Episode 213

Google wants search to die

Taboola CEO Adam Singolda has built his company on open web publishing. He sees the dynamics of the open web changing, as the battle for AI surpremacy acclerates the shift from traditional web search, putting in motion a cascading series of second-order effects that will remake the publishing landscape. We discuss why GEO is the new SEO, the need for publishers to match changed consumer expectations, the collapsed marketing funnel and why creators are the new long-tail publishers.

Transcript
Brian:

welcome to the Rebooting Show.

Brian:

I am Brian Morrisey.

Brian:

I am joined by Adam Singolda.

Brian:

Adam is the CEO of Taboola.

Brian:

Adam and I have been prepare, preparing for this podcast for the last 15 plus

Brian:

years, because I've known Adam A. Long time, all the way back when Bulah was

Brian:

not actually a content ad network on web pages, but you guys started in video.

Brian:

I remember.

Adam:

Right.

Adam:

It was the very beginning was a video recommendation engine, which

Adam:

only took me four years to realize that it's really hard to sell video

Adam:

recommendation software to publishers.

Adam:

and we then expanded to be kind of, you know, anything consumers went may

Adam:

want to do next, whether that's a piece of content or a piece of paid content.

Adam:

That was, that was the beginning.

Brian:

And I remember us talking and I, I, I think it was you and

Brian:

I, but it was, I was, I was saying like, but wait, this isn't relevant.

Brian:

I, this stuff doesn't look relevant.

Brian:

'cause relevancy was like everything.

Brian:

And you're like, no, no, no, it's not, it's not relevancy.

Brian:

It's like whether people are going to take an action on it

Adam:

Be because think about how early days this was today with TikTok, you

Adam:

have for you page, which is, which has nothing to do about anything contextual.

Adam:

It's only about what I may want to do next, which TikTok

Adam:

has done a phenomenal job.

Adam:

Sadly.

Adam:

I get, I suppose, predicting what I may want to do next.

Adam:

There a personalization engines, back then it was in the back of, you know,

Adam:

Google contextual ads and search engines.

Adam:

And so back then contextual was, was.

Adam:

Technology and we tried to bring something that was more about you may like,

Brian:

Right.

Adam:

you know, and that was,

Brian:

Which is very common now.

Brian:

And I think the other thing that like, 'cause then it became

Brian:

you guys in out brain, right?

Brian:

It was like the Bloods and the Crips, you know, but

Adam:

You know, nothing like a good two Israeli companies have having a good time.

Adam:

Come on Brian.

Adam:

This is, you know.

Brian:

I get it.

Brian:

I get it.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

and you, you wanna have that like, you know, back then it was like what?

Brian:

Like it was Dakota versus, what was the other one anyway, in behavioral

Adam:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam:

Behavioral targeting.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

But like, I think what was really interesting then was that.

Brian:

In some ways not as big of a trick, but it was like Google in some ways.

Brian:

And that Google took, the webpages that were actually valued the least at the

Brian:

time, which were search results pages originally were remnant inventory.

Brian:

It was like, yeah, just put some extra banner ads on there

Brian:

because they don't like monetize like a homepage or something.

Brian:

And in some ways you guys pulled a, a little bit of a similar

Brian:

thing by taking real estate.

Brian:

That was thought of as a place for just like remnant ads.

Brian:

Very low value, but that's when people make their decision about what to do next.

Brian:

And you can like funnel traffic in different directions.

Brian:

Do I have

Adam:

There were, there were two counterintuitive kind of eureka moments.

Adam:

Go back to 2012, at least for Tabula.

Adam:

2012 was the beginning of what we realized.

Adam:

We're on kind, we're onto something, and it started growing really,

Adam:

really fast from that moment.

Adam:

The first one was, as you said, when someone finish reading an,

Adam:

when they finish reading an article, they have this moment of necks

Adam:

when they're about to do something, they wanna read more thing, watch.

Adam:

something or make a decision.

Adam:

And if you are right, back then it was people were more

Adam:

in a viewability state of mind.

Adam:

So if it was top of the page, it was good, but nobody clicked anything at the top

Adam:

of the page and the bottom of the page.

Adam:

When you saw that, that's what people thought, but what they didn't realize

Adam:

that even though only 30 40% of people get to the bottom of the page, the

Adam:

engagement could be 10 x higher.

Adam:

So that was number one.

Adam:

The second thing that.

Adam:

quite innovative for us, was that advertising can be performing.

Adam:

On publisher sites like it does on search engine or Meta or Facebook.

Adam:

Back then, we, we did not, it's funny to go back in time.

Adam:

Back then people talked about content marketing there.

Adam:

It was all about, you know, even digital.

Adam:

If you remember, you, you, you made a good business out of people, you know.

Adam:

That was you.

Adam:

That was you.

Adam:

So, but we wanted to, to show that actually, you know, if you can

Adam:

click, if you click on something, the bottom of the article through Tabula,

Adam:

you may actually make a decision.

Adam:

And an advertiser could be measuring that experience like they do when

Adam:

they buy from Google and Facebook.

Adam:

That was new and, and those two things, you know, became a rocket ship.

Adam:

Particularly, we grew from a hundred thousand dollars a month

Adam:

in 2012 to over $200 million in 2014, just for those two reasons.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

And I think in some ways, and tell me if you disagree with this, like it

Brian:

was kind of our attention arbitrage.

Brian:

And, and by that I mean that like the attention, like when you said

Brian:

like the top of the page was, and I'm, this is gonna move into to the

Brian:

table of today, this little walk down

Adam:

That's all good.

Adam:

We're having, you know,

Brian:

uh, yeah, a little old school, a little two old guys sitting around.

Adam:

memory lane, memory lane matters, you know.

Brian:

No, but I do, you know, maybe it was 'cause I was

Brian:

like a, a, a, a history major.

Brian:

But I do think it does matter 'cause it informs, what tool is today and where

Brian:

it goes next in that like, it was taking the attention that was like the top of

Brian:

the page was, was being valued for the attention, not for the performance.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

And usually an arbitrage performance is, is.

Brian:

Performance always goes to like arbitrage opportunities, right?

Brian:

And like the bottom of the page.

Brian:

And by this arbitrage opportunity, I mean it, the bottom of the page was

Brian:

being mispriced because it was being measured based on things like viewability

Brian:

versus did it lead to some action that the marketer wants it to take?

Brian:

And like, I think what you guys found out, and brain too, I'm gonna give brain

Brian:

a little credit, is that the bottom of the page actually performs well.

Adam:

I, I, I wouldn't underestimate, I, I think you're simplifying this, but,

Brian:

Well, I'm a

Adam:

Which is, which is, that's good.

Adam:

But, but you're, but you're over simply find one important point, which

Adam:

is at the time, including companies in our space at large, it was very

Adam:

counterintuitive that you should have the advertiser, those who pay you for that

Adam:

placement, have a pixel on their page, pay on a per click basis, and measure

Adam:

measure A CPA, uh, an acquisition cost.

Adam:

Back then it was almost.

Adam:

As

Brian:

It was like gush.

Brian:

It was like, look, I covered, I covered direct marketing.

Brian:

I know it.

Brian:

Like, and, and the, the, the dudes I talked to at the DMA convention

Brian:

were completely different than the media people I talked to.

Brian:

Do you know what I mean?

Adam:

I, I, I, we proved, I mean, one of our, one of our first advertisers in 2012

Adam:

was a big subscription publisher that, I'll never forget it, it was one of the

Adam:

first five advertisers to go ahead and we proved that we can drive subscription.

Adam:

No one tried.

Adam:

No one even tried.

Adam:

No, no one tried for years.

Adam:

It was only 20 14, 20 15 that the ecosystem said, wait a second.

Adam:

This bottom of article placement, these native ads back then native ads is really

Adam:

not just a good location, but it can actually drive search like performance.

Adam:

That was the market.

Adam:

It took the market two years to catch up on one.

Adam:

Ebola did.

Adam:

I would say.

Adam:

Really well, because again, at the time people didn't think of that

Adam:

location as a performance kind of advertising opportunity, which

Adam:

became over the last decade, the most important thing marketers ever want.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

Performance marketing has eaten the, the internet, you know, and, and obviously

Brian:

Google's business has been driven by performance because they have intent.

Brian:

You type in a search term, they return.

Brian:

I'm not saying like, it's not like.

Brian:

Complicated, but in some ways it's like, okay, you type, you type in that

Brian:

you're interested in something and Google's like, Hey, hey here, here's

Brian:

some ads for, for, for that thing.

Brian:

and it's all, you know, performance based.

Brian:

They grew on performance.

Brian:

Maybe YouTube is a little bit, operates a little bit differently.

Brian:

Uh, Facebook, you know, the people who built the Google ad system move

Brian:

over to Facebook and then they rebuilt the, the thing we're seeing now, end

Brian:

of retail media, it's all performance, performance, performance, performance.

Brian:

And the problem for publishers is that in their DNA.

Brian:

They've never really fully embraced.

Brian:

I think performance advertising, it was like we'll run performance stuff,

Brian:

but that's like down the waterfall.

Brian:

Like we want, we wanna have like CPM, we are, we're about brand.

Brian:

We're not about performance.

Adam:

I, I don't think, you know, we should hold, we should, you know,

Adam:

publishers to their, you know, to, to, if, if I can represent publishers for

Adam:

a moment

Brian:

What.

Adam:

and, and, and, and if I may and I will.

Adam:

It's, you know, it to, to drive a performance adv a successful performance

Adam:

advertising business, you need.

Adam:

Tens of thousands of advertisers.

Adam:

It is, it is not a reasonable, it's not, it's not a reasonable even ambition

Adam:

for any one company that sells itself to have tens of thousands of clients.

Adam:

So I can choose one that makes sense in that moment for a company like

Adam:

Tabula, when we manage a network of 11,000 publishers, it makes sense.

Adam:

So I think publishers, you know.

Brian:

Well, it's a matching problem, right?

Brian:

I mean, like the, the, the direct marketing works when you

Brian:

match up an offer with a context

Adam:

Granular, right?

Adam:

So, so, so that's why it made sense for publishers to say, we're

Adam:

gonna sell to a few advertisers, a lot of money at a high price.

Adam:

And by the way, what we don't sell tabla, you should be our

Adam:

performance advertising arm.

Adam:

And in many ways, actually kind of like a foundation for revenue, right?

Adam:

Because we were, we became this predictable revenue for publishers.

Adam:

They can, they could say, this is, this is.

Adam:

Going up every year and rely on at the same experiences, m

Adam:

relationship, for that reason.

Brian:

Yeah, and like.

Brian:

I dunno, maybe this is part of our, but like, I mean, you, you get guarantees

Brian:

to a lot of like, particularly the bigger publishers and then, you know,

Brian:

to de-risk for them, which is always for publishers, you know, look, ad

Brian:

tech was always, you know, publishers have always looked to de-risk.

Brian:

They don't.

Brian:

They historically did not pay for, for the software.

Brian:

So instead they would do rev shares and things like this, and then go back and

Brian:

complain that they, that, that, that their partner, which took on the risk, was

Brian:

taking too much, of, of the, the profits.

Brian:

But like, you gotta, you gotta take risk to, to make money,

Brian:

right.

Adam:

was, I was always happy to take, you know, measured risks in a

Adam:

sense that if I knew, if I had, if I had conviction that something's gonna

Adam:

work for us and for them, and it could alleviate, you know, that risk, for the

Adam:

publisher to make a, a decision faster.

Adam:

I was always happy to do it.

Adam:

And I think, you know, when you run a startup.

Adam:

You know, you, you, it's all about, and, and when you scale a startup,

Adam:

it's all about managing risks and trying to be creative in, in, in your

Adam:

technology and product and also in the way you do business with partners.

Adam:

So I think, you know, for us, we were again, I, I believe among the first

Adam:

companies, to my knowledge, that came up with this guaranteed model that said, you

Adam:

know, in exchange for working for a long time together, which was also my ambition,

Adam:

I didn't wanna be anyone's vendor.

Adam:

So for us.

Adam:

You know, look to, to the extent we signed with Yahoo, a 30 year partnership,

Adam:

you know, which is I'm so proud of.

Adam:

But I always wanted forever partnerships.

Adam:

You know, I wanted to work with publishers forever.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

so talk to, so I, I don't wanna get in 'cause I mean, you guys have stayed

Brian:

in the performance, you know, place

Adam:

We've expanded.

Adam:

We, we, we, we, a year ago, we actually, we expanded our performance view

Adam:

point of view from kind of like native advertising to all types of performance

Adam:

formats and tech, you know, technology.

Adam:

And we named this to realized, so we came to market with

Adam:

Realized and we said Tabula.

Adam:

Advertising platform has a name, realize a new name, and you can work with us

Adam:

almost as easily as you work with, you know, p max of Google, or, or meta.

Adam:

You can upload any format you want.

Adam:

You, you display vertical performance, native, whatever you got.

Adam:

We reels, whatever you have, you import that from Google or Facebook

Adam:

because you all work with Google and Facebook and we, we can get going.

Adam:

You tell us your goal.

Adam:

And we use AI to generate creatives for you.

Adam:

We, we advise you budgets and, and, but it's all around performance.

Adam:

I want you to compare us to meta so we can create, you know, incremental value.

Adam:

We, I think that focus really helped us because in today's world.

Adam:

You know, especially as there's so much going on in the world, you know, so much

Adam:

volatility to be, to, to do one thing really well is really hard already.

Adam:

And to try to have this fantas full funnel fantasies, which I think you hear

Adam:

some companies speak about, you know, we'll do top of the funnel and bottom

Adam:

of the, I think it's too hard, it's different types of companies in, you

Adam:

know, merged in, in one or two or three.

Adam:

And, and I think, the market is going towards that performance

Adam:

kind of dynamics in any case.

Adam:

So we, we want to be.

Adam:

And hope to be kind of the largest performance advertising

Adam:

company outside of Google and.

Brian:

So explain that because like, I mean, I could see, I can remember like us

Brian:

having like coffee one time at, I think it was at Gray Dog, and you were like saying

Brian:

to me, you're like, what do pub, what do you hear from publishers that they need?

Brian:

Like, 'cause I wanna like actually get, I, because it's this partnership thing.

Brian:

You're like, is it, is it analytics is, you know, and I could see you guys going

Brian:

in a different direction where you said we wanna go literally up the page and up

Brian:

the funnel, up the page, up the funnel.

Brian:

You know, we

Adam:

Up the page, not up the funnel.

Adam:

Up the page.

Adam:

Yes.

Adam:

I wanted, and we do,

Brian:

But you know what I mean?

Brian:

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm using that as like a metaphor in that, like the, in the

Brian:

traditional sense of things going up the page meetings, like you would

Brian:

have more like branding and that, like instead, but you, you wanted to stay

Brian:

laser focused on performance rather than have like brand and performance

Brian:

and brand performance or whatever.

Adam:

Yeah, no, there's no, there's no performance here.

Adam:

So, so, so, so we do want to have access to all the placements a

Adam:

publisher may have, and they have great placements, and some of them may

Adam:

work to our performance advertisers.

Adam:

That is, that is something we are after via head of bidding and other

Adam:

connections that we have, because Teola is literally integrated on, you know,

Adam:

600 million people a day via first party.

Adam:

you know, JavaScript code on page, we have access to other placements.

Adam:

That is part of our strategy because we may find that this homepage unit can

Adam:

perform for Wayfair, which is a great

Adam:

advertiser.

Adam:

So we wanna be able to show it then and, and now.

Adam:

But what we don't want to do, what we don't wanna fight, we don't wanna

Adam:

measure viewability, completion rates and charge based on CPM.

Adam:

We don't, we wanna charge on CPC, measure CPA and know your objective.

Adam:

So we're, this is who we are,

Brian:

Because if you get that, if you get that right, I mean, and I think this

Brian:

is what, what, what Google got really right is, you know, they became a cost

Brian:

of sales, not marketing or advertising.

Brian:

Like they're, because like if your performance and you, you're

Brian:

saying, Hey, I'm gonna spend a dollar and I'm gonna get $3 out.

Brian:

I'm just like, I'm gonna spend as many dollars as you have $3 to give me back.

Brian:

Like I will, you know, I'll just keep it always on.

Brian:

That's what Google always said, we will have always on budget.

Brian:

So that is the, you know, the goal I wanted, like when you look at like the.

Brian:

It's like the unit of like whatever the unit of interaction is for bulah right

Brian:

across, like realize how much of that is your, what I would call like your

Brian:

legacy implementation, which is bottom of the page you might like, and then

Brian:

like, you know, some options there and, and, and you send traffic out versus.

Adam:

it's still big, but remember, so I don't know how much of it's public,

Adam:

but it's, so remember over the last few

Brian:

This will put the, this will put the podcast on the map if you get an

Adam:

yeah, I,

Brian:

investigation

Adam:

no, no, no.

Adam:

I'm, I'm very practiced.

Adam:

I'm a very practiced executive.

Adam:

So, so, you know, I, I, I don't tweet without someone reviewing my tweets.

Adam:

I'm just joking, that I can, that I can actually do so, so.

Adam:

So look, the, the, over the last few years, we're very fortunate.

Adam:

We've partnered with companies that are very, diversi, like in many ways,

Adam:

diversified to completely and changed us.

Adam:

you know, Yahoo, which is, you know, homepage and mail, and other, you know,

Adam:

very different types of inventory and huge Apple News, which is incredible.

Adam:

Our OEM partnership, Samsung omi, about a third of our traffic is in app now.

Adam:

Not mobile web, not desktop.

Adam:

And so we have, we've changed a lot.

Adam:

So I would say significant portion of our revenue is not what it was 10 years

Adam:

ago when kind of, you know, you and I,

Brian:

Right, right, right.

Brian:

Well, I ask because like, and I know it comes up in the earnings, like, I mean,

Brian:

look the webpage and, and I want to like talk about the future of the open web.

Brian:

'cause your business has always been, it's been a big funder of the open web, right?

Brian:

And like I had a breakfast this morning with a very large open web publisher,

Brian:

you know, an executive of that.

Brian:

He was like, I don't even know, man.

Brian:

Like, I know what, what has been on?

Brian:

'cause I, I'm asking everyone what's working.

Brian:

He is like, I know what worked like last year.

Brian:

Well, do I know what's gonna work next year?

Brian:

Like, no.

Brian:

Do I have any idea the following year?

Brian:

Zero idea.

Brian:

And so I think there's a lot of questions about the open

Brian:

web, particularly on webpages.

Brian:

You know, the, the webpages are not okay.

Brian:

They're not getting a lot of love these days.

Adam:

Is, is, is this a question?

Adam:

I can, I can tell you my, my, my

Brian:

It's a statement and a

Adam:

It's a, it's a statement.

Adam:

Yeah.

Adam:

Because I,

Brian:

special implementation.

Brian:

I do.

Adam:

I wasn't sure if this was an opportunity, an invitation for

Adam:

me to say something or more of a,

Brian:

It's an, of course, it's an invitation for you to say

Adam:

Uh, first of all, we pay one and we pay about one and a

Adam:

half billion dollars a year to publishers, so I'm very proud of that.

Adam:

I mean, I think we paid the best of the best of them, and, and the alternative

Adam:

to our publishers is, you know, children spending time on TikTok and Facebook's,

Adam:

which is, which is disa disaster.

Adam:

So I'm very proud of, you know, supporting trusted journalism always

Adam:

have been, but at that size now it's, I don't know who pays more to,

Adam:

you know, very important, trusted.

Adam:

Publishers around the world.

Adam:

So, it's, it's a, it's a moment of joy, you know, for us always when we finish

Adam:

the year and we look back and see how much goodness, you know, we've done.

Adam:

So I, I think, you know, in terms of the web, I think the web.

Adam:

Here's what I think is gonna, like, we're gonna experience, look, AI is the

Adam:

real thing, and, and there's, it's only gonna con the pace of change is massive.

Adam:

It's, it's, it's changing fast and the, the size of the change are growing.

Adam:

Also, the go, the growing up as well.

Adam:

I think we'll see.

Adam:

Do open web evolving in, in, in a way that smaller sites, which enjoyed SEO

Adam:

and social traffic for a decade or two.

Adam:

Those are at at risk because I think search traffic will change dramatically

Adam:

and, and it's gonna be very hard to get to be dependent on search in the future

Adam:

like we were in the past because Google will not be motivated as they used to be,

Adam:

to drive that traffic to around the web.

Adam:

Gemini is an incredible business, and I think the advertising

Adam:

opportunity at Gemini for Google is way big, bigger, and better.

Adam:

Than Google, traditional blue link that we know.

Adam:

So they're gonna push Gemini as fast as as much as they can.

Adam:

And because of that, traffic dynamics will change.

Adam:

So I'm concerned about smaller sites, which I like.

Adam:

blog sphere, and, you know, those kind of like good voices.

Adam:

I think that's gonna be at risk.

Adam:

And they, they will probably reborn in, in a creator economy of sorts.

Adam:

Like they'll go to a

Brian:

So the mid and long tail seem like it's becoming

Brian:

like the, the creator economy

Adam:

The credit economy that that's the future.

Adam:

SEO?

Adam:

I think so.

Adam:

I look at Snap, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok.

Adam:

There's a huge opportunity for the mid, mid to small kind of creators

Adam:

that maybe had thousands, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of

Adam:

thousands of page views a month.

Adam:

They have a real opportunity to, you know, to really, get subscription and commerce

Adam:

revenue on, as creators on the, on social.

Adam:

you know, Yahoo is, is, is having, their creator network.

Adam:

So I, I think we're gonna see a lot of big platforms inviting creators in, in a

Adam:

way, in a new way to create and monetize.

Adam:

and, and I think that's gonna be their future.

Adam:

When you look at the, the top of the market specifically, you know, trusted

Adam:

publishers that have direct traffic.

Adam:

That have community around them and a brand around them, I think they have

Adam:

an opportunity, opportunity to grow much, much faster than they used to.

Adam:

And I'll explain.

Adam:

So first of all.

Adam:

I think the, the, again, the desire consumers will have

Adam:

to go to direct directly.

Adam:

But I know this, even myself, I go directly to espn.com

Adam:

a lot more than I used to.

Adam:

I go to New York Post a lot more than I used to direct.

Adam:

I, I, I look for that direct relationship and I'm never gonna replace.

Adam:

I love the Knicks.

Adam:

I watch the Knicks.

Adam:

There's no future in which I chat with GPT about the Knick.

Adam:

I may ask them, when is the next game?

Adam:

But when it comes to what happened in the game, highlights of the game, I.

Adam:

I enjoy it.

Adam:

I don't want the short answer.

Adam:

Like I want to get some, I wanna get some information.

Adam:

I, I, I watch it.

Adam:

My, like me and my, my, my boy, we're watching ESPN highlights

Adam:

and things all the time.

Adam:

And there's, it's not like I'm not a heavy AI users, it's just

Adam:

not the same experience for me.

Adam:

So I think there's, there's a lot of value in, in community and, and brand and trust.

Adam:

And the biggest value creation over the next few years I think will be.

Adam:

When those trusted publishers adopt AI themselves in a much bigger way, can

Adam:

you imagine going to publishers and suddenly everything is personalized

Adam:

or you even have an LLM experience on the site and you know, we, we

Adam:

can get into that 'cause we have a product in market, but I think that's

Adam:

gonna be a big upside for engagement and revenue for those publishers.

Brian:

Okay, let's start with the Google, point.

Brian:

'cause I thought it was really interesting because, you know,

Brian:

having like, you know, covered Google from, from its early days and, and to

Brian:

becoming the hegemon that it became.

Brian:

There was like a rough equilibrium.

Brian:

Like it's never perfect.

Brian:

Nobody likes to be ruled over by hegemon.

Brian:

There's not many popular hegemons out there.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

But like for this, you know, Google roughly, it was a difficult, I give

Brian:

it some, you know, I give it a break.

Brian:

A lot of people like to hate on Google these days.

Brian:

but like I give it a break in that it was trying to, to, to serve a bunch

Brian:

of different, constituencies end.

Brian:

You know, there was winners and losers all the time.

Brian:

I remember the Google dance and

Adam:

Yeah.

Adam:

Yeah.

Brian:

but it's interests were roughly aligned with.

Brian:

And, and what I consider open web, what I mean by this is like web publishers,

Brian:

people who are publishing content to webpages, and Google was, if not

Brian:

the dominant, usually the dominant source of traffic to those webpages.

Brian:

And Google off often monetize those webpages too.

Brian:

So, you know, it, it had an interest, right?

Brian:

Like, you know, it's not just a charity over there, as far as I know.

Brian:

that bargain is really breaking down.

Brian:

So where do you see that?

Brian:

Developing.

Brian:

Do you see it breaking down further or like normalizing because Google wants

Brian:

to keep publishing alive, I think.

Adam:

Yeah, so, so again, the bigger publishers, there's dirt.

Adam:

Search traffic is, call it 30, 40% by way that traffic is

Adam:

not the most valuable traffic.

Adam:

If you, if you talk to the publishers themselves and, and call them, I

Adam:

encourage you, you'll see that the people coming from search tend to

Adam:

be the least moneymaking people.

Adam:

Like if you compare a homepage person to a search person, a homepage

Adam:

person could be worth two to three XA search person because they read

Adam:

more, they see different object.

Adam:

So, so even though it's 30 per 30, 40% of traffic, it is not 30 40% of revenue.

Brian:

Right.

Adam:

That's one important thing to say.

Adam:

Two, let's assume it goes down how much down, 50% down.

Adam:

They, they obviously need traffic to publishers because they need some

Adam:

dynamics with them for the content.

Adam:

They want to still train consumers to click on things.

Adam:

So there is value for Google and Gemini to keep clicking ecosystem healthy.

Adam:

But let's say it goes down 50%, so 30% of the traffic becomes 15.

Adam:

And the publisher lost 50% of traffic, and let's say they lost

Adam:

because of that 7% of revenue.

Adam:

One, it's not the end of the world there.

Adam:

It's not the end of the world.

Adam:

Publishers have lost five, 10, 50% revenue for many other reasons.

Adam:

Over the last decade, social affiliate things came and went.

Adam:

So we've seen, so first of all, not the end of the world

Adam:

one, but it'll be painful.

Adam:

Five, 10% of revenue loss is not insignificant, but

Adam:

that's what talking about two.

Adam:

What do you do with the 70, 80% of people that come to your site in other ways?

Adam:

I believe those people are worth a lot more.

Adam:

If you apply AI and you serve them personalized content and you give them

Adam:

LLM experiences and you monetize that with highly valuable performance ads.

Adam:

So what we don't understand is that we're in this junction now of old

Adam:

web, web in two, three years from now.

Adam:

I am convinced.

Adam:

We're talking to publishers, we're going to our, we're going to use

Adam:

it today, and we're having a five, 10 minute conversation about stuff.

Adam:

We care about what happened this morning with in the news, what happens in

Adam:

my town, what happened with my team?

Adam:

Can they win?

Adam:

And I'm, I'm talking back and forth and I'm getting content related to my

Adam:

question and this whole new supply.

Adam:

In the past, we called it page views.

Adam:

In the future, we call it queries, whatever we call it.

Adam:

But there's a whole new types of supply and LLM and time and engagement that

Adam:

will be born for trusted publishers.

Adam:

And, and in that supply, the monetization opportunity is

Adam:

something I can tell you from deeper dive like I've never seen before.

Adam:

So we now have a product in market, which if you listen to this podcast, and

Adam:

I hope you do, if you go to USA today, you'll see deeper dive on the homepage.

Brian:

And that's the a that's the AI search product that, that, that,

Brian:

that they rolled out with you guys?

Adam:

yeah, it's our LLM.

Adam:

It is more like Gemini.

Adam:

Like if I, if I look at the world of LLM, you'll have Gemini,

Adam:

which is basically free LLM.

Adam:

With ads.

Adam:

You'll have OpenAI, which is primarily SaaS B2B to companies

Adam:

or subscription to consumers.

Adam:

But it's gonna be, I think their vision would be more of a billion s subscribers.

Adam:

Versus, I don't think Sam Helman goes to Sleep and dreams about CPM and ccp

Adam:

CI don't think that's, that's not, I don't think that's a top 10 dream of his.

Adam:

However, it is a top 10, you know, top 10 dream of Google.

Adam:

So Gemini will be really good at monetizing LM and will

Adam:

educate marketers how to do it.

Adam:

And Chad g PT will never really be an advertising company.

Adam:

It will be a SaaS company.

Adam:

That's my prediction.

Adam:

I set it here.

Brian:

Oh really?

Adam:

That's my opinion.

Adam:

And then deeper dive will be like Gemini for the open web will be LM

Adam:

free, the only free one with ads.

Adam:

And I think that revenue will be potentially way bigger than we've

Adam:

ever generated to the open web.

Brian:

So Google search will become secondary to Gemini, like the

Brian:

Google, this traditional Google search experience that, that you see

Brian:

today like that, that we often use.

Brian:

is that the sort of prediction?

Adam:

I so.

Brian:

Yeah.

Adam:

I can tell you now with deeper dive, when you go to a publisher,

Adam:

the deeper dive is on the site.

Adam:

If you start typing or you're clicking on a generated question based on what we saw

Adam:

you read before across the internet, which is one of our biggest advantages 'cause we

Adam:

know what you read around, around the web.

Adam:

You basically what, what I know now.

Adam:

'cause when we launched it in September, what I know now that

Adam:

I didn't know then is that you basically become a super, super user.

Adam:

The likelihood you will read something.

Adam:

Or the likelihood you will convert and take an action with an advertiser is,

Adam:

we haven't published it yet, but it's, I can tell you it is higher than I've

Adam:

ever seen in my career to date, and I believe Google knows what I just said.

Adam:

So Google knows that Gemini performs probably a lot better than any

Adam:

other ad they've ever served on the web or on search or on YouTube.

Adam:

So they probably.

Adam:

As we know it as fast as possible so Gini can take over.

Adam:

That's my guess.

Brian:

That's interesting.

Brian:

So yeah, if you go like, on like DD deeper dive, and I think the big question

Brian:

is whether people are gonna use it.

Brian:

Are people gonna go to us?

Brian:

A and I've asked, I've asked, I've asked the, all the gt,

Adam:

Well, I have the.

Brian:

I've asked all the gt, okay, we'll get that.

Brian:

'cause I've asked them this.

Brian:

I, I'm like, amazing.

Brian:

Congratulations for getting this.

Brian:

It's good to see, you know, innovation and product and stuff.

Brian:

And then I have a comment and I say, but.

Brian:

Is anyone really gonna use a search bar on a publisher website when the, an

Brian:

entire generation has been, you know, proving that nobody wants to use this,

Brian:

the site search on, it's like trained like people who work for USA today do

Brian:

not use the search engine on their site.

Adam:

search.

Adam:

Yeah.

Adam:

Site searches

Brian:

But no, no, I'm saying it's a consumer expectation issue is like, give

Brian:

me the data that says that like you're gonna be able to get people into that mode

Brian:

when they've been trained to, when they see a search bar on a publisher website,

Brian:

they've almost been trained because they've been so horrific to never use it.

Adam:

The, I think that you and I are just, we live in

Adam:

the past because the question

Brian:

I do, I'll speak for

Adam:

the, the, the question is itself is archaic because consumers.

Brian:

now.

Brian:

We're getting into the good stuff.

Brian:

Thank you,

Adam:

Because, because when 700 million people use everyday LLM, they don't,

Adam:

they, they, they were, they didn't live when site search even existed.

Adam:

They only, the only way they expect, the only experience, they expect

Adam:

this conversation in free language.

Adam:

So when they go to a US today, or, you know, or India today, or you know, many

Adam:

of our publishers around the world, we're, we're gonna announce some more soon.

Adam:

So should, you should stay tuned.

Adam:

We launched almost every two weeks of publishers since launch, since September.

Adam:

What happens is at first they actually don't even know what it is, and we

Adam:

look at things they've read around the web before and we generate,

Adam:

suggested questions for them.

Adam:

So if I read about the next on one site and I go to a different site, that

Adam:

deeper dive may ask me about the next.

Adam:

That is something that even church GPT is not aware of because they don't

Adam:

know what people are reading about.

Adam:

They may license content, but they don't know that.

Adam:

I love reading about the mix.

Adam:

Nobody gives them information, but Tabula knows because Tabula

Adam:

is in many ways the internet.

Adam:

So now I, I was able to get you into the Prada for the first time.

Adam:

The second time around, you are typing, you already know what it is.

Adam:

And I can tell you the usage, the users that are using it

Adam:

is, is in the double digit.

Adam:

Which again, for someone that lived.

Adam:

Online for a very long time.

Adam:

1% is considered high

Brian:

Oh, a double digit percent.

Brian:

So over 10% of users

Adam:

Are you are using, are using deeper that it is astonishing number at scale.

Adam:

We're talking millions of people.

Adam:

So, and, and, and those people that start talking.

Adam:

By the way, site search was never that number.

Adam:

So, and because, because it's not site search, it's conversation,

Brian:

Wait, do they kids, do they keep using it?

Brian:

'cause there is a novelty factor.

Brian:

Like I remember when mobile ads

Brian:

had like a 13% like interaction rate.

Adam:

Yeah, that, that it goes up and up and up.

Adam:

but, but another point, so I, I'll give you another thing that

Adam:

you would appreciate using it, is that, is, that's exciting.

Adam:

Great.

Adam:

What happens, and this is aggregated information across, around the world

Adam:

of deeper dive publishers and users, once they get into deeper dive,

Adam:

that the likelihood for them to read something is again, double digit.

Adam:

So it's performing, and then the, and then the likelihood they will

Adam:

click on an ad. Which will convert for the advertiser is very high.

Adam:

So you look at those numbers again, at scale, millions of people.

Adam:

And I believe DDA could become top five LLM companies in the world.

Adam:

'cause I look at, I mean, open the eye, Gemini will always be the biggest, but

Adam:

I look at the next in line perplexity.

Adam:

In some other startups, I think we can be bigger than them because if we get

Adam:

10, 20% of people, 30% of people to use.

Adam:

LLM across the open web.

Adam:

Remember, we reach 600 million people every single day.

Adam:

So I'm so bullish on AI in the open web because I think that it, we can

Adam:

create a whole new experience for consumers on trusted publishers.

Adam:

And I will also say when it comes to decisions that matter, and I dunno what

Adam:

you think about it, but if you're about to book a vacation for your family.

Adam:

And you're debating between different pla you love Mexico and you're

Adam:

debating between different places.

Adam:

There's a good chance you go to JE and ask about some stuff.

Adam:

Like, you'll ask 'em questions about, you know, places to go,

Adam:

but there's no way you're making a decision just based on that.

Adam:

You're gonna watch videos on YouTube reviews to see if that's a good hotel.

Adam:

You're gonna maybe go to some review websites that I, you know, they

Adam:

sent maybe some editorial person to that hotel to see what they thought.

Adam:

And you'll, you'll spend 30 minutes, an hour, like it's a big decision

Adam:

about to spend thousands of dollars.

Adam:

This is where publishers, I think win.

Adam:

It's, it's where trust matters.

Adam:

It's where decision that matters.

Adam:

take place.

Adam:

Publishers are always part of it and I think this is something that will

Adam:

always keep publishers a very important no matter what AI model is coming up,

Brian:

And so is the idea here, and, and I love any, any data that you

Brian:

have on this that hopefully does not violate anything with the SEC is you

Brian:

then have a performance ad product because you, you, you have the answer.

Brian:

Anyone, I, I suggest you go and check out deeper dive.

Brian:

Just, you just go to usa today.com.

Brian:

It's right, right on the homepage.

Brian:

And, and you have basically a, a tabula performance ad,

Brian:

like underneath the, the like.

Brian:

Two paragraph or so, like response, right?

Brian:

And then you have, you have related link links to other other

Brian:

articles in the USA Today network.

Adam:

yeah, it's very light.

Adam:

I mean, we, it's, it's, there's an ad at the top and, and there's

Adam:

an ad at the bottom and that's it.

Brian:

But, but, but, but I think what I, I end up wondering is like,

Brian:

look, everyone wants a search engine.

Brian:

I would love a search engine.

Brian:

If anyone wants to gimme a search engine, it's great business.

Brian:

I would love to have one.

Brian:

look at Google.

Brian:

You can make every mistake possible.

Brian:

It doesn't matter if you have a search engine.

Brian:

I. that said publishers would love their own search engine.

Brian:

They don't monetize the same because, you know, when I'm asking what happened

Brian:

to Savannah Guthrie, that from an intent basis is not very valuable.

Brian:

I'm not sure what like, people can sell to me relating, related

Brian:

to this woman going missing.

Brian:

You guys take a different approach and it seems like you're taking

Brian:

a different approach with this.

Brian:

How are you matching up the advertising and how performant is that advertising?

Brian:

Is it, where is it between like, I mean, search is really performant.

Adam:

again, we, we have it published, kinda like the advertising index.

Adam:

I can tell you here it is performing.

Adam:

Incredibly well for performance advertisers.

Adam:

We have demand for advertisers to be part of deeper dive in conversation with

Adam:

CMOs in ways I've just never seen before.

Adam:

It's performing really well and I can tell you remember the,

Adam:

the, the law of large numbers.

Adam:

You don't need like to really make a huge impact.

Brian:

Yeah.

Adam:

We, you know, we need to just get, if we get significant CPNs effectively

Adam:

across this new types of traffic that can create, a revenue stream, a whole

Adam:

new revenue stream, a whole new journey.

Adam:

This can be a few decades of revenue for publishers.

Adam:

Search took 30, search was a, is a 30 year business that you

Adam:

know now is evolving into ai.

Adam:

And, and I don't know how long this will take.

Adam:

This could be another 30 years of revenue and publishers can

Adam:

really play as opposed to search.

Adam:

It makes so much sense for me to go through today and speak

Adam:

about what happened today.

Adam:

Also, interestingly enough, I was at dinner with a company that kind

Adam:

of tracks CDN, You know, around the web, and, and they, and they spoke

Adam:

about what do they see people ask.

Adam:

They, when they look at the, kind of the crawlers from all different AI companies,

Adam:

what they said was that, you know, about 50% of crawls are less 24 hour questions.

Adam:

People go to AI engines and ask about what happened.

Adam:

Yesterday, what happened today?

Adam:

This is a very important piece of information and we're

Adam:

seeing the same of deeper dive.

Adam:

50% pass of questions are recent stuff.

Adam:

Why?

Adam:

Why am I saying it's important?

Adam:

Because it means publishers who are the heartbeat.

Adam:

Of what happened today in the most trusted and curated and editorial way are, are a

Adam:

very important leg on this AI table, on their own site, and even outside of it

Adam:

in whatever deals will happen over time.

Adam:

So all, all of this to say that consumers, when they use ai, they really

Adam:

wanna know what happened recently.

Adam:

Sports, entertainment, news, local news, and that's something

Adam:

that publishers own will own.

Adam:

And the biggest gap is probably, if you're asking me.

Adam:

It's culture.

Adam:

Because what happens is publishers really have to ask themselves, how do we, if

Adam:

we launch today versus maybe a hundred years ago, how would we look like and,

Adam:

and, and what type of data do we use?

Adam:

'cause, 'cause look to have I salute, you know, my created

Adam:

use today for being first.

Brian:

Mm-hmm.

Adam:

You know, to say we're gonna, we're gonna do AI first and big, big,

Adam:

we're gonna innovate big and fast.

Adam:

And, you know, we, he, he invited me to his all hands, 10,000 employees.

Adam:

I was very excited.

Adam:

I know Mike for a long time and I, you know, I came in and

Adam:

we talked about innovation.

Adam:

It was awesome.

Adam:

that was a cultural move.

Adam:

It wasn't a technology move.

Adam:

It, it, we used technology, but the culture enabled that shift to happen.

Adam:

And I think it'll take, some publishers will be early adopters and they'll

Adam:

say, yeah, AI all over the place.

Adam:

Let's empower the newsroom with ai.

Adam:

Let's give them data.

Adam:

Let's put it, let's personalize the homepage.

Adam:

Let's put deeper dive or different product, to, to, but that there's

Adam:

a lot that needs to happen here.

Brian:

But when you see, when you see the, the, like the, the leaps that are

Brian:

taking place in, in AI generally, right.

Brian:

And then you compare it with most publisher web experiences.

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

They're simply not keeping up.

Brian:

And like, I don't, I think consumer expectations will change, right?

Brian:

And when you go.

Brian:

To a webpage.

Brian:

I landed on a webpage earlier.

Brian:

I don't know if they're, they're a bulah.

Brian:

I don't know, but like, I, I won't say what, actually it was variety like, I, I,

Brian:

I just like, I can't stand the variety.

Brian:

Like this experience is a loser in the market.

Brian:

It is going to lose every day of the week, and there is a absolute,

Brian:

the, the clock is ticking.

Brian:

On this approach to taking a webpage and to having a floating player

Brian:

and having another floating player, having a skin for Ford in Spanish.

Brian:

I'm not a Spanish speaker in Spanish.

Brian:

Having eight ad units for a 400 word story, having three different promotional.

Brian:

Units, having related articles, having then a content rep,

Brian:

it's a losing experience.

Brian:

I, I'm like, get me to an Instagram, get me to Apple News.

Brian:

Get me anywhere but this freaking webpage.

Brian:

And I do not think I'm alone with that.

Brian:

And I don't think that the publisher product is keeping

Brian:

up with consumer expectations.

Brian:

I don't think that's a controversial statement.

Brian:

Is it?

Adam:

It's, it's, it's not controversial.

Adam:

I think I always remind myself that, you know, publishers and you, you

Adam:

know, you played a lot of time in that space, are doing god's work to

Brian:

I know I don't hate the player, I hate the game,

Adam:

I know, I, I, I, I just, I just, I, I just, I just wanna remind you

Adam:

that we need those people to produce,

Brian:

want them to live, but I'm like, if you see a friend who's like

Brian:

drinking in the morning, you probably tell 'em, maybe you don't wanna do that,

Adam:

I just don't want my kids coming to me and making

Adam:

decisions based on a TikTok feed.

Adam:

So with all the respect, we do want those people writing

Brian:

right?

Brian:

So let's fix the

Adam:

and, and, and I think, I think we can create a much

Adam:

bigger future for the open web.

Adam:

I agree with that, and I believe the biggest upside.

Adam:

Is investing in direct to consumer relationships so

Adam:

people come to you directly.

Adam:

You can interact with them on newsletter and notifications and apps and LLM

Adam:

and chats, and I think we can grow the revenue per person ARPU via AI in ways.

Adam:

We have never seen before.

Adam:

I am bullish on this deeper dive opportunity.

Adam:

Like you said, search business is the best business.

Adam:

This is better than Search.

Adam:

Gemini is better than Google.

Adam:

Blue Link and and deeper dive is Gemini.

Adam:

So for publishers, there a piece of that pie.

Adam:

And to create double digit user adoption.

Adam:

Re is, is, is big now.

Adam:

How fast can it happen?

Adam:

I don't know.

Adam:

It's very early stages for us and our partners, and I'm

Adam:

learning myself all the time.

Adam:

We're making mistakes, we're trying new things.

Adam:

But, but you know how you, we started this podcast by saying in 2012, nobody

Adam:

thought the battle of article was a thing and nobody thought it could mean

Adam:

so much to performance advertisers.

Adam:

It's, it's way bigger than that eureka moment.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

and so what do you think, like in three years, like, are, are, are webpages

Brian:

gonna be the organizing principle for publishers like that, that that's

Brian:

the main thing that they're shifting?

Brian:

'cause this is the part that I, I really, honestly don't know about.

Brian:

'cause I just think, I see all the trends.

Brian:

And I know it's like something big is happening.

Brian:

I read the viral like, you know, x article of the week, that tells me I

Brian:

have 18 months before, like I'm like living in a cave or something, scrounging

Brian:

off the land and, and Prospect Park.

Brian:

But, like it's hard for me to, to imagine that, with all the changes

Brian:

going on, that we're gonna be going to web pages and hitting a back button.

Brian:

Maybe we're hitting maybe like I just, it seems to me that the

Brian:

publisher product that they're ship shipping has to change a lot faster.

Adam:

I agree.

Adam:

This is that, and that's why, that's why I think the biggest innovation ahead of

Adam:

us is culture, because AI is a commodity.

Adam:

Anyone listening to this podcast can today download cursor, download

Adam:

anthropic, download a lama, open source, and get going, have some fun.

Adam:

This is not the, the, the hard part is not the AI itself is the data.

Adam:

Do I know some, do you have something unique and a distribution?

Adam:

And companies like us and publishers have both?

Adam:

They have both.

Adam:

So really it's about can you build that experience to capture an opportunity to

Adam:

create monetization that is completely net new using ai And, and that's

Adam:

why I think the biggest step ahead of us is can we change fast enough?

Adam:

As an ecosystem and those who do will, will benefit significantly from this.

Adam:

And I think we can play, this is not one of those, look, it's to build an AI

Adam:

engine that can predict what I want to ask and can then monetize it with tens

Adam:

of thousands of performance search ads,

Adam:

and then encourage me to continue conversing is hard.

Brian:

So you're doing text ads in this, right?

Brian:

Is it an entirely text ads?

Brian:

You're not doing the classic, because I, I mean we have to get to, otherwise

Brian:

I'll get like a million emails, right?

Brian:

Like it, it's content rec ad ad networks are notorious in the

Brian:

popular imagination, let's just say with quote unquote low quality.

Brian:

You hear words like clickbait, MFA, all the rest of it.

Brian:

We go through these moral panics about, and there's some people

Brian:

who say, I wish that we wouldn't have these things on our site.

Brian:

It's crack.

Brian:

I wish we weren't addicted to it, blah, blah, blah.

Brian:

You know, all this, Adam, you've heard this for a

Adam:

I mean, I, this

Adam:

is, I, I I heard it in like it was years ago since

Brian:

still, people still say this stuff to me, trust me.

Brian:

I'm not like, if I did not bring this up right, so like, what is and, and look.

Brian:

I say it all the time.

Brian:

Publishers are, are in control.

Brian:

They can turn that knob any which way they want.

Brian:

They want the highest quality ads from like, only like the best.

Brian:

That's fine.

Brian:

They're not, they're not gonna make as much money.

Brian:

And performance is performance and every advertiser or every publisher,

Brian:

it seems to me, turns the knob towards revenue versus, you know, whatever sort

Brian:

of, you know, quote unquote quality.

Brian:

That's my sort

Adam:

I mean, I look, I mean, I, I, I can speak about, you know, the industry

Adam:

at large can speak about tabla and I am very, we have a hundred people,

Adam:

full-time employee reviewing ads.

Adam:

We have an AI system.

Adam:

We built the reviews, ads, we have a public policy.

Adam:

I think we're most strict.

Adam:

Than our partners in terms of what we even accept or not.

Adam:

We don't have a knob issue.

Adam:

And look at who we, and we work with the most incredible partners in on Earth.

Adam:

I mean, apple, Yahoo, Disney, N-B-C-C-B-S, Gnet Today, McClatchy, Nexstar,

Adam:

advanced Media, LA Figaro, I mean, unbelievable companies that have been

Adam:

around for like a hundred plus years.

Adam:

What are we talking about?

Adam:

I mean, I, I just don't think.

Adam:

Anyone has, anyone has the patience for, you know, to, to take that little risk,

Adam:

at least in my ecosystem, I'm aware of.

Adam:

You know, obviously, you know, I think over time things got better and we always

Adam:

improved and you know, but I mean, but, but as of now, you know, this is not, I

Adam:

think something that I spend my time on.

Adam:

I spend my time on primarily on.

Adam:

And how do we 10 x the open web, how do we grow the users that are

Adam:

on the site with high quality?

Adam:

CPM, you know, high CPM ads, based, driven by performance, driven by, you

Adam:

know, C-P-C-C-P-A, all those good things.

Adam:

That's, that's why I spend a lot of my time and, and I also see, I look around,

Adam:

we're partnering with companies like Paramount and lg, that there isn't,

Adam:

that are, they're in the TV business.

Brian:

Mm-hmm.

Adam:

So that we can connect our data and bring demand from TV in the form of

Adam:

performance ads on publisher sites to show the TV ads, also drive performance.

Adam:

All of those events validate that you know that I think we're doing

Adam:

something in the right direction.

Brian:

So you guys have scaled, and I ask because like, you know, it's one thing

Brian:

putting ads that could be interesting, like on the, the bottom of like webpages.

Brian:

But Google, you talk about tens of thousands of adver, like Google's

Brian:

got millions and millions and like they have, you know, a matching

Brian:

search is a lot of a matching issue.

Brian:

And like I remember.

Brian:

You know, Google wouldn't say how many advertisers they had before they

Brian:

went public and they would always just tell me like, over a hundred thousand.

Brian:

And it ended up being like 700,000 when they went public.

Brian:

Like, and it's, they've got, they've got a lot and so they're

Brian:

able to match really well.

Brian:

is this a different sort of challenge matching challenges you get into different

Brian:

surfaces that are not the webpage?

Adam:

I, so, interestingly enough, I think the challenge and opportunities

Adam:

is not necessarily in that direction.

Adam:

'cause this is again, actually a search.

Adam:

You're thinking Blue link search, which is, but definitely

Adam:

more advertisers is important.

Adam:

So yes, we want, as a company for Tabula, I want to grow our net.

Adam:

We call it scaled advertisers.

Adam:

How many advertisers spend more than a year?

Adam:

So we want that to grow as much as we can.

Adam:

So that's important.

Adam:

However, the biggest and interesting path I see ahead of us in the

Adam:

world of AI monetization, it's more about in the sense that if I ask.

Adam:

Let's say you said today, notice deeper dive notices that I'm

Adam:

speaking lot about the Knicks.

Adam:

I come every day, I'm like, Hey, what happened at the game and why do

Adam:

you, do you have a chance to wait?

Adam:

Compare this to like a year from ago?

Adam:

Like I saw that conversation and I do it often.

Adam:

At some point deeper dive should ask me, do you want me to do some,

Adam:

do you want to check games where I see prices are lower than usual and,

Adam:

and send this to you over email.

Adam:

And you can, do you want me to, do you wanna gimme $5,000 so I can

Adam:

buy you tickets for the rest of the year that are all in the $500 range?

Adam:

versus two 1000 because it's, it's good.

Adam:

I'll look for those opportunities and I do want to look for a train to, to

Adam:

watch, the mix when they play 76ers, because it's close and maybe it's more

Adam:

for, and I'm starting, do you wanna say do subscriptions with the NBA app?

Adam:

I got a good deal of it.

Adam:

So it's, do you wanna move this chat?

Adam:

To your I message so we can talk more frequently on your

Adam:

phone versus on of today.

Adam:

A lot of, there's gonna be a lot of synchronist kind of, interactions,

Adam:

multiday, and eventually I think that the opportunity is that I ended up buying

Adam:

from deeper dive s of today, put deeper dive, says Do you want to buy this on

Adam:

Ticketmaster or, and I support Apple Pay and I give Apple Pay and I pay it.

Adam:

It's, and it, it's done.

Adam:

I think that's what Gemini is going to do.

Adam:

And I think they may, this may be something that ai and search engines,

Adam:

you know, like we used to know, but in the form of AI could grow into not only

Adam:

do we need more advertisers, it's gonna be longer journey and a gen such that it

Adam:

comes back to me in feeding information.

Adam:

And when I'm ready to buy, I'm buying it in the moment.

Adam:

I don't have to click and go to the advertiser page anymore.

Adam:

The funnel could be dead.

Adam:

In the future, I'm just gonna make the decision

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

So that's a very different like ad system than the ones that

Brian:

you have run before, right?

Brian:

I mean, that's like very different.

Adam:

that, that anyone is right.

Adam:

No one has done it.

Adam:

I, I'm, I'm just, I, I suspect there's an opportunity, so I'll tell you what,

Adam:

I'll tell you why I'm saying that.

Adam:

We've never seen anything before that consumers spend so much time with.

Adam:

We've seen people spend 50 minutes a day on social.

Adam:

No one spent 15 minutes on google.com.

Adam:

You, you search, you click,

Brian:

Yeah.

Adam:

But now with Gemini and with the Prada, you've seen

Adam:

people spending minutes, sometime more than 10 minutes conversing

Adam:

about something they care about.

Adam:

They ask, they read, they ask, they read.

Adam:

So if I give you so much time, would I trust you enough to

Adam:

also make a decision for me?

Adam:

So that's why I think this is a brand new opportunity for us.

Adam:

We have not done it yet, but I'm excited about, you know, where this could

Adam:

go from a monetization perspective.

Adam:

This is, again, we're going back to trust.

Adam:

Do I trust someone like USA Today?

Adam:

Do I trust someone like, you know, N-B-C-C-N-B-C?

Adam:

Oh yeah.

Adam:

A lot more than I trust perplexity, you know, all day long.

Adam:

I give CNBC and NBC News my money all day long before I get perplexity my money,

Adam:

so, so I think there's an opportunity for publishers to really capitalize on that

Adam:

trust and offer me to make decisions.

Brian:

This sounds, and this is the last thing, but like this, this

Brian:

sounds like this is something for.

Brian:

You know, there's a, a severe power law that this is for, you

Brian:

know, just the top publishers.

Brian:

And I think that was getting to your, you know, bringing

Brian:

it back to like the open web.

Brian:

Like I think of the open web, you know, it's been synonymous with like the

Brian:

long tail and like there being these tens of thousands of, of websites and

Brian:

that, that was both great and really challenging I think for the overall

Brian:

ecosystem because there was, they were up and down in the quote unquote

Brian:

quality and, That kind of trust that you're talking about, that's for people

Brian:

with real brands, like not people with plausible brands in a search results page,

Adam:

I, I think, I think you're right though, that trust, but

Adam:

it could be a small local site.

Adam:

I don't think it has to be a huge volume site.

Adam:

This could be my local this, this could be a local site I love and I trust,

Adam:

and maybe by the way, it's on tv.

Adam:

My

Brian:

Board.

Brian:

Panda was a very large site back in the day.

Brian:

Nothing against Board Panda.

Brian:

I don't know if they done

Adam:

Yeah, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, I'm, I'm, I'm not addressing any of that.

Brian:

We're not, we'll not address Board Panda.

Adam:

but, but, but, but we see today, you know, obviously you have some

Adam:

great businesses that are able to charge subscription, and there's, they

Adam:

may not be huge in traffic, right?

Adam:

Substack has a lot of those very great voices.

Adam:

So I think it's, it's about, you're right, it's about trust

Adam:

and not necessarily volume.

Brian:

Yeah, no, I think, I think, look, the Open web it, it has been amazing.

Brian:

There was a lot of ARB publishing going on there.

Brian:

I would always like, the Digiday Publishing Summit was always strange.

Brian:

There would be people who are like from Vox Media, New York Times, and there

Brian:

was, there was arbitrage, but they were in a totally different like sector.

Brian:

They just happened to both be quote unquote publishers.

Brian:

I think we're seeing some kind of similar thing.

Brian:

I mean, the.

Brian:

Sort of arb publisher of today is more likely a creator newsletter business.

Brian:

And, you know, they're doing a different form, of arbing arb never dies.

Adam:

Look, I, I think I, I think I, I think what, what, what's, what's

Adam:

fun about this podcast is that anyone listening to this, basically they,

Adam:

they get a first, you know, view to our meetings over the last 15 years.

Adam:

It's basically me coming in, believing and being the optimist that there

Brian:

No, I'm trying to be an optimist.

Brian:

I'm trying to be an optimist, Adam.

Brian:

I'm trying to be an optimist.

Brian:

I, I, I, I truly am.

Brian:

anyway, I appreciate it.

Brian:

Thank you for taking time.

Brian:

It's always good to chat.

Brian:

Uh,

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