Reseller Case Study: Cartel Media [+VIDEO]
Why resellers in advertising sales trust Signagelive
Signagelive has, over the course of its decades-long history, become an industry-known, go-to platform for resellers managing enterprise-grade digital signage projects. This trust in our platform continues to strengthen, but the question is why? In such a fast-moving sector, why are so many resellers choosing Signagelive to help scale digital signage networks?
“I’ve been in advertising for most of my life, seeing old, outdated adverts.. maybe that’s what drove me to digital signage”
CEO of Cartel, Andy Barron,on Signagelive
“The beauty of scheduling”
Cartel Media CEO, Andy Barron on Signagelive
1/ Advanced scheduling capabilities
Making it easy for any authorised team member to update content from anywhere in minutes, Signagelive is ideal for scheduling relevant advertising and information. With our platform, playlists can be run on a recurring basis, or prescheduled for a specific date range or time frame.
This advanced yet user-friendly scheduling capability of Signagelive has proven to boost sales and engagement for hyper-targeted marketing approaches in many sectors, not least for advertising sales organisations, such as New Zealand-based, Cartel Media.
A specialist when it comes to delivering advertising for targeted audiences in specific venues – predominantly where people love to be, such as gyms, and leisure spaces, the Cartel Media team has, according to CEO, Andy Barron, relied heavily upon this scheduling functionality to drive sales interest and revenue.
The challenge is, according to Andy, for gyms and leisure centres that don’t usually have teams of dedicated “programmers or designers” to keep the content relevant to a particular audience, so that the screens don’t start “turning into wallpaper”.
In digital signage environments, such as gyms, Andy continues, the members can be there “three or four times a week” for up to “an hour” every time, so it’s imperative that content remains current and new – that it keeps “changing”.
“I wouldn’t like to say it was totally cost led, but it was definitely a big factor. But it’s probably more about (….) value.”
CEO of Cartel Media, Andy Barron on Signagelive
2/ Exceptional value
A competitively positioned cloud-based digital signage solution, Signagelive can offer exceptional value, helping to reduce the initial upfront and on-going maintenance costs of any digital signage network.
According to Andy, the platform maximises the profit-cost ratio, even for smaller projects that usually have tighter margins.
The decision to use Signagelive is, Andy says down to the “value” it offers: “The thing for me is looking at (…) our advertising value in a particular gym. If you can imagine (…), some of our gyms have a thousand members, we can only charge a certain amount for an advertisement that’s capturing that kind of audience. We have to be very careful on the costing of the actual units, the players, (…) the software and all the other sort of factors that create the cost model.”
“Our gyms themselves like to have control (…) of some of the content”
Andy Barron, CEO of Cartel Media
3/ Enterprise-level features
To make the management of large-scale projects easier, we provide best-in-class enterprise-level features to ensure tight yet flexible control of even the vastest networks.
Enterprise level packages include features, such as Granular User Permissions to create custom roles. This is in addition to the Approval function, and Nested playlists, which enable playlists, or specific parts of them to be embedded within a new or existing playlist.
- Granular control with Local Playlists
For Cartel Media, this ability to offer more flexible yet secure control for split content screens is integral to the business, offering customers the possibility to update their own content, which is often scheduled to run alongside third-party advertising.
Andy explains that the gyms with whom they work “like to have control (..) of the content.”, and this means different layers of access, not only for “a head office level that controls 20,30, 50 gyms, but also the local manager”.
With this “hierarchical approach”, the “admin person at the main gym group (..) can have full control. And the gym manager might just basically (..) update the personal trainer information for that day.”
The administrative personnel can then also be sure that any authorised user with more restricted access “can’t play” with any content that’s been scheduled by managers.
- Nested playlists
When it comes to scaling out new branding across a large network, Signagelive can, according to Andy, simplify and speed up the process. For the “international rebranding” of gym and leisure centre chains, Cartel Media is able to update multi-location screens instantaneously, so that the next time partners switch them on, “it’s done”. Maintaining “brand integrity right across the group” is also simple, Andy says, as his team can lock down “certain parts of the screen.”
The “willingness to assist”
Cartel Media, CEO, Andy Barron on Signagelive
4/ Industry-leading support
Renowned for the industry-leading support we offer, Signagelive gives resellers an extra competitive advantage, providing them with additional resource and expertise at every stage of a project.
Trusted as a 100% channel-focused partner, our business strategy is to deliver enhanced and dedicated support specifically for our network of resellers, who manage and add value to the Signagelive customer experience.
Our digital signage experts are trained to work discretely in the background as a natural extension of any reseller partner’s team, offering everything from software development to help and support when it comes to validating proof of concepts.
For Cartel Media, according to Andy, this “willingness to assist” is one of the main drivers that has kept the company working with Signagelive.
Of the previous CMS providers with whom Cartel Media has worked, he comments, “When you’re looking at, you know, a small market like New Zealand with a couple of hundred screens, they’re not really that interested in talking to you to be honest.”
Examples of the kind of additional support Cartel Media has received from Signagelive include, Andy says, instances where Signagelive team members have been “helping (..) to configure (..) players to make sure they’re fully tested in the office before they actually roll out into the field.”
“It’s been a challenge over the years to find the right player”
Andy Barron, CEO of Cartel Media
5/ Unmatched range of compatible leading-edge hardware
With Signagelive, resellers can find exactly the right players they need for a vast array of customer projects. Our unmatched range of compatible hardware includes all the most trusted, globally available and popular brands for powerful media players and System-on-Chip displays.
It is this wide range that has, according to Andy, helped Cartel Media to support more customers. Up until now, he argues, “It’s been a challenge over the years to find the right player (..) trying to find that affordable product, which will do everything we want it to do.”
“We’re partnering with (…) Hivestack from a programmatic point of view”
Andy Barron, CEO of Cartel Media
6/ Programmatic advertising
The integration of programmatic advertising platforms, such as HiveStack, Snapp and VistarMedia with Signagelive makes it quick and easy for any organisation to sell advertising space, bringing relevant and interested media buyers direct to them, while also automating reporting and billing.
With Signagelive, programmatic ads can be scheduled to appear either alongside other non-programmatic content, or as full-screen placements in a playlist.
This integrated programmatic advertising functionality works perfectly for what Andy refers to as Cartel Media’s “split screen content business model”, in which networks deliver third-party advertising alongside the customers’ own content.
To maximise relevant advertising opportunities, Andy confirms that Cartel Media has recently opted to use Hivestack, and that its integration with Signagelive has been “great”, offering a no-fuss, easy-to-manage, all-in-one AI-driven solution.
This integration, he suggests, makes it simpler for Cartel Media to adopt programmatic advertising, which will perhaps be, he predicts “one of the most important developments of the next ten years.”
“It’s been talked about since, back in the day of (..) the Tom Cruise Minority Report kind of screen”
Andy Barron, CEO of Cartel Media
7/ AI-driven customer analytics
The integration of vision AI solutions, such as Quividi and Meld CX Viana with Signagelive helps media buyers optimise the success of their advertising with anonymous audience as well as campaign intelligence.
With the support of Quividi-enabled cameras and Signagelive, Andy explains that Cartel Media can give “advertisers the confidence (..) that they’ve placed their media in front of the right audience.”
Anonymous audience analytics, such as “gender breakdown” and “how long people are there” at the gym helps to “justify immediate placement”, allowing Cartel Media to scale data-driven digital signage solutions at speed.
“We’ve actually grown during COVID.”
Andy Barron, CEO of Cartel Media
8/ Built for any industry application
To give our resellers more scope for growth, the Signagelive platform is designed to add value to any industry application, whether that’s in retail and hospitality, or the health, transport and corporate sectors.
The versatility of the Signagelive platform has helped support Cartel Media as it has diversified. According to Andy, the pandemic forced the company to “grow in other areas” – all still in the leisure industry, but in places, such as “indoor sports centres”.
This evolution has, in fact, helped the company to expand:”We’ve actually grown during COVID, which has been great, especially for a company which has got a big chunk of their network, which has been closed”.
“Content can easily just display, even if it’s just for a day”
Andy Barron, CEO of Cartel Media
9/ Online news and resources
In addition to the support of our team of digital signage experts, we also offer plenty of online materials and resources to keep resellers up to date on the constantly evolving features and functionality of our platform. We regularly share videos and articles on our site, as well as through our bi-weekly mailer, the Digital Signage Guide.
It’s this regular communication that, Barron says, helps Cartel Media to stay competitive, and keep “an eye on the industry”, the “opportunities” and what other people are doing” that might inspire further ideas and innovation.
