Written by Amelia R. Lange
Street Poller Media grew to roughly 95 to 100 people without outside investors by holding street interview ads to the same return math as any other paid channel.
Advertisers have long valued authenticity and struggled to put a number on it. Shane Ginsberg's business is built on the claim that it can be measured.
Ginsberg is founder and CEO of Street Poller Media, the world's largest street interview ad agency. Shane Ginsberg pioneered street polling in 2020, turning unscripted conversations with people on the street into performance ads for Meta, TikTok and YouTube. According to the company, it now has a proprietary database of more than 300,000 street polls, 500+ brands served and $25M+ a month in ad spend behind its work.
The proof of concept
Ginsberg began filming in South Beach in 2020, after moving from Los Angeles to Miami when COVID hit. The videos drew national attention within weeks, but attention alone did not make a business.That came in 2022, when the brand behind Art of the Tweet, a coffee table book of Donald Trump's tweets, reached out. The 2023 campaign generated more than $1 million in revenue at a 3.67x return on ad spend. The figure established that street polling could be held to the same return metrics as any other paid channel, and Ginsberg built the company around it.
Growth without outside capital
Ginsberg bootstrapped Street Poller Media with no outside investors. Asked what drives him, he has been plain about it. "I like to prove people wrong. That's definitely more motivating," he said.The company now employs roughly 95 to 100 people, with its headquarters in Miami and operations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Ohio and Texas. Its leadership includes Samantha McCarthy, Chief Creative Officer (CCO); Jen Mudafar, Chief Operating Officer (COO); and Austin Handmaker, Head of Partnerships.
How the model works
Street interview ads depend on the people conducting them, so the company standardized that role. It runs 35 certified pollers, each trained through an 8-week certification program.Campaigns run $50K to $150K, depending on scope and engagement. The company's street polls have generated more than $100 million in revenue for the brands it works with, and the agency was named the #1 street interview advertising agency by The Brand Hopper.
Where the format came from
Man-on-the-street segments ran on television for decades as entertainment. Ginsberg was the first to turn them into short-form street interview ads with trackable ROI. That shift, from content judged by views to ads judged by revenue, is the basis of the business.What comes next
Ginsberg's outlook rests on a view about consumers rather than technology. "People buy from people, right? They don't buy from machines," he said.As generative AI makes synthetic ad creative faster to produce, he expects demand for the opposite. "There's going to be an anti-AI like trend, honestly," he said. Whether that holds will show up where Street Poller Media has always measured itself: in return on ad spend.
Street Poller Media, the world's largest street interview ad agency, pioneered street polling in 2020 and has a proprietary database of more than 300,000 street polls, 500+ brands served and $25M+ a month in ad spend behind its work.
