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Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
Episode 139: Lisa Utzschneider on carbon, attention, AI, and why being the CEO is fun!
00:53:52
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- [00:01]
A
A word from our sponsors. Imagine if solving every marketing challenge was precise, intelligent and lightning fast. With Zeta's AI Agent Studio it is our purpose built AI agent turns insights into action, executing high impact workflows, optimizing spend and accelerating performance across the customer journey. Use pre built or customized agents to drive results that matter. See how we do it by going to zetaglobal.com atg Again, that's zetaglobal.com ATG.
- [00:40]
B
This podcast is brought to you by Adelaide. Media verification and measurement are undergoing major disruption. Legacy players are pivoting to performance. Advertising AI is reshaping brand safety and attention is replacing viewability. Adelaide is leading the shift with au, a new way to assess media quality that scores placements based on their potential to drive attention and outcomes. Before your ads run, think of it like a credit score for media. Finally, a clear view of quality. Before you buy, take the guesswork out of your investment strategy and try Adelaide AU on your next campaign. Welcome to the marketecture podcast. I'm Harry Pottero. No longer the CEO of marketexture, just a humble podcaster and I'm here with Eric Franchi who you know, was up for the job of CEO but unfortunately we had to pass. Sorry Eric.
- [01:38]
C
That's okay. Well, congratulations to our friend Jeremy Bloom as the new CEO of marketecture. Let's back it up. Tell us the story about this. Why the move? Why Jeremy? What are you going to be doing besides podcasting? Walk us through.
- [01:58]
B
Yeah, I don't have answers to any of those questions, but I'll do my best. So Mark Tector is over three years old. It started as probably people know, is mostly in audio or video interviews with leading CEOs under a subscription model. Um, and then it really changed about a year ago when we did a three way merger between Market Ad Tech God and the Ad Tech the Ad Tech Forum, which was Jeremy Bloom's content company. And since then we've grown quite a bit. We're now, I want to say if you include me, five employees and then a couple other contractors we have, we're doing our second big event and it's turned into a substantial media company. And you know, I look around and say, you know, who's the best at running a media company? I don't think that's me. I'm more of a product tech guy. Media is about relationships and about, you know, marketing and, and just bringing together people and communities. It's just not, you know, what I want to spend my day to day on. I think I have other things to work on. I just wrote a book. I enjoyed that. So I'm going to focus on the content side of the job. Podcasting newsletter, you know, hosting the events while Jeremy brings, you know, amazing track record of growing the. From a sales role, now in a CEO role. And we are building something really exciting and big, and we're happy to continue that. And we're happy about the people, you, the listeners who've helped us get there, as well as the attendees to our conference and Eric and other investors who've put some money in. So we think it's a pretty exciting journey and is the next stage.
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C
Yeah, absolutely. Congrats to Jeremy. Jeremy, if you've never met him, he posts a lot of videos online and he's just got this awesome, magnetic personality. And I think this is a role that he was kind of. He was kind of born for, you.
- [03:48]
B
Know, in a sense. Yeah, I think. I think he was. He loves creating the content as well as monetizing it. He's building a team. We just brought on another seller, Hannah Kasoff, who many people may know, and. And it's definitely going to become, we think, the next, you know, grade B, 2B media brand. And I'm excited to be along for the ride. I'm still the chairman, so I still am probably the largest shareholder, and I. I'm spending a lot of time on it still. I'm just not the one who has to make sure the snacks are in the kitchen and stuff like that.
- [04:22]
C
All right, well, let's talk about where you're going to be spending your time. Obviously, it's here on the pod, and then you're going to have a big hand in Market Live, which is like, right around the corner. And the list of speakers is ridiculous. We've been looking at pouring over all of the submissions for the Startup Showcase. First of all, if you guys think that ad tech is dead, you are damn wrong. I made one post. Sonja made one post, and we got over 60 qualified submissions, which is ridiculous. It's so awesome.
- [04:58]
B
60 new startups in adtech. Who knew?
- [05:00]
C
60 new startups, the vast majority of ones that were new to me and Sonya and probably you are. So that was amazing. So we are looking at all of them. We're taking our time. We're going back and forth and debating over the course of the next week or so. We're going to be finalizing who, you know, we want to be the finalists. We'll reach out to them, we'll confirm their attendance, and then we will announce who the finalists will be over the course of the next week or so. But this is awesome. The submissions are awesome. I can't wait.
- [05:29]
B
Yeah, it was one of my favorite sessions last time and we're making a lot of improvements. We're actually going to have a trophy. That's what you get. You're not going to get an investment, but you get a trophy.
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C
And the glory.
- [05:41]
B
And the glory, the bragging rights. Really looking forward to is towards the end of the day. And then we transition from that into me and Antonio from Chaos Monkeys in our podcast segments, which should be a lot of fun and hopefully he won't roast me too hard. Right. All right, let's get into the podcast. So today's guest is second time guest Lisa Schneider, who is the CEO of Integral Ad Science ias and we have a great conversation with her about her company, the open web, how AI is affecting them, whether carbon is still a thing, whether attention is going to be the next big thing. We have a pretty wide ranging conversation I think people will find pretty interesting. So let's dive in with Lisa. All right. Lisa Schneider, thank you so much for joining us. This is, I think, the second time you're on the pod.
- [06:28]
D
Hi, Ari, how are you? Hi, Eric. Thanks for having me today. I need another cup of coffee. Ari. I was actually looking the last time we spoke and it's. It's been too long.
- [06:40]
B
It's been a while. Yeah, I think it's been over a year. We had that whole bonding over the fact that we were in the boxing ring. You could go back into our archives. I don't know if anyone listens to podcast archives. I probably wouldn't.
- [06:55]
D
They do.
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C
It's funny.
- [06:58]
B
Yeah. We wanted to have you on not just because of your sparkling personality, but because you're in a really interesting space. It's moving, moving around a lot. It's crosses between open web and walled gardens and kind of is in the stream of kind of some of the most interesting conversations that happen in our space. So I wanted to start with that. In my mind, I think of your space. I don't even know what to call. What do you call yourself? You're not a verification company. What's the adjective that describes iis?
- [07:30]
D
So we refer to ourselves as a global optimization and measurement company.
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B
Optimization. Okay. We're going to get back to that one.
- [07:38]
D
Performance.
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B
Put a pin in that.
- [07:40]
C
It is.
- [07:40]
B
It's all about outcomes. Okay. So in my mind, because I'm, you know, my mind stopped developing 10 years ago, I think of you folks as like web verification, viewability, etc. But you know, going on your PR page, almost every press release has something to do with walled gardens or hedge gardens. There's Snapchat, Lyft, all these companies that want to be, I don't know, I don't know what adjective use verified optimize. So tell me, from your perspective, what's the current state of play of open web, hedged gardens, Walled gardens? Where are customers asking you for help?
- [08:16]
D
Sure. So again, thanks for having me. I'm Lisa Chenero, CEO of ias. I've been at IES over six years, six and a half years. I can't believe it. And as a company, we've been around for 50, 15 years and I have to say the verification space has really evolved over the last 15 years. We won't go that far back. But a big reason why I joined IAS is I just thought the verification landscape was ripe for disruption. And that's exactly what we've been doing at IIS is disrupting over the last six years. So when you think about our critical role as an independent third party verification company, where our core customers are Fortune 500 brands, think of global brands like Nestle, Coke, Adidas. We ensure that their ads, wherever they're running them, across the digital ecosystem, whether it's open web, in the walled gardens, ctv, emerging channels, whether it's retail media, online gaming, I could go on and on. We ensure that their digital ads, wherever they're running them, the ads are viewed, they're viewed by humans, not bots. There's no fraudulent activity and the brands run adjacent to brand safe, brand suitable content. So if you look at the history over the last 15 years, the first 10ish years, it was all about are my ads viewed and viewed by humans. But over the last five years as users, they were spending a disproportionate amount of time in two key areas. I know, I see it in my house with two kids. Users are spending their time on the social platforms and they're spending their time viewing stream content on CTV platforms. And because of that, the brands want to go where the users are. So the brands are shifting billions and billions of dollars to the social platforms and CTV platforms. So again, we ride along every digital impression, whether it's open web or the social platforms, and we provide protection, protecting their brand equity, brand reputation, as well as performance, and helping them drive performance, drive greater efficiency, greater roi.
- [10:38]
B
All right, yeah, so it's clarifying that you very clearly identify your customers on the buy side. They're your constituency that really matters. I want to dive into optimization and performance. Words you've used a couple times already. So does IIS have a direct product that does optimization like the way your rival DB bought Cybids or is it more like a function of quality?
- [11:04]
D
Good question. So one clarification on our customer base is I don't want to forget the publishers. So the publisher business is also a really important part of our business. Again, the buy side makes up the majority of our revenue, but we also have a robust publisher business in terms of optimization. Our working thesis has been help the brands run their ads in higher quality media which leads to higher roi. Performance is an area that we've been investing in over the last few years and you can see it in the numbers, the performance of the company that the brands they are leaning into our performance based products. I could walk you through the product portfolio, but we do have this one product that actually came out from a small acquisition. I bet you remember Amino payments.
- [11:58]
B
Sure. I know, I know Will. I bet Eric was an investor. Were you an investor, Eric?
- [12:02]
C
We were an investor in Amino.
- [12:04]
D
Of course that was. Since I've been at ias, we've made four acquisitions and of the four, three are tech tuck, what I call tech tuck ins. So Amino is one of them. Such cool tech because from Amino's tech we were able to launch a product called Total Visibility. What total visibility does it provide? Look at Eric's nodding. I bet Eric could give the pitch right now. Transparency and supply path optimization. And so what that means is we are providing transparency. When you talk to brands about the black box, and I would argue the landscape, it's getting even sort of more opaque for brands in terms of what's happening to their budgets. We are leaning into all things transparency. So we're providing transparency into supply path optimization. The brands are providing their outcome data. So that's where you start doing that math of media quality plus media cost. Thank you. Is providing that transparency. We see because of that transparency, the lift in outcome data and we're able to take that data and feed it back into our models. So performance is a big bet for the company. The brands love it because of the efficiency, the clear ROI and the transparency.
- [13:29]
B
Gotcha. So it seems as though there's always kind of a new, I don't want to say a fad, but there's always a new thing that some startup wants to measure and then they come to me and like, hey, you should invest in this measurement of like what color the website is it's like color based advertising and then Eric invests and then the whole time the company exists, it's like just waiting for is or doubleverify to buy them. And so let's run through a couple of fads and tell me, what do you think? Not fads. Let's run through a couple of alternative ways of measuring stuff and see what your opinion is. Carbon. Let's start with carbon. So is carbon a real thing or is it dead?
- [14:10]
D
So we focus on customers.
- [14:13]
B
Do customers want carbon? I'll restate my question.
- [14:16]
D
As a company and we focus on what customers need and we go build it or we go partner and launch it, or we go buy a tech and launch it. Carbon is one metric in our portfolio of metrics. When it comes to media quality, there are specific advertisers that carbon is important. We have a strategic partnership with Good Loop, we continue to innovate with Good Loop. So when you sit with specific brands, and I personally spend a lot of time with the CMOs, especially brands in Europe that are headquartered in Europe, sit at can with those CMOs, they talk about carbon. Okay, they have carbon embedded, their carbon expectations embedded in RFPs. So again, it's just one metric of a portfolio. Same thing with attention, right? Attention.
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B
Yeah, we're going to get to attention.
- [15:13]
D
Yeah, same thing, important metric. But it's one metric of a portfolio of metrics that matter for brands.
- [15:21]
B
All right, so I'm hearing, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but carbon's a little bit of a niche at this point where there are certain customers who want it. A lot of it's not that mainstream. But let's talk about attention in a little more depth because there's, I think we had Mark on from Adelaide who gave us some kind of a one on one on attention is really interesting. You have a partnership with Lumen, which is a different company in the uk. The attention people really feel as though it should be a currency. I mean I know everyone does, but they're really pushing that. That should replace viewability more or less as a currency. What's your take on attention?
- [15:59]
D
So again, it's one thing for the attention people to think it should be. We build for customers, we build for customers, we innovate on behalf of customers. So if customers are telling us, the brands are telling us attention matters. Again, it's one metric in a portfolio of metrics. And I have to say I have been saying this all along about attention. Remember when it was like the second coming? I forget when that Was like two years ago, everyone's talking about attention. And I was very consistent saying important metric, metric in our bag of products and offerings, but one of many when it comes to helping brands again drive higher ROI and drive higher efficiency.
- [16:47]
B
So what you're laying out sort of this thesis, there's this portfolio of metrics and different customers want different ones. Isn't that hard to manage? Like, how do I, as a. As a VP of marketing at a company, know how to deal with this complex situation where you have different metrics and the different metrics only appeal to different channels? I might not get attention if I'm in, let's say, Facebook. So, you know, that sounds like a really complex problem. If you could kind of up level the conversation, how should we think about it?
- [17:19]
D
Yeah, I'll uplevel it. So I actually had the opportunity to sit and spend time with our commercial leaders yesterday from all over the world, which was great. They came into New York, and one thing that I was sharing with them about complexity is it's that, and I learned this from Amazon, is when you step back and think about brands and ultimately what brands want at the end of the day, because it's so important, we build for the brands at the end of the day. If you asked an iconic 100-year-old brand 100 years ago, what do you ultimately care about? You asked American Express. Their answer a hundred years ago would be probably the same today. Right. I care about retaining my existing subscribers and I care about signing up new subscribers and protecting my iconic brand. So when you simplify it that way, that at the end of the day, the brands ultimately want to connect with consumers. They want high brand equity, and ultimately they want to drive higher ROI in the most efficient way possible. It simplifies this seemingly complex landscape because we're just focused on that and we build for that.
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B
Right. I guess back 100 years ago, the Amex card was probably made carved out of ivory by hand. But other than that, nothing's changed.
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D
Yeah, same goals, right?
- [18:52]
B
Sure, same goal.
- [18:55]
D
Consume more Coke.
- [18:57]
B
You gotta sell more stuff. Make the cash register ring. All right, we have to talk about AI. So I have two angles on the AI. First, tell us what you're doing in AI.
- [19:08]
D
Yeah, happy to. Like I said before we started topic du jour. So science is in the name of our company. We're deep in all things related to tech, tech and data and science. We've been leveraging AI for years with our products. Majority of our products are powered by AI. In particular, our multimedia classification products so by leveraging AI, our modeling is faster, it's higher velocity. We are removing the human from the human sort of model validation. So when, if you went under the hood of IAS today, you would see that 97% of our model validation has no human in it anymore because of the sophistication of our models that we built. Because we process so much data, we have incredibly rich data. We're able to feed the data back into the models and train the models. So by removing the human, the validation is getting more accurate, higher velocity, and just incredibly sophisticated models. And then things like AI labeling, where we're labeling different types of content because of more sophisticated models, 29 times faster, and then 45% more precise than humans labeling content. So again, we're elbows deep in AI, leveraging AI just to launch and provide more innovative, differentiated tech and products for the customers.
- [20:49]
B
Yeah. So it feels as though if you look at all the AI pitches that are out there, all the startups, they're doing AI stuff, a lot of them are either directly or indirectly gunning for you. Because one of the things AI is really good at is understanding text. Websites are text. So it's like chocolate and peanut butter. And. And there hasn't, I don't think, been a breakout star. That's. That has. That has grown and become, you know, a player in this space yet. What, what's your view of the startup landscape in. In ad tech?
- [21:28]
D
I'd say, I would say that, you know, AI is moving at such a fast clip right now. So innovation is so important, both from startups and from larger companies and big tech. But the end of the day, AI is only as good as the data you feed it. Right. It's kind of like if we all eat healthier food, we're performing in a healthier way. So it depends on the data, how much data. And that's the thing about our data is because we're integrated across the entire digital ecosystem, Walled gardens, open web, ctv. We're processing massive amounts of data, and I'd say more importantly, different types of signals. So curated supply, ctv. So we have a lot of data to leverage, and it's the amount of data and the quality of data that you're feeding into the models. And the thing about the startups, they just need to make sure that they have access to that much data to be able to feed models so that they can evolve their technology.
- [22:37]
B
Yeah, Eric, why don't I ask you the similar question? It feels as though there's like a lot of folks gunning for like contextual AI targeting and like verification and everything like that. What's, what's your state of play in the startup world in this as it relates to ias?
- [22:54]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's clearly like one of the most interesting categories. There's a handful of companies that are really focused on two problems. Right. So it's brand safety. Right. Maybe the original kind of core product for companies like ias. And then there's brand suitability, which because of the natural language nature of LLMs, you can do some pretty interesting things to see what's going on, whether it's on a website or in an app or presumably other environments, and make it more tailored to a brand's guidelines than the kind of blunt force keyword blocking type stuff. So I think it's a massive potential kind of up leveling of the category. But to Lisa's point, as you think about this, what does it also require? It also requires a massive amount of data for the processing to make the stuff work really, really well. Right. So I think it's very interesting to juxtapose what some of these AI first LLM centric companies can do with what they have versus an IAS or others that are just operating at a greater scale. I think it's a super interesting category and it's probably going to push everybody to get better.
- [24:12]
D
Yeah. So if you think about, and I agree with what you're saying, Eric, when you think about like how much video we're processing today, if you let me get these out of the way, if you take a look two years ago with our multimedia classification model, where we're in the social platforms classifying video, image, audio, text, two years ago we were classifying two years of video content a day. If you fast forward to today, in two years, we now process 50 years of digital video content a day. That's a lot of data. And so I have to say good luck to the startups who are trying to get into the brand safety and suitability space, both in terms of breadth and depth of data. This is massive amounts of data sets, massive amounts of data sets to train the models, having those integrations with the tech platforms. It's just a lot of data and processing and it is just a big differentiator for iis.
- [25:22]
C
Absolutely. So you talked about video. One area that you didn't touch on, that I'm just curious about. Right. So if we think about the two fastest growing parts of advertising, it's, you know, all things streaming and ctv and then there's retail media. Retail Media is unique in that it doesn't have the I think legacy brand safety issues that some of the call it open web might but money is pouring into it and I would imagine it's a really attractive spot for iis. Where do you play in retail media?
- [25:53]
D
Yeah, good question. I actually disagree with what you just said. So retail media, we're integrated across all the major retail media networks and when you take a look and this is six years at Amazon, so I know a thing or two about building ad businesses on a retail media platform. But when you take a look at retail media again pivoting back to the customer, the retail media networks and there are basically three right now that are large and then everyone else who is building their businesses but they have robust O and O owned and operated inventory and robust third party inventory. So if you talk to the brands who are promoting their products, selling their products on the retail media networks, okay, so on the owned and operated and I'm actually hearing that feedback loud and clear from brands saying thank you. I asked for third party inventory where you're running your solutions. We want your solutions more deeply integrated in the O and O inventory of retail media networks. The other thing about retail media networks that is interesting is they have incredibly rich e commerce data. So if you think about a world where we're leveraging our media quality data, e commerce data, first party brand data again to help brands drive higher roi, whether it's on the retail media O and O or third party, that's a very interesting proposition for the brand.
- [27:28]
B
Let's close out the conversation with personally you're a public company CEO that's a tough job. And then you're also in a space that is the virtual punching bag of ad tech. I don't think I've ever in my life seen a social media post which is like I love is they're my favorite company what it like I disagree with that. Okay send me we'll put it in the show notes.
- [27:55]
D
Send me the boxing ring right now. But before is I spent 20 years in big tech, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, major global tech platforms. And when I joined I and meeting with the brands, meeting with the publishers what I kept hearing over and over true story. When I joined my first 90 days I probably did 440 or 51 on ones with customers myself. And what I kept hearing is I ask you're in the business of trust. I want the platform sit and get feedback from a major brand. You're in the business of trust. I think not. So the brands they deeply trust our technology. They trust our transparency, our investments in innovation. So I actually beg to disagree that brands do love IAs.
- [28:48]
B
Okay. They should put it on social a little more. So you're saying that your job is easy and it's smooth sailing every day?
- [28:58]
D
My job's fun. My job is fun. And again, we're just focused on delivering for customers.
- [29:07]
B
All right, that's a great way to end it. So I'm glad that your job is fun. I wish I had for all the, all the ad tech CEOs listening to this, try to aspire.
- [29:16]
D
That's right. Be in the business of trust.
- [29:18]
B
Trust and fun. All right, Lisa, thanks so much for joining us. This is a great conversation.
- [29:26]
D
Great. Thanks to both of you. Have a great day. Thank you.
- [29:32]
B
This episode is brought to you by Sovereign, a software and data company powering commerce media campaigns for the world's largest brands. With real time purchase intent data collected from over $3 billion in annual retail spend, Sovereign's commerce media deals are helping reach consumers at the time of purchase and deliver better outcomes for advertisers. To learn more, visit sovereign.com that's so v r n.com to learn more.
- [30:01]
C
Okay, we are back, just the two of us with the refresh, the news of the week. All right, we got a lot this week, so we're going to take it from the top. There's a bunch of Google News coming in hot. We've got big partnerships, not small ball, not small bite partnerships, big boy partnerships, and some interesting M and A and particularly in the pharma category. So we'll take it from the top. Google. This I think hit Friday, right, Ari?
- [30:31]
B
After we had recorded.
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C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Walk us through the EU finds first.
- [30:36]
B
Yeah. So the EU has been pursuing Google on virtually the exact same case as the US doj. And they have a different process. There's no jury trial or anything. And they've been largely anticipated to be found, you know, in violation, whatever, not guilty, but in violation. And the scuttlebutt has been that they were waiting for the DOJ to finalize their remedies before they, before the EU finalized the remedies. And somewhat, a little bit surprising, they came out with their remedy, which was a $3.4 billion fine. It was in euros, but that's the equivalent in dollars. And so the initial. And there was reporting by Reuters that this was somewhat a dulled down, dumbed down remedy because they're scared of Trump and the trade negotiations between the EU and the US So they didn't order a breakup and so that's the headline is they didn't order a breakup. But if you dig a little bit further, the resolution in addition to this fine, which by the way, 3.4 billion, someone commented to me offline, is probably more than the profits of ADEX in its entire history. So everyone's saying, oh, DoubleClick was the best acquisition ever. You know, maybe not, you know, on a profitability basis. So 3.4 billion. But the interesting thing here is that the EU gave Google 60 days to propose remedies, structural remedies that will prevent future abuses of the monopoly, which is kind of like this cop out, where basically the EU has said, and they said even in the announcement, that the only remedy they think is acceptable is a spin out. But then they didn't order it. They just said, okay, Google, up to you 60 days, tell us what the remedy is going to be. But we withhold the right to determine what the remedy will be. So I think this is a kick the can to avoid Trump situation. They want the Virginia court to give the real remedy and then they'll hop on it. In the meantime, they take the 3.4 billion. I'm not that familiar with European law, but I don't think any of that 3.4 billion is going to anyone besides the EU coffers. You know, it's not like publishers are going to get a check from that. Whereas in the US part of the remedy is a, is a escrow fund for publishers based on the profits of addicts. So this is just kind of a messy thing. And then Trump talked about it. So Trump posted on Truth Social that this was very unfair and he might do a trade war, which brings up the very real possibility that someone in Trump's orbit may read my book Yield and you know, I'm here if anyone wants discounted copies for the Cabinet.
- [33:24]
C
This is all very helpful. One question. So they were fined 3.4 billion. Do they just pay the 3.4 billion or they're going to fight it and settle?
- [33:35]
B
I don't really know the inside out to be EU law. I assume they'll do everything they can to avoid paying it and settling. Right. The basic strategy for Google is to get all the cards on the table and they end up. We'll talk about the civil suits next.
- [33:48]
C
Yeah, the. They have, according to a search, quick search, 95 billion in cash. So this would be not like a small amount of their cash, you know, like over 3%.
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B
The 3 billion at a time adds up. I mean, they. There was a similar fine in the, in the App Store case, there's been fine to the Android case. You know, Europe is extracting its rents from the tech companies one fine at a time.
- [34:16]
C
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Okay, well, there's that. Google's also being sued by someone else named Pubmatic. So we had OpenX suing and then now we have Pubmatic suing. It seems like this is going to become a trend here. So in addition to funds, another way that you can get like really work down is just having to line up evermore attorneys to fight lawsuits. Did you look at the Pubmatic custom website?
- [34:49]
B
Yeah, they have PubMatic v.google.com which goes with openxvgoogle.com and.
- [34:54]
C
Hold on, did you buy any URLs?
- [34:56]
B
Yeah, I bought Magnite v.google.com. if you go to Magnitev, google.com redirects to my website. If Magnite wants it, they could ask for it. I'll give it to them, but then I'll know they're suing them. So I'll have a scoop. You know, this is jiu jitsu, journalist, jiu jitsu. So yeah, just quick rundown to PubMatic and OpenEx. Both have civil suits against Google on the antitrust grounds. And then publishers. The big case is the Daily Mail case that's coming to court in January in New York. And then there's also the Rumble case, which is separate. I don't know the status of it because Rumble had its other case against YouTube dismissed. I think the ad tech case is still going on, but it's probably less important than the Daily Mail case.
- [35:40]
C
You think we're going to see a lot more of these?
- [35:42]
B
I don't know, man. Google really has got to come to the table and talk about like a tobacco settlement and just get. Because they also still have the state case in Texas which got delayed till the spring. So I think they wait for the Virginia case to get to a remedy and then get everyone in a room, write some big checks and make it all go away.
- [36:03]
C
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, well, two other things that were interesting this week that made the news. The first was a Google pm, I think it was on X hinted that AI mode will become the default for all search, which made everybody go crazy because that would eliminate clicks going to websites and all sorts of havoc will result, particularly around publishers. And then another PM walked it back and basically said they want to make it easily accessible and not the default. So I don't know what's going on here. It was a PM that said it was going to be the default. But if they accelerate AI mode, they accelerate the decline of traffic that they send to publishers. And then on that note, I think Jason Kint found this in a court filing. Google, who had been saying that the Open Web is thriving in a lot of their statements, actually admitted that the Open Web is in rapid decline. And we'll put a link to this one. And again, they walked back or clarified the statement and they only meant open Web display advertising, not the Open Web. Even so, like, I mean, for the audience and the. And the companies that listen to this, like, it's even worse.
- [37:23]
B
Yeah, I was going through some Google financial statements and in the 2020, I think in 2024, 10K, they blame the decline of their network segment, which includes all the other stuff we talk about exclusively on reductions in gamma nadx in the Open Web. And it's also relevant to the antitrust trial that the judgment is only in the scope of open Web display advertising. It does not include mobile app, retail media, ctv, et cetera. Ooh.
- [37:57]
C
Okay. All right, let's get into some partnerships. Two big ones dropped. So let's talk Amazon. First, Amazon had a post on their blog and then it went wild. Everybody's talking about it. Where the Amazon DSP is going to in Q4, which is right around the corner, provide direct access to Netflix inventory. And I'll take a quote from Paul Kotas, who is senior VP of Amazon Ads. Our goal is to remove the guesswork for advertisers by making it simple to manage all of their TV planning and buying with Amazon ads. That's big.
- [38:31]
B
Yeah, but. But Netflix has been available to the Trade Desk and others, so.
- [38:36]
C
Oh, I know.
- [38:36]
B
This is, this is, this is a Vibe announcement, or rather the reaction is a Vibe announcement because Amazon did its partnership with Roku a month and a half ago or a can, I think. And that was. Oh my God, Amazon, Roku. That's a huge deal. It is a huge deal, but it's also just equivalent to what the Trade Desk already had. And now, you know, Netflix is available, I think, on the trade desk, Yahoo, DSP, DV360 and now Amazon. So this is a important partnership, but there's nothing like brand new we haven't seen before. But the vibes are that Amazon's the upcoming and Trade Desk is on the way down. So this just reinforces the vibes, which makes people freak out.
- [39:18]
C
I think that's right. And the reason is twofold. Number one, with Amazon plus Netflix plus Roku, you have all of the CTV inventory. Right. Like you've got the biggest ones and then, and then, you know, clearly you have the long tail. And then number two, as we've covered repeatedly, Amazon is doing everything it can to be aggressive on pricing. So you have access to inventory, you have aggressive pricing and then you have, oh by the way, Amazon data. I think this is a pretty big deal, but we'll see.
- [39:51]
B
Yeah, I think by dollar volume it's an important deal, right?
- [39:54]
C
It is, it is, yeah. Okay. The other one was Google and Critio announced a partnership or rather Critio announced a partnership with Google. So just yesterday on Wednesday, Critio announced it is the first third party to integrate with Google's Search Search Ads 360 for on site retail media supply. So depending on how you look at it from the Google or the Critio perspective, Criteo and their retail media partners get incremental demand from Google. Right. And then Google, their customers get, you know, increased supply, increased ability to, to, to drive some of those jbps higher through the Critio partnership. So this one feels big too.
- [40:42]
B
Yeah, it does. On site retail is very similar to search. They kind of go hand in hand because they're API driven and targeting by SKUs or keywords are kind of a similar situation. So you have, I would love to see a map of some kind about who can bid on whom because you have, you know, Google search as360 that now has access to Critio. Criteo does not, I believe have access to Amazon. So Critio has its own buy side platform platform, commercemax I guess it does not. It has access to Kritio's network and maybe some others, but doesn't have Amazon. And then the leading independent is sky and Sky I believe has access to everything. But I'm not really sure. That's why I'd love to see a map. Or if someone wants to comment on our, on our Twitter or on our comment, I'd love to know who has access to whom.
- [41:30]
C
We never talk about Sky.
- [41:32]
B
We don't. Sky comes up all the time as sort of this mysterious company. It's the renamed Kenshu. So it used to be a duopoly. Kenshu and Marin were fighting for the Sam market. I think Marin went out of business or went bankrupt and Kenshu changed its name because generally being in the search business was low margin, low growth and they're both public companies that nobody really paid attention to. But now that it's been renamed sky and it has probably the Most comprehensive retail media buying network. It attracts some attention.
- [42:02]
C
Yeah, well if we think about the the battle of retail Media, it's Amazon vs. Critio in some ways. So if you take Criteo supply and then bring in Google search ads demand, I think this is a massive win for Critia or could potentially be.
- [42:19]
B
It could be, yeah. I mean I think Criteo is trying to be the sell side retail media network for everyone who's not Amazon. And so the more demand you have, the more appeal you have to supply side. And then you have Kevl which is more like the custom solution for bigger commerce media who don't want to be part of the Critio network. So it's interesting. Interesting how it's all playing out.
- [42:42]
C
Yeah, no, it's a good walkthrough. Kevl, an aperium portfolio company. All right, let's talk about M and A and then we're going to spend some time on pharma so we'll talk about non pharma M and A first. So if you attended the first marketexture live just earlier this year you saw a handful of companies present. One of which was this startup called Streamr, a very personable CEO named Jonathan Mafi. Mafi like coffee, he wears a pink hat, he's always talking sh on social. It was a year or so old company and Magnite went and acquired Streamr. So shout out to MarketExtralive for showing you first Shout out to Jonathan. I've spent some time with him and it's super cool. So Streamer is effectively like a little vibe vibe that a couple of year.
- [43:37]
B
About with a little more on the creative side than the media side.
- [43:40]
C
Yeah, exactly. So providing access for SMBs to advertise on TV and in recent months they've like really gone all in on making it very easy to both build and buy the ads. So with this Magnite picks up some creative capabilities. They pick up the ability to kind of onboard SMBs and bring incremental demand to their publishers in the along the way. So I like this still a lot.
- [44:07]
B
Yeah, I do too. The exchange SSPs have been getting into the demand side as we've covered endlessly that they don't want to just be supply, they want to be demand. The problem with the demand side is that the very large advertisers, meaning the holdcos, etcetera have their own stack that's really built in. They like the trade desk, they maybe use Amazon, whatever it is. So the opportunities are mid market and lower market to get that demand. Also those markets are less margin sensitive, take rate sensitive, so you can make more money. And so it seems pretty obvious that this emerging like performance SMB segment in CTV is a pretty rich opportunity if you have the supply. And magnite is. I don't know if they're the largest, but they're a leading source of CTV supply. So it works perfectly well. And you, I wouldn't be surprised if like a Pubmatic or Open X or index, although index is kind of going down a different path but they might look at this sort of thing.
- [45:03]
C
Okay, so Deep Intent, the CEO. Remind me again, it was Chris, right?
- [45:07]
B
Chris Paquette. Yeah.
- [45:08]
C
Yes, Chris Paquette. We had him on, I think it was earlier this year or late last year talking about the company, talking about pharma and talking about their history which includes their own M and a deal with iqvia which was killed by the Biden admin. So Deep Intent is back with another deal. So a PE firm, Vitruvian, invested 637 million in deep intent in a DSP, mind you.
- [45:34]
B
So the absolute DSP, it's special. Yeah, yeah.
- [45:38]
C
A former DSP 637, which, you know, I don't know what percentage of the company that they acquired, probably valuing this thing close to a billion dollars. And what an amazing comeback story for Chris. I saw this and I punched the air. I was so excited.
- [45:55]
B
Yeah, I think it's great that this company probably very few people have heard of in our industry that's just basically a vertical DSP with really nice analytics and you can target doctors or patients in a very privacy protected way to see them be validated this way is great. Chris is actually going to be speaking at Market Sector live in October as well. Amazing. So we have that set up and congratulations to the team over there.
- [46:24]
C
Yeah. So two M&A deals this week. This is a good week. Also branch lab company that we're an investor in. I know you're an advisor in. Branchlab is not a DSP. BranchLab is an AI company that uses non pharma data to help brands do very privacy centric and advanced targeting. Got an investment from a very interesting firm. Have you heard of Next Ventures before?
- [46:51]
B
I have not.
- [46:52]
C
So Next Ventures is Lance Armstrong's venture firm. Did you know Lance Armstrong was a vc?
- [47:00]
B
I'm trying to not make a joke here. I did not. He's based in Austin. So if you're based in Austin long enough, either become a barista or a vc.
- [47:09]
C
Well, so Lance Armstrong, this is an interesting Story So obviously knows, everyone knows he has storied career. A lot of controversy at the end with peds. He was an investor in Chris Sacca's lowercase fund, which is the greatest venture fund of all time. The returns are public. It was something like 100x. Lance got a major windfall that basically kind of saved him because of all the lawsuits, as I understand that he was dealing, dealing with and then became an investor himself. Along the way he invested in Athletic Brewing, he invested in Oura Ring and then created this firm to just invest in healthcare companies. So this is like the perfect intersection of health and wellness and marketing. So very interesting investor. I think they're like excited about the company. I think this company's one to watch. Obviously I'm an investor and a fan.
- [48:04]
B
Yeah. And Branch Lab is tangentially competitive with deep intent. So it's interesting to see, you know, things percolating in this area. There are other companies that participate in the pharma business like Pulse Point, which has. It's kind of funny because their name says Pulse in it and, but they're pretty involved in pharma marketing and, and others that are kind of in the, just on the data side or on the targeting side. Adherent, which was bought by Kaden, they had a pretty big, big pharma business. I think it was kind of, I don't want to say the majority, but it was a pretty large part of their business.
- [48:40]
C
Do you know who built the pharma business at Adherent?
- [48:43]
B
I do not. Who?
- [48:45]
C
Josh Walsh.
- [48:46]
B
Oh, from Branch Lab.
- [48:48]
C
CEO of Branch Lab. Yeah, he was co founder of Adherent. So you've got real DNA in this space. And you're right, there's companies. Swoop is another one that comes to mind that's quite competitive. And these are big businesses because pharma is a big advertising business. So some stats. The pharmaceutical industry shelled out nearly 11 billion in 2024 for ads in the U.S. almost 4 billion of that is TV. And it's on track to top that this year.
- [49:18]
B
Unless. Unless something happens, something unexpected happens.
- [49:25]
C
All right, so the other piece of news this week that's like super relevant to this conversation is some news out of the administration that basically they want to close this loophole that goes back to 1997. So if you're watching a pharmaceutical TV ad, you hear a very fast paced summary of the potential side effects or just a short summary of the potential side effects. Basically the administration wants to challenge that loophole.
- [49:53]
B
Loophole is a loaded term. They're calling It a loophole? It's not clear they're calling it a actual loophole. It's a rule.
- [50:01]
C
Yeah, okay, fine. The rule that permits abbreviated description of side effects in TV ads. So long as there's more info online. They basically want to have all of the info in the TV ads, which I don't think this is going to put too much of a dent into the market. I think brands are just going to adapt and, you know, make more relevant and, you know, kind of better explainer TV ads.
- [50:23]
B
What do you think? Maybe. I think this is sort of a political move. You know, the Maha people want to look like they're doing something against Big Pharma, who, which is their bugbear. And this is maybe something that's relatively easy to fix or to change. I don't want to use the word fix to change with an executive order or something that doesn't require Congress. So this is just red meat for the RFK junior stands. Whether it actually affects the ads. Who knows what it means. Are these ads going to have to now be 60 seconds so they can list all the side effects? Effects? It's not really good for anybody. Consumers don't care about this sort of stuff. And there's a reason you don't list the minor side effects because they're minor. That's, you know, science based. So I think this is a kind of a BS move by political ideologues perhaps.
- [51:16]
C
Yeah, there's one line of thinking that I heard. I think it was in the Journal article that I thought was interesting. The CEO of one of these weight loss drugs, you know, like this is like the biggest category right now of pharmaceutical out there, especially for advertising, was saying that, you know, he or she thinks it might be helpful because some of these companies are pretty aggressive with the claims that they're making and the lack of side effects that they're talking about. So there might be another side of this.
- [51:48]
B
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think also the compounding folks, the rows of the world are definitely pushing the envelope on a lot of stuff.
- [51:55]
C
I think that's what he referred to. Yeah. So it's an interesting thing, but ultimately this is a big category. Brian weezer estimated that 20% of TV advertising is pharmaceutical. So there's a lot on the line here.
- [52:07]
B
It's very political also because so much of it goes on Fox News and MSNBC because they skew so old. So the news media is directly affected. But I mean, stepping back at the beginning of the year when we had Brian on the to talk about that. We were talking about a ban. You know, there was RFK Jr. Came in to office talking about a ban on pharma ads. Now we're talking about a little more disclosure. That's a pretty big reduction in, in the impact on the business.
- [52:37]
C
Yeah. Massive change, probably. Massive sigh of relief if you are a pharmaceutical ad seller or a, or a sales rep that's focused on this stuff. So big week for pharma and I think we should call it there. What do you think? Gar?
- [52:54]
B
Yeah, let's call it there. A good conversation. Thanks to Lisa for joining us. And there's a lot of news and we will be back next week. So thanks everybody.
- [53:03]
C
Bye everybody. Thank you for subscribing to Market.
- [53:06]
B
New interviews are added every week at.
- [53:08]
C
Marketecture tv and your favorite podcasting app.
- [53:16]
B
Foreign. Thank you for listening to the marketexture podcast. New episodes come out every Friday and an insightful vendor interview is published each Monday. You can subscribe to our library of hundreds of executive interviews at marketecture tv. You can also sign up for free for our weekly newsletter with my original strategic insights on the week's news@news.marketure TV. And if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to join@adtechgod.com.