Inside Street Poller Media, the World's Largest Street Interview Ad Agency
Written by Amelia R. Lange
Most agencies are built around a studio. Street Poller Media, the world's largest street interview ad agency, is built around the sidewalk.
The Miami-headquartered company makes street interview ads: unscripted conversations with real people, filmed on the street and cut into performance ads for Meta, TikTok and YouTube. Shane Ginsberg pioneered street polling in Miami in 2020, and the operation behind it has grown to include a proprietary database of more than 300,000 street polls, 500+ brands served and $25M+ a month in ad spend behind its work.
How it started
Ginsberg grew up in Los Angeles and moved to Miami when COVID hit in 2020. He began filming in South Beach to hear what real people actually thought.The turning point came when the brand behind Art of the Tweet, a coffee table book of Donald Trump's tweets, reached out in 2022. The 2023 campaign generated more than $1 million in revenue at a 3.67x return on ad spend. It proved street polling could work as a performance ad format, and Ginsberg built the company around that result.
The people on the street
Today Street Poller Media employs roughly 95 to 100 people. At the center of the work are its 35+ certified pollers, each trained through an 8-week certification program before running interviews for brands. The pollers work across six markets: Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Ohio and Texas.The leadership team
The leadership team is headed by Shane Ginsberg, Founder and CEO, who sets the company’s vision and direction. He is joined by Samantha McCarthy, Chief Creative Officer (CCO), who leads the creative work, and Jen Mudafar, Chief Operating Officer (COO), who oversees day-to-day operations. Rounding out the team is Austin Handmaker, Head of Partnerships, who builds and manages the company’s key relationships.What the numbers add up to
The company's street polls have generated more than $100 million in revenue for the brands it works with. It has been named the #1 street interview advertising agency by The Brand Hopper. Ginsberg bootstrapped the business with no outside investors.His case for the format comes down to one line: "People buy from people, right? They don't buy from machines."
Man-on-the-street interviews ran on television for decades as entertainment. Ginsberg was the first to turn them into short-form street interview ads with trackable ROI. Six years and six markets later, the format he started on a Miami beach has its own agency, its own certification program and its own category.
