The streets of London are set to become a lot more engaging, thanks to new out-of-home advertising screens around the city.

Outdoor advertising giant JCDecaux announced the new campaign last week, which it has named “The London Digital Network”, or LDN for short. With this, 1000 digital advertising screens will be implemented at bus stops around London, with the focus being on prime retail areas such as Oxford Street. Each screen will be the largest ever seen, at 84”, and be placed on both sides of the city’s bus shelters, creating a dynamic digital experience, and offering a huge improvement on the quality of current displays. Content will be based on big data, generated through a platform entitled SmartBRICS. This engine will take into account factors such as retail spend, social media feeds, and frame by frame audiences, in order to optimize the user experience- content will be tailored and delivered to the correct screen and location at the precise time. With this, JCDecaux wants to establish London as the world’s leading media city.

According to JCDecaux Co-CEO Jean-Francois Decaux, over 50% of UK advertising revenues are expected to emerge from digital by 2017, and so this out-of-home scheme will likely play a huge role. Already, current statistics show that digital out-of-home media is the world’s second fastest-growing advertising medium after mobile, based on average weekly consumer exposure. In fact, the two sectors are very closely linked, with around 23% of consumers searching for further information on their mobile devices after seeing outdoor media advertising- compared to just 16% when exposed to other types of media. And of course, London is the perfect urban environment for such a campaign- interestingly, the city accounts for half of the UK’s digital inventory due to frequent exposure and engagement. In addition, there are numerous examples around the capital that make it ripe for such a scheme- there’s Motion@Waterloo for instance, Europe’s largest LED screen, and the Old Street EC1 digital site, frequently used by Google for live campaigns, both of which exemplify the opportunity for large scale audience engagement and conversion.

Alongside this campaign, JCDecaux has also announced the launch of “Connected London”, a market research initiative, and a sector of its existing programme, “Connected” which gathers audience data for the company’s rail, roadside and retail portfolios. “Connected London” is set to comprise a group of 5000 local residents who will supply data each day on aspects such as brand awareness and preference, lifestyle and mentality, so the company can best continue to target consumers. It will be interesting to see how this information might influence the type of content that emerges. Furthermore, we imagine this data might also impact on future installations- research could reveal user preferences for mobile integration, and even interactive touch-screens, for instance.

What do you think about the outdoor digital revolution coming to our streets? Do you think it will have a marked affect on retail spend? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.