Why is mobile mediation broken? Jim Payne: Here is whats next!

We essentially sat down and decided with CloudX at this spring, early this spring was that look, now you have AI agents and workflows that actually can make

those tools not only usable for the publisher, but like a joy to use and can provide pricing uh advice for you and price floor optimization. We can, you

know, model out exactly how you should run an auction and what data to put into it.

It's rolling the dice drops made of golden eyes with those coins with the two and a half gamers the midnight crew talking UA advers and game

design too. Mat Felix Shak bringing the

design too. Mat Felix Shak bringing the insight we're rocking those vibes till the early day master eyes on the prize tracking data through the cyerspace skies. Felix

stacks colors like a wizard in disguise.

Jack lift us to the highest. Two and a half gamers talking smack. Slow hockey

stick got your back. Ads are beautiful.

They light the way. Click it fast. Don't

delay. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Ah.

Ah.

Hello everyone and welcome actually to a very special episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast. Today we're joined by two, I guess, industry legends to talk about ad monetization, which is my

favorite topic. So before we're getting

favorite topic. So before we're getting started, I'm Felix Braber >> and I'm >> We are your hosts and today, like I said, we're joined by two industry legends, Jim Payne and Dan Sack, who are

here to talk to us about admonetization and cloud X. But yeah, welcome to the show, guys. Thank you, Felix. Thank you,

show, guys. Thank you, Felix. Thank you,

Jacob. Appreciate uh you having us on.

>> Yeah, thank you guys.

>> So, uh maybe starting with you, Jim. Uh

I guess some people have called you the godfather of mobile mediation mainly by me, I guess, but like I don't know like do you just want to maybe give an introduction of yourself and yeah

outline some of the things you've done in mobile?

>> Appreciate that. I can't take total credit for that because um mediation existed before I got involved um with Mopub. uh maybe you know godfather of

Mopub. uh maybe you know godfather of programmatic and mobile advertising. We

could that um but I've been around the industry for for a very long time. I

mean I I started my career as a product manager at Google before uh going to ADM Mob actually because I wanted to um get involved in the mobile revolution which was happening at the

time. Yeah, the iPhone had just launched

time. Yeah, the iPhone had just launched and uh the app store was out and so I had learned everything I well a lot about advertising through my experience at Google working on doubleclick and

some products for map local based ads and realized uh that you know the mobile advertising ecosystem probably needed a little bit of that. So I actually joined ADM Mob just before they got acquired

and then um during the acquisition process uh me and another guy who uh worked at Admob Nef Jamal uh we spun out

and basically created Mopub in in 2010.

So uh since that time you know we've really been trying to move the industry forward. So, uh, you know, it's a

forward. So, uh, you know, it's a 15-year, uh, process of that, and I guess I guess that makes me a godfather just because I'm older than everybody else in the industry. So, uh, I'll take credit for that. But we did, uh, we did

Mopub and then we did, uh, Dan and I did Max. Dan obviously joined Mopub. That's

Max. Dan obviously joined Mopub. That's

how I know him. Uh, and now we're back for, uh, this next iteration, which, you know, is really informed by what's possible with AI and the democratization

of intelligence overall. And so, you know, we we felt like uh it we couldn't resist the opportunity to marry this new set of technologies and the tailwind

with a business that we know and love so well.

>> Yeah, pretty cool intro. And Dan,

yourself as well, you're no rookie either, right? So, please introduce

either, right? So, please introduce yourself. You know, I used to be the the

yourself. You know, I used to be the the young guy, but I joined I basically Yeah, I guess we all all of us. I I I basically spent my entire career in this

space. So, I I joined Mopub in 2011. I

space. So, I I joined Mopub in 2011. I

was an entry-level publisher BD guy and back back then there were two uh BD folks and one of us was handed non-gaming and the other was handed gaming. So, I was handed gaming

gaming. So, I was handed gaming fortunately. Um, and that that was a

fortunately. Um, and that that was a huge deal in my career and set me up well for the 15 years since. So I spent about 6 years at at Mopub and then Twitter working on the Mopub business,

working with publishers and then left to work on Max with Jim where he trusted me to be the CEO for a short period of time until our friends at Appleven called. I

then joined App Leven and worked over there for four years which was which was was a great experience for me and after a bit of a break you know getting back into it now with Jim as he said uh we're

really supply side people through and through um so I'm happy to be uh back on the supply side uh only on the supply side

uh pretty excited about uh the timing of this business, the product that we're bringing to market, the support we've had so far from the market on the buy side on the publisher side. Uh yeah,

that's a bit about me.

>> Sweet. All right, let's actually get started with some good stuff. So, just

wanted to start off super simple, right?

So, seeing as you guys have built a large portion of the supply side industry and all of mobile, just wanted to ask a super simple question in your opinion, right? How does the mobile ads

opinion, right? How does the mobile ads industry work and where is the value created?

>> That's a that's a great great question.

I mean, the the thing about mobile advertising is that it's it's meaningfully different than desktop in a few ways. One way is um and this is

few ways. One way is um and this is something actually we saw early on at Mopub um is the SDK piece. So a lot of the innovation in mobile advertising and

Felix I know you touch on this you know pretty much every week in your newsletter is what's happening at the actual device level in terms of innovating on the ad unit, innovating on the frequency of ads that you show,

innovating around, you know what that presentation looks like. There's so much that happens at that last mile, which is SDK bits that are shipped through the app store and integrated directly as

software into a publisher offering that is meaningfully different than desktop because desktop really is just tags. You

leave the tags there and then they, you know, essentially show the same ad unit for the most part. There's some

innovation and native ads, things like that, but those really don't scale. So

that's a big piece of where the value creation in my opinion lies. And that's

one of the reasons why, you know, we're excited to get back into it is because ultimately, you know, people when they're actually deciding how to monetize their app, there's heruristics and there's things you can try and do,

but you don't really have a lot of flexibility and you don't um you don't have the ability to actually apply intelligence to some of the things that you're doing in terms of when to show an ad, who to show an ad to, how to segment

your audience and decide, you know, how frequently should you show an interstitial. website that's you know

interstitial. website that's you know there's some best practices and there's things that people experiment with and try but ultimately I think there's a lot of um there's a lot of room there for improvement so that's one aspect of it

two I think obviously um you know the the mechanism of mobile advertising in the context of privacy means that there's less identity signals means that there's things you can't do in terms of

actually providing targeted advertising in the same way that desktop does and so there's been a lot of innovation around trying to create discovery type advertising. It's more like Facebook or

advertising. It's more like Facebook or Instagram rather than like a search ad.

And that innovation is obviously something that Apple's been doing tremendously well, but you know, others are getting into the game and there's there's plenty to be done and there's a lot of data that's on the sidelines sort of uh structurally because publishers

are sitting on a treasure trove of information, but they can't really use it. So, I think those are the two areas

it. So, I think those are the two areas of value creation in mobile advertising for me. Maybe I missed something, Dan. I

for me. Maybe I missed something, Dan. I

on the so on the publisher side and building tools for the publisher side I think it generally boils down to impacting LTV and there's a million different ways to do that and then on

the demand side I think it's really around generating ROI for for advertisers. So there's a lot of

advertisers. So there's a lot of companies doing a lot of great work on both sides to to create value. We could

we could probably spend 30 minutes talking about how the market works but yeah I think Jim captured it well and that's how I think about it.

>> Cool. So, next question. What is a mediation platform and how does that fit into the industry? It's going to get more advanced after, I promise, but just wanted to cover the basics.

>> Well, you know, mediation is kind of a term of art that I think has evolved over time, right? When we started doing this at ADM Mob, you mediation was basically a waterfall sequence of ad networks that would essentially try to get 100%.

>> It still is on ADM Mob. You can still I was setting up uh waterfalls today on ADM Mob. So, not that much has changed.

ADM Mob. So, not that much has changed.

So, I told my boss I made a playable app with Playable Maker. And he said to me, "What language did you code it in?" And

I said, "I don't know. With Playable

Maker, all you do is drag, drop, click, and it does it all for you." So, again, he said, "What language did you make in?" I went, "I don't know. English." At

in?" I went, "I don't know. English." At

the end of the day, as long as a playable maker does it all for you, why do you care? It's just like magic.

>> That's good.

>> But, you know, we we actually don't use the word mediation platform for what we're working on at Cloud X. that

there's a reason for that and that's because ultimately we look at ourselves as as publisher tools more broadly speaking it's more akin to like a supply side platform like an SSP like you would find in traditional desktop adtech

coupled with a marketplace model and you know we're not running an ad network that's not the the idea the idea is not to offer like an arbitrage but instead to create a platform upon which

transactions that want to happen can happen more easily and with less friction and those transactions that that want to happen what does that mean well That means basically um you know there's some pool of demand and there's

some pool of supply. How do we actually connect those two together? A supply

side platform or like this exchange platform is really ultimately the way to do that. Immediation was a hack to get

do that. Immediation was a hack to get there and uh remains to some degree that way. And today right now yes there's

way. And today right now yes there's unified bidding and there's um you know a single auction to some degree. It's

not 100% of what happens. And it's also not necessarily always in the publishers's best interest to have a single auction where everybody can show up. That's one way to optimize, but

up. That's one way to optimize, but you're not necessarily optimizing second order outcomes that way. If that makes sense.

>> Yeah, it does quite a lot. But I'm not sure if Yakob followed that, but so Yakob is a game designer. But yeah,

>> I used to do mediation back at Triplight if you remember the old waterfall. So

yeah, I know some of it, but yeah, let's let's get more advanced, I But then there's right now I guess CloudX is not a mediation platform per se per se but right now there's three main leaders in the industry right there's Level Play,

ADM Mob and Max. Max is kind of the clear leader that's kind of the largest on the mediation side. You've worked

with all of them you built some of them.

What's the kind of the difference between these places and what kind of do you see as the gap in the market that these platforms are not fulfilling at the moment? What's the what's

the moment? What's the what's >> Yeah. So I've only worked on one of

>> Yeah. So I've only worked on one of those three >> having Okay. aggregates both of >> Yeah. And and Jim Jim worked extremely

>> Yeah. And and Jim Jim worked extremely briefly on on a second one. I guess the main difference is these are these are platforms that uh are uh basically

offered in in connection with an ad network. So you get the tools and you

network. So you get the tools and you know and you get the ad network and the company that's operating the platform has an ad network. That's one model.

We're taking a different approach. So

our approach is is is only to build tools for the publisher without any other uh you know like business line internally that that that

we're thinking about. So we it simplifies life for us a lot. We just

build what the publisher needs nothing else. And and this this goes back to a

else. And and this this goes back to a philosophy we actually had at Mopub way back when. So rule number one at Mopub

back when. So rule number one at Mopub was always put the publisher first. It

was always do what's in the publishers's best interest and it's a it's a very simple way of building a product. So we

can apply that approach here. So we're

really just building supply side infrastructure for the publisher and intelligence.

>> I mean there's a lot of publishers that don't feel I guess right now they're being put first by any of the main mediation platforms. Uh what kind of tools are you guys uh looking at to kind of go along with to actually put

publishers first? That's quite

publishers first? That's quite interesting.

>> Yeah. Well, I I I think Dan's Dan's put his finger on something important and that that actually comes from a Google philosophy that we had when I was working there, which is focus on the user and everything else falls from

that. And we look at the user as the

that. And we look at the user as the ultimately the folks who are creating the content, games and you know, utilities and things like that, putting a blood, sweat and tears into that, shipping the software, maintaining it,

keeping a user population happy. Those

are hard things to do. Uh to get anything that resonates with a user is quite a challenge, right? So, we want to respect that. give them tools that allow

respect that. give them tools that allow them to monetize in the way that makes sense for them and the content that they create and the audience that they have.

And I think, you know, that was something that we believed at Mopub and it's we'd like to bring that back to some degree. Now, what does that mean

some degree. Now, what does that mean from a product perspective? It really

means here's the tools and we're going to also build some AI agents and workflow optimizations and things like that to help you actually use these tools effectively. One of the challenges

tools effectively. One of the challenges and I think the reason that this company is possible now, this platform is possible now versus even a year ago is that what we found when we were doing Max, you can put a lot of complex stuff

out there, but people tend not to know how to use it well or it's too hard to use or the workflows are too complicated or it's they're errorprone and you end up making things worse the more you do

rather than just going to a simple auction wherever they can can flow through. That was certainly the

through. That was certainly the conclusion we reached at some point during the MAX um product effort because it started with a you know a lot of different things you could do like different levers you can pull and price

floors you can do and create an auction this way or that way line items prior to level but they weren't really used properly. So what we essentially uh sat

properly. So what we essentially uh sat down and decided with CloudEx at this spring, early this spring was that look now you have AI agents and workflows

that actually can make those tools not only usable for the publisher but like a joy to use and can provide pricing uh advice for you and price floor

optimization. We can you know model out

optimization. We can you know model out exactly how you should run an auction and what data to put into it, things like that. All of that is possible with

like that. All of that is possible with basically the intelligence layer and it's on top of a sophisticated platform.

So we think the two together actually create this 10x experience for the publisher whereby we're giving them an incredibly powerful tool but also making it super easy to use and not make

mistakes while you're doing that because um if you put mistakes into a production game that's a piece of software, it's very very hard to fix later. So that's

ultimately the the design philosophy and we're very much designing for the publisher and the publisher team and the supply side teams which we know you know in in many companies especially gaming

studios not a lot of resources go to that side of things. A lot of resources go to UA but very very little resources go to the supply side. So let's do automation so we can actually make these

products really work to generate as much revenue as possible but also preserve the experience for the user.

>> Yeah. I mean I I wish I had some automation when I was optimizing my ADM mob stuff today. It takes forever, right? But if I can do like a concrete

right? But if I can do like a concrete example. So let's say for example, let's

example. So let's say for example, let's say I'm an publisher like outfit 7, right? You might have a team of five to

right? You might have a team of five to six people, right? What kind of benefits is it that you kind of see that? So

cloudex would sit on top of a mediation layer and then or you replace it or how does the product actually >> Hello everybody, thanks for uh joining this episode.

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>> Work.

>> Yeah, that's so initially it's a um we're we're carving out some inventory.

So how do you actually do that carve out? That's in itself a question of

out? That's in itself a question of optimization, but once you let's say once a a piece of ad inventory lands at the cloudex platform, what do we

actually do? What does it mean to to you

actually do? What does it mean to to you know service this? Well, basically what a publisher can do is set up a set of auctions that happen with participants that they define. So you might want to

say and you know we've got three launch partners that basically we announce the company with that's uh Meta, Liftoff and Magnite. And so let's imagine Publisher

Magnite. And so let's imagine Publisher X they want to do a first look deal with Meta to say for my best users the people who've been with me for the longest where I actually you know know something

about them and I know they're high value users. We want to give Meta a first look

users. We want to give Meta a first look at that at a certain price point. That's

the kind of the core initial use case that many people are getting excited about. But then you can start to do more

about. But then you can start to do more things like that, right? With more

participants on the buy side, more data, better pricing and uh essentially, you know, you can there's uh ad quality aspects of that type of decisioning too.

So okay, well I can create all that stuff. That sounds very complicated

stuff. That sounds very complicated though, right? Like many line items,

though, right? Like many line items, it's errorprone. How do I know if it's

it's errorprone. How do I know if it's even working? So the way that we solved

even working? So the way that we solved that problem is we decided as part of the design philosophy of this thing that essentially you you should be able to describe all your monetization logic essentially as code. And so we have a

blog post on our site about this. It's

the monetization is code and it's essentially like hey how do I look at this as a piece of infrastructure where I can actually ship it the same way I would ship my Kubernetes configuration

as an example. Uh I'm going to create line items. I'm going to try different price floors. I'm going to have all

price floors. I'm going to have all these different versions of that. And

when someone pushes a new piece of monetization logic, there's a diff. It

shows, hey, Jim, change this price floor from this to that. It's not just me writing it. Now, I can write it with

writing it. Now, I can write it with Claude code helping me. So Claude Code can go and create a thousand line items with very very specific pricing for each region that I might be interested in

segmenting my traffic to creating all these different keyword value pairs which would be impossible to do in a traditional UI where you're clicking everything and very very easy to get wrong and impossible to know what actually happened on the other side

because there's not really reporting that's that granular or even works that quickly. uh claude can actually do it

quickly. uh claude can actually do it and then actually pull the logs and say here's what happened and I'm going to you know make a improvement to it tomorrow and that kind of uh agentic

workflow coupled with fast iteration cycles and full observability on the platform we think is going to open up a whole new just canvas for publishers to basically say take control of their

modernization and do so much more than they've ever really been able to do that or was practical to do frankly.

>> Yeah. So I guess going back to the example I used, right? So if I'm outfit 7, uh we got Thanksgiving coming up next week with Black Friday, right? So

instead of logging on and setting bid floors that are higher or basically setting some lower, what can I say? Like

uh yeah, lower bid floors or higher bid floors, I'd just be able to write that as a prompt and go enjoy my turkey and everything is kind of just sorted for me. Yeah. How how clever is it going to

me. Yeah. How how clever is it going to get? Well, you know, I think there's um

get? Well, you know, I think there's um there's like what you can do practically speaking that's the automation of heruristics and then there's what you can do that's intelligent pricing and

modeling and predictive uh capabilities.

The second piece is based on you know actually doing this work a bunch of times and seeing what works and seeing what doesn't work and learning from those experiments that you run. But the

first piece of heristic automation, I think absolutely that's out of the box.

And you know, we've got a blog post on that too. Basically, you know, you could

that too. Basically, you know, you could go in and type Claude, you know, give me 20% higher price floors for the next 5 days on all my different apps and like make sure it all works and it'll go

create 120 light items. That'll automatically have that targeting, expiration date, all that kind of stuff.

Then give you a report at the end. Would

would you also be in a position where you could say like hey optimize for ARPA or optimize for retention and basically do whatever you want to block integral ads because they always pop up and cause churn. I don't have anything to say

churn. I don't have anything to say about that. But yeah, the second piece

about that. But yeah, the second piece >> I can >> the optimization auto optimization piece is absolutely a a key key facet of what we're doing too because but ultimately

you know we need the platform to start working right so >> right >> our our design philosophy of the product is it's full observability of programmatic and what's actually happening in the auction. In fact, you

know, our third leg of the stool here is this tr trusted execution environment uh secure auction piece where we've actually published the source code of the auction on GitHub. It's an elastic

license thing. you can see what's there

license thing. you can see what's there and then we run it on secure enclaves in Amazon and folks like Meta go in there and they actually check to see it to make sure the auction's done properly

and then and we can verify that only the winning bids emerge from this auction and we're doing it in a certain way and that's an example of the philosophy that we have which is basically the publisher

should be able to see what's happening in their auction as if you own the exchange yourself.

>> So very cool. I think you need to explain just how big a deal that is because I think there's a lot of people that don't understand that everything on mobile is pretty run on closed auctions and it's basically black boxes and it's

infuriating for publishers. Maybe you

can just go into explaining why that's a bad thing.

>> Yeah, it's well it's you know without getting too into you know speculative territory. The thing that we do hear

territory. The thing that we do hear consistently from buyers actually as well is that no one really knows what's happening and a lot of the stuff and and strange outcomes happen that you

wouldn't necessarily expect. Some you

know a lot of these things have great explanations too I'm sure.

>> I mean I can say it like right so on ADM Mob mediation Google is always the largest network on level player Unity is always the largest network. On max app is always this largest network.

>> Yeah. So in a in a perfect in a perfect economy that probably wouldn't happen, right? So

I'm not saying that there's untored things happening. Not not necessarily

things happening. Not not necessarily saying that. But what I what I do think

saying that. But what I what I do think is important to note is that running a fair auction is kind of a cornerstone of the whole idea of what we're trying to do here. And that's like I said, if you

do here. And that's like I said, if you imagine you, the publisher, had your own exchange where everyone's connected to it bidding on your inventory, you would know that you're running a fair auction.

believe that and you'd represent that to your buyers because that's part and parcel of doing that. But you'd also know the what's happening in in terms of who's bidding and what are they bidding on and how do I price my inventory and

how do I create carveout deals and make sure that my best buyers who retain my users the best are get a first look if I want to do that from a business perspective. There's nothing wrong with

perspective. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't see anything any issue

that. I don't see anything any issue there. But you know that's just not the

there. But you know that's just not the way that the tools have evolved um in the space so far. are. Some of that has to do with the complexity of it. Some of

it has to do with just the maturity of the market. But I think the third piece

the market. But I think the third piece is trust. And so we feel like both

is trust. And so we feel like both buyers and sellers trust us, trust our background, but they don't have to take our word for it because we've actually put the code there and it's verifiable too.

>> Dan, uh, norm normal mediation platforms, they are usually given away for free. Can you just explain how

for free. Can you just explain how actually mediation platforms earn their company's money and basically maybe dovetail that into how cloudex will charge for usage?

>> Sure. So if you go through a few models starting with Mopub for example, we gave away network mediation tools for free and then we had an ad exchange where we charged uh you know a transparent margin

and it was was a you know was a service we were providing to all the DSPs that wanted to access supply and a service we're providing to all the publishers who were getting access to 100 plus DSPs and we're collecting payment from

everybody. So that was that was a mopub

everybody. So that was that was a mopub model. the platforms we just talked

model. the platforms we just talked about you you you mentioned that if um a publisher's running on like a level play for example the the unity or iron source

uh network revenue share is higher than it would be if the publisher was on a different platform so the generally the reason why SSPs or mediation platforms that are that are owned by a network can

be effectively given away for free or made free and and sometimes even made free with sizable integration bonuses is is because the network that owns that

platform basically uh recoups whatever they paid in a deal and a lot more by having you on their platform where they're generally likely to clear more of your inventory than they would if you

were elsewhere. Basically, the

were elsewhere. Basically, the infrastructure goes out in your into your app and then their network's well positioned and it's it's a great outcome for their them then they'll make a lot of money through their network more than

they would had you been on another platform. So that's that's a very simple

platform. So that's that's a very simple model for us. We don't have a network.

We're focused entirely on the publisher and the infrastructure. So our starting business model is uh transparent fee to the buy side which I think is industry standard at this point. Over time there may be opportunities for us to unlock

additional revenue streams. We'll see you can imagine intelligent features that you know you could turn on and there's a dramatic increase in publisher LTV and you know that's measurable and that's like a that's like a premium

feature kind of thing. But we're we're not we're not remotely there yet. Today

it's just the uh the buy side fee for us. And and that works great. You know,

us. And and that works great. You know,

we have a lean team. You can do a lot today with with a small team, cover a lot of ground, and you know, these platforms can get really big really fast. So, we can build a a pretty

fast. So, we can build a a pretty substantial business with just that buyside fee. But I think in time

buyside fee. But I think in time there'll be premium features that we can offer as well. Yeah, Felix, maybe I can do like one of the stupid questions as a game designer product person here. Why

would I integrate in your platform if there's like a hefty bonus coming from these mediation at networks once and like to get your ones just like again TLDDR for people who don't understand that >> the Do you want to go Jim?

>> No.

>> Yeah. Uh so I' I've been out in the market now with this business for I want to say four or five months and generally the deals publishers are getting from other platforms are not exclusives. you

know, it's generally like a revenue kickback or something like that. So, it

it doesn't have to be one or the other.

And so, we're generally not putting publishers in a position where they have to ditch Google or Max and whatever deal came with Google or Max or Level Play.

>> So, the understanding is that by not ditching it, you are getting more long-term upside for you later down the line and not just short-term kind of

bonus of the integration. Do I get that right?

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>> There there's a network effect in in this business. You know, the more

this business. You know, the more critical mass of supply you have, the better off uh you are. if that supply can be most more or less accessed by as

many buyers as possible. And let's not also forget the fact that many publishers are buying a lot of traffic as well or they want to move people around their own studios. So this is

not, you know, these are these are kind of activities that um we want to be able to enable for folks. Um and our our model is like Dan said, highly leveraged

transactionbased platform orientation. What does that

platform orientation. What does that mean? Well, that means we just want to

mean? Well, that means we just want to facilitate transactions among participants of the marketplace and then take a very fair uh rake on top of that.

Now, if we're just connecting the pipes, that's a lower fee. If we're helping people price things, uh there's some intelligence there, you know, we're helping you build models based on that, you know, maybe that's a slightly higher

fee. uh if we are you know two parties

fee. uh if we are you know two parties don't have a relationship and we're taking some amount of credit risk payment processing all that kind of stuff there's you know there's other fee opportunities for us there is that we

want our fee to be reasonable limited so that we can create as many transactions uh on this platform as possible and not uh load the system with too much of a

rake that's our goal and it's important to us not to be sitting there actually the folks taking the arbitrage and I think that's you know it's a fine thing.

It's a risk-taking activity and it's a fine thing for people to do and certainly there's people who make a tremendous amount of money doing that.

That's not really our goal though. Our

goal is is ultimately the platform because we think that serves publishers the best. So, uh you were talking a bit

the best. So, uh you were talking a bit about earlier as well about mediation, how it looks very different on mobile and desktop like which in your kind of view is better or what's the main

difference and yeah, what do you think mobile could benefit that's on desktop?

I mean, if you look at it, like there really hasn't been a lot of value hasn't acred to the supply side in the desktop world. That being said, it's hard to

world. That being said, it's hard to really draw that many conclusions because Google has the most powerful franchise in desktop, runs everything end to end, has a tremendous amount of

assets there, and especially Doubleclick. they're kind of impossible

Doubleclick. they're kind of impossible to challenge in a lot of ways and they've built a lot of moes and they I think crucially too like I know that that Google's gone through some

litigation on this but for the most part the pricing of of Google adex and other products is pretty fair I think and they don't box the publisher in in a lot of ways I mean they yes they want to be part of every auction they want to be

part of everything the publisher does but it's not they don't have to so I think that's that created like a lot less of a space for this SSP to add a

lot of value in desktop. And then I think a very important piece of this is that tags can just be switched out at will. So I can wake up tomorrow and

will. So I can wake up tomorrow and switch from SSP A to SSPB on my website or run a test between these uh guys and you know this one standardized ad unit

on the web. It's a very different situation and integration. And so you know mobile just hasn't really evolved that way. I think that the supply side

that way. I think that the supply side has created a lot of value. Um, and uh, people want to do these integrations as few times as possible and then have the integrations do a lot for them ultimately.

>> Cool. And what about preid and post bit?

I guess that's the real missing piece, right? That is on desktop but doesn't

right? That is on desktop but doesn't exist in mobile.

>> Yeah, pre-bid's like rewriting the the stack of your web page based on the results of an auction. You know, it's again it's a bit of a hack, right, in a

way. And uh so that's why you know these

way. And uh so that's why you know these two worlds basically don't really uh meet you know but I I guess you could argue that a lot of the things that we've done have looked towards desktop

which I think is a bit more of a higher clock rate in terms of things and said and you know like with header bidding we said you know this is a good idea like we want publishers to be able to in

mobile to rewrite their stack based on the results of an auction and who the user identity is. that was back in the days of the IDFA and that was what Max was based on. Um and I so I I you know I

think for for me you know we look to what is happening in terms of you know the intelligence revolution and pricing things like that and we say it's time for that to come to mobile advertising.

>> Yeah I agree very much so there's a lot of mediation platforms that try to ban that actually. Yeah, that brings me to

that actually. Yeah, that brings me to another point, right? Like probably

you're entering one of the most like gatekept industries that I can think of, right? For example, I looked it up right

right? For example, I looked it up right before the show. Google has given out its bidder to nine plat or eight platforms in the last 10 years. Can you

talk about how this industry is kind of gatekept and how you actually get access to the different inventory from the different biders?

>> That's secret sauce I can't explain to you. No. Um

you. No. Um

>> um look, I mean, I would be lying to you. But if uh if I said that it is easy

you. But if uh if I said that it is easy cuz it's not it's not easy. I think the the thing that we've noticed is that when we started to think about really doing this over the summertime, you know, we started talking to some people

and folks on the publisher side consistently said, "We would love to have you guys come back, you know, because we really want to do X, you know, we want to run an auction with just Meta 10 bucks or stuff like that."

You know, there's like tactical things that they wanted to see us do. And I

think by virtue of that latent demand or you know desire to move things forward plus this notion of like hey I I can actually give you a 10x better product

meant that a supply side offering from us deserves some attention from folks on the buy side who would be traditionally the gatekeepers. So yeah, I would be

the gatekeepers. So yeah, I would be lying to you if I if I said that it wasn't I think something that would be very very tricky for anybody who's not me and Dan to do. And so, you know, we

kind of are using that, I guess, reputational capital to try and bust open the industry uh in a in a in another in another way for another

iteration to allow this new set of technologies to be applied to an old problem that um you know, people still want to improve uh improve on.

>> Yeah, it's a it's a it's a team effort.

You know, you build it kind of quarter by quarter. You know, trunch of of

by quarter. You know, trunch of of partners by trunch of partners. The

publishers have a huge role in it. You

know, when we did Max, we actually had a group of publishers invested in the business. So, we were able to approach

business. So, we were able to approach the buy side arm and arm. I think if you can put your finger on something that will make life better for an enormous amount of players in the market. I mean

there's the reality which is you know part of why we jumped back in is that the the a lot of companies are not happy.

>> Oh yeah.

>> Very true.

>> Yeah. No, it's not >> it's it's not it's not meant to be it's not meant to be provocative at all. It's

just meant to be, you know, like a factual, you know, that that's like a signal. So, if everyone was happy, then

signal. So, if everyone was happy, then we wouldn't be needed here at all. We

wouldn't be wasting our time. No one

would take our calls. It's basically the opposite end of end of the uh spectrum.

We were more or less drawn back into the market by unhappy important market constituents. Collectively, all these

constituents. Collectively, all these constituents can get a lot done on your own. You can only get so far. So we can

own. You can only get so far. So we can drop in and be an organizing force for you know the publisher community the buyside community so it takes time but

it's it's a it's a team effort.

>> Yeah. So it's it's early days. Sorry. Go

ahead.

>> Let me Felix. I would also say that people when we explained what we wanted to do with this transactionoriented platform marketplace approach fair pricing intelligence and automation like

a true 10x better product. people on the buy side that we launched with and other folks who are right behind them got really excited about that. So there was there's a level of excitement of hey

this is a new product vector that we want to actually support and that started to break that gatekeeping aspect of it and and then we offered the uh secure auction piece too to say we're

going to do all these features but we're not going to let anybody play any games with it because we've got this uh unique secure auction too. So you can trust that it's legitimate while we're opening up all these new capabilities. You know

that I just want to give credit to our early buy side partners for taking a leap with us because they saw the vision and got really excited about it. Cool.

So it's early days right? So like you said before you had M you have Magnite uh Facebook and also Liftoff currently on its partners right? So if I'm a publisher listening to this, how like

what type of publisher can get the most value and how do they get value currently in the product in its current iteration?

>> There's a I mean there's there are other byside partners integrated as well or integrating. We just didn't go through

integrating. We just didn't go through the the hoop jumping to get their marketing approval to use their names prop. I don't want to

prop. I don't want to >> right networks at AL. Right. All right.

there's there's a there's a there's a there's a very active pipeline of of of buyers integrating um basically everyone you would expect. So we we we're we're pretty slammed with those at the moment.

But to your question, publishers, so I think the the the part of the publisher market that's that's most underserved is the segment that I would describe as

more I don't I don't want to diss people that maybe aren't in this segment, but the quality focused publisher market.

publishers that want to retain. The

structure of the market today makes retention extremely difficult. It's

basically unmanageable is what we're told. So if you know you want to live in

told. So if you know you want to live in an LTV optimized world and you want to retain, then how you manage your inventory, you know, could be would probably be different than if that's not

your business model and you don't expect to hold on to users very long. So, we're

finding resonance with the publishers that are looking to retain users for a long time.

>> And realistically, many publishers have, you know, there's there's cohorts, right? So, there's some cohorts that

right? So, there's some cohorts that you're going to want to treat differently than others. I think you pointed out in your newsletter just today with Candy Crush what they do. You

know, there some people you're going to look at differently. And how do you be smart about that? Well, right now that that intelligence is really pretty hard to implement for a publisher. I mean,

with Candy Crush, they've got plenty of resources and, you know, they think about this deeply and they have the ability to iterate and test and do all these things for for most publishers we talk to. Even if they wanted to do it,

talk to. Even if they wanted to do it, it would be an initiative that they have to then start to go do. And then how are you really going to know if you're doing it that well? It's just not the highest priority. But I think as a platform

priority. But I think as a platform feature, it's a it's a really powerful thing to to for us. you're going after kind of the core the 70% uh ad revenue gaming people and kind of the apps space

I guess or where retention really matters >> we talk to everybody and um in in uh generally with everyone we talk to there's there are some users for whom

they want an alternative path and and what I what I was going to say is we we saw an incredible shift in the market I I guess Facebook maybe was was really who brought it to market. But for me I I

you know I saw Axon one launch and it moved advertisers to a AI enabled user level decisioning world and it was like wow like a just a hard to even imagine

that there was a there there was a a more man way of doing things prior to that. I think there's a similar unlock

that. I think there's a similar unlock that we can achieve for the pub side. So

user AI enabled intelligent user level supply side decision-m and monetization.

So if you think about it like that, you know, um the way a publisher wants to treat, you know, a certain type of users, I mean this like Jim said, you were talking about this in your article today about Candy Crush. So, so we we're

coming to market and for starters, we provide publishers uh optionality, an alternative path that they can tap into when they want to for some apps, for some users, whatever they want.

>> Cool. I mean, uh I'm super excited. I

can't wait to try the product. Anything

else you want to anything else you get in as last words before we kind of wrap?

>> Uh well, yeah, I appreciate you uh giving us the opportunity to talk about the product. Now, for me personally, and

the product. Now, for me personally, and I I don't want to speak for Dan, but I think he feels the same way. It's just

really great to be back uh in the ecosystem and uh to have gotten such a warm welcome uh last week when we launched the product and the initiative. A lot of people uh were very

initiative. A lot of people uh were very excited to see us back and that that just feels good. But obviously, we want tremendous amount of value here too. And

so, you know, for me, this is uh I guess this is my third company um here in the space. I the amount that you can do now

space. I the amount that you can do now with these new tools is just so compelling. And so for me, it's like

compelling. And so for me, it's like this, you know, call to innovation of uh how what are we what are we able to do with these tools and how can we apply them to a problem that we know so well

and really bust open the opportunity again. It's really been fun and um so

again. It's really been fun and um so we're we're just thrilled to be back and uh like I said, thank you for the opportunity to talk about the product.

>> Yeah, great to have you. Thanks for so much for coming on. So, this has been another fantastic episode of the Two and a Half Gamers podcast. We're thrilled to have you. Don't forget to like and

have you. Don't forget to like and subscribe. We'll be back next week with

subscribe. We'll be back next week with another game review. Thank you so much.

Bye-bye everybody.

>> Thank you. See you.