Background music in stores is often heard but rarely listened to. But perhaps that will change with more precise messaging.
In that spirit, Vibenomics, whose software curates and sells ads against custom in-store radio stations, will enable targeted messaging via a partnering with Triton Digital’s programmatic audio marketplace.
Vibenomics’ digital radio stations operate in 4,000 locations across the United States, from convenience stores to telco retail shops, reaching an audience of 150 million unique listeners. Each station contains 16 audio spots per hour, which retailers can sell to brands they carry in their stores or use to promote their own rewards programs.
Adding Triton will make Vibenomics’ inventory easier to buy while allowing brands to target audiences with contextually relevant ads. Through Triton, buyers can target ads that point out a product in a specific aisle, place ads in specific types of retail chains across the country or find high-income shoppers across a network of retail locations.
Vibenomics measures foot traffic through a partnership with SafeGraph and ties that to Triton audience segments.
“We want to open this up to the programmatic world,” said Paul Brenner, chief strategy officer of Vibenomics. “We serve a huge market of people who want to monetize their spaces and don’t know how.”
Triton will first make Vibenomics’ inventory available through a private marketplace and eventually open it up to its digital audio exchange. But first, it will need to gain a better understanding how to measure an out-of-home impression, which reaches many people, alongside a one-to-one streaming impression. Today, Vibenomics measures impressions against SafeGraph’s location data and retailer point of sale data.
Triton has worked on audio out-of-home executions before, but Vibenomics is the first company to scale programmatic access in the space thanks to its cloud-based tech, said John Rosso, president of market development at Triton Digital.
“Other vendors have highly fragmented platforms with different hardware and software,” he said. “All of [Vibenomics’] locations have the same setup, so they can leverage automation across their whole platform.”
Vibenomics, which already works with 120 major brands from Pepsi to Live Nation, expects a 400% increase in revenue from renewals in the next six months and plans to double its location footprint in 2020.
“We’ll see more interest because it’ll be easier to buy, and we’ll move away from relying on local retail relationships to agencies that can just log into a DSP and buy more,” Brenner said.
But overcoming agency sales channels could be challenging, since it’s unclear whether digital audio buyers or digital out-of-home buyers will take ownership of the solution. While digital audio buyers have worked with Triton for years, the out-of-home community is still unfamiliar with its products.
“We have a robust education and evangelism effort out there,” Rosso said.
