Justify Your Existence with Taiv.tv

Welcome to Markitecture's 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 Noah Polansky from TAIV TV. Noah, thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me, Ari. TAIV TV, how do you spell that, so people know? T A I V? TV. Got it. Okay, um, and you, did you take an Aperium investment? I just want to disclose any conflicts of interest. Yes, I did. Okay, so our co host Eric has invested in this company. All right, so what does TAFE do? We make the TVs in bars and restaurants more interesting, more engaging, and more relevant for everybody sitting in the bar. Yeah, so what does that mean? It means that when you're sitting in a bar and they're running our tech, every time that a game ends or cuts to intermission, instead of having to watch the same ads you would see in a home setting, You're going to see really relevant content, like trivia or live sports odds, as well as targeted ads. Okay, so, uh, how does this work? Are you integrated at the bar level? Yeah, we are. So we have, um, hardware that connects right to the cable box, and we do real time computer vision, getting a bunch of context about what's being shown on each individual TV. And then using that, we have AI that's able to intelligently make decisions on what to show. Cool. And where do these ads come from? Are you selling them yourself, or is it programmatic demand? It's both. So we have an internal ad sales team as well as programmatic integrations. Why are these ads better? I think the ads are pretty good on sports programs. I think they're pretty good too when you're in a house. So the problem is when you're out of home, they're usually not playing audio. They're not meant to be shown in that environment. So imagine you're sitting in a bar and you see an insurance ad or competing bars ad and it requires audio for you to engage. It assumes you're going to be staring at it for 30 seconds straight, or you're sitting in that same bar and it says Budweiser, a price of a beer in that bar. It's a static image. You can glance off it as an animation on it maybe. And suddenly you understand that you can order a beer. That's a way better ad. Okay. So where are these ads come from? I mean, creating a special ad for your system sounds burdensome given relatively small reach, right? Well, it's actually not that bad. Um, we have our own internal graphics team So we help all of our clients with ads But they're also easy to make because they're generally like low motion almost almost images with a little bit of graphic animation behind it So they're pretty easy to produce. Um, and our reach also isn't that small We're doing about a half billion monthly impressions right now. Great. Is it all throughout the US? Yeah, we're in nine major DMAs. How many bars? Uh, over 500. Gotcha. So you go to an agency and, uh, and they may represent a mainstream brand like Budweiser or whomever and you're give this pitch and then you have to probably help them out a little bit with the creative and then they run on your system, uh, to pay on a CPM basis. Yep, that's exactly how it works. Um, and then what about the bars promos? You allow for the bar to have their own promos? Yeah, we do. So one out of every five spots is for the bar as well as any unsold ad inventory. Um, and it actually lists their sales. They see usually a three to five percent sales left when they work with us just for value. Um, cool. And, um, what, um, so one thing, and I think I've talked to you personally about this previously. Um, so how do you feel about the fact that the, uh, channels being shown at these bars are not getting the ad opportunities? The ads are not showing from the ESPNs or of the world who are being broadcast in the bars. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, my stance is that if you own a bar or own a TV in general, you have the right to choose what you're showing on that TV. Um, I'm also in favor of internet ad blockers and think that they have a right to exist and that if your data is being sold, you deserve to be the one selling it and to profit from it. And so I think this extends into the TV realm as well. I think if you're going to expose your audience that is going to your BART, thousands of people to an ad, you deserve to be in control of what ads get shown. Uh, it's a, there's a little bit of an interesting back story here, which is that, uh, Nielsen has historically been very poor at measuring, uh, these third places. And, uh, companies like ESPN have been yelling at Nielsen for 20 years to better measure the broadcast in third places, and now this is potentially taking away some of the reach of those ads. Yeah, exactly. There's, I mean, they're being undercounted generally, um, and, and companies even like ESPN aren't happy about it. Um, like for example, on the digital side, we work with ESPN to help promote their ESPN plus products and stuff because they can show such targeted creative to such a targeted demographic in a good format, um, even though they understand that that does take away some of those under measured. Um, what's the rev share situation with the bars? They get, um, about 15 percent of the revenue. It can vary a little bit depending on the location. And how much work is it for them to set this up? Absolutely nothing. We take care of everything. We cover all the costs of the hardware. We set up professional tech. They gotta do nothing but sign the contract. Cool. Um, let's step back and talk basics. I usually ask this at the beginning. I forgot. Uh, size of the company and fundraising today and where are you based? Yeah, we're based in Canada, but we only operate in the US. Miami was our first market, so it's something we hold really near and dear. Uh, we have about 30 employees today, and we've, uh, we're at a seed stage. Gotcha. Uh, and, um, last question. Um, if your company was an animal, what animal would it be? That's a great question. You got to watch the videos. You know, I ask every company that don't say tiger. I was going to say lion. Don't say lion or tiger. Everyone says lion or tiger. Because I think that, um, the value in what we're doing comes from the network we're building and that as a pack, we're a lot stronger. So every bar we bring on and every advertiser we bring on makes the pack stronger for everyone else. All right, Noah, thank you for justifying your existence at TAVE TV. Thank you for having me.