K.C. McLeod teaches us about How CTV Advertisers are Discovering DOOH

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Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: K.C., we're picking up probably what's gonna be like a part two or a part three of some previous conversations, some more recent episodes, older in the catalog of time, I suppose, but we'll link to them in the comments. Conversations with Chris Kane from Jounce Media. I'm thinking about our friends Robert O'Rourke and Steven Brooks at Adxact talking about putting relevant content on screens in the real world. And today we're joined by K.C. McLeod from VideoElephant where we're going to extend that conversation. Maybe we'll answer some questions and maybe we'll present a few new ones along the way. K.C., thanks for being here.

K.C. Mcleod: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for inviting me on and really appreciate it and look forward to having a great conversation with you. It's going to be fun.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: And we started this probably a few months ago out of Home Insider and VideoElephant, just kind of chatting around what VideoElephant was doing in the space. Maybe you can start us there. What is like the core problem? that VideoElephant solves, and then we'll segue that into how is that now solving in depth and what does that solve look like in DOOH?

K.C. Mcleod: Absolutely. So VideoElephant as a company has evolved a bit over the, wow, like 13 years of its existence. But basically, you know, at its core, what VideoElephant is, is a full service video platform built on a massive library of premium short form content. And when we say massive, we're talking about 5 million assets, 3,000 new videos added to the library every day from about 1,000 different content providers. So a huge, broad spectrum of high-quality content coming from providers like Bloomberg and Euronews and Sports Illustrated and so on. you know, not raw footage, not stock footage, like fully edited finished assets. And what we do with this content library is we work with all sorts of digital media companies and ad tech companies and kind of almost anyone with a screen or with a video strategy to be a part of that video strategy that they might have an issue addressing in-house. Most often that's just simply having a critical mass of, of high quality, monetizable content. That's very expensive to produce video. It's very time. Licensed video. And so we can come in and be a resource to supplement what the in-house video team might be producing in the areas where they might not. have expert domain or expertise in that domain. Sometimes that means providing additional financial news to general news organizations, or it can be providing movie trailers where sometimes they would normally just embed a YouTube video or so on. But that can span across digital publishers. We work directly with ad tech companies who are looking for the content that they can monetize. We work with CTV and OTT apps to fill out their either linear schedule or build out verticals in an on-demand experience. And then taking us to kind of the topic at hand in the DOOH. space. There's really two ways that we work. The first being straight content licensing. You have screens that are in environments, people are looking to make them a more engaging experience. So you might have some in-house messaging you want to share, but you can also include more compelling content, whether that's topical stuff like the news, or if it's something as simple as, you know, beautiful drone footage of rural countrysides or something like that, if you're looking to create a more soothing experience in a medical environment, for example. And then we also do actually a lot of monetization in that environment too, paired with our content. But that's definitely a much bigger, deeper topic that we can dive into if the overall summary of video wealth is captured or clear here.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: I think that that's great. And I think especially too, as we think about the context of DOOH, less ads, more content, typically a hundred percent ad load, whether that's a screen in a bar and a restaurant that's complimentary to the TVs playing the big game, or it's, you know, a kiosk on the street, it's just typically all ads. So we'd definitely love to take a stop along the way there, but Understanding now what VideoElephant does, syndicating lots and lots of content to fill holes for different publishers and ad tech providers, gaps that they might have in their overall video strategies, I'd love to hear maybe there's obvious there's the obvious use case of filling screens with content in the real world. But I think there's an interesting piece to this story, which is how you're bringing new demand to DOOH, you're actually solving like a really important education gap with a whole set of advertisers that are coming from the connected TV space. Can we can we talk about that?

K.C. Mcleod: Yeah, absolutely. And what I think is important to emphasize about VideoElephant as a business, as a whole, and how it has actually driven our demand strategy is that we are ultimately a content-first business. We've always considered ourselves, you know, first and foremost, like being the best or, or premier provider of high quality content is what we strive to be with all of our partners. And so this demand piece really has followed our interest in supplying prospects and customers and partners with, with content and actually figuring out a way for, for it to, to, to make that business model work for them. So, yeah, that's a great question. We originally started off monetization in the fast space, which is very kind of self-evident, right? You're putting together channels, free ad-supported TV, like what do you need in order to make it free? You know, it's in the title, ad-supported. So we were doing that. And then what we found when we were working with potential partners in the digital ad home space is that there was this intense interest in bringing in high quality content for a variety of reasons. And the one that I think amuses me the most was people talking about how in car dealerships, they would have all this digital signage, but without high quality content, the salespeople on the floor just seeing the same like five ads and like same like pieces of house content over and over again, they would turn the screens off. Oh, interesting. So that actually like it's engaging for who spends the most time with these screens. And so in figuring out how we can make this content available and what licensing models work, it was kind of this interesting discovery on our part, which is we were saying, okay, well, you know, license fee, you know, what is your revenues look like? And a lot of people were seeing remarkably underwhelming fill for the supply that they had. And so we realized that, well, actually like we're bringing content into these environments. We're already working with demand partners who are monetizing our content library. Here's an opportunity to go back to these partners and say, listen, like it's the same content you're already buying against, but it's in a different environment. And like, are you okay with that? Is that something that you're comfortable with? Like we're being fully transparent here around. It's important. Yeah. It's a content driven by, but it is not, you know, in the living room. These are CTV screens, just not in the living room. And some people say yes, some people say no, but that really became the fuel for us recognizing, okay, like we've almost kind of stumbled upon this issue where people have, you know, an excess of supply and an interest in content, you know, can we replicate this? And it turns out we have been able to and scale up both sides of those business because there's just inherently a large amount of interest in obviously. monetizing your screens to the best of your ability and for on the demand side, reaching people in content rich environments that are engaging where a brand message can resonate. And so, yeah, that's, that's a, I've almost been talking too long. I kind of don't remember the exact framing of your original question, but that's how we have ended up in this demand space and bringing net new demand to the screen. So we're not cannibalizing any existing revenue efforts on their part. And so far, people seem pretty happy with it.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: That's great. And I think, right. And so, so let's talk about those people. There's a couple sides to that story. There's the brands, there's the publishers. I'm sure there's intermediaries and technology partners. Yeah. What, what does a win look like for the brands who are taking what they know natively as fast CTV? They know this as a sound on video first format, content, rich environment, captive environment, high dwell time. How have you overcome that education gap with them around not just the screens and the quality, but the actual experience that someone's going to have on the other side of that?

K.C. Mcleod: Yeah, I mean, I can speak to, I mean, obviously, brands are motivated by a variety of factors and what their marketing goals ultimately are. Is it simple brand awareness? Are you looking to drive, you know, very specific conversion of products and kind of everything in between? What we actually had an opportunity to do a direct campaign with a brand, a tequila brand last, um, winter and what they found that by including us as part of their media mix is actually the opportunity for, to capture audiences in an environment, bars, restaurants, out and about in general and retail environments, where there's in some ways actually a closer ability to consume the end product, whether that's buying the bottle.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: Interesting.

K.C. Mcleod: you're sitting at home watching CTV, you see a commercial for this and you go, I have to remember the next time that I'm at the store that maybe like that's going to be something like the distance to purchase is actually so much higher than in some ways, these environments are more valid. Now, of course, people say, but That's exactly what DOOH is for. And DOOH is an equally valid and specific medium for marketing. It's that we're driving it towards similar outcomes through different methods. DOOH obviously being like hyper-targeting, understanding who's present, how many people are qualifying the value of that inventory based on sort of how many eyeballs are seeing it. And we're taking the perspective of there's something compelling that's going to be on screen, which increases the likelihood that someone's going to be watching it. And then at that moment that that piece of content ends, here's where your ad lives. So it's, it's just really, I would say, capturing the pros of two different formats in a way that hopefully is effective towards delivering the brand message. And in fact, we did some research that shows that, uh, 84% or an 84% lift, I think, in people remembering an ad that they saw when there was content presented around it versus when it was the experience you were describing earlier with DOOH where it's just ad, ad, ad, et cetera.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: That reminds me of another episode, a great classic with, with Bill Harvey and really the, the, the godfather of relevance from a media research standpoint. So, and that, that speaks to that. I think it's stating something that we would all generally accept, but there's still that big missing piece of measurement like that. I get it. I understand the experience. I, I want to put a pin in measurement because I want to come back to it. I want to talk for a second about. the supply and how you select inventory. There's lots of folks that claim, hey, we have the most screens or we have this sort of inventory. But what you're describing is really a content first experience versus a location first experience, close to the point of purchase during the highest moment of consideration. How do you decide what inventory those things should go on?

K.C. Mcleod: Uh, so in a lot of ways, I don't want to sound like we're passing the buck, but you know, those are decisions that ultimately live with the buyer for us. Well, the way that we, you know, you and present our network is not, and to be fully clear, like these are not own and operated screens. We're not in the hardware business, but it's an operated inventory because it's unique to VideoElephant in that it's VideoElephant content that's running against it. So no other buyer has the ability to buy against. to sell that inventory against our content. Now, granted, if we don't have demand, people aren't going to be running our content. So it's kind of this sort of chicken and egg sort of situation of whose inventory is it? Because we're talking about physical screens and real spaces like. There is something on that screen at some point in time and like who has ownership over it depends on a lot of decisions, I guess. But how we present it is, you know, here is this broad array of screens across the country and a little bit in Canada in a variety of environments. We can say like across all of them, there is content running that's provided by us, but our library is massive. So we can start segmenting it into what kind of content do you want to be running against? what venues, what geos and so on, but instead of really trying to get that, I think, hyper-targeting of I have a grocery store that's opening and I want to hit every single screen that's within half a mile of it. It's more about, I want my message to align with, I want to reach people in certain types of venues. Certainly with some form of geo can be targeted if they want, but also we see a lot of nationwide advertisers, car companies. a telcos and so on, where they don't need to reach someone who's within, you know, six blocks of some location. They're actually essentially taking their national campaigns. And we're just trying to make that the most resonant as possible with the biggest lever we have, which is the content piece. And again, like we can also narrow it down by venue type to a certain degree, if they're interested, which we see a little bit of.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: I do want to come around to measurement. I'm curious though, because I know we've got a large audience of publishers, screen owners, media owners. Do I partner directly with VideoElephant if I'm a publisher?

K.C. Mcleod: Yes. The short answer is yes, you do. We will work with you to provide everything from the content to the ad integration. Obviously, there are lots of considerations on what that ad stack looks like. And I think this is something where in a lot of ways, the DOOH or CTV OOH space is a bit reminiscent of sort of the early days of web in some capacities in that standards are somewhat in existence, but not fully. So, you know, we do find that there's a lot of custom work that needs to take place. Like not custom, but every integration is slightly unique in its own capacity. But that being said, like, yes, we, we will work with you entirely instead of, for example, you simply going to work with an SSP and knowing, Oh, I'm going to get, you know, video elephant demand and content flowing through that, that we are that last mile between. the whole waterfall and the publisher.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: Very helpful. Thank you. And because we've been letting that beat build, like Lil Wayne said, we've been letting that beat build. Let's talk about measurement. Can we talk about measurement from a, how do we quantify the value of the inventory? Are we looking at outcomes? Like you mentioned the 84% lift based on resonance. So maybe just paint the measurement picture. What does that actually look like?

K.C. Mcleod: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, this might be a cheesy answer, right? But what is the inventory, you know, how do you quantify the value of it? What is the market willing to, you know, where does the supply curve meet? But we know that, you know, that nothing in economics really works that way. There's so many other factors. And, you know, Again, like transparency is the name of the game for us. And to be fully transparent, I think measurement is still something that we are figuring out both as a company, but then across the various parties who are working in this space. And we're actively working towards understanding what people are looking for and how we can deliver on those. There are some pieces that, you know, DOOH will always, or I would say classic DOOH, however we want to, you know, the nomenclature we want to use will always probably deliver better on than like the CTV OOH.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: So we're talking like a big bill, a billboard, a large format, something, something big and bold and DOOH.

K.C. Mcleod: I mean, that's, as you said, you know, it's just a series of 15 second, you know, static display or something along those lines. They're going to tie into a location graph or, or so on like in, And there are things that, you know, we are actively exploring and understanding what buyers want to see and what the publishers want to see. Although for the most part, the publishers just want to see the high quality content and the check that comes with it. Yeah. Yeah. That part. It's interesting because not to say you're going to too long of a segue, but I was recently at a political advertiser event and. I was talking to them about outcomes because in a lot of ways for a campaign, right, there's sort of just one data point and it's really hard to win. And then like, and what do you attribute that to? And in a lot of ways for them, it's, it's, I mean, painting with an extremely broad brush, it is sort of that it's like where it's actually that measurement sort of. is less important rather than what are the most cost-effective ways that I can get my messaging out there. So, you know, I was really thinking, I was like, wow, it's like measurement from an entirely different, it's less like ROI and it's almost more like, how do I minimize the I of that? Like, you know, it's like, how can I get, reach as many potential endpoints with as little amount of money as possible? And so, I feel like it's going to be, this is probably a format that for some is great and for others might not fully align with your marketing goals. If you're looking again to, I want to know that there was 12 cell phone, like within, you know, of this at this time of day. And again, I think that's kind of what the essence of ultimately omni-channel marketing and a media mix is, right? Is that each is going to deliver on specific points and it's how do you combine all those to ultimately drive your business goal? So again, like a huge, huge work in progress. The more we talk with the agency, it's about understanding what exactly those specific metrics they want to measure are and illustrating to them, here's what's available. moment. We can tell you exactly which piece of content this is running in proximity to. We can show you the asset. We can show you the environment that it's in and so on. But what else do you need to know to, to make sure that this is something that you're really comfortable with and ultimately feels like it's in service of what you're trying to accomplish.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: What do you think the number one thing is preventing adoption from happening faster?

K.C. Mcleod: That's a really, really good question. I gave you no prep on it. You didn't know it was coming. I didn't know that it was coming. I should have known. And there's probably a different answer depending on the time of day. You know, I'm actually going to take it back to something that Chris Keen said, which is like, you have to remember that like a lot of these decisions of like, is this inventory CTV or DOOH? Like it's just being made by like a person like at a DSP or something like that. And they're just kind of like, this is my opinion. And so what I would say is what is. Not slowing, but like the biggest barrier towards continued progress or more rapid progress is that it's one of the things that's slowest sort of in any business or in any industry, which is that it's not that a technical integration needs to be optimized. It's not that, oh, like, you know, these are, you know, written in two different code bases and they don't talk to each other or something like that. It's that it's human driven. and it's all so new that it just takes time for people to see it, to understand it, to recognize that, you know, no one, well, unfortunately, not no one is trying to pull a fast one because in all, in all, there's always someone who is. Someone is.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: I might even know a few of them. Yes.

K.C. Mcleod: We all, we all do. Right. And so, and recognizing that, like, sometimes it just takes a little while to, to become comfortable with something. And in that way, it's a bit like Clayton Christensen's, the innovators dilemma, right? Which is maybe those really big entities are going to look at this sort of small thing and say, you know what? It's the budgets, the, um, the footprint. the, you know, all of this is almost like too small for us to even worry about making a decision and being wrong about that decision. And that's okay. Because, you know, that's the whole thing about the innovators limit, right? Is that people who, where that's actually really important to their business, for example, political campaign, that's like, I've got 50 grand. That's it. Like, what am I going to do with this? And like, for them, it can be really impactful, cost effective inventory. And then as it establishes and standards start to grow and people become familiar with it and they say, video elephant or whomever else, like, I see, like, this is this inventory you have, I get how it works, is that you then slowly grow up that funnel and then you have the large entities going like, got it, like, A lot of other people had to do the experiments and like learn the painful lessons. And now we see what it is. And, you know, we all get together in an IAB meeting and say, great, this is officially XYZ. And then, you know, it's truly off to the races. But we're, I think, still really much in that sort of experiment, not even experimental, but like, cause we, we've done the experiment. We know it works, but now we're in the, like the peer review part. Right. Whereas like more and more people need to kind of experiment to understand that, like, it wasn't a fluke the first time around.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: K.C., I couldn't think of a better spot to bring us back home. Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. If folks want to connect with you, learn more about video elephant, give them the Latin long where, where should they go?

K.C. Mcleod: Yes. So videoelephant.com is a great place to start. You can reach out to me. My name is K.C.. So it's just K.C. at videoelephant.com. You can just shoot me an email. I am on LinkedIn as well. That's the entirety of my social or digital social footprint. I live in Baltimore. So if you're ever in charm city, reach out more than happy to talk about how great a place it is as a recent convert. And yeah, of course, you know, it's a relatively small world in this business. So we all cross paths sooner rather than later. So if you recognize me in some capacity and you thought what I said was interesting, you can always come up and say hi. Or if you violently disagree with me, you can also say like, I think you just totally don't know what you're talking about. We'll have a good conversation about that.

Tim Rowe, OOH Insider: From a safe distance, do it from a safe distance. K.C., thank you so much. We'll link to all of that in the show notes below. So it's easy to find. I can't thank you enough for sharing as much as you did here. If you found this episode to be helpful, please share it with someone who could benefit. Start a conversation today and take care of one another out there. K.C., we'll see you next time.

K.C. Mcleod: Thanks so much Tim, really appreciate it. Have a great one.