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DPAA head talks 'Video Everywhere'

The CEO of the Digital Place-based Advertising Association sits down for a Q-and-A session on the DPAA Summit next week.

October 17, 2013

The upcoming summit for the Digital Place-based Advertising Association takes a close look at the rise of "Video Everywhere," the theme for this year's iteration of the annual event.

Cat Greenleaf, celebrity journalist from "Talk Stoop," will kick off the day's events on Oct. 22 at the New York Hilton in New York City, and some of the other highlights include:

• President, C-level and leading activation speakers from from GroupM, JPMorgan Chase, ANA, State Farm, Universal McCann and others.
• Debates on programmatic buying, video-neutral planning and today's total media ecosystem.
• New Yorker columnist Ken Auletta, bestselling author of "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It," on the future of media.
• Creative guru Jon Bond taking a future view on creative executions and strategy.
• Leaders from Initiative, VivaKi, tenthavenue, Vistar, Media Kitchen and more.

The DPAA summit headlines what has become known as digital place-based media week in New York City, which also features events from Barco, RMG Networks, NEC's VUKUNET, the Digital Signage Federation and YCD Multimedia, among others.

To take a look ahead at the event, Digital Signage Today recently sat down for a phone interview with new DPAA head Barry Frey, the former Cablevision, NBA and USA Networks executive who was named as the organization's new president and CEO in May.

DST: Talk to us about why the theme of this year's summit is "Video Everywhere."

Frey: "Video Everywhere" is the theme because as consumers, advertisers, marketers and everybody involved in digital signage, we are becoming acutely aware how consumers now are consuming video everywhere.

Historically, video viewing was tethered to the home and the living room, but now people are very actively consuming media and advertising, pointedly, on an array of devices and services, from mobile to tablets to phablets to over-the-top media, and digital place-based media is a very important part of that consumption. That is a lot of what the summit will focus on, that we are an integral and important part of this ecosystem where video is being consumed in every place.

And for the advertising community, they are realizing that as these eyeballs and impressions are scattered quite about, that an important area to regain these impressions is in the digital place-based media screens. And many advertisers are also looking at video online advertising, yet we offer some distinct advantages where our media should be planned and bought right alongside all of the video entities.

DST:Can you elucidate what some of those distinct advantages are?

Frey: Certainly, there was a story today in one of the major advertising trades about estimates that 25 percent of impressions on the Internet are fraudulent, coming on the heels of a story from The Wall Street Journal last week which also talked about all of the bots that are clicking, the impressions that are not really discernible, video players that are small or below the fold — and with our screens, they are tremendously omnipresent and in a very singular-focused manner where consumers can clearly see and understand the programming as well as the advertising.

DST: From JPMorgan Chase to State Farm to The Wall Street Journal, there is an impressive list of people and companies coming to speak. What are they bringing to the table?

Frey: They all bring different complexions of this new "Video Everywhere" ecosystem: The advertisers are challenged to regain eyeballs and impressions and connect to consumers; the advertising agencies are in the midst of an array of challenges and opportunities where video-agnostic planning and buying is emerging, where programmatic is on the forefront of people's thoughts and how to service their clients' needs. So that's the two basic core groups.

DST: Your website says the conference will look at "how video-neutral strategies are becoming a reality at leading agencies." Talk a little a bit about what you mean by video neutral or video agnostic.

Frey: Advertisers and agencies are seeking these video impressions, and because video is now available on an array of media, there are unified efforts for advertisers and agencies to plan and buy video advertising irrespective of the specific medium that it exists on. Historically, media was looked at as very parsed out in buckets and silos, where television was very separate from video online and separate from digital place-based media. Now we are seeing movements toward a need and an interest to plan and buy video impressions agnostic of the device or method of delivery.

DST: So talk a bit more about why should people come to this? Who should people expect to see there?

Frey: This is the summit of digital place-based advertising and media where we will be covering all aspects of the media, of the advertising, of the technology, of the people. It's a great place to network; it's a great place to see the latest and greatest of what's going on in the industry.

And what I would mention, there's a great Chinese proverb and it goes as such: "Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand." So with this conference, what we're doing is we are really involving everybody, and what I mean by that is we are going to have a huge array of digital place-based media companies that will have their environments and their screens set up in the hotel, and this will give many people an opportunity to see, touch, feel and experience what these screens are all about. So it'll be very experiential.

DST: With Nielsen and The Wall Street Journal sponsoring panels at the event, those are names the man on the street would recognize. Where do you think digital place-based is in terms of being well-understood by agencies and becoming more of a mainstream and ubiquitous medium for the man on the street?

Frey: Well, the good news is we certainly are ubiquitous, and within this ubiquity we are omnipresent. And now "the trend is our friend." As consumers, as I mentioned earlier, are fast using an array of different screens to get their video and advertising content, now it is easier for the advertisers and the agencies to understand the value that we have in this ecosystem.

As I mentioned before, traditionally people would just think of video on television, but now we are all seeing that, through technology and changing consumer habits, consumers are consuming video screens throughout the day in many different places and in many different formats. And the fact that we are ubiquitous and omnipresent in these areas is what is accelerating the growth of our industry. In fact, in the first six months of the past year we had tremendous growth at almost 15 percent in ad revenue growth year on year, second only to the Internet, so we are moving ahead of other media due to people understanding that consumers are consuming our video screens along with all of the other places to receive video.

DST: When I watch TV, I tend to ignore the ads, and many people simply don't watch them, with the rise of DVRs and similar technologies. Frankly, I would probably pay more attention to ads I would see on digital signage screens. Where does that sort of trend fit in this?

Frey: It's interesting to think of the environments where you find the screens. When you're in an elevator, there's really only one screen going on in front of you. When you're in a mall, you've got a large screen, once again right in front of you; in office buildings, airline seats, you're right there. And how does that compare to either the couch potato half-asleep watching television or to the people at home using an array of devices as they're watching television? So there certainly is a focus. In fact, recent research from New Media Markets is telling us that people like the environments, and they like our screens, and it happens to be on a higher index than many of the popular Web video sites as well.

DST: Is there anything else we should cover or that you'd like to add?

Frey: The only further points that are tremendously exciting is that we are actually kicking off the conference with a news journalist star and talent that has experienced growth in popularity in good measure due to appearing in place-based media: Star journalist Cat Greenleaf, who does a show called "Talk Stoop" on the brownstones of Brooklyn buildings interviewing celebrities and stars, will actually ignite the conference, interviewing me on the steps of the Hilton hotel.

And then the other thing I would mention is that we are honored and pleased and excited to have the prolific bestselling author and media writer and pundit, Ken Auletta. Ken has written many books and two of the definitive ones are "Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way," indicating the decline of the TV networks, and then more recently, "Googled: The End of the World As We Know It," which is really the seminal work on Google, from where it came, where it is and where it's going.

Registration information for the DPAA Summit can be found at http://www.dp-aa.org/2013DPAASummitProgram.php

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