Company: Insite MediaCom

Markets: Southeastern and Mid Atlantic States.

Headquarters: 150 NW 70th Avenue, Suite 3, Plantation, FL  33317.

Phone: 888-867-2194

Insite Mediacom owns 2000 billboard faces in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania  Insite MediaCom has a partnership with Diamond Communications for the marketing and management of wireless carrier co-locations on Insite’s billboards.  You see a cell tower deployment on the right.  Insider interviewed CEO Randy Smith and President/Chief Operating Officer Glenn Flutie.

How did Insite enter the outdoor business?

Glenn is a 3rd generation outdoor advertising company veteran with 35 years in the business himself. Randy and his group were investment bankers in media telecom starting in the 80’s and were pioneers in the telecom tower business converting to a concentration in OOH assets in 2000 when InSite got started. We think that a convergence of the communication business and outdoor advertising assets is inevitable.

Tell us about your plant.

We have a combination of acquired and newly developed assets with wide diversification in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic areas. We have urban, small town, rural and interstate signs.

How’s the wireless co-location project going?

Thus far it has been slower going than we hoped, but we still think it is a long term trend. You have not mentioned our street furniture business emphasizing bus benches. We now have more than 9,000 units in Los Angeles and in Florida. The reason I bring it up here is that we have an experiment going on in Los Angeles with 300 wireless beacons on bus benches in this market. Our partner in this project is Gimbal Inc., a spin out of Qualcomm. Although the technical details are too numerous to discuss here, this is an example of what may be coming over time.

Whose digital signs do you own and what have you learned?

We have units primarily from Daktronics and Formetco. Quality has improved dramatically and operating costs, primarily electricity, have fallen significantly. We are looking to convert existing static boards to digitals where workable.

You do business in multiple markets.  Any markets in which you are especially interested in growing?

We intend on growing our street furniture business in Florida, California and perhaps other large markets.

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