Digital Signage Today
00:19:12 · Daniel Brown, Ari Buchalter
[00:19:12] S1: Well, it's funny you say that because even taking taxis and Uber in the last couple of years, I've noticed all these amazing advertising screens and interactive contents in the back seat where I can order products, and there's QR codes for my phone, and I get discounts, and it's it's blowing my mind, truly. Now with this growing trend, you know, we've noticed in digital signage in general, technology in business, now also in DOH. This ESG sustainability, accessibility, BEI, you know, these topics are growing thanks to pressure from consumers, industry, and the government. Yep. How can we build a programmatic DOH industry that is profitable, accessible, and maybe even aesthetic? [00:19:52] S2: So it's a great question. I think in some ways we are already doing some of those things, although I think we certainly have a lot more work to do in those areas. I'll give a couple of examples. Let's start [00:20:03] S1: with
00:20:03 · Ari Buchalter
[00:20:03] S2: sustainability. So digital screens, of course, avoid the physical waste that you have associated with printing and posting and taking down static ads. And of course, media owners who own those digital screens and operate those digital screens, they're inherently incentivized to minimize costs around things like power consumption for those screens, which themselves are getting smarter and greener every day. So I think there's already a good story to tell about the things that are organically happening in the digital out of home space from a sustainability standpoint. But as an industry, I think we do need to embrace the trend of actually measuring the carbon footprint of our media, which is something you're seeing happening a lot in other media channels, both because that kind of transparency is just the right thing to do. Right. You can't manage your manage your carbon footprint and reduce it until you actually measure it, but also because it's increasingly becoming an important decision criterion for buyers. Right. We're seeing more and more buyers care about and ask about the sustainability of their advertising efforts, right? How much power and how many cc's of carbon are associated with an advertising campaign, which may not be something you think about ordinarily, but the answer can be quite significant. So I think there's already a good story to tell, but more work to be done around that type of measurement and transparency. The other thing you mentioned or one other thing you mentioned was around DEI diversity, equity, inclusion. My view is that the strongest businesses are built on a diversity of ideas. And that in turn comes from a diversity of thought, diversity of experiences, and ultimately diversity of people. And I think out of home in general, in particular, that leadership levels in our industry, it skews a bit older white male. I am one of them, admittedly. And that's not something you can easily change overnight. I think what you have to do is look at your entire sort of people process from end to end, look at your hiring practices, look at how you train people, how you compensate people, how you promote people, and see where there may be biases in those processes that may be getting in the way of creating equal opportunities. It's not an easy thing to do.
00:22:21 · Ari Buchalter, Daniel Brown
We often need help from the outside in to help you as a business do that. But I think it's important and necessary for business success, frankly. [00:22:31] S1: Sounds like that trend we've covered, do good to do well, even if an integer [00:22:35] S2: There's another t shirt right there. [00:22:38] S1: Coffee mug. Coffee mug. [00:22:40] S2: Coffee mug. Sorry. Yes. [00:22:41] S1: Well, I love that, you know, increased data seems to show that doing the right thing is also the selfish thing, so why not do the right thing? I love that very much. We'll talk about Ian Bremmer in our next episode in political risk consulting. Now content content is key. We've been preaching this gospel for a year now, a year and a few days. Can you comment a little bit on content strategies, including creative movement or even timing, that work well or don't work well in this space?
00:23:11 · Ari Buchalter
[00:23:11] S2: So I'm not a creative, so I won't have any design wisdom pearls to share. But as a technologist, it's certainly clear that technology is creating new possibilities when it comes to design and content and creative. We already touched on, you know, probably the most talked about piece of right now with generative AI, and that's clearly going to transform our ability to create and refine content at a larger scale and at a faster pace. But at an even simpler and more immediate level, what excites me are possibilities around what we call dynamic creative, right? So normally you think of the ad, obviously for a static out of home posting, the ad doesn't change. But even for a digital out of home ad, typically, you know, the ad is just sort of sitting there on the screen. If you think about it, of course, our medium is essentially location and time, right? It's all about where and when we're reaching people in the real world on their commutes to work and shopping and filling up the tank and exercising at the gym, going out at the town. There's a ton of information about those physical contexts that can be used to change the creative in real time, make it more relevant to whatever's going on at that place at that time. So whether it's, you know, something as simple as just having a different message show up based on the time of day or during the weather, we just talked about the storms we're experiencing here in New York, good time to advertise umbrellas. Or it could be the distance to the nearest retail location or the latest promotional offer, the latest betting line on the sports game this weekend. Any real time information can be used to dynamically tailor message in real time. And we have the ability to do that dynamic tailoring now, pull in that information and present relevant messaging to the consumer. So it's sort of the proverbial, you know, last coffee mug perhaps, but the proverbial right message at the right place at the right time. And dynamic creative really makes that possible. And doing that at the scale of digital out of home in the physical world, I think is really, really exciting.
00:25:12 · Daniel Brown, Ari Buchalter
[00:25:12] S1: And as a consumer, I can testify, this is another example that doing good to do well, it actually helps me if I I need a freaking umbrella and they're charging $40 at the newsstand. Oh, wait, there's one for $10. This is perfect. This gets me home dry, you know? So you can serve the consumer and make a little money at the same time. [00:25:31] S2: No doubt. No doubt. And it's really and it also gains attention, right? Like people notice that these ads are tailored to them, right? To their locality, to their, you know, it's the movie show times at the theater around the corner. It's not just, you know, the advertising component, it's actually providing utility to the consumer that kind of helps them with, you know, whatever they're trying to do. So it's definitely a win win. [00:25:55] S1: That's brilliant. Listen, Ari, we've got, like, 10 episodes I wanna do after this. I'm a huge fan. You're you're the expert in this field, though, so I really wanna just hand you the mic. Did we miss any major themes folks should know about as we gear up for the new year?
00:26:10 · Ari Buchalter
[00:26:10] S2: Yeah. I mean, look, I think we covered a lot of good grounds, touched on a lot of key topics. In terms of themes, you know, probably one that I would offer is just to be ready for a lot more change, right? There are actually a lot of fundamental changes happening in the broader digital advertising ecosystem, not just out of home, but, you know, you think about online media, CTV, social media. A lot of those changes have to do with changes in the kinds of data that are available or not available for the targeting and measurement of advertising. And those changes are going to ripple through into our industry, I think for the better, because they're going to put out of home on a more equal footing with those larger channels. So let me explain that for a sec. So instead of traditional deterministic models of measuring campaign performance and what I mean by that, if you're running like an online campaign, you're tracking individuals who saw the ad, what actions did they take, and trying to connect those dots on a one to one basis. But as that data becomes more scarce, we're probably going to see more statistically driven approaches, things like market mix modeling sort of coming back to the fore. And those types of approaches really use the same inputs from all channels, whether it's TV or online or out of home. And so as a result, I think out of home is increasingly going to be less of a silo sort of off to the side and more a part of the broader media mix conversation, which is going to change who buys it. Right. It won't just be traditional out of home buyers, but new omnichannel buyers that are that are coming in. It's going to change what buyers are looking for. So it won't just be I want locations in these spots, but it's going to be more about audiences and impressions. And it's going to change what success looks like, right? Not just did my campaign deliver, but how did it drive the outcomes I'm looking for? And that'll touch on the sort of measurement things I talked about a second ago. So I think all of that, it's really exciting. But at the end of the day, the theme, I think, is is that, you know, tomorrow isn't gonna look like yesterday. Maybe that's the the fourth and final, coffee mug.