First Party Creator Data and the Future of Programmatic Ads with Key CEO, Evan Wayne

We talk with the Evan Wayne who is the CEO of Key, a Software company focusing on First Party declared data and helping creators own and monetize their audience driving Media Efficiencies & Better Business Outcomes.

In this episode you will learn about:

• First Party Data  

First-party data is information a company collects directly from its customers and owns. First-party data (also known as 1P data) is part of the mosaic of data marketers have at their disposal. It can complement, enhance, and reduce the need for other types of data.

A great example of this is a Content Creators Audience

• iOS Data Changes and what the future of advertising will look like
• How Creators can use their 1P data to effectively work with brands
• How digital advertising budgets are being effected and where more budget's will be allocated as data changes happen. 

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Duke McKenzie 

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Kyle Kaplanis

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Duke McKenzie
LinkedIn - Duke McKenzie

Kyle Kaplanis
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YT - The Web3 Guy

Transcript

Duke McKenzie: 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Tomorrow Today we have myself Duke McKenzie. We have your other co-host Kyle Kaplanis. Kyle, how you doing today?

Kyle Kaplanis: 0:08

Yo, I'm doing great Duke excited for this episode.

Duke McKenzie: 0:11

We got a good episode. We got a really good episode. You know why we got a good episode because we have my good friend, my may, man, Evan Wayne in the house. Evan is the CEO and founder of Key, and he's the foremost expert in relationship revenue building. Evan Wayne has cataloged a successful career in driving sales, as well as high growth teams accordingly. And as the founder and CEO of Key. Evan oversees connecting creators with their data so that they're able to sell, interesting and unique brand campaigns, which he'll get into. So ladies and gentlemen, let's give Evan a big round of applause. Here we go. Evan, Evan.

Evan Wayne: 0:50

Thank you. Thank you.

Duke McKenzie: 0:51

So Evan, how are you doing bro?

Evan Wayne: 0:53

I'm great. Anytime I get to see you guys, it's a good day. So we're here.

Duke McKenzie: 0:56

There you go.

Kyle Kaplanis: 0:56

Nice.

Duke McKenzie: 0:57

It's funny cuz the whole ad tech world and everything came up in another podcast and I said, you know, what would be a great guest for this , would be Evan Wayne, cuz of all the stuff that you're up to. I would love for you to first start off with your origin story. And then let's talk about Key because I think is very relevant to a lot of things that we'd like to talk about today.

Evan Wayne: 1:15

My background has been in traditionally advertising technology for the last 15 plus years. And all that means is, hopefully when you see an ad for a beautiful piece of content it's relevant to you is the dream that hopefully we supply. Previous to this world of Key, I had started a company, called Clearstream and the notion behind there was, there was not relevancy between ad that's being placed in front of right content. Speaking from a funny example, I was watching a piece of content for LeBron James and I was served. a Depends ad before. Didn't need diapers, then now, so the relevancy was off. And in that ecosystem we ended up exiting the business engine media group started seeing the landscape of all these big budgets that were thrown into one of our sister companies, Trailer Park, which is putting out these movie trailers and all these actors and actresses were in the movie trailers and in the commercials and in everything else. And then you look at what was happening from a media buying standpoint to promote that. And there was a big disconnect. They were hoping to reach the audience of their actors and actresses or those that they paid for the name and likeness by running media and environments, where they thought they would be. And I realized at that moment, wow. If talent is considered the new brand or enterprise shouldn't, they have control over their own data and make it accessible so that when they do have their name and likeness used by brands. They could be strong targeting data layers. And most importantly, in this world that we're heading to, we'll talk about first party declared data is everything.

Duke McKenzie: 2:47

Dig into that a little bit, because it's interesting when you talk to most people, right. When they hear about data or the media that they see, they know intuitively okay. When I go. Look at a Nike shoe. I see that shoe following me around everywhere. So I know something's going on. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit of what you mean, like how creators could participate in that. And what's happening today. How most people are seeing these types of ads when they're following them around the net and stuff.

Evan Wayne: 3:14

It's funny. If you're sitting around with your family and your friends, you always make that comment up. It's so creepy. They must be listening to me. all those fun things that happen in all reality, personally, speaking up, just cause the industry I'm in. I'd rather there be ads that are at least relevant to me. Mm-hmm so can understand what's going on in the world. The way that we've looked at everything and the landscape is there's a layer of data applied to every ad that should be running. And that data can be as light as to your point, I visited a website and now I'm being re-targeted, or it could be as deep as I engage with somebody in a social platform, I've purchased something previously. My behavioral patterns lead to this thought process that this ad is relevant. The second challenge is making sure that that relevancy is placed at the right time in front of the right individual. Once you have the data. What we started seeing is, and become a little bit more pop culture. Anyone that had Facebook in their portfolio took a, quite a beating recently. Mm-hmm, just like from the market bottoming out. And why iOS is having a field day with them. We're gonna update all tracking and data privacy, same exact time that Google pump faked us last year. They're actually gonna follow through with it. They're gonna delete cookies. Mm-hmm what becomes the holy grail to be able to layer in that data target and make relevancy happen. First party data who has access to all of that right now, the waled gardens, right. Doesn't have access to it?

Duke McKenzie: 4:39

And when you say the wall gardens, who are you saying are the wall gardens? Who are they?

Evan Wayne: 4:43

Right now my favorite question and I, challenge a lot of talent that we speak to about this. And I said, you have 50 million followers. You've built up an unbelievable base of talent, but how many of those emails of your fans do you own to model off of. The answer typically none.

Kyle Kaplanis: 5:00

Right.

Evan Wayne: 5:00

And then a challenge. How many does Facebook own and Instagram and Twitter and Twitch and all of the walled gardens zone, all of it. Ultimately in the end, they're just selling talents, data to brands. Mm-hmm to be able to play within their own ecosystem, the game of relevancy and our whole thought behind Key. Great. Let this still happen. Make your ad sense dollars, even though it's getting thinner and thinner, but why don't bring it off of the wall gardens and target that individual's audience wherever they go on the internet.

Kyle Kaplanis: 5:31

No, exactly. We're seeing that with the way internet is going with decentralization, same thing with creators, they're the ones that built that audience maintain that audience. Why shouldn't they be able to own the right to that data of what their audience is doing?

Evan Wayne: 5:45

Yep. One of the lens we take is I've played around with some funny words, but there's two things we've kind of come down to is also, it levels the playing field on some things too. So look, if one creator from your agency, has a million followers. Okay, but they also own a lot of their first party declared fan data. Mm-hmm and another creator has 2 million followers and zero data.

Duke McKenzie: 6:14

Right. Right.

Evan Wayne: 6:14

Now, brands are starting to realize this is more valuable. I can amplify the campaign that I'm already doing programmatically. And so we're giving that opportunity that's a beli glorified plumbing in the MarTech space to be able to sit there and facilitate it. Right. So there's so many clicks right now that people have to make from a brand to get to a talent.

Duke McKenzie: 6:38

Right.

Evan Wayne: 6:38

We're trying to remove it so it's a one click wonder to come right to you guys. And then when you have the ability to actually upsell your audience, it helps everybody. The creators rewarded by lending out their audience, hopefully financially, but the campaign performs better, which they just partnered on.

Kyle Kaplanis: 6:57

Exactly.

Duke McKenzie: 6:58

You know what I'd love your thoughts on, especially for the audience here. Cause what happens is that we get all types of people, right? Cause we're always trying to talk about what's happening tomorrow, today? What's going on talking about the future. That change that happened. Cause if you gotten an iPhone recently or you updated your software, you realize that you're being asked. Do you want so, and so to follow you all the time or whatever, mm-hmm most of the time I'm like, no, I don't need so. And so like, no, and every single one, like it's asking. I know some people know, but how big of a deal was that when apple changed? How big of a deal was that to Facebook's business and then how do you think when Google finally cancels cookies, how big of a deal do you think that is? Put that in perspective for everyone. How big of a deal this is.

Evan Wayne: 7:41

I'm gonna date myself. By saying, I love the movie Groundhogs Day. hopefully we won't see it. Bill Murray. The concept quickly is that every day is groundhogs day and he's stuck in perpetuity on repeat, waking up with the same day. I think that when this happens officially, we all go into groundhogs day for those that don't have first party data with a lot, which we'll get into mm-hmm . So in other words, the days of being able to visit, best buys or a Nike site, And then being retargeted something goes away. So when you go and visit a site again, and you go to visit all of these brands, it's Groundhog's day where it says, hi, Duke, nice to meet you for the first time. And then where you used to be able to leave. And I still knew Duke. Now, I don't know you anymore until you come back and I go, hi, Duke. Nice to meet you again.

Duke McKenzie: 8:30

right, right. Because they used to give me a cookie. Yeah. So that's how they knew every time I came back. Right.

Evan Wayne: 8:36

They knew you. And one of the things and I'll put you on the spot. How long have you had your personal email for Duke?

Duke McKenzie: 8:42

Okay. It's okay. I'm gonna date.

Evan Wayne: 8:44

It's a Hotmail.

Duke McKenzie: 8:45

It's it's so, so it's, it's funny. I'm gonna date myself now. I got two. I have two personal emails. I have one Hotmail address, but I opened in 1990, my second year college. So 19 96, 5.

Kyle Kaplanis: 9:01

All you had to say was the 19. That was it.

Duke McKenzie: 9:04

yeah, yeah, yeah. You're 19. But it was in 1996. Is when I have my, Hotmail. And then even my Gmail though, like my Gmail address that I use for everything. I think it's 10 years old. And I'll probably never change. Like I have professional emails. Yeah. But I will probably keep those two. I don't use the Hotmail as much, but I still have it cuz certain things are in there and whatever, but I will probably never change my Gmail unless God knows where.

Evan Wayne: 9:26

Thank you for answering my loaded question.

Duke McKenzie: 9:28

Yeah. Yeah

Evan Wayne: 9:28

I'm glad in 96, when there was a lot of screeching and crackling from AOL, dial up, help and here's the reason why I asked you've had an email alias from 96. You might have had another one for 10 plus years. Your email is attached to everything that you do. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm, everything from your social media logins to your credit card, to your bank statements, to your walk along the internet. And so the value of an email. Supersedes anything else in terms of a digital footprint mm-hmm so cookies, we've all lived and played in and they decay after let's call it 30 days. Some people say 60, but at the end of the day they decay and they go away and email record, like you just said, you might never get rid,

Duke McKenzie: 10:12

never goes away.

Evan Wayne: 10:13

Yeah. And so all of that information. When taken and ingested appropriately, which is what we built the plumbing for. And when you strip away that personal identified information, so it's not Duke and it's not Kyle anymore. It's an ID. Mm-hmm 9 99. And then I bump that ID. That's enriched with all of this data on purchase base against data sets like from MasterCard, a new start experience. We do this nice little translation that says this idea is this idea. And we bring 'em together. I now know a lot of information based off of what car you drive, what your behavioral patterns are when you go to Starbucks, all that information that hopefully makes ads become more relevant when they're served. But most importantly, it gives a data. Back to the whole talent world to say, when I'm out wanting to be proactive mm-hmm and I'm out waiting for that phone to ring from Nike to say, oh, we want to work with you. We're giving the opportunity for talent agencies to be proactive and go and call a brand and say, I speak the same language as you mm-hmm This is data that I use to say that my audiences are actually purchasing your product in the same way that they would've looked turned around the other way and said, I'm trying to figure out. Talent audience buys my product. Mm-hmm we're allowing the conversation to be fluid now.

Kyle Kaplanis: 11:30

That's really cool. I just wanna make another note too. On the flip side, I think it's in the best interest of a talent as well, because of the fact that most talent, sometimes they don't take brand deals cuz they don't wanna look like as a sellout, let's say, right? Yeah. But let's say it's matched up appropriately and your ad is out there to the right people. You don't look like a sellout because it's the people that wanna see that

Evan Wayne: 11:51

it's so true. It's either the brand for sellout or even if the brand's so great. You can't dilute, there's a certain elasticity right. Of mm-hmm how much is too much hashtag ad. Right. And so there's two sides to it. Yeah. The other side is great. This data's gonna help you solidify more brand deals, more hashtag ad deals. Mm-hmm well, what about the opportunity to say talents? Media talent should be their own publisher. A hundred percent. If Hulu reaches 40 million uniques a. In Wiz Khalifa reaches 40 million uniques. Every 60 days we have debt, but no one's buying media against Wiz Khalifa.

Duke McKenzie: 12:27

That doesn't make any sense.

Kyle Kaplanis: 12:29

Exactly.

Evan Wayne: 12:30

Millions of dollars on Hulu, right? Yes. There's a problem there. So I look at it and said, well, if I can turn, your talent, one of the biggest out there, Michael Lee mm-hmm why shouldn't he be a publisher network? People wanna be gamers run against his audience? What does that mean? He doesn't have to write hashtag ad. He's have to do that. They're borrowing audience from him. He makes revenue without having to do anything against it. That's the holy grail. That's what we're trying to go towards.

Duke McKenzie: 12:59

Right.

Kyle Kaplanis: 12:59

Boom.

Duke McKenzie: 13:00

And it's a big business. Cause like I just did while I was telling, if you guys heard me clicking away like I'm like trying to remember, I'm like, what is the size of the us just in the us? And I'm sure it's global the us digital ad industry. Right? So the us digital as estimated us dollars, we're projected, it looks like it is. Advertising total is 566 billion and digital looks like it's 78.5 billion. Right. And most of that spend is mixed between search and programmatic ads. So basically. Why we got excited. Most of the audience knows that we represent talent and that's my, day job and stuff like that, but how we got connected and why we got excited was I agree with you that creators are actually people think, oh, creators are just taking selfies and doing all this stuff, but really what they are, the smart ones, particularly look at themselves as a media property. Yes. And by using different technology and whatever, why should they not be treated like. Rolling stone or like MTV or something like that and getting a bit of control on that front mm-hmm

Evan Wayne: 14:02

If I'm a brand and I'm running programmatic, I'm pulling levers and those levers programmatically say, turn on con naps, turn on Herst. Turn on Hulu. Why shouldn't it say, turn on Michael Lee.

Duke McKenzie: 14:16

Right. Programmatic, what does that mean? Like, just in case they're

Evan Wayne: 14:19

what we're saying is, and again, I love doing pop culture references the old days of mad men, if we've all seen it, maybe which a lot of people have was, lucky strike being the brand. And Don Draper saying, great. I'm gonna make 15% of everything that I put out there. That's my fee. That's what I take. Mm-hmm . And that 15% was only tolerated for so long. And then all of a sudden it became, I'll do it for 14. I'll take your business for 13. I'll take it for 10. Well, the agency said there's margin in this media. Why wouldn't I just build my own. Way of running media internally. And so programmatic ultimately is a way that agencies, but also the industry say I can buy and sell media in real time.

Duke McKenzie: 15:04

Right.

Evan Wayne: 15:04

Push a button. And which everyone doesn't realize if all of us today, On this call went to ESPN. We should see a different ad.

Duke McKenzie: 15:11

Yeah. All of us should see something different. Yes.

Evan Wayne: 15:13

Small little milliseconds of an ad loading onto a page. There's a ton of decisioning programmatically that's going on in real time so that we all should see a different advertisement.

Duke McKenzie: 15:26

Right. The funny thing is, so back in my former life, I used to be part of an old school ad network and tasted this business here. But what's interesting, the things that you are saying, I used to have this phrase when I was talking to my team, I'm like, okay. The things that we are doing right now is not just affecting digital, this is how everything is going to be served. So what's funny , what you're talking about right now, like the combination of merging creators and using the tools of programmatic advertising and using zero party and first party data, all of this stuff, that's happening on digital. If everybody watch what's going on, it's gonna be taking over everything because the big Kahoona. The sexiest media right now is still television, right? Yeah. And that's just legacy. We can, all, everyone can like, I'm like this doesn't make sense. I could go on and on, on, on about that, but if you look at where TV is going, so I just bought a TV, we got a new condo and I just bought a TV for the bedroom. And the TV hooks into my, AT&T cable over the web. So everything's OTC. And on there we subscribe. We just got Hulu or whatever. I'm still seeing ads, but the ads are being served now. Like what, how you are talking about versus how TV was traditionally served. But the way I'm watching TV on my big TV is the way that everybody's going to watch TV. Real quick when my son was about four or five years old. He went to my parents place, my parents before I got them a new TV, didn't have a PVR box and whatever it is. Right. He was watching whatever he was watching his show and then an ad came on of some sort. And then he walked over to the TV and he was like, You know, trying to, trying to fast forward, he was pushing the button and then he is looking at me like, what the F this is not going on. And, and it's funny because in the world to my son who is now 14 they will not accept any types of ads or anything like they did in the past, the way TV serves. It's more like what you're saying. So the best case is. Using targeted data, trying to get something relevant, being served over the web. It's fascinating.

Evan Wayne: 17:32

It's so funny. I'm now in that same stage with a four and a half year old and three year old boy ads to them on whether it's YouTube kids, whatever it is, it's skippable, it's moving. It's not relevant, but it is funny. When an ad pops up that might have a dinosaur in it. Mm-hmm my three year old seems to continue watching. Yeah. All it was was relevancy.

Kyle Kaplanis: 17:55

Yep. It's so true. My kids do the exact same thing. Like my eight and 10 year old I'll watch their behavior as well. If it's an ad, they don't like, they know that skip button faster than anybody. This specifically the gen Z generation they're they were born with knowing where that skip button was in the womb. Yeah. but it is funny to watch their behavior because. I've seen them watch an entire ad. And because I'm in this business, I paid a lot more attention to it, and they'll say, Hey, can I get this? And I'm like, that was interesting because that ad was very geared to them. I've been noticing it more, which sucks for me as a parent because now my kids want more and more things because the ads are so targeted to them. They're like, I want this, I wanna buy this. And I'm like, great. this isn't fun for, my wallet. But yeah, it is it working.

Duke McKenzie: 18:40

Right. So in the walled garden, so the big three that gets most of the media money and that controls, like what people don't realize is that if they're controlling most of the media money and they control most of online, they control most of. Like all the media, right? Yep. So you got the Facebooks, you got the Google and who else is part of the big three Facebook,

Evan Wayne: 19:00

but now you've written TikTok in the mix from a social platform,

Duke McKenzie: 19:03

right. You put in TikTok and all those things. Do you think, particularly Google and Facebook or whatever. Do you think that the push to get off the walled garden, like to wrestle control of them because the reason why they have their power is cuz people are choosing to go there, how long do you think, in your bet, how long do you think it's gonna take to create either other alternatives or to group everything else so that it is an alternative so that they're not getting 90% of the budgets and the voice and all those things.

Evan Wayne: 19:28

So funny. Let's think through the process. Facebook walked in to talent agencies a long time ago and said, we've built a platform for you to create massive scaled reach, where we're gonna be above all these eyeballs that you know, we're gonna have a discovery platform, all stuff, and you're gonna get this huge amount of viewership overnight.

Duke McKenzie: 19:51

Right.

Evan Wayne: 19:51

And then after everybody built these audiences in their playgrounds, they came back to the same folks that they had pitched that to and said, it's just really busy on these highways of social. So the algorithm suppressing a lot of this content, why don't you pay us? And we'll make sure those ads meaning your content is seen dark posting, whitelist, et cetera, right. To be the beast.. And so we also forget that when we say social reach and everything else, each platform's created differently. If you look at how someone that's really good in this space, what they do on TikTok is different than Snapchat is different than Twitter is different than Instagram, whatever it may be. So understanding the audiences of your fans from each of those data silos is also important. To answer your question, I think that. This goes on in perpetuity. They're not going anywhere. Mm-hmm, , they've done an unbelievable job. And that's what I've always said is that anybody that comes out and says I'm gonna build something competitive to insert social platform is crazy.

Duke McKenzie: 20:58

Right. Right.

Evan Wayne: 20:59

Okay. But if you can find a way to amplify what's happening from a baseline foundationally, and that's what we're trying to do, then I think there's a lot of upside to the numbers you threw around before and everything else. It's not hard to take a small bite of a budget that is gonna be running. And the stat that is stuck with me since last year, which I read somewhere was one third of the internet is on some social media platform. Okay. Mm-hmm but two thirds of the brand budgets are on that one third. That's right,

Duke McKenzie: 21:36

right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. That off. Right. Hang on. So one third of the internet is on social media. Right? It's about a third, but yet that one third takes two thirds of the budgets. Got it. So the math that doesn't work, they're all following the audience. Right, right, right.

Evan Wayne: 21:53

So that's where I think there is a great opportunity to say, look. We understand there's people that run specifically on social, the way that we look at it, especially once you control some of your ownership of your data is now the playground's the internet mm-hmm I can optimize in Facebook and if it Instagram costs me $15 to find you Duke, and it's three bucks over on. Conde or ESPN, you're still Duke, right? Mm-hmm . But if I can, but right now it's fragmented. People buy social. Then they go over here and they do programmatic. We're looking at it saying, let's take this IDs that we've formulated mm-hmm and now let's look at the whole internet and say, great, I don't care where you go. If it's the right fit at the right time, serve something. That's relevant.

Duke McKenzie: 22:40

Yep. Yep. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Let's close off with thoughts on the ad industry where you like, how do you think this year's gonna end up, any other thoughts you'd

Evan Wayne: 22:51

I think that. The folks that is a big tipping point mm-hmm flection point in the market. I think the people that understand enough to be dangerous. What a cookie is what the meaning of it, loss of it is what first party data means versus not having, I think those that understand this is finally the year where brands and other folks have fully awoken to the fact that those are the ones that are gonna be above the grade. Those are the ones that are gonna be able to go and run evergreen campaign and perpetuity. They're gonna be able to ask for budgets that they haven't seen before. I think. We've all been running with a blind eye to what's coming, right. It's now here. And so I think this is the year where those, that establish, a footprint for themselves, foundationally of data and understanding it are gonna be in a really good place. And those that don't are gonna have a hard time catching up.

Duke McKenzie: 23:47

No, that's a great take. That is a great take. Evan Wayne. Mr. Evan, Wayne. Thanks a lot for coming on today. We really appreciate it. Very thoughtful conversation. And good luck with Key and we will talk to you soon. Thanks Evan. Thank you so much. Take care.