[ 00:00:00 ]Warm welcome to the Partner Marketing Podcast. Hello Gerhard. Hi Matthias, thanks a lot and thanks for having me here. Great to have you. You are one of the co-founders of Atolls, which was founded around 12 years ago. Can you share with us a little bit about how you started, about the beginning of your journey? Yes, more than happy so. So we started indeed in the year of 2012 and we actually initiated Atolls out of a company which was called Dropgifts. So in February 2012, we actually embarked on a journey where none of the my two other co-founder, so to say, fellow co-founders and me, we had no e-commerce experience. And we were in a journey where we had met a lot of incubators back in time in the Berlin area.

[ 00:01:03 ] E-commerce and, in general, I would say the VC venture capital arena was rather in its infancy. And we were in Berlin and actually met through a number of different coincidences. The Zamba brothers, who back in time were just about to launch Rocket Internet, I guess, Rocket Internet, everyone is familiar with. So it's an incubator who formed and initiated companies like Zalando, HelloFresh, tons of Delivery Hero at the later stage and so on. So very influential, I would say, for the overall German ecosystem. And we met them, and through a 50-minute conversation, they had a couple of ideas, we had a couple of ideas, and together we started a project called Dropgifts. Dropgifts back in time, in 2012, in Germany, a lot of first companies were cloned.

[ 00:02:00 ] So it was a clone from a Swedish company, it was called Wrapp. And what it would do is it was a social gifting startup. So what we would do is we would, in 2012, Facebook was still pretty hot, it was pretty inactive. It was interesting, right, and it was gaining still a lot of traction. And what we wanted to build was an in-app application that based on your core events that you would actually publicly make available on Facebook, such as your birthday, your maybe changing houses, you know, getting married, whatever you would publicly make available through the events, we would trigger and would allow your friends to actually gift you a gift card. And that application, we actually were building. And that's what we did.

[ 00:02:46 ] In 2012, and we failed with it very quickly, but that was actually the starting point of everything. And then I think one of the first companies that you actually founded was Coupon Nation. Was that in Germany itself as well, or was that the time when you already were working internationally? Exactly. So out of Dripgifts and out of the whole, let's say, understanding of how gift cards work, how the industry works, etc. Having access to different brands and merchants, we got into this general space around coupons, cashback, deals, rebates, etc. So that was basically how the idea came. Yeah, exactly right. And then we looked back in time and we figured, or at least in our naive understanding, right, again, we didn't have full market transparency and we were still learning a lot.

[ 00:03:43 ] We felt like, you know, launching. We were launching a coupon site, and then, you know, building on top more, which we'll talk about later, could be interesting. But we focus completely on BRIC. So Brazil, Russia, India, China. And we didn't. We never launched in China, but our first platform was launched in India. Then we launched Brazil. Then we launched Poland and Russia. And that's how it all started, because we felt that the markets and e-commerce as a whole, you know, were underpenetrated. The sort of, say, Coupon Nation as a brand. And, you know, was completely new there. We had to educate people around couponing. It was a very, let's say, different approach. And we felt that in Europe and in the U. S., those opportunities were gone.

[ 00:04:30 ] And, you know, everybody thought 2012 was the year when BRIC would kind of completely launch and that would be the future growth in terms of macroeconomy. But yeah, that's how it all started. But how did you do that? Did you have a team in Germany and you were working from there for all these other markets? Or were you actually going into these markets and building teams there? Yeah, we did a combination. So we had a couple of centralized teams that were, you know, based here in Europe, majority either in Berlin or Munich. We would have localized teams for market development, talking to clients, actually building out traction. And then we would have a couple of, you know, for example, our marketing teams would be again based here in Germany.

[ 00:05:15 ] In a centralized way here in Germany. So function by function, slightly different approaches, but everything commercial, business development, also the operations side of things. Most of the times we localized those. So we had from the get go teams in Brazil, in India, in Poland, in Russia. And that's also what we still until today believe in this industry we're in is a big success factor. Just being locally. Just being present in the market, really understanding what's happening. What was the biggest challenge at this time? Because, like, I remember we started working together around this time and I remember that you basically opened a new market every, every other month. Was that mainly building these teams? Was it the technical background? Was it the funding? What was what was the biggest challenge for you?

[ 00:06:12 ] I guess a combination of the things you said. So number one. So number one. I think really getting, getting traction in your initial market so we could prove that, you know, we have a working business model that we can execute upon it. So we were very focused, I would say, in our day-to-day operations, taking the learnings, what's working here, replicated to the other market, and to a certain extent, having multiple markets also allowed us to play and test at the same time different approaches. I think then you had, we had a challenge. We had a challenge. So it was very different. I'll give you an example. So Brazil versus India couldn't be more different. So while we in India very quickly, also through the capabilities that are the fact that, you know, partner marketing as a whole was a slightly more developed, so it was easier for us to onboard a couple of clients, whereas in Brazil, we had to do a lot of pioneering work.

[ 00:07:05 ] There was when we started, you know, affiliate networks barely existed in Brazil, there was very low penetration. So we actually had to onboard a lot of clients ourselves. Email, where you can post something directly via email or using mobile thousands. Which was quite heavy, which takes time. And which is even more heavy if you have not so much traffic to offer, because we literally you know you like in the chicken and the egg, you need to start, you know, building a bit of traction on the traffic side to actually relevant to major ecommerce shops. Yeah. So we focused heavily sort of, on both sides of the equation. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Good luck in the đ时 тeki with. While actually onboarding while onboarding first clients.

[ 00:07:44 ] ığını literally having 20 days for essential traffic. Worst someone to start working with 'um' and I would say the combination of those two things, we had to market by market, you know, tackle in parallel. And then look, I think we when it comes down to funding challenges, I think that comes slightly later. But obviously, we obviously were under pressure after having not delivered on the drop gifts model. Everybody was looking okay, what are we building out of it? Is it gaining traction, you know? Is there a clear path forward, um, or not? And I think correspondingly, there was quite a lot of pressure to show that actually we can generate first revenue, um, that would also start covering first costs. So I would say a multitude of those challenges at the same time.

[ 00:08:29 ] When I reflect on 2012 and in 2013 when we started launching the markets, it was already a bit better because we had proven in India, um, that we can actually build out the traction on the sort of the user side. And once you see that, you know, you're feeling that, you know, you're feeling that, you know, you're feeling more confident. to apply that playbook to more markets that was all focused on vouchers and couponing right that's correct that was our in the first at the very beginning that was all classical traditional coupon platforms but there was other coupon platforms there was other coupon publishers already what was the differentiator what allowed you to scale or take market share in this what what did you do differently maybe yeah so i think i think in the um in the first you know in the first markets we were indeed you know one of the i don't want to say always the first platform there have been a couple of established ones but i would say we were simply a bit more of a professional player um you know literally from the get-go with funding etc so they definitely helped to scale out processes over time take the learnings i think where it got more difficult was when you would enter really established markets right so think europe think germany think uk think us so i think particularly of france i think when it comes down to those markets we felt a different approach would be necessary we cannot just go and you know build out cupo nation germany and what we did was we did a slightly different approach we actually went for a partnership approach so we um you know Our thinking was as follows: uh, who has a lot of traffic and has a lot of media power so to promote the concept, and on the other side, um is looking for digital revenue streams.

[ 00:10:27 ] And when you add those two things together, you very quickly look into the world of media. Right? So what we did was we started talking to first pretty big news publishers and they literally fulfilled that criteria: they had a lot of traffic; they were all somehow thinking how to add a new revenue stream in their transition into the online world; and everyone was having a bunch of ideas, right? Some of them were building their first e-commerce shops, some of them were kind of having them know first, so to say editorial recommendation pieces, but would where they would write you know here are a couple of tips on what to buy during Black Friday and, and all of them however were having bits and pieces, so when we talked with them it was kind of a natural compliment for them to basically you know have another foot hole in this whole e-commerce piece, and at the same time it was very helpful for us because literally they would have a lot of the let's say reach and also the capabilities to promote the concept as a whole because in a lot of the markets where we're active, you know even even even in More established markets, uh, the general awareness of you know coupons but also of all the other models that we're doing today was still pretty low so you basically provided as a kind of aggregator. You provided the coupons and you worked together with other partners like media publishers creating some kind of like white label pages um where their users could access these these vouchers, that's smart and helps to scale quite quickly right exactly right.

[ 00:12:11 ] So I think I think we we we took one day um right and the other big thing that's already sort of started in July that I really really like one big element and I think that's Important also for understanding was the thing we we brought a lot of credibility to this whole game, right? I mean, particularly back in time. Right, I think things have changed a lot since then, but back in time there were a lot of players somehow in this right, uh, coupon one two three, coupon five six seven, you know the coupon hero, the coupon snake, the coupon you know monkey... I don't know, right? I mean, you make so this it's a very fragmented market, but Right.

[ 00:12:43 ] So within that fragmentation, we felt bringing in big brands that actually bring trust to consumers that actually, you know, would go on those platforms on those white label platforms would help a lot in terms of, you know, quality of the offering, making sure that they are in a good space. And on the other side, let's not forget also for our clients. So for advertisers, it was a very natural and much more welcoming environment to have your sort of say brand being listed. So we felt it's a big, you know, win-win for everyone in the space. And that helped us indeed to gain a lot of traction to build trust to both sides. But actually, you know, it also helped a lot of these news publishers to build out a completely new revenue stream, which became very significant.

[ 00:13:34 ] And also very relevant to them. And I think, you know, will not solve all of their problems, but actually just basically be one more element in the wider equation for news publishers to transition into an online first world. At what point later on did you decide then to diversify like you went into cashback business as well? When was that? And why did you do that? Yeah, so look, I think we very quickly when we started thinking. About the whole space, our vision was always to bring the different businesses together under one roof. And our view was, you know, when you would do consumer interviews, right, and you would talk to an average, you know, consumer, consumer doesn't necessarily differentiate between coupons, cashback, you know, a deal, a reward and incentivize gift card, right?

[ 00:14:28 ] These are all just tools for solving one major problem, which is to save money. So when. When you start thinking it primarily from a consumer lens, to us, it felt awkward how fragmented the whole space was and even today is because it's just different journeys. Maybe sometimes there's different use cases or jobs to be done that are slightly different when consumers are actually looking for to save money, but we from the get go felt strategically that over time, you know, coupons is an entry point and then we'll start building on top of it. And in it became then very quickly, you know, we did two acquisitions. We did one acquisition in the Netherlands. There was still a traditional pure play coupon player in the Netherlands, but we also for the first time bought what you would probably in technical terms call a deals block.

[ 00:15:25 ] So Block de Choyos was back in time, you know, in 2015, the largest deal community of Spain. And the way it would work was, I think, just to make this very illustrative, it's literally at the end of the day, a block that would give you tips and tricks on how to save money, post regularly, you know, product deals that are interesting; the whole magic was, you know, that literally the editorial team really would understand very narrowly and clearly why this is currently a good offer and would explain that to the consumer. So there's a big educational mission in there. So that's when we started entering at least into the deal space. And then in 2019, you know, we entered into the, let's say, traditional cashback space; that you did all through acquisitions, right?

[ 00:16:15 ] Exactly. So the primary means for us to do a lot of these, let's say, adjacent expansions into other business fields was M&A. And that was driven by the fact that we felt that if you take the cashback space, we felt. That there were very clear market leading companies in the dominant countries. So, take France, 2019, when we acquired IGRAL, IGRAL has a market share of around 80%, right? So literally the distance between the number one and the next player was so magnificent and so big that we just felt that there's so many, you know, entry barriers for the next player to catch up, particularly because it's very hard. And it's, I think, quite important to understand people. People don't like to switch their accounts so easily, right?

[ 00:17:04 ] So once you start cashbacking, unless you are incredibly frugal, and I mean, there is a small percentage of people who maybe have three cashback accounts, but that's rather the minority, majority of the average consumers, you know, are happy that they have one account where they start accruing the money. And hence, you know, M&A for us was a very dominant approach. Plus, we felt, you know, that with the teams, we could still, you know, grow in every market quite substantially. And. 2019, you know, was IGRAL in Germany, sorry, in France, and then 2021, it was SHOOP in Germany, which is the market leading cashback platform here in Germany. And now today you are one of the biggest publishers in the whole partner marketing industry, not only in Europe, but globally as well, being present in North, South America and Asia, too.

[ 00:17:58 ] Have you worked in partner marketing? So affiliates? Have you worked in affiliate marketing already before? Did you use this business model of partner marketing to scale your business or did you take advantage of that already from the beginning? Or was that kind of like your first touch points when you entered this business? No, indeed, before we founded the company, I had no idea about partner marketing, that it actually exists. I never heard about it, you know; for me, for me, it was, let's say, very unknown. And I have to tell you, you know; I've been before this working, you know, in the energy sector, right; transforming, like using software to make energy grids more efficient. Right; I wouldn't call it a very adjacent area.

[ 00:18:50 ] Right; I had no clue how e-commerce works and enhance, you know; when we we literally bought with the company, we found it. And kind of got into the whole industry more by coincidence than that. We would actually have, you know, strategically spotted it as a field of relevance. So I think that's a bit our background on partner marketing. And look now, if I if I look at how it has worked for us, I think one of the things that very quickly gets underestimated is I think there's one beauty, particularly if you're a startup, I think partner marketing allows you to gain traction quickly. Right. So I think if you have a nice product and you want to build out, you know, particularly you have product market fit, you have your first couple of users that are starting to engage with you.

[ 00:19:45 ] I think there's rarely another channel or opportunity for us to scale so quickly into getting clients on the other side. And I think partner marketing there with, you know, the way the industry is set up allows and enables that. think thereby allows also a lot of small tech players to very quickly gain, you know, at least validation and verification of the business very quickly, and then also once it's validated, corresponding scaling of it in a very fast way, which I think is the beauty of of the industry now. Vouchers and voucher models, and cashback models are an essential part of partner marketing still there is always some kind of discussion about the incremental value that cashback or vouchers brings for the brand right because some of the brands argue that they rather want to incentivize for new consumers and not for returning customers that they would have anyway.

[ 00:20:45 ] How do you how do you argue towards these topics? I think it's um it's interesting, right? I mean, you're talking about about the cheapest channel in marketing across the board, you're arguing about a channel that's probably a fifth and cost compared to any CPC you're paying at Google at Meta at any of those big companies that probably eat anyway 60 to 70 of your marketing spend so I would say first of all it's incredibly you know low paid for me. The discussion shouldn't Be about incrementality, it should be about paying fairly to publishers, and why I say so is simply because there is this corresponding understanding on, and I think very often flawed understanding. What does incrementality actually mean when we talk about incrementality?

[ 00:21:45 ] I think it should be much more than 'hey', is it just generating new customers? I think that's a small part of it. And I think if you particularly look at some of the brands that at some point have scaled and penetrated the market, I think the much bigger and more interesting challenges is how do you basically get your existing clients and cohorts to actually Derive the third or fourth transaction on your e-commerce shop that finally makes them loyal to you, right? And that's normally what I know if you take an e-commerce perspective, it doesn't matter if I go into fashion, beauty, health, or very often. That third or fourth transaction is which matters to you and that normally when your cohorts start getting, getting you know, in terms of customer lifetime value, way more relevant and sticky to you as a shop.

[ 00:22:29 ] So I think that the discussion needs to turn around who's driving those transactions even if it's just not new customers, then there should be a whole discussion, I'll give you An example we have on some of our cashback platforms, the average transaction value-just a basket that we bring with our community and our clients-is 30 to 40 percent higher in AoV compared to what we can read out of the Bookrank. So here we have quite a few companies for uh marketing Weil follower so moving forward I can give you some examples, share your thoughts here. I think you see a lot of these bisoguards examples at your Kevin Anderson; he named a whole company there, and more information is going to be like, 'Have a believe me Jeb' that your bill we actually put you the first annual check on walk, the range of guns on a book.

[ 00:23:14 ] You know, around about when that elite law is painful, abandonment rates particularly as people go towards checkout, and I think there's a bunch of arguments, you know, that then very often quickly get mixed up where I just feel the incrementality is is pretty straightforward. I think it's pretty much clearly given, I think, you know, certain clients depending on the industry, you know, I think there needs to be more discussions on how you actually reward more those first three four transactions that are so critical versus then I don't know, the tenth transaction, but I think, you know, it shouldn't be any more about new versus Existing as a standalone figure, I think that's just way too trivial and not just to the cause. And again, I would always argue, let's take the classical CPC versus CPA cost right?

[ 00:24:05 ] So basically, you know all the like the risk you involve or have with partner marketing is so much lower, it's so much lower. Right? You just pay for successful transactions and you And there's a lot that I think a lot of shops have themselves in their hands in terms of how they actually draw all the onboarding of consumers once they get redirected from a client like us, how to actually make those user flows incredibly proficient. How to make sure that people actually convert, which is not in our hands as well. So I think there needs to be way more discussions in how we actually work together more closely, how we share the data, how we actually get targeting options into a much better place together, because that would definitely help here and there.

[ 00:24:52 ] And I think there's a huge opportunity for most brands and shops to actually work in this area because you will get way more flexibility at the moment than actually working with Google, where you just basically go into the Merchant Center and you have basically there your very set rigid rules of what you can do, what you cannot do. You have on all your platforms. Like the cashback platforms, voucher platforms, the deal platforms. You have huge communities, right? So you could say that's a big marketing machine that you can use basically for any brand to push out products, to sell their stock, introduce new offers maybe to the market, right? So this is something where you can really like, accordingly, work with a marketing plan in order to push their offers. Absolutely.

[ 00:25:39 ] Look, I think when we look into some of the brands. There's a lot of brands that collaborate with us during Black Friday. I mean, this is not about days, I mean, within two hours, we're capable to completely push in a whole warehouse and make it basically, I mean, sometimes websites crash, right? I mean, that's the power of some of our websites in the community. So the push effect is so massive. And then again, you're paying CPA on it. So yes, I think great point, inventory cleanups. Massive topic for us, we have, I cannot tell you the exact number, but we have a couple of millions keyword alerts, right? So we have a very granular understanding of wishes from our community, what they would love to basically be alerted upon in terms of headphones getting discounted or a price drop on specific product groups.

[ 00:26:38 ] We have millions of those keywords, that actually we have here, and that we can target very specifically, and help brands to push specific offers out. So yeah, I think there's a massive, there's a massive effect here in terms of actually driving proactively the traffic. But we need good offers, right? So for us, one of the most important things is that, you know, we value our communities heavily, we value, you know, our shops. So literally, one of the core things for us to always, you know, really make sure that when somebody, you know, basically wants to collaborate with us, is that the offers are truly good offers, right? That's the whole value that we bring to our consumers.

[ 00:27:20 ] The whole way you describe how you're working today based on data using the communities you have, working kind of like with a marketing plan to its brands, pushing offers, certain products, that is a completely different level of professionalism compared to what you described. In the beginning, right, when you described the fragmented market and partner marketing with all these little voucher sites, etc. So would you say that in partner marketing itself, over the last decade, basically the whole level, the way of working has changed quite a bit? I would say massively, right? I think it starts with, you know, I think publishers, I mean, be it ourselves, but I think there's also a lot of great other examples. Yeah. A lot of companies in the market have professionalized, have built out big audiences with a lot of reach, have built out corresponding marketing infrastructure.

[ 00:28:20 ] Let's not forget that also costs money, right? I mean, you basically want to build out your customer segments, the audiences so that you can literally also through CRM and other push channels, you know, give advertisers a lot of variability and offerings to push the right messages to the right audiences, right? So a lot of that infrastructure has been built out and will continue to be built out, right? I mean, you can definitely see that with the rise of retail media as one massive trend. I think everybody will need to continue working on that data foundation to make sure that, you know, you have very granular information on users, but also product level. So I think that that has been a massive change that I witnessed in our company, but also I think across the industry.

[ 00:29:08 ] And then I think. Yeah. Overarching, you know, be it now, networks have, you know, massively developed, right? I think that also has been very pivotal, both on technical side, the way their offering is going. I think also the ease for advertisers to work with has become even easier than before. So I would say the whole industry landscape has changed quite a bit with, and I think for the better. And while I applaud that. I think there's still a long way to go. And I still feel the industry itself is a bit, you know, compared to other, you know, so to say alternative channels that we're competing with as a whole industry, I still feel we're not there yet.

[ 00:29:57 ] And there's much to be caught and catched up with, both in terms of how we present the different solutions that are available, the discussions, and sort of say, you know, the. The focus of the discussions, I think, should be much more on positioning the channel in a proper way than some of the discussions that I'm hearing, which is more about whether a specific channel left or right within the partner marketing earning more or less, which I don't think helps the whole industry. I think it should all be about positioning the channel in the right way, because I still think today and look, we transact; we have, we have more or less 2 billion purchasing journeys that we facilitate nowadays. So, there's quite some volume by now.

[ 00:30:50 ] And still, you know, I feel that our teams interact, you know, more and more with heads of marketings, but way too little compared to what it should be. And hence, I still think in many instances, the whole channel is being manipulated. It's being managed, you know, not with the level of dedication that sometimes deserves. It requires more effort than some of the other channels where you don't usually have only one publisher. On the other hand, you obviously have the diversity and the innovation. Is there any specific trends? You mentioned data and you mentioned technology, but is there any specific trends that you see in partner marketing? I mean, look, I think we have a couple of bigger topics, right? So.

[ 00:31:38 ] The first one that's being debated and I hope I don't strike any news here for anybody is all around making sure the tracking works properly, right? So I think there's been a lot of discussions, you know, about how the content management tools that they probably get integrated. I think, you know, there's discussions on which of those contents are good to go and mandatory, which one's not. And I think overall, I don't know how much. But I would assume it's around 30%, if not more, of transactions are not being tracked at the moment, given the different challenges. And again, it goes back to that whole, you know, awareness and positioning of the channel and how much value it creates compared to what it costs, why I sometimes have to really, you know, I'm surprised when we have these incrementality discussions.

[ 00:32:32 ] And then I would say there is a. Yeah. You know, when it comes down to the wider ecosystem, right, I still think consolidation will continue happening. So I still believe you will see more and more M&A happening across the entire system, right? So, be it publishers like ourselves actually looking for, you know, so to say, further volume, audience access, specific tool access. Be it on network side, where we have seen a lot of consolidation over the last years, or be it even on an advertiser side where, you know, I think the Zalando about you transaction, particularly for the German ecosystem has been massive, right? I mean, it just shows you how I think the trend of, you know, Chinese-based players that entered the overall ecosystem, right?

[ 00:33:31 ] And some of them are our clients who are doing an amazing job. You know, be it now Aliexpress, be it Temu, you know, literally leveraging their footprint and basically using the world as their marketplace. And I think those models are creating a lot of pressure on advertiser side, right? I think that's one thing that will continue happening. I mean, I found it amazing. I think TikTok shop in the US, right, 6 billion or 7 billion of GMV in just one year. And then at the same time. Yeah. Launching now in Spain, right? I mean, that will be a big topic for us to watch all out here in Europe, right? So that's one of the core things we're also thinking what it means for us and our products.

[ 00:34:15 ] And I think social commerce is definitely something for here to stay. But I still think the consolidation pressure coming out of there, I mean, Temu now second largest website in the US, right? I mean, we're seeing this massive concentration in e-commerce. So I think if Amazon, Temu, eBay, TikTok shop probably driving 40%, if not 45% of the total e-commerce market in the US, I would expect similar trends to happen. At the same time, while you have that consolidation, right? We have Shopify, right? Continuing to build out small individual shops and brands in the mid and long tail, which I still think are super interesting also from a part-time marketing perspective. So I definitely believe that's going to be also a nice thing. It's not a big trend that will continue being here.

[ 00:35:08 ] Last but not least, I would say one of the things we are looking a lot into is how AI changes shopping behavior. I think Perplexity launching their product was quite eye-opening, I have to say, right? A shop with Perplexity, so who hasn't tried it, I recommend playing around with it. I mean, I still wonder how much of the processes we see there are really driven by agents versus humans, okay, that's their secret. But I think just the general understanding that I think we come from an era where people have been browsing and shopping through the search, and then going into a subcategory like how probably all of us are doing it still on Amazon. I think that interface will change and I think it will become much more dialogue, chat-driven.

[ 00:35:59 ] And I think preparing for that change and how consumers engage with websites, science is something that we're thinking a lot about these days both in terms of what we need on data side but also in terms of how we need to build out our products very very interesting and then you have the big elephant in the room obviously which is Google which has is having a significant impact on our industry as well right yes so Google Google is a difficult one I would say I think the industry needs to focus on thinking what the recent changes in 2024 mean and how we want to deal with them as a whole industry I mean from you know like if you look into this latest policy that has been released around site reputation abuse I find it incredibly dangerous it's a policy that has I would say at best we're a little backing because it literally is a policy that has I would say at best we're a little backing because it literally is a policy that has I would say at best we're a little backing because it literally is tells media companies on how to create tells media companies on how to create tells media companies on how to create our content which I find ridiculous it our content which I find ridiculous it our content which I find ridiculous it literally should from my perspective is literally should from my perspective is not adding value to consumers it's not not adding value to consumers it's not adding value to anybody in the adding value to anybody in the adding value to anybody in the ecosystem and it poses the question of ecosystem and it poses the question of ecosystem and it poses the question of how much freedom a monopoly like Google how much freedom a monopoly like Google how much freedom a monopoly like Google is allowed to have And I mean, look, this is allowed to have and I mean, look, this is you know, there's no coincidence that is you know, there's no coincidence that trials in the US are happening, right?

[ 00:37:33 ] And to be seen what now the final judgment is, but they have been clearly, you know, been defined as a monopoly, which I think is something that we as a whole industry need to now think about how we make sure that with new policies, the way they engage in the search, the way they will change the search, right? Self-preferencing through AI overviews will be a massive topic for all, let's say, models that rely on search, right? And there's a lot of them. And particularly here in Europe, a lot of companies have built upon their initial traction. And I think be it now price comes or any other kind of aggregator model needs to look into that.

[ 00:38:17 ] And I think we as an industry are well advised to come together and actually think about this instead of, you know, literally either talking at small groups, or believing it will go away, or believing that we should not address it. And I think only together we can make a difference there. So I'm, it already had, it's a topic I'm quite concerned about. Now, in summer, you rebranded, maybe repositioned Global Savings Group to Atolls. What is what is the idea behind that? What is your vision behind that? So yeah, I mean, look, we, we, we went for a full rebrand on group level, because we felt that after, you know, nearly eight, nine years, we needed something that would really, you know, load up what we do, and explain it better.

[ 00:39:20 ] And so, you know, with with Atolls, you know, we, you know, are referring back to the concept of, you know, Atolls from a back end, which, which basically goes back to it. And back in time, people would use atolls as a way to logistically get from location A to B, right? It would be basically hops for people to, you know, during their journeys. And similarly, we see ourselves building out different user propositions along the customer journey to transport them from, we say, from A to P, from anywhere to purchase, right, so along the entire consumer funnel. All of our propositions and our products somehow fit in there. So far as it was important that we can literally explain this internally and externally. But also, you know, we, we went through a series of M &A transactions.

[ 00:40:13 ] And at some point, we felt that we had more people joining us through M &A. Then originally, we're here before we started the M &A journey. And we wanted everyone to feel that, you know, nobody, there's nothing such as an acquiring company and to be acquired, we wanted to send out a very clear message to all our people, everyone is the same, we're one big team. And we have one big mission. And you know, we have one joint vision. And we literally were convinced that that would psychologically also help, and potentially would reduce some of the noise, and discussions around it, that we had internally and actually bring a huge, you know, motivation element to it.

[ 00:41:04 ] And that's been so, so there's a bit of an external view, right, making and explaining what we do better, and being true to our ambitions for the future. And there's an internal element where we just felt we needed to send a very clear message to all our teams. And we celebrated that all together, we had, you know, around 800-900 people in Barcelona, it was it was an unforgettable experience. And, you know, and had good fun. And I think everybody enjoyed it. I think that's a very good move. Internally towards the colleagues, when you now think about the vision externally, and how you position yourself, it's basically making this promise that you were talking about before that you connect brands with consumers, and that you are able to engage with these consumers in order to push the offerings of these brands, right.

[ 00:41:56 ] Exactly right. And, you know, to our point as well, you know, discussing now, incrementality and different solutions, we also just felt we have different products that address problems in different stages, right? They bring consumers earlier, during the journey, maybe some of them later during the journey. The different solutions we have now under one umbrella, but at the end of the day, it's all around connecting consumers and advertisers and an open ecosystem, right, without any, you know, fenced walls, and actually creating value for both sides. Very interesting. Thank you so much for sharing this story and these insights. At the end, I have three final questions for you that I asked all my guests. First one, what would be what is the best book you read? Which book would you recommend for us?

[ 00:42:52 ] So, yes, look, I'm when it comes down to books, I have two small kids, so I have to look a bit more in the history over the last two years. But I would say, I'm, I'm quite passionate when it comes down to biographies, particularly, you know, around entrepreneurship, and some of those. And what I can really recommend is a book, probably even read it like 2016 or something. That's a book that I continuously love to think about. And that's from Benjamin Franklin, basically, his biography, really recommend reading that super interesting. So you know I really thought about the, uh, I think it's something that you, you learn a lot about, you learn about a lot in history and a lot around the problems that he's gonna help make i.

[ 00:43:26 ] But you also probably see one of the biggest, you know, entrepreneurs and inventors of our time. So that's a good one. And I think if you're looking for something more, let's say, to think about, right, and about our lives, I think this year, I read a book called 4,000 Weeks, why productivity and time management is not the only thing to consider. And that talks a bit more about, you know, the that our life, if you take 80 years, an average lifetime, that actually, that's just 4,000 weeks, right? And I think all of us are sometimes caught in the trap of saying, Oh, I just wish this week goes by, it's going to be tough one.

[ 00:44:07 ] And then once you realize it, and once you think about, you know, how we probably have optimized not only our working life, but also our personal life around time management, productivity management, and actually is a pretty contrasting view on how to live your life, which I found pretty refreshing. After building this company over the last 12 years, so I can definitely recommend that as well as a mind opener. Very, very, I will make a note, I will make a note for both. Yeah, very, very interesting. Is there a tool or an app that you would say you can't live with? So look, obviously, you know, commercially, it can only be Shoop in Germany, right? So whoever wants to save money, right, I saved a lot of money on it.

[ 00:44:55 ] So download that app. If you ask me no more about my, let's say, how I get through my life. Look, I would say I organize a lot of stuff by now on Slack. So that's one thing, probably for internal communication. And then obviously, ChatGPT is starting to really take a lot of, you know, mind share when it comes down to a lot of things. So yeah, I would say probably those three. Good. And then my very last question to you. If you were not building and running at all, what would you be doing? So in, you know, if I would have had a bit more talent for tennis, I would have definitely, you know, become a tennis player, a professional one. That, however, wasn't the case.

[ 00:45:44 ] So I think, I think I would definitely see myself in the entrepreneurial arena. And probably building. If you ask me right now, probably one of the things I would, really keen is to build out paddle courts and paddle in general, I think it's one of those rising sports, and pride sport addicted, you know, very tennis addicted. But here I have to say, this is something that can explode. And I would love to, you know, and I think kind of finding a mix between sports and entrepreneurship would probably where I would, you know, probably spend my time on a startup company in sports. Probably, yes. Yeah, something around. Thank you so much, Gerhard. That was a really good talk. Thank you for sharing with us. Thank you, Matthias. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.