New ATMs put movies where your money is
By Jay MacDonald • Bankrate.com

Got an ATM card and can't decide on a movie this weekend?

How about Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer in a frightening marriage? Maybe Matt Damon and Will Smith on the golf course? Or perhaps Woody Allen, Tracey Ullman and Hugh Grant in a hare-brained bank-robbing farce? Claymation chickens?

Soon you'll be able to use that ATM card to check out the movies while you're getting money to pay for the tickets. That's right, Hollywood movie previews are coming soon to an ATM screen near you.

Before year's end, you'll be able to preview new movie releases at more than 800 new Wells Fargo "Super-ATMs" in California and Arizona. The San Francisco-based bank plans to make available full-motion movie previews, as well as Internet news and sports, on all 6,000 of its ATMs nationwide in 2001.

Wells Fargo's new Super-ATM screens will feature coming attractions for DreamWorks films -- makers of What Lies Beneath, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Small Time Crooks and Chicken Run -- and other advertisements when customers aren't using the machines. When you insert your ATM card, the preview will stop, the machine will greet you by name and headlines from MSNBC.com will be displayed along the bottom of the screen during your transaction.

Coming soon to everywhere
Can other banks and ATM companies be far behind with other movie studios and news networks coming via the Net to their machines?

Chances are, these colorful changes you'll see soon in your ATMs are going to be paid for initially by big advertisers paying bargain-basement rates to big banks for your brief, if undivided, attention.

The Wells Fargo move is a significant step forward on several fronts, according to Ann All, editor of the industry trade publication ATM Magazine.

"A lot of people are watching it very closely because it's a very high profile pilot that seems to have attracted paid advertisers, and they are using full-motion video, which is obviously more expensive than your static flick file screen graphics," she says.

To bring you all this advertising/entertainment, Wells Fargo is using the Net as a handy supply line to every ATM.

Actually, putting the power of the Internet to use in the nation's 220,000 cash machines has been something of a Holy Grail in the ATM industry, long sought after but never attained, at least not yet. Earlier this year, American Express and 7-Eleven Inc. announced plans to place state-of-the-art Super-ATM kiosks at 200 Dallas/Fort Worth convenience stores this year, with Internet functionality to follow.

Finding the right Net/ATM balance
In their search for the next "killer ap," ATM programmers explored the feasibility of selling everything from postage stamps, money orders, museum passes, airline tickets and subway passes to prepaid phone cards, concert tickets, ski lift passes, theme park books and gift certificates.

But so far none of the new services has significantly changed the reason we visit ATMs -- to get cash.

Bill Duncan, manager of information delivery for Electronic Data Systems, spearheaded many of those pilot programs with such customers as 7-Eleven and Wal-Mart before EDS sold its 2,000 ATM machines to American Express last December.

"Lots of people want to put Internet services on the ATM because there is a screen there, but people don't want to stand in line waiting for someone to get their horoscope or find out what their stock price is; they want to get their cash," says Duncan.

A change of course
So the Net will increase ATM income for banks -- but not as the banks first envisaged.

Once banks thought they would get new income from ATMs by delivering financial services via the Net that you would use (and pay for). But now Wells Fargo is delivering movie previews and news via the Net and getting new income from advertisers instead of customers.

If you're a financial institution with aging ATMs, what better way to upgrade to Internet-enabled Super-ATMs than to have advertisers help foot the bill?

Three years ago, Duncan headed up a pilot with 7-Eleven and other retail stores to run screen ads on 3,000 ATMs. Not only did they have to change every hard drive and upgrade every unit at a cost of more than $2,000 each, they had to install small satellite dishes on top of each 7-Eleven store to download the advertising message.

By contrast, Wells Fargo can manipulate its screen images much more efficiently through its own intranet.

By establishing revenue-generating relationships out of the gate with heavy hitters like DreamWorks and MSNBC, the bank appears confident that its tiny screens can in turn build business.

'A natural'
Duncan says ATMs are a natural advertising vehicle.

"Convenience stores have television monitors, airports have television monitors. Somebody believes those impressions are valuable," he says. "I believe the ATMs are as viable as anything else. ATM advertising is going to happen."

Ann All agrees. She says the new ATMs hitting the market this year feature "toppers," where banner advertising will scroll across the screen. Messages there can easily be combined with coupons, to the advertiser's delight.

It remains to be seen whether banks can provide the advertising coverage, or "reach," that major advertisers require, however.

"There are no banks that have ATMs in all of the most desired areas," she says. "Wells is great if you're interested in the West Coast, but if you're interested in the East Coast, Wells is not a power out there. That is sort of a problem here in the U.S.; we do not have any super-national banks. Advertisers do tend to want particular market areas, and those are not always going to be in one part of the country."

Duncan says ATM advertising has much in common with Internet advertising.

"People are still deciding whether Internet advertising is of value yet, but eventually it will be," he says. "ATM advertising is equally a contender."

Jay MacDonald is a contributing editor based in Florida
To comment on this story, please e-mail the Bankrate.com editors

-- Posted: July 18, 2000