Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise

Auren Hoffman (00:00.965) Hello fellow data nerds, my guest today is Bill Wise. is the co-founder and CEO of MediaOcean, the advertising technology platform that powers over a quarter of all global media spent. Prior to MediaOcean, Bill held leadership roles at other ad tech companies, including DoubleClick and Right Media. Bill, welcome to World of DaaS.

Bill Wise (00:22.743) Aren't thanks so much for having me I always love intros because it makes me sound so much better and more interesting than I think I really am So I appreciate and yours was very Yeah You know and yours was very pointed it wasn't a long one it was just right to the point, you know, yeah love it well

Auren Hoffman (00:28.603) Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I forgot to say all the Nobel prizes that you won and all the other types of things.

Yeah. Yeah. Keep it. Keep it good. You know, keep it good. I don't talk about your amazing kids or anything else in there. Yeah.

Bill Wise (00:46.126) Well, listen, mean, you've been at this podcast for a long time. I finally got the invite. So I was clearly on like page three of your like, who do you

Auren Hoffman (00:52.881) You know, we're going through the, have a whole thing now to go through the OGs of ad tech. So that's been my goal over the last couple months is to slowly go through the OGs. You're clearly one of them. Maybe the OG in ad tech. And for people who don't know, like what is, like, you're kind like the system of record in the advertising world. What does that exactly mean? Like you're kind of the blockchain before a blockchain, the ledger, right? Of all the different transactions.

Bill Wise (00:59.534) All right.

Bill Wise (01:21.42) Listen, didn't call me Billy Blockchain for no reason. So yeah, so I always say Mediocean, the heritage of Mediocean is like we're more like a vertical ERP than we are an ad tech company because a lot of what we do is what an ERP would do in other industries, right?

Auren Hoffman (01:39.109) You're like, you're consolidating transactions and figuring out where the money goes. Yeah.

Bill Wise (01:42.402) Yeah, we're doing all the back office stuff, right? Everything from reconciliation to bill pay to media finance, integration to whatever your financial system is, payments to vendors, et cetera, et cetera, know, reconciling APAR. And so all that back office stuff is what kind of our agency system business was. And, you know, we saw this one Venn diagram, which was a Harvard business study that said, hey,

In most industries, there's a system of record, a system of engagement, and a system of intelligence. And the goal is if you can be all three, that's like the pinnacle of a technology company. So we were kind of the system of record. And then

Auren Hoffman (02:20.177) That would be pretty awesome.

What's an example of another industry where there's somebody who's all three?

Bill Wise (02:27.906) Well, all three is nearly impossible and there's inherent conflict of interest of being all three. That means that Big Tech is all three for their stuff, right? And actually what you want as an independent participant in the ecosystem is to actually pick kind of leading candidates for each of those and then say, hey, it's okay to have my system of record and system of engagement be the same company because that drives workflow efficiency.

Auren Hoffman (02:29.615) Yeah, yeah, that's what I Yep.

Auren Hoffman (02:36.101) Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Yep.

Bill Wise (02:57.518) But if you actually have your system of record and your system of intelligence crossover, then, and this is the case of Google, and you're an ad agency, if you use Google for both of those, they will absolutely disintermediate you because they'll gain all the intelligence and use that to drive system of record directly to advertisers or publishers, whatever. And that is what the DOJ is looking at. But we also said system of record companies are great.

Auren Hoffman (03:17.499) Yeah.

Bill Wise (03:26.124) but they typically are like lower growers, high market share, smaller TAM. So what are we going to do? And so we started acquiring ed tech companies, kind of go from back of the house to front of the house. And we started that during the pandemic and we've spent, yeah, 4C, then flash talking, then an AI company, and then most recently Innovid, which is...

Auren Hoffman (03:32.55) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (03:45.637) That was like flash talking some of these other acquisitions you made.

Bill Wise (03:53.314) The largest deal we've done at a little over half a billion dollars.

Auren Hoffman (03:56.835) And, and, and the core business, like for people who don't really understand ad tech, it's like, it's really the money flow is super complicated. Cause there's often like 20 hops between like the buyer and the seller and stuff. Right. Like walk us through kind of that complication. there other industries that I assume like maybe like stock trading or something has some sort of similar complication.

Bill Wise (04:20.814) Yeah, it's funny. We hired a president of technology a bunch of years ago and he came from a company that built software for Wall Street, which is probably, you know, we've had more success hiring outside of ad tech than in ad tech for that business, for that reason. Because what people don't realize is, you know, in ad tech, it's like, you know, hey, you know, we're going to increase innovation and stability may go down, you know, but you're willing to offset

Auren Hoffman (04:37.008) Yeah.

Bill Wise (04:50.646) like moving the needle. In the system of record business, you've got to reconcile $180 billion worth of annual transactions to the penny. And if it doesn't reconcile to the penny, it's off, and it's broken. So stability matters more than innovation in that business. so for those of us who are technology enthusiasts and technologists and work to software companies, it's hard to reconcile that

that pendulum, right? But at the end of the day, it's stable. And one can argue, we are this for the buy side of the advertising industry. There isn't an equivalent on the sell side. And it shows, right? So when you're talking to NBC or Google as the publisher, the fact that they don't have a standard on the sell side like we have on the buy side.

Auren Hoffman (05:45.807) And why do you need two separate standards? Like, why can't the standard on the sales side be the standard on the buy side? Because the money is flowing, right? Is there just a conflict of interest or something or?

Bill Wise (05:52.374) Yeah, so we did try. It's an inherent conflict of interest unless you stayed completely neutral. And so when we look strategically at, we have this kind of like near monopoly on the buy side system of record, which is fine because we're not doing optimization, decisioning, et cetera. It's fine. Our market share is fine. And we have long term contracts and our clients are happy. So the question was, do we do the same to the sell side?

Or do we get into the intelligence, right? Get into kind of those systems of engagement, systems of intelligence. And in the end, we decided to go there and focus on the buy side and be kind of an independent technology provider at scale for the buy side. Because we just saw our inherent conflict of interest with Google, Facebook, and Amazon being both the largest sell side players and the largest buy side ad tech players.

Auren Hoffman (06:46.426) Yes.

Bill Wise (06:51.086) And that's really an inherent conflict of interest.

Auren Hoffman (06:55.023) Now, this business you build is like super massive, but it really doesn't get the spotlight. Is that positioning deliberate?

Bill Wise (07:02.914) Well, I always say like people don't give a shit about plumbing electricity until it's broke. And I would say we're the plumbing electricity of the advertising industry. I think as we acquired Flash Talking and now Innovid, I think now people probably know us more through those deals than they do our core business, which our core business continues to throw off the...

Auren Hoffman (07:11.451) For sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (07:27.781) Right, that's still your cash cow, I presume.

Bill Wise (07:29.42) Yeah, that's where all of our cashflow and EBITDA comes from. But I think the other part is there's interesting things happening. Obviously, we all see what's happening with Google and antitrust. But I think marketers are kind of waking up to say, hey, in a world of data, AI, decisioning, who are the partners I want? And I also would say that

For the last 20 years, was advantageous to be a startup, where you could be nimble, could be quick, can scratch an itch that people have. Now, would say it's at, you need to be, because Fortune 500 companies are leaning in, you need to be an awesome technology provider at scale. And Procter & Gamble, Unilever, General Motors, they don't want to work with 48 ad tech companies.

Auren Hoffman (08:24.625) I mean, but they're probably working with 400 ad tech companies today. I mean, in reality, right?

Bill Wise (08:29.89) But as they start bringing those contracts in-house and start decisioning and signing contracts, they don't want to work with full 100. Like through the agency, sure. Or through a trade desk, sure. But as they're saying, hey, who are my partners going to be? They want to work with less than 20.

Auren Hoffman (08:33.327) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (08:41.275) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (08:50.639) Yep. And, and the, how, like there's this relationship between like agencies, brands, tech vendors, and there's a lot of tension sometimes between all those guys. like how has that been evolving over the last 10 years?

Bill Wise (09:08.248) Yeah, so one of the things that, and kind of a North Star for me as I think about the strategy going forward is we want to be neutral and independent, right? And so, you know, obviously the world is not black and white, it's varying shades of gray and it's getting more, you know, like it's getting more varying shades of gray. Yeah, and it's very common. mean, and you know, talked about the supply chain earlier, like,

Auren Hoffman (09:26.939) Yeah, it's very complicated.

Bill Wise (09:33.186) I don't think people think of advertising. When people think about complex supply chains, they think manufacturing and logistics. They don't necessarily think of advertising, but you and I both know the advertising supply chain is god. It's insane. The question is, are you truly getting the ROI for the cost you're spending? If you're spending 40 cents of every dollar of media, that means only 60 cents is being used for

Auren Hoffman (09:47.313) Insane. Yeah.

Bill Wise (10:01.964) You for actual media the actual product and 40 cents is going to supply chain You know, you got to make sure that the ROI on that really is worth it, right? So so now I don't even remember what the question was but

Auren Hoffman (10:11.057) Totally.

Auren Hoffman (10:14.957) Well, I mean, there's, there's this tension between the agencies and the tech vendors and stuff like that. And it's, know, and you kind of work with all of them, but they're, they're, you know, there's kind of like more winners and losers there. And recently there's been lots of folks who have been on the winning end or lots of folks have been the winning, losing end and it's changing all the time.

Bill Wise (10:17.816) Yes. Yes. Yes.

Bill Wise (10:34.2) Yes. Yeah, so yeah, my point was being independent and neutral allows me to go into any room and truly understand, you know, what their business objectives are, you know, what hurdles they have and be able to talk to them about, know, and I can go into an agency, I can go into an end marketer, I can go to an ad tech company, I can go to NBC or someone on the supply side, broadcaster. And I don't compete with any of them.

Right. now, you know, now that we're getting into ad tech, the question is, you know, should we start competing with some of these guys? You know, because there is fragmentation and there is complexity of the supply chain that's, you know, probably too costly.

Auren Hoffman (11:20.923) And when you, when you made these acquisitions, like, how do you think about it? Because like media ocean, like your core business, you're number one. You're the clear market leader. You're the clear. Now you're buying things that are not necessarily number one in their market. you know, maybe they have the potential to be number one, but they're not number one. They might be number four in the market or so lots of other very, very different type of business. that's out there. like, how do you, how do you think about like how to.

Bill Wise (11:40.11) Yep. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (11:49.553) what you acquire.

Bill Wise (11:51.404) Yeah, great question. The interesting part is we ran a cell process, the single worst time to ever run a cell process, February of 2020, we ran a cell process. And obviously, about five weeks later, the world was shut down with the global pandemic.

Auren Hoffman (12:10.665) And just so that because I don't think that the audience knows because you're owned by private equity firms and private equity firms tend to trade businesses. Yeah.

Bill Wise (12:14.86) Yeah, yeah, we were at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we sold our company to Private Equity, Vista Equity in 2015. In 2020, we ran a sell process. We had to shut it down because of the pandemic. But we picked it back up a year later. And the interesting part is because we actually started the process and kind of sent out the book, people had our numbers, right? And typically companies that are selling their companies, they have like kind of these sell side models and

people are always trying to figure out where's the bullshit because people are kind of on the higher end of what you think you can do. So a little over a year later, we run a process again. so people naturally go back to the book from 15 months earlier. And we exceeded all our numbers in a global pandemic. And I was thinking to myself, there's no better credibility than running a process, pulling it, and 15 months later actually say, hey,

Auren Hoffman (13:07.313) story.

Bill Wise (13:11.384) You know that sell side process that you probably thought was on the optimistic end of the range? No, we actually, not only did we beat it in the middle of a pandemic, we exceeded it. So we ran a sell process and it was, you know, people were like, my God, you've done a great job. We like you, we like the business. It's incredibly successful. It's unique. It's, high market share. We didn't get one offer, but like every single meeting went well. Everyone was like, you know, kind of showering with compliments and

And so I was like, this is unbelievable. And so I ended up calling a couple of the PEs that I thought I had the best meeting with and said, listen, I don't understand. We had a great meeting with your team. And one person kind of summed it all down, which is like, hey, listen, your core business is a phenomenal business. And we see how Vista is going to get their 3x 20 % net IRR.

Auren Hoffman (14:05.264) Yeah.

Bill Wise (14:07.768) you we don't see how we are because you have such high market share in a pretty low TAM market. So if you can... Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they were like, but if there was something you can add on to that ERP or system of record, that's a much higher TAM, even if you had smaller market share, you know, but you can leverage the core asset. And so to be honest with I would love to take credit for being this visionary, you know, but it was actually...

Auren Hoffman (14:12.741) Yep. Yeah. You can't increase your market share that much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (14:37.297) It's like desperation.

Bill Wise (14:37.858) Failing it was it was failing in a cell process that was like, you know, and yeah, and so I said Like this is coming flash talking. I think if I integrate the ad server like, you know, it's a much higher tan And so we ended up selling the company by buying flash talking Which is a much higher tan it got us into creative personalization AI ad serving and then you know and then

Auren Hoffman (14:41.979) We've all been there.

Auren Hoffman (14:56.465) Bill Wise (15:04.843) And then it's like, all right, well now we're in this ad-serving market that's kind of monopolized by Google, who has probably 80 % market share on the buy side, 98 % market share on the sell side. And that's when we were like,

Auren Hoffman (15:16.591) Is it really that high? Is our market share that high?

Bill Wise (15:19.886) The on the sell side, it's probably, you know, call it like 70%. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's mostly only because when they bought YouTube, people didn't want them to be serving ads into video and CTV. So that's where innovative, innovative probably has 50 % market share of CTV. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's when we said, well, you know, kind of being the distant number three player in that space, like

Auren Hoffman (15:26.147) Okay, wow.

Auren Hoffman (15:39.566) I didn't know that, wow.

Auren Hoffman (15:47.451) Yeah.

Bill Wise (15:48.11) The market is kind of natural duopolies. And so if you're not one or two, you're just spinning your wheels to become one or two. And it requires a lot of investment. So we kind of leveraged as much as we could. And then we said, we got to go out and buy the number two player and merge Flash talking and InnoVid together. And so that's the journey.

Auren Hoffman (15:55.685) Yes, for sure.

Auren Hoffman (16:09.073) And how would you devise like, I think it's a very hard decision sometimes to decide, okay, we're to go into these other markets. And sometimes I've been a part of companies where they'll, you know, they'll, okay, we're to go into this other markets hotter. We'll buy the, if you think of these companies, like, you know, back in the day, like Newstar bought a lot, they were like the number four in everything.

And, and just like they, they spent more in acquisitions that I think, think Forex more in acquisitions than the end up market cap of the company. Right. So clearly it was a bad strategy. it's clearly it has a way of like, you know, biting people in the butt sometimes, like how would you advise other CEOs to like think this through?

Bill Wise (16:52.11) Yeah, I would say most M &A is, I would say a majority of M &A fails. You you gotta be very deliberate. You gotta have a level of precision on these things. by the way, tuck-ins are fine, Especially if you can do tuck-ins with your operating cash, like great. But if you're gonna actually go and raise debt or raise new equity, which is what we had to do both for the InnoVid deal, you better make sure it's gonna work.

Auren Hoffman (17:07.569) Yeah, yeah, yeah, a tuck in for sure. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (17:22.191) Yeah, for sure. Because it's about the company thing. In a way, yeah.

Bill Wise (17:22.222) Um, so, so, you know, we acquired, so, so I would say we got into the ad tech business by buying 4C and we completely screwed it up. We come like, yo, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We, bought the business. Uh, what I would ask what we do, what did we do? Right. Um, the, so the, the first is, you know, uh, going from being this like kind of legacy ERP business to like being in the dynamic, you know, ad tech business.

Auren Hoffman (17:32.96) really?

What did you do wrong?

Bill Wise (17:51.554) The first thing we realized is that the people were all there, you know, working for equity, like probably making kind of like a little bit below their market value in terms of cash for the dream of like an exit and IPO, et cetera. Private equity doesn't give equity out to everyone. And so, you know, so very quickly we lost a lot of good talent and, you know, we didn't embrace the culture.

Auren Hoffman (18:03.833) Yep. Yep.

Bill Wise (18:19.406) Right? And, you know, like everything from like, you know, what systems do you use internally? How do you compensate people? Yeah. Yeah, no, no. The biggest one was we were a teams company and like when we told them they were going to move from Slack to teams, you would, you would think like we were just ending like, you know, just life as we knew it. Right. And then by the way, then, then we made another acquisition flash talking.

Auren Hoffman (18:24.345) All right. Cause like they're you, you're using outlook and they're using Google apps or something or whatever.

Bill Wise (18:47.458) And they were like, we are not moving off of Slack. And then I kind of like started tinkering around with Slack and I'm like, why are we on Teams still? is like, you we should have listened. you know, so we didn't embrace the culture. We didn't understand the attributes, you know, and we also, you know, we're leveraging the fact that we were this like major staple in the industry and we can just add this thing on, integrate it in and people are going to start using it.

didn't happen, right? So we ruined the 4C business and then we had to then reinvest back. We also fell behind the market. The market's moving so fast. We stopped developing at the pace in which the market was developing. And so we had to...

Auren Hoffman (19:31.589) Was this all about like a cultural thing? if you kind of kept the culture alive, it wouldn't like, is that the big thing?

Bill Wise (19:37.184) It was a combination of like, and you'll appreciate this, it's it's a VC mentality versus a private equity mentality. And there's a reason why private equity doesn't buy immature subscale companies, right? They buy established companies who already make money, right? Who have a position. And so trying to do a VC type acquisition in a private equity model is very difficult because

Auren Hoffman (19:45.135) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (19:52.815) they're willing it. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (20:05.03) Yeah.

Bill Wise (20:05.816) there's constant expectations on just 3Xing my money and getting 20 % annual returns. And that's hard to do. And when you buy a kind of immature company that isn't at yet that scale, that requires investment. So we screwed that one up, and we've since fixed it, but it required a lot of energy. And it also required us to completely invest back in the business.

And so we literally just in the middle of last year rolled out a new platform for that business and it's already paying dividends. We're now growing that business for the first time since we bought 4C. When we bought Flash Talking, we were like, we are not going to do the same thing. But we kind of did a little bit in that we then we were organized functionally. And so we decided, hey, let's let's integrate Flash Talking functionally.

Auren Hoffman (20:50.523) Yeah.

Bill Wise (21:02.44) And but we kept all the other things like we gave more people equity. you know, embraced, you know, things like Slack and, their cultures. And then what we realized was these are two different cultures that you can't force together. So very quickly.

Auren Hoffman (21:14.193) Totally. Yeah, you can't say, I'll seem reporting to your global CRO or something or whatever. Yeah.

Bill Wise (21:19.662) Exactly. And that's exactly what we did. So we we basically then decoupled them and actually started, you know, kind of running it as business units. And that that casted the whole thing, which is like, all right, do you want to be a branded house or a house of brands? Right. Do you want everything to be MediOcean? But then we were like, no, MediOcean is this like high market share, slow moving, you know, you know, kind of cash cow stability.

Auren Hoffman (21:34.939) Yeah.

Bill Wise (21:46.158) So we decided to kind of be a house of brands. And so now, you know, we've embraced flash talking. We're now embracing Innovid. We made 4C social ads by flash talking. And now we're rebranding our legacy business to not be Mediocean, because that's going to be the parent company. the, you know, kind of the new business is Prisma. And we've also decided to brand the ad tech business Innovid.

So we're going to change it from flash talking to Innovid. So that integration will be.

Auren Hoffman (22:15.951) interesting. Why, why do that? Cause like flash lucky has its own good brand, innovative has own good brand. So you, kind of ruin the, mean that, flash looking around is probably worth at least $20 million. You know, you kind of take that away if you re brand. So why do you make that decision?

Bill Wise (22:32.471) Yeah, well first, Innovid went public and just kind of the brand equity of going public and being out there. Innovid also is like the fastest, there's two parts of the market that's growing the fastest. One is retail media, the other is CTV. They are synonymous with CTV. We wanna be kind of the next generation CTV company. so, we hired Bain and did all sorts of stuff. And in the end, it kind of spit out exactly what we knew, which was.

Auren Hoffman (22:39.067) Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, has a better brand.

Auren Hoffman (23:01.413) Yeah. Don't you think ever hiring Bain is always a bad move? it really, does it ever work? Like you just get the answer either that you know is right. Or do you think actually is good? Why do companies hire Bain? Is what I'm asking. Yeah.

Bill Wise (23:09.484) They. Listen. Listen, if if you you know if you so we've hired Bain multiple times, they have helped us on numerous occasions, but you have to be very prescriptive on you know what their scope is, what they're what they're going after just but the level and even getting through honestly getting through investment committees will be very difficult without the work of Bain, right?

Auren Hoffman (23:38.479) Yeah, that's helpful just to like, so to check all the boxes for the private equity firms and stuff like that. Yeah. nice. Okay. Nice.

Bill Wise (23:39.79) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and we now have three private equities. So we went from Vista to CVCTA and Charles Bank. So we don't have one private equity. We have three private equities, three investment committees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (23:51.965) perfect. Okay. Got it. See that you definitely need made. Okay. They can like wrangle it all and stuff. Okay. That's the tax. Okay. That's interesting. Interesting. You know, the anchor when we, when we sold live ramp, was two things that, that the parent company wants to do. The first one was to report in functionally. So, you know, report into the CRO, report into the chief product officer, report into. So I was like, and I said, so, and I was like, that's a very interesting,

Bill Wise (24:09.25) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, terrible idea.

Auren Hoffman (24:20.417) or suggestion that you made parent company, but we'll have that under advisement and we never did it. and yeah, totally. That library. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That would have never happened. Yeah. And plus everyone would have left. And then the second thing they said is, you have to use all of our tools. So, you're going to be on outlook, starting literally like, you know, in two weeks. And I'm like, that's a.

Bill Wise (24:26.782) Yeah, thank God. Thank God because live ramp, you know, and it ended up being a reverse of reverse takeover. It never would have happened. It never would have happened.

Auren Hoffman (24:47.077) very interesting suggestion that you made their CIO, but we're not going to do that. And they were like, well, you have to do it. I'm like, it's very interesting that you suggest that and we'll take it under advisement. And so we never did that either actually. So we never, we never, we never integrated any tool. We never even gotten like on their sales force or something and just allowed us to move faster. Otherwise, you know, people are going to leave and you know, you got to protect your people.

Bill Wise (25:00.973) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill Wise (25:12.238) But by the way, that's actually a good point to all your listeners, which is when you get acquired, there's typically a liquidity event and everyone's happy, but it's actually strong leadership. Strong leadership has to stand up for their businesses. So you as a founder and CEO, when you sold LiveRamp, you had the fortitude to be like, I know I just became pretty wealthy, but

But we got to do what's best for our business, our clients. And you bought this business to get an ROI yourself. If you do these three things, you're going to kill the company. And by the way, I had that happen with flash talking. inevitably, when people sell their companies, they kind of take their eye off the ball of the business. So typically, you buy the business, you're all excited, and then you get the first month's results. And you're like, you didn't execute.

Auren Hoffman (25:47.793) Exactly. Yeah.

Bill Wise (26:10.912) And so I'll never forget, had a conversation with the CEO of Flashdog, John Nardone. And I was like, how do you miss the first month out? And I was like, we cannot have a broken business. And his response to me was like, Bill, you've already broken the business. And I was like, well, that's a little dramatic, John. But in a weird way, he wasn't wrong.

Auren Hoffman (26:29.54) You

Auren Hoffman (26:34.203) Because if you take these guys, cause like they're have to do all these internal meetings and these integrate, like if you spend all your time doing that, like you can't actually be in the business. Yeah.

Bill Wise (26:42.686) Exactly, but and but we did force them Functionally and and then literally within probably a couple probably two quarters. We said this isn't gonna work and we course corrected So also being able to also being able to like admit when you're wrong is kind of critical in these things Yeah, yeah Yeah

Auren Hoffman (26:52.753) nice. Okay.

Auren Hoffman (26:57.989) Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to do. That's, that's almost the hardest thing to do. now you, you, you've also been vocal about like these coin measurement monopolies that are out there. and, and things about like attribution, like how, how can we make that better?

Bill Wise (27:16.622) Well, it's interesting, right? Because if you think about brand safety and viewability, there's kind of a duopoly out there. You have double-verifying IS now that Oracle and Moat are out of the business. When it comes to currency, you still kind of have a monopoly in Nielsen. And then you have all these measurement companies, like outcome-based measurement companies. And that's where there's massive amounts of fragmentation. And frankly, if you're kind of a small company,

I met with a company the other day who's doing incredibly well, growing 50, 60 % a year. They have one client, 60 % of their revenue. And so you can kind get that core anchor tenant and kind of grow a business. And in the world of AI, you're just building your business a little bit more intelligently than the incumbents, you can use that to your advantage. so, see, I've been mostly vocal about the duopoly of DV and IS.

because we kind of bought a small little company called Protected that we think is like next generation technology. But it's like one of those things where, hey, if it's not broken, don't fix it. DV and IS are also both great companies. I'm not disparaging them at all. They're wonderful companies. And so we think there's opportunity, right?

Auren Hoffman (28:30.841) Yeah, well-ranked companies for sure.

Bill Wise (28:40.396) That gets into like, if you're the system of record and you're the system of engagement or workflow systems, do you integrate systems of intelligence or measurement companies or do you become one? And so our tact is primarily to take a partnership strategy there. But I do think, and there's wonderful comments. I just attended this conference in the Bahamas that was run by a Tain.

Attain is a new company. have Jonah Goodhart doing Mobian. You have Brian O'Kelly that started with Scope 3 and now that kind of like, yeah, he bought a new thing. So I think a lot of us are trying to figure out like, there are these pockets of gold, like Deviant IS, at their peak, they were worth like $10 billion combined. Right now, it's probably more like four or five. That's a tremendous amount of value for someone in the intermediary business.

Auren Hoffman (29:16.293) He's buying a new thing. Yeah.

Bill Wise (29:37.838) And what we've seen now is DV saying, yes, not enough just to do brand safety verification. They're going into outcomes and measurements. And so they've acquired two companies, SyBids and just another one last week. And so for us, we are partners to everyone, even if we compete with you. So DV and IS are critical integrations that we have with our system of record, even though we own protected, which competes with them.

Auren Hoffman (30:06.705) Because measurement in some ways, like money could flow measurement. so you could say, if this outcome happens, we will pay you an additional X, or we'll give you the SPF, the CTA on this, or whatever it might be. And so then having that somehow integrated with the money flow system has some sort of power there.

Bill Wise (30:15.949) Yes.

Bill Wise (30:30.306) Yeah, 100%. And we'll continue to look at it. Innovid did have a business called XP. they went public through SPAC. So when they despecked, they bought a measurement company. And a lot of these measurement companies, as they're growing, they kind of look and feel more like managed service businesses versus kind of true software and data companies. And so a lot of times, kind of like

buy these companies and you're like, how do we now automate it? And so it took them a couple of years to do it, but they now have a business that they call Innovate XP, which is measurement. And it's a business that they provide to both sides of the coin. So it's both the buy side. So the sell side is roughly 50 % of the revenue of that business. it kind of starts getting in. And that also in CTV, you can't just be on the buy side. You need to integrate into.

all the streaming devices, Hulu, Netflix, etc. And so I think as we start focusing more on next generation television and CTV, think providing more solutions to both sides of the coin actually makes sense.

Auren Hoffman (31:42.417) And there's been all these other like measurement players over the years, which maybe didn't survive. Like, you know, if you asked me 10 years ago, maybe com score was like a well-known one, but that, you know, and they, they, and then they kind of bought rent track, which seemed like a great idea, but then it just kind of, they had their own issues and it's been kind of mired in some things and obviously, yeah, like video amp, kind of going after Nielsen for a while. Maybe they still will win that one.

Bill Wise (32:03.0) Yep. Yep.

Auren Hoffman (32:09.253) But like, it seems like the measurement stuff has been like remarkably stable the last 15 years, like the same companies from 15 years ago are still the main ones today.

Bill Wise (32:19.566) Yeah. And by the way, just how many companies have tried to go after LiveRamp? There's a ton of companies. And listen, we've

Auren Hoffman (32:24.113) Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Why is that? Like, why? Because like in a very dynamic market where you think there would be a lot of changes there would be. But and I doubt like the incumbents are able to get us, you know, they're not they're probably on tech that's three generations ago. And they, you know, they probably have other things that are hampering them to move quickly. Like, why? Why are these incumbents so sticky?

Bill Wise (32:45.186) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill Wise (32:52.174) Well, and by the way, I don't know if you knew this, but we took a flyer on VideoAmp. So we own 10 % of VideoAmp about 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we liked what they were doing. At the time, they were like a video DSP that wanted to get into measurement. And then the minute they kind of their eyes on currency and raised a lot of money to go after Nielsen,

Auren Hoffman (33:00.243) I didn't know that. Okay.

Bill Wise (33:22.058) It just didn't make sense for us to be in that business anymore. And we ended up selling out our stake.

Auren Hoffman (33:28.048) you you have like this you got like a secondary transaction. good for you. wow. Cool.

Bill Wise (33:31.086) Yes. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a secondary transaction and and and yeah, and what I said was like at the time I said, you people who were talking about I spot video and I spot video, you know, like everyone like an NBC was like, hey, how do we create this whole like industry thing around, you know, beating down Nielsen and my take and I said this publicly was like, I wouldn't bet against Nielsen, right? Because there are moats.

Auren Hoffman (33:43.001) Yeah, I spot too. That's another comparison.

Bill Wise (34:00.236) which is if you have the buy side, the sell side and the intermediaries all agreeing on a currency, you know, and this is actually what LiveRamp has, right? There's a lot of people who are like, like LiveRamp, like move too slow, don't like the service. know, like, so, you know, companies that have incredibly high market share that are, that have created a moat are incredibly difficult to get out. Like, you know, as an individual participant.

Auren Hoffman (34:06.235) currency. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (34:28.037) Yeah, have to offer the company really has to screw it up. They really have to screw it up. Yeah.

Bill Wise (34:30.83) You really, yeah. And you gotta figure out what is your angle. And I think with Video Amp, they always said, this is a domino where I just need one of them to fall. So it was gonna be NBC, because they were the most vocal. And next thing you know, NBC renewed with Nielsen. After all years and years of kinda having their like, Gatescape, Loom Escape, whatever, around that stuff.

Auren Hoffman (34:54.873) Maybe it was good for NBC because I don't know what the, maybe it was a negotiating tactic and they renewed at a better rate or something. Yeah. Cause that's the problem is like if you're in your startup, never like these big guys like NBC, they just might be playing you to get a slightly better deal on their contract.

Bill Wise (35:00.59) 100 % 100 % and so so like, you know companies

Bill Wise (35:09.538) Yes.

Bill Wise (35:13.478) 100%. 100%. And then we saw it recently, right? Video app had another company about to go, created a scurry. They ended up resigning with Nielsen. And so companies who have created moats, very difficult to bring down. But as an industry, you should be leveraging these startups to tell Nielsen, like,

you're not the only choice, right? Even if they are the only choice, right? You want to make sure that companies who have high market share continue to invest, right? Or else the industry won't move forward. And if the industry doesn't move forward, we all lose, right? And so we had a small little competitor during the pandemic, and I credit them for making Medio Ocean a better company. We needed that competition. yeah, it was great.

Auren Hoffman (35:52.347) Yup.

Auren Hoffman (36:03.311) Yeah, yeah, lights a fire under you.

Bill Wise (36:08.022) and now they're no longer in business. we needed it for a couple of years.

Auren Hoffman (36:11.121) All right. Now you need a new one. Yeah. Yeah. It's it was interesting because in the, um, kind of in the credit finance world, like there, there's FICO, right? They have this currency and everyone else says, they're there. Their algorithms aren't very good. And, know, all these other, but like it does, in some ways it doesn't matter. It's like literally these loans are packaged by FICO scores. Like there's just no way, unless they really messed it up.

And they're incredibly well run the CEO is amazing. but like they'd really have to mess it up for to give like a huge opening for somebody else.

Bill Wise (36:46.49) By the way, so I had a, you know, we all have these various friend group, text groups, whatever. In one of the text groups, somebody said, hey, what's everyone's FICO score? And I was like, I have no effing clue what my FICO score is. So they're like, you can go to American Express, da da da da, go look it up. So everyone was sending each other their FICO scores. And I went and looked it up and like mine was like dreadfully low. And I kind of don't give a shit, but then it...

Auren Hoffman (37:01.296) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (37:14.577) I have no idea what mine is either because the fill us in.

Bill Wise (37:15.736) But by the way, then I, but this happened to me like seven weeks ago, eight weeks ago. And so it really bothered me. And so I basically spent like two hours and now I have a really high FICO score. So I'm, like, I'm back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, I felt like in a way I felt like, like just not good enough, right? I was like, I was like, I don't even want to tell me, I don't even want to say what my score was. Maybe you're, you're

Auren Hoffman (37:27.963) Are you just like, just to brag to your friends and stuff?

Auren Hoffman (37:39.345) Bye.

Bill Wise (37:43.21) Listeners can guess what it was but like now I have very now I like I beat there's one guy who like prided himself on his Figo score And I I couldn't get to his level No, no, I literally yeah, I call I call my I Call I call my bank. I'm like, me what's driving this and it was some car loan or that I was like no I paid that off like, you know, so I you can correct it you can correct it So I did I spent a couple hours of my time corrected it but you know

Auren Hoffman (37:44.549) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (37:51.377) So you just hack, you just hack the system or something or whatever, like, are you closed down these four credit cards or whatever?

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (38:05.509) Dolly. Yeah.

That's hilarious. It's funny. I have a buddy and sometimes when we go to dinner, he's like, everyone whip out your phone and and let's see your Uber rating. Yeah. And then he's like, whoever has the lowest Uber rating has to pay for this dinner or something like that. And then like one time I had like the lowest Uber. I'm like, I got it. I got to like be much nicer to the Uber driver. So I'm like giving him flowers and stuff to get my just so I can compete with this guy.

Bill Wise (38:20.723) yeah, yeah. dude, I'm always the highest.

Bill Wise (38:26.028) Love that. Love that.

Bill Wise (38:31.041) Yeah.

Bill Wise (38:37.006) That's a very common one. It's a very common one. I have a very high Uber rating. I happen to be pleasant. when I'm on, no, no, sometimes, oh, if you're on your laptop, yeah, that's like, your maximum rating is a four. You can't get a five if you're on your laptop. So there are times I'll be like, all right, let me take an Uber because I got to do this call. And I.

Auren Hoffman (38:40.73) you

Auren Hoffman (38:44.559) You seem like a very talkative guy. I'm like surly in the back of my laptop. Yeah.

I'm always on my laptop in the Uber, that's my problem.

Bill Wise (39:04.48) and I apologize in advance and I apologize when I leave. And everyone always is like, all good brother, I get it. But I make mention. I don't know what your, has the world gone crazy on tipping? Now I get a cup of coffee and it's like, how much tip do want to leave? And I feel guilty about saying none, like.

Auren Hoffman (39:06.768) wow.

Auren Hoffman (39:14.255) Yeah. And then you slip on the 20.

Auren Hoffman (39:24.582) my gosh, it's the worst.

Auren Hoffman (39:30.769) Yeah. First of all, like in Manhattan, like a cup of coffee is like $22 or something. So first of all, that's the problem in itself. I went to, I went the other day at cafe. I got a cup of coffee. was like over 10 bucks. like, this is insane. Like what is going on? Then of course, then you, of course you have to tip 25 % or something. And it's like, it's, they watch you tip, right? It's not like, it's not like on the slide. They're like watching you do it. Otherwise they're going to spit in your coffee. If you don't give them a good tip.

Bill Wise (39:35.086) Yeah.

Bill Wise (39:43.425) Insane. Insane.

Bill Wise (39:48.982) I don't know.

Bill Wise (39:56.402) You got it, you got it. Like tipping has gotten out of control. That being said, the cost of living has gotten out of control and we need people to continue. So we need to pay good wages.

Auren Hoffman (40:03.387) That's true. Yeah. Good point. We need to pay good wage. Yeah. So I don't know what the answer is. We're going to have a while. Although the way modes are the answer. Maybe the.

Bill Wise (40:13.09) Well, and I don't know where we are on this, I guess everyone ran on tips will not be taxed.

Auren Hoffman (40:19.705) Right, it's true.

Bill Wise (40:21.516) So I don't know where we are on that, but you know.

Auren Hoffman (40:22.939) That's a good point. So they, they, they should just do, they should, they should make the price lower and then they should make the, the, tips 100%. Right. That would be the smart move to, they should do that. Like the private schools to just lower the tuition and then just like encourage you to just donate a massive amount. So, right. Like there's all these ways, I guess, to tax it. Yeah. To give the system. Now we, we had a.

Bill Wise (40:37.902) He.

Bill Wise (40:42.862) Oh, it's a game of the system. I like your thinking. Game of the system. I like it. I like it.

Auren Hoffman (40:48.537) Tim Vanderhoek could see a vine on recently and he thought like a linear TV is just really just going through this implosion over the last few years. Like, where do see that industry going?

Bill Wise (40:59.404) I love me some Tim Vanderhoof, but he comes out with his audacious sayings or whatever.

Auren Hoffman (41:05.425) He is the best brand, you know, his ticker is, is, is DSP. I mean, that's so brilliant. Like what a brilliant marketer. Yeah.

Bill Wise (41:10.126) No, no, so no, no, no. OK, OK, so first off, his ticker is DSP. Innovate's ticker was CTV, right? But here, I'm going to go on record as saying terrible, terrible strategy. By the way, those companies are both trading below. were like, know, Innovate went.

Auren Hoffman (41:18.364) that's a good ticker too. Wow. Okay.

Auren Hoffman (41:25.891) really?

Auren Hoffman (41:30.545) Because Salesforce is CRM. mean, that's a pretty, that's worked out pretty well for them, I think. Yeah. Okay.

Bill Wise (41:34.446) Salesforce is the exception. You want the association to be with the name of your company and the brand. So it's like, it's Viant. So let me just, V-I-A. No, it's DSP. What the hell is that? So those of us in the industry think it's cute and it's nice and it's awesome. People who are stock traders who have no idea what the company does or very limited, don't even know what a DSP is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would argue...

Auren Hoffman (41:39.675) good brand. Okay.

Auren Hoffman (41:49.187) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (41:58.811) Right, right, right. They don't even know, they don't know what DSP means. Yeah, yeah.

Bill Wise (42:04.428) Like and I've been thinking about this because I love CTV. I loved like when they first came out. had the same idea Phenomenal tickers. I think they're both trading below their IPO price. I go on record as saying if if Mediocean goes public, we're not gonna do cute We're gonna do something that represents Mediocean Yeah, okay

Auren Hoffman (42:20.625) Interesting. Okay. So like the, the, the MSFT for Microsoft, that's the better strategy than software or whatever the, you know, a soft could be or something like that. Okay.

Bill Wise (42:26.382) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. 100%. And I agree. think Salesforce did a wonderful job being like, not this, we're not that. Like it's software as a service. So they pushed the CRM and I thought it was a great, they did a great job. I think that's the exception, not the rule. Don't be cute. If you're not a 30, 40, $50 billion company, don't be cute. You want name recognition, Viant.

Auren Hoffman (42:43.248) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (42:47.631) Okay, interesting.

Bill Wise (42:55.512) do something that, and buddy.

Auren Hoffman (42:56.705) If you're not a 30, $40 billion company, should you even be going public nowadays? So tough.

Bill Wise (43:01.486) Well, you know, it all depends on your investor basis, you're an investor, like, you know, private equity buys and sells companies for a living. have to exit, right?

Auren Hoffman (43:10.201) Yeah, but they have other opportunities for other private buyers to buy it and other partial exits.

Bill Wise (43:14.85) But you get to a certain level, like if we're expecting Medio Ocean to be worth, you know, six, eight, 10, $12 billion, like there's a limit on the number of companies that can pay that price. So, you know, at some point you have to go down the path of IPO, right? But anyway, but...

Auren Hoffman (43:27.194) Yeah.

You just have no choice. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's so tough to be a subs, you know, slower than 10 billion market cap public company. It's just so hard.

Bill Wise (43:41.038) Even with like small cap NASDAQ, like if you're worth under a billion, it's like, you're not going to get the analyst coverage. You're not going to get, you know, kind of the supply. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you got to be, you know, it used to be like, Hey, you get to a billion dollars, you have, you know, and you're a high grower. Now it's like, you got to be worth at least five. I think you're right. Five billion is the low end of companies that should go public, you know? But getting back to Timmy Vanderhook, the, you know, people have been calling for the death of linear television.

Auren Hoffman (43:47.737) Yeah, I don't think you'll get it under five or 10 billion nowadays. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (43:56.911) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (44:00.761) Yep. Yeah, it's really, really tough.

Bill Wise (44:10.574) for years. we, so, you know, when MediaOcean, the inception of MediaOcean, which was the merger of DDS and MediaBank, which is the venture funded company I was running, we've collectively been processing $70 billion of television for 15 years now. And, you people have been calling for the death and, as eyeballs shift, it's going to shift. Guess what? It hasn't. It was 70 billion 15 years ago. It's 70 billion today.

Auren Hoffman (44:40.325) So the eyeballs are shifting, but the dollars are steady.

Bill Wise (44:42.242) Yes, because it's the most effective, like other than search, it's the most effective form of advertising. It's site sound and motion. It's upper funnel. You can elicit emotion. You can drive sales. It's tonnage. It's brand marketing. It's direct marketing.

Auren Hoffman (44:59.441) But you can do that in CTV too. You don't have to do it on linear TV and linear TV is, mean, I don't know anybody under the age of 65 that watches linear TV. I'm sure there are some people, but I don't know anybody. I've never met anybody under the age of 65 who buy linear TV.

Bill Wise (45:03.608) Yes. So as.

Bill Wise (45:10.76) Stop it. By the way, know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, But by the way, I had this I did this class and I was like talking about like who the top actor was on prime time television last year. And you know who that you know, so people start talking like Rob Lowe and Grey's Anatomy people, isn't that? No, the top actor in terms of ratings was Lamar Jackson. Right.

Auren Hoffman (45:28.303) Brav-lo.

Auren Hoffman (45:32.549) Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (45:39.089) Mar Jackson. Oh, right. Of course. I mean, of course everything is football. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not all sports. It's like, it's all, it's all, it's all football. Nobody, nobody watches the NBA even the average, the rating. mean, that also NBA is so boring. I mean, it's so boring football. So amazing, but like, you're right. It's like, it's like, it's like 99 of the top 100 is football.

Bill Wise (45:40.62) Because now network television is all sports, right?

Bill Wise (45:50.913) NUTS!

Yeah, well, ratings are down. Ratings are down.

Bill Wise (46:04.6) Yes, yes.

Auren Hoffman (46:05.487) And most of it's NFL, maybe a few great college football games on there as well. Yeah. And then of course, yeah, I've been, doesn't want to watch Lamar Jackson? mean, the guy is amazing. Like I love watching Lamar Jackson. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Wise (46:08.876) No, football is there. But you know.

Bill Wise (46:14.582) Amazing amazing amazing and by the way, you just moved to DC recently and so like the commanders like they they were Dude they had a great year the great year. I love I love the NFL I love it but anyway, my point is that people have been calling the death and and so yes I I do look at so 15 years ago, you know the quote-unquote TV market was 70 billion today the TV market

Auren Hoffman (46:20.281) Right. Right. I get, I get, I can watch him live. Yeah. Yeah. Though I'd prefer it. Right. The commanders, right. Jayden Daniels. Like, I mean, these are amazing athletes. Yeah. Yeah. It's, amazing watching.

Bill Wise (46:44.078) is a quarter trillion dollars, right? Because we still have that 70 billion dollars of linear. We have 40 billion of CTV. We have 100 billion of online video. Right. And so so now like, you know, when I said like MediaOcean wants to be the next generation television company, it's it's like, you know, so naturally that 70 billion will continue will go down as and but but CTV will gain it. Right. And so I look at the TV market is going from 70 billion to a quarter trillion.

Auren Hoffman (46:46.555) Yeah.

Bill Wise (47:13.944) to a half a trillion to a trillion, right? And that's the market that we wanna have incredible, yeah. Yeah, and then the question is how do you transact? so, companies like Viant or DSP as their ticker symbol represents, wants to be the lion's share of that. But the reality of it is there's gonna be a...

Auren Hoffman (47:15.665) Yeah, yeah, that's inevitable. Yeah. So whether it's linear or CTV, like it doesn't really matter for your case. Yeah.

Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (47:29.765) Yeah

Bill Wise (47:39.04) a lot of DSPs that matter, right? Obviously Google has DV360, you Trade Desk, now Amazon has their DSP, the Yahoo DSP is great, Vient is, I think Vient's a great company, I'm a shareholder. So there's gonna be fragmentation there, and so we believe there needs to be a system of record and there needs to be an ad server that will feed one of the five, six, eight, 10 DSPs.

Auren Hoffman (48:00.631) You mentioned your shareholder and viant. How does that work? Can you be a shareholder personally or how does it work? so you're allowed to do that. I don't even know how these things work when you're CEO of these things.

Bill Wise (48:06.018) Personally, no, no, personally, personally.

Bill Wise (48:12.258) The the the I'm just a supporter of the industry. I'm a shareholder of

Auren Hoffman (48:15.057) Okay. So you just buy, you just buy, you just buy the market, right? Okay. You're, you're an app loving, you're in a trade desk and everything. Okay. Okay. Live arm. Okay. Got it. Okay. You're just long in the industry. You just support her. Okay. Cheerleader.

Bill Wise (48:18.318) I know about it. Yeah, I know. I'm in I'm in live ramp. I'm you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm long the industry. Here's the deal. I a few a few years ago, I was like, I coined the term that I always buy at the 51 week low, because the minute I buy it, I am the worst public company investor. So I then took a different approach, which is I'm bullish on my industry. So I'm just going to start buying companies that that are public companies.

Auren Hoffman (48:35.27) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (48:45.22) Everything. Yeah.

Bill Wise (48:47.394) that I think are good. you know, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (48:48.433) But you buy them individually rather than like there's cause like, I don't even think there's a good, um, you know, there, there's not like a good ETF to buy ad tech or something that I know of. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Which probably should be, you know, I don't know why there isn't there should be, cause it's a great, have been a good one. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I'll do that on the side. Yeah. Another thing to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Wise (48:57.644) No, no, no, no, not at all. Not at all. I think Terry Kowaja wanted to do something like that. Yeah, there probably should be. Well, maybe you can do it. Yeah. Yeah. As if you don't have more things going on. And then I said, I'm just going to buy products I love and use. And so I love Uber. I love Uber Eats. I love Uber. I bought Uber. And I love Netflix. I bought Netflix. So the minute I stopped trying to be intelligent,

Auren Hoffman (49:19.279) Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great.

Auren Hoffman (49:25.733) Cause then it's fun. Then it's just like, then it's just like fun. Yeah.

Bill Wise (49:27.692) Yeah, yeah. No, the minute I stopped applying intelligence to my stock buying, I actually became more successful. And here's the other thing is B2C brands have the ability to trade at way more than what they're worth. So I bought a Tesla, whatever it was, four or five years ago, loved it. I was like, let me buy Tesla.

Auren Hoffman (49:33.178) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (49:49.04) Yep.

Bill Wise (49:50.432) If I like the old me would have been like Tesla is so overvalued like they were worth more than all auto companies combined. It's stupid. They're not a tech company. They're an auto company. Like it's stupid. You shouldn't do it's irrational. But the new investor who's who's just like I love Tesla's I'm going to buy Tesla stock. I love Netflix. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (49:54.82) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (50:04.561) It's like, love, I love the cars. Right. Yeah. I mean, their cars are amazing. Right. Their cars are amazing. So like, yeah, it's kind of fun for this. It's fun to join the, I wouldn't put like, you know, 50 % of your net worth in it or something, but like, you know, it's fun to be along for the ride. Why not? Yeah. You know, remember like Peter Lynch, like the fidelity guy from like the eighties and nineties. He was like the most famous kind of investor. That was like exactly his strategy. He's like, find the brand you love.

Bill Wise (50:18.796) No, no, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, exactly. So.

Auren Hoffman (50:34.299) Dig into them because they may not all be perfect, but find the ones you love and you know, whatever, Dunkin Donuts or whatever it is, and then buy those by the stocks. Yes. Okay. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I love that. Now, now a decade ago, like a most probably most of your customers were at least from the media or several agencies. Now I'm sure that's changed over time. Like how, how is that evolving?

Bill Wise (50:41.176) Starbucks. I'm an investor in Starbucks. I love my Starbucks. So yeah, it's an easy strategy.

Bill Wise (50:59.598) So when we sold the company to Vista in 2015, yeah, wow, 10 years ago, the agencies were 100 % of our revenue and the six holding companies were 91 % of our

Auren Hoffman (51:04.144) 10 years ago.

Auren Hoffman (51:12.017) 100%.

Auren Hoffman (51:16.514) my gosh, wow.

Bill Wise (51:18.382) Today, agencies are about 42 % of our revenue and the holding companies are 35 % of our revenue. So we've done a really good job diversifying the business. 82 % of all.

Auren Hoffman (51:28.433) Wow, okay. That's a huge difference.

Yeah. Now, portion also because they are less important than they were. Right. So they're, mean, they're still obviously very important, very, but they're, they're less central to everything than they were as well as well. Right.

Bill Wise (51:44.418) Well, no, I wouldn't say that. I would say marketers are leaning in and making technology and data decisions themselves. So this whole in-housing is not really, it's not fingers on keyboards in-housing, it is like brand marketers, like blue chip marketers care about their data and care about where their data is going. they know that's going to fuel an AI strategy, et cetera.

And so they desperately want to control that. But agencies continue to be fingers on keyboards. They continue to ride shotgun on these decisions. They have to interoperate. And so I think it's become more complex. And I think agencies have a great opportunity right now. The companies that are embracing AI identity, audiences data, like publicists are crushing it. Now Omnicom, GroupM,

Auren Hoffman (52:36.411) Yeah.

Bill Wise (52:40.084) know, Dentsu, you know, very quickly following path. And I think pendulums will start switching there.

Auren Hoffman (52:47.919) Yeah. Interesting. All right. Few personal questions. The first we were talking about this before we started taping. why is Walter's hot dog the best hot dog in the world? You and I both have an affinity for Walter's hot dog. It's so good. Right.

Bill Wise (53:01.531) So Walter's hot dog so those of you I lived in large month for two decades Orrin grew up in large Mont and so yeah So a lot of times we'd have a lot of conversations about Walters hot dogs, which is an establishment. It's just a

Auren Hoffman (53:14.961) Yeah, it's right across the street from the high school. So if you go to high school, you just like walk across the street, give yourself a hot dog. Yeah. Yeah, by far. Yeah. And they, they, they, they slice it down the middle, which I think is part of like, and no one else really does that for some reason. I don't know why it's like not that hard to do, but it's the key to making the flavor go.

Bill Wise (53:20.536) Single best hot dog in the world. By far, it's not even close.

Bill Wise (53:34.892) Yeah, it's an extra step in the process, you know in the supply chain of making you know, and you know, but it's also the secret sauce on top of splitting the hot dog down the middle, you know, and ever you know Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So now listen, so I've since moved on from large mon as as have you so I probably I probably lost five pounds just not being near Walter's hot dogs

Auren Hoffman (53:36.857) Right. So it makes it more expensive. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (53:44.121) Yeah, have better mustard and yeah.

Auren Hoffman (53:59.132) It's a point. there's pluses and minuses of Walter's hot dogs. All right. Two questions. We ask all of our guests. What conspiracy theory do you believe?

Bill Wise (54:01.942) Yeah, yeah.

Bill Wise (54:09.262) What can, oh my God, I now I really wish I had looked at the questions before this. By the, I am a terrible guess, I apologize. The, God, what can, by the way, can you give me an example of like, just to start, my brain thinking?

Auren Hoffman (54:13.039) I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're bad gas because you look at all the questions we sent you ahead of time.

Auren Hoffman (54:24.335) mean, some people will, you know, they'll talk about the UFOs, the JFK, right. But then somebody will have like, you know, the big food is against us. And, know, they're making us eat all this crap. Yeah, everyone's got their own kind of conspiracy, but there's ad tech conspiracies. Right. There's a Google conspiracy, right. There's lots of little ones. College, you know,

Bill Wise (54:27.992) Yeah, yeah.

Bill Wise (54:42.83) It's a little, you know, so I, God, I got to really think about this, but the, like, I was actually thinking about it literally last week, just about like AI, you know, and I kept thinking like, you know, I was thinking one, there should be kind of some sort of Bill of Rights around AI, but it would have to be a global Bill of Rights, right? Because I think AI could be the greatest thing ever. It also could like, you know, be a threat to humanity.

And then I was thinking, God, wasn't it great back in the day when the government, when people trusted the government as opposed to today, where like the government would just work on shit, like, you know, behind closed doors, not telling anyone about it. And you got, and he actually trusted them to do that because it was the right thing for. Yeah, exactly. So, so I think like, to a certain extent, like I think there's a lot of conspiracies that I do believe in. And, and it's mostly because

Auren Hoffman (55:18.385) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (55:28.239) the Manhattan Project or something.

Bill Wise (55:38.99) We had trust around institutions and governments that we no longer have today. And we had a lot more confidence. And in a weird way, transparency isn't necessarily the best thing when it comes to certain people that you trust working on something that could be. So I, for one, was like, obviously, there's gain of.

Auren Hoffman (55:42.246) Yeah.

Competence, we had competence.

Bill Wise (56:04.898) gain-of-function research happening at the Wuhan virus. And obviously, that's where COVID started from. at some point, and because it's it's like, duh, you know, but at some point, that was a conspiracy. So I guess that's the conspiracy. Yeah. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (56:08.113) Yeah, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (56:17.413) Right. It started as a conspiracy. It started as a fringe belief, but now I feel like 90 % of people in the US believe it, right? So it's no longer fringe anymore. Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah.

Bill Wise (56:23.554) Yeah. Yeah, so because I didn't do my homework, I'm going to use that. But I actually think there's a lot of conspiracies that I kind of believe in.

Auren Hoffman (56:31.599) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. There's a, there's a few I have, but they might get me fired as a CEO. So I can't say them publicly. our last, last question we ask all of our guests, what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Bill Wise (56:37.484) Yeah.

Bill Wise (56:46.798) Oh, it's bad advice. You took me for a loop there. You know, like I actually got into a little squabble of the great Professor Galloway, you know, because I'm a passionate guy and I think passion's great. and he and he challenged he threw out a challenge, which was like the only people who tell you to follow your passion are like rich, successful people like and and then I started thinking about it like

Auren Hoffman (57:12.879) Yeah, yeah.

Bill Wise (57:16.462) I didn't follow my passion. I studied accounting because I went to college right after the recession of the late 80s and the only people getting jobs were like teachers and accountants. And so even though I hated accounting and like, it brought down my GPA because I wasn't very good at it, I became an accounting major because I wanted a job. and then that accounting major, then I got it. Yeah. And then like, I became a CPA because that's what accounting major is supposed to do. And it's a really hard professional exam.

Auren Hoffman (57:35.129) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Necessity breeds some invention sometimes, yeah.

Bill Wise (57:45.782) And then it took me years to get rid of the CPA because I was an accountant. But then I joined an internet startup in the mid-90s and nobody really had any financial acuant at the time. And so I kind of rose to prominence because I actually knew how to run a P &L and what it meant. And these media businesses where you were paying publishers 70 % was never going to make money.

Auren Hoffman (58:06.277) Yeah

Bill Wise (58:15.798) You know, so I actually didn't follow my passion. I actually learned something that would get me a job. And so I think that's I think that's the one is like father.

Auren Hoffman (58:26.693) Yeah, I see like someone, they don't fire your pressure. But otherwise, like don't be in a business that you don't like either. Right. Like you're probably, you probably worked with good people that you enjoyed, you know, mostly and you know.

Bill Wise (58:37.486) Yeah. But I also say, when I used to say it, is like, you could be passionate about an industry, you can be passionate about your clients, you can be passionate about your colleagues, you can be passionate about like, if you're an IT guy, you can be passionate about the things you do in IT or engineering. So following your passion is like, you have to love what you do. I always say, I spend more time with the people I work with just by the math.

Auren Hoffman (58:49.103) Yeah, totally.

Bill Wise (59:05.826) Right? Of like, even if you don't work that, like if you just work like nine to six, you just by the function of how much sleep you need and that you end up spending more time with the people you work with than you do your family. And I love my family. So I better love what I do. You know?

Auren Hoffman (59:17.756) Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. This has been great. Thank you, Bill Wise for joining us on World of daaS. I follow you at Bill Wise on X. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage you there. This has been a ton of fun. It's been great.

Bill Wise (59:31.448) Thanks, Auren.