Ad Infinitum is the award-winning podcast solely focused on audio ads,
the creatives who make them,
and or the latest thinking that informs them,
how the space is evolving,
and,
my favorite part,
a roundup of recent audio ads with analysis by yours truly,
Stu Redwine,
and each episode's guest.
This is season three,
episode seven of Ad Infinitum,
titled
Antonio Littitz.
Today's guest knows more about what makes
ads work than just about anyone I know,
specifically what makes audio ads work.
And that is Antonio Coronado,
agent
004 of Oxford Road.
Antonio,
welcome to Ad Infinitum.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
I'm happy to be here.
This is a long time in the making.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's just an honor to be on the podcast.
It's exciting times,
you know,
exciting times for our organization and just the world at large.
So.
Well,
why is that what happened?
We are now one mega organization now.
We're Oxford Road.
and Veritone One.
Combined.
Combined,
yeah.
What is your title now these days,
Antonio?
Special Agent
004, Antoniolytics?
My title now is Ad Operations Specialist.
Okay,
Ad Operations Specialist.
So for you chief audio officers that are listening,
Antonio,
why he's a particularly special guest with this is that he's not a creative,
so to speak,
from the beginning,
at least not professionally.
He's in ad operations and
We call him Antoniolytics around the Oxford Road office because when it comes to refining our audiolytics system,
the framework we use to grade and optimize audio ads,
Antonio brought this incredible combination of creative sensibility and analytical rigor.
I would say it was about four or five years ago when we really dug in and optimized audiolytics that final time.
That sounds about right.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I was part of this initial crew of certified graders and I kind of stuck it out and in a way found a calling.
grading the ad.
So.
Well,
you and I were having lunch the other day talking about this in advance.
I think it is so interesting that you weren't a creative coming in to help build this tool to optimize creative.
Like,
can you tell me about that?
Yeah.
So I initially had a desire to get into copywriting early on,
but then I sort of segued into this audiolytics thing,
this framework of grading ads.
And I sort of found a place there,
you know,
what I realized from some of the copywriting that I'd done is that it's largely like a collaborative effort.
So
This is just like another way that I'm kind of adding value to the end result,
the ad.
And really what drew me to it is just,
it's sort of kind of our secret sauce.
You know,
it's the only thing that Oxford Road does that nobody else does that I'm aware of.
So it's one of several things we do that no one else does.
Yeah.
But one of the other things we do.
Yeah.
So
I'm trying to remember,
like you were in traffic at the time.
Like,
how did we even get you into audio lytics?
So from what I recall,
there was a sort of like an open call to just.
anybody in the company to learn audiolytics and become a certified grader.
I remember there was a course,
a rigorous course that you took us through,
but it was good.
It was,
I think about maybe,
I want to say around at least six people in the beginning.
Yeah.
And then I think people sort of,
you know,
they faded out,
faded out for a little bit.
It held pretty strong.
We had a team of like about three or four people for about a year.
And then as things happen,
you know,
people move in different directions,
but this was something I just always enjoyed doing.
So So whether I was in traffic or my current role in operations,
I always.
you know like to just kind of come back to it and like find some time to contribute in some way so i mean you're the one and only antonio i'm just looking at the certified grader number so dan granger our founder is agent
00 so triple zero then i'm 001 then erica was 002 sierra was
003 antonio coronado 004 page melissa and mason like that was the first class mason melissa page antonio sierra
Yeah.
Like I think that was that core group that you're talking about.
So now I remember we're like,
hey,
we're going to train folks on this because we'd only been doing it in creative.
And I think we'd like lost some people.
And so you came into it.
And yeah,
you really had a knack for it,
which I think is so fascinating.
I think it's so fascinating because there's like different ways to come at creativity.
And there's this guy,
Walter Murch,
wrote a book in the blink of an eye.
It's about film editing and he breaks it down.
And this is stuck with me.
And it's like kind of the age old.
There's two kinds of people in the world,
you know.
those that like yacht rock and those that don't.
But he talked about like the idea of somebody that's making something out of clay,
like where they're adding and they're intentionally,
you know,
making it out of clay one piece at a time,
moving towards that objective.
And then there's like a carver making something out of stone,
they're chipping stuff away and they're revealing it.
I take that to be like the.
intuitive kind of creative types as opposed to the intentional i'm going to structure it all out so what i think of for me in fiction is stephen king's the dark tower series he wrote over like 40 years and if you read his book on writing and hear stuff that he said about it like he used the force force is with you young sky like
he just wrote the book and then wrote the next he did not have it mapped out to end in the seventh but i think it's seven books something like that where the harry potter series jk rowling took a very different approach where it was all mapped out Yeah,
shout out.
whole blueprint for how the thing was going to end.
And yeah.
Yeah.
And so when I think about investing dollars in audio advertising,
I agree with Sir Martin Sorrell that advertising is a solution to a problem,
fundamentally a business problem.
And it's to get more people to transact with you.
It tends to lend itself,
I feel like on the face of it towards that building brick by brick approach because you're building towards this very specific action that you're trying to get someone to take.
Yeah,
I would agree.
And that's really what I love about audiolytics.
It's kind of just asked like those fundamental questions about,
you know,
when somebody's
interested in a product,
like,
you know,
what are the things they're going to want to know?
You know,
that framework just really answers all of those things.
So.
So let's do this.
We know the nine key components,
right?
Yes.
So we'll do them without looking at anything.
I'll start.
Setup.
Value prop.
Positioning.
Demonstration.
Substantiation.
Offer.
Scarcity.
Path.
Execution.
There we go.
It's so rad to me.
It's so simple.
I believe in it to my core.
And I feel like you.
never knew any different.
I guess that's what I'm trying to say since you didn't come up as a creative.
And so you've accepted it on the face of it.
Like I remember reading,
there's this book,
Diary of an Adman,
and I read it during the pandemic.
And what was so wild about it,
it was written like in 1944,
1945,
and the days and the date matched in like 2020,
2021.
So if I would open Diary of an Adman and read June 7th,
like Tuesday,
June 7th,
it was Tuesday,
June 7th in the year I was reading it.
So that was just kind of cool,
like a cool little thing.
But he had this story where he was talking about he was kind of perplexed by this minister friend of his.
And he's like,
well,
how is it that you can believe this stuff?
And the minister's response was by preaching it.
And I feel like with you with like audio lytics,
you didn't know any different.
So you're a true convert.
You're like,
well,
yeah,
this is obviously the way that persuasion works.
Exactly.
Yeah,
that's a great way to put it,
because I really didn't know.
I never really reviewed ads,
much less audio ads when I kind of came into this.
so.
this was really just like that course we were just talking about was just really like my actual introduction to ads and just even like copywriting in a sense,
because even when I kind of dabbled in it a couple of years ago,
that's how I approached it.
I was looking at,
you know,
what's the setup?
What is the value proposition?
What is,
you know,
how am I going to substantiate this?
And that was really kind of how I came at it because I really didn't know any better.
So I liked that,
you know,
and it really is,
you know,
what I turn to every time whenever I'm listening to an ad in a podcast or watching an ad on TV.
Yeah.
So the other aspect of this and why I wanted to do Antoniolytics was that we're at such a inflection point with AI,
where I really do believe like,
so Audiolytics is composed of 71 subcomponents,
nine key components.
Antoniolytics goes into a spreadsheet and listens to an ad,
this is Antoniolytics of the past,
goes into a spreadsheet and listens to an ad and then marks whether those 71 things are present or not present.
And then we had weighting assigned to them based on performance.
And that's how we come away with a score.
And now...
you know,
we're bringing all of this stuff into AI and are able to do it with machines.
And it's just so fascinating to me is like,
there's a lot of other jobs like that,
or a lot of other tasks like that,
where it's going to be like,
wait,
grandpa,
you mean back in the day you used to have to do that?
And,
you know,
like Spotify,
you know,
is mandated
AI tool usage.
It's a big move and you're seeing it everywhere.
And so that's just fascinating to me that it's like,
here's this thing you used to do.
You used to do to so much detail.
a human's probably never going to have to do again.
Like,
what do you think about that?
And how do you see AI impacting what we do day in and day out?
Yeah,
it's definitely a major turning point,
just the fact that it's being mandated.
And I think we're definitely going to see more of that just across the board.
I mean,
I was trying to think earlier,
like what industry couldn't benefit from AI in some way,
even if it's just down to creating a schedule for employees or trying to,
you know,
bounce some kind of budget in some fashion.
I think we're definitely going to see more of this and
It's,
you know,
being prioritized differently across different organizations,
of course.
This is a case where they're obviously very adamant about having their employees use it.
I think ultimately that's where it's going to end up.
So like maybe a plumber,
plumbing is not going to be done by AI.
Right.
But I think there are aspects of a plumbing business that could be facilitated by AI in some way.
Plumbing-o-lytics.
Right.
I think you're right.
What's wild to me is that I think of all the time and energy that went into audiolytics.
Yeah.
And Antoniolytics.
And it's like,
oh,
wow,
that's just poof.
Yeah,
it is hard not to have a personal connection to that.
Like those are hours of my time that I spent doing that.
And in a way it is like,
yeah,
wait a minute.
This thing comes in overnight and it just knows how to do everything.
And,
but,
you know,
again,
I think like kind of what we're getting at is there are aspects of it that I would trust it to do fully and not miss a beat on.
There are other parts of it where I think it's going to at least take some time to catch up.
And more specifically,
I think,
you know,
a lot of the conversations we used to have around audiolytics were what's being said,
like we're like really concerned with like the explicit versus the implicit.
I was just talking to somebody about that yesterday.
That's something that
I think AI can...
in a very general sense,
do pretty well,
just be very explicit about things.
So this is what's happening.
We're working on an AI module right now,
like with our own training data and all this stuff,
and the scores are off from the human scores by a consistent amount.
There's a couple of things at work.
One is we very carefully guard the weighting and the formula,
which is all proprietary.
Simply put,
it's as you approach the speed of light,
which for us,
you know,
is a 90%
approved score for all in-market creative.
it gets increasingly difficult.
to leave the Earth's atmosphere.
Like it's increasingly difficult to get to 90 as you get closer and closer to 90.
And that's all done with this formula.
And then there's a couple other aspects to it that it's all proprietary to make it be as accurate as possible.
So when we're doing it with the
AI, we're just being very careful with that aspect of it.
So it's kind of doing its own thing,
so to speak,
based on what we've shared publicly.
So that's like where we've been very careful.
is that we're sticking to things we've said or like articles I've written about audiolytics publicly as like the training data for the model.
So with this said,
it seems to be what's happening is what you're talking about.
It's taking a very literal definition of all the key components and it's grading accordingly and it's grading lower than humans.
And the very thing I was talking with someone else at the agency about yesterday was like,
I think it's this implicit explicit thing in that humans are inherently,
no matter how much we train them with audiolytics,
more likely to be gracious.
For instance,
with a statement like,
let's say we're here at HeadGum Studios.
Thank you,
HeadGum Studios for hosting that infinite item.
HeadGum Studios is
50% cheaper and the best place to record.
Okay.
You know,
as Antonio Lytics,
that the missing piece there is,
it doesn't say 50%
cheaper than the competition and the best place to record when compared to all the other options.
And that's what I think you're talking about where a grader is going to go,
oh,
that was positioning.
And the robot goes,
no,
it wasn't.
Yeah.
I mean,
even with all the experience I'd had grading for all those years,
grading several scripts,
I still ran into that problem several times.
I would just find myself being lenient when it comes to the implicit.
And I'd have to kind of go back and reread things multiple times.
Yeah.
Just ultimately say,
okay,
it actually isn't there.
I have to do a lot of brain work to actually get there.
And my brain is filling in the gaps,
whereas the typical listener or audience member wouldn't really know that off the bat.
Yeah.
I think that's a really important piece that I think.
AI is going to play a big part in.
It's going to be able to kind of pick up on that.
So.
No question.
It's going to be less accommodating.
And I also think,
you know,
fundamentally the human brain is a storytelling pattern recognizing survival machine piloted by a spirit,
an eternal spirit,
let it be known.
But like you're saying,
like we look to want to resolve.
We want to fill in the gaps and we want to resolve.
It doesn't.
The machine doesn't have to do that.
We like fundamentally have to do that.
We want to make it make sense.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think the fact that there's a person on the other end of it,
the multiple corporates that are working on this piece,
there's kind of this communication that you have just,
you know,
when you're speaking to somebody that we kind of get what we're saying.
We don't have to use all the words every time.
So you kind of definitely want to complete the sentence in a sense.
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
Yeah,
exactly.
I agree.
So,
Antonio,
you've reviewed thousands of spots through the audiolytics lens.
And so something I want to ask you is AI generated or not,
what are the key components you see as the biggest blind spots?
for advertisers?
Yeah.
So from my experience,
you know,
grading all those scripts,
it tends to be the,
you know,
kind of like we were saying,
just the most seemingly obvious parts of an ad where you think,
you know,
it's pretty clear.
But what I mean is just a very simple summary of the product that we're advertising,
a one line saying,
this is what the product is.
And a lot of times you don't see that either it's missing the copy,
or maybe there were so many hands in it that it gets lost somewhere.
So
I think that's usually the biggest miss that I can see.
Well,
let me do this.
Setup.
It seems like most of them have a setup of some kind,
right?
Yeah.
Value prop,
you're basically calling out value prop.
Positioning.
I feel like that was always a gap.
That's consistently a gap is positioning.
People not wanting to come out and say,
this is how I'm better than the other options specifically.
Yeah.
And not a quantifiable way because it almost doesn't,
you can say that you're better,
but when you actually put a number behind it,
you know,
that's what really kind of makes it mean anything.
So yeah,
it's definitely that.
Yeah.
Yeah,
and folks will balk at that.
And then I'll say like,
let's say we're in a meeting,
there's 10 people.
I'm like,
well,
what if you knew that AI was rating all of us during this call as to who's the most charming?
Magic mirror on the wall.
Would you want to see that list?
And everyone,
of course,
wants to see the list.
It's ridiculous.
if you think about it.
Yeah.
But relative value is what it's all about.
This is good.
This is bad.
So that's a gap I see.
Demonstration,
most ads seem to do this.
The thing is,
I was just up late last night working on a bunch of scripts,
prepping them to do this human versus AI comparison that we're doing with audiolytics right now as we're onboarding it into the matrix.
So I was looking at all those scores and it was like the ones that I see and I feel like this holds up are always the gaps is positioning,
substantiation,
and scarcity.
Yeah,
because I mean,
those really are just the most black and white pieces.
When I feel like people don't want to do it,
they don't want to say.
But what I notice is,
for instance,
like you walk into Walmart in Santa Clarita,
where I live,
and they have banners in their store that are like number one retailer or number one grocer in California.
Think about that.
They know what they're doing.
But for some reason,
you'll get these smaller advertisers that we're working with.
I mean,
not as big as Walmart.
And it's like,
oh,
I don't want to do that.
I don't want to beat my own chest or I don't want to.
For some reason,
you know,
you'll see that gap in the scripts where it's like.
You need to somehow provide some social proof or something.
Yeah,
I mean,
that's one of your major selling points.
I mean,
if you can kind of have that,
as we say in audio like that,
onliness factor or just being the first and foremost.
Onliness.
Yeah.
My heart is warm to hear you talk about onliness.
I mean,
you know,
again,
this is like how I learned about ads.
So I have those all locked in.
They're etched in my mind.
And the power words.
Power words,
yeah.
Do you remember them?
I think I remember most of them.
It's you,
free,
now,
new,
because.
Easy.
That's all of them.
You knew free now because easy.
Yep.
You answer those.
The way I look at audiolytics,
the 71 subcomponents in the nine key components is like,
it doesn't hurt to have a great answer for all of them.
It'll never hurt you.
No.
Yeah.
I don't know if I've ever seen a great answer for all of them,
but yeah,
of course that's the ideal.
Just have it,
you know,
satisfy every one of those 71 components.
This feels so like detailed and yet it feels special,
you know,
especially as we're going into with the merger and we have a CAO summit this summer.
And I don't know about you,
but like with the merger and stuff like ever since the fall and then like our 10 year anniversary for Oxford Road was last summer,
like all this nostalgia.
And then you combine that with like you're the physical representation of John Henry and the machine.
What's nice is you're in ad ops now.
So it's not like you're doing Antonio Lytics,
but like spiritually you represent human powered audio lytics at this point where it's like that chapter is closing.
I know it's yeah,
there's.
definitely nostalgia there.
I would be lying if I said there wasn't like a little bit sad about it going.
Yeah.
I'm glad that it's growing.
I feel like in a way a parent or a older brother,
I'd say,
and just kind of seeing it grow and kind of move on to better things.
But I definitely will miss those times where I had spent with it and just kind of thinking about it and applying it in different ways.
It's yeah.
Yeah.
It's wild.
It is.
Yeah.
Little brother audiolytics of big brother
Antoniolytics. Yeah.
That's a great way to put it.
I think the implicit explicit,
like that's so interesting because that came up yesterday as we are doing the official like John Henry versus the machine test.
Remember we had all the components that are in the scorecard.
They're highlighted in maroon for some reason.
Remember I highlighted them all in maroon and remember it because we identified with that training group because as you guys were getting trained,
it was like,
these are the most subjective ones.
Right.
And I can't remember how many it was,
but I mean,
it ended up being of the 71.
I want to say at least probably 20 or so.
where those were the most difficult ones to make a judgment call on.
Do you have memory of that?
I do.
Yeah.
And to that point,
I don't know if this is where you're going with it,
but I think those more subjective parts are where AI is going to have a more...
difficult time kind of nailing,
at least at this point where it's at now.
At some point in the future when it's more sophisticated,
it can maybe make those calls.
But I remember Setup is one where we had a lot of those subcomponents highlighted in Maroon.
So for you chief audio officers that are listening,
Setup is the first key component,
and it is comprised of several subcomponents.
And so what I'm hearing you say is that that one in particular,
there was a few that were highlighted in Maroon because they were subjective.
Yeah,
yeah,
they're subjective.
And where I was going with it was there's a lot of emotional
aspects to that.
I actually was surprised to hear you say that you think AI is going to have a hard time with the maroon ones.
My viewpoint,
hear me out,
is I think AI is going to actually resolve those because I think we're going to be able to layer in what we tried to do with human graders and we're not always able to do because sometimes we're doing competitive sets or you don't have access to enough information.
Well,
what does AI have access to?
Hopefully more information to go like what you're talking about in the setup is like we can speak about it in general is.
How is that speaking to,
hey,
you,
right?
We're basically going,
hey,
you,
how is that speaking specifically to our audience?
Well,
I'm going to be able to give the AI that information about the audience to better answer that.
I feel like in a one-to-one,
like,
why did you grade up this?
Let's just keep it general,
like set up key component.
Why did you grade it this way based on this audience information?
Or would you grade it differently based on this audio information?
And I feel like that'll be a lot easier and less subjective than even you as Antonio Lytics.
If I were to give you the brief for,
let's say,
HeadGum Studios and who their target audience is to get people to come record here,
let's say,
I don't think I would trust Antonio Lytics'
interpretation of that as much as I would trust AI's interpretation.
Yeah.
In mapping it back to the subcomponents.
You get what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Okay.
Do you agree or do you dissent?
I would say I agree to a certain level.
I want to get at the heart of it.
Why is it you think that AI won't be able to handle the subjective maroon subcomponents?
I guess I'll kind of go back to just the emotional aspect of it.
It's kind of harder to nail that with what I've seen AI do up until this point.
Okay,
that's fair.
Yeah,
and that's what I think that it's like,
it can do the pieces,
right?
But it's like,
what is the centralizing principle?
And this is something.
that I've been thinking about.
I've been listening to Jordan Peterson's We Who Wrestle With God,
and something he says in there has stuck with me,
and he talks about how a message has a soul.
And when there's this unifying principle that aligns intent and action in a message,
we can feel it.
It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.
When someone speaks from the center of who they are,
aiming at something real and true,
their words have weight.
They connect.
And so that's where I think I connect that to what you're talking about.
It's where like,
yes,
letter of the law,
this is right.
And if I go in sequence,
it's all right.
But what's the heart of it?
It's something Joe Pitka,
the commercial director,
talks about where he was known for reworking the creative that was given to him.
But what was really cool is I saw him in an interview talking about how he believed there's a good idea at the heart of it.
And that's,
again,
Peterson's idea of this unifying principle at the heart of it.
And I'm linking that to what you're talking about,
where it's like,
if you don't have that emotional truth,
and that unifying thing down at the very center of the thing,
yes,
we can grade all the pieces in the Lego blocks individually as Lego blocks,
but like,
what is the like,
that's at the center?
Yeah,
I would echo that.
And sometimes it's even hard to articulate that,
like what that is even.
But the fact that,
you know,
that commercial director you just referenced is able to do that,
you know,
I feel like that's a skill that I don't know if AI could do without the right prompts or...
Yeah,
yeah,
I don't know how you do that.
I just thought it was so cool because it was so charitable.
Yeah.
That it was like...
you know,
it gets covered by a lot of CYA stuff.
It gets covered by committee work.
And then you get this jumbled thing.
That's this kind of monstrosity.
That's a racehorse,
you know,
designed by committees,
a camel.
What I liked about it is that he's like,
I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I'm going to try to find the thing at the heart of it.
And I think that might be behind what we're talking about when we talk about subjectivity.
I would even see that sometimes with just human generated copy.
Yeah.
You know,
so many hands have touched it that that original.
idea,
that intention,
it's there in some sense,
but it kind of gets lost when so many people are making adjustments to it or they have their own ideas about what it should be.
So if I can figure that part out of how to find out what that through line is or what that emotion is at the core that what we're trying to get at,
and it starts there rather than just kind of,
for lack of a better word,
Frankensteining something together based off of,
you know,
these are all technically what should exist in a piece of copy,
then,
you know,
I think that's kind of where...
it'll eventually kind of find the most success.
So I think it will handle the maroon five.
It would be cool if there was five of them,
the maroon 50,
whatever it is.
I think it will.
I think it's a way to solve for that.
And I think it will handle the implicit and the explicit.
And beyond that,
I think it's like,
you know,
as you go through the grade card,
it's like you get.
to the execution section,
which we were very intentional in the way that we structured it,
that those first eight components before execution are like what's said in this order,
that it's important that it's in that order in order to persuade someone.
And what I talk about is like this idea of like the Gettysburg Address has a very high audiolytic score.
It's got all the pieces.
Or if you were trying to get somebody to buy knives from you,
you know,
kitchen knives,
door to door,
I absolutely believe it's these eight in this order,
great answers to each of them.
you got the best chance of selling those knives.
And then execution is how you say it.
So it doesn't matter.
The premise that we've operated from is it doesn't matter how you say something unless you got something to say.
So we figure out,
you know,
what are we going to say?
And then it's how we say it.
But what I'm getting at is I think some decision fatigue sets in by the time you get to the execution section.
You know what I'm talking about?
Yeah.
Because you think really hard through those first eight.
And then like you get to execution,
it's kind of like,
did it do that?
Did it not do that?
Did it do this?
And it's like,
oh,
you know,
because you know how some of those are nuanced in execution.
where AI is not going to get fatigued.
It doesn't get fatigued.
It doesn't,
right.
Yeah.
And that was always the thing when you kind of get through that scorecard and you're at the bottom,
you kind of have to almost go back in a way,
redo the brain work of kind of going through and just to make sure that it meets all of those final components just because it's like,
it's all about tone.
Yeah,
I think that's right.
I mean,
it's how it's said.
So it's like tone of voice.
You're exactly right.
Like if you're going to do it right,
it's like you go through the A in detail and then you got to almost do it again for execution.
And you know,
where's the person out?
Yeah,
it does.
If you're doing a few of those,
it's like,
yeah,
you're kind of,
we want to get to the end of it.
But yeah,
in our sort of framework,
it's like you were saying,
it's really the most important part because the fact that those all exist is critical,
but then they also have to follow that order.
And if they don't,
it's sort of...
Which was always a big thing,
actually.
Yeah.
That's always a big one.
I remember that was that stuff would not be in the right order.
That was one of the most common ones,
I feel like early on,
because I mean,
we were really great in our own homework.
Yeah.
And it was like,
oh no,
I need to get this in the right order.
Right.
And that's the thing too.
Most of the time I'd create a piece of copy that where somebody didn't really approach it from that audiolytics lens.
So
I'd kind of have to,
you know,
there's a lot,
obviously overlap here,
you know,
something can satisfy a demonstration and then also have maybe some substantiation in there or some value proposition.
And it's not always in the right order.
So you kind of have to rearrange it.
And a lot of times it's just about deciding,
okay,
what am I going to give it this point for?
To me,
does this sound more like a demonstration of how this product works or is this more...
you know,
the value proposition.
Is it explaining to me what this product is?
And those were two that always kind of felt like interchangeable in a way in many ads I've heard.
So.
Yeah.
I always think of like a tight line,
like 15 minutes will save you 15%
or more on car insurance.
And it's like,
that's doing a lot.
15 minutes could save you 15%
or more.
There's actually a lot of key components in there,
you know?
Yeah.
And they can be on top of each other and still get the job done.
Like we've used audiolytics to grade billboards.
And that's something that I think AI is going to help with as well is like locking in the model,
locking in the waiting.
And then it's going to have no problem going,
give it a static image and go grade this with audiolytics.
Like AI will make that leap where a human might be resistant to that idea.
All right.
Well,
it's been fun making audiolytics work with you.
Now let's see what Antoniolytics says here live with audiolytics.
Now it's time for the main event.
We've got the top spenders from Magellan,
ye mighty CAOs who are listening.
You can get a free demo of Magellan at Magellan.ai slash ad infinitum.
And what I've got,
Antoniolytics,
are the top spenders from March 2025.
That's T-Mobile,
BetterHelp,
and Toyota.
And I'm breaking T-Mobile in two because we've got a lot of spend.
I was seen against T-Mobile.
I want to say I was around $2 or $3 million.
And then about four times that amount against Mint Mobile.
So that's going to be the four that we listen to.
Are you ready to grade some ads?
I am ready.
All right,
let's go.
First one up is T-Mobile.
Today at...
T-Mobile,
I'm joined by a special co-anchor.
What up,
everybody?
It's your boy,
big Snoop Dio,
Double G.
Snoop,
where can people go to find great deals?
Head to T-Mobile.com and get four iPhone
16s with Apple Intelligence on us,
plus four lines for $25.
That's quite a deal,
Snoop.
And when you switch to T-Mobile,
you can save versus the other big guys'
comparable plan plus streaming.
That's spang.
When we up out of here,
see how you can save on wireless streaming versus the other big guys'
T-Mobile.com slash switch.
Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.
All right.
The game is afoot.
All right,
let's see.
On that T-Mobile spot on the Antoniolytics scale.
I would give that like about a 65%.
65%?
In that range,
yeah.
Wait,
what's the range?
Between 60 and 70.
Okay,
let's see what Audiolytics gave it.
Oh,
this is interesting.
Okay,
Audiolytics gave it an 80%.
Why the low score,
Antoniolytics?
To be honest,
I think I usually go into it with kind of very hesitant to kind of give it a high score.
For those of you listening,
he didn't break out the 71 point checklist here.
This was off the dome.
Yeah,
yeah.
So you're saying you're a harsh critic at first.
I am a harsh critic.
So maybe if you went in and did the scorecard,
it would be higher?
Yeah,
most likely.
Okay,
fair enough.
Why don't we listen to another one?
Okay.
And see what happens.
Okay.
So the next one up is,
do you make your bed every morning?
I do.
Good.
Jordan Peterson is proud of that.
Next one up is BetterHelp.
It's a new year.
So what might get in your way of making this the year that you ask for help with some problem you're having,
feelings that you don't understand,
or a conflict that you can't seem to fix?
Here's a thought.
What if asking for help meant that you wouldn't let anything get in your way of solving an issue,
finding out an answer,
or discovering a better direction?
Asking for help is much more about your determination and your commitment to making your life and the lives of others who love you healthier and more fulfilling,
even if it means asking for an outside perspective.
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And if you use the code or link betterhelp.com slash selfwork,
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off your first month of services.
Pleasant music.
It is.
Does that give it any extra points?
Well,
not for me.
Probably not.
What's Antoniolytics give that one?
I would probably give it a 60.
All right.
I like that you're staying consistent with your harshness.
Yeah.
You know,
again,
that's kind of something I always kind of go into it hesitantly until I kind of can spend a little more time on it.
But with that one specifically,
what stood out to me the most as one of the components that was missing was the substantiation.
I didn't really hear anything about,
you know,
any sort of clear evidence or anything communicated that was backing up why this solution was a success.
Yeah.
Better than exactly why it is better help.
Yeah.
It's just help.
Yeah.
It's just help.
Right.
So
Audiolytics gave it a 78.
Here's what's interesting.
it's lower than the other one.
So
T-Mobile,
Antoniolytics 70,
BetterHelp,
Antoniolytics 60,
Audiolytics
80, Audiolytics 78.
So their tracking,
it's just your initial is a lot harsher.
It is.
Which is interesting,
especially in light of our conversation earlier that it's like,
I'm kind of hearing you beat yourself into submission to be so explicit that actually you're like even less gracious than the machine now with your initial grade.
What would be interesting is to have you grade these with the full grade card and see how they came out.
But we're just going to take them for what they are right now.
And why don't we do the next one,
which is from
Toyota.
Hey, it's Rich Davis from Covino and Rich.
The Toyota Tundra and Tacoma are designed to outlast and outlive,
combining raw power with precision engineering.
All backed by Toyota's legendary reputation for reliability.
Climb inside a Tundra and experience the uncompromising strength with its available...
i-force max engine and tundra delivers exceptional power torque and towing capacity plus the spacious and high-tech cabin keeps you connected on the run or check out a tacoma agile dependable and unstoppable the tacoma is designed for those who go beyond the trails stay
ahead of the pack with available off-road features like crawl control or break out your tunes with the available portable JBL speaker.
Toyota trucks are built to last.
Year after year,
mile after mile,
so
outlast every adventure and outlive the moment.
Buy a Tundra or Tacoma today.
Visit buyatoyota.com,
Toyota's official website for deals.
Or stop by your local Toyota dealer to find out more.
Toyota,
let's go places.
Antonio Lytics,
let's grade advertisements.
I'm going to probably say
60% on that one too.
Possibly even lower.
Why?
Well,
I didn't really hear a very clear setup.
It went straight to...
the solution.
You know,
it might've been a little bit attention grabbing,
but I didn't really hear anything that set up anything.
It's Covino from Covino and Rich.
Hey,
it's Covino from Covino and Rich.
Right.
It's one way to do it.
It's kind of ham fisted.
So you're going to give it sub 60.
Yeah.
I'm going to give it a,
I'll say 60.
You're going to stick with 60.
Okay.
I'm going to say it's like a low 60 and the other one was a high 60 because this is what's interesting.
Audiolytics got it at a 72.
So right now,
even though the scores are different between
Audio lytics and Antonio lytics the ranking is the same Wow if that's a low 60 Yeah,
that's a lower 60 than the 60 you gave better help.
Yeah,
I almost was gonna say like 55 like in that range again This is like where there's a lot of this like,
you know could be biased or just the fact that I'm aware that I'm giving It low scores.
It might even be influencing this decision to not give it that 55 I'm like,
oh I'm kind of being a little too harsh But really I think 55 is probably like my gut reaction when I first heard it So well,
what's always so fascinating to me is like we hold these truths to be self-evident evidence.
When it comes to persuasion,
we can get into our heads.
But what audiolytics externalizes is what I believe we know and have experienced as people on this planet working to persuade each other of how to persuade.
And so regardless of the rubric somebody brings to the show,
it almost without fail,
their rank order mirrors audiolytics.
Even if like their score is slightly different,
like the 1,
2,
3,
4 spot is almost always the same.
Wow.
Which is really fascinating to me.
Okay.
So the last one,
here we go.
And then we'll wrap up is
Mint Mobile.
This episode is sponsored by Mint Mobile.
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All right.
This is going to be interesting where you come down on this one because of where
I know the Audiolytics score is in comparison to the others.
No pressure.
No,
I'm going to actually,
I'm going to go even lower this time.
How low can you go?
I'm going to give it,
I would say,
between 50 and 55.
Okay.
I didn't know I was coming in with dark Antoniolytics.
All right.
Audiolytics gave it a 76.
So for the most part,
you tracked right there along with Audiolytics,
which is what we typically see.
You did give this last one the lowest score.
Turns out that Audiolytics was more gracious with Mint Mobile than Antodiolytics.
But when you think of all four of these and the grades you just gave them,
I got two questions that we can wrap it up.
One,
is this what you were used to seeing back when you were?
fully
Antoniolytics. And two,
what advice would you give to the CAOs that are listening that invested millions of dollars in putting these messages on podcast?
To answer the first question,
yeah,
the typical range was,
I would say,
between a 60 and a 70 on the first go when I first,
you know,
listened to an ad or created a script.
So I'd say these are probably like a little bit lower.
And that's,
I guess,
maybe again,
it's just where my head's at today.
You know,
it can be that sort of thing where it's just like,
you know.
I'm coming at it from a different angle or for whatever reason,
thinking about it in a different way.
And it sounds like you've trained yourself to be hypercritical when you're off scorecard to sort of protect against being too gracious.
Right.
And that's just from the experience of just having when I started,
I was just very,
you know,
easily giving things higher scores than maybe I should have.
So I kind of learned to kind of not be as gracious to begin with and then kind of have it earn that higher score.
Yeah,
I tend to just be a little bit critical when I first kind of go through it like in the first pass.
So.
Okay.
Regardless,
where did these ads miss and what could they do better for those chief audio officers that are listening?
I guess one component that was missing from a lot of them was just the substantiation.
That accounts for kind of a big portion of this framework.
It's,
you know,
we want to be able to back up all these claims with,
you know,
some pretty solid evidence,
whether that's facts and figures or just a host kind of giving a personal endorsement or a testimonial.
And so that's where I see a lot of these kind of missed.
And it's difficult to do.
But another part is the setup.
you know the setup is
really key.
You can argue that's maybe the most important part,
because if you don't get past that,
then you're not going to be able to almost everything else after that doesn't matter.
So at least today when I heard those ads,
I didn't really feel putting myself in the shoes of a listener.
I wouldn't feel compelled to listen.
They're all kind of snoozers,
but I am on a comfortable couch here at HeadGum Studios.
But like the temperature in this room and like the vibe and this chair and those ads,
I want to go to sleep.
I don't know about you.
Yeah.
Like I tuned out on the BetterHelp one.
I just checked out.
I mean,
for me,
the Mint Mobile one was
maybe it was just the delivery that kind of...
He was kind of just flat like this.
Yeah.
Do you say data or data?
I say data.
Yeah.
Do you pay for data?
Right.
Hey,
it's Rich from Rich and Covino.
You should drive Toyota.
So what it could have done better was...
I love my Toyota.
I've been driving Toyota since 1997.
Got my first Tacoma.
This is Rich from Rich and Rich and Covino.
I got to tell you about these screaming deals Toyota's got going on right now.
Unbelievable.
Truth is,
I don't drive a Toyota right now,
but I'm thinking about it,
especially when you hear what they got going on.
Right?
Like that's the thing they can do.
They don't even have to endorse in the moment,
but like personalize it.
Talk about it.
Yeah.
It's always those way they kind of customize things and just kind of put things in their voice.
That's what makes me want to listen usually when I hear an ad.
I can't even remember the T-Mobile one.
I can't either.
Snoop Dogg.
Yeah.
I know one of them had Snoop Dogg and that's really all that I remember about it.
So.
Would you have remembered that it was T-Mobile?
No.
I mean,
Snoop Dogg has like so many products he endorses that,
yeah.
Unless there was something about.
like that personal endorsement.
I mean,
you know what they need to bring back.
Did you play with GI Joe's as a kid?
No.
Okay.
Well I did.
And you could call and you could talk to Sergeant Slaughter.
My name is Sergeant Slaughter.
It'd be cool.
Like do a spot T-Mobile.
Like you could call and you can talk to,
it's like a automated Snoop Dogg.
Yeah.
That'd be awesome.
Yeah.
Maybe.
I don't know.
You bring up a good point with the celebrity endorsement where it's like,
if it's Kevin Hart or Snoop,
you're sort of like,
I don't know.
Like sometimes when I look at Ryan Reynolds and maximum effort.
On the one hand,
I really like what they say about advertising.
Okay.
And I agree.
On the other hand,
a lot of times it's,
hey,
I'm Ryan Reynolds.
Yeah.
They put Ryan Reynolds in it.
It's like,
well,
okay,
well,
who doesn't want the charming,
awesome actor?
That'll grab my attention.
But you got to think about.
out like you're saying it's interesting you remember it's snoop but you can't remember who it was for yeah i mean any of those maybe with the exception of like better help i guess if i had to like look at a list and see what are the products that snoop dog would most likely endorse i could maybe guess that it would be like t-mobile but just kind of hearing that it's yeah unless i did that i wouldn't really remember you know like he didn't say anything about t-mobile that maybe remember that was a t-mobile ad okay so for the caos that are listening c's may get degrees but they don't work well in audiolitics
It's easy to become forgettable.
There is a sea of sameness.
These are things that are as old as advertising.
And two key areas to think about are substantiation,
like we talked about.
You've got to give,
you know,
facts and figures.
Or you can.
You don't have to.
But give facts and figures.
Most people aren't.
Why should they trust you?
Give that personal endorsement.
I mean,
that's like 101.
It's particularly in audio.
And that's interesting because that links to both substantiation and the setup.
You've got to get their attention and then keep their attention throughout the ad.
Antonio Lytics.
This has been a very special episode.
Thank you.
It's a moment in time.
And I feel like we're like putting it in the time capsule.
Yeah,
it's kind of we're almost in a way marking this end of this chapter and kind of moving on.
It was an honor to kind of be a part of it for so long.
And it'll always be.
I'll be linked to it in some regard.
So,
yeah,
I thank you for that.
That's awesome,
man.
Well,
Antonio Lytics,
it is very special.
Thank you for today and for all of the years of making the ads work.
And honestly,
for being a true believer,
because I got to say my personal part of this is
I get tired.
You know,
my life quote has been Franklin's energy and persistence conquer all things.
I believe that.
But man,
with audio lytics,
it's been a slog.
Yeah.
And it was tough when folks were kind of not on board.
You know,
it's OK to be skeptical.
But the fact you've always been dyed in the wool and I know I can talk to you about it and you're a true believer has been wind in my sails on this audio lytics journey.
So thank you.
And thanks again for coming on the show.
Where can folks connect with you?
You can find me on LinkedIn,
Antonio Coronado.
Okay,
and maybe we'll see
AntonioLytics.com pop up?
Yeah,
hopefully.
That could be cool.
That would be awesome,
yeah.
And then we'd memorialize the whole thing at the official Oxford Road Museum.
All right,
that's a wrap on another episode of Ad Infinitum.
If you found this helpful,
insightful,
or just made you think about audio advertising a little differently,
please let us know and leave an honest five-star review.
And if you've got an idea for something about audio advertising or an ad or campaign you want us to look at,
please email me at Stu at Oxford Road dot com.
And don't forget to check out the latest ad rankings and get a free demo at Magellan dot a slash ad infinitum.
And remember,
until next time,
to have fun making the ads work.