RMG takes over national sales for two health and wellness networks in US

August 24, 2010 by Dave Haynes

Reach Media Group, which may quite possibly have the deepest pockets and biggest DOOH ambitions in the sector right now, just made a couple of announcements this morning about effectively becoming a sales rep house, along with owner/operator of its own DOOH nets.

RMG has done a deal to sell the ad avails for Everwell, which has TV screens in a pile of medical clinic waiting rooms. RMG will roll these venues and eyeballs into what it is now calling its Point-of-Care Network. The press release says “With Everwell on board, the RMG Point-of-Care Network’s footprint expands to 1,700 screens and 6 million monthly viewers. RMG will exclusively represent Everwell for national advertising sales. Everwell’s impressive library of custom content for doctors’ office waiting rooms will air on its Everwell TV Network.”

As you can see (above) by the size of the monitors Everwell puts in (I didn’t even know there were 200 inch LCDs), Everwell needs a LOT of national ad sales to pay for those big fellas.

Then we have, also today, news that RMG has done a similar deal with the Pharmacy Health Network, adding 650 screens and 4.5 million monthly viewers in pharmacy locations across the U.S. The pharma network is owned by health care giant Cardinal Health. As with Everwell, RMG will do national advertising sales for Pharmacy Health Network.

Another company, Respario, will continue to manage operations on the Cardinal network.

The pharmacy numbers roll into the larger Everwell number of 1,700 screens.

There must be some contorted logic for issuing two separate press releases concurrently about essentially the same thing, and my guess is it has to do with ramming in lots of quotes and enduring no egos are bruised. All it does, though, is irritate the people who have to sort it all out … like me. BAD, bad press releases.

Anyway, the news itself is kinda sorta interesting but hardly something that demanded an embargo. There has long been chatter that RMG, which has Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers to write checks, has been looking to buy PRN. Maybe that’s still the case, but this looks like RMG is now competing with that company as a national ad sales force representing networks other than its own.

It’s a logical next step that streamlines sales ops and trims costs, as well as takes some competitive noise out of the market and better controls pricing. There will no doubt be more of this kind of thing.