D2CX
One of the big trends in startup land over the last decade is consumer brands getting built
But these channels are getting more challenging as they have been optimized and scaled by thousands of brands over the last decade and the marketers in D2C land are increasingly looking around to see if there is anywhere else they can go.
Enter our portfolio company Simulmedia, which we invested in almost ten years ago to bring the transparency and efficiency of online advertising to television.
Simulmedia has launched an offering for these D2C companies to help them add television to their marketing mix. Television is hard for small companies. The initial buys are large and it is challenging to “test, measure, test, measure, test, measure” to optimize before you scale.
So Simulmedia has brought D2CX market.
D2Cx is a marketplace featuring over 135 national TV networks, making it easy for direct-to-consumer brands to test TV advertising at low entry prices, learn what’s working, and scale.
You can start for as little as $50k and 100% of the cost of the media will go towards the purchase of media.
If you want to try out D2CX for your company/product, you can learn more here and sign up to try it out.
Comments (Archived):
I remember television.
I love the contrarian play of TV ads. Lot less competition than before, huge potential. Let the others fight it out on social media, certainly seems worth a shot to try this
It looks very easy to set up your campaigns and then tweak. Very cool!
They don’t allow you to sign up or request information with a gmail account. I understand the reason for doing this but I would not be restricting lead sign up I would just vet with a higher priority anyone with a company email (which they should already be doing)…. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Agree. Your suggestion protect from Negative Network Effect. Just don’t pay that much attention to Gmail account users, or even better communicate afterwords desired action you want to happen. (Upgrade info etc).
What is the reason?
They want people who work for a company to so identify themselves so they can decide how much effort to put int to the lead and also not be bothered by triflers.As an example let’s say you get a lead and it’s [email protected] vs. [email protected]. So they are trying to discourage anything but inquiries serious enough to inquire at a company address. And then they have some additional intel to guide their response. Back in the day when we got phone leads I would dial up to Dun and Bradstreet (business credit service for those not familiar) to be able to know how big of a company someone was with and anything else I could find out. That was very helpful. Not all potential customers have the same potential.Now I don’t know how many inquiries they get but I find it hard to imagine they get so many they need to not do the same thing (as vet by company email) but do it another way. Ok so maybe they don’t want a competitor to game them but that is easy to get around. That is super easy to do.Anyway they could simply reply to [email protected] and ask a few questions in order to determine who they are dealing with. I do that all the time. Someone asks, I reply with some questions. Based on answers and even how someone answers I can tell a great deal. I have thousands of data points over many many years.It also sends a message in kind of snotty in a way. “Don’t bother us unless…” Once again this is a matter of taste and it’s not clearly right or wrong. But as a generality I think you take all potential business seriously until proven otherwise. They are not in a position to turn down any business. Sure maybe they don’t want to be bothered by some person in a home business. But they spend money also. So figure out a way to take their dollars or at least bank the lead for future potential (or the email address).Anyone who doesn’t understand this concept has never been on the front lines of handling leads. They are not Hewlett Packard or Apple Computer.By the way I deal with people at companies, startups and they often write to me by way of gmail addresses.
Ok here is a test question for you. Just after I wrote the reply to you I get a lead for a real estate rental (one of the things that I do, but not the only thing I do). I call the lead and setup an appointment. After I get off the phone I find out he is a ‘big fish’ potential tenant.When I meet with him later today do I tell him I know who he is?If so why?If not why not?Once again not a strictly right or wrong answer but more nuance and matter of style. (Of course I think what I do is right with these things..)Now knowing who he is allows me to tailor my ‘act’ to him in a way that suits my goal. So depending on the choice I will act differently.
Was this an investment when USV had a completely different thesis?
If you look in the small print, “Back Dave Morgan when he shows up at your office telling you about his new startup” must be somewhere in the thesis.
Was this when you worked at USV?Thanks Charlie.
This is exciting for a whole slew of reasons but 2 readily come out on top for me:1/ Disruptive D2C brands really don’t have a playbook on how to build brand equity and often struggle with anything other than very focused performance marketing. It’s not a trivial challenge as the people who are skilled with performance are rarely also equally skilled with brand (and in the interest of full disclosure helping folks figure this out quickly and effectively is a growing part of my company’s business).2/ As traditional TV audiences age I’m pumped to see D2C brands focusing on older demographics use TV buys to build their customer base. It feels like a completely untapped and underexplored area of the market that will be beneficial to both media owners selling ad space and consumers watching programs on traditional (mainly linear) TV. Everyone wins.