Digital messaging will rise in 2013 and owners of prime real-estate (out-of-home landlords) are increasingly venturing into the landscape for marketing and revenue.

According to a new report from Accenture, “Despite the global economic downturn, significant infrastructure projects are still being planned or built, and interestingly, the money realized from selling advertising space at airports, train stations and other transport hubs will supplement the finances needed to deliver the upcoming large-scale projects.”

Opportunities for owners of public and private facilities, struggling to offset rising costs, such as airports and on-road transit systems abound. Recent US transit examples include: Cleveland renamed the new Bus Rapid Transit system the “HealthLine” promoting the Cleveland clinic and University Hospitals; the Chicago Transit Authority is in the process of selling naming rights of 11 train stations to advertisers; and the New York MTA is considering selling advertising space on the front of the subway MetroCard.

Kerry Bianchi, Managing Director, Global Lead for Media Management, Accenture Interactive, spoke with brandchannel about the biggest obstacles to digital out of home advertising in 2013.Continue reading...

Everywhere you look are advertisements: on your clothes, on your gas-pump handle, on manhole covers, or on the front of your subway card. But one man is aiming to create a special spot where consumers will be advertising-free. Strangely, though, it’s a place that has long been a home for advertisements: the billboard.

Artist Stephen Glassman believes that drivers shouldn’t have to be looking at advertisements when they are stuck in traffic. Instead, wouldn’t it be nice if they were looking at gardens floating in the sky? Glassman, who has been creating large-scale bamboo installations in L.A. since the 1992 riots there, would like to transform the world’s billboards into a sea of floating bamboo gardens, NPR reports.

Well, if we can bring clouds indoors, why not help more of nature float outdoors?Continue reading...

Titan calls itself the leading and the largest transit advertising company in North America, “with more markets and more top ten DMA penetration and riders” than any in the out of home (OOH) advertising category.

In a bid to keep innovating with new advertising solutions for brand marketers, they’re testing three digitally-enabled phone kiosks in New York’s Times Square as you can watch below:Continue reading...

Skyscraper? Check. deadmau5? Check. Light Show? Check. Nokia Lumia 800 phone with Windows? Check and show time!

On Monday Nov. 28th, Nokia illuminated the Lumia brand by teaming up with deadmau5 (pronounced "dead mouse" for those wondering) for a free music and light show spectacular at London's Millbank Tower. The skyscraper's 800 windows were covered with vinyl as 16 projectors beamed 3D images onto it. Three dimensions not enough? deadmau5 created exclusive remixes for the performance which added another.

This isn't the first type of launch event of its kind, and by "its kind" we mean using large projectors for free shows at launch events— witness Jordan Brand's Carmelo Anthony M8 launch event in New York, where a holographic projection of Carmelo walked on water (the Hudson River, to be exact).

While projecting on a building is always an attention getter, the envelope has been pushed further still.Continue reading...

Trailer from This space available on Vimeo.

In the 2011 rumination on advertising's creep into our life, Morgan Spurlock's POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, we visit São Paulo, Brazil. In 2007, the mayor passed a "clean city" law that banned outdoor advertising. The city's 8,000 billboards were determined to be causing "visual pollution."

Fast forward to today, and the Dutch head of the Infrastructure and Environment Dept. is calling for a ban of all QR codes on billboards.

Now, another documentary is looking at "New Yorkers and others around the world who want to reclaim the integrity of their cities against an onslaught of visual pollution." Is this the beginning of a global movement?Continue reading...

The above mural in Los Angeles was the winner in Dr Pepper's Pepperland Contest, conducted by deviantART over the summer.

Founded in August 2000, deviantART is the largest peer-to-peer online social network for ‘Deviants,’ aka the 18 million members who upload and share their original art works ranging from traditional media to digital and pixel art, films and anime, racking up page views of 43 million unique visitors monthly.

deviantART teamed up again with Dr Pepper for a “How do YOU Drink Your Dr Pepper?” contest that left the pages of online social networks and jumped to the walls of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Users submitted 2,105 entries over three weeks and campaign analytics showed that entrants pushed their mural ideas via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Live Journal, Stumbleupon and Reddit “to the tune of about 15.9 million total impressions.”Continue reading...

Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, home to the city of Pittsburgh and its three rivers — Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio — boasts 520 bridges, drawing tourists and bridge-hunters (think of them as leaf-peepers, without the trees) from across the US and around the world.

Now, some of those historic bridges may soon carrying advertisements.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that county officials “are taking steps to find out how many (bridges) might be suitable sites for advertising or sale of naming rights” in order to raise cash for “infrastructure maintenance.”Continue reading...

Oregon’s motto is “she flies with her own wings.” And now she’ll fly with digitally enhanced ones.

The state's legislature has just agreed to allow digital billboards along all state roadways, according to the Oregonian. The newspaper points out that while some Oregon cities already allows such billboards, this law will allow for such advertising along all of the state highways.

Digital billboards are a hot topic of debate around the US.Continue reading...