Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Cedric Bernard, ex co-CEO of Kinetic North America, has partnered with Blip, North America’s most successful self-serve OOH advertising marketplace, to form the largest aggregate network of billboard operators in the USA.
Adkom is an opt-in network comprised of roughly 250 American independent OOH media companies who already receive incremental revenue from Blip.
Media owners participating in Adkom benefit from access to large-scale, national guaranteed campaigns across their static and digital inventories – in addition to the hyperlocal revenues they already receive from Blip’s ‘pay-per-blip’ self-serve digital marketplace.
Adkom CEO Cedric Bernard told us “Adkom is a quantum leap forward in consolidating North America’s OOH buying landscape, accelerating my mission to eliminate industry fragmentation and facilitate access to OOH. National brands continue to spend more on OOH, which is incredibly encouraging. However, most of this budget does not get allocated to small and medium-sized media companies, so we encounter an ever-widening spending gap between OOH media budgets and the expansive number of smaller independents throughout the USA who truly drive the OOH ecosystem. Adkom bridges this gap.”
He continued “Blip has already made it accessible for businesses of all sizes to buy OOH advertising. I’ve been watching Blip’s meteoric rise to prominence over the past 2 years, witnessing countless small businesses use Blip’s tech stack to easily transact on previously inaccessible OOH inventory. Adkom builds on that toolset to seamlessly execute guaranteed static and digital campaigns across the entire network. Adkom therefore opens up the valuable aggregate supply base of independent OOH companies to agencies and national brands who would love to transact across this new national footprint.”
For advertisers, Adkom leverages Blip’s proven technology which successfully optimizes placement of hyperlocal buys at the right time and place, to reserve space for guaranteed digital and static campaigns across the network. For media sellers, Blip ensures that total yield for the participating media owners is maximized and eliminates channel conflict by optimizing across guaranteed and non-guaranteed buys. Adkom also promises to bring standardized measurement to the entire network, facilitating placement of guaranteed campaigns in seamless coexistence with Blip’s existing hyperlocal demand.
Blip CEO Brent Thomson said “Blip is now recognized across the OOH industry for having changed the game by removing all the obstacles that previously prevented small businesses from accessing OOH. What happened next surprised us: an increasing number of our media owner partners asked us whether Blip could bring in bigger, national advertisers as easily as the hyperlocal demand that they’ve enjoyed from Blip – and including their static inventories while we’re at it. We feel strongly that Blip should remain laser-focused on being the best provider of incremental hyperlocal advertising demand. Partnering with Cedric to create Adkom is Blip’s solution to static and guaranteed buys, addressing our American sign owners’ need to band together and become relevant to national brands and specialist agencies, who until now, have not been able to buy from these operators individually. Because Adkom is a separate opt-in network, Blip can continue to focus on the hyperlocal demand channel while still accomplishing our mission of giving media owners the option to leverage new demand sources as desired.”
Together, Blip and Adkom bring incremental demand sources of revenue to OOH suppliers. Blip brings hyperlocal demand to any supplier, and Adkom brings national interest to media owners who have previously been overlooked by large brands or agencies. Both are achieved without cannibalising any existing demand channels.
Cedric started his career in media in 2002 at Publicis Paris, before moving to New York to participate in the creation of experiential agency Publicis Events where he drove M&A activity. After moving to creative agency Publicis Modem, Cedric joined Dentsu America. From 2013, Cedric served Kinetic North America in various positions as CFO, COO, and finally Co-CEO. His tenure at Kinetic afforded him the opportunity to work with media owners to reduce the highly fragmented OOH landscape and improve measurement practices.
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