Attendees
Andrea Atzori, Nital Shah
Transcript
Andrea Atzori: Just thinking in case there is a phone ringing or…
Nital Shah: Yeah yeah yeah.
Andrea Atzori: stuff like that sometimes I put everything in silent but you never know I’m not alone here so there are other people so you Mhm.
Nital Shah: No, no, no. I think it’s pretty casual. I don’t think no because it’s first of all it’s not live and second is we going to make those edits and we’re going to break this entire 40 minutes interaction into size content anyway. So all easy.
Andrea Atzori: Sounds good. Let’s kick off. Of…
Nital Shah: I usually don’t prepare much because I’m the asking party,…
Andrea Atzori: Of course.
Nital Shah: And the second thing is because it’s just about what we do day in day out and it’s about our knowledge, what we know already.
Andrea Atzori: Exactly. No,…
Nital Shah: I think it’s not much Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: I did look at the questions. I did try to think about the questions as well and the answers. So, I did a little bit of prep. I wouldn’t say that I’ve been doing a lot.
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: I just did look at it this morning and…
Nital Shah: Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: a little bit earlier. So, just to be on the same page.
Nital Shah: Yeah. Perfect.
Andrea Atzori: No, all good.
Nital Shah: Yeah. So, let’s get started. Andrea, let me introduce welcome to the series. We really appreciate your time. let me quickly have an introduction. Andrea, I know you from what last 15 17 years.
Nital Shah: You have been in the industry more than 24 25 years. no,…
Andrea Atzori: Let’s not talk about that.
Andrea Atzori: That makes me really old.
Nital Shah: but amazing the way Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: Yeah, it’s been a long time.
Nital Shah: the amazing the way you have been crafting your path. have great level of extensive experience and exposure serving lot of brands in London in Australia now and you still serve lot of global brands. I was fortunate enough to work with you in person as part of your team as well for a few years. So very much impressed with your deep knowledge and most importantly your passion, it gets highlighted very well when we see your contribution on search engine and many other platforms, The way you contribute that your passion it’s loud and clear.
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: So yeah, welcome to the series and look forward to our interaction today.
Andrea Atzori: Thank you.
Andrea Atzori: Yeah, thanks. Look, I’m really excited to be speaking with you today. as you say, we know we known each other for a long time and it’s fair to say that we kind of grew together because, we had similar parts. So, it’s nice to, reconnect whenever we got the chance and the opportunity. we live in places that are quite far apart, but it’s always nice to be able to catch up with you and I’m looking forward to our chat today.
Nital Shah: Okay, so without further delay, let’s deep dive. we’re just going to have series of questions on various topics and would love to have your inputs based on your exposure and extensive experience you hold.
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: So let me deep dive let’s start with kind of audience targeting and…
Andrea Atzori:
Nital Shah: hyperpersonalized approach which everyone talks about right so would love to know Andrea with push of hyperpersonalized marketing many marketers are doing and d deep diving into data but still not hitting the mark of how and what specific audience targeting practices they should follow.
Andrea Atzori: M h m h m hm.
Nital Shah: Would you mind sharing few suggestions or best practices on how you navigate that
Andrea Atzori: It’s a very interesting question and…
Andrea Atzori: I think there is lots of nuances in that and I think there’s lots of answers too. Look it’s not secret that audience targeting has become more and more important. we’ve seen how things have evolved in the last few years and if we take the example of paid search and Google ads originally it was all based on keyword targeting the keyword was telling you what the user is trying to do so you have an intent when you’re looking at keyword but the reality is that in the last few years we’ve seen an evolvement or an evolution of this where the keyword is one of the signals and the audience targeting has become more and more important is also
Andrea Atzori:
Andrea Atzori: true to think about the fact that these changes have been pushed by obviously Facebook and Meta on which interest ing audience targeting as are really the key criteria for which you can reach and engage with people. but the other thing that is also true nowadays is that audiences in a way seem to be becoming also I guess less defining and it’s an interesting development…
Nital Shah: Mhm.
Andrea Atzori: because I picked that up from my latest trip in Europe from some of the industry conferences I was attending to where some people are doing some experiments and looking at how the platforms are evolving in terms of audience targeting. There is a very popular guy that works on the meta platform and he’s called John Loomer and he did some test and he was talking about how in his experiments the audience signals are becoming less important.
Andrea Atzori: So what that means is that basically when it was trying to validate whether audience signals and audience targeting were still effective the results were actually kind of negating that and that’s something that also picked up from other conversation with other experts whereas for example is a very similar thing in the way that Google platform is also working nowadays because if you think about pmax for example you can input audience targeting you can input theme keyords or theme of keyword
Andrea Atzori: words, but it is just more of a suggestion. It’s not a targeting. So, let me just explain this. So, perhaps we’re moving away from audience targeting to audience suggestions. So, the platform then is going to use that to refine the people that is going to reach, but still going to keep that freedom and liberty to actually expand and say, “Okay, that’s a signal. That’s what I’m going to use to inform my decisions, but that’s just a signal and I’m going to try to use it as a signal.” So that’s something that I picked up that I thought is quite of an interesting development. that’s one part of the story. The other part of the story is that obviously audience targeting is still important in the sense of that it’s still important that you obviously segment and choose the segment of audience that you want to reach.
Andrea Atzori: you need to specify which audience you want to target and segment it because obviously of being able to be relevant, being able to reach the targeting that you aiming for. But as I say, perhaps the real evolution is the fact that as opposed to targeting,…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: we should be using that as a signal. We should see the audience targeting as a signal.
Nital Shah: Interesting.
Nital Shah: And that leads me to the second question which is about first party cookies and privacy regularization,…
Andrea Atzori:
Nital Shah: right? as I’m sure especially coming from your Europe trip recently and attending conferences there and now rest of the world is taking that up as well that everyone is getting super conscious on that first party and cookie data and stuff like that right what’s your observation that with privacy regularization being tightening up and…
Andrea Atzori: Mhm. Yeah.
Nital Shah: all the cookies are phasing
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: out how a marketer should successfully transition that first party data towards ensuring they are leveraging that for personalized marketing effort because now you don’t get to see all the data points right so even that creates limitation with your audience targeting because lot of things due to regularization is been restricted so any tips and…
Andrea Atzori: Is that Yeah,…
Nital Shah: suggestions on how a marketer should to capitalize on personalized campaigns.
Andrea Atzori: and I think that’s a very good question and a good segue from what we were talking about in regards to the audience targeting. I think as you pointed out vacy concerns, all the privacy regulations that we see especially in Europe and in the US have brought attention to the fact that obviously we need a consent first and all that is creating issues in terms of obviously tracking and being able to obviously have reliable data. what that means is that as you pointed out the third party cookies have become less and less reliable since the launch of iOS 14. We’ve seen how that has impacted us as marketers and advertisers.
Andrea Atzori: But the reality is actually that what is promoting is something that in a way is actually a positive change because as opposed to being able to target people based on third party cookies and therefore what people used to do before which was more of a spray and…
Nital Shah: Mhm.
Andrea Atzori: prey approach so kind of like mass reach. what we see now is that there is the evaluation of firstparty data and with that evaluation there is also the need to nurture engagement with your own customers. So basically create your customer lists as opposed to obviously buy audiences from somewhere else. so nurturing those lists means also creating value because the reality is that nowadays users are very aware of privacy. They really value I guess their efforts as a customer.
Nital Shah: Mhm.
Andrea Atzori: And their time as I say is really important to them. So therefore if you really want to engage with an audience you really need to add value. So in a way we’re going back to the marketing basics where is about creating value that is seen as valuable and therefore enriching the user experience. and in that regards what that promotes is basically engagement and a meaningful conversation with your audience.
Andrea Atzori: So really the suggestion for me is to move towards that engagement with your own customers with create your own lists curate your own CRM have all those touch points that are making something that is valuable not just for you…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: but also for your customer and I think that’s really is the future of targeting because it’s more about as I say adding and delivering Is that it?
Nital Shah: very interesting.
Nital Shah: Very interesting. and the overall entire marketing landscape has evolved over last decade. Right now it’s not about that Everything is getting omni channel and as you mentioned it’s not just about how you get customers in it’s about how you even nurture them within your CRM what your touch points are and stuff like that with all these transitions and markets are tough overall holistic holistically with global economic situations right and everyone is needing more for less and the reliance
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: of various channels has increased as well now it’s not just about performance and acquisition channels equally important is your nurture and your CRM and your marketing automation channels as well…
Andrea Atzori:
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. Yeah.
Nital Shah: how crucial the performance marketer roles is now right and what are the top three suggestions you have for any performance marketer today to get the best performance performance for their Google ads or programmatic or any sort of paid media they are managing.
Andrea Atzori: Look, I think the thing is like you say, is really not necessarily that we can be omni channel but certainly a multi- channelannel advertisement that nowadays become more and more important because users obviously don’t follow a linear path. there is interactions across multiple platforms, multiple touch points as you correctly said also and because of the fact that users are more conscious and aware the user journey is becoming longer there’s been some recent studies that have been published that show how this was the one that I’m thinking of is more relevant maybe for the European market but is a global trend the fact that users are taking longer to make decisions especially if you’re thinking about consider decisions purchase decisions.
Andrea Atzori:
Andrea Atzori: So what that means is that you have to engage with your audience across multiple touch points and multiple platforms. and therefore what that entire as well that is very important that you curate your message. The message is consistent. the message is consistent not only across one channel but across multiple channels and therefore we see that it’s becoming more and more important that you also curate your creative and the messaging because it’s about creating something that again as I say before adds value and engage with it with your audience.
Nital Shah: Mhm.
Andrea Atzori: So for example, we’ve seen advertisers using more things like storytelling or messages they are delivering in sequence for example. so all that is becoming really really important. Another thing they also picked up from my latest trip was when I went to a speech from Ron Fishkin and he talks a lot about zero click marketing and it’s quite fascinating because he’s putting the emphasis on the fact that we as marketers and especially performance marketers focus a lot on clicks but we often forget the power of branding
Andrea Atzori: and create a brand. And the reality is that if you think about measuring clicks with all the challenges we face such as for example privacy, regulations, cookies and all that kind of stuff, it’s very difficult. But we still focus on the clicks and we forget where we can still make an impact and where people are actually spending most of the time. The example he was providing was if we think about clicks we think about Google mostly but if we look at where people are spending time then social is where people spend most of the time.
Andrea Atzori: So it’s about thinking not necessarily how clicks are delivering for your campaigns but think about also how do you create an impact to actually create a brand and therefore it’s really important that you start thinking in a way that is more holistic like you say for example we need to think about multi- channelannel and…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: therefore you need to think about how that is going to play across multiple platform platforms multiple channels and so forth Yeah,…
Nital Shah: Interesting.
Nital Shah: Zero click marketing. Yeah. Yep.
Andrea Atzori: it’s very interesting and I think it makes a really good point because at the end of the day is also a trend if you think about it what he was saying is that look at the way the search engines are evolving there is less and less traffic that gets sent out to websites because of the fact that you got struct structure snippets for example you got Now AI overviews you have people also ask and all that kind of stuff that is basically trying to provide an answer already within the platform. Same thing happens with other platforms like Facebook and Tik Tok all those platforms are also trying to retain the user on their own assets and not send them to the website. So therefore if you rely on clicks you’re missing all that part.
Andrea Atzori: So therefore it’s saying don’t focus just on the Focus also what’s happening within those platforms and how those interactions that don’t drive clicks are still meaningful for you to create a brand…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: because essentially what will happen is that people will obviously recognize you as an authority as a brand and then come back to Google and search for you.
Nital Shah: Interesting.
Nital Shah: Interesting. and providing ROI or showing return on ad spend has always been a challenge, right? And with u with these behavioral changes coming through what are your suggestions and tips how a marketer should improve conversion or show better return to the business because now everything is distributed and though your focus as a marketer is always towards that last mile conversion either it’s a revenue or it’s a
Nital Shah: read but how a marketer should show that value of their activities of either it’s been driven visibility on social media or even if it’s been driven traffic how do they connect these dots to the revenue
Andrea Atzori: Yeah, interesting question and… I got two answers for that. so the first thing you can think of is following on from what we just discussed is that what when I was away for my trip to Europe I actually was speaking at one of the conferences and my speech was about how to scale meta campaigns in 2025 and one of the key things I highlighted in my speech was that we need to go past ROI because the problem with ROI is is a valuable metric but without the context it doesn’t really give you a lot of information. I can give you an example. You could have an ROI of 10 to one but if your costs are nine out of that 10 you might still not make enough money to actually even break even.
Andrea Atzori:
Andrea Atzori: So the reality is that what you need to look at you need to look at the actual investment and the return from that investment across all the marketing channels and therefore that’s the reason why we talk about MER marketing efficiency ratio. So in that case what you’re measuring is the revenue proportionate to what you investing as a marketing activity So in that case you can really measure if the impact is positive or not. So that is the first thing that I would say in regards to ROI that is an important metric but to look at just ROI it can be also a little bit misleading. Now going back to your question in terms of obviously looking at how can we improve the performance of our campaigns?
Andrea Atzori: How can we improve that? M for example. I think the reality today is that we obviously lean a lot on automation and algorithms. if you think about platforms like Google ads, meta, they all obviously use a lot of smart bidding algorithms and automation. but the reality is that machine learning is as good as the information that you provide to the machine. So for that it’s really important that a you provide data and b you provide the right data. So there is a saying this is breeds success and what that means is that if you want to really make your campaigns perform you need to provide valuable data.
Andrea Atzori: So what that means is that if you want to get conversions that are valuable you need to actually input conversion data. So for example offline conversions enhance conversions and all of that. Obviously on top of that providing other signal signals like we said at the beginning for example audience signals and all of that can also really help to inform the decision that the machine is going to make. Without that, the best you can aim for is possibly average because at the end of the day, if you think about the way, for example, Google ads works now day is that it is a platform that is really level the field and that’s because it’s very much all working on automation nowadays. Smart bidding, whether it’s TOS, you name it.
Andrea Atzori: But ultimately everyone can basically do the same if they do the basics. But if you go past that and you start inputting data and helping the machine to make better decisions that’s really what is going to give you an advantage. The other thing is obviously like I say using those features of the platforms that perhaps certain users are less used to. for example there are nowadays more and more features that get a little bit hidden in the settings if you think meta always keeps hiding things and makes it very difficult for advertisers and most of the times nowadays you have to opt out to remove those default settings.
Andrea Atzori:
Andrea Atzori: And the other thing is also using other tools such as for example scripts, API, anything that allows you to use features that are not necessarily available on the platform itself.
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: Interesting. And while we are on that topic, if you can help us go a little deep into performance max campaign, what have been your observations and…
Nital Shah: how marketers should leverage it in a best optimal way?
Andrea Atzori: Yeah, I’m just smiling…
Andrea Atzori: because I think everyone talks about Pmax nowadays that is the topic Pmax Pax Pax everything everywhere you go there is always going to be talks about AI and Pmax. look the thing is PMAX is obviously I guess the first thing I would say is there to stay is lots of criticism since it inception in 2021 but it’s also true that has evolved a lot and I think really is where the platforms see the future of advertising in
Andrea Atzori: in a way that is trying to help advertisers to get across lots of different types of platforms and networks even just creating assets or so basically it’s just lowering all those barriers that before were a very big challenge for advertisers. If you think about it, even just thinking back five years ago, it was really difficult for small advertisers, small businesses to do display campaigns, to do video campaigns. And the reason why is because they didn’t have the assets.
Andrea Atzori: But nowadays, generative AI and the integration of generative AI within the platforms is really helping lowering those barriers and is really helping pretty much all advertisers be to embrace and be able to advertise in Instagram, Tik Tok, you name talking about PMAX specifically as I say it’s improved a lot in the last couple of years and I think credit to Google they’ve been listening to the feedback because they got a lot of feedback and if you think about the changes they introduced now it was only a few days ago they introduced the segmentation so you are able to segment the performance of your asset groups that was just a few days ago not long ago they introduced campaign level negative lists.
Andrea Atzori: So they keep improving and they keep listening to the feedback which is very positive but really is showing you that the trend is there and is there to stay which is obviously generative AI is becoming more and more of a part of our campaigns setup implementation and…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: optimization and yeah that’s there to say as I say But the other thing I would add to that as well is sorry just to reconnect with…
Nital Shah: Okay.
Nital Shah: Interesting. No, thanks for sharing that. And yeah, that leads me.
Andrea Atzori: what we said before again though remember the success that you’re going to see is as good as the effort and the input that you put because it’s fair to say as well that there’s been a lot of criticism for Pmax which was justified because of the fact that initially was a very much of a blackbox box. But there’s also been a lot of criticism because people have tried it and failed thinking I just put a few headlines, couple of images, a couple of keywords and u I’m expecting success. The reality is as I say with generative AI with the automation with machine learning the efforts are going to is so important to get meaningful outcomes.
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: You know that saying in garbage out if you don’t put the effort you can’t really expect great results. That is really important to note.
Nital Shah: Yep.
Andrea Atzori: So Mhm.
Nital Shah: No. Yeah. That leads me more towards questions on reporting and in your experience, right, with a lot of focus towards datadriven marketing and campaign optimization, what are your takes on predictive analytics tools?
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: how reliable have you found them or if you have any specific suggestions or recommendation for the audience on …
Nital Shah: which tools would you recommend and if you have seen any pitfalls or if you have seen some strengths with any predictive analytics tools
Andrea Atzori: Look it’s a good question and…
Andrea Atzori: I think this reconnects to what we were saying before about obviously the challenges that we facing in regards to tracking analytics used to be observation of the data if you think about the old GA it was pretty much what you see is what you’re getting you never questions then you never question the numbers but nowadays the numbers that you see are modeling analytics now is all about modeling and obviously the next big step is the fact that obviously is being used to do predictive modeling as well so I think in that regards is very exciting because as opposed to just use it to interpret the data and use that data in insights that might be more or less actionable.
Andrea Atzori: The predictive part is quite exciting because it should once obviously know things are in place and if things are in place in the right way. it should help you to actually proactively think about the changes the way you want to optimize a campaign because you should be able to see what you can expect if you make some changes or if you change some variables. So the predictive part is the really exciting part.
Nital Shah: Nothing. Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: obviously there is still a lot of work I think needs to be done in terms of being able to really leverage on these tools at least in terms of mass adoption I think at the moment there’s lots of challenges one of which is obviously skills and knowledge I mean if you think about for example G4 is a very very powerful platform and I think again it’s getting a lot of backl lash because people found it very challenging because they’ve been used to using the likes of universal analytics which as we said was a very different tool because it was more based on observation of the data.
Andrea Atzori: G4 is very very powerful but it also means that you really need skilled people at least at this stage to be able to make the most of it because it is a very complex and powerful tool. the setup alone can be quite challenging. the old concept is being flipped. before we used to track and focus on actions. So if you think about the way universal analytics used to work, it was focused on things like sessions for example. Nowadays you still got sessions but the focus is more on the user and the interaction of the user and that’s the reason why for example we track events in G4.
Andrea Atzori: So I think in a nutshell really this is going to evolve and how much we going to progress in adopting this to leverage the tool at its best because I think at the moment the challenge is that we look at G4 and people look at the numbers and feel like you just get a bit of insights but you’re not really using the tool and it’s not really giving you…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: what it should. So what I think will also happen is probably opening up for more skilled people that will be more specialized I don’t…
Nital Shah: people. Yes.
Andrea Atzori: if you remember but back in the days we used to have lots of people that specialized in things like Omnature Adobe analytics and…
Nital Shah: Yes. Yes.
Andrea Atzori: all that kind of stuff and is because it was difficult it was complex so you needed specialists and I think analytics is become more and more of a specialist skill I certainly can’t say that I can use G4 the way I used to use analytics for example and that’s an opportunity because I think again for those people that will be able to leverage analytics and how powerful it is it will make a big advantage the other thing that obviously will involve as well is other opportunities like the amount of data
Andrea Atzori: we go think about again analytic G4 and the fact that we’re tracking every single interaction every single event it means obviously being able to leverage on that data using other tools like BigQuery and visualization like PowerBI Tableau and all that those things are becoming more important because of the fact that we have much more data that’s the other challenge that we got and…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: that’s the reason why is important we know that things are much more complex but there is a lot more opportunities as well.
Nital Shah: Yeah, interesting and…
Nital Shah: while we are on analytics and you sharing all those details would love to know your suggestions for marketers on how they should optimize their reporting frame.
Nital Shah: framework with consent mode remodeling and things like that coming in play. any suggestions on how to optimize and enhance their reporting framework
Andrea Atzori: Yeah, I think reporting again is about purpose.
Andrea Atzori: So I think it’s about defining what your objective is and what you’re trying to get from the reports. I think sometimes we see reports just for the sake of just putting numbers on a spreadsheet but I think it’s about really going back to what do you do the report for what do you try to achieve what you’re trying to communicate so for me is about understanding…
Nital Shah: Nothing. There we go.
Andrea Atzori: what you’re trying to get from the data and therefore build reports that are actually meaningful because of the fact that as I said before we are overwhelmed with data we have plenty of data but the reality is what do you want to get from that? for example if it’s reporting in terms of providing a dashboard where you got the performance for last week or for example week on week or last month then obviously is as simple as just creating a template a framework that provides that information but really there is not much value if you just providing data and numbers really is about how do we start using things like generative AI and analysis of the data
Andrea Atzori:
Andrea Atzori: through automation and the likes of J GP or Gemini for example to actually surface the insights and the recommendations that is really where we need to put emphasis and focus and the other thing is obviously as you said because we’re creating predictive modeling because of the fact that we know that the data can be a little bit sketchy and we have gaps in the data is also not necessarily always focusing on fixating with the numbers…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: but use the data as a way to understand trends and anticipate what could be the possible scenarios that you are facing ahead.
Nital Shah: Go ahead.
Andrea Atzori: I think that’s really important because if you’re looking at the absolute numbers you’re kind of missing the point you’re focusing on the small detail and you forgetting the bigger picture.
Nital Shah: Good job.
Andrea Atzori: is if for example we look at we had a th00and clicks last week it doesn’t matter if it’s a thousand or if it’s 950 what you really want to focus is how did that number change compared to the previous week and what that means so it’s really about focusing on what the numbers and the data is telling us and…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: that’s the reason also why I think visualization is becoming more and more important because visualization unlocks insights that are very difficult to extrapolate and surface when we’re looking at tables of data. So again, that for me is really where things will evolve more and more and I think yeah, the visualization will be a key part of the reporting and dashboards. Mhm.
Nital Shah: Okay.
Nital Shah: Great. Andrea, you touch AI and chat GPT and that’s the buzzword everywhere we go around these days, I also noticed you recently published an article on search engine journal about web scrapping and using AI and chat GPT for Google Sheets and many other areas.
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: any suggestions…
Nital Shah: what sort of simple AI tools, techniques or quick hacks you recommend for marketers which they can use to streamline their day-to-day operations and improve their overall campaign performances.
Andrea Atzori: Yeah, that’s a good question and…
Andrea Atzori: thanks for referring to that article. That was a very popular article that I wrote two years ago. I got that published two years ago on search engine journal and is very popular because it got about 200,000 reads for that article and more than 100 shares. very popular to the point that last year they asked me to revisit it and refresh So my initial writing was about using Google Sheets and Xpath to actually scrape a website and extrapolate text and data essentially. but when I refreshed the article last year it was more about how can we use AI and specifically in my case was charged that process.
Andrea Atzori: And the thing is that nowadays you need even less knowledge because what you can do is you can leverage the likes of chat GPT to actually give you the prompts to be able to do those tasks. what I faced when I did my experiments was that the technology sometimes still fails you still can face some issues but it’s still a very important I guess aspect in the way we can improve things nowadays what I mean with that is that when I think about AI and where we are at today is that AI is a great enabler
Andrea Atzori: to improve your performance and sorry and I’m just trying to think about the word and efficiency if you like so…
Nital Shah: Mhm.
Andrea Atzori: but I think about as part of a wider array of tools at the moment and it’s more about improving your processes and workflow flows. At least this is where I see AI at the moment. So what I mean is that you can automate some tasks from beginning to the end, but the reality is that you’re more likely at this point to use as part of your processes. If you think about it,…
Nital Shah: Mhm. It’s third party.
Andrea Atzori: there’s so many examples we can think of that most of us we use nowadays, but we don’t even think about that much. I’m using AI. But you use it to ask questions. only last week OpenAI released the search functionality of Chad GPT in Australia. we use AI for keyword research to validate data. So you use it within your processes and that is really creating efficiencies. So that is really where I think we are at today. But this is what is today.
Andrea Atzori: I think the future looks much brighter and much more interesting because again something that I got from my trip and from the conferences I attended is that there is a general consensus that really what is going to be exciting is the next phase of generative AI where it seems like quite a few people agree on the fact that for example in a couple of years time we wouldn’t even have landing pages we won’t be talking about landing pages anymore but There will be AI agents which will be basically the way you interact with a brand or with a website. So what that means is that we will have unique and very much customized experiences that are relevant to you and that are unique to you and not necessarily what someone else is going to experience. So that for me is where it gets very exciting and very interesting.
Andrea Atzori: But yeah I guess we are probably a few years away from that but obviously lots of developments things happen very very fast so it’s definitely a space to watch and…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: obviously if you’re not using AI at the moment I think then obviously that is probably a bit of a H 2025.
Nital Shah: Okay.
Nital Shah: And we are kind of towards end of 2024. and you also contributed to PPC trend 2024 ebook for search engine journal. so now it’s the time …
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. Yeah,…
Nital Shah: what do you see what are the emerging trends which marketers should focus for 2025.
Andrea Atzori: look, I think it’s a good question. yeah, I would encourage anyone in the audience to go and check that ebook because I contributed to that. But there is also take from other authors that are really big names in the I guess u industry. so I would encourage people to go and check it out, download it and read it and enjoy it.
Andrea Atzori: My take in terms of some of the biggest trends will be as we said at the beginning I think is really about the fact that we need to think about and…
Nital Shah: Good Morning.
Andrea Atzori: and put at the front the users really is not necessarily thinking about just like I say third parties first party but it’s really thinking about how do we engage with the users in a meaningful way that’s going benefit both them and us as a brand in order to achieve our own objectives. because of that I think I don’t know how many people are talking about this but I do really think that one of the biggest things we’ll see is really more and more emphasis on the creative I think about that from a Google ads perspective and if you think about the fact that we used to create ads run the ads and not really think too much of it and still to this day
Andrea Atzori: I still see that kind of approach and attitude a lot because when you look at Google ads creatives I see a lot of ads they are basically just repeating the same concept just repeating the same USPS and that’s a bad use of responses ads for example but I think that we will see more and more of an emphasis on the creative itself and that’s not just for the text ads but also for display and video and if you think about it I think it will be a transferable concept that we see moving from social media to Google ads or PPC for example because of the fact that the creative is becoming more and more important as we say before users are spending more time doing research are spending more time before they make a decision and…
Nital Shah: Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: so therefore the creative and the way we get in to communicate with people will be more and more important. Therefore, the quality of the creative is going to be more and more important and I think that’s also what we can see happening also in the platforms themselves because for example Google is started looking at or introducing brand guidelines for example with responsive ads one of the challenges we had before is always been the fact that the ads looked pretty ugly
Andrea Atzori:
Andrea Atzori: You got Google just, choosing a background color. You got fonts you can choose and then sticking an image to it. And you can say, they pretty ugly. But the reality is that in a nowadays market, the expectation is that the ads should reflect something a bit more of a much better quality. So that’s what we’re going to see and I think it’s going to be exciting because that I think will put an emphasis on responsive ads. So adds the arch created automatically or programmatically but also in terms of rediscovering the importance of creating creative good design good assets and not only for the display but video but also for the text whereas is not good enough anymore to say in Sydney best hotels and…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: repeat that 20 times on your ads. hm. Yep. Mhm.
Nital Shah: Yeah. Yeah.
Nital Shah: No, true, true, true. No, thanks for sharing that, Anda. And I think great insight throughout the session. I would love to end with one last question. it’s a little holistic and not specific to performance marketing, you have been working with some leading global brands like Nike, PlayStations in your journey and you currently also work with a lot of global brands.
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: where do you see the marketing landscape is heading and where these brands are focusing for let’s say look at next two years of Horizon if you are to kind of draw a picture that…
Nital Shah: how the marketing landscape would be two years down the line what are your thoughts Okay.
Andrea Atzori: Look I think is an interesting question and…
Andrea Atzori: I think is a tough answer. but in terms of global market I think obviously as I say there’s going to be a point of convergence between branding and performance. I think we often looked at the two things as separate things. We often have different teams that looking after branding people that are looking after performance. The reality is an artificial split that we make but the reality is that we see more and more convergence between the two and I think brand nowadays as a performance elements or…
Nital Shah: Mhm.
Andrea Atzori: as performance elements attached to it and likewise we cannot do performance without branding so I think it’s really about the convergence of the two and that is a positive thing because again it’s about putting the emphasis on the user as opposed to think about okay I do this campaign to generate awareness but this campaign is just running in silo and is driving maybe top of mind but it’s not really connected with the rest of the activity that we’re doing the other thing is with that being said as well the other pressure that we see is the fact that obviously we are in a tough market from an e economy standpoint
Andrea Atzori:
Andrea Atzori: things are not easy because we know there’s a lot of people that are under pressure from a economic standpoint. but that’s also true in terms of marketing as well in the sense that I think we will see more and more emphasis put on creating sustainable campaigns. I don’t think we can afford anymore to create campaigns and,…
Nital Shah: Yep.
Andrea Atzori: spend big chunks of money just to create brand awareness. everything needs to be created and have a strong purpose attached to it, but also needs to be done in a sustainable way. for example, if we create assets, we need to make sure that those assets are created in a sustainable way. So that is not just done for a oneoff, but they can be reused. So I think that sustainability as well will be an important factor as well.
Nital Shah: Mhm. Okay.
Andrea Atzori: That we will see. The other thing that I think is important is that although I talk about convergence I think there is also an element of we’re going back in circle in the sense that we see more and more the emergence or the evaluation of specialism. think if you think about it our job because of multiple reasons is becoming more and more challenging because yes we have machine learnings and systems that are helping us to do our job. But at the same time to really be able to drive the best performance we need to be the specialists that know all the tips and tricks and know which levers and all the hidden features that we can leverage.
Andrea Atzori: And it’s about knowing how to use your data knowing how to find your insights knowing how to leverage that and predicting future behaviors and trends and for that I think also some specialism is quite important.
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: So we see a little bit of a reemergence of specialism and specialist agencies as well.
Nital Shah: Interesting.
Nital Shah: Great. And a thanks thanks for having an amazing insightful session and lot of intel. I’m sure a lot of people who go through these video or go through this information would be able to learn a lot and I’m sure it will help them in their journey ahead.
Andrea Atzori: That’s good. thanks for the feedback is very flattering.
Nital Shah: So I’ll just stop the recording. So yeah,…
Andrea Atzori: I hope it was helpful.
Nital Shah: we kind of just on time.
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: I know I think look …
Nital Shah: No, no.
Nital Shah: I think great insight, I think when we look at byte-size content, some really good, very specific information coming through. Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: if I have to be honest I think what I try to say is what I really pick up from what’s going on around us because the answers sometimes you can just answer everyone else’s they would say look you do performance max you do focus on the conversions the reality is that we see a lot of change happening and I think where we can add value to your audience my audience is to bring those insights that we capturing from these conversations because really is about being one step ahead and I think that’s where I think the real value is. So I hope that was able to bring that to the conversation today.
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: No, no, no. True, true. No, It was there.
Nital Shah: So, yeah. Great. Perfect. what’s the plan for Christmas?
Andrea Atzori: Not big plan…
Andrea Atzori: because we’re still trying to get our place knocked down and rebuilt. So we kind of working through that project. and yeah, nothing else to be honest because obviously that will be an expensive exercise. but I’m planning more to focus on my job at the moment because I think I really have found my focus now in the sense of I’m trying to write more pieces for SEJ. I just done one for search engine land which I’m hoping is going to be published soon.
Andrea Atzori: And I will probably be speaking at Brighton SEO in April next year. So, I’m trying to kind of focus on that and raise my profile.
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: So yeah, I think that’s going to keep me a little bit busy for the next few months.
Nital Shah: Yeah, I think my observation is huge impact of building authority and…
Nital Shah: building credibility of your own profile. So in early days those guest posts which we used to call for SEO has no more weightage if the author who are writing or publishing does not have their own authority in that space.
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. …
Andrea Atzori: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just basically useless. Yeah. And that’s…
Nital Shah: Yes. So I think author Yes.
Andrea Atzori: that’s what makes SEO really difficult nowadays because the reality SEO is all about ETA if you don’t have ETA.
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: And that’s also why even for us is about crafting your own specialism is I can’t go and talk about for example branding and say that’s my specialtity therefore I’m expecting to have links and stuff like that. Nowadays it’s really about ETA specialism. So that’s what is reward the way it used to be doesn’t work like that anymore. so before I forget there is one thing I wanted to actually mention and…
Nital Shah: Yeah, absolutely right.
Nital Shah: Absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: see whether there’s any interest from your end as well because really I see the value more and more in the events and the speeches. So what we trying to do I don’t know I mean with James he’s always up for things but then he’s super busy so it’s difficult but hopefully I will get him as well.
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: I already told him but what I want to do is organize at least one if not multiple events where we hire a venue. So I don’t know if you remember the venue that is above wine station fish burners.
Nital Shah: Yeah. Yeah.
Nital Shah: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yep.
Andrea Atzori: So we’re thinking about maybe we are at the venue of fish burners because it’s a good location and they have good facilities for this and maybe we do ideally maybe four speeches 20 minutes each. So the format that I see when I go to these events is usually 20 minutes plus questions or 25 plus five minutes questions or 30 minutes no questions. And I’m thinking if we do four speeches and obviously do an introduction I think it would be a good opportunity because we can really raise the profile a lot like that. obviously we record the session so we got the videos but we also bring people to us.
Andrea Atzori: So whether it’s prospecting clients because I had a conversation with James and…
Nital Shah: Yep.
Andrea Atzori: I said maybe we can do also for example some session sponsored by what do you call data slayer for example because I see lots of these things sponsored by super matrix sponsored by channel lots of software companies are sponsoring these events but I think it would be good. So if you are up for it, I will share some details of my idea. I could do a speech about for example the evolution of Google ads or the paid media ads.
Andrea Atzori: You guys could do a speech if you feel about another subject I don’t know whether is SEO whether is digital PR would be a good one because SEO is dead it’s more about digital PR nowadays if you can do digital PR or whatever is the topic that you feel like you guys we could go maybe atomic to do another speech I could get someone else to do another speech so we have three four speeches we bring prospective clients because
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: in Australia there’s not much of this kind of stuff happening. and I think it would be a good opportunity. So, I’m definitely Yeah.
Nital Shah: Yeah yeah I think very up to discuss more.
Nital Shah: I also see I could also collaborate and contribute to bring more people on board as well with this proposal because we work with lot of other agencies and…
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. Yep.
Nital Shah: if they are not kind of in direct competition right we can create that cohesive collaboration right
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. Look,…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: the way me to see is that it’s something that you’re doing to bring value and that is really about raising your profile.
Nital Shah: Yeah and…
Nital Shah: different topics right different topics so for example as you speak I can think of one of our other colleague Miy Siddhi from Red Panda right he’s big on kind of sales training and…
Andrea Atzori: Exactly. Yeah. he is big on Abspot,…
Nital Shah: sales enablement HubSpot yes yes so…
Andrea Atzori: right? Yeah. So, exactly.
Nital Shah: then we can bring him
Nital Shah: on right.
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. Mhm.
Nital Shah: I was actually in discussion with Richie Quinn…
Andrea Atzori: Salesforce.
Nital Shah: who he’s at Clio now,…
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. Clavio would be perfect. again we can ask him,…
Nital Shah: right? Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: would you sponsor a session, or stuff like that? And then s for it’s valuable for them. But I think it will be a good opportunity to get good exposure to raise the profile and also be top of mind because then the people will say, ” yeah, those guys,…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: they were really good about talking about digital PR or talking about this, do you still have the office here in Sydney? Do you still have people here in Sydney?” No, not anymore. But we can organize something anyway.
Nital Shah: enough. Not anymore.
Nital Shah: No. Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: It’s not a big problem.
Nital Shah: Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s not a problem.
Nital Shah: Whenever we are arranging maybe couple of people from my team can fly over, And we can join and be part of those sessions or we can be part of that event. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: Yep.
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. Let’s do it because I think really there is a massive opportunity here since no one is doing that.
Nital Shah: And yeah, amazing to see Rory be being a CEO. It’s amazing.
Andrea Atzori: I I met with James last week and he’s made the joke. He’s like Rory’s from SEO to CEO for that’s brilliant.
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: It’s totally true. But no, he deserves that. He’s is Yeah,…
Nital Shah: A lot of hard work.
Nital Shah: Yeah. A lot of Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: And yeah, it’s amazing to see him get into that. So yeah, we could do something with them. Richie Queen like you say,…
Nital Shah: Yeah. I think atomic you data slayer.
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. Yeah. Gagan is also quite good probably at this kind of stuff.
Nital Shah: Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: Even Gagan, I don’t know.
Nital Shah: Yeah. Govern can be really good.
Andrea Atzori: Yep.
Nital Shah: Even just Rene like old atomic.
Andrea Atzori: Exactly.
Nital Shah: True. We can gather everyone and…
Andrea Atzori: Exactly. Yeah.
Nital Shah: just create one.
Andrea Atzori: Yeah. Yeah.
Nital Shah: We don’t need even anyone external. Yes.
Andrea Atzori: No. Exactly. Let me then share some ideas, some thoughts and let’s make it happen because I think is a great opportunity. and I see how people really are thirsty. there is really a desire for this kind of things because the level of conferences you got here they are apart some SEO specific ones…
Nital Shah:
Andrea Atzori: which is like Sydney Melbourne SEO collective which are very much a little bit of a kind of a niche thing because they’re very much just for O people. all the other conferences I’ve been is things that are very much highlevel topics where they talk about marketing
Nital Shah: Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea Atzori: but they don’t talk about things that you can take away actionable insights nuggets that you can take away so I think there is a massive opportunity with this kind of stuff awesome all righty no le Let’s do it again at some point soon as well…
Nital Shah: Yeah. No, perfect. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it.
Nital Shah:
Nital Shah: And yeah,…
Andrea Atzori: because I think it’s important to maybe we do a quicker catch up as well where we do a quick version snappy one whatever but I think it would be good…
Nital Shah: yeah, coming up.
Andrea Atzori: because there’s always lots of stuff that is happening and…
Nital Shah: Yeah, perfect.
Andrea Atzori: and again now that I’m quite involved in this kind of things yeah I’m more than happy to share my thoughts …
Nital Shah: Have an amazing weekend ahead and let’s stay in touch and let’s take that I …
Andrea Atzori: I’m flying to Italy on Sunday, so I’m flying again.
Nital Shah: Okay.
Andrea Atzori: I’m going for a week, so it’s going to be quick this time.
Nital Shah: No worries. Have a safe trip then.
Andrea Atzori: Thanks. Speak soon. Bye.
Nital Shah: Bye. Bye. Bye.