Life in Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home
00:00:02 · S0, Dom Kozak, Dallas Wiles
[00:00:02] S0: Life in Programmatic Digital Out of Home brought to you by JCDecaux. Bringing together the greatest minds, discussing the latest trends, and uncovering what life in Programmatic Digital Out of Home is all about. [00:00:28] S1: Hi. Welcome to episode two of series three of Life in Programmatic Digital Out of Home. Today, I'm here with our co CEO, Dallas Wiles, who we're thrilled to have on the podcast to give us an overview of his programmatic out of home journey as a senior leader. We'll be talking about the evolution of programmatic out of home over the past five, six years, the importance of us as media owners being innovative and driving change, and how to get your senior leadership team excited about programmatic out of home. So to get us started, Dallas, could you just introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us about your background and your role at JCDecaux? [00:01:07] S2: Thanks Dom. Good to spend a bit of time with you. Obviously knowing each other for many a year at JCDecaux, but I'm Dallas, as you said, co CEO of JCDecaux and I've been lucky enough to hold this role for nearly five years now. I've been lucky enough to be in this business for the last twenty five years. I originally joined JCDecaux in April 1999 as a campaign manager. [00:01:31] S1: All the best people start from campaign managers, Dallas.
00:01:31 · Dom Kozak, Dallas Wiles
[00:01:31] S1: All the best people start from campaign managers, Dallas. [00:01:33] S2: Apparently so, Dom, apparently so. Yeah, a campaign manager and then we had the opportunity to work my way through the ranks at JCDecaux with many opportunities over the years. My role is quite an easy role, to be honest, because the world is ever evolving and the world is ever changing and we have to make sure that we continue to change and adapt for the good and for the better shall I say. And out of home is definitely a transformative trend over the last five to ten years. I suppose I believe in a sustainable but automated future and I think some of our programmatic tools and some of our services that we have created and curated with our partners like VIOOH and Displace will definitely help us for the future and it's a powerful platform that we both love and work on and why wouldn't we want to give our clients the best opportunity and our agencies even a better opportunity to communicate further by using technical solutions as part of the pretty much oldest media channel in the world. [00:02:40] S1: I guess before we kind of get into some detail about today, it's worth thinking about the past a little bit. I think we launched Programmaticly back in June 2018. Really, '19, we started to ramp up those capabilities. For you, in your role of CEO, what did the introduction of programmatic mean?
00:02:40 · Dom Kozak, Dallas Wiles
[00:02:40] S1: I guess before we kind of get into some detail about today, it's worth thinking about the past a little bit. I think we launched Programmaticly back in June 2018. Really, '19, we started to ramp up those capabilities. For you, in your role of CEO, what did the introduction of programmatic mean? [00:03:01] S2: What did it change? I suppose I was quite lucky. I think sometimes when you introduce a new offering or a new product or a new division within a business it's scary because you aren't aware of the unknown. With my background being in commercial sales and working, you know, we work closely in tandem together in all honesty on the platforms at JCDecaux. It actually gave me the comfort that we could make a change and make a difference and as you said you know introducing Programmatic to our footprint and to our plethora of solutions and products has definitely helped. I suppose was it scary? Yes. Did we have all the answers? No. But I think if you look at JCDecaux as a business globally and in The UK we've always been willing to make significant changes to our landscape but for the benefit of our community and out of home.
00:04:02 · Dom Kozak
[00:04:02] S1: Yeah, I mean genuinely, I would say a little bit weird or a bit maybe, unusual certainly for other people that I speak to that someone who heads up programmatic within the business has, you know, their senior leadership actually understand details of the platform and how it works and all of that. It's it's actually quite an unusual thing. For me, I think that speaks a little bit about, you know, all the things we're very good at within this business, I think, is actually nurturing the right talent to get And people into right that means that you do have that kind of deep, deep understanding, which is, for me, makes my life a lot easier that I don't have to talk in, you know, very slow sentences to you. What are those kind of main opportunities, but also the main challenges from five years ago, and and how have they evolved in kind of the five or six years we've been trading very dramatically?
00:04:48 · Dallas Wiles
[00:04:48] S2: I suppose the million dollar question was always asked by clients and agencies why are you doing programmatic? You know because there are those misconceptions of programmatic in other channels, the unknown you know how accurate, how truthful was it. And we have to make ourselves relevant and in any sector, in any business that is always evolving, you need to make sure that you're on the front foot and move with the times and sometimes try to be ahead of the times. I suppose the early conversations that I had with people when they heard about our journey and our investment and joint proposition with VIOOH was why is this different to other programmatic? And I suppose what we had to do was not persuade people but say to people is if you can hit an audience that is in an open mindset, in a public domain, that cannot be turned off, is visible and people are in different modes be it work, be it personal, be it social, why wouldn't you want to execute programmatically and out of home? I remember someone saying to me, one of the independent agencies said to me, do you know what? On a Saturday we would sometimes spend £50,000 in the Daily Mail online trying to target rugby audience. Now why wouldn't you want to target the rugby audience on rail when they're traveling to the ground or walking to the ground or commuting to the ground or driving to the ground? Know we've got a captive audience we had to be part of that journey and as you and I know we often discuss the revenue figures week in week out Dom. We're taking more money on weekends now than we ever have. Absolutely. Because there is a platform that's automated and there's less of that manual intervention. Now look at the recent revenue growth that you know JCDecaux Holdings you know shared. Out of home programmatic has grown significantly over the last five years let alone over the last two years and I think you know the success stories that we can point to and I know we'll talk about the Programmatic Awards later on that we've launched but there were plenty of success stories out and about. So join the evolution or join the revolution whichever way you want to see but I do think more people are taking notice and I think that we're in a very strong position and working for JCDecaux, you've always got the premium asset.
00:07:24 · Dom Kozak
[00:07:24] S1: I think there's two messages that perhaps people don't understand about out of home often. One is exactly that being a media for good, 46 being the pound, going back into the community in one way or another. And the other is the fact that we are, inherently, we reach all audiences. Anyone who leaves a home is accessed by out of home. You know, we're not, we're not discriminatory. You can reach those absolute niche audiences and could be really egalitarian in your in your market planning, which you can get a great advantage. Thinking back to these other first conversations with agencies and brands about programmatic Out-of-Home, You you got any examples of how they played out?