Michael Whiteside Joins QMS

September 13th, 2024

Tristan Cotterill

Leading digital outdoor media company QMS this week announced the appointment of Michael Whiteside as National Sales Director – Advanced Trading, effective October 7, 2024.

Based in Melbourne and reporting to QMS Chief Revenue Officer, Alex Kerley, Michael will be responsible for leading QMS’ programmatic offering across Australia, ensuring there is a seamless connection and coordination across the business to deliver on agencies and clients’ requirements for integrated solutions across all the major demand side platforms and data providers.

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OAAA Marketing Leadership Update

September 12th, 2024

Guest Contributor, Anna Bager

With the summer behind us and an exciting Q4 and 2025 on our near-term horizon, OAAA has an important leadership update to share today in support of our mission and continued growth.

Julie Thompson joined OAAA in 2020 as a strategic advisor, was later named as Interim CMO, and has served as EVP & CMO for the past year and a half. She is now moving into a new strategic advisory role with the organization and returning to her roots as an independent industry consultant. In conjunction with the news, Olivia Oshry, who currently serves as Vice President of Marketing, is being promoted to Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications.

Olivia assumes the role and joins the OAAA Executive Team effective October 1, 2024, and there are no plans to hire for the CMO role.

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Mayfair Equity Partners i-media MBO

September 12th, 2024

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

Mayfair Equity Partners says that it has completed the management buy-out of i-media. Mayfair has acquired a majority stake in the business alongside the i-media management team.

i-media has developed the UK’s largest network of full motion large-format digital screens at Motorway Service Station Areas via exclusive partnerships with major operators including Moto, Welcome Break, Roadchef, and Extra. With a presence at 130 roadside locations, i-media gives advertisers access to UK motorists, a varied and affluent audience, reaching an average of 6.3 million weekly visitors and more than 31 million unique visitors annually in a high dwell-time environment.

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LG Showcases Display Solutions For UK Market

September 12th, 2024

Andrew Neale

LG Business Solutions (LG) has announced the availability of its latest display innovations for the UK market, showcasing major new solutions including its transparent OLED, new streaming technology and all-in-one LED display at their ThinkBeyond event which took place in London September 4-5, 2024.

LG’s state-of-the-art range delivers significant benefits to organisations across a wide cross section of industries, including hospitality, education, corporate, and retail.

  • Built-in Google Cast provides the comfort of home entertainment in hotels. LG’s latest entries into the hospitality TV market not only deliver 4K UHD and smart capabilities, they’re also the first hotel TVs to offer built-in Google Cast, enabling hospitality businesses to deliver guests the comfort and convenience of home in their rooms. Both Android and iOS users are now able to seamlessly cast to their hotel TVs, removing the need for unwieldy login processes and allowing guests to watch their preferred streaming services with ease.

    Hospitality models on display at ThinkBeyond include the 4K UHD Smart TV and the 4K UHD OLED TV with Pro:Centric hotel content management capabilities.

  • CreateBoard delivers next-gen education tools. UK-first LG education solutions delivered by the new CreateBoard enable teachers to deliver lesson content more effectively and memorably.

    Multi-touch capability can track up to 40 separate interactions at a time, allowing classes to seamlessly get hands-on with the lesson. Teaching templates including a ruler, table, and sticky notes also allow for active engagement by students and enable intuitive classes. Images and videos can be quickly edited, and lesson content can be easily shared via QR code, as well as displaying up to nine shared screens.

    As well as teaching benefits, CreateBoard also enables seamless communication across multiple rooms, with broadcasting and alert messaging capabilities

  • Transparent OLED brings the magic to retail. New to the UK, LG’s transparent OLED signage delivers the very cutting edge of in-store signage, breaking down the barriers between the screen and surrounding environment, seamlessly connecting different spaces and people. With high transparency and self-lighting pixels, the display maintains vivid colours and high contrast ratio even when the display becomes transparent. It brings content to life from wide viewing angles, and the content blends into its surroundings seamlessly and naturally. The addition of P-Cap touch sensor film also enables interactive retail uses, including check-in, ordering, and product exploration.
  • Widescreen and all-in-one LED optimise meeting spaces. Showcased at ThinkBeyond, LG’s 21:9 ultra stretch display is optimised for business, enabling a more flexible, immersive experience than standard 16:9 displays, and ensuring all content displayed is the optimum size and definition. Alongside this, its all-in-one micro-LED display delivers remarkable visual precision for the boardroom. Advanced LED chips provide impressive detail accuracy and precise light control, delivering crystal-clear images on the display, providing a true-to-life visual experience.

Commenting on the showcase, Nigel Roberts, UK Head of the Information Display business unit of LG, said “Our range of cutting-edge display solutions are the foundation for a new generation of excellent user experiences, right across the hospitality, education, corporate, and retail sectors. With many of these innovations coming to the UK for the first time, we’re committed to delivering high-quality display to meet business needs in multiple industries”.

The LG Business Solutions Company is a trusted partner offering innovative products and customized solutions for diverse industries worldwide. With a portfolio of unique offerings ranging from industry-leading OLED to LED signage, LG is a respected name among customers around the world. LG’s IT solutions include business monitors, laptops, projectors, cloud devices, medical displays, commercial robots and electric vehicle chargers, all designed to maximize work efficiency and return strong value to customers.

New @ASA_UK Awareness Campaign

September 12th, 2024

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is partnering with Compare the Market and Acast for the next phase of its awareness campaign which launches UK-wide this week and will run for eight weeks across multiple platforms and channels, both online and offline.

Guy Parker, CEO of the ASA, told us “We’re pleased that our ad campaign is having a real impact on people’s trust in the ASA and advertising. It’s important people know that we’re here, keeping advertising legal, decent, honest and truthful, and we’re grateful to all our partners for lending us their iconic slogans that the public know so well. Our new partnership with Acast means we’ll be able to directly reach podcast listeners, reminding them that we regulate ads across all media. And the iconic branding of Compare the Market will help reinforce the message that the people can trust that we are effectively regulating UK advertising.”

The Advertising Association (AA) has worked closely with many of its media owner members across the industry to help the ASA access advertising inventory which has been donated by organisations. This campaign is geared to help further build on the rising trust in advertising that the Credos Value of Trust report, released by the AA in June, highlighted.

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New @Hotcrowd_Canada Marketplace

September 11th, 2024

Tristan Cotterill

Hotcrowd is described as your all in one MARKETPLACE connecting advertisers with various Out-of-Home digital screens and billboard owners.

You can find out more about Hotcrowd Advertising Canada here.

Fanta Use #AI to Create Real Time #DOOH Content

September 11th, 2024

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

This week, at Amsterdam Central Station (Metro network North/South Line), a unique campaign from soft drink brand Fanta is on display.

The campaign promotes the release of Warner Bros. Discovery’s new comedic film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, where the ads are created on-site with the help of artificial intelligence.

Mark Veenman COO, CS Digital Media told us “This campaign is a discovery and showcases the possibilities of AI technology in Out Of Home advertising. The result is innovative and surprising, and this strategy has not been used before. Of course, CS Digital Media could not achieve this without an advertiser willing to relinquish control of their ad campaign. With Fanta, in cooperation with EssenceMediaCom, we found a great partner for this approach”.

The Fanta Halloween Beetlejuice campaign, invites commuters to pose in front of a camera, after which #AI technology instantly transforms them into a unique, personalized Beetlejuice character displayed on a large 6×4 meter LED wall. It’s a snapchat like feature, the creation is generated, shown, and disappears forever from the screen within 30 seconds. Each time a new commuter poses in front of the camera, the process is repeated.

AI is increasingly being used in outdoor advertising. However, this is typically limited to data analysis, targeting, and content creation before any campaign starts, keeping the outcome controllable and manageable. Fanta, however, dared to relinquish control of the creation and allowed the AI tool to operate independently under certain conditions.

The basic requirements for the creations are safeguarded with the right prompts, but the final output is unpredictable. This makes the Fanta campaign exciting and also creates maximum attention at the audience. Each creation generated by AI is inherently new, which at the moment is still a relatively unique approach in DOOH.

Anouk van Huissteden, Coca-Cola Company brand manager said “As a brand manager, you need to have an eye and focus on every detail. With real-time generated AI content, that’s simply not possible since the content changes constantly and is generated on the spot. As a brand manager, this takes some getting used to, but the constant change in content amazes and keeps the consumer engaged.”

CS Digital Media is a media technology company focused on innovations in advertising technology and software in the fields of media, e-commerce, energy, and mobility.

If you are already in Artificial Intelligence (AI) wishing to learn more about the advertising and out of home (OOH) industries or in the advertising and OOH sector and wish to better understand AI and Machine Learning then our annual AdAI Conference on Tuesday September 24, 2024 in Toronto is a must-attend.

There are only two dozen tickets left, cost CAD 299 (COMMB members should contact the association for a discount code) and can be found here.

Western Sydney International Airport #DOOH Tender

September 11th, 2024

Tristan Cotterill

Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport (WSI) is inviting out-of-home advertising organisations to register their interest to provide internal and external digital advertising at Sydney’s new airport.

This will include around 80 different digital advertising assets across the airport including large format outdoor digital signage and in-terminal operational and advertising screens delivering high potential passenger engagement.

The Registration of Interest (ROI) is now open for WSI to identify suitably qualified operators to participate in the Request for Proposal (RFP). Interested parties who can demonstrate satisfaction of minimum requirements in the ROI may be invited to participate in the RFP later in 2024.

More information can be found here.

GPO Vallas Has Launched SOMO In The US

September 11th, 2024

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

GPO Vallas, a leading Latin American OOH advertising company has announced the U.S. launch of SOMO, a new business line built by partnering with Ara Labs, for the operation of 4,000 screens in 2,000 digital car top advertising displays in NYC, which they say will generate over three billion monthly impressions.

The companies entered into an exclusive multi-year partnership with Ara and with the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade (MTBOT) and Creative Mobile Media (CMM), a division of Creative Mobile Technologies (CMT). MTBOT is the largest yellow taxicab association in New York City. Through this partnership, SOMO will have access to up to 5,500 taxicabs to display advertising on top, currently representing over 65% market share of the total taxi tops in the city.

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CampaignAI Launched By @Displayce_Media

September 11th, 2024

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

Displayce claims to be the first specialised platform to integrate generative artificial intelligence for recommending personalised DOOH strategies. After a year of research and development, Displayce is launching CampaignAI, an intelligent assistant designed to transform how advertisers and agencies design their DOOH campaigns.

As artificial intelligence tools experience exponential adoption, with global productivity gains estimated at $4.4 billion, advertising agencies rank generative AI among the top four most attractive topics for 2024. Displayce, already a pioneer in using AI for optimising DOOH buys, is taking a new step by integrating generative AI into its programmatic platform, becoming the first to offer such an innovation in this field.

Hayssam Soueidan, Chief Technology Officer at Displayce told us “Integrating generative AI into DOOH presents complex challenges, such as managing AI hallucinations that may generate unrealistic strategies and adapting to the specifics of DOOH, including environment, timing, and context of delivery. With my team, we have addressed these challenges by combining the latest advancements in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), fine-tuning existing models, and our knowledge base accumulated from thousands of DOOH campaigns. Thanks to advanced evaluation algorithms, only the most relevant strategies are selected. CampaignAI is the first component of a suite of AI tools that we plan to enrich to further integrate media, creative, advertiser, and targeting data specifics”.

CampaignAI not only simplifies the creation of DOOH campaigns but revolutionises the process by analysing client briefs to generate personalised strategies perfectly aligned with marketing objectives and target audiences. Thanks to this innovation, each campaign benefits from unparalleled precision, relying on personalised and data-driven scenarios. This approach not only improves efficiency but also maximises the impact of advertising campaigns. Platform users are thus free to choose the most relevant recommendation, allowing them to script media plans that reach the audience in the most pertinent contexts – based on location, time of day, and surrounding activities.

Designed for both advertisers and more experienced media agencies, CampaignAI addresses issues such as ‘I want to promote a new bike brand in France’ or ‘What is the best media plan for a watch brand during Black Friday?’ Identifying new creative avenues, data sources, targeting, or digital screens is now possible in just a few clicks. With this new solution, the time to create a DOOH campaign is significantly reduced, allowing advertisers and media agencies to focus on strategic vision and client engagement while letting CampaignAI inspire them with personalised, original, and effective strategies.

If you are already in Artificial Intelligence (AI) wishing to learn more about the advertising and out of home (OOH) industries or in the advertising and OOH sector and wish to better understand AI and Machine Learning then our annual AdAI Conference on Tuesday September 24, 2024 in Toronto is a must-attend.

There are only two dozen tickets left, cost CAD 299 (COMMB members should contact the association for a discount code) and can be found here.