00:27:42 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:27:42] S0: We're trying to give you props though. [00:27:43] S1: I did like it. I did enjoy. I like the next slide. Yeah. Look, prioritization is is like the name of the game with a business, especially at this size. Like this is what we deal with all the time. How are we going to prioritize resources, whether that's sales resources, engineering resources, which things are we going to build in what order? You have to realize we operate in 25 plus countries. And guess what? Each of those countries want something different. Yep. And so how do you which one matters the most? Is it the one that's biggest? Is the one that we just released? So prioritization, the role of product usually, and Kira, for example, who leads product, it's a really hard job. You know, I joke with Kira, I'm like, who's going to hate you this quarter? You know, because someone is you're going to give something to and they're going to be very happy with you or potentially partially happy, but you're going to give them something. But 20 other people, you're not giving what they want. Yep. And they're going to hate you. And they're to bother you all quarter for the next thing. So really prioritization and allocation of resources are probably the probably the one of the hardest decision making that you have to do day to day when you operate these businesses, especially to your point, as you get a lot of clients who have more requests or requirements in order for you to even operate their businesses. Right. And that that gets, it gets stressful.
00:29:06 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:29:06] S0: Yeah. And you you could make the wrong decision by chasing money. Yes. And pleasing, you know, client x. Yeah. While missing the vision. So, you know. [00:29:17] S1: Yeah. Well, common problem that we see, especially on the competitor side is like, people will get one client and then they'll sprint to the next. Right? And they don't keep the client they want happy. And then so a year, I mean, we were at, were in it for the long game, right? We've been doing this for fourteen years. So when a competitor wins a client and then they are rushing to the next deal, but the current client they got, they're not keeping happy, they're not building all the things they promised. Well, guess what? That contract probably ends in a year or two, we're there to catch it. That happens a lot in business where I think people are just trying trying to promise and save the next thing and vaporware sell their way to the end. [00:29:57] S0: Yeah. And and you can't can't trick technology. You can't trick the evolution. Over time, it's eventually gonna catch up or it's gonna cost you... [00:30:05] S1: Gonna bite you at [00:30:06] S0: some point. Yeah. It's gonna cost you a significant amount of money. Yeah. And I never stopped to think about, like, you guys never you never went off off course.
00:30:06 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:30:06] S0: some point. Yeah. It's gonna cost you a significant amount of money. Yeah. And I never stopped to think about, like, you guys never you never went off off course. [00:30:14] S1: No. You know, we looked at mobile many times because there was always that tie, as you guys know, and that was we partnered, right? Instead of building it, we always partner with mobile companies. That was a thing that made a lot of sense buying mobile and out of home together, reaching the on the go consumer, all that, all that fun stuff. And we, we thought about it many times like, wow, imagine our own mobile bidder, imagine we could have mobile and out of home in the same interface. Like, it's a no brainer that people would use it. And you realize from a product market perspective, it's it isn't a no brainer. The buyers of out of home and mobile are different, and they probably wouldn't log into the same account to do both. And, of course, there are omnichannel DSPs where that does happen, but the majority of buying is still not like that today globally. [00:30:57] S0: Yeah. So what are... Do you... Over the years over the years, fourteen years, key milestones that have kind of helped shape the journey? Maybe some of them kind of Yeah. A hiccup made you realize like, yeah, that's a... That's the wrong path. But... Yeah, definitely. Does some kind of come to your mind?
00:31:16 · Michael Provenzano
[00:31:16] S1: Yeah. Look, I I think in the early days, people forget like you're just, you know, working with engineers to build software and then pre selling it to people. Like you're showing demos of something that's not even fully baked. And you know, people say, oh, great, let's use it. And you're like, well, I need a few more months, you know? So the first months of these businesses, if not almost almost the first year is pretty dead on the business side. It's really a heads down engineering thing. We didn't hire someone on the business side, probably till year two or so. It was a while before we did. So probably the first milestone was just the marketplace turning on. So like, you could log in as a buyer, you could log in as a seller and transact. Was like the basics. Brass tacks. And then when you have that, the next would be being able to integrate with a media owner. And even those integrations were really complex in the early days, this sounds crazy talking about it now, but early days when when we when we would talk to CMS companies or media owners that had their own CMS, you know, they everything was on a loop system, right? So just play over and over again. And, when we said like, well, we need you to track every single transaction, every time you show an ad, we need to know about it. People are like, mind blown, my god, how can we send this many requests? It's like, that's what computers do, guys. And it was just, to make the industry transactional, as I would call it, it was probably one of the biggest fundamental jumps for the the industry. So we moved into this like, systems are going to track every transaction like every other form of advertising, let's go. And that that took a big mindset shift for media owners, and for buyers, but that was a fundamental moment in like year two or so where like people started doing that by default, and that became pretty much the standard now. After the marketplace though, probably maybe year three or four, think you checked my calendar, but bringing in data was a big one. So in the early days, we actually first brought in carrier data. That's right. And we started buying that and building models on it of how people move throughout the day and, what were they doing and where were they. And if you knew that, you could better target out of home advertising. And then of course that data moved into GPS data.
00:33:30 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
Now full circle, we're talking about carrier data again, but the the idea of using movement data to understand statistically the patterns of consumers and using that data to tie back to attribution and measurement, that was game changing for the pitch, game changing for the industry, actually being able to bring ROI to clients on the brand side. I mean, that that was a massive milestone for us. [00:33:52] S0: Yeah. And to be able to look, act, and behave like other media. Exactly. It's key. [00:33:57] S1: Yeah. I mean, you want to feel like a unicorn, you feel special and stuff. But if you're if you're... You know, people don't know where to put you at an agency in terms of buckets of money, you just get kicked out. You've got you got to fit into something that makes sense. And audience based buying was how most online media was bought. So Right. If we could fit into that, that that was... That proved to
00:34:19 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:34:19] S0: be really productive. Yeah. So I've I've said this statement a hand, quite a few times, but, you know, the importance of employees, the importance of people, one of one of the things that I've loved from day one, even in in that office that you guys were running, you really kind of have set the standard in culture, culture in the workplace, which, you know, oftentimes it can kind of be this fun little cheesy word that people say, and part of their mission statement, and they may have a podcast and their HR department may talk about culture all the time. But, you know, one of the things that I've always seen and has seen an evolution as well within within your organization, and obviously it goes back to people, but the culture that you have at Vistar is... It's fun. While you guys still continue to, like, grind and innovate while you're working in a relatively, like, traditional corner of advertising that is out of home. Like, explain that. Because you guys all of a sudden become, like, if I'm gonna coin the phrase, you guys are all of a sudden, like, really cool kids where it's like, wait, that... Yeah. These are our tech friends. And it's like everybody wanted to be friends with this. They're like, yeah, it's my guys. [00:35:24] S1: Yeah, that that that coin flipped. I mean, it wasn't always like that. [00:35:27] S0: Oh, without a doubt.