Company of the Day: Ashby St Outdoor

Company: Ashby St Outdoor

Markets: Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma

Headquarters: 1855 Shelby Lane, Fayetteville, AR  72704

Phone:  479-442-0300

matalone Ashby St operates a billboard plant with 2,000 faces in over 40 counties in Arkansas, Eastern Oklahoma and Wichita, Kansas.  The company has 75 digital faces.  Ashby St was founded in April 2011 with the purchase of 400 billboards in Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma from Fowler Media.  In January 2016 the company purchased Clear Channel’s Fort Smith Arkansas and Witchita Kansas plants.    Jim Matalone is the company’s founder.  Prior to starting Ashby Street, Matalone was the President and CEO of NextMedia Outdoor for 9 years.  Jim has served as Vice Chair of Marketing and as a member of the Board of Directors of OAAA and has over 25 years experience in the outdoor business.  One of Ashby Street’s outside investors is Tinicum, Inc., an investment fund manager.   Tinicum also has an investment in Skyway Towers which has partnered with the Independent Billboard Operators to represent billboards to mobile carriers as potential cellular antenna sites.  Insider talked with Jim Matalone.

Jim, how did you originally get involved in the out of home business?

I was working my way through college in Atlanta managing a patio furniture store that had a Turner billboard on the property.   I was in my last semester when Jim McLaughlin (then managing partner at Turner Outdoor) came into the store to buy furniture.  We started talking and he suggested I set up an interview for a sales position.  I started a few months later at Turner Outdoor (which was located on “Ashby Street” in Atlanta).

What’s new at Ashby Street over the past year?

We have continued to improve our digital distribution in our core markets by re-deploying existing digital boxes to areas with higher demand.    We have also expanded our local sales forces, especially in Arkansas where we felt we were understaffed last year.   So far both efforts are proving to pay dividends.

What’s your take as an independent operator on the best way to migrate from selling impressions to selling audience?

This seems to be a difficult question these days.  In my opinion, Geopath’s pricing makes it impractical for smaller independent companies (especially smaller market plants with lower rates per face, etc.).   Also there seems to be a number of other sources for similar audience information becoming available which are being explored.  While I feel we will be more successful as an industry if we find one source and format to use, the pricing model needs to be practical for all size and inventory types of companies.
Another thing I think we need to be conscious of as an industry as we begin to offer more refined audience data for advertisers, is that one of our greatest strengths as a medium is our broad audience reach.   The more narrow we define an audience, the more challenging it can be for us to get a larger share of ad budgets.
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