Tom Burgess, president of SnippMedia, discusses how financial media networks (FMNs) leverage banks’ first-party data to present targeted offers within banking apps, creating unique advertising opportunities. Tom explains SnippMedia’s campaign process and performance metrics, sharing insights on targeting capabilities and A/B testing. He also explores the future of FMNs, encouraging marketers to explore this innovative approach for reaching new audiences and driving brand growth.

Episode Transcript

Adrian Tennant: Coming up in this episode of IN CLEAR FOCUS

Tom Burgess: We have the ability to show when a consumer is engaging. We have the ability to show when and specifically when and where they make their purchase. That is incrementality and ROAS tracking capabilities.

Adrian Tennant: You’re listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, fresh perspectives on marketing and advertising, produced weekly by Bigeye, a strategy-led full-service creative agency growing brands for clients globally. Hello, I’m your host, Adrian Tennant, Chief Strategy Officer. Thank you for joining us. Marketers constantly seek innovative ways to engage consumers and drive sales. In recent years, the rapid growth of retail media networks has become an important channel for CPG brands. Building on this trend, a new financial media network leverages banking data to offer a fresh approach to consumer engagement and attribution. potentially revolutionizing how brands connect with their audiences. Our guest today is at the forefront of this development. Tom Burgess is the president of SnippMedia. He’s a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in advertising, Fintech, and data ventures. Tom has founded four companies, including Linkable Networks, acquired in 2017, and Third Screen Media, the first mobile advertising network later purchased by AOL. Today, as President of SnippMedia, Tom is helping clients reimagine how brands interact with customers through financial institutions’ reward programs, potentially reaching over 67 million U.S. consumers. to discuss the potential of financial media networks, or FMNs, and their impact on the future of advertising. I’m delighted that Tom is joining us today from Newport, Rhode Island. Tom, welcome to IN CLEAR FOCUS.

Tom Burgess: Yeah, thank you very much for having me, Adrian. It’s nice to be here.

Adrian Tennant: Tom, you’ve had a very successful career in advertising and technology. Can you tell us a bit about your journey and what led you to your current role at Snipp Media?

Tom Burgess: Sure. There’s kind of two types of entrepreneurs in this world. Entrepreneurs that focus on A better mouse trap and entrepreneurs that focus on building solutions to pain points that have no cure right and i’ve been the latter i’ve always built solutions for pain points that have no solution it’s like banging your head against a cement wall but it does bring. a lot of fun and adventure in building out new programs that industries need. So I’ve done that four times. I’ve built four companies. I’ve been super fortunate to work with amazing people over these years of doing that. And I’ve always focused on advertising and loyalty, the advertising and loyalty industry. And all my work’s been focused on bringing advertising dollars where consumers benefit from that funding for new services or new products. But each one of my companies is basically focused on that. And I’ve also been involved as a board member or an advisory board member with several companies along the way that do that. I still do that kind of work. But today with Snip, we’re focused on bringing advertising dollars to help people save money when they buy everyday products. So my journey has been incredibly smooth, wildly crazy, but incredibly smooth. And we’ve reached this point today where kind of everything I’ve done in the past all fills in to where we need a solution today to help people in this economy save money on everyday purchases.

Adrian Tennant: Can you explain what a financial media network is and how it differs from other advertising channels?

Tom Burgess: A financial media network is really what it sounds like in the sense that we are approaching banks with money-saving offers for consumers. So those consumers that go on their banking application or their banking website, and surprisingly, some people find it surprising, that you and I as consumers, whoever might be the household banking person, will visit their banking application three to four times a week. So there’s a lot of engagement. And it’s a perfect place if you’re going in and you’re going to pay your bills and you see a way to save money, the mind is ready to see that, right? “Oh, I’m paying all these bills. Oh, there’s an opportunity for me to save money.” And of course that’s unique and that’s different than other advertising channels, but in its simplest format, it’s a highly engaged audience and it’s a very relevant or contextual offering.

Adrian Tennant: SnippMedia has partnerships with major US banks. So Tom, how do these partnerships work and what benefits do they offer brands?

Tom Burgess: So the banks benefit from having a loyalty offering, the brands benefit from that large engaged audience, very loyal audience, right? So if you’re going there, when you talk about advertising, there’s contextual advertising of having the right offer in front of the audience and when they’re in the right mindset. As I just mentioned a moment ago, this is an environment where a consumer is there. It’s a very trusted environment. So those brands are presented in very good light. They’re also presented when that consumer is engaged in the idea of financial management. So an offer, some money savings, a coupon or a rebate or something along those lines is very appropriately placed at that consumer’s time. The banks benefit because, hey, there’s a good green, if you will, a hug from the bank to the consumer saying we’re helping you save money.

Adrian Tennant: Can you walk us through how a typical campaign works on your platform from a brand’s perspective?

Tom Burgess: Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward, a typical insertion order kind of structure where a brand would come to us, we’d talk to them about the audience that we’re reaching. As you had mentioned, Adrian, we reach consumers through top five banks. So Bank of America, PNC Bank, these are a couple that we’re able to mention. So we talked to the brand about what their goals are. They provide us with offer details. We build out the graphics using their assets so that when the consumer is engaging, they will see what the brand has approved as a graphic interface. And the consumer then activates the offer and then goes in store and redeems the offer. So the brand needs to understand the flow. We walk them through that. And then the brand will provide whatever kind of reward or discount cash back as far as a financial exchange goes.

Adrian Tennant: As you know, Tom, one of the challenges in digital advertising remains accurate attribution. How does SnippMedia’s platform address this particular issue?

Tom Burgess: Attribution is number one for us, we can tell the brand exactly when and where the consumer saw the offer, when they engaged with the offer. So each offer must be activated on our platform. So it’s not a surprise and delight type of environment. So it’s not not causing any conflict with the brand. The brand is knowing, receives data from us and through a data dashboard that shows when the consumer engaged with the ad, and then we see every purchase. So when we do our confirmation, showing that the consumer redeems it, it is in store through multiple different capabilities, but could be as simple as somebody taking a picture of receipt. It could be much more smooth where the consumer just walks through the point of sale using their payment card, and we receive that data back through the payment rails, beating the point of sale system or some other loyalty system at the retailer. So we have all these different capabilities to confirm that the consumer saw the ad and the consumer purchased the product.

Adrian Tennant: How does the targeting capability of your financial media network compare to that of RMNs?

Tom Burgess: This is a great question because financial media networks are nascent. I mean, RMNs are early still, right? But the financial media networks in the format that Snipp does it at that skew level that we’re talking about today. have been launched now for just about six months. And I would say we’re at the first stages of targeting. And the reason we’re still being careful with the targeting is because we’re learning how best to leverage the targeting capabilities. We have all the data. We have the data of where the consumer lives, where the consumer is engaging with the ad, where maybe they’ve even purchased in the past. We see their purchase history. Today, however, we’re keeping it very simple in our targeting capability. We’re targeting the right ad in the right geographic area and possibly targeting down to what stores those offers would be redeemed at or be. targeting the consumer to go to a particular retailer. So that’s about as basic as we’re standing on right now.

Adrian Tennant: Your platform is particularly well suited to CPG brands. So Tom, can you elaborate on why this is the case and maybe give us an example of a successful campaign?

Tom Burgess: Yeah, this is so four or five months of true real engagement. The best thing I can talk about, I think, as opposed to giving a specific case study is the performance metrics that we’re seeing. So for instance, a typical user is engaging or activating, we call it “snipping.” So as I mentioned a moment ago, the consumer goes in and they activate the offers. We call it snipping. Ha ha ha, a little We’ll play on words there. But the consumer snips on average six offers. So that’s really exciting for us, right, to see that a consumer is truly engaged. They’ll snip six offers. And then at each purchase, we have an average of two offers being redeemed at each time a consumer is filling their basket and making a purchase. So these are the kinds of metrics that we’re seeing so far. Now, that’s high engagement. How does it work for each brand? And that gets into more of the case study kind of questions. So I would say the answer there is today, most of our brands are doing a dollar off. Buy one product to get a dollar off, get $2 off, get $3 off. For electric shavers right now where the offers are much higher, $30, $40 off. That’s the type of programs we’re running. And we’re basing the success on the size of the audience and the number of redemptions. So a little early for us to really have full case studies to share. We’re just starting to put them together. And as everybody knows, the brands are very tight with their data. So it’s not always easy to have a full exposed transparent case study, but very good engagement metrics so far.

Adrian Tennant: Excellent. Well, for CPG brands in low consideration categories, where shoppers are most price driven, if SKU level offers are in that $1 to $1.50 range, can SnippMedia help brand managers assess if digital coupons or rebates are strong enough for consumers to respond to them?

Tom Burgess: Yeah, this is a great opportunity to run A/B tests, right? Because we can deploy offers for the same brand on different banks. So that means we can see engagement at different levels. We’ve had some brands that haven’t been immediately happy with the redemption levels that they’re getting right off the bat. So they’ve come back and they’ve said, hey, we want to mid-flight change the offer. We want it to go from $1 to $1.25. And let’s see if that makes a difference. And we’ve had other brands say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to slow this thing down. We’re burning through this offer. What should we do? And we’ve practiced with different things. So Snipp is in control of the campaigns and we can do mid-flight management. It’s not as though the offers are sent out into the wild, picture a paper coupon. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, right? You can’t change anything. And everybody knows this, this is nothing new on digital coupons, but this is what I’m saying that we’re able to do. So a lot of A/B testing, and in fact, even on the same bank, we’ve had offers where we can deploy to a segment of the population or the audience on that bank, and then test it, see how it goes. And if it goes well, then we’ll deploy it across the entire bank. So we have a lot of capabilities for brands to test.

Adrian Tennant: Does that mean that SnippMedia can also help CPG brand managers know whether digital coupons or rebates are the best approach?

Tom Burgess: So Snipp operates programs for both. We in fact have a decade of doing rebates and this is really Snipp’s first foray into digital coupons. We have a lot of brands that we know how their digital rebates work or how their maybe even some neck hangers or traditional type rebates work and we can compare that off uniquely with our historic data to see how the digital coupons are working. So I think if I’m hearing your question right, that we can compare those with them because we’ve seen a lot of other programs that does brands. And then we offer up, and I say this in a collaborative manner, we offer up advice, we offer up ideas. Brands take that advice sometimes, other times they will dictate to us what they want to do and we just execute it.

Adrian Tennant: Let’s take a short break. We’ll be right back after this message.

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Adrian Tennant: Welcome back. I’m talking with Tom Burgess, President at SnippMedia, a new financial media network. What opportunities exist for brands to amplify their offers in other channels?

Tom Burgess: This is the future kind of view right now, right? So if you look back on the digital advertising industry on its own, say maybe the advent of mobile advertising, which we all know now is the biggest channel in digital advertising. But when it first came out, people at agencies and so forth, and I was heavily involved in mobile advertising, so I lived this real time. But there was a time when you walked into an agency and they said mobile advertising, and they said, “Oh, is that ads on the side of a bus?” And I kid you not, I literally got that the question, “Where are these mobile ads gonna be on? What buses are they gonna be?” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, mobile advertising as in mobile on your phone.” And that took the industry a while to understand. And then it took the industry a while to integrate that into say the media exchanges and the digital media ad networks. So we’re at that same level now with both FMNs and RMNs where they are kind of today siloed-type programs. FMNs, our financial media networks, operate within Bank of America, within PNC Bank, within other banks. And when a brand approaches them, you’re really still today saying, “Okay, I’d like to be on Bank of America, I’d like to be on PNC, I’d like to be on this bank, I’d like to be on that bank.” And they go and they work with a company like Snipp to help them get there. What’s coming in the future will be when a brand makes a purchase through maybe they’re traditional, if you can call it that nowadays, I guess we can, digital media network and or exchange, and they’ll be able to choose the audience of an FMN. The same thing’s going to happen with RMNs, but we’re not there on either. So that is a future question, and it’s going to happen, right? It’s on its way to happening.

Adrian Tennant: Tom, you mentioned it’s still early days for SnippMedia, but based on your broad industry experience, what makes a digital coupon campaign successful? Have you identified any offer must-haves or insights that you could share with us?

Tom Burgess: This is probably one of the most debated topics. So very good on you, Adrian, for asking that. So I’d say that the majority of people will come to the table and say, “I want to track ROAS. I want to track my return on my ad spend.” But that seems to be shifting. And I believe, personally, shifting in a good manner towards incrementality. “What is this campaign actually bringing me that I can’t get somewhere else? Or what is it bringing me in a increase and amplification, if you will, on other programs I’m running?” And they want to track incrementality. So a brand wants to focus on the data that they can receive. That’s my belief. And it is something that RMNs and FMNs are very, very strong at, right? We have the ability to show when a consumer is engaging. We have the ability to show when and specifically when and where they make their purchase. That is incrementality and ROAS tracking capability. So when any brand comes to the table, I believe the best part of their research and their planning should be focused on “What kind of data am I going to get after the fact?”And then, “Can I maybe do in-flight changes to optimize those results?” So yes, you’ll be able to track ROAS. That’s simple, straightforward. Everybody’s got their own unique formula, but that’s very, very simple in the FMN world because we have that data for you. But more importantly, let’s look at what incremental type of growth you want to see. Do you want to see more users? Do you want to see more frequent purchases? Do you want to see a higher number of items purchased per shop? And all of those incrementality types of things are trackable in these types of programs. The advice I would give is look into the data you can get.

Adrian Tennant: One of the issues agencies like ourselves and clients alike face is the challenge of standardization in reporting across different media platforms. So Tom, how is SnippMedia addressing this particular issue?

Tom Burgess: I was the founder of what was called the Card Links Association, which is the standardization board for FMNs. So there’s a group together already standardizing the functionality, the engagement of brands in the financial media network environment. Recently, I think it was just last week, the retail media network published their first set of standards by the IAB. And I believe that the best track here for the financial media networks is to follow along on that path, to go to the IAB, stand on the shoulders of the standards that have been already established for RMNs. And pull the unique capabilities or the unique needs, I should say, from that standardization effort into the financial media network. So this is something, it’s very early as we’ve been saying, but it’s going to follow that same path.

Adrian Tennant: Privacy is a significant concern, of course, for consumers, but also for those in the digital advertising industry. How does SnippMedia ensure consumer privacy while still providing valuable data to brands?

Tom Burgess: Yeah, the good news is we’re working with first-party data here. So we’re not bringing in an aspect of comparing IDs that we need to share with other networks and so forth. So it’s all based on first-party data from those financial institutions. We work on an anonymous ID for each user. We have a history, some shopping history behind that unique ID. We have one environment where we collect email addresses on an opt-in basis for consumers that would like to receive a notification when new offers become available. But other than that, the entire platform operates on a unique anonymous ID. We have no PII. And we have no PCI, which might be a newer term in the advertising world because it’s a payment card information or payment card data that would mean your card number, right? We don’t operate in that. A lot of people wonder, “Well, you have my credit card number.” No, we don’t. We have a unique ID and it’s a system generated ID, right? It’s not based on any other thing that we could be reverse engineering back to a user. So we no PII, no PCI, but first party data attached to an ID that allows us to maintain that reporting that we talked about.

Adrian Tennant: What is SnippMedia’s pricing model?

Tom Burgess: I think it’s important to say to any brand today, especially right now in this early days, our pricing model is performance based, meaning brands can engage and run their offers across these massive banks, this huge audience, and only pay when a consumer purchases their product. Because we have that specific data, we do performance-based pricing based on purchasing. We do have other opportunities where a brand can pay to amplify their offer by having it uniquely placed within the banking environment. We’re running a big campaign right now with one brand that’s doing that. But still, we run campaigns every day that are purely performance-based.

Adrian Tennant: Got it. For marketers interested in exploring financial media networks, what advice would you give them to get started?

Tom Burgess: It’s always a hard thing for either a new platform like this or brands looking for a new channel. I would obviously say, cause I’m being very selfish here, reach out to Snipp. We’ll help you. Right. So that’s an easy way to go, but it’s going to come down to a brand looking to reach a new audience. If an agency is working with their brand and the agency wants to bring a new unique audience to their client. then FMNs are an outstanding place to do so because the audience is very large, very engaged. So it’s a matter of new opportunities, finding incremental budgets, testing, learning, optimizing those campaigns so that they meet the goals that the brands are trying to achieve. Again, a new audience operating in a new channel, new advertising channel. Does that help? Am I answering the question right?

Adrian Tennant: You are, and it’s exactly why we wanted to talk to you and IN CLEAR FOCUS, Tom. Looking ahead, what developments or trends do you foresee in this new world of financial media networks over the next couple of years?

Tom Burgess: We kind of covered a couple of them already, which is in its early days, it’s operating on that first-party data. We have outstanding attribution and other reporting data elements. So the brands can get involved, test, learn, optimize. Where it will go in the future is going to be engagement with new targeting capabilities. So taking additional data, for instance, the banks know where you shop, but the banks don’t know what you buy. So Snipp knows based on the data that we collect as campaigns run what the consumers are buying. So now we can help brands target based on that consumers or that unique IDs purchase basket, right? What the elements are in their basket, so help them with that targeting. So that’s a future piece. Another future piece is integration with the call it more traditional and more standard media buying capabilities, buying through exchanges, the other channels, FMN becoming a new audience that a brand or an agency could share their dollars, their spend across this new audience. It’s a unique audience, right? So that means that the exchanges today don’t have that. There’s no shingle hanging in the exchange world that says FMN at this time, but that will happen.

Adrian Tennant: Tom, if listeners would like to learn more about you and your work at SnippMedia, what’s the best way for them to get in touch?

Tom Burgess: Easy. Two different ways. Snipp.com and it’s S-N-I-P-P.com, or an email at lets.talk@snipp.com. So let’s – L-E-T-S dot talk at snipp.com. Those are the two best ways.

Adrian Tennant: Perfect. Tom, Thank you very much for being our guest on IN CLEAR FOCUS!

Tom Burgess: Thank you, Adrian. It was great being here with you. 

Adrian Tennant: Thanks again to my guest this week, Tom Burgess, President of financial media network, SnippMedia. As always, you’ll find a complete transcript of our conversation with timestamps and links to the resources we discussed on the IN CLEAR FOCUS page at Bigeyeagency.com. Just select Insights from the menu. Thank you for listening to IN CLEAR FOCUS, produced by Bigeye. I’ve been your host, Adrian Tennant. Until next week, goodbye.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00: Introduction to Financial Media Networks

02:05: Tom Burgess’s Entrepreneurial Journey

03:54: Understanding Financial Media Networks

04:55: Partnerships with Major Banks

05:57: Campaign Process Overview

07:03: Addressing Attribution Challenges

08:11: Targeting Capabilities Compared to RMNs

09:14: Suitability for CPG Brands

11:05: Assessing Offer Effectiveness

12:56: Digital Coupons vs. Rebates

15:35: Amplifying Offers Across Channels

17:15: Keys to Successful Digital Coupon Campaigns

19:27: Standardization in Reporting

20:36: Ensuring Consumer Privacy

22:08: Pricing Model Explained

22:59: Getting Started with Financial Media Networks

24:02: Future Trends in Financial Media Networks

25:29: Contact Information for SnippMedia