• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 13, 2017

Simpli.fi recently launched a dynamic creative platform for the automotive industry that, unlike most retargeting processes, doesn't require consumers to visit a company's website to target them with an advertisement.

Prospecting Dynamic Creative for Auto serves ads to potential buyers based on upper-funnel behaviors, such as keyword searches and the contextual content.

"If someone searches on 'red Chevy truck,' even though they haven’t visited a local Chevy dealer, they will see an ad for a red Chevy truck when our platform has access to inventory data," said Simpli.fi co-founder and CEO Frost Prioleau.

The platform uses AI to match the keywords searched on with the keywords in the ad inventory.

Data & Programmatic Insider caught up with Prioleau to talk about the company's future after closing the sale of the company in October to Chicago-based private equity firm GTCR. He and co-founder Paul Harrison remain "heavily invested" in the Simpli.fi's future.

Here are excerpts from our conversation.  

Data & Programmatic Insider: What's the biggest shift the company's made in the past five years?

Prioleau: We were originally a point solution around search retargeting, but brought in site and contextual retargeting. Now we're heavily into mobile targeting based on GPS data.

Mobile became more than half our platform in the third quarter of 2016. Now it's more than 70% of our business, driven by geofencing technology.

During the summer, we began making foot-traffic data available for local campaigns.  We run about 74,000 live campaigns across the platform at any one time. Many are small budget campaigns for local businesses.

Foot-traffic attribution and purchase attribution are things we're excited about.The data shows lift in foot traffic driven by local campaigns.

D&PI: When you think about programmatic, is there something that keeps you up at night?

Prioleau: It concerns me that programmatic gets a lot of bad press regarding lack of viewabliity and fraudulent activity.

There are implementable solutions to solve these problems. If you look at the way programmatic is growing, you see a larger percentage of money going through the channel. First display, then video, and OTT next.

[eMarketer estimates programmatic display spending will reach about $33 billion in 2017.]

D&PI: Do you support programmatic ad buying in OTT today?

Prioleau: Yes, we run OTT today. We just started. It will really develop in 2018, as more inventory becomes available.  We should see a lot more across the industry during the next 18 months. 

D&PI: Are there any plans to start up a new business?

Prioleau: We remain heavily invested in Simpli.fi. Mobile,and OTT will become a major focus for us in 2018.

D&PI: What's the best piece of business advice you've received?

Prioleau: It's more of a realization I came to rather than advice I received, though I received advice and I didn't immediately accept it. It's about the importance of building a culture in a company that attracts great people and helps them grow.

The culture is an important part for the ongoing success of the business.  

Early in my career, I felt it was overrated, but I quickly learned that's not the case.