IDOOH: Interactive In-vehicle Screens for Impactful Advertising

What if taxi service providers offered a tablet-like interactive platform to passengers during their hour-long rides? Will passengers prefer such a platform over their smartphones to keep themselves entertained? “Since not many consumers in Southeast Asia enjoy the benefits of unlimited data plans, their tendency to indulge in the engaging content offered to them in taxis increases,” reasons Mark Forsyth, CEO of IDOOH—a Singapore-based provider of in-vehicle screen platforms. When Burger King was in need of an innovative strategy to launch and create awareness about its product “King Box” in Singapore, IDOOH came up with an interactive game and deployed it on screens in all ComfortDelGRo taxis across the island country. The game involved catching burgers, fries, and other ingredients of the King Box and collecting them in a movable basket within a certain timeframe, and the winners of the game would receive redeemable Burger King coupons via email.

Not only did a majority of people play the game but also entered their email addresses and redeemed the vouchers at Burger King outlets. The campaign attracted 366,533 impressions in a span of mere four weeks, leading to an excellent engagement rate of 5.07 percent with 18,588 engagements. In addition, 4095 voucher emails resulted in an acquisition rate of 22 percent. These numbers rightly illustrate the potential of interactive platforms in delivering impactful digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising. Although the King Box campaign was a huge success, it wasn’t achieved by IDOOH’s content-rich platform singlehandedly; the company’s ability to track fleet and engagement data played an equally significant role.

“An efficient analysis of data associated with passengers’ preferences enables us to monitor the frequency of engagement and also estimate when and where passengers engage with our platform the most,” adds Forsyth.

IDOOH also lays significant emphasis on logistics as varying regulations in different Asian countries make hardware deployment and functioning with rideshare drivers challenging. Besides, countries in Southeast Asia have diverse cultures and are at different levels of technological development, which eradicates the feasibility of a one-for-all platform. As a result, understanding the needs of clients and partners in every country is crucial. IDOOH’s ability to blend with a country’s culture is a key factor for the company’s success in a large and heterogeneous Southeast Asian market. In fact, Southeast Asia’s growing population along with heavy traffic on roads is what led to the creation of IDOOH’s adaptive platform.

A majority of IDOOH’s clients are advertising agencies with existing TVCs for the brands they represent. These agencies require IDOOH to showcase their campaigns in the form of JPEG files, mp4, or treatments on thousands of screens across major cities—a task which the company completes within 24-48 hours. By further providing the hardware and backend systems to clients, IDOOH eventually assumes a consulting role, guiding clients to make optimum use of every possibility that an interactive touch-screen platform offers. The company’s client-oriented business approach—ensuring a constant dialog with clients and the target markets—has helped the company install 5000 screens so far. By investing in innovative features like geo-location, day-parting, big data, and presence recognition which allows personalization of all kinds, IDOOH is right on track to raise the number of screens deployed to 10,000 by the end of 2018. Furthermore, the company plans to extend its services to Australia and Thailand by the end of this year and later to Europe and the Middle East.

The biggest advantage of IDOOH’s platform is the ability to adapt to any form of narrative optimally, providing easy customization to clients. “No matter what the customization request is, if you can dream it, we can deliver it,” concludes Forsyth.