Out-of-home is already a well-established medium in many parts of South America. In Colombia, digital out-of-home is becoming more common, its popularity largely thanks to the support of media owners like Marketmedios, who are making it more widely accessible to the media buyers and advertisers they partner with.
It’s safe to say that although digital out-of-home is still an emerging channel, it’s making a big impression on audiences and advertisers alike.
Engaging audiences with digital out-of-home
Based in Bogotá, Colombia, Marketmedios celebrated a milestone 20th-anniversary last year. Today, Marketmedios has grown to become one of the largest media and out-of-home companies operating in the region, a success the team attributes to the diversity of media formats available to advertisers.
While Marketmedios works in advertising formats beyond out-of-home—such as radio—its founders, Mauricio Prieto Uribe and Alberto Prieto Uribe, have a particular fondness for out-of-home, having worked in the industry for nearly three decades.
According to Alejandro Prieto, Vice President of Commercial Sales, the company’s inventory is not just limited to large-format spectaculars, but that is an essential part of their offering.
“We started with billboards, and we’re constantly looking for new mediums that we can add [to our offering]. That’s one of the reasons we can grow at the pace we’re going.”
The company’s network spans roughly 300 digital displays, divided among shopping malls, airports, stadiums, parking lots, and public transportation like Bogotá’s bus transit system, TransMilenio.
Though headquartered in Colombia, Marketmedios operates digital screen networks in neighbouring Panama and Ecuador, and they have plans to expand into Honduras in the future. According to Prieto, the team is also working towards expanding into the retail space. The company recently teamed up with Winkel Media, an advertising and analytics agency based in Mexico, with digital displays installed in convenience store locations.
Marketmedios’ screens run ads almost exclusively, but they make some exceptions for municipal communications or messaging from law enforcement. For now, they don’t run data integration feeds—for the most part, it’s strictly business for these media owners.
Driving awareness and generating demand with digital
Marketmedios has seen a remarkable shift in its digital out-of-home efforts. Around three years ago, digital out-of-home media buys accounted for approximately 5% of Marketmedios’s revenue. That number has steadily increased; today, it makes up about 25% of revenue. It’s clear that the company’s emphasis on the medium is having an impact.
In addition to championing the benefits of digital out-of-home, Marketmedios books up space in a way that resembles a more traditional approach. Oftentimes, large corporations with numerous subsidiaries or products will book up screens to full capacity, sometimes for as long as a year. These brands will then fill up all available ad space with their vast portfolio of products, switching out their ads depending on the day to completely occupy one screen and maximize the investment of their ad spend.
Marketmedios also tries to reduce the volume of advertisers that can book up space on a screen at a time, limiting the number to five different advertisers apiece. This way, their customers benefit from a sense of exclusivity along with the assurance that their ads will be played in each loop. So far, this has proven to be an effective approach, as each of their screens generates an average of 21,400 impressions per month.
A growing network with help from Broadsign
When starting out in digital out-of-home, Marketmedios had a smaller network and made do using the CMS that came with the screens they invested in. But as they expanded and got into programmatic DOOH transacting, they knew they needed the support of software built for digital signage that could readily adapt to consumer demands.
“We figured that if we want to grow, we have to go with the best” says Prieto. After doing their research, Marketmedios adopted the Broadsign platform, and soon realized that this was the solution they had long been seeking.
The Broadsign platform enables Marketmedios to manage and oversee their out-of-home operations. Broadsign’s CMS is a user-friendly tool that facilitates automation and helps manage a rapidly growing network. With plans to begin transacting programmatically, the platform also enables them to easily integrate with multiple DSPs across the industry. When it comes time to sharing results from campaigns, Broadsign’s reporting tools offer their customers in-depth insights and data, showcasing the true value of this investment.
Today, approximately 50 of Marketmedios’s screens are running on Broadsign, a number the team hopes to increase to 75 by the end of this year, especially given that they are in the process of exploring installing screens in new venues and expanding into other countries.
Eyes on expansion
Over the past couple of years, digital billboards have become more widely available in Colombia, and they’ve seen major growth in popularity since then. That’s great news for media owners like Marketmedios, who see the massive potential to grow their DOOH offering and serve advertisers and audiences in their country and beyond its borders.
Interested in growing your digital out-of-home network? See how Broadsign can help.
