The future of Digital Out of Home is HTML5?
Yes you heard it hear first, the future of digital out of home is HTML5.
Digital out of Home — or DOOH as it’s more commonly known — has experienced a pretty significant degree of innovation and technological development over the past few years, with companies like Ocean Outdoor, NGage Media and Experion pushing the boundaries of technological development.
DOOH publishers in the Netherlands have been able to accept HTML5 developed ads for some time now, and Ocean Outdoor in the UK is soon to follow with HTML5 ads running across their large UK network in 2020.
So what does this mean for advertisers? In short, developing creative for DOOH will become faster, more efficient and more engaging. Here I’ll detail the opportunities when combining DOOH with HTML5 development.
Live Feeds
There is nothing better than a relevant creative that engages data from live information. Using code, it’s possible to run live feeds into a creative, whether that be a live clock, share prices, live news, and even a live video stream: it’s all possible. A nice example would be a count-down timer on when a new film or product is due to be released.
Responsive
Utilising certain triggers, it’s possible to develop creatives that can change according to certain information that is pre-defined. For example, by connecting to a weather API, advertisers will be able to change the creative displayed based on the weather in a given location. A simple example is the promotion of outdoor hiking gear for wet weather when it’s raining, and light weight gear for when the weather is sunny.
Live Streaming
The possibilities are endless! Imagine communicating to your target market with a live video stream. Excellent for branding and brilliant for creating awareness.
Advertisers that sponsor sports events, and have the possibility to stream them will be salivating at the potential of live streams. We’ve already seen the positive impact live streaming for events has had in cities during the men’s cricket World Cup, and the football World Cup.
Streamlined production
One pain point with DOOH advertising is the variation of screen sizes and ad formats that are accepted. Presently, there is a large array of screen sizes and most require the upload of MP4 or .mov files. This means a great deal of production work for creative agencies. However that’s all about to change.
DOOH placements are in effect very large digital display ads that you’ll see on a mobile or desktop device. Developing using HTML5 will speed up the production process as the development as making changes and coding to multiple size variations is more straightforward.
Gamification & Interaction
Everyone loves to play computer games, don’t they? Most people deny they play computer games but secretly a lot of them play Candy Crush on their phones, for hours on end, you know who you are.
So yes, you can code computer games where users can connect to the wifi of a DOOH screen and control the game with their mobile screen or any other kind of interaction that involves connecting a mobile device to a computer screen. Cool huh?
