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- [00:00]
Ad Tech God
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- [00:51]
Audiohook Sponsor
This podcast is brought to you by Audiohook, the leading independent audio DSP. Audio Hook has direct publisher integrations into all major podcast and streaming radio platforms, platforms providing 40% more inventory than what could be accessed in omnichannel DSPs. What's more, audiobook has full transcripts on more than 90% of all podcast inventory, enabling advanced contextual targeting and brand suitability. Audiohook is so confident that in addition to CPM buys, they offer the industry's only pay for performance option where brands can scale audio and podcasting with peace of mind knowing they are only paying for outcomes. Visit audiohook.com to learn more. That's audiohook.com welcome to the AdTech Godpod.
- [01:34]
Ad Tech God
Your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, Ad Tech God. Welcome to the AdTech God Pod, your go to for real conversations with talent on the market. Today we're joined by Matt Black. I've interacted with Matt quite a bit on LinkedIn and after seeing he's been exploring new opportunities, I thought it was the perfect time to bring him on the podcast. I want to go beyond his LinkedIn profile and get to know the person behind it. Who knows, maybe this conversation helps open up the door to his next big gig. So here we go. Matt's background is primarily in adopts, but as you'll hear his knowledge extends well beyond that. I've said before that I've never really fit neatly into a box in my career and I think Matt might be in the same boat. So sometimes a resume can't necessarily capture the full picture, but a conversation can. So I'm really excited to get this started. Matt, welcome to the ADTech Godpod.
- [02:30]
Matt Black
Thank you for having me, your holiness. It's absolute pleasure and was absolutely excited to be a part of it.
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Ad Tech God
Yeah, same here. Thank you. Thank you for accepting. You know this is something new that I'm trying out. I see a lot of these, like, really great people on LinkedIn that are looking for work and DM me, and I DM them and we have conversations. I figured, let me try something new and maybe go beyond the LinkedIn profile, get to know the person who's looking and in search of a, you know, their next opportunity to see where it goes. Like, it could be nowhere and it could be. You get hit up by five people who want to talk, so it doesn't hurt completely.
- [03:06]
Matt Black
And I think you took a lot of the thoughts right out of my mouth in that a resume, especially when you're deeper into your career, is only a snapshot and can only convey capabilities or knowledge. And at the same time, I'm happy to be guinea pig for you.
- [03:23]
Ad Tech God
Awesome. I'm so happy for you to be here, Matt. And so let me. Let's do this. How did you get in the industry? How did you get in the advertising? Do you want to take me back to maybe, like the beginning? What brought you to the point where you're at today? And what experience do you feel like you have in the market that you could offer?
- [03:38]
Matt Black
So originally I was pursuing 3D animation to work in video games, and then the wonderful market crash of 2010, 2011, kind of disrupted all of that. And again, back then was unemployed. So started thinking back on other experiences and skills that I had and became a production coordinator for a small startup in San Francisco. And through that, part of the responsibility was to traffic ads. And of all the time I've spent on the web, I never thought, like, who's the one putting these ads up? Or how do they get there? So it was a whole new world to me and something that really caught my curiosity because I knew even though I was just trafficking, that there was more to it than that. And that's where my career kicked off. From the startup, I went to Dictionary.com, which I was a specialist. So I was doing trafficking, campaign reporting, you know, account management, campaign management, you name it. And I had a great manager there who took and understood my background and my experience and was able to connect the dots for me. So the understanding of, you know, I started developing websites back in 1996, went to school, like I said, for 3D animation and visual effects. So we're dealing with a lot of creatives and things of that nature. I also worked at a radio station that was streaming live on the web before most people knew what the web was. Okay, so maybe that's not completely, but you get the idea. So it felt like all of my experience had led to this type of career. And the more I dug into ads and ad tech, the more I loved it because there was a very creative outlet for me, which I'm sure most people don't see. But you have not just creatives as in like what you're serving, but the solutions that you come up with. Out of the box thinking. And I found that I was finding more unconventional solutions because of my knowledge of web development and how web sites work, and I just started chasing it. And after working in the publisher sector for so long, I wanted to understand how DSPs worked. I wanted to understand what agencies are doing. I wanted to close the full end to end ecosystem and have an understanding of that and where the discrepancies are. Like, what's the buy side doing so differently than the publisher side that's causing a lot of, you know, the wasted spend that we see. But more to me was how far down this rabbit hole can I learn from? So to that I worked at a dsp, I worked in brand safety and ivt. Specifically, I have consulted on programmatic publisher business and worked with an agency and had a good time doing all of it. And just, you know, that tinkering and improving is what I love. But yeah, so that's, that's a lot of years compressed into a few minutes.
- [06:50]
Ad Tech God
Oh, it's, it's crazy. You go back, you know, just, just looking at how long you've worked in the space, like, I, I get it. It's really hard to, to narrow it all down into five, six minutes of a description of what you do. Like, you worked at Stitcher, you worked at a mobi, you worked at as a freelance at Goodr X, and you worked at Bliss Point leading a team. What would you say is like your strong suit? What's your strength? Because you understand the creative aspect. Obviously there's a passion for that. If you wouldn't have majored in that if you didn't love it. What's your goal? Do you want to get back into out operations, run out operations team? Do you want to work in some sort of creative tech company? What would be your ideal situation? Or are you just kind of open.
- [07:32]
Matt Black
To it all right now? I'm open to it all. I think I've hit a point that the things that I know and the exposure that I've had and the solutions that I have built, I just want to go help. I want to take everything that I've learned and everything that I will learn and go help somebody do it better. And not to say they're not doing it great now, but again, with the understanding of the function, you can come up with a lot of solutions that most people aren't going to see. Because you know, I don't want to say how to game the system, but you know how to utilize the system better for your needs. You know, I am open and just strangely I love doing ads and just want to get back to doing great work, you know, with great people.
- [08:20]
Ad Tech God
You're active on LinkedIn. I see you post on occasion and comment on occasion. Like what, what direction do you think things are heading in and how do you, how do you feel? Because this is always a hot topic. Like how do you feel AI is going to improve what you're doing on the creative front, on the adopts front? What trends are you seeing or at least reading about and interested in that you feel are good for the industry and good for you for learning experience or for potential new roles?
- [08:45]
Matt Black
The AI one, I know it's going to be a hot take, but having lived through and experienced the hopefulness that people had behind programmatic and what they were expecting at that time for it to be able to do, I think we're going to kind of run into the same thing with AI. I think there will be efficiencies that we get and it'll make things easier in some cases and will provide a great alternative. And as much as I love the thought, I don't think we're going to see the all in one type solution or the revelation that people are expecting it to be. And it's not to say that it won't get there, but understanding what goes into KPIs, what goes into optimizations, what goes into all of those types of mechanics, and even at a base level, what goes into trafficking. I think there's going to be a limitation where we still need hands in and that AI won't be able to just solve that. I do think as people build upon it, we're going to find a lot more efficiencies and a lot more time saving capabilities through it and probably a better level of knowledge base just on how to do optimizations. And what does this look like? You know, what should I be doing here and what lever should I pull? I think it'll be very useful to accelerate people's careers on the more junior level and I think it's going to be a good thing overall. But I think we as an industry need to be a little More realistic in our expectations versus hopeful.
- [10:32]
Ad Tech God
Yeah, no, I feel like there's a, you know, AI fixes all mentality and trend. I think it's powerful. I think a lot of the manual optimizations could probably be automated. I think that, you know, the amount of processing and understanding of what's happening will, will be great. I think AI as a, you know, generative AI kind of product for creative, I think could be really interesting. And let's see where that heads down and how good that creative is. But on the, on the trafficking part, like some of the DSPs are coming out with these, like just type in your budget, type in your brand and basic description. It's going to do everything for you. I don't know, like, I, I think that's cool and that's great for a very basic buyer or a very basic brand. Maybe for a small SMB like that could work where you don't really know what's going on and you just say, hey, I'm a pizza shop owned by two people. I want to target an area and run it. But for like major global brands, like, I just don't see how a simplified UI will benefit them outside of the maybe efficiency and optimization piece. But it'll still need oversight, right?
- [11:37]
Matt Black
Exactly. And you're hitting on exactly what. What I mean is there's still too much in the details of strategy, I guess you could say, like targeting and what metrics you're going after and you know, what KPIs you have. The one thing to me that I've always found is KPIs are going to be the tricky part because it's hard enough from person to person to translate on a very high level. And I'm sure somebody's going to say something about this. But like the CTR versus cpa, like acquisition acts versus click throughs. Right. How do you explicitly describe that to AI? So it understands the difference and you don't go back to your campaign in a week and it's optimizing towards CTR instead of acquisition. Those are the deeper seated things that I worry about in the introduction of AI.
- [12:34]
Ad Tech God
I wouldn't say I did adopts, I would say I was very close to adopts in one role. And I feel like sometimes it's also gut instinct of what works. Sometimes the numbers don't necessarily show, but there's like a gut instinct without any data that you think may or may not perform better, minor tweaks that you do to try to deliver on whatever you're delivering on. Sometimes they work but then you just, you unwind it. You're like, hey, forget it, this didn't work. It's like your typical like pen and notepad optimization where you're just let me try this out and if it doesn't work, I'm gonna undo it and if it does work, I'm a hero and I'm just gonna keep going with it. And I think sometimes that non deeply calculated optimization sometimes really works. And it, there is real no logic behind it outside of I tried this a while ago and it seemed to perform really well. I'm gonna give it a shot. And even though it's a different campaign, it's different clients, different targets, different inventory source, I'm just going to try it and see if it works. There is no historical data to optimize off of. It's really just something that you tried somewhere else and it happened to just work. And so that's, I think where we will miss out on is that gut instinct that people have just after doing ops for so long that you're able to just say, you know what, I think this might actually do it.
- [13:57]
Matt Black
And let's look behind the veil. Right? I think exactly what you're talking about is something that happened with me at Stitcher is when I was at Stitcher was about the time that Google released the ECPM and their definition of it just never sat right with me because something didn't make sense. It was only basing the value off of what was sold. And having grown up in family run restaurants and other types of businesses like that, you kind of know that at least a restaurant there's a rule of three, which is your cost of goods, your overhead and your profit. So when I was looking at the ecpm, something just did not sit right. And that's when I actually ended up taking kind of a rule of three. It's like, sure, we made a dollar for everything we sold, let's just say. But then you realize that some of your networks were at a fill rate of 2%. So for that and we didn't have passbacks at that time in app. So to be running 2%, you're having to work that much harder to get that same $1. And I've always said now that like the ECPM is like a restaurant trying to sell at cost their food at cost of goods. You're. And it's going to fail because there's all the overhead that it doesn't take into consideration. And as soon as I started, as you said, napkin math.
- [15:21]
Ad Tech God
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I live my life on napkin math.
- [15:25]
Matt Black
I started doing new calculations and took our general. When I took over Stitcher Programmatic, it was about $7,000 a month. After I vetted a few partners, which took about 3ish months and really got into optimizations, I was able to increase that to about $45,000 a month in about three months. And it was just because of a new calculation.
- [15:49]
Ad Tech God
Where do you want to head towards? Like, I mean, this pod now gets thousands of listens a month. It's pretty wild to see where it's heading. What's your ideal employer? What's your ideal company to work for? Do you want to work at a dsp? Do you want to work at a publisher? Do you want to lead a team? Are you okay with individual contributor? What's your ideal goal? And are you remote?
- [16:10]
Matt Black
Yeah, I remote. I would love. I've been remote since before the pandemic. I mean, I started remote really when I was with Stitcher, which was back in 2015. Ideally, you know, there's always going to be a love for the publisher side just because that's where I cut my teeth. And there's a fun aspect of just working on that single project to continue it to grow as much as you can. But I'm also open to agency. I would even go back into Programmatic, meaning DSP or ssp. I'm pretty open on company wise. I just want to find someplace that I really fit. And I know it sounds weird, but I think all of us are looking for it and don't really want to admit it, but I just want to be. I don't want to say appreciated for what I know, but I want that to be. Not that it's my way or the highway, but knowing that I have the experience that I have and the consideration. But I'm very open. Like when I graduated college in 3D animation, I always targeted kind of the fringe companies. I wanted to work for the Nvidias as well because those were always the people that were going to have a development cycle that needed 3D animation and it was security and it was safety. And I will 100% admit that. And I know that a lot of the industry right now is on different ground. But like, I love seeing these companies that are getting into ads and I would love to go help them because what good is all of this experience that I've built if I can't help somebody get a head start on what they want to do? But at the same time, since I know programmatic, I would be happy to go back to somebody like Nexen and work with them with whatever they had because they, they were great as well. I'm kind of an open book.
- [18:03]
Ad Tech God
I. Yeah, I love. And everything you're saying is, I mean, everything you're saying makes sense. I mean there's, there's a lot of benefits to working for a big company where, you know, the process is built and the security is there and the stability is there. And then there's also the sense of being appreciated and, you know, like respected for your experience and your knowledge and to be listened to. I think that's probably what, that's what it kind of sounds like you're asking for is like, look, I want you to be able to listen to my opinions, I want to speak my opinion, be able to share my knowledge with you. Whether it's, you know, taken into consideration or not is one thing, but I want to be able to give advice and provide my knowledge to the greater team. I don't think that's asking for too much.
- [18:48]
Matt Black
And I've come across this more often than not, I think for me, because I've never approached it this way and never understood anybody that has, but there's a lot and I think it's becoming less nowadays. So I applaud everybody that lines up with this. But there's a lot of why should we change? Because this is how we've always done it and for me is everything's evolving and you know, we've seen other parts of the industry so we know that there's different best practices elsewhere that will serve you better than how you've always done it. And that's what I mean, at least let me fight for my point even if I lose.
- [19:27]
Ad Tech God
And I think that's a multi work environment too, like being able to share your opinion and, you know, deliver the facts and deliver the insights. If they decide to act on it, it's one thing, but at least give, you know, hand over the podium for a moment and let me speak my opinion. Share my, my knowledge is, is not asking for too much. I think a lot of companies don't do that. I think some companies do that like where, where they're open to your feedback and your insights and it might be something. They kick the can down the road for a bit, but then they come back and they say, hey, look, look, that was a really good idea. Let's give it a shot now. So, I mean, I work with a bunch of these companies in some capacity. Matt, at this point, I think we've worked with most of the ad tech companies, so I'm really hoping that someone out there is listening that wants to give it a shot, maybe bring you into an interview, bring you into a conversation, even if it's casual.
- [20:14]
Matt Black
I appreciate that and thank you again for all of this. I really, I can't tell you. As we were discussing, you know, there's been a lot that's been happening for me since the beginning of the year. So when I got this invite, like, it's so far the best thing that's happened all year.
- [20:32]
Ad Tech God
Just, I mean, I'll say it, I'll say it again. All I want is people work, make money, support their families. That's all I care about. Like, the tech behind it all, like, is great and it's wonderful. Awesome doing cool stuff. But in the end, like, we all have families to feed. That's all that matters.
- [20:48]
Matt Black
Agreed and appreciate it.
- [20:50]
Ad Tech God
Awesome. Matt, thank you so much for being on the pod and I'm looking forward to speaking with you soon.
- [20:55]
Matt Black
Thanks for having me and it was such a great time and I'll keep up with you on LinkedIn.
- [21:00]
Ad Tech God
Same here. 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 @ check Community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of ad tech innovation.