CES 2018 Preview: What Marketers Should Look For In OOH Innovation
As the form-factor of technology changes, evolves and miniaturizes, so does our relationship with it, writes Kinetic's Rosh Singh. What does OOH look like when AR is ubiquitous, and what can marketers do in a world where sensors are woven into the materials around us?
The world of outdoor is a hotbed of innovation, and there are numerous technologies that will either affect the way that brands engage with consumers, or change the way that consumers engage with the world around them. And with CES 2018 just around the corner, we have a brilliant opportunity for us to discover and delve deeper into the technologies that will influence and affect the out-of-home market in the coming year.
Wearables >> Integrateables >> Embeddables
As the form-factor of technology changes, evolves and miniaturizes, so does our relationship with these technologies. What does OOH look like when Augmented Reality is ubiquitous, and what can we do in a world where sensors are woven into the materials around us — and what does Human/Computer Interaction look like when we have input mechanisms embedded within us?
While 2016 saw Virtual Reality gather the column inches, 2017 was squarely the year of Augmented Reality, bolstered by big announcements from Apple (AR Kit) and Google (AR Core). The immediate application is as an app-based experience through a mobile device, which — while it presents an interesting engagement mechanic — isn’t going to change the world of OOH. It is, however, the development roadmap of the technology which should interest us.
As the form-factor of AR develops and ultimately shrinks into a wearable technology, we will see it cease to become an engagement mechanic; rather, it will become the prism through which the everyday consumer views the world. We will see companies exploring the evolution of this at CES this year: Information overlaid on posters and screens pointing consumers to stores showing live stock levels and enhanced product information could quickly evolve to a scenario where the physical advert no longer exists and each consumer is fed a programmatic Outdoor Ad directly through their device and targeted based on their personal data.
The way in which we engage with our devices will also evolve, with sensors and input mechanics embedded within us allowing us to manipulate, engage with and report back to our devices in a much more natural way. Some companies have developed temporary tattoos that can function as an input device as well as a healthcare tracker, monitoring heartbeat, hydration and blood pressure, potentially allowing us to target audiences based on Biometric attributes.
Driving In A Post-Attention World
Level 5 Automation (full automation) seems like a forgone conclusion at this stage, but what does a fully autonomous car look like? For an industry that is heavily reliant on a vehicular audience, what does it mean to us when our consumers are no longer looking out of the window or paying attention to the roads?
While the technology behind Autonomous vehicles is interesting, it is the user experience of the passenger that should gather interest from an OOH perspective: It’s likely that we’ll see a vision of the “cockpit of the future,” a multi-functional and screen heavy environment, which may make the battle for those all important eyeballs that bit more difficult.
Smart Cities, Smarter OOH
OOH street furniture occupies a large and prominent place on our streets and, as other media channels are suffering when it comes to brand safety, OOH has the opportunity to not only be a safe brand canvas, but also a channel that gives back to the environment and space it occupies.
Advancements in nano-technogies are able to accurately detect vehicular pollutants and changes in atmospheric conditions due to extreme weather among others, and feed this back to municipal organisations as a live data feed, as well as using the data to trigger highy-targeted dynamic digital out of home advertising.
While Outdoor may be seen by many as a traditional advertising medium, the transformative effects of technology will be felt through the world of out-of -ome more than any other channel — and CES will be the perfect opportunity to see and experience the future world of OOH.
** Rosh Singh is the Director of Digital Innovation at Kinetic UK and a contributor to GeoMarketing.
