High Traffic Medical Waiting Rooms
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
The Canadian Health Media Network has grown to include seven affiliated digital out-of-home waiting room networks, giving media planners and brand advertisers national coverage and access to a weekly audience of 523,000 viewers.
Since its founding 18 months ago, CHMN is now providing health and wellness content in 552 high traffic medical waiting rooms from coast to coast, with screens in 26 waiting rooms operating in Nova Scotia – mainly in the Halifax region – coming under the network umbrella starting in mid-April. These follow the 30 waiting rooms serviced by Canal Sante in Quebec that were added in March.
In addition to Canal Sante, The Canadian Health Media Network’s other current affiliates include: Creative Display Technologies, Cruise Media Group, Medik-TV, Mommentum Health Media, Optometry News Network and PHSN.
The expanded affiliate network represents roughly 80% of the medical waiting rooms in Canada that currently have DOOH networks running in them. Typical venues include multi-practice medical centres, primary care facilities, family health centres, group health centres and hospitals, as well as medical laboratory, x-ray and ultrasound clinics.
Media opportunities in the aggregated network are sold exclusively by three seasoned media sales teams: ZOOM Media in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia; Volt Media in the Maritimes; and Distinctive Sales in the Prairie provinces.
Advertisers with health and wellness messages can now easily target audiences across the country, with just one order and invoice, and one proof of performance report. Ed Voltan, CHMN CEO, says that a fundamental aspect of the national network is a commitment to rigid compliance standards for audience measurement and reporting.
“We’ve put together a very seasoned media group to manage and sell this,” says Voltan. “We’ve all been part of the fabric of the media industry for many years, and we understand how important it is to have a uniform, credible proposition. When it comes to DOOH, we’re steadily working to raise the credibility of the sector by supporting the common metrics initiative that has been established by CODACAN (Canadian Out-of-Home Digital Association/L’Association canadienne l’affichage numerique.)”
CHMN only accepts new affiliates if those network operators can demonstrate ad spot compliance – proof that spots actually ran as scheduled, and that viewers had an opportunity to see the ads.
Affiliate networks retain their own local sales forces, but they focus entirely on developing community-centric advertising accounts that are not managed by the national/regional network sales teams. The organization also has an affiliation with the American Health Media Network, opening the possibility for ad buys that cross national boundaries.
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