E208: James Hawkins

Richard Hill [00:00:04]:
Hi there. I'm Richard Hill, the host of Ecomer One, and welcome to episode 207. In today's episode, we're diving into one of the biggest challenges in ecommerce marketing, attribution, with multiple touchpoints across paid ads, organic search, email, and social, understanding where your revenue is actually coming from can feel like a guessing game. But getting attribution right is crucial. It helps you scale profitably, optimize ad spend, and double down on what's working. So how do you move beyond last click models and truly track the impact of your marketing efforts? That's where James Hawkins comes in, senior partnership manager at Triple Whale. We talk why has attribution become such a major challenge for ecommerce brands in recent years and how privacy changes like iOS 14.5, GDPR, and cookie restrictions impacted marketers' ability to track and measure performance, how to avoid the biggest mistakes ecommerce brands make when it comes to attribution, and what role does AI and machine learning play in improving attribution models for ecommerce, and, of course, so much more in this one. If If you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast.

Richard Hill [00:01:10]:
You're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode. Well, James, welcome to the podcast.

James Hawkins [00:01:21]:
Thank you very much.

Richard Hill [00:01:22]:
Welcome to Ecometer one. I think before we get into all things attribution, triple wow, and the state of the nation, it would be great for you to introduce yourself and how you got into the world of ecommerce.

James Hawkins [00:01:33]:
Thank you very much. Yeah. So hi. I'm James Hawkins. I'm the partnership manager based here in The UK for Triple Whale. I was brought into team last October purely and simply because what we found was we found that Triple Whale was really getting a lot of ground here in The UK and that it was crying out to have presence and boots on the ground here within the territory. But my story of actually getting into attribution is is a long checkered story, so I will give you the abridged version. But, the background primarily is left university and found myself in sales.

James Hawkins [00:02:08]:
My first job was making 200 cold calls a day, and I consider that my apprenticeship for everything. Wow. Very forwards. I then did a brief stint selling school dinners, which was nice. And then, realistically, what I wanted was I wanted something a lot more dynamic. And this was the time when, obviously, ecommerce had been around for a while, but we were starting to see the advent of things like Shopify, a lot more the flexibility, a lot more dynamism in the industry, a lot more tech companies sort of growing up. And I think that decentralization of tech, you know, beforehand, it was very much your oracles of the world had a big tech stack. And then as that kinda then started split apart, it gave an opportunity for a lot more tech companies to come to the foreword, start doing some really interesting and exciting things.

James Hawkins [00:02:53]:
And then, you know, we kinda just saw an explosion, and I've ridden that wave since really. Spent some time working in various different areas of econ, but primarily on the on-site side. So I worked in loyalty for a little while for loyalty line he may have heard of. Yeah. And then I moved into attribution and the stars aligned. Wow. And

Richard Hill [00:03:16]:
What a journey, School dinners. School dinners. 200 phone calls a day.

James Hawkins [00:03:20]:
That's it.

Richard Hill [00:03:21]:
And then, now here we are attribution. That's it. 200 phone calls a day. I like that. I like that. I like that. Like I

James Hawkins [00:03:27]:
say, that was my apprenticeship into the law and work. I think if you can do 200 call calls a day, you can do anything.

Richard Hill [00:03:32]:
Yeah. That'll put, that's put the fear of most people to be fair, 200 calls a day. But the the sort of the the confidence to deal with whatever you're asked, maybe some random question on a podcast ten years later, you'd be able to cope

James Hawkins [00:03:44]:
with it really well. That's it. That's it. You know, throw them at me. I'm ready. Let's go.

Richard Hill [00:03:47]:
Let's go. Let's go. So attribution, I mean, why when I think about ecommerce, there's obviously a lot a lot of different channels, a lot of different ways that people can find stores now. But why has attribution become such a challenge for ecomm stores, would you say, over the last few years?

James Hawkins [00:04:04]:
I think attribution just in general has become so challenging mainly due to the increase in privacy laws. Right? And I think if I kinda consider ecommerce as like a before COVID and an after COVID period because if we think it was 2020, the iOS 14 came out. It was at that sort of same time during COVID. We saw this enormous rise of ecommerce. And I think there's there's still this mindset because before COVID attribution, it was it was very much the heyday. You know, we're all running around high fiving because, you know, you could just throw money at Meta. You could throw money at Google.

Richard Hill [00:04:41]:
Yeah.

James Hawkins [00:04:42]:
You could target so precisely that you knew that where you were putting that money was gonna be driving you an ROI. Introduced then cookie restrictions, iOS 14, GDPR, all of these sorts of things. Attribution just then became an entirely different ballgame. And it was almost overnight. You know, if we look at 14.5, you know, the introduction of that Yeah. Once that was introduced, only 25% of people allowed apps to track. Overnight, isn't it? Overnight. Yeah.

James Hawkins [00:05:10]:
And so you've got businesses who have had this long standing attribution strategy that they've been working with for years and years as they've grown their business just overnight completely upended. Mhmm. And so I think to answer your question about why attribution is so important, I think where we stand now, we've had this kind of someone coined it the other day, the COVID hangover, where, you know, we kinda see a bit of a tapering off of that explosion. But I think there's a lot of folks who are still looking to try and replicate what was happening pre iOS 14, and they're looking for a solution that's going to replicate that so that they can be operating in the same way that kind of throw money into the hole, and it will start generating ridiculous ROIs. But I think the reason attribution is now so important is that it's not just something you need to do. It needs to be an entire strategy. Mhmm. You know, you need, as a brand, to have a firm strategy in all areas of your attribution funnel, not just hoping for the best, but, you know, what's bringing new eyeballs in the top of funnel? What's, you know, generating interest mid funnel? What's closing business and converting people? Bottom of funnel.

James Hawkins [00:06:18]:
How am I doing my branding? What's my awareness like? All of these sorts of different elements. And the reality is is that a lot of the impact from a point just doesn't answer a lot of those questions. Mhmm.

Richard Hill [00:06:29]:
So I think for the the guys that are listening, I think, obviously, the the game's changed. You know. And I think people some people are hanging in there and, well, no. The sort of reporting's okay. Well, you know, two plus two plus two is not nine, you know. And and you you know, you you didn't do a $300. You actually did $250. So there's something amiss, isn't there? You know? And what maybe what are some of the common themes you're seeing with brands that are still maybe hanging in there that that that, you know, the sort of, what are some of the biggest mistakes you're still seeing with ecom brands when it comes to sort of attribution tracking?

James Hawkins [00:07:01]:
I think the the number one, and I think this is for a lot of folks would empathize with this, is the trust that people do put in platform. You know, I'm not here to bash everyone.

Richard Hill [00:07:10]:
But Mhmm.

James Hawkins [00:07:11]:
Somebody explained it to me the other day in a way that I thought was was remarkable. It was like, at the end of the day, these ad platforms are marking their own homework. And I was like, that's a very good way of putting it, actually.

Richard Hill [00:07:22]:
Like it.

James Hawkins [00:07:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. Because everything's operating on last click. Everybody's just grabbing that information. Like you said, two plus two plus two does not equal nine. And, actually, when we look at it from a business perspective, if you were to take the revenue that each of your platforms was claiming they've made you, add that together, it's less two plus two plus two equals nine. It's more, you know, two plus two plus two equals 300. You know? Yeah.

James Hawkins [00:07:44]:
It doesn't reconcile with the p and l. So I think that's the biggest Yeah. One of the biggest mistakes I'm seeing is that people, for whatever reasons, either aren't scrutinizing what's being reported to them and then comparing that revenue to their p and l. Or if they are, they're just kind of allowing it. And Yeah. Yeah. I think that's probably my my primary mistake I'm seeing. And then I think secondly, what I would say is going back to my point around strategy is that not all platforms are created equal, but also they all do slightly different things.

James Hawkins [00:08:19]:
And as I mentioned before, acquisition attribution in general is a strategy, and it's a patchwork. And I quite often speak to agencies, for example, and they'll be like, oh, well, you know, one of my clients saw a a drop in ROAS in meta, for example. So, knee jerk, they wanna turn meta in. Yep. Yep. But actually, when we lay that out in Triple Whale, for example, when we look at that customer journey, we see that actually 83% of those journeys of which meta was a touchpoint had a Google touchpoint Yeah. As well. And actually, they also had a TikTok touchpoint.

James Hawkins [00:08:54]:
And it just becomes this fabric. And I think it's less around putting all the onus on each channel individually and more about trying to understand that entire patchwork Yeah. And how that works for your business.

Richard Hill [00:09:04]:
I think you explained that very numb very nicely, that sort of patch work, that holistic view, isn't it? Because on their own, you know, it's, you know, quite an inaccurate Yeah. Position reporting. Oh, Facebook, Meta. Meta. You know? Last click, thought oh, it we're down, but, actually, that platform touched that user here, here, and here. Okay. The conversion was in AdWords, for example. But does that mean we we turn off Meta? Usually not.

James Hawkins [00:09:35]:
I think and and I was chatting to somebody the other day, and they were saying that they had a long standing Google campaign and hadn't really touched Meta in the past. They've just done a bit of kind of awareness. But then they started working with an agency who did a lot of work around branding and also, top of funnel activity through Meta. And they saw their, like, ROAS from Google increase. And they were like, how do I don't understand that. I was like, well, it's because it's that patchwork. You know? Yeah. It's not that one is doing more than the other.

James Hawkins [00:10:03]:
It's just they all kinda combine. I mean, the average touch points that people have now is about five or so. Yeah. At least, I'll and it's if you're considered a purchase. You've got to go and show your mom, your wife, your, yeah, your uncle before you actually buy something.

Richard Hill [00:10:14]:
So true, isn't it? We're having a few things done to the house at the moment, and it is. It's not like, oh, yep. Yep. Yep. Bye. You know? So, yep. Let's go to the shop. Have another look.

Richard Hill [00:10:23]:
Let's go have another look online. Let's read all the reviews. That's all now. I've got obviously matters hitting me with the remarketing, whatever TikTok bit bids are coming through reviews, YouTube videos, the the the the two, three months, four months. Newsette is one of the things on our list at the moment. We've spent a lot of time, like, showing the showing the kids, you know, I want a bit of that one. Oh, no. Don't like that one.

Richard Hill [00:10:44]:
I'm not sure this one. Oh, YouTube ad, Facebook ad, you know, different platforms coming through. We haven't bought the damn thing yet, but, you know, I'm sure we'll probably end up in store. Again, so that's a tricky one to track as well, isn't it? So we'll probably we were more than likely for that purchase. We'll end up in store. We'll we'll go and, you know, buy it there and then in the store. But, of course, we spent a lot of time considering what size, color, etcetera, to get. Same with the table as well we're looking at, you know, some to track some of those things.

Richard Hill [00:11:14]:
I mean, what a so I like the patchwork analogy. That's a brilliant sort of, you know, what are some of the things that brands can do to sort of maybe see beyond that last click attribution? Obviously, we'll talk about triple well, but what are some of the things that some of the brands can do to sort of help report on a more realistic view? You touched on, obviously, having the data from the back end of the of the platform, for example. Is there any other things you're seeing, successful brands doing to really track the bigger picture?

James Hawkins [00:11:44]:
So you mean their kind of wider exposure and the impact Yeah. That that's having on on the business? I think, like I said, first things first is is really doing a bit of housekeeping. Yeah. Doing housekeeping in terms of your tracking and those, as you mentioned, those sources that you're using to understand it. Yes, I work for one of those sources. But at the end of the day, if you're not doing server side tracking at the moment, you're missing out

Richard Hill [00:12:09]:
Yeah.

James Hawkins [00:12:10]:
On a lot of stuff. And what that, first and foremost, would allow you to do is at least it's nothing's a silver bullet these days, but it will at least allow you to start from a a position where you can be confident in the information that you've got and confident that it's giving you a snapshot in terms of your performance across the different channels. I think from there is making sure that you are just constantly refining your reform and strategy. Just because something worked one month doesn't mean it's gonna work the next month. Yeah. You know, taking into account things like seasonality, if you're a company that works on drops, what's going on in the world, all of these sorts of things, even down to the weather in some cases. Yeah. Yeah.

James Hawkins [00:12:54]:
That's gonna affect the that's gonna affect the strategy that you put in place. And I think you need to be agile enough to do that, and you need to be in a position whereby you can adapt fluidly to put your best foot forward to get the majority of customers across the line. And then I think just lastly, just constantly scrutinizing the data that's coming across, Mhmm. Making sure you're comfortable with it, making sure it's answering the questions that you have, and making sure it aligns with where you're trying to take the business. Mhmm.

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Richard Hill [00:14:02]:
So the brands that are sort of circa 10 mil plus that maybe want us more of a solution focused, SaaS to work with. Tell us a bit about Triple Whale, how that can help.

James Hawkins [00:14:13]:
So I think in a nutshell, Triple Whale is just gonna answer your question when it comes to service side tracking, gathering information Yeah. Around what your audiences are doing and where they're discovering you. In its basis form, Triple Whale exists to gather data into one place so that you can understand your business holistically. I think that's one of the things that we, again, quite often overlook, especially in, like, the Shopify ecosystem. Data's not hard to come by. It's just rather siloed. So it's very difficult as a business owner to be able to identify if I make a change to a, not what's gonna happen to b, but what's gonna happen to l, zed Yeah. Whatever.

James Hawkins [00:14:55]:
Yeah. So first and foremost, Triple Whale puts all of that data into one place. From the acquisition and the attribution perspective, it's that server side tracking. It's gathering the best quality data that you can get hold of, so that you are able to be best placed to understand, as I mentioned before, all of those different acquisition strategies and action off the back of them. But then it's looking at some of the other functionality as well. Things like we last year released, something called Sonar, which is essentially our CAPI that then pushes, the event data that we gather through our pixel back into the ad platforms. So at the moment, that's live on Meta and Google, and also Klaviyo from a retention perspective. But you asked a question a moment ago about what's something that people could do to go beyond kind of that attribution piece to to grow their businesses and start to leverage more out of attribution.

James Hawkins [00:15:51]:
That is another thing that I think is highly important is leveraging something like a CAPI solution. I did triple wells, because at the moment, we're seeing some unbelievable results, you know, sort of 22% increase in revenue from abandonment flows in Klaviyo just by passing that information back into Klaviyo. 17% increase, in ROAS from meta campaigns where Sonar is is in play and passing that information back. Mhmm. Because it just again, it allows you to be so much more targeted. You're not doing things like double acquisitions Mhmm. And all of these sorts of things.

Richard Hill [00:16:25]:
Yeah. Interesting. I think it'd be good for you to maybe step us through, like, a case study when you think about some of the brands you've worked with, you know, and maybe some of the problems they've come to you with, which no doubt we've covered quite a lot of already. Ultimately, some some very poor tracking in place or, you know, it is what it is in certain instances. It is, you know, you're relying on, you know, the different platforms. But, unfortunately, you know, they have their own, you know, their own sort of, reasons why they are reporting how they are reporting. But, obviously, a lot of brands come to you, and come to Triple Whale. And, you know, I think we could just step through from maybe the eyes of a listener that's sitting there doing, you know, $1,015,000,000 pound a good a good million pound plus a month.

Richard Hill [00:17:06]:
Mhmm. Now they've got some attribution challenges, you know, and maybe working with an agency, and they've built them some bespoke, you know, Looker Studio reports and and maybe pulled in some data into that from the back of Shopify to sort of match, you know, the five or six to four, seven or eight or nine channels pulled in. But then they've got a Shopify data. They know there's some disparity there, but no doubt that's something you see most days. Most days of the week, you get up to that sort of challenge, maybe step us through a case study or two on what they were able to do then with better data to help them make better decisions with their advertising.

James Hawkins [00:17:41]:
So I don't necessarily have a case study on a a brand level basis off the top of my head. Forgive me for that. But I think, you know, in general, the majority of conversation is is just a bit of exhaustion, really. You know? People just being relatively exhausted because as you mentioned before, you do get these plateaus in growth.

Richard Hill [00:18:03]:
Mhmm.

James Hawkins [00:18:05]:
Again, not to harp on about it, but we saw that enormous explosion of the industry, ten years worth of growth in ninety days in 2020. Ridiculous. And, again, people searching for that, and we're seeing a drop in the industry. So people at at the moment looking to refine, and you you mentioned a moment ago, just making those tiny percentage changes here and there. I don't wanna say it, but marginal gains, that all amount to a a maximum. And I think when we speak to to folks from a brand perspective, it's really, like I say, that that level of right, we've kinda come to the end of our tether. We we are at our limitations in terms of what we can understand, what we can refine, what we can do. We spend all our time in, you know, ads library trying to understand what our competitors are doing.

James Hawkins [00:18:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. But the reality is is so much time is being spent analyzing data that's gonna help you move the needle half a percentage. So, actually, it's a case of the best reactions we get when we kind of introduce folks to Triple Whale is the idea that you can start to have a more holistic understanding of your business. And through things like forecasting and from a performance marketing perspective, you know, modeling out what those future predictions of your business will look like, it allows you to almost iterate and then be able to put strategy in place that's gonna meet that Mhmm. Depending on where you're looking for your business to go. So for example, if you're at 5,000,000, you want to get to 10,000,000, you know, you need to then first understand where you are as a business, what's working, what's not working, benchmark against your competitors, what sort of results are they seeing, and then, like I say, start to iterate off the back of it, use some of the forecasting models, understand your what would be your optimized spend, where should you be putting your money, all of these sorts of things to best support your brand in that journey of growth. Mhmm.

Richard Hill [00:19:59]:
Mhmm. Love it. So on that sort of vein, typically, most of our listeners, you know, they'll probably be investing in five or six paid channels. Mhmm. They're probably, doing some UGC with influencers, no doubt doing email. Then maybe we got, what's what else is in the mix? SEO, of course. Mhmm. You know, is there any sort of, is there any corporates in there or different patterns you're seeing when people are doing, you know, a lot of the different channels? Because I think as smaller brands, quite often, they usually are maybe just doing SEO and PPC, SEO and Google, you know, maybe a little bit of meta.

Richard Hill [00:20:34]:
But as you start to to grow, it's quite common that, you know, five, ten million plus, you're, you know, you're investing very heavily into, you know, TikTok, meta, search ads, shopping ads, maybe some display, you know, YouTube, you know, email marketing of course, you know, and then email marketing is very usually, you know, flows in campaigns. And then on organic, you know, you've got the, you know, the SEO content machine that you've no doubt investing in, and then the link building, and then the PR, and you know, it's then all of a sudden, you know, we've gone from maybe, you know, two or three channels, maybe five years ago to this maybe 10 areas of investment. Is there any sort of patterns you're seeing? Maybe whether certain channels really overestimate without telling any brand names maybe. Because we don't know what to say. Any of our other guests that have been on this other other podcast, but, you know, there are certain, marketing channels are a little bit, how can I put it? A little bit naughty with their attribution, or any sort of patterns you're seeing with the the the firms that are doing a lot with a lot of channels.

James Hawkins [00:21:41]:
So I think part one of that question is difficult to pull out one in particular channel. I think they're all quite naughty Yep. To be honest. But I don't think that's necessarily vindictive. I don't think anyone sit sat there going, oh, we're not in their hands going, we're gonna over attribute here. I just think it's the the the nature of Yeah. Yeah. How their businesses are based and how they track.

James Hawkins [00:22:01]:
You know, by their very nature, they're not recognizing the patchwork element of things because they only have access to the information that they have Mhmm. About their platform. So, yeah, I'm seeing just a lot of over attribution. But then I think there's some some interesting channels that people are starting to make more use out of, which are quite interesting to me. So for example, Applovin. I hope I get this right, but it's essentially positioning ads on mobile games. Yeah. And so we integrated with them, I think it was just shy of Black Friday last year.

James Hawkins [00:22:39]:
But, actually, for a lot of folks, it drove a lot of performance over that period. And it was something that, yes, there's always been ads served during Melbourne games, but I thought that's something I hadn't really thought of before. And actually an area where there are a lot of captive eye eyeballs. Yeah. And to a certain extent, you can be quite targeted, you know, understanding, you know, game a resonates with

Richard Hill [00:23:00]:
Yeah.

James Hawkins [00:23:00]:
Men in your demographic. Yeah. Makes sense to advertise there. Yeah. Yeah. So that's certainly one of the things I've seen. And then, certainly, there's been a lot of changes recently with the advent of AI. I I I hate the word AI.

James Hawkins [00:23:16]:
I feel like it's just used so much at the moment, and it feels like a bit of a a marketing term in a lot of senses. But when used properly, it's so phenomenally helpful. You know, I think you mentioned yourself that, you know, when we get to a certain level, we're not just dealing with Meta and Google. We're dealing with four, five, six, seven different ad platforms. You know, you've got to be constantly iterating on those platforms. You've got to be worrying about your SEO and making sure that you're discoverable organically. And in its very basis form, if you look at AI or LLMs in general, what it what it simply does is it allows you to ingest a huge amount of data that would take a human five days Mhmm. To run through and pull any discernible insight out of it.

James Hawkins [00:23:58]:
And at the click of a finger, be able to get inside of the back of it. So where we're seeing a lot of successful brands operating at the moment is making use of that technology. Now, obviously, everybody's familiar with your chat GPTs and these sorts of things. You know, it's a good place for for broad market research. But, actually, again, one of the things that that we worked on and and released last year was our internal AI. So it's everything's a whale pun, I'm afraid. So Sonar, we mentioned before, this one's Mobi. Oh.

James Hawkins [00:24:28]:
And Mobi is an LLM that that literally does just that. I mentioned before that Triple Whale essentially pulls all of your data in one place. Yeah. Doesn't necessarily answer the question of the fact that you still got to interpret all of that data. Yeah. Now what Mobi allows you to do is just talk directly to that data. So an example might be, show me my three high three best performing and three worst performing Yeah. Meta campaigns of the last three hundred and sixty five days.

James Hawkins [00:24:54]:
Right. Within thirty seconds there in front of you. Now what that allows us to do, as I mentioned before, and what it's allowing brands to do is I touched on the consistent iteration you need to have in acquisition and attribution. You need to be agile. You need to be able to adapt and to modify your campaigns based on so many different elements that are happening in the industry and in the world at large. Being able to have access to that data at your fingertips and make those decisions quickly is huge. Mhmm. And that's before we even then look at layering in things like predictive AI.

James Hawkins [00:25:31]:
So real like so, again, if we look at something like look at the his look at the his history of your performance across all of your channels and then extrapolate from that data based on the day, the time of year, whatever Mhmm. What discernible trend it can identify. That is so powerful. Mhmm. Being able to go right. Okay. Looking at all of this information, we know right now that you should optimize your spending in Meta, Google, and TikTok, reduce your spend in Snapchat, for example. And off the back of that, there's the prediction that you will be receiving x y zed in an in incremental revenue there.

James Hawkins [00:26:16]:
That is just huge from a marketing perspective. Mhmm. Mhmm. Actually, you know, not it's not there to be, as I mentioned before, the silver bullet of this is what you need to do is there so that it takes so many hours away from the teams and allows you to be as efficient as possible and to action off the back of it. Mhmm. And I think it's the brands at the moment that are embracing AI that are and I think just that just applies to the population as a whole. You know? It's folks who embrace AI at the moment who are gonna be the ones that stand out in even a year, five years, ten years. I genuinely think it's a big fulcrum that we're on as a society at the moment, and I think the brands that are building that into part of their stack are the ones that are gonna win.

Richard Hill [00:27:01]:
Yeah. I think it's the speed at which these platforms are moving, you know, just I mean, I just think of, you know, like, things that brands are doing that we're dealing with we work with and and speaking to, then what we're doing is an agency. You know? And I I we talk a bit we talk in our agency with we talk to a lot of other agencies. We do different different lunches and different adventure agencies. And one of the questions that we ask is what keeps you up at night? Yeah. And what why why are you when you're lying in bed at night and maybe you just can't quite get a slate that you're thinking about, you know, as a business owner, senior leadership manager, etcetera, marketer listening to this podcast. You know? I think that's a great question. And one of the questions that got asked last week was, what, you know, what what keeps you up at night? And one of the answers was very much, you know, what are we doing with AI within our business? And I think, you know, it's literally no matter what social channel you turn tune into, you know, know, as a business owner marketer, you know, it's a I, they say I, that, a I, or they say I, that.

Richard Hill [00:27:59]:
But, obviously, just making sure that as the marketer, business owner, that you are investing time into, all the people that you work with are investing time into different AI. You know, some of the so we're looking to build or we were we were looking to build, a tool internally, that will basically present to a prospect their link gap. And we've we've started specking out of this, and we're looking at a developer who who could build this for us. And, we've sort of earmarked about roughly about $40 internally to do this project. Mhmm. Well, a week ago, I found a a tool, which is I need to call lovable dot dev. And, basically, I built that tool in four minutes for me. So I don't need to spend $40 anymore.

James Hawkins [00:28:50]:
Is it and and that's that's that's the exact point. You know? Yeah. It's like I think when you say to AI to a lot of people, people think ChatGPT. Yeah. Yeah. You know? It's like, oh, do you use AI in a business? Yeah. Yeah. We do.

James Hawkins [00:29:03]:
Yeah. And what it is do our blog post. Yeah. What it is is the marketing team will run something through ChatGPT and then to, like, alter it so it sounds like the tone of voice of the business. Yeah. If that's what you're doing, get back to the drawing board and start looking at other tools. Because like you mentioned there, like, I was listening to an interview the other day. I can't remember exactly who it was, but it was someone, Steven Bartlett, and they were talking about agentic AI.

James Hawkins [00:29:27]:
Yeah. And that's something that we've just released in in triple world. And, obviously, from our perspective at triple world, it's very, very focused on ecommerce. But Agenctic AI is gonna be the next thing, using agents that are AI based Yeah. In order to be able to complete tasks that would have taken you a long, long time. Yeah. And an example this chap gave was, you know, you could go out and build a business, and what have you and build a website and all of this sort of stuff. And then in the future, you'll be able to get an AI agent to do that for you very, very quickly.

James Hawkins [00:30:04]:
Yeah. And I think to all effects, that can be a little bit scary. You know, it's like, well, okay. Well, where does that leave me? And actually, I think the point I'm trying to make is the viewpoint is you need to become familiar with AI. Because AI will either be the thing that becomes a bit of a nuisance to you, or it will be something that is absolutely super powering you. Yeah. It's taking you from being able to do something in twelve hours to being able to do something in Yeah. Half an hour and deliver twice, three times, four times the value.

James Hawkins [00:30:33]:
Yeah. Its capabilities are gonna be phenomenal well, are phenomenal and are only increasing

Richard Hill [00:30:40]:
day in day. Yeah. It's crazier, the speed, how things have changed.

James Hawkins [00:30:45]:
You know? My washing machine has AI now. I don't know what that means. A hat's outwork. Right. Well, I have no idea. I think there's something like it it weighs the it weighs Well, adjust the work Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:30:56]:
The water based on the weight and then it yeah.

James Hawkins [00:30:58]:
And that's what I was saying earlier on is, I think, beware of false prophets, so to speak. You know? I think AI is thrown around a lot.

Richard Hill [00:31:06]:
But I mean, going back to the sort of AI and attribution, you know, just it was it's Moby, isn't it? You know? Just the fact that you can you you're using AI to interpret the historical data from all said platforms. And you walk in on a Monday morning, and then you basically, hey. Can you tell me how my ads did over the weekend? Which channels performed the best? Which we can do some of that with, you know, with with, you know, reports, etcetera, but not the speed and the sort of, granularity. But I think that's what the AI could can do.

James Hawkins [00:31:43]:
Yeah. A %. It's like, you know, run me this report, show me the best cities that we saw the most sales from, create me five pieces of copy of my best performing campaigns, and send all of this to me at 08:45AM on a Monday. Yeah. So you're coming in, cup of coffee, open the laptop, and bang. There's your strategy

Richard Hill [00:32:00]:
for the laptop. Task task based AI or a report based, and you can just adjust it on the fly. Yeah. Very, very, very, very impressive.

James Hawkins [00:32:08]:
Exactly. Exactly. And I think the other the other thing to mention here as well is circling back to what we were talking about at the start is one of the key if we boil it down to something very, very simple, one of the key challenges that folks are seeing regarding attribution is is gap. Right? So beforehand, you could track everybody and everything they were doing. Now there is a level of areas that are blind spots, and we need to infer the gaps between that. You know, we can only track so not not necessarily when you're looking server side, but when you're looking platform side. And with all of these privacy laws, it means there's certain things that that you may not anymore have access to. So when we start then looking at something like AI, AI is giving us that ability to bridge those gaps.

James Hawkins [00:32:51]:
You know? So part one, you should be doing server side tracking. Get the best data you can get a hold of. Part two, you should have some form of AI that's bridging that gap. Ideally, again, triple well. But that's bridging that gap and allowing you to holistically understand that business. And then from there, be able to forecast and predict where you need to go next.

Richard Hill [00:33:11]:
Mhmm. Okay. So we're covering quite a lot of ground. Mhmm. But I think when I just go back to eight like, I feel like, you know, if we were sat here eighteen months ago, probably wouldn't even mention the word AI. Mhmm. And just the speed at which things have moved just with what we do in our agency, let alone, you know, obviously, people that are super embracing it. You know, being able to build a a workable app within five minutes the other day, which which I which I did.

Richard Hill [00:33:39]:
You know? And, you know, that's not something I have that skill of. Obviously, I'm visualizing, creating a brief, and then getting an AI to build it. You know, where where when I think about that crystal ball of attribution and AI, this is quite a difficult question.

James Hawkins [00:33:55]:
Okay. I'm ready. Right. Let me Are we ready? Right. We're ready. Let's go. Difficult question time.

Richard Hill [00:33:59]:
But, like, you know, what where is it gonna go? You know, when we're thinking, you know, you we're here now where we're we're asking it x, y, zed, and it's it's it's coming back to us with, you know, lots of, situations and I and ideas around creative. It's telling us our best, you know, our best performing this, that, and the other and best times of day and all that. And it's looking at the predicting this because the weather's, you know, the weather's, you know, we know right now we've had a little bit of nice weather the last few days. And if that's, you know, bringing the weather in and but where is it gonna go? You know? I think, you know, it's only probably eighteen months ago, we started doing anything with AI. So eighteen months from now, you know, what sort of things we're gonna say? What's what what sort of things are you maybe hearing at at, Triple Whale head office? Like, oh, we could we could do this or is there anything you can share that's maybe coming down the pipeline?

James Hawkins [00:34:48]:
So I think it's it's the million dollar quote. It literally is a million dollar question. If I knew where it was gonna be in in eighteen months, I would be a billionaire. But I think realistically, the focus seems to be at the moment on this idea of agents. You know? It's like Yeah. Jobs to be done Yeah. Essentially. How can we or how can AI pick up the slack in business? You know, if we use an example, I spoke to somebody the other day who spends eight hours on a Monday building reports.

James Hawkins [00:35:18]:
Yeah. And then come Friday is working to eight, 9PM, actually actioning still actioning off the back of the reports they had to build and constantly having to redo those reports during the week. That's not him using his skills to the best of their ability. You know, how many times have we started a job and actually realized that 90% of that job is busy work and 10% execution? Imagine if you could be in a position whereby you had the time, the headspace, the ability to execute flawlessly off the back of these things. And to be honest, like I said before, it's not here to replace anybody. It's here to superpower you. Yeah. You know, everybody has their has their professional professional capabilities.

James Hawkins [00:36:06]:
And being in the best position to execute off the back of that, I think, is gonna be phenomenal. Mhmm. And I think I genuinely think in five years' time, we'll probably be in a position where we'll be like, do you remember when we used to do this? And, actually, I spent eight hours putting that into a sheet and then Yeah. Building a pivot table. And

Richard Hill [00:36:28]:
Yeah.

James Hawkins [00:36:28]:
It would take me four hours to find that one piece of information from a platform from four years you know, all of these sorts of things. I think we genuinely will look a little bit blank like that. But then saying that, when my dad got a Nokia thirty three ten and the the fascia came off, I said to him at the time, I was like, honestly, I don't know where they're gonna go from here. Where can technology go? So I'm not standing here as some pariah of of, you know, forecasting tech. So

Richard Hill [00:36:52]:
It is it is crazy when you, you know, when you think how fast things shift and but with AI now, it's just gonna be like supersonic. So the things we're gonna be, you know, even a year, if we sit back down and we're talking about, you know, AI hand insert anything to do with business marketing. I mean, it's just you've got to embrace. I think you just have to embrace and it isn't quite a lot of unknown. Oh, I didn't know. Oh. You know? And then in terms of, like, reskilling or retraining people in different areas in business, you know, we I remember when I, you know, I went to a conference, like I said, it's probably about eighteen months ago. I came back, right, Jet GPT guys.

Richard Hill [00:37:28]:
My content team were like Yeah. Where where does that leave us then? What are we gonna be doing? Well, we're gonna be embracing it. You're gonna be experts in this, and, well, of course, we're still creating a lot of content. There's certain content we can embrace AI and. You know, fast forward even three months is like, you know, where we are able to create we're creating a lot obviously, we create literally millions of words every month for for clients and and and a certain element of AI is used. But our output for clients is so much more, and the quality overall is better. But now by embracing that, we're able to do right by the clients and better by the clients because we may be doing, for argument, say, triple the amount of certain areas of content that we were doing manually. The quality's still there, whereas the people that our clients are competing against that aren't embracing a level of AI are still doing a quantity or an amount of work that they just can't compete with us.

James Hawkins [00:38:25]:
Yeah. So And that's and that's the point. Right? It's like you will see a shift, and you will see Mhmm. The companies that are adopting these things and the ones that aren't because it will be the the, a, quality of output and b, speed of output. And, you know, Triple Whale is a prime example of that. As I mentioned before, run me a report. Like, go into Mobi, run me a report of my last three hundred and sixty five days of content and give me five pieces of creative for or five pieces of content Yeah. For this week that I can test.

James Hawkins [00:38:54]:
It'll come back to you with five pieces of content. Oh, sorry. Creative. And what that will do is it's not there saying your copywriters need to have a day off. It's they're saying, these are based on that information, the five pieces of copy that will resonate the best with your target audience based on this information Mhmm. That would take you Yeah. Two weeks to look through all of your ads and all of those results. Mhmm.

James Hawkins [00:39:21]:
And then from there, you're not sitting spinning on your chair going, right, okay. So what should I talk about this week? You've got these five Yeah. Lovely frameworks to work off the basis of. Yeah. Like I said before, modify into your tone of voice, you know, switch up as and when appropriate, all of these sorts of things. And that, like you say, it's that output level.

Richard Hill [00:39:41]:
Yeah. It's it's huge. Spending time on, you know, but in in in an agency, you know, we spend a lot more time on the columns with the client, understand the brands, understand the nuances. We can save time doing x. We can obviously spend that time, you know, understanding the brand, understanding the the market more. Yeah. Very exciting. I could do a we we'll probably do a whole episode on AI with you in a year's time.

James Hawkins [00:40:05]:
Oh, I don't know if I'd be the right person for that. I'll get I'll get my, one of my colleagues in to talk to you about AI.

Richard Hill [00:40:10]:
So going back to attribution then. So I think, you know, we'll have a we'll have a lot of brands that are like, right. Okay. So we've got a problem. You know? Yes. We are spending on all these channels channels, and we know all these numbers don't don't make sense. You know, they don't add up. You know? What would you say is a good first step for them to action to try and solve this challenge? Or, obviously, there's a varying challenges out there, but in terms of what would be a good first action for the people that are maybe struggling to piece their patchwork together?

James Hawkins [00:40:44]:
First thing I would do is just get service side tracking. Yep. We released it on our free plan now. So you can literally get server side tracking for free if you download the founders dash from Triple Whale. Yep. It gives you, like I say, that server side understanding of what your attribution looks like. Don't get me wrong. It's not gonna go into war and peace like triple world profit does, but it's taking you from one to 50 overnight.

James Hawkins [00:41:10]:
And the installation is so straightforward and simple Mhmm. That it just it's moving you towards the right path, and just doing a bit of hygiene on your data.

Richard Hill [00:41:21]:
Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll obviously link up Triple Whale in the show notes. For those that wanna find out more about Triple Whale, more about yourself, what's the best way to do that?

James Hawkins [00:41:30]:
So best way to do that is you can either reach out to me directly on LinkedIn, so I'm James Hawkins. I'm sure you'll probably put a link for that as well. Or alternatively, on our website, triplewell.com, all the information can be found there. We're very, very approachable. So always feel free to call up if you wanna have a chat.

Richard Hill [00:41:48]:
Yep. We'll we'll then call that up. Now I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book to recommend to our listeners, James?

James Hawkins [00:41:54]:
I do. And, actually, you know, this is something I've been mulling over a lot in my head. So, from a nonfiction basis, depending on how you interpret it, my favorite book is Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which sounds rather grandiose, but I think I'm a big reader, and I've always found that whenever my head gets a little bit carried away, I can always revert back to that, and it calms me down. And it gives me a lot of perspective on things mainly because at the moment, you can go and buy 500 books on every single area of whatever in business that you want to look at. But actually, something like that, it was written, you know, two thousand years ago. And it still holds so accurate based on the work we do, the world we live in, and I take a lot of, a lot of comfort from that. So I would say to folks, yes. There's a lot of books you can read, but Yeah.

James Hawkins [00:42:54]:
If you have some time, pick up meditation. Back down to It just it is important. Quietens the noise. Yeah. It quietens the noise.

Richard Hill [00:43:01]:
That's very important, isn't it? Very, very apt when we're we're just talking about the the the the million things that are spinning around just to do with AI, let alone, you know, running your, you know, your ecommerce store or running your ecommerce marketing department. But just hang on and have a minute to yourself. And

James Hawkins [00:43:17]:
Yeah. And chances are, like, genuinely, I will I've got an old beaten up copy at home that I bought for about 50 p from all Waterstones about fifteen years ago. And it's ripped, dogged, covered in highlighter, notes all over it. And like I say, when I'm in those moments, it's not that I pick it up and read it from front to back cover. I would just open a random page and just read two or three pages because it's it's in sort of little different snippets. Ahead. Exactly. It's like different meditations.

James Hawkins [00:43:47]:
And Yeah. There's a few books like that as well, like the Almanac of Navao, that can just give you those short insights that you need Yeah. Especially when we're all working such busy lives.

Richard Hill [00:43:59]:
Mhmm. I agree.

James Hawkins [00:43:59]:
So yeah.

Richard Hill [00:44:00]:
That Great choice. Great choice. We'll link that up as well. Yep. One click, and you can have it in your in your basket and at your house tomorrow. Right? Well, thanks very much.

James Hawkins [00:44:08]:
Thank you very much for having me. Thank you. If If

Richard Hill [00:44:15]:
you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast so you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day, and I'll see you on the next one.