This week, Silverpush is excited to feature Scott Stewart, the EVP, Managing Director at Epitaph Group. We break down what makes the agency special, why Epitaph Group chose Silverpush as a contextual partner, and, best of all, Scott’s hot take on the advertising world today.
1. Tell us about your agency. What makes you stand out?
I think the thing that is special about Epitaph Group is that we are a Canadian independent agency with very big ambitions. We have a portfolio of global, North American, and national clients. As a result, we’ve developed a proprietary product suite that has been designed to help vault us into becoming the agency of tomorrow – today!
As an agency, we recently went through a re-positioning around the whole concept of “Media Done Right”, largely to address some of what we see as the key issues affecting the industry. We want to position ourselves on the right side of history to do what’s best for our clients.
A commitment to better strategy, radical transparency in business, and an unwavering accountability to our clients’ best interest is what really sets us apart from other agencies and the holding companies, a lot of which have simply become principal buyers.
In short, being independent allows us to think independently.
2. What made you choose Silverpush as a contextual partner?
We are big believers in the attention economy and identifying partners that will help us increase the overall quality of what we buy on behalf of our clients.
Aside from brand safety, if we can increase quality by both buying better audiences and increasing ad attention, we are doing something right. Silverpush has been a key partner in helping us do that on YouTube, which continues to be a priority platform for our clients.
3. Has the market changed recently? What are the biggest trends that you’ve seen with clients recently?
Attention and accountability to ad spend are two key areas that we are focused on to help improve our clients’ investment, and contextual targeting has become a big part of that.
We see return on ad spending measurement as table stakes, which is why we have invested substantially in infrastructure for the agency to model and measure the performance of our ad buys.
At Epitaph Group, we see our jobs today as providing our clients with a clear and visible linkage between media dollars spent and business transactions created. We leverage this data to move away from having media conversations to having business conversations with our clients and outcome-based planning.
4. What ad channels are driving the best results?
It obviously depends on what the strategic objective is, but for long-term growth and brand building, video in general tends to be key for building awareness. In the short term, social is key, largely due to its cost efficiency and virality.
Now that we are doing a lot of measurement, specifically around attribution and incrementality, we can now quantify the impact of each channel on the bottom line.
That said, time and time again, we continue to see YouTube as a priority channel.
5. Have you noticed the impact of AI over the past year? Where have you seen it being used the most?
Machine learning has impacted our business model from how we use predictive AI from both a performance perspective, scoring incrementality, and obviously in what we are doing with contextual targeting.
ChatGPT has created a reduction in search and web visits, but the biggest area I think we have seen an impact in is deep research.
6. What are the biggest ad challenges for brands? What are the biggest opportunities?
The biggest challenge is another year of doing more with less from a budget perspective, how to leverage all this data, and how much of the budget should be dedicated to the brand.
The biggest opportunity is all based on building a model to understand incrementality and spending impact when it comes to the brand.
7. What is your advertising hot take?
Recently, we have seen the third wave of the rise of the creative indy here in Canada, with big creative names leaving the big agencies, only to open their own shops and achieve a great deal of success.
As more and more clients want better from their media agency, and by that, I mean better consumer insights, better strategic thinking, and better, more meaningful connections with their audiences, there is a big need for better media thinking.
Performance media has been the great equalizer, and true efficiency isn’t about how cheap you can buy anymore. It’s about the strategy, the solution, and how close you can get to the consumer.
Simply put: clients deserve better than they are getting from the industry, and that’s why we exist.
Want to learn more about Epitaph Group? Visit the agency website here.
