Insider heard Brad and John, a couple disk jockeys from Bellingham, Washington talking about smart digital billboards on a September 26 podcast.
Brad and John got a little bit right and an awful lot wrong about digital billboards. Insider has excerpted the 5 minute podcast in italics so you can see what regular people think when they are exposed to the smart billboards. Then Insider asked Ian Dallimore, Lamar’s Director of Digital Innovation and Dan Levi, Clear Channel Outdoor’s chief marketing officer to correct Brad and John’s misconceptions.
Brad: So they’ve got these new billboards now when you’re flying down the freeway that will send advertisements targeted just to you.
John: I don’t know if I like this.
Brad: There’s one that is set up on a highway in Illinois right now and there are more of these coming. Smart digital billboards is what they are called.
John: They’re setting up cameras that will read your license plate and then computers will make snap judgements on where you’re from, what your age is, your income level and then design billboards just for you.
Brad: In this computer’s memory are 2,000 different images of each of the makes and models of cars on the road…These are car dealer ads. Most car companies want to advertise to 7-12 year old cars…So it will kick out any new cars and just target old cars…
John: But that’s not even the end of it. Not only will the billboards flash you an ad but they say any mobile phones in a passing billboard may light up with a reinforcing message to that ad…they’ll blast a message into your phone. That’s wierd.
Brad: The day will come when they’ll be able to read your browser history on your phone and how awkward will that be if you are in the car with your wife and you go flying down the freeway and up on the billboard pops an ad for Pornhub…
Brad: So they’ve got these new billboards now when you’re flying down the freeway that will send advertisement targeted just to you.
John: I don’t know if I like this.
Ian Dallimore: At Lamar Advertising Company we are working with data companies to better understand habits and journey’s of specific consumer behavioral sets. We anonymously identify a consumer that has been exposed to an Out-of-Home billboards campaign and then serve them a mobile advertisement in app later that day. When then are able to provide attribution and verify if that billboard and mobile device lead to an in store visit. The Out-of-Home industry is and always will be a one to many advertising medium. By pairing both Mobile and Out-of-Home we are able to provide a strong campaign for brands and advertisers. Brad’s statement is partially true but mobile advertising has been doing this for years, literally every in app advertisement that you get is served to you based on where you have been throughout the day and week. Also for the record we like to do the speed limit on the interstate and not “flying down the freeway.”
Brad: There’s one that is set up on a highway in Illinois right now and there are more of these coming. Smart digital billboards is what they are called.
Dan Levi: While Brad and John are correct that advertisers are using data to get smarter about targeting consumers, Out-of-Home advertising is inherently a medium used to deliver ad messages to groups of consumers, or as we sometimes refer to them, audience segments. At Clear Channel Outdoor, we analyze large sets of anonymous and aggregated mobile data to find behaviors or other traits that are shared by large groups of people who see the billboards, so advertisers can best deliver their messages to people who exhibit the desired behaviors. Some examples would be people who shop at Target, or get their coffee at Starbucks, or go to the movies. In other words, we’re not looking at or tracking individuals, we’re understanding group behavior, and using these insights to help our advertisers deliver their messages to the right people, in the right locations, at the right time. But to be clear, the billboards aren’t smart, it’s the insights that come from understanding this anonymous and aggregated data that allow our advertisers to smartly and effectively use billboards.
John: They’re setting up cameras that will read your license plate and then computers will make snap judgements on where you’re from, what your age is, your income level and then design billboards just for you.
Brad: In this computer’s memory are 2,000 different images of each of the makes and models of cars on the road…These are car dealer ads. Most car companies what to advertise to 7-12 year old cars…So it will kick out any new cars and just target old cars…
Ian Dallimore: I think that Brad and John are mixing and making up quite a few campaigns in this comment. Very similar to facial recognition campaigns that you might see in airport and transit advertising that trigger Digital Out-of-Home advertising based on your age, ethnicity, gender and emotion; we have done a few campaigns using VRT (Vehicle Recognition Technology.) These are cameras that are set up 1000+ feet prior to Digital Out-of-Home billboards that only recognize the front grills of cars that are passing by and blurs the licenses plates if they are in the front of the car. The technology is able to identify the Make, Model, and Color of the vehicle and then trigger a creative message on the Digital Billboards 1000+ feet ahead. The images that are captured aren’t stored after it’s triggered. Campaigns we’ve done using this technology has included Chevy Malibu (2016) and Paramount Pictures (2017) both used the types of vehicles to trigger a creative message for the drivers passing the digital billboards. Brad and John’s comments about identifying license plates to determine judgement of all of that personal information is beyond true. No technology that we use stores images or captures personal information of those driving past or interacting with Out-of-Home advertisements.
John: But that’s not even the end of it. Not only will the billboards flash you an ad but they say any mobile phones in a passing billboard may light up with a reinforcing message to that ad…they’ll blast a message into your phone. That’s weird.
Dan Levi: As I mentioned above, at Clear Channel Outdoor we never target individuals, nor do we know any personal information about consumers who pass by the ads on our billboards. We use mobile data to understand groups of people who share behaviors, to help advertisers better deliver their messages. And this applies not only to our billboards, as I described above, but also to mobile ads that we use to “amplify” or extend the impact of the billboard ads. We anonymously identify groups of people who have passed by the billboard ads, and then deliver mobile ads to these groups of “exposed” consumers as a way of helping our advertisers get more value and impact. It’s worth pointing out to Brad and John that this happens across all ad-supported mediums. To illustrate, Brad and John should consider the ads they see on TV if they’re watching a football game, for example. It’s not a coincidence that they’d likely see lots of ads for cars and trucks, because advertisers know – from analyzing anonymous and aggregated data from Nielsen – that lots of guys who drive trucks watch football. That doesn’t mean that a Ford F150 ad is targeted specifically at Brad or John; rather, Brad and John are representative of the kinds of people to whom Ford would be trying to promote their trucks. That doesn’t mean they’re the only people watching that game – lots of young people and people who have no interest in buying a truck would also be watching – but for Ford, there would be enough people who have an interest in trucks that running the ad on the game makes sense.
Brad: The day will come when they’ll be able to read your browser history on your phone and how awkward will that be if you are in the car with your wife and you go flying down the freeway and up on the billboard pops an ad for Pornhub…
Ian Dallimore: This comment is actually not possible with our digital networks to identify specific devices to then trigger creative advertisement onto the Digital Out-of-Home. The reference to “blast a message into your phone” also isn’t possible. All advertising that we do when we pair Mobile Advertising with Out-of-Home is all in app. This means that if a Mobile device that drives past a billboard that was geofenced and they fit the target demographics of the advertisers campaign and they had a an app running in the background would be the only way that driver would receive a mobile ad. This would also require the driver to open the app that is running in the background to refresh to see that advertisement. We never and can’t “push” advertisements to devices they are all in App advertisements. We focus on geofencing our billboards but more importantly we geofence specific points of interest for the brands and advertisers to serve Mobile advertisements. The point about “read your browser history” also isn’t possible as we are only dealing with in app advertisements. Brad I’d suggest you be careful what you search on your phone because your wife doesn’t need a Billboard company to find out you’re watching Pornhub!
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