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invidis analysis

Ad-Serving Platforms aim to bridge the Gap

Platforms were once hyped as the key to success for Digital out of Home (DooH). Many in the industry believed that a professional DooH-platform would revolutionize the industry. Until now none of the inside or outside players have managed to establish a service-offering successfully. An analysis of DooH platforms
Choosing the right tool (Photo: invidis)
Choosing the right tool (Photo: invidis)

The heterogeneous infrastructure makes it almost impossible to book, manage, play-out, report and bill cross network Digital-out-of-Home campaigns efficiently. Often costs for adapting the copy (advertising), planning and reporting exceed media budgets of smaller campaigns. Various DooH-companies and external media out-of-home and online specialist are targeting the market. None of them have managed to gain sufficient traction. A few have stopped their offering others changed their product offering to better serve demand.

The main challenges have been identified by the Digital-out-of-Home industry:

  • current networks are too small,
  • offering only insufficient reach and
  • Non-compatible CMS systems.

Basically DooH platforms are often seen as a competition to the core services offered by global media agencies. This is somewhat true for billing. The processes of planning and booking are also been claimed by media agencies as their home turf. But some investigation into this matter reveal, that global agency groups offer only low tech DooH planning & booking solutions. Their solutions are generally very sophisticated but focus on above the line media as TV, Print and recently also Online.

The existing platforms are suboptimal for DooH purposes: Due to the technical challenges most of the media agencies don’t have access to live-availability and proof-of play reports. Core services which agencies offer in great depth for online, print, TV and radio.

Most media agencies underestimate the technologic challenges of the multiple CMS-Platforms used by media owner as JC Decaux, Ströer, Clear Channel and the hundreds of others. As much as buying power, scale and global reach is helpful for the sales process, it’s not of great benefit in the DooH circus.

Joining sales (media agencies) and delivery technology (platform provider) seems to be the right approach. Only after the above mentioned basics have been established in the market we can focus on cross media programmatic buying. One of the hottest trend in the media industry.

The DooH-industry needs to deliver their DooH-homework first before connecting with other media. Obviously DooH-media owner like Ströer have an advantage as they control their own DooH-Network as well as relevant online platforms.

invidis is looking forward to welcome major players to a panel discussion as part of the OVAB Digital Signage Conference Munich on 18 September 2014. Attending will be platform service provider Ayuda (US), Central Station (NL), Vukunet (UK) and DooH experts Neo Advertising (CH), media agency Posterscope and Sales House Silverflow Media (DE). Vistar Media (US) is also invited to the round table.

The pan-European association OVAB has published an overview of DooH & programmatic buying including the various processes and touch points. The main modules are

  • Aggregating – delivering an overview of available media assets (DooH networks)
  • Planning – enabling the media buyer to plan campaigns according to reach, socioeconomic (target groups etc) and geographical features
  • Booking – booking the campaign with live-availability data
  • Ad-Serving – managing and serving the various ads and CMS systems
  • Reporting – recording and analysis of actual play-out data from all networks of a campaign
  • Billing – based on reporting (due to special conditions exclusively by media agencies)

Furthermore OVAB will address the following topics

  • Demand-Side/Supply-Side (Cross Media Media-Agencies)
  • Programmatic Buying (automated sales – prices driven by demand)
  • MIS/CRM – Management Information System (flawless transfer of live date to MIS/CRM systems

For more information please check the conference website.

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