Welcome to FinTech TV.
I'm Mary Blair, and today's market information moves faster than ever, and effective digital strategies are no longer optional for public companies.
Visibility can directly impact investor confidence as well as access to capital.
So how can companies cut through the noise and adapt their strategies to a rapidly?
Changing market landscape.
Well, joining me here at the New York Stock Exchange is Ty Hoffer, president of Winning Media.
Ty, great to have you here.
Thank you, Remy.
It's great to be back.
Well, first and foremost, for our viewing audience, can you tell us how you actually cut through all the noise and get investors' attention in today's crowded marketplace?
Well, I think that investors see on average 4000 ads a day, you know, across our phones and desktop it's, it's crazy the barrage of information that we all have to sift through, and it's very hard to penetrate that.
And I think a mistake that companies make is they think just releasing a press release or posting on X or LinkedIn is, is, you know, that's the extent of their messaging.
And that's a really, really big problem.
So we use something called retargeting.
Have you ever heard that term before?
So you know, retargeting, if you maybe tried to buy some shoes or you bought your husband something and maybe you didn't buy it, you notice they're following you around on your phone.
Those advertisers are coming back to you.
We use that same strategy.
When we are explaining the narrative to investors for our clients and talking about their stock, that's what's most effective.
It's actually quite difficult to do, but you know, the old law of sales that most people make a really good buying decision after 5 contacts.
It's usually between the 5th and 12th contact.
Retargeting is definitely a big part of our secret sauce.
So Ty, can you tell us a little bit about some of the biggest mistakes that companies out there make when raising capital and also messaging investors out there?
Well, a common mistake I see is, you know, they, they start marketing and start messaging too late. and or they just don't have the budget allocated for it.
So when you're raising money, you know, some of the bankers, a lot smarter than me, will, you know, give the give the counsel to their clients that they need to carve out a certain percentage to marketing, and it's usually around 10% depending upon the sector that the company's in.
But so does that mean, you know, you raise $10 million and set aside a million dollars for marketing for the next year?
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
And some CEOs might say, wow, well that's a lot, you know, I've never done that before and I would just tell them that, well, if you don't in your space, I guarantee you there are your competitors that are going to, so that's, that's probably the biggest mistake that I see.
Yeah, and we're here at the New York Stock Exchange, so I do want to ask you about companies and stocks.
So when is the most critical time for a company and when it comes to marketing their stock and how has the strategy actually changed since the pandemic since we were here at the end of 2025 and about to head into 2026?
COVID was so crazy because, you know, No companies couldn't do roadshows.
They couldn't do conferences.
The Canadian companies couldn't cross the border.
And as a result, a lot of companies turned to digital and they're like, Well, that's how we're going to tell our story.
So there was a lot of budget that was spent online.
There were some successes, but there were also a lot of failure failures as well.
And so you know, a problem with, you know, the big ad networks is unfortunately they were exposed to, you know, some fraud, some, you know, some pump and dumps, some bad experiences, and a lot of the, a lot of the rules or regulations behind what companies could do, how they could, how they could market.
Which ad networks they could use a lot of that changed and so we've really had to adjust our strategy so we can work with those ad networks, which, which we do really well.
Yeah.
And speaking of what you do really well, tell us about your team and how media buying as well as investor marketing has actually evolved over the years.
Oh my God, it has changed so much, you know, this is our 21st year in business, and You know, 1015 years ago our business was so dependent upon email lists, you know, we were one of the bigger, bigger email list, you know, brokers back in the old days, and that is definitely much less effective today and almost cost prohibitive.
So we've really pivoted our, our model tremendously these days we really act as an ad agency to where companies are relying on us to manage that marketing budget, you know, for example, we spent $150 million with Google.
When you do that, you really learn what works.
You also probably even more importantly learn what doesn't work.
And so I think that's a really big value add is, you know, companies sometimes might say, oh well, my, my brother-in-law can run, he knows how to do Google AdWords, or my niece just graduated college.
She can manage our, she can manage this for us.
It just doesn't work that way, you know, we have to, we have a whole team of writers, designers, media buyers, and it really takes takes a full team to execute these campaigns and make them successful.
Yeah, and speaking of what works and what doesn't work, when it comes to ad agencies, we're seeing so many potbucks.
So for companies out there, what do they need to keep in mind?
Well, you know, there's quite a low barrier to entry if you would like to become a, you know, digital agency and promote, promote stocks.
I mean, we saw a plethora of them enter the space, you know, during COVID, and unfortunately companies did have some bad experiences and, you know, anybody can hang out a shingle and say, hey, you know, wire me a couple $100,000 and just trust me, it'll it'll all work out.
And that's why I'm really proud of the fact that we've been around for over 20 years.
We've worked with hundreds of companies on on all the exchanges, and from that experience, you know, we're able to really bring the value of of knowing the different scenarios of when we should be engaged, maybe when we shouldn't be engaged.
And finally, you describe your team as flexible and nimble, so why is that important to you?
Well, you know, look, I can't control when a company's going to release news.
I can't control the market conditions, but the way that we run these campaigns is very flexible and nimble because we're spending budget every day depending upon market conditions.
Maybe Trump says the right thing or the wrong thing that affects things, and that allows us to sometimes increase the spend, decrease the spend, turn it off.
It makes the model very efficient.
And that's what generates such a high return on investment for our issuers.
That's something we never could do 1015 years ago.
We had a much more static business.
We had very little control today because we have that control.
It enables us to adjust.
And that's, I think what clients like so much is, you know, we may spend a little less money on Fridays, a little less money on Mondays, we might spend more on Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays because those are more common press release days.
So it's that nimble nature that I think clients really, once they understand how it works, they really, really appreciate that.
Well, I appreciate your time today.
Thank you so much for joining me here at the New York Stock Exchange.
Thank you so much, Remy.
I appreciate you.
