Thursday, December 22, 2011
Effective Jan. 1, 2012, NBC will deliver news and information along with clips from its regular entertainment programming on VeriFone's Paymedia Solutions payment-enabled media terminals to more than 12,000 taxis, thousands of gas stations and other digital out-of-home platforms. Advertisers will be able to engage interactively with consumers via the terminals to deliver e-commerce offers, coupons and micro-sites.
The launch will begin in nine cities – New York, Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Washington and Miami – and is predicted to rapidly expand to other markets. New Yorkers will comprise the first group introduced to the partnership as there are more than 6,800 New York taxis already outfitted with the NFC-enabled Paymedia terminals.
Riders in New York will immediately have access to regularly refreshed local news and weather updates from the local NBC affiliate, as well as content from NBC Sports Group, NBC News, NBC prime time and late night programming, several cable networks and Universal Pictures. Breaking news and headlines will stream across the interactive TV screen and allow customers to access more information about events from the interactive screen.
The Paymedia terminals will also allow riders to purchase products advertised on screen simply by swiping credit cards or tapping NFC-enabled phones on the terminals. Advertisers will be able to build mobile and social features into campaigns, track user engagement and allow users access to coupons. Advertisers can also target the time of day their ads will run and the locales in which they want to advertise.
VeriFone Vice Chairman Bud Waller said when announcing the partnership, "NBCUniversal is the perfect strategic fit for us as we extend our payment-enabled media platform beyond TaxiTV into other verticals, including our existing client base of over 60,000 gas stations and more than 1 million retail installations."
Greg Scholl, President of Local Integrated Media for NBC Owned Television Stations, added, "We are excited about future growth prospects as VeriFone continues to innovate its products and push into new digital out-of-home sectors."
Jason Gross, VeriFone Media Director of Strategy and Marketing, told The Green Sheet VeriFone ended its previous agreement with American Broadcasting Companies Inc. to go into business with NBC Universal. "The rollout of payment-enabled media is just the tip of the iceberg," he said. "We are really in the early stages."
Gross noted consumers will be able to download a content app that will let viewers continue to watch the stream of programming and advertising after they are engaged through the VeriFone Paymedia platform.
"The divisions of NBCUniversal are looking for as much value as possible," he said. "The loop of content and advertising is timed to the length of the engagement. The 10 to 20 minutes you spend in a taxi is an engageable experience. We know the average trip length because we run the system that calculates the fares. On the other hand, we can do short consumable bites of content. For instance, at a gas station you may see one small sketch from Jimmy Fallon or a Jay Leno monologue."
Gross added that the content will be approximately 50 percent paid advertising, "maybe slightly higher."
Gross believes Paymedia value-added services will help VeriFone, its customers and partners add new revenue. In May 2011, VeriFone introduced Paymedia Solutions as a subscription-based service providing merchants with payment-enabled media at the POS. The service includes integration of services such as couponing, loyalty, location-based social media and value-added services.
VeriFone said Paymedia is "an expansive portfolio of systems, infrastructure and services with which ISOs, acquirers and other resellers can equip merchants with a true 'intelligent checkout' capability." Paymedia also includes end-to-end encryption and tokenization to facilitate Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliance. 
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