Madvertising by AdQuick — Advertising, Marketing & Ad Tech Podcast
00:04:05 · Barry Frey, Adam Singer
[00:04:05] S1: Got a great EBITDA too because as an association, we have to be EBITDA positive every quarter, so that works as well in the... In that level. [00:04:14] S0: So in your time at the DPA, do you wanna talk about a little bit what's changed, I guess, most dramatically about out of home? And if you wanna go... Even go further back than that, because you've been in the media industry a long time, like, what's different now than, you know, ten, twenty years ago?
00:04:32 · Barry Frey
[00:04:32] S1: Well, certainly, the digitization of out of home is most prominent, where one, as you alluded to before, where so much of traditional media has been negatively compromised by digital, we are actually enhanced by digital, and we enhance other media. Be it social. We work very well together. So that's been the biggest change, and therein what comes from digitization of the media is better targeting, better addressability. We can serve ads by time, by weather, by news. We can serve it by the audience in front of the screens. So it's very addressable, very targeted. You know, in the old days, you'd have a billboard, and it would say, you know, turn right here on the side of the road McDonald's, and that would stay there for years. Now we can change the ads, like I said, by any indicator that we like, which of course makes for the brand a much more targeted experience, limiting waste circulation. In terms of big events and elements that happened, certainly COVID was demonstrable for us. I felt like the therapist every day talking to my media owners where they had expenses and and costs and staff, but no eyeballs. And what we did though, which helped accelerate the industry, is we went down hard on programmatic. So we doubled down on programmatic. And why? Because programmatic enabled the shifting of advertising to go from where people were not to where people were. So they may not have been in office buildings, but they went to gas stations. So they shifted the advertising there. And this happened all around the world, basically, where we promoted our programmatic members. We introduced a lot of members to each other. Some members had great product, but small sales staff, so we introduced them to members that had large sales staffs. And that was a real turning point where generally, and as I could say, bigly, to quote somebody, really accelerated the growth out of home advertising. Like so many times when there's kind of bad news that happens, it instills creativity to happen and innovation to happen. So we did that during COVID as as an event there.
00:06:54 · Adam Singer
[00:06:54] S0: Yeah. And I think everything that survived COVID and out of home is a great example because now out of home is at all time high revenue. It's like it it really shows what's, antifragile. Right? What, you know, may have, you know, taken some sort of risk or or or fall but came back even stronger. I think that speaks to the quality of the medium and and really all of the companies that came back as well. Like, those companies clearly had things that were important to the world that that were durable, that were going to last through, you know, a filter like a like a pandemic or or some big event. So I I think especially because of actually a lot of things during COVID, like people glued to their devices. I think now we're seeing even more resilience in things like travel, in out of home ads, in, you know, people going to movies. You know, a lot of the new Gen Z focused movies are not high budget, like obsession and backrooms are generating, you know, incredible revenue. We just had the new Christopher Nolan movie. So I think we're seeing the world return to how it normally was, and and I think it's healthier. It's better. We shouldn't just be on our screens all day. Marketers should do bold, ambitious things. Because, really, at the end of the day, like, you know, if if if I'm just going through my own media habits, I couldn't... I'm probably served, you know, probably hundreds of ads a day on my phone and on my computer and on my TV. And I remember close to none of them, and I can actually recall the cool out of home ads I saw, not just because I work in the sector, because I take a photo of them. I share them with my friends, and I'm like, wow. This company really believes in this message. They're spending all this money for, you know, this big splashy campaign. I'm obviously biased. I'm a marketer, so I pay attention to them. But at the same time, I'm not the only one who does that. So I'm not unique.
00:08:46 · Barry Frey
[00:08:46] S1: You mentioned some great points, Adam. I I... You you... I love your descriptors. Antifragile and durable, the out of home world. You're absolutely right. And I'm gonna add something based on what you said, and that's IRL in real life. You know, we are connecting people to brands, people to each other in real life, so people are going out. Look at Major League Soccer. Look at f one. Look at the New York Knicks this year. Events and activities in addition to the movies you mentioned, people are out and about more than ever. They're they're going out more heads up than heads down. And this plays very well into our medium because we are a one to many medium out in the real world. So when you're in the real world, it's authentic. You know, as an example, authenticity, you have a lot of, you know, activity on on the web where people may be getting AI fed content or something that may be adjacent to a terrorist website or have some some bad issues around it. But when you're in a one to many medium in public, you can't hide in the sunshine. You gotta tell the truth. So it's an incredibly brand safe environment, and we are really so excited about how people are now coming out. People are engaging at events. Look at all the activities of concerts and sports over the past just six months, and we're going to be speaking a lot about that at our summit coming up in October. By the way, October, thirteenth, New York City. Reach me for details. Maybe we'll put up a a URL on this when you do it, but it's gonna be a really exciting day, and we're gonna talk all about how we are connecting, connecting with brands, connecting with each other all in real life.
00:10:30 · Adam Singer, Barry Frey
[00:10:30] S0: Yeah. We'll put a link, to the summit in the show notes so anyone listening can easily find it. I I also like... I I liked what you said about, one to many. And, you know, the large brands of the world, the the Apples, the, you know, Amazons, etcetera, they they were, like... Their most ambitious marketing is one to many. It's one message that they put to everyone. And, really, a lot of the Internet platforms that are hyper personalized, they're they're good for, you know, very end of funnel demand capture. So, you know, someone who wants to buy, like, a funny T shirt right then, sure, you might sell them or someone who's already in market for something, you know, if they were searching for a search ad. But how do they get in market in the first place, or how do they know to associate, you know, a brand with quality? And out of home is one of the final mediums where you can actually communicate things to the entire population where it's that shared [00:11:25] S1: things to your point.
00:11:25 · Barry Frey, Adam Singer
[00:11:25] S1: things to your point. [00:11:27] S0: That... Where where it's actually a shared message and shared experience. And and I think that's one thing I wrote once about out of home is it's the most Lindy ad format. So it goes back to the town square. And the fact that we can now buy this programmatically with technology, I do think using technology to make purchasing it more efficient is important. And so that's where the tech... I I think that's where a lot of the magic is in the world. For example, Uber. Right? Uber revolutionized the taxi industry. Taxi industry is not new. The the the notion of getting from point a to point b in a cab is obviously not anything, but they made it more efficient. And, you know, that... That's what we're doing and, you know, what some of the other out of home ad techs are doing. Obviously, we're doing it best, but, know, I have bias. But regardless, however you're you're buying ads, even in the real world, you should be using technology for them.