NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences

A company out of San Francisco is looking to capitalize on your time in line by launching NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences solutions that allow you to interact with the ads you’re probably already being exposed to. RMG Networks Inc. have 200,000 televisions that target air travelers, shoppers on check-out lines and runners in gyms and they are now looking to add NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences to the mix.

How did NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences evolve?

We are not quite to Minority Report levels of marketing where your iris is being scanned and there is a database of information specific to your purchases and likely responses to certain ads, just yet. However, if you have walked into a Walmart or other large store in the last 6 months you will have been greeted with LCD’s on end caps showing video / TV ads for the product you are looking at. Sneaky, huh? Reinforcing brand and product messages with a reach out and grab approach works, and you can expect to see a lot more of it over the next couple of years. This type of captive audience marketing is generally not interactive other than you watch, you pick up the product, you purchase. It doesn’t build a relationship between you and the brand in question. But that is about to change. It is just a simple fact in marketing that when you are out and about you are a potential target for ads, but when you are in line you become part of a captive audience.

What is NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences

NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences, however, takes advantage of the time when you are in line waiting. It sneaks up on you when you have nothing else to do but enjoy a little light entertainment to an otherwise laborious couple of minutes, and allows you to do something with the ad. Whether you are invited to get a coupon, join a newsletter or download an app of interest, to you the marketing is presented in a medium you are not used to and so you will be far more likely to interact with the ad. All you need to do is simply whip out your phone and tap the ad. It is effortless, it is interactive and it is entertaining.

Expanding use cases for NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences

So as we stated above you can expect to be exposed to NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences ads while you are in the grocery store, in line at an airport or at the gym, but where else can this approach to marketing be used? Expect to see NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences cropping up in restaurants as pre-meal entertainment, in public bathrooms, in bars, clubs, cinemas, in malls, bundled with coupons and shopper information information, at theme parks and maybe even at drive-thrus. Anywhere you are forced to wait or a place you go that has no entertainment, anywhere you are fixed in one spot is a potential target for NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences. Marketers don’t simply want you to buy a product anymore – today’s best marketers want to establish a relationship between you and the brand, product or company in question. With permission based tactics you may decide to like a brand on Facebook, sign up to have coupons delivered to an app you can download in Target or follow product news on Twitter via an NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences campaign. Getting you to buy a product is great, creating a relationship where you become aligned with a brand and become a life time customer is better. Building a campaign where you feel to do all of the above and share that information with family and friends is best, especially when that facility is built into an app you just downloaded and is built so it is effortless for you to share, let’s say for example, a discount with your nearest and dearest friends.

Getting back to RMG and its NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences

RMG Networks is getting ready for an IPO, and if you are interested in that story, check out Bloomberg’s article here. We on the other hand, in this post, are interested in the business model and marketing opportunities that companies like RMG Networks and its competitors are building using NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences.

The Chief Executive Officer of RMG Networks, Garry McGuire said, “Most of our advertising campaigns in the next three years will be NFC enabled.”  He plans to expand this feature to offer tags near 75,000 monitors by the end of the year, from about 1,200 now. “It makes every ad campaign twice the size. It could double our revenues three years out.” McGuire added, “We are definitely getting broadcast TV budgets and we’re seeing a lot of migration from newspapers.” McGuire told Olga Kharif, “Our business is growing astronomically.”

Even investors in the firm are singing the praises of NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences. “It’s a huge growth area,” said Elisa Steele, a board member at RMG and Chief Marketing Officer at Yahoo! Inc. “We’ve only begun to see the innovation here.” And why wouldn’t they as businesses pay RMG $1 every time an app is downloaded from one of its displays. If you want to see NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences in action check out the video from RMG and its partner Blue Bite, Llc below.

Scott Lyon, Vice President of Marketing at a RMG competitor, Captivate Network said,“We are all seeing traditional video advertising dollars coming our way.”

Marketing researchers are also excited by the prospects of  NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences. “It’s one of the fastest-growing media in the world,” said Patrick Quinn, CEO of PQ Media, an advertising research firm who also said that some ad buyers eschew traditional broadcasts with avoidable commercials. Sales in this niche market aimed at captive audiences are expected to surge 17 percent to $6.47 billion this year, according to PQ Media.

Summary of NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences

Engaging with your audience at a mutually convenient time is great, especially if you can provide an interactive experience that starts to build a relationship. Savvy marketers will build viral expansion loops that involve social networks into their ads and will have apps to download to further the relationship. NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences works, and if you have the budget you should probably give it a go to see if the ROI and metrics pan out for your company. NFC advertising and marketing for captive audiences is just one form of NFC advertising that near field communications allow, but we like what we see.