January 15, 2026 • 44 mins
Recorded at the 3CV Villa in the heart of CES 2026, this special episode curates standout insights from executives shaping how people watch, shop, pay, and belong. They unpack the biggest themes of CES, reflect on broader industry shifts, and share what they’re prioritizing as the year ahead takes shape.
Along the way, they share practical insights for marketers navigating a world where media, commerce, and community are increasingly connected. It’s a thoughtful look at where the market is moving, and how to stay ahead.
Featured Voices Include:
- Ali Miller, GM, Ad Products, Instacart
- Nili Klenoff, EVP, Mastercard Commerce Media
- Jeremi Gorman, Chief Revenue Officer, Fanatics
- Dan Robbins, Head of Growth & Strategy, PayPal
- Bethany Eppner, VP, Global Business Marketing, Fandom
- Jeff Lucas, Chief Revenue Officer, Tubi
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm Michael Kassan, and this is Good Company. Together we'll
explore the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment, sports and technology.
I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes, even a
couple of disruptors or candid conversations as we break down
how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the future of business,
culture and everything in between. My bet is you'll pick
(00:32):
up a lessen or two along the way. As I
like to say, it's all good.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Every January, our industry descends on Las Vegas looking for
the future. Faster tech, smarter tools, bigger promises, and no
shortage of spectacle. But the real signal at CEES isn't
what's on the show floor. It's what leaders are deciding
to do with all of it. This year, the shift
feels bigger. The lines between media, commerce and technology are collapsing.
(01:09):
AI isn't a concept anymore. It's core infrastructure and trust.
Relevance and influence sit at the center of value creation.
It's against that backdrop that opportunity is being redefined. For
this special episode, recorded at the three CV villad during CEES,
I spoke with executives across streaming, commerce, payments, and fandom
(01:32):
to capture their takeaways. Here's what they told me. This
is Good Company CES twenty twenty six Insider Edition.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
I am Ali Miller. I'm the general manager of Advertising
at Instacart and this is my fourth CEES at CES.
I'm always really excited just to make connections with partners,
customers and everyone we're working with. It's really exciting to
have everyone in the same place and feeling so much energy.
One of the biggest trends, which is probably no surprise,
is omni channel. For me in the retail media space,
(02:04):
we've been really focused on building foundations for great on
platform advertising with retail media, and now coming into twenty
twenty six, we're really seeing this opportunity to scale it
across channels and using data as that touch point to
help advertisers reach consumers wherever they are, but still drive
really meaningful results that they can measure using retail media data.
(02:25):
I think the big winner if we do our jobs right,
is the consumer. It can be really easy to fall
in love with the technology and all of the AI
that we're all talking about on the CEES floor, but
ultimately this is all in service of creating great products
and great capabilities for the consumer or for the user,
whether that user is everyday consumer or a partner like
an advertiser, a brand, or an agency which I spend
(02:47):
my day with. One of the ways that I'm really
focused on using AI is to make sure that we're
not over using it in a way where it's just
falling in love with the technology itself or screaming at
the consumer that this is an AI capability. I think
it's incredibly important to stay grounded and how we can
use AI to drive value. So one of the things
that I've been thinking about on the advertising side is
(03:07):
how do we apply AI behind the scenes where the
consumer doesn't even know that AI is being used to
improve relevance or ranking or personalization as they're shopping and
finding recommendations and responding to them. So that's one way
in which we've seen AI make a tremendous difference. Another
big area that I think is incredibly important that I
think is a bit under utilized today but has a
ton of potential, is just for improvements in enterprise workflows.
(03:30):
So on my side, looking at the advertising industry, we
know that AI can play a huge role in helping
to drive relevant recommendations, easier setup, in management of advertising
campaigns and driving results. And so that's something that my
team is really focused on building out over the course
of twenty twenty six as part of our omnichannel transition
with retail media, or our expansion of omnichannel retail media.
(03:53):
One thing that I'm seeing brands talk about more and
more is how to marry traditional media and metrics so
reachage impressions and audience with the best of what retail
media can provide, which is the end result, and so
looking at how we can marry that purchase information, that
purchase based data where brands are already buying across all
of those traditional and new channels, across linear TV and
(04:17):
connect to TV and social and so many other places.
We're seeing a lot more of those conversations starting to
come together as we're breaking out of silos and really
seeing how retail media can help to scale across all
those different touchpoints. One of the things that we see
and how people are continuing to change and evolve their
everyday shopping is that it's a very non linear journey,
and so shopping and discovery can happen at any moment,
(04:38):
in any order across all channels. So as we look
at instacarts, Marketplace, and at our set of Carrot Ads partners,
where we extend our ADS solutions to two hundred and
forty plus e commerce sites that use our ADS technology
to run retail media on their own sites, we extend
into the store, and we extend off platform with partners
like TikTok and the Trade Desk and Meta and Pinterest
(05:00):
and many others. What we're seeing is that it's so
important to take that connector of data and help brands
understand where are consumers actually discovering making purchase decisions, and
what's resulting in a purchase, even if it may not
have happened in that traditional full funnel orderly sense, it's
going to be hopping around and anything can kind of
be discovered at any moment, and loyalty is really up
(05:21):
for grabs. Purchase data can really unlock new opportunities for
brands when they're looking at how they can connect purchase
information directly into where they're already buying. One of the
things that we're trying to do at instacart is make
that really easy by focusing on integrating our data where
brands and agencies are already buying, So, for example, working
with the trade desk to integrate our catalog information, our
(05:44):
purchase data so brands in their own seats can buy
using Instacart's audiences and close loop measurement without needing to
jump through hoops of managed service. We're taking the same
approach with partners like TikTok. We are discussing it and
launching an end to end integration where instacart data can
be directly accessible within TikTok's Ads Manager, making it super
easy to activate and manage and understand performance in terms
(06:06):
of purchase data directly where brands already are. And so
we know that retail media data can be incredibly valuable
to plug into all of these different touch points. But
the next stage is making it super easy to scale
without needing to jump through a lot of hoops. So
from the very beginning, instacart was a retail technology company,
(06:27):
and so we're really focused on creating not just a
great consumer experience on our marketplace, but offering technology to
help retailers and e commerce grow and be successful and
reach consumers where they are. And that's really shaped our
approach to retail media as well, and what we've seen is,
as the rise of retail media has created so much
fragmentation and complexity buying across literally hundreds of different retail
(06:49):
media networks, brands are looking for an easier way to buy,
and so the approach that we've taken is to actually
connect the dots between the instacart marketplace and e commerce
partners who are working with us using our ads technology,
making it really easy for brands and agencies to buy
in one place and allow their ads to show wherever
their products are available. And to really take advantage of that,
(07:11):
it does require thinking about retail media a little bit differently.
It's not going to be retailer by retailer, it's not
going to be location by location. It's going to be
wherever you're driving the most impact. And that's what's going
to help retail media really break into its next stage
of scale and also help to unlock all of these
additional omnichannel capabilities. The next evolution for shoppable media is
(07:33):
that it's going to just be incredibly easy to take
action wherever you're inspired to try something new. And the
part that I love about connecting to instacart is that
not only are you able to purchase an item, but
you're going to have that item in your hands in
an hour, and so it can be a really magical
way to just truly make that connection of inspiration to
(07:53):
purchase really real and tangible for a consumer who's looking
to just try something that they just discovered. I think
one of the most most important things that I would
like to see in retail media in twenty twenty six
is that we really continue to break out of silos.
It's no longer a world where retail media needs to
sit in an e commerce corner somewhere. It's very much
about connecting and building bridges across traditional media marketing and
(08:18):
really starting to tell that story in a consumer centric
way in a way that can be most valuable and
successful to drive results that really matter to France.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
I am Nili Klenoff, the Executive Vice President of Mastercard
Commerce Media, and this is my first year at CES.
There are a few themes that I was encountering this
week for the industry. The first is agentic obviously on
everyone's mind, you know how AI is shifting commerce and
(08:48):
permeating everything that we do. I think The second is measurement.
I mean, it sounds basic, but it's still a fundamental
that's important. There's still challenges, especially in the retail media
space with standardization, consistency, you know, the measurement muscle for
a lot of the players in the space, and not
really just attribution, but incrementality. It's still an important topic.
(09:12):
And then commerce media itself, how all of these things
are blurring and all the lines are blurring, and how
commerce media as I see it, is emerging as a
service that can give clarity. I think that there's a
lot of discussion about AI eating the point of discovery
(09:34):
right and we're all experiencing that as players in the
industry and as consumers ourselves. I think what perhaps many
don't appreciate and me coming from Mastercard, have up front
seat to how AI is going to be shaping the
commerce experience itself and how we're going to see the
convergence of the point of discovery with the point of buying.
(09:57):
I believe we will move to place where we have
agents that are again eating how consumers become aware of
products and services and then actually enable the commerce component
of that. And I think brands need to be aware
of that right. They need to be aware of this
full integration that's going to take place, and the fact
(10:19):
that we're no longer just marketing to consumers. We're marketing
to agents, and that you've got agents now playing a
role in the full value chain. I think we all
talk about measurement, We all talk about the importance of
reach and targeting and audiences. I think, as the consumer
(10:42):
is everywhere, as brands need to show up everywhere, As again,
these lines are blurring between point of discovery and the
point of commerce itself. The value of one to one
is going to become increasingly important. And it's not that we.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
Weren't paying attention to it beforehand. I just think that
we need to appreciate even.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
More how valuable it is to cut through the clutter
and help brands elevate. Trust is the foundation of everything
that we do. It is engineered into the fabric of
who we are at Mastercard, how we design, how we build,
and how we bring solutions to market. It's why we
(11:26):
feel fit for this moment and commerce media is because
so much of the trust that we bring. That trust
is a function of so many different components. It's privacy
by design, the ability to have our not ability, the
requirement to have privacy teams embedded in our design and
(11:48):
our go to market processes. It's certainly for commerce media
it's consented data, so consumers are opting in to receive
the content, and then it's our data responsibility practices. This
gets threaded through everything we do at Mastercard, but in
particular the business that I'm in now, think layers of
security being applied to the data itself, being applied to
(12:11):
the transactions. Consumers always in control of their data right,
they can opt into services, they can opt out of services. Transparency,
the ability to understand where their data is used, things
like inclusion, making sure that when we're running our models
we are training them for bias, and there's so many more.
And then the last, you know, again from a commerce
(12:33):
media standpoint, authenticate in environments, making sure that those are
really safe. For brands, they can feel confident about where
their content is showing up because the consumer has been
logged in. So when you kind of put all of
these components together, it's actually how you create the trust
consumers feel it, but that takes a lot of work
(12:54):
to get there. There's a few roles that brands can
play inside the commerce ecosystem. The first, I think is
the data. So commerce media providers, we certainly have access
to lots of insights from the data that we power,
but that's one data set, and brands have access to
other data sets. Publishers have access to other data sets,
(13:17):
and so the ability to stitch together that data and
leverage the insights becomes something that is I would say
a critical role that brands can play. The second one
is being ready to meet consumers where they are. The
consumer is elusive, the consumers everywhere they are interacting across
an increasing web of channels, devices, environments, whether that's social,
(13:40):
whether it's messaging apps, which by the way, are like
really popular and Latin or agentic, which is where we
all are right now. Brands need to be able to
show up there, and I think having the partners that
can help them do that seamlessly is going to be
really key. And the last is just brands prepping themselves
(14:02):
to evolve with the flow of commerce, making sure that
their brands are showing up and irrelevant at that point
of discovery, which again is converging with the point of commerce.
The world is definitely shifting and cmos have to shift
along with it. I think the first capability that marketers
need is to be well versed in technology. I like
(14:26):
to say that when the marketing experience is invisible, the
product becomes exceptional, and that means that product, marketing, and
tech all need to be working as one. That's a first.
The second is the data. Marketers need to really understand
the nuances of the data, how to structure the data,
(14:50):
and then the applications that sit on top of that,
the ability to kind of how data science and how
all of the modeling works to make sure that they're
brands are showing up at the right moments in the
right places. And then the last is partnerships. I think
that's true for all of us, but especially for marketers.
It's those partnerships that are going to enable them to
(15:13):
be present where the consumers are. Success for Master or
Congresce Media is our customers success. It's going to look
different for every customer, and that is engineered into how
we go to market. We sit down with every customer,
every brand. We understand what their goals, what their objectives are.
Do they want to drive awareness, do they want to
(15:34):
drive frequency recency? Do they want to lift average order values.
Is there a target row as that they want to hit,
and then we are actually setting up the campaigns to
execute across our network to meet those objectives. Doing that
is creating value, and ultimately it's about creating value for
every partner in the value chain. I think that for us,
(15:59):
we can do that that will spell long term sustainable success.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Stay with us. We've got more good insights from CEES
right after this break.
Speaker 7 (16:22):
Hi.
Speaker 6 (16:23):
I'm Jeremy Gorman.
Speaker 8 (16:24):
I'm the chief revenue officer of Fanatics Advertising, and I'm.
Speaker 6 (16:28):
Most excited to see people.
Speaker 8 (16:30):
I've been in this industry for twenty six years and
this feels like a reunion every year. I feel like
the industry is getting back to a place of true
partnership where it went quite transactional for a long time,
a lot of you know.
Speaker 6 (16:43):
Just last click attribution type work.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
And every conversation that I have had so far has
been like, how do we help each other and go
into business together again? And that feels first of all
more fun for everybody, and then secondarily, I think there'll
be a lot of great creative coming out of that.
The two things that I think are most pressing at
are actually antithetical to one another. I think we as
an industry, no surprise, need to embrace AI, but in
(17:06):
a healthy and responsible way where consumers aren't confused about
what is generated by AI. And I think that people
tend to think that that is bad by default, which
it's not. It's efficient and it's effective, but we as
an industry owe the respect to the customers and end
users to use it responsibly, to label it clearly. And
then the other is that the pendulum swinging back to
(17:29):
brand advertising at the same time makes me really happy.
If I were to actually say who the winner is,
I think it's sports. The conversation around sport is incredible,
the way that it brings people together.
Speaker 6 (17:40):
It's really the true last water cooler moment.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
I mean, there were a couple obviously huge winners in
that space in streaming most recently, but nonetheless live sport
is the thing that you don't know the end to
and it's kind of the only one. And seeing advertisers
not only form their own sports division with inside holding companies,
but also the way that people are talking about engaging
with the fan. So not just the industry, but people
(18:04):
are caring very much about how they show up for
the people who love the games.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
As platforms, content and commerce converge.
Speaker 8 (18:13):
I believe that the zeitgeist itself is actually something that
is going to win and again kind of the end
customer in our case, the sports fan or the culture fan.
In other people's cases it's a different kind of fan
or the customer or the shopper as the case maybe,
but as those come together, I think that that is
where people are going to actually find value in advertising.
(18:33):
And we had come from a place where people were like, oh,
I hate ads. I think people are starting to like
advertising again because it is more personalized, because it is
more deliberate, because it can be in the right place.
I have said the words the right ad to the
right person at the right time five thousand times in
a far less raspy voice than this.
Speaker 6 (18:53):
But here we are at CES and this year I
believe that.
Speaker 8 (18:57):
We will be there and continue to iterate upon that
in a way that the end customer is the big winner.
I think the biggest end tapped opportunity is to feed
into the emotion of the fan, particularly around advertising, when
you watch games with people. When you are at a game,
people care so deeply about sports. When you say what
(19:20):
time is X show on? You say, oh, it's on Thursday.
When you say when are the Rams on? We play Sunday,
And it is a wee thing, even if you are
not in a jersey in a helmet, you know, on
the field, et cetera. And to me, I think sitting
at that intersection is extraordinary because what do marketers want
(19:40):
more than to be a part of somebody's like true heart,
which sports absolutely is when you think of what do
people love the most? Their family and then their team,
and we get to help brands reach fans in a
really meaningful way that is not just spots and dots.
That is, of course, it's data backed, and I think
we can do it with precision in a way that
(20:01):
very few other companies can.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Everything is so asynchronous.
Speaker 8 (20:05):
You and I may see the same meme on Instagram reels,
and you might send it to me three weeks from now,
and then yes, it's still funny, but we didn't experience
that at the same time. Same is true of anything
algorithmically served and also most streaming things, and with sports,
everybody's experiencing it at the exact same time.
Speaker 6 (20:23):
They have the exact same emotions. Either elation or depression.
Speaker 8 (20:29):
I think that the ability to experience every something in
real time brings people back to a place where we
all grew up, Like I remember the finale of Mash
of Friends of Family Ties. Then it just doesn't happen
as much anymore. And where it happens is in sports,
and you aren't going to go to a game like
(20:49):
the white Out game with Penn State and Orient that
goes to overtime, where you get half of this incredible
stadium just despondent and the other half of the stadium
in jubilation mode. And that is a really cool thing
to experience as human beings as we get further and
further disconnected from the day to day, so sitting at
the center of that is a true joy. The role
(21:13):
that commerce plays in the fan experience is extraordinary for
a litany of reasons, one of which is that it
immediately puts you in somebody's tribe. My goddaughter, for instance,
went to Alabama, and so four years I had to
pretend to really like Alabama, and every time I wore
something Alabama, somebody would walk by me and say roll Tide.
(21:35):
And that sounds like more than a commerce experience to me,
and it is, but it is the way for somebody
to visually see that you are on their team, that
you have something in common. And one of the hardest
things to do when you're meeting strangers at all is
to find that first point of commonality. And commerce in
fandom does that for you. And we do that at scale, bigger,
(21:58):
better and differently than anyone else one. Because we have
the authentic merchandise, we work directly with the leagues. We'd
have in stadium retail, we do a lot of the
colleges as well, and so when people put their money
forward to buy the authentic thing, they actually care differently,
and that says something about the customer and about how
(22:19):
much their fandom actually is commerce.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
And given the amount of commerce that we do, you can.
Speaker 8 (22:26):
Tell that people are voting with their wallets that their
sports fandom is critically important to their commerce experience. We
launched Fanatics advertising late last year and it has been
truly one of the joys of my lifetime. And I
think one of the things that has been so incredible
is kind of rebuilding this from the ground up, giving
(22:47):
brands the opportunity to participate in ways with fans that
they couldn't necessarily before either, because brands don't want to
guess what team you like, because if they guess incorrectly,
then that actually is a more negative experience.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
Not showing them an add at all.
Speaker 8 (23:01):
So being that definitive source, building an audience extension program
where you can reach the fans that participate across tops, lids, betting,
and gaming collectibles fanatics proper and being able to reach
them in their natural environments with an audience extension product
has been really rewarding. And I love sports and so
(23:22):
to be able to talk about it all day with
brands who love it, and I've spent so much money
and so much time on getting it right and being
able to allow official sponsors to extend their season or
unofficial sponsors who might not be able to afford the
entirety of a league sponsorship to still be able to
reach the fans that they care about really really matters,
and it's been an incredible journey.
Speaker 9 (23:45):
Dan Robbins, global head of Growth and Strategy for PayPal
ads to me, there are two big themes that come
to mind. The first, of course, is AI and the
thing that I'm most interested in is the way that
AI starts to specialize. This was not at CS, but
this week open Ai announced Chat GPT for Health, which
(24:06):
is taking chat GPT and providing a specialized experience that's
just focused on health. I think within advertising, we're going
to start to see similar specialization, and it already exists
a bit, but it's very nascent. The second theme, which
is very close to us at PayPal, is the maturation
of commerce media and the fact that there are now
(24:27):
over two hundred companies that are doing some form of
retail media kind of comes back to the old saying
that everything becomes an ad network. And what we're excited
about as a player that is cross merchant that isn't
just one retailer but works closely with most of the
fortune one thousand brands out there, is the ability to
(24:48):
help take retail media to the next level, and by
that I mean the theme being how do you bring
the partners together, make it easier to buy ads across
all of those plays, and do so in a way
that gives data that's comparable. I think the big area
that AI is underappreciated is the decline in visitation to
(25:13):
retail websites, Specifically most of our retailers are saying that
they are seeing fewer and fewer folks go to their
website to shop, and that's a direct function of the
growth of various different ways you can do research and
shop with AI. It's a big focus for us at
PayPal because we want our merchants and retailers to grow
(25:34):
and be successful. It's one of the reasons that PayPal
ads launch storefront ads, which basically brings the storefront to
the shopper wherever they are. Specifically, imagine you're on a
publisher website, you're reading the news, and in that you
see an ad for a pair of shoes. You can
(25:54):
actually buy those shoes with PayPal in the ad without
ever leaving the publish your website, and when you're done,
you're brought right back to where you were. So it's
a fundamentally endemic experience. And to me, why that's exciting
and also maybe still underappreciated is as fewer people go
to these websites and storefronts, it's going to be vital
(26:18):
to bring the storefront to the shopper. So what commerce
platforms see about buying behaviors before a purchase happens is
actually something that's fundamentally unique to commerce. This week, PayPal
ads announced our Transaction Graph, Insights and Measurement program. What
this is is bringing to bear the best of PayPal
(26:39):
data and insights so that you can understand exactly that
the consumer journey before a purchase. What we're finding is
that the data is cross merchant. It's not just one retailer.
It's covering more than four hundred and thirty million consumers,
two hundred global markets, more than thirty million merchants. The
second thing is that it's the intersection of search, shop,
(27:02):
and social. What we mean by that is it's what
you're looking for, what you're buying, and then how you're
splitting expenses with your friends. Interestingly, what we see when
we pull all of that together is there's a real
increase in the growth of AI and Amazon earlier in
the shopping journey. The shopping journey doesn't end just when
(27:23):
you buy something, because there is the social or payback
component after So the number one emoji used on Venmo
is the pizza emoji, and that's because people share the
things that they buy. And to me, we've just scratched
the surface of this because it's an expansion of that
traditional funnel, and I think for the marketer of the
(27:45):
future that's going to be really important in commerce. I
think there's three key things in twenty twenty six that
brand marketers can focus on within commerce that will give
them a leg up. Number one, laser focus on the
Amazon on an AI shopper, particularly AI still nascent, but
it's growing quite quickly in our data and being able
(28:06):
to get ahead of that shopper journey. The second thing
bringing the storefront to the shopper. If you're seeing fewer
people going to your dot com or going to your app,
bring that payment flow outside of your own surface and
then to me. The third thing is the money moment
(28:27):
is really valuable and I think still underappreciated. When you
think about when people are actually buying something, when they're
looking at their balances, when they're sending money to friends
or to family members across borders. There's a real real
focus on commerce behavior and mentality. In that instant you
are thinking about how you spend money, what you want
(28:49):
to buy, what you have purchased, and I don't think
historically brands have realized how big a moment that can
be to win mind share as well as wallet share,
and those three things the Amazon AI shopper, expanding the storefront,
owning that money moment huge opportunities. PayPal thinks a lot
(29:12):
about small businesses and how it impacts growth. As I
mentioned earlier, more than thirty million merchants work with PayPal,
and of course a majority of those are small and
medium sized businesses. Earlier this year, we announced the launch
of PayPal Ads Manager, which helps those small businesses grow
in two fundamental ways, the first earning more money, and
(29:32):
then the second is growing their customer base. That's fundamentally
unique in the SMB ADS world because if you think
about most ads offerings, you need to spend money, you
acquire customers, you hope, you grow, you put more money in.
What's different here is you earn money before you start
doing anything. What we mean by that is we're actually
(29:54):
enabling our small and medium sized businesses to put ads
in their checkout flow without doing any heavy lifting on
the technical side. That all sits within the PayPal Merchant portal,
which is where so many small businesses go to operate
their business, whether it's money, payments, invoicing, and so much more.
(30:15):
I'm really excited about this because If there's one thing
that makes advertising easy for small businesses, it's for it
to live where they already do their business. To have
to go and open something different, learn a new platform,
test it out. Most businesses just don't have the time,
the money, the resources to do it, and so we're
(30:37):
really focused on driving profitability and growth in the existing workflow.
There's a lot of things I'm excited about for PayPal Ads.
You know, we're a little over a year into our
business and the vision is to help brands and to
help merchants earn more and make more. And we're going
to continue to expand our ads on our platform, adds
(31:00):
off our platforms, helping transition the growth to agentic commerce,
bringing our data and our insights forward to brands, agencies,
and merchants so that they can be smarter, and ultimately
making commerce media easier for the industry.
Speaker 7 (31:19):
H I am Bethany ebnerm VP, Head of Global Business
Marketing at FANDOM. This is my second CEES in person.
When I think about CS twenty twenty six and what
I was really looking forward to most, it really is
about people. It is the industry and colleagues, colleagues of
(31:39):
the past, people who have kind of grown up with
in this industry, and to me, it's that human connection
and that's what it's about. It has been proven over
and over again fandom is a new marketing channel and
fan moments they are the new currency. And I have
not seen a lot about that, and perhaps I just
haven't looked, but I know that's something that we feel
(32:01):
powerful about at fandom and I think it's something that
is key and will kind of set the trend for
the year. I think that active fandom, meaning true passion
over whether it be a show, a movie, an ip
a sport, that is something that we need to really
(32:23):
look at as an industry and measure more accurately. It's
not just about engagement, it's about true, active participation. When
we look back at this moment in time, I think
what's really going to define this era of change is
the idea of trust as a default. We assume, or
(32:45):
we have assumed, especially as marketers, that consumers are going
to trust what we say is true. They're going to
like the product, they're going to buy the thing, they're
going to relate to whatever it is, whatever message we
are delivering. Guess what that's not true? Trust is something
that needs to be earged. It has to be done
over time in a really authentic and I really hate
(33:09):
that word, but it's true, in a really honest way.
That is the only way to really break through in
this world, in this era, in this marketplace, brands really
do need to earn the opportunity to participate. And so,
especially when it comes to fandoms, you cannot just come
(33:30):
in as a brand and assume that your message will resonate.
You have to educate yourself on those fandoms. What makes
those fans tick, what's important to them, what drives them,
and you really need to become one of them in
order to resonate with the modern day fan. There's a
very distinct difference between fandom and audience. Fandom is about passion.
(33:55):
Audience is about being passive. You are passively engaged in
something you are watching. You maybe half paying attention. Yes
you've been recorded as being part of that experience. But fandom,
that is when you live and breathe it. It's how
you identify. It is kind of what drives you. And
(34:15):
that's the big difference. I think that brands that are
taking the time to understand the fans they want to
reach and are able to really communicate in that language
and create that connection. Those are the ones that are
doing it right. So that's when they are truly able
(34:38):
to connect with fans and create that kind of two
way relationships. So an example would be a brand who
leans into a specific character. They understand that that character
is trending or that character is beloved, and they partner
with that character. That's a good way do it. Offering
(35:01):
maybe behind the scenes footage, sneak peeks, offering different experiences
related to those fandoms that above and beyond what the
fan would receive and enabled by a brand, that is
the best way to kind of get at the heart
of fans and kind of pull at their heartstrings. I
(35:24):
think the fandoms influence purchasing decisions in unexpected ways because
it is incredibly powerful how the right connection between a
fan and a brand can drive true ROI. So I
think it's not necessarily intentional, but if a brand kind
(35:45):
of comes in and builds that connection with fans, that
fan unintentionally is going to support that brand. It's subconscious, right.
I believe that eighty nine percent of fans generally prefer
a brand that supports the fandom that they love. So
(36:05):
it's unexpected in ways that the fans don't even realize
that they have this bias towards this product. But because
they have that relationship and that understanding that that brand
or product loves and supports their fandom, they support them.
And I think that's the beauty of epic fan marketing.
(36:30):
When I think about twenty twenty six, I think about
fan strategies and this kind of new concept that every
brand out there has to have a fan strategy. It's
not as simple as kind of just demos and hoping
your message resonate. It's really leaning into these fandoms and
(36:53):
these communities that drive pop culture and connecting with them
and building a strategy around that. I'm proud to say
that we at Fandom have made it really easy. We've
created the fandom formula and it's a proven playbook for
a brand to help find their fan strategy.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
We're going to take a pause for a moment, and
when we return, we've got more CEES takeaways for you.
Speaker 10 (37:27):
Hi, this is Jeff Lucas CRO two B and this
is my tenth CS the Top Themes for twenty twenty
six and CEES is the growth of CTV, the application
of AI, you know agentic AI two systems, and also
to agents, and then I think we have to look
at commerce because commerce is playing such a big part,
(37:49):
and it's really about retail media networks and instant commerce.
They've been around for a while, tael media networks, and
they've been doing great, and there's so many of them,
but we have to see how they interact with CTV,
and I think that's the biggest new angle of it.
One intention for twenty twenty six is to really concentrate
on predictive outcomes. We want to make sure that our
(38:12):
clients feel that they're receiving the value that they're looking for.
We take every dollar they spend as an investment, and
we really want to make sure that that predictive outcome
works for them ahead of time, so they know exactly
what they're getting. I think you always have to stand
behind what you promised and deliver, and I think that
predictive outcomes is a big part of that. With AI,
(38:35):
it's more about the opportunity. It's really about taking AI
down to the fundamentals and really looking at personalization and
really serving relevant content and adds to the user and
to the viewer. And it's important that when we do that,
we're always looking at what is best, what's the best
value for time because it's all about tentiveness, so they're
(38:56):
investing their time. We do want to make sure they
see the right content. We want to make sure they
see the right ads. What will define the biggest change
is I think when we look at the death of
the monoculture and Anjulie will say that a lot of
our CEO, but I think it's so true because when
you look at two B to Be is made up
of three hundred thousand pieces of content. But it's really
about fandoms and who's to say what people should be saying.
(39:20):
People should be choosing the viewers should be choosing what
they want to say. There is definitely a shift in
the landscape on what defines a hit. Everyone's trying to
tell younger audiences what the hit should be, but fandom
really dictates the hits.
Speaker 6 (39:37):
It's personal to them.
Speaker 10 (39:39):
Audiences are dictating the formats that they like, and they're
dictating the quality of what they like. But it's really
about you know, fandoms. They're a key Everything is competing
for attention. I mean everything that someone does, and we
know that, you know, we look at where one hundred
percent free AT's part, which is something that we say
(40:01):
we think all entertainment should be that way because we
want to basically open up our platform to as many
people as possible, and if we can give them the
fandoms that they want, or in a creator point of view,
creators bring their fans with them, we think that we
can win in terms of attention because we're developing what
they want to see. That's what really drives this audience,
(40:25):
this young gen Z millennium multicultural audience to the platform
and that they want to go down the rabbit hole,
as we say, they want to find the content that
they want. And I think on top of all the
different fandoms that are offered, I think bringing that creator
side in was the most important because that's in addition
(40:45):
to EVAT is built to have creator on it, because
a lot of people think that creator has to be
these short hits, these short bites, and it doesn't. It
can be a longer piece of content. And I think
if you are invested in the creator and what they do,
you're going to follow them onto different platforms to see
what else they're going to do. You know, we had
Noaeback who has forty million followers. We put him into
(41:08):
a movie about a love story, you know, coming of age,
which is a fandom. Bring him in and he who
knew he's a great actor. He acts really well. But
we get five million gen Z millennials right there. The
first five days and the sequel to Sidelines one had
an impressive growth. Two B is using AI in multiple ways.
(41:33):
It's using it with personalization of content, It's using it
with you know, personalization of ads. We also use it
to work smarter across the business internally and more broadly.
Speaker 6 (41:45):
We think AI.
Speaker 10 (41:46):
Really democratizes the creation of content. And when it does that,
it's allowing for more people to create content, more creators
to come to the platform, bring more fans with them,
more fandoms, and it just feeds right into how two
BE is built. Successful advertisers on the two B platformers
reaching a totally incremental audience. You're reaching a young, multicultural audience.
(42:09):
They are gen Z, they're millennial, hard to find, hard
to reach anywhere. Sixty nine percent of them are court cutters,
court numbers. Eighty percent don't have cable. Okay, This is
a very unique incremental audience and probably about seventy percent
can't be found on other streamers, So that is a
win for any advertiser. You're not going to find this
(42:30):
audience in many other places. Brands still underestimate the entertainment
consumption habits of gen Z and they think they only
prefer short form content. No way that that is not true.
Research shows the migration of millennials and gen Z are
moving to longer form content. So you're reaching these are
(42:51):
audience types that are not being reached on other streamers,
and not being reached in broadcasts, and or not being
reached in cable. What excites me most about our streaming
is headed is really how AVOD is blossoming. Avod is
becoming bigger and bigger. One hundred percent free ad support.
It is the way to go. And we're not saying
that the viewers are saying that. I think that when
(43:13):
you look at the value that an advertiser is getting
on the platform. When we talked about the incremental audience,
but we're also talking I mean avid is stop start
whenever you want. It's about the lowest commercial ad looked
in streaming, and I think it's it's very important as
we move forward. What excites me even more is that
it's going to keep growing and if you really look
(43:36):
at avod is growing at a faster clip than any
of the subscription services. So I just think the future
is very right for TV.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
We've heard a range of perspectives today, so before we wrap,
I asked each of them to step back and describe
CEES in just one word.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
Huge, brimming, exhausting, educational, pure chaos and this I want
to go dialogue.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
I'm Michael Kassan. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Good Company is brought to you by Three C Ventures
in iHeart Podcasts. Special thanks to Alexis Borger Purdo, our
executive producer and head of Content and Talent, and to
Carl Catle, executive producer at iHeart Podcasts. Episodes are produced
and edited by Mary Doo. Thanks for joining us. We'll
see you next time.
Good Company is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm Michael Kassan, and this is Good Company. Together we'll
explore the dynamic intersection of media, marketing, entertainment, sports and technology.
I'll be joined by visionaries, pioneers, and yes, even a
couple of disruptors or candid conversations as we break down
how these masters of ingenuity are shaping the future of business,
culture and everything in between. My bet is you'll pick
(00:32):
up a lessen or two along the way. As I
like to say, it's all good.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Every January, our industry descends on Las Vegas looking for
the future. Faster tech, smarter tools, bigger promises, and no
shortage of spectacle. But the real signal at CEES isn't
what's on the show floor. It's what leaders are deciding
to do with all of it. This year, the shift
feels bigger. The lines between media, commerce and technology are collapsing.
(01:09):
AI isn't a concept anymore. It's core infrastructure and trust.
Relevance and influence sit at the center of value creation.
It's against that backdrop that opportunity is being redefined. For
this special episode, recorded at the three CV villad during CEES,
I spoke with executives across streaming, commerce, payments, and fandom
(01:32):
to capture their takeaways. Here's what they told me. This
is Good Company CES twenty twenty six Insider Edition.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
I am Ali Miller. I'm the general manager of Advertising
at Instacart and this is my fourth CEES at CES.
I'm always really excited just to make connections with partners,
customers and everyone we're working with. It's really exciting to
have everyone in the same place and feeling so much energy.
One of the biggest trends, which is probably no surprise,
is omni channel. For me in the retail media space,
(02:04):
we've been really focused on building foundations for great on
platform advertising with retail media, and now coming into twenty
twenty six, we're really seeing this opportunity to scale it
across channels and using data as that touch point to
help advertisers reach consumers wherever they are, but still drive
really meaningful results that they can measure using retail media data.
(02:25):
I think the big winner if we do our jobs right,
is the consumer. It can be really easy to fall
in love with the technology and all of the AI
that we're all talking about on the CEES floor, but
ultimately this is all in service of creating great products
and great capabilities for the consumer or for the user,
whether that user is everyday consumer or a partner like
an advertiser, a brand, or an agency which I spend
(02:47):
my day with. One of the ways that I'm really
focused on using AI is to make sure that we're
not over using it in a way where it's just
falling in love with the technology itself or screaming at
the consumer that this is an AI capability. I think
it's incredibly important to stay grounded and how we can
use AI to drive value. So one of the things
that I've been thinking about on the advertising side is
(03:07):
how do we apply AI behind the scenes where the
consumer doesn't even know that AI is being used to
improve relevance or ranking or personalization as they're shopping and
finding recommendations and responding to them. So that's one way
in which we've seen AI make a tremendous difference. Another
big area that I think is incredibly important that I
think is a bit under utilized today but has a
ton of potential, is just for improvements in enterprise workflows.
(03:30):
So on my side, looking at the advertising industry, we
know that AI can play a huge role in helping
to drive relevant recommendations, easier setup, in management of advertising
campaigns and driving results. And so that's something that my
team is really focused on building out over the course
of twenty twenty six as part of our omnichannel transition
with retail media, or our expansion of omnichannel retail media.
(03:53):
One thing that I'm seeing brands talk about more and
more is how to marry traditional media and metrics so
reachage impressions and audience with the best of what retail
media can provide, which is the end result, and so
looking at how we can marry that purchase information, that
purchase based data where brands are already buying across all
of those traditional and new channels, across linear TV and
(04:17):
connect to TV and social and so many other places.
We're seeing a lot more of those conversations starting to
come together as we're breaking out of silos and really
seeing how retail media can help to scale across all
those different touchpoints. One of the things that we see
and how people are continuing to change and evolve their
everyday shopping is that it's a very non linear journey,
and so shopping and discovery can happen at any moment,
(04:38):
in any order across all channels. So as we look
at instacarts, Marketplace, and at our set of Carrot Ads partners,
where we extend our ADS solutions to two hundred and
forty plus e commerce sites that use our ADS technology
to run retail media on their own sites, we extend
into the store, and we extend off platform with partners
like TikTok and the Trade Desk and Meta and Pinterest
(05:00):
and many others. What we're seeing is that it's so
important to take that connector of data and help brands
understand where are consumers actually discovering making purchase decisions, and
what's resulting in a purchase, even if it may not
have happened in that traditional full funnel orderly sense, it's
going to be hopping around and anything can kind of
be discovered at any moment, and loyalty is really up
(05:21):
for grabs. Purchase data can really unlock new opportunities for
brands when they're looking at how they can connect purchase
information directly into where they're already buying. One of the
things that we're trying to do at instacart is make
that really easy by focusing on integrating our data where
brands and agencies are already buying, So, for example, working
with the trade desk to integrate our catalog information, our
(05:44):
purchase data so brands in their own seats can buy
using Instacart's audiences and close loop measurement without needing to
jump through hoops of managed service. We're taking the same
approach with partners like TikTok. We are discussing it and
launching an end to end integration where instacart data can
be directly accessible within TikTok's Ads Manager, making it super
easy to activate and manage and understand performance in terms
(06:06):
of purchase data directly where brands already are. And so
we know that retail media data can be incredibly valuable
to plug into all of these different touch points. But
the next stage is making it super easy to scale
without needing to jump through a lot of hoops. So
from the very beginning, instacart was a retail technology company,
(06:27):
and so we're really focused on creating not just a
great consumer experience on our marketplace, but offering technology to
help retailers and e commerce grow and be successful and
reach consumers where they are. And that's really shaped our
approach to retail media as well, and what we've seen is,
as the rise of retail media has created so much
fragmentation and complexity buying across literally hundreds of different retail
(06:49):
media networks, brands are looking for an easier way to buy,
and so the approach that we've taken is to actually
connect the dots between the instacart marketplace and e commerce
partners who are working with us using our ads technology,
making it really easy for brands and agencies to buy
in one place and allow their ads to show wherever
their products are available. And to really take advantage of that,
(07:11):
it does require thinking about retail media a little bit differently.
It's not going to be retailer by retailer, it's not
going to be location by location. It's going to be
wherever you're driving the most impact. And that's what's going
to help retail media really break into its next stage
of scale and also help to unlock all of these
additional omnichannel capabilities. The next evolution for shoppable media is
(07:33):
that it's going to just be incredibly easy to take
action wherever you're inspired to try something new. And the
part that I love about connecting to instacart is that
not only are you able to purchase an item, but
you're going to have that item in your hands in
an hour, and so it can be a really magical
way to just truly make that connection of inspiration to
(07:53):
purchase really real and tangible for a consumer who's looking
to just try something that they just discovered. I think
one of the most most important things that I would
like to see in retail media in twenty twenty six
is that we really continue to break out of silos.
It's no longer a world where retail media needs to
sit in an e commerce corner somewhere. It's very much
about connecting and building bridges across traditional media marketing and
(08:18):
really starting to tell that story in a consumer centric
way in a way that can be most valuable and
successful to drive results that really matter to France.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
I am Nili Klenoff, the Executive Vice President of Mastercard
Commerce Media, and this is my first year at CES.
There are a few themes that I was encountering this
week for the industry. The first is agentic obviously on
everyone's mind, you know how AI is shifting commerce and
(08:48):
permeating everything that we do. I think The second is measurement.
I mean, it sounds basic, but it's still a fundamental
that's important. There's still challenges, especially in the retail media
space with standardization, consistency, you know, the measurement muscle for
a lot of the players in the space, and not
really just attribution, but incrementality. It's still an important topic.
(09:12):
And then commerce media itself, how all of these things
are blurring and all the lines are blurring, and how
commerce media as I see it, is emerging as a
service that can give clarity. I think that there's a
lot of discussion about AI eating the point of discovery
(09:34):
right and we're all experiencing that as players in the
industry and as consumers ourselves. I think what perhaps many
don't appreciate and me coming from Mastercard, have up front
seat to how AI is going to be shaping the
commerce experience itself and how we're going to see the
convergence of the point of discovery with the point of buying.
(09:57):
I believe we will move to place where we have
agents that are again eating how consumers become aware of
products and services and then actually enable the commerce component
of that. And I think brands need to be aware
of that right. They need to be aware of this
full integration that's going to take place, and the fact
(10:19):
that we're no longer just marketing to consumers. We're marketing
to agents, and that you've got agents now playing a
role in the full value chain. I think we all
talk about measurement, We all talk about the importance of
reach and targeting and audiences. I think, as the consumer
(10:42):
is everywhere, as brands need to show up everywhere, As again,
these lines are blurring between point of discovery and the
point of commerce itself. The value of one to one
is going to become increasingly important. And it's not that we.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
Weren't paying attention to it beforehand. I just think that
we need to appreciate even.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
More how valuable it is to cut through the clutter
and help brands elevate. Trust is the foundation of everything
that we do. It is engineered into the fabric of
who we are at Mastercard, how we design, how we build,
and how we bring solutions to market. It's why we
(11:26):
feel fit for this moment and commerce media is because
so much of the trust that we bring. That trust
is a function of so many different components. It's privacy
by design, the ability to have our not ability, the
requirement to have privacy teams embedded in our design and
(11:48):
our go to market processes. It's certainly for commerce media
it's consented data, so consumers are opting in to receive
the content, and then it's our data responsibility practices. This
gets threaded through everything we do at Mastercard, but in
particular the business that I'm in now, think layers of
security being applied to the data itself, being applied to
(12:11):
the transactions. Consumers always in control of their data right,
they can opt into services, they can opt out of services. Transparency,
the ability to understand where their data is used, things
like inclusion, making sure that when we're running our models
we are training them for bias, and there's so many more.
And then the last, you know, again from a commerce
(12:33):
media standpoint, authenticate in environments, making sure that those are
really safe. For brands, they can feel confident about where
their content is showing up because the consumer has been
logged in. So when you kind of put all of
these components together, it's actually how you create the trust
consumers feel it, but that takes a lot of work
(12:54):
to get there. There's a few roles that brands can
play inside the commerce ecosystem. The first, I think is
the data. So commerce media providers, we certainly have access
to lots of insights from the data that we power,
but that's one data set, and brands have access to
other data sets. Publishers have access to other data sets,
(13:17):
and so the ability to stitch together that data and
leverage the insights becomes something that is I would say
a critical role that brands can play. The second one
is being ready to meet consumers where they are. The
consumer is elusive, the consumers everywhere they are interacting across
an increasing web of channels, devices, environments, whether that's social,
(13:40):
whether it's messaging apps, which by the way, are like
really popular and Latin or agentic, which is where we
all are right now. Brands need to be able to
show up there, and I think having the partners that
can help them do that seamlessly is going to be
really key. And the last is just brands prepping themselves
(14:02):
to evolve with the flow of commerce, making sure that
their brands are showing up and irrelevant at that point
of discovery, which again is converging with the point of commerce.
The world is definitely shifting and cmos have to shift
along with it. I think the first capability that marketers
need is to be well versed in technology. I like
(14:26):
to say that when the marketing experience is invisible, the
product becomes exceptional, and that means that product, marketing, and
tech all need to be working as one. That's a first.
The second is the data. Marketers need to really understand
the nuances of the data, how to structure the data,
(14:50):
and then the applications that sit on top of that,
the ability to kind of how data science and how
all of the modeling works to make sure that they're
brands are showing up at the right moments in the
right places. And then the last is partnerships. I think
that's true for all of us, but especially for marketers.
It's those partnerships that are going to enable them to
(15:13):
be present where the consumers are. Success for Master or
Congresce Media is our customers success. It's going to look
different for every customer, and that is engineered into how
we go to market. We sit down with every customer,
every brand. We understand what their goals, what their objectives are.
Do they want to drive awareness, do they want to
(15:34):
drive frequency recency? Do they want to lift average order values.
Is there a target row as that they want to hit,
and then we are actually setting up the campaigns to
execute across our network to meet those objectives. Doing that
is creating value, and ultimately it's about creating value for
every partner in the value chain. I think that for us,
(15:59):
we can do that that will spell long term sustainable success.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Stay with us. We've got more good insights from CEES
right after this break.
Speaker 7 (16:22):
Hi.
Speaker 6 (16:23):
I'm Jeremy Gorman.
Speaker 8 (16:24):
I'm the chief revenue officer of Fanatics Advertising, and I'm.
Speaker 6 (16:28):
Most excited to see people.
Speaker 8 (16:30):
I've been in this industry for twenty six years and
this feels like a reunion every year. I feel like
the industry is getting back to a place of true
partnership where it went quite transactional for a long time,
a lot of you know.
Speaker 6 (16:43):
Just last click attribution type work.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
And every conversation that I have had so far has
been like, how do we help each other and go
into business together again? And that feels first of all
more fun for everybody, and then secondarily, I think there'll
be a lot of great creative coming out of that.
The two things that I think are most pressing at
are actually antithetical to one another. I think we as
an industry, no surprise, need to embrace AI, but in
(17:06):
a healthy and responsible way where consumers aren't confused about
what is generated by AI. And I think that people
tend to think that that is bad by default, which
it's not. It's efficient and it's effective, but we as
an industry owe the respect to the customers and end
users to use it responsibly, to label it clearly. And
then the other is that the pendulum swinging back to
(17:29):
brand advertising at the same time makes me really happy.
If I were to actually say who the winner is,
I think it's sports. The conversation around sport is incredible,
the way that it brings people together.
Speaker 6 (17:40):
It's really the true last water cooler moment.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
I mean, there were a couple obviously huge winners in
that space in streaming most recently, but nonetheless live sport
is the thing that you don't know the end to
and it's kind of the only one. And seeing advertisers
not only form their own sports division with inside holding companies,
but also the way that people are talking about engaging
with the fan. So not just the industry, but people
(18:04):
are caring very much about how they show up for
the people who love the games.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
As platforms, content and commerce converge.
Speaker 8 (18:13):
I believe that the zeitgeist itself is actually something that
is going to win and again kind of the end
customer in our case, the sports fan or the culture fan.
In other people's cases it's a different kind of fan
or the customer or the shopper as the case maybe,
but as those come together, I think that that is
where people are going to actually find value in advertising.
(18:33):
And we had come from a place where people were like, oh,
I hate ads. I think people are starting to like
advertising again because it is more personalized, because it is
more deliberate, because it can be in the right place.
I have said the words the right ad to the
right person at the right time five thousand times in
a far less raspy voice than this.
Speaker 6 (18:53):
But here we are at CES and this year I
believe that.
Speaker 8 (18:57):
We will be there and continue to iterate upon that
in a way that the end customer is the big winner.
I think the biggest end tapped opportunity is to feed
into the emotion of the fan, particularly around advertising, when
you watch games with people. When you are at a game,
people care so deeply about sports. When you say what
(19:20):
time is X show on? You say, oh, it's on Thursday.
When you say when are the Rams on? We play Sunday,
And it is a wee thing, even if you are
not in a jersey in a helmet, you know, on
the field, et cetera. And to me, I think sitting
at that intersection is extraordinary because what do marketers want
(19:40):
more than to be a part of somebody's like true heart,
which sports absolutely is when you think of what do
people love the most? Their family and then their team,
and we get to help brands reach fans in a
really meaningful way that is not just spots and dots.
That is, of course, it's data backed, and I think
we can do it with precision in a way that
(20:01):
very few other companies can.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Everything is so asynchronous.
Speaker 8 (20:05):
You and I may see the same meme on Instagram reels,
and you might send it to me three weeks from now,
and then yes, it's still funny, but we didn't experience
that at the same time. Same is true of anything
algorithmically served and also most streaming things, and with sports,
everybody's experiencing it at the exact same time.
Speaker 6 (20:23):
They have the exact same emotions. Either elation or depression.
Speaker 8 (20:29):
I think that the ability to experience every something in
real time brings people back to a place where we
all grew up, Like I remember the finale of Mash
of Friends of Family Ties. Then it just doesn't happen
as much anymore. And where it happens is in sports,
and you aren't going to go to a game like
(20:49):
the white Out game with Penn State and Orient that
goes to overtime, where you get half of this incredible
stadium just despondent and the other half of the stadium
in jubilation mode. And that is a really cool thing
to experience as human beings as we get further and
further disconnected from the day to day, so sitting at
the center of that is a true joy. The role
(21:13):
that commerce plays in the fan experience is extraordinary for
a litany of reasons, one of which is that it
immediately puts you in somebody's tribe. My goddaughter, for instance,
went to Alabama, and so four years I had to
pretend to really like Alabama, and every time I wore
something Alabama, somebody would walk by me and say roll Tide.
(21:35):
And that sounds like more than a commerce experience to me,
and it is, but it is the way for somebody
to visually see that you are on their team, that
you have something in common. And one of the hardest
things to do when you're meeting strangers at all is
to find that first point of commonality. And commerce in
fandom does that for you. And we do that at scale, bigger,
(21:58):
better and differently than anyone else one. Because we have
the authentic merchandise, we work directly with the leagues. We'd
have in stadium retail, we do a lot of the
colleges as well, and so when people put their money
forward to buy the authentic thing, they actually care differently,
and that says something about the customer and about how
(22:19):
much their fandom actually is commerce.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
And given the amount of commerce that we do, you can.
Speaker 8 (22:26):
Tell that people are voting with their wallets that their
sports fandom is critically important to their commerce experience. We
launched Fanatics advertising late last year and it has been
truly one of the joys of my lifetime. And I
think one of the things that has been so incredible
is kind of rebuilding this from the ground up, giving
(22:47):
brands the opportunity to participate in ways with fans that
they couldn't necessarily before either, because brands don't want to
guess what team you like, because if they guess incorrectly,
then that actually is a more negative experience.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
Not showing them an add at all.
Speaker 8 (23:01):
So being that definitive source, building an audience extension program
where you can reach the fans that participate across tops, lids, betting,
and gaming collectibles fanatics proper and being able to reach
them in their natural environments with an audience extension product
has been really rewarding. And I love sports and so
(23:22):
to be able to talk about it all day with
brands who love it, and I've spent so much money
and so much time on getting it right and being
able to allow official sponsors to extend their season or
unofficial sponsors who might not be able to afford the
entirety of a league sponsorship to still be able to
reach the fans that they care about really really matters,
and it's been an incredible journey.
Speaker 9 (23:45):
Dan Robbins, global head of Growth and Strategy for PayPal
ads to me, there are two big themes that come
to mind. The first, of course, is AI and the
thing that I'm most interested in is the way that
AI starts to specialize. This was not at CS, but
this week open Ai announced Chat GPT for Health, which
(24:06):
is taking chat GPT and providing a specialized experience that's
just focused on health. I think within advertising, we're going
to start to see similar specialization, and it already exists
a bit, but it's very nascent. The second theme, which
is very close to us at PayPal, is the maturation
of commerce media and the fact that there are now
(24:27):
over two hundred companies that are doing some form of
retail media kind of comes back to the old saying
that everything becomes an ad network. And what we're excited
about as a player that is cross merchant that isn't
just one retailer but works closely with most of the
fortune one thousand brands out there, is the ability to
(24:48):
help take retail media to the next level, and by
that I mean the theme being how do you bring
the partners together, make it easier to buy ads across
all of those plays, and do so in a way
that gives data that's comparable. I think the big area
that AI is underappreciated is the decline in visitation to
(25:13):
retail websites, Specifically most of our retailers are saying that
they are seeing fewer and fewer folks go to their
website to shop, and that's a direct function of the
growth of various different ways you can do research and
shop with AI. It's a big focus for us at
PayPal because we want our merchants and retailers to grow
(25:34):
and be successful. It's one of the reasons that PayPal
ads launch storefront ads, which basically brings the storefront to
the shopper wherever they are. Specifically, imagine you're on a
publisher website, you're reading the news, and in that you
see an ad for a pair of shoes. You can
(25:54):
actually buy those shoes with PayPal in the ad without
ever leaving the publish your website, and when you're done,
you're brought right back to where you were. So it's
a fundamentally endemic experience. And to me, why that's exciting
and also maybe still underappreciated is as fewer people go
to these websites and storefronts, it's going to be vital
(26:18):
to bring the storefront to the shopper. So what commerce
platforms see about buying behaviors before a purchase happens is
actually something that's fundamentally unique to commerce. This week, PayPal
ads announced our Transaction Graph, Insights and Measurement program. What
this is is bringing to bear the best of PayPal
(26:39):
data and insights so that you can understand exactly that
the consumer journey before a purchase. What we're finding is
that the data is cross merchant. It's not just one retailer.
It's covering more than four hundred and thirty million consumers,
two hundred global markets, more than thirty million merchants. The
second thing is that it's the intersection of search, shop,
(27:02):
and social. What we mean by that is it's what
you're looking for, what you're buying, and then how you're
splitting expenses with your friends. Interestingly, what we see when
we pull all of that together is there's a real
increase in the growth of AI and Amazon earlier in
the shopping journey. The shopping journey doesn't end just when
(27:23):
you buy something, because there is the social or payback
component after So the number one emoji used on Venmo
is the pizza emoji, and that's because people share the
things that they buy. And to me, we've just scratched
the surface of this because it's an expansion of that
traditional funnel, and I think for the marketer of the
(27:45):
future that's going to be really important in commerce. I
think there's three key things in twenty twenty six that
brand marketers can focus on within commerce that will give
them a leg up. Number one, laser focus on the
Amazon on an AI shopper, particularly AI still nascent, but
it's growing quite quickly in our data and being able
(28:06):
to get ahead of that shopper journey. The second thing
bringing the storefront to the shopper. If you're seeing fewer
people going to your dot com or going to your app,
bring that payment flow outside of your own surface and
then to me. The third thing is the money moment
(28:27):
is really valuable and I think still underappreciated. When you
think about when people are actually buying something, when they're
looking at their balances, when they're sending money to friends
or to family members across borders. There's a real real
focus on commerce behavior and mentality. In that instant you
are thinking about how you spend money, what you want
(28:49):
to buy, what you have purchased, and I don't think
historically brands have realized how big a moment that can
be to win mind share as well as wallet share,
and those three things the Amazon AI shopper, expanding the storefront,
owning that money moment huge opportunities. PayPal thinks a lot
(29:12):
about small businesses and how it impacts growth. As I
mentioned earlier, more than thirty million merchants work with PayPal,
and of course a majority of those are small and
medium sized businesses. Earlier this year, we announced the launch
of PayPal Ads Manager, which helps those small businesses grow
in two fundamental ways, the first earning more money, and
(29:32):
then the second is growing their customer base. That's fundamentally
unique in the SMB ADS world because if you think
about most ads offerings, you need to spend money, you
acquire customers, you hope, you grow, you put more money in.
What's different here is you earn money before you start
doing anything. What we mean by that is we're actually
(29:54):
enabling our small and medium sized businesses to put ads
in their checkout flow without doing any heavy lifting on
the technical side. That all sits within the PayPal Merchant portal,
which is where so many small businesses go to operate
their business, whether it's money, payments, invoicing, and so much more.
(30:15):
I'm really excited about this because If there's one thing
that makes advertising easy for small businesses, it's for it
to live where they already do their business. To have
to go and open something different, learn a new platform,
test it out. Most businesses just don't have the time,
the money, the resources to do it, and so we're
(30:37):
really focused on driving profitability and growth in the existing workflow.
There's a lot of things I'm excited about for PayPal Ads.
You know, we're a little over a year into our
business and the vision is to help brands and to
help merchants earn more and make more. And we're going
to continue to expand our ads on our platform, adds
(31:00):
off our platforms, helping transition the growth to agentic commerce,
bringing our data and our insights forward to brands, agencies,
and merchants so that they can be smarter, and ultimately
making commerce media easier for the industry.
Speaker 7 (31:19):
H I am Bethany ebnerm VP, Head of Global Business
Marketing at FANDOM. This is my second CEES in person.
When I think about CS twenty twenty six and what
I was really looking forward to most, it really is
about people. It is the industry and colleagues, colleagues of
(31:39):
the past, people who have kind of grown up with
in this industry, and to me, it's that human connection
and that's what it's about. It has been proven over
and over again fandom is a new marketing channel and
fan moments they are the new currency. And I have
not seen a lot about that, and perhaps I just
haven't looked, but I know that's something that we feel
(32:01):
powerful about at fandom and I think it's something that
is key and will kind of set the trend for
the year. I think that active fandom, meaning true passion
over whether it be a show, a movie, an ip
a sport, that is something that we need to really
(32:23):
look at as an industry and measure more accurately. It's
not just about engagement, it's about true, active participation. When
we look back at this moment in time, I think
what's really going to define this era of change is
the idea of trust as a default. We assume, or
(32:45):
we have assumed, especially as marketers, that consumers are going
to trust what we say is true. They're going to
like the product, they're going to buy the thing, they're
going to relate to whatever it is, whatever message we
are delivering. Guess what that's not true? Trust is something
that needs to be earged. It has to be done
over time in a really authentic and I really hate
(33:09):
that word, but it's true, in a really honest way.
That is the only way to really break through in
this world, in this era, in this marketplace, brands really
do need to earn the opportunity to participate. And so,
especially when it comes to fandoms, you cannot just come
(33:30):
in as a brand and assume that your message will resonate.
You have to educate yourself on those fandoms. What makes
those fans tick, what's important to them, what drives them,
and you really need to become one of them in
order to resonate with the modern day fan. There's a
very distinct difference between fandom and audience. Fandom is about passion.
(33:55):
Audience is about being passive. You are passively engaged in
something you are watching. You maybe half paying attention. Yes
you've been recorded as being part of that experience. But fandom,
that is when you live and breathe it. It's how
you identify. It is kind of what drives you. And
(34:15):
that's the big difference. I think that brands that are
taking the time to understand the fans they want to
reach and are able to really communicate in that language
and create that connection. Those are the ones that are
doing it right. So that's when they are truly able
(34:38):
to connect with fans and create that kind of two
way relationships. So an example would be a brand who
leans into a specific character. They understand that that character
is trending or that character is beloved, and they partner
with that character. That's a good way do it. Offering
(35:01):
maybe behind the scenes footage, sneak peeks, offering different experiences
related to those fandoms that above and beyond what the
fan would receive and enabled by a brand, that is
the best way to kind of get at the heart
of fans and kind of pull at their heartstrings. I
(35:24):
think the fandoms influence purchasing decisions in unexpected ways because
it is incredibly powerful how the right connection between a
fan and a brand can drive true ROI. So I
think it's not necessarily intentional, but if a brand kind
(35:45):
of comes in and builds that connection with fans, that
fan unintentionally is going to support that brand. It's subconscious, right.
I believe that eighty nine percent of fans generally prefer
a brand that supports the fandom that they love. So
(36:05):
it's unexpected in ways that the fans don't even realize
that they have this bias towards this product. But because
they have that relationship and that understanding that that brand
or product loves and supports their fandom, they support them.
And I think that's the beauty of epic fan marketing.
(36:30):
When I think about twenty twenty six, I think about
fan strategies and this kind of new concept that every
brand out there has to have a fan strategy. It's
not as simple as kind of just demos and hoping
your message resonate. It's really leaning into these fandoms and
(36:53):
these communities that drive pop culture and connecting with them
and building a strategy around that. I'm proud to say
that we at Fandom have made it really easy. We've
created the fandom formula and it's a proven playbook for
a brand to help find their fan strategy.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
We're going to take a pause for a moment, and
when we return, we've got more CEES takeaways for you.
Speaker 10 (37:27):
Hi, this is Jeff Lucas CRO two B and this
is my tenth CS the Top Themes for twenty twenty
six and CEES is the growth of CTV, the application
of AI, you know agentic AI two systems, and also
to agents, and then I think we have to look
at commerce because commerce is playing such a big part,
(37:49):
and it's really about retail media networks and instant commerce.
They've been around for a while, tael media networks, and
they've been doing great, and there's so many of them,
but we have to see how they interact with CTV,
and I think that's the biggest new angle of it.
One intention for twenty twenty six is to really concentrate
on predictive outcomes. We want to make sure that our
(38:12):
clients feel that they're receiving the value that they're looking for.
We take every dollar they spend as an investment, and
we really want to make sure that that predictive outcome
works for them ahead of time, so they know exactly
what they're getting. I think you always have to stand
behind what you promised and deliver, and I think that
predictive outcomes is a big part of that. With AI,
(38:35):
it's more about the opportunity. It's really about taking AI
down to the fundamentals and really looking at personalization and
really serving relevant content and adds to the user and
to the viewer. And it's important that when we do that,
we're always looking at what is best, what's the best
value for time because it's all about tentiveness, so they're
(38:56):
investing their time. We do want to make sure they
see the right content. We want to make sure they
see the right ads. What will define the biggest change
is I think when we look at the death of
the monoculture and Anjulie will say that a lot of
our CEO, but I think it's so true because when
you look at two B to Be is made up
of three hundred thousand pieces of content. But it's really
about fandoms and who's to say what people should be saying.
(39:20):
People should be choosing the viewers should be choosing what
they want to say. There is definitely a shift in
the landscape on what defines a hit. Everyone's trying to
tell younger audiences what the hit should be, but fandom
really dictates the hits.
Speaker 6 (39:37):
It's personal to them.
Speaker 10 (39:39):
Audiences are dictating the formats that they like, and they're
dictating the quality of what they like. But it's really
about you know, fandoms. They're a key Everything is competing
for attention. I mean everything that someone does, and we
know that, you know, we look at where one hundred
percent free AT's part, which is something that we say
(40:01):
we think all entertainment should be that way because we
want to basically open up our platform to as many
people as possible, and if we can give them the
fandoms that they want, or in a creator point of view,
creators bring their fans with them, we think that we
can win in terms of attention because we're developing what
they want to see. That's what really drives this audience,
(40:25):
this young gen Z millennium multicultural audience to the platform
and that they want to go down the rabbit hole,
as we say, they want to find the content that
they want. And I think on top of all the
different fandoms that are offered, I think bringing that creator
side in was the most important because that's in addition
(40:45):
to EVAT is built to have creator on it, because
a lot of people think that creator has to be
these short hits, these short bites, and it doesn't. It
can be a longer piece of content. And I think
if you are invested in the creator and what they do,
you're going to follow them onto different platforms to see
what else they're going to do. You know, we had
Noaeback who has forty million followers. We put him into
(41:08):
a movie about a love story, you know, coming of age,
which is a fandom. Bring him in and he who
knew he's a great actor. He acts really well. But
we get five million gen Z millennials right there. The
first five days and the sequel to Sidelines one had
an impressive growth. Two B is using AI in multiple ways.
(41:33):
It's using it with personalization of content, It's using it
with you know, personalization of ads. We also use it
to work smarter across the business internally and more broadly.
Speaker 6 (41:45):
We think AI.
Speaker 10 (41:46):
Really democratizes the creation of content. And when it does that,
it's allowing for more people to create content, more creators
to come to the platform, bring more fans with them,
more fandoms, and it just feeds right into how two
BE is built. Successful advertisers on the two B platformers
reaching a totally incremental audience. You're reaching a young, multicultural audience.
(42:09):
They are gen Z, they're millennial, hard to find, hard
to reach anywhere. Sixty nine percent of them are court cutters,
court numbers. Eighty percent don't have cable. Okay, This is
a very unique incremental audience and probably about seventy percent
can't be found on other streamers, So that is a
win for any advertiser. You're not going to find this
(42:30):
audience in many other places. Brands still underestimate the entertainment
consumption habits of gen Z and they think they only
prefer short form content. No way that that is not true.
Research shows the migration of millennials and gen Z are
moving to longer form content. So you're reaching these are
(42:51):
audience types that are not being reached on other streamers,
and not being reached in broadcasts, and or not being
reached in cable. What excites me most about our streaming
is headed is really how AVOD is blossoming. Avod is
becoming bigger and bigger. One hundred percent free ad support.
It is the way to go. And we're not saying
that the viewers are saying that. I think that when
(43:13):
you look at the value that an advertiser is getting
on the platform. When we talked about the incremental audience,
but we're also talking I mean avid is stop start
whenever you want. It's about the lowest commercial ad looked
in streaming, and I think it's it's very important as
we move forward. What excites me even more is that
it's going to keep growing and if you really look
(43:36):
at avod is growing at a faster clip than any
of the subscription services. So I just think the future
is very right for TV.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
We've heard a range of perspectives today, so before we wrap,
I asked each of them to step back and describe
CEES in just one word.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
Huge, brimming, exhausting, educational, pure chaos and this I want
to go dialogue.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
I'm Michael Kassan. Thanks for listening to Good Company.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Good Company is brought to you by Three C Ventures
in iHeart Podcasts. Special thanks to Alexis Borger Purdo, our
executive producer and head of Content and Talent, and to
Carl Catle, executive producer at iHeart Podcasts. Episodes are produced
and edited by Mary Doo. Thanks for joining us. We'll
see you next time.
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