Digital Signage Today
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.
00:11:38 · David Weinfeld
[00:11:38] S1: Yeah, and I would add that when you look at out of home in The US, it is 2.5 pennies of every media dollar. What that essentially means is that there's an enormity of spend that's going to channels like social, online video, display, now CTV audio, that are getting the lion's share of dollars. And when you think about how memorable, impactful out of home is and really digital out of home and the type of dynamic creative opportunities to Adam's point that are available. But also it is really about elevating and educating the buy side and helping them understand that thanks to platforms like Vistar and PlaceExchange and BroadSign and Perion, that it's now easy to buy. It's easy, really more easy than it's ever been to identify the right type of inventory against your target audience, and even more so being able to measure the impact of that. We work with a great partner in ADCS Insights, where you're actually able to do sales lift at scale in a economically affordable way. And so when it comes down to it, digital out of home can be seen as both an incredible brand awareness channel, but truly a performance channel in the eyes of digital buyers. And when you think about the sea of sameness that exists within the likes of Instagram or Facebook, or how forgettable a mobile ad on your phone is, start then contrasting that with a 100 inch four k HD screen in a residential lobby or in your doctor's office or on the corner of 5th Avenue. And that's when I think brands will truly see the overwhelming opportunity that exists within our channel. And our hope is that, you know, we can elevate our network partners and really elevate the whole of industry so that we can get more of that 2.5¢ and continue to fight for our fair share of that media dollar.
00:14:07 · Judy Mottl
[00:14:07] S0: So is the measurement aspect, which is getting better, obviously, one of the challenges still facing the industry?
00:14:20 · Adam Malone
[00:14:20] S2: Yeah. Yeah. And if we had more than thirty minutes, I think we'd dig into, we'd hit this from multiple angles, but I'll say something maybe controversial, which is, you know, we're gonna get the measurement solution or the audience and an impression solution that we pay for. And I think a lot of the, you know, I think a lot of the agenda around Geopath and Purview and these other things is kind of missing the point, right? It really, you cannot expect an industry wide universally accepted platform and dataset for $10,000,000 or $5,000,000 or $2,000,000 in annual committed support. That same $100,000,000,000 in spend that's going into what we call traditional digital or digital display or online video, probably 10¢ of that dollar goes into verification and targeting. And so, that's $10,000,000,000 of paying for the data efficacy of that media. That's the scale of investment, right? It'll be relative to our, you know, maybe 10,000,000,000, but there's no reason, like if we wanna really do this right, and make it so that The US out of home industry is not a $10,000,000,000 industry, but a 20 or 30, it might take a billion in spend, in committed spend. And how you do that with the various business models, the way they do it in programmatic digital is that it's built into the CPM. It's just part of what you pay for when the advertiser spends a dollar in the system, 10¢ of it goes to buy the dataset and get the verification done. I think that's reasonable, right? I think that's reasonable. And if we really want innovation to come in, if we really want entrepreneurs to come in, spend tens and tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars cultivating these data sets and really, really at scale, then let's let them make some money. Let's let them make two X, three X on their investments in these systems. I haven't seen the big guys want anyone else to make money, any of the new entrants into this space to make that level of money. So I'm a little reticent to see that happening, but that's the kind of a bold idea around measurement that I think if we allow ourselves to imagine a future that looks different than the present, we are all investing a tremendous amount more, in order of magnitude more, at least in data and measurement, if we wanna go and compete and win at the higher levels.