ClearChannel expanding its interactive bus shelter program

January 21, 2011 by Dave Haynes

Those very cool giant touchscreens that Clear Channel Out of Home has been running at selected bush shelters in San Francisco and (didn’t know this part) Washington, D.C. went off well enough that the program is being expanded.

Twenty new interactive digital shelters have been installed on major public transportation routes in San Francisco with plans for further expansion in both the Bay Area and other markets in 2011,” said a release.

The San Francisco program, done with Coca-Cola and Yahoo (the one that we’ve reported), involves 20 interactive digital transit shelters that work like smartphone screens – 72-inches instead of 4.1 or whatever. In the case of Yahoo campaign, transit riders and people just walking by could stop and play a selection of games and compete with others for points.

“The units are sold in four-week increments,” Jordy Ford, vice president of digital development at Clear Channel. “We are working with lots of clients in technology and media to find interactive applications to run on these screens.”

Ford said the overall goal is to create a turnkey solution. “The idea is to take customers’ mobile and tablet apps and re-purpose them for these screens without losing functionality.”

Clever. Reduces development cost and probably ensures a much higher quality experience.

In the nine weeks since the campaign launched over 150,000 game plays have been initiated. Obscura Digital and Clear Channel Outdoor created a groundbreaking reporting system, to collect real time data. Interaction data has the ability to prompt dynamic adjustments to the content, creating a more effective campaign. With Yahoo!, the reporting system measured game play, time, location, usage trends and click streams.

The San Francisco bus shelter network delivers free Wi-Fi access to the surrounding area, creating tremendous opportunities to deliver a new level of creativity in integrating the Outdoor advertising medium with mobile and social media. Furthermore, the state of the art touch screens have been developed to withstand harsh outdoor elements including rain, direct sun and temperature variations.

The first-of-its-kind interactive digital transit shelter campaign was launched in partnership with Yahoo!, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the City of San Francisco, ACNE Production and Obscura Digital. Kinetic orchestrated the media buy with Clear Channel Outdoor for the Yahoo! program.