What happens to roadside billboards when we’re all in self-driving cars?
Out of home advertising is one of the fastest growing market sectors, but when our attention is no longer focused wholly on the road, will roadside OOH continue to deliver? Simon Lawson says “yes, more than ever”.
If you believe the predictions, transportation is about to undergo the biggest revolution since the invention of the modern internal combustion engine in 1876.
According to Stanford University lecturer, Tony Seba, four technologies are about to change everything: solar power, battery storage, electric vehicles and self-driving cars.
What could the future look like?
People won’t be looking out at billboards, they’ll be looking at their phones like on public transport.
I’ve been telling everyone the samething. The future autonomous vehicles don’t even need Windows. The passengers could be completely surrounded by AR. If ads will be a part of this, it won’t be outofhome companies. Even if it looks like a billboard. It will be a medium owned by the car manufactures. The screen inside your call all around you.
Nothing, just as it is now. Billboards are a thing of the 80’s, pointless.
Spend your ‘advertising’ elsewhere. Stop polluting our skylines.
Did you really just write that? must live on a deserted island!
FYI… Digital billboards weren’t with us in the 80s and are the fastest growing OOH media space in the world!
Take some time to learn about them it’s a very interesting change in our world as we know it, enjoy.
Your welcome.
Simon im an OOH Media owner and love your optimism.
How do you see the individualization of served content when there are dozens of other people passing at the same time ?
Secondly access to mobile phone owner data in Australia is somewhat limited by law . How do you see this being overcome ?
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your questions.
We’re talking a long way into the future, so it’s difficult to speculate with much accuracy, but the difficulties associated with your first question is one reason I tend to think that internal screens/augmented reality windows in self-driving cars are likely to become a primary DOOH delivery device for personalised messages. From a DOOH roadside perspective, advertisers could programmatically bid against one another to display messages relevant to defined segments who might use a section of road at a given time, or even bid for the opportunity to display a specific message to a specific passenger who is about to travel past.
On the mobile phone data question, we are already becoming less reliant on the phone companies and advances in apps, location services including beacons and the evolution of virtual personal assistants like Siri and Google Now are an indication of rapid development in this area. It’s likely the legal framework will continue to struggle to keep up with the technology.
All I see in my head after reading this, is the movie ‘Minority Report’ where they have floating billboards, windows turned into screens, cars with internal personalised advertising and roadside rubbish bins changing their ads as you walk or drive past….argghhh!!!
Thanks for your comment, Heather.
In good news, I think passengers may be able to pay a small surcharge in order to limit the ads to which they’re exposed on their trips in self-driving cars.
One of the interesting things about being alive today is that we can see, in quick succession, a bunch of disruptive technology.
Most of us weren’t around to see the Model T displace horses.
Extrapolating J Warner’s “who wants to hear actors talk?” dismissal of movie sound, we can see countless variations of the theme. From early TV dismissed as “a fad”, desktop printing wiping out printing businesses, Uber, even personal computers (wasn’t it the boss of IBM who predicted that only six computers would be needed worldwide?).
I myself have made such predictions: I reckoned it would be too expensive to wire up cable TV in Australia and we would have universal satellite services. Oops.
Then I reckoned self-drive cars would be slow being implemented because the metallic tracks would have to be embedded in the roads.
I never suspected self-drive cars could have computers so smart that they could “see” the road just like we do. Who knew?
When Microsoft launched Windows 95 (we did video support for the roadshow), Bill Gates announced the MS network and predicted 20 million users by the turn of the century.
I did the math; 20 million in 5 years? 4 million a year, or around 11,000 a day. HOW, I asked, could Microsoft process that many, how many phone people were they hiring? Of course, as it happened, there were no phone peeps – rather than ring up, Users went online and completed their own subscriptions. D’oh!
So now “how will we see billboards?” Dude! The answer is we’ll see them in a way we least expect.
So, in my new driverless car, with the front seats reversed, will I be watching a big screen in the middle connected to my phone or will my phone be completely embedded into the car system? I COULD look out the front of the car – and I probably will for a while. But I don’t have to look out the front of aeroplanes anymore. I can get on with a range of activity.
No doubt driverless cars will produce the same behaviour.
(Maybe I’ll lie down and look at a screen in the roof)
So, forget billboards, they’re gone. Think instead how can advertising be integrated into my driving experience. Location dependant information will be GPS based and integrated into my system. If there is a food outlet 5k away, I don’t need a billboard with a drawing of coffee on it, it will come up automatically somewhere in my sight. Hologram?
It might also prove better where, for instance, a car can report it has travelled a certain distance or time – thus the occupants are more likely to be hungary. Less “hits” for the advertiser but tighter targeting and higher value. Family of five in the car? Time to highlight that ‘family special’.
A series of conditions can be programmed: “travel over 50k, three or more occupants, destination sixty minutes or more away” and a suitable message used. A bank of messages can be available.
This might also be a sort of disruptive technology: imagine I could program preferences into my car system, maybe I like small places where they serve coffee and sandwiches. These places could come up on my screen rather than bigger brands.
A bit like “avoid tollways” on my SatNav today.
We’ve all had the experience of seeing a “Macca’s 5k” sign on a trip and, as we pull out of Maccas, we notice the cute little coffee shop we would have preferred if we had known.
Could happen. Nah! Nobody really wants to hear actors talk.
Great comment, John.
I agree with your thoughts on location-based messaging specific to the nature of the passengers, their preferences and particular types of trips.