By Riley Kaminer
Being a Miami tech entrepreneur is an extrovert’s delight, with bars and restaurants playing a central role in our community-led movement. These watering holes are a breeding ground for connections and ideation. Definitely an upgrade from long nights toiling in a garage.
That makes AdTech startup Taiv’s a natural fit for South Florida’s tech ecosystem. The Canadian startup lets bars and restaurants harness the full control of their TV screens. Using Taiv’s hardware/software solution, these bars can swap typical TV ads for ads from Taiv’s network.
Not only does this have the potential to net these small businesses up to around $500 a month. Taiv’s system also gives these bars better control over their AV systems, allowing them to play their own content.
“The revenue potential is what is driving most bars to sign up,” co-founder and CEO Noah Palansky told Refresh Miami. “But what keeps them is the emotional feeling of, ‘wow, I can design something in iMovie and then play it on 100 TVs at work.’”
Palansky’s inspiration to found Taiv alongside Avi Stoller and Jordan Davis began from frustrations he saw in the advertising industry through his marketing role at a startup. “I saw that TV advertising was stagnant,” compared to the digital world, he explained. “I kept asking myself: if TV weren’t a thing – if every business had TVs, but nothing to show – what would it look like?”
That’s when Palansky and team started to build. In 2020, about a year after founding the company, Taiv went through YCombinator. Soon thereafter, the startup launched in South Florida – its first market. Our region’s reputation as a hospitality hub originally lured the Taiv team and now has implemented its solution in dozens of restaurants and bars here. The startup is now active in Southwest Florida and Austin as well.
The technical solutions powering Taiv’s system are more complicated than you might expect. From a hardware perspective, it is no easy feat to tame the often complex AV systems found in bars. On the software side, Taiv has developed a computer vision system that ‘watches’ the live video feed coming in and identifies when they are able to place an ad.
From a sales perspective, Taiv must attract two customers: the bars and the advertisers. Palansky said that his sales team spends about half their time pounding the pavement in South Florida to find bars and restaurants that might be interested in Taiv’s offering.
For advertisers, Taiv leverages the fact that they offer an unusually robust dataset about the impact of their ads. “We’re taking a radically transparent approach,” he said. This stands in stark contrast to the traditional advertising industry, which often either does not share all their metrics with clients – or does so many days or weeks after the fact.
“We can show that we’re actually adding value to the bar experience,” underscored Palansky. “We’re always thinking about how we can make this benefit every party: the restaurant, the viewers, and the advertiser.”
Looking forward, Palansky is excited to launch in upwards of six new markets within the next year. That will give them all the ad space necessary to continue satisfying their advertisers. Taiv is also planning to ink partnership deals with content providers to up the ante of what they can provide bars. And Palansky signaled that a Series A fundraise is in the cards for next year as well.
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