Monetizing Free Traffic That Refuses To Convert To Premium: SocialVibe CEO Jay Samit, Los Angeles (Part 5)

Sramana: What about Pontiflex? There are some interesting aspects about their business.

Jay Samit: I don’t know much about them. They focus on lead generation, which is not in our brand advertising space.

Sramana: That is the company that I think is the closest to you, and they are over a $10 million company. They position themselves around engagement advertising. They have a pay for performance value proposition that is similar to what you are talking about.

Jay Samit: There are other people who do pay for performance such as ‘buy these flowers and get Farm Cash.’ There are a lot of companies that do that. We don’t do that. We only do attention. We never require a consumer to do anything.

Sramana: Do you measure how much time you have engaged he audience for?

Jay Samit: Yes. On Super Bowl Sunday we did a campaign for Kia. The average time spent was two minutes and 56 seconds. Our average time across all campaigns was 63 seconds. Our record setter was three minutes and 24 seconds for iTunes.

Sramana: But there is no call to action necessarily?

Jay Samit: Never.

Sramana: Are you more of a proxy for television advertising?

Jay Samit: This is pure brand advertising. It is not some type of direct response.

Sramana: Zynga was your first publisher. What year did they come on board?

Jay Samit: Zynga happened about a year ago. Our company was started three years ago. Once we spread throughout Zynga, our network just exploded. We tend to pay publishers more than any other revenue stream that they have. It has worked very well.

Sramana: As you develop the company, are you going to broaden your strategy? One of the issues in the publisher world is the monetization model. It has imploded. How do you see yourselves evolving? How do you propose to get into the NYT and WSJ types of places?

Jay Samit: We are presently involved with most people who have paywalls because of the breadth of advertisers advertising with us. We offer our solution on three screens. We do this on the desktop, smart phones, and in living rooms on OTA set-top boxes and gaming systems. Everybody has seen those wasted impressions. If you are measuring impressions, you have the wrong idea. It may have worked in television, but it does not translate into results today. Our advertisers have done many third-party studies that show a ninefold lift in purchase intent where they can demonstrate that digital leads straight to purchase. We are expanding across every place that has these value changes in our lives.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Monetizing Free Traffic That Refuses To Convert To Premium: SocialVibe CEO Jay Samit, Los Angeles
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