Greg Rogers is CEO of Pictela, a brand content distribution platform.
AdExchanger.com: How is your Tacoda experience relevant to what you’re doing today with Pictela?
GR: At Tacoda we developed a sophisticated targeting engine. Now that the industry can effectively reach the right people, the next step is to build an advanced messaging platform that delivers maximum impact and relevancy everywhere online. That’s Pictela.
What problem is Pictela solving?
The current online marketing ecosystem was built on the principle of user dislocation. We have a $25 billion industry based on moving consumers from one place to another. Click and visitation patterns show that consumers have grown weary of this. Consumers want brand experiences wherever they happen to be.
Pictela solves this problem. In just the last 90 days we have been certified by 20 major publishers and now reach over 120 million consumers worldwide. Pictela is Facebook-approved and runs directly in the News Feed. The units are published to blogs and used as PR. Pictela goes everywhere a consumer spends their time.
Can you provide a use case of how and why a piece of brand content is delivered?
Here’s a great example of what Pictela does: Burberry produced a series of beautiful photos and videos for their spring/summer 2010 collection starring Emma Watson of the Harry Potter movies. This brand content was distributed through our platform to publishers like Hearst, Conde Nast, Time, Inc., and Hachette in ad inventory across North America and Western Europe. The engagement levels were like nothing we have ever seen. People shared the units to their Facebook pages for all their friends to see.
What was fascinating were the differences, by country, in terms of interaction and sharing. Consumers globally are ready, willing and able to share brand content.
What’s the market opportunity?
Online still only garners 10% of total media spend despite representing 30% of consumer time spent. That’s a 300% growth potential that Pictela will address.
Also, catalogers spend $60 billion each year creating and distributing brand content. However, these offline industries have a growing distribution problem. Pictela allows all of this offline content to come online at the fraction of the cost of direct mail and FSI.
How does Pictela’s revenue model work?
When we serve brand content into ad inventory we work on a CPM model and shared impressions are free. If there is no paid media component we serve content into social media environments based on a serving fee.
Can you share any current client momentum and the company’s target market? Profitable?
We are experiencing powerful growth this year. Retailers like Macy’s, Burberry, and Victoria’s Secret are now on the platform. CPG clients are also flocking to Pictela–they have a tremendous amount of content that they need to surface outside of their web sites. Auto, entertainment, travel and pharma are also hot categories.
Any marketer with brand content or a publisher partnership where they have access to content is an ideal client for Pictela. Quite soon every marketer will have a brand content strategy.
In general, in terms of brand dollars moving online, what needs to happen?
What Atlas and DoubleClick did for direct marketers, Pictela will do for brand marketers. Our platform not only allows marketers to serve high definition brand content wherever consumers happen to be, but also gives them the ability to track it all: across paid, earned, and owned media.
This is not an easy thing to do, incidentally. Fortunately, we have a great technology team with amazing leadership!
How can publishers work with Pictela? What’s in it for pubs?
Pictela Certified publishers benefit in three ways. First, because Pictela serves unlimited amounts of high definition content into ad units, we make publisher inventory more valuable and effective. Second, because Pictela focuses only on premium publishers and portals, we help them create a differentiated offering. Third, with our deep agency and client relationships, we are creating new revenue opportunities for our partners.
A year from now, what milestones would you like to have seen the company accomplish?
Our goal is to put brand content at the center of the marketing enterprise.
Throughout 2010 we will continue to focus on technology and distribution. Pictela will announce a number of key partnerships in the months ahead. These will be very interesting! Also, we will start to bring leading creative agencies onto the platform.
In 2011 we will focus on growth and will develop into a true global company. Ideally, by the end of 2011, we will have hundreds of great clients on the platform. Pictela will be providing each client with unprecedented insights into their consumers and how they are interacting with and sharing brand content.
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