Latest / IAB Europe podcasts / Digital Dawn - From Cannes to Commerce: Inside Wolt Ads

Transcript

Digital Dawn - From Cannes to Commerce: Inside Wolt Ads · IAB Europe podcasts

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to IVRS podcast Digital Door, the podcast that brings insights and learnings from the digital advertising and marketing industry to light, spark new ideas into existence, and help our industry to thrive.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: In each episode, we invite a different guest from across the industry to share their inspiring insights and explore innovative ideas.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: From DEI and AI, the latest technical advances across a variety of channels, we cover it all with leaders from across Europe.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Whether you're tuning in for a deep dive into emerging trends or to hear firsthand experiences from the people shaping our industry, you're in the right place.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoy.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: Great to meet you, Solomon.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for being with us today at Ivy Europe.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to Vault and Career Journey?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: We'd love to hear some more about you before we delve in.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: I've had a non-traditional career journey.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so together with you, we went to USC.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Graduated a little while ago, not too long ago.
• 1:08
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Six months, a year?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a few years.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: New grads.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was in the alcohol industry for 10 years.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I was working for the largest distributor in the US.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I had my own retail business.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: And most recently, before Walt, I was at AB and Bef uh working tech partnerships there.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was COVID.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there was a huge boom on CPG interests in the QuickCommerce space, right?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: That was like the new thing.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: We all thought we were going to be ensconced in our homes for the rest of our lives.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the future.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: It still is.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they were really looking for somebody to help them manage large CPG accounts.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the original innovators in the space were Unilever Coca-Cola.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I came on board to really help Walt figure out how do they manage enterprise from a CPG perspective, right?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because they were always looking at this from a very venue level.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're servicing restaurants, we're servicing groceries, which is our huge new focus.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: But how do the CPGs play into that?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: So around five and a half years ago, I joined Walt uh to start forming that strategy.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: Can you tell us a little bit more about the shopping behavior in that consumer category on Vault and how they might be different from, say, a traditional retailer like a Walmart or an Albert sense or a Wake Gross since our audience isn't?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the opposite of what you'd expect.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think at Waltz, we always understood that we needed to go for larger baskets in the weekly shop.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So let me take a step back.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: That is the opposite of what I would have expected.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Let me take a step back on that uh and just provide the fundamentals.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a difference in a space between players like ourselves, like Uber, uh, like the delivery hero group of companies, Meituan, where you're a platform, okay, and you have restaurants and you have groceries and you have many different verticals.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: First, this is a pure dark store experience.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and at Walt, we always understood that we were building a shopping mall in your pocket.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: How does that work?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: You have to start with the most frequently purchased items, which are restaurant food.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we opened the food for at the start.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: That helped us build the flywheel, right?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: That gives you enough volume for couriers, that gives you enough volume for the customers to find something interesting, huge amount of merchants there.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then we started adding on.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we bolted on grocery, uh, we bolted on convenience, we bolted on electronics, flowers, pet.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're kind of going through the whole shopping mall journey, if you can picture it in your head.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why am I going there?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because we didn't want to just be a burger delivery and okay, I need a top up uh because I ran out of this ingredient, or I really just want a Coca Cola, or I really want a Ben and Jerry's ice cream late at night, and I'm just gonna like get in 15 minutes.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, that shopping journey exists, but there's a lot less profit in that journey, and there's a lot less sustainability in that journey, and there's a lot less value for everybody in that journey.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So our vision was really how do we build this new generation into replacing all of their physical shopping, or most of it at least, onto online, which I think you know is the future, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at kids these days, they're not gonna go drive to a discount supermarket 30 minutes away, they're already on our phone.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was a long-winded way of saying our shopping journeys are larger than you would expect.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we just had Red Bull over at our retailer conference, and they shared that items ordered on Walt, like the basket sizes, are bigger than in-store even.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Forget about bricks and clicks.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we're really moving uh more and more.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, as I said before, impulse is always there, but toward bigger baskets, toward more weekly shopping journeys uh and toward a bunch of categories.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you for sharing that.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_03: And that was extremely insightful, like you said, not what I would have expected.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_03: Now let's switch gears a bit into retail media specifically.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: What you're building in retail commerce media, whatever you want to call it, is unique and you've acquired a number of assets.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Walk us through your product capabilities and how you talk about it to your CPT brands.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the product capabilities have accelerated in an unbelievably fast fashion across the industry, but specifically at Walt.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: You acquired my previous employer, Symbiosis.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna get there.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so symbiosis is actually a crucial part of our strategy.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So DoorDash acquired Walt in 2022.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: DoorDash acquired Deliveru October of last year.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're going through this amazing process now together, uh, where we're bringing the three platforms together on the back end, one unified at UX.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's gonna service the large second largest delivery base in the world after Maitwan in China.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna have a unified UX that brings all the power from each of the different platforms, the best in class UX, UI, measurement, all of those things to the consumer.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the product journey we're at now, and we're toward the end of it.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really exciting.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna go into all of the different ways.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're having a conference at the end of October.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be launching this to the world, so you're invited.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but let me take a step back.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: As far as in a broad perspective, priorities.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we have on-app, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have your on-app placements, and we've gotten really good at converting users, providing value to users, understanding that user journey on app, and how CPGs can interject there.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So to your point on symbiosis, and I think that's one of the key differentiators for us, like you know, there's millions of shopping journeys, potential shopping journeys, that are happening when you're on Instagram, that can be happening when you're on TikTok, even when you're on your native news site.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the brilliance of Symbiosis.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: So they let you kind of close that funnel.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Connected funnel is a kind of buzzword where you're talking about here a lot, uh, and make all that awareness shoppable.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: So off-site media is definitely a huge priority for us, especially now on the FIFA World Cup.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've got hundreds of campaigns live.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And advertisers love it, right?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because they have our consented users, they can layer on all of the targeting capabilities MADA has.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it really provides a lot of value for the young customer.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: Connected funnel, one of your favorite buzzwords.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: What are your top three favorite buzzwords we use?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Shoppable awareness, connected funnel, artificial intelligence.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: Shoppable awareness.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: What's that?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's exactly what I just said, right?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's looking for RRI now.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, like, especially on commerce media, like the traditional marketing funnel is dead, dying irrelevant.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants to provide awareness.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, in the old world, you're gonna do awareness, and what's the effect of it?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna do a brand lift study and you're gonna do surveys, and you're gonna find something out in six months.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: So now it's just somebody else's acquisition, everything we're doing on the off-site space, we can provide that volume, we can provide that awareness, we can provide those creatives uh like before, but you can also make it shoppable.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you collapse this funnel, and they can click on that link, they can scan a QR club, whatever it is, and you can do the closed loop attribution to let them know like what was the effect at the end of the day, how much sales did that create?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what everybody's looking for.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: And are brands mostly coming free for that closed loop attribution and really looking at their ROAS, or are they also talking about the upper funnel, the awareness?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and how are they combining those two messages?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So in Khan, we're talking about the upper funnel, right?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Which is uh that's their whole purpose for being here.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, yeah, I mean, the original starting point is the closed loop, is the attribution.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: For what are they looking for?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: Incrementality is that's another buzzword.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: I love that one.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's not a buzzword because it's the truth.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and everything around measurement, you know, that's what we're focusing on is on the incremental sale.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that's the origin of Walt.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why, as a restaurant owner, you know, why do you put your burger shop or as a grocer, why do you put your grocer on Walt?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're enabling local commerce and providing you that incremental sale from somebody that would not have walked into your store on the street.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing the same thing for CPG brands.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of like the beautiful path that they're working toward with us and what we're trying to let them see in reality with measurement capabilities.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, not to get too technical or boring, but incrementality is the big thing we get asked about at the IAB.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: And we've issued a paper about it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: We have some guidelines, right, in terms of what's accepted in terms of incrementality.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: And the reason I say it's one of my favorite buzzwords is because a lot of people misuse it, right?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: They'll say it's an incremental sale when it's really just a sale.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: How are you measuring incrementality?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: What are your preferred methods?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's a hundred different methods, and I'm we're relying on you as the IAB to tell us what like the accepted standard is going to be.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, well, I mean, let's look, we're working together on that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um at the nice plug, we're super happy to join the IAB, by the way.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: We are very excited to have you.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: We've been working with you and the background for a little bit because you're such an important player in the industry.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: And to have you officially join us is honestly super, super exciting.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a category quick commerce, something we want to focus on.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: We want to grow together and want to create more standards, especially for the smaller brands who don't have all of the tools and bells and whistles that you uh might have as a Nestle or a PMG.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you for being part of that.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we'll work on it together.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think the prime thing for us to work out is what is a standardized, fair, acceptable way to demonstrate infantality?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is it through ghost ads?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how are the different ways to do it?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not gonna dive into all of that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: That can be its own podcast.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I think look, on the on a high level, are you showing them who's new to their brand?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Almost as importantly, who's new to their category, where are the shoppers coming from?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: How do those journeys interact?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something pretty unique that we can do in commerce media.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: And some of your stores, I might not be using the right word, right?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: But some of your retailers, your stores, also have their own retail media programs.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: How do you reconcile those two things?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: And are you being able to tie a whole measurement story across both assets?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you come from symbiosis.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, I so I think I think that's a great question.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's two approaches to it.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: One approach, you know, if you look at what happened with Spar in Hungary, they're an amazing partner, and we were able to deliver so much efficiency before getting into the media network part just on, you know, the third-party delivery from the Spar stores in Hungary, that they closed down their bricks and clicks.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: They understood, like, why do we have our own website up?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Walt is super efficient, everything's working really well.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you have that case where they just decided to go all in with Walt, and we're taking care of a hundred percent of their delivery commerce needs.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Then, of course, retail media is just also through Walt.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: But on the other way, especially with symbiosis, we look at this as how do we support them, right?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do we win-win together?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: How do we grow the pie?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a lot of my message to a lot of our partners.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're not out trying to out-compete you, we're not trying to take your dollar away from the CPG.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: How do we work together?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: How do we broaden everything?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we just started that, you know, and I think that's a new frontier of CPG, platform, retailer conversations.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we've kicked those off with a few of our key partners around Europe.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we're just ideating right now on how that looks like.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: How do we make sure that everybody's happy, that nobody feels like there's a priority going toward the retailer and a priority going to us as a platform?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that all comes back to incrementality.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because if we're really driving incremental sale and we're really driving an incremental dollar, which we are, then of course this is the right place to invest.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the learnings we're taking here are, you know, how do we create a unified retail media ecosystem that sometimes it makes sense for the CPG to put their campaign toward the platform?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it makes sense for the CPG to put their campaign toward the bricks and clicks.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the other exciting part about the Symbiosis acquisition.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, moving past being able to connect a funnel, collapse the funnel from social media onto the platform, but also Symbiosis is going to allow us to support our retailer partners and creating a unified retail media ecosystem.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: I did not appreciate all the beautiful things you're already doing with Symbiosis.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: Very different company from the one I left.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: But for those who don't know Symbiosis, I'm just gonna try and do it a quick symbiosis.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: Symbiosis uh started as an off-site platform that enables brands and retailers to buy media on the likes of Google and Facebook, et cetera.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_03: It was acquired by DoorDash a year and a half ago now.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it has now been integrated in the door in the DoorDash platform to continue on delivering on that promise for all of the DoorDash partners and beyond, right?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_03: Anything else you'd add to that?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: No, I think that's a great summary.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, fantastic.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: Dawned on me that not everyone might know what it is, and we've used that word.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now everybody knows.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: Great.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: So wrapping up, how was your can?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: What was the highlight of your can?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think everybody's gonna agree con was hot.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, yes.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um the highlight.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: The con has transformed.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, everybody knows that commerce media is here to stay.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's engaging, and I would say the highlight of my con is to see the CMOs, the really brand marketing folk, uh, start to really engage with us, understand the value we provide, and see it as part of the broader advertising ecosystem, which is great.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: It w every year, commerce media is a bigger and bigger part of it, and it's so amazing to see that what also dawned on me is that this is a creative festival, and the creative stuff is still happening.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I ran into so many people that were so proud of their lions walking around.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also nice to remind ourselves that along with all of the ad tech and the kind of more analytical side of things, there's still room for creativity, and uh, it's a big part of why we're here today.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: I felt really reminded of that this time around.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's it's a good reminder because you can forget about it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I guess that's the future, right?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you marry the boat?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get the hardcore analytics and the really brilliant creative artists to create the right paths?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're not there yet.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: No, we're not.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I hope AI doesn't take over.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: I hope so.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so nothing.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for tuning in.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: We'll be back with a new episode very soon.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: So be sure to subscribe and tell anyone else you might be interested to listen in too.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: For more information on Iob Europe, you can visit our website at www.ibeurope.eu or contact us via at iobeurope on Twitter.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening and stay safe.