Digital outdoor: Long road for the great outdoors

Poster networks - digital or otherwise - aren't built overnight, of course. Last year, Viacom Outdoor (was CBS Outdoor) launched £30 million worth of digital escalator panels, LCD screens and cross-track projection sites on the Tube, most of which is on course to roll out from this spring, and it added GPS to its fleet of 25 LED buses.

Meanwhile, Titan expanded its Transvision network of giant screens at railway stations; Clear Channel launched the UK's first digital roadside billboards in July; and, in the summer, JCDecaux spoke of its digital plans for Heathrow's Terminal 5, which begin a drive to digitise 60 per cent of the UK's airport advertising estate.

At the same time, numerous Bluetooth/Hypertag/shortcode developments have helped to keep digital outdoor's interactive potential in the news, but, even as the momentum builds, it is clear that this is a long-term shift with a long-term timetable.

"Ultimately, I guess all outdoor will probably be digital in some shape or form," says Damian Blackden, director of strategic marketing technologies, EMEA, at Universal McCann EVP. "How long that takes remains to be seen, but we can see what the future looks like - just go to Tottenham Court Road station."

To Tottenham Court Road, perhaps the centre of the digital outdoor advertising universe since May 2005 when its digital escalator panels were unveiled, we can now add Bond Street, Charing Cross, Euston and Paddington, which, just before Christmas, gained 'D-EP banks', to use CBS Outdoor's term. Virgin Atlantic, Magners, Pioneer, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and GuestInvest were the first advertisers on the network, which will be augmented this year by hundreds of further D-EP panels and large LCD screens in ticket offices, as well as cross-track projection (XTP) sites in central London stations.

The scale and cost of the initiatives presents a sound justification for the relatively slow spread of digital outdoor. "As soon as you start thinking about the amount of technology and the amount of sites that need to be digitised to create a significant product, you realise what a huge task it is," says Blackden.

CBS Outdoor's planned investment in the next wave of Tube developments is equivalent to the revenue of the entire digital screen sector this year. Nicky Cheshire, sales director of CBS' Alive division, is confident. "If you look at the OAA forecasts, they predict significant growth for this year in terms of digital revenue," she says. "The convergence of technology is something consumers expect and our approach to digital has always been to look at it from a consumer point of view; if it is relevant to consumers, it is relevant to advertisers."

Lead medium

JCDecaux has earmarked as much as £25m to introduce up to 1,000 screens in Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Luton, Aberdeen and Southampton airports in the coming years. The first phase will see a network at Heathrow's Terminal 5 opening in March 2008.

"When we tendered for the BAA business, we made a conscious decision to make digital pretty much the lead medium," says JCDecaux marketing director Richard Malton. "The capital expenditure in this area is massive, but, with Viacom positioned to launch digital, as well as ourselves, we think there will be enough weight in the market to reach the tipping point."

In July, Clear Channel Outdoor unveiled the UK's first network of digital roadside sites in central London. The nine screens, with one more to come this year, are roughly the size of conventional 48-sheet billboards. They can carry ads from up to six advertisers at a time, changing ads at five-second intervals and giving each advertiser an estimated 19,000 displays a week. The pilot, using technology from Magink Displays, came on the heels of similar tests by Clear Channel in Cleveland and Las Vegas.

Marketing director Pip Hainsworth says Clear Channel has 60,000 panels dotted across the country of which only a tiny percentage are digital at this stage. "There is so much to be said for the power of a wonderful image, whether it is digital or a backlit 96-sheet, beautifully presented, powerful and stunning. We think there will still be a large part to play for traditional outdoor sites with brilliant creative."

Amid all the excitement, it is easy to forget that the outdoor industry already has many profitable networks that do not need replacing overnight. According to Cheshire, CBS Outdoor has no imminent plans to install LCD sides across the entire London bus fleet. "There is certainly potential to increase the number, but the technology is very expensive."

There are many pros and cons to digital outdoor. On the one hand, digital positions sell for a premium and the ability to rotate ads is desirable. Likewise, the promise of interactivity via mobile applications is a real one, but the reluctance of consumers to enable Bluetooth has poured cold water on the early excitement and there is a real dearth of the kind of research that could push digital outdoor on to media schedules.

"There's an important difference between attracting attention for a few seconds and delivering a rewarding experience, whether it's an eye-catching animation on a screen or a Bluetooth mobile experience," says Nick Harper, director of media agency Monkey Communications. "There is still a real lack of information regarding how these digital networks are consumed. Currently, it is only really qualitative research and, unsurprisingly, most of the general public think the D-EPs are 'really good'."

Pretty basic

Creatively, the real pace-setters are still few. "Mostly, it is still pretty basic, straightforward stuff," says Agency.com group account director Saint Lewis,. "I wouldn't say anyone is using digital escalator panels to their full potential, but it's still relatively expensive to buy that media."

Sonic Vision's Sony Bravia bouncing balls push on escalator panels was inspired by the iconic Fallon/Jonathan Glazer-created TV ad and perhaps provided digital outdoor with its first creative hit. Meanwhile, in March, The Independent was the first advertiser to run a time-sensitive campaign when its agency, Walker Media, booked the D-EPs for live feeds of the paper's cover, digitised by Grand Visual. In strategic terms, Agency.com's high-definition Tottenham Court Road ads for BT Hub were the first to exploit the technology's potential to adapt to a shifting audience when they split the week with News of the World.

Yell.com's proposition also adapted easily to a range of digital outdoor platforms for a campaign last year. The newly GPS-enabled LCD buses broadcast messages that changed as the bus travelled between locations, while JCDecaux bus shelters were used to show interactive maps of local shops, restaurants and bars. "We had more than 200 people interacting with the bus shelters on a daily basis," says Frank Pedersen, group account director at AKQA, which creates Yell.com's digital and outdoor ads. "And they aren't just interacting with an ad - they are actually using the product, and you would hope that many of them will then go online and do it as well."

Two strands

The most widely-publicised developments of 2006 have been London-centric, although large networks of digital screens exist across the country, from Tesco TV to SUBtv's student network to i-vu, Avanti and Brightspace, and Screen FX, whose MallFX touchscreens are in shopping centres, gyms and on trains.

While the disinterested observer can easily throw digital screen networks and the traditional outdoor industry's digital posters under the single, blanket definition of 'digital outdoor', the competition between the two types of media is intense, particularly among those who believe digital screens in areas of long dwell-time are the unacknowledged future heroes.

John Scorah, joint-head of sales at Screen FX, feels a watershed has been reached. "The common misunderstanding has been in digital screens being treated as posters, but the marketing industry is finally starting to understand the relevance of outdoor digital in reaching the masses with targeted messages."

Match Day Media has built Europe's first 'trans-stadia TV network' in 14 UK stadiums, including Man United and Chelsea, attracting a potential 500,000 fans on any Saturday. Managing director Gerry McKenna says: "In 2007, the medium has to determine the trading currency for media planners and buyers. The industry needs to identify the two strands of outdoor digital media and create a trading currency for each. Entertainment-led digital networks like ours create long audience dwell times, high engagement and a captive audience, whereas digital signage networks or digital posters have high audience figures, but low dwell times and not much entertainment."

Ivan Clark, managing director of Destination Media Group, says digital networks have showcased some of the most promising and disappointing trends of the past year. "Looking back, we've seen some failures and we can use Tesco TV as an example," he says. "Putting screens above people in a retail environment, without sound, and expecting them to engage is the wrong thing to do." More encouraging were Brightspace's network of Bluetooth-enabled screens in 350 bars and clubs and a promotion for Monkey, Dennis' digital men's magazine. "You are in a bar with Bluetooth on; a message asks if you want this content from Monkey and you download it to your phone," says Clark. "It's not massive numbers, but it adds extra value."

Those in traditional outdoor have a habit of glossing over the existence of such networks. Malton adds: "Until now, without being disparaging, there have been hundreds of small manufacturers and media owners with networks of screens in bars or toilets, and there has been a lack of credibility in terms of how it works, how you measure it and what it adds on top of a normal ad campaign. I would hope that now there is going to be that reassurance in the marketplace."

THE LEADING PLAYERS

CBS Outdoor

Generally considered the pioneer of digital outdoor, CBS has big plans. By spring, D-EPs will be set up at 13 new locations, 225 LCD panels in ticket halls and high-dwell areas, and cross-track projections at 150 sites in 24 Tube stations. London buses complete the digital transport estate.

Clear Channel Outdoor

It has run interactive poster campaigns at traditional sites, but its main contribution to digital outdoor has been its London network of nine digital billboards, soon to be increased to 10.

JCDecaux

After CBS Outdoor, JCDecaux's planned digital investment in its airport estate, beginning with Heathrow's Terminal 5, were the most-discussed developments last year.

Titan Outdoor

It added three screens to its Transvision network in Liverpool Lime St, Glasgow Central and Birmingham International stations to bring the total to 17.