67 Understanding Programmatic Marketing Tools and Optimization - Justin Croxton Jun 30 2021

[00:00:00] 

Greg Bray: Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode of the Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with Outhouse.

Greg Bray: And we're excited today to welcome to the show, Justin Croxton the co-founder of Propellant Media. Welcome Justin.  Thanks for joining us.

Justin Croxton: How's it going? Everyone, Greg, appreciate it. 

Greg Bray: Well, Justin, for those who haven't had a chance to meet you yet, why don't you give us that quick [00:01:00] introduction? Tell us a little about yourself. 

Justin Croxton: Sure. I'm Justin Croxton co-founder of Propellant Media. We are a digital advertising technology company based out of Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia, and also Charlotte, North Carolina.

We focus a lot on programmatic display and geofencing is sort of what we lead with as an organization. But we do a number of other things that help support those efforts to, you know, drive customer acquisition and you know, client retention. And that's really, our focus is what we do as an organization.

Kevin Weitzel: All right. That was way too much business. Justin. I need to know something besides a major fact that you have a perfect beard to grow fantastic sideburns.  So give me something that somebody will learn only about you on this podcast.

Justin Croxton:  My wife and I were both born on May 26.

Greg Bray: You share a birthday with your wife.

Justin Croxton  I share a birthday with my wife and we both celebrate our birthdays together with our five-year-old son.

We drove to Myrtle [00:02:00] beach, uh, just recently. And so that's like a very unique factor. The way that a lot of folks don't know about myself

Kevin Weitzel: Were you married on May 26th?

 Justin Croxton: Now that would have been a little crazy. Yeah. But, but we did meet on May 26. We were both celebrating our birthdays. And so you could kind of call it a birthday party if you will, but we were sort of celebrating separately and then we met and then. It's a long story, but it's an interesting one for anyone that's curious. I can tell you afterwards

Greg Bray:  I'm just still processing, how you celebrate the two birthdays at the same time.

Justin Croxton: well, I'll just say that it certainly makes the gift giving a little bit easier. We either get lazy and decide not to give gifts. Or we say, you know what? We have a couple extra bucks. We'll do a little splurge here and just makes it a little easier from that [00:03:00] standpoint. 

 Kevin Weitzel:  Justin, you could do what I do, which is to say, let's just not do gifts and then you do a gift anyway, just to do it.

Justin Croxton : Oh, she, oh my wife. She'd be so upset with me. She's like,

what's going on here? And so if I say no gifts and she says no gifts, and I get her a gift, or I'm in the doghouse, like I always try to do something good. No, you're the doghouse, Justin, you said No gifts!

Greg Bray:  that's right. It's a fine line to walk. So coming back to you just a little bit more about your personally, you're pretty educated where'd you go to school?

Justin Croxton: 

Yeah. Um, went to Morehouse in Atlanta, Georgia.NYU stern school of business in New York also  studied abroad at Kai and Costa Rica. Um, and another business school, was it Hungry? Yeah, Hungry. So I've studied a number of different places, but my primary focus has really been sort of in the area of business and digital sustainability studies, [00:04:00] um, in Costa Rica as well.

So, but I  primarily. Graduated from NYU stern school of business in New York. And, it was interesting. I mean, it was just a great experience being able to. You know, just all the classmates and just that whole experience with everybody that comes over internationally, just kind of get a sense of the different cultures and the folks that you go to school with.

And what was really interesting when I was at stern is, you know, everybody is hustling. Everyone's trying to get that perfect investment banking position. How do I get that perfect consulting position? And for me, I've worked in commercial real estate for six years prior to going to business school. And so I was like, you know what?

That's not me. That's not my world. I'm kind of liking this digital marketing thing. And so I literally started my own consulting practice at . How do I say this turned into an internship between my first and second year. It stern picked up a couple of clients. One was a bail bondsman. Another was a bankruptcy law practice.

[00:05:00] And literally, you know, the rest of the day, I said, man, I can have clients all around the world. It doesn't matter where I work. And, and so that was sort of  how I, you know, my experience both while it's stirred, but also how I really started to make a transition into digital advertising in general. 

Greg Bray: No, that's, that's a fascinating story, how all that comes together.

And Justin, you mentioned that at Propellant, you guys kind of specialize in programmatic advertising. And I think that, you know, for those of us who do digital marketing all the time, we kind of throw that term around, but I'm not sure that everybody. Out there understands what we're talking about and we say programmatic advertising.

So can you give us a little deeper definition there, help us understand that term better? 

Justin Croxton: Absolutely. So programmatic, you can look at it as the automated buying. And selling of ads in real time. And so back in the  day, there was a time when people would literally have to take an order from an [00:06:00] advertiser and then find the different websites that they want to place that order on meaning their ads.

Um, and it just became very inefficient once you start having more and more websites that kind of hits that sort of hit the, you know, different inventory sets. You know, folks just kinda got to a place where there's gotta be a technology that allows you to place those buys and place those buys in such a way where you're targeting the people that matters the most to your business and your brand.

And so whenever you hear the word programmatic, it is the automated buying and selling. Of ads in real time and targeting people based on a number of different variables, which we could talk about differently, but that's really what that is. And so if you, any mobile app or website that's out there, any of those ads that you might see, that's all programmatic display advertising.

Greg Bray: So if I'm understanding correctly, what it really, it's no longer required for me to go [00:07:00] talk to website A, B, and C, and do a contract with them that says, Hey, I want to show my ad on your website. Rather I'm doing that contract with a provider that is then sending those ads out to all kinds of different websites for me and trying to at the same time, show them to the right people that are interested in my product, as opposed to everybody else.

Justin Croxton: that is perfect.. Absolutely. It just makes the process much more efficient. I would have kind of said it better than that, Greg.

Kevin Weitzel: So I have a question for you and pardon my ignorance in this, in this arena. But you know, when you see those ads that just kind of pop up in Facebook or on when you're playing a video game or you're on an app of some sort, is there a way to, uh, differentiate, not necessarily paying for the views, but pay for the actual interaction with like a lead a click-through.

Justin Croxton: So, you know, I there's, there's, there's not [00:08:00] many plats platforms outside of the Google search, specifically the Google search  platform where you only have to play for clicks, let's say in the programmatic  world, which is display you are paying primarily for impressions.  So when an ad, let's say you're on angry birds or where's the threads, whether it may be, you see an ad and it pops up and you see  that ad, it passes your purview.

The moment that a passage of your purview is when you were charged for that impression. Um, and that's, you're going to see that typically with most ad exchanges, except for Google dis. Way,  maybe a little bit, but definitely primarily Google search is primarily click and interaction based. Everything else is either based on view or based on someone seeing an ad itself.

Greg Bray: So, but from what you said, there Justin, it is smart enough to know that if this ads like at the footer and I haven't scrolled down to see the [00:09:00] footer, you know, that I'm not getting charged until they've actually kind of brought that ad into the viewable. 

Justin Croxton: That is 100%. Yes, that is correct. Okay. Or that should be the case in the majority of cases, but yes, that is the case. Yeah. 

Greg Bray: So of course, you know, seeing ads all over the place now, so many websites, so many apps, everything runs on ad driven revenue. That's their model, right? So they want the advertisers and they want to show those ads to everybody.

So they can charge me more for putting my ad out there. How do I start to limit that? How do I find ways to narrow in, on the right audience? That's what I want to reach. 

Justin Croxton: Yeah, great question. I, you know, the programmatic world has become even more sophisticated over the last, I don't know, let's call it five years, but really last 10 years, specifically with them understanding that is as an advertiser,

If I'm not showing my ads to the [00:10:00] right people, then what's the point. Um,  I mean, I think, you know, if I can't get my ad in front of someone who, you know, is looking for a, or has an interest in a particular area or a particular topic, but I'm just showing it to everybody that might be in a zip code that I'm wasting 80%, 90%, 95% of my ad spend.

And so the programmatic world, they they've, you know, a lot of companies have come up with their own technology and a lot of folks. Figure it out. What are the right ways to ensure that my ad is being placed in front of at least the right person that could possibly be showing an interest in that area?

One way is what we call geo-fencing, where you can target people based on their location, their physical location. And a lot of times geo-fencing specifically, you can tell a lot of where someone might be in the buyer's journey based on their physical location. A great example is if someone happens to be, [00:11:00] let's call it at a car dealership, eight times, maybe nine times out of 10, they're probably shopping for a car.

We're going to get a car repaired depending on the location, within the car dealership that they might be in. Um, let's take a home builders and let's say you have someone who's looking to buy a home. Someone goes to a physical location, that's a new construction, good chance they're shopping around.

Right. And so that's just one example of how programmatically you can target someone based on their physical location. And there are other ways that you can target people beyond just their physical location, photography based on keywords that might be on the landing page. You can target people by way of, um, you know, different demographics, psychographic variables, as well as a lot of different ways that you can get in front of the right audience programmatically.

But that's primarily sort of the ways that a lot of times we're, you know, dive in deeper into that audience and trying to get, you know, a client's, you know, message [00:12:00] directly in front of those users that, you know, during that period of time, 

Greg Bray: So let's, let's drill down into, geo-fencing just a little bit more than you brought that up as a good example.

I think that's a hot buzz word, I guess right now, at least it used to be til everybody started staying at home in 2020 A little bit of a hit in 2020, but I think, I think people are leaving the house again now. Um, you know, you used a great example there of, you know, visiting a car dealership. What are some other ways that. That you would think geo-fencing might be useful from a home builder perspective in trying to identify people that, that are shopping for homes.

Justin Croxton: I have a couple of different ways. I think the first is for sure. You know, we'll even, you know, the work that you guys have done, you'll say you have a home builder and that home builder knows there are, let's say seven communities that are direct competitors of theirs within a five mile radius.

[00:13:00] You can build a virtual fence, like literally like through our technology, a virtual fence around those. Individual communities. Someone goes to that community. We're able to capture their mobile device ID and begin serving as them during a period of time. That's just one example of what we call competitive conquesting.

Right? A second way is let's say you happen to have a list of actual addresses of homes that are for sale. You pull that from an MLS system. Um, we can take that in same address lists, address city, state, and zip upload that into our database. And we use the same technology geo-fencing. But in this case, it's called household addressable geo-fencing and build virtual fences around those homes, using the tax and Platte line coordinates of those homes to get messaging directly in front of those users.

Um, who are going to those homes essentially. So you may have those homes that are for sale is really what I'm speaking, speaking towards. So that's another example, [00:14:00] um, reasonably we have, um, We have a few, uh, real estate broker shops and some relatively large ones here in the United States. And one of the particular, uh, gave us a Gabe, have they already have like a CRM database list.

And so they provided us with that CRM list and we matched it against our files and we are serving ads to those brokerage shops so that they can, whenever they have a client, that's looking for a home, they're thinking about. You know that, you know, one of their clients, communities, so there's a number of ways to skin that cat, you know, we've had some folks that will even use it for customer loyalty purposes.

They'll, geo-fence their own community. Cause they just want to keep blasting messages just to the people that are going inside of their community. Um, so it really depends on the use case. I mean, I think that's where it gets into sort of the strategy. And what you're trying to accomplish and also your, your media mix and all those different things.

But those are four clear examples that home builders can [00:15:00] leverage, programmatically to get their message in front of the right people. 

Greg Bray: So Justin, one of the questions I get asked a lot about geofencing and I confess I know the answer, but I'm going to ask it to you just to let people find out, but can I stop my competitors from geofencing me?

You know, that's I get asked that one a lot. 

Justin Croxton: so, you know, I hear about. A couple of, technology providers who say that they can place a shield. It's what they call it. This magical shield. That's going to stop other people. I love it and the short answer is no. Um, there are certain things that.

Like in part of what part of what other folks are saying that they can do is they will, they'll like, geofence like their own location is really what they're doing. They'll, geo-fence their location. They'll put an ad budget towards it and they will skyrocket the bids so that no one who, whose [00:16:00] geo-fencing their location will be able to win out on those bids.

That's essentially what it is that costs money, right? Exactly. Exactly. Okay. That costs money. And so the question for some folks is, you know, what's the cost of preventing other folks, you know, from being able to geofence your location, you know, successfully, and you know, that's some folks may decide that they do want to make that spin and some people don't, but there's not a magical shield that's blocking other satellites from being able to stop those signals.

Kevin Weitzel:  How little confidence does a company have to have to think they need to shield people from seeing their competitors or that's just killing me. 

Justin Croxton: Yeah. It's you know, and, we try to say it and, and not be tongue in cheek about it, even though sometimes we can be, but we tell folks, look, you know, don't worry as much about what your competitors are doing.

Worry about your [00:17:00] landing page, worry about your customer experience. Worry about your ads, your placement. That's what you should focus on. And then, times get good cashflow gets good. All right. Then if you got a couple extra dollars, you want to do that, then that's fine. We can explore that.

But the conversation that we're having with brands and agencies who think about deploying that tactic and they get that question from folks from time to time. 

Greg Bray: Justin. Are there certain types of ads that work better in programmatic than others? Or is it all over the place? 

Justin Croxton: Um, you know, I think that there's a little bit of that all over the place, but there's four specific ones that, to sort of it within context, there's four that gets the most, how do I say this?

The most coverage, but I think that's a little technical. I think what you're asking is, you know, is it better to use Jeff. GIF ads versus JPEG versus HTML five [00:18:00] versus video. And it's really been fascinating for us. We've seen standard JPEG ads perform just as well, if not better than GIF. And HTML five.

And part of the reason for that is because, you know, someone's attention span is very short. You know, I'm not usually like looking at an ad for, you know, three or four seconds, you know, unless it's a video, right? So in those instances we've seen the click through rates and that level of engagement for those kinds of ads, just standard JPEG and PNG for better than HTML five and some of the animated ones.

Yeah, I've worked at now separately. If we're comparing video to, you know, static. If that one's a little tougher to discern. I have cases where we just, you know, if a client has both video and static, we like to do a little bit of both just to kind of break up the minutia a little bit. So it really, really does depend if you're [00:19:00] asking the question in that context specifically.

But if you're talking about like, you know, you know, what type of language and, you know, Did, should I use an image, not use an image that kind of, that's a different answer. 

Greg Bray: and so much of that, you know, has to do with offer and audience and everything else. I'm sure that exactly.

In a very, a lot. Sure. So Justin, besides geofencing what, what other types of tools out there? So again, let me back up. So when we talk about geo-fencing and relation to programmatic, Geofencing is the tool that is being used to identify the audience. Yes. We're showing the ads to

Justin Croxton:  exactly 

Greg Bray: programmatic as the tool that delivers the ads out to the world.

Okay. So other than geo-fencing then what, what other kind of tools are there that help identify the audience, in this landscape? 

Justin Croxton: Oh, my goodness. so I mentioned CRM retargeting. That's another tool that we're using that we utilize. Often. I mentioned the [00:20:00] addressable geofencing, that's another tool.

Um, there's a few other ones, one in particular called keyword contextual that I kind of spoke about a little bit where you can reach people who are going to certain landing pages and websites and targeting, targeting those people based on the categories. Of those websites or even just the keywords that happened to be on those websites and a great example.

I'll just, just kind of throw this out there. We're working with a number of candidates that's running for office, um, around the country at sort of political season right now. And a lot of times they say, oh, Justin, I want to do Google  ad words and I want to target people that are, you know, doing searches for my name.

And I'll say, ah, you know, that's a good idea, I guess, but I think there's some better options out there such as. Keyword contextual, where you can reach people. Who's either reading certain news websites or individuals who are reading sites or reading certain pages. That's [00:21:00] talking about the current election that you might be in.

Essentially. and so those are sort of the tactics slash tools that we'll leverage to help identify the audience. And once we've identified that audience in real time, the programmatic, that's the part that starts to deliver the ads to those users during that period of time.

Greg Bray: Oh, I thought Kevin had a question.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, I did. I thought you were. I thought you're leaving. Sorry.  We can put a hold on this with Katie, just I thought you were going to lead from the geo-fencing to the OTT and I was going to be like, so for instance, Justin, are you down with it? And then he can finish up

Justin Croxton:  well, I lost my train of thought I actually was going to, but then my mind went to the different tactics piece, but I do appreciate that.

I was thinking about tool, but the OTT was, so I'll kind of say this, the funny thing about over the top TV and for over those who don't know it. OTT [00:22:00] stands for over the top TV, connected TV advertising. If you think about cable television, you're talking about cutting the cord from those people who watch cable instead, you're watching TV through the internet and what's so beautiful about that approach is you can now layer audience targeting.

Specifically with the traditional sense of targeting people who are who's watching TV effectively. And w I mean it's been really, really a fascinating space. We're seeing so many more people getting into that particular area of digital advertising is not as expensive as people may think.

You can start off with thousand 2000, 3000, even. $5,000 budgets.you know, depending on sort of the case, obviously. Um, but most importantly, you don't have to worry about, serving ads to a ton of people that doesn't even fit your target [00:23:00] audience. A lot of times we'll layer addressable geo-fencing or audience curation tool.

Uh, and we'll layer that with OTT advertising, there's a lot of platforms that doesn't allow you to do that, and so OTT is a very fascinating space. I think it's part, it's certainly part of what we've been doing quite a bit for a number of clients recently. Um, and it's just one of those areas.

If you have a 15 second or 30 second video spot, you must absolutely consider OTT. Or if you're doing TV or traditional television advertising, you should absolutely have OT as part of your media mix as well. 

Greg Bray: No. I certainly think that there is plenty of inventory out there because I know when I watch some of these shows, sometimes I get the same ad, like a thousand times in a row because they don't, I'm guessing cause they don't have anything else to show me.

That's all that they've got, or there's no ads at all, which I love. Honestly, because of my show goes faster, but you know, 

Justin Croxton:  I was that way with my wife yesterday. I was like, [00:24:00] why are we getting all these ads? I would have no choice. Yeah, 

Greg Bray: exactly. So Justin, when you start looking at display advertising, of course the click-through rates are different from like paid search and some of those types of things, what, what are some of the metrics that people, you know, and, and best practices or benchmarks that, that help decide whether you're being effective with this approach?

Justin Croxton: Well, I'll say the industry standard for programmatic, for static ads that is typically about 0.1%. So just think about for every thousand impressions you should expect at least one click, anything over that. I consider it. Okay. To good, anything below that, uh, you gotta look at the copy and see kind of what's going on there.

Um, anything that's over a 0.2 to 0.3 is really, really good though. Particularly in the programmatic space. And so when I, when we have conversations with clients, you know, we don't tell them, Hey, you should put all of your eggs into this programmatic geo-fencing basket. Part of the conversation is you, are, are you already doing, you know, some ad [00:25:00] words, you're doing paid social, you're doing some, some traditional print offline media, maybe.

And this is part of the mix in order to both raise the awareness, reach those folks that are at that intent stage. And then also hit those people that could actually be in market as well. And a lot of times that's going to depend on the different tactics that you did that you choose to deploy. But typically one of the metrics like the efficiency metrics that we'll look at is a click through rates.

Um, there's some other, we can measure online metrics, online. You know, form submissions and things of that nature. We can also measure with geo-fencing. You can measure, walk and visits as well. So if you want to see how many people saw or clicked on your ads and then came back to your, let's say your home builder community, let's say we can measure that with geo-fencing and even better.

You know, we can even measure that with through stat static ads, pre-roll video and over the top TV. [00:26:00] Connected TV advertising. and so, you know, a lot of clients, they come in thinking about programmatic and saying, oh, is going to perform just as well as paid social and paid search.

And I'm like, no, you can't, Look at it. It's all part of your omni-channel media mix and these KPIs, you know, see click-through rate. Walk in visits, those kinds of even reach, those are sort of not your leading indicators, but they're part of the ways in which you measure success and try to move the needle to overall uplift for your brand.

Greg Bray: So it sounds like the idea that the last ad somebody saw and then came and visited my community is not really a fair assessment of how the overall program is working. If I'm understanding what you're saying, 

Justin Croxton:  it's it's to your, to your point, Greg, it's never, well, that's too absolute of a term. It's rare.

It doesn't [00:27:00] happen in that vein. You mean everyone that's out there. Just take yourself as a great example. You go to Amazon, you're bout to buy something and then you say, ah, I don't know if I'm ready yet. And then you go over to Facebook and then you see that same ad, you know, like, you know what.

I'm still not ready yet. And then you go over to another website that you're reading constant on and you say, you know what? I think I am ready and you click on it. It takes you back over to Amazon and then you buy it. Wasn't Amazon. That was the first touch. Or there wasn't the last touch. It was really, um, you know, the website or, you know, whatever, right.

Y'all kind of get the point and that's not even just, you know, based on going to different websites, you know, you can start off on mobile and then make a purchase on desktop even. And even a lot of the tracking that we do for a number of clients, like. Truly like confirming leads and sales that a client has gotten a lot of times where we have to go through a lot of scrubbing and look [00:28:00] at first touch, full attribution, last touch, to see where that person landed in rarely is it that first thing that someone saw, it's usually a number of different touch points.

So, you know, if as a smart marketer, as a smart director of marketing or someone as a business owner, you have to look at your marketing. Beyond that vacuum, you have to, in order to, you know, discern some level of success from your programs, your campaigns that you run. 

Kevin Weitzel: So if the, if the KPIs aren't directly proportionate to conventional, you know, like pay-per-click, et cetera, is the expenditure and the ROI. Is that, outpacing conventional or, or is it a in line with.  

Justin Croxton: You know, I would say that I don't want to say this. So if, he, there's a, a couple of things that you have to look at you know, the first for us is let's say a client had a use, a stylized example, say a client has a $20,000 budget. They're doing [00:29:00] ad words.

They're doing all these different things, right? And they decide that they're going to add in programmatic or whatever, and they start to add, you know, you, you're trying to exclude seasonality and some of those other variables, but you start to see a lift or you see a proper lift in overall exposure and engagement to the right people.

Then, you know, that variable in this case, programmatic did have some lift. Now, sometimes you're going to say, well, I still need some money, more defined metrics to give me a better sense of that. And so that's, when you look at your click through rates, you're looking at, you know, walk in visits, you're looking at online conversions, that's happening, whether it be at the first touch for the last touch.

And even to that end, you can still through a lot of stuff that we do. You can still measure what we call view-through conversions, people who just saw the ads and then converted in some, in some other capacity. Is there some people that will come to us and they'll say, oh, Justin, we got all these walk-ins, but, uh, I don't know if you guys actually [00:30:00] were the ones who drove those.

Those walk-ins because these are only people who saw our ads. I'm like, what are you talking about? Of course, of course, this had an impact. You see 20 walk-ins and you know, those walk-ins attributed to someone who literally saw your ad from something that our team was doing. You're telling me if there wasn't some impact now, to your point, the question is what level of impact.

That's where you get into some more granular conversations of, okay. Well, you know, you know where we do position based, attribution, are we going to put like a 10% attribution to this? A 20%? That's sort of a different conversation, but. It's never one-to-one um, there's just a lot of things that marketers have to consider, um, to discern, you know, what's the overall, uh, you know, ROI and overall lift that they're getting from this program and what they're trying to achieve.

Greg Bray: I think to add to that just in the other, the other part that these, measurements can be so helpful with is actually. [00:31:00] In, within the optimizing of the campaign itself, when you start to get down to the fact, well, ad number one, versus ad number two in the same, everything else being equal ad number two did better.

Right? So let's do more of that instead of ad number one. And that's, that's a little different than what you were talking about more global view, but. Again, measuring at this very detailed level can really help you make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck by op what's the message that works best.

What's the placement, what are the best fences in our geo-fencing campaign that are working better than the others? You know, all of these types of things that lots of, lots of dials to turn there. 

Justin Croxton: Um, and just to, just to dovetail on that just one more time. And so I think that's perfect because a lot of times, you know, Whether it's home builders or anybody for that nature.

Yeah. We're kind of stuck in our silo of, okay, this is what we're going to do for print and TV and all these other things. And then you get into the digital side and you're like, well, how do I, you know, test to see actually [00:32:00] what's working? And, you know, the grade I think with digital is you can literally split test so many different creates so many different things, so much creative, so many different messages and get insights that can help fuel all the other things that you're doing from a marketing standpoint.

And so, you know, I think for a lot of people that are out there, you know, thinking of whether it's programmatic or, you know, ad words or paid social or anything of that nature, the split testing part to your point, Greg is vital because it helps not just with the optimizations of those existing campaigns, but so fuel a lot of the other things that you're looking to do from a creative and messaging perspective, uh, for the overall omni-channel campaigns that a brand might be running.

Greg Bray: So Justin, when you think about where programmatic is and some of these tools are today, what, what do you see changing over the next few years? What's coming. What's new. What do we need to watch out for that's coming? 

Justin Croxton: Well, certainly privacy. Privacy and identity is a big one without a doubt. [00:33:00] and a lot of folks don't know exactly where it's going to shake out.

I'm not even myself. I do know that if can take a great example with paid social, um, that, you know, there was a time when, oh, not time. I mean, you, you know, when I'm looking at it, it'll report within the paid social world. I can see, you know, how many conversions that we got based on age and gender in now.

Now, when I look at it, I still see those metrics, but then I have another bucket that's called unknown and I'm starting to see that unknown bucket get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Uh, so I think that's one thing that is unfortunate. I do understand that there needs to be a certain sense of privacy that's protected from folks.

And so that part is understandable, but. There probably will be a point where third-party cookies is going to go away. Third-party pixels and, you know, it's, it's going to be an interesting sort of way that, you know, advertisers and brands sort of navigate, how are they [00:34:00] ensuring they're still getting their ads in front of the right people.

And so it was going to be really, really important for a lot of the brands, the home builders that are out there make certain that you have a really clean CRM database. In this case, your own first party data that you can use to find the right people that sort of fits your target audience.

That's one area that's definitely changing. No one has the right answer. Everyone's just trying to figure out how to ensure that their best practices and their tactics are evolving. And it's just like anything else. I mean, you know, You, you get this thing that's working. So, so well, and then, you know, legislation causes it to, you know, put a wrinkle, but, you know, every, we all evolve and I think that's really what ultimately matters in this case, but that's one thing that folks should definitely be on the lookout for is going to continue to be an area to be aware of in the future.

Greg Bray: Well, Justin, we're really appreciative of your time today and all the information you've shared with us. [00:35:00] Any, last piece of advice you'd like to share with everybody, 

Justin Croxton: you know, instead of getting all, serious with business, just, I'm just going to tell folks out there have fun, have fun. Life is too serious to, you know, not be having enjoyment and fun and the work that we all do.

 I'm just going to literally literally leave it at that. You know, just kind of take my enthusiasm on this podcast. Like I enjoy these, but this is my world. Um, and so everyone, if you're doing that, you know, everything's going to be quite all right. Well, 

Greg Bray: I'm sure that people that listen to this podcast do it for fun.

Justin Croxton: hopefully that little footnote broke just a little bit. Just, just a touch. 

Greg Bray: Well, Justin, if people want to connect with you and learn more, what's a great way for them to get in touch. 

Justin Croxton: You can literally visit www.propellant.media. If you did a search [00:36:00] on Google for propellant.media, I'm sure you would find us or Justin Croxton and I'm sure you'll find maybe a couple of snippets on myself as well.

And that's it.  

Greg Bray: Awesome. Well, thanks again, Justin. We really appreciate your time today and thank you everybody for listening to the Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine

Kevin Weitzel: and I am Kevin Weitzel with Outhouse. Thank you.