How Netflix Is Revolutionizing Ad Buying, Bosses Are Done Being 'Nice’, 14M YouTuber Quits - Is Going Viral Worth It?

In this episode #2979, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss how AI is transforming advertising, including Netflix's dynamic ad placements. They explore shifts in digital marketing, evolving workplace expectations, and the balance between fame and anonymity in the digital age. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) Revolutionizing Advertising with AI (02:55) The Evolution of Digital Marketing (05:58) Changing Dynamics in the Workplace (08:46) The Price of Fame vs. Anonymity To suggest a topic, go to https://www.marketingschool.io. For more content from Eric and Neil, check out Eric’s Leveling Up with Eric Siu YouTube channel and Neil’s Neil Patel YouTube channel. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric's ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel, @ericosiu Instagram @neilpatel, @ericosiu Drop Us a Review If You Enjoyed the Episode!

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:35Speaker 01

  You see the change that Netflix is making with advertising? I think it's going to revolutionize TV ads.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  I have no idea what you're talking about. What is this?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  All right, so if Netflix films a show, or a movie, whatever you want to call it, it could either be both. And let's say there's a scene where someone's in a fast food joint, or a food place. They can put a Coca-Cola machine in the background and change the drink people are drinking to Coca-Cola.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Oh, it's like the things that they used to have in, that they have in movies where people can pay for like a BMW place when they're a Maserati or whatever, right?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Correct, but you can do that on the fly.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  Dynamically.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  With AI, they just switch it all out now.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Now, they weren't the first to do this. Amazon has actually been doing this a long time with Prime, because I met up with one of the people on their ads teams for Prime, probably a year and a half to two years ago. Most people don't know this, but Amazon's been doing this for Prime for a very long time. But Netflix doing this, and Amazon, I don't think it's self-serve yet, but I bet you eventually it'll get there. This is just going to start going mainstream, and the people are going to start switching those. But I think this is going to really start changing digital marketing, because if you look at the trend where digital marketing is going, it really is becoming a game of top of funnel, not necessarily from a click standpoint, but from a brand awareness standpoint.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  How do you get your brand everywhere that's relevant to your audience? So for example, if Netflix filmed a documentary with Bill Gates, Inside Bill Gates's Mind, right? I believe that's what it's called. A lot of business people watch that. That would be great for us.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Oracle or MP Digital or Salesforce.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I would pay when Bill Gates is filmed in his library to have, you know, something in the background being like NP Digital that blends in and it just.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Or when he says something really inspirational, right? And it's like, if you want the mind share where he's inspiring, it's like, and whatever says, someone says that there's something inspirational.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. So I would pay for that because a lot of, or a percentage of the people, even if it's a small percent watching it, would be a good fit for us. And I think this is a great way to get more top of mind. And I think this is what, really, even when you think about SEO back in the day from what we were doing, we weren't really optimizing for clicks. I know everyone was tracking clicks. We looked at clicks as, oh, more people get to know our brand. Dude, we created content on so many long tail queries that never drove revenue. And we knew that because we wanted to get our brand out there. And we believe that the more people that get to know our brand in the long run,

• 3:16Speaker 01

  whether it's people talking about us or mentioning us, eventually it would cause customers, even if it was two, three, five years later. It's the same thing now, but you can't necessarily attribute the traffic to your website. You've got to create the content so then that way people can see you. So you reference everywhere, your logo everywhere, your fab icons everywhere. And in the long run, we still believe that'll drive revenue because it's worked for us.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I'm just looking at YouTube now, or we know that search console, Google search console, you're getting more impressions. You're seeing this open jaw thing where impressions are going up and traffic's going down. It is becoming more of this, we just kind of talk about it like, if you're doing good work and your brand's getting out there more, it's fine. Don't try to, you're not, don't try to lose sleep or don't lose sleep over not being able to track everything.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  But one thing that's been pretty resilient with all these AI changes for us is tools. Because if you look at Uber Suggest and Answer the Public, it's keyword research. In today's world, people still need keyword research more than ever because it's complex on, what are you trying to optimize for to get your brand out there from social media to Google to YouTube, right? And we look at the tools. Tools are somewhat AI proof in which you're gonna use what AI to do keyword research?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  I think AI also links to tools more, meaning it calls out tools more because it can't do this. And I think tools are higher bar too. So because of you can vibe code a lot of stuff now. I think the bar is now higher. It's like it's easier to make an ebook now.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  It's easier. So but now it's like if you go towards a harder thing, the blue ocean, which is building tools, you're gonna stand out. And so with Click Flow, we try to give like, oh, here's 25,000 words for free, right? That's like, that's a good offer. And so with you, you have like, you do have, Uber suggests is you do have a free version, right?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  And we're actually trying to go more free, uh, which we talked about last time. We were running tests on that in like, I think, two, three weeks. Uh, we're making some other changes in the short run.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  But we're integrating things like AI data from all the search queries people type in on these AI platforms and how often your brand shows up. So we're starting to tie in some of those things into our tools. We're at least experimenting on our end before we release them. Uh, but when we start gathering data from a lot of places and showcasing it within our own tools, we're seeing usage on our tools, uh, do very well in this kind of environment and we're not seeing it decline really.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  You know who called us out? Uh, the, the head of SEO at Canva, she posted, or he, she or he posted this on.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  CEO's millennial.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, so this person was like, hey, we're actually seeing a lot more traffic go to our calculators and, um, our different, like, basically, you know, either trending topics or calculators or tools and things like that. Basically saying that, um, they're seeing their traffic from LLMs go up and it's because of those pages, not so much the what is the informational pages.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  And so if that's a signal, then it's like, that is a signal to go build more things and do tougher things. Um, but that's what it is ultimately. And, and by the way, um, Do you have any, anything else on this one before we move to the next one? No, go for it. Okay, so um, I do want to go back to, because we've talked about this a couple of times already, but Wall Street Journal posted this on bosses are done being quote unquote, nice, right? And then on, on one end, I see on LinkedIn, like I see one person, she posted saying that we need to unionize as employees. We cannot let this happen to us. And it got like three likes on it. My point of saying this is that it's not that bosses are done being nice necessarily. It's so it's, it's basically saying, oh, um, bosses are tired of this. You know, I hear from some bosses,

• 6:55Speaker 02

  they're like, some people, they're, they're going on a rampage right now. They're cutting due to AI. You know, we hear, oh, this person cut eight million in payroll. This person cut 400 people or whatever. It's not that people want to do that. It's just whatever is best for business at the end of the day. And I think what happened maybe in 2020 or so, and this is what I saw, 2020, 2021, when interest rates were very low, um, the economy was ripping and everyone was investing a lot and people were paying crazy high salaries and everything. Um, and people had to be a lot more accommodating. And I, I think what happened was people became very entitled, right? And, and boss had to deal with that. What you're hearing now from Wall Street Journal, you're also hearing this from other podcasts is that, um, people are starting to realize now

• 7:37Speaker 02

  that maybe they were being paid too much, which is ironic to me. Um, so people are being paid too much. And then also again, bosses are tired of this whole like, as I'm interviewing these CEOs, like, so, so Eric, what's your take on it? Should we be back in the office? Um, you know, what, what about this remote work thing? I talked to my, my, one of my relatives who works at the, um, who works at the IRS, right? Um, I was like, hey, what do you think? Should they have cut 20,000 people? What is like, absolutely. They should have cut 20,000 people. So you're seeing that all this happen in the economy right now, where I, I think the, the, the quality bar expect is expected to be higher. And a lot of people aren't willing to meet that, that new bar because of AI is making us, helping us do things a lot faster. We're asking questions a lot faster.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  And so that's why there's this quote about bosses are done being nice. It's not unionizing or anything. It's that. A lot of these people, you and I, we spend a lot of time on talking to other people and learning how they're getting faster. We just want to be more efficient, right? And so if people aren't willing to meet that bar, there's a lot of CEOs out there that have said, hey, here are our new standards of excellence. Here's what Toby from Shopify said. Here's what the box CEO said. Here are new standards of excellence. If you don't want to meet it, that's okay. You don't have to be here, but we're done being accommodating. And that's what business is. Business is you're just here to serve your customers and you're here to make sure that your numbers aren't upside down. And that's what, nobody wants to be mean, right? Like, we don't start a business to be mean. And so when people talk about unionizing, or this is not fair, or like, this is, you know, this boss is a tyrant,

• 9:03Speaker 02

  or whatever. It's like, no, like, we don't even have time for that. So anyway, this is just me ranting a little bit, but it is, it's interesting to see both sides. And what I will say is, it's very refreshing to see the people on my team that are stepping it up. And it's also very easy to see who's not willing to step up.

• 9:19Speaker 00

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• 9:53Speaker 01

  Yes, very easy. Yes, and people can try to do whatever they want, like, unionize and all this kind of things, but if they don't figure out how to play ball, I think in the long run, a lot of them will just end up being replaced. And if you look at typically what I see from an employee standpoint, being unionized, it's the people who

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Aren't doing the best job who are really for unions. The people who are A players don't care for unions, don't want that because they're compensated really well. It's the C, D, and F players that are just like, yes, we want unions because they want protection.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  And they're not learning, getting better, putting in the time and effort that's really needed.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And by the way, like, I don't want to spend too much time going into politics, but it's what we're for at the end of the day is equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Because if everyone has the same equal outcome, there's no incentive for you to work hard, for me to work hard, for Noah to work hard. There isn't, right? That's just what it is. And so it's not that bosses are done being nice. It's more so bosses, if you want to call them that, or really founders, they just want to get things done. And I don't know about you, but like, when someone blocks me from getting something done, I just, I just want to get things done. Just get out of my way, please. Like, that's all it is. Like, join me or like, please just get out of my way. That's all it is. One thing about getting out of, out of, out of my way in a different context too, is going back to YouTube.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Did you see that 14 million YouTuber? He had 14.8 million subs on YouTube and he quit. So the question really is, is getting views worth it? Is going viral worth it? Because this guy just packed up and quit.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Was he generating a lot of income each month?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  I don't know. He probably was. But this guy would post about how he's like walking in the Alaska mountains and it's freezing. And he's like vlogging it. He's like about to die, by the way, until he finds a cabin and he goes in the cabin. He's like vlogging that, like. So very wide TAM type of stuff. You'll get a lot of views. He was done. He quit because too many people recognized him and it started to interfere with his personal life, right? And so this again is a trap of, is it better to be anonymous or famous, right? And I think what we called about earlier in this podcast, the very first topic that we had was talking, really, part of it's talking about how these business influencers have started to chase views. But this is the price you pay at the end if you chase too many views.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Because everyone recognizes you and it interferes with your family life and your personal life.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I look at it as some people want to be famous and they like the attention. Not everyone is that way, but I do believe a good chunk of people are like that. And for those people, they should go after it.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  If it was me personally, I would rather be anonymous in life and rich. I put the and in there. I think that is the best setup. I have a friend who is pretty high up on the Forbes list. I know him well. He wears like flip flops, Nike flip flops.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Hey, why dressing nice doesn't make you more money?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, he probably has nice clothes. I've never seen him in nice clothes. Where's Nike flip flops? I don't know what he drives as a car, but he has nice cars, but I think he drives like a Toyota or something or one of those.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  That's his daily driver.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, doesn't care, doesn't have the fanciest home and no one really knows who he is. And he goes around and just lives his life and he loves it.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  By the way.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  And he's rich as crap. When I mean richest crap is like he can go buy a sports team, rich.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  In any league, so billions and billions.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  All right, we will see you tomorrow. Please don't forget to rate, view and subscribe.