Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
The Brand Ventures division of Westfield Corporation (ASX Code: WFD) has announced the rollout of 450 state-of-the-art, eye-level digital media screens at 17 flagship retail destinations across the United States.
We understand that these are 75-inch Esprit Digital units. Adding these 450 new units to Westfield’s existing large-format, high-impact digital screens has created a fully integrated and dynamic network of 550 screens located within many of the top media DMAs in the nation—including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco-San Jose, and Washington DC.
This new Westfield Network will provide brands with the ability to customize out-of-home advertisements in real-time and deliver what they describe as “unprecedented audience measurement capabilities”.
The press release states the “eye-level screens will not only be able to track the number of individuals passing in front of them at any moment in time—but will also employ technology to help determine the demographic of viewers in close proximity”.
The network uses crowd analytics to optimize advertising content in order to be meaningful, relevant, and engaging for a single passerby or larger audience. This means that advertisers will be able to strategically tailor their content with the right message, for the right audience, at the right time.
The Westfield Network is also able to measure the quality of engagement and receptivity a certain message is having upon a viewer. An individual’s emotional response, and his or her dwell time, can be gauged and an advertisement automatically triggered to respond to these and other web-based data feeds, including social media feeds.
Combined, these features dramatically amplify creative possibilities for brand partners and can help ensure that their advertising “cuts through” with consumers to be as effective as possible.
Charley DeLana, Westfield’s EVP of Brand Ventures told us “The Westfield Digital Network customizes out-of-home advertising in a way that we could only once dream about. On the front-end, we now have the ability to deliver dynamic and intuitive content to millions of Westfield customers, while also providing robust analytics on engagement and demographics back to advertisers.”
The Network’s value for advertisers is compounded by the fact that—compared with other out-of-home options where consumers are often passing by with other purposes, the Westfield environment is one in which consumers are in a “shopping state of mind” and closest to the actual point of purchase. Additionally, as a result of being able to construct the Digital Network’s infrastructure from the ground-up, Westfield’s screens have been organically infused into the overall customer journey—ensuring the best sightlines, highest dwell locations, and top retail districts are delivered to brand partners.
Moreover, the Westfield screens are able to broadcast live events and entertainment across the entire Westfield Network. This is significant because—now more than ever—concerts by headline performers, movie premieres, new technology launches, and local arts and culture festivals can be interwoven into the total Westfield experience, regardless of the event’s original location. These touchpoints provide further scope for multi-platform partnership opportunities with leading brands such as Ford, PepsiCo, JP Morgan Chase and T-Mobile.
For these and all of Westfield’s brand partners, Westfield promises that the data capture, the underlying power of the company’s Network, is paired with an abiding commitment to maintain the privacy of all patrons and customers. The data points analyzed and captured by the network are maintained in an anonymous manner, and no person’s identity is ever captured, revealed, or shared. Only aggregated and anonymous data sets are generated by the network which enable brand partners to detect trends across different consumer segments.
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