Who Should Use ChatGPT Ads—and Who Should Wait? [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 173]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

[00:00:00] Should your business be running ads on OpenAI? A few months ago, OpenAI launched ads. At first, it was only available to brands who were able to spend over $200,000 a year. But now, it's open to all businesses. And you may be wondering, is this a blue ocean that I need to jump in before it's too late? Or should I be avoiding this at all costs?

[00:00:17] Don't miss this episode because we have the definitive answer for you​

[00:00:17] (Intro)

[00:01:04] Bob Ruffolo: And welcome

[00:01:06] Bob Ruffolo: back everyone to the podcast, and today we have a great,

[00:01:10] Bob Ruffolo: great episode.

[00:01:11] Bob Ruffolo: We have my man

[00:01:12] Bob Ruffolo: Tanner Holman here, 

[00:01:13] Bob Ruffolo: a 

[00:01:13] Bob Ruffolo: paid ad strategist. 

[00:01:15] Bob Ruffolo: And Tanner,

[00:01:15] Bob Ruffolo: you've been with IMPACT

[00:01:16] Bob Ruffolo: here 

[00:01:16] Bob Ruffolo: for 

[00:01:16] Bob Ruffolo: about four 

[00:01:17] Bob Ruffolo: years.

[00:01:18] Bob Ruffolo: Um, but

[00:01:18] Bob Ruffolo: you are

[00:01:19] Bob Ruffolo: one of these guys

[00:01:19] Bob Ruffolo: that are just

[00:01:20] Bob Ruffolo: working with clients, often behind the scenes. Uh, the cl-

[00:01:23] Bob Ruffolo: our clients know

[00:01:24] Bob Ruffolo: who you are, but I'm

[00:01:25] Bob Ruffolo: not sure if the greater Endless

[00:01:26] Bob Ruffolo: Customers community knows who

[00:01:27] Bob Ruffolo: you 

[00:01:27] Bob Ruffolo: are. Um, I think

[00:01:29] Bob Ruffolo: the world 

[00:01:29] Bob Ruffolo: of

[00:01:29] Bob Ruffolo: you, and why don't you just

[00:01:30] Bob Ruffolo: take a quick minute and introdu- introduce yourself to everyone?

[00:01:32] Tanner Holman: Yeah, it's great to be here. I'm Tanner Holman, the head of paid media here at IMPACT. So most of my days are spent actually working with clients and building out ad strategies to help grow revenue and, and attribute that into dashboards, work through HubSpot, all the fun pieces that play into this awesome system

[00:01:48] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, and Tanner is, um, a technical wizard. He runs all of

[00:01:52] Bob Ruffolo: our ads

[00:01:52] Bob Ruffolo: for us on, on Meta, especially when we have the conference coming up, Endless Customers Live.

[00:01:57] Bob Ruffolo: runs all the ads you

[00:01:58] Bob Ruffolo: see for that, which is great. [00:02:00] Um, and, uh, and you specialize

[00:02:02] Bob Ruffolo: primarily

[00:02:03] Bob Ruffolo: in the Meta platforms, but you go across all platforms as well

[00:02:08] Tanner Holman: Yeah, Meta is certainly my-- And social in general is my main focus right now. I've got a couple of other great team members that handle a lot of the search side as well as what we'll talk about today with the OpenAI side. Um, but I have deep experience across all of those platforms for sure for the last ten years or so

[00:02:23] Bob Ruffolo: Well, 

[00:02:24] Bob Ruffolo: great. Um, hey, 

[00:02:25] Bob Ruffolo: listen, 

[00:02:25] Bob Ruffolo: so we know search is changing. We know the way people are researching companies is changing. Uh, AI platforms are playing a bigger role here. Uh, OpenAI, um, has released the ability to run ads on the platform, and today, we're

[00:02:38] Bob Ruffolo: gonna talk about should it be part 

[00:02:39] Bob Ruffolo: of your budget. 

[00:02:40] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, a-and if it is,

[00:02:42] Bob Ruffolo: how do we do this the right way?

[00:02:43] Bob Ruffolo: Sh- how do we get

[00:02:43] Bob Ruffolo: started?

[00:02:44] Bob Ruffolo: We're gonna answer everything 

[00:02:45] Bob Ruffolo: today about OpenAI ads, and I'm so glad that you are

[00:02:48] Bob Ruffolo: prepared for this 

[00:02:49] Bob Ruffolo: and you're gonna help our audience

[00:02:50] Bob Ruffolo: dive deep into this because

[00:02:51] Bob Ruffolo: it's 

[00:02:52] Bob Ruffolo: something that, that we all

[00:02:52] Bob Ruffolo: are gonna

[00:02:53] Bob Ruffolo: have to take seriously because

[00:02:54] Bob Ruffolo: AI tools are not 

[00:02:56] Bob Ruffolo: going 

[00:02:56] Bob Ruffolo: anywhere. 

[00:02:57] Bob Ruffolo: So let's just maybe walk through high level the

[00:02:59] Bob Ruffolo: [00:03:00] history of

[00:03:00] Bob Ruffolo: how

[00:03:01] Bob Ruffolo: OpenAI ads came to be.

[00:03:03] Bob Ruffolo: What, what, what do we know 

[00:03:04] Bob Ruffolo: about this? 'Cause 

[00:03:05] Bob Ruffolo: I know it's just started with like enterprise

[00:03:06] Bob Ruffolo: companies first,

[00:03:07] Bob Ruffolo: right?

[00:03:08] Tanner Holman: Yeah, it, it was a really interesting journey that they took to roll this platform out. So, um, i- initially, the launch wasn't necessarily limited to enterprise. What it was really limited to was how much money you could dedicate to spend to the platform. So back earlier this year when OpenAI first launched and announced that they're doing ads, you had to dedicate, uh, 200K minimum spend to be able to even get in and access the platform.

[00:03:32] Tanner Holman: Way too much for most businesses to be able to bite off and chew, especially with what was promised or not promised back from those ads. When they launched earlier this year, at the very start of the year, 200K minimum, zero conversion tracking, zero data back on how people are engaging with you, what type of searches, queries, conversations are bringing them in, and expectedly, many of those brands were not super happy with it.

[00:03:59] Tanner Holman: Um, [00:04:00] I certainly 

[00:04:00] Bob Ruffolo: basically just give us $200,000 or

[00:04:03] Bob Ruffolo: more and, uh, and we don't 

[00:04:05] Bob Ruffolo: have

[00:04:06] Bob Ruffolo: to give

[00:04:06] Bob Ruffolo: you anything back for that. We have no idea

[00:04:08] Bob Ruffolo: what we're, what it's gonna

[00:04:08] Bob Ruffolo: do. Yeah

[00:04:09] Tanner Holman: Exactly. Not even how many clicks we're getting you, how much-- how well your ad is performing. There was almost nothing from everything that I've seen so far. Luckily, that changed. So back in May, they launched a self-service pilot for OpenAI ads, and at the beginning of this, it was very invite only. So you had to go in, you had to fill out a bunch of forms, you had to submit business details so that they could verify that you're legit.

[00:04:34] Tanner Holman: And then it allowed people to jump in and start testing the platform with, um, a budget of their choosing, um, which was really nice, but there were still some really critical pieces missing. Specifically, conversion tracking is, is first and foremost on that list, um, as well as limited ad types. And it was a little weird to start, to just put it lightly.

[00:04:55] Tanner Holman: Um, I'm not a fan of ad platforms whereas, "Hey, give me your money, we'll show your [00:05:00] ads, but we can't tell you what's actually happening with it," because then how can you make sure that you're making the right investment?

[00:05:04] Bob Ruffolo: Sure, yeah

[00:05:05] Tanner Holman: That very quickly changed. So after about thirty, forty-five days, they did roll out conversion tracking.

[00:05:11] Tanner Holman: So now you can install an OpenAI pixel and you can get, um, you can start tracking those conversions from a click and a view perspective. And the platform's continuing to change a lot. Something I didn't mention as-- a minute ago is they also didn't have geographic targeting capabilities. So when you first launched into those platforms nationwide, all of US, nothing you can do about it. They rolled out conversion

[00:05:33] Bob Ruffolo: that's

[00:05:33] Bob Ruffolo: not gonna work for most

[00:05:34] Bob Ruffolo: of the Endless 

[00:05:35] Bob Ruffolo: Customers community. Okay. So

[00:05:37] Bob Ruffolo: that's a, that's a

[00:05:38] Bob Ruffolo: disqualifier

[00:05:39] Tanner Holman: Yeah, I would argue for most businesses as well. It's just it doesn't make a lot of sense for most people at that point in time. Then they silently rolled out a, the ability to target, uh, geographic areas. So now you can target cities, you can target zip codes, states, which makes it a little bit easier to bite off for most of the Endless customers community

[00:05:57] Bob Ruffolo: So this is just so,

[00:05:59] Bob Ruffolo: like,[00:06:00] 

[00:06:00] Bob Ruffolo: you know, Google Ads, something in AdWords,

[00:06:03] Bob Ruffolo: where they were

[00:06:04] Bob Ruffolo: in, like, 

[00:06:04] Bob Ruffolo: 2005,

[00:06:06] Bob Ruffolo: '6, '7. OpenAI is 

[00:06:07] Bob Ruffolo: not even there yet. It sounds like. It's,

[00:06:10] Bob Ruffolo: like, so archaic

[00:06:11] Bob Ruffolo: that they... These basic features 

[00:06:13] Bob Ruffolo: that you would expect

[00:06:14] Bob Ruffolo: to have

[00:06:14] Bob Ruffolo: in a

[00:06:15] Bob Ruffolo: platform

[00:06:15] Bob Ruffolo: coming out from a company like OpenAI, they still-- or they're still v- in

[00:06:20] Bob Ruffolo: the very, very early stages of doing these things.

[00:06:22] Bob Ruffolo: It's

[00:06:22] Bob Ruffolo: wild

[00:06:23] Tanner Holman: are. Yeah. And, you know, there is something to be said about a slow roll being a good thing to make sure they are actually holding true to what they're promising. Um, but it's changing very fast. Even just this morning, actually, they announced that they're rolling out the ability to have carousel ads for product feeds, because before it was almost like a Google display ad.

[00:06:40] Tanner Holman: You have one little icon picture, you have some text alongside it, and, and that was the ad. So if I had to, to look into my crystal ball, we're gonna start seeing some more evolutions of what you can do with the creative within the platform as well

[00:06:52] Bob Ruffolo: No, it makes a lot of sense. Um, a- and I would say, you know, ChatGPT and, and, you know, OpenAI, they have some great [00:07:00] tools when it comes to creating creative. Obviously, doing images in there that's significantly improved, uh, videos, so I'm-- I wouldn't be surprised if that gets rolled out. Now,

[00:07:09] Bob Ruffolo: one 

[00:07:09] Bob Ruffolo: thing as we were preparing for

[00:07:11] Bob Ruffolo: this episode, we

[00:07:11] Bob Ruffolo: were just talking right before this,

[00:07:12] Bob Ruffolo: and I should

[00:07:13] Bob Ruffolo: have like

[00:07:14] Bob Ruffolo: thought of this earlier. I was like,

[00:07:16] Bob Ruffolo: "Wait a minute. Tanner, do you know I- I've never seen an OpenAI ad?"

[00:07:21] Bob Ruffolo: I was

[00:07:21] Bob Ruffolo: I was like,

[00:07:22] Bob Ruffolo: "Why,

[00:07:22] Bob Ruffolo: why 

[00:07:22] Bob Ruffolo: have I not seen it?" He

[00:07:23] Bob Ruffolo: goes, "I'm not surprised." So, to-- so why is it... And

[00:07:25] Bob Ruffolo: many 

[00:07:26] Bob Ruffolo: of the community might be saying, "Oh, okay,

[00:07:27] Bob Ruffolo: I've heard that OpenAI ads

[00:07:29] Bob Ruffolo: were a thing. I've seen the headlines." But

[00:07:30] Bob Ruffolo: then when you

[00:07:31] Bob Ruffolo: really think about it, it's like, wait, a minute, I've never

[00:07:32] Bob Ruffolo: seen an ad in OpenAI.

[00:07:34] Bob Ruffolo: Why

[00:07:34] Bob Ruffolo: is that?

[00:07:34] Tanner Holman: Yeah, I would venture to guess much of the Endless Customers community is, is ahead of your average person in how they use AI. And to be ahead of the average person, you probably need a paid plan, whether that's the lowest paid tier or the highest paid tier. Those paid tiers don't get served ads. The people that are getting served ads in the platform are operating off of that free plan.

[00:07:57] Tanner Holman: So there's pros and cons to that. That works [00:08:00] really well for, say, a home services business where your consumer or where your potential customer is, call them an average person. That's a little bit different if you're in the B2B journey and trying to sell to other businesses with really high ticket items of people who probably are using a paid plan from their company

[00:08:17] Bob Ruffolo: Great point. Amazing.

[00:08:19] Bob Ruffolo: Now

[00:08:19] Bob Ruffolo: we're

[00:08:19] Bob Ruffolo: going to fit. So

[00:08:22] Bob Ruffolo: um, what else would you say... Uh, so we, we heard that they didn't have geographic, but now they do. Um, we heard, um, you know, conversion tracking, I mean, that would have been a disqualifier. Um,

[00:08:33] Bob Ruffolo: are

[00:08:33] Bob Ruffolo: these 

[00:08:34] Bob Ruffolo: ads

[00:08:34] Bob Ruffolo: actually a good fit for any businesses in our community, do you think?

[00:08:38] Bob Ruffolo: Um, or would you say, you know, they're not a good fit right now for these, this criteria as well? So

[00:08:45] Bob Ruffolo: who

[00:08:45] Bob Ruffolo: are 

[00:08:45] Bob Ruffolo: y- they

[00:08:46] Bob Ruffolo: a

[00:08:46] Bob Ruffolo: good fit for and who are they

[00:08:47] Bob Ruffolo: not a good fit for?

[00:08:49] Tanner Holman: Yeah, the answer's gonna be somewhere in the middle on that, to be totally honest with y'all. Um, right now, if I had to say who are these ads the absolute best fit for, it's big [00:09:00] retailers, it's e-commerce companies who are selling a physical product, even people in the, um, in the vehicle category of I can have this product feed and upload it up into the platform and really specify how my ads are showing.

[00:09:14] Tanner Holman: That's like the number one best fit that I'm seeing at this point in time. Now, that's not to say it doesn't work for anyone else. Um, this could still work for home services now that people are able to geographically target and start specifying where their ads are shown and their budget. Um, I think the most important piece is to just set your expectations accordingly because this platform is still new.

[00:09:36] Tanner Holman: This platform does not have a direct connection into HubSpot at this point in time, so the data that you're getting back from the platform isn't as clean as what you may be used to, and so you have to set those expectations accordingly. If you wanna follow every single ad engagement off of OpenAI into your HubSpot portal, that's probably not gonna be possible for, I would say, at least half of those engagements.

[00:09:58] Tanner Holman: When you start looking into the [00:10:00] details of it, um, many of the conversions that I would expect you will see are what's called a view-through conversion, so it's not gonna have a UTM parameter. It's gonna make it very difficult to actually see the entire journey because they see the ad, but they're actually getting to your site in another way

[00:10:16] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Wow. Uh, no, this, this is, uh, this is incredible. Because I, again, I knew these existed. I, I hadn't honestly dove into them deep enough, so I'm glad we're having this conversation. Um, all

[00:10:28] Bob Ruffolo: right. 

[00:10:28] Bob Ruffolo: So let's, uh, 

[00:10:29] Bob Ruffolo: let's,

[00:10:29] Bob Ruffolo: let's put ourselves in the shoes of the people that are probably listening to this. We'll just take a B2C example, and let's take a B2B example.

[00:10:36] Bob Ruffolo: Um, we'll start with the B2C, and we mentioned, you know, some home improvement companies. But let's say, um,

[00:10:42] Bob Ruffolo: let's say we're a basements company,

[00:10:43] Bob Ruffolo: and we do basement work. Um, if you were-- If someone's gonna come to you, Tanner, and say, "Okay, we are doing Endless Customers pretty well. We wanna start amplifying it, and we want to start running ads," um,

[00:10:59] Bob Ruffolo: how

[00:10:59] Bob Ruffolo: would you [00:11:00] approach

[00:11:00] Bob Ruffolo: that? 

[00:11:00] Bob Ruffolo: And then let's look at would ChatGPT ads play into that or not, and what would you do instead if you're not doing ChatGPT ads? What, what might that experience look like if they were working with you and you're, you're getting them all set

[00:11:10] Bob Ruffolo: up?

[00:11:11] Tanner Holman: Yeah. It's a great question. So let's, let's pretend for this example that ads are not being run at all right now. Um, my base recommendation is that we're gonna wanna start filling up one glass at a time with any platform that we're gonna be managing. My immediate recommendation is gonna be to start with Google Ads. From there, we could start to introduce Meta Ads because those platforms are a little bit more proven. They have direct connections to HubSpot. We know what we can expect to get back from those platforms from a performance standpoint, but also the data that we can see to make sure that the opportunities coming in are qualified and the people that we're hoping to get in front of. Where OpenAI would come into the play is once we've started to reach a threshold where more money does not always equal the same amount of more results. Once we hit that point of diminishing returns, then we start to look at other [00:12:00] platforms and say, "Okay, how can we move that needle? Is OpenAI the right move?

[00:12:04] Tanner Holman: Should we look into Microsoft and start pulling the levers and initiating really intent tests to say, 'We have this much money, this is the outcome we want. Are we gonna get there? What levers do we have to pull to help us get there?'"

[00:12:19] Bob Ruffolo: You

[00:12:19] Bob Ruffolo: know, I think what you're saying is really, really smart.

[00:12:22] Bob Ruffolo: Um,

[00:12:23] Bob Ruffolo: it can be so tempting to wanna jump right into these AI ads because we know that's where the world's going. But don't forget, I mean, this is an investment of money. You could be dropping $10,000 like that, and the worst thing you wanna do is say, "Well, just because this is where the world's going, I

[00:12:40] Bob Ruffolo: have to

[00:12:40] Bob Ruffolo: be there."

[00:12:41] Bob Ruffolo: But the reality the 

[00:12:42] Bob Ruffolo: tools are

[00:12:42] Bob Ruffolo: still 

[00:12:43] Bob Ruffolo: not fully there to

[00:12:44] Bob Ruffolo: make sure you're optimizing. I mean, just-- I just think about Google Ads, just how much adjusting and tweaking, and tweaking, and tweaking, and tweaking,

[00:12:50] Bob Ruffolo: to optimize the

[00:12:51] Bob Ruffolo: performance of those ads has to go into

[00:12:53] Bob Ruffolo: that.

[00:12:53] Bob Ruffolo: And that's where someone like you comes

[00:12:55] Bob Ruffolo: in who's

[00:12:56] Bob Ruffolo: done this

[00:12:57] Bob Ruffolo: before and knows

[00:12:58] Bob Ruffolo: exactly how

[00:12:59] Bob Ruffolo: to set up

[00:12:59] Bob Ruffolo: in the [00:13:00] beginning to 

[00:13:00] Bob Ruffolo: really do that the 

[00:13:02] Bob Ruffolo: right

[00:13:02] Bob Ruffolo: way 

[00:13:03] Bob Ruffolo: in the

[00:13:03] Bob Ruffolo: beginning.

[00:13:04] Bob Ruffolo: OpenAI

[00:13:05] Bob Ruffolo: doesn't have that yet. One,

[00:13:06] Bob Ruffolo: they, they hardly have

[00:13:07] Bob Ruffolo: the features to be able to hone in on, on things like that. So you're just throwing

[00:13:10] Bob Ruffolo: money at the 

[00:13:10] Bob Ruffolo: wall, and

[00:13:12] Bob Ruffolo: it's unproven.

[00:13:13] Bob Ruffolo: there's there's really nobody

[00:13:14] Bob Ruffolo: that's mastered this yet because

[00:13:16] Bob Ruffolo: these t- tools 

[00:13:16] Bob Ruffolo: are 

[00:13:16] Bob Ruffolo: rolling out just

[00:13:17] Bob Ruffolo: now

[00:13:18] Bob Ruffolo: for the first time. So

[00:13:19] Bob Ruffolo: it

[00:13:19] Bob Ruffolo: sounds like 

[00:13:20] Bob Ruffolo: for most

[00:13:21] Bob Ruffolo: companies, this might not be the best decision.

[00:13:23] Bob Ruffolo: The best decision is to go

[00:13:24] Bob Ruffolo: where it's 

[00:13:25] Bob Ruffolo: proven,

[00:13:26] Bob Ruffolo: you're getting true ROI, 

[00:13:27] Bob Ruffolo: you can truly

[00:13:27] Bob Ruffolo: track it. And,

[00:13:29] Bob Ruffolo: uh,

[00:13:29] Bob Ruffolo: a- and again, that...

[00:13:31] Bob Ruffolo: I, I would have to agree with

[00:13:32] Bob Ruffolo: your, your recommendation

[00:13:33] Bob Ruffolo: here.

[00:13:35] Bob Ruffolo: So now,

[00:13:35] Bob Ruffolo: Tanner, you 

[00:13:36] Bob Ruffolo: you just mentioned too,

[00:13:37] Bob Ruffolo: um, if you're starting somebody up. Uh, so we talked about basement companies starting up for the fir- very first time.

[00:13:43] Bob Ruffolo: What about if they've been

[00:13:44] Bob Ruffolo: running, say, 20,000, $30,000 a month in ads and they've had

[00:13:50] Bob Ruffolo: decent

[00:13:50] Bob Ruffolo: performance, but they're saying, "Okay, I'm having... My, 

[00:13:53] Bob Ruffolo: uh, the

[00:13:53] Bob Ruffolo: cost per lead

[00:13:54] Bob Ruffolo: is more expensive today." Um,

[00:13:56] Bob Ruffolo: how would you approach

[00:13:57] Bob Ruffolo: that?

[00:13:57] Tanner Holman: Yeah, [00:14:00] that's, that's where the real fun kicks in for me. At that point, that's when we're, we're looking to create long-term tests of, of testing out various platforms of what's going to ultimately lead to that end goal. So for the sake of OpenAI ads, what we do is we put together a sixty-day plan. We'll say, "Hey, um, here's how much budget we're gonna need.

[00:14:19] Tanner Holman: Here's who we're targeting. Here's our creative, and here's our prompt," in, in a sense, or our context, as it's called in OpenAI ads. And then we get to say, "Okay, we ran this test for thirty days. We're about halfway through. What if our s- click-through rate isn't where we wanted it to be? Great. Now we know we need to look and change the creative or the context," or, "Okay, once people get to the site on the page that we provided them, they're not taking that action.

[00:14:44] Tanner Holman: Awesome. Now we know we need to tweak the landing page and work on our conversion rate optimization." And there's-- then we just keep pulling back layers after we gather enough data to make adequate decisions and just keep driving towards that end goal. Because that's, that's the fun of ads is there's never a, there's [00:15:00] never a endpoint.

[00:15:00] Tanner Holman: There's never a okay, stop. Let's just leave it all lights on and, and go from here because things are always changing. New competitors are always entering the space, so it's just a constant rinse and repeat of, okay, we tested this, it moved the right way or it moved the other way. Great. Let's keep doing the next step or the step that comes after that, or, oh, that didn't work.

[00:15:19] Tanner Holman: Let's pull back to what we were doing before and just keep going in that circle over and over again.

[00:15:24] Bob Ruffolo: Awesome.

[00:15:25] Bob Ruffolo: Now

[00:15:25] Bob Ruffolo: we've covered 

[00:15:26] Bob Ruffolo: the B2,

[00:15:27] Bob Ruffolo: uh, C side. Let's go to the business-to-business side. Um, so say I'm an accounting firm, and how would things change based on what we just recommended? Now, I'm immediately thinking based on what you said before, um, if I'm an accounting firm, I'm dealing with professional, professional businesses, OpenAI probably fits even less now into that because they probably all have paid subscriptions.

[00:15:47] Bob Ruffolo: They're not gonna see the ads anyways. But

[00:15:49] Bob Ruffolo: I could be wrong 

[00:15:50] Bob Ruffolo: on that. So how, how would you approach a, a B2B example?

[00:15:54] Tanner Holman: Yeah, I completely agree with you. I don't feel like OpenAI Ads has a strong place in [00:16:00] B2B at this point, especially if you're going after established businesses that are doing more than three to five million dollars a year, where they're providing their employees with these tools to then, um, you know, continue to work and test and, and evolve into AI in general.

[00:16:16] Tanner Holman: Where there is some potential is if you're a business that's going off after smaller companies, newer companies, companies that may not have the budget for all of the tools for every employee across these businesses. If I'm a, a startup, um, accounting firm, I may not be putting all of my money into all of these fancy tools.

[00:16:34] Tanner Holman: So back to what we said a minute ago, and this is what I'll, I'll hit on every time anybody asks me, is initiate a test, outline what you want to see, and then the test will guide your next steps from there. If you see absolutely nothing, okay, pull out, put those funds in somewhere else. If you're not spending on somewhere like LinkedIn, that's a great place where you can really hone in on those B2B segments that you're trying to target for

[00:16:59] Bob Ruffolo: You know, [00:17:00] you

[00:17:00] Bob Ruffolo: just mentioned LinkedIn and obviously B2B. I, I should have mentioned that before. We-- You do a ton of LinkedIn ads. Uh, you do it for us, obviously. We're B2B, so we do, do a lot on LinkedIn. Uh, that's another platform that you specialize in. Um,

[00:17:12] Bob Ruffolo: so, 

[00:17:13] Bob Ruffolo: so

[00:17:14] Bob Ruffolo: let's just-- let's

[00:17:15] Bob Ruffolo: probably just call

[00:17:16] Bob Ruffolo: the answer to our question today.

[00:17:18] Bob Ruffolo: It's for most businesses, if not all businesses, it's too early to be investing in OpenAI ads, especially for most of

[00:17:27] Bob Ruffolo: our audience

[00:17:28] Bob Ruffolo: that is not

[00:17:29] Bob Ruffolo: running

[00:17:30] Bob Ruffolo: fully, like

[00:17:31] Bob Ruffolo: honed-in ad

[00:17:32] Bob Ruffolo: programs 

[00:17:33] Bob Ruffolo: right now, getting every bit out of the platforms that already exist. There's so many other better options than running AI ads right now.

[00:17:41] Bob Ruffolo: So I wanna

[00:17:42] Bob Ruffolo: take this in a couple different ways.

[00:17:43] Bob Ruffolo: First, tell us what you are 

[00:17:46] Bob Ruffolo: seeing is working today. What platforms outside of Meta and Google are expanding or features of those? What,

[00:17:52] Bob Ruffolo: what are you really excited

[00:17:53] Bob Ruffolo: for today it's, that you're seeing great results with? Um, and then after that, we'll talk about the world of AI ads in the [00:18:00] future.

[00:18:00] Bob Ruffolo: So, so let's start, like, today, right now.

[00:18:02] Bob Ruffolo: What, what, what are you seeing

[00:18:03] Bob Ruffolo: is

[00:18:03] Bob Ruffolo: working for most businesses that, that are probably listening to this?

[00:18:08] Tanner Holman: Yeah. For, for most businesses, um, I'm gonna derail you a little bit. I do still feel Google and Meta are the biggest players in that game. Um, there's a reason that they, they get so much money in from those platforms. It's because they have the people, they have the, the tools to do what you're trying to do.

[00:18:24] Tanner Holman: I think the biggest thing that excites me for what ads are looking like today and to the future is the evolution and the focus on creative. There's no more of the world of I'm just gonna put an ad out and it's gonna bring me things. You have to test, test, test. You have to have the ability to create video ads, static ads on a very regular cadence.

[00:18:45] Tanner Holman: If you're not creating new ads every, let's call it at least month, um, I would say you could even move a little bit faster than that, then you're probably behind the curve already. What a lot of these platforms are moving towards is creative diversification and allowing the, um, you [00:19:00] allowing the platforms to then say, "Give us as much, as many assets as you possibly can, and then we're going to tailor when and where those ads are shown to the individual user and what they're likely to engage with."

[00:19:11] Tanner Holman: That was a big change that took place in Meta over the last year, where everything they're focusing on now is personalization to the user. So if you're running a campaign with $5,000 a month on Meta and you've got one ad in there, you're behind. You're losing out on learnings, and you're probably not getting the results that you could if you diversified

[00:19:31] Bob Ruffolo: Okay.

[00:19:31] Bob Ruffolo: So

[00:19:32] Bob Ruffolo: that

[00:19:32] Bob Ruffolo: sounds like a lot of work, now, 

[00:19:34] Bob Ruffolo: right? We're talking about, um, lots and lots of creative assets, and AI can certainly help with that. Uh, we see

[00:19:41] Bob Ruffolo: these...

[00:19:42] Bob Ruffolo: I 

[00:19:42] Bob Ruffolo: see ads all

[00:19:42] Bob Ruffolo: time 

[00:19:43] Bob Ruffolo: for, for AI

[00:19:44] Bob Ruffolo: fake influencers that are promoting products with, you know, videos that are avatars. Um, we obviously know AI is great with creative in Canva.

[00:19:52] Bob Ruffolo: What are you seeing in terms of, like, the best AI tools today to help just companies crank out

[00:19:58] Bob Ruffolo: the the creative

[00:19:59] Bob Ruffolo: that they need [00:20:00] to be diversified like you just mentioned?

[00:20:02] Tanner Holman: Yeah. So I don't have a tool of choice at this point for creative. I think ultimately how you decide that is what works best in your workflow for the tools that you already have. For me personally, as a media buyer and from the strategic perspective of paid media, I find it's really helpful for, um, cr- ideating on a lot of drafts and getting that diversification and all of those unique directions in a much faster way.

[00:20:26] Tanner Holman: I think that there is still a potential to, um, you know, you still need to have that human in the loop across everything with all of this creative. And past how the creative is being built, there's also a lot changing in the legal space of when and where you can show ads generated with AI. For example, recently, New York just had a mandate or a law that requires you to disclose if the creative used in your ads was created by AI.

[00:20:53] Tanner Holman: Now, that's a really tough subject because, one, how do they know that? Two, how is that different from [00:21:00] generative fill on Photoshop? There's a lot of gray area coming down with all of these changes that I expect to change really fast and start to be moving more across the US

[00:21:10] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah. Awesome. Um, that, that is a good warning on AI ads. That's interesting, 'cause again, we're seeing all these ads promoting doing ads with AI, and now that- that's something we have to be cautious of, which makes a lot of sense. Um, how about, like, YouTube? Obviously, Google's part of YouTube. Are, are, are we seeing anything doing really well on YouTube ads today or, or not so much?

[00:21:35] Tanner Holman: YouTube ads are really strong if they're positioned correctly. Um, my personal belief in what we tend to see across all of our clients is that YouTube is a more upper mid-funnel engagement. YouTube is not gonna be what I recommend to a basement remodeling company who's trying to get leads in the door right now.

[00:21:52] Tanner Holman: It has a place in the system, but you have to also remember, where is that person at in their journey when they're seeing your ad? Uh, [00:22:00] let's take an example from me last night. I was looking up some videos on how to help my daughter with this craft, and there was an ad that popped up for a window company.

[00:22:08] Tanner Holman: Do I need new windows in the near future? Yes. Was I gonna click on that ad in that moment while I'm watching a video with my two-year-old to create this fancy craft thing? No. But if that creative aligns with me, I liked what they had to say, I'll remember them, and I'll go back to, to engage with them at a later point when I'm ready

[00:22:29] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, that makes sense.

[00:22:30] Bob Ruffolo: You know, I, I would

[00:22:31] Bob Ruffolo: love to 

[00:22:31] Bob Ruffolo: see

[00:22:31] Bob Ruffolo: us, um, running more ads on YouTube for, uh, the podcast. I know this is probably going a little bit more behind the scenes than what's the purpose of the episode here. But Tanner, I'd love for, for you to look into that for us too, because I think that that's probably a missed opportunity even for us is, is to get this, these episodes more promoted, so cool. 

[00:22:49] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, let's do it. Let's make it happen. Um, most direct way for me to go to Tanner right now is we're, we're in this conversation.

[00:22:56] Bob Ruffolo: Um, all right. So, um, Google 

[00:22:59] Bob Ruffolo: [00:23:00] has not

[00:23:00] Bob Ruffolo: changed, uh, the... When you go

[00:23:03] Bob Ruffolo: to Google,

[00:23:04] Bob Ruffolo: uh, obviously you have the AI Overviews, but you still get the links below. You still have the ads showing there.

[00:23:09] Bob Ruffolo: Um,

[00:23:09] Bob Ruffolo: I believe

[00:23:10] Bob Ruffolo: at some point those links are going to go away, and there's gonna be more

[00:23:14] Bob Ruffolo: prominence

[00:23:16] Bob Ruffolo: on the, 

[00:23:17] Bob Ruffolo: um, AI Overviews or AI Modes. It's all gonna come to one Gemini, and it's just gonna be like, all right, I'm just going and I'm looking for something. I'm gonna get an answer right here. I think at some point the, the...

[00:23:27] Bob Ruffolo: I think we all know what's holding them back from doing that is they're worried about the

[00:23:30] Bob Ruffolo: ad revenue.

[00:23:31] Bob Ruffolo: Um,

[00:23:31] Bob Ruffolo: but at some point

[00:23:32] Bob Ruffolo: I think that they're going to figure that out.

[00:23:34] Bob Ruffolo: So let's like kinda

[00:23:35] Bob Ruffolo: think future cast here and, and give me your best guess. Um,

[00:23:40] Bob Ruffolo: where is

[00:23:41] Bob Ruffolo: AI ads? Like

[00:23:42] Bob Ruffolo: where are, where 

[00:23:42] Bob Ruffolo: are AI

[00:23:43] Bob Ruffolo: ads 

[00:23:44] Bob Ruffolo: going in the future? And wh-when should we

[00:23:46] Tanner Holman: a really fun--

[00:23:47] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah

[00:23:48] Tanner Holman: Yeah, that's a really fun question, and this is my favorite world of, like, how can we speculate what's gonna happen here? Um, right now, Google is making a very big play to change some of their older [00:24:00] ad formats, ad structures, and lean a lot heavier into the AI that they have behind the scenes and that they are working on with Gemini and all of these pieces.

[00:24:09] Tanner Holman: Um, one really good example of this is Google Display Ads. What used to be a simple Google Display ad is about to very drastically change, and they're gonna roll that into what's called a demand gen campaign, which leans really heavily on that personalization, multiple creatives, multiple text variations showing all different sorts of ways.

[00:24:27] Tanner Holman: Another really big one that probably applies very heavily to the Endless Customer's audience here is how LSA ads are changing, and this is actually rolling out this month and going to continue to roll out through the rest of this year

[00:24:40] Bob Ruffolo: Okay, so LSA. LSA

[00:24:42] Tanner Holman: local services

[00:24:43] Bob Ruffolo: service ads. Okay.

[00:24:44] Bob Ruffolo: Yep

[00:24:45] Tanner Holman: So if you're running these, you probably know these as local services ads where you give Google some money, you tell them, "I'm willing to pay this much per lead or this much per week to get those leads," and then they start pulling those in.

[00:24:57] Tanner Holman: And then you have the ability to [00:25:00] dispute those leads if they're bad, et cetera, et cetera. This whole platform is about to get turned on its head, and, well, this could probably be a whole other podcast sometime, um, where local services as a platform is completely going away soon. Um, this is happening sooner for some s- um, some segments, some industries than others.

[00:25:18] Tanner Holman: For example, roofing is a really big one that's about to change this month. All of those LSA opportunities, those pay-per-lead campaigns, are about to be rolled into the more traditional Google Ads platform into Performance Max. This is, um, frankly, something that makes me very nervous and is going to cause a lot of disruption for companies that aren't prepared for this or don't know that this is coming yet.

[00:25:41] Tanner Holman: Um, you're going to lose a certain amount of control over some of those campaigns. And so if I'm looking at Google and seeing all of these things they're announcing and saying, "What comes next?" There's going to be more of that focus towards you give Google a handful of assets or a handful of guidelines, and then it takes the lead and goes out to try [00:26:00] to do what you tell it to do.

[00:26:01] Tanner Holman: Um, less control over, say, the specific media as, like, what I'm used to and what I like. That is probably the future. Meta's doing the same thing with their generative assets. Um, you know, there's a handful of, of levers you have to switch on or off in your Meta campaigns. Otherwise, Meta will just create an ad for you and show it without your approval.

[00:26:22] Tanner Holman: There's one I saw a, a couple weeks ago that was an ad for a dentist office, and it was generated by Meta. Wasn't a great ad, if you ask me, because if you, like, look at my face right now, imagine my face with no features other than big teeth over my entire face, and that was the ad for the dental office.

[00:26:39] Tanner Holman: It was a little jarring and scary. So as the platforms continue to take more liberties on their end and, and try to personalize more content, you have to be extremely mindful on what to look for and when to look for it to make sure that you're not getting ads that don't properly refrec- reflect your brand or do the opposite of resonate with your audience and end up scaring [00:27:00] people away.

[00:27:00] Bob Ruffolo: Wow. So, 

[00:27:02] Bob Ruffolo: um, not sure about you, my head is spinning right now. Um, and this is why I, um, am not as smart when it comes to ads, 'cause this is a whole nother world that's totally different than what we do with Endless Customers, but so

[00:27:14] Bob Ruffolo: important.

[00:27:15] Bob Ruffolo: Um, and

[00:27:15] Bob Ruffolo: that's 

[00:27:15] Bob Ruffolo: why I use Tanner, 

[00:27:16] Bob Ruffolo: right? It's, Tanner's staying on, on top of all these things.

[00:27:19] Bob Ruffolo: You can s- clearly see

[00:27:20] Bob Ruffolo: he's obsessed

[00:27:21] Bob Ruffolo: with knowing where the world of ads is going. Um, I'm so lucky to

[00:27:24] Bob Ruffolo: have you,

[00:27:25] Bob Ruffolo: uh, on our

[00:27:26] Bob Ruffolo: team

[00:27:27] Bob Ruffolo: so that I can just like, "Hey, help us figure

[00:27:29] Bob Ruffolo: all this out." But you're also available to work.

[00:27:32] Bob Ruffolo: He d- He

[00:27:32] Bob Ruffolo: does our ads, but he

[00:27:34] Bob Ruffolo: also-- you work with our clients.

[00:27:35] Bob Ruffolo: And,

[00:27:36] Bob Ruffolo: uh, Tanner

[00:27:36] Bob Ruffolo: is available

[00:27:37] Bob Ruffolo: to take on more clients right now,

[00:27:39] Bob Ruffolo: uh, if anyone

[00:27:40] Bob Ruffolo: is looking to

[00:27:41] Bob Ruffolo: have somebody review their ad campaign or say, "

[00:27:44] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, not--

[00:27:45] Bob Ruffolo: uh, " My cost 

[00:27:45] Bob Ruffolo: per leads are so much higher right now.

[00:27:47] Bob Ruffolo: How do I get this down?" Or,

[00:27:48] Bob Ruffolo: what other platform should I be on?" Or, "How

[00:27:49] Bob Ruffolo: do I

[00:27:49] Bob Ruffolo: get started on another platform?

[00:27:51] Bob Ruffolo: This is his world, and he knows where all the stuff is going. Um, I will

[00:27:55] Bob Ruffolo: take you up on that, that

[00:27:56] Bob Ruffolo: offer to have you

[00:27:56] Bob Ruffolo: come on and do a whole nother episode on LSA ads, 'cause I [00:28:00] think that's, that's right.

[00:28:00] Bob Ruffolo: We should probably do that in the next few weeks, um, while this is all fresh and hot. So get yourself maybe, uh, you know, ready for another episode here.

[00:28:08] Bob Ruffolo: Um,

[00:28:10] Bob Ruffolo: if anyone wants

[00:28:10] Bob Ruffolo: to get

[00:28:10] Bob Ruffolo: in touch 

[00:28:11] Bob Ruffolo: with Tanner, um, just go to

[00:28:12] Bob Ruffolo: our website,

[00:28:13] Bob Ruffolo: impactplus.com/talk or go to Talk to Us.

[00:28:17] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, fill out that form

[00:28:18] Bob Ruffolo: and just say, "Hey, I wanna talk to Tanner about our paid ads."

[00:28:21] Bob Ruffolo: Uh, I think that's probably probably the fastest way to get in touch with you. But they can find you on LinkedIn or where

[00:28:25] Bob Ruffolo: else?

[00:28:27] Tanner Holman: Yep. LinkedIn is probably the next best place for me. Um, that all sounds great to me

[00:28:31] Bob Ruffolo: And you may also see

[00:28:32] Bob Ruffolo: his information comes out as Swell Squad. That is the, the name of the division of IMPACT that runs paid medias, the Swell Squad, uh, or the Swell team. So Tanner, this was an awesome episode. Before we wrap up, is there anything that we missed today that, that we need to talk about when it comes to OpenAI, uh, OpenAI ads?

[00:28:50] Bob Ruffolo: I think we have our decision for most businesses, but is there anything that we missed?

[00:28:54] Tanner Holman: I feel pretty good about the discussion we've had so far. Um, there are some technical pieces if [00:29:00] we really wanted to, to get into it, but I think that for the most part, keeping this at the, the level we have it is a really good spot. Um, yeah, I feel really good about all this

[00:29:09] Bob Ruffolo: All right, Tanner, you have 

[00:29:10] Bob Ruffolo: been great, man. This has been such a great episode. Thank you so much for coming on

[00:29:13] Tanner Holman: Thanks for having me. It's been a great time

[00:29:15] Bob Ruffolo: This has been 

[00:29:15] Bob Ruffolo: another episode of the 

[00:29:16] Bob Ruffolo: Endless Customers Podcast.

[00:29:17] Bob Ruffolo: We'll see you at

[00:29:18] Bob Ruffolo: the

[00:29:18] Bob Ruffolo: next 

[00:29:18] Bob Ruffolo: one. 

[00:29:18] Stephanie Baiocchi: If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers Podcast.