More info on the i-vu digital signage network investment

Ask and ye shall receive, I always say, and Adrian Cotterill over at the Daily DOOH was kind enough to forward the press release that I was looking for regarding the i-vu investment deal mentioned yesterday. For extra credit, check out the Wikipedia page for General Mediterranean Holdings, the organization making the investment. I'm starting to feel that things may not be entirely what they seem, and I wouldn't be surprised if the $82M was contingent upon the firm winning a number of contracts that require massive amounts of money to front the hardware costs.


NEWS RELEASE CONTACT: Ash Communications
October 2007 TEL: +44 (0) 20 7734 5666
i-vu SECURES £40 MILLION NEW INVESTMENTTO BECOME WORLD'S LARGEST DIGITAL NETWORK

In one of the largest investments in outdoor digital seen in the UK, leading
interactive digital screen media network owner, i-vu, has secured £40
million (US$80 million) of new funding, which will make it the largest
digital network in the world - with well over 300 per cent growth in the UK
and USA in one year - and enabling it to expand into Europe.

As a result of the investment, i-vu is also planning to create its own
content for the network, develop its interactive offering to advertisers,
increase partnerships with a range of content providers and develop the
network as the leading interactive customer service and management tool for
the salon industry.

By the end of the year, i-vu will have around 2,200 screens in the UK in the
middle to upper range of hairdressing salons - which cater for young
professionals and highly affluent clients - giving advertisers a footfall of
1.147 million per month. A target of 2,500 screens is planned for Summer
2008 in the UK and 7,000 screens in the US by 31 December 2007.

As part of the expansion, i-vu is committed to changing its programming
daily and has entered into a new content partnership with EMI and cemented
existing relationships with channels such as E!, BBC Worldwide, CBS and ABC.
It now enjoys 120 different content streams. i-vu has also strengthened its
collaboration with L'Oreal in the US and UK.

In addition, i-vu has secured a raft of new salon chains in the past few
months including some of the largest in the UK such as Jo Hansford,
Francesco group, Lookfantastic and in the USA such as
Toni & Guy (USA) and the Regis Corporation.

The funding is provided via General Mediterranean Holdings (GMH Group),
which has consolidated assets in excess of US$4 billion and owns several
media businesses worldwide, including Korad, part of Ogilvy and Mather, and
Middle East Online. .../

Mike Anstey, ceo, i-vu, says: "i-vu has come of age. It has its own voice
and character, which reflects the dynamic lifestyle of its viewers, and
advertisers now understand the appeal of its interactive, up-to-the minute
programming. GMH Group recognises the potential of digital media and
particularly i-vu's unchallenged position in the market and will provide the
platform for us to build on all that we have achieved to date."

Over the past five years i-vu has established partnerships with some of the
leading names in the salon world, including: Clipso, Cobella, Headmasters,
Nicky Clarke, Richard Ward, Rush and Trevor Sorbie. It has also attracted
advertising client such as 20th Century Fox, BMW, Gillette, GlaxosmithKline,
L'Oreal, Masterfoods, Nokia, Toyota, Warner Bros and Wella. The funding it
has now attracted will enable it to significantly increase its penetration
in the UK, USA and Europe and provide advertising brands with the benefits
of size and structure.

GMH Group was founded in 1979 and today is a diverse business group with
activities in banking and finance, real estate and construction, hotels and
leisure, industrial, trading and pharmaceuticals, communications and IT and
aviation. Its 120 companies employ over 7,000 people in the Middle East,
Northern Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Caribbean, Asian sub continent
and the Pacific Rim. With consolidated assets in excess of US$4 billion,
GMH Group brands include Korad, Ogilvy & Mather; Arabic News Broadcast; Le
Royal Hotels; Hilton Hotel, Beirut; and, Unysis buildings, London.

Tags: i-vu, digital signage, retail media

i-vu bags $82M in investments, plans US, UK, EU salon expansion

While I can't find a press release or any news on i-vu's website, aka is reporting that the company just received $82m in equity money to expand their UK and US networks.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with i-vu, the company is a British-based captive audience network provider with screens in thousands of upscale hair and beauty salons on both sides of the pond. According to the article, "the investment from General Mediterranean Holdings GMH) will let i-vu increase its UK estate to 2500 screens and its U.S. network to 7000 screens by the end of 2008.

"The company says it will now undertake to update programming daily, and has added EMI to a roster of content partners which already includes the likes of ABC, BBC Worldwide and CBS, providing a total of 120 content streams. It will also move into production of its own content."

As the article also notes, even though the amount being invested is more than the total sum paid by CBS to acquire the (arguably larger) SignStorey network here in the US, the audience that i-vu has is quite different in that the average audience member spends about 90 minutes in the salon exposed to the medium. Contrast that with many grocery-based signage networks today that hope for a couple of seconds and a few fleeting glances at best, and you can see where they think their value lies.

Sadly we can't mash a whole bunch of numbers together as we did with the SignStorey article, as i-vu's (horribly annoying) website lacks a lot of detail. Based on the company's current monthly impression count of 1,794,000 viewers/month, they've received $1.90 for every impression that would be generated at the current level for the next two years ($82M/(1,794,000*24)). Of course, they plan to use the cash to expand to a total of 9,500 screens by the end of 2008 (and even more optimistically, 100,000 screens in 10,000 salons in the US by 2010, according to this press release), so those numbers are going to be skewed.

I can't for the life of me find out how many screens/salons the firm currently has installed so if we were to just assume that the 7,000 figure represents a quadrupling of their current size, then our $1.90/impression figure would come down by quite a bit, to $0.48/impression.

That's a silly way to go about looking at this investment of course, though given that i-vu's newer units are all touchscreen based, it should be pretty easy to get an accurate idea of how many "users" the system had over a given month.

I'll tell you one thing: anybody who spends $150 on a haircut -- and that's typical if you believe i-vu's data -- clearly has plenty of spending money. With the opportunity to score up to 90 minutes of face time with such an audience, it seems like a number of high-end advertisers should be taking a look at this network.

Tags: digital signage, captive audience networks, i-vu