Digital Signage Today
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.
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.