Comments on: CBS Outernet To Kill Its Grocery Business

By: Dean

Dean — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:34:09 +0000

2 sides indeed. The network was purchased from SignStory and expanded from a successful local sales concept and refocused on national sales. While local sales stayed strong and profitable, the expected windfall from national sales contracts failed dspite multipe national sales manager changes. Infighting and corporate power grabs even had some wanting to see the venture fail. The network lives on, in the Big Y Chain, based on the local sales model that made it successful in the beginning. It is a simple idea. Local businesses can target local shoppers with great reach and frequency. The multi million dollar contracts from national advertisers (and their agencies) didn’t happen. They didn’t want to be bothered with limited neighborhood specific campaigns.

By: David Murphy

David Murphy — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 21:59:09 +0000

As in everything there are two sides to the coin. Yes it would be an extremely negative event for those companies that rely on ad revenue to cover hardware and content development, that model has always been difficult and the ditches are littered with the remains of companies that have tried.

For those of us that believe in what the content can do for a retailer or other public space; this will be an opportunity to educate the retailers and be paid for raising their environment to a higher level, engaging the consumers, and lifting sales.

By: Charles Ansley

Charles Ansley — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:54:33 +0000

My view is this is a very major negative event for the retail/advertising part of the Digital Signage industry in the USA. When a company, as well run from a DS prospective as I suspect CBS Outernet is today, is not be making profits from size of the networks they manage, that can not be a good story for any part of the DS industry. I sure hope the forecast of pending doom for their Grocery TV network is wrong.

Does anyone else see this as a potential major event or am I off base?