Brendan Weitz, Head of Product Partnerships

Brendan is responsible for revenue, distribution, acquisition, and growth related partnerships while also leading Quora’s NY office.

How do you think the way people look for information online will change in the future and how will it impact advertising?

We’re already seeing a massive shift in how and where people access information.  By the end of 2020, over 50% of searches will be done via voice .  While the majority of voice searches are happening on mobile devices, we see behavior shifting as habits are forming with voice assistants in the home, car, and elsewhere.  I’m pretty confident that the majority of voice searches are what I’d call “short form” like asking the weather, time, or to play a song, however I’m bullish that over time we’ll see voice cover more mid and long tail queries as voice assistants like Alexa, Bixby, Home, and Siri become smarter.

It’s pretty early days from an advertising standpoint with regards to voice as a channel, however thinking more holistically, with the increase in the use of these digital assistants, optimizing for voice search is already critical to SEO success at this point and I’m confident that voice will have a line item for advertising budget in the next few years.

Can you give some tips on how to get the most out of Quora advertising?

I tell marketers all the time to first get onto Quora as a user or business, start following topics, and read or answer questions.  This will provide some baseline understanding of the user experience on Quora for those of which you’ll be trying to reach via advertising.

Quora is nuanced in the sense that there are essentially two types of users - those whom consume content via the Quora feed on web, app, and email-- and --those whom come from search engine queries looking for a specific answer to a question and spend time on question pages.  Once understanding this, advertisers will be able to create strategies to reach these different types of users in the right context, with the right message via Quora ads based on their advertising objectives.

There are some great answers on Quora from our team members whom are smarter than me here and some best practices here from our business site.

Serious advertisers need tools to analyze campaigns. How do you work with AdStage to fill this need?

Absolutely true!  Considering our advertisers use multiple ad platforms to reach their customers, it is important for them to see a holistic view of their media investments in one place.  AdStage makes this happen by integrating with the Quora Ads API as an early beta partner. The AdStage integration improves workflow enabling marketers to get all their Quora Ads performance data into one place allowing them to spend time on strategy versus manual reporting or analytics.  We’ve gotten great feedback from advertisers leveraging the AdStage integration.

How does the Quora Ads Platform fit into a cross-network (or maybe integrated?) marketing strategy?

As people consider new products and services, Quora acts a resource for making informed decisions for over 300 million people every month.  As a result, the Quora Ads platform encompasses a robust suite of tools to help marketers reach consumers throughout their journey- from generating awareness to driving consideration through to conversion.

However, considering the mindset of the user on Quora - we typically fall into the “consideration” bucket or “mid-funnel” in marketing nomenclature as a critical touchpoint within the journey, therefore it’s important for marketers to evaluate their activity on Quora appropriately from an attribution standpoint (everyone’s favorite topic).

Are there any specific verticals or industries where Quora works particularly well for acquisition?

We’ve seen a lot of success across technology, professional services, education, recruiting, real estate, and finance, which aren’t surprising given the lengthy consideration cycle for these types of products/services.

However, some of the emerging verticals that we’re excited about are entertainment, commerce, and auto given the amount of content on Quora that lies in these areas. Here is a link to some of our case studies.