On screenDigital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising puts video or static ads on screens in commercial spaces, such as a dining room, a service lounge or a gym front desk. A first campaign goes more smoothly when you make the decisions in the right order, because each one narrows the next. Your outcome shapes your audience, your audience shapes where you run, and where you run shapes the creative and the timing.
This checklist takes those decisions one at a time, then gives you a table to fill in and a short list of what to bring when you ask CETV Now for a quote. It is written for a marketer or business owner planning a first in-venue video campaign. If you want the basics of the medium first, read how DOOH advertising works or the plain-English guide to DOOH.
One piece of context helps with every step below. CETV Now is a self-install, plug-in network: a small media-player device plugs into a screen a venue already owns and runs licensed programming with video ads over live TV. Your ad appears inside a room where people are already sitting, so you are planning for a room, not for a feed.
Start with one outcome
Pick one thing you want people to do or remember, and write it as a single sentence. Every later choice gets easier once you have it, and the quote conversation goes faster. Common outcomes look like this:
- Awareness: people near you recognize your name the next time they need what you sell.
- Visits: more people come to a specific location, such as a new gym or a second restaurant.
- Response to an offer: people ask for a particular promotion at the counter or by phone.
- Launch: a new service or menu item becomes known in a neighborhood.
Choose one, not four. A screen in a room carries one message at a time, so an outcome with three parts turns into creative with three competing messages. If you really have two outcomes, plan them as two campaigns, each with its own creative and its own way of judging results.
Who do you want to reach, and where do they wait?
In-venue advertising reaches people who are already somewhere for another reason. CETV Now describes the approach as reaching people while they wait, watch and decide, in venues customers already visit. So describe your customer by the situation they are in, not only by age or income.
Ask where your customer has time to spare. Someone waiting on a vehicle in a service lounge is in a different frame of mind from someone at a gym front desk or a table in a restaurant. Dwell time, which is how long people stay in a space, matters because a longer stay gives an ad more chances to be seen. CETV Now puts average dwell time across its network at 15+ minutes. That is a network average, and it will differ by venue and category.
Take a hypothetical home-services company. Its customers are homeowners who also eat out, work out and get routine care close to home. The useful question is not 'who are my customers?' but 'which places do they sit in for a while, and what decision are they close to making there?' The answer gives you a shortlist of places to consider in the venue step.
Targeting can also be layered with audience type and time of day, which is called daypart. Decide now whether the hour matters to your message. A breakfast special has little reason to run in the evening. For more examples of matching customers to venues, see DOOH for local businesses.
Which geography should the campaign cover?
Match the map to where your customers actually live, work and travel. CETV Now targeting works at several levels: neighborhood, city, metro, zip code, sector or vertical, and individual venue. You can be as narrow as a single venue or as wide as a metro. Local DOOH advertising explains how that targeting works in practice.
Before you draw the map, check whether your area is live. CETV Now is live in five markets: Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville and Salt Lake City. Miami is coming soon and is not live yet. For any other city or region, availability is unconfirmed, so send an inquiry and ask rather than assuming.
- One location: start with your neighborhood and the nearest zip codes, where most of your customers already come from.
- Several locations or a franchise: franchise brands can let each location target its own nearby venues while following national brand standards. See DOOH for franchise brands.
- More than one market: pick a first market and scale from there. Ad insertion has no minimums and no long-term commitment, so you can start with the area you know best and widen the plan at your own pace.
Which venue categories fit?
CETV Now runs in high-dwell commercial venue categories. Pick the ones where your customer is present and where your message makes sense in the room. These are the categories, with a prompt for each:
- Auto dealerships: customers waiting on service or weighing a purchase. The guide to advertising for auto dealerships goes deeper.
- Restaurants and bars: people waiting for a table or sitting through a meal. See DOOH for restaurants.
- Medical and dental offices: patients in a waiting room. See DOOH for healthcare.
- Fitness and wellness facilities: members at the front desk or in a lobby. See DOOH for fitness and gyms.
- Retail: shoppers who are already in the store. See DOOH for retail.
- Professional services such as offices and salons: clients waiting for an appointment. See DOOH for professional services.
To narrow the list, ask three questions. Is my customer actually in this kind of room? Does the setting suit my brand? Does my message fit the moment? A weekend event promotion fits a restaurant dining room more naturally than a medical waiting room, even if both reach local adults.
Placements run in curated venue categories to keep brands in appropriate contexts, and creative is submitted for review before it runs. If you advertise in a regulated field, such as healthcare, financial services, alcohol or legal services, check your own compliance rules before you plan the message. This page is not legal or compliance advice.
How should you plan creative for a screen in a room?
People see a venue screen from a few feet away or from across the room, usually while they are doing something else. Plan for glances rather than close reading. A few habits help with almost any format:
- One message. Match it to the single outcome you chose at the start.
- Large, short text. If a person cannot read it from across the room in a glance, cut words or enlarge type.
- Strong contrast. Busy backgrounds and thin type are hard to read on a screen in a bright room.
- Your name early, and again at the end. Someone may only catch the first or last moment.
- One next step in a few words. A phone number, a short web address or a line such as 'ask at the front desk' is enough.
CETV Now supports full-screen video, static creative, multi-spot branded campaigns and local offers. Creative can be a 30-second video, static designs, or animated motion graphics shown as overlays on live TV. Full-screen video runs as an unskippable takeover of the venue's live TV, so the spot has to make sense on its own from the first second. See full-screen video, static creative, local offers and branded campaigns, or compare them all on the ad formats page.
How do you set timing and judge delivery?
Set the flight and the dayparts
A flight is the stretch of time your campaign runs. Tie it to a real date on your calendar: a grand opening, a seasonal menu, an enrollment period or a sale. Work backward from the start date and leave room for creative review, since creative is reviewed before it runs and the length of review is not stated here.
Advertisers set their own spend and schedule, and there are no minimums or long-term commitments for ad insertion. That makes it reasonable to plan a modest first flight, look at what happened, and then scale at your own pace. If time of day matters, name the dayparts you care about, such as lunch hours for a restaurant or early mornings for a gym.
Decide how you will judge delivery
Delivery means your ad ran where and when you bought it. CETV Now tracks and reports delivery against its network data, with venue-level impression reporting, real-time statistics and 24/7 campaign monitoring. An impression is generally a count of an ad being shown. How CETV Now counts and verifies them, and which report formats and cadence you get, is not confirmed on this page, so ask to see a sample.
Delivery reporting is built to show what ran. Whether people then called, booked or bought is something you should plan to measure on your side, and you can ask CETV Now what else is available. Before the flight starts, set up at least one of these:
- A phone number or web address used only in this ad.
- A promotion your staff can recognize at the counter or at booking.
- A simple 'how did you hear about us?' question for new customers.
- Your normal call, booking or sales numbers from the weeks before the start, so you have something to compare against.
If you plan for clients, delivery reporting is available for client updates, and agencies can plan across markets and venue categories through a single network partner. DOOH for agencies covers how that fits into a media mix.
What should you bring to a quote conversation?
Pricing is quote-based and depends on market, venue category and schedule. There is no published rate card, so a quote is the only way to get a number. The more precisely you can answer the decisions above, the more specific the conversation can be. Use this table as a one-page worksheet.
| Decision | Question to ask | What to bring to the quote conversation |
|---|---|---|
| Outcome | What one thing should a person do or remember after seeing the ad? | One sentence stating the outcome, and the number you will use to judge it. |
| Audience and moment | Who are they, where do they wait, and what are they about to decide? | A short description of your customer and the places and hours they are likely to be waiting. |
| Geography | Which neighborhoods, zip codes, cities or metros? Is the area a live market? | A prioritized list of areas, plus the addresses of your locations if you have them. |
| Venue category | Which categories fit my customer and my message? | A shortlist of categories, any you want to avoid, and the reason for each. |
| Creative | Which format fits the message, and what does review involve? | A concept, a draft or an existing video or static design, and any compliance requirements. |
| Timing | When should the flight start and end, and do dayparts matter? | A start date tied to a real event, and the hours that matter most. |
| Delivery and measurement | What will delivery reporting show, and what will I track myself? | Your own tracking method, your recent baseline numbers, and who will review reports. |
| Spend | What can I set, given that the quote depends on market, venue category and schedule? | The amount you are comfortable spending. |
To start a campaign, you share your markets, venue categories, creative and budget. CETV Now maps the plan to real-world audiences, provides a quote, and gets the campaign live on the network. The how it works page shows the process, and the advertisers page gives an overview of what is available.
- 01
Fill in the worksheet
Complete every row of the table above, even if some answers are 'not sure yet'. Gaps are useful to know about.
- 02
Put your outcome at the top
Write the one-sentence outcome and how you will measure it, so the rest of the plan can be checked against it.
- 03
Check your area
Confirm whether your markets are among the five live ones or whether you need to ask about availability.
- 04
Gather creative or a concept
Bring a draft, an existing asset or a rough idea. If you are in a regulated field, bring your compliance notes.
- 05
Send the inquiry
Use the contact page, call (833) 807-1500, or email info@cetvnow.com, and ask for a quote based on your worksheet.
Figures reflect CETV Now network data and are provided for informational purposes. Individual campaign results vary; no specific outcome is guaranteed.