What apps does a startup building an online advertising manager use?

Dhawal Mujumdar is one of the co-founders of AdsNative, a platform designed to help people with advertising naturally display it as content, and also helps any outlet with space for advertising connect with advertisers. Dhawal shared with us several of the apps they use internally that help them grow their business.

Visit our guest at…

• AdsNative
• Follow Dhawal on Twitter

In this show you’ll learn why AdsNative uses…

• New Relic for deeper customer data.
• Datadog as their monitoring service.
• Slack as a communication tool.
• MailChimp for email marketing.
• Intercom to see how customer use their site.
• Mixpanel to dig deeper into their site/user analytics.

Dhawal also recommends…

• Wunderlist as an iOs to-do list.

*this is a machine generated transcription please excuse any typos*

Jimmy: Hello and welcome everybody, we are back again with GetApp podcast, how apps help me grow my business. Today we have Mr. Dhawal Mujumdar and he is the co- founder of AdsNative. But before that, let me tell you a little bit about GetApp. If you don’t know GetApp, GetApp is a very cool directory of business applications.

For example, what is the use case here? Let’s say that you have a small advertising company, and you are looking to better control of your finances that are getting crazy and out of hand and you have more paper than you would like. So you jump over to GetApp, you look at our finance and accounting category and on the results page, you will see a whole bunch of different options from FreshBooks, to Xero, to FinancialForce and something that you will be able to do is to be able to get there .

You can compare up to 3 of them side by side and you can read reviews. You can do a whole bunch of stuff and basically it’s all designed to help you make a very educated and informed buying decision.

So by the time you land on this new page, hopefully you will have enough information to go ahead and feel very confident in making a purchase and signing up. So, GetApp is designed to help you find all sorts of business applications very fast. With that said, I would like to welcome Dhawal from AdsNative. How are you doing Dhawal?

Dhawal: I’m doing great. Thank you I appreciate it.

Jimmy: I heard you had maybe about 20 minutes of sleep so I will try to be as gentle as possible. I think that’s something quite normal though with startups right?

Dhawal: Yes, did a lot of work, did a lot of conception. That’s probably one of the reasons so maybe I might be …

Jimmy: Well let me see. Before we get started, tell me a little bit about yourself because I always find it very interesting to know a little bit about the background of the people that decide to build companies that end up changing the lives of a lot of people. So, tell me a little bit about where are you from? What you studied and how you ended up getting 5 minutes of sleep?

Dhawal: Sure so my background family probably comes from I grew up in India. I was born and brought up there. I spent part of my student life in India. And then I did my undergraduate in bachelors in Engineering Computer Science particularly which is pretty popular. There is joke in India, either your son becomes a doctor or engineer or he does not study at all. I just follow that mentality. I was really interested in Computer Science that was one of the reasons I did that.

After graduating from CS, I got interested in the topic of the area of human computer interaction which is more like the computer science which is interaction design or user experience design like which is common nowadays in this industry. So I applied to grad schools.

I went to Berkeley right in the Bay Area which is really an awesome school. I’m used to the weather of California. That was one reason I moved to California. I just wanted sun year round. So it was easy that I have to move to Bay Area.

In the Bay Area there are lots of amazing work that is happening, that was another reason. Why I started AdsNative? I think so prior to Adsnative I was just running a small startup I would say in the area of … like image based widgets that we would include lots of different websites. And one of the challenges that we had is monetization.

So we would ask people to pay us money like five bucks, 10 bucks like monthly fee. Like the typical subscriptions models that we had at that time. But unfortunately it was covering very big cost but it was not covering our salaries. Like okay so there is something we need to do. Maybe we can have like a premium type of model we’ll have a fee and still have some ads supporting our model there.

We didn’t want to do the traditional way of advertising. The traditional way of advertising that we know is what we call the display of the barrel advertising. Even the mobile apps that you see at the bottom of your page.

The sticky banner, like the flashing click me, click me type of contractions they have. They interrupt your experience and we all hate that, it just sucks. So we wanted to do much more in real advertising. We had about eight images and that image that just looks great. It goes with the experience and users also enjoy that.

So we started looking for that kind of solution that will satisfy our needs. And we could not find anything that would completely satisfy our needs so we thought, “Wow this is an interesting area.”

So I asked a lot of my friends who are running their start ups, or running successful applications are you interested in a solution where it gives you a software to create advertising that is really integrated on the lines of the way Twitter does with their tweets. If you use Twitter or Facebook what Facebook does is like sponsored stories. In Facebook they don’t show banners they show sponsored stories. It has nothing but the Facebook updates on the brands.

On Twitters they have tweets which are nothing but tweets on brands and they are just promoting them. So there’s this type of advertising is known as content and driven native advertising. We wanted to do that in our application so we thought like, it’s a great area.

I think a lot of people in the future all the big companies are moving to this type of advertising. The battle of advertising of all 90s or 2000s is dying anyway because the performance is shitty and everyone hates them. So why not create a software, why not create an infrastructure where we help ad developers, we help website owners, we help content publishers to do that style of advertising.

Jimmy: Okay.

Dhawal: And that’s where we started.

Jimmy: Okay cool. Okay, so one of the things that when I was digging into AdsNative obviously not having access to the platform or anything. You just kind of get this very skin deep look into what it does. So from what I understood, excuse me if I come off like a total newbie here but I’m completely a novice online advertising more than anything like the technical part behind it.
So what I understood is a person signs up to AdsNative and let’s say they develop an application for an iPhone. The ads that are shown in the app they can control? How does this work?

Dhawal: Yes so I will give you a case I’m an ad developer. Say I am creating a photo sharing application just another photo shooting application that I am creating. I want to monetize that because people are not willing to pay because all the photo shooting applications are free and everything is ads supported.

So, I have two choices; either I take money from people so that I can support my operations or I start showing ads which are placed at the sticking at the bottom of your app, and you will start getting money that’s what most games do that. Like flappy bird. The developer of that made $30,000 out of like every day from using just banner ads. If you have a really large audience banner ads may work but they suck.

Jimmy: Yes that’s an outlier though.

Dhawal: Yes that’s an outlier but another way you could do the others like showing ads that are really integrated. The way Instagram does that. Instagram has nothing but sponsored photos like in your stream of photos or in your other images like an images sponsored by one of the brands that helps Instagram, like brands promoting that.

Now to do that, there are lots of challenges. Number one, you need to have ad delivery. You need to have all these brands have certain challenges I want to have in my campaign on certain days, certain times , certain targeting. Like I want only geographical targeting or the user’s targeting. Certain reporting needs. You need to give much more detail reporting.

So all those things, you can do it in house but it takes lot of manpower to do that. So what we do is we take care of everything of those needs. Like in using our system and people sign up in details and repairs and just like get started in doing that style of advertising. And we do all the heavy lifting.

Jimmy: Okay I really want to dig a little deeper.

Dhawal: Sure.

Jimmy: Let’s say in the case of web application for example. The web application would really, it would be for someone who is let’s say has, I guess and correct me if I’m wrong. Let’s say they have a new site a blog something like that. They want to allow third parties to create ads that are more integrated into their content?

Dhawal: Yes.

Jimmy: Okay then they kind of created this whole back end with AdsNative that allows them to inject this into their site.

Dhawal: Exactly.

Jimmy: I get you. They still have to go and sell the ads that they are going to display.

Dhawal: Yes.

Jimmy: You guys created the whole beast that allows the person wanting to display ads to connect to the person wanting to show their ads. Have it all nice and neat into the same stream of content without being too obtrusive.

Dhawal: Exactly.
Jimmy: I got you sir. That’s pretty neat.

Dhawal: And like if they need any help on connecting to advertisers because we work with a lot of advertisers so we also connect them. So on top of that they don’t need to go to agencies, brand advertisers. Yes we also have demand sourcing so we can also take care of that.

Jimmy: This is interesting. So then this is a potential client then could be even a start-up who is dealing more on the content then that’s looking for that monetization option that if they get the traffic, you guys can help them with everything else.

Dhawal: Absolutely everything else if you want. So in a way we are monetization added service you can call that. We can help you by bringing the certain demand or connect you with demand sources and all the technology. That is why we run all the campaigns.

Jimmy: In the process of building something like AdsNative, are there integrations with third parties that you need to do, that you have? That help, from what I understand you have two end users You have the site displaying the ads and the ad buyer right?

Dhawal: Yes.

Jimmy: So are there like third party integrations that both of these people can find on AdsNative to make their lives easier?

Dhawal: Yes. I don’t know exactly understand what do you mean but third party integrations?

Jimmy: For example let’s say a CRM will integrate with Gmail to not have to build out its own emailing system or something like that?

Dhawal: Yes. We do have all the third party integrations necessary. So like from of usual sites like they have all the SPKs and they have all the plugins that they need so their life is easier. They use WordPress and they have certain SPKs. If they use IOS application we have iOS SPKs, or ad buyers, if they want to pull their content on different schemes. My content like on Instagram when I want to show that particular ad XYZ app they can pull that we have all sorts of integrations also.

Jimmy: So that’s very cool. So, you mentioned Instagram. Are you guys feeding ads to Instagram?

Dhawal: No not at the moment.

Jimmy: Not at the moment until they open the API.

Dhawal: It’s not like, it’s not open.

Jimmy: Yes

Dhawal: They are also I think making it better their ad experience.

Jimmy: So, in your evolution of building AdsNative, is there something that has surprised you or that has been unexpected that has happened?

Dhawal: Unexpected I think being at a start-up in almost every day there are lots of things that you don’t expect or things that you expect they necessarily go backwards in almost every way. One thing that we feel just to be specific on that is like when we started this company, we thought like we are not sure how many people need this table.

There are lots of people who really care about their advertising like how they want to do that and particularly app developers. they don’t have a lot of options because they just hook in to all these banner ads and mobile screens. On desktop you have much bigger screens like one corner to start showing your banner ad but on app the space is so limited and they interrupt the experience. People are like even more looking for these type of solutions.

Jimmy: I guess one of the things that a lot of startups here is you know, investigate the market and figure out that you have customers. So on and so forth. So you guys just kind of built it and said, “We believe in this and its great and we know that there are going to be people that need it.” Or was there more deliberate process of investigation and so on and so forth?

Dhawal: Yes we did some market research of course and we did spend a couple of months just talking with people and understanding what kind of needs. We are not sure initially if it’s needed it so I’m dealing with and just talking to as many people as possible. Particularly ad developers and almost everyone was like yes I would like to have this tool. I would like it for me. I think it’s important to do market research initially.

Jimmy: Enough right?

Dhawal: Yes

Jimmy: So before we transition over into getting to know the apps that you guys use. I guess I have one quick question, one curiosity. How long, because this seems like a very big development project. How long is it before you had the idea and the first line of code is written until you can actually have a product that both ends of this business could use? How long was that time frame?

Dhawal: I think like we just spent maybe when we started looking at this particular market maybe one or two months we were just doing pure marketing research. Then we started getting small prototypes so it was not full code I would say but just a small prototype just to explore further and just validate whatever ideas that we have or whatever the discussions that we had with this certain data.

And that continuously going like creating small prototype first you put up an ads and yes it’s really working and users will start liking this kind of stuff. And then like going more bigger like getting much bigger and adding more features to it so quickly titrating. We would always do prototyping very fast, add features based on the data that you see and that’s what the culture we have and the company also.

So we have been in business now around two years and yes we have hundreds of sites and apps using us like we process more than like half to one million ads every month. It’s been working pretty well so far.

Jimmy: That’s pretty cool. So moving into, shifting gears over into more apps that you and AdsNative uses. The first question is, are there any apps that you have in your smart phone right now that you recommend highly? That is beyond the social media apps that a lot of people are using?

Dhawal: So let me check my smart phone.

Jimmy: Some productivity apps or you know some stuff that really makes your day much easier.

Dhawal: I would say, in terms of the productivity apps wise. I do have apps like Evernote. I use Notes app a lot. That is my, there is one app like Wunderlist I use a lo for my to-do. That is not that well know but I like them a lot

Jimmy: Wunderlist?

Dhawal: Yes its W-U- N- D-E-R-L-I-S-T. So it’s like a tool list which is like Cloud Send if I have Mac app. I love apple. It’s really easy; I do like a bunch of to-dos so I need to do these things and it syncs really well. So I like that one in terms of productivity. And apart from that I use traditional app that everyone uses like the Google apps.

Jimmy: This Wunderlist looks pretty cool I have to check that out so now transitioning over to into the apps that AdsNative uses. What are some of these premium third party application SaaS apps that you guys are using internally to make your business run smoother and make your lives easier?

Dhawal: I think primarily most products we have Google apps running the core, like the back office work what we call.

Jimmy: Yes

Dhawal: On top of that we do lots of sites … we have services like New Relics

Jimmy: New Relics?

Dhawal: New relics is like an app of all your data, data logs. There are other few application that we use. In terms of we use slack for internal productivity. Slack app is like team communication and more of like IRC. Much improved IRC. It is going pretty fast and we like them so we use Slack a lot.
I think on top of that we use MailChimp all our email marketing stuff. Then we use Google Docs for all our like we use Office, like Microsoft Office we use Google docs it’s much easier.

Jimmy: Yes I think that you and probably 99% of every other start-up is on Google docs.

Dhawal: Yes it’s so easy you don’t have to buy all that crap. Google docs is so much better than office. I have used both Intercom and Mixpanel for user engagement and customer engagement and analytics on the site. These are the few apps that we use.

Jimmy: So intercom and mix panel can, I find it always interesting the different analytic tools that people decide to use above Google analytics and kind of the reason why.

Yesterday we had a guest that was Loretta Jones from Insightly land. She uses KISSmetrics and one of her biggest selling points on KISSmetrics was just a super simple and easy to use interface and I think that’s something that’s very valuable.

In your opinion what is the reason behind using a Mixpanel?

Dhawal: Mix panel is like integrated. When we integrate I wanted this whole integration to be a little easier. I have not checked out KISSmetric for a while, I should check them out. We have integrated Mixpanel for almost a year and a half now. They had some start-up offers at the time so I was like just check it out and I met some Mixpanel engineers and they sold me on their products. So I just integrated it. I really like them.

Google analytics gives you who came to your page, visited at your site, and which pages or which site gets visited. Mixpanel goes or KISSmetrics , Mixpanel intercom go beyond that I would say.
They tell not only who visited on your site but what they did on your site and kind of like you can clear also some funnels.

You clear something like computer customer communication. If they did certain things, if they did X step then you kind of set themselves some communications in pop-ups or emails. It gives you much more deeper engagements so that’s why you use them.

Jimmy: Is there one piece of data that you are looking at every day. That every besides you know, are we making enough money to pay the bills. Aside from that metric, is there another number that every day you are checking out to kind of see how it’s doing?

Dhawal: Yes for us the most important metric at least is how many ads that we deliver or how many ads that we processed. That is the most important metric for us because that’s

what our business is for people to use ad serving needs. That is the metric that we always use, around that there are a lot of like how many people logged in, how many ads integrated.
So all those data is interwoven into one single metric. We use all these tool so that like just to see all the signals that intertwine to that particular data.

Jimmy: From your experience what do you think? Because I imagine that to serve and correct me if I’m wrong, to serve more ads you really need the website to have more volume in traffic kind of yes?

Dhawal: Yes.

Jimmy: From your experience, from dealing with a bunch of different companies. Is there something that you have kind of learned over these two years that tells you whether or not a site is doing a good job in terms of getting more traffic? What do you see that the sites that do well? Why did they do well? Is there something that you kind of get?

Dhawal: Absolutely yes a lot of things. Number one how fast the site loads that is really important because people don’t pay attention to the speed and retention. There are so many tools to do that. Like Google has a page speed optimization there are so you can see how many scripts there are, there are so many tips online on how to improve the site performance.

The basic things like minimize your images. A lot of people ignore that and the slower the site people are just going to run away. If the site is not loading. Performance is a function of user experience and Google was the first company in the world that did that.

Second thing, a lot of companies put all sorts of crazy advertisements all over the page. Users do not like to be bombarded with ads. Just put one ad and the performance will be significantly better. If you put hundreds of ad in your page nobody will come to that page and eventually you are going to make less revenue. Just put one or two ads and make it really clean. I’m sure you will make more revenue in doing so.

Also a lot of people think more ads means more revenue and they lose the site where like it’s not about more ads. It is about creating a great experience advertising just like adding to that and people forget that. That’s another thing that people forget.

And typically like mobile optimize also like there are so many things that people can do. They can use WordPress there are so many things that that works from mobile site. And there are other so many frameworks that are responsive also people love being able to message and have that mobile optimization.

Jimmy: That’s very interesting having the site load quickly. Having very clean site with like one core, two core ads on the page and a mobile optimize site. That’s insightful. That’s very cool. So from your two years of building AdsNative, is there any recurring kind of annoyance that you have had that with any type of application?

Dhawal: Not that I can think of. Like just a recurring annoyance I would say. We have not had a particular one I can think of on top of my head. Once in a while there are maybe some hiccups down the road but that is understandable. I think you can clear that out. We have not had something recurring.

Jimmy: So very cool. I think that I will not take up more of your time but I really learned a lot about Ads Native. Because when I was looking at the site I kind of got a feel for it but because you are not in the ads space, ad world you really don’t understand all the pieces.

But talking to you now is like, “Okay I completely get what they do.” And it’s very cool because to me I find it super curious to see that what’s powering a lot of monetization for sites that is their only avenue. Congratulations, I hope that your first two years turns out to be 20 or 30 and that you guys do some bigger and better things .

Dhawal: Thank you I really appreciate that.

Jimmy: So before we sign off, any last things you would like to tell the audience?

Dhawal: One thing I would definitely say that if you are ad supported business do see us if you’re concerned about what kind of ad experience you want to do. Don’t think about money right away so that’s one thing I always tell that.
Don’t look at the short term revenues. Go for long term and look for the ad experience that you want to do. Think about this twitters and Instagram how much time they spend just optimizing on their ad products. They spend years before making it.

Jimmy: Yes because it can really be that one thing either ruins you or makes you.

Dhawal: Yes that definitely helps so that’s one thing. And yes any question regarding monetizing relation shoots me an email dhawal@adsnative.com I am happy to help. Regardless you consider us or not just on an advisory level I am happy to help.

Jimmy: Very cool thank you so much Dhawal. From my end I would like to let everybody know to go visit AdsNative.com if you are in the ballpark of looking to serve ads on your site. Definitely get in touch with Dhawal and with the team over at AdsNative. I am pretty sure that they will give you more than plenty answers to all of your questions. So go over to AdsNative at AdsNative.com.

And on my end I would like to invite you also to visit GetApp.com so with whatever you are looking for in the world of business applications we pretty much have it all there. You can compare them. Give them reviews and do a bunch of cool stuff there to discover tools that you know you need. And maybe a whole bunch of tools that you have no idea you needed but oh my God you just discovered them.

Dhawal: Yes surely.

Jimmy: So thank you so much Dhawal and I’m pretty sure I will be tweeting at you from now on.

Dhawal: Perfect thanks a lot I really appreciate it Jimmy and it was a pleasure talking with you.

Jimmy: Thank you for coming on the show.

Dhawal: Yes see you have a good one.

Jimmy: Bye Dhawal.

Dhawal: Yes. Bye.

The post GetCast 5: AdsNative, natural online advertising manager. appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.