Channel 4, Maiden Outdoor and Railtrack are set to trial an
interactive outdoor advertising medium at Waterloo station for 12
weeks.
The experiment, which is aimed at commuters, replaces Channel 4’s text
billboard at the station with four screens showing a mixture of live
broadcasts, trailers, games and competitions.
An 0800 telephone number, sponsored by Colt Telecommunications, will be
flashed up so that commuters can listen in or compete via their mobile
telephones.
One screen will continue to show text information based on listings for
the week - a service already in place in many mainline stations. Another
will show more in-depth promotions and trailers for the rest of the
season’s programmes; a third will contain the games and competitions. A
final screen will show live programmes, including the Big Breakfast,
Light Lunch and Channel 4 News.
Advertisers on the service flash up telephone numbers which mobile phone
users can dial straight through to; callers can also continue to listen
to the broadcast once they have boarded the train.
Channel 4, Maiden Outdoor and Railtrack hope the medium, which will roll
out across the country, will ultimately function as an extension of
digital television.
Wendy Lanchin, the head of marketing at Channel 4, said: ’There are
endless possibilities for this medium. The trial will be monitored to
see how many people actually interact with the service, rather than just
look at it as a video poster.’
The technology behind the site was developed by Red Fig. The software is
driven by hardware from Silicon Graphics.
