7.17.2010

Rhode Island-based GoGo Cast Inc. provides in-store advertising

By Paul Grimaldi
Journal Staff Writer

Paolo

Cranston, RI July 17, 2010 — A new Rhode Island technology company is trying to make money by getting people to spend more of their cash when they go inside stores.

GoGo Cast Inc. uses the Internet, wireless technology and its own software to let businesses tailor time-sensitive in-store digital TV advertisements to people walking into their businesses. Advertisers can track the available ad time online and tailor ads to particular times of the day, products or sales programs.

"It's an immediate call to action to buy on the spot," said David R. Paolo, GoGo Cast's chief executive officer and president.

Paolo is a Rhode Islander and technology-industry veteran who caught the Internet wave at just the right time nearly 20 years ago.

Paolo founded Log On America in 1992, shortly after graduating from Roger Williams University.

His computer bulletin board system expanded to offer Internet access to homes and businesses, signing up a number of prominent institutional clients in Rhode Island.

Log On America reached its zenith in April 1999 with an initial public offering that valued the company on paper at $238.3 million.

By late 2002, like so many other high-tech high-flyers, it was out of business.

Paolo moved on to a series of technology-industry ventures before investing in the digital TV ad business of GoGo Cast, along with Greg Argyle, another company founder.

The company evolved out of one started by Eric Decker, a veteran of computer industry giant Cisco System Inc. Decker serves as a GoGo Cast adviser.

GoGo Cast installs the HDTVs in stores, manages the advertising and content feeds, and services the TV sets.

Ads can simply be text or full-range HDTV ads. They run alongside live video feeds from highway traffic cameras, news digests and weather reports.

The stores can blacklist ad content, filtering out products or services it considers inappropriate or preventing rivals from infiltrating their stores with competing ads.

In exchange for allowing the TVs inside their stores, retailers share the money made from ads placed by other businesses and get some free ad time.

The company claims sales in stores where its TVs are installed increased at least 17 percent.

GoGo Cast is not the first company to pitch systems providing in-store ads on TV screens. Some competitors in this advertising niche focus on fast food restaurants, for instance, and retail giant Walmart runs its own network of advertising TV screens.

GoGo Cast is keeping itself to the convenience store and pharmacy niches and now provides the advertising service to 550 stores in New England and elsewhere.

It recently signed deals with Massachusetts-based convenience store chain Tedeschi Food Shops and a Rhode Island company that operates 40 Shell gas stations.

About 5 million people walk through those stores weekly, he said.

The company, located in leased space on Comstock Parkway, has about $3.5 million in private financing and expects to be cash-flow positive — that is to be taking in more money than its spends — by October.

As it's growing, it's adding workers to the dozen it has now, said Paolo, who lives in the Scituate village of Hope.

The newest is a vice president of sales, hired away this week from Comcast Corp. GoGo Cast will add about 30 workers over the next year.

The long-range plan is not to build GoGo Cast into a public company, as he did with Log On America, but to build the business to the point it becomes an attractive acquisition for a larger company, Paolo said.

"This company will be ultimately acquired," Paolo said.

About GoGo Cast, Inc.

GoGo Cast, Inc. is an on-demand, out-of-home digital media company that enables customers to directly communicate with their clientele across vertical markets. Using an aggregated network of digital media and audience-targeted content, GoGo Cast delivers direct-to-consumer advertising that enables retailers, brands, manufactures, advertisers and promoters to reach highly targeted audiences, influence brand choice and receive measurable results. With GoGo Cast's content network and commercial grade digital screens, advertisers can deliver messages that influence consumer buying decisions at the right place, at the right time.

GoGo Cast Inc. Contact:
Phone: 877-320-GOGO
Email: info@gogocast.com
Web: www.gogocast.com