289 - Empowering Advertisers: Leading the Charge Against Fraud in the Digital Age with Blockboard's Matt Wasserlauf

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO of a company called Blockboard. You're going to have to explain to me what this company does.

Yes, because I went to the website to try to make sense of it. And I—

oh boy, I'm a pretty smart guy, but I couldn't figure this one out. But as I understand it, you're involved in using AI and blockchain to help people buy advertising on video to keep them from getting screwed. That's the basic sense.

That's well put. I'm going to— can I quote you on that, Doug?

You can quote me on that. So tell us a little bit about your backstory and what your company Blockboard does.

Sure. Matt Wassiloff. Doug, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here on your podcast. My cred is I was the first guy to put video ads on the web 25, 30 years ago. That pioneering spirit has carried me through the past 25 years. I've built 3 companies. This Blockboard is my most exciting. I'm genuinely excited to use your phrase, Doug, I help marketers not get screwed. That's the bottom line. And we're using two technologies to do that at Blockboard. One is blockchain. That's the foundation of our platform and our technology. We use Ethereum blockchain to do that. And then on top of that blockchain is AI. So we're using artificial intelligence, particularly GenAI, generative AI, to drive our marketer's message to their customer as fast as possible. So those two technologies are what we're using at Blockboard to drive the world-class outcomes for major marketers.

So how do you get into, how did you get into the idea of using blockchain and AI to help advertisers get more bang for their buck?

So that would go back to the past 25 years that I've been, uh, building this industry, which today is about $50 billion. Uh, it's amazing how fast and far it's grown. But over those 20, 25 years, I've watched the good things, the growth, but I've also seen the bad things. I've seen the growth of MFAs, made for advertising sites, bots, fraud. Those sorts of things have been what's crept up and grown so much so that I had to do something about it. Doug Noll, I put my stake in the ground with Blackboard. To fix that problem. It's a huge problem. According to the ANA, the Association of National Advertisers, it's a $22 billion problem.

Wow.

It's incredible. I, even as I say it, I can't believe it, but it's a $22 billion problem that nobody is talking about or doing anything about.

Let me see if I understand the problem. So you're, I'm on, I'm, I see a video ad somewhere where I see it. Maybe I see it on streaming or I see it on the website. I, if I'm an advertiser, well, I'm paying cost per thousand of impressions, CPM, something like that. Is that where I'm paying on?

Yes, correct. Correct.

What am I paying for? CPM?

Yeah. You're, they're paying for the ad that you saw, but I just told you there's $22 billion worth of those ads that nobody saw.

That's right.

That's what they're paying for.

Somehow, whatever the signal is that, that, that is being received is a false signal. And that's getting charged to the advertiser.

Yes. $22 billion worth.

That's a lot. So how do you guys fix that problem?

So we're using blockchain. I mentioned Ethereum blockchain. So the piece that we're— the technology that is so critical in our process is what's called a smart contract. A smart contract, Doug, is a piece of code. It's a light piece of code that through which all these ad calls come from the Paramount Pluses to the Netflix. And they pass through that smart contract. And at Blockboard, it snaps when we know we're reaching you. If we know we're reaching you, and that's what our marketer is trying to do, reach you, Doug, we will accept that ad call and distribute the ad. That smart contract is what's helping us mine through all of those made-for-advertising sites.

And for the people that are making money off advertising, what's their take take on all of this?

That's a great question. 6 years ago when I started Blackboard, I thought they'd be like, wow, that's amazing. How can I get some? I've been disappointed, to be quite frank, Doug. What I've learned is my industry is very happy with the tech stack that they built over the last 15 or 20 years. They put a lot of time and energy and perhaps money into that tech stack, and they're hesitant and reticent to change. So it's been a, it's been a struggle these past 6 years.

Also benefiting from $22 billion a year of fraud too, right?

You said it. You said that. I didn't say that. You said that.

Why kill the goose with the golden egg?

There you go. There you go. So that's what they said.

So the people who are selling the space don't like it, but the advertisers presumably do like it because they can, as I saw on the website, there's very detailed metrics that you're delivering to people. Right. You really understand. Where their dollars are going and measure their ROI and ROAS more effectively.

That's right. I would say the past few years we pivoted as a company from those brand marketers who don't care as much to the performance marketers that live and die by the sale.

I got it.

And so those are the marketers that have come in force and with scale. So that's how we're winning at Blackboard.

So you've been doing this for a long time. What is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you excited?

This. Cleaning up the mess. Cleaning up the mess. I see it as my legacy. I was one of the first people in the industry when it was zero, Doug. I remember those days. We were trying to sell— I was trying to sell video advertising on a 56K modem when it didn't work. And today I feel very good about cleaning up what has become a toxic waste dump. I really do.

How's your platform doing in terms of protecting your advertisers?

Wonderfully amazing. 100%. We have a guarantee that when an advertiser signs with us, that 100% of their budget is going to go to real humans and the right humans. And for the marketers, from Planet Fitness to Proactiv, are over the moon excited and doubling down.

So when an advertiser comes to your company, they give you— they're going to give you— they give you the video ad they want to run and they give you the profile. This is the audience. Our target audience that we want to hit. And then it's up to you to figure out how to distribute it. And to your point, have what you call the contract or whatever it is, put the code in to keep the crooks out and only focus on real humans, real life.

Smart, smart contract.

That's correct.

Yes.

Yep.

Yep. That's how it works.

So are you then contracting with the media sites themselves and then you, and that cost gets passed through to your advertiser? Is that how it works?

Yeah, we are.

We're publisher direct. So we work with Paramount and Warner Brothers and everybody. So we bring the marketer's message directly to Paramount. And that's how we make money is the small margin that we make on top of Paramount.

Okay. That was what I was going to ask you. Where did your money come from? So you have a slight markup over whatever, whatever Paramount would charge.

Correct.

Now the reason that one of your clients, customers would be interested in paying that markup is because They know that when they book with you guys, they're gonna, the impression count is gonna be real. It's not gonna be inflated.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. And we're getting the notice of those major publishers. Their NBC actually called us out in an article during CES and thanked us for helping them with programmatic advertising.

Oh, good.

Because when we deliver an NBC viewer, it's a real person and they know they're not getting that from the other. Technology providers.

So I looked at your website, looked at your executive team. It looks like you've got a pretty good-sized organization. How many people do you have working?

Yeah, we're 70 people. So we're getting there. I'm a baseball guy. I like to say we're probably approaching the second inning at this point. So it's still early, but yeah, we're 70 people and we're going to have record revenues in the tens of millions of dollars. And we're, we're profitable. I'm very proud of that. We're running a profitable blockchain company, which you just don't hear a lot of.

Right.

And we're most importantly, Doug, is we're, we're We're delivering for major clients. We're delivering sales. We're delivering outcomes. For Planet Fitness, it's gym joins. For Proactiv, it's sales of their acne, uh, skin medicine. So that's what makes— that's what gets me excited and gets me out of bed every day.

What is it that you think is unique about you, Matt, that you bring to the table personally that's made all this success? So you got decades of work in this field, right? What is it that now, all of that experience, what is it you think that you can put your finger on that says, okay, this is why this is working and this is what's in me that's made this work? Recognize part of the team.

No, I appreciate Doug, definitely. And it is all about my team, but I've had for 30 years in this business impeccable reputation. I've always done right by my customers. I was there in the beginning. I was the first Procter Gamble video buy. And I remember those clients. Bob Dees isn't there at the company anymore, but I did right by Bob Dees at Procter Gamble, and I've done right with his team ever since. And they know me, and they know I'm a pioneer in the industry and that I've done well by them. So to have that kind of reputation to carry into this next phase of our business when it's going to become arch critical, uh, to mine through all these MFAs and just bad stuff with the backdrop of a Google antitrust suit going on. Is what differentiates me from just about everybody else in the industry.

Yeah.

You had a post on LinkedIn the other day about that. Tell— what's the effect of the Google antitrust finding and what you're doing?

I'm proud to say, not from my own conversations, but from my industry peers' conversations, that Google is taking a different tone and a different approach. Yes.

Finding some—

Yes. I actually talked to some of my sellers this morning and I said, let's reapproach some of these Google conversations because I hear they're striking a different tone in the market. So we'll see. I have yet to speak to my Google contacts, but I feel like that as the backdrop throughout the industry is really helping soften what's been some really hard conversations and difficult challenges in our industry. I feel a big change coming.

Wow. So how do you scale the business from where you are now?

It's going to be through— AI is definitely helping. We went from mere blockchain and machine learning to now AI. And for customers like Proactiv and we have Knockaround Sunglasses and Planet Fitness, they are seeing record sales. And now through the holidays in the next couple of months, all the marketers who really want to drive sales during a critical fourth quarter are knocking on our door and taking our calls. We're a large sales force, and so we're out there, but AI is definitely going to drive that scale.

Is this stuff so proprietary that there's barriers to competition? So you, are you not going to see a lot of competition or are you going to see other people start to emulate what you do?

They may. I think one of the biggest challenges is we built our company on blockchain and what happened through those past 6 years is Sam Bankman-Fried. And FTX, right? And all the people who were experimenting with blockchain over the last 6 years have said, wait, whoa, this guy's getting thrown in jail. I don't know about this blockchain stuff. So we are really the Lone Ranger out there with the security of blockchain. I was never focused on cryptocurrency. I was focused on the operating system, right? And the platform, which is a public ledger. I think we have, we have our run of the place for a little while, Doug, and I'm excited about it.

That's gotta be. I was going to say, that's got to be exciting.

Yes. Yes.

So I'm curious.

I want to pivot a little bit to what this is all about. The leadership listening. You've been in a lot of different positions starting at the very bottom, now all the way to the top, CEO of a number of companies. How do you learn how to listen?

It is one of the most underrated and least spoken about attributes of a leader. So I give you a lot. I'm tipping my cap, Doug Noll. The fact that you're saying this, I love you for saying it. I agree. It is something that is so critical because you can't learn and you can't act and you can't adjust unless you listen and you know what you have to resolve. You know what you have to overcome. And most people and leaders, they won't be successful very long, but most people don't understand that very simple thing. You need to listen.

Yes. How did you come to that? Of course you're singing my song, but I'm curious, how do you come to that insight, which is absolutely correct, of course, in my opinion.

I've always been as a business person, customer first. And so that, that approach. And perspective has— I don't know if it's just you learn the most from your customers. When someone pays you, you have to listen. If you don't listen, then you're— it's almost— you have to understand why they're paying you, what they want, and you have to be able to deliver on that. And if you're not listening, then you're never going to know what it is they're paying you for and what they need. So I've always been customer first throughout my career, and that's what's helped me lead. Yes.

So figuring out what the customer need, not what the customer may say they need, but what they really need and helping them sort through and figuring out what it is that they actually need has been part of your journey. And listening, of course, is a crucial part of that.

Yeah. And that's a very good point, what you just said. And I would say then listening, you, you you have to really be good at listening to understand the difference between what they're saying and what they really want.

Right.

And so that comes through experience and being a really good listener. So well said. Agree.

How do you, how do you find your, how do you find listening as a leader in your organization? You got 70 people and you're growing rapidly.

Yes.

So how do you see, how do you see your listening skills creating that culture where people are paying attention and focusing on what's important.

That it's actually become easier for me through the pandemic now that we're post-pandemic because the rest of the world through, uh, the pandemic has gone virtual. And this new generation of young people only understand virtual. And what I tell my 70 people is get out of the office, get out of your house. And go see your customers and talk to them and look them in the eye and understand what they need. And so I am all about getting on a plane, going to see our customers. I say it every day to my team, and that is what I believe is a difference between my type of leadership and this next generation of leadership.

And how does your team take that? What? Get on a plane, go talk to people?

The young, the young people, it's an adjustment. The young people aren't accustomed to that way of just dealing. Even the kids who are just out of college, they're used to learning virtually, having social networking friends, doing everything on their phone. So that's a big adjustment for my older crew. They've heard it before and they, it's good for them to be reminded that it is important to get out there and physically see your people.

It's so interesting that you should talk about this. I'm very concerned about young people in their 20s and 30s not knowing how to listen, not having a clue how to listen. All they know about is texting, right? They have no idea about how to really create social interaction. Do you have to train these young people? How do they learn stuff they've never been exposed to before?

There is a lot of training. Yes. There's a lot of training. And some have— I haven't made it in my organization because they could not make that adjustment. There are a number of young people who have come up to me and thanked me because they feel if I— they didn't— and they didn't get it between the eyes for me, their career might have been affected, right? Because now they're learning those hard lessons. It's— I also was— I never forced people to come to the office, but the young people, when I said to them, it's going to help you to come to the office, you're going to be able to build relationships in a way that you couldn't otherwise, they've come and thanked me. For that. Yeah, it's the biggest adjustment is our young people.

So it seems to be universal. I've seen, of course, it's apocryphal, but you see all these young people in a room and all they're doing is looking at their phone and they can't even talk to each other. I don't know how true that is, but it seems to have a certain amount of validity. I feel—

no doubt. No doubt. I also told our people years ago that when you do a virtual meeting, face on and voice on. Because we had young people who wouldn't even put their face on.

Wow.

I was right there about to fire them, but I've been patient. It's a learning curve. It's an adjustment. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's amazing what that pandemic has done to this new generation of, of young workers.

So you bring in the young people, they're reticent, they don't have good social interpersonal skills. They're not used to talking to people. They've got a lot of anxiety around talking with people, they don't know how to deal with conflict, they don't know how to deal with disagreement, right? So they're completely avoidant. How do you help them get through all of that? This is stuff they should have learned in the third grade. Not that they're going to learn.

You can only help the people who want to help themselves, to answer that as succinctly as I can. But we, yeah, we've had turnover and a lot of that turnover has been due to some of these issues we talk about, but for those that have learned and made adjustments, they're on their way to a wonderful career and great success.

I would say that they're very lucky to work with somebody like you who's forcing them outside their comfort zone to learn the skills that they have to learn in order to be truly successful as human beings and in their, whatever their careers are. Where do you see Blockwork going? Where do you see it in 10 years?

Yeah, in 10 years we'll be fully programmatic automated. Programmatic is the term we use in our industry, which ultimately means automation. So we're showing our industry how to operate in this new world of CTV and programmatic media. And now more and more of our clients are saying, okay, I love this, I want to do it myself.

There you go.

And we call that our self-service platform. So that's a big part of our next 5 to 10 years.

What does CTV CTV mean? You got a lot of acronyms.

I've never heard of it. No, I appreciate it, Doug. Thank you. We get complacent in those acronyms. CTV means connected TV. It's become the industry term for this new streaming TV opportunity. So when you turn on Netflix and you're ultimately turning on an app and that app is on a new operating system from what we used to work in web video, which was browser-based, right? Cookie-based, right? Now we're dealing with, we're dealing with apps, which ultimately are sitting on the Apple iOS or Android Google system platforms. And that is all called CTV, connected TV. So old TV or linear TV came through the antennas. Right.

Analog.

One way. Analog. One way came into your home, that transmission. Now connected TV is a two-way conversation that is living on your apps, and that we call connected TV or CTV.

Oh, I've got so many questions. We don't have to— Okay. Yeah, it's so fascinating to me. So part of what I know is that when you open— you're on your phone or your tablet or whatever and you're connected to the internet, there's a whole bunch of information that's made— or now is made available to whoever's content you're watching. And I mean, cuz I know I've got a platform that tells me who, who's on my website and what blogs are they reading and what's their name and what's their phone number and what's their email.

Right.

It's kind of phenomenal. Kind of scary when you think about it, right? Yes. Yes. And so I'm sure it's that only at a whole more sophisticated level. And I take it then that what you're able to do is sort through all of the signals that are coming through of who's watching the video, for example, or watching the ad, and you parse out, you can say, this is human, this is not human.

Right.

So this is not real because you, the signals are obvious once you've got, in your case, AI able to sort through and make a differentiate between those real and not real. Is that, am I, as for a non-tech guy, am I getting that right?

100%.

Okay, that—

you just nailed it, Doug. You could join my team anytime.

All right, I got it. So the technology then is setting up, setting it up so that when one of your client customers sends out a video ad somewhere, that the only ad, the only thing they're going to pay for is what your system can target as being a real viewer, not a fake.

That's correct.

Got it. Yes, I would say that's a sea change.

Much appreciated. And like I said, for those advertisers that recognize what you just said, and it is a sea change, they're all in, they're doubling down. For unfortunately, most of the marketing community, they are making so much money on the old ways, the legacy systems, right, that they are hesitant to change. I listen, I think it's coming. I know it's coming. I know it's coming. I'm in this for the long term until they put me in the box. And I know it's going to be sooner than it is later. I really do.

That more and more people are going to be using the kind of systems that your company is—

Yes. Yes.

And the fraud— there's always going to be out there people who are scamming and always trying to get deals. But to the degree that a company like yours can cut that out, it means that you're providing a really valuable service to your customers.

Yeah, I'm about to go to press with a great brand called Luxottica. They own Sunglass Hut, right? So sunglasses—

where I'm wearing them. Yeah.

And they saw an 80-plus percent increase in efficiency. And that efficiency, by the way, is customers to their stores. And we're going to market with them and I'm going to carry this woman with me throughout the market. And if there is a brand that is willing to waste 80% of their money, plus, it's just, it's just, it's unsustainable is what it is.

Right?

It's unsustainable. That's how big the problem is.

Yeah. You think about how large these ad budgets are. And the stuff you're depending upon, this kind of advertising, driving traffic to either website or stores or whatever.

It's incredible.

It is incredible.

She's the first major brand that's willing to go to the press with me. I'm quite excited. It'll start in earnest next month. But I haven't found a client up to this point that's willing to go to the press because they don't want to upset their Google relationship or their Trade Desk relationship and admit to some ills or wrongs that they've done in the past. It's mud in their face.

It's not like people like me who just call it the way it is.

You're the exception.

That's correct. I don't have it. I don't have a dog in the hunt.

Doug in the race.

All right, man, one more question. I'll let you go. This has been a great conversation. What's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

Um, I am— one of my little quirks is I'm a patriot, okay? And this is— you might laugh when I show you this, but I make sure in my wallet I have $1 from each one of the dollars. So I have a Washington $1. I then have a Thomas Jefferson $2.

I have Abe Lincoln.

The reason I have the— yeah, Lincoln. I have Alexander Hamilton. I have Ulysses, the winning Civil War general, and I have Benji. The reason is I love my patriots, my heroes that have built this country. And I'm so proud of what they built and what we have. And I keep at least one of those dollars and their pictures in my wallet at all times. And it's just a demonstration of the love I have for my country.

Good for you.

There you go.

Good for you. I really appreciate that. That, that's really cool. You're carrying the symbolic value of almost 300 years of, of, of democracy around in your pocket. That's pretty cool.

There you go.

There you go. There you go. This has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for taking time outta your busy day.

Thanks, Doug. Thanks for having me.

You're welcome.

All right.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content to To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team.

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