CHMN’s medical waiting room gains national footprint

October 25, 2010 by Dave Haynes

We’re seeing media sales by DOOH networks get rolled up in a couple of ways.

One is by signing on with aggregation services like Adcentricity or SeeSaw (or others, there are a few now) or via services such as rVue.

The other is through affiliate networks – essentially similar networks in the same vertical who agree to have national ad sales done by a central body, instead of each of them making calls.

The latter is what’s happening with medical networks in Canada, where 90 per cent of the DOOH networks working in that vertical are part of an affiliate network.

From a release:

The Canadian Health Media Network (CHMN) has grown its affiliate network to nine with the addition of QuickCast Media and The Community Network, giving media planners and brands expanded advertising reach into high traffic medical waiting rooms across the country.

The expanded affiliate network represents roughly 90 per cent of the medical waiting rooms in Canada that currently have Digital Out Of Home media networks running in them. Typical CHMN venues include multi-practice medical centres, primary care facilities, family health centres, group health centres and hospitals, as well as medical laboratory, x-ray and ultrasound clinics.

Weekly reach is about 718,000 viewers.

CHMN affiliate now consists of PHSN, Cruise Media Group, Medik-TV, Mommentum Health Media, Creative Display Technologies, Optometry News Network, Canal Santé, QuickCast Media and The Community Network.

CHMN’s broad reach allows advertisers with health and wellness messages to target consumers either nationally or provincially, with just one order and invoice, and one monthly proof of performance report. CHMN CEO Ed Voltan said a fundamental aspect of the national network is a commitment to rigid compliance standards for audience measurement and reporting. CHMN only accepts new affiliates if those network operators can demonstrate ad spot compliance — proof that spots actually ran as scheduled, and that viewers had an opportunity to see the ads.

Media opportunities in the aggregated network are sold exclusively by ZOOM Media in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia and by Distinctive Sales in the Prairie Provinces.

“We’ve put together a very seasoned media group to manage and sell this. We’ve all been part of the fabric of the media industry for many years, and we understand how important it is to have a uniform, credible proposition,” explained Voltan. “When it comes to DOOH, we’re steadily working to raise the credibility of the sector by supporting the common metrics initiative that has been established by CODACAN.”

CODACAN is the Canadian Out of home Digital Association/L’Association canadienne l’affichage numerique, a non-profit trade association representing the digital signage and DOOH industry in Canada.

Affiliate networks retain their own local sales forces, but they focus entirely on developing community-centric advertising accounts that are not managed by the national/regional network sales teams.

First announced in Fall, 2008 CHMN also has an affiliation with the American Health Media Network, opening the possibility for ad buys that cross national boundaries.

About the Canadian Health Media Network

CHMN is a marketing affiliation of DOOH operators serving high traffic medical waiting rooms across Canada with a targeted, contextual blend of health and wellness messages, clinic information, and relevant advertising. For more information, please visit: www.chmn.ca