STRATEGIC PARTNERS
By forming a strategic alliance, ATM Advertising Inc. and Inter Active Touch Marketing can offer advertisers more machines in the country's most sought-after market areas.by Ann All, editor
June 14, 2000
In their discussions with advertising agencies, ATM advertising companies probably hear one question more than any other: "What have you got in the top 10 DMAs?" (DMA is adspeak for designated market area or demographic market area). "When you're talking to an ad agency, that's generally the first thing they ask," said Mike Szimanski, president of Baltimore-based ATM Advertising Inc. "It's almost a pre-qualification for talking to you." The ability to offer advertisers machines in the most popular DMAs is one reason why ATM Advertising Inc. decided to forge a strategic alliance with another ATM advertising company, Miami-based Inter Active Touch Marketing (IATM). "Now we're able to ask the advertisers, 'Where do you want to be?' Between ATM Advertising and ourselves, we're absolutely able to deliver them the networks within the top DMAs," said Antoinette Okon, IATM's vice president of sales and marketing. "We can give (advertisers) what they've been asking us for, and now they're comfortable." The companies' combined database amounts to more than 30,000 advertising-ready ATMs in all of the top 10 DMAs, as well as many of the nation's secondary markets. With that kind of critical mass, they won't have to spend as much time trying to recruit ATM owners. "We can now concentrate more of our efforts on issues related to client service, education on this new medium, sales and pricing. We continue to seek new banks and networks of ATMs to represent, but this places both of our companies ahead on several levels," Szimanski said. They are already working on their first deal, a placement for a dot.com on 500 to 600 ATMs in New York City, Miami and possibly several other market areas. Combined, the ATMs do in excess of a million transactions a month. "Those are the kinds of numbers that the national advertisers said, 'You get there and we'll talk to you, ' " Okon said. Both companies opted to make "pricing sacrifices," Szimanski said, to make the medium more attractive to advertisers. "We hope to make up for it in volume." "Now is not the time to get greedy," he added. "Once the advertising community realizes the value of the medium, there will be a demand situation which will likely result in increased prices." Szimanski and Okon both expect to see more partnerships between like minded ATM advertising companies, and perhaps others such as ATM manufacturers, financial institutions and large ISOs. "This industry faces a lot of challenges, and we need to look at whatever economies we can build in," Szimanski said. "Why should a manufacturer or a financial institution have a sales department, for instance, if we can prove to them that by having an external sales department, it can still be profitable for everyone."
