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We want to talk about Mountain. That is, of course the voice of I'm sorry, was that mean?
Yeah? Ignore me. I've been friends with this guy for years.
I know, but I just mean sometimes you have to ignore that. Mark Douglas is with us founder, chairman, president and CEO of the ad platform company Mountain here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. We should point out the stock is a downfalling result. Although we were talking about a bunch of analysts have come out and raised the price target on the company. The stock is up more than seventy percent from its IPO in late May. Since you actually talked to him once before today on TV.
Stock Take It Away eighty two percent.
When I looked this morning since the IPO and that was just May twenty second, right, Yeah, I looked at the it's.
Down sixteen percent, though I love it.
I looked at your.
Curious about buying for the Mark?
So what is going on there? Mark?
Because I counted eight analysts had raised their price targets on your stock.
Since the release.
So you do the earnings call yesterday, you have these one on one meetings and these analysts go back to their office crunch numbers and as they say, actually Mountain's worth more than we thought, and now the stock is down.
How does that the I mean, this is the stock market for you. So the only thing we can do. We have a big TAM meaning big opportunity. That's the total addressable total addressing the mart let's not use acronyms. And then we are growing consistently and really really happy with the growth, and we are doing it with a justin the ebadad basis. We're doing it profitably, and so that's what we can do. And honestly, I think it's
a great opportunity for investors. And you know, whoever wants to take profits today, great, you're you know you're up one hundred percent, well yesterday.
Anybody listen is going to say, well, of course he's going to say it's a great investment. Yeah, talk to us about the business a little bit more. Mind, everybody who might not be familiar. We often talk to you about, certainly when it comes to the digital ad market. But tell us exactly what you guys are doing right.
So what Mountain does is we enable small and mid sized businesses to advertise on television for the first time and to do it specifically on streaming television across every streaming network, and then do it with precision to find So these are not brands like a T mobile where
everyone in America can be a customer. These are challenger e commerce brands, direct to consumer at travel brands who they are growing businesses and now instead of just being on paid search with Google and paid social with Meta, they now can be on the big screen on television, on across every streaming network and do it with precision to make money. And so mount enables that with our software platform, and we are partnered with virtually every streaming
network in America. We're partnered with all of the TV manufacturers in order to make this possible. And customers have responded.
What is a typical digital ad cost?
Well, it's more in terms of what are the average budgets, right, So think of it that way. So your business and our minimum spend on our platform is five hundred a month. We have companies spending millions a month and so, and the way they think of this is what's the return on AD spend? What kind of revenue am I getting in comparison to what I'm spending on the media and so, and the return on ads spending most businesses looking for is in the two to one, the three to one arrangement.
And you spend the dollar, you make two three. Now you play that game all day. And they're used to doing this with on Instagram basically using meta app platform and do it with Google's app platforms. So it's Google AdWords. Everyone's probably heard AdWords even if you haven't used it. Meta app platform now Mountain Performance TV, and that's the opportunity. We've a name and it's a very big market opportunity. So the companies consistently growing.
The other thing they do is wait, wait, so what's the return on is it two for one or.
What is that?
Well, it depends on the customer. That's that Those are kind of average status more in a three to one range, but some if you have great product market fit, meaning like people see that probably like I have to own this, you're going to have a higher return than the company that just released the product and is still figuring out like you know, what their their target consumers wanted by So it varies by customer, but I say that's range two to the one to three to one is what
most companies looking for, and that's the fit the economics of the business. The key thing here is ninety seven percent amounds customers have never advertised on TV before, So we are literally enlarging the market, bringing new companies into the television advertising market for the first time on streaming.
And your take on that is what a percentage of the return on that or what is your piece of that?
Right?
So, so a portion of their budget goes to pay for all of the technology we power in order to make that possible. And that's very typical. If you think of a company, we don't compete with trade desks. They're in a completely different segment in market, but that's it's the same revenue model as someone like trade desk.
So I think the coolest thing you thank you, by the way, No, of course, I just want to finish the thought.
One of the coolest things that you guys do is you say that these people have never made ads before, A lot of them when they come to you. And so when I think of making an ad for TV, I think I got to get you know, cameraman, director, editor, et cetera, and so forth. But you have a AI tools that help them reduce that budget, I imagine drastically and you can tell me some numbers around that. And b you have Ryan Reynolds as your chief creative officer, right so, and you see the ads that he makes.
Yeah, they're just brilliant.
So, by the way, they don't have direct and I mean they get produced in what seems like an impossibly short period of time. That's because your first thought is usually your best and increasingly, you know you can use the cell phone, the iPhone, the film to film an ad. So our customers, they're right, ninety seven percent who are new that television now have TV ads when we meet them,
they do have a lot of video. You can't be a director consumer brand and you're not creating video for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and so those assets can now be brought to television. You do need an editor to edit them into a thirty second TV commercial. Also, we have a division amount is called Quickframe. It's a network of thousands of young independent creators videographers who can help edit those ads. You stock video and now.
Say you don't have to have them on staff. You just pop into them when you need those.
It's like Uber for creative. We just connected with a creator. And then, as you mentioned, AI tools are coming on pretty strong now, so we have essentially we haven't fully released it yet. It's in cut beta with some of our customers or a general AI tools and you can mix that. You can bring in your video you already have plus general video and mix it all together to have you know, kind of the perfect TV commercials.
So when I met the way I met Mark first was that I knew a few investors and they were like, we got this guy who's like a genius coder and he just creates businesses. You were you were at Oracle for a while first, right way.
Back in the year. Then you went to did you literally worked with Mark Beneoff was like, well, he and I were both individual contributors at the Oracle when I met Mark in in the Bay Area, and then he became like director of Desktop Products and I was directed Dido. Yeah, and Larry Allison was walking the hallways. It was a long time again, but no, I mean.
My point is that you went on and did a bunch of other stuff.
So you built essentially the matchmaking machine at e Harmony.
Yeah, I was head of mentioning.
Yeah, you did other startups and when I met you, you were doing Steelhouse and then you pivoted to do Mountain.
What's next for you?
Mark? What's next? The way I think it would be really clear? This is why I told my team n if you look at any successful like public company, ninety percent or more of the value is created after the company goes public. So you think of Meta Google, but you could think of trade Us, app Love and any these companies. A successful company most values. So I said, IPO is done.
You just you know.
So we're at the ten percent mark and now we're going to go for the other ninety percent. So we're going to bring hopefully millions of investors along with us. And so the next is to continue to go after this market, build even more product, more tech technology, and really just grow this into what we the hoscale We.
Want is your company.
Because when I talk to like Joe Kaiser at Mercado, right, yeah, they invest he's on your board. Yeah, he it's about you. He's like Mark Douglas is the asset here, he's the brain. But I know that you have an extremely happy employee base, you have incredible ratings on glass Door. Nobody has to come into an office. So how important is the company that you built, the team that you build around you.
It's incredibly important. I mean it's not just me. I think I'm not used to like talking about myself. I think the skill I have is I think I'm a very good at product market fit, like really identifying these trends are going to equal this opportunity. And that's what we did here. When we first launched our performance CV platform, I told the team the easiest way to win a market is to create that market. So we're going to we ate the market for performance advertising on television what
we now call performance TV. But like, so I identified the opportunity, the trends. Yeah, I worked with our designers on what the product should look like. But it's at mound five hundred people working as a very efficient team. Almost forty percent of team as engineers, and it's I don't want to sound like a cliche, but like, there's only so much I can do. I can like point us at the right market opportunity, but execution matters, and especially matters now that we're public.
And wait, I got to ask you, though, the barrier to entry.
Me the harder question.
No, I know when you say execution, that's my like. But barrier to entry sounds like another company could do this or another advertising company like this doesn't sound so difficult for somebody else, except you do have kind of your own ip of you being and behind it. Yeah, yeah, and yes, but Apple wasn't the first mover when it came to smart phones, and yet look what it's done so other people can come in. So how do you on the market?
Yeah, so I got about forty seconds. Okay, So there's a ton of technology involved, and the first mover advantage does matter there. We have a big cost evangel partner with every streaming network and they are increasingly reliant on Mountain being a growth channel because remember ninety seven and sets out of every dollar is new revenue that we're
bringing into the TV industry. And then we have our sales cycle averages nineteen days to bring a new customer live, so we're finding the customer before anyone else, bring them live faster than anyone else, bringing more technology to bear to drive that return on ad spend. All of that combined is our advantage?
How much of your customers come back and stay with you just quickly?
Oh, it's the vast Yeah, I don't have that. It's the vast majority of our customers or repeat spenders over and over and over again.
Interesting space, Interesting individual. Mark Douglas of of course Mountain, joining us right here on Bloomberg
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