Ep 581: Meta Ads Aren’t About Targeting Anymore: How $5–50M Brands Win with Intent-Based Creative

0:00The environment in which we're running our creative has changed so drastically. It still blows my mind how many people are kind of like still buying media, like interest-based media, like it's 2019. Today's consumer, they're not necessarily looking to be persuaded. They're looking for a resolution. You don't need to change people's minds, but you need to answer the questions that they have in the moment. What's like really driving meta is idea variation. My bigger bet, we're heading toward a world where paid social and paid search are really converging in this like single intent layer.

0:40This episode is brought to you by Contentful. Marketers, you know that feeling when your creative clicks, when that social post sends engagement through the roof, when your outside of the box campaign hits ROI positive, when When a personalized homepage turns prospects into customers, it's utter marketing bliss. Contentful helps you create tailored omni-channel experiences without working overtime. No stress, no limits, only possibilities. Get the feels at contentful.com. It's all killer, no filler. I'm Eric, and I am here with Pilot House's VP of Brand and Performance, Daniel Sandecki. Welcome to your first episode of the All Killer, No Filler D2C podcast.

1:22Eric, thanks for having me. Super excited to be here. Let's get going. Let's grip it. Well, first of all, start by a little overview for my value and for the listeners of what, because Pilatus just went through and sort of like added the VP layer in the company and added sort of, has really been going through a bit of a transformation about how we're thinking about things high level strategically. So maybe tell us a bit about your role and what that indicates. Yeah, like stepping into the role here has like really been energizing because like not only because of the role, but because like the entire creative discipline feels to me like it's in a little bit of a moment of recalibration, both at Pilot House and like for agencies that are kind of like paying attention, right?

2:01So the thing that I'm like trying to build at Pilot House is a system where like the creative is working at two levels simultaneously. Like one is like one of those things, like the traditional, like the things that we traditionally associate with like brand creative, like that kind of like emotional craft, the story, the texture, voice feeling. Like I came up in the traditional agency world where that like mattered deeply as far as creative goes and I still believe it does. But like on the second level and which is newer to me and to us, I think. And honestly, a huge unlock is like grounding creative in what customers are like genuinely care about, like in the moment that they encounter a brand.

2:44like not in an abstract sense but i mean like the literal things the literal questions that are kind of like sitting in their their head at the point of decision and honestly this matters now more than ever because like the environment in which we're running our creative has has changed so drastically like it still blows my mind how many people are kind of like out there like still buying media like interest-based media like it's it's 2019 and like platforms like facebook haven't even updated their interest graph meaningfully in such a long time. You log into the Facebook app six years ago, liked a tiki bar and quit drinking three years ago.

3:23You've got entire targeting categories full of people that these interests aren't relevant anymore. And Meta has been quietly deprecating all of those targeting options for a long time because they know they don't work. So the real shift everyone is missing, I think. and I'm using meta here as an example, is like they really went all in on AI. It's like it's not about clever targeting anymore. It's like basically hands off, trust the pixel, give us the signal and we'll find you people. And like that's the direction of creative these days. So like honestly, that's a long way to say like that's what has been on my mind as I've started role here.

4:07How do we build creative that thrives in an environment that Meta is building? Creative that still has that branded emotional intelligence, but also really speaks clearly to those intent questions that real people are asking. For me, that's the frontier. I'm intentionally designing the role at Pilot House around that. You said in your notes, I thought something was interesting. and you said that creative isn't about persuasion anymore. It's more about resolution. Can you dive into what you mean by that a bit more? Yeah. Like, I mean, historically, I think creative, like madman era, like creatives rooted in persuasion, right?

4:45Interrupt, very interruptive, like impress, convince. You made a big campaign, you spent the big bucks, you bought yourself some reach and like you hoped that it would shift perception. But like today's consumer, like they're not necessarily looking to be persuaded. wait they're looking for like a resolution they're working against like actual friction points and like little anxieties they have like all day long like hey you know will this product work for me like is it truly worth that money like is it gonna solve this problem that i have like what if i choose the wrong product you know is is this for me like those are like the key insights like and and so when you're starting to like target like doing that kind of like filtering creative like it can't afford to be generic anymore like now that ai is doing a lot of the filtering creative itself has to be very very specific like it has to start doing the the sorting like and that's why like broad audience doesn't work with a like a broad message ultimately right it like it works beautifully though with a very specific message because the that very specificity kind of gives the algorithm them like a little bit of a fingerprint.

5:55So like, this is like a shift from persuasion to answering questions that is, you know, recognizing that you don't need to change people's minds, but you need to answer the questions that they have in the moment. And that's where creative wins now. And I think that like that, that's where creative fits. Super interesting. We've always talked about Google and the Google ad suite as more or less like an intent capture platform where you already have this latent intent and you're just putting the search terms in front of the right people who already have these intents. Whereas meta is more of an intent generation engine where you're sort of like, it's funny, I find myself going on Facebook now just to like look at clothes.

6:34Like Facebook is kind of like my shopping experience now in some ways, because that's where I've bought, I clicked enough stuff there. Like I don't go to the brand's websites, I just go to Facebook because I know I'm going to see all those ads there. Talk to me about how meta, how intent plays into meta because we don't always think of it as an intent capture platform we do think of it as a as a intent generation system yeah you know what so like and to be fair like the the meta platform is changing like significantly significantly quickly and and um i've always kind of looked at google before meta like in in terms of like where customers are expressing kind of like their their their frustration or or their desire so like i'm reductive in this sense in that like I like to defer to search as like a proxy for what people are looking for intent-wise on meta and I like Google especially because it is very private zero social pressure you're not kind of like performing for anyone you don't have to posture it's just you and the truth like your search history is the one thing that you're gonna never share with anybody else right you're going to take it to your grave.

7:42It's like the largest, most honest consumer data set. So like to that end, every single query is a question that someone cares about. So I like mining kind of like the Google side of the data in order to kind of inform the expression of intent on meta. And like, for me, the reason that this is becoming really important to creative strategy is is meta's algorithm is now behaving more like search, right? Like it doesn't want personas. It doesn't care about interests, right? What pages people liked in 2016, right? Like it wants intent. So when your creative starts to mirror the questions that people are actually asking, and we use Google as a proxy for that sometimes, meta as a platform can instantly identify who should see it.

8:32And then the ad itself becomes the targeting, right? Like the language behind the problem it's solving really becomes the audience signal, I think. It's funny. We've been saying that, you know, creative is the new targeting for about four years since iOS, whatever that was, iOS 14. But it's like, we were saying it then, but it's like, it's really become the reality now. It's on like an actual, with Andromeda, it's like an actual technical lever that that's the way you should be thinking about it. Can you give me an example? I love that idea that people walk around with these private anxieties or these questions kind of on their mind.

9:08Can you give me an example of how creative could be looking at a friction to resolve? So yeah, it's interesting that you kind of have grounded that into something that we've been saying for years. Because this approach to intent has been kind of on my mind over the past three or four years. But it used to be like a very manual process, right? So like we'd look at the creative problem, we'd look at social conversations or search intent, for example, and like we'd start to like tag them and like eventually kind of like build like a psychosocial profile of what searchers are asking for. But like recently what's got me really excited, the LLMs that we're working with right now are great at taking like thousands of these like unstructured queries each slightly different and like like rooting through them to reduce the signal to noise ratio right so now we can take like this really entire messy chaotic data set and feed it into chat gbt or gemini and ask it to like review the questions people are asking not like key words necessarily, but like their psychological intent.

10:21So we start to like identify patterns, whether people are trying to justify the value of something or they're fearful of making a wrong decision or they're comparing brands or they're aspiring to a certain lifestyle or they're signaling their identity or want to remove emotional friction. And we can group these. And once you see these patterns kind of like rise up, you can start mapping them directly to the funnel. Like, you know, that is, I think, what is one of the most important levers that we can pull as far as creative. But Eric, I recognize that I probably deviated a lot from your original question there.

11:00I think I like to package multiple questions into one. So I think you answered half of it. But I think what you're referring to now are what you called in your write-up here, psychological intent clusters. is that sort of what the way we're thinking about things yeah like i i mean like i'm i've come from very much like a content focused creative background and like another way of framing them is like editorial pillars it's it's like what are the five or six areas where your customer has demonstrated that there's heat right and if you are able to kind of like define those five or six content clusters, you can start to map those to the personas that your strategists are bringing you.

11:42You can start to map those to different parts of the customer journey. And then when you're briefing in your creatives, you can actually brief them in with the questions or fears that people have. And the output of the creative is to pointedly address those. So we get into a situation where like we know creative variation works really well and in the past it might have been what uh drove efficiency on meta was like just like literally button swaps and colors and and and hero images but like now for for me what's like really driving meta is idea variation right so that like we come oh you know like meta starts to almost act like a like a SERP more more so than then like as a platform, it starts to function as a SERP.

12:34And then the creative that we're building is almost like a library of answers that Meta then takes and like drops into your news feed because it's identified that you have like a specific pain point or a specific question. So like, yeah, a brand starts to build this library of creative that addresses people's pain points. How important is funnel congruency? Because this is something I remember when I was Back in the day, I cut my teeth on AdWords, and we would use dynamic keyword insertion on the landing page to make sure that the keyword they came from made sense. And funnel congruency was very important.

13:10And I hear a lot about the post-click environment at Pilothouse right now. And I'm wondering, how structured is funnel congruency? If you bring someone in from one of these psychological clusters, does the landing page refer to the same things? How important is funnel congruency in this new world? I think it matters less. I think especially since the advent of Andromeda, which is probably the most significant shift in Meta's ecosystem, I would say ever, they're a matching engine now. And they match the rather messy customer journey that we kind of all undertake. So I mean, we love to look at a linear customer journey and some of the more daring agencies among us might talk about infinity loops and whatnot.

13:59But at the end of the day, Meta is going to message match the right person in the right moment, right? And that's just the future. It rewards specificity. It rewards kind of like actually answering the questions that are put out in front of you. And then it rewards that intent alignment. So to answer your question, I think it matters less these days because the AI is helping us categorize and sort that than it did in the past. I think what matters now is, and I mentioned this earlier, more of a focus on idea variation so that you essentially start to build a library of creative that addresses different parts of the funnel, that addresses different pain points along those points of the funnel, and that you build this repository of creative that meta can then drop in at the right moment.

14:51So we can be a little less intentional about the creative. It doesn't necessarily disqualify or mean like post-click matters tremendously from a conversion sense. But from a generating awareness and like building consideration, Meta does like a – and again, I'm focused on Meta here. But Meta does a really good job. And presumably, ChatGPT is going to do a very good job in the near future of that. And Google, we know, has always done a great job of it. I like it. So, yeah, if you're thinking about these, because I think if you were thinking about it in these sort of discrete angles or funnels before, you'd find that like 90 % of them would never get used.

15:30Whereas now, if you do it right, it paints this cumulative picture in a way where creative, it like accretes in a way to be like, oh, I didn't think of it from this angle. And it's a way to just kind of complete the picture of someone's intent through all these different pieces of creative that kind of tell different parts of the story. Whereas previously, if something, it wasn't as cumulative. It was like, does this funnel get them to conversion? Yes or no. Whereas now it's sort of like this cumulative effort. Does that feel accurate? I think that's accurate. Like, you know, the simplest way that I've kind of expressed, like the way that the creative economy works on platforms like MetaNow and across LLMs is like intent comes in.

16:10So you like search questions that people are asking, show us what people are looking for, the answers that they're looking for. then we can take those insights and we can structure them like take these questions and build like psychological patterns out of them and then our job as a create as creatives is creative translations like turn those patterns into like those creative answers that are expressed through like that brand craft that are still you know that are still aligned with the brand and now you can kind of then push it into the platform to be routed and like the algorithms on these platforms are going to identify best who these answers belong to.

16:47And like, that's the loop, like it's clean, it's scalable, it compounds. And it means that like, creative is no longer like just an output, but it's like that kind of operating system that connects with like, human intent. Can you tell me a little bit about how you coming onto the team has led to the sort of restructuring or thinking differently about how teams within Pilothouse kind of function? because I just I'm always trying to get as an arm's length from pilot us I'm always trying to understand how it kind of works how does your team work with the various you know the buying team for instance here's an interesting one in terms of like the buying team like and uh I haven't explicitly discussed this with with uh like our div heads and like uh at meta and google and stuff like that but like my bigger bet like we've discussed is like that we're heading toward a world like where paid social and paid search for that example are really like converging in this like single intent layer so like i think we move like from like a very channel specific outlook that's where we were to bringing creative up a level and informing across channels like so that like our creative like we'll build creative libraries that can be deployed across channel quite easily.

18:05Like I had mentioned that act more like SERPs, multiple answers competing for relevance. And like those platforms will infer the intent, not the target demos. And then creative teams, like the creative team itself will operate more like an insight engine than we have in the past, like, which has been more like just like asset factories and like the brands that kind of like scale, they're not going to be the loudest, but they're going to be the ones who like understand these like you know deeper questions so like if i were a brand and i was considering how to compete going forward it would be like don't view your creative as like an output any longer view it as like an integral part of like that closed loop uh system uh and and not just like not not just you know look at the performance output of that and adjust accordingly uh but think of it intentionally as part of like the overall brand strategy that you're that you're building how is brand strategy you know i think of it was a huge madman fan and you come from maybe a bit more of that world how does the way we're describing creative is like a strategic maelstrom in a right way in a way you've got all these different pieces that get hit on at different points and i think back to like don draper in the in the boardroom telling the story about the kodak uh carousel photo carousel.

19:25And he tells this one through line brand story that becomes the monolithic sort of approach that they go to market with for, for this product. So maybe just compare like, where, where are we at then with sort of this idea of classic brand storytelling in this, in this modern maelstrom world? Yeah. Like, I mean, I don't think you have to lose that because I think like that, that, that, that branded element, it kind of, uh, it, it isn't, it isn't exclusive, right? Like it can be expressed kind of like at that, like I love that maelstrom that you referenced there. Like it can be expressed in the maelstrom.

20:01And like, I guess one thing that we haven't really focused on in this conversation is like how important it is marrying up that human intent with that brand intent. And you don't have to sacrifice the the expression of the brand by focusing really downstream at like the human level intent questions. What you do is you can use those human level intent questions to really inform like how meaningful that brand is to the, to, to the end user, right? It's, it's very much a two way street. The brand can learn from the way that its customers are talking about it and, relying on it. And that can really feed back into that kind of like emotional brand-led creative.

20:47But again, at its very best, these function in lockstep with each other, I think. Now, just dive a little deeper down into the actual creative itself. One of the points that you made in your write-up here was the difference between like an interruptive hook and a recognition hook. Because we think a lot about meta as being this interruptive platform. And I think you've already spoken to how you take that interruptive aspect and build it into more of a recognition hook. But what do you mean by that? Yeah, like, I mean, so for me, it's less about the thumb stopper, which like, I love a good thumb stopper.

21:22But it's more like, it's more about recognition, not interruption. So like the best hook, when you come across it, it's like, oh, that's exactly what I was wondering. That kind of like search language can give you that verbatim. And if you can pointedly address that question, like that's the best type of hook. One that kind of like, wow, they're really, these guys kind of get me, right? And not surprising, but a recognition that you kind of like see yourself mirrored in that language. I was just talking about this with Jeff yesterday, and I don't, this is maybe more on the buyer or traffic side, but we've, you know, In thinking about Meta as a intent capture platform, which is the way we have thought about it in kind of previous years, I was thinking about the kinds of targeting people do.

22:07And for the longest time, we've done conversion-focused ads. So ads based on people who are most likely to convert. But if you think about it, especially in this world, that is going to limit your funnel massively, potentially, to people. Because Meta now knows through all these different cues who's actually in market. And that's probably a tiny fraction of the people that you could end up reaching. So I bet in a lot of cases, you end up like super saturating that absolute bottom part of the funnel with all sorts of different brand messaging. But when it comes on the actual buying side, are we starting to open things up more to other kind of targeting and intent types rather than just conversion based?

22:46Are we talking about traffic campaigns or other things that are higher in the funnel? Yeah, like I think like, you know, instead of saying like, who should we target, like Meta is kind of like now asking like, what is the right message that fits this person right now? So that when we're building kind of like this repository of creative, like we're very intentional about strategically focusing on the parts of the funnel that matter to the brand out of the gate, but with a focus on kind of like building a very fulsome repository of creative that can be drawn. on. So I think like we have like, you know, it kind of like portends a future where we like, we can be less intentional about like targeting specific parts of the funnel and really just like, really just focus on trusting, trusting that the pixel is going to, and the algorithm is going to do that work for us.

23:37And like, that's why like the, you know, more than ever that creative strategist layer, that media buyer layer and the creative itself really start to converge. And like Like my bet is like we've been talking about is that it really starts to converge from that intense aspect. I think back to all the different All Killer No Filler podcasts we did about brand versus performance. And it's the silliest dichotomy in the business world maybe. How do you think about blending brand and performance? Yeah, like that's like my favorite misconception. And I think like you and I kind of get the sense you and I share the same take on this.

24:15But like intent, like, you know, that doesn't kill brand, right? Like intent strengthens that brand because like ultimately it forces clarity, right? So brand is really built through this kind of like repeated, consistent answers to meaningful questions. And like the brands we love, they're not random. Like they solve the same emotional tension kind of like over and over for us. So like it doesn't necessarily cheapen that creative. Like it's not just performance creative. It like refines it. It's sharpening the brand story to kind of like align with those like real problems, those aspirations and those frictions that people experience.

24:54So for me, it's not an either or. It's like almost like creative that addresses intent is an expression of the brand itself. It has to be at this point. And I think that's where influencers and that layer of sort of like other voices echoing certain things and hooks with recognition hooks within your brand becomes so important as well that people see it from not just from you, but from other sort of people in their environment. Exactly. And I'm glad that you touched on that kind of like influence layer. And like influence for me has always been about like that, the more authentic, genuine expression of intent because it's coming from a place that is outside of the person or outside of the customer and outside of the brand and a third party for sure.

25:42I'm just amazed when I go when I'm on on the internets now and watching a video, the amount of people who you can just tell are reading a screen with an LLM output. And, you know, it's not just this, but it's this. And, you know, and all of these all of these LLMs output like the world's best, most manipulative, you know, the best copywriting text from all the best copywriters of all time. But it makes everything sound the same. And I just find like, I'll be watching a video on some like deep esoteric thing or whatever. And I'm like, this ChatGPT just wrote that for you. And it's probably like your thoughts are built in there, but you're saying it in such a way now that it's so like, is this when we talk about, you know, taking, putting things into LLMs and getting outputs for creative, how, how concerned are we about saying things less elegantly so that we don't sound too much like LLMs?

26:37Yeah, you bring up a good point. For example, one of the greatest tells of most LLMs is the use of the M-Dash, right? Beautiful use of the M-Dash, which I used for years before this. It's ruined it for me. Exactly. And it was like, and you know what? I could craft a beautiful email with like an M-Dash is like part of like my go-to punctuation. And it was a real, like I felt kind of like a brand. Now it's been commoditized. In fact, it's like a tell. So I have to find myself editing backwards so I sound more authentic. Although my true authentic voice, utilize an em dash. And hey, LLMs are great at using transition words and stuff like that.

27:20And those are, again, tells and some of the constructions that I'd mentioned earlier. I think we do get to a point of diminishing returns and we become very sensitive to AI slop. And that's why I think at the end of the day, the human layer, and that's why I love creative in essence. And I feel like we're at a point where people are very concerned about creative being displaced. But that human layer, I think that human layer is a necessary layer that should always exist between the work that an LLM can do to help us really get to the creative problem and the output. And as curators, as editors, as designers, that human layer, we have to be very intentional about it.

28:11And that's, I think, how we solve that creative problem. Absolutely beautiful. Great first appearance on the DTC podcast. Totally painless, minimal edits. Daniel, I think you're going to be a regular fixture on this. If you want to, if people want to reach out to you, and I think that happens a lot with the podcast, they want to reach out to you and talk brand, talk performance. Where do you recommend they do that? Yeah, you're welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn. You're welcome to email me. SimpleDaniel at Pilothouse.co. I'm, as you would imagine, as a digital creative, of I am perpetually online.

28:45So find me where - Chronically even. Chronically even. So yeah, email, LinkedIn are probably the two best bets. Nice. Well, we'll compare screen times after the call. Thanks for coming on today, Daniel. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, thanks, Eric. Really, really appreciate it. I would happily join you in the future whenever you ask.

29:09Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not getting the D2C newsletter, you can subscribe for free at directtoconsumer.co. And if you want to learn more about Pilot House's all killer, no filler services, take off to pilothouse.co. I'm Eric Dick, and this has been the DTC Podcast. We'll see you next time.