Over the past few weeks, every out-of-home (OOH) advertising frame in the UK has been given a 10-digit code to automate trading of sites between media agencies and owners.
The code allocator, called Space, will cut man hours and work in OOH ad trading and planning, according to the UK marketing body for the industry, Outsmart, formerly the Outdoor Media Centre.
“Instead of humans having to do hours [of work], machines can talk to each other and do the same work quickly,” explains Alan Brydon, CEO at Outsmart. “In any business, if you can get the functional stuff out of the way, your talented people can spend more time doing what is important – having good ideas and working with customers to get better solutions.”
Another innovation announced this month is from Ocean Outdoor, which is gearing up to launch The Loop Live in 2016. The trading system enables brands to buy OOH advertising by number of ‘impacts’. Advertisers will be able to decide on the audience, time and locations and using that data Ocean’s system will optimise the campaign across screens.
This offering will be rolled out to 20 double-sided digital screens in 12 locations in Birmingham city centre, which offer full-motion, real-time ad placements and are fitted with cameras and NFC technology. The trading technology will also be available for other Ocean Outdoor sites known as The Grid, which consists of eight digital screens in six cities.
These innovations are a few of examples of where OOH media owners have made strides in digital offerings this year, which will change the way brands buy outdoor advertising in 2016. Nearly a quarter of outdoor advertising spend is digital. According to a study by media agency Kinetic Worldwide, the total inventory of digital OOH sites in the UK is set to grow more than 40% between now and 2020.

Exploiting installed technology

It is not only in the use of buying automation technology where brands have begun exploiting new digital outdoor offerings, but also the technology installed in OOH sites. For example, Ocean Outdoor’s Media Eyes launched in September with a Virgin Trains campaign at Birmingham’s newly refurbished New Street Station. It has three LED screens with cameras that recognise the gender and age of passers-by. The system is able to select and serve the most appropriate adverts for the audience within the vicinity of the screens. Media Eyes also beams free Wi-Fi for consumers. In exchange, users agree to share data, which can help further refine what to broadcast and select ads the system can push to commuters’ mobile devices.
Battersea Dogs & Cats Home also used a new technique in outdoor advertising this year where a dog followed shoppers around screens in Westfield Stratford shopping centre, asking people to adopt him. The ‘Looking for you’ campaign, created by OgilvyOne in partnership with media owner Exterion on a pro bono basis, used RFID tags placed inside leaflets that were given to passers-by. The tags interacted with digital poster sites so that the dog followed the same shoppers from screen to screen.

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