Digital billboards have been making lots of headlines over the past few days. Ad Age, Media Week and several industry bloggers have all reported on the E! News channel's decision to use digital outdoor displays in several markets, including Tampa.
125 billboards, 12 in the Tampa Bay area, will provide commuters with dynamic headlines that are pulled directly from a website. "The ability to test different headlines in different ways is very interesting to us," said Annemarie Batur, VP-marketing and advertising, E! Entertainment. "E! News is all about what's happening in that moment. The fact that we will now have the ability to change out headlines as breaking news happens will be a great way to see how we drive traffic."
Here's how we set it up. First we uploaded the background image with Ryan Seacrest, Giuliana Rancic and a yellow background on which the live headline could be placed. Next we added the dynamic content item. To do so, first we enter the address of the website from which we want to pull the headline; http://www.eonline.com/ for example.
Next, we need to indicate which piece of text from the webpage we want to place on the billboards. To do this, we need to look at the website's html code. You can look at the code of any website just by clicking "Source" in the "View" menu of your Internet Explorer browser. Once we find the desired headline in the code, we look at the last piece of text before the desired headline, and the first piece of text after the desired headline. We enter these "tags" into our software so that the program knows to pull the text in between the tags.
Now, any text that is entered in that spot on the webpage will automatically appear on the digital billboards. From there, we can adjust it's placement, font, color and size. Essentially, whomever is updating the website is changing the billboards simultaneously. The picture below shows the "Dynamic Content Editor" screen in our software, where we make the magic happen.
Some local advertisers, such as Action Air Conditioning and the Transitions Championship have already used this type of live feed on their digital billboards. What has me particularly excited about the the E! News campaign, is that it indicates that national advertisers are starting to jump on board with the capabilities of our new medium.
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