Episode #32 – The Performance Marketing Spotlight with Cooper Schwartz

Marshall Nyman [00:00:02]:
Hello and welcome to the performance marketing Spotlight. I’m your host, Marshall Nyman, founder and CEO of Nymonco. Each episode, I will be bringing you someone with deep experience in the performance marketing space where they highlight their experiences within the industry. Today I have Cooper Schwartz, who is the head of new business and growth at Moneygroup. Welcome to the podcast, Cooper.

Cooper Schwartz [00:00:24]:
Hey, thanks for having me.

Marshall Nyman [00:00:25]:
Of course. Excited to have you on today and let’s jump right into it. Can you briefly introduce yourself to the audience?

Cooper Schwartz [00:00:31]:
Yes. My name is Cooper Schwartz. I am 41 years old, still trying to keep it young. Live in Puerto Rico with my lovely wife and two daughters. Spend my time at the beach and at the pool, mostly when I don’t have to be working and traveling as much as humanity for work and for play the rest of the time.

Marshall Nyman [00:00:56]:
How did you get your start in the performance marketing industry?

Cooper Schwartz [00:00:58]:
So my entrance was during a time in my life where I thought I wanted to be a sex and relationship therapist. I was getting my masters in counseling psychology towards becoming a therapist. My mother is a renowned sex and relationship expert. I thought I would go and follow the family tree. And a friend of mine while I was going, getting my masters helped me get a job at a pet insurance company as a partnership manager, typically doing a lot of affiliate partnership work. And for about two years at Healthypaws Pet Insurance, I got my affiliate legs and learned the basics of the business. And as that grew, one of my childhood friends, Gregory Powell, now the CEO of the current company that I helped partnered and grew, and another childhood friend, Sam Nichols, were launching an innovative business that would take consumer comparison sites into the paid media space. And they reached out to me while I was working at Healthypaws and said, we have this great idea.

Cooper Schwartz [00:02:19]:
There’s not really any great comparison sites out there making decisions easier for people who want to find a better, faster, more reliable way to get connected with a company. And we’d like to start it with someone we trust. And also we think pet insurance is a great industry to start. So that was kind of the beginning of me moving to out of what I thought would be a therapy future to strictly affiliate marketing.

Marshall Nyman [00:02:51]:
Amazing. So in 2014 you joined consumer advocate. How did you ultimately end up there?

Cooper Schwartz [00:02:57]:
It was kismet. You know, it was timing. I trusted these childhood friends who both had amazing experience and backgrounds, one almost ten years working at Google, the other working at SEO Moz, one of the early SEO influences of the industry. And they kind of said we needed someone to sell this idea. We need to kind of build out the idea that sites should work with comparison sites, or I should say brands should work with comparison sites, because consumers don’t want to hear the brands themselves just recommending in an echo chamber why they’re the best. They want someone trustworthy. And so I went out there, the CEO and my friend Greg teases me, I changed the answering machine on my cell phone to cooperate. Consumers advocate.

Cooper Schwartz [00:04:02]:
And I started in the basement of, of the co founder’s place in Seattle, Washington, for about two years, just dialing and working and building this business. And we started with pet insurance. The concept worked. We brought it into paid search, and then we just scaled across vertical by vertical.

Marshall Nyman [00:04:30]:
So you started in pet insurance for consumer advocate. What other verticals are they expanded into?

Cooper Schwartz [00:04:35]:
Well, today we’re in something like 80 categories, but it turns out that consumers really, when they’re making decisions reliably, tend to be a little bit more reliable when they’re tough decisions or big ones. Financial subscriptions, things that are going to change their life. And so we oriented into a lot of financial categories, a lot of insurance categories, big subscriptions that require trust, identity, home security, things that people are really thinking about, their family about. And we could then work with brands that saw a real value in having their services reviewed and were okay with being under a microscope. And now it’s whack a mole. There’s a million review websites out there today. Some are incredible, some are incredible, incredibly thin. But we, you know, I think we started at a time when we got to help define what it meant to be a good site and a best practice in the space where you could help consumers in a way that, you know, I could sleep at night and found that we were, we were helping a lot of people.

Cooper Schwartz [00:06:03]:
And, and it’s, you know, clear today that that’s the case because people still use sites and the terms best, top compare reviews, you name it, no matter how much we don’t want to use that sometimes because we know what’s getting served to us. It’s, it’s in our, the nomenclature of our, of our culture. And, and so that’s why it continues to be something that we, we do.

Marshall Nyman [00:06:27]:
So with the evolution of consumer advocate in 2019, you acquired money Group. What led to that?

Cooper Schwartz [00:06:33]:
It was our CEO Greg Powell’s kind of obsession as a child. You know, we all remember money magazine from the dentist’s office and, or any doctor’s office that you went to, you know, as a geriatric millennial. And Greg kind of grew up with this idea that it would be an amazing, amazing accomplishment and brand to be associated with. And the opportunity came up with Meredith. When they decided to close the print version of the magazine, they were gonna shutter it. And Greg caught wind that it was for sale. And through a lot of hard work and some close misses on the opportunity, him and our CEO, Ian Robertson, were able to acquire Money magazine. And it was with the goal of bringing this legacy of this 50 year old brand back to life.

Cooper Schwartz [00:07:33]:
And it was a huge deal for us because we went from being kind of a no name agency, media buying company, to a real brand with a real publishing force. We retained almost every employee that was hired at Money magazine and now moneymoney.com. and we. We were able to pivot in a big way, and we pivoted to be able to publish content and work with media in a way that we had never done before. First, we were kind of a paid search house that was working towards being a publisher, and then we were actually.

Marshall Nyman [00:08:14]:
A publisher for anyone who might not be familiar. What is money.com?

Cooper Schwartz [00:08:17]:
Dot money.com is a site that helps consumers plan for the future financially, plan for retirement, help them with anecdotal stories that have to do with their finances, information that kind of builds financial literacy and teaches people how to be smart with their money, and encourages people to engage with the brands that are who our editors objectively recommend as the best in their industries. It’s a way for people to find fun and engaging and interesting stories with money and just relevant news in the industry. It also is a nod to Money magazine and the type of articles and content and style of writing that people loved about that brand. And so we’ve been able to retain that, even with brand updates and. And a lot of design updates over the years. But it’s kind of its own thing, and it’s also a historical relic for that reason.

Marshall Nyman [00:09:31]:
Well, it’s obviously a great domain name, if nothing less. Yeah. What do you do in your current role for the money group?

Cooper Schwartz [00:09:40]:
Currently at money group, so I look at White Space initiatives. I’ve always been kind of an independent contributor. As much as I love managing my team and working with people, and people who know me well, know me as a connector, as a talker and somebody who, you know, kind of gets their energy off of people and relationships, I try and build new categories. It’s been the most fun part of my job, finding areas that are undeveloped, you know, going out and working with people to understand what, how those industries work and how we can bring them into kind of the review and comparison space currently at the company, I sit over a kind of a group of maybe 15 verticals, everything from insurance to home services to softwares and even some financial products and subscriptions. And we’re just trying to find new companies that are new and cold companies that are not involved with the brand that we, we like and that we want to promote and lift up and engage with them and engage them with the consumers.

Marshall Nyman [00:10:50]:
For brands looking to work with the money group, what is the best way for them to get started?

Cooper Schwartz [00:10:54]:
So a lot of brands find us organically in the SERP. They find us through ads and all the channels that we are marketing in. We’ve done a decent job, I think, outside of paid search where we’re a gorilla in this space to grow into social and now influencer and even on tv. And we’re out there trying to find companies that want to be compared and want us to highlight the things that they do best and even some of the things that they don’t do well, but done in an objective light if they want to get connected with us. We work with every major affiliate platform, we host relationships ourselves. We also have our own technology platform. It’s proprietary to us, so we do a lot of the tracking and attribution and reporting ourselves, which makes it easier for us to build custom integrations with a lot of companies. You can imagine financial institutions tend to be very sticky when it comes to things like this.

Cooper Schwartz [00:12:01]:
And so we thought we just better be adaptable. And that’s allowed us to find inroads with some of the major institutions that are out there.

Marshall Nyman [00:12:09]:
What has been your favorite part of working with the money group?

Cooper Schwartz [00:12:11]:
My favorite part, you know, it’s a small industry and it’s an interesting industry at that. Over time, I’ve been able to connect with a lot of people in the space that I keep bumping into and working with over and over again because we all tend to kind of move around into companies and then find each other or think of that person again that we enjoyed working with. And so being in money group for almost eleven years has allowed me to engage and reengage with some of my favorite people across the industries that I’ve worked within. And so that makes, you know, that builds upon my enjoyment in the industry. But also because we’re a portfolio company, because we work in so many different categories, I’m constantly learning I can come up with any idea in any category. Tomorrow we’re going to launch into blinds. The day after that we’re thinking about going into antivirus. The day after that we’re interested in obscure rv insurance category, and we just keep learning about something new and that keeps it fresh and exciting.

Cooper Schwartz [00:13:28]:
And that’s also just, I realize, a true benefit of being part of a company like this because so many companies need to focus on one category to really, you know, maximize the value of what, what they’re trying to provide.

Marshall Nyman [00:13:45]:
You’ve attended many of the conferences and spoken at several of them recently. What do you enjoy about attending conferences and the value you get out of them?

Cooper Schwartz [00:13:54]:
I have a problem. I’m addicted to conferencing. I’ve been trying to kick the habit, but it only seems to be getting worse. There is something about the energy at a conference mixing with people, you know, and all of the openness and white space of everyone you don’t know. That is truly fascinating to me. Coming from a therapist psychology background. I love the dynamics that play out when you’re meeting new people, how you break down barriers, how you spot the guy you need to avoid a mile away. All the things that happen at conferences are just so interesting to me.

Cooper Schwartz [00:14:38]:
And then, of course, you have an opportunity in a very short amount of time to provide a value proposition that’s either gonna hit or not. Or you realize that you really just need to make a true connection with this human being so that baseline of trust is established to then build something later. And I just think it that part of this business, no matter what industry you’re in, is essential. I don’t think conferencing will ever go away. And for me, it’s been where some of our best business relationships have come from, and now my friendships. And so I speak at a lot of conferences now, not just to help others and lift others up and teach them about what we’re doing, but to challenge myself, to make sure that I’m the best version of myself. And it’s kind of the natural progression for me as I’ve been doing what I’ve been doing for a while.

Marshall Nyman [00:15:30]:
Well, it’s how we developed our relationship. So I’m big on conferences as well, especially in today’s remote environment, big time. Seriously, what is a major challenge facing you as a publisher in the affiliate marketing space?

Cooper Schwartz [00:15:43]:
You know, I don’t want to like bang the AI drum, but I think that it’s, you know, it’s on everybody’s tongue. It’s what people are talking about. We see that more and more companies are having to make the decision between choosing editorial, real editors and editorial integrity with coming up with a faster, leaner solution to publishing and I think that the verdict’s not out in terms of where companies are indexing there. We’ve made a choice to keep faithful to our editors and just enable them with AI to be able to, you know, write and do their jobs with, with more efficiency and make their lives better. Because those tools are objectively amazing and wonderful, but they don’t replace the real McCoy. I think that’s going to continue to be a threat. I think there’s so many publishers out there that sometimes the message gets diluted to the consumer. This is kind of going almost back to the comparison space where you’ve got now 510 comparison sites on a mattress search and everybody’s got something slightly different to say about each brand that’s on there.

Cooper Schwartz [00:17:03]:
And it starts confusing the consumer about who they actually should go with. And I think while it’s important to have a lot of commentary and an open market for that, for that content, I think there needs to be another level to help us sift through what, you know, what’s true, what’s accurate, what’s even real. I know the FTC just changed some laws there and I think that’s a step in the right direction.

Marshall Nyman [00:17:32]:
What is a common misconception people have about working within performance marketing?

Cooper Schwartz [00:17:36]:
Well, I think. I think that from a publisher perspective, that performance marketing today, because it’s so hard to sometimes break in with big publishers, requires non performance ideas. In terms of the way that you get things started and some of the relationships that you build upon later, we see that the cost of starting something new sometimes is so, you know, it’s so risky because from a resource perspective, we have to leave something else that’s more profitable to do it, that we’re less incentivized sometimes to be going out there and creating something new. And so those that enter the performance marketing space need to be more open to flat fee and more traditional type deals that can get the door open to get the conversation started and to de risk on both sides the start of that process in order to get something going. Now that’s speaking from a company that where we really have a hard time just inviting net new smaller opportunities. But I found a lot of headway with brands that are willing to go a little extra step. The other thing that’s maybe a misconception or something that’s hard is just that you can making margin, a lot of margin, the beginning of any relationship or anything you’re doing is probably not a good sign. I think scale is the most important thing for most relationships that I’ve been involved with and trying to see the long run instead of the short gain.

Cooper Schwartz [00:19:29]:
Anyone who’s, who sees a lot of gain in the very beginning and is happy with that and not thinking about the bigger picture is short sighted and it’s going to come back to bite them.

Marshall Nyman [00:19:39]:
Any predictions on the future of performance marketing or maybe where you see things headed?

Cooper Schwartz [00:19:44]:
I think that it will continue to grow exponentially. I’m seeing a lot of old stalwart brands in the insurance and finance, financial, you know, verticals now moving into, into performance marketing where they weren’t there before. It just makes sense there’s a better way. We have the tools and the technology to do so. And all of us who are starting to age into, you know, to a level where we can go and work at these institutions as we decide we’re done working for as a publisher, as an agency. We want to go to brand. We want to leave the brand. We’re just starting to infiltrate all of these institutions that have made it.

Cooper Schwartz [00:20:30]:
And so I expect it to continue to grow. It’s still a relatively small industry, but as it becomes, you know, more easily attainable to get educated in our institutions, I expect it to grow a lot in the next few years and into the future. So it’s a bright future for our space.

Marshall Nyman [00:20:53]:
Final question, what has been your favorite part of working in the performance marketing industry?

Cooper Schwartz [00:20:57]:
It’s a corny answer, but I love the people, and I’m sure a lot of people say that there’s something about the creativity that one must have in most cases, to find new deals to create something out of nothing, just, you know, from, from something that’s in your hand to something that you can’t grasp but pulls you in. That makes it intoxicating for me. I love the imagination. I like the people who are interested in coming up with new ideas. The amount of teams that have to come together to build something, from product to development, sales and marketing, engineering. You’ve got so many different entities that all have to work together. And ideally, you get to kind of get a little bit from everyone, which makes the whole experience that much more dynamic. So I think there’s always something new to play with, and it’s why it will always keep me well.

Marshall Nyman [00:22:04]:
A big thank you to Cooper Schwartz for joining the podcast this week. Some great insights into his background and how you can best work with the money group. What’s the best way for listeners to connect with you?

Cooper Schwartz [00:22:15]:
You can reach me at my email@cooperoney.com. feel free to visit money.com to contact us if you’re a brand and you want to find out all the different things we can do together and and find me on LinkedIn. Cooper Schwartz looking forward to it.

Marshall Nyman [00:22:34]:
Excellent. Again, thank you to our guest, Cooper Schwartz and to our producer, Leon Sonkin. If you’ve enjoyed this content, please give us a like and follow. Thank you for listening in. I am Marshall Niman, host of the performance marketing spotlight and founder and CEO of Nymonco, signing off. Thank you.