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- [00:00]
Ad Tech God
This episode is brought to you by Zeta Global. Do you know what it takes to transform marketing into a data driven profit center? Are you able to align the C suite around your AI vision and strategy? Zeta Global has the Playbook to help you get started Download Driving growth in the AI era today at Zetacmo AI Book. Again, that's Zeta Cmo AI Book. Welcome to the AdTech God Pod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host Ad Tech God. Welcome to the ADTech Godpod, your go to for conversations with those who curate today we have Yen Win, the SVP Head of Curation at Consumable. Yen is the Curation Queen, having worked at Audigent prior to joining Consumable. She's worked at Varic, Goodway and more in her career. Curation has been a hot topic for a while now and will continue to be so. So I'm really excited to be chatting with her about what she's doing at Consumable and how she sees curation playing a large role. Yen, welcome to the ITech Godpod.
- [01:18]
Yen Win
Thanks for having me. I'm honored to be in the presence of ATG greatness.
- [01:22]
Ad Tech God
Same here. Yen, I am honored to be in the presence of the Curation Queen. So thank you. Thank you for joining me today. Question for you. I'm not too familiar with Consumable. Before we start, can you just give me a little bit of insights of what Consumable does and what they are as a company in the space?
- [01:38]
Yen Win
Yeah, of course. Consumable is an audio first company. We are building the next gen audio supplies platform and I was brought on to build Consumable's next gen audio curation business.
- [01:55]
Ad Tech God
And you previously worked at Audigen, so you have a lot of background in curation. Why don't you just take me back from when you worked at Goodway and Varick and how you reached where you are today. Really leading on Curation and having a title that has curation in it.
- [02:11]
Yen Win
Yeah, you know, it was totally accidental. I don't think that any children growing up would say I want to grow up and be a Curation person or to work in advertising. But you know, here I am like.
- [02:29]
Ad Tech God
The rest of us.
- [02:30]
Yen Win
Yeah, yeah. You know, everybody wants to be a policeman or a firefighter, but here we are creating PMPs. But you know, it was totally an accidental. I kind of fell into this career. I started at Goodway Group when Programmatic was this weird mysterious thing that nobody fully understood. I was this wide eyed newcomer asking what's an attribution model. What is headabitting? What's a pmp? And the funny thing is, everyone was still figuring out too. And I still think that they're just all figuring things out together as we go. And yeah, Goodway was my first stop and I thought I'd retire there. It was a remote first gig way before. That was cool. You know, we're talking early 2000s. But then this recruiter from Varic called me with this opportunity that sounded amazing, but the only catch that I would have to move to New York City. Here's the thing. At 16, I'd already traveled 9,000 miles to America with just a backpack and a dream. Like a lot of immigrants out there came here for college. And mind you, the radius of the globe is about 8,000 miles. So I literally travel halfway around the world to chase. My dream was an ad tech, to be honest.
- [04:04]
Ad Tech God
But we don't choose this life. The life chooses us.
- [04:07]
Yen Win
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, I thought, what's another thousand miles, right? But talk about culture shock. The New York City pace was insane. Everyone there was the smartest person that you've ever met. And the kind of place where you check your ego at the door every morning and basically have to relearn everything daily. It was intense.
- [04:33]
Ad Tech God
You must have learned a ton. You know, moving into, I think it was varic and then Goodway.
- [04:39]
Yen Win
It was Goodway and then Varic and then varic.
- [04:41]
Ad Tech God
And then when, when you joined Audigen and Audigent was recently acquired, I'm sure curation was still a buzzword, if you want to call it that. And now it's definitely not a buzzword. It's definitely something that a lot of companies are focused on. How is curation, I guess, different at Audigent than it is at Consumable where you're audio focused.
- [05:03]
Yen Win
And you know, to be honest, I was spinning for months. Right? You're going from a lower pace company like Goodway, where you work at home, to Varic, which is like kombucha and tap everybody at the ping pong table discussing the next best thing and GDPR and Apple news privacy policy, changing everything, right? So I got my footing eventually and it was super fun. I learned a lot. And during that whole time, the one constant in all of that hectic life was the fact that we all knew that we were the beginning of the end for third party cookies. So I wanted to get closer to the data side. So I work at Holding Co Environment and then in House role. They were all data focused, but I felt Like I was just scratching the surface and I was really hunting for the next IT solution to this massive ad tech puzzle in this identity landscape. And everything changed at Autogen because suddenly I wasn't just implementing strategy, I was actually creating the playbook. And you know, at the time, curation wasn't even a word in adtech that I haven't really heard of it until then. And the Xander team kind of gave us the idea to call it that and you know, shout out to my Xander team who, you know, really was the founder of a lot of things. They, you know, they all have that founder spirit and expert in their own fields and we work together to create the industry first true curation platform. So, you know, at Arjun, I learned a lot. We created new things and that's what really excite me. I wanted to create a new product, I want to create a new solution that isn't just going to be, you know, just another ad tech vendors that, you know, creating something to carve out margin. It was actually seeking a solution to a lot of problems. And you know, I really enjoy that. And I saw basically the biggest opportunity of my career. So I started building these relationships with SSPs. We develop custom audiences together from complex data sets. Autogen was first and foremost a DMP or data management or monetization platform. We created solutions that actually deliver on not just the data driven promise, but also supplies that are premium and perform. And the one thing that I found during my time at Audition is that as curation became the industry buzzword, a lot of people are still very confused about it. There's not a lot of education about what curation really means. It's not just a sight list or, you know, something that you slap the word premium on it and push it out the door because everybody overused the word premium. When everyone say we have something premium, it loses its meaning. And we found that the really true core of curation is not in the supply or in the data, but the expertise of the curators who find the best suited solutions, match it with the best suited supply, package it in an elegant and neat EMPs or buyers to easily target, easily optimize and to easily reach out to us, the curators, to say, I need more performance on these specific goals and we would optimize toward that. So in a sense we found that the true essence of curation is in the expert who actually package and optimize these campaigns, like, let's just say curation traders.
- [09:42]
Ad Tech God
How do you think that that differs from the audio space? Because now you're focused on audio, specifically audio. Do you find that the Same signals, similar KPIs, similar measurement solutions are out there? And is curation playing as big of a role in audio that's such a fast growing section of our industry or sector of our industry?
- [10:05]
Yen Win
A lot of audio and great question because a lot of audio is still very much serving on audio platform, let's say. Emarketer just reported that programmatic digital audio spending will hit about 2 billion this year. But here's the kicker. Only 30% of digital audio ad dollars are currently flowing through Programmatic channel. And that signals a huge, massive untapped potential. Consumable. We're trying to build a bridge to kind of connect the tech gap between the classic audio business and the programmatic buyers. You know, it's fascinating to me because, you know, like I said, I want to build a product that bridged the gap. Just like, you know, Uber built their rideshare product that bridged the gap between, you know, having to physically go out on the street and wave a taxi to Airbnb, who build a product that bridge a lot of gap in lack of space or lack of unique locations that provide more custom solutions for buyers. So in the audio space, if you think about it, there are billions and billions being spent in this industry. And while the marketers are pouring money into increasingly crowded video channels, there's this quieter revolution unfolding in digital audio that I don't think anybody is really paying attention to. I mean, it's the same reason that we're here today on the attic God pod.
- [11:56]
Ad Tech God
When big things happen, it's growing quickly. I mean, the space is growing quickly. Spotify just announced their exchange. And I think one thing that I often don't think about when it comes to audio is that audio is not just Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, but it's across streaming devices, it's across smart devices, it's across all types of formats. So when you look at audio at scale, there's a lot of scale there.
- [12:26]
Yen Win
It's so much scale. And that's what we're trying to build is a way for buyers to more easily by audio ads, more targetable and more addressable audio ads. That's something that we are very focused on building. You know, if you think about it, in the morning when I wake up, I would have two or three podcasts that I listen to. When big things happen, people turn to audio. We saw this play out during the recent elections and sporting events like super bowl and March Madness. All the tent poles, there's A podcast about it and you know, that massive untapped potential in an uncluttered environment in audio. Now think about the 75% of U.S. adults that listen to spoken word audio monthly. That's 20% of the Americans daily media time four hours daily. I mean, I don't know if you listen to podcasts for four hours daily, but you know, you listen to maybe an hour or two on podcasts, a few on radio and some more on, you know, even some people are listening to YouTube but you know, they leave their phone on the counter to, you know, like clean the kitchen and they listen to mostly the audio part of it. So the audience is already there, the tech is already there, just waiting for brands to show up.
- [14:04]
Ad Tech God
Why do you think brands are not investing as much in audio in comparison to something like connected television? Because the traditional radio industry is sizable. The digital audio industry, I would assume I don't have stats in front of me, is growing at ridiculous rates because I don't even listen to the radio anymore. I stream everything. What do you feel like those budgets haven't completely shifted or increased over the last few years?
- [14:34]
Yen Win
I think it's just always a educational gap. I think there's also this misconception that visual is always better, but the value prop for audio is compelling. Audio ads delivery similar emotional impact and educational benefits as video, if not more often at significantly more efficient price. And we ask the question why? But behind the scene there's a lot of work that's being done to educate buyers. And typically I think that's a barrier to entry that everyone think that if they want to buy an audio ads that they have to book a podcast episode, you know, pay upfront 5,000, $10,000 for one episode run. Whereas you know, the reality is you can actually buy podcasts programmatically and target the right audience. So it doesn't just served on all of the podcast audience, it might just serve on like specific contextual categories and like what consumable have done is we analyze podcasts at the episode level to figure out the sentiment behind certain podcasts. And this was important during the political season and will become more relevant because you don't want to just target, you know, politics or left leaning or right leaning. They want to target, you know, more issue based and buyers are becoming more sophisticated. So you know, if you are atg, you know, you have let's say millions of listeners, including me, but you only want to target female listeners who lived in certain part of the countries who are interested in, you know, certain aspect of the audio podcast program. There's a way for us to segment these audiences and target them. Now. Previously, the. I think that the adversement of, you know, people were more adverse to buying audio is because the uncertainty and the lack of targeting.
- [16:59]
Ad Tech God
Where do you think things are heading as it relates to audio or just digital advertising overall? You know, making audio more addressable or addressable is obviously a goal, but what direction do you see the industry moving in the next 12 to 18 months? Especially considering all the political climate, all the stresses that we have on the economy. Where do you see the most potential as it relates to this space?
- [17:25]
Yen Win
Yeah, I've. I think that I've heard the word efficiency a lot lately and for forward thinking brands, I think the opportunity is very clear in the near future, in the next, you know, just few weeks or few months, as you planning your Q2, Q3 and your holiday dollars, you need to connect with engaged audience in an environment with less competition, more attentive listeners and you know, 2 billion audio market is just the beginning. I think that you're looking at an uncluttered space for advertisers who understand the opportunity and that opportunity is clearly audio for me. And I believe that curation is the bridge for ad tech that's been missing. Our curated PMPs, like I said, aren't just merely sightless with some vague promises of premium. What we've done here is building the bridge to connect the invisible tech gap. And we're broken down walls, we help agencies and brands navigate very fragmented identity landscape and very outdated audio ad serving technologies. We're not just talking about better targeting. We're creating an entirely new approach to audio that delivers performance.
- [18:56]
Ad Tech God
As a podcaster and who looks at my stats religiously, it's something I look at on a daily basis. It is pretty incredible to know that the targeting is so targeted towards an audience.
- [19:12]
Yen Win
Right.
- [19:12]
Ad Tech God
My podcast is primarily focused on people, the ad tech space, the advertising space, and I go listen to other pods and they're focused on other topics. The level of focus I have when I listen to a podcast is definitely higher than when I watch tv. And the reason is because I'm usually listening to podcasts while I drive, which means I have no other distractions other than making sure I break at a red light and not hit anyone. The rest of the time, my brain is really focused on listening to what's being said, like I'm having a conversation with someone in the car. As a podcaster, I really do think that the value in podcasting and audio in particular is really good.
- [19:53]
Yen Win
Yeah. If I were a brand, let's say Spectrum. That comes to mind as I've seen tons of Spectrum business CTV ads recently, especially on Amazon. I have complaints about the CTV frequency cap. But think about it. If you could serve a CTV ad during dinner hours tonight and break up that frequency cap, accompany that with a business podcast ad during the next day's commute hours, someone who listens to NPR News, WSJ or the Ad Take God podcast, someone who's paying attention to what they're hearing. How much more powerful could that be?
- [20:32]
Ad Tech God
The whole, the whole industry seems to be underrepresented. I have friends who work at Spotify. It seems like the focus to increase ad spend on audio isn't where it should be. I think CTV gets a lot of the limelight, but like you mentioned earlier, just a knowledge gap in what the capabilities are, the targeting is and what you focus on, which is, you know, the curation that's needed to get the right audience at the right time on the right content.
- [21:02]
Yen Win
And that's very well said. I am a very transparent person and I think that the audio industry need to sit together, not in silo. I would invite everyone to the table to think about how we can bring the most value to the buyers out there. Yeah, when I was a media buyer, I found that often ad tech products were not built with the end users in mind because if they had, the industry wouldn't be so confusing and complicated. I think curation could change that. I truly believe that curation is an elegant solution to the fragmented problem of ad tech. And you know, if you think about it like as buyers, what if you don't have to learn every single new tool to be at the top of your field or to keep up? And as publishers and vendors, what if you don't have to build a brand new client facing UI every time? You know, if I were Brian O'Kelly, I would build scope three's go to market strategy as a neat and curated solution that everyone who has access to any DSP can tap into. And if I were building a retail media network or Spotify or whatever the next big ad tech product would be, I would build them as a curated product.
- [22:25]
Ad Tech God
So that being said, what do you think excites you the most in regards to the innovation you mentioned Scope three, They're obviously building out some products. What kind of excites you about new technologies rolling out? Are you focused a lot on utilization of AI for curation? Are you excited about new formats coming out? What kind of gets you excited for the future?
- [22:50]
Yen Win
I think that generally I'm an optimist, so I'm excited about a lot of things. When someone announces a new product, I say great. If it works, it brings more efficiency, it brings more values to the industry. Great. I'm excited about Scope three because, you know, environmental impact is always top of mind for everyone, especially with the immersion of AI. I think that digital out of homes is going to be also one of the next big, big things, especially audio enable out of home screens. I think that any solutions that we can work with to bring more values to reduce our footprint in terms of, you know, environmental footprint, I would welcome all the challenges and all the change. It forces us to innovate, it forces us to compete. And I think that the side that should benefit from all of this is the buyers and the brands. I want to create a product that, you know, not just make the most money possible, but, you know, I want to make the job of a buyer easier. Speaking from, you know, a true person who started from the buy side.
- [24:12]
Ad Tech God
Amazing. Thank you Yen again for being here today and thank you for joining as my guest. And thank you to David Brogilvy for the recommendation. Great person. I really appreciate you taking time out today.
- [24:24]
Yen Win
Yes, thank you. It's been a pleasure.
- [24:26]
Ad Tech God
Same here. Thank you so much. 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 adtech. 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 adtech innovation.