EP43 - Invent Status Quo with Sean Downey

So when you think of digital advertising, one name is just synonymous with it, and it's Google. And today I have the pleasure, the luxury, the honor of having, I guess a, a legacy in his own right in terms of being a part of the digital, advertising landscape. Sean Downey, who is the president of America's and Global Partners at Google. I think that's a new role for Sean. He can explain his progression and a recent promotion, which I will say congrats on, but Sean's ultimately responsible for leading Google's overall advertising business in North and South America. Before that, he was the vice president of the Google Marketing platform. Some of the. Technologies that enable advertisers and brands to really take advantage of, of data and intelligent advertising and targeting through the Google platform, as well as other platforms working with marketers, agencies, brands, partners, really the entire ecosystem to take advantage of the capabilities that Google has to offer and market. I know personally he's helped me understand, learn and mature my own skills, my team skills, and the companies I've worked with. Everything from measurement and analytics to. Conversion and tactics on growing our business. before that, Sean was the VP of the buy side sales at DoubleClick. Obviously a a long tenure DoubleClick into Google and has worked at some startups and other technology vendors. I'm sure you're on a lot of boards and do a lot of other things, but, Sean, welcome to the podcast today.

Thank you, cor. I'm super happy to be here and excited to be invited. It's my first Canadian based podcast. I always get invited in the United States, so really happy to come up, uh, and do this with you. as you know, I love coming to Toronto. I love the market. I love. Of the people, uh, and I have a, a New York history and I went to school in Buffalo, so I feel like I'm an honorary Canadian sometimes and really appreciate the invitation.

I appreciate it. And selfishly, it's kind of like Canadians consume, you know, 60 to 80% of their content from American sources. So the reach is there. And so for me, this is actually a bit, you know, self-serving cuz I get the American reach of people that like to follow and listen to you. So it works both ways, so I, I appreciate it.

Outstanding.

So, why don't you maybe explain, and, and again, congratulations on, the recent role change. you know, what does actually fall under your purview? I think everyone who listens to my podcast understands Google at a macro level, but maybe talk a little bit about what teams and accountabilities fall within your.

Yeah, I'd be happy to. Uh, and I noticed you were very, you were very kind to me and you said I had a nice legacy. I, that's kind of code for, been around a long time, I think. and you said long-term double clicker. I started that business in 2003, but I actually started my digital journey in 99. In a schoolhouse in North Carolina, which is really weird place to start a digital career, but that's how people were doing it then. Uh, and I had the honor of like seeing all the curves of how the digital industry grew, how technology was built, how advertised and evolved, and ultimately ended up here at Google, which is a great company in this, in this new role. And it's a fun role. so the un under the, you know, the, the, the work that I have, My work is leading the advertising business for Google and the Americas. So all the way from Toronto to buis s in my team's, work with customers to make sure they get the best of Google and hit their revenue goals. So think about, you know, Google search falls under that purview. YouTube sales, all of our programmatic businesses, and that technology businesses, any tool or property, that we can put in front. Of a partner and a brand and an agency to help them with their business results follows in our purview. ultimately I handle the largest advertisers, so we handle the largest advertisers in the world and the largest agencies and partners in the world. And, you know, we're there to make y'all better. Um, and that's our focus every day and we're hoping that we can help maximize your, your business through the tools and services that Google offers, which we think are pretty great. but we have to help you sometimes make sure you know how to use'em.

So you, you work in an industry, in an organization that I think, you know, people go, wow, I mean, Google search, it's, I guess to some degree as close to perfect of an advertising platform as you can, especially when you're thinking about. The last touch, the conversion, the measurability, the ability to look at the data and be very granular. But as a leader of that group, you know, I can also see that people running that organization, running those, those teams and optimizing on, on a daily basis can get very stuck in, well, it's working. Like, don't, you know, don't kind of wake the sleeping giant because God forbid you try something. Deflect from success. How do you motivate and think about keeping a team always focused on consistent improvement in a world where it kind of works? Search is pretty darn good.

Yeah, search has been great for a long time. I think it starts with just my philosophy, in business and life is really the same Corby. I'm an unapologetic growth mindset person. I, I believe personally, I myself, am a work in progress, as a human, as a business leader, as a partner. and I wanna make sure that I get better every day. Um, and that's the mentality I always try and bring to our partners, and more importantly, our team, so that they strive to be better. and I give them this really simple framework that we're not here to be status quo. we're here to invent status quo. and that means you have to constantly evolve, constantly find better ways to do things. And I think the benefit of my, my history, and the roles that I've been in is I've, I've been able to see curves in technology. I've been able to see curves in how advertising's evolved, uh, and we're able to always do some things incrementally better all the time. with some testing and some experimenting, and we can in fact find ways to improve on things that we think work really well, whether it's search or whether it's digital advertising or whether it's, you know, how we, you know, build something in our backyard. Like there's always massive improvements. And I'm a big believer that the intersection of really smart people, really strong technology advancement and different thinking. Leads to better results. in particular when you start thinking about search. You know, search behaviors are dramatically different than they were, 20 years ago, when Google was getting its start. Uh, and Google, it's always been important to you as a brand and all your customers because you know, intent. Matters most. In many cases in advertising, we've always been able to capture really true intent or what's on the zeitgeist to what people are searching for. They're looking for information, they're looking to be connected, and we can always make sure that happens. But what we find is. people search differently. people interact with information differently, and people are sometimes in different mindsets about how they're searching for things or what they're advertising for, and getting that ethos or that thinking in front of customers to know that modern search or modern information seeking from customers is different really starts to change the way you might go about. Approaching the the marketplace or the tool. And then what I love the most is when you start thinking about technology advancements, there are different ways to approach it that might be able to maximize your investments that are dramatically different than how you worked 12 months ago, especially five years ago.

So in, in the notion of instilling that, inventing the status quo kind of a mentality, is it, is it hiring the right people that come innately with that? Same philosophy. Is it incentivization and structuring the way in which you give people objectives and targets? what's the balance and how do you keep that consistently growing?

Yeah, I, I chase it in a couple of ways, so I, I think, you know, people, I think people go to work every day and they, they especially come to work here at Google to make a difference. right? People don't sign up for big company jobs if, if they don't wanna make a difference. So I think you have to find the right mentality in people that want to grow, want to have impact, uh, want to take some level of risk and have some innovation. So I think there is a profile and a skillset set of that type of. attitude, the agility associated to it, that you have to have. so that means you have to paint really strong visions. Like I'm a big believer that you gotta win the hearts and minds of people about what they're trying to do and why. And that it does in fact make a difference, and that they play a critical role in making sure that happens. Like we're not handing anyone a sales. We're a business plan saying do X, Y, Z, and it works like we're asking people to think, to work with partners, to think with them jointly and then apply, right? And then we try and do things in a common way. I think a lot of that also comes with how you structure your culture. I'm a big culture person, and I think if you want to do that type of thing, you have to have a really innovative. Culture that has tremendous amounts of psychological safety, uh, feels like they can come in and contribute ideas and belongs. and then they feel really comfortable pushing the envelope. So we, I do a lot around making sure people feel seen here, heard, feel like they can be themselves, and share, and then find commonalities and then they feel like they can innovate. And then I never. Punish failure, right? So I, I love a healthy dose of failure and it's something that as long as we learn something, we can fall forward on it.

One of the things that you said to me not that long ago, which has stuck, and it kind of ties to this whole theme, and maybe the last question on sort of the people culture side was this notion of simplification and to what you just said around. You know, creating psychological safety, uh, never punishing failure. The the flip side is, you know, The motivation and the focus in an incredibly simple way so that people don't have to distract themselves. And, and you talked about your annual review. One post-it note stuck to the computer with one word. And we won't go into the example you gave me, but, um, I, I've actually taken that back myself and I told you I was gonna steal it and give you credit. So it right here publicly, I'm giving you credit. Um, That's a great example of, helping your team really focus and understand that you can't solve all the world's problems. Are there any other things you think about, in the guise of simplification, both from a culture but also as we transition more into maybe the chat about, you know, advertising and digital marketing, like simplification is a great theme. Anything come to mind now in today's market and world that really stands out as, as good examples of, of taking that.

Yeah. Well this is something that we work on a lot and is, you know, as I, you know, ascend to this role within Google is a big agenda item for me, is to get even more simple. So there's this healthy balance, I think, between innovation. and doing the common things commonly that work. Right. And I wanna have teams, really drive towards innovation. But I try, I try to give them a framework that, you know, as we sit here today, what are the things that we believe are the most impactful things for the business and for our partners? Uh, and how can we do them in a pretty common way and execute right? And I think the lion share of what we try and bring to the market has that mentality because, Incubated it. We've tested it. We've proven it, and there are now things that we want to put in front of customers to help them solve problems. And we can do a lot of things more simple and common if we align around the most. Effective things that solve problems. So we do a lot of that. And that means simpler goals, fewer simple equals fewer in there, and more common ways to solve it. Right? And then I ask them to innovate on the edge, look at the problem that a customer might give you. Think about how you might string something else together. Test it, bring it back. And if you could bring it back to the center for me, I can then give it to everyone else. Right? So I have this cycle and I always think about it in terms of like, incubation is a, an idea in a test, prove it works. Then I think about growing it and a handful of more things. And then I think about scaling it. And if you're just innovating and experimenting, you have innovation items or experimentation items, if you can understand. Innovate on the edge, prove it works, and scale it, then it becomes common. Then I can get everyone to do it, and that's a simpler approach. And then we go to the next frontier. So we're trying to really get that muscle built not only for ourselves, but for our partners and customers, because I think it's a really effective way to execute efficiently in at scale really well. But keep your toe into the new

so I mean, you, you've obviously had the exposure of, you know, really strong, high performing teams inside of an organization like Google. You've had experience with, massive global agencies who support all kinds of different organizations. You've also had direct relationships and support of, of large brands, you know, national, international, global, whatever. So, on that innovation front, where are you seeing bigger potential impact on the, the product innovation? The. offer or build as an organization or maybe the process, you know, the how you operate. Obviously you can innovate on both. Any insights into sort of the what versus the, the how?

Yeah. I mean, I could, we could bring it back to some of the, the search conversation because people sometimes miss this. Um, the way that people search. Is different than it was. Uh, and therefore how you have to go after that, uh, audience, uh, and be effective. Has to be a bit different as well. Um, and there's a lot of technology around that helps you do it right, which we're probably not used to. And you know, we, we used to be guilty of probably some inhuman language. We'd say, please go automate things, uh, or please use our machine learning and we'll find answers for you. Sounds super scary and super weird. To people, uh, in a reality, we want you to take advantage of really strong modern technology cuz the fact is like how people search views different. So you should find ways to find that in real time and keep up with the pace of customers. So we've introduced a lot of machine learning models to help identify people. that look like what you want and what they're searching for and helping you expand your reach of marketing campaigns into it. It's a really easy, simple, effective way that a lot of customers have changed. Uh, but more importantly, I think I'm trying to get the market and our customers and even our teams to understand the powerful shift that we're kind of sitting in front of right now. Now, a lot of people have loved playing with the chatbot, G P T Chatbot. I'm sure you've played with it because you love

I literally have that as a question on how that's going to change the way in which we actually think

love it. Um, but you know what it is, it's a really awesome thing and I, I love, that it's there because it's giving. artificial intelligence, like a moment, right? It's kind of like it's coming out. People see that there's a really effective use case for it that helps people do things or helps people solve problems, right? And I think that's fantastic, right? Because we've invested so much as a company. Uh, you hear our Sundar Pcha, our CEO talk all the time, that AI is the future of Google. And we've been building artificial intelligence into our consumer products and into our advertising products for a long. Um, and they solve really simple problems. So if you think about be just being a consumer, like I'm on the Android stack cuz I'm a Google guy. So my phone in my car, Android car, uh, it's really seamless. Like it's helping me, it's anticipating my needs, it's giving me information when I need it. and a lot of that is like artificial intelligence learning models that have been built in the same, applies a lot to the advertising model. It's like as we're starting to do things like maximizing performance, we're using a lot of artificial intelligence in machine learning. To help you do it. Uh, and I think having people see chatbot in the open brings use case and, you know, probably a more human approach to it than they've ever seen before. And I wanna make sure people understand that, you know, we've using, we're using those powerful mechanisms to drive not only our consumer products, but our advertising products to be. Really effective and it's an evolution. Um, and you can start to see like you're, you're getting more than you thought you could, and you're using the assistance of technology to do it. And I think that transition is really important. And that does mean then you automate some more things or you do some more expansive learning models that you're not controlling, uh, in your office, but you learn as you go and it's becomes a little bit more of a innovative, modern thing. That has high value for you, uh, in providing, providing information or provides the results that you're looking for as a marketer. So that's a huge shift. Um, as I think about growing and getting people to think differently, that is a really important one for our teams to be talking about.

Yeah, chat. Chat. Uh, GPT is interesting from my perspective cuz it's taking a lot of the things that you just described that may be quite under the covers. Right? Like, why does my map recommend that I. Leave now because it knows my calendar events, it knows the traffic, it knows the weather, it knows my driving patterns at me personal, and it puts all those things together. Um, that's kind of hidden and subdued within the platforms and tools and apps that I use. this is in your face and, uh, so much so that, uh, my son who, who had a paper due right before the holidays, Finally let me read something as a proofread. And uh, and I said to him, this is the best thing you've ever written. And I literally had asked him, did you write it? and I think that's the other element of this is it's now questioning, you know, where is the line between what a human is creating versus what a human is adapting and editing? Uh, and so there's, there's no question. It, it's interesting. the thing that you just mentioned though, in that example of, Uh, personalizing an experience of me making sure I leave my office at a certain time to get to where I need to go, and all of that automation obviously requires. A fair amount of trust from me as a consumer with the platforms and the tools and the technologies that are underlying that. Cuz I'm, I'm giving access. I'm, I'm sort of bequeathing my privacy and my, my personal information, and, and maybe that's the, the sort of next topic for a quick minute discussion is this world of privacy and control to the consumer. We've seen sort of gdpr, we've seen California, we see more stuff coming in Canada. There's legislation on the table now. What's your take on, let's say the next 24 months in terms of the, the privacy landscape and, and, and what is, you know, what do you see the consumer versus the organization having to do to, to make sure everybody's comfortable as we move forward?

Yeah, it's a great question. I've probably spent the majority of my adult life on this topic. It seems like I. You know, I used to be a fan of coming into these conversations and saying, here's the privacy landscape and here's what you should be doing. Uh, I feel like people understand privacy. I think privacy, to me, I'm a consumer too. I'm just like you we're both consumers as well as business people. There, there's like, it's a basic human right to have privacy, right? And control about what you have. Uh, and I think all the things that have happened over the last handful of years, whether it's, you know, As early as the rise of ad blockers to, you know, regulation in Europe and all across the world to, you know, consumer tech stacks like your Android platform and Apple platform or CONT consumer technology stacks, right? Uh, wanna protect. Privacy because that's, that's their consumer, that's their lifeblood. Um, and I think you have to respect a consumer from that area. And people respond to make sure they are, because consumers A want choice, B want control. And they want to give people information as long as it's people they choose, right? They want who people they wanna have a relationship with. And I think that is what you have to get your head around when you start thinking about privacy. So if you're a brand or an agency partner, you have to build trust-based relationships with your consumers, right? Because they also want personalization. They also want value returned for the information that they give you, and you have to make sure that you're transparent about that, that you understand the value that you can return and that you do, right? Because if you don't, or you say you sell the information or you append things that they didn't have any intention of you having. Becomes a tougher value proposition and a tougher trust factor, right? So you have to really think about what does that trust-based relationship actually mean as a brand? And then build your strategy outwards, right? So cookies are always a good example, or fingerprinting or IDs. People love to talk about those, but if they're not transparent, purposeful consent based, they don't meet that. right? And you have to have a really strong view as a brand to do that. Now, what I like in the marketplace is you can have that point of view and not have to do anything really crazy, right? Because the technology's evolving with you. And if you just want to be transparent and safe, you could do a handful of things you like. Make sure that you are really transparent about what data I'm collecting. And what value I'm giving back to you. Like your example is Google has to be transparent with a consumer about what did you sign up for and what are we doing with it? Right? And you'll find those in all of our consent centers, like we're really clear about all of these things. That's a really important thing. And that means you're collecting more first party data as a cu as a customer, and you're thinking about how to apply that intelligently, and then there's a bunch of technology. innately, privacy safe, right? So I spent two years worrying or hearing about cookie deprecation from people like you, big, big customers who I who I love.

I plead the

you're, and you're really worried about it, as was everyone. Uh, and I say, uh, prove they don't, you don't need them. before they go away. Right? And then I'm getting into some other tactics, whether it's like first party data usage or contextual usage, which is highly effective, or some of this machine learning capabilities that learns with privacy, save signals, uh, those are all paths that are built into technology that. actually deliver incremental performance versus the old way of doing things, and are great to adapt. but that means you have to have that change mindset. You have to have that innovative experimentation mindset, and then you have to layer your work against it and see what's working better for you. And then I think you'll leave the room after a year and you'll say, do I have better relationships with my customers because I've been transparent with them and brought value. Yes. Am I living those values, uh, in my advertising campaigns by using transparent, privacy, safe tech and data? Yes. And did I get great results from my business? And I think most times you'll find that answer is yes, and that's always the end story is, did I grow my business and my customer relationships, yes or no? And the inputs to me matter less than did I achieve. As a, as a brand, or did I achieve that as a partner for you? Um, and get you there in a place that protects your brand, protects your customer, and evolves our industry properly and protects it.

And I, I think Google's been, been great at it. And, uh, and for years I've, I've taken the opportunity to do that value exchange. Uh, you know, it's worth it for me to allow. Information about my day, my life to be exposed in exchange for the fact that my kid's never gonna be sitting there on the bench waiting for, for dad to show up at the hockey or soccer game because I know I'm gonna get there on time.

A lot of people will say that, and I think the research shows that, and it's important as like as professional marketers, we don't twist that, right? Because people are always willing to give information for things they value and. Right. And if you don't, you don't want anyone to have it. Right. And that's, that's the critical point in all these conversations is, you know, let's we'll use, like, I like fun examples. You and I are friends. Uh, if I'm having a conversation with you, a one-on-one conversation with you, and you tell me you love music and you're a big music guy and you tell me some of the bands that you. So I send you something about the band, or maybe I'd say, Hey, let's go to this concert together cuz we're both into like alternative rock, right? And we'll go do that. That's a one-to-one exchange. You've, you trust me, you've told that to me. I'm using the information and trust to say let's improve our relationship and experience together. That doesn't mean the fourth person at the table or the third person at the table should use it

Although if they wanna send me an audio slave concert ticket, I mean, I'm

send you audio slate, but there're dropping. You might, you know, you don't want them to have all that information about you. And that's, that is third party, right? So like there's something innate to this one-to-one connection and consent where you're building a relationship that then enhances it. Versus someone random listening in, or maybe I told them that you liked Audioslave and they sent you an Audioslave book, um, or Dave girl's book, something like that, right? And then you'd be like, why does this person know that? Right. And I think that's how consumers feel a lot of the times. If it's not a consented relationship,

If I choose to put it in my headline of my LinkedIn profile, feel free to send me a pair of socks.

you, you've advertised God

exactly.So, no, I appreciate that. And, and maybe then, you know, the, the last question then is taking all those themes we've discussed and, you know, we're, we're into 2023, and you, like I have had, uh, you know, a few years of experience. What's your forecast? What do you, what do you see as any fundamental themes or changes both for the overall industry and maybe for Google specifically over the next year that, uh, you can share?

You know, I, I think people are entering 2023 in different places, um, around the world. Like, so, you know, we've had a wonky three years, um, whether you're starting with Covid and then recovery from Covid. And then, you know, the, the macroeconomic activities have, you know, haven't been the best for some people and they've been good for others. Um, if, depending on where you're at. Uh, so I think you, you have a lot, you have a mixed bag of how people feel coming in the 2023, I think. Um, One, you should have a lot of optimism. I'm, I'm always a glass half full person that I think more companies are getting focused on what really matters to them. in this drive towards profitability or efficiency or responsible growth is actually a pretty good thing cuz people are gonna start to understand the metrics that really matter to their business and they'll start to apply that to advertising. So I, I see a lot of brands. Kind of going back to basics as they should around, how do I really value. My investments and what's working and what's not working, and that's for a partner, that's music to my ears because I, I get to really lean in and have a, a really productive, deep relationship with you about how do I help you versus how do I hit some KPIs. So I think that's productive. Um, so I think people will spend the next six months to 12 months really getting those models refined. Uh, probably come up with some great measurements, some great ideas, and they'll come out of it when consumer and spending maybe where they want it to be. in really good shape. Um, I think the second thing that I'm excited about is we're at the precipice of some really important shifts and they're moments for me, and I think they're moments for advertisers that we have to get right. Like so we always love, like the digital transition, we always love the mobile transition. I think this shift to. Machine learning based advertising that drives growth is a really big moment that we have to get people to understand and there's a lot of foundation building to do it. and I think that's a really fun, exciting time because we can really lean in with you and say, how do we improve the way the operating. Works to drive value for you, and now's a good time to do it because you're, you're kind of going through a growth, a growth phase or, or you know, a more cautious phase. And then there's this awesome, awesome continuous shift of video to be streaming, to be, uh, Connected. Uh, and we have fantastic properties at YouTube and I just think it's the mainstream moment. You think of all the things going on. We just did the N F L deal for ticket, for example. Uh, you know, Amazon does a lot with the N F L and I think there's, it's really exciting to see a lot of the behaviors of consumers shift online video. And there's so much more that we can help people take advantage of, um, and really win that moment. And then we're reinventing measurement. in real time. Um, and I'm hoping it's around like incremental growth. It's around bottom line profitability. It's around bottom line sales activity. Cause I really think this is the year that a smart marketer makes marketing a revenue center and that a cost center. Uh, and that's an exciting thing because, because we have to think differently because we don't have the same proxies, we can actually make it, imposition it a lot better.

Make marketing a profit center. I like it. Um, full p and l we'll figure that one out. That's a, that's a whole other conversation and I guess vertical dependent and what kind of business you're in. But, um, I, I really appreciate those insights. Sean Downey, president of the Americas and Global Partners for Google. honestly, really appreciate you spending the time, just speaking honestly, truthfully and transparently, uh, about what's going on in the industry. thank you and I look forward to continuing our conversations.

My, pleasure. Thank you for the invitation, and I'm so glad that we could have the conversation. They're, they're really important and, and fun and enjoyable. so I'll come back

Perfect. Thanks a lot.