Captivate sees spending shift as it celebrates 20th anniversary

SVP of advertising and Canadian GM, Barb Huggett, talks about the company’s plans for its milestone year.

Captivate is blowing out the candles on 20 years in business.

The company is celebrating the milestone year by adding inventory in a new city, installing screens in six buildings in Ottawa, which are set to go live in November. The buildings in Ottawa it will set up in include the World Exchange Plaza, Place de Ville Towers and the Jean Edmonds South and North Towers.

Overall, Captivate now has 12,000 screens in North America, with other Canadian cities including Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal and Toronto.

Starting off as more B2B targeted, advertising on the screens has shifted to include more consumer-facing companies in recent years, said Barb Huggett, SVP, advertising sales and GM, Canada at Captivate Elevator Media. The biggest change in the past year, she said, has been CPG clients jumping to #2 on the ad buying list this year, from #6 last year. Financial clients remain the top buyer of ads for 2017.

“From a CPG client perspective it’s more about path-to-purchase and they’re embracing the audience,” she said. “We are spending so much time at work that elevators are a natural place to reach the target audience.”

Huggett said advertising revenue is up year-over-year, but as Captivate is a private company she wouldn’t share specifics.

In addition to expanding to Ottawa, Huggett said the company has a more ambitious plan to grow beyond North America and become the largest elevator media company globally. On the Canadian side, the company is growing beyond elevator advertising, introducing multi-purpose lobby screens within some of the buildings it has inventory in earlier this spring. Huggett expects those to grow in 2018.