SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
1104 $3m+ Adtech CEO on Threats from Cypto, Ad Management going in House
02 Aug 2018
Chapter 1: What is the background of Michel Gagnon and his experience in the ad tech industry?
Don't give too much importance to other people's opinions. He was working and did a lot of business in the ad space in general. Joined WPP, was a manager there. P-Lista was acquired by a group inside of WPP for about, you know, it was reported 30 million on 3.6 million euros in revenue. He's since scaled that business. They're thinking about publishing side.
They're thinking about the advertising side. They're thinking about things like branded content and how they continue to stay super relevant in the years moving forward. This is the Top Entrepreneurs Podcast, where founders share how they started their companies and got filthy rich or crash and burn.
Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to 2.7 million.
I had no money when I started the company.
It was $160 million, which is the size of many IPOs. We're a bit strapped. We have like 22,000 customers. With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc. are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes. I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Michel Gagnon.
He is the CEO currently of a company called P-Lista. Now, before joining the company, he worked for PwC both in Canada and Germany. And in his last role, he served as manager strategy consulting in Berlin, advising tech companies on their international expansion.
He also acted as a member of the executive committee of the Canada-China Business Council and brings many years of experience in various strategy and international business development roles at Bombardier Inc. Okay, are you ready to take us to the top, Mikel? Yes. All right. Very good. Tell us about the business. What is P-Lista and how do you generate revenue? What's your business model?
Well, first thing, it's called P-Lista. And basically what we're doing is we're a global ad tech company and we focus on three things. Giving users a good experience and delivering ads that they find relevant. We help premium brands reach their audience and achieve their campaign objectives.
And we give publishers a series of tools and technology so that they can generate sustainable revenues from different sources.
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Chapter 2: How does P-Lista generate revenue and what is its business model?
It doesn't make sense. There are too many people in the value chain. So I think we will see a consolidation.
Sorry, how is that good for the publisher? So if I put a dollar through you or a dollar through any of your competitors, you're going to take 10, 20, 30, 50, 90, I don't know what, cents on the dollar just to manage the spend. Isn't it better for publishers to have more options to drive that ad, I'm saying ad tax, not tech, ad tax lower?
I think what you have to think about is, okay, what are the capabilities, the tech capabilities? the tech capabilities of publishers and of advertisers. I think the reason you will see a consolidation, but you still have a lot of specialization in terms of being able to develop top notch state of the art technology. And I do not think that the majority of publishers can afford to
to develop the app themselves. The same thing for brands. This is not necessarily their core business, especially for publishers. So you still need these specialists, these guys who really know the market and can afford to develop the technology. So I think providing the real top-notch technology is key. And the other thing is it doesn't mean that you cannot offer different options to publishers.
Publishers can go through a variety of channels to get their advertising dollars. What we're seeing also with publishers is that they're putting a lot more emphasis on other revenue streams, which is what I mentioned we're also focused on. A lot of publishers are now investing in increasing subscriptions.
I think the New York Times last year, the year before, revenues from subscription surpassed revenue from advertising. Is that a threat to you guys? Not really, because I think we have the technology that can help them do this as well. Oh, really?
Yes. Specifically, Polista or WPP in general? Polista.
We offer real-time analytics. So basically, publishers can see exactly how their content is performing. And basically this technology originally was developed to help publisher optimize their homepage. But we're tracking a lot of KPIs that can help them actually track subscription conversion.
So you'll tell the New York Times which article and how far down the article to put, to see the rest of this content, subscribe for a dollar a month. You'll help them figure that stuff out.
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Chapter 3: What differentiates P-Lista from other ad tech companies?
No, not at the moment because it's more something that we've been developing like in recent months and we see the trends and we have the technology. So we're working on it right now and it's not, you know, our biggest revenue driver. Is it free? Is it just value add right now?
At the moment, we're more in the testing phase because we have the tech, but we were not using it exactly specifically for subscription at this stage.
Yeah, I think ad tech is going to be very fun to watch over the next several years because I definitely see a world, publishers, especially those fake news and echo chambers on Facebook newsfeed, all this stuff. In an ideal world, I think people would say if we didn't have to rely on advertising, we wouldn't.
So if people can figure out a way to monetize the consumer directly, right, with a subscription, right, I just think that's the future. And whoever gets ahead of that curve faster is going to win. And maybe it is an ad tech company. Maybe it's you guys.
Of course, we'll be there. I still think that, you know, advertising, bad advertising is bad. But I think, you know, we still need advertising so that people know that we have a business. Why do people care, though, if you have a business? I mean, if you're Apple, you want to make sure that you can reach consumers and they know what's your next product. This is advertising, right?
Unilever, they want to make sure that people know how their brands are doing, new products, the new discounts that they're offering. So this is advertising in itself, I think, is not necessarily bad. I think we've had a lot of bad advertising lately. over the past years and maybe decades.
And then now what we're seeing is really a focus on users and audience where they, you know, in the past we were just developing a big, big message and we were basically shoveling them down their throat. So I think it's a healthy change for the industry.
For publishers listening, help them out. Do you see any other trends emerging in terms of additional revenue streams besides the New York Times kind of subscription model and besides a typical advertiser model? Is anyone doing anything really creative?
What we start seeing is we start seeing publishers having their own, I would say, content creation, building their own content creation teams. I think they have the people to do this. And I meet a lot of publishers and I've met a lot of publishers in many countries over the past 12 months. And I would say the big ones all have a focus on getting branded content money.
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Chapter 4: What were the key milestones in P-Lista's history and acquisition by WPP?
at UTA or CAA, you know, very high touch model. And obviously those agents are the ones getting the cut of a quarter million dollar sponsorship deal. And, you know, you'd call that essentially branded content.
Do you think there's a play that's maybe more long tail where you could help folks do that at scale that were not as large as, you know, the show or as large as the CEO that wanted the branded placement?
Yes, but again, it depends on how you position yourself. What we're doing at this stage is really focusing on publishers who are trying to get that money directly. And I think, ultimately, what we're offering, as I said, we're a tech company. Um, I personally don't want to get involved into the content creation.
I think there's a lot of other people who's, you know, who are really good at it, like publishers or even, you know, some specialized agencies. Don't you have to get that business though?
If you want to do branded content, you have to be in the content creation business to some degree.
Well, we are. I mean, we can be in different ways. So as I said, if I'm approaching a publisher like the New York Times, who has his content creation studio, I would be part of that group.
um how should i say of that uh of that deal right because i'm providing the technology and the the the distribution uh so that they can uh you know be efficient and and really help brands reach your objectives uh so that's one way to do it as i said we're also part of the wpp uh and and group m they have they have lots of of agencies who are also creating content
So it's not our core business, but I think with the tech we have, we're really well positioned to play in that space.
All right, good stuff. Let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, what's the last business book that you read, Michael?
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