August 7, 2025 • 12 mins
MNTN is redefining how brands use television by making TV advertising as measurable, precise, and performance-driven as Internet searches and social media. MNTN’s software is helping a new generation of marketers turn Connected TV into a core part of their growth strategy.
Mark Douglas, the company's founder, chairman and CEO, says he's bullish about the future of TV ads with MNTN developing new technologies and bringing on content creators to help small businesses build ads on streaming platforms. Mark speaks with Carol Massar and Matt Miller on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
We want to talk about Mountain. That is, of course
the voice of I'm sorry, was that mean?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Ignore me. I've been friends with this guy for years.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I know, but I just mean sometimes you have to
ignore that. Mark Douglas is with us, founder, chairman, president
and CEO of the ad platform company Mountain here in
our Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. We should point out the
stock is a downfalling result. Although we were talking about
a bunch of analysts have come out and raised the
price target on the company. The stock is up more
than seventy percent from its IPO in late May. Since
(00:43):
you actually talked to him once before today on TV.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Stock take it Away eighty two percent.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
When I looked this morning since the IPO and that
was just May twenty second, right, Yeah, I looked at
the it's.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Down sixteen percent. Though I love the earnings.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I looked at your curious about buying for the Mark?
So what is going on there? Mark?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Because I counted eight analysts had raised their price targets
on your stock.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Since the release.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
So you do the earnings call yesterday, you have these
one on one meetings and these analysts go back to
their office crunch numbers and as they say, actually Mountain's
worth more than we thought, and now the.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Stock is down.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
How does that be? I mean, this is the stock
market for you. So the only thing we can do.
We have a big TAM meaning big opportunity. That's the
total addressable total addressing the mart let's not use acronyms.
And then we are growing consistently and really really happy
with the growth, and we are doing it with justin
(01:38):
the ebadad basis. We're doing it profitably, and so that's
what we can do. And honestly, I think it's a
great opportunity for investors. And you know, whoever wants to
take profits today, great, you're you know, you're you're up
one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well yesterday.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Anybody listen is going to say, well, of course he's
going to say, it's a great investment. Yeah, talk to
us about the business a little bit more. Mind, everybody
who might not be familiar. We often talk to you
about certainly when it comes to the digital ad market,
but tell us exactly what you guys are doing, right.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
So what Mountain does is we enable small and mid
sized businesses to advertise on television for the first time
and to do it specifically on streaming television across every
streaming network, and then do it with precision to find
So these are not brands like a T mobile where
everyone in America can be a customer. These are challenger
(02:29):
e commerce brands, direct to consumer at travel brands who
they are growing businesses and now instead of just being
on paid search with Google and paid social with Meta,
they now can be on the big screen on television,
on across every streaming network and do it with precision
(02:50):
to make money. And so mount enables that with our
software platform, and we are partnered with virtually every streaming
network in America. We're partnered with all of the TV
manufacturers in order to make this possible. And customers have responded,
what is a.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Typical digital ad cost?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, it's more in terms of what are the average budgets, right,
So think of it that way. So your business and
our minimum spend on our platform is five hundred a month.
We have companies spending millions a month and so and
the way they think of this is what's the return
on AD spend? What kind of revenue am I getting
(03:29):
in comparison to what I'm spending on the media and so,
and the return on ads spending most businesses looking for
is in the two to one, the three to one arrangement,
and you spend the dollar you make two three Now
you play that game all day. And they're used to
doing this with on Instagram basically using meta app platform
and do it with Google's app platforms. So it's Google AdWords.
(03:52):
Everyone's probably heard AdWords even if you haven't used it.
Meta app platform now Mountain Performance TV, and that's the opportunity.
We've a name, and it's a very big market opportunity.
So the companies consistently growing.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
The other thing they do is wait, wait, so what's
the return on Is it two for one or what
is that?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, it depends on the customer.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's that Those are kind of average status more in
a three to one range, but some if you have
great product market fit, meaning like people see that probably
like I have to own this, You're going to have
a higher return than the company that just released the
product and is still figuring out, like you know, what
their their target consumers wanted by So it varies by customer,
(04:36):
but I say that's range two to the one to
three to one is what most companies looking for, and
that's the fit the economics of the business. The key
thing here is ninety seven percent Amounds customers have never
advertised on TV before, so we are literally enlarging the market,
bringing new companies into the television advertising market for the
first time on streaming.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And your take on that is what a percentage of
the return on that or what is your piece of that?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Right, So, so a portion of their budget goes to
pay for all of the technology we power in order
to make that possible. And that's very typical. If you
think of a company, we don't compete with trade desks.
They're in a completely different segment in market, but that's
it's the same revenue model as someone like trade desk.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So I think the coolest thing you thank you, by
the way, No, of course, I just want to finish
the thought.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
One of the coolest things that you guys do is
you say that these people have never made ads before,
A lot of them when they come to you. And
so when I think of making an ad for TV.
I think I got to get you know, cameraman, director, editor,
et cetera and so forth. But you have a AI
tools that help them reduce that budget, I imagine drastically,
(05:47):
and you can tell me some numbers around that.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And b you have Ryan Reynolds as.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Your chief creative officer, right, so, and you see the
ads that he makes.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, they're just brilliant.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So by the way, they don't have direct and I
mean they get produced in what seems like an impossibly
short period of time. That's because your first thought is
usually your best and increasingly, you know you can use
the cell phone, the iPhone, the film to film an ad.
(06:17):
So our customers, they're right, ninety seven percent who are
new that television now have TV ads when we meet them.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
They do have a lot of video.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
You can't be a director consumer brand and you're not
creating video for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and so those assets
can now be brought to television. You do need an
editor to edit them into a thirty second TV commercial. Also,
we have a division amount is called Quickframe. It's a
network of thousands of young independent creators videographers who can
(06:50):
help edit those ads. You stock video and now say.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
You don't have to have them on staff. You just
pop into them when you need those.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
It's like Uber for creative. We just connected with a creator.
And then, as you mentioned, AI tools are coming on
pretty strong now, so we have essentially we haven't fully
released it yet. It's in cut beta with some of
our customers or a general AI tools and you can
mix that, you can bring in your video you already
have plus general video and mix it all together to
(07:20):
have you know, kind of the perfect TV commercials.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
So when I met the way I met Mark first
was that I knew a few investors and they were like,
we got this guy who's like a genius coder and
he just creates businesses. You were you were at Oracle
for a while first, right.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Way back in the year.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Then you went to did you literally worked with Mark
Beneoff was like, well, he and I were both individual
contributors at the Oracle when I met Mark in in
the Bay Area, and then he became like director of
Desktop Products and I was directed Dido. Yeah, and Larry
Allison was walking the hallways. It was a long time again,
(07:56):
but no, I mean.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
My point is that you went on and did a
bunch of other stuff. So you built essentially the matchmaking
machine at e Harmony.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, I was head of mentioning.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Yeah, you did other startups and when I met you,
you were doing Steelhouse and then you pivoted to do Mountain.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
What's next for you? Mark? What's next? The way I
think it would be really clear?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
This is why I told my team, n if you
look at any successful like public company, ninety percent or
more of the value is created after the company goes public.
So you think of Meta Google, but you could think
of trade Us, app Love and any these companies. A
successful company most values. So I said, IPO is done.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
You just you know. So we're at the.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Ten percent mark and now we're going to go for
the other ninety percent. So we're going to bring hopefully
millions of investors along with us. And so the next
is to continue to go after this market, build even
more product, more tech technology, and really just grow this
into what we the pscale.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
We want is your company, Because when I talk to
like Joe Kaiser at Mercado, right, yeah, they invest He's
on your board. Yeah, he it's about you.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
He's like Mark Douglas is the asset here. He's the brain.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
But I know that you have an extremely happy employee base,
you have incredible ratings on glass Door. Nobody has to
come into an office. So how important is the company
that you built, the team that you build around you.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
It's incredibly important. I mean it's not just me. I think.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I'm not used to like talking about myself. I think
the skill I have is I think I'm a very
good at product market fit, like really identifying these trends
are going to equal this opportunity.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And that's what we did here.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
When we first launched our performance CV platform, I told
the team the easiest way to win a market is
to create that market. So we're going to we ate
the market for performance advertising on television what we now
call performance TV. But like, so I identified the opportunity,
the trends. Yeah, I worked with our designers on what
(10:12):
the product should look like. But it's at mounds five
hundred people working as a very efficient team. Almost forty
percent of team as engineers, and it's I don't want
to sound like a cliche, but like, there's only so
much I can do. I can like point us at
the right market opportunity, but execution matters, and especially matters
(10:33):
now that we're public.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And wait, I got to ask you though, the barrier
to entry.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Me the harder question.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
No, I know when you say execution, that's my like.
But barrier to entry sounds like another company could do
this or another advertising company like this doesn't sound so
difficult for somebody else, except you do have kind of
your own ip of you being and behind it. Yeah, yeah,
and yes, but Apple wasn't the first mover when it
(10:59):
came to smart phones, and yet look what it's done
so other people can come in. So how do you
on the market.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, so I got about forty seconds.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Okay, So there's a ton of technology involved, and the
first mover advantage does matter. There. We have a big
cost evangel partner with every streaming network and they are
increasingly reliant on Mountain being a growth channel because remember
ninety seven and sets out of every dollar is new
revenue that we're bringing into the TV industry. And then
we have our sales cycle averages nineteen days to bring
(11:32):
a new customer live, so we're finding the customer before
anyone else, bring them live faster than anyone else, bringing
more technology to bear to drive that return on AD spend.
All of that combined is our advantage?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
How much of your customers come back and stay with
you just quickly?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Oh, it's the vast Yeah, I don't have that. It's
the vast majority of our customers or repeat spenders over
and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Interesting space, interesting individual. Mark Douglas of of course, Mountain,
joining us right here on Bloomberg
Speaker 4 (12:04):
M
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
We want to talk about Mountain. That is, of course
the voice of I'm sorry, was that mean?
Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Ignore me. I've been friends with this guy for years.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I know, but I just mean sometimes you have to
ignore that. Mark Douglas is with us, founder, chairman, president
and CEO of the ad platform company Mountain here in
our Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. We should point out the
stock is a downfalling result. Although we were talking about
a bunch of analysts have come out and raised the
price target on the company. The stock is up more
than seventy percent from its IPO in late May. Since
(00:43):
you actually talked to him once before today on TV.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Stock take it Away eighty two percent.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
When I looked this morning since the IPO and that
was just May twenty second, right, Yeah, I looked at
the it's.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Down sixteen percent. Though I love the earnings.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I looked at your curious about buying for the Mark?
So what is going on there? Mark?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
Because I counted eight analysts had raised their price targets
on your stock.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Since the release.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
So you do the earnings call yesterday, you have these
one on one meetings and these analysts go back to
their office crunch numbers and as they say, actually Mountain's
worth more than we thought, and now the.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Stock is down.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
How does that be? I mean, this is the stock
market for you. So the only thing we can do.
We have a big TAM meaning big opportunity. That's the
total addressable total addressing the mart let's not use acronyms.
And then we are growing consistently and really really happy
with the growth, and we are doing it with justin
(01:38):
the ebadad basis. We're doing it profitably, and so that's
what we can do. And honestly, I think it's a
great opportunity for investors. And you know, whoever wants to
take profits today, great, you're you know, you're you're up
one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well yesterday.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Anybody listen is going to say, well, of course he's
going to say, it's a great investment. Yeah, talk to
us about the business a little bit more. Mind, everybody
who might not be familiar. We often talk to you
about certainly when it comes to the digital ad market,
but tell us exactly what you guys are doing, right.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
So what Mountain does is we enable small and mid
sized businesses to advertise on television for the first time
and to do it specifically on streaming television across every
streaming network, and then do it with precision to find
So these are not brands like a T mobile where
everyone in America can be a customer. These are challenger
(02:29):
e commerce brands, direct to consumer at travel brands who
they are growing businesses and now instead of just being
on paid search with Google and paid social with Meta,
they now can be on the big screen on television,
on across every streaming network and do it with precision
(02:50):
to make money. And so mount enables that with our
software platform, and we are partnered with virtually every streaming
network in America. We're partnered with all of the TV
manufacturers in order to make this possible. And customers have responded,
what is a.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Typical digital ad cost?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, it's more in terms of what are the average budgets, right,
So think of it that way. So your business and
our minimum spend on our platform is five hundred a month.
We have companies spending millions a month and so and
the way they think of this is what's the return
on AD spend? What kind of revenue am I getting
(03:29):
in comparison to what I'm spending on the media and so,
and the return on ads spending most businesses looking for
is in the two to one, the three to one arrangement,
and you spend the dollar you make two three Now
you play that game all day. And they're used to
doing this with on Instagram basically using meta app platform
and do it with Google's app platforms. So it's Google AdWords.
(03:52):
Everyone's probably heard AdWords even if you haven't used it.
Meta app platform now Mountain Performance TV, and that's the opportunity.
We've a name, and it's a very big market opportunity.
So the companies consistently growing.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
The other thing they do is wait, wait, so what's
the return on Is it two for one or what
is that?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, it depends on the customer.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's that Those are kind of average status more in
a three to one range, but some if you have
great product market fit, meaning like people see that probably
like I have to own this, You're going to have
a higher return than the company that just released the
product and is still figuring out, like you know, what
their their target consumers wanted by So it varies by customer,
(04:36):
but I say that's range two to the one to
three to one is what most companies looking for, and
that's the fit the economics of the business. The key
thing here is ninety seven percent Amounds customers have never
advertised on TV before, so we are literally enlarging the market,
bringing new companies into the television advertising market for the
first time on streaming.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
And your take on that is what a percentage of
the return on that or what is your piece of that?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Right, So, so a portion of their budget goes to
pay for all of the technology we power in order
to make that possible. And that's very typical. If you
think of a company, we don't compete with trade desks.
They're in a completely different segment in market, but that's
it's the same revenue model as someone like trade desk.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
So I think the coolest thing you thank you, by
the way, No, of course, I just want to finish
the thought.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
One of the coolest things that you guys do is
you say that these people have never made ads before,
A lot of them when they come to you. And
so when I think of making an ad for TV.
I think I got to get you know, cameraman, director, editor,
et cetera and so forth. But you have a AI
tools that help them reduce that budget, I imagine drastically,
(05:47):
and you can tell me some numbers around that.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And b you have Ryan Reynolds as.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Your chief creative officer, right, so, and you see the
ads that he makes.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, they're just brilliant.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
So by the way, they don't have direct and I
mean they get produced in what seems like an impossibly
short period of time. That's because your first thought is
usually your best and increasingly, you know you can use
the cell phone, the iPhone, the film to film an ad.
(06:17):
So our customers, they're right, ninety seven percent who are
new that television now have TV ads when we meet them.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
They do have a lot of video.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
You can't be a director consumer brand and you're not
creating video for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and so those assets
can now be brought to television. You do need an
editor to edit them into a thirty second TV commercial. Also,
we have a division amount is called Quickframe. It's a
network of thousands of young independent creators videographers who can
(06:50):
help edit those ads. You stock video and now say.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
You don't have to have them on staff. You just
pop into them when you need those.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
It's like Uber for creative. We just connected with a creator.
And then, as you mentioned, AI tools are coming on
pretty strong now, so we have essentially we haven't fully
released it yet. It's in cut beta with some of
our customers or a general AI tools and you can
mix that, you can bring in your video you already
have plus general video and mix it all together to
(07:20):
have you know, kind of the perfect TV commercials.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
So when I met the way I met Mark first
was that I knew a few investors and they were like,
we got this guy who's like a genius coder and
he just creates businesses. You were you were at Oracle
for a while first, right.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Way back in the year.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Then you went to did you literally worked with Mark
Beneoff was like, well, he and I were both individual
contributors at the Oracle when I met Mark in in
the Bay Area, and then he became like director of
Desktop Products and I was directed Dido. Yeah, and Larry
Allison was walking the hallways. It was a long time again,
(07:56):
but no, I mean.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
My point is that you went on and did a
bunch of other stuff. So you built essentially the matchmaking
machine at e Harmony.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, I was head of mentioning.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Yeah, you did other startups and when I met you,
you were doing Steelhouse and then you pivoted to do Mountain.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
What's next for you? Mark? What's next? The way I
think it would be really clear?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
This is why I told my team, n if you
look at any successful like public company, ninety percent or
more of the value is created after the company goes public.
So you think of Meta Google, but you could think
of trade Us, app Love and any these companies. A
successful company most values. So I said, IPO is done.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
You just you know. So we're at the.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Ten percent mark and now we're going to go for
the other ninety percent. So we're going to bring hopefully
millions of investors along with us. And so the next
is to continue to go after this market, build even
more product, more tech technology, and really just grow this
into what we the pscale.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
We want is your company, Because when I talk to
like Joe Kaiser at Mercado, right, yeah, they invest He's
on your board. Yeah, he it's about you.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
He's like Mark Douglas is the asset here. He's the brain.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
But I know that you have an extremely happy employee base,
you have incredible ratings on glass Door. Nobody has to
come into an office. So how important is the company
that you built, the team that you build around you.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
It's incredibly important. I mean it's not just me. I think.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I'm not used to like talking about myself. I think
the skill I have is I think I'm a very
good at product market fit, like really identifying these trends
are going to equal this opportunity.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And that's what we did here.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
When we first launched our performance CV platform, I told
the team the easiest way to win a market is
to create that market. So we're going to we ate
the market for performance advertising on television what we now
call performance TV. But like, so I identified the opportunity,
the trends. Yeah, I worked with our designers on what
(10:12):
the product should look like. But it's at mounds five
hundred people working as a very efficient team. Almost forty
percent of team as engineers, and it's I don't want
to sound like a cliche, but like, there's only so
much I can do. I can like point us at
the right market opportunity, but execution matters, and especially matters
(10:33):
now that we're public.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And wait, I got to ask you though, the barrier
to entry.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Me the harder question.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
No, I know when you say execution, that's my like.
But barrier to entry sounds like another company could do
this or another advertising company like this doesn't sound so
difficult for somebody else, except you do have kind of
your own ip of you being and behind it. Yeah, yeah,
and yes, but Apple wasn't the first mover when it
(10:59):
came to smart phones, and yet look what it's done
so other people can come in. So how do you
on the market.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, so I got about forty seconds.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
Okay, So there's a ton of technology involved, and the
first mover advantage does matter. There. We have a big
cost evangel partner with every streaming network and they are
increasingly reliant on Mountain being a growth channel because remember
ninety seven and sets out of every dollar is new
revenue that we're bringing into the TV industry. And then
we have our sales cycle averages nineteen days to bring
(11:32):
a new customer live, so we're finding the customer before
anyone else, bring them live faster than anyone else, bringing
more technology to bear to drive that return on AD spend.
All of that combined is our advantage?
Speaker 1 (11:44):
How much of your customers come back and stay with
you just quickly?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Oh, it's the vast Yeah, I don't have that. It's
the vast majority of our customers or repeat spenders over
and over and over again.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Interesting space, interesting individual. Mark Douglas of of course, Mountain,
joining us right here on Bloomberg
Speaker 4 (12:04):
M
Hosts And Creators
Tim Stenovec
Carol Massar
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!