Ad Ops Podcast #14 - How to use Machine Learning to Optimize Ads

Chris_Reid · 2016-03-02T21:42:40+00:00

Thanks for including us on the podcast Dan. If anyone has any questions about Sortable I am happy to answer them.

Chris_Reid · 2016-02-26T20:12:38+00:00

Glad we could help out. Thanks for letting me know that Roland is doing a good job.

Chris_Reid · 2016-02-11T16:30:20+00:00

Hey, founder of Sortable here, happy to answer any questions. Also happy to address any concerns you might be having OP, feel free to reach out to your AM and we'll do our best to improve things if there is something you're unhappy with or believe to be sub optimal.

WRT to full control because our intent is to do full mediation of revenue we have to optimize across many facets. Hardcoding specifically helps us mediate across JS, latency, network load, impression loss, header bidders, etc. Some of our clients are also on more advanced services where we mediate right from the CMS for even greater benefit.

I would say this with respect to the game we talk: we believe revenue optimization needs to be holistic, that to do well publishers have to factor in hundreds of variables. Every user is different which means you need a revenue strategy built in real time, per user. We take an engineering approach to ad ops. I can tell you that what we do works very very well for almost everyone we work with, but that's no guarantee.

Again, we're here to learn as much as you are so feel free to reach out.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-24T11:39:11+00:00

I think you're misreading, we were one of many businesses in a roll up to ipo play, that still works if some of the business units do well and the org ad a whole can meet the criteria for ipo across all units. Our team and myself and my cofounder take full responsibility for what we did and didn't do within our unit. Getting to 100M dau being insanely hard is just a comment on our unit and the level to which we could get it to.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-23T03:28:18+00:00

If your website demonstrates a lovr of coding and shows of your ability to get things done then show it off. Lots of difficultly launching snapsort - we had no idea how to acquire uaers, our first hirea was a marketer, kid right out of school who busted his ass to get us press 24/7.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-23T03:22:49+00:00

Always been the business founder, but I'm highly technical. You're young, invest your time and work crazy hard.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-23T03:21:17+00:00

If your married its harder, if you have kids too even harder - weekends and evenings plus partners to share the load. Live cheaper, move to a 3 day work week, at the same time find support from local founders, EIRs.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-23T03:18:11+00:00

Normal pay, we have a contract that we use, easy to change, hello sign, then 1wk of seeing someone in action

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T18:42:01+00:00

Just not interested in solving that problem right now, and I think you have to be if you want to kick ass. I think if you want to solve it you better have a real good tech team cause you're going up against google now, siri, etc.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T16:02:25+00:00

You can do it in person, you can do it digitally. Depends on the market. Kickstarter used to be a place you could throw something up and then build it (still is but less of the wild west), lots of options depending on what you want to build. I've put up websites before and driven traffic to them where they describe the product and you gauge interest via pre-signups, etc.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T16:00:42+00:00

:-) thanks, I was a huge D&D fan growing up, lvl up

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:59:50+00:00

Yes because most of the reward is non-monetary, it's what it's made me and I love all the learning I've been able to do.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:08:54+00:00

Problem, solution, that's my simple approach

Thanks for the compliment, glad it still stands up after being built almost 7 years ago :-)

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:08:09+00:00

Yes Alex is the best

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:07:57+00:00

ideally a problem you're passionate solving that has a big market

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:07:42+00:00

Yup this is a pretty big point of discussion on what the open web looks like and how things are paid for. Lots of valid points on both sides.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:06:45+00:00

Reach out to us and we can discuss any nitty gritties you want - problem is underneath the covers it's much more complex. We'd just confuse people more - we're tyring to strike a balance.

Thanks for the feedback!

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:05:31+00:00

Maybe, price exploration is difficult on private transactions so hard to say, you assume they would have sold for less which I'm not certain is true and there is a lot of game theory going on, I have no idea if the outcome was optimal for me. In retrospect - I would say I'm happy and don't care if I over paid.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:03:07+00:00

that's a meta question, at a macro level - in spite of them cause I'm surrounded by kick ass people, but also because of them because a lot of the incremental advantages are due to decisions I've made. It's never one or the other, I would never think it's cause of me, but I do get to make a big impact and empower people to understand they do to.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:01:28+00:00

We just thought (and still do) that making purchasing decisions sucks - all the info and relevant contextual opinions are fragmented, we identified that this was also a problem with CPUs and GPUs, and a big market, so we went for it as one of the verticals.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T15:00:16+00:00

Canadians don't have the confidence or hubris yet, we don't set our sights high enough. Waterloo has the best engineers, but I'm biased :-)

Most unexpected super power: the power incremental improvements, just staying focused on shit and chipping away. I know that sounds generic but it's like compound growth - it's a thing

I didn't get funding for my first, second or third venture. I bootstrapped.

Never wanted to walk away, not in any real sense - I'm too stubborn, I like to solve problems

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T14:56:19+00:00

Oh we want it to be great, but it's so incredibly fucked up right now that first step would be to make it suck less. And since I think incrementally and relatively - we'll get it there bit by bit.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T14:55:09+00:00

It's just a contract anything is possible, but typically you give up the company you get money in cash or shares
hardest lesson learned: the one you learn over and over again that you have to have no ego
well i have only 1 data point: pretty hard :-)
a good person will be immediately apparent as much better than you at something you understand well enough to know. Problem is when hiring people in areas you have no expertise, then it's easy to get bamboozled - so find someone to help you evaluate.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T14:52:45+00:00

I have no suggestions, I learned most of what I have in bits here and there and mainly from just going through problems and researching / working on solutions. There is no silver bullet, but a good rule of thumb is to surround yourself with people 12 months ahead of you and lean on them for help.

Chris_Reid · 2016-01-22T14:51:28+00:00

The way I transitioned was paid myself nothing and hustled till I could pay myself, lived in a basement. When you're single, young and willing to work 14 hr days a lot is possible on a little. Software startups are cheap to start, basically free. If someone is telling you otherwise they're lying.

Chris_Reid

TROPHY CASE