Episode 180: How PMG Is Scaling Creator Marketing With AI with Jennifer Quigley-Jones

Speaker A: This podcast is brought to you by the Build, a new podcast from the guys behind Sincera, Michael Sullivan and Ian Myers. They built their company by figuring out clever solutions to a few important ad tech problems in our industry. And that's exactly what the show is about. Mike and Ian interview some of the smartest tech minds in the biz to hear about how they identified opportunities, solved their hardest challenges, and grew their businesses in the process. Listen to the Build with Mike o' Sullivan wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, hello, I'm Jeremy Bloom, co founder and CEO of Market. And boy do I have news for you. Marketexture Live is back. And if you've been watching from a

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Speaker B: to AI tech and modern marketing.

Speaker A: This is where the people shaping what's next for the ad, uh, industry will be, want to be, and need to be. Early registration is live now, so lock in your ticket@chicago.architecturelive.com Again, lock in your ticket@chicago.architective.com disclaimer. I live in Chicago. It's not Chicago, it's Chicago. Uh, welcome to the Market podcast. This is Ari Paparo. I am here with Eric Franchi and we're both safely back from Cannes. You're in America, right, Eric?

Speaker B: I am, I am. They let me back in.

Speaker A: I love America. After spending a while in Europe, it's like you get back to the iced coffee and the air conditioning and the economic growth and all that stuff. I just love it. Are you feeling patriotic coming into this July 4th weekend?

Speaker B: Come on, man, you know me. Always, always. I have my red, white and blue shorts on.

Speaker A: They're doing like MMA on the White House lawn. Like you've got all of your checkboxes getting checked.

Speaker B: Yeah, that event was incredible a couple weeks ago. Um, anyway, what we got today?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, um, I conducted an interview, uh, while I was at Cannes, uh, with a woman named Jenny Quigley Jones, who's the VP of strategy and innovation for pmg, the agency group. Um, and she's a really interesting person because she sold her agency to pmg. So she was running an independent sort of influencer creative agency. And then she sold it to pmg. Now she's heading up their efforts. There's. And, uh, it was pretty interesting conversation because she answered kind of all the questions I want to know, like, uh, do you use the APIs from YouTube and Instagram to get the data about the influencers or do you do it yourself? How do you make sure they're on target? How do you do. She even goes into how she does pre calls with the influencers before a campaign. Um, if you're into the nitty gritty of how Influencer really works, this is a pretty darn good interview as far as I'm concerned. Um, so, uh, um, yeah, yeah, just,

Speaker B: uh, there were two big takeaways I think everybody had, um, coming out of can. One was just the rise of the creator or the fact that, you know, creator is, is very clearly like sucking a lot of dollars and, and, and attention and, and energy, um, out of the room. And, you know, I spent a lot of time with like, kind of what you would consider core ad tech, um, in addition to, you know, breaking into spaces like Influencer and, and, and whatnot. And every ad, ah, tech company is trying to figure out their influencer, their creator plan. I think many of them, the answer is like, you, you don't have one. Right? Like, this is such a different beast. But I think everyone is trying to really learn and understand. So this should be an awesome conversation for like, everyone, even if they're not like, in creator, even if they're, they're in ad tech, they're trying to figure

Speaker A: out clearly the most. It's the most important thing going, going on in advertising with the possible exception of AI. Um, so, um, so we'll do that in real and we'll come back with the news. We have a Comcast breakup. We have bending spoons and a bunch of other stuff. So, um, we'll be right back. All right. We're at the PMG cabana, or beach plage. I don't know what you're supposed to call it.

Speaker C: We're in the, the AI and tech sandbox.

Speaker A: Oh, I'm sorry, It has a name.

Speaker C: It has a name.

Speaker A: It's the AI and Tech sandbox has nothing to do with the beach. We're at Cannes, uh, and I have the pleasure of meeting for the first time and also, um, interviewing, uh, Jenny Quigley Jones, who's the VP of strategy and partnerships for pmg, um, and previously was a CEO of a influencer creator agency called Digital, uh, Voices Digital voices. Digital voices.

Speaker C: There you go. You got it.

Speaker A: I got it.

Speaker C: You put it in one. The innovation was doing great. We're innovative at the sandbox for regular listeners.

Speaker A: You know how often I mess up the intro so I feel like I nailed it. We could end the interview now.

Speaker C: Yeah, thank you very much. Goodbye.

Speaker A: M. So I'm really excited about this conversation because in my opinion, uh, the creator, innovator, um, influencer world is the most important trend it can, uh, it is the thing that's taking over. Everyone's talking about it.

Speaker C: It's actually insane. I think last year there were 100 to 200 creators here and this year there are over 2000, 2000, 2008 is many of them are coming partly encouraged by brands and they've been asked to speak by brands. They're often given like a free can ticket but they're not paid for their accommodation or their travel. So they're paying for that themselves.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: There are creators staying in Nice. Like they don't. It's like their first exposure to Cannes. It's probably their first exposure to like senior marketers.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And I think it's, it, if it continues, I think it's really going to change Cannes lions for better and worse, like, but I think it's um, it's definitely a fast current growing industry.

Speaker A: It is. And it's also among the, uh, the agency set who are talking about it. It's not just the influencers, you know, not just a couple of good looking people taking selfies. You know, the folks in suits are talking about it too. Uh, so let's hear your story. Uh, how'd you get here? Tell us about digital.

Speaker C: So, um, I founded Digital Voice when I was 26 with like £500. 700. I'd worked at YouTube as a strategic partner manager for a couple of years. Um, before then I worked with Syrian refugees. So like completely different to this. Okay, that's pretty, very different. Just hard pivot, you know, I think do everything run at a wall really fast.

Speaker A: Who's more demanding, Syrian refugees or influencers?

Speaker C: Influencers. Way more demanding. Refugees are lovely.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: M so, so sorry. Influencers love me too. Changed my life. Thank you. Digital voices. I was uh, in London, 26, started by myself, freelanced for like nine months and then realized I really missed having a team. Like, the benefit of working at Google is you're with incredibly bright people all the time. Um, so I pivoted and we won our first big piece of work with Rolls Royce. The jet engines, not the car.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker C: And we made a science, technology, engineering and maths YouTube channel. Um, yeah. To talk about young people going to space. And so I used all that money to reinvest in the business, started scaling, got to Covid, and There were like five of us and we were doing fine. We're a YouTube specialist agency. And then when Covid hit, we realized we should switch to doing all the platforms. Right. So Instagram, TikTok, even LinkedIn. Um, and we grow our revenues 500 in one year. We grew to a team of 20 really quickly. And then we sold to PMG in Twin last in January. It was announced January 6th. Um, so by then we were a team of 80 people in four or five different countries, but we'd run campaigns in 40 markets. We do all the influencer marketing for DoorDash. We work a lot with General Mills, Adobe. Um, yeah. And we just have incredible clients. And I think it's been really exciting to build a business, internationalize it, build tech for Influencer, which I think is.

Speaker A: Yeah, I want to talk about that

Speaker C: has become table stakes now and it's accelerating so much.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Um, and to be in an industry where you're building generations of entrepreneurs that didn't exist before. Yeah, that's what I love. 70 cents on every dollar spent with us goes to a small business owner. And so you feel like your role is really having this ripple effect impact in building an entire economy.

Speaker A: Right. They're very entrepreneurial, the influencers. They have to be. There's no, there's no game plan. Right.

Speaker C: It's only like only 4% of creators make over $100,000 a year.

Speaker A: 4. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah.

Speaker C: So there's a lot of people who are in that middle who are surviving or like making money on the side of their work or working from home and. But it's really interesting because out of their revenue, 70% comes from brand deals. So those creators, brands are changing their ability to produce content.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: They're transforming their life.

Speaker A: They're not just. They're not just getting a lot of followers on whatever platform, Insta, whatever, and then getting a check at the end of the month. That's a small amount of their income.

Speaker C: That's the monetization from platforms like YouTube was the best at this, which is what I loved about working there. But TikTok and Instagram monetize as well. Honestly, so much of your money comes from brand deals. And brands often won't work until you reach a certain scale.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Or they'll pay us a certain amount. That's a uh, smaller amount for a lot of work.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I think creators often that's why they don't like being called influencers. They like being called creators because they started to create and they knew the chances of getting big. You're not going to be Mr. Beast. Like it's a tiny, tiny like 0.000. It's like saying I want to be Elon Musk when you start a newspaper stand. Right. Like um, I'm an entrepreneur, I can be Elon Musk. No. So I think a lot of them start out really hoping that they'll do something that resonates with the community and they don't even mind if it's small.

Speaker A: So our creators, influencers synonyms or and they just don't like them or is there a difference?

Speaker C: So initially it was just synonyms and the creators preferred creator. But now the slight shift in the industry in the last 18 months, this is what's changed is something called creator paid ads.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: So all the big social platforms, Google, TikTok, Meta have realized that compared to brand produced ads, ads that are produced by customers or creators outperform them pretty much every time. Every 8 CPA. Great. Um, if you want low cacs, get creative produced assets.

Speaker A: Yeah, right.

Speaker C: And so they call it creator ads. That's the difference, right? Sure. I think the mainly synonyms.

Speaker A: So there's a lot to talk about. Um, let's start with the very basics. So at the agency, is it a brand coming to an agency and saying I have budget, I want influencer help me. Or is it saying well, I want to sell more soda, what should I do? And then you tell them that this is a channel they need to be in.

Speaker C: So we've kind of done both. What I think is interesting is okay, previously there are a lot of influencer marketing agencies that also manage talent. So a brand would come to you and say, hey, I want to work with Amy Smale. And um, then you'd say yes. Okay. Also, do you want to work with other creators?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: I think the professionalization, thank God. Of this industry in the last few years has meant that agencies like ours don't manage talent.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: The best agencies don't. It's huge. Because you're double dipping.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: You shouldn't be taking from the brand and the creator. Like even if you have some weird backroom scheme, it's still, it's non ethical thing to do.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: So um, and it's not transparent. So normally a client will come to us and they'll say, hey, I want to do this.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: One campaign.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Do we work with TikTok creators? We have hired a team of specialist strategists who will say and who will look at data and as part of pmg like that. Supercharged. The content is supercharged because we have so much access to more data and we all design a campaign for them.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: But what we often say to our clients, so say, uh, doordash, one of our clients, they're running 20 campaigns at once at the moment. So they're running always on campaigns to remind parents that they exist. They're running always on campaigns targeted at Gen Z. They're running always on campaigns targeted at different, um, communities. But then also they'll have campaigns around the world, cup around reservations around new features. So what we're doing all of the time is like telling a brand if you want to do this really well, this isn't a campaign play anymore. This should be an always online in your media plan.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker C: But also it should be involved in every single aspect of your marketing.

Speaker A: Right. Uh, does it burn out though? Do you need different influencers a month later? Right. Because if you have the same influencer constantly talking about DoorDash, it would get a little tired of that influencer's followers actually.

Speaker C: So the data we've got says differently.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: So if you've. So for the clients we have who work on performance campaigns, so conversion campaigns, we find. If you find a creator that converts so that the first barrier is delayed, convert the first time. Once they convert, if you work them consistently, no more than once a month. If you work them more than once a month, this you cannibalize your own audience.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker C: And if you work with them every month or every quarter.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: Their conversions slightly increase, then stay steady. Okay. Because actually the long term exposure effect from a creator that you're choosing to watch, you feel, you trust and feel that brand divinity more. And often like you don't buy an item on the first time you hear it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So once you hear it, it's like the posters that out of home you have to see it seven times. It's like, think about that with creators. Um, I think you can accelerate that process by having the creator sponsored, then having the creator produce an ad and then retargeting that ad and then you can accelerate it by bringing media and influencer together and driving conversations.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, I want to talk about media in a moment. So let's go back to the data side of things. So, um, you're not going from a blank Piece of paper every time you're trying to create a campaign. Right. So no.

Speaker C: Oh, that would be a nightma. And again, this is where I think we used to, a couple of years ago, have brands that would come in, they'd say, we want you to do one campaign. And they were RFP and new Influencer agency every time.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: But now the clients we work with, the smart clients in this industry, and I think that's one of the reasons the PMG acquisition made so much sense, because they have a similar approach. Your value, um, you double down on your value as an agency partner. Right. The more data you have, the more insights you have, the more you know what that brand wants to promote, how they work, how they speak. The more your whole team are trained on that, the better the results.

Speaker A: Are there data sets available that will rank, say, the top 100,000 Instagram accounts of what they talk about?

Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Oh, oh.

Speaker C: There's a whole SaaS side this industry that is very competitive, very controversial. It's great.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So, um, couple of things. Digital, uh, voices and kind of. I think PMG has a similar approach. We believe in partnering where it makes sense so you're not duplicating work that exists and then building where only you can build. So we had partnerships with Captivate and I think Sprout Social now, who are helping us source creators.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: They're helping social, social, listening, and they have the links to the platform APIs. So you can source creators by their audience.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So say you are Adobe.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker C: And you're like, I want to reach creative professionals who age between, ah, 25 and 34 in London.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: We can find those people who have that same audience.

Speaker A: You're using, like the YouTube API and the Instagram API, I guess. Um. Right. Um, and then.

Speaker C: Wait, and I can go even more into detail.

Speaker A: Yeah, please. As much as you want.

Speaker C: So that's the partner side. So then the thing we built was, uh, a campaign management system that just did everything super efficiently. So like a client logs in, we log in, and we make sure that, like, it's easy to approve creators. They can see all the information they need. They can approve content. Right. The thing that we did that was really exciting, that not starting with a blank sheet, a paper blank page, we built a tool called Composer. So we have eight years worth of data not just on, like, which creators got good views and got engagements, we have which creators drove sales.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So the value, I think the moat in this industry of doing it for such a long time is that you can use that. That data and turn it into Insights.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So we built a tool called Composer. That's an internal tool that can tell you, like, what's a good CPM for tech, for YouTube, what's a good CP for the Instagram, for CPG brands. And so we pulled out Insights as well, proactive insights, and was like, if a creator had their face in their thumbnail, it outperformed in this campaign.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker C: Like, for Adobe, good looks like this. For General Mills, good looks like this.

Speaker A: Y.

Speaker C: And so all of that data helps us make really smart decisions. And that's, again, so a brand works with us. We have that data, it doubles down. The more we work together, the more insight we have and the better.

Speaker A: Well, uh, in traditional media, there's always a debate about the amount to credit to the creative versus the media choice.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: Um, so in Influencer, it seems like there's the influencer, there's the copy of what they're going to say. Right. And maybe there's the price is another big factor. What's the most important thing there to drive results?

Speaker C: Oh, there's so much. Okay. Uh, that creative, we do. Okay. One of the worst things to do in the influencer industry is to give creators a script. Right. And when you see Fernando Fernandez talking about how 50% of Unilever's marketing spend should go to social and Influencer.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Dove Unilever have 50,000 creators at FIFA World Cup. 50, uh, thousand. And if they are all saying the same thing or if they're all speaking from a script.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: All that content will not perform organically. It will. It will.

Speaker A: You can write 50,000 scripts when you.

Speaker C: Yeah. No, you can't. And when you scroll on social, you. Okay.

Speaker A: When you look at YouTube, the same thing, uh, multiple times. It's very annoying.

Speaker C: Oh, I hate it. With podcasting sponsors, I'm like, come on, podcasts get better. Um, I'm sure your reads are great, your ad reads are great. So what we tend to do is with every creator, we'll have, um, so for the campaign, we'll have, uh, a strategy agreed with the client. When we say to the client, look, not only are these the creators you should work with who are speaking to your customer, and some of the unexpected. We had a tech brand that was working with drag queen. Drag queens.

Speaker A: The drag queens.

Speaker C: Because the tech brand helped you unlock content globally. And lots of people who live in other countries want to watch RuPaul's Drag Race. And one of the best converting verticals was drag queens. So, like, Great. But when we produce that brief, we'll say, also, here are three thought starters that people in that vertical watch. Then we get brand feedback. We take that and adapt it for a creative brief. So we say, hey, here's what been successful before. And then if a piece of content drives mad conversions, we include that in the brief.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Then this is where AI comes in. You can automate so much of creator outreach, you can automate so much of working with creators. But we insist on a human doing an onboarding call with the creator.

Speaker A: A call. Okay. Okay.

Speaker C: Creators are amazing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: However, they have been burned by brands a lot.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker C: So if you send a creator a script, they are like, yeah, I want to get paid. I want to not have to reshoot.

Speaker A: M. Can you imagine if some reshoot is the worst? Right. Last thing they want.

Speaker C: If someone else also reshoot this interview, we'd be like, no, don't.

Speaker A: No. I mean, they make up, they. They the spontaneity and then the reshoot, it all goes away.

Speaker C: It's awful.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: You've done an edit and then you get told to reshoot. Worst thing in the world. So on this onboarding call, we say to them, hey, this brand here are some talking points. But what would your audience say?

Speaker A: Right? Yeah.

Speaker C: And sometimes they'll have great ideas. Sometimes they'll have ideas that are like, I want to do whiskey tasting for a family brand. Don't you dare. So we steer the ideas if we need to, and then they say to us, if we do this, is the brand going to tell us to reshoot? Because it's crazy. We once had a creator for Doordash. It was, um, to promote candy delivery at Halloween.

Speaker A: Last minute candy sounds good.

Speaker C: Yeah. So she sent something really basic, and we were like, it's not going to work. Like, that's too basic. And so she said, okay, I can do an insane set of nails. She was a nail creator where I make a custom doordash delivery driver's bag on my nail covered in candy. But she was like, if you dare, don't approve this content. Like, it will take me, like, hours of work. If you don't approve it, I will never trust you or the brand again.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker C: And, um, we made sure the client was happy, and then we let. Let them approve something crazy out of the box. So I think it's like that creative negotiation is super important. And then when you do the media piece, if you say to the same creator, uh, thanks for the nails. They're amazing. But we also want four assets. Uh, Optimized for different social platforms where you're more explicitly talking about doordash. Where a voiceover could be like, hey, oh my God, look at my candy nails. I didn't get candy for Halloween. Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker C: That can be more explicit and more explicitly what the platforms need. And that never goes on their channels.

Speaker A: Okay, so I want to repeat back what you said to me, so make sure I understand. So the engagement with the, uh, with the influencer could include a fully, sort of, call it organic kind of conversation about the brand, which goes on their main feed. Um, and does not and may say hashtag ad. But it's, um, should say.

Speaker C: Should say it was.

Speaker A: I say will, sorry if you've got

Speaker C: in trouble with the FTC or asa. Right, Yeah. I was like.

Speaker A: And the amount of reach that post gets is not up to you. Um, and then in the same package, they're being asked to produce assets that then you can use, uh, through a media execution where they're not. It's not on their feed. Maybe they're tagged, I imagine.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker A: Right. Okay.

Speaker C: They can be tagged. It's really. There are so many different ways to do this. Amazon has such a smart way. Amazon actually tried to get more value from the creators by saying, hey, any ad we run with you in it, we'll have your affiliate link. So any sales we make from the ad, you will get affiliate. Yeah.

Speaker A: And I think that is a client or the client.

Speaker C: The creators. The creators love it. Other clients get terrified. Yeah, some clients. But Amazon, I'm like, that is so creator forward.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Because it's a way that they want you to put more spend behind the content.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: A lot of creators, especially their agents, they'll try and negotiate. Oh, if you're going to put loads of spend behind it, we want a huge fee.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: But actually for Amazon, they've made a way, uh, it's going to benefit themselves.

Speaker A: So let's talk about the platforms. Um, to what degree are the platforms, uh, either helpful or muscling in on the territory of the tool providers? Uh, because I know that they're starting to be. Oh, we'll help you find the influencers. We have AI, uh, Gemini. We'll help you find the best YouTube channels.

Speaker C: Um.

Speaker A: What's going on?

Speaker C: Wow, Ari, you just sound so controversial. There is so. Okay. I really enjoy working with the platforms. Okay.

Speaker A: Of course you love the platform.

Speaker C: I love the platforms. As someone who used to work at a platform, love the platforms. However, you're. You're right in that I think a lot of platforms now, especially after TikTok did so well, are, uh, trying to build their own tech. That means you, as either an agency or a brand, engage with creators from those platforms on their. On their own platforms.

Speaker A: Yes. Workflow.

Speaker C: Yeah. The challenge for that is actually a workflow one, which is why I'm so glad to see a lot of them opening APIs up, because.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: You often are working with the same creators on multiple platforms. So we've done research in the past, and it's found that YouTube creators, because you spend way more time with them. Someone who watches this podcast, hopefully watches for half an hour.

Speaker A: The whole length.

Speaker C: The whole thing. Yeah. And then at the end, you watch another one and you love Ari's face and you like the way he talks and presents, and it's great.

Speaker A: You have at least a thousand subscribers

Speaker C: on YouTube who love Ari.

Speaker A: They love us.

Speaker C: Okay. But when. If someone met you in real life or followed you on Instagram. Right. Or X or whatever, they probably, if they're a YouTube subscriber, they will feel like they know you better.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker C: So we did a, uh, study that found that, like, YouTube creators on other platforms have far higher engagement rates.

Speaker A: Okay, that's interesting.

Speaker C: Again, parasocial relationships. Deeper. It's just more time. So when you're working with one creator across multiple platforms, then being siloed onto, like using a YouTube tool or using a TikTok tool is really frustrating. Frustrating because the brand wants to get the most value from being like, hey, creator, I'm commissioning X piece of content from your. It's going to live everywhere. So I think sometimes the brands are trying to be helpful and to make it more accessible by having these tools.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: But the API is the best way for an agency to scale it. Of course, again, go back to the Dove and 50, uh, thousand. 50,000 creators at the World.

Speaker A: You did 50,000 calls.

Speaker C: We didn't know this is what they've done this year. We didn't run that.

Speaker A: Because your phone call before you get started is trouble scaling a little bit.

Speaker C: There are ways you can scale it if you do group calls.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: So we did that for a CBT client. Um, but yeah, so if you think about that, any agency that is trying to operate that scale, especially one that's building their own. Like we have our own payment systems, our own legal contracts. It needs to scale. And if you're trying to silo your platform, you're actually going to get less budget because you're making it difficult to work with you.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: So the platforms, please. APIs.

Speaker A: APIs. That's all we ask. Just give us some API. Um, what about media, uh, outside the platform? So to what extent do you have an influencer? I mean obviously if it's a sports really well known a list, you're going to use it in all different media. But how often are you talking about kind of a modestly influential person who then their image is now going to be used elsewhere? Banner ads, connected tv, billboards.

Speaker C: Billboards. It's happening a lot. So it's really interesting because I think there's so much excitement for creators when they're featured in out of home.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So um, I think Adobe, Adobe and Samsung have both done this. They had creators like go to Times Square or go to Piccadilly Circus and photograph them on a billboard so it becomes a piece of content. And we're seeing this more like you've probably seen this trend for like out of home that is actually designed for online consumption.

Speaker B: Uh-huh.

Speaker A: Right. Like what's an example of that?

Speaker C: Like um, oh, the, the PlayStation out of home that ended up going viral online. It had like the controllers and the PlayStation signs. It was done by ample time.

Speaker A: It's done out of home.

Speaker C: Yes, it's done out of home. But like you know, more people are going to see it online when it goes viral on LinkedIn, viral on, on TikTok than um, than on right now in actually go and visit in London.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I think there's so much space for that. Um, there's also a lot of space for really interesting like digital out of home.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So say again for a brand like uh, brand like Doordash or a hyper local brand, could you have creators recommending their favorite local restaurants in local digital output?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So I think there's way more potential there and it's making the campaigns feel m more cohesive. You've got faces you can trust. Again you talk about influencers being good looking people. Actually often people want to buy from people who kind of look like them. It's not even the good looking ones like product category. Yeah, the good looking ones can be in the Sports Illustrated, uh, swimwear model parade, catwalk.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Like Alex Earl did that. But I like when I see someone who resonates with me, I like. Yeah.

Speaker A: So, um, are podcasters influencers?

Speaker C: Yeah, you're an influencer.

Speaker A: Uh, right. Are we in the same category from your perspective as an agency, are they same category or are they a different thing? In.

Speaker C: Okay, this is like where I think the industry is going because we discussed earlier like the challenge of Measurement.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Brands need one place with one source of truth where they can pull together podcasting, influencer, uh, and affiliate.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Which is impossible. They need that. But it's impossible.

Speaker C: It's possible. Dream big. Dream big, Ari. We can build it. Um, so I think, like, it's a similar thing, right? The deals are very similar. Yeah, the structure is very similar. Like, old YouTube marketing used to be a script ad read. And that's a lot of podcasts being asked to do.

Speaker A: Yeah, they are.

Speaker C: But there's space for it to be creative and the creative is going to drive better results.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: So, um, yeah, we're trying to. Trying to. We're actually working with podcasters for a few brands.

Speaker A: Podcasting is basically like, uh, influencing for dads. More or less.

Speaker C: A lot of dad influencers. Dad influencers are great.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: No, it's. It's funny, like, most people, especially because I was a young woman starting the agency, right? So most people said to me, like, oh, do you work with fashion and beauty for influencer? And I was like, rolls Royce, jet engines, surfshark, Adobe, all these tech creators, like, tech channels. I love the tech. I love the geeky stuff.

Speaker A: How did you get the Rolls Royce account? Like, how did you even get in the meeting like that? Honestly, Gotta be a story.

Speaker C: There is. Um, okay, so when I worked at YouTube, there's always a list of people who want to work with you, but you have your okrs, you have your goals that are your data.

Speaker B: I'm.

Speaker A: I used to work at Google. I'm familiar with you.

Speaker C: You get it, the perf cycle. Let's not go into it like trauma. You're a zoogler. You're a zoogler.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: Are you in the Zoogle Network?

Speaker A: I am not. I'm a sort of long, uh, story. But I'm not the most popular person on Mountain View.

Speaker C: Oh, I'm so excited to hear this story. I will. That love, like, removes you, removed you from the search results. I'm like, asking Gemini. I have to ask ChatGPT about you because Gemini will reject you.

Speaker A: The listeners of this podcast know what I'm talking about.

Speaker C: I'm so excited on this. Okay, so, um, I. So there were lots of people who wanted to talk or work with me because my job was to help people grow organically on YouTube. So strategic partner, Mandra. When the creators make more money from ads, so does YouTube. So there were lots of people who were not on my list of priorities. But when I left those people, the first ones who are like, hey, you don't work at YouTube. Let's talk. All right. Which actually is amazing. And I think if you're. It's very, very hard. The most successful business founders are not like Mark Zuckerberg or me.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker C: At 26. They are people who start in their 40s and 50s. So like, because you have a network that you can use and I was using the network I had. So if I hadn't worked at Google, do I think my company would have done so well? No, because I used that as the first job.

Speaker A: Well, Google is, uh, someone once described it to me as a diving board. Like when you leave, you get one big bounce out.

Speaker C: Yes. And that's it. And if you screw that up, if you screw up your first six months, you're dead to everyone.

Speaker A: You're dead to everyone.

Speaker C: Right. Thank you. That's the best analogy.

Speaker B: I love.

Speaker C: Um, so there was a list of people on the list and there was.

Speaker A: So to be clear, this is a list of people who Google wouldn't call back. Like, basically. So basically, Google's bad customer service turned into your opportunity. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker C: Also, when you go to a room, you speak to room, you say, I used to say to like a room of like 400 people I was speaking at, I'd say, who has met someone from Google? And everyone put their hands up. And I'd say, put your hand down if it was a salesperson. And everyone put their hand down.

Speaker A: Right, right.

Speaker C: And my advice was not making Google money. It was how to grow organically. It was like how to grow with making content, but not how to grow that. Sure. So there was, I think, a long list of people who didn't have access to this knowledge. Um, and then there was this wonderful, very random, quirky man who, uh, had befriended someone and he'd charmed. He charmed the Air Force and Rolls Royce into working with him on this project that was all about getting young people excited by going to space.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: He was a very charming man who did not have any of the substance to do the work.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: He at one point turned up, ah, at ah, these companies and went, look, look, guess what I've got in my pocket. And he'd pull out a Mars bar and he'd be like, let's go to Mars. That was the content.

Speaker A: Was his name Musk?

Speaker C: Yeah, well, Pre Musk. And I wish he had, uh, any of the other similar.

Speaker A: Okay. It's socially awkward one's good. Amaris.

Speaker C: He was an interesting character. He was like a very great salesperson. Very unreliable. And they were like that's the content. And he was like, maybe Jenny can help. And then we designed this huge YouTube channel and it was really great, but they literally had. They were going to. It was a creative problem.

Speaker A: So to close this conversation out, what's the future? What does the next couple of years look like for this market?

Speaker C: I'm so excited. I think the Net, the future we're seeing a lot of the independent players get acquired at the moment. So like Whaler were acquired by Accenture last week. Influentials when acquired by publicists. It's a really interesting space because to reach the scale, to get to the vision that the market has and the budgets the market has, we can't continue to operate the way we did before.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: You cannot run a 25 creator campaign. And congratulations, let's go home.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And so how do you work with thousands of creators and how do you be profitable doing that?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And that's where I think AI has to play a role. And agentic AI has to play a role. So one of the things I'm so excited about PMG is we have 250 engineers. We are using AI in every process. And I'm not just saying this like I'm not drinking the Kool Aid, I promise. At the leadership retreat, George Popsefanov, the CEO of pmg, sat all the leaders down and was like, you're going to use AI now?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: Like not to write your emails. You're going to actually use a new tool we've built.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And he made people who are so not used to being vulnerable sit there and seriously build things.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And he was tech support, which is like how. It's amazing. So I think what we're going to see is this huge opportunity to build, create an entire ecosystem that improve measurement, that improve outreach, that improve scale. They have humans in the loop at crucial moments. And that's what I'm really excited to take advantage of. I think if we can get that right with social commerce, with podcasters, pastors, podcasters, podcasters, podcasters, podcasters with influencers, with affiliates, I think we're going to build the future of an industry where creator is table stakes. The second aspect of that is a very human investment. So when everyone is scaling in that way, which again, a lot of influencer agencies aren't positioned to, because they haven't built tech, they don't have tech teams, they're going to be left behind so quickly. I'm not talking a year, I'm talking like in the next three months. The other part of that is when influencer is table stakes. Back to your point, how do you stand out creatively? So also at the same time, it's so important to invest in strategic strategists. So to invest in strategists and data and insights who can pull ways of standing out, ways of running campaigns that stand out that really cut through a very, uh, saturated space. Right. So that's what I'm excited to do. At the same time it's like improve measurement, data, scale, but then also improve, elevate the creative.

Speaker A: I'm really bullish on the space. I'll tell everyone who asked that I think it is the most important thing going on. Maybe, maybe X, AI. Uh, AI and influencer are the two most important things.

Speaker C: And when you combine them, you have the best podcast ever.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So, Jenny, uh, Quigley Jones from pmg, thank you so much. This is one of the most interesting interviews we've done at cat.

Speaker C: Oh, thank you. I'm very flattered because you've had some great interviews so far. I was stressed when you first spoke to me about who you interviewed, so thank you Ari. I really, really enjoyed it.

Speaker A: And we'll be back uh, with the second half with our news of the week. So stay tuned.

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Speaker B: homedepot.com how doers get more done. All right, we are back with the news of the week. The refresh as it were light uh news week. You know I think posts can pre July 4th. You know like not a lot of groundbreaking things happening but there are actually a couple of, you know, things that are super interesting we should touch on. Comcast bending spoons by the way, fascinating company. I did a deep dive. We'll talk about it and then actually some cool stuff going on in meta but before we put the just final pin in can 2026, I'd love to just talk to you about two topics. Um, the first was and both of these are well reported first you know uh, uh, the live ramp 2.0 or what happens post live ramp um from digit A and then, and then OpenAI. Um, it was a big topic of conversation still like what happens after live Ramp is, you know, ultimately acquired by publicists. Assuming everything goes, goes through. Is what happens after Live Ramp just more Live Ramp? Is there a rise in independent alternatives? Does it force a wave of M and a high touch? We've been talking about a bunch. They were there at force. They were, you know, having this conversation. There was a great piece again, you know, digiday about other alternatives, including you know, two of our portcos and your portco, um, adi5 and madconnect. What, what's your thinking on this and did you have conversations on it?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a topic that's on us on a, uh, slow boil. Everyone's thinking and talking about it, but I don't think anyone's actually acting just yet. Um, from my conversations and people who have chips on the table, uh, there's no action. They, they, the chips are sitting there, nothing's happening. Right. Um, and I think it's a little bit of a, uh, a problem. And I said this on the last week's podcast, which is like expecting the brands or the agencies to cobble it together themselves is probably too big a lift for most of them. Um, and so it's going to be led either by financial, uh, actors like PE firms who will make this happen somehow, or by individual entrepreneurs. Um, and uh, and it's a lot to ask also for them because you might have to combine two or three companies or take one company into a pretty major build out of the components that are missing. Um, so I would hope someone, someone like you, Eric, you're in the arena, like, let's make it happen.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, and I, and I think that's actually a neat idea. I have no knowledge of if you know, this type of roll up is happening. But you know, one of the plays here is to actually like, you know, put together the three components of the, of the stack, as it were. Right? The connectivity layer, the data layer, the identity layer, and then just like go to market with a, with a new challenging company that's like AI first and, and you know, more aggressive on pricing. I think that, I think that's a neat idea. And maybe that's high touch, by the way.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a neat idea. I think high touch is probably like 75% of the way there. Their graph is probably the weak point. Uh, whereas you have other companies, you have some hidden graphs. So the trade desk has a graph. UID 2, uh, critio has a graph inside its company that nobody can use. It's only used for Their own purpose. It's one of the largest graphs in the world. Uh, there are a lot of these graphs hidden in the attics of ad tech companies or um, uh, basements.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Um, but a graft is only one piece. You need a graph, you need a cross device, you need a clean room, and you need hundreds of onboarding relationships. So how do you, how do you get that together? Uh, we're interested. Hit us with your opinions, you know, email us or uh, or DM us and we'll figure it out.

Speaker B: Yeah, send your ideas. Um, all right. Other thing. And M, again, kind of beside creator AI was the, the talk of can. Uh, there was an open AI, uh, press briefing. Like, I don't know if architecture was, was invited if, if not. That's. Yeah, that's a, I mean that's a.

Speaker A: We've been trying to get someone from opening out in the show to our events. We're kind of striking out as of yet, but we're working on it.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, it seems like they're making their way into the space. Uh, Ad Exchanger had a great piece on it, just kind of recapping the conversation. Sounds like it was all on the record. A couple things I pulled out of it, um, that just, you know, again, to kind of underscore the bullishness that I think both of us have on um, the Future here. Um, 900 million weekly active users, you know, across ChatGPT. Obviously a percentage of them are monetizable. This is pretty wild. I think 20% of the queue of the queries have direct commercial intent. And then 80% probably could be, you know, connected to some portion of the next 80%, um, probably could be connected to commercial intendant in some way. And then number three, the majority of the buys are now cpc. So, you know, like moving very quickly into a performance medium. I thought these were like interesting notes. Um, and again, you know, just being a can, you know, having this upper frontal conversation, everything seems to be moving in the right direction for OpenAI. I'm still just like super enthused about it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think for the folks who are actively participating, meaning the vendors like Critia, who I interviewed, or um, or um, Stack Adapt, they're all reducing their minimums, onboarding clients as fast as possible, seeing good results, seeing interesting things. Like I think, I think I mentioned this on last week's show, but I can't recall, um, in my interview with um, the CEO of Critio, he, he said that something like 80% of the clicks, uh, out of OpenAI are first time customers. So you're, you've got a lot of mid funnel, upper funnel going. Wow, really changes your perspective a bit. Uh, not just on OpenAI but also Google's opportunity where um, where they, it's a market expansion because it is helping customers and consumers in a way they weren't helped by search. Um, so yeah, really exciting things going on.

Speaker B: Yeah. And, and by the way, this doesn't you know, spell death or, or, or you know, kind of Google getting left out. I'm sure there is a way that Gemini competes really, really effectively in this arena if, if not having like a very formal one because they're connected to all of the intent data.

Speaker A: It's really bullish for Google I think because you know one thing that is a misconception of many people is that Google uses all of your data for advertising. Um, and actually they use very, very little of your data in search advertising. Uh, they may use your location, a couple of other things but um, Google doesn't know how many children you have or whether you own a house, a home or a car. And yet if consumers want the, the AI search to be as good as possible, they'll probably volunteer that information. They'll, they'll say yes, I really to know how many kids I have because then you'll be able to help me with my travel or my car purchase or whatever it is. Um, and I think it's just enormous amount of upside for Google on this.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, man, this is going to be interesting to watch. Okay, cool, let's move on. Um, Comcast. So I don't know if this was predicted or not predicted or surprising. They're going to split into two companies. A media and entertainment unit, obviously NBCU and then wireless and broadband. And the market seemed to like it. Um, and you had an interesting post on X basically saying, you know, this is just like the next step towards the spin out of Freewheel, whether that's part of one of one of these things.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: So it's like FreeWheel lives in NBCU but it's actually a Comcast asset or it ends up, you know, kind of being spun out.

Speaker A: Freewheel staying with Comcast, the, the cable and tech company. Um, NBCU is the biggest customer, customer of free will. Right. Um, so a couple of thoughts here, uh, that are not in the kind of obvious stuff, um, which is you know, like I said, Freewheels biggest customers, NBC second biggest customers, probably Comcast ads, um, which is staying with the Comcast company. Um, and it's been a little Bit hurt by the fact that it's been part of Comcast. So it has been unable to say uh, sign Disney um, or Netflix to its ad server despite really having the best ad server in the video market. Um, so it may be that, that trains already left the station and that's not going to happen. But not owning NBCU makes them much less competitive with say a Disney. Um, you don't have nearly as much of a, of a conflict there. So that could be bullish for Freewheel. Um, it could allow them to do things that maybe they didn't want to do because once again NBC was sort of a captive customer or captive vendor there. Um, on the other hand uh, if you look at NBC use um, peer ah, group, you know Fox just acquired Roku, uh, and, and Netflix is building their own ad tech stack and Disney's building their own ad tech stack. And so it, you can imagine NBCU being more acquisitive and more likely to build as an independent. Um, the one piece of information I don't have, which maybe some of our listeners have or maybe if James Burrow is listening we. Where's Universal Ads going? Universal Ads Ads is the self serve buying tool that was uh, part, I'm pretty sure it reported up to Comcast Ads, meaning the Comcast part of things, not the NBCU part of it, but it's called Universal Ads and probably the biggest piece of its inventory is for NBC and the NBC properties. So I just don't know where that's going.

Speaker B: We had James on the other pod open market. I don't think we posted it yet. I think it's coming um, in a couple weeks and my impression is that NBCU is a big inventory partner but like they have like access to literally everything. Um, so I can imagine it stays within Comcast. I can imagine it you know is a, is a um, more of a classic uh, aggregation play. But I don't know.

Speaker A: Yeah, as for the Freewheel spin out, that's been the dream of many executives who've worked at Freewheel, many bankers who follow free will, everybody and their brother. Uh, because the, the synergy with the rest of Comcast is not great. Uh, there's not enormous amount, there is some uh, but a lot of it is really arm's length transaction. So Freewheel as an independent vendor could uh, be a pretty interesting um, you know, multibillion dollar public company. I would say it's very unlikely. It's just wishful thinking.

Speaker B: Yeah, makes sense. All right, let's see uh, bending spoons. How Familiar are you with Bending Spoons?

Speaker A: I love it. I love this idea of. It's basically VC arbitrage. Basically like VCs. If VCs fuck up your cap table, take it private, sell it and just run it for profit. That's the basic concept.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's the basic concept, um, to the company IPOs today. Uh, last I read it's looking to raise 1.6 billion, uh, in a $19 billion IPO. So $1.3 billion revenue business last year with a small loss. And they have been acquiring all of these like I guess you call them like web 1.0 and 2.0 businesses with a very unique playbook. So Bending Spoons owns aol, which I want to talk to. This is you know, sort of like the ad tech adjacency. They also own Evernote, Vimeo, Wetransfer, Bright Cove, Eventbrite. I mean basically like companies we were all talking about 10 years ago and haven't talked about since. Um, and their playbook is acquire immediately, cut headcount immediately raise prices and get you know, a team that apparently is like really good, um, improving the product, um, to uh, to keep customers over, over the long term. Um, and you know, again to your point, if these are companies that have kind of tapped out on, on you know, their, their current business, it gives them um, a way to uh, to sustain and be part of a, a larger organization.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love the business model. A lot of these companies are relatively healthy but don't want, want to operate to maximize profit, which sounds silly as a capitalist, but they want to m. They still are expecting hyper growth. They want to invest, they want to double in size even when it's maybe not feasible anymore given their space. Um, so you have to turn over the cap table, get new ownership and then just change the way investors see you. And uh, so investors see this company as a cash machine, as a profitable ah, both a profitability machine and a growth machine because there's a lot of other candidates they could be buying. Um, two, two points that I, I'm thinking about, number one is when do they get into ad tech? Uh, because not because ad tech could be profitable, but because they should be able to support their properties with ads. And they probably want to in house that to keep costs and, and profits as high as possible. I don't think the model works for ad tech where you buy like an SSP and cut people in profit I think but much more likely they would want to run their own ad tech. Um, and then the second question, um, really is like, are they too vulnerable to AI? Uh, where, if you buy something like Evernote, which is really just a kind of second tier SaaS kind of product, um, you know, that you may have concentrated risk from disruption from AI. Maybe not, no one knows, but that's kind of what comes to mind.

Speaker B: Good questions, um, Evernote aside, they have assets that I think are, um, probably sustainable. And to your point, you know, they are advertising businesses or advertising. Jason. So Vimeo, we transfer Vimeo, Wetransfer, Bright Cove, Eventbrite and aol. I mean these are all advertising businesses and could portend what you, you said. You know, in terms of having, you know, a stack aol, these numbers are shocking. So, all right, so number one, AOL is still alive. They, I think it was last year. Um, they, they basically stopped the, the Dial up subscription service. You know, now everybody's got access. Um, it makes $633 million a year. $633 million a year bigger than most ad tech companies through selling ads and membership subscriptions for things like malware protection and tech support.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: 30 million monthly users.

Speaker A: It's a tax on the seniors of America.

Speaker B: It's so good.

Speaker A: We could lower our Social Security lockbox fund if we uh, if we just got rid of these services. No, it'd be good for them. Uh, I guess I have a question. Maybe you know the answer. Why did Yahoo give up all this revenue and profit? Because AOL was owned by Yahoo most recently and it feels like there's uh, there's synergy there. And as a private equity held company, why wouldn't you want all that profit?

Speaker B: It's a good question. I mean my, my gut reaction is just focus. Right? Like bending spoon just wants to do this. They want to have all of these disparate assets, run them through a playbook. Yahoo is going for growth. Yahoo is like focused on the dsp. So I, I would imagine this is just a focus thing, um, and utilization of resources, but I don't know.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. One of the details I always wanted, uh, I wanted to know when the Yahoo AOL split happened was does Yahoo retain any of the kind of search or mail data? Because that's really their core asset. Um, and I don't know the answer to that.

Speaker B: I don't know either. Um, one of the best entrepreneurs I know is raising money for a SaaS role as up. Um, his view is somewhat, you know, kind of like what you said with, with bending spoons. Whereas, um, the SAS pocus is Largely overdone. You um, could probably create some sort of entity that has a lot of assets. You can rip cost out, you can increase prices and improve the products and have a going concern. I mean this is going to be like the, the bet for Constellation software moving forward and I think there's others that are going to go down this route. That's going to be interesting.

Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. SAS companies are wildly overstaffed and over, over cost because they uh, are doing that for growth. And if the growth slows the next, the logical thing to do is to cut aggressively and work for profitability. But they don't want to do that, especially if they're public. So a roll up makes tons of sense in SaaS. The product velocity of some of these SaaS companies is, is so slow in the age of AI that you know, it's embarrassing. I mean the, the poster boy for this is always a DocuSign that has like 10,000 employees or some ridiculous number for a product that you could vibe code and. No, and I know, so don't come at me. I know it's a lot more complicated than vibe coding. I mean getting a signature in Germany probably has a team of 100 just figuring out how to do it. But the point being like if you wanted to run that company for profitability, you could easily chop a third of the steps stuff. Um, and that's the case for probably most SaaS companies.

Speaker B: Yeah, agreed. Um, Meta news. So this morning this was interesting. So news uh, came out that Meta, Meta has been just like buying compute and they're you know we talk about this every quarter with the earnings. Their opex is just increasingly like crazy. Um, they are planning to sell excess cloud computer. So they're buying cloud compute, they're building data centers and then they're going to go and when they have like any access, um, go sell it to the market because there's a big market for this stuff. This puts them competitive like directly against now aws, Google Cloud, Azure, you know, some of the highest growth businesses within the hyperscalers and puts them all of a sudden in Enterprise B2B. It's fascinating.

Speaker A: It's weird because there was another report this week that Google had to cut off Meta because Meta was so much GCS resources that they were at capacity. So Google's at capacity because Meta wants more and now meta says implies they have excess capacity they could sell. Uh, I'm just trying to picture, let's say you're the CEO of some big company like your auto parts, right? And your CTO comes to you and says, hey, I got a great idea. We're gonna, we're gonna get off Amazon and we're gonna put all of our compute on Meta. Uh, do you think you, you survived that meeting?

Speaker B: Oh, no, it's a really good question.

Speaker A: Um, they gave me some pre free glasses and uh, you know, I don't

Speaker B: know, I guess it's a, it's a commodity and you know, um, as long as it's, you know, reliable and fast and secure, price probably wins.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the bigger question than the cloud, the cloud thing is super interesting and a big question mark for me. But the really interesting thing is will Meta back in the game with the frontier model? Uh, because, you know, a year ago the conversation was about Lambda and it was open source and it was like jiu jitsu where they were going to take, they were going to take away from OpenAI and the other folks. Um, you know, was it commoditize? The compliments, uh, of their competitors and you know, they've, they bought multiple billion dollar acquisitions reorgs and they're really nowhere like, you know, they're, they're just, just not a, uh, really important force in this whole movement.

Speaker B: Uh, you're right. Gosh, I remember when they came out with their latest model. It had a cool name. I used it like the one day came out to be able to talk about it on the pod. It was good. And I've just forgotten about it. Like it's really tough, um, the, the daily habit here. But I mean, at the end of the day, Meta, their ad business just prints money with AI, you know, once,

Speaker A: I mean, Meta could fire, you know, probably two thirds of their employees and make the same amount of money, but. Right. But then, uh, not sure, not sure Wall street would like that because it's giving up the future.

Speaker B: Never bet against Zuck.

Speaker A: Never bet against them. Yeah.

Speaker B: So also last week, Metaglasses, um, launched with Kylie Jenner, um, you know, the one that she designed. Uh, it was interesting. So, you know, Snap.

Speaker C: Snap.

Speaker B: Snap's presence at Cannes was about the spectacles. Like, I mean they, they had a hotel.

Speaker A: I don't.

Speaker B: You probably walked past it.

Speaker A: I walked past it. I didn't. Go ahead.

Speaker B: Yeah. Whatever hotel it was, the hotel name was covered up just by a word, spectacles. And apparently $100 billion deal with Robert Downey Jr. Like, you know, they're, they're all in for these $2,200 or $2,300, um, glasses. So Metaglasses launched Kylie Jenner Designed them or designed a pair is the face of it. And they're $299.

Speaker A: Um, remind me, is she the one dating Timothee, uh, Chalamet?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, she's like the most famous woman in the world, I think.

Speaker A: Okay, cool.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: Anyway, all that side, well done. Um, uh, do we think these things are going to scale and gain popularity? And then number two, I know you have your kind of dream that it can help you recognize people on the

Speaker A: street that say, hey buddy, that is my dream.

Speaker B: I mean, what is the ads application for this stuff? Because I mean, I've been waiting for the AR VR moment. It never happened. The smartest CEOs in the world, best companies in the world, are still investing in this stuff. And what do you think the future is?

Speaker A: Well, first of all, it's still a niche product. Even if millions of units are sold, it's still a niche product. So I think we should treat it like a niche product. The um, the, it's not just that the form factor needs to get smaller and the price needs to come down. It's that there really isn't a killer use case. People use it for a little bit of this. And that hasn't hit the mainstream. Even the way the Apple Watch or the Earbuds have, um, you know, there, it's well behind those two in terms of adoption. Um, so that's the most important thing. Um, will it become a consumer product? And then the second question is based on that, who would be in the best position to make it a consumer product? Uh, and Meta is in a very good position. They've invested quite a bit. They have the VR, AR technology they acquired and support huge amounts of money in. Um, they're not the only ones. You know, Apple, even though it whiffed on its first try, Google Android, maybe Snap, if they get a better product out there. And then the last question is, what's the ad opportunity? Well, it seems pretty clear that whichever hardware provider creates is going to control the ad opportunity. There's no reason why you would need to open it up to anybody else. Um, so that would kind of make me a little scared to invest in anyone who wanted to make a business selling those ads.

Speaker B: Agreed, agree.

Speaker A: One quick correction. The, the Snap space they get every year is not a hotel. It's actually a museum that they take over and they do all these very inter immersive interactive art things. It's very highbrow, which is different from everything else at can, which is very low brow. So yeah, stands out a Bit?

Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't go in. I just looked at it from afar. Um, what's this you put in the notes here about uh, the ftc, US EU data share? Seems important.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, this is usually. We should probably put this in the monopoly report, um, but it's something I've looked after for a while. Okay. So if anyone has heard the word shrems, you may get ice in your veins. Um, the, uh, shrems is back. So, uh, it was in I think dealbook this morning that the, the data provisions that allow U.S. companies to collect data from European citizens has now is in its third iteration because the first two were challenged by this German guy named Shrems and he won in European court. So. So, uh, uh, the data provisions were overturned and the current agreement between the EU and US allows the data to be collected by US firms only if it's regulated by an independent ftc. Fast forward to yesterday and the Supreme Court ruled, uh, that the FTC is no longer independent. There is no such thing as an independent agency in the United States anymore. Anymore. Um, the President, Donald Trump or whoever is the future president can change the FTC commissioners at will without, uh, without uh, them running through their term or without requiring cause. This will cause the EU US data sharing agreement, I forget the name of it, to be null and Shrems is going to sue. He already told the EU he is preparing his case. What does this mean for us? It means that it's going to be a continued pain in the ass for American companies do business in Europe and at some point they may. If a follow on agreement is not found valid in the eu. The worst case scenario is that you would need separate data centers in the EU that could not send any data to the US and in a strict interpretation you would need your own teams in Europe to be the only ones who had access to that data and would not be able to have Americans get access to the data in any form. Um, that is what Mr. Shs wants from, for his godforsaken continent.

Speaker B: That sounds like an aair for no

Speaker A: news feed for companies.

Speaker B: Exactly. Wow. Okay.

Speaker A: Odds, uh, of it happening, 100%. No, I mean the odds of him suing, very good. The odds of him winning, very good. The odds of the US and the Europe getting back together and coming up with another workaround that keeps this, this gadfly legal gadfly at, uh, at arm's length for a couple more years. That's probably good.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: All right. Um, I think we should call it there.

Speaker A: Yeah, let's call it. All right. Um, well, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Jenny Quigley Jones. Um, and we'll be back next week, everyone. Have a great Fourth of July.

Speaker B: Thanks, everybody.

Speaker C: Thank you for subscribing to Market.

Speaker A: New interviews are added every week at Market. And your favorite podcasting.

Speaker C: Applause.