adjust to those that automatically adjust for us because they sense snoring. Or it cools down because it senses your temperature. These once-passive things in our lives are now going to take a more active role in creating better experiences.
CES is now a place where lots of marketers and advertisers convene each year. What was the buzz among this crowd last week? Was it all AI?
Yes, that was definitely one of the changes I’ve seen in my years at CES. Maybe 15 years ago was when Yahoo, CNET and other media companies started pitching tents at CES. This meant that more marketers and ad industry people started coming. Both from a vendor and publisher side, it has become a magnet for senior-level folks. I love it because I get to see and reconnect with people both on a professional and social level, understand the momentum for the year, and learn about a technology or media vendor that I may have missed otherwise.
You definitely get a sense of the themes the media and advertising communities are talking about, and yes, it was all about AI this year. Pretty much every slide deck said it was powered by AI, and there were a lot of vendors who were promising that their AI could help marketers with decision making whether that’s helping you come up with the right target audience or the right optimization metrics.
“Certain outlets are booming, like video and streaming, but places where we used to target consumers are struggling.”
Do you think AI can help you do this?
Certainly, algorithms and machine learning —which are the building blocks of AI—already do a lot of this, and AI will start to do more and more of it.
Right now, you can go into any DSP and say I'm looking for in-market shoppers for credit cards, or in-market shoppers for financial services, or in-market shoppers for automotive. These people have already shown signals that they're looking. These signals are very binary. Maybe they’ve visited an auto website or read an article on the best minivans. Now every ad they see is going to be for a minivan—we’ll tell you why our bells and whistles are the best bells and whistles in the world. We’ve all seen this as consumers; as soon as you show an inkling of interest, every marketer in that category pounces on you.
As I said, though, this is after you’ve signaled that you’re an active consumer, and there are only a few ways for you to signal that. AI has the potential to broaden the signals and analyze your behavior more completely to help understand where you are in that buyer journey. You know, are you walking onto the lot with a check in your hand, or have you just started contemplating a new car? AI has the potential to be anticipatory vs. reactionary.
Part of the problem with targeting in-market shoppers, though, is that we’re probably getting to you too late. You’ve likely made some decisions already or narrowed it down to just a few brands. We need AI and algorithms to help us do broader audience targeting or contextual targeting that says this person should be in the market for a minivan. They just don't know it yet.
This sounds like an upside to the coming evolution of AI, better targeting. But you also believe that AI is going to change how search works in a way that will be challenging to marketers and publishers. Can you explain?
We will have more information on who is an active or prime prospect, but we’re going to have a real challenge in getting our message in front of them. Part of that is that people’s media consumption is changing. Certain outlets are booming, like video and streaming, but places where we used to target consumers are struggling.
Let’s go back to that person in the market for a minivan. They search “best mini-vans 2024,” and Google brings up articles in Consumer Reports or Car and Driver on the safest or most comfortable mini-vans. As a marketer I know to put the ads for my minivan in these articles. This is how it’s been done for years.
But now, with the help of AI, Google doesn’t give the consumer a list of the articles anymore; it basically says, “I’ve read all these articles, and I’ve already generated the answer to your question. Here are the top five minivans of 2024.” It’s doing some of this already, and it’s only going to get better and smarter. Soon it's also going to know you live in the Northeast and have two children that you drive to soccer practice, and tell you not just the best minivans, but the best minivan for you.
This could be great for the consumer but as an advertiser, as a publisher, you're not coming to my website anymore, right? So, if I'm trying to get the Sienna in front of you, where am I going to do that? Google isn’t formatted, at least not yet, to have ads next to the search results. There are limits to this inventory. We’re going to have to make up for some of what we counted on in the search.
You’re one of our first interviews of 2024. Before we let you go, what are the top five things that marketers should be thinking about this year?
Wow, this feels like the lightning round of a game show. It’s hard to think of just five. I guess I’d start with these trends that I expect to see this year:
Huge growth in ad-supported streaming, including live sports, which should be a good opportunity for marketers to reach consumers in premium inventory.
The continuation of the always-connected consumer who is going to want a seamless shopping experience across channels.
Both a rise in influencer marketing and rising skepticism of influencer marketing that brands will have to navigate carefully.
The growth in optimized conversational search for both text and voice as search habits and access points/technology continue to change. Have a look at Ray-Ban Meta Glasses.
Finally, as I said earlier, we’ll see AI automation continue to evolve so that it is powering all of these trends.
January 9, 2024
