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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, and 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, and grew their business in the process. Listen to the Build with Michael Sullivan wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by
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Accenture when your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the
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rhythm of ad sales using automation, analytics
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and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery
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and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most.
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Learn more@accenture.com Spotify welcome to the AdTech
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Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, Ad Tech God. Welcome to the AdTech.pod where we speak to the leaders in the advertising industry. Today's guest is Jonathan Frollinger, CEO of Big Happy. Big Happy is a high impact mobile advertising company. If you're unaware, John has a great and long background working in the industry. He's worked at companies like Coffee Labs, Verve, Starcom, US Open and more. Our pre chat was awesome because I realized we are both very unfiltered and I can't wait for this unfiltered combo. So John, thanks for joining me today.
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Thanks for having me ATG and excited to get a nice little Thursday night rolling with you here. Let's chat some ads my friend.
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I start all my podcasts the same way. It's you know, a meet the guest type of intro. I know who you are. I've actually met you in person before but you probably would not know that, but I would love to hear from you. Your background, what you did in the advertising space. You worked with, you know, agency side, you worked at mobile companies. Tell me how how did you become the CEO of Big Happy and what got you to this point?
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Yeah, so I had the pleasure of landing at Starcom post college. I had absolutely no idea what working on the Samsung CTV team meant at the time, but that didn't really matter. Graduating in the 2011 recession. You took whatever job you could get at that point and it turned out to really be the best thing for my career. I think growing up in an agency and Growing up with really smart people around you is just really exhilarating. And you know, you get to talk to so many folks out there. It's kind of during the proliferation of programmatic and ad tech and all these things. So I was, it was a really fortunate time to be on the agency side, learned so much and then ultimately went into the ad tech world. Spent a few years at Verve Mobile, really got to understand the pipes of ad tech. And now, you know, DSPs connect to SSPs, data segments are loaded. But the thing I loved about Verve and really the thread throughout my career is that I've always loved the creative that goes into advertising and how that's portrayed. It's of course the only thing that the consumer actually sees. So while we had an incredible ad tech background at Verve, it was really the creative that I loved selling there and was working with so many amazing clients and partners ultimately went a bit off the deep end and went really into kind of the creative production world for a few years. And that's when I would like to say that I kind of got my MBA in CGI and also a little bit of business and just got a ton of great learning experiences there. And then really kind of birthed in the company sense, Big Happy as a brainchild of those three things, how do you make media buying much more effective through creative and through graphics, but make it so that brands and agencies are able to tap in in a really easy way and scale these ads through their DSPs of choice, their viewability partners of choice, their data segments of choice. And ultimately we make incredible ads that really do reach the consumer in a way no one else can. And so that's how Big Big Happy kind of came to be. And seven years in now, we're having a lot of fun. The team has grown tremendously, but it's, it's just an incredible, incredible run.
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I have a question for you for, for the people who are listening, what's your, I guess, elevator pitch for Big Happy? What's your core focus, your unique selling proposition to market?
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So I always tell people, you know, Big Happy is really the first ad platform to put C3D and CGI ads at scale across phones and out of home. We make, run and measure the ads for the world's biggest kind of brands and agencies. But you can really think of Big Happy ATG as the Pixar of an ad tech ads that people actually look at and that brands are actually proud of. And we started it because creative is the hardest variable for brands and agencies to crack. And ultimately the only thing that ever gets seen by the end consumer.
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I know that there's, there's some wording around it with, you know, creating high impact creative. I guess, in a, in a world where, you know, your mobile device is your mobile device creative is now being generated through all types of AI. What does, I guess, high impact look like today in 2026, where there's both a human element to it and I guess an automation or AI element to it?
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Yeah, it's a great question. And we're definitely in that high impact bucket and we like to be, because we believe that every ad should be impactful. But as we know, not all of them are. I think really what makes Big Happy so unique is what we do from a graphics perspective. And from a 3D perspective, really the ads that we create are all made through computer app graphics, 3D. I'll give you a good example. We did a craft lunchables and Transformers collab. And in that we turned Ham and cheese Lunchables into Transformers in an ad unit, CGI and computer graphics, everything is possible. That would have been really hard for you and me, atg, to put on Ham and cheese Lunchables and try and turn into Transformers in the real world. So it's really computer graphics in 3D that makes us different. And consumers respond really differently to computer graphics because we are all in the real world and we're all pretty relatively aware of the things that might happen to us kind of throughout the day. When you see a ad that's done in 3D, that's done really well, it's going to stand out to you. It's going to operate visually in a different way. That actually makes your brain do what we call as a take two, because emotion is processed before logic. And so our ads are really able to get to the consumer, make them see it differently, and then their brain is kind of able to lock in and catch up to the conscious thinking to really kind of unlock that memory gateway for the remembrance of the ad itself. I'll give you analogy that's similar but different. When you're watching a horror movie or someone jumps out behind a doorway and scares the shit out of you, sometimes your brain is thinking, how do I get my heart back where my heart's supposed to be? And you already have goosebumps. In a similar way that emotion is processed before logic, your galvanic skin response is actually going to jump and tell you that you're scared before your brain feels it. Our ads are able to stick out in such A way to consumers that they're able to focus in on them and, and then remember them in such a specific way because we've unlocked that real biological gateway.
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I love that aspect because a lot of what I used to do when I had, I think, more bandwidth was I used to create a lot of like, really cheesy videos and posts. Either they were humorous or they were like a little bit too emotional, or they were something that I felt that resonated with me at the time in order for me to express that emotion. And that was actually probably the biggest driver for growth because people recognized what I was posting, the music, the tone, and the creative behind it. Do you find that brands that you work with or advertisers that you work with in general trust in that gut feeling that they have, even though it's CGI and it's automation. But do you feel that there's still this overwhelming feeling of like, yes, we need to tap that emotional piece, we need to tap that biological piece in order for us to push the narrative or push the campaign forward?
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It's a great question and I think one that we win from a lot, right, because brands and marketers do ultimately buy on gut and pie on emotion, but they'll only do it once. And so when we walk into a room, we can really create something differently. The same way that the type of content you, you make stands out amongst the crowd. When we go into a room with brands and agencies, they really see the difference in what they do. They really tune in and say, wow, okay, how are you doing this? How is this different? We also try and show them how we make computer graphics, how we build a Pillsbury Doughboy or a Celsius can in 3D. But brands will only buy you on gut and emotion once it has to work and the data has to work for them to come back again and again and again. And I think that's so excited about the business that we've built and why we moved into additional channels last year with our digital out of home launch. Because this does push brands forward in many, many ways. Whether you are a QSR brand selling burgers, a CPG brand selling water bottles, or, you know, a pharmacy brand measuring audience quality and script lift. These sort of visuals and graphics really stand out to the consumers and change their emotional pull as well.
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Do you focus primarily on mobile and now digital of home? Do you tap, I guess, connected television or any other platforms overall?
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So the main mediums we play in at the moment are really the dibs out of home and the mobile world, we love that one, two punch. Being able to really drive those awareness consideration messages across both of those platforms, but also really where we can add a ton of value to brands, right? We believe that those are channels that are ripe for innovation, where we can go into a room and talk to a brand about leveling up their creative there. And that's what's most important, I think, for anyone in this industry. But always what we play by is we have to be able to drive an insane amount of value. And those are the mediums currently that we really, really just excel in and brands are loving. But what I think is important to remember because we've seen mobile, you know, really being used as a awareness all the way down to lower funnel performance platform. Digital out of home is one that I think is starting to get a lot of love these days because it is exciting, it is different and the performance is not limited in ways that people, I think for many years have thought it was. But for us, we spend an insane amount of time thinking about graphics, graphical computing and so to be able to take these incredible ads that we do and now put them on the biggest spectaculars, the biggest billboards, but also around bus shelters in every city in America, that for us is where we're able to bring brands to life in ways that you just never could before.
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I want to ask you because this is a question that we did at the possible, I think it was possible hot takes. We asked the question, you know, is it targeting or creative? Which one is more important? I'm going to guess that you're going with creative.
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I'm going to go with creative on this one because it goes back to. And listen, targeting, you know, at this point to me is table stakes. Our platform brings in all of the best targeting out there. Because if you are ultimately reaching the incredibly wrong consumer, no one cares how good your creative is, right? But I think we've spent quite a bit of time over the last 15 to 20 years building out signals that are very easily accessible. But you kind of nailed it. Atg, it is creative at the end of the day, right? And we've seen so many studies that do that. But we also know that from the way that we are wired as humans, because you said something really important, it's what's different, it's what stands out. And there is a real biological reason for that. The brain is wired to remember what stands out, not what's average and seen constantly. And that's the von Rich Storf effect that goes back almost 100 years now by by a very smart lady from Germany in the 1930s who really showed that if you do the average things, people forget about them. And it's the hits and it's the real winners that stand out and the one that the brain decides to keep.
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Hey everyone, this is Adtech Dot and this is a commercial message. Here at marketecture we know what you need more of in your life. Adtech Podcasts. So I'm thrilled to tell you about the Media Ocean Podcast network. Three different shows currently live and a bunch more launching soon. There's Femme Forward, a show about women and leadership added up, which is Basically ad tech 101. And frap rap with G Dog, which defies all descriptors. Check them out@mediaocean.com podcast network. That's MediaOcean.com podcast network available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. And thank you Media Ocean for supporting market. I'm going to pivot a little bit and ask you a question mostly about mobile. Mobile ad spend is obviously massive, but the media and I guess the industry is always talking about connected television. It's a little boring. I think we consistently talk about ctv, but then we understand and realize just how powerful mobile is. What do you think is the right mix? Like I see advertisers push for the branding and awareness. Now CTV is being pitched as a performance channel, but what do you think is like that right mix of digital home mobile, maybe even traditional out of home linear television, ctv. When you speak to someone about the creative, how are you looping this all in together? How are you thinking about that creative process across your core focus platforms and then maybe outside of that?
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Yeah, I mean, I would say putting my media buyer hat on TV is always going to be such a powerful medium. Right. The ability to kind of leverage audio as well as visuals of that nature on big screens make it powerful in the same way digital out of Home has that real power from a massive screen perspective. You know, I don't see the media model, model mix changing too significantly over the next few years. Here's what I do see changing a little bit and I do think it's because mobile is a really underappreciated, even to this day, platform for brand awareness. But I think you've had brands for so many years who have been spending an insane amount of time, money and effort with these live shoots, procurement, massive budgets and TV isn't driving that sort of value that they think it is unless it's really put in the right sort of environments. Like these live events, moments, all of those sorts of things, because otherwise people are just looking at their cell phones while your TV spot is running, let's call it what it is. But I do think one of the most interesting shifts to clients and how they'll look at spend over the next few years is that the cost of creative generation will come down to some extent. The cost of making TV spots will be more accessible to medium sized brands. Larger brands will figure out ways to bring those costs down and when they do that, that they'll no longer be forced to justify an abnormally high spend in tv. And I do think that you'll see a lot of other platforms gain market share and spend share because of that, because that it really should have been optimized years ago. But as we all know, we have to justify the cost expenses of things. And so I think TV has been overspent in, for, for quite a bit now and again, incredibly powerful platform. But we need to push the industry as well for more transparency and more real reporting and what's going on there until brands really, really should put what they're putting in that channel.
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Okay, now I'm gonna pivot because. Thank you. Because I'm, I'm, I would say I was slightly familiar with Big Happy, but now I feel like I nailed it. Probably become your sales rep. Where are you seeing things heading? So I often try to forecast with guests like what is going to be hot 6, 12, 18 months from now. What are you really like, bullish on what direction do you think the mobile advertising and digital home space is heading? I'd love to hear your perspective because of where you sit in the ecosystem. I, I think you can bring a great perspective to the listeners.
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Yeah, I mean, I get really excited by, I think, where the advertising community is going from a few different perspectives. One, I think AI as a whole is going to give the creative and the folks in this space who have always thrived a lot more time back to do what they do really well and come out of trafficking sheets and billing sheets and put their brains towards being really creatively focused. And so I do think because of that, because of the time savings, we'll get more relevant advertising as an industry, but we'll also get to do it in a way that's a lot more fun. I think we're already seeing the benefits of creating material, of selling through things to clients that might have taken, you know, 1am Nights at an agency a few years ago that have now really been kind of cut down by some of what we're able to do here. But I do believe that the industry is going to use that resource time back to be more thoughtful and to drive brand and do these sorts of things with all of the tools that we have at our disposal. I think we're starting to see that. This is my opinion, at least two years ago it was going to take all of our jobs and no one was going to be making ads anymore. And I wrote a piece last year about how you might see SMBs really embrace this and the generative AI model over years to come. It really isn't there yet. From a true ad creation perspective, I think brands need to be smart in the way that they generate and commercialize and use their assets instead of really leaning into some of these tools that ultimately is what I call the AI kind of treadmill loop of death where you start to get in with these models that don't take care of your brand just yet. Because when you ask for a picture of, you know, water bottle on the moon, it doesn't care about your water bottle the same way the Coca Cola company might. It cares about that overall picture because it's just based on data sets. I believe very much that brands are going to have to use tools incredibly sophisticatedly, but also from a way that makes it commercially usable. And that's really exciting, I think. And I'm also a big believer that the robots are not coming for our jobs. Right. We've seen, I think, kind of, you know, some real adjustments in the ad world. But. But we've seen that before and we've seen it really swing back on the up and up. Brands are more important than ever. Creative thinking is more important than ever. But media execution is really important. Right. You're ultimately a brand in their agency is only as powerful as their media partners that they choose. And those folks are really now able to use tools that enhance the deliverables for clients, the speed for clients. That's a huge win. Right? We know how fast digital moves and so we're gaining so many benefits of it. But I like to tell my team a lot that AI solves for the 20% of your day that you can't predict that one thing that used to get you in much more of a hole, but now you can solve a little bit quicker because regardless of what business you're in, it never runs exactly how you think it will. And we're lucky enough in adtech to use tools to get around that 10 to 20% that used to be really hard to solve. Some industries it's harder to do. Right. Like if you're a restaurant, you know most of what's happening that night. But if you get my Aunt Judy, who's lovely in there, she's going to actually absolutely rock that place. And there's no AI that's going to fix that. I think we've really come a long way and we'll be incredibly benefited by all of these tools, but it. We really will bring out more of our brains as well.
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I can tell you that if it was up to Ari, he would automate me because after working with him for two years, I know he's had enough of atg.
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It's fascinating because I also believe that we. There's so much noise out there right now, right. And it's so much noise where, you know, I was out to dinner with a client who I think is one of the smartest folks in these industry. In the industry at this point. And he said to me that he was really scared to kind of push back against folks pushing AI. And I thought that was really interesting. And something that we all have to be a bit more acceptable and understanding of is AI is super transformative. We've used it at Big Happy to cut down the time that we work. We don't work Friday afternoons anymore year round. And we're super laser focused on client services. But to hear someone say that they don't feel like they can speak out against AI is really tough. Right. And ultimately a real pain point for this industry because we need to understand what it does. We need to fix trafficking for agencies before we start talking about agents to agents, agents bidding and bidding. The compute doesn't make sense there. It won't get there. And I think we all have to come back to being a little bit more human to human.
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I agree with you on that aspect. I. I also think when it comes down to creativity and tapping emotion, AI can't tap that. It thinks it's tapping emotion. It thinks it's creating something that is the right tone or the right sentiment that you're looking for. But it. 99% of the time, this is the mark and anytime I've used it and this is just like a Standard LLM or ChatGPT or Claude. And I try to make it touch a particular emotion that I'm looking for. It really misses the mark. It requires a ton of editing. So for me it's like spark an idea and then the human element has to play a role. You have to go through and read it, edit it and spend a few minutes doing so or it just sounds robotic and dull.
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Totally. And in this and in the place that you're talking about, right when you're creating a video, when you're creating any sort of animation and animation is required for storytelling in any capacity that's not at the point where you're able to use it well. And then you have to spend hours and hours to go through and adjust it. And it's like, you know, we're sitting here and clapping as an industry kind of like idiots that the chat GPT is able to make a static 300 by 250 banner. We've been able to do that for the last 12 years. Right. What are we talking about? Generating assets doesn't equal quality. I don't know and I don't know what an agency is going to do when a client decides that, you know, they have 200,000 different type of ad units because they think that changing the color of, you know, CTA 900 times is going to change anything more is not always better. And all that these tools can do is generate an asset. We've been able to build ads for the last 15 years. We're not sure as an industry why that's been so hard for everyone else to do. That's part of the reason Big Happy entered the picture eight years of those 15 years ago. As we said, listen, there are real ways to do this, but creative tech is a big piece of it. And all these things flow, as you know, from being in this industry very much together. The creative and the media and the tech platforms and the measurement all have to line up or there's no game here.
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You know, we, we refer to it at market texture. We definitely, definitely have a little bit of shiny object syndrome happening in the industry. Like there's, I get it, it's powerful, it's useful, it streamlines operations, it can help in many, many ways. But the AI pitch as the pitch itself, without true value building behind it is out of control. And so I tell everyone, like we talk about outcomes, cool. Like you don't no longer have to say it's AI powered, just tell us what the outcome will be, tell us what the output will be from this. That's what we're looking for. We're not looking for an AI powered solution. We're looking for what are you trying to solve in market.
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Yeah, how do you help me solve it? And I think AI enabled companies and ones that use it can actually explain what they do rather than being AI first and just telling you how they believe that they're going to replace people is the way to go. And I think that's where we're at, right? If you are talking to someone and they cannot give you specific examples of how they use AI in their product to either make the products better, that helps you and your business, or to make your life easier as a buyer, you've just totally missed the point. No one cares anymore about your 9262 different AI models. We don't know what to do with them. Please tell us.
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Before we close out the podcast, I wanted to ask you, as someone who's been there for quite some time and scaled the business quite a bit as well, what's some of the biggest learnings you've had with doing so in terms of the culture, the product and your clients? What's it take to scale a business to where you're at today at Big Happy?
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It's hard, right? You got to get really, really good people. And I think that's ultimately what we've been able to do. I've always been able to surround my with incredible people throughout my career. So going back to, you know, how I got started, I still have so many folks from the agency side, folks that I've worked with in the ad tech side who now have, you know, come on over to Big Happy. And so it's, it's an incredible experience. It's the most fulfilling one I've ever done and getting to work with so many smart folks. But it's also so cool to see some of the younger folks who've joined a few years ago as we're now getting up a little bit into our first grade, second grade years, really just winning in the game of advertising and having so much fun talking to brands, doing real things. But I think as we keep growing, you know, it's always challenging ourselves, remembering how much we can do. And I think the one piece of advice, not that you necessarily ask for it at atg, but the one that I always kind of give the team and I think, you know, one that resonates really well, is always to learn and be curious, keep finding ways and keep asking those question of why, why does it work like this? Ask, you know, not every single time, but ask, you know, the questions and learn. And then more important than ever these days, understand technology. You don't need to write code, but you need to understand code and you need to know how pixels work and you need to know how pipes work and all of these things. And understanding those things will give you such an advantage over the next few years and understanding how AI works. It is a script, literally and technically, and you can read about it and learn about it. And so we're just having a ton of fun, but it's really a shout out to the people that we've been with along the way.
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I love that dunk. This has been great. I thank you for being my guest today. Thank you to Big Happy for having you. I truly appreciate it. And yeah, I hope you kick butt all summer. Good luck to you and to all the growth at Big Happy.
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Thanks so much atg. This was awesome man. Have a phenomenal weekend and excited to see you under the radar soon.
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Yes and no. We didn't have to bleep anything out.
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I know, I tried. I saved you know it's on the post production there.
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Take care. Thank you John.
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Thanks guys. Have a great one.
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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.