Cory Treffiletti on Reinventing AdTech: In-Content Advertising & Brand Awareness in 2025

1. How important is improving unaided brand awareness to your marketing objectives in the next 12 months?  

I lead marketing for a tech company, and as a B2B marketer I think unaided brand awareness is everything!  Tech needs to be top of mind in order to be considered.  When someone is considering using a technology, or for that matter any product or service, your awareness is key.  You either need to be thought of immediately, because you are clearly associated with that category, or when they do their research and see you, they immediately think of you in a different, hopefully better, way.  That second example of more aided awareness, but unaided awareness can keep you in front of the pack and force everyone else to position against you.  The biggest, best brands and ones that stay top of mind and score highly on unaided awareness.  For the next 12 months specifically, this might be the second most valuable metric I have as a marketer, second only to actual verifiable, qualified leads that convert.

2. To what extent do you believe in-content, non-disruptive advertising can outperform traditional formats in building brand equity? 

I believe it could be the way brands build trust and break through the clutter.  Interruptive ads are good for frequency and bringing a brand back to mind, but the in-content and non-disruptive model is better because you know it is not skipped, and it benefits from being in the content people know and love.  That’s why influencers do so well.  The messages are not skipped, and there is an implied trust in the creator that carries over to the brand.  That trust comes from an authentic implied endorsement.  Brands need that trust with the consumer, and if they have to borrow that trust from the context or the creator, then so be it.  If you take a portion of your budget and allocate it here, you get more awareness for your buck because it can’t be skipped, and that awareness is associated positively with a message.  That means your entire budget works smarter AND harder for your objectives.

3. Do you see embedded brand content within creator videos as a scalable and sustainable strategy for your brand? Why or why not? 

Yes.  Fundamentally, this is what we do.  We enable scalable solutions to execute this model.  For us, the audience that is attached to a show or a clip from a show, has a higher propensity to watch and engage with that content when it is shown to them, and that creates a higher attention opportunity for the brand.  When the audience is paying attention, your brand message works smarter.  I will never say this is the only way you should operate, but it definitely could be 50% of a marketers budget going forward.

4. As consumer attention shifts toward short-form, creator-driven, AI-augmented content, how is your organization adapting its messaging strategy? 

Our messaging has to be crisp and simple.  It has to be short and succinct.  It also benefits from being embedded in B2B content because that audience is ready for that kind of message.  For me, it's all about storytelling in the shortest way possible.  A good analogy is children’s books.   Those books are able to tell a story and get a point across very quickly.  When I used to read them to my kids, there was always a key message conveyed in a short time.  I think our marketing and messaging strategy has to be the same way.

5. Which KPIs are most important when evaluating a new advertising technology like RAI?

Any new technology should be able to be measured by the same KPI’s as the methods and formats that it is competing against.  For us, we evaluate our results on Unaided Awareness, Click-Through Rate, Video Completion Rate and Sales Lift.  These are standard KPIs and ones that any marketer should be focused on.

6. How important is being an early adopter of new advertising technologies in maintaining competitive advantage for your brand?

I think this is extremely important.  You always need to be thinking ahead.  Testing new technologies early allows you to unlock the value for your brand quickly, and maintain that competitive edge.  If you wait until someone else has figured it out, then you’re always going to be playing catch-up!

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