ZOOM TV digital signage network reaches Romania’s travelers, shoppers, commuters, visitors and more
Monopoly Media, one of Romania’s largest advertising agencies and a Scala Certified Partner, has recently completed the deployment of a four-channel, 3,500-screen network designed to reach people across Romania in metro stations, retail outlets, leisure and hospitality venues, and airports. The network, ZOOM TV, is the first in Romania to reach viewers across the country and is the largest network by number of screens in Eastern Europe.
With the intention to create a national digital signage network, Monopoly Media’s challenge was to identify the types of venues where such a network would be of most value to viewers and advertising partners. They also considered how it would be segmented to offer the right balance between reaching a wide audience and more targeted audiences.
Monopoly Media’s answer was to create ZOOM TV, the network’s “hero brand,” from which four sub-brands were created:
* ZOOM IN is a 700-screen network located in key metro stations and subways reaching over 600,000 viewers per day. Content includes timetable and news data feeds from Metrorex, current affairs, sports and celebrity news, travel tips and so forth. Screens offer time-specific information, scheduled by station where appropriate.
* ZOOM BUY is located in key areas throughout malls, Fun Land, Cash & Carry and other retail outlets. It provides point-of-sale and advertising content to shoppers within retail stores including Cora, Kaufland, Carrefour Romania and Metro.
* ZOOM OUT is located in leisure and hospitality venues in select towns and cities, and provides specific lifestyle, music and entertainment content for bars and pubs to an affluent and traditionally hard-to-reach youth market.
* ZOOM UP is installed in six airports across Romania and targets business people and high earners through deployment near specific lounges and waiting areas attracting this target group.
In creating a digital signage network that reaches and appeals to travelers, shoppers, relaxers and flyers, Monoply Media needed to reconcile several key areas:
- A definition of the brand and its values to underpin the information and commercial messaging approach of ZOOM TV to ensure relevancy across all screens and venues to all viewers: The ZOOM channel reflects a broad set of values which enables it to be compliant with a host’s own brand and which also allows it to stretch across multiple venues and retail clients. It does this by ensuring the content is relevant for different venues, target audiences or interests, and where appropriate provides up-to-date news and information, and time-specific editorial content, offers and value.
- An understanding of each sub-brand’s individual values and the creation of channels that offer enhanced relevancy and targeted content: On average, 40 percent of each channel’s content is unique, with 60 percent appropriate for broadcasting on all ZOOM TV channels.
- The creation of network operations processes capable of managing the scheduling and distribution of informational and commercial messaging across the network efficiently and effectively: Monopoly Media selected Scala to provide comprehensive design, scheduling and management functionality.
- The commercial case required to provide quantifiable return on investment for retail and landlord partners: Monopoly Media decided on two key returns. First, a percentage of airtime is set aside to allow each host or retailer to create and deliver their own branded messages to their customers which is provided as a managed service by Monopoly Media. Second, Monopoly Media shares a percentage of media revenues generated through the selling of advertising airtime back with the host or landlord.
This is the first time in Eastern Europe that a single-brand, multi-venue network has been created that is significantly different from other “network aggregator” models found elsewhere, because often they concentrate on key commercial sectors such as retail and, in some cases, sell other networks’ airtime. Conversely, Monopoly Media has direct relationships with their retail and leisure customers, owns the physical network, and has a broader intent to widen the reach of the network into the community.
This means that Monopoly Media is able to provide advertisers and planners with a national digital signage advertising opportunity that reaches more than a million viewers per day at specific points of relevance out of home, monetizing each channel’s reach as part of the wider ZOOM TV proposition, and using internal tools to provide channel-specific and channel-wide advertising opportunities.
The centralization of the media planning and scheduling, content management and network operations process has been critical to the success of the business model in being able to offer a multiple-venue, multiple-channel strategy that can be managed remotely, provide a high level of updateability, flexibility, consistency, and enable the system to accommodate thousands of different content elements from a wide range of sources to ensure each sub-brand provides a high level of viewer relevancy.
“With over 3,500 screens across four channels, our ZOOM network required a sophisticated central management system to cater to our network’s large appetite for content. For reasons of ease of use, scalability, and functionality, we decided that Scala provided the best platform for us to manage our network’s scheduling and content management requirements for today and our future requirements,” said Gabriel Faflei, General Manager of Monopoly Media.
In addition to the ongoing network development program designed to take the ZOOM network to new audiences, technical enhancements continue to provide greater levels of user accessibility and widen the commercial opportunity. One such development is www.zoom.tv. This web-based platform will shortly provide a mechanism for campaigns to be planned down to individual venues, requiring airtime to be purchased and content to be created, uploaded, and scheduled remotely. ZOOM.TV aims to make the process of accessing and using the ZOOM network considerably easier and quicker for clients, and it will link through a managed portal to Scala, which will provide extended services to Monopoly Media to assist in the creation and ongoing management of this enhanced service.
Oscar Elizaga, VP, Scala EMEA, commented, “Monopoly Media has taken digital signage network ownership to another level. Where in the past digital signage networks were developed for individual retailers, malls or brands necessitating multiple buying decisions for advertisers, Monopoly has taken a holistic approach to reaching people outside of their homes.” He continued, “The audience reach offered by Monopoly Media through a single buying point and technical solution makes it an easy and effective model. I’m very pleased that Scala has been able to add value to this proposition through our provision of professional content creation and management services to Monopoly Media.”
About Monopoly Media
Monopoly Media is one of the largest advertising agencies in Romania, being involved in myriad projects. Monopoly Media develops In-Store Advertising systems in large commercial centers throughout Bucharest and across the Romanian territory. The advertising concept is based upon broadcasting audio-video commercials using digital displays into the environments that are visited frequently by customers. The advertising systems cover the following areas and locations: advertising in the shelves areas in Real, Kaufland, Billa, Cora, Carrefour and Metro networks, advertising at the cashiers in Carrefour, Billa, Cora, Sensi blu networks, advertising in the big commercial galleries/food courts in Carrefour and Cora networks, and advertising in Plaza Mall and City Mall. With more surprises to come in the near future, Monopoly Media is offering solutions to help businesses achieve their stated success. More information is available at www.monopoly.ro
About Scala
Driving more than 200,000 screens worldwide, Scala is a leading global provider of Digital Signage and advertising management solutions. Scala is the world’s first connected signage company, offering the leading platform for content creation, management and distribution in Digital Signage Networks and the first unified platform for advertising management of both traditional and Digital Signage Networks. The company’s Digital Signage customers include Rabobank, IKEA, Burger King, T-Mobile, Virgin MegaStore, Warner Brothers, The Life Channel, Rikstoto, Repsol, NorgesGruppen and thousands more. Advertising management customers include CBS Outdoor, Clear Channel Outdoor and Magic Media, among others. Scala is headquartered near Philadelphia, USA, and has subsidiaries in Canada, the Netherlands, France, Norway and Japan, as well as more than 450 partners in more than 60 countries. More information is available at www.scala.com
Source: Scala
