Adspace Gets Access 360’s Mallvision, And With It, Vertical Dominance

August 7, 2012 by Dave Haynes

When you are #2 you can either try harder, or try something else.

Access 360 has gone the “something else” route, making the word official that it is getting out of the shopping mall media business and focusing on its other vertical: sports venues.

The assets and presumably the contracts for its Mallvision program have been acquired by Adspace Networks, the biggest media firm in the mall space. Adspace gets the sales representation agreement for Simon Property Group’s OnSpot Digital Network (involving 47 premier Simon malls), and 17 of those monstrous Mills Properties malls.

Access is now clearly rebranded as Access Sports Media, selling media avails in pro and college sports venues.

The deal increases Adspace’s mall count by nearly 50 percent, from 141 to 205 and more importantly increases the monthly reach to 48 million individual shoppers. Gross impressions – presumably meaning duplicated eyeballs – rises to 641 million per month.

ASdspace also adds the important DMAs of Phoenix and Miami.

Dominick Porco, chairman and CEO of Adspace Networks, is understandably happy about bagging Simon and taking Mallvision out of the competitor role. “We have long admired the quality, strength and depth of the Simon digital mall portfolio and are pleased to now be representing it. Adspace and Simon recognized the strategic benefit of combining networks to consolidate and create a singular digital offering to the advertising buying community that presents increased impressions delivered in a consistent format. The acceleration of our market penetration to 47 million upscale individuals every four weeks gives Adspace tremendous media scale. We dwarf every cable network in reach, and can deliver this desirable audience at less than half the CPM, so Adspace can be a terrific complement to a TV plan.”

One small wrinkle that comes, I believe, with acquisition is new formats, which means a changed sales pitch and more creative production needs. The network now has three formats: nine foot “floor mounts” in portrait format that have been the Adspace staple, and now 42 to 63 inch “aerials” in landscape format and 8-by-14 foot “spectaculars” in landscape format.