Marketing Without Marketers? Julius Körfgen on Autonomous AI, Growth, and the End of the Marketing Stack

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What happens when AI stops assisting marketers—and starts becoming the marketing team?

In this episode of Signal & Noise, Brett House and Rio Longacre sit down with Julius Körfgen, Co-Founder

& CEO of Uplane, to explore how autonomous AI is transforming modern marketing.

After building one of Europe's fastest-growing climate tech companies, moving to Silicon Valley, joining Y Combinator, and founding Uplane, Julius is helping enterprise brands rethink how marketing gets done. Rather than automating individual tasks, Uplane is building an AI-native platform that combines strategy, creative, media buying, optimization, and analytics into one continuous learning system.

Together they discuss:

• Why nearly half of digital advertising spend is still wasted

• How autonomous AI agents could reshape marketing operations

• The future of media buying, creative optimization, and campaign management

• Why agencies and marketing teams must evolve in an AI-first world

• Why storytelling and brand strategy become even more valuable as AI automates execution

  
  

Whether you're a CMO, founder, marketer, or AI builder, this conversation offers a glimpse into what marketing may look like when AI moves beyond copilots and begins running entire workflows.

Watch the full episode and join the conversation.

🔑 What We Cover💡 Key Takeaways🎯 Why This Episode Matters Read the full transcript below.

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Brett (00:06.223)

Hey everybody, welcome back to Signal and Noise. This is Brett House, joined by my co-host Rio Longacre. And today's guest is Julius Korfkin, co-founder of Uplane. Uplane, which I called Uplane. It's Uplane with a U. and I got his name right. Despite the Umblot, I got the name right, but I screwed up the name of the company. so Uplane, Julius is a is a co founder and CEO of the company.

Rio (00:12.128)

Hey there.

Rio (00:18.936)

Uplane.

Julius (00:19.178)

A flame. Exactly.

Rio (00:22.69)

You got his name right, but you messed up the company name, Brett.

Brett (00:34.477)

Right, it's an AI startup for those that don't know, building what it describes as a fully autonomous marketing engine, which I assume is for B2B purposes, not B2C purposes. Is that right, Julius? Correct. I w I wanted to make sure, because marketing automation platform sort of is the giveaway. and and prior to finding f founding a plane.

Julius (00:46.37)

Correct, correct.

Brett (00:54.867)

you led growth initiatives at NPOW, which for those that don't know is one of Germany's fastest growing climate technology companies. That must have been super interesting. So we'll probably dig a little into that, where you helped build an internal lead generation platform and became a major driver of newer customer acquisition. So you've been on the B2B marketing automation kick, right? And that Martech stacked at Lisbine, which I've had you know, t de decades of experience in as well. So this is certainly gonna be a super, super interesting conversation.

Rio (01:19.862)

Yeah, both of us have Julia J Julia, so this will be good for us.

Brett (01:22.975)

And you're located in San Francisco, which the weather there is a lot nicer than it is in here, here in New York where the sky is orange right now. Yeah, we're getting remember the fires that you had a couple of years back? We have the Canadian wildfires, which are there are about a hundred of them right now.

Julius (01:23.117)

Cool.

Julius (01:27.928)

Sometimes sometimes we have good weather, exactly.

Rio (01:32.472)

Well sp

Rio (01:37.098)

Well well, Brett, it's been it's been a hundred degrees in Denver this entire week, so it's kinda miserable. So I we're both jealous of your weather in San Francisco, Julius.

Brett (01:40.547)

Yeah, so it's it's it's Yeah, hot, humid, and smoky. It's it's a bit it's a bit apocalyptic out there. It's actually hard to breathe a little bit outside. but but so you relocated to to San Francisco after leaving in pal, you joined Y Combinator, which is awesome. We should certainly talk about that, and quickly decided to build a plane a plane, it into one of the fastest AI startups in the in the kind of marketing automation space, right? You surpassed one million in ARR within six months.

Julius (01:41.371)

huh.

Julius (02:02.968)

Halfway.

Brett (02:10.242)

That's awesome. I can't say my company's quite there, but we're we're almost halfway there. and and that's not Signal of Noise. That's my my other company, which is high signals. we and you raised you just recently raised four point five million in i as a seed round, right? From Y Combinator, Play Ventures, 20 VC, Rebel Fund, and Multimodal Ventures, if I get all that right. Right? So I've got this and and some of your customers include Deut Deutsche Bank, right? And Douglas. So you guys have gotten some big, you know, that's the

Rio (02:12.215)

It's fast, yeah.

Julius (02:18.327)

Ha ha.

Julius (02:28.674)

Correct. Yes, correct, correct.

Julius (02:35.948)

Yes, yes.

Brett (02:39.724)

The crossing the chasm, right? When you go from SMB and mid market support to actual enterprise companies, which is a tough chasm to cross, right? Because you don't always have the credibility. Yeah. Mul multi-threaded through very complex organizations. They don't know who the hell you are. I'm sure so we'll we'll we'll certainly talk about that. You don't have the case studies to back up and validate what you've done. So that's certainly an interesting cause I cause we love to talk to founders on the show. So welcome to the show.

Rio (02:50.261)

It's a totally different sales motion, much harder, much longer. Yeah, different different things you need to do. Yep.

Brett (03:09.486)

I know you've been a big advocate of AI out there kind of in the public sphere on LinkedIn of how how it's not just making marketers more productive. it's kind of fundamentally fundamentally changing how marketing organizations work, right? I think you've I I think I've seen a lot of those themes as a common thread through what you're doing, not only in your company, but just in your voice in in you know in on LinkedIn and other and other places. But thank you for coming on the show and welcome and and tell us a little about yourself and did I get anything wrong about your background?

Julius (03:38.2)

Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. I think you did a fantastic job of introducing what what we're doing. Yeah, so I'm Julius, born and raised in Germany, was as you said marketing director at one of Europe's fastest growing D2C companies. Actually, like we sold solar systems to private household households. And I mean I've been in marketing my entire life. I started the first

Online marketing business when I was 17 years old. We sold t-shirts on Instagram. And this is how I also got accidentally into into the founding space. I did that with with my best friend back in the days. And I mean it was it it was accidentally actually. Like we started to design t-shirts for for my friends and and ourselves, and then we had one t-shirt that actually

Brett (04:16.365)

Yeah.

It started early. It started really early.

Julius (04:31.5)

went quite viral. it had it had a huge print on the back. It's it's it's pretty controversial. It said remove before sex and and this and this and yes. Yes, yes. No it's in we we had it in English. And close to Frankfurt. I I come from a small town close to Frankfurt.

Brett (04:42.222)

That's that's terrific. I'm like this is the best way to start a podcast, right? In German. This is back at right in your and we're and we're

Rio (04:47.373)

Or n or is or is it English? Was it English or German? Or both?

Brett (04:53.506)

you had in English. And where in Germany did you live? Just out of curiosity. to close to Frankfurt, yep. Yep. Wow. And so so your high school classmates started wearing this shirt? my gosh.

Julius (05:00.74)

And

Yes. Exactly. So so this is this is how everything started actually and and then we had to produce lots of t shirts, build an online shop, we got investment in the company and this is how how actually everything started like for myself and Yeah like popped, yes, yes. And

Brett (05:20.054)

From one meme, remove before sex. Like that that was your meme. That is a good one. Wow. Were you were you active on social media and was this something that you think just happened organically? Like, hey, we have a good idea, we're gonna kinda pr we're gonna commercialize this thing in a in the form of a t-shirt. Right? Or were you s super involved in social media and you kind of were into the meme and the right?

Rio (05:24.237)

Well if it's a good one, right? Yeah. That's funny.

Julius (05:35.244)

Yeah, I mean I mean this was back

Julius (05:43.477)

Yeah, I was I was a lot on social media, but it's something that that also was organically, right? People when they wore it, they posted it themselves on social media. back then influencers weren't such a big thing, but we had some influencers wearing it as well, and then it gets emotion. So this this is how everything started and how how I personally got into like marketing and all of that.

Brett (05:57.313)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Julius (06:06.792)

And yes, as you mentioned, most recently worked at nPal, was fantastic time, company was growing at an insane speed. And yeah, I was lucky to join their marketing team where where yeah, as you said, I was tasked to build completely new platforms. So it was basically a new brand that sat next to the core brand, like a lead platform where we generated leads that then the sellers could call. And

Rio (06:34.753)

And they were a B to B company marketing to businesses, correct Julius?

Julius (06:37.716)

no we were marketing actually to consumers here. So this was exactly so we were selling solar systems to private households. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So and with the entire thing of sustainability going on, this was like a huge boom. We were two times fastest growing energy company in Europe and I think the company scaled to unicorn in like five years. So it's it's been a

Rio (06:40.581)

it's consumers, okay.

Brett (06:45.962)

Like solar panels for roofs and other solar related products, I'm assuming, yeah.

Brett (07:05.164)

Yeah. And so now did did this now let me ask you this, did this solar power power air conditioning? Because I know that's hard to find in Germany.

Julius (07:08.512)

Yes.

Julius (07:13.654)

Yes, I think I think they're extending their like like air conditioning is a is a crazy thing. Like right now I think we had the hottest days in Germany ever measured, like one week or two weeks ago. And yes, right? And no one

Brett (07:26.05)

you're seeing that everywhere. Right? You're seeing it in France. We

Rio (07:28.769)

Yeah, well we were in France, like for for Cannes Lion, it was the hottest rec recor ever recorded temperature for France. Yeah.

Julius (07:30.968)

And no one has and no one has ACs in Germany, right? It's a it's a funny thing.

Brett (07:35.33)

Forty five in one town it was forty five degrees Celsius. Which for those non metric people on the phone, yeah, it's like one ten. And then if you add a little humidity on top of that, right? It's yeah. So yeah, so so it's sorry, I I I didn't mean I I I just think it's kinda funny because that is a raging debate right now. Why does Europe not have air conditioning?

Julius (07:38.592)

Yes, yes.

Rio (07:40.365)

It's like one ten or something like that, right? Yeah.

Julius (07:44.854)

Yes, exactly.

Julius (07:49.438)

Ha ha

Yes.

Rio (07:54.744)

Well well it must have been but Julius it must have been really challenging in Germany with the data privacy laws that are quite strict to actually do B to C marketing. So that's that's interesting. I don't know if we can we have time to dig into that at all, but I'd like to hear about that. Also too, one thing I've noticed I've I've run into a bunch of German founders here who have really cool stories who and I think it's not surprising they come here because if you want to raise money, it's much easier here with all the you the the amount of VC here relative to anywhere else in the world is it's it's a big discrepancy.

Julius (07:54.879)

It's funny. It's really fun.

Rio (08:22.519)

But also because of like the environment here I think is a little more founder friendly too. I don't know. I don't know if you can comment on that at all.

Julius (08:26.856)

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I I I agree completely. But I mean when you come from from Europe, you you see it in a in a different way. You don't think you're you're on hard mode in Europe, but you think if you go to the US it's more on easy mode and Europe is like the normal default. So I mean I grew up with all those laws and regulations and I got into marketing with this. So it wasn't like, this is crazy, but this it was more like okay, this is the world

How it's how it is, and then you like when you come to the US, you see like, okay, it can be can be way way easier. I mean like the entire setup of the company is easier. Now obviously, we like we we started the company in in Germany, and we have like a large client base in Europe that grew organically like through our network. Our first clients were from Germany as well. So

Brett (09:02.475)

Yeah. It's a

Rio (09:03.511)

So it was easier?

Julius (09:24.054)

When we founded the company, actually we we founded it in the US. So it's a US company and we have contracts from the US entity to German companies and there we have to set up a bunch of stuff. But yeah, and I mean we also serve German enterprises, so that's even more true.

Brett (09:39.595)

Yeah. Yeah, but but incorporation I'm assuming you're incorporated in Delaware. Yeah, and and so so the incorporation and I think that's your point, Rio, is that is that some of the regulatory stuff around actually forming companies, and if you compare all the industrialized nations of the world, right?

Julius (09:44.13)

Correct.

Rio (09:53.592)

But Brett, even beyond that, but Brett, even beyond that, like registering a company's easier, but raising money's easier here. Marketing's easier here 'cause of data privacy laws. We have some but they're not as stringent, right? So it's so it's it's generally an easier an easy yeah.

Brett (09:59.009)

Yep. Yep.

Yeah, you've got the V C P E financial services system that's built around encouraging new new company startups. Yeah.

Julius (10:11.094)

Yeah, totally, totally.

Rio (10:11.735)

So but but Julius, we wanted to, I mean, that's I think that's those are interesting topics, so I'm sure we could probably spend a lot on that, but we're really keen to get you on here because what your company is trying to do is it it's a topic that's super interesting. And it's a topic, frankly, we've written and spoken about a lot here, about how AI is changing the way people actually do marketing, the way they spend their hours in a day, the way they sp log into platforms, the way they jump across platforms, the pivoting, the swiveling, all that stuff. So that is

The thesis is has always been the last couple of years that this is going to be changed in a meaningful way because of AI. you think about it, like we've been using software marketing, Brett. I mean, both of us have been doing this about twenty five years, right? But it's from the start it was learning d l yeah, learning this tool, learning that tool, learn you know, you learn a marketing automation tool, you learn an analytics tool, you learn the CRM, and you have to learn these different tools and then you're you're constantly ch jumping back and forth. But you know, more dashboards, more automation, more this, more that. It's

Brett (10:55.488)

We're aging ourselves.

Julius (10:57.194)

Yeah.

Rio (11:11.487)

It's been, I mean, that's really and everything focused on the UI. That's been the you know the the way of working in in marketing, the way working in SaaS, and in ad tech too to a large extent too. People people at agencies are spending their time some platforms. So in theory, AI is starting to change all of this, and it really raises some uncomfortable questions for marketers and for those in the SaaS business. If I if AI can build work, build and run workflows, create ads, spin up landing pages, you look at tools like Lovable, they do it really well.

Julius (11:38.518)

Yes.

Rio (11:38.539)

If it can even go in some decisioning, deciding where you're spending your budgets, how you're optimizing your campaigns, what does the marketer become? What does the marketer do? And how does it change marketing? So I so that's really the topic we are keen to dig in with you today.

Julius (11:51.392)

Yes, amazing. I think I think there are hundreds of points we we can we can dig into.

Brett (11:57.77)

Yeah. no, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so cause you guys call yourself just just to to kind of seed the question, right? Is full you you got you you it's called the full funnel AI marketing automation platform. I've I've certainly worked a ton with the Marketos and the HubSpot's and the eloquas of the world, right? And the integrations with CRM, like like s like Salesforce, right? And but you had a line that I thought was interesting is that it you it it kind of

Julius (12:08.855)

Yes.

Julius (12:18.2)

Exactly.

Brett (12:23.455)

captures this in a really simple, easy way is AI should run campaigns so that marketers can run marketing. Right? So so like like talk about your sort of the thesis, kind of the mission statement. Yeah.

Rio (12:34.945)

Yeah, why'd you build a company?

Julius (12:36.758)

Yes. So I think the biggest problem in marketing if we if we take a step back is that actually like there are different estimates, but basically half of the world's ad spend is wasted on ads that don't perform. And this is this is the biggest problem. So companies run so many ads, like whether it be billboards or in Meta, TikTok, Google, wherever, they just don't bring any returns. This is the biggest issue. And

How this issue comes up is because no one really knows what are the ads that actually have a positive return on ad spend and what are the ones that don't have it. And this is the biggest issue in marketing. And we build uplane exactly around this entire issue.

I mean, the way to find out which ads are actually the ones that are the top performers, right? It's typically a small fraction, like 5% of all ads that people test online, especially, are the ones that actually bring bring direct results and that run super profitably. and finding those requires testing and iterating, right? So this is what needs to be done, and this is what marketing agencies do, what performance marketing teams do, and

The main bottleneck to do this more efficient and to do this faster is basically the human in the loop, right? So it's

The human that has to analyze, like go through meta campaigns, read out like what are the ads that are performing. They have to click into each ad and see, like, okay, which headline is the one that's working, what's the image here? They have to think like, okay, what made this ad work better than the other one? Then they go back to their design team or campaign planners, right? They write the next campaign brief, they send it to the agency or they send it to their design team. They take a week to build it. Then they send it to the campaign management team. And with the clients that we work at, this

Brett (14:04.8)

Yeah.

Julius (14:29.306)

Entire process to run through once takes sometimes three to four months, right? From one feedback that they got from the market directly, what ads are working, to the next campaign brief. And during this entire time span, ad ad spend is wasted on ads that don't work basically. And this is exactly where we're we're like going in fully, and we say like this loop shouldn't take months, but it should take

Rio (14:36.173)

Yeah, it's not surprising.

Julius (14:58.988)

Hours or days. And that's why our hypothesis is that we need to automate everything that basically is done by a human at more than one time. Right? So if like an alignment in an ad is done multiple times, AI has to do it. If like an analytics process is done more than one time, AI has to do it. And if like a campaign writing process or like ideation process, which humans do every single day is done more than one time, AI has to do it.

Brett (15:27.851)

Yeah.

Julius (15:28.384)

can use AI to automate the entire operations, the marketing operations, run through this flywheel and this this loop much, much faster, and actually spend way less on ads that don't work.

Brett (15:40.236)

Yeah, it's g it's it's it's a faster sort of life cycle between sort of data capture, insight development, we'll call it, and actual activation, like re responding, pivoting, changing, whether it's your creative or budget allocation. It's interesting because that's a very

Rio (15:54.55)

Well y ever but Brett, every part of that process takes forever, right? Like so there's there's the actu even in in a regulated indust industry especially or in a big ent in an enterprise, like even like the process of creating the brief, work several rounds to get the brief nailed, right? Work in a creative, several rounds to get that approved. Then you have to load it up in your platforms, and you have to get the campaigns ready, then you have to test them. I mean, that can take weeks. I there were some pharmaceutical companies I worked with where just swapping in new creative for like one or two variants could take

Brett (15:58.358)

Yeah.

Brett (16:06.539)

Yeah.

Julius (16:07.2)

Exactly.

Julius (16:20.621)

Well.

Rio (16:24.087)

four to six weeks minimum and that forget about, you know, the loop between the results, the analysis of the results and tying those back into optimization. So yeah, that's it's always been a big issue.

Brett (16:33.568)

Yeah, and it sounds it seems like a solve for that problem was like you know, before automation, before AI was doing what it's doing now, was to just throw bodies at it, right? It was an FTE sort of play, whether it's on the agency side or within within a B to B company, you have these large teams, and it's interesting, we had a we had a really good conversation. Or workflow management.

Rio (16:51.615)

Or or workflow management tools, like large teams plus like you give them workfront or some like you know, work management tool that actually sets automates it makes it a little better, right? You're at least having checkpoints and you you can you monitor your approvals and you can assign things, but it's still a clunky process.

Brett (17:06.506)

Yeah, yeah. And it's and it sounds like Julius, tell me tell this. It sounds like you guys are working on improving that whole process from a workflow management in a and a streamlining of of of of processes so that you can get quicker to delivering something. But you're but you're a little are you a little less involved, arguably, on the B2B side with the the performance attribution analytics aspect aligned to the ad being served? Because that sounds to me a little bit more like a B2C use case versus a B2B use case.

Julius (17:12.205)

Yeah.

Julius (17:34.242)

Yeah, so we sell our solution B to B, but our clients are B to C mo mainly, right? I mean there are a few that run LinkedIn ads or that run meta ads. Typically if they target like SMEs, like small shops, they are very successful at running meta. But our clients are anyone who who can do online marketing basically, right? LinkedIn ads, Google Ads. We also have B to B clients actually. Yeah.

Brett (17:40.362)

Yeah.

Brett (17:54.709)

Yeah.

Brett (17:58.273)

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so the so the use cases are not specifically B2B. That's that was it they're actually they can be B2B B2C use cases. So we we had it now now tell this, so like from some of your clients that you're talking with, are they are they kind of in this situation or or this reality now where they're debating efficiencies and and how they improve the efficiencies of their team? Like we had an interesting conversation with Alina Vandenberg, I gotta get her name right, who's the Chili Piper CEO. she's originally Romanian, so

Julius (18:05.367)

Exactly.

Brett (18:28.236)

Originally European, she moved to New York City and did not, and so Alina, if you're listening to this, we do want to have you on a full pod because we lost audio at Cannes. So we actually, it was the one episode of the 40 that we interviewed that we did not capture audio, which and it was a terrific interview. But she had a team for Chili Piper, of 22 marketers, and she was under the gun of the PE backers and her board, right? It was kind of that survival zero-to-one mode, right? I I don't know why she had 22 people, but point is

she had she w she went in and she interrogated like kind of what they were doing on a day-to-day basis. And being a full stack developer, she she leaned in and she said, you know, there's a list of like to-do lists to your point, Rio, about all of the sort of manual tasks from media planning and brief building to creative variation, all this stuff that much of it, much of which could be automated.

And so she went in and she actually reduced she used her own tech, because she's a full stack developer, to basically reduce her team from twenty-two to two.

Which is has a h tremendous human cost, right, if you think about it. And then eventually it started to build back up, but it was just kind of a use case in like how do you actually make your team what what actually can we automate? Like how much of this is actually necessary people work and how much value is it really adding? And she's saying, Well, you know, twenty out of twenty four instances are are not as valuable as they could be, you know, for our argument. Is that what you're seeing you know, is like a debate that some of your clients are having?

Julius (19:58.241)

I mean, like from the marketing organizations the way they exist today, or like some are transforming already, but basically today, they need to transform tremendously. And I think the jobs that are done today will be automated.

A lot, right? Most marketers like they started their career because they want to bring their crazy ideas to life. And the reality is they just run operations all day, right? They design, they go through messy sheets, they build something, but they don't actually bring their ideas to life or ideate. And I think the the marketing organizations of the future.

Brett (20:22.827)

Yeah.

Julius (20:33.356)

They will not be operators anymore, right? AI can do all of that. As I said, right? Anything that a human does more than once, AI should do. And there will come new roles, right? I think partnerships will be way more important, right? That you have maybe more partnership managers, or you have like an entire brand team that thinks about how do we tell the story of the brand, that gives guardrails and guidelines to the AI and to the operative AI system.

And there will be there will be more roles that are more into brand, more into creative, more into storytelling, and all the things that have to be done the first time, right? So this is where I see the the human marketer. And obviously that's a it's a big shift from what they are doing today. But if we actually think, those are the exact reasons why people started to go into marketing, and I think it will market make marketers actually way more happy. That's that's my take on it.

Rio (21:30.808)

Yeah. Well it's interesting you look at marketing. I mean I think the rule of thumb is around fifteen percent of overall marketing budgets go to op just marketing ops, right? which is significant, right? And then when you add in like the the the salaries for ops that that balloons quite a bit. I think it's around a quarter of all marketing spend when you when you cut it up go goes to that. So it's a lot. So there's p huge potential savings.

Who are you selling your out of curiosity, who are you selling your product to? Are would this would the person buying this be a marketing ops person? Would it be a CMO? Or would it be someone in the media side who wants to automate some of these things and maybe move some of those tests over from marketing ops to more media ops? Like who's who's buying this? Who's the customer? Or does it depend?

Julius (22:10.456)

It's typically a quite high buy-in. So we sell to CEOs, CMOs, or sometimes if they have a performance marketing team, it's head of performance marketing or mark performance marketing VP, but it it comes from a from a quite high level.

Rio (22:16.173)

CFO is probably too.

Julius (22:28.386)

I think the reason for this being is that it's actually a platform that applies to the entire marketing team immediately, right? I think what's special about us and where we're unique is that we decided not to build a point solution. right? We're not another AI ad maker, but we're actually filling like the gaps, we're bridging the silos between like the different teams, right? The thing that humans, human operators are doing today. And this is why, like especially with enterprises, we

Brett (22:44.021)

Yeah.

Julius (22:58.33)

We have, right, I mean there's so many things we need to do. We need to speak like to the managers. How how does the marketing team look tomorrow? How do we guide this transition? How do we manage this entire transition? And this is why we need quite high buy-in with those enterprises.

Brett (23:16.595)

Yeah, what I read was you're targeting companies that spend about a hundred K or more in digital marketing. Is that is that an accurate number? That that that cut you're targeting companies that spend a hundred thousand dollars or more in media spent. Is that is that was that is that correct?

Julius (23:23.426)

Sorry, did we spend?

Julius (23:28.982)

Yes, exactly. Like that's correct, yes. But I mean a hundred K is like enterprises spent yeah, I it shouldn't it shouldn't shouldn't sound like this, right? I mean it's a lot of money, but the enterprise that we work with they spend a hundred million and more, right? So exactly.

Brett (23:35.495)

Not much. Yeah.

Brett (23:46.634)

Yeah. Yeah. But there's a floor where it's it's large enough for for automation to matter. And so can you tell us

ha like how like to describe sort of the not not not to shield the the platform but just to understand when you say marketing automation I almost automatically think of your classic B2B marketing automation platforms like the ones that I mentioned in the intro the eloquas Hobspot Marketos right and and yeah and a lot of those bring on some some CRM capabilities but a lot of it's about audience segmentation analytics so you understand w how your audiences are interacting with various forms of of

Julius (24:06.552)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rio (24:07.575)

HubSpot, Marketo, et cetera. Yeah. Maybe work front or things like that.

Brett (24:24.321)

communication, email marketing. Some of them might plug into other stacks for other types of advertising, like DB360 for display or or retargeting. So how how do you guys characterize yourself and and why did you choose that category marketing animation? Was that just more of a descriptive term or is that really what you're doing?

Julius (24:39.724)

Yeah. Yes. it's I think it's it's

We're like not building workflows that are being executed, or we don't have humans in the loop that need to w set up every workflow. We're working heavily with AI here, of course. And when marketing, I I think marketing will have like a huge transition, right? I think the entire campaign thinking that we have today, right, where marketers work based on a calendar,

Brett (25:09.503)

Yeah.

Julius (25:10.85)

will not prolong much longer because we need to shift to a way where where we actually go intent based, right? So we see consumer behavior, we see consumer engagement, right? Those can be clicks on the website, click on an email, they added something to their cart, they abandoned the cart, whatever, right? These are signals that marketers need to react to and that also push advertising like meta ads, Google ads, TikTok ads, whatever, need to react to. And there's so many decisions in this thing where you right

Where you don't follow a calendar anymore, but you follow signals that you get like from your consumers. And on the same motion, the segments obviously get way smaller, right? And instead of targeting broad audiences, you will eventually go to very small segments, and maybe even segments of one. And this requires like huge decision trees.

very very high intelligence and it's something that no basic automation tool or no human marketer can actually build content and steer content for. So this is exactly where we

Brett (26:13.191)

These are real time dynamic decision trees that that that branch off into like radical complexity to to based on how people are engaging, their their their engagements, their intent, their actions, right? And it's all feeding into this larger kind of

Rio (26:19.841)

Well

Julius (26:26.178)

Right.

Rio (26:28.311)

Julius, quick question though, about about your tool itself. So like is it is it creating workflows and managing as a layer, an agentic layer that sits on top of existing tools that are maybe have maybe gone headless and it's actually pulling from their databases and executing across, or is it actually replacing specific tools? And if so, which tools is it replacing in the current stack?

Julius (26:50.7)

Very good question. So the the way this has to be implemented, I think like our goal is to actually automate all operations here. This is our complete goal. when we work with enterprises, they have very sophisticated tax stacks. And the biggest fear and something that is impossible to do is tell them, Hey, abandon your tax stack. From now on, Uplane runs your entire marketing fully autonomous. This is everywhere, right?

Brett (27:17.169)

Yeah, yeah, rip and replace, that's that's not a very good sales pitch right there.

Rio (27:19.949)

So that's a hard sell. Yeah.

Julius (27:20.948)

Exactly. So so this this would not be how we could cooperate with with the two enterprises by now, right? So the way we actually do it is that we plug into the current systems that they have. Obviously there are a few point point things that that we like do now. So for example we have a creative suite in which they can actually like it's like a design tool that's pre-filled by us. I think this is the only

vertical tool where we actually replace, but other than that, we have it's like a layer on top. And the way that we incorporate with with those enterprises is that our tool basically

Pre-does the work for the employers, right? So that they in the first step can really closely monitor what they are actually doing, what the AI is actually doing, right? So what does this mean? A designer, for example, instead of designing the ads themselves, they see in the board, they see the pre-designed ads by us. They can go into the ad, they can do some adjustments to it, and they actually approve or disapprove every ad that Uplane built. So in this way, they are still in control, they are still doing the

Operations in the first step. And the idea here is obviously like that the transition is smooth and we ensure quality, but also that we learn what are the adjustments that they actually make. Or a campaign manager, right? They have now in the upland platform a ticketing system where we propose the budget pro shifts, right? So please shift this and this many dollars to this campaign or improve budget, daily budget on this campaign by 10%, right? And they can look into it, they can approve it, they can make

Adjustments to it in the first step. And this is how they build trust. This is how Uplane learns what is actually approved, what is not approved, and how it can get better.

Brett (29:14.482)

Well is there a fee so around that creative mentor you guys are plugging into the client sort of data spine, right? Wherever that lives. It could be it could be multi-platform, it could be in a c a central data warehouse or lake house, right? They've got some sort of security data infrastructure, AI infrastructure underneath it, which would be in you know, one of the cloud platforms, probably Google Cloud, BigQuery, that you know, or or or the AWS's of the world. Right. So you guys are plugging into that and is there a feedback loop, like for the creative use case, just specifically there.

Julius (29:19.702)

Exactly. One hundred percent.

Julius (29:41.303)

Yes.

Brett (29:42.301)

Is there a feedback loop in terms of gathering real time information on how that ad is performing for for recommended adjustments to the creative? So that you know, th th so so is so is that happening and then there's a human that sort of helps to approve, disapprove whatever changes are being recommended by the AI? Is that a

Julius (29:49.74)

Hundred percent.

Yes.

Julius (30:02.905)

One hundred percent, right? So the the human designer will see ads that are actually based on the real time performance that we have. There's a small description with it that says this is a variation of a best performer or something like that. And so they can go in, they s it's like very high in their in their queue. They can go in, approve it, or do some adjustments if they want to, and the moment they approve it, we push in the queue and it will go live at the moment it makes sense. So this is

Rio (30:28.535)

Julius, like a question about the creative itself. So I'm assuming that you train your AI on their their brand standards, their brand templates, on you you give it the client, we need to give it access to their the digital asset management repository where we see where all the stuff is is is held. So I guess it's a two part question. So number one, I'd love you to comment on that. Like how does it, how do you ensure brand compliance? But I think number two, I actually had a client a couple of years ago ask me a very interesting question when they were implementing AI.

Julius (30:31.746)

Yes.

Rio (30:56.919)

For their in-house creative team. And the question was, will we need a dam? and at at first I was sort of thinking, of course you need a dam, you need a taxonomy, you need to train the AI, you need to store things that are approved, like because that's how marketing works, right? But then yeah, correct. So so so that but when I thought about it, I realized actually, you know what? Dams are for people, so people can only access know where to find things, can access the things that are approved.

Brett (31:09.766)

And and a dam for those that don't know is digital asset management. Yeah.

Rio (31:26.615)

Can store them there. And then obviously you can link out and activate them, but it it does it does more than that too. But I more thought it more thought actually maybe with AI that might change in the future. 'Cause initially my response is an A dam is more important in an AI world, right? But maybe it becomes less. So I l I love your your com your comment on those two questions. over to you, Julius.

Julius (31:46.647)

Yes. I think like first question about compliance. This is actually one of the biggest surprises that when we build up lane is that very many of our clients are in regulated fields, right? Financial services, pharma, like anything of supplements, right? Where where we actually have very strict compliance grade lines and the

And also brand compliance, right? We have like we work with supplement brands that have like 200, 300 page brand guidelines, or like the enterprise, they have way more pages, right? So

They have the pain of like designing and having those internal loops ten times more than non regulated in industries, right? So they they really, really feel this pain and it takes ages and they have so many back and forth with their legal team, with their brand team, whatever. And

Brett (32:30.258)

Yeah.

Brett (32:37.63)

Yeah.

Julius (32:39.84)

No designer can remember like 500 pages of brand compliance guidelines. They they just can't, right? So everyone who works in a design team, they know those back and forth, right? They always have them and they will not stop. And AI can actually handle like 500 pages of design comp and compliance guidelines, and it can run checks afterwards that it doesn't have to go to the brand team and it doesn't have to go to the legal team to get an approval, but it can run those real time.

And we see that AI, like with our brands, we actually have one one client where we even set up a score for them, like a brand score, that that we actually score higher in terms of brand compliance and and regulatory compliance than their internal design team. And this is this is like a breakthrough moment for us because because this

Brett (33:10.409)

Yeah.

Brett (33:29.726)

Does the internal design team get defensive because of of that score? Right? They're like, my god, we're gonna be replaced.

Julius (33:34.367)

Julius (33:37.677)

Well so I think I I mean marketing will change because of AI, right? And I think everyone that works in marketing has to be aware of this and and I mean we spoke about it a few minutes ago. Marketing will be about the s storytelling, about the brand angles, and it will be less operations. So it's it's a tough thing, but everyone who works in marketing operations

Brett (33:43.199)

Yeah, yeah.

Brett (33:57.896)

Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause 'cause all of that stuff is where is where differentiation, where your strategic advantage and your differentiation and your and your definition is a as a brand, like your brand definition or product definition, that's where that that's the magic, right? Everything else to your point can can

Rio (34:12.535)

Well, for real marketers, yeah. I mean that's what's what they should be liking to do and preferring to spend their time on, right? I think anyone who prefers to spend their time on the operational stuff, you know, y you know, maybe they should be r rethinking what they're doing with their lives. I don't know, but I I don't disagree there.

Julius (34:17.12)

Yes, exactly.

Brett (34:24.85)

Well

Yeah, have you have you found that you've got a a particular advantage, you know, having done this with a handful of of of you know highly regulated industries like Deutsche Bank, right? In terms of once you once you pass their SNF test, which I'm sure that you have to go through an entire process. We did this when I was at New Star Data Identity Company. I mean, we went through like a two or three year sort of regulatory approval for us to be able to use was identity resolution and related data services, right? To be able to to integrate within their systems. and

Julius (34:41.664)

Yeah.

Brett (34:56.629)

And but once you passed that bar, which was a very high bar, it smoothed the way and it also provided a moat for us as a vendor, right? Because we knew a competitor couldn't come in and just displace us without like a six month or one year review process by by a financial services institution. So have you have you found that? I mean, is that a is that a specific area that you've sort of leaned into and said, Hey, we've kind of mastered this this category, this domain?

Julius (35:23.264)

Yes, I I think we're obviously very proud proud on this and it's something that enterprises care tremendously about and but not just enterprise but also SMEs, right? I mean everybody went to Chat GPT and was like, please give build me ten ads for my brand and then they were disappointed with a messed up logo or the product is not right or whatsoever, right? So in our sales process we actually always

Brett (35:46.833)

Yeah.

Julius (35:51.853)

Like generate a few ads, generate a landing page for the brand that we're selling to for free so they can actually see the quality that we hit, so they're like know what they buy into. And we want to take away this fear of like it's gonna be AI slob because AI build it. I think it's a way how you set it up, how you prompt, what evals do you run, and and what checks do you do before you actually push an ad live or publish it.

Brett (36:20.349)

Yeah. And do you guys have any particular you know, is there a focus on any particular type of channel? I mean, when it comes to to advertisement, there's a lot of form factors, right? There's everything from C T V and linear television down to, you know, email marketing and display programmatic. I mean, where do you guys find that you play and does that differ between B to B and B to C clients?

Julius (36:29.175)

Yeah.

Julius (36:42.324)

yes for sure. So we follow our we follow the demand from demands from our clients, right? We speak with them. we happen to be super strong on meta advertising, like this is something that

Like when we started the company back in October last year, or this when we basically we started in August but launched in November and this was the entire setup phase. The Andromeda update just came out and everybody was struggling with Meta and as they needed more assets, right? So Andromeda basically says that you need to have a way higher asset diversity and they can bring like specific assets to very small niche audiences. And everybody was struggling with creative back in this time. And this is how we started in meta and we got all those great

Brett (37:22.973)

Yeah, yeah.

Julius (37:25.888)

meta use cases and now I think almost every client we have runs meta campaigns with us and then obviously Google is very high demanded LinkedIn is very high demanded TikTok is very high demanded but we also run tabula outbrain ad form dsp like there there are many platforms that we operate

Brett (37:43.687)

So so it's all digital it's all digital, largely social. some sort of r we'll call remnant inventory. We Yeah, most mostly paid media, is that right? Yeah. And and so

Rio (37:49.761)

Mostly paid media it sounds like too.

Julius (37:52.492)

Yes, exactly.

Rio (37:53.934)

Okay. So question then because it's paid media, sorry Brett, like because it's paid media, do you sell to brands with big in-house teams mostly? Do you do you sell to brands that have agencies? A lot of the things you're describing, whether it's the building of the creative, loading the ads, going to the platforms, checking the opposition, a lot of those things are done by marketing or advertising agencies. So curious about what your customer base looks like. And for those who have an agency, how does it typically work?

Julius (38:18.348)

Yeah, so we always start like we we want to take away the fear, right? People are always a little bit skeptical. It's an AI team. And the way we start is that we do a pilot of three months typically, where we run side by side next to the current setup, right? So that they can actually right, we just have one campaign that's called Uplane Campaign, and we just do our operations from there. We produce the ads, we produce the landing pages, we do the media buying, we do the entire loop, right? The feedback and all of that. And

Then after three months. We're acting as the agency. Yes, we're we're we're just like the agency, exactly. And and then teams can actually look at performance, and I mean we take full ownership of the performance that we get, like return on ad spend or cost per lead or whatsoever the the target is for the for the client. And after three months they can look on performance, and I mean

Rio (38:49.901)

So you're acting as the agency then, you're actually like buying the media for them, paying the platforms.

Julius (39:16.076)

We're we're here to give the companies a better return on their ad spend and I think in almost all cases we were better than the the setup that was there before.

Rio (39:25.847)

So is the goal to actually win the media dollars too, or is or is that just something that you you'll do because you have to and then you'll and then you'll or I mean are you are you are you ha if if the goal is to win the media dollars, is that a big part of your business or is it not part of your business really?

Julius (39:39.564)

Yes.

Julius (39:42.913)

I mean, we want our clients to obviously to to be as successful as possible on those channels that we manage. And it's a natural way that the media dollar then goes up if it works very profitably for them. So we are also incentivized in that that sense. So we charge a percentage of ad spend that we sit in the same boat with our client and really want to want to have those channels take off. Yes.

Rio (40:07.009)

Okay, so you actually are acting as an ad agency. You're actually managing the ads the ad spend for them and you're but you're also with the with your platform, you're running a lot of their ad operations in addition to that.

Brett (40:07.473)

Sure.

Julius (40:16.427)

Exactly.

Brett (40:17.67)

Yeah, so so so what do you th what do you see as sort of particular? Because that sounds to me like a a tech company that's AI first coming

Rio (40:25.003)

Or an agency with its own eye with its own proprietary tech.

Julius (40:26.796)

Yeah.

Brett (40:27.952)

Yeah, or or an agency yeah, well agencies tend to be solutions oriented first, but tech enabled so that you can solve those solutions with with underlying tech. You guys seem to be tech first.

Rio (40:36.887)

Well a lot of agencies have struggled with that over the years, Brett, right? I they've they've they've really tried to go more product and become more have their own IP. I think there's more of a trend of that now, but I think it's historically it's been challenging, especially when they broke off media from creative, right? They're it you know, it became more difficult to do that.

Brett (40:41.628)

Yeah.

Brett (40:52.796)

Yeah, and no, and I'm working in that space heavily of sort of a a you know, agency, this sort of new hybrid model that's coming to coming to play, where it's you're not really you're a product company, you're kinda you're you're there you're more of a product company than you were in the past, but you're still a managed service, and so there's this hybridization of what's happening in the ecosystem where you're solutions led, you're still leading and educating clients and solution selling based on their use cases, and then tech enabling, so the actual solution can be delivered and activated, and then there's some data congruence underneath everything that you're

doing right especially if you're plugging into the their tech stack and their data data data infrastructure you you you have learnings that can compound across the different work streams because it's all com connected to one sort of unified data spine and there's there's you know all that sort of stuff so my my question though was really oriented around that seems like a a a a challenging way to enter the market.

Julius (41:25.558)

Yes. Yeah.

Brett (41:46.537)

Because you're going up against every independent agency that's going through this transformation. You're going up against the vendors and you know, tech vendors, and you're going up against the agency holding companies that work with the big enterprises. So how do you guys navigate that? Because you don't want to get blacklisted by the agencies. you don't want to be considered a point solution. So, how do you guys navigate that sort of strategic competitive landscape?

Julius (42:13.42)

Yeah, that's that's a very very good point. I mean the way that we we go into the market is that we say

We replaced the agencies or the non AI native agencies. and I see also the ra the role of the agency shifting. We can speak about that maybe a little later. But I think the agencies that just run operations, they need to rethink what they're doing. And we're like we're replacing those agencies for sure. And actually, businesses spend so much for the agencies. I know very, very few business owners that are like fully content and fully happy with what they get. Like typically they

Brett (42:28.637)

Yep.

Brett (42:38.587)

Yeah.

Julius (42:50.298)

Complain, it's too slow, it's they don't get the data they want, they don't get the transparency that they want, they don't get the performance that they want. And with this three-month pilot where we run head to head against the agency or the current setup that's at place, we actually give them an opportunity to look into the value that we provide. And business owners are, I mean, from what what I know until today, they are very happy to challenge their current setup.

Rio (43:20.139)

So it sounds as though that you'll go and you'll say, give us some just a test, a big slice of ad spend, let us run with it and we'll look we'll use our we'll use our platform to do it and let's compare apples to apples and see are you getting better return on ad spend in the end? Is it it? Okay. And how are you charging for your platform like like overall? Is it is it just a percent of ad spend or are there is is it is the which is a typical kind of like media model or is it

Julius (43:33.26)

Yeah.

That's a hundred percent what we do, yes.

Brett (43:37.724)

Yeah. And it and it's all d

Rio (43:47.861)

A hybrid where you have a sass SAS fees baked in. How do you can you comment on that?

Julius (43:52.365)

Yeah, of course. So we have a fixed fee, that's the monthly retainer. This depends on how much work we do and agree on first, right? So we have different packages, how many ads we provide, how many landing pages we do per month, and then we have a variable of ad spend that we charge based on yeah, how much how much actually runs through the account. Yeah.

Brett (44:13.382)

Yeah, and so it sounds it sounds like from a channel focus area, it's social media, it's the things that you just mentioned, right? Social media plus the taboulas, which we'll call the the bottom feeders, the remnant inventory of the of the digital display ecosystem that everybody tries to ignore, like you know, 'cause like it's when you get to the bottom of a page, when you're on the internet, you're like, my god, what am I being exposed to from an advertising perspective? The bottom feeder the The Outbreads and the Tabulas, sorry, sorry, outbreed Tabula, but no but

Julius (44:22.338)

Yes.

Rio (44:35.799)

Bottom feeders. Yeah, it's just not wrong, right?

Julius (44:41.129)

Huh?

Brett (44:43.336)

So it sounds like that's the focus area, but once you start to go into other channels, things like things that th you like if you're a customer data platform, you might manage email, right? if you know you might if you're a DSP, you might actually be serving into programmatic C T V space, right? out of home, digital out of home. Are you guys at all tackling that area or or because you're a you're a an early stage startup, let's like are you focusing specifically on what you described?

Julius (45:00.535)

Yeah.

Julius (45:08.908)

Yeah, so so right now we're focusing very much on the digital channels. We we get those requests already. So actually both enterprises requested to extend beyond this. So email is something one one enterprise is pulling us very much into the direction to actually sync this with like right their their Google campaigns and and meta campaigns. So if somebody clicks in an email, they got like they we part of this audience and get like this and this meta ad, right? Or the other way around, right? They engage with meta ad and now

They get an email, right? So it makes complete sense to make this a multi channel experience instead of having silo teams where everyone sends their sends their their spam in the same way, right? And and out of home is the same story, right? Like we had we have a client that that said they spent almost one month just changing all their assets for like Easter back in the days, where they had to add like Easter banners on every ad that they did.

Brett (45:51.1)

Yeah.

Julius (46:08.698)

I mean in Uplane this runs super fast for an out-of-home campaign. So this is something that we could also support with. And we need to prioritize right now if we focus on the digital channels, but this is like these are all extension points that make complete sense to integrate.

Brett (46:24.635)

Yeah.

Rio (46:25.025)

So, Julius, you mentioned a couple of things when you were talking on some of the benefits or value propositions of the platform. One of them is transparency, another one was was cost, another one's performance. Like so looking at those three, I guess number one, do you think marketers really want transparency? There's a lot of talk about it, but we've debated that quite a bit in this podcast that, you know, maybe they say they do, but do they really want it right? what they really want is outcomes. And then I even see a trend in the agency world where

Some of the big hold codes are even saying, We'll give you less transparency. Give us your money, tell us the outcomes, we'll just get it done for you. So I love your thoughts on that, on how like how that's affecting your sales pitch and what you're hearing back from brands.

Julius (47:05.944)

A hundred percent. So the the most important thing that they want, and you're completely right, Rio, is performance. And this is like our the thing that we lead with completely. I mean our entire sales pitch is structured around performance and and the way we build the company and our like we have one target KPI in the firm that every employee has to focus on and this is client performance, right? So this uplane is completely about client performance. And giving giving marketers transparency is is one aspect of that.

Because at the point where we only run performance, the brand team, the organic social media team, the email team, they love it to see what are the headlines that are actually performing, what are the images that are performing, what are the call to actions that work, because they bring it bring it into their strategies. So this is something that all speaks into this aspect of performance right now.

Brett (48:00.166)

So how are you proving performance, right? Do you have a measurement layer do you plug into either attribution or MMM tools for for deep analytics in terms of what's really driving performance? And how do you how do you categorize that like based 'cause there's performance is a lot of things. you could say that performance

Julius (48:15.618)

Right. And

Rio (48:16.301)

There's there's all the attribution platforms, right? You could there's the measurement platforms.

Brett (48:18.243)

Yeah. You could say you could say performance. Yeah, you could say performance is like conversion metrics. Like you you arrive at a landing page, you submit, right, for a service, for a product, right, for a a checkout, right? You could also say performances there was a halo effect due to the brand exposure that they had on CTV, and six months later, you know, that that individual or that household ended up

Julius (48:23.341)

Yeah.

Julius (48:35.062)

Right. Exactly.

Brett (48:42.215)

you know, a a a a a purchaser or a buyer, right? So how do you guys actually track that? Does it live within the natively within the ecosystem of the client? yeah, how are how are you making those inferences and decisions?

Julius (48:55.16)

Yeah. I mean the difficulty that you have to describe what performance actually is and how to measure it is exactly what we see as well, right? Every client has a different definition and a different way to measure it. And we need to integrate natively into what they do, right? Because otherwise they also don't don't trust the data if it's like something that just we come up with. so we we natively integrate with with the stack that they have at hand, right? And and the good thing is, many enterprises have sophisticated testing methods

Brett (49:05.35)

Yeah.

Brett (49:09.563)

Yeah.

Julius (49:25.384)

test like tech stack in in place to measure that and when we integrate actually with their meta account or their Google account all of this is in place and they can measure performance pretty well.

Brett (49:36.879)

Yeah, yeah. And and so there's there's no lock in, right? And I think that's a critical a critical play, right? Like CISO validation, zero trust, right? No data movement, right? There's all these things happening in the industry from a regulatory perspective, right? Like how are are are you are you is i are you guys going forward with sort of a no lock in sort of strategy? Meaning you're you're we're gonna we're gonna plug into your data, but there's no data movement, right? It's it's per client isolation.

Meaning everything that's be happening from a decisioning and optimization perspective is happening within your environment, completely private and regulated and secure, data collaboration or otherwise. Is that how you guys think about that when you get technical in terms of describing the the capabilities?

Julius (50:17.9)

Yeah, I think technically there's there's no real lock-in. I mean the assets that we generate, they obviously like the clients are only allowed to use them as long as we work together. I think that's completely logical. But we want clients to stay with us. big like the only thing that we store is we gather so much data about

Like what ha headlines are working, what images are working, what emotional triggers are working. and this is like really where we say we want to be like ten times better than this one marketer that had been with your company for ten years and has the best gut instinct. Like the uplane gut instinct should be like the best gut instinct you have because it's pure data, right? And this is the login that we want to create and comes through performance inc increments versus when like the operations are all done manually.

Brett (51:11.471)

Yeah, and is it all

Rio (51:11.821)

So do you have your own native reporting like or or ad like measurement environment or that you're then pulling like which you're then building to kind of pull from the different platforms or do you just tell them to or do you just have some of the analysis from that and you're just sending them back to the individual platforms to get their measurement?

Brett (51:14.609)

Yeah.

Julius (51:28.908)

This depends how sophisticated the setup at our client side is. We have an an overview panel in the upland platform where they can click into, where they can dive as deep as they want to into into all the data that we capture. there are some clients, like especially the enterprise, they have their own performance like measurement cockpits that they've built in whatever platform, and then we integrate with that.

move our performance data into those and and try to set it up in a way yeah that it makes sense to them.

Brett (52:00.561)

So do they have to log into your platform to actually see creative variations and landing page variations? And it seems like those are your two focus areas. You've got a certain number of form factors for display or creative advertising. And then you've got like it kind of sounds like Optimizely. Sounds like the Optimizely business plan. Is it is that is that an accurate competitor to talk about, right? Like were they it was a lot of landing page optimization, right? All that sort of stuff. Or can can somebody, for example, within their own

AI implementation internally within the organization to say let's say they they the organization uses Claude actually conversational interface without having to go to your platform. Right? Is that did you guys have that type of of of you know you know freedom to use these insights and access this stuff and tell it what to do without actually logging in to the platform? Is that is that are you guys too early for that? Is that what does that look like?

Julius (52:54.706)

so right now the managers can log into the platform. They can like for example we have we have different interfaces for for different functions in the team today, so that like the designer stays a designer, they will log into the platform, they see a Pinterest like board with all our assets that we've created, prioritized by how much uplane things they should go live or maybe should go live later, and then they can review them, work in them, right? I think there

very few platforms that have this interface, like a quad would be obviously. We also have like the the opportunity to chat with it, but we need some visual here, right? And and we want we want designers to work very fast through these and don't wait for a chat board or anything. So this is the interface that we chose here. And same goes right for the campaign manager as said, right? They see like our proposed budget adjustments and they can work through them.

Brett (53:34.779)

Yeah.

Rio (53:50.616)

Julius, one thing I've always found very challenging about creative in media is that when you look at marketing operations for, let's say, owned and for CRM channels, you've got all these internal processes related to getting content created, approved, put into plat platforms, right? And a lot of times it's either web platforms. Brett's your point earlier, marketing automation. If they're doing testing optimization, they might use it optimizedly. So there's, and you have these like complex content supply chains. Adobe made a

big deal out of that the last few years, right? Trying to optimize that using using workflow management, then then ultimately they're trying to put an AI layer on top of that. What I found interesting for paid media is that because paid media, you're looking at potentially much more, many more variants. They're served up in different channels, different different types, right? Different formats. And then the results are different. The results sit in platforms that a lot of times

are very different, like a DSP or you know, is gonna look very different than, you know, like logging into your own CRM or your marketing automation platform, right? So so it's I think it's always been a challenge. Over the years we've had attempts to do DCO dynamic creative optimization, but it's never really gone anywhere because of ad serving and all that. So love like like your thoughts on that bridging that divide. How is like are you do you find you're successfully doing it? Thoughts.

Julius (55:09.016)

Do you mean the dynamic creative optimization or or what are your what are your

Rio (55:11.927)

The the divide divide between like CRM and don't channels and what's going on in paid media because they're different platforms. You're using the same brand standards and brand guidelines, but the formats are in different platforms, they're s they're served up differently, that are used different. It's kind of s it's almost separate in many ways from the content supply chain for owned and for owned and let's say CRM data and media.

Julius (55:30.52)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean like the the DCOs that like for example Meta does already, right? They definitely like they definitely give uplifts and this is something that we're using in the campaigns that we run as well. But I think the the best uplift that we see right now, and we see this actually improve performance by ten to fifteen percent alone, is a mix of structured tests where we can actually extract value ourselves and then add the DCO as an additional thing on top, right? So if we run

Clear A-B test about if we learn like what are the headlines that are actually working, what are images that are actually working, and we give this to the DCO, it will be even better than when we let the DCO do its own thing. So I think there need to be those those two components. And this is one effect, like if we just look onto one platform, if we look like platform agnostic.

There's also a lot of cross-learning that needs to be happened, right? So I think the most basic one is if a headline is working very well on Google or a keyword is working very well on Google, we want it on the meta ads as well, right? It's it's a very high likelihood that this will work. And and we at least we want to test it. And we want to test it fast, right? Maybe it's a a time-bound keyword like something about the World Cup, or you know, you never know, right? You want to push those fast into different campaigns, have these cross-learning effects, and yeah, this is what Uplane is for.

Brett (56:51.449)

Yeah, so it's it sounds like it so now as we say and I don't think these questions are gonna be tough. we're gonna keep interrogating the topic. so so it sounds like you you

the the more that you elaborate on the on the capability of the platform, it sounds like a test and learn platform. Like it sounds like you're test and learn you test and learn creative per channel and then you apply it yeah an optimization. But what I'm missing is what about all the other stuff? What about the the order management system? What about the brief development? And and are you automating other you know the media buy when you actually place the you know, are you automating some of those pieces?

Rio (57:08.747)

And optimization.

Julius (57:21.964)

Yeah.

Brett (57:26.117)

or is it more around landing page and creative test and learn, optimize, apply, repeat?

Julius (57:33.302)

Yes, so we we we have this focus always on on return on ad spend and think media buying is a very important part of this, right? When you run performance marketing at the point where you work with Uplane, like our clients step up from sometimes twenty assets per month to a thousand assets per month, right? It's a it's a huge increment. they run much shorter, like bad assets get turned off after a day or two already, and so we need to have some function that that also helps with the with the media buying.

So this is what we what we do natively within our platform as well. so that we push the creatives live that we think have the highest potential. we decide what ad spends to put on what what assets, turn off the ones that don't work. So this needs to be integrated. ERP integration is something that's like definitely important. Like we have a retailer with over like 2,000, 3,000 products, and

Like many, many retailers, if you look on social media, they actually advertise products or they have ads live for products that are not in stock, like retailers. And with with one client, we actually like we haven't set it up yet, but we're planning to build it for them that we integrate with ERP so we can check the stock levels and only advertise like the most profitable products to the right audience. Exactly. Yes.

Rio (58:51.831)

So you use signals from the ERP in order to inform kind of your every you could inform your bid management, you could inform your audience selection and and targeting. yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, it's interesting though. So so so my understanding then is like you're focused really on paid media, on paid channels, then but I do think there's an opportunity for someone, not saying you should necessarily do this, like to connect the content from paid media.

Brett (58:54.639)

Yeah.

Julius (59:00.834)

There's so much power in this, that's crazy, right? Yeah.

Brett (59:04.333)

And

Rio (59:16.225)

to the content from CRM and own channels. 'Cause really no I very f no one's really doing that today. It's kinda seems like there's a typically a break there. A lot of the reason is because agencies have typically handled the paid side. But but I think tying that together, I think brands really want that. So I think that is that is an interesting point.

Julius (59:32.94)

Yeah, I think so too.

Brett (59:33.817)

Yeah. And and what do you what what is your perspective on on sort of dynamic well, I guess you could say dynamic creative optimization, but dynamic real time data in in other types of feeds into creative. Sort of think of it as like like within

within the real time advertising environment. I mean what do you what do you think about that? Where do you think that's going? Right? Where where ads are showing, you know, to your point about hyper segmentation and sort of decision trees that are very complex, almost getting to that one one to one point. Yeah, I mean where do you think where do you think sort of real time feeds plays into the mix for for creative?

Julius (59:53.496)

Okay.

Julius (59:58.529)

Yeah.

Julius (01:00:11.66)

Very very good question. I think this is where we have to go to, right? I think ideally every creative that's shown basically twice has a little level of fatigue. And if we speak about the perfect advertising world, we have like a perfect customized ad that's basically shown once to one person, right? So this is like obviously not not possible and and for for good reasons as well, maybe not possible that they're like segments two segments of one on on

I mean back in the days you could actually like target by account and it and could go down to the most granular levels. today they stopped this. I think the smallest segment sizes a hundred people. But like to answer your question, I think we need to go into this future where we capture real time signals from all kinds of platforms, right? From news feeds, viral TikToks that are going on, maybe memes, maybe interests that that we have with those with those consumers and give them targeted.

At the right time. I mean, they were at the 4P, right? The right promotion at the right place, the right time for those peoples, right?

Brett (01:01:19.546)

Yeah.

Brett (01:01:23.907)

Rio, I th I was wait I was waiting for you. Yeah, you wanna go to quit hit quick hits? Yeah.

Rio (01:01:23.991)

Should we move on to quick kits? Yeah, yeah. We're an hour, so I think that I know you do have to run to the meeting a second. So if you're if you're good to quick kits, let's let's do You jump in house.

Brett (01:01:30.713)

Yeah, yeah.

All right. So one one AI tool that you use every day.

Julius (01:01:34.208)

Cool.

Julius (01:01:39.104)

Actually Notion. I use Notion AI, yes. We have our we have our entire company information Notion and Notion AI is like the agent to to work through it.

Brett (01:01:40.877)

Notion. Okay. Why?

Brett (01:01:51.843)

Wow. That's awesome. So it's like your knowledge graph as an organization.

Julius (01:01:54.966)

Yes, one hundred percent.

Rio (01:01:58.104)

So Julius, what's the biggest misconception about AI that you're hearing from customers or the public or people in the industry?

Julius (01:02:06.207)

it's point solution tools in my opinion. I spoke to a very, very big enterprise last week and they've tested two hundred point solution tools in their in their marketing team alone and they rolled back all of them. So they're looking

Rio (01:02:17.773)

Good Lord.

Yeah, I mean that's just you're that's not a s that's not a way to win. I mean that's crazy.

Julius (01:02:23.922)

Yeah, exactly. I mean I mean it's it's one of my favorite quotes from CMO of Salesforce Bobby Jania. He said, We're using the most powerful technology in history to send more one-way spam faster. And I think point point solutions are are the way to go for this. Yeah.

Brett (01:02:37.313)

Yeah, that's for sure.

Rio (01:02:40.811)

I can't argue with that. Yeah. You look at like LinkedIn's become like a dump dumping ground, right, of

Brett (01:02:43.885)

Yeah, yeah, look look yeah, look at your like LinkedIn inbox. I mean the amount of of sort of automated BDR, SDR outreach where you're like I mean i i you ca it's hard to decipher what's human and what's what's AI driven. so biggest mistake you think enterprises are making adopting AI. We talk a lot about that, about the the tr the transformation, becoming AI first, how organizations are either whole stepping back

Julius (01:02:47.788)

Yeah.

Brett (01:03:11.727)

are getting exhausted with the process and just defaulting to copilot. what what do you think the biggest challenge is?

Julius (01:03:18.552)

Yeah. I think the biggest challenge is is exactly what I just mentioned, right? There are so many point solutions out there and they fit natively very well with the structure that the teams have today. But they actually don't drive bottom line performance. I mean, this anecdote that I just told tells the story perfectly, right? They didn't they paid so much for all those tools, they didn't get any bottom line performance improvements. And where that actually hits is if you bridge like the silos and actually improve the marketing flywheel and we actually measure important

Performance increments with our clients, and it's it's the fear that they don't know how to get to those systems, and we try to build the bridge to get like actually to operational autonomy. So yeah, I think the biggest mistake is implement lots of point solutions that give you very sloppy siloed results. Yeah.

Brett (01:04:12.835)

Yeah.

Rio (01:04:13.621)

You just what a waste of time. You it to focus on all these point solutions, spin your wheels, implement them, and then maybe they work, maybe they don't. You're not proving you're disproving AI. You're just like we tried to apply it to something with no organizational strategy. Yeah, that's sounds like sounds a waste of time. I I remember stories in the first year post GITPT when we had we I had one client at an agency said I think their their IT team spent fifty percent of their time for one year messing around with banging out demos that

Didn't not a single one actually went to production, which is crazy.

Julius (01:04:45.346)

Crazy.

Rio (01:04:48.107)

What's the most underrated growth channel that you're seeing for your performance marketing clients?

Julius (01:04:55.072)

It's meta, I'd say. so so I don't know, I I I completely love this channel. like I I think every customer

Brett (01:05:06.304)

And and and meta's meta's the com com combination of both Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, are you talking about all of all of the platforms within their s their ecosystem? Yeah.

Julius (01:05:10.828)

Yes. Yes, exactly, exactly. All the platforms that hidden matter. And

I think companies underestimate the potential. They always think they've hit a ceiling. they always think it's not really working and you do a few tweaks or you just increase the the production and iteration speed and you can like run through ceilings and scale tremendously. so this is the most underrated one in my opinion.

Brett (01:05:40.48)

And and do you think that the the Zuckerberg announcement around the end to end agentic media planning to activation system that that is being built in house or has been built in Meta, that's been getting complaints in terms of of its ability to deliver effective creative, right? is what is what I've read a lot about. Do you think it's overrated or underrated?

Julius (01:06:01.737)

I mean it's it's basically the like the next step of the DCO that we have, or like if we spin into the future. I hope that there are a lot of good features that that we can also use. but let's see, so far Mark has not a good track in like I mean we we would all live in the metaverse according to him already today. So let's see how how how much they cost exactly.

Brett (01:06:10.67)

Yeah.

Brett (01:06:22.468)

Remember that trend? Yeah.

Rio (01:06:24.245)

Okay.

It wasn't a trend. He just invested a lot of money in it, never went anywhere. but I do think those investments will pan out one day. I think we may be surprised, but but not for a while. the looking at the agency space, do you think the current agency hold co model looks very different in a couple of years? And if so, how?

Brett (01:06:30.967)

Yeah.

Julius (01:06:34.144)

Yeah, I hope so.

Julius (01:06:47.37)

A hundred percent. Once again, right, the operations that agencies do today, they will be run

Hopefully all by Uplane. so so what agencies have to do is they have to manage those transitions. I think organizations need a lot of guidance there. Like, how do the marketing teams of the future look like? one really important aspect is to like you need the people still in the future. Like I'm very sure about this, and we see it with like the transformations that we do today. that we like take the people, tell them about the mission, tell them about the future, and and give them this journey and the excitement for the

journey as well. So I think this is where marketing agencies have to step in. And then there will be way more as I said, right, brand will be more important, storytelling, partnerships. so those things is is where agencies will be still really important and where where all the creative and bright minds that work in agencies have a very yeah yeah a hundred percent

Brett (01:07:43.468)

Yep. Your trusted consultants that guide you through the journey and the transformation process, which is very difficult. An organizations struggle to kind of keep up with the speed of tech that we see all around us, right? and it's interesting. I think I think we we've got it. I think you guys are a disruptive little startup that's that's coming at the agency world, right? Whether it's the independence, it's probably mostly the independence.

Rio (01:07:55.415)

Yeah.

Julius (01:07:55.458)

Exactly.

Brett (01:08:06.563)

and that's cer that's certainly interesting. So but you wouldn't describe yourself an independent technology enabled agency, would you?

Julius (01:08:15.138)

No, not really. No.

Brett (01:08:16.383)

No. Got it. Yeah, so you're you're more the pure tech play, a little bit of the you know, solutioning, I'm assuming.

Julius (01:08:23.532)

Yeah. Yes.

Rio (01:08:24.119)

But but I think this is an interesting so Julius, I think it's an interesting opportunity for companies like yours, because you look at I mean the problem one of the problems when you compare the SaaS business to the agency business over time, right? The SaaS business has crazy margins like ninety, ninety-five percent. You know, once your product's deployed, it doesn't cost a lot to maintain. Obviously you've got to sell it and do customer success and things like that. But the margins in SaaS business are crazy. So the SaaS companies have always been very reticent to have a services layer, right? Because it's like they get hammered by by the street whenever they do that because the margins.

Brett (01:08:50.583)

Yep. Totally.

Rio (01:08:53.217)

On services are so much lower, maybe the twenty five percent or something, right? But I think for company a AI margins are much lower because of the cost of the cost of tokens, the cost of the cost of you know really supporting supporting these technologies. So I actually think it lends itself better to have a combo, right? Services plus AI enablement, it actually makes for a compelling company where the two where the two components actually have very similar margins overall. So we're seeing a big trend. I mean, consulting, we're seeing a trend where the forward deployed engineer, which is really a fancy way of saying consultant.

I think matches quite well. So so I it's cool to see like how you're experimenting with this model. I'm glad to see you're getting some traction. So congrats on that.

Brett (01:09:22.454)

Yeah.

Julius (01:09:30.85)

Thanks a lot.

Brett (01:09:31.703)

Yeah, hey, thanks for thanks for joining Signal and Noise, Julius. It was great, great getting to know you and talking to you, and thanks for being so upfront and you know, open about your about about what you've done. Yeah, and you know, we we like to put you on the hot seat and sort of just ask as many questions, just so we understand. But it's it's interesting to hear your thinking as a founder, as as a product leader to to

Rio (01:09:41.013)

And detail too, yeah. We always appreciate that, yeah.

Julius (01:09:47.08)

Okay.

Brett (01:09:54.018)

what you're doing, how it's disrupting the space, what the the what the what the ecosystem looks like and and where you guys see it going. So so congrats and keep up the good work and thanks for joining Signal and Noise and for everybody that joined. visit us at wdebdeb.signal noise dotai, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcast. we've got tons of editorial content coming out from Rio and a lot of executive contributors and lots and lots of podcast episodes. I think we're rapidly approaching

It's not a huge number, but it's a good number. A h we're we're we're rapidly approaching about a hundred yeah, over a hundred episodes.

Rio (01:10:26.133)

We're over a hundred. Well w well well well well if you look at our shorts, so just a possi well, just at possible and can we at eighty, Brett. So like we're when you look at long our Yeah, but but long long form we're close to a hundred. Yeah. So thanks everyone. Yes, it's it's been fun.

Julius (01:10:29.261)

Wow.

Brett (01:10:32.949)

Yeah. Yeah. And those aren't even full length, right? So so everybody

Julius (01:10:33.406)

Yeah.

Julius (01:10:38.978)

Wow. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It's been great.

Brett (01:10:40.45)

Yeah, and thanks Julius. Appreciate it.