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Always Be Testing explores the experiments, insights, and growth stories shaping the future of affiliate and partner marketing in B2B SaaS. Hosted by industry veterans, the show dives deep into real-world lessons from the people driving measurable impact at companies like Google, HubSpot, Ramp, Webflow, G2, and beyond.
Each episode uncovers what happens when today's most innovative marketers challenge assumptions, run smarter experiments, and build programs that scale revenue through meaningful partnerships. If you’re in affiliate, partnerships, or SaaS growth — this is your front-row seat to how the best do it (and what they’ve learned along the way
00:00:05:21 - 00:00:27:10
Unknown
Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast. I'm your host Tye DeGrange, and I'm really excited to talk to Lacey Thompson today. Lacey, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. How are you doing? Happy. Great to see you. As always. Always enjoy our conversations. Happy Friday. Just just sharing. It's it's summer's come early in Austin, Texas.
00:00:27:10 - 00:00:53:03
Unknown
But we'll handle it. Okay. And I think I should refrain from flipping off right now since it's pretty. Not all at it's. That's all right. You're always welcome. And you guys have a good thing going up there too. Yeah. In the summer. Yeah. I'm going to plan my trip for August to come visit. Exactly, exactly. Those of you don't know, you should.
00:00:53:03 - 00:01:16:10
Unknown
Lacey is an amazing leader, agency leader, affiliate, marketer, partner, marketer, digital marketer, and she's got something exciting she's launching now, which is fantastic. I'm just so happy to talk to you about it and talk to you about your experience. It's going to be a great one. I'm super excited and a little scared, so I want to be scared about nothing to be scared about.
00:01:16:10 - 00:01:43:21
Unknown
So Lacey is is launching Media Pack, which is an amazing tool to reach brands and allow brands to place media programmatically in a really interesting way. So I'm excited her to talk about that. She has been instrumental in agency growth, something that's near and dear to our hearts, and it was able to scale LBT partners to get acquired by New Engine, which is one of the most amazing acquisitions in the last few years.
00:01:43:23 - 00:02:03:06
Unknown
She's worked with brands like Blue Nile and Expedia. So you're you're talking to somebody great today, very highly respected in the industry. And I think it's going to be a lot of fun. So anything else you want to add now you've said too much. Well let's jump into it. So you've been able to build things on the brand side.
00:02:03:06 - 00:02:37:12
Unknown
You've had the agency experience. I'm excited to hear a bit more about Media Packed. What your vision of For It is, what you're thinking about in sort of what was the what are some of the key problems that you saw in market where you're like, this doesn't exist now? I need to build this. Yeah. Well, I think like the the evolution of my career, it's funny actually kind of follows like a similar path of a story that I heard when I was back in house at Blue Nile, and I heard the story of, like, Mark Zaid on and why he created Blue Nile.
00:02:37:12 - 00:03:11:16
Unknown
And then he went on to create Zulily as well. And it was very much like this organic story about things that had happened in his life, and him wanting to create a solution for the problems that he had. And so for me, I was at Expedia running the affiliate program there. I had hired an agency, and when I fast forward three years after that started like partners, I really just wanted to create the type of agency that I would have wanted to hire when I was in-house.
00:03:11:16 - 00:03:42:15
Unknown
So I wanted a lot of transparency. I wanted to create a solution that wasn't just like pushing, advocating for the things that weren't in the best interest of the brand. Like all these things, all these like issues that I had seen, brand side. I wanted to create an agency solution that would solve for that. So then when I had my agency, I think one of the most important things for agencies is to always be considering how they're spending their time, because the time that your team puts in is your cost of goods.
00:03:42:15 - 00:04:09:18
Unknown
It's different than like pill company or something like that. Your people are your resources, and the more time they spend on things that are not focused on driving results for the clients, the less time they have to spend driving results for the clients. So one of the things that was just like, so monotonous and time consuming and painful was the process of buying flat fee paid media.
00:04:09:20 - 00:04:41:08
Unknown
And I did it when I was at Expedia. There's a huge part of our industry that still sort of acts like business development, building real relationships in person with people, having real conversations, real negotiations, which I think is very powerful. But I also saw a need to create efficiency and have systems around it. And so in the programmatic space, you have DSPs and space, and you have standardized formats of everything.
00:04:41:10 - 00:05:10:12
Unknown
But when you're buying flat for you direct paid media, Vox will have a totally different media content placement, a spreadsheet or rate card than PMC, or they it's just is all over the board. And so with the with the advent of AI, it has been so much easier to create even more efficiency in that whole process. And that's what was really fun about building media.
00:05:10:12 - 00:05:32:17
Unknown
Packed is sort of like had this idea back in my agency days, but now that I have the time to actually like put it into practice, we I created an AI scanner for all the media kits and rate cards, and so it just can read everything and build that standardized. So it just alleviates like so much more work that people have to do.
00:05:32:19 - 00:06:03:06
Unknown
So really I mean, it's all about creating efficiency and making the process seamless and not disparate and all over the place and time consuming. Yeah, I love that. And it's it's there's still such great aspects of our roles of affiliate and partner marketing where you've got that relationship, you're having those conversations, you're negotiating. But for for this, I'm excited because I do think there is a there's a gap in this space.
00:06:03:06 - 00:06:33:10
Unknown
I do think there's a need to bring a little bit more of that AI, technology and programmatic aspects of Mediavine to affiliate, where it's in some ways stuck in 1985. So I think there's something I think there's something there. And I'm excited about it for you. Absolutely. Yeah. We we need all the good tooling we can get. Obviously, the run of being able to build something from nothing is amazing and exciting, and to be able to scale it to the level you did with LTE, was just phenomenal.
00:06:33:12 - 00:06:56:06
Unknown
Looking back, was there something that, hey, on paper, looked like a phenomenal decision? But in hindsight, as you've had some time to look at it, you're like, probably wouldn't have done that again. Is there anything that comes to mind? It's it's just so hard because I think that with every decision I make with other people, even sometimes together, decisions that we make together, like you have the date.
00:06:56:06 - 00:07:17:14
Unknown
It's just like with marketing, you have the data and then you have your like, context and expertise. And every decision is sort of about like bringing that together. So I never really just look at a spreadsheet, even though I am a highly analytical and data driven person, because you can kind of make data tell whatever story you want if you try hard enough.
00:07:17:16 - 00:07:43:03
Unknown
And so I think, I think that in retrospect, some of the things that I did were actually like, not because of the spreadsheet. And the spreadsheet told me something else, and I did it anyway because I was just really, like, passionate about it. Like, for example, very early on I was like, I want to give everyone four months of paid parental leave.
00:07:43:05 - 00:08:02:13
Unknown
I had like six employees, seven employees, and normally, like, you can't do that at that size. It's really difficult. And I was like, f it, I don't, I don't care. It's going to happen and I'm going to figure it out. And we were fully remote. So we started building out the spreadsheet to be like, how would we do this?
00:08:02:13 - 00:08:31:02
Unknown
And we're like, yeah, it's possible. And I think, like in hindsight, I would totally do it again because it's just values aligned to what I believe in. And I wish I could do more than that, to be totally honest. But it in practice was incredibly difficult to implement, and hiring remote employees and all these different states like operationalizing that is such a massive pain in the ass.
00:08:31:02 - 00:08:55:11
Unknown
Like, you really don't get it until you've had to do it, and it just makes you like, not want to hire people in certain states or things like that. But at the end of the day, it's just part of doing business, and you just sort of have to accept that there's going to be some things that are not ideal, and it's a trade off because you, you, you have to figure out like what your priorities are.
00:08:55:13 - 00:09:14:06
Unknown
So, I mean, I just don't have a lot of like things where I looked at something in a spreadsheet and I said, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And then it didn't, because I just think it's always important to combine it with like, your values and, and what's important to you. And then you can't. I love that and forgive everyone out there.
00:09:14:06 - 00:09:38:15
Unknown
If there's knowing looks, laughter or crying, it's because I went through. Similar thing is that Lacey has is she knows all too well. So well said and said well, just to maybe humor me, was there stuff where you're kind of position changed a little over time? Or maybe you look back and you're like, not, not not to like dwell on it, but is there something where you're like, okay, that's an interesting evolution.
00:09:38:15 - 00:10:06:17
Unknown
I'm looking at it differently now, even if it was like Beyond Light, if there's just something that you've maybe changed position on a little bit trickier one, I mean, what I would say is I do and sometimes I do wish I would have started a company earlier in my career, but then I'm always like, what I've done at the same because I learned so much from all of these different experiences that I could apply to what I did.
00:10:06:19 - 00:10:35:01
Unknown
But the first day, I think it was the first official day that I was in business. I had a call with another female founder, and she had spent like 14 years at Coca-Cola and done these like leadership training sessions and she said that one of the key things that she retained from some of those sessions is that women just don't start their own businesses until they have 100% confidence.
00:10:35:03 - 00:10:58:18
Unknown
It's just men and women are biologically different, and women have a tendency to not want to take that risk earlier on. And I think that I very much was that way. And I don't know that I had 100. I don't know that I still have 100% confidence in anything. But I definitely like I spent three years at another agency helping to scale that.
00:10:58:20 - 00:11:34:13
Unknown
And I felt like after doing that, I was like, well, I could do this on my own, you know? But could I have done it on my own before? Possibly. I probably would have made more mistakes. I don't know who knows. It's it's hard to look back and yeah, but I think like I have shared that story before and I share it again, just because if there are other women that are contemplating like going into business or anything of that nature, like I just I would encourage people to take the leap before they feel like it's right, because sometimes that right moment just never arrives.
00:11:34:13 - 00:12:03:18
Unknown
Yeah. That's a really that's a really interesting point. And I think I couldn't agree more with you on all of it. I think I think I started relatively late in my entrepreneurial journey, and I had exposure to what it meant to be an entrepreneur, but I was in house company guy for quite a while. Self, and I think, I think there is an interesting case to be made, even if it is to just try it at some point or maybe try it a little bit earlier.
00:12:03:18 - 00:12:25:12
Unknown
I think that's a really interesting, appreciated conversation, and I think it's good to get probably worth doing. And also think about the times when it's like, how close was I to not doing it right? I don't know if you ever thought of that either, but yeah, I at six months into starting, I mean, I just consulted it in the beginning and I didn't know for sure that I was going to create this agency.
00:12:25:14 - 00:12:50:13
Unknown
And six months into starting, I was like, okay, well, let's do this all by myself anymore because I just got so busy. And then I was I hired a coach to sort of like, help, help me work through, like, what am I going to do? Am I going to go or not? And then even after I decided I'm going to go, I hired my first employee, and then one of my clients wanted to bring me on in-house to be their CMO.
00:12:50:15 - 00:13:19:10
Unknown
And I was like, I could do both. Why not? So I was going to LA every other week going into office, and I basically had like a job and my agency. And then it all really came to a sudden halt for like HR reasons. Not on my behalf. Thankfully, but all of a sudden, like that opportunity just kind of stopped.
00:13:19:10 - 00:13:39:11
Unknown
And it was actually like such a good sign for me. I took it as like a sign of like, that's not actually what I was meant to do. I sort of was thinking, oh, explore this. Maybe that will be the path. Like maybe I'll just go that way instead of this way. Yeah. But it was made very clear to me in a very like cosmic way.
00:13:39:13 - 00:14:15:19
Unknown
So sometimes those are nice. Yeah, that's so cool. I mean, I think it's amazing that you are got the drive and the gumption to go at it again with a new venture. I mean, that's something that I think not a lot of people would do. After the successes that you've had. I'd love to hear a little bit about the the timing around media packed and transitioning from the new age and opportunity, and just it's it's like a I think it's pretty impressive to to drive to build again from from nothing.
00:14:15:21 - 00:14:38:23
Unknown
And I think it's pretty amazing. But I'd love to hear kind of that. But also like, why now sort of for, for media packed. Yeah, I mean, I, I transitioned out of my full time role at New Engine in June and my, my career has always just had these like levels of intensity and then like a small window of some sort.
00:14:39:00 - 00:15:04:00
Unknown
When I was at Expedia, I went part time for like four months and just kind of reset a little bit and refocused and thought about the bigger picture and like where I wanted things to go and my future. And I think that it is important for people to have some sort of like pause at a certain point of the the pushing, pushing, pushing and pushing.
00:15:04:01 - 00:15:31:14
Unknown
You have to like take a breath and like reset your nervous system and become a little bored for a little bit, which I'm not very good at, by the way I like. But it's difficult for me to take. But I love to travel. I, I spent some time traveling after my transition out. It was the summer, so I got to spend more time with my kids and my family.
00:15:31:14 - 00:16:03:00
Unknown
And I have done some, like artsy things, like just played around with a lot of different ideas. But then I was encouraged to start checking out some of these AI dev platforms, and I had actually come up with a media pact idea back when I had alt partners and I had an investor pitch deck that I had built, and I put it into lovable, and I started prompting it, and I was like, build this thing.
00:16:03:02 - 00:16:29:04
Unknown
And automatically from the very first prompt, I think I said, I want it to have an AI scanner so that sellers of media can just upload their stuff, and it just creates everything for them. And I mean, within an hour I was just mind blown and I it wasn't really like I had this intention of like, or this plan or this timeline or the like, even thought that I was going to do this.
00:16:29:04 - 00:16:51:23
Unknown
Like, I, I honestly didn't think I was going to do this. And then and then I did it really randomly and I was like, wow, this. I mean, I was just so mind blown. I was like, I can't not do this because it's just incredible what is possible today. And I'm so honestly, I think there's a lot of fear around the AI right now.
00:16:51:23 - 00:17:13:11
Unknown
Rightfully so. I have it, you, but I just think it's such a cool time to be an entrepreneur or like the things that you can do with your ideas and your vision. It's it's like nothing I've ever seen before. And I just, I excited about it. I couldn't like, hold back and not, not try it. You know, I love that.
00:17:13:16 - 00:17:46:05
Unknown
Yeah. It's it's mind blowing for, for for my perspective. And so many people are seeing it and it's, it's so fascinating I there was a recent one of many content pieces and posts about it, and it's almost overwhelming to keep track of. But what I liked in particular recently was, basically like you can you can basically have it do a lot of the things that you're just it's a it can complement you and you can enable you to do things that you're more, more able to focus on.
00:17:46:05 - 00:18:04:21
Unknown
And I'm not phrasing it particularly well, but it was a very simplistic 1 or 2 liner where it's not necessarily something to be as afraid as are of it. If you can, if you can enable you to do good things, if it can enable you to do what you want to do. And I think that's the exciting part of it for for you and for all of us.
00:18:04:21 - 00:18:30:21
Unknown
And I love the entrepreneurial opportunity. I think you've probably seen a bunch of things sharing that. This may unlock a lot of entrepreneurial opportunity for a lot of different people, perhaps more than it has then previously. Yeah. And on that note, I would just say, like the I think the dynamics of technology are they've changed. They're changing. They'll continue to change.
00:18:30:24 - 00:18:58:05
Unknown
They always will. Yeah. But I think right now, like if there are other entrepreneurs out there like watching this or thinking about what to build, like, I don't think it's going to be as successful to just build a tool that does something like, you have to have something else that's a part of the moat and the business model, otherwise anybody else can build it and maybe not.
00:18:58:08 - 00:19:24:00
Unknown
Hey, because we've all seen that chart of like all the squares and the colored dots and who's using AI and blah blah blah, blah blah, and one little corner, a thing where people are building with it. But that will that will change very quickly. So yeah, I couldn't agree more. It just in elaborating with you like having this a horrible statement, but like having someone's nectar ring has come up a lot around like SAS.
00:19:24:00 - 00:19:44:01
Unknown
Like at the end of the day when you run into a big problem that's hurting your business, you want to be able to talk to a human to say, hey, how do we resolve this? Or not to mention the challenge of distribution, which we all know is so what we do to to an extent, is not there for a tool that was just launched yesterday, even though it might have the same features of your tool.
00:19:44:01 - 00:20:08:00
Unknown
So it's fascinating to hear and see people make sense of it all. I'm sure you're you're making sense of it rather quickly building this. There's a lot of people that have a lot of opinions about it, and we don't all have this in my opinions, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And we'll see. I mean, it's always fun to like, share hypotheses and hear other people's hypotheses of what's what's to come.
00:20:08:00 - 00:20:30:02
Unknown
And and we'll see. Yeah. I mean, no one knows for sure. Exactly. Exactly. Sort of related is you think about all the things you can build and all the opportunities that media packed could be, and you've got your product roadmap and you're building, you've got some some good brains thinking on it, like how do you keep focused when you can build anything?
00:20:30:02 - 00:20:54:24
Unknown
How do you think about product roadmap in that world where building becomes so much easier? Yeah, I do, I have three advisors for my company and I, I, I just this is something that I did with ELT partners as well. And I think that hearing from other people who are successful, well networked know their shit is more important than me.
00:20:54:24 - 00:21:19:09
Unknown
Just saying, like, this is what I think. And so a lot of times when I think about what to focus on, I lean on other people and I just like to get feedback and get a lot of input before I make a decision. And I have an like an AI tool guru who's one of our advisors and I, I was talking about like what we have this problem that we need to solve.
00:21:19:10 - 00:21:52:00
Unknown
It's a it's around like how our stripe payouts work and like understanding the flow of all of that and all this stuff. And he's like, well, you need to decide like, what is the most important thing for your target customer? What what is your moat? What is your thing that they want? What's your differentiation? And if what you're trying to solve for is not aligned to that differentiation and that moat don't waste your time building it unless it's really easy to build.
00:21:52:02 - 00:22:19:14
Unknown
So one example is I kind of got to this point where I was tracking everything that I wanted to build into the platform, and a Google sheet for a long time. And I was like, I probably need to have like some sort of project management solution, a Kanban board of sorts. We previously used asana, for example. There's lots of other ones out there in the space, and I was thinking like, should I use this one or that one?
00:22:19:14 - 00:22:49:18
Unknown
Or does Google have a thing or what? And then I just thought, well, it'd be a lot easier if it was just like in my admin portal, so I can go in and prompts to build the same thing, and I don't have to go license it. And it took like 30 minutes to build it out. So like it's a it's a trade off between like, is this core to your solution and what the differentiation is to the end user.
00:22:49:20 - 00:23:17:15
Unknown
And or is it fast to build it yourself? If if those two things are no then go buy it somewhere else. Go license it somewhere else. Use a third party tool. That's kind of like my thought process around it. Yeah, even even for now, that now that building has become longer times, for lack of a better term, it's a it's a bit of a trade off for our own way, in a different way.
00:23:17:15 - 00:23:38:04
Unknown
So it resonates with me. And I think that logic is this very sound. Talked a little bit about important to the customer. Right. The one that's actually utilizing the tool and media packed. When you think about the media buyer, I'd love to hear your perspective on like kind of what is it? What does that flow potentially look like with with Media Pack?
00:23:38:04 - 00:24:00:01
Unknown
What's the what is the intention? And in terms of how you can kind of alleviate some of those pains and some of the like jobs to be done and things that they, they will be doing and being able to do with, with media packed. I love to hear a little bit more about who are the types of people would really resonate with who the types of folks could use it, benefit from it.
00:24:00:03 - 00:24:30:19
Unknown
Yeah, that question really makes me think to the fact that I got a really, really good book recommendation from my friend Rob over at Lovehoney when I first told him about Media Pact, and that book is called The Cold Start Problem. And it's all about like, building network effects. Have you read it? It's a good one. Yeah. So for media packed, like kind of using some of the terminology from the Cold Start program, the selling side is actually the hard side of the platform.
00:24:30:21 - 00:25:04:00
Unknown
Right. Like the reason why some of these other solutions that have existed out there in the in the past haven't succeeded is because they don't get the seller adoption. And I also don't have background on the seller side in my own career. And so while I can to some degree sort of theorize about what their business looks like, I needed to get in there and do like customer discovery conversations with them to really make sure that what I was building was something that would be adopted by them.
00:25:04:02 - 00:25:40:19
Unknown
So since November, I've been having those conversations with sellers of media, and I've recorded them all, and it's built a spreadsheet and tracked everybody's feedback to really validate that. What I wanted to build was the right thing to build, but some of those conversations have, like, meaningfully changed the direction with which I build the platform. And so some of like the functionality around like visibility in the platform and whether you can negotiate and like whether you show pricing all the time, like all of these things are things that like, I probably wouldn't have come up with on my own.
00:25:40:21 - 00:26:14:06
Unknown
And again, like just crowdsourcing the needs I think is a really important piece. And then I've been onboarding sellers first. We just started like mid last week, so it hasn't been that long. We're very early days, but we have 14 sellers on the platform right now. There's 1380 placements that are now on board, and so I want to make sure that when the buyers come there's stuff there like things for them to see, ways to interact.
00:26:14:06 - 00:26:46:05
Unknown
They're going to be excited to like engage and then also like for everybody to be inviting all of the other people that they know in the industry. Because if I'm a buyer, I probably know a lot of sellers. If I'm a salary, I probably know a lot of buyers and that's, I think organically how the community will come to grow that love that we talked about this a little bit, but the the affiliate world is kind of has its own methodologies and idiosyncrasies of media buying, which we we talked about and know all too well.
00:26:46:07 - 00:27:07:06
Unknown
And then you've got kind of the programmatic world and world that buys things a little bit more, a little bit more programmatically. What's your thought on where it sits and how you're thinking about it in that realm? Is it is it predominantly in the affiliate space, or how would you maybe describe it for people? I had, in theory, kind of going into this whole thing.
00:27:07:06 - 00:27:34:02
Unknown
As I mentioned, there are other tools out there kind of similar to media packed. This isn't like some new invention, right? On some of the affiliate platforms. These tools exist. I won't name names. There's like three of them that I think still exist today. My theory as to why it hasn't really scaled is because these sellers that are the hard side of the platform, they don't want to have to manage their inventory on five different platforms.
00:27:34:04 - 00:27:59:16
Unknown
They it actually makes more work for them than just doing it the old school way. And like manually reaching out to people and doing it through email and sending bios and all that stuff. So that was my initial theory. And as I had these conversations with sellers, that was validated, but what actually came up again, like through these conversations was these they're they're not just selling to affiliate marketers.
00:27:59:18 - 00:28:23:10
Unknown
In fact, like most of the people that I talk to, most of the sellers said that maybe half of their sales come from affiliate marketers. Some of them said 40% like less than half. So I think the the market opportunity outside of affiliate is so much greater, or at least half of of what the affiliate like industry can represent.
00:28:23:12 - 00:28:49:21
Unknown
And so if you have these tools within affiliate network platforms, you're never going to access those types of buyers that are outside of the affiliate platform. So those are like my two really big reasons why I think it hasn't worked in the past. And I think there's other aspects of the platform that I could kind of go into a little bit around these series, but it's not an affiliate tool.
00:28:49:23 - 00:29:20:09
Unknown
It's a media buying tool to create efficiency for flat fee media buys. So like if you're a media planner and a media buyer who is typically buying programmatic media, I've interviewed some of those folks as well. And they'll say like, yeah, we'll definitely do like CPM buys on the Trade Desk or whatever other platforms. But oftentimes they'll throw in like this flat fee portion of it that still is handled very manually, that doesn't have a system with which to execute it.
00:29:20:11 - 00:29:47:06
Unknown
And so now I do see media packed in the future being able to be leveraged by people who are selling programmatic, by people who are selling to brand marketers or PR agencies. I it's definitely not I don't want to put it in a an affiliate corner, but I know for a fact, because of you, I've been in forever, that that's a definite pain point in affiliate marketing.
00:29:47:11 - 00:30:05:02
Unknown
It's really well said. It's been absolute pleasure. As always, thanks for coming on and sharing some amazing learnings, and I'm excited to continue to collaborate with you on media packed and it's coming a lot more coming soon. Have a good weekend. Bye.
00:30:05:04 - 00:30:05:10
Unknown
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