Marketers Juice up the Jukebox

There’s not much research to suggest that people are more easily persuaded in bars or restaurants—although that would explain perennial hopes of the Cubs’ chances for a playoff berth. But there’s voluminous research to show that marketing in bars, restaurants and clubs can be effective in reaching the elusive young adult audience. These 21-to-34s tend to go out for entertainment regularly, more than once a month on average; and while they tend to TiVo mass media at home, they present an attractive target in a social setting such as a pub or night spot.

And a handful of broadband-enabled jukebox ad networks want to help marketers hit those targets with out-of-home interactive advertising. For example, San Francisco-based Ecast claims to provide digital music and other content to more than 10,000 bars and nightclubs around the U.S.

“We differentiate ourselves from the gas tops, elevators, taxicabs and other out-of-home ad experiences in that we’re not passive,” says George Giatzis, Ecast’s senior vice president of ad sales. “Our devices engage the user with touch screens both for choosing music and for interacting with content. And they’re reaching young adults who are socializers, out and about—a highly desirable group of influencers. We’re taking an elusive demographic and skimming the cream of that crop.”

Those devices are jukeboxes first, of course. Users deposit money or swipe a credit card and navigate through their song choices. Since the boxes are networked, songs can be downloaded instantly and repertoires refreshed easily; most Ecast devices offer 260,000 song choices (compared to about 1,000 for a CD-based jukebox.) Ecast adds both new offerings and back titles to its catalog every week.

As customers make their selections, they will be served one interactive ad per page, in the standard leader board or skyscraper formats. If they touch one of those ads, they’re driven to a mini-site that replicates the look and feel of a Web site, with a number of interactive elements such as quizzes or surveys. The most productive Ecast ads are the full-screen ads that pop up after the user has spent all his on-screen credits and chosen all his songs.

“At that end-of-session page, we’re getting from 8% to 27% touch-throughs into the advertiser mini-site,” Giatzis says. “If you compare that to 1% click-throughs for online display ads, it’s pretty amazing. We think people out socializing with their friends let their guard down a little bit and let themselves be more curious. The right brands, reaching the right people at the right time, can have a lot of success.”

A&E Networks thought they were a “right brand’ for the Ecast network last fall. The network worked with Ecast to design a campaign around a new celebreality show featuring “The Two Coreys”—as in, Haim and Feldman, those ‘80s child stars. The campaign featured a customized four-week promotion on Ecast boxes in 1000 bars and nightclubs in New York and Los Angeles, run last October.

That campaign got a 14% click-through rate to the “Two Coreys” mini-site. Once there, customers had four elements to interact with; a photo gallery, a selection of video clips from the show, a trivia quiz about the careers of the two stars, and an opportunity to enter a drawing to win an Apple iPod by completing a short survey on A&E’s overall programming.

Another promotion around the VH1 Network’s “Hip Hop Honors “Music Awards ran for a month before the October broadcast. Ecast was able to examine play logs in its network and identify more than 5000 sites where patrons particularly favored rap, hip hop or R&B/soul selections. Those venues then got a campaign that let fans interact with promotional content for the show and even allowed them to request an e-mail reminder of the October 8 broadcast date. The result was a 17% click-through rate on the end-of-session screen.

‘I wouldn’t say the hip-hop audience is niche, but it’s very specialized,” says Nigel Cox-Hagan, senior vice president of VH1’s creative group and consumer marketing. “We were able to use Ecast’s network to reach fans of the music at the right place and when they were in a festive mood. We had a whole set of tactics for publicizing the show that included online ad buys and print. This was complementary, but it also helped us reach those people who fall out of the net of VH1’s on-air audience.”

Ecast isn’t the only broadband music game in town. New York-based TouchTunes operates nearly 30,000 devices in bars, restaurants, and clubs and also in retail outlets and other businesses. It too offers ad space with an interactive twist at the end of the music selection session. TouchTunes’ first effort for a non-entertainment brand, just completed last week, promoted Absolut’s new pear-flavored vodka with five-second billboard ads and included an invitation to complete a short survey about liquor consumption and Absolut brand awareness.

‘It’s powerful to be able to tap into the power of music in an organic and relevant way,” says Vicki Saunders, director of music marketing and promotion for TouchTunes. “Advertisers are interested in using this new medium to raise their brand awareness in an uncluttered ad environment.”

One small drawback to jukebox marketing has been that venues usually limit themselves to one juke per joint, sharply curtailing available screen real estate. But a new TouchTunes development may get more screens out there and thus more promotions in front of patrons: the PlayPorTT, a portable tablet console that will let users browse the music catalog from their seats or tables and send their choices wirelessly to the jukebox. The consoles also offer games and, of course, ads, and will go into production later this year.

“Right now we can run those Absolut ads in only one place in a given venue,” says Marc Felsen, TouchTunes’ vice president of corporate marketing. “That one jukebox screen averages about 1.4 million impressions every day across our network of 30,000 units. But picture a bar with that same jukebox but also with eight or 10 portable units scattered around the room. That obviously makes our reach that much more significant.”