
Screenverse President Assesses the RMN, DOOH, Programmatic Landscape
Adam Malone, co-Founder and President of Screenverse, predicts that retailers will all want to own and operate their own ad networks. Outside of the top 5-8 retailers, however, the vast majority of retailers would be best served teaming up and supporting third-party networks. This scenario may not become a reality in 2025, but Malone says it’s inevitable.
Screenverse is a programmatic DOOH partner that helps media owners and advertisers adopt and optimize advertising across billboards, urban panels, and retail environments. It has 18 networks under its umbrella, comprising 100,000 screens across 30+ unique venue types in all 210 U.S. DMAs.
Screenverse’s work includes that for Nutrafol, a hair-wellness product, ran across OOH, digital billboards, and transit media. The channels were paired with precise geofencing to capture data on opted-in mobile users within proximity to the ads. Nutrafol saw a 92.07% lift in conversion rates among the exposed group.
While Malone also sees RMNs capturing a bigger share of total ad spend, driven by the value of first-party data and shoppable experiences, “We are yet to see how they will make an impact on OOH,” he said.
Would you say you’re a contrarian to the enthusiasm for retail media networks?
I wouldn’t say I am a contrarian to the enthusiasm for RMNs, as they present an obvious advantage for marketers and retailers alike. Marketers can use them to reach more relevant audiences while they provide retailers with audience and shopping insights that can help make their retail marketing more effective. We are yet to see how they will make an impact on OOH, though I am optimistic that we will start to make strides on both sides of the aisle to create a better omnichannel buying experience and ultimately a better advertising experience for consumers.
You’ve said that if retail media sneezes in the direction of DOOH, it will get pneumonia. What do you mean by that?
When I say that if retail media sneezes in the direction of DOOH it will get pneumonia, I mean that as a positive because OOH has a major opportunity to benefit from the data that retail media networks have to offer. The more that is known about consumers in these environments – from their behaviors and interests to their spending patterns – the more likely DOOH will be able to earn a seat at the retail media table. We are cautiously optimistic that ad copy will make it onto third party screens and signage in and around the physical points of purchase, and even a 1% increase in RMN spend-share would make a massive difference to Screenverse and its partners.
eMarketer estimates the in-store portion of Retail Media will reach $1B in advertiser spend by 2030. That is equivalent to the entire US programmatic DOOH ad spend in 2024. Why is this comparison significant?
Back to the sneezing = pneumonia thing. Since Screenverse’s founding in 2020, annual Programmatic DOOH investment in the U.S. has grown from roughly $100m to $1B in 5 years. A respectable CAGR, and one that is likely to continue for years to come. Compare that to the RMN space, and it’s not even in the same stratosphere. If we are thinking about ways to aggressively grow the DOOH “pie” there are few better ways than to shave off a few percentage points from our RMN neighbors.
How do you meet attribution challenges in DOOH?
Going forward, I hope to see increased collaboration between media owners, tech platforms, and advertisers to create shared attribution standards and solutions that help overcome these hurdles. Additionally in 2025, more advertisers and retailers will integrate shoppable ad formats such as QR codes into their DOOH displays, whether in-store or at venues along the customer journey, allowing consumers to purchase directly from these displays and make the buying process more seamless and convenient. Increased use of QR codes in DOOH displays will permit DOOH to begin bridging the measurement gap, heightening the positioning and desirability of DOOH in the ad spend landscape.
What predictions can make about programmatic advertising in 2025?
With planned investments in programmatic DOOH in the U.S. projected to increase by an average of 29% this year, programmatic advertising will continue to be a massive driver of opportunity for media owners, and an important access point for advertisers and agencies.
The number of smaller networks that will increase their profits with programmatic this year will grow exponentially. For media owners, it used to be that only the “fittest could survive” in the programmatic DOOH space due to the strain it took on these businesses to build out their networks and sales teams, and go from local to national sales, ultimately scaling out their networks. Now, media owners can set up a small number of screens in a market with high-demand and get access to programmatic exchanges and start to monetize those first screens immediately – and become profitable and grow from there. The economic opportunity is different today.
Video ads in the physical world go from something advertisers accidentally do while purchasing “CTV,” to something advertisers do fully on purpose. We think there is a massive opportunity to reach hard to reach young, mobile, affluent audiences that don’t abide ads on their TVs and phones, if they can avoid it. They are the ones out and about in the world, and advertisers will want to utilize their TV-quality video assets to inform and engage these audiences at the gym, at their workplace, at the supermarket, and many other touchpoints in the physical world.