Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark

Telmo Silva, ClicData

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

Integrating data has increasingly climbed the priority list for more ambitious and involved digital signage and digital OOH projects. The big driver for that is how near or real-time data makes what's on-screen automated and triggered, which means more timely, targeted and therefore relevant messaging.

Lots of CMS software companies offer some degree of data integration and on-screen presentation, and we're starting to see some third-party companies that work mainly in digital signage - like Screenfeed - also offering data display toolsets.

We're also now seeing well-established data handling companies making themselves known in this sector, particularly to help make some of the more complicated set-ups both happen and then reliably, and securely, work. ClicData is a software firm based up in the northwest of France, but has clients globally that use its Business Intelligence platform to bring data in from more than 250 sources - into a single, harmonized data warehouse.

I spoke with co-founder and CTO Telmo Silva about Clicdata's roots, how its platform works and how it can be applied in digital signage applications.

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TRANSCRIPT

David: Telmo, thank you very much for joining me. Can you tell me what ClicData is all about? 

Telmo Silva: I started ClicData in 2008 as a pharmaceutical-focused data analytics company, and later branched out a little bit into making it a wider-used data analysis, data management and data intelligence tool for all sectors, and hence the name, ClicData from ClicPharma before, and yes, this tool is really the culmination of that learning in the pharmaceutical sector that we thought is applicable to really any sector. 

David: Okay. So if I'm sitting here listening to the beginning of this podcast, some people might be wondering, those in digital signage and the AV sector, might be wondering, okay, why am I listening to this? How does it plug into that sector? 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely, and it's funny, Dave, because an acquaintance of ours asked me, should we do this podcast? And I said, yes, absolutely, because everything generates data and digital advertising is definitely one of the factors. 

You have to know where you're spending your money and what you're requiring and who's looking at things, and one of the first clients we had in the early days was actually a Canadian company out west that had this technology on elevators to take snapshots of peoples and try to recognize their age group and their demographics and as they're playing the videos on the small screen on the elevator, try to figure out what's the retention? Are their eyes moving and moving away from the screen and so forth, and how long do they stay hooked for those short 30-second clips, and things like that? And that was actually my first introduction to digital advertising and a use case for ClicData, a very successful use case, and I was hooked on that. 

I was hooked into that so much that where ClicData is based out, which is France, there's a very large history of retail companies here that spent a lot of money on aisle advertising, and they start using those concepts, not only in terms of video and monitoring but also in terms of monitoring the paths of customers through their stores, optimization of aisles and things like that, where to put the digital signs and advertising and so forth, and all that generates a lot of data that you have to make sense of. And this is really well ClicData comes in, right? Those point solutions with digital advertising are part one, but without actually collecting all these from the different stores, and different locations that start making sense of it, it's just data, right? It does not turn into information until you do something with it and that's really where we come in, in trying to bring as much data from the different systems and different points of information really that a company may have, or a client may have and bring that into something that makes sense, that you can aggregate, that you can slice and dice, and then further down the line, then expose that to your customers, and say, okay, this is what you paid for.

David: So you're aggregating and harmonizing and developing insights around the data as opposed to being a collector of data, right? Like you're not doing any of the computer vision or sensor-based work yourself? 

Telmo Silva: We do not, but we do have all the necessary connections just with the different systems. Unlike potentially other systems that are very well standardized, each vendor of those displays of those collectors may have their own interfaces, APIs and so forth. They may have their own storage formats and as you use the different systems, your challenge is really to understand, how can I connect to this one now, and how can I extract information that I want out of that. And our connectors are actually quite flexible in that sense where we have fixed connectors for some of those systems, but for others, we have generic connectors that you can kind of configure to tap into that data. 

David: Would this be something that might be called middleware?

Telmo Silva: I would say potentially, yes. It depends on your definition of middleware. Ultimately we see business intelligence at least the portion of data analytics and reporting that we offer, as the next step before you feed it back and you go, okay, now I understand the results that I've received here, what improvements are we gonna make? And we start to cycle again, right? 

So again as an example, you may start receiving data from certain videos and start saying, okay, this is the demographics and so forth, can I make some adjustments to my campaigns or to my videos or to the sequence of videos that I'm displaying? Again, I'm going back to that video on the elevator concept and optimising that, so it is part of that loop of data collection, data analysis, making decisions based on that data, and then feeding that back into the loop again.

David: When you started the company accessing data from all kinds of different data sources was very complicated and time-consuming, and you had to get all kinds of permissions and all kinds of meetings and phone calls and everything else to work it out. 

One of the things that I gather has changed over the last decade or so is that most platforms now have APIs, it's easier to get stuff out of them, and so on. So has your role lessened, or has it increased because they're always changing and there are so many and if you're an independent company, like a digital signage company, a software company, you have to stay on top of that, or you would use a company like ClicData that's spending all their time doing that and making it easy?  

Telmo Silva: To answer your first question, it has actually increased, right? Whereas before we would ask a vendor whether that be Facebook or Google and say, our mutual customers have data on your advertising network, right? And again this kind of can expand to any type of data vendor or data collector that we may tap into and before they would basically know it's our data, and the consumers of course start reacting against that, right? Today, If you do not have an API, if all you do is get my data into your system, but not give me anything back in return, then I don't want anything to do with you.

And we've seen backlashes at times with Facebook, Cambridge Analytics and things like that, where those types of sharing are also kinda gone another way rather, but nonetheless, today, if you do not have an API, then you're a second-class citizen on the internet and on the software technology stack. So that is great but an API is still an API. It is a programming interface and it does require some knowledge and it's not a standard. Just because we call it an API does not mean that they'll follow the same standard, it's very well organized, and it’s very well understood. So every API has its nuances, its little quirks and its own way of paging through the amounts of data that it can offer.

And so our role has actually increased due to that, because again, as I was mentioning before our connectors know how to deal with those different variations and those different formats and schemas that the data may be provided with. So in that sense, it's actually increased the need to have a tool, like ClicData, to be able to tap into those APIs and bring it into a format that is easily digestible by any analytics tool, including our own tool.

David: How much is involved, if you wanted to do this yourself and let's say you wanted to Integrate information from four different business system sources or whatever, within your company? Is that something that would take a morning, a month, or a year to do if they weren't using something like ClicData?

Telmo Silva: If they were not using something like ClicData, they obviously need somebody technical, but it would take an extensive amount of time for development, and again, large companies still do that, where they write custom interfaces to bring the data and amalgamate them into one single source of truth. This is where millions of dollars are being spent on data warehousing projects and business intelligence implementations and so forth. So not having a tool like ours definitely would require a good technical team, and again, depending on the sources, potentially database analysts, database experts, SQL developers, API developers, whether they do it in Java or Python or what have you.

And then bringing all that into a data warehouse will definitely take more than just a few days. In my previous life, prior to creating ClicData, that was my bread and butter, and these projects would go on for 3-6 months. With ClicData, if we have the connector that you need or if you can configure your API connector and you have a basic understanding of APIs, you should be able to do that within a day, to connect three or four data sources and start seeing the data flow through into ClicData. 

David: So on a project launch basis and certainly on an ongoing operating basis, it sounds like if you're running a spreadsheet model on this and a business argument, it would take a huge amount of cost out of the equation and time, and these are people you don't need to hire? 

Telmo Silva: It goes on to just beyond hiring and the people behind it, because, having somebody who can accompany you if you're not an expert or in the technical side, then it may be worth it. But the bottom line is the continuity of it as well. It's okay to build a prototype. It works once but the next day, you don't want to have to do the same thing, right? You don't want to have to copy and paste the data into Excel or out of Excel again and repeat and so forth.

And also, technology is what it is, business evolves as it is, and so you always need these adjustments. It is an investment that you have to make towards being data-centric, being data-focused and to say, I want to build these systems that collect the data on an ongoing basis that I can automate the reporting that can save you time as well in reporting these numbers back to your team or your clients or your management team and all this combines into the ROI that you're looking for, and yes, there is a technical side of it as well that there will be savings, whether it's in consulting or in minimizing, at least the number of times that you involve them, to gain access to your data. 

David: If I'm a customer, what am I buying and how am I paying for it? Do you buy an enterprise license or is it software as a service? 

Telmo Silva: It is totally software as a service. We do not offer any on-premise installations of software, and this is because we want to be rapid at giving new features, new connectors. Connectors continuously change, and there's new software in the market and we wanna be rapid in making those available. So software as a service is really our model, and what you get when you subscribe to when you get one of these subscriptions, which is monthly or yearly based, is you get basically all the connectors. You get a data warehouse, a database available to you through Microsoft Azure, that's our partner, and you can have your data stored in over eight different regions around the world: US, Ireland, Canada, Germany, France, and a few others, and once you have that data warehouse, that’s your piece of the database there, the data starts flowing through the connectors. Once that is in your data warehouse, then from there you can actually build downstream flows, you can tap into it directly with Excel if you want, or you can use our dashboard tool to start creating dashboards and graphs and charts and tables indicators. 

You can share those dashboards with other people. You can publish them to your customers, et cetera, and then you can just automate these things so that it just does that every day or every morning or every hour.

David: Is that the primary output that you would see for digital signage and digital out-of-home home networks, probably more so on the digital signage side, would be data visualizations and dashboards? 

Telmo Silva: I think that would potentially be one of the use cases, analyzing the data that's coming through and making decisions based on those as normal reporting and analytics data tools would. The other part of it and some customers of ClicData do this is they just use the collection capabilities of ClicData and the data warehouse to store their data, but then they feed that into other tools of their choice, tools that potentially they wanna do some more advanced machine learning on the data, maybe they want to write their own special code to analyze it, or maybe simply feed another system that requires this data to consume it and so forth.

ClicData is really a multifaceted tool that can be either used just for collection and aggregation of the data or all the way through to data visualization and analytics. 

David: Okay, so you would have almost like templates or widgets of some kind that would be able to do develop dynamic charting and things like this based on what you select?

Telmo Silva: Absolutely, much like you would do on a pivot table in Excel, to drag and drop some columns, and the chart starts taking shape with columns, rows and so forth. That's exactly our design, it's very user-friendly as much as we can, we do have a lot of options for styling because not everybody likes the same styles and colors, but in essence, it's very much an Excel-like data visualization tool built into ClicData.

David: If I'm a digital signage CMS software provider and I'm working with, let's say a financial services company and they wanted data visualization, if I wanna put that visualized chart into a schedule, so it shows up on the digital signs around the workplace. Is that an HTML file or how do you get that up on a screen?

Telmo Silva: If you want to embed our dashboards into third-party applications, into screens, we have quite a few customers that have screens around the office, we have a railroad train station system that actually publishes our dashboards on every single station and stops with the schedules and things like that, and their performance, so are they late, etc. 

So you can definitely embed that, and it's just simply a URL. You put that inside an iFrame, inside your web page, and the iframe immediately refreshes if the data has been refreshed, so you don't have to do anything, you just have to open it up in a browser, maximize the screen and boom, your dashboard is live and will refresh automatically. 

David: Aare there any kind of limitations on how real-time it is or is it just how you wanna set it and how it works at the other end, in terms of data generation? 

Telmo Silva: Our schedules have the ability to go on a minute basis to your data sources and pull the data in, however you can use our API, because we too have an API, to push data in, and in that case, the push is up to you. If you wanna send it once per second, you can. These will not be full data loads. These have to be small packets, a few rows, a few hundred rows at a time, potentially. 

But you can use our API to bring in real-time data, and again, the same concept, whether we pulled it or you pushed it, everything downstream gets refreshed and gets activated for you.

David: I suspect that's a conversation that you and your sales engineers have at times with resellers and end users, “Sure we could do real-time, but for the application you're talking about, do you really need that, or is every minute or every five minutes fine?” 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely, and this is why we stopped our schedule at one minute. Again, you have to be really in a high traffic, high volume situation, and to be able to make a decision in real-time, and that's ultimately the key, right? It really is up to you and there's the cost associated with you developing a push notification to other systems as well.

So it really is up to the customers, but yeah, in some sectors there are times that some folks ask for real-time when in fact, their data doesn't change on a daily basis. Case in point, Facebook, they themselves only refresh their own metrics or expose their own metrics on a much larger time scale. So for us to do real-time with certain systems and certain data sources is just refreshing and using bandwidth for nothing. 

David: Do you have to make statements and assurances around privacy of the data or that's not really your issue, whoever's collecting that data or you're gathering that data is the one that's gonna have to worry about that, you're just enabling the use of that data? 

Telmo Silva: Even though obviously data privacy and respecting the customer's data is our number one thing, we do have a role to play. If we're talking in Europe, GDPR is a huge thing. Every country has their own protection laws and privacy protection, like the California Data Protection Act. Every country and state and province has their own or has started some type of laws and regulations.  Us being a European company, but with customers in North America, we have to be very careful. This is why we're almost the only ones that actually are able to start your data warehouse in any country that you wish in those eight regions that we've mentioned, and that's step number one, but we are a data processor for you. We don't know what your data is, but we are processing your data for you. It's our application, and we are responsible to make sure that there's no external access to it, that if there are court orders, we have to make sure we validate and check them with our customers and so forth. 

Luckily that has never happened, but we don't know what your data is. So we are not able to be really responsible for it, but that's part of our terms of service. If you put data that you are not entitled to use or process if you put data that is not legal for you to own, that's the responsibility of our customers, but obviously, we would have a role to play in that in this GDPR system where we are responsible to at least point out or give it out if asked legally, obviously. 

David: I assume you get a lot of questions around security as well.

Telmo Silva: Oh, absolutely, and again, this is why we partner with Microsoft Azure. Our expertise is really making the software intelligent, and easy to use, that it processes fast, that we can process thousands and thousands of files and sources and dashboards a day, an hour really, and not really on the physical and digital security of these data warehouses and systems. And this is why we rely on Microsoft Azure severely. We have a strong SLA with them to protect our property and our customer's property, their data. 

David: I know almost nothing about the technical side of what your company and others like it would do, but I assume that a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of security is on the Azure side and you take advantage of that and you let them worry about that, but, make sure that you're working according to their policies, right? 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely, but it also takes our knowledge to encrypt the data and to make sure that their configuration is set up correctly. I think that is the positive and negative of cloud-based systems, like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. It's so easy these days to just start a server anywhere and start putting data into it. It's much harder to make sure that nobody else has access to it and to make sure that it's protected and so forth. And even within Microsoft, there are some checks and balances there as well. We can’t say, just because it's Microsoft's or Amazon or Google that takes care of your data, we're pawning it off on them, and if something happens, let's go to court.

That's not how it should be handled. There has to be some responsibility on the people using those systems, and how we code the application, and to make sure all the settings are set up correctly. So it is a team effort between the vendors and us, and also our customers to make sure that they're comfortable with the fact that we are ISO certified, SOC certified HIPAA compliant, et cetera. This is time and an investment on our part to make sure that they should not be just for the sake of having a stamp, on your website saying, “We are ISO certified” and that's it. It does take effort from both companies and all parties involved to make sure that the data is secure and private. 

David: So Microsoft is a major business partner, but they're also a competitor, through Power BI?

Telmo Silva: That is correct. Power BI, their visualization tool is a competitor to our data visualization module, not necessarily to the whole ClicData platform, and they do an excellent job at it as well. 

David: But I assume your company has its share of competitors, right?

Telmo Silva: I believe there's data visualization for every type of business in the world. Power BI, Tableau, ClickView. I don't wanna name more than three, but there are at least three hundred of them, and let's not even go beyond those, let's just talk about Excel, there’s some amazing visualization in Excel and it has been around for years. So there's a lot of great experience, but again, these are tools and they are distinct separate tools, and if you have to load up Excel or Power BI or whatever every day to hit refresh, and then export it out and think about security and access, then that's the downside of these tools. They do a great job for that initial data investigation but are terrible for the ongoing maintenance of it. 

So what we say is, whereas we may not be as advanced as some of those tools, potentially. If you're trying to do something very specific that only Power BI can do, maybe we cannot do it. The upside of using our tool is that you don't have to do anything else. The data is there as soon as it's refreshed, the dashboards know that the data is refreshed, it immediately sends emails out to the people that are on the list for receiving this dashboard, and they get it on their mobile app. They get an alert, whatever, right? It's all automated for you. 

So if you want to spend less time wasting copying and pasting and using Excel and these tools, then, these are the types of platforms that you need to look for. 

David: I assume the other thing is that you stay on top of it because APIs change and data sets change and everything else and if you just had it developed yourself internally or if you outsourced the development, a month later, the schemas and things could change and all of a sudden it doesn't work, right? 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely. We see that with the big players obviously, Google, Instagram, Facebook, and others are constantly improving their APIs. Security keeps changing around the world. We're phasing out certain types of security, TLS 1, TLS 2, et cetera, and APIs need the security, they need to be compatible with it. So this is really where most of our customers get their benefits is to say, okay, ClicData is taking care of all that for you, and then make sure that the data keeps coming in, and flowing into your data warehouse. 

David: So if I'm a digital signage content management systems software provider, or Perhaps an AV/IT systems integrator who has an ask from clients or wants to incorporate this into their service offers, what's involved?

What are the first questions you have to ask them? Do you support this, do you support that, or are there any really real barriers? 

Telmo Silva: We start by looking at their data sources, right? If we can't bring the data, if they're using a very specific format of a very specific system that we cannot gain access to, typically very old ones then we're upfront about it. We say that you're not gonna get this data in, and you're not gonna be able to report it.

David: It's on a mainframe system or something?

Telmo Silva: Mainframe, believe it or not, we can connect to it. It is important for us and believe it or not, there are still a lot of customers, especially in the retail sector that does mainframe, IBM series of servers, those things that we thought don't exist. They exist and they exist in quite a lot of companies. So we still support those. But sometimes it's just very cryptic or the format. I cannot give you an example off the top of my head but we have this, as I mentioned before, a very robust kind of API connecting connector that takes a lot of options, and most of the time we can configure it to fit.

But yeah, if you're a provider of data that pretty much says: I'm not giving you access. I can only give you monthly reports or something like that. Yeah, you can import those reports monthly by hand. Is that something that you really wanna do, et cetera? So we discuss alternate solutions like that.

But yeah, that would be the first step. The second step is what are their objectives? Are they looking for visualization and embedding these dashboards and putting them back to their customer in a self-service mode so they can monitor the success of their campaigns, their ads network, et cetera? Or is this internal use for analytics and so forth? So we discuss those items to make sure that ClicData is the right solution for them, and if all checks out, I think then the next step is just to get a trial account for 15 days and connect a couple of data sources, see what you can build. We have an in-app chat tool that allows them to ask questions as they go along during their trials. Ask your questions, ask how you can do things and get that first initial prototype, and that's a big advantage of being a SaaS product, there's no installation, you lose nothing, right? You don't have to install or return servers. You just get started, start connecting your data and start playing around with your data and start visualizing and prototyping within your team, get success quickly, get motivated quickly as well. That's a big part of it, and from there, you just start your subscription level.

David: What level of skill do you need? 

Telmo Silva: To do complex things, you definitely need some SQL sometimes, some function programming, as you do with Excel, we are all different experts in Excel. There are those of us that use Excel just to type in numbers and your basic drag and drop, and that's it. And then there's those that know to do Lookups and they know a few more functions and then there's those that do Macros in Excel, right? There are different skills, and with us, it's the same thing. It really depends on what you need to do and how much your data needs work. So we have our own kind of Excel-like language that they can use, very similar to SQL as well. They can do a lot of things with the data. 

We needed to make ClicData very powerful, and very flexible to ensure that we will not be stumped by a specific need or a specific customer request. But at the surface, we also try to make it easy with a strong UI to write those hard-to-write functions behind the scenes through an interface that is a little bit easier to use.

David: So at a minimum, you want somebody who has an interest or a knack for this sort of thing, as opposed to Margaret in Sales and Marketing saying, “Here, you do this!” and she gets the deer and the headlights look? 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely. Now you can, if you have, and some customers of ours do this and they split the work of connecting and making the data available versus consuming the data, right? 

You have your technical person, the person that knows the data very well to create these kinds of slices and catalogues of data and make them available to the rest of the team, and the team then goes in, either with our dashboard editor or report editor, and does their own dashboards and their own kind of visualizations or with other tools as well. So there are also those splitting of functions that sometimes are important to put in place into a company.

David: ClicData is in Northwest France based in Lille, correct? 

Telmo Silva: Yeah, we have three major offices. That is our head office, the engineering office in the north of France. We have one in Toronto, Canada, and we have one in Texas so we're all over the place a little bit.

David: So Europeans are gonna engage through your European offices and Canadians and Americans can find a couple of offices on this side of the pond? 

Telmo Silva: That's correct. 

David: Where do they find you online?

Telmo Silva: ClicData.com 

David: It's important to say there's no “k” in the click. Somebody got to it before you could get the one with the “k”? 

Telmo Silva: I believe so, or maybe at that point in time, we wanted to make it very even with four and four, Clic and Data, I'm not sure.

David: Oh, they'll find it. Thank you very much for spending some time with me. 

Telmo Silva: Thank you for having me.

Tom Goddard, World Out Of Home Organization (WOO)

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

The World Out Of Home Organization has been around for decades, but under a French acronym that didn't mean a lot to much of the world. The non-profit changed its name from FEPE International to its new handle a few years ago, and has never looked back.

It now has members from all over the globe - with outdoor advertising companies of all sizes and stripes signing on to benefit from lobbying, networking, policy discussions, standardization, research and education.

The organization also does a heavily attended global conference each year, as well as at least a couple of regional versions in APAC and the Middle East.

I had a great chat with out of home media veteran Tom Goddard, a London-based Irishman who gives his time and experience as the organization's President and Executive Chairman.

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TRANSCRIPT

Tom, thank you for joining me. Where are you today? 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, nice to be here, David. I'm in sunny London. We're having a Mediterranean type of summer, which is a hit and miss here, but we're having a lovely summer at the moment and I'm right in Hyde Park, so I'm looking into the park and all the joggers. So it's a lovely spot, it's about 28 degrees, so pretty cool. 

Hopefully you have air conditioning! 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, but I hate using it. I've had to use it a bit lately, but yes, I do. 

So you are the head of the World Out of Home Organization? Can you give me the background on yourself and what that organization is all about?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, of course, David. For my sins, I'm President of the World Out of Home Organization, it's an honorary reposition and the World Out of Home Organization is a not-for-profit body and its purpose is the same now as it was when it was set up 63 years ago. It's really to drive sector growth. 

When the organization was set up in 1959 by Jacques Dauphin who was one of the pioneers of French outdoor media alongside JCDecaux, it was originally called FEPE which is short in French for  Federation European Publicite Exterieur, and in later years, it expanded outside that footprint and became a truly global organization. So in 2018, we decided to rebrand as the World Out of Home Organization, which we launched the following year at our Dubai Congress, which happened just before the pandemic, and so we're now the World Out of Home Organization, but we are 63 years old. 

Yeah, I have known a few people who would make reference to FEPE all the time, like Sheldon Silverman when I was in meetings with him, and I didn't know what he was going on about, but when the name was changed, I was like, “Oh, now I get it!” It’s a more universal name.

Tom Goddard: Yeah. It's very plain and it says what it does. 

With regards to your background, are you a media owner guy or an agency guy or something else?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, I'm a media owner guy. I come from the media owner side and I've had a long career on the media owner side, all the way from a small company started in Ireland to running the International division of CBS Outdoors, as it was then called. More recently I was the chairman of Ocean Outdoor in the UK, which is one of the leading digital out-of-home companies in the premium sector.

Are you still active, or are you still working? 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, I'm still pretty active. I just stepped down from Ocean, just about a year and a half ago, but but I have also got a business called, Out of Home Capital, which I've set up with with eight other very experienced out-of-home professionals, and it's a global advisory business that helps all sectors of the out-of-home ecosystem to achieve their strategic plans. So I'm busy with that alongside my active work in the World Out of Home Organization. 

Out of Home Capital, is that also a funding entity or purely advisory?

Tom Goddard: It's mainly advisory, but we do have access to capital sources, and we do advise, for example, out-of-home media owners who are perhaps getting ready for a sale or getting ready for an IPO, we do advise them on how to go about preparing for that and also we have sources that we can recommend in terms of of capital investment.

Is that a going concern that keeps you busy or is it one of those things that's a little little bit of peaks and valleys, where a project comes up and you're all busy and then there's not much going on and you can relax and then something else comes up.?

Tom Goddard: We set it up a couple of years ago and within two weeks we had our first project, which was a New York Bank making an investment, needing a due diligence report, and since then we've been steadily busy, including working for a large private equity operator who were examining the potential sale of Clear Channel’s European assets, and we have three European city projects at the moment where we're advising European cities on their out-of-home strategy and on their smart city strategy. 

So it's really getting traction now, David, and when we set it up, we wondered how it would go, but everybody seems to tell us that there was a gap in the market, there was a need for this global advisory business and that seems to be the case. 

I did a lot of consulting for a bunch of years now. Now, I'm just focused on Sixteen:Nine, but I would get emails and phone calls from people asking about whether I could do advisory on digital out-of-home and I would just flat out tell them that there are other people out there who know a hell of a lot more about that particular side of the business than I do, and I would point them that way, because it's just not my thing. 

And we’ll talk about it later, but I’m eternally confused by the whole programmatic business. I understand it at a macro level, but boy, it's complicated. 

Tom Goddard: Absolutely, but if you get any more referrals, just send them my way.

But interestingly there are not a lot of advisory units out there who really have the depth of experience needed. For example, we're just in the process of advising a large Asian media player who wants to get a tall hold in Times Square in New York, so you can get things like that along with major retailers who are looking to maximize their digital assets in their supermall.

So there aren't many companies that have the ability to assess the audience value and also know about the aesthetics and the environment. 

So how global is the World Out of Home Organization at this point, are you covering every continent and how many members do you have?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, it's really taken off in the last few years, particularly since we rebranded, David, it's amazing what that has done, but we now have over 150 members worldwide. That's mainly large out-of-home media owners like Lamar, OUTFRONT in the US, and then JCDecaux in Europe, Out of Home media in Australia, Phoenix Metropolitan in China, and we also have lots of national out-of-home trade bodies, like the OAAA in the US and FAW in Germany, Outsmart in the UK and the Outdoor Trade Association in Japan. 

The other good thing about our organization is we also admit service providers in the out-of-home sector like Daktronics and BroadSign in the US are members and most of the ad tech providers like View and Hivestack and Vista are members, and of course all the major BD buying agencies as well, Kinetic Talent and Rapport. So we totally embraced the entire 37 billion out-of-home ecosystem. 

So if you want to be a member or you're considering being a member, it's not really the case where you go, do I join World Out of Home, or do OAAA or whatever, you can be a member of all of them, and it's not a conflict, and you're not choosing sides? 

Tom Goddard: No, in fact the World Out of Home Organization is an international global body whereas the trade associations like Outsmart in the UK and the OAAA in the US are mainly national associations, and what we do is we connect with them and help to amplify the work they're doing and also help them to develop standards and best practices. So it's an entirely complimentary thing that you would join. 

And also you would join it to be a part of a sort of a sharing and learning platform and to get access to our extensive database and active networking forum, and of course you get favorable discount rates to all our events. Somebody said to me recently that our annual Congress is really now a must attend event. 

Is that the big thing, the resources and the conferences and so on? Are those kinds of the main motivators for joining? 

Tom Goddard: They used to be, David. We used to very heavily rely on our annual Congress which is highly attended by the senior people in out-of-home. But we are now doing our annual event, we had one recently in Toronto and next year's is in Lisbon in June, but we're doing two fairly major regional events. We've got one coming up actually in October in Southeast Asia for APAC and that's based in Kuala Lumpur, and we've got one coming up in February in Dubai covering the MENA region. 

So the events are a big attraction, but there's a lot more to the organization now, including monthly global Zoom calls with members, webinars and lots of other stuff that's going on throughout the year.  

Is it a case where you have media companies, particularly those who cover multiple companies competing in many respects, but this is a forum where they can collaborate and share ideas and the competition goes away for at least a little bit? 

Tom Goddard: That's a very astute question, David, and that's the tightrope all trade associations walk and what we do is we try to focus as hard as possible on sector growth and all the things that contribute to sector growth. And what you get is fierce competition locally at national level, between out-of-home media operators, both at the media owner and the media agency level. But there are lots of areas where it makes sense to collaborate and cooperate at association level to drive the sector because there is hard evidence now that a 1% sector growth is five times more valuable to your bottom line than a 1% growth within the silo.

So when you talk about the sector, are you talking at a macro level about out-of-home or digital out-of-home? 

Tom Goddard: I'm talking about out-of-home at a macro level, and don't forget that, 63% of global revenues still come through the classic out-of-home channel or static, as I think you call it in the US, but that is obviously tipping year by year in favor of digital.

Some markets are at 80% digital and other markets are a lot less than that. I never foresee a situation where the market will be all digital. But I think the majority will be digital, but there will still be great work to be done with classic billboards, doing directional work for the likes of McDonald's and other big retail operators. 

Yeah, there's any number of instances where I've seen digital in play and thought that wasn't necessary, it was almost like they did it because it's digital, that makes it shinier and newer and more attractive and a poster, a printed stock would've been just fine. 

Tom Goddard: Yeah. I guess because of the capital investment required, out-of-home media owners are pretty cany when it comes to the ones that need to be digitized. It's usually a very high value site. Sean Reilly at Lamar has a statistic that shows something like 4% of his inventory produced 27% of his revenues. Forgive me if I haven't got the numbers right, but we are moving into an era now where less is more. So I think you'll see a rationalization of out-of-home inventory around the world, but it will be higher value and more digital.

Yeah, I'm curious if your organization has a role in mentoring a lot of the startups that come along? These are the companies that want to put screens on everything, I just wrote last week about a company in London that's putting them on delivery scooters, and I tend to roll my eyes on a lot of these new kinds of efforts, but I thought that one was actually pretty spot on given the way London works and everything else, but there are so many dreamers out there that think they can put a screen anywhere and it's the road to riches route for them. 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, as we would say in Ireland, David, “God bless them!”

We would say, “Fill your boots!”

Tom Goddard: The simple fact is you put multiple screens where there is a huge audience, and on the back of delivery bikers is not exactly the place to get a return on that investment. But I think that there's always gonna be left field entrepreneurs coming into the industry. 

Where you see the big changes is with the high value sites around the world, and of course, lots of advertisers are cleverly using trophies or marquee digital sites on their social media as well. Most people who buy space in Times Square or Piccadilly Circus in London get wonderfully extended coverage and amplification on social media. So I think, in terms of dynamic content, in terms of the fact that involving memory and encoding digital motion really scores very high in those areas. 

So is that part of the reason why you're seeing like lights, particularly in Asia, you're seeing a lot of these, anamorphic collusion types of creative that they are hoping will also get picked in social media and so on, so it's extending the reach?

Tom Goddard: Absolutely, David, this is a really very exciting new innovation and Ocean calls it deep screen, and there are various sorts of versions of it.

What we're finding, which is very exciting in our sector is that there's two levels of creativity, the traditional great ideas that the great creatives come up with as well, and then there's the great creative technical applications, and what you've just described, that is a great example of the attention getting the ability of these deep screen ads and they just go viral on social media. 

Yeah, I've found that there's only been a few campaigns that have somehow rather threaded the needle between really interesting visuals but actually an effective ad. There have been ones where I'm trying to figure out okay, who is even the brand for this, but once in a while you see the ones where they've managed to achieve both.

Tom Goddard: Yeah, the people who invest in these types of locations also use them as part of their annual reports in their own collateral material, they use them in their websites. They get tremendous mileage out of them. 

Most of the great creative directors of our times always say, if you can get it right  on a poster, on an outdoor ad, you get it right on all media, that's as true today as it ever was. 

Because it's short and sweet and to the point, right?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, you've gotta get the message across swiftly and you've gotta be entertaining. 

Yeah, I try to emphasize in my past life with consulting clients, that this is not a storytelling medium, it's a glance medium. You've gotta get your message across really quickly and somehow resonate with them. 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, you're dead right. 

One of the challenges through the years, particularly in the early years of digital out-of-home was getting acceptance from media planners and buyers, that they would understand the medium, that the level of measurement was good enough to mirror what was happening online and elsewhere, and it wasn't just guesswork about audiences. Is that a hurdle that's now being cleared? 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, very much, and of course the research is very robust now, in terms of the work that digital out-of-home does. 

At a broader level, David, we are now in a global media market that's all about screens, and of all the legacy media, out-of-home has converged best with the digital era, and is regarded really as text friends, so I think we now are an integral part of the digital screen world and there's a terrific amount of research to back that up.

We recently spent a year updating and distributing the audience measurement guidelines, because it didn't include digital in the previous version, and it now fully includes the digital part of our medium, so we're well covered there. 

Is it possible to have global standards or is there just too many differences region to region or even country by country?

Tom Goddard: No, it absolutely is possible to have global standards, and that document, which is a 100+ page document put together by Neil Eddleston and Gideon Adey, two of the accepted global gurus on audience measurement, that has received tremendous endorsement from organizations who are all consulted in the process. 

You can have a model that fits most markets that is adjustable for the physical state of the local market and the level of maturity in that market. But yes, the important thing is to try and have an accepted level of research across all the markets so that the CMOs are talking the same language when they're buying out-of-home.

I know you're not a hardcore technology guy, but I have to ask about LED just from the lens of LED has opened up the opportunity to get beyond standardized billboard shapes and standardized kinds of locations, so you're now seeing the sides of entire buildings, including the Burj in Dubai being lined with LE  lighting that at a great distance can look like an ad.

Are we heading to a time where it's going to be like a few of the movies out there, like Children of Men or Blade Runner, where there are billboards on the sides of buildings and blimps and everything else? 

Tom Goddard: I think we're there now, David, certainly in China. If you go to Shanghai, it will blow your mind, and what's great is that there was a time when out-of-home media owners didn't have the greatest relationship with municipalities in cities, but cities now and out-of-home media owners are working collaboratively to integrate great digital treatments in the fabric of the cities and to connect with the smart city technology.

I think most mayors in the world now would regard large format, digital media and small format, on street furniture units to make a statement that this is a progressive city, this is a city that's moving fast in the digital age, so I think we're there. I think you can do nonstandard formats, particularly on super premium, as we see, and even now, we see some incredible treatments, with groups of drones being brought in for special occasions, so digital out-of-home is really, as I said, of all the legacy media, it has embraced technology best, and I think is really well equipped. Because when we started this organization, when our forebears started this organization, it was for the same reason which was to drive sector growth. But then, the big tech guys came in with television and later color television and now out-of-home is competing against the tech giants that are preeminent in digital marketing and in digital media. 

So we have to move along with that, and that's what we're doing, and this is why digital out-of-home is the second fastest growth medium in all of media . 

Is it part of your organization's charge to demystify or simplify some of the enabling technology, because I'm somebody who's been involved in the industry at various levels for more than 20 years and I struggle mightily to understand everything going on with programmatic, and if I'm having trouble, I suspect a lot of other people are. 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, you’re dead right. I've been banging on about this at various conferences. I think what we have is that programmatic is really simply computer-to-computer trading between SSPs (supply side platforms) and DSPs (demand side platforms) and it's gotten a bit complicated in out-of-home because we've added multiple layers on top of that, such as data stacks, real-time bidding capability, dynamic content, etc, and all these additions are meant to enhance the process and make it even more targeted and precise, but you're right, they also increase the complexity as well. 

We often have programmatic panels at our conferences and I appeal to the panelists to speak English and stop talking in all their tech language and we are getting better, but I would have to admit, David, I think it's unnecessarily complicated, or we make it unnecessary complicated, and certainly that's something we need to work on.

Yeah, I wonder if some of it simply has to do with all the different vendors, almost inventing terms so that they can differentiate themselves from a bunch of other companies that are doing roughly the same thing? 

Tom Goddard: Yes,. I think this gets back to my overriding point: our real competitors are not the other outdoor companies, our real competitor is at sector-level. So the more standards we have, the less complicated it is for media planners and CMOs to look at the medium and buy the medium, the faster the sector will grow. 

You and I are absolutely aligned on that, and it's something that we work on constantly. 

In terms of the overall organization, if you had to identify what your main sort of challenge or thing that you wanna accomplish in the next couple of years, what would that be?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, fortunately, David, in out-of-home, there are way more opportunities than challenges at the moment, but the ones that are in my mind that need more attention are audience measurement and sustainability.

We still have huge deserts, huge markets, and regions around the world that either lack or have suboptimal audience measurement systems, such as China, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and again, getting back to my point that if we can all get up to speed in terms of industry standard and languages, you know, I was down at the WFA, the world Federation of Advertisers Congress in Athens a couple of months ago, and listening to the brilliant CMOs talking on the platform there, and they look at things globally and they move around a lot, so it's very important for us to get all those markets that don't have audience measured, and we're introducing ourselves an initiative following our 100+ page guideline book called “Measure the World” to encourage those markets, to put the investment in through their national associations.

And then of course, the second thing is sustainability, which is a big challenge for every company and every citizen. 

Yes, and I guess the other one that is steadily coming up is security and network security and locking down your billboards and your digital posters. 

Tom Goddard: How do you mean? 

In terms of not getting hacked!

Tom Goddard: To be honest with you, David, it's a very rare occurrence, but it does get a lot of publicity when it happens and it's usually from a novelty point of view. I saw something a couple of days ago that was rather amusing, but it's very rare and our security levels are very high and that's why it's very rare. So I don't see that as an issue. 

Yeah, I think the mainstream media companies certainly understand it. It's the smaller kind of entrepreneurial operators who are trying to cut corners and then they discover, “oh, we shouldn't have cut that corner.” 

Tom Goddard: That's right. 

So if I'm an organization that is listening to this and thinking, I wanna know more, I perhaps want to join the World Out of Home Organization. How do they find you? 

Tom Goddard: As I said, the World Out of Home Organization is a not-for-profit organization. Our board of directors, which is like a who's who from the out-of-home media owners association, all give their time voluntarily to the organization. Its only function is to improve and promote out-of-home globally, and to drive sector growth. 

The membership fees are pretty nominal and the value that you get from the association makes it a no brainer. So you just log on to our website and there's a place there where you fill out the application form and join, and we are enjoying a very steady growth of new members at the moment. But it's not just about getting membership fees to cover the basic cost of running the organization, it's about learning and sharing, and everybody, as I said in Toronto, at the Congress, whether you are big or small and you have a story to tell, we do a weekly newsletter and everybody has a chance to tell their story in that.

So from my point of view, but of course I would say this anyway, David, it's a no brainer to join the World Out of Home Organization. You are doing only good. 

It's worldooh.org, correct? 

Tom Goddard: Correct! 

All right, that was terrific. Thank you for spending some time with me.

Tom Goddard: It was a great pleasure and I hope this nice weather continues, and let’s chat again sometime to see how much progress we've made.

Absolutely.

PJ Thelen, RoveIQ

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

When PJ Thelen talks about the company's software and hardware, he focuses almost entirely on the experiences they enable and deliver, as opposed to the features and specs of the technology.

It's refreshing, because a lot of the conversation and marketing around outdoor displays for directories, wayfinding and advertising has been - at least in recent years - about how they were more than just screens, but smart city devices that did a variety of things, including WiFi connectivity and IoT sensors. Thelen went so far as rebranding the company he now runs from smartLINK to RoveIQ - getting away from the heavily-used smart moniker and emphasizing how Rove speaks to enabling people to navigate a space with intelligent - the IQ bit - guidance.

The company has a CMS, sophisticated mapping, an ad server and analytics capabilities all designed to help people find their way around big places. The early adopters have been commercial properties - like mixed-use lifestyle developments. In many to most cases, those are wayfinding directories with mapping, supported by advertising.

But Thelen sees a lot of possibilities working with large-footprint healthcare, helping people find their way around sprawling medical campuses. There would be physical screens providing guidance, but in his vision, RoveIQ guides people from the time they park in a hospital garage all the way to a specific building, floor and waiting room.

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TRANSCRIPT

Peter, thank you for joining me. Can you tell me what RoveIQ is all about? 

Peter (PJ) Thelen: RoveIQ really emphasizes smart kiosks and wayfinding software solutions. 

We just rebranded our organization from smartLINK to RoveIQ and Dave, a big reason for that was we wanted to make sure our new name is better aligned with the solutions that we bring to market and the value that we provide for both our customers and partners. Now the word Rove, it's the whole idea of wandering, discovering, et cetera but the IQ element is to do it in an intelligent fashion. So you have a very efficient and enjoyable experience.

So if somebody listening to this is trying to visualize what you do, the visual that would immediately spring to mind would be a display totem outside in a public plaza or something like that with directory or mapping, correct? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, without a doubt. So I always use the analogy, Dave, to pretend that you're going to a place for the first time. You're not quite sure where you are or what is around you so you leverage the hardware and our software to understand what is available and then ultimately leveraging either the kiosk experience or the mobile experience allows you to essentially get to where you want to go leveraging a Blue Dot scenario, which obviously is our wayfinding software.

Blue Dot scenario, what do you mean by that, or is that just the name of the software itself? 

Peter Thelen: No, that's just the analogy I use Dave, where if you think about where you are and let's just say, hypothetically, you want to go to a restaurant, the dots correlate to the path that you need to take to go from where you are to where you ultimately want to go.

The old name, smartLINK, connoted the whole idea of smart cities and that there were all kinds of companies coming up with smart city kiosks in the last decade or so, and I don't necessarily see a lot of traction for those sorts of things. Is that kind of driving this as well? What if you better focus on the whole idea of guiding people, as opposed to saying this is this station that will do all these other things to help cities become smarter? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, we took a step back. RoveIQ is a software company. It just so happens that it needs a hardware platform to promote the value that we drive on a day in and day out basis.

In our minds, smart was widely used. It didn't necessarily correlate to exactly what we do today and where we're going tomorrow. From a search engine optimization perspective, it was tough just because there's so many smart this and smart that. As RoveIQ continues to grow, we're growing more and more into other verticals beyond just the smart city. So the bottom line is that we wanted a name that more appropriately aligned with who we are and what we're doing on a day in and day out basis, and it just made sense. 

It was a great exercise. It was about a six month long exercise with a phenomenal local company here called Brand Fuel, and we're very happy with the results.

There seem to be two kinds of threads of these kinds of outdoor street furniture displays. There are those shopping malls and community business districts, that sort of thing put in to help people find their way around intelligently, and then there are those that are there primarily as advertising. “Oh, by the way, there's also a directory” or “there's also some sort of a lookup thing” but it exists for advertising. Do you go down one path or the other, or do you serve both? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, that's a great question, and we definitely serve both, but there is no doubt that the emphasis of our software is around creating experiences. Experiences that a visitor or a resident is wanting to have, or is not expecting, and ultimately has, which generates this great feeling. 

Our software, which we consider a platform. It is a content management solution. It has the ability to be an ad server, which allows you to download and upload ads as well as schedule ads, then it has this third element around data analytics and reporting. So we feel like we have some of the best software out there. But there is no doubt at the end of the day, we're trying to promote more experiences as compared to just ads. 

But a big part of the ROI from a customer perspective is that digital out-of-home ad opportunity, and post COVID that's growing significantly, which is creating great opportunities. 

And ultimately, regardless of the venue and the scenario, something's gotta pay for the thing, right, so that's why advertising tends to come into play? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah. We always say there's hard and soft ROI in terms of your investment in RoveIQ. The soft is the experiences that both the customer, the resident, the visitor, incurs on a per visit basis, and how do you measure that? Secondly, it is the digital out-of-home ads based on whatever DMA that property or the city resides in that correlates to how big of an opportunity that is, and then the third element, which in my mind is still fairly immature, but it's becoming more relevant and more mature each and every day is this whole idea of how do you leverage the data? 

Whether it's the touch analytics, whether it's the video analytics and then the ability to potentially incorporate both WiFi and mobile, and then what do you use to do with that data to do something of value with it. 

You mentioned experience, how do you define and characterize experience? 

The experience can be what you see on the screen, what it looks like and everything else, or the experience can be, “that was easy. I found what I was looking for quickly, and that was a great experience” because now I can go in and experience whatever public plaza or mall or attraction that I'm at? 

Peter Thelen: At the end of the day, people want to be informed, they want to be educated, they want to gain access to information in a very quick and inefficient manner, and ultimately, they want to. 

We're designing our software where when you approach a kiosk and you start to interact, you can get off of it in less than 40 seconds and feel really happy about the experience and you're on your way, and you feel like you're on your way in an intelligent way. I always use the analogy, Dave, if you come to a property or a city for the first time, you're gonna be inclined to use our software. We at, RoveIQ wanna make sure every time you visit that city or that particular property, regardless if you know where you are and what is around you, because of your previous experience, you want to, once again, interact with our software, it causes you to want to come back, and if you're coming back, that means we're doing our job and adding great value to the customer, the property, etc. 

So if you're doing your job, this is where repeat visitors tend to migrate to like Moss to a light. They just know, “I'll start here to help me find what I'm looking for”?

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct, and our new brand promise is this whole idea of enriching lives through intelligent software designed to move humans, then we elaborate saying both physically and emotionally, and that emotional element is probably the most important. 

So where does your company start and where does it stop in terms of services and technology that you provide?

Peter Thelen: So knowing that we're a software company that ultimately needs a digital display to add value and differentiate, we're providing a fully integrated solution to a customer, which obviously includes the hardware, the related installation, the software, and then the ongoing maintenance. To do all of those things, you need to wrap it in a bow from a project management perspective, and then ultimately you're bringing this data element and this advertising element as part of the overall solution as well so the customer looks at you as a one stop shop. 

So we have that ability today. Now, obviously, we leverage partners where that is their core business to add the ultimate value and aspects of the overall solution. But hopefully that's transparent to the customer. 

Yeah, I'm guessing that you guys would be happy as clams if you could just be a software company and not have to worry, or really even think about hardware and just provide the specs that it needs to run on this sort of thing, but as you say, people want one stop shopping, they want turnkey. 

Peter Thelen: Yep, but that does bring up a good point. Before I got here in May of 2021, we were predominantly dependent on hardware. Of course, in the last 14 months we've made phenomenal strides in promoting mobile-only solutions. So if you think about something as simple as a smart city or a mixed use real estate, yes, you're walking up to a kiosk, but as you exit that kiosk, you can scan or text to phone, to basically take that exact same experience from the kiosk with you on your mobile device, you don't have to download anything, it is considered a web app and off you go.

We're also offering mobile-only solutions which are cool. As we penetrate colleges and universities and healthcare, we're not dependent on that hardware. You can get the benefits of our software, just leveraging your mobile device which has been pretty exciting to see and we look at that as a high growth vertical. 

So in theory, let's say on a university campus, you could walk up to a support column in a building and there'd be a QR code on there with a message that says. “Having trouble finding your way? Scan this!” and it'll launch your app and off you go? 

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. 

How do you make money off of that then? 

Peter Thelen: Well, that's all our software. If you think about it, the theme you're probably hearing from me is, we're a software company, and every time we're providing value around our software, there is a fee for that subscription base , it's monthly and it's based on the opportunity. 

So in a conventional setup where you are providing display hardware, you would have a play out license for that display, but with the university campus or something like that, if you're not using physical displays, you would just have some sort of a site license for the campus?

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct.

Okay. That makes sense then. I'm curious about wayfinding. Mapping for big public displays has been around, I'd say at least a decade, maybe 15 years, and like everything it's evolved, and I saw on your website, one of the things you talk about is three-dimensional wayfinding. 

Over the years, what has your company found in terms of what resonates with end users? Do they care about certain things like it being three-dimensional or do they just want something that's very intuitive and quick? 

Peter Thelen: I've concluded it's all the above. I think users today are smarter than ever. They have a very high expectation in terms of the experience that they're aspiring to have. So they want everything. There's a lot of wayfinding solutions out there. So we always think to ourselves, what makes ours better than the next, and knowing that we emphasize experiences, how do we really promote a better experience as it pertains to that whole wayfinding experience? 

So not everybody does 3D, most only do 2D. The whole idea of interactive is a big deal, and we obviously wanna promote that fairly aggressively, but the one thing that we're really emphasizing, Dave, is this idea of hyperlocal. Do we capture all elements of a property? So when an individual starts their journey, leveraging our software, it's a great experience. They very clearly know where they're going, they can visualize the surrounding environment and as they're going, there's no fear and uncertainty or doubt about where they're ultimately going to get to, because there's a high degree of confidence in that.

The hyperlocal is a very important element to our solution. It could be as simple as a bench, it could be a tree, it could be the look and feel of the building. Our UI/UX team does a phenomenal job of configuring the property on a per deal basis to make sure it looks and feels just like that property actually is.

So some of the areas you're in like Port Orlando in Orlando, or Miami Design District and so on, if a shopping or mixed use outdoor district like that approaches you guys and says we want to do this. What is involved? You were talking about the UX design and everything. Do they go on site or how do they put this together? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, it's a lot of different elements, which makes it fun and exciting, but ultimately it starts with a site survey, where we walk the property with the respective owners. We identify those high traffic areas. We understand the goals from the owner in terms of what they really want from this hardware and software. You have to define the advertising opportunity as part of the whole digital out-of-home. Sometimes it's a great opportunity, sometimes it's just an average opportunity and in some instances, based on the location of the property, it might not exist at all. Then the last element is this whole idea of data. 

Data is becoming more valuable like I referenced earlier. Each owner wants different types of data sets that's important to them. So as part of the onboarding, we define those data elements. But as we leave that site survey, you're taking all these pieces to the puzzle and assembling them into this picture that correlates to ultimately what they want which is a combination of hardware and software that are strategically placed throughout the property. We've built out the software in terms of the configuration so the experience as you approach the digital display looks and feels just like the property. 

I always use the analogy, picture your iPhone. When you open up your iPhone, you have the various apps on the first page. That's no different than what we do for a customer as part of the configuration process, and then we build out the maps. Take into consideration that hyperlocal, 3D concepts 

It is the core goal and aspiration simply to ensure that people who visit a venue like Port Orlando or whatever, to just not be lost and frustrated, or is it a little more sophisticated and evolved in the case of trying to influence where they might go?

Peter Thelen: I'm chuckling a little bit because it's both. If you think about the whole idea of moving people physically and emotionally, the physical aspect is the wayfinding, and that is the emphasis of our software, but we're one of the first in industries to roll out augmented reality selfie. I was at the Avalon property outside Atlanta, Georgia last week, and I sat on the property for three hours, Dave and I watched people interact with our software, and 70% of the people were leveraging the selfie and having an absolute blast with it in terms of what filter to use, how many people to incorporate into the selfie picture. I watched them scan or text to phone and I watched them walk away giggling, because they were so happy with the experience. 

Okay. So this is walking in front of a totem, there's a camera, it's capturing your image in front of the camera and then you're overlaying it like mouse ears or whatever?

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. I would say think of Snapchat filters, that's the exact experience that we're promoting, leveraging our software. 

Is that all just about the experience? Like I did this at this location and it's going to brand it and say I was at Avalon, and I did this fun thing and it's cascading out to that person's followers and therefore it's helping the Avalon brand? 

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct, and then the other side of that, and I'll just use an example of coupons. Think about the whole dynamic of a property wanting to potentially push more and more of the visitors to select locations or select stores, think about the whole idea of, I'm at Avalon for the first time, where is Lululemon? I used the software to understand where Lululemon is from a wayfinding perspective, Lululemon then offers me hypothetically a 10% coupon for today's spend, I scan that QR code, I work my way to Lululemon, I obviously make my purchase, I go to the POS as part of my payment process and I get 10% off my total order.

Lululemon's ecstatic that our technology drove people to their store, but the visitors were ecstatic because they got 10% off that they weren't expecting, everybody's happy. Those are the ideal scenarios. So the next time that family comes to Avalon, they're gonna be very inclined to leverage our software to understand what other coupons are out there.

That's got traceability too, right? 

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. 

Yeah, and is that happening very often, people using it?

Peter Thelen: The answer is yes, and it's happening more and more every day. RoveIQ has only been around since 2016, it was started by two individuals that also had another company. So you could make an argument, it really was a hobby.

I came here in May of last year. We had very talented people, it just needed more direction and more leaders, and we're adding new features every single day to our software to once again, heighten the whole idea of creating more and more experiences.

. Did you know much about this space when you came into it? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, I did a little, I do adapt to be dangerous, but I ran an IT solutions company for 19 years. I spent my last two years at an organization called Kroger, a rather large grocery store where I ran a division called Sunrise Technology, and that was all about leveraging technology that Kroger developed in house and realized that it worked, and the ask from me was to take that technology and sell it to the global retail world. 

The emphasis of that technology was digital shelves inside a grocery store. So I took that same experience, in that case, it was a digital shelf. In our RoveIQ world, it's a digital display, but the elements of the solution were very similar: data, advertising and experiences. 

I noticed in the press release announcing the name change that you also made a reference to healthcare software that was coming and I thought that's interesting, so what was that all about and is it now live? 

Peter Thelen: I've had so much fun with the team and healthcare customers working on this new concept and it's going great. The premise is fairly simple. If you think about the average experience today, where you have to go to a healthcare facility tomorrow, and these healthcare facilities continue to get bigger and bigger, which from a patient perspective, creates a lot of apprehension and anxiety around, where do I park, what entrance do I go in, and how do I ultimately get to the department that I'm needing to go to? 

So leveraging our legacy software, we have made tweaks where we are now integrating into their Epic and/or Cerner, where essentially a patient gets a text the day of their visit and that text takes them from their current location to the correct parking garage via car, then transfers to foot from the parking garage to the correct entrance, and then continues from the front entrance to the actual department. All leveraging a mobile device and obviously our software on that mobile device, and needless to say, it's addressing a rather large problem in healthcare that we believe with confidence we can solve and we're pretty excited about it. 

Now, where does it stand? We're in pilots as we sit here today, which means we're learning every single day with a set of customers, and needless to say, our goal is to go live with many customers as we enter 2023. 

That's an interesting one because an awful lot of big healthcare complexes started off as one building and ended up being eighteen buildings and they're all joined together and it's confusing as hell to find your way around, and I can certainly respect the idea of something that can say: go out this door, go down this hallway, go up three levels, then turn right and left, and eventually you're gonna find your way there because without it, you might have to leave super early because you know you're gonna get lost. 

Peter Thelen: Completely agree, and if you think about the idea of hyperlocal and our legacy software with these enhancements, we can promote this unbelievable experience where you always feel like you know where you're going and where you need to go to ultimately reach your destination. And from a customer experience perspective, these healthcare entities that we're working with today, that's one of their big issues. 

People need to feel good about where they need to go and how to go about getting there. 

Do you address language as well?

Peter Thelen: The answer is yes. Now our current pilots, they have not asked for that, Dave, but the bottom line is, our software has that capability. 

Yeah. I asked because years ago I had a meeting with a hospital in Toronto and it was in a very multicultural area of Toronto, and they had a roster of staff and volunteers who just handled all the different languages that came to the reception desk, asking where the Pediatric Clinic was or whatever, and they would have to call people and say, we need somebody who speaks Lithuanian or Tagalog or whatever it may be, and it was this monumental challenge. 

I suggested at the time that you might wanna look at some sort of interactive directory that you select your language first, and then it takes you where you need to go that way, and they said that's interesting, but they wanted to just do the wow factor, I can't do stuff in their public areas instead, and they're like, oh, okay, that's not gonna solve any problems, but fill your boots. 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, the bottom line is you wanna make sure you have software that can cover the population. The healthcare entities we're working with are defining that population. Needless to say, we're making sure our software can perform, and since it's our own proprietary software, the sky's the limit in terms of the capability and potential. 

Yeah, I could certainly see what you're describing is working well on university campuses as well, particularly for night courses and part-time students who aren't familiar with where they're going and really the same thing in airports.

Peter Thelen: The airports for us, Dave, have been a tough market. It's so competitive, there's a fair amount of rather large players. Don't get me wrong, we focus on airports, but that's not necessarily where we have generated the most success today.

Airports are also pretty conditioned to media companies coming in and saying, we'll put this in for free. 

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. I can play that game all day, every day. I can play, it's just a matter of, can I compete? 

Yeah, you're not gonna win too often when the other guy's saying, we'll put it in free for you.

Peter Thelen: You know that's the dynamic we deal with every day on a per deal basis. Based on the perceived digital out-of-home advertising opportunity, that can create a free experience or that unfortunately you have to pay for, it has to generate the corresponding value. So those are the discussions we have. 

I'm guessing the majority of the opportunities that you run into and close are in some way bolstered by advertising, and there aren't that many that are purely just an informational display?

Peter Thelen: It's interesting, we've had a phenomenal 2022 and the characteristics of each deal really are so different, especially as it pertains to advertising, and there is no doubt when advertising can generate that ROI on its own, it makes it a very easy decision for a customer. But when that's not the case, then it correlates to what are the other value elements and is that important to our property? And we're seeing that increase more and more, which has been exciting, because obviously that's creating great opportunities for us. 

But there's no doubt, advertising is a big play here and at the end of the day, we're trying to do everything within our means to bring the best solution forward around advertising to optimize that ROI from a customer perspective.

You mentioned programmatic in your press release. So are you working with the many programmatic companies out there? I don't even wanna rattle 'em all off, cuz there's so many and I'm so confused by it. 

Peter Thelen: Yeah. So our software, because it's this platform and has this ad server capability, it integrates into programmatic partners, and we're constantly looking at the appropriate programmatic partners and then obviously incorporating those into our solution. 

So yeah, that's a big opportunity. This whole idea of unused inventory, how can it be sold in an automated fashion? These programmatic partners make it very easy to fill a high volume, usually obviously lower revenue elements, but still important from a customer perspective. 

The company itself, is it private or are you publicly traded? 

Peter Thelen: No, it's private. It resides here in Northern Kentucky, right outside Cincinnati, Ohio. The emphasis today is within the United States, although we're always looking at growth outside of the US, but it's a fairly small company, but it's doing some really exciting and fun things.

How many folks do you have working there? 

Peter Thelen: So we have 12 people today. I'm trying to grow that by an incremental three between now and year end. We have about 25-30 unique customers across five verticals: smart cities, mixed use real estate or lifestyle centers, we call it entertainment, but the emphasis really there is sports arenas, and then college universities, like we talked about earlier and healthcare. We're heavily focused on five verticals. 

All right. So if people wanna know more about RoveIQ, where do they find you? 

Peter Thelen: Our new website is RoveIQ.com, which in the last three weeks has gotten a lot of attention, which is pretty exciting. But they can also email me, which is pretty simple: pj@RoveIQ.com, and you have my commitment that I'll respond and give it the appropriate attention. 

All right this was great. Congratulations on growing the company the way you have.

Peter Thelen:. Dave, I really appreciate your time. I appreciate your support. You do great work and thanks for giving RoveIQ an opportunity to talk about what we do on a day in day out basis.

Rosemary Valenti, Outdoor Solutions Group

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

New York City is a massive out of home media environment, but much of the attention gets directed to the giant LED boards in Times Square, when there all kinds of other interesting and high opportunity environments that also generate a LOT of eyeballs ... like the ferries across the Hudson River.

Outdoor Solutions Group has many, many years under its belt doing static advertising on the ferries that take commuters back and forth from New Jersey - from wraps on boats and shuttle buses to ad posters and big banners in the ferry terminals.

The company had been slow-walking its digital plans for a variety of reasons, but when COVID hit, the company decided it was time to start converting some of that printed stock to digital. Part of that was triggered by the simple observation that as the economy and riders started coming back from lockdowns, digital interest and buys were coming back faster.

I spoke with Rosemary Valenti, who has spent a long career in New York OOH media circles and fully took over the business when her husband died a few years ago, after a long scrap with cancer. She now has a son helping her out, and partnerships with established digital partners in Broadsign, Pearl Media and TSItouch.

In this podcast, we get into why Valenti's firm took the digital plunge, its challenges and benefits, and her plans to convert more of the print positions to quickly refreshed digital displays.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Rosemary Valenti: I'm Rosemary Valenti. I'm the CEO of an Outdoor Solutions Group in New York, and I've been in this out-of-home world for a very long time. I started this company with my husband, Mark Valenti in 1996, but we were both in the out-of-home world prior to that, we were in companies that are now considered outfront media.

And your son's still involved in the business, right? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, actually, Matthew was an infant when I started OSG, and then by the time he was 15 we had him, as a courier almost, going in, dropping off mail, that's how he earned his allowance, did some inside of the ferry postings and he was an intern, he was great. He learned a lot of the business and now he is Vice President of Outdoor Solutions Group. 

Nice, and you've run it on your own since you lost your husband? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, in 2018, we unfortunately lost Mark to cancer. I took over the helm, but Mark and I did this for years. I had a backseat for a while, and he was more in the forefront when the kids were little, and then I would in those say 10 years, we were just in tandem running it pretty much, and then when he got sick, we needed a little help, and then after that, I just started to run it and then Matthew had some experience at Clear Channel Outdoor for a little bit, and then came in and joined forces with me and is instrumental in everything that we do together. He's great. 

Good. It's nice to have him involved, I guess. 

Rosemary Valenti: Yeah, even my other son has posted things. It was a family affair for a while. But that's not my other son's career path. But we do all participate in this. 

Your environment is transit, and particularly the ferries, along the New York waterways, correct? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, New York Waterway Ferries are our business partner, and they specialize in ferrying people from New Jersey waterfront properties or New Jersey over to Manhattan, and then we have locations in Midtown and Brookfield Place, and it was static for a long time, and then we decided to introduce the digital, which we needed to do, especially after COVID. 

We got shut down for a little while in COVID, and had to rebuild it from the ground up, basically. So we had a lot of entertainment, a lot of Broadway, so we lost everything, and also New York Waterway had only essential service for a few months, and so they were shut down, and so we slowly have come back just like many transit systems, but in New York we were hit hard so it took us a long time to get this back up and we're there now. But we took a hard look at the company and we saw digital coming back faster and bouncing back faster than any kind of traditional transit, so we implemented converting some of our traditional, basically if you wanna call theem street furniture, but they’re six foot by four foot, that's what we pulled out in some of the terminals, and we put in a 75 inch Samsung QMRs which really is helpful to have, you can send creative right from the office desk. 

Yeah, really. So why do you think digital was coming back faster than static?

Rosemary Valenti: I think people wanted cancellation clauses, there were less production fees. You could easily take something in and out, you can change creative. They were a lot of people who were speaking to the public about COVID through out-of-home and we didn't have that in the beginning. We didn't have that opportunity, but you saw advertisers doing messaging about COVID, and then saying, we're back and all different things. But we were shut down and so when we were coming back, we wanted to make sure we had something like that and what Waterway also wanted that, they have their own spot, they can alk to their customers through us because we put them inside the ferry terminals, and we also put them inside the ferries themselves. 

Yeah. So you have various terminals, they're like small airport terminals with concourses and you've got what used to be light boxes are now digital, and then you've got, I think portrait displays that you've got on the actual ferries? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, we did everything portrait display. So our in wall in the ferry terminals, which is really in the waiting areas and some of the pathways that they walk through to get into and then to get onto the slips. Those are 75 inch portraits, and then in one of the areas we have like maybe a 55 inch where some of the seating is facing, and then when they get into the ferries, they're 43 inch and they're right at the entrance and exit door. So you come into the lower level of the ferry and that's where our screens are, everything's portrait. We figured one piece of creativity is easier. 

We're trying to do a two minute uninterrupted loop through the whole system, so an advertiser gets the entire system, which then can give them 90% of the ridership almost, if you think about that, they're in the highest traffic ferries, and then they're at the terminals. Right now, on the New Jersey side, in Port Imperial / Weehawken, and in Midtown and in these ferries, that's our phase one. We intend on putting in some more digital. We just have to do it in phases. 

You're also still recovering from COVID, right? Not health wise, but business wise. 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, that's why we're doing it in phases. But much of the ridership is back and it's a little bit different. It used to be more Monday to Friday. Now they're seeing those as many people on a weekend, then there might be a Tuesday probably because of split work weeks, right? So I think people are taking advantage of this city more because they don't have to go every day to work. 

Our partners, New York Waterways, they're seeing almost a steady flow back in, it’s just different for them, which is great.

Is the ferry ridership profile a bit different from what you would see on Long Island rail, or particularly the subway? 

Rosemary Valenti: Definitely different from the subway. I would say it's an affluent audience. So I would say maybe more a Metro North that goes up to Westchester and somewhat like a Long Island railroad. We have a very affluent and high education especially there's people that live on the waterfront. So some of those waterfront areas in New Jersey have all been built up into these million dollar apartments, so it's really becoming a beautiful area. They have a beautiful skyline view, and then what Waterway did is once they land in Midtown, they provide a complimentary bus service to go Midtown down 34th street, 42nd, 50th. You take your route and they make it, basically from home to the office so you can circumvent subways, you can circumvent everything, they call it door to door, and it's a complimentary bus. 

So those are the buses that we wrap. They have a fleet of buses along with the fleet of ferries and then downtown Brookfield place area and Wall Street, it's all pedestrian, you walk to your offices from there, cuz it's much closer. So they don't have to take mass transit really. 

And I would assume that if I think about being on New York subways, that a great many of the ads are for English as a second language courses and career colleges and things like that, I'm guessing that you're getting different kinds of brands who are advertising on your screens?

Rosemary Valenti: I would say that the subways have a mix of different types of advertisers, but we're getting high end real estate, we've been getting some alcohol brands, we had HubSpot where they wrapped a ferry and they went onto the digital and they wrapped a bus. So that's a CRM. So we're getting certain things like that, and Broadway have come back. We have Disney's Lion King and Aladdin, and we're getting more interest in that sector again. But, we had lost a lot of that so that's coming back and we just got Fire Islands, Hulu. So they did like a partial ferry wrap, but they also got onto the digital and obviously streaming is like digital. So that's great, and they had done a big pride event here. So we had sponsors of that pride event and then they were also on our ferries and the ferries were chartered to get to that pride event in Governor's island. It was called pride island. Yeah, there's different types of advertisers that we would get high end real estate that they might not get in the subway. 

I'm guessing that long before you decided to start the conversion over to digital, you were getting banged on by no end of display and software companies to make that conversion quicker. What was holding you back? 

Rosemary Valenti: Strategy, trying to figure out exactly what to do because there were options. Do we do a big spectacular, do we do LED instead of the screens, so we really wanted to figure out where should we go? And as we looked at our own dioramas on our walls, right at eye level, and we said, it make perfect sense to update these into digital because they're sitting on benches next to them, they're buying tickets next to them, they're walking past them when they're trying to get to the bathrooms. They're all in the area, in the ferry terminals that make the most sense, and inside the ferries, it was absolutely an easy decision to just put these right at the entryways. So you come in, you sit down and you face our screens. 

Is it technically challenging to put them in something like a ferry becaused of the salt air and everything else?

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, actually, we worked with TSI Touch and they gave us these anti-glare screens and protective coverings, so we needed to work on a design with that. Even in the ferry terminals, they have a wall of glass that you are sitting in and there's a wall of glass facing the Hudson river. So we needed anti-glare. We wanted to make sure they were protected with tempered glass because people do roll their suitcases sometimes. So we needed to get all these components factored, like what do we need in this to put this in? 

And then TSI Touch actually supplied us with them once we told 'em what we were looking for, and then we had to deal with the design of our ferry terminals. So in Midtown, there was a lot of steel. So they helped us fabricate the enclosures that kind of go with the flow and looked somewhat like the enclosures we had on a more updated version of the enclosures, and same with the Port Imperial / Weehawken, we did a a black covering so it looked like a giant iPhone. But we had that kind of color on the walls prior. So they were instrumental in helping us with the design and they also made sure that the heat could escape. There's all these elements that you have to do when you have to put these in, then you have computers in the walls, and I would say that when you talk about inside the ferries, we have had to get to a cradle poin because there's no LTE. So you had to figure out how to get the LTE across the Hudson and back every 20 minutes, and there is electrical issues on ferries, just like in trucks. 

Yes, they call it dirty power!

Rosemary Valenti: Dirty power! That's exactly what they call it. Yeah, we had to work with Marine electricians to make sure we had the right surges or something that may deal with a low power instead of a high power. So that's some stuff I didn't understand, but now I understand. 

The good news is, you had your baptism in fire. So if you can put screens with everything involved on a bouncing, rocking ferry, going across the Hudson, putting them in a static, enclosed building like a ferry terminal should be a walk in the park?

Rosemary Valenti: Yeah. That's why we did the ferry terminals first. Yes, we had to learn about the ferries and deal with ferry operations and you know, they're using these vehicles, you gotta take them outta service for us to install them. It's not as easy, but they're very helpful and they wanted this and we work well together, but I didn't understand a lot of Marine things, and I've heard terminology that I never understood, like “give her a splash” and that means a ferry going back into the water. 

And then for software, we use Broadsign for content and programmatic because that's something that everybody's taking advantage of and we wanted to get involved in that as well. So Broadsign educates you, they have the support staff, they teach you everything, and they're fabulous to work with. So we're really getting dynamic advertising.

I would imagine that's another baptism in fire you had. If you're been doing static advertising for 20 plus years, to all of a sudden wade into this Labyrinth, I would almost call it the programmatic world, must have been bewildering, cuz I try to write about it and I'm bewildered.

Rosemary Valenti: It is. I think that's why I think my husband was even approached prior to that and didn't wanna do it in the beginning. He saw a lot of companies like that start and then maybe fail. So we waited quite some time, but my son was at Clear Channel and he was selling Times Square billboards and things like that so he understood digital more than I did. So he was a great asset for that, and then we partnered with Pearl Media last year, and they also helped us understand this and they helped strategize with us and we ended up using one of their guys who branched off on his own Daniel, Oak city Integrations is his company and he helped us with the software and guided us in the implementation of all of this.

Okay, so you do media sales through Pearl and you also get backed up through programmatic buys?

Rosemary Valenti: We have a rep deal with Pearl Media, so they help us with the advertising as well as ourselves, and programmatic goes through Broadsign, and that makes that side very easy. So yeah, that's how we are getting an influx in sales between OSG's staff and then Pearl’s sales staff.

Because you are in terminals and ticketed environments, people go through turnstiles or something like that, I would assume you've got a pretty reliable one traffic and impressions count, and you wouldn't have to rely so much on venue analytics?

Rosemary Valenti: We joined Geopath and they rated not only our buses on the streets, but our dioramas that were existing and then our digital, it was switched out to digital. So we worked with Geopath and we have over 2 million monthly impressions per advertiser, because there's a lot of signs in there. We launched with 27 screens. So because we were rated first with Geopath as static and then converted existing things, it was pretty easy for them to help us. We explained that it was 15 second spots within a two minute loop and they could easily do the conversion and help us with that. All advertisers look for the audited so we give audited impressions. 

And are you with other associations as well?  

Rosemary Valenti: We worked for the buses, which are static, with Street Metrics and they helped audit those, and OAAA is somebody we belong to but that's just a membership organization. They had done a study once on one of our ferries, which was all state. So we've seen those studies. But  they're a good source. 

Do you think you could have stayed as just analog or now that you've gone the digital route it makes sense? 

Rosemary Valenti: We knew we needed to go digital, we didn't wanna stay analog. We wanted to be updated. It’s just that my husband's health was a problem, and so it held us back the 17 months he was sick, so it held us back. But then, when COVID hit, we knew we needed to convert. 

And now that you've done it, you talked about the quick turn on being able to change ads and things like that. Have you been able to assess the ROI value of it? Like you've done it and it makes sense? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, it makes sense. It happened faster than I thought, some of the return on investment, which is great. So we're seeing the digital take off and people really like it. Like I said, they can just send you a file, we can push play. 

We've even had like the Yankees come in for two day stints and then two day stints, like when they first open season and then a bobblehead thing. So those short term campaigns we could never have done with static so it really helps. 

Yeah, I would assume with the static thing, particularly if you're gonna replace a bunch of light box posters with new print ones that don't turn that quickly, it's like numerous days, at least? 

Rosemary Valenti: You mean just to post?

Well, if somebody says, “I would like to do this” then the creative's gotta be done, and then it's gotta be printed, then it's gotta be sent to the site, then somebody's gotta switch it out and everything else, it doesn't happen in half an hour. 

Rosemary Valenti: Right. You need an install team, you need to print them. Your print could take a few days for us, say a regular diorama, which is six foot by four foot, but it could take several days to print a bus or a ferry and it takes over a day to wrap a bus. It takes a day to wrap a bus and a ferry. It could be one day if it's good weather, but with the ferries you're dealing with weather conditions.

But the combination, they're starting to like the combination because you get to hundred percent share a voice with your static, and then you get this digital where you can change creative. We've had the cannabis expo run with us. They had four different creatives on the walls that were running, simultaneously and then they gave us some static. So the combination, they knew they were always gonna be there, and the diorama sat down in Brookfield place, but they were part of a loop inside the ferries so they were getting on the wall and in the ferries as well as some traditional and that combination is really nice. 

There was a company that didn't last, maybe it was COVID, but I think it was more about regulations, that was floating an LED display on a barge on a river. I can't remember whether it was the East River or the Hudson. 

Rosemary Valenti: It was on the Hudson. They they made it illegal. I think it still may exist out in Florida or something, but… 

Yeah, I think they’re in Miami.

Rosemary Valenti: It was removed because it was interrupting the Hudson river view for one of those people that paid a lot of money to have that view, and this light is flashing in your giant windows, they all contacted the mayor and the governor and they got that removed. I think, to them, it was unsightly. It was very bright. In their offices, you could see it going up and down. That's why ours is static, it's static on the ferries, it's not something that's lit up like that. It's still a fabulous 84 foot long message on the ferries, but to put the digital on the water and then flash it up into both waterfront sides of the river when these people, I think, pay all this money to have a waterfront view, but imagine just putting your kid to sleep or something, and then you these lights are flashing in the window. I can't even imagine all the things that they were hearing, but they did force them out of New York.

Yeah, I was just curious because if you are doing static, doing basically vehicle wraps, but on a ferry, if you could do that with LED that was permanently there and just changed the file, even if it wasn't flashing, it was just solid, that would be very efficient and maybe have an ROI down the road, but then you might face the same heat. 

Rosemary Valenti: Yeah, that's not something that we're interested in. I would imagine some of those screens have to use generators, which could make things even louder, or you're on the waterfront, you're bumping around, but it probably is taxing. Think about if it's a generator that has to use gas and now you've got this whole diesel/fuel issue right now going on with how much everything is, but I think that it's too invasive, the digital going inside the waterfronts, their views. 

I think there's too many voices saying we don't want this. 

How competitive is the media environment in New York? I know it has been like that for a very long time, but I'm curious because there's just so many different ways that people are putting advertising on. 

Rosemary Valenti: I would say it's very competitive because you have traditional billboards going down the West side highway, you have all the transits, you have the subways, you have buses. So we're all fighting for the budgets. But we are the only ferry wrap program but there is digital inside of some of the other ferries that run around, but all out-of-home in Manhattan is competitive. We're all looking for an edge.

Yeah, and they're all coming out of COVID, just the way you guys are as well, right? 

Rosemary Valenti: We're all coming along. I think I think we're pretty much back. We're one of the top markets, right? So if we're gonna be anywhere, it's nice to be here because we have a lot of people, but I would say that I'm seeing that people are contacting me daily to ask me about my rates and my business and that's a plus because we did go a while in COVID when it was deafening. 

Are you looking to expand or is it more about building out the digital side of the portfolio you already have? 

Rosemary Valenti: We are looking to expand on the digital inside of our terminals more and we're partnered with Pearl so we're strategizing if there's other opportunities. They have some good stuff too. So they're right i near where we are so it offers this great synergy. 

We're looking to expand. We buy again, we still wanna, we still have a little bit more phase to build out just with New York waterway. 

All right. It was a pleasure to speak with you.

Rosemary Valenti: It was great to speak with you too. I appreciate it. 

All right. Thanks for your time. 

 

Jeremy Gavin, Screenfeed

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

Screenfeed has, for many years, been one of the primary players in subscription content for digital signage - offering great-looking, fully-automated infotainment feeds that help populate the schedules of screens and get viewers looking again and again.

Now the Minneapolis company is introducing a new service that's a direct play on the no code software movement. Screenfeed Connect is an online toolset that allows users - whether they have developer chops or not - to easily and quickly integrate data sources into fully customizable HTML5 designs and layouts.

The product of two years and 30,000 developer hours, Connect grew out of the frustration of custom content project pitches going nowhere because the clients didn't have the budget. Screenfeed, for example, might need to charge $7,000 to reflect the time needed to develop a finished, automated template, but the client might have a budget for $700.

By putting Connect together, Screenfeed now has a platform that plays to the whole notion of economies of scale. So maybe that $7,000 job could be done for around $700.

I spoke with Screenfeed founder Jeremy Gavin about the roots of Connect, and how it will be available to see and try out this week on the show floor at InfoComm.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jeremy, thank you for joining me for those who don't know what Screenfeed is all about, and I can't imagine there's a lot of those, but nonetheless give me the skinny on what your company does and how long you've been around?

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah. Thanks for having me, and happy to share what Screenfeed is up to.

We started as a service. I started the company in 1999, I believe. We really didn't transition to what is now Screenfeed until 2008. So we've been doing this for Screenfeed, which typically has been known as the provider of infotainment content or data feeds. Like we call it dynamic rich content, that's ready-made. It's been a lot of fun building that. We serve content to over 175,000 screens around the globe, and all types of CMS and on many different types of digital signage networks. So it's been fun to see the industry grow over the last 14 years because we've been involved in a lot of people's networks, making sure everything under the network is running and that the screens are working. We just get to provide them great content that feeds their screens, keeps them fresh, and the purpose to use our content is really, in most cases, it is to get people to watch the screen longer or get them to turn their head and look at it in the first place.

You may have some messages, it could be employee messages, it could be advertisements that you want people to see on the screen, that's maybe the purpose of the screen. But in an exchange you might want to provide them something like news or weather or sports scores to gain their attention, and in some cases, it is to inform them whether it's alerts, weather alerts or traffic. There is some utility to the content that we provide, as well.

And you guys have done some research that kind of validates the whole idea of injecting things like infotainment into schedules that would otherwise just be a series of promotional messages or workplace messages or whatever it may be, that actually does have a positive impact that it does get people to keep looking and remember the next thing that comes up on the screen, right?

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, absolutely. Certainly when we started we were going off of a gut feeling that, Hey, we should put something on the screens. And truth be told, a lot of our customers probably have said that we need to check a content box. So what can we get that is easy and updates to my screens.

So it's not the same all the time. So you'll get some use from that, just to say, let's just keep our screen updated with something new. But fortunately, we've had opportunities to work with customers who wanted to think smarter about it and say, Hey, is this actually helping? And we worked with a large national bank, for example, did a number of studies on a lot of our products to see what would help them  deliver the message that they want to deliver.

And I can't give the exact details from which company and that type of thing, but generally the assumption was if we play weather, will the marketing piece that we run after the weather be seen more? And so when they did in-person testing a large thing over three months, they came back to say what was the highest recall piece. And it happened to be weather, but of their marketing pieces. The marketing piece that ran after the weather was recalled at a 40% higher rate than all the other messages. So they've said the same thing with our traffic and our sports scores, and it's been fun to see that have an impact for them.

And certainly that could be the case for all of our customers. 

At InfoComm this week, you are launching something called Connect, which is a pretty big leap forward for you guys. 

Jeremy Gavin: It is.

It's been something we've been working on for about two years and and actually came out of some frustration that I had at a couple of levels. I was at a speed dating show in London, maybe I don't know, three, four years ago and actually canceled. So I'm not going to go. I don't think they need the infotainment for the people I was going to meet with, but I said, I'm going to go anyway and I'm going to see if they don't need what I have to offer.

We're content people, what can we offer them? And so I flew over there and it was a miserable two days, not really selling anything, and I was just devastated. I'm like, wow, what's going on here? But we have always known that, we sell infotainment, we're a slice of the content pie, and I, so I came back home thinking we just need to be a bigger part of the content by the way.

We've been doing this for 10 years or eight years. We're experts in this. We know how to deliver dynamic data, how to make it look great on a screen, and so I decided we just wanted to say yes to more projects. So really and this is where Screenfeed is at, not only outside of the connection are we're just wanting to say yes to mark on projects.

We want to be the content people that people think of when they need dynamic content because we're good at it. So we decided, Hey, we need to put out a lot more products that use people's own data. They've been coming to us to license data. But we had a lot of requests during our time saying, Hey, can you offer this look community events feature?

Can you allow us to put our events there? Or we’ve got company news. In addition to the news that we're subscribing you, can we do that? And we've got involved in a lot of custom projects and there was one particular project where I felt like there was this great opportunity, this really cool shaped screen in Vegas for this bar.

And they wanted some sports scores as well as their own news and some other things, and what they want to do is really cool. And so we gave him a quote because we've got lots of great front end HTML developers, and it was going to be like $7,500, and that was us trying to keep it small because there's this one bar, what are they going to spend for that?

And, they said, no, and I was frustrated and I thought we need a better answer for that. So we built a tool that allows us to do a project like that, for hundreds, projects that used to take a developer and a designer three weeks now can take a day. It's built too. Basically it's a no code use trendy term solution that builds HTML content apps that integrate with your data.

So that could be the case of a weekly sales leader board. It could be a menu board. It could be a progress bar. I don't like to give out all the samples because. The cool thing about it is it's not just a bunch of templates. It's literally a tool that allows you to create an app. So that's connected and we've been working on it for two years and I'm happy to tell you more about it.

How does it work in terms of if I am an end-user or a reseller, am I subscribing to something? Am I paying for the functionality one? 

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, that's great. So connect, initially we're going to be offering it for free throughout the whole summer. Yeah. We want people to see, that's true. That's obviously valuable for us to see what apps people would use.

It's what the use-cases are, and in the end it's a tool to get a project from A to Z, and that's what it is. We don't want people to see it as a design tool. It's not another Canva that has data integration. It really does cut down projects time from A to Z. But when we do offer it, certainly it will be licensed similar to how we license our Screenfeed content, which is a license per player, a small monthly cost per player.

And then for Screenfeed, actually, we're launching a new pricing model to simplify things for us next week as well. So essentially you'll be able to purchase a license for all of our infotainment apps. So you don't have to decide what you want. You can change any time. Or if you really want to, you can just purchase one one app like a local community or calendar feed. And the same thing with connect apps, I get a license per player and with one license you can create as many apps as you want on your screen. So you could have 10 of our apps running in your playlist, or if you really only have a need for one app such as a welcome screen, you can just pay for one license.

So the pricing I'll be setting over the summer, but it will be very similar to our Screenfeed pricing now, which scales down the more licenses you have. So we have networks with one screen, and we have networks with 30,000 screens, and we make it affordable for them. 

And I think you said you put in 30,000 hours of developer time into this?

Jeremy Gavin: We did. Yeah, pretty much our COVID was spent building this. We did start beforehand. I got back from that show, I think in 2019, and we started saying, Hey, we got that. What else are we going to do? What's next for Screenfeed? And so we spent a few months trying to determine what that was, and when COVID hit, we just said, "Hey, yeah, let's do it." At that time, honestly I thought we'd build this thing in six months, and I thought the pandemic would be over in six months. So it really wasn't related to the pandemic. It's just, at that time we just started it, and said," Hey, let's get this done." And so from a team perspective, we expected to launch a minimally viable product early on.

But there's just so much this can do, and we just kept wanting to add more. So we had a little scope-creep. But honestly, I'm really proud of what we have and it's a very usable tool right now. In fact, we are already using it for customers now.

It's nice that I'm coming to InfoComm, which will be the first trade show with it.  

So the premise here is no code software. If I am the digital signage person in charge of, let's say, a regional savings and loan with, 20 branches or something like that, and I want to put financial data  that's not just market data, I could go into your tool set, and do this myself, regardless of whether I have any skill sets around database tables or HTML5 coding or anything like that. Right?

Jeremy Gavin: So in that use case, they might want to be showing their own rates. They might want to didn't be showing the bankers that you're working with and rotate that.

I'll give you a little story. So I'm involved in a girls' fastpitch club, and we have our own training facility ... and this is just my own use case for this. We had four different teams of girls that didn't really know each other a whole lot. They played on different teams, but during the winter, they're working out together at this training facility, and so we wanted them to learn about each other, very similar to what you might do with employees. And we had schedules, we had a number of things we wanted to push out. Of course, I wanted to put a bunch of screens in there. So I did that, and to get done what I wanted to do on the screens I had access to developers and designers on my team, but it would have taken a lot of their time.

And I can't say, Hey, let's take a bunch of time on my developers on Screenfeed for this use. So I delayed and delayed it, it would have taken probably four to six weeks, but once I had the first version of Connect built, I sent out a form just using JotForm to all the players and said, "Hey, fill out this form. What your goals are this summer? Who is a teammate you appreciate and why? what's your favorite ice cream? That kind of stuff. And with that data, I was able to make four apps within two hours ... one that showed, "Hey here's my pet, and here's a picture of me." "Here's me and here's my teammate that I appreciate, and why." "Here is our calendar, and our training calendar schedule countdown to the state tournament."

So I made a playlist there one morning, and I was able to do that. The key was I was able to do that myself, and I made it look the way I wanted.

There's a lot of template tools out there. But with Connect, you can start with a blank canvas. You can just start adding things onto the canvas and design it. You can connect to any data source currently that delivers XML, JSON, either Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, and the CSV files. We'll be adding a lot more connections to Salesforce and Shopify and everything else you can think of.

So those data connections are already pre-built. It's just easy to use the data that you already have. So as long as you have data, this is a tool for people who want to display that data. If you don't have a data source, you can also just add your data and then connect. And so there's a great data management tool there.

Some other use cases, for example, would be that we have worked with a mall in New York and they want to display a featured offering for their tenants. This happened during COVID. They wanted to do some things to help them, and it was a lot of work. We were doing this manually for them, where they'd say they'd contact these stores, try to find out what they wanted to emphasize, and by the time they get the information, their deals are almost over. So now they just send out an email link to a form that's secure. They log in, they just tell them what their offer is. They upload an image. It goes to the mall manager,  who then has an approval process within Connect to approve, and then that gets rotated into the template that was built in Connect, and automatically delivers it. So now the managers of that mall, the only requirement they've got after sending that link out is just to approve messages. And they're done. They don't have to manage anything else. Our system takes care of the rest. So it's really a workflow tool, in addition to a design tool.

Is there some sort of fault tolerance in place? I know I can remember back to the early days when companies were introducing Twitter visualization. So you can take the Twitter feed and show it on the screen. But Twitter kept changing its API and it didn't work, and I guess the same thing happened with some other social media channels. Do you have something that's doing data checking or whatever, to make sure that these data sources are still structured properly? Or do you have somebody who has to stay on top of it? 

Jeremy Gavin: Yes, absolutely. So when a new data connection is created first we have to ask, in a lot of cases, say for a Google Sheet, we have to have authenticated access to get that, unless they've made it public. We also asked for permission to cache that data securely on our servers.

We'll be able to opt out of that if they don't want to. But that allows us, if a connection breaks - Twitter and Instagram are pretty famous for that, where they just asked you to re-authenticate and they won't read your data. Or if someone's got a Google Sheet and someone in the office, that's the data source for the screen, but all of a sudden they make some changes that break it.

We have a stored last created version of that, and then we send an email notification saying, "Hey, we've got a problem. You might want to fix it. In the meantime, we'll use the last data that we have." Then there's another control that allows you to decide how long that bad data can be used. 

So that's a way for us to manage that and make sure that the screen is not impacted and then there's also some fallback messages you could apply in the template so that, "Hey, if the data's not there, display this message instead."

I spoke with Intuiface two or three weeks ago. They do interactive software and have been doing no code before people were using that phrase. And Geoff Bessin talked about how part of the rationale was this would enable developers to do things much more quickly. So something that might've taken two weeks to put together, they could maybe do in a morning or something more like that. Is that kind of the same case here? And is that your target end user - more the solutions providers than actual end-users?

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, I think there'll be a solution for both, but we see a lot of opportunity with solution providers because it allows them to say yes to more things. You mentioned earlier, we put 30,000 man hours into this, over those couple of years, and we did that, and most of those hours mean we've done work that now you don't have to do.

So an integrator who we work with a lot in a lot, we have a reseller program for Screenfeed. So we work with a lot of integrators to resell infotainment content, and they would bring us a lot of these custom projects, where "Hey, we need this to be customized. Maybe the content that we're offering needs to be customized to the brand of the user, or a new custom HTML project.

And they would generally have to have us bid it, and then they would resell our services. But in this case and most of the cases, honestly, they don't want to get into content. They want to provide a total solution, but they don't want to deal with content, and with Connect, now they really don't have to have the web development skills to be able to do HTML5. It's hard for them to hire that type of work. But with this they could sell that as a service that's valuable to the customer and then use Connect to be able to quickly create an app ... and the customer doesn't necessarily need to know that they used Connect.

They're just delivering a beautiful HTML5 content solution that taps into their data, and they can do that within a few hours. We do have a number of templates that people can start with. Again they're not just templates that are stuck the way they are there. We call them examples. You can really use them to plug in some data, and if you like the way they look, great. But you can completely customize it by taking the things out, and adding things in. And that will empower those solutions providers who want to say yes to their customers. "Yes, I can take care of your issue." And have an easy way to do it.

And the other benefit is we're here to help when they have troubles, and if they want to hire us to just implement it, we're saying yes to that. So we're going to be here to help them deliver whatever it is they need to deliver to their customer, as it relates to content. 

You mentioned the bar in Las Vegas and how there was a custom job opportunity there, and they said no, because of the cost. Was that happening a lot where you could do custom work, but the price point just didn't work for these guys and with Connect, now you've got something that's scalable, that you built an infrastructure and platform around it and therefore you can dramatically lower the costs, right?

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, absolutely. Just yesterday, I had a call with a customer we used to do a lot of custom work for, and it was pretty typical that when they needed something, and they had a bigger budget, they could do $5000-$8,000 on a typical job. For example, in this case, they needed four different views of data, and it was a data source, we hadn't worked with yet. So I would have charged, I think it's still a good rate at 8,000 bucks for four different uses of data. We usually say it would have taken four to six weeks. But I'd let them know, Hey, we've got this tool now called Connect, and I'd like to try it out for this. It'll take us about a week and I'll quote it at $1600. So that's just a real life situation, where I'm going to be able to deliver for this customer now, I might have a reseller that maybe is using Connect, might say I know that customer has got an $8,000 budget. Maybe they could sell it for $6,000 and they just make more profit. It does allow us and our partners to say Yes to more people who just want to put their calendar on the screen, or they just have some data source, their weekly rates or their featured products that they want to have on their screen, and our tool makes that easy. 

Does this allow you to do some things  ... like you've always had standard things like sports news and sports scores and that sort of thing, and they've been built around the Associated Press or  other news data feeds ... could you conceivably have a junior hockey league (as you're in Minnesota) that could do sports scores and visualizations, just using scores from the league that would never be on the AP feed or something like that. But you could make it look like that?

Jeremy Gavin: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. That's a great point, and that kind of goes back to people in the past that asked us, "Hey, how can we get our content on there. A lot of reasons for people to come to Screenfeed are because It looks good and they know it works. We've been in this business for a long time. So we know what it takes, like "Hey, this particular piece of software, you want to do something in a different way. Here are just best practices and how to get HTML animation to work well to tap into data."

The beauty of this is you are not limited to the data sources we provided. As long as they have a source for data, or they're willing to create one, let's say it's easy to use Google Sheets or come right into Connect, and you can create your own columns and everything, and put your data right in there.

And you could assign a user permission for one person, whose job is to update that content, and then it pops up on all your screens. So yeah, the junior hockey clubs in Minnesota certainly could use this to populate from their schedules or their stats, that type of thing. As long as they've got a data source or we'll put it in ... this will work well for them.

So I'm using any number of different CMS software platforms out there. Let's say using. I don't know, Stratacache, or Scala or Spectrio ... what's involved, how do you integrate this? Is it just an HTML5 file that goes into a schedule?

Jeremy Gavin: Our Screenfeed content can be delivered either via HTML and just as a web page, we can deliver it as images as well, over a Media RSS, or just a direct URL. So depending on your software, there is some people want to make sure they can download in cache, at the player level, and so they prefer images. We're also working with other software providers to say, "Hey, how can we manage the  ability for it to run offline as well," and so that is another angle from a screen play perspective that we are already speaking with other software providers about. So how do we integrate this into what they're doing?

Now some software providers have some design tools or some templates that this maybe does overlap a little bit with. But we think we've taken a completely different approach, and certainly for software companies that do not have a design tool in their software, this will have the ability for them to white label the Connect solution, so they could integrate Connect right into their software. The end result is we want to enable the customers who use the software to be able to just say, "Hey, this is what I want to do and have a way to be able to execute."

Is it fair to say that if you are an end-user or a CMS software provider, that's already been working with Screenfeed using its infotainment feeds, that there's nothing technically different about integrating this?

Jeremy Gavin: With Screenfeed, we've been adding a lot more of the ability to customize our feed. So you can change colors and fonts, and we call our feed configuration pages. So a lot of people who are used to using Screenfeed, they're gone in and they've made a bunch of choices and picked some styles. And then they end up with a URL, and with that URL, they go in and they schedule it in their software and it just handles automatic updates. So they can set it and forget it.

Same experience here with Connect. They just can start with one of our templates and modify it, or they can create an app from scratch, and in the end, they're going to end up with a URL that they'll be able to schedule in their software.

And then some of the settings, for example, within Connect, can be things like "How often should this data update?" That may be, "Hey, it only updates every day or maybe it's every hour, maybe it's every two minutes." There's other controls in Connect too, such as triggers. "If this number is lower than this, then show this other product."

Or "If This Then That" opportunities that you can take care of with HTML5, and take advantage of the data that's in that. In the end, we're focused on data-driven content. So there's a lot of tools within Connect that you can configure with triggers or moderation. Bbut at the end of the day, you're going to get a URL that you can schedule in your playlist, and it'll run with all the smarts that you assigned.

Yeah, so you can, depending on what you do, whatever the case may be, you can maximize the relevance of what you're putting up on the screen. 

Jeremy Gavin: That's the power of data-driven content, and that's what we've been working on for over a decade, and is how to use that content. So to us, as you can imagine, this opens up a lot of different possibilities for us to provide some more interesting solutions than maybe just this straightforward work. 

We're not doing a lot of triggering, and although we have had people trigger ads and different things with weather or traffic conditions with their own data, there's a lot that goes they're going to want to go into that. It's going to be fun. That's one of the reasons over the summer that we're not introducing a cost because we want to see how people can use this solution to create various apps that maybe we haven't even thought of.

You've been doing this as you've mentioned for a decade or more, and I would say a decade ago, people like you and me and some others have been yelling from the rooftops, "It's the content stupid," and it's been very difficult to get people to respect that what's on the screen is more important than what's driving the screen? What's your sense of the state of the industry right now in terms of the understanding of the importance of content and creativity? 

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, definitely. When I got into the industry I came from a company that was in website design and content development. And I saw this, at the time, just being run by a lot of AV guys, I would say. There weren't even a lot of web technologies, and I thought, "Hey, yeah, people are gonna spend a lot of money on screens, that cost a lot more then, media players also cost a lot more, and I knew people were spending a lot of money ... and I thought, but once all these screens got in and the've spent all that money, they're probably going to want to leverage it, and then start spending money on content. Some people got that right away, but honestly, it took awhile. But this year, and I'm telling this to my team, I've had so many more conversations, particularly with software providers who want to partner ... where they're finding that when they're selling their service against other CMS companies, they have similar features. So they're now saying, some have invested more in content and that's a differentiator, and so they're asking, "Hey, how can we use content to provide more of a total solution or to have that advantage. But yeah, the number of people early on, like the early DSE days, we'd see people who would say "Hey, I've got my media player picked, I've got my streams, I got a rollout partner. I got everything ready. I got it. We're launching this thing two weeks ago, but we don't know what we're going to put on it for content." And that was just a theme that a lot of us, I'm sure you heard a lot of it back then. Certainly people have gotten a lot smarter, and so that's a benefit for Screenfeed.

And part of the reason why I invested two years of time for our company to double down and provide more content is that I just think people are smarter. They want smarter content. The way I look at what we're offering is this is not a solution if you just need to create a graphic. You can use Canva or Adobe Photoshop, or a lot of other tools. This is a tool for smarter content. Projects that maybe people said no to just because of the time or costs, not because of the idea. It was a great idea. We want those ideas to be able to be executed. 

So if someone is at InfoComm and they want to know more, where will they find you on the trade show floor? And will they be able to get demos? 

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, we'll be in the digital signage pavilion at booth N1167, and we'll have the ability to give you either a quick summary of what Connect is. And, we'll also have screens and laptops there just to show you actual demos. It's very easy to use, and by the time people are listening to this, you'll be able to go to our website, and you'll just be able to create an account and start using Connect right away. You won't need a credit card or anything, just start using it and start trying to tap into different data sources.

And even though we are offering it for free, it still comes with full support. So it's not a situation where you're just kind of on your own. Come see us at booth N1167, and you can get a demo there at InfoComm. And if you're not at InfoComm, just so you can pop to our website and request a demo.

I think it does help to get at least a 15-20 minute rundown on what it is, just to level-set someone, and they'll have a better chance of figuring out how it can help them. 

Alright. It was great to catch up with you. It'll be great to get a demo at InfoComm of this, and I just wanted to personally thank you for all the support through the years of Sixteen:Nine. You proactively came to me when I said I was going to start a podcast, and said, "I want to sponsor it" ... and you've been a sponsor of the publication for a very long time, and it's much appreciated. 

Jeremy Gavin: That's been great for me. I know when I got into the industry, this was a great source and that was the case for a lot of people. It's almost like a little, it's a source that everybody goes to. Anytime I hire someone, that's part of our onboarding process, to subscribe to your blog. It's fantastic, and the industry has benefited from your previous life as a reporter ... and so thanks for all that you've done to kinda help each other share our stories with each other.

All right, hopefully we will see each other in Las Vegas. If they let me across the border. I have to remember how to do things like wear adult clothes. 

Jeremy Gavin: Look forward to that. 

Alright. Take care. 

Jeremy Gavin: Thanks, Dave.

 

Jeremy Jacobs, Enlighten

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

The cannabis retailing industry is interesting in a whole bunch of ways. It is a unique vertical market with an absolutely screaming need for digital signage and interactive technologies.

While longtime recreational users may know their stuff, as US states and Canadian provinces have legalized, there's a whole bunch of new users coming in with needs that have more to do with sleep problems or arthritic joints. They walk into dispensaries and are confronted with products and options that are somewhat or entirely unfamiliar, so screens that promote and explain are very helpful and relevant.

The dispensary business is also interesting because the industry has its own overcrowded ecosystem of payments and management systems that need to somehow be tied together.

The largest player in cannabis digital signage is the Bowling Green, Kentucky firm Enlighten, which is in some 1,200 dispensaries in the United States,

I had a fun conversation with Enlighten founder Jeremy Jacobs, who found his way into digital signage when the clean energy business he was running went south in the late 2000s recession. He pivoted into screens in businesses, and menu displays for restaurants led to an opportunity to branch into cannabis retail. He's a super-smart, interesting guy more signage people should know about.

Enjoy.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Jeremy, thank you for joining me. Can you give me the rundown on what your company does? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely, Dave. Enlighten is the only real omni-channel company within the cannabis vertical particularly, and by omni-channel, we affect the customer journey throughout that entire customer journey. We have a product real quickly called AdSuite that targets people in a digital environment, whether it be mobile, Roku or even desktop computers based upon audience segmentation data we have, to know those are known cannabis consumers. And then we have our SmartHub product, which is an in-store product which is why we're here today, digital signage, kiosk related, and that product helps to upscale the customers that were brought in from the marketing from AdSuite.

And this could be on menu boards, this can be on information displays, this can be on tablets, any number of things, right?

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, so SmartHub is really unique. Even if you zoom out of the cannabis vertical and just look broadly at the digital signage industry, SmartHub is an extremely unique product that we created. It manages kiosks, it manages digital signage, all sorts of menus, feature boards, order queue systems, break room TVs, where the audience has shifted from a consumer to the actual employee. It uses extremely advanced logic and filtering with the point of sale data that it's consuming to make these things and even has an e-commerce component to it.

So really the way to think about it is that SmartHub is an extremely robust merchandising platform that manages all of your consumer facing surfaces, whether that surface is a passive screen, an interactive screen, like a kiosk or even the webpage where someone would come to purchase and make an order on your website.

And the cannabis industry is its own unique ecosystem, right? There's POS companies that only do cannabis business, and so on? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, I would say there's no true word than cannabis is its own individual ecosystem. So as a veteran, not been in the industry quite as long as you but since 2008, I've seen a lot of things and cannabis extremely unique. So it does have all of its own tech stack companies for the most part. There are a few companies, Microsoft Dynamics makes a sort of a POS system that's been modified for cannabis. But outside, I'll see a Square every now and then, but for the most part 99.99% of all point of sales systems at a digital signage company would integrate with are extremely cannabis specific and they all compete for what is roughly 8,500 retail clients across just short of 40 states, and so to talk about the uniqueness, even in more depth, not only are the stacks different in cannabis than they would be outside of that, but all the individual laws and rules that apply very literally from state to state. So you even have state variances. 

Why would so many companies decide, “I want to be in a space that's changing constantly and not all that big and in the grand scheme of what retail is”?

Jeremy Jacobs: That's a great question. I think what your question was alluding to, there's the TAM, the total addressable market. You look at restaurants and there's literally hundreds of thousands of them, and I would argue there's barely as many POS companies in restaurants as there is inside of cannabis. And I think it's a couple of things. From an emotional standpoint, this is “the green rush” right? Any cannabis advocate that for the last hundred years that it's been illegal has felt violated by the error, has seensocial injustice from that. I believe there's an emotional component why a lot of these companies are there, a lot of these leaders are there. Second, there's a power vacuum that gets field when no one wants to go somewhere. So when you take a look at the cannabis industry, none of these major POS companies that we're referring to, none of them had any interest at all whatsoever in getting involved in cannabis. So the result of that is someone has to, and then the third prong, I think of this little fork here is that there is a green rush. The Anheuser Bushes of the world are about to be made of cannabis. There's very unique transactions, very unique audiences, and there's a lot of money to be made there. There's a lot of value and you can see companies that are in the space that make tech. 

If you look on the internet, Weed Maps is probably the largest one, listed on the NASDAQ billion plus dollar company, recently Dutchie has made some announcements for billion plus dollar companies as well. So fortunes are being made even though the total addressable market is small.

Yeah, I've always thought that the cannabis dispensary business was a particularly interesting one for digital signage, because unlike most retail where you walk into an apparel retailer, you know what you're looking for, clothes, I need a shirt or whatever. It's pretty obvious. 

But if I walk into a cannabis dispensary, I'm pretty much lost. I don't know what I'm even looking at and all these different strains of flowers and buds and this and that. It is like Mars to me. But, and I suspect a lot of people walk in like that who maybe aren't recreational users, but want it to help them sleep or calm them down or whatever purpose they have for it?

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, and so to drill into that observation you've made is really there's two kinds of consumers that very quickly develop in cannabis. There's the customer that you just described, which is a new customer, and there's a lot of those, because again, cannabis was technically illegal for about a hundred years. And so there's a huge amount of new customers that don't know anything, and so there's a massive educational vacuum there, and that's actually, Enlighten really started as we recognize that, and so we created an in-store digital out of home, a television network that runs ads for brands and things of that nature, endemic or non-endemic. We've got clients like Door Dash or Vans shoes or FX networks and their cannabis shows, but the content that's on that network is educationally driven specifically to satisfy that lack of education that you just talked about, and then on the other end of that spectrum, there are these clients that very much know what they want and precisely what they're looking for and those particular clients aren't looking for that same experience. They're looking for, digital menus that can be sorted based upon terpenes are based upon cannabinoid profiles so the highest THC value, they're looking for is express checkout kiosks, so they don't have to have an interaction. 

So uniqueness of the cannabis dispensary from a digital signage perspective is you have to create digital environments that satisfy both of those polar opposites. 

I gather when you were talking about omni-channel that it's really important or helpful to a company playing in this space to be able to serve multiple needs and to integrate with the other technologies that are part of the ecosystem. If you just did digital signage, it's a walled garden thing where you're going to get much better reception for many users, whereas you can provide multiple components, right?

Jeremy Jacobs: Oh, absolutely. I've been in a lot of industries. The restaurant space was the first one. I was really into digital signage. Sysco Foods started slinging my digital menus for me, and like things 2009 and their 30 different offices and so I got to see a lot of things there. But in the first week in cannabis, eight years ago, the word integrate came up like 40 different times within an hour, and so I've never seen an industry that's so demanding of integrations. Like for example, you walk into a restaurant and any number of restaurants and you look over by the hostess stand and there's the DoorDash tablet, and there's a GrubHub tablet, and there's a Postmates tablet and there's all these tablets. And so the hostess is watching these orders come in and then they're putting them in their POS system.

That would never fly in the cannabis industry, like it's a demanded integration by these people, and so if you're going to create an integration engine, you're going to want to make it have more points of influence than just a TV menu, you're going to need to provide that e-commerce plug and you're going to need to provide those kiosks. You're going to want to link up with their customer data for targeting those customers, on their mobile devices. You're exactly right, if you're going to be relevant in cannabis, your stack better be serious because they're trying to reduce that vendor set to if they could just one, nobody does all of it, but they want to reduce that number to the smallest possible.

Is that in part, because it's a younger buyer audience who understands technology more and didn't grow up in kind of old style restaurants or whatever, where there were all these different systems? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Interesting thing you said there,t because it's a younger buyer, so that was very true eight years ago. But at this point, that is not the truth at this juncture. So just a few years ago, I think it was two and a half years ago, the fastest growing segment of users shifted from 20 year olds to middle-aged mothers and it was the fastest growing audience, and then over the last few years, what has really been the fastest growing audience has actually been elderly people. It seems like they're starting to come to grips with, “Hey, I have pains and aches and cannabis is actually the solution”, and so it's a big growing segment. 

But I think the answer to the question that you did ask is why is there this desire for a consolidation of a tech stack more than anything. 

Yeah, I was thinking more of the operators that tend to be younger. Maybe that's not the case? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Same thing at this point, it's not the case now, it's weird. So it was the case before, a hundred percent because who was willing to take that risk to get in the weed business, and so a hundred percent, but now I'm sitting in meetings with digital officers and marketing officers from Abercrombie and Apple, and they came from big organizations and so it's a very changing landscape. 

But at the end of the day, I think that some of them are young, so yes, to your answer, very good observation. Second is the ones that aren't young are professionals, and they're used to dealing with that. But thirdly, I think for both of them, the demand of tech stack is necessary because the regulations and the data that they have to send back to the state agencies and authorities and all of those sorts of things and the compliance they have to undergo is worse than any other industry ever. Like they're under so much scrutiny and you could lose your license at the drop of a hat, and so they want less to deal with so they can focus more on staying in business. 

Does that touch on your platform and what you do? Do you have to have a Nevada version of it and a Colorado version and I forget where else it's legal, California, obviously. But do you have to pass them out state by state or is it pretty uniform?

Jeremy Jacobs: Great question. So the technology itself is the same across all the states. AdSuite is AdSuite and SmartHub is SmartHub, but there are definitely nuances. So let me give you a couple of interesting examples in the state of Pennsylvania, you're not allowed to put anything up on a screen from a digital signage perspective, unless absolutely it has been medically proven. And so it needs to come from a doctor or some position, a medical authority, and in Alaska, for example, they don't believe anything has ever been proven by a doctor or medical authority and so you can't put anything up that even closely resembles a recommendation. So there's two polar opposites. So from a content perspective, I gotta watch those things.

From an advertising perspective. Some states, even though it's cannabis, won't let you show pictures of weed in the advertisements. Go figure that out. How do you advertise weed without showing weed? You can't show people consuming the product in a lot of states with advertisements. So there's another nuance, and then a third nuance is like in Pennsylvania, what I'm able to put on a digital menu is very specific and I cannot put any imagery into one thing, and I have to, I'm required to put certain testing results, similar to the way in the restaurant industry. Now everybody went digital whenever they were required to put the calorie count for these items, and that's when you saw this massive uprising in digital cause they got to replace all this stuff anyway, might as well go to the screen, and in Pennsylvania, I got to put things like that, testing results. 

What's the content that seems to be required across all the different dispensaries, kind of the money messages that need to be there, and the operators want to have up there?

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, so from a TV menu perspective. We'll start with our that's the most largely adopted digital signage product ever and so the TV menu, what's necessary is the name of the products, the type of the product, the weight of the product, the price, the product, but really importantly, people want to know about cannabinoid profiles, is this high or low in THC? The psychoactive ingredient that gives you the feeling of a high, is it higher, lower in CBD, which is the non-psychoactive ingredient that really focuses a lot on pain, arthritis and inflammation and things of that nature, muscle pain. So consumers sort of demand that, operators want to provide that.

And from an educational perspective, if you're talking about a different digital signage product and just more like digital signage, we're producing educational videos, the demand really is around education of what are these different terpenes, what are these different cannabinoids, these little things inside of the cannabis that creates different effect for each strain, like this one makes me sleepy, this one makes me energetic, this one's great for back pain, and so that's the demand from a regulatory standpoint of pretty much the only uniform thing that I can't really do is show anything that's cartoonish that might want to lure children into the store. 

There was a big problem with packaging for edibles for a while there, right?

Jeremy Jacobs: It was, they've got sour patch kids on the box, and the first versions of edibles were very kid friendly because they took kids candies and made them, and now that's pretty much been regulated out. So the same thing, that same sort of concern with the packaging that you pointed out with edibles is also a concern in digital signage and even digital advertising. So if I'm targeting a mobile phone, even though I'm targeting a known cannabis consumer, just stay away from anything that might be alluring to children.

So if I'm a customer of Enlighten, is it a SaaS platform that I am using?. 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, so the two products are different. The SmartHub is the in-store signage, kiosk, kind of technology that manages all of that and talks to your POS system. That is definitely a SaaS product. As far as pricing models, there's been a lot of those in digital signage, our kiosk system is one price for your entire store and use as many as you want. Our signage model is the same as anyone else's, per node. SaaS model on our AdSuite product, though that is a SaaS product, if you will, it's a piece of software that gains you access to those audiences on our DOH network and in stores, as well as, digital Roku devices, mobile devices, desktop computers but that's driven just like any other digital advertising model would be external on a cost per impression basis.

What's the footprint for your company at this point?

Jeremy Jacobs: So we've reached a really interesting crossroads, very few companies in cannabis have ever got over that thousand mark. Right now, I would estimate we're in probably roughly 1200 dispensaries, somewhere thereabouts and then have several hundred other clients that are brands and so forth so our footprint reaches to about 1500 or so clients, big number and a TAM of 8,500, if you look at it that way. 

And this is an industry that like more and more states seem to be coming on stream, or at least there's a push to bring them on stream. So it's not like it's a finite market right now?

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah. So that's part of the growth. When we're assessing growth, there's a couple ways to look at it. One is how we can get more money out of the existing customers and that's to offer premium versions of our products, additional services that might be out there that we could focus on. But also there's just the overall growth of the entire market itself, and there's a couple of phases of that. The first phase is for the state to go medical. So now, they can be a client of ours. But typically, we find the greatest traction in the states once they go recreational because what happens is their revenue growth is astronomical. 

People don't appear to want to go to get a medical license nearly as easily as just walking in a dispensary. So whenever they go recreational, they buy a lot of other products from us and really focus on that retail environment and creating a magical experience for those recreational customers. So really there's two phases, medical, and then recreational. But right now you're looking at cannabis in almost 40 states at a medical level roughly 10 or so at a recreational level. I’m averaging there, the number changes. I haven't kept track of it in a minute, but to give you an idea of growth, there's about 10-12 to go to medical and then there's the vast majority or 80 plus percent that are not yet recreational. So a lot of growth in them. 

Are you up in Canada as well? 

Jeremy Jacobs: We are. So it's a lot of challenges working inside cannabis, anybody's ever nailed internationally. You have to have your own bank accounts, your incorporations, your teams up there. It's hard to import hardware products, and as a company, we do also provide the hardware. So that has its own challenges, but we do operate in Canada. We've got some systems in Puerto Rico, which is a US territory.  Jamaica, we send some things too. We have some plans we're brewing up. Spain has a pretty good sized cannabis market and so we're looking internationally there because the challenge is the same. People don't understand cannabis, they need education. That's the same worldwide. It's been illegal globally, for a hundred years. 

How did you get into it? You mentioned that your first foray into digital signage was restaurants for Sysco, how did you end up in this? 

Jeremy Jacobs: So in 2008, I started a company called IconicTV, and it's had many offshoots with verticals. I've been one of those guys when I see a vertical, I'd make a very precise product. We helped build a C-store DOH network called C-store TV. We had a school product called, school menu guru. We had a lobby product called lobby Fox, it does visitor management and so one of those products we noticed early on was digital TV menus, and so in 2009, I formed a deal with Sysco foods and they have 30 offices across the country that would distribute my digital signage, digital TV menu products to their restaurant tours. And so I hired these vice presidents in each of those areas to partner with those offices as Sysco calls an opco, and so Sysco would have reps and my reps would go do ride alongs, and so they would ride along with these representatives and go in and meet these restaurant tours at work and stuff. One of them, the guy in Denver, Colorado, Ted Tilton's name? So Ted called me one day and this is right before cannabis goes legal in Colorado, which was the first state to legalize recreational cannabis, Washington and Colorado voted on it basically at the same time. But Colorado was the first actually who implemented, and he calls me, he says, Hey man, I got this idea and I said, what is it? He goes, these TV menus we’re selling through Sysco. I said, yeah, he goes, what do you think about making some for marijuana? I said, what are you talking about? And he says I've got these buddies opening this dispensary called DANK, and it'll be the closest dispensary to Denver International airport and I got this feeling as soon as weed was legal in Colorado, a lot of people are going to be coming into DIA and this place is going to be really busy since it's the closest one, and he says, and I was like, what would be the difference? And he said, essentially we put up marijuana buds instead of chicken sandwiches. And I said, I'm in.

I've been a big advocate of cannabis for a long time. At one point, I was even the executive director of Kentucky NORMAL, the division of the national organization for marijuana legalization. It's the Kentucky chapter. I've been a big advocate of it. I've been a self prescribed patient for many years. It was an interesting opportunity to take a couple of things I was very passionate about both cannabis and digital signage and went to do some real work on two things I care about. So we dove in. 

Has the profile of the operator changed? 

I remember talking to another person who's involved in this space and actually being out in Denver and he was saying that there’s two types of operators. There's a business people who see this as a growth opportunity, and they've already had some experience in retail or in investing or whatever, and then there's growers and growers who are turning into retailers and he said the challenge with the growers as they're growers, they're not business people and they don't really understand retail, and I'm curious if in the early days you saw a lot of them stories of dispensaries that would start up and then drop off because they didn't really know what they were doing? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, and I'll take that example. Your friend gave you a pretty good insight there, but to expand on that, I don't even think it's just growers though. It's I think just very weed passionate people, like they're very passionate about it. Whether it's consuming it or making concentrates or growing it or whatever. So I would just call them plant passionate people versus business people, and it very much exists, and it doesn't today to the degree that it used to. In the beginning, someone that's a senior executive vice president of Abercrombie is not going to go start a dispensary, like during the first couple of years, we were all wondering if everybody opened these things, were all gonna go to jail. I'm sure everybody in America is going everybody in Denver is going to do it, just wait, and if all my friends at open dispensaries were sitting around, I would have conversations with the night and they're like, I'm just wondering if tonight, the DEA raids my house, and so nobody wanted to be under that scrutiny except plant passionate people.

But as time got on and the federal government sorta started to take a position, even if the position was, “we don't have a position”, that's still a position, and so they're not taking an aggressive stance on it then you began to see real business people start to come into the environment and at this point, you have organizations like Cresco who just bought Columbia Care, and these operators have over a hundred stores and they're doing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in retail cannabis sales. These are not the type of marijuana dispensary that I think most people have in their mind. These people have entire floors of IT teams. They have entire floors and marketing teams. They do in-depth customer insight studies, and that influences every tiny nuance of their packaging and their store layouts. These are real operations, but I can still take you to Oregon right now and  walk into the shop or Nancy and Megan who are best friends and they have tie-died things up on the wall and they're very whimsical people that are just very passionate and who also have a successful sotry. Now they're not going to sell hundreds of millions of dollars to cannabis, but they're also successfully operating. 

Think of it like liquor, for example, Liquor Barn exists and that's a big corporation. But, in the town I live in, everybody wants to go to Chuck's Liquors when Chuck was alive, because Chuck was just the coolest guy ever. So you went to Chuck, so they both have a place. 

Yeah, I've certainly seen the same thing. I remember being an Amsterdam for ISE and, you'd stick your head into one of these coffee shops, and it was just a hole in the wall and weird but out by the hotel where I was staying, there was a dispensary that looked like an Apple store, like it was very slick. 

Jeremy Jacobs: Interesting you say that. So there's this place called Euflora and Jamie Perino was one of the owners at the time and it's at the 16th street walking district in downtown Denver. This is the big street with the old piano outside and everybody wandering around a very touristy area and so we did the first project for them that I remember getting a call from them and they're like, “Hey, we open in 11 days and we've got this crazy idea where there'll be a touchscreen kiosk and it's sitting next to a jar of marijuana, and this kiosk has all this interactive stuff on it with everything about that strain of marijuana. We needed in our stores in 11 days. Can you guys do it?” And they said, oh yeah, and our budget is X, and I just laughed, and I said X is missing a couple of zeros, especially for 11 days, what are you talking about? And they're like, can you do it or not? And I said I can, but I shouldn't but I'm going to, and so we did, because we wanted to be part of the exposing of this whole thing.

And so we took it on, and so when you would first walk on your floor, you can dig up some old video files from the news channels from eight years ago, it very much looked like an Apple store cause we had Apple iPads on every table next to a jar of marijuana and you can scroll up and down and see what the euphoric effects would be and does it make you sleepy, happy, hungry, horny, what's it going to do? And, in what genetics, where did it come from? And just all this interesting stuff, and people would come into that store fascinated, and so it was very Apple-esque. 

How did you end up in digital signage? Cause I was looking at your bio and you've got patents in Magneto, hydrodynamics for energy exploration, drilling and everything. How did you get here? 

Jeremy Jacobs: What the hell happened? Early in life I realized I didn't really like formal education. So I think I'm like nine hours from a college degree, but I dropped out and became entrepreneurial. So I became an investment broker and I worked on several different fundraising deals, most of them were driven around biodiesel. That was very active at the time when I dropped out of college, nearly two thousand, biodiesel was a thing, a lot of different technologies. And very quickly I got interested in alternative energy technologies and energy efficiency technologies, and just anything that was energy related, and technology related, and so I had an operation with about 20,000 acres of natural gas wells in Eastern Kentucky that were clean natural gas wells using advanced technologies like hydraulic fracturing.

I started inventing Magneto hydrodynamic technologies that's used by Chevron and Exxon and people that. It goes down in oil wells. It's used to eliminate paraffin and that technology has now been adopted by the DoD to make airlines, to make fighter jets fly farther because the fluid systems flow better and a lot of different things, and then 2008 came, so I own a quarry, that's mine and silica for Silicon to make marker processors, and I got a bunch of natural gas, wells and magnetic technologies, and 2008 comes, 2007 comes, the housing crisis collapses, everything and natural gas went from about $14 in MCF, which was a vast majority of the revenue that we were driving to like a dollar and a half in MCF, which is the unit that you produce and sell for, it stands for thousand cubic feet, and I needed $3 to make that make sense, right? And now it's at a dollar and a half. So I went from really cash flow positive to a hundred percent cash flow negative and just a matter of months.

And on top of that, when you own a bunch of quarries, nobody's buying any materials, and so I look up and literally everything I'm involved in just all of a sudden is collapsing and I don't have the payroll to make payroll for this massive bunch of employees. We had several offices in different parts across the country. And surely it was excruciatingly painful fast. Everything had to close, and so here's, here's the reality. I'm at home depressed out of my mind. I've just had to lay everyone off. I've had to shut in all these gas wells. I've had to lock the gates on all these quarries and nobody wants to talk about anything, everybody's going broke and my wife comes to me and she says, you've got to do something. We have kids we have to feed, we have bills we have to pay. You cannot sit here and be depressed, and I had seen somewhere I think it was in a mall. A friend of mine had built a TV screen, turned sideways, and it had Adobe Flash player on it, and it was playing some animated motion graphics that he controlled on a desktop PC inside this big kiosk and I thought I could do something similar to that, and so I literally grabbed a 32 inch Vizio TV out of my living room. My wife goes, where are you going with my TV? I said, I'll bring it back to you. I'll see you in a week, and she goes, you are leaving with the TV for a week? I said, yeah, and you’ll get a bigger one, I promise, and I grabbed the Toshiba laptop that my field hands that would go around, they had to log what parts they use and how long they were on job sites and stuff, and I grabbed one of these old stinky laptops that smells like crude oil and hung it in a friend of mine's restaurant in Clarkson, Kentucky. It was called K's cafe and it was political season, and so I'm going to tell a story about myself here, Dave, and so I go around and build these very animated PowerPoints and I'm changing the files out via LogMeIn at the time. I didn't even have any software, digital signage software. I didn't even know about the digital signage thing.

And so I'm like, I gotta sell ads on this thing, so I go to this guy that's running for sheriff, and I told a little white lie. I was like, Hey man, the other guy that's running for sheriff, he's buying in on my screens. It's in the most high traffic restaurant, and apparently legally, I've got to offer you the same opportunity at the same price. He goes, why what's he paying? And I told him, he goes, I'll take it, and so then I went to the guy that I just told a white lie and said, this other guy is buying. It was, which was actually true the second time. That's how I got started, I had to feed my kids. I had a 32-inch Vizio TV and a busted up laptop and I sold some people aspiring to be politicians, some ads and some real estate agents, and it just grew from there. I look up and I’m in hundreds of restaurants and fitness centers with the DOH network and six months later, a friend of mine says, Hey, can you use one of those silly ad TVs and make a menu on it because the price of salmon keeps fluctuating so much. I got to put these mailbox letters, and so we made, which was one of the early digital menus. I think we'd both agree, 2009-2009 was not the dawning moment of digital menus. It wasn't the precipice of it. That was very early.

And so we started using those and saw opportunities to replace those little black felt directories with the letters you run out of the M, and so you flip the W upside down, it's all bow legged looking, on the little felt boards. We started making digital directories integrated with Google sheets, so you could change it easily and the rest was history, man. I dove in and needless to say, the kids are fed now. The wife is happy. She got a bigger TV. I think it's 70 inch now. So everyone's cool. 

That's a hell of a pivot. 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, buddy. Necessity is the mother of invention. 

All right. This was terrific. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, man. I was going to start off this morning saying longtime listener, first time caller. I've been watching your website, your blog, your podcast for as long as I can remember. So it's been an honor to finally get to be a part of it, and I really appreciate it. 

Thank you for taking the time with me.

Jeremy Jacobs: I thank you, Dave.

Peter Livesey, Esprit Digital (2022)

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

Esprit Digital has been making and supporting custom display solutions for 20 years from facilities north of London, but the company recently took the interesting step of investing in their own manufacturing in China and expanding from LCD into LED.

The company has built up a reputation for putting together displays - from screens that line subway escalators to sidewalk totems - that manage to look sleek, but also have mission-critical reliability. Esprit  has, for example, a major, longtime customer in the giant Westfield shopping center chain, and also works with big OOH media companies and retail brands.

I was intrigued by news that Esprit was getting into LED displays - a market that's even more crowded than digital signage software - so I arranged a catch-up interview with owner Peter Livesey. I learned his angle is all about custom, or as Brits like him say, bespoke.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Peter, thank you for joining me. We’ve done a podcast in the past, but that was, I don’t know, in 1977 or something like that, so things have probably changed. Can you give me a background on what Espirit Digital is all about and really what the last couple of years has been like? Cause it's been a little bit nutty.

Peter Livesey: To say the least. I think it was 1975 actually, but we won’t split hairs about that. 

So you were in your forties then, I think? 

Peter Livesey: Ooh, are we going to spar straight away? There are a lot of questions there. First of all, It's great to be back because I think that's where we are now and I think we, as an industry, as a world, are starting to come back to where we were a couple of years ago and we're still here, Espirit Digital, we're still going. We are stronger than ever. 

It's our 20th anniversary this month. So we're very proud of that. We're going to be doing some things to mark that and the reason we're stronger than ever considering our traditional customer base effectively shut up shop and put everything on pause for the most part for the last two years for all the reasons we know, is because we did a strategic pivot.

We brought a technology called InstaScan, which allowed people to get into buildings and get into public spaces, it took the temperature, and it worked really well. It was a cheap, lightweight item, could be wall-mounted or freestanding. Anyway, we sold thousands of them, made them all here just north of London and distributed them around the world to people like Costco and it was a good one. That's probably not the main reason we're still here, but it certainly helped us. 

It's interesting because in Q2 2020, I saw no end of press releases from companies saying we're selling these things now, and I did not see a lot of indication that there was a lot of take-up, but you're saying it, it went great. 

Peter Livesey: Yeah, absolutely. Particularly in the US, we did a lot of little big chains over there and it worked very well. 

Yeah, I probably just haven't seen them cause I've been locked in my room for two years now. 

Peter Livesey: In that igloo of yours, I know. Now we're back to what we really love, which is screen integration and our key verticals as ever digital out of home being number one, screens that generate money tend to tend to be the most interesting for us because everyone wants to push the envelope with every new project. So they always want new toys in the box and new sizes and new applications, and it's great for our R&D team. 

So your company would primarily be known for digital display totems, whether they're interactive or “static” in terms of not being interactive, but they're running video and all that stuff for street furniture, for shopping malls, that sort of thing, is that pretty accurate?

Peter Livesey: Historically, it's always been malls, metros and airports inside and outside. It doesn't have to be totems or kiosks or pods as we call them, it could be any shape screen. As long as it's a professional solution that requires a player and some other toys, whether you talk to it by interacting, with touch screen or with gestures, or now with voice, we have a lovely voice platform where you can talk to screens and they can answer you and give you all kinds of information live, particularly for wayfinding, that's an excellent application. 

It doesn't really matter how you talk to them and what CMS you use, all of that is secondary. What's important to us is we design and build hardware solutions for, as I say, digital out of home smart cities and laterally in the last few years, retail, and that's one of the things we're going to come onto because retail screens, I think, it's set to be a boom. It's already now on every architect and design drawings, they've got screens built in. So regardless of where the retail is, if it's in a high street or an airport, it makes no difference. Screens are a big part of the mix, and as I say, there's never been a better time to talk to your customers. They've been gone for a while. You've got online eating your lunch. It's definitely time to fight back with a much nicer experience in store and screens is a great way of starting, put a screen in your window, put the content, nice people come in, welcome them, maybe with a screen or a series of screens, and then have, partner sales screens dotted around the store to give people more micro information where wherever they want to go while they're waiting for shop assistants to either catch up or to find out their query. 

The last time I was at a trade show of any size was ISC more than two years ago now, and I believe I bumped into you there, but one of my takeaways from that trade show was: I was amazed by how many companies in Europe had these indoor and outdoor display totems. So they all had variations on roughly the same thing. How do you compete in that market? How do you set yourself apart from them? 

Peter Livesey: How do we set ourselves apart? We think we make the most reliable and the best looking kit on the market. It's highly stylized. For instance, the new totem we've just put into the Westfield mall of the Netherlands is a good example. They're sleek, black. They have beautiful ambient light displays down the side strips. They're double-sided 75, and literally if you had them in your home, you would think it was a beautiful addition, and they're in a high-end mall, Westfield's first kind of digital transformation mall on mainland Europe. And, by all accounts, it adds to the overall appeal of the mall. It enhances Westfield's brand, enhances it, and then the ad company, they can sell on a beautiful looking totem. 

So we set ourselves apart by being competitively priced or being the best designed unit and it being reliable and reliabilities is key. You can't put stuff out that is going to go wrong in the first six months you can't. So our track record, starting with the London underground, where we had thousands of screens on the escalators in the early two thousands. They were there for 15 years, our stuff that we've put into Westfield around the world, Australia, we're still looking after 600-700 units in America now on a daily basis. These things have been in for, probably since 2016 and by and large, the fault rate is so low on them, and that is because we use quality components inside a sensibly laid out solution that for me, looks and feels better on the inside than it does on the outside. 

There seems to be two streams of activity. There are the companies that are designing indoor and outdoor display totems that they're focused on almost making it a commodity, knocking them out with a kind of a standard shape and everything else and putting in a commercial display and saying, here you go, versus what you're saying. It almost sounds like you have to, in certain respects, re-engineer a display and really think through everything if you want them to work happily in the field for many years. 

Peter Livesey: Totally. That’s exactly it. No one else, I don't believe, in the world knows as much about the actual screen and the panel itself than our guys that are in our building and they know what's going to make those screens last and last, whether they're inside in In a nice cushy mall in a city or they're outside in a desert in Saudi as we've done them or outside Metro in Oslo where it's freezing cold, no one knows how to make those screens work 24/7/365 for 5 to 10 years, and that's something that, as you say, will set us apart. 

What is actually harder, is it Oslo or Riyadh? 

Peter Livesey: Any temperature extreme. We've dealt with them all, and then sometimes you get both in one place. In Oslo, it's freezing cold for 10 months a year, it's properly freezing, but for two months a year, it's really warm. So you have to have the technology to be able to cope with that, and we've got it and we can prove it. We've got probably 20,000 of these kiosks out there around the world. We're still doing remote and physical support on all the ones in America. We've just delivered a new double-sided outdoor 65-inch kiosk for an upscale mall in Austin, Texas and that follows hard on the heels of one that we did in NoHo in LA. So these are highly stylized, external, full sunlight, full out solutions that we don't expect to see again for 10 years and that's the thing.

So you can compete on price and volume, or you can compete on reliability and design, and obviously that the latter is more fruitful in probably many ways. 

Peter Livesey: Yeah, listen, we're not a maintenance business per se. We support our kits around the world. But we're interested in making solutions that don't go wrong. So if you have a maintenance contract, which effectively is your insurance, if they get vandalized or there is a problem, someone's there too, within the SLA terms to make sure it gets fixed and we have SLAs of 4 hours sometimes, mostly 24 or 48 hours. But that's not what drives our business, our business is all about reliability and yeah, we can compete on all those other elements and really the custom thing is the reason we're having this catch-up today because the custom thing is what's driving us into looking at our own brand of LED and this is why we've called it Lumos, which has got some Latin connotation lighting or something, but anyway, it's a nice name. We like it, and it's exciting because, historically obviously, we've supplied LEDs for many years from every manufacturer out there that's worth anything. 

We've put up some really huge LEDs because our skillset is that we can design and build the solution that goes around it, all of the substructure, and we can put things up in hostile environments and make sure that they last. Where there was the big hole was in custom LEDs, and LEDs that just had a price advantage, it also had a reliability to match anything that's out, and Lumos has got that. We've got an enormous range. We are bulleted into a factory in Shenzhen that we now control, and it's a fully automated factory where literally the planets have lined up because I think it's the right thing to have made this move for Espirit because we've got a huge customer base. We're in 32 countries around the world now, and all the tenders that are coming out for kind of the big stuff, the smart cities and the digital out of home tend to have a LED element and LCD kiosk elements together. They're not doing them separately like they always used to, and it makes a lot of sense now for them to go to a one stop shop, tf they're happy with the service they get from Espirit. 

I was curious about LED from the point of view of things like street furniture and the totems and other types of LCD products that you've done, as LED pixel pitches have improved and prices have come down, I've long wondered whether companies such as yours would start to transition from what can be highly engineered, needy, so to speak LCD displays into LED displays are going to typically last longer and probably need less engineering to keep them running, wherever they are.

Did you see the market going that way or do you think there's always going to be a demand for LCD because of the resolution and clarity and everything else that you get from it? 

Peter Livesey: That's a great question. I've got some micro LED 0.8 downstairs, and it's very hard to tell the difference. At the moment, historically LED has always been for distance viewing and LCD has been for up close and personal, and that's the broad differential, and that's merging into a gray area now where we can use LED in a lot more situations and that will improve and that will carry on evolving.

I think it is a stable technology and we can offer a 10 years warranty from the manufacturer. We can now make it bespoke, everything's designed in the UK here and the factory just makes everything and we either distribute them direct from China to the customer and we either work to do the installation together, we're doing a fabulous one at the moment for the world cup in Qatar. Can't really mention it, but it's this unbelievable hotel that is, I don't know, six or seven, whatever it is, it's the most expensive being built. And the atrium is going to have bespoke tiles as an art installation. So you're going to walk into this atrium, you're gonna look up and there's going to be an enormous comb of LEDs. So every tile will have a mirror, its own mirror, and there's hundreds of tiles and hundreds of mirrors and they form what we think is the world's largest kaleidoscope, and all the FIFA are going to go like, how did that happen?

So that kind of thing, it just wasn't possible a few years ago. It's just that you couldn't do bespoke like that, and now it's absolutely possible. In the last couple of years, we've had this on our radar for a long time. So we haven't launched it officially,but  the list of the brands that we are currently using, and I mentioned retail, we're talking about Valentino, Jimmy Choo, Dolce Gabbana, Fendi, Armani. The fact that they've prepared to use, effectively a new brand is a huge endorsement. It really is something that came out of an interesting idea that we've actually made happen, and I think we have got a real chance in the marketplace because it’s got lots of things going for it and it does what it says. 

When you talk about bespoke, or as we say over here, custom, what's the demand there? Because obviously there are a lot of LED manufacturers and they're all doing LED cabinets that are squares or rectangles more often, and you put them together and you can derive all kinds of shapes, then there are the companies who want stuff that can wrap around columns and so on. So what's the custom demand that you're getting? 

Peter Livesey: So there's three verticals that I see and that is screens that make money, which we know all about, screens that give out information, which we also know all about, and then screens for art, and where those things are emerging, that's where the custom element comes in, where you've got an odd shape like in Westfield, in the Netherlands, we had to build a specific LED because where they wanted to put it out the front door of the mall, there was a residential set of flats and they couldn't get the zoning approved because this enormous residential block made an official complaint saying this thing's going to be too bright and it's going to affect our lives and all the rest of it. So we built a special louver that meant that they would never see it. So the lights, the light source, streamed towards the tracks, and obviously it's got sensors, so it goes up and down, depending on the ambient light. That's the easy part: it's been around forever, but the whole part was having these louvers that directed the light away from the flat. So there's a very simple example of a kind of bespoke LED. 

So if you just had a big billboard shaped sign that somebody wanted in a shopping mall, they could buy that from hundreds of different companies and just tile together, 40 or a hundred or whatever LED cabinets, and off you go, but in your case, you're dealing with demands. You can do those, I assume, but you've got customers saying, yeah, we need this to be curved, or we need this to do this special thing? 

Peter Livesey: Absolutely. We've got a lot of advertising customers in the middle east, that you may or may not have heard of, and they have put up our kiosks and now they're starting to put up our LEDs as well in some really fun environments. So Lumos now is in places like Morocco, Jordan we just put one up in Baghdad. Would you believe in Iraq? There's no way that now is going to be priced out of having an LED built. 

Baghdad? 

Peter Livesey: No, you didn't expect to be talking about that today, did you? 

No, probably not. I'm curious about your decision to invest in a factory in Shenzhen because there would have to be all kinds of contract manufacturers over there who would do the work for you and no end of companies, who would a white label product for you? So why make the capital investment yourself? 

Peter Livesey: Control. If I said anything else, I'd be lying. It needs to be just us. It needs to be the standard that we want. We've got our own people on the ground there, as I say, we do all the designs here, and yeah, it needs to be just us. Market is growing year on year, someone just announced a $25 million investment into their manufacturing capability, and they're absolutely right.

I'm not going to say it's going to explode exponentially, but it's certainly going to grow in a decent way because it works. 

And that growth comes amidst, I've heard descriptions that there are literally thousands of LED companies in China, understanding that the vast majority of them just serve the domestic market, but it's not like there's a scarcity of competition out there for you. 

Peter Livesey: When I was 24, I had a factory in China, it wasn't even in Shenzhen, it was miles inland, making red full color LED tickets that we used to put into shop windows. My brand was called Color Cell. So I know a lot about Chinese manufacturing, particularly in the LED world, and yes, you're right. There are thousands of facilities. So you've got to know what you're doing is a bit of a minefield out there. But I think we have the experience or I certainly have and the setup that we've got now will allow us to grow a lot and very quickly, and I think we are already starting to see the brand with all the majors. Certainly the retail clients and digital out of home aren't spending as much money, obviously because of COVID but I had lunch with one of the CEOs of one of the biggest outdoors in Europe then he said, we're very close to 2019.

I know he's got a kind of a job to keep spirits up and stuff, and I really believed him when he said that, and I think anecdotally, everybody's coming back, everyone's going to be in Toronto for the world out of home. Then ISE and then there's other events later in the year. So I think we're getting there. We're getting back to where we all were. It's just been weird not doing any kind of business trips for two years. 

Is there more and more demand to do something special and different when you're doing something like a big LED display where it's not enough anymore to just be large and be this particularly large rectangle sitting on a wall or whatever?

Peter Livesey: For a lot of applications, no. It literally just has to do that. It has to look good and it has to work for the warranty period, and that is the primary function, but there's so many other factors involved. You've been to some of the facilities and you know that if you put the wrong diode or even the wrong wire, or use low grade stuff, yeah, you're going to make the cheapest solution. But are the colors going to be any good, is the contrast going to be any good? Is the brightness going to be any good in six months in a year in five years? No, it just can’t be. We're talking about electronics here. 

So you've got to weigh up. What's your budget? What do you want to achieve? If you just want to start your business off and just get noticed and then upgrade it in six months or two years then, yeah, you can go for a low grade option. If you're a serious player, who's got networks out there that you want to lose and sweat for 10 years, then you've got to pay that extra 10% upfront and get all the benefits down the line.

Is it a steady job to educate the buyers? I would assume the big established digital home media networks have lots of experience with this. You don't have to explain to them the importance of reliability and quality components and so on, but there's always a new subset of buyers that come along, are you always having to educate?

Peter Livesey: Okay. So this side of the pond, JCDecaux probably the biggest dogs, they'll have super experienced buyers who know all about quality and what they want to achieve with any given network that they're going to put in. So it's less about an educational thing and more about keeping them up to date with any technological advances they don't necessarily know about and just talking them through, and they know that we're a highly experienced operator, who knows what we're doing. So those kinds of conversations are valuable.

New entrants or a kind of second tier players, it's slightly different. There's a lot more hand holding the newer the entrant to the market is, and in some cases like when we did Westfield America, for instance, for the LCD network and for all the malls over there, their philosophy was look, we've been chosen to do all the kiosk network, indoor and outdoor therefore, we're going to take their advice on everything from screen size, to brightness, to surrounds, to glass, to PC, to absolutely everything, and then if any of them go wrong, it's their fault. They got to sort it out, and that's worked really well for them. 

You mentioned kiosks. I'm curious what the public and buyer demand is now for interactive displays. I've written a number of times about how, when the pandemic first broke out, I was wondering what this was going to mean for touchscreens? Is anybody going to use them anymore? And over time, we learned that the risk wasn't all that great there and this is an aerosol problem more than anything else, and touchscreen demand actually went up, did you see that as well? 

Peter Livesey: Slightly. Back in 2012, there was a big thing called SARS in the far east, which had this kind of bird flu connotation, and the Japanese were in particular telling the world they're never going to touch, they're never going to share screens in a public place and demand just fell off over in that part of the world, and this time we had the same rumors with COVID that we wouldn't be using touch screens for our wayfinding, for any other interactivity in store. We're not seeing that at all, we're still seeing demand for touch. But as I mentioned earlier, we've got two other good option gestures where you'd point your finger and you zoom in and out with your finger. That's now using a camera triangulation technology, which is just some fun and it's not difficult to achieve, and then voice, voice is a good one. Why not? Now, we've got reliable. The dialect was always the problem. I don't know if you ever had a sat nav where you couldn't talk because you spoke in Canadian and the sat nav only understood Welsh. But do you know what I mean?

It's an endless problem for me. 

Peter Livesey: Yeah. But now we're over that.

So what is coming up for Espirit Digital in the next year or so that you're obviously going to be expanding Lumos? 

Peter Livesey: We've now got a team in America on the ground. So instead of running projects from the UK and running sales from the UK, we have a new head of sales, Simon Joseph, who ran sales for Trans Lux in the past, and he was an ex sky TV employee over here in Europe, and he's also experienced in LED and he's got a little team that is now making some good progress in the sports area for stadiums and arenas. And yeah, he's got a big sale for a hotel in Dallas that's going to be going live later in the year on the PGA. I think it's the 18th hole of the PGA hotel, but I can't announce it yet, but it's a big one there. So he's got his hands full because I think America is still, it's going to be probably the biggest market for LED over the next five years and that team will grow organically. Likewise, we've got a new team in Scandinavia, and those guys are doing some great stuff over there and yeah, we want to get bigger, and I think that will happen. 

And when you say you want to get bigger, what's the size and state of the company right now? You're privately held, how many folks do you have now?

Peter Livesey: There's 35 in the UK office. We've got consulting partners out in the Middle East in particular, which is a very strong market for us, and these people around the world, as I say, business development, then I think we're probably going to double it in the next two to three years, but it will depend on the uptake on Lumos largely, and also how quickly do you sell out of home spring bank? Because the biggest networks fare revenue generating screens. There's no doubt about it, and if you're going to put out, I don't know, five hundred or a thousand in the city, there's only a handful of players on the planet that can fulfill those needs, and we're one of them. 

So as they come back, we'll win our fair share of those, and we'll have to gear up accordingly. The company is in good shape. As you say, it is privately held at the moment. It's all about getting the growth strategy right, having the right products and the right people, and one mantra that we live by is that it's much easier to get into Espirit Digital than it is to get out of it. Most of my people, I don't know if you read recently our director, James Welder, he's just done 15 years, and our projects directors on 13, that kind of level, almost everyone's been here for at least a decade, and these are all department heads who run lots of people and have the most experience, some of them in the whole industry. 

Yeah. Employee retention is always a pretty good indicator of things. 

Peter Livesey: Yeah. I like to think so. We are on a happy ship and we've got knowledge in the building. So when clients come down, we've turned this whole factory set up in Stevenage into a bit of a bit of a showroom. So you can come in, you can see all the different outdoor resolutions, you can look across the industrial park and see all these already lined up and then all the indoor ones are in here. 

We want to get as many people coming over and having a look. We had probably our first visit from a US distributor and they came in and I think they liked what they saw and it all makes a lot of sense, and talking to people who are passionate, know about this stuff and who don't cut corners, who will say no? We will say, no, you really don't want to have that glass for that application. I know you want to save money, but if you just hear us out, this is the way to go. This is the right PC. This is the right panel to use on the LCD. We're completely agnostic. We work with all the main panel manufacturers and we choose the right one for that application at that time and for your budget. 

All right, Peter, a pleasure to catch up with you. 

Peter Livesey: Yeah, likewise, Dave, you keep well, and no doubt, I'll be seeing you at various events this year for the first time in ages and we'll have a beer. 

Yes, like I said, I haven't really traveled at all since Amsterdam more than two years ago. So it'll be almost weird to go to an airport, but thanks again!

Peter Livesey: Thank you.

Jonathan Labbee, SACO Technologies

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

Montreal's SACO Technologies doesn't have anywhere near the mindshare of the largest LED display manufacturers in the pro AV industry, but it's nonetheless the supplier behind some of the biggest and most interesting display jobs lighting up these days.

That is SACO's LED light stick technology cladding the world's tallest building - the Burj Khalifa in Dubai - and turning it into a colossal media display that can do everything from mood lighting and still images to motion ads for movies, like this recent spot for the new Batman blockbuster.

While the other major players in big direct view LED displays work with pro AV consultants and integrators, and media owners, SACO engages with architects and building engineers to fully integrate active, addressable LED lighting into the facades of buildings and, in some cases, the overall structure of the building. For example, the home grounds of the new MLS team in Cincinnati designed active, changeable lighting into the entire stadium exterior, as opposed to bolting a big conventional display to its side.

That huge low rez LED display on the top of SoFi Stadium in LA - where the Super Bowl was just held - that's SACO, too.

The back-story of SACO is super-interesting and super-different. The company's roots are in supplying the blinking indicator lights you'd see in old school control rooms, like the walls in power plants. Back in the mid-90s, one of SACO's founders wondered if the colored LEDs could be put together and controlled to create a video display. A small reference design proved the concept, and within a couple of years, SACO was providing a massive version as a digital backdrop for U2's PopMart tour.

That led to more concert tours, and by the mid-2000s, the company was also a major player for large format stadium and arena displays.

These days, much of SACO's work is custom and specialized, and not the kind of work suited to the more mainstream, high-volume LED guys.

I had a really interesting chat about SACO with Co-CEO Jonathan Labbee.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jonathan, thank you for joining me. Can you describe what SACO as a company does and how long has the company been at it? 

Jonathan Labbee: Yes, absolutely. SACO was founded 1987 by the Jalbout brothers, Fred and Bassam Jalbout, and originally started off as a company that specialized in nuclear controlled room equipment. So SACO actually stands for Systems Automation Control, a very far cry from what we're doing today, but essentially if you’ve watched a Steven Seagal movie and you see these big control room panels on these oil rigs and all that kind of stuff, that's the type of stuff that SACO used to do. And in those panels are a lot of little tiny blinking indicator lights, and some other control equipment that SACO used to manufacture, and eventually they started experimenting with LED technology, and one of the brothers, Bassam, came up with the idea of creating a display using these solid state lights.

At the time it was only red and green and eventually was working with one of the premier LED manufacturers still to this day, and when they invented the blue LED, they provided that to the team back in Montreal, and essentially created the very first video display on earth. It was a small little sample. It was maybe like a one foot by two foot sample. It was quite small, but it was able to demonstrate the capabilities of putting up an image and eventually a moving image, and this caught the eye of certain advertising companies and more importantly at the time a rock band, and we got a challenge from the band U2 to create this 50 foot by 150 foot wide video stage, a backdrop to replace Sony jumbotron that they were planning on putting on PopMart. And we took up the challenge, designed and built this thing and deployed it with success on the PopMart tour, started in Las Vegas, and then we toured with U2, essentially showing off these new capabilities. 

This was in 1997. 

Wow. So that first reference design that you talked about, was that 97 or a little bit before then obviously? 

Jonathan Labbee: The reference design was in 93, that's when the blue LED was invented. We had, at that time, already created a red, green display as a prototype. But then eventually we did build a red, green and blue version. So an RGB version, a full color version and I think we met the band maybe like the end of 1994. 

That’s quite a transition from doing a control room to working with Bono. 

Jonathan Labbee: It completely changed the company. At the time we called the technology, smart vision. We did a tour with success and picked up a bunch of other bands and then eventually started doing permanent installations, like the Baltimore Ravens stadium and Washington Arena and so on.

And then if we fast forward a little bit, we end up in 1999 when we built the very first NASDAQ screen in Times Square. 

So the sort of curved one with the knockouts for all the windows, that's you guys? 

Jonathan Labbee: That's us, and that's actually a really interesting story. Already making a curve was going to be a big deal, no one had ever seen a curved video screen of that magnitude, and then we had gotten the project. It was a full display at the time, and then the client, NASDAQ came to us and told us that the main tenant in the building was no longer willing to have their windows covered. So we created his knockouts and everybody was worried about how it would look, I guess it would look odd with these holes in it. With a little bit of convincing, everybody went with it, and the very first piece of content that we put on there for testing was Pac-Man. 

Which makes sense, because it would work around the hole.

Jonathan Labbee: Exactly.

Interesting. So you started out doing, I guess, almost like mesh LED curtains, and then the NASDAQ's display was quasi conventional LED cabinets, although albeit a little bit curved and all that, and in the past seven years, really, all these other LED companies have come on the market with their own cabinets on all that and you guys haven't really stayed in the conventional LED cabinet business. You've gone in other directions, right? 

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, that's correct. We still have some “standard” type products. Although they're really more there to support some of the iconic projects that we're doing, and some of the more complex projects that we're doing.

So for example, if we have a client that wants to do this kind of nighttime identity thing on their building, that highlights the architecture, and so on, like some of the projects like FC Cincinnati, in some cases, they may require some video screens down at the bottom on the marquee or inside and stuff like that and so we do have offerings to be able to support them with it. 

So is a lot of what you do custom then? 

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah. I would say most of what we're doing today is highly customized, not full custom, but highly customized, and there's a difference there, in the sense that our product is really the technology itself and then how we package it is the customized portion of it for the client.

A lot of the reason that you get attention, I gather at least, is that unlike the vast majority of the companies who are selling “conventional LED products”, they're working with AV integrators, whereas you guys, by the looks of it, at least tend to work with architects. 

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, that's a very good observation. So our main drive is really with architects. We have seven architects on staff here at SACO. We have mechanical engineers, of course, electronics engineers, but also structural engineers. So when we go into a project and usually the earlier, the better, because we're able to detail down to the level of the building and at the same time, we're able to influence how things get integrated, because we know how we can make things. 

We're able to work with the architects to integrate the product in the building facade or wherever it's supposed to go where it looks integrated and not bolted on, and that subtle difference makes all the difference in the world.

It also makes a difference in terms of the engineering, right? Because even though the individual light rods probably aren't all that heavy, if you have thousands of them, it adds weight to a building, right? 

Jonathan Labbee: It does, and so if we were to come on, say after a building's already up, we would normally be adding not just a product but we'll be adding, like the bracketing and whatever else that we're doing. If we're there early enough in the early stage, maybe the extrusion for the window will be designed differently to accommodate the product. 

So there's some savings in terms of weight and potential costs, but also the final look is very different. 

Going back in the past decade or so, you started to see signature buildings in a landscape that would be lit at night for different purposes. They might have a certain kind of baseline set of colors that they use. But if like right now there would be buildings that are in blue and yellow because of the situation Ukraine has. 

That seemed to be the way things were being done for quite some time now, but with the Burj in Dubai, that's more than just a sort of ambient lighting. It's a media facade. Was there a moment when it changed and you're able to do that or has that always been possible and it just hadn't been done? 

Jonathan Labbee: We've always been able to do that. I think that the market and the clients, as they evolve and they see things and they have ideas and then we start exploring ideas with the clients, then I think that's truly when things get revealed, right? 

So we may have the capability to do something, but then you also need to get the client that has a vision that allows that to happen. 

Okay. So with the Burj, the world's tallest building, at least I think it still is, but with that one, you've got your product on at least one side of the building. Is it just on the one side kind of facing the mall and all that, and that goes from top to bottom, was it built in or was it added after the fact?

Jonathan Labbee: So this was added after the fact, and actually what happened there is that the client had tried something, they had acquired some products, I don't know exactly where and had put it up. So they had this idea of wanting to do this. I believe it was a DMX based system. It did what it was supposed to do, but the problem is that I don't believe that it lasted as long as they needed it to. So a year and a half in or something, we connected with them and then we designed for them a system that would fully integrate with the fin, we have these really beautiful stainless steel fins on the building. That's what gives it shine during the day. 

So we wanted to respect that, but it was also the perfect area to attach these things. So we designed this kind of fin, like a nose piece for the fin that integrated the product, all the cabling and everything, and then we installed that at the end of 2007. 

Okay. So with that building, as huge as it is, you can actually do a full motion ad, like the recent one for the new Batman movie from street level, all the way to the top, right?

Jonathan Labbee: Oh, absolutely. Everything that we do is basically either a full video screen or a deconstructed video screen, and in the case of Burj Khalifa, it is what we would refer to as a deconstructed video screen. So it has a twenty five millimeter pixel on the height, but then a meter and a half on the width. So it goes in between the windows and obviously with distance and so on, your brain is able to put the image together. 

It's interesting, in the past four or five years with LED marketing, it's all been about finding pitch pixel pitch, and it's 0.9 versus 1.2, and oh my God, 1.2 is awful by comparison, and you're talking about a meter and a half pixel pitch. 

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah. Everything has to do with distance and contrast, at the end of the day it can be broken down as that. It's in the distance and contrast. 

So what's involved in putting up something like that? God knows, I wouldn't want to be one of the technicians who told me to go up to the 110th floor and go outside and put this on.

Jonathan Labbee: It's a really interesting process and much like other projects that we've done, it was the first time that we were doing something. Like this and by like this, I mean, at that height with no cranes and difficult to access and so on, the building itself is almost a kilometer tall. Everything is done with rope access people. 

And then the other complexity that comes into play is time. So between when we got the contract and we turned the screen on, It was seven months. So that's not a lot of time to design a new product. We actually had to design a new product for this project, did the engineering, the testing validation, certifications. So essentially what we did is, we had our factory in Montreal. We design and manufacture everything in Montreal by the way, and then we replicated a portion of our factory in Dubai, and we did a lot of final assembly and insulation within the extrusion pieces and so on, and the cabling, everything we did there in Dubai. 

The client was very instrumental in helping us set up all of that capability there, and then we just staged everything everywhere that we could in every empty space of the building, and then started deploying these via rope access team, and obviously part of it is a hotel, part of it is are residences. So you are very limited in the amount of time that you can spend. At night, you can’t be in front of the hotel portion, during the day, you can't be in front of the residences. So we needed to plan across a whole building how to get these things in place. 

And is it set up in such a way that if you're in one of these residences, you don't see the light emitting from these fins that it's just pointing out? 

Jonathan Labbee: Correct, so you have no idea if you're inside the residence that there's actually lighting on the building.

Which is a problem for some of the media facades I've seen that are just mesh LEDs because you're now looking through this grid system to see outside. You’ve still got your view, but it's compromised. 

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, exactly, and that's actually one of the reasons why the horizontal pixel pitch had to remain at one and a half meters was because we didn't want, nor our client, didn't want anything in front of the windows. 

These media facades on buildings seem to be a thing certainly in China, but I'm starting to wonder when we'll start to see more of them in North America. Are you seeing the demand there to do this? 

Jonathan Labbee: Yes, absolutely. Although things have shifted, I think that with the introduction of the Burj, FC Cincinnati, SoFi Stadium on the roof, I think clients and architects are realizing that a media facade doesn't need to be just a rectangular or square video that takes up all their front real estate. They're starting to look at it more as a way to enhance the architecture that can also do media, and being able to prove that you don't have to have the same pixel pitch on the vertical and horizontal. You can do different things and it just makes it more unique and interesting to the building while you're still communicating the message that you want to from the advertiser or from whatever you're trying to communicate. 

Is it your control system as well for the software that's driving it? 

Jonathan Labbee: So we do everything up to the video processor. So the video processor, what takes a signal and then we work with a variety of companies like Disguise or Seventh Sense depending on the type of project. But anything that has a very complex geometry, we usually work with this Disguise. 

Yeah, you're not going to get a setting out of the box for a client or a building. 

Jonathan Labbee: No, not all, however, our team does produce all of the 3d coordinates for the software to understand it. So you don’t have to have a human sitting there trying to figure out the map, because we already have the map created with a tool set that allows us to take the map and turn it into the coordinates for the systems that we work with.

So mapping a building is actually fairly simple, and if you were to change something or you had to adjust something in your final drawing sets, you can just re-upload that file to the server, and the server will change the pathways for the video image.

image. Now, when you're working with a giant scale surface like that, because the pixels are a meter and a half apart, at least in that job, does that limit the amount of light that's coming out?

One of the things I wonder about with city bylaws and all that is, if you tried to do something like this on a building in New York or Montreal, what would be the citizen reaction? Would they say, “We can't tolerate this. It's going to blind us. It’s going to feel like a tanning salon in our house”?

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, actually a very valid point. We went through that exercise just recently with a client, and that really becomes more about being a responsible corporate citizen. That onus falls on the client, but also on us to provide the tool set to their client for that. But again, if you remember what I was talking about contrast earlier, if something's too bright anyway, then I'm sure you've driven on the highway and seen digital signs for where their brightness wasn't turned down at night and it hurts your eyes. So I bet you don't remember the ad that was on that screen because your brain was too busy hurting.

So in any case, to be able to show off the very best of that building and what you're trying to show, you have to have the right level of contrast. So if it's very bright outside, obviously it could be just light pollution, then you'd want to pump up the power, but if you don't have a lot of competing lights, you would want to j, drop the power down and then the brightness. So we can do it in a few ways. Obviously we can set levels based on time of day and with light sensors and so on which we do for several clients, or there's just just bypass where the client can select it or at night it's just that level.

The Burj is a special case, but if there were other tall buildings in major cities that wanted to do this sort of thing, would they be looking to do it as a media model or do they see it as a way to distinguish their building with ambient lighting that's interesting to look at? 

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, that really depends on the client. I think that some clients go in with the idea of wanting to create a media building. So if you look at the Hard Rock hotel, for example, like the Guitar hotel in Hollywood, Florida, their intent was clear of what you want it to do. It is media focused from the very beginning. 

Some of our other clients, I'm thinking of one of the embassies that we did in New York, for example, originally started off as a way to highlight the building. So there was more kind of a highlight on the edge of the building. But when they saw us testing, they realized, wow, I think there's more capability here, and I think that each client goes through a level of evolution on how to utilize the product. 

And I guess there's a delicate balance that they have to reach as well that you were saying earlier, you can be good corporate citizens and do something visually interesting with your building, but then you can cross the line and start selling mortgage broker services 

Jonathan Labbee: You could do that or you could strobe and there's a lot of things that you could do that you wouldn't necessarily want to do and some of the clients, obviously we have some very sophisticated clients that have a media strategy for that, and they have a team, but some of the other clients just want to do something beautiful, and when that happens, we have a division inside of SACO called the Media Collective, with a Creative Director and so on, and we usually put together a base package for them, just to be able to kinda understand how to utilize your building. 

Is the Media Collective in-house designers, or is it a collective of people who have the skill sets and experience to work with your technology?

Jonathan Labbee: So we have some animators in-house but the whole reason we have a media collective is really to build a collective of external firms that we work with because we actually get a lot of work through design firms. So we don't want to end up competing with them so if we do end up having a project that requires some content, Burj was a perfect example. In the beginning, we built a bunch of content for them. So we directed the whole thing, but we had, I think, six firms that worked with us to provide different flavors. 

When you have a specialized project, somebody like another Montreal company, Moment Factory might come to you guys and say, “Hey, we need to do something on this monumental surface. Can you help us?” 

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, correct. Actually Moment Factory, there are several projects where we've collaborated together. One of them being the AT&T project in Texas. We have our product inside of the A looking thing. 

Yeah, that kind of a spherical walkway thing that kind of leads you to the building? That's a very cool project. So when you are working with these different companies, are they coming to you directly or does it tend to come through an architect? 

Jonathan Labbee: No, when we're working with these with design firms, they’ll usually either contact us or again, vice versa, if we have a media request, we'll contact them. 

There are any number I would imagine of companies out there that have LED light sticks that can do kind of mood lighting for a building. Do you compete with them or their control systems really meant to like, change this block to blue and change this block to yellow so we can have the Ukrainian flag?

Jonathan Labbee: I would say that in certain times, we'll see them on projects, but those companies are usually DMX based, whereas we're video based and there's a really big difference there in the overall approach and also in the ability to display color and bitrate and stuff like that. So just coming from a video background, the type of clients that usually seek us out, or that we seek out have a vision for media, not just for lighting. 

Do they also come to you because of the scale that you've done these ginormous projects? 

Jonathan Labbee: Absolutely, because you also have to be game to do this. These challenges are filled with unknowns, and I think that the team at SACO thrive on them. 

Yeah, I'm sure there are all kinds of companies who, if they were approached to do some of these large scale projects, they'd go, sure, and then they'd go back to the engineering team and look at each other and go, okay, now what? 

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah. We've had a few instances where, let's call them competitors, in certain spaces that got a project and had no idea how to do it and they came to us and we worked with them. It's a small industry, so we're friendly with everybody, 

You mentioned earlier the idea of shape and you worked with FC Cincinnati on this new MLS stadium, right? Could you describe that? 

Jonathan Labbee: The working part or the project part?

The stadium is a curved kind of bowl thing, and the whole outside of it is a bit like the Bayern Munich stadium in that you could eliminate the whole thing.

Jonathan Labbee: Yes, exactly. Here the architect is Populous, a company with whom we worked with in the past, and we have a very good working relationship there. So when they took over that project, I believe it was with a different architect prior, and they came up with this kind of vision of these angled fins where you could see through the building and so on, they created this very light structure which at night needed to be highlighted. 

So when they brought us on board to start taking a look at the designs and giving our ideas and stuff like that, obviously it made a lot of sense to highlight the edge of that. The product is very much recessed inside of the fin. So it's completely invisible during the day or when it's not on, and I guess there were several ideas there, but I guess one of the guiding principles there is that it needs to be integrated and needed to highlight the architecture at night and keep that sense of emotion like that whole stadium has this static motion to it. So based on that, we ended up designing a solution for it, and also created the base content for the client and it's been highly efficient for the client. 

Is it actually less costly to do it the way you're describing as opposed to doing like a full LED mesh curtain and all that, just because there's less hardware, fewer LED diodes and so on, or it does balance out because this is custom engineering?

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, I think I think maybe it balances out. It's probably overall it's maybe a little cheaper because you're integrating early but that only happens if you're integrating early, if you're retrofitting, it's usually it usually balances. But the big thing that it does though, is that it does become unique to that property. 

When you just start adding video screens, and again, I'm a big fan of video screens. That's what we do for a living. But video screens, like what we refer to as traditional video screens, have their place. But on a building, it just ends up looking like advertising, if you just put it up a building, right? So if you really want to enhance the building and kind of blend art and media, I think that's a highly effective way of getting your message across because then there's no mistake in if someone takes their Instagram shot or whatever, there's no mistake in where that is. 

And I'm sure that you spend the time with the clients, for them to understand, look, this is low resolution. This is in a lot of cases meant to be seen from a hundred meters away or further away. If you want to put pricing propositions on the screen, that's probably not going to work, but logos and things like that's going to work well. 

Jonathan Labbee: Yep. Exactly. And again and as you approach the building or as you approach a property or as you're walking through a property, your experience is going to change. So that video element will now become more of a lighting interesting kind of ambient element, but then you'll have something else in the Causeway or whatever with maybe that has a tighter pixel pitch or something to just continue that whole experience as you walk through the property.

Do you strictly work with outdoor products or are you doing anything indoor? 

Jonathan Labbee: Oh no, we do lots of indoor stuff. 

Is that more conventional, like LED modules, cabinets, that sort of thing? 

Jonathan Labbee: Yes, actually, in its construction, I would say yes but in its deployment oftentimes it's different. We did this art piece, which is actually a media piece with Jenny Holzer, which sits inside of the Comcast headquarters in Philadelphia, and there are custom tiles that are 6.32 millimeter pixel pitch at the exact 8 inches wide, and they needed to fit in between these wood slabs on the ceiling and the entire ceiling has video strips going right through it, right through the escalator and everything. 

Oh, so is this tied in with the big LED wall it's already in the lobby there? 

Jonathan Labbee: The LED wall is in the other building. 

Gotcha. The other building is fantastic, what they've done there. 

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, exactly. So we'll also deploy, like we have a project right now going on, I can't really say what it is yet, but it has a bunch of really high res stuff, and these kinds of monuments in a curved fashion, all interactive. So high res video screen type stuff that we do a lot, and we do a lot of touring also. All tier one, so the Paul McCartney's of the world and Lady Gaga's utilize a lot of SACO equipment on their tours. 

And these again, would be stuff that you can put up and take down pretty quickly. They're lightweight and there's a pastor, so you can see it and behind it, all that?

Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, exactly. So what we do for touring is actually use our frames called Fast Frames and they're very fast to set up and rugged. And, in touring speed is extremely important because time is money there, as you're loading and unloading, others are waiting on you. So we came up with this system that's very fast. 

I'll give you an example. When we came up with this new product called the S series. One of our very first clients was Bruno Mars, and this is obviously through some partners, rental partners, and it was a 50 foot wide video screen by 20 feet tall and that took 13 minutes and 13 seconds to set up, from the carts to image on. We actually made t-shirts that said 13:13. 

Yeah. That's a good thing. Cause somebody's going to ask, what does that mean? And then you're immediately pitching, 

Jonathan Labbee: Well, exactly, and also touring does allow us to have a customer base there that is always hungry for the latest in things. Although we have more standard products there that can do their main elements, we'll build a lot of custom stuff for touring as well, and so on the Taylor Swift tour, for example, we had a bunch of 12 millimeters and some 9 millimeters, but because the thing went up like a half pipe in certain areas. We designed these custom triangular tiles to fill in the gap to provide a monolithic look and so on.

So we have clients that are willing to try new things there, and then we take all of that knowledge and then we apply it to our more permanent projects afterwards. 

You're obviously pretty well known in the live events community and I guess in architectural design, not really in the digital signage or LED display community or at least the conventional side of that. Does that matter, or are you quite happy with just stealthily building up your business? 

Jonathan Labbee: Very good question. I would say that in the beginning more, more on like the 2000s stuff, we were doing a lot of arenas and stadiums, like the traditional center hongs or ribbon boards, we were heavily heavily involved there. But when so many companies came out with offerings, there were some differentiators of course, between what we offered and what other people offer, but the cost just kept getting driven down and down, and all of a sudden, you're now operating in a commodity based business.

That's not where we necessarily like to be, we're innovators at heart, so we like to focus on areas where our talents can be fully exploited, and so as soon as you introduce a little bit of complexity and there's a lot of clients that want something complex and context could be something as simple as a curve, an angle, a shape, an installation, we ended up finding ourselves almost alone. 

Yeah. Interesting. I know there's a big project that you're not able to talk about yet but I'm sure maybe we'll get back together in a year or so when you're allowed to talk about this thing running and it's amazing, and unfortunately we can't talk about it at the moment.

Jonathan Labbee: No, but I'll be happy to speak with you when we can. 

Absolutely. All right. Thank you very much for spending some time with me. That was terrific.

Jonathan Labbee: It was a pleasure.

Anders Apelgren, Visual Art

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

So many companies in the digital signage ecosystem are all about the technology, still, so it's interesting to come across a tech company that functions as a turnkey provider, but leads with the creative aspect. It's even in the name - Visual Art.

The Swedish company started roughly 25 years ago, and has steadily expanded its footprint and operating base. It is now active in 32 countries, though northern Europe is still its busiest territory.

One of the interesting aspects - and I don't think I'ver seen this - is how it is owned, in part, by an out of home media company, UK-based Ocean Outdoor. Ocean bought the media wing on the business back in 2019.

But ad networks are not the main focus - with much of Visual Art's business in retail and QSR, through whale clients such as McDonalds.

I spoke at length with the CEO of Visual Art - Anders Apelgren.

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TRANSCRIPT

Andres, thank you for joining me. You're in Stockholm. Is that the main office for your company? 

Anders Apelgren: Yes, the whole company was founded in Stockholm. So Stockholm is still our biggest place. 

And where else are you located? 

Anders Apelgren: We have companies and offices in 8 countries. It's all in the Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and we’re also quite big in Germany and Spain. We also have a small company in the US. 

Okay. So is expanding beyond the Nordic region something that's happened recently or has that been evolving since you started? 

Anders Apelgren: We have two different business areas before, so we were in the nordic countries before, but we sold half the company two years ago. Now, we're expanding again, outside the Nordic countries, and to be honest, Sweden is quite a small country, so the market is so much bigger in other countries like the US and Germany. 

It's interesting with Sweden and the Nordics in general, it seems to be something of a hotbed for digital signage.

Anders Apelgren: Yeah, I think we are quite good at it in northern Sweden both in software, and also with the audience, since we understand technical things. So I think it's quite easy to sell to Swedish people and companies. So we are at the forefront, at least in mass deployment, maybe not in having these huge, big things like in Times Square, but I think most deployment of screens are in Swedish. 

That's interesting. Is that just a particular mindset? 

Anders Apelgren: No, but I think, on average, people see that they can earn money on the screens even by selling more or by selling commercial space on the screens and they are seeing opportunity with the price going down with screens, more and more companies are doing it.

Okay. So can you give me a rundown on what Visual Art does and the breadth of services?

Anders Apelgren: We are a one-stop shop so we can give the clients everything they want. But of course the big foundation we have is our tech part. So we have our own CMS and we also have our media player. The media players can work on any platform so that's a big strength we have, and we are selling that software to competitors as well as a white label product, that is the foundation of the company. 

But since many other companies don't have a one-stop shop partner, we can help them with content, strategies, sell hardware and do installation as well.

Yeah, that seems to be almost the default demand now of larger companies. They're basically saying that they want to stick to what they're good at, and they'd like to outsource all of this to a company that is good at that.

Anders Apelgren: Exactly. And that's why we are expanding to so many countries, because we need to be close to the customer otherwise we won’t get the business.

Did you start as an integrator or a solutions provider and then add software? Or did you start as a software company? 

Anders Apelgren: We started as a production company, so we have a very good background in creating content. 

Interesting. A lot of companies in the digital signage ecosystem have branding that is very much about their technology and that's how they market their technology, whereas your name and your go-to strategy seems to be about the visual side? 

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely, if you don't have the correct content on the right screen location, it’s useless. You need to understand what’s the meaning of this screen and where you should place it. You can place the screens too high in the grocery store and nobody sees them. It means the whole thing is about understanding how to use the screen in the best way. 

And it is that easier to do now than when the company first started? 

Anders Apelgren: I think it's easier to do that thing in Sweden especially, and in the mature markets, but there are still a lot of RFPs out there who only focus on software and they don't really understand what most will have in the future because most of our clients today have a lot of integration. 

For example, the biggest grocery chain in Sweden is ICA and it is one of our clients. We have almost 95% of content automated, so it's done fully automatic. Nobody's creating the content. So you need to understand when you buy a software, what is your end goal with the solution? Not just buying the software. 

Yeah, really, and using those integrations. I also found it interesting that a couple of your offerings that maybe aren't a part of the norm of a typical digital signage provider is you have live data integrations for sales performance, for things like McDonald's and so on and instead of it being a dashboard that gets pushed to a large format screen. These are dashboards that are being pushed to iPhones and smartwatches, right? 

Anders Apelgren: That’s correct. We have McDonald's in perhaps over 20 countries. With the information it's not only sales, it's a lot of different information about the stores. So the store manager or cashier can see the sales in realtime.

Basically the demand for this was that they had quite bad systems. It's the same thing in many big companies. They're very slow. You have to go to five or six different places to get the data. So we collect all the data for them and push them down to their phone. So they have all the sales, all the stores on the phone in real time.

Was that a product that you developed because they asked you to develop it or did you develop it and put it in front of them? And they said, “yeah, we like it”?

Anders Apelgren: I mean it was in Sweden that they wanted to have a big screen, just a dashboard with the template of the company. But then when it gets all the data, we realized we can make a much better application of it. So then we created the phone and watch application, but the idea came from McDonalds in Sweden. 

Is there a lot of demand for these kinds of operational dashboards that would be on large format displays in the back office of a retailer or in logistics? 

Anders Apelgren: I think that time has passed. I think nowadays you have everything on your phone. So I think if you use big screens now, it’s probably to get the information to your staff more or less. So in your crew room, you might have some kind of big screen with information, but it's quite hard to reach the young people in a big company getting information.

So that's why I was wondering about that. So maybe not the sales KPIs and so on, but there would seem to be a lot of information in production areas that is the only way you're going to get this information in front of people is on a large screen because they're not going to have this dashboard app on their phone, or if they could have it, they probably wouldn't look at it?

Anders Apelgren: They wouldn't look at it. That's the problem. So you need to put it in their face more or less. 

Is it a lot easier these days to do these kinds of beta integrations? 

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. Nowadays most companies have quite good backend systems, but still we have a lot of big companies who are facing a lot of legacy systems that are not that easy to work with, but it has gotten easier, absolutely. 

So what do you do with them? 

Anders Apelgren: For McDonal’s, from the beginning, we made a crawler application, so we logged in on a webpage and crawled all the sales figures from that system, because that was the only way to get the data. But today, of course we can get it through some kind of API. So it's moving in the right direction.

You have your own signage player, a CMS platform. When did you launch that? 

And I'm curious, given that the Nordics countries have numerous software firms that have their own CMS platforms as well. So why do it yourself when there is so much out there? 

Anders Apelgren: We launched the player in 2010, and back then, basically there was no really good platform at that time. A lot of screens were black, no one had control over the physical screen. They were considered lucky to have control over the media player. 

Of course they're getting better and better. But at the end of the day, this thing needs to be working every day and also needs to be able to do whatever the clients want to, and so far I haven't found any other software that can do everything that we can do with our software. So we’re quite proud of our software and we sell it now as a product to competitors. 

And you said, other companies can white label it? 

Anders Apelgren: Yes, exactly. So we’re selling it over, like we have a big distribution in Australia, for example.

Okay. And you also said you do your own media players? 

Anders Apelgren: No, not our own media players. We can run on all media players. We only use standard products like Samsung or LG, but we can run on Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and so on. 

Are you using a lot of smart displays? 

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. If I look two years back, or three years back, I think 80% was like a Windows or Linux computer and 20% was system on chip. Today I think 95% of what we sell is system on chip and 5% is like a Windows computer. So the trend has shifted quite quickly to systems on chip. 

It's funny because I've been following the system on chip ecosystem for about nine years now, when it first came out and for the first many years, I spent the majority of those years there were nothing but detractors who were saying this is not the way to go, it's problematic. There's not enough power on and on, and it's just a bad thing to do, but obviously the market has shifted that way. 

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. I think four years ago now when Tizen was launched, we tested it and there were so many problems with it.

So we acquired a big reseller in all the countries. We got like a person in Korea coming to Sweden. So we hired him to this desk for four weeks. He reported back all the problems we have, and after like three months, we had a stable product. So Samsung is very grateful to us that we helped them to make Tizen stable. 

I gather one of the big attractions of a system on chip is simply that you have this consolidated display unit with minimal cables and therefore minimal things that can work loose or be pulled loose or whatever at a remote location. So maintenance costs drop substantially? 

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. Of course you can also make the installation look nicer if it wasn't to get tied into the wall or wherever you want to keep the screen. It's easy to install and there’s only one piece that can break down. 

Also, you have one supplier that would help with the solution. You have no Samsung or LG to blame. If it doesn't work, is it the media player or is it the screen? It's the screen because that’s everything that you have. 

Yeah, you don't have all the finger pointing. What is the primary vertical market that Visual Art goes after? Is it retail? 

Anders Apelgren: I think we are quite wide in that, but we are really strong in retail, but I would say fast food, gas stations, and that's just a coincidence.

It happens that we come to markets that are exploding, and if you look at gas stations in Sweden, they all now have this menu board, and coffee screens, most of them have windows screens. If it goes to Germany, almost no one has almost anything yet, but they're all asking for it right now. And then of course, you're in a good position. If you have done it in all the gas chains in Sweden, you have the knowledge. 

And they're using that to pull people into the store, I assume, and because they're now, maybe not making as much money selling tobacco products and things like that, but they've got food items?

Anders Apelgren: Exactly. They need to bring people into the store to buy some food items. 

And you also do QSR? 

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. We have McDonald’s in all of the Nordics and Subway all over Europe/ 

Ah, okay. So you've got a pretty big footprint then? 

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. We're very proud of them. Both those clients want to have a one-stop shop solution. They want to have at least somebody that can do content as well and also help them with both costing and segmentation. 

How hands-off is it? 

I did some work with a QSR chain here in North America, Tim Horton's going back a ways and I remember years ago asking them what they thought of the software they're using and they said, we have no idea. We've never seen it. We don't have a login or anything. They handed the whole nine yards to the solutions provider and said, you do this for us, and we'll have a, not these exact words, but we’ll have a weekly call or something and just review what's needed.

Anders Apelgren: I think it's a bit different, but many companies are still doing that. They just want it to work. So they tell us this is what should be on them and so on, and then they don't care about how it works as long as the screens are showing the right contents more or less. 

We have a lot of template based systems, so some clients do all this themselves. So they schedule everything themselves with templates.

Who would be your largest clients? 

Anders Apelgren: McDonald’s and ICA are the biggest clients we have.

Okay, and you are also doing some kind of flagship or signature and installations. I saw one, for example, for Audi and I've seen some large groceries where you've got entire facades of the store in LEDs?

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. Of course we help clients with flagship stores as well. It's very good for publicity and so on but to be honest, the big money is in volumes. So the flagship stores, we're happy to do them, but mainly those screens are quite expensive, and also don’t have good margins on them to be honest. We do them, but we want to have the whole chains to do the volumes, so screens rollouts and stuff since that’s where the money is for us.

Yeah, I guess you can do a big video wall for the front of a store and it's one software license. 

Anders Apelgren: Exactly! And the software and the support doesn’t give us recurring revenue.

What's been the lesson out of the last two years with the pandemic and retail being conflicted and in some cases closed and restricted and everything else? 

Anders Apelgren: That's a good question. I think some shifts have been to use the screens for other purposes. So for example, in Sweden, you're limited in how many people you can bring into the store, depending on the size of the store. So then they want to use the screen to say, “Sorry, you cannot enter right now. There's too many people in the store.”

Otherwise, I think the sad thing is that many retailers had a tough time surviving because people weren’t coming to the store, buying online and stuff.

So has that slowed the retail business on your side? 

Anders Apelgren: If you look at the trend for all of Europe, we have lost like 18 months of growth. So if you look at the curve of expanding signage in Europe, we lost at least 18 months in developing or rolling in Europe during the pandemic. So obviously it affected the sales. 

You mentioned that the idea of metering for store capacity, has been taken up by many companies in terms of, going beyond just a simple sign that says 200 people at a time are allowed in here, are you doing this sort of automated sensor driven things where it's looking at who's leaving and therefore allowing people to come in?

Anders Apelgren: They use cameras to count the people automatically, and then the counter can say, “Now there are 15 people in the store. You have to wait outside, please!”, and the screen goes red. 

So I've seen that talked up a lot. I haven't seen that many real world examples of it being done. You're saying that you've deployed that sort of thing?

Anders Apelgren: Yeah, we have done them together with some grocery chains, and they had all of the people counting systems so we just hooked their people counting system and then changed the content on the screen.

Oh, okay. So they were using it just for store analytics and they've adopted it for this as well?

Anders Apelgren: Exactly.

Interesting. Some of the other things that were floated in the past couple of years was the idea of touchless based interactions and things like infrared, temperature sensors, and screens with hand sanitizer dispensers below them and so on, and I've been hearing from people who didn't have any reasons to say one way or the other that they understand there's a lot of vendors who invested in the hardware and had a lot of trouble selling it. 

Anders Apelgren: Yeah, we have a lot of companies coming to sell them as well, but I agree it has been a problem, and as I see it now, the question is now why should you use touch screens in the future? You have your own device in your pocket, which you don't need to standardize. 

So what we have done for McDonald's as a pilot in the US is that you can go to the kiosk in the store, you take your phone and you scan the QR code on it, and then you could use your smartphone as a remote control to that screen. So you get the same image on the shelf, in your phone, and then you can touch the phone and then control the kiosk. So it works like a remote control to the kiosk. That's even better than deploying new hardware and touching something anyway. So there are different options to do that, I’d say.

Did that go beyond a demonstration? Is it used? 

Anders Apelgren: This was last spring in the US and it was really high up in McDonald's management team. So we demonstrated this for them. They tested it for a store a little bit, but then they forgot about it because think about how many kiosks you’d have at McDonald's and they aren’t cheap.

What's the process that you go through when you engage with a new client? Personally, if I'm sitting down in my days doing consulting, the first question out of my mouth would always be: Why am I here? Why do you want to do this? 

Anders Apelgren: We do the same thing, and most often we offer them to do a workshop with a strategy that will help them to take this forward and answer why they want to have the signage? What is the purpose of them? 

And if you look at many retailers in clothing, the main thing for them is to get people into the store. So the window screen is the most important and then, how can we attract people to the store? So you need to understand what your biggest issues are, what they want to achieve. So normally we do workshops and we build a strategy for the clients and then we start to ask, where should the screen be and what should be on them? 

And as you said because you're turnkey, you can help them with all that as well, including producing the content? 

Anders Apelgren: Exactly and during integrations, almost all the screens we install, we frame them so it fits into the interior as well. So not just putting a screen because it looks quite dull to have a screen only, it needs some kind of framing to make it melt into the interior. 

It used to be the case, and I'm curious if it still is that if you handed the creative side of digital signage projects off to an agency, it's not a medium that they understood and they generally didn't do a very good job with it.

Is that still the case that you're better off working with a company such as yours because you understand the dynamics and the sight lines and everything? 

Anders Apelgren: Yeah, I think so. They are getting better, absolutely, but they're not thinking in our way, like If you think you have the screen in the window, you cannot do very long content, just also thinking out how the audience is on this screen? If you look at the agency, they look at TVs and they don't really understand what will be the flow with people in front of this? 

So they need to learn a lot, but they're getting better, I would say. 

I read on your website that you now have a new product line. You're now also marketing LED displays, right? 

Anders Apelgren: That’s correct. We are importing them ourselves from China, and that's basically to get these big flagships. 

Also, the price is going down so much, especially for indoor LED screens that you can have in your window normally inside, and testing a lot of RFPs with price pressure on, we cannot have somebody in between to get the lowest purchase price to win those deals. 

So there's no end of options for LEDs. Why have your own? Why not just say we understand this stuff, we'll find you the best option. Is it a matter of control and understanding the supplier? 

Anders Apelgren: Normally, we avoid doing this. We have always used Samsung and LG before, but we cannot win the space if we have somebody in between, in the sales process, otherwise you will lose these big flagships that we talked about because we will price ourselves out of the picture. So that's why we're doing this.  

Is it difficult to find the right supplier? There are so many and the quality and particularly support can vary dramatically between them. 

Anders Apelgren: The supplier that we use, they’re quite stable now. We have used them before, even though we haven’t bought directly from them.

Is there technology on the software and the display hardware side that you guys are intrigued by or that you see potential for? 

Anders Apelgren: Not really sure what you are asking for to be honest. 

I think the big ones for me would be things like LED on different kinds of display surfaces, like on film or even embedded in glass. Some of the emerging tech... 

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. We did an H&M store, this is supposed to be 10 years ago, and in this store, we had a big projector that displayed a huge screen on the window, and then we had infrared technology that could announce the audience floating outside the window. So we tested those kinds of things, but so far we haven't ever seen any kind of volume on those. It has been really fun doing some flagship store installations, but we still haven’t done any hige rollouts for things like these. 

What about analytics? You mentioned how you're tying into store analytics for access control and so on. Is that being widely used now within retail, the idea that you can understand how the store works and how people are looking at screens and so on?

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. First of all, we do a lot of research and even with new clients to understand what they do, but we also have all the things we show and load to put into a database, and then they can cross reference what we have been showing, like the sales of that item with the client to see what kind of images on the screen really drive the sales. 

How large is your company?

Anders Apelgren: We have around 100 employees. This year in 2022, our aim is to sell about $32 million. 

Okay, and what's going to be coming in the new year. Do you have big projects or new products that are coming out? 

Anders Apelgren: I think really the biggest thing is to market our very good software, even more in the world, to deploy it worldwide anywhere, and also to move into more countries. We’re quite aggressive about finding new countries. So I think we'll probably have at least four new countries this year. 

Now, will you do that through acquisition or just organically grow? 

Anders Apelgren: Organic is our main target. We can buy companies if we see anything good, but normally for us, we don't want to have some big company in this country, we mainly want just sales and a product leader. So most companies are too big to buy. I don't want to have really big foundations in every country. 

And are you privately held or venture backed? 

Anders Apelgren: 50% of the company is owned by employees in the company and the remaining 50% is owned by Ocean Outdoor out of the UK. 

Oh, okay. I did not know that. Interesting. So you have direct ties into digital out of home?

Anders Apelgren: We do, yeah.

And would they do media sales for you as well on certain projects?. 

Anders Apelgren: Absolutely. If you look at the ICA grocery stores in Sweden, we have all the screen installations and they are selling the advertising space. 

Oh, interesting. I don't think I've heard that with an integrator where they've had ownership through a media company. 

Anders Apelgren: It’s a good combination, I think.

Yeah. All right. It's been great chatting with you. Thank you very much. 

Anders Apelgren: Thank you very much.

Dennis Hickey, SNA Displays

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

I spoke recently with a consulting firm that was looking at the outdoor LED space, and trying to wrap its collective heads around who the LED leaders were in North America.

They rattled off a bunch of vendor names, but did not mention SNA Displays. I sorted them out, noting how the company was a significant player, and how they were a rare Chinese LED manufacturer that was doing a great job of building up a presence and business in the U.S. market.

SNA is interesting for a whole bunch of reasons. The name is short for Sansi North America, with the parent firm being back in Shanghai. But SNA seems to run very much as a U.S. company, with full offices and support systems over here, as well as marketing developed and managed on this side of the Pacific. The difference is not subtle, as I get a lot of marketing stuff from China-based vendors that just won't resonate over here and, probably, in Europe.

SNA is also interesting because it doesn't just manufacture and sell indoor and outdoor LED displays, it becomes a direct partner in jobs - helping finance projects that might otherwise remain just ideas.

I had a great chat with Dennis Hickey, who runs SNA and the related company that does financing, Infuse Digital.

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TRANSCRIPT

Dennis. Thank you for joining me. Where are you today? 

Dennis Hickey: I'm actually working from home in New Jersey, right outside of New York in Short Hills. 

Okay. Went to talk about a couple things today. First of all, could you tell me about Infuse Digital, which is the newer of the two companies that you run. I know they are related.

Dennis Hickey: Yes. Thank you. Infuse Digital came from the SNA Displays side as a company that wanted to hold hands for clients that were interested in LED products or digital products LCDs, kiosks, et cetera, and clients just didn't understand the process, and so where it came was from the fact that SNA displays was bidding multiple projects through multiple clients. It always seemed to be a price war, and if we didn't have intelligent digital consultants involved in the project, it usually just came down to price, and unfortunately, Based on the fact that we have 2,500 employees and 2.5 million square feet of manufacturing, our prices are usually tied, maybe some of the smaller folks.

So we decided that we wanted to hold hands with these clients, help these clients. We wanted to make sure the clients were getting the best product, the best solution that will have the maximum return on investment, and so we told the clients that essentially, we would be the investor, and we would put up the funds and the financing, and then we would hold their hands and do the at-home advertising and the sponsorship revenue that could be generated from these, not selling the advertising or the sponsorship ourselves, but utilizing some of our partnerships to bring them to the project.

So that was the spearhead to everything here. 

So that's pretty widely different from what most LED manufacturers do. 

Dennis Hickey: Yes, Obviously that's always been our case. We are probably number one in boutique products. Making the human head once and obviously our custom fabrication. 

For the major spectaculars on the SNA side. So we needed to think out of the box more, and thinking outside the box, we know there's clients and we know clients will Google this, or maybe see a post, maybe read an article and then want that product. But they have no idea what the cost is associated with that. They really need their hands held more.

And so that's where the concept of infused came from. 

So is the core part of it, the financing end or is it the whole turn key? We'll take this from start to finish?

Dennis Hickey: It is always going to involve some form of financial abilities. If you can provide your own finance, if you can build it yourself, you'll probably want to maximize the return on that particular investment.

But there are a lot of clients out there who take triple five in an American dream that are more inclined to know how to build this great mall and entertainment venue. We have a ski slope. We have a theme park. We don't really understand the digital environment and they came and they brought us on to handle that for the next 20 years.

We also gave them 40,000 square feet of digital product as a result, and then maximized the return on. According to that, they can make money through name sponsorships, or they can make money through at-home advertising with one of our partners. So they got everything at once. However, on the flip side, you could have a building in times square, that is one of the developers in times square has a property and they have plenty of money and they know what the at-home revenue is going to be generated.

And they're going to buy the product themselves. Those folks will come directly to SNA versus the other folks that want some assistance will come to our sister company infuse. 

Okay. So are you effectively providing a lease on the equipment? 

Dennis Hickey: Actually, what we're trying to do is we're actually providing the ownership of the equipment and actually a tenant of that asset.

So we own the assets. We advertise them and organize sponsorship for those assets. We maintain those assets for the life of the assets. If it's an LCD chaos, for instance we will replace those through the course of the 10, 15, 20 year contract we have. If it's an LED, it's obviously replaced probably in around 10 years to reinstall the latest and greatest. The other cool part is we know the industry, we know the industry in and out. So we're giving our clients the tightest resolution pitch the highest resolution displays because we want to keep them relevant because we're making money off of the advertising and sponsorship as a result.

So, if they're looking at a project and you're recommending piece X, because it's time square and they're going we only have a budget for P 10 or whatever. They don't have to compromise on that. They can use what's best if they're working with you? 

Dennis Hickey: Yeah, perfectly said, and yes you will see, for instance, we're finishing a project in times square.

This is 6.67 millimeter pitch, and that's probably going to be the latest and greatest. A lot of clients will have already put up their 10 millimeter and then look at their neighbor and say I wanted that. We're thinking ahead of that. Because again, we could do everything at cost.

So it does give us a slight advantage. Because we are the manufacturer of the product. So yes, that is essentially what it is. 

Are you in certain respects, disintermediating the integrators who would be doing installation, maybe doing some of the managed services or is there still a running partnership?

Dennis Hickey: Absolutely running partnership. We do have a preferred dealer program. We highly respect preferred dealers. We do not ever want to step on their toes and we never will. This is more of a developer standpoint where at high end development maybe not necessarily sports but venues right outside of sport.

Case and point, as I mentioned before, the American dream is right outside the MetLife stadium, and we're there and they were looking for a partner to take everything on. However, diversified as part of the American dream, and we built some of the products to diversify them. We did not step on their toes by any means.

Ours is purely advertising and sponsorship revenue elements that do not fall in there. 

So, when it comes to some of the turnkey things like managed services and so, is that something you're doing internally through infused or subbed out to the diversified companies like that?

Dennis Hickey: Actually we have our own in-house folks that do our own service on our own product. But so we do maintain our product on this particular project itself. But then we've always blended in those regards. When we do a diversified project, they still may need our systems division to assist with some of the stuff, because remember the products are the priority. We know the ins and outs and upside downs for them. So we work together in UNISON. 

How long has Infused been around?

Dennis Hickey: Infuse established in 2017. We actually started the company as a Sansi development group.

We changed the name to Infuse to be a little bit more distinctive. It pushed the envelope with everybody about what it is. It's time to infuse some more digital platforms into your landscape making it more relevant. It's great to do statistics and where statistics are permissible but sometimes digital will take it further.

And so that's where we infuse some digital in your platform. 

What's been the take up on it, or do you have a lot of your clients going down that path? 

Dennis Hickey: I'm sorry, can you repeat that? 

What's been the adoption rate for Infuse with the clients who you work with and who you target? Are most saying this is great, I want to do this? Or do a lot of the protector of the property developer saying, “No, we've got the money. Thanks.”?

Dennis Hickey: Actually, it works in twofold. Obviously we're getting direct leads for folks that have found us and are interested in doing business, but it actually comes from the fact that SNA may have a project that has been sitting in our possibility category for a while.

And the client goes, I'm going to put it off next year's budget and put it off the next quarter's budget, and they just can't make it financially meet, obviously with the pandemic that actually grew even bigger where clients were like I'm a little nervous now because tourism was down for a while.

We have the confidence that everything's coming back. So we asked the client, would he be interested if we took the role and it's taken some clients over the edge? Some clients are still excited about building it themselves and want to maximize the dollars for it. We made an offer in times square to somebody to do an infused deal.

And they said, no, they are comfortable doing it on their own and they will do it when the time is right. And we accepted but there are folks that are just like, what, I really want to build it. I really want to get started, and with the pandemic, you may be our only paying tenant.

And so we then took that role and took it over to the edge. 

So I guess this enforces even more of a business discipline on you guys as well. If somebody in Time Square says we want to put up a big spectacle, it's not that tough of a decision to make, but if somebody in, let's say downtown Omaha, Nebraska wants to put up a big spectacle, you've got to make some decisions around, okay, if we finance this, is the money there to make this feasible? 

Dennis Hickey: Perfectly said, and I'll give you an example of a Margaritaville in Orlando, which is right outside of Disney's animal kingdom. And Margaritaville came to us. They were on the fence about what direction they wanted to go.

And we talked about maybe we should invest in it. But we did a shared partnership investment where we both had skin in the game essentially to make the deal happen, and the person that puts the most skin in the game we'll get the most return on investment initially. But again it's the client's property, so in the end they will reap the firm benefit. But yeah, it works and it varies per location. It may be a situation where we can do an evaluation. We can say, Unfortunately, we love your concept. We love everything you do. It's not necessarily going to work for us here. But we'll make a form of investment in 10, 15, 20%, maybe 50%, or maybe we know when we can really make a stronghold against some other things and we'll take the a hundred percent investment path.

It will vary per project location. 

You're not in a position like some tech giants, like the Ciscos of the past who would pretty much buy a stadium deal just because they're going to get other things out of it? 

Dennis Hickey: Perfectly said too. Yeah, Cisco can be more business to business, but you could have other manufacturers that have consumer products and, by marketing their name by putting their name under they might get the attention of somebody that attended that sporting venue or that entertainment venue wants to buy a product at best that has the same name that doesn't really work for us. For what our standpoint is, we know what should generate revenue wise on those screens. Our partners in the at-home world will tell us, and we live by that. So because of that, we can say to the client what he could make. He could make X dollars per this. If he doesn't believe us, we'll put up the money and show him.

So we're not going to see naming rights on a NFL stadium anytime soon with SNA display stadium on it?

Dennis Hickey: No, but we just landed a major NFL stadium recently, I’ll tell you about it at another time. But no, you won't, it really doesn't do us any benefit. If you see SNA displays on a display, you’ll wonder, what do they make? And look us up when we have a fantastic website and think what does that have to do with me? I'm not putting a $5 million LED in my kitchen, so it's not really going to work. 

SNA is an interesting company in that it's a Chinese manufacturer, but this is the North American entity of it. So Sansi North America. Is that correct?

Dennis Hickey: That is correct. We have Shanghai Sansi Technologies and then Sansi North America. There has been a partnership for many years where we took control of Sansi North America, with all dynamic, digital displays, direct view. It dates back, I came from and lived in the sign world prior to joining a company based out of Plano, Texas, where Jason Helton, who works with us, worked out of, and he was buying from a company, Shanghai, Sansi.

We struck a deal with Shanghai Sansi to represent their product here in the United States to cover North America. However, we knew we landed some big name brands, which are international and we cover those as well, too. It's been a great long relationship with Shanghai Sansi.

We do a range of things prior to the pandemic, where we do factory acceptance tests, we take people to tour the factory. As I mentioned, the 2.5 million square feet of manufacturing that occurs there we show everybody in the ins and outs and show them around the Shanghai area and maybe other areas too to make a fun trip out of it.

So we've been doing it for a while. It's a great relationship and our exclusivity with Shanghai's Sansi is very strong.  

The larger Chinese LED manufacturers, the Leyards, the Yunalumens, and so on. They don't really have a distinct North American entity like a US office of, but you guys have made a very concerted effort to, I wouldn't say distance yourself from the parent company, but you are your own thing with your own marketing, website, everything else. You're not just piggybacking on what's coming from Shenzhen or Beijing or Shanghai. Why is that? 

Dennis Hickey: Great point, and thank you. The reason is there's a very distinctive marketing value between China and the United States, and in meeting Shanghai Sansi said that they know their expertise lives in the product manufacturing. They want to stay ahead of the curve and the product side.

And our team wants help to manage the process. So we have SNA pros that are certified licensed engineers and architects. So we want to manage the construction side of it. So we're giving everybody a turnkey. And we also want to have a US marketing presence. Us marketing is very different.

So you mentioned folks like the layers out there. They do a lot of interior decoration. You name some others. They do a lot of exterior work, and we do all, and we do all in the house. So we want to leave Shanghai, since he focused on the latest and greatest product, remember we were the first to the United States with a 1.2, five millimeter.

We did it first, at a stadium in Washington, DC. So we want them to maintain that. We have a good lane of workmanship together. They stay in their lane and focus on the product. We stay in our lane and focus on the marketing as well as the construction part to make sure that our clients have somewhere to call, we call it 24 hour service, right?

When we go to sleep, they're still working. So you get a 24 hour response continuously, and we created our own app to follow your projects from start to finish. Oh, so you can use the SNA app to know what's being manufactured and not just when it arrives in the United States, it's being manufactured day one.

See what's going on overseas while you started to work with us. So it's been a good process responsiveness and delivery and service. We know all the functionalities of the displays and we have a good team to stand behind it. To be an SNA pro you have to be certified in a category. So these are licensed engineers, licensed architects, or they have had an extensive amount of time working in the field, whether through service, et cetera, on a particular product, and they become certified as SNA pros. This is the quarter of our business. The SNA response time is what we call a no excuse response. So that's why we have the app. Follow your project on the SNA app from start to finish from day one.

And then throughout we want you to know how much inventory you have. We want you to know everything through that process when you do business with us, and it starts with our SNA pros. They know everything. So it's no excuse because they might be a licensed electrician or they might be an electrical engineer.

So they're going to get you the immediate answer, and we're going to tell you rapidly, you don't have to wait a few days to hear something from overseas. You can hear right away. 

And I assume that makes a big difference with the integrators and the specialty consultants and those kinds of folks out there, because you know what, one of the issues with some of the tier two manufacturers coming into China is they may have, what's pretty great product, but if there's a problem, the support is 12 hours away and it may or may not be in a language that both ends speak?

Dennis Hickey: Exactly! Perfectly said, and it all comes down to costs. Any downtime is down on return on investment and we keep on a media display. Exactly. But even if it's a lobby, and it's a back screen, you're giving information to potential folks coming to work every day. And if that screens down, it takes away from the look and the aesthetics of that big, expensive building that you just built. We can't have that excuse, and the good news is our diagnostic software is actually. It's free and it exists. Our app is free. You can follow your project, start to finish free.

So we want you to always know through transparency, the health of your display, and we always want you to have an immediate and absolute response. 

The profile of the buyer for indoor and outdoor LED seems to have evolved over the years. What really struck me was sometime last year you guys put out a case study and it was a sports bar with a fine pitch direct view LED over a portion of the bar across from Lambeau field in green bay. 

And I thought, this is one of these cases where there's clear evidence that LED is now a mainstream product. It's no longer this high end thing that only goes in very deep-pocketed venues.

Dennis Hickey: Perfectly said, obviously the market has evolved. In 1997, the blue Dyer was invented and made LEDs obviously way more expensive, but over time and over manufacturing, the costs have come down to a certain degree. It's still more expensive. But the cost of the LED coming down and then the fight over longevity, brightness, uniformity and seamlessness has really taken the lead to another level, which is why you have interests from major corporations that used to focus on purely LCDs.

They're in because they know this is the future and has really taken off. It's still more expensive. We like to say that, if you're going to put up three LCDs high, by three LCDs wide, you're probably better off doing LEDs. But until you get there, it's slightly more expensive. So you have to think long-term, forget the capital expenditure and that tends to work.

But we also know that Lambeau Field is going to be sold out. Where else can you go to have fun and watch the game? It's great sitting on your couch and watching the game. But, it's actually more fun with a group of people in a bar right outside the Lambeau stadium as I couldn't get tickets, but I got tickets outside of the stadium.

So that was definitely a fun project. 

And are you generally seeing the profile change, where it's not just these big, spectacular installations inside and out, but that you're getting things like this sports bar or was that more of an anomaly? 

Dennis Hickey: Absolutely. It's all coming to fruition.

You gotta thank God to Google and other search engines where you can see what our neighbors are doing. But it's definitely moving. You get a significant price brightness difference. You get a longevity difference. You get an operating difference as well as a bezel difference.

More purity of screens. It is and definitely will gravitate towards that. Like I said, those big companies see that I'm aligned. That's why they joined the competition. We've been doing Shanghai Sansi since 1993.

And they just started joining. So you can see the evolution of that. 

If you're looking at stuff coming out of CES this week, and just generally in display technology, there's all kinds of ongoing discussion and product launches around mini and micro LED. But is it more marketing noise or is it really where this stuff is going? Because I don't think you guys do that. You're still SMD based, right? 

Dennis Hickey: Yes. We're more SMD based, but we're always researching the latest and greatest. It's a rush for the latest and greatest. So in the exterior market, folks like to talk about how my brightness level is always a very extreme high number.

And we always joke about that and say, we can give it 10 times of that, but we killed the life expectancy of your display. So it is more of a marketing ploy of being different. First and foremost, you take something simple as a diode. Shanghai Sansi was getting six months advanced release on the diode to test it, to qualify it, to make a better product.

And Nichia might set the spec on what that product is and so on and so forth, and it's not just Nichia, I just use that loosely here. It could be anything, and so what we do is you follow the specs, but everybody wants to be more distinctive and Sansi North American, Shanghai Sansi, we don't necessarily need that market distinction. We want something a bit better delivering the product. Making sure the product is reliable. Being with the no excuse policy turnkey has answers to the questions like, who do I call, when I have an issue or question? How and when do I get a response? Will I get a response? I think it is a more distinguished group.

We'll get the new company to pop up and say, Mine's flexible or something like that. That works on 2% of the industry. We are going to focus on what the far majority need. And it  needs a qualified, reliable product with a reliable company, standing behind it, and that's really what it is.

With that technology though, the SMD stuff that you're primarily using, is it now matured or are there still advances that can be made, that if we could just get this or that, then we'd be at a Nirvana state? 

Dennis Hickey: I think it's just perfecting it and further perfecting it right.

To get it better, obviously it always lowers the cost. But I don't think there is anything more in line with that, and it's just my opinion. Jason Helton on our team probably has an even better answer to that question. But from my standpoint it is getting the most reliable, the best view, the best color uniformity, the best view angles, and starting to maximize those directions. That is really what it iS. We've been Guinea pigs before a new car came to the market. You might want to be a Guinea pig, however there are pros and cons to that. I like to take the road of what's established and what's developed.

And just to make sure it's perfect, and then, let the human, I do the rest. 

Is SNA doing anything with the transparent mesh LEDs that are starting to cloud entire buildings in China and things like window film?

Dennis Hickey: Yes. We have several. We have one in Shanghai, Sansi, they just shared it recently as well. We've had it, we call that product since 2009 through the media. So what's actually existed here in the United States for over 13 years, and it's evolved. 

It didn't look very good for a long time. 

Dennis Hickey: It definitely didn’t. Everything becomes a little bit thinner and a little bit more transparent. But we do have a product on it. Like I said, we can make anything. Keep in mind that Shanghai Sansi makes LED lighting products. The bridge between Macau and Hong Kong, all that lighting is Shanghai Sansi product. So we have the team to pretty much do anything that is designed and developed or in concept. It's just, there's not a lot of them. There's permit restrictions in some cases in some areas, but it exists and it's pretty easy to make. And like I said, we've had a version in 2009 and here we are, now 2022, it's definitely much different, but we've been doing it for many years.

What's going to be the big news for you guys this year?

Dennis Hickey: I actually think we're getting into sports, watch out! I think our entrance into sports changed the whole platform. We haven't really been in, we always joked we've been outside the bowl, but never in the bowl, and we're about to take a presence in a bowl.

Very distinctive team. Hopefully at some point we can announce it. But I think our competition knows what it is. So maybe they will announce it for us, but there's several more. So sports are big. I think infuse really helps our clients get over the hump like they want it but can't afford it or they want it but are unsure.

And I think that gets us over the hump as well, and I think SNA is doing what best they can do, continue to help the client from start to finish, being transparent and open. That's really our game. We stay within their budget. There are no change orders.

We finished the project on time which they wanted, there are no excuses, And I think with all of that, you're going to see some big dynamic things in Las Vegas of course in Times Square where we have a bulk of the market share there as well. You're going to see some big distinct things in some of the major cities.

Like we just recently did with AT&T in Dallas. You're going to see the same. 

Yeah, and that's a beautiful project there. One day I'll be able to travel again and see those things. 

Dennis Hickey: I think we can hopefully. I'm praying the latest and greatest with this pandemic is now an End-demic.

Like we all get by and if you're vaccinated, boostered and you probably have it. At some point, hopefully we can all move on and I think we are.

All right, Dennis. It’s been a pleasure to spend some time with you. Thank you. 

Dennis Hickey: I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Blake Sabatinelli, Atmosphere TV

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

Screens in bars, restaurants and all kinds of venues have been part of the mix for decades, and there have been all kinds of different takes on what to put on those screens that not only entertains and occupies guests, but also has  tangible business impacts.

Straight-up digital signage solutions give venue operators the ability to fully manage what appears on the screens, but then those operators have to do the work to keep the system running and content fresh.

Boxes and software that squeeze a broadcast signal can allow operators to run in-house ads below and on the side of the screen from cable TV feeds, but the legal side of that can be more than a bit shaky.

Widely available high-speed internet and over-the-top streaming technology advances have opened up a new way to keep screens fresh and interesting, and a well-funded Austin, Texas spinout company called Atmosphere TV is going hard at the opportunity.

Launched in 2019, Atmosphere has more than 50 streaming content  channels that are in 14,000 venues and reach some 25 million sets of eyeballs monthly. There are curated channels full of cute pets and funny misadventures, but there's also a newsroom that produces carefully selected news that manages to straddle the increasingly polarized political divides of the U.S.

The particularly interesting kicker is that the service is free to users, with Atmosphere even sending operators free, pre-staged Apple TV boxes that just need to be plugged in and connected to broadband.

I had a great chat with Blake Sabatinelli, the company's Chief Operating Officer, about how things work and where Atmosphere is going.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Blake. Thank you for joining me. What is Atmosphere TV all about? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Atmosphere at its core is a place-based television platform and we think at Atmosphere that we're here to help inform and inspire people who are watching our platform, and we do that through any one of our 54 channels that are on our platform, whether it's Atmosphere News, which we just launched or Chive TV, which is the the engine that built Atmosphere as a whole before we spun it out on its own. But we're everything from entertainment to information to digital signage and really just here to make sure that we're getting people to look up in the venues that they're sitting in, instead of staring down at their phone and engaging with the world around them. 

So the simpleton explanation would be that this is something you would use in place of putting TVs in a venue and putting CNN or Fox or whatever on and just letting that run? 

Blake Sabatinelli: A hundred percent. We look at our content in a whole different light that I think what you see in the traditional cable space, and if you go back to the genesis of our company, Leo and John, our founders were sitting in a bar, there was ESPN on mute, there was Judge Judy on mute and they were looking around and no one was really paying attention and they realized that no one was really programming television for out-of-home, and that audio is a huge consideration. 

In both places, if you go to a sports bar here in the states, you'll see a football game that's usually the primary audio or a baseball game or something, but there's also 15 other TVs in the venue, and all of them are running captions that are really small, that you can’t see from 30 feet away on content that's not engaging if you don't have the audio on, on content that honestly isn't engaging even if you have the audio on. And in some cases, especially if you're talking about the news, Fox News or CNN, MSNBC, that's angering half the audience there. So we're coming at television from a totally different perspective. 

We programmed it for eyes and not ears, which is not a native thing for anyone coming from television. You have to do both and ensure that it's something that everyone can lean into and enjoy and be engaged with.

You mentioned that you've launched a news product among the many channels you already have. When I look at Atmosphere TV, and I've been familiar with it for a while, it's primarily soft content, it's curated social media videos, and that sort of thing. News is a very different animal!

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah, you're telling me. I spent 15 years in the news business before joining Atmosphere and ran a company called Newsy for seven years prior to this, and there's a whole different world from what traditionally is published on Atmosphere to what a news channel is. But if you really break it down, it's really not all that different.

On the entertainment side of our business, it's engaging short form videos, programmed in such a way that you want to lean in and really watch, and with news, we're really trying to take the same approach. Keep people informed about what's going on around them. Tell them the things that they need to know, do it all in an audio off capacity, which is a challenge out the gate and also sprinkle in some things that inspire and entertain them along the way, because it's a pretty dark world out there and news can be a dark platform.

So we feel like we can come at this a little bit differently. Get people to smile, get people to nod and understand what's happening and not feel bad after watching it at the same time. 

Is it a function in certain respects of the political polarization that's out there, particularly in the United States, where you have auto dealer showrooms, where they may have one TV and you get arguments breaking out about the fact that it's on CNN or it's on Fox, and as you said, 50% of the people are unhappy?

Blake Sabatinelli: I mean, look, I can tell you now that if you watch our network, there are no opinions. There's no commentary, there's only context and information, and that really does come to the point that you're making that the political environment here in the United States is challenging right now.

There's no way to make everyone happy. So our view on the way to make this work is to strip out all the things that make people angry and just report facts and just really hammer home the headlines and straight news. There's plenty that happens in Washington on a daily basis that's factual and incredibly important. There's plenty that happens in Washington DC, if you watch Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC on a daily basis, that's filler, that's conjecture and opinion that people for the most part really don't care about. 

So I would imagine with some of the other channels that you have, where it's cute pet videos or extreme sports or whatever it may be that, you've got content curators who are scanning YouTube and whatever for material. 

Is it different for the new side where you have a quasi news room? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah, we do have a newsroom. So we actually hired Michael Grimes, the former head of social for NBC News to come in and join us and lead our newsroom, and we have a team of producers that sit just out in front of my office and are producing news on a 24/7 basis at this point. So yeah, while it's not our normal curation process, there's a news room out there and it's exciting to see and I like the buzz.

How do you gather this news? Do you get feeds from the Associated Press and so on, like everybody else? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah, that's correct. So we actually partner with a number of down the middle, highly respectful of these organizations, like the Associated Press, AFP, Reuters, and others to ensure that we're aggregating and collecting the best news that's out there and packaging it in such a way that it can be enjoyed on our platform. 

So on the other hand with the softer content, how does that work? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah. So we have a team of producers that work on each of our channels. Not all that different than what you mentioned that are out actively seeking out content on the most popular social platforms, whether it's TikTok or YouTube or Facebook and working with these content creators to license their content and get it on our platform to then produce it with a very specific formula that we generate for each channel and get it up on our platform when it’s ready to go. 

If you use material from YouTube or Facebook or TikTok or whatever it may be, are you talking to those platforms for the rights to that material or do you go right to the content creators? 

Blake Sabatinelli: We work directly with the content creators and we work with them in such a capacity that it's a mutually beneficial relationship.

Most of these content creators are really looking to extend their reach and ensure they're going to get as many eyeballs on them as a creator as possible to build up their businesses, and we ensure that all of our content creators get a significant amount of showcasing in each of the videos that we air there, so when people see something amazing happening on screen, they're able to look up and say, I want to go to Instagram and follow that guy. So we've built these relationships in such a way that we have an active ongoing discussion with the content creators and when something new pops up in their feed and they're sending it out, they're reaching out to us as well.

I guess chasing down certain material from somebody who's in the business or wants to be in the business of creating content that generates income for them that way, they're probably pretty easy to chase down. But on the other hand, you have the serendipitous stuff where somebody took a video of some weird weather event or whatever, I suspect it is probably a lot harder to get them? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah, that can be challenging, but we also work with the licenses agencies that those folks work with most predominantly. So whether it's your Stringers or Jukin or others, so wildly large, and when I say large, the vast majority of our content comes from the creators themselves.

We also have to work with the licensing agencies as well to ensure that we're gathering all those amazing pieces and putting them in one place. 

So technically if I am a restaurant operator, bar operator, and I want to use Atmosphere’s one or two or many channels on it, how do I do that? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Great question!

You generally just give us a call. We have a box delivered to you. It's a self-install. We have everything set up for you. So you call us, we will send you a fully provisioned device. We have onboarding steps delivered with the box so you can plug in and get set up on the internet, and once you turn your TV and the box on, it's up and running. 

Everything is managed by us from a cloud capacity. So our IT team and our engineering teams push updates and manage the devices remotely, and if you ever have any issues, you can call our customer service team. They're there 24/7 to make sure that any issue that crops up is able to be taken care of immediately. 

So it's pretty much set it and forget it?

Blake Sabatinelli: That's right, and that's why we love the platform so much, and that's why our operators that use the platform love it so much. It's robust, it's highly engaging and it's easy to use. 

And this is an Apple TV bow?

Blake Sabatinelli: It's a provisioned Apple TV box, that's correct. 

If you had a smart TV, like a Samsung or an LG Smart TV that has apps and everything else, could you use that instead? 

Blake Sabatinelli: So we actually do everything through our own device. We found that our device is far more robust, easier to keep up and running and just decided to go that direction. 

Yeah, and the Apple TV boxes, they've got pretty good third-party device management and things like that. So you can remedy things, and as you said, push up new firmware and everything else. 

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah, a hundred percent. The entire Apple ecosystem is robust, and we've found a great deal of success in working with both third-party management platforms and on the Apple TV platform broadly. 

I'm thinking five-six years ago, this would have been a lot harder to do. Over the top streaming capabilities have progressed massively in that time space, right?

Blake Sabatinelli: A hundred percent. The proliferation of high-speed internet has been a key catalyst in the growth of the business. You couldn't necessarily deliver gigabytes upon gigabytes of information across a slow 128 kilobytes a second DSL line, that was challenging.

And the additional infrastructure that's been built along the way to support services like Netflix and Amazon, HBO Max, and others has really benefited our business as well.

There's a digital signage component, I guess you could call the whole thing related to digital signage as well, but there's the ability for the owner-operator of a venue that's using this to go in and add advertising, right?

Blake Sabatinelli: That's right. 

So we give our venue partners the opportunity to add a couple 30s spots every every couple ad breaks into the channel feeds itself. Everything that we hear back from our partners at this point is that it is a great tool for them to be able to advertise specials, upcoming events, you name it for their venue and it's just really helps complete that fortuitous circle of keeping butts in seats longer, bringing them back more frequently, spending more money, etc.

How do they do that? Is there an app or a desktop application? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Great question. We actually have a portal with a digital signage manager that allows you to either upload your own assets, or we have a tool that allows them to create their own assets on the fly within the ecosystem itself. So if you have an agency and you've been working with them, or you have a creative team and you work with them to create assets, that's great. But if you don't, you're at a small bar or a restaurant, or a dental office and you need to get something done. We have a tool in there to help you build this. 

With templates and things like that?

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah, we have templates, both video and still, and a ton of options in there. 

Do you work at all with third party digital signage CMS software platforms or is it that either you're going down this path or you go down that path. You can't really merge the two? 

Blake Sabatinelli: So primarily we work within our own platform. So all of our tools are built custom for our device and custom for our platform as a whole. 

If there is an opportunity for us down the road to work with third-party software operators, whether that’s for queuing or for other signage options? A hundred percent, but right now we've been operating and developing all our own software. 

Do you get beyond the simple component of throwing ads every three minutes or whatever it may be and enable a venue operator to do things like, ”Hey, we're hiring!” or things like that that get into messaging as opposed to advertising?

Blake Sabatinelli: Whatever they want to run in those spots, it's up to them. We're not in the business of policing how businesses operate their own signage option. So if they're looking to post that they're hiring, which I know every restaurant in America is right now, then we would encourage them to use the tool to do that as well.

It’s a subscription, right? 

Blake Sabatinelli: So our platform as a whole is actually free. If you want to use the digital signage option, it's $50 a month. 

So you send them a free Apple TV box? 

Blake Sabatinelli: That's right. We send people a free Apple TV box and we ask very few questions of them. Our goal is to get people on board and running and streaming and getting people enjoying the content as fast as possible, and while it sounds too good to be true, it's not. 

We give you a free Apple TV box. We pay for that Apple TV box by providing advertising. So we're advertising a sport or business, it's a vast majority of our revenue stream, and we find it works for both us and for our partners. 

Okay. So there's a programming wheel and there’s interruptions in that programming wheel that are both for booked advertising, that your team or the Atmosphere team has sold or is through programmatic platforms of some kind, but if you want to do local on-premise venue specific advertising, that's an opportunity as well, and you pay $50 a month for that? 

Blake Sabatinelli: You hit the nail on the head there, and we end up offsetting some of those advertising slots that we normally would sell on a national or local capacity for the venue operators themselves.

What's your built-out footprint at this point? 

Blake Sabatinelli: We're over 15,000 venues right now, reaching I want to say 48 million unique visits on a monthly basis at this point.

Did some of that transfer over from Chive or is that starting from scratch a couple years ago?

Blake Sabatinelli: So some of that definitely transferred over from Chive. Chive was an incredible catalyst and test case for us to be able to understand product market fit and the dynamics of the marketplace. We have doubled our footprint over the last year and have seen tremendous growth post COVID.

Now if you look back at back in the Chive TV days, we were primarily focused on only bars and restaurants and bars and restaurants are still our bread and butter at this point, they make up 60% of our venue footprint but we've definitely diversified significantly and learned a lot post COVID too. 

Now there's any number of Software companies and solutions companies that sell into hospitality, sell into restaurants and bars and all those kinds of venues, as well as clinic waiting rooms and so on. They would sell a software solution that would enable the operators to go in and do all of their on-premise messaging and everything else but they would then have to subscribe to a third party content service, like a ScreenFeed, or one of those kinds of companies to provide the other content for the wheel. 

Is that something you sell against or are you finding people are saying, “You know what, I love the ScreenFeed material and everything else, but we just can't keep up with all this. We don't want to manage it. If we could just get something that just shows up, that would be better”? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah. So there's a couple of constituencies that we sell against. 

Primarily for us as is against the pay television ecosystem. There's not a lot of great options that exist for waiting rooms or public spaces that exist in the pay TV ecosystem. Some of the contents are wonderful with the audio on, but when the audio is off, it's not, and there's also no signage options in there, which clearly is a challenge. There's also the folks that are endemic to the space, to your point, the operators that work with the waiting rooms, especially around point of care and we do hear a lot that people just really want to make sure that the perceived wait times are going down and they can provide signage options, and for us, making sure that our venue operators have higher net promoter scores that proceed wait times are lower in bars or in restaurants, that you're staying for longer is really the key. Beyond that, the additional messaging is a bonus. 

I'm going to assume that you guys have done the work to try to develop and highlight some of those metrics, right?

Blake Sabatinelli: That's a hundred percent correct. So we've worked with in-market to understand dwell time and other metrics within our restaurant venues, we work closely with our metrics partner Epicenter on how people are engaging and activating with our content, and then a number of case studies along the way to really drive down the funnel, the efficacy of the platform and everything. 

So what does happen? Does it increase dwell times if I'm ordering a second round of drinks or another plate of nachos or whatever? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Our last study showed that we had 16% longer dwell time in bars and restaurants and 18% higher return frequency amongst customers and a lot of our venue partners who shared back some of their net promoter scores have gone up based on our content being in place. 

So really there's no argument against it. If they're going to have flat panel displays, whether they're TVs or commercial displays in their venues anyways, and if they get the Apple TV box free, then you know, I would imagine it's hard to say no?

Blake Sabatinelli: Like I said, we've grown really fast the past 18 months post COVID and the business has been booming. So I agree with you. It's hard to say no. 

The biggest challenge that we have, and it's really about getting people to understand that this thing that they didn't know existed in a segment that really doesn't have anyone else playing in it. It exists and it's going to be beneficial to their business. Once they understand how this fits into their restaurant experience or their waiting experience, it's an easy close. 

So you mentioned how the growth happened in the past 18 months, I keep saying 18 months, it's probably like 20 months now.

Blake Sabatinelli: It's been a long time. I've lost count at this point. I think everybody has, as I'm sitting in my home office saying that. 

COVID was an interesting thing for our business. Look, I don't think anyone in the media space would say that things didn't go a little haywire in April of 2020 but it did also give us the opportunity to evaluate our business model, our distribution strategy, and to really think about how we could expand and pivot a little bit. So while bars and restaurants were closed, aftermarket auto and doctor's offices, dentists offices, and others still had people coming into them, especially outside of California and New York, so expanding our distribution strategy has allowed us to not only keep up and running through COVID, but to dramatically increase the velocity of our distribution as we've gone out of the initial wave of COVID and into the present day. 

Is there a type of a vertical category type of venue that seems to adapt it more so than others?

Blake Sabatinelli: I'll be honest with you. We've seen strong growth in that across a number of categories. So everything from traditional bars and restaurants to QSR, we've seen explosive growth in gyms, in aftermarket auto, in point of care. Moving now pretty aggressively into airports and other spaces. We've just seen strong, measured growth across every category and every segment that's been incredibly encouraging. 

When you onboard new clients or new venue clients, do you do any work to audit the type of audience that they may have and make recommendations about the channels that suit them best? Because I'm really curious whether a venue puts in a channel that’s about cute puppies or whatever, and the audience would be saying, “Why are you showing that?” Or “Why are you showing news? I don't want to see the news.” 

Blake Sabatinelli: There's plenty of venues that Chive TV works really well in, but in veterinarian offices, Paws TV plays better and so we make that recommendation. The same goes for news in airports in the doctor's weightings rooms. So we're incredibly thoughtful about how we present our content and where we think it should play, and our customer service and account management teams work closely with our venue partners to ensure that they know new options are available and that options they may not know about that may suit their venue better are available as well.

Do you try new content channel formats and try them out with test partners and sometimes just throw them out, cause that doesn't work? 

Blake Sabatinelli: We wouldn't be a tech driven platform if we weren't doing a significant amount of AB testing. Our product team and content teams were constantly working within new partners to do tests and learn to better understand product market fit of a channel or a new format and to better understand how we can continue to improve the product. It's a constant process and it's just part of operating in the ecosystem that we do. 

Have you learned things about length of material, like duration of material? 

Blake Sabatinelli: We actually have and there's a reason that if you look at the content on our platform, it's formatted the way that it is. People want to quickly move from one thing to an X and I think that's partly a by-product of this new world that we live in where short form, highly addictive, highly engaging video is the norm. You're used to looking down and getting that dopamine rush. So fitting that format onto a big screen is important for us.

And then just people are really looking for variety too. That's why we have custom playlist features that allow you to compile a number of different options into one because not everyone wants to see the same thing for a long period of time. So we try to keep the format moving, we try to keep the content moving. We try to keep it varied and engaged as much as we possibly can again, to reduce perceived wait times on one end or in some cases to ensure people are sticking around the same. I'm hoping I can get another round of people doing amazing things. 

How do you deal with portrait material, stuff shot in portrait mode?

Blake Sabatinelli: At this point pretty much everything is shot in a vertical format. So you get pretty used to working with curtains. We've done a good job of being able to cycle back and forth between the vertical and horizontal formats as effectively as possible, and I think people have gotten used to seeing video shot both vertically and horizontally.

Ten years ago, I remember you would shoot a video on a cell phone while working in the news business, you would be screaming in the control room. Why didn't they turn their camera sideways? In this instance, everyone's used to this, this is the new normal and it's really not that big of a concern. 

And I guess the advancements of camera sensor technology and smartphones has been good news for you guys as well. Like you say, 10 years ago, I remember I had a Blackberry about 10 years ago and that camera was dreadful. 

Blake Sabatinelli: 320x240 resolution and if you watch that on my little MacBook that's sitting in front of me right now, I believe the kids would say it looks like it was shot on a potato. 

Look, the advancements in camera technology have just really been a boon to businesses like ours. I have one of the crappier iPhones in my pocket and I think it's probably a higher resolution camera than the SLR that's sitting in my closet that I've never used. So it's been fantastic for us. 

Yeah, that's exactly right. I've got a mirrorless camera, nice SLR, and I never use it because it's just so much easier to whip out my phone, take a shot, and it's got like a 16 megapixel sensor and it looks great! 

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah. What a time to be alive that I don't have to carry a giant camera or a camera bag around with me anymore. So I'm not going to complain. 

You recently announced, I believe that you are expanding Atmosphere TV into Canada, right? 

Blake Sabatinelli: That's correct. We're actually moving aggressively there right now. 

When I look at your installation map, it throws me off a little bit. It looks like you already have a lot of points of presence in Canada, or is that just the way the map looks?

Blake Sabatinelli: So we do have some presence in Canada to start off with, but now we're making a concerted effort to actually come in and take as many shares as we possibly can in the marketplace. But early on we were testing, are we a hundred percent sure that the content is going to work just the same as it does in Canada? It does. Is our distribution and sales model gonna work exactly the same? It will. Is the ad sales model exactly the same? It is, and so at that point, we all sat down and made the decision to make a more concerted effort to move into Canada, to take more share and to really replicate the model that we have down here in the States.

Yeah, that would be the easy one. The harder one would be going South. 

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah. Look, our primary target out the gate is English speaking countries. We have Canada, Australia, New Zealand, there's plenty of others that'll be coming down the pipeline. But moving into second languages is definitely going to be a focus for us, especially as we start to understand what the economics look like in each market, how we can program in those markets in such a way that we do here in the United States and in Canada, and then we'll continue spreading in that direction. 

How big is the company at this point? 

Blake Sabatinelli: The headcount changes every single day. I think we're at 220 people. We've about tripled our head count since I joined in March, I think I was employee number 84. 

So there's 110 plus people who you've not met yet because you're working out of your bunker? 

Blake Sabatinelli: I go into the office four days a week and I am incredibly thankful that I'm able to go in and actually see people face to face and so we have a large contingency here in Austin, satellite offices now that are popping up in New York and LA, and Chicago is on the roadmap. While we're almost all here, there's a decent chunk of us that are external, and I've had the pleasure of meeting everyone in person.

How much of that would be Editorial versus Sales versus IT or Ops, I guess you'd call it? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Editorial’, probably a quarter of our company. IT and Operations, probably another quarter, and then the rest is spread across Distribution and Ad Sales and GNA, and other.

Has it been hard to manage all this largely virtual?

Blake Sabatinelli: So we've been back in the office since March at this point. There has been a significant amount of growth with all of us virtual. I'm not going to tell you that there hasn't been a growing pain or two and that it's all easy, and this is a cakewalk, Dave, but our team's incredible, our HR team, our finance folks, recruiters, everyone that works on our team to find, identify and bring and onboard new employees, they're wonderful and so it hasn't been as bad as I’d think as other experiences I've heard across the industry. 

My twenties and thirties were spent in newspaper newsrooms and I struggle to wrap my head around the idea that you would have a dispersed newsroom where you're only talking to each other by video meetings and Slack.

Blake Sabatinelli: We did it in April of 2020. The entirety of our Newsy at home and we spun up live operations in people's living rooms and it was absolutely bananas, and that was as difficult as you would imagine, and was ripe with challenges, but that team got it done too and made it look easy.

I think one thing that I've learned in this new COVID world is to truly expect the unexpected, and so long as you're comfortable with that, and so long as you know that something's going to blow up at some point in time and you're ready for it, then it's not that bad.

So what can we expect from Atmosphere TV in the next year, are you going to be launching more products? 

Blake Sabatinelli: Yeah. So I think you're going to see a pretty significant expansion in our content offering. We've had the opportunity over the last year to really understand product market fit, to do a significant amount of tests and learn, to gather the data that we need and really prepare ourselves to start running. I feel like we've been at a full sprint, but now it's time to move like Usain Bolt for the next couple of quarters. So a significant expansion in our content offering in the size and scale of our company and our distribution footprint. We have big plans ahead and I expect you'll be able to watch Atmosphere pretty much everywhere you go here soon. 

Are you still hiring people? 

Blake Sabatinelli: We are hiring like crazy and have plans to continue at a pace like we are now through the next two years. 

Great. All right, Blake, thank you so much for spending some time with me.

Blake Sabatinelli: It's my pleasure. Thanks for the time Dave.

Florian Rotberg, Invidis

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

The Munich-based digital signage consultancy invidis has been doing an annual yearbook publication for the past decade that is something of an industry bible for the European and Middle Eastern markets, and with each annual edition it gets a little more detailed and broader in its scope.

The company does a German version and another one in English to service the rest of the region. There are many, many industry reports out there purporting to have a real understanding and data about the digital signage industry, but most of those reports are expensive and frankly not worth the money. 

The invidis yearbook, in contrast, is rich in detail, and full of insights from people who know the business at an expert level.

And the best part, it's a free download - with the report bankrolled by sponsor advertisers.

I caught up with Florian Rotberg, one of the principals at invidis, to talk about this year's insights, and why the focal point for 2021 was on what they call green signage.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Florian. Thank you for joining me. You're just back from Dubai! 

Florian Rotberg: Thanks for having me. Yeah, it was very exciting in Dubai at Expo 2020, and we spent a few days there. It was still very hot, but it's fascinating to see how immersive signage can be in today's show.

Yeah. There's digital signage all through the Expo site, right?.

Florian Rotberg: It's fascinating. It’s LED with a lot of projections. During normal times, you don't see that much projection, but in this special country pavilion, there were 180 of them, it's fascinating to see. It's also great to see what works and what doesn't because some of the countries run out of money or never really had a good plan and you feel it immediately. So you enter the room and go, “oh, that's crap, I’m leaving,” and unfortunately, sometimes you have to wait two to three hours at some of the very popular pavilions. So then it's not a good experience, but in general, it's fascinating to see what's the coolest thing.

It's not only LED and projection, but it's also how that's really integrated in architecture and not only how it integrated into the room, but also a lot of mirrors. So one of my favorite things, and I've talked about it many times before, it's really how you combine signage, how you combine LED or projection with mirror. You can do fantastic things and you see some really cool pavilions. 

Yeah. There was a new observatory that just opened up in New York, overlooking Madison Avenue in Midtown and it's got a big LED wall, but it's also three levels of mirrored ceilings and floors and walls and everything else and reflects like crazy. I was trying to wrap my head around it, but it's that kind of thing where it becomes just an infinite space. 

Florian Rotberg: Exactly, and it feels immersive and it can create great experiences there, and we took 1400 photos and 70 hours of video, so we’ll put everything together in the next week we would publish it on Invidis Meets World on YouTube where you can watch it and we will show a lot of other stuff also obviously.

What is invidisXworld?

Florian Rotberg: So invidisXworld is something we started before the pandemic, and we decided because signage is so much about content, so much about the whole room, it's not only the digital canvas, but how people move in front of the screen and what a brand or the vendors really want to achieve. 

And so we decided, we have to travel. We have to go there. We have to talk with the people who designed it, and we have to just experience ourselves and then to tell the audience how it really feels. So we just hired the camera team, and we went off to Sweden and to Berlin which is still both in Europe, so it was easier to reach, and we spent a week there and talked with dozens of experts and visited museums. Some of the museums just opened for us because they were all closed because of a lockdown, and we went to Volvo, to H&M, to different places, to headquarters and talk with the guys who are responsible for that. It's a fascinating show and people like it and we get quite good feedback. 

So we're working in a visual medium, and you're actually using video? 

Florian Rotberg: Yes! 

How clever. 

Florian Rotberg: To be honest, I always thought photos are so cool, it's so easy, but unfortunately video is so much better, but it's very expensive. It's not just you spending a week somewhere, you have a whole camera team, and almost like a broadcast team, we have a video guy, sound guy, a producer, and you have to feed them and that is sometimes difficult. So you have to manage them almost like kids, but at the end of the day, you get some really good footage afterwards and it’s worth the trouble.

For people who haven't been to Dubai, as you say, it's fascinating. I find it extremely weird, but the degree of digital signage there, all these projects, and a lot of them are big budget projects, are they instructive or are they one-offs where you look at them and go, that's really cool, but, that's not something that's ever going to scale?

Florian Rotberg: It's changing. In the past, it was just about the “wow of the moment” and afterwards, they all forgot about it. Nobody cared about maintenance, and after a year it just looked horrible, because nobody invested in content and nobody cared about it, and to be honest, even till today, the majority of the digital touchpoints are still not really connected to any backend systems or so and there are various reasons for that.

One is when they open something and then they forget about it. People change jobs really fast. So even the person who is responsible for that leaves a job after a year or so, and so nobody has ownership anymore, and last but not least, these countries are relatively small, so reaching scale is very difficult, even for big chains, maybe maybe 40 stores or so getting scale is difficult. 

And they're interested in the “wow” and unfortunately not so much until four to five or seven year long contracts.

But you said it's changing? 

Florian Rotberg: Yep. It's changing, getting smarter, getting more connected. To be honest, the region is the most digitally advanced region with a very young population.

They have two-three mobile phones, and they're very open to all of this stuff. So it is changing, and we talked, while we were there, to one of the biggest telecommunication companies there, and we were at one of their flagship stores and they now have 170 stores and they have really good connections, and they really think in customer journeys. 

We also visited a smart hospital, which was really cool. You identify yourself when you enter the hospital with your ID card and then it takes a photo of you and then you walk through the hospital and it detects you and makes sure that you're in the right room, that the right person is there and everything. So very smart and they’re really starting to think about journeys and to improve processes. So at the smart hospital, the process before was three days with all the examinations until you got to stand for your visa renewal, and now it's down to 30 minutes, which is incredible, and this is only possible with digital.

So I wanted to chat for a number of reasons, but the principal one was the yearbook that Invidis puts out. Could you explain what that is and how it works? 

Florian Rotberg: Some people call it the Bible of the industry. I'm not sure if I would call it that, but yeah, it's an annual book we have been publishing for 11 year now and it's free to download on Invidis.com and it basically gives a yearly update about the latest trends. We have lots of rankings there, especially this year since it was quite interesting. You know, like the largest CMS providers worldwide, and which verticals are most important for digital signage, etc.

We just give an analysis of the market, what has happened and also an outlook on what trends are coming up and what to understand, and the main topic this year is Green Signage. I know many of your listeners are based in North America, but over here in Europe, it's a huge topic. During the pandemic, the interest in more sustainable solutions has improved dramatically, and so more and more brands are looking to also operate their signage networks more sustainably, and what's most interesting when we did all the research is that 80% of the carbon footprint of a digital signage project is during operations. So for five-six years, the whole thing is operating. It's not so much the production, it's not so much the shipping. Yes, it's still 10-20%, but 80%, that's the biggest lever, and so it's not only about buying a more sustainable, more conscious signage solution, but it's really about how to improve existing installations.

And there are so many things you can improve and you can reduce power consumption with the right content. Turning it off at night, it's so unfortunate that the majority of the signage runs 24/7 even if there are no people around. Kiosks systems, they all run 24.7. There's no reason if a kiosk system is somewhere on a factory floor and the floor is closed or in the evening, or at night, it's still running. In the beginning, especially with LEDs, obviously they consume a lot of power. So there are a lot of levers and ways to be more conscious and more sustainable. 

Do you think part of that is simply the early days of the legacy of digital signage software and hardware is that you were afraid to kind of power it down cause it would come back? 

Florian Rotberg: Exactly. Yeah, that's the main thing, at least that’s what the technical integrators always say. Some, especially on some more recent screens, turn off the sensors, the light sensors and everything because the marketing department wanted the red as close as possible to their official red and obviously that doesn't work if you change the brightness of the screen but things are changing really fast.

And what's most interesting now with the pandemic and about sustainability is that signage has become a CEO topic for the first time. In the past years, they never really cared about digital signage, but now they really have to report it to their shareholders: how they could improve operations, where they could reduce the carbon footprint and digital signage plays an important role.

Interesting. The yearbook is primarily focused on Europe and the Middle East, right?

Florian Rotberg: Yes. That's how we started. We started this in Germany and then we extended it and now it's more or less all over Europe and every year we add a few more countries. Last big thing was the Nordics, and currently we're working on France, Spain and UK, so next year, we will also have rankings for these countries, and yeah, especially in Europe most markets were quite national markets and now some bigger international players are really growing and Europe is seen as one market, and so it's important to have all of them and that includes the UK. 

Yeah, despite Brexit. Is what happens in Europe indicative of what is happening globally or is it its own thing? 

Florian Rotberg: The whole green stuff is probably the most advanced in Europe.

Yeah, you don’t hear about it in North America. Honestly, I've never heard anybody bring it up.

Florian Rotberg: Yeah, but over here, especially in the Nordics, it's very important, and just for example, electricity is 10 times more expensive in Germany compared to Korea, for example. Even the designers and the engineers who create new solutions, they're not aware of how important power consumption is and life is changing, and I think this whole climate debate we are currently having, I think it will become more important, not only in Europe, but also in the US. 

I know that Europe and the Middle East primarily, I've heard other people talk about the real action these days being in China and in India and I wonder how hard it must be, particularly with China, to try to wrap your arms around who the major players are, what activities are going on, any of those things?. 

Florian Rotberg: Yeah, China is a very difficult market. There's a lot of potential but it’s very difficult as an analyst, really, to look at the market and it's so different.

Interestingly enough, there are a few bigger digital signage integrators based in Europe and North America who also have offices in China and they’re pretty much doing this stuff for all the big luxury brands and so. So there's some European and then North American guys who really are trying to do stuff in Shanghai and the big cities, but the general market is just huge, and you probably talked to Chris Regal or so, because he's very successful in India and in China, but he's targeting more of the mid market and the European players, they're just looking at how to bring Italian and French brands to China.

And those European brands and other brands, would they rather bring familiar companies into the country to do that for them, as opposed to hiring local firms? 

Florian Rotberg: At the end of the day, that's the case, but that's also with North America, that's the success of the media to be honest. Media’s strength in Europe is that they represent America, the American customers here.

So what is happening in terms of the yearbook? Obviously we're hopefully coming out of a rather rough couple of years. I noticed in the report that the countries in Europe, at least that had a particularly rough time were France and the UK versus some of the other countries that were down, but not to the same level. Why did that happen?

Florian Rotberg: Because of the lockdown. We had different levels and different lengths of lockdown, and just looking at Australia, they had a three months lockdown. Now that obviously has a huge impact because the stores were closed, and even if it's a brand that’s willing to spend money and to upgrade the stores, they couldn't because technicians weren't allowed to enter the stores. 

I know, in past discussions around this, that Europe's an interesting market in that dominant players in many respects are dominant by country, as opposed to across the continent? 

Florian Rotberg: That has been the case, absolutely. But this is currently changing. So we have, we call them the Top 3, they are the three largest pure play digital signage integrators, and they've all been acquired more or less by private equity and now they're buying competitors in the big markets. All three of them really try to grow into a pan-European or international player. 

But in relative terms to the North American guys, AVI, SPL, Diversified and Stratacache, they're tiny, right?

Florian Rotberg: They are tiny. They hope to change that but they are very small. But to be honest if you look at AVI, SPL or even Diversified, they're not pure digital signage, they do a lot of Pro AV, IT stuff, so you should compare apples with apples, but still X times larger than the biggest in Europe.

AVI, SPL just announced, I think, it's called the Experience Technology Group. So they seem to be recognizing that they need to get more serious about signage and venue based displays.

Florian Rotberg: Oh, yeah, and I love what they do. They're really smart in creating this platform to manage different AV solutions and everything. So I think that it's a smart approach, and also now looking out to create more immersive experiences because if you have expertise there, you can really export it throughout the world. So that works quite well. 

But in Europe, we still have the problem of 25 different languages and really creating concepts, which you need to understand the culture and yes, there's a big difference between Sweden and Spain or Italy and Ireland also. So really to understand that, and that was a reason why there were large local players and still, if you look how these big three or at least three for European sizes and how they're growing, they all built up little local creative teams and sales teams in each countries because you need to have this local expertise, you need to speak the language of the client, and you need to understand what they really want to achieve. 

You've done a ranking of the Top 10 Global CMS software platforms, and I'm making some assumptions that there are some CMS platforms in China that you and I probably have never even heard of and that they are probably huge as well. But were you surprised by who showed up on this list? 

Florian Rotberg: Some surprises, yes. I mean there's a small asterisk next to it. So it's just the best of our knowledge, obviously. I'm sure there are many but one big problem is always Samsung. They never report anything, and it's really difficult. 

So the largest one is Stratacache. It's a little bit more than 3 million active licenses, and one of the surprises was that the top three players were Navori. I'm not sure if many of your listeners have heard about Navori. They're based in Switzerland.

They're pretty big in North America actually. 

Florian Rotberg: Yeah, not so much in Europe, funnily enough, even though they came out of Europe and yes, they have more than 1 million active subscribers. So that's quite cool, and then you see some more vertical ones who are growing through acquisitions a lot and socialists like BroadSign, it's great to see. We have followed BroadSign for more than 15 years now, and it's great to see how they have become the standard in the digital out-of-home industry. It’s quite impressive.

Yeah, they've risen to a level where they pretty much own that vertical and I always try to coach software companies that you really don't want to be a generalist. You want to have a focus on something and they probably more than anybody have done that in digital out-of-home. 

Florian Rotberg: Yeah, but the same with Four Winds etc., they all are specialists, or at least they are focusing more and more on certain verticals.

Yeah, Four Winds barely calls itself a digital signage company now. They're talking about the workplace and the same with Ops Space. 

Florian Rotberg: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think there was just an announcement in that space today. 

So what are you seeing in terms of trends in the industry? As you mentioned, the shift to, or the interest in green signage is one thing. What else are you seeing happening out there? 

Florian Rotberg: The biggest challenge currently across the world is to manage the supply chain shortage. Unfortunately, that won't go away in 2022. If you read the Financial Times, if you talk to all the people, you just read it every day and most people expect that to last at least until the end of next year.

And that's pretty bad news because the order books are as full as they were before. There's a lot of demand for signage at the end of the pandemic, and unfortunately 2022 will still be a difficult year. Secondly, we have a shortage of talents and whoever you talk to, I'm sure you also get calls about companies saying, we're desperately looking for a new manager and I get them every day and that's a huge issue and then shortage in diversity, shortages of women, of everything. It's still a very male dominated thing, and today InfoComm opened and I'm sure the majority of them are men, as always, and so we see these three shortages: supply chain, talent and diversity.

When I get asked to organize panels particularly with an organization like the AVIXA, which has diversity initiatives and everything else, they really encourage me to make sure that I'm finding women and people of color and so on, and I'm completely supportive of that, but it's hard.

Florian Rotberg: It is hard, yeah. It's not easy. I fully understand, but alsowhen you look more in the new work, in the hybrid world, it's all about hybrid and that's very challenging for everyone. It's easy to have everyone at home. It's easy to have everyone on location, but managing these hybrid workspaces is very difficult. How can you create meetings where everything feels included and often you communicate with eyes and with every single one that's very difficult to do when alf of the people are somewhere at home or so. So you need lots of creativity and innovative solutions to manage that. So that's also something which will definitely remain. 

And we're seeing gimmicks coming up there, like this idea of the metaverse and using quasi holograms, so that it feels like you're sitting across from a real person when it's not obviously, do you see any potential for that stuff?

Florian Rotberg: To be honest, it's a one way road because it's nice for the guys who are in the office, but for the guys who are sitting at home in front of this small screen, it doesn't help them at all, and you need to have both sides and you need to empower both sides, and so I think at the end of the day, it's difficult to solve and we haven't seen any solution.

I think the cool part is teleportation stuff, and last week in Dubai, there was also an IT show. It was just the biggest and it was unbelievable how full it was like before the pandemic, and they had these cool mirrors and everything. So it looked like somebody was in the room, when obviously he wasn't. And so it's great to see, but it doesn't help people at home, and so that still remains a challenge. 

And I wanted to go to that show. I've seen some videos of some booths from some companies, and it looked insane. 

Florian Rotberg: It was, and a lot of booth people were waiting an hour more. Can you imagine that? Just to enter the booth because it was so full, it was unbelievable. We all had to wear a mask, no question about it, but we waited more than an hour just to get in. So yeah, it was amazing, and we produced lots of videos and we will publish that in the next couple of days.

It's really cool stuff, especially in regards to retail technology, all the cool stuff, all the fancy things were robots and solar, but also AI and how it really works, and then some simpler solutions in all of these checkout carts and everything, and also these devices which measure you so you don't have to find the right size without using camera technology, because obviously that's something which most people don't like. And it's interesting to see what kind of solutions there are. Much of the stuff, it's really something where you're thinking, oh, it'd be great. If they would roll that out in the future, the majority of them are still in the prototype phase, but hopefully we will see lots of this coming up.

Your report coined a term, “Deep Signage” which I had not seen before, but I understand it and this idea of integrating back office systems with other business systems within a company. It sounds like that, particularly in Dubai, is really coming into play. 

Florian Rotberg: Yeah, we try to form this term, deep signage, because for us, it's important that you connect as much as possible, as long as digital is just a layout on something existing. It won't really offer the experiences everyone needs and the benefits. So you have to connect it to the back office, and especially when we talk about moving away from just digital signage CMS, all the way to a digital experience platform, then you need to mix everything and then really connect. So deep signage is something we believe is one step towards digital experience. 

Yeah, and how do you define digital experience platforms? 

Florian Rotberg: Oh, that's difficult. Yeah, when you download our book, we have a little picture there, and it's four stages. We start with a digital poster, which is the most simple one. Then we have digital signage, then we have a digital signage experience platform, and then the ultimate is digital experience platform, because there's a totally different approach to it, and when we talk about DXP, it’s not digital signage or mobile or online, which is in focus, but it's really the data, it's the experience which is in focus regardless on which channel you play it out, and it's really orchestration of all of the different channels and different stories and media platforms, and that's what digital experience platform is about.

But then many customers ask us who does it and who's good at it, and it's very difficult. There are only very few companies and most of them are totally vertically organized players like Zara,, I'm sure you know them, because they do everything, they own the factory, they own the warehouse, they own the shops, and they own the data and for them, it doesn't matter if you go into a store, try something out and decide to buy it online, because they own the whole value chain and this is one of the few companies who really are able to deliver a DXP and make the most of it, but more will come definitely. 

If you're a smaller company, is it something you can even contemplate at a different kind of scale?

Florian Rotberg: No, it's not worth it. I think you need to be very large, to be honest, and to really put up a DXP project, you probably need a few million just for setting it up. 

You mentioned private equity companies and some of the integrators in Europe, or are you seeing a lot of private equity activity?

Florian Rotberg: Yes, it’s unbelievable. So much money in the market. That's the reason that conservation is speeding up so fast, it's unbelievable. 

Why do you think that is right now? Is it distressed companies? 

Florian Rotberg: No. We were surprised not at all, but maybe that's also a European thing because the governments took care of that and so most of them kept their employees, which is a good thing now, because they didn't have to retrain new people so it's not about that. 

It's more about that the crisis wasn't really an economic crisis. It was more of a human crisis, and so most companies still have a lot of money, except if you are a Chinese real estate company, then maybe you don’t. But in general, they have a lot of money. The private equity companies, they're looking for new ways of spending it, and they all buy into the digitization of stationary retail. They fully understand that times have changed and you can only survive if you're fully digital, and so that's probably why they like it.

And then there are also some of the trends like we have the first valuation of more than a hundred million in Europe for an integrator, and this is one of the thresholds where, you know, private equity likes to come into the market. Zeta Display, they were almost at a hundred million valuation and it's not much compared to the top three in the US but for Europe, that's quite big, and that that made it really interesting for many others. 

You also, in the report, talk about changing roles of the different companies in the ecosystem and how there are dinosaurs, disruptors and discovers. What do you mean by that? 

Florian Rotberg: Ah, that's quite interesting, especially when you look at software companies, some of them are reinventing themselves, and in the past,, there was the value chain and there were clearly defined roles. There was an integrator, the integrator usually owns the lead with the customer and he chose certain software and certain hardware and that was it basically, and then you did some stuff in the back and, but I think Chris Regal was the first one, when he quit Scala, he said “oh, I'm sick of just having 3-5% of the project, I want to have more”, and so he decided to build around software this whole end to end solution.

And then other companies, software companies from Sweden and other parts of Europe, they're really also trying to change the way the value chain works. So they really want to be ISV+. So they want to do everything except hardware . Obviously the investors love that because that's every single sale which would have recurring revenue and nobody wants to touch hardware, and Chris Regal always tells us that you need to also to understand how to learn, to manage it. Otherwise the service you mentioned will be really expensive. So it's interesting to see if this ISV+ model will work out for them. 

So that sounds like the dinosaurs are those who refused to adjust and adapt, and the disruptors are those that are doing things differently?

Florian Rotberg: Yup. We have some smaller, more aggressive players coming into the market and also players like Spector, many people hadn't heard about them and now they have become really relevant 

And there are also companies that, in some cases, are very large companies that can come into the market from outside, like consulting companies like Deloitte and so on and disrupt things as well, right?

Florian Rotberg: Absolutely. On a different level, but yes, Accenture, Deloitte, all of these guys and they are really close to the big enterprise. So usually they do at least double digits, sometimes triple digit contracts with blue chip companies every year and they're trusted names. So it's an easy one for BMW, Adidas, Nike, or whatever to hire one of them and to ask them to create a new digital concept. Unfortunately, most of them don't know how digital signage works.

Yeah. So they always invent this great stuff. It looks fantastic on PowerPoint and everything, but then at the end of the day, they need to subcontract it to the signage contractor to solve the whole thing and make it work, and we have also seen the big four have failed as a digital signage company, and so it's interesting, but eventually they will buy some digital signage companies I think.

Or hire smart people, you know? Over here in North America, I think about Gensler and Publicis Sapient, and they have some super smart people working for them now who really get this space and get the technology and everything else. So they're getting there, but it's a very small percentage of people within very large companies.. 

Florian Rotberg: You mentioned Gensler, it's fascinating, and I'm sure we talked to the same people there and it's really fascinating how with new projects now, they make more money with digital stuff rather than the traditional architectural stuff. So that's fascinating. Not revenue wise, but from the bottom line, and that's interesting to see because if you do digital consulting, obviously your margin is higher than with your standard architectural work. So it's fascinating to see how architectural companies like this are really getting into the digital space and if you don't see it as just a layer really integrated, you need to plan it from day one. 

Last question: Is there a piece of technology or an emerging technology that gets you particularly excited? 

Florian Rotberg: We are both not the youngest anymore. We have seen many technologies come and go, and I know one thing that never works is 3D.

So we were a little bit surprised to see how 3D in this false perspective on this LED wall worked, but I still think it's a hype, to be honest. 

Analytics, sensors, and IOT will make a difference, no question about it. But it’s not one technology, it's more, I think a mindset of connecting everything and measuring everything and adapting to the audience in the milliseconds. I think that's something we're changing. It's probably a whole range of different technologies. 

Yeah, I'm of the same mindset. I tell people that the stuff that excites me would probably bore the pants off of them, and just in terms of its the operational stuff is being able to affect messaging based on what the data is telling you, and it may be really boring saying, go this way instead of that way, because that's too busy over there or whatever, but that's fabulous stuff and it makes a difference or whatever venue it is works. 

Florian Rotberg: Exactly. It's more the stuff under the hood, which really gets me excited and that's also where you can really improve processes where you can really add value, and so that's what we are mostly working on, and obviously customers want to pay for the glittery stuff on top of the rest. But no, but that's where we see the biggest changes happening in the future. 

So if people want to read the 2021 year book, how do they get it? 

Florian Rotberg: It's free to download at invidis.com and I think you also published an article, so you can also find it on your website a link to that, but it's free to download, it's 200 pages and not only this year's edition, but if you also want to read some auditions, please come to our website a and download it there.

And you're able to produce it for free because you get advertising sponsors to support it, right? 

Florian Rotberg: Yes, but it's still more work than we get from advertisements, I can tell you that

It was a pleasure catching up with you as always. 

Florian Rotberg: Thanks for having me. 

InfoComm 2021 Roundtable: Tortured Terminology, With Three Daves, A Kim And A Chris

A virtual roundtable panel run last week during the InfoComm trade show pulled three Daves, a Kim and a Chris together to talk about the use and abuse of technology terms in digital signage and pro AV.

Run as a version of the Digital Signage Federation's periodic Coffee and Controversy series, the panel included Kim Sarubbi of IoTecha, STRATACACHE CEO Chris Riegel, David Title of New York-based Bravo Media, and Portl founder David Nussbaum, who has a very cool transparent LCD product he calls a hologram mainly because he needs something short and digestible for what is a complicated offer.

We had a great, very frank discussion - there's no other way with these folks - about a variety of topics, from all those things on Linkedin that aren't holograms or aren't even real, to the challenges of marketing complicated technology.

This was a Zoom call, and the full video is available via AVIXA as part of a post-InfoComm conference package, but here's the audio version.

I have not done all the polish at the front and back, just so I could get this out as a bonus podcast. 

Sixteen:Nine podcasts have, forever, been gratefully sponsored by Screenfeed, the digital signage content store. Sixteen:Nine is an online publication and companion podcast produced up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is a product of Spectrio, a leading provider of customer engagement solutions ranging from digital signage, interactive kiosks, wifi marketing

John McCauley, Velocity

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

More and more traditional integrators and IT services companies are finding their way into the digital signage industry, but I can't recall seeing one of them getting seriously into the media side of business ... until now.

A well-established IT managed services company based near Toledo, Ohio - called Velocity - is not only providing technical services to digital out of home media companies, it's directly selling media.

The company describes its media solutions business unit as being an an end-to-end digital signage provider - doing hardware, software, installation, tech support, media sales and everything in between.

Velocity runs and owns digital screen networks in groceries, cinema lobbies and hotels, and is looking to grow its footprint.

I had an interesting chat with the company's Senior VP of Digital Media, John McCauley.

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TRANSCRIPT

John, thank you for joining me. I was intrigued when I heard and started reading about Velocity that here is a managed services company, a managed services provider that does a lot of IT work, but they have a media wing and I thought, oh, that's different. 

John McCauley: Yes it is, and I think we have a very enthusiastic CEO, Greg Kiley who has really taken to the place-based digital out-of-home media’s core component and how it stitches together with our overall managed services business, and I think we're starting to really see the benefits of it with the investments that we've made in both resources and just alliances through COVID. So it's exciting times. 

Okay. So let's back up a little bit. Can you tell me a little bit about what Velocity is all about,  where it's based, how large a company it is, those sorts of things? 

John McCauley: We're based in Holland, Ohio. It's near Toledo and the company started 15+years ago. Greg Kiley, the CEO, created a rollup of local, regional voice and data services. And from that you create some scale and you create some efficiencies for customers, allowing sort of one-stop shop across like multiple locations across multiple areas of the country, and that proved to be a very fruitful business, saving money of course, and really creating some stickiness between customers.

The managed services, the network services, what else can you do on that connection? That was like a birth of where other aspects of the company could grow, and sectors that we’d like to be in including retail and hospitality and entertainment. All those things started to really converge and the company had a lot of success probably for a good 15+ years and two years ago, more or less, we got into sort of the digital out-of-home business and always had connection to our customers and really in response to the customers thinking, what else can we do on the connection? 

Starting with merchandising signs, thinking about hotels and maybe retail, those locations would use those to promote offerings and then over time, we start to explore with our customers, can we turn this into a media opportunity, which obviously would provide revenue back to them, creating another revenue opportunity for the company. And I think the timing of that is all very serendipitous for us because digital out-of-home, and technology enabled selling are all converging, and that's a big part of the growth in digital out-of-home is this sort of the technology and the digitization of signs, and we find ourselves in a very interesting and exciting place right now.

Did you have end-user customers who were pushing Velocity on some sort of a cost-recovery model, saying, could we put in signs and make money back on these things or was this more something that Velocity came up with? 

John McCauley: I think a little more on our side and then the clients obviously are the beneficiaries of it. I think a company like us is thinking about all sorts of growth opportunities and also thinking about ways for more customers to come into the fold. We want to be able to provide as much stickiness as we can. So whether you would come in through our network services side of things and we bring digital signage solutions to you or someone comes in through the digital signage solutions and we're able to extend them network services.

The company is very focused on being deep and across the board with as many solutions as we can for our customers. 

So right now, if I'm looking at your website, you do call centers services, repair depot, onsite techs, back office support, project management, all the kind of traditional things that you would have out of IT managed services and telecom managed services.

I remember having a client in the auto sector that had a digital signage department and they described themselves as the land of misfit toys. They didn't really fit in with the rest of the company. Culturally, how does the media wing fit within a whole bunch of guys or people who are IT services people? 

John McCauley: I think we fit very nicely together. There's a lot of similarities within that. First and foremost, we're very customer centric, right? So I think when you start as being customer centric, whether you're providing an immediate solution for a customer or a sort of technology managed services solution, you end up in the right place aligned around that. There's also a lot of cross-pollination, whether you work with CMS systems, or digital signage sort of capabilities, you're working very closely with your IT group, and then also as you're supporting your customers, right?

We have a grocery network and a hospitality network and others, and the responsiveness, we all work well together, right? If a sign goes down, you're tapping into your managed services group, the call center is contacting us and it's very symbiotic, and I think the way the company has put these pieces together has worked well. I can definitely see in other places where they may be assembled versus orchestrated, you'd probably see a bit of a difference. 

So the media solutions business unit, if you want to call it that, what all is in that? 

John McCauley: So we have networks and hospitality, grocery. We have a relationship with cinemas and Cinema lobbies also within Redbox in video toppers on top of Redbox kiosks, and then through another group, as part of a media solution, we have a direct sales group that represents inventory within bars, transit centers, and convenience stores. 

So that mixture of that portfolio of media opportunities allows us to leverage a direct sales group that is working on just a representation basis to help bring into the fold of particular deals of other media that we own and operate, and similarly, if we go owned and operate, we can look to extend those opportunities within networks that we represent. I think within the digital out-of-home space, it's important to have that sort of portfolio approach, allows us to nurture some networks, develop other networks, and I think overall a lot is happening in the space and allows us to be nimble too. 

Did you start with direct sales or was that a kind of a lesson learned, that we can't really use a rep shop, we need to bring this in-house?

John McCauley: We have an affiliate approach. So I would say our channel strategy where we do use Programmatic, of course, everybody needs to connect to Programmatic. We have third-party relationships with people that may have endemic relationships, maybe particularly within grocery. ScreenVision Media represents some of our inventory and they are leveraging the on-screen advertising and people who want to get close to that customer and extend them outside the cinema. So that sort of has its own strategy, and then our direct group is really a traditional digital out-of-home group. So you can't forget that part of the stack of revenue coming in, and I think as we think about revenue and I know a lot of people in the digital out-of-home space think about this is where the layers of the cake are coming from. 

It may be in the beginning of the year when the media is not as heavy, like 15% of media might be spent in the first quarter, you might be a little more Programmatic oriented, right? As you get open exchange, not PMP, as you get to later in the year where maybe 40% of the media spend could be in Q4, you're probably going to be more PMP and maybe a little less open exchange. And so that mix of portfolios could also change by the sector, vertical that you're in. 

We consciously did that and I think bringing in the digital out-of-home was on the roadmap. It just took us as we started to make our acquisitions and some of the other affiliates came in, but they all have to work together. We're working very closely as a centralized resource, coordinating the efforts, because that's how you maximize the revenue. 

The grocery network you acquired, has that been the model for all the media properties you're in? 

John McCauley: That was something that we were interested in grocery and retail. That opportunity came our way and we definitely saw our chance to leverage our relationship with our affiliates, as well as combine that with some strategic things that were coming down the road, but many things we just built from scratch. At the hotel and hospitality network, I think there was a recent release that went out with G6. That's something that there is no network that begins, right? So we're deploying the signs and we're starting it from scratch, and I think you'll, over time, see even more from us where we're combining opportunities where there may be existing networks in place, but we can be the catalyst for more digitization and more growth.

So the G6 one, that's an operator of a series of Motel 6s, right?

John McCauley: Correct. Yes, and hotels are an interesting sort of vertical in the digital out-of-home, not quite landed with media buyers yet, but there's a tremendous amount of purchasing power that resides within hotel guests. Obviously if you stay at a hotel for longer periods of time, you're going to be spending more money in the local economy. But even if you were to go in and have a short-term stay right, more than likely, you're going to be spending some money in the economy. 

We also know from just the dwell time, as people are considering things, landing a message that may be more regional in nature, or maybe it's a specific product, that's yet another impression that's made on a customer or potential customer, as they're within the lobbies. There's a little bit of work to do within hospitality, but we're super bullish on that, particularly when you see that the spending ultimately at the end of the day, media agencies and advertisers are looking for what's that incremental media that I can bring to my campaign and media mix that can be the extra, what's going to help me close the loop? And I think when you're sitting in front of people who are away from home, you know they're going to be spending money. That's definitely an opportunity to influence purchase. 

I'm guessing and it's purely a guess, but given the history of digital out-of-home, a lot of the networks that kind of bubbled up were often by entrepreneurs who were bootstrapped and were going into places like Motel 6 owner group or whatever, and saying, we can do this for you, we can put these screens in and so on, and maybe in the early days they accepted that. But I think the experience was such that so many of those kinds of bootstrap companies went out of business, that a large well-established IT services firm is probably more readily welcomed in the office to talk about it. 

John McCauley: I think the key thing about it is, even if you can bootstrap the signage deployment, ultimately at the end of the day, it's going to be the service, right? With signs, always there's cane activity issues, something goes down the monitoring, the maintenance, right? The ability to help program through CMS systems and that ultimately is how you get across the finish line, and it's super difficult to do, I think if you're bootstrapping and we have the benefit of the resources of Velocity, to create an infrastructure that allows us to support these networks and obviously as we scale, we continue to look at sort of our resources, but we're very much on the radar screen of how we continue to provide that level of resourcing. 

So I'm an owner of numerous motor inns in the US Southwest or something like that, and I approach you guys, what all would you be able to do? Do you take it right from start to finish and aftercare or are there things that you still leave for others? 

John McCauley: Yeah, this would be end to end. Our way of choice of moving forward is design, I think sometimes that's often missed, what's the best place to deploy? What is the best signage to use? Getting them deployed and then ongoing monitoring of the deployment, and ultimately, depending on whether the customer wants it or not is bringing advertising. But whether you bring the advertising or not, there's a CMS system component and we find if we have everything from the beginning to the end, we can provide the highest level of service for the customer, and look, I don't think it's really lost on our customers who are in the hotel business. Sometimes we use the term digital concierge for the signage that we provide in the lobby because that's allowing the hotel to communicate.

These are the services that are available within the hotel. Sometimes it could be a restaurant, right? They are in there and it helps them drive money, sometimes it's a rewards program. ESA has something called the perks program, which allows their guests to download an app and get deals in the community. So that level of communication, we want to be able to provide that CMS component and then advertising is something, and I think generally speaking, when it's handled end to end in a one-stop shop, you're going to get the most from your primary customer, and you can bring the most service, and therefore the most benefit whether it's going to be efficiencies, savings, and obviously, revenue. 

I remember with telecoms companies going back 15 years or so, they started looking at digital signage and described it very much as you did a little bit earlier on, where it's a layered service thing where we're already providing the connectivity and the the boots on the ground, so to speak, to come in and repair things. So why not layer this on top of it? Just in the same way that we could maybe layer this building security or whatever.

John McCauley: I think layered services is a nice way to describe it, and I think when you're working with companies like Velocity where you're very customer focused and looking to help drive value, for your customer, these things come up and I do think that this digitization of signage and communication, while some people may feel like that's a lot to undertake, once you have it, you're taking the communication and you're changing it up, like on a much more frequent basis. 

If you think about movie theaters, and think about menu boards, that used to be that you put them into sort of a plug board, “Popcorn costs $2.50”. Nowadays, a lot of movie theaters have digital menu boards and those digital menu boards allow things to be like by movie, you can change what the offering is. Here's the pack you're going to be focusing on around the time of day and that has really proven to be a driver of an anchor mentality, and that I think is ultimately the proof of the pudding, and I think more people are coming around to that. Posters, things like that, where people would do analog, you can take the same image, send it across digitally, and that now can be customized and tweaked regionally by the market, targeted by time of day, and I think those benefits are becoming much more real to people now, and I think with COVID, in particular, people took the time to think about how digital and technology play a role in my company and I think we'll start to continue to see even more disease of analog opportunities and more exploration of where some signage could be put into venues to drive the revenue and create some efficiencies. 

Does it matter at all about focus? So if you're doing Motel 6 lobbies and groceries in New York state and cinema lobbies, those are pretty different kinds of environments. Does it matter in terms of sales and support that you get a little more focused on one particular vertical or a couple of others? 

John McCauley: I think from the support side of things, there's a lot more commonality to the back end of how you support those signs because of this connectivity coming in, and I would say that would not have been the case years ago. It would have been more difficult to try to manage multiple like sectors, because maybe the differentiation of signage, maybe the CMS system you're using, a lot of that stuff I think has gone away, making it easier to potentially manage like a variety of verticals, but in particular for the sales side of things, we like to think about our areas of focus proximity to retail and purchase.

So lots of times we're nestled within retail, right? You're in a grocery store, we have Redbox, you're there and then the ability to be close to purchase. So whether you're at a bar, you're obviously purchasing in the bar, but oftentimes and with your in hand and the ability to influence purchase, I think is a big deal in digital out-of-home and our network is set up in that way to be around that. We would think about retail and proximity to purchase as a really key component of our business. 

You mentioned CMS, is it a case where you're using a partner firm’s CMS or have you developed your own?

John McCauley: We have our own CMS system and as we've taken on networks, we've had to work with other CMS systems, but ultimately I think in looking at the ad ecosystem, right? If you start at the far left with a DSP slide into the SSP, right? Then you have an ad server, then the CMS and the connectivity to the sign, I think for the most part people who are in the business that we're in, they want to have the CMS connected to the sign, right? Because that's really how you're controlling the sign. You're working with a third party on the signage and having that creates a larger scale and more efficiency. But at the end of the day, a lot of the CMS systems work the same. 

We would obviously think ours is better because we were working to work on our signs and making sure they're doing what we want to do, but I think he needed to have flexibility. So at the end of the day if you want to be in the business, you have to have a wide lens and work hard to get people to consider your CMS system. 

Do you find with the end user customers who you work with and Target in particular that there's any sort of demand that no, we need to work with this particular CMS partner, we need to use this particular smart display or operating system, or are they pretty open? 

John McCauley: I think if you're inheriting something, there's already a bias, that, hey, we've used this and we're looking for a new operator, and I think there are companies that would come in and maybe operate that and certainly we consider everything. I think when things are starting anew then you have the opportunity to bring to bear the capabilities that the company may have around sourcing and designing signage that works as well as the CMS system.

I think you need to be competitive, right? So if someone likes a particular CMS system, you understand what those needs are, and you obviously are going to be upgrading your CMS system to have those. So yeah, you need to be definitely paying attention to the marketplace. I think like in anything, whether it's this business or any business, if you have blinders on, and are rigid and say, this is the way we do it, then ultimately you're going to miss out on opportunities, right? Because the marketplace is going to dictate the services and the capabilities that you need to have. 

Okay, so if I'm a digital place-based startup and I'm putting screens in, I'll make something up in ski resort lounges or something like that, don't think I'd do that one but anyways. 

If I was being smart, I’d determine pretty quickly that I don't know what I'm doing with technology and it would be great if I had a partner who did all that stuff for me, and I just focused on sales or even had sales done by somebody else, and I just run around and get the real estate agreements, is that something you'll do where you just kind of take everything on?

John McCauley: Absolutely. That's the type of thing we would put ourselves in position to do, and I think as you were indicating that sometimes we're seeing the customer saying, yes, I'll get the real estate because I have real estate, I want to convert some real estate, I want to better leverage my real estate, but ultimately we find that customers are trying to drive more revenue, right? Like in their existing business, how do they drive more revenue? I know you were using the ski resort, right? Can they get people to the lodge and buy more? Can they get them to do lessons? Ultimately the businesses are very focused on that. 

Bringing advertising in, that's obviously very complimentary, and we find that when you're bringing advertisers into venues, particularly on the mix of them, local and regional play well because it's sorta like the company you keep. If there's some advertising in there, people go, oh, look at that. They're advertising at the ski resort. I think that is also things that the venues like, they like to be immersed within either the community or things that their customers are feeling that are current.

You've grown a little bit in the media space through acquisition, is this an ongoing thing? Is Velocity looking for other networks that they may potentially acquire as well to build out their footprint? 

John McCauley: I think we will always have our eyes on where we can be strategically accretive, particularly around these verticals and sectors and being close to retail and purchase and if there are things that pop up, we're also actively looking. I would say that that's very much in the forefront. 

There’s a lot of digital out-of-home networks out there. Generally speaking, do you get a sense of how they're doing? There's obviously some large ones that are doing very well, but it's been a rough couple of years for just about everybody.

John McCauley: Yeah, I think heading into that quarter before COVID shut everything down, they were really coming off a record year, having a record quarter digital out-of-home, and then basically the world's shut down, and what we're seeing is that traffic is certainly back, people are out and about, depending on where you are in the country, it could be a little bit less but certainly people are feeling more comfortable being vaccinated, and what we're seeing is that a little bit of an over-indexing to transit and billboards. That's the safe play, right? People are out there driving. I think people are over-indexing there. 

In that middle sort of ground, like street furniture is almost back to where they need to be from the pre COVID levels, and then the place-based, essential markets, whether it's grocery stores and others, they certainly have had the traffic, and they're shown a little quicker recovery and then things that would be considered more discretionary, whether they be movie theaters or people could argue bars, whether that's discretionary or not, but they serve an essential part of the communities. All of those types of things are definitely starting to show the rebounding and heading towards the trajectory of getting back to pre COVID levels. 

But I think that's just the cadence of the way people have responded to it. They have to see that the traffic is steady and consistent, that we can weather the storms of having variance that really impacted the traffic, and then ultimately I think Q4 is a good time for it, right? Because at the end of the day, Q4 is when many companies, whether you're selling stuff, whether it be media or selling products, you need to get your impressions, you need to reach, you need to get impressions. You need to influence people who are in position to purchase. I think this quarter in particular will really start to provide the wind behind the sails heading into 2022. There was a DPAA conference last week which was really encouraging. It was well attended by 600 plus people in person at Chelsea Piers in New York. The energy was high, lots of clients there. Lots of things happening within the digital out-of-home, and I think there's a lot of optimism around place-based. 

And I think you told me in our pre-call that Velocity is a member of the DPAA? 

John McCauley: Yeah, we're members of the DPaA, and in my prior life, I was at the ScreenVision Media and I was on the board. So I'm very friendly and familiar with the leadership there, and I think they've done a very nice job. 

Between the DPAA and the OAAA representing the industry, evangelizing the industry, making sure it's staying top of mind with agencies and brands and CMOs, I think that's an important component and I think there's the retail networks whether it be Walmart doing Walmart Connect or Walgreens or CVS or our efforts at retail, I think they have a very high value, and I think people are really paying attention to the ability to influence customers with wallets out. 

I assume, right now, Velocity is its revenue and its focus is heavily in its traditional business of IT services managed services and so on, and that the media side of it is a fairly small percentage of the revenue. 

Is there a longer-term vision where Velocity starts to become more and more a media company?

John McCauley: We'd have to ask Greg and the leadership team about that, but I see a real enthusiasm for the media business and how the media business supports and can support other opportunities within the company, and so I think as a result of that, it’s strategic importance will continue to grow and so will the revenue but we definitely want to be in the business, whether we're powering networks, whether we're monetizing networks, there's a lot of connectivity that we like being around the space and it plays very well into sort of the overall company of network services and then layering on the media services.

All right. That was terrific. I appreciate you taking some time with me. 

Doug Lusted, AdStash

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

Much has changed through the years in digital signage and digital out of home, but one thing that's been pretty constant is how small businesses like the technology when they find out about it ... but don't want to pay for it.

Doug Lusted has seen and heard that for many years, having founded a Canadian startup that was doing proximity marketing and venue analytics almost a decade ago.

He gradually, with his team, started pulling together the idea and eventually the platform for AdStash - a service that enables small business operators and service providers who target that sector to get digital signage in place, and make money from the screens, instead of paying monthly bills for them.

The core premise of AdStash is small to medium-sized businesses - from one-offs to groups of venues - can tap into advertising dollars from a dozen supply-side ad exchanges and generate incremental revenue. They don't pay any recurring subscription fees, and the only upfront cost is an $80 Raspberry Pi media player.

Based in suburban Toronto, but virtual in most respects, the company is investor-backed and already has a footprint of some 70,000 screens in the U.S. and Canada.

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TRANSCRIPT

Doug, thank you for joining me. We've known each other a little bit for quite some time now, and I would say your company has been on a bit of a journey because when I first ran into it, I believe you were doing proximity marketing, right? 

Doug Lusted: That's right, and we're still doing that. That was our first product and we're heading out to our second one now.

And that was called, Linkett, wasn't it? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, so to clear it up because branding is often a question. The company name is Weston Expressions. Our first product was Linkett, which is an audience measurement platform that still operates today, and then our second product is AdStash, which we'll get into.

With the first product, what was that all about? That was NFC-based, right? 

Doug Lusted: It started out to be NFC. We were trying to track engagement and impressions, but ultimately that morphed into WiFi. So it's predominantly a WiFi tracking platform today. 

Because every smartphone has WiFi probably turned on or at least available, and not everybody was equipped with NFC and not everybody had it activated, right?

Doug Lusted:  You got it. 

So this was just a better way to go, and now you've launched AdStash. Can you tell me and the listeners what that's all about? 

Doug Lusted: So what AdStash does is provide digital signage networks the technology they need to go programmatic with no monthly fees, and so on a deeper level what that really means is that the core technology we've built is an API that connects your digital signs to multiple programmatic ad exchanges at once. So it saves you all that integration time and money. 

And if you become an AdStash customer, what are you getting and what are you using? 

Doug Lusted: It depends on your network. We're pretty flexible. We've got a bunch of different pieces to the puzzle. 

But basically, an API connection that lists you on all the major SSPs or most of them. Now, if you need a media player, we can provide you that. If you need a content management system, we have a free one. Those are typically used by our smaller networks. And the enterprise users generally stick to the API because they've got all of that in place already. 

Okay, so if I'm already on Brand X CMS, there are hundreds of them. You don't need to back out of that and use your CMS platform or anything like that. The CMS is meant more as something that enables it for smaller businesses?

Doug Lusted: Yeah, exactly, and sometimes what happens is we'll have a customer who's growing their network, and they realize, I can use this CMS that doesn't have any monthly fees. I'm going to switch to that now while I'm deploying. But yeah we can integrate with any CMS. It's a fairly straightforward open API.

I guess it becomes a delicate dance of working with other CMS companies, because if they're hearing that, you don't need to use a commercial or fee-based one, you can just use ours for free they may be thinking, “I don't want to work with you.” 

Doug Lusted: Yeah. It's a good point, and to add a little more color to that, it's a very light, basic CMS, right? We can show videos on full screen, maybe a traditional L-bracket, but that's it. 

It's very light, more kind of aimed towards small and medium-sized businesses. If you're a large enterprise digital signage network that needs some bells and whistles, sticking to your current partner is probably the best bet and we're pretty open about it. 

Is that intentional or is that more a function of, “if I want it to have something that was a lot more robust, that there's a whole bunch more time and dollars that I need to put into it to get to that point”? 

Doug Lusted: So we found that most of our early adopters were small and medium-sized businesses that weren't too picky on what's going on the screen? So it would be hard to give out a content management system that's free that has all the bells and whistles as I said, so I think it was intentional. It's just like a backup plan. 

One thing we noticed in this industry is that there's a massive amount of supply in the market that is just a mom-and-pop shop with the TV turned off. So we're just trying to make it as simple as possible, like “Hey, here's this box. There are no monthly fees, plug it in and you're ready to go.” 

And if they opted for this, let's say I have a nail salon in a strip mall because every strip mall has a nail salon and they want to do this. How does it work? What do they get out of it? How do they use it? 

And in terms of what they get out of it, what kind of revenues would they see? Is it something that just is going to just pay for the TV in a lot of respects? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, sometimes. So basically if you use our full tech stack, you get the media player, plug it in just to HDMI and power, and then WiFi or Ethernet and then a free content management system that's cloud-based, the nail salon often puts up their own content on the screen, hours of operation, promotions, that good stuff, totally self-serve, and then we, just like almost any programmatic platform, we aim for a 30% fill rate with third-party ads that we're getting from our programmatic partners. 

Given the infancy and where we are with programmatic, some months we hit 30%, some months, we don't, depending on a whole bunch of variables. But the idea is that I think for a small mom and pop nail salon if you look at our data over the past 24 months, minus the closures, due to the pandemic, the average locations making about $50 to $70 a month in revenue that they wouldn't have gotten elsewhere.

And for a lot of businesses, that would be like, you know, who cares? But is that a meaningful number to these people? 

Doug Lusted: It is, and especially with COVID impacting a lot of the revenues of these businesses, they're hungry to figure out any way they can earn a couple extra bucks, and most of our clients aren't necessarily one-offs, they own 10 stores, they own 50 stores, and so when you start scaling it, it becomes a nice little incremental piece of business that doesn't require much work. 

One of the big challenges that I've seen through the years with these kinds of initiatives is, working with small to medium businesses is not terribly efficient. You've got to sell them one by one. You don't just go in and get an enterprise deal for a thousand locations or anything else. 

How do you deal with that side of it and how do you sell it? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, it's a great point. So in the very early days, our Guinea pigs, we were going door to door on these businesses directly. But now I would say 99% of our business is through the digital signage channels so digital signage distributors, smaller and medium place-based digital networks looking to go programmatic, and if you look at the adoption curve, it's similar to any company, start with the little guys and you start climbing up the chain. So we've taken that route and we're working on the channel right now. 

So using the example of the nail salon again, how would they find you then? Would it be through like a Synnex or Ingram Micro or something like that? I can’t imagine a nail salon knowing what Synnex is. 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, exactly. So we do inbound marketing, right? So they'll probably find us online. But like I said, it's a small portion of our business, but they'd be able to find it through any of our paid campaigns, whether it be through Google ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, etc. Word of mouth is probably our biggest channel, right? 

Somebody starts making money they didn't before and they want to tell their friends, they want to move it to the other properties they own. So organic's been a big one for the smaller customers. 

Yeah, and if they need it, you provide an $80 media player. So I guess if they make $50 to $70 a month, they pay for that thing pretty quickly. What is that? Is that a little Raspberry Pi or...? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, it is a Raspberry Pi with our firmware on it. It's got a couple of extra little components to it, like just some USB antennas and things of that nature, but under the hood, it's a Raspberry Pi. 

The analytical side of the business that you started with, is that bundled with this, and would a small business need it/use it? 

Doug Lusted: It is bundled with it, but it's generally hidden from the small businesses.

The reason why we need it is that we need to know what traffic is in front of the screen when ads play so that we know how much to bill these programmatic partners, everything's impression. 

Would a nail salon really need a big data platform to understand its user’s behaviors? Probably not. So we hide it, but it is built in there so that we can gauge traffic levels for our advertisers. 

So if I am the nail salon and I opt in, what am I using to update content and manage the thing? 

Doug Lusted: In terms of our content management system, they're logging in and uploading their own creative. We don't provide a designer tool or any type of creative tool ourselves. They just upload whatever they have. 

Okay, and they do it off the desktop or can they do it off mobile? 

Doug Lusted: They can do it on desktop or mobile. 

Specific app or is it just the web version of the website?

Doug Lusted: We have a specific app as well. So on mobile, we have an AdStash app. You can download and manage your digital signage network just through your phone if you'd like. 

I've always been curious about the mindset particularly of the small to the medium business world. By far, the most active blog post on 16:9 is one that lists all of the free software options out there.

Do you find that generally for small to medium businesses, digital signage is not a major core initiative of what they're doing, it's just something that maybe they can use, that there's a real resistance there to spending any monthly fees? 

Doug Lusted: I think so. We often A/B test this ourselves to test what is the bigger value prop, the ability to make money on programmatic ads or save money on subscriptions? It's really a mix of both, but the smaller players for sure are interested in anything that isn't going to be recurring, and we also have a lot of requests from the digital signage groups that they outsource this to. 

Like I said, our average user has got about a hundred screens. So this is generally something they've outsourced, they've told their digital signage partner, “Hey, you've heard of this free AdStash thing, check it out!”

Okay, and what's your installed base right now? 

Doug Lusted: So across North America, we have 70,000 screens. The US is a lot more dominant than Canada. We've seen some pretty exponential growth there. But in Canada, we've got about 6,000 screens and then the rest of the US.

Okay, and what do you figure you have to be at in terms of footprint to get something akin to critical mass? Or does it not really matter as much when it's programmatic? 

Doug Lusted: It doesn't matter as much when it's programmatic, and I think that's one of the huge attractions to it, especially for the medium size players.

If I've got a hundred screens, maybe 50 in Toronto, 50 in Montreal, that's not really big enough to attract a national campaign, but programmatically, by nature is grouping everybody together to try and attract a national campaign. So I think that's a really big thing. 

Most typically for these small business screen networks, it's hyper-local advertising. It's like the local injury accident lawyers and mortgage brokers and that sort of thing. What kind of advertising are you seeing on the screen? 

Doug Lusted: So given that we only do programmatic advertising, most I would say is national. Now we do have some local, right? The Calgary Stampede brought in a lot of local ads, even though like DoorDash will do a national campaign, they'll have custom creative or calls to action based on each local community. But for the most part, at least for now, we're seeing a majority of it nationally. 

And with the analytics that you're able to generate, what do you see or what are you learning about sites? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, so traffic data is the most important for sure. Impressions or visits, right? Unique visits, dwell time and frequency are the big three per location. 

It's really interesting to see the dwell times. That's what I'm interested in because, during the pandemic, medical was really one of the only things that were open, and you can see our dwell time doubled so the average person sees twice as many ads. What does that mean? How is that going to affect things? 

So the most important thing right now is traffic. A lot of these exchanges, like HiveStack or BroadSign, have geofencing technology, so they can gather demographics on their own. We have that capability, but most of the time the exchanges say, “Hey, we got that covered.” 

With the rise through the years of computer vision for doing on-premise venue analytics, once in a while, something bubbles up and people get all freaked out about the idea that there's a camera looking at me. 

We've seen that a few times in Canada and it comes up elsewhere. What's the situation with your users when it comes to WiFi. Do they care? Are they alarmed in any way? Like they seem to be well on the camera side? 

Doug Lusted: Some of our bigger customers are, but we've been pretty proactive in being GDPR compliant. So from a consumer perspective, they don't see anything. They don't see a camera being pointed at them. There's a little box behind the TV that no one sees. So we don't really get any questions on the consumer side. 

From the actual kind of business side, yeah, just, are we GDPR compliant? Are we collecting any personally identifiable information, which we're not. 

Where are your servers? We get asked those questions a lot, but after they read through what we're doing with the data and they realize it's very anonymous, high-level traffic counting. We've never had any problems with it, and in fact, It's helped us in a lot of deals. Like we're an airport, and as I said before, we're in medical clinics where you can't put a camera. So we carved out a nice little segment of the market, where we seem to be dominating that market share, at least in Canada, just because of those regulations around those venues. 

Is it easier to compete with some of the other kinds of focused networks out there? Through the years, I've seen bar networks and hair salon networks and nail salon networks, and everything else. Because you're broadly based, you're not saying, “We're the guys for this.” Is it easier to sell into a broader diversity of businesses? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, it is. But it's also a little confusing because any other place-based digital network, in some sense, if they're on programmatic and not going through us, they're competitors. But on the other side, they're also prospects. So if it gets very confusing, okay, who's a competitor and who's a prospect who should we target? And there's a lot of his “frenemies” in space, and it's getting even more complicated as more and more programmatic platforms come into play.

When your resellers and channel are meeting with a company that has a hundred screens across a network, do they even get into what programmatic is and how it works or do they just say, put this in, we will sell the ads for you and it’ll start showing up within three, four weeks and you should see a check of $50 to $70. 

But I'm guessing they don't really want to understand, is this a demand side platform or supply side or any of that stuff? You're just basically saying it's like Google Adsense, it will just show up. 

Doug Lusted: Exactly. They don't get into all the nitty gritties.

You go into a nail salon and try to explain what a supply side platform and demand side platform are, it's probably not going to work out. 

It's getting more and more confusing as more and more are popping up. But yeah, it's basically, “Hey, we're going to install this new box to your TV, ads are going to show up hopefully and make some revenue”, and another thing is like a lot of our channel partners, they're selling ads directly themselves, not programmatic, just traditional direct sales. So a lot of the time, it's not just us who's responsible for revenue. We're just adding the icing on the cake. 

Okay. So that would be like the guy in your part of the world around Toronto, who's got some medical clinics and he's using your platform, but he would have direct sales as well that he could go to a medical equipment supplier or whatever, and say, “do you want to advertise on these?”

Doug Lusted: Exactly. So our agreement, with our customers, is that we have the exclusive rights over programmatic sales. 

We're going to connect you to all of the SSPs that we're partnered with and we're going to handle that relationship for you. That's the value we bring, but we're not shutting down your existing line of revenue when it comes to traditional sales.

And that's why you're talking about like a 30% fill rate that there should be this broad understanding that, “Hey guys, this isn't your sole answer if you're an ad network, this is part of your answer.” 

Doug Lusted: Exactly, and I think that's where we're at in the programmatic industry is this strange hybrid model, where we're putting a bed on and focusing on that or predicting that more of it will shift the programmatic as adoption increases across the industry. But right now, yeah, this isn't your only source of ad revenue. 

So I'm HiveStack and I'm working with you guys. What visibility do I have? Like what do I see when I'm trying to place an ad of some kind or drive a campaign across your screens? 

Doug Lusted: We try to be as transparent as possible. What you'll see is an address obviously, of where the screen is located, their analytics will tell you the type of audience that's in there. We'll provide you with the traffic counts that are in there. We even require our users, when they install a device to take a picture of the screen, so that you can actually see what the screen looks like and that it exists, and then you'll just obviously see the playback reporting o how many times did your ad play there and whatnot.

And I'm assuming the analytics side of that is increasingly important, even if it isn't to the venue, it is to the programmatic side? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, exactly, and I think, anybody who's been in this industry for a while understands that that's one of the biggest bottlenecks of programmatic right now. There's not a clear winner of measurement. There are a whole bunch of different vendors, and we ourselves, as the digital signage industry are confused about it, which then makes it almost impossible for these programmatic exchanges to wrap their heads around it, or come up with any standards.

And I don't think that's going to change anytime soon, and one of the reasons why is, I think that we need to understand that there's going to need to be different methodologies and technologies to measure outdoor screens versus indoor screens. These are two very different things, I don't think one solution is going to be able to cover both. So we need to really think, how are we going to frame this, how are we going to put standards around it and take the time to educate these ad exchanges on how it's gonna work? 

Do you get pushback at all from, let's say some of the larger, more established to programmatic platforms saying, I don't know who you are, you're not big enough for me or anything else, or do they all look at this as more inventory and it's properly described and the analytics are available and so on. So, it doesn't bother me that it's a nail salon and it's not a major international airport?

Doug Lusted: So in the early days, we got pushback from programmatic exchanges because we didn't have that many screens, and it's that chicken and egg problem. So we went out and started building our supply base, and I would say now, we're one of the bigger players with 70,000 screens.

So they look at it and say, not necessarily, this is more screens, cause that's not always how they think, but they say, Hey, this more audience profiles. This is more traffic for us. 

And I assume all of your venues are data tagged every which way? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah. So not only just what type of venue it's in and where it's located, but what size is the screen, what things are around it, there's a lot of data that's associated with it, and thankfully we are not tasked with having to have a UI for that, that the advertiser has to see, that's basically our programmatic partners job and that's not an easy one. 

Going back to the nail salon thing, I signed up for it and I'm running a set of nail salons, which is about as bizarre a thought as I can come up with. Who would do the data tagging for that? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, we do all of that. So once you install the device, you do take a picture of your screen once it's done. We have a list of venues that you can select from a dropdown that is in accordance with the IAB standards. They just find and select a nail salon, which is one of them, and that's basically it. We do everything from there, everything is pretty much automated, 

So it's a free service. The obvious next question coming out of that is how do you make money? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah. So we take a commission only on the programmatic revenue that we bring to the table, that flows through our pipes. The commission depends on volume and how many screens you have, but that's how we make our money.

I think I saw the baseline was like 30%, and it scales down from there with the larger jobs? 

Doug Lusted: It does scale down, yeah. Sometimes it'll actually scale up depending if you're missing core components of technology.

So someone may say, “Hey I don't have this feature in the CMS, can you build it or can I have it?” And they'll say, yeah, but if you don't want to pay for the custom dev time, then the way we'll make our money back on that is maybe 35%. 

Even in that case, it wouldn't be fee-based, it would be built around the commission?

Doug Lusted: We're pretty flexible. Most of our customers have come to us because they don't want to pay fees. So it ultimately ends up being a commission, whether we like it or not. 

Is that just a concession to the realities of working with a small to the medium business world is that they would like to have this, they just don't want to pay for it. So let's work with them as opposed to just saying, “We won't work with you, goodbye!”

Doug Lusted: Yeah, exactly, and I think that's the whole notion of AdStash, and one of our big hypotheses is building this business as there are so many screens that are not being added to programmatic exchanges because they can't afford the technology that's required to do so. 

So whoever activates, all of those screens are going to own a huge portion of the supply in the market, and nobody's pulled up their sleeves and gone after that segment of the market because nobody wants to pay for anything. 

So was AdStash something, going back to 2013-2014, that you were thinking about, or is it just through the years you came to this realization, having worked with a lot of end-users that there's a hole in the market for this, we can build it and get there before somebody else does?

Doug Lusted: It was a bit of both. So when we were really focused on analytics back in 2014, we weren't thinking about it, but we heard rumblings of programmatic and we always thought to ourselves, audience measurement is great, but it's hard to tie return on investment to, especially if you're talking to a digital signage network, like, “why should I invest in in analytics, if I can't guarantee I'm going to get more ads?”

So we always thought, in the online world, advertisers demand it, and then so when we heard of programmatic coming down and we're like, wow, our data is actually going to be very valuable here and mandatory. So this is a good space for us to get into, and then we were just really early adopters of it, we started working with Campsite right when they started in Toronto and Montreal and it just escalated and we rode the wave. 

And how many programmatic platforms are you integrated with now? 

Doug Lusted: So right now we're live on 12. We've got a few contracts signed we're just finishing up integrations with, but as of today, we're on the 12th.

I'm not as close to programmatic as a lot of people seem to think I am. Twelve is what, like half of them out there, or my impression is 12 is like 1% of them. 

Doug Lusted: So it's a little complicated. There are SSPs and DSPs. The DSPs, yeah, there are 80 of them out there, but not all of them are doing digital out-of-home advertising, only a small fraction of them are.

What we're doing is aggregating all of the SSPs into one link, the supply side, the supply-side ones that actually do digital out of home. There are tons of supply-side platforms out there that you can join your website, but for digital out-of-home, there aren't that many out there yet. So I would say, of the active ones right now, we have a large majority of them. 

Tell me about the business. You founded it. Is it completely bootstrapped, self-funded or have you been involved with private equity or VC companies? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, we're VC-backed. So in 20014 ish, when we were just doing the analytics, we raised a small seed round, and we went through an accelerator in Silicon valley called 500 Startups, and then when we launched AdStash, we raised a second round of funding, a bigger round of funding to help push this product. 

Where are you at in terms of the size of the company? 

Doug Lusted: So right now, we're at 13 and growing. It's been unique for us during the pandemic, we’ve done fully virtual and we were hiring during the pandemic too. So it's been interesting to have a team with some members you've never met before. We were surprised to figure out that some of our employees are like 6’4”. We had no idea they were like these big people, so it's been a unique experience, but a majority of our team is software developers. 

We're not a heavily focused sales and marketing organization because that's what our programmatic partners do for us. They're doing all the sales. So of that 13, the majority of them are software developers.

And we were talking before we turned on the recorder that you moved from downtown Toronto to the burbs. Based on the last year and a half, are you concluding that, hey, we don't really need a physical office or any of those things? Maybe we have a kind of virtual rented office and a mailbox kind of thing and it'll do because so many tech companies have gone that way? 

Doug Lusted: Yeah. Speaking on behalf of our company, I don't think we need an office. We like to do monthly hangouts where we'll all meet somewhere. Just rent an office for a day and talk strategy and whatnot. But when it comes to the day-to-day operations, we don't need an office. Again, software developers, most of the time, are locked away coding, they don't really need an office. 

They don’t want to talk to other humans anyways. 

Doug Lusted: Yeah, exactly. But yeah, as long as they have a kitchen nearby, things are good. So for us, we'll keep doing the virtual way.

That being said, it has presented interesting scenarios in terms of culture. It's very hard to build a company culture virtually, there's only so many things you do. So that's why we really like to implement at least monthly hangouts where the whole team comes together in person and does something to try and build that culture.

That is what's probably important to keeping virtual employees nowadays, because if they can get a new job without having to move and just simply saying yes, you gotta build that company culture to want to entice them to come work for you every day. 

Yeah. It would be pretty easy to leave if you have absolutely no emotional attachment to the people you're working with. You don’t know how tall they are. (Laughter)

This has been great. Just a quick question. If people want to know more, where do they find AdStash? I'm guessing, it's AdStash.com. 

Doug Lusted: Yeah. AdStash.com. Best way to get us. 

All right. Thanks a bunch. 

Doug Lusted: Thanks, I really appreciate you having us on.

 

Amanda Benzecry, Take Down The Ads

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

As much as people in the digital signage industry are understandably excited and enthused by the appearance of more and more digital displays in public spaces, it's important to remember that not everyone is in love with screens.

There's always some people who don't like ad posters and billboards just because. But there are others who have tangible, well-researched and argued positions about why they're not big fans.

I recently came across a small, grassroots campaign in the UK that has a running slogan of Take Down The Ads! It grew out of the appearance of LED ad spectaculars that went up a few years ago in a lovely, leafy part of southwest London.

Their appearance offended Amanda Benzecry, who has been leading an effort online and through the local government process to fight their existence, primarily on environmental grounds.

It could seem, from a distance, like just an effort to rid the neighborhood of something the locals don't like or understand. But Benzecry actually comes out of the advertising industry and understands how things work.

We had a great chat about why she and other similar efforts around the UK are fighting the steady influx of digital out of home displays, and the reasons behind their opposition.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Amanda, thank you for joining me. First of all, can you tell me what the Take Down the Ads movement is all about? 

Amanda Benzecry: It goes back about six years and it all started with a very local issue, completely relevant to the immediate area in which I live and the appearance of three very large LED screens, I'm talking huge, now marketed as the Barnes Landmark and the Barnes Tower, which appeared without really much, or if any local consultation, and this is in Southwest London. It's on a road that is called the South Circular, but at the point in which these screens appeared, it's only a two-lane thing. So we're not talking about a big motorway and it is a gateway between a number of sort of conurbation, Barnes, Roehampton, Putney. It gets a reasonable amount of traffic going through it, but it is not a motorway. 

It was previously characterized by being very dark and very leafy and sits opposite a designated nature reserve, which sounds weird for London, but we get these little pockets. The complication was that in this case, the screens went up on the land that belongs to a rugby club, so it's not like other LED screens around the borough, which sit on council land. This was actually an application by a rugby club. To have permission, to have screens erected, to generate funds, to ensure the future of the rugby club. And that was the justification for allowing the screens to be erected in a location that if you look at all the planning guidelines, it should not have been allowed, but they found a way around it. 

Now, I don't believe that anybody should, and I'm not against the sport and not against rugby, but I don't think that given the location of those screens and the implications because it impacted on a wildlife corridor and bat movements and things like that. I have always campaigned on an environmental platform. So Take Down the Ads began with a specific campaign against those screens, and unfortunately, it became a sort of Twitter storm and I was accused of wanting to put a rugby club out of business, and it was never that. It has always been an environmental thing. And really the change to the landscape is absolutely unacceptable. 

Also, this rugby club happened to be located in metropolitan open land. Metropolitan open land is afforded certain protections. So, the whole thing was really quite suspicious as well, and I think the key thing is, and this is what started the whole issue, is that the location was quite vulnerable in that there weren't many neighbors around because it was opposite a nature reserve because there is meant to be a degree of local consultation when certain screens go up, but then in this instance, they didn't need to be because nobody was effectively living immediately opposite. But my point was actually the result implicates the entire environment and all of us, even if we live a quarter of a mile away, I have to drive past them and I would really have liked the choice to comment as to whether I wanted to have these things up or not. 

That's a very long explanation but Take Down the Ads started six years ago, but it started with a particular campaign. Then it grew, although it's much more challenging for me in this part of London, into looking at the incursion of these screens across the borough. I would say probably that we don't have too many, but I don't think we should have any because they are now on a scale that is completely unacceptable. They are marketed, the main contractor here is JC Decaux. They are marketed as towers. They are the size of buildings and we now have a number on high streets which are just huge and completely unnecessary and environmentally damaging and adding more clutter to what are extremely busy streetscapes, because remember, we don't have wide avenues in London. It's all very narrow, everybody's on top of everything. We have old buildings, we have new buildings and these things sit on the street and they are mind-blowing and you don't have a choice. You don't have a choice to switch them off or not to look at them. They just glare down at you. 

This is what the digital out-of-home companies like about it. The fact that you can't miss them, but I think it's important to stress, as people are listening to this, you actually come out of advertising. You're not somebody who just hates ads. You understand the business. 

Amanda Benzecry: Absolutely. It is not about advertising. It is about the medium and what that medium does to a local environment, the pollution, and also mental pollution because when you're driving in London, bloody hell, there's so much stuff going on and then suddenly there are these big screens. So there's environmental pollution, mental pollution burning away, I know they're LED and, but I think there is a place for these screens, like in airports, on airport concourses or train stations where you've got a captive audience and you might want to be entertained. Where they start to come in and add clutter and they're huge and spoil the environment and just add to the mental pollution, I think that is unacceptable, and particularly when, there are many ways to advertise to people now and all those ways that you can reach people, then people still have the choice to not view them or whatever. They can false forward, or they can delete or whatever. 

With these, you just don't have the choice, except for, I try not to look at them when I'm going past, and I think that is an arrogant selfish thing to do, especially nowadays when we are so worried about our environment and mental health and things like that. 

This caught my attention based on Twitter, and I think you included my Twitter handle in a tweet or something like that, and I'd look at it and went what's that? You have a petition that you're looking to get circulated and t's pretty modest compared to a lot of petitions.

Amanda Benzecry: It is quite interesting, and I am quite frankly slightly disappointed that it doesn't seem to have caught the attention. 

Well, now with Sixteen:Nine covering it… (Laughter) 

Amanda Benzecry: Well, yeah, exactly.

But I think, to be honest, we're getting a bit of petition fatigue. Interestingly, for the CARPA campaign, when I initiated the campaign against the rugby club. That one has currently got 650 responses, but it's a very old petition now.

Again, it needs to be in the thousands for anybody to really take any notice. But I think disappointingly, I'm not seeing anybody in a position like a green party actually taking it up as a cause and promoting it, and I'm not sure why, other than that, maybe there are just big bucks involved. These screens do make money for councils and there would be a loss of revenue if they weren't allowed to rent the land to the JC Decaux and Clear Channel and stuff like that. So clearly there is a commercial argument that is working in the favor of the LED screens. I think what is also quite interesting is there have been instances where the local council has refused planning and then it goes to the government level, to the planning inspectorate and then they override it. They override the local council. So my personal view is that it needs somebody, a politician, to take it out, but nobody seems to be willing to, and that is disappointing, particularly now when the environment is so important.

SoI can't explain that other than there's money somewhere involved, and that's that stopping it, I would just say interestingly we, Take Down the Ads that did get involved in an application for the screen over a major arterial road, and that was an application by Transport for London who is responsible obviously for the underground system, and their stance on these screens actually is that they believe that a driver can cope with lots of different messages. So the safety aspect is a very difficult platform to campaign on because you don't get their support, but in this case, the road runs along from outer London into central London, there are a number of roundabouts and overpasses, and then the road goes under the roundabout and there are bridges if you like, and they have steadily through the area, erected these LED screens claiming, excuse me, that they're great for disseminating traffic information. 

I have never seen traffic information on them, and it came to a point where we've got an intersection locally, which is really the intersection between Putney common, Wimbledon, common, and thank goodness, we were actually able to campaign on an environmental platform and the local council rejected it and they didn't appeal. So that was a small victory. But it was pretty obvious, but there are other areas where it's particularly a conversion from paper to LED. That seems to be just fine. If there's been a poster there already has a poster then you can change it to LED pretty easily actually. 

So in the context of what you do, if you get word of a plan out there, is it just yourself, or do you have a circle of people? 

Amanda Benzecry: So to be honest, for the most part, it's probably three of us, but don't tell JC Decaux that, but also we have joined a network of ad blocks across the country.

Yeah, people across the country are doing things locally. 

Amanda Benzecry: Yeah, but the reality is if somebody is applying for the installation of a LED screen in my area, the local authority isn’t going to take any notice of that because they're in Bristol. But certainly, there's also a number of societies in the area and we keep an eye on planning applications and make sure that we don't miss something. So if something comes up, we're able to challenge it, but the reality is you have to challenge it in a sensible way, grounded in those planning policies.

But I think one thing I have been doing or certainly Take Down the Ads has been doing, which has had some effect because I believe that it was acknowledged that it was having an effect from the feedback I got, again, in relation to the rugby club is that we've been writing to advertisers. And some of them ignore it. Some of them do withdraw their ads and that has an implication on revenue. On environmental grounds, and not saying come down and see this for yourself, but just giving the picture and saying the choice is yours, but we just wanted to advise you that the screens are controversial on an environmental platform, and that has some currency with some advertisers. 

Interesting, not the automotive guys. But some of them have said, thank you for your attention to that. We won't use them again, or a couple of them are taking them down immediately, which is nice, so that is an interesting strategy, and I've said to the other guys to just writing to the advertisers because I think the only way you can possibly affect change, if what you're saying is that the industry doesn't really understand how consumers are feeling, then if you write to advertisers and the advertisers keep coming back and saying, hold on, what's going on here? This is controversial, then that's another way round it really, I think. 

I gather much of what you're saying is, yes, there are ostensible controls in place at the council level and above that, but unless people such as yourself raise the issue, that the controls are just rubber stamp exercises and things go through.

Amanda Benzecry: I think that is the case because one of the primary directives is, you have to sensitively handle advertising and it should not add clutter into an already busy streetscape. Well, it does. Yeah, so I think to answer your question, yes, definitely. I think it will slip through unless there is a concern and an effort to remind the planning department of their obligations and of the planning policies, which is remarkable really.

You would have thought that they would automatically protect an environment, but I'm seeing countless decisions, not only with LED screens, but buildings and stuff, where they seem to put an interpretation on planning guidelines, which I just can't believe that they've done, and yeah so I think it is really important for locals to make an effort when there is the news and we keep an eye out and look at the planning applications when there is an application for a screen that as many people as possible know about it and can comment. 

You would think that because people from around the world come to London because they want to see the old buildings and heaths and everything else, the leafy areas that there would be a business concern from the tourist end that if you start to dot the landscape, particularly the areas that are supposed to be visually attractive, like there are lots of parts of London that, up by the airport and so on that it's not going to be this attractive anyways, but people won't come if it just looks like suburban Cincinnati or something.

Amanda Benzecry: I think to be fair, we haven't arrived at a situation yet like when you're traveling on the motorways in America and stuff like that, it's not as bad as that yet.

So I think one has to think ahead as to the more these things go through. That's the beginning of a slippery slope and we absolutely don't want that to happen. I suppose it's difficult, isn't it? When you don't know what it was like before they were there, you can't really judge how bad it is.

For example, the three screens that started off my campaign. I think people are used to them now and that's the danger as well that our tolerance becomes greater and all, and we just become complacent and then you turn around and suddenly there's another, do you see what I mean? But I don't believe it's bad enough, certainly in those tourist areas for the moment that it would have a detrimental impact on our tourist industry. I think there are many other things that have a detrimental impact on our tourist industry, but I can't honestly say that those screens would be one at the moment. 

Somebody did say, there was a petition comment that said, “We don't want to be like America” and some American people got very offended by that. And you do see them all along the motorways and, I think what is quite interesting is that some of the companies are being quite creative with the way they present these screens. So we're seeing some sort of architectural input that sometimes gives them validity. Again, with the rugby club, they decided to make the surroundings look like rugby player posts, which actually made it even worse because you've got these total posts, and just give it permission that somehow they're making some artistic contribution to the environment, which I don't think they are.

Do you get the flip side of the argument from the councils that this adds to our revenue base by doing this. If we don't do this, do we have to raise taxes?

Amanda Benzecry: Well, yeah. We actually live in a borough where that's a whole other argument, we pay too little council tax as a borough, and I don't know, to be honest, I haven’t done the calculations to know how much our council tax would increase if they didn't have any LED screens in the borough. I couldn't begin to comment, and so who knows, it could be a lot, could be a little, but I do think that this particular borough, being a conservative borough, always tries to keep the costs low unnecessarily, and that's an awful thing to say because I'm sure, there are a lot of people on the breadline, but the whole structure of council tax is a whole other podcast.

But on the face of it, yes, I understand how there is an argument that says, we need the revenue and just as the rugby club, their argument was if we don't have the revenue from the screens, we'll go out of business and that's really hard, and so therefore you're putting an environmental argument against a commercial argument and which one should win? My view would always be to find other ways to generate revenue so it's not so damaging to the environment that it has to be the environmental platform. There are always other ways if you weren't able to do it, you'd find another way. 

Is light pollution an issue at all?

Amanda Benzecry: It's interesting because I've read somewhere that one of the companies is talking about taking measures to mitigate light pollution, maybe turning them off at night. The rugby club screens go off at night blessedly, which is great. A lot of others burned through and I think so that it would be very helpful if there was a time limit set on these things, it would definitely be because it would calm things down in the evening. 

I would argue that but again, you see there's no proven evidence, but I would argue that the wildlife corridor that was opposite the nature reserve, the bat route because in this part of London, we have these green spaces that interconnect and therefore there is evidence that wildlife moves between them and yes, in the winter, there is no winter because the lights are still burning till 11 o'clock. So whether that confuses wildlife, I'm sure it does well, and apparently, the insect population is declining, et cetera. But to be honest, there's nothing, there's no comprehensive and absolutely categorical study that has said yes, over the last 10 years, we've seen the insect population decline by 20% because of LED screens.

Do you see what I mean? So it's really difficult. 

So the overarching thrust of all of this in many ways is not purely take down the ads don't want any more advertising, anything else. It's an in-your-face statement, but it's really about to let slow down and really look at what's going on and enforce the controls that are supposedly in place?

Amanda Benzecry: I think so, but also I do think that because of the size of them and things, I think that there are places for them, and I don't believe that the place is in London anyway, because of the size of it, and the small roads. I just don't think they should be in our city.

I think they can be in our airports and in our railways, absolutely. But not in the street with all the traffic and the mayhem and the pedestrians and the cyclists, and I just think they are effectively unnecessary distractions. 

Have you ever spoken to a JC Decaux, Global Outdoor, or any of those?

Amanda Benzecry: JC Decaux blocked me actually because obviously, the “I damage the environment, take me down” graphic which was produced here. I absolutely blitzed them with that and I replied to everything and all their clients and this one and that one, and in the end, I'm afraid I was blocked, and I think it’s still not enough, and I think advertisers actually need to take some responsibility as well, but you can understand how everybody's all excited about them and they look fab and the brands up there and all that. I get it. 

But I think what you said earlier is that people need to just slow down and think about what it's doing to our streets and people and the distractions and just the business of it all, and I think just to be a little bit more judicious with their choice of locations, I think is what one would hope for in the way moving forward.

So if people listening to this are in Southwest London in particular or elsewhere, and want to be supportive of what you're doing and maybe lend a hand, how would they do that?

Amanda Benzecry: I think they can certainly tweet to me, @takedowntheads. The Facebook page is actually called CARPA. Unfortunately, I wanted to drop that and change it, Take Down the Ads, but Facebook won't let me do that. So that is still called CARPA and I think there's an email address on there. So yeah, I think locally the entity is pretty well known, but also look at the petitions as well, and support the generic petition, which would be great, which is to get the government to consider the proliferation of these ads and, and more public consultation. 

All right. It was a pleasure to have some time chatting with you.

Amanda Benzecry: Thank you. I think I chatted at you, didn't I? 

That's what interviews are for!

Amanda Benzecry: Oh, that's okay then. Anyway, thank you for inviting me on, and I really appreciate it. It's been very nice. Thank you very much.

 

Alberto Scirocco, Leftchannel

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

While the people who wake up in the morning thinking about digital signage fully understand and appreciate the value and importance of great, effective creative, there are lots of end-users who don't quite get that part of it - and still think of display projects as AV technology exercises.

It's particularly true with large format display jobs - which are being green-lighted all the time based on lots of discussion around pixel pitch, scale and cost, but almost none about what will be on the display.

Alberto Scirocco is the Founder and Creative Director of the motion and design studio leftchannel, which is technically based in Ohio, but is largely virtual. His office, for example, is on the Italian Riviera. Poor fella.

I had a chat with Scirocco about the Wild West nature of the business, when it comes to design. We had a great conversation about  what makes displays interesting and engaging, and how the good ones have a function.

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TRANSCRIPT

Alberto, thanks for joining me. You’re off in Italy!

Alberto Scirocco: Yeah, that's right. I am in Italy right now. 

Can you tell me the background about leftchannel? 

Alberto Scirocco: We started leftchannel about 20 years ago and at the beginning, we just started as a motion design studio, so a more traditional format at the time. Did a lot of advertising, music videos, film titles, and a lot of our gigs were really artistic execution, and then, in the course of time, through the years, we've become more and more involved in actually crafting some of the messages that we're animating and putting in motion, and it's been an interesting road, and of course, markets change in a lot of different ways and technologies have changed in lots of different ways, and one of the things that have been interesting for us has been adapting to all the new stuff and we have an experimental nature.

I come from industrial design and fine art, and so I'm always gonna have this foot in both camps of being engineer minded, but also have a real passion for really expressive artistic work, and in the last several years, we have been being more and more focused on really trying to apply strategy to design and making sure that we were doing stuff that's useful and not just pretty.

This would be more motion, graphic design than video editing? 

Alberto Scirocco: Correct. We end up having to do a lot of production, but generally, our focus is design, and so when we do production it is because it's part of a piece that we'll have design and animation within it. 

I'm guessing if you've been at this for 20 years, that the demand to do things on screens has grown quite a bit because 20 years ago, digital signage was one of those things where you had to explain what it was. Now, there are so many screens out there and there are so many large format displays where it moves away from just being messaging to experientially engaging stuff where you really have to think about the creative. 

Alberto Scirocco: Yeah, exactly. I think that's part of what motivated this conversation is exactly the fact that, as you mentioned, signage used to have a very practical, very pragmatic mindset, you think about billboards and advertising and there's a very clear function of what those things are for. For a while now, screens have appeared in a lot of different places and it's bringing a lot more functions to the table, a lot more opportunities of what screens can do and some of them are really quite powerful, and so yeah, the demand has grown quite a bit. The nature of the request has grown quite a bit, because like you said, I think when I first started there were jumbotrons, and you were doing pixel animation, stuff that looked like 80s video games on this gigantic screen. So they were very delineated into what they were trying to do. 

But now it's wide open. You have art installations, you have places that completely define placemaking, completely defined by the screen and the experiences inside. So, it's a pretty exciting time. I have to say for this type of work. 

You're doing in Italy. leftchannel, I believe is based in Ohio, but you're virtual and you work around the globe, right? 

Alberto Scirocco: That's exactly right. We have people from all over and also when we were very much in Ohio, we still didn't work in our geographical area. So we’ve always done national, international work just because the nature of the work is unique, and so it's attracting people from all over. 

In the context of digital signage and large format display, what are some of your projects that people listening might be familiar with?

Alberto Scirocco: I think there were a couple of Times Square videos that are likely to have seen something we did for Disney and Exotica which were very visible and that stuff folds down that category of the more traditional type of work that you would think, but it's very noticeable, it's really big and flashy and you're really competing for eyes, but it was really fun, project because of the fact of combining animation, obviously they're very illustrative look and then very graphic components and having to support Exotica and the product and advertising. So we love things like that, briefs like this, where there's lots of complicated stuff that need to come together. That's stuff that we get really excited about. 

Have you done much in the way of permanent installations, like the creative for permanent ones? 

Alberto Scirocco: Yeah, there's actually a couple of large corporate pieces we have done for companies, which is also a very exciting and interesting field for us.

Once again, we tend to get involved in a lot of different things, but there was a common thread and the common thread is trying to build something that does something. I know that it doesn't seem like much, but it was actually the real thought behind it. We really love work that has a functional quality and sometimes even artistic pieces have a very functional quality, right? I refer frequently to the Samsung screen in Korea, which I'm sure you're familiar with, and it's interesting because some of that work obviously feels very artistic, but it has a great effect on that area. It defines that place completely. 

So there is a function to it and the function is not always directly advertising, which is actually one of the issues that I have sometimes in industry is how to directly focus on advertising. A lot of this signage is missing some of your opportunity, but yeah, we've done some large installations on corporate buildings. And like I said, that's also a very interesting field sometimes because you're trying to create something that is doing something for the audience, and so it's entertaining and interesting, it defines space, it does something for people passing by. It's still telling a story of a company and there's lots of different ways that you can do that. Sometimes it's a very explicit story, but sometimes it's just a complete composition of impressions as well. 

If I look on your portfolio page on the experiential side, I see did the Sheraton Dallas and Verizon stores and things like that. 

Alberto Scirocco: Yeah. So it's a very broad spectrum.

The Sheraton was a very fun project. We're still engaged in the project, we visit to refresh their content from time to time. Very interesting placement of these two structures that are wrapped with screens because being on the doorway, they have this almost like arch triumph feel, right, where they are greeting people on the way in but they're also are still addressing all the people on the inside, from the bar and restaurant inside the lobby. And so they have a dual function, so it's really interesting to create work that has that impactful effect on people that come in. But it also has an ambient peaceful environment feeling for the people that are on the inside. So yeah, that's been an extremely fun project.

We're actually rolling out a couple of new modules for that in the next couple of months. 

Your managing director, Candy, I was trading emails with her and she was saying how experiential is in something of a Wild West phase. What do you guys mean by that? 

Alberto Scirocco: If you think about advertising, in its infancy, there was a lot of defining what advertising could do and then if you fast forward all the way to today, there is a science to advertising. There's a lot of things that are just so clearly defined to the point that, unfortunately, there are also expectations on both ends, right? You just know how certain things are gonna look and sound, but it's because there's clarity of how people react to things and what works.

And in truth, there's always creative space in every place. But when something gets very refined and it's not in infancy anymore after a while, there's just a little bit less space. But digital signage is really in a sense in its infancy, there are still firsts that are coming out. And people are going at it in a lot of different ways. Sometimes they're going at it a little backward. So there's a lot of people that, for example, will look at a space and they'll say, we need a screen there, and that seems to make sense, because they're looking at in terms of hardware, “let's put an opportunity there” but obviously, the screen is just an opportunity. It's just an empty potential, and when people walk by a screen, they don't see a screen, they just see what's on the screen, and so it's odd how a lot of these installations are basically being done that way, without a real strategy of the necessary hat are we trying to do with this space, what do we want people to see? And then sourcing the technology that supports it. 

I know there are really a lot of situations where people are saying we're going to put something there and somebody will figure out what goes on. 

Yeah I've heard stories. I remember a friend of mine, who's a creative director for a digital shop in the Toronto area saying he got a call one day from an AV integrator who had put up a big LCD video wall somewhere, and the guy was asking, “Do you have any content we could put on this thing because we're lighting it up today?” Michael, my friend, was on the other end of the phone, just looking at the phone call going, “What the hell?” 

Alberto Scirocco: That actually happens a lot. You mentioned that and I know it seems crazy and I think to most people listening to this, it might seem like a very odd thing, but it actually happens so much that people contact us and ask us for blank content to have for those situations, just generic stuff to fill screens. So it's a little bit crazy, right? If you imagine that movie theaters did that, they just put up screens and, speaking of that, I tend to make this kind of comment, when's the last time you told somebody to go down to the theater to have a great new projector? 

People are very unaware of the technology and technology is transparent to the user. At the same time, I get it because I understand how people, especially coming for real estate, feel like if we had something here, they didn't want to lose that potential, and because, as I said, this is a little bit far west, because it is a little bit lost. Right now you can go to a number of people to have a conversation about creating an experience. You could be talking to an architect and that kind of makes sense. You could be talking to a company like us, a video company, you can be talking to a hardware manufacturer, you can talk to an integrator. So there are lots of different people you could be interfacing with and obviously, they're all coming from a different position.

You go to Best Buy to buy a TV, you walk out with a TV. There is an understanding that there's content out there you're going to see. Similarly, with subscriptions, the content is a given, and so with the same mindset, you go out, you buy a gigantic screen, maybe it's just an ultra-widescreen, and all of a sudden there's really nothing for that thing out there. That has to be made by somebody, and for us, sometimes that's amusing and entertaining because somebody hands you a very weird form, and then we suddenly have to figure out, who's here, what is the story, what kind of mindset there and how long ago as well, like we have to visit in reverse trying to figure out what we can make with space, and t, that can be fun for designers, but as you can imagine there was an opportunity in kind of planning things if possible.

You mentioned being somebody who has an affinity for things that have a function to them, do big experiential/engaging displays need to have a point, or is it enough to be wow factor/eye candy? 

Alberto Scirocco: I don't know that I can make such a blank statement. In my opinion, there's always a point, that is the point. I’m in Italy right now, which is where I'm from. There's a lot of art, a lot of public art. There's also a lot of decorated places. So most buildings are decorated, most gates are decorated. You just grew up with this idea that wherever you lay your eyes, there's going to be something pretty. Somebody is taking the time to decorate it, and but there's also a lot of functional spaces out there, especially modern spaces that tend to be very functional.

There's just a certain sense of what a strip mall looks like, and it's a very undecorated place, right? There are a lot of very pragmatic places. Certainly, something that is just pretty and the spectacle can really do quite a bit for space and that's a function, making something beautiful is definitely a function. So when I say function, I don't mean that automatically it is creating schedules or whatever, but the point that I make is that, if you are trying to make a place interesting, then maybe advertising is not the right thing to do with that space.

And for example, there's actually an airport that I won't mention. They went through a

very large renovation and part of the renovation, they put these two gigantic screens and all to do is show advertising and it's almost like an intentionally designed strategy to make people ignore the two biggest screens on earth because when you think about it, I don't know, there's a bigger softball than people in the airport. People are just bored and pretty much everything you're doing, the airport is waiting. So you're waiting in line, then you go wait in another line, and if you have nobody in line, you are just simply waiting, and so it'd be pretty easy to entertain those people, but that's the one thing that we have gotten really good at doing is not looking at advertising, and a hundred percent of retiring programming is really not a good use of that space, and so then it's a whole lot of people that are wasting a lot of opportunities. 

Is there a monetization model for this sort of thing where it is experiential as visually interesting, but you're doing something that's going to pay for this what is still pretty expensive tech? 

Alberto Scirocco: I think there are lots of them, I think there are lots of different ones. If you have a mall and more people are coming, that has value, and so there’s a monetization for the children area in the mall clearly iins the fact that you're creating traffic, you're attracting people who can spend time. So there's really a lot of monetization strategies and for a lot of different situations, and that's what I mean by function. Those are those situations where you can have that conversation and say, what is it that we want in this case?

I think sometimes people fall into that trap of directly monetizing something and then say we're just going to sell space. But that's not automatically something that is going to work. So sometimes you have to be a little bit more strategic about really what do we want out of this space and how is that going to be functional for us? And sometimes, traffic, the quality of the experience of the viewer. You think about theme parks and theme parks are money machines in a lot of different forms, right? People pay at the door to get in and everything in there is expensive, and then they're just gigantic shops but people are enjoying themselves. And so that's the point. You're trading something for something you've giving the audience, and you're charging them for it, and I think everybody's very comfortable with that. We all don't mind paying for it. That's a good win-win, consumers are comfortable with it.  So I think if you make a space worth people's times and people having a good experience then they're okay rewarding you, by spending their money on your experience as the product you offer.

So I think that's really what it comes down to. You're trying to make sure that it's a dialogue between two groups, and so you want to give the audience something that fits with their story. So where they are, where they're trying to do in this specific place, that makes sense for where they are and people are rewarding you.

So when you engage with a new customer or maybe re-engage with an existing one, what's the process? How do you sit down and set the intention for the project? 

Alberto Scirocco: Yeah, that's a varied answer because the customers are coming from lots of different places, and so sometimes you have people that come to the table with nothing. They just know that for example, I have a property and they want to embellish it or they want to create something that will give a sense of value or sometime they'll have a property and the city is asking them to invest in art and that's it, and they have to invest some percentage. So there are lots of different agendas, but you also have marketing teams and insights who have a very clear sense of what they're trying to do.

And it varies quite a bit, so it depends on really what people bring to the table. So when people have no real idea what they're trying to do, we try to take a really broad approach and explore the opprtunity, understand the space, understand the audience of the center, who could be there, who is there, what will be good for them? It's essentially a design thinking exercise, as you can imagine, it's just really clearly understanding who we are on our end and meaning us as the client, and so understanding, what they offer, what they can do that is positive and obviously, what they have to gain and then the same, do the same thing for the audience and then try to draw vectors, trying to understand really what's a place where both groups can overlap in a natural way and it translates into the design.

When you’re producing content for a client, how does the conversation go when you're talking about the sustainability, the shelf life of the piece? Because I've seen lots of work that looks fantastic, but it's there too long. It becomes stale dated. 

Alberto Scirocco: That's right, and that also changes greatly because it changes, based on how frequently people go to a place.

Going back to the example of theme parks, sometimes some of those experiences stay for a really long time, because you're not just going there every day, and so you might experience it twice in the arch of seven-eight years, and so it doesn't quite get old. But you put something in front of a mass transit terminal, like a subway and the same people now are going over twice a day or two, four times a day, every day, and now it's quite different, and again that's what really comes down to what we're talking about. So really understand the situation, understand the use. And then of course there's always the component of finance. What makes sense financially? 

So if the frequency is important, then you have to be creative about creating content that has an ability to change frequently, and as you said, that really is an application of the space or the use. They're all different. But that's something that definitely figures. We definitely try to be really focused on that as well. How frequently refreshes, how refreshes are going to come together and, is there going to be a need for drastically changing the content, because maybe it is like an array of different pieces, or is there a story that gets to be evolved? We have some corporate clients where we're busily redoing or modifying the piece every couple of years and which is a fairly long period of time, but it is an evolution of the same story. So it still satisfies the original brief has just new content, new footage, new design/ 

One of the workarounds for the cost of content and the challenge of keeping it refreshed is doing visualized data. There are several pieces out there in the world at airports, in public buildings, and so on. I'm a fan of the set-and-forget types that it's very efficient and everything else, but I'm starting to wonder more and more about its effectiveness because I just wrote about one at the Sydney Australia Convention Center yesterday, it's a 96-meter long display, and it'almost looks like a blue screen of death, but it's not obviously. Code running across the screen. It looks visually interesting. But I wonder sometimes when people are looking at this, do they know what they're looking at? And does it matter whether they know what they're looking at?

Alberto Scirocco: But, it's funny to some degree it doesn’t. Some of those pieces, they're really much more akin to art and video generative, something that is generative work that is generated by data. In the end, it's really more for our satisfaction to know that it’s generated by data, but it's a very plastic piece. It looks like what it looks like and if it's beautiful and it's interesting to see, then it's something you can watch for a period of time, it's like watching a waterfall. You can pretty much watch it endlessly because it's just naturally interesting, and so if you're able to recreate that natural sense of something that has just enough evolution, enough variety, but some qualities that are attractive, so that piece can stand forever, and then when it was generated by data or not, but it's irrelevant, and it's very transparent tp most users, it becomes really cool for designers. 

People get really excited sometimes, but it does but is they are really visible. I don't know if you're an audiophile, but I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to this stuff and I love audio stuff, and sometimes you're looking at an amplifier and that its distortion is so low and but in the end, you're not really hearing that. You just know it, so it becomes an intellectual appreciation that your body really just ignores.

Is it a little bit like buying a car in the old days, everybody would open the hood and look at the engine and all that, and now I suspect 99% of people never even flip the lid open ‘cause they don't know what they're looking at and who cares? 

Alberto Scirocco: Yeah, exactly. It just knowledge. It's nice to know about the product. It's nice to know what's happening behind it, but it doesn't necessarily affect your experience of it, but it's interesting. 

It's interesting work and it's cool that work is out there. It's cool that people have found a way to in some way, intellectually you can compare the fact that something moves very naturally, but is still generated by data and so you can say the way that the flow of data kinda ends up being similar to a form of chaos controlled chaos, which is similar to nature. This stuff is all really interesting in theory. In the end, if the piece is beautiful, then it's beautiful to look at, and then at the same time, as you said, it could also be puzzling but then, a lot of abstract work is, so I think there's a lot of good in that.

And as it's right application, like you mentioned, the airport is a good place for a piece of art, especially a piece of art that is constantly evolving. You have the perfect audience, in that case, to sit down and contemplate something that is just transforming, I think that's really a good application.

You mentioned the Samsung board in Seoul’s Gangnam area. There's been a lot of stuff on LinkedIn and I guess more broadly on social media about these anamorphic displays. Are you seeing a lot of demand for that from inbound customers? 

Alberto Scirocco: Yeah, we are. There's definitely conversations that come about it and all these things, it's always funny.

We were very experimental at the beginning of our careers as a motion design studio. I was very interested in really doing things just to see what you could do with the media, and it wasn't like a desire to be different. It was just like curiosity about what the software and the medium could do, because it was new.

So we did a video of photo parallax, which is a very trite technique today, but, in 2004, it wasn't, it was very new and we put it out there and it was a video for a DJ and it was the first video of MTV put on their online presence, and for a couple of years, it was a daily email of somebody asking us to repeat that and then years later, we did something else which was visit combining cell animation with 2d work, with digital work and trying to make, so another thing that also became very popular eventually, and then for a couple of years, it was everybody asking for the same thing, and so that's how it works. 

Somebody puts a waterfall in the lobby, everybody wants a waterfall in the lobby, and their first waterfall is super cool, it's a really cool idea and it's great. The 40th that’s out there, It's still cool, but it's not necessary. What basically ends up happening is that you, as an artist, find yourself getting constantly typecast, and when you're concentrating to break that typecast because what you are trying to say to people is, “I can do a lot of different things, and that was an idea, and I have more ideas”, but it's easy to shop for a thing that you see then for ones you don't see, and so I think that's what happens.  

That screen you mentioned, it’s very successful, it's very smart. It's also very simple, and it's really good, you know what I mean? It's just a beautiful, fun thing and I love to see it and that's what you want it to be. You want it to be something that you just said, I'd love to go see that in person, and so now everybody's thinking, “oh, that's it, that's the solution!” 

But you'll have to break it to them thatthe visual effect really only works from a very specific angle.

Alberto Scirocco: I know. Here is this massive thing that's visible for a really large surface, but it really only works for one slice of that. But when you are in that slice, it is pretty cool but it's a very good solution, and I think it's a great thing and that's what we were saying earlier about what you brought up about the wild west. It is wide open right now because when we do something that is going to be on a curved surface and everybody's going to be really stoked about that, and then there's going to be something else because there is a lot of space for exploration which, as I said, that's what's attracting us a lot, it's another opportunity to try stuff and do new things.

All right, Alberto. That was a great conversation. Just one quick, last question. If people want to know more about your company, where do they find you online? 

Alberto Scirocco: leftchannel.com. I know we went real deep on that one, but we have lots of work on Vimeo and work and other channels as well. But yeah, people come and check us out. 

All right. I appreciate you giving me some of your time. 

Alberto Scirocco: Thank you so much for having me.

 

David Weinfeld, Screenverse

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

Advertising is hard - and a lot of companies, from startups to majors, have found out the expensive way that creating and running a screen network that's funded through booked ad spots is no walk in the park.

There are lots of programmatic advertising options out there to make access to brand advertising easier for network operators, but a start-up called Screenverse is going down a different path - basically saying to a lot of companies that have screens: "You focus on what you're truly good at, and we'll take over the ad sales and management of your network."

So in the same way that some solutions providers are the outsourced digital signage operating units for companies like QSR chains, Screenverse is doing the sales and related work for companies that happen to have a screen network as part of much larger businesses.

A great example would be TouchTunes, which has 1,000s of digital jukeboxes in bars, with screens on them that support booked advertising. Screenverse now runs and sells the ad display side of the business, so TouchTunes can focus on what it is super-good at - music content curation, licensing and overall ops.

The company was started by a couple of guys I have known for a long time in this industry - David Weinfeld and Adam Malone. While less than two years old, started just in time for a pandemic and nuclear winter for out of home advertising, Screenverse is making money and recently announced a quasi acquisition deal to bring on the sales experience and business ties of The Danaher Group, a boutique media sales run by Sue Danaher, who many industry people will know from her days running the DPAA.

David and I go back to the days when we were consulting partners on The Preset Group. It was terrific to catch up, and get a better understanding of how his company fills what is a pretty obvious need in the market for companies that want to monetize the screens in their network, but struggle (or would struggle) trying to run ad sales and media operations within the walls of a company that otherwise knows very little about advertising.

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TRANSCRIPT

David, thank you for joining me. It's been a while since we've caught up. The first thing I wanted to ask is what you've been up to? Cause we've known each other for more than a dozen years and you've done a few things lately and then got into starting Screenverse. 

David Weinfeld: Yeah, absolutely.

So prior to starting Screenverse, I had been working in different startups, largely in the digital, out-of-home, and digital signage space. Most immediately, I was at Vistar Media leading their global supply-side sales team, and that was an incredible experience, really being able to see across the whole of the landscape, building out their enterprise software business that included their ad server and player software and building that out and enterprise relationships with companies like Top Golf, RedBox, etc.

But even as I was doing that and playing on a lot of the experience that I had in the industry, even dating back to our days at the Preset group, understanding that there continued to be this prevalence of networks that at their core weren't media businesses, and so they might've had thousands of screens in grocery or Walmart stores or in office buildings, but really weren't in a position to maximize the revenue that they could generate. 

They were seeing success by connecting to an exchange like Vistar, but I just saw so much more potential in the way in which they could monetize those assets, and as I started seeing that, I really got the idea for this vision of the business, Screenverse, playing on my time, working with you at the Preset group, consulting to major display manufacturers like Samsung and LG and others, but then really looking at the networks that I most enjoyed working with were networks that were just entirely new to the media side of the business, and as you and I both know, and most people listening to the podcast, there are so many stories that we can tell of the digital out-of-home networks that have come and gone. The skeletons of past networks that otherwise you would've thought, there's a foundation for success here, and sometimes it's the expectation of, if you build it, they will come, and the advertiser is just going to knock on our door, and what I've since learned is that's obviously not the case, and programmatic, there does open that door to a degree and create some of that opportunity, but really Screenverses exist to really blast that door wide open on behalf of our network partners, and so when I left Vistar pre-COVID, it was with a very clear vision of the business that I wanted to start.

I was lucky enough to found the business with another great industry professional in Adam Malone, a friend who I've known for over 10 years, and in doing so, we built up a company whose entire focus is on ad management and monetization for digital screen networks and really taking networks like Pursuant Health and there are 4,600 screens in Walmart stores nationwide. Our partners at Corner Media, Touch Tunes, Touch Source, Paramount, Smartify, Spin, and others, and really being able to best package and position their inventory, no matter however a brand or agency wants to transact against it, whether that be through a direct IO or by way of a programmatic channel.

If you had to do your elevator pitch, the 25 words or less of what all that you do, what would you say? 

David Weinfeld: Yeah, I would say that we turn our network operators' side business, which is bringing third-party advertising through their screens, to our main business.

So that includes everything from ad operations, media packaging, CPM management, optimization of deal flow and management of their inventory, both through the direct and programmatic channels, in such a way that's going to maximize the revenue that they see from agencies, brands, and demand-side platforms. There are some analogous companies in the digital space. Some of those companies are Inc.’s 5,000 fastest-growing companies in 2019. There’s a comany by the name of Freestar, who I really admire the way that they've grown and built their business. 

Cafe Media, Adpushup, are all examples of companies that exist to really demystify for publishers and companies, how to maximize their revenue generation and take advantage of existing technology. So we're not trying to reinvent the wheel. We're most certainly not trying to be a supply-side platform. But our goal is to be the best possible service layer, leveraging technologies like a Vistar or Place Exchange and others, and being able to build lightweight technology on top of that, whose entire purpose is to realize greater revenue and greater efficiencies in the sales and ad management process. 

So you've got companies who have screens associated with their business, for whatever reason, like during waiting rooms or in Touch Tunes that have digital jukeboxes that also have screens that you can sell ads on, but it's not their core business so effectively they can outsource all of that to you, to people who understand the game, understand the process and everything else, instead of trying to understand that internally and be a skunkworks and a business that spends 98% of its time on other matters, right?

David Weinfeld: That's exactly right, and what I've seen historically is that it's very hard for those types of businesses to hire really strong and capable media salespeople, and for good reason, because they're not media businesses, and so they ultimately are challenged from the outset, whereas it's much better and actually a lot less costly and creates a lot more opportunity and potential against their inventory to bring in a company like Screenverse where that's our entire focus.

I really like to think about companies and their capabilities. What can you be the best in the world? What is your superpower? Well, our superpower is monetizing digital screens in the physical world, and so if we have companies like Touch Tunes who are incredible in building out distributor relationships and building out the largest footprint of digital jukeboxes in the US and globally, or a company like Pursuant Health, who has kiosks in every single Walmart store nationwide for blood pressure, BMI assessments, and other major health assessments. That's what they're best at in the world, so let us manage the media business and the media side, and especially as programmatic becomes an increasingly important part of the digital out-of-home landscape, understanding the nuances of that channel and how best to navigate different SSPs and DSPs, agencies and the way in which they're transacting, whether direct or programmatic becomes really important. And it ensures that their inventory is getting in front of the right buyers and that they're seeing the greatest value from their inventory and by packaging partners together, we're able to create some really unique audience segments, such that, by itself, a network might not have the scale to get the attention of a major brand, like Starbucks or Unilever, but together complemented with other assets and other inventory, it tells a complete story.

So a digital out-of-home network, in something like let's say waiting rooms or whatever, they could do direct sales themselves, but they're going to have to hire people to do that. They could get a rep shop, but they rep all kinds of things that might not even be digital, or they could think that they could just use programmatic, but the reality is programmatic isn't going to fill their inventory. 

So you need to have this hybrid and you either do it internally, or you go to somebody like your company, right? 

David Weinfeld: That's exactly right, and there are a lot of companies who really media or being ad supported is their core focus. So you have companies like Doctor's offices, patient points, or you have companies in gyms, Zoom media, right? Those are not our target partners because they already have in-house sales teams and the entire business is built on how do I monetize those assets? But we really look at companies that otherwise might be in similar environments. 

So we have a partner in a company called Touch Source that is one of the largest providers of office building directories and screens and major healthcare offices to the tune of 10,000 screens nationwide, whose superpower is building out these great solutions and interactive experiences and managing tenant databases and directory user experiences, but there is an advertising opportunity there, and one that in order for them to hire an in-house sales team and think through all the nuances of how they marry that against their existing business, is we formed a partnership with Touch Source, such that we can really manage and own that and act as a consultative partner, and we certainly work together to strategically think about which screens within their overall portfolio of 10,000 make the most sense to bring third-party advertising to, and we're not recommending or saying that, “Hey, our expectation is to light up advertising on all 10,000” but we are in the process and we're at a hundred buildings today, but our expectation is to be in the not too distant future at a thousand buildings, where you're talking about is a network that has multi-million dollar media sales potential in a post-COVID environment, and one that otherwise would have struggled to access those dollars, even by just connecting to programmatic pipes like a Vistar Media or Place Exchange. 

You still need people, even though it's technology-based and there are automated workflows, you still need people to manage these systems and there are still relationships at the core of the transactions that happen, and so that's really what we say, there's an opportunity to connect to an exchange and gather low-level dollars but you understand CPM, you understand the dynamics of the demand and supply within the ecosystem and what the competitive landscape looks like, and all of a sudden we became not just a cost center to our business, but we realized success in partnership with our network operators, such that it hopefully is an easy decision for them to work with us. 

Yeah, it's been interesting to listen to this because I admittedly didn't fully understand what Screenverse did, but now I do, and one of the reasons I understand it is I've lived it. Years and years ago, I started a network in the pedestrian corridor system underneath downtown Toronto. There's like miles and miles of walkways with retail down there and everything, and hundreds of thousands of people. Great media environment, in a lot of ways, but this is 2003-2004, and people didn't get it. So I needed professional salespeople to do that for me, and I tried doing partnerships with companies who were already digital out-of-home, and while they understood the pattern and everything else, they just weren't fully invested in it because they had their own product to sell, and at the end of a meeting, they went, “Oh, by the way, we have this thing too. I'm not quite sure what it is, but are you interested? No? Okay. Bye.” 

It just didn't work. You need somebody who's focused. 

David Weinfeld: Absolutely. It's really where opportunity meets execution.

And the understanding and we're entering an environment and thanks to programmatic, and I really, especially the more time that I've spent on the demand side, I have a much greater appreciation for the work that Michael Provenzano and the earliest employees at Vistar did, and frankly, building out the programmatic market.

But now that they have, and now that it's much more robust and it's still in its early innings, there is an opportunity for networks like that to get access to dollars that they otherwise would have been challenged to, but to do it entirely on your own and not understand the advanced capabilities or options that are available to you, it is essentially leaving dollars on the table and programmatic is all about minimizing loss and maximizing gain, and so if you can be in a position where you can bring in the right partner, and again, we're a partner. We don't physically own any screens. We haven't invested capital in building out screens. So we don't have any interests that could otherwise be muddied by bringing on additional networks.

We curate the partners that we work with. We say more “No” than we do “Yes”, and it's really important that we think about how they fit within our portfolio, not just in the near term, but in the longterm and how our sales team, frankly, can be successful on their behalf because the last thing I would ever want to do is set unrealistic expectations, which I think can very easily happen, not just in this industry, but really any media space of well, I have this many millions of impressions that equates to this media value so I should generate a million dollars a month and that's nice on paper, and it's nice when you build out projections, but the reality tells a very different story.

And one of the things that, myself, Adam, our team prides herself on as being very open and transparent with our partners and setting very clear expectations of this is what we believe your network is worth, this is what we believe that we can deliver in terms of value. Our hopes far exceed those numbers, but we also don't want to go into a relationship where the numbers far outweigh what we think the market can bear. We do have very high hopes, or as optimistic as I think anyone in this space around where digital out-of-home can grow and what it can become in the media mix. But the reality is that programmatic is still a small part of digital out-of-home spending, it's around 5-6% of our overall spending, and thanks to COVID in industry and out-of-home in the US that was approaching $9 billion, got knocked down to between $6-7 billion and is fighting its way back. But I've long believed that in order to unlock the greater demand and revenue that should be coming into out-of-home in general, it's going to be by way of digital buyers. It's going to be by way of buyers who understand that, layering in contextually relevant digital playspace like with a partner of ours, the bulletin who was in a high rise, residential apartment buildings in major cities in the US, layering that with targeted campaigns, it's hard to beat for a D2C brand like a GoPro or Hell Fresh, or Uber eats, but right now they're not really thinking about that within their total strategy. That of course incorporates Facebook and Google and Instagram and connected TV, and so if we can get any access to those budgets, we should become a much more important, incredible part of the total media landscape.

Is there a distinction between endemic and non-endemic advertising at this point or is it all just like data flags? 

David Weinfeld: We really think about it on a network by network and kind of category of venues standpoint. So with the network, like Touch Tunes and, by way of our acquisition of the Danaher group and bringing on incredible talent in the form of Susan Danaher, former DPAA President, CRO at Ad Space (now Lightbox), SVP at Viacom, Victor Germaine, who was a VP at Screen Vision and major sales leader at GSTV and bringing those individuals into our business, but their specialization and where they really focus their energy were on vice categories naturally like beer and alcohol, who were endemic brands through the bar and restaurant category, just as much as you might say for an office building network. That would be B2B financial services or a retail-based network. Endemic brands are much more CPG-focused, but we do see also across all categories because we see a lot of otherwise non-endemic spend from insurance companies and others that you might not immediately connect with a bar and restaurant environment, but who make a ton of sense, just the nature of the audience. 

So it really depends upon the brand and agency and what their objectives are. If their objective is to really be where the product is sold, well that's why we do a lot of business with Anheuser-Busch and Heineken. But if you're also thinking about a brand that has a relationship by category adjacency, or just reaching that audience. So think about any of the brands like Uber, Lyft advertising in a bar or restaurant, or a brand like a USAA advertising in a Walmart location, the product itself isn't sold there, but certainly, the constituency that they're looking to reach, that they target by way of other channels are very present in those environments, and so we have a mix, but it really speaks to how we position different networks, and the reality is when you undertake a business like Screenverse, you end up having networks across a variety of categories. It's our responsibility and job then to figure out how best to package and curate that, not just for ourselves, but for the market et all. 

So we're not just going to an agency and presenting a disparate menu of offerings but we understand their client mix. We understand the way in which they buy and what their objective is. So we might just say, “Hey, for the types of brands that you represent, and the fact that you're looking to reach a millennial audience, then you're best suited reaching them in bars and restaurants or reaching them in high rise apartment buildings in cities like Chicago, New York, and DC” versus a brand like USAA, that's looking to reach a much broader population across the entire country, and that's where you start pushing them into inventory, like in Walmarts or grocery stores or convenience stores where they can segment potentially against an older demographic or certainly a broader segment of the overall population.

So if I did a spreadsheet exercise of costs of taking ad sales and media operations, in-house versus outsourcing to Screenverse, how is that going to look? 

Is it going to be more costly to do it internally or more costly to do it through you guys? 

David Weinfeld: Yeah, so we actually, in many cases do this modeling with our partners and it's definitely more costly internally to make that happen. But the other aspect is even if the model shows that it might be less costly, by way of, “if I hire three people, I can build up this sales organization”, you have to look at it and say, what is the success you're going to yield? And that to me is even more important than just doing your cost exercise and saying, all right, I'm going to need two senior sellers and an ad operations person to build up any type of sales business unit, but that alone isn't really going to be successful and do those individual sellers. It's not an easy thing to find people that know the digital out-of-home space and know how best to navigate out-of-home agencies and digital agencies, and are they going to be equipped to really tell a story that's large enough to get your network noticed, but that's also why we look to have our model based on success, such that we're not a hard and fast cost against the business at the outset, but we see success when our partnerships see success. So ours is really a percentage of revenue-based model, such that it's not, you need to make this large upfront investment. We actually believe as much as you do in the potential of this, and we're going to invest a lot of time and energy upfront to get our team trained upon the inventory, to package the inventory, to leverage our relationships across the industry to tell your story and activate you on programmatic platforms if you haven't done so, help you build out those integrations, if you don't yet have them.

And so there's a lot of nuances in that, but I would look really to what's the totality of success that a network could realize trying to go it on their own versus trying to partner with a company like Screenverse, and what we found with a lot of those partners is it becomes a very large challenge to try to do it on their own. And I give everyone the absolute best of lock-in and I support any network that wants to build out their own sales team and thinks that if it's core to your business and you can be the best in the world at selling your inventory, then you absolutely should be the ones to do it. But if it's something you're trying to do on the side, and it's really not part of your brand value, it's not part of your overall culture, overall story, I've seen that very hard and it feels like an extra appendage that doesn't necessarily fit within a company. What we can do is say, we're going to be here and consult you. You don't need to worry about becoming experts in this because guess what? We're thinking about this day in and day out, hour after hour, and we're going to meet with you regularly. We're going to provide you with updates. We're going to demystify the industry in a way that I'm hopeful that, even if we have a network relationship where after two or three years they go, you know what, you've helped us so much, we've actually now had the confidence and belief that we can do this in house, I still see that as a successful outcome because we delivered on the promise of helping them grow their business. I, of course, would love to be with our partners for 10+ years and really build out the highest level of success. But if they decide to bring that in-house, after we've helped them level up their understanding and connections with them, that's successful. 

Yeah. Everything you said is so spot on and I wanted to say something about cultural fit and you did, just cause I have seen that as well, where you see a media operation bolted onto the side of a very traditional company and I've watched it play out and it almost never works just because, as one person described it, we’re the land of misfit toys, you just don't fit! 

David Weinfeld: What's funny too, and I look at it this way and I wake up every day energized by trying to change this mindset. But even if you look at out-of-home overall, so out-of-home is a marginalized part of the media industry. Overall, it really occupies sub 5% of total media spend. When you look across all channels, then within out-of-home, digital out-of-home is the minority of revenue. That's certainly changing and shifting in the US and other parts of the world. But then within digital out-of-home, digital place-based, this is very much the marginalized aspect then is looked at as a subcategory, knowing that digital billboards take up a lion's share of dollars.

And so I wake up every single day excited because I'm in the area that is that diamond in the rough that has the greatest potential that is maybe being undervalued and underutilized, but it's growing, and it's in an area that I do believe in its efficacy and value, and there are so many studies and so many data points that I know you've read, and the readers of your blog that you published, that people have talked about on this podcast of the efficacy of marrying digital out-of-home with mobile, with social, with connected TV. I just believe in my heart of hearts and I know it's taken longer in many cases than a lot of people have expected. But I so directly believe that once more people start seeing those studies and realizing the results for themselves and leading into space and thanks to programmatic and DSPs, like the Tradedesk and Verizon media and EMOBI and Adelphic and others leaning in and ushering those digital buyers that have access to larger budgets into our space. That's really what's going to drive a sea change and that's what I wake up each and every day, knowing, we're nowhere near where we need to be or where we can be even as a company or as an industry overall. But boy, if I can be part in any way, shape, or form of ushering that forward for my team, my partners, the industry overall, that's what drives me because I look at it as if we can bring more revenue to our company that otherwise looked at advertising as this headache, or this is a tough thing to manage. 

But all of a sudden, by working with us, they're seeing seven figures of revenue and they're much confident with understanding, right? It can be hard when you look at programmatic and you see peaks and valleys of revenue and disparate spending come through, and it can be very confusing. But once you have someone that can walk you through the dynamics of how people are going in and spending and how we build deeper relationships with them and what's happening indirectly. Now all of a sudden you're part of a business that, maybe you're not driving the car, but you're a much more confident passenger. And when you're a much more competent passenger, the great news there is you're much more willing to then make investments and build out your network and build out your infrastructure, and ultimately that benefits the networks, it benefits the advertisers, it benefits the SSPs. It benefits the DSPs. And that's what really drove me to start this business and why, when I was at a company in this space, like Vistar that was innovating and driving change and was very successful, that I just felt this push, that there was an opportunity for someone with my background and experience and with Adam and now bringing on Susan Danaher and Victor Germaine and our larger team and the expertise that each of them brings to the table, we have the opportunity to really build a company that has staying power that can ultimately bring an enormous amount of value and also create some efficiencies for SSPs or create efficiencies for networks that they otherwise might have been challenged to find on their own. 

Are you bootstrapped? 

David Weinfeld: So we've raised a small friends and family pre-seed round of just around $400,000, but actually we'd been profitable in 2020.

We officially incorporated the business at the end of April 2020. We were profitable in 2020, we're profitable today and, we're thinking about it what does raising funding against this business look like? And we look at it, not as a requirement, but as a mechanism to accelerate growth. You know the most important pillars of our business are great people and great network partners. 

So the deal you did with Danaher Group, it's probably more like a joint venture sort of thing in a lot of ways? Because obviously, you couldn't buy them out in the traditional sense of a private equity deal or something. 

David Weinfeld: Yeah. So I would definitely categorize it as more of an acquihire, and so really being able to bring those individuals in-house. Thanks to our growth and thanks to the revenue that we build, our equity has value. So there are definitely mechanisms within our partnership that involve that, and so that the Danaher group team that's now joined with Screenverse can participate in the success and growth, and that's really ultimately how we were able to put that together, and it was on the back of getting to know Sue for many years in this industry and really aligning on the vision.

I had such admiration for the business she had built at the Danaher group and the importance of the relationship that she and Victor and their operations lead, Taylor had with touch tunes so much so that they were truly an extension of that company, and I said that's so much in line with the vision that we have for the partnerships that we form on the supply side at Screenverse, and we would love to bring your leadership, your knowledge, your experience into our business, and oh, by the way, we get an incredible network in the form of Touch Tunes, and we can just have that part of our overall growth and at a time where bars and restaurants have been challenged in light of COVID.

But now that we're starting to come out and restrictions have all but been eased across the entire US, Los Angeles and California were the final metropolitan areas that had any restrictions on bars that have since been lifted and really say, “Hey, bars and restaurants are hopping right now”, and so if I'm going to double down on any piece of inventory, it's going to be in that segment. And if I'm going to double down on talent, it's going to be with people like Sue Danna, her Victor Germaine, and Taylor, and that team and their knowledge and so much of what they bring into our business is fueling growth, not just against Touch Tunes, but against all of our partners, and as we bring on additional sales directors, as we bring on additional operations, team members, it's really all geared toward how do we maximize success for the network partners that we work with and how do we ultimately build campaigns that are going to drive tangible results for those brands, such that they continue to invest, not just in us, but in digital out-of-home and digital place-based in general

All right, David, that was terrific. We could have talked a lot longer, but I'm afraid we gotta wrap this up. Great to catch up with you. 

David Weinfeld: Yeah, it was absolutely great to catch up with you, Dave. You're someone who I have absolutely, in the past, love working with, who I have such great respect for in this industry.

Thank you for having me on the podcast and really look forward to being able to continue having these conversations and sharing the growth story of Screenverse with you and your audience.

Remco Veenbrink, VideowindoW

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

If you spend any time on Linkedin, or even platforms like Instagram and Twitter, you've likely seen quick videos of LED displays somewhere in Asia that are using anamorphic, three-dimensional creative to get viewer attention.

We've seen spaceships look like they are emerging from the screen. Giant sloshing waves inside what looks like an aquarium. Huge robot hands reaching out from the screen. And on and on.

It's becoming a thing. But it is not a terribly well understood thing.

Which is why Larry Zoll from Sensory Interactive, which does what it calls dynamic real estate, reached out and suggested the emerging creative trend would be a great thing to explore in a podcast conversation.

Zoll is the managing director for technology and innovation at his firm, and has been fielding questions and requests about this stuff for a long time now. What's clear is that not many people understand what's going on and how it works. For example, customers ask if the LED display technology they have in place, or are putting up, will support the anamorphic creative pieces they want to do.

The short answer is yes, because this is all about the creative, and not about the display hardware.

We had a really good chat about what this visual trickery is all about, how it's done, and its limitations. If you watch 10 videos out of China and South Korea that have anamorphic creative, you'll notice nine of them are shot at a very specific angle. Because the visual effect may only work from that angle. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Remco, thanks for joining me. Can you give me a rundown on what Video Window is all about? 

Remco Veenbrink: Yeah. Thank you for having me, David. Video Window is a glare controlled with a media platform. You can compare us to segmented tintable glass, which doesn't exist. So it's tintable glass with segmentation and those segments work like addressable pixels and with those pixels, we control the transparency of the window. But as we show content, we can actually show interesting videos, graphic art as glare control. So our system controls the transparency of the content, and we're developing all kinds of nice content for Video Window to work like glare control.

So you can think of gamification. We already had Pong. We're now working on Space Invaders which can be controlled by passengers because our main target area sector is aviation right now in any public transportation hub. Based on QR codes, people can then grab their controller and play Space Invaders, but it is glare-controlled, and we also have generative video art. It's all glare control. 

So it's smart building glass that doubles as video walls. This would be a quick way of saying it? 

Remco Veenbrink: If you change the word “wall” for “window”, then yeah.

It works like a video wall, but it’s transparent and that way we don't need to be in front of a wall, we can be embedded into the glass, and we actually serve people, the planet, and profit. We can also reduce the CO2 emissions of a building and help in reducing the carbon footprint of that building. So there's the tintable glass aspect.

So what's the underlying technology. Is it switchable glass stuff or is it LED embedded in glass? 

Remco Veenbrink: It's liquid crystal. That's the core, it's a thin-film transistor liquid crystal display. So it's TFT. We started out with a twisted nematic, so TN LCD, and we recently developed a high-resolution display based on TFT. 

So when you say high resolution, for a typical structural glass panel that you're using would you be realizing full HD resolution or 4K, or how does all that work? 

Remco Veenbrink: It's 2K resolution right now, and we're happy to work together with an OEM who can actually build that for us, because before we had a 15 millimeter, like half an inch sized pixel that was a rather big pixel, but this new generation of Video Windows is built together with an OEM. 

Okay. So you're - I don't want to say approximating, it’s the wrong word - but the visual experience is not that much different from what you would see on a conventional LCD display then, in terms of resolution? 

Remco Veenbrink: Nope. It's a 2K square pixel resolution. So that's a bit different from a normal LCD display. They are subdivided into subpixels. So you have RGB sub-pixels, and we don't have those. We have square pixels, it’s a monochrome pixel. 

Is there any opportunity to go to RGB or is it always just the way you do it and it makes the most sense to be monochrome? 

Remco Veenbrink: RGB subpixels take away so much transparency that you need a backlight, and as we use the exterior light, the sunlight, the daylight as our backlight. So we wanted to make it as transparent as possible, and with RGB subpixels it's dark. It's pretty dark.

With LCD technology, I don't think we will get an RGB transparent screen that could work as glare control the way we use it. We've seen some interesting developments with the electoral wedding which was done by a Dutch professor. He came by, he showed the technique, but that's years out before that will be available.

That's a very fundamental technology that's still under development and that's a CMYK solution, and that means as there is no black in there it's pretty watercolorly still but it's an interesting technique. I don't think that with TFT LCD, we will ever see an RGB transparent display that can be used in the way that we do.

So using the natural sunlight as a rear illumination of the display, so to speak, what happens at night? 

Remco Veenbrink: Then our backlight is gone. Predominantly, we’re glare control so we embrace the sun. We embrace the daylight, instead of fighting it, whereas video walls would actually increase the lumen output and really put more nits in there. We actually have a higher contrast ratio when there's more sun. On the new panel, we're testing it and averaging it out but it's around 8 Watts per square meter, and we average this out because usually, you don't show a full black as an image. So when we put it as a full black image, it's around 8 Watts per square meter, and that's so little especially if you compare that to those high brightness screens, they become more efficient over time but that's 800 Watts easily per square meter.

So if you address the areas that we aim for 100-400 square meters, you're looking at some serious energy consumption, and yeah, for us the 200 square meters you could still run that on a normal outlet. It's very energy efficient.

So if I'm sitting in a departure lounge at the airport in Rotterdam, what am I seeing on this window glass? What's showing, and how does it look? 

Remco Veenbrink: Right now, we have content agreements with the local museum, with a local art Academy and they all provide content for us. So it's a lot of cultures, it's a lot of art. We also have poets that provide work. So we have poetry that shows, we make that with the motion graphics into an interesting film and we have a Pong playing, so you can log in with your phone and play pong and that's all in a mix. So we have five-minute mixes. So we show commercial content, we show artistic content and we show gamification, and yeah that's how we add value, and next to that, we also have a close connection to the internal communication department from the airport who uses our screen to address certain messages to passengers, for instance, all the COVID measures, we run that. In every other film, we show those measures that people should take into account. 

And you show operational stuff as well, like “You're at Gate 5 and this is a flight to..”, that sort of stuff? 

Remco Veenbrink: Yeah, that's the new stuff but we haven't installed our new high-resolution screen yet. In two months, it will be installed, and there we can show flight information and wayfinding because that is too detailed for pixels with a 15-millimeter size, and even though we have a 25 square meter set up, you can only show one flight at a time and people like to have an overview. But that's definitely coming and that's what we're building right now, is the API integration to have that flight information shown on our hardware. 

And you mentioned you're primarily focused on mass transport, particularly airports. Why are they interested in your product?

Remco Veenbrink: Good point. Their main issue right now is non-aviation revenue, making more cash flow. So they need more money, and we can help them with increasing their non-aviation revenue by showing commercial content. So we have a threefold advantage. We have ad experience cause we're mostly at addressing the gate areas.

So we can add more experience for the passengers by showing artistic content, gamification, and interactive content. We can actually reduce the CO2 emission by helping the climate control system and by being more transparent which allows for daylight to be a bigger part of the basic illumination of that area. So we can help save energy, and then with the commercial content, we can help add non-aviation revenue so that we are addressing their biggest pain, that profit part. But, they all have to also live up to their goals, which is reduced CO2. 

When it comes to the media side of things on monetizing these window displays, do you get pushback because A) it's only in black and white, and B) it's only running during daylight hours.

Remco Veenbrink: The daylight hours, we can address. It's all proven technology. It's just not so sustainable and we really like the sustainable aspect of our proposition. The color, I tried to explain to them that if you have an 85-inch commercial content full-color all over the place anyway, do you really want a 100 square meter display to be full-color? Your entire terminal will be blended or washed away in all kinds of colors. 

Color is very intrusive apart from it being actively lit or, 

The fact that it's black and white allows for such a big screen to be part of your building. So it integrates really nicely and even has a soothing effect with our generative video content. We show biophilic design, so we show leaves and flowers and we imitate the canopy of a dense forest where sunlight is broken up, and we create a very nice shadow pattern, which is moving, which is very soothing and that shimmering light really is calming down the passengers. 

This is an added value that really doesn't need color. But there's a lot of communication that we can do with being monochrome and a lot of premium advertising is still done in black and white by choice because it just has a more premium feel to it.

Do airports typically use a tintable electronic glass of some kind, or is this new to them, regardless of whether it has the media capability that yours has? 

Remco Veenbrink: Tentacle glass is being implemented, I've seen it in a couple of American airports. That's done by either Sage or View, those are two big players. One is American, the other is French. 

Tintable glass is a good solution. It's just that it's pretty expensive, right? Your return on investment is taking pretty long. So with our solution, our segmented tintable glass pays for itself immediately because we offer it in a leasing option, so the costs for leasing are way below the profits for advertising. So actually we don't ask people if they want to buy our stuff, we ask them how much money they can make from their glass. 

So you work with some sort of a leasing company and if an airport comes to you, you are able to set something up for them?

Remco Veenbrink: Yeah, that's how we do it. We work with the Global Leasing Company, or at least in the States, that's how we do it. So we reach out to them. We have a potential client in Luxembourg, for instance, how can you finance that, then they do their jobs and yeah, they find a leasing solution, and then we can offer it to them, and then, most of the time that's done pretty quickly. They take one week maybe, and then we can make them an offer, and then together with the media department of the airport, we can assess the media value for them, and then we can each see how far we can make a profit for them and how fast. 

And is it typically like most airports would have or at least substantial airports would have a media partner that owns the out-of-home media rights for that property, like a JCDecaux or whatever. Would they be the ones selling this space? 

Remco Veenbrink: It would be a collaboration. We had an airport that already had that concession in place. Decaux is a big player, Clear Channel in the States and there are many more players. Some airports still do it themselves. They don't have an intermediary agency in between. But we would work together with those players and agree to make an agreement. 

We saw in Europe, here in the airport that really like our solution for the added experience was to be installed near the security area where we also proposed a nice film for the security to show how it's done, those instructional films, but we had some nice content creators, and the airport really wanted it because they also had a glare control issue near the security area. So they just came to our table and said, “The two of you need to fix this.”

We see Decaux as a partner. We are not the media agency, we can turn any content into glare control and that is our main differentiation, and we don't have a sales department that reaches out to advertisers on a daily basis.

What about control of the displays, in terms of airports again Decaux or the airport themselves will have some sort of a content management system, whether it's Decaux with a BrightSign, or I don't know whether they're using Omnivex or whatever it may be. Do they work with your CMS or do they have to use your content management software to update your Video Window display?

Remco Veenbrink: The latter, because we need to adjust the content to work as glare control. So our content is the active layer, controlling the amount of glare control, controlling the amount of transparency. It's a good question by the way because that's what we're now working on with our software engineers, to create an API that can fetch content and then on the fly, adjust it. 

The challenge there is that our screens are depending on where they're placed, but they're so big that architecture and architectural elements like pillars and columns, and what have you are breaking up the display, the canvas, and the building is part of the canvas.

So what we want to automate, and this is under development, is to do an automated plan and scan, where we make sure that crucial areas are always shown at the unobstructed areas of our screen and logos, they cannot be obstructed by a pillar, eyes shouldn't be blocked by column, that type of intelligence. That's what we're now implementing in our content management system. Other than that, we have an editor standby that can do that on the fly, but if we want to move into programmatic advertising this has to be developed and that's what we're doing, but that comes with a lot of convolutional neural networking image recognition, it’s pretty next level. 

Complicated stuff, yeah. So speaking of complication you're having to come at this from a few different angles, and from what I can see from your background, you've got one founder, who's a Banker, and the other founder who's has a fine Arts degree, but you're dealing with structural glass design, you're dealing with the engineering of sound baffling at an airport, you're dealing with software for glare control and you're dealing with media displays. It's very involved. 

Remco Veenbrink: It's a lot of challenges, yeah, but we have great advisors. You know this is something across multiple sectors: glass construction glass is a world of itself with a lot of demands and safety regulations. We don't pretend to know that, but we do know people who are fully an expert in their field, and yeah we tied that all together. So we have the expert of liquid crystal display so he knows that world. Glass construction we work with Bill Kington who is really open to innovation. That's a strong name. The content management systems, we work with the best of the brightest from the technical university here in terms of computer engineering. 

So that is what we are developing in-house. We always reach out for the best expert available, and if he's not available, we make sure that he gets interested in what we're doing. 

So would you say you're a software company primarily? 

Remco Veenbrink: Yeah. Now that we start using high-resolution screens, we decided to be agnostic in terms of our display components and we set up a whole spec sheet. It's built on our spec sheet but we're not intending to build displays, that's a whole industry in itself and pretty challenging and its margins. There's only a couple of OEMs left, so it's all consolidating.

Yeah, that is a market, and once again, there we just reached out to the best and they know how to do it. 

So if you're going to sell against some of the other technologies that are emerging out there like transparent mesh LED and LED on a film that can be adhered to window glass, and then even LED embedded in glass, what's the argument for your product versus those options? 

Remco Veenbrink: Those options are great, but they’re not glare control. So you can’t put them in the sun and try to read them. If you're looking against the sun with those structures, it's not happening. 

If the Window did not have any active glare control happening, is it 100% transparent, or is there a kind of sense of haze or how does it look? 

Remco Veenbrink: It's transparent, but as you probably know liquid crystal displays work with polarizers. So you don't have a hundred percent transparency, but the transparency that we have is very much comparable to glass that is implemented in buildings these days.

It's tinted in some ways?

Remco Veenbrink: There's always a tint in the glass, and there are coatings in the glass which are fixed. So the thing with that, and the great advantage of tintable glasses, for instance, in the winter, you don't want the block the heat. You can actually use the temperature that the sun produces in the infrared spectrum to warm up your terminal and that can really save a lot of money and really save a lot of energy and really help reduce the carbon footprint. So if you could switch on and off the ecoating, that would be really interesting. 

That doesn't exist. So Ttintable glass can really help to warm up in the winter, and in the summer we play our content a bit darker, and then it's tintable glass and you can really help to bring down the energy usage to a good place.

Are there any limits in terms of display performance or updating speed? So for instance, you can do 30 frames per second only?

Remco Veenbrink: We can do 60 frames per second, which really makes it stand out from the others that use the electrochromic process, which is a chemical process where ions go back and forth. That takes minutes. So you know, that will not bring any video footage to the window anytime soon, but there are developments which also use liquid crystal display. For instance, Merck is developing tintable glass based on that technology, and we were in touch with them.

We're in touch with the founders of that technology. Actually, they already exited the company, so those are our advisors. So these guys who have developed this for Merck are also advising us on how to do it, and yeah, they don't do segmented, they do mono cells, big mono cells, but switching time is indeed much faster.

And then there are suspended particle devices from research frontiers which also take seconds to alter the state. Nothing that we know of is as fast as our technology, which is 60 frames per second, and that allows for video.

And in terms of updating, if there was some sort of an alert for say a gas leak in an airport terminal and your CMS is tied into the alerting system, would it take minutes for that alert to show on your screen, or would it be as instantaneous as it would be on a normal digital sign?

Remco Veenbrink: No, we run with their signage systems. So, they can overrule any content that we’re playing, and they can own their communication tool, obviously.

So it's not going to take, as you were saying where some of these other technologies take several minutes for a new message to build on the screen or whatever. if there's an alert, it's an alert and it happens right away. 

Remco Veenbrink: Yeah, we can install that. We haven't installed that yet, but yeah our technology allows for that. That's like an API integration where they have pre-set images or notifications that they can then push, and when they push something, it will over overwrite or override any other content. 

Okay. So you're in Rotterdam's airport right now. Are you fully in there or do you just have a demo?

Remco Veenbrink: No, we actually have two installations. One is facing Northeast and the other is facing Southeast. 

And that's like one exit away from your offices, right? 

Remco Veenbrink: Yeah. 

And you're also in Amsterdam’s Schiphol? 

Remco Veenbrink: The funny thing is that the Schiphol group actually is the owner of Rotterdam airport.

So it’s a small country and the Schiphol group has several airports, amongst which also JFK Terminal 4 and Brisbane. So yes, we are talking to the Schiphol group, and they're all very eager to come over in two months to see our new installation, a high-resolution installation. So yeah, we have high hopes there.

So if I wanted to see Video Window right now, I would have to go through Rotterdam airport? 

Remco Veenbrink: Yeah. For now, that's true. But we're also talking to a museum in Philadelphia that’s interested. We are discussing some installations with airports in the States. But due to Covid, it’s a bit quiet on that front. 

What's the state of the company right now? You’re obviously a startup. How big are you? How are you funded? 

Remco Veenbrink: Oh, we're bootstrap, self-funded so far and any investors out there can reach out to us. 

We are nine people at this point. As you said, there are two founders, and we have seven software engineers and they're all doing honors programs, and so they're the best of the brightest and we're very happy with our team, but we're looking to expand. 

We to set up shop maybe even the States, we were reached out by several system integrators who would like to represent us in the States and in Canada. Also in the middle East. So it’s starting to move fast now, and that's really great to see because as a startup, you have a dream, you build on it. That's great to see that it’s catching on and South by Southwest also really helped in that sense. We were pitching there. We were second in the future of travel still.

So that was a very nice experience, and we were also actually approached by a American investors. So we are discussing raising money. 

Yeah, there seems to be a fair amount of investor money out there right now. I get phone calls and emails. 

Remco Veenbrink: Yeah, indeed. Yeah, interest is so low that, if you have money you better invest it into something. And yeah, it's a very likable product. It's pretty cool. It has a high wow factor. It serves people, the planet, profit, and it gets noticed. 

That's great. All right, Remco, thank you very much for spending some time with me. 

Remco Veenbrink: Yeah, Dave, thank you very much for doing this podcast. 

 

 

 

ACE Roundtable: Personalization In DOOH And Digital Signage

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

As vaccination rates climb and we can seriously look at getting back to some normals in our daily lives, there's a lot of discussion happening around what consumers will expect, and accept, in terms of personalized digital marketing.

Things like appointment-based shopping and personalization grew more prevalent because of lockdowns and necessary pivots by brands, and consumers are now somewhat conditioned to services that are more tuned to their needs. 

But at the same time, there are still lots of concerns about things like being tracked in some way by technologies.

We talked about all this on a recent roundtable panel organized by Advocates for Connected Experiences, an umbrella organization that involves numerous industry associations and bodies that touch on advertising, retail, marketing and design.

I moderated the session, and noted how great it was that the gender balance was completely off, with one guy and a bunch of super-smart women.

My panelists included:

• Kim Sarubbi, who chairs ACE
• Debbie Haus, Retail Touchpoints
• Kym Frank, Geopath
• Cybelle Jones, SEGD
• Beth Warren, CRI
• Laura Davis-Taylor, InReality
• Stephanie Gutnik, Verizon Media

This is a special edition of the podcast.

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