Speaker 2
I think caution and excitement, that's pretty good way to approach this. Yeah, there's a lot to come. So I want to get into Tracer for people who aren't familiar listeners that don't know what Tracer is. Give me a quick rundown on Tracer, what you do and how it works. But remember that this is a jargon free zone because on the website, I did notice some phrases like unparalleled transparency and business platforms and centralized data of those experiences.
Speaker 1
Don't worry about updating the website. We are updating it, no jargon. So no, Tracer is the easiest way to talk about it is we are actually an AI powered data intelligence platform. And so what we do is we provide brands with reporting visualization that enables them to be able to measure things like lifetime value of their customer, analyze and creative with testing options, organizing their ERP data, actually getting all of their data centralized for AI usage. That is what we actually enable brands as well as agencies and tech partners to do with only a couple of clicks of a
Speaker 2
button. Give me a real for me. Give me an example of Tracer in action. Just any kind of example. Yeah.
Speaker 1
So I think a great example and it's actually on our website. This will stay on the website, although we will be updating other things. I'm a great case study is our partnership with Papa John's. I think everyone knows Papa John's. What we do with them is they actually have a lot of national work that they do on the marketing side. They also, as you would assume, have a lot of brick and mortars in regions. And so they do a lot of regional advertising and marketing as well. What they were unable to do prior to Tracer was to get everything consolidated into one view. So they would truly be able to understand the impact of their national efforts on their regions and then the impact on the bottom line and the contribution of each. So with Tracer, we are able to get everything centralized into one source of truth that they now use across all of their different agency partners, whether it's national agencies or regional agencies in order to really understand the impact of their marketing advertising efforts in totality. So that's something that we are very proud of with our partnership with Papa John's and is a great example of what Tracer can do in action.
Speaker 2
And how does Tracer work with, say, a CDP or some other data related technology that one of your clients might already have on board? Yeah.
Speaker 1
So what we actually do is we ingest all of your data into our platform. So if they're working with a CDP, that would come directly into Tracer platform with all of your other data as well as much data as you want to provide to us in order for us to actually get into that one consolidated view of how all the levers you're pulling are actually working together. And we would normalize that within our technology. And then we are able to within the technology also provide to the answers that you're hoping to understand within the data that you're feeding in. So if you're within your CDP, if you're trying to understand what customer group X might do within a certain advertising channel, we're able to answer that within our platform. And then we can send that wherever you need it to go, whether you need that answered to go to your CEO's inbox, whether you need that answer to actually go back into a data lake, whether you want it to be visualized within a visualization partner, we can take the answer that we've arrived to and place it wherever you need
Speaker 2
it. Not to make this podcast into an exercise of reading Tracer's website, but there is a phrase that I'd like to talk about a little bit that's mentioned on the site. In big letters, it says, enterprise analytics is broken. Quote, unquote. So yes. Why is it broken and how did it break? Or was it ever functional?
Speaker 1
Well, I was going to I was going to say was it functional is the is the real question, right? It's it's broken because there are too many data sources, too many data sets that are floating around. So when we were talking earlier about the growth of digital advertising in general, or just digital because it goes beyond advertising, there is just a lot more if you've seen the most recent Luma scape, like I can remember what it looked like many, many years ago. It was not remotely as complex or tiny. You can't even see the logos anymore that show up on it because there's just so many technologies. There's so many competing tools that are out there where in order to stitch everything together, it's incredibly hard to do it until Tracer. And so that's why we say enterprise analytics is broken. It's because the solve up until Tracer has been humans trying to stitch it together on our own within different spreadsheets within different teams, trying to come together to get to an answer. That all goes away once Tracer is enabled. And it's very easy for you to get to the answer using all the technology that you might already have, you can port that all within Tracer to get to a simple answer and understand how they all work together.
Speaker 2
So one more question before we just take a quick break. You joined Tracer in May of last year from Tenuity and your Tracer's first president. So why did they create that role? And what would you say your top priorities are right now as president?
Speaker 1
Yeah, so the role came out of we just closed our first series A in August of this last year. And part of the close of the series A was to bring on a president that could actually help Tracer grow into its next wave of growth. There hadn't been any investment into Tracer from a marketing sales operation standpoint. And so my role as president is really to bring those functions to life within the organization. So Tracer's growth has been pretty organic, all homegrown word of mouth. We have the great history of first being incubated within VaynerMedia. So that definitely helped us from being able to start off as a truly enterprise offering. We spun out four years ago when we did the initial seed round. And the seed round was really to invest in the technology to make sure that the technology was bulletproof, that we had a great product that we could go to market with. The series A was okay, we have this great product. Let's make sure that we go to market and let's have a president in here that actually knows how to go to market. That is what I've been focused on is really making sure that we build out our art, that we make people know that we exist beyond just word of mouth. So building out our revenue arm, making sure that we have a great client success team as well as hiring our first sales leader who came over from TikTok, making sure that we have marketing activities and really process orientation around how we're going to continue to grow on the revenue side and build the business. So that is where I've been focused for coming up on a year.
Speaker 2
All right, cool. Well, UT's the Tracer Origin story. We'll talk a little bit more about that and the Kevin Durant connection because there is one. It's just here. So stick with us.
Speaker 3
All right, we're back.
Speaker 2
And to take a quick step back, I do want to talk a little bit more about Tracer's origin story. Like you mentioned before the break, the tech was incubated within VaynerMedia. And it was because Vayner was looking for automated reporting and analytics tools that they could use across clients, but there wasn't anything that they really felt like was a fit. So they just made their own, which is kind of cool. Like around 2015, I believe, and then you traced some of the story, right? Like 2018 separated into its own LLC. And then there was this initial funding round. It was led by Mark Lohr, I think, right? Thejet.com founder. Yeah,
Speaker 1
yes. Mark Lohr was our Mark Lohr. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2
I need to learn how to pronounce people's names. And that was through a fund that he has VCP ventures with Alex Rodriguez. Yeah. And then more recently, Kevin Durant invested also, which is really interesting. So KD and Alex Rodriguez. And they're not alone in being celebrities that have invested in AdTech or Martech or Data Analytics. There is a surprising number of athletes and personalities and celebrities with investments in this industry. I once went to a conference that MPARTICAL, the CDP, hosted a bunch of years ago, and there was a fireside between my cats and Nas, who's an investor, which was pretty cool. I know that Edward Norton is an investor in EDO, which is a TV measurement company. And John Bigg Wazamo was involved. I don't know if he still is with his Latinx focused digital media company called NGL Collective. And I know this because I got pitched by them a while ago and I tried to snag an interview with John Bigg Wazamo, but it didn't happen, unfortunately. And I'm sure there are other notable examples that I'm not aware of. But what do you think appeals about this industry to high profile investors like that? I mean, is it just another part of the portfolio? But why would Kevin Durant invest in a data intelligence platform? Yeah.
Speaker 1
And I mean, honestly, I think it's that when you actually hear the problem that Tracer solves, everyone knows that it's a problem. It doesn't, it's not agnostic to the media world or the publishing world or the technology world. If you're an everyday person, you hear that enterprise analytics is broken and you might say, well, what does that mean? And then when you say, well, how are you able to stitch all of your content together to get one answer, you sit and think about it. You're like, oh, okay, yeah, I could actually see the application for that, especially with Kevin Durant and he has his boardroom platform that is a content engine, right? And so when you are actually sitting as an end user and an everyday user that consumes content, but you're also someone that is creating content that you're trying to distribute to outside of just your website to different podcast platforms, different streaming platforms, different social platforms, et cetera, it becomes a very easy proposition where I think they just see the opportunity to get involved in a product that's truly changing how people are going to be able to get to answers quickly. So very, very proud of our investor group. They're actually all involved. It's not just names on a piece of paper because they do see the value in what we're trying to bring to market.
Speaker 2
I mean, I don't think of this loom reaper as an everyday person, but yes, I hear what you're saying. So sticking with that enterprise analytics is broken or we're on our way to fixing it. There are too many data sources. The technology is very complex. So with that as the backdrop to this question, do you remember, I don't know, seven, eight, 10 years ago, you almost literally could not get through a conversation about marketing without someone talking about big data, capital D, capital D. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, just big data as in, you know, this constant ever growing deluge of data, structured data, unstructured data, just inundating businesses on a daily basis. So it's not like there's less data today, less business data, but now you never really hear anybody use that term. It just doesn't come up anymore. So what changed? Why don't people talk about big data anymore?
Speaker 1
I think what changed is that people actually just started to get more specific instead of just clumping everything into big data, right? Because when you just say big data, how do you actually understand what anyone's talking about in order to actually get to an answer? So instead of saying big data, I think what people say now is CDP data, like what we were just talking about, or they'll say social media data, or they'll say first party data, or they'll say, oh my God, my cookies are going away. Like they're just more specific. And I think because it has become such a proliferation of data that everyone in an organization had to get smart about data where they couldn't just say big data anymore. Like you have to actually be specific with the data that you're talking about in order to know what to do next if there is anything to do next and to leverage the data in an appropriate way. So yes, we actually, no one says big data tracer because it's so bad. Yeah, it's so passe. But it just doesn't really mean anything. Like let's be specific and talk about the data that we are trying to talk about. I think that's where it disappeared into actually the specificity of the data that people are trying to have a conversation about.
Speaker 2
On the point of, oh my God, my cookies are going away. And on the flip side, I'll just say it, big data is signal loss. So the fact is third party cookies are getting phased out fully. Of course, everyone makes the point you already can't access third party cookies and other browsers, but it's really ending now. Device IDs are harder to come by, same for IP addresses soon. So targeting is going to be a challenge, but measurement, man. I mean, you mentioned this during the first half. That is going to be really, really hard. So do you think, and you mentioned it as one of the main challenges that brands are concerned about, do you think brands realize though how difficult measurement and attribution is going to become as a result of a broader signal loss? And as it gets harder, I feel like more money is just going to go to the old gardens. It's inevitable.
Speaker 1
I do think that brands understand. If you asked me this question maybe a year and a half, two years ago, I would say that everyone had a little bit of understanding, but I do feel that everyone understands at this point. I think that the challenge from a brand standpoint is that there are different levels of understanding. And what I mean by that is that I think from the marketing side of the organization, they, their hair is on fire because they understand that it's going to be a challenge for them to actually get the same type of results or exceed the results that they've been historically tracking and measuring their success against from a business standpoint. But if they aren't completely plugged in with their analytics and their IT teams on their hair being on fire, then I think that that's where there is a little bit of friction where different parts of the organization have different agendas and they have different goals that they're trying to achieve. And if the entire organization isn't rallied on the notion that they need to be focused on solving this cookie deprecation issue, that's where I think that's where the friction comes in. Is that just because the marketer is saying that they need support doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the organization is going to be as on board as the marketer to solve for it at the same pace and as quickly as the marketer would necessarily need it.
Speaker 2
So some people's hair is on fire and then some people are like that, that little dog in the meme who's sitting in a room that's on fire drinking a cup of coffee and he's just saying, this is fine.
Speaker 1
This is fine. I'm fine. We're all fine, right? We're good. Yeah. I think that everyone, and like I said, everyone in the organization knows that this is a problem. I think different teams understand the problem more than others. And we're going to come to a point where if those teams aren't talking as frequently as they need to, if they're not embedded in working towards the same goal, then that's where the challenges and the lack of preparation come in. So
Speaker 2
I want to change gears for a bit and talk about some research, really like a benchmarking and trends report that Tracer put out recently covering January compared to December in terms of CPMs, cost per click and click throughs across all the major platforms, all the whole array of Google stuff, display, search performance, Macs, YouTube, Metas, stuff, TikTok, Pinterest, the trade desk, LinkedIn, Bing and Nx. Nx. So one of the findings is that CPMs and CPCs, and this is not really surprising, they were down a lot in January month over month, the holidays end. And then after that, the ad spending and marketing spending, Bonanza, the brands that have done that, they pull back. And you guys found that putting aside the trade desk in Google search, pretty much every other platform saw double digit drops in their January CPMs versus their December CPMs and every platform other than Google display and TikTok saw big drops in cost per click. So this is like a two-fold question. And with an observation, Tostin. So love observations. January seems like a great time to reach people because it's way cheaper. But I mean, do people, so that's the observation. And then questions are, do people actually want to hear from brands in January? Like, are they in the mood or are they in hibernation mode and money-saving mode after their post holiday excesses? But then again, it could be a really good time to invest, not just because it's cheaper, but a good time to invest in branding with an eye on future performance because branding is like step one of someone actually being aware of something and then buying the thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1
So what's actually interesting, so I'm not dating myself because we've talked about by 20 years at this point. So I've had 20 years of observation to look at. And what's so funny is that as you are asking the question, I was really trying to think back to a number of the larger brands that I've worked with and all of them, regardless of category, some health care, which makes sense, right? Because you have people who are doing their nearest resolutions, but also telecom, confectionary, clothing, retail, honestly, you name it from my background and Q1 was always their make or break quarter. And if they didn't see a strong January, that was indicative of a potential low in the rest of their year. And so I would say that it's a great time for brands to actually be investing into January given the cheaper inventory that's out there. And no, I actually don't think that consumers are burned out from holiday access. I think that they're actually looking for deals. I think that they, some consumers are actually waiting because they know that there's going to be a lot of sale happening in January, February. I think it's a great time for brands and brands should actually leveraging our data. They should actually reconsider how much they actually want to invest. And a lot of the brands, like I mentioned, that I've been thinking of over the past 20 years, they do do quite a bit in January, but not as much as they do in Q4. And knowing that January is such a telltale sign for them on how the rest of their year is going to be, they should probably be doing more given the lower cost of entry.