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Real-time analytics allow for real-time course corrections in DOOH

RVue's CEO talks about his firm's real-time analytics, and the importance of real-time analytics in DOOH.

June 7, 2011 by Christopher Hall — w, t

Jason Kates, the CEO of DOOH media planning firm rVue, remembers all too well losing a big client several years ago after only discovering too late to do anything about it that a digital out-of-home campaign hadn't been delivering the expected audience – an experience that helped fuel his motivation to push for real-time network analytics.

RVue recently announced that it has started providing its DOOH network partners with the option to sign on – for free – to the company's analytics program which will provide clients and agencies, and the networks themselves, with real-time evidence that the campaigns are performing – or not performing – as promised.

Beyond the motivation of not losing another client because a discrepancy between expected and delivered audience caused by outside factors isn't discovered until the post-campaign reconciliation – "With real-time analytics you can actually overcome those obstacles," he said – Kates said there were also several other main motivating factors in the move.

First of all, he said, with DOOH being a digital and Internet-connected media, there aren't any good reasons not to have good real-time analytics in the space. Additionally, the analytics help prove integrity, he said, "to make sure that you're really getting what you're supposed to be getting," and they offer the ability to optimize a campaign while it's still live and up and running.

For instance, he said, say an agency creates a campaign with rVue that is supposed to run on 35 networks and 250,000 screens and deliver 1 million impressions a day – but five days in it becomes apparent that the campaign hasn't been running at 100 percent on all screens and has only reached an estimated 4 million impressions, not the promised 5 million.

"We can see instantly who's underdelivering, and we have an automated platform that reports back to those networks that are underperforming to let them know," and nudges them to make sure the advertiser gets what its paying for, he said.

The way it works is simple, Kates said. RVue provides its network partner with a package including "an invisible piece of code" that the network puts in its playlist, where it runs in the background and reports back to rVue all day, he said. The network, of course, also has access to the data, he said.

"It shows the integrity of the network, and then they can overlay that with a campaign, to make sure it's delivering what it's supposed to be delivering," he said.

This analytics isn't AVA, or anonymous video analytics or impressions – "that's phase two and phase three," Kates said – but measures proof-of-performance metrics.

"So right now what we've got is the ability to prove that those sites are really there," he said. "Unbelievably, that's an integrity issue – and we're delivering."

RVue's network platform is an accepted buy platform in a true marketplace model, where campaigns are bought and sold and bargained over, Kates said.

"Where analytics comes in, in the next phase, is actually the most important phase, what's known as 'shepherding the campaign,'" he said. "You don't just hit the button and hope; someone's got to make sure that it's running.

"Being an engineering company, we automate that functionality – that's where the confidence comes in, and they actually know it's happening, as opposed to just hoping that it's playing."

There are also great software companies that put out "awesomely-engineered software" that already does "a portion of what we do," Kates acknowledged.

"The problem is when an agency buys across 35 networks and 250,000 screens, it's not always BroadSign and RDM software running all those campaigns," he said. "If it was, it would make our lives a lot easier, but we had to come at this from a step higher so that we were able to give that type of information back to the agencies because we don't have the ability to get that from the software guys."

In addition to giving the agencies and rVue more confidence in the reliability of the networks and the campaigns running on them, the analytics package also gives networks themselves added value, Kates said. It gives the networks a capability to monitor and proactively manage their networks that they'd previously lacked, and it also makes things easier when campaigns wrap up, he said.

"We know that the networks understand that if they're part of the analytics platform it takes some work off of their plate of having to reconcile post-campaign as well," Kates said. "That's really one of the ideas here, that we're bringing these applications in that help make everybody's life easier and accelerate the money into the marketplace."

A substantial number of rVue's network partners already have signed up, and Kates said he expects to have above a 90-percent adoption rate by the end of the summer – and the results so far have been very gratifying.

"For the most part, most campaigns actually run on time ... and it's quite satisfying to see that," he said. "You don't want to do this and uncover a big, huge mess. It sure makes our industry stand up tall when we're able to see the fact that most of this is running in the high high nineties across the board ... So it's good for our industry; it's healthy; it's kind of like a gut check in that, yes, it all works."

Photo by Tomas Lau.

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