Saturday, March 31, 2007

Marketers target Wal-Mart's in-store TV network

Wal-Mart's initiative for it's in-store TV network is being noticed for its huge target audience. Marketers are increasingly realising the value and reach of retail-based TV networks to target new and hard-to-reach consumers. Wal-Mart has 125,000 screens in 3,100 of its stores, giving marketers an audience of 127 million shoppers each week. Wal-Mart's in-store TV network system offers much more than store discounts, it has the news, weather, entertainment programs mixed in with paid advertisements and has become the country's largest and most sophisticated in-store TV networks.
The network, operated by Premiere Retail Networks, is about to get even more sophisticated with a systemwide upgrade from satellite broadcast TV to an Internet-based system. The change will give advertisers, who now can deliver messages to different store departments, the ability to target individual screens, says Keith Daly, PRN head of programming strategy and broadcast production.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm surprised more stores haven't started doing this yet. I predict it will pick up fast, though, and it'll be the norm to see TVs in stores.

Shalini said...

Yes, we are sure to see more of this in the future. The target audience in stores has already decided to spend money, so half the battle is won!

atomicbrownboy said...

This particular business model has yet to prove viable. Many of these ad revenue based "narrowcasting" a.k.a in-store retail networks, leverage or extort the brands that they sell in-store to buy time on the networks rather than the brand voluntarily choosing this as another consumer communication point. The technology may great, but the content strategy needs an overhaul

Shalini said...

Thanks for the input. It'll definitely be interesting to see how retailers adapt and consumers react to this technology.