DigiCom - Growth Marketing Podcast · Digicom

Episode 2: An interview With Jesse Clemmens co-founder and CEO at HiTide

·25 min·1 clip

A simple DM-to-text test outperformed everything else Hightide was building and drove the pivot.

Jesse Clemmens brings a long ad-tech background to the conversation. He traces that background through about a decade in the exchange world, where programmatic ads, real-time bidding, and audience-targeted inventory shaped his experience. The career stops are familiar. He talks through time at Google, two startups that were later acquired, and most of his career at Meta, where he worked on Audience Network, gaming, and connected TV products. The conversation then turns to the product. Hightide is presented as an SMS growth tool for Shopify merchants, built to help brands move from platform-dependent reach to more direct audience access. The show spends time on that idea. Jesse describes rented audiences as places where an algorithm sits between a brand and its followers, so even a strong post may only reach a slice of the people who signed up. Owned audiences come next. He uses SMS as the clearest example, because an opted-in list gives a brand a direct line to people who have explicitly said they want to hear from it. The host keeps pressing on the practical side. That means the discussion keeps coming back to what control looks like when a marketer is trying to balance social, SMS, and the limits of algorithmic distribution. The startup story stays in frame. Jesse says Hightide is still early, that the new company launched less than eight months ago, and that the team has already learned a lot along the way. The tone stays loose. The exchange sounds like working marketers thinking out loud, with a lot of casual affirmation and repeated restatements that keep the core point easy to follow. The episode does not pretend growth is simple. It treats channel strategy as a problem of reach, ownership, and repeatability rather than a single clever tactic or a magic tool. The close is straightforward. Jesse points listeners to Twitter, LinkedIn, and GoHighTide.com, and invites brands or marketers interested in SMS and growth to get in touch.

As heard by us

A clear look at rented attention and owned reach.

Jesse Clemmens talks plainly about ad tech and growth. After about a decade in programmatic ads, with time at Google and Meta, he is now building Hightide, an SMS growth tool for Shopify merchants. The strongest part is the contrast between rented and owned audiences.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want a cleaner way to think about rented attention and owned reach, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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