A Calgary company has taken a wide area network and a computer monitor – both commonplaces in computing – and turned them into a new advertising medium.
Called AdWall, the medium uses computer files already, or especially, created by an ad agency and transmits them over phone lines to an installed AdWall.
Michael Readwin, a co-founder ofAdWall Advertising and its vice-president of marketing, says the AdWall medium is nothing more than a wide area network attached to a particularly large monitor.
‘[But,] technically, it’s a new medium,’ Readwin says.
A wide area network of computers is a network of computers linked over an appreciable distance. Its short-distance cohort is a local area network.
Bank of monitors
Readwin says the most straightforward AdWall is a bank of computer monitors 50 feet square.
He says each AdWall costs $200,000, and has five to six times the resolution of tv screens.
AdWalls run a six-minute loop with 36 spots at 10 seconds each being shown, Readwin says.
He says AdWall Advertising recommends a one-month advertising minimum. Advertisers are allowed two changes a month at no charge, although changes can be made at any time.
Readwin says for the time being, the advertising shown on an AdWall is essentially stop-motion, although he adds by having different monitors show different elements of an ad, the impression of movement is easily created.
Readwin says AdWalls are much cheaper to use than video walls and their message, of course, can be changed at will.
He says using Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, software found in many art and production departments, the agency creates the ad it wants for a client, then transmits it by modem to Calgary.
Transmits advertising
Readwin, in Toronto in late October to demonstrate AdWall, says from Calgary the company’s own computer then transmits the advertising to the required AdWall location.
Readwin says AdWall uses Apple Macintosh technology, but has the capacity to take files from any other make of computer.
At the moment, he says there is only one AdWall location – at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.
The AdWall at Pearson is something of a test, and advertisers are being charged $2,000 a month for one 10-second spot or about half of the eventual cost.
Readwin says advertisers using Pearson’s AdWall beginning Nov. 15 include loyalty program Air Miles and Digital Computer, which will employ the medium to promote its new personal computers.
He says AdWall Advertising has signed exclusive airport deals with Mediacom and Urban Outdoor. DC
