The Billboard Insider Podcast
00:00:00 · Dave Westburg, Jonathan Gudai
[00:00:00] S0: Hi. I'm Dave Westburg, you're listening to Billboard Insider Podcast where I interview industry leaders about trends impacting The US out of home advertising business. This podcast is sponsored by Samsung LED Displays. Today's podcast guest is Jonathan Gudai, CEO of Adomni. Welcome to the show, Jonathan. [00:00:17] S1: Thanks, Dave. Great speaking with you again. [00:00:19] S0: It's been a very busy eighteen months since I last had you on the podcast. What have you and Adomni been up to since we talked last? [00:00:29] S1: Oh, boy. I mean, even just thinking in the last month or two, definitely, there... There's been so much action. You know, 2019 was a really great year for Adomni, I think also for just, you know, the programmatic out of home world. Mhmm. And and a lot of our media owner partners have talked about record sales. And then even in q one, kinda leaving 2019 going to q one twenty twenty, the market was really on fire. Mhmm. And we had amazing, amazing momentum and big plans for 2020. Of course, you know, with... Enter the the COVID pandemic and and all of our plans and hopes out of... You know, immediately kinda changed to just understanding what was going on around us and Mhmm. And trying to cope with the period that really none of us had any sort of contingency plans for, I mean, anything that we've drawn up. So, yeah, in many ways, Dave, it was... It's been the best of times and the worst of times for for a dominant industry.
00:00:29 · Jonathan Gudai, Dave Westburg
[00:00:29] S1: Oh, boy. I mean, even just thinking in the last month or two, definitely, there... There's been so much action. You know, 2019 was a really great year for Adomni, I think also for just, you know, the programmatic out of home world. Mhmm. And and a lot of our media owner partners have talked about record sales. And then even in q one, kinda leaving 2019 going to q one twenty twenty, the market was really on fire. Mhmm. And we had amazing, amazing momentum and big plans for 2020. Of course, you know, with... Enter the the COVID pandemic and and all of our plans and hopes out of... You know, immediately kinda changed to just understanding what was going on around us and Mhmm. And trying to cope with the period that really none of us had any sort of contingency plans for, I mean, anything that we've drawn up. So, yeah, in many ways, Dave, it was... It's been the best of times and the worst of times for for a dominant industry. [00:01:26] S0: Now, Jonathan, walk us through when when stay at home orders are issued, traffic plummets, what actually happened to programmatic buys? Did it go to zero? Did people have? Were some people still running? What actually happened? [00:01:42] S1: Yeah. So it's a great question, and there's a few different sides to that question. You know, there's what happened in programmatic out of home, what happened in programmatic online, what happened in out of home just in general. So, you know, obviously, we can speak for ourselves, but I think it's also important to put everything in context. [00:01:59] S0: Yes.
00:01:59 · Dave Westburg, Jonathan Gudai
[00:01:59] S0: Yes. [00:02:00] S1: You know, in in in March when, you know, the governor started telling people you must stay at home Mhmm. And everyone's hoping it was gonna be for a short while just to, you know, just to flatten the curve. Mhmm. A lot of the advertisers responded in a very extreme way. Mhmm. I mean, across the board. Right? And so Yes. You you saw companies saying, we need to pause anything and everything right now until we figure out what's going on. Mhmm. So there's some channels where hitting a pause button could happen and literally in minutes Mhmm. You're not spending money. [00:02:36] S0: Mhmm.
00:02:36 · Dave Westburg, Jonathan Gudai
[00:02:36] S0: Mhmm. [00:02:36] S1: And so so you see that in the online programmatic world and in our world as well. And so we saw that. You know, we we saw the big the big brands just wanting to be conservative while they were figuring things out in in March and April. And then for Adomni in general, it it was just, you know, it's out of home, and people are in home. So it's a tough sell, I think, for any company that's selling ads to have buyers, at least in March and April, where everyone is at at the shelter in place, appreciate the medium and wanna continue spending when in many in many cases... Not all cases, but in many cases, the audiences just weren't there. Yes. What... What's interesting, of course, is that the money is, in some ways, didn't just pause altogether. It's not like all the whole marketing world shut down. They shifted. Mhmm. Mhmm. So when when you see that Facebook still had a a growth quarter in q two, it's pretty kinda mind blowing when even despite all the uncertainty and all the fear, marketers still felt that they could reach audiences who are in their home on Instagram and Facebook. And so, ultimately, you know, when we look at the the pandemic, we kinda need to break it into different segments Mhmm. Where the March 1, April was as bad for us as probably all the rest of the the industry [00:03:49] S0: Sure.
00:03:49 · Jonathan Gudai
[00:03:49] S1: And rightfully so. And then as more and more of the markets started opening up, you know, we knew it was it was just a matter of time. It was... Is it gonna be in May? Is it gonna be in June? You know, we had we had braced for the worst, which is that q two would just be a complete wash. Mhmm. But we didn't know. And so what what we were focused on during that time was inwardly improving the technology, improving the product, thinking about data, and how we can bring data into the story so that when advertisers do resurface Mhmm. We could show them that audiences are back. And it's not just one of those, trust me. You know? This is what this media owner or operator is saying, but more of a holistic... This is what the mobile location data providers... This is what Apple... So Apple created a really great dashboard that showed the mobility of of of Apple iPhone users. Mhmm. And so that was really how we spent q two was... And and and and that's why I say it's the best of times and the worst of times. We were so productive as a company during that during that period. Had we not had this opportunity, a lot of things wouldn't have been dealt as quickly. And so that was that was the first wave. Right? That was, you know, March, April, May. Yes. And then what we started to see is that, you know, there were little nibbles in terms of marketers asking for outdoor type inventory at first. Billboards being the most prominent media type out there. And as people just started to say, I can't stay in my house anymore. I've gotta get out. I've gotta I've gotta take the kids out of the house, or I've gotta just go for a hike or whatever it it was. We really shifted our sales and approaches to to saying, look. These roadside digital billboards, in some cases, have more audience than they did before COVID happened. Yes. So you can still reach people. And so that's what our our sellers and our marketing was was was really getting behind that. Sure. There are some media types that we have that are are not open yet, whether it's cinema lobbies or gyms, you know, those kind of places. But, hey. We've got billions of impressions of billboards.
00:05:54 · Dave Westburg, Jonathan Gudai
[00:05:54] S0: Yes. [00:05:54] S1: And that was that was how it shifted where we focused on what we could do as opposed to just waiting for the market to come back around. [00:06:01] S0: And it it seems like... I I know from my own personal experience, April and May were terrible. But my revenue, as a guy that runs a roadside billboard plant, my revenue in June is now back above where it was in January. Now my sense of... And looking at the reasonable triple a numbers, that is not the case for, place based. That's probably not the case for transit and street furniture. They were all down 70 to 80% in the second quarter. So probably place based and transit's lagging, but billboard seems to have come back a little faster than maybe some other forms of out of home. [00:06:38] S1: Yeah. In many ways, that's what you would expect. Right? With the notion that, you know, if the audiences are back and these are mediums that are always on Yes. Twenty four hours a day, that... And they're not as subject to, like, governor restrictions, then... Yeah. I mean, I'm great. I'm really happy to hear that your your particular plans numbers are up. And Yep. And that's that's really encouraging. [00:06:59] S0: Yes. [00:07:00] S1: We do think that digital billboards still are in that upper echelon of media that is easy to sell or at least explain. [00:07:08] S0: Yes.