Stew Redwine (00:00):
This is Add Infinitum.

(00:18):
Add 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, stew Redwine, and each episode's guest. This is season three, episode five, and today we're diving into a growing problem and an opportunity, one that's not just a creative issue, but also a business issue. And it's called AI Slop. AI Slop AI is making it faster and cheaper to churn out content, but is that making the work better or is it just helping us create more mediocre ads at scale? Spoiler, it's the second one. Before we get into it, I wanna share a line from my friend Joel Beckerman, founder of Made Music Studio. We were just talking yesterday and Joel was saying that what they do at Made Music Studio, and I think what the best brands and creatives and audio do live up to this quote from Joel, which is we create invisible Lamborghinis.

(01:17):
And what he means is when audio is done right, it's like a precision machine. Beautiful, powerful, designed to be experienced, felt and remembered. And here's the problem right now, AI isn't building Lamborghinis, it's cranking out invisible minivans, functional, maybe memorable, not a chance. And that's what we're talking about today with commercial director Jordan Brady and Steven Goldstein, CEO of Amplify Media, who is celebrating 10 years today and NYU professor. And he's also the author of a February 4th, 2025 article titled AI Slop is Everywhere and it's Getting Worse. That inspired this episode. So all credit where credit is due. Steven, you spent your career helping brands tell better stories and your piece on AI slop put words to something I know a lot of us are seeing. Welcome to the show. Good to be here and

Steven Goldstein (02:08):
Hopefully we will be real and not automated.

Stew Redwine (02:11):
I hope so too. I mean, unless the whole thing's a simulation, but then we don't really know it so there is no spoon. And Jordan, you're a commercial director who's been in the trenches with me for a few years now, and your encouragement is a big part of why ad infant item even exists. You respect the process, my brother, and you know what happens when the craft disappears. This has been a long time coming. Thanks for joining.

Jordan Brady (02:34):
Oh, I'm so happy to be here. I love this show. And I'm just curious, when you say AI slop, what is that little sound design element that you put under AI slop? Is it like, because that's my favorite part of the show.

Stew Redwine (02:48):
Yeah, like it's like a wet, it's like,

Jordan Brady (02:51):
But there's, well here it is. Lemme play it. What about when you say Steve's company Amplify Media? It'll go amplify. Amplify,

Stew Redwine (03:00):
Yeah. And then you hear it from the other side of that valley, like Amplifi rights, the herbs and spices. Sorry Steve,

Steven Goldstein (03:09):
When we did the AI slump blog post, we had ze coming out of the screen.

Stew Redwine (03:14):
That's right. With that said, Steven, I'd like to start right at the source. What do you mean by AI slop and how are you seeing it show up? Like if you could summarize for the listeners essentially what you put in that article and what kicked off this show.

Steven Goldstein (03:25):
Yeah, so AI slop was something that I was first exposed to at the Consumer Electronics Show in January in Las Vegas, Las Vegas. And I cannot find the person who first said it. I want to congratulate them on a brilliant term, cannot find that. But it was talked about a lot at the conference and not so much in audio or video terms, but this notion that if you could say on social media, crank out one post a day, now you could do 27 posts a day because it takes you what an extra 15 seconds to order it up and send it out. So when they're talking about AI slop at CES, they're talking about just the volume of things that are coming out that are truly mediocre. And so taking that and grafting it for audio and video, it is sort of low quality, soulless kind of content that it just floods out there. And so we can do that in audio and video and we're seeing it all over the place. And so it's bland and it's generic and it's not particularly useful, but it is cheap and easy to do.

Stew Redwine (04:30):
It reminds me of something I heard in the Netflix documentary from a few years ago, the social dilemma, and I can't remember who one of the subjects was in the film, but he was talking about this idea of that like in science fiction for years, the idea was that AI would overcome human strength. That the problem would be that Terminators would be able to even overcome our greatest weapons and ability to wage war Vista baby. And he is like, the real truth is AI overcomes human weakness and it's like that's actually the bad part. And it's like I'm kind of jumping ahead a bit, but the majority of advertising is dull. 16% of advertising is correctly attributed and remembered. So now it's like that's human weakness. It's being lazy, it's just not putting out great work. And now you've supercharged the ability to do even more of that at scale. And Jordan, you're the guy they call on when people still care about how an ad feels and that it makes an emotional connection, particularly in audio. How have you seen AI creep into your world so far in the past couple years? What have you seen unfolding with AI slop?

Jordan Brady (05:31):
I think I'm gonna ride on Steve's coattails and say that there's just more scripts coming my way, unfortunately for the same budget. Like we wanna do all four and they're all derivative of one another. So it's my guess, I have no crystal ball, but it looks like somebody generated a bunch of ideas as opposed to curating everything down to one or two great ones

Stew Redwine (05:54):
Like the South Park. I mean it was like on the front end of all this where they had chat, GPT even wrote the episode with them and then, I don't know if you remember, there was a character that was like a wayfinder, he had like a hawk and he was like a man of the woods and he could detect chat GPT. He's like, I will find chat GPT. So you're seeing it in that people are like, Hey, we put together some scripts and you're like, obviously they're just cranking with chat,

Jordan Brady (06:18):
Right? They're all derivative of not only each other, but I can sense, 'cause I've been around a day or two, they're derivative of campaigns that have happened for years and the scripts, sometimes a script will feel like an infomercial structure as opposed to something truly innovative as far as presentation. Like one of 'em, I pulled up a script for the show. When it looks different, feels different, it is different from other oatmeal. Like there's nothing really that special about it <laugh>. And how is it different by the way <laugh>? Well I don't know, but the alt line was, it's at the intersection of design and delicious <laugh>. Like it can't be different. So I think someone played with chat GPT and said, oh that's fun. I use it all the time. And I would encourage everyone to use it as a creative sounding board or partner, but the human has to be the curator of what's good. And then for a commercial, since I work with live actors, just remind everybody, you may have engineered this script to death, but the actor's gonna say it in a way a human would like leave room for the human element to kind of take the veneer off of the script.

Stew Redwine (07:27):
All great points. It's like how to bring that real emotion or you know, I kind of pair in my way of viewing things in advertising even as like it's an idea in emotion. And then I'm trying to communicate that through. I'm curious. So I do wanna pause just for a second 'cause you know, another aspect of what you do Steve, is as a professor at NYU, this is more of like kind of a curious tangent like what have you done or what are you doing with students? Just talk about a temptation, like how are you guys handling like chat and CLA with students right now in universities?

Steven Goldstein (07:57):
You're talking about the homework assignments and projects? Yeah. Yes. It's definitely an issue because we want them to use their brain, but their brain sort of leans toward, hey, I can get this thing done in four minutes instead of an hour and a half. And so there is that temptation, but you can sort of tell, most AI writes perfectly and flowery has little cadence to it that most students who are 21 years old don't have. I've had a few cases where I've had to flag it as AI and we've had them change it, but there's no tool. You know how they have those homework tools where they run your homework through to see if you've copied it from somewhere else at ai, it's much harder to do. So we don't really have a foolproof way of sort of measuring it or knowing it. But intuitively you do know it.

(08:45):
And so that's sort of the way we're handling it. But we also talk about it and we talk about it in relation to what we are talking about today. And it just is clogging the pipes. I mean there's so much content coming at them, you know, we call it TikTok brain and this is, you know, the endless scrolling that's going on and 96% of the content you're just skipping by. So there's only about 4% that you're stopping and looking at. Well that holds true, maybe not in the same ratios but conceptually in every other medium. So if radio commercials are 16, 22 minutes of the hour, you know that a lot of 'em are gonna be cruddy to begin with. And then if you take the shortcut, they're gonna get crustier. But what attracts people is that serendipity, that moment, that thing of interest that breaks out from the pack. Just as when you're scrolling with TikTok you see something that's attractive, but most of the stuff is bland, you just keep going.

Stew Redwine (09:45):
That's a great cross application. 'cause sometimes I think the new medium sort of can create a idea that this is somehow new and different. In many ways it is. And then in many ways nothing changes and that like we are highly tuned for the novel 'cause we're pattern recognizing survival machines. But your point on how like the majority of it is skippable, that's where it gets expensive. You know Peter Fields's research shows that Dole ads cost two to 2.6 times more in media spend to have the same impact as interesting one. So you're spending like let's say a typical podcast test campaign quarter of a million dollars. So now it's half a million, you know, or 750,000. Let me say that again, being boring, it's the most expensive creative decision you can make. And that's where my mind goes. AI isn't just making it easier to make content, it's making it easier to make boring content faster, cheaper, and a greater volume than ever before. I'd like to ask both of you, so either of you can take this in either order. Why do you think brands are falling into this AI slop trap? It's a trap.

Jordan Brady (10:55):
I'll go. They have a perceived value that more is more as opposed to better is more, more being interesting. So it's the illusion that quantity of ads and perhaps they're smitten with data from testing, you can test 30 different versions of something. So I can't argue with that. If you're going to test 30 versions and figure out which one's getting the most hits or calling that 800 number that that's a bad thing, sure that works. But the slop is the lack of curation. Again, just why not make a few really great ads? Why not add something that's authentic? AI by design is derivative, right? It's trained on other ads. It's like Disney sitcom writers grew up watching sitcoms and they write in a sitcom voice. Maybe that's not my best analogy, but Steve is laughing.

Steven Goldstein (11:45):
I like it. I think it's perfect. And by the way, here's the other thing about all that mediocrity. I mean mediocrity is getting crushed everywhere. But when you turn on that sitcom in the first minute, you know whether this is gonna be a good show or not, whether it's funny and if it's got that can sort of laughter feel and you know the smart ass kid sort of, you know what I mean? That's a formula and we're just rejecting those formulas and it's, I don't think this is necessarily about commercial content. I think it's about all content that just mediocre content is getting crushed. And those systems, they may give you a fantastic idea. I mean I certainly use AI and I find it to be incredibly valuable. But as Jordan said, the human touch is the differentiator there.

Jordan Brady (12:31):
There's another thing, when Steve was talking about TikTok, I was thinking about all these people that produce tiktoks post ad nauseum where it's top three things you need to do. Well, AI will soon be able to deliver the top three things better than human scan and faster and more of it. So it will negate those. Why would humans make top three things you need to do when AI can generate all these things? So we have to find something new to do.

Steven Goldstein (12:58):
So on my website I have what I call the grid of pain and it's four quadrants. The lower left quadrant is where most content lives. It is the low value, low awareness stuff and that's where things start out. The goal is to be in the upper right quadrant, which is high value, high awareness. I don't care whether you're in the TV business, the movie business, the magazine business, you online, content creation business, whatever it may be, getting to that rarefied air of the upper right hand corner is hard because hits are hard, great content is hard, that has not changed. It's just become even harder because we've got this hose from the machine which is able to crank out even more stuff. So it was already bad to begin with and now it's gonna be even harder because, and I don't really mean to call it the machine because it's what you put into it determines what you get out of it, but it's clogging the pipelines. And so what really needs to happen is a thinning of all of that stuff. And I think about it in terms of podcasts. We only have three or four ads in a, you know, half hour of podcast listening today. Although that seems to be going up. So those ads can stand out. But what happens when you're in the radio sector and there's eight minute stop sets and there's a lot of mediocre commercials baked in there, don't people just tune all of that out? Or how do you stand out when you're in that cluster?

Jordan Brady (14:25):
Well, when it looks different feels different. It is different from other oatmeal.

Stew Redwine (14:30):
Exactly. And I'm so glad you're bringing us to audio 'cause that's what this show's all about. Because if there is one place that AI swap is hitting hard, it is in audio. And I wanna call out the very first episode of Ad Infinitum. I played an ad for Dallas Taylor kind of on this idea of how AI voices sound and it was inconclusive. It was a, or ai, which is making our larger point is that humans have done just fine at making dull stuff without AI where a human being recorded a VO that is very ignorable and normal and you know, it's like, okay, it sounded like a robot. Is that a robot? That's where we're seeing an impact. It was scripted to death reads, robotic voices, zero human nuance. You hear it immediately. But again, I wanna stress you hear that with human voiced creative too.

(15:16):
So a human written human voice can be just as bland as robot written robot voice. That's really important because it's the whole flattening of the broadcast affect that first whatever reason developed like crooners. You know, the reason crooners sang in this range is because that's what the fidelity of the medium at the time. So it's just so fascinating to me. But the stakes are high according to infinite dial 20 25, 40 8% of Americans now 158 million people are monthly podcast listeners. It's big and it's growing up to be as big as its dad one day radio. And I'm noticing, Steve, to your point, the breaks are sounding more and more like commercial radio. We used to look at pre, mid post, and I'd love to get your thought on this. Now when I'm looking at stuff and I'm doing an audit for an advertiser, I'm looking at it one of our current clients, it's like that's even now antiquated because we'll go pre mid post. Well there's four mids.

Steven Goldstein (16:05):
Mm-hmm <affirmative>

Stew Redwine (16:06):
I'm saying four pods, dude. There'll be like three or four pods of mids now.

Steven Goldstein (16:10):
Well, but that was inevitable. I mean look, these things are can be expensive to produce and market and you have to pay a lot of people along the way. So I don't begrudge the notion that advertising that the level of advertising in these things is increasing. I think it needs to be monitored, which is a different topic than the slop topic. But as you add more units, you certainly are becoming less distinctive or you're risking becoming less distinctive. But I'm not sure that I have a great solution for that. And I also just wanted to mention on the AI side, I don't know of any top podcast that is AI generat. All of them are quite human and they tell stories well and they laugh and they have pauses and they have communication. I mean, just as we're doing in this podcast today, there are the nuances and the systems can't do that. And I have not heard that at a high level. I certainly am aware of some that have tried to shortcut by doing AI podcast or cloning their own voice and it is getting better and better and better. I gotta say it is frightening how good it is, but it still is off. It misses that tone that you were just referring to Stu.

Jordan Brady (17:25):
I used an AI clone tool for a documentary to come up with a line and it was easier than getting the subject to have him drive to a studio or send a sound person out to the compound where they lived. And to make it human, we took, it was just a sentence or two, we took two different takes and then edited them together to make them flawed. Right? Added the humanity back together by zing it up. As we say. One of the things I love about podcasts are the in show reads. And I would encourage anyone that wants to learn more to go to oxford road.com, they make it really easy. They're great and they're experts in the podcast field with the mid show read. I just did it. You did. You know Smartlist does a great job of their reads because you can tell they're having fun with it.

Stew Redwine (18:15):
Totally. Look, I'm not anti AI and I can tell neither of you guys are, we use the tools to help us create and to speed up production, right? I mean it'd be like the anti internet or anti electricity one that we use a lot is Wonder craft.ai. I've talked about this before. What I really like about it is that I find in particular, whether it's sonic branding, we're talking about produced audio or even live reads, that audio, even though it's our first sense, it's our fastest sense. It's so powerful. It's so fascinating to me that it's so difficult to imagine. And so, you know, presenting scripts and stuff on the page, people have to imagine sounds, which is almost seems like it's even harder than imagining visuals. So now I can press play a lot easier, which I like. So we can go with Wonder Craft make like this is how it'd be customized to a sports genre.

(18:59):
This is how it'd be customized to, you know, and it's like, yeah, this is admittedly a cloned voice, but it helps us press play to get a concept in somebody's mind so they can understand it with you guys when it comes to how you're using a AI in your own creations for yourselves. This is where I like wanna get real. You know, for me I use transcripts of this very show where it's my words and then that helps me like write the outline for this show where I have it go out and find stuff about you guys. I give it a little bit of an idea of what I'm looking for and then I've got a Stew Redwine tone of voice based on now thousands of words that I've actually spoken. How do you guys use AI in your own work and where do you draw the line with it?

Steven Goldstein (19:36):
So I think it's a remarkable prep tool. I think it offers great guidance. It could take a big project and break it down. I've been using it with my clients on prep stuff, but I also use it for the schoolwork that I'm doing. They can read 30 papers a lot faster than I can and point out things that I wouldn't see. And so it's not that I have it reading all the papers, it's guiding me on things that they're observing, that sort of thing. I would say that it's getting more powerful quite rapidly. It's getting smarter, it's getting more accurate, it's learning more about me, just as you said Stu, it sort of knows more about you. I think those things are critical and there's that axiom or cliche that it's, you know, today's the dumbest it's gonna be. And I think that's exactly right. Every day it's getting a little bit smarter. So I don't fear that at all. I actually love and admire how fast it's grown. And then I'm reading newsletters from the industry on tactics and strategies about how to use AI better because it's way more capable than you know, the dumb stuff I'm doing. And I like learning that.

Jordan Brady (20:42):
I use AI as a means of production often for a means to another means as a filmmaker I use generative fill in Adobe Photoshop to put a little bird on the shoulder of a knight or something like that to express what I want to do. I use Topaz Labs to up res an old 640 resolution commercial that was relevant to a job. I was bidding to a 4K spot so it didn't look, you know, all fuzzy and alias. I use Adobe podcast if I'm interviewing someone over Zoom and they don't have the industry standard, the sure SM seven B like I have now. And that tool. Yep, Stew's got it. <laugh>. Yep, Steve's got it. They both hold them up at the same time. Listeners, I don't know what sound effects stew's gonna put in, but they both held up the same microphone I'm using. Thriller was recorded on this microphone.

(21:39):
Maybe you can put a little, but I think Adobe and I use Adobe Firefly and Adobe Express, which has ai, Adobe's gonna be like the Walmart of AI where they have a one-stop shopping suite of tools for the common man or woman or they, and I use it like I said, a means to another means. And certainly the AI built into a premier when you're editing can help the sound. The one thing I haven't done yet is fire the human storyboard artist and swap them out for ai. Because I find the collaboration with the human when I'm storyboarding for filmmaking, I find their input invaluable that the human mistakes or their interpretation, just their drawing. And I draw myself with an Apple pencil on an iPad and so I love the human connection and back and forth that that process does. But storyboarding is clearly, I think there's a storyboard.ai, right? That one just doesn't, it's too much slop ai, how about that?

Stew Redwine (22:42):
I can see that that is such a nice dynamic. There is just something nice about, like I always think of kind of a garage band of just for friends, just working out a melody and bringing something to life. And I think the day will come that you could conversationally do that with an AI where you're using a digital writing pad. It'll be like the movie her, you won't know. It will feel like a human. I a hundred percent believe we will get there until the exchange is on that level. I think that's the thing is the exchange is not yet on that level, but once the exchange is on that level, you won't care that it's not a human.

Jordan Brady (23:13):
That's probably true, sadly. The other thing I'll say that's great. Two things. One real quick. Otter AI transcribes my notes from Zoom's and helps me write a headline for my podcast. I'll say, what's a good title for this episode with Steve? And it'll give me five and none of them will be perfect, so I will have to tweak them with the human thing. And then the wonderful thing about ai, it democratizes the tools of storytelling so that a little girl in a village somewhere with a laptop can make a whole movie. And that's a good thing.

Stew Redwine (23:45):
Yeah, it could make transformers, you know what I

Jordan Brady (23:47):
Mean? <laugh>, it's like it could and there's gonna be a ton more slop films with ai, but will that one rise from the ashes like the phoenix and blow us all away?

Announcer 2 (23:58):
Blow us all away?

Jordan Brady (23:59):
Yes.

Stew Redwine (24:00):
I like Steve's point of view as well as sort of like, you know, this changes everything. This changes nothing. The means to get to dull has just changed, but the mission is still the same. So whether you're using AI as a writing partner or this or that, it's you have to have that moment where you stop and you look at it and go, <laugh> is this distinct? Is this memorable? However you got there. It seems to be our general premise as a group that if you're mainly relying on a logic-based computer intelligence to make derivative works, your likelihood of hitting that is probably not as high. But you know, time will tell. So alright, let's make this practical. You'll be stuck in the grid of pain. You'll be stuck in the grid of pain with oatmeal that just looks like everybody else's <laugh>. It's just

Steven Goldstein (24:43):
Plain old oatmeal <laugh>. Can I just do a little story about how really good content stands out? Les Moonves who ran CBS for many, many years. So it is the night before the affiliates meeting at Carnegie Hall. That is the time in which all of the TV stations, the CBS TV stations gather and they present the fall lineup and there's a hole in the lineup. There's one hour that has not been filled the night before. How can that be? How is it possible that this legacy super smart organization still has an hour free and they're debating about which show to choose? They have two shows and they are arguing about it and they can't get to it. And so Moonves turns to Phil Rosenthal, the guy who created Everybody Loves Raymond and says, take these two DVDs, go into the other room, watch 'em and just come back and tell us what you think the room was pushing for a Tony Danza show. He was gonna be a cop. Okay. Or a Detective Rosenthal comes back in and they say, so which one do you like? And he says, I've seen the Tony Danza show a million effing times. I like this other one. That show was CSI. That's what they put into that last hole in the CBS lineup. And in its first week it was the number one show on tv. And that's just a great reminder about how the system still works.

Stew Redwine (26:04):
That is fantastic. Yes. That's the goal. It's like care about making great work and if that's set, if that posture is set on the team, whatever tools or people or androids you work with to get there, you will get there. It is like a law of the universe. Now can you be assured you're gonna make a mega hit? No, but

Steven Goldstein (26:23):
No, but nobody had seen that before. Nobody had seen the science exactly behind detective work and that's what fascinated him. And that show of course, durable Beyond durable. Amazing.

Jordan Brady (26:34):
Well, CSI has spawned so many spinoffs too. And the latest one debuts this fall, it's called CSI, AI <laugh>, the Grid of

Stew Redwine (26:44):
Pain,

Jordan Brady (26:45):
My Destiny to be the Grid of Pain. Steve, this serious question, do you give private tutoring on like how to grow a podcast, how to make it right, how to, because Stu mentioned something earlier that you helped him. I would love to learn more from you. I've found this a fascinating conversation. This is what I

Steven Goldstein (27:03):
Do. I do advisory work. I love it,

Jordan Brady (27:05):
I love it.

Stew Redwine (27:06):
He's the man. I just wanted to mention, Steve, do you remember at the CAO event I was playing you those mnemonics? Yeah. Where you and I were banning about that idea of like we either gonna signal AI content or signal original content and then like we talked about making it a sub frequency that would be detectable but watermark. Yeah, watermark. And then like I talked to this producer in Atlanta and he even figured out a way to do it as a frequency that you know, you can't hear but your dog can hear <laugh>. That could be detectable. But it's so funny because that was actually exactly a year ago and at that time I remember how much I was feeling that like we've gotta market, we've gotta know whether it is or not. And now it's like I'm kind of like, I don't feel that as strongly, are you in a different place? I mean, do you think that that would be worthwhile at this

Steven Goldstein (27:49):
Point? Look, if you're the creator, you certainly don't want your content ripped. That I think is why watermarking is important. But if you're the audience, the audience, especially the younger audience, their authenticity meter is so finely tuned. They know when something is bs, they know when it's fake. They can tell on the video side. Ooh, and I know there was one other thing I wanted to mention. I was just listening to a podcast with Neil Mohan who's the head of YouTube and he's talking about, hey, everybody was watching YouTube on their smartphone and now they're watching it on their big tv. And so what does that mean? That means all these goofy handheld videos, which have been a staple and fantastic, may need to be rethought as stuff gets projected on bigger TVs. So now you move back into a whole new world of production, scaled production, quality

Stew Redwine (28:42):
Production. I'll let Jordan speak to that a bit because Jordan, I just have a little brief recap on that note of like kind of the journey of content for YouTube that 10, 15 years ago it was, Hey, is this for YouTube? So then okay we'll just have your, you know, shoot it on A-D-S-L-R and use the camera mic. But now it's like that's not, they don't even say it to you in the briefs, right? Don't I have that right? 'cause it's gotta be 4K if it's on YouTube. Am I representing that correctly?

Jordan Brady (29:05):
I believe so. I mean look at Mr. Beast. He puts so much money into production A because he cares and he always has he bet on himself, which my daddy said is the best way to gamble bet on yourself. And the production value is so comparable to anything you would watch on a big screen. That's the lesson he won. And I think there's a place for the lo-fi stuff. YouTube recently backed out of creating content like their original programming and said, we're better not developing shows and just being a platform. So I think that says a lot too. They're just like, you guys make it.

Stew Redwine (29:40):
We could talk a long time about all this. I think what's cool that I'm hearing right now is regardless of where it's shown, regardless of where it's experienced, the setting your true north on being distinct and memorable and worthy to cut through everything. And I think that that comes from a being clear about the purpose and coming from the heart and creating the thing. If you're doing that, you're gonna be okay, whatever the tools are being used. And this is the thing about ad infinitum and why I started it is that you know, there's theorem and there's practicum and I've always actually been a very practical person. So let's hear how some top advertisers are showing up in audio and we're gonna rank 'em, we're gonna do what ad infinitum does best. It's time for the ad grading round, normally brought to you by our friends at Magellan ai.

(30:20):
I still wanna make a shout out to them. They're a leader in podcast ad intelligence, Magellan tracks and ranks the top podcast ads. And today we're actually gonna break down a few commercial radio ads, which I think is good for a couple reasons. One, it's still at a massive scale and two, I feel like it's the father of podcasting. And then that for the last 15 years of podcast it's kind of like F you dad, I'm not gonna be anything like you. You'll see. And now it's like kind of doing the traditional, it's looking in the mirror and being like, oh my god, I'm my father. It's like, yeah, check yourself before you Wreck Yourself podcast, you better check yourself on your yourself. Let's listen to what Dad's doing with his audio ads. I mean, uh, frankly, honestly, I'm doing weekly audits for both prospects and clients and it is increasingly produced spots that sound like they've, and I know Steve and I could go on a huge rabbit trail here.

(31:10):
It's produced spots in these podcast ad breaks that sound like they've simply been ported over from radio with no thought or concern and it's like, wow. So anyway, that's what we're gonna listen to. I do still wanna shout out to Magellan, if you want a free demo of their product, which I highly suggest, you can go to magellan.ai/add infinitum. And with no further ado, let's grade some ads. Alright, so these are the top spenders for media monitors over the week of March 10th through the 16th 2025. And that is progressive Verizon Wireless at and t and Cricket. What was interesting is using VX to view their spend, we're looking at millions of dollars year to date. And then what I did is I isolated like the top spot and I had to make a decision since two of us are located in Los Angeles, I went with Los Angeles and also frankly when I clicked on New York, I was getting mostly Spanish ads, which was interesting.

(32:01):
And they were Puerto Rican, they were like targeting Puerto Ricans in New York. I was like, this is interesting. So instead went with the top spot for each one of these advertisers in Los Angeles just so you guys have context that they spent the most against in February. And that's the thing with that infinitum was always like it to be like boots on the ground. What is happening in reality right now? And so those four top advertisers are progressive, Verizon Wireless, at and t Wireless and Cricket. Have we discovered a theme here? You'll see what I mean. It's not that they're identical, it's that they were the spots with the most spend against them in February. So we're just gonna jump right in. This first one is the top Spiner and their top spot in Angeles in the month of February on commercial radio. A riddle brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

(32:44):
What do your home and auto have in common? Progressive protects them both. It was an easy riddle. Learn more@progressive.com <laugh> and the game is afoot. All right, so what you're doing is you're gonna be grading these on a scale of Steve Goldstein, scale of one to 10 in persuasiveness, the Jordan Brady scale of one to 10 in persuasiveness. And then I will provide the audio lytic scores. What I've been doing most recently is I give all those at the end so as not to tip the scales and what typically happens is we hold these truths to be self-evident that the audio lytics scores tend to ride right along with professionals such as yourselves scores. But we'll see. So starting with this first ad, I'll look to you Steve, what do you give this on a scale of one to 10 in audio persuasiveness.

Steven Goldstein (33:28):
Alright, so you want me to rate that? It's really not even a big spot. It's a 10, it's a tease and it doesn't have any production value, so I gotta put it in the five or six zone. I'm not sure I need to stick around to find out what the riddle is. So that bothers me a bit, but it doesn't feel like a full on spot.

Stew Redwine (33:47):
Yeah, and it is a 10 and you know that's something we've done as well. You know, a reminder, this is a massive advertiser, but nevertheless, thanks for starting. We're off to the races and they're off. We're gonna give that one a five and a half from Steve Jordan, what do you give this progressive ten second spot?

Jordan Brady (34:03):
I gave it a six. I liked its brevity and that it was to the point, but it lacked flare. Like if you're gonna use a riddle, you could have teased it like it was gonna be a big twist at the end and it wasn't. They didn't play into that. They missed the human touch for me.

Stew Redwine (34:19):
All right, and here's Verizon. This is this top spot from February. Here we go.

Announcer 1 (34:25):
Right now at Verizon you can get one line for less than you think. Just $50 per month. When you bring your phone, which is less than you spend on Bella's dog Walker and Glam Squad every week, get one line on unlimited welcome for $50 per month with auto pay plus taxes and fees at your local LA Verizon store today. $15 monthly promo credit supplied over 36 months with a new line on unlimited welcome in times of congestion unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic, domestic data roaming at two G speeds. Additional terms applies.

Stew Redwine (34:55):
All right, Mr. Brady, we'll start with you on this one.

Jordan Brady (34:57):
Well I'm gonna give it a five because there was no sound design, Bella's Dog Walker and Glam Squad. There wasn't a roof or anything, it was just like randomly mentioning that I spend $50 on my dog's walker and glam squad. What is a glam squad for a dog? That was just, and then I tuned out during the other stuff. But I will appreciate that they didn't race through the end of the spot like a lot of ads do.

Stew Redwine (35:24):
The disclaimer you're saying?

Jordan Brady (35:25):
The disclaimer. Yeah.

Stew Redwine (35:26):
Yeah. Which if we look at it, the disclaimer was 10 seconds of disclaimer, $50 monthly credit

Jordan Brady (35:32):
To a 30

Steven Goldstein (35:33):
Mr. Goldstein, it feels in the four to five zone, this feels like a scroll. What do I mean by that? This is the sort of thing that I would see on my browser or in TikTok or Instagram and I would just keep going because there's nothing new here. $50 per month that is definitely less than I would think, but then it was qualified down there and if you catch it down at the bottom, which most people wouldn't is that they're giving you their lower tier service, which is why they say it may be temporarily slower than other traffic domestic and data roaming. So there's always a catch whenever there's a deal. Sorry

Stew Redwine (36:08):
You caught it. You heard those T's and C's. All right, so we've got 5.5 for Progressive from Steve, Steve Alytics. We got a 4.5 for Verizon Jordan's tracking along, which is always interesting to me. Six for Progressive and five for Verizon. And then every once in a while we'll have one where people go two different directions. Next one on the list from media monitors weekly report. March 10th to the 16th. Again, this is looking at Los Angeles. We listen to Progressive Verizon. Next one up is at T Wireless. Here we go. Anna. Hey. Yes. Welcome to

Announcer 2 (36:39):
Mexico. Just visiting or coming home.

Stew Redwine (36:41):
Whoa,

Announcer 3 (36:42):
That's a fun question. Well, I live in LA but my heart is in Mexico too. Tell in your home, look at these familiar faces. Wait, who's that? Uh, that's Mexico. Anna trying to sway you. There's two of you. Mexico, Anna la Anna and you <foreign>. This is where your heart belongs. Your roots, your favorite football team. Homemade guacamole. What about la? Your favorite ice matcha, your high school friends, your precious routine. The street parties, Kaza Beach. Wait, why can't I have two homes? She's got a point Who's not sick? Can you tell have two homes? Yes. You know, as

Announcer 2 (37:15):
Long as I'm in LA or Mexico, I feel at home. <laugh>,

Steven Goldstein (37:19):
I totally get

Announcer 2 (37:19):
That. If your heart is in two places, your phone plans should be too. At and t keeps the 3, 2, 3 connected to Mexico and 20 other Latin American countries at no extra cost with unlimited data talk and text requires ATT limited premium pl, Mexico two G often data speed. They apply Latin America coverage in data speech, very international usage, not exceed domestic.

Steven Goldstein (37:38):
Who? Dio. Steve, what do you think of that? Uh, you gotta go a long way to find out what this thing is about. I went to Mexico and back and I still didn't know what it was about <laugh>. And when I finally get back there, I find out not much else. It's just another spot for another vendor. I mean I was hopeful at the beginning it had more production value and maybe a storyline, which I always like. But I also think, and this will please no advertiser and it shouldn't, is that if you aren't identifying yourself pretty clearly and what this story is gonna be about or what this ad is gonna be about near the top, you lose people like crazy. And so that's just the rule of the way it is today In our, in a little TikTok brain world, I don't think there's a choice. So I'm giving it a four.

Stew Redwine (38:25):
Okay, down the slippery slide we go. You know, and to your point Steve, you know Pierre Boulevard, I feel like every time they release more research over there, one of 'em is always like early and often didn't. And it's like with these, it's like, I mean it's completely predictable or derivative, but it works another at and t travel story. Like you could just do that, you know?

Steven Goldstein (38:42):
Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Stew Redwine (38:43):
Something. Yeah.

Steven Goldstein (38:44):
Hey, and I also wanted to mention going back to what Jordan said, do you remember when they sold knives in airports? That was a really good idea when they had a different era. Hey, weapons. Weapons right

Stew Redwine (38:55):
Over here, right before you enter the gate. Those were different times. Okay. But Ron Pope was on TV holding it down out there showing us all how it's done. But wait, there's more. All right, Jordan, what say you?

Jordan Brady (39:05):
Well, I gotta agree with my man Steve. The beginning, the setup to this ad was longer than Brody's Oscar acceptance speech <laugh>, which was actually longer than the brutalist itself. Now my wife being a Latina, I wanted to love it and I was following the story, but yeah, I was hoping at the end they would've said, do you need a phone that works in two places or I love your fix of an at t travel story, but that never came. So I'm gonna give it a 4.7.

Stew Redwine (39:36):
4.7 down the slide we go. So I remember once writing a note to a prospect or I know the way the story ended is they were a client, but I basically took creative, sort of similar to this and I'm just gonna do the math right now. If I do 46 divided by 60, that's the percent 76%. Okay? 76% of the ad is over before it's at and t. So now I'm gonna take $205,000, which is what was spent on this times 0.76. And what I wrote to that advertiser was, you just lit $155,000 on fire. Congratulations. Complete waste. I guess theoretically it could pay off that much of a setup of 46 seconds. And they're buying a minute, man, you know what? All of a sudden that ten second progressive ad is starting to look pretty delicious.

Steven Goldstein (40:23):
Yeah.

Stew Redwine (40:23):
Compared to this.

Steven Goldstein (40:24):
You mean the one targeted at the 82 year olds? Yeah. That's gonna work well too. <laugh>.

Stew Redwine (40:29):
Well, I mean the duration. Might as well do a ten second spot,

Steven Goldstein (40:32):
Right? Well you're catching them before they pass away, so that's good. <laugh>.

Jordan Brady (40:36):
By the way, that's 3,136,000 Mexican pesos, <laugh>,

Stew Redwine (40:42):
Onlay A. All right, let's move on. Cricket, this is the last one and then we'll wrap up. So here we go. Cricket was the fourth largest advertiser in Los Angeles in the month of February, according to media monitors on commercial radio, which is podcast daddy. Here we go.

Jordan Brady (40:58):
Is

Stew Redwine (40:58):
That a new Samsung Galaxy? A 15 5G? Yeah, I got it for free when I joined Cricket Nation. Sounds pretty great at cricket. Anyone can get a new phone when they switch. Whoa. With a high quality camera, meaning more flattering selfies for all and super fast 5G. So you can post them or all to see your friends, your family, your Fs. Free phone.

Announcer 1 (41:17):
Free phone. Okay, I'll switch. Welcome to Cricket Nation Cricket. Five G's not available everywhere. Must bring your number to Cricket on a 60 month voice plan. First one, service charge tax to it sale terms com.

Stew Redwine (41:28):
Alright, we'll start with you Mr. Goldstein. What do you think?

Steven Goldstein (41:31):
I'm gonna give that a seven. They had mission and they got right to it and they stayed on it. And you know, maybe it's not the biggest offer ever made, but it is one of the clearest, certainly in this little competition that we've gone through here. Mr. Brady, do you agree?

Jordan Brady (41:46):
I concur with Steve. You know when I think of cricket, I think of a burner phone. Like that's what I would get. And I realize I'm wrong, but this set it up perfectly. Is that a new Samsung Galaxy and I got it free when I joined Cricket Nation, now I'm listening free phone. And they had the herbs and spices and the sound design and then the guy wrapped it up rather quickly, but at that point, who cares? I'm entertained, I give it an eight.

Stew Redwine (42:10):
Wow. Okay, well I happen to agree with you guys on that as well. You gave it an eight. So if we do these in order, we're saying Cricket was at the top with Steve and Jordan and then it was just descending on from Progressive to Verizon to at and t. And when I look at our audio lytic scores, for the most part there's an alignment there. What's interesting is yet again the top rated ad at 79% on a scale of 90% as our target score for all in market creative. 'cause essentially there's 71 sub components, they're all weighted based on performance and it gets increasingly difficult to add to your score as the score moves up. So Steve gave cricket a seven, Jordan gave it an eight and Audio Lytics gave it a 79%. So we have a very clear winner and I think, you know, they did a lot of stuff right?

(43:02):
I even think it's cool they did a co-branded spot and they got that outta the way right up front. Sometimes I'll see that get mentioned again at the bottom. And I think getting it out of the way, almost like putting the disclaimer at the front, which we've done at Oxford Road, get that stuff outta the way so we can talk. And in this cricket nation, I also think you know what you brought up Jordan, about Bella's grooming the dog grooming. Like it's an attempt to be clever and I also think an attempt to, well we're speaking to dog owners 'cause we know our audience is a lot of dog owners, but it was almost too specific while selfies, you got everybody there, right? They actually are being somewhat cute but making an appeal that everyone can relate to. So you know, very clear winner here. And I guess I would ask you both listening to all four of these, how much AI slop do you think we just heard?

Steven Goldstein (43:45):
I just wanna know what the answer was to the riddle

Stew Redwine (43:48):
<laugh>. The answer was progressive. I'm waiting. Did we hear anything in there that was distinctly human? How do we look at these through the AI slop conversation is my question.

Steven Goldstein (43:58):
My filter on this is somewhat simplistic and I don't know that it's really tuned for the AI world, but capturing attention has to be done in one to three seconds or people move on. And I don't care whether you're talking about a song on the radio, an ad on the radio, an ad on a podcast, you know, subject matter that is just not appealing or of interest that's getting harder and harder. And so I don't even have an AI quotient on that other than to say a lot of that creative did not click on that level.

Stew Redwine (44:27):
Jordan, what's your take on these ads through the initial conversation in slop,

Jordan Brady (44:31):
The AI lop lens? Well I think that Bella and her dog walker and the glam squad was not ai. I think it was a swing and a mist by a human that has a dog and spends too much on their dog. And I was like, hmm, maybe they needed a little AI slot to make it more mass appealing. What's the one that just went on and on about Mexico Horizon? I think that one had a little AI swap with the litany of things going back and forth. I like my latte in LA and my tequila body shots in Mexico.

Stew Redwine (45:01):
I think that's a really great point. You know, both of you, it's funny, you know, Jordan, you're pointing out where maybe that's some derivative stuff. I guess the point is, you know, whichever one that was, I always love this about Adam finite is that like we will listen to an ad and within three minutes someone can't remember it. I'm like, well that's everything you need to know right there, <laugh>. Like, I can't remember. We just, and it's like we just listened to it. In fact we were solely focused on it and you still can't remember it, but nevertheless it was long in the tooth, you know, I mean we talked about that it was 40 some seconds before they introduced the brand and the one that we had that was standing out was cricket where they said their name early and often I think, you know, to your point Steve, it's kind of like ending this episode on AI Slough is like, that's not even the point.

(45:40):
Don't get distracted by that. The game, the mission has not changed. It is to get attention and keep attention and be worthy of it. And so this is what I, you know, for the chief audio officers that are listening, you know, to sum it up to remember from today, boring is expensive. So even though we're talking about it, we're having fun with it. Thankfully people have done the math and it costs you two to two and a half times more with your boring creative. So interesting, beats boring every single time. AI best serves creativity, not replace it. And I'm almost struggling with the word creativity, but that you use AI in service of the mission, which is to be distinct and memorable. So garbage in, garbage out, you can join the great masses of folks that are making you know AI lop. If you're not making sure that you are grabbing attention and keeping attention and being worthy of keeping attention.

(46:26):
I always think of that word worthy and protect your sonic signature, whatever that is. It can be a lot of things, you know, we didn't really touch on that, but Cricket had their audio logo in there. I didn't hear at and t's an at t spot, which is fascinating. But if you have, you know, every brand makes some kind of sound. And I think, you know, something I've been talking about recently is like, just like people we're timid to get up in front of a group of people and talk even more timid to get up in front of a group of people and sing. I'm in a store and I'm singing. I think brands are timid to use their voice and it's like, don't be define your voice and use it so people can recognize you. And consistency beats scale. So yeah, Napoleon said quantity has a quality all of its own, but if you can consistently show up with distinct assets, that's gonna be a lot better than just blasting a whole bunch of mediocre stuff out there. So what's the fastest way to lose money? Sound like everyone else? What's the fastest way to make money in audio? Be distinct, be memorable, and be worthy of the audience's attention. 'cause you're renting space in their mind. Well, Steven Jordan, this was a very tidy conversation, wasn't sloppy, very human conversation. Where can people follow you guys to hear more from you?

Steven Goldstein (47:32):
You can reach me at Amplify A-M-P-L-I-F-I media.com, Steve Goldstein. And I would like to add one other thing if I could please. We use this axiom all the time. What's in it for me? W-I-I-F-M and people are narcissists with their time and if you aren't getting to the point with them quickly, they just move on. They got other things to think about.

Stew Redwine (47:55):
Excellent point. I'm glad you said that. Absolutely. Like Steve said, just go to A-M-P-L-I-I media.com to read more of his very insightful thoughts and engage with him there. And Jordan, where can people hear more from you?

Jordan Brady (48:09):
Well, first of all, I mean, amplify with an I instead of a y media.com is a great website, Steve, and it's been a pleasure to be on the show with you. It's been wonderful, Stu, thanks for having me. You can go to True Gent TV because I'm a true gentleman and that's my commercial production company and commercial directing film school.com, which is too long of a URL. But just remember commercial directing film school.com. We have a retreat for filmmakers, storytellers, producers, audio people. And the theme for our fourth year in a row is called Define Your Voice. Because as a filmmaker, if you define your voice and become a specialist and be known for the thing you do, you're gonna cut through the slot. So you just said it like 3.8 minutes ago, define your voice as an advertiser. So that's very much aligned with our philosophy at commercial directing film school.com.

Stew Redwine (49:02):
Well this has been awesome. Thank you guys very much. I can't encourage the listeners enough to check out both Jordan Brady and Steve Goldstein. They're both very open-handed, huge fans of both of you guys. You both have impacted my work. Such a fun conversation. So thanks again. Thank you. Pleasure. To our listeners, thank you for tuning into Add Infinitum. If you love this episode, let us know with an honest five star review and if there's an audio add or campaign you want us to break down, send it my way. That's stew@oxfordroad.com, STE w@oxfordroad.com. And don't forget, if you wanna see the latest podcast ad rankings and insights, check that out at magellan.ai/ad infinitum for your free demo. And most importantly, until next time, remember to have fun making the ads work.