Outbound Strategy Bulletin · Dream Giant

Consensus Media Solutions

ICP Intake Questionnaire May 2026

Your answers build your ICP from the ground up. The intelligence brief Rob put together is our starting hypothesis. This questionnaire replaces our guesses with your real-world customer knowledge. The ICP we build in Apollo (firmographics, titles, geography) and the messaging layer we use in outbound (positioning, proof, triggers, anti-targets) come directly from what you write below.

Specificity wins. Vague answers produce vague targeting, which produces the wrong leads. Consensus is early-stage, so it's fine to draw on prior conversations, pilot discussions, or what you saw work at ICON. If you don't know an answer yet, leave it blank and we'll dig in on the kickoff call, but don't fill anything in unless it's true. Your progress saves automatically.

Target Companies

Walk us through your earliest customers, pilots, or the conversations you'd most want to clone.

Whether you have 5 paying customers, 2 pilots, or just a list of conversations that felt like a great fit, name them. What they do, how they came to you, why it clicked. This is the most important answer on the page. Everything downstream builds from this.

What's the revenue range of agencies you're targeting? Of brands?

Different for self-serve (agencies) vs managed service (brands). Give the floor, ceiling, and sweet spot for each. The brief hypothesizes $2M to $30M for agencies and $10M to $500M for brands, but tell us what you've actually seen.

How many employees do your ideal agencies and brands have?

Agency and brand headcounts run different profiles. Give us the range for each, and where the deal feels easiest to land. Tiny shops vs 100-person agencies behave differently.

For brand-side prospects, what level of programmatic spend signals real fit?

Annual ad spend, monthly burn, programmatic-specific spend (vs total media). What's the floor where Consensus is worth the deal-setup time?

Where are your target customers actually located? Cities, regions?

NYC, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Austin are the standard media cities, but where do YOUR conversations and relationships actually concentrate? Where would you fly in person tomorrow?

How do you split focus between agencies (self-serve) and brands (managed service) in the first 12 months?

70/30 agency-heavy? 50/50? Where do you want outbound to push hardest, and where will the early revenue come from? Agencies close faster but spend less. Brands close slower but anchor a bigger contract. Tell us how to weight effort.

Rank your target verticals from sharpest fit to weakest.

Auto, healthcare and pharma, financial services, multicultural, retail, telecom, home services, real estate. Rank in order. Which is the wedge you want to lead with, and which can wait? CodeVoyant's ZIP-level edge is sharpest in some of these.

Where is the wrong fit? Industries or company types to skip entirely?

Be specific. 'B2B SaaS with no consumer media spend.' 'Pure e-comm running only Meta and Google.' 'Holding company shops with internal trading desk mandates.' What patterns kill the deal before it starts?

Trading and Technical Environment

What DSPs do your best agency prospects already trade on?

The Trade Desk, DV360, Amazon DSP, Xandr, Basis, StackAdapt, MediaMath. List them in order of how often you see them in conversations. The DSP they use is our hook into the cold open, since Consensus Direct activates inside their existing seat.

For brand-side prospects, what's their typical programmatic setup when you walk in?

Fully agency-managed, partially in-house, fully insourced, or somewhere in between? Each posture changes the pitch. In-housing brands are your sweet spot for managed service. Agency-managed brands need a different door.

What signals on a prospect's profile tell you they actually get programmatic at a deep level?

TTD certifications, AdExchanger or Digiday comment activity, Programmatic IO or Beeler.Tech speaker history, posts about supply path optimization or cookie deprecation. The signals that say 'this person will understand the pitch in the first sentence.'

What signals tell you a prospect is TOO sophisticated, or too locked in, to need Consensus?

Internal trading desk with proprietary cohort tools? Holding company shop with locked vendor terms? Existing partnership with Audigent or Permutive? List the patterns where you can't insert, so we don't burn cycles on the wrong fits.

Personas and Titles

On the agency side, who actually writes the check? Title and seniority.

VP of Programmatic? Head of Trading? Founder-CEO at smaller shops? We want the actual buyer with spend authority, not just someone who'd take a meeting. If it varies by agency size, tell us where the line moves.

On the brand side, who writes the check?

CMO at smaller brands? Director of Media? VP of Digital Marketing? At what company size does each role even exist? Tell us where decision-making sits across the brand profile range.

Who plays the multiplier role? The person not signing the check but pulling you in.

An agency programmatic trader who'd recommend you to their director. An in-house media buyer who'd surface you to their CMO. An adtech consultant who'd plug you into 5 of their clients. Who do we pitch FOR the influence, not the budget?

Seniority floor. Lowest title worth pitching.

Manager? Director only? VP only? Goes too low and meeting volume eats Chris's calendar without producing decisions. Goes too high and the deck-jockey-in-chief filters you out before a real trader sees the pitch.

Titles that look right but never convert. Who to filter out.

'Performance marketing' people who just buy paid search. 'Digital marketing managers' who actually mean social. Junior media planners. List the title patterns that look like prospects on paper but won't move a deal.

Signals and Triggers

Think about every fit conversation you've had so far. What was the trigger that pulled them toward you?

Did an agency just lose a CTV pitch? Did a brand just bring buying in-house? Did a consultant just lose a client over inventory? Walk through what's actually been the catalyst, even in early/casual conversations. This becomes how we time outreach.

If we handed you a list of 100 agencies and 100 brands tomorrow, what 3 to 5 signals on the page would tell you which to call this week vs which can wait?

Examples: 'open req for Programmatic Trader,' 'announced in-housing in last 60 days,' 'public LinkedIn post about scale erosion,' 'recent new client announcement in auto.' These become the scoring rules in Clay that tier your list.

Are there time windows in the year where outreach lands harder?

Annual upfronts? Q4 planning? End-of-fiscal-year for auto or pharma? Pre-Programmatic IO conference cycles? When does urgency spike for your verticals? Helps us pace campaigns.

Positioning and Proof

Name every account, pilot, prior client, or published methodology we can reference in outreach.

Format: 'CodeVoyant Hispanic streamer methodology, published case for Spanish-dominant ZIP targeting.' Consensus is new, so lean on Chris's ICON International campaigns, named pilots, and any methodology that's been publicly documented. What can we credibly cite without overstating?

In your prospects' actual words, how do they describe the problem you solve?

The phrase a trader uses at 3pm when scale is dying. The complaint a media director makes about black-box vendors. 'Our CPMs are out of control.' 'The audience data feels generic.' Give us the trigger language we should mirror. Outreach in their words sounds like a peer. Outreach in yours sounds like a vendor.

When a prospect first reaches out, what do they say their problem is? How does that differ from the deeper structural issue Consensus actually solves?

Example: prospect says 'we need better CTV scale.' Structural issue: 'their DSP filter stack erodes inventory before activation, and they're solving downstream instead of upstream.' We need both for outreach: the stated complaint to open with, the structural diagnosis to follow up with.

Chris's bio, in his own words. What earns immediate credibility with a VP of Programmatic on first contact?

Specific ICON International roles and years, named campaigns or clients (with permission), conference speaking, AdExchanger contributions, certifications. Don't be modest. Operators buy from operators. This is the credibility opener for every cold message.

Who do you compete against, and how do you win?

Audigent? Lotame? Permutive? Adelaide? Eyeota? Holding company internal trading desks? Name the top 3 you actually see in deals, with a one-line beat for each. What does Consensus do that they don't?

Who do you lose to, and why?

Honest answer. Where does Consensus get out-positioned today? An incumbent vendor with locked contracts? A bigger DMP brand with more proof points? This saves us from chasing deals you'd lose anyway.

Describe an agency or brand that LOOKS like a great fit on paper but is actually the wrong customer.

The pattern that fools us. 'Active programmatic agency but actually a TTD-exclusive shop with no PMP latitude.' 'Mid-market brand spending on programmatic but actually all DSP-direct with no audience layer needed.' Save us a quarter chasing the wrong logos.

Deal Economics and Outbound

Pricing model and deal economics.

Self-serve agency access: per deal? per cohort? subscription? Managed service: % of media spend? flat fee? retainer? Pilot pricing, minimum spend, contract length. What you've actually charged or what you've tested with early prospects. Range from smallest to largest.

What does a prospect say in the first call that tells you they're a real buyer vs a tire-kicker?

The signal that makes you lean in. 'We have a media test budget approved for next quarter.' 'Our agency is dropping the ball on CTV reach.' 'I'm responsible for ROAS and have sign-off up to $X.' This becomes the SQL qualification rule. Without it we'll book meetings that waste Chris's time.

What's a realistic sales cycle from first meeting to first activation?

Likely different for each motion. Agency self-serve (pilot one deal ID, fastest). Brand managed service (full contract, slowest). Consultant white-label (somewhere in between). Give your best estimate, even if it's early-stage guess work based on prior experience.

What outbound channels have you tried, and what's worked so far?

LinkedIn DMs and content, cold email, AdTech Slack communities, Programmatic IO and Beeler.Tech in-person, partner intros, paid? Be specific: what's produced real conversations, what's burned time, what's untested.

What's the lowest-friction CTA that gets the first meeting?

'Free Cohort360 audience build for one campaign?' 'CodeVoyant geo analysis of their top 5 ZIPs?' '30-min audit of their last 90 days of programmatic spend?' What feels like a no-brainer first ask for an agency? For a brand? For a consultant?

Once all questions are answered, submit them to the Google Sheet. Answers appear on the Dreamgiant tab in Dream Giant Clients Answers.