OOH Uncut Podcast: Jonathan Gudai
Published: July 10, 2023
Jonathan Gudai Discussion on OOH Uncut Podcast with Rick Robinson
Rick Robinson: Hello everybody. Rick Robinson here from PJX Media and today, we have Jonathan Gudai, He's the CEO of Adomi. There that programmatic digital out of home platform many of you have heard of. Jonathan, welcome to the podcast.
Jonathan Gudai: Thanks for having me Rick good to be with you.
Rick Robinson: Thrilled to have you, you know, I know you've been in Out of Home Media about 10 years now or so ish. And have created some innovation and brought new clients to our space. We're always appreciative of that. And so, I'm going to ask you this question. What can out-of-home do that no other medium does?
Jonathan Gudai: You know, there's a lot of answers I think to that question. The one that I say jumps out of me is the feeling. Out of home, unlike any other channel has the ability to deliver feelings across multiple stages of the experience and I'll take you through what I mean by that.
Rick Robinson: Okay.
Jonathan Gudai: So as the planner of at home, the ability for you to be able to see these huge larger live canvases and evaluate where and how big and when, and what does it look like. Your brand is gonna be able to show up and be able to have that huge impact as you're actually thinking about the planning cycle. the number of screens that go with that, your ability to have this excitement around, being able to reach them multiple times a day, and then, of course, you know, one of the things I love most about, the this business is once the campaign is launched, sharing those proof of play photos, or those videos from the drive-bys. And that feeling that comes off from a CMO, or a CFO or even a CEO of just your pride. that comes from their logo, their brand being on this huge scale, I'd say that that feeling is very, very unique to home
Rick Robinson: That's a fascinating insight. So far I've been asking this question now. I think of the seventh person I've interviewed and regardless of whether they were a measurement person or digital person or wherever they come from there, they're surprisingly all going back to this gravitas, right? The emotional presence the the power of the medium and public space but no one yet. You're the first to talk about what it's like for the media planner. Right. And I think you really nailed something there because the media planner is exciting because they can anticipate what's going to happen. They know how cool this is going to be when it's out in the public space. They kind of see it before anybody else sees it out there. What, what brought you to that? Where did that come from? That that observation of the planner?
Jonathan Gudai: Yeah, totally. You know, so I came from e-commerce before Adomini and it was e-commerce was all about. How do you create the best buying experience with the least friction and the, you know, best bells and whistles to to drive a product sale. And I took some of that thought process to digital home and said, How do we have the best planning experience where regardless of your background you can go to a web website. You could enter in who you're trying to reach whether that's audience background, or it's geographical specification. And then be able to instantly see, here are the opportunities. Here's where we think that the best impact will happen. And I felt that like, that was an opportunity that was just waiting for digital marketers, who are used to buying, you know, through Google's online portal…Facebook tiktok. They have their own online portals and so that's really where we focused the domini's attention in the early days and that means maps where you could zoom in. And unlike, all of the other competitive channels, you can click on a dot and see this piece of real estate. That's 48 foot wide and 14 foot tall and just imagine your brand on that screen and the ability to also put it into the language of the digital marketer, where they're thinking audience first, and they're thinking about impressions and cpm’s. The, the idea that digital home isn't this extremely expensive or extremely hard to buy channel, With technology that enables that through planning tools. So I love it.
Rick Robinson: Let me ask you then.
Jonathan Gudai: Yeah.
Rick Robinson: And I'm going to jump in here that feeling, right, that sensation of knowing, it's going to be real before it's real, right? That visceral experience,…both in the planning process. And then, you know, when it goes up for the public and then for the people, investing the sea level and anybody in the organization that sense of proof, right? I call it proof of life, right? You see it out there? There's evidence like,… is that We all feel that, we all see that and we all understand that either if we're in the business or we've bought some out of home hard question like Why isn't that enough to move the needle? Like why are we still hovering around four or five percent of the pie?
Jonathan Gudai: I believe that the technology and the availability that companies like Adomni and even PJX Media with some of the tech that you guys have built. It has just not entered into the hands of enough people yet. It's available. It is easy to use, it's powerful, but it hasn't yet kind of seeped into the digital media mix from the standpoint of a planning and execution perspective. And I think that's one of the things that we're looking to solve is having the digital omni channel planners and buyers, really think of digital home as a part of their always-on mix and not have that. Be something that part of the traditional bucket and other people plan to buy. And so that's just a transformation that has the world has added so many different touch points and so many different channels its now starting to converge into what really is the only approach I see that changing Rick.
And you know what also helps us with that in that regard is the notion of going back to the feeling. Having not just necessarily the media buyers and the planners participate. But even potentially consumers and…I, you know, last year, when we launched for Mother's Day, our Shoutable product I've so many videos that we can share, if there's a link to his podcast, of people, taking their mom to Billboard, and then they unveil it and just the tears, and then the pride and then the shock and then the kind of emotional outburst.
Rick Robinson: And and the feeling right? The feeling always there for the consumer. It's part of the feeling we've put out there.
Jonathan Gudai: It's it's powerful, it's powerful. So if we get more people participating, I think then eventually digital out of home just goes from four to six, six to eight. And, and then we're in double digit territory.
Rick Robinson: Well, if we go, well, we all have some missionary work to do. We all need to preach from the pulpit and help help this medium proliferate. You heard it here everybody, but out of home, does it know they're meeting? Can do is create this feeling from planning to the buying phase executing getting up on the street, the sense of pride and, and joy really that comes from the brand. And then also for the public when they see themselves or a brand that they are fond of out up on the streets. Jonathan, thank you for your time, I appreciate it. I hope you have an awesome day.
Jonathan Gudai: Thank you. Always a pleasure, Rick.
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