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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowFishers-based audio marketing tech company Vibenomics Inc. has launched a new platform designed to make it easier for retailers to do business with Vibenomics—and with its marketing-tech peers.
The platform, called the In-Store Marketplace, is currently operating as a Vibenomics subsidiary. But if it succeeds as hoped, the company may spin it off into its own business, said Paul Brenner, Vibenomics’ chief strategy officer and audio-out-of-home president.
The In-Store Marketplace, which launched earlier this month, offers a central platform where retailers can buy brick-and-mortar audio and display advertising from multiple providers. This type of advertising includes things like the in-store audio messages, in-aisle digital displays or gas-pump video screens shoppers might encounter when they visit a retail store.
Brenner said the platform aims to offer a more streamlined way for retailers to purchase this type of advertising. Currently, he said, retailers must deal with multiple providers—which can be a complicated and confusing process.
“There’s probably 15 different in-store media providers, and everyone’s doing it a different way,” Brenner said.
Vibenomics offers in-store music, audio advertising and messages to in-store shoppers, and its customer base includes the grocery chains Kroger and Hy-Vee.
The In-Store Marketplace has already gained participation from several of Vibenomics’ peers. They include Mood Media, an Austin, Texas-based company whose products include in-store digital signage, music, scent marketing and other offerings; Alpharetta, Georgia-based Sellr Technologies, which offers in-store televisions and computer tablets; Atlanta, Georgia-based FuelMedia TV, which offers video messaging at gas stations and convenience stores; and Everett, Washington-based WaterStation Technology, which makes in-store self-service water vending stations.
These participants, or publishers, can list their advertising inventory on the In-Store Marketplace along with Vibenomics.
“We want it to be an agnostic space,” Brenner said. “We want it to be ‘Switzerland’ for all of these people.”
Some of the marketplace publishers could be considered Vibenomics’ competitors, but Brenner said the goal is to help everyone gain more business in what is an emerging segment of the advertising world. “We all have to come together to create this scale and ubiquity in order to be taken seriously.”
At present, Brenner said, Vibenomics isn’t charging the other companies anything to list their inventory on the In-Store Marketplace. That could change, Brenner said, depending on how well the platform resonates with retailers and publishers.
And if things really take off, Vibenomics might spin off the In-Store Platform and turn it into a separate company of its own.
Vibenomics will take some time to see how things work before making these decisions, Brenner said. “Our goal is to learn as much as we can over the next six or nine months.”
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As a consumer, this really has no appeal to me — we’re already nagged in stores enough that I would go so far as to say, “I won’t buy anything which has nagware trying to get me to buy it” and if its store-wide, I’ll have to take my business elsewhere.