In the conversation, Mike and I talked about how Telly has evolved from its initial, eye-catching value proposition—free televisions in exchange for detailed first-party data—into a pitch rooted in the integrated advertising the platform offers marketers.
And this week, you can also watch an edited version of our conversation here.
This interview has been edited. This edition of Quote/Unquote is sponsored by Telly.
Mark Stenberg: What is the Telly business, and how has it gotten to where it is today?
Mike Shehan: It’s completely turning this 80-year-old industry of manufacturing, distributing, and monetizing TVs on its head. You get this free, amazing TV in exchange for data—we ask 120 questions in order to get the TV. That enables us to see every single ad and every piece of content that plays across the entire ecosystem, and we can detect how many people are in the room watching.
Mark: The first stage of the business was handing out free TVs to build the data set. Now you’re more focused on the ad products themselves. How is that going?
Mike: Our home screen ads are truly unique. We’re not sneaking spots and dots into a two-minute break here and there—the ads are persistent. Last quarter we served over 50,000 unique advertisers, probably 10 times more than last year. We’ve shown these ads drive much higher brand recall, around 250%, and click-through rates quadruple when we hold those ads there for two minutes or longer.
Mark: Turning TV into a performance marketing channel is something of a holy grail in CTV, and shoppability was a big effort of Telly’s for a while. How is that going?
Mike: The jury’s still out on transacting on a device. What advertisers want is to reach more people per impression. When two or more people are in a room, we know they’re 42% more likely to talk about that ad.
Mark: What headwinds is Telly navigating?
Mike: On the ad-tech side, TV buying—that’s where you’ll find the headwinds. Anytime you introduce innovation, the challenge is adoption. I saw the same thing in 2014, when CTV ads were introduced en masse. There’s no argument—CTV ads are better in every single way than traditional linear ads. But buyers have established planning cycles, measurement frameworks, allocated budgets. It took years back then just to get CTV ad buying.
Mark: The name of the game in CTV right now is consolidation—Fox buying Roku, the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. Does that affect Telly?
Mike: We don’t really view anybody else as our competitor. I spent 20 years building companies like SpotX, and every day was spent asking who’s getting between me and my customer, who’s moving my cheese. I don’t feel that at all at Telly. We don’t need 80 million Tellys like Roku has. Our ability to generate revenue from the Tellys that are out there is multiples higher.
Pulled Quotes
“You need journalists on Earth.”
Venture capitalist Keith Rabois, explaining the thesis behind the unlikely outlet State Affairs
READ MORE
