Article

Commentary: What can DOOH learn from Google?

RVue's Jason Kates was a panelist at MediaPost's recent DOOH Forum, and talks here about the discussion.

April 14, 2011

By Jason Kates

CEO, rVue

Yesterday I had the privilege of being invited to speak at MediaPost’s DOOH Forum in New York City as part of their Screens Week Conference. The topic was the technology behind DOOH advertising when it comes to planning and execution in a session titled "Assessing DOOH Technology."

On the panel, I was joined by several top players in our segment, including Peter Bowen of SeeSaw Networks, Rob Gorrie of Adcentricity and Graeme Spicer of NEC Display Solutions.

I applaud MediaPost editor and panel moderator Joe Mandese for choosing this topic to be part of the Expo as it seemed to be a hot topic during the day. However, as a group we strayed slightly from just "assessing" the technology that we bring to the table. Perhaps an alternative topic might have been "What can we do to grow this market like Google grew the online advertising market?"

Yes, the Internet is a different media, but the digital mediums share many key characteristics, and Google can stand as inspiration for where we can aspire to go as purveyors of digital out-of-home media. The Internet giant changed online media buying by making it simple for media planners and buyers to buy and sell search advertising.

Google increased demand for online advertising and were able to easily scale as that demand continued to grow. If purchasing and planning media is confusing or time-consuming to the buyer, growth will be slowed. As a company, Google had the single greatest impact on Internet ad buying by culling data, organizing key information and streamlining the buying process.

As an industry, we have the opportunity to create greater liquidity for buyers and sellers in Digital Out-of-Home and Place-Based Dynamic media. We estimate that there is nearly $20 billion in unused DOOH media inventory available in the marketplace today, yet studies show that we are collectively executing only $3 billion — it is critical we address and understand the reason for this gap and the potential of this opportunity.

The estimated $20 billion speaks to the revenue opportunity to sell both on the hyperlocal level, down to the screen (not just homogeneous content over a large network), as well as nationally. We all understand that, for example, a customer in a music store in Miami's South Beach may have highly different buying tastes and music interests than one in Dallas or Alabama. The ability to purchase audiences on a hyperlocal basis is one of the greatest strengths of DOOH media, and exactly the kind of hyperlocal buy that many advertisers are looking for and willing to pay for.

The growth opportunity is there. But we're going to need technology backed by an in-depth expertise in DOOH media — like the panelists are providing — to bring the type of efficiency to the buying model that can accelerate the visibility, analytics and confidence the advertisers need to receive in this media. The more effective the technology and accurate the data, the higher the value proposition will be to both buyer and seller due to automation and access to inventory.

We stand right now in a complex sector for buying — an idea with which all of my fellow panelists would agree. Our market is growing and difficult to purchase, or, to sum it up in one word, "hyperfragmented." (Which also seemed to be a buzzword at the conference when relating to Digital Out-of-Home Media as there are so many ways for the audiences to consume content via DOOH.)

Joe Mandese alluded to a statistic that Patrick Quinn of PQ Media presented earlier in the day that said the top 10 networks in the DOOH space represented 70 percent of the market.

Graeme Spicer mentioned that was the case because agencies don't have an easy way to access the other networks. To quote him, "Those 10 networks, I'd buy them too. I've known them for years; I trust their audience numbers. That doesn't mean that the other 60 networks out there that have meaningful audiences aren't still a valid and appropriate part of the total buy in the DOOH space, we just haven't given them the ability to buy them efficiently."

Rob Gorrie mentioned that we as an industry are on the right track. He said the Canadian market is further along in DOOH adoption than the United States., and that we're where Canada was about two years ago. But once we establish fluidity through a platform, the acceleration begins to happen very quickly.

I believe we need to broaden our thinking past just screens and platforms. The demand side of DOOH advertising is about finding and delivering targeted audiences, which ultimately is what the agencies are after and a core competency of DOOH. The sooner we, as an industry, come together to deeply understand and target the valuable audiences we reach — over solely the screens and mass impressions — the closer we are to speaking the advertisers' language and the quicker our medium will be to making a bigger impact in their media mix.

Kates is founder, CEO and chairman of the board of rVue, the demand-side platform for digital out-of-home and place-based media.