Cardlytics CEO Amit Gupta

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (00:00.77) Hello, fellow data nerds. My guest today is Amit Gupta. Amit is the CEO of Cardlytics. Ticker symbol is CDLX on NASDAQ. Cardlytics is a commerce media platform that leverages its publishers first party transaction data to power rewards and programs. Before Cardlytics, he held leadership roles at Stripe and served as director strategy for Google's Geo division, which oversees Google Maps. Amit, welcome to World of DaaS.

Amit Gupta (00:27.777) Thank you, Auren, great to be connected and a huge fan. So looking forward to our conversation today.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (00:33.826) Yeah, really excited. Now, maybe not everyone knows if you're not like deep in the ad tech world what Cardlytics does. So can you just give us like a super quick overview of what is what it is?

Amit Gupta (00:43.433) Yeah, of course. So as you said, Cardlytics is a commerce media platform. within the platform, we run two ecosystems, the financial media ecosystem and a retail media ecosystem. On the financial media side, we run arguably one of the largest financial media networks in the US and UK through our unique positioning and partnership with most of the largest banks in the country. And on the retail media side,

we bring to market a leading identity resolution capability. And same way partner with the largest retailers and also based on our IDR capability, bring our own retail media and data network called Ripple.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:26.446) Okay. So you just said a whole bunch of things. don't think like anyone would know what they mean. Probably most people don't know what retail media is. No one probably has ever heard of the acronym IDR. I've been in ITech for my entire life. I've never heard that acronym before. So what, what is that? Yeah.

Amit Gupta (01:37.171) Yeah. Yeah, IDR is identity resolution, right? So.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:42.198) I funny. I come from the identity space. I've literally never heard that. Is that like a common acronym that everyone says and stuff or?

Amit Gupta (01:48.413) I think you're right. you're when you kind of get in the weeds enough and are nerdy and geeky enough in the identity space, it becomes a popular acronym. but here's.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (01:54.56) OK. Is that like well known, like even at live ramp and stuff and things? OK.

Amit Gupta (01:59.985) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, in your your former company, who, you know, is a great partner of ours. So the simple thing is, for a a bricks and mortar retailer, they want to know the in store shopper and and they have different ways to connect with them that are not on their loyalty network. And we help with our product with our IDR product we get.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (02:20.92) So you're taking like the card, the last four of the card, plus the zip code and the name, and then you kind of like help identify that person or something.

Amit Gupta (02:29.213) That's exactly right. The first six, last four, and a few other attributes that are part of our secret sauce, we help identify the individual so that retailers can then form a loyalty relationship.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (02:40.066) Got it. And you say, okay, we have 100 % confidence, we're 80 % confident that it's this kind of consumer type of thing or?

Amit Gupta (02:47.711) That's exactly right. So that's part of the secret sauce that where we can actually come back and the retailer partners who had anywhere from like 30 to 40 % of their customer base known, and we bring it to 90%. And you're right, Orin, we give a confidence ranges. In some cases, we can actually come to the point where we can say it's deterministic or close to it. And in some cases, we'll say it's highly probabilistic and we give high confidence levels.

So yes, we have confidence levels with our output.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (03:17.644) And what else can you tell about that person? Like, because they may not, I mean, they may have seen that person a bunch of times and not known it, but what else can you tell them about that person?

Amit Gupta (03:26.973) Yeah, such a good question. So knowing the person by themselves is valuable, but we also believe attributes and behaviors are important. So each of that individual or identity graph of ours comes with over 140 attributes. So the socioeconomic, behavioral, is it a pet family? Is it a sports family? Is it a family?

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (03:48.654) Now, how do you know? Cause I've seen the data from all these different places and they're like, you know, maybe directionally right, but almost always wrong. Like half of them have my gender as a woman. Um, you know, and so, you know, how do you, how would you know that these are correct or, does it matter? Is it just fine if it's directionally correct?

Amit Gupta (04:05.44) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (04:09.449) I think this is what we pride ourselves on. So it's more than directionally correct and it's either in some cases deterministic because our core of the business is based on first party data. And the second part is we thrive on scale. So we process on the bridge side of the business, we process over 12 billion transactions and that allows us a lot of scale, a lot of rinse and repeat. And then on the financial media side,

We have a view into over $5.8 trillion of spend. So the scale really helps us get a highly probabilistic and in some cases a deterministic point of view.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (04:47.214) Got it. Okay. And like when you are, you're also getting these like transactions that are coming in from banks. partner with banks to give them like offers, right? And then they're giving you, there's kind of like a quid pro quo where they give you some transactions and stuff like that. And you have certain rights on the transactions, not other, can't like, I assume you can't just like sell the transaction data, like an affinity or a Yodlee or something. So like,

Amit Gupta (04:59.051) That's right.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (05:15.64) How does it work? Like what's the deal that you have with these like banks?

Amit Gupta (05:18.785) Yeah, I think the best thing is our financial partners, our bank partners are very aligned with us in to deliver the maximum value to their card holders. Right. And so part of that process is we integrate with the banks, we get their transaction data, very uniquely positioned company, very privileged that we get that large amount of transaction data, as I mentioned, $5.8 trillion a annual spend.

in the US, which is more than half the US cardholder, all debit card and credit card transactions. And that allows us to give a lot of insight into their own cardholders at an industry level, but also allows us to bring advertisers so that they can actually get a micro-targeting capability to reach out to these audiences in the bank channel. So when a user goes and logs into their bank app, then they are able to redeem these offers.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (06:11.362) This is where you see those offers. Hey, you can get like 10 % off of Best Buy when you spend your card there and stuff like that.

Amit Gupta (06:15.793) That's right. That's exactly right. and that's the powerful thing. I think the other thing you mentioned about rights. So the rights are very much focused on things that we can do, products that we can bring to market to again deliver the most value to the cardholder. So you're right, we can take some of that data outside of the open web, but that does allow us to bring more innovative products. So more recently,

We have, as I mentioned, two businesses, the retail side and the financial side. We have now started to connect those two businesses in a privacy safe way. And that gives us the ability to bring a CPG level offer, a product level offer, a brand level offer, so that there's more value for the consumers for even their everyday spend. And that becomes more interesting for the banks, for the advertisers, and for the consumer.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (07:08.108) With each bank, do you have like different rights? Like for some, can only do certain products and then for some like maybe after you earn their trust, you can do more things with them or how does that work?

Amit Gupta (07:18.987) So each bank, as you can imagine, is different. each bank partner is very important to us because they're placing a lot of trust by giving us access to their data. the banks are different by definition. So there are some banks that are leaning forward and kind of going into more forward-looking things and products that we can do that we can bring to market. But there's a core set of data rights that cuts across all banks that allows us to run a network at scale.

And that's consistent through all our bank partners. So maybe let me ask you, what's your favorite snack?

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (07:49.356) And it's.

my favorite snack of all time or, well, I mean, I'm a donut person, so I love donuts.

Amit Gupta (07:54.622) of all times.

Amit Gupta (07:59.551) So donut and maybe what was the last place that you got the donut?

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (08:03.896) There's this place locally near where I live in DC that's just like amazing. Just has these incredible donuts.

Amit Gupta (08:10.485) So let's say the amazing players donut. if you share a bank that you like, you may not want to share the bank that you bank with, but a bank that you like.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (08:18.456) Sure, I mean there's lots of banks, let's say Bank of America or something.

Amit Gupta (08:21.599) Bank of America. So next time you go in, you get your favorite chocolate donut from the Amazing Donut Place in Bank of America. Right? And that's what we can actually bring. So the Donut Place is happy.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (08:30.029) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (08:33.582) But they won't know I got the chocolate donut. They'll know I spent, you know, $8 at the donut store.

Amit Gupta (08:40.469) So that's the beauty of it, Aurang. So you're right. The bank transaction would know that you spent $8 at the donor place. But our new capability where we're able to connect the skew level data with the basket level data allows us to get to the chocolate donut.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (08:53.026) Okay. So you, you, you then, you're trying to build relationships with the merchants where they're like sending the skew and then you, you, you connect it up just like the same way you're doing before with that identity management solution. And then you can say, okay, these are this, this happened with this transaction or something like that. What does the merchant get for that? The merchant gets like better offer ways to get better offers and stuff.

Amit Gupta (09:03.531) That's exactly right.

Amit Gupta (09:09.13) That's exactly.

Amit Gupta (09:15.497) Merchant gets to have or in their favorite customer to try the new chocolate donut, right? Merchant gets to bring the best of the better marketing, more targeted, more efficient spend.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (09:20.174) So better marketing or something.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (09:27.0) And is there data co-op? Because like, I spend a lot of, I spend probably like way more money than I should on donuts, but I also spend a lot of money on like pickleball stuff and whatever. And there could be like a pickleball donut combination or something, you know.

Amit Gupta (09:43.561) Yes. So I think you can imagine because we also know a little bit more about Orin that Orin's probably a sports family and specifically around pickleball. So yes, we can actually bring the connection of the right part, the right partners. So in addition to the donor people, we could bring Fanatics to making sure that Fanatics is offering your favorite pickleball player jersey to you as well.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (10:04.334) But is there a, is there, you managing like a second party data sharing or is it like, okay, we're putting this data in a co-op and based on that, we're going to like build profiles on people and stuff like that.

Amit Gupta (10:14.965) Yeah, we have Cardalytics acquired this company called Bridge a few years ago. And Bridge is where we have the identity resolution capability. And also, that is the part of our retail stack where we connect with the, where we use to connect with the retailers. And in that, we do have a co-op of grocers and mid-market retailers and convenience store operators.

So in that, have over 130 million unique shopper profiles. That allows us kind of what you're saying, alluding to that is in a way a data co-op. And that allows us to build the profiles then advertisers can access and reach out to across the internet.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (10:59.042) That's interesting. Do you, is there like data you wish you had the rights for? Like, you could only do this, you would unlock like another billion dollars of potential or something or.

Amit Gupta (11:09.981) Yeah, I think the ability to connect both the datasets, right? Both datasets are the financial dataset and the retail datasets. Both are very, very rich. Both are powerful. They have scale. And ideally we want to connect the two datasets. And only recently we have now started to, we have kind of cracked the code and we're piloting with one of our bank partners to connect the two datasets. They do, yes.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (11:17.036) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (11:34.36) Because they have to agree to this. That's the thing. OK, yeah.

Amit Gupta (11:37.193) Yeah, we take, as I mentioned, this is trust business and we take this responsibility very seriously. So we get approvals from banks whenever we are doing something new with their data. And so one of our forward thinking bank partners and one of our merchant partners we've connected. And now we're able to kind of show the power of data. And so it's an interesting next step in the company's evolution. And that does unlock.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (11:40.898) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (12:03.549) a whole bunch of ability for a new set of advertisers to connect with their customers in a different way.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (12:09.76) Interesting. when a bank like, cause there's a few other companies that kind of offer, do these like Cardlink offers and stuff like that, like Cardlytics. So let's say a bank like Bank of America or something like that is like thinking about doing this or, or do they, do they have like four different vendors in there and they're just trying to understand like which are the best and, then, okay, first they give like 25 % each to each vendor, but then over time they're like reallocated to people who are making more, like how does that work? Like.

Amit Gupta (12:38.049) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (12:38.582) Or do you get like an exclusive to this particular bank or something?

Amit Gupta (12:42.827) yeah, absolutely. think the interesting thing is sophisticated marketers really are doubling down on cart-linked offers as a unique ad format, because this is one of those ad formats, and you know this better than I do. This gets direct value instantly to the end consumer, right? So it's a very unique ad format and it's actually gathering more steep. So the leading marketers are creating a budget line for CLO and we're excited about that.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (12:50.381) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (13:10.665) And they're actually leveraging some of the new products we bring. Card-linked offers, thank you. I appreciate me. I keep using those acronyms, throw people off. Yes, card-linked offers, that becomes a major channel. some of the marketers are really testing out the new products. So we brought in things like multi-tier offers. So for example, some of our airline advertisers are using our product to help customers upsell.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (13:11.886) Just further, see a lot of his card linked offers. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ha

Amit Gupta (13:39.753) And by broader fairs or even our gas advertisers are using our products to upsell to premium levels, premium start. that the whole kind of ecosystem kind of benefits. Now, to your point, there are competitors who are in the market because it is a vibrant market. It is a growing market. And the way the banks think about it, in some cases, they love the fact that we have an end to end platform.

and they really leverage our platform as the core way to run these offers. And at times they'll get content from some of the other partners. On the flip side, there are banks that have their own platform, one or two banks that have chosen to kind of think about their own platform. And then they still value our premium content because in the industry, maybe I'm biased, we do have the most premium offer content with some of the leading advertisers. And that differentiates us in a pretty major way.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (14:37.442) Though are there, I mean, you see so much data about transactions, about, so I assume you have like all this like super interesting data about consumer behavior, about the economy. I haven't seen you like publish a lot of that data. Do you have not have the right to like publish that or, or are some of the insights or, or maybe do I just haven't seen it?

Amit Gupta (14:58.645) Yeah, I think you're right. We do have limited rights in how much we can publish because there's a data lag that we get subject to because of the size of data. Some of this data can, as you can imagine, be market moving. There's not that many entities that see $5.8 trillion of spend. And we see that spend on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a recurring basis. So there are limitations in terms of rights.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (15:16.536) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (15:23.585) We do publish, and but this is good feedback. We need to do a better job in publishing our insights more often. So just to give you a few interesting anecdotes, despite the market sentiment we see, retail spend is up 6 % if you think about like March, April this year versus last year. 6 % year over year. Same thing for home improvement. see, for example, for gas, we see trips are down.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (15:40.014) Oh, wow, 6 % in here every year. Oh, that's a lot. OK.

Amit Gupta (15:51.701) but sorry, trips are up, but the spend is down because of the reduction in the gas price, right? So trips are, if I recall right, the trips are up, down.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (16:00.886) trips are basically just the time number of times you go to the gas station or something like that.

Amit Gupta (16:04.801) That's exactly right. Right. So and in terms of delivery and restaurants, the third party delivery, we see increase of about 13 % year on year. But the in restaurant, there's a reduction of about 3 % year on year. So there are very interesting trends that are happening. Some of these, especially around every home improvement or retail, there are some tariff effects that we can see where consumers might be front running.

just to kind of get ahead of potential tariffs, but

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (16:32.174) Yeah.

So consumers are actually thinking about it and like they're spending like to they have the knowledge enough to spend. I got to buy that German or Chinese product now type of thing.

Amit Gupta (16:45.547) I think we do see some spike in the March, April timeframe, but overall, the retail is still, the everyday retail, everyday spend is still holding steady, as I mentioned, like 6 % year on year. So there is some front running, but generally the spend is holding steady, both for just everyday retail and home and garden, home improvement. So, you know, we see so far the consumer is trying to find deals, right? So people wanna spend, people wanna...

make sure that their needs are getting taken care of. And there are more interested in finding deals that helps them meet their needs at times at a slightly lower checkpoint.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (17:23.136) Interesting. What would if you said what would you see that would make you worried about the economy? Like what what type of stat would it would be like, well, I got to get out of the market or something or whatever.

Amit Gupta (17:34.847) Yeah, I think there are two or three indicators that start to get us a bit worried about. So when the everyday spend, so discretionary is discretionary because that kind of goes up and down and it impacts certain parts of the demographic more than others. But when everyday spend or food and restaurants spend.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (17:55.726) to restaurants, like just like kind of like things that you could cut or something. Yeah.

Amit Gupta (17:59.551) That's exactly right. When they're kind of border at the level of discretionary and everyday spend. Right. When those start to go flat and start trending down, that means the consumer is hurting. And we don't see that at this point. As I mentioned, it's a very good thing that we see in gas. The spend is down 11 percent, but the trips are only down 3 percent. Right. So the consumer is actually holding pretty steady. And that spend is down mostly because of reduction in gas prices.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (18:05.601) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (18:12.888) Yep.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (18:29.324) Yeah, interesting. And then nowadays, like every company, seems like has some sort of rewards program. Are there some sort of like basic principles that make these programs work well?

Amit Gupta (18:43.061) Actually, that's so true. The reward program have become, in some ways, table stakes. For any large consumer platform, loyalty is important, because consumers have a lot of choice. And it's a good thing, because the competition brings more value to the consumer. So the core elements that we see as we work with different kind of partners, there's a clear, differentiated value proposition that needs to be there. It needs to be easy.

to earn and redeem. And it needs to have value to the consumer, in some cases for their everyday, in some cases for the discretionary spend. So depending on the vertical, you can imagine like airline and hotels are more in the discretionary side and the everyday platforms like the retailer loyalty programs are more in the everyday side. But the perception and the

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (19:28.823) Yep.

Amit Gupta (19:37.557) feel of reality, feel of value has to be important for the end consumer to truly kind of get on the wagon.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (19:45.336) Most airline loyalty programs are now worth more than the airline. Like a lot of these airlines are actually like, they've got this money losing airline and then they've got this loaded program and credit card that's like making all the profit on the side. Like how do other businesses learn from the airlines so they can monetize those customer relationships? Or is that just like, it's just too hard. the airline is its own like weird, unique thing.

Amit Gupta (20:10.527) Yeah, I think the airlines and hotels are in a unique place. And for a couple of reasons, as you can imagine, there's a fixed cost to the inventory, like the empty seats or the empty rooms. Once the plane flies or once the night is gone, that fixed cost is still there. So for the business to monetize those fixed costs in a profitable way, that is something very differentiated for the airline and the hospitality industry.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (20:28.333) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (20:39.881) Secondly, banks and card companies have realized there is a high switching cost for the consumer. So the loyalty element, the stickiness with a airline program and a hospitality program is pretty high. And so they're willing to buy these points, in substantial amount of revenue, generating substantial amount of revenues for these companies. So there's real value that is ascribed to them.

And in some cases, as you said, in some cases, it's actually delivering equal, if not more, revenues, profitable revenues to some of these companies, which is absolutely fascinating. And thirdly, from a consumer standpoint, for a vast majority of consumers, this is actually helping them defray their discretionary spend. So their vacation travel or their vacation hotels get significantly reduced or significantly comped, so to speak.

through their loyalty programs, and that creates a stickiness. Now, you also see some of these loyalties have started to fray now because there is question about the loyalty points or the value of these loyalty programs. And that's where our platforms come in as a great complement to both some of the non-airline and hotel programs, but also to some of these programs as well.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (22:01.294) Can you walk us through like how the interchange works for credit cards? Like I know like if you, if you've got like a platinum card, they could charge a higher interchange because I guess they have a more wealthy consumer or something. so that consumer's worth more than if you have just like a more, maybe a card for students or something. Like how does that, like, how does that work? And how does the retailer like decide, agree to this like variable interchange rate?

Amit Gupta (22:28.651) Sure. I think it's a wonderful thing that allows us, as you can imagine, interchange funds rewards and is kind of the genesis of the way we do card-based transactions in the US. So the interchange is set by the network with the merchant. And in some cases, the network basically goes for, here's the minimum viable that we need. In some cases, where the merchant has a lot of transaction power.

So you can think of a large retailer that has a lot of transactions that a lot of folks who are going through their checkout, they have a lot of transaction power and they can dictate a significantly lower interchange with the network. Because in this case, they have the ability to.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (23:14.2) But even there, don't the cards vary? Like, don't they pay more for like the platinum card than they do for the bronze card or something?

Amit Gupta (23:23.293) The interchanges do vary by network. for example, traditionally Amex charges slightly higher interchange rate than some of the other networks like Visa and MasterCard.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (23:32.45) But even like the Sapphire card costs like has a higher interchange, I believe, than the other chase cards. Right. So like the the premium cards within the network with the sort within within the bank like charge more interchange. It's like somehow the merchant must agree to it. But like, I don't know how they how they they do that.

Amit Gupta (23:39.349) See you.

Amit Gupta (23:52.063) Yeah, because you can imagine, and Amex is in a unique position because it's a closed loop network, as you know. And so they bring a lot of high consumer spend because generally their portfolio tends to be more of a higher consumer spend and less revolving spend. So they can kind bring different value to the merchant than, let's say, a different card product that is focused on, hypothetically, let's say, a student population.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (23:57.313) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (24:20.129) And they're going to have a different level of spend. They're going to have a different level of frequency of transactions. The average order value is going to be different. So they obviously have a different level of market power, transaction power. And they need to kind of go along with the network to potentially go and accept a slightly higher interchange rate to be able to accept card-based transactions. And then you have the neobanks.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (24:48.269) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (24:48.302) There's a lot of banking as a service providers that are also kind of sitting on top of the visa rails.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (24:55.49) Yeah, those are, those might be even be debit cards. So you're not even getting rewards for that, but they're getting like a 2 % kind of net interchange that is funding them. Like a chime or something, you know.

Amit Gupta (25:04.735) That's right. It's very few bips that are getting. Yeah, exactly. So they have lower number of bips that are getting spread across a different set of parties. But they're riding on the same rails. And in some cases, you're right, that they are more debit-centric payments, because it's focused on a different kind of use case, a different kind of demographic. And they're making sure that that use case has access to spend capability.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (25:32.046) Like, Chime is likely going to go public this year. Is that something you track? Do you track how these neo banks are doing?

Amit Gupta (25:41.501) We do. And actually we are partnering, increasingly partnering with not only the large banks, but also NEO banks. So I'm happy to share that as we start to grow our NEO banks, both NEO bank footprint, both in the US and UK, we're also seeing different spend patterns and we're bringing, as you can imagine, NEO banks are a bit more forward thinking, forward leaning in terms of trying on new products. So as we develop new products, new offer categories,

Neobanks love to try them because it does bring instant value to their consumers and that's the feedback we hear which is really gratifying.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (26:17.614) When I look at like the typical Carling golfer that I get, most of them are pretty lame. Um, you know, every once in a while you get like the unique one. Amix will be like, okay, we'll give you clear for free or we'll give you Uber one for free or some of our door dash, whatever. Like, and then, know, it's like, oh, that's cool. I'm getting this like a hundred dollar benefit for using this and stuff like that. But a of times it's like, you're getting this very, it's, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's not even a good coupon or something like.

Amit Gupta (26:24.086) Mm.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (26:47.244) Do those work? Like, cause when you look at like the vast majority of them are pretty lame and every once in there's a good one. Like, do the lame ones actually work to like, to drive something or is it just like, it's just, it's almost like free advertising for the merchant to throw something up there.

Amit Gupta (27:02.059) I think it's a good point. It's a combination, right? And also depends on the user. for Orin, we need to have what I would say more exciting offers in terms of either a bigger percentage back or a bigger dollar value back. For some consumers, they like the fact that there is, even if it's a smaller amount, but there's everyday spend reduction. the check size for their spend for everyday purchases increases.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (27:27.32) So, yeah.

Amit Gupta (27:30.367) Right, so the percentage might be lower or the dollar value might be lower.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (27:34.188) And how do they know, like, do they get an, like after they spent money at Best Buy and they just, they save 10 bucks or something like that. Do they get like a text or an email somehow from the bank saying like, Hey, you just saved 10 bucks and we're now like, you know, debiting that or putting that back into your account or something.

Amit Gupta (27:50.271) So I love that question because in some ways, so depends on the bank. Some banks actually do give them, here's your statement credits, you saved X dollars. And in some cases, they actually get a notification as well. So it depends on the bank. So neo banks are a lot more comfortable with sending more frequent notifications, as you can imagine. And then some of the traditional banks prefer.

you know, number of emails or lower number of communications because they have different standards, internal standards. But the good thing is, you know, when we think about reward, you'll see it on your statement.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (28:24.59) But I would see it on my statement or something like I'd see like I spent $179 best buy and then later here's here's an extra 10. Here's $10 that I got put onto my account because of that or something. Okay.

Amit Gupta (28:35.221) That's exactly right. So you go to your monthly statement, you'll see that credits appearing on your statement without having to worry about.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (28:40.418) And there's those credits only happen after I paid back my, my minimum balance or, or does it happen like immediately? Like when that, when that statement happens.

Amit Gupta (28:48.637) Yeah. So it depends on the offer. In some cases, it appears right away. So you can imagine like a hotel offer or an airline offer. You may have spent right away, but it waits till the flight is flown or the hotel night is the of the user actually stays in the hotel. So in some cases, it's delayed. But yes, it shows up right away on the credit card. And this is something we know since the conception of the company, we've given over $1 billion in rewards.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (28:53.26) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (29:03.231) yeah, OK, yep, that makes sense. Yep.

Amit Gupta (29:17.579) So we are very proud of the fact that we become part of the journey as different partners of ours are looking for new ways to give rewards back.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (29:26.23) And it seems like every brand is launching their own like retail media network right now. Like every brand is becoming like an ad tech company, every retailer, and you just go down to whether it's whether it's a internet one, like Instacart or even just like random ones that are out there. What are the characteristics of like a successful media network that they should be focused on?

Amit Gupta (29:50.027) True, think there's always flies when there's honey, right? And retail media is the new kind of flavor de jure ad format for sure. And that's why we have a lot of these new ad formats popping up left, and center. And that's creating a lot of fragmentation. As I frankly, as I spoke speak with CEOs and CMOs who are in our network, they actually talk about that it's way too much. And there was the initial excitement about

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (29:54.893) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (30:18.047) Hey, can we actually now leverage these new retail media networks? But we are already starting to see consolidation, and we expect that consolidation is going to continue. So if I think about what differentiates, the single biggest thing is it has to be first party data is what makes these networks impressive, right? And that has to be offered at scale for sophisticated advertisers, or frankly, even smaller advertisers to take true advantage of retail media networks. So the first party data at scale is super important.

The second part is there has to be ease of execution and ease of activation. So we come across certain networks where people have to sign on and then they have to kind of go get the data out and then they have to go somewhere else to activate. And that's too much friction for either an agency or a marketer that is trying to rapidly allocate money, allocate budgets. So both the scale of the first party data, the extent and richness of the first party data,

and the ease of activation, all those are important for one of the largest. And those are the characteristics of the large retail media networks. And that's what we pride on ourselves as well. In Ripple, which is our retail media network, that offers exactly this, right? Offers a lot of scale in terms of over 130 million unique shoppers. And then the ease of execution or ease of activation, people can actually get audiences.

directly at one of these large DSPs like Trade Desk and others who are our partners or your former company as well. And then also license the data. And they can also active log into our platform, do sophisticated queries and activate it right there and activate anywhere on the open web like Google, Meadow or anywhere.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (32:03.886) What like you're now the CEO of a like a super small cap public company, like I imagine it's super challenging, like walk us through some of those challenges.

Amit Gupta (32:16.029) It is. It is. I think it's both a combination of challenging and an adventure. Right. So I think the key word I would probably put here is balance. There is amazing ability for us to move fast as a tech company and develop new products.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (32:33.87) But I assume you would have more ability if you were private, right? You would be able to move much faster if you're a private company than if you're public. Or am I wrong about that?

Amit Gupta (32:43.177) I think the ability to do rapid change and not look at, not worry about short-term quarter-by-quarter performance significantly is better as a private company. So you're exactly right. I think the goodness that the public company or the public stature brings us is openness about our capabilities and receptivity with some of the leading advertisers and leading partners who we work with.

Because everything is open, there's a transparency element that allows them to place a higher degree of confidence in us as a company. But yes, I think it is a challenge, it is a balance, but I'm very gratified to be able to serve in the

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (33:27.362) When you look at like, there are definitely some other companies that went down like dramatically and was able to come back. Like maybe most recently, like Carvana, you saw just this massive, just like they lost 90 plus percent of their value. But, and then they were able to actually come out of that and come back. Well, like, are you study some of these companies that are out there and stuff?

Amit Gupta (33:41.216) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (33:51.317) Actually, it's interesting you mentioned Carvana. We have a very good relationship with Carvana as a company and a huge fan of what they've been able to accomplish in a very short amount of time. I think there are definitely companies that we look at and study and kind of get both inspiration and lessons from. The key part, I consistently tell my teams, we have to really stay focused on the customer.

And that's what Carvana did, right? They made sure that they're delivering value to the end customer. And that's what we've stayed focused on, making sure that we're delivering the maximum amount of value to the end consumer with our partners, both on the financial media side and the retail side. And that's really helped us kind of weather through some of the storms in the past.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (34:36.222) A couple of questions we ask all of our guests. What is a conspiracy theory that you believe?

Amit Gupta (34:40.705) That's a good one. I think maybe this is me growing up as a Trekkie. I believe in the UFO conspiracy theory. I feel that there is something out there. Or UFO now recently, I think they've recently pointed as aerial phenomenon. And so if you think about the recent Pentagon tapes or congressional hearings and now setting up of ARO,

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (34:52.385) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (35:01.698) Yeah.

Amit Gupta (35:10.221) You know, there's something there and I think as we get newer technologies and new capabilities, hopefully we'll be able to detect and connect with.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (35:20.46) It's literally like three years ago, it was like complete conspiracy theory, like only like the craziest people, but now like it seems like the average person believes it or something like it's moved just because of all this congressional testimony and other stuff that's out there.

Amit Gupta (35:29.857) That's true.

That is true. That is true. I think it's starting to become a lot more mainstream or at least more mainstream than before. Right. But yes, it is. That's an interesting one.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (35:38.989) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (35:43.062) Okay, last question we ask all of our guests, what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Amit Gupta (35:49.525) I have a college kid, a college going kid who's a freshman. So I end up kind of finding myself giving him advice more often. I don't know if he listens or not, I definitely do. Exactly. But I dispense it frequently. You know, there's one of the more recent conversations he and I were having. I think he had heard from somebody that, you know, if you love your work, the work is then not a pain and a

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (35:59.854) Probably not, yeah.

Amit Gupta (36:18.721) It becomes a pleasure and it becomes something different. And I tend to think about it differently. So my advice would be to him and advice generally is you got to figure out what you're best at. And once you figure that out and hopefully that is monetizable and the market values that then it's hard work and making yourself better and more differentiated at that special skill. And work is work.

Right. And, and it has to be, you know, we've got to go through the slog. We've got to go through the hard times and get through the other side.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (36:49.44) Yeah. How does one figure out what they're best at? Or how does one like a college kid like your son or something who, you know, may have a lot of strengths and stuff. Maybe they know like clearly they're bad at certain things and decent at certain things, but how does one narrow it down?

Amit Gupta (37:04.501) Yeah, I think it's an iterative process. There are people who might hit the bullseye right up front, but it's an iterative process. As you said, at times it's easier for us to know these are things we're not good at. So for example, I knew I was not going to go become a doctor. And that was not an area of interest. And I think that's

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (37:22.891) Why did you know that?

Okay. So you just weren't interested in it, but none of us, so you weren't like good at it. Like you probably had decent memory and stuff. Right. And I don't know whatever doctors need. Yeah. Yeah.

Amit Gupta (37:32.371) That it's true. That is actually right. There's a correlation to it, right? Interest starts us, gets us to spend more time in the area. More time, more ad-bats starts us getting kind of more, a higher level of proficiency or understanding. that's, and then the ball starts rolling from there. Now there are probably a correlation to, remember my dad getting me a Commodore 64. I'm dating myself by saying that, right? And I tore it up.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (37:41.996) Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (37:56.012) Yeah.

Cause I assume you have like Indian parents who like all they would want is their son to become a doctor, right?

Amit Gupta (38:04.833) But I do have Indian parents and they definitely did. I was very fortunate. They allowed me three choices and not just the doctor choice. So, there we go. There we go. So, but yeah, think that fortuitously, I think we live in a time when kids have a lot more options. And so, we're an interesting place for sure.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (38:13.802) Okay, you could be an engineer as well or something. Okay. Yeah. All right. Great.

Auren Hoffman (@auren) (38:29.326) Well, this has been great. Thank you, Amit Gupta for joining us at World of DaaS. I follow you on LinkedIn. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage you there. This has been really interesting and a ton of fun.

Amit Gupta (38:39.531) Thank you, Arun. Great catching up and wonderful conversation.