OOH Uncut Podcast: Craig Benner
Craig Benner, Founder & CEO, Accretive Media, joins host Rick Robinson, CEO, PJX Media, on OOH Uncut, the podcast featuring thought leaders in the Out of Home advertising world.
September 5, 2023
Craig Benner Discussion on OOH Uncut Podcast with Rick Robinson
Rick Robinson: Hello everybody, Rick Robinson here on OOH Uncut and I am with Craig Benner today. He's the Founder and CEO of Accretive Media and Accretive is a brilliant company. They're an out-of-home data and tech company and they are focused on attribution of the out-of-home channel. Craig, we're very pleased to have you, say hello.
Accretive Media, Craig Benner: Thanks thanks for having me, Rick.
Rick Robinson: All right we are going to jump in here. Like we do with the question of Season One: What can out-of-home do that no other medium can do?
Accretive Media: It's a great question so I am fairly new to the out-of-home space. not fairly new. I've been in the space for five years now and,…
Rick Robinson: That's new.
Accretive Media: it's new-ish. So I have a very,…
Rick Robinson: But you have a strong opinion I know. So let's hear it.
Accretive Media: very strong opinion on just about everything out of home specifically and it's funny I’ll answer that question with a couple stories actually and the first story is when I was in digital. And I spent the last 15 plus years in digital before I got in out of home. And I remember I was at a dinner that we put on for agencies and brands. and I was at a programmatic digital company, and we're sitting there at a dinner with brands and agencies, and we're all around the table. And they said, What's the most memorable ad that you have seen? to a bunch of advertising people, right brands and agencies and every single person there cited a TV commercial or an out of home experiential ad And we're all digital people.
Rick Robinson: How about that?
Accretive Media: And we're sitting there and it was like this is a huge backfire… not one person in a digital funded and supported and sponsored dinner not one person talked about a digital ad. so, I thought
Rick Robinson: So, their greatest memory was something else, it was out of home or…
Accretive Media: Exactly. It was out of home or…
Rick Robinson: Wow.
Accretive Media: TV. so, I sat there, and I thought about that and I was just like, We're never gonna have that emotive experience of other channels. So then fast forward and I I'll get to your answer in a minute. So then I thought about that and I was sitting there and the crux of digital was always. And I remember thinking about that we're in the programmatic space and it was all about behavioral targeting. And my company was a big,…
Rick Robinson: Mmm.
Accretive Media: was a big pioneer in the programmatic space and in behavioral targeting, it was always this question of audience versus context or scale versus niche or…
Rick Robinson: Mm-hmm
Accretive Media: this or it was always So here I am and out of home and when you say What can we do that? No one else can do. It's all about the and
Accretive Media: The experience, the unique relationship between a consumer in the physical world and the physical world. when I think about Is it impact is an audience? Is it reach?
Rick Robinson: Mm-hmm
Accretive Media: It's like let's not talk about out of home and or let's talk about how you can have audience and reach and impact and audience and I'm biased because I'm a measurement hack. But now with the advancements and measurement, you can measure efficacy in the exact same way you could do digital, which was the one knock on our channel for dozens of years. And now we can measure efficacy and we can get into mid funnel and we can get into performance. And we could do exactly what every other channel can do. So now, tell me, one area where we're deficient, you can't, because we have reach, we have frequency, we have audience, we have context, we have environment, we have all of those things plus and so,
Rick Robinson: so we have and I love it there because you referred to out of home as our channel. So now it's in your blood completely.
Accretive Media: I joke around that, I'm clearly passionate about this stuff and I say, Yeah, my old digital friends don't necessarily love me anymore, but my new out of home friends, They can appreciate it because we have the benefit of measuring the effectiveness of all of these out of home.
Rick Robinson: Look, I mean, Craig lets be honest. Somebody like you with somebody we envied in the digital world and the programmatic world, getting all the budgets and it was a mystery to us how we could go get a part of it. So the fact that you've come over here as a convert, first of all gives us a small little moral victory and then secondly you're bringing your knowledge and you're teaching us how to measure out of home, how to bring digital metrics out of home. And what's even better is that these things you talk about how out of home is memorable. Autom is emotive how it can and be multiple things and do this all in the public space. What you're showing us is that we can prove that. Now, …
Accretive Media: Yeah.
Rick Robinson: we can prove that because everybody loves a great billboard they've always just wanted us to prove it. And you in a creative are helping us do that. So I want to say Thank you for that. re gonna wrap, we've hit our five minute Mark. We're gonna have you back for season two because I have a great question there that I can't wait to ask you, but that's gonna wait. So, thanks for your time, take care and have an awesome day mate.
Accretive Media: Happy to be here and Viva la out of home.
Rick Robinson: Viva la out of home, we'll wrap on that.
Accretive Media: Thanks Rick.
