The global CMO of StackAdapt, a rapidly growing AI-powered buy side marketing platform, empathises with marketing chiefs of today.
Marketing teams and budgets are being squeezed with CMO tenures shrinking and pressure to do more with fewer resources.
AI technology has been viewed as either a panacea to the relentless squeeze of doing more with less, or as the machine that will stamp all over marketing jobs along the relentless efficiency journey.
Nelsen, who led marketing teams at fintech firm MX and Qualtrics before moving to StackAdapt 18 months ago, is of the camp that AI technology is part of the solution, enabling marketers to plan, execute, analyse and measure campaigns with greater speed, sophistication and effectiveness.
He understands these dynamics better than most. Nelsen leads marketing efforts at a company that uses AI technology to provide marketers (including himself) with the insights, inventory, measurement and analysis tools for personalised campaigns across multiple channels, including display, video, DOOH and connected TV.
Nelsen caught up with B&T ahead of StackAdapt’s Conversion conference in Sydney to discuss the challenges marketers face today, including pressure to over-index on performance; his approach to marketing; the role of AI in marketing and creative; and StackAdapt’s plans to grow in the APAC region.
B&T: StackAdapt is relatively new to this market, can you provide some context about your operations and plans for the APAC region?
Ryan Nelsen (RN): “We have about 40,000 brands on the platform, and over 5000 clients, which are a mix of agencies and brands directly, running around 230,000 campaigns a year in flight. We are starting to see some really good scale across the APAC region. Of our 1,400-1,500 people globally, we have about 80 people in APAC and around half are based in Sydney. We have had 100 per cent year over year and have recently expanded to different markets, including Hong Kong, Thailand and Indonesia. The sky is the limit and we expect a doubling of size again in this region – that is the plan.
B&T: You have been on a road trip to visit clients in Singapore and Sydney. What are marketers telling you is the number one challenge they are facing?
RN: Marketers are being overwhelmed about AI. A lot of people are worried about their jobs, they’re worried about the marketing world being disrupted. They’re worried about whether they are using the right technology, building the right campaigns, slowing down. As marketers I think we all have a bit of that anxiety around what does the world hold over the next several years. What we find is that if we can be the secret weapon or partner for those marketers and advertisers who are trying to build relationships with their audiences, and make their lives easier through technology, then that’s where we’re winning right now.
B&T: As marketers are under extra budgetary and time pressure, have you noticed a swing towards performance and lower funnel activity?
RN: Generally, yes, but it depends on the brand. I have a lot of empathy for what marketers are going through, because performance, performance, performance is so important. We did a study with a US company called Advertiser Perceptions that found about 76 per cent of marketers are focusing on performance marketing, while about 24 per cent are focused on brand. However, we have worked with Kantar recently and found that if you spend 50 per cent on performance marketing and 50 per cent on brand marketing, your sales over time go up by 10 per cent.
B&T: If that is the case, why are marketers not getting the message when it comes to performance vs brand, and what is your approach to marketing?
RN: If you only focus on the brand as a marketer, you’re gonna get fired, probably because you’re not showing the ROI immediately. But if you only focus on performance, that top of the funnel is going to dry up, and it’s going to be a lot harder to get those wins down the road. What I’ve done personally is built trust with our founders (Ildar Shar, Vitaly Pecherskiy and Yang Han) and with our board. They trust me and our team with our intuition and our creativity to go and make some bets and to think about a long term vision that’s going to get us to where we need to be. I also think about revenue as the marketing team’s goals, adopting a CRO mindset to drive long-term revenue versus short-term wins.
B&T: What role do you see AI technology playing in marketing, and where do you believe it has the most potential for positive disruption?
RN: What’s fascinating is AI is opening up the world to create commercials for brands of agencies of every size. Traditionally you might spend $100,000 on film production out of your $500,000 budget. But now using AI technology, $200 of that budget potentially could go to the production of it, and the remainder can go to the dissemination and getting it out to your your audiences. What that does is it opens up and creates an opportunity for creativity and a creative playing field that with the power of a couple clicks and a couple buttons, you can now tell your story to the world and spend the money getting it to the right channels. The creativity side of AI, the strategy of streamlining things, is where I see the biggest impacts, although the creative potential is my favourite.
B&T: Do you believe that AI will replace big human productions?
RN: People are testing and trying it but we have to see what the future holds in terms of culture. Does it accept those things? Does it make it feel less human? Does it make it feel less personal? There’s gonna be some brands that 100 per cent lean into AI and never do human production again. But I think there will also be those that use the human touch as a differentiator.
B&T: Finally, what are some of the key product advancements in StackAdapt’s pipeline that you are most excited about?
There’s a lot around video optimisation and video creation in the platform. There’s a lot around other channels as well. So I could see a world here. And I think I’m safe to say, you know, as we’ve talked about a few other folks as well, but we launched an email email platform several months ago to connect some things end to end. Launching also kind of a programmatic direct mail so being able to connect your direct mail ads to your programmatic and being really personalised within that, and then SMS and other things can come down the road.
