• by Michael Shields , May 22, 2004

Zoom Media--perhaps best known in media circles for alternative out-of-home advertisements such as billboards placed above urinals in bars and restaurants--is now entering the youth market.

Zoom has acquired the assets of Target Market Concepts (TMC), a promotional company that specializes in marketing at family-oriented recreational venues. With the purchase, Zoom will now launch the Zoom Family Network, claiming the media and marketing rights to over 500 family entertainment and skating centers in the top 30 DMAs across the country.

According to Zoom, family entertainment centers are a five billion-dollar industry. Such centers are defined as large-scale recreational complexes with three or more attractions such as skate parks, sports fields, laser tag and video arcades, and the like.

While TMC specialized in promotions, Zoom's advertisers will now be able to purchase horizontal 6' x 4' backlit, bus shelter-sized billboards that will be displayed in the common areas of all 500 network venues. "We don't know anybody that does this," Dennis Roche, president and CEO of Zoom, says of the youth-oriented effort. "Nobody that we know of is offering this particular kind of product."

Zoom will continue to work with TMC to offer sampling and promotional programs for partners. The company hopes to capitalize on the 200,000 to 400,000 annual customers these centers receive from hosting birthday parties, camp outings, and sports leagues. "Some of these places host a thousand birthday parties a year," Roche says. Perhaps best known for its "Social Network," which features ad presence in more than 2,000 restaurants and nightlife locations nationwide, Zoom also runs place-based advertising in Bally's health clubs and Loew's movie theaters.

Now, Zoom's Family Network will reach a 6- to-17-year-old demographic, specializing in targeting tweens (roughly defined as 8-14 year-olds). While this represents a younger audience than Zoom is perhaps known for (Roche joked that most clients won't buy both bars and roller rinks), Roche does see some potential synergies with cinema advertising and certain family-oriented fitness centers.

Through this acquisition, Roche wants to continue to build upon Zoom's growing equity as a major out-of-home player, but by maintaining its unique focus on highly targeted programs. "Targeting is becoming much more important on all levels of advertising," he says. "Our business is to identify lifestyle-targeted media venues."

Zoom's ability to offer multiple demographics to advertisers exploring alternative media should help convince skeptics. "A lot of times in the past, this stuff has been thought of as labor-intensive," Roche says. "We want to legitimize the entire business by keeping it all in one place."