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Waiting room - tv advertising

by iInvent
13 replies
Good morning!

I haven't been around in a while - busy bee lately! Hope everyone is well!

So yesterday I was visiting my doctor...sitting in waiting room for a while, and thought - they should have a tv with information, ads and so on. I know you see this more & more now in city clinics... So I thought - Mmmm maybe I should create this new line of service in my business!

I came on here to search & see if anyone thought of it or was doing this already - doesn't seem like it!

Any thoughts/input would be appreciated!
#advertising #room #waiting
  • Profile picture of the author Jack Gordon
    I don't do anything like this myself, but I was deeply entrenched in the movie theatre business back in the late 90's when on-screen advertising exploded onto the scene. You might look to that as a source of data for your research.

    While not exactly on point, they had a very robust debate about the ethics of advertising to a captive audience, the mechanics (which would obviously be different), the marketing methods, the ratio of ads to entertainment, etc.

    Maybe that is helpful, maybe it isn't. But I agree it is an idea worth exploring, with a huge potential marketplace if you can make it work.
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    • Profile picture of the author iInvent
      I think it does have a huge potential! I did some quick calculations...
      With one clinic, I could make a revenue between 1-3k a month, depending on amount of ads and what they pick.

      I'm looking to have a stream of somewhat passive reccuring revenue and this seems like a good idea. With just a few clinics, I could make an easy 10k a month...with little overhead.
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      Chantal
      "Before you try to satisfy the client, understand and satisfy the person."

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      • Profile picture of the author Jack Gordon
        Originally Posted by iInvent View Post

        I'm looking to have a stream of somewhat passive reccuring revenue and this seems like a good idea. With just a few clinics, I could make an easy 10k a month...with little overhead.
        Never quite as easy as you think it would be...

        But, you never know until you get out there and try it. I think it is a very worthwhile idea.

        Remember, though, that you are competing against (at least) two compelling adversaries.

        1) Inertia. Many of these offices already have cable tv (which they are paying for) and the ease of just turning it on every day. You are asking them to take an extra step, and possibly cancel an existing service, which will be resistance points (though if it saves them money on their cable bill you can use that). If they don't have a tv already, you will probably have to give them one.

        2) Judge Judy. If you take over for The Today Show (or Judge Judy, etc), you will have to replace them with something that is compelling enough to justify the switch. This probably means licensing your content from someone else. Even if you could sell all slots, nobody wants to just bombard their customers with nothing but ads. And different offices will have different ideas about what is acceptable or desirable content, so you may have to have multiple options to choose from.

        Also, you will probably have to offer some sort of rev share to make this compelling for the clinics.

        And you'll need to have a good video post-production editor to put it all together for you (you can find good talent through the outsource sites if you don't want to do it yourself). You'll also probably have to be able to create (free) advertising for those who don't have the resources to put it together themselves.

        Final thought, you'll have to audit the locations to make sure they are playing the ads all day every day. You have made commitments to your advertisers, but without control over the remotes it will be a logistical challenge to deliver on them.

        Passive income? I doubt this would qualify. But certainly it could still be lucrative.

        Good luck!
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        • Profile picture of the author Ron Lafuddy
          Originally Posted by Jack Gordon View Post

          Never quite as easy as you think it would be...

          But, you never know until you get out there and try it. I think it is a very worthwhile idea.

          Remember, though, that you are competing against (at least) two compelling adversaries.

          1) Inertia. Many of these offices already have cable tv (which they are paying for) and the ease of just turning it on every day. You are asking them to take an extra step, and possibly cancel an existing service, which will be resistance points (though if it saves them money on their cable bill you can use that). If they don't have a tv already, you will probably have to give them one.

          2) Judge Judy. If you take over for The Today Show (or Judge Judy, etc), you will have to replace them with something that is compelling enough to justify the switch. This probably means licensing your content from someone else. Even if you could sell all slots, nobody wants to just bombard their customers with nothing but ads. And different offices will have different ideas about what is acceptable or desirable content, so you may have to have multiple options to choose from.

          Also, you will probably have to offer some sort of rev share to make this compelling for the clinics.

          And you'll need to have a good video post-production editor to put it all together for you (you can find good talent through the outsource sites if you don't want to do it yourself). You'll also probably have to be able to create (free) advertising for those who don't have the resources to put it together themselves.

          Final thought, you'll have to audit the locations to make sure they are playing the ads all day every day. You have made commitments to your advertisers, but without control over the remotes it will be a logistical challenge to deliver on them.

          Passive income? I doubt this would qualify. But certainly it could still be lucrative.

          Good luck!
          Jack,

          Excellent points you make here, especially this one.

          "Final thought, you'll have to audit the locations to make sure they are playing the ads all day every day. You have made commitments to your advertisers, but without control over the remotes it will be a logistical challenge to deliver on them."

          I've been in a lot of waiting rooms over the last few years. I've seen the staff person switch channels, to catch her favorite show. Sometimes they just turn it off.

          I've also seen patients and customers do this.

          There are ways to deal with the problems you've listed but they will involve "active" participation, not passive.

          At least initially.

          Thanks for your input.

          Ron
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  • Profile picture of the author Peter Lessard
    I sat in some shared office space and one fellow renter was a doctor in Ottawa that launched a waiting room tv service back in 2001. With partners they worked at it for several years and hundreds of thousands in investment. They owned the network/equipment etc... They definitely did NOT make thousands per clinic.

    There are a few providers in Canada doing this that have about 10 years behind them. The sticking points that I saw from the outside in were as follows:

    1. They actually had 2 doctors working the phones all day because the ONLY person that gets to speak to a doctor is another doctor if he calls so that really opened doors.

    2. They eventually moved to a model where they would supply all equipment and install for free because their goals was maximum amounts of eyeballs to get advertisers to pay. This meant serious funding money upfront.

    I have not looked at this space in some time but I am pretty sure a clinic can contact one of the established waiting room tv suppliers and have everything installed for free. Next they will try to pitch that client on becoming an advertiser if its a good fit though generally it is not. Generally their best advertisers are the pharma companies, vaccines etc...

    The other road block they seemed to have was how picky each office was about what their patients would be shown.

    There is way more to entering this space than meets they eye.
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  • Profile picture of the author CageyVet
    It is an interesting idea to put it into clinics and medical offices.

    Do you do digital signage for other businesses already? Just wondering where you are going to get all of the advertisers needed if you do not have a stable of them already?

    Also, other than a % of the advertising revenue, what is the benefits that you are going to show the clinics, doctors, etc for doing this in their waiting room? Are they going to make a good ROI on showing their waiting patients information about things? It is not like patients are in the buying mood to be up-sold on something, unless it is in a vanity or appearance based medical office.

    I see this possibly working in the dental, cosmetic medical and maybe the extreme speciality medical market since there are upsells and repeat business to drive for the office itself. Plus there are more lucrative advertisers in those markets.

    There will be a large cost of entry though since you are going to want to maintain consistency for your advertisers. So that means you are going to most likely need to own all the equipment yourself in terms of the TV screens, mounting, etc. Since if one office has 20 inch screens and the next office has 40 inch screens, it is hard to sell an advertiser on being put on both of those screens for the same price if at all on the smaller screen.

    Also, you are going to have to invest in some higher end digital signage hardware so that you can do pass through Live TV unless you can work your pitch around information videos playing all of the time or maybe a playlist of youtube videos on a private channels. That is if you also go for the connected to the Internet route, which is the much easier way to go for administration but adds another layer of complexity to the model.

    Interesting idea though...
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    • Profile picture of the author savidge4
      Might I suggest looking into Panasonic models ZT60, WT60, VT60, ST60 and DT60 from the 2012 and 2013 model year. They are designed with a banner ad setup by default that can be tapped into so that the programming remains the same and the ads can be changed with a bit of a hack using a usb memory card.

      Basically you are not altering the actual programming in any way ( they can use cable or satellite or whet ever they are using) the banner ads appear across the bottom of the screen

      Hope that gets you in the right direction
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      • Profile picture of the author wsands
        I actually did this for a couple of years.

        I had a network of 34 locations. It was a mix of technologies that I ran and I did a lot of research on different ways to setup a larger network.

        At the time, we really couldn't keep up with the network as it was. I called it a "sneaker" network because we had to visit each location monthly to swap out the ads.

        Part of my network was made up of 22" LCD Screens that had a flash card in them. They mounted to the wall, and inside the bottom access door was a locking screw, so no one could take it off the wall unless they had a key to the access door to remove the screw. It had no buttons, only a remote, which I kept. Once we setup the screen at your location, it turned on and off according to your office hours, and took into account daylight savings time. Pretty cool.

        The other part of my network was flatscreen tv's mounted to the wall, with a dvd player "cleverly" hidden behind it. The problem with this was that the dvd players broke all the time, and the staff had to turn them on and off. It was a pain in the butt! I had to always go out to new locations and remind them every other day to turn it on, and it was really important, and we made commitments to other advertisers, and etc etc etc... What a headache.

        The tech you pick will play a big factor in your reliability and ease of updating. I did find software that would allow me to network into the screen and upload new ads. It would also monitor the screen to make sure it was on, and on the right input etc... I even talked to sprints reps to get the screens connected to their network instead of having to rely on the locations wifi etc...


        In my experience they are poor at getting conversions, no one really takes action from them. You would have to really saturate an area to get a good conversion rate. Like everywhere you go you see the screens with the same ads playing all the time. Then you think, hey there's that burger place I see in all the waiting rooms I'm in all the time, lets check them out. Or maybe you google them etc...

        We tried all kinds of different ads on them, business card styled ads, video, free stuff, we put funny videos in between the ads to try and catch attention like it was the actual tv, we really tried to get a conversion out of them, I just think we had too few screens out there.

        We would get the hosts to host the screen for free, in exchange we would give them free ad space on 10 other locations. We never advertised a competing business inside their business, and we wouldn't put them inside a competitor etc...

        As for selling it, we did ok. Our price points were around $50-$150 per month, but we usually threw in something extra like a small website or something. Typically, we would charge someone for the website and use the ad on the screens as a closing tool for an SEO Package or something.
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        • Profile picture of the author iInvent
          Originally Posted by wsands View Post

          I actually did this for a couple of years.

          I had a network of 34 locations. It was a mix of technologies that I ran and I did a lot of research on different ways to setup a larger network.

          At the time, we really couldn't keep up with the network as it was. I called it a "sneaker" network because we had to visit each location monthly to swap out the ads.

          Part of my network was made up of 22" LCD Screens that had a flash card in them. They mounted to the wall, and inside the bottom access door was a locking screw, so no one could take it off the wall unless they had a key to the access door to remove the screw. It had no buttons, only a remote, which I kept. Once we setup the screen at your location, it turned on and off according to your office hours, and took into account daylight savings time. Pretty cool.

          The other part of my network was flatscreen tv's mounted to the wall, with a dvd player "cleverly" hidden behind it. The problem with this was that the dvd players broke all the time, and the staff had to turn them on and off. It was a pain in the butt! I had to always go out to new locations and remind them every other day to turn it on, and it was really important, and we made commitments to other advertisers, and etc etc etc... What a headache.

          The tech you pick will play a big factor in your reliability and ease of updating. I did find software that would allow me to network into the screen and upload new ads. It would also monitor the screen to make sure it was on, and on the right input etc... I even talked to sprints reps to get the screens connected to their network instead of having to rely on the locations wifi etc...


          In my experience they are poor at getting conversions, no one really takes action from them. You would have to really saturate an area to get a good conversion rate. Like everywhere you go you see the screens with the same ads playing all the time. Then you think, hey there's that burger place I see in all the waiting rooms I'm in all the time, lets check them out. Or maybe you google them etc...

          We tried all kinds of different ads on them, business card styled ads, video, free stuff, we put funny videos in between the ads to try and catch attention like it was the actual tv, we really tried to get a conversion out of them, I just think we had too few screens out there.

          We would get the hosts to host the screen for free, in exchange we would give them free ad space on 10 other locations. We never advertised a competing business inside their business, and we wouldn't put them inside a competitor etc...

          As for selling it, we did ok. Our price points were around $50-$150 per month, but we usually threw in something extra like a small website or something. Typically, we would charge someone for the website and use the ad on the screens as a closing tool for an SEO Package or something.
          Thanks for sharing!!! Appreciate it!
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          Thanks for reading!

          Chantal
          "Before you try to satisfy the client, understand and satisfy the person."

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        • Profile picture of the author ylian
          Originally Posted by wsands View Post

          I actually did this for a couple of years.

          I had a network of 34 locations. It was a mix of technologies that I ran and I did a lot of research on different ways to setup a larger network.

          At the time, we really couldn't keep up with the network as it was. I called it a "sneaker" network because we had to visit each location monthly to swap out the ads.

          Part of my network was made up of 22" LCD Screens that had a flash card in them. They mounted to the wall, and inside the bottom access door was a locking screw, so no one could take it off the wall unless they had a key to the access door to remove the screw. It had no buttons, only a remote, which I kept. Once we setup the screen at your location, it turned on and off according to your office hours, and took into account daylight savings time. Pretty cool.

          The other part of my network was flatscreen tv's mounted to the wall, with a dvd player "cleverly" hidden behind it. The problem with this was that the dvd players broke all the time, and the staff had to turn them on and off. It was a pain in the butt! I had to always go out to new locations and remind them every other day to turn it on, and it was really important, and we made commitments to other advertisers, and etc etc etc... What a headache.

          The tech you pick will play a big factor in your reliability and ease of updating. I did find software that would allow me to network into the screen and upload new ads. It would also monitor the screen to make sure it was on, and on the right input etc... I even talked to sprints reps to get the screens connected to their network instead of having to rely on the locations wifi etc...


          In my experience they are poor at getting conversions, no one really takes action from them. You would have to really saturate an area to get a good conversion rate. Like everywhere you go you see the screens with the same ads playing all the time. Then you think, hey there's that burger place I see in all the waiting rooms I'm in all the time, lets check them out. Or maybe you google them etc...

          We tried all kinds of different ads on them, business card styled ads, video, free stuff, we put funny videos in between the ads to try and catch attention like it was the actual tv, we really tried to get a conversion out of them, I just think we had too few screens out there.

          We would get the hosts to host the screen for free, in exchange we would give them free ad space on 10 other locations. We never advertised a competing business inside their business, and we wouldn't put them inside a competitor etc...

          As for selling it, we did ok. Our price points were around $50-$150 per month, but we usually threw in something extra like a small website or something. Typically, we would charge someone for the website and use the ad on the screens as a closing tool for an SEO Package or something.
          Why did you leave this business ?
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          • Profile picture of the author wsands
            Originally Posted by ylian View Post

            Why did you leave this business ?
            In the end we ran into a lot of issues with the host locations doing things like, hooking cable up to our screens, or not keeping them turned on.

            We had to visit each location with the dvd players a couple times a week to make sure the employees had remembered to turn them on and that they played right etc...

            Basically it wasn't economical. If all our screens were the better type that turned on and off automatically and didn't have a wearable component like a dvd player (which we replaced frequently) then it could be a different story.

            In all honesty though, I think there are several positives from this type of marketing, however, I think the business owners see them as not as much value as we do.

            I would say that if there were a network of 100 locations that all automatically turned on and off etc... that would be different and they would see the value of that because it's mass distribution at that point.
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        • Profile picture of the author junioreality
          Originally Posted by wsands View Post


          The tech you pick will play a big factor in your reliability and ease of updating. I did find software that would allow me to network into the screen and upload new ads. It would also monitor the screen to make sure it was on, and on the right input etc...
          What's the name of this software?
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          Marketingvideocreators.com
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  • Profile picture of the author iInvent
    Thanks everyone for your input. Still working on a few things. Will keep you posted.
    In my area, businesses are struggling with visibility. Not much available to advertise other than local newspaper but no one reads them! For the same price as an ad, they could get a lot more visibility in the waiting rooms.
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    Thanks for reading!

    Chantal
    "Before you try to satisfy the client, understand and satisfy the person."

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