SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 841: Why He Can Charge $1000 CPMs, $31m Raised Helping Create Better Content
Nov 12, 2017
22:44
Shaul Olmert. He's the cofounder and CEO of Playbuzz, an award-winning, storytelling platform that empowers publishers, brands, and agencies worldwide to create interactive content for editorial and commercial purposes. The world's top publishers and brands worldwide use Playbuzz's desktop and mobile-friendly storytelling tools to improve audience engagement, optimize social sharing, increase site traffic and lengthen page-viewing time.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – N/A
- What CEO do you follow? – N/A
- Favorite online tool? — Evernote
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Shaul would have told himself that everybody else in the world is as clueless as he is
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:40 – Nathan introduces Shaul to the show
- 02:25 – Playbuzz is a platform that helps make one's storytelling more compelling and engaging
- 03:10 – Playbuzz's tools are completely free for publishers
- 03:20 – Playbuzz currently has tens of thousands of publishers
- 03:24 – Playbuzz has market leaders using their toolset
- 03:46 – Playbuzz makes money when publishers opt-in to their monetization program
- 04:11 – Advertisers want to present their brands to the audience that is listening
- 04:54 – Playbuzz's revenue is in the dozens of millions on ad spent on the platform
- 05:18 – Playbuzz's volume is high and consistently growing
- 06:10 – Playbuzz manages the distribution of the content items which will benefit the publishers as well
- 07:00 – Nathan summarizes how he understands Playbuzz to work
- 07:50 – The brands create their content and Playbuzz shares them on their partnered website
- 08:16 – Playbuzz charges per view
- 08:35 – The charge depends on how long their content is being viewed or listened to
- 10:00 – Playbuzz is creating new ways to grow their engagement
- 10:37 – Playbuzz has two revenue streams
- 11:53 – Playbuzz has been around for 5 years and has been in the market for 3 years
- 12:36 – Playbuzz has 2 founders and 170 employees globally
- 12:54 – Playbuzz has raised a total of $31M
- 13:40 – Shaul shares what he thinks of Disney's efforts in advertising
- 14:43 – "The more value we create, the more our value increases"
- 14:54 – Playbuzz is still burning capital and scaling up
- 15:10 – Playbuzz is constantly creating to optimize data
- 15:36 – The majority of the funds go to engineering, product and data
- 15:49 – Shaul believes that eventually they will win the war by having superior technology
- 16:50 – Shaul shares his take on using voice searches for collecting data
- 17:30 – Shaul is looking to take podcasts to a wider audience
- 19:15 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Content is KING.
- No matter how good your content is, if you can't share it with an audience, it's useless.
- Voice searches will change how we do advertising, and this change will happen soon.
Resources Mentioned:
- Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives