We recently spoke to Ashin John, our Digital Operations Manager, to learn more about impressive tech innovations in out-of-home media and what BackLite is doing to use these technological innovations to our advantage.

Enhancements in digital display technology:

- Higher resolution: Narrow pixel pitch LED displays refer to displays with a small distance between the individual LED lamps, resulting in higher resolution and more detailed content. Higher density of LEDs per square meter results in a wider colour gamut that helps to create more vivid and dynamic content.

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- Greater contrast: Improvements in technology have led to improvements in contrast ratio, resulting in deeper blacks and brighter whites.

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Better viewing angles: With the continuous development of LED technology with SMD, viewing angles have greatly improved, and content remains visible when viewed from different positions.

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Increased energy efficiency: Power consumption of large format LED displays has reduced over the years and will continue to reduce with technological advancements. Integrating light sensors with the display system helps adjust the display’s brightness for optimum viewability based on the ambient light levels, which helps manage or reduce power consumption.

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Dynamic Content Capabilities:

Advertisers can use BackLite’s dynamic content solutions to create engaging and interactive campaigns that more effectively capture the audience’s attention. Advertisers can use dayparting in campaigns to target specific audiences by displaying different content at different times of the day.

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Content management platforms allow easy integration of real-time data in digital content, which we can publish across multiple screens and locations. Networks process and analyse real-time data based on different parameters, which can promote actions such as changes in content and schedule. Some examples of dynamic content campaigns produced and executed by BackLite Media include:

• Weather and news updates
• Social media feeds
• Sports scores and news
• Countdown to events and TV shows

Audience Measurement: Audience measurement platforms are tools used to measure impressions and engagement in OOH advertising campaigns. These platforms provide detailed information about audience demographics, attention time and engagement patterns.

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With the advancement in artificial intelligence and machine learning, computer vision technologies collect data based on detections of the number of people exposed to Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising. Advertisers can use this data to deliver highly targeted campaigns based on the audience’s demographic.

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Geolocation platforms use data from mobile signals to track the location and movement of people to generate insights about the audience.

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Automation allows content management platforms to ingest audiences to generate campaign performance reports.

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Some technological challenges that face the industry and how BackLite is overcoming these challenges:

Security: DOOH displays are vulnerable to hacking and other cyber-attacks. BackLite takes security measures to protect the networks and system, which include:

• Multiple authentication layers and limit access to authorised personnel
• Periodic update of software (operating system, content management system and 3rd party applications)
• Firewall to control incoming and outgoing network traffic
• Regular monitoring of logs and network traffic

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Integration with 3rd party systems: Content management systems must be integrated with other technologies, such as audience measurement tools, programmatic platforms, and real-time data sources. BackLite performs integration testing in a controlled setup before deployment to the production/live environment.

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Data privacy: DOOH systems collect data from people exposed to advertising or interacting with the displays. BackLite partners with solution providers who comply with data privacy regulations to ensure data is collected and stored securely.

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What are some challenges that you’re working to overcome at the moment?

Having been in the market since 2020, I would say that Seventh Decimal overcame some significant challenges in terms of spreading awareness and getting the endorsement of major stakeholders on the measurement methodology. Now that Streach is rolled out and is heavily used by the industry, some new, yet smaller, challenges emerged that we are focusing on, such as:

1. Remaining relevant in what we are offering to all stakeholders.
2. The level of customisation on the system.
3. Its interoperability and connection with other ad tech (like DSPs/SSPs) or trading desks, among others.

Additionally, I would also like to highlight that some challenges exist in the industry that impacts us as a measurement system but are beyond our capacity to solve solely, and that is why we invited stakeholders to a round table on a technical committee to discuss those challenges and prioritise them based on the industry demand.

I believe that you’re creating a technical committee. Would you please tell us a bit more about this? How is the formation of the technical committee progressing?

Oh yes, indeed, a technical committee to launch a JIC (Joint Industry Currency) was created and includes representatives from the media agencies (MCN Group, Publicis Media Group and Omnicom Group) and media owners (Al Arabia, BackLite Media, Elevision, Hypermedia, and MPN).

The technical committee will have to take collective decisions to standardise, enrich and empower the existing OOH media measurement system.

The topics of the round table include:

• Standardisation of Ad formats

• OOH Inventory naming conventions and unique identifiers

• Metrics Nomenclature, definitions, and calculations

• Transit and place-based media

• Introduction of additional qualitative metrics

We were extremely happy with the warm welcome that stakeholders showed to our initiative, supporting us in driving a mid to long-term roadmap for the OOH media measurement system in the UAE.

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What are Seventh Decimal’s plans for the near future?

This year advertisers have started looking at OOH measurement and data to analyse their campaign’s performance and rethink their OOH strategies. Consequently, we are forecasting major growth in the industry.

We will continue to support agencies and advertisers in their efforts to highlight the potential of OOH; Through the measurement data of Streach (Reach/Frequency/Impressions), advertisers can now accurately model and fairly value the contribution of OOH to their overall media mix and assess their ROAS. Seventh Decimal will extend its support to provide data for agencies with the ultimate goal of increasing the OOH’s share of the omnichannel marketing spend.

One such initiative is the partnership between Seventh Decimal, BackLite Media and Reprise/MCN Group, which we announced a few weeks ago, to collaborate for studies dedicated to the understanding of OOH’s return on ad spend (ROAS) across MCN brands.

BackLite has partnered with Neurons Inc., a neuromarketing research company specialising in using neuroscience and behavioural science to understand consumer behaviour and decision-making processes. Neuromarketing research uses EEG and other techniques to measure brain activity in response to marketing stimuli. Their suite of neuroscience tools is called Predict, a cloud-based attention prediction AI.

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Predict AI is built on consumer neuroscience data measuring:

+120K reactions of high-quality eye-tracking technology

+100B data points of eye movements and brain responses
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Coupled with data from 120K reactions to high-quality eye-tracking technology and over 100 billion data points of eye movements and brain responses, Predict AI has become remarkably accurate — reaching 95% accuracy for its models. Visual heat maps, fade maps, and benchmarks can all be conveniently accessed from Predict. Because of this, BackLite is better equipped to effectively target, empathise and influentially forecast attention on our platforms.

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This solution estimates a campaign’s creative performance through various image processing functionalities, producing a heatmap (static or video). The tool is based on a deep machine-learning model. It is designed to help advertisers understand whether their OOH creative will likely attract the right audience’s attention in the right places. BackLite can provide saliency heatmap reports to its advertisers before the campaign to identify elements such as call-to-action and branding for improvement to increase message memorability, recognition, and effectiveness

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As part of this year’s SpotLite Magazine, we sat down with Ahmed Emam, Chief Sales Officer at BackLite, to discuss the UAE’s out-of-home market and what trends he expects to see in the near future. Here’s what he had to say.
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What interesting market trends did the out-of-home media industry see in 2022?

The OOH industry is seeing a strong recovery after the slowdown driven by COVID. In 2022 the tendency to go more on Digital-Out-of-Home (DOOH) was very obviously amplified by BackLite’s introduction to world-class stunning DOOH media solutions such as The Triple Crown, The Gateway, and Al Jawhara in Dubai. In addition, Forced Perspective 3D (FP3D) campaigns are the latest hype, providing the right blend between innovation, creativity and reach.

Each campaign on our iconic digital screens is inherently unique as a result of the creative ideas behind the campaign. BackLite Media screens at JBR and City Walk in Dubai are considered the first choice for brands to execute their 3D campaigns. They deliver successful innovative campaigns throughout the year via multiple sectors, including Luxury, Automotive, Cosmetics, Gaming and much more.

What upcoming trends do you expect to see in the industry in the next five years?

There is no doubt that DOOH will continue to grow and dominate. Communication with audiences will be more personalised, seeing location-triggered messages and more dynamic content. In the near future, DOOH will be integrated with online platforms to extend small-screen content onto large out-of-home screens.

How would you describe the current state of OOH in the UAE, and what does that mean for advertisers?

The OOH advertising industry in the UAE has been experiencing immense growth year after year. With the introduction of a data-driven approach and the digital transformation by BackLite Media, investments in OOH advertising are becoming more optimised and justified. Measurability allows advertisers to choose from a wide range of options for reaching their target audience.

With multiple touchpoints, campaigns can be more frequent on the roads, leading to increased visibility and impact. In other words, the advertiser books only what they need to book. In terms of formats, revolutionary DOOH products and enhanced OOH static assets have been introduced to the UAE market in the past couple of years by BackLite Media to ensure a more sustainable future for the industry.

How is the market growing, and what is BackLite doing to keep their competitive advantage?

We saw good market stats in 2022, and some finetuning can always help for more significant market growth and healthier competition.

BackLite Media will always focus on the finer details to ensure the clients receive unmatched quality. The client investment with BackLite Media reflects their trust in what we do. We commit to ensuring that our client gets a professional journey, and we help our clients by offering a complete OOH plan to create successful campaigns from all aspects.

In short, we treat every campaign as our first ever, WE CARE.

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Dubai is known for its bustling streets, and 2022 was no exception. Traffic in the city has increased recently, but this is good news for out-of-home advertisers. In 2022, our billboards in Dubai saw record-high impressions, with millions of people seeing our billboards each month.

Last year, motorists in UAE cities lost an average of 22 hours as a result of traffic, according to the 2022 Global Traffic Scorecard published by mobility analytics firm Inrix Inc. The research focuses on metropolitan areas in order to evaluate traffic congestion. According to the data, the 22 hours drivers spent waiting in traffic was a 54% increase from 2021. The increase in traffic has been attributed to several factors, including the city’s growing population and the influx of tourists.

While traffic congestion can be frustrating for some, it has excellent advantages for out-of-home advertisers, as more people are exposed to their ads. By understanding consumer behaviour in traffic, brands can target their advertising efforts to reach a broad audience and maximize their return on investment.

After seeing the traffic volume increase report, we decided to look at our own data on BackLite Intelligence. Unsurprisingly, our billboards in Dubai saw a considerable surge in impressions in 2022 during Dubai’s peak tourist season. Our static billboards on Sheikh Zayed Road saw over 150 million impressions and over 30 million pass-bys during October alone.

The significant increase in impressions is a testament to the effectiveness of out-of-home advertising. This is especially true in a city like Dubai, where people are constantly on the move. We are proud to have seen such success in 2022, and we look forward to continuing to reach more people in the future.

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