Ripple TV is a local digital display out of home network that is starting to aggressively expand. Currently the site claims that it reaches 10 million consumers with limited distribution in California, Arizona and Nevada. (Most of that is currently at Southern California locations.)
The company puts screens, a hard drive and some other hardware in local businesses (think chain bookstores, coffee chains, etc.) and runs content and ads, near the register for example. It’s a very interesting business made more interesting by today’s announcement of a self-service ad product: Ad Center. Think AdWords meets SpotRunner.
Ali Diab, who used to be at Yahoo! and work in their Local group, is co-founder (with Alex Nocifera).
Ads run on a loop and you can control the duration of your ad buy (one week, two weeks, etc.). There’s also super-local targeting available here. For example, Diab told me of one film industry-related vendor in Southern California who was targeting ads in a local coffee house literally across the street from its place of business. The owner of the business knew this is where the crews took breaks and was able to successfully target them using the Ripple network.
There’s both a national ad play and a local play (obviously). For example: realtors or auto dealers and their local inventory. In general, Ripple offers more geotargeted ad inventory (display/awareness) for the local SEM firms seeking additional distribution for their SMB clients.
There’s a good deal more here too. But that’s it for the moment.
Screenwerk 
October 8, 2007 at 5:25 pm
[…] happen. Captivate Network is a company I spoke to a couple of months ago, after PR reps saw my posting about Ripple TV (and comments to reporters). I spoke to CEO Mike DiFranza and we had a fascinating conversation […]
March 25, 2008 at 12:30 pm
[…] very interesting company in the local space that I’ll write more about soon. Here’s my previous post on […]
July 11, 2008 at 4:13 pm
[…] has 1,500 locations in multiple states and is now “coast to coast.” Ripple has a very compelling offering and ultimate success is about building out as many locations as possible. After that it’s a […]
July 7, 2009 at 3:10 pm
[…] This combination will give the new company much more leverage and clout with advertisers, as well as reach with consumers. Existing local sales channels haven’t really tapped into Digital OOH as a distribution medium to date. RippleTV offered (I don’t know if it still does) a unique self-service ad capability. […]