Ben Kaplan 00:00
Hey, this is TOP CEO, the show about CEOs making tough decisions featuring CEOs from startups, scale ups and fortune 500 enterprises. TOP CEO is a business school case study, telling the story behind the story, and what you can learn from it from those who have faced the fire. And come out the other side. Welcome to the TOP CEO podcast.
Bill Wise 00:31
When I look back, I had this vision for what is now Mediaocean 15 years ago, and the irony is, I'm just starting to actually execute on the vision that I had 15 years ago, which is so incredible unique.
The Detective 00:45
Imagine you're the CEO of Mediaocean, the mission critical platform for omni channel advertising. This software giant stands at the crossroads of brands, agencies, media, technology, and data, employing AI and machine learning to optimize marketing investments, and business outcomes, your business model to serve as the all important operating system for the advertising industry, handling everything from back office functions to media procurement, effectively controlling the pulse of a $70 billion market. I
Bill Wise 01:23
cold call the founders and said you're sitting on a billion dollar idea. And I'm the guy who's gonna get you there.
The Detective 01:30
Yet beneath the veneer of success, lies an ocean of challenges that test the mettle of your resolve and vision. Now, imagine the monumental task of steering such an enterprise through the rapidly evolving advertising landscape, the challenge of shaking up the entrenched linear TV industry with a digital data driven vision.
Bill Wise 01:54
They literally kicked me out of meetings, I would go into television organizations and talk about how digital is going to disrupt what you're doing. It's going to be digital, it's going to be programmatic is going to be data, I literally was physically removed from some organizations, comfortably
02:09
settled industry giants complacent in their well worn grooves, unwilling to let go of their familiar methods. These are your opponents, ardent protectors of the status quo, staunchly defying change, standing in the way of technological revolution, the resistance is palpable, the skepticism entrenched in the heart of an industry that has long fly on a linear model.
Bill Wise 02:38
And I literally thought to myself, I just ruined my career, I had a great digital advertising career. I literally just ruined my career. Will
The Detective 02:46
you managed to crack the code transforming the monolithic TV industry? Or will the monumental resistance from an industry deeply set in its ways proved too much. This is the story of Bill Wise, CEO of Mediaocean. And this is The Addendum.
Ben Kaplan 03:10
Bill, one of the things that's interesting about your vision for ad tech is some of the resistance that prevented that vision from taking place. Obviously, we've seen huge growth in sort of digital media, maybe other types of meat that we're not digital lag behind. Talk us to start with this challenge you faced of you kind of see where the snowball needs to go. But there's lots of forces that prevent that from happening. And that was a primary challenge for Mediaocean. Yeah,
Bill Wise 03:42
Ben, I, thanks for having me on. And I appreciate the question. When I look back, I had this vision for what is now Mediaocean 15 years ago. And the irony is, I'm just starting to actually execute on the vision that I had 15 years ago, which is so incredibly unique. Let me tell you maybe how I got here. I started my career as an accountant. Luckily, I wasn't a very good one. So there was a digital advertising company called double click, who hired me when they were a small startup that just moved from Atlanta to New York. Obviously, double click is part of Google Now. And a huge part of the ecosystem. But so I got into digital ad tech by just by happened chance, lock, and you see a manage my way. And then I just became an entrepreneur. I started a couple of companies. Some were successful, some weren't. My last company was a company called write media. We sold it to Yahoo was the first ever Ad Exchange. And I had the vision and idea back then is, hey, you had all these ad tech companies. But you had these marketers, large marketers like Procter and Gamble, Unilever, etc. But all these brands and a couple 100 million dollars of spent if those companies thought of themselves as ad tech companies and not marketers, they'd actually be the second or third largest ad tech companies in the space. Again, this is 15 years ago, and so I actually went to Cincinnati met with Procter and Gamble and pitch them on becoming their own ad tech company. They ended up creating what became the first DSP in the market. You know, we got a quarter billion dollars to test this out from Procter and Gamble. I was in Cincinnati, presenting to their marketing investment committee. And they said, Hey, Bill, have you ever thought of applying all of this data driven marketing to traditional media like television? And I said, Mark is Mark Pritchard at the time. I was like, I don't even know how TV is bought and sold. I'm a digital guy. And he was like, you should look into that. Because for Procter and Gamble, digital is millions. Traditional and TV is billions. And so kind of the entrepreneur in me was like, Alright, how is television bought and sold? So those
Ben Kaplan 05:48
numbers work in my favor? Yes. I'd like to find a solution for this. I have Procter and Gamble telling
Bill Wise 05:52
me this. Yeah. I was like, millions are great. Billions or better? Yes, yes. So everywhere, I turn those as clinical Donovan data systems, and for lack of a better analogy, they were the double click of TV, right? They were the ad tech company, around processing all of the TV spent. And so literally, the entrepreneur and me found a little startup in Chicago called Media bank, I co called the founders and said, you're sitting on a billion dollar idea, and I'm the guy who's gonna get you there. And they were like, what's the vision, I was like, the vision is that the TV market eventually will look and feel like the digital ad tech market or digital advertising market looks today. Right? It's going to be data driven. It's going to be programmatic. It's going to be automated, right? Ai didn't exist them, but it's going to be laced in AI and automation. And so that was the vision I had for what's now Mediaocean. I had that in 2009. And the incredible part is, the industry was so set in its ways that just now I'm starting to really relies on that vision that I had 15 years ago, talk about
Ben Kaplan 06:57
some of the roadblocks and obstacles, because maybe other CEOs can appreciate that, particularly ones that are trying to disrupt something, right, because you're trying to disrupt something kind of like by definition, sort of needs disruption, but there's entrenched power there. And sometimes you can be like sort of more nimble and outmaneuver, because like no one focuses on it. But other times, I think is more in your case, people really want the status quo to be the status quo, right? There's sort of entrenched power in there that is vested in the staying the way it is that would see what you're trying to do as a threat. Yes,
Bill Wise 07:26
100%. So the way you buy and sell television, right, there's national television and their spot, and local TV, it basically hasn't changed in three or four decades. And so, you know, when I first had this vision, and ended up taking over the assets of media Bank, which was a startup, trying to disrupt kind of the TV space, from a software perspective, organizations, you know, it's like, hey, TV is not broke. In fact, it's the only thing we can count on, right? If you're a movie studio, you know, dropping some commercials,
Ben Kaplan 08:00
it's not very precise with a big hammer, you like whack a mole, it's big, it's powerful. And you're gonna hit something with it.
Bill Wise 08:06
Listen, it's tonnage. It's sight, sound and motion, right, you can elicit an emotion. And if you need to get butts and seats, you know, for the Barbie movie, or you know, or for Oppenheimer. TV has always been the best way to you want to sell cars. TV is a it's a funnel, and it's upper funnel is not precise, but it works and it's tonnage. And so companies like auto CPG movie studios, right? They've been relying on television for 40 years. It's not broke. It is the richest and most profitable for publishers. And it's incredibly efficient for advertisers in their agency. So what
Ben Kaplan 08:46
does that mean for the entrenched powers then that want the status quo that took a while to work through and figure out how to do it,
Bill Wise 08:51
they literally kicked me out of meetings, I would go into television organizations, and talk about how digital is going to disrupt what you're doing. All media is going to be connected through an IP address, right? It's going to be digital, it's going to be programmatic is going to be data. And literally, I literally was physically removed from some organizations. And I literally thought to myself, I just ruined my career, I had a great digital advertising career. I literally just ruined my career. That's literally what I thought for about a year. But then
Ben Kaplan 09:22
why was, you know, I understand why they'd be entrenched the way it is. But as progress was sort of happening as digital was rising as a part of budgets, does it start to change over time, people sort of say like, Okay, I see how this is useful. Digital continues to take more and more of a bigger bite out of our pie. Either we reinvent, or eventually we become obsolete and people start coming over over time. Well,
Bill Wise 09:46
so the interesting part is, there's been this tug of war between kind of the traditional linear guys and the digital folks, right. So the digital folks, you know, have been saying, hey, buy online video and CTV from us, right? And the TV folks were like, Yeah, sure, go ahead buy through the digital guys. It's immaterial. And so for the better part of 15 years, it was immaterial. Right. And, you know, the other thing is the pandemic, what likely should have happened over five years in terms of transformation, in terms of digital transformation happened in basically five months through the pandemic, right, where all of a sudden, the levels of activity skyrocketed across platforms like Netflix and Prime Video, et cetera. And so we saw a level of digital transformation that just, you know, the pandemic really swept in forced the market to say, Oh, wow, now, you know, now digital television, or connected TV or CTV, is now a pretty material portion, right? TV continues to be a $70 billion industry here in the US. It was 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and it still is today. CTV, which was less than a billion dollars just a few years ago, is the fastest growing part of the market. And now finally, organizations can't ignore it. Right. But for the better part of the last 15 years, they completely ignored it.
The Detective 11:10
In the face of tradition, a seismic shift was brewing. Right back at age old paradigms of TV advertising were being challenged, resistance was inevitable. The industry clung tightly to its proven profitable methods. The notion of data driven AI based systems sparked fears, dismissals, and spawn trajection. But beneath the turbulence, the tides of change were undeniable, a dramatic transformation was on the horizon, a future so potent, it threatened to uproot entrenched norms. The industry stood on the precipice caught between the pool of progress and the comfort of tradition.
The Detective 12:09
As the tension escalated, the question became more pressing with the industry bend, or break under the weight of change.
Ben Kaplan 12:23
You said you were like removed from meetings, people didn't want to talk to you. They didn't want to have your ideas spread in our organization, we don't like it. What did you do that? Did you consider going back? Like we got to just be a digital shop, let's just focus on that. There's too much resistance, they're not ready for it. I'll see you guys in 10 years. Did you think about that? Or did you think about how did you approach it? Or did you think like, Hey, this is a side chain, I'm gonna work this build my other businesses keep going? How did you think about how you approach that resistance,
Bill Wise 12:48
we certainly built a digital business in a digital focus. But again, I was so confident in where the market ends up that I was like, I can't give this up, right, we have to transform this linear side of the TV business. And it's not just TV, it's also things like radio, right? Pandora was starting to become popular, right, Spotify a little bit back then. So I didn't give up. And in fact, what's interesting, you know, is, if you want to disrupt an industry that doesn't want to be disrupt, the best way to do that is to own all the workflow for that industry. So we were a start up, there was a company called Donovan data systems that was founded in 1967. They work with every single agency, ad agency, and all the major markets, which gave them access to every single major marketer, and had direct links into every single major broadcaster like NBC, CBS, FOX, etc. So I said, Hey, if they're not going to believe in my vision, I gotta go on all the workflow and start changing the workflow. So media bank, the startup, I was running, merge with Donovan data systems to actually form Mediaocean, which name the company today. And by virtue of that merger, we basically took over $70 billion of TV spend almost overnight, and then the real work started beginning which is, you know, how do we transform this legacy business that kind of isn't broke, right? That was the biggest pushback I got was stop trying to disrupt something that doesn't need to be disrupted. And it really was consumer behavior that needed to be the catalyst to make it you know, where they say okay, fine. Now we need to we need to evolve or die. Take
Ben Kaplan 14:28
us back to the merger for a second how was it done? How did all the players kind of sign off on that? How did that deal work for both sides to make it work? Because if you're them you're sitting on this we have this asset great, why disrupt it? Why take a risk? I don't care what Bill tells me we're kind of sitting pretty we're kind of fat and happy Why should we change? Yeah,
Bill Wise 14:49
for most people may know this, but the the advertising ecosystem, there are six ad agency holding companies incredibly large that handle each handle 10s of billions of dollars. So ad spent, you're
Ben Kaplan 15:00
talking about the WPS and the publicists and all all? Yes, yes,
Bill Wise 15:04
they come, et cetera, et cetera. So they had all six. And so we started building workflow technology to compete with them. The difference is they didn't have any digital platforms. So we started with digital, built a digital platform, but also started building and evolving TV, print, radio out of home, all kinds of the linear traditional media types. And so we ended up stealing one of the holding company. So we got one agency, one major agency, which is an agency within publicist group, estar. Com media vez, we got them off of Donovan onto media back. And then we got another holding company, IPG on board, but just verbally on board, you know, these are like ERP platforms. So, you know, the implementations are like a year to a year and a half long, when we already had one of the agencies. And we got one of the holding companies. Then I called Michael Donovan, Founder, CEO and 100%, equity owner of Donovan data systems. And I said, Hey, I have Starcom events, I got another one, and I'm gonna get the rest of Google assists, I'm going to have to have the six in the US we should join forces because I know exactly how to evolve this. We're in a knife fight over this traditional media. But meanwhile, Google, Facebook this before Amazon, create an ad business, Google and Facebook are basically building this, these incredible ad tech businesses. So we got to stop thinking about each other as the competition, the competition, is actually Google and Facebook. So
Ben Kaplan 16:34
to kind of paraphrase this one, you had to get who's gonna become your partner's attention by getting some business to start with. So you're a player and then saying, like, Hey, we're actually partners, not competitors, is what we should be. How long was it before you kind of said, Let's talk merger, which is a big thing, right? Because you're like, maybe viewing each other as competitors. You're saying it's not really because there's bigger competitors on the horizon? But kind of hard to be like, you know, by the way, we were like, rivals for the same girl. And now we should all get married together. Right? Let's just all be one happy family. How long did it take you? And what was that conversation like to kind of get them?
Bill Wise 17:13
Well, they started looking at us as direct competitors. Because, you know, we knew in order to kind of see the vision through, we needed to own all the workflows. So we, we directly were competitive with them for about a year and a half, two years, you know, so there was a lot of resistance, I finally convinced Sir Michael Donovan to merge. At the end of the day, I did provide an alternative that none of the ad agencies had, you know, over the previous 20 3040 years, literally, when we merged with Donovan, they were over 40 years old. And the day after this was completed, we had $120 billion of ad spend going into our platform 120 billion, then the question was like, Alright, how is that 100 20 billion going to evolve over time? And what do we need to do now to start transforming that business and continue to transform that business where we are now in 2023? Right. And so that started on on our path. And basically, that created, in essence, an ERP business for the advertising industry, right? Where we look more like an oracle or an SAP?
Ben Kaplan 18:18
Well, and just to explain that explain how for people that don't track advertising and ERP, which is the system that kind of handles operations for companies just explain what that means. And this kind of vision coming through this sort of, like, almost like operating system for the advertising industry? Yeah, it
Bill Wise 18:35
really is like an operating system. Right? We it's a lot of the back office functions, I I say all the time, people don't really care about plumbing and electricity until it doesn't work. And then you really care. And so Meteos really provides a lot of that plumbing and electricity, right, it's a lot of, you know, back office integration of financials, invoicing, reconciliation, Bill Pay, but also, all of the media procurement. And so, you know, it's very sticky, high customer retention, high net revenue retention, basically, customers, when they find, you know, kind of these systems of record, very difficult. I mean, it would take an organization two years to leave.
Ben Kaplan 19:15
So you sort of have entrenched customers that are going to, you know, for the most part, stay with you. But that was, of course, it's a little bit of like the classic Good to Great scenario. It's like now you're the entrenched you wanted to disrupt this now you though, but then, you know, there can be someone who comes along too, and wants to disrupt that as well. So it starts all over again. 100%.
Bill Wise 19:34
And so even if you have this great, you know, position where you're grained in, you have high customer retention, you can't rest on that, right, you need to continue to innovate. You know, and I say all the time running a company is not a sprint. It's also not a marathon. It's a relay race. And you have points in the in the maturation of a company where you're handing the baton off, and you're running the next leg of the race. And so Oh, you know, media back was the first leg then the merge with Donovan was a second leg. The third leg really was around the pandemic, which was alright, that's great that we have this software that's ingrained. And it's a lot of back office. But a lot of what's happening and the vision I had for how do you really take TV to the next level and to the current century is around ad tech. And so we started this path to invest. And we've so far invested about a billion dollars, but invest in acquiring ad tech assets, that gets us closer to the vision of transforming, you know, all media and omni channel together. And so we acquired this company called foresee, which had programmatic software that bought all the walled gardens, walled gardens being, you know, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, now Tiktok, et cetera. And then the second business was a comical flash talking, which had software that dynamically optimized creative and had an ad server that competed with DoubleClick. And so you know, and so now, not only do we have this kind of vertical ERP for advertising in this operating system, but now we have some of if that's the back office, now we have some of the front office, which are these ad tech solutions. That gets us closer to the vision of how do we transform this industry into an omni channel, data driven, programmatic industry, but
The Detective 21:33
audacious vision met the stern ball of tradition.
21:39
At its core, the revolution of integrating data driven and AI solutions into a stagnant conventional world of advertising, the industry bolt, but the visionary was not deterred.
The Detective 21:56
A strategic merger, a calculated pivot took the reigns of 10s of billions in TV ad spend creating a shockwave change. Yet the road didn't end there. Even admits the seeming safety of an established player. The specter of disruption blue innovation could not and would not be still a billion dollars poured into ad tech assets, each investment a stepping stone towards an omni channel data driven future. But what can we learn from the challenges faced by mergers and acquisitions? And what advice can we glean for other CEOs looking for growth in the same way?
Ben Kaplan 22:47
Now you're building you're building you're building. And all of these other solutions are coming, hence your relay race or hence, these different chapters in the company, this new chapter begins when all of that happens, and for other entrepreneurs, for other CEOs that maybe haven't grown through strategic mergers or acquisitions. What is your advice on how to approach that? Because that can be daunting if you're new to it. Because it's fraught with danger of yes, it makes sense, theoretically, of this piece ads, but there can be problems in company culture, there can be software that doesn't match with other software, there's all these pieces, since you've done it a few times. And obviously, if it's been critical to the journey of media ocean, what is your advice for that either acquisition or merger as a way to grow?
Bill Wise 23:32
The advice is don't eff it up? It's so disruptive, that you have to get a right. I found out you know, after Google acquired double click, I, you know, I saw the number of people that Google had and corporate development, I thought was crazy, right? It's like, alright, you have, you know, people who buy companies, why? Why do you need 100 people, like when you're buying companies, but it wasn't, you know, people buying companies is people integrating companies, right? Because you can not get the integration wrong. And by the way, we failed, we failed a bunch, which is why I think we're getting better at it. Because we failed a bunch. But you you hit it like What do you
Ben Kaplan 24:09
mean by failed a bunch? Like what does that mean? It you mean in terms of integrating your companies together just like it took you too long? Or it ultimately didn't work? And you had to just abandon it? Or what do you mean by filled in
Bill Wise 24:18
a world of data and AI and software acquisitions are largely about people and culture. It is understanding the culture that made that company work, and not killing it. Right. And it's very hard to do when you're a much larger organization. Maybe the other company is, you know, startup entrepreneurial spirit, and we're this larger, slower moving company, you have to figure out how to keep the attributes of what made them special, or figure out how to kind of merge the things together. Certainly software and code base, you can figure that stuff out. What you can't figure out is the Northstar, right and making sure or that the cultures connect. And at its additive to the business, I would say, a vast, vast, vast majority of m&a activity or failures, you know, there's a vision, but it is so hard to execute on that vision, when naturally things are going to change, right? People are going to change processes are going to change, right? You know, and it's disruptive. And so, you know, we now have some of our best and brightest working on integrations, because that's how critical it is. And you got to listen, right? You know, we, we had processes, we had things. Luckily, in this last acquisition we did was flashed on, which was about a half a billion dollar deal. They had some really strong executives with really good experience. And they came in here and said, Listen, we're three weeks in, you're already screwing things up. And you know, as the CEO, I don't, I never want to hear that. But sometimes you need to just listen, and you need to hear it. And you need to change, you know, the way you're thinking about it. And you have to care about culture and people and process, because if you screw it up, it's just so much costly than just not even doing the deal at first plus.
Ben Kaplan 26:12
And ironic for when you think of technology companies or software companies that like, you know, hey, what has to work is the technology or software, but no matter what your business, it actually comes back to people and aligning people and having a common vision and working together. And the issue is, which you see a lot two is that maybe you acquired this company, because they were special in some way. I mean, maybe it was a peace in your ecosystem, but maybe just as a special you are acquiring them for that specialness, which actually emanates from the people in the culture. And the minute you kill it, you just sort of killed the thing that made you want to buy it in the first place.
Bill Wise 26:48
Yeah, yeah. And by the way, big companies are the worst at this, right? Because they have their you know, like, if you're Oracle, I'm not picking on Oracle, but Oracle did a bunch of acquisitions, you know, in the ad tech space. So it's like, All right, we don't even think about this a client, Unilever says, Hey, we want to start talking to you about your solutions. Here's an NDA, we go great, you sign the NDA, boom, you're done. You sell coming to Oracle, you know, getting that NDA signed, may take three weeks, right? By then, you know, Unilever is off to the next startup. So you know, you gotta you gotta respect both sides. But you know, you have to you hit it on the head, you know, there's the special sauce that you acquire company for, don't kill the special sauce. Finally,
Ben Kaplan 27:28
wrap up your journey. I'd love to get your take on how do you as a CEO, stay true to your vision over time, and maybe over long periods of time. And maybe in the interim of that time, you have a vision you go do businesses goes in other ways. Maybe you continue to grow. But maybe there's something larger out there that it seems like you are still in search of to put all these sort of fragmented parts of the business together into one thing, what is your advice for sort of staying true to your vision, even when a lot of CEOs, very common to face this is like you could be too early to the party? He'd be like, it's gonna get there. But if you don't time that, right, when people are ready for it, you're not gonna be successful either. How do you stay true to your vision over time? Yeah,
Bill Wise 28:15
I listed my first vision for the business I was 10 years early to the party, right. But luckily, I was able to kind of generate revenue and other ways. And you know, and kind of weed it out, you know, until now, basically, what I would say is, yeah, I say all the time, like, I'm actually not qualified to do anything in Mediaocean, other than run it. So it's a good thing. I'm CEO, surround yourselves with the best talent, surround yourselves with people who are much better than you. And then that allows you to focus on some of the soft skills like, what is your company culture? What do you want that to represent? You know, how do you think about your greatest asset? Which is your people? And where do we need to be in the next two, three and five years? Right. And so I spent a lot of time thinking in the lens of my investors, you know, who have a three, five or seven year horizon, you know, how am I going to double or triple their money in that timeframe? And, you know, do I have the right assets today, to get there? Do I have other new assets I need to add on to this? And then are those assets? Can I build them myself? Can I partner, you know, with companies in the ecosystem? Or do I need to go out acquire it. And so I spend a lot of time thinking about the next two to three years, mostly because I have the luxury of doing that, because I have a great team, you know, who's much better than me, who's managing the day to day. And I think, you know, obviously, if you're less than 10 million in revenue, and you're the CEO, you're doing everything, you're talking about top clients, you're managing the product, you know, the product roadmap and pipeline, and you're putting out fires, right? Then you grow you know, the next phase is like 50 million in revenue, then 100 million in revenue and then a quarter billion dollars in revenue. So when you you know get to a level that where we are today, the business I can't add anything to the day to day the business, other than making sure our customers are delighted figuring out what the next two to three to five years look like, and how do we make our investors and customers happy. So I would say surround yourself with the best talent possible I'll let them do their job.
The Detective 30:22
through the lens of audacious ambition and tenacity, the world of advertising was forever transformed. Once a bastion of traditional methods resistant to change, it found itself at the precipice of a digital data driven revolution. The initial rejection was fierce, a veritable storm pushing against an unstoppable force. Yet, a strategic maneuver gave the Trailblazer the reins of a $70 billion dollar industry, allowing for an influx of disruptive innovation. But the journey didn't end at the point of success. Amidst the sense of security offered by an established position. The shadow of disruption loomed large the response, a ceaseless drive for innovation, and a billion dollar investment into ad tech assets, each an integral brick in the foundation of an omni channel, data driven future. Each challenge met. Each solution crafted was a testament to the power of visionary resilience. The industry resisted, the stakeholders watched warily, yet the relentless stride of progress couldn't be held back. The Journey unveiled an invaluable lesson. To thrive in an ever evolving landscape. One must be the harbinger of change, not its bystander. And with that, it's Case Closed. This was brought to you by top thought leader. Find out more at top thought leader.com
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