How Netflix Is Revolutionizing Ad Buying

You see the change that Netflix is making with advertising? I think it's going to revolutionize TV ads.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

What is this? All right, so if Netflix films a show or a movie, whatever you want to end up calling it, it could either be both. And let's say there's a scene where someone's in a fast food joint or a food place. They can put a Coca-Cola machine in the background and change the drink people are drinking to Coca-Cola.

Oh, it's like the things that they used to have in— that they have in movies where Um, people can pay for like a BMW place when they're in a Maserati or whatever, right?

Correct. But you can do that on the fly.

Dynamic AI.

With AI, they just switch it all out now.

Wow.

Now they weren't the first to do this. Amazon has actually been doing this a long time with Prime, cuz I met up with one of the people on their ads teams for Prime, uh, probably a year and a half to 2 years ago. Most people don't know this, but Amazon's been doing this for Prime for a very long time. Mm-hmm. Uh, but Netflix doing this.

And Amazon. Self-serve?

I don't think it's self-serve yet, but I bet you eventually they'll get there. This is just going to start going mainstream and people are going to start switching to us. But I think this is going to really start changing digital marketing because if you look at the trend where digital marketing is going, it really is becoming a game of top of funnel, not necessarily from a click standpoint, but from a brand awareness standpoint. How do you get your brand everywhere that's relevant to your audience? So for example, if Netflix filmed a documentary with Bill Gates, Inside Bill Gates' Mind, right? I believe that's what it's called.

Yeah.

A lot of business people watch that. That would be great for us because—

Oracle or NP Digital or Salesforce.

Yeah, so I would pay when Bill Gates is filming in his library to have, you know, something in the background being like NP Digital. blends in and it just—

Or when he says something really inspirational, right?

Yeah.

It's like, if you want the mindshare where he's inspiring, it's like, and whenever someone says something inspirational.

Yes.

Yeah.

So I would pay for that because a lot of, or a percentage of the people, even if it's a small percent watching it, would be a good fit for us. And I think this is a great way to get more top of mind. And I think this is what really, even when you think about SEO back in the day from what we were doing, We weren't really optimizing for clicks. I know everyone was tracking clicks. We looked at clicks as, oh, more people get to know our brand. Dude, we created content on so many long-tail queries that never drove revenue. And we knew that because we wanted to get our brand out there. And we believe that the more people that get to know our brand in the long run, whether it's people talking about us or mentioning us, eventually it would cause customers, even if it was 2, 3, 5 years later. It's the same thing now, but you can't necessarily attribute the traffic to your website. You've got to create the content so then that way people can see you, see you referenced everywhere, your logo everywhere, your favicon's everywhere. And in the long run, we still believe that'll drive revenue because it's worked for us.

Yeah, I think I'm just looking at YouTube now, or we know that Search Console, Google Search Console, you're getting more impressions. You're seeing this open jaw thing where impressions are going up and traffic's going down. Um, it is becoming more of this. We were just kind of talking about it. Like, if you're doing good work and your brand's getting out there more, it's fine. Don't try to, you're not, don't try to lose sleep or don't lose sleep over not being able to track everything.

But one thing that's been pretty resilient with all these AI changes for us, mm-hmm, is tools. Mm-hmm. Because, uh, if you look at Ubersuggest and Answer the Public, it's keyword research.

Yeah.

In today's world, people still need keyword research more than ever cuz it's complex on What are you trying to optimize for to get your brand out there from social media to Google to YouTube, right? And we look at the tools. Tools are somewhat AI-proof in which you're going to use what, AI to do keyword research?

I think AI also links to tools more, meaning it calls out tools more because it can't do this. And I think tools are higher bar too. So because of you can vibe code a lot of stuff now, I think the bar is now higher. It's like it's easier to make an ebook now. Yeah, it's easier. So That now it's like, if you go towards a harder thing, the blue ocean, which is building tools, you're going to stand out. And so with ClickFlow, we try to give like, oh, here's 25,000 words for free, right? That's like, that's a good offer. And so with you, you have like, you do have Ubersuggest, you do have a free version, right?

And we're actually trying to go more free, which we talked about last time. We were running tests on that in like, I think 2, 3 weeks. We're making some other changes in the short run. We're integrating things like AI data from all the search queries people type in on these AI platforms and how often your brand shows up. So we're starting to tie in some of those things into our tools. We're at least experimenting on our end before we release them. But when we start gathering data from a lot of places and showcasing it within our own tools, we're seeing usage on our tools do very well in this kind of environment and we're not seeing it decline really.

You know who called us out? The head of SEO at Canva, she posted, or he, she or he posted this on—

CEO's millennial.

No, no, SEO. Oh, the CEO. Yeah, the CEO. Yeah. So this person was like, hey, we're actually seeing a lot more traffic go to our calculators and our different, like basically, you know, either trending topics or calculators or tools and things like that. Basically saying that they're seeing their traffic from LLMs go up and it's because of those pages, not so much the what is, the informational pages.

Yeah.

And so if that's a signal, then it's like that is a signal to go build more things and do tougher things. Here's the problem with most marketing agencies. They don't understand What is happening with the world of AI. With my agency, Single Grain, we think about agentic workflows. We think about creating agents for the future. When we think about SEO, we think about creating different products such as internal linking products or content consolidation products. And on the other side of things, we think about building products such as Care. We just think about making marketing easier overall. If you want to stay at the cutting edge of marketing and at the same time leverage the power of AI, go to singlegrain.com and we'll see you on the other side. I do want to go back to— because we've talked about this a couple of times already, but Wall Street Journal posted this on bosses are done being quote unquote nice, right? And then on one end, I see on LinkedIn, like I see one person, she posted saying that we need to unionize as employees. We cannot let this happen to us. And it got like 3 likes on it. My point of saying this is that it's not that bosses are done being nice necessarily. It's so it's, it's basically saying, oh, bosses are tired of this. You know, I hear from some bosses, they're like some people, they're going on a rampage right now. They're cutting due to AI. You know, we hear, oh, this person cut $8 million in payroll, this person cut 400 people or whatever. It's not that people want to do that. It's just whatever is best for business at the end of the day. And I think what happened maybe in 2020 or so, and this is what I saw, 2020, 2021, when interest rates were very low, um, the economy was ripping and everyone was investing a lot and people were paying crazy high salaries and everything. Um, and people had to be a lot more accommodating. And I, I think what happened was people became very entitled, right? And, and bosses had to deal with that. What you're hearing now from Wall Street Journal, you're also hearing this from other podcasts, is that, um, people are starting to realize now that maybe they were being paid too much, which is ironic to me. Um, so people are being paid too much. And then also, again, bosses are tired of this whole, like, as I'm interviewing these CEOs, they're like, so, so Eric, what's your take on it? Should we be back in the office? Um, you know, what, what about this remote work thing? I talked to my, my, one of my relatives who works at the, um, who works at the IRS, right? Um, I was like, hey, what do you think? Should, should they have cut 20,000 people? What is like, absolutely they should have cut 20,000 people. So you're seeing all this happen in the economy right now where I, I think the, the, the quality bar expect is expected to be higher. And a lot of people aren't willing to meet that, that new bar because AI is making us, helping us do things a lot faster. We're asking questions a lot faster. And so that's why there's this quote about bosses are done being nice. It's not unionizing or anything. It's that a lot of these people, you and I, we spend a lot of time on talking to other people and learning how they're getting faster. We just want to be more efficient, right? And so if people aren't willing to meet that bar, there's a lot of CEOs out there that have said, hey, here are our new standards of excellence. Here's what Tobi from Shopify said. Here's what the Box CEO said. Here are new standards of excellence. If you don't want to meet it, that's okay. You don't have to be here, but we're done being accommodating. And that's what business is. Business is, you're just here to serve your customers and you're here to make sure that your numbers aren't upside down. And that's what nobody wants to be mean, right? Like we don't start a business to be mean. And so when people talk about unionizing or this is not fair, or like, this is, you know, um, this, this boss is a tyrant or whatever, it's like, no, like we don't even have time for that.

Yeah.

So anyway, this is just me ranting a little bit, but it's, it is, it's interesting to see both sides. Um, and what I will say is it's very refreshing to see the people on my team that are stepping it up. And it's also very easy to see who's not willing to step up.

Yes.

Very easy.

Yes. And people can try to do whatever they want, like unionize and all this kind of things. But if they don't figure out how to play ball, I think in the long run, a lot of them will just end up being replaced. Um, and if you look at typically what I see from an employee standpoint being unionized, It's the people who aren't doing the best job who are really for unions. The people who are A players don't care for unions, don't want that, 'cause they're compensated really well. It's the C, D, and F players that are just like, yes, we want unions, 'cause they want protection.

Yeah.

And they're not learning, getting better, putting in the time and effort that's really needed.

Yeah. And by the way, like, I don't want to spend too much time going into politics, but it's what we're for at the end of the day is equal opportunity, not equal outcome, because everyone has the same equal outcome. There's no incentive for you to work hard, for me to work hard, for no one to work hard. There isn't, right? That's just what it is. And so it's not that bosses are done being nice. It's more so bosses, if you wanna call them that, or really founders, they just wanna get things done. And I don't know about you, but like when someone blocks me from getting something done, I just, I just wanna get things done. Just get outta my way, please. Yeah. Like, so that, that's all it is. Like, join me or like, please just get outta my way. That's all it is. Um, one thing about getting out of, uh, out of, uh, outta my way in a different context too is Going back to YouTube, did you see that 14 million YouTuber? Um, he had 14.8 million subs on YouTube and he quit. So the question really is, is getting views worth it? Is going viral worth it? Because this guy just packed up and quit.

Was he generating a lot of income each month?

I don't know. He probably was. Um, but this guy would post about how he's like walking in the Alaska mountains and it's freezing and he's like vlogging it. He's like, about to die, by the way, until he finds a cabin and he goes in the cabin. He's like vlogging that, right? So very wide TAM type of stuff. He'll get a lot of views.

Yeah.

He was done. He quit because too many people recognize him and it started to interfere with his personal life, right?

Ah.

And so this again is a trap of, is it better to be anonymous or famous, right? And I think what we called about earlier in this podcast, the very first topic that we had was, Um, talking really part of it's talking about how these business influencers have started to chase views, but this is the price you pay at the end if you chase too many views because everyone recognizes you and it interferes with your family life and your personal life. Yeah.

I look at it as, as some people want to be famous and they like the attention. Not everyone is that way, but I do believe a good chunk of people are like that. And for those people, they should go after it. Um, if it was me personally, I would rather be anonymous in life and rich. I put the and in there. Uh, I think that is the best setup. I have a friend who is pretty high up on the Forbes list. I know him well. He wears like flip-flops, Nike flip-flops.

Hey, why dressing nice doesn't make you more money?

Yeah. He ha— he probably has nice clothes. I've never seen him in nice clothes. Uh, whereas Nike Flip-Flops, I don't know what he drives as a car, but he has nice cars. But I think he drives like a Toyota or something, or one of those.

It's his daily driver.

Yeah. Doesn't care. Doesn't have the fanciest home. No one really knows who he is. And he goes around and just lives his life and he loves it.

Yep.

Um, by the way, and he's rich as crap. When I mean rich as crap is like he can go buy a sports team rich. Okay. In any league.

So billions and billions. Yeah. All right. We will see you tomorrow. Please don't forget to rate, view, and subscribe.