How to Scale TV That Actually Performs, with Meghan Shea, Sr. Director of Marketing at Bonafide Health

0:00TV is back and I don't mean the TV you grew up watching. I'm talking about TV as a performance channel. Measurable, scalable, and finally accessible to brands of all sizes. I'm partnering with Tatari to pull back the curtain on what it actually looks like to run TV like a modern marketer. We're talking linear, streaming, CTV, all of it in one place. Here's how we're structuring this. We're going from zero to hero. Growth brands testing TV for the first time, mid-market brands scaling what's working, enterprise brands building full brand strategies, and yes, Super Bowl campaigns. And then we're getting tactical on how you can plan and budget for TV in 2026.

0:44TV has always been a performance channel. Markers are just catching up to what's possible, and Tatari is the platform making it happen. They give growth teams access to all of TV and let them evaluate it the same way they evaluate paid search or paid social. No black boxes, no guessing, just results you can tie back to your business. This is the TV series for marketers who are done leaving this channel on the table. Excited to dive in. If you haven't tuned in to episode one, make sure you give it a listen. Now here's our second episode with Bonafide Health. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast.

1:25I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. we are back with another episode of the market millennials podcast today i normally don't have two guests but i have two guests in the podcast which is makes it even more fun to have a podcast with two guests so i i'll let them introduce themselves um but excited to talk we're gonna talk all things tv tv is exploding right now everybody's wondering how to do it how to do it right. Megan crushes TV, so we're going to talk TV today.

2:13So I'll let you two introduce yourselves. Yeah. My name is Megan Che. I lead growth marketing at Bonafide Health, which is a women's health company that was really built to solve problems that women have been told to ignore for a very long time, specifically around menopause and women's sexual health. I think what really makes us different is that everything we do here is science-backed, clinically studied, and hormone-free. And from a growth perspective, our job is to really translate that science into trust and really meeting women where they are without talking down to them, but really educating them so that the brand feels credible and human.

2:52And I know this podcast is called Marketing Millennials, but for any aging millennials that are listening, perimenopause is knocking on our door so go check us out i was actually listening to a good hang podcast with amy pauler and she was she she uh jennifer lawrence was like um scratching your ear and she's like just so you know that the sign of perimenopause and it was like i did i did not know that um so just uh i thought it was hilarious listen because i listened to that like two days ago so it was hilarious. Yeah, we don't have products that help with ear itch, but hot flashes and other things, we got you.

3:31We'll hand it over. Cool. Yeah, well, I'm Ramana Bottini. I am a senior client development manager here at Tatari. If you didn't catch the first part of the series yet, Tatari helps brands and agencies buy and measure ads on TV that feel a lot more like digital. So we work across all inventory sets, streaming, linear online video, whether that's something super highly targeted on CTV, like retargeting or lookalike modeling, all the way up to things as big as the Super Bowl on NBC. The big difference is that we don't just run the media. We try to measure it against real business outcomes with an incremental focus.

4:06So anything from CAC and ROAS to reach and frequency. Amazing. So we're going to dive into TV today, but the first question I have is, so I know TV as an ad channel wasn't entirely new to you, Megan, but you changed how you used it. So what wasn't working for you in the early days with more sporadic TV tests and what finally pushed you to rethink your approach to TV? Yeah. So earlier on in our TV journey, we were working with a different agency and honestly, the data was so fragmented. Reporting was delayed, which was a nightmare. And we weren't really able to see the way that TV impacted our marketing efforts as a whole.

4:50So when we switched over to Tatari, that really gave us the transparency and ultimately the trackability that we needed to prove it out. When I say prove it out, we were a small company at the time. It's like talking to our CMO and talking to our CFO and really justifying that this deserves a place on the media plan, especially with Linear. As I mentioned, we're a menopause company. So our core demographic is really 55. So while everyone's kind of like talking about streaming and like on that boat right now, we're there too, but linear is still a huge, huge priority for us. Yeah. I think Megan hit the nail on the head.

5:22Fragmentation is like a huge story in TV right now. Like she mentioned, everyone's talking about streaming taking over, which is true, but the reality is like linear still makes up half of viewership when it comes to TV today. And even more when you look like ad-supported viewership. And so when you start to think about like the picture, right, you've got audiences across linear streaming. You've got new publishers emerging and then other ones merging. And it gets really complicated fast. So if you're trying to measure TV in different silos, it can just be like really, really difficult to understand what's actually driving results.

5:52And that's ultimately why having a single partner that could kind of give you access to all that and measure it all head to head is that much more important. Just so people know, like, what were you doing before as like, what did the process look like before to what is it now? I know it was fragmented, but how much of a struggle was it for you? Oh, yeah. So I would say everything that we do when we were DTC only was very digital. And we're in the age of instant gratification. So we wanted those numbers now. We're spending money. We want to see how it's doing for us. Before we were working with Tatori, we were on almost a two-week delay on getting that reporting.

6:30And we work with Rockerbox as our MTA. And it was a manual ingestion process. So not only was it a two-week delay for us to get the data, it then took even longer to sort of get it into Rockerbox. When we switched over and we have like Tatari's Pixel on our site, everything is so seamless because they have that integration. So we're able to see with no delay, like what our CACs look like on pretty much a daily basis. Yeah. I mean, I know my wife is in DTC and she runs digital for a beauty brand and she would be panicking if it took three to four weeks to get data i would be panicking as a marketing officer even in b2b like nothing should take two weeks to get data that's just something especially as a marketer who's spending money every dollar counts um but i know you initially came into tv with performance marketing mindset but what did performance tv and then i air quote that mean to you at the start and how has the definition of performance TV evolved over time?

7:39Yeah. So when we first started in our early days, like CAC was king, right? If you wanted to spot on the roster, AKA the media plan, like you, you had a number that you had to hit. Um, so that's how we used to see it. And when we were talking about performance TV, that was a very clear call to action with an offer, you know, driving the user to our website. Not only has our view on TV expanded, but we've expanded as a business. We're now Omnichannel. We're on Amazon. We're in Target. So we have to understand the halo. Really, that's happening. And it's not just about the CPA that Rockerbox or MMM is telling us that TV is driving.

8:17We're really looking how it's impacting other channels. So some of the things that we're looking at is how CAC is shifting on other channels? What sort of increase are we seeing in brand or semi-branded search? What does that movement look like? And ultimately, our mix shift, right? It's not all coming to DTC anymore. A lot of our purchases are coming on Amazon and that's from the halo from TV. We've also really worked our way up the funnel. So like I mentioned in the beginning, our creative was very direct response focused with a clear call to action and an offer. We've also slowly started building our way up into this rebrand where not only are we addressing symptom relief with one of our products, but we need to connect in women's brains.

9:01When they think about menopause, they're thinking about Bonafide. So our creative strategy has shifted as well. Yeah, I think I'll let Ramona add to that, but I do think that digital does so much to increase all other channels and digital doesn't get as much if you're running D2C and you're trying to grow every channel. Because I know you can do targeted ads on Amazon, but then your like halo effect of Amazon's going up and in stores. So I think that, I mean, that's also like the benefit of TV. You want people to think about when they're thinking about your product, when they're in store, when they're on Amazon, when they're on here to just think about your name and the brand recognition.

9:43And also in the age of AI, where now people are like searching like best support for menopause, like best products, You want your name to be searched on the internet a lot. So TV is a great way for that. But I asked Ramon to add on to this. No, I mean, you guys both hit the nail on the head. I think this evolution or like this story is something we hear a lot from scaling performance driven brands, right? Like TV in the early days is purely DR play. It's CAC and ROAS and whatever core metrics you care about. And that's it. But at least our philosophy is that like TV's greatest strength, historical play, has always been reach at scale, right?

10:19So there aren't many channels today where you can get 15 to 60 uninterrupted seconds of time to basically tell your brand story to millions of people without competing for someone's attention on Instagram feed or something like that. And so that type of brand building and impact, we see that that kind of show up well beyond a standard in-platform CAC. So you've hit some of the key metric we've looked at. So things like higher click-through rates on social, larger retargeting pool is branded search lift, and then like obviously impact to other sales channels as well. So I think Megan's team is doing a great job of trying to triangulate all that and understand what the impact of TV might be.

10:55We hit on this a little bit, but a lot of times TV is also great for a strategy shift because you did shift from just being digitally native product to being on target. So I know you said at the beginning you really cared about cat, cat goes king. But how does TV play a role when you deeply care about efficiency, but you also know that retail is a priority? 100%. So, I mean, some may argue that we did it backwards, right? We expanded our physical availability before we expanded our mental availability. So that is really what we're focused on this year, right? We're on Amazon. We're in Target. We're there, but if people are walking by the shelves and they don't know us, it's going to be a really hard sell in Target.

11:45So we're really, really focused on expanding that mental availability, and TV is there to help. I don't think that we're in the place right now, and if there's other smaller DTC brands that are looking to dip their toe in, you're not going to go just from optimizing to CAC to buying on a region frequency scale. So although we are moving our way up the funnel into a more awareness-focused, top-of-funnel channel, we are still looking at some of these core metrics like the impact on branded search and how it's playing with our other channels to still justify that spend, although it's not completely direct response.

12:19But it becomes super important. And in many ways, TV has almost become what I'll call a legitimizer. I mean, anybody can run ads on Meta. like my neighbor is running ads for his painting business, like on Meta. But right. I feel like, especially for our demographic, a little bit of older women, maybe millennials and younger, a little more marketing savvy, but TV has definitely been a legitimizer and super helpful as like a tool in our toolkit for driving at retail. Also, I mean, what's good is as a small test, like, you know, you have, you're in this store in Target, you want to see a store sales go up in Target, but also are they lifting DTC sales in a region.

12:59So you can run like a test in a region to see if there's in-store purchases and DTC lift and DTC sales in, let's say, a market that you're trying to grow in. That's some things I know a lot of people do with a new channel of TV when they start doing regional buys. Definitely. I think there's always a trade-off to that as well, though, That media gets a little bit more expensive. So learnings are always important, but they do come at a cost. So you got to make sure that you're planning those tests accordingly throughout the year. Yeah, that's a good point, too. I think that sometimes you have to go wide for pricing and let the creative win.

13:41I think that's super smart. Ramana, you want to add on to this part, too? No, no, I think that's all relevant. Yeah, like making it on this, too. But especially on the linear side, pricing can be pretty pricey when you start to think about the operational and opportunity cost of running a test like that. I think CTV today is very easy. It's the minimal when it comes to actual operational gains from doing that. And that's a learning that a brand wants. We're always in the camp of doing other things and bringing your own measurement to the brand so that we can triangulate TV and that impact in many different ways.

14:19So I think streaming is definitely an easier sell on that front. But yeah, overall, I'm happy to do that for our brands. And I know we talked about that it's pretty expensive to do regional buys and stuff like that. But a lot of mid-market brands, not truly huge and big DTC brands, worry about premium TV being out of reach. So what convinced you to test like higher profile placements like Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, or even CNN's New Year's Eve? Yeah. So I would say that we lean into these around key time. So Q5, when inventory is cheaper. I mean, who does not love a good bargain? I am a TJ Max Maxnista at heart.

15:04I love designer for less. So when these opportunities pop up, I know one of the things we were talking with our reps about was sort of like these fire sales and fire deals. making sure that we have a little bit of pocket of budget so that when we're planning our TV budget, we do have a little pocket that when these fire sales come up, we can really take advantage of them. So that's one. And just making sure that you're being smart in the time when you're buying them and sort of aligning them with like tentpole moments. Q5 is one that's big for us because that leads right into Q1 when we're really leaning into wellness.

15:37But then also sort of like accepting the reality that this might not convert or hit the same way that our regular buys do. So it's not just working in a silo on their growth team. It's like tapping our counterparts. So the e-com team and the lifecycle team and making sure that they're aligned with the buy, you know, they know when it's airing and they're ready to like capture that traffic and put them in the right flows and convert them downstream if needed. Yeah, that's a good point because I think a lot of people don't set up the operations and the backend so they could do buys like this. Because if you haven't set up things in the back end or have creative ready to go just in case a Q5 fire sale goes.

16:19And it's also perfect for a brand where people start thinking about things going into New Year. And they're thinking about wellness. They're thinking about what should I get. I'm worried now. Especially millennials. We love a New Year's wellness. yes yeah so i think it's good that your team you sets sets that up agreed yeah i mean just for a little context like that stretch of q5 is like super advantageous for brands just like bona fide right that are like resolution focused or just like health and wellness in general and like the the operational side of it what happens is basically there's a giant inventory surplus or you know depends on the network and whatnot but a lot of advertisers campaigns will wrap up like that Q4 kind of seasonal demand dries out.

17:09And so, like, in short, you can see inventory come at like a significant disarrant, right? So, I think as an example, we had a few clients this year book things like college football playoff games at 50%, 60 % off the original asking price. And so, if brands are, you know, looking to kind of capitalize on that, they can use Q5 to, you know, launch TV aggressively heading into Q1 and kind of build that reach quickly and create a lot of momentum heading into their peak seasonality lucky this is like a niche podcast so like people who are not a bunch of people are going to run to do q5 ads this year so uh like there's not a million so that's a huge tip that i didn't know that it's a fireside sale like for some of those premium spots in q5 so i think that's a so megan so if your price goes up it's not my fault during that.

18:01I let the cat out of the bag. You also said that TV works best during key moments like Q1 or like seasonal pushes or launches. So how do you actually change your strategy during those periods? Yeah. So, I mean, as a wellness brand, like definitely a heavier investment in Q1 makes sense for us. I know a lot of brands, you know, lean in and Q4, that's when we tend to pull back a little bit. Like Q1 is really like our Super Bowl moment. And then that also gives us, we could take more risks in Q1 because then that gives us more time to clock back throughout the year. We're also thinking about creative tweaks and seasonality.

18:42So unfortunately, like obviously for a clothing brand, right, they're going to talk about bathing suits in the summer and coats in the winter. Well, for us, women tend to just deal with their hot flashes in the winter when it's like, I don't know, in New York, five degrees outside right now. And it's a little bit colder, so they'll deal with them. But we've really leaned into hot flashes in the summer, you know, when it's 90 degrees and we know that those can be unbearable. So it's really switching out our creative and getting strategic in that way. We also have used TV and, you know, this was a definitely a learning moment for us for new product launches.

19:17So at the end of 2024, we launched a hot flash innovation, but we didn't end up getting support with TV and like, I would say overhead coverage for our media until the summertime, which I think was a miss because that's when it really like started to pick up. But I think we could have gained momentum if we would have had TV in market a lot sooner. And we have a new innovation coming in the first half of this year. And you better believe that we have TV like ready to go as soon as that product is launching. So that was a lesson learned for sure. Yeah, I think people also forget that before you do something, you need to like have drum beats before your product launch.

19:58You need a little bit of, hey, we exist, we exist, we exist. Oh, here's our new launch. Like we exist, we exist. You don't need to like have super, but you need those little drum beats. And a lot of people put so much pressure on a launch that they do everything just on launch day and then it kind of is just this serotonin going down because you just like lost like it's either you win big or you lose big but those drum beats help like get you prepared like even black friday where having drum beats leaving up to black friday it's better than having um just everything go when it's super expensive on black Friday to pay to play.

20:44100%. And I think that our product specific ads are those drum beats. So we talked about before, like really connecting menopause and bonafide at the top of the funnel. I look at that as our always on. And then during the key times, like new product launch, you'll hear a product drum beat. Then over the summer, you're going to hear more about hot flashes. And then those are kind of like our pulsing moments, but we want to make sure that that brand message just sort of always just like, hey, don't forget about us. We're here. Romano, what other brands, I know you work with Hotham Women's, but what brand, what other types of brands could like use this like strategy for like product launches, Q1, Q5, like what, what are you seeing in the like TV space?

21:26Yeah, I would say it's pretty agnostic, you know, like it's, I think just because like you're, you know, you're at the peak seasonality of Q4 is like the demand might not be there as much. It doesn't necessarily mean you can't use it to your advantage. I think for other brands, like think apparel or, I don't know, home goods, things like that, it's a really good time to eventually kind of understand your audience and TV a little bit more, right? So if you're seeing success with sports throughout the year and you're kind of just dipping your toe in the water there, you can basically go in there and say, all right, we're going to take a big spig based off the data we have and understand if that's something we can drive forward, if something we want to pay the bigger price for down the road next year.

22:07So I think it's just a good time for brands to kind of like set up their testing long-term and better understand what these kind of more technical moments can do for them overall as a business. I also think you have to capitalize on moments where things cost lower, where a lot of people wait and say, okay, I'll wait for my Q2 budget. I'll wait till my Q3 budget. it'll get cheaper in Q5 next year. And then they've missed out on serious like moments in the year where CAC is lower or fire south stale happens. And I could have done this drum beat or I could have spent. So like, how do you think about like capitalizing on moments where, um, like you could push CAC or like push a little bit more budget, um, and instead of waiting it out?

22:56I feel like the thing I tell my team all the time is scared money don't make money. Like you got to be willing to take risks and you got to lean in. I will say if you're working for a smaller, scrappier company, that's a lot easier, right? As you start to evolve and get bigger, like, yeah, you have to work things up the chain. But as a culture and an organization, you need to be aligned on when to take risks and when to lean in. um i think it's super super important i i think also i mean i'll go to another picture because we talked about a little bit how you had really bad tracking at the beginning um and i think that i think still a lot of brands are stuck with like one way to track things and they and and one way to track things normally leads to saying meta and google are the best channels because um it's like a walled garden, those channels.

23:52And they, they're, if anybody knows, like they, like they're trying to make money and keep people on meta and Google. So how is like your approach to like, um, multiple measurement strategies, um, gained your confidence of TV as a channel? Yeah. So we use a triangulation approach. I think, um, in our early days when we were just running on TV, I mentioned we used MTA and we use Rockerbox. That's easy when you're just running on search meta and just a few channels. But as we've really expanded, we needed to expand our measurement portfolio as well. So we use MTA, that's sort of like at the top of our triangle, and then sort of at the bottom bases are platform data and our MMM.

24:36So those are the three numbers that we're triangulating against. As we've moved to Omnichannel and we're working our way up the funnel in the channels that we're spending on, this year, like our approach is to turn that triangle and we want MMM to really be at the top and really just use MTA and platform as sort of like a gut check and more for like daily decisions just because we don't get that MMM data as frequently. So that's really the three pieces that we're using. That has also really helped us gain confidence, I would say specifically with Tatari and TV, because those MMM numbers are much more aligned with the platform data that we're seeing, it also allows us to take into account for the halo effect and Amazon, right?

25:20Because if we're just looking at Amazon in a silo, that pack could look amazing. Whereas when you're working with an MMM, you can model that in and it will take credit, you know, from your meta spend, from your TV spend, that's really driving that growth on Amazon. So that's going to be a key for us this year to rotate our triangle. Yeah, that's a super good point because I think that sometimes you are running channels and then the halo effect are affecting other channels, but then you stop it for like digitally because it's not working as well digitally. or it wasn't working better, but like Amazon's going up and retail's going up and maybe digitally like hacks are a little higher and you're not giving credit to these ads or working overtime for these other channels as well.

26:09So I think that's a super good point. Romano, is this the best approach that you see people doing or like what are some other ways to measure TV effectively? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of ways to do it. No measurement solution is perfect at the end of the day. If it would, I think if we had that silver bullet, we would all be trillionaires. But the reality is we always encourage brands to bring other measurement solutions as well as using ours. So I think Tataru's platform measurement is really great about understanding the entry campaign decision-making, right? Network versus network, creative versus creative, things like that.

26:44But there's obviously more at play here, like Megan's called out. And so whether it's MMM, MTA, or Tatari platform, I think using a combination of those things and trying to understand how, you know, fluctuation in TV spend and those types of changes can impact the overall business. And that ultimately just gives brands more confidence to continue leading our learnings for, yeah, more of the day-to-day. Also, like plug for your team, we're giving them access to these platforms as well. So it's like our team at Tatari is plugged into, you know, our recast and our rocker box. They're not only like helping us make buying decisions based off of the data that they're seeing, but they're also putting themselves in our shoes and the world that we're living in and who we have to be accountable to and using those to help make decisions as well.

27:30Yeah. That's super important to have like a partner that's like has insight of what you are doing and not just spewing out like industry benchmarks and this is what other people are doing um so i think that's super important i also want to like i know people have like this mindset that and again it's because they're like it's we have this like mindset of instantly running ads on meta and instantly running ads but um like how has where was that moment when tv clearly proved that it was more than just like running an ad? What was that moment where it was actually driving the business forward? Yeah, I think for us, there's a couple instances, but one that comes to mind for me is we really do mine a lot of our customer reviews.