• by July 24, 2000

Out-of-home and online advertising may be closer to realizing the convergence dream than any other media. After Snapple announced last week that they will be wrapping ATMs, some of which already serve ads to bank customers, with Snapple ads, some thought "what will they think of next?"

We didn't have to wait long for an answer. One of the first things to hit the newswire this morning was a press release from CMGI's AdForce network - http://www.adforce.com - announcing their alliance with Hypercom to deliver targeted ads to consumers as they pay for groceries.

As consumers swipe their debit and credit cards through some of the 20 million check out card payment terminals worldwide, AdForce will serve them with an ad, providing advertisers with an opportunity to deliver and measure the effectiveness of ads, self-select coupons, loyalty programs, promotional messages and other content.

According to AdForce, an average of ten debit or credit transactions are processed per day through each terminal, making the global audience for point-of-sale based advertising about 1.4 billion consumer impressions per week.

In addition to its vast reach, company officials say, the medium is especially suited for the delivery of targeted advertising, without the need for consumer tracking.

But here is the real question: where do we draw the line of saturation? As one of our readers said a few weeks ago, the arrival of OOH ads has many consumers "longing for the now lost world where every surface wasn't considered a potential ad location."

Just because a market is "un-tapped," does it automatically mean we advertisers should tap into it?