Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
00:21:14 · Eric Franchi
[00:21:14] S1: Absolutely. Good stuff. Okay. Before we get into the AI, we should probably talk about SpaceX because we talked about it last week, the hotly awaited SpaceX IPO. SpaceX went public at over 2,000,000,000... $2,000,000,000,000 valuation. Elon Musk became the first trillionaire. The stock, I didn't even look at it today, continued to trade up, because it was extremely low float, meaning only a small percentage of the company was available for trading, and there was great retail demand for this. So the stock just went crazy. They then acquired Cursor, Cursor AI, for $60,000,000,000 a couple of days later while the stock was on a... On an upswing for for stock. So this is just like masterful on a number of on a number of levels, because they're able to, you know, obviously keep the the the price of the of the stock up and, you know, not have a ton of dilution for really interesting asset. Why is this related to ads? I'll tell you why this is related to ads. So number one, don't forget, SpaceX owns both X and XAI. So there's ads somewhere inside of SpaceX, which is the riot. I think number two, maybe this is the more interesting thing is what is cursor? Cursor is not a foundational model. It's an application. So, you know, the bet for a lot of ad tech is that ads and ad tech is an application layer for AI. This is a massive acquisition and a massive bet on the acquisition layer... On the the, the application layer. So I think there's an interesting story here to think about, you know, if this is truly kind of value creation for applications, might signal that there's, you know, more m and a to come across everything.
00:22:59 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:22:59] S2: Yeah. I think I think that is the interesting part of this that, in terms of the foundational models, Grok and xAI are, you know, pretty distantly behind the other folks. And you have Anthropic printing money with its coding machine. So Cursor is generally, I think, considered the second best coding module. And so we'll see if they can spin this into a revenue generating piece of the business. Meanwhile, poor ex ads team is now, like, in the basement office with the drippy pipes, you know, deep within the most valuable company in the world, but, like, nobody knows they're there, and they have to report 19 level... Levels up to Elon who probably doesn't even like ads. It's a... It's tough being on that team, man. [00:23:45] S1: Pour one out. Hopefully, we'll see you in Cannes. Alright. What was in the water this week when it comes to... [00:23:52] S2: Cannes was [00:23:53] S1: in the water. Is it everybody's trying [00:23:55] S2: to get [00:23:56] S1: ahead of Cannes announcements by announcing this week? It's wild.
00:23:56 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo
[00:23:56] S1: ahead of Cannes announcements by announcing this week? It's wild. [00:24:01] S2: The amount of inbounds the inbounds I have on embargoes, exclusives, this and that. We're announcing this on Monday. It's gonna be AI. It's different. Basically, the marketing team has a choice. They either release Monday or Tuesday of next week, it can, and they try to get through the noise, and it's exciting, and they embargo it. Or they throw up their hands and say, too it's noisy. Let's get it out first. So we have some... Our Salesforce needs something to talk about. With the team, they can't be embargoed. So they do it this way. [00:24:29] S1: That's rational. [00:24:29] S2: And it's like That's rational. Everyone has AI. [00:24:32] S1: Everybody has an agentic announcement. Horizon builds buying agents into Horizon Blue. Nexxen opens up to AI agents across everything. Right? So there are DSPs and and an SSP. DV launched Nora, which is a cognitive engine. Fox launched their own AgenTex solution. Disney, they launched their thing. Like, where do we even start here?
00:24:32 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo
[00:24:32] S1: Everybody has an agentic announcement. Horizon builds buying agents into Horizon Blue. Nexxen opens up to AI agents across everything. Right? So there are DSPs and and an SSP. DV launched Nora, which is a cognitive engine. Fox launched their own AgenTex solution. Disney, they launched their thing. Like, where do we even start here? [00:24:58] S2: It's... Nothing here is very exciting. It's like all... Yeah. It's like, you know, just added AI to it. Great. Like, the d... DV is, like, the first time you can use AI to pull in verification data. It's like, okay. Sure. It's the first time... It's like the first time anyone did a website with a cooking... With a recipe on it. Like, it's the new thing. Yeah. It's new. Okay. If that's true. I don't even know if it's true. Horizon is sort of interesting. So I get... Horizon announced their sort of AI suite, their partnership suite last year at Cannes, and it was things like measurement and verification. So adding the ability to buy stuff is... I think that one's more on the interesting side, mostly just because we don't hear enough about what these agencies are doing with their AI. They're not really putting out any details, so this is maybe maybe something... A little glimpse into how it might be developing.
00:24:58 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:24:58] S2: It's... Nothing here is very exciting. It's like all... Yeah. It's like, you know, just added AI to it. Great. Like, the d... DV is, like, the first time you can use AI to pull in verification data. It's like, okay. Sure. It's the first time... It's like the first time anyone did a website with a cooking... With a recipe on it. Like, it's the new thing. Yeah. It's new. Okay. If that's true. I don't even know if it's true. Horizon is sort of interesting. So I get... Horizon announced their sort of AI suite, their partnership suite last year at Cannes, and it was things like measurement and verification. So adding the ability to buy stuff is... I think that one's more on the interesting side, mostly just because we don't hear enough about what these agencies are doing with their AI. They're not really putting out any details, so this is maybe maybe something... A little glimpse into how it might be developing. [00:25:49] S1: Of the five announcements, three of them were about agentic transactions. So buyer agents, seller agents. And I think that's a good signal that this thing is picking up some steam. The Disney... So that included Fox, by the way. Like full, you know, fully supposedly, according to the announcement, like full fully agenda capabilities including buyer and seller agents. Disney was, you know, I guess Disney like in that they're offering an AI creative tool for [00:26:21] S2: Right. Some
00:26:21 · Ari Paparo, Eric Franchi
[00:26:21] S2: Right. Some [00:26:21] S1: creatives to... Right? So like a first step in, you know, I think appropriate for for Disney, but like three of the five getting into Gen Zix transactions. Like, it's still early, but I think that's a a nice signal here. [00:26:33] S2: Yeah. Disney's announcement is sort of a universal ad similar to what Comcast has been doing. Because Disney has had self-service buying for a while, so now they're doing creative. The other ones, yeah, have have to do with buying and coordinating, and we reported, I think, last week that Ignite had had this sort of, like, area in its system for AIs to talk to each other. You know, I would love to see some detailed case studies, some actual examples, because I think I think it really is one of those things where everyone is launching stuff, and it's trials and tests and whatnot. [00:27:07] S1: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It's it's announcements then pilot time. Last one before we we let you go into the the Paris evening. Snap launched Spectacles. So Snap's answer, guess, to the meta Ray Bans. Have you seen these? Have they made their way out to to Paris? [00:27:25] S2: Mostly people making fun of them on Twitter and elsewhere because they look like nineteen seventies, like, you know, car dealer glasses, more or less. [00:27:34] S1: They do. They do. And they cost $2,000 to... That's a lot. Don't know what the meta... The price point of the meta's might be in like the $2.03 hundreds.