Traditional outdoor companies have been bringing the digital element to their products for years. The same benefits that advertisers enjoy with digital place-based products – such as shorter turn-around times and lower production costs, are available with traditional media like billboards, bus shelters, newsstands and transit.

Benefits of the medium:

One of the benefits of using digital as an advertising medium is the ability to “narrowcast” by reaching very targeted audiences. However, there is still a need to reach the “masses,” and that has always been an advantage of traditional outdoor advertising. Billboards, street furniture and transit advertising can still target the commuters driving into the city and walking around in the high pedestrian areas.

Digital traditional outdoor products provide increased availability in the more desirable market areas that may have typically been sold out. Other benefits include creative flexibility, social media integration and little or no production cost. An advertiser can also change messaging throughout the day, making the ads more relevant to the consumer.

The ability to create intimate messaging and two-way communication through the use of electronic devices and social media creates added value and engagement. Digital creative makes turnaround and planning time shorter and more cost effective.

How it is used:

Traditional outdoor companies employ different sales strategies for this category. Some sell digital products as a network. For example, a company that has thirty digital billboards in a market might sell them as three 10-unit networks. Other companies may sell digital assets individually to help provide more availability in areas that are quickly sold out. You can find out how companies sell these products by viewing the Pricing / Impressions tab under any Product Profile on DOmedia.

These types of sales strategies can provide an advertiser with the chance to be seen “everywhere” in the market. They provide both reach and frequency with a lower CPM akin to traditional inventory. For instance, if a client buys ten units targeting morning traffic on a daily basis, there is a high opportunity for a large audience to see your message each day.

An advertiser can also use the traditional formats to make an impact. For instance, in addition to the high profile displays available in all markets, many markets have areas providing bigger screen opportunities in high pedestrian areas. New York, Las Vegas, and Phoenix are just a few of the markets providing these opportunities.

How it is measured:

The Traffic Audit Bureau measures traditional fixed outdoor inventory (billboards and street furniture). Look for transit to be measured by TAB in the near future. In the meantime, traffic venue numbers for airports and bus and train stations are typically used. Also, ridership data can be used for advertising inside the trains and buses.

Markets available:

In recent years, large traditional outdoor companies have been very aggressive in building out their digital inventory. There aren’t many markets left that do not have digital billboards. Not only are we seeing growth geographically across the US for digital bulletins and posters, but also for other traditional formats. In major cities, you can find digital displays on bus shelters, newsstands, and buses.

New Technology:

Over the years, improved digital display technology has allowed for much higher-quality creative executions. The technological advances are apparent in the use of creative elements, for instance, advertisers can choose to display current headlines, flavor of the day, mortgage rate updates, etc.

New technology has also allowed for social media campaigns, two-way communication, audio and interactive campaigns. There is also technology available that allows for creative to be changed as popular items are being sold. “Wisdom of the Crowd” is a technique allowing store inventory systems to “decide” which items will be displayed on the creative execution.

Some of the new technology even allows for interactive displays as well as measurement of shopper engagement. An advertiser can find out who actually looked at the displays, the percentage of shoppers who were engaged, and even when the customer (time/day) looked at the ad message.

Who provides the products:

ABC Regional Sports & Entertainment Sales
American Outdoor Advertising
Asian Targeted Media, Inc.
Atlantic Sign Media
Border Billboard
CBS Outdoor
City Reach, Inc.
Clear Channel Outdoor
DDI Media
Digital Spectaculars
Emerald Outdoor
Fourpoints Communications
Jersey / Premier Outdoor Media
Kessler Outdoor Advertising
Key-Ads Outdoor Advertising
Lamar Advertising
Las Vegas Billboards
McIntrye Outdoor Advertising
NextMedia Outdoor
Reeves Media
YESCO

Search DOmedia, the largest out-of-home advertising marketplace with inventory information from over 500 media sellers, to find the right company for your next traditional, digital or alternative out of home advertising campaign today.

Begin Your Free Search >>

Sue Danaher, President of the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) explains what it will take for the industry to move forward. Standardization, creative execution, increasing awareness and accountable measurement are just a few of the topics covered in this post by the industry veteran. If you are thinking of incorporating digital place-based media in your next campaign, dust off your notebook and take notes from this industry leader.

My name is Susan Danaher and I’m President of the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA). I started my ad career on the agency side, first in media research and then in media planning (at Y&R and B&B). From that exceptional training ground, I dove into the fastest growth industry at the time, cable TV. During a two-decade period, I had the opportunity to work with pioneering leaders in the field: USA Networks, Turner Broadcasting (TBS, TNT and Cartoon) and Viacom (MTV, VHI, Nickelodeon, NAN, TV Land, Spike, Comedy Central, and CMT). Over the years, our brands became strong enough to migrate off the screen, and extend their reach and influence across many media platforms. And, as they did, we integrated those media platforms into the sales portfolio to better serve the needs of our clients.

What exactly is Digital Place-based Media and how does it differ from digital out-of-home?

When considering Digital Place-based, first think screens, located in places all along the path to purchase: malls, bars, gyms, doctors’ offices, hospital rooms, office lobbies and elevators, restaurants, taxi’s, airports, planes, hotels, gas stations, and the list goes on.

What these screens have in common:

• They are digital video, many addressable and internet enabled, some even interactive.
• They are programmed with engaging content that either entertains or informs (frequently both) and is relevant to its environment.
• They allow marketers the opportunity to target well beyond standard demographics, allowing the marketer to get at lifestyles, consumers’ mindset and relevance.

What Digital Place-based is not:

• Static images that are digitally delivered to billboards.

Why should a media planner consider digital-place based advertising in a campaign?

Mass Reach
Digital Place-based media offers mass reach on a national, regional, local and even hyper-local level.

Targetability and Recency
The ability to go way beyond standard demographics to reach consumers in accordance with their lifestyle and mindset, at the right time and right place when they’re in the marketplace considering their options and making purchase decisions.

Delivers Light TV Viewers and hence, balanced TV plans
Digital Place-based media permits clients to balance their TV plans and indeed extend their reach to encompass light TV viewers, a very desirable segment of the audience that is not tethered to their TV sets or DVR’s. According to GfK MRI (Fall, 2010 Survey), the 2 lightest TV viewing quintiles, representing 40% of the population, does only 11% of all TV viewing! Conversely, the two heaviest TV viewing quintiles, again representing 40% of the population, does 73% of all TV viewing!

Flexibility

• Geographic: National, local, and many operators can offer hyper-local delivery
• Copy: Marketers can use existing creative assets if so inclined and change copy quickly and often if need be
• Address-ability: With operators that offer addressability, triggers can be set for campaigns that align with business objectives, like if the pollen count gets high, the Dow goes over 12,000 or there’s a snowfall of 3 inches or more
• Real time Sales Offers and Incentives: Due to digital delivery, advertisers can now update offers and incentives regularly
• PoP has become Digital: Point of Purchase has become digital, allowing clients to deliver messages at the point of sale.

Measurement
Many network operators are measured by 3rd party research companies in accordance to DPAA’s Audience Metric Guidelines, thus allowing for credible audience currency and the ability to target and negotiate on the basis of targeted CPM’s.

Syndicated multimedia services (like GfK MRI, Ipsos/Mendelsohn, Experian Simmons) are measuring the space lending insights into product usage and cross media consumption and thereby providing media planners with the tools to evaluate the medium.

IMS and Telmar: Several network operators are now included in R&F systems that reside on media planners’ desks, enabling them to evaluate the effects of investing dollars in the medium.

In your expert opinion, where are we as an industry today?

We are where the cable TV industry was around 1985. In the internet business, it’s around 2003. Order has been established in this nascent industry and the prospects for growth are tremendous. We are on the cusp of big things.

How is technology shaping the future of the industry and how is it affecting the way brands are using the medium?

As outlined above, digital delivery is enabling tremendous benefits for clients. Further, the intersection of mobile, social and digital place-based media is an area of much activity and experimentation, and I expect many developments to emerge to further enable clients to effectively communicate with their consumer bases along the path to purchase. Finally, the use of QR codes and NFC (Near Field Communication) are evolving quickly to enable consumers to access fresh information easily, in the right place and the right time, and are natural apps for Digital Place-based media.

Experts are saying there may be a tipping point coming. What do we need to do as an industry to make sure this happens?

To network operators, it’s essential to be measured in accordance with the DPAA Audience Metrics Guidelines by a reputable 3rd party research company. And if you’ve done that already, continue along that investment trajectory. Get yourself onto the media planners’ desks via an R&F system to help demonstrate the benefits of including your platform to a media plan. Additionally, companies like DOmedia are helping to increase the exposure of Digital Place-based networks to many agencies and advertisers.

To ad agencies, get involved. The DPAA has an Agency Advisory Board that is very active and can always use fresh ideas and perspectives. We’re working quickly to establish standards that will allow us to scale this medium to the benefit of you and your clients.

Screenfeed understands digital signage networks and how important fresh, engaging content is when it comes to attracting viewership. But they also know the toll it can take on a company that creates custom content to fill a playlist, then attempts to continually refresh it. Oftentimes, it just isn’t economically feasible to take that burden on for a digital network.

As The Digital Signage Content Store®, Screenfeed provides the best licensed digital signage content in the industry. Digital networks and operators can subscribe to a number of different channels. Screenfeed will mix them up automatically and consistently deliver the content to the network. And because it works with any digital signage software, you can schedule hours of dynamic content in just minutes! Whether it is one screen or a nationwide network, Screenfeed’s scalable solution can deliver. Plus, because many of their channels offer great looking hi-def content based on photos, graphics and information rather than video, you can get HD content at a low bandwidth.

So What Are the Different Channels?

News-in-Pictures
To attract attention to screens, these channels feature high resolution photos of celebrities, sports heroes, well-known places and events people recognize at a glance. Each photo is accompanied by a brief headline. News-in-Pictures channels include Top News-in-Pictures, Celebrity Life-in-Pictures, and Sports-in-Pictures. Screenfeed also recently added Health, OMG!, Tech, Business, World, Canada and UK News categories as well. Learn more »

Daily Video News
This channel engages viewers at a deeper level, providing videos that include a brief story of a breaking news topic including interviews, movie reviews, politics, business and sports. Choose to receive either a single news minute covering the best stories of the day, or subscribe to a full set of 5-9 video stories daily for each channel. Daily Video News channels include Today’s Top Video News, Entertainment Video News, Sports Video News, NewsMinute Daily Video, Showbiz Minute Daily, and Daily Celebrity News. Recently added channels include Today-in-History, Lifestyle, Tech, Business, and Strange News categories.

Weather Graphics & Video
You may not know it, but weather is the #1 requested type of content on digital signage. So why not give the people what they want? Stick with simplicity using the Basic Weather or Weather Graphics Package. Or you can really “wow” your audience with the HD Video Weather, Weather Radar Package, Premium Weather Center or even customize your weather services.

Infotainment
People want to be entertained. Using Screenfeed’s Infotainment channels, you can easily capture your audience’s attention with some fun facts and information that actually engage them. Perfect for doctors office waiting rooms, Healthy bites provides health information in HD that can be branded or sponsored. Also great for a waiting room or area with a captive audience is the Photo Trivia Channel, complete with HD photos and interesting facts about science, travel, celebrities, sports, nature and history. Or check out the Top Tweets Channel, a moderated feed of the most interesting and appropriate tweets of the day. Want to provide localized content? Try the Local Event Information channel, offering community, sports, music and theater event details. Screenfeed also provides unique content with the Celebrity Biographies channel and Weekly Fashion Review channel.

Ambiance
Captivate your audience with the ultimate visual appeal. Through the Naturescapes Channel, eye-catching high-definition footage of pristine beaches, mountains, dense forests and colorful rainforests combine with natural sounds and relaxing music to create the right environment. Want something a bit more exciting? The Extreme Sports Video Channel shows wipeouts, tricks and unbelievable scenery on water, land, snow and air. And perfect for banks, offices, hospitality, cafes, restaurants and golf retail, the Golfscape Channel offers breathtaking photography of golf landscapes around the world.

Learn more about Screenfeed’s Content Channels

Getting started is pretty simple.
1. Browse the vast collection of digital signage content channels and decide which of them you’d like to subscribe to. Once you’ve chosen your channels, call 1.800.461.3002 to subscribe.
2. Next, Screenfeed will gather info about your network and software, then set up your account to provide the right format and delivery method.
3. Finally, you schedule the content in your playlist.

Once the content is scheduled, delivery will be automated with no further work from the network.

To find out more or to subcribe, call Screenfeed at 1.800.461.3002 or visit www.Screenfeed.com.

With a history in electric transportation that dates back to 1989, ECOtality North America has worked on every Electric Vehicle(EV) initiative in North America since the 1990’s. Under the guidance of ECOtality, the EV Project will install the largest EV infrastructure to date. The EV Project is scheduled to deploy 15,000 chargers and 8,300 EV’s in 2011. All chargers will have an individual digital display that will inform consumers of their charge event status and deliver advertising.

Blink DC Fast Charger

A select number of the charging stations, the Blink DC Fast Chargers, will use a 42″ LCD touch screen to display charge status, statistics and cost, convenient payment options and billing information, and connect to the Blink Network web portal for further information. The Blink Network will enable full network coverage for delivery of national ad campaigns and will have hyper-local customization capabilities. The Blink charging units are available for wrap effects. They are scheduled to start appearing at BP and ARCO fill stations as early as March 2011. This further displays the growing relationship between new consumer serving technologies and digital ad networks.

The test markets for this round of infrastructure development are 16 major cities in 6 states including 6 of the top 10 DMA’s. Check out a live map of current locations on ECOtality’s website.

More information on the EV Project and ECOtality

Blink 220V Chargers

This post was written by Jacob Thomas. For more information about this story please email jacob.thomas@domedia.com.

This season, the leaves are changing, the air is getting crisper, and the big brands are taking it outside… Outside of the home, that is.

When deciding how to build excitement and promote tune-in for the new fall schedule, Fox chose to move away from the TV commercials to focus on OOH, taking advantage of traditional formats along with digital billboards and networks. The driving factor behind the new move to digital? — the ability to show full-length pilots for some of this season’s lineup, such as “Raising Hope” and “Lone Star”. Full pilots ran on three major airlines, the Hotel Networks and Princess Cruises, and street-level video networks at subway stations.

Next up: Budweiser. The king of beers (whose recent sales would suggest he’s been overthrown) needed to find a way to cozy up to young under-30 beer drinkers. The solution? In-bar promotions. The bait? Free beer! The campaign started earlier this week, encouraging under-30′s to “Grab some Buds,” and reaches it’s high point tonight as the brand hosts the “Budweiser National Happy Hour.”

So what does a company do when they want to reach active 20 and 30-something’s who don’t spend their time watching TV and surfing the net? They go to them! Just ask Mitsubishi, who recently found a new way to reach the M-Generation, their target demographic whose lifestyles closely tie in with some of the vehicles’ “personalities”. The brand decided to take it on the road, showing up at races, trail heads for mountain biking, dog parks and more, asking people along the way–”What Are You Into?”

For the launch of the new 4-door MINI Countryman, the company took more of an interactive approach, actually getting consumers involved in the advertisement. Over the summer, replicas of the new car made special appearances in shopping centers, stations and streets around the UK. The challenge: how many people can you fit in a MINI? And although the cars looked packed to the brim with crammed-in people gasping for air, they were, in fact, empty.

So how did they do it? Using video cameras inside the MINIs, passersby could take the challenge, packing as many people as possible into the car while recording the whole scene. Then, the footage was projected onto the inside of the MINI, as if the challengers were still inside. Participants could then share the video with friends via Facebook.

Remember some of MINI’s other executions the past few years, some of which landed them in the 2010 OBIE Awards Hall of Fame and as finalists for AdWeek’s Best Out-of-Home Ad of the Decade?

The campaign for MINI Clubman also made it as a finalist for the 2009 Out-of-Home Media Plan Awards.

From the beginning, the issue has been one of raising awareness, change, and funds to help local residents. To do this, Adams Outdoor Advertising used the power of OOH media to bring the situation into daily conversations. Using their own billboards, they posted creative showing a sad face with eyes made of shrimp and a mouth made of an oily brushstroke. Not only is the ad effective in getting your attention, it also brings the realization that the spill touched everyone in the area… especially those fishermen whose livelihoods depend on ocean life.

On the other side of the spectrum, Patron Tequila took a fun approach to raising money for Gulf residents. The St. Bernard Project partnered with The Patron Spirits Company to create the “Patrón Tequila Epicurean Express,” a restored 1927 train car that toured the country, stopping for two nights in select cities. In exchange for donations, people could board the train for a cocktail party the first night, while big spenders were also invited to a gourmet dinner the second night.

Other areas of the Coast, such as the Florida Panhandle, are finding creative ways to lure tourists back to the area they claim is unaffected by the spill. And what better way to inform people that your vacation destination is as oil-free as ever than to show them? VP of marketing for the Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau, for example, is using digital billboards to post images of the pristine beaches she snapped using her iPhone. The images are then displayed alongside messages like “Our Coast is Clear” and “Wish you were here.”

Let’s start in Melbourne, Australia, where Adidas has placed a huge (19 feet high and 2 tons!) Jubalani soccer ball outside a crowded tourist-y area and has a young whippersnapper who plans to live in the ball for the entire length of the World Cup. By entire, we mean 22 to 24 hours a day!  The lucky guy, Adam Santarossa, is set up with a flat screen TV, computer, Playstation, couch, bed, free food and drink, and all he has to do is use social media to keep the world updated on his new lifestyle and, of course, offer his commentary on the soccer games.

A hop, skip away in London, the famous Piccadilly Circus square features a digital screen sponsored by Coca-Cola that runs live video of fans’ celebratory dances. The stunt, aptly named “What’s Your Celebration”, engages passersby by first calling them out. The people manning the board use a laptop to type messages to the people looking at the screen and then call them to the piece of Astroturf grass and corner flag to perform their best victory dance. Their video is then posted on the screen for the entire square to see.

Heading south to Johannesburg, Nike is promoting its “Write the Future” campaign where fans can type a message up to 57 characters via the promotion’s Facebook page, Twitter (#NikeFuture), QQ (in China) and Mxit (in South Africa) to any of 50 Nike-endorsed soccer pros. Select messages are then displayed on the fourth largest building in the city along with awesome graphic images of players like Cristiano Ronaldo.

Much like the Olympics or the Super Bowl, the World Cup offers companies the chance to market to mass consumers in innovative and new ways. This year is no different –the creativity continues to flow and we are all very impressed with what we’ve seen. Now if only the U.S. had beaten Ghana…

Jack Sullivan from Starcom demanded the early attention of the conference with powerful insights from a panel of Big Buyers. Tough questions were posed throughout the day, and from what I can tell, some still need answered. These include:

• Consistent Measurement – More networks are starting to get measured—which is great—but now we need to find a consistent way to compare apples to bananas to better understand the differences in the quality of impressions when we look for scale.
• Consistent Formats – Sure it would be great to create a custom creative message for each unique consumer in each unique environment (and at different times), but given digital OOH is still small potatoes to most advertisers, how practical is it to do so?
• Growth Plan – Given digital signage has many technical strengths and capabilities (geo addressibility, mobile integration, POS positioning, etc.), why are we still chasing traditional formats and budgets? How can we balance the need to lower barriers of entry to advertisers, while allowing the core strengths of the medium to shine through? Where do local advertisers fit in?

As the day rolled on, our own Jeff Bell revealed screenshots of DOfind, the highly anticipated enhanced version of our directory service, during the vendor showcase (which included some other cool companies, too, like interactive gaming provider MegaPhone who used the audience’s mobile phones to demo a few games in what was probably the day’s most unique presentation).

Late in the afternoon, I enjoyed the irony of Dave Weinfeld’s point about how the event missed an opportunity to integrate mobile with the digital screen. In the session before his panel, the creatives were dismantling certain example executions for “not utilizing the strengths of digital signage” (like mobile integration). People (including me) were tweeting on their phones throughout the event, but there was no tie in to the “screen” that was on the stage (except for MegaPhone; applause again guys). I guess we can all learn to improve as we better understand the capabilities of this media.

Overall it was a great show and I look forward to working with the industry in addressing these key issues for growth!

Thanks PRN for the lunch and the Starbucks card from bingo. And thanks to Bob Martin and the folks from RMG Networks for buying the beer after the show!

Find me @mattwarholic or email to matt[at]domedia.com

This technology offers a glimpse of what advertisers are pushing these days: interactive out-of-home media executions. The technology, called ‘augmented reality,’ adds virtual imagery to the environment as the audience sees it. A notable example is the yellow ‘first down’ line in football games on TV. In this case, the Na’vi cat-eyed, blue face staring back at users is augmented reality. Other technologies gaining popularity in the OOH advertising world include holograms and nearby motion generated sights and sounds. According to Lance Porter of LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communications, “Technology has finally caught up with what marketers have dreamed about since the Internet went commercial in 1995.  [Technology] has moved so quickly now that so many things are possible.”

This isn’t the first digital out-of-home campaign Inwindow Outdoor has created. Similar campaigns for Sprint Mobile, The CW’s The Vampire Diaries, and the popular children’s movie, Coraline, were featured in big cities across the United States. The Avatar advertising experience (also delivered by FOX Studios, Zenith Media and Blue Bite) is on display for a month, beginning April 16^th.