Lessons from a Massively Successful Adtech Product Launch
Last week, the DSP Viant (full disclosure: a client of mine), debuted ViantAI, an “autonomous advertising platform” that, as of now, automates media planning and will ultimately automate media buying, decisioning, and measurement, too.
The announcement was extraordinarily successful at generating awareness, industry engagement, and pipeline, according to both publicly visible information and the founders. CEO Tim Vanderhook’s LinkedIn post alone has generated 750 reactions, 130 comments, and 85 reposts as of the writing of this newsletter. Tim and his brother Chris, the COO of Viant, told me their social posts had collectively driven 150,000 views as of three days after the launch.
The Vanderhooks came on Open Market, my podcast with Eric Franchi, to discuss the launch, among other things, yesterday. Without giving away any secret sauce, I’d like to highlight a few of the steps they took to make the product launch so successful — in hopes that others might find repeatable wisdom.
Communicate Directly with Your Audience
A key part of my philosophy as an adtech marketer is that CEOs, especially founders, should communicate directly with their audience. The Vanderhooks are big believers in that strategy, and their announcement is an excellent example of the strategy performing to maximum effect.
The usual playbook with a product launch is to pitch reporters. Usually, reporters aren’t interested. (Ask any PR pro; product launches are notoriously difficult to pitch.) But even if reporters were interested, posting the announcement on social instead and going directly to the audience offers a number of benefits.
You can see how much and how many people care.
You collect feedback in real-time to improve the product and its positioning.
The people who do care, either by liking the post or (better yet) commenting and providing feedback, essentially provide social proof to validate the product. This is one of the hardest challenges for adtech companies — getting brands, agencies, and publishers to care about product improvements. When a bunch of people from those organizations comment on your product launch post, they algorithmically signal to their peers that it’s worth paying attention.
Lay the Foundation for Social Success
The Vanderhooks have been posting on social about once per week (sometimes more) for a couple of months. In doing so, they proved that social could work for them while expanding and engaging their audience before the launch.
Often, founders only take an interest in marketing when they have a big announcement. But the companies and company leaders who excel at marketing don’t pop into the public sphere just for self-serving news. They generate enthusiasm and good will well before a launch (frankly, all year round, ideally).
In this sense, generating attention for industry announcements is a bit like running a long-distance race. The work you put in well before the big day is critical to the results you achieve on it.
Commit to High Production Value
The ViantAI demo video was 12 minutes long. I’ll be honest — when I first saw it, I thought, “Damn, this is long. Will people engage with a video this elaborate?” But I, a terminally online person as susceptible to a short attention span as anyone else, easily finished it. And you can tell by the comments and enthusiasm that many others watched all or most of it as well.
One driver of the engagement is, of course, the actual contents of the video. But the high production quality doesn’t hurt. If you’re going to go all in on an owned content strategy (releasing your own video, for example, to announce a product instead of relying primarily on journalistic content), put your best foot forward on the logistics.
Capitalize on a Trend
Of course, as with all business successes, these lessons aren’t purely repeatable or formulaic. I’d say the magic to this announcement lies in its timing. As the Vanderhooks say in their video and post, everyone knows AI will drastically change advertising, and we’re waiting to see how. The video is a prime example of what that change may look like. So, it’s the right product at the right time.
Nevertheless, the product launch’s success is a sign that the times are changing. Media relations is still one of the three pillars of adtech marketing distribution (along with content and events). But it should not be the primary pillar because it’s not under companies’ control. Social content, by contrast, empowers organizations to control the cadence and exact contents of their communications with their customers and those who influence them.
Communicating directly with the audience worked for ViantAI. I expect it will continue to displace the traditional media as the vehicle for major company announcements in the coming years.
Establish a direct relationship with your audience. If you don’t own the message, someone else will define it for you.
