Elevator advertising company Captivate is still going up in Canada.
The company has added two new office towers in Toronto and Montreal to its existing inventory, while also renewing a previous deal with Cadillac Fairview that encompasses 12 buildings in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary – including the TD Bank Tower in Toronto, HSBC Bank’s Vancouver headquarters and the Shell Centre in Calgary.
The new buildings include the 30-story RBC Waterpark on Toronto’s Queens Quay, which is managed by Oxford Properties Group, and the 26-story Deloitte Tower in Montreal, a Cadillac Fairview property.
Captivate is currently in the midst of an aggressive expansion that sees its ad-supported elevator screens in 1,800 top-tier office buildings in North America’s leading urban markets.
“We’re looking to continue to grow our business,” said New York-based CEO Marc Kidd. “We’re committed to Canada and to growing our footprint and working with advertisers to grow the advertising side of the business.”
Captivate rebranded from Captivate Networks and enhanced its screens earlier this year.
It has seen viewership grow 220% in the past five years, which Kidd attributes to increased post-recession employment levels and far greater employee density within office towers.
“As new buildings are being built, and new people are coming in, the trend is to go with a much higher density of people per square foot,” said Kidd. “People are going with more open offices, they’re going with the trading desk format that has become very popular. There are still people with private offices, but you’re seeing much more density.”
Captivate’s Canadian footprint currently consists of approximately 2,000 screens in 200 buildings in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal, but the company is looking to expand into other markets, said Kidd.
He said the 5-6 minutes an average office worker spends in an elevator is equivalent to smaller specialty TV networks. “What we’re trying to get [advertisers] to understand is we’re offering a primetime audience in the daytime, and we reach people when they are engaged in making daily decisions,” he said. Advertisers have “absolutely” been receptive to that message, he said.
In Canada, Captivate reaches an estimated 1.3 million unique viewers a month, generating an estimated 6 million impressions. A typical office tower employee will see between four and six 15-second ads during an average 75-second elevator ride.
He said approximately 70% of the people it reaches are decision-makers, both at work and at home. Kidd said Captivate’s audience is about 55% male with a median age of 39 and a household income of $90,000.
Kidd said financial services, travel and tourism and restaurants are robust advertising categories. He said digital place-based media is getting “another look” from advertisers and agencies as TV ratings fluctuate and traditional upfront dollars continue flowing into digital.
