With all fronts of the movie business in turmoil due to the ongoing pandemic, Redbox, the DVD rental kiosk business that has recently ventured into the ad-supported streaming space, has teamed up with cinema ad seller Screenvision Media to bolster its advertising capabilities.
Consolidated under Redbox’s advertising sales arm, Redbox Connect, the partnership will allow the Chicago-based DVD peddler to “provide national, regional, and local advertising” to roughly 40 million customers through its entertainment network, which encompasses physical rental kiosks, a mobile app, connected TV and video-on-demand platforms.
“I think there’s a ton of synergy, connecting two powerful ecosystems,” says Jason Kwong, chief strategy and digital officer at Redbox, which started building out its advertising business approximately three years ago. As a result, it is able to bring a wealth of first-party data to the table, including customers’ movie preferences, shopping habits and more, he says.
“That CTV piece is going to be a big part of our expansion” in the coming years, Kwong adds.
Redbox’s massive U.S. retail footprint—in front of supermarkets, convenience stores and other high-traffic areas—generates hundreds of millions of monthly impressions, and the Screenvision partnership aims to utilize the company’s full suite of marketing touchpoints to gets brands’ messages across digital out-of-home, mobile, web and CTV.
“We actually approached Redbox about a year ago,” says Screenvision CEO John Partilla, who adds that the partnership marks the movie ad seller’s first material foray into CTV. “We thought it provided a tremendous opportunity for us … If you want to reach the moviegoing audience, you’re no longer constrained by the pandemic.”
A large chunk of Screenvision’s target demographic is comprised of young cord-cutters (and increasingly, cord-nevers), meaning the new partnership will allow its ad sales team to connect marketers with “highly coveted, hard-to-reach” audiences who’ve been deprived of theaters lately, Partilla says.