4A’s will be hosting its annual Data Summit in New York City on February 7th. High-profile leaders will discuss how data will continue to transform marketing campaigns. Speakers from top companies, including Allstate, NBCUniversal, and Google, will dive into issues such as cybersecurity, data quality, and utilizing data to drive strategy. The keynote speakers include Rishad Tobaccowala, Strategy and Growth Officer at Publicis, and Ari Schwartz, former Assistant to the President and Senior Director of Cybersecurity at the White House.

The importance of data is only going to increase, and 4A’s recognizes this trend. Learning how to collect and properly utilize marketing data can help companies refine and improve their marketing strategies and campaigns. This drive for data also brings new concerns which 4A’s is also addressing, like cybersecurity and data quality.

DOmedia is committed to helping agencies, advertisers and media vendors leverage their data to build organizational intelligence and improve ROI. We look forward to all the great insights that are sure to come out of this event. Learn more at http://datasummit.aaaa.org/

Today we announced our partnership with Strata, a leader in media buying and selling software. DOmedia will integrate our planning and buying tool with Strata’s financial platform. The system integration will help streamline the OOH buying process by sending transactions completed with DOmedia straight into agencies’ Strata systems. Strata agencies will also gain access to our media inventory, and planning and workflow tools. Harmelin Media will be one of the first agencies to take advantage of the opportunities this partnership presents.

“DOmedia’s workflow automation tools allow us to spend more time evaluating locations and building successful campaigns for clients,” said Joe Waugh, Senior Vice President at Harmelin Media.“ Connecting DOmedia with Strata will create a seamless process going from RFP through contracting, invoicing and billing.”

Strata is a national leader in media buying and selling software, with over 1,200 agencies utilizing their system. Their platforms encompass all media types, including broadcast, newspaper, outdoor and digital advertising. Integrating with Strata will provide even greater efficiency for DOmedia agencies and help OOH vendors reach a wide swathe of potential new customers. Learn more about the partnership here.

As outdoor advertising became more commercialized, the industry needed associations to advocate for its interests. This resulted in the founding the Bill Posters’ Association of North America in 1872. A few years later – out of the same necessity – the Associated Bill Posters’ Association of the US and Canada was formed in Chicago. That organization later changed its name to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, or OAAA. The OAAA helps its members keep up with government regulations, innovations in marketing and any other questions regarding out-of-home media.

Since it was founded, 126 years ago, the OAAA has introduced both the OBIE and Out of Home Media Plan Awards, advocated for the interests of advertisers, and encouraged positive government relations with the industry. Additionally, the OAAA helps to maintain traffic safety and develops public policy. 

As a whole, the OAAA works to make advertisers’ jobs a little easier, acting as the middleman between them and the government. They also provide advertisers with useful research to improve their campaigns, as well as regularly hosting several national conferences to keep members informed and ahead of the curve.

As proud OAAA members, we look back fondly on the founding of the Bill Posters’ Association of North America. Even though the Associated Bill Posters’ Association is the organization that  became OAAA, we have to raise our glass to the organization that started it all. Here’s to another happy 145 years of great outdoor advertising.

Speaking of celebrations, DOmedia celebrated the launch of our Supply-Side Platform at last year’s OAAA conference. You can learn more about this suite of tools for media vendors here.

Back in late 2013, Motorola came out with their new smartphone, the Moto X. The company made sure that it highlighted the ability to customize the phone, making a big deal about it being “designed by you.” While the phone itself contained impressive technological advancements, the print ad that Motorola ran for the phone is probably even more spectacular.

In January’s edition of Wired magazine, Motorola had a spread that allowed readers to change the color of the phone. It’s as unbelievable as it sounded (and looked) — until you dive into the electronics hidden in the pages. Incredibly thin LED lights, pressure sensors, and batteries comprised this ingenious print ad. Each different color “button” had a pressure sensor under it, signaling the lights to change to the color selected. Readers could experiment with 11 different colors, and watch as the paper seemingly changed color before their eyes.
Interactive advertising experiences are becoming increasingly popular in a multitude of ways, as consumers are becoming more and more desensitized to the constant bombardment of marketing. Getting a consumer actively involved in the idea of a product can be the difference between signal and noise.

Creative thinkers often come up with the most abstract ways to express their art. JG Ballard, an English dystopian fiction author in the 1950s, created extremely cryptic and seemingly nonsensical billboards that did just that.

Ballard was an unusual character. He was one of the first New Wave science fiction writers; his writing style is so distinctive that “Ballardian” is an actual word used to describe novels. His novels, The Atrocity Exhibition and Crash (the former of which was banned in the US), drew sharp criticisms from a wide range of communities.

Before his career as a novelist began, Ballard put together a series of billboards which made no sense to viewers — until now. Appearing to be random words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs plastered on a billboard, they drew attention simply for being odd. The billboard series left even those who closely studied Ballard’s work scratching their heads. Recently, those scholars have discerned that the series may have been encrypted replicas of Salvador Dali paintings.

Ballard was a surrealism enthusiast, and Dali was his favorite artist. The placement of the words on the billboards, as well as the choice of words themselves, appear to match up with some of Dali’s paintings, including Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of a New Man and one of his most famous Persistence of Memory. In the billboard matching Persistence, there is a repetition of the word “time,” and a large “T-12” in the center of the board seems to reflect the clocks in the painting which point to 12. Additionally, the placement of the text matches up with various subjects in the painting, including the words “total bureau” being placed where a shape in sand looks like a desk.

Was this truly Ballard’s message with the billboards? We may never really know. His mind seemed to work in strange ways. One critic even said he was “beyond psychiatric help,” a statement of which Ballard was proud. Artists always find new mediums in which to create their art, and Ballard simply chose a way that we are still struggling to decipher.