Justify Your Existence: Vibe.co

Welcome to Marcitectures Justify Your Existence, where we ask early stage ad tech and MarTech startups to tell us why we should care about what they're building. Today we have Arthur Quiroux from Vibe. Arthur, did I do okay with your last name? Uh, so quick disclosure, I'm affiliated with this company, Vibe, so, um, there is a little bit of a conflict of interest, but I'll still try to take it hard on you. So, Arthur, what is Vibe?

So Vibe is the Facebook ads of TV. Basically, we empower every SME businesses, um, to advertise on streaming and most, uh, on streaming. Yeah,

Okay, so you're using Facebook ads as sort of an analogy. You're not actually buying ads on

exactly. Yeah. Just a super simple ad platform that my mom can use, uh, but that's deep enough so that you can build expertise on it.

You think your mom could actually buy ads using Vibe?

Absolutely. Like tons of moms and pop shop actually use Vibe. So definitely she's not a media trader, like disclaimer, she's not a media trader as well.

we should do a little challenge session, see if you get my mom to buy some ads, 305. Um, so, uh, tell us about the company. Uh, how large is the company, where are you based, and what is your fundraising

Yeah, absolutely. So we're 36 people. Um, half of the team is based in France where we have all product, um, in management and, uh, then everything operational is based in the U. S. We solely operate in the U. S. Uh, and we launched in September of 2022. And we've raised 7 million to date and, uh, maybe raising right now. I don't know.

maybe? Okay. So, um, so you're a French company, but you do business exclusively in the U. S. Um, and now tell me how this works. So, I I see your I see your ads everywhere. I don't know. You're retargeting me or something. I see your ads on Twitter. I see your ads everywhere. So I see your ads and I go to what vibe. co and what do I do?

you register on vibe. co, you have instant access, um, to the platform. You can basically. create your campaign just like you would do on Facebook ads. So select like who you want to target, um, which channels you want to target. You just drag and drop your creative and you're ready to go on TV within the next five minutes. and, uh, the payment works, uh, with credit cards. Uh, and that allowed us to onboard over a thousand brands in less than

Okay, so let's go through step by step. So what inventory you said TV is this linear or connected TV?

No, no, we don't do any linear, we don't do any cable. Um, we solely do streaming, the future of TV. Um, and we have access to pretty much the whole inventory out there. We work, we have direct deals with uh, pretty much all the publishers and not Netflix yet, not YouTube, but uh, hopefully in the future.

The majority of the, of the standard CTV of offerings.

And a bit, and a bit more.

I would think a lot of these small advertisers though, they, they want to cherry pick, they want to say, look, I want to be on CSI Miami or something like that. Is that possible? Or are you buying more by channel?

Not yet. For now it's solely by channel and, and streaming apps. But we've just released, like, 30 minutes ago, um, our live sports feature. So now people can target, uh, NBA, NFL, local, uh, leagues, um, NHL and, um, PGA.

Oh, that's very cool. So I imagine geo is a very popular way for, to target given these are small advertisers.

Yeah, absolutely. This is, this was probably, like, the, the, the first. thing where we put a lot of focus and being able to, um, deliver locally, uh, as much as possible because that comes with tons of constraints. Um, and yeah, most of our clients use local targeting.

where do the, where do the customers find the creative to run?

Usually they already have, uh, the creatives. We don't do any like create creative production or anything like that, but I mean, in 2023. Most of, like, advertisers already have, like, some videos they can convert, like, quite easily. Uh, social sets or this kind of thing. So it's not much of a problem.

Do you, uh, does your tool help at all? Like, uh, to make sure it's like 30 seconds and the right formats and everything like that?

No, we just, we just do, like, the classic, like, um, we can, like, conversion, resampling and everything. But we don't do any, like, uh, video editing.

Got it. And what about optimization and, uh, and any sort of conversion attribution? What, what does your tool offer there?

Yeah, this is the most important thing, I think, uh, for us, uh, and for our clients. Cause they all look solely for return on ad spend. They put 1 in a machine, they want 2 out. Um, so we do a lot. Um, of optimization on the bidding side, uh, with our own bidding, uh, system solution in the machine learning models. Um, and then we do all the measurement through IP. so whether, like, with our own solution for web or with MMPs such as, like, Adjust Napswire for apps.

Got it. and, and so in terms of competition, this is competitive with like TV Scientific and Mountain and some of the other solutions like that.

Yeah, kind of, like, we compete with TVSignificant Mountain, like, on the larger, clients like big e coms, big, gaming companies. But when it comes to the small, like, local businesses and such, we don't see much competition for now. either they work with some local, like, networks or this kind of thing. But they're not used, usually it's the first time they advertise on TV and we're really bringing their, uh, budgets, uh, into TV for the first time.

What, how small are these companies? What's the minimum spend?

Right now, it's 50 bucks a day. That's the minimum, but, uh, like, they, a lot of them spend much more than that. Yeah.

Right, that's pretty small. alright, last question. Um, if Vive was an animal, what animal would it be?

It's a dragon. That's, that's actually what we, I don't know if it qualifies as an, as an animal, uh, kinda, uh, but, uh, yeah, yeah, close enough. But, uh, yeah, usually, uh, internally we say that we are not building a unicorn, we're building a dragon.

Alright, I'll take that answer. Alright, Arthur, thank you for being here. Thank you for justifying your existence.

Thank you, Ali.