Multiple Strategies for DOOH Investing
LARGO, Florida (June 9, 2011) – DOOH.com’s Original Articles by Tony Hymes (Editor) – Multiple Strategies for DOOH Investing.
All of the buzz around DOOH has been attracting a lot of eyes from international and domestic investors looking to find target companies to acquire and/or grow. It is important that the different stages of investing are understood by the executives of these digital out of home companies to maximize their chances of success and to achieve their goals.
As a private equity investor, he always had an interest in media. He started to look at digital signage companies to get involved with after learning about the power and potential of the nascent communications medium. “I wanted to focus on the last frontier for reaching the consumer that I felt was very underdeveloped given rapidly evolving technology, like retail environments. Digital signage is really just recently starting to pick up traction in that territory.”
Having to choose between pure digital signage start ups or other established companies already involved in related media distribution, he elected the latter. “A lot of companies that are start ups know very little about producing and building out a media broadcast network that can scale to hundreds or thousands of locations; we’ve been doing that for 30 years.”
BTV+, the company that was acquired and renamed UR-Channel, had already built out genuine turnkey network and content production platforms allowing corporations, including some of the largest retailers in North America, to broadcast information to their employees, such as for staff training. It was in fact digital signage in its earliest form. “It was relatively easier to deploy a digital signage network, leveraging off of the experience and knowledge the company had with training and corporate messaging. The screens are back end facing, and the content is naturally different. But the network infrastructure is very similar to digital signage.”
With 30 years of existence, the expansion into the digital signage market was a natural extension of the business. “We already had a platform, already dealt with some of the biggest Canadian retailers, already had the infrastructure; it wasn’t really that difficult to layer on another form of video content.”
From the precarious position of the venture capital investor, Terk notes that finding a group with an established revenue stream can be a safer bet requiring far less capital than a start up, “I didn’t need to keep going to investors to get more and more funding to develop the company.”
Look for two more articles to come in our “Multiple Strategies for DOOH Investing” series featuring Ira Terk to learn about how investing works both ways, from investor to company and from company to investor.