2078 – Transforming Billboards: The Future of Outdoor Advertising with KEVANI’s Kevin Bartanian

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1:05With us right now is Kevin Bartanian. Kevin, you are the founder and CEO of Kevani. Your website is kevani.com. That's K-E-V-A-N-I.com. Kevin Bartanian, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Yeah, tell us a little bit about Kevani. Kevani is a premium outdoor advertising company. We specialize in iconic, one-of-a-kind, large-scale media destinations. Really, our installations serve both as a civic gesture and a promotional medium at the same time. It's not about just advertising spaces. It's about creating something that fits within the environment that it's in and creating ultimately meaningful connections with audiences.

1:55Yeah. All right. I cannot recall the last time I had someone who knew about outdoor advertising right now. For those of us who were just running our businesses, give me a little bit of a primer or a 101 on what and who is outdoor advertising for. Sure. Outdoor advertising, the first billboard was erected in 1833. Some history lesson for you. The billboards are generally for the masses. It's one of the oldest mediums in advertising. It also happens to be the second fastest growing medium currently next to digital advertising, mobile devices, etc. It's in the public spaces. There are multiple formats of outdoor advertising, whether you're looking at street furniture, which includes bus shelters, whether you're looking at transit when you were in the airport last time, or where you see billboards also on the freeways, on the streets, digital and non-digital billboards.

3:01So it's a different part of your daily commute when you're outside of your home. Anything that's outside of the house that you're seeing is usually kind of grouped into this bucket of outdoor advertising. You have your devices, you have your TV, you have your radio, You have your other traditional formats like newspapers and outdoor advertising is outdoor. Yeah. Well, certainly. So it's interesting. I live in Orlando, Florida, and we do have quite a bit outdoor advertising, and it's mostly Morgan & Morgan. Yeah. And who's the other guy? You know, it's like there's so many attorney billboards. And then, you know, it is fine.

3:41I don't love those ones. I love the Disney ones. I love the Universal. So we get a lot of theme park billboards as well. So it is interesting, like when I think about, you know, the subsets or the industries that I think particularly play well or invest heavily into outdoor advertising, you know, those two immediately come to mind. And then, of course, I don't know. What do you, in terms of sectors or industries, who's dominating outdoor? So there are different categories kind of of outdoor advertising. generally speaking outdoor advertising is all about reach and frequency in markets that are not los angeles or new york or miami you really get into local businesses and you really get into reach and frequency type formats in markets where you have la which is a top dma you have new york which is a top dma you get to deal with different types of advertisers that are not morgan and Morgan.

4:35So for us, it's all about national advertisers. So our top categories are luxury fashion, technology companies like Postmates or Instagram, and other fashion companies like Nike or Adidas, and even healthcare, to some extent, are our top three, four categories. And that's who basically spends the bulk of money with us. And for us, our inventory is a little different. So So a lot of our assets are digital, as I said. They're large, iconic in places that are heavily trafficked by both pedestrian and vehicular. So think of like LA Live, AEG, where Lakers play. Or think of, you know, Kia Forum or SoFi Stadium, where Rams play.

5:19These places where it kind of leads people to congregate. Those are the places that we're at. And usually our assets are really large or even the freeways, the 405 or the 110. And that's the type of inventory we have. But again, every asset, every market has a unique story to tell and the unique reach optionality that they have, each advertiser has. Yeah. Kevin, tell me a little bit about Kevani and how Kevani maybe works in a way that might be a little bit different from, let's say, a traditional billboard advertising consultant or someone that's selling the inventory? Where do you fit in? Yeah, sure.

6:01We are a media company, so we own and manage the assets that we have. We work with advertisers and also agencies around the country and around the world. Really, when we started the business, we identified a void in the business. As I said earlier, the billboard business has been around since 1833. it originally started as a local business. Over the last 50 years, it's consolidated several times. And majority of the billboards now or outdoor advertising assets are owned by three companies that are publicly traded. Through time, they lost a really touch with their local communities. So when we came into the space in 2017, we kind of realized, okay, if we had to redo this entire concept of outdoor advertising how we do it and how we be different so we re-identified our customer groups it starts with uh with uh with our first customer group which is a community piece we we feel like we're occupying people's space it makes us think about curation a lot more design a lot more how can we give homage to the environment even though we don't touch this customer uh you know physically every day right they're not in the room with us we pretend they're They're in the room with us on every decision we're making.

7:18And our second customer group is the advertiser agencies, which we treat equally, and also benefits from us being in places that people want them to be in. And then the third is a developer. That's sometimes a city, a state, a stadium, et cetera, the place that we are on, whether that be a building or a site. So by having this kind of approach, we were able to launch the first digital out-of-home large-scale asset in Los Angeles. Then we quickly expanded. We almost have permission from the city to be where we are. And we provide things like art, local content, community content. We really try to get out of our way authentically to make sure that we fit in the neighborhoods we're in.

8:04And that's kind of the point of the main difference between us. and other colleagues. Yeah. You know, lest someone think that what we're talking about, and I'm spending some time on your website right now, lest someone think that we are only talking about the boring, dry, old school billboards that you might see driving through rural Georgia. I'm speaking for myself. today's outdoor advertising kevin is there are some instances like you know we have we have some in orlando not as much vegas oh man some of these some of the big cities too they are doing some really cool innovative exciting uh things with outdoor advertising do you mind kind of bragging about some of the things that you think are kind of cool that are out there in outdoor advertising right now?

9:05Yeah, I mean, a lot of things are cool. I'm biased about it. But here, I'll kind of, maybe I'll touch on exactly why it works, why out of home is trending and is the fastest growing medium right now in the marketplace. And then we'll talk about some of the things you might have noticed on Instagram as it relates to outdoor advertising. So urbanization has happened. So more people live in cities now than they've ever have in the past. So that's kind of boosted our ability to communicate with those people. And that's why a lot of people are spending a lot of money within the out-of-home space. Digital technology has really expanded our ability to really mimic how digital media operates, whether that's your mobile device or cell phone.

9:47We can change content dynamically. So instead of having like you have boring ads, you really have an ad that's resonating with the audience in that local community, which has really changed the game. You have enhanced measurements studies. Now we can tell you exactly who saw the ad, how many impressions you got, as before it was just about... How? How do you do that? So we use this thing called Geopath Impressions, which is a nonprofit organization centered around out-of-home business. And they have all sorts of data points like people count on the sidewalk, there's visibility indexes, There is actual real-time data with GPS systems and mobile data that we are buying and sampling on specific blocks.

10:31And then from there, we're able to kind of tell you exactly how many people have seen the ad. Just similar to how Nielsen does it with Nielsen ratings is the same concept you have with Out of Home. And always remember that Out of Home is one-to-many medium. It's not a one-to-one medium like your cell phone device. So it's a little different, but it is an impression that we're delivering for our advertisers. And in multiple studies have showed that brand recall and engagement is super high with an out-of-home business. I think 75 % of people who see an ad out-of-home space end up going to a website or Instagram when seeing it.

11:12And talking about Instagram, I think one of the things you're seeing online now as it relates to cool activations are things like 3D content, which is essentially anamorphic content where with an illusion, the ad feels like it's popping out of the screen. Usually you see it in LA on some of our screens or you'll see it in New York and Times Square. People are doing a lot of things with that. And this whole idea of secondary screen, meaning Instagram or Facebook or other channels like YouTube, having these cool activations really live online has boosted the appetite without a home because it not just only lives on, you know, in LA, downtown LA on Figueroa Street or in Inglewood, it really lives online as well, potentially reaching millions of additional impressions.

12:04So those are kind of the exciting things that are happening within our space. Yeah, I really, and I think people know what I'm talking about. Like when you see something that's like really innovative, dynamic, it feels exciting. Like that's a part of that impressions. When we think about the actual design of the ad, that in and of itself communicates so much. The last thing I wanted to ask you about, Kevin, is kind of like ROI. Like, how do we calculate that? Or you're asked a different way. I'm curious about, you know, what's kind of the floor in terms of investment. Like, cause I think old school billboards, you know, I recall, you know, it's going to be a few thousand dollars to at least get even 30 days impression.

13:01You know, and again, those were, those were back in the, I'm only referring to like late nineties numbers. That's the last time I remember talking with someone very specifically about the cost of billboard advertising. But I know that there's these, you know, fractional impressions that you can do now that, can you tell me how that side of it works? sure yeah so so i think there are multiple ways to look at it uh how the roi is measured and i'll give you some examples so you have the basic cpm based right system where the cpm cost per thousand impressions if you look at it through that lens we're one of the lowest uh costs per impression uh in in the system of out of home just because our medium is one to many and our impressions are super high, depending on obviously where you're buying it.

13:49There are multiple formats within the out-of-home system. So when we talk about our inventory, usually iconic, so on the premium side. And then when we're talking about bus shelters, when we're talking about specific locations, like to drive traffic to, let's say you have a store somewhere, right? And you want to drive traffic to your store, but you don't have signage. You could buy a bus shelter. You could buy a few of them for a couple hundred dollars and drive traffic to your store. That's amazing. And then there's general kind of top of funnel activations about brand building that larger brands will activate multiple formats.

14:31So you have iconic units like ours mixed in with bus shelters, reach and frequency, then mixed in with some traditional billboards that you talked about earlier with Morgan & Morgan. so those types of things kind of tied into that we've actually plugged them a couple times on this show on this podcast oh man i can't imagine who handles that account we're giving him a lot of impressions uh but but basically that's kind of the uh and then there are brands who have first party data whether we're talking nike whether we're talking google and others who actually will see themselves a spike in activity they don't always share with us but the reason that we know that it works is they come back as a returning customer and that's usually how we know that it's working for them and this first party data is really instrumental on their decision making as it relates to i mean future future campaigns and how they're calculating and or why and there are hard to reach audiences yeah so oh yeah yeah so sports things like that where brands want to get in front of and there is no other way to do it other than a signage right outside of let's say crypto.com arena as people are leaving a Lakers game, for example.

15:44Yeah. Welcome by a message by. That's yeah. Yeah. All right, Kevin, your website, Kevani.com. What is the next step for a friend that's been listening to our conversation? We have about one minute left. Say that question again. We have about one minute left. So our friend that's been listening to our conversation, and they'd love to learn more about seeing if there might be an opportunity to work with you? Like, are they just curious? And maybe they want to talk it out or something? Like, what would you recommend? They, where do they go? What do they do? Yeah, I think the first step is to go to our website, kavani.com, as you mentioned, to kind of get a feel and a general sense of out of home.

16:21We have a great news blog posts as well that go along with that website that might be good for you to learn if this is the first time you're, you're kind of looking at out of home and as well as follow us on Instagram, Kevani USA is our hashtag. And from there, you can kind of see what other advertisers are doing on a regular basis. Morgan in our office keeps that regularly updated. So it might be a good tool for you to kind of just learn about the business. Yeah. Kevin Bartanian, founder and CEO of Kevani website, kevani.com, K-E-V-A-N-I.com. Kevin, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.

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