Commentary

Digital Outsider Taps Madison Avenue Insiders, Will Tackle Creative Next

Suzanne Alecia of OOH Video Advertising BureauOne of the ad industry's top digital outsiders is getting inside some pretty big agencies. During an update on various initiatives by the bureau, Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau President Suzanne Alecia confirmed OVAB is in discussions with Havas' MPG unit about scheduling a special "Collaborative Alliance" meeting that would focus exclusively on digital out-of-home developments, and potentially, deals.

Details of the meeting, including when and where it will be held, are still being hashed out, and the OVAB members have yet to weigh in on it, but the idea was the brainchild of MPG COO Steve Lanzano, who wants to do for digital out-of-home media, what the agency's collaborative alliance has done for interactive television: bring a wide cross-section of industry stakeholders together - including competitors - in a neutral environment to share information and brainstorm about how the industry can utilize emerging media platforms for the greater good of everyone concerned.

Lanzano hopes to replicate similar quarterly meetings with other crucial digital media trade organizations. The effort is an outgrowth of the Collaborative Alliance, which MPG formed in June when it recruited former Carat Digital Executive Vice President Mitch Oscar to head it up.

While Alecia demurred on specifics about the upcoming collaboration with MPG, she said other key agency executives have begun taking an active role in OVAB, including Patrick Moorehead, director of emerging media at Avenue A/Razorfish; and Drew Corry at Initiative's digital innovation unit, Amphibian. And she says it isn't just coincidental that those execs are coming on board from agencies normally associated with online media buying. Increasingly, she says, her out-of-home media members are utilizing Internet Protocol technologies to deliver digital video programming and advertising to out-of-home locations.

"We're cracking into any [ad agency] media group head who can help pave the way within their own organizations," she says of the OVAB digital missionary work. "It's different in every agency. Sometimes it's the online group, sometimes it's the out-of-home group, and sometimes it's the television group. It's fascinating to see who's been given the authority to explore new platforms and ways of doing business this way."

But the main reason for Alecia's visit with the Digital Outsider was to update us on plans for OVAB's Oct. 29 Digital Summit, a day-long event in New York designed to help marketers, and agency media planning and buying executives, understand the state of out-of-home video technologies and advertising issues.

The day will be structured around three key issues: Creative, research and planning, and will feature a variety of case studies from some recent successful out-of-home video ad campaigns. The day caps off with a panel of client-side executives sharing their views, hopes and aspirations for out-of-home video, as well as any pitfalls they've encountered along the way.

But the highlight of the summit will likely be the official release of the just ratified OVAB guidelines for audience metrics and measurement. Draft versions of the guidelines already are being circulated among the OVAB membership, as well as key stakeholders in the advertising and research community, and Alecia says they've already gotten the tacit blessing of key bodies like the Media Rating Council and the Advertising Research Foundation.

"It's been socialized within the media research community to a large degree," she chimed.

As important as the research and measurement issue has been for getting the digital out-of-home market moving, Alecia says the next big push for the industry will be "creative," including work to understand what formats work best and in which kinds of environments.

"Now that we've done the measurement part of it, we want to move on to the other part, the creative part. The more that advertisers understand about how they can create specific messages for specific environments, the better it will be. Sometimes just running a 30-second spot in an out-of-home location isn't enough," she says, adding that OVAB has done some "back of the envelope" analysis of the myriad creative formats utilized in out-of-home video outlets, but has not yet catalogued their impact. That will be part of OVAB's 2009 agenda. Stay tuned.

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