How Do Local Networks and Businesses Utilize Streaming? Spencer Potts Of Madhive Explains It To Teenagers

We met with Spencer Potts, the CEO of Madhive and he taught us how his company works at revitalizing and evolving local advertisement, in an era of online streaming.

The following summary is written by Jay Fagel, with help on the video and transcript by Rio Damata.

What does Spencer Potts actually do?

Spencer Potts is the CEO of an advertising technology company called Madhive. Essentially Madhive helps local businesses advertise through streaming TV platforms like AppleTV and Hulu. Madhive makes their money through selling their streaming tech to local broadcast groups, brands, and agencies, which then place those advertisements on streaming services. As the CEO of Madhive, Spencer oversees and runs the company. He also manages the investment board, he builds relationships with their clients, weighs in on tough decisions, and makes sure the company meets their revenue goal.

What is interesting about what Spencer Potts does?

It is really interesting how Madhive focuses on connected TV advertising through streaming services. Consumers now mainly use streaming services to watch TV, so streaming advertising helping local businesses is new, and is the beginning of an industry with an abundance of growth. I also think that it is really cool to manage and oversee any company, but especially one which introduces new ways to build your business. 

What I liked about his message?

I really enjoyed doing this interview with Spencer for many reasons. The one thing which stands out the most is how he explained what he does. His job is very complex, and there's a lot to it, but to someone who knows very little about marketing I felt that now I have a very strong understanding of what Madhive and Spencer do.  Furthermore he was very clear with us, for example he gave examples that I could interpret and really understand. Lastly, Spencer was a cool guy to talk to in general, he was very kind, and he speaks like a CEO, which he is.

JAY: We're about to meet with Spencer Potts, the CEO of Madhive to learn more about the company.

RIO: All right. Hi. So I just want to start off with what I ask everybody. What is your name? And what do you do? 

SPENCER: Yeah. My name is Spencer Potts, and I am the CEO of a software company by the name of Madhive.

RIO: And just in a sort of quick summary, what is your company do?

SPENCER: Yeah, so our company is software, right? So we are enabling local advertisers to actually put their commercials on streaming. All the apps that actually-and digital mediums at play ads, we help local advertisers get on this.

JAY: What is your favorite part of your job?

SPENCER: So my favorite part of the job is really team building, I really like to inspire people to come to a common cause they get excited about like, so I'm really kind of a culture guy. And I think that, you know, life is short, if you will, and I know your parents probably say that all the time, but it's really special to get people that really get motivated by working together. So I'm really excited by that. And the fact that we've been able to grow so fast, I think has gotten people even more excited. What it does is it allows you then to attract more people, right? And, you know, if we can keep that culture intact, I think that's where the great companies continue to thrive.

RIO: And so you mentioned advertisements. I just want to sort of repeat what you said, what did you mean, what do you do with the advertisements on the streaming platforms?

SPENCER: Yeah, so we actually so that the software just like if you know, if you use Microsoft Windows or go onto your Mac computer, and you know, you download a software package, whether using DocuSign or anything, you could use the software as again, the digital application where the major station groups like a CBS, FOX and NBC go in, they log in, put in their password, and they're local salespeople Because every cable station group, right, so let me take a step back. If you're like Fox, and you own 15 to 25 different major station groups, and let's pick a city you know, Detroit, they have local salespeople the way that those station groups make money is their local salespeople are going around asking for advertisements from like the local dealerships, the local restaurants, local hospitals, advertise to the people that are around you so that more people will visit you, right? And so the local salespeople walk into the dealership, they say, Hey, in this new world of digital, you know, advertising, they say, listen. Before we used to, used to advertise in the yellow pages back when I was a kid, right? Actually books you'd like see an advertisement, and then maybe email, you would campaign through an email messaging, hey, I got an email that might bump my dealership, maybe I'll stop by. And then you know, maybe some texting, you know, there's things that come through text. And now the new world of video, right? So I can actually put a 15 to 30-second commercial together, and that would be really impactful. I don't know how it's gonna work. But I'm willing to take a small percentage of what I'm running on the cable channel that I've been running on, the local Fox channel, and if it's been working, you know, you hope there's a relationship there. They're like, Yeah, we actually got a lot more people coming into our store after we ran the last campaign to say, come into, you know, Tim's Auto. Why don't we do it on streaming? And the reason they're doing it on streaming is because people like yourself are moving to streaming, right? They're no longer watching cable as much as they were. So they want to make sure they have the access to the audience. So if you two, in particular, were an audience to go into this dealership, they'd want to find you, and you're not on cable anymore. You're on streaming apps, right? So that's the way that we make money is because we give it to the station groups, they go sell the advertisements, and then every time they buy, you know, that campaign, we end up getting paid.

RIO: And just a quick, just I'm wondering, when was the company founded? 

SPENCER: It was founded technically in late 2016, and started becoming a real business and I would say, started really growing in 2019. 

JAY: So what is the process of getting local advertisers on TV?†

SPENCER: Yeah, it's very sophisticated technology, I appreciate you asking. There's something called the bitstream, where all of the people that have the ability to offer what you will call a commercial spot in the world of digital, it's called impression. So if you're paramount, or you are Netflix, and you hear like, Hey, here's where you can fill a commercial. There's a technological world called programmatic. It's very, like, technologically advanced, where a lot of people may want that Netflix inventory, they may want to play their commercial. So there's somewhat of a bidding war. And it all happens real time, you know? Its like a few milliseconds, it's under a second, someone wins the bid, you know, and it's very much an auction process, which gets into another level of sophistication. But that's how it happens it's like we take the-so our software takes in the commercial, bids all around the bitstream. Some we win, some we lose and then that is immediately placed onto the Netflix spot where you may be watching Netflix, and there's a commercial break, and then you see the commercial. And so that's, what's called an ad server. 

RIO: So, and I'm not sure if I'm being correct, so you can correct me, But by what I'm understanding, you're sort of bringing back local advertisements to streaming services. 

SPENCER: That's right. That's right. Yeah, we're just the next evolution of where it goes in any I'd say advertising community, you want to go to where your audience is, right? So if they're watching cable television, go to cable, if they're watching, streaming go to streaming, so we're actually bringing them to the new world of streaming, which was again, very new, several years ago. 

JAY: What sets Madhive apart from other software and advertising companies 

SPENCER: Appreciate it, we're the only group that can be very, very specific, all the way down to like, half a zip code, into where we can target. So that's the distinctive nature of Madhive is so far at scale, meaning it's at a size, right, because we're running 20,000 campaigns at the same time, right? We're the only company that offers programmatic, connected television, local targeting, on a platform.

RIO: All right, then I'm just gonna wrap it up with one final question. Do you have any messages to marketers or people who may want to make a company similar to or might want to join a company similar to yours? 

SPENCER: Yeah, I mean, for marketers, who may want to consider using Madhive, I would say, come by, set up a demo, right, where we can show you kind of the tooling and if it suits your particular needs and connected television again, because we're specific, as I mentioned, towards connected television video. Yeah, we'd love to show you what we have, and kind of where you can customize effectively, our software to your needs. 

RIO: All right, yeah. Thank you.