In the bad old days of analogue, taxi drivers only had three channels: sport – usually football, sound bites on the topic of ‘what’s wrong with society’, and a public information broadcast about the standard of other people’s driving. And all of this with the radio switched off!
Thankfully, the near future will be very different. Driverless, digitally integrated vehicles with streamed content will become ubiquitous, while some driverless taxis will also be Uberquitous! This sea change in personal transport will have a profound effect on advertisers, brands, data specialists and passengers. So climb into our limousine of speculation as we imagine the year 2020 when Rhoda and Roger each take a trip.
Rhoda owns a driverless car. Let’s call it a Votefor* (award yourself a prize if you get the joke). Once onboard she checks traffic and roadworks updates in real-time, before adjusting her route. For the first ten minutes she reads a book, bluetoothed from her tablet to the screen, but an urgent email converted to voice and a warning about a drop in her share portfolio soon distract her. Her book closes down because the eye tracker realises she’s no longer reading it. As she approaches a set of traffic lights the Point of Interest commentary subsides and a DOOH board facing her reads the number plate and tailors its advertising (from an extensive range) to let her know the new Votefor Freedom is available for presale. The board scans her eye movement and records her attention span, while tracking and preparing for the four vehicles behind hers.
By contrast, Roger orders his driverless taxi by phone app. He bluetooths the journey barcode, the door opens and in he gets. The taxi offers him a range of streamed viewing, chosen to suit his journey time. The content contains sponsored and targeted ads, which are selected according to data from recent sales and collection beacons, loyalty cards and his screen tap preferences. Faced with a choice of short films, music, news, radio stations, email and the internet….he watches cartoons. Well, 31 is the new 21! Thinking himself a rebel Roger pulls out a can of lager, but the taxi has scanned the barcode and immediately warns him that consumption of alcohol is a violation of his service agreement and would result in a fine. Roger sees Rhoda’s Votefor pass him in traffic and an ad for the latest model, triggered by the 360-degree cameras, plays on his phone. He pauses it and transfers it to the taxi’s superior sound system by bluetooth because he likes to sing along to the jingle.
Okay, that’s our fantasy but where are we now?
GPS, Sat Nav technology and Google Street View already provide enough reliable data for conventional vehicles, so perhaps a Driverless network 1.0 could trial in urban areas with more sophisticated mapping software onboard – along with a back-up driver / technician?
Insurance companies currently promote black box recorders for some drivers, known as telematics. Data is collected includes actual driving behaviour, distance travelled, times of journeys, and types of roads used.
Automatic Number Plate Recognition is used by the police, cross-referencing real-time data capture with other databases to check for vehicle tax, MOT, insurance and criminal activity. And they’re not the only users.
OOH 3.0 isn’t fit for purpose yet and the rate / scope of development is not keeping pace with the car industry. However, a great deal could be achieved by 2020 if the OOH came together to get its house in order.
What needs to change?
- A national network of mapped and connected routes.
This could be achieved through greater cooperation between driverless vehicle manufacturers and technology suppliers. Alternatively, government intervention could result in a national strategy and phased rollout, in much the same way that the Electricity Act 1926 created the National Grid.
- Standardisation of the technology that makes autonomous journeys possible.
Sometimes competition only serves to divide resources and inhibit growth. Remember VHS vs. Betamax, and Bluray Disc vs. HD DVD? Another approach would be to have dual compatibility (imagining another rival platform scenario!), as is the case with some Beacon apps.
- Mobile providers need to collaborate more on their infrastructure. Ofcom made overtures to the industry back in 2011 and the response from the Mobile Operators Association gives an interesting insight into their considerations. Partnered projects would bring economies of scale, and government backing (we were thinking a PFI model or the Superfast Broadband initiative) could re-energise a host of supporting industries.
Let’s not forget that OOH media owners also have a huge stake in a successful outcome for this revolution, given the natural affinity between the needs of the mobile telcos (in the future) and OOH sector.
- An OOH industry that’s future proofed:
– Smarter ways of storing, analysing and segmenting cross-platform generated data.
– New data protection legislation and clearer guidelines for how we generate data (anonymised and otherwise), who has access to it, and how it may be used.
– Consumer confidence in the quantity and specificity of the data we collect, and how it benefits consumers.
Data, data, everywhere!
This is our brainstorm of the components in a driverless car journey dataset:
– Time of day / day of week / weather conditions
– Starting point and destination.
– Choice of route (useful for billboards, POIs, discounts, traffic light beacons).
– Channel / info selections in-vehicle.
– Enabled (and pinged) apps.
– Websites visited in transit.
– Eye tracking inside vehicle and from billboard.
– Vehicle user demographics.
The key for OOH 3.0 – and in our opinion the demarcation between DOOH and MOOH will become increasingly meaningless – is integration. A consumer’s journey may create interactions with OOH, DOOH and MOOH, swapping back and forth between them. The user experience must become the focus, not the platform it is delivered on. Advertisers and brands need to embrace this paradigm shift.
The future is already upon us. Gartner, Inc has estimated there will be 6.4 billion connected devices (of some description!) by the end of 2016. The more effectively we can manage that sea of data, the better we can understand the individual needs of consumers and deliver personalised advertising that speaks to them. Do it well and it doesn’t feel like advertising at all, just the right brands reaching out to the right people.
And, it seems others agree with us! Check out this article by Thomas Stelter, VP of Emerging Solutions at the creative agency POSSIBLE – ‘How automotive brands can win over the always-on consumer’.
* Volvo, Tesla and Ford are key players in the driverless car market. You knew that, right?!