The Exchanges

Q Okay, this is an interesting question. Does CAC to LTV fade in importance in a world of ever transient technology?

A I believe since I joined Wix, that I never used lifetime value. So I'm using different term. I'm using a T-R-O-I. It's time to return on investment. It was 2012. We are a poor company before IPO and Facebook back then launched, I think they call it a page aid or something like that. And we measure everything. And I remember a conversation that I had with Avishai and I moved with this new advertising format. I did five acts in one day. Because I saw the results that I'm seeing from that. So I believe in building the shorter cohorts for me to move as fast as I can to impact the result of the company. And lifetime value, it's much slower than metrics that currently I have. So I have one day cohort, seven day cohort, 14 days cohort, and 28 days cohort. It is eventually giving me an indication about when my TROI is going to be one.

AI assessment note: “I never used lifetime value. So I'm using different term. I'm using a T-R-O-I.”

Q Dude, flattery will get you everywhere. One thing that I want to start with is I hear that you've got some news. And so can you tell me what the news is and go back a little bit to a time last year when that idea originated?

A So the news is that we are going to do two Super Bowl spots this year. One is for Wix, and this is going to be the sixth one that we're doing for the amazing company that I'm part of it in the last 18 years. And in addition to that, we are going to have Super Bowl spots for base 44 as well. I think that we are the youngest company ever that going to have Super Bowl commercial. Another interesting story to tell is the timeline of the decision to go and to purchase the spot. So we announced that we are buying Base-Forty-Forty-Forty around mid-June, twenty-twenty-five. I have on record a message that I sent on WhatsApp to a friend of mine, Mark Zaminer, who is buying the Super Bowl sports for me in the last six or 10 years, actually. It was the TV and radio, and on July second, I sent him a message That I would like to buy a spot for base 44 and how much it's going to cost me. So it took me, let's say, 12 days. I was a bit slow to solve some amazing indication from community for people who love the product, how they're using the product, the intent, user behavior, the acquisition that we can have. And we went and purchased the spot that we are just announcing.

AI assessment note: “the news is that we are going to do two Super Bowl spots this year.”

Q Okay, this is an interesting question. Does CAC to LTV fade in importance in a world of ever transient technology?

A I believe since I joined Wix, that I never used lifetime value. So I'm using different term. I'm using a T-R-O-I. It's time to return on investment. It was 2012. We are a poor company before IPO and Facebook back then launched, I think they call it a page aid or something like that. And we measure everything. And I remember a conversation that I had with Avishai and I moved with this new advertising format. I did five acts in one day. Because I saw the results that I'm seeing from that. So I believe in building the shorter cohorts for me to move as fast as I can to impact the result of the company. And lifetime value, it's much slower than metrics that currently I have. So I have one day cohort, seven day cohort, 14 days cohort, and 28 days cohort. It is eventually giving me an indication about when my TROI is going to be one.

AI assessment note: “I believe since I joined Wix, that I never used lifetime value.”

Q Dude, flattery will get you everywhere. One thing that I want to start with is I hear that you've got some news. And so can you tell me what the news is and go back a little bit to a time last year when that idea originated?

A So the news is that we are going to do two Super Bowl spots this year. One is for Wix, and this is going to be the sixth one that we're doing for the amazing company that I'm part of it in the last 18 years. And in addition to that, we are going to have Super Bowl spots for base 44 as well. I think that we are the youngest company ever that going to have Super Bowl commercial. Another interesting story to tell is the timeline of the decision to go and to purchase the spot. So we announced that we are buying Base-Forty-Forty-Forty around mid-June, twenty-twenty-five. I have on record a message that I sent on WhatsApp to a friend of mine, Mark Zaminer, who is buying the Super Bowl sports for me in the last six or 10 years, actually. It was the TV and radio, and on July second, I sent him a message That I would like to buy a spot for base 44 and how much it's going to cost me. So it took me, let's say, 12 days. I was a bit slow to solve some amazing indication from community for people who love the product, how they're using the product, the intent, user behavior, the acquisition that we can have. And we went and purchased the spot that we are just announcing.

AI assessment note: “So the news is that we are going to do two Super Bowl spots this year.”

Q Are you investing in AI search today in terms of how you appear in LLM rankings? If I go to ChatGPT and say, what's the best, you know, website builder, are you investing to make sure that you show up in the top three?

A Yeah, definitely. Although it's, the percentage is very low. And, and, and again, what's happened in the last two, three months that, uh, I think that Google changed again, the way that we are using AI using search. And again, in general, when you are looking at most of the traffic, the relevant traffic in the world, it's still on Google. Okay. It's still on Google. So yes, the more early adopters already moved from the regular traditional search, tons of users, the regular users are still using it in a regular way. And we need to do both right now. We need to be relevant for the AI search and we need to be relevant for Google search. And not only that, for our users, we need to teach them both. Okay, we need to teach them to do SEO, and we need to teach them how to be relevant for, for MLM searches as well, so.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, definitely. Although it's, the percentage is very low.”

Q Simon Sinek, who's a very famous speaker, and has said before about selling the why, not the what. Apple are brilliant because they sell the creativity that their products allow, the ability to paint beautiful pictures on an iPad, And what's unlocked by it? Not a quantium processor and the what. How do you feel about selling the why, not the what, given the product centricity that you said there?

A How many apples are in the world? Apple is one. It's a company, right? And we can talk about, let's say, 10 more, not in the level of, of Apple, that can tell a story like that. And all the others, other, and eventually, I remember a launch of a product that we had. Okay. We launched a product. We moved from flash. You know, that Wix used to be a flash based platform from 2008 to 2012. And in 2012, we moved from HTML five to flash. And I worked on this launch for months. Eventually I wanted to say it's very clear. I use the kiss methodology to keep it simple, stupid. HTML five is now on Wix. And I had a lot of plans and everything like I back then used to have tons of media buying deals. And I replaced all the spots that I had in 1:02. All of them were manually, by the way, by my team. And I replaced every spot that you had from create a free flash website to HTML five is now on Wix. And when I showed the spot Back then it wasn't a spot. It was just, you know, static, 302 57 to eight on something like that. The dimension of, of the banners. I saw the division that I had to one of my board member and I saw how upset he was. Then he opened the announcement of Apple on, on the iPhone. And I told him We are not Apple. Okay. And the product that we are not, that we are currently giving to the world, it's not iPhone. We just would like them to know that we used to be flash and now we…

AI assessment note: “How many apples are in the world? Apple is one.”

Q Do you see ROI on performance alone, or do you believe in the long tail that the brand marketing will override that in the time?

A I believe in the balance. Okay. So for example, in the last two years for Wix, not for base. Okay. Currently I'm talking about Wix. There are some investment, heavy investment on the brand, on activity that we're doing. A lot of videos with our users, On YouTube, social activity, some competitions that we're doing, and we're measuring eventually everything that we're doing. And what we decided this year to allocate some of this money to the Super Bowl commercial. And in our spot this year, the product is going to be in the central. Ok, so we are not going to have celebrity. We are not going to have a lot of hoo-ha special. We are going to have a product. And you are going to see how other people using the product. It's almost like a direct response spot that we bought on the Superbowl. And the reason for that, that we believed that the product was worth being the Superbowl. This is the reason that we decided to go at Wix in the Superbowl. In term of base, it was a statement of new things that happened in the world. The vibe coding, The democratization of creation in general, of web application, mobile application.

AI assessment note: “I believe in the balance.”

Q So from speaking to so many friends of yours, they all said that I had to speak about the historical Super Bowl investments that you've made. Can you help me understand the rationale behind doing Super Bowl? Obviously, it's a huge platform, and brand marketing-wise, it's amazing. But for you as a CMO, why do you think it's such a good investment to do Super Bowl?

A The way that I'm thinking on brand activities is that it's not an empty, ok? It's not only brand. And when I'm doing acquisition, I'm not doing just acquisition marketing. So when I'm doing brand marketing, I'm thinking the balance between brand and acquisition. And when I'm doing acquisition, I'm thinking about the balance between acquisition and brand. And the beauty about Superbowl, I'm saying it a lot of times that, uh, in the day after the Oscar, everyone are talking about who dressed what. And the only day that people are focusing on On commercials is around the Super Bowl, and the day after, people are keep talking about what was the ad of who, and all the years we are keep thinking about technology and how to skip and buying a premiums in order that we won't listen to commercial. On Super Bowl, we are talking about the commercial, and you know, I'm a huge sports fan, and I'm huge NFL fan, and I understand them It's not only sports. NFL and Super Bowl in particular is like a celebration in the, especially in the US, but it became more and more famous globally. And just to be part of that is to be there. And I keep saying about it, you know, product is the main of our companies. We are nothing without products. But to trust a product, to trust what our users are doing and to be in the Super Bowl is a message.

AI assessment note: “The only day that people are focusing on On commercials is around the Super Bowl”

Q Are you investing in AI search today in terms of how you appear in LLM rankings? If I go to ChatGPT and say, what's the best, you know, website builder, are you investing to make sure that you show up in the top three?

A Yeah, definitely. Although it's, the percentage is very low. And, and, and again, what's happened in the last two, three months that, uh, I think that Google changed again, the way that we are using AI using search. And again, in general, when you are looking at most of the traffic, the relevant traffic in the world, it's still on Google. Okay. It's still on Google. So yes, the more early adopters already moved from the regular traditional search, tons of users, the regular users are still using it in a regular way. And we need to do both right now. We need to be relevant for the AI search and we need to be relevant for Google search. And not only that, for our users, we need to teach them both. Okay, we need to teach them to do SEO, and we need to teach them how to be relevant for, for MLM searches as well, so.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, definitely. Although it's, the percentage is very low.”

Q So from speaking to so many friends of yours, they all said that I had to speak about the historical Super Bowl investments that you've made. Can you help me understand the rationale behind doing Super Bowl? Obviously, it's a huge platform, and brand marketing-wise, it's amazing. But for you as a CMO, why do you think it's such a good investment to do Super Bowl?

A The way that I'm thinking on brand activities is that it's not an empty, ok? It's not only brand. And when I'm doing acquisition, I'm not doing just acquisition marketing. So when I'm doing brand marketing, I'm thinking the balance between brand and acquisition. And when I'm doing acquisition, I'm thinking about the balance between acquisition and brand. And the beauty about Superbowl, I'm saying it a lot of times that, uh, in the day after the Oscar, everyone are talking about who dressed what. And the only day that people are focusing on On commercials is around the Super Bowl, and the day after, people are keep talking about what was the ad of who, and all the years we are keep thinking about technology and how to skip and buying a premiums in order that we won't listen to commercial. On Super Bowl, we are talking about the commercial, and you know, I'm a huge sports fan, and I'm huge NFL fan, and I understand them It's not only sports. NFL and Super Bowl in particular is like a celebration in the, especially in the US, but it became more and more famous globally. And just to be part of that is to be there. And I keep saying about it, you know, product is the main of our companies. We are nothing without products. But to trust a product, to trust what our users are doing and to be in the Super Bowl is a message.

AI assessment note: “the only day that people are focusing on On commercials is around the Super Bowl”

Q I do want to talk about that, but if we think about being like a relatively early stage founder, how do you advise them when you have a channel that's working? Do you just double down, keep going, don't worry about diversifying? Against your point there, don't build the traffic sources that are diverse, just double down. Or be expansive and have a portfolio of channels from an earlier time?

A I think that you should do both. I think that you need to do 10 X of the things that are working for you, but all the time to open in your areas. Because you don't know what's going to be tomorrow. That means that I talked with someone and I shared with them that we are doing Super Bowl spot for base. And he told me or that we increase the budget in aggressive way. And the first thing that he thought is that he's told me, he said, why are you doing that? Are you afraid of? And I looked at him, man, I'm not afraid of anything. Okay. I have opportunity and I'm trying to optimize any opportunities that I have in order to build sustainable business.

AI assessment note: “I think that you should do both. I think that you need to do 10 X”

Q Simon Sinek, who's a very famous speaker, and has said before about selling the why, not the what. Apple are brilliant because they sell the creativity that their products allow, the ability to paint beautiful pictures on an iPad, And what's unlocked by it? Not a quantium processor and the what. How do you feel about selling the why, not the what, given the product centricity that you said there?

A How many apples are in the world? Apple is one. It's a company, right? And we can talk about, let's say, 10 more, not in the level of, of Apple, that can tell a story like that. And all the others, other, and eventually, I remember a launch of a product that we had. Okay. We launched a product. We moved from flash. You know, that Wix used to be a flash based platform from 2008 to 2012. And in 2012, we moved from HTML five to flash. And I worked on this launch for months. Eventually I wanted to say it's very clear. I use the kiss methodology to keep it simple, stupid. HTML five is now on Wix. And I had a lot of plans and everything like I back then used to have tons of media buying deals. And I replaced all the spots that I had in 1:02. All of them were manually, by the way, by my team. And I replaced every spot that you had from create a free flash website to HTML five is now on Wix. And when I showed the spot Back then it wasn't a spot. It was just, you know, static, 302 57 to eight on something like that. The dimension of, of the banners. I saw the division that I had to one of my board member and I saw how upset he was. Then he opened the announcement of Apple on, on the iPhone. And I told him We are not Apple. Okay. And the product that we are not, that we are currently giving to the world, it's not iPhone. We just would like them to know that we used to be flash and now we…

AI assessment note: “We are not Apple. Okay. And the product that we are currently giving to the world”

Q I get you, but is it not a game of eighty-twenty, where 20% of the traffic sources drive 80% of the outcomes?

A It's all the time. It's a tricky one because I saw some, let's say, about Maurer, ok, that when we bought him, almost all of his traffic came from social. Everything. Ok, it was linking posts. It was, let's say, some posts and some community efforts. What we are doing, we are bringing the multiples. Okay. This is the reason that I need a lot of people in my department to do a lot of things. So I'm doing social and I'm doing education and I'm doing YouTube and I'm doing Facebook ads and I'm doing TikTok and I'm doing Twitter and I'm doing search and I'm doing SEO activities. I'm doing a lot, a lot, a lot of things eventually, because this is how I believe that you need to build a business In a mature way, to reduce the risk, and to find arbitrage all the time. I would like to find the arbitrage of tomorrow.

AI assessment note: “we are bringing the multiples... because this is how I believe... to reduce the risk”

Q you mentioned there, like, hey, we want young people out of university, fresh, AI first. Sam Altman said that young people use AI as an operating system for life. And that older people use it as a replacement for Google. I think that's probably true, and we see it a lot. Honestly, if you are in your forties, it doesn't look great for you. Plus, do you worry about that?

A I think there are a lot of, of changes that are going to be to the work sphere. I do worry of an increase in the unemployment rate. I think government need to think how to solve it. But as a person who is Part of that. I, the only thing that I can shout on everyone is stop thinking about your title and start thinking about thinking differently. Okay. Because this is how I measure myself and how I believe others should do. And definitely people who are not going to be AI first in term, I can talk just about marketing for now. Okay. Again, I'm trying to be humble and not to preach about anything else. People who can dock AI with me and take the ideation to execution and A-B test fast. Those are the people that eventually are going to be my A players.

AI assessment note: “I do worry of an increase in the unemployment rate.”

Q Do you see ROI on performance alone, or do you believe in the long tail that the brand marketing will override that in the time?

A I believe in the balance. Okay. So for example, in the last two years for Wix, not for base. Okay. Currently I'm talking about Wix. There are some investment, heavy investment on the brand, on activity that we're doing. A lot of videos with our users, On YouTube, social activity, some competitions that we're doing, and we're measuring eventually everything that we're doing. And what we decided this year to allocate some of this money to the Super Bowl commercial. And in our spot this year, the product is going to be in the central. Ok, so we are not going to have celebrity. We are not going to have a lot of hoo-ha special. We are going to have a product. And you are going to see how other people using the product. It's almost like a direct response spot that we bought on the Superbowl. And the reason for that, that we believed that the product was worth being the Superbowl. This is the reason that we decided to go at Wix in the Superbowl. In term of base, it was a statement of new things that happened in the world. The vibe coding, The democratization of creation in general, of web application, mobile application.

AI assessment note: “I believe in the balance.”

Q you mentioned there, like, hey, we want young people out of university, fresh, AI first. Sam Altman said that young people use AI as an operating system for life. And that older people use it as a replacement for Google. I think that's probably true, and we see it a lot. Honestly, if you are in your forties, it doesn't look great for you. Plus, do you worry about that?

A I think there are a lot of, of changes that are going to be to the work sphere. I do worry of an increase in the unemployment rate. I think government need to think how to solve it. But as a person who is Part of that. I, the only thing that I can shout on everyone is stop thinking about your title and start thinking about thinking differently. Okay. Because this is how I measure myself and how I believe others should do. And definitely people who are not going to be AI first in term, I can talk just about marketing for now. Okay. Again, I'm trying to be humble and not to preach about anything else. People who can dock AI with me and take the ideation to execution and A-B test fast. Those are the people that eventually are going to be my A players.

AI assessment note: “I do worry of an increase in the unemployment rate.”

Q I do want to talk about that, but if we think about being like a relatively early stage founder, how do you advise them when you have a channel that's working? Do you just double down, keep going, don't worry about diversifying? Against your point there, don't build the traffic sources that are diverse, just double down. Or be expansive and have a portfolio of channels from an earlier time?

A I think that you should do both. I think that you need to do 10 X of the things that are working for you, but all the time to open in your areas. Because you don't know what's going to be tomorrow. That means that I talked with someone and I shared with them that we are doing Super Bowl spot for base. And he told me or that we increase the budget in aggressive way. And the first thing that he thought is that he's told me, he said, why are you doing that? Are you afraid of? And I looked at him, man, I'm not afraid of anything. Okay. I have opportunity and I'm trying to optimize any opportunities that I have in order to build sustainable business.

AI assessment note: “I think that you should do both.”

Q I get you, but is it not a game of eighty-twenty, where 20% of the traffic sources drive 80% of the outcomes?

A It's all the time. It's a tricky one because I saw some, let's say, about Maurer, ok, that when we bought him, almost all of his traffic came from social. Everything. Ok, it was linking posts. It was, let's say, some posts and some community efforts. What we are doing, we are bringing the multiples. Okay. This is the reason that I need a lot of people in my department to do a lot of things. So I'm doing social and I'm doing education and I'm doing YouTube and I'm doing Facebook ads and I'm doing TikTok and I'm doing Twitter and I'm doing search and I'm doing SEO activities. I'm doing a lot, a lot, a lot of things eventually, because this is how I believe that you need to build a business In a mature way, to reduce the risk, and to find arbitrage all the time. I would like to find the arbitrage of tomorrow.

AI assessment note: “because this is how I believe that you need to build a business”

Q What does that mean? Can you unpack that? Yeah.

A So, so for example, I don't see search as a impact on brands. So compared to other activities, search is something that I'm measuring specifically by TRIs that I'm comfortable in compared to let's say a YouTube or social or LinkedIn or different other social activity that we're there. Search is specific. And we measure search for a long time in different, in one way. And when we did the test, I think it was, I think it was September seven. And in September, 11, I asked for everyone to come to all hands. I explained the different way that currently we're start working and we implemented two days after. And you don't need to be afraid to preach to something else when the data are showing you something differently or something new that you didn't know before.

AI assessment note: “for example, I don't see search as a impact on brands”

Q What does that mean? Can you unpack that? Yeah.

A So, so for example, I don't see search as a impact on brands. So compared to other activities, search is something that I'm measuring specifically by TRIs that I'm comfortable in compared to let's say a YouTube or social or LinkedIn or different other social activity that we're there. Search is specific. And we measure search for a long time in different, in one way. And when we did the test, I think it was, I think it was September seven. And in September, 11, I asked for everyone to come to all hands. I explained the different way that currently we're start working and we implemented two days after. And you don't need to be afraid to preach to something else when the data are showing you something differently or something new that you didn't know before.

AI assessment note: “for example, I don't see search as a impact on brands.”

Q When you look at channel composition across the team, Do you break channels down to specific people and allocate three to SEO, four to YouTube, three to TikTok, or do you have a blended across to make it a more cohesive unit?

A Today, it's much easier to keep cohesive messaging because the AI tools, you know, helping us. And I remember the time where I was browsing and was seeing something that it's not our brand and doing like screen service and sending it to some people angry. How can it be that we're doing such a crappy work? So it's a mix. Okay. So for example, the team were buying traffic. They are buying from one centralized team on all the channels. The people who are managing communities, they're doing it maybe to one channel or two talent. The people who are doing SEO, just doing SEO MLM. So it's very depends about the skill of the people, the Channel that we are working and the things that we are doing on this channel.

AI assessment note: “So it's a mix... it's very depends about the skill of the people”

Q When you look at channel composition across the team, Do you break channels down to specific people and allocate three to SEO, four to YouTube, three to TikTok, or do you have a blended across to make it a more cohesive unit?

A Today, it's much easier to keep cohesive messaging because the AI tools, you know, helping us. And I remember the time where I was browsing and was seeing something that it's not our brand and doing like screen service and sending it to some people angry. How can it be that we're doing such a crappy work? So it's a mix. Okay. So for example, the team were buying traffic. They are buying from one centralized team on all the channels. The people who are managing communities, they're doing it maybe to one channel or two talent. The people who are doing SEO, just doing SEO MLM. So it's very depends about the skill of the people, the Channel that we are working and the things that we are doing on this channel.

AI assessment note: “So it's a mix. Okay. So for example, the team were buying traffic.”

Q How do you think about channels like content, which obviously I do, where the ROI is very long, often you have to build an audience over a year or two, Quite a lot of budget, actually, to build that, but when it works, it really works. How do you think about that in a world of TROI?

A Confidence. Experience. I'm very experienced. I think that I am, like, the most experienced CMO in every public company in our technology sphere, ok? So I saw a lot, and I have no problem to fail, and I have Trust with my partners and I'm sharing a lot, a lot of information with my partners. I'm sharing a lot about the things that we are doing and I'm doing. And eventually if you are doing some things and the numbers are not popping up from the data, you need to ask yourself, do I need to do it? Or I need to change the way that I'm thinking. So I have to share with you. So there is some philosophy that I preach for, for, I don't know. I think eight to nine years, and I did some tests with my team that I saw different indication for something that I preached for nine years, and I changed the way that we are measuring everything in three days after I saw those indications.

AI assessment note: “Confidence. Experience. I'm very experienced. I think that I am, like, the most experienced CMO”

Q How do you think about channels like content, which obviously I do, where the ROI is very long, often you have to build an audience over a year or two, Quite a lot of budget, actually, to build that, but when it works, it really works. How do you think about that in a world of TROI?

A Confidence. Experience. I'm very experienced. I think that I am, like, the most experienced CMO in every public company in our technology sphere, ok? So I saw a lot, and I have no problem to fail, and I have Trust with my partners and I'm sharing a lot, a lot of information with my partners. I'm sharing a lot about the things that we are doing and I'm doing. And eventually if you are doing some things and the numbers are not popping up from the data, you need to ask yourself, do I need to do it? Or I need to change the way that I'm thinking. So I have to share with you. So there is some philosophy that I preach for, for, I don't know. I think eight to nine years, and I did some tests with my team that I saw different indication for something that I preached for nine years, and I changed the way that we are measuring everything in three days after I saw those indications.

AI assessment note: “Confidence. Experience. I'm very experienced. I think that I am, like, the most”