“What did that sign say?” If you say you’ve nev­er asked a pas­sen­ger that while dri­ving down a high­way, you’re lying. Sta­t­ic bill­boards and traf­fic signs are easy to miss, espe­cial­ly when you have to con­cen­trate on the road in traf­fic. So what’s the answer for adver­tis­ers and traf­fic agencies?

One is the dig­i­tal bill­boards that change their mes­sage every few sec­onds, but they’re still sta­tion­ary and only allow for mul­ti­ple ads in a sin­gle sign. Anoth­er is using the sides and backs of large trucks as mov­ing bill­boards. Now we’re get­ting some­where, but there are still down­sides. Like the fact that paint­ed or print­ed ads don’t change, so local or region­al adver­tis­ing isn’t very fea­si­ble on a truck that trav­els cross-coun­try or even cross-con­ti­nent. Dig­i­tal sig­nage on truck can fix that prob­lem, but they’re hard to see in day­light and can be blind­ing to dri­vers at night.

Elec­tron­ic sig­nage com­pa­ny Visionect is solv­ing all of these prob­lems in part­ner­ship with Mer­cedes and Ger­many’s Road­Ads, cre­at­ing e‑ink Road­Ad dis­plays for the backs of trucks that are easy to read (because they use four con­nect­ed e‑ink boards to cre­ate one 3x5 ad space), mobile (because they’re on the back of over the road trucks, of course), and can be used for local or region­al adver­tis­ing. This last fea­ture is accom­plished through GPS, wifi, and 4G tech­nolo­gies to down­load appro­pri­ate ads for the area the truck is in, and they’re accu­rate with­in 16 feet. I doubt the adver­tis­ing land­scape will change much over 16 feet.

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing truck-based adver­tis­ing to dri­vers, which accord­ing to sur­veys gen­er­ates 2.5 times more inter­est than sta­t­ic bill­boards, these dis­plays can also pro­vide valu­able ser­vices like warn­ings of upcom­ing traf­fic prob­lems or delays, weath­er warn­ings, or how far it is to the next gas sta­tion. Not to men­tion infor­ma­tion like need­ing to take the next exit to get to such-and-such restaurant.

The oppor­tu­ni­ty is pret­ty huge. Up to 94% of peo­ple sur­veyed remem­bered see­ing a mobile bill­board like these, and 80% remem­bered the ads in spe­cif­ic detail. Most of us can’t recall what half of the tele­vi­sion ads we watch are actu­al­ly for, just that they had some­thing cute or inter­est­ing in them (if that much). There are 2.8 mil­lion trucks in Ger­many alone (the test mar­ket), and each one gets 50,000 vies per day. That’s prob­a­bly more than your blog.

Visionect signs are dust resis­tant and water­proof, as would be expect­ed of a dig­i­tal sign affixed to the back of a big rig, and use very lit­tle pow­er because they’re e‑ink rather than LED or LCD, so they don’t require any back­light­ing. The first five trucks will hit the road this Novem­ber in Ger­many as part of the pilot tri­al, but this is an idea which has great poten­tial to take off quick­ly and spread just quick­ly. We could eas­i­ly be see­ing these truck-based dig­i­tal dis­play ads in lots of coun­tries and in huge num­bers with­in a cou­ple short years.

Visionect might well become a strong draw for mar­keters, dri­vers, truck­ing com­pa­nies, and any num­ber of jobs in the elec­tron­ics or tech­nol­o­gy fields. What about you? See an inter­est­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty in this?

(Image cred­it: Road­Ads)