[Top Agency Series] How To Make the Most Of OTT/CTV Advertising With Todd Porch

Todd Porch is the President of Strategus, the leading Connected TV/Over-the-Top managed service provider recognized on the Inc. 5000 list as one of the fastest-growing companies in the US for five consecutive years. As an innovation leader in data-driven CTV advertising, Strategus provides a full suite of managed services, including attribution, targeting, optimization, reporting, and analysis.

Todd is a senior executive with proven results in leading businesses at all levels of growth. He has worked at well-known organizations, including Effectv, Comcast Technology Solutions, Yahoo!, and Sprint. Currently, he serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Denver in the Executive MBA Program, teaching strategy and leadership.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:47] Todd Porch talks about Strategus and what it does 
• [06:40] A case study of how Strategus helps its clients 
• [11:44] What online radio does Strategus serve? 
• [13:30] How Strategus does targeting from a radio and TV perspective
• [15:44] Todd shares his career background working with Sprint, Mark Cuban Companies, and Strategus
• [20:19] Why he transitioned from the corporate to a startup environment 
• [23:54] Lessons learned from Yahoo! Acquisition process
• [29:27] The growth strategies for Strategus
• [35:52] What attracted Todd to go work with Strategus

In this episode…

Do you need help with the ROI of your advertisements? What’s the best channel to leverage, and where can you get the support you need to reach the right audience? 

Almost every household has a TV. According to digital media executive Todd Porch, marketers should leverage this medium to advertise their brands. He recommends partnering with experts who can help them navigate the complex over-the-top and connected TV ecosystem and drive campaign strategy, efficiency, and performance.

In this inspiring episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz welcomes Todd Porch, President of Strategus, to discuss how they help marketers with OTT/CTV advertising. Todd talks about Strategus and what it does, a case study of how it helps its clients, how it does targeting from a radio and TV perspective, and its growth strategies.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Todd Porch on LinkedIn
• Strategus

Special Mention(s):

• David Miles on LinkedIn
• Joel Cox on LinkedIn
• Sprint
• Mark Cuban Companies

Podcast(s) Mentioned:

• Second Bite Podcast

Book(s) Mentioned: 

• The Great Game of Business: The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company by Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham
• The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company by Stephen Drotter, Ram Charan, James L. Noel
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins, Jerry I Porras
• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman
• Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord

Related episode(s):

• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on Inspired Insider
• “[One Question] Building a Platform to Empower Others with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on Inspired Insider
• “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on Inspired Insider
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on Inspired Insider 
• “[Top Agency Series] Expanding Your Brand Impact Through Social With Duncan Alney of Firebelly Marketing” on Inspired Insider

Episode Transcript

 Intro  0:15 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz  0:23 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. We have Todd Porch of Strategus and Todd before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes people should check out of the podcast. And since this is part of the top agency series, I did two interviews with Jason Swenk. Jason Swenk, built his agency up to over eight figures sold it, and then he started new business, purchasing agencies. So both of those are great. Todd Taskey is another good one. He also has a Second Bite Podcast, where he talks about how he pairs private equity with agencies and they sometimes make more on the second bite than they do on the first through selling. And Duncan Alney of Firebelly Marketing we’re gonna talk about, you know, strategist has a lot of solutions for agencies. And one of those solutions is for food and beverage companies, agencies serving food and beverage companies. So Duncan, they specialize in food and beverage companies at Firebelly. Marketing. So I’m going to tell him to check out what you guys do. Todd at Strategus, and this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help people give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that we actually help you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast we do accountability Strategy, and the full execution and full production of the podcasts we call ourselves. Sometimes the magic elves that work behind the scenes, I have a feeling, Todd and their company also are sometimes the magic elves that work behind the scenes for search for the TV, radio and online advertising. And for me Todd, the number one on my things in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to do that. And then profile the people and companies I most admire and share what they’re working on over the past decade. So you have questions, go to rise25.com If you thought about podcasting, you definitely should. So without further ado, Todd Porch serves as president Strategus and Strategus and Todd to do a better job explaining but it’s a connected TV managed service provider. So when you turn on your TV, and there’s all of those, YouTube TV, Hulu, like ever, I think I subscribed to like seven different ones, not HBO Max all of them. So Strategus just served the first programmatic connected TV ad campaign back in 2015. And is one of the only pure-play CTV services, connected TV services companies out there and Strategy has been recognized on the Inc 5000 list is one of the fastest growing companies in the US for five consecutive years. It’s hard to do a one year and then two years. It’s amazing the growth that you have had there. To do it five consecutive years, Todd serves as adjunct professor at the University of Denver in the Executive MBA Program teaching Strategy and leadership and his background goes way back. I’m not going to date you too much today, but goes way back in internet days, back to 1999 at Yahoo. So he’s very early in Internet and Internet world. He also was at Sprint into Mark Cuban company. So Todd, thanks for joining me.

Todd Porch  3:36 

Hey, Jeremy, great to be here. Thank you for the invite.

Jeremy Weisz  3:40 

So I really want to dig into your background. But first just tell people a little about Strategus and what you do.

Todd Porch  3:47 

Look, Strategus Jeremy was a company that was founded in 2015. for all intensive purposes in as you stated, as the pioneer in the connected TV space by serving the first programmatic, the first programmatic, connected TV ad campaign. We did that for a large automotive company, we still actually work with that company today. So long-standing customer of ours. We aspire to be the managed service company that all others are measured by and that wears a number of different costumes. We continue to assert ourselves as the kind of industry-leading managed service provider granting access to Americans living rooms and through their largest digital devices. We’re a TV-centric data-driven entity and we start on the living room TV and continue to engage audiences across every device that they own. We acknowledge kind of vast complexity and fragmentation, in a breakneck pace of change in this industry, we’re continuing to curate an ad tech stack of kind of Best In Breed data, inventory and measurement products to deliver this inventory and campaign strategies and solutions for both agencies and direct clients. So we love what we do. We’re fast and nimble. Oftentimes, we say it’s better to be fast than big. So we take a ton of pride in really providing solutions for our customers that allow differentiation from the vast array of outlets that you can buy connected television inventory from, I kid all the time. I mean, CTV inventory is like, hot dogs on corners, you can buy him in every big city, you can find them everywhere. So we have a what we think is a cocktail of differentiation, that we deliver and execute very well for our clients. And that’s why we continue to grow year over year, as you mentioned for the past six or seven years,

Jeremy Weisz  6:16 

I want to talk about some case studies for a second. So people kind of understand a little bit. So take, for example, there’s an agency that serves the legal fields, whether it’s personal injury, or whatever it is agency would come to you and you would be a partner with them. And talk about maybe an example in the legal industry.

Todd Porch  6:40 

So, let me just kind of explain our process. Because we’re a small and nimble shop, we have the capability and the openness to…

Jeremy Weisz  6:52 

Small is always relative. I don’t know if you consider it small, but yes, go…

Todd Porch  6:58 

We would say it has been a successful approach for us is, from an agency standpoint, it’s important that the agency understand that we’re not trying to do their job for them. We are happy to stand beside the agency and lock arms with them, and be their de facto connected television solution provider, or will stand behind the curtain and provide them with the ability and enable them with the ability to go execute under their brand. So we’ve done it both ways. We continue to do it both ways. And that’s part of our strategy. Yeah, ultimately, we want to continue to provide the value differentiation, for connected television in particular, as an element across the digital landscape for a marketer. Right. So we would, depending upon the goals and objectives of the campaign, typically what we would do is sit down with faction of our team, both from our r&d for our Strategus labs group, from our account management group that ultimately has seen kind of both the front end from a Strategy perspective and the back end from an execution perspective, I always call those people on my team, the voice of reason, because they know what works and they know how to optimize it, and they know how to manage those campaigns on a daily basis and in one of our solution provider, one of our account executives, so we get that Strategy team together to listen to the needs and objectives of the agency or the client, and then we ideate with them with our portfolio right of solutions. And the portfolio of solutions that Strategus offers isn’t just a host of off-the-shelf products. We leveraged the data that we’ve collected the proprietary data that we’ve collected over the last seven years. And we leverage that data in a host of different ways. So from a whether it be from an attribution perspective, whether it be from a strategy perspective, whether it be from an audience building perspective, we have oodles of data that we can leverage to come back and say and provide a suggestion or a recommendation for how the audience should be identified, how it should be accessed, what should be measured, and this didn’t matter whether you’re a legal client or whether you’re a CPG client or whether you’re a travel and entertainment client, these are principles and factors that kind of agnostic to the business. But we do have, you know, we’ve got case studies industry-specific, whether it be in education or health care or home services or automotive, you know, any one of those, we have the capability to kind of dig in and showcase how we’ve delivered results historically, for our clients. I think it’s important to know and you mentioned this in the intro, that we’re a pure play CTV provider. A lot of times from an agency perspective, they’re looking across the entire digital ecosystem to provide those solutions. And we very intentionally and deliberately have made the decision that we want to be really good in the CTV space, we want to be the best in the business in the CTV space, and let others chase after the elements of the rest of the ecosystem. That’s uncommon from an agency perspective to provide but better to go deep than to go to be a mile wide and an HD.

Jeremy Weisz  6:59  

You do, Todd, online TV, an online radio, too, right?

Todd Porch  10:57 

We do have a an audio solution. That’s correct.

Jeremy Weisz  11:03 

So like, as an example, in the TV world, like that’s, I’ll just bring it up on the screen, you know, you have YouTube TV, you have Hulu, you have HBO Max, you have all the online TV solutions, you can see there, what are some examples of the online radio that you serve up?

Todd Porch  11:44 

Look, wherever there is audio, you know, from a programmatic perspective, we curate really, premium inventory. Now premium is a very interesting word these days, because really premium is in the eye of the beholder, if I can identify some used to be by a position and a placement on a particular show, network, web webpage, etc. In the programmatic world, what we’re trying to do, what we’re doing is we’re identifying that audience where they are, and in that regard, it makes them premium, because if I can get to your prospect, in an audience in a spot that isn’t necessarily intuitive, that becomes a very premium place to do that. Now, programmatically, we’re curating inventory from all over the place, right? Whether it be video, which is your primary medium, but also from an audio perspective, podcasts, etc. Online streaming, audio programming, we are placing ads across the entire landscape of both audio and video.

Jeremy Weisz  13:05 

So how targeted can you get with that? Because I know, you serve even local restaurants even so like, from a radio and TV prospective, it seems like you can do a lot of different things, even from a targeted solution, location wise, and what are the other ways you can target with it?

Todd Porch  13:30 

Well, really, Jeremy what we do, we have built a proprietary identity graph, and that becomes the engine by which all of that targeting kind of comes from, that’s our data from the last eight years. That is your data from the campaign’s that we’re currently running, that is data that comes from other entities that we put into our graph, and it allows us to slice and dice and come up with and build those audiences in a very proprietary way. That allows us to get down to frankly the very minute level of targeting capabilities right.

Jeremy Weisz  14:19 

Like can you do retargeting so like if they hit the website and you serve them up on so watching like ESPN or something?

Todd Porch  14:27 

Sure, we call that our encore product. So you know, we could serve you an ad on Tuesday on your big screen in your, in your living room for an automotive client. And then I can follow that up on Thursday on one of your devices. And then I could follow it up again, if you clicked on Friday, and then I could follow your footsteps onto a car lot on site. had her day and I can connect all of those dots to create a level of attribution that is hard to come by in other mediums.

Jeremy Weisz  15:10 

I love it because it’s gives so many ideas. It’s super powerful. someone’s like, hey, wait, I just was watching the basketball game and I saw Rise 25 on the screen.

Todd Porch  15:21 

Exactly. Cool.