Adcentricity, Impact Mobile partner on digital out-of-home media

By Mickey Alam Khan

Adcen­tric­ity, the lead­ing aggre­ga­tor of dig­i­tal out-of-home media, has part­nered with mobile mar­ket­ing firm Impact Mobile Inc. to tar­get mobile consumers.

The deal will add a mobile com­po­nent to cam­paign buys made across 85 Adcen­tric­ity media part­ners and 150,000 dig­i­tal screens.

“Mobile adver­tis­ing, as much as dig­i­tal out-of-home is a fan­tas­tic hyper-targeting oppor­tu­nity for brand cam­paigns,” said Rob Gor­rie, CEO of Adcen­tric­ity, New York. “There is always an oppor­tu­nity to fur­ther engage con­sumers in each of these environments.

“So we’re try­ing to make sure that we’re not doing mobile for mobile’s sake,” he said. “So the part­ner­ship with Impact Mobile is designed to pro­vide spe­cific ser­vices or ini­tia­tives that are turnkey and spe­cific to retail­ers and brand needs in fur­ther con­nect­ing with consumers.”

Adcen­tric­ity is an out-of-home media strate­gist that offers strat­egy, plan­ning, buy­ing, cre­ative and track­ing ser­vices for ad cam­paigns across its part­ners’ screens.

Cross-selling Obama

The com­pany claims to deliver 200 mil­lion monthly impres­sions across dig­i­tal screens in sports are­nas, con­ve­nience stores, restau­rants and bars, gas sta­tions, office build­ings, ATMs, gro­cery stores, uni­ver­si­ties and tran­sit locations.

Work­ing with Impact Mobile will enable Adcen­tric­ity to offer mobile capa­bil­i­ties in four areas.

The first offer­ing is based on calls to action includ­ing SMS, votes, sweep­stakes, con­tests, coupons, pro­mo­tions, text for infor­ma­tion, sur­veys and call-back request.
Rob Gor­rie is CEO of adcentricity

The next is retail and redemp­tion offers com­pris­ing bar-coded mobile coupons, unique PIN num­bers that drive to Web and ticketing.

Con­tent deliv­ery includ­ing ring­tone, wall­pa­pers, videos and games is the third service.

Finally there are mobile appli­ca­tions com­pris­ing mobile Web sites and smart­phone applications.

“Increas­ingly, push media chan­nels are using mobile as a valu­able direct response media,” said Gary Schwartz, president/CEO of Impact Mobile, New York and Toronto. “Mobile allows brands to bridge the con­sumer beyond the ad impres­sion to click-throughs and obtained con­ver­sions to Web, store and other destinations.

“The consumer’s phone is essen­tially a per­sonal dig­i­tal dis­play,” he said. “Impact Mobile is a fer­vent believer that mobile is not a stand­alone media and works best to add value to tra­di­tional push media. Mobile helps con­nect the media dots and move the con­sumer effectively.”

Impact Mobile has sev­eral retail clients who use the firm’s Jump­TXT plat­form for SMS, MMS and WAP mes­sag­ing, and the deliv­ery of mobile con­tent and applications.

Also, Impact Mobile has worked with music and sports venues over the years to cre­ate direct response offer­ings for dig­i­tal signage.

“We are very excited to now power the largest dig­i­tal dis­play net­work in mar­ket,” Mr. Schwartz said.

Adcen­tric­ity launched its AdV­enue plat­form last year, help­ing then pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Barack Obama’s cam­paign in the bat­tle­ground state of Ohio. The plat­form helps adver­tis­ers tar­get by region and venue type, as well as demo­graphic data.

Per Adcen­tric­ity, AdV­enue helped iden­tify the tar­geted demo­graphic and psy­cho­graphic audi­ences within key geo­graphic areas to develop and exe­cute Mr. Obama’s campaign.

That cam­paign is said to have pro­duced a monthly audi­ence of 866,189 serv­ing 2,173,457 Obama ad spots with an SMS call-to-action includ­ing spe­cific key­words in each DMA.

“The dig­i­tal out-of-home indus­try actu­ally has in place the same ben­e­fits that mobile has – media while on the go,” Mr. Gor­rie said. “So the value of couch-based adver­tis­ing for tele­vi­sion just isn’t as strong as it used to be.

“So these days the fact is, peo­ple are look­ing to drive sales and activ­ity and you need to first find and then moti­vate peo­ple when they are active and not pas­sive when they’re on the couch,” he said. “Offer­ings like mobile coupon­ing or store-based loca­tors pro­vide an inher­ent value in assist­ing the con­sumers through their pur­chas­ing cycles.

“The fact is, mobile helps trans­form the dig­i­tal out-of-home indus­try into a mar­ket­ing solu­tion and mature it beyond a media transaction.”

Edi­tor in Chief Mickey Alam Khan cov­ers adver­tis­ing agen­cies, asso­ci­a­tions, research, and col­umn sub­mis­sions. Reach him at mickey@mobilemarketer.com.

Source: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/3021.html