What have you learned about what makes a good digital location?

Demand, Location, Good Lease and View Time.  Our preference is stop lights, but in most of the markets that we’ve built digital’s those spots have already been converted.  If there is No Stop Light, then we hope to have a 15 – 30 second drive by.  This Cherokee digital is our 2nd in the market.  The first one, in downtown is 100% occupied year round.  We intend for this new digital to be a second option for those needing digital options in the market.  Having a good Land Lease is always important when making a significant capital expense.  In this case we have about 87 years remaining on a 99 yr lease, so we know we won’t have to deal with rising land rent in the future.  We’ve got a general formula, we go by to help determine what would make a good digital site.  And most of it again is based off Demand, Location and the lease.  We have enough historical data to guide us and what our expected return should be.

Have you ever installed a digital that didn’t work out and if so why?

Most of our markets we work in are rural markets with county populations under 30,000 people.  We’ve never had a issue building just 1 digital in a market.  A few years ago we built our 4th digital in a specific market with expectations that it should do very well.  It was at a Stop Light, near the High School, a Lowe’s.  For whatever reason it didn’t hit our internal projections in the first year.  We couldn’t really figure out why.  Things did turn around in the 2nd year and we are now exceeding our prelim projections.  Sometime it takes awhile.  We are cautious though not to try to overbuild a market with too many digital’s.

Is it easier to sell ads on a digital network as opposed to a single digital or two?

We don’t really sell a Network spot where they pick and choose what boards to run on.  Most of them know which digital’s they want to target and will ask for those.  If we are sold out on a particular board generally we have another close by that they can get on.

How important are automated networks (Adquick, Blip, Place Exchange, Vistar) in your digital ad sales efforts?

When you combine all our programmatic they are our #1 Client based off $$$ volume.  Blip specifically has been great for us.  And we’ve been partnered with them for 7 years or so?  They are the bulk of our programmatic.  We are tied to Vistar / Place Exchange, etc.

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