Brewing Success with Arthur Yu: Leaning into Brand Marketing

Today on Pipeline Brew, Matt sits down with the seasoned advertising expert, Arthur Yu, whose career spans over twenty years supporting tech and media giants such as Disney, Google, and AWS. Their conversation covers his unique journey, from starting as a finance coordinator to where he is today as a prominent leader in the ad space. 

In today’s digital-first landscape, Arthur talks about what he calls the “one-second audition,” emphasising how brands now have less time than ever to capture consumer attention. The solution? Increasing your investments in brand marketing. 

Listeners will also gain Arthur’s perspective on incrementality and the statistical methods essential for measuring true marketing impact. His clear explanations of market mix modeling, conversion lift, and match market testing equip marketers with practical tools to prove ROI in a rapidly changing environment.

Later on in the conversation, Arthur shares his personal journey battling and beating cancer. For anyone else who might need help, support, or advice on their own journey, Arthur encourages you to reach out to him on his LinkedIn. 

Arthur Yu is a global marketing expert responsible for over $3B in media spend and held leadership positions in NAMER, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM. His most recent experience focuses on driving digital sign-ups and revenue for tech clients (Google, Amazon Web Services, and Meta), but he also has a long history of brand campaigns for entertainment (Disney/Fox/Lionsgate) and automotive clients (Hyundai motors).

[00:00:00] Matt Hummel: Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Pipeline Brew, the podcast that meets at the intersection of people and pipeline. We’re bringing you fun yet insightful conversations where you’ll not only hear from marketing experts, but also get to know them as well.

[00:00:21] Matt Hummel: Hey everyone. Today I’m super excited to be joined by Arthur Yu. Arthur has been in the advertising space for more than 20 years and has been making huge impacts from the very beginning when he led digital media strategy for some of Disney’s most successful franchises, including Pirates of the Caribbean.

[00:00:37] Matt Hummel: He has slowly moved into the tech space with recent roles at Merkel and Essence Media, where he supported giants like Google, Intel, and AWS. Welcome to the show, Arthur. How are you today? I. 

[00:00:48] Arthur Yu: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Matt. It’s a bright sunny day here in la, the calm before the atmospheric river rainstorm.

[00:00:58] Matt Hummel: Ah, yes. La [00:01:00] Beautiful town. I had family there. They’ve since left, but I loved coming out there as a kid in the summers and going to Disneyland quite often. So have you been out to Disneyland before? 

[00:01:10] Arthur Yu: Yeah, we actually took my son April there for his first trip just three weeks ago. It was perfect. He doesn’t quite know Mickey yet, but he was very excited to meet Lightning McQueen and to Mader from cars.

[00:01:24] Matt Hummel: Oh, great movie. That’s awesome. Well have fun. Arthur, if you’ve listened to the show before, you know, we like to kick off each episode with a little bit of an icebreaker, so nothing too crazy. Are you ready for that? Yeah. What is your go-to beverage when you need a little pick me up. 

[00:01:38] Arthur Yu: Oh, I’m not necessarily proud of this, but it’s a necessity for context.

[00:01:43] Arthur Yu: I wake up every day around 5:00 AM to get my morning workout in. So my pick me up is pre-workout, and the main thing is it’s just like. Super caffeine packed. Oh yeah. And I keep it on my nightstand with a glass of water [00:02:00] and it’s just an easy way to get outta bed. 

[00:02:01] Matt Hummel: Well, good for you for getting up that early.

[00:02:03] Matt Hummel: That discipline is awesome. I know there’s a, there’s a whole philosophy around the 5:00 AM wake up, so I am slowly trying to inch back from, I’m in the six o’clock hour at least, but five o’clock that would be awesome. So, well, good for you. Before we talk about what you’re up to today, I’d love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself, your passions and your background.

[00:02:24] Arthur Yu: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I mentioned I’m in la. I’m la born and raised, funny enough to two accountants. My mom and dad were both accountants and I studied finance in college thinking I’d do something safe like my parents, even though secretly I thought of myself as a creative. But you know, after college I fell into advertising.

[00:02:46] Arthur Yu: Via a temp agency while I was looking for a finance job, and eventually I found a finance coordinator position at Disney. And when I went in to resign my temp job at Publicis, thank God they [00:03:00] countered. Not only did I fall into something that I didn’t know, I’d love advertising. I fell into my passion, which was movies for Disney.

[00:03:09] Arthur Yu: And you know, since then. I proactively expanded my experience to include different industries. So I moved on from movies to automotive and I did a little bit of fashion and e-commerce. And most recently I’ve been working on tech and global, actually, so North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. So overall I, I feel very fortunate because I still love advertising 20 years later.

[00:03:36] Matt Hummel: That’s awesome. Well, it’s funny with your parents both being accountants, I spent really almost half my career working as a marketer, but for accounting firms, including Deloitte, and then a, a big tax consulting firm. And yeah, if you’re not wired for that, then. You’re not wired for that. Very, very, very different, you know, mindset to go into accounting versus the creative world.

[00:03:58] Matt Hummel: So there’s really no, I don’t [00:04:00] feel like there’s any gray when it comes to accounting. 

[00:04:02] Arthur Yu: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the proof was in my grades, there were like the easy A’s, which were sort of like the more creative focused ones. And then there were the hard B’s, which were the, uh, finance and, uh, accounting classes. 

[00:04:15] Matt Hummel: No doubt.

[00:04:16] Matt Hummel: Well, cool. Thanks for the background. Love your story. I love how you’ve gotten to where you are today. Any big lessons that you’ve learned along the way, you know, through your journey or aha moments that you’ve had? 

[00:04:26] Arthur Yu: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, my entertainment clients and my tech clients have so much in common now, you know, Amazon with Prime and Disney with plus, so they have that in common now.

[00:04:41] Arthur Yu: But if there’s something else that I’ve seen they have in common, and that’s. A customer above all else. Mm-hmm. So, you know, while there might be periods where margin and yield and revenue get the spotlight, acting in the customer’s benefit has always been the most proven long-term driver of success. So managing [00:05:00] expectations, delivering and exceeding on expectations, and occasionally surprise and delight.

[00:05:04] Arthur Yu: I think that goes a long way for all my clients. 

[00:05:08] Matt Hummel: I love that. Do you feel like there’s been. One, whether it’s entertainment or tech that has sort of come up to that realisation or have they both, do you feel like sort of been on level playing scale with the, you know, the idea that it’s really all about putting the customer, customer above all else, as you said?

[00:05:25] Arthur Yu: Yeah, I think, you know, I’ve worked for Disney, Google, Amazon, I think that’s in their DNA. Yeah. All of them have really approached their product in that way. So other companies, I think there’s elements of that, but I don’t know if it’s as ingrained as, you know, some of the most successful clients. Awesome.

[00:05:44] Matt Hummel: Well, as we transition to our next topic, I’d love to hear your view, you know, especially given the brands that you’ve worked with, you know, on how brand has evolved throughout the years and where have you as a marketer and an advertiser had to adapt. 

[00:05:58] Arthur Yu: Yeah. You know, I’ve seen [00:06:00] brand advertising evolve in three ways.

[00:06:03] Arthur Yu: Force view opt in. And now the one second audition. 20 years ago, because of the linear nature of mass media marketers had basically 30 to 62nd forums to force feed your message to a captive audience. And the medium part was easy. It was all about the message at that point. And then 10 years ago, with the advent of digital and mobile, online video, social media.

[00:06:31] Arthur Yu: Consumers had new media channels that allowed them to double click on a topic and opt in to learn more. So that was, I think, a game changer. But today, because of the reduction of forced view mediums and the flood of opt-in messages, brand marketing must really pass the one second audition. So that’s capturing your audience attention.

[00:06:53] Arthur Yu: Within an increasingly short amount of time. 

[00:06:56] Matt Hummel: I’ve never heard it explained that way. It’s super interesting. I mean, [00:07:00] you sort of gave us a history lesson too, in advertising in a very concise manner. Talk to me about the one second, what do you call it, the one second? Uh, audition. 

[00:07:08] Arthur Yu: Audition, yeah. 

[00:07:08] Matt Hummel: How does one pass, it’s kind of funny, you coming, uh, almost it’s like, you know, your evolution from Hollywood or entertainment into tech.

[00:07:16] Matt Hummel: I mean, how does somebody pass a one second audition? Any tips? Well, so. 

[00:07:22] Arthur Yu: The fourth view medium still exists, so I think that’s why you’re seeing a lot of attention on live sports and podcasting. So the advertisers that do it best really use that precious time effectively. The one second audition I think works in two ways.

[00:07:42] Arthur Yu: If you don’t pass the audition, hopefully that first view is sort of like a. A banner impression, almost like a billboard or a banner ad. 

[00:07:51] Matt Hummel: Yeah. 

[00:07:52] Arthur Yu: But if you’re able to engage them, it really depends on what you’re trying to market. I’d say the easiest way to pass an audition is to [00:08:00] use humor or use a message that feels native to the platform.

[00:08:05] Arthur Yu: But you know, that’s just the rule of thumb. And it might not necessarily be true to the solution you’re selling or your brand. So in that case, I’d say having a very. Relevant message is probably the most important consideration for passing that one second audition. 

[00:08:20] Matt Hummel: That makes sense. How do you or, or where do you think brands go wrong when, because I think everybody knows there is a proliferation of messages out in the marketplace, right?

[00:08:30] Matt Hummel: We’re getting hit with thousands, if not tens of thousands of messages each day. So it’s kind of obvious, like you need your message to stand out. People know humor works. W why are more companies though, not passing the one second audition? 

[00:08:44] Arthur Yu: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s probably because they don’t have any brand equity.

[00:08:48] Arthur Yu: Mm. So if you’re trying to build a brand and market a solution, I. You know, that’s a lot to do in 30 seconds and it’s impossible to, to do in one second. [00:09:00] 

[00:09:00] Matt Hummel: So there’s no shortcut to the one second audition. And, you know, absent of, and again, rule of thumb, but I think what I’m hearing you say is to pass a one second audition, you really need to have equity in your brand.

[00:09:11] Matt Hummel: So you need to be constantly building and investing in establishing your 

[00:09:15] Arthur Yu: brand. Right, right. The only shortcut, the one that I feel is utilised too much is promotions and offers. You’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. Right. So you’re not only not building a brand. Yep. You are still spending money, losing margin on short term gains.

[00:09:34] Matt Hummel: Yeah. That makes sense. Well, I want to continue, you know, diving into the topic of brand because. It’s just, for one, it’s a fascinating topic and there’s so much noise out there right now around the importance of brand and it, it’s a little bit funny, and I’m sure you get a chuckle outta this with your history of brand marketing and advertising, but it’s almost like brand wasn’t cool for a while.

[00:09:56] Matt Hummel: It’s, it was all about demand and revenue and, and now it’s like, oh, [00:10:00] no brand. It’s, it’s back. It’s sexy again. So, you know, we’ve seen the shift back to the importance of brand again. I think we would both contend it’s always been important. But I’m hearing, you know, for more and more customers and organisations that I’ve been meeting with, that while they understand that the big brand budgets that once were, are no longer, so things like billboards taking over an airport or airports, traditional kind of those big campaigns, they’re just not doing them anymore.

[00:10:27] Matt Hummel: And so they’re kind of struggling to answer the question. If not that, then what, you know, how do you still drive effective brand advertising? How do you still make an impact on your brand? When you have to change your thinking based on, on budgets, what are your thoughts on this? 

[00:10:43] Arthur Yu: Yeah, yeah. No, I, I think there are a lot of reasons why brand is receiving a lot of attention lately.

[00:10:49] Arthur Yu: So the last decade introduce a lot of innovations in performance marketing, the ability to target with precision dynamic [00:11:00] messages. These were game changers. But today, 2025, these capabilities are business as usual. And you know, there are new things like laws capping these capabilities and people in general have developed their own personal ethics of, you know, privacy and the creepiness of some of these approaches.

[00:11:20] Arthur Yu: Yeah, so I think this has led to marketers seeing performance as being normalised, you know, business as usual, status quo, and. Brand marketing, I think, has gotten a spotlight because established players are trying to grow their ecosystems with new capabilities, and also startups are trying to take advantage of how easy it is to build and scale new solutions relative to how hard it was 20 years ago.

[00:11:46] Arthur Yu: So, you know, I’d say depending on the organisation, brand marketing can mean two things. It’s amplifying the strength of what your brand stands for. Or it could be finding out what your product strength is, distilling it down to a core [00:12:00] idea and communicating that to your customers. 

[00:12:02] Matt Hummel: That makes sense. And how, is there sort of a, again, use, I’ll use your term used earlier, rule of thumb.

[00:12:09] Matt Hummel: Is there rule of thumb as to which of those two, you know, brands should be thinking about as one more important than the other? 

[00:12:16] Arthur Yu: Yeah, I’d say if you’re an established player, you know, protecting your brand equity. Probably the base of the pyramid. And then really finding out what synergies exist, you know, to build upon that.

[00:12:32] Arthur Yu: And then of course, the, the last priority will be, you know, how do we either develop a new brand or can we extend it to even more divergent capabilities? And then if you’re a startup, again, I’d say it just goes down to what are your product strengths? How do you distill it down to a core idea? Then how do you communicate that map, you know, with precision to your target customers?

[00:12:53] Matt Hummel: Yeah. Yeah, that that’s super helpful. You know, and you’ve obviously worked on major brands. I think about AWS, for example, [00:13:00] AWS, obviously, you know, I’m not saying full name, but Amazon Web Services. When I think about Amazon Web Services, I think about them probably rightly in the way that Amazon wants me to, which is an entirely separate company.

[00:13:11] Matt Hummel: When I think about Amazon, I think about. You know, the guy who knocks on my door two times a day, you know, to drop off a package. Right. Again, you’ve, you’ve worked on major brands like that. I think about companies like Salesforce or Google or Microsoft too arguably are household brands, right. Our B2B brands, but have, again, that household understanding.

[00:13:33] Matt Hummel: But I would often contend, ’cause I hear from, you know, marketers will say, well, everybody knows Microsoft or Google or Salesforce. But to go back to your points around brand, kind of serves two purposes, and one of them is really that product differentiation or product strength. When you think about brands like that, that maybe are known, maybe Microsoft is known for office or maybe their Xbox, but not for other, you know, products.

[00:13:57] Matt Hummel: Or Salesforce may be known for their CRM, but [00:14:00] not as well known for their dashboard products or other products in the suite. Is that where you start to think about. It’s not so much the sort of top level amplifying the strength of Salesforce in this example, but really building out the brand within that specific product.

[00:14:17] Arthur Yu: Yeah, this one’s a really tough one to distill because these leaders in their respective categories can really only grow by expanding their ecosystems. So it’s an imperfect pivot. So I, there’s nothing I can say that’s an umbrella truth for any of these companies. I’d say Amazon is an ex excellent example because for all intents and purposes, like you mentioned, they, they invented online retail and they invented hyper scaling.

[00:14:45] Arthur Yu: So I think their brand leaned into those strengths through their expansions. So for example, emphasising retail intelligence with the development of Amazon ads. You know, if, if like Amazon ads is a [00:15:00] commodity, but when you couple it with their retail data. All of a sudden it becomes very interesting and very differentiated.

[00:15:07] Arthur Yu: So likewise, with AWS, they, for all intents and purposes, invented hyper scaling. So you know, they’re known if you are a startup or a global company that needs to scale in new regions or new capabilities you can rely on, you know, Amazon for cloud as well. Microsoft, I think is an interesting one because they’ve always been an engine for productivity.

[00:15:32] Arthur Yu: In fact, I’ve seen many sales pitches right now using the term operating system as a metaphor that describes their solutions. Whereas Microsoft was literally the operating system that has powered productivity for decades. So from their perspective, it was sort of like an easy expansion to say, we’ve powered your computers, now we’re powering your cloud, and we’re powering.

[00:15:56] Arthur Yu: Your day-to-day productivity. 

[00:15:58] Matt Hummel: I like how you unpack that [00:16:00] because especially, you know, I think about the mic, Microsoft example, they really built off the strength of their brand and they were just, to your point, able to carry that thread through to expand scope, expand their business, and and ultimately grow revenue.

[00:16:13] Matt Hummel: So while not being disingenuous to their overarching brand. So I love that. That’s a great way to unpack that. You and I were catching up recently, Arthur, and you mentioned the word incrementality, which is a word I had not heard before. I thought it was fascinating though when you unpacked it for me and you know what it means to you and how you think about it.

[00:16:33] Matt Hummel: Will you explain to the audience what you mean by the term incrementality? 

[00:16:37] Arthur Yu: Right, right. And I think the concept of incrementality it, it definitely isn’t new, but it has garnered the spotlight lately because of how performance advertising has become business as usual. The concept of incrementality is really focusing on customers who would not have converted had it not been for the influence of paid advertising.[00:17:00] 

[00:17:00] Arthur Yu: And it looks different depending on, you know, who the advertiser is, the size of the company. Are you a startup? Are you Fortune 500? Are you blue chip company for startups? Basically, almost everything you do is incremental because you’re starting from zero or a relatively smaller base. So I think for the past 10 years, this is why social media and podcasts have been such an important part of startups, marketing mix.

[00:17:29] Arthur Yu: But you know, rising consumer consumption in these areas, coupled with the relative under investment from bigger companies has equaled a winning formula for startups. But now that the cat’s out of the bag and everyone is competing for the space now. The incrementality of social and startups is much more complicated.

[00:17:50] Arthur Yu: So I think that means there are a lot more tools that are needed to measure incrementality, and that’s largely market mix modeling. [00:18:00] MMM match market tests, MMT, and conversion lifts. CLSI 

[00:18:05] Matt Hummel: was just gonna ask you, so you, you answered my follow up question, which is how, you know, how should marketers be measuring incrementality?

[00:18:12] Matt Hummel: So I guess my follow up question there would be. And maybe it’s both as I, as I give you the, the choices. But when marketers, you know, get set out to measure the, you know, what we’ll call incrementality, should it be for defending their spend or should it be to optimise their spend? 

[00:18:31] Arthur Yu: Incrementality often gets categorised with revenue because that’s, I think, what’s new, right?

[00:18:38] Arthur Yu: With, with the new laws, with the new ethics around data and privacy. That one-to-one full fire hose data feed isn’t necessarily something we can rely on for attribution, so that’s why we need to use more statistics. So I’d say first of all, you have to define your objective. Are you trying to [00:19:00] measure incrementality from a brand perspective or from a revenue perspective?

[00:19:04] Arthur Yu: Because you could do both. And the methods for measuring both are are very similar. So match market tests are when you run advertising in two markets that look very similar and you have a control message and you have an exposed message, and then you measure the impact of brand or revenue in each market.

[00:19:26] Arthur Yu: Likewise, it’s very similar with conversion lift studies. You measure brand or revenue before the start of a campaign and after. Or you target different messages in different media to control and expose groups while the campaign is live. So, you know, these are two methods for measuring incrementality, both at a brand level and a revenue level.

[00:19:47] Matt Hummel: I love that. And I think, you know, one of the takeaways for marketers out there too is I. Even if you don’t have the latest and greatest or most sophisticated measurement tools out there, modeling capabilities, there is still something as [00:20:00] simple as, you know, looking at core metrics, whether it’s web traffic or pipeline or revenue, where you pick a metric, right?

[00:20:07] Matt Hummel: I. Look at how you’re performing before a campaign and after a campaign. I mean, it kind of dates back to, you know, when we didn’t have the sophistication around measuring, you know, TV advertising. And so I feel like, you know, you still had to measure it, right? Those are significant investments and so you kind of see the metric of lift, for example.

[00:20:24] Matt Hummel: And so I think I. Not all hope is lost for marketers who may not have the budget or the, the resources to be able to do more of that mixed modeling or advanced modeling. So with that, I want to kind of take a step back almost to take a step forward. You just really outlined what I would call, you know, very advanced modeling, measurement systems that brands can use to really evaluate performance.

[00:20:46] Matt Hummel: Obviously today we are living in a very much a digital first world and COVID certainly pushed us even further that direction than we we ever had before. As more and more of our budgets went digital. [00:21:00] And you know, I would contend from what I’m seeing and frankly how I’m operating as a marketer. We’re seeing some more balance now where it’s not just all digital every day, but there’s still, we are still living in a digital first world.

[00:21:12] Matt Hummel: And you think about buyers doing the amount of research upwards of 80 plus percent before talking to a sales rep. You’ve lived and breathed, you know, history of advertising and marketing. Are there classic plays? Are there sort of the traditional approaches to marketing that you still see as effective?

[00:21:32] Matt Hummel: You know, and, and not, I don’t want to. Give away an answer, but you talked about at the beginning of our show, just customer above all else. And I would continue to believe that to be as true today as it was back 20 years ago. But with that in mind, you know, how can marketers really stand out amongst all the noise and uh, and just the crowded environments that we’re living in?

[00:21:53] Arthur Yu: Yeah. I’d say one of the classic brief requests is how do we impact, how do we break through? [00:22:00] A lot of the, the classic tactics still work. They’re just more expensive and less scalable nowadays. Yeah. I hinted at this earlier, this is why I think live sports have become such an important solution for companies like Amazon and Netflix to build out.

[00:22:20] Arthur Yu: They understand that this is sort of like the platinum advertising solution right now, and one of the very last instances of. Captivated force view ad mediums. So I’d say, uh, you know, live sports is incredibly important. Even out of home. While out of home. Used to be a very cost effective way of getting cheap impressions.

[00:22:42] Arthur Yu: That’s probably not its best use case nowadays. I’d say targeted geo proximity is the best use case for out-of-home. Nowadays. You’ll see a lot of this with, for example, the sphere in Las Vegas targeting. Mm-hmm. The big in conventions like. AWS Reinvent or [00:23:00] CESI live in Los Angeles, so you know, every time there’s Academy Awards or Grammys, we’ll see billboards just talking about four year consideration because they know the areas where, you know, the academy voters are frequenting.

[00:23:15] Arthur Yu: So I’d say, you know, live sports targeted out of home, especially towards events and important locations are some of the most important classic practices that we still employ. 

[00:23:27] Matt Hummel: That’s really cool to hear. It’s funny, you see a lot of technologies trying to adapt and evolve to creating scale around A BM, for example, and I think ABM started off as.

[00:23:39] Matt Hummel: Really what it’s, I mean, look, ABM’s been around forever. Back 20 years ago, we called it relationship marketing and now it’s become this whole sort of separate thing with, and again, I always say if you ask 10 people what a BM is, you’ll get 11 different answers. I think where marketers used it effectively early on was they really understood, you know, to do a BM right, or to do relationship marketing, [00:24:00] right?

[00:24:00] Matt Hummel: Meant you could just take on a few accounts and I think now A BM has replaced. Traditional demand gen in a lot of cases where it’s almost viewed as a more targeted demand gen, right? So you, instead of just going after the entire ICP, now you have a targeted set of accounts and therefore that becomes account based marketing.

[00:24:18] Matt Hummel: And I would contend, you know, maybe that’s a version, but that’s not, at the end of the day, that’s not real. You know, certainly not one-to-one or one to few. And arguably it’s maybe not even one to many. With that said, though, you know, you see companies trying to create scale. Around a BM. And it’s, and I liked what you said, you know, it’s kind of getting back to doing tactics that aren’t scalable.

[00:24:42] Matt Hummel: And when I meet with customers and, you know, a lot of ’em still use traditional funnels and you know, that’s how they’re trying to grow their business. And nothing wrong with that per se, but I always ask the question, how many customers do you need? You know, how many new logos do you need to win this year?

[00:24:56] Matt Hummel: How many new products to sell into existing customers? And the [00:25:00] number is always significantly smaller than what you would think. And I’m like, so you need to win 10 deals or a hundred deals. That’s a hundred accounts. You know, put your efforts towards those. So, you know, what are your thoughts on how should companies, do you have a point of view on how companies should really think about sort of, is it a numbers game or at what point do you just say, we’re gonna really hedge our bets on these companies?

[00:25:21] Arthur Yu: You know, the answer I think is all of the above. It’s yes. And so yeah, you need to focus on greenfield. You need to focus on strategic accounts, the ones that are current customers with opportunity to grow. But then there’s also opportunistic. I think there are customers out there that can make or break a company, and I think if you don’t focus on them, your competitors will.

[00:25:46] Arthur Yu: So I think the answer really is all of the above. It’s just a matter of making sure that your, your operations are organised in a way where you can prioritise greenfield, strategic and opportunistic. You know, each to the level that they [00:26:00] deserve and your chances of winning them. 

[00:26:02] Matt Hummel: It’s a great point of view.

[00:26:03] Matt Hummel: I would agree. You know, there’s been a lot of research recently on how only 5% of companies are actually in market ready to buy, and yet what we’ve learned is the 95% who quote unquote, aren’t necessarily in market are still being influenced by what they’re seeing and learning about. Ultimately the challenges that they’re facing are the problems that they’re, they will eventually be trying to solve.

[00:26:27] Matt Hummel: And as a result, they are almost shortlisting their preferred set of one or two really at most preferred providers. And so I, I, as you were unpacking that, I was thinking, man, that’s a great case for brand building in those 95%, you know, who may not be ready to buy today. But there’s still a strong reason because.

[00:26:48] Matt Hummel: 5%, you’ve gotta keep replacing that 5%, grabbing it from the 95 once they’re ready. So I think that’s a really great, great perspective. 

[00:26:57] Arthur Yu: Yeah. And the answer can’t [00:27:00] be just throwing more people at the problem, right? That’s just not scalable. So it’s impossible to have an umbrella response to the challenge of how do we service strategic, opportunistic, and greenfield equally.

[00:27:13] Arthur Yu: You just can’t. Right. But you know, I think that’s where the advent of marketing automation has really helped power that engine. The ability to categorise company based on their surging intent, based on whether their contracts are ending based on feedback from the sellers that you know, the boots on the ground.

[00:27:34] Arthur Yu: I think these are all inputs that we can help marketing automation give us. More data on where to look within the categories of strategic, opportunistic, and greenfield. 

[00:27:45] Matt Hummel: Love it. It really goes back to, you’ve gotta start with your audience. There’s not a one size fits all marketing approach. So if it’s, if it’s greenfields, if it’s strategic, if it’s opportunistic, look, the reality is companies have a certain budget they’re given.

[00:27:58] Matt Hummel: Marketing has [00:28:00] certain budgets they’re given to work with. What are the types of things you can do to make the biggest impact within those different audiences? And they’re very likely going to look different in terms of the types of activities and investments that are being made. So I like your point around marketing automation.

[00:28:14] Matt Hummel: That could be a great way to just continue to stay front and center and relevant with those accounts, who it could be more of an opportunistic, uh, thing there. So. Great perspective. Two quick things for you and then we’ll end. And I want to, and I want to talk about you, so we are nearing, if not already, in a post cookie world.

[00:28:35] Matt Hummel: What are your thoughts on that? How do you see this really impacting the industry? 

[00:28:39] Arthur Yu: I think it is going to increase the importance of the current ecosystems. The Google, the meta, the Amazons of the world will become that much stronger. So this is where the statistical incrementality measurement becomes important because [00:29:00] the ability to measure across ecosystems is from a one-to-one perspective going away, right?

[00:29:07] Arthur Yu: If, if not already gone. Yep. So you, you will need to use statistics to get better direction of what your marketing mix looks like across different channels. I’d say for B2B it’s even more challenged because. When you think about ID based media and cookie-based media, it’s largely tied back to your email address.

[00:29:28] Arthur Yu: Mm-hmm. Which is largely your Gmail account, or you know, your Yahoo account and not your work email. So a lot of the cookies, a lot of the IDs that exist currently for B2B marketing. Will disappear once the cookie disappears. So I think that will increase the importance of companies that have very strong first party.

[00:29:48] Arthur Yu: Um, you know, a BM data like LinkedIn, like the Publishers Foundry, I think is, is positioned well. You know, the tech targets, the news sites. I think it’ll be very [00:30:00] challenged if you’re reliant upon third party data, especially for enterprise IDs. 

[00:30:05] Matt Hummel: Do you think contextual advertising is a suitable replacement, if you will, as you think about the future of B2B advertising?

[00:30:12] Arthur Yu: Probably not. So contextual can mean a lot of things. If we’re talking about display banners next to articles, probably not. Native ads within contextual feeds. Getting a little bit closer. 

[00:30:27] Matt Hummel: Yeah. 

[00:30:28] Arthur Yu: Video, instream video. I think that gets closer as well. Sponsorships of events. I think that’s getting a lot closer to Yeah.

[00:30:37] Arthur Yu: You know, contextual importance. So, uh, it, it really, it, you know, from a, an industry term, I wouldn’t say contextual is one-to-one, but there are tactics within contextual that can be very powerful. 

[00:30:49] Matt Hummel: That makes sense. And I, I, I have to ask, when you were mentioning email accounts, you mentioned work, Gmail and Yahoo.

[00:30:55] Matt Hummel: Was there any reason you didn’t mention Hotmail? I mean, do you not have a Hotmail address? Arthur, [00:31:00] I, you know, I’m kidding. Is it even Hotmail? Is it, isn’t it Outlook now I, oh, is it just all Outlook? Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m, that’s awesome. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, last, last question for you, and maybe this is too big to answer succinctly, but ai, we couldn’t have a conversation without talking about ai.

[00:31:18] Matt Hummel: Maybe I’ll ask it this way. What do you see as the biggest opportunity within media for AI? 

[00:31:24] Arthur Yu: Yeah, I think the ecosystems that are already doing it, let’s take Amazon from a consumer perspective as an example. If you are buying products on Amazon, they have a closed loop look at you. And now that they’re expanding their advertising capabilities to include NL on Thursday, you know, ad serving, uh, you know, network ads outside of amazon.com.

[00:31:46] Arthur Yu: They’re able to optimise their marketing efforts towards people who buy or people that are likely to buy products. I’d say, you know, the same analogy exists on meta. It exists on Google as [00:32:00] well. From a B2B perspective, I’d say because of the lack of scale, it’s going to be much more of a challenge. Yeah, I think the AI capabilities there might be more relevant from a generative kind of messaging approach.

[00:32:16] Arthur Yu: Maybe less so in an advertising approach, except for maybe companies that can scale like LinkedIn. Like LinkedIn has an audience network. Microsoft owns LinkedIn who obviously has very strong relationships with chat GPT. They potentially have, you know, all the components of making a very scalable AI optimisation algorithm for B2B, but haven’t quite seen, you know, solutions yet, but I’m sure they’re working on it.

[00:32:46] Matt Hummel: No doubt. Well, it’s time to jump into our final segment, which we call What’s on tap. So what’s on tap for you, Arthur? At the top of the show, we talked about your favorite pick me up beverage, which is a glass of water with some strong caffeinated [00:33:00] mixture in it. Waiting for your 5:00 AM Wake up call. I wanna flip the question around what is your favorite drink when you need to unwind?

[00:33:07] Arthur Yu: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, two years ago the answer would’ve been beer, but for the last year. I wasn’t able to have alcohol because I was getting treatment for cancer. So that year was basically the longest I’ve abstained from alcohol since I was 18 years old. But you know, thankfully there have been a lot of solid non-alcoholic options lately.

[00:33:32] Arthur Yu: I love athletic brewing. I think they’re in a different league than, you know, ODOS of yesterday. 

[00:33:38] Matt Hummel: It is true. I have a, I have a buddy who recently introduced me to non-alcoholic beer and he had athletic brew and he had one of their IPAs and I’m like, this is not o’ duals. And now we go to Whole Foods and I see an entire section of non-alcoholic beers and so That’s awesome.

[00:33:54] Matt Hummel: Well, for those who don’t know, you obviously just mentioned it, but you’ve had quite the [00:34:00] extraordinary journey battling and. Proud to say and excited to say, beating cancer. So first off, a huge congratulations on, on overcoming that, that battle. So would you be open to sharing a little bit about your journey and just kind of what that’s looked like for you the past year or two?

[00:34:16] Arthur Yu: Yeah. Yeah. I, I would, and you know, normally I wouldn’t, but the story has become public outside of my control and I’m, I’m, I’m kind of glad because I wasn’t embarrassed. But I felt like it wasn’t relevant to a lot of people. But now that my story is public, I’m hoping that whoever else it reaches that it is relevant to, can benefit from what I’ve gone through.

[00:34:44] Arthur Yu: So I was diagnosed with a pretty aggressive cancer in 23 acute myeloid leukemia, and it was, to say the least, a shock, right? Mm-hmm. My grandparents lived to be in their nineties and [00:35:00] hundreds. I’m an athlete, I’m a certified personal trainer. At that time, I felt immortal, so the diagnosis was especially shocking.

[00:35:09] Arthur Yu: But you know, thankfully I took the treatment well and it really increased my prognosis and it looked like a bone marrow transplant would cure me. So knowing that you have a cure for cancer is just. Amazing, right? Because it’s just not something you typically associate with cancer. You don’t hear about people getting cured.

[00:35:31] Arthur Yu: But we found a donor in the Philippines and he was willing to come over and donate to me and save my life. But his visa was denied by the US government twice. So you know, it was again, the second shock. The first shock was getting cancer. The second shock was our government preventing the person who could save my life from coming over to save my life.

[00:35:55] Arthur Yu: I. So I started a social [00:36:00] media campaign on TikTok and Instagram that went viral, and there was no secret, I don’t think I, it was, I think, a very compelling story. It was me talking about the need for a bone marrow transplant to save my life, and I think people resonated with the authenticity of the message.

[00:36:22] Arthur Yu: And the desire to help by sharing, and I think that’s what got the attention of mass media. So it was picked up by all the major news outlets, Fox A-B-C-N-B, C-C-B-S-N-P-R, and it eventually got the support of my local government, you know, my, my congressmen, my senators, and eventually the federal government as well.

[00:36:43] Arthur Yu: So ultimately, my donor’s visa was approved on the third try. He came over, he donated his bone marrow. I went through the transplant in March of last year, and even though recovery was tough, I lost a lot of weight. I was down to [00:37:00] 111 pounds, which is what I weighed. Wow. When I was 13 years old. But with lots of time, lots of gummy bears, lots of protein shakes, and exercise.

[00:37:09] Arthur Yu: I’m 110% today. So, um, I say 110% because I’m, I’m as strong as before, but stronger because I’ve got the added benefit of perspective nowadays. 

[00:37:21] Matt Hummel: That is an unbelievable story. So again, just a huge, huge congratulations. I really appreciate your openness and I know, I know your story’s out there, but just appreciate your candor and openness to share about it on this forum because.

[00:37:35] Matt Hummel: Yeah, I think there’s a lot, there’s a lot in there and I think for a lot of us at this age, we do think we’re immortal. And the reality is we’re not. I’ve had my own health scare and it’s, you know, it, it’s just, yeah, it, it can be cer it’s certainly a shock. And so that’s amazing that you fought through.

[00:37:52] Matt Hummel: Not only your own health challenge, but the challenge of getting the treatment that was right in front of you for the taking. So that’s amazing story. So, [00:38:00] um, well, I also know you’ve got, what, a 2-year-old, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So timing of, of when you were diagnosed and you said 2023 with now you’ve got a young child, so I’m sure.

[00:38:13] Matt Hummel: If you needed an extra reason to fight that I would imagine was one. I’ve got a couple kids myself and I love, I always love talking to other, other parents because, you know, inevitably we always have some good stories. So, any story, good story, funny story that you’d wanna share with the audience too around run your new kiddo?

[00:38:31] Arthur Yu: Yeah. You know, I think separating the signal from the noise. Was especially difficult when I got cancer because I was diagnosed two months after our newborn was born. Wow. So I was very tired from lack of sleep from just taking care of him. But in reality, I was tired because my body had stopped making blood.

[00:38:55] Arthur Yu: Mm-hmm. And I, my, my heart was racing because my [00:39:00] body was trying to survive on less and less blood each week. It was a tough conversation with my wife because, you know, she’d just gone through childbirth and I’m saying, Hey, hey honey, I, I know I got eight hours of sleep last night, but can, can I get 10?

[00:39:16] Arthur Yu: And then, and then it turned into, I, I know I got 10 hours of sleep last night, but I need to take a nap, you know, at three o’clock because I, I just feel so sleepy. And she’s, you know, she’s recovering and, and she’s getting, you know, really annoyed with my increasing requests. But I think she got to the point where she recognised like, okay.

[00:39:32] Arthur Yu: You know, uh, I know my husband, he has more energy than this. Something is wrong, so something’s not right. Yeah, something’s not right. So, you know, I think she, she eventually said, Hey. Go to the hospital, we, we gotta get this checked out. So it’s funny now, it wasn’t funny then, but it’s something, you know, we do laugh about now.

[00:39:49] Arthur Yu: ’cause she’s like, oh my god, can you imagine how my wife was saying, can you imagine how I felt when you’re asking me to give you more nap time to give you more sleep? And I just, you know, so it’s [00:40:00] like, okay, 

[00:40:00] Matt Hummel: no, that’s really funny. I had a buddy who, who swore he would have sympathy whatever, when, so if his wife had cravings or.

[00:40:09] Matt Hummel: You know, wasn’t feeling right. He’s like, oh yeah, I’m also craving just terrible food. Or, you know what? I am extra tired too. He wasn’t joking. He swore this to be true. And I’m like, look buddy, all I’m saying is your wife’s the one carrying the baby. Maybe put your feelings to the side. So 

[00:40:27] Arthur Yu: I was trying, I I’ve, I didn’t know what was wrong with me.

[00:40:29] Arthur Yu: I I, I just turned 40 too, so I was like, is this what 40 feels like? Is this what a new dad feels like? You know, like, it, it took me like a full, like month before I got to the point where like, no, I, I remember I was actually, I was walking with a colleague down the hall and I was like. I was like, keep it together.

[00:40:46] Arthur Yu: Arthur, why are you so outta breath? Like, I couldn’t, I couldn’t hold a conversation with this person walking 10 feet. That’s when I knew, okay, like. This is not right. Something’s wrong. Yeah. 

[00:40:56] Matt Hummel: Yeah. ’cause I think when you turn 40, it’s just your back gives out. Other than that, [00:41:00] everything should be fine. So.

[00:41:01] Matt Hummel: Yeah. 

[00:41:02] Arthur Yu: Exactly. 

[00:41:03] Matt Hummel: Well, Arthur, this has been an amazing conversation. I can’t tell you how much I’ve appreciated, you know, getting to know you more throughout this and just the time that you’ve taken. Uh, I know our listeners are gonna get a I vote too. So thank you again, 

[00:41:14] Arthur Yu: Matt. It was a pleasure. Thank you. And thanks again for having me.

[00:41:18] Arthur Yu: Absolutely. 

[00:41:21] Matt Hummel: Thanks again to Arthur for joining us on today’s episode of The Pipeline Brew. I hope you’ll enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Please leave me a comment with your thoughts and make sure you subscribe to the show so you’ll never miss an episode. Once again, I’m Matt Humel and I’ll see you next time.