DPAA Adds Russian And Romanian Members

August 16, 2012 by Dave Haynes

The Digital Place-based Advertising Association says it has added Russia and Romania to its international membership, joining earlier relationships announced with associations in Canada, Brazil and Australia.

The Romanian Indoor Advertising Association (RIAA) was founded just last tear and is driven by Ovidiu Brazdau, a managing partner of Info-Sanatate Network, a waiting room network in 554 hospitals and private clinics in 122 cities in that country.

The RIAA, says a release, wants to  get the DPAA’s audience metrics guidelines established in Romania, and has already had meetings with the Romanian Auditing Bureau for Media Networks, Romanian Association for Audience Measurement, and Nielsen Romania.

“Info-Sanatate is the first media company in Romania that measures the effectiveness of the indoor advertising campaigns, in terms of audience, efficiency indicators and ROI evaluation,” says Brazdau. “In partnership with Nielsen, our goal is to upgrade the business environment in Romania and convince all media agencies and OOH networks that a standardized evaluation of campaigns is necessary.”

The Russian effort – still in its formative stages – is driven by Dmitry Kurkovich, the CEO of AIZ Media, which runs a video wall network shopping malls.  “The modern Russian OOH market needs to come out of the shadows,” says Kurkovich. “Today it looks like Frankenstein’s monster. It is made up of weird segments, with some parts overgrown, while others are obsolete, a monster that interferes with its own development. Joining DPAA gives us a chance to standardize the market, make a normal human being out of the monster and consequently achieve the volume of $600 million in digital Indoor sales by 2016.”

Frankenstein? Ok, I was staying the hell away from gothic horror references with the whole Romania thing, but Jeez.

On a related note, why wouldn’t these associations hook up with OVAB Europe?

The DPAA also re-announced that Canada is an international member. The Canadian Out-of-Home Digital Association (CODACAN) announced back in May that it was hooking up with the DPAA.

Charles Vachon, chairman of CODACAN: “By aligning with the DPAA, the Canadian industry has taken a step forward in solidifying the power of digital out-of-home and digital place-based. CODACAN’s mission is to provide a precise and informative way to enhance advertisers’ goals. The DPAA has been promoting a number of insightful and viable messages to the advertising community for years and with this new partnership CODACAN will be able to share these with the Canadian advertising community.”

“Our increase in international membership reflects the fact that digital place-based media is growing in influence throughout the world,” says Susan Danaher, president & CEO of the DPAA. “We look forward to working closely with our international counterparts to translate the growing consumer consumption of digital place-based into greater ad spending on our medium.”