Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
00:37:29 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi, Tim Rowe
[00:37:29] S0: Yeah. I I think someone told me, I can't source it, but someone told me there's, like, 20 different attention vendors out there trying to get advertiser dollars. I could confirm. Adelaide's the only one who advertises on this podcast, so shout out to them. But the... But, yeah, if you have that situation with that many vendors calling on agencies and advertisers, then the more standardization, the better. I I think I've said this on a previous pod, which is I do not think attention should be a currency. I I believe in currencies that are very conservative and can be measured at scale, and I think attention, you know, step one is getting some accreditation and some standards. Let's not go too crazy the way we did with viewability, but I think it it would definitely help to have this. [00:38:10] S2: Yeah. Agree. Feels like attention is also tailor made for out of home. Right, Tim? [00:38:15] S1: Well, it's interesting because out of home as an industry is moving away from attention as the currency. To date, mostly the effort has been to adopt a currency of likelihood to see. Recently, there's been an effort opportunity to see aided by ironically the MRC. I don't know what What's everybody's [00:38:38] S2: about using those QR codes?
00:38:38 · Eric Franchi, Tim Rowe
[00:38:38] S2: about using those QR codes? [00:38:40] S1: You know what it is? Here's your hot take. I think that there is by some an effort to potentially artificially inflate the amount of impressions that some of this media gets so that they can make more money. Versus drive down to the job to be done of creating investment confidence for marketers who've never used the channel before to spend on it without losing sleep at night. I think one man's opinion. [00:39:10] S2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Alright, cool. Well, we'll keep an eye on it. A little m and a news. So Attitude, which is programmatic company for publishers, acquired Hashtag Labs. Ari, think you're more familiar with these companies. Why don't you give us the breakdown of of this deal?
00:39:10 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo
[00:39:10] S2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Alright, cool. Well, we'll keep an eye on it. A little m and a news. So Attitude, which is programmatic company for publishers, acquired Hashtag Labs. Ari, think you're more familiar with these companies. Why don't you give us the breakdown of of this deal? [00:39:30] S0: Yeah. So I think... And I might be wrong. I know what Hashtag Labs does. I interviewed them on Marketecture. We've made that interview free with registration on marketecture.tv, so you should listen to it. They effectively are automated way for publishers to manage their monetization. So they have technology that will manage your header bidding setup, your pre bid, will do all of that sort of stuff, add tags. It's like a big tag management system, really slick UI. I was pretty impressed by the product when I saw it. I think attitude is kind of the same thing, but also with monetization and services. FreeStar Raptive? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. But I don't know if it's exclusive rep like Raptive or if it's more just like a service. I'm just unclear. Maybe we should have someone from them on the show. But, basically, it's a bit of a broader solution than hashtag. [00:40:20] S2: Got it. Makes sense. I think consolidation of these companies, to service publishers makes a lot of sense. So good job, and check out that free interview on Marketecture TV. Two quick notes, and then we'll we'll call it a day. So, everybody should absolutely look at that deck that you got ahold of for the, the DoubleClick acquisition thesis. That was killer.
00:40:41 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:40:41] S0: Yeah. A little backstory here. So I think the the moral of the story is don't get me having a grudge against you because, like, four years ago, I was, I I saw this deck firsthand when I worked at DoubleClick. I wasn't responsible for it, but I saw it. So I knew it existed, and I didn't have a copy. And four years ago, I was on Alex Kantrowitz's land of the giants podcast. He did an episode about Google and its dominance in advertising, and I was, like, the first guest on, and I and I gave him the whole story. There was a thing called YMAG. It's called Wimag because Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google were the only people big enough to buy DoubleClick. And there's a spreadsheet, and it's been lost to history, and it's really exciting and interesting. So that was my story. Immediately after me, they had my good friend, Neal Mohan, on. And Neal was my boss at DoubleClick, and he has had an amazing career. He's now the CEO of YouTube. And Neal gets on the podcast, and he's asked about why MAG by Alex. And he goes, I don't know about that. I don't think that's true. And he created the podcast. So he... I got... He fibbed online and made me look bad. And I love you, Neal. If you're listening, I really don't think he's listening. But if you are listening, I got your back here, man. We found it. So eat it, Neal. [00:41:49] S2: You didn't put that in your newsletter, to be clear. [00:41:51] S0: I did not.
00:41:51 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi, Tim Rowe
[00:41:51] S0: I did not. [00:41:52] S2: Alright. Excellent. So Marketecture listeners, you got the scoop directly from Ari on this one. That is awesome backstory. One one thing that is, like, non ad tech related but got ad tech x all fired up that I wanna close out with is founder mode. So there was a post by Y Combinator's Paul Graham talking about a new term that he invented called founder mode inspired by Airbnb's CEO speech. Everybody's mad about it or loves it. And effectively, this is about founders just working more directly on the company, in the company, not having professional managers making decisions and getting their hands dirty. Tim, start with you. Are you for founder mode or are you against founder mode and why? [00:42:41] S1: All for founder mode. If founder mode is being led by presumably some semblance of the founding team, I think it I think it creates the connective tissue to the original thesis. Why are we here? What do we stand for? I think that those things can get lost as, you know, as teams get big. I'm I'm a fan.
00:43:01 · Ari Paparo
[00:43:01] S0: Alright. I have complex thoughts here. It's definitely real. It's definitely real. The the founder knows more than anybody else, and they care more. And those are the two important things. And I wanna emphasize knows more because it's impossible to come in as a VP or a CXO at a company and know every little choice and mistake that was made over the x years beforehand. And when you're the founder, you literally know every single mistake, and you can see patterns that other people can't see and make decisions. I I actually found this the other side when I joined AppNexus as, their first head of product, and I had all kinds of thoughts that immediately, like, Brian and Mike Nolan were like, nope. Try it. Sorry. Like... And, you know, that's a little humbling, but it's true. The one thing I will say is that I think they, was Brian Chesky from Airbnb is the person who brought this up. He has sort of a history of saying inflammatory things that are, you know, typical Silicon Valley group think, like, MBAs are bad, product managers are bad, and, you know, those are really stupid thoughts to have. MBAs are great if you use them for what they're good for. So I I think that the danger of founder mode is it's an endorsement of micromanaging, which is a terrible mistake. What it is an endorsement of is caring and staying involved and very actively managing the people you bring in as professionals even in categories that you may not care about, like HR and finance and legal. As a founder, spend the time, dig deeper, do... I I love the idea of skip levels, but it is not an excuse to micromanage. It's not an excuse to say that the VPs I hire are not qualified or should not be given the power they need to do their jobs. And you really have to be subtly balancing those two things.