JUICE Mobile’s proximity marketing network is being built to enable advertisers to communicate with consumers via push notifications. Messages are sent to mobile devices through beacons placed on traditional OOH structures like billboards and bus shelters, as well as newspaper stands, garbage cans and power lines. The data collected from these opt-in notifications will help advertisers drive consumers into stores and use the information to benefit future campaigns.
JUICE Mobile is known for its innovation in the mobile and connected device space, pushing the technology envelope to evolve the market and connect mobile advertisers with their consumers through its NectarTM programmatic direct platform. Now the company is moving into new territory by building a cross-country proximity marketing beacon network to bridge the gap between mobile and OOH advertising. The proximity network is expected to launch in Q4 of this year.
What the beacon network will do is make it possible for OOH advertisers to extend their campaigns by providing product information or pushing brand offers to the phones of consumers who are in close proximity to a billboard or transit shelter with a beacon. Notifications of offers are sent through iOS and Android devices giving users the choice to decline or to accept relevant offers.
Neil Sweeney, president and CEO of JUICE Mobile, expects that the majority of Canadian OOH companies will adopt the technology. “We believe that the mobile business is evolving towards activation and OOH is the right area for brands to start to participate. Three-quarters of consumers are willing to receive notifications, like location-based offers, on their mobile devices – if the offer has value to them. Right now, no one is filling that demand.
“It’s important to remember that the consumer is paramount here and that there is a demand from them. 80% of mobile users would share location data with brands in order to receive SMS or push messages. That is a huge number. So that number in combination with the scale of the OOH mobile network and the app market, you get a real sense of how exciting this can be.”
Recent examples of increased interactivity include this coffee stop – Nespresso and Marketel created espresso machines out of Quebecor transit shelters for the VertuoLine launch; a campaign executed by Quebecor for ATR, Association of Tourism of Saguenay, morphed from static posters to interactive digital boards activated by motion sensors to deliver new creative. The information could be transferred to a mobile device via a QR code or NFC.
The offer could be as simple as a coupon for a free coffee at the coffee shop across the street from the OOH structure. The key to it all is that the technology being used needs to speak to something on the phones. That’s where JUICE Mobile’s technology expertise comes into play. The company has built a proprietary proximity software development kit (SDK) that can be implemented into any mobile app making it proximity aware. JUICE Mobile is offering the SDK to some of its premium publishing partners as a way to turn their standalone iOS or Android apps into proximity-enabled applications.
This new opportunity gives the OOH industry the ability to provide advertisers with more accurate audience measurement rather than relying on estimates of ‘opportunity to see’. When people walk by the OOH structure, the technology is trying to ascertain whether they have an app. That search for a connection provides a count of the number of people who pass by the transit shelter, column, billboard or poster.
Sweeney says, “I think this new direction has the opportunity to shape the way that OOH advertising will be bought in the future. For the first time, advertisers will be buying transit shelters and posters based on an exact audience. It is never a bad thing for an industry when you get more accuracy and efficiency, which I think JUICE Mobile has the ability to provide.”
