CDP = Confused Data Platform with Amol Waishampayan and Lou DiGiacomo | 2024 NADA Show

Kyle Mountsier: 0:06

All right, we got Lou and a mall. All right, first of all, before we get started, Lou, we'll start with you give us your title,

‍Paul J Daly: 0:13

what you do and what you really do like then well, you really do what you really do.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:16

I'm not your title, because everybody knows that site. Yeah. Yeah. Louis Giacomo,

Lou DiGiacomo: 0:20

VP of product at full throttle, and I helped them all build things.

Paul J Daly: 0:25

That's the reality of it.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:27

I'm always like, I just make sure he helps me build.

Amol Waishampayan: 0:31

She's underselling himself. Yeah. My name is I'm always around the Chief Product Officer at full throttle AI. And I'm the guy that sits in the basement and makes epic shit.

Paul J Daly: 0:40

That's literally a basement.

Amol Waishampayan: 0:43

Yeah, basically, we remote work, you know, work from home sometime? Well, there's an actual basement that I reside in, you know, you get more time out of the Batcave when I when I need to. Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:54

So I met full throttle back, I think you and I were on a call. Yeah, four or five years ago. And I was still at the dealership. And just talking like, I think building since like, 2018, what you guys are doing at this point? Yeah. And talking probably way before a lot of other people were about what data really is, and what first party data really is. And there's been a lot of new entrants that are just flooding the market with those words. And I think you're maybe a little bit confused. Yeah. And the industry is a little bit confused about what are we really talking about when we're talking about this level of data that you guys are looking at? CMS, like, it's the little skinny on what that really means and what you guys have been doing? Yeah,

Amol Waishampayan: 1:35

great, great question, loaded question. But for sure. You know, you nailed it. Like we started doing this back in 2018, when it wasn't cool to do it. But we knew that it was something that needs to be done. We knew some of like the seismic shifts that were going to come into the marketplace due to technology changes, privacy changes, legislation roll, rolling out, bet both at a state level, as well as at a national level. And so we've been building a way to create really powerful, identifiable measurable audiences. Since back in 2018. We've been invested in that steadily over the past five, six years, we've gotten two patents, since we first started one on our way to net new create real household audiences. And our second, we just got in January for how we'd run attribution off of traditional video like mvpds, as well as audio terrestrial and streaming. So really, really excited. We've been doing it for a long time. It's interesting. You know, your second point, I think, is good, too, that a lot of people have now come into this space, right? And people have come to this three letter acronym CDP, right. And I'm going to use a word that you used a couple of times, which was confused, right. And I think that while many people aim to have a customer data platform, they end up in a confused data predicament. And that is really, what ends up happening.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:58

That's the real liar to wearing a shirt that says confused data predicted that was CDP. Right? Exactly.

Amol Waishampayan: 3:04

Like take a look in the mirror like, what have you done? Do you have a CDP? Or do you have a confused data predicament? Yeah. And I think that's that's kind of what's happening. But I think, you know, the vast majority of the industry has the right idea. How do we harness and activate data? I think the missing mark, which we learned only because we started this this early on, is that it's not just about all let's get all the data in one place. When it's small, what are you going to do with it? Right? What are you going to think about outcomes? How are you going to use this data? And I think, probably what most people are doing, and I'm maybe I'm oversimplifying, but I think it's, Hey, we use some technology, we have some data in some place. And now we're uploading some lists to Facebook and Google. And so we're putting more money in Facebook and Google and that's cool. But it's not really going to help you change your market share by the by the beginning of 2025, right? You need something that surely is going to have a paradigm shift, especially with you know, Cookie deprecation all these changes, like it's gonna get pretty crazy people aren't feeling the pain that much right now, but as cookie definitely isn't fully rolls out. If you don't have a good way to activate all this data and measure all of that data without feeling like you're going to what's that show? Saw that the velocity, the circus delay, right? Yeah, sometimes doing this data. It feels like feels like a circus delay. And so you got to jump through hoops. You got to do somersaults and do this don't want to do that. Even their agency partners. I think it can be so long answer to your question, but that's what I feel like if I had to say, hey, snapshot of what's happening, you know, February 2024. What's going on? I feel like that's that's the world we're currently living in.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:38

As you're building products, you know, over the last, what is that five years, there have been these significant changes. We've heard about Apple and then Google planning on deprecating cookies, Apple beginning to block scripts where we can't even even have the access to the people that are that are on the site, or like looking at how to sync that stuff. In the privacy laws, with what's necessary between tracking on sites verse verse, what we have in the DMS or the CRM? How are you overcoming some of these, like broad technical, technological changes that the biggest players are implementing? And you're saying, gotta pivot? Again? What are the what are the pivots that you're making to make sure that dealers can still communicate and where they need to do to customers?

Lou DiGiacomo: 5:23

I think there's a couple of general themes that you don't really have to pivot from necessarily, and one of them is privacy, for example. So we're always on the cutting edge of you know, consumer privacy and making sure that everything's always consented and opted in. And I think that's something where that doesn't change that much. Everyone has a general idea, their state by state legislation is nuanced. All that but in a general sense, you know, when you use, you know, first party data, I think you're already in a better place, compared to what you buy. So these lists from, you know, other places that you don't exactly know where they come from. So I think that's already a good start. And then I think, you know, moving quickly is in keeping it, you know, a small team dedicated to innovation, and being able to stay on top of new tech continue, you know, it's like a Formula One car, it's always building, you know, there's always modifications being made.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:09

I appreciate that. Yeah, I

Lou DiGiacomo: 6:11

think that's the recipe is kind of keeping the, you know, those long standing, never changing principles in place, while keeping a small nimble team ready to keep innovating and building.

Amol Waishampayan: 6:20

Do you guys think it would be useful to talk because I think you touched on a really important topic, which is that people know, stuff is changing. But I think it's hard. I think there's like, it's hard to understand, well, like, what what is it? There's like cookies, there's mobile, like,

Lou DiGiacomo: 6:33

it's really

Paul J Daly: 6:34

useful to talk about that. Because, like you all the three of you really understand the technical side of what's going on. But I think the vast majority of dealers don't that's like the sky is falling. And unless you have a marketer on the team, yeah, who is really dialed in, that isn't just spending most of their time making, you know, sliders and offer

Amol Waishampayan: 6:53

cons. Right, yeah, right.

Paul J Daly: 6:57

No, but what I'm seeing there are just a massive majority, probably isn't majority of dealerships, you have a marketer who just doesn't have the time to dive this deep into the content. So I think it's usually useful because I think it's a real problem. Yeah. And a real thing that like, people can get pulled straight really quickly. Yeah. When you don't know much, hon, because everybody else sounds right. Because you know, more than I do. So you must be right. So yes. All right, helps that.

Amol Waishampayan: 7:23

So let's start with the simplest one. The first one is called Mobile IDs. And it's about your mobile device, whether you have an Android or an iPhone, right. And there's essentially two big use cases that probably every dealer has heard of. So let's talk about those two important use cases. This is one of the biggest things that's being that has changed and has, it's no longer as effective. So it's a good one to start with, right? With every mobile device. There's a unique mobile device ID right. And it's global. It's mostly unchanging. Right. And, and that's what people use. And for a long time, you were able to say, Okay, I want to target all the people that are all my competitors. Lots right now, right? Are you saying I want to target all the people that are, you know, going to Pep Boys. And so you basically, set a little geo addressable areas, capture all the mobile devices that are going to that location? And the way that that work is that everyone has some free apps on their phone? Certainly before Apple made their changes. You had those like free game apps, free weather apps, or if you have kids, your kids are on those free games. And everything that those apps are getting your location, the background, a little

Paul J Daly: 8:27

I agree to

Amol Waishampayan: 8:31

downloading Wild West, you don't have to say so. So then what happens is the Apple comes out with this change is what everyone's heard when they started saying privacy. Right. And that's the Do Not apps do not follow. Yeah. Not to try to ask them not to track right. And so that's what everyone gets on phones. About 60% of people say no to that, right? Or they say yes, I don't want them don't track me. Don't track me right now. Right. They're out. So now what happens to all your ability to do this? You can't do it anymore. The second biggest use case is walking, walk on attribution, right? Where they say you can do media campaign X or both legs, we're going to tell you how many how many people actually walked onto the law, like Google kind of does this a little bit. There's a lot of vendors out there. It's using your mobile ID, right. So if you say do not track right, now you can no longer use those solutions. So that is one huge one that's changing. There are solutions out there that say that they are cookieless. But they are mobile ID full. Right. And so this has gone to what's left, right. So I think that's that's the first one and maybe you want to talk about some of the cookie deprecation piece too. Yes, I mean, they just like simplifying it for like dealers. But

Lou DiGiacomo: 9:41

overall, I think, you know, for a dealer for even anyone who's not is in the weeds of all the different kinds of cookies that they you know, you go on a website, and now you see all the consent banners, and do you agree to this and all that. But before that any of those things were in place. The way third party cookies works is there were ad networks out there. Google is even a good one that you Just any website can put the Google tag on their site. And they have all kinds of different reasons why they do that for analytics purposes and all that. But then, really, behind the scenes, two of these ad tech networks are bundling all of those different people on all these sites they visit. So when you visit the food site, we visit an automotive site. They're tracking you across site. And we're building audiences and people just like you, they make those audiences available for sale in digital media platforms. Yep. What's changing with no more third party cookies? Is that that cross site tracking is going away. Yeah, the only tracking that can happen now is individualize that every site. So they won't know you were on an auto site. And on the food site, the food site when No, You were on their site, the auto site knows you're on yours. There's no connectivity in the middle there. So really just the robustness of who's all in market who's all looking for that? Who's looking for that? Totally drops, because now it depends on each individual website to maintain their own audience their own traffic, you know, and make that audience available? Well, let

Paul J Daly: 10:55

me ask the $500 billion question. How do you fix that? What technology is going to span the gap? Because you're spending money to get that information. And now all those indicators are going away? It doesn't sound like an easy problem to solve. Right? But what solves the problem? What is the future?

Lou DiGiacomo: 11:14

I think it's if I had 500. A lot of different solutions out there are building to figure something out, then I think, you know, trade desk, if you guys are familiar with those kinds of media platforms, you know, they have, let's have everyone give their email address and all agree to join our network, you know, and we'll put an ID attached to all of it. There are things where technologies are grabbing an IP address off the website, you know, everyone's freeware, and IP addresses, but not everyone realizes that, like they're actually changing the framework of IP addresses. They're changing what they look like a whole nother you know, whole thing with ipv4 and ipv6. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Amol Waishampayan: 11:51

So when you want to get into that, yeah.

Lou DiGiacomo: 11:54

The short answer is that there is nothing really there's nothing as ubiquitous as mobile ad IDs and third party cookies. Yeah, from that widespread connecting people across systems perspective?

Amol Waishampayan: 12:04

Well, we do differently is that we're providing some it's not going to solve every single person's problem, but it does solve dealer's problems, right? And so we build first party data, not just from your yes, your DMS, that's one obvious source of first party data. But the second is other ones, like your website traffic, right? You have really important website audiences. And I think I will make a hypothesis that we have this conversation in 2025, right? And we'll come back here and say, Hey, did this happen? I think that one big definition is going to change that dealers are going to learn to stop using the word traffic. And they're going to use the word audiences, because that is what's going to happen in the future. We believe that 2024 is the year of audiences as a result of everything that we just talked about. You need access to first party data. And when you think about running large media and driving households and people to your site, you should be now be thinking about those as really valuable, profitable, measurable audiences that can go help power, all these other problems that are happening in the Indiana Tech universe. Well, gentlemen,

Kyle Mountsier: 13:07

I love that. That's a great way to get it on.

Paul J Daly: 13:09

We got it recorded now. We'll come back here later. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for spending some time. Thanks for the hard work you're doing whether in the basement or everywhere else. Yeah, we really need you're out there looking over the horizon. So

Amol Waishampayan: 13:21

thanks for having us.

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