# Is Streaming TV the Next Performance Marketing Channel?

> A NachoTuesday interview — the C-Suite Insights series from NachoNacho, the B2B SaaS and AI
> marketplace. In conversation with PJ Wenzel and Alex W., CEO and COO, Adlever.

- **Page:** https://nachonacho.com/nachotuesday/video/Is-Streaming-TV-the-Next-Performance-Marketing-Channel
- **Guest:** PJ Wenzel and Alex W., CEO and COO, Adlever
- **Recorded:** 2026-10-27
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaxFnH6djMo

## Summary

In this Nacho Tuesday session, Andy sits down with the founders of Ad Lever to discuss how their platform is changing the landscape of programmatic streaming and display advertising. By cutting out the middlemen, Ad Lever offers a self-service "easy button" that gives small and medium-sized businesses the exact same household-level targeting capabilities normally reserved for large agencies. Key Takeaways: Hyper-Targeted Access for SMBs : Ad Lever bypasses traditional trade desks and DMPs, allowing businesses to upload their own first-party data or select highly specific deterministic data points (e.g., homeowners under 40 with a college degree) to serve ads directly to exact households. Quality Over Volume : Rather than enforcing minimum budgets, Ad Lever recommends targeting a minimum of 1,000 households to ensure adequate frequency without over-saturating or confusing the buying algorithms. Streaming vs. Social Economics : While social media ads see massive drop-offs within seconds, streaming TV (CTV) ads boast video completion rates upwards of 90%. Streaming is ideal for 30-second storytelling, whereas social is better for immediate three-second click-throughs. Creative Best Practices: For video and display ads, advertisers should always keep their logo on screen, focus on building positive psychological associations around customer pain points, and commit to enough frequency to actually generate measurable results.

## Product discussed

- **Name:** AdLever
- **Page:** https://nachonacho.com/product/AdLever
- **What it is:** Launch targeted display & video campaigns across channels in minutes.
- **NachoNacho deal:** Lifetime Pro Membership for just $1,800 USD
- **Estimated savings:** Save up to $948/year

## Full transcript

Andy: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to another Nacho Tuesday. Today I have Alex and PJ here with Ad Lever. Without further ado, we would love it if you guys could introduce yourselves and what you do over at Ad Lever. Alex: Sure. I'm the COO, and I oversee the technical aspects of what we do and our product setup. I manage our connections with different services and work closely with our programmers to organize our product offering. I love bringing precision targeting to the masses. PJ: And I'm the CEO. I do nothing and take all the credit for it. I helped birth the company, lead the vision, determine where we should go technologically, and figure out where we need to be in a year or two. I do all the things a CEO does and take the responsibility for it. Andy: Excellent. Could you tell us more about Ad Lever? How did this company start, and what exactly do you guys do, just for the uninformed viewers that might be watching? PJ: I'll take that one. We just launched in May, birthed out of the idea of democratizing programmatic streaming, display, and pre-roll advertising. Alex and I have the same titles at a company called Ring Digital. Ring is the managed-service version of Ad Lever, whereas Ad Lever is an entirely self-service ad platform. Ring has been doing this for 12 years with many clients, but we wanted a way for smaller businesses and nonprofits to create their own campaigns and have that same level of targeting. Ad Lever allows you to bring your own first-party data—or purchase data from us—and create your own display or video ads. You can then send those ads across streaming TV or online video directly to the audience you've selected. It is the easy button for first-party data activation in the digital space. Andy: It sounds like this has been unattainable for a lot of performance marketers for many years. Doing streaming TV ads wasn't easily accessible for the average business. What has changed over the last few years? Is it really just a UX change and offering this level of turnkey service? PJ: It's been a gradual evolution. There's an old story, Andy, about John Wanamaker, the great department store merchant. He always said he knew half of his advertising was wasted; the problem was he didn't know which half. That's the problem marketers have struggled with for years. It's not just a UX difference; it goes much deeper than that. Getting on target—getting in front of a very specific group of people at the household level—is incredibly complex. Everyone likes to say they target at the household level, but do they really know exactly who they're targeting? It's like a beautiful mechanical watch. They look simple and elegant on the outside, but inside they have all these complications that hide hundreds of years of sophisticated engineering. It's the same with Ad Lever. Behind the scenes, you're bypassing a DMP, a DSP, and a trade desk. You're going all the way to your audience and the ad networks. There's a lot of wiring, but the UX allows people to basically upload their own spreadsheet, create their ad, and instantly get in front of those specific people on streaming TV. The technology has always been there, but you previously had to go to the big players, bring a lot of business, and make a strong case for how you wanted things connected. Now, we've thought deeply about the UX to make it attractive and simple. Andy: So it's always existed, but it's not what you do, it's how you do it. You guys have tied all those pieces together and made it accessible for the masses. It's moved from a media buyer role to something attainable for a performance marketer who wants hyper-targeting and a turnkey approach to pull off these campaigns at scale. Do you see streaming becoming one of the top new marketing channels in the next couple of years for SMBs? PJ: I hope so. The issue is that there aren't many people creating tools like this. Streaming is already highly popular, but the question is how small and medium businesses can use it to their advantage when they can't afford the overwhelming amount of money it traditionally takes. The way streaming has been purchased up until now is a lot like throwing a dinner party and sending invitations to everyone in the city, hoping the right people show up. Ad Lever gives you an actual guest list. Andy: It sounds like this has been unattainable for a lot of performance marketers for many years. Doing streaming TV ads wasn't easily accessible for the average business. What has changed over the last few years? Is it really just a UX change and offering this level of turnkey service? PJ: It's been a gradual evolution. There's an old story, Andy, about John Wanamaker, the great department store merchant. He always said he knew half of his advertising was wasted; the problem was he didn't know which half. That's the problem marketers have struggled with for years. It's not just a UX difference; it goes much deeper than that. Getting on target—getting in front of a very specific group of people at the household level—is incredibly complex. Everyone likes to say they target at the household level, but do they really know exactly who they're targeting? It's like a beautiful mechanical watch. They look simple and elegant on the outside, but inside they have all these complications that hide hundreds of years of sophisticated engineering. It's the same with Ad Lever. Behind the scenes, you're bypassing a DMP, a DSP, and a trade desk. You're going all the way to your audience and the ad networks. There's a lot of wiring, but the UX allows people to basically upload their own spreadsheet, create their ad, and instantly get in front of those specific people on streaming TV. The technology has always been there, but you previously had to go to the big players, bring a lot of business, and make a strong case for how you wanted things connected. Now, we've thought deeply about the UX to make it attractive and simple. Andy: So it's always existed, but it's not what you do, it's how you do it. You guys have tied all those pieces together and made it accessible for the masses. It's moved from a media buyer role to something attainable for a performance marketer who wants hyper-targeting and a turnkey approach to pull off these campaigns at scale. Do you see streaming becoming one of the top new marketing channels in the next couple of years for SMBs? PJ: I hope so. The issue is that there aren't many people creating tools like this. Streaming is already highly popular, but the question is how small and medium businesses can use it to their advantage when they can't afford the overwhelming amount of money it traditionally takes. The way streaming has been purchased up until now is a lot like throwing a dinner party and sending invitations to everyone in the city, hoping the right people show up. Ad Lever gives you an actual guest list. Right now, marketers primarily learn digital marketing through social channels like TikTok or LinkedIn. To get programmatic targeting through top ad agencies, you typically have to spend tens of thousands of dollars every month on platforms like The Trade Desk. Hopefully, this tool is the first of several that democratizes the process. Andy: With so many new products coming out right now, especially with AI, it is hyper-competitive to get in front of customers and build brand awareness. Streaming could be a much more accessible channel for small business owners going forward, shifting from a large-scale brand awareness channel to a targeted performance channel. Realistically, what is the minimum campaign size you recommend for people to get started? Alex: We normally recommend no fewer than 1,000 households. We talk in terms of audience size rather than a dollar amount because we want users to be effective. On Google or Meta, you can spend $15 a day to an audience of 6.5 million. The platforms will gladly serve that budget, but they're just dripping the message out and don't want you to get too targeted. We are the opposite. We want you to use just the people you want to get in front of. But to make sure we're serving evenly and the buying algorithms don't get confused, we recommend at least 1,000 households. If you don't have data, you can purchase it within the platform. With Ad Lever Pro, you can download the spreadsheet of those households and use it for your business intelligence. Frequency is very important. Academic studies and industry experts like Seth Godin emphasize the effectiveness of frequency. We don't want people to spend $150 to an audience of 10,000 and get zero sales. Our mascot is Archimedes, who said, "Give me a lever long enough, and I'll move the world," and that's exactly what we're doing. Andy: Great point. People need multiple impressions these days, especially since attention spans are shorter. It's good to have a full marketing mix—hitting them on social and streaming. How do the economics of streaming work compared to social and other advertising channels? Alex: With streaming, it's a bigger screen, and it's much more difficult to skip, making each impression a higher quality one. For example, we're running a campaign right now using videos adapted for both social and the big screen. The big-screen videos have a 98.5% video completion rate. Those exact same ads on social have a 1% completion rate. Only 13% of people are making it 25% of the way through a 30-second social video—that's just seven and a half seconds. Conversely, a lot more people will click on a social ad because you can't easily click on a CTV ad. It really depends on your content. If you have a story that requires 30 seconds to tell, CTV is a great channel. If you have an idea that can be conveyed in under three seconds to drive traffic, social is the better choice. It's apples and oranges from a budget standpoint, but on CTV we've seen terrific video completion rates that move audiences on their own. Andy: I can attest to that. I'm conditioned to ignore social media ads, but anything I stream definitely catches my attention. How sophisticated can this audience targeting really get? What kind of variables are you hitting? Alex: It gets very targeted. Let's say you want to target people who own homes, are under 40, have children, hold a college degree, and have an estimated net worth of over $200,000. You can put all of those together to get a very specific audience in any area, whether that's Denver or Fairbanks. Every data point you add narrows the audience. All the data points we make available are based on actual, real-world spending habits. They are deterministic, not modeled. If you swipe your card at Petco, you're flagged as a pet owner. Buying a house is public record, so you're flagged as a homeowner. Basically, if you take part in modern conveniences, you are signaling hard data points about your lifestyle. Consumers consistently say they prefer curated advertising over seeing ads for things they don't care about, so this benefits both the advertiser and the consumer. Andy: So it utilizes similar third-party data points to what you'd find through Meta advertising to help narrow that targeting down? Alex: Yes, we give direct access to that through the audience picker. We currently have about 25 to 30 hard data points. We don't use self-reported data because it gets outdated quickly. We rely on what people have currently done in the real world. Andy: What does attribution look like for someone trying this out for the first time? Alex: This is one of my favorite questions. With the data that people bring, they already have those records in their CRM. It's as simple as flagging them as an audience receiving advertising, and then tracking them as a sale when they come back in. If you're an Ad Lever Pro member and use our provided data, you can do the same thing: tag them as Ad Lever contacts or flag them as campaign-specific. On the backend, you'll be able to easily calculate return on ad spend or cost of marketing. Andy: What key metrics would a marketer consider to determine if a campaign is successful? PJ: Since we're talking about streaming, video completion rates are what you're looking for. On the big screen, you want to see those 90% completion rates. With pre-roll, you're hoping for north of 50%, ideally into the low 70s. When you're looking at display advertising, click-through rates are important. Ultimately, the metric is whether people bought or acted on your advertising. The neat thing about Ad Lever is that you can match your targeted first-party data against your sales records to see if they actually purchased. Alex: We also provide a dashboard where we've taken various performance and vanity metrics and weighted them into an "Ad Lever Score." This gives marketers an at-a-glance view of the health of their campaign based on a combination of audience size, video complete rate, and click-through rate. Andy: Do you guys provide services to help with the creative? Let's say it's a local plumber who isn't technically capable of creating a high-quality video. What does that look like? PJ: Everything on the platform is do-it-yourself, though you can always reach out to us through the contact page for creative solutions. The idea with Ad Lever is that even a local plumber can get on there and make their own ad. We have templatized video ads, making it as simple as a couple of clicks—upload your logo, and you're off to the races. Alex mentioned Seth Godin earlier. In a 2003 TED Talk, Seth pointed out that inventing sliced bread wasn't the hard part; getting people to care about it was. There's a big lesson there for advertisers. You can have perfect distribution, but if your message is forgettable, you've just figured out how to deliver a forgettable message more efficiently. Many AI ad creation tools generate unusable content and dump you into complex video suites. We approached video differently, releasing foolproof templates that make life incredibly easy for users without creative experience. Andy: It looks like we're out of time, but I can go a few minutes over. What are the biggest mistakes you see people make with their creatives, and what tips would you recommend for optimizing streaming campaigns? You have to capture attention within the first three to five seconds. Alex: When it comes to creative, we ask our graphic designers to follow a few specific principles. First, try to keep the logo on screen all the time. Similar to a political yard sign where the first name is tiny and the last name is massive, you always want to advertise the brand name. Second, make a positive psychological association. You don't have to answer every possible question in your advertisement; you just have to make the audience feel seen regarding their pain point, and show that you have a way to address it. Keep that brand on screen and pique their interest. Andy: Consistency is everything in branding. Get your logo out there so people recognize it the next time around. PJ: 100%. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner, always said you should "invert, always invert"—begin with the end in mind. Instead of asking what guarantees a successful advertising campaign, ask what practically guarantees a failed one. First, you launch without a plan. Second, you don't put enough frequency behind it. Third, you panic after two weeks because the phone isn't ringing and you turn everything off. One of the easiest ways to waste your budget is to spend just enough money to prove absolutely nothing. Andy: Good products start with the problem you're trying to solve, and the solution gets designed around that. A lot of people just create a solution in search of a problem. PJ: Exactly. Ad Lever wasn't created just because we thought it'd be fun. It solves two real problems. First, small businesses don't have access to this kind of targeting, and setting up a Facebook or Google ad looks incredibly complex compared to using Ad Lever. Second, most businesses can't afford to bully the DSPs and DMPs into allowing them to target specific households for backend tracking. Ad Lever solves problems for the layperson, the small business owner, and the sophisticated marketing expert sitting inside a Fortune 500 company. Andy: It cuts out the intermediaries operating on the old-school playbook and demystifies the whole process, making it accessible with a turnkey approach—very much like Google AdWords did back in the day with search. Where can people learn more about your services and pick it up today? Alex: Adlever.io is a great place to start, or the Nacho Nacho marketplace. It's a tremendously easy way to use the most advanced tools available in programmatic advertising today. Andy: We're proud partners to have you guys in the marketplace. I'm highly excited about this product myself. Streaming has historically been difficult to get into, but what you are doing makes it accessible for marketers like myself to launch turnkey campaigns. I highly recommend any business owners or marketers check this company out today. Thanks for coming on today, guys. PJ & Alex: Thanks, Andy. Take care.

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