Marketing in the Madness

How Uber Is Transforming Advertising, One Ride at a Time

• Street Agency, Katie Street, Paul Wright, Uber Advertising • Episode 55

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Uber may be best known for getting you from A to B, but behind the scenes, it’s revolutionising the advertising world. From personalised ad experiences during rides to partnering with brands like L'Oréal, Bacardi, and Chelsea FC, Uber’s advertising platform is growing into a billion-dollar business, one ride at a time.

This week on Marketing in the Madness, Katie Street is joined by Paul Wright, Head of International Advertising at Uber, to uncover how Uber is transforming advertising. One ride at a time. With insights into how Uber has transformed its unique user data into a powerful, non-intrusive advertising platform. Driving impact for brands while respecting the consumer experience.

With a career spanning leadership roles at Apple, Amazon, and now Uber, Paul gives us an insights into the evolution of digital marketing, and where the future of advertising is headed.

🚕 Journey Ads: Transforming Advertising, One Ride at a Time.
Discover how Uber’s Journey Ads work seamlessly, delivering targeted ads based on real-time user behaviour without disrupting the experience. PLUS. How Uber’s unique ad format captures user attention at key moments. Creating high engagement and impressive click-through rates of 2.5% to 3.5%.

💡 The Power of First-Party Data for Personalized Ads.
Uber knows where you’re going, and it’s using that knowledge to help brands connect with consumers in a personalised way. Paul explains how Uber uses its vast pool of first-party data to target users with relevant ads. Whether it’s suggesting a product while you wait for your ride or a promotion while heading to the airport.

📈 From B2C to B2B: How Uber is Connecting with Businesses.
Think Uber ads are just for consumer brands? Think again. Paul dives into Uber’s success in the B2B space, sharing how businesses like Accenture and Bacardi are using geofencing and targeting professionals during their daily commutes and travel.

🌎 Building a Billion-Dollar Ad Business at Scale.
With Uber Advertising now operating in 34 markets worldwide, we get an inside look at how this new venture has scaled rapidly. From local campaigns to global brand activations, we find out how Uber’s advertising business has grown from the ground up into a billion-dollar success story.

⚙️ What’s Next for Uber Advertising? The Future of Ads, Data, and AI.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, Paul shares his vision for the future of advertising. With AI and attention metrics taking centre stage, Uber is poised to stay ahead of the curve by delivering ads that combine creativity, data, and an exceptional user experience.

💥 Real-Life Campaigns that Drive Impact.
From helping brands target travellers in airports with personalized promotions to serving event-specific ads for concerts like Taylor Swift at Wembley, Paul reveals some of the most successful campaigns that have capitalized on Uber’s ability to reach users at the perfect moment.

🎧 Tune in now to discover how Uber is transforming the way brands connect with their audiences, one ride at a time.

Connect with Paul Wright:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulwright66/

Connect with Katie Street:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/
https://www.instagram.com/streetmate/

Follow Street Agency:
https://street.agency/
https://www.instagram.com/street.agency/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/streetagency/


Paul:

In one way, we've got a brand business. The other way, we've got a performance business. And how do you join those two together? For us is attention. So we've built this business up. It's now a billion dollar business. We've done a real range of things, from high volume awareness activations to very, very highly targeted events,

Katie:

the ability to change quickly, to personalize that's where it gets incredibly brilliant, but also kind of scary. We were do pretty much know probably most of what's going on in my life, in terms of where I'm traveling, what I'm eating. We've got to have a great

Paul:

user experience. And this is the crazy thing on this approval, though, averaging 90 averaging 90 to 100 seconds engagement time per ad. You've

Katie:

got to have the data, but you've got to also be able to measure you. And then for you guys, you've then got to be able to be really clever, because you've got to serve the right answer, the right people in the right times. What do you see, in general, for the future of advertising,

Paul:

I think AI can will make some pretty disruptive things, particularly to the agency world. I'm never sure how much that is hype versus reality. Human intuition is something very difficult to replicate.

Katie:

Now is the time that we've all got our got to understand how our businesses can use it. Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of marketing in the madness. Now I feel like I'm going to change today's episode title and call it marketing in the advertising madness, because with me, I have the fantastic Paul Wright, Head of International Advertising at Uber International, Uber advertising, Head

Paul:

of International at Uber advertising.

Katie:

What he said. And the great thing about me being sat here with Paul is, not only we're going to talk about advertising, which I haven't actually done on the podcast for a little while, we're also, well, we also have had a potted history where we've kind of crossed over. We know quite a few of the same people, because I, of course, also started my career in advertising. So Paul, to get us frame what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about what you're doing at Uber when it comes to your driving advertising, and how that's grown the business. But also, I, well, I want to hear more about your career, your history, and I guess how you've ended up where you are today. Okay,

Paul:

I'll try and do quick, quick quick history, because it could. It's quite complicated in some areas. So I started well, my first ever job was at Lloyd's bank in Baker Street, which was boring as hell. And then a friend of mine said, Oh, this company called Sky channel is looking for people. Sky channel, as it was, then was a cable TV channel, so it's doing Spider Man repeats, essentially. And WWF, interesting anyway. So it was about just being bought by Ripper Murdoch and it was going to be turned into something. And I thought, well, it's much more interesting than working in a bank. Let's go and do this. So I went and got this job as a sales assistant. And you probably remember that the term sales assistant then was like an apprenticeship. You know, you were like you did whatever you were told to do in the first sales team, and didn't know it, but stayed there for what didn't plan this, but stayed there for about 1110, or 1011, years, I think, all the way through, from when it started, through the bumps in the road that it had, through the merger with BSB, through all sorts of craziness. It really wasn't. It was the ultimate startup. I think, startup. I think people tend to forget, because of all the big internet startups that there were startups before that, and sky was and, you know, may nearly broke Murdoch's financial financially as well. So it was an interesting thing. So fantastic. Built great that we built teams there. Had great fun. And then I moved into digital in the latter part of the 90s, because everyone was doing digital then, and eventually decided to lose sky and go and work for startup which raised$100 million and went bust in two years, which is pretty good going,

Katie:

right? I mean, it was

Paul:

a great ride, but there's so much you

Katie:

learn from that kind

Paul:

of, Oh yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, you learn all about things like cash flow and all the things we probably didn't manage that well, and how investors were pushing us to do things which we probably shouldn't have done. So it was all craziness. But then came out there without a job, and it was 2002 and then myself and three of my team, because we were running the sales and marketing team, came up with this idea to do sales house, essentially for sports rights holders. Because we've been sort of doing bits of it in the previous this previous company. And we thought, well, let's give it a go. It was me and three, three women interested in the sports business, which in that time was really unusual to say the least. I mean, there's, you know, sports businesses tend to be very, very male dominated, and suffer from that, in my view. So we set up this business raised, I think we raised 30 grand between us to get it going, and then we're off and running. And our first clients was Chelsea, and then. We took on all the major clubs in the Premier League and the Football League and all sorts of other places we work with Premier league.com, and the ECB and the RFU, and we got there in four years, we got it to $7 million to another business, and then we sold it to sky. So I went back to Sky having sold them a business which was a very different experience. My first experience, fun ransky digital media, then for a couple of years in sales, and then moved to various other places, including a time at Omnicom running digital so I went agency side for a bit to the dark side, yeah,

Katie:

not dissimilar from where I am now.

Paul:

So I learned a lot about that was at the time Facebook was really coming through as a big platform. Mobile was beginning to come through as a big platform. So it's really interesting time to be there. And then I was head on to go and work for Apple, and ran Apple's first ad business in international very similar to the one I do now, actually, which is fun, that were lasted for about four years, then that business closed as they reset it for Apple Search answer is what it is now. Then I did a another startup for a couple of years, and Reese did that, which was a whole interesting group of founders and people, but I had to reset that business. Then I left there, and then I went to a company called seismic, which is an ad tech company, which then went into chapter 11 five weeks after I joined which obviously I had that five weeks I'd have to do quite a lot to me. So we then sold that business to Amazon. So I went to Amazon for a few years and ran their ad tech sales teams in various markets. And then I did a short stint in luxury fashion, working for farfetcher a bit, and then I ended up at Uber, wow. So that story, also, there's a couple of other companies I was involved in selling stuff. So I've done lots of, you know, interesting stuff. I'd have great, great it's been great fun. There's been some ups and downs inevitably in all of

Katie:

that. Yeah, and advertising has changed, yeah, I mean the change, you know, as we went to digital, I guess, possibly one of the biggest changes that I've certainly, you know, I I started my career like plucking ads for, yeah, I work for United advertising for exchange mark, which I used to like to call exchange of farts. And that was, I literally used to be sat. So I started in the, I actually started in the perk, because everyone used to come through the personal so it was like, you Joe blog selling this car, and you literally just would sit there, and you just have calls come through and type up their adverts, try and upgrade them to, you know, do you want it in bold? Like that was, that was the upside when we were selling and selling print, and how that evolved, even in the short time I was there, you're always probably there for three or four years. How that evolved in three or four years to be the digital base. And I remember even starting going, Oh, now we can sell ads online as well as in print. But the changes that you must have seen and gone through have been seismic.

Paul:

Yeah, yeah, there were. I mean, I remember when I first started at Sky. My job was to fill out a form which scheduled when the commercial spots were going to go out. And you fill out this form, and you take it over to this lady called Lynn, who ran the traffic team, who was all fearsome. I mean, if you got anything wrong, you're in deep trouble. And you'd hand it over, and then she'd say, Okay, come back in a couple of hours. And you come back and you get a print out of when it was gonna when the ads were gonna be scheduled. And then basically one centralized, relatively advanced video recorder at the time was the thing that was it, right? And then there was no real, I mean, ratings then, especially in cable networks, was really done once a quarter, once a year, they did a quarterly diary survey, which said, Did you watch this channel at this time? People just ticked a box. I mean, yeah, no Barb. Then at that stage, for for certainly, for satellite. So that was crazy. Then there was a digital came, and now, you know, I'm sitting here, and we're sitting ads into people's Uber app, and it's like, you know, it's a very, a very different world. But this, I think the one thing that's always true is good advertising is still good creativity generally, and good context to the user. I think some of that has been lost with the digital in the digital world, because I think we've got so we've almost got too much everywhere, yeah, well,

Katie:

the ability to change quickly, to personalize, etc, is brilliant, but also, can also go wrong Absolutely. So talk to me about just to frame it for our lovely listeners. Talk to me about what being, you know, the Head of International, yeah.

Paul:

So I joined Uber what in december 22 my task was, firstly to build the UK team, and now my role has expanded to more markets. And Uber advertising is a pretty new business within Uber, obviously. I mean, Uber is, you know, you know what Uber we do, a very operational business that delivers things to people, gets things to people, to places, so that that business. Sort of started back in 2020 But Uber advertising itself, as in the team I'm now in when he started in 2022 and I guess we're looking at it in three ways. I guess there's, firstly, what happens on the Uber Eats marketplace, or, you know, how happens there, in terms of, how do our restaurant partners get prominence within the search that you make, or whatever. So that's key, and that's a really important part of the engagement we have across the globe with multiple partners. Then the next area, that was our first area, and the next area is what we do with CPGs or fmcgs, depending on which side of the pond you come from, in terms of how they're engaging with our customers. Because, you know, you may go in on Uber Eats, and most people go into Uber Eats and don't know what they want to order. They just know they want to order something. Is it going to be convenience delivery? Is it going to be a pizza or whatever? And then within that, there's obviously a question of what goes into the basket. And if you're, you know, if you're an ice cream brand, you know, do you want to get someone to buy the ice but the ice cream in the basket as well as putting the main meal in there or whatever. So that's a big area for us. How do you capture that moment? Because I was talking to one of our CPGs recently, and they were saying, you know, if you look at on trade or in restaurant, they're probably getting 50% for each meal. They get 50% attachment to attachment of their particular product, but in a delivery environment, it can be lower than that, so obviously they want to get back up to that. So that's one area, and then the next one is what we do. And all of these things, all of these brands use. This is what we do in our Ryan's business, which is pretty unique, because we know where you're going. So you know if you're going to Taylor Swift. Is there an advertiser who's interested in capturing people to Taylor Swift, which we've had, right? So we know you're going to Wembley Stadium on the day that Taylor Swift's playing. Therefore we can, we can make that assumption. Or if you're going to an airport, or if you're going to anything, you know, we can make some, you know, going to a bar or you go into a restaurant, or you're going to, you've been picked up somewhere and going to another place. So there's a lot we can do with that. And so we've put in this thing called Journey ads, which is what we call it, which is essentially simple ad units that sit in your Uber app. They don't just, they don't interrupt the app at all. They don't suddenly take over the screen. They just there. And they evolve according to you, the way your app evolves, in terms of how, firstly, when you get your driver, and then the next one, the driver is on its way, and then when you're on the car. And we've seen great response to that, because it's a single advertiser per trip, so you're not being bombarded, as most of you who use Uber, I'm sure know is you tend to be looking at your screen making sure the drivers find the pickup point, all that type of stuff. So you got the attention. And what we've seen is great advertisers really understand this context play. So if you know that about this person, then give them some context with what you're saying in your message, and then it works. So we've built this business up. It's now a billion dollar business. Wow, so clever across all these surfaces. And, yeah, it's, and it's been, it's been a real ride, because building the team running with this very fast growth business has been, you know, something else. But yeah, we announced in July after our billion dollar run rate, and we haven't, you know, we've still got a long way to go. There's a lot more things we want to do, but our core principle is always, look, the consumers experience of Uber can't be interrupted by this. It's more about the consumer experience has to the ad experience and the consumer experience have to sit side by side in a complimentary way. Yeah, I think that's really important in this world where I think sometimes advertisers want to interrupt almost for the sake of trying to scream for attention. And you don't really need to do that. That's

Katie:

super interesting, because you can see how it might like in my head as, oh, wouldn't that be great? Like, I'm waiting for an Uber right? But you know it's going to be five minutes, 10 minutes you're near a Lola's cupcake. Go and get I mean, I'm just making up a campaign here. Yeah, then that could be damaging, because you might then miss your

Paul:

the ones that we get, the airport ones, is probably the best example we have. So brands like L'Oreal and various other brands who want you know that you're going to go to an airport, know that you're going to go through duty free. Therefore, here's the latest Amani fragrance, and here's a free gift through an add to Wallet feature that you can have when you get there. Nice. And that's where I think we see some really great engagement in terms of, you know, audiences. Audiences love that, because it's like, well, I'm getting a benefit from it, and it recognizes what I'm doing. And, you know, all those types of good things.

Katie:

I mean, that's where it gets incredibly brilliant, but also kind of scary, because you're like, oh yeah. I mean, we would do pretty much know, probably most of what's going on in my life in terms of where I'm traveling. Yeah, well, I'm eating which I actually, I know some people are quite funny about their data. I'm actually a huge fan of how do you guys I mean, obviously, in quite a short period of time, this has, you know, hugely grown, hugely evolved. I'm obviously often on this podcast, and just incredibly, in general, interested in technology. Is this proprietary tech that you guys are using? Are you use, like, how? Because you've got to have the data, but you've got to also be able to measure you, and then for you guys, you've then got to be able to be really clever, because you've got to serve the right answer, the right people, the right time, so the data's got to be right. But the technology, I guess that,

Paul:

yeah. I mean, I think if you look at a lot of retail me, I mean, we're sort of a bit of retail media and everything else, yeah, a lot of retail media uses a lot of third party systems. Yeah, we use very few customers are our own nice we do use Criteo for partnership with Criteo on what we call sponsored items, which is, you know, the first thing you see in a menu, that type of thing, yeah, but we don't that's the main thing. So we've been very careful to build what we think sits within our ecosystem. I guess because we're app based as well, it's important, because if you you know some some experiences with certainly locking a lot of ad tech businesses into your ecosystem can create quite a lot of disruption from a user perspective. So it comes back to we've got to have a great user experience. People don't want the Uber app not to get you a car quickly. It's important, or you want to get the food that you want to order quickly. So we so I think that's part of our success, in that we've done as much as we can in house, relatively, and then occasionally we will use third parties where needed. Yeah,

Katie:

and obviously, as well as creativity, the next thing that's super important, what's creativity? Sorry, I've gone to the thing that I think is important. That's all the thing that we're talking about, ability, health, Katie. So as well as the technology, the creativity is seriously next in line. So how do you guys come up with these super relevant, super creative campaigns that are going to capture people in the right moment, at the right time, without disturb, without disturbing, literally, their journey?

Paul:

Yeah, well, I think the way the ads work is that they're they're sort of striking display ads on that. This is on the right side. So they're very striking. We use video, and you can use video in them if you want to, but they just sit into the app like sort of in a natural way. It's not a it's not forced in them, but that sense, you just see the ad. You know, you won't see an ad every single time. So it's not, I mean, people's usage of Uber is above yours, obviously, but then people's usage of Uber is probably quite broad across a month, so they're not going to be bombarded ads in the way that they may be on a publisher website or whatever. So we've done video, we've done gamification, we've done add to wallet, which says a lot of variation, yeah, of what you might see, the creativity comes out. I think, firstly, strong use of color is really interesting. Because the Uber app is actually quite straightforward. It's very, you know, it's black and white, right? So therefore, having color on it makes it stand out really well. Some people have done, you know, nice, sequential messaging something. I mean, we just guide people according to what we see on the engagement, the engagement time. And this is the crazy thing on this ad product, is it's probably nine Well, it's averaging 90 to 100 seconds engagement time per ad. Wow, that's really high. And that's because, obviously, that's what the way people engage with it. And then the click rates are averaging two and a half to three and a half percent consistently. And we've not seen that drop normally with in all my experience across all media formats, the first time you set up for new format, someone goes great, and then it goes high click rates, and it goes down. But this one hasn't. So I think what we we seem to have got the balance right at the moment in terms of some nice visual imagery, some good storytelling. If people want to do that, good reasons to click, which is add to wallet or play a game and get a benefit, that type of thing, and use it's just understanding using that downtime which people, you know, they're waiting for their Uber, they're getting in their Uber, there's not time that they're necessarily dedicating to anything else, yeah,

Katie:

yeah. I think that's the you've got them in a time, yeah, especially when they're in it, because I'll often be sat in an Uber like, how long is it going to take me? What's the traffic? Like, we're constantly looking are they, you know, and as a woman, also sometimes, like, just, are we definitely going where I'm supposed to be going? Sadly, that I do. I do feel like I need to do that sometimes, not to, not necessarily, to any specific kind of driver, but you do. I think that's just a woman thing. So once you've captured their attention, what are you really seeing working right now? Like, what when it comes to, like, a standout cat, and I don't know if you're allowed to share this, like little case study, something that's that's really. It like gone. Just wow, that has suit delivered way more than we thought it would. I

Paul:

think interestingly, relative to what you guys do, we do a lot of B to B stuff, actually,

Katie:

really, yeah. Oh,

Paul:

that is interesting. Tell me about this. Because, then, you know, because you can geofence the City of London, yeah, or you can geofence people in on business accounts, or people, you know. So we do a lot of work with all sorts of people, from Accenture to others, in terms of targeting those audiences as they travel on business around a city. And we think that's a very important part of you know, because that that audience is difficult to engage with, but they are obviously, clearly using Uber as part of their day to day operation. So we do a lot of that. We've done a lot of stuff around airport and travel. That's a big area of growth. We've done some work with brands like Bacardi, where we've targeted people going to particular bars, serving particular brands. So we can do we've done a real range of things, from high volume awareness activations to very, very highly targeted event, you know, someone wants to do it, promoting a particular event that happens in London this week or that week, or happens in Toronto, there's an event in Toronto, or something that type of thing

Katie:

that would be Incredibly helpful for me, like, just thinking, when we do LA, we work at a lot. Sorry, I was going into bits that I'm interested. Yeah, of course, that's fine. Sorry, guys, sorry if you're not interested in there, so you're gonna have to listen anyway. Sales pitch continues. But yeah, the in the B to B, well, that is super because, yeah, I go to, I've just come back from a conference in Ibiza, but like, you know, to know who's going where, and to be able to, yeah, help plan their jet, because we host a lot of fringe events around large, you know, for instance, gosh, I mean one that's coming up, Web Summit, which is huge, which most people listening to this will know, like, it's great to understand who's there. Do you capture so in the sorry, again asking the questions that matter to do capture B to B data, as in, things like their job titles. We

Paul:

wouldn't do that, but we, we would. I mean, we're, we're very careful with data first, yes, have to be Yeah. But if someone's got a business account, we would recognize that, yes, okay, fine. Which is all, and also what type of car they take is interesting, yeah, sometimes, you know, because companies might dictate you can, you can take a business comfort, but you can't take this or whatever. So that's enough. And then also the locations that people are going in and out of, yeah, so in the case of Web Summit, actually, we're working on a campaign for this. At the moment, Web Summit in Portugal, we can target people coming to him from website,

Katie:

yeah, which is amazing, yeah. And you see it, and, you know, I've been to Web Summit, like, two or three years, and you can see all the advertising changes, even at Heathrow terminal, fire everything. Everything changes everywhere. Because everyone knows it's all this. You know that, God, I don't know how many people, how many people is this ridiculous? It's a large 80, 90,000 or something. And so many people. You know, every time you're listening to a conversation, someone's going to Web Summit, or it's the same when I get even this. You know, some of the smaller events that we do, you know, like the shop talk Europe, for instance. You know you can all the advertising changes. So it makes sense that, you know, and I guess I just hadn't gone there, and yes, they're thinking about Uber thing as well. But of course, it is, it

Paul:

is, it is. I mean, we did, we did a cap campaign for demexco, the big, uh, tech showing for one of the ad tech partners. So yeah, we do a lot, but it is a range, because just, I mean, there's we can, some people just want to do for general awareness, for an event, but some people want to, you know, just target a wide audience for whatever. Yeah. I mean, we do campaigns for, we have Uber pets. Yes, what's Uber pet? Uber pets is our cars for taking you and your pet to wherever. Yes, okay, cool. I need that because I've got two dogs. So we do a lot of targeted work around that audience, because obviously it clarifies that you're a pet owner. Yes, nice, and that's all we need to know. I mean, this is the thing with this data set, we don't need, we don't need a lot of data from anyone's personal data. We just need to know what your interest is determined by the actions you're taking. Yeah. So we've done a lot of work with that, with, you know, pet brands and pet insurance companies and that type of thing. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot we can do Uber Green's another one. We do a lot of work with Uber green, because lots of people who obviously physically choose Uber green, which in London is a purely electric suggest a greater, perhaps a greater, interest in climate change or sustainable energy or whatever else. And we've done a lot of work with that as well. So well. So there's a lot. Yeah, the great thing is, it's sort of, you can segment things very easily based on simple behavior points.

Katie:

Yeah, I love that. I find it so interesting. It literally like I could geek out on data. I always joke about

Paul:

the fact that, you know, some things like. Particularly for people in the advertising industry, you know, sober house and pickups and drop offs there, we can do that

Katie:

later. Guys contract actually going to the Groucho tonight. Okay, so two big questions that I want to kind of end with. First one, what's next for Uber advertising.

Paul:

Well, we're growing markets. So we we've opened up a lot more markets. So I think we're in 34 markets globally now. So we are a global platform in that sense. So I think that's been and that's part of the remit I've now got in terms of looking, looking where else we're going to go to so I think the growth will continue. I think the one thing we've got to work through is, in one way, we've got a brand business, the other way, we've got a performance business. And how do you join those two together? For some brands, you know, does, and some brands are starting to do this now as well. And we think that that's a very big thing. Because I think with a lot of, how would I say a lot of retail media businesses, they tend their main focus is on pure ROAs and, you know, conversion, which is fine, but the brand element is much harder to produce because, you know, the way people use their site, or whatever brand doesn't have it, but we obviously have this brand thing in the right side, so we can combine that. And I think that's our next area of working out how that works, and then looking at that, and then I think the other thing is, for us, is attention. I mean, it's a bit of a buzzword at the moment. In advertising, everyone goes on about attention is hasn't been it's been a buzzword for a long time. To be fair, people need attention, otherwise they're point having advertising. But I think particularly in digital, there's been this thing about the worries, about the fact that people aren't really seeing the ads. So I think we have a very unique proposition and attention, and we're just working through what that means to our consumers, and therefore what to what that how that takes us forward? Yeah,

Katie:

I think that's what's interesting, is you're back in the day, when I worked in advertising and it was mainly print, it was really hard to prove exactly or to give any stats or data back to your client to show the success or the click through or anything, because you were literally just hoping that they were seeing it and going like you. We just couldn't track it, but we totally can now, and especially when you are a fully digital product, obviously, with real life cars, which are also becoming digital as well. Yes, of course, Teslas, so I think that's a super interesting space. And my next question was going to be, what do you see in general, for the future of advertising? Oh,

Paul:

well, we have to cover AI, because you can't have a conversation with the future without a eyes in there not got to AI. We haven't got we've done really well. They haven't done AI yet. I mean, I think, I think there's a lot of things going there's a lot of things all happening at the same time, there is growth in I think advertisers are more and more increasingly, or increasingly concerned with understanding audiences. Hence first party data becomes more valuable, which has sort of been a trend for a while, but it was the big thing about digital at one stage, was we have this thing called cookies that we can track people everywhere, which is like whatever. Now, I think if you see, certainly the investments that you know, the volume so Amazon's our business, or anything else, first party data is really important, and that's an AI will just enable that to happen easier, but that's just one of those things. So I think that's one thing's going to happen. I think, I think AI can will make some pretty disruptive things, particularly to the agency world, in terms of, you know, what processes and things they do for buying and planning and all that type of stuff. The question I always question, having worked an agency, and you run an agency, is how much, certainly the big agencies need to invest to get there, because they've always struggled a little bit to do the investment because, because their margin is so tight, yeah,

Katie:

yeah, it's tough being an agency world, questioning my life decisions. I

Paul:

mean, I think yours is different. I mean, yours is different. But I think the big agencies are rely on big volume transactions in media. Yes, they probably want to use AI, but they, how are they going to do it? I don't know what they what's the investment level? So I think the first party thing, the disruption, in terms of roles, disruptions, to some degree in creativity, but I'm never sure how much that is hype versus reality. Yeah, because I still think human intuition is something very difficult to replicate. And yes, you can use AI to once you've created a great idea, then you can use AI to do more versions of it. But are you really going to use it to create the

Katie:

idea? No, and I think that's where people go wrong. Is going to AI to create the idea. It's just going to give you a generic idea that he's it's given. He's given. I was going to call it a man, then it's definitely a she can't be that intelligent and not be a woman. But I think there. There's an interesting time where you know, in terms of how businesses adopt, utilize and instruct AI, like someone actually said on this podcast, Charlie Bell from contempfa, we'll have to name him, Master AI, or it will master you. And I think now is the time like we've all got got to understand how our businesses can use it, how we should use it, you know, things like, Have you got an AI policy like that becoming a thing like, you've got to have an AI policy as a business to understand how you can use it. And I think again, when it comes to advertising, you know, AI is it's going to influence what we see, what we absolutely I mean, it is in, in simple terms, it is personalization, right? But actually, you know, AI and advertising potentially goes very, very deep.

Paul:

Yes, it does. And it changes things like search and all sorts of things that, in ways we probably haven't anticipated yet, yeah, but, I mean, but I think, but that's going to be, I mean, to some degree the scale thing favors the big players in the in the market anyway? Yeah, certainly from a median perspective. So the Googles and Amazons and people of this world will be probably fine in this world because they've got enough scale of users. But for others, it will be, yeah, could be quite disruptive. But I'm always positive about these things. I think there's there's there's, there's always a writ, there's risks and stuff that we'll discover and have to deal with. But then there's also positive things, and then there'll probably be new jobs that surround it, that come out of it, like they did with the digital wave. I mean, everyone said the conversation we're having about AI were very similar when we had the internet. Yeah, 100% the internet's going to destroy everything. Yeah, you know, no one's gonna have any jobs. Don't think humankind quite works that way, but maybe I'm, you know, I think it will change some jobs and remove some jobs. Of course it will, but that doesn't mean so they won't be creative and creation new jobs in other areas. Yeah,

Katie:

exactly. It's gonna. It's just gonna change things. Yeah, it probably will. We will lose some jobs in our place. We will naturally, but it's gonna create new areas of opportunity. I said only two questions. I have one last question, because I felt like I can't not ask you this. So we've both grown up in advertising sales. I think I've grown up, actually, I definitely haven't. I really have not grown up, but we've both spent a lot of our careers in ad sales, and I guess in sales in general. I'm also interested, just as a you know, business owner and someone who's interested in sales, how do you guys, you know, from a B to B point of view, how do you guys attract your leads and develop your sales? What's your what's your lead generation? Lead

Paul:

generated sales process. I mean, I think when we first started, it was me basically on my own, going out doing deals and use my network and all that type of stuff. And then classic case of proof points. Get a couple of great campaigns, which we did, got those showed to show people, and then move from there, and then sort of expand from that with more case studies and keep going. I think for us, we always have to be we have to be out there a lot, because I think we, we don't fall into an easy bucket. Sometimes, for some people, this is particularly on the journey as product is quite a unusual product. It doesn't really exist in many markets outside of what Uber does we there are some other other people doing the areas of this type of stuff. So it's we are pushing a new a new concept. So that takes a bit more time from a sales perspective, bit of reassurance, you know, particularly with agencies, because the first thing they'll say, Well, does it do this? This and this? Because this is what we expect everything to do. And you're like, well, it does some of that, but it doesn't do all of that, but so there's a bit of reassurance that has to happen as well. But so far so good. I mean, the team have done an amazing job to build, build out some amazing brands, doing some really cool stuff very quickly. Because I think people see, they can see when you see their reaction to it. I've been in sales a long time, when you see people's reaction to it, you go, that doesn't happen very often, yeah? Because people go, I get it, and then they start, as you were saying, geeking out, being on you know, how could we make that work? Yeah. So I think that's been a great, a great element for this. And the other thing is, we've got the one thing, the wonderful thing we've got over is a big commitment from our senior management about ads as well. So Dara, our CEO, talks about it, and has obviously invested heavily into the into the thing. So we've got a confidence that comes with from that, that helps us in our sales process and publicly being able to talk about it, which not a lot of big tech type companies like us tend to be. They're not so much out there. I don't think they tend to be a little bit more PR controlled. And, yeah, we're allowed to say this only today. That's it. And you're like, Okay, well, that's not very genuine,

Katie:

yeah, but it's very. Interesting, because there's clearly two markets as well that you guys, you're going direct to consumer, well, direct brand, not direct, direct to consumer, but direct to brand. And then also, I'm guessing that you also sell through agencies. We do sell through agencies, yeah, in what I would think of, in the way that, yeah. So we

Paul:

do, yeah. We do both. And, you know, we have a range of and we even within agencies. We're working with B to B brands. We're working with, you know, London theater as buying inventory on us at the moment, wow. Because obviously it makes sense, if you've got tourists in London who are going around on Ubers, then you may want to promote

Katie:

your show. Yeah, yeah. It just makes sense when you think about and that, and that's what I think you guys have got in your favor. Like, you know, I often talk about the kind of three stages of the kind of buying consideration journey. As you go, first, they know that they have a problem, or, you know, they want to attract more customers, or whatever it might be, but what they're not aware is of your solution that can help them solve that problem. So really, that's your your job, and probably once they're there. And you can, because we're all so used to using Uber we can, we can envisage how it would help us. It would be so it's just a case for you guys. It's just that awareness piece that here, you know, we can help you solve that problem in a really unique, different way. No, I agree that we can also track and prove works, and you know, you can test, and if it doesn't work. Off you go, but, yeah, of course it's gonna work. But

Paul:

you also on the basis that there isn't any competition in that, right? Yeah, it's just you, you, you're the advertiser for that journey, yeah,

Katie:

and that's it. Yeah, black cabs can't compete with you on that Paul. Thank you so much. It's been incredible to well, just I've now, like, fully delved into opportunities over there's probably going to be lots of things I sidetrack and talk, yeah, big thank you for joining. Thank you for having me. It's

Paul:

been great fun to be here.

Katie:

Thank you. Bye.