How to build a profitable Beacon enabled advertising network for brands, apps and venues

Transcript

• Todd DiPaola 00:00

  The market, one of the world's largest platforms for location, if you actually use third party measurements, not just self described measurements, I say we're the largest according to comScore, you know, the best days or days have been getting getting better. And they're gonna continue to do so as more dollars are shifted from dentary Media to actual accountable media that has an ROI. People spend the money printed, goes to the mailbox, it goes in the trash, it sits in big stacks as people are walking to store their faces in their phones. So you know, it's hard enough with the imagine a two sided network like eBay create, how do you get the buyers with the seller? Well, that was tough. But once eBay gets to be a certain scale, everyone just goes to eBay. Yeah, that's the place where buyers and sellers come together, we've created a three sided network, which is more difficult than what eBay did. And definitely that means the early years of doing that can be very challenging. Putting that together. I think once once you get to a tipping point, and we're we're a bit past that now. It's, it's no problem that a fan or monetization in this might average $1 CPM, we can get monetization upwards of 500 to $1,000. So those apps are now getting by literally 500 to 1000 times the revenue, which is also not bad for our partner.

  Narration 01:23

  You're listening to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacoystem with Steve Statler.

  Steve Statler 01:34

  Welcome to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacosystem. My name is Steve Statler. And this week we are at the headquarters of in Marquette in Venice, California. We're part of Los Angeles, and I am with the CEO of inMarket, Todd DiPaola. Thanks so much, Todd for doing this. Well, I was really excited to get a chance to talk to you for a couple of reasons. One is your company is extremely unusual in the ecosystem, in that you're not burning through masses of cash, you seem to actually be doing pretty well in terms of funding your operations from from your business, which is very, very unusual. So that's one reason.

  Todd DiPaola 02:19

  Yeah, it's a strange world out there. I mean, I'm I went to school to be a scientist, not a business person. But I did take a couple of business school classes. And one of the things you learned early on in this business school classes is in business, you're supposed to sustain yourself and actually make a profit. That's the point of businesses. Yeah, nonprofit, which I spend a lot of time and it's the opposite, burn cash and do things in the world. So definitely, in my in our business endeavors, I guess I was taught early on that you should have a sustainable business. That's something we've always focused on.

  Steve Statler 02:50

  I think everyone wants to do that. But very few people are chi there. And what where we are in the beacon ecosystem is kind of this bootstrap process. And very often you like have to spend a lot of money to hopefully make money. But you've, you've managed to hit on something that we're going to look at in this interview. And last week, our interview was all about kind of technology. It was the CTOs agenda of ultra wideband and all that sort of stuff. And we're getting to the opposite end of the spectrum here. And we are going to be talking about the agenda for for brands and agencies, and what you guys do and if I got to look at it at a meta level, I'm also fascinated by what you do, because you've got a network and networks, I think, are the key to the future success of this ecosystem. So we'll look into that as well. But why don't we just kick things off with you explaining to people what your market does?

  Todd DiPaola 03:43

  Sure. So inMarket is one of the world's largest platforms for location. And if you actually use third party measurements, not just self described measurements, I'd say we're the largest according to comScore. So we work with three parties. And I think, you know, Hitchhiker's Guide to the ecosystem is a very appropriate name for things that beacons by themselves are a commodity product, you could probably buy them at RadioShack. Now, you know, making beacons is is one part of the ecosystem. But unless you can actually have them do something, have them reach people have a purpose in it. It doesn't go very far. So from the ground up as a location company, in our DNA, we looked at how we can create value in the in the chain out there for multiple parties, bring them together, and then hopefully do some good. So So we work with three different parties out there, we work with locations themselves, installing beacons, even when there are no beacons. We work with apps to use all the sensors on a phone to be talking to that phone at the right moment in time. And then we work with brands ultimately to have a reason to reach people, particularly at places of commerce, and help influence them to learn about a new product or buy something that they might not otherwise have bought. which is sort of mediate one on one. So we bring all those three parties together we create value, we've been able to demonstrate we create value for those apps, both in getting higher retention rates for their, for their consumers, when the app comes alive and kind of has this concierge experience, or you know, what we sometimes call this world of more intelligent, ambient intelligence around us. It's a better, it's a better environment for that user, if they had an app in their pocket and forgot to use it. That's a bad experience when the outbreaks that wakes up at the right moment, that's this concierge experience. So we create value for those for those apps, and actually demonstrated value, lift and retention, as I mentioned, lifting the monthly active users and ultimately a lift in revenue. For the side of the locations, we're helping those locations become kind of wiser on this digital plan, instead of just putting a bunch of advertising on the walls and such well, consumers face is buried in their phones, why not make the phone smarter in those in those certain places. So we work with locations. And then brands are always trying to reach out and touch consumers and they can touch them in all different sorts of methods of demographics. But there really hasn't been much focus on the timing. A lot of you know, the world of marketing our lives reaches us when we're on the buzzers on the seats in the computer, or watching TV. Those are definitely times media's consumed. But they're often far from the point of influence. So we both have this company and my previous company have always tried to reach people, when they're at those decision points. And it gives brands an unfair advantage against their, their competitors, if a consumer is making a decision, and now they're being influenced at that point, you tend to have a leg up versus someone that tried to influence the consumer much earlier in that in that chain.

  Steve Statler 06:46

  So we started this conversation talking about money, and perhaps you and you've outlined a triad of stakeholders that are in this kind of the party that you're throwing to everyone has to turn up pretty much at the same time, you can't have the party if if one of those members of the the triad are missing. But who is paying for what do you sell beacons?

  Todd DiPaola 07:10

  Yeah, so we can make different arrangements with different location providers. But we're not really in the business of RadioShack. And I think, in the world of we believe a lot of beacons are somewhat commodity hardware. There's some pros and cons. And certainly, we do make our own beacons, we have our own IP, we filed patents. We've been doing this pretty much longer than most other folks in the world. But we don't really focus on that as a company. I think the real key is putting together a turnkey solution for folks. So because we've now have that scale on all three parts of the platform, whether it's a location who wants to reach people inside their location, whether it's a brand that wants scale, or whether it's an app that wants a revenue model, or a better use case, we can provide value to any of those players. So we're sort of at a tipping point, I'd call it where we have exclusivity into a lot of these areas. And as a result, we've been able to help each of those stakeholders out pretty well.

  Steve Statler 08:07

  So it doesn't sound like a lot of companies thought beacons want an opportunity, all the benefits, I'm going to start selling beacons to retailers. And I think a lot of those companies have struggled to get retailers to pay for a big beacon deployment. And my sense is that whilst some retailers may buy your beacons as part of the infrastructure, you're not looking to make money from retailers, is that correct?

  Todd DiPaola 08:35

  I think that's correct, we we ultimately kind of survived by creating value. And again, it's maybe my, my, my bias can either as a scientist or, or just my experience that maybe I'm not really good at selling things in the space. So ultimately, we we live or die based on performance. And that can be challenging, sometimes early on, when there's a lot of excitement around an area and big marketing endeavors and such. But I think, you know, for us, if we don't make our partners money, we die on the vine. So that's given us in our own DNA, the ability that we must create value, if we're not creating value, we cease to exist as a company, it's a very hard way to set things up. But once you've proven it, you have lifelong lifelong partners. And there's a nice, a nice interdependence there of us having to continually do good work and improve. So we so we build those partnerships.

  Steve Statler 09:27

  So the retailer can definitely get value. If there are people with apps that are beacon enabled coming into their store, they can see who's coming in the store, they can hopefully get lift in sales, but it seems to me that you make most of your money from charging brands to engage with consumers that are in venues in stores. Is that correct?

  Todd DiPaola 09:50

  Yeah, I'd say that's, that's a fair assessment is that over time, brands want to reach consumers at the right place in time and especially if you can demonstrate it leads to ultimate increase in sales, which we've, you know, we've done, you know, hundreds if not 1000s of times now with with brands. Absolutely. That's, that's some of the, the, the top of the value chain.

  Steve Statler 10:13

  Okay, so most of you, some of your revenue comes from retailers, but probably most of it comes from brands.

  Todd DiPaola 10:19

  Yeah, and I think it's a, it's a mix from different areas. But ultimately, folks, you know, all day long, there are billions of dollars spent trying to reach consumers in different ways. You can look at this large and growing mobile piece, large and growing location piece, but look beyond that into your mailbox and the trash you get in your mailbox every day, there's a multibillion dollar industry there of folks trying to reach consumers and influence their their retail buying same thing as on TV. So there's always been a lot of dollars spent to reach people offline, it's just never had very much accountability to it. So now that we can use this digital layer over the physical world, we can add accountability to it. And just as we saw shifts in my previous company, in the world of search, and a world of digital, and more and more dollars went to someone like a Google who could reach people at the right time, you know, our belief has been if we can create a large moat around, and kind of almost a monopoly of reaching consumers, when they're at that, that moment in time, it's going to be very valuable. And the same way someone will pay $1 or two for a click the consumer sitting on there, but they should pay at least the same amount for a consumer about to make that purchase in the store in real life. So that's been our, our guiding thesis and and so far, it looks, it looks hopefully to be the right one in this place. We're always learning and always improving our capabilities of how can we create value for those those advertisers or brand partners. And I think the best the best days or days have been getting getting better, and they're going to continue to do so as more dollars are shifted from dead tree media to actual accountable media that that has an ROI.

  Steve Statler 11:59

  And dead tree media, then traditionally, people kind of get their flyers from the grocery store. And they think that the grocery store is paying for all these promotions and the offers. But that really isn't the case. A lot of the times it's the brands that have the margin. They have the bigger advertising budgets.

  Todd DiPaola 12:19

  Absolutely. Yeah, there's a, there's definitely a complex world out there for where the dollars come in and how they get spent. But at a high level, it wasn't a bad. It wasn't a bad bet, go back to you know, when I was a little boy with my mom going to the grocery store, she might have got an ad on Sunday, and that was there was no internet, you don't have internet, you get the media you that's available, which is comes in the newspaper, you look through it, you see advertising, you walk into a store, you might pick up a circular there, and you see Wow, steaks are on sale, that's fantastic. Filet Mignon is 70% off. So then my mom would load up and buy, you know, 10 times what she would normally buy, because something's on sale. So that system of getting information to consumers, has been around for a while that consumers have wanted that want to know what's on sale. Brands have wanted to put that information out there to sell more product. But as consumers media consumption habits have shifted. Now those stacks of circulars go, people spend the money print, it goes to the mailbox that goes in the trash, it sits in big stacks, as people are walking to store their faces in their phones. So we're just evolving. A medium that's always worked very well to the types of consumption that consumers want. Now they want it instantaneously at the right moment. And if they didn't learn something's on sale, or there's a new product out there, they're going to make that incremental purchase. So we're bringing, we're fusing these digital tactics that have been so successful with offline tactics that have been so successful, and just bringing them together in the modern age.

  Steve Statler 13:46

  That makes sense. So I talked about this, this party, maybe a maybe a concert is a better metaphor for what you do, you kind of have a, you have a venue, you have an audience and you have kind of the band. And you kind of if you're doing one of these things, you probably start off and you have a small venue and then he gets bigger and bigger. You don't want to have Madison Square Garden, and then maybe an act that's not going to pull people in and you don't want to have this amazing venue and lots of people that aren't really motivated to, to arrive. So you seem to be I'm imagining one of your challenges is getting that right balance between having enough apps, having enough retailers and having enough brands that are willing to put money into this ecosystem and and drive the campaigns. How have you built up the and you get the audience through through the apps, right? You have how many apps are plugged into the inMarket ecosystem at the moment and how many people are using those apps?

  Todd DiPaola 14:52

  Yeah, we've got several dozen apps that are that are plugged in comScore says 46 million monthly active users. So that's pretty, pretty exciting in terms of reach that's out there. And you know, as you allude to, it's hard to build up all these pieces in concert with each other some folks who build platforms called a crab walks, or you can take one step in one direction, one step the other direction. You know, it's hard enough with Imagine a two sided network like eBay created, how do you get the buyers with the sellers? Well, that was tough. But once eBay gets to be a certain scale, everyone just goes to eBay, because that's the place where buyers and sellers come together. We've created a three sided network, which is more difficult than what eBay did. And definitely, that means the early years of doing that can be very challenging. Putting that together. I think once once you get to a tipping point, and we're we're a bit past that now. It's, it's no problem. And then you can add excess capacity, you can still get out of whack, you can basically add excess capacity I those areas. So everyday, we're onboarding apps, we're getting more locations on board, and we're getting more and more brand campaigns going forward.

  Steve Statler 15:56

  What are some of the larger apps that people will have heard of that tapped into your ecosystem?

  Todd DiPaola 16:01

  Sure. One big one is is Conde Nast is one that we've been partnering with for a while, and Epicurious is definitely one of our earliest and best partners out there. And they've got a fantastic app, one of the leading recipe apps in the world, and their consumers are all the time are doing things, looking at recipes, and we help that app become better. When somebody walked into the store. Now they're getting reminded, hey, you wanted to make a lasagna recipe tonight, don't forget to pick up the items, you'll need to need to make that lasagna recipe. So they're a fantastic partner of ours. And obviously, you know, a very large traditional media company that's incredibly successful. So it's exciting when we can partner with someone with a storied and successful past as a Conde Nast and really help them use location to improve their app.

  Steve Statler 16:50

  And you've got others. And maybe this has changed. I don't know how dynamic these relationships are, and how exclusive they are. But this ShopSavvy, enlistees and and you did you not start your business with your own app?

  Todd DiPaola 17:03

  Yeah, so we started a while ago, and this may be kind of the conclusion we came to that we should build partnerships. We started our life as a company called checkpoints. And we became inMarket, we changed our name to reflect what we do over time. We built the one app to rule them all, as every app maker probably does. This is the one app everyone's going to use. Yeah, you know, we're going to be the next base book. And and you tend to find out that actually, what happens is, there's a certain percentage of consumers will want any given use case. But no app will really solve all use cases for all people. So something like a Rewards app that we created. First, it's fantastic for a certain segment of consumers who like loyalty apps, other folks like clipping coupons I want to discount out. Other folks want to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible. So they use an organizational app like lyses and others are foodies. So they're using Epicurious. So we found that there's different strokes for different folks, different apps for different chaps. Yeah. So we said, rather than us trying to build the best kind of app, why don't we really focus on the location piece, and power, better experiences for the different apps that are out there. So we've added more and more folks on board, given them location capabilities, better experiences for their users, and then better monetization. Instead of Banner monetization, which might average $1 CPM, we can get monetization upwards of 500 to $1,000. CPM. So those apps are now getting five, literally 500 to 1000 times the revenue, which is also not bad for our app partners. And like you mentioned, those things have have kind of the challenge of building everything up at once. When you're at a certain scale, you can you can do that effectively. And you can be plug and play for new apps to come on board and monetize better. So whether it's the user experience, the left hand retention with increasing monetization, we're providing a lot of value to our partners there.

  Steve Statler 18:59

  So do you have any games that are plugged in with your ecosystem? That's that's an area where I, because obviously, there's a lot of games that are freemium type apps. Maybe that is less positive, because it seems like everyone plays Angry Birds. It's not like you're kind of plugging into like with WebMD. Clearly, there's some affinity between weapon D and drugstores. But Angry Birds probably gets played everywhere. What are your thoughts in terms of mobile games being certainly potential partner?

  Todd DiPaola 19:33

  Yeah, we're, I mean, we're a mobile moments company. So we're trying to reach that consumer at the right point in time where it makes sense. So traditionally, we haven't you know, hasn't made sense as much for a, you know, an app to a game app to light up when you're in store. Now we are starting to see some changes out there. It's kind of pokeymon go and the rise of more augmented reality games. So I think that's a that's a potential growth opportunity. But we always want to make sure from our perspective that we're providing value to the consumer Not being interruptive. If you're interruptive, you tend to your audience of apps tend to or your audience of users tends to shrink, we've been able to prove for the right apps, we can help their audience grow. So it's something we'll we'll look at and consider, as we expand to more locations. And you know, where we went to GameStop. or something, for instance, that might work very well with certain gaming apps. But we've really focused on the traditional consumer journey, and where we can be helpful there. So today, we haven't really focused on on a game company per se.

  Steve Statler 20:30

  I just, if you think about people who are killing time in airports, they've made it through the intimate process of being frisked. When going through TSA, they collapse into their seat, and then they start playing. Whatever Tetris it seems like, if you could then say, hey, there's a Starbucks, though, you know, how about a caffeine shot? There's a Starbucks, like 50 yards away from your so that would be kind of a cool thing to do.

  Todd DiPaola 20:55

  Yeah, absolutely. We are, we are doing that also, even throughout even outside of the app. So we're directly integrated with we use the data to have better experiences outside so we could still, we still probably are reaching people through some of our predictive marketing sides of things through gaming apps, potentially, we just there's not as much reason why that app might buzz you today. But you might see a banner there for sure. So I think there's, there's definitely things we're always looking at expanding. Today, we haven't focused as much on it.

  Steve Statler 21:23

  So where is the state of art in terms of location and precision? My sense is that a lot of what you are doing is measuring and getting triggers when someone enters the store. So we're going to store level triggers, or are you going more granular? Are you going to, where are you on the continuum of so and so is about to go in the store, or so and so is in a certain department or so and so is in front of a certain product? I know you try and get ahead of that. But I'd love to hear your views on the role of real precision indoor location and how that can add value or not?

  Todd DiPaola 22:05

  Absolutely, I think there's a, there was a big shift just in the past couple years from location 1.0, which is the traditional banner world out there where people are programmatically buying, based on call stated locations, somebody saying, Here's a lat long where consumer is without really even knowing using things like like geocoding IP address. And that's sort of been the standard even till today, most location is bought that way. As you get to location 2.0, which is actually comes from Maps specifically or first party for us and our SDK, pulling beacon data, Wi Fi data, actual first party GPS, you get an enormous amount of precision, and clearly beacons, you can go beyond that where you can get departmental or aisle level. So I think the the industry is still evolving, I'd say for the most part, it's still in those in those early stages, the vast amount of dollars spent, are to reach people who are in a particular zip code, or might be within 10 miles of a Walmart, and that's 90% of the population is within 10 miles of a Walmart. So I think we're kind of on the leading edge of that additional precision of which building are you in specifically, what store in the mall are you in? And ultimately, what aisle or what department are you in there? So I think it adds enormous value, we've been able to show that. And I think the media world is just starting to understand that the differentiators there when they actually look at who drove sales, there's a big difference between reaching somebody within several miles of a store and reaching someone in that store at the moment.

  Steve Statler 23:38

  So how much of So you've talked in the past about quantum receptivity, which is sort of this figuring out someone's about to go to the grocery store before they actually are busy chasing after their kids and dealing with shopping carts, so they can actually pay attention to your, your promotion. So it seems like to me location has two roles. One is in the kind of the targeting and predictive analysis, which is when do I present the offer? And then the other half is the attribution. Did that person actually go to the store? Did they stand in front of the Samsung phone in the store? And you can you talk? Can you talk about how much of what you're using location for is driving? Targeting? And how much is attribution? Or is it both?

  Todd DiPaola 24:28

  Absolutely, yeah. So it depends on who the client is, in many cases. So if it's, if it's a location specific client, we can absolutely measure did did that consumer ultimately go to that location? What's the lift and how we're bringing someone back to that store more frequently? So we do we do both for attribution and for targeting. And the other you know, look at targeting sometimes is when to reach the consumer or you know, before they go to the store, when to reach them as they're in the store. And the other piece that sometimes gets put on the wayside is also when to when to pause when to not reach this person and And again, some that came from our background in digital. There's this concept of digital of day partying or our partying to know the people you reach, don't try to show an impression at 3am, this person could be sleeping with their phone on. In location world, that's a, that's a new idea that it's not just, here's someone in a Walmart parking lot, that's where a lot of location is instantaneous. Someone in a Walmart parking lot is either about to go to Walmart, perfect timing, or just leaving Walmart worst possible timing. So you get about 50% waste in a lot of location, because they're only seeing that instantaneous moment. So a lot of quantum receptivity is figuring out, you know, can we predict the next time this person is doing a store trip? Are they headed there now? Or did they just leave that store and you should really save your save your bullets in the gun for the next time when it's when it can be a better target. And we thought of that from experiences, we've had ourselves just kind of watching consumers and ourselves going into a store where you might see these coupons, the printout right after you're you're checking out the most amazingly targeted coupon to what you're buying. excepted came at the worst possible moment in that lifecycle of a consumer, I'm just leaving the store. So why would this you know, it's amazing targeting hits you at the worst possible moment and said, What if we could roll back the tape and reach them when they walk in the store? If that's what we do? What if we could roll back the tape a little bit further beyond that to when they're on their way to the store? Hey, we can build that product. And we can also realize this person just checked out, don't give them this Miss offer at the worst possible time. So we sort of built this the quantum receptivity, based on all the data we have in the unique place where we sit on a phone with an SDK with first party data with beacons to understand that full consumer lifecycle of each individual is different. When did they go to the store? How often is their average trip time? What are the standard deviations there to recognize personalized marketing for that consumer of when they're most receptive.

  Steve Statler 26:55

  So I was one of my consulting clients is been working on this technology to get sub meter accuracy from, from from Wi Fi, which is pretty awesome. And my job was to help them with the business plan and kind of figure out what do people actually want that. And I ended up having a whole bunch of questions as to whether people could actually use that, in the short term, at least maybe in the long term people can I'd be interested in your view on that if you had the ability to figure out where someone is within the store sub meter accuracy. And obviously, if you have enough beacons, you can figure out where people are, but just in a practical sense, it's kind of hard to figure out sub meter accuracy. But is that something that you can use today? Or do you think that's something that really is going to come to the fore? And in a few years time?

  Todd DiPaola 27:47

  Yeah, I think it's it's a, it's exciting in some ways, but you know, one of the things we're we're doing sometimes is just updating retailers and brands on technology that came out two years ago, where the, there's so much kind of noise in the ecosystem to be able to show I know, there's many things that you can do, you know, but what should you do? And what must you do is tends to be one, so definitely you, you can eventually figure out, you know, people talk about insure meter accuracy, you know, maybe we're slowly starting to approach it. But even if you could do that, what would you do with it, you're buzzing someone's phone, every single product they stand in front of in a store, that's probably not a good user experience. So even though some of the capabilities we have we found, just because there's a, an actual technical capability doesn't mean it actually makes sense from a business standpoint, or use case the endpoint. So we try to focus on the the tangible, and what we can do today, and have a lot of things in the lab of what can happen later on. But make sure that there's actually a good use case. And we've got the metrics behind it before we deploy it.

  Steve Statler 28:49

  And so are the use. So what I'm hearing is essentially the most people are not, most brands and retailers are not ready to use sub meter accuracy. They're just trying to figure out is someone arriving at the store? Are they leaving the store? And did they go into the fresh produce department or not?

  Todd DiPaola 29:09

  Yeah, and even you look at, you know, dollars spent, you know, most most dollars today are spent in a way of, I've got a store in this zip code. I mean, you try to reach houses in the zip code that is the state of the art where the majority of dollars are spent to do so you look at that, and then you compare it to sub meter accuracy. Yeah, it's an interesting technical problem. But from a business standpoint, we spend a lot of our time just educating people that way, why are you reaching folks in the zip code around your store, you could reach folks who shop in your store and bring them back an incremental one time a month would be transferred that would give you billions of dollars a year if you did that. You can find folks in neighborhoods that live right next to your store but they're going to competitor stores. Wouldn't you like them to come to your store? You're spending 10s of Millions of dollars on on either location based mobile or digital advertising. But half the time you're reaching a consumer who is not at all receptive to this. So we see those as enormous billion dollar problems that we're solving. And again, we have all sorts of things in the lab of what could be the future. But there's a lot of work being done in the presence of just educating people and showing demonstrate to them that you can be effective. So I'd say we spend all definitely a lot of our time on the technical side, but also a lot on the on the talking to consumer side.

  Steve Statler 30:31

  So let's wrap up by talking a bit about the one of the primary customers, the stakeholder that the advertiser, and so you're you're you have a sales team that they're selling to media buyers, are they who's the customer in within the brand, or the agency or?

  Todd DiPaola 30:48

  Yeah, it depends, I mean, we're in a new in a new realm. So there are many different touchpoints and decision makers from you know, the brand, the CMO level the agency, we talk with all folks in there and try to educate them about what we do, show them the KPIs and try to say let's focus, you can focus on click through rate, we're going to do amazingly well there, we've got case studies to show that, but let's look at some of the more important of actual products sold or, or trips to the store. Because those are KPIs that might be things that were previously unattainable. But now you can actually you can see, you can benchmark us. So all day long. We love having kickoffs against against other folks in the space, or even an old school folks, whether it be newspaper, TV, etc, to show that this is really high ROI advertising. That's where I've kind of built my both my career and I know if we're creating value for folks, that long term, we're going to win forget about, you know, what's the latest, you know, news about, about technology or things going on, we're actually creating value and for every dollar a partner spends with us, they make three, four or five back, it doesn't matter how the economy is doing, it doesn't matter what new technology comes out, we're going to be growing and growing rapidly. And that's, that's been a great guiding light for us.

  Steve Statler 32:06

  And what are some of the metrics that you're able to share with brands that get their attention?

  Todd DiPaola 32:11

  Yeah, so you know, lift in lift in sales for the dollars they spend with us? How many more sales? Do they ultimately yield? That's, that's probably the key one. Store trips, certainly, if you're talking to, you know, fast food restaurant, or a retailer or a mall or a clothing company, those are things that people are very interested in also.

  Steve Statler 32:31

  So it sounds like one of the biggest challenges you have is just educating the people that are spending those those dollars. Are there any other challenges? I think when you're building any network, especially advertising networks, it's about scale. Are you able to deploy campaigns nationally? Do you have enough? What are the top three constraints that if you can wave a magic wand and kind of accelerate progress on those metrics? What what is it that would allow you to double triple your business?

  Todd DiPaola 33:02

  Yeah, I think one of the great challenges to have right now is one of growth and people we've got, I think just north of about 5050 folks now and are trying to hire about as rapidly as we can. So finding, finding that next next level of talent to help us grow has been probably our biggest challenge. So if I could wave a magic wand, where I could either create a cloning device for for some of my the superstars we have now, and and bring more people on board, particularly kind of I'd say, going, going bananas and hiring on the sales and marketing side. That'd be that'd be fantastic. You know, smart engineers. Those are probably the biggest challenges to the business right now. But, but even though they're they're great problems to have, yeah, it's basically how can we spend money faster to grow is our problem. We have clients, we work with them, they come back time and time again. So we're reaching out to more and more clients to give them a sample and then work with them.

  Steve Statler 34:04

  Good. And where do you see the product going over time? What do you want to do with these engineers that you hire?

  Todd DiPaola 34:10

  Certainly, so I think we're, you know, we're getting just in the past couple years, or even months in this case of rolling out quantum receptivity. Now we're looking at interesting ways, interesting new products around the data. That's definitely something that quantum falls deeply in that category for us. So we've always been the leaders of reaching a consumer at that moment of truth. And we're looking at how we can take data from that moment of truth to to further create personalized experiences for the user. And then McCollum unfair advantages for the brands that that, that work with us.

  Steve Statler 34:43

  Cool. Okay, Todd. Well, thanks so much for your time. Congratulations on all your success. It's great to see a company that's growing and really delivering clear value to people that can help grow the ecosystem. I do want to just give a shout out to Proxmox Who are our partners in this space they've just come out with their cue to report on stadiums, venues and events. So check out the proximate report and for for people that have watched this that want to listen in the future check out our podcast but Todd once again, thanks for letting us join you here in your headquarters and it's been great to hear what you guys do.

  Todd DiPaola 35:23

  Alright, thanks a lot Steve.

  Steve Statler 35:45

  We've got limited bandwidth some music with you have an artificial construct?

  Todd DiPaola 35:49

  This trip is getting worse all the time. Especially songs that you take. It's only a 300 baud modem. That's the exactly I can be able to surf the internet as much now now maybe I'll stay I'll standard. So the songs, you know, the songs think we take where one of which is, is lean on me. But there's different versions of that song. Yeah, kind of 80s version by Club Nuevol kind of mixes mixes things up a little bit. So it's a remix of a classic, I think always, you know, you want to help people out whether you're on Mars or you know, part of the beacosystem. So I think there's a lot of interdependence that goes on. Yeah, so that's, that's one of the ones I thought I'd take. The other one is Van Halen, Right Here. It's a nice kind of rock and roll song. Just kind of about you know, the the immediacy of life and kind of living in the moment you know, also on the world we live in and kind of you know, moments of truth in the mobile world I think is is pretty, pretty apropos for that. And then I thought of another one which is the Friends theme song. It might get annoying if you play it over and over again for for a couple of decades. But at least sometimes you know it gets it gets you happy. And again another one about kind of of togetherness and kind of working with people and having good time. So I think those are things that if I am a we do here pretty well also.

  Steve Statler 37:09

  Excellent.