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Ep. 141 Why Mobile Advertising Is Still Undervalued with Liftoff’s Casie Jordan
00:33:07
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- [00:00]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
This episode of marketexture is brought to you by Locala. Locala helps brands think outside the midstream using real world market intelligence, local context, and competitive signals to understand where to compete, where to defend, and where to grow online and offline as markets move. Locale's agentic operating layer lets marketers move faster, simplify complexity, and adapt campaigns market by market, where it matters. Locala Adaptive Advertising for a World in Motion
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AdTech God (Host)
this episode is brought to you by the Build, a new podcast from the guys behind Sincera, Michael Sullivan and Ian Myers. They built their company by figuring out clever solutions to a few important ad tech problems in our industry. That's exactly what the show is all about. Mike and Ian interview some of the smartest tech minds in the biz to hear about how they identified opportunities, solved those hardest challenges, grew their business in the process. Listen to the Build with Mike O' Sullivan wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the AdTech Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, AdTech God. Welcome to the AdTech God Pod where we speak to the female leaders in the mobile space. Today's guest is Casey Jordan. She's svp, Programmatic Exchange and Commercial Solutions at Liftoff. Casey's been with Liftoff for four and a half years, having joined as the GM and moved up to where she is today. She's worked at Twitter, Adobe Operative and more. She comes very highly recommended by a mutual friend of ours and so I'm really excited to have her with me on the pod. Kasey, thank you for joining me.
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Casey Jordan
Thank you so much. I am so thrilled to meet you. And for those not watching the video version, I'm using meet in quotes. But I have been a big fan girl for a while so I'm excited to be here.
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AdTech God (Host)
Well, thank you. Let me ask you, ATG or Taylor Swift?
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Casey Jordan
Oh, okay. So I mean, I, I feel like two things can be true at the same time. So I'm a big Taylor Swift fan, but also a big ATG fan. And something about me is that I love to gather evidence. I love mysteries. So the fact that your identity remains, you know, hidden peaks the very core of my desire to sleuth. My husband has called out that my favorite mysteries to solve are like the low stakes one. And as much as I have, like a really keen interest in investigations, I. I also understand that some things must remain a mystery in life in order to preserve some magic. So I will respect your continued identity obfuscation.
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AdTech God (Host)
All I can say is when you're establishing a business license, hire good attorneys that know how to bury who is on that license. So it was a. It was a process.
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Casey Jordan
Retaining counsel. Retaining counsel is always a good idea.
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AdTech God (Host)
Kasey, I wanted to ask you. Liftoff recently IPO'd. Congratulations to you and to the team. I've been watching it closely. I'm sure it's like a really proud moment for you, having been there for so long. Before we start with the whole interview and your background, I just wanna ask you, how do you feel about the company being public? How is the team taking it? Yeah, I'd love to hear your feedback.
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Casey Jordan
So we feel really proud to have invented Rocket Week with. With Both liftoff and SpaceX going public in the same week. Different deal sizes, of course, and maybe Liftoff has like a baby rocket, but still a rocket nonetheless. So it was a very interesting experience being at NASDAQ and around all the banks and, you know, during the SpaceX week. But we're excited because we've carved out, you know, a space for ourselves and it was quite a journey to get here. I am both a business leader in that I have, you know, a revenue line underneath me, as well as our marketing and communications team. So for me, it was particularly exciting, something I've never done before, to be involved in all of the PR and comms and all of the things that are associated with taking a company public and. And beyond that, I think our team, you know, we have a little over 600 employees at Liftoff. Many of our employees have been with the company for a decade or more, and it's definitely a big milestone that everyone is incredibly proud of.
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AdTech God (Host)
Well, we are proud as. As the advertising industry. I think generally when companies in the space go public, like, it's. It's a really cool thing, just solidifies and validates all the work that we do. Not many get that opportunity, so. So congrats to you and the team.
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Casey Jordan
Thank you.
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AdTech God (Host)
I want to ask you, you spent a long time at Twitter, you worked at Adobe. I would love to hear your background, how you got to where you're at today and where you think things are going. So let's start with maybe your background and what led you to being svp. Programmatic Exchange.
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Casey Jordan
Yeah, so, I mean, I definitely did not actively choose ad tech. I don't know anyone that necessarily did. But growing up, I really wanted to be a writer. I genuinely loved writing and the writing process. I still do to this day. My team will constantly accuse me of writing very creative prose about bid requests. And bid responses. But as an introvert and a naturally shy child, words were something that I always felt like I could kind of use as a form of expression and, and also like a practical way to get things done. But I started, I started cocktail waitressing and, and serving in New York City in the early 2000s. And around that time I decided that I really liked money. And I'm not, I'm not ashamed to say that at all. And I kind of reject the premise that money cannot buy happiness. I think sometimes it can. But even at an early age, I kind of understood that writing for a living significantly, you know, reduced the probability of my earnings potential. So I chose a business major and kind of ultimately came to understand that tech in general was my way forward. Since then, I've tried to, you know, weave creative writing into, into my day to day. But you know, from there, after college, like, my path into ad tech was like, as I said, very unplanned. So I started at Newsweek and also America magazine, which gave me like real exposure to publishing. And what it started to do was give me exposure to the shift from print to digital that was really happening in real time and sort of that, you know, the dissipation of, of, of an analog world. And I think that transition is actually what pulled me further into the business side. And so I was really curious about, you know, where that value was moving. And the answer was clearly online. I remain extremely online to this day after, after my publishing experience, I joined a company called Operative, which is still around today. They're an ad tech company that was serving large publishers and kind of their quest for monetizing their content. So I was doing like software and ad trafficking implementations. I was doing a lot of actual ad trafficking in DFP and Dart for publishers. Now, many years later, Google Ad Manager, I was doing them for companies like Fox Interactive Media, which owned MySpace at the time, and Dow Jones and Gannett. And that was my first real exposure to kind of like the infrastructure side of digital advertising and how the tech behind it can help publishers make money and help buyers, you know, serve advertising, like, how the pipes work, how publishers make money, all that kind of stuff. And that gave me like, really early empathy for both sides of the market. Around that time I was kind of pulled into, you know, wanting to be a part of a startup. It was like, cool at the time to, you know, at least get some kind of startup experience. And so I really wanted to have a hand in business building in the Antec world. So I joined a super small company There are about 15 of us in an office above the Five Guys on 34th street and 10th Avenue, New York in around 2010. And within months, Adobe acquired Demdex, which was the industry's first DMP. So I went from a 15 person company to a 15,000 person company and I joined the team really to like a lead implementation for the dmp, which still exists today. It's around, it's called Adobe Audience Manager. And this was in like the late 2000s, and brands were kind of starting to, I think, grapple with like what it means to really own your audience data. And so that time at Adobe was really spent, you know, helping Fortune 500 companies and advertisers build their data strategy. And this was before mobile apps existed, before a lot of the, like, foundational privacy, consumer privacy stuff has come out. At some point I became a Twitter super user and got it in my mind that I always wanted to work at Twitter and I kind of manifested that for myself. So around 2014, I joined Mopub, which had recently been acquired by Twitter, and that's where the mobile app ecosystem really became my focus. And so I spent the next eight years at Twitter building that platform and growing it into the number one mediation and mobile app programmatic platform. Had such an amazing experience at Twitter. Twitter was then, of course not what it is today. Very much focused on, you know, powering the public conversation of the world. And so I did that right up until Applovin acquired Mopub in 2022 for a billion dollars.
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AdTech God (Host)
Are you still super active on Twitter? I'm curious.
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Casey Jordan
So I. I am not as active as I once was. Yeah, I would say that it's. It feels like a little bit of a different place than it once was though. Over a decade of, you know, checking my timeline multiple times a day, I've not been able to shake that habit. So I would say I'm more of a consumer of posts and less of a poster at this point.
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AdTech God (Host)
Point, I think there's a lot of that happening. I sense it's not the same as it is. I think a lot of the audience has left, which kind of sucks. Like people that I think were active six years ago are not active anymore. So I feel like sometimes I'm screaming into the void. What used to work and get a ton of engagement doesn't anymore. And so I've kind of decided to move on to cheesier things like LinkedIn. So after, after your time there, you then joined Liftoff. What attracted you the most to joining Liftoff? That Long ago. Four and a half years ago. And what kept you there? I'm just curious. That's a long time to be at a company.
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Casey Jordan
Great question. So, you know, Applovin acquired mopub. I felt like there was a part of me that felt like maybe that, that maybe there was a place for me outside of ad tech. And I felt, you know, and I don't say this now because I almost think like this is ad tech's all I know. And I think I'll just probably do this until, you know, I can feel the, the sweet release of retirement. But there was a moment where I said, you know, I'm going to try something different. But there was a bridge for me with Liftoff. And so Liftoff and Vungle merged in 2021 and, and Vungle had acquired a company called Jet Fuel, which was an influencer based platform that happened to serve the mobile app ecosystem. So they, they've worked with influencers who were, you know, effectively advertising mobile apps. And so there was a business unit within Liftoff called Jet Fuel. And I actually joined Liftoff to be the GM of Jet Fuel. And so it felt like, okay, this isn't necessarily core ad tech. There's a little bit of a, you know, there's a UGC component here, there's kind of an adjacent tech theme. And so, and I also knew various folks at Liftoff just from working together over the years and in particular our now CEO, Jeremy Bond. He was, you know, when the news that Applovin had acquired Mopub came out, you know, when it became public, I looked at my phone and he was the first text message that I actually had. And he was kind of putting fillers out there of, you know, asking me what I was going to do next. So, you know, that stuck with me. And prior to that, every International Women's Day since I'd known him, he would send me, you know, an email like just kind of with, with compliments on International Women's Day. And so that's the kind of ecosystem and climate that Jeremy and his leadership team create at Liftoff. And that in addition to kind of the opportunity to do something that I felt was a bit outside of ad tech was, was what drew me to lift off. And since then I've taken on other responsibilities at the company like our exchange and other teams, but that was what the initial draw was.
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AdTech God (Host)
So I love that because I love that he created a culture of like, inclusivity support. And you, you mentioned that you already had worked with people there, so you were already aware of the culture and how they work both, you know, time and ethically and everything. And I think that like that's a huge part of joining companies and knowing whether or not it's the right place I think is like do your research or at least know someone there who can vouch for the work environment. Because it is very easy to get drawn in by salaries and titles and then not really have a good idea of what the work culture is like until you get there. Which is why I tell people just like network, like build your network and ask people and they'll be honest with you. So I love that that worked out question for you. Now your SAP Programmatic exchange, what does that mean? What do you do every day?
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Casey Jordan
Yes. So it's a, it's a bit of a hodgepodge team that I have. So the programmatic exchange part is that I manage our, our third party programmatic exchange which means we have buyers in the ecosystem buying onto our exchange. So Liftoff has, you know, kind of a. We have two different business units that create this flywheel of supply and demand. We have our supply side business called Lift Off Monetize where app publishers deploy our SDK and that's how they are able to monetize their business. And we reach about 1.4 billion daily active users. And we've been building up that user base for over 12 years at this point. And on the demand side we have our DSP left off Accelerate and then we have our Exchange which still carries the name of the Vungle business since the Vungle Exchange or VX for short. And that's the area of the business that I own. So we have deep both DSPs as well as Omnichannel buyers buying the Lift off monetized supply. I have a few other teams that are all in service of supporting our customers and so they are our creative strategy team and that's a group of folks that uses both traditional creative strategy techniques as well as C gen AI to work with our advertisers to to build creative that are going to work for them. In the mobile app ecosystem. I have our Gamer Refinery and App Refinery team which was another acquisition that Liftoff made. It's an intelligence platform that uses both AI as well as human research to explain trends that are going on in the app ecosystem of our sales engineering team which very technical in nature and unblocks issues for our customers. And then our brand and communications and marketing team which do all of our events, all of our content set me up on to go yap on podcasts, things like that.
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Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
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AdTech God (Host)
I wanted to ask you because there's, there's a lot of exchanges in the market. You guys obviously have monetize, accelerate, the Vungal or vx, the actual exchange that you, that you run. What has changed in the last four and a half years since you've been there? How buyers, how has that changed overall for you? Have you seen a shift in the way they look into inventory, quality? Are there any particular characteristics that they, they want today that they maybe didn't care about four years ago? I'd love for you to kind of explain that a little bit.
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Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
Great question.
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Casey Jordan
I think there's probably over the last four years, I think there's probably like two core themes that I would say that programmatic buyers have kind of brought to four. The first is that all of these buyers, our own included, are really doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on, on the usage of machine learning, which is effectively AI. And, and we are at lookoff, we're like extremely bullish on the true, you know, economic applications of AI. And so for a long time I think that AI story in ATT and CK was mostly about like, you know, targeting. And I think that's, that's real invaluable. But maybe, you know, the advertiser doesn't see it. And so I think what's starting to happen now with programmatic buyers is AI is really showing up in the actual ad, in the creative itself. So I referenced before we have, you know, our creative strategy team, like they're using generative creative tools, dynamic personalization, conversational ad formats. And I think that's where the experience really changes. And I think that's, you know, that's what's always made mobile advertising harder to defend, you know, is that, you know, users don't necessarily like changes, they kind of tolerate it. But in this case, you know, the reason they're, I think going beyond tolerating it is because the creative that consumers are consuming is, is, is feels more personalized and feels more like it's something that, you know, they actually wanted to see.
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AdTech God (Host)
And so you guys have what, you guys are utilizing generative AI for your creative, and then you're using what just like AI in general for optimization and curation and optimization of campaigns within your exchange.
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Casey Jordan
Exactly. So our, our own DSP Lift Off Accelerate is. Has always been built on machine learning. And so the users that our DSP is bidding on are part of the flywheel of data that comes into our platform. And we use a mechanism called neural nets to basically figure out for our advertisers who are the right users that we should be serving your ads to so that you have as much working media as possible. And so that's a trend that we're seeing not just with our own dsp, but, but our partners who buy on our exchange as well.
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AdTech God (Host)
What are you hearing from, I guess the publisher side with generative AI, Are you feeling like it's generally improving user experience? Are you feeling that they're annoyed? Or is it more gen for initial creative with a human editing and capability? Or is it just like on the fly done during campaign?
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Casey Jordan
I mean, it's a little nuanced, I think, for our team. We still feel strongly that with creative generation, if you're using genai, there's a lot of cool things that can be done and there's a lot of innovation that has happened, but we still feel strongly that a human eye will always be a part of the equation. And there's something we call it taste. Effectively. If you're using AI and you're using it for idea generation, it has to be pulling on something that already exists because it had to have been fed into the models in the first place. And so there's an element, I think, of, you know, with our strategy at Liftoff, which is we understand that, but we also understand that they're the creativity and the, you know, the ad taste that can come from pairing both the machines and the human brain to kind of do that editing work. And like I said earlier, like creative writing has, and creative idea generation has always been so important to me, you know, from childhood, but also in my career. So that's something that we feel really, really strongly about at Liftoff. And so I think if you think about that from the publisher side, we've heard anecdotal feedback that publishers, I think, are. They continue to always want a good user experience from their ad partners and from the ads that they're serving. Of course, it's their content, their games, what they put out there in the world is their bread and butter. And so they want to protect that and preserve that. And I do think that there is a general happiness with the innovation that's happened in terms of creative. But of course we need to maintain those creative quality standards. That's always going to be something that ad partners in the ad tech ecosystem need to be mindful of. There's a lot of stuff that even we at Liftoff have done in the last year to try to preserve those standards. Because without publishers, and we say this at liftoff, without our publishers, we're nothing. That's where everything is sourced from. Whatever their concerns are with creative quality. You know, as an ad tech community, we need to be constantly listening to that and adapting.
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AdTech God (Host)
I think you mentioned 1.4 billion dau dao. That's like no joke, 1 point, 1.4.
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Casey Jordan
Eventually we'll get to 4. But yeah, it's.
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AdTech God (Host)
No, I said 1.4. Yeah, 1.4 is, is huge.
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Casey Jordan
Yeah.
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AdTech God (Host)
So that's a massive number. Overall, do you find that and sorry, I'm just firing off some questions because I'm generally just curious about the mobile space overall. Do you find that things like inventory transparency have become more important in the mobile space? Because historically it's really been it's heavily performance without many questions. Is what it used to be like? It was just like can I drive downloads, Can I drive installs? Am I converting people to play my game or to download my app? But are you finding that transparency has become a more important role for buyers And I guess what do you guys do to help provide that transparency?
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Casey Jordan
Yeah, absolutely. I think two things. I mean I think the, the mobile app ecosystem for sure has consistently been performance based. Right. App advertising works inside of apps because it's just the native environment you're already in. I think this, the, the ecosystem that has been and that has evolved over the last decade is, is kind of transparency first. So every buyer, you know, through a bid request and through the OpenRTB spec that the IAB has continuously improved upon over time, you know, can see the supply that you're buying on. So particularly when it comes to SDK direct platforms like Liftoff, all of our buyers know that they are directly buying traffic that has been, you know, sanctioned and co signed by Liftoff and we have to have a direct relationship with the publisher and that transparency is kind of non negotiable. I do think though that to hit on one of your other points though is that yes, performance based app advertising has kind of been the majority of app advertising over the years, but there is, I think a Push and there has been for a while of more actual brands who don't have their campaign goals being an app install like more of that brand budget is, you know, coming to the app ecosystem. You know I think something that we talked a lot about in our IPO roadshow was, was that mobile is effectively like the largest underpriced medium in advertising. So the open in app ecosystem generates around $0.07 or something per per hour compared to $0.24 on CTV. And then, and I'm spewing like I think these are really important.
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AdTech God (Host)
No, I love the stats.
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Casey Jordan
38% on traditional TV. So we sit inside this like huge market that's just structurally under monetized. I think we talk about the second screen but we're also talking about a generation of humans now entering the workforce that have been mobile first since birth. And so that second screen is, is effectively their primary screen. And so I think our market, the mobile app market is structurally under monetized. And that gap is starting to close more. And that's where I think we're going to start to see even more, you know, brand spend coming to that ecosystem when you know, some smarter advertisers do get it. But a lot are still kind of in the mode of like we need to do desktop and we still need to do all these budgets in traditional tv. But the attention span, the engagement, just the general climate of especially this generation is you know, move to the mobile app ecosystem.
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AdTech God (Host)
And it's crazy because the industry talks the most about ctv. So every podcast, every event, every conference, every gathering a CTV and the opportunity there. But people are forgetting that mobile generates way more revenue than CTV does today. I mean maybe It'll change in 10 years but the mobile opportunity is, is massive. And even as you mentioned like moving into one to one personalization and gen AI and the creative aspect and moving beyond just performance is only going to like make that lead bigger as brands are recognizing like hey, frequency matters and branding matters and brand recognition matters and brand retention matters. It's not just I clicked and downloaded whatever game like it does matter that people are seeing your brand on mobile and they will convert later down the line.
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Casey Jordan
Yeah, later down the line or you know, especially, especially as brands feel more comfortable with the app ecosystem and I think they're starting to more. You know, our friends at Unity have been doing a lot of work to, to kind of educate the brand and agency ecosystem on why even games in particular are a very pleasant place for advertisers to spend money. But I think as that you Know, as that theme kind of takes hold a little bit more and they need to trust the ecosystem. Right. Which is why we're all working on those trust efforts. But I think there's, you know, it's, it's not just oh, they'll, they'll come and they'll make a purchase later. It's maybe they'll even make a purchase now. A lot of our partners and our e commerce partners are dabbling in like shoppable ads and you know, they might, this user base might just actually complete that conversion in, in a full screen format as they're consuming the apps that they consume on an everyday basis.
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AdTech God (Host)
Couple final questions for you. I think this next one is going to be interesting. What do you think is like a common misconception of I guess, a mobile exchange, especially considering there's the supply side and the demand side that you, you own and what the output is for the overall client when the exchange is held by you.
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Casey Jordan
I think that's something that we, you know, we've kind of talked a lot about as Liftoff is on our journey to ipo. There was a lot of, you know, storytelling that needed to happen around the theme that I referenced before about just the huge user base opportunity, but also with Lift off because we, we see both sides of the marketplace. To your point, I think that's rare. So most companies in adtech are either a DSP or an ssp. And because we have both, you know, our DSP can connect advertisers to mobile app audiences and our exchange connects the publishers to that demand through that directly embedded SDK. And so that dual sided infrastructure I think gives a lot of data advantage to both sides of the house that, you know, really very few single sided players can replicate. And I think our going back to our focus on AI not just as a, a popular thing to talk about or. I do love some of your memes on Instagram about, you know, C level executives kind of just glitching and regurgitating the term AI over and over again. But for us it's been the core to how our whole company was built. And when I say built, it's like just the notion of constant self improvement of our models that we're giving our advertisers access to.
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AdTech God (Host)
You've obviously been successful in your career as a woman in the space. I wanted to ask you what helped you do that because I understand that there's a lot of females in this space that find it difficult to grow in their careers. Obviously Liftoff has created a platform for you to grow. But what do you feel helped you get to the point where you're at today? And what advice could you give some of the women listening to the pod?
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Casey Jordan
Being a female also being, you know, generally an introvert, I've kind of had to manage that in, in very nuanced ways. And so the first way is just like energy management. I'm very intentional about kind of like protecting my time before big meetings or events. And I don't necessarily, you know, I try not to overbook myself because I think being one of, you know, being in a minority of females, you know, in, in any meeting or at any event, you feel a certain amount of pressure to show up in a certain way. And so you feel, you know, that can be, that can be exhausting. It can feel intense. And so I think learning how to kind of manage my energy in those situations has been really important. I do also feel like there's an element of having to be, you know, the most prepared. And so I found that if I know my stuff cold like, you know, before a client meeting, just knowing everything about their business, the deal structure, the competitive landscape and, and what they actually care about, I can kind of override that anxiety of how I show up with, you know, with competence, I guess. And so you don't feel as exposed when, you know, you've done the work as now a female in ad tech who's, you know, pretty much been in, in this space for over 22 years. I, I think the, you know, advocating for other females and observing situations where, you know, maybe there's someone that is doing kind of the quiet work that people are not maybe observing and kind of lifting, lifting those women up. So those are the things I would say. I mean, I think if I could go back and give myself one piece of advice, it would be like you're going to be in situations where you will be the only female in a room of, and there's 20 men and it feels they might not perceive it, but you absolutely will. And you're going to have an infinite number of kind of gray area conversations. And the way you navigate them will really kind of define your reputation more than almost anything else you do. And no one really tells you that, you know, when you're starting out.
- [31:49]
AdTech God (Host)
So. Casey, well, thank you so much for, for joining me today and thank you to Liftoff for having you here. I wish you guys the absolute best and thank you. Looking forward to talking to you soon.
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Casey Jordan
Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
- [32:00]
AdTech God (Host)
Of course. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in. To another episode of the AdTech Godpod, a podcast for the people about the people. Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of ad tech. Don't miss out on the latest updates, so follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of ad tech innovation.