Dubai: Want to get a coupon offer on a meal at that new restaurant everyone has been talking about? Or participate in a one-off promotional offer from your neighbourhood salon? It’s easy enough ... just get into the lift.
Advertisers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi will soon have the opportunity to build a closer relationship with their target audiences as they move up or down elevators.
Elevision, which pioneered placing screens featuring news and ads in lifts across city towers, is now taking the next logical step.
By Q1-19, it expects to have an app available that will allow lift users to capture advertising messages and promotions on their smartphones directly from elevator screens.
“Hold your phone up to the screen, there will be some image recognition scanning done of the content that is there,” said Niall Sallam, CEO at Elevision.
“Essentially, what the phone then does is extract and cache that content,” the chief executive added. “This bridges the gap between the elevator screen and the mobile, and offers another potential platform for advertisers to get their message across, tactical ones in particular.” The transfer of content happens via beacon technology or Bluetooth.
“Sure, we are not talking about being able to reach the 500,000 cars that a billboard on Shaikh Zayed Road can do. But for most residents in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, getting into and out of lifts is integrated into their daily routines. That’s four to six times a day — for some advertisers it’s a good point of contact.”
Sallam’s emphasis on tactical campaigns make sense.
For advertisers, it will mean another chance to “push” messages to a captive audience, even if it will be for a few seconds at a time. The most likely use would be to push location-specific promotions, which would make sense for the lift user to be a part of. If advertisers want brand building, they had better look elsewhere.
But with all the talk about advertising getting ever more intrusive, wouldn’t it take a lot of convincing — and promotion sweeteners — to get users to download the app and start waving their mobiles close to the screens?
“These are done strictly with opt-in technology,” Sallam said. “None of the messages are being pushed onto the user mobiles if they don’t want to.”
There is no breach of privacy whatsoever, he says.
“Advertisers will have to provide the incentives for users to engage with the screen.”
Elevision already has a network of in-lift screens to get cracking with the new value-addition. There are 800 screens installed at towers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The plan is to start “sandboxing and testing in Q4-18 and launch in Q1-19”.
And with any new tower being completed, it opens up another opportunity for Elevision and its advertisers to get into a new lift. Elevision typically comes into the picture once a tower is complete and the developer/landlord has managed to build up a sizeable occupancy.
“It’s important to have that 75-80 per cent occupancy — for us that’s the trigger to get in,” said Sallam. “We prefer not to get in at the start of construction because there’s always a lag between a tower being completed and tenants moving in. An 80 per cent tower occupancy provides the eyeballs for the screens.”
The company recently picked up a contract from DIFC to install a further 80 screens, including large-format ones, on top of the 64 it already has at the financial district. The phase 1 of the roll-out should be ready by mid-September. (Elevision also operates the 96 metre long and 1.3 metre wide DIFC ticker.)
“Digital out-of-home (advertising) is where we see higher growth in the UAE ad industry,” said Sallam. “As such, the outdoor media scene remains quite active in Dubai, depending on the seasonality. A backlit billboard on SZ Road during the fourth quarter could be at Dh250,000 a month, but go for Dh125,000 in July and August. But demand is definitely there.”
