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- [00:03]
A
What's the best time of day to get a deal? All day with Jack in the box's all day big deal meal. You get to choose from four entrees like the supreme croissant and five tasty sides, plus a drink starting at $5. So hurry in or take your time. You've got all day at Jack. Every bite's a big deal. Welcome to marketecture, where you can get smart fast with in depth interviews of leading technology executives. I'm Ari Paparo and I'm joined today by Alex Comer, who is the founder and CEO of VidMob. Alex, thanks for being here.
- [00:46]
B
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
- [00:48]
A
I'm excited about this because I've heard so much about VidMob, but I don't think I know what it does. So what does VidMob do?
- [00:53]
B
That's funny. I think that's probably not a terribly uncommon view. I mean, the reality is, because VidMob's changed a fair amount over the year, but. So today we think of ourselves as the creative data company. And I think we have a very specific view on what creative data is and why it's important. But essentially our view is that our role in the world is to help the world's leading marketers build an understanding of kind of why creative works by helping them sort of connect all their ad accounts everywhere they're spending money. So the metas And Googles and TikToks and Amazon, on and on and on. And then our software ingests every piece of ad creative that they're running. So you could kind of be hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of individual pieces of creative. So display, video, et cetera, and then just go through sort of frame by frame and understand literally everything that's happening creatively. So not just like computer vision tags, but you know, production style and narrative arc and like total understanding of creativity. And then we pull all the performance information, so media metrics, sales data, brand lift, et cetera, kind of cross those two things and theoretically get to an understanding of how every single creative decision drives every behavior you care about. And that's what we think of as creative data. And what we're seeing now is that as we head into this kind of new AI driven world where AI is used sort of throughout the entire marketing supply chain, Creative data is essentially the recipe for effective communications. And it's a really exciting time where it seems like almost every day there's a new way to use creative data to be a more effective marketer.
- [02:33]
A
Okay, that's super fascinating. Before we go into more depth on that, let's get some basics about the company. Where are you based, how big are you? What sort of funding have you taken?
- [02:40]
B
Sure, yeah. So based in New York, but at this point fairly global. So operations in Latam, Europe, APAC, et cetera. I started the company 10 years ago, so 10 years this September, which is an exciting milestone.
- [02:52]
A
It Rails.
- [02:52]
B
We've raised a little over $200 million to date.
- [02:56]
A
Wow.
- [02:56]
B
Yeah. And the most recent round was a series D led by Shamrock Capital. So it was $110 million Series D. Great.
- [03:03]
A
That's a lot of money. So why do you need all that money? What's so hard about this problem?
- [03:07]
B
Well, I mean the data scale is significant.
- [03:10]
A
Right.
- [03:11]
B
And so we're building an analytics product that literally deals with tens of trillions of impressions. I think now we've analyzed close to 20 million individual ads themselves and the scale and scope of that significant. And then we exist kind of across the ecosystem. So like I think the way we think about it is that like a meta or Google, like the platforms themselves are going to build components of creative analytics. Always obviously going to be sort of like single platform solutions.
- [03:40]
A
Right.
- [03:40]
B
And the agencies also are building elements of this. But a lot of our customers who are sort of large global brand portfolios tend to work across multiple agencies. And so our view here is that creative data is so critical for success in the future. It's like you couldn't really operate for the last 20 years without sort of customer and audience data. I think it's sort of the same thing going forward. And so this is something that kind of has to be owned by the brand. This is a true like first party data asset. And you know, we're sort of going after like helping them construct, build, operate and then operationalize that asset.
- [04:16]
A
Yeah. So I'm very familiar with the concept of creative testing. Like that runs pretty campaign. Right. That when you're still at the agency level, you're still trying to figure out what message works. You get a little poll, little survey, but once it's baked and it's out there, how much variation is there in the creative.
- [04:32]
B
Enormous. I mean, and that, that's the thing is that we think about creativity in terms of like often like the big sort of brand platform, Coke and a smile or. Yeah, exactly, you're not you and you're hungry or Wendy's, where's the beef. And I don't think any of that changes. Right. Like we're still gonna need that incredibly inspirational spark that Sort of defines a brand for years and years. But there's now also something that has to do with sort of the very tactical execution that exact same where's the beef campaign just to I guess probably show my age a bit.
- [05:04]
A
Yeah, I don't think anyone who's listening knows what you're talking about, but that's cool.
- [05:08]
B
And if on TikTok we've got opened with a close up of the tiny burger and meta, we're gonna open up with the sort of the older woman or like those, those tactical executions might lead to literally 2 difference in performance even though the message is exactly the same. And so what we see is that whether it's by format, by platform, by audience, there are enormous opportunities to draw not like a couple percent but like tens, hundreds of percent differences through just understanding based on data. What is that tactical execution that's going to drive the best results.
- [05:41]
A
Right, okay, so let's break it down. So let's start with the sources. So the social sources I guess are straightforward. Right. You can pull all that data in. Do you do open web also?
- [05:50]
B
We do, yeah. So today DV360, Amazon DSP, we'll be adding a trade desk integration soon and then we're also pushing into retail media. Amazon's a significant partner. I just got back from Amazon reinvent yesterday morning and CTV is kind of coming. So our view as the creative data should be applicable that whole kind of digital media companion, the signals will be different like you.
- [06:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, so I was going to get there, you know, let's talk about the signals obviously. So on some of these platforms you're just getting clicks and conversions or something like that and other platforms maybe you're getting especially video like second by second viewership. So what's the useful signals and what is more emerging?
- [06:29]
B
Well, so it's really interesting. I mean and the reality is our customers care about different things. There are some people who are optimizing against, you know, sort of media metrics, others who view attention as, as the, as the core signal. Others who want to sort of tie it all the way through to their mmm, a number who are looking at kind of brand metrics. The reality is we can look at anything. So you know, once you have that sort of core creative decisioning framework and then you have the behavior set that the market cares about, we can go in either direction.
- [06:57]
A
Right. And to what extent does the client have to tell your system what the ad is about or supposed to be about? Like does your system just download a bunch of stuff and Figure out that the theme is where's the beef? Or does the client have to figure, have to tell you what it's looking for?
- [07:12]
B
No, it's fully automated. So we've now built dozens of proprietary models and what they do is they go through and connect their various ad accounts. And so a larger client that might be literally thousands of ad accounts around the world. Yeah, and then it just runs. So it starts by looking backwards 13 months, pulls in all the historical creative, all the historical media data, you know, everything but you know, it's continuously refreshed. And so you have that pre flight visibility in flight and post flight. And can you sort of look at it across the whole and to what.
- [07:42]
A
Extent does it look at results against media tactics or audience tactics? Like a creative could work for women and not work for men? How do you know that?
- [07:51]
B
Absolutely. Well, we get that information back from the platforms.
- [07:55]
A
Exactly right. You don't have any user data in your system. Yeah, it's aggregated already.
- [07:59]
B
That's right.
- [08:00]
A
All right, that makes sense.
- [08:01]
B
That's right. And then what we're doing is we're going through and helping our clients. Like the platforms are out there with sort of like the Facebook brilliant basics or the Google ABCDs, which are great places to start, but probably not that surprising if the best practices aren't the same for LVMH and aflac. And so, you know, what we do is help each customer kind of by brand, by audience understand like what are their sort of like proprietary golden rules and then they can deploy that in a variety of ways. So Adobe is one of our investors. We have plugins that sit inside the creative cloud and while someone is actually constructing creative, they can actually test things in that composition environment to ensure that they're adhering to the platform, brand, audience, best practices.
- [08:50]
A
Oh, interesting.
- [08:51]
B
You don't even like render the asset until it's already following those rules.
- [08:54]
A
It's kind of like back testing. Like before you rent those out, you see if it will work or not.
- [08:58]
B
Exactly. And one of the things that we were demoing at Re invent on Wednesday was how creative data can be applied into generative tools to drive a better output. Because I think the reality is as exciting as all these gen AI tools are, they're all kind of the same.
- [09:14]
A
Right.
- [09:16]
B
And, and, and for a marketer, that's not exactly what you need. Like the whole purpose of marketing is to be somehow differentiated and better than competitors. And so what we showed was taking a kind of a multimodal model that we built with Claude And Titan inside of our Adobe plugin, how we're able to literally just like toggle initially off creative data. So you put in a prompt for a brand, make a series of assets, then toggle on creative data. And now what it's doing is behind the scenes through an API. It's plugging in the current performance information, the sort of criteria for this brand, the strategic insights, all that stuff, and then the resultant generated content is like 10x better.
- [10:02]
A
Right, right, right.
- [10:03]
B
No extra work. And that's what we're seeing is you can sort of drive this impact like the content supply chain.
- [10:09]
A
What. Give us some more color on what sort of insights your customers get. Like, what's the example report look like, what they do? They log in. What do they say?
- [10:18]
B
So in this particular case, like, it knew that what we were showing was a hypothetic, like, pet care brand.
- [10:23]
A
Yeah. Okay.
- [10:24]
B
And it was about. All right, well, authentic moments, showing the owner and the pet doing this on like an indoor setting, having it framed a certain size within the frame.
- [10:33]
A
Yeah.
- [10:33]
B
Making sure that there was a specific call to action, the logo was clearly present. Like all these things were sort of drove into the response, whereas the initial generated response was kind of an image.
- [10:46]
A
Yeah, that sounds, that makes total, total sense. But aside from the AI, first of all, who are your customers? Are they creative directors or are they marketing people?
- [10:53]
B
Yeah. So it's really across the spectrum. So we work with brands on the creative side and then we work a lot on the. On the media side as well. Right. Like, making sure that you're not spending dollars on assets that aren't going to work is a. Is another pretty easy way to drive performance.
- [11:06]
A
Okay.
- [11:06]
B
And so we tend to work with kind of large brand marketers. So think L'Oreal, Coca Cola, you know, working with them globally, generally on kind of all brands over in the world. And then we're often partnering with their agencies to help them utilize the platform, whether it be to drive strategic insights and create more intelligent brand toolkits to inform production itself as they're going to make media decisions, or to actually pump sort of creative quality signals out to measurement frameworks. So you can actually now attribute for creative quality.
- [11:37]
A
Right. So what's the user like? Do they log in at the end of a campaign, beginning of the campaign, every single day, or none of the above?
- [11:44]
B
It really depends. So you think of it as they've already been using the platform. So they have some.
- [11:48]
A
The data's there. Right.
- [11:49]
B
They have some series of custom brand guidelines that they are using. To inform original planning. So that's informing shot lists and things and helping do that that level. Then as they're producing, it's helping actually construct it. Knowing that. All right, well, it's important that we sort of have open with the mascara being applied, then show the talent, then show the product or not vice versa.
- [12:12]
A
But how do they know that? Is it. Does your system just like say that in plain English or is there a report where it says like top priority? Like what does it look like when I log in?
- [12:20]
B
Yeah. So very rich analytics environment where you can go through and essentially explore any creative curiosity you have. So understanding what are sort of narrative arcs and product pairings and messaging types and how does this messaging impact conversions versus awareness. So you can explore any of that and then as you understand those insights, then sort of codify them in the platform and share them out with other people within the org.
- [12:46]
A
Right. But how analytical do you need to be to understand the outputs?
- [12:50]
B
So historically pretty analytical.
- [12:52]
A
Yeah.
- [12:53]
B
And we would have strategists at VidMob or an agency partners doing that work and using that to deploy reports that would then be. But we've now launched essentially like a chat based co pilot, which really kind of changes it now to the point where.
- [13:08]
A
Yeah, it seems so. Yeah.
- [13:10]
B
Hey, I'm interested to know like my beverage, what food does it pair better with and how does that vary from the American Southeast to Mexico or some other territory?
- [13:19]
A
Right.
- [13:20]
B
And we think of these things as small, but again like that might lead to literally like a couple hundred percent difference with some very tactical thing like that.
- [13:29]
A
Yeah, yeah, I get that. That makes sense. What's the business model?
- [13:32]
B
So essentially what our platform is doing is learning from every impression, analyzing sort of all the creative in every impression. And so we just charge essentially like a few cents for every thousand impressions that the platform analyzes.
- [13:44]
A
Those on impressions, not on creatives.
- [13:46]
B
Yeah, it's on impressions analyzed effectively.
- [13:48]
A
Impressions analyzed. That's interesting because like on a social network you might have a very large number of impressions and it doesn't scale exactly with the insights.
- [13:56]
B
Right, Yeah, I mean, but what it does though is it gives control to our customers. Right. And so they decide like what brands they want to deploy it to. And typically what we're seeing is that because we're able to consistently drive sort of 30 to like 100 plus percent, like lifts and whatever the KPI that the customer cares about, it pays for itself within like a couple months, basically.
- [14:18]
A
Got it. And it's just per impression. So it's not per Region per brand, stuff like that, you just sign up and then the more you use it, the more you pay.
- [14:25]
B
Yep, exactly. And so typically we'll start with some sort of brand A in market y sort of quickly see results and it ends up being scaled globally around the.
- [14:35]
A
Portfolio in terms of demonstrating results. Does your system allow that? Like if I get my first report and it says have a cuter dog in my ass, then I run a cuter dog and I get better results. Do I just have to offline know that you gave me those results? Or does your system actually calculate ROI based on changes or stuff?
- [14:53]
B
It does in certain cases. In other, in other cases, we might need to do it more sort of manually. But it is generally pretty easy to see the impact. Right. Especially when there's sort of pre existing work and you can compare sort of before time and after time and how.
- [15:06]
A
Much work is it to set up, like for a new client, what do they have to do?
- [15:09]
B
So I mean, it's literally just going through and oauthing the different accounts.
- [15:14]
A
Okay.
- [15:14]
B
So I mean each account takes a couple seconds.
- [15:17]
A
Got it. Great. Well, let's move on to our lightning round. Relatively quick questions, relatively quick answers. What is your number one competitive advantage?
- [15:27]
B
I think our number one competitive advantage is the robustness of the platform. We are able to generate the richest creative data asset that exists in the industry. And the way I think about it, it's like if your customer data was literally just an email address and someone else's was email geography, purchase interest, media interest, the latter is going to win and the former is not. Because we have like dozens of proprietary models to sort of unpack creativity, that creative data richness is kind of unparalleled.
- [15:57]
A
Gotcha. This isn't on the script, but I want to ask, why are you called VidMob? Where's the name come from? Did you pivot or something?
- [16:04]
B
It's a good question. So when I started the company, the idea was sort of same meta idea, which is just creative is really important and if you know what to make, you can drive better business results. But the way we did that in the beginning was through a marketplace connecting brands with editors.
- [16:21]
A
Oh yeah, yeah. That was a big kind of fad at some point. Like the community created ads thing.
- [16:26]
B
Yeah, exactly. So this was. We would have literally never called it this at the time, but it was essentially like uber for video editors, right?
- [16:33]
A
Yeah.
- [16:33]
B
It enabled us to start working with all the platforms because they sort of all saw that when marketers had better ad creative, they spent more money and then that enabled us to then start building the workflow software, start plugging into ads APIs, and really since about 2017 we've been on this creative data journey.
- [16:51]
A
Got it.
- [16:52]
B
But yeah, so originally it was VidMob sort of two sided marketplace. Vid being people who had raw media mob being people who, you know, wanted labor and wanted jobs.
- [17:00]
A
Got it. Okay, back to the lightning round. What's the number one reason people don't use your product?
- [17:04]
B
I think it's because they aren't already. Change is always daunting. People are busy and we really have been sort of creating a category before. We started talking about creative intelligence and creative data and all these things like no one did. And so when you're the category creator, there's a lot of education that goes into that. And so when people don't start working with us, it's usually because they just haven't thought about it already. There isn't pre existing budget. Usually we can get them eventually, but.
- [17:33]
A
There'S a minimum scale point. Right. Like there's customers are too small to use. You know something.
- [17:37]
B
Yeah, that's right. And we're definitely like very focused on sort of like large enterprise.
- [17:40]
A
Yeah, got it. All right, last question. If VidMob was an animal, what animal would it be?
- [17:46]
B
I would say a seal. Very intelligent, very agile and friendly and easy to work with.
- [17:51]
A
All right, there you go. Alex Gomer from VidMob, thank you so much for being here.
- [17:56]
B
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
- [17:59]
A
New interviews are added every week at marketecture TV and your favorite podcasting app. Thank you for listening to the Market 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 at News Market tv. And if you're feeling social, we operate a vibrant Slack community that you can apply to join@adtech God.com.