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May 25, 2016

Smart Billboards Powered by Data Analytics

(Clear Channel Outdoor)

If you thought it was a coincidence that a digital billboard displayed an advertisement for a handbag you just checked out at a high-end retailer downtown, think again–that digital billboard advertisement was, indeed, meant for you.

Well, maybe not for you, in particular. But somebody like you.

Thanks to companies’ unprecedented capability to track people’s movements via cell phones and categorize their interests, the age of the smart billboard is here. It may seem a little creepy to some people, but its apparent effectiveness means that it’s likely here to stay.

Media giant Clear Channel is helping to define the segment with a new solution it launched in February. Called Clear Channel Outdoor Radar, the new service is aimed at delivering the same sort of sophisticated audience segmentation that online marketers have enjoyed to the Out of Home (OOH) advertising market—in other words, billboards.

Clear Channel is partnering with several firms to make this work, including AT&T, which sells location data on 130 million AT&T Mobile subscribers via its Data Patterns unit; PlaceIQ, which collects location data from mobile apps to create behavior data for users; and Placed, a location analytics firm that tracks consumers and their behaviors more explicitly through a mobile app, which the company pays consumers to use.

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Clear Channel knows things about the people that pass its billboards

These technologies come together through the Radar Analytics Suite. Here’s the basics of how it works:

First, a wireless cell receiver near the billboard picks up signals from mobile phones and other nearby mobile devices from people driving by. Then, the info from the cell signal is used, via its partner’s databases, to slot the driver into pre-identified customer segments. Then an advertisement is displayed that corresponds to that driver’s segment.

Clear Channel currently offers 11 interest segments, including NCAA, NFL, or NBA; home improvement; fashionistas; electronics; Moms, QSR visitor, auto intender; and finance. The goal is to offer 1,800 audience segments by August, the company says.

And because Radar has access to historical location data, it’s able to display ads according to where people are travelling throughout the data. So if you regularly drive to church on Sundays, or if the pony track is more your thing, Clear Channel’s partner will know that (although Clear Channel itself says it doesn’t have access to that level of detail).

Clear Channel, which owns tens of thousands of billboards around the country, has another system that uses a video camera mounted near the billboard that can determine the make and model of the car you’re driving, a form of facial recognition for the grills of cars. This lets it show ads for a Chevy car if you’re driving a Ford, for example.

Clear Channel describes Radar like this: “Using anonymous aggregated data from consumer cellular and mobile devices, Radar measures consumers’ real-world travel patterns and behaviors as they move through their data, analyzing data on direction of travel, billboard viewabilty, and visits to specific destinations. This movement data is then mapped against Clear Channels’ displays, allowing advertisers to plan and buy out of home [ads] to reach specific behavioral audience segments. Radar can also help advertisers measure consumer behavior following exposure to an out of home ad, allowing them to quantify campaign ROI with digital attribution.”

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Clear Channel is determining the most effective ad placement for clients based on aggregated geo- and time-series data

The company is adamant that it never knows the identity of the people driving by its billboard, although it admits that its partners do have that information. “Clear Channel Outdoor’s media does not collect any personally identifiable information from consumers or track individuals. Radar uses only aggregated and anonymized analyses from privacy-compliant third party data providers who have verified that they adhere to consumer-friendly business practices that include offering opt-in or opt-out provisions,” the company says on its website.

But even aggregated and anonymized data is useful for Clear Channel, which is a $3-billion subsidiary of iHeartMedia. “In aggregate, that data can then tell you information about what the average viewer of that billboard looks like. Obviously that’s very valuable to an advertiser,” Andy Stevens, senior vice president for research and insights at Clear Channel Outdoor, told the New York Times.

In a way, it’s as if a bit of the World Wide Web has made it into the real world. Whether Internet users know it or not, their every movement is tracked and dissected by marketers in an attempt to get personalized offers and relevant content in front of them. Savvy users can turn this tracking off, but many people seem to like how the Web seems to know what they want.

Radar has been rolled out in just 11 U.S. cities so far, including Boston, Los Angeles, and New York. Early tests with the shoe company Toms showed an increase in brad awareness and purchases, according to the NYT story. Plans are to expand the service, and with more than 6,400 digital billboards across the U.S., Clear Channel already has the assets in place to do that.

But Radar is also already causing controversy. Minnesota and New York senators Al Franken and Charles Schumer have called for an investigation of Clear Channel’s so-called “spying billboards.”

“A person’s cell phone should not become a James Bond-like personal tracking device for a corporation to gather information about consumers without their consent,” Schumer said in a statement. “No one wants to be followed or tracked throughout their day, electronically or otherwise, so these new billboards not only raise eyebrows, but they raise some serious questions about privacy.

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