At OOHNYC, a Lot to Digest
by Nick Coston, OOH, DOOH, pDOOH Professional; Industry Writer
This past summer, McDonald’s and Burger King, two of the larger OOH media buyers, used ChatGPT to fight one another using artificial intelligence in their campaigns. Admittedly, I am as up-to-speed on AI as my dog. But while attending OOHNYC last week, I learned where our industry is headed with this new tech.
At the Digital Signage Federation Cocktails & Controversy Monday evening and followed by the DPAA Global Summit a day later, new terms like AI-Driven Billboards and Sentient Billboards were bandied about. In plain English, they mean the use of digital OOH displays where the copy utilizes artificial intelligence to adapt and interact with their surroundings.
For example, an AI billboard might use facial recognition to determine the median age and gender of nearby pedestrians, adjusting the advertisements accordingly. Likewise, these digitals can analyze traffic patterns and weather conditions, customizing the content to fit the current environment. This level of personalization ensures the ads are more engaging and relevant. That would presumably capture the attention of potential customers, leading to higher rates, better returns, and improved ad performance and ROI.
Or so it seems.
Some of the keynote brand speakers at this past week’s DPAA event, such as Tariq Hassan with McDonald's, Traci Spiegelman with MasterCard, Todd Kaplan from Pepsi, and Jillian Zech at Brooks Running, addressed these new technologies. A recent study shows that 80 percent of frequent shoppers want their experience personalized. AI has this capability with billboards through audience segmentation to find effective messaging while better understanding customer behaviors.
And to better understand these terms, I asked my dog.
AI will certainly allow our talent to crunch data insights and predict oncoming trends. With that info in hand, ad content becomes better tooled through precise timing and messaging. That’s easy to understand. But some of our industry’s best minds have concerns about over-targeting; the old-schooler in me still believes in the easy-to-grasp creative and importance of branding.
Are we in the danger zone of AI taking over our beloved OOH media? Are we too traditional to keep up with the advertising Joneses? Not really. OOH agencies are already using AI for location-based intelligence. This data is especially useful to small businesses in real time. But real pros don’t risk big-name brands. They improve on what has worked time and again.
My worry is there’s a technology fever with AI across many landscapes. Barely a day goes by when we don’t hear of some personal safety issue that gives us pause. Scientists have been warning us for decades about AI going drastically wrong when it was originally seen as a shortcut savior. This leads to my main observation this week…
Maybe we should slow down a little bit with AI.
Going back in time, starting with Fritz Lang’s 1927 haunting black-and-white film “Metropolis,” a highly stylized futuristic city sits above the grim reality of the dark underworld that runs how the city works. One of the main characters is the robot Maria, one of the first and only female robotic images of early science fiction. Think of her as a first-generation Alexa. In the movie, she is played by the German actress Brigitte Helm as a robot in human guise. AI gone bad.
My wife in real life is also named Maria. I have been sleeping with one eye open since I returned from New York. My dog has no such problem.
4 Things Noticed at #OOHNYC
1.) As in previous years, DPAA always has cutting-edge Broadway entertainment mixed into their Global Summit. This year was outstanding again with singer Nick Fradiani, lead performer from “A Beautiful Noise,” the Neil Diamond musical, belting two of his hits. Playing on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater since 2022, Nick left many of us in awe. This was my first time singing along to “Sweet Caroline.” Really. How’s that for a Tuesday afternoon?
2.) Pilk with cookies, you ask? Todd Kaplan, Pepsi-Cola’s CMO, did a beautifully orchestrated presentation on “New Ways to Experience Pepsi.” One is combining equal amounts of Pepsi and whole milk. Most say it’s similar in flavor to an ice cream float. Not sure which cookies go best. The second imaginative way to experience a Pepsi is to mix the beverage with a generous amount of hot sauce. Lemme explain again… In a video shared to the Buffalo Bills’ Twitter/X account, QB Josh Allen adds a hefty pour of Buffalo hot sauce to a glass of Pepsi Zero Sugar. Even the Bills’ account called him out, saying, “You’ve taken this Pepsi deal way too far,” alluding to the PepsiCo partnership Allen struck up earlier this year. After 2.5 million views, the phrase “Buffalo Your Pepsi” was coined. The taste is compared to a Bloody Mary, minus the booze. Feel free, however, to add some hooch, as I did. A shot of vodka is all it took. Thanks to Todd’s show, I found my fall football drink.
3.) Not to leave out my fav pastime (eating), DPAA did a yeoman’s job feeding all attendees on Tuesday. Not only that, but our pals at Outfront Media promoted it as a “Zero Waste Event,” donating all extra food to New Yorkers in need. Placards were placed in food lines, along with QR codes that directed smartphones to Outfront’s partnership with the MEANS database. That kicked off an industry-wide commitment to donate all excess food from major events to battle food insecurity. Well done, Outfront.
4.) “Postcards from Earth” is a full-length film designed solely for projection inside the new 18,600-seat Las Vegas Sphere, the biggest planet-size OOH display anywhere on the outside. In the world. The venue exterior features 580,000 square feet of LED display space that can feature holiday themes, with the sphere depicting a Halloween Jack-o’-lantern or a Christmas snow globe, for instance. This boffo exterior also serves as the most expensive form of OOH media anywhere, clocking in a reported $450,000 for a 24-period of advertising. No share of voice on this baby, it’s all yours when you buy the time. After all, it cost $2.3 billion to build. The Sphere’s owner, MSG Network, says they can generate 4.7 million daily impressions—300,000 in person, and 4.4 million on social media. It’s yours for a week at $650,000. Awesome way to promote pilk.
Nick Coston has been in the advertising industry for over 35 years. He’s worked at newspapers, magazines, OOH/DOOH companies, programmatic platforms, and ground-breaking ad tech companies, including Washingtonian, Washington Times, New Republic, USA Today Weekend, Clear Channel Outdoor, The Neuron and Hypercell. Currently SVP media sales/strategy at Smartify Media, Nick also spent 10 years buying OOH for a top 10 national advertiser. He resides with his family in Dayton, Maryland, and has been musing about the Outdoor Media industry for over five years.
Nick always great to see you at the conferences, the true application of personalized AI driven ad messaging comes from the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise Everything is tied into your eyeball and once he needed to change his identity by changing his eyeballs OOH posters were targeting the eyeballs and his new personality by name. This will happen in next 10 years and Google had been rewarded a patent for such tech. Good luck to us all and your dog