Digital out-of-home is in the limelight, thanks in part to T-Mobile’s planned acquisition of out-of-home SSP Vistar Media, announced last week.
This deal is a “great moment” for DOOH to present itself as an effective and attractive advertising channel, said Ryan Spicer, CRO of Atmosphere TV, an Austin-based startup that serves video content on TV screens in venues such as bars, restaurants and airports. Atmosphere TV monetizes the ad inventory.
But T-Mobile’s move – and Atmosphere’s business model – also put a spotlight on the gray area between DOOH billboards and connected TV. This gray area – Chris Kane, founder of Jounce Media, calls it “sorta CTV” – includes TV screens that play video with ad breaks in public places.
Atmosphere TV now has screens in more than 60,000 venues worldwide and reaches roughly 160 million unique monthly viewers, up from 100 million nearly two years ago.
An atmosphere for advertising
For Atmosphere, adoption has been quicker among venues than advertisers. Some brands 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 slightly lifted its “foot off the gas pedal” on distribution so it can spend more time and attention on attracting new advertisers.
Over the past two years, Atmosphere has been expanding its direct sales efforts with a focus on agency holding companies, Spicer said, although it’s also doing outreach to small and/or regional businesses.
Atmosphere pitches advertisers and media buyers on the opportunity to reach an audience that’s typically 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 ad-free viewers while they’re out and about in bars, restaurants, waiting rooms, gyms, et cetera.
Atmosphere also pitches its digital-style targeting capabilities. An advertiser, for example, can choose to target Atmosphere screens within a certain mile radius of where their customers are most likely to be. Buyers can also target screens based on venue type. Atmosphere sells its inventory both directly and programmatically, including through Vistar Media.
The CTV OOH identity crisis
Most advertisers can agree there is value in reaching a large number of people at once while they’re on the go and buying things.
But “where we get stuck,” Spicer said, is when advertisers try to look at Atmosphere through a purely CTV or DOOH lens, since it doesn’t fit neatly into either category.
“We don’t share a lot of DNA with DOOH,” Spicer said.
Whereas digital billboards rotate static or video ads, he said, Atmosphere plays video content on TV screens with ad breaks – which is more like how streaming TV works at home. Atmosphere views itself as “functionally CTV,” he said, but it’s out of the home and has cheaper CPMs. So, not really CTV.
Either way, “we’re not here to argue what bucket we belong in,” Spicer said.
Still, when advertisers expect Atmosphere to act exactly like CTV or exactly like OOH, he said, it can “slow the conversation down” about the value that video distributors like Atmosphere can offer brands.
Instead, Spicer said, buyers should consider inventory like Atmosphere’s to be premium video that, as such, belongs in their digital media buys. This type of premium video – content that can reach large and valuable audiences at efficient rates – complements campaigns that run on popular streaming services like Disney+, Netflix and Peacock, Spicer argued.
And so far, it seems, more brands are giving “sorta CTV” a shot.
Today, Spicer said, Atmosphere has more than 1,000 direct advertiser relationships, up from somewhere in the hundreds just a couple of years ago.
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