Data Back, Insights Forward

She's the co founder and CEO. So she really kicks us off into a conversation that we've been having. I think, in a lot of ways more implied. And Laura and I have been talking a lot about dipping our toe into shark infested waters, maybe just jumping into shark infested waters. Around the data and analytics topic and what it really means for marketers, what it means for media, what it

means around insights forward and data back. Because we're so focused on benchmarks that don't mean anything today, we've created kind of these false indicators. Yeah, I think it's interesting, you know, as data becomes democratized or commoditized, and everybody has the first party set, the third party set, how they're translating that into how they're translating that into dashboards and insights. And you know, what's the right talent that you should have at the table? Are they analysts? Are

they scientists? Are they engineers? You know, it's interesting. We've had everybody from brands to publishers, um to agency executives on this show talking about what data means to their business. And I think what's interesting and what you were just alluding to is that we're an industry that continually looks

for the standardization why why? And I think what we're going to hear from Onda is that there isn't actually a one size fits all solution and that the KPI s are indicators from the brands that she's working with, are very indicative of the fact that maybe there shouldn't be And so what works for your business? How do you move the bottom line? How do you understand your consumer? And should you be looking for the same consumer persona

profile that your competitor is. She might suggest probably not, and she may suggest that your competitor may create this content. Actually you should be over here on the complete other side, creating another piece of content or whole content program. Yeah. And I think as an industry, we we talk a

lot obviously as data as an output. And I think what Ada is going to talk a bit about today is where where it becomes an input, right and how understanding as she'll call it system one versus system two, which is a very articulate way that she'll talk about UM emotion versus the analytical side. UM is a really interesting filter for I think about how we try to jam everything together, but really the importance of allowing them to live independently to come to direction or a decision

in your marketing. So put on your Scoopa suit. We'll be back with Onto Gonska from Notch and we're back in the studio with the founder and CEO of Notch ANDASA. Welcome and thank you so much. Thank you for pronouncing my name right. So you're from Transylvania. Yes, I am a very lovely place, a lot more, a lot friendlier than you would think. Brn and Rays grew up there, became very good at math early on, kind of like

a celebration of all Eastern European stereotypes. I was really really good at math and a very good ballroom dancer. So from Eastern Europe, right, you're supposed to be a ballerina and a computer scientist. So I'm just saying I kind of fit into the stereotype. How do you have time to do anything else? Well, now I don't dance anymore. I just do the nerd stuff. So on to tell us about Notch, it's about four years old. Yes, how did you get started? What was the farthest through the

trees that you saw? And how is that company evolved? Yeah, so we got started by not being at all focused on marketing. I initially was really obsessed with figuring out how people felt in real time about something. I was trying to figure out what are the kind of big missing data sets about humans online? And I realized that there wasn't a very good way to collect feedback. UM

surveys were really crappy consumer products. No one wanted to engage with them, and as such, there was this big missing data set of how people actually felt about stuff. And so I set out initially to build a consumer product that people would want to engage with, something that was elegant, simple, frictionless, UM an action that you could do within your attention span, which is about six seconds um and something that you'd really enjoy engaging with, because

you know, human beings are rage atmental creatures. We have opinions. It's just a matter of having the right product to get them to to share that opinion. So we built something it really worked. Um you know, surveys get around a zero point zero one sent response rate, and we were getting on average, and the exponential increase in response rate meant that we could get a lot of data at scale about how people feel, which then we started thinking who cares about this data? And we had all

sorts of assumptions around it. At the time, we were in Silicon Valley still, which is where we got started, and I started traveling to New York meeting with a bunch of different people. And one of the first marketers I've ever met was someone that Alexa knows really well, Beth Comstock. And thank god I met with her because you know, as we all know, she's this incredible, you know, legend marketer in our space who sees innovation and manages to kind of pinpoint and had lifted up for everyone

else to see. And that's exactly what she did for us. So with time, UM, we kind of went from just tracking how people felt, too, then using our technology to track everything else about a person, behavior, demographic data, literally everything. So we kind of blended what someone says about themselves and what their behavior says about them um into kind

of a more holistic version of themselves. UM. And then we started working with you know, all the big financial brands, all the big auto brands, all the big telco brands, and we kind of are on our way to becoming a standard for how content, in particular r o I is measured. So we when you started, you weren't working with brands. What were you measuring in terms of people's feelings and perceptions of things? Great question. So we were

working with editorial teams. We were measuring, Yeah, we were measuring the response of people two topics that editorial content was about. Um. But as you can imagine, we realized that one, you know, by large, creators don't love being told what data data says. Right, and this is a generalization that might not be true today, but it definitely

was about three years ago. UM. And too, there wasn't a lot of money and selling creative sentiment type of data to creators, and so we started taking a step back and thinking what's the best go to market here? And we realized that marketers were becoming content creators a k. Content marketing was on the rise still is, and that they needed a better way to measure it because all the standards for display advertising like mode and integral ad science,

we're not really doing the job. So I don't think it's a surprise actually that you have an artistic creative side as a former ballroom deal because one of the things that I have always been impressed by your product is the aesthetic of this online survey, if you will, and the sort of creativity that went into that engagement rate output. Right, So can you talk about how you blended art and science to create an online survey that could engage consumers in a way that isn't just a

backs out totally. So we kind of left off from the idea that UM surveys were not very engaging consumer products and started asking ourselves why. We realized that there's two issues. The first was the context. Usually surveys are targeted to you in a disruptive way. They kind of pop up or they're sent to you via email two days later. By then, you know, in today's world there was so a d D that you have no idea what happened two days ago. So it's really kind of

a disruptive context in both cases. Right, So we realize that it has to be at the end of an experience, and ideally and immersive experience, not a transactional and like a display at And therefore we realized that content was not only a winning mechanism for brands to tell their story and engage with audiences, but also a really good way to get someone to share their feedback. The second

piece was the methodology. As it turns out, you know, if you if you believe that the brain has kind of like system one system too, As it turns out, you know, System one is where we have kind of store feelings or analyzed feelings. When you smile, I know exactly how you're feeling because you know it's in system one. I don't have to think about it. But if you ask me how much is seven times pretty seven? I go into system two, which is the nalytical brain now surveys.

What they do is they ask you to convert something that lives in system one, which is a feeling into a percentage or a number or multiple choice, which automatically send you in system too. Therefore, there's a massive friction and people don't tend to express that feeling. So what we did is we basically said, let's create a really the intuitive design. Um, let's take a universal metaphor. And this is I think where we really kind of hit

the nail on the head. Because universal metaphors or something you learn between zero and FOD regardless of whether you're from Transylvania or from California or Nebraska. There you go. Um, and we realize that temperature is one of them. So if you present someone with a temperature scale, they automatically know what to do with it without having to think about it. Visual like a visual temperature temperature I like,

I don't like a slider. Yes, And we realize that it also gives us, as like data nurse, it gives us the ability to create granularity because you could have as many skills to the temperature as you want, so you could have really granular feeling. You could enable people to quickly answer a question without thinking about it, and you could enable them to have a really positive experience as opposed to making them feel like they've had to

spend minutes figuring out how they actually feel. You just give them are really easy and um and rewarding way to share that feeling like they want to actually share their feedback they do. Yeah, I mean this is kind of the premise on which re build the companies that human beings and nice say judgmental, but you know, and like its scientifically speaking, we wouldn't be able to survive unless we made judgments all the time. So you know, I do believe that we're very opinionated and we do

want to share that feeling. But the methods in which we are given that opportunity today or what Twitter and Facebook? We have to sit there and write a hundred forty characters. It takes me like an hour to do that every time I try to do it. So yeah, we gave people a much more frictionless, easy way to do it. And what kind of surveys or what kind of questions are you asking for brands? Is it you know, around brand sentiment like that high level? Is it around products? Well?

What are the types of things that you're actually going out there for brands and asking consumers? So taking just a quick step back, I think the bigger question is how do brands think of content marketing success. I realized that when it comes to display um I mean not to discredit any of the products that have done so well in the market, but measuring displays a little bit more binary. The ad has either been seen or not

or clicked on or not right. But when it comes to content, people just have very different definitions of success um, but they tend to gravitate towards five big categories sentiments one of them, or attitude rather, engagement, impressions, social, and conversion.

So what we do now is we capture all those five categories and we try to work with the brand to understand what their custom version of successes and then create custom scores that help them kind of force rank every single content investment to see what's performing the best in real time. But when it comes to the kind of upper funnel goals, because I've kind of described upper funnel to lower front of right UM, I would say it also kind of depends on what the brand is

really after. So we can ask any question whether it's intend to purchase or brand loyalty or perception of brand innovation, or brand love brand awareness. I mean, it really kind of depends. And that's the beauty of this universal metaphor that it is that it kind of enables you to to ask any type of question, as opposed to emojis or the thumbs up thumbs down, which only really gives you a limited range of responses. If brands aren't using notch,

what are they using? So uh quickly kind of leads me to the other thing that really stand for, which is transparency. Um, we realize when we came into the market that when brands work with agencies, agencies then kind of pay let's say, ten different distribution channels, and then those distribution channels are actually the ones that pay data

companies to measure their own performance. So say at the level of the distribution channel, you find a combination of a few different companies mode you know, Google Analytics sometimes Um, Simple Reach, Nudge. There's a bunch of different analytics companies that sell to distribution channels. But the problem is this is click attribution still though in a lot of ways, right, I mean then but like it's front end, yeah, yeah, I mean, there's not a lot of depth or variety

in the type of data that is collected. But the problem is two fold. If you're allowing as a brand, I mean, you used to be the head of meter, right, So um, if you're allowing your distribution channels to grade their own homework, they're not going to give themselves a B. So you know, you end up as a head of media. Not only do you get good news by the time it gets to it's like, oh my god, you've done great.

Keeps any one with us. But the other portion of the other problem is that you're allowing the distribution channels to spend all this money that you gave them on duplicate measurement. So what we came to brands and said was, we're not going to monetize from any distribution channel because we want to be you know, Switzerland. We want you to be our master, and we're going to represent your interests when we go and measure on your behalf across

all these different channels. So we kind of centralized that data, um, the data collection essentially, not just the data reporting. And as such, I don't think, you know, there's a lot of competition in that space. I haven't heard of any startup that said I will actively try not to make money from two thirds of the market. You know, it's kind of like a pretty crazy bold thing to do on the how as an industry do we need to

shake things up when when it comes to data? There have been standards of metrics that have been in place since I've been in the industry that don't seem to keep pace with the change of technology, with the types of advertising or non advertising that brands are going to market with. You know, laugh a lot about this idea of having to duct tape together measurement reports because there isn't a one size fits all solution and if there's

nothing that allows me to see front to back. But yeah, we kind of chase to the lowest common denomina and say this was a success because X number of people engaged with something. Um, what's your long term dream vision for how we piece those things together? So I think the biggest shift that needs to happen is that cmos and marketing teams need to understand the power that they have in demanding that they are able to collect first

party data across every single spend that they do. I don't care if it's offline, online, I don't care if it's podcast or digital marketing display advertising, it doesn't matter. They should understand that they are able to request that they get independent data reporting. Now, what this will do is to fold. First, it's going to declutter all the messs happening right now with all these different distribution channels

measuring their own performance. It's also going to hopefully remove the need for these massive data aggregators like you have, including data Ama right that got acquired by Salesforce. They are an amazing platform and they do incredible work with AI and putting together all these different data sets. But why do we allow people to report their own data sets? Like why do we allow people to bring an Apple and a Draff and ask them data Rama to put

the two together and make sense of them. But imagine if you had ten million dollars and you put a million across ten different channels, and you said, guess what, I'm going to put my own pixel on all of this, and I'm going to get the data in the format that I want, on the timeline that I want, and I'm going to make sense of it because now I can control the kind of collection of it. Right, So when you control the collection and the formatting of it,

making sense of it is really easy. Like as a data scientist, I can tell you of the job of a data scientist is cleaning data sets and making them talk to each other. But should they hold on? But should it be? That's a problem in the industry right now. By the way, the problem, one of the biggest problems in the industry in my opinion, is that data scientists are actually people who need to be innovating and be more like data entrepreneurs and be actually getting more from

insight and be evaluating insight versus cleaning data. Right now, we have built this system that is all about data prep. Yeah, and it's because people are freaked out and I don't even know is this the right question? Are we asking the right question around just gathering data? To me, it's are we gathering the right insight? Do we actually right?

Do we can? We evaluate the right insight? But if we agree that their time is spent on cleaning data sets, then we need to figure out how to remove that time so they can spend time on insights and strategies. So my proposition is that there's gonna be really bold brands like Jimpy, Morgan Chase. We're going to go in and say notch will be my data collection practice. Right, my data collection tag picks whatever you want to call it,

and we collect all that data. It's already clean. So literally, our data science team, all they do is find insights. All they do is get on the phone with Jamie Morgan and their agency and say, put more money behind here. Decrease the importance of that that audience is not responding well, because we don't waste any time trying to clean up stuff for can we trust this data? No, it's all first party, it's all transparent, and we can, you know,

go ahead and truly analyze it. So my big outlook is CMOS basically going to Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and Amazon and everyone and saying you want my money, great, put my pixel on it. I need to collect data about my audience and how they're responding to my advertising. And they're doing that through not they're doing that well. So you have an agreement with any third party site out there. I assume right that if someone is interacting in a notch ui that you have rights to all

of that data. So that's how it works. So the data belongs to the brand, it doesn't belong to us. We're literally just a conduit for data collection, and we

reserve the right to create benchmarks and aggregate insights. You would do work with you know, publisher X. We would embed in that content piece, and any data that comes, like the audience that came to that audience, to that content pies, the type of audience, the way they engaged, the way they felt, all of that would be passed on immediately to you and the publisher and the agency.

So complete transparency. But you would own the data, and we would aggregate data from publisher X, publisher, why, publisher whatever, and you all of a sudden you would be left with this first party data pool that you could then put into your CRM, put into your DVP, etcetera. And

what you just said, no one's doing. But let's like no, but let's let's like like explain that you are saying that a brand could actually own data from a publisher, from an audience, from audiences they came to a specific publisher versus a publisher giving you the data they want

you to have. Yeah, exactly. Hello, And and also the reason why publishers are okay with this, just for a second, there's some publishers out there that are definitely pushing back and have against transparency on this idea, but publishers are actually waking up to realize the more they embrace the transparency rhetoric and approach, the better it is for them, because it's coming anyways, right, and if they truly trust their engagement, it makes sense for them to do this.

The question they ask us is can you please make sure that this data that we're going to give to j Imraan Chase is not going to be put into a audience extension platform, Like they don't want their data or their audience to be monetized. And yes, we do that. We promise them that because the data that we capture, we don't have a data exchange, We don't sell that data to competitors, we don't do anything with it. It just belongs to the brand. So what the brand could

do something with it? They if they put it into their d MP. By that point it's completely anonymized. I mean, we're GDP are complying across every single state of America and Europe, right, and it doesn't really lead back to the publisher. An interesting m article that just came out from saraficher Um inter Axios Trends Reports that is calling this the summer of ad tech UM acquisitions. Right, So you alluded to obviously data Rama being purchased by Salesforce

for over a hundred million dollars. You've got Medium IPG obviously one of the largest holding company groups, acquiring Axiom for over two billion dollars. This obvious is going to continue. As you're talking on and you're describing your kind of thought and vision is what's happening in the the industry is where you're positions and knowing that agencies UM you need this support. Do you see not moving to a data

agency that happens to make products. We currently have kind of a customer success data and our team that does that, and they've worked with your teams and hopefully helped interpret

some data. But we're thinking a lot about how do you scale that, how do you actually even bload that up to take it to the next level UM, And so we're thinking about UM either building our own high touch consultancy around UH, you know, analyzing data not just our data, but maybe other first party data that we can bring into our fold UM or creating an ecosystem around notch and just saying hey, guys, here's our data. You know, do you do you want to go analyze it?

And maybe we work with Canada or a center, you know, the kind of more services heavy players um. And so that's something that I'm very actively thinking about and we'll probably you'll see something from us over the next six months. What what is the industry missing? Like? Where are we We're so data obsessed to the point of just complete saturation. I mean we have people come and talk about data in all different types of ways on this show. What is the thing that we're not seeing? I mean, you're

from your vantage point. I always say, you know, there's there's this weird paradox where you have too much data and very little insight. And I think the what's missing is that we're just taking data sets that have already been collected and banging our head against the will trying to make them, you know, talk to each other. When the truth is, things are changing so fast online that if you're not collecting data in real time and using

it for predictive insights, then you're already behind. Like if you're still trying to figure out how the data sets of six months ago fit with each other, and you know, forget it. So I think what's the point that we're missing is kind of forget the data sets you've already collected. Just try to focus on how you streamline data collections. You can action on the stuff that the audience is

trying to tell you. Now, that's I was just going to say to you, this is about insight forward, go back, right, it's data back. It's insight forward, which to me means analytics. Right. It to me means actually going back to your roots. It's math. Yeah, I think it's actually marrying research analytics in real time, which has not really been possible, and we're trying to obviously do that through what we do. And by the way, this is the other thing that I don't even know if it's going to blow up

the Internet, probably not. But I don't really believe in benchmarks and indexes in today's world. I've just seen brands define their notions of success so radically differently, and content is not only valuable, but as I mentioned, it's multivariate and its success. I feel like people should just kind of forget that and focus on who we are, what is our bottom line, and how do we get there

through marketing? Right, Because everyone's talking about the single source of truth, and what you're saying is there is no single source of truth. You have to start going forward into insights versus worrying about these made up benchmarks well that we've created that aren't really actually benchmarks. Right. Data is directional. Of course, people have made data their strategy. Yeah, you know, and people are like this says this, so

we must do that. And he's opposed to like, where where Why aren't we critically thinking about these things in aggregate and then borrowing from culture and borrowing from you know, influence and being able to kind of create as opposed to dictate. I think it's very different. I also think it changes the mindset and the organization of a marketing team all of a sudden, puts you into like thought sprints almost versus these long drawn out plans that make

no sense. Data decks that are over a hundred pages. Give me the executive summary, what is the negative information? I need to move on? Let's go. I think data has two functions. The first one is you put it to use immediately through plant forms that can harness it to better target audiences both with creative and distribute media. Right, or the second is its surfaces three to five main insights that you can go and think about and act on in your next campaign or next strategy. But anything

in between. If you're talking about you know, even tempage data decks, I don't think it's you know, I don't think it's realistic. Are you only digital in terms of UM, Like online media is notch? Can you notch work on broadcast? You know, linear, other screens, vot T voice, those types of places. So now we're going to get to like how we take over the world answer. So we started

off with literally just paid custom content. We then expanded into content syndication, then expanded into own content, then social so we actually can capture first pretty data on a couple of the big walled curtains, which is crazy UM. Then expanded into email, and now we're expanding into being

able to measure podcasts as well. And so we're building towards understanding what is being said in a podcast and then trying to basically figure out how do we meet the customer or the audience in a way to ask them for their actual feedback but also study their behavior. So very much working on that very much, thinking about O T T I think there will be a day

when we figure out how to do offline as well. UM. But yeah, the entire philosophy behind it is do it in a way that has the CMOS kind of interest in mind, and do it in a way that collects first party data only. I would love to see the temperature scale on this show. You'll be the first customer the beta test. I don't know how Atlantia feels about that, but like it's coming at you Atlandia. So and uh, we're gonna flip to our game that we play. It's called kill by d I Y what would you kill?

What would you kill? What would you buy? What would you do yourself? Not? Not something else? So I would kill any form of transactional advertising, to be honest ist, UM, that would be mine, and that includes display, but it includes a few others. UM. I absolutely hate being met with the um the really impersonal advertising of a brand. So I persume a massive believer in content, I would probably buy most of our competitors and create a larger consortium that has a lot of power to compete with

the Oracles and Adobes and salesforces of the world. And I'm actually actively thinking about that so hopefully they can hear me say that. Um, And what was the last one? What would you do yourself outside of notch? Oh? Well, can I answer something radically different that's not at all

in this space. That's what we like. Well, So I've been thinking a lot about how professional women need UM a brand that cuters, like a clothing brand that cuters to them, UM in a way that you know, enables them to look amazing and high powered and sassy and awesome from seven am to the eleven PM when that dinner ends. And so I've been thinking a lot about the fact that I don't really have those types of clothes. I have to go like our shoes that are comfortable

but also kind of show my very spunky personality. So I've been thinking a lot about like what brand would do that? And I would probably do it myself. And thank you so much for coming, Thank you for having this was so much fun. If people want to get in touch with you by your product, get more of your insight, yeah, reach and at k n otc H dot com. And it's been awesome much thank you, Thank you on a fun conversation, and there's so much more we like just hit the tip of the iceberg. So

we're definitely going to have you back. I think we should do like a much bigger round table too with some of these folks who are thinking differently, talking differently about data. And I love that she said she wants to put together a consortium of ad tack that could

go and compete against the oracles. I think that actually is the new attack, that meaningful attack, and we've got to like strip away this like old skin of ad tech and actually kind of raise the people up who are thinking like Ada and who are doing things that actually make a difference and have a vision around what marketing of the future is going to look like and how it's going to speak and get back to their consumer needs the way we need to get back to

our consumer needs. Yeah, I love the idea of creative and strategic application of data. I mean, I think, you know, data for face value in the numbers is certainly valuable and I think we will continue to need it, But the interpretation and how we use it is obviously where I think we all collectively agree to it needs to go so big. Thanks to our friends and family at Panoply, Dana, our producer Matt Turk Andy Bowers, Jacob Weissberg, and all of our friends and family in Atlantia. We'll be back

in two weeks. Full Disclosure. Our opinions are our own