Ricki:
Hello, I’m Ricki Lee, and today on the Capital Compass, we are taking a closer look at specificity (USOTC:SPTY). An ad tech company focused on improving digital advertising performance by eliminating fraud bot traffic and wasted spend challenges that continue to weigh on marketers and brands globally. The company has recently announced a series of strategic developments including leadership additions, deeper AI integration expansion into Europe, and steps towards regaining full reporting status, all while outlining an ambitious growth trajectory over the next 12 to 24 months. Joining me now to walk us through the strategy, the technology, and what comes next is Jason Wood, founder and CEO of Specificity. Jason, welcome to the Capital Compass.
Jason:
Yeah, thanks, Ricky. Thanks for having me on again.
Ricki:
So Jason specificity recently announced a major leadership transition, bringing in a new CEO and CTO. How do these additions change the company’s execution strategy and ability to scale from here?
Jason:
Yeah, I think they put us on a much faster trajectory. I think one of the biggest mistakes that founders like me can make is thinking that, well, I got us here so I can lead a company as we grow to 20 million, 50 million wherever we were able to take this company, half a billion, whatever. And you really need a seasoned veteran, CEO, somebody that understands corporate finance in a really granular way, somebody that understands capital markets from a CEO perspective and not a passion. Like, like it comes from an initial founder. So we brought on Robert Fedder, who’s going to come on board with us after he completes the current turnaround he is working on now probably late Q1. So we’re hopeful it’ll be sometime in March. And that’s going to open up a lot of avenues of business for specificity.
Jason:
He’s just a much more capable day-to-day CEO than I am. I’m a passionate guy. I’m a great evangelist for our brand. I’m passionate about the tech. I’m a tech geek. But he’s a seasoned CEO and when you’re trying to scale a company to the level that I have in mind and where I want to take this company, you just have to know when it’s time to get out of the way and let somebody, but frankly, more skilled at that particular arena than you take the reins. And that’s why we did that. Similarly, Rob Gagne is, and I’ll get pushback, but in my estimation, he’s one of the top 10, 20 technologists in the world. I mean, this guy’s brilliant. And so bringing him on to do the physical build out on the tech stack that we’re working on now did a lot of things for us.
Jason:
One, it brought it all in house so that we can direct it, own it, control it, but in addition to that, not having to sub it out or bring in programmers or go offshore for it. We’re protecting our intellectual property. And so you give a guy like that a role of CTO and equity that’s somebody that we hope we’re hopeful is going to be long term in that position. And there’s so much protection that offers when you’re doing things that are as inherently proprietary as what we’re doing.
Ricki:
Amazing. Well, I hope they’re listening to you singing their praises. You’ve also highlighted deeper AI integration across the platform, particularly around identifying and eliminating bot traffic. So what measurable performance improvements should clients and investors expect to see from this shift?
Jason:
Well, I mean, it’s very encompassing, right? What this technology does for brands and marketers, but to summarize it in a simplistic way as I can right now, depending on which study you believe, anywhere from 40% to 60% of your ad spend is being pushed to serving ads to mechanical traffic. So in other words, it’s algorithmic, it’s automation, it’s not human beings. By eliminating all of that, we’re literally going to be doubling the amount of human beings that brands are talking to for the exact same ad spend. A task we don’t think is going to be very difficult to convince brands to come on board with. So that’s why these case studies that we’ve put out and that we worked so hard on were so important because they deliver proof of concept that the final phase of this, which is the final build out of all of this, really what it’s bringing into the table is the proprietary large language model that we’re going to train ourselves, but we’re already doing this. But in a manual way, the automation piece of this is going to allow us to scale with literally little limitations in terms of internal capacity to bring on clients. And that’s what you have to have, you have to build a very long runway if you want to land a very large jet. So that’s what we’re seeking to do.
Ricki:
Amazing. And you’ve also announced a letter of intent with Blackpearl Group. Can you expand on what that partnership is intended to achieve and how it supports building a fully integrated ad tech stack?
Jason:
Yeah, what I would tell you about that is, I’ve been asked a lot since we put up that press, like, aren’t you guys competitors? And we’re not. So what Blackpearl Group is they’re just a brilliant data aggregator. So their job is to go out onto the internet every single day, measure every intent signal coming off of devices in the world, aggregate it and bring it in. If you looked at the Imperva study from 2025, the Bad Bot report, what we now know as a technology community that encompasses not just ad tech, but IT and security protocols and Agentic AI and all of this is that 51% of all internet traffic in 2025, and this is the first time it was a majority of traffic was automated. So it’s either algorithmic bot and of that a significant percentage that was nefarious.
Jason:
So it’s, it’s bad bot traffic, and that’s why they call it the Bad Bot report. So the implications to what we’re doing, given that that shift has happened, so quickly over the last few years , it’s imperative to understand that a company like Blackpearl aggregating all these signals, they refine it down and try to get rid of as much bot as they can, but their job is to aggregate the data. Our market position is to sit in between the large data aggregators, and in this case they’re our partner and the market, the brands, the marketers, and be that piece that refines that data, eliminates bot traffic, ensures accuracy. So they had a vested interest in allowing us to have a copy of their identity graphs, both for Europe and the US and the Pixel technology under our roof, because our play is going to go further in the refinement process.
Jason:
So it’s going to benefit their data, it’s going to benefit their clients, where their clients may come to us to help with that in partnership with Blackpearl. And it’s a great business development opportunity for both Blackpearl and us because we’re bringing them clients and now they’re in the process of introducing us to a few of theirs further refinement. So it’s just a fantastic fit for Specificity in our shareholders. The brilliant part about the Blackpearl acquisition is one of the biggest challenges in tech is getting a valuation, right? Because you see these incredibly insane valuations come out over the last few years in this space for companies that are doing ai. And then it peters out because the promise didn’t meet the technology. And so a lot of companies in our space failed to deliver what they’re promising, what we’re doing, we’re already doing it.
Jason:
We’re not pre-revenue. We’re not just coming out of the gates. We’ve been doing this for a while. So we not only have the, the proof of concept, but now by having all of this technology under our roof and in our control, because we’re going to own a copy of all this getting a valuation that’s going to be much more advantageous to us and our investors, frankly, is going to be very easy just based on the physical assets. Because this kind of technology, and we looked into it to build it ourselves we estimated somewhere in the neighborhood of about $20 million to build it. So I was successful in doing this deal with Blackpearl in a manner that gets us the technology at Specificity, ownership of it without having to lay out the cash to have it. Instead we partnered in a mutually beneficial way that that gave us the tech and gives Blackpearl a revenue stream from us. So it’s a phenomenal play. So the valuation piece is going to be a big deal, and as we acquire the tech and here in the coming weeks and maybe a couple months, we get this into our ecosystem and own it, we’re going to get a new valuation and based solely on the hard asset, it’s going to be very favorable, comparatively speaking.
Ricki:
Wow. It sounds like a really big project over there. Specificity has also begun expanding into, so signing enterprise level clients over there. What’s driving demand in that region right now and how does the European opportunity differ from that of North America?
Jason:
Well, the Euro in Europe, they’re a spaghetti mess over there. And I don’t mean as countries, I’m talking about the ad tech industry. They have what’s called the GDPR over there. And they use this thing called European Universal ID 2.0. And that’s how they do data in Europe. And you’re not allowed to aggregate buy, sell data, and it all surrounds consumer privacy. Now, the way they wrote the GDPR was intentionally vague because it encompasses all of the European Union. And so each country has different levels of protection that they want. So for example, in the UK, they don’t have nearly as rigorous standards for consumer privacy that say France has, or Germany they are very intense about the level they want. But our play coming into market with this identity graph is we don’t think a work around in the GDPR, we think it fits under it and returns the ability for marketers in Europe to do more granular targeted marketing.
Jason:
Again we’re not buying data, we’re not doing any of that. What we’re doing is we’re leveraging intent signals and there’s no personally identifiable information in the intent signal. So when we’re trying to say target people that are searching for certain products or visiting certain competitor websites or whatever the intent category may be, that data that comes in from Blackpearl and then into us is mobile ad IDs. It doesn’t say, Hey, it’s Ricky Lee and he’s sitting in London and here’s his address, here’s his date of birth and all that stuff. So we serve ads and when they go to the website, we’re just opting them in on the website. And we moving forward later this year, we’ll be able to de anonymize that data to do legally compliant outbound like email marketing, things like that. In Europe, they have not had that opportunity. And so as a result, what you find are 25-year-old guys, single guys get targeted for diaper ads and they get targeted for female products like purses and makeup, and it’s very difficult for them in Europe to target markets. So that obviously leads to a lot of waste. Our solution gives European brands control again over the audiences that they’re serving ads to. So we think Europe is a huge opportunity for this play.
Ricki:
Amazing and the company has outlined a potential tenfold increase in revenue over the next 12 to 24 months. What specific drivers give you confidence in that outlook, and where do you expect the biggest contributions to come from?
Jason:
Well, like we just covered we think we’re going to scale fairly quickly in Europe I mean, there’s already a lot of demand in Europe coming to us. So without making any forward-looking statements, that projection’s not predicated on just my gut instinct and rah rah rah. It’s not that kind of prediction. So we leverage the CRM and we practice what we preach, right? So we build our own ad tech and our own digital marketing targeted towards CMOs, CEOs, business owners for lead generation and for ourselves. So being a data company, our projection that we can grow that fast is predicated on our capture rates, our lead gen rates, the ROI out of our marketing spend, the volume of leads that we’re acquiring, the sales cycle, how long it takes from the time you meet a prospect, because with ours it’s incredibly technical. So if that sales cycle isn’t three days it can be on the small business side. But for these enterprise level brands, they really need to pop the hood and understand what we’re doing. So given the sales cycle and given the amount of opportunities in our sales funnel currently, so you do all that math and we’re pretty confident, 10x is not a huge overestimation. In fact, we’re think we’re probably being quite conservative.
Ricki:
And final question for you, Jason, then. You filed an S1 and are working toward a return to full reporting status. How does that change your access to capital and investor base, and what milestones should investors be watching over the next six to 12 months to validate that growth story?
Jason:
Yeah, sure. So when we got through the borders fraud and got back in compliance and did all of that, the OTC, along with the SEC still had us listed as alternative reporting, meaning that we weren’t required to be in compliance. That could be when you’re on alternative reporting, that doesn’t really deliver confidence for investors because maybe you’ll file your quarterly reports, maybe you won’t, it’s all of that. So it’s inherently important for investor confidence that we be fully reporting and not just by choice, but that the way we file that we are a mandatory filer. So the yield sign coming off the stock was great, but it took a couple of months, especially because we had the government shutdown here in the US right as we filed that S1. It took a couple of months to get us off of alternative reporting, and then we hit the holidays and for that reason, the stock is struggling. And we anticipated that, we expected that, but we’re very confident all that’s going to turn around.
Ricki:
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us and walking us through the latest developments at Specificity, Jason.
Jason:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Ricky. I appreciate it, man. It’s always good to talk to you.
Ricki:
Likewise. So, for more information, you can visit specificityinc.com. I’m Ricky Lee, and this has been the Capital Compass. Thank you again for watching, and I’ll see you next time.