Tattletech Hot Seat with Ari Wegter, GlibHippo

If you haven’t figured it out already, there are some entrepreneurs that are memorable and some that are not. This one you can’t forget even if you try – Ari Wegter, one of the Co Founders of LoveFilm, the European online DVD distributor like NetFlix but with a better name; and now one of the Co Founder’s of GlibHippo, a new vertical for 18-34 year old males in the Net Generation. Caught up with Ari in his restaurant in Copenhagen – and we warn you, it’s raw and uncensored, like we like him!

Tattletech: Your site says “We Speak European”.  I like that – how does it inform your everyday business practices?

Ari Wegter: GlibHippo is an opportunistic play – After years of doing start-ups with capital intensive, bleeding edge technology, I wanted to do something different, something simple that made money from day-one. So I decided to exploit the inherent inefficiencies of today’s online advertising market in which buyers and sellers are both clueless and disconnected. This venture is conceived of as a luxury guide product, a kind of bespoke digital navigator for Alexa 1000 customers. In other words, GlibHippo caters to blue chip publishers and advertisers, connecting them via GlibHippo’s propietary trading platform. Here’s how it works: we buy web traffic internationally, re-package that traffic by vertical media category, e.g. video games, movies or music audiences, and sell it to European advertisers. Since many of our upstream customers are American – who labor under the illusion that the EU is a coherent single market with a common language – we arrived at the tag line “We Speak European”. Just a dash of Monty Pythonesque humor to denote that we are a vintage European internet company.

TT: It sounds like your target audience is 18-34 year old males.  Doesn’t that exclude a lot of potential users?

AW: Yes, it does – if you consider a global audience of 250 million users to be a limitation to our reach. GlibHippo specializes in media categories that correspond closely with our publishing network’s core user profile, namely young, tech savvy, digital entertainment-hungry males with disposable income to boot. We understand the behavior of this premium segment because we belong to it ourselves.

TT: Social networking is being cited as the cornerstone for the marketing efforts of more and more companies lately.  What kind of sustained or increased growth do you see in social networking, and in what directions?

AW: Social networking as a marketing tool is underused and overrated. The more intrusive facebook becomes in my private space, the less likely it is users will want to return there. Also, social networking traffic is cheap. Traditional online advertising is no different from above-the-line content in that it works in best in semi-public spheres. Only when the message becomes more sophisticated can we expect to see internet user tolerance grow beyond the remote-control response adopted from skipping TV-ads. I believe marketing trends will shift gradually from advertisers preferring major portal channels towards highly targeted niche (i.e. vertical content) social network sites. Eventually, analog channels will be entirely displaced by online / mobile marketing worldwide. And then, whoever owns the pipes controls the flow. And no – content is not king, liquidity is king.

TT: You must have some gamers on staff – what do you guys enjoy playing most, what are some of your new favorites?

AW: That is true! We dig games and gadgets. Between the GlibHippo founders we cover all platforms from console to PC. So Josh is a Call of Duty veteran who “gits some” every day on XBox Live. Søren is a real guitar hero. Maik,our German Sales Director, loves Killerspiele and has developed impressive chainsaw skills on Gears of War. I prefer racing and simulation games with any type of hardware.

TT: How has your success with Lovefilm dovetailed with the development and growth of GlibHippo?

AW: I lost my virginity as an entrepreneur at Lovefilm. As Europe’s largest digital entertainment site today with more the 1.1 millions active users, Lovefilm showed us how hard it is to reach your target audience on the web. Controlling your cost-per-acquisition of new customers is the key to sustainable growth, particularly in a cash-constrained environment. GlibHippo helps advertisers to achieve this goal while connecting them to the right publishers. The next step for us is to build a full-fledged exchange platform.

TT:  As the recent economic downturn has dragged on, inventory management and control have become more crucial than ever.  Do you have any indication from your partners and publishers that this has started to relent?

AW: Signals are weak, so no real indication yet. Traffic sales are down, inventory prices are depressed and advertisers are still in cost-cutting mode. It’s a bear market out there with little change is sight til Q4 this year.

TT: Word on the street is that Ari Gold is your hero, any others out there?

AW: Want to hug it out bitch? I admit: Ari Gold is my alter-ego. Jeremy Piven has gotten the break he deserves with this role, from playing the perennial best-friend to leading man in Entourage. His abrasive, hyper-American management style is everything Europeans loathe and fear about the land of the free. I find that amusing. Gold is a post-modern superhero, a flawed human specimen endowed with mythical powers of persuasion and greed. Pretty easy to identify with, just like my other HBO favorite Tony Soprano. I think Ari Gold will give Obama a run for his money as Republican nominee in 2012!

Tags: Advertising, Lovefilm, online advertising