Digital Signage Today
00:00:10 · Judy Mottl, David Weinfeld
[00:00:10] S0: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Digital Signage Today podcast. I'm Judy Mottl, editor of Digital Signage Today. I'm very excited about our guests, David Weinfeld and Adam Malone, the cofounders of Screenverse, which provides digital at a home advertising. So David has over thirteen years in digital at a home, including launching networks and building Vistar Media's supply side business, where he expanded media owner partnerships from 30 to 120 plus and helped create a multimillion dollar software as a service business. Adam brings fifteen years in out of home media, growing DOmedia to 1,500,000,000 in annual transactions, and later leaning supply, finance, and marketing at Screenverse with a focus on partnerships and innovation. So thanks for being here, David and Adam. [00:01:09] S1: Thank you for having us. [00:01:10] S0: So we're gonna talk about the shift with Digital Ada Home from static signage to a fully digital data driven medium, which is being driven by technology. And that's everything from digital ad marketplace connections to smarter CMS, real time data, automated pricing, but also by the marketplace itself. And for network owners, it's a pivotal moment. It's no longer enough to have screens connected. The question is whether those screens are configured, standardized, and discoverable in the ways that buyers actually plan and purchase media. But before we start diving into the whole industry shift, why don't you guys kick us off with a little bit about who and what Screenverse is all about?
00:01:10 · Judy Mottl, David Weinfeld
[00:01:10] S0: So we're gonna talk about the shift with Digital Ada Home from static signage to a fully digital data driven medium, which is being driven by technology. And that's everything from digital ad marketplace connections to smarter CMS, real time data, automated pricing, but also by the marketplace itself. And for network owners, it's a pivotal moment. It's no longer enough to have screens connected. The question is whether those screens are configured, standardized, and discoverable in the ways that buyers actually plan and purchase media. But before we start diving into the whole industry shift, why don't you guys kick us off with a little bit about who and what Screenverse is all about? [00:02:03] S1: Absolutely. So Adam and I founded Screenverse a little over five years ago with really the sole goal of leveraging world class people and technology to best monetize digital screens in the physical world. And what we found the best way to do that was using programmatic technology. So our responsibility for the network partners that we work with, which today accounts for over a 130,000 screens and more than 20 different networks, is that we are going to best manage and monetize their inventory through programmatic marketplaces like Vistar, Place Exchange, BroadSign, and now Purion, and unlock demand from digital buyers, omni channel DSPs like The Trade Desk, and ensure that our partners who often cases are challengers or are companies that aren't media businesses at their core can best compete in what is a very dynamic marketplace.
00:02:03 · David Weinfeld, Judy Mottl
[00:02:03] S1: Absolutely. So Adam and I founded Screenverse a little over five years ago with really the sole goal of leveraging world class people and technology to best monetize digital screens in the physical world. And what we found the best way to do that was using programmatic technology. So our responsibility for the network partners that we work with, which today accounts for over a 130,000 screens and more than 20 different networks, is that we are going to best manage and monetize their inventory through programmatic marketplaces like Vistar, Place Exchange, BroadSign, and now Purion, and unlock demand from digital buyers, omni channel DSPs like The Trade Desk, and ensure that our partners who often cases are challengers or are companies that aren't media businesses at their core can best compete in what is a very dynamic marketplace. [00:03:08] S0: And it is, I mean, I think consumers are embracing digital advertising, you know, more than ever these days. So my first question for you guys, since you're in the thick of it, what is the state of digital out of home right now?
00:03:26 · Adam Malone
[00:03:26] S2: Well, we can tell you what it looks like from what we say is the growing part of the growing part of the market. So back to your original question or the intro question, we do think that there are a lot of these very powerful trends converging that are helping companies like ours and the kind of networks that we work with start to compete and win and build these kind of viable networks, even at smaller scales than they could have ever previously done. So one of the things, one of the sort of trends that's converging is the fact that the hardware for some of these screens, 55 inches screens, even digital billboards, if you think about some of the original digital billboard conversions and constructions, these were $500,000, 600,000 projects. And then now you can get a commercial LG or Samsung screen that shines bright. You can see it across the street in the middle of the day in Phoenix, Arizona, you can get that for two orders of magnitude less than that. And so, there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of open questions still around how do you weigh the value of a giant screen versus a smaller screen and the kind of audiences that get delivered. But fundamentally, it's cheaper to build and reach audiences at scale. You can build these networks faster, you can sell them quicker and easier through programmatic tools. You don't have to stand up a local sales team, then a regional sales team, a national sales presence in New York and Chicago, you don't really have to build it that way, slowly, incrementally. And by adding tons of people, you can just kind of build assets that have media value, as long as you get the right audience data associated with it, as long as you plug into the right monetization pipes, you can start to sell and use that to fund expansion. And that's really exciting for us. So like good ideas and solid entrepreneurs, they have an opportunity to thrive and to build profitable businesses in the first year. And that's not something that in my fifteen years of being in this space was really easy. It might've been possible to do, but it certainly wasn't as easy as it is today. So we're super excited about the kind of folks that that's attracting to the space and the networks that we see as they flourish today.
00:06:11 · Judy Mottl, David Weinfeld
[00:06:11] S0: So the technology and the innovation is actually expanding the opportunities, you know, both on your end and also on the end of the customer base that where, you know, there's a big piece in the market that never was able to do that 500,000, million dollar project, right? [00:06:33] S1: And honestly, I think it also elevates out of home, which again is one of the oldest legacy media channels and elevates it within the minds of today's advertisers who, again, are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in digital channels. And so it really allows out of home to embrace the digital in digital out of home and really go toe to toe with those other channels that are seeing significantly higher volumes of spend. And because you're meeting people in the physical world, in moments that matter throughout their day, you have the ability to reach them during purchase journeys. You have them ability to reach them during major paths to purchase and major points of decision. And that's really where we see such enormous opportunity for this channel. And the fact that really is technology that is both elevating out of home in the eyes of advertisers, buyers, consumers, but also technology that is democratizing access to billions of dollars of advertising budgets that never used to invest in this channel.
00:06:33 · David Weinfeld, Judy Mottl
[00:06:33] S1: And honestly, I think it also elevates out of home, which again is one of the oldest legacy media channels and elevates it within the minds of today's advertisers who, again, are investing hundreds of billions of dollars in digital channels. And so it really allows out of home to embrace the digital in digital out of home and really go toe to toe with those other channels that are seeing significantly higher volumes of spend. And because you're meeting people in the physical world, in moments that matter throughout their day, you have the ability to reach them during purchase journeys. You have them ability to reach them during major paths to purchase and major points of decision. And that's really where we see such enormous opportunity for this channel. And the fact that really is technology that is both elevating out of home in the eyes of advertisers, buyers, consumers, but also technology that is democratizing access to billions of dollars of advertising budgets that never used to invest in this channel. [00:07:48] S0: Right. And like I mentioned earlier too, the fact that the average person is paying more attention And kind of maybe even actually looking for that digital channel for insight, think is a big piece of it as well. So when we look at, you know, we're looking at all the great innovation, the great expansion, what are some of the biggest opportunities then for a digital out of home network?