Jun
5
I’ve been debating about whether or not to post this but finally said “why not?”. For some reason I felt it was a bad idea….
A client of mine recently contacted a VERY large media buying organization in Manhattan about buying space on Digital Signage screens. He had a substantial budget to spend.
This is the email stream that he forwarded me on his interactions with them. JACK MEDIABUYER is actually the top media buyer at this Media company in the Digital space.
While it’s disheartening, it is educational. I may be wrong but the boilerplate answer that comes back as final tells me Digital Signage hasn’t made its way far enough into the trenches yet.
Notice this stream of email took from Feb 15th to Mar 27th.
All names have been changed to protect the innocent. I’ve reversed the order so you can read it chronologically:
====================
From: Joe Client
Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 12:01 PM
To: Jane MarketingPerson
Subject: Re: MEDIA
Do you manage media buying services on Digital Screen Networks throughout north america?
====================
From: Jane MarketingPerson
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 11:45 AM
To: JACK MEDIABUYER
Subject: FW: MEDIA
Hi JACK-
Is this something you could help me answer? I’m not sure what he’s inquiring about.
Thanks!
====================
From: JACK MEDIABUYER
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 18:44:02 -0500
To: JOE CLIENT
Conversation: MEDIA
Subject: FW: MEDIA
Hi Joe Client,
JANE MARKETINGPERSON passed on your email to me. I run the Digital office in New York and am responsible for planning and buying all digital media on behalf of our clients.
Is there something specific you are looking for?
Best regards,
JACK MEDIABUYER
JACK MEDIABUYER
POSITION REMOVED
MEDIA BUYING COMPANY
====================
From: JOE CLIENT
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 4:53 PM
To: JACK MEDIABUYER
Subject: Re: MEDIA
Hi JACK,
I was interested to know if you were able to provide media buying services and ad creative for digital screen networks (aka; digital advertising networks, outdoor digital screens, retail digital screens) throughout key markets (new york, boston, maimi, atlanta, dallas, los angeles, vegas, san francisco, philly, vancouver, edmonton, calgary, toronto, ottawa) north America?
Regards,
JOE CLIENT
CLIENT COMPANY
====================
NOTE THAT THIS MESSAGE CAME BACK 3 WEEKS LATER
—— Forwarded Message
From: JACK MEDIABUYER
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:26:44 -0400
To: JOE CLIENT
Conversation: MEDIA
Subject: RE: MEDIA
Hi JOE CLIENT,
We are a full-service media agency. So, yes, we do planning and buying for all media platforms, nationally and globally. We partner with our creative agencies for creative executions.
Best,
JACK MEDIABUYER
====
If ya don’t know the answer, just say yes 
Because there’s been so much “noise” about Digital Signage, many of the media companies, while they want to participate on a national scale, are finding it exceedingly difficult to get engaged and so the message about Digital Signage advertising gets lost and isn’t disseminated effectively throughout their organizations.
A fair amount of non-partisan education really does need to happen higher up in a really concise, practical way to help move advertising forward nationally on these platforms
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2 Responses to “Educating Big Media on Digital Signage”
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content, content, content… Until there is content to get the eyeballs, the ad dollar from the big brands will stay away.
Thanks Rob, for your insight and for pushing the discussion along. I truly believe that when RELEVANT CONTENT that is not just commercials or news or sports or music videos is provided to these “closed networks,” then the dollars will show up BECAUSE THE EYEBALLS WILL.
cheers!
I could not agree more about content and the factor it plays in making a network an overall success. Even more so, relevant content-I come across new networks often and I am impressed by a lot of thier content-while not all have it together, more and more are outsourcing to creative’s that understand this space or have an in-house team that continues to learn and improve. Considering that I and other networks I may or may not be friendly with have pitched many of the national media firms (just for fun)and our network hosts relevant, well done content; I beg to differ that it is the content keeping them away. I spoke with WOW/Kinetic (OOH of Mindshare) this week for the third time and I will just say that if I were Cingular I would have an exit plan-the contact was lost until I gave some examples and explained myself in a fashion I would with a local advertiser. The other side of that conversation is that my company is working on deploying a new technology shortly and in a talk with Mindshare Detroit (Emerging Media)-they/he knew exactly what was going on and clearly had the wisdom-that I didn’t; this was a senior exec. Education is key here as is time and proper politics at the big shops-a well known OOH VP often says turning a battleship is not easy-I have to remind myself that unless I am dealing with c-level execs, chances are slim I will see any movement, unless my network has a national foot print….lastly, my understanding is that several of the top brands have extensive in house testing going on as I type, of digital signage, and that the cat is not out of the bag. As the market is so fragmented one advertisers do not have the man power nor want to sort through 100-150 networks that may or may not have 50 endpoints or more…but instead seem to be waiting until other media outlets have to be supported fully and/or there is more consolidation in the market…….