[(0:01)]Announcer: This week on the Sonic truth, head of offline marketing at Right Side Up, Christina Rubino, joins Veritonic's digital marketing manager, Sabrina Nielsen to discuss instilling confidence in the audio platform. Key KPI's to gauge success and more. Thank you again for tuning in and welcome back to the Sonic truth.

[(0:20)]Sabrina Nielsen: Hello everybody here and welcome back to the Sonic truth. On today's episode, I am joined by Christina Rubino of Right Side Up. Christina, number one, thank you so much for being here to join us today. Really appreciate it. 

[(0:32)]Christina Rubino: I'm, I'm so happy to be here. It's always a pleasure to chat with you. 

[(0:36)]Sabrina: Absolutely likewise. We are so looking forward to this episode. So I'm gonna go ahead and just dive right in and get straight to the content.

[(0:44)]Christina: Sounds good.

[(0:46)]Sabrina: Awesome. I would first love to start by just having you give folks a little bit of a background about who right side up is and what you guys do? 

[(0:54)]Christina: Happy to do that. So, Right side up is a growth marketing Collective and Marketplace. Uh, we were founded about 6 years ago. Originally founded in the Bay Area. We essentially work with different companies to help them fulfill any marketing function, really tied to growth. So customer acquisition and, uh, a lot of our work focuses on paid search, paid social, conversion rate optimization, content strategy. I joined the team almost 5 years ago because I was really intrigued by the business model. Our founder, Tyler Elliston is also a gem of a human being. And when we were talking, I realized that nobody had taken the consultant business model to offline marketing and specifically podcast advertising and audio marketing. And so, what I realized was there was, uh, an opportunity not to use the old tech industry, uh, phrase of disrupting an industry[laughter]. But there was an opportunity to disrupt an industry by bringing kind of it a third way to staff, uh,  offline engagements, offline campaigns, and basically just help clients in house navigate these highly profitable channels. But when you think about, uh, in particular, let's say podcast advertising or radio or even link TV agency management, there's only a few tens of marketers that can do that end to end from a growth marketing perspective. And so, what we wanted to do is basically break down some barriers and help brands access that talent and help them really get started in the mediums and meaningful way scale it and and basically regain some internal competency in lot, in a lot of these channels. 

[(2:37)]Sabrina: Absolutely. I think the breadth of the services that your team provides an overall, just the support that is provided as well. It's invaluable, I would love to know what the typical level of comfortability with utilizing the audio medium looks like from clients who are coming your way.

[(2:53)]Christina: So it really it varies. I would say a lot of the time like I said there's only a few tens of marketers out there that I would personally call and entrust with getting a channel like podcast advertising or streaming audio or whatever off the ground and house. And so, what I wanted to do is kind of break apart some of the information asymmetry that exists because historically, either you're going to run a campaign in one of these channels with your existing full time team who may or may not have any level of familiarity with these channels in question.

[(3:24)]Sabrina: Sure.

[(3:25)]Christina: Or you use a third party agency which can be a fast way to get started. But eventually, um, and I'm biased towards this. I've worked agency publisher, in house, now consulting. I am highly biased towards in house management and ownership of channels. I feel like owning your own data and owning the, this kind of soup to nuts of your marketing is a really powerful thing for brands to be able to do. And so I wanted to focus on building. We call it a third way but basically a third way for brands to do this. And I would say a lot of our clients come to the table not confident or comfortable at all with audio marketing. 

[(4:05)]Sabrina: Sure.

[(4:06)]Christina: They just know that, you know, it's a good way for them to diversify their existing media strategies and diversify their existing media mix because you tend to reach an audience that's net new from, let's say I still can't call Facebook Meta because I've just been in advertising for too long but sure, Meta. And you know, let's say you're using Meta or AdWords or you're doing affiliate marketing, you can access a highly incremental audience in audio and it also feels since, scary for some brands, right? Like it's, uh, if radio in particular might be one of the first broadcast channels that they're investing in etcetera. So what we try to do is, when you think about building out strategies and execution, our team really takes on the full service execution of these campaigns, everything from strategy to creation, to inception, to execution, to optimization and measurement. We basically plug in like we're a bunch of like senior or media managers or senior marketing managers, marketing manager level. And we basically act as the in house  "client" it was actually really funny Sabrina. When I first started, people would get so confused as to like who the client was because they were like, well, who is this person in house? And I'm like, it's it's Grant. But it's Grant at domain.com and it's like, no, that's the same Grant Durando that's on our team here. Shout out Grant. [laughter] He just happens to be fully embedded in an in-house marketing team because they're accessing our talent to get over some of the learning humps that come along with campaigns like this.

 And then eventually there are some clients that we've worked with now for almost almost 5years which is crazy, um, especially in 2023 thinking about like the average agencies tenure even. Um, and then there's other clients that it's, you know, we've taught them so much and in some instances, we've even help train their team internally to be able to take over for us. And so we might scale back our level of support. We call it a phone a friend when we do that.[laughter] I made that up.

 Well, you know, you you ever  like work in house and you're just like, man, I wish I had somebody to look over this copy for me or.

[(6:23)]Sabrina: 100%.

[(6:24)]Christina: You know, it's it's  just really nice to have a gut check like you might be capable of doing the channel in your own but you're like, God, I just really want somebody who like lives and breathes this stuff to go in on it with me. Um, so I like to say we, I call it graduation when a client takes their campaign in house. That actually makes my day because I want brands to own their destinies in this channel. I feel like the more advertisers we have who understand channels like podcast advertising and and broader audio more holistically, the more stable advertising revenues are going to be in these mediums and ultimately, they're, you know, they're stable and growing. We wanna continue to to see that trend happen. So for me, the way to do that is through education. So even if they're not comfortable with the outset, they're going to be comfy by the time we're, you know, getting into it and scaling a channel profitably.

[(7:19)]Sabrina: 100%.  And I mean on that note of education and kind of building that confidence in the clients to be able to own their own strategy, which also I have to say I think is definitely one of the most attractive parts of Right side up because exactly to your point. It's so helpful when folks in house can feel really, really confident about what they're doing and what they're investing their time in.

[(7:39)]Christina: Yeah.

[(7:39)]Sabrina: They're going to have a little bit of lay of the land while still having that support they're, if in the event they need it or if in the event to your point they want to get a gut check. With this in mind, what's the typical like timeline or education process look like to be able to successfully "hand off" a strategy to a client where they feel equipped enough to be able to take it and run with it and do what they need to do. 

[(8:03)]Christina: Yeah, it really depends on the organization itself. Like there are some organizations where I like to say, give me any of really Savvy paid social media marketer. Give me like 6 months with them and they'll know what's off in podcast for example. Um, but it also depends on that teams bandwidth. So it really, it runs the gamut. There are some instances where we have clients come in and we help them in house their programs for maybe an agency running them. And they'll be like, oh, we only need your Staffing for like 4 to 6 months or 8 months and then 2 years later, they're like, please don't leave me alone. [laughter] We're like no problem. We're not going anywhere. It's totally fine. Because then they realize like what's really involved in managing these channels. And in other instances, we've had ones where it's like, you know, after about a year, they come to us and they're like, we feel equipped to do this. Let's start the off-boarding process. You know, we're gonna take the tools and spreadsheets and scheme on, you know, data Studio views, everything that we've created together. Um, but it's very intentional and I think that was a big attraction for me. I've worked at agencies when you're like, you know, in the review process and you're getting ready to like lose business or businesses up for review and it's really uncomfortable for everybody involved. And I'm like, if we could all just realize that, you know, a brand's, I like to tease publishers and say our out clauses at Right Side up are better than media publishers. Like, we have a 7 day out for our clients which is unheard of in like the agency and even like some of the traditional consulting world, right? And the reason we do that is because we were founded by an ex-head of growth marketing. And what he wanted when he started this company was access to the best talent that you could possibly find. But also that flexibility of like hey, I might really wanna take this Channel in house in the next 6 months but I might also have somebody who like winds up going on mat leave or you know winds up moving on and oh crap. Like I'm not gonna be able to actually staff this channel the way I thought I would or, you know what, guess what, there was a market event. We actually are gonna be pulling back from paid marketing for a while. We're gonna do X, Y, and Z and we're gonna come back to this channel at this time. It's that kind of like flexibility where it's mean you're gonna notice a trend of my responses which is like, oh, it depends because every single Advertiser is so different and that's, for me, that's one of the reasons that I'm still excited to do my job after 5 years. Like I love that my days don't look the same and my or the way that we work with every client at Right Side Up. Um, not just from an audio perspective but just across the board. Like we've really work with them to try and figure out the right mix and utilization of our services that makes sense for them. And it's not weird when we get shown the door if that makes sense.

[(11:03)]Sabrina: Sure. No.

[(11:04)]Christina: Like, it's just, you know, it's a lot of are pretty much all of our. We just hired our first head of sales. Uh, they started this week. We've only really worked on inbound referrals  which is really rare for a business of our size and stage and scale.

[(11:19)]Sabrina: Incredible.

[(11:21)]Christina:  It's great but it also it comes from the fact that like guess what, we know like okay, hey you don't need our help in paid social anymore but you wanna diversify your media channels. Have you talked to Christina, have you talked to, you know, Matt Altman, who leads our Marketplace team or you know, any of the other GM's or people at the company who can help people figure out what they need next. It's not like trying to just like hang onto the business for dear life which again, I've worked in agencies for almost 11 years. I get to say things like that about client retention because I was tasked with client retention.

[(11:58)]Sabrina : Sure.

[(11:59)]Christina: Um, and it you know, that it it kind of like removes the element of having multiple goals when you're working together and that kind of relationship. It's like really when I say it's so trait but we want what's best for every single one of our our advertisers we work with. Like, no, it's actually true and my business model benefits from it. Like, our compensation is aligned, it's it's kind of a, I'm I'm still excited about it because the structure lets us do our best work and really the best work in service of the clients and working with like the right third-party publishers, the right third-party Tech. Um, and that is different for every single one of the like, well into 3 figures clients that we've worked with even just on the offline team. Um, you know, Right Side Up has 400 to 600 Consultants out on projects on any given month. And it's again, it's that customized approach and like having so many different tentacles and so many different parts of the growth marketing pie that means that like we can actually help clients at all stages. Um, I'm like, okay, how's that bad but yes, I am, I am genuinely still excited about this stuff [laughter].

[(13:09)]Sabrina: No, it absolutely speaks to just the depth and the breadth of what your team is able to do in providing  clients with the confidence that they need to feel like they can absorb these tools and they can make competent decisions in audio which again is still, the there's a lot of gray area with folks feeling like they can understand how to do audio and to do audio well.

[(13:30)]Christina: Rights.

[(13:32)]Sabrina: Um, so with a huge gigantic feet that I think you guys are able to provide to clientele to offer that. And I think too something that would be interesting for both myself and our listeners to kind of take into consideration and I'm sure that this will also be variant depending on which types of clients that you're working with but what are some of the key KPIs or measures of success that your team is seeing that kind of focused conversations around results evaluation and getting folks to that piece of the puzzle where they can say, okay, you know, I'm successful because of X,Y and Z.

[(14:02)]Christina: Mmm. It's a good question, I think. And that's, this is to your point. Yes, the KPIs are gonna be vastly different for different advertisers, you know, you're going to have more awareness focus advertisers, you're gonna have growth and direct response focus advertisers. Largely we tend to work with the latter and it's to help them define what business success looks like for them based on their desired business outcomes. So, I think sometimes we forget as an industry that KPIs are intended to be in service of an individual advertisers performance. You know, key performance indicators really speak to how is this campaign doing for me advertiser at this given point in time and to the point about teaching clients and advertisers like what they actually need to know to have confidence in the data. I  believe in a super informed ultimate client. Like I want us to align on measurement methodology. And I also want us to, you'll hear me say this, uh, I've say this 10 times a week but my belief is in, so not just like the quality of the KPIs of which ones but also the measurement methodologies that you're using.

 I am a very big believer in overlapping and redundant methodologies because there is no one silver bullet for audio marketing. Um, you know, there's there's survey based attribution which is super strong, there's vanity royal attribution, promo code attribution, there's pixel-based and server-side attribution. There is a lot of different ways that you can basically measure some of the same KPIs which include sales, uh, lift and traffic. Um, you know, uh, leads essentially like just like qualified leads and like s-seeing where people land at different points in the funnel. For me, it's when you have the opportunity to integrate different data sources. What you're basically looking for is a triangulation from different data sources of how your KPIs are looking, right? So if I'm let's just say, I'm a direct to consumer. E-commerce marketer and I am selling, I don't know, uh, nail polish, that's what I have on my desk [laughter]. Um, so let's just say I'm a direct to consumer nail polish, uh, seller, right? And I have the, you know, I have a set of KPIs that I am responsible for to my shareholders, to my board etcetera. I am tasked with growing the sales of my product. I am tasked with get like gaining new customers. Um, I'm tasked with, you know, basically figuring out the right mix of paid and [inaudible] Marketing in order to achieve that. And so, when we think about the ways to enable attribution and measurement for a client like that often, what I'll Advocate is some sort of survey based methodology. I actually wrote a guide in collaboration with fairing a couple of years ago on how to use post check out surveys to determine media attribution for channels like podcasts and audio that have so much breakage in them. So let's just say that you're you're using some sort of survey based
methodology, you can also use promo codes and vanity URLs in that instance, either one frankly, but I prefer vanity URLS because promo codes tend to leak. Um, so you use the the triangulation of that direct response from a vanity URL or promo code that somebody is hearing and entering. Then you use survey based methodology and or you implement pixel-based attribution which is imperfect and only more so after iOS 14:5 and you know, subsequent privacy challenges that the industry is facing.
 But you have these implemented and what you're really looking for is a triangulation of these different sources to say this is the lift over baseline.

[(17:55)]Sabrina: Right.

[(17:57)]Christina: This is the incrementality that these programs are driving and they're all generally in the same ballpark, right? If if you're looking at different sources of measurement and it's like apples, apples, apples, basketballs. You're like huh, well I mean clearly something is going on over here that my my measurements coming back to me and saying basketball instead of the apples that the other, you know, measurement methodologies are are showing me. And so it's like, if you had only chosen to go in that one direction, you would have a false negative or false positive on your media. So for me, it's just to recap it's setting KPIs that are appropriate to a given advertiser that can be measured by multiple and overlapping methodologies when you're live in different media channels.

[(18:45)]Sabrina: Absolutely. No makes total sense and I think obviously, this is one piece of the puzzle that is most near and dear to our heart at Veratonic because...

[(18:52)]Christina: Yeah.

[(18:53)]Sabrina: Well we do providing comprehensive whole funnel audio measurement Solutions but makes complete sense and obviously makes total sense that those KPIs and those measurements of success are going to look slightly variant contingent upon the client, what their goal is and what type of Ad they're running and, you know, etcetera etcetera. 

[(19:09)]Christina: Yeah.

[(19:10)]Sabrina: But  I'm positive to know that those very clear cut measurement pieces are the driving and deciding factors on  how you're identifying success at Right Side Up and then also how your clients are internalizing that as well. 

[(19:21)]Christina: Yeah, no, it it definitely is and it's like, this is the point of, you know, with Veritonic, um, the great part about working with a third party like Veritonic is that you can get a very Channel specific view of measurement, right? Um, and and you can understand essentially like what a given channel is doing but then to be able to integrate it with the other methodologies of measurement. So to be able to integrate it with the other methodologies that a brand is using. So let's say, media mix modeling or survey-based attribution or whatever else. It gives you another point of data to be able to have confidence in your marketing spend overall. And if Veritonic or another third party or your in-house attribution was saying something wildly different than the other, it would give you a flag of like, hey, why is this happening? And so again, like it helps you be more confident in the third party measurement that you enable when you have, you know, not only when you have multiple methodologies enabled but also, when you have in-house advertisers who understand who Veritonic are and what you guys do, who understand the ways to use, you know, the data that you get out of that kind of integration in conjunction with your first party data which often is I mean, first party data, let's just say from the back end of Shopify or something for a TDC advertiser. That's your, that is your source of truth, right? And so, yes and no because what might wind up happening is you might see, wow, actually paid search is just really popping for us when it comes to, you know, last click attribution or multi-touch attribution and it's like well, yeah, no kidding, paid search captures the demand that's being driven by other channels. And so you work with third-party technologies to help redistribute some of these credit because when you're just looking at, you know, last click attribution even view through attribution to a certain extent, it can start throwing up some false positives or negatives and, and it can infect your media, uh, Investments over time which is really challenging because then you start to optimize in the direction of those signals without realizing that like, wait a second, some of these signals are actually like not as strong as as others and so that's why I go back to like an informed ultimate in house advertiser is the goal and it it, I hope it's our goal across the board as an industry because working really closely with in-house marketers you understand and get what we do means better outcomes for the industry as  whole.

[(21:59)]Sabrina: Most definitely, absolutely. We all we all learn together. We all thrive together.

[(22:03)]Christina: Yes, absolutely. 

[(22:05)]Sabrina: [laughter] I could definitely talk measurement all day long but I do wanna ask one additional question[laughter]. In understanding what the bridge building process typically looks like between your team and
 and your clientele in building strong relationships with networks and publishers as well.

[(22:22)]Christina: Yeah. So we are actually one of the largest buyers of direct response oriented podcast advertising in in the country and the world. Um, and what that means is, I mean in the last 5 years, we've invested over $200 million profitably in podcast advertising in particular. And that means that we have really strong relationships with most of the top publishers in the space. One of the other, one of the parts of it that I really, uh, enjoy as a, you know, long time media buyer is also our focus on working with independent publishers and even independent shows. We buy thousands of shows regularly, um, but it's it's kind of interesting. I would say we buy it on average, somewhere between 4 to 6000 shows in a year depending on, you know, the scale of of shows that we're buying. Um, but when you hear like there's millions of podcast out there, it's like, yeah, but only I mean under 9 or 10,000 of them are really monetized any kind of compelling level and then of that, there's another sub-segments that actually back out and work for most advertisers, right? So, what we tend to do is we focus on the publishers, the  shows, the the structure in which we know that we can generate positive results for our advertisers. When it comes to that bridge building, one of the unique things about the model that we have is we work with advertisers to set up not only media publishers but also third-party attribution error checking systems etcetera up in house. So we don't act as an agent, right? Which is the traditional construct. In media when you work with a third-party, we actually set up these publisher partnerships directly between advertiser and media owner. And what that means is there's way fewer people in the kitchen, like there's just way way fewer Cooks in the kitchen so we can actually get things done really quickly. We still have the buying power and the advantage of working with a third party that like lives, breathes, sleeps and eats this stuff, right? 

[(24:29)]Sabrina: Sure.

[(24:30)]Christina: Um, but you're we're not the gatekeepers of  these relationships. Um, we work with with partners to basically get direct advertiser set up on the same kinds of fee schedules, payment terms etcetera, that would historically only be afforded to agencies. So when I say like it's a disruptive business model, that's really one of the cores of it from an audio perspective. It's we're not operating on a media commission basis which is still somehow, um,  across the board o-of  very large majority of how agencies are compensated in this space which for me, we work on like time and materials. Um, we work on retainer. And so, the way we work is proportional to the workload involved, um, as opposed to like that media commission model which it scales favorably to the agency and not necessarily advertiser. It's hard in the beginning when a client doesn't have optimal scale to be able to staff. But then on the flip as you scale a program, um, it tends to scale wildly proportionally to the agency and so us being able to like break down. So try it, but break down the barriers between advertisers and the sources that they're buying from a media perspective. If you think about it this is very similar to the disruption that, um,  you know, AdWords and Meta first pursued when they went Advertiser direct. There are more brands who manage paid search and paid social in house than probably any other medium. And so for us, exactly. So that for us it was like this is an opportunity to level some of that playing field to help advertisers in house own some of these media relationships and on the flip of it, work with our partners. And, you know, everybody that we work with on the network and publisher side to help them get closer to the client, to help them frankly diversify their business, you know, across multiple advertisers without only being beholden to, you know, the the buying whims of like one or two decent sized agencies in the space. 

[(26:40)]Sabrina: Or ultimately rather than even bridging gaps, kind of leveling the playing field at the end of the day and making sure that everybody has a space at the table which is exciting and exactly to your point probably assume we're speaking to measurement. It also opens the opportunity for all of us to be able to to get into audio, to feel confident in audio and to make audio better for everyone who's going to be involved in the audio market as a whole. 

[(27:00)]Christina: Yeah, it only benefits us and like there's this very weird thing in our industry around like, do you work in an advertiser or a publisher? Do you work, you know, in house or are you in an agency? And what has kind of cracked me up over time is like and and frankly working at Right Side Up has helped bust some of these for me. Uh, some of the clients that we've worked with have later become consultants for us or vice versa. There have been instances where we've worked with consultants, um, for the audio business and then they've come to us because, you know, they'll wind up going back in house full time or they'll have been moonlighting with us and they're like, dude, we have this agency in place or we have the sub optimal structure in place. Can you guys just come in and help us do this? And I'm like, Oh, so it's one of those instances where like talent becomes clients, clients down the road can become talent. You know, I I've had some go to publishers and become salespeople that then sell into us. I've had I've hired sales people to later become marketing consultants and who later work in house. So it's like for me i- it's really there's so much talent in this industry and the more we can focus on just like the actual work of it all, um,  unless the trapping surrounding it like just making it as easy as we can to get the work done well, uh,  as possible like that. For me, that's like one of the reasons I wake up in the morning.

[(28:25)]Sabrina: Absolutely, there's so, so so much interconnectedness and we need to be able to kind of celebrate that a little bit more. I couldn't agree with you more. I would love to shift into a couple of just fun rapid-fire questions as well to wrap up here.[laughter] Ju- and just to keep it light and fresh.

[(28:38)]Christina:  Let's do it. 

[(28:41)]Sabrina: Awesome. Can you remember the first podcast you ever listened to?

[(28:46)]Christina: Um, it was e-  wow now you're going to really understand how my own media diet is just bizarre [laughter]. Um, it was either Bill Burr, um, 99% invisible or it was Pot Save America when it was still keeping it 1600. Like back. Yeah. 

[(29:04)]Sabrina: Wow. Okay. 

[(29:06)]Christina: So was it's one of those three but I don't know which one the first one was. All good shows.

[(29:11)]Sabrina: Got it.  Sound great exactly I was about to say some great choices nevertheless. So, whichever one of those. Kudos to you. If your day could be summed up in an audio advertisement, what would the cta be?

[(29:25)]Christina: [chuckles]Is anything going really great or really poorly? Palm talk to Christina. I mean, really.

[(29:29)]Sabrina: I love it [laughter].   Absolutely a mega tune, love that one. And then, I also have to know if you have just one single piece, or maybe just a couple of small pieces of advice for marketers who are looking to break into, or really refine their position in the audio landscapes, what would it be? 

[(29:49)]Christina: Um, hmm. Work with people that you trust and learn absolutely everything you can from them. But keep in mind that literally everybody is making it up as we go along, like, the more senior I've gotten over the years, the more I've realized that nobody actually has the answers which is both like scary and also comforting, right? It's like but when you think about it, some of these channels like yes, radio has been monetized for almost 100 years. But a channel like podcast is only been monetized for like 15 and 10 of those at any kind of meaningful scale. So it's like, who is who are those people that have every single one of the answers to all of your questions? It's like, no, we're working together to figure out the answers to these questions and based on Market events and, you know, what a what a time to be alive, basically these last few years. Um, but based on Market events and our understanding of the way that people consume these channels, the answers are changing every day. So it's like, yeah, just work with people you trust and always just work in pursuit of doing the absolute best work that you can every day and realize that like the answers are gonna change and I like to joke around and say I don't know if you remember the show Whose Line Is It Anyway.

[(31:11)]Sabrina: Of course.

[(31:12)]Christina: But everything is made up and the points don't matter. That's[ laughter]. That's just changes everything. 

[(31:18)]Sabrina: It's beautiful, I think that the most perfect piece of advice that anyone could get absolutely. We're all in the same team.

[(31:21)]Christina: [laughter] Well thank you.

[(31:23)]Sabrina: We're all in this together, we need to take it all as it comes, go with the flow and continue to learn and advance, together explore on the same team at the end of the day. 

[(31:31)]Christina: Yep. That's that's it. That simple [laughter]. 

[(31:35)]Sabrina: Thank you so so much Christina for joining us today. This was a completely eye-opening. I know our listeners are gonna have an absolute field day with tuning in to this episode of the podcast. We could not appreciate you joining us today anymore and would love to have you on again soon.

[(31:52)]Christina: Thank you so much right back at you Sabrina. It's always a pleasure. 

[(31:55)]Announcer: At Veritonic, we remain committed to helping you get the most out of your audio strategy. If you're interested in learning more about Audio research, testing and measurement, visit Veritonic.com or contact marketing@ veritonic.com.
[END]