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- [00:00]
A
Hey, real quick, before we dive in, if you've got a brand or marketing tool that marketers need to know about, sponsor the show here at Perpetual Traffic. Perpetual Traffic puts you in front of thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. So head on over to perpetualtraffic.com to apply to be a sponsor of this show. 73.7% of people on the planet who have Internet access use meta on a monthly basis.
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B
When you think about, like the Roman Empire, like Zuckerberg is the Julius Caesar of today's day and age.
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A
If you want to get to your client or customer or grow a business, meta is the place to do it because that's where the eyeballs are. A couple of different friends of mine, non tech industry, they express their deep concern about their jobs in legal, in architecture, in building, are all going to be AI'd out. And I'm like, no. There's one thing that's counterintuitive to all of this is you're listening to Perpetual Traffic. Are you losing hours building campaigns and analyzing reports? Well, active campaigns, AI agents do all the heavy lifting for you. They create content, plan campaigns and orchestrate your email, SMS and your WhatsApp all working towards your revenue goals. You get clear recommendations on what to do next backed by billions of data points. No more guessing about what's working or wasting time on manual setups. Just strategy and results. Try it all for free over@activecampaign.com that's activecampaign.com hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11, alongside my amazing state capital hopping co host, Lauren.
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B
E. Petrullo, founder of Mongoose Media. I wake, I'm like thinking I'm in heels, like hopping like a rabbit between the old Capitol building and the new Capitol building.
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A
You're just hopping from capitol building to capitol building. Well, suffice to say, you probably want an answer as to why I'm actually saying that if you're listening to this show, which you probably are, because here we are. What exactly have you been doing aside from getting a lot of dental work done this week? And we are going to leave a link in the show notes to the the perpetual traffic episode that could have been when you like, basically you got like some kind of dental work.
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B
Daddy cavity. Okay, let's be real. I'm not a very good flosser. I'm sorry, just keep it real.
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A
Kind of floss. Got a floss every day.
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B
They actually said it's because I apparently I don't grind in my sleep, but I compress in my sleep. So my upper teeth made divots in my lowers and so there's just like a bankment of bacteria. Like I made their own extra house because the way I compress. So anyways, yeah, whatever. Now I'm gonna go night guard, sweep a bath. Woohoo.
- [03:04]
A
It's great content right here. Or leaving a link in the show notes, guys, just because it's so funny. We couldn't record because I couldn't understand what Lauren was saying. Like a mouthful of. It's actually lidocaine. Everyone say it says it's Novocaine. I used to sell him drugs, believe it or not. So anyway, whatever. Point is like you sound like a Rhode Island, New York, Boston mashup. And I couldn't understand like every like third or fourth word. We're gonna leave a link in the show notes on that. On Lawrence. Definitely check out Lauren's Instagram. Anyway, um, just, just a video where I recorded it.
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B
Being like there's proof I'm memorializing what I sound like and I like watched it yesterday. I was like, oh my gosh.
- [03:49]
A
What, Gosh, what is going on here? That's the crate. That's the funniest thing. I was laughing my ass off. Anyway, so you are in the state capitol right now? Yes, in Tallahassee. But first off, you know, aside from my wife, who knows every state capital? I don't. I think probably the majority of listeners are like, yeah, state capital of Florida is Miami. Unless you actually live in Florida. The point is, is you're there and you're there for a very interesting reason which relates directly to all the stuff we're going to be talking about on today's show, which if you've already seen the title of today's show, we're going to go back in time and tell you exactly why Meta is the best ad platform on the planet for 2020, 26. But a lot of it has to do with AI and a lot of their investment in artificial intelligence, Llama platform, obviously, the algorithm, all of that. And you were testifying yesterday in front of what, a House subcommittee. Tell. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing.
- [04:50]
B
Yeah, I was super grateful. I got an invitation to join the subcommittee. There's a panel on professional and business use of AI. It was led by Chairman Mike Jalambardo. And then there was my representative from Orlando that was there. So it was the subcommittee. They had several other things before, but I was last and Longest and it was myself. There was representatives with executives from Microsoft from OpenAI ex bailed.
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A
Really?
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B
Whatever. Yeah. So there was someone that was supposed to be there, their head of policy. Like we had the head of Solutions of AI for OpenAI Leadership at the others. And then Meta, because of how much I use meta AI specifically and my personal usage of it, invited me there to speak on this panel. And it was amazing because while the other two zoomed in, they zoomed in like I drove up from Orlando. The others just joined in. It was a lot of fun. I had a very different way. I shared how I use AI and the opportunities behind AI. Like not to the other gentleman's detriment or anything, but they were very policy forward in their speak. They were talking about LLMs and where data lives. And it was something that I could keep up with, but I couldn't imagine that the rest of the representatives necessarily clearly could because it's not the world that they live in. And so I thought I had done a good job of bringing actual use cases of how we use AI, generative AI, specifically using it in sales and marketing. The opportunities of leveraging AI to augment an employee's better output versus just like replacing people. We've never hired more people since AI. We hire more and we hire more local. Um, and so I was sharing that side of the story because they're, they're going to be making committees across the US and nationally that's going to govern AI and before they make that type of legislative override. And while we're still in this development stage, our elected leaders are trying to get a grasp on it. Well, that's not necessarily the tool that you. So I, that's what I get to talk about, how I use AI, how it's really helped and empowered my business and that I could advocate for small businesses of when they're making these policies to know how we're actually using it. And I fell, I legit fell. I was on the podium and it slipped. And so I stayed in character and I was really grateful. Six representatives had come up to me afterwards saying that they appreciated my liveliness. Despite that, like not only did I fall during this like hour long panel or whatever, I also started crying like the very first moment when I had two minutes to introduce myself, I was bawling. It was not necessarily the best intro, but the bill that was passed right before me that was like unanimously approved was about accessibility. Oh, I'm going to choked up again. And just allowing Floridians a chance to Find solutions to accommodate their wheelchairs or ECVs. And my dad was handicapped. He was six, eight and a half. So he couldn't fit in his wheelchair. And he was a va, so we had to wait two years before he could get his next ECV before it would have been approved. So he didn't travel with us the last four years of his life because we were waiting for his next wheelchair because we weren't allowed to modify his. So they had passed this unanimously and came up, and I was like, I'm sorry, guys. The last bill he passed unanimously was so good. Thank you. I'm. Lauren called her a bug and spirit media. It was embarrassing, but whatever. Anyways, that's what I did. It was like, a very great session, talking about AI, talking about meta AI and how helpful it's been for me and the small businesses I represent.
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A
And so that was really it. So you, like. How long did you speak for? How long was your.
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B
Oh, it was like. It was great. It was a dialogue. There were questions back and forth. There's a lot more like proper etiquette that maybe I wasn't aware of or prepared for. Like, thank you, Chair. Thank you, Representative Hinson. That was a wonderful question. Thank you, Chair, for recognizing me. Like, there were those type of moments that the other gentlemen on Zoom were doing, and then it was very politicky. Meanwhile, they were like, okay, the floor is yours to myself and the other panel. So I was like, I'm gonna go first. I got five brothers let me in. And I had to be. I had to wait till I was recognized as speak.
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A
Oh, right. Yeah, protocols.
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B
Right, yeah, protocols. Whatever.
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A
You're probably not so good at protocols.
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B
One of the representatives told me I should run for office one day. She did say when I'm older. But they said I was the most lively speaker they had. They said, thank you so much for your testimony. Thank you so much for your presentation. And it was very grandstandy, but it was full of my personality from crying out the gate. And then, like, all these, like, movements around and falling. I felt like Jennifer Lawrence, but of politics.
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A
I think that's the step, the falling. You didn't hurt yourself on the falling?
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B
No, not at all. But they were like, oh, none of us knew that platform moved. Yeah.
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A
Oh, all right. Right, of course. Yeah. Well, they probably don't, like, move around a whole lot. You're. I would imagine you're gesticulating and you're doing your Lauren Petrulo thing, and, like, most people just sort of stand there, right at the podium and you know, deliver with hand gestures.
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B
Yeah, I look like the blow up thing in front of a used car lot right everywhere.
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A
I know, I know you're constantly like, you know, you know, knocking your, your microphone on shows like this. So the bottom line is, is like you were there for to understand from the small business perspective the power of AI, the threat of AI. Like what was, what was sort of your, your summary of it, your takeaway for those who are listening.
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B
I think my takeaway would be that the representatives are afraid. They're afraid of job loss, of employee replacement, they're afraid of the expenses acquired to small businesses to adopt AI, the lack of learning and education on the matter. And then there was definitely one representative who was very adamant on bringing on AI's influence on minors. And so I was glad for like the different things because when one representative said like, hey, I don't, is this going to replace jobs? Are we going to harm our economy by having small businesses and medium to large businesses adopt AI? Like I've never hired more because of AI. I have better output because of AI. I can empower and connect. And I talked about how like AI is this like great equalizer in the sense that I, I volunteer at juvenile detention centers and I teach incarcerated youth how to become people after being prisoners and like that their record's not their resume. And a lot of these very talented young adults who maybe were great at sales but selling something illegal have incredibly transferable skills and how AI allows them to compete against MIT graduates and other students that maybe didn't graduate out of a JDC you because they have an attitude for hustling and an aptitude for technology. And we were able to talk about how there is an opportunity for X cons to use AI. And I gave an exact example that I've done with some of the stuff I'm doing for my nonprofit where I talk to ex convicts and I say great, let's, let's have a dialogue with AI. Like talk to Meta AI or talk to ChatGPT, find a job that you're interested in, upload the job description now, have a conversation with the chat back and forth for 30 minutes so that you can at the end of the session build a resume that the job where you submit your application to will see you as a person and not as a prisoner. And for that they were like, this isn't how we thought about using AI. They're only using it to like get recipes or plan vacations. So exchanging how I actually use it against their Fear of this is going to hurt the American people, this is going to hurt our job force, this is going to hurt our kids, was an opinion that hadn't been well represented previously.
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A
I think one of the things that people are so worried about, and this has not come up, and we haven't talked about this in quite some time, is the job loss factor, the fear factor when it comes to AI. We've really been just sort of talking about how great it is, how great it is for obviously the Meta algorithm, which we're going to be talking about here today, but also just AI in general and how it's a force multiplier for your best people. The adoption of it is still, in my opinion, lagging. Like we still have the people that are sort of the early adopters really doing a lot with it, and then there is sort of a drop off. I'm seeing that, you know, within not only just my company to a certain degree, like that's just the normal course of how any new technology is adopted. You're always going to have the, you know, the people that are going to be on the leading edge and then you're going to have the ones that kind of come after that and then you're going to have the skeptics and then you're going to have the ones that are just never going to do it. So, and I think that has played itself out to a certain degree. I think our space in digital marketing has adopted it probably quicker than maybe a lot of industries that are less tech heavy. I mean, obviously you've got the tech sector, for example, but you know, if you look at like Meta, you look at Amazon, you look at layoffs and then hiring, you've got layoffs that have actually happened this year for sure. So Meta laid off 3,600 people in January of this past year, but they're also hiring 2,000 people right now. Amazon laid off 14,000 people back a few months ago, but now they're hiring another 3,000. So I think there's a shuffling of the deck here that goes along with AI. Is all of that related to AI? You know, some of it is, of course, looks like it's hard to really say, but I know this is like we have the same staff number today that we did probably about a year ago, and we're better leveraged for future growth. We have shuffled the deck quite a bit. We have changed people out that are not adopting the new technologies, that are resisting the way that things are going to be and sort of, you know, bringing Me back to the days of oh, I remember when we used to be able to charge $25,000 for a sales page. You. Yeah. Now we get a 5% tail on that into perpetuity. Well, those days are over. Like I'm using an extreme example here because obviously something like that is completely replaced by God knows how many different tools that create landing pages, sales pages. Now one of my favorites right now is lovable, by the way. But anyway, the point is this, is that all of this is moving forward no matter what. Yeah. I had a conversation with clients, couple of different friends of mine, non tech industry this past weekend and they expressed their deep concern about all of this. Meaning that their jobs in legal, in architecture, in building are all going to be AI'd out. And I'm like no, it actually you still need a human in the middle of it.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Human in the loop. Yeah. My, my architect friend was complaining about. I am so backed up right now. I'm like, I'm so, I'm like that's great. How is AI helping you become more productive? Oh, I haven't used any of the tools. So if he used some of the AI tools and yes he does do a lot of things that are sort of leading edge in the past in the architecture space. I'm like, you need to look at this in a different way. You need to be able to adopt it to make yourself more productive and find tools that enable you to be not only more creative but, but produce better work. And that was sort of the big breakthrough. Like I don't know if I necessarily got through to them. Like with my lawyer friend I was like, yeah, I'm definitely outsourcing some of our contract work to AI and Gemini and chat GPT when I need to put together an addendum and then I might run it by our lawyer. But I don't incur the $600 an hour fees anymore that I used to. So there's cost in discovery. Yeah.
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B
Leverage that $600 to invest back into your business. So it's, it's. I think the reshuffling is the best example. I told them that like there's definitely going to be jobs that will go away without, without a doubt. Because the same as we do not have telephone switchboard operators anymore. Like there is positions that will absolutely go away. But you know, we do have instead of telephone operators, we have hundreds and hundreds of stores across the state of Florida that sell cell phones. We have sales people, we have door to door salesmen. It's just, it's a reshuffling of what those jobs are. And um, there's tasks and skills that AI can help you with, where it can help you have better output. I liked how you had expressed that really well. And so I think it's a, there's a lot of fear around it and there's stuff that's definitely gonna replace and go away. But like even like on today's topic, it's just like technology evolves. It's robotics with AI that's going to facilitate greater examples. They were concerned about like the non tech, like the more manual jobs. And I had talked about how there's this one plumber that we consulted with where they're able to use AI, like the meta glasses for example, where they can have a junior apprentice on site. The older gentleman is too arthritis prone to get under the sinks anymore, so he's a younger apprentice. And then with AI and with glasses, the younger apprentice is now supervised by the experienced individual. So the younger one can get in, understand what are the different pieces and have conversations back and forth. So instead of the cost of one plumber being there, you're actually getting two because AI has now enabled you to double the workforce. But then you're also able to be more efficient because that gentleman who's overseeing it can check in with two or three of a supervisor overseeing two or three jobs at the same time. So that small business owner is expanding his ability to work. And if you think about it like from a VA perspective or for an elderly, like an home, if you're still.
- [19:06]
A
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B
Half of Florida, right? You have such long cues before an H Vac person can get to you, before a plumber can get to you. And now you're able to just help a lot more. I think of your architecture friend, like, you're able to support more growth. All the people that he's backlogged with are preventing from contributing to the economy because they can't get their renderings done, they can't build their stuff. So AI is amplifier of growth.
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A
Excellent point. Yeah. Like, he hasn't used any AI tools at all. He hasn't even used ChatGPT at all for any of this, or created a GPT for architecture. Now, my point was this is, obviously we're going to get into the show here, but the point is, is you have to be able to be open to it and understand it's not a threat, it's actually an opportunity. And I think you said it great, especially in that now, like, I never thought about that niche and the plumbing niche. Like Meta's AI glasses, which, by the way, are.
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B
Oh, I've got them. I got from High Level. They're right here. Hold on, let me grab them.
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A
So cool. I got to try them out in a conference about six months ago, and I thought they were. They were a little bit clunky then, but now I've not seen them as of yet. But they look amazing.
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B
So shout out to High Level because they gave them to me after speaking at their event in Dallas.
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A
That's fantastic. Yeah. See, there you go. Looking good.
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B
And so, like, here I can, like, take a picture and you can see that there's a flash or. Let me see.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Oh, there you go. You can see that it's recording with the light flashing.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So now I get a minute of recording whatever I want, or the same as I can say, like, hey, AI. Hey, AI, what's in front of me? Hey, Meta. What's in front of me?
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A
Hey. Where?
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B
Okay, now you can't hear her, but she's explaining to me what's on the screen in front of me.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Because I can't see committing. Put my prescription ones into it. So switch back to my real glasses.
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A
So I like a continuation on the plumber thing. So I had a plumber at our house, and we had this. This pedestal sink that we wanted to change out. We got the wrong size cabinet sink. And so the thing didn't, like, align up. And so they, for like, two hours, like, tried to figure out, like, how to actually do this and how to figure it out. And what's worse yet is that the new faucet that Jen wanted was, like, made in Germany, so it didn't, like, match anything that they had, you know, in the truck. And so it took them another two days to figure this out. If they had Meta glasses, I guarantee you they would have been able to say, what is this? How can I order it and where can I order it? Like the attachment for the sink, like, and then the problem that they had with the pedestal going to the cabinet sink. How can I actually get around this? Is there a better solution? And there was two of them. There was the guy that was working and then there was my, my buddy who's been doing this for years and years and he doesn't really do much of the work anymore, but he's like the sensei when it comes to like heating and cooling and plumbing. And so his apprentice could have used the Meta glasses to at least give ideas to him. And then he would then say, oh, I don't know if that would necessarily work.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
With Meta's classes, you're using Meta's LLM. So there might be a creative solution that he's never talked to or that isn't in the public domain that he might know that the Meta llama, you know, LLM, which is basically powering everything for Meta right now, like behind the scenes, not necessarily the AI algorithm that we're going to be talking about. The point is that like that's a whole other thing. And they could have taken a three day job and compressed it into maybe a day or come back with the right attachment and gotten it from, you know, I don't even know how they fixed the damn thing. I think they just sort of jury rigged it and so far it's not leaking, which is good. The point is, is like I could have helped there.
- [23:42]
B
Absolutely. And then they could have had more jobs. You wouldn't have had to have spent as much and paid for their lack of discovery. They could have used that time to invest in marketing for their business, to attend a trade show, to upgrade their licensure. Like it's just allowing you to be more efficient. So as you said, you kept the same headcount, but you've amplified your ability to grow. You are more prepped to take on more than you were a year ago with the same staff. But what I know you're doing is instead, I mean, you are taking in more always, but you're also making better from existing. So your output the same as like so many other marketing agencies and advertisers. Which is why I say like the media buyer's role that is going away, like the telephone switch operator, it's not the same role anymore. You're a strategist, you're providing more value. Like I had given an example of how they had like just before me a 450 page bill that they were examining. I said, that's a lot. And like I'm in the middle of reading, you know, the, what is it? The Wheel of Time series. So I have the first book, I don't remember chapter two because I'm like 800 pages in. And so for someone to have to go through it, you can leverage an LLM to say, hey, here's all the source material. Knowing what you know about me and my policies, knowing what's important to my constituents. Please identify the seven things that I need to look at first in this bill to make sure I can form an opinion on whether or not this is written for my representatives.
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A
Super good. That's a great use for AI right there.
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B
The note taker.
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A
Oh yeah. Oh, was it even better?
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B
Yeah. I saw three people be like, oh.
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A
There'S one thing that's counterintuitive to all of this, and I'll end on this. Before we get into our meta part to today's show, is because this is obviously, this is something that you and I are super passionate about, is because everything's gone AI and everything's gone virtual. Ever since the pandemic, people are craving more human contact.
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B
Absolutely.
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A
In person events. You're a great example of this. Like you have spent a tremendous amount of time on the road doing in person stuff. It's like old school. That can never be AI'd out. I'm sorry. Face to face contact interaction with other humans in a physical space. There is, there is no replacement for it. And we have a great client. We did actually a case study on this a couple shows back, which I'll leave in the show notes in the software space. Great business. And before the pandemic, they would do small sort of get togethers for some of their like elite groups. They're doing their first major conference for not only their members, but also for new potential clients. It's a little bit less than a thousand people and we had a strategy call with them this week is how we can help. Obviously, you know, get them to that number and sell the place out and make it as profitable as possible, which is hard to do with a physical event a lot of times.
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B
So you don't make money on the event long term on these customers and the retention.
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A
But yeah, but my point to them was, because this is the largest event ever, is like, you guys might not make money from this but what you will do is you will get tremendous amount of goodwill and retention. And I know what the retention numbers are. They figured out a lot of great ways in which to retain their clients, you know, through software stickiness, through the back end, like white labeling of GHL and all these other sorts of things. Super smart things. But this is one more thing to layer on it. I said, yeah, that's the reason why if you ever gone to a concert recently, Jen bought tickets to Maroon 5 like three weeks ago. I don't even know how much they were. Like, they were so freaking expensive. Like, everything is so freaking expensive. Not even a maroon 5 real.
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B
You haven't been to a Beyonce concert. Hold on.
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A
Oh, my God. It's like insane, insane expensive.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, like we were going to go to like the Four Nations Hockey Tournament last year. It was like $4,000 a seat. But anyway, it's like crazy stuff. But the point is, people are craving in person events as a. Yeah. As a reaction to a lot of this AI ification and Zoom and all the things that you do every single day. So if you can incorporate an element of human contact into your business, however possible, that's a great play for you into the coming year because it differentiates you and it also plays alongside the efficiencies that you get from AI and.
- [28:08]
B
People buy from people and it's so much easier to build trust. So much of your marketing and earned equity or earned media, like what they're going to be doing on their brand equity, you get from in person. Hermosi, we talked about this. A lot of how he cashed in on this massive brand equity deal. When he did his book launch, he had for two years leading up to that, hosted people every single week in his office where he was just bringing troves of future customers and they were building that brand equity. Because then you saw the people that are in the Zoom background, those are individuals that had purchased private time with him. And it was this whole, you know, ascension ladder into brand equity. So I think it's a great play when you can have an in person experience. The same as, like, just to end on, like me visiting the capital. I now have in person relationships with 13 different representatives from the state of Florida. All of which I'm like handwriting a letter and saying, like, hey, if you ever want me to speak on this subject matter to your constituents, say less. Just let me know when and where and I'll be there to continue the conversation so that they're the people that elected them can also have the opportunity to hear how AI is an adoptable resource to amplify your own personal growth and output. So that's, that's how I'm doing it now because I met them in person and I'm going to do a handwritten card and my call to action is like, if you want me to continue this dialogue, put me in front of the small business owners in your district and then I'm going to have an in person introduction from their elected official. Hey, here's Lauren, the founder of Mongoose Media, here to talk about how you can adopt AI into your business to grow and scale in 2026. I couldn't have had a better introduction pipeline for 2026 now. Thank you.
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A
So back to my last point. I mean that's, that's a tremendous example of the in person effect and the networking that you can gain from it. We've always talked about sort of in person events and how they're important now, but I think now more so than ever. So great work on that. We're going to transition here to a little bit. We're only going to get into the first part of this. I have a feeling this is going to be a multi part episode. I got to quiz you on something here. You don't know that this is, this has turned into a quiz. The British Empire. We're aware of the British, the British Empire, Right.
- [30:29]
B
My family. Yeah. The people I'm related to that murdered a lot of people. Yeah, let's go.
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A
Yeah, they sure did. Absolutely. We, we broke free from them here in the United States. Watch the American Revolution by Ken Burns. Oh my God. It's like nine hours of like cure for insomnia. It's like it's.
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B
You okay? Yeah. Like my family got kicked out. They married an Irish woman and then Queen Victoria and Albert were like, nope, you must le. And that's how we end up in the space.
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A
Well, you know the, the big joke in our family is that my wife's family came over on the Mayflower era because we're in like the Plymouth, like Sagmore beach area. And I came over because I was, you know, I basically left Ireland because of the potato famine and you know, came here diseased and you know, barely survived in Boston, of course, landed in Boston. What are the chances of an Irish Scotland in Boston? Anyway, so anyway, so she's royalty and I'm just, you know, Irish scum which my in laws always sort of kid me about. So British Empire, guess what percentage of the planet when the British Empire was at its Zenith. What percentage?
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B
42%.
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A
Don't Google it.
- [31:43]
B
I didn't. I'm off the dome. 42%. Damn.
- [31:48]
A
They. They cover 23% of the world's population. All right, here's another one. Maybe a little bit farther back. Portugal, probably your. No, the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire at its zenith had what percentage of the world's population under.
- [32:04]
B
Well, that's hard because this side of the hemisphere didn't exist during the Roman Empire.
- [32:10]
A
It's harder to make. I don't know.
- [32:12]
B
I'm going to say, okay, I'll stick to my 41. 42%.
- [32:16]
A
You're right, actually, it's 40%.
- [32:18]
B
Yay.
- [32:19]
A
Very good. All right, now, Meta. Meta platform.
- [32:25]
B
Okay.
- [32:26]
A
Of the percentage of humans on the planet. I'm not even talking about humans that have Internet. Percentage of humans on the planet. What percentage of humans on the planet interact with a meta application on a daily basis?
- [32:41]
B
On a daily basis. Humans on the planet. So we can eliminate, you know, children under the age of seven and then. Okay, and then we can. I mean, even in remote areas, there's a lot of tribes that have access to phone, Internet, and so it could be a shared device. I'm going to say 61%.
- [33:03]
A
61.
- [33:04]
B
No, 69, because that's a funnier number. But I say 61.
- [33:07]
A
61. All right. Well, you're a little bit high, but you're actually accurate on the Internet side. Because on the Internet side, if somebody has access to the Internet, it's actually closer to 70%.
- [33:19]
B
Okay.
- [33:19]
A
However, for humans on the planet, 43.75% of these.
- [33:25]
B
Same as the Roman Empire.
- [33:27]
A
The same as the Roman Empire. Actually a little bit greater by percentage numbers. Yeah, slightly better. 40%. 43.5%. So no platform or in the case of the British Empire and. Or the Roman Empire regime has had this kind of influence on people on a regular basis. Now, obviously different. We're talking about political, you know, we're talking about, you know, civilization, which was very different. Obviously, the. The population was. I don't even know what it was during the Roman Empire, a lot less than it is today. We've got 8 or 8 billion people on the planet right now. The point is this, is that we have got 3.5 billion people that are on this platform on a regular basis, and there's about 8 billion people that live on this planet. That is the influence of meta. Now, Google, I would.
- [34:21]
B
I'm still going to argue it's more, though, because you said interact, and there are still People that are interacting with meta tools, like people that are watching over someone's shoulder, that's aware of Instagram, that's having conversations about WhatsApp. Like there's children, like I think of in latam, like, because WhatsApp is a meta owned device and that's their primary means of communication. Even though the child is not using WhatsApp, their family is using it and they're interacting in some way, shape or form. So I mean, maybe that's like directly connected from a user. And then if you look at the smart tax that they're debating in Chicago right now, like, that's huge. But wow. I mean, when you think about like the Roman Empire, like Zuckerberg is the Julius Caesar of today's day and age. Elon Mus hate that.
- [35:10]
A
Probably, yeah. I mean, depending on which search you use, there's one that says it's 49% of all humans on the planet. So the point is this is that it's greater than the Roman Empire. But to your point, anyone with Internet access is the reason meta was actually doing these like planes that were low flying like gliders over Africa with Internet on them. Do you remember when that was happening? This was like five, six years ago. Like, and that was like their play to expand their global pre Starlink.
- [35:41]
B
This was. So Elon just did it better.
- [35:44]
A
Yeah, Elon did it better. Obviously now pretty much everyone on the planet will can or quasi has access to the Internet. But to your point, 73.7% of people on the planet who have Internet access use Meta on a monthly basis. We all know this as marketers and business owners. That growth is amazing until something breaks or some catastrophic event, heaven forbid, should ever happen to your business. And I don't mean just your ad campaigns going sideways. Maybe a client slips on a wet floor or a shipment suddenly goes missing, or a contractor gets hurt, or, or an employee gets hurt. Suddenly the thing you've been building can take a huge financial hit, maybe one that you worry might take down the company. And you should always be thinking about that as the business owner. Most people don't think about business insurance until after something goes wrong, when it's already too expensive or it's too late. That's why we're big fans of what next insurance is doing business. Insurance is so important for any business, whether you're online or offline. And they've basically taken the pain out of business insurance. It's 100% online, ridiculously fast, and designed specifically for small businesses. You answer just a few Questions and next tells you exactly what coverage you need. No phone calls, no waiting, no holding the line for the next representative. Just fast, affordable production that actually has your back when things go sideways. Policy start for as little as $29 a month. Don't wait for a crisis to remind you you're not covered. Get protected in minutes@nextinsurance.com perpetual. That's nextinsurance.com perpetual.
- [37:32]
B
Okay, now you have monthly active users. That's more impressive because while my mom, lover, she's 81 years old, has Facebook, she's not using it as actively as I am in any way, shape or form. So it would be so interesting then to see that even that differentiation by generation because Gen Alpha is actually like one of the not gen. Is it maybe it's Gen Z is the smallest use of social media in comparison to other generations and millennials use it the most. So I mean all that to say, like there's just so much going into how we interact and use these different devices. I'm still shook by the fact that Roman Empire comparable numbers. I mean, it's when you go to crazy percentages, right? Like that's when you talk about, oh, the Titanic was the biggest box office. If you bring inflation into dollars, like that's massive.
- [38:27]
A
Massive. Absolutely massive. And I think that's the reason why we're going to do this. You know, two or three part series on why Meta is the best ad platform on the planet. Just because if you have a product or service, your customer is on there. I don't, I don't care if you're selling B2B even like we've seen, we're like, yeah, I don't know, maybe we should try LinkedIn ads. And then we do LinkedIn ads versus meta now, especially with creative diversification, we're like, it crushes it over at Meta just because like the platform is so good that the reach is so broad. So this is just sort of the first step. I mean it's an incredible amount of. Even if you, you can Google this, you can look it up, throw it into chat GPT and check our math on this. The point is, is if it's 73 or 71% or it's 40 or 44%, doesn't really matter. It's still like larger than the Roman Empire.
- [39:23]
B
Okay. I wanted to pull up one thing because I remember like Saudi Arabia because we would have clients are like, hey, we want to expand in the Middle East. We have European continents and there's no.
- [39:33]
A
Facebook in, in China.
- [39:37]
B
VPNs you, you know what I mean?
- [39:39]
A
That could, I suppose.
- [39:41]
B
No, you definitely, you can use VPNs. But you're right, there's still like political ram of like restrictions on this. But like one thing, like I remember when we were looking at expanding into the Middle East, Saudi Arabia had like 97% of their population is on the Internet. And I just from the AIO review is that WhatsApp usage from the Saudi Arabian population is 83% with 72% of their population on Instagram.
- [40:08]
A
That's incredible. That's unbelievable. I mean the goal of Meta and Zuckerberg's vision, whether you like him or don't like him, he is an absolute visionary. And there was a point, I think during the iOS 14 update, which we're going to talk about in this whole thing. And the point is this. It's like if you're not on Meta, if you don't believe in what Meta is doing, you're missing out on basically 72% of the world in a, in a very large way. And we're not even including like the kind of like there's no, there's no meta in Russia, there's no meta in China. So let's take those populations even out. So it's like it's pretty much whoever you want to reach, especially in those countries, like Saudi Arabia, like I know, you know, United Arab Emirates, probably the same percentage as Saudi Arabia, if not higher. Talk about like when I was in like Thailand, Vietnam two years ago. Internet, like they're so far advanced where we're at right now, as far as speed, especially at that point in time. The point is this is like if you want to get to your client or customer or grow a business, Meta is the place to do it because that's where the eyeballs are. And with the Meta Andromeda update and creative diversification, it makes it even better and easier and less difficult. Now we're finding that media buyers are like, wow, I can actually set this thing up with creative diversification and let Meta do the work. Even with open targeting, like with zero targeting whatsoever. Maybe some age related targeting to a certain degree, but even that, like meta figures it out over time. And this has been building ever since really since 2004 plus. I mean that's really when it all kind of started. I mean, if you look back on, you know, the Facebook, which really did start in 2000.
- [42:01]
B
Oh yeah, the Facebook that was in the movie.
- [42:05]
A
I was in the movie and I've read a lot about that movie, like the social network, it overly dramatized, dramaticized. I never know what that word is. The sort of the Winklevoss twins and Zuckerberg. And like, there were so many college campuses that actually had sort of their own social networks. And it wasn't really a novel idea, but basically the story behind the story is that Facebook actually started as a college campus social network on the Harvard campus here in Cambridge, just down the street from where I live. The point is this is that. And then it expanded outward. Now, a lot of the Ivy Leagues actually had their own individual networks. And so this was not a novel thing. But what Zuckerberg did is he added all these individual cool features, some of which actually caught him in real trouble. Was. I think it was. Was it Larry Summers? I think it was the president of Harvard at the time. The point is this is that the. That sort of intellectual property, that fight that makes a whole movie is a little bit overblown, but still, it's. It's a great movie if you've watched it's Hollywood.
- [43:16]
B
That happens all the time.
- [43:18]
A
Yeah, of course it is. So the point is this is that this is the. This is the platform I think, that you need to be on in 2026 and you need to master it. Whether or not you do it internally, you know, the. Your own team for a VP of marketing or a director of marketing, or whether you hire out for an agency. Because this is the place where everything is going right now. We've geared our entire business towards this, and everything else is sort of secondary at this point. We're having clients come to us and say, hey, I want Google Ads. And so we start Google Ads and we're like, you know, what you really need is you actually really need Meta. And then all of a sudden, the shift goes from 80% on Google to 80% on Meta, like over the course of a few months. And all of a sudden, results are where they need to be. You know, hey, I was looking for a 3.8 blended mirror. I never ever got it on Google. I was always at like 1.2. And now with the difference in blend and creative diversification, everything that's going on now with the Andromeda update, like, you've been able to sort of. We've been able to reverse a lot of these trends and getting off like this, the standard sort of platforms and looking at Meta as the discovery platform, I know you've sort of felt the same over at Mongoose for sure.
- [44:29]
B
I mean, it's the opportunity to cost effectively get in front of your intended audience, you have the ability to expand at scale with your creatives and with Andromeda and then the GEM update, especially of with the organic side in 2026, small business owners, medium business owners especially are going to be able to capitalize on all of their organic content they've been doing for years. Like for 2026, for me at least, I believe that because of the Gem update, where it's just essentially saying it doesn't matter if it's a paid ad or an organic post, all of your content matters into building up a better delivery service for your end customer, end users.
- [45:10]
A
So I think a lot of people.
- [45:10]
B
Who have invested in the organic side will start to see that if you do invest in Meta and you take advantage of the opportunities, you now get to not have an organic side and a paid side, like you have these combined together for the intended output you want when you're investing into Meta as a platform. So like again, it's like it's looking at Meta like you and I talk about the paid ads, so much of this. But now with organic, now with conversational marketing from Messenger, IG Direct or you have like WhatsApp, like all of this is finally coming together in culmination where brands that have been investing organically for years, posting on social to crickets are now going to see an impact to their paid ad strategy because of their content organic. And that all tends to because of AI's involvement where it's going to start pulling and extracting from your website, from your organic social media content to create the ads that will likely lead to a higher probability of a purchase.
- [46:12]
A
Yeah, and it's because they've got more data than that. Well, but maybe with the exception of Google, I don't know who has more data. That's really sort of the question.
- [46:21]
B
It's all the same amount of data. There's like who has more? It's at this point it's infinitesimal. Infinite, whatever that word is.
- [46:27]
A
Infinitesimal. Oh yeah, sure, it's infinite. We'll just go with yes. So I just want to end here, like on our first part here on some of the mind blowing like growth numbers for Meta for the last few years because they just came out with their quarterly earnings just a few weeks back, their market capitalization which was over 2 trillion. 2 trillion market cap, which is basically share price multiplied by shares outstanding, 1.93 trillion. Nvidia is not too far behind. I mean Meta is just an incredible growth machine. Like I said, we've got 3.94. Almost 4 billion monthly active users. We've got 4. 3.4 daily active users. Think about that percentage right there. We were just sort of quibbling over like, monthly versus daily. Monthly and daily is almost the same. They've got so much engagement. And this goes back to Zuckerberg and his just maniacal. In a good way. Devotion to. I need to connect the world's. The people on this planet. I need a way to connect people. And the only way to do that is through engagement. And we're going to get into that through this series and to show how they sort of did this sort of one step at a time. And it wasn't all at once. It was sort of little improvements and a lot of, you know, stealing, slash borrowing from other platforms, which I'm sure we'll have some pretty. Or acquisitions on that. Or acquisitions.
- [48:12]
B
Acquisitions that came into play. But yeah, it's this incremental growth towards the world domination of your time and attention.
- [48:19]
A
Annual revenue fiscal year 2024164 billion ad revenue. 160 billion.
- [48:27]
B
By the way, it's just an ad platform.
- [48:30]
A
All.
- [48:30]
B
What is the. What's the other 4 billion or like, was it a few billion dollars from. Is like what Quest Sales.
- [48:38]
A
Sales probably like, yeah, they don't sell data, by the way. Everyone, Cambridge Analytica came out and they said, oh, Meta. You know, Congress actually said. Senate said, oh, Meta sells their data. They don't sell data that we use the data that they collect to make the advertising that much better. That's what they do. They don't sell data. So that's a advertising company first, which I don't think Zuckerberg ever really thought it was going to be that way.
- [49:03]
B
That's your. Was it like 90, 98% of their entire revenue came directly from ads. So every small business owner that donated to the fund, to the cause, they're like, thank you.
- [49:15]
A
We. We donate 107 million a year to it. It's like, it's crazy to think, like we're just tier 11.
- [49:22]
B
But it's small. Like I.
- [49:23]
A
It's small.
- [49:23]
B
The numbers drop in the market. Yes. Drop in the bucket. I remember, like being in Silicon Valley, like on campus being told if you're spending less than $200,000 a month, you are considered small for Meta.
- [49:35]
A
Yeah, it's true. It's absolutely true. That's why they've geared a lot of their focus towards agencies. There's a lot of stuff that they do for agencies because they realized, unlike Google, they realized, all right, we can get to a lot of advertisers all at once by going through agencies. It's a really smart move. I always thought that was a smart move. As advantageous for us as an agency, of course. But one last number here. I remember a buddy of mine who runs a hedge fund out in California and he always said whenever there was bad news from Meta coming out, like I remember early 2022 when after the iOS 14 update hit and their stock just cratered and it went down and down and down all the way through, like October of 2022, he's like, Meta's done, dude. Like your business model is done. I'm like, I don't know. Since that point in time, Meta Stock has actually increased 5 over 500%, nearing 600% since it's where it'll be interesting.
- [50:34]
B
If we do every year, like an annual wrap up of like, how much did they make from Ant? What is their current stock price? Again, we're not financial advice. It's not financial advice in any way, shape or form. But it's like the platforms, if you're listening to this, the platforms we use like, like we bought Shopify at the very beginning and it like just sky like the tools that you're using as like a small thing, like, are you using it? Are you continuing to use it more? Do you see more adoptability? This is not financial advice in any way, shape or form. But when I've looked at what's in my portfolio, I'm always gonna be like, yeah, if I'm using the tool anyways, I'm like, I'm just going to invest not in the software price alone, but I'm vested interest in their success. When I like, yeah, like I, I have a Shopify store, so I have Shopify stock, like that type of situation because it's the tools that I'm using and when I stop using a tool I'm like, okay, then this is again, I am not in this space in any way, shape or form. But when I'm using something, it's like the kids that pick the song like, oh, I love this game. It's like, okay, well this was made by Rocket Games or whatever. So that type of situation, like the Cruella de Vil style where they had kids testing games because they had the biggest insight. I'll just share back which tools I'm using and if I enjoy using them.
- [51:53]
A
Yeah, I mean if I see a tool that makes sense, like Shopify, for example, Meta, of course Atlassian, which is another one that we Use like there is just, there's a lot of them that Stripe for example, there's like a private equity deal going right now with Stripe. I got like all of these tools. I'm like wow, these are really game changing companies. So yes, you can for sure make money off it through your own individual investments. I choose to actually leverage these tools primarily for the growth the business, which is the largest investment that I have right now. Last number for you here, total revenue 42 billion. 42 billion. And that's a 16% year over year growth. But their earnings grew by 37%. This is after what, 37%.
- [52:39]
B
But that's only because they got rid of the whole like quest while they're doing the Meta real estate.
- [52:44]
A
They did, they did. They definitely reduced a lot of that infrastructure. But they have been pouring into capital expenditures too. Like let's not forget the 72 billion they spent this year alone, probably even more now on AI infrastructure and they're going to be spending 115 billion in 2027. So there's a lot of capital capex that's going into all this. Does that affect earnings? I'm not a financial analyst. The point is this is like the thing is growing and it covers 70 some odd percent of the planet. It's the place to be in 2026. We're going to continue with this conversation on our next show and of course wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure that you leave us a rating and review. We really do appreciate that it gets us out to a larger audience and teaches people how to do this stuff the right way. We really feel very strongly about how we feel about Meta right now. It's not because we're shareholders, we are not giving financial advice. We're doing it because we're seeing its effect on businesses and helping business scale and grow and ultimately achieve their vision through metrics that matter and growth at scale. So that is what this whole thing is about. So on behalf of my amazing globetrotting Senate House capital trotting co host, Lauren Ipatrulo, ciao till next show. See ya.
- [54:03]
B
You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic, Sam.