How to monetize DOOH advertising with self-service devices| Self-Service Innovation Summit 2020 | Retail Customer Experience

Movie rental provider Redbox, coin cashing machine operator Coinstar and Five Star Food Service, a convenience services provider, may all be different businesses, but the three share one big goal: to monetize their self-service devices whether it’s a kiosk or a vending machine.

Leaders from the three companies, which are adopting digital out of home media technology, shared insight on their unique approaches during a session at the recent virtual Self-Service Innovation Summit presented by Networld Media Group.

The talk, “Monetize Your Self-Service Device,” featured Terrence Coles, head of Redbox Media Network/Redbox Automated Retail, Nathan Hoy, DOOH advertising operations leader at Coinstar and C. J. Recher, VP of marketing at Five Star Food Service Inc. The panel was moderated by Eric Lamb, VP of publisher solutions at Vistar Media, a digital media services provider that uses data driven technology to provide insights into audience movement patterns to deliver programmatic DOOH, which sponsored the session.

Exploring programmatic DOOH

Lamb kicked off the talk with an introduction of DOOH and insight on programmatic DOOH. Programmatic refers to the buying and selling of advertising through software. The approach initially began with online display media before extending into mobile and video channels and now traditional advertising channels including TV and radio.

Vistar Media provides software that helps media owners, including the three companies involved in the panel talk, with managing ad and media inventory via a system that automates OOH transactions, from planning to creative approval workflow, as well as delivery and reporting inventory.

Yet, despite strong automation capabilities, programmatic DOOH isn’t something that’s turned on and left to run. The human element, as well as a company’s media and marketing strategy, both play a vital role when it comes to a successful programmatic campaign.

When done successfully, it can provide a new way to reach a targeted audience, connect with buyers and drive revenue.

Lamb described DOOH as a subset of OOH that encompasses all digital displays that have a capability to deliver ads, from a single image to full motion video. These displays can range from digital billboards to an ATM at a gym to the point-of-sale checkout in a mall retail environment or the vending machine in an employee breakroom or a kiosk providing movie rental or coin cashing.

“There are a lot of different screens out there and people are finding a lot of different interesting ways to monetize them and make better use of them,” said Lamb.

Approaches in play

Redbox is working with Vistar Media to deploy media on its 41,500 kiosks on a local level. Coinstar is tapping Vistar Media to drive DOOH marketing on the company’s ad channel that sits atop of its 22,000 kiosks (involving 4,000 screens).

For Five Star Food Service, Vistar Media serves as partner on DOOH for its 1,800 kiosks and its close to 10,000 screens. The Chattanooga, Tennessee-based foodservice contractor serves the breakrooms for over 10,000 companies across the Southeast U.S. via micro markets, vending machines, coffee brewers and cafeterias.

“For us it’s really always been about creating that engaging and exciting customer interaction and bringing that to life,” said Recher, who described the process as removing outdated vending machines and bringing in an exciting concept boasting engaging content.

“It’s been a true differentiator for us in terms of a service model,” he said.

Five Star Food Service evolves

The DOOH effort began five years ago with promotions and working with its kiosk partner to enable the digital touchscreen as a media and customer interaction point.

Then it began collaborating with its partner brands to bring “excitement” to the breakroom, and a year later turned to the digital signage kiosk boards within the micro market.

The company jumped in with both feet in 2018 and decided “to go in deep” after finding success with promotions on kiosks and signage boards (1,800 kiosks, 1,800 digital ad boards).

Now it’s leveraging vending machine card readers and incorporating the 7,000-plus screens for promotions and callouts, Recher said.

Redbox finds multiple uses

At Redbox, the movie rental is its core value, but it’s also focused on leveraging the kiosk screen space for advertising revenue.

A few years back it began looking at advertising across various platforms, such as programmatic ads on the kiosks, notably the banner ad space at the top of the screen’s user interface.

That presented a real opportunity, said Coles, given the 100-million-plus impressions a month on the kiosk screens.

“The key was to use the power of entertainment to advertise at the point of retail,” he said, noting its kiosks are everywhere from convenience stores to Kroger, Walmart and Circle K. “We are strictly only in the static banner phase today and looking into screens on top of the kiosk to leverage video placement.”

The approaches by Redbox and Five Star reflect how innovative DOOH can be done, said Lamb.

“You can incorporate the small image style banner ad or take it full screen and show a full motion video. There are a lot of different ways and all of them can be profitable and successful. It’s really a matter of what makes the most sense for your network and what you’re trying to build,” he said.

Coinstar cites dual opportunities

At Coinstar, which “dabbled in OOH advertising,” according to Hoy, there were two compelling DOOH opportunities given the two screens on the kiosks.

The question, he said, was how to optimize the real estate already in play and incorporate larger screens to reach audiences.

“We took that idea and built our own advertising platform that literally bolts on to our devices, and from that we expanded everything and built out, with Vistar, the platform from start to finish. We developed an entire platform that exists as a DOOH experience in the retail grocery space.”

Each company participating in the panel, said Lamb, are all playing in a kiosk environment but coming from different perspectives when it comes to advertising.

“The ads have different purposes and may be reaching different audiences and different types of advertisers, but technology and processes is all behind it.”

The internal resource requirement

One aspect that may often be misconstrued when it comes to DOOH is that it requires tons of internal resources and tons of people and a big pot of money.

But, as the panelists shared, that’s a huge misconception.

All three began with small internal teams and built out the capability and expanded as needed.

“When we think about how everyone is all different stages, you can still have success without having an enormous team or people. You can build on a small sort of footprint and go from there,” said Lamb.

A key to success, said the panelists, is ensuring the DOOH effort has both the support and involvement of marketing and the company’s operations team.

In regard to DOOH technology decisions, building or buying platforms, the starting point is understanding what’s already in place and what is needed, said the panelists.

Redbox had a custom in-house system but was relatively limited when it came to messaging on its kiosks as it wasn’t built with an ad-serving intent.

“That’s what led us to speak Vistar (Media), to think about campaigns and advertisers and impressions — all the things that are more ad related,” said Coles, adding that in his view digital OOH is still relatively nascent as opposed to other digital formats.

“A platform like Vistar allows us to have programmatic, plus direct, and have more control and also deliver at a kiosk by kiosk level,” he said, adding “you can imagine with 41,500 kiosks it’s pretty difficult to manage and I think those are things that are super important to have.”

In the beginning it had custom formats for its media, and now has a format that is a standard to the industry.

“We can implement for a full screen ad that was not the case prior,” he said. “It’s very hard when you have a one-off and having every campaign be custom had been difficult.”

Building from the ground up

Coinstar, said Hoy, was in a similar position as Redbox. It chose to build everything from scratch in order not to interfere with its core business.

That approach, he said, “allowed us to react quickly and deploy more rapidly and be more efficient,” he said. Now Coinstar is looking at a way to optimize and plans further development such as on its touchscreen.

The approaches, said Lamb, illustrate that there is no one size DOOH approach that fits all.

“But if you talk to the right people and start engaging early, you should be able to come up with a pretty good strategy and don’t need an army of people and millions of dollars to get it going,” he said.

The ad campaign tech strategy

When it comes to deploying the media and advertising campaign effort, it all comes down to the customer and consumer interaction, and that can be one-to-many, one-to-one or a combination of both.

Coinstar set up its strategy to allow the programmatic aspect to work organically while it focused on developing its direct sales channel, said Hoy.

“[Vistar Media] allowed us to not worry so much on what’s going on the network and ad buys with those buying programmatically and allowed our primary focus to be with client relationships with larger agencies, so our direct sales channel so has evolved, and we’ve been able to spend more time on that side.”

At Redbox, the scenario was nearly the reverse, said Coles, as it needed to focus on a direct campaign strategy and implemented Vistar Media to take care of that need.

“We needed to manage on kiosk basis, first and foremost, and to be more efficient in our direct campaigns,” he said. “Programmatic is starting to really increase as we socialize that inventory to buyers.”

Five Star, said Recher, needed to take both a one-to-one and one-to-many ad approach as it has both opportunities to leverage.

“Our digital signage boards in the marketplace are that one-to-many as anyone in the breakroom can see the ad displayed. The kiosk is one-to-one and you can tell when someone is there. It’s the best of both worlds,” he said.

And that — the best of both worlds — is ultimately where everyone wants to get to, said Lamb.

“But again, you don’t need it all to get started and you can evolve over time. Start with one and determine what is doable and feasible for your company.”