The Art of the Perfect Checkout Offer with Rokt | Behind the Numbers

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Marcus Johnson (00:00):

In today's economy, every ad dollar counts. That's why performance marketers are turning to Rokt Ads to reach over 400 million active shoppers in the transaction moment, when they're a purchase online. You only pay when customers engage. Learn more at Rokt.com/EMARKETER. That's R-O-K-T dot com slash EMARKETER.

(00:27):

Hey gang, it's Friday, May 9th. Suzy, Jeremy, Jon, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER video podcast made possible by Rokt. I'm Marcus, and tonight, we'll be discussing how you move folks from browsers to buyers. Joining me for that conversation, we have three people. Let's meet them. We start with our VP of content, head of our retail desk, based in New York, it's Suzy Davidkhanian.

Suzy Davidkhanian (00:49):

Hi. Thanks for having me. I thought you were going to say hey.

Marcus Johnson (00:50):

Why did you take so long?

Suzy Davidkhanian (00:53):

I was waiting to be greeted.

Marcus Johnson (00:55):

That is shocking. For more? You wanted more of an introduction? That was already [inaudible 00:00:58]-

Suzy Davidkhanian (00:57):

No, I wanted a hello.

Marcus Johnson (00:59):

Thank you. [inaudible 00:01:02].

Suzy Davidkhanian (01:02):

Now, you win.

Marcus Johnson (01:06):

Senior director of briefings, also living in the big city is Jeremy Goldman.

Jeremy Goldman (01:08):

You don't even have to acknowledge me, Marcus, and I will still say hey, and I'm excited for this conversation. Professional, Suzy. Take notes.

Suzy Davidkhanian (01:14):

Come on.

Jeremy Goldman (01:15):

Senior vice president of solutions and operations for Rokt is also joining us. He's also based in New York. It's Jon Humphrey.

Jon Humphrey (01:22):

Hey, Marcus and team. Good to be here.

Marcus Johnson (01:24):

Hey, fella, thanks for joining us. We start, or we have an external guest on, with the speed intro to get to know him a little better.

(01:34):

All right. 60 seconds-ish on the clock, let's do it. First question. Jon, you are based in New York, but where are you from?

Jon Humphrey (01:40):

I grew up in New York. As they say, sometimes I'm a unicorn, so I grew up in New York City, moved up to Westchester when I was a teenager, and have been here pretty much ever since. I can't seem to leave.

Marcus Johnson (01:54):

Tell us what you do, in a sentence.

Jon Humphrey (01:57):

I run the solutions and operations team at Rokt, which manages all of the technical services for all of our clients. So I have the lovely pleasure of getting to work with all of Rokt's largest clients every day.

Marcus Johnson (02:07):

Very nice. Okay, final question. If you could own one arcade machine, if we could give it to you for free, it lived in your house, you could play it whenever you wanted to, what would it be?

Jon Humphrey (02:16):

Ooh, good question. Almost certainly Cruis'n USA. Just put me in there with the gear shifter that doesn't do anything, and I'll just race and car for the end of time.

Marcus Johnson (02:29):

I was going to say which one was that, but this was obviously one of the driving ones.

Jon Humphrey (02:32):

Oh, it was the best driving one, the driving one. Really the only driving one.

Marcus Johnson (02:35):

Okay. Very nice. Susie?

Suzy Davidkhanian (02:39):

So of course, I don't think I want one in my apartment because it's so big. I am a gamer. I play on my phone all the time and I used to have a Game Boy growing up, so I'm all in on the games, but standing up to be obsessively playing a game for hours on end just doesn't sound fun.

Jon Humphrey (02:58):

Oh, but Susie, that's the beauty of Cruis'n USA.

Suzy Davidkhanian (02:59):

Glad I asked.

Jon Humphrey (02:59):

You get to sit down when you play it.

Suzy Davidkhanian (03:02):

Oh, yeah, you picked a good one. One of the motorcycle ones where you said... Because otherwise, I would've been like Tetris, Super Mario Brothers. I'm not sure, dating myself here, but standing up, you can get a-

Jeremy Goldman (03:13):

Mario still exists.

Suzy Davidkhanian (03:15):

But it was cool when I was growing up.

Jeremy Goldman (03:18):

So cool.

Marcus Johnson (03:18):

All right. Nevermind. We shouldn't have. We can cut that straight out, guys. Don't [inaudible 00:03:24]-

Suzy Davidkhanian (03:25):

You didn't cut the last time, the least not last.

Marcus Johnson (03:25):

I know, because you wanted it to be cut, so we left it.

Suzy Davidkhanian (03:26):

So annoyed about that.

Marcus Johnson (03:26):

And Jeremy, how about you?

Jeremy Goldman (03:29):

This is definitely the old four player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that's giant, and I've got a big place because I'm rich, because I'm a writer. And also, if it's not that, then the six player X-Men game. That was that same kind of thing that takes up even more space. Yeah.

Marcus Johnson (03:47):

Great. Great answers. The correct answer we were looking for is NBA Jam. Good attempts anyway, most of you. Susie, what happened? All right. Time now for the fact of the day.

(04:02):

Why is music so nostalgic? So a few theories here. Some research, I guess I should say, not just theories. A 2008 study at the University of Leeds in England identified what they call a reminiscence bump. It's when folks retain more memories during their teenage years and early twenties than they will during any other life phases. Catherine Gillespie of Vice was noting this. Psychologists say our favorite music tends to be from this time since these are our identity forming years, and the songs that accompany our adolescent experiences leave a lifelong emotional imprint in our brain. Economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz used Spotify listening data to ascertain that men's favorite songs were released when they were between the ages of 13 and 16. For women, it was between the ages of 11 and 14.

Jeremy Goldman (04:57):

That blows my mind. I'm like, okay, that basically explains my life. Thank you.

Marcus Johnson (05:03):

Yeah. Yeah. You could have guessed this, but it's great to have some research to support that. Okay, this is why I'm still listening to Dr. Dre and Jay-Z and whatever hits from those few teenage years which were so informative. Research at Cambridge University in 2013 confirming that we place less importance on music as we age, and the music that we do seek out tends to be less intense and more sophisticated, things like jazz and classical music. And this one's really nice. University of Melbourne, in Australia, neuroscientist Amy Baird found that couples with a special song that signifies an important moment in their relationship will strengthen their bond by listening to it together, and it could also possibly alleviate the effects of dementia.

Suzy Davidkhanian (05:56):

What?

Marcus Johnson (05:58):

Yeah, music-

Suzy Davidkhanian (05:59):

Do you have to listen to it with a person?

Marcus Johnson (06:01):

Wonderful invention. I wonder if that was the whole point of the... Oh, no, it strengthens your bond with that person.

Jon Humphrey (06:10):

This adds up though. This is why I can still sing every lyric of Lil Wayne mixtapes from The Guidance. I think this all adds up now. I get it.

Marcus Johnson (06:19):

A skill you thought wouldn't be useful in your adult life.

Jon Humphrey (06:21):

Yeah, exactly. The things they don't teach you in school.

Jeremy Goldman (06:25):

I was going to say, did subconsciously having Rokt on the show make you think of a music related question?

Jon Humphrey (06:31):

As it should. I happened to be sitting in the conference room. Huey Lewis & the Noose [inaudible 00:06:36].

Marcus Johnson (06:37):

Oh. Then I'm going to pretend yes. Anyway, today's real topic, why the new funnel begins at checkout.

(06:49):

All right folks, let's start with this. Jon, what does Rokt do?

Jon Humphrey (06:55):

An easy one for me. So Rokt is an e-commerce technology. So we work with a lot of the largest e-commerce brands in the world to help them deliver more value to customers when they're checking out online, and we do so in a couple of interesting ways. One is through the technology that actually powers the front end. What do we show to customers in this most important moment of e-commerce, as we call, it the transaction moment? But we also allow them to tap into what we call the Rokt network. The Rokt network is made up of thousands of advertisers, so advertisers who are looking to put their offers, brands, products, services in front of customers. So we actually help connect the e-commerce clients to a whole network of advertisers. So it's a business that's been around a little over 12 years at this point.

Marcus Johnson (07:42):

As mentioned in the open, you guys are saying that the new funnel begins at checkout. How come? And that feels like it's too late.

Jon Humphrey (07:54):

Yeah, it's a good question. So I'll share a little bit of background with you as to where Rokt came from, and I think it'll illuminate why we focus so much on it. So way back when, the CEO of Rokt, Bruce Buchanan, actually before this was running a low-cost airline, Jetstar, in the Asia-Pacific region. And a really interesting statistic, not just specific to Jetstar but just about any low-cost airfare provider, so that they actually lose money every time they sell you a ticket. So every time you buy one of those tickets, they lose, I don't know, 10, 20 cents on the dollar. What's interesting though is that when you get into that moment of checkout or the transaction moment as we call it, customers enter into this really linear mindset. They go step by step. They enter their payment details, their shipping details. Then they go on this journey to select all of the ancillary services that they might need to make their trip better.

(08:41):

So a business like Jetstar, other low-cost airline providers, and this actually extends to resellers, ticketing, events, et cetera, tend to make about a hundred to 120% of their business profit in the last three to four screens of e-commerce. And so what's interesting is while it's actually a small subset of the total customers who actually visit your site that make it into the checkout experience, it's the most data-rich environment and it's the most high-attention environment that you can get in e-commerce, and it all happens in a very short period of time. So yes, begins late, but I'd say by far the best way to extract value out of the e-commerce transaction is actually focusing on those last couple of screens and making sure you put the right thing in front of customers at any given time.

Suzy Davidkhanian (09:23):

You know what I would say, Marcus? I don't know that it's starting late. I almost feel like it's restarting again, because these are consumers who've already made a purchase with your brand, who like your brand. We don't concentrate enough on the transaction and the conversion. There are people you don't have to spend money on because they already like your brand, they've already purchased from you, and so now you're sending them aftercare emails. I know that's not exactly what you guys do, but this is a component of keeping them engaged with you, whether it's coupons and promotions, emails, SMS messages, retargeting them to other adjacent products in your suite of products. All of that is with an engaged customer, so it's cheaper.

Jeremy Goldman (10:05):

I think, by the way, that's the key thing to me, is the engagement level, the focus level of the customer. From the e-commerce sites that I've managed in my past life, I can tell you, those are such important moments where somebody's really leaning in, and can you capture and do something with that attention, in addition to obviously optimizing the checkout process? That's I think one of the key things that we're really talking about here, is tapping into a customer when they're engaged the most.

Suzy Davidkhanian (10:34):

What I think is tricky though, and I don't know what you guys are doing about this, Jon, it's the websites that are doing one-click checkout. Because now, they're just going straight through. They don't want to have anything to do with you. They're very engaged, they're highly motivated, but they're looking for convenience, in this instance, speed to move on with the next part of their life. How are you guys managing that?

Jon Humphrey (10:54):

Yeah. I tend to think, Susie, that these one-click checkout experiences, you'll even start to see partnerships between the likes of Shopify and OpenAI trying to figure out these mechanisms to speed out the checkout experience. That's all the better, because what it actually allows you to do is then, like you said before, Susie, extend the checkout experience. So if you can actually get somebody through that funnel faster, you still have their attention. Nothing's changed about the consumer psyche in that moment, and so you have this really interesting opportunity to say, "Now that I got you through this faster, what else can I offer to you? Or what else will add value to this experience that'll actually extend this moment?"

(11:31):

And so a lot of people think of the transaction moment as fixed. It's three screens, but actually, what you start to hear a lot in the industry, and I've even heard some previous guests on the podcast talk about this, is this idea of the next best action. Like, "Okay, I'm done with this thing. What should I do next? Where does the brand want to take me on this journey?" It's a really interesting opportunity, and actually it's easier to do if you can get them through that upfront part faster.

(11:53):

And Jeremy, what I was going to share before as you were talking about that, I think it's a really interesting point, that one of the challenges I think, because the opportunity is so big, because it's such a high-intent moment for customers, you also have a really big ability to get it wrong. You can screw it up really, really easily, and we saw this. If you look back, a lot of companies would say, "This is where we make all of our profit. Let's ask customers to do a hundred things." Let's take a three screen checkout experience, and Susie, do the opposite of what you said, let's make it 20, and let's ask them for the bag and the seat and the gift card and the gas. And what we've learned over time is that that just doesn't work. Consumers just don't have the attention span to go through something like that, and that's okay. And so really, it's about how do you pick the one or two things that's going to be most relevant to each person and just help them continue their journey faster?

Marcus Johnson (12:39):

And how do you decide what to show them?

Jon Humphrey (12:41):

Yeah, it's a tricky one, Marcus. The good thing about the way that Rokt has constructed its business, but also the privacy and security that we operate in, when you think about the transaction moment, there's a lot of sensitive information that exists in there, customer's payment details, all of their first-party data. The way that we select which ad to show is by actually being a very trusted partner to each of these e-commerce brands. So trusted that they feel confident to use their data with and through the Rokt ecosystem to actually power the selection, whether it's an advertisement, whether it's a different type of creative. It could be something that they're offering like a credit card that they offer to their customers as a first-party campaign.

(13:20):

So the way that Rokt works from a technical perspective is data comes in, content goes out, and because we have this massive network and have been collecting data over, gosh, I think the number is over 6 billion transactions that Rokt will optimize this year, there's a lot of historical information that you can draw on to say, "What should we do next?" And that also affords you the opportunity because of the scale of the network to try new things, test against those hypotheses, so we're always learning. You're never going to get it right a hundred percent of the time, so the best thing you can do is try something else and see how it goes. But we have access to a lot of first-party data because we operate as an extension of the e-commerce partner's business, versus this disparate ad network or something that they just tap into one-off to generate a little bit of extra profit.

Marcus Johnson (14:03):

Do you see that there are certain categories of things that people do prefer in those moments than others? Obviously, it's going to be very unique to that person and the data that you're pulling based on them, but are there themes of, okay, in these moments, people tend to these buckets of things?

Jon Humphrey (14:19):

Yeah, I'll give you two. I'll tell you a theory that's proven not true, and then something that we've realized off the back. So a theory that's been proven not true is that everything needs to be contextual. So just for an example, I'm buying a flight. I need to then buy a suitcase. I'm buying a hot dog and so I need a bun. That really doesn't work at scale, and it also really limits the opportunity for you to connect with the customer. And so what I've been really surprised about is that somebody might be buying a flight, but they're actually really interested in a meal kit service directly thereafter. The reasoning, you could go down the rabbit hole and try and figure out why people might be interested in that, but in reality, it's just whatever the customer wants at that given time,, so that's always something I've found interesting about this moment.

(14:58):

But Marcus, the name of the game is, like Susie said before, it's things that people can get through quickly. If somebody's buying in a moment, they don't want to then go on another non-linear journey, product discovery journey to then have to figure out what they want. They want to stay in that linear mindset. And so this idea that we can get somebody to an external landing page or to another part of your website or even keep them on that page in the moment to help them get access to these services quickly, those are the brands that tend to win. So people who forget about that landing page optimization funnel tend to lose in that environment.

Jeremy Goldman (15:31):

I think, yeah. A perfect example I can imagine is I am seeing a concert out of town and I'm buying tickets, and wait a minute, I don't know where I'm going to park afterwards. That could be easily a situation where you do know something about me and my situation, and that is a relevant add-on, that I don't want to start that process of researching nearby garages. I just want a recommendation.

Jon Humphrey (16:01):

Yeah. And you know what, Jeremy? The way that it's recommended to you might be different than the way it's recommended to Suzy. So for example, Suzy might want to know exactly how far that parking garage is from the stadium because she's bringing her kids to the stadium and is trying to figure out how far are we going to have to walk? Jeremy, you might have a really fancy sports car. You said you were rich because you were a writer, right? And so you might want a covered garage. You want to see a picture of that thing, like where's my nice sports car going to be? And so the way that you receive information is also different. So it's not just about what am I going to put in front of you? It's actually the same product, I'm going to put parking. But it's also how, and that tends to be actually the difference maker in trying to appeal to different types of customers.

Suzy Davidkhanian (16:37):

It's very clever. It sounds like you also have a lot of different partnerships, so that you have the stadium and different parking garages, or I was thinking about often I use the Curb, the New York Taxi Cab advanced quick payment system, and then as I'm getting to the airport, there's a pop-up for Clear, which in some ways is very genius. My question to you is how much information do all of the partners share with you so that if I already have Clear, then you show me something like the Chase Lounge or some other something?

Jon Humphrey (17:09):

Yeah, it's a great question. My worst nightmare is if we were to show you something that you already have. It's just such a bad customer experience.

Suzy Davidkhanian (17:15):

Me too.

Jon Humphrey (17:16):

It's such a bad customer experience. And look, sometimes it's unavoidable and that's okay, because it's always privacy first. And so the way I think about this is twofold. One is the way we position Rokt is a client controlled platform. Our clients are the e-commerce businesses, and so it's up to them how much they want to use or don't want to use. And so the way we coach them through that is that the more you put in, the more you get out. The more data that you can use about a customer to make a decision, the more relevant the end decision is going to be.

(17:42):

But on the other side, it's also up to the network. So these network of advertisers might say, "You know what? I don't ever want to show my service to somebody who already has it," but there's a lot of interesting marketing strategies in there, Susie. Even though you may have, let's say Clear for example, maybe they actually do want to show it to you again because it's actually now about usage. So when you get to the airport, they don't want you to avoid the Clear line and go somewhere else. They want you to use the service you have access to because they're focused on that longer-term retention strategy view as a customer.

(18:09):

So you can take a bunch of different approaches, but I tend to find the best ones are some combination of contextual relevance, I'm on the way to the airport and I need to get through TSA, and also individual relevance. I'm on the way to the airport, but you know what? I've really been thinking about signing up for Apple TV. It's weird to think about, but it happens all the time.

Suzy Davidkhanian (18:31):

I'm so fascinated by this. There is the sending people off to a completely different partnership website, but it sounds like there's also a lot of advantages of keeping someone within the fold, but not like, "Here's a dress, it comes in eight colors and 37 sizes." It's almost like, "Here's a dress you just purchased, and we noticed maybe three months ago, you brought red lipstick, so here it is again in case you need it now."

Jon Humphrey (18:54):

You know, Suzy, what's interesting is, so if you think about the breakdown of where the customer is in the moment, so let's say they're actually before they've hit the buy button, so you're on the payment page and you're entering in your payment details, that is probably a pretty tricky time to take customers totally off-site on a non-linear journey. And so a lot of the work that we do is to try and figure out how can you actually maximize the value you get out of each step in the funnel, but not disrupt the core reason that somebody came to the site in the first place, which is to buy the ticket or to buy the pair of clothes? And so it's a really delicate balance.

(19:28):

Once you're post-transaction, you have a lot more flexibility, because like you said before, Suzy, you can start to extend the journey. I'm going to take somebody on a totally new journey knowing that I still have their attention and can make a prediction as to what's relevant. So it's a really delicate balance. The further you are up in the funnel pre-purchase, the more likely it is that it's going to work better if you keep somebody on the site. And so we do a lot of work with financial services companies, insurance companies, things that happen pre-purchase to actually embed the experience directly in the site because it just works better.

Jeremy Goldman (20:01):

By the way, it's an imperfect analogy, but Suzy and I often talk about beauty products, and I think a lot about what are the things that are put in the line when you're at Sephora? These are these perfect impulse purchase and things that might have a high degree... Obviously, they can't be personalized in the way that Rokt is, but they're not meant to get you offline, to jump out of the line and start to evaluate the product. They're more like, "Oh, I'll add this on or I won't." And I think it seems like you guys are trying to add value in a way that, to your point, the worst thing you could do is stopping people from transacting. It's more so about can you add additional value on top of the transaction that isn't going to complete either way?

Suzy Davidkhanian (20:45):

And truly after transaction, so less likely to keep them on, say, the Macy's website or the Sephora website, but to move them to a partner website.

Jon Humphrey (20:54):

Exactly. Yeah. And Jeremy, I think that's the best version of offline personalized marketing in the world, is the trinkets that you can-

Suzy Davidkhanian (21:02):

Cash wrap.

Jon Humphrey (21:03):

[inaudible 00:21:03] for, right? Like I myself unfortunately fall or I succumb to the candy at CVS. I'm always at CVS and I'm like, "Well, obviously I need Reese's Pieces," but it works. It's a good strategy, Marcus, I know, I know you're getting Reese's too.

Marcus Johnson (21:17):

It's because I'm English. Every American loves peanut butter.

Jon Humphrey (21:20):

But yeah, it's a really powerful strategy, and look, the challenge that you run into is can you make that decision quickly and not disrupt the customer? Because if you do, you've really started to disrupt what they're there for in the first place. And so we take the strategy a lot that somewhere between 20 and 30% of the time, the best thing to do is nothing. And it's odd, businesses that make money on advertisements tend to think, "Well, let's show more advertisements. It's my business model." We tend to take the opposite approach which confuses people sometimes, but it works better over the long term. And so actually, if you can get rid of a lot of ads, the ones you leave are more relevant. If you can get rid of a lot of conflicting messaging, the ones you actually leave are more relevant to the customer.

Suzy Davidkhanian (21:57):

And so it's almost key to think about it. It's not like the, "Oh, people who bought this also bought that," which a lot of retailers are doing on their own with their own modeling, let's say. But it's once it's been purchased, sending someone to a very relevant Starbucks or whatever it is that we know the adjacencies between customers who shop this brand also love this brand.

Jon Humphrey (22:18):

Yeah. I usually say, Susie, that contextual relevance isn't bad. It's just not the only thing that you should think about. And so it's not always just this part of the outfit fits with this part of the outfit. That's great. Upper funnel, product detail pages, sure, there's really powerful recommendation engines out there, but what else can you do and how can you broaden the scope? And I think that's particularly important in a time like this. Economic uncertainty, things like that, how do I expand the scope without bombarding the customer with lots of messages? Because that is not a long-term strategy that works.

Jeremy Goldman (22:52):

Jon, one thing I was curious about is something we get clients asking us quite a bit about, the new tariffs regime and a whole bunch of uncertainty tied to that, a little bit unclear from an economic standpoint about what happens next. And how does that factor into your way of thinking at Rokt in terms of how you can basically add value to each transaction? I imagine that has to have some impact.

Jon Humphrey (23:19):

Without a doubt. Well, I'll share this with you. We have the opportunity to work with a lot of the major big box retailers. Some of the ones you mentioned before actually, Jeremy, are clients of ours. And those big box retailers when they see something like this have to go through a rethink, like, "How am I going to remain a profitable business that can reinvest back into the growth of my business?" Because a lot of these companies have to rely on net new customer acquisition just as much as they do those retention strategies, so there always has to be these budgets to push back into top-of-funnel branding, customer acquisition. That gets really hard during a time like this.

(23:52):

The way we think about the world is the best things you can do as a vendor in a period like this, there's usually two things. The first is give your clients a lot of flexibility. When I see vendors trying to lock clients into 2, 3, 4, five-year contracts during a time of economic uncertainty, I struggle to figure out why. Is the contract more valuable than the product? What's going on here? And so is there a mechanism actually that you can take to allow your customers to extract a lot of value from your product to give them a lot of flexibility back during a time of uncertainty? So that's principle one that we always take, but principle two, Jeremy, is focus on the outcomes.

(24:27):

The way we position Rokt is twofold. If you're a partner, the easiest way to think about Rokt is that you can extract value directly from the platform without necessarily having to put any money in. You're just extracting value off the backend. And for advertisers, when they come in, it's a new mechanism, a new performance channel that they can invest in to acquire customers at a really efficient rate. We would never operate in a world where our advertisers were overpaying for customers, and so it tends to be a great efficiency driver.

(24:54):

The way I generally think about this too though, particularly in the Martech landscape outside of this, Jeremy, is one of the challenges is there's a lot of SaaS businesses that are a step removed from the value chain. They don't have the direct ability to add revenue back into your business. You can think of things like the CDP space for example, the customer data platforms. So Rokt went out and actually made an acquisition earlier this year of a company called mParticle. The whole reason for that is that if you can actually bring those types of businesses closer to the value layer, you can add way more value back to their existing clients, but then also use some of that technology to add a ton of value to Rokt's existing clients as well.

(25:33):

You create these two-way streets, so I think you're going to start to see a lot of that sort M&A activity, Jeremy, in the Martech market, of trying to get things that can't directly generate value and bring them closer up to the value chain layer. You see a lot of that activity with companies like Braze, for example. Very close to the value layer, sending out these marketing messages and generating value, and so they're going out and finding other businesses that would struggle in a time of economic uncertainty but can be great bolt-on products to their suite.

Marcus Johnson (26:00):

Let's end with this. Jon, what's next for Rokt? What's on the roadmap?

Jon Humphrey (26:03):

Good one. A couple of things. So the number one thing that we always focus on is how do we improve... We have these north star metrics in the business, but how do we improve the rate at which customers sign up for the things that you offer them? So that is always the biggest R&D investment that we will make. No matter what new products that we offer, what ways you can configure our products, the underlying foundation, we call it the Rokt brain, the underlying foundation should always improve a few percentage points a year. So that's the biggest R&D investment that we'll be making forever as I see it.

(26:34):

That said though, Marcus, I think one of the things we're particularly interested in is stepping our way up the funnel even further. A lot of Rokt's clients and where Rokt has become ubiquitous is, Susie, like you were talking about, post-purchase. So after somebody buys something, we'll give you this special offer directly after. Now it's about how can we take that same technology and allow clients to optimize their first-party initiatives? So this might be their credit card campaigns, it might be insurance that they sell. Jeremy, it might even be parking spots that they sell a ticket so those are strategic partnerships that they offer. The balance there is how do you do it in a way that doesn't impact that core reason the customer came?

(27:10):

But when you can do that, like I said before, Marcus, that's where the value lies. You think about these low-cost airline providers, et cetera, that's where 120% of the profit lies. Imagine you can improve those outcomes by 10, 20, or 30%. So you very quickly transform the unit economics of those businesses, and our mission is to help them reinvest that in something else. Go create new stadiums somewhere, open new stores somewhere, deliver it back to the communities that you operate in. So I think it's this really interesting flywheel that you can create if you really nail that upper funnel piece of the market.

Marcus Johnson (27:40):

An excellent thought to end on. Thank you so much, Jon. Thank you to everyone for being on the show. Thank you to Susie.

Suzy Davidkhanian (27:47):

Thanks for having me.

Marcus Johnson (27:48):

Of course. Thank you, Jeremy.

Jeremy Goldman (27:50):

This was fantastic. Thank you.

Marcus Johnson (27:52):

Thank you again to Jon.

Jon Humphrey (27:53):

Great to be here. Cheers.

Marcus Johnson (27:54):

Yes, sir. Thank you to the whole editing crew, Jon, Lance, Danny, and Stuart runs the team. Oh, I missed Victoria. Victoria's going to kill me. Oh my goodness.

Suzy Davidkhanian (28:03):

Please do not edit this one out.

Marcus Johnson (28:05):

[inaudible 00:28:06] my favorite. Victoria Mayley, thank you so much to just Victoria. She's going to be so mad. So if you're on social media, Stuart runs the team. Thank you to him as well. Thanks to everyone for listening in to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER video podcast made possible by Rokt. Make sure you subscribe and follow and leave a rating and review if you have a second. We really appreciate it. We'll be back on Monday. Happiest of weekends.