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Digital out-of-home is in the spotlight, thanks in part to T-Mobile planned acquisition Out-Home SSP Vistar Media, was announced last week.
The deal is “a great moment” to position Dooh as an effective and attractive advertising channel, said Ryan Spicer, CRO of Atmosfera TV, an Austin-based startup that serves video content to TV screens in places like bars, restaurants and Airports. The TV atmosphere monetizes ad inventory and shares a cut with venues.
But T-Mobile’s move—and the atmosphere’s business model—also put the spotlight on it in the gray area between the dooh panel and the connected TV. This gray area – Chris Kane, founder of Jounce Media, calls it “Sota CTV” – Includes TV screens playing ad break video in public places.
Atmosfera TV now has screens in more than 60,000 locations worldwide and reaches approximately 160 million unique monthly viewers, up from 100 million almost two years ago.
Advertising atmosphere
For atmosphere, adoption is faster among sites than advertisers. While venues are seeing the air as a net-new revenue stream that doesn’t require any heavy lifting, some advertisers are still trying to figure out where, exactly, “Sorta CTV” inventory fits into their media and marketing plans.
For that reason, Spicer said, Atmosphere has taken its “foot off the gas pedal” on distribution so it can spend more time and attention on attracting new advertisers.
In the past two years, Atmosphere has expanded its direct sales efforts with an emphasis on agency holding companies, Spicer said, although it is also reaching out to small and/or regional businesses.
Atmosphere positions advertisers and media buyers with the opportunity to reach audiences that are usually hard to reach.
Many streaming subscribers still refuse to watch TV with ads and are inaccessible to streaming TV advertisers. But brands can reach these viewers without ads while they’re out and about in bars, restaurants, waiting rooms, gyms and et i cetera.
Atmosphere also sets up its targeting capabilities in a digital style. An advertiser, for example, can choose to target atmospheric screens in a roll from a certain number of miles from where their customers are most likely to be. Customers can also target screens based on venue type. Atmosfera sells its inventory directly and programmatically, including through Vistar Media.
CTV OOH identity crisis
Most advertisers can agree that there is value in reaching large numbers of people at once while they are on the go and shopping.
But “where we get stuck,” Spicer said, is when advertisers try to look at the atmosphere through a purely CTV or DOOH lens, because it doesn’t fit into either category.
“We don’t share a lot of DNA with DOOH,” Spicer said.
While digital billboards rotate static or video ads, he said, Atmos plays video content on TV screens from ad breaks — more like how Streaming TV works at home. Atmosphere is considered “functionally CTV,” he said, but it’s out-of-home and has cheaper CPMs. So it’s not exactly CTV.
Either way, “we’re not here to argue which bucket we belong in,” Spicer said.
Still, when advertisers expect Atmos to behave exactly like CTV or exactly like OOH, he said, it can “slow down the conversation” about the value that video distributors like Atmos can offer brands.
Instead, Spicer said, buyers should consider inventory like Atmospheric premium video that, as such, belongs in their digital media purchases. This type of premium video — content that can reach large and valuable audiences at cost-effective prices — complements campaigns running on popular streaming services like Disney+, Netflix and Peacock, Spicer argued.
And so far, it seems, more brands are offering “sorta CTV”.
Today, Spicer said, Atmosphere has more than 1,000 relationships with direct advertisers, up from hundreds just a few years ago.
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