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Your guided tour of the world of growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, marketing, and life.
Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and have some fun talking about data-driven growth and lessons learned!
Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your
host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance
marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing.
We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth,
marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door,
and have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned.
Hello, and welcome to the next episode of the Always Be Testing
podcast. I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and I am really thrilled to
have with us today Dominic Williamson. What's up, Dom? Hi. Hi, Ty.
Good to reconnect. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm glad to have you. And and so thanks for
joining us. I'm, I'm here in Austin, Texas. It's a exciting week
here. We have f one coming into town. We have a
marketing land event here tomorrow, and then there's an all in
podcast hundred and fiftieth episode gathering in in town. So there's,
like, all kinds of fun little things popping up. I actually as I walked into this,
episode, Bill Gurley, I heard his voice, while they're doing startup pitches here at the
Capital Factory in Austin. And I my ears perked up. I'm like, wait a second. Is that Bill
Gurley? And it and it was. So we're he's just about twenty
yards away for the startup fanboys out there. Sounds fun. I'm in San
Francisco. I don't think there's quite as much going on this weekend, but, it's,
it's it's very this is the nicest time of year from from a weather perspective. I know you you were here
before, but, yeah, you you kind of, during the summer, it's cold, and then now now
it's unseasonably warm, so it's it's nice. I love it. Yeah. It's a great time to be in the Bay
Area, for sure. It looks like it's been beautiful. Well, I'm super excited to dive
in with Dominic today. He's such a seasoned analytics pro.
So you and I were on the same team, larger team in Internet marketing at
eBay, and you've led strategy and analytics for Facebook,
for FanDuel, for Compass, for Instacart, like, an insanely
awesome resume, and very accomplished. So amazing to you and
excited to just dive into all the all the fun data things, today.
Cool. Looking forward to it. Absolutely, man. Well, cool. Like, maybe
super basic level, when you kind of break down what you do in
strategy and analytics, like, how would you kind of just describe it to a fifth
grader at a basic level? Well, my son is a fifth grader, so this is not, not
entirely theoretical. I essentially look at the spend when, when people spend on
marketing and and advertising, media in particular, I investigate that with different
techniques to understand whether or not it was worth it. And then the step beyond that is
to make that investment better. So where are the areas where we could invest more? Where could we invest less? And then within each
of those channels, how can we do better? So it's really making sure that the money that people spend on
marketing is as effective as possible. And it's it's but it's mostly from that objective viewpoint. It
It always sits somewhere between finance and marketing to to say, well, here's the money. Here's how you spent
it. Was that a good idea? Where else can we spend it? Yeah. That's really interesting. This
is such a such a great one. What are some of the big, maybe, learnings
you've you've had? And you don't have to necessarily name the exact name, but, like, what are some
of the course corrections you've seen at maybe the macro level? Or what are some of the,
suggestions or recommendations that have come out of those, hey. Was this spend
valuable or not? Yeah. I think some of it won't come as a surprise to you at all. I I
think the big piece was, and this is not a secret, but but at eBay
doing geo level targeting to understand what the impact was. The struggle that you
have with attribution is that it's so nice and convenient, and it gives you exact numbers. And you can look at them every
week, and you can draw charts, and and you can present your reports. But the
underlying question of, well, what is this really showing us is the one that I think testing
is is the answer to. And I think, as you know, testing is key to
understanding all of these the the true incremental impact of everything. And I do think
geotesting at eBay was a was a really big starting point. And I think at the time, it was very new for the
industry as well, the idea of looking at something that had been traditionally measured through last click
and and pretty much last click alone and taking it from an entirely separate angle, which essentially
ignores all of that information and says, well, what about these geos versus these geos? What's the difference
there? So I think that was a a really big piece in understanding that things could be
done in a different way from a measurement perspective, but then also, obviously, in an operational way. I think, it
was the asset test of whether or not spend was operate was as effective as we thought it
was, and and that was a a great learning there. And I know that's it's in the public domain now, the
the geo level tests. Steve to Davis and and team published that. So it's it's one that I
think I do see on occasion still being brought up. But I think the the whole industry has moved on from that now. That
was the great first step, and then everything else has been building on since then. But I think that was
the the first real eye opener, I think, was that. Yeah. You were kind of part of that pioneering
wave, to be candid. And I think it's something a testament to you and a lot of your
teammates and the contributions you've made. If you don't mind, like, for folks that are maybe
less a couple steps removed from some of these incrementality tests and the
measurement of marketing and seeing if it is valuable or not. Is it safe to say
that the geo level test is a type of holdout test? Is that correct?
It's a type of holdout test. And the nice thing about it is that it's also just a campaign that
happens to be on in a certain geo. So in that sense, it's very transparent and
intuitive for people. And it's a it's a great way to introduce testing because
everyone understands this idea of, well, if this geo is on and this geo is off, I should expect to
see an impact at the geo level. So, yes, it's it's it's kind of like a user level holdout
if if the users were geos rather than people. And then, obviously, that comes with its drawback as well
because there's a lot more noise when you only have two or I mean, two hundred geos that that you can be using in
the US, but that's a lot less than the millions of of users that you might have. So it it loses
something in in terms of readability, but it gains a lot in terms of intuitiveness and
also just being able to operate against it. You can't actually always operate against the user level because
you don't always know exactly who everyone is and who's seeing what. You usually do know where they
are, and so it does make it easier to to kind of execute. So as a rule,
I would always prefer to do a user level holdout test, because you just you control for the
most things there. But in practice, geo level tests are really helpful and and often the only
option for for some of these things. But, yes, to answer your question, it's a holdout test. The the holdout
is is an area rather than a set of people. Well, it is a set of people, but it's a set of people in in its own
area. And for those not aware, it helps evaluate if there was
a a measurable lift in the geo that received the ad versus not. And
so, therefore, the brand can go, well, this worked or didn't, generally. Correct?
Exactly. So you have your you have your let's say you're you're using the US. You
target a certain portion of the US, and and maybe it's at state level, maybe it's at DMA
level, and DMA being kind of the the smallest level that you can execute a TV campaign.
And maybe it's at those levels where you split them up and you say, these people will see it, these people won't, and you expect to
see a lift in the area that that did see it. So it's a it's a great way
of doing a test on the sly because you could just call it a geocampaign.
The difference between it and an actual geocampaign is that you want to, as as much as possible,
randomly select you at geos rather than select the select New York and
San Francisco and LA because they're the big ones, because that's that's going to skew it. But, yeah, it's
it's a nice way of of working with a team, a marketing team in particular
to to ensure measurement, but but not make it measurement first, let's say.
Interesting. That makes sense. And then you're you're am I correct to assume you're kind of
selecting geos that have characteristic similarities? How do you make sure that those
aren't skewed to your New York point earlier? Yeah. There are different ways. So in
theory, you want to randomly take, you got two hundred DMAs, let's say, you want to
randomly split them in half and use them. In practice, that doesn't really work because there are so few of them
that you rarely get a great match that way. So you have to do a bit of it. It's called, you can
use stratified samples. So you can say, well, these here's a group of kind of tier one and here's tier two and here's tier
three and then kind of randomly sample within that to make sure that you do get a good selection. You're
often working with, with the agency or if you are working with an agent, but you're often working with the
buyers to say, what can we actually do? It's not always possible. And that can
sometimes I'm I'm thinking more from a TV perspective right now, but that can sometimes
impact. It's where they say, well, we've only got inventory in these five places. Like, this is gonna work. And
there's always, I think, a a line between doing something because it's a
a practical thing to do and doing something for for the purposes of measurement later. And
and that's I think part of my role is to make sure that we're not just forcing it into
a measurement structure that that actually makes it less effective, but but we can find that happy medium
between the both where we're spending. We're we're investing wisely from
a how big an impact can we have point of view, but we're also doing it in a way that that's measurable.
The geos is a big question there because a national campaign can on TV again,
can cost about the same as seventy percent of the country. So if you're doing a thirty percent holdout, you're just losing
thirty percent of your reach. And so you have to kind of get that right balance of, do I
need to measure this? Do I want it to have as big a bang as possible picking the right path? And
it's not, you can't walk both paths simultaneously. You can't have as big an impact as
possible and as measurable an impact as possible at the same time. So how do you structure it to make sure it's
the right place? I love that sentiment because I think oftentimes brands and marketers
get really ahead of their skis and excited about Mhmm. We're gonna go really
ten out of ten on attribution and incrementality, and they don't always
recognize, like, what is the cost of that in media, in hours,
in in time, in limiting that reach a little bit. Right. And then to your
point, is that investment actually giving them the long
term and short term return that they're asking and wanting? For example, if it's a product
launch, do you need a holdout? Are you going to do this ever again? Do you need to understand
and replicate? That so you might not wanna hold out at all in that situation. But but, conversely, if you're doing
something where you think I'm I'm gonna keep doing this every three months for the next three
years, I should know what what it's really doing, and I should have a better read of of how much return I'm
getting. So I think I think those strategic questions need to be answered first before you then design, how do
I actually execute this? I love that. You kinda reference TV, you know, a fair
amount in that, you know, example. Do you find that when you're
kind of counseling with performance marketing teams that maybe other channels
are similar in their ability to do those types of holdouts and lift tests.
And I'd be curious to hear what channels you like to like to do that with and
which ones might be more difficult. Other channels are usually better. The reason I keep mentioning TV
is is it's pretty much your only option. If you if you are doing TV and you want to hold out, geo is pretty much your
only option. I think with other channels, you get more flexibility in terms of what you can do.
Every digital channel generally gives you the option to to have a geo targeting and therefore
geo holdout. And often, there's no real cost in terms of, loss efficiency
if you do geo target. So the the seventy percent I mentioned before is really for TV. If you do that
in in digital targeting, it tends not to be an issue. So, so, yeah, I I think other
channels lend themselves even more to this type of measurement. Mhmm. There can be a struggle
in every channel of individual user level targeting holdouts
because you need to have a very clear, consistent view of who is who.
And that's easier to do if it's which geo is which geo versus which individual is which individual.
But obviously, it is possible, but it's just it's just harder. So it it depends
on on the channel, but I would say every digital channel lends itself to to geo
testing, and and a lot of them lend themselves to user level testing really well as well. That's awesome.
I have to bring it back to the fifth grade kinda macro case,
here. Is that your would be your son in this case, you mentioned? Do you have a Yeah. Fifth grader?
He's at school right now, so I can't bring him in to to give his view of what I do. But, but
yeah. On the next episode, I think. Yeah. I don't know. He'll be he'll be taking
people's jobs soon, the next generation. Hopefully, that's one way
traffic economically right now, so I hope you get to know.
So for the fifth grade perspective, when you're when you does the question ever come up,
does marketing work? And so, obviously, it's a very blanket question, and it's one that, you
know, you're kind of at the core asking yourself and your colleagues. But most
often, does it seem to be working, or are you kind of like, don't don't do it?
It definitely works. And if if work is means do people buy things
more because you have marketed them? No no doubt that that is true. Does it work well enough to
justify the investment? That's the real question. Right? That's the crux of the question, and that varies
a lot. There's the classic quote, right, that that half of my marketing dollars work and I know which
half. I think now we we understand which half better than we
ever did before, or at least we're we're certainly building out that that understanding a lot better. I
would say that a lot of marketing spend is is not driving as much
response as the cost of that spend. I think that that's fair. I think there are
broader impacts of marketing as well. So in terms of brand building, there is that
kind of nebulous impact that that could be there for the future too. But I do think people could
almost invariably be more efficient with their marketing spend. And, and I think there's there's
a real push to make sure that happens. And I think it's certainly growing as a
in terms of maturity, people's ability to to spend the the dollar in the place that does
give them the right return is is improving. Yeah. I I love that, and I would say that we share
that enthusiasm. I I there's very few brand advertiser campaigns
in our world of performance marketing where I'm not really excited to look under the
hood with my colleagues and go. How can we save you money? How can we think about
ways to spend the same or less and get the same result? Mhmm. Or conversely, if you're in growth
mode, how do we scale up to spend thirty percent more
and get eighty percent more value? So I think that's the fun of
what we get to do. And and while there's creativity involved in that, obviously, there's a lot of
data and analytical work that you and your team are very steeped in that that is at the core of what
you do. Maybe a transition with that, does marketing work?
Like, what are some of the myths that you find in analytics in your field and
that, you know, maybe even, like, your trained colleagues might come up against every once in a while? What are
some of the things that you wanna debunk for the audience today? I think there are
certain hand wavy pieces that that always end up with us erring
on the side of being generous. And so by that, I mean, there's people will say, well,
the the rising tide floats all boats. So maybe this has impacts on on other things, which I just
mentioned as well. I get I think it it is genuine, but at the same time, I think we have to quantify
that because, otherwise, we have a tendency to just use it as a as this theoretical
extra value that that's never been captured but somehow makes everything justified. I think you see that
particularly with brand campaigns as well where we say, well, look. We didn't see it. We didn't see the sales right now,
but maybe there is this long term impact further down the road. Maybe there is, but but we
should we shouldn't assume that there is. Right? We should we should get to a place where we understand how
that works. And I get that it's hard, obviously, that the longer an impact takes to manifest, the
harder it will be to measure. But we can't just make the assumption that it did. Right? Then then you
always on the side of overinvestment if that's your assumption. And and so you essentially
skew it so you're always always getting it wrong. That, kinda reminds me of the old
saying that hope is not a strategy. Right. It's a good, reminder. But the thing is I think
it's fair I don't think it's unfair to say, well, this model doesn't capture the the longer
term impacts. Right? I don't think that's untrue. We can't assume that that
that that kind of mystery extra bonus impact is somehow always enough to
justify the investment. So I I think that's the point is that they there is a
tendency because you have you as the individual, not you know, depending
on your role, but you you buy media from someone. You want that media to have been as effective as possible. You
inevitably kind of towards this generous view of the response. And that
mindset is, I think, the problem, and and changing that mindset, shall we say, is the opportunity.
Because if you go out there and say, I don't want these results to show me that everything I
did was great. Because if I do, where do I go from there? I want them to show me that these three things didn't work
for me because then I can improve. Then I can then I can find opportunities to invest elsewhere,
then I can find more efficiencies. But the your kind of natural inclination as a human being
is to say, I just spent all this money. It must have been effective. Let's hope it's effective. And and
so if you can create a a framework where you work, where
you're actually looking to find places that you spend in the wrong place,
the ineffectively. And you're kind of you're happy to find those things, and you're those are the
opportunities. If you could switch it to that mindset, then I think that's where you're gonna get the growth and and the
efficiency gains. I love that. It's like, there's kind of, like, the the psychological
concept of growth mindset, but you're essentially saying if you apply those
principles in an analytical way to your view of
analytics and strategy and is marketing performing, you're kind of welcoming
in that healthy scientific criticism. And I think that that sounds like a really
awesome way to be thinking about your marketing. There's always something to do. There's always
something to improve upon. Even if the greater the greater good is there, it
could probably be improved upon, which to your point, and I I really love that. Yeah.
And I do think, to some extent, we are naturally inclined
away from that because you're essentially let's say you have three parties. You have someone who's selling you
media. You have someone who's buying media. You have someone maybe an agency in between. All three of you
want that media to have been effective. Right? So all three of you are are absolutely aligned in that.
You will take the most generous view. Intuitively, you will take a more generous view of what that
response was. But but if all three of well, I don't know if the media seller vendor is ever
going to take the view of well, actually, it didn't do that well. But if you do take that view as, let's say,
an agency and a buyer that, well, I I don't just want it to have done well. And
and I'm not going to kind of bend my mind to believe that it has done well. I'm gonna be as
objective as possible and look for those areas of of opportunity and to some
extent be congratulatory when we do find those pockets of what this didn't work. Okay.
That's fine. Now now we have an opportunity. Because if my results come back and say, well, you are the best in the world at this job. Everything you just did
is perfect. You've got nowhere to
go from there, and you can't possibly gain efficiency. So what you should be looking is is for
is is for those opportunities, and and you should be open to them. And I know that it's easy for
me to say because I I am sitting between finance and marketing, and and so it's a lot easier for me to take
this very objective viewpoint. If I was on the marketing team, I think inevitably my my brain
would start switching a little bit towards, well, perhaps we miss this or perhaps we miss that. But, yes, I
do think that's that's where and then when I've worked with companies that it's when that mindset's in place that
you've seen the most kind of efficiency gains. What's that dynamic like? I've had some really good
interest. We we've I've lived through it, worked on it, but also lately talked to some
good people on finance and in marketing. You're kind of that in between, it sounds like, in some in
some instances. Yeah. What is that dynamic like, and how do you kind of
help set that up for success? Your traditional stereotypical view
is finance wants to stop spending and marketing wants to spend more, and then you sit in between and balance
the books. I think that's an old fashioned view of it now. And I definitely I think
everyone can be aligned, but you have you have a a marketing team that's great at making
their marketing better. And they're they're focused on the day to day of making their marketing better.
But they're not necessarily the the most objective source of what did that marketing just do and and where
where should we be investing. And then you've got a finance team that's that's looking for as
objectively as possible where the best investments can be made, but doesn't understand the practicalities of every
single thing, every single investment decision that can be made. Right? Because they can't have that same depth that
is, knowledge as the operating teams do. So I think it's it's that area in between
where we try and help as much as possible by taking the objectivity of finance, by taking
the kind of operational awareness that that the marketing teams have. And we have to borrow that that knowledge
from them. I know that we have it on our own. But we can get close to that and say, okay. I I understand.
In theory, we would spend ten percent more on this channel. In practice, we can't because either this
channel is at a hundred percent or is it zero percent. There are those situations that come up, and I think it's it's
like understanding those nuances as well. This may be presumptuous, but do you think that the
best marketers and the best finance folks are able to kind of put on
the Dominic hat a little bit and kind of view of it that way while collaborating with
you? Yeah. I think so. I I hopefully, the Dominic hat is just objectivity. I think that's
the that's the thing that I am trying to to bring, as much as kind of,
methodological techniques and and things like that. But I do think it's that objectivity. And, yeah,
increasingly, you know, marketing is my numbers driven. Right? It's if you go back twenty years, it all looked very
different. And so, yeah, I think most marketers now have a really keen eye on, well, what is my
cost per lead and and and what should it be and what are the marginal cost per lead? All of these type of things, I
think, are are very easy for a for a marketing person to access now. And I do think,
from a finance side, that's true as well. And then I think it just goes to the next level of how
can we optimize, what changes can we make. That's awesome. What were some of
the experiments and tests and conversations that were
maybe most exciting or most impactful to you or the brands that you were working on?
Aside from the eBay one that we mentioned earlier, I think while I was at, Facebook,
we worked with a lot of smaller clients, not smaller clients, but we worked with a lot of advertisers.
And Mhmm. User level testing on media was just such a new thing at that point.
We're talking ten years ago because I'm I'm old. But we it was a while back that it
was such a new idea that, and it was kind of one step beyond what we'd
done at eBay. We would have liked to have done the user level testing, but we couldn't identify the individuals as
well as that. But then Facebook could. And so they have that user level test tool,
which now everyone can use. But back then, it was it was new, and and the questions were,
why would I do this? I have an MTA model or an AskClick model. I don't need this. And so a lot of
it was that conversation. But they were really good conversations to have because you're
challenging the orthodoxy of of using this model, which has
built an entire industry up to that point and and and challenging it, but but challenging
in a way that I think was positive and and kinda has has helped the industry. And you do I
think testing is such a is such a not a buzzword, but it's, like, central to the industry now. People do
test a lot. And, and I think being part of that early on was was really good because
you had these conversations with clients, and you you could see people's kind of eyes open to this idea
of, oh, I could do this. Right? I get it now. So they move from why would I to, okay, how
where else can I do this? Like, where where? And it was good to see the industry move move in that direction as
well. The other one I would just tag onto that is is if you ever work
on models, and they're not tests per se, obviously, but there's there's just a degree
of magic in modeling. You take all of this uncertainty and you can if it works well,
you can kind of create a a model that explains so much. That's amazing.
Yeah. I think they can be they can be really powerful as well. It's it's a
pain. They're I've worked on a lot and they've never been easy easy, but they're certainly
getting easier now just because people have great data. I don't know if
you've talked to anyone regarding Robin, the the the kind of the open
source m m model that Facebook created, that's a really good starting point for anyone as well.
That's super helpful. We've we've run into it a little bit, and we've we've done some lift
testing through there. But I I love that call out, and it's a really great one for folks to kind
of hone in on and look at as well. And for those that are not as familiar with
would you say that how would you kind of describe it for folks new to it and
kind of what how it's maybe better than other views of incrementality?
Yeah. It does attempt to tease out that specific question of incrementality. So you
have all of your media channels as inputs into a big regression model, and let's
say you're trying to predict sales, and you can put in what I spent on TV.
Again, it really was born out of TV. It's such an old, methodology Mhmm. Only because TV was
was so hard to measure. But but now you can put all of your other channels in there too. So you could look
at spending on Google. You can look at spending on Facebook. You could look at even things like outdoor advertising.
All you because what you're really building is a model that says, I spent this at this time. How did
my sales respond to that? So that's the that's the the kind of theoretical part of it. You in
order to understand what your media did, you have to understand what everything else did as well. So
that's the hard part. You have to understand seasonality, and you have to understand if if if weather affects
your business, which it it does for a lot of businesses. And, you know, holidays, all of these
other kind of pieces that that fit together to to determine your sales on a given day. You can't just
put your ad spend in there. You have to put all of those things in there to build it. The great thing
about it is that it's agnostic to the user level path. So it ignores the last
click model. It ignores the impression model. So you're losing information there, but you're gaining something
by by having an independent view of it. So it's a great way of kind of calibrating your MTA because
it's not biased by your MTA. If your if your MTA says, I spent this and there was this clicks
and this much came back, and your model says the same thing, they've they've arrived at that conclusion from
different places. So it's really good as a as a way of, benchmarking. And then the
other thing, obviously, if if you have channels that aren't covered by MTA or aren't fully covered by MTA, it's
it's a great way of of measuring them. I think the other thing is just that
if privacy rules change your kind of information that you have on path to purchase,
if you don't know if people saw it or if they clicked on it, and I I suspect increasingly in the future that might be the
case, then this model doesn't need that. So it's it's also a a kind of future proof
model. So I think if you went back Huge. Yeah. And I think if you went
back, you know, a few years, were were outmoded and and old because
you have MTA models. Why do you need this? And and then I think now there's a an increasing recognition
that, oh, this is actually a great way of of covering the future and not just the past. That's really that
kind of dovetails perfectly in my next question, and it's so exciting. I can envision a world
where it sounds like you're saying for those listening that, hey.
Privacy concerns go up. MTA visibility goes down. Generally
speaking, the growth and importance of is even more
underscored. Is that safe to say? Yeah. I I think so. And it I think it
underscores this idea as well that I know you and I are probably probably aware of, but just
generally, we don't need to know the individual person's conversion. We don't
necessarily care that it's this person. We we only use that information to draw to
draw a a a kind of path and a and a map to to clicks and and impressions and things like that.
But we don't really, really need to know it at that level. And so I I guess I say that just so if
people are worried about when I talk about privacy, believe in personal privacy, and I and I, I don't
want to know what you bought. I want to know that x sales happened because this
happened. I don't need to know anything about any individual person ever, and I don't wanna know that. And there's too
many of them. I'm just trying to draw that path. And, and I do think drawing that
path does clash with personal privacy sometimes because as an individual, maybe I don't want people to know that
I saw this ad and I clicked on this ad and I bought this thing. I it doesn't matter. But then I do think
because the the model ignores all of that layer of information and
just builds it out, the the the kind of, the aggregate that it will
always be immune to any changes to privacy that we have in the future. So, yes, that's that's the benefit I
see. I love that. There's another theme I'm thinking of around the specifics of
and it does kind of relate to, like, past versus future, and maybe you
can guide me here. So is looking as a look back at the past
performance to kind of assess if marketing worked, or is it can
it be predictive of future? Does that make sense? Yes. It does.
If if it can never be predictive or prescriptive, it's a little value. I mean, I guess it there's some
value. It it helps you understand where your investments were, and maybe you can make big kind of changes
based off that. But, no, ideally, what you get out of that model is also the the
kind of scenario planner piece of it where you say, I have diminishing returns up to this
point. So I could spend up to here, and then I could be spending here in these different channels. So, yes, ideally, it does
help predict the future in terms of how much you should be spending. It also can one of the
I mentioned that you have to take into account seasonality and all of these other pieces, And a lot of the
public sorry. The the, open source, model, Robin, for example, does that
really well to the extent that you can actually use it for forecasting as well. So even if you weren't
working with marketing data and you just want to know how many sales am I likely to see if these
things continue, it works for that too. So it has a lot of really helpful side
effects that that come out from building this model. And that's when I mentioned there's a bit magic in there because
you go in there wanting to work out what what my TV spend did and what my kind of Google spend did,
and you come out understanding seasonality and whether you'll
have a long term trend that's going up or down when you take all the noise out on all of these pieces. So you do
get a lot of of useful predictive pieces from there too. That's amazing. Yeah. Quite a testament
to to the power of that model and the fact that it's open source, I would venture
really creates makes it more valuable. Is that is that accurate? Yeah. For
sure. I I have a bias to wanting to build things in house, so that
so that you can fit all of your in house pieces together and you can understand everything, and and you can
see inside it. And so, yeah, I like the the open source model for that reason. It it
takes effort, but at the same time, I think it's worth it to to have something internally
that that you truly do understand because the outputs of a black box model are
useful, especially if they do give you very prescriptive, go and spend this here at this time, and this will
happen. They're useful in that sense, but there's no substitute to really understanding what's going
on underneath there. And so you can know, well, yeah, this may this may be true, but the margin of
error is really wide, or I'm really confident that this will happen and and the model's always going to
keep keep giving me that. I think you get that extra layer of understanding if if you build it in house.
Yeah. No. I love that. It's really fascinating because I think they it sounds like there's a lot to
be built on top of, and I imagine a number of businesses are doing that probably a
mix of in house and out of the box, I'm guessing. Or I think so. I you
have little choice sometimes to to go with third party things. Right? Depending on what you're trying to
measure, sometimes you just don't have that layer of data to to do things. So I think there are
occasions where you inevitably will will lean on someone like
Facebook lift testing, for example. You you can't run that same test internally. You have to rely
on Facebook, and then therefore you get less information back from it. So So I think you're always balancing those pieces,
but, yes, third party tools are definitely useful. Sometimes they're essential because
you can't do it without them. But if I have the ability to to build it in house, my
my bias and my preference is always to try and do it internally so that that level of data
exists and exists to to feed so many different pieces as well. Yeah.
I love that. And it is there kind of spending sizes where you kinda say, okay. I'm kinda
jumping ahead a little here thinking through how you're counseling client you know, clients.
Primarily, you're you're really a great aside from Facebook, correct me if I'm wrong, you're really
representing one brand and getting a lot of those questions from finance and
marketing. Right? Right. But thinking through, like, in a hypothetical scenario, a brand that
spends a hundred million a year, maybe they or sorry. They're making a hundred million plus a year. Maybe
they're spending, you you know, minimum five a year on marketing, which isn't
a lot in your standards. Mhmm. Where do you counsel them? Let's say they're on five or
six performance marketing channels, maybe maybe a little bit of TV, maybe a little bit of audio. Like,
is there is there a spend level where it's like, a lot of this doesn't make sense? And it
kind of like is there a how do you kind of guide those brands that are
kind of in those situations that might be working their way up to being, you know, a, a
FanDuel? It's a tough question because the answer is it depends, and I know that's not a great answer.
But, basically, it depends less on the budget and more on the impact. So if you
are working at a company where the impact of marketing is is
fairly small compared to the natural baseline that that that company has. So I I don't wanna presuppose
any other companies, but let's say Amazon. Right? Obviously, the Amazon is really high. If Amazon stopped
spending on marketing, what would happen? They wouldn't disappear overnight. They would drop by something, and I don't know what
that something is. But there are smaller companies
impact, then it's very easy to measure, and and it doesn't matter so much on how much you're spending. It's it's what
that what that share is. Now that's actually the answer to the question rather than the question. Right? Because you want to
understand how much is being driven by by marketing, and you don't necessarily know beforehand. But I
would say if that signal is strong, and I've worked at places where the,
the spend is not necessarily that high, but the signal is strong, then it's a very easy model to
build. Conversely, though, if you're if you're moving the kinda top line by one or two
percent, I don't know Coca Cola as well, for example. I'm sure that their advertising has a massive
impact, but I'm sure it's also very hard to measure because there's so much of a baseline that that you're building it on.
So it it depends in that sense more so than how much am I spending. It's how
much of my of my sales, shall we say, are being driven by marketing. And if
it's less than, say, five percent, it can be really noisy, and it can be really difficult to to pick that up,
especially if you break down into the smaller channels. But if it's twenty percent, yeah, you should you
could build a model very quickly that that that kind of detects that. That's interesting. And then and
if you're kind of in that hypothetical scenario and you kinda have a, well, suite of
cards that you can kind of hand out to say, okay. We're gonna run this type of a test or we're gonna run this type
of a test. Not like to say that the number of options is the key,
but just out of curiosity, is there, like do you have kind of five
options to choose from? I know it's a little overly simplistic for your world, but or is it kind of
like, hey. These are the two that I kind of go to, currently? If if
you can do a user level test, there's never really a a great cost to that in terms of
opportunity loss. So for example, if you're sending out an email campaign, you can keep back ten
percent of of your user base pretty easily. You arguably lose ten percent of your
total impact because you did that, but then also you measure that impact and then you can optimize it in the future.
So going back to the the scenario we talked about earlier, if it was a launch campaign, I probably wouldn't do that. If
it's a campaign that's going to go out once a month, then I really would want to know how effective it was and
how I could impact the effectiveness of it. And so I would keep a a holdout. So I don't think there's a real
cost there, and and I I would put it to user level k, user level test in every chance I could. And I don't
think that changes how how you spend, and I don't think it changes the response that much. Facebook, for example, if I'm
doing a a Facebook campaign, I would I would just put a user level test, and it's I think you can pretty much set it up
by default and and get the results every time. So there's there's really no reason not to. So, yes,
I I think those ones those really easy, nice, low touch ones, I I would do every time.
If it comes to things like geo testing or pulse spend testing as well, if you're
trying to build a model and then turn your spend on and off, It's slightly disruptive from a
from an operating point of view, but it it does help you read into a model. So those
are slightly more disruptive operating things, the geo testing, pulse testing.
Those are but those are ones I would do if I really wanted to measure. And so I think user level test,
really kind of a no brainer. It's very easy. Pulse testing, it's it's easy to to kind
of operate. It's not that easy to measure, but it's it gives you more than than the absence of those
things. And then geo level test, yeah, it's slightly harder to operate against, but it it gives you a a
nice read. So it's, I I would do those That's great. I would do those things if if,
but only if I really wanted to measure them. And I I think I'm, I'm not I'm
not unique, but one of one of the things I try and push as an analytics person is I don't want to
shoehorn everything into my measurement solution. I don't want you to do these things because I I want to be able
to measure it. I I need to know if it's if it needs to be measured first to make sure that we have that right
path of why are we doing this. We're not just doing this because I want to do it. That's not the right reason to do it.
Let's do it because we want to replicate it. And if we don't want to replicate it, then do we need to do
these things? So it's it's getting that right path between making it measurable and and making it consequences
of
consequences of going through a a test? And do you think there's a there's a percentage
of folks that do that? I'm biased towards doing tests if if we can,
naturally because because otherwise, I wouldn't have a job ultimately. But, yeah, I I'm biased towards doing the test.
I I do think, I think it can create conflict when
we're saying, actually, we just we just lessen the possible impact of this because we
wanted to test it, and we're not really using those results for anything. Like, those those type of
scenarios are the ones where I think it creates conflict. But I think if you lay out beforehand and you can lay out
before with any kind of test you do, almost have this was it like pseudo code logic where you
say, if this happens, then we'll do this. And if this happens, then we'll do that. If you can't articulate that before a
test, then there's not that much point doing a test. So if you can't if if you say, well, I'm gonna hold back ten
percent of my email campaign, And what will you do if it doesn't pass a certain threshold? Nothing. I'll
do exactly the same thing. Okay. You don't need to do that then. It's not going to change anything. So it's that it's that point
that that I I try and make team. What a great reminder for so many. I think that's
super, super helpful. We talk a lot about, like, data literacy in our
organization and training and understanding data. How how how have
you done that in your career? How do you help kind of demand that and collaborate with
your teams to make sure that that data literacy is there? I think I've been
fortunate in the working with most marketing teams now, especially the digital marketing
teams. There there's usually a very good data literacy as as standard. I think the nature
of the the business has has certainly made that almost a prerequisite for a lot of
the roles. I think the other piece is having a company that does just have the data and
has kept the data in the right place. And and then most of my experience has been with,
bigger companies or later stage startups where they've kind of got that piece already and that that's
been done. So I've been fortunate in that sense because I do think if that's not there, it's hard to get everyone
aligned to a certain metric. I think if you've built on that bedrock of just having the data
available and people also being confident that that data is right. And so when they look
at, a number being unusual, the question is not, well, what's wrong here? Did we
just we do we do we we forget to, like, run a a data poll or did we do
whatever? I think if you get to that point where they're they're confident that this is representative of a real thing that's just
happened, And then the question is what do we what actions do we take based off that? I think that's
that's a good kind of level to be working with day to day. You do need to get to that
point. And I think for smaller companies, it's harder just because there's there's more volatility in the data.
But once yes. Once you've got once you're confident that the thing you're looking at reflects real life and not
some artifact of the data, then I think you're in a good spot. I love it, Dominic. We
talked a little bit about, football UK soccer. Maybe you can share,
for the audience a little bit about your your team and and Okay. Who you're going for.
So this may for some people, this is going to be gobbledygook, but I,
I support Nottingham Forest, who are now in the Premier League, have been for the last
season and a bit. And it's been so exciting because they were out of the top division for so long, for
twenty years, and they just got into the top division. They only just stayed up last season, but now
they're they're looking good. So it's very exciting for me because I get to watch them on regular
TV all the time now. And it's just it's such a step change from from where it was before. It's it's
really good. So I have no complaints because they are not expected to win every
game. They're not I'm not disappointed when they don't win. I'm not even that disappointed when they lose. And when they do
win, I'm excited for an entire weekend. So it's a very I'm I'm really fortunate right
now. That's really cool. How how did you become a fan of that particular team?
Oh, it was just my local team, so I I kind of got into it by default. So I
was born in Nottingham. Love it. And any particular players to, follow or that
you, you live on? They have a lot of good players now. There's, there's
a a a guy called Ibrahim Sangare who just he's, I think, our most expensive signing
now. Morgan Gibbs White who is on the cusp of the England team, although that's a that's a tough
midfield to break into. And then there's a new center back that we signed from
Brazil called Murillo, and he is he's only played two games, and he's so good. And so
maybe if we replay this in a year, people will be talking about Marinette like, oh, yeah. Obviously, we know who he is.
He's, like, the best center back in the world. We we could be doing that or or people may well know
not know who he is, but I I think he has potential to be a to be a big name. I love it.
I did just watch, relatedly, England, Italy. Jude Bellingham was
playing. He doesn't play for Forest Place for Real Madrid, but I actually think he's probably the best player in the world
right now. And and he plays for England, so that's nice. Absolutely. I love it. You guys gonna win another
World Cup? Maybe the Euros. They the England just qualified for the Euros
in Germany next year. So, that's a that's a realistic one, I think. We came second
last time, so it's it's not Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dominic, it's been a
pleasure, man. You you shared so many great insights. I'm really grateful for the time you shared with the audience
and and your knowledge and expertise. It means a lot for folks that wanna follow you and and
maybe, learn more about you and your story and what you're working on. Is there where
can people find you or if you'd like them to? Reach out to me on
LinkedIn. It's Dominic Williamson. There are a few Dominic Williamsons. There's not that
many. Look for the one who was at eBay and Facebook. They'll probably find you the right one. There was a cricketer called
Dominic Williamson. That's not me. He's almost the same age as me. He played cricket in England at the
same time for a local club. So he is is is the slightly more famous Dominic
Williams, and I would say, but unless you're interested in cricket. If unless you're interested in cricket,
I I wouldn't I wouldn't bother him. How's your cricket skills? Oh, awful. Awful. It's,
it's the worst sport for me, I think. I don't know. Me too. We're in good
company, Dominic. It's a pleasure. All the best man. And talk to you soon. Thank
you. Cheers. Bye.