• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, December 9, 2014

Rick Sirvaitis is a sales legend in the media industry, with stints at Blair, NBC Network, WDIV, Turner, Fox Family, and GM Mediaworks. Now, as president of StoreBoard Media, he is involved in an entirely different form of advertising, putting ads where we’ve probably never seen them before: on the security pedestals located at store entrances.

It seems as if advertising is everywhere, but there are apparently more opportunities to place messages than we thought. And at a time with more technology built into every out-of-home ad, the simplicity of this type of advertising is notable.

In my interview with him, Sirvaitis talked about his company, the impact of outdoor advertising, and the fragmentation of television. Below is a short excerpt:

CW: Tell me about StoreBoard Media.

RS: It is a very simple concept. Virtually every major store has pedestals at the entrance that prevent people from stealing product. There is an RFID tag on every product that sounds an alarm when they try and exit without it being deactivated. Very simply, we put ads on those pedestals. So everybody entering and exiting the store can see the ads, and they can’t be missed.

CW: Rick, how do you measure exposure?

RS: I have always gone by the premise that an impression is simply an opportunity to view, and we estimate the number of transactions that that average retailer might get over a four week-period. We then multiply that by 2.76 to come up with an average number of impressions over a four-week period. … We factor the 2.76 as follows – we count going into the store as one, going out the door is two and we add a factor of .76 for people that shop and don’t buy or shop with somebody. We have had that data verified by people counters.

We sell it on a four-week basis.  A client gets all of the ads whether there are two pedestals or twelve in a particular store for that full four weeks.

CW: Rick, taking the long view, what is your opinion about the current fragmentation in television?

RS: I think what is happening in the real world with DVRs is a little different from what some of the numbers may be showing. Right now you are talking about 50% penetration on DVRs . We did a number of studies when I was at Mediaworks about what the impact was. I contended at that time that for every point of penetration of a DVR, the marketplace in effect lost half of that in GRPs of commercial value.

We can all talk programming; Program delivery in television is at an all-time high in viewing, but I would ask the question: Do we really know how much of it is commercial viewing versus programming viewing? And how much of today’s viewership, especially by Millennials, is non-commercial? Look at binge viewing. Look at Netflix. Look at HBO. Look at all of these trends. Most people who get a DVR feel that it is the consumers’ right to avoid commercials and they will figure out how to skip through them as fast as possible. They are going to watch more programming, but it is getting tougher and tougher to get a commercial message in front of the consumer.

CW: What are your thoughts about going from C3 to C7?

RS: I am a little surprised that there is such a trend towards C7 because to me it is really missing the big issue, which is that most of those delayed viewers are skipping commercials. So how you can really count a commercial message beyond a few days? ... I think the best way to count them is what a lot of networks are doing with VOD now, where they might have a shorter commercial load  -- but that’s probably of greater value to most advertisers because you can’t fast-forward. [Viewers] know it is short so [they] will pay attention. It probably has a lot more impact.