Rockerbox’s Attribution Journey

Summary

AdExchanger Talks: Rockerbox’s Attribution Journey – Detailed Summary

Podcast Information

• Title: AdExchanger
• Host/Author: AdExchanger Talks
• Episode: Rockerbox’s Attribution Journey
• Release Date: July 8, 2025
• Host: James Hersher (filling in for Managing Editor Allison Schiff)
• Guest: Ron Jacobson, Co-founder and CEO of Rockerbox

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1. Introduction to Ron Jacobson and Rockerbox

The episode kicks off with host James Hersher introducing Ron Jacobson, the Co-founder and CEO of Rockerbox. Jacobson shares his journey into the programmatic advertising space, starting from his early days as a software engineer at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Notable Quote:

"I was fresh out of college with a Computer Science engineering degree, working as a software engineer at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It took me six months to realize it wasn't aligned with what I wanted to do with my life." ([02:15])

2. Transition from AppNexus to Founding Rockerbox

Jacobson recounts his transition from AppNexus, where he served as a product manager, to founding Rockerbox alongside his first hire, Patrick Latul. He highlights the supportive and intellectually stimulating environment at AppNexus, which paved the way for his entrepreneurial venture.

Notable Quote:

"AppNexus was a very unique environment with super smart people at a hyper-fast growing company. I got really lucky." ([03:35])

3. Origin of Rockerbox: From Mobile App to Attribution

Initially, Rockerbox started as a mobile shopping app for women's fashion. However, after realizing the mismatch between Jacobson’s interests and the business, he pivoted to focus on attribution and measurement in advertising.

Notable Quote:

"We stopped the mobile app after two months when I realized I shouldn't be in the business of selling women's fashion." ([08:00])

4. Challenges in Scaling and Funding

Rockerbox faced significant challenges in scaling and securing venture capital. Despite generating profits through their initial media business, they struggled to obtain external funding, primarily due to the unfavorable timing of funding rounds and the unpopularity of managed service media businesses at the time.

Notable Quote:

"Every time we tried to raise capital, we failed. It was an adverse election problem." ([10:49])

5. Pivot to Attribution and Overcoming Industry Challenges

In 2018, Rockerbox shifted its focus exclusively to attribution, moving away from the profitable but distraction-heavy media business. This transition was driven by a desire for better alignment with client needs and a more sustainable business model.

Notable Quote:

"Attribution was a much better problem set for me and my co-founder. There was a much better founder-market fit than our original media business." ([15:18])

6. The Evolution of Attribution in AdTech

Jacobson discusses the evolving landscape of attribution over the past seven years. He notes the initial opportunities before significant privacy changes and the acquisition of first-generation attribution companies. Rockerbox differentiated itself by measuring across various channels, including paid social and direct mail, rather than solely focusing on programmatic.

Notable Quote:

"We approached measurement less from a lens of pure programmatic and less from the lens of piggybacking on DoubleClick UIDs." ([22:34])

7. Current Attribution Landscape and Rockerbox’s Position

Rockerbox operates in a highly competitive and fluctuating measurement industry, characterized by cycles of inflated expectations and subsequent disillusionment. Jacobson emphasizes the necessity for measurement providers to offer diverse methodologies, including multi-touch attribution (MTA), marketing mix modeling (MMM), and incrementality testing.

Notable Quote:

"All measurement providers are eventually going to have to provide all types of measurement." ([25:30])

8. Acquisition by DoubleVerify (DV)

The recent acquisition of Rockerbox by DoubleVerify is a significant milestone. Jacobson highlights how this partnership will enhance Rockerbox’s capabilities, allowing for organizational scaling, better go-to-market strategies, and integration with DV’s robust data resources.

Notable Quote:

"Coming together with DoubleVerify is going to be huge for Rockerbox. They bring a lot of resources that we never had." ([33:40])

9. Future Outlook and Optimism

Looking ahead, Jacobson expresses optimism about leveraging the combined strengths of Rockerbox and DoubleVerify. He anticipates accelerated growth, enhanced product offerings, and the ability to better serve clients with increased resources and support.

Notable Quote:

"We're excited to sell into DoubleVerify’s extensive customer base and leverage their data to make our product better." ([33:40])

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Conclusion

In this insightful episode, Ron Jacobson provides a comprehensive overview of Rockerbox’s journey from a premature mobile app venture to a leading attribution provider in the ad tech industry. He delves into the challenges of scaling a startup, the strategic pivot to attribution, and the significance of the recent acquisition by DoubleVerify. Jacobson’s experiences underscore the dynamic nature of the advertising technology landscape and highlight the importance of adaptability and strategic focus in driving business success.

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Notable Quotes Summary:

• Ron Jacobson ([02:15]): Discusses leaving the Federal Reserve for a startup environment.
• Ron Jacobson ([03:35]): Praises the unique environment at AppNexus.
• Ron Jacobson ([08:00]): Explains the pivot from a mobile shopping app to attribution.
• Ron Jacobson ([10:49]): Details challenges in securing venture capital.
• Ron Jacobson ([15:18]): Justifies the shift to attribution.
• Ron Jacobson ([22:34]): Highlights Rockerbox’s unique measurement approach.
• Ron Jacobson ([25:30]): Emphasizes the need for diverse measurement methodologies.
• Ron Jacobson ([33:40]): Expresses excitement about the acquisition by DoubleVerify.

Transcript

[Ron Jacobson]

Foreign.

[James Hersher]

Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you. Today's episode is sponsored by Philo Ads. Philo Ads is built for brands that want premium connected TV placements without the premium price tag. With highly engaged audiences on fan favorite networks like Discovery, TV One, mtv, ame, Own, Lifetime and more, Philo Ads delivers a CTV experience that gets results. Kick off your next campaign with Philo Ads today at Ads Philo tv.

[Allison Schiff]

Hello there and welcome to the Ad Exchanger Talks podcast, our weekly program featuring guests from across the world of data driven advertising and media. I'm Ad Exchanger's James Hersher, filling in this week for Managing Editor Allison Schiff. Before we start, let me give a quick pitch for the upcoming Programmatic IO conference in New York City, which will be September 29th and 30th at the Marriott Marquee. The agenda is coming together beautifully. A couple sneak peeks I don't even think are on the site yet include data and advertising leaders from CUR, Dr. Pepper and Coinbase, not to mention a recent FTC commissioner. So get your tickets now and I'll see you there. Should be a good one. But back to the show. Joining me this week is Ron Jacobson, who some listeners may know as co founder and CEO of Rockerbox. Jacobson has been deep in the weeds of programmatic advertising, starting as a relatively early product manager at UP Nexus and for the past 12 years or more has been the leader of Rockerbox, one of the longest standing attribution providers, whatever that means anymore, and which actually sold to Double Fairy in February this year. So, Ron, welcome. Thanks for being here.

[Ron Jacobson]

Thanks, James. Looking forward to, to catching up.

[Allison Schiff]

So, so yeah, let's, let's start by rewinding quite a bit. How do you, how did you end up in, in this space? And yeah, at AppNexus, I guess to start.

[Ron Jacobson]

So that's going back. Going back a while. I was fresh out of college. I had a COMSCI engineering degree, and at the time I was actually a software engineer at the Federal Reserve bank of New York. And it took me all of six months to realize that working for the Federal Reserve is not aligned with what I'm looking to do with my life for a host of reasons. And I literally remember finding this list. I think it might have been Business Insider of like the top 100 startups in America. And I think I applied to like 95 of them. Just like straight up, I'm like, I need something new and somehow I wound up in that Nexus office back then on 18th street interviewing for a job at a company that I frankly had no idea what they did. I remember an interview question was something around like what I would do with creatives or something. And my response is I'd ask you what a creative meant because I literally had no idea what the. About anything about this, about the industry. But yeah, it was really lucky, really fortunate Apex, this was an amazing place to be. It was a 45% company at the time. So just one of those really unique environments with super smart people at a hyper fast growing company. So got really, really lucky. I, I wound up there.

[Allison Schiff]

Yeah. So that's, I imagine a, a bit of a, a crash course over some months. If, if the word creative is new to you, there's a lot of jargon to learn. It's like yeah like a year of medical school or something or medical school sound makes it, makes it sound too smart for.

[Ron Jacobson]

Well, I actually have next a lot of credit. Something that they did really, really well was they invested a lot in training. I remember AppNexus had this whole thing for every new app Nexian, you had to be able to draw on a whiteboard like the full flow of an ad impression from a publisher to I guess the SSP to the exchange. And every single app Nexian from finance, legal to I was in pop from operations had had to be able to do it. And they, yeah they, they invested a lot in trading. But you're right, it was, it was kind of 0 to 100 learning all the acronyms that we love so much in our industry. So. But yeah, I, I got up to speed quickly.

[Allison Schiff]

So that was so got. Got a first taste of Programmatic unexpectedly and yeah, you know, so how does that lead to Rockerbox? It was only, what was it like a year or so later you.

[Ron Jacobson]

Yeah.

[Allison Schiff]

Started. Started a new company.

[Ron Jacobson]

No, I was, I was there for just about three years. I think maybe two and a half. Three years. Yeah, a little bit longer than that. Basically like the company scaled to like three, three 50 people and I just kind of realized I was less interested at the time in the problems of like how do you scale an organization from 350 to a thousand and more? Like how do we actually go from zero to one. And when I joined up Dexus I kind of told myself that I would use this to kind of use your analogy again as like my MBA learn how a business is run as opposed to actually going to get an M. I don't know if Going to a startup is the best way to learn how businesses are run. But it definitely taught me something about how you can get a product in market and start generating startups. Well, exactly, exactly, yes. All the chaos and mess that they are. But yeah. So it just kind of got to this point where it wasn't the right spot for me anymore. Even though I had been promoted, I was running a quarter of the product function there. Um, I was overseeing dsp, SSP integrations, data providers, had a pretty decent remit and then decided to leave. And I'm really, really lucky that the first person I ever hired in my life at AppNexus, well, in my life, I guess, Patrick Latul, decided to join me and start walkerbox together. So that was, that was how we kicked off this journey.

[Allison Schiff]

I feel like there also was, you know, sort of like, I think it was like an officially kind of like approved trend. Like, I don't know if, you know, Bach was like an investor, but there were a lot of like startups or sort of entrepreneurs spun out of AppNexus. There was at least like half a dozen or so.

[Ron Jacobson]

Yeah, there. I mean, I followed the triple of guys, so they, I know those guys very well. I work with them all. They, they left to join this startup accelerator called era, and I ended up applying to era and I think they referred me and they convinced them to take us in. At the time, we're actually a mobile shopping app that was somehow a mobile shopping app for women's fashion. So it was a weird journey that got us to Rockerbo. But, but you're right, AppNexus has, has spawned a good number of startups and there was just something very special about adnexus. It's not all, not all startups are like that. I mean, people are super, super smart, very hardworking and just, I think, really ambitious. I mean, I think the characteristics for a great, great company, I guess. But yeah, Nexus was, was special.

[Allison Schiff]

Yeah, my wife actually worked there. I don't know if you would have overlapped. She would have been in the same like, organization as you. She's a she. When did she leave or when did she join Zodus? Actually, I guess would have been her name at the time.

[Ron Jacobson]

It. It rings a bell, honestly.

[Allison Schiff]

Yeah, yeah, so, so yeah, that it. I did have an interesting window in. I was not allowed at like app Nexus functions. Like, at one point I was.

[Ron Jacobson]

Well, you know, we like to, we like to keep it classic.

[Allison Schiff]

Yeah. So what was the original idea for Rocketbot? Like rocket rocks. Like Was that, you know, was this obviously everything like programmatic pivots and evolves and you know, I feel like maybe at rocket box of all of everybody has been the most consistent through line. I don't know if anyone like hang their hat on the term like multi touch attribution anymore. But yeah, how did. Maybe it's something totally different. Like what. What was the beginning of Rockerbot?

[Ron Jacobson]

So we did start with that mobile app, which we stopped after around two months when I realized I shouldn't be in the business of selling women's fashion. I know this is just an audio podcast, but if people see how I look and dressed, I definitely should not be in the fashion industry. That led me and Rick to sitting in a room for a week trying to think through what are we doing now? We quit our jobs, we have no idea what we're doing. And the first spot we landed actually was this concept of what eventually we called recency marketing. But at first it was really trying to solve the problem of stale data segments. I remember at apnexus I managed data integrations and I asked one of the providers once, I'm like, what does it mean to be an auto intender? And they're like, anybody who's been to an auto site in the last 30 days is an auto intender. And I thought that was just stupid. Versus why don't we find people who very, very recently have like hyper intense focuses on a vertical? Like that's. I think what's more important than the fact that I happen to be checking out, you know, Ford 25 days ago. So that was our, our first idea after the mobile fashion fiasco. And we actually launched that and scaled it pretty well. We, it was a managed service media company buying against this concept of recency. We called it recency marketing Selling agencies getting better.

[Allison Schiff]

Like, how are you, you know, doing okay? Like, it is clearly like you're painting with a pretty broad brush if you're just being like, all right, like here someone read an article about like electric vehicles and they're just like in market for whatever we want to say.

[Ron Jacobson]

Well, listen, we were, these were early days of Programmatic and we were basically looking to the bitstream as a source of information around users and where we're seeing ad requests from them. And if we saw an ad request from somebody on an auto site five minutes ago, 10 minutes ago, 15 minutes ago, that gives us each, I guess subsequent impression gives us more confidence that they're currently in auto mode. So it was leveraging that data. We had to Have a really large in store memory. A large. Basically we kept most of bench human memory so we could basically do lookups on a user for what their last 3060 minutes of browsing was from that we can make really awesome profiles because of that. So really high performing. Very focused on prospecting, trying to get in front of net new customers to drive bottom funnel conversions. So we ran media for Timberland and Citibank and some Chainsawbox. This was still Rockerbox. Yes, this is rockerbox v1. If you go to the wayback machine to like 2014, you'll see a very, very different version of Rockerbox. And we ran that for quite a while. I guess we were running media technically probably until from 2014 to end of 21, so quite a long time. And we were basically a bootstrap business. We raised a million bucks so we were never able to get venture funding. Every time we tried, we failed. Every time we did a need funding.

[Allison Schiff]

Why did you fail? Did you never like just not interested in the category the idea or just couldn't reconcile on value or something?

[Ron Jacobson]

I think it's. I think every time when we needed funding is when I tried to raise capital, which is always the worst time to raise capital. And every time we didn't need funding because things were going really well, I was like, why would you raise capital now? Like things are going really well. So it was kind of an adverse election problem. Also in 2013, 2014 when we first started the business, adtech was very out of vogue at that point. Particularly managed service media businesses were very, very not in vogue. So yeah, I failed every single time I tried to raise venture capital. We raised angel, angel investment, which is about a million bucks, but primarily kind of going back to your initial thing on MTA and attribution. We first got into the attribution business, our core attribution business, which is subsequently what was all of Rockerbox and what DB was interested in Rockerbox for. We launched that in March of 2018 and we kind of did this. There's this classic kind of thing of trying to transition from media business to a SaaS business, which is really hard to do because media businesses as you know, generate quite a lot of profit. And we were taking that profit to invest in our attribution business, which was quite unprofitable for a very long time because we didn't have venture capital. So in a way we use the media business as a way to fund the growth of our attribution business. And it's really hard because like that final point where you want to shut down the media business so you can focus on. On the attribution on the SaaS business. It's like a very. It's a very. It's a big unknown because, like, unless you are purely profitable at that point, you're kind of taking a bet. And we, we eventually shut it down and thankfully it all worked out. But it was a big transition business.

[Allison Schiff]

Like, are you just like, is there, you know, where they're like a DSP or something where you're like, okay, we're like facilit. Some kind of switch to here.

[Ron Jacobson]

So that was our recency marketing idea. That was basically. We built our own dsp, Essentially we had our own bidder and we would sell, you know, to Chase. Let me go. Give me $100,000 and we'll get you, you know, $500,000 worth of revenue. And it was all targeting users based on that idea of their recent behavior. So that that was it. It was selling it to agencies, but.

[Allison Schiff]

We got rid of it. Like, was that, you know, did you just like shut down or do you just like.

[Ron Jacobson]

Yeah, yeah, we literally just one night we just said, we're no longer running media. And go figure, all of our clients are working with us for all those years. They found other places to run their media. So again, part of the reason why media businesses are really hard, why IO businesses are really hard, again, it was very, very profitable. So, like, because of that, we were able to fund years and years. What's up? Why stop?

[Allison Schiff]

It's a profitable business.

[Ron Jacobson]

Yeah, Focus. It's just hard to run an organization when both two things. One focus is definitely one. We wanted the entire business to be able to be running in one direction. And the media business was, I guess, pulling us in a different direction. Maybe we could have spun it out as a secondary business or a standalone entity. We chose not to do that. But the larger reason is attribution was a lot more exciting for us. We thought there was a lot more potential and a much bigger problem, but we thought it was a lot more suited to our skill sets. We very intentionally moved into attribution in the sense of like, I remember one day my co founder and I were like, we were looking at ourselves and analyzing our business and what we liked and disliked about the business. And there were many, many things we disliked about the media business. We hated the fickleness of it. We hated the relationship nature of it. We hated having the agency as an intermediary between us and the end advertiser. That can be very successful but for our business, it wasn't. And we also hated that a lot of times we felt the advertisers were asking us to do things that we didn't think were actually in their. Well, I guess the agencies were asking us to do things that we didn't think were in their best interest, like get a higher ctr, even if it's fraud. So, like, those things just bothered us. And I can explain why. But attribution somehow emerged as something that could be very different than this. Instead of selling to agencies, we sold to brands direct instead of iOS, annual SaaS contracts. Instead of us in some ways wanting the clients to spend more and more dollars with us, we're very, very aligned with the brands. Like, all I care about is that my customers are successful and their businesses grow, because if their businesses grow, they're going to keep wanting measurements. So attribution was a much better problem set for, for me and my co founder. There was much better, I guess, like founder market fit than our original media business.

[Allison Schiff]

Well, I think this is a good point. I'm going to take a quick sponsor break and we are going to check back in and just dive into what that attribution business has looked like in the past few years. So stick with us.

[James Hersher]

I'm Sarah Sluice, executive editor of Ad Exchanger and Ad Monsters, and I have with me here Reid Barker, who is the head of advertising for Philo. Welcome, Reid.

[Reid Barker]

Hey, thanks for having me.

[James Hersher]

So let's start by telling us a little bit about who watches Philo. Why do users come to your service and who is the audience?

[Ron Jacobson]

Yeah.

[Reid Barker]

So Philo is a streaming service that has the linear channels from the cable, entertainment and lifestyle networks you've known and loved from Warner Brothers, Discovery, Paramount Global, Hallmark A and E plus, the entire AMC plus library. So with that entertainment and lifestyle focus, that means our audience is primarily women. We see them watching it on the biggest screen in the house, and active users are watching linear television more than three hours a day.

[James Hersher]

So we know that you're different on the audience side. But let's talk a little bit about the tech, the programmatic pieces that our viewers love. Agency buyers are flooded with CTV options, fast networks. So tell us what differentiates Philo on the ad side.

[Reid Barker]

Yeah, you know, the big conversation is all around dollars moving from direct linear to programmatic. And Philo's been programmatic from the start. That means we've been in programmatic advertising more than seven years. That means we understand that Programmatic is not just a machine talking to machine that you plug in a pipe. It's about really understanding what goes on there. So we feel ourselves are really have a lot of expertise in this area. That means that we need to have the best signals both for identity as well as context, the most transparency, and really listen to the buyer so that we can say yes to what they need to fulfill their KPIs.

[James Hersher]

Great answer. Reid, you and I were both at can. What are some of the trends and innovations you saw there that are exciting you in the CTV space?

[Reid Barker]

Yeah, I've been around innovative ad products forever and seeing some of the things like pause ads, interactive ads, suddenly becoming standardized in a way that makes them available via programmatic channels is just, it's great to see they're actually finally going to get adopted. And the other thing is just everyone's talking about mergers, sell off, spin offs and I feel like I'm a Jack Nicholson at a Lakers game with the front row seat of what's happening. And in addition to actually just watching, I'm also on the field. So it's amazing and amazingly terrifying all.

[Ron Jacobson]

At the same time.

[James Hersher]

Well said, Reid. I couldn't say it better. Thank you for joining us on the podcast.

[Ron Jacobson]

Thank you.

[Allison Schiff]

All right, we're back. So, yes, let's get back into the attribution picture. So this is 2018. You said when you're sort of, you're getting into attribution, you're putting together this new focus. 2018, 19. And I think that that's, this is sort of like a strange time in the attribution world because I, because there was this period when, you know, like when you were at AppNexus and like when all these incredible things were possible in the bid stream and you know, the like promise of multi touch attribution that, you know, I think was kind of like hanging there for, for a bit and maybe when you started was kind of in like the, the eye of the storm in a sense when like people were like had a handle on things like this like new programmatic thing, like people, you know, like kind of were getting a sense of what to do and what attribution was like. And just before all the privacy changes, you know, Apple policy changes starts making things impossible. So that's, that's like getting back into the like the back half of the hurricane, which is actually the tough half to stretch this analogy. So, so yeah, so what, what happens with, you know, okay, we're focusing on attribution and it feels like, okay, like how could you even focus on attribution? What what's possible, what you could do is, is changing so much at just, at this point in time.

[Ron Jacobson]

Well, you're, you're, you're, you're kind of nailing it. I think in 2018, 2019, even to 2020 I think was like, well, 2018, 2019 were like the last of the last years of the prior era of measurement. I would say it was before COVID it was before the craziness of D2C, the emergency of D2C. It was before the original iOS changes, 14.5 changes. And on the other end you also had kind of the first generation of attribution companies largely being acquired. So Converto had been acquired, Odometry had been acquired. Digital iq. Yeah, exactly. So you kind of had like, Exactly. So you have like the old guard kind of going away. The new problems haven't yet emerged. And there was an entry opportunity to just kind of enter and replicate what the old guard was doing. And that was really how we first started at this. We first pitched Warby Parker, they were our first client and I believe they had been using Convertro before Rockerbox and Convertro shut down. And we basically came and we're like, well, we'll do that for you. And that was it. And it was off to the races. And at that point, honestly, like I didn't know half of, I mean, obviously didn't know half what I know today, but we entered it very much this from a programmatic mindset. Like all I knew in the past was programmatic. It's all I'd done for so long. And I remember in those first conversations I started to quickly realize how little Warby talked about programmatic. They almost like didn't care at all. They talked about paid social, they talked about search a lot. We talked about direct mail. And it made me start to realize this whole notion that attribution's all around programmatic and that we can use the idea of real time bidding is going to enable one to one measurement and impression level measurement. Maybe realize that's kind of the wrong problem to begin with, even though that's what all the first generation of attribution companies focused on. So we started off right away with how would we measure paid social, how would we measure paid search, how would we measure direct mail? Even things like, okay, let's get the mailer log files, let's actually get the list of who they're sending direct mail to and get the addresses and connect that to the address when somebody actually buys a product. So I think we lucked into Just by virtue of our first find approaching measurement less from a lens of pure programmatic and less from the lens of let me use a double click UID and let's piggyback on top of that trying to stitch every impression together. We just didn't do any of those things, which is, which is really lucky and fortunate for us and I think actually proved to be really, I guess kind of ahead of the times. Not again, not really intentionally. Just like we couldn't use a third party cookie to measure direct mail or to measure meta.

[Allison Schiff]

So first client. That's why it's amazing how often that name comes up. They're just always like, you know, or like a bellwether or some kind like, or yeah, they're just.

[Ron Jacobson]

Well, I'll call out a guy, a guy Brian Magada. He's a great guy. I think he's pretty well known across all. A lot of attic startups talk to him. So I, I, I'm very, very thankful to him. And guy Michael Craig from Warby. They, they gave us a chance and yeah, from there we're off to the races.

[Allison Schiff]

So what is the, what is the attribution picture now? Like obviously you know, there isn't, there isn't like a category of sort of multi touch attribution. Like it looked like maybe there would be and you know, is it like now you hear a lot about like incrementality sort of testing vendors. There are certainly like, you know, there's like a new set I think whereas like Rockerbox, you know, now Rockerbot without like visual iq, Rockerbox is sort of the, you know, the, the old guard maybe of like triple, Triple Whale and the North Beam and companies like that. Yeah. What is attribution nowadays and what does Rockerbox do?

[Ron Jacobson]

It's been, yeah, it's been an interesting I guess seven years since we launched attribution business. Like the first thing is many companies have come, many companies have gone and I think that's like one of the most interesting parts of the measurement business. It's like an industry full of like littered dead companies. Everybody tries to enter measurement over and over again. These like new entrants that think it's such a simple problem. It seems like it should be very solvable. And this was me by the way, when we first got into it as well. We were extremely naive things thankfully. But so many companies have gotten into it and most, most fail. I, I disagree on the MTA side. There actually is, there is a good market appetite and opportunity around mta. I know it has at Times, you know, not the best reputation. I, I disagree with some of those assessments on why the reputation is what it is. But there's a huge, huge market opportunity for mta. Um, and there are companies outside of Rockerbox who are selling it all. That being said, I would say in the last seven years it's sort of been like the Gardner hype cycle, you know, like the peak of inflated expectations, the traffic disillusionment, et cetera, et cetera for all the types of measurements. So there's definitely was an emergence of incrementality testing. It's becoming hot again now. But it was also pretty hot again. It was pretty hot also in like 21, 20, 2021 there was. It started to get hot, then it cooled, now it's getting hot again. You had medium mix modeling, which similarly got hot around 23 to 24. And I think it's cooling down a little bit now and I think it's going to be getting. I just keep seeing the cycle happen over and over again. Where measurement is overall these days is. And where I see it going is all measurement providers are eventually going to have to provide all types of measurement for, for. I can walk through, I believe this, but you can have companies that are.

[Allison Schiff]

Doing MTA that's like, oh, like we're like a TikTok Instagram specialist or something. Like what do you mean by all companies?

[Ron Jacobson]

I mean, you're starting to see all the measurement providers offer multiple methodologies. So MTA plus MMM plus testing or testing plus MMM or MMM plus mta. So basically every platform is going to have to offer all types of measurement. So I think there's a race to see who does that best, who makes the best all one solution. Then there are other parts that are orthogonal to that core measurement question. But the idea of a standalone platform that is just doing one type of measurement can be a successful business, but is not in a position to win the market.

[Allison Schiff]

Gotcha. Okay. And yeah, let's take sort of a little look forward because interesting, exciting news of just a few months ago acquisition by dv. And I think Double Verify has, you know, they've been getting sort of closer like we were talking about like the, you know, the being in Media Verse software. Like I think Double Verify is sort of skates as close as anyone could be to being on like the media side, I think more so with side bids. That's. That's dv, right? Not ias. Yeah, that's okay. Good.

[Ron Jacobson]

That's right.

[Allison Schiff]

So, so yeah, I'm sort of being. Yeah, More of like, you know, custom algorithm. Like they wouldn't say like we're not like the dsp but you know, getting, getting close and, but yeah, like what is, what is the picture of, of Rockerbox within dv?

[Ron Jacobson]

And yeah, so a couple things, One, going back to like the core what, what I see a measurement company needing all of them are going to need all three measure methodologies. I don't think that's going to be enough though to win long term. I think what you're starting to see is measurement and this ties into dv. So we'll get there. Measurement that doesn't tie back into media execution and optimization is difficult because it's kind of like data standing there but not necessarily being action bound. So I think that's one thing that's going to be really critical for any measurement company is how do you take your kind of source of truth centralized data and feed it back into optimization which Rockerbox is able to do with DV via sidebits. So that's one interesting part about working with dv. I also think measurement is going to start to go. There's debate on outcomes but I think supplementing the traditional measurement with upper funnel media quality data is actually going to be really important. Not just was this met, you know, not just was the media did it convert but was it fraudulent or was it brand safe and was it viewable. So I think this notion of how do we get incremental data assets and apply it on top of outcome based measurement is going to be really important part to where outcome based measurement goes. And DV has that in spades obviously. So I think that they bring it onto the table. So good.

[Allison Schiff]

I do think there is an interesting sort of step here where like, and it's one that you know, DV has done especially for Rockerbox where like if you think of Rockerbox as sort of okay, usually we go to like some brand like you said early on we've kind of like skipped the agency. There's almost this like purity of being like okay, we're an analytics and attribution provider that just looks at what your media did and sort of we give our opinion and like you know, they can even sort of like take it or not like to a degree. Like maybe you say like oh, like this isn't working. Like no, we're going with like our agency and we like the reach here or whatever. And you know, now, now it sort of is more of like all right, we are, we're making kind of like a definitive and qualitative statement about media and about vendors and about, you know, other things. And it's, it's, it's, you know, it sort of is like taking a bigger step, like, and it, you know, more influential. I think, like, what is that? What does that look? Is that true?

[Ron Jacobson]

I think in some ways it's needed. I think measurement without action is wasted. Just having like results of measurement that kind of sit there without some action being taken, it's like, what's the point? So I think whatever you can do to make the taking of that action simpler and easier is advantageous and beneficial to the end advertiser. I think it does need to be done in a way that's neutral though. And that's been to me in the rocker boxes since day one. I don't care where my clients spend their dollars. I don't care if it's meta or if it's Google or if it's direct mail. I really don't care. All we want is that they spend it in places that are best for their business and that aligns really well with where DB is coming at us from. You know, they don't own any media. They similarly don't have any reason to care if ads are being spent on one platform for another. So we're very aligned there. But we're also aligned with the notion that analysis without action just provides less value. And that's also one of the big challenges that many measurement companies face is you get to a world where you're providing this great product and it has really great insights, but maybe it's too much, too many insights for the actual advertiser to take action on. So it's just kind of sits there and that's, that's one of the big challenges with measurement and why I think it's so important for us to help our clients close a loop between our results and actual media optimization.

[Allison Schiff]

Yeah, I remember even like going back to like app Nexus early days, like I said, you know, one sort of fraud and like there were a lot of issues that kind of surfaced. They'd been there for a while and then, you know, it, it starts to be like, oh, like there's this question of like, okay, sometimes there's like fraud. It's like, that's bad, you know, fraud. But sometimes like, okay, the X's, it's a small X on the ad that you click it. Like, you know, it's like, it's a bit of a tactic to like generate a click through or something. And it's not like fraud but it's not like great and App Nexus doesn't want to be like a referee or whatever, you know, like no one wants to be the referee. And I guess that like, oh, with dv you are sort of like they're maybe they're taking on the referee role a little bit more. It's like, you know, it's like you look at like Nielsen, it's just like the least appealing job in the world to be the referee.

[Ron Jacobson]

Well, I mean, listen, that's why the measurement business is at times really hard because you are taking that position somewhat. And yeah, nobody, I think bark actually said this recently, nobody really loves the referee generally. It doesn't mean it doesn't play an important role. And by the way, we faced this for years. I mean we had times where we would show reporting and it showed Snap, you know, the new snap. I'm picking Snap randomly. But the new Snap test that you just ran was horrible. But the CMO doesn't believe that and can't admit that. And they took a big bet and they need to show that their bet worked. So it's not that the measurement is right. I need a new measurement provider. So it's always a bit contentious with attribution in terms of are your results actually heated? Are they believed, are they not believed? Are they not believed? Are they not believed for the right reasons? Are there kind of hidden incentives that are leading people to make conclusions that they make? So it's a very, it's a very tricky business.

[Allison Schiff]

Have you ever thought about going to a, to a brand like being on the, you know, being a marketer yourself?

[Ron Jacobson]

No, no, no. Literally never thought.

[Allison Schiff]

I feel like the client, never having been part of any like client like vendor relationship myself, you know, I feel like I would always want to be on the, the client side. Like being on the vendor side is always like, oh, like that just seems so. But some people live for it.

[Ron Jacobson]

I speak to brands nonstop. I know their challenges inside and out. I actually think a bit more as consumer business versus a B2B business. Consumer businesses are so different than a B2B business. And I don't know if I have the aptitude or anything to, to be in a consumer facing business.

[Allison Schiff]

Well, let's, let's end with hopefully, hopefully like an optimistic note. But like, you know, what's, what, what are you most excited about? What do you, you know, for the, for the rest of the year say, what are you, what are you thinking about? And yeah, well, we're covering off some.

[Ron Jacobson]

Really awesome product work in the first half of the year we had some really big launches in the back half which stay tuned for those. But I mean generally I think the, you know, coming, coming together with Divi is going to be huge for Rockerbox. They bring a lot of resources that we never had. As I mentioned, we were bootstrap business. They're obviously publicly traded billion dollar company. So they're, they're really going to help us scale both organizationally from a go to market perspective. They have a lot more customers than we ever did that we are, we're very excited to sell into. So I'm excited to leverage a lot of what they bring to the table from a go to market perspective, see how we can leverage their data to make our product better and really just people to scale Rockerbox. I mean we internally, we think of it as business as usual. We're just continuing to do what we've been doing with more resources. So that's very fun for me, having been so resource constrained for the past 12 years to finally have a little bit more wiggle room to go fast.

[Allison Schiff]

Cool. Well, we'll be keeping an eye out for announcements in the back half of the year. Ron, thank you for being here and everyone else. We'll see you next week. Back with Alison. But it was fun to. It was fun to fill in.

[Ron Jacobson]

Thanks, James. Have a good time.

[James Hersher]

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