His company, Intersection, “is an experience driven, out of home media technology company focused on bringing programming, consumer amenities and advertising to cities,” he explained and added, “We are aiming to elevate the urban experience for consumers and advertisers.” His company, which reaches the 15 biggest cities in the U.S., offers a range of consumer services such as free internet access, such as through LinkNYC, real time information and way-finding products.
A Changing Media Ecosystem Based on Greater Privacy
In an emerging world of IDFA and the prospect of a cookieless future, there will be some media platforms that can easily pivot to this new reality. Out of Home is one of them. The shift from consumer opt out to consumer opt in creates an opportunity for a more passive form of collecting consumer data coupled with a platform the offers premium content. “If you advertise on a premium publisher you know the audience you're getting. You know that the audience is going to be high quality. I think that's got benefits for publishers, because the publishers get the full value of the audiences and they don't have these ad tech companies as middlemen,” he explained and added, “The notion of content and context becomes much, much more valuable and publishers that can deliver that kind of audience are going to be in a really good position.”
Privacy
looms large as a challenge for many companies but Grosso is unconcerned because
when it comes
to out of home, “You don't need to know who that person is you
just need to know that people who were by your screen showed up at the store. You
don't need to know anything about those people other than that and that's a
very privacy friendly way.”
Intersection’s Offering
Intersection positions itself as a publisher that can offer a range of compelling content such as that found on LinkNYC which offers weather, time, factoids, art, notices of local events, etc. In addition, the company can offer a point of purchase opportunity for advertisers. “Say you're a beer company and want to reach people who are going to bars. You could buy a digital out of home campaign on our screens on Friday nights, right around the bar. I don't need a cookie to be able to get that audience, I can just get that audience, where they are at a logical place in a logical time,” he noted.
And the sun-setting of cookies poses no problem and even offers a compelling point of difference for out of home, according to Grosso. “I can put ads in the drugstore, but I also can put ads on digital out of home screens or even static out of home screens right outside the drugstore and again that's a powerful context, so I think location and context become really important in a world where you can't try to use cookies to track that kind of audience,” he shared.
Intersection’s Measurement
Measurement deliverables for advertisers include both established currencies and strategic partnerships. “We rely on Geopath which is an audited set of metrics for the out of home industry,” for reach, frequency and impressions, Grosso explained. “Geopath is the currency that people buy and sell on. We found that it was a good baseline. But you have to enhance on top of it. So we’ve put together an ecosystem of partners that can build on top of what you get from Geopath,” which includes more demographics – the types of people who have seen the ads and what they do after exposure.
One example is StreetMetrics for exterior buses. “We sell advertising on 10,000 buses in the United States and using StreetMetrics provides digital style measurement in attribution based on the data they collect,” using the GPS from the bus to match to the data they collect to better understand the audience, he noted.
Looking Ahead for Out of Home and Intersection
For Grosso, the future is bright with possibilities. “Valuable premium audience with differentiated content is going to be really, really successful,” he began, “That's going to be true in the digital space and that's going to be true in the physical space.” He pointed out that the opportunities are there for both big and small companies. Big platforms like Facebook or Google, “will continue to be hugely successful because you have lots of data and big audiences that are highly engaged. If you're a specialized vertical publisher with good audience you're also going to be successful. The premium out of home companies that have assets that can reach hard to reach audiences with really good creative in contextual brand safe environments are also going to be hugely successful because so much advertising is targeted by location and without a cookie trying to find those people on a mobile phone, is going to be very hard, I can guarantee you.”
He sees that, “People are coming back to cities and going out frequently. Advertisers want to reach those folks at critical points throughout the day, so high quality out of home publishers are going to really thrive. Out of home will become a great way to add highly localized reach for any of these marketers because if they want to target locations or consumers who congregate and specific neighborhoods, the best way to do it has always been out of home, but now it'll be the only way to do it. Out of home will continue to be the most cost effective, privacy friendly and brand safe way, if you want to target a geography,” he concluded.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
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