Video media provider offers new technology to ad market

Potential for tailoring message to consumers

Avia Ustanny, Gleaner Writer

With its LCD advertising video screens growing, even if still a limited feature of offices and supermarkets across the island, Andrew Pairman's Intelligent Multimedia (IML) says it is this week rolling out new technology that will provide its customers with the facility to track who's viewing their ads, thereby enhancing their ability to more precisely shape the message.

"We are trying to determine reach and length of interactivity," IML's operation manager, Rasheed Girvan, said of the company's MediaVue service, that is being unveiled as part of a planned aggressive expansion of its operations.

"We are also considering the feasibility of adding another dynamic element, which would be to change content according to who is looking, such as switching to sporting content for men and clothing for women," Girvan told the Financial Gleaner.

Pairman controls clutch of Internet and communications services companies, including:

Anbell Agencies, which sells handsets and telephone accessories;

Anbell Telecommunications an Internet services provider, whose offerings includes voice-over-Internet protocol (VOIP); and

Anbell Media, an outdoor advertising outfit that delivers messages primarily through electronic signage and video boards.

A year and a half ago, Pairman launched IML as a stand-alone entity to deliver video advertising content on LCD screens placed at strategic, highly trafficked locations, such as supermarket, stores and some government offices. The company currently has 56 viewing locations.

Last month, Pairman, through his investment bankers, Mayberry Investments, flagged up a planned private placement for Intelligent Multimedia, to raise between $80 million and $150 million for between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of the company. Much of that cash, if it materialises - a specific date has not been set for the launch of the offer - will go towards expansion.

According to IML's business development manager, Dominic Azan, the projection is to add another 100 viewing locations to the 56 that the company now has by yearend, and by another 50 or more by next June.

"Our business plan calls for 200 or more screens over the next 18 months," Azan said. "We are at the tip of the iceberg."

Indeed, Azan estimates that IML currently has no more than a five per cent penetration of the potentially feasible viewing locations in Jamaica.

The push for expansion, however, is gaining traction.

With the company's video screens already broadcasting messages in tax offices and some supermarkets, IML recently struck a deal for its expansion into all 14 in the GraceKennedy-owned HiLo chain, as well as Tony and June Wong's two General Foods stores at the Liguanea Plaza in St Andrew and the Ocean Village shopping Centre in Ocho Rios, on the island's north shore.

"We have been able to target people while (they are) doing their business, by communicating with them while they are waiting inline," Azan, the business development manager. "We educate, entertain and give advertisers an opportunity to communicate with them."

It is that experience the IML hopes to now exploit by using the technology to deliver greater value for the clients, by providing them with more specific profiles of the 'audiences'.

For instance, with the new system, by using eye-tracking connected to a web camera IML will be able to more accurately pinpoint the number of viewers looking at advertisements, determine their gender and approximate age.

This kind of information can then be plotted "into a graph for the system manager's use", explained Girvan, the operations manager.