Interviews

MarTech Interview with Francisco Larrain, Chief Technology Officer at Topsort

Dive into our exclusive MarTech interview with Francisco Larrain, CTO at Topsort, as he shares insights on retail media innovation, AI-driven ad infrastructure, and his journey in shaping a post-cookie advertising world.
MarTech

Francisco, welcome to Martech Cube, before we begin, could you please share your professional journey and how you came to work for Topsort?
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. For the whole of my career, I’d consider myself a serial entrepreneur. I grew up in Chile and at a young age I found engineering to be a safe haven and a fun game to obsess upon. Naturally, this led me into becoming engaged in the startup community. Before I joined Topsort, I was a hedge fund analyst and a venture investor.

I also was a lead engineer with Groupon, where I spent about five years building out the platform’s merchant system. Here, I grew passionate about working on marketplaces and building technology that works really great for sellers. Today, I spend all my time focused on solving the various engineering puzzles Topsort throws my way as the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

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Can you tell us about Topsort and what the company does?
Topsort is an AI-first ad infrastructure platform that democratizes Silicon Valley’s big tech’s secret monetization technology. Giants like Amazon and Google have made insane profits off of retail media and we think it’s due time emerging and up-and-coming industry players can do just the same. This is especially true as third-party cookies phase out and new means of bringing joyful advertisements to consumers must emerge. In this way, our team likens itself as being the connective tissue for the post-cookie world of ads.

In terms of the more technical aspects of what we do, Topsort specializes in AI for auctions and new age ad infrastructure, making ads relevant, simple, and joyful in a cookieless, bidless, and keywordless world. Through our retail media infrastructure, truly “clean” zero knowledge clean room, and one-click global ad network, we are helping retailers, brands, agencies, and marketplaces of all shapes and sizes tap into a new revenue stream, all while remaining free of creepy third-party cookie tracking and privacy-invasive data.

How has your experience in retail media in both the States and Latin America shaped your approach at Topsort?
Having started my career in Chile, I’ve good relationships with some of the top retailers in the Latin American region. I’ve learned over the years that marketplaces globally really want the same thing – to focus first and foremost on their product and to tap into retail media to create a new revenue stream that actually makes their customer and advertiser experience even better.

Our privacy-first retail media infrastructure does just that – making advertising more enjoyable for everyone in the ecosystem and ensuring that advertisements don’t bombard customers or interrupt the shopping experience. We all know how annoying cumbersome ads can be and I think that consumers all around the world have been over pop-ups for a long time now. These learnings – both in the US and in Latin America – have really fueled how I approach the product roadmap at Topsort.

The retail media boom is significant, with brands investing heavily. What trends are you seeing in this space?
The retail media boom is truly here to stay, with the market for retail media growing quickly and expecting to reach more than $160B in a few years’ time. We attribute this upward growth to various factors, spanning consumer desire for more privacy-friendly engagement from brands to the highly profitable business of turning a great marketplace into a retail media platform. All-in-all, it’s just a great way to monetize and deliver a better customer and advertiser experience. At Topsort, we really want to depart from the idea that advertising can’t be an enjoyable experience for all involved.

How is adopting retail media infrastructure becoming a crucial additional revenue stream for emerging marketplaces?
Retail media infrastructure provides a great additional revenue stream. Many marketplaces have already built a great product and a dedicated customer base, so why not take that to the next level by providing hyper-targeted advertisements that seamlessly integrate into the shopping experience? It’s a great way for marketplaces to get that additional revenue stream, while also empowering the brands they serve to put their products in front of the right eyes and really tailor the shopping experience to the customer in question.

What are the typical barriers to entry for adopting retail media infrastructure, and how do they impact businesses?
Typical barriers to entry for retail media include long integration times, strapped technical teams who can’t take the project on from scratch, and disruption to business. To put this into perspective, integration can take anywhere from 3-6 months of time – this is simply an absurd ask for a company that is trying to solidify its place in the market. In addition, technical teams tend to not be able to manage such a lofty integration while prioritizing day-to-day duties to keep their business running smoothly.

This segways into the final barrier, disruption to business. Integrations like this take a ton of time and manpower and can result in the website being down or glitchy. Companies thinking of adopting retail media have to think long and hard about when is the right time to disrupt business for 3-6 months and that answer is typically ‘never’. This is really understandable, but it’s a shame because retail media opens so many doors in terms of monetization.

Why is Topsort’s low-code integration so groundbreaking, and how does it benefit marketplaces of all sizes? How does low-code integration help overcome the barriers to adopting retail media advertising?
Our low-code integration is so important because it breaks down each one of these traditional barriers to entry. With just a line of code and the support of 1-2 engineers, our low-code integration enables retailers and marketplaces to integrate retail media infrastructure in as little as an hour. This alleviates all the pressure of having to decide when is the right time and how to allocate the right manpower to pull such a task off. We are really proud of this integration because it allows the ‘smaller guys’ to reap the same benefits huge retailers and marketplaces have been enjoying for years.

Can you explain how Topsort’s retail media infrastructure, including auction integration, self-service platforms, and real-time reporting, provides the best monetization technology for retail media?
It’s really insanely easy to use our platform, and that makes all the difference for sellers who don’t have a ton of advertising experience or know-how. In terms of the auction integration, Topsort’s AI auto-bidding algorithm takes the guesswork out of deciding where to place ads by evaluating real-time bids to ensure the highest return on ad spend (ROAS) are chosen.

In addition, our self-service and administration platforms help end-users understand and track key metrics like clicks, impressions, and purchases, providing insights into ad performance and user engagement. Finally, the real-time reporting provides accessible, comprehensive reporting dashboards that show ROI and what is and isn’t working.

What is your personal strategy for staying ahead of technological trends and innovations in retail media?
Talking to other smart engineers! I get very inspired by the diverse and deep knowledge mix of engineers here at Topsort and enjoy solving challenging problems with driven people.

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Francisco Larrain, Co-Founder and CTO of Topsort

Francisco Larrain is the Co-Founder and CTO of Topsort. Francisco was previously the head of local engineering at Groupon, where they ran a 100+ engineering team spanning teams in Chicago, Palo Alto, Seattle, Berlin, and Santiago. Francisco also founded and served as the CEO of Zappedy, which was acquired by Groupon. LinkedIn.
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