Russ Curry, Ministry of New Media
Screenverse has acquired The Danaher Group and by doing so, has become the exclusive sales partner for TouchTunes.
The acquisition most likely makes Screenverse one of the largest digital OOH sales companies in the US, with exclusive sales representation of 50,000+ screens and 2.5 billion monthly impressions.
The Danaher Group was led by world-class media veterans Susan Danaher (former DPAA President, EVP Viacom, CRO Adspace/Lightbox) and Victor Germain (VP Screenvision, SVP, Gas Station TV).
Susan, Victor, and Taylor Chiulli have joined Screenverse in sales, research, and operations leadership positions.
Adam Malone, Screenverse President, believes that “this represents a major step forward in the business. TouchTunes is one of the largest and most significant digital place-based networks in the world, by number of screens and total impressions. At a time when the world is opening back up again, we are incredibly optimistic about the bar and restaurant sector. With a ‘Roaring 20’s’ like Summer upon us, TouchTunes is strongly positioned to reach a Gen Z and Millennial audience when they are out in the world having fun and spending money!”
The TouchTunes network will be available via leading SSPs; Vistar Media, PlaceExchange, and Magnite.
Screenverse are commissioning on-premise research for the Beverage and Alcohol market from Nielsen CGA and other providers.
Screenverse is currently hiring Sales Directors (CHI, NYC, Remote) and Operations Analysts (Remote). If interested, please inquire at sales@screenversemedia.com or adops@screenversemedia.com for further details.
June 30th, 2021 at 13:22 @598
Good news for Sue and Victor. The last year had to be really tough. What I don’t get is that the combined entity is essentially selling stuff available through at least a dozen other mobile and DOOH companies signed up for the programmatic pipes. There is nothing really exclusive about it anymore, and no fences or badges. When everything is available to anyone through everyone it’s just really confusing and commoditizing to the buyers of DOOH. It probably ends like digital and mobile. In the end DOOH networks can either go fully programmatic and hope for a decent share of the revenue pie at low CPM’s or figure out how to be a premium publisher and sell their premium inventory directly. Premium in our game isn’t content based like the Internet. It’s contect (location) based. If you have a premium location should you race for the bottom. The other issue is of course, our platforms cost far more in hardware and operations than a website. Will the bottom support those costs of capital, operations, and excessive venue owner revenue share? I’m dubious.
June 30th, 2021 at 14:09 @631
Perplexed touches on a number of interesting points.
The last year has been tough, but it has also fortified the need for digital OOH companies to embrace the emerging tools, platforms, and budgets wielded by digital buyers.
Screenverse works with digital screen networks who, in most cases, are not media businesses at their core. They sell music (TouchTunes), they do medical assessments (Pursuant Health), they run building directories and content (TouchSource and theBulletin). They hire us to run their media businesses. Their “side business” is our “core business”.
The fact that media owners, Screenverse included, list and sell media through several platforms (DOmedia, AdQuick, Vistar, Place Exchange) is simply pragmatic as each platform has different tools, customers, and $$ flowing through their pipes.
“Premium” is in the eye of the beholder, and much of our role as salespeople is to find the brands and agencies who fancy our audiences the most. I would argue that if OOH is going to break out of its “vanity” box, then we should emphasize the “plow-horse” power of delivering audiences at scale, rather than the “show horse” placements that drive Instagram posts rather than bottom-line results.
Thanks for the post and for sharing your perspective!
June 30th, 2021 at 15:12 @675
Thanks Adam. Totally get what you are saying about companies that add advertising to something that is not advertising as a platform. And I appreciate the need to get DOOH to more buyers.
My point was that the same inventory you are “selling” is accessible programmatically by many other sellers. I personally been approached by a several mobile companies trying to increase their buys into the space by subscribing to programmatic DOOH pipes. It is also because the mobile ad space is increasingly cookie cutter, cluttered, and commoditized. They are doing the same with programmatic connected TV and audio. That is the opposite of exclusive.
I get that you are selling your “selling” on top. I’ve seen many DOOH sales brokers and sales companies come and go. What remains for DOOH platforms is there are simple economic truths to the business. The main one is that the models consistently fail when there are too many hands out for the revenue (which is consistently well over-estimated). Understand in the digital programmatic value chain there are often a dozen or more takers in revenue and publishers can expect absurdly long payment cycles (which only lengthened during Covid).
Unless we see venue owners forego the large shares they demand in recognition of the costs, it will be much harder to bear the cuts that the programmatic layers (plus sales brokers) take off the top. That can of course go until the pockets are empty. The dirty little secret of our industry is there is barely anyone operating a network that is profitable despite the hype.
There are some bigger issues that need to be solved. The OAAA walking away from real ad impressions combined with the raft of duplicative programmatic selling will only increase the opportunity for bad actors to perpetuate fraud. And impression to the player (not the screen) doesn’t mean someone saw it. The reason no one has truly adopted video analytics based impressions is because attention is so low.
The agencies know that. Watching the DPAA webinar earlier this week, I saw yet another agency exec spouting the benefits of and nascent opportunity for DOOH. When questioned though he admitted that the rest of the agency folks aren’t really bought in. I welcome your growth, and I’m glad your focus is on DOOH. It’s more the mobile companies coming in that bug me. They don’t get the medium, and they stand a real chance of screwing it up with the agencies because it simply does not deliver the same reporting granularity. I know after years at DoMedia you get it and will do right. Thanks.
June 30th, 2021 at 17:32 @772
Perplexed – color me very impressed with your very thoughtful response. Thank you. I see where you are coming from and agree on most of the points you’ve made. I will not, however, let my appreciation for your perspective stand in the way of me sharing mine!
First, you and I have very different definitions of several key themes, and it might be helpful to share my perspectives juxtaposed with yours. (Please call me on it if I’m being unduly ungenerous)
– “Selling” – My team and I are “selling”, every day. Research, prospecting, outreach, calls, meetings, RFPs, negotiations, IOs, POP shots, service. Some of our clients are only direct (RFPs, IOs, analog reporting) and some of our clients are only programmatic (OE, PMP, automated reporting). I can promise you, all of our clients require some level of selling. I pine for the day when this stuff just gets “bought”!
– Agencies, SSPs, and DSPs are all “selling” too. Especially if you’ve got digital place-based media that isn’t called out directly in an agency brief. You better believe the gals you are “selling” to are “selling” too! I haven’t experienced a “dozen” hands out for revenue. Maybe I’m naive, but I see value creation at each layer of the current system (Network, media owner, SSP, DSP, agency/advertiser). The key is to streamline the process and lower the “taxes” but that will happen through time and competition, so I’m not too worried about that.
– “Exclusive” – What I mean by exclusive is that I’ve been hired by my network partners to operate their media business. I price the media. I sign the contracts. I’m celebrated when I have good sales quarters. I determine where my team spends its time and attention calling on brands, agencies, DSP managed service sellers, etc. We have our noses in the air and we follow the scent of money wherever it leads, because that’s what we’ve been hired to do. And, of course, we can be fired just like any in-house sales team can if we fall short!
– Mobile Companies – I assume you aren’t talking about mobile handset marketers who are being mobile display ads across mobile web, apps, Google, and Facebook. I assume you do not mean pre-roll Youtube. I assume you mean the crop of start-ups who sell moving media (wraps, tops, etc) to collect mobile devices and data and then “sell” mobile media retargeting campaigns based on exposed audiences. (Btw – this business model is smart – super smart – and is bringing real digital dollars and interest from brands and agencies who see other digital top-and-mid-funnel campaigns as losing their affect.)
If you are taking issue with these “mobile companies” wanting to extend their reach by buying large format and/or static OOH to extend their data collection and retargeting service, my question is, why haven’t you (not really YOU, the royal YOU) take a page out of Stroer’s playbook, Adams’, Clear Channel’s… and start offering data collection and retargeting services yourself! If there is an arbitrage opportunity here then there is a growth opportunity as well if you can offer it in house.
– Measurement – Still a major challenge at every level of the OOH ecosystem. My suspicion is that as we await a centralizing savior to present itself (Geopath, OAAA) the prominent SSPs in our space and the Omni-channel DSPs will activate the mobile geo and behavioral data they’ve been collecting for a decade to help advertisers find their audiences in real time in the real world. No offense to Geopath or any other traditional OOH measurement body.. but we ain’t building that.
So let’s saddle up to the Trade Desk and Verizon, educate them on the value and nuance of the media, and be first in line to catch the deluge of money as it floods into the system.
July 1st, 2021 at 12:06 @546
Thanks Adam – great reply. “Color Me Impressed” is the best Replacements song ever btw.
By mobile companies, I mean the location based/retargeting/geofencing mobile ad sellers out there. No reason to name a few – there are way too many. They have also tied up to the pipes and are also selling the same DOOH platforms and audiences to the same agencies and clients along with their mobile and CTV.