On the subject of DOOH pricing, CPM, etc.
My last post was over a month ago, but it was an important one, discussing the results of our most recent survey on DOOH advertising pricing. After publishing that article, I got a number of calls and emails from operators of what I'd consider to be fairly large DOOH advertising networks. All of them wanted a more detailed analysis of the numbers, and an opinion on whether they were reliable. However, none of them contributed to the results by filling out the survey in the first place. All seemed a bit... irritated on the phone (it's harder to pick out that nuance in an email). One possible explanation might be that our data suggests that some DOOH advertisers are overpaying for their current placements, which could theoretically drive actual pricing done. But if that were the case, I'd be expecting more holiday cards from big brands thanking us for helping them lower their ad spend.
Image credit: Quinn Dombrowski on Flickr
"I have no idea about ad sales..."
Not one but two VC-backed startups called in recently to chat about their plans to launch the next world-dominating, advertising-funded digital signage project. Neither management team included any experienced ad sales people. One of them didn't even know what media buyers and planners were. But despite that, they both mentioned Coke, Pepsi, Apple and Nike as potential advertisers. Yikes. I've been saying this about once a year since around 2006, but not having ad sales experience is the #1 reason why DOOH advertising networks fail. Maybe it's time for yet another refresher article on the subject :)
Build-vs-buy, redux
Likewise, I had a build-vs-buy conversation with a pretty business-savvy group recently. Way back in 2010, I figured the market was mature and established enough to put this kind of inane discussion to bed, but I was wrong. And I see that Ken Goldberg was lucky enough to have a similar discussion (and blog about it) just recently. All I have to say is this: if you're thinking of writing your own software from scratch, you should probably pick a less saturated market.
In the digital signage world, the more things change, the more they stay the same. On the downside, that means that there are still loads of crazy people in our industry. But on the upside, it also means that costs continue to fall, and our approaches for identifying and moving past all of the crazy people remain relevant. And once we put the crazies aside, we find that the opportunities are bigger, more varied, and span a much larger swath of vertical markets than before.