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Business English: The billboards that speak to your mobile
The technology, which allows posters to „talk“ to mobile phones, has excited advertisers and technology groups and even attracted the attention of credit-card companies hoping to turn these conversations into transactions.Sports fans at the Philips Arena in the US city of Atlanta encountered a strange new kind of advertising during its most recent season. Visitors with Nokia mobile phones were able to hold their handsets up to one of a series of posters and see relevant content appear on the handset screen.
The technology, which allows posters to "talk" to mobile phones, has excited advertisers and technology groups and even attracted the attention of credit-card companies hoping to turn these conversations into transactions.
At the Philips Arena, the phones electronically read data from a tiny device called a near field communication (NFC) tag embedded in the poster. The data prompted the phone to access a website containing downloadable content. What looked like a static poster then gave mobile phone users access to ringtones, wallpapers, screensavers and video clips.
"They were getting video, graphics and other information relevant to the event taking place that night," says David Lee, vice-president of business development for Atlanta Spirit, which owns the stadium and its basketball and hockey teams. "We see promotional value and a brand extension opportunity to let the fans get information at a moment's notice." The venue now plans to launch the service commercially.
Creating "smart" posters that can make more information available is a way of extending a brand, says Jonathan Morgan, sales and finance director at Hypertag, a company which makes the communication devices. Hypertag has been selling smart poster technology since 2003. Instead of using NFC chips, it stores larger amounts of data on a memory device attached to retail displays. Rather than redirect the phone's browser to a website, the device itself contains all the content and sends it directly to the phone.
Originally, Hypertag used an infrared signal to link the poster to the phone. Now it relies on Bluetooth radio technology, typically used for wireless headsets.
While NFCs are designed to work in very close proximity to the mobile phone (people must touch the poster with the phone), Bluetooth radio has a communication radius of some 10m.
Mr Morgan cites three reasons why companies are willing to pay to use its technology in advertising campaigns. "The first is that it increases the impact of the advertising," he says.
"The second is that we can increase the amount of time that you spend interacting with the brand." The third, he says, is measurability, since the devices record the number of people connecting.
Whereas the Bluetooth devices cost several hundred pounds (they can also be rented), NFC tags cost around 50 euro cents per unit in volume, says Christophe Duverne, vice-president and general manager, identification, at Philips Semiconductors, which made the NFC chips used in the Philips Arena trial. However, while Bluetooth capability is common in today's phones, NFC readers in handsets are still largely non-existent. "We will see those deployed in volume in 2007 and 2008," he says. Beyond promotional uses for the technology, credit-card companies are also keen to get involved. Visa and MasterCard have initiatives to put credit-card account details into NFC-enabled handsets, essentially turning the phone into a credit card.
In future, users could tap the phone on a poster advertising a music compact disc or video game and pay for it directly via a web form automatically filled out with credit-card details stored in the phone, says MasterCard. Reinventing the advertising medium as a point of sale could bring new perspectives to impulse buying.
Heikki Huomo, chief technology officer at Innovision Research and Technology, an NFC reader development company, hopes that the chips will be embedded directly in products, too. "Today, we focus on helping people to make purchase decisions, but the electronic link from the product to the website is valuable after the purchase," says Mr Huomo.
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FTD.de, 11.09.2006
© 2006 Financial Times Deutschland,
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