Sales battle card · internal
The four things we get compared to
Telly
Concede where they genuinely win, out loud. A seller who says “Samsung has more scale and better self-serve tooling, here's what we have instead” keeps credibility for the rest of the meeting. One who pretends otherwise loses it permanently.
Smart TV home screens
SAMSUNG · LG · ROKU · FIRE TV
They win: scale, buying relationships, measurement maturity, self-serve tooling. Say it.
We win: theirs is visible between sessions — ours whenever the set is on. Theirs is ACR-inferred — ours is declared. Theirs catches someone hunting for something to watch; ours catches someone settled.
Say: “A home-screen ad reaches someone who's looking for something else. Ours is there for the whole evening.”
NEVER: compare footprints.
CTV video
PRE-ROLL · MID-ROLL · PAUSE ADS
They win: scale, content context, and video is what brand teams already know how to make.
We win: no pod-position premium, because there is no pod. No frequency waste inside our surface — we own all of it. And “non-disruptive” is a claim they make and a fact we have.
Say: “They're trying to make the interruption feel better. We're not interrupting.”
CAREFUL: frequency control is true inside Telly, not across the ecosystem.
DOOH & place-based
VISTAR · BROADSIGN · HIVESTACK · PLACE EXCHANGE
They win: true public-space scale, a mature venue taxonomy, an established buying practice.
We win — the sharpest contrast on this card: DOOH gives you a screen and no idea who is standing in front of it. We give you the screen and the household. Dwell in hours, not seconds. And an on-screen click.
Say: “You've been buying screens in places. This is a screen in a household — and we know whose.”
BEST CONVERSATION AVAILABLE. Ask early who owns place-based.
Doing nothing
THE REAL COMPETITOR
Sounds like: “Interesting — let's revisit next planning cycle.”
Why: no line item, no internal precedent, no career upside in going first, and a genuinely full plate.
Beat it: make the first commitment small, defined and time-boxed — a test with a start date beats a proposal with an open one. Give the champion the one-pager to forward. Attach it to something already on their calendar so it needs no separate justification.
Say: “The people who define how a category gets bought are the people who bought it first.”
Quick reference · for live calls
Twelve objections
Bold = what they say
Grey = the answer
Red = ask this next
“How many households do you have?”
Fewer than the platforms you're comparing us to — which is why we're not sold as a reach buy. Answer it plainly, then move. Never bluff this one.
→ What would justify a test rather than a campaign?
“Isn't this a banner ad on a TV?”
A banner is served and gone, cookie-inferred, and fighting fifty others. This is permanent, declared, and alone on a lit 55-inch screen.
→ What would make it not feel like display to you?
“I don't have a budget line for this.”
Six budgets fund this — CTV, place-based, display, social, retail media, innovation. Treat it as a routing question, not an objection.
→ Which one is open? Who owns new formats?
“Your numbers aren't validated.”
Concede cleanly and specifically. Here's what is validated, here's what isn't, here's what's in field. Honesty wins this deal.
→ What validation would your team actually accept?
“Nobody's asking me for this.”
Nobody asked for retail media in 2018 either. The people who decided how it gets bought were the ones who bought it first.
→ When did retail media first hit your plans?
“Privacy — there's a camera in the room.”
Physically shuttered, for video calls, never used for targeting. The sensor is millimeter-wave, not imaging. And our data is declared, not inferred — the opposite of the model under scrutiny.
→ Can I send your privacy team the documentation?
“Will you exist in a year?”
Fair question — don't get defensive. Structure is a better answer than reassurance: short, defined, clean terms so the question doesn't matter much.
→ What would de-risk this enough to try it?
“Brand safety won't approve you.”
We're an easier approval than most CTV. One owned-and-operated environment. No long tail, no UGC, no arbitraged supply, nothing to spoof.
→ What does your verification vendor need from us?
“Creative is a lift.”
IAB standard sizes — your existing display runs today. And we'll produce the first flight rather than have you build a business case for it.
→ Can you send what's running now?
“Can I frequency cap across my CTV?”
Within Telly, completely. Across platforms, nobody has solved it — including the people telling you they have. There's no universal creative ID yet.
→ How are you handling that today? Genuinely asking.
“What's the CPM?”
Answer it, then fix the comparison set. Against CTV video we look expensive per impression and cheap per hour of presence. Against place-based it reads differently.
→ What are you benchmarking it against?
“Prove it's incremental.”
Not fully, not yet — and anyone in this category claiming otherwise is overstating it. Offer to co-design the test and publish whatever comes back.
→ Would you design it with us? Your methodology.
Open with this, before any of the above: “Which budget would this most likely come out of — video, display, place-based, social, or an innovation pot?” The answer reshapes the entire proposal.
Telly