EUROPE NEWS

UK: DigiCom Takes Ownership of Amscreen Media Networks

A deal between Amscreen and Tom Goddard’s outdoor advertising sales operation DigiCom, sees the national screen media network change hands

Amscreen, a leader in screen solutions, has completed a deal with Tom Goddard’s out of home business, DigiCom. The acquisition sees the transfer of all marketing and sales operations for the 3500 screen out of home network.

The sale of the Lord Sugar owned business means DigiCom now commands one of the largest digital screen networks in the UK, reaching 10m adults every week across the healthcare, digital roadside and forecourt retail sectors.

Goddard has a proven track record within the out of home sector, having held the position of executive deputy chairman at Amscreen, as well as previous roles that include CEO at CBS Outdoor (now Exterion Media). Goddard will maintain his position as group chairman of Ocean Outdoor. The deal sees DigiCom entering into a partnership with Amscreen who will provide full technology and service support for the advertising screen networks. The existing agreements with the various network partners, including the likes of Tesco and Shell will be managed within DigiCom.

The acquisition follows the news earlier this year of a complete hardware refresh across the entire 2500 digital roadside screen network to the new ‘Mini-Digital 6 Sheet’ format. The new screens provide further opportunities to integrate with other media channels and leverage real-time data to offer more relevant, targeted and measurable advertising activity. A full reappraisal of the 650 screen healthcare network is also planned.

Tom Goddard, DigiCom executive chairman stated “Digital out of home is undoubtedly one of the fastest growing and most exciting sectors to be in - the Amscreen Media network acquisition offers DigiCom a huge foot print across the UK and access to an excellent product powered by Amscreen. We look forward to bringing a range of new opportunities and offerings to the market in the coming months”

DigiCom represents the UK’s largest, purely digital screen based advertising sales business.

DigiCom’s national network reaches over 10m adults every week via 3500 digital screens. The portfolio consists of a national healthcare network as well as the only truly national digital roadside proposition in the UK. Screens are situated within high dwell forecourt retail and healthcare venues therefore delivering brands the opportunity to capture the attention of and communicate with consumers on their journeys.

DigiCom’s core product is the Mini-Digital 6 Sheet, powered through a partnership with leading screen provider, Amscreen.

These HD screens offer a full spectrum of creative possibilities including; live, full motion content on a national scale, as well as serving locally tailored content activated by environmental conditions or an array of other possible data sources.

UK: TfL confirms JCDecaux as winner of 'world's biggest bus shelter ad contract'

JCDecaux will take over what TfL describes as the world’s biggest bus shelter advertising contract from Clear Channel, which has held the account since 2005.

It was revealed last month that JCDecaux had been selected as TfL's preferred partner subject to a formal appointment being made. TfL kicked off the contest to install and operate its street furniture in September last year.

JCDecaux will sell ad space across 4,900 of TfL’s bus shelters. London’s public transport provider said the new contract, which begins on 1 January 2016, will provide more digital ads, and more interactive advertising and local information for customers.

Leon Daniels, the managing director of surface transport at TfL, said: "Our bus network carries 6.5 million people every day, and with almost 5,000 bus shelters in some fantastic locations across the capital, this is a great opportunity for advertisers to reach out to our customers.

"The new contract with JCDecaux represents good value for fare and taxpayers and will generate revenue for us to invest in delivering better services for our customers."

The contract is part of TfL’s commercial strategy to generate £3.4 billion in non-fare revenue over the next decade, which it said will be reinvested into the capital’s London’s public transport and road network.

Jean-François Decaux, the chairman of the executive board and co-chief executive at JCDecaux, said: "JCDecaux is delighted to have been awarded the prestigious TfL advertising contract, the world's largest bus shelter advertising concession.

"London's economy and population is booming. The city is changing at a rate not seen since Victorian times and it will have a population of 10 million by 2030 increasing its value as a market for advertisers.

"This award consolidates London’s bus shelter contracts into a single proposition of 15,000 back-lit 2 sqm panels, paving the way for a significant digital transformation. "The company plans to make London the global showcase for digital out-of-home with more than 50 per cent of its UK advertising revenues forecast to be coming from digital by 2017."

Source

UK: Forrest Media Extends Glasgow Digital Offering with 3 new Giant Screens

Scotland’s leading OOH operator adds 3 new screens to its digital inventory

As the sole provider of Giant Super Premium digital roadside screens in Scotland, Forrest has announced the development of 3 new sites to add to its portfolio.

The new locations entitled;

CityScreen Glasgow Quayside,
CityScreen Glasgow North and
CityScreen Clydeside Expressway

will open up vital routes within Glasgow and will deliver even greater exposure for advertisers.

The new screens have been strategically planned and developed as locations which will enhance Forrest’s existing portfolio and bring the Companies’ total Giant Digital offering up to 12 screens, 6 of which will be in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland and the third largest in the United Kingdom (after London and Birmingham), with a total urban population of 1.75 million.

Forrest MD, Marc Keenan said:

"Our unique local knowledge has, once again, allowed us to plan and develop these important main arterial routes in our home city. 50% of our screens now have consent to play full motion, which gives us a unique position in the market.

With digital OOH showing such high levels of demand, we believe that full motion offers advertisers more creative scope to promote their brands. We will be launching the 3 new screens across November and we are thrilled to be strengthening our position as the premium digital provider in the northern half of the UK."

UK: Can cities kick ads? Inside the global movement to ban urban billboards

First it was São Paulo, then Chennai. Then Grenoble, Tehran, Paris and now even New York have spawned movements to replace or ban outdoor advertising. Are we entering the age of ad-free cities – or is this just an eye-catching distraction?

Something seemed strange. Staring out of a hotel window in São Paulo, my eye was caught by an oversized digital display crowning the top of an undersized skyscraper. Steadily flashing the time, then the temperature, the display was incongruous in a way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

It was only later, when a colleague mentioned that São Paulo had banned billboard advertising, that I realised what had felt so odd about my view. Those flashing numbers were the only visible signage actively making a play for my attention. Having come from New York, I was used to looking out at a landscape of logos and gargantuan product shots; a vista of advertisements all jostling for “eyeballs”, as the industry so charmingly puts it.

Left unchecked, the proliferation of outdoor advertising can consume a city. In the early 2000s, advertising grew exponentially in Brazil, and São Paulo began to suffocate under a smog of signage. Finding it difficult to control the number of ads through regulation, the city took the unprecedented step of banning them altogether. In 2007, Mayor Gilberto Kassab implemented the Clean City Law, labelling outdoor adverts a form of “visual pollution”. In a single year, the city removed 15,000 billboards and 300,000 oversized storefront signs.

Full article here

UK: Blowing Up the Out-of-Home Industry: an interview with Katrin Robertson

By Stephanie Gutnik, Marketing and Business Development Manager, BroadSign

As CEO of the German blowUP media group, the leader in the European giant posters market for the last 20 years, Katrin Robertson is used to looking at the big picture. She spends a lot of her time traveling around the group’s offices, dealing with the demands of different markets, works closely with her parent company the Stroer Group and yet still has time to get involved in mentoring young businesswomen, including an exciting up-and-coming hat designer in London.

Katrin has always enjoyed dealing with all the different aspects of how a company works. Upon graduating from the University of Düsseldorf with a degree in economics and marketing, she joined a consultancy firm that specialized in setting up businesses and organizing everything from financing to marketing and recruitment.

“It was a tremendous all-round training and gave me a fascinating perspective on all the elements that have to be done right if a firm is to be successful, particularly in market research, finance, product placement – and recruiting the right people and getting the best out of them,” she said.

After working on a project for blowUP media, Katrin was offered the job of Marketing Director and has since been promoted to where she sits today. “I was intrigued by the concept of giant posters, which can only be erected on temporary structures and necessitate the continuous refreshment of property portfolios. This means you have to balance the skills and needs of site developers and advertising sales people.”

When she became International Sales Director, one of Katrin’s main projects was moving to the UK for three years to assist executives manage the launch of blowUP media in the UK 15 years ago, helping to steer it from outsider to market leader in a short period of time. “As a young German woman, I did not fit the typical profile of an OOH executive in the UK,” recalled Katrin. “It was an exciting challenge in terms of growing my own career and the blowUP brand, in competition with strong UK rivals in the premium large format sector.”

In 2012, Katrin moved back to the UK as Managing Director of blowUP media UK before being appointed CEO of the whole group.

Now Katrin gets a buzz from managing different nationalities and helping them grow. “I have learned to treat people as individuals and realize that often you have to motivate and encourage them in totally separate ways, partly because of their individual personalities and partly because they are operating in different business cultures and conditions.”

Katrin’s interest in developing people led to her first steps into mentoring younger women in business in her spare time. “It’s very refreshing to review a business in a completely different industry and provide essential advice and guidance taken from my experience in building blowUP’s businesses in several countries in Europe. There’s so much talent out there that just needs some help with the basics from someone who’s gone through the same process and who’s on their side. Often it’s the personal stresses and strains that are challenging, whatever the business you are in and whether you’re running your own business or trying to build a career in a big multi-national.”

Full article here

UK: Christmas Opportunities in OOH with Talon Outdoor

The Christmas market is worth approximately £90 billion, with an estimated 2.5% rise in Christmas retail spend in 2015.

The high street and malls are still the most popular destination for Christmas shopping, 8 out of every £10 is being spent in store.

With this in mind, Talon have put together two packages that will enable advertisers to capitalise in the build up to Christmas: Weekend retail activation pack (two weekends) - A digital OOH weekend pack featuring the UK's best performing sites & Black Friday (November 27th) three day digital pack.

The main objectives around these opportunities are to drum up brand awareness in the build up to Christmas. With 20% of people in 2014 using their smartphone to buy gifts, now is a key time to capitalise on the emerging mobile commerce market.

The festive season is a time of the year when people are travelling, spending and entertaining in large numbers. Your audience is extremely mobile, ensuring a key time of year for both domestic and international travel.

Full information here

AMERICAS NEWS

USA: JCDecaux keeps an eye on potential US acquisitions

JCDecaux is the world’s largest outdoor advertising group, selling space on everything from bus shelters in Edinburgh to bicycles in Paris and digital screens on the Shanghai Metro. This week it won the contract to sell advertising space in almost 5,000 of London’s bus shelters.

But Jean-François Decaux, co-chief executive, believes the company can become much, much bigger — potentially though acquisitions of its US-based rivals, Clear Channel Outdoor and Outfront Media.

“We could more than double our market share” over the next 10 years, he says. At present, JCDecaux estimates that it captures 14 per cent of global out-of-home advertising revenues.

The French group operates 1.1m outdoor advertising panels in 70 countries, after this year snapping up Continental, Africa’s biggest outdoor media group. If Mr Decaux gets what he wants, before long the group will operate “one in every four outdoor advertising panels in the world”.

Investors may not be quite as optimistic as Mr Decaux, but they too hold high expectations for the company. At a market capitalisation of €7.1bn, JCDecaux is valued at about 30 times its forecast 2015 earnings — a significant premium to its peers in the European media sector.

Sarah Simon, analyst at Berenberg, said in a research note last month that JCDecaux “faces an historically low level of competition globally” and is “exceptionally well positioned for the future”. However, she cautioned that this favourable outlook appears to be already priced into the company’s valuation.

So how does Mr Decaux plan to achieve his ambitions? First, the company needs to break into one of the few big markets where it is not the dominant outdoor media group: the US. Just 6 per cent of JCDecaux’s total revenues of €2.8bn last year came from North America.

“We are the natural buyer” of the US operations of Clear Channel Outdoor and Outfront Media, Mr Decaux says. Both companies generate annual revenues in the US in excess of $1bn.

“It is only a matter of time” before Clear Channel’s indebted parent company iHeartMedia puts it up for sale, he says.

Full article here

USA: Consumer’s Call Digital Billboards Cool—and Recall Ad Messages

Digital billboards represent a growing advertising opportunity for marketers to reach an audience of consumers who think the medium is “cool” and who exhibit a heavy recall of the messages they see.

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America recently commissioned a Nielsen on Location survey to help advertisers and media sellers better understand digital billboards. The resulting report says there are now over 6,100 digital billboards available for marketers in 166 DMAs across the U.S.

Nielsen conducted an online survey with U.S. residents who live in 5 markets – Atlanta, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Phoenix and Tampa. Respondents were screened for having traveled on specified roads containing digital billboards within the past 30 days. Ad recall was tested for 30 out-of-home campaigns running on digital billboards in those markets involving six brands per market.

Some of the general findings: 75% of respondent recalled seeing a digital billboard in the past month; 60% noticed one in the past week; 55% recalled the message on the screen “every time or most of the time” they passed by; 82% recalled ads from the digital billboards; 71% said ads on digital billboards stand out more than ads online; 72% think digital billboards are “a cool way to advertise;” 61% agree it’s a good way to learn about sales and events; and 46% believe digital billboard ads stand out more than ads on TV.

At 82%, advertising was the digital billboard content that was noticed most by travelers. Next were Amber or missing child alerts at 35%, followed by community event information at 24% and weather alerts at 18%.

The survey found digital billboards can be used to drive consumers into stores. Among those surveyed, 37% noticed a digital billboard in the past month providing specific directions to a nearby store or restaurant, and 22% have changed their plans to visit the location featured in the ad.

In each of the five test markets, six brand ads were used on the digital billboards. In Atlanta, the top performing ad was for a local major league sports TV broadcast, with 58% of the viewers having recalled that ad. Next was a legal services ad at 54%, an airline ad recalled by 46%, a local deli ad recalled by 38%, a grocery store ad by 32% and a plumbing service ad by 18%.

In Cincinnati, the top performing ad was for a local zoo with 68% of the digital billboard viewers recalling that ad. Next was a lottery ad recalled by 65%, a sports broadcast recalled by 63%, a grocery store ad recalled by 43%, a bank ad by 42% and a QSR ad recalled by 29%.

The Minneapolis the top performing digital billboard ad was for a major national QSR chain with 46% recalling it, followed by an appliance retailer ad with 32% recall, a pizza restaurant ad with 28% recall, a coffee shop ad and a bank ad both with 25% of the travelers recalling it, and a deli ad recalled by 17%.

Full article here

USA: Adding beacons yields more intelligent digital signage in retail and out-of-home

By Mark Boidman, Managing Director, Peter J. Solomon Company

Beacon technology solutions are helping to create an ecosystem that connects brands, advertisers, mobile apps, retailers, and venues to facilitate the delivery of contextually relevant content and advertising. Moreover, beacons bridge the digital and physical worlds. Given the range of its applicability as well as its ability to drive sales and content delivery, beacon technology is poised to transform how companies interact with consumers.

Beacons use Bluetooth technology to communicate with a smartphone or other smart device in a physical environment, which can include retail stores, sports and entertainment venues, transportation hubs, parking structures, museums, and parks. When a smartphone user enters a location in which beacons are installed, a notification is sent to his/her smartphone delivering relevant, proximity-based information. For example, upon entering a retail store, the user may be informed of sales and promotions in progress at that store, in addition to live inventory data and where exactly within the store items can be located. In an art gallery, a notification may include artist information and price details on displayed works. At the airport, beacons can be used to send gate information and flight updates.

Beacons have a role to play in a number of industries. It’s about the connection to the consumer and the ability to exchange information. Digital signage use in retail outlets is expected to grow from $6 billion in 2013 to $28 billion in 2018 as retailers digitize their customer buying experience. U.S. in-store retail sales influenced by beacon-triggered messages are estimated to grow from $4.1 billion this year to $44.4 billion in 20161.

LOCATION-BASED MARKETING

Innovative retailers and marketing professionals are leveraging beacons for location-based marketing to provide consumers with push notifications—messages or alerts delivered on the location’s network to a smart device—that include contextually relevant content and offers at the point of sale. Beacons offer the unique ability to reach consumers in a purchase mindset. Brands are no longer limited by shelf displays to interact with consumers. Using beacons, store displays become an interactive and highly personalized marketing tool.

Locations deploying beacon technology can take many forms. Beacons can be placed in any physical location, as well as on or in almost any physical object, including jukeboxes, bus benches, taxis, gas pumps, ATMs, even store mannequins. By 2018, there could be as many as 300 million beacons deployed worldwide.

Full article here

AUSTRALIA NEWS

Australia: oOh! debuts Australia’s largest digital full motion billboard

Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall, a bustling hive of commerce, has become home to Australia’s biggest full motion, high resolution digital billboard, bringing a slice of New York’s Time Square to the culture capital.

oOh!media, Australia’s largest Out Of Home (OOH) media company, has created the blockbuster, six storey 236 square metre screen known as ‘The Bourke’ that can showcase animated footage, movie trailers and digital ads in all their glory..

Roadshow Films, Vodafone, Corona and Audi have all signed up to be the first to advertise on this premium state-of-the-art digital billboard located in Melbourne’s retail heart linking Swanston and Elizabeth streets.

Noel Cook, oOh!’s Group Director - Road said he was delighted to unveil ‘The Bourke’s’ - Australia’s largest high definition and full motion video capable billboard - .

“’The Bourke’ is the centerpiece of our digital strategy. With millions of dollars spent and two years in the making, it is the pinnacle of interaction allowing creative engagement with live feeds and social media capabilities,” Mr Cook said.

“Advertisers now have a truly unique opportunity to make an unmissable impact with almost 100,000 pedestrians on average who pass the site every single day.

“We’re giving brands the opportunity to showcase content that will not only add to Melbourne’s vibrant cultural fabric, but literally turn heads in a city that boasts being Australia’s shopping mecca.”

This iconic site joins oOh!’s growing portfolio of digital billboards which also includes ‘The Emporium’ in Melbourne and oOh!’s new Signature Collection, a network of premium high-end digitised billboards being installed at famous locations in all of the country’s major capital cities.

To date the Signature Collection includes premium digital billboards in Adelaide’s CBD at the Corner of Rundle Mall and King William Street, Perth’s Mitchell Freeway, Brisbane’s iconic Story Bridge and three digital billboards on Sydney’s Southern Cross Drive at Mascot and Eastlakes, with further digital billboards set to be switched on in the second half of this year

In addition to displaying full motion advertising, ‘The Bourke’ will also carry local news, entertainment and weather, which will be updated live via the company’s proprietary in-house digital content management system, ARGYLE

‘The Bourke’ continues oOh!’s strategy by deliberately focusing on getting the right mix of digital and static inventory, so that in three years we will be generating significant revenue from digital inventory, complimented by continued investment in new media digital capabilities.

Australia’s biggest full motion billboard in numbers:

• Dimensions: 8.41m x 28.16m

• Size: 236.8sqm

• Display type: High Definition, full motion video

AFRICA NEWS

Nigeria: Charles Chijide Bows Out As OAAN President

President of the Outdoor Advertising Agency of Nigeria (OAAN) Mr. Charles Chijide bowed out of office on a high note last week when he commissioned the association's house as his last major assignment as the president of the body. Also, a new president has been elected. He is the Managing Director of Media View Limited, Mr. Babatunde Idowu Adedoyin.

Adedoyin won after polling 47 votes to beat Mr. Ladi Sole of Uniksites Nigeria Limited who polled 11 votes. Other members of the new executives include Vice President, Mr. Emma Ajufo; General Secretary, Femi Ogala; Treasurer, Atilola Williams; Publicity Secretary, Obi Nnaobi and Mr. Tunde Oyekan as the Assistant General Secretary.

The Ex Officio members are Modupe Lawuyi, Bidwell Okere, and Churchill Nwagwu.

Adedoyin attended both St. Benedict's Catholic School and St. Paul Comprehensive School, Igbore, Abeokuta. His is a member of American Marketing Association; he attended Middlesex Polytechnic (now Middlesex University), Hendon, London where he bagged Higher National Certificate in Marketing Communication in 1980.

He sat and passed London Chamber of Commerce professional exams the same year and returned to Nigeria for the National Youth service Corps. He co-founded Intermedia Service Limited, an outdoor advertising practitioner while still in public service in 1989, but resigned from the company in 1995.

According to Chijide, the completion and commissioning of the OAAN House is a major achievement, adding, "I really commend the foresight of all my predecessors as they are all men of high-level foresight and they played commendable roles both at different times when they had the opportunity to serve and collectively after their terms to ensure that the dream to have our own House is realised".

Besides the OAAN House, Chijide reeled out some of his administration's many achievements, which included the resuscitation of poster award that has now gained international dimension, capacity building in partnership with North Dakota University, U.S.

He disclosed that the capacity building has been slated to be a yearly training programme, and explained that as part of efforts aimed at putting OAAN on the digital map, the association had also reached an agreement with ROTAPANEL.

Source

South Africa: Capturing an airport advertising audience

Advertising in airports is not only lucrative but also very effective. Posterscope South Africa managing director Craig Page-Lee explains why and looks at what is being done to improve this.

Those behind airport media have clearly understood the relevance and exploited the benefits presented by out of home (OOH) advertising today.

They have tapped into the multitude of format types and touchpoints available in this environment, ensuring it is an “always on” medium for advertisers to connect with consumers. Globally, it continually evolves to satisfy client demand and embraces the constantly evolving world of technology to provide a fully interactive brand experience for travellers.

Why, you may ask? Well, the airport environment provides a captive audience and multiple opportunities for advertising messages to be seen. For a long time, airport advertising has been viewed as aspirational, delivering a desirable audience in an environment that in most instances is outstanding. Global investigations demonstrate that the majority of airport media product portfolios are being developed to enable clients to target their audience accurately along their entire journey, from landside to airside, from pre-check in to arrival at their final destination.

Airport audiences are susceptible to different types of communication, depending on where they are in their journey. As such, we must understand when and where the audience is best placed to process different messages. Also, we need to know what media formats and elements are most suitable for the delivery of these messages.

If the point of media consumption is not consistent with the audience’s mindset, there is a risk that the message will be wasted. Also, if the media formats and elements are ineffective, poorly placed, too large or too small, the advertiser’s investment is wasted and the entire media platform loses relevance.

Having a deep understanding of the travellers’ journey and airport process is essential to delivering an effective strategy for brands wanting to capitalise on this premium platform.

It allows advertisers the opportunity to provide the right message to travellers at the right time, in the right place within the airport process and throughout the different stages of the airport journey.

The traveller’s journey is a dynamic and “arousing” experience where all passengers are in specific “aroused” receptive states at different times in the airport process, according to a key global Airport Ethnographic Research study undertaken by JCDecaux.

This research tells us that higher arousal leads to higher advertising awareness, which is delivered in the form of short messages. It maintains that lower arousal leads to “learning”, which is delivered in the form of more complex messages.

Creative agencies need to demonstrate an understanding of the traveller’s journey by delivering suitable creative and relevant messages on appropriate formats throughout the journey. In this way, campaign effectiveness is enhanced, message delivery is maximised and the advertiser’s spend is optimised.

Full article here

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

Jordan: Pikasso Jordan Reveals Two New and Impressive Landmarks in Amman

Pikasso Jordan has strengthened its Landmarks portfolio with two new prime locations around Abdali in Amman. The new Landmarks L3 and L4 are located on Queen Noor Street, reaching affluent consumers in and around the busy shopping district of The Boulevard.

Landmarks L3 and L4 are impressive media fences measuring 25m width x 6m height and 40m width x 6m height, respectively. The Landmark L3 is located next to the two others Landmarks L2 and L1, where traffic is often blocked. The Landmark L4 is only few meters close from the Ministry of Interior, also facing Umniah Telecom Headquarters.

The Landmarks are the perfect tool for brand dominance through a creative compelling statement.

These new locations have been developed as part of Pikasso’s exclusive advertising concession with Abdali Development.

Pikasso is the leading Out-of-Home advertising company in Jordan. It is also the 1st national OOH operator in Lebanon, Iraq and Algeria under the name of Lawhat Algérie. With more than 8,840 advertising faces, the Group enjoys a key position in the Levant and North Africa and offers a comprehensive range of products and formats in 300 cities and towns.

The Group operates in all the fields of OOH: Billboards, Large Formats, Digital, Urban Furniture, Transport advertising, and Malls.

Abdali is Amman's new downtown that provides the Jordanian capital with the central business, social and residential destination it needs as a regional business and tourism hub.

ASIA NEWS

India: OOH media is evolving towards an ecosystem of tech integration: Kinetic Worldwide’s Amit Sarkar

The COO of Kinetic Worldwide shares his views on the current scenario of OOH media in India, the changing ecosystem, emerging challenges, and more

If there is an effective way to communicate with people outside of their homes and on the move, then it is out of home advertising. One agency that has been successfully catering to the growing needs and demands of the OOH industry is Kinetic Worldwide.

Kinetic has been building a keen understanding of how brands connect with people’s lifestyles and the environments they engage with when away from the home. Their expertise and insight allows them to deliver solutions for their clients that achieve brand and marketing goals. Kinetic has developed centers of excellence in digital and aviation media, point-of-care communications, multicultural and mobile marketing, and OOH printing and production to expand the possibilities of communicating with a diversity of audiences on the move.

Kinetic’s network reaches across the globe. From 42 offices in 32 countries, the company offers dedicated expertise in OOH planning and buying solutions and have developed strong partnerships with clients, agencies, suppliers, media owners, and technologists.

Amit Sarkar, Chief Operating Officer, Kinetic Worldwide speaks at length to BestMediaInfo.com on the key developments in the OOH industry in India, the changing ecosystem, growing demands of clients and consumers, and more. Excerpts:

You took charge as COO in 2013. How has been the journey been so far?

It’s been a fantastic journey over the last two years. We started from the second quarter of 2013, and made the drive successful with some great new business wins, restructuring the talent matrix in the organisation to get the right optimisation that fits into the changing needs of the business. In 2014, we successfully integrated Bates WallStreet under the Kinetic umbrella and in December, we launched Kinetic Active – our specialist offering on OOH creative, digital content, technology and experiential marketing, which will further strengthen our position in the market place. We are today a Rs 425 crore-plus organisation with the largest office network in India, providing 360 degree integrated OOH approach to clients.

Kinetic launched a full service OOH agency, Kinetic Active, in late 2014. How well is it doing?

Kinetic India since inception has been servicing clients and providing solutions that are 360 degree OOH, which include Impact, Awareness, Reach, Engagement, Interactivity and trying to bring in ROI for clients. With the launch of Kinetic Active, we have created a specialised focused division addressing today’s needs of advertisers, brands and consumers. We are servicing our existing clients and pitching in for other new business as well. We have received an encouraging response from clients in support.

Full interview here

China: Personalised OOH: Precision targeting comes to China Post screens

China's official postal service has deployed a comprehensive upgrade of its 20,000 outdoor smartscreens with new facial recognition capability, mobile interactivity, data management and campaign optimisation features.

Cameras attached to China Post screens across the top 20 cities in the country will be tracking the directional movements of eyes, the number of glances passersby give and the dwell time of each glance while also judging the biometric signature of each individual.

The system takes 60 images per second and compares these against a database of biometric signatures, then marries the assigned signature of the viewer with programmatic-buying information such as audience type, demographic targets and location-specific filters.

This in turn triggers dynamic content. Take for example an automobile ad. A brand may choose to show male consumers what's under the car hood, while female audiences see information about fuel efficiency and safety.

The personalisation of the ad is enhanced by allowing the public to scan QR codes or tap NFC interfaces to receive e-coupons from the advertiser along with instructions for conversion online or offline to result in a closed sales loop.

Omnicom Media Group in China has been working with Heli Media for the past two years in a go-to-market partnership for this deployment, the first ahead of another 60,000 screens committed for 2016 with other partners including Longfan Media.

This digital out-of-home automated advertising platform is known as IMON, for which Heli and its technology partner Quividi own an exclusive worldwide distribution license. The screens will be further enhanced in later phases with through-screen payment and augmented-reality features.

To date, the IMON system has a bank of over 5 billion biometric signatures stored by race, age and gender in 50 countries for comparative refinement, said Jason Perry, group operations director of Heli Media Group.

The system does not store actual images of the audience members, so there is no privacy infringement, according to Perry, who said the biometric signatures provide no knowledge of what the individual looks like or who they are.

In China the laws are very clear in regard to taking a person's picture without permission. Paraphrased below, from both the "General Principles of Civil Law" and "The Supreme People Interpretation of the Implementation of the General Principles of Civil Law," the use of a citizen's portrait for profit without his consent shall be prohibited and identified as invasion of right of portrait.

According to Doug Pearce, CEO of Omnicom Media Group Greater China, the system offers the screen owner, the media buyer, the ad agency and brand advertisers an upgraded solution to overcome historic OOH inadequacies.

"There was a real lack of understanding who your audiences are, but now you can put a number to it, say, 5,800 people have seen your ad definitively. You're not buying general headcounts," added Pearce. "Bad programmatic buying is a race to the bottom with real-time bidding. Good programmatic buying is when you can quantify and qualify your audiences. In the past, there were no set rules for tagging data and so no way to cross-reference different datasets" he said.

The capability to buy outdoor ads programmatically also levels the playing field for smaller screen owners who have been operating in the shadow of larger ones, Pearce said.

This will probably cost more in the short term in terms of media rates, but almost zero waste makes up for the higher pricing, he pointed out. There will be no "bad spots" because the system programmatically chooses the best screens across the entire network to suit specific goals.

"Locations with low audiences will simply never be chosen by the system for ad placement", added Perry. Heli Media charges a service fee (percentage of total ad cost) onto the inventory pricing placed by the screen owners, going beyond charging advertising by time or traffic estimates.

I call this bringing truth to advertising, said Perry.

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