Unleashing Data Curation and Identity Frameworks: Simpli.fi and Audigent's Groundbreaking Partnership | Drew Stein

David McBee: Hello, and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I'm David McBee. Our guest today is Drew Stein, founder and CEO of Audigent, the leading data activation, curation and identity platform. Drew has been Audigent's chief product officer since its inception in 2018, and he pioneered their industry-leading, private-marketplace products, including SmartPMPs, ContextualPMPs, and CognitivePMPs. Drew architected the industry's first cookieless header-bidding solution and Hadron ID, Audigent's privacy-centric, cookieless identity framework. More recently, he has become a driving force behind many of the industry's most prominent, curated marketplaces, helping agencies, brands, and publishers develop consumer-friendly, high-performance programmatic solutions. Drew, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Drew Stein: David, it's terrific to be here, and I'm excited to talk about certainly Audigent, but more importantly the amazing partnership that we've had with Simpli.fi and what the future holds for us together. David McBee: Yeah. Before we start, I just have to thank you for that bio with all those incredibly-complicated words. You really challenged me today. So thanks for that. Drew Stein: No, I get it. It's funny. AdTech is not for the lighthearted. It's not knowledge that you just wake up all of a sudden and you intuitively know. It's an ecosystem and it's one that takes years to master, and fundamentally, a very entrepreneurial ecosystem. So, the words are constantly changing, the acronyms are constantly changing, the frameworks for data and identity and how all of these great impressions are trade are just constantly changing. So, it's an incredible industry. But yeah, sometimes the word salad is really more than a jumble that people can handle, so- David McBee: It sure is. Drew Stein: ... I thought you did a terrific job there. David McBee: Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Well, drew, you are clearly a data guy, which is something that we're obviously passionate about here at Simpli.fi and why our two companies have been working together for over a year now. So I'd like to ask you, what opportunity did you see that led Audigent to create data curation? And maybe even define data curation briefly for our viewers who are unfamiliar with that terminology. Drew Stein: Sure. Curation, at its heart, is a pretty simple concept. It is the packaging of data and inventory into single pre-packaged deal IDs or private marketplaces. There's an old way and there's a new way. The old way is data is solely looked at as a DMP segment, all that great taxonomy is packaged up and then punted into data marketplaces, or as DMP segments into DSPs. Then there's this new way where data is curated through the supply path. It is packaged with inventory and then put in front of DSPs as a PMP instead of a DMP segment. In terms of how we got here, frustration, funny enough. The frustration is often the light bulb that sparks innovation. And this is really a very similar story. We had built this great DMP. And when we started off life, we were going to be a 2.0, next-gen DMP, the cleanest data, the highest-performing taxonomy. We were so excited as a startup company to be having our code on page and really understanding whether it was contextual or audience-based signals and packaging together. And then we did what all DMPs do. We'd punt them into data marketplaces, into DSPs. And we'd wait. 30, 45, 60 days. We'd finally get back. Some report would've, like, one line on it. It would be spend. And that's when we realized, "Being a DMP kind of sucks." We had all this great data, but we had no way of knowing whether we were providing value, no way of optimizing anything we were doing in real time. And we took a step back and we said, "Wait a second. DSPs have real-time data. SSPs have real-time data. How do the data people have no real-time data?" And that's when the light bulb really went off. So, we went to a partner or two on the supply path. We went to two prominent SSPs and we said, "Hey, if we give you our data, could you package it together with the inventory and allow us to ship a deal ID instead of a DMP segment back to our DSP partners? And would you give us a very simple performance feed so we could assess how we were doing in real time?" And the rest is really history. From there, we were like, "Whoa, we've got something really exciting here," because we were able to use that signal back from the SSP to drive optimization, first, manually, and eventually, algorithmically, and automate a tech stack that sat on top of those SSP platforms that could take in that signal. And the signal got bigger and bigger and bigger over time. We got more and more details back. And then we started getting back log-level data on top of that from the SSPs, and our data-science teams were off to the races. We were able to build the original version of what we had in mind, which was really build high-performing segmentation that we could provide. And we can do it a lot better for our partners through these packages, through these curated packages of PMPs versus the old way, through a DMP segment, where we didn't get any log-level data and we didn't get any kind of real-time performance signal back. So, that's where the spark came from. We were just frustrated. We thought we had something great, but we didn't have a seat at the table. And curation gave us a seat at the table around optimization. David McBee: That is fascinating stuff. Thanks for sharing that. We really can't have a conversation about data without talking about cookies. So, what do media buyers need to know about curation of data as the cookieless future becomes the cookieless now? Drew Stein: Yeah. Well, it's a great question, David, and it's kind of the second big reason why curation is so important right now as a trend. The old way, DNP segments, 80 to 90% of them rely on cookies, MAIDs, IP address, or other legacy identifiers that are, frankly, just going to be deprecated. We didn't do it. Google, Apple got together, they decided what the future was going to look like, and the rest of us are kind of reacting to it. But alongside of getting that feedback loop that we talked about with the SSPs, we said, "Wait a second. Instead of using cookies or MAIDs or IP address, instead of using those legacy identifiers, what if we found a different way, a different framework," right? It's funny thing. Hadron is a framework for identity. It's not an identity or an identifier in and of itself. And what we said was, "If we co-located servers in the same datacenters as our SSP partners and we were able to have a lightning-fast conversation with the bidstream, we wouldn't have to ship all of those legacy identifiers everywhere. We wouldn't have to host all of those matching tables. We could find a different way to communicate around identity without having to rely on all of these old-school deterministic identifiers anchored," many of which are anchored in PII and certainly cookies. And that was one of the core benefits of why curation made so much sense for us. It wasn't just about providing value and performance for the brands and media agencies, it was also about finding a new language or new framework for identity that we could exchange with SSPs and DSPs that didn't rely on hosting all those matching tables and sending all of those cookies everywhere. And that's, from a product perspective, how we thought about identity and the cookieless future and where the opportunities are for companies like ours. And now we're seeing tremendous addressability through our cookieless header-bidder product. Amazon at Cannes said publicly that they're seeing 30% better addressability using Hadron than other core identifiers for their cookieless header bidder, through TAM. And that's been a tremendous partnership for us. We are, according to Sincera, now a top 10 cookieless identifier in the bidstream, but the real numbers are coming out soon. We actually are number 7 and one of the fastest-growing identities in the bidstream. I think we'll break top 5 sometime over the next 6 to 12 months. David McBee: I love that story. I have to tell you that when they first announced that they were going to take cookies away, our chief technology officer, Paul Harrison, at Simpli.fi, said, "There's going to be solutions. By the time this is gone, there'll be plenty of solutions," and that certainly has come to pass. So, awesome. Drew Stein: Yeah. I mean, fundamentally, I think this is a huge opportunity for the ecosystem to get it right. We don't have to anchor identity in people's personal information in order to drive marketing efficacy. I feel like there's been a lot of reputational challenges for AdTech in general, and, of course, identity and cookieless that have led to some of these decisions to deprecate some of the legacy identifiers. But we finally have a chance, I think, to be consumer-friendly, privacy-first, and really nail it for consumers and brands in this next go. And I'm personally optimistic and I'm excited about what the future holds. It's time virtuous companies win and win a lot bigger in our industry. And when you can create products around identity that are privacy safe, that drive outcomes for brands and media agencies at the same time while they drive revenue for publishers, that's a win for everybody, right? The consumers win, the content creators win, and the brands and media agencies win. And I think we're going to stick the landing on this one, David. I think our ecosystem's finally going to get it right. David McBee: Win, win, win. I love it. All right. So, Drew, before we wrap things up, I wanted to just give you this opportunity to share some of the exciting news regarding Simpli.fi's partnership with Audigent. Drew Stein: Well, first and foremost, what I would say is I love the Simpli.fi platform for many reasons. And one of the top reasons I do love it, from a performance perspective that I see on the PMPs, is it truly doesn't matter, it can be a large buy, it can be a small buy, the performance is always there and there's a great partnership that's there. Whether you're the biggest buyer in the world, the smallest buyer in the world, there's something about our deals on Simpli.fi that work really, really well. And I would say also from a geo perspective, you don't have to be running national campaigns in order to see the value. You can be hyper-local, you can be geo focused, and still drive value, performance, and efficiency around media campaigns. And what I would say is, from our perspective, we're doing a few things that are unique and exclusive to the Simpli.fi platform around this partnership. First and foremost, we'll be first to market together with Simpli.fi on a raft of very specific PMPs, curated marketplaces at scale using our new simple PMP toolset. And that's going to allow people not just to build or to access what I'll call the public marketplaces but the simple PMP tool is going to allow individual brands and media agencies to really build bespoke marketplaces for themselves and even bespoke deals for themselves. Second, another part of what I think is going to be really unique about this partnership is we have over 500 exclusive contextual deals that are going live on the Simpli.fi platform that won't be available elsewhere. We're excited about those. We know how they're going to perform because we know how well our deals perform on the Simpli.fi platform. And I think for us, it helped us go all in in terms of making a decision about, "Well, what could we bring to the table that's highly differentiated and unique, but also provide that at scale?" Overall, the partnership will have well over a thousand private marketplace deals available. They'll be across display, they'll be across online, they'll be across CTV. And when it comes to reaching target audiences at scale and driving performance and efficiency, we are beyond confident in our marketplace capabilities to do that. And it's not just one vertical, David. We see these deals providing value in automotive, in multicultural, from holiday shoppers to back-to-school, luxury, beauty, home and garden, entertainment. There are a lot of key verticals that benefit from the close alignment between data and the supply path. And being able to do it on a platform like Simpli.fi and take advantage of the fantastic toolsets that the Simpli.fi DSP has to offer is, I think, a huge advantage. And you get to do it, by the way, across all of the leading SSPs, whether it's PubMatic, or Xandr, Magnite, OpenX, or some of the best partners that we have that are integrated with our Hadron ID and are able to provide more value. So, it's an exciting time for Simpli.fi and Audigent, and I'm really looking forward to the next phase of our partnership together and what it'll bring in terms of driving value for brands and media agencies. David McBee: Yes, it is an exciting time. Thanks for outlining that so effectively, Drew. So, real quick, before we let you go, what is the best way for viewers to get in contact with you, follow you on social media, just learn more about you? Drew Stein: LinkedIn. I certainly am excited always to champion so many of the great things going on at our company. There's so many great leaders that we have constantly putting great stuff out there. I'm a reposter, I'm a liker, I'm a sharer, and LinkedIn is certainly the best way for people to contact me and get in touch. David McBee: Awesome. Well, Drew, thank you very much for being our guest on Simpli.fi TV. Drew Stein: Thank you, David. David McBee: And thank you, guys, for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry-leading media-buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.