What a day!
The DailyDOOH Investor Conference took place Wednesday (Oct. 22) before 90+ senior executives from digital networks, investment houses, consultancies and industry-related companies, and I doubt there was anyone in the room who went home without having learned something or having thoughts to ponder.
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From the very first speaker to the end of the day, topics were raised, discussed and questioned.
Hot among them was programmatic buying, which some people believe can’t be done – at least, not easily – in the digital signage sector. Raised initially by the first speaker, François de Gaspé Beaubien, chairman and chief coaching officer, Zoom Media [2], it was again brought up during the speeches by several others during the day.
Among the things we learned on that topic was that Zoom will be ‘inventory testing’ it in early 2015. We also learned that soapbox session speaker Dirk Huelsermann, manager of VUKUNET [3] in Europe, doesn’t like it at all. And Jim McLaughlin, CEO, Signal Outdoor [4], attending from Atlanta, Georgia, is among those concerned that it could lower CPMs.
We also heard the recurring theme, both among speakers and from others during the networking breaks, that nobody likes the name of ‘digital place-based’ under which many networks operate. We heard some alternate suggestions, such as ‘public video’ by de Gaspé Beaubien; ‘environmental media’ by Lisa Cohen, manager of environmental media at Bloomberg LP [5]; and – possibly this writer’s favourite among the three – ‘location video’ by Dominick Porco, chairman and CEO, Adspace Digital Mall Network [6].
New York Digital Signage Week [7] and its events have also brought a mix of nationalities. So far, I’ve personally talked with people from the US, the UK, Canada, France, Sweden, Turkey, Dubai, and Switzerland, among others.
We’ll be writing what several of the individual speakers had to say at The DailyDOOH Investor Conference, and, no doubt, at Thursday’s conference on Digital Signage for Employee Communications, over the next few days, so stay tuned!