Programmatic Reimagined: Rebuilding Trust Through Transparency with @‌Curate's Rhys Denny

Speaker A: Hosted by Ed Steer and Dan Boulter, uh, Life in Digital explores the ever changing media landscape with today's industry leaders. We'd like to thank our sponsors Revving the Solution, enabling flexible access to revenue and greater control over capital across the digital economy through their transactional based funding model.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to another Life in Digital podcast series. Here with us at Sphere. I'm um, really lucky to be joined by Greece Denny today CEO and founder of Accurate. Reece, thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker A: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

Speaker B: Have you had a good day today?

Speaker A: Not too bad, not too bad. The sun's coming out so you know the heat wave's coming so we're excited.

Speaker B: And REEC was saying he's been training for the media for a night this morning. Let's see.

Speaker A: Look out for him. We'll see, we'll see. Yeah, well, fingers crossed.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well thanks so much for joining us Rhys. Um, I guess to kick things off, if you want to tell us a little bit about your background and kind of what led you to uh, founding Accurate.

Speaker A: Yeah, um, I mean how far back do you want to go? I was actually selling Grace. We just came in. I think my first ever job was actually in recruitment so.

Speaker B: Really?

Speaker A: Yeah. When I graduated a few years back, now we won't say that. Yeah, I was doing recruiting for engineers so uh, I don't know how I got into that. Um, and then the natural career progression into ad tech um, is obviously a slower. But um, it's been a bit of a, been Programmatic M and ad tech now for probably crikey sort of 2011, 2012 times. So started out at Adjug for a little bit. Um, so that was ah, the ad network days and then was then very fortunate enough to join Pubmatic. So um, when we were sort of like four or five in the UK at the time when I joined. So really open doors where it was uh, you know the SSPs, you chose one or the other head of bidding was a dream that didn't exist yet and it was uh, going back in and trying uh, to sort of compete with the big dogs like Rubicon and Ab Meld who had sort of foothold. Uh, so we were there for a bit and then um, was at LoopMe for a short time and then Veuve as Veuve was previous uh, incarnation which was in app location business. Um then GDPR came uh, and uh, there was no more in application business in the UK and Europe so we all lost our jobs. Um, and then on the back of that um Co founded a business called redbud with a few of the guys who were at the team with me, uh, Chloe and Ian and a few of the guys there. Um, we did that for a couple of years and then we're very fortunate to be acquired by SourcePoint out of the US M which was just, I suppose in the midst of COVID which uh, was odd timing and the rest of it, um, did a few years there with the team, grew out and embedded the sort of technology together, which is really exciting. Um, and then around two and a half years ago, was itching to give myself some more stress and uh, make life more difficult for myself again. So thought well, let's co found another business. So uh, we had the idea of uh, evacuate. We saw some opportunities in the market and I thought, well, there's something here that we can build and go from there. Uh, and here we are two and a half years later.

Speaker B: Yeah, nice. Amazing. About two and a half years you said. So what was the original thinking behind it? What kind of problems in the Programmatic space trying to address when you first launched?

Speaker A: It was quite interesting when. So I think we were having conversations around where we sort of thought the market was going. And I think at the time curation wasn't this all encompassing word that it was. I think it was still, you know, fairly new. Ish. So we were either smart or lucky. I don't know which one. But as we literally, as we sort of seemed that we launched the business, it seemed to grow and explode around. Curation was sort of the hot topic of the moment and we saw opportunities in sort of how businesses were structured or how the sort curation space was going. Um, a lot of feedback we were getting was around the ability to have more transparency or control. Um, current incumbents are doing great jobs and growing. But we wanted to have a slightly different take on where we saw there was an opportunity for us that was very much around, um, focusing on more like an infrastructure type play, um, and empowering other people to um, utilize our technology to grow out their own sort of curation offering from there. So we wanted to sort of take a slightly different tack to sort of what was currently in the sort of space.

Speaker B: Nice. Yeah. Uh, yeah. And I know with Programmatic it was originally designed to kind of help the industry become more efficient.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: How do you think it got so complex?

Speaker A: I've been thinking about this one and it's, I suppose it's how you unpack it is how deep you want to go. I think, you know, humans are humans. Are funny creatures. We like what we like. So I think that's where the benefit of the likes of, you know, a meta or a Google or a closed wall garden ecosystem know works. But again, I think on the same time, we don't really like being told what to do. So I think if you're going down the line of saying we can only work in one silo, I don't think people generally like that. So I think the opportunity to go and target outside walled gardens and see how we can improve efficiency for partners is a compelling one. I don't think the industry has become complex by design. I think it's actually because of opportunity. I think the market moves really quickly. As we sort of said earlier, like curation was hot by minute and now is commoditized. Everyone talks about it. There's always something new to play with. But that brings opportunity. So I think, which is great. So there's a lot of companies that see opportunities spin up, have a slightly different view on how they do things, and that becomes opportunities for buyers and other people to sort of test and try out. It doesn't necessarily mean it's, um, you know, complex to confuse people. It's complex because there's opportunity. Um, so there's a lot. You know, you look at the Lumascape over the last sort of, you know, five, 10 years and the difference between where it was then, where it is now is huge because of opportunity. And I think there's so many good companies and good businesses that have spun out of that and a lot of options. Exactly that. And it becomes difficult because it becomes choice paralysis. Sometimes if you're a buyer and looking to know where to go, because you could have a couple of companies that look at the same problem and have four different ways of solving for it, um, which route A might work for partner A and route B might work for partner C. So again, this opportunity is great. It creates, um, the chance for new businesses to grow and add value. Um, but I think the flip of that is it adds complexity and difficulty. And when everyone is time poor and strange anyway, that then becomes a challenge. So it's an opportunity and a challenge. I don't think it's by design. Um, I think it's because we work in industry where opportunity is abundant and, um, lots of people can have different ways of solving the same problem, might create a few more problems. But, you know, that's, uh, that's the nature of the beast, I suppose.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And then I guess there's like kind of that Leads into kind of transparency as well. There's a lot of scrutiny around that with media buying.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Why do you think kind of trust and stuff has become such an issue?

Speaker A: I think it kind of plays into that and I think it's, I think you look at. So to go back maybe to sort of the redbird days of when we sort of launched that business. The idea around that was to highlight some of the hidden complexities that uh, was on a website page, you know, because of calls over here or integrations that aren't necessarily always visible. And I think that's kind of where the ecosystem has kind of sort of spun this thing out. I think it becomes complicated because you might think you're partnering with X, but actually they may be partnered with Y and Z in the back end and these things come in which again creates opportunity. But I think that's when you break it down. There's maybe this, that element of okay, well actually who is doing what on my page and who is getting access to information that maybe they shouldn't be. How is that being traded? If a lot of that is being traded with a, uh, percentage type based model as well? How much of my working media is actually going to be working media? How much of that is being taken by intermediaries in the middle that I might know about or I don't know about?

Speaker B: And there are agencies and brands asking that. Is that something that's at the forefront?

Speaker A: Yeah, but I think it's becoming a much bigger conversation all the time. I mean look what's happening in the DSP space at the moment. Um, you know, obviously not to call anybody out, but you know, there's certain companies that are growing. Definitely not. They're far bigger, they're far bigger than me. But again, I don't think necessarily, you know, again, it goes back to that point. Opportunity comes, businesses grow and thrive and then, you know, things change, models change. I think if you're then um, you know, potentially sort of taking more out than is deemed to be necessary or transparent or what's in there? Uh, sorry, what's believed to be, uh, fair, then it creates a bit distrust. So I think it's. We built our model on a fixed fee basis. So we don't charge a percentage of working media. We charge a fixed fee for our services. I think that again, I'm biased on that, but we believe that is a fairer way of adding value. If we're transacting on a CPM that is higher than um, another campaign, we're not doing anything different for that campaign, we're doing the same thing. So us taking more out as intermediary I don't believe necessarily is a fair way of doing things. Um, I'm not saying the whole market is moving that way or changing that way. But for us it kind of feels that it's something we're hanging our hats on because the value in is the same. Whether we're doing a Ah, $30 CPM CTV campaign or a ah, couple of dollars on a display campaign, us taking more out isn't great. So that should be going to publishers, it should be going back to sort of partners or buying more Wikimedia. Um, so I think that's a challenge and I think you look at it from all the different lenses. Publishers get concerned because they've got people plugging in and don't know where things are going. Buyers get concerned because they're putting revenue on the other side and don't always know where things are going. So it becomes a little bit black box of loss of information. And I think it's becoming more and more apparent, you know, these conversations all the time on LinkedIn. So it's a long winded answer basically to a very complicated question. So it's, Yeah, I think it's ultimately, it's becoming more and more of a thing. Especially with the way the market's moving to more regented buying and um, you know, we're not there yet. But that will probably shine more of a light on this uh, lack of transparency as well.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I know kind of it is becoming a big thing now and everyone's kind of claiming transparency. Um, what does that actually look like? What is like being truly transparent? Would you say the fixed fee thing

Speaker A: is that uh, for us, yeah, I mean for us we believe that if um, we work with our partners, whatever they put in to the platform, they know where every dollar has gone. So uh, if they are um, bidding on inventory, they will know what the media CPM is, they'll know what their percentage is and they'll know what our take is. So it's very clear from the start, um, what goes in. It's all transacted through deal IDs. So again that simplifies uh, the process a bit more because we're not having to rely on other intermediaries. So for us that's a really important tenant of what we do. So when we do end of month reporting, it's like buyer knows. Okay. My uh, impression goals are that my revenue goals are that my CPM goals are That I can account for where all that sort of spend went through those pipes. Yeah, exactly. But I think that's because of the route we're trying to take. We're trying to get buyers closer to sellers and work closely with publishers and close with buyers from that sort of thing. So not every transaction or every buy is like that. Of course open market is a bit more challenging. Um, but again that's where when we talk about curation that's the benefit I believe that curation brings. It brings transparency, it brings accountability and it brings the ability to drive much more um, uh, stronger outcomes for partners because they know where they're buying and how you can optimize across it. So I think that's when curation becomes a strong element to the ecosystem and a benefit in what it's doing.

Speaker B: Yeah, I see. And then media teams and stuff have been asked to do a lot more nowadays with less. What kind of operational pressures are you seeing for those agencies and traders on a day to day?

Speaker A: Yeah, it comes back to that sort of point of raise earlier around if you're a media buyer and you wake up in the morning and you look in your Inbox and there's 100 new companies sending you messages saying we can do X, Y and Z for you but you've got to deliver in your campaign. You know, the tried and trusted routes you, maybe you've worked through, uh, you know, um, a particular route before and that's always ticked your box. Um, so they will out of necessity I suppose to ensure that the client budget gets spent and that client budget gets reinvested through their agency. They need to make sure that they are delivering against their outcomes and their goals. So it becomes a difficult pressure for somebody um, to try new options. Uh, and that's completely understandable. I think a lot of buyers want to, they want to be able to um, find those hidden nuggets about IT value and that they can deliver better outcomes and KPIs for their clients. Um, but again we know the reality of it. They don't have huge teams. Um, they're being asked to manage multiple different sort of platforms, UIs, um, you know, and um, again a million different people trying to sort of sell them the next great shiny object that comes off the track. So it's a very real pressure. Um, I think that's for us is why we felt that this infrastructure play was a really important route for us to go down. Because the idea of what we built is we allow um, buyers through our platform to be able to look across the ecosystem. So they can look across multiple different platforms. They can, uh, set up, optimize, manage, report across multiple different, uh, SSPs through one route. So we're trying to relieve a lot of that pressure. If you're a trader, buyer and saying, well, actually that route might have worked, I would like to test the routes, but I don't have necessarily an integration or a contract or the time or the know how to go and set up a deal or literally learning a new system becomes challenging. What we're trying to solve for that is by saying, well, if we can create this infrastructure layer of saying, well, you can now go and test those different pipes and see if they deliver better outcomes for you. We can look at, um, the overlap of, um, performance and domains and cost and see, actually is there an efficiency we can find you from buying them? Um, maybe a route that takes less of a fee out of that. Um, but does that then tally up with delivering against your KPIs and does that tally up with the scale and opportunity that they've got within their platforms? So if you can have a unified view, our, uh, belief and the goal and what we're seeing as we grow the business out is we try and relieve some of that heavy lifting and operational pressure for buyers because they can do it through one place as opposed to managing multiple, just making it a lot easier.

Speaker B: Basically.

Speaker A: That's the plan, that's the goal. So, yeah, and the more we build in, the more sort of partnerships and the more that we make the platform, you know, you pictures across different areas of ecosystem. Um, that's very much the goal for us is like, you know, if we can help with planner buyers and programmatic buyers and executioners to say, you have one access point. And that's why, as we said, the Wall Gardens work well, because it's one way in and you can tick a box and the deal's done. If you can take a similar approach to sort of DRDs across a wider ecosystem and save efficiency and time, still delivering stronger outcomes for buyers. And the idea of that is that it's um, a benefit.

Speaker B: Yeah. And then building on that, away from kind of operational pressure, you get like human pressure as well, People jumping out, burn things like that. And you've got a product called Aardvark. Right. So tell us a little bit about that and what the thinking was.

Speaker A: Yeah, so it's. The thinking was it's got two A's in the name. So it's always good to say, but no, you know, but joking aside, the idea of Aardvark isn't. And that's the platform we were talking about. So we want it to be, you know, digging for little bits of treasure like an aardvark does. But the idea is the way it's been structured and set up is it's not just for enterprise type customers. Actually. We've got a few partners who are using the platform, who are individuals who, for whatever reason, the market's crazy. You guys know more than most because of where you're positioned. Um, but there are sort of very skilled operators who have great relationships, um, and sort of great routes into the agencies, um, that at the moment, previously, uh, didn't have a way to drive activation and execution. So what we're able to do is give almost the same level of operational efficiency to an individual as we can do to enterprise and they can start scaling out their own offerings. So we're starting to see more and more of this. So Aardvark is white label. So we have, um, multiple different partners who are using it, um, as sort of their own curation, offering and taking it to market.

Speaker B: Sorry, did you say white labeled?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's whether it's an individual or enterprise customer. Um, because for us, as I say, the idea was to drive this infrastructure, this operational efficiency across, you know, business and individuals because there's so many talented people out there, as you sort of said earlier, that are, uh, resource light, time, light pressures are across everywhere. If we can release some of that by creating, you know, a layer that helps, um, and that's sort of where we're sort of seeing things sort of scale up from that perspective. So it's become quite interesting whether it's, you know, enterprise or individuals. And we've got some really great success stories of people that are coming in and actually starting to grow out their own business off the back of this, which is, which is great to see if we can help our mates, then that's always a good thing.

Speaker B: And then coming on to AI, I feel like I speak about this in

Speaker A: every podcast is so AI,

Speaker B: which obviously coming so far, I'm sure it's going

Speaker A: to be everywhere in Cannes as well this year.

Speaker B: Are you seeing kind of genuinely useful applications of that yet or where are you up to?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's, I mean, obviously, I mean you can't, as you say, you can't ignore where it's going and everything else. I think we have for us there's a few different applications of how we're using, um, sort of tools so we've built a uh, brief response tool, um, called Wanda. Um, it's called wanda because my LinkedIn was hacked a couple of years back by a lady called Wanda Johnson. So developers like that. So I thought we'll call this Wanda just to I think take the mick out of me. Which is fine. Um, but the idea around that is, you know, we're allowing um, again to drive goods back to operational efficiency but also using technology that's available to say you can input and ask um, our uh, LLM questions around my brief and it will come back to you with an M output. So we'll have a brief response which will include domains, audiences, uh, CPM goals, et cetera so that we can help drive that efficiency for those partners, partners to use um, these incredible tools to build out efficient media plans which helps with time saving and having to go in again to look at all the different platforms and pull things together. It's that efficiency. Similarly we're looking at how we can use um, more and more um, of these sort of LLM based optimization tactics. So that's the partnerships and stuff we're building out. So helping with outcomes and driving more efficiency for campaigns that are running. Um, and then obviously like every company in our space we are investigating the ADCP route and the IB Tech Lab route and seeing where this is going. I think we've seen some good examples of sort of buys at the moment or companies starting to invest in that space. I think the IB themselves said themselves about a month or so we went to one of their events that we're probably 12 to 18 months away from this being taken over from what we're doing today. Um, but uh, AI moves at such a fast pace it's insane. Um, but we're starting to see how this can be useful for this wider ecosystem infrastructure play that we've got. Um, and again working closely with the SSPs on what they're doing and how it ties into some stuff that we're setting up. So absolutely, again long winded answer to your question, but yeah, in different elements of the business and then like everybody else in the ecosystem, understanding how this, you know, exciting new way of buying is going to be impactful and how we can be ensure that we're at the heart of it.

Speaker B: So essentially like removing friction and um, improving kind of decision making.

Speaker A: Exactly that.

Speaker B: Are you seeing like tangible results from that?

Speaker A: I mean, absolutely. I mean I think it's like, you know, obviously internally with the tools that we use, you know, particularly, you know, we're a small Startup. So for us using things like, you know, know, anthropic and Claude Co working stuff, yeah, uh, it's been mind blowing for me. It's incredible, isn't it? Like, you know, you can literally go in as smaller companies and drive efficiency. Um, you know and I think when it's used helpfully, you know, for me obviously there goes, you know, the concern around what it means for the human element of people coming forward and you know, hopefully we're not looking to replace everybody with a machine because that's scary and crazy. But I think, think what it can do is it can enhance what teams are doing and enable efficiency and smaller business to scale quicker, which is really exciting and certainly I think with uh, the impact and uh, the usage we've had at Wanda today, um, and how people are interacting with it and turning around responses to brief requests that used to take a lot of time, a lot of work from our team going into individual platforms, putting things together that have been able to literally go in and within 5, 5 minutes pull out uh, an in depth sort of brief response. It's crazy. So yeah, and you know, how we then enhance and advance, that is really exciting going forward. So yeah, absolutely. The efficiency it adds in is crazy.

Speaker B: Yeah, it really is lovely. And then finally in terms of programmatic, tying it back to programmatic, we've touched a little bit on transparency and stuff. What does the future of programmatic look like and what would, I guess, more healthy, sustainable, transparent ecosystem look like?

Speaker A: If I had the answer to that, I'd be doing well, I don't know. I think it's maybe a continuation of these sort of conversations. I think you don't want to kill the opportunity for people to come in and create amazing businesses that add value in the ecosystem because there are lots of people that have really sort of smart ideas. So I think there's always going to be an element of complexity or new ways of thinking and people coming in and having a different view on a certain way of doing things. So I think that's a real big positive and a plus about our industry. There's loads of smart people. The barrier to entry is fairly low for an ad tech business. You obviously need money to sort of get people and technology. Um, is AI making that easier to do? Maybe, um, is that good? Maybe, um, but I think, you know, hopefully it's continuing to drive more of this, um, you know, to say transparent way of buying. What is transparency at the end of the day is, you know, I think there's, there's always going to be this, this element where there's. We're never gonna. I don't say never. That sounds really. That sounds really defeatist. But, you know, will everything be completely clear and honest and open? You know, maybe, you know. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I'd like to think that, you know, everybody has, has good intentions. I'm an idealist like that. I get laughed at by a lot of people. But I do believe that deep down, you know, we all want to do right and, uh, do good things for the ecosystem and the industry and, you know, create, you know, an exciting industry that allows us to go and do all the cool things that we do. Um, so, yeah, again, long answer to this question is we're more meandering, really, than anything else. But, yeah, I think, I think it's going to continue down the route. It's going, um, I think AI is going to be obviously more and more embedded in what we, we do. Um, will that lead to more transparency? That's the goal, I suppose. And that's where we're hoping that it will add and, uh, make things a lot clearer. So, um, yeah, more of it. More of the same of where we're going, I would imagine.

Speaker B: Fingers crossed. It goes in the, in the right direction and not the reverse.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: Okay. Lovely. Ruth, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Life in Digital. If you want to know more about our guests or any of the topics that we cover today, you can find out more in our show notes and on our website.