Bob Klausmeier has had a varied career with stints as an out-of-home industry executive, out-of-home journalist and digital sign OEM executive. He is co-managing partner for Prime-Site Media an outdoor advertising company with 14 digital signs in Southern Michigan. Bob also operates digital sign industry consulting business. During 2013 Klausmeier published Out of Home magazine. Prior to that time Bob was director of sales and marketing for Yesco. Insider talked with Klausmeier earlier this week.
Bob, how did you happen to enter the outdoor advertising business?
I had worked for quite a few years as a vendor of technology to the outdoor advertising industry, retiring in 2012. In 2013 I founded Out of Home Magazine which allowed me a different perspective on the industry. As I interviewed industry professionals I not only learned more, I developed a passion for the industry that would only be satisfied by operating my own plant. But, I did not fully understand the land-lease component, so I contacted an old friend from Michigan who I had always admired for his site development skills. Ultimately, we decided that our own respective talents complimented one another, so we launched Prime-Site Media as a new venture.
Any thoughts as to what Samsung will make of Yesco’s digital billboard business.
That’s a painful subject for me, as one who worked to develop that company’s digital outdoor business. I am not in contact with my former employers, but I have heard that their primary focus, going forward, is the sports venue industry, as well as casino signage.
Whose digital signs do you use a Prime-Site and what have you learned?
We use Watchfire digital outdoor products exclusively. As an operator, I have found that the single, most critical element of a digital purchase is the dependability of the product, followed immediately by the service response time. Downtime costs money. I investigated the top five digital suppliers in the US and found that Watchfire had the longest mean-time-between-failures. Secondarily, Watchfire has a diagnostics support mechanism that is better than any I have seen. When there is a technical failure in a sign, the operator receives a series of notifications from Watchfire. The first alerts to the nature of the problem, the time it occurred and the action plan to remedy the problem. The second alert tells you which service vendor has been engaged and when they intend to be there. The final alert tells you that the issue has been resolved and the amount of time that the error existed on the sign.
What most buyers don’t understand is that you are not just buying the sign. You are also buying a relationship that should serve you well for the life of the product.
What has to happen for programmatic digital billboard ad buying to take off?
It has taken off. There was a lull for a number of years as the early adopters blazed the trail and endured the still-developing technology. Simultaneous to that period was a long waiting period by the national ad buyers while they waited for sufficient inventory in the markets.
Today, the only thing blocking wide-scale deployment is the legislative environment. Many communities still wrestle with the question, “Do these things cause accidents?” Over a dozen traffic studies have been completed, documenting the opposite. There are over 7,500 digital billboards in the US alone, thousands more in the rest of the world. I am not aware of any accidents attributed to digital billboards as a distraction to drivers. And yet, you still hear the question.
What assumptions should a digital billboard buyer make concerning replacement costs. What components of a digital sign will need to be replaced and when?
The answer to that question varies, depending upon the product manufacturer. Watchfire’s products have been documented to last at least ten years. The Chinese imports, typically, are shorter. Likewise, the Chinese produced products come in multiple cabinets that are not really viable for face replacement.
In our company, we plan on replacing the LED boards and power supplies sometime in year 9, depending upon how the sign looks at that time. We anticipate that cost to be about 45% of the cost of a new display. Keeping in mind that the display cost still inches downward each year, we anticipate the cost to be about 35% of the current display cost.
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