Digital Signage Today
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?
00:08:18 · Adam Malone
[00:08:18] S2: I'll maybe take it a slightly different way. David and I had a chance this year to travel to France and go to the Cannes Festival for Creativity. And I met more creatives than I have in the entirety of my career. It was, you know, there are influencers, creative content generators, folks that work at creative agencies, you know, and they're there celebrating the creative advertising work that was put on display at the festival. And to a person, conversation, you know, what do you do? What do I do? And so, you know, I had the chance to talk a little bit about the space that we love, you know, out of home media, this giant canvas, these incredible touch points along the customer journey. And it was really interesting to see and hear from the creative folks about how exciting it is for them to be able to play in that space. Hey, I only get a chance to do this four or five times a year, I wanna make sure I'm doing it right. Do you have any advice for how I can utilize? Because most of the work that they do ends up on a really small screen. And now they can come and be in particular places and spaces, they can be around certain events where a bunch of their audience or target audiences are all there and all together and experiencing the same media together, which is just sort of awe inspiring to them and sort of just seems so normal to us, but it's not like that in other media. How many people can you fit in your living room? Super Bowl ads are like a $100,000,000,000 a second or something now, and it's because there's 30 people watching altogether. It's like, that's what our space does every single day. That's what we do in the subway every single day. That's what people do in malls, etcetera. And so really thinking of it from the advertiser, from the creative, how can I engage with my audiences in the real world with a large canvas? What can I do to be able to leverage that? And it is a little bit expensive to do it at scale. There is a little bit of friction there, but it's like the stakes are high, so they have to really put the time into develop the right creative that fits in that space. And when they do it and it happens and it's done really well, it is so impactful.
00:10:49 · Adam Malone
And that's why you see all these creative campaigns blasted throughout the internet once they show up on Sunset Strip or they show up in Downtown Nashville or Austin or a place where this experiential or this digital activation took place. So I really love, yes, the technology, yes, the data, yes, a lot of this stuff is getting cheaper and more pervasive in these cities, but that just creates so much opportunity for creativity and for engagement and for sharing. I just, man, if we can just get more of these creative types to try it and learn and see the success and see the amplification of it, I just think that's one of those things that'll just create an incredible flywheel for the industry.