Adshel has unveiled plans for its Australian digital street furniture network, with 270 screens to be rolled out nationwide, in what the company is calling a “game changer" for the Australian OOH sector.
The network, called Adshel Live, will go live in October this year, with screens in all of Australia’s major metropolitan cities. It follows the launch of a similar, Auckland-based network announced at an investor day for APN News & Media – owner of Adshel – in May.
Speaking to AdNews, chief revenue officer David Roddick said, "The advertising industry is beginning to understand the possibilities and the capabilities it presents, so now seems like a good time to be able to open up those opportunities at street level, with roadside products.
“The trend that is currently emerging – certainly in this part of the world, and probably growing at a faster rate than anywhere in the world – validates the decision."
The screens will offer advertisers dynamic messaging, real-time capabilities and contextual relevance, with the scale of a national network. They will also be decked out with Adshel's other recent product innovations, including beacon technology, and be segmented through its tie-up with Roy Morgan's Helix Personas.
Roddick says it's these widesweeping capabilities that move it beyond the characteristics of traditional OOH and make Adshel Live a “game changer”.
“I think it opens up a challenge to the labelling of this as small-format out-of-home,” Roddick says. “If it's being dynamically served, capable of adapting through the flight, can react to real-time events and can be optimised, at what point does it blur the line with online media, and become part of a screen strategy rather than an OOH strategy?
“Rather than defining it through those old pigeon-holes, we can look at all of these media in what they can provide and how they can work together in an integrated way.”
Adshel is launching a trade marketing campaign called 'Relevance at Scale', aimed at marketers, media agencies and creative agencies.
“Digital is not simply the ability to serve multiple advertisers on a single location. It’s the ability to serve much more creative and powerful content,” Roddick says. “So making sure that it’s fully understood by the creative community is a core part of the strategy."
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