Bringing digital advertising to the streets
Outdoor advertising – until now the preserve of major brands – has been largely untouched by the digital revolution. Lithuanian start-up Intenova intends to shake things up with WOWTTO, an innovative high tech solution that will open the market up to smaller businesses, increase advertising effectiveness and, perhaps most interestingly of all, eventually depend on public involvement. Driving effective digital marketing ‘The WOWTTO concept is an outdoor advertising marketplace that is based on digital displays attached to the backdoor windows of cars,’ explains project coordinator Laurynas Jokubaitis, founder of Intenova. ‘Through an app, advertisers will eventually be able to target specific geographic areas or even desired streets via a bidding platform, and decide what time they wish to advertise. The digital display content on the cars will therefore change in real-time, based on targeting preferences set by our clients.’ This is a hugely ambitious concept and the five month EU-funded WOW project – due for completion in July 2017 – is crucial to helping the company scale up. Phase I involved validating the concept using printed stickers; the company must now prepare for the mass-production of digital displays and refine the algorithms that will be used to efficiently run the online marketplace. In addition to the advertisers and the digital technology, the third key element of the concept is of course is the vehicles. WOWTTO’s online marketplace will bring advertisers together with drivers who perhaps commute along a daily route that might be interesting to a company looking to advertiser their DIY shop, for example. This will be similar to how Uber works; drivers who own their cars can earn money by displaying WOWTTO digital screens in their back windows. ‘We will start with Uber–like taxi drivers, people who spend a lot of time on the road,’ explains Jokubaitis. ‘But once we have achieved a marketplace balance between advertisers and drivers, then we will say to the general public that anyone can join this scheme.’ Marketing for local SMEs Jokubaitis believes that once up and running, the concept will be hugely beneficial to local companies and businesses. Outdoor advertising tends to be expensive and static; the WOWTTO concept will up end this by bringing the flexibility and targeted nature of Facebook and Google advertising onto the streets. ‘Our platform will create opportunities for SMEs who will now be able to deliver messages to potential customers even with very limited budgets,’ says Jokubaitis. ‘If you are a local baker for example, you might want to advertise on just a couple of streets between 6 and 8 am. We can show small companies that they can have great exposure to the general public for as little as, say, EUR 1 000, and can spend this in the timeframe they need.’ Jokubaitis says that initial field testing has shown that compared to other outdoor advertising channels, SMEs were able to increase the number of received quotes by up to 150 % and sales by up to 50 % for the same budget. Thanks to EU support, Intenova is now set to launch Phase II testing of its digital displays in Vilnius. Jokubaitis hopes that by the end of the year, at least 200 cars will be advertising on the streets of the Lithuanian capital. Next steps include completing the front end solution – the interface that prospective advertisers and drivers will use to access the online marketplace – and the development and testing of digital displays that can be affixed to the outside of car windows.
Keywords
WOW, WOWTTO, Lithuania, digital, advertising, vehicle, SME, Vilnius, Jokubaitis