How to Launch an Adtech Product: Best Practices from Scope3
Most product launches go unnoticed. It’s the kind of thing adtech PR professionals say to each other, dreading having to meet the overinflated expectations of CEOs: “No one wants to cover a product announcement.”
Scope3 launched two products last week, a brand safety product called Brand Standards and an Agentic Media Platform that will help advertisers hit more granular goals while more effectively balancing different interests (such as ROAS and total sales). The launches were a huge success, generating (I’d guess) hundreds of thousands of impressions and dominating industry discussion for a couple of days.
How’d they do it? I’d boil it down to five practices others may be able to emulate.
1. Meet the moment: You can’t determine your product roadmap based purely on what’s hot, but you can calibrate your marketing expectations — and tweak your strategy — based on the alignment of your product with the technologies du jour. Scope3 launched two AI products at a time when the industry is ablaze with speculation about how AI will transform marketing. In essence, the industry has been asking a question; they answered it. It’s no surprise peers, customers, and influencers paid attention.
2. Build influence over the long term: The intensity of the reception for a product launch is correlated with the work a company does year round to cultivate its audience. Marketing, in that sense, is just like sales — you don’t have a high close rate when people are just hearing about you for the first time when you want something. Similarly, people don’t pay attention to your product launch or Series A announcement when they never hear from you otherwise. Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley had been posting about AI and agents for months — and has been cultivating a reputation and audience for decades. That pays off in these big moments.
3. Leverage the CEO as chief evangelist: The CEO is the chief evangelist, and a charismatic and widely respected chief evangelist is invaluable. If you're lucky enough to have this, leverage it for all its worth. If you don't have it, nurture it — influence is built over time. Brian continues to cultivate his social media audience, relationships with reporters, and industry partnerships. He clearly puts a lot of thinking into his keynotes. All of this matters and pays off when you have products to announce.
4. Bring in partners: Make your exciting news exciting for others, too. Brian and his team had a little recurring gag at their Landscape conference. Brian kept saying on stage, "Wouldn't it be great if someone from [Amazon, Index Exchange, GM, etc] were here to explain how they'll use this or how it works?" Then the person would come onstage. Even if your product is nascent, if credible people outside the company can attest to its value as you announce it, that validates its promise. Also, all of those people and their teams are then keen to promote it. Enthusiastic partners maximize attention.
5. Take an omnichannel approach: Don't depend on one channel; use every channel: events (IRL), earned media (the press), and social. To maximize the impact of these launches, Scope3 held a conference, coordinated articles with a half dozen press outlets (expertly coordinated by Tiffany Collins), and consistently teased the announcements on social to build buzz. This is the gold standard for modern distribution.
Not all these advantages and approaches are replicable for every product launch, but they provide a good sense of how you can earn the industry’s attention — and generate pipeline.
