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The AdTech Forum - Series 1 Episode 5
35 Plays1 year ago
"Creative is the final frontier" - Ben KartzmanIt's the final episode of our inaugural CREATIVE series!We are so grateful to our #creativeadtech sponsor, Flashtalking by Mediaocean, for helping AdTechGod and OhHello.io 🌞☕️ come together to cut through the industry noise by bringing you TheAdTechForum.comIt's episode 5, and we're delighted to have Ben Kartzman (the COO of Flashtalking by Mediaocean / Mediaocean) join us to talk about all things #creative #ai #personalizationThank you for watching, learning, and engaging with the first (of many) series of TheAdTechForum.com---> jeremy@theadtechforum.com & atg@theadtechforum.com for all inquiries, sponsorships, collabs
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Transcript
Welcome to EdTech Forum
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the next episode of the EdTech Forum, brought to you by our sponsor Flash Talking. With us
Introduction of Ben Cartzman, COO
00:00:12
Speaker
today, we have Ben Cartzman, the COO of Flash Talking by Media Ocean. Ben Cartzman is Chief Operating Officer at Flash Talking and Media Ocean. He brings over decades of industry knowledge and leadership experience to his current role.
Flash Talking's Growth and Media Ocean Acquisition
00:00:26
Speaker
Cartzman served a COO of Flash Talking prior to Media Ocean's acquisition in 2021,
00:00:31
Speaker
where he helped grow the company from dynamic creative optimization to becoming the leading global independent ad server. Cartzman joined Flash Shocking in 2018 as part of a merger with SpongeSell where he was CEO and co-founder. Ben, Flash Shocking is known as being the leader in creative ad tech.
Innovation Driven by Client Needs
00:00:50
Speaker
How do you continuously innovate? So for us, it really starts with our clients. It starts with what their needs are, it starts with where the market is, starts where we think the market is headed. And something that we always do because clients look for us to be thought leaders and to help them as they're sort of iterating on their plans in any given year.
Annual Roadmap and Transparency
00:01:10
Speaker
One thing that we do every year at the beginning of every year is we publish our roadmap. We host a webinar, we put the roadmap out there for anyone to see whether it's our
00:01:19
Speaker
clients, competitors, people in the industry, we're very open, we're very transparent. And we think by providing that sort of sense of where we're taking our products allows us to continue to drive innovation. I love that. That's such a smart, transparent way of doing business.
Local Super Bowl Ad Announcement
00:01:36
Speaker
So by being transparent, rumor on the street is that Flash Talking is going to be sponsoring a Super Bowl ad. Ben, do you care to share a little bit more with us?
00:01:45
Speaker
It's true. All the rumors are true. We're going to run a local spot in Fort Wayne. Turns out it's a little cheaper to just run a local spot in Fort Wayne than to buy a national ad for 7 million bucks, whatever they're going for this year. We'll put it up on YouTube and we'll share it across our socials.
00:02:04
Speaker
We had a lot of fun with it and we're excited to share the theme about just being more efficient, having fun with your advertising, and just keep it going. We're pumped. That's great. Well, you should be pumped. Ben, from SpongeSell to FlashLocking to MediaOcean, what fuels your passion for our industry?
00:02:30
Speaker
The industry
Passion for Creative Tech and Collaborations
00:02:31
Speaker
is always evolving and for us, creative has always been at the forefront and we think that will continue to be there. I think whether it's the core of what we do in creative and creative technology or it's the people that we do it with. I've been fortunate to work with people for years and in some cases, decades.
00:02:53
Speaker
It's fantastic. I get up every day excited to go to work with these folks that I work with. I think that's a big driver for me. Ben, you talked about the industry constantly evolving. Obviously, as we move into 2024, there's a lot of talk about multiple buzzwords. We hear a lot about
00:03:12
Speaker
signal loss, hear a lot about, you know, deprecation of cookies and identifiers. But in particular, you know, AI seems to be a really hot topic across the industry. Overall, we've obviously found that 2023 was the year of AI where everybody has been rolling out various AI products, whether it's LLM or other. I'm curious,
AI as a Strategic Focus
00:03:32
Speaker
what is Flash Talking doing to incorporate AI into its platform?
00:03:38
Speaker
We're doing a ton with AI. In fact, across our six strategic initiatives for the year, AI is one of them. We acquired a business called Drisham a couple of years ago that's in the AI business. They've got a product that is really tied around the auto-classification of creative and so allowing us on a
00:04:00
Speaker
I don't know if by element basis within each piece of creative to understand what's actually happening with inside of an image right and then to label that provide that insight and that data back to the media planner back to someone at a creative agency to then you know be able to adjust craters on the fly we also feed that into.
00:04:22
Speaker
Our optimization engine which takes all of that insight and they can get smarter around you know which creates to serve to to who and to where and so and so when there's a ton we're also doing. With the inside of our protected media product which is around protection and contextual classification and safety.
00:04:41
Speaker
Really the list goes on but rest assured it's a core part of what we're doing and it has to be and I think for me the exciting part about it is when we get to talk about it to clients, we get to demo what we're doing, they look at it and they say these are things
00:04:56
Speaker
we could never have done on our own even though we wanted to do that we just didn't have the manual no one has the manual capacity to do it and now that you're using your software to bring it to us it's gonna make us better in our jobs gonna make us smarter so we're really excited about that really i would say the practical applications of a i inside of create.
00:05:16
Speaker
On some of the previous episodes, we've heard all types of feedback, AI obviously being a very hot topic in market. We've heard how important the human element of it is, the understanding of the right color, the right placement, the right messaging. So hearing that AI is also being embraced simultaneously with a human element, I think is what drives the overall goal and delivery and KPI that people are looking for.
00:05:44
Speaker
So really that combination of both a human and automated or AI element is really what drives things forward.
Future of Creative in Advertising
00:05:51
Speaker
As we move into, you know, the tail end of Q1, obviously there's a lot of creative predictions. Just so I understand, what is Media Ocean Flashtalking's prediction for creative in 2024?
00:06:10
Speaker
So we think it will become the most important element in advertising, right? As everyone's been squeezing as much juice as they can out of audience targeting, bid management. Creative is still sort of, it's the last frontier, right? And so we've done some research and said 65% of marketers believe creative will have a bigger impact
00:06:31
Speaker
on any of the audience targeting or traditional media targeting work that they've been doing historically. When you think about that in context, you think about the rise of the programmatic and the rise of the DSP over the last 10 to 15 years inside of our world.
00:06:47
Speaker
Creative has evolved, but it hasn't really changed that much and not nearly to the level that we've seen on the media side. So we think with data deprecation, cookie deprecation, you're going to see this move towards creative. You're going to see a move towards contextual and being able to leverage those things together. And so I would say we're really excited about that. The other piece that we're deeply committed to is what we're calling creative orchestration.
00:07:15
Speaker
So the ability to take a piece of creative and distribute that across all of your channels right so whether that's into social channels whether that's into ctv whether that's into a programmatic display whether it's into audio whether it's into digital out of home where ever you as an advertiser wanna put your message.
00:07:35
Speaker
You need a tool and you need a system to help you orchestrate that and efficiently push it out. So you don't want to continue to spend a bunch of money on creative production and on sort of redoing the same ad over and over to fit all these different formats. You want to dump it into one system where you can effectively push a button and then get it distributed everywhere that you want to be and where your audience is.
00:07:58
Speaker
And so we're going very, very deep on that. And that's really when we relaunched Flash Talking this year. That's really what it was all about. Flash Talking
Relaunch as Full Stack Creative Solution
00:08:07
Speaker
is this full stack creative solution for any marketer to enable personalization across any channel that they want to be in.
00:08:16
Speaker
This is great insight, Ben, and I'm happy to hear that you're embracing all aspects of technology. I think the movement to a full stack solution is definitely the right one. We see this in market, but incorporating all those pieces that you mentioned, including, you know, personalization and all the creative ad tech functionality and features that you have.
00:08:36
Speaker
I think is really important for the market. I want to thank you, Ben, for for being our guest and thank you to Flash Talking as well. Obviously, you had a lot to do with sponsoring this. So thank you for being here. That brings us to an end of the series. Thank you for joining the Tech Forum sponsored by Flash Talking. We really covered a wide range of topics today with Ben. Stay tuned and see you all soon. Thanks.
00:09:04
Speaker
you