Digital Signage Today
00:15:13 · Daniel Brown
[00:15:13] S1: Are there any mistakes people are making that you think, hey. Avoid this. And are there any untapped opportunities that you're like, man, you know, smart businesses should really be jumping in here quick?
00:15:24 · Chris Grosso
[00:15:24] S2: I think the biggest untapped opportunity is retail media. I think the amount of digital signage that is close to adjacent to retail locations is is is large. I think every anecdotal piece of data I've seen is when you see an ad for something outside of a store to go buy the thing, you buy the thing. And, you know, retail media is growing at massive rates. And I do think a large... A a chunk of that ought to go to out of home because you can get a lot of that same... Just like you're buying, you know, retargeting on the Internet for retail media, buy the ad outside the store. It's just... It it... It's not rocket science. It will have huge impact on the business. That's a massive untapped opportunity for people. In terms of things people to look out for, I do think thinking about when to transition from a printed sign to a digital sign and making that transition at the right time and in the right places is hugely important. You get three, four, five times as many ad impressions from a digital sign than a printed sign based on the flips. And you gotta make sure that the math pencils out to spend the money on a good digital sign because, you know, it's expensive to put one of these in, it's expensive to operate these things. So you want to make sure it's there in the right locations and at the right scale that makes sense. I think when I got into this job, when I started in out of home eight years ago, my view was digitize everything. And reality is you can get a lot of the benefits in your printed ads by putting things like QR codes and the digital data that you can pull together from the printed ad. So you want to do a lot of digital, but you want to do the right amount of digital in the right places. I think getting that balance right is one of the most important determinants on whether a business model is going to be successful in this space.
00:17:06 · Daniel Brown
[00:17:06] S1: I've been hearing so many C level folks and consultants and researchers talk about the physidigital or the phygital, and making your brand identity, your brand story kind of straddle both, you know, the physical and the digital. Make your make your physical digital. And it sounds like that's tracking very well. And I also love how you mentioned retail media, exploding. We saw Amazon, Walmart, Kroger. There's so many brands jumping onto this. And we talked to Ori Moore of YCharge, who globally, they're they're expanding in retail media because at the point of sale, that's the point of decision and research is really showing impact. And what I also love in this industry is that folks are starting to say, oh, database decision making is not just for IT. Well, let's look at the data. What does the data say? And it's showing amazing things about the ROI of these digital signs. On a personal aesthetic level, what's one of your favorite ads or contents or examples that you saw? And you said they nailed it. I
00:18:00 · Chris Grosso
[00:18:00] S2: think outside... Leaving aside our stuff, you know, just as an industry observer, I think a lot of the large format work in in three d in places like Times Square has been very, very impression... Impressive aesthetically and really, really good, like hat tip to the folks doing many of those campaigns. Going back to some of the stuff that we do, the things I like best are our ability with products like Link to take over a city at scale at a moment in time. So, you know, in New York, there's this thing called Manhattanhenge, where the sun lines up with the street grid. And, you know, we sold a sponsorship for someone to sponsor and take over the entire city at that moment. And the ability to have all the screens basically with an ad referencing Manhattanhenge with the sun, like, you know, lined up right on the street grid was really cool. And I think the ability... As I said, I think these... The ability with our medium and in our media to be able to take over a city at scale very quickly at a moment in time and really bring a city together in a way that is very hard to do, as the thing I like best on what we do. But, you know, as I look at, you know, when I think about our, some of our competitors, because we're not in the billboard space, I think what folks are doing with these big, format screens in some of these places is also really, really impressive. And, you know, I think what's great about our medium is these products really work together in in in tandem in a pretty compelling way.
00:19:38 · Daniel Brown
[00:19:38] S1: And by the way, the public safety benefits, that's growing as well. So that's a great benefit. And I think it ties into one thing. What are your thoughts on making your digital out of home, whether it's football, smart city, retail, beyond, sustainable, making it privacy friendly? And can you do that and also be super successful? What's the mix?
00:20:00 · Chris Grosso
[00:20:00] S2: Yes. Well, look. Privacy friendly is is core to what we do. We work with municipalities, so they... We need to do right by them, and they're they're pretty clear on their expectations around privacy. So we... Everything we do is extremely privacy friendly. We don't use personally identifiable data. We do not target people in public space. You know, the minority report world of, hey, Chris, we know you looked at something online and we're going to retarget you in public space. We don't do that. I don't think that's something that can be done in a privacy friendly way. So you have to do that. As for sustainability, I agree it's something that we take very seriously as well. Things we've done, you know, on the static side and the printed side is a little bit easier. So for instance, we've got shelters where we do have lighting in the bus shelters and the the printed screens are backlit, and we power those by solar panels, which is a double win because it's better for the environment and it's actually cheaper to install because you don't have to pull power and about the same or a little bit cheaper to operate. And, you know, we're testing electric vehicles to go out and service our our our signs. On the digital side, it's a little bit harder, but we are looking at environmentally friendly, sustainable, renewable energy sources for many of our digital products as well. And then look, inherently in our business, we are very sustainable give back to society because the biggest, one of the biggest levers the city has to reduce this environmental footprint is mass transit. And our whole business is based on supporting mass transit. So as I said earlier, if, you know, brands that wanna do good, support your mass transit systems. Right? Sponsor the electric vehicles or electric buses that are taking people around cities, which are taking huge amounts of carbon out of the... Well, not taking carbon out of the atmosphere, but avoiding carbon footprint. Is it very easy that if if brands want to associate with environmentally friendly causes, the transit system's about as environmentally friendly cause you can get.