Digital Signage Today
00:08:40 · Daniel Brown, Chris Grosso
[00:08:40] S1: And the power of local communities. And what strikes me hearing you talk about even the... Some of the AI generated content making it more affordable. I'm thinking, okay. We're seeing a mass movement towards the democratization of the digital signage and advertising landscape for small to mediums, indies, mom and pops. So I'm thinking, well, if I own a little, you know, bar and grill near the stadium, suddenly maybe I can, start profiting and leveraging from this in the same way that, one of the big beverage companies is, and that further builds the local community and puts money back into the local community. [00:09:11] S2: Yeah. No. I think that that's very, very much true. And I think one of the the real opportunities for for marketers when they're supporting the transit or the street furniture or or some of these other advertising categories is that the media investment people are making is immediately going back to the community. So whether it's us or JCDecaux does this, Outfront does this as well, it's not just us, but a lot of times, collect that revenue, a lot of that revenue goes right directly back to the community in terms of literally cash payments. And another big chunk of that revenue will go to fund critical amenities like the bus shelters, like the free WiFi, like the digital communication networks. So, you know, it's a way for brands to really, really support these communities in a positive way.
00:09:11 · Chris Grosso, Daniel Brown
[00:09:11] S2: Yeah. No. I think that that's very, very much true. And I think one of the the real opportunities for for marketers when they're supporting the transit or the street furniture or or some of these other advertising categories is that the media investment people are making is immediately going back to the community. So whether it's us or JCDecaux does this, Outfront does this as well, it's not just us, but a lot of times, collect that revenue, a lot of that revenue goes right directly back to the community in terms of literally cash payments. And another big chunk of that revenue will go to fund critical amenities like the bus shelters, like the free WiFi, like the digital communication networks. So, you know, it's a way for brands to really, really support these communities in a positive way. [00:10:00] S1: That's brilliant. We were just talking to, in Spokane, we were talking to the public facilities department about how, you know, it's it's not a for profit thing when they bring in these big concerts to the public arenas. It's it's how they're funding the infrastructure, and that benefits everybody in the local community. And I think that's a very powerful thing. Now in terms of the technology used, are we talking about epaper? Are we talking about traditional LEDs? Is it some kind of mix? In terms
00:10:26 · Chris Grosso
[00:10:26] S2: of our signage? Yeah. You know, I think, look, there's two big buckets. Right? I mean, we'll do traditional LEDs that could be both small format or large format. LEDs is is kind of our... You know, that's kind of the bread and butter of our digital business. But there's also just the traditional static printed advertising that also works well. But, you know, what we've been able to do and what the industry has been able to do is overlay digital technology on the printed ads so that, you know, we have a sense based on the digital mobile devices that data that you can get from third parties in a privacy friendly way to understand who's actually seeing the ad and what they do afterwards. What's really interesting, and again, I think this is the medium and the locations more than anything, is that every time we looked at whether or not people who've seen ads and interacted with the ads and what they've done afterwards, these ads have huge performance in terms of driving online behavior. People see the ad, they might see the ad digitally, they might see the ad static, but then they will take an online action afterwards. So it's a very valuable way for brands to acquire customers, build relationships with customers and acquire customers as well. And that goes beyond both the digital sign for sure, but also even the traditional printed sign as well.
00:11:43 · Daniel Brown
[00:11:43] S1: We've talked about sort of the collapse of the silo where digital signage and digital advertising is becoming this huge interconnected entity. It's almost like the metaverse in a sense where even a printed ad is part of the metaverse because of the QR code and because of the mobile interactivity. Exactly. Do you have a word to say to folks about the power, advertisers about the power of, hey, you need to embrace this sort of metaverse mobile interactive world? Well, yeah.
00:12:10 · Chris Grosso, Daniel Brown
[00:12:10] S2: I mean, there's no, look, there's no substitute for real life. We learned this during COVID. We learned this after COVID. You know, the ability to interact with people when they're living their real lives is hugely, hugely valuable. And I think that there's no substitute for it. So you can get a lot of the benefits that you have from your digital advertising, but you also get all this way higher engagement by interacting, you know, putting your ads in front of people in physical space where they can't skip it, where they're, you know, people are tired of looking at screens and looking at their down at the screen, so they're seeing things in physical space. You really can cut through the clutter in a way the digital advertising can't, but you get all the metrics and data and goodness that you can from your digital ads, plus all the benefits of being in physical space. So I think it's a very much, a very, the value that can be created from the out of home advertising, I think you're gonna see a ton of growth over the next three or four years because there's a lot of untapped opportunity for marketers to to leverage this medium for sure. [00:13:20] S1: What kind of creative, what kind of content, what kind of things should you do in this crowded landscape to stand out from the competition? Is it should you have... Is it the seven second rule? Is it the motion rule? Like, what kind of stuff are you seeing?
00:13:33 · Chris Grosso
[00:13:33] S2: I think it's the useful rule. I think you want to have screens that provide value to the the the consumer and the person walking down the street. And if you provide value, they're gonna pay attention. And value can come in different ways. It can come what time my train is coming. It could be the weather. It could be the sports scores. It could be art. It could be a fun fact. But what we've seen time and time again is that you can condition people to look up to get a little piece of information or a little piece of happiness about their day, and then you can put the ads in as well. So I think, you know, having engaging content on the screens is always job one. I mean, more important than anything else, if you've got great content that people are gonna engage with, they're gonna look at your screens. And that's part one. Part two is location, right? If you put the screen in the right place, they can't help but see it. And one of the reasons I spent much of my career in digital media, and one of the things I always loved about the out of home space is from an audience development perspective, if you put the placement right, you you... You've gotten half the battle. There's no... You you can't get disintermediated by one of the online platform companies. It's there. You walk down the street and you see it. And that goes back to where we started, which is you wanna be where places where people are convening at mass and at scale. And, you know, a place like Penn Station, that's every day. A place like Times Square, that's every day. But almost every weekend, that's that's one of these stadiums, and and that could be a football game or, you know, what we really saw, you know, this summer was Taylor Swift and and the the massive impact that she and her concerts had on on the economy and on on these cities was was huge. And and, you know, that doesn't happen online. That only happens in real life.