Location Media Xchange (LMX), the independent media supply-focused arm of Moving Walls Group has inked a deal with Kalms, a leading retail technologies provider in Singapore to equip their Smart Vending Machine digital screen network with contextual ad-serving capabilities.
The global pandemic is accelerating digital transformation among retailers. Apart from e-commerce store adoption and on-demand delivery, retailers are turning to vending machines as an outlet to automate sales while reducing fixed overheads. Euromonitor International reported that vending machine sales in Singapore would exceed US$72 million by 2020.
Kalms’ Smart Vending Machines are equipped with digital screens that can be programmed to serve advertising content. This is part of a new cohort of media assets that are forming the “Outernet”, a term coined by the Moving Walls group to refer to the consumer engagement opportunity when audiences are not looking at their devices.
Bridging Digital and Physical World Experiences
Kalms has already rolled out more than 150 Smart Vending Machines across Singapore with plans in place to deploy even more. These machines are ideally placed to cater to the current social distancing and physical contact limitation requirements. With their screens, they also immediately become an opportunity to engage moving audiences.
LMX will equip these sites with audience measurement, dynamic ad-serving, and programmatic buying capabilities. With this in place, marketers will be able to extend the reach of their digital campaigns to similar audiences seen to come into the proximity of the Kalms vending machines.
Digital advertising spends continue to grow as audiences spend more time online. However, people still spend significant periods outside their homes and in environments where billions of place-based screens are now available. It is just that these audiences have not been addressable in the same manner as they are online.
“This partnership marks the beginning of “Outernet” advertising,” says Srikanth Ramachandran, Founder and CEO of Moving Walls Group. “Internet Advertising has grown into a 300 Billion dollar industry because it delivers addressable audiences. As consumers, we spend equal if not more hours of our waking time outside and when we are not looking down at our mobiles, we are looking up. By making audiences around smart vending machines addressable, the LMX platform has made digitisation a profitable exercise for Kalms.”
It is no surprise that Kalms is among one of the early adopters of automated advertising in the physical world. Masataka Mukai, Operations Director of Kalms points out “We were one of the first in Singapore to integrate contactless payment into our machines while offering a unique interactive customer experience. We are in the business of automation and it is only right that our advertising solution is able to deliver the right messages to the right audiences across all our locations. LMX’s connectivity to the world’s largest digital demand-side platforms will also make these screens available to local and regional marketers alike.”
