Last week's decision by the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) to rebrand itself as the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) probably should have come as little surprise to people in the digital signage and kiosk industries.

Now that it has come, though, the association will use it as a springboard to seize new market share opportunities and launch new initiatives, say DPAA officials.

According to longtime OVAB board chair (and CEO of Captivate Network) Mike DiFranza, the name change was approved by the OVAB/DPAA board after an extensive consulting process — and some of the most enthusiastic advocates for the rebranding were the advertising professionals who plan and buy out-of-home advertising time for their brand clients.

These ad-agency professionals recognized, DiFranza says, that the "out-of-home" moniker from the old OVAB name was not specific and clear enough to describe the different engaged audiences that brands can reach with "digital place-based" networks.

DiFranza said that these agency professionals view their buys of digital place-based networks as a separate and distinct complement to their other media buys of static roadside billboards, digital LED billboards, street furniture, transit advertising, airport advertising and other traditional out-of-home media.

Changing names equals seizing new market opportunities

This rebranding of the Madison Avenue-based DPAA is another example of how the leading U.S. organizations serving the digital signage, place-based digital media and kiosk sectors have successfully repositioned and renamed themselves for the last several years.

This repositioning and refinement (and sometimes rebranding) in our industry also has been done by tradeshow and event producers (the Digital Retailing Expo rebranding as the Digital Signage Expo and KioskCom's announced rebranding as Customer Engagement Technology World) and industry publications (Captive Audience Network Briefing merging with Narrowcasting News to form AKA.TV back in 2004).

The bottom line here is that we're all trying to keep pace with the market and seize new revenue opportunities.

New initiatives are coming at DPAA

DiFranza acknowledged the current U.S. economic slowdown has caused some networks to drop their memberships in DPAA. Also, some DPAA member networks have been acquired by other DPAA member networks. (Memberships run about $40,000 per year for operators of digital place-based networks.)

DiFranza said that, with this rebranding and DPAA's new focus on selling the digital place-based networks into the digital and TV budgets, the DPAA hopes to woo back some of its lost members and gain new ones. He cited Gas Station TV and AccentHealth as example of networks focused on TV ad-buying budgets that DPAA hopes to recruit in the coming months.

To pursue ad buys from the digital and TV ad-buying buckets and win new members, DPAA president Suzanne La Forgia said the association plans to take several initiatives:

• DPAA will expand its work with Mediamark Research (MRI), a prominent research house that publishes the annual Survey of the American Consumer. This annual survey collects information on adult consumers' media choices, consumer product usage (tracking more than 6,000 product/service brands), demographics, lifestyle and attitudes. La Forgia explained that DPAA has persuaded Mediamark to incorporate more questions about consumer viewing of digital place-based media into the survey, so that the data will go into databases that define the media-planning and media-buying tools for many ad agencies.
• La Forgia is working closely with both Nielsen and Arbitron to expand their work tracking the audiences of digital place-based media. La Forgia said that Nielsen and Arbitron are motivated to expand their research work here because of the rapid growth in the sector. She also hinted that both will soon be announcing major research results regarding place-based digital.
• She is working with DPAA members to gather case studies and speak on seminars and panels at events sponsored by Mediapost and other influential organizers of events that media professionals attend.

"We felt that the old name was more exclusive"

"The new name clearly defines us as our own entity…Just like TV is different from cable, digital place-based media is different from digital signage," DiFranza said in a recent interview. "The name change opens up opportunity for this space. By engaging the multiple constituencies in the agency community (out-of-home buyers, digital-media/Internet/mobile media buyers and broadcast/TV buyers), that helps this industry grow. It's a more inclusive strategy. We felt that the old name (OVAB) was more exclusive."