Newsagents are firmly on the radar of companies wanting to get us to take on their advertising screens. I know of five companies who consider newsagencies to be ideal for hosting their screens.
Some want screens to be placed in windows, facing onto the street. Others want screens in-store. There are promises of a share in advertising revenue as well as the opportunity to include your own ads.
I have been approached by several companies wanting to talk about their plans. To date I have not agreed to meet because I am sceptical about ad screens being of value to newsagents. Here are my concerns:
- Content. If we are to give up key real estate then we need control over content. There is no pint in running an ad which competes with what we sell.
- Return. I am yet to see numbers for any in-store digital signage business which is delivering a reasonable return to the host retailers.
- Barrier. Some screens I have seen act as a barrier to people looking into a newsagency window. In one case, The centre of the main store window is taken up by the screen. This stops passers-by seeing the inside of the store.
- Parasite business. A product which is places next to a very popular product is considered a parasite product – it is relying on traffic for the popular product to guide its success. That is what these screens are. There are enough challenges to the traditional newsagency business model to indicate that we should not dilute the focus on our business. These screens run the disk of doing that.
- History. The newsagency channel track record in this space is not good.
I have seen newsagencies with in-store advertising screens which promote only products sold in-store. While the content is usually produced locally and is therefore not as slick as professional ads, there is evidence of success.
Personally, I think this is where newsagents should focus their attention – on promoting products and services available in their own businesses on ad screens. It is far more valuable to you to get an existing shopper to buy an additional item in your store than to earn a commission from an ad which encourages them to buy something elsewhere.
Newsagents need to do their own research and make up their own mind. Caveat emptor.
The club industry has just been stung by a similar scheme, faulty equipment duel lease terms (all sounds very familiar). We will not be taking them on board.
About 18 months ago, we were approached by one of these mobs. The pressure was unbelievable. They claimed that they had all the local maccas stores on their books, and were wanting to sell advertising space on the screens to us, rather than wanting to install the screens in our store. So beware of the other half of this venture.
Erm… yeah no.
We agreed to one of these prior around the timeBill Express started. It never happened fortunately and I would not entertain the idea now unless it was backed by perhaps one of the magazine or news paper publishers. Even then after BE I probably would not be interested.
it would be great if the state associations produced a file twice a week, that newsagents/members could download and run on their own screen.
it would be a powerpoint presentation which included images from lotto, magazine distributors newspapers and prehaps even generic photo copying services phone cards etc, then also with the space for each agebnt to add their own personalised pages.
this idea woulnd earn us any extra money in advertising revenue, but we would have control.
peter