David Kaplan – Head of Digital Marketing at GrocerKey

David Kaplan is an expert in digital customer acquisition and analytics who faced a major barrier — what can be done about viewability and attribution.  He comes on the show to share how he came into attribution, what this has enabled him to do, and how he overcame the challenges of early adoption.

David Kaplan started his career with the Tribune Company as a sysadmin for a joint venture with America Online. In the early nineties, David became Director of Special Projects for SportsLine, working on some of the earliest sports websites such as Shaq.com and the San-Francisco 49ers. As digital continued its growth, David built out affiliate, paid search and SEO programs for TicketsNow and Discover Financial. In 2009, David took on all digital media responsibilities for Peapod, including aggregating multiple lines of business and integrating a multi-touch attribution platform to become the single source of truth.

Key takeaways:

[1:26] I introduce today’s guest, David Kaplan, and invite him to walk us through his career, from starting out as a self-taught developer to creating Shaq’s website to where he is today: Head of Digital Marketing at GrocerKey.

[4:14] David speaks to the challenges of acquiring customers while he was at Peapod — Google Analytics taking credit for conversion where the people never even saw the ad, duplicates, etc. — and how he dealt with those before he found attribution.

[6:57] David details the priorities he had when he began his search for an attribution partner, starting with viewability.

[8:36] Today’s marketing environment is incredibly competitive and the COA is going up, so you definitely need to know what your money is doing! David also touches on the ramifications of customer blindness and resistance.

[10:56] David shares his biggest marketing lessons as well as what his aha moment was, with regard to attribution and how he got Peapod to adopt this new technology.

[15:23] Getting people to believe the numbers was in part about data warehouse matching but also education about a multi-touch process.

[17:10] David explains why the first touch is so important in customer acquisition in non-brand search.

[18:12] In 10 years, David predicts that anyone who is serious and can afford it will be doing attribution.

[19:04] I thank David for coming on the podcast and sharing so much of his experience.

Be sure to tune in for the next episode and thanks for listening!

Connect with our guest:

David Kaplan on LinkedIn