Digital Signage Today
00:11:47 · Daniel Brown
[00:11:47] S1: That's impressive. That's impressive. It it reminds me of all the cooler ads that you'll see at some of the big grocery lines. And Right. We've chatted with, Ori Moore about his WiCharge product, which now allows wireless power transmission to screens like that on shelves at the point of purchase. And I think during our interview with him and, I think it was Daniel Brown, they said that studies show that, what, 90% of purchases happen there. So why not have advertising at the point of purchase? It's a it's a win win for everybody. Exactly. I love that. Well, I'm curious. So getting more into the nitty gritty of the, I suppose, the aesthetic side, but there's also a lot of database decision making. What are some of the basic rules of success for successful programmatic digital out of home? And nested into that, what are some of the don'ts, some of the things that people should avoid that you keep seeing the big mistakes?
00:12:36 · Ari Buchalter
[00:12:36] S2: Yeah. So in terms of rules for success, you know, approach that from the standpoint of the seller. It's important to keep in mind that lighting up your inventory with a programmatic partner doesn't automatically mean that gobs and gobs of money are going to start flowing in while you sleep. Actually, some money that will happen to some degree. But to really maximize the opportunity, you do have to provide some care and feeding to it, right? You have to make sure that all the information about your inventory is accurate and up to date, where the screens are located, what kind of screens they are, what kind of advertising formats they support. You also have to make sure that you're packaging it in ways that buyers are looking for. So, you know, buyers may want to buy grocery stores. Generally, they may want to buy, you know, people shopping for baby food in particular. So you just want to make sure that the way you're merchandising it and communicating what this inventory is to the market matches what the kinds of audiences and context that buyers are interested in. And you want to make sure that the partners you're working with understand the unique value that your inventory brings, right? What's special and different about your screens, your locations, that it's important that the buy side knows. So a good SSP partner, a good supply side partner can certainly help you do all of that. But it does take some work. The folks that are most successful at this do end up having a small group of internal folks and resources that are dedicated to those kinds of tasks if it really is going to be a large part of the business. Because like anything else, what you get out is a function of what you put in.
00:14:16 · Daniel Brown
[00:14:16] S1: Oh, I'm just going to say that was such a great line. I'm going to put that on a T shirt. I'll share royalties with you. What you get out is what you put in. It's really good.
00:14:24 · Ari Buchalter
[00:14:24] S2: And of course, I didn't make that up, but it's certainly true and accurate in this context. So the other question you asked was, what are some of the don'ts that people should avoid? You know, I think oftentimes people are just sort of happy to get any money flowing through the pipes and maybe don't take as close a look at it as they should. I think one of the issues in our space is around transparency with regard to all the economics behind the transactions. And this is sort of a bigger question and issue that exists in the programmatic landscape generally. Some sellers are content to take whatever they can for the inventory that would otherwise go unsold, but it's possible they could be getting even more. So you imagine, let's say a buyer was willing to bid $10 CPM or cost per thousand impressions for a particular ad slot, but maybe somehow down the chain that only got communicated to the seller as a $5 CPM. So obviously, dollars 5 getting taken out somewhere in the middle, and that's obviously not a situation that benefits either the buyer who's getting less media for their budget, nor the seller who, of course, would be realizing less revenue. But it can and does happen with some platforms if you don't have sort of full transparency. And so from my view, it's really important that sellers demand that transparency from their programmatic partners into the complete economics of every transaction, whether it's a so called private marketplace deal or an open auction transaction. These are just different ways that programmatic media can transact. Regardless of that transaction mechanism, getting that transparency all the way up to the true price that the buyer on the other side is paying and any fees that come out along the way. I think that's really, really important to have a healthy, thriving ecosystem. And I encourage all sellers to ask those questions.
00:16:21 · Daniel Brown, Ari Buchalter
[00:16:21] S1: So this is where it sounds like I keep hearing we need more data based decision making, be good at math or hire someone who's good at math to help you optimize. [00:16:30] S2: Yeah, that's exactly right. And make sure that you have all the relevant data, right? Again, what you get out as a function of what you put in. So if you don't know all the information going in, you can't make the best decisions and ensure that you're getting the maximum value from it. [00:16:45] S1: Well, listen, you kind of went into the trends a little bit earlier, so I wanna expand. You know, I keep going to these business summits, and I keep hearing somebody say the line, programmatic's only a tiny portion of the overall duo space globally space globally, and they're kind of dismissive sometimes, which makes no sense to me. It's been growing very, very fast, and we've been following some of the international markets and emerging markets where it's got logarithmic increases. What kind of trends are we looking at over the next decade, and how can smart business folks cash in?
00:17:17 · Ari Buchalter
[00:17:17] S2: Yeah. Logarithmic or even exponential, which would be even faster growing. Digital out of home is certainly the fastest growing component of out of home more broadly. And then within digital out of home, programmatic piece is even faster growing still. It is, I think, a little bit tough to come by reliable estimates, but my guess, and this is just a rough guess, is that programmatic digital out of home is kind of somewhere in the neighborhood of roughly $500,000,000 market in The US today. That's, of course, not including rest of the world that may perhaps double that. And it's growing at high double digit rates. So overall, out of home may be growing at low single digit. Digital out of home may be sort of low double digit growth, 10%, 12%, something like that. But programmatic digital out of home is going to be multiples higher than that, probably somewhere between 50100% year over year growth at this rate. You know, it's always hard to project out the future, particularly far out in the future. But if you look at how every other digital channel has evolved, and by that, I mean online advertising, mobile advertising and so forth, Programmatic has come to account for about 85 to 95% of how those channels transact. So personally, I don't think digital out of home is going to be the only channel that ends up bucking that trend, and for some reason not. You know, also achieving that that type of majority share of transactions. It is still, you know, relatively small today, 500,000,000 in The US, perhaps again, of a total $8,000,000,000 out of home market. But it is it is fast growing, and it is, you know, gaining the attention of new buyers. Right? So it's not just that more money is flowing in, but it's coming in from places that hadn't bought out of home before, and that's really exciting to sellers.