[on-hold music] We've got a lot of advisors and people who are saying not to make any revenue comments but- Yeah. Who are these people? [laughing] All the lawyers, right? [laughing] It's a [beep] figure business.
[beep] figure. Yeah. Okay. So that's, uh, that's amazing.
[on-hold music] This week's episode of the Rebooting show is made possible by my friends at Bombora, which helps publishers solve an important issue.
They need to know their audiences better. The phase out of the third-party cookie has emphasized the need for publishers to collect first-party data.
But the reality is, no publisher will have enough information on the majority of their users. According to Bombora's research, many publishers have between seventy and eighty percent of their audience as unknown.
This presents quite the dilemma because if publishers only focus on first-party data as the bulwark of their post third-party cookie strategies, they're gonna miss the majority of their audience.
Here's how Steve Lilly, SVP of Global Data Partnerships at Bombora puts it. We're essentially a, a massive data ecosystem, and our business model is really nothing new. We're a data co-op.
There's a lot of problems that we solve for data as it relates to sales and marketing, predictive analytics.
But as it relates to our publishing partners, specifically, there's two primary problems that our model solves, which is unknown audience.
We still see just about every publisher we speak with has a massive percentage of unknown audience and no real cost-effective way to, to address that.
The other, in terms of B2B marketing or B2B audience targeting, is understanding what businesses are visiting your site and what those businesses are in market for.
Stick around until the end of the episode to hear the full conversation that I had with Steve on this topic.
And we go into, like, how publishers can augment their first-party data efforts with a comprehensive digital transformation strategy. Hope you enjoy it. Now on to the episode.
[on-hold music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I'm Brian Morrissey. Very happy, uh, to have the next, uh, guest because I think, uh, when we talk about building sustainable publishing businesses, there are...
It's not one type.
There are so many different types, and I think what I try to do with the show is to bring on different people who come at it from different angles, whether it's like small angle of, like, a newsletter publisher, whether it's, like, a big well-known brand.
And there's also, like, I just had on Neil Vogel from Dotdash Meredith. There's this emerging... It's not even emerging.
It's always been this area of, like, intent-focused publishing, and I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned here because this is a part of media that maybe doesn't get as much attention as it deserves, and it's backed by solid business models.
And so I wanted to have on, uh, Greg Powell, who's the CEO of Ad Practitioners, which many of you, I'm sure, have not heard of, but you should, and that's why we're doing this podcast. Greg, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. Okay, so this is... I've done, like, probably hundreds of podcasts in my life.
I've never done one with someone in Saskatchewan, and I've never done one with someone using Starlink. So this is a first. Well, I came up to rural Saskatchewan about a week ago. My, uh... We've got family up here.
Um, so we're in a place called Loon Lake. If you Google it, you will see that we are pretty far north. And I was really worried when I arrived because the internet connection was about four megs.
And, uh, we plugged in the Starlink, and, uh, speed test this morning was a hundred and sixty-two. So I'm, uh, I'm happy to be connected, really appreciate, uh, what, what Elon's done- Okay. -with Starlink. I do too.
And if you use TRB at checkout at Starlink, like, you get a discount, and I get a cut on it. Perfect. Just kidding. [laughing] But that leads into Ad Practitioners because, like, I...
It's a little bit of a generic name, I think, and it's based in Dorado, uh, Puerto Rico, and so probably a lot of the people here in, like, New York maybe don't know it.
But, like, it is now the owner of Money, not a magazine anymore, but formerly a magazine and a well-known personal finance brand.
Let's go back for how you started Ad Practitioners because you didn't come out of the publishing industry. You c- you came from the tech side with, like, Google and the distribution side.
So explain a little bit the origin story. Sure. So, so I started at Google, and I was there for a period of about a decade.
And my job at Google, I was working with several thousand technology companies over the course of the time that I was there. And really at the core of it, it was all intent-driven marketing.
And so about a decade ago, a lot more of the internet looked like Craigslist. Uh, user experience wasn't a big part of it.
And, uh, I saw a need, and eventually I decided I wanted to fix pieces of it, where people are searching for, uh, complicated, complicated questions and, uh, they need simple answers.
And so, uh, the origin story was I called up some longtime friends.
If you pull up the kindergarten, uh, photo from, uh, the Bush School in nineteen eighty-nine, you'll see, uh, several of the folks who are still with our team today.
I called up a few of them, and I built the first version of the website, which wasn't much better than Craigslist.
I really didn't know anything about, uh, building websites, but, uh, went on YouTube and kind of taught myself what I needed to learn.
And then fortunately, it turned out my friends were a little bit better at building websites than I was. And so we were able to, uh, to launch Consumers Advocate and, and we were kind of off to the races. Okay.
So th- what you saw though at Google was that...
I mean, obviously, like, Google is sort of, in the old days, it was called, like, the database of intentions or whatever, and it's like we put into, to Google, like, what we're...
It's-- I always go back to, like, that Seinfeld episode where Kramer somehow was, like, the movie phone thing and, like, he was trying to intuit based on, like, what people were putting into the phone, like, what they wanted to, and then he was finally like, "Why don't you tell me what you want?"In the movie phone voice.
And like Google was that. Like, why don't you tell me what you want?
Because a lot of, like, publishing is trying to like intuit people's like intent, and like the beauty of intent-based publishing is people are telling you what you want.
What did you see actually at Google about like, because in the old days before we called this intent, we called it like SEO publishing, what were you seeing about like this ecosystem that developed around the fact that people were going to Google and putting in what they're, what they wanna do?
Two things. So in the early days at Google, uh,
everyone had kind of this super user access where you could log in and you could see every single thing that people were searching on, and you could see, uh, all of the ads that were showing up, all of the organic, uh, listings that were showing up.
And so the first thing that you could deduce from that was, uh, which problems were happening to a large number of people.
And so when we've tried to publish content, we've always tried to focus on solving problems that impact a large number of people.
The second thing that we could see or that I could see was that content that is engaging, uh, is what people are gravitating towards. People, people don't wanna do all of the research themselves from scratch.
Uh, they'd like to go to a publisher site who has hired an expert or spent some time really diving deep and pulling together all of the information. Yeah.
So Consumers Advocacy, you were looking to answer questions about products, right? And then you... I assume the, the model was very affiliate based. Yes. That's right.
So the first content that we published was around pet insurance. Uh, pet insurance, I had, I had a dog, I'd been doing research myself.
Uh, I knew that it was really complicated and there were a lot of differences between, uh, different plans.
And so publishing that content in an easy to, uh, in an easy to consume format, uh, was really, uh, differentiated and really a big deal at the time. Okay.
And like the model is y- so people search for pet insurance 'cause I don't... I mean, I don't have a pet, but if I did get a pet, I would probably wanna insure the pet and I have no idea where to go.
And so I would go to Google.
And I'm sure a lot of people who sell pet insurance, I don't know who they are exactly, and that's why I would go to Google, would want to be in front of the people who obviously are in market for pet insurance. Yeah?
That's right. It's, uh, it's an, it's a, it's an affiliate, uh, revenue model. So- Okay... if people lead- And they pay you a bounty.
Like what, what would like a pet insurance company pay for an in-market buyer of pet insurance?
Off the, off the top of my head, I don't know if I could say, but it's, it's when, uh, when someone goes and they fill out, uh, a quote request, it's probably, uh, 40, 40 bucks, 50 bucks, something like that. Okay.
So that sounds pretty good, right? Like, and if, particularly if you, you create a really good piece of content, and so a lot of the people and new people will come in market for pet insurance all the time.
People get pets all the time- Mm-hmm... from what I'm told, and they don't know where the pet insurance. And that like that content ke- is like an annuity. It keeps paying and paying, right? That's right. Yeah. Okay.
That's the model, right? That's the model. So how do you... How did you come up with these different categories?
'Cause like, I think a lot of, a lot of ways people coming from like, particularly like me from the content side of publishing, the monetization comes like almost like afterwards in a lot of cases.
And I think this is like a different field and it's like it's very service-oriented, but like you usually are taking a bunch of different inputs, right?
Like, so you're looking at like, there needs to be a volume of people searching for this.
'Cause pet insurance is like, a lot of people have pets, and I assume a lot of people wanna have like insurance on their pets, right? It's not like, uh, there's only like 50 people who get pet insurance like a week
in the United States. A lot more than that. Yeah. Uh, yeah. So, so explain to me the formula that you ended up developing or if there was a formula at, uh, Consumers Advocate. Yeah.
So like, like I was saying before, the formula is really geared around trying to solve large problems and a lot of times those happen with life events.
So if you are moving across the country and taking a new job and buying a house and all of the associated, uh, things that you're gonna need to do in order to make that happen, we try to create content that assists at those types of events.
So, so when we started doing that over time, it turned out that a lot of the highest volume, uh, problems that people were looking to solve were all around personal finance.
And so that's what led us to really kind of focus over time on personal finance. Okay. And I mean, I'm just gonna be [laughs] sort of direct about this, but also like personal finance pays like pretty high bounties.
I mean, this is like getting the LTV of a person getting that product is pretty high, right? Well, sure. So it's, if you're just chasing volume, you would be publishing content about Minecraft or something, right?
Like- Yeah... it's, uh, but there's no intent there. So, so it's the combination of high- But also high value intent... high volume and high value. And when you look at- Yeah...
those things together, uh, that's what we're, what we're looking to solve.
Because a- advertisers will basically tell you by voting with their dollar where the big LTVs are and where the big problems are that, that consumers are looking to solve. They're making a big life choice, um- Yeah...
when the LTVs are that high. Yeah. Yeah. And, oh, by the way, we're talking about lifetime value for anyone who doesn't know the LTV. Always try to define the acronyms, acronyms.
I'm getting a, a, a thumbs up from Jay, uh, our producer, and so I caught that one. Okay. So this is, this was like an effective model, right? Like, so you're building a team, you bootstrap the...
You guys bootstrapped the whole company, right? That's right. Yep. We, we bootstrapped the business.
Uh, right off the bat, engagement was really strong, but we got to the point where it was time to start hiring.And so that's where Puerto Rico came into, uh, our story.
So we-- I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I knew that as a young entrepreneur, that was not a place for a bootstrapped company to really thrive because we'd be competing against all of these big name tech companies, and the cost- Yeah...
of rent is insane, and, and it was... So we were kind of open to anything, and we were at a bar in Washington, DC, and another entrepreneur friend of mine, uh, mentioned that he'd been reading about Puerto Rico.
And so we had never been to the island. We knew nothing about it, but my wife's birthday was coming up, and so we said, "Well, let's just go take a trip down and scope it out."
And when we landed in Puerto Rico, we immediately fell in love. The people that we met were incredible. The, uh... I think I mentioned this, my wife's Canadian, so the weather was definitely- Yeah...
something that was attractive to her. And so we said, "Th-this sounds like a great adventure. We should do it."
And immediately we leased an office space, and, uh, we bought a house, and we put everything that we owned in a shipping container, and, and we were off. And you were... And this is...
The company was all being built around Consumer's Advocate, or you had other sites too? That's right. So at the time, uh, the company was being built around just Consumer's Advocate, but obviously that's changed. Yeah.
Explain the sort of growth trajectory then. Sure. So we, uh...
A-as I mentioned, as we were publishing more and more content and trying to focus on, uh, high volume, high value opportunities, we had gravitated towards personal finance, and we had built a technology platform, uh, first and foremost for ourselves, uh, with Consumer's Advocate that, uh, had no reliance on third party cookies.
Uh, the technology was fast and delivered, uh, a really good experience for users, and we had a closed loop feedback system.
So we call this technology NavChain, uh, because it kind of ties together a lot of different parts of the consumer's journey as they're navigating through our network of websites.
So it, it closes feedback with over 1,000 different advertisers with all of their non-standard CRMs and all of their information.
It, very importantly, it closes the feedback loop to, uh, media buying platforms like Google or Bing or Facebook, and it closes feedback loop with internal systems like, uh, NetSuite for in-invoicing or our CRM tools.
And so we launched this technology in, or the very beginning of it in, on September 1st of 2017. And so the team was, uh, right around five people, I think. It was a really small team.
And, uh, Hurricane Maria hit 20 days later in Puerto Rico. So this is, um, this was, like, a huge moment in Puerto Rico where, uh- Mm-hmm...
everyone is going through this collective crisis, and we had leaned into automation to power the backbone of the business, uh, basically coincidentally about, uh, two and a half or three weeks earlier, which was, which was a really big deal.
Okay. So y-you bought Money, I guess it was, like, two, two and a half years ago. It was 2019, right?
Like, so I mean, I think, like, at the time, this was before the Dotdash Meredith deal, obviously, but, like, Meredith itself was, like, shedding some of these assets, right? Like, what, what made you decide?
'Cause I mean, you get a nice model going on.
I don't know, like, building a brand in this world, like Consumer's Advocate, like, you wouldn't go down the street, I don't think, and people, you would ask them, "Oh, you're Consumer's Advocate?"
They're like, "Oh, yes, of course, Consumer's Advocate." But, like, it is a brand in that, like, when you search for pet insurance, you see s- Consumer's Advocate, and you're like, "Oh, well, like, that's...
It's trustworthy." But, like, explain the... What attracted you to basically it's a legacy publishing brand. Sure. So when I grew up, uh, personal finance and Money Magazine was all around our house.
I really credit my mother for giving my sister and I, uh, a really early education on, uh, saving and diversified investing and funding your retirement accounts.
And, uh, we'd sit around the dining room table and talk about 1031 tax exchanges. I'm very acutely aware that- This is a very different childhood than mine. Yeah, yeah. I gotta say, Greg. [laughs] It's, it, it's...
I was gonna say, I'm very acutely aware of how unique this is and that a lot of people, uh, did not have this experience growing up.
And so I knew the brand and I loved the brand from having this childhood experience with it.
But, uh, when I had heard that it was potentially for sale, I went and I looked at the current status and, uh, I saw something that had been, uh, under-invested in pretty severely.
I think it, it had been neglected and sort of an afterthought. From a technology perspective, the website took 42 seconds to load. There were, like, pop-ups and probably 20 banner ads down the page when you loaded it.
And, uh, beyond just the technology piece, uh, the content strategy had really drifted away from, uh, what I consider to be the core of Money.
And they, they were publishing stories on, uh, celebrities' net worth and what are the- Yeah...
Kardashians spending on, and it was really geared around trying to drive as many eyeballs as they could because that was Meredith's, uh, business. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's fascinating 'cause that's the part I wanna get at because, like, business models drive, like, everything. It's my theory.
Like, in publishing, like, at the end of the day, like, when people are like, "Why is this so..." It's like it all comes back to business models, right? And it's like the...
Having, like, a fast loading site, having, like, a clean, like, good user experience is no lo- it's not a technology challenge.It is simply not like it's a business model challenge and like I think what a lot of legacy brands when they're trapped in a, an ad model that is not at the bottom of the funnel, it is very top of the funnel, it's you're on like a treadmill to try to like do more and more, and that's why the experiences are terrible.
But when you have a better business model, you can have a better experience. That's right. The very first thing that we did when we bought Money is we took revenue to absolute zero.
We removed every single form of advertising that was on the website.
And, uh, when you're spending that much money on a brand and there is an existing revenue stream, I think that's, uh, that's something that can be scary.
And I think a lot of larger companies, to your point, are, uh, are not in a position where they can take a really large risk in the event that it doesn't pay off. Right?
Yeah, but when you were looking at the asset, I mean, what you saw that like, it has a brand that, that people know. They don't have those stories with Consumers Advocate. Like it's nothing against the brand. Yeah.
But I think these are different types of brands was I guess my point. Obviously, I think most like Meredith properties of that era, I just keep hearing the word underinvested.
Like, basically, they, they weren't managed really well from everything I've ever...
So like there's obvious like things just improve I think that a lot of people saw with some of these brands, but also I think that the category, right?
Like, if, if you sort of reorient the content to how do I solve a problem, right, in an authentic way to the brand, then that leads to a better business model than trying to ans- if you are doing intent, like doing the intent, like what's the net worth of the Kardashians or something like this.
Get a lot of clicks, but it's, they're not like super high value. That's exactly right. I mean, you have to hire incredible people.
We've worked really hard to lean into bringing on board and keeping on board the, uh, journalist team that was working for Meredith.
We kept almost all of them, and we've just about doubled the staff of full-time dedicated, uh, journalists and writers who are focused on publishing content on money.
And, uh, and we've very much oriented the coverage towards intent, towards solving problems for people.
So that, that means that we've done a lot more coverage on complicated subjects like insurance or improving your credit score or paying for college.
And, uh, and a lot of that content didn't live on money, uh, at the time that we bought it. But like exactly why is that content...
Why is it better for your business to have that under the Money umbrella versus like Consumers Advocate? Like why pay for that? Is it-- does that just drive like more engagement, like when people search for it?
Like explain the dynamics for how you marry a l- quote, unquote, "legacy brand" with this kind of intent.
So the way that I think about it is that, uh, we've got a couple different lines of business, and so we have an SEO business where, uh, you are publishing high quality content.
Neil spoke about this, uh, when you had him on the show. Yeah. High quality content, fast with as few ads as possible, and you just wanna focus on getting that content out there.
And what Money has is, uh, incredibly strong authority in terms of its link graph.
The underlying Google algorithm, uh, has obviously like, gone through lots of changes, but, uh, backlinks are and continue to be a core part of it.
And so Money has a really strong, uh, link graph that was built over a really long period of time. And so because we have... And, and it's real, like, the, uh, to your point, it's a real brand with real- Yeah...
authority in personal finance. And so it's, uh... Yeah.
The good news about any sort of legacy brand that's been kind of mismanaged or neglected is like that they haven't even like spent the effort to do like many of the sketchy things. [laughs] Right. That's right. Yeah.
So, uh, so- [laughs]... none, none of that at all, everything was built incred-incredibly well, and so that's a great platform to publish on top of.
So you can, uh, when you start publishing content, uh, that's more intent driven, uh, Google notices, and they reward it. Yeah. So how do you end up like differentiating like your strategy?
And I know it's hard to like say 'cause you're like, "Well, I'm not inside those companies," but I know you have an answer.
From the sort of Red Ventures and Dotdash, 'cause I, I do think that there is like a cohort of these type of companies. I mean, Red Ventures is like pretty massive, so is Dotdash. Mm-hmm. So it's a good company to be in.
[laughs] Mm-hmm. Yeah. No. Uh, well, the Internet's a pretty large space, uh, but I think that... So I think that there's a lot of, there's a lot of market share that everyone can kind of, uh, focus on.
But we w- one of the biggest ways that we're differentiated is that in addition to publishing great content and trying to make it fast and, uh, the ads more helpful and less intrusive, we focus on paid media amplification in a way that I think that those brands...
So what an example of that would be, uh, if you publish a content on paying for college, Google might pick it up on a keyword like how to pay for college, and mon-money shows up on the first page of results, and people will come, and they'll get educated on the guide that, uh, we've published.
It may not, uh, rank us for a keyword like student loans, but the intent behind someone searching for student loans is effectively the same.
And so we use paid media to make sure that we're getting our content in front of as many people as possible who share kind of the same underlying intent and are looking for, uh, looking to solve those problems. Yeah.
And it's very funny 'cause like the last week's episode I did with Adam Rian from Workweek, and they spend a lot, it's a newsletter, B2B newsletter company that has like a creator spin, but they spend a lot on paid acquisition.
I always found like paid acquisition funny in publishing because like you talk about it like matter of factly because it's like, yeah, it's like you, how you find customers, but like there was always this sense...In publishing of like denying it, like you pay a lot in order to acquire customers that in any other business, like it's like yeah, of course, it's called like marketing, like this is what you do.
But I do wonder whether or not being smart at acquisition, at paid acquisition, all kinds of acquisition, but paid acquisition becomes like a real competitive advantage for a lot of publishing categories.
I, I would absolutely say so. We've spent over a half a billion dollars on Google, uh, in the history of the company. So we are really operating at scale when we are... when we're, uh, promoting content.
And so I, I think that because of the technology platform that we've built and the way that it allows us to leverage automation in the process, we're able to, we're able to drive a really large audience through the paid channel.
Yeah. So you look at it almost, it's kind of like the, like the travel aggregators, right? I mean, like they're always like spending, like...
So I guess like what I wonder is like how is it like, is the competitive advantage just that you've built like a better system? Like you're able to like apply data in order to like find the opportunities?
Because it's not just a matter of like, "Hey, here's a bunch of money. We'll dump it into like Google," I assume.
Uh, like explain exactly as much as you can, like what makes, what's the secret sauce behind what you're doing then on that front?
So, so I mentioned that our technology ties together all of these, uh, separated, independent, non-standardized systems.
And so that, that doesn't seem like a really large problem to solve, but when you are talking about, uh, working with over a thousand different advertising partners who all have different down-funnel KPIs that they care about and you're trying to drive traffic at scale, we've developed a system that takes all of the information, it standardizes it, and that we do our own proprietary lead scoring in order to, uh, basically synthesize all of that data into something that is usable.
So then with the, with lead scoring, uh, we're able to then go out and buy media on an automated way that delivers the right high quality, high intent, uh, leads for the advertisers. Okay.
So basically like when you're bidding to like acquire a visit, you have a pretty good idea of whether you're gonna get a return in aggregate on that because like... But, but I also, I end up wondering like,
like how do you end up... Because like most people arriving through that, are they just one and done or are you trying to then make them like quote unquote loyal to the brand?
Or do you just recognize that in this category people are just always gonna start with Google and like the odd person will start with Bing?
I think the answer is always yes and, uh, we, we obviously are working to engage our audience and drive subscribers and drive as much repeat visit activity as possible.
But when you're talking about intent-driven marketing, I would say that, uh, consumers are very open to reading content wherever they find it.
And so I think if you look at your own search behavior, anything that you search for, uh, I, I think that if the content quality is really high and you found it and it answered your question, then you're a little bit less, uh, sensitive to the brands, uh, that found it.
Like most people aren't going to any money.com or, uh, Forbes or, or anywhere and saying, "All right.
Well, I'm gonna first go to the homepage of Forbes, and then I'm going to see what their picks are for, uh, bet insurance companies." It's just not how people, uh, navigate. Right. Yeah.
So I think the last like several years in publishing has all been about platform dependency and the pendulum keeps swinging in this industry [laughs] and like now people are saying, "No, you can't rely on like algorithms, that's horrible," and stuff like this.
Meanwhile, there's all these like incredibly successful publishers who very much rely on algorithms, but mostly probably the most mature of algorithms, which is search algorithm, which is really Google because the other ones are rounding errors- Mm-hmm.
-in many cases. But you were at Google and you saw...
We were joking like we were talking yesterday during the tech check because like having covered Google for many years, like I saw like basically they used to have this thing called the Google Dance where they would change the algorithm and now I think it's become like just an always on dance, I guess.
Yeah. But anytime you change the algorithm, there's winners and losers, right? [laughs] And like I think a lot of publishers forget about the winners part, but... and they just focus on the losers. But explain that.
I mean, it's a risk factor, but like why do you have like confidence in... I mean, first you're a big customer, so that helps I'm sure. [laughs] Give you some confidence.
But like why, "Oh, I know Google doesn't do it," nobody talks to anyone at Google. But like you do have aligned incentives, don't you? I mean, we can start with that. Maybe you don't have aligned incentives.
So from a decade of working at Google, I truly believe that the paid business has its own, uh, reinforcing mechanisms, but there very much is a walled garden between the paid and SEO side.
There, there's no one to talk to and I'm a large customer. I have, uh, a vice president fly down to Puerto Rico to come and meet with us of our business unit. There's truly a walled garden.
So there's nothing on the SEO side. But back to your question on why we have confidence. I think that, uh, over, over time, uh,
Google wants to reward the best content and I think that you'll see some instances where they use the analogy of like the best movies of all time.
So if you create a list of the best movies of all time in two thousand and fifteen, uh, there's a certain number of movies that are gonna be at the top.
And then if you create the same list this year, uh, there are gonna be some new things that have come out.And so, uh, there's gonna be some of the old classics, uh, they might be, uh, displaced a little bit, they might lose a little bit of traffic, but, but they're still gonna have a, a very well-deserved, uh, space, uh, in, in that list for the foreseeable future.
And so I think that we think about SEO much in the same way, that there, uh, there may be some fluctuations over time, but if we continue to publish really high quality content, we believe that a brand like Money deserves to have a place on that list.
Okay. So like with a large enough portfolio too, I would guess that is some insulation. Like, you're always gonna have... Like, I know that is...
And it is in Google's interest to, like, reward sites that are doing the best content.
But just the reality is of doing that at the scale they are, like, there's plenty of people who end up on the losers list who think they should be on the winners list based on how the algorithm changes, right?
I mean- Sure... that's inevitable. I'm sure, I'm sure you guys have had pages that, like, have all of a sudden gone down in ranking that, like, you're like, "What are you talking about?
Our, our content is way better than the people at the top," right? Yes and no. It's Google. [laughs] I think Google's pretty good at it.
I mean, I think, uh, I think that usually when someone else's content is ranking ahead of ours, I think that, uh, Google focuses on a lot of, uh, a lot of structural things- Yeah... that they can measure at scale.
They've got billions and billions- Yeah... of websites to crawl, so they do a pretty good job. Yeah. What... Do you have any concern that, like...
I, and I know, like, this is, like, eventually will become true because, like, Google Search has been dominant forever, but there is, like, some...
Yeah, I just see more people, like, complaining about the quality of the search results because they're so powerful, right? And, like, there's always regular things, like, no, people are...
The latest thing is like, "Oh, people are using TikTok to try to find restaurants, not, like, Google." Do you see...
I mean, this is not something you could control, but, like, you're obviously very focused on, on search being so central when you're try- trying to solve a problem.
But at the same time, like, what I wonder, it's kind of like email's so effective that, like, in some ways it becomes ineffective because everyone is trying to game the system. Is, does Google...
Is Google Search at risk at some level because it's so powerful?
I definitely think about Google as a risk, and I think that's why channel diversification and amplification beyond search is a big part of our strategy as well.
So we take our content and we syndicate it out on Apple News and MSN. We take our content and we promote it on channels like Facebook and other social media outlets.
I think that TikTok is very much becoming a place where the next generation of people younger than me are going to get advice and learn about financial products and services or new apps that they should try out. Yeah.
So I think, uh, I think that the biggest risk that I see associated with, uh, with Google would actually be Apple, because such a large percentage of Google traffic now comes from, like, your iPhone, right?
So if Apple, uh, if, if that relationship, if the search relationship between Google and Apple subsequently changed, it would have a really large impact on search as a whole.
I mean, I, I thought a lot about this- Yeah... when Siri came out, right? Like, what if everyone starts just talking into their iPhone and- Yeah. Although that never happened. Yeah. I feel like. [laughs] That's right.
I... But it was certainly a concern at the time. Right.
Yeah, no, that's an interesting one, 'cause I remember it was like, "It's all gonna be voice assistants," and then it became, like, a very fringe behavior I feel like, to like s- be like, "Hey, Siri," like...
Should watch that. [laughs] You're gonna activate an activator. [laughs] It's gonna activate. I already did. My phone just, like, went nuts. So what other... I mean, 'cause this is firmly in the service category.
Do you wanna stay focused on like... I, I mean, financial products are usually pretty good. But what other areas are you looking at or are you focused on?
I mean, health or the regular high value, uh, areas, or what are some other areas? So to date, we've really focused and we've developed a strong muscles around, uh, the personal finance category.
We have a really strong advertiser network. Yeah. Uh, and, but I think that our technology would scale.
I think that for the business in the future to continue to grow, uh, we would be looking at opportunities for inorganic, uh, acquisitions where if we had the right capital partner...
This is one thing about a bootstrap business where as the business grows, bootstrapping has been really great because we retain control, we control our own destiny, but at the same time, uh, we've started, we've started to get to a scale where in order to, in order to really do something transformative again, like Money certainly was for us, I think that we do- Yeah...
we, we will need a, a capital partner in order to do that. And so the things that you're talking about would require us to, uh- Yeah... to partner up with someone on the financing side in a more meaningful way. Okay.
Anyone who's interested, just contact me and I'll pass you along to Greg and take a 10% fee. [laughs] So, uh, 'cause [laughs] it's all about a 10.
[laughs] Uh, no, because I mean, I do think, like, look, if you're gonna, like, end up, you see, like, the between, like, Red Ventures and, like, Dotdash Meredith now, like, th- these are big companies, like, at the end of the day.
And, like, bootstrapping is great. How many people? Uh, uh, how big is the company? So- You can say people or revenue...
yeah, so we have, we have about 120 people in Puerto Rico, uh, about 20 in New York, and about 20 in Shanghai. So it's 160, uh, full-time folks who are working, uh, on the company.
We've got a, a lot of advisors and people who are saying not to make any revenue comments, but- Yeah. Who are those people? [laughs] All the lawyers, right? [laughs] It's a nine-figure business. Nine figure. Yeah.
Okay, so that's, uh, that's amazing to boot- bootstrap to that, that, that level. That's great. Well- I mean, it gives you a lot of leverage of, like, finding some partner with... There's still a lot of money out there.
I live in Miami. I hear, like, the Blackstone people, like, during the boom days, trying to figure out where to put money, see if they wanna buy up every single coin-operated laundry in the world, and[chuckles]
Roll them all up. So awesome. Well, Greg, I wanna thank you. I'm glad the Starlink held out. Me too. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks so much for hosting me. Okay.
[music] Thanks a lot for listening to that conversation.
Up next, I have a ten-minute bonus conversation with Steve Lilly of Bombora about why publishers should be out there kissing a whole bunch of frogs in advance of the demise of the third-party cookie.
Trust me, it makes sense in context. [music] The best data is the data that publishers have on their audiences, and we recognize that we're going to pay more money, which I think every publisher should wanna hear.
Now, on that topic, I wanna move to the, the third topic that I wanted to, uh, address with you, and that's around, like, how you had talked before about using data as, like, a storytelling, and I think that's, like, incredibly important.
But when publishers talk about data, a lot of times they're- they just go to first-party data. It's like, "Well, we have first-party data. We have a lot of logged-in users."
And, like, at Digiday, we, we-- I used to do these things of, like, what people say and what they really mean, and so, like, when, like, if I was doing one of these, it would be like, what they say is first-party data.
What they mean is, like, email addresses. So talk to me a little bit about why first-party data is not enough. Yeah. Well, first-party data, as you just described it, right, is, you know, what, twenty, thirty percent
of any of most publishers' audience.
And everybody's seen the value of gathering authenticated users and registered users, and we've had tons of third-party data to enrich audience, right, for decades, and yet what was the number you threw out today?
Like you threw out the other day, Brian, something like eight percent growth rate on authenticated users, like- Yeah...
is the be- I forget what the number is, like, the best you could hope for, and it's not- Well, like if you're converting-... likely even that sustainable. If you're gonna...
Yeah, if you're gonna converting, like, the subscriptions is anywhere between five and ten percent.
Some people go higher, but it's, it's minuscule, and then getting people to register and to log in, that's gonna be more but not-- You're not gonna get... It's more than a donut hole.
[chuckles] I guess it's a donut hole, actually. Yeah. Well, at least, at least the first- I'd have to, I'd have to, I'd have to do that. I forget how to do that with the circumference.
The first, the first digit after the zero. [laughs] Yeah, or after the da- after the decimal point. But no.
Yeah, I mean, so I, I was surprised at one of our, uh, one of our reps had gone out to the FIP conference in Portugal, and so there was this interesting exchange where people kept talking about their first-party data strategy and their first-party data strategy, and then it became clear that it was like a, it was an informal roundtable.
It was, like, five out of eight people were referring to just converting users to as registered users. And which brings up a thing for us, which w- w- we were shocked. We started little by little.
This went back four or five years.
We'd have gained some trust with a partner and have them say, "Hey," the funny thing about people being cautious with their first-party data strategy, that's another part of complacency, right?
Well, if my silver's turning into gold, I'm gonna hoard it and I don't wanna lose it, which is another element people are afraid to move forward on things f- because they're gonna screw up this now golden asset.
But the-- We were surprised.
It was like, no, they were thinking about first party only and but little by little, we gained trust from partners to say that the, the funny thing is, as much as we hold these crown jewels in, in the form of registered users so close, the reality is eighty percent of the audience is unknown.
Almost every publisher we speak with, right, probably have fifty or sixty conversations a month, right?
We'll say somewhere between eighty and, or pardon me, sixty and eighty percent of most publishers' audience is unknown. It's one and done, and it's transient, but it's consistent.
It's always coming and going, is unknown. And we've had one publisher correct us in the last, God, year, said, "Well, no, we, w- our unknowns are more like fifty percent."
And it's amazing that the first-party strategy gets dumbed down. Well, how do we get more registered users?
Well, you've had all these resources at your disposal for y- which you're doing a better job of if it's possible. Now it's a little late to be prior-- I mean, certainly, it's going to be more valuable.
Silver is turning to gold in that regard. Yeah.
But with third-party data going away, third-party cookies going away, you just lost one of the number one resources to help you better personalize outreach, convert those call to actions, and still this unknown transient audience looms, and rarely do we come a-across partners says, "No, I've got that sewed up.
I've, I handled that and solved that years ago." It just was amazing to me a-as we continue to sort of validate this data point, how many partners sort of accept this extremely high level of unknown transient audience.
And so we think the first party, solving for first party is not just registered users, but figuring out all the possible strategies you could leverage to better understand that transient audience.
Because if you're using data to pitch the planning and activation of a piece to just to fill in the blanks on even thirty percent, half of sixty percent unknown audience puts you in a position to, you know, provide a significant, uh, a significantly improved picture of the value of your audience.
Even if that person is coming and going that day and never coming back, it's still an executive decision maker at a five hundred plus employee company. And guess what? Yeah.
Tomorrow they'll be a different guy, same, same demographic. So that audience does exist. It is tangible, it is targetable, even if it's transient and always turning over.
So what a missed opportunity to not figure out ways to fill in those blanks to better present the value of your audience. And so we're surprised- Yeah, and-...
people don't think about that as part of the first-party audience problem.
Yeah, and when people, like, talk about, like, first-party data being gold and, like, I'm reminded it's like, yeah, but gold is limited in supply.
That's what gives it its value along with some intangible qualities, like people like to wear jewelry with it and stuff like this, and it has a mythology around it, but it's in limited supply.
So, like, let's be real here, like, you're gonna have to solve, uh, for more than just, like, gold. You're gonna need some other metals in the mix.
So but explain to me why, 'cause the second things that publishers would say was context. Look, the pendulum is swinging back from audienceTargeting, see a cookie, hit a cookie, doesn't matter the context.
Now we're going back to like context. It's sort of the original signal that was used to target advertising really, right? And it's like everything sort of comes back in fashion. But
explain to me why like context plus first party isn't enough. Well, yeah. So I think,
well, I'm not sure that it's not enough because I think some of the biggest pubs that we talk with, that we work with that I think have some real forward-thinking ideas around cookieless have figured out that just keeping track of everything people are consuming, right, using a logical taxonomy about all of their topic coverage is a way to build out really robust profiles on, on individual users and, and that will be a good proxy, right, of tho- their behavioral interests and to some degree, other, uh, demographic attributes, right, for say, high net worth individuals or super consumers or whatever term you want to use.
I think-- And, and so context matters and contextual will matter.
I think where what everyone is forgetting about is, and we saw this, again, another tactic that heated up only to cool off very quickly, right, was people figuring out what was their contextual strategy to be.
And I think what we never saw surface, and I th- still think is a big unknown, is what's gonna be the standardization around contextual that allows advertisers to buy contextual at scale?
Are you gonna, are you gonna buy on a different taxonomy from every major direct buy that you're going- Yeah... that you're gonna make? Maybe. But th-that's gonna last for how long until someone figures out?
I mean, it's not gonna be-- It may be the standard, but not for long because it's just ultimately gonna be inefficient. You're gonna lack standardization reporting.
It's one of the things that we're doing because we're trying to classify intent. We're classifying generically topics on page.
So we're trying to look for ways to provide a standard, a standardized taxonomy that will allow a partner to expose their sales to contextual demand that would have scale based upon a standard.
But I think like anything, there'll always be a proprietary alternative that's specialized in some capacity.
It probably is quite performant, but I, but I don't think that alone is gonna solve the problem for replacing programmatic demand that was based on third-party cookies with a contextual e-equivalent until there's, until you have some kind of standard or agree to take some of the most narrow proprietary classification and level it up to something that might have a little bit more of a universal- Yeah...
component to it. [outro music] Thank you for listening this week. We will be back next week with a new episode. The Rebooting show is produced by Podhelpus. Podcasts are a great way to expand your client base.
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