Tony Jacobson, CEO of AllOver Media, sat down with us to discuss his alternative media company.
AllOver Media is a successful alternative out-of-home media company that serves nationwide. Tell us a little bit about the history of the company.
I started AllOver Media in 2002. The original plan was to provide indoor billboard advertising in restrooms and take it outdoor as pump toppers at gas stations or convenience stores (C-Stores) across the country. C-stores have received tremendous…
AllOver Media is a successful alternative out-of-home media company that serves nationwide. Tell us a little bit about the history of the company.
I started AllOver Media in 2002. The original plan was to provide indoor billboard advertising in restrooms and take it outdoor as pump toppers at gas stations or convenience stores (C-Stores) across the country. C-stores have received tremendous press over the years, making them more and more exciting to go into. We took the C-Store platform and added nozzle ads, concrete and floor graphics, icebox wraps, and window clings and more giving clients this domination effect. From that point on, AllOver Media had to develop a solid nationwide network of installers. When we claim to be a national OOH company, it’s true in every sense of the word. A customer is able to take our inventory into any MSA. It’s very unique in this industry. Over the years we’ve built our sales team and our staff, we do in-house printing and we have over 1,000 contractors that we work with across the country. We do literally tens of thousands of installs every year nationwide.
With such a wide variety of options nationwide, there’s probably a lot of working pieces involved in a campaign. How do you ensure satisfactory execution?
We definitely had to create a proof of performance standard that, I believe, is at a higher standard than might be expected from a traditional OOH company or even just a traditional media company. We developed custom apps for all of our installers. When they do installs they upload photos on our product proprietary phone app. Each uploaded photo has a latitude/longitude timestamp so we can see where and when the photos were uploaded. We incorporated GPS units to our truck sites. We also use other elements from our phone apps and truck GPS to track our door hanging section. GPS units are attached to our installers and the installers are taking photos along the roads. We’re actually leading the industry of door hanging by creating a proof of performance. A customer can literally watch their installation be performed. We cover a lot of ground. We aren’t digital but we can turn out very quickly and show results.
AllOver Media is a unique name for an OOH media company. Is there any significance behind it?
My original company was AJ Indoor. Back then we had a mindset that when you went to find an advertising company in the Yellow Pages, a company with an A name was before B and C. Literally. Our objective was to always tell a good enough story that our customers never went to B or C. When we sold that company and I started AllOver Media, I was more concerned with the new company name starting with the letter A because I was still in that old phone book theory! When we were presented with the name AllOver, I was just blown away. I knew that name so well. We would show clients our 300 locations to choose from and they would say “Boy you guys are all over!” So oddly enough, our company has been called AllOver since 1987. I was very excited to take that name and brand it as we did because it represents everything we are trying to do on a local, regional and a national level. We can take that client message and successfully create an all over message.
Who is AllOver Media now, and how do you see it moving in the future?
AllOver Media is a workhorse company. We allow agencies and customers to go where they need to and just dominate. But what goes beyond our execution is pretty extraordinary. Our behind-the-scenes work is much bigger than what is presented when you just consider a single pump-topper ad. It molds extremely well with other products out there, and we can be an absolute answer to areas that have been typically hard to reach. AllOver Media will continue to grow their existing products and continually grow in larger format product acquisitions. We’re a strong place-based media company. Our offerings have been around for 20+ years, and it’s not some new fad that’s going away.
Check out AllOver Media’s profile to learn more.
