David Bloom:
Hi there. I'm David Bloom with StreamTV's live show with Mike Shehan, the Chief Revenue Officer of Telly. We're here to talk about their really interesting merger of hardware and advertising and the opportunities that is presented. Telly now is out in the market. Mike gave a keynote speech just a little while ago, so he's fresh off the dais. What did you talk about?
Mike Shehan:
Of course, I talked about Telly and just how Telly is just completely reinventing TV, like soup to nuts. First off, and this is a big one, it's free. It's a free TV in exchange for data.
David Bloom:
It's not just free ad-supported television channel. It's a television.
Mike Shehan:
Exactly, it's a free TV, but you would think with free, you'd get maybe cheap. It is literally the nicest, smartest TV you can get on the market. Most TVs, you have a screen, maybe some little speakers. They expect you to buy the soundbar. Our soundbar is built in, it's Harman Kardon. We have a far-field mic. You can talk to your Telly. We have a 4K HD camera with a privacy shutter. I don't have 4K on my laptop. And then a smart screen. And this is really what separates us. This is like what we call the industry's-
David Bloom:
To be clear, it's a separate screen down below the main screen.
Mike Shehan:
10 inches by 48 inches. It is there to show content. You can customize it, newsfeed, stock ticker, sports scores. It's designed to get your eyes down there, but we also coordinate content based on what's going on up top. So if you're watching the Denver Broncos and the Ravens, you're going to have team stats, player stats underneath. But the real magic is, of course, that screen is always there and that's where we put our ads. And of course, that's how we make it for free because we put ads on the TV.
David Bloom:
Sure. Now, you guys have been in the market for just a little bit now, right?
Mike Shehan:
Yep.
David Bloom:
How do advertisers work with you and how do channel providers work with Telly?
Mike Shehan:
Yeah. So mainly we work with the advertisers. One, of course, is programmatic. To get a Telly, you have to fill out a registration form of 120 questions, which goes very deep into your household. We also know what content you're watching as well, and we also know, we have a presence detector, so we know how many people are in the room or if anybody's in the room. So it's very powerful from an advertising perspective. You can bias programmatically, we showed display and video ads on that smart screen, or you can work directly with us for more advanced executions that are just much more creative, where you're combining what's going on in the top screen and the bottom screen.
David Bloom:
Data's everything on these. So how are you using that data? Is there anything new in the secret sauce of Telly with the data usage and the ways... You've got that questionnaire, which most advertisers would love to have access to, I'm sure, but how are you using the data to supercharge your ad delivery?
Mike Shehan:
So the 120 questions are all vertically oriented based on certain categories, ad categories. So whether it's quick service restaurants and automotive. Automotive, how old is your car? If you have a car that's over six years old, you're probably in market for a new car. We also ask questions about who your insurance provider is, etc. So we use that data, of course, from a targeting perspective, but we layer in also other data such as what do you watch? So if you want to target football fans, we can target football fans that watch at least six hours of football a week.
David Bloom:
And that's in the spring.
Mike Shehan:
And that's in the spring. Yeah.
David Bloom:
A serious fan.
Mike Shehan:
Those are the maniacs.
David Bloom:
Yes. So there's lots of ways to get pretty granular it sounds like, and you guys aren't getting into, quite yet, uptake so far, but where do you go next? What's next for Telly?
Mike Shehan:
So the beauty about our advertising is the smart screen allows us to deliver ads the entire time. Actually, when audiences are most engaged, they're actually watching the content on the TV, so the delivery of ads that are related to the content, that's where we're going next, as well as duration. We can hold those ads there for longer time. We're not trying chase spots and dots, 30 seconds here and there to interrupt between content. We're actually showing the ad during the whole programming, so we can hold it there for five minutes, three minutes, an hour. And we just did a one-hour roadblock for a premiere of a TV show, and we actually showed that people engage with those ads more the longer it's there, which we're very excited about.
David Bloom:
No one saw that coming. I hope that doesn't mean that ads will feel longer than they already do, but it's very interesting to see. We'll have to wrap it up there. But thank you Mike. I'm David Bloom with Next TMT's here at the StreamTV show. I'm talking with Mike Shehan, the Chief Revenue Officer for Telly. Thanks.