SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Switch on. Okay. Exciting. Okay. Well, we'll let everyone file in. Very exciting. Uh we can start the conversation by Adam. How long have you been at Cognition and what do you do here?

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

I have been at Cognition for I don't know, eight months, I think. My my anniversary will be late April. So coming on a year. Um sometimes feels like a day, sometimes feels like five years, but I think that's life in a startup. And I lead the product organization. So have a few product managers and a product.

SPEAKER_02: 0:44

And then what would you what does your team do on a daily basis?

SPEAKER_01: 0:48

Yeah, so I have a couple different groups in my under my team. We have a handful of um product managers who are really like setting strategy for features we want to build and working directly with the engineering teams, which on Q is our CTO, Colin. Um and then I also have a few folks we call product enablement in our group, which really are kind of our go-to-market and our our interface and and conduit between like the product and the development organization and our like sales and account management and and the front-facing part. So they help train and build collateral and stuff to make sure we know when we actually build a feature that you know people know how to use it and what it does and why it's important, that type of thing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29

Yeah. And then kind of going on with product, uh Colin, I'll let you introduce yourself and how long have you been here? What does your team do on a daily?

SPEAKER_03: 1:39

Sure. Hey everyone. Uh Colin David, CTO at Cognition. I like to say Adam is the why, and I'm supposed to be the how. So our teams are really well built and really cohesive around understanding the needs of the user, uh, really the future goals, the current goals, making sure we get that done in a timely fashion. Uh my I got my start in automotive specifically in this technology advertising space back in 2007. So uh from day one, it's always been the car is the star. I've known a lot about kind of cars through working in this industry, met a lot of great folks who I think are gonna be on today. So I just want to say what's up to them. Um, and joined Cognition in 2004 after they were a longtime partner and uh helped them with Creative Studios, Creative Services with uh the Car Tender platform.

SPEAKER_01: 2:26

So that's OG.

SPEAKER_03: 2:29

I'm sorry, 2024, excuse me. Yeah.

unknown: 2:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 2:35

Yeah, just happy to be here. Thanks, Ava.

SPEAKER_02: 2:38

Of course. And then who is on your team in development and what do they do?

SPEAKER_03: 2:44

So we have a number of engineers. Uh we're located globally. Uh, our main focus is anything from processing billions of sales records on a daily basis, right? We have massive data sets of various uh first-party data. Uh, we focus on privacy first solutions, so working a lot with data clean rooms that helps with our measurement and our reporting, specifically around like matchbacks or attribution. Um, and then we have guys who are focused on QA, front end, making sure the user experience is good. We get a lot of client requests. So we really are there to cater to the clients as well. A lot of what we do is very fluid, and we're always solutioning or building new things to help us stay on the cutting edge.

SPEAKER_02: 3:24

Yeah. Awesome. And then so the theme of this live is breaking the$40 billion black box of streaming TV. So I thought a great place for us to start is just explaining how a streaming TV ad gets on streaming TV. And since you both are on product and dev, I know you'd be two great people to talk about this topic. So I'll let you take it away.

SPEAKER_01: 3:46

I hope I hope Colin has the answers. I have nothing.

SPEAKER_02: 3:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 3:50

You just click a button and it works. That's that's how I love streaming.

SPEAKER_01: 3:53

That's that's the dream. That's what Colin and are working towards. Um, yeah, I mean, I think I can start, I think from you know, we work a lot with our clients, and a lot of it is I think, you know, in streaming, just like in old school TV, it's sort of the you know, starts with the what is our objective? You know what I mean? So we want to have our our clients or partners really figure out what is the strategy of the end client. In this case, I'm usually the a dealership. Is it am I merchandising my Y Buy and my brand at the as the dealer level? Am I merchandising my vehicles? To to Colin's point, a lot of the time the car is the star. But I mean, I think somewhat old is new, right? In traditional advertising or in digital or streaming, like you still start with what is the goal, what is the objective, and then that helps us drive, you know, the creative build, what do we think the message is gonna look like? What is the audience? Who do we want to target? And we can get into that, but I think for me it's like you know, sometimes we think about streaming and some of these things as new and interesting because it's digital and we have new ways to buy it, but like the themes of strategy and marketing are still hold true even in these new mediums. Um so for me, it's like we we want to start there, and then a lot of times I think as Colin will probably pick up on like what is what is the commercial, what is the ad? What is the creative? Like, that's the next step.

unknown: 5:08

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 5:08

Yeah, Ava, we're we're using a lot of signals at cognition to help us with those creative approaches. So, I mean, streaming TV can be really hard in the sense that, oh, you're trying to integrate with different platforms. Okay, which DSP do I use? Which audiences, which inventory? We're the translation layer to help simplify that for our partners. Uh, when you think about creative specifically, we have tools and processes, and obviously a really good level of experience in advertising for automotive and even in other verticals now. So we use that tech, we use those learnings to really make that process fast and efficient. I think one of the biggest pain points that we have seen our customers face is I want to run advertising on streaming TV, but I don't have the content. We are able to actually fill that gap because we have so much expertise, we have a library of B-roll for cars or other types of footage, we have resources in-house and tech that helps you create that content and get your campaign launched within minutes instead of hours. That's a huge part of what we do. And then some of the signals are things to Adam was talking about, like, well, what is your strategy for this campaign? What are you trying to do? We can also look at historical data and say, hey, we're seeing these things perform really well. And based on your targeting, we should align that messaging inside of the creative to kind of close the loop and make sure that we're on brand, we're on message, and we're catering to a better performing uh creative with that campaign.

SPEAKER_02: 6:35

Right. And then you kind of talked a little bit about the creative and that we make it in-house that with Creative Studio, or do you want to go a little more into that?

SPEAKER_03: 6:43

Sure. Yeah, so Creative Studios really are all-in-one solution to let you build your own ads. Uh, we can use different sources of data like vehicle inventory or product catalogs. And then we use that to in near real time generate video assets, image assets. Um, these we can also generate ad tags, which dynamically update with the creative. Uh, that's one of our competitive advantages as well, is speed to market with generating that creative and using the creative studio to do that. We work with a bunch of different data sources, we build custom templates. It's a very fluid, kind of customized process and technology that we've built.

SPEAKER_02: 7:22

Right. It talks about Creative Studio and Data Studio. How do these products all work together? I know Adam does a lot of that. So if you want to elaborate on how every product works together.

SPEAKER_01: 7:32

Yeah, I think for for us, the you know, you start with the creative, you build a, you know, you're gonna build an ad. And to Colin's point, we have a lot of dynamic elements. Uh one of our other sort of differentiators is we we run and and have a certified ad server, which means we can, you know, when we build an ad, it delivers against this an ad tag or you know, a vast tag when we actually you know purchase media in a DSP or directly with the publisher, run against a specific ad tag, then as you want to update the inventory or update the offer or any of those things that come later, that can happen dynamically. So that's a really synergistic, you know, to your point, the connective layer of our products and how they work together is you know, Creative Studio is talking to the ad server and helping helping you make those components you know work and work in real time together and makes it easier for the user to not have to go in and say, oh, my offer changed or want to you know merchandise new vehicles that are now in my lot, that though that's can just happen automatically without having to log in and swap something or produce a new video, which is great. And then a lot of times like we use our you know media studio, which is really our connectivity into platforms where we're actually purchasing the ad inventory, you know. So we connect into the Amazon DSP, you know, we're working on connecting into things like DV360 and other other platforms we can actually buy media, and our systems help you know take that ad and then actually purchase the campaign. So, what is the campaign, what is the budget, what is the targeting, you know, and then really for me, I think a lot about where and what you know, what publishers do I want to have my ad show on, you know, what you know, what channels, what apps, um, those types of things. Uh and so the media studio really helps us figure out where we're gonna purchase. The creative is like what's gonna show to that user when the ad delivers in real time. And then the last piece is always like, how did it work? What was measurement, right? Which is the the kind of the final piece of measurement studio and how many impressions did I deliver, what was my unique reach, what was my frequency, and then ultimately, you know, did we you know show our commercials to people who eventually bought cars? So that attribution component, especially in this world where you know dealers want to move metal, we want to show you that like it's it's worth it getting in this, you know, this black box of streaming, but those people do buy cars eventually, they do a visit your dealership site eventually, do the research. And so having that like closed loop system connect back and say, yeah, we we are being able to prove to you that we are you know marketing to people who actually purchase or service, you know, um, at your dealership is super important.

SPEAKER_02: 9:57

Yeah. And I guess a little about the measurement piece. We actually just came out with a great radically candid episode last week about data clean rooms and data studio and everything, but going along with data and measurement, because that's such a huge important component. How would you guys say like the measurement all works together? You talked a little about attribution. What is the process once the ad is live that you guys are looking at?

SPEAKER_01: 10:19

You want to take that, Colin?

SPEAKER_03: 10:21

Sure. So I love that radically candid episode, Aqua uh Ava, because Aqua provided a really great analogy. She basically described the data clean room as a filing cabinet. So we run that campaign. The first thing that needs to happen is we need to start collecting some data about impression serves who we're reaching. Once we've got about two weeks of data or even 30 days of data, we can then work with our customers and say, all right, send us your first party data. Send us data about people who bought cars, you know, 30 days after that campaign, or sorry, during that campaign period. And what we do is we look back in time and we say, all right, these are the people that bought cars, or these are the leads, or these are the service ROs. Now let's match them to who are actual Amazon users. And then we can say, all right, those are the same people who saw your ad. So that is a process that we do every week. We constantly are running what we call workflows where we're actually checking against that data to tell you on a week-by-week basis, hey, this is who you can attribute your ad to, or this is how many people your ad ads were exposed to. And again, we do that with any kind of data service, leads, sales. So that's a big part of like how Data Studio works as a clean room, but then how Measurement Studio services that information in a privacy-safe way to show you what's working, how is it working, which channels are most effective. Um, there's a number of ways we're able to tell that story.

SPEAKER_01: 11:46

And I think for me, one of the big benefits is we can we can do that against your own first-party data if we can if you want to give back give us access to that. And it's all privacy-safe and hashed, but we also have third-party data sources because sometimes, especially for our agency clients, you know, getting data from a dealer repeatably weekly, monthly, you know, that's a challenging exercise, either because of the privacy safe nature of it or just the operational nature of getting it, exporting it, connecting to the systems where it lives in the DMS or the CRM. So I we have sort of both solutions for you. One is a kind of a pretty turnkey where you don't really have to do anything. We're gonna source that data from third-party sources and get the registration information in and do the match for you. And then, of course, you're you know, first-party data is always best if the dealer wants to provide it. But you know, having both options and looking at both is great, and and having that repeatable source that can happen every week, no matter what you provide, is great. And then, of course, if you can give us first-party data or more detail about service or ROs, things that we wouldn't get on the on the sales side. Um, but I like having both for our clients because it is tricky to get that repeatably.

SPEAKER_02: 12:51

Yeah, for sure. Uh going along with how ad is made and the why and the how, well, what do you guys have planned for a product that you want to share coming up with the cognition platform?

SPEAKER_01: 13:05

What do we have coming up? Well, there's a lot. I mean, I think we are working on um a handful of new creative like templates and things on the on the ad building side. I think we want to make it easier for clients. So we're we're working on things around you know, OEM compliance, making sure that we're, you know, making easy to do co-op approval, get OEM compliant assets, those types of things. And I think having variety of creative and ease of sort of building some of those new templates or new versions to give you know to give that commercial the sort of uniqueness and the flair that you want is super important to us. And I guess the other thing I would say is we're we're pushing really hard to um further our solutions into the Google Stack. We've been we've been doing a lot with Amazon over the years. And you know, while we've been working in in the Google Stack and DV360 and YouTube, we're gonna push our solutions a lot further into that ecosystem and continue to leverage the clean room tools that they have and make sure that we're you know we're living in in a place where we can be well-rounded for our clients and make sure that we have access to all the right inventory, first, you know, first party inventory and like owned and operated by Google, like a YouTube, um, but also um, you know, the breadth of other streaming options that are out there.

unknown: 14:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 14:26

Eva, I would say on the engineering side, a lot of our focus around what Adam just described is also just creating more simplicity around a very complicated process. There's a number of connection endpoints, there's a number of ways to process data, there's different systems and different rules that you have to follow to do it. Um, a lot of the behind-the-scenes work is making that process as easy as possible for our end users and our partners. And then I'm also really excited about what we're doing in measurement because we're telling a story through streaming TV media channel that that I don't think has been told before, at least not in the depth that it could be told. So we're we're learning a lot, we're building a lot. I think we're doing a better job of telling our story and how effective streaming TV can be. I think we're really breaking down a lot of walls there.

SPEAKER_02: 15:14

Yeah, definitely sounds like it. Well, it's like Tim there just joined.

SPEAKER_01: 15:21

Welcome. What's up, gang?

SPEAKER_02: 15:23

Welcome.

SPEAKER_04: 15:23

How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01: 15:25

Tim has entered the chat. Tim has entered the chat.

SPEAKER_02: 15:29

Well, it's going so thank you so much, Adam and Colin, for breaking down and Adam's.

SPEAKER_04: 15:36

Here we are. Thanks, Anyways.

SPEAKER_02: 15:39

Of course. I'll let you guys go and we'll have Tim Dare and Amber Daniels talk about what's going on in the marketplace.

SPEAKER_04: 15:48

All right, yeah. Take it away, guys. Bye.

SPEAKER_02: 15:56

Hello.

SPEAKER_05: 16:00

What's up, Ava? How are you?

SPEAKER_02: 16:02

Hi. Good. So we're just waiting for Amber, but before she gets here, do you want to talk about how long you've been at Cognition and what your team is doing on a day-to-day basis? And just talk about all that. Holly introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_05: 16:19

Yeah, so uh good to be on here. Hey everyone. Um, Tim Dare, VP of Sales over at Cognition. Um you know, been in the the ad tech and automotive space for roughly 15, 18 years. Who's counting? Um always helping brands and agencies really understand how to leverage tech and data to to drive downstream action. So fun to be here. Um you know, free time to spend my time uh running around a soccer field field trying not to pair an ACL save my kids. Uh anyway, that's me.

SPEAKER_02: 17:03

So the topic of this live is breaking the$40 billion black box of streaming TV. We just had Adam and Colin talk about what an ad is and how to make it and all the logistics that go into that. But I'll let you take it away. And Amber, when she joins, she can add on to the conversation. But what's going on in the marketplace nowadays in streaming TV?

SPEAKER_05: 17:27

Yeah, you know, I think it it's funny. Um, a lot of the conversations that I think we're we're having today really revolve around uh a number of things. Oh, there she is.

SPEAKER_00: 17:38

Sorry, it's my first time, so I was struggling to get into this. Hi.

SPEAKER_02: 17:47

Hi. So Tim was actually just about to talk about it, but we're just talking about um, so Adam and Colin were just here and they talked about what an ad is and how it becomes an ad. And would you guys want to break down what is going on in the marketplace currently and what we're doing about it?

SPEAKER_00: 18:04

Yeah, well, I'll let Tim, I'll let you finish your thoughts since I interrupted.

SPEAKER_05: 18:16

So um, I think what we're seeing in the marketplace is a couple things. Um I think we're we're hearing what what's old is new again. I think in the past, when you bought traditional TV, you know, you were really used to buying named publishers. I'm gonna go to NBC, I'm gonna go to Fox, I'm gonna go to the number one local TV station in the market, and then I'm gonna penetrate that market. I think what what we're seeing more and more today is that agencies and brands are taking a very similar approach, whether they're buying a PMP or Proto-Mag guarantee directly through the DSP, giving them a lot more control over where their placements are actually being shown. Rather than just buying through an exchange and you know, my ads will fall wherever they may. Um, I think buyers they have a lot of control and more than they than they have had in the past. On the heels of that, I think what we're also seeing is buyers want to understand what is the duplication across those different pubs? How do I ensure that I'm maximizing the audience? How am I ensuring that I'm I'm not over penetrating that audience? Or if I'm under penetrated, how do I get more share of that audience's ears and eyes?

SPEAKER_00: 19:42

I I think we're leading into kind of overlap analysis, which Tim, you know, I don't know, Ava, if you know this, but Tim kind of spearheaded our first overlap analysis. I'll let him share the results. But I think even that analysis to me is interesting. Interesting, not because of the overlap, but because what are you supposed to do with that overlap report? I think there's this misconception. If you take frequency, for example, for example, there's different schools of thought on ad frequency. I think the same principle applies to overlap. Just because you're reaching one consumer on Amazon Prime versus the same consumer on YouTube TV, it's not a bad thing necessarily. So I think more it goes back to the title, I think, of this um topic is the black box. It's okay, great. If we remove that layer and there is no black box, what are we doing with that information that we have? I think that I don't have an answer, but I think that's the those are the questions that we need to be thinking about answering is okay, great, we have these tools. Now what? Right.

SPEAKER_05: 21:00

I don't know if that's something that you that resonates with you then.

SPEAKER_02: 21:06

Yeah, all you talk about the results that everyone's gonna be. That's really the question.

SPEAKER_05: 21:16

Yeah, you know, what we I think that what we're seeing, um, we had a client that was activating on an open DSP, um, and then one that was activating more in what I'll call uh a Walled Garden-centric DSP. And they were buying really basically two different inventory sources. One, let's call it open exchange across both DSPs, and one like an isolated publisher across um one of the DSPs. So the the the challenge they they were looking to understand is okay, what happens when we add this incremental audience to our to our media mix? What's the overlap? How do I know that I'm really expanding my portfolio of customers that I can reach? What we saw was there there was really like only a 10% lap across both of the DSPs. And when you add in even a DSP that might be buying the same publishers, that you're actually adding in some incremental reach because each one of those DSPs is identifying that consumer in uh either a different audience set or they're winning different bids, or there's just uh efficiencies in the way that they're accessing their header bidding, right? So um, although they might have been buying like relatively the same supply, the the incremental reach was actually uh a pretty pretty large, um, I'd say there was a pretty large discrepancy between who they were thought they were reaching and who they really wanted to reach.

SPEAKER_00: 22:59

Absolutely. That doesn't surprise me, frankly. Um I think I think what what is also I don't know why this came to mind, and I'm always guilty of this. Like I'm always the one that gets in trouble for taking us down a different path. But you know what excites me about where we are in this in this time in this space is we are finally at this inflection point where we have started to kind of you know have more, we have more insight. So you've seen the transition of dollars from linear to streaming. That's to me, that ship has sailed. We're there. We are we're on our way, we're there. I also think we're we're starting to see this inflection point with search. I think we're seeing this because, and it's it's probably somewhat of a siloed view because of you know what Tim and I do on a daily basis is talking to customers, we're looking at the reporting that we have at Cognition. You're starting to see how search is impacted by the investment that's happening in programmatic. And these are the conversations that we have been having for 15 plus years. We know that, you know, display and programmatic was was doing, we know it's doing its job, but we can never really see it, right? You have standard KPIs beyond that, beyond just the impression and our attribution, now we're looking at like how is it influencing the other channels? I again this goes back to I don't want to say the black box because it's not the black box. It's like, okay, now we have it. What do we do with it? I think is the question. But now that we see that we're at this inflection point, I think it's partially because of AI and the change in search behavior, but it's also because our of the transparency that we have through measurement in these programmatic campaigns that we've been running. So I don't know, Tim, if you're seeing that, but I'm seeing like a lot of correlation to investments in a market and search or social volume. It's specifically search, is I think where the biggest um eye-opener is is just seeing like how much of programmatic media is influencing search. And we haven't had that visibility. But what do I do with that?

SPEAKER_05: 25:24

Yeah, I I think we're we're seeing that more and more every day. And and you're right, as we dive deeper, I think that the the talk track has always been we know that video investment at large drives customer action, whether that be traditional TV, programmatic video, streaming TV, the thought was always, yeah, we understand that that drives customer action. And the the challenge I think we always ran into is that you know, the the search platforms will take whatever action was taken and say, that was my conversion, right? When in the reality is that there were five or six things that happened before that customer decided to go to that search platform, type in a brand name, and then take an action online and or buy a product. So to be able to start to see that that linear journey or that customer journey, and then understand where were the touch points of influence, and then how do I take that data and then bring it back into my media mix so that I can drive efficiencies across all of my other media channels, not just the streaming TV portion of my buying. So when you can start to unify all of that data and bring that holistic, like multi-touch story together, that's where that's where it becomes a lot more powerful rather than saying, oh yeah, my my search budget is is killing it, and I should just you know double and triple my search budget. The other the other problem I think I I just fundamentally have with just dedicating all of your money to to search is that you're letting the market dictate your future. And you so if the market takes a downturn and consumers just aren't searching, you have no defensibility around your business. And our job is as marketers and advertisers is to really create demand, not just capture demand whenever the demand should flow downstream. We should be the drivers of demand.

SPEAKER_00: 27:31

I completely agree. I think what we've observed through we'll call it the last five years, is such a decline in dealer loyalty. I mean, not to mention brand loyalty, but dealer loyalty for an abundance of reasons. But we've seen a departure or a decline in dealer loyalty, and and you do not see a concerted effort, in my opinion. You don't see a concerted effort to combat that. And what I mean by that is if you're only capturing, you know, what we'll call what is already yours, you're not gonna beat that loyalty component. You've got to branch out beyond the customer base that you have today. And I've said this for years. I mean, I think Tim and I have a similar background in in audience and data. And you know, telling the story of why you would want to target a third-party list like Polk or Xperian is challenging, especially when you operate in an industry where the mindset is just hyper focused on that low funnel activity, but doesn't have a lot of emphasis in that upper funnel. I think we see that as a challenge as well. So always push that back as like, well, are you thinking about this business this way? I I don't think that we are as an industry.

SPEAKER_05: 28:55

Yeah, the the the 30-day clock is um is always in the back of I think every marketer's mind, knowing that that 30-day clock is really driven by a 90-day clock. So if you can control the 90-day clock, the the 30-day clock should take care of itself on its own.

SPEAKER_00: 29:17

I I don't know if this is a question or statement. Um, but one of the things that has come up for me lately is how brands are looking at this goal of cross-tier and customer touch points. We are seeing some brands engage in, you know, at least having an interest and understanding how consumers behave across their ecosystem. So if we're looking at a tier one, tier two, and tier three um landscape, and by landscape I mean dealer websites or brand websites, not only websites, but also media when you're layering that together, you really start to understand how consumers are behaving across tiers. I'm not just talking about the media, I'm talking about overall shopping behavior. It's it starts from the point of impression to the point of transaction. So is Ava being exposed to ads? And does Ava ultimately take some sort of action and deliver an outcome that is a vehicle sale or a service transaction? Or it could be, you know, with the non-auto side of our business, it could be uh a furniture purchase or you know, name your outcome. We really have we've done a great job talking about how we're gonna solve for cross-tier, but what we're not seeing is a lot of engagement for like actually implementing the tools and I don't want to call it guardrails, but like the framework that you need to answer those questions. It's not just about, you know, bidding on specific keywords. If we're talking about search, it's not just about bidding on specific keywords. It's not just about, you know, how much am I investing in demand generation versus demand capture? You have to pull all of that together in order to tell that story because then it becomes less about coordinating media efforts and how many touch points is it per consumer. I think that's ultimately what we should be driving for. And that is part of that black box. What is kind of a two-part black box. You've got a black box that is the walled garden. And then you have the black box that isn't the walled garden. So bringing all of that together is the most challenging thing, especially in a fragmented business, which is you know really where we operate. Those are the conversations that Tim and I are having every day, are with um organizations that have a very fragmented framework.

SPEAKER_02: 31:59

Right. And I know we are at time. And thank you so much. That was a great explanation of everything that's going on in the marketplace right now. Um, for everyone watching, do you guys want to say like where they can find you and how they can connect with you to learn more about this?

SPEAKER_00: 32:14

Yeah. Find me on LinkedIn uh where we are here now, or you're welcome to email me at amber at cognition ads.com.

SPEAKER_05: 32:23

Yeah, hit us up. See you guys later.

SPEAKER_00: 32:26

I was I was gonna pop uh Tim's cell phone out here and see how many calls we get.

SPEAKER_05: 32:34

I get a lot of spam calls already. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02: 32:37

Uh you guys so much. See ya. See you guys in the next one.