Vibenomics, Inc. is a programmatic audio out-of-home advertising and experience company that powers custom radio stations for retailers. Vibenomics gives brands the ability to talk to shoppers directly at the point of sale. The company’s President and Chief Strategy Officer, Paul Brenner, recently talked with freelance reporter Mel Stott.
Let’s start with an overview of Vibenomics. What does the company do?
We help brick-and-mortar retail locations enhance store sales by combining licensed background music playlists with commercial spots paid for by brand advertisers. We enable brands to talk to shoppers directly inside thousands of retail locations. Vibenomics’ audio OOH advertising is aimed at influencing in-store purchase decisions.
Any examples of how your retail clients use Vibenomics?
One of Vibenomics’s key clients is convenience store chain Kwik Trip. Kwik Trip is a family-owned company based in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The company employs more than 25,000 people and has over 600 store locations.
When Vibenomics approached the Kwik Trip team, Mark Meisner, the chain’s director of marketing and advertising, said the technology and revenue model was something he’d never seen in this space before.
Typically, Kwik Trip sees roughly eight million or more transactions a week in their stores. With that number of ears and eyes, they saw an opportunity to increase in-store buying.
Using Vibenomics’ audio OOH solution, Kwik Trip was able to offset costs to the stores for in-store music and generate ad revenue.
The campaign itself ran six weeks and focused within the adult beverage category. Following the campaign, Kwik Trip saw a 14.1% lift in sales, and a 743% return on ad spend, reaching a total of 343 Wisconsin Kwik Trip stores. These numbers were compared to the sales of a control group of 169 Kwik Trip stores that did not run the ad.
How does the process work? Does each retailer have its own audio feed? Does a chain have customized feeds for each location?
On our retail network, each location receives its own customized, private audio feed.
We deliver the content through flexible plug-and-play mobile tablet devices that communicate with our cloud-based platform.
The technology allows for complete flexibility so that retailers can manage their spaces any way they like it. They can tailor the content by location, state, region, or across their full chain.
Our network partners are able to customize their in-store experience and control branding in the way that makes sense for their company.
With 100% uninterrupted share-of-voice and brand-safe placement, brands can talk to store visitors at our rapidly expanding network of 5,000 convenience and grocery stores nationwide.
Who are some of your advertisers?
Vibenomics has worked with more than 120 unique advertisers, representing both endemic and non-endemic products. Some examples include Coca-Cola, Pepsi, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Purdue University, Red Bull, Monster Energy, Live Nation, Kraft, NCAA, and Metro by T-Mobile.
Do you have your own ad sales team, or do you outsource?
Vibenomics has two sales divisions. One is selling the audio OOH experience. This division helps retailers’ solve their audio needs. In addition, it provides data and advertising revenue share options.
The other team sells advertising spots on our OOH audio network to regional buyers across NYC, LA, Chicago and other major markets.
Can brands change ad creative on the fly to address dynamics such as weather, inventory levels, etc?
Our technology follows the media planning, buying processes and tools employed by OOH. As the first programmatic-enabled audio OOH provider, we can easily update advertisement messages in real time via SSPs and DSPs. We also have greater than 95% delivery rate to the IoT-enabled devices at each of our locations.
Retail venues use a specific device allowing for geo-location changes dynamically and as granular as needed by each ad campaign. Vibenomics’ Creative Studio can produce scripted creative in three business days or less. Approved content gets automatically scheduled to play through our dynamic flight programming interface.
In addition to your ad revenue stream, do retailers pay you for the service?
Retailers pay us to carry our service, but we share ad revenue. Thus, we turn what is historically a cost center for businesses into a revenue stream for them.
At the same time, we help retail businesses build stronger customer relationships.
Vibenomics helps retail locations deliver the shopper experience they want to achieve. We also have to observe with the mix of vendors who stock their shelves.
How many shoppers does Vibenomics reach, and what type of attribution metrics do you provide to brands?
We operate in more than 6,000 locations across 49 states, reaching over 200 million people monthly.
Vibenomics’ audio OOH content and ad platform serves over 120 advertisers.
Through our Host Network POS Data Sharing Program, we measure the impact that audio advertising has on sales lift and return on ad spend. For example, we saw a 31% lift/$2.50 ROAS (return on ad sales) on a 45-day snack food campaign (215 stores/173 spots per week), and a 27% lift and $12 ROAS on an eight-week energy beverage campaign (230 locations/174 spots per week).
Vibenomics has at its disposal cloud-based technology, licensed background music library and data integration capabilities. In addition, we have a team of audio experience experts and a network of on-demand professional voice talent.
To learn more about Vibenomics, click here.
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