It’s over a decade since Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report dazzled viewers worldwide with visions of a dystopian advertising future where personalized environments reacted seamlessly as people strolled through them. The underlying theme of some of those scenes has come true online in the form of increasingly hyper-targeted and persistent advertising, but offline remains a different story.
That’s a situation that’s going to change sooner rather than later, however. Strolling around the average city street, things may look largely as they were ten years ago at first glance, but there is an awful lot of technology bubbling away just under the surface that’s set to revolutionise outdoor advertising in the very near future.
In this article, we’ll look at the problem with where we are now, why outdoor digital advertising is potentially so powerful, and what’s coming down the pipeline.
Wallpaper Paste: A Cutting Edge Technology?
The next time you walk or drive past a man dutifully slapping up posters for a nationwide or local campaign with a paintbrush and a bucket of wallpaper paste, ask yourself this question: is this really the best we can do in an age where Target can sell nappies to someone before their family knows they’re pregnant?
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker.
If ever there was a medium that encapsulates the wisdom of John Wanamaker’s hoary old quote, it’s outdoor advertising. It remains a huge industry but the problems it presents in comparison with even bog-standard digital advertising options are enormous:
You’re looking at a potential world of pain in terms of preparation, lead times, and setups. Get anything wrong at the printing stage and you can kiss that money goodbye.
Judging impact is notoriously difficult, even with the addition of specific toll-free numbers or coupon codes.
It’s completely unreactive. Once the campaign is there, you’re simply crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.
Of course there are digital options available for outdoor advertising which mitigate against some of these factors – consider the moving billboards in evidence at any major sporting occasion, for example – but we’re still nowhere near the sort of display level people are already used to in indoor environments.
That technology is not a million miles away, however. Expect the next few years to see outdoor advertising take off its digital training wheels and move from being essentially crudely animated digital signs to being a fully-enabled digital advertising medium. We’re already seeing some beautiful screens pop up all over the country for example in shopping centres and on the side of roads with incredible quality creative that the audience wants to engage with.
Outdoor billboard technology has already advanced to the stage where Google are testing the automated buying and selling of outdoor digital ad space in London via DoubleClick. Competing offers are also in the works from smaller players such as Xaxis, Rubicon Project, and TubeMogul.
Nascent examples of the type of creative opportunities this enables for advertisers are already starting to appear. Vivid Brand recently put together a great overview of exemplary outdoor digital campaigns that are already knocking the socks off viewers in the UK, America and beyond. Highlights include British Airways’ incredible #Lookup campaign and Walkers’ #tweettoeat campaign.
Introducing Time and the Wisdom of Crowds
The examples above are already pretty impressive but we predict two wider trends that will really add fuel to the fire from a general advertiser’s point of view:
- Time-based display: Once Google cracks the code in terms of inventory and delivery channels, it’s only a matter of time before each digital display space becomes an ad opportunity that can be bought and sold at particular times. This is going to be a truly revolutionary development when the tracking gets truly local.
- Targeting particular crowds: There’s a theoretical intersection between digitally enabled outdoor ads and the fact that the vast majority of people are carrying around devices that know their location, demographic details, purchasing history and desires intimately. Privacy concerns will probably stop a true Minority Report scenario unfurling, but there’s nothing to stop aggregated data being used to drive outdoor ad display on a real-time level in response to who’s watching it.
Let Us Help You Dominate the Local Landscape
The next five years are going to see fundamental changes erupt across both offline and online advertising so you need a team in your corner that understands what’s coming down the line.
Contact the team at MediaSmiths today to discover how we can help you spread your message to meet people wherever they are!
