Q&A WITH ERIK TAMMENURM, CO-FOUNDER & CEO AT NEXD


Posted May 6, 2021 by aliceworly12

Erik Tammenurm, Co-Founder & CEO at NEXD, has been with NEXD since the very beginning, starting as NEXD's CTO. Now, some 5 years later NEXD has grown globally, with offices from London to Tokyo, and Erik has taken on the role of CEO.
 
Erik Tammenurm, co-founder and CEO of NEXD, was with NEXD from the start and started as NEXD's CTO. Now, about 5 years later, NEXD has grown worldwide, with offices from London to Tokyo, and Erik has taken on the role of CEO. Test different creative solutions, messages, shapes and find the combinations that work for your brand.

MEDIA 7: What inspired you to do advertising and why did you choose NEXD?
ERIK TAMMENURM: Good question. Before starting NEXD, I was mainly involved in mobile game and application development. Advertising seemed to be that mystical industry that seemed so out of date and focused on the wrong angle on how the solutions were supposed to work as expected. In 2014 I teamed up with some industry leaders in advertising in Estonia and we decided to tackle the problems that are plaguing advertising.

M7: How does NEXD help companies get results? How does it ensure a better ROI for them?
ET: I think advertising got lost. It should focus on the message, the form of the message, and the audience - in that particular order. Advertising isn't just about the audience. This idea stems from flawed logic, but is unfortunately the most common focus for advertisers right now. Adidas recently researched ad spend and found that 65% of revenue comes from new consumers, but 80% of ad spend goes to existing consumers. There is a big gap between expectation and reality. That's why we try to help advertisers get a great brand experience and make it as easy as possible so their audience can engage with the brand in a more meaningful way - which increases ROAS. I believe that consumers want to engage with the brands that they are using. Advertising should be a conversation.

Nexd helps advertisers create an interactive brand experience so their audience can engage in a more meaningful way. Interactive and engaging ads are more memorable and help attract new customers to the brand. Our ads are designed to facilitate this conversation and conduct it in a very intuitive way. We've tried to remove the barriers that keep many advertisers from producing good digital ads - namely the time and cost of complex coding that adds huge overheads to you - and making great ads available to everyone. Our goal is to help our customers improve their RoAS and I have to say that we have achieved quite good results in this regard. The future of advertising depends on finding new ways to connect with customers, and finding good and creative solutions is time consuming and expensive with off-the-shelf solutions.

M7: Which marketing channels do you use for advertising and which do you see as the most promising given your target customers?
ET: Our main channel is our newsletters and blog. I've always appreciated addressing customers through content - creating value for their time. We mainly distribute our content via social networks and emails. While we have quite a long range for displays, this is mostly for perception and exposure for us. I don't see very strong returns in B2B compared to display solutions.
M7: What role does content play in advertising? Which content format is best for your platform and why?
ET: Content is essential for B2B solutions. Good content is a great way for consumers to spend time with your brand and gives you an opportunity to give back to them. I've always valued more visual content - infographics, reports and videos, as well as face-to-face webinars. I often try to put myself in the shoes of our customers and see what actually seduces me or helps me at any point in time. This enables us to solve our customers' problems or questions. Be more creative. Talk to the end user and 90% of the time it will result in a higher ROAS than a properly targeted but boring experience.

M7: What do you think are the three biggest marketing challenges in the post-COVID-19 era?
ET: Creativity - It's pretty difficult these days to be creative with the tools available and within all the constraints of the marketplace. Your ad must be under 4MB (otherwise browsers will block it), it cannot be animated too much (otherwise browsers will block it), it should load within 1 second. At Nexd, we have built our solutions on completely new technologies that come from gaming. Files are created that are small enough, fast enough and load within 1 second. Our job is to provide advertisers with the tools to keep their creativity unlimited and remove the barriers and worries of complying with those restrictions.

Data & target groups - The accuracy of the data is questionable at best. How we use and review this information is long overdue for a complete overhaul across the industry. How sure can someone be that they are actually reaching the right audience? With GDPR / CCPA and browser removing third-party cookies, it is now almost impossible to find the right audience. So why bet on it? I believe that it is far more valuable to be related to the right message.

Scam - Did you know that roughly 5 cents for every dollar you spend advertising is a scam? By using old technologies, you lose more money every year. At Nexd, we have spent countless hours breaking down how fraudulent actors may work and doing our best to prevent them from making money from our customers. There are also many other companies whose only focus is keeping advertising safe.
M7: In the world of big data, creativity gets stuck. Is there a way to balance the two and create better ad campaigns?
ET: As I said earlier, I believe that data can be used in very good ways, but opacity is still a problem. Advertisers make the best possible decisions with the information available. But are they using accurate data or are they advertising based on inaccurate data? What I've seen a lot lately is that most of the assumptions are made under the wrong premise and this ruins the whole message and seriously affects the effectiveness of their campaigns. The future of advertising depends on finding new ways to connect with customers, and finding good and creative solutions with off-the-shelf solutions is time consuming and costly. This is the main reason I decided to start Nexd.

M7: Wisdoms for Advertising Professionals?
ET: Be more creative. Talk to the end user and 90% of the time it will result in a higher ROAS than a properly targeted but boring experience. Reconsider your assumptions about who you are advertising to. Focus on making sure you found the right message and shape. Test, test, test. Test different creative solutions, messages, forms and find the combinations that are suitable for your brand. Advertising is always evolving and can be challenging at times which I think is the most interesting part.

ABOUT NEXD

Nexd is the developer of the fastest, lightest and most innovative advertising solution in the world. Nexd is an easy-to-use online tool that enables marketers to create interactive, lightweight ads that actually appeal to their target audience. Unlike competing platforms with complex builders, Nexd is based on simple drag and drop layouts, which cuts production time from weeks to minutes. Nexd is an advancement in how users perceive and interact with digital ads. Thanks to weight-saving and visually impressive displays, Nexd offers an increase in performance and a higher RoAS compared to other solutions.
Nexd has a broad customer base in over 20 markets on five continents and serves over 3,000 campaigns from over 200 brands, agencies and publishers.
-- END ---
Share Facebook Twitter
Print Friendly and PDF DisclaimerReport Abuse
Contact Email [email protected]
Issued By Alice Worly
Country United States
Categories Advertising , Business
Tags advertising campaigns , advertising professionals , future of advertising
Last Updated May 6, 2021