Connect: Out-Of-Home Mobile Advertising Platform

Out-of-home advertising company Clear Channel Outdoor (CCO) announced Tuesday it is rolling out Connect, its global interactive mobile advertising platform.

Connect creates seamless integration between out-of-home and mobile, driving deeper brand engagement with consumers when they are out and about, says the company.

With Connect, advertising panels on CCO’s pedestrian-accessible sites across the globe will be turned into mobile launch pads, enabling consumers to access interactive content from advertisers via their smartphones.

By June 2014, CCO plans to:

• Create a mobile network reaching 175 million consumers monthly across 23 countries on 5 continents;
• Equip 75,000 outdoor sites with Connect tags enabled for Near Field Communication (NFC), QR code, and in Latin America, SMS capabilities; and
• Offer marketers an out-of-home / mobile interactive platform from any media owner and the only one with a global scale.

“The global rollout of Connect accelerates the metamorphosis of out-of-home advertising from being the oldest form of advertising to the most modern and creative,” said William Eccleshare, CEO of Clear Channel Outdoor.

The Connect tags are permanently attached to digital or static panels on pedestrian-accessible sites with heavy footfall and long dwell-time, such as street furniture – including bus shelters and similar street-level advertising structures – shopping malls, airports and at other points-of-sale.

Consumers simply tap or scan their smartphone over Connect’s NFC tag or QR code to instantly open a gateway to an online brand experience.

In CCO’s Latin American markets, the platform will also run with the addition of SMS capability; a tailored SMS code will appear on the outdoor advert.

Advertisers can offer a range of consumer benefits which can be grouped into 4 main categories:

• Information – search, maps, location-relevant, utility
• Shopping – transactional, discounts / couponing
• Entertainment – gaming, video, photos, apps
• Community – social media, text / IM, sharing

According to CCO, advertisers and planners will also benefit from the rich data and metrics captured by Connect.

It includes date, time, location, conversion of click-thru’s, and even which kinds of devices were used – all allowing for campaign optimization, performance review and delivery of ROI.