Online Tool Allows Media Planners to Manage Digital Billboards

Newcomer SeeSaw Networks hopes to do for the digital billboard marketplace what ad networks have done for media buyers online: make the purchasing of advertising as simple as possible.

While outdoor is perhaps the oldest advertising mechanism, its current digitized iterations have shrunk in size and spread everywhere from the tops of taxis to grocery stores. But purchasing highly targeted advertising space on digital billboards has been difficult due to varying formats and providers.

Seeing an opportunity to streamline out-of-home digital billboards, SeeSaw Networks has launched SeeSawAds.com as a free online service for media buyers to purchase advertising space.

“What’s been a challenge for media agencies is they would love to advertise in this medium, but they would have to work with three, or four, or five network providers. A media planner really just has to be registered in our system and have a couple of hours of training to allow them to understand where the information is,” said Rocky Gunderson, vice president of marketing and network operations for SeeSaw.

He said the company sells ad space on about 10,000 locations in 205 DMAs.

By collecting a database of different categories of digital signs and creating an affiliate marketplace, SeeSawAds.com will not only allow media buyers to purchase numerous ad types, but also do so with a greater level of targeting. The system includes a planning tool that allows buyers to purchase digital billboard space targeted not only likely demographics of viewers, but geographic areas as well. Using the system, it’s possible to purchase ads only in a half-mile radius around any number of physical store locations, according to Gunderson.

“Part of the product is a planning product, where you go through a series of questions that allow you to target people. The system will go out and interrogate the system for the best possible parameters,” he said.

Separately, SeeSaw also announced a partnership with Alchemy, a company which adapts and repurposes elements from existing video, graphics, text, photography, animation and audio to engage targeted audiences. It also signed Border Billboard to its list of affiliates. Border Billboard operates 50-foot LED video billboards along the border between the U.S. and Mexico.