This LED Ad Display Flies Around

October 17, 2024 by Dave Haynes

Airplanes have been towing printed advertising banners across city skylines for decades, so it was inevitable that someone would develop a service that uses heavy-duty drones to carry suspended promotions and ad banners, including digital ones.

Here’s a video of a Japanese company’s LED Vision Drone, based on a remote-controlled drone that can carry a payload of roughly 220 pounds and move as quickly as 40 miles per hour. One qualifier – its flight time is maybe 10 minutes.

The company, MPLUSPLUS, worked with another firm dox inc. to develop the service. They describe it this way:

The cloth display of the LED portion unveiled  measures 2.6 meters wide and 6.8 meters long, incorporating a full-color LED array of 17,280 units. The specifications of the attached LEDs, as well as the wireless LED control devices and batteries, are all designed and manufactured in-house. The LED screen can be customized not only in terms of size and LED pitch but also in shape, allowing for various forms such as humanoid figures or product silhouettes based on specific requests.

I would put this in the same bucket as the barges that cruise just offshore from popular beaches with big LED ad boards facing the people out in the sun for some R&R. It’s technically possible and some brands would undoubtedly buy it, but I doubt many people would welcome it. Then again, it’s just another ad delivery mechanism as loved or as hated as digital billboards and ads running on semi-transparent mesh LEDs on the sides of buildings.

Given the flight time, I’d imagine this is the sort of thing that would be used more for events than booked campaigns.