Rob Emrich. He’s a serial entrepreneur, currently involved in his latest venture as the founder and CEO of The Mobile Majority. He’s founded and served as chief executive at 6 startups in social ventures including Road of Life, which distributed as $70M dollar curriculum; BULX, which was acquired by Dealyard in 2011; and Boundaryless Brands, which was acquired in 2011 along with SpeakerSite. Know more about Rob at his website.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The Goal
What CEO do you follow? – N/A
Favorite online tool? — Spark Email Client
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Have fun”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:40 – Nathan introduces Rob to the show
01:26 – Rob just bought Gimbal and will use that name
- 01:55 – They’re taking the name most especially because of the .com in Gimbal’s website
02:15 – Rob believes that what drives success in online marketing is data
02:58 – Most of Rob’s previous companies were in the ecommerce space
03:22 – Mobile phone ends up being the bridge between the online world and the offline world
- 03:31 – Rob was missing data regarding targeting and attribution
- 03:46 – There’s no way to know if an offline campaign is effective
04:36 – The technology Rob bought that has the data can now run campaigns and know that you were on that campaign
05:05 – Offline behavior ends up becoming an incredibly strong signal of intent and is an accurate way to measure attribution
05:21 – Gimbal uses Beacon
- 05:37 – Beacons are usually a 2-flow energy and Qualcomm invested around over a hundred million dollars for the technology
- 06:01 – Beacons are precise when working with GPS
06:53 – Qualcomm spun out beacons in 4 other companies to develop the culture of innovation
- 07:28 – When they spun out in 2014, it became a challenge for big companies to innovate
08:20 – The valuation
08:44 – The deal structure that Rob had with Qualcomm was a mix of different things: cash, debt and equity
08:57 – Total funding from Mobile Majority was around $25M
09:03 – Mobile Majority was launched in 2012
09:38 – Rob has gone through things after his first exit
- 10:05 – “I’m going big at this point”
10:16 – Rob is currently 37 and has no kids
10:33 – Team size is around 100
11:20 – Primary line of business is essentially acting as a media and advertising operating system for large media companies
- 11:41 – They target individual people
- 11:44 – “We understand identity very, very well”
- 13:09 – They were getting revenue share
13:42 – When CBS creates content, that content generates users and Mobile Majority exposes them to more user data and will sell their operated properties
14:30 – Mobile Majority is different from Outbrain because Mobile Majority’s ads are more targeted
15:10 – Mobile Majority now has 10K end customers
- 16:00 – Total advertising purchase range is between $10M-100M
16:15 – Average percentage taken by Mobile Majority varies
- 17:08 – Instead of charging towards content, Mobile Majority will only hit specific people who are on the list
18:46 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

There’s a lot of missed data in the offline world that is still not easy to track.
Knowing and understanding your target audience is more effective and cost-efficient for you.
Just go on with your life and have fun, create businesses while you still can.

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Hotjar – Gives Nathan a recording of what is happening on a website or where are people clicking and scrolling on the website
Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

679: Mobile Majority $25M raised, Acquires Qualcomm's Gimbal To Lead Mobile Ad Attribution Using Beacons w/ CEO Rob Emrich

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