Madvertising by AdQuick — Advertising, Marketing & Ad Tech Podcast
00:00:00 · Adam Singer, Mo Moubayed
[00:00:00] S0: Hello, listeners, and welcome to the latest episode of the AdQuick Madvertising Podcast, a podcast that explores the intersection of technology, advertising, culture, all of the things that you care about. Today, we have a special guest. We have Mo from Veridooh. He is the cofounder and CEO. They are redefining transparency and trust in out of home ads. We just announced a partnership with them. They're, the independent verification platform of choice and, really cool Ad Tech company. Hopefully, you've heard of them before, but today, we're gonna give you an introduction. Mo, welcome to the show. [00:00:40] S1: Adam, thank you. Really happy to be here. [00:00:43] S0: And so let's start at the beginning. Maybe what inspired you to start Veridoo? And can you give a little bit of an explanation for, like, the marketer who isn't technical? They run billboards. They run out of home ads, but but they don't really know much else other than the medium and how to do the creative work.
00:01:03 · Mo Moubayed
[00:01:03] S1: Absolutely. The way Veridoo came about was really through another company that me and my cofounder were were were trying to launch. We were trying to launch digital signs on on top of taxis and Ubers in Australia. And as we sort of... In that prelaunch phase, as we went around to sell the media media space, we kept on being asked by the agencies, how do I know if my ad played? You you know? And and, you know, hearing that question over and over again led us to to ask out ourselves the question, well, how do you know today? Like, if you've spent a million dollars on an out of home campaign, how do you know it was delivered? And a lot of the times we we... The the answers we got back was, oh, we're really not sure, or, you know, maybe the media owner can send us a a play report, but that's marking your own homework. And it got really interesting when we got challenged by a brand in Australia to to say, if you could prove that the ads played, then we would be be your first client on your digital taxi tops. And we went away and we built the first proof of concept, which solved that challenge for for brands. And, you know, five years later, here we are as as the market leader, independent verification company in the world, which is really exciting. If I had to, you know, explain to a marketer why we exist, it really is to create transparency around the delivery of your out of home campaign. If you spent a $100,000, you've spent time briefing, strategizing, and planning, you've gone out and bought it, the next thing you'd like to know is all that hard work that you've put up front has eventuated, and what you've bought was delivered. And what we have seen the outcome of this is is we've seen brands and marketers really have more confidence in their out of home bias. And I think giving brands that confidence in their out of home bias then sort of translates into an increase in spend by advertisers when they have that confidence.
00:03:35 · Adam Singer
[00:03:35] S0: Awesome. And so, Mo, can you talk a little bit about, like, how the technology actually works in just simplest terms for non geeks of how you guys actually do this on on the on the back end?
00:03:50 · Mo Moubayed
[00:03:50] S1: Absolutely. I think a really good way to to to look at it is to actually compare it to maybe what what other competitors do as well. And, historically, for you to know whether your campaign ran, you would ask the media owner for a proof of play report or a spreadsheet or a document asking... Telling you that the campaign had run. I think marketers who who spend a significant amount in out of home realize that that's not okay, and it sort of fits into your marking your own homework category. And what Veridoo sets out to do and what our technology does is we are 100% independent. And so if you ask a CMO or a marketer, what does a 100% independent mean from a verification perspective, it means the verification provider collects their own data, that that the data is not being supplied by the media owner. There is no conflict of interest with the media owner, and none of the data that's being collected can be changed or influenced by the media owner or the buyer as well in this instance. And we do that through a patented piece of technology called the smart... A smart creative. And essentially, what it is is the creative is is either traffic to Veridoo or or or traffic using our our tool and a tag. So online brands and advertisers and marketers will know a tag or a pixel. It's similar to a tag or a pixel, but it it it turns into this smart creative which we then deliver to media owners who play the smart creative, and that smart creative is passive and self aware and understands exactly when it's being played, for how long it's being played, and where it's being played, so on what panel. And so from that, we can then calculate and compare to what was booked in order to give the market a a clear view around, the delivery of their campaign.
00:06:09 · Adam Singer
[00:06:09] S0: Yeah. It's really cool. I I like that, you know, similar to how marketers are actually tracking things online. I think it's interesting because for the, for the out of home space, the trust is really important because the dollar figures are so high. And, you know, you really wanna make sure that the campaign is running as intended. So so I think what you guys are doing is really important. How do you how do you approach marketing, Veridoo itself, especially as a b to b company? You know, I think for... You know, how do you state the problem and, like like, what are the ways that work best... Have worked best for you to grow? Because we have a lot of b to b companies that are listening to this, and I always find listening to a little bit of how other people have grown in companies is always really instructive for other marketers to take some inspiration.
00:07:06 · Mo Moubayed
[00:07:06] S1: Yeah. So b to b, and as sort of maybe we define who our clients are, agencies, brands, advertisers are our clients. How do we talk to them? You you know, very early on, we invested in comms and PRs. I think that's that's the first thing that we did. We don't do a lot of paid advertising, sort of online paid advertising or anything like that. We have very clear target audience. And, you know, we sort of look at how do we sort of educate, and we use comms and PR to educate, and I think that's the best way. So the best way for us to do it is, like, really educating. And I think why is that important? Why do I use the word educate? It's because independent verification is very new. It is a recent sort of innovation in out of home, and so out of... A lot of out of home buyers maybe haven't had experience in the online world. So whereas independent verification is very well known in the online world, it's it's it's new to out of home. So, you know, I think out of home is going through a shift in in general around its digitization and and being omnichannel and and being accepted into the omnichannel sort of family. And, yeah, I think education is a huge one. Secondly, we do a lot of... What... Let's get more education at the agencies and talking to them. It... It's interesting. I think when you speak to a a CMO or a head of media, because of their breadth across online and and other mediums, If I if I mentioned independent verification about a home, it's it's sort of a no brainer for them, and I... Like, that's that's probably the easy bit. Figuring out, like, figuring out a way for them to know that we exist is probably the heart of it. So I think two two challenges. If you're... I don't know what... Unsure of what independent verification does, we're we're educating, and then there's a... There is an audience that knows what independent verification is but just don't know that independent verification for AdHome is available.