Your ROI Will Double With These Digital Billboard Strategies

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Podcast Introductions
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hey everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Media Buying Podcast.

I'm here with my, my good friend, Rob. Rob, good to have you on again, as usual. How are you?

Good as always to be here.

And we are delighted to have on the show today, Alex Weinberger, who is the GM of Digital out of home a Adroll. So Alex, good to meet you as well.

Hey, Jim. Hey Rob. Great to be here.

What Digital Out of Home Is
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So tell us a little bit about digital out of home at Adroll, kind of what that, what That's all.

So digital out of home. For those that don't know what it is as one of the newer channels in the programmatic digital space, it really covers. Everything that's outside the four walls of your home, not your personal device, right? So it's not gonna be your laptop, your smart tv, your smartphone, but it's gonna be all of those digital screens, whether it's roadside billboards, screens and bars and malls and gyms and restaurants, and digital bus shelters.

So really kind of covering all of the space between your home. And where it is that you're going. 

Market Growth and Validation
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Um, [00:01:00] so the industry has seen a massive, massive surge of investment coming into the space. I think last year it was right around like $3.6 billion, which accounted for something like 34 or 35% of all out of home spending.

Across the US So the investment is, is significant. I started selling digital out of home in February, 2020, which is important 'cause that was right around the time they told everyone in the world to stay home. And I was tasked with selling digital media outside the home. So it's been an interesting journey to say the least over

So is it billboards with kind of tumbleweed rolling by them? Right.

in, in certain instances, yes. And that was something that we were definitely up against in those early days. But, now that we've kind of gotten back to whatever we'll say normal is, or whatever normal may be,I, I wanna say five or six years ago, the investment level was right around a billion dollars.

So we've seen this massive surge. Not just of interest from the industry, but also from big, huge, massive corporate entities that are really starting to take shape. [00:02:00] all really validated by what we've seen in the mergers and acquisition sector of the industry over the last even 18 months with. T-Mobile coming in and buying Vista Media for $600 million.

And even, I wanna say a couple weeks ago, a private equity firm came in and bought Clear Channel Outdoor for $6.2 billion. So, why is, is now the time for AdRoll to launch a digital out-of-home product? It's because the mar it's 'cause the market's validating it. the market is validating it. The media owners are validating it, and the investment from the major advertising players continues to show that it's, it's a worth, it's a worthwhile channel.

So, I mean, again, I, I don't know about Robert. Have you got experience of work working with Adroll in the past at all?

Yeah, I've worked with that role in the past, but definitely all web at the time. It wasn't any of this, but I'm getting very interested as we speak. I.

Same, same, same thing. I mean, like my, my original foray into kinda like working with AdRoll. I, I worked with him back in the day when, really they were the kind of the go-to platform for people that wanted to kind of do complex dynamic remarketing, but just [00:03:00] didn't really know how to do it. Right. So.

Like, I think AdRoll kind of found, found a way to kind of make that better, better for people who wanted to have the, the kind of the expertise of it, but didn't have the technical chops to be able to put it all together. Right. And that was certainly my experience of working with AdRoll sort of back in the day.

Right. So to to, to kind of see you guys are kind of getting much more heavily involved in digital out of home, I think is, is a good thing. I know that, that there's a lot of people who have a, again, like some businesses spending a ton of money on like traditional billboards where it's some guy going around with a kind of glue gun and.

Put pasting things up. But I think, the, the digital really gives you the ability to kinda get so many, so much more kind of granular in terms of the, the capability. And, and, again, I, I'm, I'm just kind of excited to, to hear a little bit more about it as well.

Yeah. 

Why Programmatic Beats Vinyl
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And what you said is, is, is absolutely accurate. The traditional out of home where I think you use, like guys going up with glue and, and all that, right? Like that, those are your traditional vinyl costs. And there's a lot of cha not challenges, but some of the, the limitations within [00:04:00] the traditional out of home is that you're paying for a 30, 60, 90 day contract and you're locked in.

You've got all of these upfront and backend costs of, you've gotta put it up, you gotta pay a crew to go put it up. You gotta pay a crew to go take it down. And what if the messaging has to change, right? What if the dynamics in the world change, and you need to shift on a dime? And that's where digital, out of home is really interesting because of the, the programmatic digital nature of it.

But also kind of being able to see where all of the other programmatic channels, where all the advancements and evolutions of, that we've seen them go through. And we've been able to kind of just. Adopt them, right? Pluck them out of not thin air, but see what everyone else is doing and apply that to what we're doing in digital out of home.

And whether that's, the real time bidding, right? So you can be in a hundred different screens at once under one contract with 15 different media owners. we digi programmatic digital out of home really allows. Marketers to hit the easy button. especially when working with AdRoll, because you don't need 15 different contracts.

You need one [00:05:00] deal with me and with my counterparts on the sales team, and we'll manage that whole piece for you. 

AdRoll ABM Meets DOOH
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Um, but going back to what you had said, Jim, when you, when you look up. Who is AdRoll, they go top of the list as far as ABM platform, account-based marketing and retargeting. That's what we're known for in the industry.

and that's what really drew me, to AdRoll be, if I'm being very honest, when, when I was, looking for a new opportunity, DSPs are kind of a dime a dozen. And when I was talking to people in the industry like, ugh, another DSP, like, what are you gonna do there? But it's the ABM piece. It's the B2B piece that is a really underutilized and undervalued, opportunity within the digital out of home space.

So much of. Digital out-of-home and out-of-home in general is that kind of high level upper funnel awareness. but with the ABM platform, being able to target contacts and remarket or retarget them in very localized areas, that's what gets me really excited is kind of leaning into the B2B and the ABM [00:06:00] opportunity within digital out of home that I think has not really been, really flushed out yet.

It's funny, I've, I've got a friend who, who did a, a lot of stuff way back in the day, and I mean, he was, he was really into kind of trying to, to do things on the cheap right, but get maximum exposure and he wanted to kind of. Appear on tv. So he did AKA kind of like a Twitter, ad campaign where he had, I think something like 1500 journalists in a, in a custom list.

And he basically targeted the hell out of that list, right? So, so he basically had all the people that could basically book him to come on and talk on CNN or, Fox News or what have it. And, and he was just targeting those people. And I think for 50 bucks he ended up on like four or five different news outlets kind of talking about a new product that he brought out.

Right. And I think sometimes that's the, the, the advantage of having some, some of that sort of, digital capability. But in an environment where people are, again, people are still out and about and, and walking around, right. But I think it's taking some of the kind of creative element of that, that type of piece, and putting it in a, in a, in a billboard that, [00:07:00] ultimately will get people to kind of act on what you want.

Right. So.

Yeah, it's, it's a great, it's, it's, it's the connectivity between the digital and the physical space while using all of the advantages of the digital ecosystem, right. In the programmatic advancements, I'll tell you a funny, a very quick, funny story about that is. My first kind of introduction to out of home is I was working at a mobile location ad tech company and an out of home company was white labeling our mobile ad tech.

So they were selling billboards and they wanted to sell mobile alongside of it. And our number one market in the country was Florida and our number one vertical was personal injury attorneys. And you figure, okay, they want to be around urgent cares and hospitals and. No, they wanted a billboard between their house and their office, so they could see their face going to and from the office every day.

So there's that vanity play that comes with the industry overall of being able to see your ad in this instance, their face out in the wild, where some of the other [00:08:00] programmatic and digital channels, it can feel like a needle in a haystack seeing your ad out in the wild. Whereas with digital out of home, it makes it feel a lot more tangible.

I actually, I have a good example of that too. when I was over tour and living in Phoenix, one of the exam, they had one billboard, I believe it was in Southern Cali. but you could literally rent like, what was it, like five impressions or something. And they'd be like, between this time and that time, you can go see yourself right here on this.

And I was like, if only I could do that for other people and just know when they would've been around there for that one impression. That would be the most. Profitable impression I probably would ever have. And then I just waited and waited and waited and started seeing people ask questions like, how would you do that?

And then I saw you guys talk about this, and I was like, there we go. So it's, there's, there's a lot of that where like I've been waiting for that targeting piece to come in because at a certain point you start to wonder if it's like a coincidence. You're sitting at like a sports bar, you're eating something, and then something comes up that really resonates with you.

Did they actually target the people in there based on beacons? Did they target based on X, Y, or [00:09:00] Z? Or is it just timing? You don't, you don't really know. But with some of it you do know. And that's where a lot of the ROI can start to come in.

Exactly. 

Targeting and Indexing Explained
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And so to your point, it would be incredibly creepy and massively ineffective if we knew that Rob was in a bar eating a cheeseburger and we were gonna serve him an ad for homeowner's insurance 'cause he had those signals that would be. That's a bridge too far even for me, right? I'm a sales guy at my core and I, I'll, do what you gotta do to get the deal done.

But when you think about the industry overall, what that's doing is they're indexing against screen. So the targeting and digital out of home different from other programmatic channels, right? So what we're really great at here at AdRoll is that one-to-one targeting, right? We have an ICP, we know who we're gonna reach, we know how to find them, and we hit them with an A one-to-one ad.

Digital out of home. It's a one to many tactic. So our audience targeting is based on indexing. So in that instance, right, we want someone 35 to 55 that's in market for homeowners insurance, right? What we're able to do within the platform is we're able to [00:10:00] understand what screens. I have observed mobile devices that fit that profile at a higher than average rate, and that's our indexing.

So we know, hey, this bar screen is gonna reach someone that looks like Rob, that's in market for homeowners insurance and fits this cohort. So let's put more ads on that screen. It's not as scientific and specific as we know we're gonna reach Rob, but we know that we're giving ourselves a much higher probability of reaching that cohort and that.

Persona by being on this screen in this location because the data is telling us that.

Yeah. 

Proximity and Last Mile Retail
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'cause I think, I think, that, that whole thing with proximity marketing, it's always been such a, an amazing thing to be able to kind of tap into, right? I mean, I used to do that where I would use proximity targeting where the devices is, is the targeting effectively, right? So where is that device at any given point in time?

And depending on. What time of day it is, what day of the week it is, you can kind of govern who's the audience in, in that particular location, right? So if it's a sports venue, people might be there for, to watch a particular game, but then [00:11:00] there's gonna be all these bars nearby where they may go to, and you can target people in those bars as well with the devices.

But I guess with digital out of home, you have the ability to, to kind of. Put, put in place. If they walk from the stadium to a, a, a restaurant, there may be billboards that they kind of pass that are on a bus stand or something like that. There's a kind of bus shelter where it'll have a, a digital kind of thing where, you know, potentially that that is being shown because people have identified themselves by being in an audience based on their proximity to the, the stadium.

And then obviously they get to the, the restaurant they're going to, and they pass a, an ad on the way. Right.

Exactly, and, and what you just outlined is still to this day, what I would say, kind of like the core foundational piece for digital out-of-home targeting is that proximity, right? You want people in and around an area. It's really used super effectively by retailers. thinking about like grocery stores and drug stores and the drug and the mass and the club channel.

they call it winning the last mile, and you want to be able to put ads in the way of [00:12:00] consumers when they're in striking distance, right? So, you want someone to buy Kraft mac and cheese at Walmart. Being 10 miles away on a billboard, I'm just gonna go to my local grocery store and I'm, I'm not gonna go 10 miles outta my way to that Walmart, but if you can say, Hey, Kraft Mac and cheese is buy one get one free at Walmart, and you look up and you see a big Walmart sign, two stoplights away, right?

That can drive you into that location to ultimately execute that purchase. So, being as close to the shelf and being as close to the transaction is one of the really core, value propositions. For digital Outof home, especially in like the brick and mortar retailer space.

Measurement and Incrementality
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So, I mean, one of the, the biggest challenges I think Rob and I are kind of experiencing in, in our sort of world of, of digital marketing is. That whole thing to do with accountability and measurement. Right. I mean, I think for me there's, there's always the, like we get paid on results. Right? And if you are unable to get the results, then potentially you don't get paid.

Right. And I, I wondered whether digital out of home, 'cause I [00:13:00] mean, because it's based on views and, and everything else, then, how, how do you kind of like close the loop to say that particular campaign was successful, we spent, 50 grand and we, we made 300 grand in, in incremental revenue.

How does that kind of work?

Yeah, so in the, in the exact scenario or that example, let's talk about the methodology and how this works. And to be very clear, AdRoll, we do not do. Our own measurement. And I think that's important, right? Third party measurement is kind of the gold standard because that way you're not writing the test and grading your own homework.

and a lot of clients really want that external validation. So in that exact example, right, let's use the craft and Walmart thing. We'll just keep on going with that. And I don't work for either of them, neither of them are paying me. I

You're making me hungry though, talking about like mac and cheese though.

I was about to say.

I have a, I have a three and a half year old and a 2-year-old.

Their bodies are basically 80% mac and cheese and pretzels. so, so when you think about that example, there's multiple different third party vendors that are tracking all of this. But the standard methodology is such that we'll [00:14:00] put this craft mac and cheese ad within a one mile radius of these Walmarts all across the country in a specific DMA, whatever that targeting looks like.

And what we're able to do is the screens individually are observing all of the devices that have moved through a dynamic radius. So how far do you reasonably have to be to see this ad? So for a billboard, it might be a 300 foot radius. For digital bus shelter, it might be 50 feet. For a bar screen, it might be 15 feet, whatever that radius is.

What they're doing is they're observing all of the devices that are moving through this radius, and they're matching that up against the timestamp of when this Walmart. Craft mac and cheese ad was being displayed, so that is your exposed bucket of devices. They're then able to track that consumer journey of did they make it into a Walmart?

Okay, great, that's easy enough. You put a polygon around the Walmart, did we see that mobile device enter that location? But then what you're able to do is you're able to tie that back using a third party measurement partner. There's like IRI by Rcna, there's a BCS. There's a bunch of these vendors where [00:15:00] you can.

Subscribe to and get this POS anonymized point of sale data to say, did this device Id tied through, either our loyalty ID or some other indicator, did this person that was exposed by Kraft Mac and cheese, and that's how they're able to say, okay, well we spent a hundred thousand dollars. We have their $350,000 worth of mac and cheese sales based on that exposed data.

Well, we got a $3 50 cent return on the investment, but that becomes a really strong story of, validation for the tactic overall.

And I'm guessing that, that there's probably the ability like down the line to be able to kind of track lifetime value, say that initial kind of purchase then became. 500 like subsequent LTV kind of purchases of, mac and cheese over time, right? So.

Exactly. and the other interesting thing that you hit on, which I think is a really important piece to talk about, is the incremental piece of it, right? Because early days, digital out of home sales measurement was all about attributable, Hey, did we see this device? Did they go [00:16:00] into the store? Did they purchase it?

But what if I was gonna go purchase that? Anyway, right now the tactic has taken credit for a sale that they were gonna get anyway. And as so much of media is taking credit for things that may or may not have exactly been attributed to you. I was absolutely guilty of that at many points in my career.

Right? But the idea is that it's gotten so refined and so specific that you can say, Hey, you were supposed to get a $2 return on investment here just based on normal transaction flows. Now this extra dollar 50 of incrementality that we're getting in this example, that is your incremental lift. So you put in a hundred thousand dollars, you got $350,000 worth of sales, 200,000 of that was gonna happen no matter what.

But the lift that incrementality pieces, that dollar 50, that becomes hugely powerful. That is what, especially in the CPG space, that is what they're driving towards at a really significant rate, and that's what they're demanding.

So again, given that you kind of got into, digital, out of home [00:17:00] right at the time that sort of COVID happened. what, what, what sort of impact, is some of the, the kind of the, the things that are going on in the world. What, what sort of impact is that having on sort of sentiment, how, how are, how are advertisers and, and agencies and everything, how are they generally feeling in, in, in that world?

'cause obviously Rob and I come more from a traditional online world rather than an offline, right. By the sounds of it, you are, you're talking about like a lot of people with a lot of money, investing into this sort of solution. I mean, what, what, what is, what is it like in, in that sort of ecosystem now?

Demand Drivers and Creative Matters
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Yeah, so the, the demand is hot. It's big in the, in the United States here you've got four major out-of-home players. You've got out front, you've got Lamar, you've got JC Decaux, and you've got Clear Channel Outdoor, who I just mentioned, had been acquired and Clear. Channel Outdoor and JC Decaux have the largest international global footprints of any of the big four.

But to kind of showcase the, the demand for it is it costs these companies between 500,700 $50,000 per screen to [00:18:00] transition from a traditional outof home to a digital outof home. Now, we all know that businesses are not going to make that massive investment unless the juice is worth the squeeze. They can't do it fast enough.

Right. But the, the, and I think what you were asking was is you've got brands like Coca-Cola, Proctor and Gamble, Delta Airlines, Ford Motor Company, all spending significantly on there. But you've also got, mom and pop like body shops and restaurants and localized campaigns who are investing in them.

Because when a consumer sees Tide, Delta Airlines. Rob Autobody shop and then Ford, right? It gives a huge amount of validity to the brand because they are standing shoulder to shoulder. Their ad was on the same screen directly after this massive Fortune 500 company who's spending billions of dollars in media.

They might have only spent 25 or $50,000, but in the eyes of the consumer, they're being viewed in the same vein, on the same screens, in the same environments. So it brings a [00:19:00] huge amount of, validity to, to the brand and overall to the consumer as far as sentiment and favorability. but you can even see, Netflix was spending so much money on out-of-home advertising on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, that they just bought an out-of-home company for like 50 million bucks.

They were like, yeah, forget this nickel and dime stuff, we're just gonna buy the whole thing so we can put our ads up there. so brands are really leaning into it. And from a creative lens, there is nothing more important than the creative of a digital out of home ad. It doesn't matter how good your audience targeting is, how good your measurement is, how good your strategy, your screen selection, your placement, all of that.

If your creative is flat, no one's gonna pay attention to it, and you're not gonna perform. It brings a lot of these brands and a lot of these creatives. And these copywriters, it's their biggest, most wide open format for them to do whatever they want with it. and it really is bringing out the best in a lot of brands, their creative lens.

AI for Creative and Planning
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I mean, we are, we are, we are seeing a lot of, like job losses through AI [00:20:00] taking over people's jobs. I know people have talked about it and now No, no, it's not happening. Not happening. I mean, it's definitely happening. Am I right Rob? I mean, am I, or am I kind of

Yeah, there's no question.

Right. So I mean, how, how is that going to, is Im, is AI going to impact the digital outof home in the same way that it's affecting the online space?

Yeah, I think it's gonna impact the digital out of home, but I don't think it's gonna be through the lens of job loss, at least initially. Right? Like, you never really know exactly how this is gonna shake out, but where I'm seeing it really come into play is the, the ability to build creatives at a very rapid rate.

Building quality content, even to the point of building video content where it might've cost you 50 or a hundred thousand dollars to have a crew and an editor and all these things do go into Claude or Gemini or Copilot or chat GPT, and you can build a 15 or a 32nd. Tv, quality commercial, that you can be repurposed on social, on tv, on OLV or in digital out of home as well.[00:21:00] 

So I look at ai, through the lens of digital, out of home as being able to bring better creative, more impactful and effective creative to market quicker, which, which gives me all a huge amount of, of excitement, right? I'm excited to see better creatives out there in the market. But also as far as planning right, to say, going into platforms and saying, I wanna reach men 35 to 54, who might want a weight loss drug or might want, a new car or whatever it may be.

And being able to very quickly and rapidly identify which screens are gonna meet that targeting criteria faster, that will help me. I don't think that will put me out of a job that will help me do more of my job at a higher rate. So that's how I look at it through the lens of ai.

you think of it more as augmentation. It's gonna help people instead of replace them, it's gonna help them iterate faster, do more. All

Iterate faster, do more, build more strategic and savvy campaign, get to market quicker, which is great. I mean, right. Right now [00:22:00] digital auto home, I like to say is kind of the jet ski of the digital media, tactics. We can turn it on a dime and get there quickly. Some of the other tactics take a little bit of a longer lead cycle to plan, to map out, to get a proven to get launched.

as an example, I am actively working on and pitching proposals for clients to support Shop Talk in Las Vegas next week. We're not stressed, right? We're not stressed about the timeline because if we get creatives in hand by Thursday, we'll be live by Monday. 

AI Speeds DOOH
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Um, so the ability to get to market quick has already been a calling card of the digital out of home space, and I think that AI will just accelerate that even further.

so I, I for one, welcome the addition of, better, smarter, faster, more savvy because I think it just, it up levels everyone.

I completely agree. I completely agree. 

DOOH Growth Outlook
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So I mean, in, in terms of the, the future, I mean, where, where do you see the kind of the future, what's the potential in, in sort of digital at home for, again, for, for people that are watching this [00:23:00] and maybe looking to kind of pivot or transition into this from where they've been doing kind of like traditional online, like Rob and I, guys like Rob and I, is there jobs for us kind of in this industry or like, I mean, what, what, what's the kind of future look like for, for digital ad home?

I think the future is the moon, I think. I think it's all there we're on this hockey stick trajectory of investment of interest. There was a survey that came out earlier this year. I don't have a citation, I can't quote it, but I'm sure if we Google it, we can find it. Something like 70 plus percent of CMOs surveyed said that digital out of home is gonna be a part of their media mix.

This year. That was almost zero in 2020, right? It wasn't really on people's radar. So it's becoming more in demand and that's going to bring talent. That's gonna bring, bring, bring people from other verticals and other sectors of the industry into out of home because there's in, there's interest there. but where, where do I see it in the next couple years?

Retail Media Arms Race
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I think what's really interesting is the tie in that it has to retail media. And [00:24:00] the explosion that we're seeing there, right? Like retail media and digital out of home and CTV are probably the three hottest buzzwords in the digital ecosystem right now. And retail media is just absolutely on fire. And there's, there's an armed race right now,because of the linkage with using digital out of home to drive people in store.

And now there's already an existing network. There's maybe something like a hundred thousand digital screens in store right now, but it's all fragmented. You've got a handful of different vendors that have screens at different points in different areas around retailers. But again, it's kind of random and it's kind of fragmented.

But what we saw with Walmart when they acquired Vizio is now they've got these screens and signage all over their retail environments, and they're selling ads on that through their retail media system networks. And we've seen in the last year, Kroger contracted with Barrows. Albertsons contracted with Strata Cash, Aho del Hayes, which is a huge [00:25:00] East coast based footprint here.

where I'm in New York, they brought their edge platform from Europe over here where they're headquartered, where they're launching in-store signage at the shelf all over the place. This is kind of the arms race of who is going to be, who's gonna plant the flag and be the vendor. The in-store signage go-to network. Then how Digital Auto Home ties and connects into that is you're buying these retail media campaigns in the cha, in the channel, in the retail media network at Shelf. But don't you want to create a funnel to drive people to that shelf to ultimately execute that purchase? So I see the ex. Explosion of retail media, the arms race of the digital in-store signage within these retail media ecosystems and how it ties back to what digital out of home does really well, which is drive people into locations and alert them of different things that are going on at the shelf.

I think that's where we're gonna see the most change, in the most drastic impact for digital out of [00:26:00] the next few years.

Remnant Inventory Question
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So, so one of my first sort of forays into programmatic was, was I think probably back in like 2009 or something like that. And, I was working for a, a kind of an ad sales house and we were repping some big brands that, big publishers that kind of like, we were selling their ad inventory and we got to the point where we would sell.

Inventory, sort of, like we'd have a rate card, we'd have a certain amount of inventory that would be be bought by big agencies. They'd pay the sort of rate card, and then there'd be, other people that would want to be sort of like lower down. So they would buy kind of like a little bit less, less better sort of slots.

and then at the end of that, that would be like remnant, right? I mean, Rob knows where I'm going with this and, and obviously there, there was a,

that's, that's a, that's a dirty word.

but again, I mean like I, I had a, a, an affiliate network and I sold my affiliate network to this ad sales house. That's how I got involved with it. Right.

Because we were running affiliate offers and, and there was a lot of unsold inventory and I wasn't sure if, if digital out of home had the same issue. I mean, the one thing I like about the kind of two guys with a kind of bucket, with, with [00:27:00] glue in going up and pasting a billboard is once that billboard's there, like it's there.

Right? Whereas if you are doing digital out of home right, then, your, your billboard could be there for like. Five seconds and then gone. Right. And you're paying for impressions, I'm presuming, I presume it's, it's paid for on a CPM basis. Right? So it's like, I don't know how many people saw that at all.

Right? I mean, again, it's, it was there Great. Got the impressions. That kind of gets the, gets my bill, right? But I don't really know. So sometimes it's better to have the billboard that's static and in fixed in its place. Right? 'cause you know that all the footfall that goes past that is gonna see that ad.

Right. And you're not paying for it on a per impression basis. Right. Because it's. Whoever walks past. Right. And,and I just wondered whether there was a lot of digital out of home remnant and if there was, how can we buy it? But, yeah, I mean, like too, too, too

Yeah, no, it's a.

I dunno, I mean like, like I've just got my head going round here, going like, there must be remnant inventory here somewhere.

Right.

Yeah. 

RTB Waterfall Explained
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So there, there absolutely is and, and it works very [00:28:00] similarly, as I mentioned, to the real time bidding kind of programmatic waterfall that you get everywhere else. So there might be a billboard in the middle of Times Square in Manhattan. And they have set a, a bid floor of let's say, $4, but you've got thousands of different DSPs that are bidding on that one ad call.

So they might set a bid rate of $5 or $6 or $8, and you might have some opportunistic networks that are bidding $4 and one penny. Right? So as. It goes through the waterfall, right? Like the 9, 8, 7, $6 bids. They're gonna win those first, but they're not gonna be bidding on every single one. They might have moved on and their attention is elsewhere.

So that's why when it falls down to that bottom of the, of the waterfall, you do have those networks that are able to secure. I don't like using the word remnant, right? Because to me, remnant feels like it's not as good as the rest.

So Robert and I call them bottom. Bottom feeders. Bottom feeders, right? I mean, like, there's, [00:29:00] there's loads of ways of, of describing it, but yeah, I mean, I, I, again, I think I thinks. I, I, again, I, I've made tons of money on the back of remnant inventory because you get a great slot, right? I mean, ultimately the ads are going in the same places as the people that pay 30 bucks, CPM for a video ad or whatever.

It's exactly the same slot, right? It's not like you're paying for something different, right? You're just paying kind of like a more appropriate rate for your budget, right? And, 

Exactly. It's, it's an efficiency drivers.

yeah.

Yeah. I was also gonna say too, to be fair, that actually is very close to his example as well, with the commercials. Not in a bad way, but in a good way where it's like Fortune 500, fortune 500. Bob's auto repair shop, fortune 500. That could have just been one slot that didn't get bid on, like in, in traditional media.

Right. So like that concept actually carries through all the way too because yes, you get the, the extra, oomph of being around the actual name brands. The actual brands themselves. But even for like, I never got into video, like, not video, video of like TV [00:30:00] video. Because I was always like, that's way beyond my budget.

That's way beyond what I can look for. But now it's like. If you, if you're relating it to RTB, that means it's not beyond my budget, I'm just looking at the wrong people. And that's where I think you're basically saying is that the majority of people in that space have kept it that way for a reason. And that reason is based on massive commits.

30, 90, 60 day commits. But it's also all or nothing commits. It's not, 'cause they don't have the ability to say on Monday, we'll try this on Tuesday. We'll try that on Wednesday. Because doing that physically sucks on cost, but like on an ad server, yeah, you can do that all day. But go

Creative Refresh Tactics
---

And that, and that's exactly one of the great value propositions of the programmatic digital out of home space is to exactly your point, Rob. Let's say we're running a four week campaign. You don't want your creative to get stale. You want to have sequential messaging so that every Monday we flip that out with new creative, guess what?

That doesn't cost you anything. It's just uploading new creative. There's even really interesting things that you can do like thinking for like in the B2B lens conference and trade show [00:31:00] support. Hey, we're gonna be in Las Vegas. We're gonna be in Miami. We're gonna be in Dallas for these five days, and we know that day one, everyone's flying into the airport.

So let's put all the ads in the airport and on day five, on the getaway day on the airport. But let's say on day one, it's, Hey, come check us out at Booth. 1487 on day two. It's, Hey, come join us at our happy hour at Mandalay Bay Day three. It's, did you know, whatever it may be, right? So the creative versioning, the creative messaging, and even I had one client, my biggest cl deal I ever sold in my career was a $1.4 million deal.

I will not name the brand. that might not be appropriate here. but they

obviously not. Rob's auto.

No.

No, but what they wanted to do is they wanted to understand creative best practices by format. They were like, Alex, we've got billboards, we've got digital bus shelters, we've got gas stations, we've got gyms, we've got bars, we've got all, we've got public transportation. What are creative best practices by [00:32:00] format?

'cause it's not a one size fits all. So as I mentioned, right, you don't want, you can't use video ads on billboards 'cause that promotes very unsafe driving practices, right? You don't want movement in people's periphery while they're driving. So that's one message and we're talking big, bright, bold colors, three to five words with a pack shot.

Done. Right. But what about a digital bus shelter where you've got people that might be lingering for four or five minutes waiting for the next bus or foot traffic that's going by. Maybe you can put a different message there. And what about the gas station where unless you're in New Jersey where they don't let you pump gas,you can do a full audio and video ad, right?

Take your 32nd TV commercial or your, your video content from, from meta, and let's plug that onto the gas station screen. There's so much creativity, right? When I kind of got on my soapbox and talked about how you can do the most wild and amazing creative things with digital out of home, there really are no limits, right?

Different messaging by format, different messaging by day. All these different things are one of the really great value propositions of, really having fun and like letting it [00:33:00] riff with within this tactic out in the real world.

Venue Targeting Playbook
---

Yeah, I mean I've, I've seen myself run campaigns where, you know, to your point about targeting venues, like, so I used to go to HubSpot's inbound event, so I would tar target the actual conference center where everyone was, was based right on for the days that the event was on. Right? And then anyone that kind of saw an ad through, through that.

Period. Right. Would then be in my audiences that I could then remarket to them when they got back to wherever they were going back to. Right. So for, for me, it was like a complete no-brainer. 'cause it was very, very cheap to kind of run a campaign. I could, I could add exclusions. So I could say I wanna target people that if somebody's been at a particular venue.

Like 25 times in the last 30 days, they probably work there, right? So you don't wanna have them being in your, your audience 'cause they're not gonna be relevant for you. Right? So you could kind of do, do those sorts of clever things. And I think sometimes it's, it's the, the creativity is not just the pictures and the videos and everything else.

The creativity is thinking outside the box of how you can kind of [00:34:00] target a particular thing. again, based on that, or I mean like, like with email, I mean I used to run like email where. We would run on a, a server where everyone was, was trying to get into the inbox for Hotmail. Right. And there was a company that, that specialized in delivering Hotmail.

They had four whitelisted ips, right. They had working with big Fortune 500 companies who were sending hardly any email at all. Right? So we said, look, can we just kind of jump and put some of our sort of spammy emails in, in the, in the mix, right? And they were like, sure, why not? Right? So we, we did really well getting into inbox for, for Hotmail just by understanding.

How that particular ecosystem worked. And I'm just curious, so obviously the digital ad of home, is, is one piece does, does ad roll sort of then flip those people that, that kind of do that into the, the, the normal ad roll where they kind of do the remarketing kind of through traditional sort of display and everything else that way.

Retargeting and Privacy
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Yep. Ab absolutely. It's one of the core value propositions that we're able to bring. And as I mentioned, it's one of the things that AdRoll is known for and it's one of the things that when I came on board here, I was, very vocal about [00:35:00] making sure that this product fits in to how all of our customers are currently engaging with us, and the majority of them are doing.

Retargeting and all those different things. The interesting thing has been kind of tap dancing through all the privacy laws, but in a good way, right? we want this to be anonymized. We don't want people feeling super creeped out, right? Like, I don't have a dog, but I am obsessed with dogs.

So I talk a lot about dogs and I get ridiculous ads are to me on Instagram, and TikTok for dog ads because they're absolutely listening to us, right? That's not what we're doing here with digital out of home. but. The, the interesting thing is about how we have to do it on a region by region basis.

'cause at AdRoll we are offering digital out of home, across 35 countries globally. US is our biggest market, but we're really big in emea. We're really big in apac. Australia in particular has been a really great market for us. but when you think about the different laws, you have to kind of abide by what's going on there.

So here in the US with the new privacy laws, we used to be able to get device ID pass back, made files where we can plug into A [00:36:00] DSP, match them up against their identity graph and then start serving them meds. It was very straightforward and simple, but now with the privacy laws, we're not able to do that.

Now we get these exposure files via an audience segment that gets pushed through a clean room that we have to grab and then activate through our, through an SSP partner. And that's okay, right? That's just, you just have to kind of like figure out the nuances and the way to go about it. So, that's something that we're really excited about here in the us but again, in other markets where we are still able to get those made device ID passback files where, we grab it through an S3 bucket, we pushed into our platform, we match it up, and then we're on our way to be able to retarget.

B2B ABM Priming
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So definitely something that we're excited to be able to bring, and that's what I mentioned earlier about that ABM and that B2B space. Think about how valuable that could be, not just for trade shows and conference support, but hey, we know where the corporate headquarters are for one of our core, one of our main targets.

Well, let's run a three month plan and we'll do 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM in the morning for drive time, [00:37:00] 11 to one during your lunch and coffee break, and then four to 6:00 PM on the way home. And let's do it in the billboards and the bus shelters around there, and let's do it at the bars where they go for happy hour after work and potentially in the restaurant where they're going to grab lunch.

So there's a lot of different ways that you can put this messaging in front of your B2B type businesses. And I always talk about, digital out of home priming the pump. We talked a little bit earlier about how we can use out-of-home for more down funnel tactics and strategies to drive people into locations, measuring foot traffic, measuring incremental lift, also doing brand lift studies.

That's survey based, doing web traffic, doing app downloads, all things that we can do with digital out-of-home measurement, but also think about it as priming the mental pump for these people that we wanna reach, where we can then hit 'em with a prospecting email, we can hit 'em with a display ad with all these different things.

That the first time you get a prospect from Bob's Auto

They, they know you. They know you.

didn't I see that on that bus shelter? Exactly. So it's, it's a [00:38:00] really great tactic that can hit all the different pieces of the funnel, and it's just about being creative with the way that you leverage it in the way that you use it.

And so, and some, and like Rob and I will say, that's smart. A lot of people will say that's creepy, right? But it's like, sometimes the, the, the line of, of difference between creepy and smart is like very thin, right? 

GDPR and Global Rollout
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And, and, just trying to make sure, as you say, like, like, I'm here in the UK and we have GDPR and it's kind of very, you know.

Much more difficult to kind of navigate your way around, right? Spend so much time on consent mode and all that sort of stuff, which is not the, it's not, it's not fun, it's not exciting, but at the same time, it's really super important if you don't take care of it right? Then you could be working for a client who goes outta business 'cause they get a whacking great big fine from, from the government for, breaching GDPR.

So.

Exactly, and, and I was actually in, London and Dublin. I dunno if it was last week or the week before. It's kind of all mushing together time right now. 'cause I've been on a little road show since I got here. But we spent,three days in London and we spent two days in [00:39:00] Dublin kind of talking about digital out of

And

about rolling it out and survived.

which was very exciting. But, Jim, to your point. Sat in front of these big agency rooms, in front of these independent agents and these massive hold codes with their London offices. And the first question outta their mouth was, talk to me about GDPR and how are you navigating it? So it's on everyone's, everyone's top of mind.

and we're working through it just like everyone else, right? We're, we're building the plane while flying it, we're figuring out how it works. but the good thing is, is that it's not the end all, be all. There's still ways to be impactful and to be effective using this tactic, even without the retargeting.

Wrap Up and Subscribe
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Well, it definitely sounds like it's an exciting space. I'm, I'm really glad that we kind of had you come on as a guest. It's been, it's been an absolute joy to, to meet you and, and find out more about kind of what you're doing and what's going on in the d digital ads own space. Again, I, I've been excited about it for quite a while.

purely and simply on the, sort of the DSP side of things. but you know, again, I think you've kind of taken show, shown me a different view. View in terms of [00:40:00] what's available out there. so again, it just, so if, if anyone that's obviously anyone that's like listening in, watching in will have show notes at the end to make sure that they can kinda get hold of Alex if they need to wanna find out more about AdRoll.

Is there anything in particular that you want to kind of like just leave our, our, audience with Alex?

We are open for business. I cover all regions, all markets. I'm doing calls till midnight, right? We're here to, we're here to take care of our clients and I'm excited to work with everyone.

Sounds good. Sounds good.

a response.

Absolutely. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm all about that. So yeah, appreciate you kind of coming on and, for everyone that's been watching, listening in, make sure you subscribe, hit the bell, do all that sort of good stuff on YouTube. If you are watching the video or do whatever things you do on podcast on Apple and Spotify.

I don't even know. Do, does anyone listen on Spotify or Apple anymore? I don't even

If you guys listen on Spotify, you let us know. 'cause I think we have maybe four, four or five listens. Last time I checked, granted it was a week in when we first set it up, but I'm pretty sure four of the. A five was me. So I don't think that counts

But

Well, it was great. It was [00:41:00] great talking to you both.

Good. Okay. Thank you. And, we will talk soon.