Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast.
00:01:43 · Ari Paparo
[00:01:43] S1: Yeah. Me too. So this week, big news, we announced the agenda and speakers from Marketecture Live. That is our event that's taking place in New York on March 17. It is going to be fun. So the theme of the event, we originally were focused on identity, then we realized there were bigger problems seventeenth. Out there in the world. The the entire media landscape is in chaos right now between changes in consumer behavior, AI, identity, etcetera. So we actually changed the theme of the event to chaos. And maybe that isn't, you know, a typical theme, but we like it. So this event has amazing speakers talking about AI identity. We have Perplexity on stage talking about their advertising program. We have folks from Progressive Insurance from Hershey's talking about how brands are handling some of these issues. And we have an AI startup showcase where we're gonna do very brief, like, two or three minute pitches from companies you may have never heard of but are innovative and are on, like, Eric's radar. And Brett Wilson, the former founder of T-Mobile, who's now a venture capitalist, he also is curating a bunch of startups. So it should be super interesting. Call to action. You should go to marketecturelive.com and register. This podcast comes out on Fridays. The deadline is Friday, so you need to do it right now. You need to actually, like, pause the podcast, go to marketecturelive.com, register, and you'll get your discount, early bird discount. Otherwise, you pay more starting tomorrow. The second call to action, if you are a really innovative early stage, especially AI startup and you're interested in being part of the start up showcase, you can email me at info@Marketecture.tv, and I will forward it to the appropriate parties. And there's no cost to that. That's just something we we wanna do. You Are excited about Marketecture Live, Eric?
00:03:23 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo, Tim Rowe
[00:03:23] S2: Of course, I'm excited about Marketecture Live. I can't wait to hear from Taz at Perplexity. I've known Taz for a long time. [00:03:29] S1: Oh, have you? [00:03:29] S2: What a job. Yeah. That's gonna be neat. Having brands on stage is always insightful. Start up showcase, spending some time with Brett is gonna be great. And then we're gonna do a live pod at the end. Right? [00:03:39] S1: We are doing a live pod. So that should be exciting. Anyways We probably have some more guests that we'll be announcing over the next coming week. So check out the agenda. Did a lot of really good stuff there. And, of course, if you're interested in sponsoring, also feel free to reach out. We're happy to hear from you. We have some great sponsors lined up, but there's still availability. So with that very long plug, let's go for it. Let's have Tim on here to talk about Vistar T Mobile. Alright. Let's talk Vistar T Mobile. Tim, thanks for being here. [00:04:08] S3: Thanks so much for having me back, gentlemen. It's good to good to be here and exciting to talk about digital out of home news. [00:04:14] S2: Yeah. I mean, who was excited about digital out of home before Monday? You Yeah. And [00:04:21] S1: Like, people really like the last time you were on the show. I don't know. Was a couple of months ago, but that was probably the last time anyone thought about people out of home until this week. [00:04:30] S3: Well, you know, that's good company. [00:04:32] S2: An expert. Everybody's an expert. My man Tim
00:04:32 · Eric Franchi, Ari Paparo
[00:04:32] S2: An expert. Everybody's an expert. My man Tim [00:04:36] S1: is the expert. We got him. We got Tim. Tell us what what does it mean, man. Flow's living under a rock. T Mobile acquired Vistar, which is probably the most well known ad tech company in the digital out of home space, was $600,000,000 reported price. And what does it mean, Tim? Give us give us your hot take. Just let's So start it
00:04:57 · Tim Rowe
[00:04:57] S3: what does it mean? I thought a lot about this in in preparing for today's conversation. Initially, I thought this is T Mobile's way of creating defensible moat around some of the investments that they already have going on. Obviously, Eric, the the acquisition of Octopus was two years ago almost now at this point. Yeah. They started in the fall of two thousand twenty three to make a serious investment and play into retail media. I know that they were having large conversations about the hardware associated with that and actually got to spend some time with the T Mobile ad sales team last February at their sales kickoff. And we talked about things like first party data and connectivity. And what was interesting was when we talked about first party data, there was obviously the privacy limitation between sharing the actual T Mobile user data with a ad application. But one of the exciting things that the team shared then was how they were starting to pilot the T Mobile and this is one of the notes here I see. In prepping, they started to pilot T Mobile connectivity to power the digital signage infrastructure. And that stood out as interesting, and I think that that's one of the the interesting details on this deal is Vistar... Because none of this existed, Vistar created an SSP, a DSP, and the hardware themselves. So I think that T Mobile might be looking at it from a few different angles. Obviously, the the the plug into the install base of advertiser of Vistar, but then also there's a huge ecosystem of hardware that needs connectivity to monitor ads.
00:06:28 · Ari Paparo, Tim Rowe, Eric Franchi
[00:06:28] S1: Yeah. I think unit economics are a big part of this. But before we dive into that, let's do some refreshers for those of us... For the listeners who aren't experts at the There's so much. 99% of listeners. What was Octopus? What is Octopus? [00:06:40] S3: I would actually love to defer the question to to Eric. [00:06:43] S2: Eric, you're an investor in [00:06:45] S3: Octopus. Right? Invested. [00:06:46] S2: Yeah. Yeah. We we were an early investor in Octopus. So if you have ever been in a Uber or Lyft in a major city and there was a tablet behind the headrest of the passenger seat, that's Octopus. They basically pioneered this idea of like back of the car video gaming content advertising. And T Mobile acquired them to Tim's point a couple years ago because they have a strategy. You know, I don't even know what what what you would call it, you know, sort of around digital out of home, but, you know, kinda like unique places, unique screens, unique formats. They've done a great job with it, by the way. It has grown a top. [00:07:25] S1: That's great. They don't do top of cab, though. That's a different sort of thing. [00:07:29] S2: No. Nobody looks at that stuff. You... You're inside. You're captive. [00:07:32] S1: Like the top of cab business, but let's let's move on from that. So, Tim, what does Vistar do?
00:07:32 · Ari Paparo, Tim Rowe
[00:07:32] S1: Like the top of cab business, but let's let's move on from that. So, Tim, what does Vistar do? [00:07:37] S3: So Vistar is a dedicated digital out of home DSP. And they've done a great job of building really the the the requisite sales motion to advocate for digital out of home, the networks that are on the platform. And that's fundamentally what they are, a DSP, but also functioning as an SSP, having to build that connective tissue and the hardware associated. [00:07:59] S1: You said just a moment ago they had screens too. Are they... They've physically owned screens or rent screens? [00:08:05] S3: They don't own any screens. It's the... Rather the networks. The publishers plugging into to create the supply available on the platform. [00:08:13] S1: Right. So you have you have a retail location. They have a screen that's provided by another party, and then that also is monetized by another party, you know, to an ad network for lack of a better word. And then Vistar is buying into that. Now does Vistar also have an SSP, or is it only, like, an SSP to the extent their DSP can bid? [00:08:31] S3: That's a good question. I believe it's to the extent that their DSP can bid, but I would let the audience correct me if that's incorrect. [00:08:39] S1: Yeah. I kinda think that a DSP, like, a a Trade Desk or MediaMath type DSP can buy from Vistar, but probably... You know, this has always been a very small amount of volume.