00:08:36 · Ian Dallimore
[00:08:36] S0: Yeah. And I don't want to say carte blanche here, but a lot of startup CEOs, founders, co founders, they're just kind of like, yeah, that's the number for me. I'm out. And one of the things, again, without going into too much detail that I really enjoyed throughout this entire process, we're just walk... Watching you truly care about your employees, truly caring about your people. And over the last few weeks, having conversations with the Lucy's, the Christians, the Eric Lambs, Akira, everyone, like that, it's amazing to hear them talk about it, to your point, like, as exciting as you were, but more importantly, watching you make sure before this deal is inked, like, want to make sure, not from a monetary perspective per se, but also I want to make sure that there's something here for my employees to continue to innovate and build upon, as opposed to, I'm checking out, good luck to everybody, I'll be on an island. You and I have jokingly said like, you're like, yeah, there's no island to go to.
00:09:37 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:09:37] S1: No. And I like working, so it's maybe my own curse. But, no, you know, it's really important that everyone likes the home that we go to at some some point, right? So, you know, over the years we had talked to different acquirers, we talked to private equity firms, we went through the whole gamut. So my team's kind of heard from everyone at different points. And we were at a fork in the road where we did make it to make a decision to move forward with this deal. And, I did consult actually a good amount of the employees of, hey, like, you've been with me forever, this is going to be the next steps and forever. Are you excited? And they were. They were pumped about the opportunity. T Mobile specifically is a client. They're like one of our biggest clients because they use actually all of our products across the buy side, sell side, everything. And, so it's like, well, yeah, they've been a great client of ours. We we know them well already. It was a great place to be for them. [00:10:30] S0: Yeah. So let's kind of take a step back. So Lamar, obviously, knowledge, we invested three or four years back into the company. And for us, it wasn't necessarily just Vistar per se, it was we believed in the technology, we believed in programmatic, and we believed in your leadership. Sure. What did what did that investment mean to you and the company outside of just the money side of things?
00:10:30 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:10:30] S0: Yeah. So let's kind of take a step back. So Lamar, obviously, knowledge, we invested three or four years back into the company. And for us, it wasn't necessarily just Vistar per se, it was we believed in the technology, we believed in programmatic, and we believed in your leadership. Sure. What did what did that investment mean to you and the company outside of just the money side of things? [00:10:57] S1: Yeah. Sure. I mean, now now that I look back at it all, that was definitely a big jumping milestone, big change in the company, and that is really the first person, you know, really to put money where their mouth was and said, this is important for the space. And it was the top company out of home saying, hey, programmatic's a real thing, it's going to be around for a long time, and Vistar is the best company to be doing it. So that was a substantial moment for our business and for the industry. With T Mobile coming in, I feel like that's another stepwise function of here's the next thing that's happening. A company that is not an out of home company, it's a telecom company, is saying to the whole world that out of home is an extremely important channel to them. And my hope is that it changes the way a lot of brands look at out of home in the future, knowing that such a powerful brand that's very consumer focused is saying this and put this statement out there.
00:10:57 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:10:57] S1: Yeah. Sure. I mean, now now that I look back at it all, that was definitely a big jumping milestone, big change in the company, and that is really the first person, you know, really to put money where their mouth was and said, this is important for the space. And it was the top company out of home saying, hey, programmatic's a real thing, it's going to be around for a long time, and Vistar is the best company to be doing it. So that was a substantial moment for our business and for the industry. With T Mobile coming in, I feel like that's another stepwise function of here's the next thing that's happening. A company that is not an out of home company, it's a telecom company, is saying to the whole world that out of home is an extremely important channel to them. And my hope is that it changes the way a lot of brands look at out of home in the future, knowing that such a powerful brand that's very consumer focused is saying this and put this statement out there. [00:11:59] S0: Yeah. And it's... People often say like, well, why does it make sense for a carrier or a cell phone company? I... You and I were joking before over here. You said that on the Reddit, which by the way, you should never read the comments. [00:12:12] S1: I never... Yeah. You can't read it. [00:12:13] S0: But you said that, somebody said like, does this mean my cell phone phone bill is gonna [00:12:17] S1: go up?
00:12:17 · Michael Provenzano, Ian Dallimore
[00:12:17] S1: go up? [00:12:18] S0: Like... Yeah. It's wild. Right? But, you know, so maybe kind of shed a little bit of light more on... I think a lot of people, even within, you know, the home space, even within the media space, or even outside on the tech side, you know, T Mobile is a pretty robust, you know, you said they're using all of your your tools. Maybe give our give our listeners a little bit more on, like, what those tools are that Vistar has, but then also more importantly, like [00:12:40] S1: Yeah. [00:12:40] S0: Where's the connection with T Mobile? [00:12:41] S1: Yeah, look, they believe that they can really make out a whole truly targetable and measurable to the next level. You know, they have this amazing relationship with their customers. They have access to this amazing dataset across their assets. And they believe they can really tie the loop in terms of measurement in out of home. And I agree with them, they definitely can. So that's one of the biggest opportunities that they see. They also have a massive retail media network, and they're leading the charge on what retail media means, especially in store. And so, we've been working with them on powering their retail media network from ad delivery perspective and monetization perspective. And our intention is to take that and grow that into other retailers across [00:13:25] S0: the world as well. And for our listeners, the product that you guys have is Cortex Media. It actually powers Lamar's digital billboards and a handful of other waste based companies and even out of home companies.
00:13:25 · Ian Dallimore, Michael Provenzano
[00:13:25] S0: the world as well. And for our listeners, the product that you guys have is Cortex Media. It actually powers Lamar's digital billboards and a handful of other waste based companies and even out of home companies. [00:13:36] S1: Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, Cortex is software that powers the screens and then, our ad serving platform is what's pacing, making all the decisions on inventory management, revenue, billings, all that good stuff. [00:13:47] S0: Yeah. And it's, you know, we hear this whole, like, rise of retail media and, you know, for me, when when we kind of learned about this deal, it's kind of like, well, yeah, T Mobile has x number of thousands of stores, they have screens inside of those stores, and you and I were kind of talking a little bit earlier about this as well. So... And then the SSP DSP side of Vistar as well. Like, now it, in essence, can consolidate all of the the media advertising buying, whether it's in their store, online, mobile, social, and out of home into one cohesive. [00:14:21] S1: Yeah. There's definitely a lot of integration opportunities across the products and services of the business. So that's gonna be, what our next few months are gonna be about. About to Yeah. Be [00:14:33] S0: you know, the other the other side of the retail media side is like the Cortex and then the ad server component is that's an immediate integration. So when people ask me the question, yeah. So it's really about like, how do they continue to grow that product? So...