The Practical Playbook for Starting TV in 2026, with Donna Lazaro from Gabb

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. Let's go. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies.

1:27The 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 Marketing Millennials podcast. Today, I have two guests, Donna and Anna. Donna is the Senior Director of Brand Marketing at Gab, and Anna is from Tatari, and we're just going to have a good conversation about one of the most hot topics in 2025 and 2026 and beyond, which is TV and connected TV. So I'll start with Donna, let you introduce yourself, and then I'll move to Anna. Sounds great. Yeah. I'm Donna Lazaro. I'm the Senior Director of Brand Media at Gab. I've spent the last five years building and scaling our brand media strategy and leading full funnel initiatives to help grow our brand awareness and just support sustainable growth through our marketing channels and TV being one of those.

2:33Excited to be here. My name is Anna. I'm from Tatari's side. I am a platform team lead here, so work with some of our high-growth clients. Yeah, excited to be here on Chat TV. I think the first thing I want to just lay down the foundation of what Tataria is, Anna, so that people could understand and what makes it different from traditional TV buying or programmatic-only CTV platforms. Yeah, absolutely. So most platforms just sell a slice of the TV landscape. So maybe that's programmatic streaming only or linear only, while Tatari is a full convergent TV platform. So helping brands buy and measure TV across programmatic streaming and linear.

3:20And it makes it feel a bit more like a digital landscape. So you're able to optimize on a next day basis. So yeah, the platform enables clients to buy all inventory types, which is the biggest differentiator. That could be a highly targeted campaign, like a lookalike audience or retargeting, or it could be as big as a Super Bowl spot on NBC. So we connect directly to publishers and avoid the extra ad tech markups. So for a small brand, more budget goes to media versus middlemen fees. And then having everything in one platform also allows us to provide unified measurement across linear and streaming or programmatic and a true understanding of incrementality holistically across all TV buys and real-time reporting.

4:09I think one also I just want to add on before we get to Donna, but as I know there's different maturity levels between TV, there's people who are just getting started and then there's the people who are already experienced with TV. So how does it support both everybody in their journey? Yeah, absolutely. So for a lot of first-time advertisers expanding into linear or connected TV for the first time, it can be quite daunting. So we help small brands scale on TV by making TV cheaper to test, easier to manage in-house, and measurable. So they're able to treat it like a performance channel rather than just a brand play.

4:52So brands are able to start at modest test budgets, so lowering the barrier to entry. And these brands are able to ramp based on performance, similar to a digital channel. And then for brands in a growth stage, Chitari's platform makes it easy to scale. So say that you are launching into retail, how can we scale TV efforts to support those pivotal moments in a brand's journey? And last but not least, mature advertisers. Obviously, we know there's massive scale potential within TV. So we have specialized teams to support brands in those sorts of stages. So whether they're diversifying their media buys with premium ops, NPE buys, sponsorships, integrations, and then start to begin to think about upfront buys.

5:36So same exact platform, but different entry points for brands in different stages. Thank you for that. And with that context in mind, I want to talk a little bit about Gab, Donna. So for listeners who may not be familiar, what is Gab? Who are you building for? What makes your brand different from anyone in the market? Yeah. So Gab's mission is to help parents protect every childhood with safer tech for kids. And Gab was founded in 2018. And at the time, really the only option for a kid's phone was a traditional smartphone, which, you know, they're built for adults. They're not for kids. And so with that, Gab launched its first phone for kids that doesn't have social media or internet access, making it a safer option than traditional smartphones that may, you know, have these other dangers that come with it that, you know, a kid isn't ready for.

6:33and you know since then we've added you know different products to our lineup software solutions to help you know parents parent in this digital age that we're in with safer tech options that you know can grow through you know age appropriate steps with the different devices that we have yeah that's super cool I mean my kid's six months so I'm ready thinking about tech I need to use for my kids. So it's, it's also like, I think we're the millennials are like shifting the narrative of like later phones, later technology, later everything. So I think this is super cool that we don't have to worry about like unlock phone and that journey of an unlock phone, which is kind of scary.

7:22But I also want to get into that. I mean, you, Gab has been running TV since 2023 and not many of your competitors are in the TV space. So can you talk to us why you felt this was the right time to diversify your channels and why TV specifically? Yeah, great question. So in 2023, we launched TV, like you said, and we felt like at the time we had, you know, a really good grasp on our core channels, you know, organic, social, meta, Google search. And we were really looking to scale. And we felt that TV was going to be a great channel to add to our mix, to provide, you know, more reach and scalability to help educate.

8:14You know, Gab is the leader in the category. And so we've been breaking into this new category that people aren't aware of. And so we felt like TV through that different format compared to different formats on these different channels was going to help educate and tell our story a little bit more. As well as, like I said, increase that reach, make people aware of us, build that trust with parents. I feel like there's this element to TV that adds credibility. You know, when you're showing up next to a Toyota commercial or whatnot, it adds that credibility. And, you know, we want to be top of mind, again, in our category as it may develop, to be the leader, you know, in safe tech for kids.

9:06And, yeah, it's really helped fill the funnel to then support our other channels. yeah i think that's one of the biggest things that people don't think about with tv is um and probably one of the biggest deterrence of tv is they don't since meta and google are these walled gardens you you think oh my god when you start turning on tv you're just like meta why is meta doing better why is google doing better but it's like that whole halo effect of um these things are doing better. And I love the point you made about, I think like when you show up on TV, it has a perception you have more money and you're bigger than you are, even if you're on a TV on a budget.

9:52It still makes you seem like you're bigger, but I want to let Anna add on to this and see what you have to chime in on. Yeah. Totally agree with you, Donna. There, There's actually e-marketer studies that have validated that credibility that is associated with advertisers that show up on TV versus other platforms. So that is definitely a reason why a lot of advertisers will shift over to TV on top of the incremental reach, which you also mentioned. And then in terms of that halo impact across other channels that both of you guys talked about, That is something that a lot of advertisers are starting to look at and look at their marketing mix more holistically and how TV may be impacting other channels.

10:37So, Tatari's data science team actually has a report that can put numbers behind this. So, we have a Halo impact report that is able to show lift or boost to any other marketing channels that are trackable. So, some pretty cool data validation in both of those categories. I also want to ask, I know smaller, usually smaller brands have a large percentage of their budget tied to the digital channels. How did that play into the decision making process of adding TV into your mix? Yeah. So we looked at TV as an additional channel, not replacing any other channel. But yeah, definitely complementary to the core channels that we've been on.

11:24And I would say, too, as we were vetting different TV agencies and just TV in general, we know that TV can be a little bit harder to track compared to meta. And so data was really important to us to be able to measure this as we hope to scale it at the time. And so we really looked at what Tatari had to offer in terms of data and what we could lean on and help data inform decisions. and so it helped grow and helped make that decision to lean into TV knowing that there was some data to fall back on and not looking at it in the way of just it must convert immediately but really looking at it as a long-term play and holistic growth and adding that into our media mix.

12:28Yeah, data is definitely leadership's favorite language. Yeah. You can't win if you don't have data. Even if the channel is an amazing channel, if you can show any incrementality levels, any incrementalness on that channel, or have any reports or show that it's helping other channels, they're never going to trust you on that channel. So I like that. I mean, when you're looking at a channel, you have to look good, especially in this day and age, is the reporting good? How's the data flowing? Is this platform going to serve that need so I can go into a leadership meeting with some ammo and armor?

13:14So I'm going to beat up in that meeting. Yeah, and I know you mentioned TV was also a tool to build the funnel or fill the funnel. I'm curious to hear if that impacted retargeting pools across other channels, especially as you ramped up scale on TV. Yeah, definitely. We've had really successful big moments with TV in addition to just core performers. And so definitely, especially during tentpole moments for us, we've really landed great spots, which has driven so much traffic to our site. and being able to see that in Tatari's tool, seeing that spike to our website, as well as other channels, a lift in branded search terms and things like that.

14:03And then again, our other channels help pick up that retargeting piece and really drive efficiency across a lot of platforms. I think one of the biggest worries I hear with a lot of people that I talk to when they're going into TV is creative. How am I going to create a TV ad? Do I need a huge budget to do it? It feels so much different than meta creative or just social creative. So how did you approach your first TV ads? What's your approach to scaling that channel? Yeah, great question. So for us, we have an amazing creative and copy team. And we put together internally a handful of concepts.

14:53And then we partnered with our research team and we actually sent out more of like a survey research form where we sent that out to our demographic and asked them questions. After seeing potentially, you know, seeing this on in a commercial format, how likely would you be to visit, you know, the site and learn more? And so we know we wanted to do, you know, more than one concept. And so we took the research from that study that we did and analyzed that internally and then picked some of those, you know, top performing or just leading indicators from from our demo to then execute on. And, you know, we had a variety.

15:44We have one that's pretty serious, one that's a little bit more humorous and having a variety. We have four concepts and we have all four, you know, running at the same time. And it's really helped us, you know, test and learn. And we found that, you know, some have landed better on different networks and has really just helped holistically shape our brand with the different concepts and frequency and things like that. I'll add one more thing that I see a lot of people doing this very well, especially smaller brands is, I mean, using your existing creative that you have on Meta and stuff where people just stitch together UGC or they stitch together or when they're doing UGC, they have it in mind that I need to do horizontal and vertical shots.

16:38I think that's the biggest thing now is when approaching a creative meeting or creating creative assets. It's like, okay, I'm thinking. There's a potential that might go on TV and might go on YouTube and might go on other channels. Let's actually shoot it in different ways. It's compatible. But I also, I know, Anna, you deal with a lot of clients with the same exact problem. What are you seeing and how are they dealing with that creative nervousness, basically? Yeah, you actually took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to ask you, a lot of brands will hear some of the costs associated with creative production for TV.

17:20And sometimes, again, that could be quite daunting and a barrier to entry for the channel. So we have quite a few brands that have tested UGC or existing social assets on TV. So maybe picking the top performer on their meta channel or TikTok or whatever it may be, stitching it together, making a TV spot out of that. Has Gab tested that in the past? And have you seen success versus some of your more TV-specific concepts? Yeah, we haven't. Yeah, I've loved what you're both saying about UGC. and UGC has done so well on our other platforms. At the time, I felt like maybe in 2023, UGC wasn't as maybe prominent.

18:02And so we definitely went more of like the polished route, which has still worked, but we haven't tested UGC on TV. But I definitely have seen just in my own viewing, I've seen brands lean into that quite a bit. And so I think as we're looking in the future to refresh our creative, I would definitely love to throw a UGC concept in there and see how it does. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the consumer research that you put into the TV-specific concept is incredible, too, that work ahead of time. And then last question from my side is a lot of brands will sometimes worry about creative burnout or wear out within TV.

18:43But we know TV has longer creative longevity versus some digital channels. So I was curious if you were able to keep that concept that you were talking about live on linear for an extended period of time, maybe like a year, year plus. Yeah, we've actually been running all four since 2023. We've found that, you know, some are performing better than others. And so, you know, in the Tataari platform, we've been able to adjust those weights and really lean into the ones that are doing better. But I definitely think from my perspective, TV creative can last a lot longer than maybe, you know, burnout on these other channels.

19:25And so we're still going strong with the creative that we have. But I think that there's a few indicators that it might be time to look this next year into refreshing some of that. And maybe that makes the upfront costs of creative production for linear specifically easier to digest. Yeah, definitely. Going on this topic on what spots you're putting connected TV on, I know a lot of brands worry that they're not going to be able, that premium TV is out of reach, right? So what is your strategy around primarily using linear to build success around entertainment networks, co-viewing networks like Nickelodeon or cartoon networks and sports like playoffs, college football, etc.?

20:17Yeah, we've really leaned into the linear side of TV. It's just for, you know, affordability and just the reach opportunities. We've booked hundreds of spots in college football, below rate cards using Tatari's tool and just that partnership there. I feel like we've really been able to get great deals on these really large opportunities, high visibility opportunities. and in the beginning we've really used our budget to lean into fire sale opportunities where again large reach that we maybe wouldn't be able to I guess afford just up front but having that remnant inventory through fire sale opportunities to be able to test into something that we've wanted to something like American Idol and be able to get some you know leading indicators if this is something to shift budget into, or, you know, maybe it's not a good performance and be able to shift your strategy elsewhere.

21:21But yeah, we've, we've continued since we've launched to allocate a budget for testing. And that's kind of fluctuated in, in how much, but the adding in testing has, has really helped unlock new networks and audiences that maybe we weren't seeing before. And I just want to ask you something about just like Tatar in general, but like, I've heard a lot about like fire sale, like spots. What does that look like? How did they come up and how they purchased and how does that work when using Tatar? Yeah, absolutely. This comes up for all clients, all stages of their TV journey. It does require a bit of communication, both internally for our brand and communication with your Tatari CSM, just to make sure you're aligned on what budget makes sense, what CPMs make sense, what discount you would bite at, what types of opportunities you're interested in.

22:18But essentially, Tartari's media buying specialist team gets past quite a few fire sales or deals, kind of. If there's leftover inventory, maybe you have a week heads up or a day's heads up. So it can happen really quickly, which is why the name is a fire sale. So just having those discussions up front with your client, making sure you're aligned on budget, CPM, et cetera, are super, super important. So when those flash deals do come up for a program that makes sense for your brand and your business, you're able to jump on them. And I think also that price point makes it, again, like an easier entry point.

22:58So maybe we're able to build confidence with those types of buys where you have a discount and build confidence that that performance does back out, which allows you to eventually buy future premium opportunities and unlock even larger audiences. I think that's super smart just in general for why brands should have an allocated special budget that they can tap into all the time that's meant for these type of fire sales or quick campaigns or opportunities that go up. I wonder, like, how is that structured in your budget, Don, for, like, okay, a fire sale comes up. I need to – I don't have to go through this 10-person approval process.

23:45I have to beg finance for money. How is it already set in your budget so I can hop on opportunities, not only for, like, a fire sale, but any campaign you're running that, like, you can spend money quickly? Yeah. Yeah. Going back to just like that test budget with, with that test budget, we know that like these fire sales would fall into that. And so being aware too, of the time of year you're in. So if it's college football, being aware that some of those could come through, or like I said, like American Idol, things like that, being, being aware of, you know, the TV landscape and what's, what currently is, is, you know, live was something that helped be able to just understand how much we needed to set aside and the ones that we needed to watch for and that we thought would be a good fit.

24:40I was going to ask if there were any performance factors as well, because I know Tatari's data set does provide insight into genre performance, or maybe you saw really strong performance on ESPN, and that indicates maybe a World Series fire sale could make sense. What types of data points did you look at as a qualifier for fire sales? Yeah, great question. So we, kind of like you said, like leading indicators from other things too, like we've noticed that, yeah, ESPN as well. And so really testing into, you know, different types of sports. Also, if it's something that maybe we're unsure of, I would lean on my Tata Rep to provide, you know, any kind of like demographics fix if they could, if they had insight into that.

25:26And then really for us, really in that stage of like scalability and growth, really looking at like the cost with the CPMs and, you know, the household impressions and, you know, kind of like predicting and seeing how we could back into it were some of those like key points we were looking for. What are some of those key moments in Gab's journey where you are? I know you said you're saving time, like budget for those moments. What are those moments that you're saving budget for and how does that work? Yeah, so we have two big moments, holiday, which is I feel like most brands, and then back to school as well.

26:11Kids being away from the home and so parents really looking for something to stay connected with their kid while they're out of the house and away from them. And so, you know, really leaning into heavier investment during those times, you know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday weeks, and really like adjusting, you know, end cards to highlight our promotions to drive urgency. We also, more so during holiday, you know, there's a few different networks that, you We lean into Hallmark where we're not doing that year round, but I do feel like there's some seasonality that we play into during those moments.

26:56and just kind of seeing where, while we don't have our competitors having a presence, trying to show up in similar or maybe similar brands that have that same demo show up next to them in a commercial, like on TV would add that credibility, hit that same demo, kind of our seasonal strategy. Yeah, I think one of the things also how I'm getting from this is I mean like one of the things you should do when you're getting into tv is figure out those moments be very sure on like who you're the audience is and then you can go and like for example if more parents are watching Hallmark because it's like holiday movies uh they love a holiday movie a comfort movie let's go let's go to Hallmark or finding those like underpriced like buys that my audience is doing is i think you being able to like communicate that to any partner you're working with whether you're working with a tv partner or agency or anybody it's super helpful to be like okay my audience's parents i i have these moments that i want to hit parents um and what are like tatari give me those like spots where or where do you think those are the best spots?

28:18And then Tatari can come up with, like what sample channels that you can hit on. Yeah, it's almost a combination of like that upfront planning work, finding the correct audience. So using competitive data, using share of voice data, MRI and Simmons is available. So again, like indexing out where your custom audience is in the linear or connected TV landscape. So that upfront work. But then on top of that, Donna, you mentioned like the viewership with Hallmark Changes. especially around the holiday time frame, that's absolutely true. So the ability to be nimble and agile based on performance is also super important.

28:53So the second you start to see drop-offs in performance on a network like Hallmark, where viewership is shifting, I think that can really benefit a brand during those peak seasonal moments. So at what point do we see really strong performance with Hallmark? Double down. And then at what point do we see drop-offs in performance and need to scale back? i also i want i also uh i know you were initially when it came to tv for brand awareness but i i do believe i do believe strongly believe that um all marketing is performance marketing even if it's brand uh because you have to like if you don't if you're not performing you're you're probably something's happening but um you went in that mindset and it is a great channel for brand awareness to go capitalize those to educate that buyer.

29:44But how has that definition evolved for you as you've seen the impact across these other marketing channels? Yeah, I agree with you. I think that, you know, originally our thought leading into it was, you know, focusing on brand awareness and that's held strong even to this day. But I do think that there is a brand and performance element and have chatted with other Tatari clients as well. And some of them really look at it as performance. And I think it kind of depends on just the industry and brand. But yeah, we've held strong on that brand performance metric. But with that said, we've definitely seen TV as like the scalable channel that feeds the whole funnel.

30:33And so definitely have seen the the effects of it in our performance you know the performance side of the business and again also on the brand awareness side too seeing really strong lift there i think it's also important what you said is when you are doing a a channel for brand awareness or brand in general um like being able to communicate with your performance team that this is happening so you can also get that credit across these other channels because if you're running it in silos or it's not connected to their dashboards or you're running it in, that can create a lot of issues that, oh yeah, we're doing so great at performance marketing.

31:15Look how much better Meta is and look how much better Google when you're running brand awareness campaigns that are actually having that halo effect or uplifting these other channels. Anna, do you want to add on to anything on that part? Yeah, I think the way that Gab has approached measurement framework has been really amazing to see, just making sure that the campaign is set up for success. We have clear benchmarks, clear objectives for the campaign and measurement models to track each component of the overall measurement framework. So definitely love to hear that. And yeah, I think TV can be looked at as an avenue for expansion across any sort of journey.

31:57So maybe a client is starting out with our self-serve platform, which I know Gab did at one point. So using the tool independently, building out more of like a DR approach to TV and being really nimble. And then as they scale into brand, maybe that requires a bit more support from specialized teams. Donald, what advice do you have for like brands like yours that are growing, scaling, that are thinking and adding TV in their mix? What would, what are some pieces of advice would you give them to? jump on the TV train. Yeah. Yeah. I've kind of hit on it throughout our conversation, but I would say, yeah, before you start, define what success looks like, really understand the reporting options that are available when, you know, working with an agency.