Adam Mitchell: Simplifying Sponsorship Decisions (Full Transcript)
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Ronen Ainbinder 0:32
Coming up next, on the Halftime Snacks, is the man leading the disruption and innovation of the sponsorships market. He snacks with us today from Toronto, Canada – and he's here to discuss many topics with us related to sponsorship effectiveness, return on investment, and so much more. He's the CEO & co-founder at SponsorPulse. This first-of-its-kind sponsorship intelligence tool makes sponsorship insights accessible to properties, brands, and agencies of all sizes. The best part about this platform is that it can serve brands from several industries – from sports to music, entertainment, causes, and more. SponsorPulse will give you the data you need to understand the reach and potential impact of any property. I'm excited to get the chance to share the mic with him! Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce — Adam Mitchell!
Adam Mitchell 1:27
Thanks for having me. Looking forward to the conversation today.
Ronen Ainbinder 1:30
Man, for sure. Let's kick it off with a fun icebreaker, man. What is your favorite TV show of all time?
Adam Mitchell 1:36
Favorite TV show of all time, I think, has to be the newsroom. Got Me? Oh yeah, some of those episodes even got me tearing up but a fan of the newsroom bringing in real-life events. And it was a good one. I still watch it to this day,
Ronen Ainbinder 1:53
I'd never seen it before, the first time I ever heard of it. So I must be doing something wrong. Because I don't know.
Adam Mitchell 2:00
You'll have to give it a try. You have to give it a try. It's worth it. It's worthwhile.
Ronen Ainbinder 2:05
Is it a Netflix man? I've never seen it like, what's going on? Are you kidding me?
Adam Mitchell 2:10
I don't even know where it is. But you definitely got to check it out.
Ronen Ainbinder 2:12
It's alright, man. I'm gonna check it out. You guys check that out as well. Adam, man, happy to have you on the show. Finally, we're going to discuss so many things about sponsored posts and about you and your story and work and everything you've been doing for sponsors' sponsor booths since the beginning. But let's go, and First, understand who you are. Okay, who's the one sharing the mic with us today? Who's Adam Mitchell? And to be more specific, let's talk about some experiences or some things from your past if you want to mention conversations or people from your past that influenced you in a specific way that drove you to sponsor posts. And that also gave you an edge as the CEO and as the one driving the company today and in the future? What experiences, conversations, and people from the past drove you to who you are today?
Adam Mitchell 3:10
Ya know, it's a great, great question. This started my career; I started on the brand side, worked over at Kraft Foods, when it was still Kraft Foods, and worked, then Labatt. And I think it was surrounded by some of the best marketers I've ever met, some of the best people I've ever met, and a lot of them I'm still close with today. And I mean, sponsorship at that time was always a big part of our connection planning and how we wanted to get our brands into the hands of the minds and hearts of consumers. And I think that was my first exposure, at least as a marketer. To how we go about doing that, I think we're gonna look bad on some of those major global brands and local brands and all the different ways that we can integrate the product. The product story into different properties, whether that was for music, even on the causal side of things, were certainly foundational to what are one of the foundations to where I've landed today. And then, I went from there and joined the property side and worked at the public broadcaster here in Canada, CBC, Hedgerow Canada, and in partnership sales and marketing were surrounded by an amazing team of people working on such a prestigious property with so much national pride. And, and I think that was another great experience, but seeing it from the other side and looking at how we could build partnerships that would allow brands to capitalize on the Olympic movement. And those experiences led me to like where we are today, and we're working on bringing sponsored posts to life. I think there are many major pain points in the sponsorship space and sponsorship industry, which makes sense, given all the growth that we're seeing there. And we're on the, we're on the journey, and I think on the path to trying to alleviate some of those major pain points that exist and creating a product that will hopefully evolve the way that the sponsorship industry works overall.
Ronen Ainbinder 5:13
Yeah, absolutely. We're gonna get into all of those pain points in a second. But before that, I want to just make sure that the listeners understand what SponsorPulse is. So if you want to, just give us a little bit of an overview of the product or service, because I know that you guys offer specific types of services. So, in a nutshell, if I was five years old, explain to me what sponsor p is.
Adam Mitchell 5:41
Yeah, no, it's, it's a great question. So sponsor, Paul's is a SaaS platform, not that a five-year-old would know what a SaaS platform is. But it is a platform that provides brands, properties, and agencies, whether you're buying or selling, somewhere in the middle with the insights you need to make better decisions. So we're all about simplifying the decisions that you're making. If you're buying a property, if you're selling your property, we provide the data in a credible, transparent way that you can obviously leverage to your advantage to make that process more efficient, more informed, to make sure that your dollars are working for you as hard as they possibly can, or that you're driving the most revenue possible for your property.
Ronen Ainbinder 6:29
Man, this, this five-year-old is now a genius.
Adam Mitchell 6:33
A lot to understand all.
Ronen Ainbinder 6:36
Yeah. But first of all, let's define exactly what a property is. Because it's not an organization, but it's also not an event. And it's not even a team. So how would you define or explain? Also, again, to a five-year-old, the genius five, Einstein five years, what property means?
Adam Mitchell 6:55
Yeah, from, from our perspective, and it's an important part of our business, is that across all passion points, there are organizations that you can sponsor, whether that's a sports league team tournament, whether it's a music show or an award show, whether it's an entertainment property, a community event, or a charity, or a cause. And our goal through our product and everything that we do is to create a level playing field for all those different types of properties. So we use the word property because it is, in a lot of ways, synonymous with the sports world, but, but it is a lot broader than that because we capture and measure 1000s of properties around the world that certainly go well beyond the world of sport,
Ronen Ainbinder 7:40
Are athletes considered properties?
Adam Mitchell 7:43
Do we have a product that looks at celebrities and influencers, and athletes, but they're not. They're not considered properties. I think for a lot of reasons. I mean, it wouldn't be right to call them properties for one. But no, we look at properties in terms of these organizations that execute and run different types of events or offer something to consumers to people around the world to engage with.
Ronen Ainbinder 8:08
Interesting, okay, and so let's talk about the methodology. Yeah, I did some research. And I figured that what you guys do is you basically go out and interview like, 1000s of people. And you measure, you ask him about specific properties, as you mentioned, and then try to look for specific key points and metrics that you're looking to evaluate. So I have a lot of questions about that. If you want to just maybe also explain real quick, how exactly do you go ahead? Yeah, about finding all these people and then creating those questionnaires, or, yeah, interviews, or how you go about quantifying the answers. Just speak a little bit about the process of doing that.
Adam Mitchell 8:52
Yeah, that's a great foundational point. So I mean, a lot of our journey started and essentially developing a questionnaire that would work across all the different passion points, all the different types of properties, we were just talking to you because a big thing that we talked about, and that we hear so often in the world of sport, in particular, is we hear about fans and fandom. We believe in fans; we believe in fandom; there's no question about that. But when you're creating a common currency and leveling the playing field across music, entertainment, lifestyle, cars, fans isn't necessarily something that makes a ton of sense. And the reality today is that in just about every boardroom that we've ever been in, in any competition that we've had if we asked everybody around the table to define what a fan means or what it looks like to them, you're almost always going to get different answers. So we essentially set out to create a methodology, a questionnaire that would allow us to measure all these different properties along one common ruler to provide instant context to just how big or how great or how significant an opportunity is next to another. So we're in the field every month across 18 countries serving over 30,000 people, and those are different 30,000 people every month so that we're constantly replenishing and keeping a pulse on the industry. And what's happening, what that allows us to do is add new properties when new things are coming up to add categories like cryptocurrency, or cannabis, or whatever it may be as those things are coming up. So we're super responsive and reactive to what's happening around us, which keeps us relevant and ensures that we have the latest and greatest data on how these properties are performing. So we infield every month, and we aggregate that data. The questionnaire guides the metrics and the key metrics that allow us to evaluate any property. We look at it threefold, there's a behavioral component, do you have reached you have an audience? How often? Are they engaging with you? Are you growing? An emotional component? Which are you passionate about? Or are you excited about the property, and then an impact component, which gets down to the heart of it for brands, is are you likely to purchase or be more favorable towards brands that are sponsoring these properties. And so, we've tried to distill it down to seven key metrics. We roll those up into an opportunity score, which is essentially a simplified way of comparing one number to compare different properties or opportunities. No problem, that's what you use. And of course, because of our methodology, we can get into so many different filters and consumer profiles to look at Brand behaviors, category behaviors, demographics, going from global all the way down to local to see how that landscape changes, which is quite, quite interesting. And gives, I think, a lot to work with and a lot to dig into.
Ronen Ainbinder 11:39
So this is the moment where I start challenging you, Adam, don't feel attacked. This is brilliant. Let's go. So my first worry with the procedure that you guys take. And I think it's a great procedure, a great process of collecting information. But the first thing that I'm worried about is reliability. How accurate are you delivering insights and numbers to this opportunity score? As you mentioned, how accurate it is, I'm going to give you 111 of the arguments, which I think you'll give me. Probably you will tell me if it's right or wrong. Still, there's in statistics; there's just the law of large numbers, which means that the more people you interview there, the more accurate your answers will be. Regardless of the population size, so probably like 30,000. So if you're interviewing 30,001, it doesn't make any difference at all. So like there's, there's a number after X amount that it doesn't matter how many more you interview, you already got your answers. So that's one, but what of your agreements in terms of protecting the reliability and the accuracy of the data and the insights you provide?
Adam Mitchell 12:49
Yeah, absolutely. So one, I mean, we have a lot of different quality measures in place. And we have a partnership with dynamic, a globally recognized panel provider, to ensure that all the quotas are met and to ensure that we're bringing in obviously real people who are giving us real answers to their questions. So there's a lot that we could get into. But it would be boring to talk about quality assurance and how we do it. I think the law of numbers is an interesting point. So depending on the boardroom, depending on who you're talking to, some brands say they're happy with the sample size of 150 people. They'll extrapolate that, and they're fine with that margin of error, right? So it comes down to willingness or business risk or what you're comfortable with. A lot of properties and brands will tell us that they want 500 samples as a minimum. A couple of reasons why we survey more people than arguably we might need to, and why we do it consistently are one, we want to get into the minutiae, we want to get into the depth of the detail to tell you as a brand Budweiser, this is who you should be going after, from a sponsorship perspective, you can't do that if you're looking at small numbers. So we have the ability, through the size that we use, several people that we speak to monthly to get deep into specific cuts of data that allow, I think, brands and properties to get a lot more sophisticated with how they go about making their decisions when it comes to sponsorship. The second is things change. Things change a lot in the world of sponsorship. So you look at I'll speak to an example here in Canada, but the Toronto Raptors from a performance perspective over the last three years like we see those curves. So being able to trend that data and showcase how that's coming to life and their performance translates to consumer behavior and attitude. I think it is a critical part of any property's journey; any brand's journey to understand is making gains. So a big part of our product and how we collect data has to ensure that we can continue to provide that storyline of what you're doing working, or are you making gains with the groups of people you're looking to make gains with? Is your property moving in the right direction or not? I think, to be honest, From a lot of what we see around the world, in sponsorship, there's a huge lack of credible, transparent data. In many cases, there are a lot of people making tens of millions or hundreds of millions of decisions that are not necessarily with data or insight guiding them. So we believe that we are one source of data. We believe, obviously, in the power of leveraging other audience data, whether it be broadcast or social or digital, whatever it may be. But we're focused on the consumer's perspective; we believe it's a great equalizer. Stated behavior. Yes. So some people will challenge themselves in terms of well, is what people tell you, they do the same as what they do? Well, you could, you could challenge people on the other side of it to what people do online, or what people search online, or who they engage with doesn't necessarily mean that they're passionate, or that they care about it, or that they're likely to convert towards brands that sponsor that particular property, or, or individuals. So I think we see it as the sum of its parts. We're just focused on doing the best we can to evolve the industry to be more accountable for the amount of money that's being spent, which I think will translate to greater value for consumers and people who are attending these events or contributing to the bottom line of a lot of these organizations.
Ronen Ainbinder 16:19
I want to hear you from a different perspective, let's say now your brand, and I've sponsored posts, okay? Yeah. What would you think are the dangers of making choices or decisions based only on the data means sponsored, sponsored posts provide to you? What would you say? What would you push back? Or what would you say to me? Because here's what I'm thinking, okay. Keep that story in your mind. We're going to get into that. But here's what I'm thinking. Okay. I think that ranking is important. But I also think that its not ranking is not the same for different companies and brands worldwide. And here's, here's an example just to see if it makes sense because this is the quickest thing that I can think about. But suppose I'm an insurance company in Ecuador, write that I serve clients in Ecuador, and come and come to your website. I come to your, your service. And I see that the latest report on marketable properties, which we'll get into in a minute, says that the World Cup is the number one event property in the world. And in the world of sports, which has the most impact and the higher opportunity to score. Right. But what if that doesn't mean that that is the right place for me? Or the right rank? In terms of what I'm trying to achieve selling insurance in Ecuador? So suppose now you are the company selling insurance in Ecuador? Adam? I don't know if you speak Spanish, but we can do this, unfortunately. But what would you say are the dangers? Or what would you push back in saying, okay, but we explained to me why, or how exactly do brands and companies need to look at sponsor polls? Right. And, and how would you then advise against being careful with what opportunity score you guys sponsor, per se, may drive wrong decisions for those companies and brands?
Adam Mitchell 18:21
Yeah. So I think my first challenge as a brand owner would be the Global list. I'm a local brand, or it's a global list. What does that mean for my particular target or my particular category, or my brand? And I think that that's, that's exactly the question that we want people to ask because we have the data to help people get to that more nuanced decision, a global list, no matter how you slice, it is a global list, it's based on the weight of the population of the world in the way data is coming back. So it's going to be drastically influenced by where most of the population is. Some of the properties that do exceptionally well in those areas, you'll get China, Indonesia, India, the US. I mean, they're going to make up the lion's share of it, which is the truth based on population and consumers. So it is a global list; it is intended to provide a snapshot of how properties are growing and who's coming onto the scene who's cemented their role within the consumer's mind on a global level. But I think the reality is that you've got to get into the nuanced data and get deeper into it to understand specifically where my insurance consumers, right, and what are the top properties in Ecuador, in this particular example, and if I'm targeting people that are a certain age bracket or a certain household income, we have all those different layers of data that allow you to get a lot more targeted with the way that you look at your sponsorship portfolio and that allow you to quantify how big this opportunity is? Who are we talking about? How many people are there that meet those criteria in the particular market that you're active in?
Ronen Ainbinder 19:55
Interesting, interesting.
Adam Mitchell 19:56
I think I ended up pitching sponsored posts there instead of answering those, But I think it was a follow-up question coming. So I just beat you to it.
Ronen Ainbinder 20:03
Yeah, no, but I think it makes total sense. Now, one of the things that I've realized from interviewing tons of founders and CEOs, and directors of sports companies is that the better the question you make, the better than today, you're probably going to get in the interview. Now, I want to know how exactly you iterated over your questions in the questionnaire, like how important it is for you guys to go back to the questionnaire? And see what questions drive better answers and then how to triple tap on those or change the order of your questions like walking me through the iteration of, or improve the product by improving the source, the main source of inputs that drive your outputs?
Adam Mitchell 20:50
Yeah, no, it's an important point. I mean, our parent company IMI International, is a global marketing, research consultancy. That's been around for, obviously, for 10 or 15 years. So our parents, we got started in the sponsorship space over the last 1015 years. And then obviously, three years ago, we just started, we decided to start on this path of creating SponsorPulse. And I think we leveraged the history, knowledge, and experience from all the different surveys, questionnaires effectiveness studies that we had done previously for brands across the globe properties across the blue of the globe. But there were some underlying key themes that we knew we needed this methodology to evolve to deliver against in terms of that level playing field for all different property types. And we knew there were certain elements that we wanted to get a better assessment of. So much of what we did in the initial early days is not glamorous or sexy. Still, we're back into the field weekly, surveying 1000s of people in different markets to see whether they are getting differences in the responses? Are we getting consistency in the responses? Or what are the deltas that exist between the different questions that we're asking? So I think we spent not only a ton of time historically as a company, but certainly in the early days in the early phases, to ensure that we were providing a narrative that made sense for both properties and for brands. And I think and for agencies, obviously, who are in the middle or representing one side, like we wanted to be very purposeful with the metrics we asked. So we wanted to provide a total reach number that isn't just about how many people follow you socially because that's not reaching. And it's not just about broadcasting. So we've layered in different metrics or different ways of qualifying whether people engage with a property that goes into following, following it in news or buying or wearing merchandise, or playing fantasy, when it comes to sports, volunteering your time, or donating money when it comes to causes. So we've been very, I think, intentional with the way that we've looked at the different metrics that make up the composition of our story to say, we can tell you what the total reaching audiences, and we can break that out in terms of how and who you're reaching, where we can then get deeper into who's frequently engaging intensely every week for more with you, which is so important for properties to obviously move the needle on, but also for brands who are looking for properties, they're going to offer them a lot of different opportunities to connect with consumers, we look at momentum, are you growing or not? There's a lot of fascinating things that come out of that when we look at the progress of different properties across the spectrum. And then when it comes to emotion, we looked at both sides, right, we saw that there was a very significant difference between passion for property and excitement for property and those things, excitement changes quick passion takes time, right? You have to sustain that excitement level; if you're going to drive a passionate base and continue to build, build against that. And then the impact metric at the end of the day was like, what is it all? What does it all mean for a brand? Who's spending it? Or who's being asked to spend millions, 10s of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorship? I mean, we have to have a way to get down from this, this approach that I think has been, I think it's been changing quite drastically over the last several years. But it used to be, well, your total reach will be hundreds of millions of people, and we're going to give you a billion impressions across every channel. And that's great. But, at the end of the day, how many people are we talking about impacting through this particular property or this sponsorship, and we have a way a reputable, credible way that a property or a brand can say, Okay, I understand the total size of the opportunity, but for my category, or for my specific brand, or for my specific demographic, like, how many people at the end of the day, are we talking about impacting, and that's a far more rational and important conversation, which also steers a lot of the other outputs of that decision, which is how do we activate? How do we execute? How are we going to prove the return on our investment? So I think that's a bit of the logic and what it took to get down to seven metrics, which we don't think is overkill. We don't think it's too many. But we know that people are strapped for time. So we will simplify, create that funnel so that people can look at properties and one consistent way across the globe, and, obviously, get down to the nuts and bolts of who we are talking about impact.
Ronen Ainbinder 25:13
at the end of the day. And the seven metrics are just mentioned quickly.
Adam Mitchell 25:17
Yeah, so the top of the funnel engagement, total reach. Below that intensity is among engaged, who are engaging with the property weekly or more. It's a great proxy for fandom. Momentum is people who are engaging with you currently, who believe that their interest expects their interest in you to grow over the next 12 months. So it's a great predictor of where the property is going, passion, excitement, and then potential impact on purchase consideration. And then potential impact on favourability. For brands that are sponsoring properties,
Ronen Ainbinder 25:52
Awesome, awesome, man, you; you mentioned so many awesome takeaways. But one that I want to repeat and distill for everyone listening is specifically for startups that are starting or building a product or service that aims to solve a need or a problem in the future. I see in you guys, a very important element of it, that it's changed is basically to change and adapt, and follow the trends and follow what's going on in the markets and in the industries in sports and in everything that's going on as you mentioned, crypto and other like areas connect cannabis and stuff is being there and being in staying up to date, that is probably the number one indicator of a startup or a company, that means that it will eventually prevail and survive, because I feel like with no change, if you just would have creative, just one simple questionnaire and use the same one every single time, you probably would have gotten similar results over and over again. And even though the words are changing, you are not changing, so you're staying behind. So I just wanted to rename, rego over again, and review that idea, as you mentioned, which I think is super interesting and valuable for startups and companies that are starting. But before we finish, I just want to cover the latest report you guys released a few weeks ago, the top 50 most marketable sports properties report. What are some of the results that surprised you from this, this, this year's report? Or this one, compared to the last previous one? Is there anyone or two things that you were like, ah, that's interesting? Yeah,
Adam Mitchell 27:41
I mean, there's a lot that we can dig into in terms of things like the nuances of the list. I think the first thing that kind of hit us in the face was that the top five properties from last year are the exact same this year. And so I think that that speaks volumes to the role these properties have cemented in, in the global sports space. And that would be FIFA, then you've got the Olympic Games, and you've got the NBA, then you've got Real Madrid, then you've got Barcelona. It shows just the power of those properties on a global scale, which is just fascinating. If you will, I think the other underlying themes, 22 of the top 50, were football, leagues, and teams tournaments. So there's no question flipped when I say football in Canada, soccer is what I mean. But there's no question it is a global game. However, there are a lot of properties that are popping up and others. Other sports that I think are going to start they're already starting to challenge a lot of the top three, so whether it be table tennis, whether it be badminton, whether it be volleyball, there's a lot of different properties that are popping up that are making some important gains. I think you have a year; UFC and the new Premier League posted the largest gains versus last year, moving more than 1212 spots, respectively. In the list, which is amazing to see. Like it shows obviously how some of it from the cricketing perspective how they're growing into a global, truly global brand, or global sport, and UFC.
Ronen Ainbinder 29:13
Is that the biggest riser? The one that changed sports the most is that exactly. I've heard more of it lately. So I would guess that's the biggest riser.
Adam Mitchell 29:25
That is it. Yeah, so IPL and UFC both were pretty much neck and neck in terms of rising versus last year. And I think UFC is like, I mean, they've done an exceptional job building personalities, which is largely due to the personalities and the athletes in the ring. Still, I think they've done an amazing job at globalizing their sport and obviously delivering something entertaining. But that also just profiles just an incredible athleticism, whether you like or appreciate the UFC or not. You kind of have to stare at it and or at least look away in awe at what they've done. Then one of the last things I'd say is that you're not last. There are a couple of things. One other thing. Women's sports, no question, there are five of them in the top 75 because we have the top 100 list available for download online. It's just like, it's amazing to me, it's about, it's about damn time that they get the respect they deserve and the exposure they deserve. We know, and we have the data, women's sports are something that everybody wants; males are the biggest consumers of women's sports. So I think it's something that we're going to continue to see these properties rise. And then the last kind of thing that popped up was six motorsport properties and racing teams, among them that were on the or within the top 50. So a number of them knew based on the new tracking that we have for some of the racing teams specifically. But Ferrari was just outside the top 10, which is pretty fascinating; we think of who they're up against. So I think some interesting things dig into that we encourage people to challenge
Ronen Ainbinder 31:06
Man, I'm curious, which properties are the biggest losers?
Adam Mitchell 31:09
Tennis.
Ronen Ainbinder 31:11
Oh, wow!
Adam Mitchell 31:12
All four grand slams. So tennis dropped pretty significantly versus last year. So they're the ones that dropped the most. I mean, there's a lot of different ways that we can diagnose that and get into, like, specifically, what country was it that drove the decrease? But ya know, they hurt the most on this year's list. The Chicago Bulls dropped significantly. I mean, as an American team to be relevant globally, I think it's still a massive achievement. But they had the next Netflix documentary last year, and yeah, and, and less news this year. But I think it's important that we keep seeing the cross-section of sport, with music with entertainment with cause and brands being a part of that journey is where we're, where we're seeing a ton of progress. And I think success because people are looking for that content in different formats, and different storylines, different narratives than just the live sport itself. So it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out. I saw that Jason Sudeikis of Ted lasso, I think, is doing something productive with Real Madrid. So I'm like, There's a cool innovation happening in space. That's bringing people from entertainment and sport, music and whatever it may be kind of all together, which I think consumers are responding well to.
Ronen Ainbinder 32:29
Interesting. Is there anything that you have learned or one specific fact about France? Or about the behavior or behavioral element of the people following those properties? Are you being engaged by those properties? Is there anything specific that you saw that pops the eye?
Adam Mitchell 32:49
Yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot of things. And one of the things that I find the most fascinating is that like, on average, from our global studies, we know that the average individual will consume north of 19 different properties and a year. So I think we often talk about a soccer fan, or a football fan, or a hockey fan, or whatever it may be, there is so much content out there, there are so many different ways for people to engage with different properties, whether they're in a sport or Beyond Sport. And so I think the thought, or the general premise that you're dedicated to only one sport, and that's all that you're gonna be interested in, is just flawed. And I think, as a result, a lot of brands are looking for ways to diversify their portfolios and look at properties outside of sport to get another hit and be able to connect with people in other ways. But definitely, something that I think is just important to remind ourselves, like, we're all people at the end of the day, right? Whenever something is entertaining that we can, that we can spend some time and engage with, and feel like we've got something out of, we're going to take those opportunities. So I think it's an interesting thing to continue to track to remind ourselves.
Ronen Ainbinder 34:01
Oh man, this has been so interesting. I think we're gonna need another halftime snack to go over more of the questions. Still, at the same time, it's super interesting, man, but before I let you go before we wrap this up, I just want to ask you one last and more personal question, man. What's the book you've recommended the most?
Adam Mitchell 34:20
Ah, that's a good one. Um, it depends on the day, to be honest. So what uh, what I've read free was a book, I guess from like, 2009. But I think it was interesting to read about the premise of freemium business models talks about Gmail versus Yahoo and how they went about their little battle. It is also funny to reread from that long ago because some of their conclusions certainly aren't true today. But I think there's an interesting thing going on in the world. Round like information and access to data, obviously, we're at one particular cross-section of that. And I think that there's an interesting dynamic between information being available free to people. And then the scarcity of certain information is something that is obviously of great value. And I think, for us, it's something that we continue to revisit and think about and talk about as a team. Because we've tried to build a model, as we've successfully built a model that makes data and the insights that you need to make good sound business decisions, we've made it accessible at the price point that we make it available at. But we're continuously looking for ways to obviously improve accessibility to data. Because we believe at the end of the day people have the right information at their fingertips, it's transparent, it's open to all parties, people will make better decisions, which is going to lead to better value at the end of the day for brands properties, and more importantly, for people who are consuming brands and properties,
Ronen Ainbinder 35:59
man, it's fascinating to hear you speak. As I told you, in the beginning, you spoke like a consultant and spoke with so much clarity, and your thoughts are such an organized man, and I'm amazed by that, man. I can't thank you enough for coming to the halftime snacks. It has been such a wonderful time. I barely even realized that. We're well over the limit. But I didn't care because it was so fun. Man. I appreciate you coming and sharing with us. Everything from insights and your story and your experience. And thank you so much for coming!