Take your digital signage mobile with XOGO.

Put your message on the move with car-top digital signage.

When you think of digital signage, you probably think of digital screens in a waiting room, retail store or maybe in your local coffee shop. But we're seeing a new and fascinating trend these days, with innovative brands running digital signage across LED screens that are mounted on top of cars and even on the side of trucks and lorries.

Why take signage mobile?

The primary benefit of car-top digital signage is increased visibility. While a standard outdoor sign can only been seen by people passing by on the street or sidewalk, a car-top sign is regularly traveling around the city, being seen by far more viewers and demographics.

Thanks to GPS functionality and XOGO's APIs, it's even possible to program the signage player so that it plays different content depending upon its location within a city. Imagine an Über car moving across New York City, as an example. When the car is in Chelsea it can run ads for participating businesses in that neighborhood, then change its content automatically when the car travels over to Brooklyn, in order to show ads relevant to businesses in that market. It all happens without any interaction from the driver. In the future, some advertisers are looking into connecting sensors to these displays, in order to deliver accurate ad-impression KPIs for the advertisers (i.e. how many people looked at the screen for 3 seconds or more as it passed by).

How it Works

Our typical car-top digital signage customer already has a fleet of vehicles that are moving around an urban area, i.e. taxis or delivery services. They may have a list of local customers that are interested to place ads on these vehicles, and/or they may want to work with a programmatic advertising exchange like Vistar Media (our partner) in order to pull in ads from national brands and monetize their screens. Once the demand for advertising is established, there are four components required in order to actually set up the car-top signage network.

LED Screen

Several manufacturers offer LED screens that can be attached to the top of a vehicle, typically via strong magnets. These screens are weatherproof, and typically vary in price according to their size and their "pixel pitch". The latter term is the measurement (in millimeters) between two adjacent pixels. A smaller pixel pitch (lower number) is better, as it means there are more LED pixels per square inch / centimeter. Just like a 4K television is sharper and has a higher resolution than a 1080HD television, an LED screen with a 1.6mm pixel pitch is sharper (but higher priced) than one with a 2 or 2.5mm pixel pitch. Expect to pay between USD $2500-5000 per LED screen, depending upon size and pixel pitch.

Media Player

Some car-top LED screens can be purchased with a built-in media player, while others simply have an input (similar to a TV) that allows you to plug in your own media player. XOGO is compatible with both, since we run natively on most operating systems, and also offer our own affordable media player, the XOGO Mini Max.

Look for a system that incorporates the latest version of Android, with plenty of RAM for video playback, and a hard drive large enough to accommodate all of your ad content. Also considering your connectivity needs - do you only need to update the media player when it's connected to WiFi, or do you need to have LTE connectivity so you can send content updates to the media players while they're moving around the city? This part can be intimidating but don't worry; please contact us via the form below and we'll be happy to discuss your project and offer recommendations.

Power Inverter

This bit may be obvious, but typically a power inverter is required in order to turn the 12V power from the automobile into a standard 110 or 220V signal (like in your house or business). These inverters are fairly inexpensive and can normally be plugged into the round 12V outlet in the trunk of your car. They allow devices like screens and media players to plug right into the inverter, like you were plugging into a standard wall outlet.

Digital Signage CMS

The final component of your solution is the digital signage content management system (CMS). Some car-top LED systems claim to have a built-in CMS, but there are several red flags to look for. Most of those CMS system are not cloud-based, so you can't update the content remotely when you need (many rely on USB sticks). They may not support content that's the same resolution as the LED screen, meaning that your content can appear pixellated or have letterboxing (black bars) on the sides. And they typically don't have the ability to adjust content playback in real time based upon the GPS location data coming from the media player, or to interface with programmatic ad platforms like XOGO does.

Summary

Car-top digital signage is growing rapidly in popularity, and can be an excellent way for brands to get their ads noticed. Since the content can be programmed to change depending on the location of the vehicle, they’re also an excellent way to hyper-local advertising to small businesses. Please contact us if you're considering setting up a car-top signage network; we'd love to discuss your project and its unique requirements.

Take-Aways

• Car-top digital signage allows advertisers to drastically increase ad impressions

• It's possible to adjust content playback based upon live GPS location data

• LED screen pricing varies according to size and pixel pitch (resolution)

• Media players can be connected to LTE in order to receive content updates in the field

• Beware of CMS systems that promise a lot but underdeliver in the mobile space

• XOGO has loads of experience in the car-top signage space; please contact us to discuss your project