Digital Signage Today
00:05:30 · Daniel Brown, Ari Buchalter
[00:05:30] S1: I love that. That's the most tight definition I've heard yet. So well done there. [00:05:36] S2: Thank you. [00:05:38] S1: Well, this makes me wonder. I hope you don't mind me asking an unplanned question that just popped in my head as you're chatting about this because it sounds like this is a big data, operation on both the supply side, the demand side. And I have heard nothing but AI for the past quarter, two quarters, three quarters, and I've had to write about nothing but AI. And I'm curious, are you seeing a lot of changes in your industry and work based on this new AI phase and the hype cycle and so forth?
00:06:06 · Ari Buchalter
[00:06:06] S2: Yes, is the short answer. There is a lot of data that goes back and forth in the programmatic out of home world. It's not exactly the same types of data as you have in other parts of the advertising ecosystem, right? A lot of the data people talk about with online and social is sort of data about users. In our world, of course, this is a one to many medium. We're not tracking people and targeting individuals on a one to one basis. But there's a tremendous amount of data about the screens themselves. Where are they located? What is the venue? What's going on at that place and time? And you have that across hundreds or even thousands of different media owners and hundreds of thousands or even millions of screens. And then, of course, a lot of different data about the advertisers and creatives that can be appearing on those screens. So we're seeing AI come into play in a couple of different ways. One is clearly around the development of that creative of the ads themselves, you know, using generative AI to think of new words and pictures that you can put on the screens at a rate that humans simply can't do. So kind of idea for creative, but also using AI and kind of its cousin machine learning to sift through all of that data and understand what combinations of screens may work best against what combinations of audiences at what times to really optimize campaigns in ways that just humans using spreadsheets just wouldn't be able to do. There are probably lots of other ways that AI is going to be used in our industry that we haven't even thought of yet. So I think it's just the beginning of the first inning, but it's clear it's going to have a big impact.
00:07:51 · Daniel Brown, Ari Buchalter
[00:07:51] S1: Well, we're going to have to cut the podcast short because you used a sports metaphor, Ari, and I just can't have that. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. This is great. Well, we'll have a follow-up episode just about the AI and the machine learning because Awesome. [00:08:04] S2: Three episodes already out of one. It's great. [00:08:06] S1: Now I'm curious, Ken, this is this is a world where I've seen the emergence after COVID, small to medium businesses, independent businesses. Sometimes I'll walk in and I'll see, to my surprise, a kiosk or a screen or something, or I'll see some advertising. I'm like, oh, they're getting involved. How can small to mediums and indie businesses start getting into the programmatic digital out of home game? And is there a way maybe they can take a piece of the pie, maybe get some of that cost recovery by running ads for large, large brands?
00:08:39 · Ari Buchalter
[00:08:39] S2: Yeah, absolutely. And programmatic is really a great way to do that because if you are a smaller business, a restaurant, coffee shop, what have you, selling advertising is not your top priority. Even deploying screens isn't necessarily a core part of your business. But obviously advertisers want to be able to reach consumers wherever they are, whether it's a coffee shop or a laundromat or what have you. And the cost of deploying screens is going down. There are a lot of partners out there that can help make that process especially easy and turnkey. But then you, of course, have to generate the demand, the advertising dollars that will show up on those screens. And if you are a smaller business, again, this isn't your core focus, and you don't necessarily have time or resources to hire people to go out and pound the pavement and sell ads on these screens. So what programmatic does really well is it offers a direct line into potential demand for that inventory. And the good news is it's pretty easy to activate. There's been a lot of standards developed so that if you do have a screen, lighting it up with a programmatic partner that can bring you demand is a pretty easy and quick set of steps, can be accomplished in a couple of weeks to a couple of hours, depending on if you have everything set up and ready to go. So from a seller standpoint, whether you're the one deploying the screens or you're the small business in which the screens are getting deployed, the good news is that it's pretty easy to activate demand. It's really about finding the programmatic partners that are driving the majority of that demand and integrating with them.
00:10:17 · Daniel Brown
[00:10:17] S1: I love that. I love that. Chatting with small business owners. And I spend a lot of time in bookshops and coffee shops. So that's that's my people. That's my tribe. And it's comforting that maybe, you know, this is another tool to help the brick and mortars as they're trying to find their place in this post lockdown world. So I'm actually gonna be sharing that with some of my friends. I'm like, hey, guys. There's hope. You can you can get involved.
00:10:36 · Ari Buchalter
[00:10:36] S2: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Sorry, just to interject. The success that, well, starting with Amazon and then other large retailers have had in taking their online properties and bringing advertising into those contexts is really now spilling over into the physical world where you have large retailers, whether it's Kroger's or Albertsons or Best Buy or Walgreens or what have really thinking about their network of locations as an extension of that network to reach consumers. So it's not just about the commerce, but also about the opportunity to deliver media content, advertising, messaging, and so forth. And so there's an expression that's come up lately that said, every business is an ad network now, even down to small businesses that again can take that same idea, maybe not at the scale of some of those larger businesses. But again, it doesn't need to be at that scale in order to make an impact for a small business owner. So it's definitely a trend that's taking hold and is in fact, I think projected to be the fastest growing and possibly soon largest segment of all of ad spend over the next couple of years.