QUESTION: Athletic ad arbitrage--asinine or advantageous?

[kairos555]

Bear with me, I'm as green as they come with regard to marketing and the advertising industry.

I was in the gym the other day (a big gym, multi-state franchise). and noticed that there's damn near 30+ screens around the building. Some with ads for the gym's services, some with cable news, etc. One in the sauna with ESPN running for 20 hours a day.

These screens get thousands of eyeballs daily, many thousands of unique eyeballs per week.
Is there an opportunity to sell ad space on these screens? e.g. to keep some screens on one ad for an energy drink all day, or some such external product. Could this sort of ad space provide revenue to the owner of the physical space enough to be worth the sacrifice of internal ad space, or one less cable TV, etc.?

I have no idea if there is a legit value proposition to be had with either party. But there are a lot of smarter, more experienced folks on here that I'm sure would have an opinion on it.

Apologies if this isn't clear--but hopefully you get the idea. Thanks in advance!

 

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[LateStarter]

Bear with me, I'm as green as they come with regard to marketing and the advertising industry.

I was in the gym the other day (a big gym, multi-state franchise). and noticed that there's damn near 30+ screens around the building. Some with ads for the gym's services, some with cable news, etc. One in the sauna with ESPN running for 20 hours a day.

These screens get thousands of eyeballs daily, many thousands of unique eyeballs per week.
Is there an opportunity to sell ad space on these screens? e.g. to keep some screens on one ad for an energy drink all day, or some such external product. Could this sort of ad space provide revenue to the owner of the physical space enough to be worth the sacrifice of internal ad space, or one less cable TV, etc.?

I have no idea if there is a legit value proposition to be had with either party. But there are a lot of smarter, more experienced folks on here that I'm sure would have an opinion on it.

Apologies if this isn't clear--but hopefully you get the idea. Thanks in advance!

There may be something to explore with that, but you need to think it through some more.

As background, I work in broadcast media and have for the past 22 years. I've owned my own company designing and building A/V systems for broadcast facilities, sports venues, surgical suites, remote education and government.

What you're talking about is called 'digital signage'. There are a lot of platforms out there that offer this as a service, so dig into why gyms haven't adopted this already. Similarly you don't see a lot of banners, posters, or ads for third party products in the gym. Why is this?

Also ask yourself why they have the TVs now. What purpose do they serve? Who are they benefiting and how is that benefitting the gym. Use that as a way to think through your business model. How can you change this model to provide more value to everyone. Then see if your idea still makes sense to pursue.

Good luck!

 

[kairos555]

There may be something to explore with that, but you need to think it through some more.

As background, I work in broadcast media and have for the past 22 years. I've owned my own company designing and building A/V systems for broadcast facilities, sports venues, surgical suites, remote education and government.

What you're talking about is called 'digital signage'. There are a lot of platforms out there that offer this as a service, so dig into why gyms haven't adopted this already. Similarly you don't see a lot of banners, posters, or ads for third party products in the gym. Why is this?

Also ask yourself why they have the TVs now. What purpose do they serve? Who are they benefiting and how is that benefitting the gym. Use that as a way to think through your business model. How can you change this model to provide more value to everyone. Then see if your idea still makes sense to pursue.

Good luck!

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
And cool to hear you've worked on surgical suites--my background is in clinical engineering & healthcare IT.

Not to get too fancy, I wonder if there's an opportunity to "replace" cable ads (useless to both the gym and the member) with paid local ads or one contracted partner's ads. e.g. every time commercial comes on, external box switches video/audio to paid advertisement.

Just thinking out loud. I know there's simple auto-mute technologies for commercials. Maybe it picks up on the commercial, and flips video to paid ads.

Reminds me that I also saw a commercial for Applebee's when I was in Chili's the other day. Non-ideal.

Anyhow, thanks again for the reply. Great food for thought.

 

[LateStarter]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
And cool to hear you've worked on surgical suites--my background is in clinical engineering & healthcare IT.

Not to get too fancy, I wonder if there's an opportunity to "replace" cable ads (useless to both the gym and the member) with paid local ads or one contracted partner's ads. e.g. every time commercial comes on, external box switches video/audio to paid advertisement.

Just thinking out loud. I know there's simple auto-mute technologies for commercials. Maybe it picks up on the commercial, and flips video to paid ads.

Reminds me that I also saw a commercial for Applebee's when I was in Chili's the other day. Non-ideal.

Anyhow, thanks again for the reply. Great food for thought.

No worries.

What you're talking about is called a 'dynamic ad insert'. They work in two different ways for traditional broadcast. Either they can detect the 'fade to black' between the commercials and the ads, or some can detect inaudible 'cue tones' that trigger the break.

You're going to have to sort through a lot of professional applications for broadcast cable and digital streaming/VOD (aka OTT) to find what you need. The tech challenges can probably be overcome, even if your research reveals exactly what you need doesn't exist yet. Just make sure your business model works and there's a need that you're solving.

 

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