US-based OutdoorLink, Inc. offers media owners solutions for seamless control of illumination on billboards
The
future of OOH is reclining quite prominently on the digital medium.
With innovations for DOOH springing up quite regularly, it is safe to
say that the future of OOH is in good hands. US-based Outdoorlink, Inc.
is taking this control over DOOH to a new level, by giving an option to
the media owners to have complete control of their digital displays.
Monitoring the billboards has been made easy with various features
including real time alerts, alarm notifications, web-based interfaces
and the like.
Smartlink, their new cellular M2M controller is
designed to control and monitor billboard lighting through cell, laptop
or tablet. With billboard lighting being remotely controlled and
performance and management reports being readily available, the media
owners will have a greater control over their media, resulting in better
results for them and for the advertising brands.
With such
innovations being laid in front of the OOH industry worldwide, the
question was how ready is the industry, in both the developed and the
developing countries, to invest in it.
The 56th FEPE Congress
held in early June in Budapest, Hungary was a platform for the companies
of the world to showcase their advances within the DOOH industry.
Somewhere in between the industry celebrating its past success and
pondering over its future path, products like Smartlink take a strong
stand to cater to the latter requirement.
Franklin Olive, Vice
President and General Manager, Outdoorlink, Inc. communicated his ideas
about the DOOH industry, Smartlink and the company in itself, in an
interview to Outdoor Asia's Preethika Kotian. Franklin is responsible
for the daily operations of the company which include future product
development and implementation, engineering, sales management, product
forecasting and production, inventory management and reconciliation,
customer support and the general oversight of all employees.
Edited excerpts of the interview:Digital
OOH is seen to be the future of OOH. Will adding a remote controlled
monitoring feature for billboards add to the relevance of DOOH in the
coming days?SmartLink was designed to remotely control the
illumination and remotely monitor the electrical issues on static
billboard locations. Also, SmartLink can be used on digital billboards
to remotely re-boot the digital components if necessary.
Are there any more innovations that could be added on to this theme?SmartLink
has an additional feature under development; SmartLink CIC that allows
the user to remotely take an image of the advertising display in real
time. The image is transferred through cell technology and loaded into
the users SmartLink account which can be accessed through the website or
App. Also, SmartLink can integrate with the outdoor advertising
companies charting system which streamlines operations.
Are media owners interested to invest in remote-controlled billboards?There
are over 65,000 SmartLink units deployed throughout the world. Most
units are deployed in the US. We have active units in the UK, Canada,
Mexico and China. We too recently attended the FEPE show in Budapest
and had interest from other countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Algeria,
South Africa, Kenya, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, India, Hungary,
Luxembourg, Ukraine, and Croatia. Being designed by a former outdoor
billboard owner, the SmartLink was truly designed and customised for
this industry by someone who spent his life in the outdoor advertising
industry.
Will this technology be concentrated in Europe alone or have you looked into making it international?We
plan to launch internationally. We have found that the issues that
haunted outdoor billboard companies in the US are also prevalent around
the world - remote control of illumination and notification of
electrical issues. SmartLink can solve these issues!
Do you find this kind of technology to be feasible in the OOH market in India, presently and in the future?We
think the SmartLink solution can benefit outdoor advertising countries
worldwide. We have engineered three models to cover the three main
types of utility power voltages across the world; 120v, 220v and 3
phase. We met two outdoor companies from India at the FEPE show who
showed interest in the SmartLink product.