okay so we're diving into digital outof home advertising today do o yeah do it's uh it feels like it's everywhere you know those big flashy Billboards the screens you see in like Ubers and taxis even in those mall kiosks yeah everywhere it really feels like it's everywhere we look these days but I have to say for something that everyone's talking about do isn't exactly setting the advertising world on fire is it well that's the interesting thing you know the potential it's definitely there right I mean the Technology's gotten really sophisticated the audience is huge but
but it's like it's stuck yeah yeah it's like stuck in second gear or something it's having a bit of an identity crisis don't you think is it just like a really fancy billboard or is it trying to be like the next big thing in Connected TV yeah and what with that prediction we saw that by 2028 do ad spending in the US could actually shrink I mean that doesn't exactly say future of advertising does it no it doesn't really doesn't you'd think combining the old school impact of billboards with the whole you know hyper targeted
thing that digital advertising does so well would be a slam dunk it seems like a no-brainer right you get the captive eyeballs but then you can really zero in on who you want to reach the technology is getting really good at understanding who's actually seeing these ads exactly but there are some big roadblocks some big ones okay so what's roadblock number one well you know I kind of think of it as this identity crisis we were talking about okay the media buyers the people who actually decide where the advertising money goes right they're not quite
sure what to make of do is it a billboard is it TV is it like some weird hybrid and that makes it really hard to measure how effective it is and if you can't measure it and in advertising if you can't measure it you can't justify spending on it you can't put a number on it yeah it's a non-starter and we saw that firsthand actually with that whole thing with that CTV ad Network trying to pass off these sidebar ads in bars as some kind of like super premium inventory it was oh kind of outrageous
it's like they were trying to have it both ways yeah exactly and that just erods trust for sure which is you know that's everything in advertising and that leads us right to roadblock number two the Doos landscape is incredibly fragmented okay this is where I started to get a little lost to be honest all those acronyms were flying around ssps and dsps I felt like I needed a decoder ring or something but my takeaway was that online advertising is kind of Consolidated right you have your big players and everyone knows who they are right exactly
online advertising has its Giants right but do not so much it's dominated by a handful of major companies so it's like walking into a grocery store yeah and there are only five brands of cereal on the shelf right you know you might find something you like but it's not like you have a lot of choices that's kind of what's happening with do H and that lack of competition it really stifles Innovation yeah it's like why bother innovating if you can just coast along and exactly and Rak in the catch if a few big players control
the game why change it and speaking of a few big players that jnce media research you sent over man talk about a rabbit hole it is it's a latton pack it really is like I felt like I was getting a crash course and you know all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in the ad world that we never even think about yeah I mean it can feel like a bit of a black box totally and what jce found it's pretty revealing basically there are a small number of do companies that are just flooding
the market with these ad requests those bids right you're talking about it's not that they necessarily have more inventory oh interesting it's that they're really good at gaming the system so it's like not about the quality it's about the quantity those people you know shoving flyers in your face on the street you're more likely to just yeah just take take one to make them go away it's kind of like that yeah you know imagine one company sending out say two or three bids for a prime advertising spot okay another one's bombarding potential buyers with 40
bids oh wow for a similar spot who do you think's going to win the 40 bids for sure it's a numbers game wow but that's not the whole story that's just one piece of it okay so what's the rest of the story what else is going on so ad networks ad networks right this is where it gets even more interesting these are the middlemen okay they operate between the companies selling the ad space and the brands that are trying to buy it all right and what they do is they bundle together do inventory okay and
often mix it in with connected TV inventory so wait hold on so you could think you're buying an ad on like Hulu right but it could end up on a billboard potentially yeah or on that screen at the gas pump oh wow see that feel Not always completely transparent about it yeah that feels a littley yeah a little shady I mean I get it everyone's trying to make money but if I feel like I'm being misled or I'm not really sure what I'm buying it creates this distrust and confusion exactly which makes people hesitant to
really go all in yeah totally it's like it makes me want to just stick with what I know and that's a problem for do right because it needs those advertisers to buy in exactly but it's not all bad news programmatic do desite all of this is growing okay so there's hope there is hope I like hope there are signs of progress so programmatic do it's growing but it's got some work to do it's a work in progress yeah kind of like what growing pains exactly so where are we seeing progress like what's actually looking good
well the good news is some companies are starting to address that transparency issue headon it's about time right they're realizing that if they want advertisers to trust them they got to be more upfront about you know what they're actually selling honesty is the best policy right makes sense to me what else is looking up content adjacency is another area where we're seeing some really interesting developments remember how we were talking about do trying to be more like TV right right well companies like ad ex ector trying to bridge that Gap they're figuring out how to
combine that really precise targeting that you get with CTV with the real world impact of do okay so how does that work like give me an example so imagine you're at a sports bar right you're watching the game highlights the Energy's high and then boom right when everyone's glued to the screen an ad pops up for say a new energy drink or a sports betting app it's about timing and it's about relevance so it's like it actually makes sense in that moment exactly it's not just some random ad that has nothing to do with what
I'm doing it's all about context right right and it's only going to get more sophisticated like imagine an ad for allergy medication that plays on those digital Billboards in your neighborhood but only when the pollen count is high wow that's the next level right okay so what about measuring all of this I mean can we actually prove the do works that's the million-dollar question and the answer is it's getting a lot easier to do that realtime data and analytics are becoming so much more powerful we're not just talking about estimating how many people might have
seen your ad we're talking about knowing like did they actually go into your store after they saw that ad wow did they make a purchase online that kind of data is incredibly valuable so big picture where do you see do going is it going to be this huge part of our digital lives or is it going to fizzle out I'm optimistic I really am I think do has the potential to be a really big deal but it all comes down to trust and transparency can these companies be honest with advertisers can they deliver on their
promises if they can I think we're going to see amazing things from do and that is our Deep dive on do what a wild world it is it really is and it's only getting Wilder so will do weave its way into the fabric of our digital lives or will it you know kind of Fade Into the background that's for you to decide this has been a really fascinating Deep dive thanks for walking us through all of it my pleasure thanks for having me of course until next time
