# S1 E15 - Meta - Carlos Garcia

Episode 15 - Meta - Carlos Garcia 

[00:00:00] Elgato Wave Neo-24: welcome to the middlemen. I'm Tom Limongello, and I'm here with Todd Sawicki. We, as middlemen, live at the intersection of media and e commerce, and we would like for you to join us in our discussions where we turn that chaotic intersection into your comfort zone 

[00:00:15]  

[00:00:17] Tom: We got a big company this time. We've got Meta the most recognizable company that we could have on the podcast. And, normally we're talking to people from smaller upstarts who are doing really interesting things. 

[00:00:30] Tom: And potentially, with very large budgets. But I don't think we've ever really had somebody from a company like Meta. 

[00:00:36] Todd: I think it's interesting to get a chance to put a face on Meta in this case, and their ad org and the sales org within it. Because I think, the challenge with a lot of people is they look at the Metas of the world and, you were saying one of the biggest complaints about Meta or Facebook is you can't get a response from your rep or human or whatever, you're having a problem [00:01:00] advertising. 

[00:01:00] Todd: There's all sorts of chatter view on different social platforms around that. I And so a chance to meet someone who's a practitioner, right? Carlos has a background. He leads their CPG account org. He can't, he was retail before that within meta. And so I think that's a cool aspect to see within the duopoly, who's a human being, who's, And then a part of the space and hopefully opens up, a channel and some visibility into what's going on inside medicine. 

[00:01:29] Todd: We're excited to talk to Carlos for that reason. He's obviously, I think Tom, one of the interesting things to your background is you have worked with Carlos before, so you have a relationship and understand what it's like to work with Meta, especially in this emerging retail media space, because that's certainly been a part of your background and what led to this conversation. 

[00:01:48] Todd: So maybe give a little bit of that background 

[00:01:49] Tom: Yeah. What's crazy is that now you're hearing, Meta people being, interviewed on like Eric Sufert's mobile dev memo and stuff. And they're finally getting to the place where they're [00:02:00] talking about the things that we were trying to do, back in 2018. Where we were trying to integrate a conversion API and back then it wasn't working. 

[00:02:10] Tom: And so we'll talk about that kind of stuff. But for me, it was eyeopening at the time that one, it was hard to make something as big as Facebook work in the way that a retailer wanted it to. If you had tons of stores, there were too many campaigns to manage. You had to use third parties. 

[00:02:28] Tom: I think a lot of that has changed. And I think, we're, it's going to be interesting to talk to him about how measurement has changed. Because that was, those were all really big pain points back then. 

[00:02:39] Todd: I think that's, a good point here, which is that people have been, and even going back to my publisher days, have been trying to work with Meta and Facebook as a platform, as potentially a partner, traffic acquisition, and so forth. And it just, I can't imagine a world, especially of RMMs, moved down from the largest of the large, the Amazon, Walmarts of the world. 

[00:02:59] Todd: Down to [00:03:00] more regional retailers, regional grocers, in the grocery space, it's the Wegmans, it's the Publix, it's the whatever. And you're going to see this in, the electronic space with retailers as well. And so there, do they have enough traffic to stand on their own and not? 

[00:03:16] Todd: necessarily likely when you look at the scale of what CPGs really are going to need and their their vendors and their brands. And so I think this is going to be a fascinating play to see how, yes, there's a duopoly with Facebook or Meta and Google, but the reality is are, how friendly are they working with others? 

[00:03:34] Todd: And I think, I think that's been one of the interesting questions is, Meta friend or foe. And, I think Google has struggled more to be a friend. And most people put them in the post best publishers, put them in the photo space for sure. Hence all the antitrust stuff. And I think this is an interesting opportunity to learn, maybe where Facebook falls on this spectrum. 

[00:03:53] Tom: And, if you could think back to the Keith Brian Best Buy ads episode there's, the complaints on the meme [00:04:00] accounts on Instagram, like digital advertising, I can't get to my Facebook rep . 

[00:04:03] Tom: If you're a really big brand, we'll talk about big brands and how their relationships are to you may have a really close relationship and very hands on. And some of those conversations about, doing conversion API and things like that become front and center. I don't think we'll get to all that stuff today. 

[00:04:16] Tom: We're gonna have a short break. Conversation with Carlos, but I'm excited. 

[00:04:21]  

[00:04:21] Tom: Hey Carlos, good to see you. How's your Friday going? 

[00:04:23] Carlos Garcia: It's good. It's good. Awesome to see you as always. Thanks so much for having me today. I'm just up here in Northern Connecticut freezing freezing my butt off. It is cold. It already feels like winter. 

[00:04:35] Tom: Yeah, I don't know Todd if it's cold by you, but this was definitely the week, I don't know, I'm going to hope I don't just overwear this sweatshirt, but I need it in the 

[00:04:43] Carlos Garcia: Then make sure you don't wear it for more of the podcast because your your listeners will call you out. 

[00:04:48] Todd: the winter has arrived in Seattle. We have our first atmospheric rivers coming in this weekend and it's going to be an inch plus of rain north of Vancouver is going to get like 4 to 10 inches of 

[00:04:59] Tom: rain [00:05:00]  

[00:05:00] Tom: Todd has that progressive ad style of using the real weather terms that I don't understand, go 

[00:05:05] Todd: Yeah you if you're out here in Seattle, you learn what atmospheric rivers are we get them every year and they call it the pineapple express. It's a stream of moisture that goes from Hawaii and the jet stream just shoots it right up to the Pacific Northwest. And that's why we get all our rain. 

[00:05:20] Todd: It's a monsoon. Honestly, it's, it, we're in monsoon season. That's the best way to think of it. It's very much like what, in the movies and suddenly it goes from dry to six months of rain. And yep, we're, it started and we're up to it. The good news actually is I'm heading to Boston this weekend for the head of the Charles 

[00:05:34] Tom: Oh, 

[00:05:34] Carlos Garcia: Nice. 

[00:05:34] Carlos Garcia: Nice 

[00:05:35] Todd: My daughter is rowing there for Hamilton 

[00:05:37] Carlos Garcia: Oh, right 

[00:05:38] Todd: And I looked online, it's going to be like, so you guys might be freezing your bums off right now, but it's supposed to be like 65 to 70 all 

[00:05:44] Tom: that's always a really nice weekend. I've been up there many times, so that's awesome. All right, so let's get it going. Carlos. The reason you're on here is we worked together when I was at Quotient. You've been at Meta for a long time, and I know a little bit about you starting [00:06:00] Linear tv, and then when we worked together you were on the retail group. 

[00:06:04] Tom: But why don't you give us a walkthrough of, how you got to where you 

[00:06:07] Carlos Garcia: Yeah, absolutely. I'll just start from the beginning. I started my career on the client side at MasterCard where I got to work on some of the early priceless TV ads. So started making TV ads, did that for a few years. Actually brought me out to Seattle a few times. We did a lot of work out in that market. Was there for several years. Then I went over to Univision. It was in the television space on the media sales side. So doing TV upfronts for, for almost a decade. And then around 2012, I came over and joined Meta. And I've been there, been there ever since. And it's, it was actually Facebook at the time and been quite a journey and it's evolved quite a bit. When I started, I was part of our CPG team leading our beauty vertical. And then, I moved to work with some of our global partners. 

[00:06:50] Carlos Garcia: Then I moved over to start up an organization, that we called CPG retail. So that's Tom, when you and I met subset of the retail group. working on [00:07:00] the retailers that sell CPG products. So grocers, club, drug, mass, convenience, so on and so forth. And then I came back to CPG proper at the beginning of the pandemic, helping look after our beauty home and personal care, sub verticals. So that's me in a nutshell, linear guy turned digital about, about halfway through his career. 

[00:07:20] Todd: Yeah  

[00:07:20] Todd: it will, and now you're part of, one of the big empires, you're like a, a Darth Vader lieutenant in a lot of the ad world, especially as we look at it, I think it might be a good thing to, you think about it, you've been there for a long time. We've seen the rise of Facebook and meta. As you sit there and probably, every time you walk into a room with other vendors, get slings and arrows shot at you and what have you, what do you think the biggest misperception Of meta and Facebook is from an industry standpoint, from an ad perspective, obviously you've been wearing that shield, that badge for a long time. So that's probably a great place to, to start 

[00:07:53] Carlos Garcia: I hope it's, I certainly hope it's not Darth Vader esque. So I would say, I would say that's, [00:08:00] one misperception I hope is not out there too much. But, i, I think, overall, one of the things that I've learned starting in the linear space and now working in the digital space is I think it's a lot more similar. Then people realize, right? Like it feels like this big difference with like traditional media  

[00:08:17] Carlos Garcia: and digital advertising and, TV ads versus maybe mobile ads. And yeah, there is a lot of, difference on the surface, but when I think about how we work with our CPGs or really any of our brands, or categories that we consult with at Meta, it really falls into three buckets and it's all around media and marketing and advertising rigor. 

[00:08:35] Carlos Garcia: Those buckets are media, creative and measurement. So it's about. Running campaigns in a way that are going to reach enough people enough times for enough long enough of a duration to drive whatever the business impact is that you're looking to drive.  

[00:08:48] Carlos Garcia: Creative will be about making sure that you know how to communicate your brand and your message effectively, largely in a mobile space and now in a short form video oriented mobile space. And the measurement is making sure you have those [00:09:00] right tools in place to understand that impact that you're driving, whether it's ROAS awareness, Online sales, offline sales, whatever, right? Making sure you have that plan in place so you can optimize and get better. So I would say I think the What I've noticed working in both is that there is actually more similarity than difference. There's more fundamental strategic similarity than difference. 

[00:09:20] Tom: Okay. When I was working with you, it was very much, in the world of CPG brands that rely on physical retailers. 

[00:09:28] Tom: We were trying to do things like, put promo into the ad feed, like actual coupons into the feed. We were trying to do capi or a conversion API to measure. Basically the big problem was we had acquired a company that had, the ability to Set out a message to a bunch of micro influencers to put out a campaign that would do well in the algorithm, but the measurement was always a real challenge. And so we wanted to do some extra things like CAPI, et cetera, but we always got stalled and it just [00:10:00] didn't, it didn't work. And so I wanted to get your perspective on what it was like back then, but I would imagine it's probably changed a lot since. 

[00:10:06] Carlos Garcia: Yeah, it has. It has and it hasn't. I think it really depends on what category and subset of retail or CPG that you're looking at. That was, just to clarify, was probably around, I think, 2015 to 2017, roughly.  

[00:10:20] Tom: I, yeah, so I saw, from our original chat or whatever, I started in 18 and then I went through to about 22. We probably stopped working together in 21 because I think you were starting to shift 

[00:10:29] Carlos Garcia: Okay, got it. Got it. My ears might be off a little bit on that. So I'm probably counting the years then that I was on that team before you and I met, but that whole window, let's call it 2017 to 2021 or so. So retail as a category was pretty well developed. On balance overall, right? 

[00:10:47] Carlos Garcia: So if you looked at retail as a category, we had a lot of retailers that had already understood how to rely on our platform to drive in store traffic, and then we had a lot of retailers that had a lot of, did a lot of their business through e commerce, right? And they knew how to [00:11:00] use our tools to drive trafficking and conversion. 

[00:11:03] Carlos Garcia: Through, through their digital channels, whether it was their website, their mobile apps or a combination. I, and then obviously we had a lot of Omni and Omni players as well. I think the thing that you're hitting on that kind of CPG retail, we saw this a lot in the grocery space, which I know we spent a lot of time working on together. 

[00:11:19] Carlos Garcia: They were not brand new to our platforms, but a little bit newer than some of the, more established retailers that had been working with us for a longer time. And I think one of the biggest things that I saw with them is the e-commerce piece of their business was much smaller.  

[00:11:35] Tom: Like a hold or Albertsons or maybe even what dollar general was like non 

[00:11:39] Carlos Garcia: yeah, I think, yeah, exactly. Categorically, I think if you were to look at like grocery drug. Dollar, right? They were a lot less developed than they are today. That's completely changed because of the pandemic, right? Their businesses have massively shifted. And as a result of the way they work with us, has massively shifted. So I'd say now, if anything, we've [00:12:00] moved in that subset of retail and broader retail large as well, more into an Omni. type of approach where we're supporting, the retailers driving that in store sales, but also their digital sales. And that could be, that could be sales on their websites, that could be drive up and go, buy online, pick up in store, so on and so forth, and making sure that we can help them across that full spectrum. 

[00:12:21] Todd: In terms of working with the retailers, I think when the interesting aspects of what's happening now with the CPG companies is almost this three legged. Triangle or stool with the rise of retail media networks. And I imagine a lot of those emerging retail media networks called the tier two guys as they start building out audience extension becomes a really big part of the strategy for those retailers, right? 

[00:12:45] Todd: Because they don't have the traffic to drive a ton of Revenue or impression volume on their own sites. And so audience extension becomes a big part of that. And how have you started to see that shift in your own business of working with [00:13:00] CPGs that yes, now we're seeing this sort of three way play where we're working with, our traditional CPG clients are either bringing in the RMS or they're coming to us because they already know you have, they have you guys have a relationship and advertising relationship with those CPGs. 

[00:13:13] Todd: What's been the rise of RMNs, And how they've touched your, facet of the 

[00:13:19] Carlos Garcia: Yeah, no, I think you're spot on and it's been a quick rise, right? So if I think back to when, tom and I were working together and back when I was working on launching that CPG retail team, RMNs were still, I'd say in their infancy around that, like 2017, 2018, 19. range or whatever time period that was, super early days. I think back then there was a lot of interest in the space. They saw Amazon had a lot of success in the space, standing very high margin business to help, prop up the overall business and they wanted to go deeper into that space. And I think also across the industry, from suppliers, from CPGs, there's always been this interest in retailer data, right? If you're a supplier or a CPG that [00:14:00] doesn't own the end transaction with the consumer. There is a lot of insight that you can gain by working with a retail partner. So the retailers were trying to find ways to bring this, to those suppliers. So obviously that's exploded since then. And I think, most major retailers have some kind of presence in, in the space. I think you're exactly right that, the reality is for most retailers, they probably don't have enough traffic on their digital properties right now to really achieve their long term ambitions for their RMNs. So when I look at digital platforms play a big role in helping them expand that reach. And then also I think it's important to be able to do it in a way that's measurable, which is a place where we spend a lot of time on our end to extend that traffic in a way that's measurable to drive and develop and run campaigns for their suppliers that are going to drive real impact.  

[00:14:47] Carlos Garcia: We're really excited about the partnerships we're building with our RMNs. It's early days still unquestionably, but we're helping them drive better consumer interactions, helping them drive towards that profitability and ambition, [00:15:00] helping them advance from closed loop measurement perspective. 

[00:15:03] Todd: From that standpoint, what are the things that, the retailers are maybe doing well or not well, or what's some of the lessons that have learned as they make this transition to working with you guys, one of the things we'd love to talk about with the rise of our men's is as a retailer, you're now a publisher and you need to think like that. What's interesting also, if you go back to early rise of Facebook or slash meta advertising, publishers driving traffic was a big part. The Facebook ecosystem in terms of traffic acquisition and, retailers having to pick that up. So what are some of the lessons, or things that is,  

[00:15:35] Todd: The CPGs come to you and say, Oh, we need to pull in the RMS, we need to do a three way, or the RMS approach and saying, Hey, you guys have been working with this brand. 

[00:15:41] Todd: They want us to work with you now as well. What's the sort of the story that, or the things that have been, those lessons learned so far in terms of dealing with those arm ends that they've started to onboard and realize that Facebook has to be a part of it, has to be a part of that strategy. 

[00:15:54] Carlos Garcia: Yeah. I'd say for, from the retailer perspective, I think it's, recognizing that [00:16:00] there's a real opportunity to work together. As partners, and I think on balance, they have been doing this, so I'm not suggesting they have it, but like recognizing there's an opportunity to work together and leaning into that and, really, just seeing us as a partner that can help them. Connect with the 4 billion people across our platform. And I'll use that number specifically because RMN is not just a U S thing, right? This other regions as well. So the reach that we have globally can help retailers in, the U S and in other markets as well. So recognizing that we can help them connect to those people, to then, help their brands and their suppliers, target existing buyers, potential future buyers, finding people in the mindset. To buy all in the service of driving more sales on behalf of their suppliers. Through that retail channel. I think that's a really good thing. Leaning into this idea of omni channel, to drive closed loop measurement across, all channels where they sell, campaign automate, automation, things along those [00:17:00] lines. We have a lot of tools just as part of our ad stack and the way that we work with advertisers that can get applied. To a retail media network and help them help make those stronger. Continuing to lean in on that journey with us is something that, that, we completely advocate and I'm super excited about it. 

[00:17:14] Carlos Garcia: And I think it's going to continue to evolve quickly. 

[00:17:16] Tom: You moved on from being a sort of retailer facing person and meta to being back in the CPG world. And I think we talk a lot about CPGs that are reliant on physical retail, but a lot of the customers for meta are, e commerce native or DTC brands. Talk to us a little bit about, what Yeah. Is that, what's different about that, but also what are the challenges that those CPG brands bring to you? 

[00:17:41] Carlos Garcia: Yeah, it's you're exactly right. And I appreciate you recognizing the spectrum, right? Cause when I talk to,  

[00:17:48] Carlos Garcia: People that don't know the nuance of the business, they might just assume that CPG is just the big traditional CPGs. 

[00:17:56] Tom: I'm definitely a guilty of that 

[00:17:57] Carlos Garcia: sometimes  

[00:17:58] Carlos Garcia: It happens. 

[00:17:58] Todd: Oh, super, I [00:18:00] by the way, I'm super guilty of that an outsider, as a guy who came from the ad tech and martech world. You just naturally, when you hear brands and CPG, you think of the big product guys that are in retailers like Target or grocers and what have you. And so it's fascinating to realize, no, we, it's anything selling to that small to 

[00:18:17] Carlos Garcia: large really to large, new to old. Even in my own org, I have brands that we look after that are a hundred plus years old that, are household names for decades to brands that are, digital native, less than five years old and on this explosive rocket ship growth. And when you look across that range from traditional. Brand that may only be reliant on retail sales all the way across the spectrum to a brand that's a hundred percent reliant on their own D2C sales, right? The way that you work across that spectrum, there's a lot of nuance to that. I would say strategically it goes back to those three buckets that I mentioned before around creative media and measurement like that's going to be the underlying theme, of where they are on that journey, but I'd [00:19:00] say something that we're seeing a lot that's been really interesting to watch over the last couple of years is I feel like there's a lot of interest in either under that spectrum to learn from one another and get a little closer to the middle. 

[00:19:12] Carlos Garcia: So what I mean by that is bigger, traditional, retail reliant CPG brands that are really interested in becoming more agile, right? And being able to optimize. More in real time, right? And getting more direct consumer insight, right? They see what the DTCs are doing on this end. And they're like, yeah, I want to do some of that. I want to infuse some of that into my ways of working. So we're seeing many brands restructure, how they operate and restructure, how they organize to start to do more and more of that. I'd say on the other end of the spectrum, you have a lot of DTCs that look at these traditional brands. And I think they see two big opportunities. One is. Is there an opportunity to go into retail to drive a lot more growth? And that is something that we're seeing, in some pockets. And then I'd say the other thing is CPG historically have done a really good job about building [00:20:00] lasting brands that have been around for a hundred years, 50 years, 40 years, decades that people know really well, and the D to C brands that on balance tend to be a little bit newer. I found are trying to take pages out of the brand building playbook. 

[00:20:13] Tom: When we talked earlier, you talked a little bit about lo fi content is, to give some examples, like if a big brand, like a Campbell's or somebody like that is trying to do something that's right in the moment, they may not be ready to whip out their iPhone and just take a video, right?  

[00:20:27] Carlos Garcia: Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Lo Fi content. Lo Fi, as a guy who started his career making TV ads. Like lo fi content has been fascinating to watch and I really Attribute it to the creator ecosystem which we used to call influencers now we call creators because it's a broader creators does a better job of covering the full scope of what they can do from a creative I would look at influencers more of a subset of creators, but in any event, I think it's changed what, what the definition of an ad is, right? 

[00:20:57] Carlos Garcia: So if I think back to  

[00:20:58] Carlos Garcia: The early 2000s, when I was making TV [00:21:00] ads for MasterCard, There were certain expectations of what an ad looked like, right? It would have a certain level of polish. It would have a certain structure, a certain level of investment that went into it.  

[00:21:11] Carlos Garcia: You fast forward to today, to 2024 and what ads look like today versus back then at night and day. 

[00:21:17] Carlos Garcia: So lo fi ads might be shot on an iPhone, bought by a creator themselves, done very quickly, a little bit more raw, a lot more human. What we're seeing is there's a world  

[00:21:28] Carlos Garcia: For both of these things, right?  

[00:21:29] Carlos Garcia: And all the like places in between the two ends of that range. And, we're finding that creative diversity across that range, and if you can actually find a way to communicate your brand from, something more polished all the way down to something that's more lo fi and quicker and maybe down and dirty, and all those variations in between, that actually improves your results. Creative diversity, Helps how you show up in our auction and proves the outcomes that you see in  

[00:21:57] Carlos Garcia: in the auction. Because in, in short, it gives [00:22:00] better opportunity to serve,  

[00:22:01] Carlos Garcia: More types of creative messaging to different types of groups of people. We find that it increases your reach overall on balance, which thus in turn, drives, better business outcomes.  

[00:22:11] Tom: So I love the idea that. different types of creative expand your reach, which I think intuitively I always thought, but I didn't know . That was in there. So tell us, what's the result of that. What does attribution look like now? as I was saying earlier, attribution was really challenging for social. Where is it now? 

[00:22:29] Carlos Garcia: attribution will vary a little bit based on what type of brand you are. But I would say overall, it's essential and we do spend a lot of time on this. So if you're, so let me start with MMMs, right? Because MMMs have continued, they were a thing when I was making TV ads at MasterCard. back then and even before that. 

[00:22:50] Carlos Garcia: And they are still very much a thing today. And I'd say, we've seen a lot of acceleration and investment in this space from a lot of our brands, MMMs are going to be essential for anybody. That's a [00:23:00] retail focused distribution model type of brand. Those more traditional brands, very often it's the source of truth for most of the brands that we work with, it's going to do a really good job of giving that full picture of your total marketing plan, all of the channels and what kind of impact did it have at driving. store sales, and retail sales. And it's especially important for CPG's that don't own that end consumer data. We are starting to see some of our D2C partners, dabble in the space as well. And start to invest in MMMs as well, but that's a critical attribution piece. Another thing that we do with many of our partners are individual isolated sales list studies. And I think Tom, we might've done one or two of those back in the day when we were working together, but,  

[00:23:41] Carlos Garcia: sales lift studies will allow you to go deep on a specific channel, whether it's meta or another channel. We work with partners like Circana, formerly known as IRI, Nielsen Catalina Solutions, where you can probe really deep into a campaign to understand the incremental impact. And D2C perspective, [00:24:00] D2Cs have real time data flowing, through their tools and our tools on a regular basis that allow them to make really quick decisions and adjustments to their campaigns to improve results. 

[00:24:10] Todd: And I think one of the things you're, you bring up that's interesting, and I think it's always been one of the appeals of Facebook slash meta is how. Data focused. It has been as a right ad platform and product and offering, the marketplace model anyway, from an auction standpoint. So I think that's one that as the point of RMNs is the attribution largely, it's about data. It's about user data. It's about attribution. A lot of the things that are. Core, I think to the meta platform and your point of like the messages guys were partners. We're not competitors. I think that's perhaps on the publishing side. In the early days, people always looked at Facebook much more as a competitor, especially for, consumer attention and what have you. But I think today, from RMN standpoint, Facebook isn't selling products.  

[00:24:55] Todd: It is a platform that can be Thank you. More of a partner. I think that's one of the things took [00:25:00] out from your comments of you're going to be friendly to people. There's ways to work together. And I think that's something that I think people can walk away from. 

[00:25:07] Todd: And especially they dive into the tools and the stack. And you and Tom talking about CAPI is a great example of like ways you can collaborate, work well together. So I think that's a good point to call back to and, pin for people to better understand, like, how can they work  

[00:25:22] Todd: with meta and how can they be quote unquote a good partner going forward and that you guys are open to multiple party conversations, not necessarily trying to  

[00:25:30] Todd: a one to one sort of 

[00:25:32] Carlos Garcia: conversation  

[00:25:33] Carlos Garcia: Yeah, I would completely agree. We very much look at it as a partnership type of approach. We do, the retailers that are active in the retail media network space, Even if you set retail media to the side are already massive partners of ours, right? We've been working with them for as long as i've been here and in some cases longer. Just as marketing partners in general advertising partners in general So we have long standing relationships with these [00:26:00] retailers and I think the retail media opportunity creates another spoke of that partnership that we can do together to help elevate the entire retail media ecosystem overall. 

[00:26:10] Todd: And maybe as a good, closing discussion here and, bring up from a competitive landscape perspective, I think people are curious to understand, right? The rise of Tiktok is obviously a big one. It's, competes with Instagram and Reels. And one has been the fascinating things from Tom and my, introduction to DTC over the last couple of years has been the rise of Tiktok shops. 

[00:26:32] Todd: And how that has really been a hugely effective platform for driving commerce. Like it, for those unaware, TikTok is really overemphasizing, commerce related content and really pushing hard into that, vertical. And, what's your perspective on the rise of TikTok shops? And obviously,  

[00:26:50] Todd: instagram and Reels are part of your Kit of products that you're obviously monetizing and promoting and selling. And so we'd be curious to hear your perspective [00:27:00] on, is reels becoming more commerce friendly? It's always been obviously creator influencer friendly. But what's your perspective on that? 

[00:27:07] Carlos Garcia: Yeah, absolutely. I'll take probably a little bit of a step back on that and just look at like social commerce more broadly, overall. And I would say, first and foremost, having more players in the ecosystem. to elevate things like social commerce is a good thing, right?  

[00:27:20] Carlos Garcia: This is something that we believe in, we invest in as an organization, and I think having more players in the space elevates it overall. So just as a starting point, I'd say  

[00:27:30] Carlos Garcia: that's good for the overall ecosystem. We, we've been active in the shops specific and commerce specific space for, for quite some time.  

[00:27:40] Carlos Garcia: I'd say from a social commerce perspective, like when you look at it very broadly, our biggest role. is driving trafficking aversion to our DTC partners, right? So their websites to their apps, so on and so forth. But we also are active in the on platform conversion space as well. And we've, we've had things called shops actually called shops as well. For several years now, we have [00:28:00] Facebook shops. We have instagram shops. We're basically our online storefronts that live within. It could live on Facebook, it could live on Instagram, it could live on both. And it makes it easier for people to, to find and buy the products that they're interested right in the moment without having to leave our platform. Something I'm super excited about is, we have a relatively new solution that we call Shops Ads. Which are if you have a shop on Facebook or Instagram, you can run and let's say you also have a website shop right on your own DTC, you can run an ad campaign that will basically optimize in the last moment, right as the consumer seeing the ad, whether to send the traffic to the shop or send the traffic to the website. 

[00:28:44] Carlos Garcia: Based on, where the person is more likely to have a better experience. So basically the ad has two paths and it instantaneously towards whichever path is, going to be a better experience for the person in that moment. And we're seeing some really encouraging results for our partners that are using these [00:29:00] right out of the gates. I would say overall social commerce continues to be a priority. Shops continues to be a priority for us. And it's good to see that the ecosystem overall is continuing to grow and evolve. 

[00:29:09] Todd: Yeah, no, I think that the rise of social commerce is really impactful and interesting and the creators reaction to that and embracing your point about what's an ad and seeing a ton more content in reels and other social video platforms, it focused on that. And I think that to me will be one of the most interesting vectors as content and advertising. We've always been talking about any of advertising right for a long time and the blending of when is what is an ad and what is content is really coming together. But I think if anything, the rise of sort of these other platforms is brought up the and focus on quote unquote commerce based content. And by the way, an acceptance of the audience of that in a lot of ways,  

[00:29:50] Todd: Has been fascinating. And, if anything, I think, other platforms, the YouTubes of the worlds and others have been a little bit of a laggard in that versus let's say reels. And so it'll be interesting to [00:30:00] see the impact of that and where it's going. 

[00:30:03] Tom: Absolutely  

[00:30:05] Todd: So that was an interesting conversation. And, as we prefaced at the beginning in terms of is meta a friend or foe, and I think. Meta is from an RMN standpoint, has way more of an opportunity to be a friend and, they're a identity extension, their traffic extension, yeah, to an Amazon, more faux, but to the rest of the space, right? 

[00:30:29] Todd: Retail at large, their willingness to, connect identity, their willingness to connect for traffic, we just, and I think that's where there's a lot to be here. And, I think that the interesting aspect of that is meta, more friends to retailer, you're going to have common customers in those brands. 

[00:30:48] Todd: And I think they're willing to work on that and figure out a way to make it work for everybody. And I think the other aspect of that is you learned in this episode that you don't go on LinkedIn and looked up [00:31:00] the biz dev person at Facebook. Booker Meta, you find the salesperson, the account work, like with Carlos. 

[00:31:07] Todd: So if you're in the retail media space and you're going to be working with CPGs, Carlos is the guy you should be reaching out to on LinkedIn, not some random biz dev person. I think that's a good takeaway here is that might be part of the struggles. People don't know where to plug in to Meta. 

[00:31:21] Todd: And here's an example of someone I think you can plug into and who'd be Very open to having a conversation to figure out how to make that three way work, because that's Tom, where you started working with him, 2018, 

[00:31:31] Tom: Yeah. We were lucky that the retailers are making those connections for us to Meta. If we had gone in as just a vendor without a retailer connected. That might've been different, I think what was refreshing to hear was how how much he works with DTC brands and also learning about how those DTC brands have more agility and that it actually has an impact. 

[00:31:53] Tom: on the reach that they see because they're using different types of creative when we worked with Facebook back in the day, [00:32:00] I think we struggled because we were working on behalf of big companies or, big retailers and those CPGs. So really tough to break through like the style guides and the creative templates that we had to use. 

[00:32:10] Tom: And so, knowing that, Oh, you do a grainy video this time, you do a polished video that time you do another video that's. It's totally different. It's going to actually help you with the algorithm and you're going to get a benefit of reach on Meta. I think that's, super interesting and something that I hadn't really thought of. 

[00:32:28] Todd: those are things that I think the world perhaps sometimes reacts too quickly. Look, I've no, I've got plenty of beefs over the years with Facebook slash meta. And I'm sure yourself, right? There's, they're incredibly tough competitor. I think they've done, a really good job of building a, 

[00:32:49] Todd: really impactful ad platform really from scratch over the last, 10, 15 years. So credits to the teams that have built that out. And there's someone that we're going to have to pay attention [00:33:00] to in this post GDPR world. Reality is if you have logins, and obviously the reason they're successful is they have 4 billion logins, the largest collection of logged in users in the world. 

[00:33:12] Todd: They're just someone you're gonna have to play with. It's like playing, you're in the PC space. Yeah. You're gonna have to play with Microsoft. 

[00:33:17] Tom: not just that. All this stuff we've been talking about in our previous episodes have been how privacy is shrinking the open web pool and, this off platform traffic concept or whatever. Facebook is one of the only games in town. So to your point in the discussion, it's a big deal. 

[00:33:34] Tom: The RMN CPG and. Meta three legged stool is a really important part. Of how you get in front of your consumer and the fact that they are now, really talking about going with incrementality. It'll be interesting to see because, the retailers are all about let's show sales lift. 

[00:33:55] Tom: And I think when he was talking about showing sales lift, some of it was. Not exactly always [00:34:00] the retailers data. It was more like in the NCS and the others or whatever. So that third party that's attention I'm seeing a lot of and I think we'll be talking more about that. 

[00:34:10] Todd: And I think the other thing that's interesting is, Carlos touched on this, which is, CPG is not big brands like, Maybelline and Unilever and whatever. It is also upstarts and smaller players. And I think we often forget that as we look at that. And what I found fascinating is this conversation of yeah, we're introducing the concept of to these small guys. And of course, the large brands are trying to become more digital direct and there's, the trade off between them. And so it's interesting to hear also the little nugget there might be the realities of, which is your media mix model and your impact of different media, getting to these smaller players, traditional approaches and techniques are moving down the chain into smaller companies. 

[00:34:51] Todd: And so we, it's just not all doing things new. Cool. There's ways of doing things in traditional brands that are continuing to live on and being passed to the next [00:35:00] generation of brands that emerge. 

[00:35:02] Tom: Great. That was a fun discussion. We have a lot of episodes that are upcoming. A lot of these people are people that we've. We're definitely gonna be talking about in store media. We're going to be talking to, 

[00:35:15] Todd: I'm super excited about in 

[00:35:16] Tom: I'm super excited about that. I'm super excited because we worked in the Shopify world. 

[00:35:21] Tom: I want to hear the Thrasio turnaround story that's coming. So this is going to be a fun fall. 

[00:35:28] Todd: exactly. Looking forward to 

[00:35:29] Tom: All right. Talk to you soon. 

[00:35:30]