DPAA Taps Enhanced TV Ad Vet Frey As New Chief

by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, May 22, 2013

Barry Frey, a long-time cable and interactive television executive who helped pioneer the field of “enhanced television,” has joined the Digital Place-Based Advertising Association as president-CEO. He is the fourth TV sales exec to helm the advertising trade bureau since it was founded six years ago as the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau, and the first that is not a woman. He succeeds Sue Danaher, who resigned from the DPAA to take a senior sales position at DPAA member Adspace Digital Mall Network.

Frey’s appointment signals that the DPAA is sticking with the position that it isn’t out-of-home media, so much as it is a new form of out-of-home “video” that competes directly with conventional television and online video, but with the added advantage of proximity. DPAA members range from operators of video programming networks located at gas station fuel pumps to high-rise office building elevators, and generally pitch advertisers and agencies on the notion of reaching audiences with video programming in locations that can directly influence their decisions based on their locations.

“He is a perfect fit for where we are as an industry in this new era of video-agnostic planning and buying,” stated Mike DiFranza, DPAA chairman and president of Gannett’s elevator network, Captivate. “His expertise tapping into advanced data and technology to build solutions that address client and agency needs is exactly what the [digital place-based] industry needs right now to garner its rightful share of budgets.”

The DPAA uses the term "digital place-based media" to differentiate itself from other forms of digital out-of-home media, including electronic billboards, because its members consider themselves more TV-like than outdoor, and because outdoor media generally get a fraction of the advertising rates of television’s.

That said, the total digital out-of-home marketplace is expanding rapidly as traditional out-of-home media players convert from analogue to digital technology, and a number of entities have begun organizing the marketplace much like the online industry’s exchange-based programmatic trading systems -- something TV operators and “premium” online video suppliers have been resisting for fear of commoditization.

Frey joins the DPAA from investment banker Sonenshine Partners, but is best known as the head of Cablevision Systems’ “advance platform sales,” which created award-winning interactive TV advertising campaigns for a wide variety of advertisers and agencies.

digital-out-of-home, tv, video

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