Jeremy Weisz 13:38
How did they hear about you?
Casey Binkley 13:40
I think I would have just been reaching out to like, marketing agencies, and got in touch with the agency that deals with them. And they basically had a crack and then yeah, so it’s been true.
Jeremy Weisz 13:54
I love the core story, specifically, Casey, because you ate your own dog food. With it, you actually put an ad on the side of a truck, and they responded to it.
Casey Binkley 14:04
There’s no better proof and it actually works.
Jeremy Weisz 14:08
So, from a brand perspective. I know you worked with, you work at companies like Amazon and grills pickles. Talk about what you did with Amazon.
Casey Binkley 14:21
Yeah, Amazon has been an amazing partner. So there’s kind of two things that we work with Amazon one, one from an inventory side of things. So Amazon’s got some great last-mile delivery trucks that are predominantly like residential-based. So great for like CPG direct consumer, any sort of retail brand you’re in residential neighborhoods, some people might see the CASPER truck delivering a mattress well, they just assume that their neighbor ordered a Casper mattress so it kind of creates this larger than life. So we want to help our work with them from an inventory standpoint. And then to we actually help with campaigns, with their advertising clients going out onto trucks. But this, one of our initial campaigns that we did with them was inclusion diversity campaign went live in five markets, predominantly kind of the South or Midwest was two trucks in each market. And it was Alexa, what is love? So they had done a promotion with their Alexa home device that if you had asked Alexa, what is love? Alexa didn’t really have an answer for that. So as part of the campaign, they pre-recorded kind of, what is love to a whole bunch of different people. So if you were to ask Alexa, what is love, you could get a response from this person or that person or a whole bunch of different responses. So, campaign was really powerful. We had one of our truck drivers actually ended up meeting the woman of his dreams. He was out on a delivery. And she noticed this ad on the side of the truck and said, wow, this man is like really progressive and is into stuff. And they ended up going on some dates, and it ended up true fairytale fashion. So it was pretty cool in that sense.
Jeremy Weisz 16:12
That’s awesome. We’ll talk about gorillas and pickles for a sec in a minute. But talk about partnerships, because I noticed when I was doing some research that you are very strong in in promoting partnerships. And it’s one of the ways that you’ve grown the company.
Casey Binkley 16:29
Yeah, I think like, we always kind of joke internally that we’re like the triple win. So not just the win-win, it’s the triple win. So we partner with logistics companies. So it’s a win for them, because we’re driving more revenue for their business. Plus trucks look amazing. And they typically have clients that get excited about what they’re doing with these campaigns. So it’s a win for the logistics company. On the other side, it’s a win for the brand, because they’re getting mad terrific exposure are, were one of the most cost-effective at home channels out there. So from an efficiency point of view, we’re bang on we’ve got very cool targeting capabilities. So from a brand perspective, amazing value and amazing results on a brand side. And then the third one would be our internal team. So, we’re making this all happen. And we love to kind of like coin the triple win together with everyone.
Jeremy Weisz 17:25
And then what about me, because you get a lot of probably referrals from actual logistics companies that recommend different trucks to right, who are other types of partners that help with kind of driving business.
Casey Binkley 17:42
Yeah, by all means, I mean, we work with like, Amazon on that side of it, we’ve got Etsy. We’ve got Canada carnage, there’s like a whole bunch of fairly large carriers. And then we start to work with like regional or like smaller, maybe you own five or 15 trucks. The logistics industry in general is extremely fragmented. I can’t remember the exact stat, but it’s something like 90% of trucking companies own less than 10 or 15 trucks. So like there is some huge players out there that own a massive amount, but there’s a lot of small kind of regional or local players that we work with as well. So and that community is very referral base. So when you have a good experience, you run a campaign with Casper mattresses, good experience, and then we got another one coming up for like countertops. If we need additional trucks, we can typically work, reach out to our existing partners and get referrals into that. So definitely a big proponent of referrals,
Jeremy Weisz 18:49
or go up the team for a second and the evolution of the team. Because when you first started, you had the manufacturing business in the wine, the home wine and brewing. It sounds like you bootstrap the company. Talk about the milestones and what your team look like in the journey. Totally.
Casey Binkley 19:06
So yeah, when I first we’re definitely been bootstrapped out organization. When I first started, I had a tech partner named Zachary Levy. Him and I started and worked together to kind of build the first MVP for about a year or so. And then I had kind of done my exit out of the brewing company, and I was lucky to kind of go full-time with Movia. And just Zack and I just decided that it wasn’t going to be the best fit working together. So I then needed to find a new head of tech. So my CTO that’s been with me now for six years is Gregory Meloche. He is an absolute genius. I think I’ll just kind of chat about our tech a little bit while I’m here, but like I think a lot of people look at our tech that hey, you build this, you know, hardware sensor base. It has analytics. And it all sounds simple. But, you know, our tech stack is very advanced one, we built hardware. So, there’s companies out there, that’s all they do is build hardware. Well, we build hardware, too, we build an operating system that makes all these hardware components work together. Again, there is companies out there that all they do is specialized in operating systems to make the hardware work. So we have, again, build custom software to make. So a custom operating system, two these devices all have a SIM card. So we’re sending this data in real-time, that hits our back end, we could be processing and millions scans a second, depending on how many devices are online, the data is coming in from all over the world, North America, Europe, we’ve got devices in Australia, South Africa, so this data is coming in at a very fast, furious rate. So we’ve got debt back in data processing, again, some companies, all they do is process data and specialize in that. And then too, we pull this data in real-time for a customer-facing dashboard. So you’ve got this whole front-end component going on. So we have really married four tech stacks together hardware, operating system back end, and then front end. So there is a lot going on. So I give a ton of kudos to my technology team and leader in general. Philip Randall has also been very instrumental in our business. So it’s kind of myself Gregory and Phillip. Phillip’s our COO. So he handles the operation, kind of executional side of the business. So we couldn’t neither, we couldn’t exist without each of us or the three of us together because very important roles. And then we’ve got a few people under Phil on the operation side. Gregory’s got a few people under him on his tech side. And then we’ve got a sales team that’s kind of three people as well right now.
Jeremy Weisz 22:05
What were some of the challenge is if you’re looking awesome, pulling up the Mobilytics, you could check them out mobilytics.ai. Why the decision to release it to other people, like you could have kept it under your own and just kept it proprietary. But it sounds like you’ve offered the platform and other companies can use it right now, too.
Casey Binkley 22:28
Yeah, so we’ve always had a lot of people say, hey, the value that you bring in marketing industry is like in the tech that you built, mobile billboards and trucks, iPads are great, but like this tech stack that you built for real-time one on one impression metrics is like very huge, being bootstrapped, it’s taken us a bit to get the tech stack really stable and solid. We kind of hit that milestone about a year and a half, two years ago. And then we’ve started to do licensing with so most of the digital mobile billboard trucks in the US have our technology from a measurement perspective. We’re now starting to partner with transit networks. We’re doing static out-of-home, like roadside billboards. And the other one that’s kind of really picking up in terms of pace right now is indoor retail media networks. So everybody in that home space knows it. But for those that don’t, kind of the next wave and out-of-home is in-store retail. So your Whole Foods, your Trader Joe’s all these big retail stores are going to have tons of screens inside them that are going to be ad networks. So we’re starting to power measurement solutions for these.
Jeremy Weisz 23:41
Talk about some of the challenges you had to overcome on the tech side, because like you said, there’s a lot of moving pieces here, from the hardware to the software to the back end front end. What did you have to overcome the actually, and then you’re putting it in conditions like it’s on a truck. It’s snowing, it’s raining? Like, it’s just there’s a lot of environmental things as well.
Casey Binkley 24:07
I’m happy that you’re picking up on that, Jeremy, because yes, we’ve had a lot of fun over the years building different hardware iterations. We’re going on to V five right now. So when we initially started, I think a lot of kind of prototyping starts on Raspberry Pi boards. We were right there with everybody else. So we built on Raspberry Pi’s for the first few years we were kind of doing small-scale rollouts with them, but realize we needed a custom PVC board. So yeah, we’ve got a customized board or kind of solution that we’ve been doing for kind of two years. So V4 is a custom solution and V5 will be our kind of secondary custom solution coming out. But hardware has been tough. The operating system is also tough because it’s like kernel level development. So like you’ve got to have somebody that is a very advanced programmer to get in and program operating systems. So, one, they’re hard to find two, they’re expensive. So operating systems have been big. I would say like, data back in Gregory’s got a big kind of knowledge and backhand. So I’d say like, that side, I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but we’ve had, you know, that would be our least cumbersome component. And then front end, there’s lots going on there. So front ends always been fun to build as well. But yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 25:31
Where does it go on the truck, like when I’m visualizing a truck, where does the hardware device go.
Casey Binkley 25:38
So it plugs into a 12-volt outlet, a cigarette lighter, and then it just sits up on the dash by the windshield. So it’s a very small device, I’ve got one on my desk, let me grab it.
Jeremy Weisz 25:50
Check it out.
Casey Binkley 25:55
So this is one of the units, this is V4, our V5 will not have any external antennas on it, it’d be a little bit smaller, basically be like a small black box. So we’ve got a couple different power sources, we’ve got a 12 volt like cigarette lighter for vehicles, we’ve got a normal wall jack. And then we’ve also got a USB power source as well. So we can, typically,
Jeremy Weisz 26:20
So they’ll plug it right in the front, and like it’ll sit on the dashboard somewhere or somewhere in the front.
Casey Binkley 26:25
I mean, it’s typically it’s pretty small form factor. So when you stick it up, kind of by the dash at the front of the windshield, when you get great signal visibility, because it’s like in the open under compared to signal strength reason, the same technologies, your home Wi-Fi router, people, your Wi-Fi router in the basement, go up to the third floor, you’re gonna get signal or not, so any sort of obstructions, metals, cement, brick, whatever it is. So we’d like to have kind of clear visual sightlines is where we get the best signal strength.
Jeremy Weisz 26:54
So why did you go out and get patents then? For a company, I mean, I can see why protects your IP, but also, it’s not a small decision, because it’s capital, man, it’s time to talk about decision to get patents.
Casey Binkley 27:12
Yeah, I guess it was, like, I thought, what we built is novel, because nobody else is had been doing it or is doing it. So I wanted to kind of make sure we stuck our flag in the ground. I figured that the measurement kind of body was going to develop into different ways, a lot of like, out-of-home measurement is done through Telco or SDK data, which is opted-in data. So when you download Facebook or Instagram on your phone, and you hit accept those x apps, track your location data, then there is data companies that basically buy this data or have access to it that will provide measurement analytics, but it’s a small portion of the overall data that’s out there. So that and then like potential fundraising opportunities. It’s, as a startup that’s thinking about potentially raising money. If you have patents, verse nine, you’re in definitely in better position. So.
Jeremy Weisz 28:11
So who are the, I get the clients from the Movia side of things, right? Because you have increased revenue streams for logistics companies and trucks, you can get brands, more exposure, talk about the ideal clients, customers for Mobilytics.
Casey Binkley 28:28
So Mobilytics, like we’ve started in kind of the moving measurement space, so anybody that has moving out of home inventory, could be trucks, it could be cars, it could be taxi tops, it could be transit or bosses. So that was kind of like the first forte, we’re now starting to work with a lot of the digital out-of-home providers. So the one thing that I think is, I’ve been in that home space for five or six, almost seven years at this point, we always talk about growing that home market share. So out of home represents 5% of all marketing dollars. Digital is roughly 50. You got TV, that’s maybe 20, 25. And then there’s kind of out-of-home brand. Radio, kind of the smaller channels, survey talks about how our home should grow. I’ve been here again, for seven years, there’s been a ton of innovation in that space. We digitalized a lot of the assets. So when you drive down the highway now they’re not just static billboards, but they’re digital big screen. So that’s been a huge innovation. We’ve also in programmatic. So you can serve digital out-of-home in real time through buying platforms like BroadSign or hive stack or place exchange. They’re basically Google AdWords, but for physical billboards. But again, we haven’t grown our market share. We’re just stuck at this five and I think what’s happened is when a digital buyer looks at programmatic out-of-home right now, they have a hard time feeling confident and how its measured and transacted. So when an online buyer buys online, they buy in real time they buy in one-to-one data. It’s like they know what they’re getting. But when they buy programmatic out of home, that data that they’re buying, or that impression measurement is done off SDK data, which could be a week or two weeks or 30 days old. So it’s not dynamic. It’s basically like what your impression is for the month is what the impression is, well, advertisers know that impressions are dynamic, if the Madison Square Gardens gets out, those bars and restaurants are going to spike because there’s lots of people around there. So I think the big opportunity right now without a home is going to real time one to one. And what that’s going to do is make a digital media buyer confident to buy more programmatic at home, which is going to increase our market share and visibility in general.
Jeremy Weisz 28:34
How did Grilles use you?
Casey Binkley 29:34
So Grilles on the Movia side did an amazing campaign with us this summer, we were live in LA so they did 20 trucks, the trucks stick out because they’re bright green and very hard to mess. So we’ve delivered over close to 150 million out-of-home impressions. There was a video that went viral this summer on TikTok so somebody was following one of the Grilles trucks and did this awesome recording asking the truck to flip over because they wanted to get some of the pixels that were inside. Anyways, that video went viral on TikTok, there was over 275,000 likes. So like over a quarter million likes on this video, which for an out-of-home campaign is like, you know, the essence of going viral. And they also saw a 40% increase in sales this summer in LA. So there was a lot of people eating pickles in LA this summer.
Jeremy Weisz 31:54
On the Mobilytics side, talk about some of the use cases there. I’m looking at the site and led truck media.
Casey Binkley 32:05
Yeah, like there’s a lot of digital mobile billboard operators out there that have trucks with the big screens that drive around. It’s hard again, for these clients or operators to provide measurement abilities on their unit.
Jeremy Weisz 32:23
What were they doing before? Just guesstimating? Or what?
Casey Binkley 32:27
I mean, yes, on, a lot of them were even doing anything. They were just saying, hey, the truck was out there for eight hours today, it was downtown Chicago at these locations. And other than that, we know people were there. But we don’t really have a clue. So there was that, or people were using SDK data, which is opted-in data from apps that are tracking your locations. But that’s a very small portion of all data that’s out there, it’s me 10, maximum kind of 20%. So they were always either low on the numbers or having to use some multiplier to get it up to kind of a normalized value. So I mean, operators now can want to have this data at the touch of their fingertips, or if they want to give a client login so the client can monitor these trucks and know how many people are seeing them in real-time, it’s kind of taken their units into not the future by relevant times.
Jeremy Weisz 33:26
I was led truck media using this a day already had relationships with different you know, trucks or billboards and they’re using your sensors are how does it work for them?
Casey Binkley 33:38
Yeah, exactly. So they have digital trucks all over the all over the country. And basically, we will put our sensors on their trucks so they can provide measurements, so they get a dashboard that they can show their clients. And they can also upsell their clients on mobile retargeting campaigns. So sending digital messages back out on to the phones, through apps like Facebook, Instagram, the weather network. So one, it’s a bit of an upsell for them. They’re upselling a retargeting campaign, so more margin. And the other thing it does is it strengthens their relationship with the client. Because now you’re not dealing just with the traditional or at home buying portion of it, you’re dealing with the digital teams as well. So digital teams get the data they actually get, they see great results. And now they want more of this data, which in turn means more at home campaigns.
Jeremy Weisz 34:29
So it creates more revenue because they can also charge if they want it or if they choose to charge a dashboard fee for them to actually see all the data and also that also creates an upsell for mobile retargeting as well. Exactly. Bingo. And then for the truck media, what type of is it on trucks kind of like I’m seeing a bulldog mobile billboards today have similar kind of use cases there. Are they different is a different types of inventory that they’re putting the sensors on?
Casey Binkley 35:03
They would be similar. So there’s probably about 50 or 60, digital mobile billboard operators across the US, we’ve got, I would definitely say over half, maybe close to like 60% of them using our tech on their truck so far. And then other use cases would be like transit advertising. So like boss advertising or car advertising, or even like internal fleets. If you’re a plumbing company, and you want to measure and see how many people are seeing your vehicles that are branded out in the community, well, we can put sensors on your vehicles and know exactly, how many people see it, where the units were, and then we could retarget digital messages back out, you know, build your customer base more. So it’s great for advertisers, but it’s also good for a company on fleets as well.
Jeremy Weisz 35:58
What are some other use cases that you see that’s applicable? Maybe that are using you or maybe not? Like you mentioned? There’s lots of HVAX companies, plumbing companies that have trucks all over cities that can use it? What are some other use cases besides maybe a media company like we’re seeing with, you know, Bulldog, or LED truck media?
Casey Binkley 36:19
I mean, in store retail, so retailer attractions, so if you’re interested in knowing how many people came to your retail store over what time? When are your peak hours? Is it between nine and 11? Are you busy is between three and five? What parts of the store did somebody you know, they came in the front entrance. But did they go to the back corner where that kind of display stand is? Or did they only make it halfway through the store. So there’s like lots of in-store insights. I mean, those are kind of be like the other one would be like special events. So like festivals or trade shows where you set your 10 by 10 booth up, or how many people actually came to your booth or if I’m at a big music festival, and I’m running a t shirt stand, well, how many people came over to the t shirt stand. So kind of gives the ability for event organizers to pull analytics that they can provide to brands or their partners that are participate in the event?
Jeremy Weisz 37:23
Is there a minimum number of sensors are something that you need a commitment for? Like, let’s say, you know, brands like yeah, we want to do this. But I don’t know if it’s worth it for you as a company to like send them one sensor for one tent or something.
Casey Binkley 37:40
I mean, we’ve got no minimums, but we’ve got volume pricing incentives. So we’re happy to ship one to five sensors, our volume incentive started 25 or more. So we go kind of 25 to 100 to 500 to a couple 1000 square. So depending on…
Jeremy Weisz 38:01
Casey, I want to talk about so like there’s unfair advantage versus bigger opportunity. And the decision, maybe it was an easy decision, maybe not. Because with Movia, you had an unfair advantage. But you have these patent sensors, you have a dashboard, you have analytics. And you’re weighing that against bigger opportunity, like actually providing other companies in the industry with the exact solution that gives you an unfair advantage. So talk about the decision to release Mobilytics or the sensors. Was it tough? And what was your thought process at the time?
Casey Binkley 38:40
Great question. Because yeah, it’s been something that our team has spent many years kind of determining or thinking about for sure. I think, one we had operators reaching out. So we had digital the lie media is led truck me is the billboard dog mobile billboards, they were reaching out, they wanted the tech. So we knew that we were going to have clients so it wasn’t like this massive leap of faith. Are people interested in this?
Jeremy Weisz 39:09
Do they hear about it?
Casey Binkley 39:11
I mean, we’ve been in marketing now for five or six years under the Movia brand and they realize we have had a competitive advantage with this real-time tech that we’ve had. So, the industry is definitely known about it. So when we had people reaching out two, we love the mobile billboard business, but it can be a little bit spotty. It’s not like a SaaS platform where you’re got that reoccurring, that kind of stable revenue, we could hit a big campaign and then you could not hit a big campaign it kind of ebbs and flows a little bit. So Mobilytics is a bit more of a steady revenue, and we just, we truly think that the out-of-home mode working in general is that kind of this inflection point where real-time one to one data is, in my opinion, in our team’s opinion, kind of going to be the crux of what takes out a home to that kind of next level. So, to hoard it all to ourselves, is that going to be great for the out-of-home community. I mean, it’s good for us, but like, out of home in general has an ability where we could, I read a an article in the summer. So the out-of-home worldwide is a 30 to $35 billion market, worldwide billboard advertising. There was an article I read in the summer that estimated the online global ad fraud market. So spend that went into fraudulent online ads last year was $86 billion. So that’s two times bigger than all the billboard advertising in the entire world. Well, we’re very real. When a billboard goes up, it’s physical, there’s no fraud that’s happening, because it’s physically on the side of the highway. But it’s just not measured properly, the numbers aren’t there. So I think that there’s a big opportunity for out-of-home to grow and market share, become real-time and be bought and transacted very similar to Google AdWords account where, digital buyers are 25 to 30 years old, they’re not, you don’t have an older person that’s in the digital buying chair. And for those buyers to become confident, I think a home is going to become really sexy in the next like, not that it isn’t already, but in the general media mix, everybody’s like, oh, out of home, well, if I could buy that billboard in real-time, and know that, like, hey, my boss just left the office. And I know that he’s driving home right now, guess what, I’m gonna buy five billboards in real time on his way home from the office, so he knows that I’m doing my job. That’s where I think at home is gonna get cool and kind of savvy like that.
Jeremy Weisz 42:01
Have you seen any of those? Right now, interesting use cases out there that you didn’t expect people are using your sensors for?
Casey Binkley 42:15
I mean, I think I’ve started to realize how big of a need there is for this in an indoor application. Because Telco data, and SDK data can be very hard, if you’re, I’m just taking Toronto for an example. But a lot of our shopping like our Sobeys Loblaws, or, you know, main grocery stores are in the billet bottom of huge apartment buildings, it could be 20 or 30. storeys tall. Well, it’s very hard to get any data in these places, because it’s just so like, I think that there’s a big need for indoor to be measured more.
Jeremy Weisz 42:53
Yeah, I’m looking here. It’s just interesting. There’s a lot of use cases. That gets my entrepreneurial ADD mind going here with outdoor digital, obviously, we talked about but static mobile, there’s digital washroom ads, static washroom ads, wall murals, airport advertising. So there’s a lot of convention centers, a lot of interesting use cases. Casey have one last question. Before I ask you, I just want to point people to check out mobilytics.ai you can check out movia.media to learn more about what Casey and his team is working on. My last question is just resources as a leader, entrepreneur, what are some resources because he books, it could be mentors, that you have helped you throughout your journey?
Casey Binkley 43:44
Yeah, I think like, I do a lot of like YouTube, podcasting and whatnot. But I also would think like, depending on where you are, I always find that there’s like, kind of state or government or municipal resources that are out there trying to help propel the kind of entrepreneurial community forward. In Toronto, we’ve got federal programs, we’ve got provincial there is municipal programs. And then you’ve got like local universities that are kind of starting stuff. So I always think like just tapping into the broader kind of entrepreneurial community in whatever municipality, there’s incubators all over the place. Like, there is 1000 people that want to see entrepreneurs succeed right now and programs set up for that. And I think that when you really dive in and find out what’s there they can be, there’s the OCI Ontario Center of Excellence or innovation here in Ontario. There’s Mars, there’s community tech in Waterloo, like there’s programs out there that one they have mentors. So you’re gonna meet people get ideas, there could be funding opportunities. They could host social events for like networking. I think like as an entrepreneur, some people get fixated, hey, I got this great idea, I got to pull it off, it’s like, an idea is a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that’s like, really going to make or break it. And if you’re not going to talk about your idea, it’s hard to think that you’re ever going to execute that well, because you’ve got it all bottled up in your head, right? And I think a lot of people that don’t kind of come from that mindset, they like, harbor their ideas, they don’t want to share them. And then maybe they spend all this time working on an idea only to find out like, hey, it’s maybe not gonna work, or nobody wants to buy this or it’s like, not what I thought. So I always think just, like talk to everybody about your idea, nobody’s gonna steal your idea, your way down the path anyways. Everybody’s too busy doing their own stuff. So like, don’t think like, I think it’s about kind of broadening up.
Jeremy Weisz 45:59
Yeah, I love that. Do you have any favorite books on the topics that you’ve looked at throughout the years?
Casey Binkley 46:05
I think like, I used to do a lot of reading in terms of like sales reading. I think I’ve like shifted my mindset where I’m like, a little bit more into that mindset. One person that’s been instrumental to me over the last few years has been a guy named Dr. Joe Dispenza. I’m not sure if he’s on your anybody’s radar, but he’s a really cool guy. He’s got just insane stories about he’s a quantum physicist, neuroscientists, and I’m an active into meditation on a daily basis. I think that Joe is really helped with my clarity, my positivity, just knowing like the direction that I’m gone. So, I think that there’s lots of business stuff that you can read on and become good at sales or partnerships or negotiating or whatever it is. But I think having a healthy mindset in general is kind of one of the biggest things that I’ve seen over the last few years. It’s been very positive for me,
Jeremy Weisz 47:07
Casey, I want to be the first one to thank you. Everyone, check out movia.media and also check out mobilytics.ai and we’ll see you next time. Thanks, Casey.
