Hey Canadian advertisers and out-of-home companies: Brandon Newman thinks you’re doing a poor job with your digital billboards.
Okay, so he didn’t say that exactly. But the president of Dynamic Outdoor – an out-of-home advertising company that operates 24 large-format digital boards in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal – feels there’s considerable untapped potential within the industry.
Newman’s remarks represent an aggressive – and outspoken – push into the market by Dynamic, which formally launched in November when it took over representation of 23 large-format boards (it recently introduced a 24th in Toronto) owned by Allvision Canada. The boards had previously been repped by Cieslok Media.
Dynamic made two announcements this week, including the appointment of Montreal-based Ayuda Media Systems to oversee its sales, operations and ad serving capabilities. Ayuda’s technology stack includes mobile sales tools, inventory management, digital scheduling and back office finance tools.
The Ayuda appointment was followed by the announcement that Dynamic had joined the Canadian Out-of-Home Measurement Bureau (COMB).
Newman, whose career includes stints with both Astral Out-of-Home and Onestop Media Group, says many of today’s high-tech digital boards are nothing more than “glorified billboards.” He accuses out-of-home companies and advertisers of treating them like “sticks in the ground” – buying and selling on the basis of out-dated metrics like location and traffic counts.
It’s an approach that’s no longer relevant, Newman says, especially when technology is capable of allowing digital boards to react to external factors like weather, traffic flow – even a plane flying overhead.
“That has nothing to do with the billboard, that’s all technology and software first,” said Newman. “The way I see our business, and the way I believe digital out-of-home should be viewed, is that we’re a technology company first, and we have billboards second.”
Newman realizes it will take some time to convince the industry that there’s a better way to buy and sell digital out-of-home.
“It really is a bit of a paradigm shift, because the box that out-of-home has been put in for so many years, based on GRPs and site-specific buys, is so completely entrenched within the industry,” he said. “To go in and [say] ‘We can do things differently,’ there’s a bit of a learning curve.
“We know that as much as we’re going to have our early adopters, there are traditionalists who want it to be the same. If they’re going to try and compare us to our competitors, it’s going to have to be in apples-to-apples format, and therefore it’s going to be sticks in the ground.”
Newman wouldn’t reveal specific sales tactics for Dynamic, but says the objective is to challenge so-called “conventional methods of message delivery” in both the digital and traditional out-of-home industry.
“Ideally I’d like to turn this whole model on its head and work differently,” he says.
Newman says out-of-home is in a “prime position” to deliver on technology enabling advertisers to interact with audiences, respond to social media trends and use aggregators to create messages relevant to a specific time and place.
“I think this is the way things are going in general, and we’re in a prime position to be able to present options like that probably sooner than anyone else,” he said. “We’ve done our homework, and now we know what our message is, who it’s to, and what we’re going to do.”
