Out of Home
Your client's message goes to college
By Kathy Prentice
Aug 27, 2007 - 1:06:40 AM

Delivering ads to college students via digital screens has been around for a while. Now there's an expanded network with screens on campus and off campus that offers advertisers an opportunity to reinforce those messages wherever students go throughout their day.

To find out how to get your client’s message in front of college students where they study, work and play, read on.

This is one in a Media Life series on buying the new out-of-home venues. They appear weekly.

Fast Facts

What
Ads on digital signage on college campuses and at locations near those campuses where college kids shop and hang out.

Who
SeeSaw Networks of San Francisco.

There are also several media companies that offer signage at targeted locations on and around college campuses.

How it works
Ads air in a mix with content on a network of digital screens.

SeeSaw recently added Univeristy Network and Zilo Networks on-campus digital screens to their network, creating a program that now spans both on- and off-campus venues.

On-campus screens are in student unions, recreation centers and dorm rooms. Off-campus screens can be found in grocery stores, bookstores, bars and restaurants, gas stations, travel centers and specialty retail stores as well as at ATMs.

Screens range from 27-inch plasma displays at store checkouts to 50-inch plasma monitors in recreation areas. Options for ads include tickers, main panel and skyscrapers.

Creative is provided by the advertiser and can be changed during the course of a campaign.

“With this particular demographic, the more disruptive the ad is, the bigger the flash, the more it catches their attention,” says vice president of marketing and co-founder Rocky Gunderson.

Sound isn’t used because the venues are generally noisy, he says.

Loops run between 6 and 10 minutes, depending on the pass-by and dwell time at the venue, or how long kids hang around the screens.

Half the air time is dedicated to content, the other half dedicated to ads and information about campus events.

Sponsor ads run 15 or 30 seconds, and advertisers can buy packages that include on- and off-campus signage.

Markets
Signage is available on and around 469 colleges and universities in all 50 states.

Numbers
Screens are available in dorm rooms in 350 of the 469 campuses in the network. Two hundred campuses have screens in public areas. Reach is 7.2 million students.

How it is measured
Third-party-validated traffic studies are provided. Impressions are estimated at 22 million weekly.

Research
According to OTX, a Los Angeles research firm, 70 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds report that they pay attention to out-of-home digital advertising. Additionally, 27 percent say they buy products or take some form of action as a result of seeing such advertising.

College and university students spend over $200 billion annually, including $275 monthly in discretionary spending, and 81 percent hold down paying jobs, according to a study by the National Center for Educational Statistics. 

What product categories do well
Automotive, financial services, consumer electronics, entertainment and apparel do well.

Ads for firearms aren’t accepted, and that's also the case for alcohol, credit cards and political ads on some campuses.

Demographics
According to data from SeeSaw:
-On-campus signage skews female, representing 56 percent of those exposed to the signage.
-Off-campus advertising skews 49 percent male and 51 percent female.
-College students spend eight to 10 hours a day on campus.

Making the buy
Lead time is three weeks with creative in hand. The minimum buy is one week. A typical buy is three months. Pricing is set on a CPM basis.

“We have online digital media planning where advertisers can look at inventory by category, get a sense of market coverage and an idea of pricing,” says Scott Hines, vice president of marketing and customer experience.

Who’s already on SeeSaw college screens
Microsoft Zune was one of the first advertisers on this new network.

What they’re saying
“Different kinds of messages fit different venues, depending on whether they’re on or off campus. You have to look at screen size and dwell time versus state of mind. You could take a TV spot and redo it or build something specifically for this medium.” – Rocky Gunderson, vice president marketing and co-founder of San Francisco-based SeeSaw Networks

Web site info
SeeSaw Networks at www.seesawnetworks.com