Episode 1
Billboards Bets and a bit of Booze
Being open-minded means knowing what’s possible. In this episode, Jonathan Gudai is joined by the host of Digital and Dirt, Ian Dallimore, as he explains why betting BIG on the future has quickly evolved Lamar from a small Louisiana billboard company to one of the largest out-of-home advertising companies in the world!
Transcript
Jonathan Gudai
We’re talking about billboards. We talk about bets. We’re talking a little bit of booze.
Ian Dallimore
You could tell I’ve literally never gambled in my life. Ooh.
Jonathan Gudai
All right. All right. Here we go. Here we go. I’m Jonathan Gudai, Co-founder and CEO of Adomni and Shoutable. Very excited to have our inaugural session with the one and only Ian Dallimore from Lamar.
Ian Dallimore
Thanks for having me. This is spectacular. This is. This is definitely bigger than Digital and Dirt’s studio. Thanks for having me.
Jonathan Gudai
You are in Vegas?
Ian Dallimore
Yes.
Jonathan Gudai
Like everyone says in Vegas, you got to go big.
Ian Dallimore
Yeah.
Jonathan Gudai
And so we’re bringing the heat tonight. So this particular session, we’re talking about billboards. We’re going to talk about bets and we can talk about a little bit of booze.
Ian Dallimore
Cool.
Jonathan Gudai
But before we start, let’s start with the bets. So I’ve got three bets I’d like you to place. Red, black or green?
Ian Dallimore
We’ll go green for Lamar.
Jonathan Gudai
Green for Lamar. He’s true to his colors all the way. And that’s also the rarer of the roulette wheels. Odds, too.
Ian Dallimore
You could tell I’ve literally never gambled in my life. Ooh.
Jonathan Gudai
So check this out. This is called the Number Juan. J U A N.
Ian Dallimore
Let’s go.
Jonathan Gudai
And what’s special about this is that it’s a 116 months aged. It’s called an extra anejo, where typically, you know, tequila is even just a few years. And this thing when we went into Total Wine Store in Vegas, which you can imagine what they have in Vegas for Total Wine. This guy is like you want to see something really special. Check this thing out. 116 months, 9.6 years old in the barrels. Salud.
Ian Dallimore
Salud.
Ian Dallimore
Oh, yeah. That’s great. Good. Tequila.
Jonathan Gudai
That’s smooth. All right, let’s cut to business. So billboards and bets in business. Just like in life, you make your bets. You make your preferences on where you see things are going and where you’re investing your time, your energy. And what if you were to think about what you personally want to see and where you see Lamar and the industry betting to grow the space? What does that look like?
Ian Dallimore
I think we’re down the path, obviously, with our amazing partnership with Adomni over the last what has it been almost three years now? I think it continues accessibility of our inventory for out-of-home side, well beyond digital, is a focus. I think that opening up a real time API availability rates, ability to contract and buy on the direct side of our business is pivotal for the future of our company. So still having programmatic data and impression driven buying.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah.
Ian Dallimore
But our other 325,000. Now plays a role into media buying. Sure, it could be. Obviously, we’re going to connect with you guys at Adomni, offer something else. But connecting with our ad agencies, connecting with a kid in a basement, connecting with whomever wants to visit API.
Jonathan Gudai
Small business? Yeah, yeah. So basically taking your whole inventory, kind of making it online, just like you’re booking a hotel room or, you know, car rental or something like that.
Ian Dallimore
Exactly. Yeah. And it’s interesting because our CFO, Jay Johnson comes from the Marriott world and hosts properties. So, you know, and then now our head of IT Sukhvinder Singh also coming from those host properties. So they’ve played this role in the last ten years. So it’s been a lot of fun for us to kind of say like perfect and especially personally been exciting for me because I’ve been one of the lone people within not only Lamar but within the industry that’s like hey we have to move forward.
Jonathan Gudai
Yep.
Ian Dallimore
And obviously I’ve taken a lot of arrows both in my chest and my back. But I, as pioneers do.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah.
Ian Dallimore
Yeah. That’s a huge focus is the ability to access all inventory in out of home and we hope that our other vendor partners follow suit.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah and I mean from a percentage perspective obviously Admoni and programmatic is focused on your digital inventory, but like you said, there’s hundreds of thousands of non-digital boards and even the digital ones themselves that people want to have as a real estate buy or a specific proximity signage by your vision as they go to the Lamar.com and it’s just literally, you know, within minutes they can put in their credit card and they can buy and they book their space.
Ian Dallimore
Yeah. And the hope is, is if just as they’re using real-time data to determine what to buy. Right. It shouldn’t matter if it’s a digital screen, a bus shelter, an airport ad or roadside static billboard. It shouldn’t matter. Right. If that location’s highest index is towards a certain audience then make it easy to buy.
Jonathan Gudai
Yep.
Ian Dallimore
So I think that that’s pivotal. That’s a huge focus for us and Lamar.
Jonathan Gudai
And it’s amazing that the biggest billboard company in the world, or it’s definitely the U.S. but I mean, by a lot of measures, the world is the one doing the most innovation with these kind of self-serve platforms and working with us. I mean, we were testing things and have always tested things where you guys are the most open minded companies that actually try things like Shoutable, for example, a few months ago. And and really everything that we bring up, there’s an openness to doing that. And talk to me about that. Is that part of the betting sort of philosophy? We’re like, your leadership team thinks of growth that way where, you know, we’re going to place a couple bets to see what plays out.
Ian Dallimore
Yeah, I think so. So, I’ve been very blessed. 17 years I’ve been with Lamar. Blessed to have leadership that has allowed me to kind of evolve in the early days. Tommy Teepell, our former CMO. John Miller who was huge and still is our mentor. Hes our SVP of Sales, and has really allowed me to just kind of run. And when I say me collectively, the larger team and then within the organization that Lamar and then just fantastic Ross Riley and Sean Reilly. It’s leadership just to kind of be like, All right, let’s go. Let’s try something. Because remember, Lamar was the first to embrace programmatic out of home almost, it’s been over right at ten years now. Yeah. And we were very early on. And again. It’s no different than a lot of the technologies that we use for specific campaigns. I mean, we rolled out a campaign where I came back from CES probably 11 years ago and I saw this cool video technology that could recognize the front grills of vehicles, make, model, color. And look, I had zero business having a conversation. This guy had zero business talking to a billboard guy. But I was just the way my mind is and I’ve always been.. My mom jokingly has called me the future. It’s been kind of my nickname growing up in my whole life. And…
Jonathan Gudai
You’re a Tinkerer.
Ian Dallimore
Yeah. So we took this company and we were like, All right, cool. Let’s take this vehicular recognition technology. Let’s put it on this static board 500 feet. Before a digital. And then have competitive conquesting. And so we were the first campaign we ran with that was Chevy. It would recognize Toyotas, Nissans, Mazdas. And then it would trigger back on that digital. And it would say, you know, “hey, Mazda. You know our Chevy Malibu has more safety features comparative –
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah. Comparative
Ian Dallimore
Yeah. And the color of the vehicle was the same color vehicle as the Mazda. So it’s just been. It’s really the same thing we’ve done with Adomni and our partnership. It’s just really been like what you know, why not. Yeah you know my motto to my team is the way that things are today are not the way that they need to be tomorrow and that that mindset is constantly mindset just constantly evolving. And, you know, we jokingly say Lamar is 120 years old you know. Innovating since 1902, because we really have, we went from hand paint to paste to vinyl to now recyclable vinyl to launching the first digital 20 little over 20 years ago.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah.
Ian Dallimore
So it’s just that evolution mindset that has to play. And look, we would be just fine if we didn’t evolve, but it’s imperative to constantly change your position.
Jonathan Gudai
For sure. And you know, the third aspect, I mean, obviously there’s, there’s, there’s the ease of the buying and then there’s there’s that, there’s technology. But let’s talk about the buyers themselves because we believe that we’ve got to open this thing up. And so when you think of that third bet, is the buyer part of that? Like are we having new conversations with people? What are your thoughts on that one?
Ian Dallimore
Yeah, it’s and look, it’s a touchy conversation. We love our out of home specialist friends but now the new relationships that have happened on the programmatic side are with our new friends, Nature and Maxwell at the Trade Desk. So now we’re starting to have omnichannel DSPs integrated in and and become interested in our space. Google DB360 just integrated. And so I don’t believe that the focus is always going to be one specific buyer. Look, remember Lamar’s a $2.1 billion company, 80% of our income comes from local advertisers, and that is a direct-
Jonathan Gudai
Relationship.
Ian Dallimore
Relationship.
Jonathan Gudai
With transaction.
Ian Dallimore
With that dealership in, you know, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Or that boutique in Austin, Texas right? So I believe that as technology continues to increase, as platforms like Adomni and others, and programmatic and at Lamar.com, it begins to really challenge the entire industry to kind of morph and change into the inventory is accessible to everybody. Right? You know I don’t care who buys if I’m Delta. I don’t care who buys the seat. I don’t care if you buy it on Orbitz, you buy it on Delta.com, or you still go old school and call-
Jonathan Gudai
The travel agent.
Ian Dallimore
call Susan, the travel agent.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah. And optionality, I think is the name of the game and there being more surface area for your inventory to be serviced and and and I think your philosophy has always been we’re not going to build everything. We’re not going to own everything, which I recognize and really appreciate it because I feel like some companies fall into that trap and even with some the agency side or the publisher side of thinking that, you know, we’re going to build our own team or we are going to build our own tech, we’re going to build our own stack, and that’s going to be our unique advantage. And I think ultimately your advantage is the real estate terms, the quality of the screens and the people that are helping ensure that those stay up and running. There’s the whole world that can do that job, you know, better as a technology provider, as a service provider that, you know, that would appreciate that.
Ian Dallimore
So why, I think you said the exact perfect word. It’s more efficient. Right? And I remember this when Ross Reilly and I were talking to Kevin Reilly are now chairman, or former CEO at Lamar. He said, look, as you guys, the two of you evolve technology within the company. Don’t ever forget the personal relationship that our local AE’s and national reps have with the brands. So what that means is, is to your point. You know, one of the newest things that we’re working on right now is rolling out an API to ten agencies that have platforms. They’re ingesting real time availability rates, locations. And what’s that’s done, Jonathan, is really just eliminated the bullshit of Excel spreadsheets. So, oh my God, Like somebody asked me, what would you change ten years ago within the out of home industry? And I would say I would eliminate an Excel spreadsheet like that. That would be the greatest thing ever.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah.
Ian Dallimore
And, you know, so that’s what technology does. Is it still allows for that 1 to 1 conversation to happen. But now you really start to evolve the salesperson because now you’re really having to come in with an idea. You’re having to come in with a concept because I don’t need you to pull rates and availability. So I think that the evolution of the salesperson is going to evolve as well, which is fun because the out of home space gets to be anything you want it to be.
Jonathan Gudai
Let’s pause on that one. Come back. Thank you for being my first guest.
Ian Dallimore
Yeah, I know this was special and I’m glad I went with the green because this tequila is fantastic. I don’t know what the other two options were, but.
Jonathan Gudai
We’re going to have to definitely save this one of my records for. For the future. But thank you. Good times. Enjoy Vegas while you’re here.
Ian Dallimore
Thank you, my friend. Keep doing great things at Adomni and Shoutable. We’re beyond excited to be partners with you guys. So to be your inaugural guest and now enough to go back to my team and build out a legit studio.
Jonathan Gudai
Yeah, well, we got some people that can help you with that for sure. Like we. Yeah, a lot of passion went into this and everything we do. So thank you. Ian Dallimore, Lamar, You guys rock.
Ian Dallimore
Thank you, my friend.