indoorDIRECT Showing Indoor Success

Gail Chiasson, North American Editor

indoorDIRECT Inc., Dallas-based owner of the Restaurant Entertainment Network, reports that credit card usage increased by 100% in a test run in quick service restaurants promoting the card availability.

The test covered hundreds of thousands of transactions.

“The size of the increases exceeded even our initial optimistic expectations,” says Fred Margolin, indoorDIRECT’s CEO. “It is a testimony to the power of our network and the willingness of fast-food customers to be influenced by advertising during the 25-30 minutes they are eating in the dining rooms.”

Reaching more than 150 million consumers annually, the growing Restaurant Entertainment Network is currently located within 1,077 major brand quick-service and family-dining restaurants in America’s top DMAs. Through partnerships with over 100 leading media content providers, the network independently produces an entertaining mix of ‘bite-sized’ music, sports and pop culture programs.

The company is now presenting three new one-hour shows per week featuring a mix of ‘bite-sized’ music, sports and pop culture. In addition to the regular programming, indoorDIRECT updates breaking sports and entertainment segments daily. It also works with big events like the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the Academy Awards, working closely with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for event previews.

The new shows, theBITE, theBITE Weekend and theBITE@Nite, feature hosted magazine-style short ‘bites’ on sports, entertainment, music, lifestyle and children’s programs from more than 100 top entertainment/sports/news organizations.

Each Bite program is produced to appeal to the audience in the restaurants during specific week and day parts. TheBITE (running Monday through Thursday) targets a general daytime audience; theBITE@Night (weekly from 6PM to close) features targeted content to a largely teen and adult audience; and theBITE Weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) highlights content geared to families and lifestyle.

“In addition to our content partners, our advertisers are starting to realize the power of running entertaining branded content on our Network,” says Margolin. “Because we focus on entertaining, the restaurant customers really watch the content and the ads.”

Steven Justman, president of sales for indoorDIRECT, says that the network is building a case history of tangible results in a wide-range of advertiser categories and that indoorDIRECT’s customer engagement, ability to run long-form content, and hyper-targeting capabilities is making the company’s product a compelling media choice for national, regional and local advertisers.


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