#19 Smarter, Cleaner, User‑First: Redefining Ads | with Paweł Mazurek
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Partner Marketing Podcast.My guest today is Pavel Matsyurek, CEO of TakeAds. Pavel is at the helm of one of the most innovative companies in the partner marketing space, driving growth and shaping the future of performance marketing. TakeAds has been making waves with its cutting-edge solutions.I'm excited to dive into the impact of their approach on the industry. Pavel, it's so great to have you on the show.Very warm welcome.
[Paweł Mazurek]
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Likewise, it's great to be here.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Yes, very good. Maybe we want to start by you introducing yourself so that our listeners know who you are, what you're doing, give a little bit of a background to understand better.
[Paweł Mazurek]
Yes, of course. So hi, everyone. Hi, Matthias. My name is Paweł. I'm 44 years young. And I have what you might call a business HDAD. It means that I do multiple things. But the one that brought me here to this podcast, which I'm very grateful for the invitation, is that I run the company called Take Us. I'm the CEO and we work in the affiliate industry for quite some time. We aggregate demand from multiple affiliate networks all over the world and we use our own formats and other ones to spread them across the internet in order to bring the most value for the advertisers, of course, as you do. But also, we look closely at the monetization part, so at the publisher business side. That is our, I would say, main goal.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Very good. We will come to that in a moment. Speaking a little bit more about you, your background actually is in law, so you're actually a lawyer. Is that right?
[Paweł Mazurek]
Yes, I've graduated law many, many years ago. During the university times, I worked in an NGO that was focusing on human rights. So I visited court proceedings when I was like 21, 22. And then I decided, OK, I might have made the wrong choice in terms of education. So pretty quickly, I've changed into international relationships. And then migrated from the international relationships to the online industry. And I'm still here. A part that I did see some international relationship when bringing people to Svalbard as a side business.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
When was that roughly, when you switched to online, so to say?
[Paweł Mazurek]
Online was 2008 / 2009 officially 2010 was the moment I said okay bye bye to the old me welcome to the new me but I'm involved in the online industry since 2005 more or less so it's like 20th anniversary this year.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So you have quite some background you've worked at chromatic group before you worked at data insights right and you worked at RTB House. Can you describe a little bit about the experience and what you've done there?
[Paweł Mazurek]
Of course, there was, so RTB House, it's a company that's still on the market, it's doing retargeting for multiple publishers, but mostly directly with the advertisers, working directly with e-commerce, of course, and also working with the affiliate industry. Data Insight was a company that was doing research. And we launched the research study on the Polish e-commerce market. And Dramatic Group, it was like me, trying to go to the customer side. So from as we are all the service parts of the agency, the somebody who's running ads, going towards the customer side. It was amazing. It was we were running ads. We were running campaigns in Nigeria. For instance, all over Europe. But then the war in Ukraine started and it was a big blast for the market, for the industry, of course, apart from the people in Ukraine, which is obvious. But then it meant that the business perspectives of the company changed and I took another change as well and I landed at Take Ads.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Very good, very good. You have on the site because you said already in the beginning that you have different interests, why take ads is your main focus. You have on the site some other topics that you're interested in. So, you co-founded a company with your wife. Can you tell us a little bit about that as well, maybe?
[Paweł Mazurek]
Yes, my wife is an Arctic guide since 2014. Over a decade of uh guiding people and showing them the beauty of Svalbard, which is an island in on in the Arctic, uh, and a couple of years ago she she started doing a like a side business, side hustle, so to say, of organizing trips and showing the beauty of the Arctic and calling out to people. And recently, not that long ago, we decided, okay, let's make it official, let's make it formal. We've established a company and we are now officially showing the beauty of Svalbard to people from all over the world. So, please be invited. We're not running an affiliate program yet. Okay, you should. Because we're not technically ready to do that. But that's one of the steps coming up.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Very good. What's the company called?
[Paweł Mazurek]
It's MyArctic. You can find us on Facebook. You can find us on...we have a website. Imagine that we have a website. So, please check us out.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Hopefully, we'll see you in Longyearbyen.V ery interesting. Very good. Thank you so much for sharing about your background and everything. Now, you're CEO of TakeAds since 2022. I think 2022 was as well the year when TakeAds was founded, right? So you're basically there from the beginning. Can you describe a bit about your vision, the business model? What is TakeAds doing?
[Paweł Mazurek]
We work with, let's say, two main business models. One is nothing new. It's a typical meta network that is aggregating demand from the affiliate networks all over the world and is sharing it to the affiliates, to the smaller affiliates, so that we take over the manual work they would need to do to work with many networks, yourself included. But the other part is that, more focused on the our own advertising formats, because I strongly believe that, more or less, for 10 years now, we can see that internet is being more and more cluttered with advertising. But I know that it may not good from a perspective to say that from a perspective of a person who works in an industry for like 20 years, like it's connected to the industry. But if you look at the internet nowadays, to the biggest portals, the biggest websites, it's overloaded with advertising; there's too many ads. The ads are being big, intrusive; they're like interfering with perception of the content and what we do at Take Ads, what we specialize in, and what the mission of ours is is to more be to have.an ad that is working but is not that intrusive that's why we we work mostly with native advertising and we don't call banners native advertising because i think that if we continue to do as we do as an industry now we have like 47 percent of online users worldwide having some kind of ad block features installed in their browsers that number was very low for the mobile devices for many many years so it was like kind of an understanding in the industry okay ad block is a desktop thing if we go to the to the mobile mobile is not that penetrated with ad blocks or ad blocking software it has changed and if we continue to do that we will lose the the contact and the reach to the the valuable users that have decided not to see any ads.So our mission at Take has to answer your question is to, of course, make money as everybody does and provide good quality for the advertisers and monetize the content of the publishers, but without making the users angry with the overload or overflow of advertising. So that's the main mission. There's ups and downs. We have features that we were we had very much hoping for and that we failed so we constantly have an R&D team in place that is thinking about non-intrusive but working formats, mostly we focus on contextually targeted ads, so rather than looking at cookies and data users, we look at the content and the context when the user is and then we are placing the ads of ours.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So, on the one hand, you work with all the different networks in the different markets, you collect offers, you connect with brands; on the other hand, you work with our affiliate sites. If my notes are correct, you work with around 35,000 different publishers that you are connected with?
[Paweł Mazurek]
The number is fluctuating, but the number is pretty high. We have our own codes; we have publishers that work with us. So it's more or less, it's, you know, ask me today, it's going to be 32. Ask me tomorrow, it's going to be active publishers sending traffic 33 and a half. So more or less, that's the number. And on the network side, on the network side, of course, we work with trade doublers. Best partner, but we also work with multiple others, okay?
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Now you work with these publisher sites-you integrate with them, can you share a bit more about what kind of publisher sites is that? What is your typical partner? Is that a huge variety of different types of publishers? Is it mainly media publishers or is there any speciality about them?
[Paweł Mazurek]
There's variety, we try to have multiple solutions for multiple publishers. Of course, the The most important part is the SME content publishers, but not the ones with the news.It's unfortunately not a success story. We've had the case of going to the US market and joining one of the organizations that gathers media publishers, like press publishers, American press publishers, mostly independent newspapers. And we were extremely happy to do it. But unfortunately, it turns out that the content that they are sharing is, you know, nowhere near uh content that sells.So, that content provides user intent for purchasing goods. So, we have different models of publishers: we have search engines like other than Google's; we also have content publishers; we have news publishers; we have extensions; we have like mobile browsers. So, probably there is like anything you would find in a typical meta network in terms of like sharing the content. But we also say, okay, let us put our JS code on the website and then we decide what format is being shown to the content that we see. Of course, there's like uh the technology is uh is being developed constantly. We've had one of the the best you know, you might have noticed that I like fail studies not success studies, but fail study of ours was that we've had a content and there was a word book.It was a review of a book. But our systems decided that the best possible link to this word 'book'would be booking.com. So we've obviously made a clickable link to booking.com. But that was algorithm and that's being helped by AI, that we look at the content, digest the content in the best possible way and find the best possible link amongst the ones that we have from the networks. So it's like, It's kind of two companies in one, but I understand that the market is transforming and my strong belief is that we need to go towards being 100% owner of the Qlik Origin and being in full control of where the traffic is coming.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
When you work with these publisher sites or when you like obviously are looking for new partners is there anything special that they need to have, that they need to bring to the table? Or can you basically work with any kind of website?
[Paweł Mazurek]
Of course I cannot work with any kind of websites because your team doesn't allow me to your compliance team I mean no of course not. We're looking at at least a minimum size of the publisher, simply because the payout model and the financial model is built that way. And we look at the content they're having. So obviously no illegal content, no adult content, nothing like this. But also the content has to be at least somewhat moved towards the e-commerce industry. Because as I mentioned just a second ago, we've had a test in the US market in 2023, I think. We've onboarded like big websites, like multi-million dollar websites. And we were expecting like, you know, an amazing growth. And it was okay, we have reach. Maybe the content is not that much one-to-one into sales and e-commerce, but there's reach. And that works for CPM and branding campaigns, but not for performance campaigns in the industry we're both in. So we have a target in terms of quality content, anything that a user might be reading or using on the path, in the conversion pipeline on the path to purchase. We can show them the ads of ours. Also, we also have one of the the newest babies is the Take Deals brand where we want to move the coupons higher in the pipeline of the sales.Imagine that if you have a content a content website that is related to any goods any goods in particular at this very moment; Not that many players are serving in this content. It's very high in the pipeline. It's kind of a consideration level, at least. Not many companies are serving discount codes or coupons for that particular user. So this is our goal and this is what we do, that we move the coupons higher in the pipeline. Of course, it's not applicable or not good for any advertiser.It has to be in line with their business model or the idea of, to which user they want to give the discount to. But technology is there. So, you know, there's multiple possibilities. Apart from a lawyer education, I graduated marketing and I teach marketing for 13 years now. So I always repeat to the students and to my colleagues that we need to just simply look at how the users are behaving online, how the ones that we want to reach, what they do, what's the path. They are taking in order to reach the final goal which is in our case a purchase made online and then we might think in which of those points for at least a reasonable amount of people we can serve them a non-intrusive and non-irritating message from the brand, and if we do that it's gonna be good for everybody.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Let us come to the integration and about, like you mentioned, the different formats you're offering for the integration with the websites. Let us come to that in a minute. I have a question before. These roughly 30-something thousand websites you're working with, is that websites that typically already have been working with partner marketing as a publisher themselves? Or is it websites that you like bring new to the table, so to say?
[Paweł Mazurek]
It's both. For some, it's something new that they haven't even tried. Those would be the smallest one. Up until today, they're using a typical RTB DSP. So they just connect to an SSP, put a JS code on the display, JS code on the website and be done with it. For some, they already have experience. And for some, it's they do have experience. They do have a strong position in a given market. But as you know, as probably everybody in our industry knows, every single website has a decent percentage of cross-border traffic. So somebody from another geography. And the way that market is built, the way that market is segmented, actually Tradedoubler included, that there's maybe not silos, but the countries are kind of, or the regions are kind of separated. And sometimes when the publisher is like huge in Slovakia, they do have 10% of traffic from Poland. And my experience is that often they monetize it obviously with RTB, with SSPs, but they don't do that in the affiliate industry. Because the affiliate networks they work with, they're local for a given market with local offers and some worldwide offers as well. But not neighbor-specific ones, so this is also one of the possibilities for us to go to integrate and say: listen, hassle-free will not take 90% of your traffic; it will take five or six percent of your traffic and monetize it from those geographies, from that geo, from that language. Because well, I don't i think I don't need to explain that-a user that's sitting in Slovakia will not purchase goods, most probably will not purchase goods from the Polish market. They have their own supplies. Of course, if there's worldwide supplies, Amazon, you know, AliExpress, etc., they will. But from Poland, I don't think so.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
It's very interesting because it basically means that you're expanding the market that is available then, right? Because with your tools, you're addressing as well websites that have not been working with partner marketing. So, you're basically expanding the market, bringing new types of traffic to brands through the networks.
[Paweł Mazurek]
And we try to keep them to ourselves.But of course, uh, you know it's hard, and everybody that had anything to do with like teaching people, it's like you're explaining and convincing at the very same time, so I'm convincing you to work with me and I need to explain to you how it works, why it is, why it's not CPM, why CPA-based or CPS-based cooperation model, and why even if you have 5, 000 unique unique visitors a month, it makes sense to make you know this couple of bucks a month with me.So, and of course, you know the industry is not new; we like there's not that many new players coming to the market; it's not like you know 20 years ago what you would look on the internet and yesterday there was 100 websites, today it's like 200 websites, and tomorrow there's going to be 500 websites.So this is the way to grow, we in my opinion, we have the two ways: geographical growth, product growth, and of course, reaching to the small and medium ones or bringing new products, new value to the market.And as I said, working with Adblock is one of the, or with Adblock users is one of the things that I see as an interesting way forward.Because if you look at any data, there's like 50 billion US dollars in lost revenue for the publishers.So the publishers, they can go to any analytical tool, have a look at what percentage of users of their website is having some adblock tools and just calculate how much, like if I'm earning 100 million a year, probably there's 50 more in lost revenue because I cannot monetize it.And this is the, I would say this is the holy grail.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Now you spoke about the integration. You said you have different formats. Can you explain a little bit more? How does it work? I think you have four different products that you offer in order to integrate on these websites. Can you explain a bit more in detail how does it work and what are the different options?
[Paweł Mazurek]
It's a bit misleading. Uh, the simplest way to say it is like we have two main methods of integration. We used to have, we do have a WordPress plugin, but unfortunately that was like kind of a dead end. We can you can use as a publisher the typical end-to-end integration, like the end-to-end integration of uh with the API with us, so typical Meta network stuff. You can go to our catalog and look through the office and manually get the link or you can take the JS code, hours put it on your website, decide on what publish, what advertising type do you want to run on your website? Of course, that will go through moderation; that's going to be checked if it's fine, if you're allowed to work with us. If we see if our compliance team actually wants to see your traffic coming in and then you're ready to go. As for the advertising formats because this is the integration part and anyone like at least the JS and the WordPress one can use multiple formats. Then we have the the the advertising formats so we have a dedicated offer for cashbacks, we have dedicated offers for tech deals with coupons. We work with search engines and we work with content websites. With Take Word, which I would say my favorite child in the bunch, it's a non-intrusive way of showing the the users the link they might be interested in so In short, I think for now at the moment, with the state of the industry, the most important part is to get quality content and quality advertising possibilities on quality content. And this is like all, so my publisher sales team is way bigger than my advertiser sales team simply because we know that the focus is over there. We need to bring as many quality. Publishers as we can with good content. If it's a nano website with 5,000 visitors a month, but the content is good, I still want them in.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
How do you integrate yourself then? Because you have all the different content on the different websites, high-quality content, as you say, then your advertising, the contextual advertising, needs to match the content.
[Paweł Mazurek]
How are you doing that, uh, we're scraping the content once, uh, and then, uh, we're ready to go so, you're looking at the content and the context of step that doesn't change at least if it's not a forum it doesn't change then we can understand that okay this is a this is a proper feed uh there's also like you know that there's this company's all over the planet that do that for the biggest portals uh for RTB so simply scraping in order to add to the bid request the information about the the content or to do a summary for the search engines to make the hashtags for for this so kind of it's the same way the same technology the same the logic so to say that we understand and okay this is the content this is the word and this is the context now we can do it so you know we're very grateful for AI to be here and to make it kind of easy because everybody now says yes we're using AI in our daily business but it'sReally helpful because otherwise we would need to do it manually, just go to the website to every single URL on a given website, so home page, section, article, and then manually like at least tag it, probably that could have been done but it would take quite a reasonable amount, unreasonable amount of time.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
You integrate with JavaScript, you just said. When you do it like that, are you then not as well subject to ad blocking or how do you avoid being blocked?
[Paweł Mazurek]
There's a rule. I shouldn't say that out loud on the podcast. There's a rule and there are rules, imagine this with AdBlock community which is like really advanced and really amazing community working that the way that the system of a plugin works is that it does not interfere with the perception of the user of the website so if you look at click-throughs if you install AdBlock you look at click-throughs if you look at the domains most of them, most of the big affiliate networks domains are being blocked on the click moment. So even if I see an ad as a user with AdBlock, I click on it, I'm being redirected through a redirect of a given domain, then there is a message from Ad blocking software saying like, this click was being blocked because it's on the white list, this and that. So, you know it's a tricky thing, but as soon as we say 'okay', we're not serving irritating ads that they're like changing the look the website; that the look of the websites etc we should be fine, but it's a race and it's always like who comes first, the community they look at what we do, we look at what they do, and it's like a constant uh I wouldn't say battle but a competition.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Can you measure if you are blocked or not, or to what extent you're blocked on different websites? Can you measure that?
[Paweł Mazurek]
We can see how many fires of AdBlock was there. So many, many years ago, we were a completely different company. We've had a tool that we call the Snippet. It was simply firing to every single browser it would see a fake ad. And it would just monitor if the ad went through, if it was opened by the browser. That's it, nothing else. And it meant that if it was fired and opened by the browser, we're good. If it was fired but not opened by the browser, then it means there's some kind of ad blocking stuff. And of course, you know that there's so many software that is blocking ads, there's VPN offering this, there's browsers with native ad blocking, there's you know the most popular extensions with the kind of similar name, uh, so of course you can't win them all, it's it's impossible but just looking at the majority of it, just looking at the reports, well it says a lot about the state of the industry and you know you're you're also quite a reasonable amount of time in the industry uh we're both kind of guilty of it.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Let's speak a little bit about the business model. So you're working with all the different affiliate networks. You're getting CPA done from the brands, right? Yes. You work with all the websites you have as well on a CPA basis. So is it CPA for CPA and you earn money with the commission you're making?
[Paweł Mazurek]
It’s different models so but mainly the first part is 100% correct okay we work with multiple affiliate networks obviously we get CPA then we work with publishers on CPA we work with other publishers in the different models if it's of course if it's like if you're pitching a small bra, small publisher like with a great content we can say okay we can work with UCPM. But it’s like the last resort. Usually our main business model is CPA to CPA.But of course, then it's like hard convincing. I’m coming to you, Matthias, as a new publisher saying, hi, you know, I have this amazing advertising format that's native and native kind of sounds. Nobody will notice it.So the CTR would be very low.And I want to work on CPA with you. So your answer would be, 'You know, I'm. With SSPs, I'm working CPM for like the last 15 years. So this is a new way of thinking about monetizing my content for me. Let me think about it. And that's what we say that we want to onboard, as you've noticed, that we want to onboard new publishers that have experience with the typical CPM, SSP, OpenRTB protocol to something new for them. And for them it's like, 'okay, but I'm earning like, pay me CPM.' You pay me CPM, we're good. And my flat CPM is 10 euros. And then you're like, 'yes, but not the risk.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
It's too high. But you basically bring them a new revenue stream, right?
[Paweł Mazurek]
But of course, uncomparable to the ones they're getting from OpenRTB or from, let's say, Google. It's like, it's smaller. It's additional revenue. It's possibility to get additional revenue. Yes, but it's a new integration new code some work etc. and we've had cases like let's be honest we've had cases when we would onboard the publisher was extremely happy about onboarding good quality publisher with decent size and after one month of working with them we got an email that guys i like your team I like what you do but for the last month i earned less that it would cost me to order a pizza so I'm sorry but not interested anymore so it's like you win some you lose some but i strongly believe that we have to do something about it. Now you're obviously very successful, so TakeAds is around for three years.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
You already expanded to 10 countries or even a little bit more. Can you share a bit about how this has worked, this international expansion, your learnings from that? It's quite an exciting story, I think.
[Paweł Mazurek]
Please bear in mind that TakeAds is TakeAds since 2023. It was on the market before we rebranded in 2023. It's extremely, it's easy. I know that you've opened a new entity now and rolling it out. But in my experience, if you have the demand from the advertisers, then you have the key thing that is in demand on the market. Money. Because you have the budgets of the advertisers. And then all that's left. It's to find the proper market, to look at the average prices, of course, the wealth of the population, the size of the population, the key players on the market, and just go into the market to pitch your idea. And with the tools we have now, with all of the Zooms, Google Hangouts, all of that, travel is not that necessary. So, we work, obviously, Germany is a home turf and the biggest market for us. We have amazing results in the US market. We have UK market, we have France, we have some Western Europe as well. And when expanding, we're simply looking at, okay, you know, the way that we position. We need affiliate networks to be already on the market. So we look at you guys, we say, okay, they go there. Let's see what can we do about it?
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Very good, very good. Let's speak about native advertising in general a little bit. We're speaking about a market that is 127 billion big. It's growing fast. Can you share a bit more about the market overall, how you see it, how you see trends and how you see trends for the future most of all?
[Paweł Mazurek]
You've seen the data. So the growth has a bit stagnated. Big raise on the native ads, and then it's like stopped and it's more or less constant, still growing but not as much as it did. It's highly dependent on what you consider to be native advertising because in some reports, everybody says 'okay, influencer marketing is kind of native ads'simply because there's a picture, there's a product, so it's native. Some other people would say, 'you know, a banner if it's like if it's light in white in color and it kind of looks like a background of the website, it's also native advertising. I would disagree and I would say that native ad like there's a great IAB standard that says what is native ad-it's not intrusive, looks like the content, it's based on and some and doesn't interfere. So, like, it's not not intrusive again, uh! And if you look at it say okay let's see at the offerings we have with companies that sell native ads and just compare the offering of theirs with the IAB standard of what the native ad is, and there's some mismatch-like sometimes it's like it doesn't look like it's kind of native. So on one hand side, I'm sure we have as an industry, we have to follow the non-intrusive say native ads path because otherwise, we will just eat our own tails and convince more users. To go out to AdBlock on the other hand side, I fully understand that if you're a publisher and you have, you know, go to any biggest publishers in Germany, you will see on the top of the screen like covering probably 50% of your screen And mega double billboard ad, like 970 by 350 or something like that.Some amazing big ad. Try going to them and say, 'Listen, but you know what? This is bad.'You need to change that because users do not like that. And they will come back to you and say, 'Listen, but this is the most expensive advertising format I have.' And this is bringing me a significant percentage of my ad revenue. And no, I will not. Remove it from my website until somebody comes to me and says, OK, let's do something else. You know, there's paywalls, there's subscription, but it's not developing as fast as it used to.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So you speak about achieving a sense state in native advertising. Is that kind of like a summary or an approach about what you just shared?
[Paweł Mazurek]
I think so, but I don't think it's possible. We both know it's not possible. But the goal is there. Let's make internet a nice place to be again.A nd without cutting the publishers from the supply of money. This is the way we should move forward.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So thinking about having the right balance between advertising and content, basically.
[Paweł Mazurek]
Exactly. I'm not a publisher. I know most of the publishers are now stack-quoted or VC-backed or something. They have KPIs to deliver, as we all do. And then you say, 'Hi, let's make internet great again', to quote a famous person. I don't think it's possible, but it doesn't mean we should stop trying. It's a good goal. I'm 44 years old, as I mentioned, and I remember when internet was kind of almost without any ads.I was a great place to be, even though it was like not nowhere near where it is today. But it was like, you go for content, you look for content fine, you find it, you go home. Now, you like have to scroll 15 ads, look through the ads to find some content, then you find the content, and then you're gone.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
So I know I sound like an old grumpy person, but uh well, you're actively working on changing the status quo so um what would you say now looking a little bit into the future? What would be the main trends or looking ahead a few years, how will it look like then? What do you think?
[Paweł Mazurek]
Uh, you know the elephant in the room is that the internet is being uh mostly I wouldn't say own but most of the advertising budgets go to two players, two global players, and the rest of us, we we kind of work with what's left. So we can probably as an industry say okay we are our our alternative is that we really care about the users we respect the privacy already done we respect the the user experience they want to have or they don't want to have such experience and then we can say okay let's be growing because like you know double digit growth in in in the digital industry it's time of the say 2000s uh it's not it's not that easy to grow double digits year to year because the the market at least in you know in our region is kind of stagnated everybody who was who was supposed to be online is already online there's not not going to be that much influx of new players of new users so my take we would see users accepting paywalls more and more, which means they would pay to the publisher with great content for using their content and not seeing any ads, and I think we will see more users actively speaking against your intrusive advertising. We already see that every single statistics shows that. So that's my take. And that's why I'm trying to push takers to the path that it's on.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Very good. You are on a mission. Thank you so much for sharing all these insights and information, Pavel. At the end of every podcast, I ask the same three questions to all my guests.I hope it's okay for you if I do the same with you. It's becoming a little bit more personal, if that's all right. Of course. Would you mind sharing with us what is the best book you've ever read? We need some recommendations. We need some input.
[Paweł Mazurek]
I am prepared. So answer one is, of course, I've mentioned going to Svalbard. Oh, it's blurred. So probably read one book, a tour guide about Svalbard. It's quite thick, actually, right? Sorry? Yes, yes, yes. There's plenty of things to do. Read one travel book. It can be Svalbard. It can be anyone, any other. And just go to the country. If you want to go to Svalbard, hit me up. I'll help you. But jokes aside, there's a great book by Stephen Covey. It's called Seven Habits of a Happy Family. It's written by Americans for Americans, which means it's easy to read and understand. And it gives you seven simple tools to make your family life happy. And it also reflects on your business life. So come to Svalbard.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
I'll borrow you the second book. And bring this book with you. And then always, when you think about managing a family, managing a company, there is quite some overlap, right? There is some experiences that you can share between the two. 100%.
[Paweł Mazurek]
If you're reading this book, you're like, okay, I can use that at home, but also at work.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Very good. Very good. What is the best app you would recommend to us or an app where you would say that you can't live without?
[Paweł Mazurek]
I would say it's Strava. I'm sorry. It's not business related.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
Ah, you're on Strava. Very good.
[Paweł Mazurek]
Yes, I'm on Strava. I used to be on the Better app, but it was discontinued two years ago. So Strava, yeah. It keeps reminding you that. You should go and do some sports simply just for the sake of sharing it with your friends on Strava, so as long as it works I'm fine. This is probably one of the first apps I would open on my new phone when I change ones, very good okay cool.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
And then the last one is an easy one. It's about what you would do if you wouldn't be free. If you wouldn't be CEO at TakeAds, not be a lawyer and lecturer at university, but would be completely free to do whatever you would want to do. What would that be?
[Paweł Mazurek]
The answer is easy as well...uh, I would probably be writing, snowmobiling on Svalbard, and I wouldn't say hunting birds because it's completely illegal and the birds are protected. But simply enjoying the outdoor life in the Arctic, that would be, I would say, my take.
[Matthias Stadelmeyer]
You got me interested now. Thank you so much, Pavel. Thank you for a great talk. Thank you for a good time and joining us here on the podcast. Thank you so much.
[Paweł Mazurek]
Thanks a lot.great day afternoon night regardless of what you when you're listening to this, thank you.