We are here at eTail Palm Springs and seeing and hearing the latest and greatest in e-commerce and retail.
This year, many advertisers – especially retailers — are being asked to do more with less. At the same time they have smaller budgets, they also must contend with an astonishing amount of waste: nearly 2/3 of every ad dollar spent actually goes toward the end inventory, and up to 15% of total spend goes to fraud or made-for-advertising content.
Today we’re going to talk about what to do about all of those wasted ad dollars. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Matt Wasserlauf, CEO at Blockboard.
Resources
Blockboard: https://www.blockboard.com
eTail Palm Springs: https://etailwest.wbresearch.com/
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Transcript
This was AI-generated and only lightly edited
Greg Kihlstrom:
We are here at eTail Palm Springs and seeing and hearing the latest and greatest in e-commerce and retail. This year, many advertisers and retailers are being asked to do more with less. At the same time, they have smaller budgets. They also must contend with an astonishing amount of waste. Nearly two-thirds of every ad dollar spent actually goes towards the end inventory, and up to 15% of total spend goes to fraud or made-for-advertising content. Today, we’re going to talk about what to do about all those wasted ad dollars. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Matt Wasserlauff, CEO at Blockboard. Matt, welcome to the show. Thanks, Greg. Happy to be here. Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Before we dive in, though, why don’t you give us a little background on yourself and your role at Blockboard?
Matt Wasserlauf: I’m the pioneer in video advertising. 25 years ago, I put some of the biggest brands in online video. And 25 years later, or should I say six years ago, I started Blockboard. We at Blockboard rebuilt the entire digital ad ecosystem on the blockchain. And today we’re combining blockchain and artificial intelligence to drive amazing outcomes for our marketers.
Greg Kihlstrom: Nice, nice, love it. Well, yeah, let’s dive in here. And I want to start by talking about the challenge that I posed in the intro. You know, wasted ad dollars generate less than optimal outcomes. And in an environment where marketers are being asked to do more with less, this waste is going to be very detrimental to, you know, the retailers we’re talking with today at Etail, as well as many others and their ad campaign success this year. So why don’t we start with, you know, how bad is this issue exactly?
Matt Wasserlauf: It’s it’s horrific. Eighty four billion dollars to be exact. That’s a juniper research number. Eighty four billion dollars of advertising is getting wasted. So we attack we attack the problem. We’ve solved the problem. And so our marketers who really are focused on outcomes like sales and leads and that’s why we’re here at eTail. They’re enjoying the benefits of no waste. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom: So, what’s the typical, like, paint the picture for, you know, what’s the typical, like, pre-blockboard solution for marketers that, you know, they know there’s this issue? I mean, this has been a well-documented issue. How are they trying to solve it before?
Matt Wasserlauf: Before Blackboard, you would use a verification company. So the biggest are DoubleVerify, IAS, Integral Ad Science, Moat was one. And you would pay them to look at all of your ad delivery and tell you where it was well spent and where it wasn’t well spent. The problem with those services is they’re manual. And they’re very cumbersome. And they don’t provide you real-time results. You have to analyze that post-buy. So it hasn’t been a very good solution. And for the past 15 years, what really it’s allowed is for this problem to grow to $84 billion.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and that 84 billion dollars on the advertisers. And I mean, that’s that’s huge. That impacts a lot. What about the consumer?
Matt Wasserlauf: Yeah, the consumer, the consumer is really not the victim here, although I will say the consumer’s experience in streaming in particular, is suboptimal. If you’re watching a sports or even the shows on Netflix and what have you, they’re not great experiences. They’re interruptive. There’s high frequency with these marketers. You’ll see the same ad many, many times. So there’s a lot to improve for the consumer. But really, the biggest losers in all of this have been the marketers.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about Blockboard Solution here and how you solve for this. I know you briefly mentioned, but talk a little bit about Blockboard and where it kind of fits into this process.
Matt Wasserlauf: Sure. You know, we’re six years old. We’ve become a much bigger company because our advertisers are really happy. What we’re doing is we’re making every dollar for them work. So, a lot of our customers are challenger brands who are really focused on making their dollar work out there. We work with great agencies who are really focused on their clients and their clients’ business. So, we’re having a lot of fun helping marketers really leverage this incredible new medium, which is streaming CTV. We’re driving outcomes the focus being on KPIs that are sales and leads and really helping them build their businesses So it’s been a great six years
Greg Kihlstrom: Can you talk a little bit about, you know, you mentioned it’s built on AI and blockchain. Can you talk a little, I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with some applications of blockchain, but how is blockchain used kind of in this?
Matt Wasserlauf: Right, you know, so pre-Sam Bankman-Fried, I tried to educate the world on really the best use case of blockchain, which is security. Okay, security, it’s not cryptocurrency. It’s all about securing the back end. And that’s why I chose Ethereum blockchain to be particular for our enterprise here. So, Blockboard is built on Ethereum. We use, on Ethereum, we use a smart contract, which is really a digital insertion order. It’s a piece of code that has the parameters of the marketer’s goals. and campaign and quickly, in less than 33 milliseconds, we secure the ad call that they want and we drive and deliver their ads. And that process on a smart contract is the key to the kingdom.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. Well, and, you know, so talk a little bit about the results that the customers are seeing because of that.
Matt Wasserlauf: So we have amazing customers. Proactive Skin Care was our first that tested not only blockchain, but AI. So, you know, the key in this is really the blockchain providing security so that when you tap AI and the potential of accelerating those outcomes, there are guardrails in place. So, proactive, in one month, sales went up 217% and they’ve been our biggest customer ever since. They continue to see improvement. One of the real exciting parts of AI is it’s removing diminishing returns. Typically, when you’re trying to drive outcomes, you may accelerate those outcomes and over time, you might see them diminish. AI is removing diminishing returns. It’s unbelievable and proactive is enjoying that.
Greg Kihlstrom: And is that just because of like machine learning?
Matt Wasserlauf: Yes.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah.
Matt Wasserlauf: Yes. It’s machine learning. It’s always improving. So rather than relying on our team, we have a great team of 80 people and it’s great for them to understand how to optimize campaigns and do all that work. But now that we’re tapping AI and it’s taking it out of their hands and they’re looking at everything else that we haven’t been looking at, it’s been a real accelerator for us.
Greg Kihlstrom: And real quick on that part, it sounds like AI frees up the team to do other things. How do you think about that kind of relationship?
Matt Wasserlauf: Yeah, I don’t think it’s a threat to humanity. And I want to share with your listeners on this podcast, embrace it as a real opportunity. And if you get learned on AI, it’s going to be a great opportunity for you. So we’re seeing that for the 80 of us at Blackboard. We’re understanding the potential of this great new technology, and we’re using it and educating our customers and our marketers and our marketing partners on how to really leverage it. So it’s a great opportunity for our industry here at eTail.
Greg Kihlstrom: That’s great. That’s great. So lots of people listening out there are advertising already. How do they start? working with you, like what’s the way?
Matt Wasserlauf: We pride ourselves in ease. I mean, you know, it’s just a matter of touching base with us and us finding you. And when we do find you, it usually starts with a test, a test that with a budget that you’re comfortable with and you’ll see the impact right away. And so it’s it becomes a fun exercise for, you know, proactive being the example we’ve been talking about here. You know, in one month they saw sales go up 217 percent. And it was a very fun and exciting conversation going forward.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. So, I want to get your thoughts a little bit on where we go from here. So, your platform uses blockchain, uses AI, I’m sure it uses a bunch of other tech as well. Where do you kind of see this technology continuing to improve this big challenge of fraud and waste?
Matt Wasserlauf: Right. Unfortunately, it’s not going fast enough. Our industry is, you know, I’m talking about the digital ad industry is very entrenched. You know, a lot of people spent a lot of time and a lot of money building tech stacks. And so, everyone is more or less reticent to change or hesitant to change. And, you know, All we can do is, one at a time, finding customers like Proactiv who are interested in this new technology and testing and learning. Those are our customers, but it is happening, for my taste, much too slowly.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you think there’s, on the marketer’s side, do you think there’s reluctance to use too much AI too quickly, or is it more just a matter of education?
Matt Wasserlauf: No, I think we’ve been slow to use it. I think the industry views it as a threat to their jobs. And so, you know, I’m trying to re-educate those who I get a chance to talk to and hear on this podcast. I mean, it’s an amazing opportunity. And when done right, it has unbelievable impact. We have to find like-minded people.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks so much for joining. One last question for you before we wrap up. I’d like to ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Matt Wasserlauf: to stay agile to survive. We are in a very hyper-connected world, but we’re also in a world that has lots of different challenges, and we have to continually look to be better, learn, understand new ways of doing things. You have to be agile to survive in this world, and I’m doing it every single day.
