Product News | October 11, 2021

How Go2Digital is making a premium play for the Croatian DOOH market

A small coastal nation across the sea from Italy, Croatia is perhaps best known for its stunning beaches, rich history and for being one of the Game of Thrones filming locations. However, look behind the scenes and you’ll see that it has also become home to an exciting shift towards smart city infrastructure.

Leading this transformation is Go2Digital, a young company with big ambition. Its mission: to become the sole Croatian destination for digital out-of-home.

Bringing the DOOH industry home

Go2Digital was created in 2014 in response to two important observations:

  1. Out-of-home, and particularly digital out-of-home, was a hot industry worldwide
  2. There were no big DOOH networks in Croatia

With Croatia’s population topping out at a little over 4 million, the founders realized that fast action could allow them to capture a large proportion of the national market. First targeting the shopping mall vertical, the company jumped in with 100 screens in 21 of Croatia’s 30 largest malls. This was followed by investments in premium outdoor screens in Zagreb’s Main Square, as well as on other top streets in Croatian cities.

Today, the company boasts 203 screens across the country. This includes locations in the 19 largest Croatian cities and 28 of Croatia’s 30 largest malls. Go2Digital estimates that its network allows it to reach 95 per cent of the urban Croatian population, making it one of the three widest-reaching media networks in the country. And still, Go2Digital sees this only as the beginning of an even more expansive network of screens. As it grows, it intends for its premium locations and cross-country presence to make it the go-to DOOH network within Croatia.

A high-tech sheen to every screen

As it has developed, Go2Digital has continually introduced innovative and captivating technologies to its network. A prime example of the results of this investment is the ‘Seastar Diver’ campaign that Go2Digital ran for Croatian Telecom to promote its sponsorship of the Sea Star music festival. With this campaign, a display’s audience was invited to connect to a large screen via their mobile phone. This turned their phones into controls for playing a game on the big screen. The campaign was a big hit, and a great showcase of the tech behind Go2Digital’s network.

Visual recognition is another area that Go2Digital has experimented with to great success. Early in 2018, a special campaign was developed for the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S9. People who passed by the display were presented with emojis in their likeness, with the option to snap a photo by smiling for the display’s camera. This, too, proved popular with Go2Digital’s audience.

Additionally, the company works with the Quividi digital signage analytics platform to gain deep insight into the performance of the screens on its network. This helps the company track how many people see screens and ads, ensuring Go2Digital can accurately price its inventory. It also offers insight into the demographic makeup that sees a given display. This makes it easier for brands and agencies to target their content for the greatest impact.

The future calls

One exciting project being undertaken by Go2Digital is an update of Croatia’s public telephone network. Existing facilities were underused and losing money. However, they held important positions in high-traffic areas and were a public necessity. Inspired by similar projects taking place elsewhere, Go2Digital put together a plan to modernize the phones.

The result: goodbye payphones and hello free communications hubs! Go2Digital’s new phone booths offer free phone calls, WiFi hotspots and interactive screens. In the near future, payment systems and an information service will be introduced for even greater convenience. All of this is supported financially by advertising content delivered to the phone booths’ screens. Once struggling financially, Croatia’s public phones are now becoming sustainable and useful to more people.

Go2Digital and Broadsign

With a countrywide network and plans for aggressive expansion, Go2Digital requires a powerful content management system. For this, it turns to Broadsign.

With the intuitive dashboards included in the Broadsign platform, Go2Digital can streamline monitoring and maintenance and deliver the high-quality service its clients demand, all with little effort expended. This leaves more time and resources to devote to the sales and technological development the company needs to pursue its goals. If ever they encounter an issue with a screen anywhere on their national network, they can immediately catch and fix it remotely.

Best of all, the platform scales up easily. However large Go2Digital gets, it will be able to maintain the same level of efficiency and quality that its clients appreciate today.

Product News | October 11, 2021

PATTISON Modernizes its Out-of-Home Technology Stack with Broadsign

Partnership streamlines daily operations and unlocks new revenue potential; enables PATTISON clients to maximize OOH campaigns

Montreal, Canada, April 25, 2024 – Out-of-home (OOH) ad tech leader Broadsign today announced that PATTISON Outdoor Advertising, a leading Canadian OOH media owner, has adopted the full Broadsign OOH technology stack. With Broadsign already providing a centralized hub for its programmatic digital OOH (DOOH) workflows, the expanded partnership now enables PATTISON to dynamically manage and optimize its OOH inventory to unlock previously untapped revenue opportunities. The partnership also opens up new ways for brands to book campaigns on PATTISON inventory with a more targeted, impression-based approach and accelerates the rate at which PATTISON can display client ads across its OOH inventory, spanning urban pathways, residential and office buildings, transit hubs, airports, and other venues across Canada.

Providing a near real-time ad scheduling workflow comprising advanced optimization and prioritization tools, the Broadsign platform is helping PATTISON reallocate time previously spent on manual campaign pacing and adding daily plays to bump up the delivery of low-pacing campaigns. Broadsign’s optimization engine works on a play-by-play or impression level based on each campaign’s goals, and enables PATTISON’s sales team to easily find more available inventory, even in high sellout periods. With the updated OOH platform, PATTISON can now easily customize campaigns to align with client needs. Since beginning its rollout of the new platform in early March, it has powered OOH campaigns for some of PATTISON’s largest clients, including Holt Renfrew, Lotto Quebec, McDonald’s, and Tim Hortons. 

“In evaluating our options, the Broadsign tech stack quickly emerged as the best fit, especially for our ad-serving needs. It lets us maximize yield and revenue potential while ensuring pDOOH campaigns can be seamlessly executed based on client goals, with little to no manual intervention,” shared PATTISON Director of Digital Innovation Jessica Littlejohn. “Our digital product offering has never been more robust than with Broadsign at its core, and our team has more time to do what we do best – understand and help our clients achieve their objectives.”

Echoing Littlejohn’s sentiments, PATTISON President Steve McGregor, added, “The support the Broadsign team has provided along the journey has been instrumental in helping us to achieve our business goals and prepare for our next phase of growth.”

“PATTISON is an industry trailblazer with a reputation for always being one step ahead of the curve. It was one of the first media owners to offer full-scale programmatic DOOH and advanced audience-based targeting options,” shared Maarten Dollevoet, Chief Revenue Officer, Broadsign. “PATTISON’s commitment to evolving its digital toolset to prepare for the next wave of OOH is inspiring, and we’re excited to partner with them to help them reach their goals.”

About Broadsign

Broadsign empowers media owners, agencies, and brands to harness the power and reach of out-of-home to connect with audiences in ways unlike any other advertising channel. More than 1.5 million static and digital signs along roadways and in airports, shopping malls, retailers, health clinics, transit systems, electric vehicle charging stations, and more run on Broadsign, reaching audiences at multiple touchpoints throughout the consumer journey. The Broadsign Platform helps media owners such as Outfront, Pattison Outdoor, Global, and Intersection streamline business operations and maximize revenue opportunities while enabling marketers and agencies to more easily plan and execute dynamic OOH campaigns that resonate with audiences. Brands spanning AB InBev, Disney, FanDuel, H&M, Honda, HP, Johnson & Johnson, KLM, Uber Eats, Sea-Doo, Samsonite, and many more have run successful programmatic DOOH campaigns enabled by Broadsign technology. https://broadsign.com

About PATTISON 

PATTISON Outdoor Advertising, a division of The Jim Pattison Group is Canada’s largest Out-of-Home advertising company. PATTISON Outdoor helps brands and businesses harness the power of Out-of-Home advertising by providing the most comprehensive range of products, markets, insights and customer support services. With its roots reaching back to 1908, PATTISON has been providing innovative solutions for Out-of-Home advertising opportunities with products ranging from traditional billboards to transit, digital, airport, residential, office, and street level formats. PATTISON is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario with over 25 sales offices across the country, providing advertisers unmatched reach and coverage with products available in over 200 markets coast to coast.

Product News | October 11, 2021

What’s new in the Broadsign Platform: Sophisticated targeting, creative management and UI improvements

Spring has finally sprung, which means fresh air, greenery, and, most importantly, fresh updates to the Broadsign Platform. This season we are bringing you sophisticated targeting tools, streamlined creative management, and major UI improvements to make the campaign planning and management process for directly-sold campaigns as seamless as possible for campaign planners. 

Why does this matter? While the activation process for digital out-of-home (DOOH) may only require a couple of minutes, the campaign planning and management process often requires much more time. Discovering available and relevant inventory, collecting data to prove the medium’s effectiveness in meeting campaign goals, and managing campaign creatives are all time-consuming tasks.

The new spring updates introduce a new level of automation that not only reduces the time and complexities of getting DOOH campaigns out the door but also helps make out-of-home (OOH) a competitive and attractive medium for buyers. Let’s dive in!

Sophisticated targeting tools that find the best inventory 

We don’t believe granular targeting should be just for programmatic buys. That’s why media owner campaign planners who plan, execute, and monitor directly-sold campaigns through the Broadsign Platform now have access to the same flexibility and comprehensive targeting capabilities as online and programmatic media buyers. 

With our new targeting tools*, you can now filter your inventory by location and key points of interest (POIs), enabling campaign planners to find the most relevant inventory for each campaign at the click of a button. You now also have access to an intuitive map visualization that displays your inventory with quick filtering by area, support for bulk location uploads, and setting radius parameters. 

These additions to the Broadsign Platform not only cut down on the manual work required for inventory discovery but also provide your team the opportunity to be more of a strategic partner to buyers. 

For your sales team – who juggle multiple responsibilities, like business development, client relations, creating proposals, negotiating deals, and overseeing campaign execution and performance –  they can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time advising buyers on the effectiveness of OOH and its complimentary effect with other mediums. For your campaign planners – who often juggle multiple campaigns at once – they can plan and set up campaigns a lot quicker, freeing themselves to focus on more critical tasks. 

*Disclaimer: For sophisticated targeting capabilities, you must be fully migrated to the Broadsign Platform and be located in the following supported countries – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States of America. 

Simplified creative management and centralized campaign planning

Media owners juggle multiple campaigns and creatives at the same time, and without the right tools, the creative management process can become complex and stressful for your teams. Our new creative management tools now allow you to create, edit, manage, and assign campaign creatives with ease. On top of that, you’ll also be able to push your campaigns live – all within a single unified workflow through the Broadsign Platform.

In this update to the Broadsign Platform, you can now manage creative bundles for each of your campaigns directly through a new web-based workflow, eliminating the need to go through the Broadsign desktop tools. This enhancement provides your team with greater flexibility by allowing them to access and manage their campaigns from any location at any time. 

We think you’ll also love how intuitive and easy-to-use the campaign planning tools are to adopt. Users of all technical proficiency levels can quickly learn and use this streamlined approach to create and manage campaigns with ease. 

Additional management tools for an improved user experience

Along with comprehensive creative management and targeting tools for directly-sold campaigns, additional tools and UI enhancements have been added to improve the usability and user experience of the Broadsign Platform:

The Guaranteed Campaigns module is now fully integrated into the Broadsign Platform

We’ve fully integrated the Guaranteed Campaigns module, formerly called Broadsign Direct, into the platform interface. This consolidation allows you to more conveniently manage campaigns, packages, and settings directly from the Broadsign Platform, eliminating the need to visit the original stand-alone application. 

Inventory package accessibility

Access inventory packages effortlessly through the platform’s updated navigation bar, enhancing efficiency and ease of use.

Centralized settings management

Administrators can now adjust and manage all necessary settings for digital and static inventory, user management, and more directly within the platform’s web-based UI through a centralized hub for control and configuration.

Campaign monitoring enhancements

With the newly implemented progress indicator, real-time monitoring of campaign pacing is now possible, giving immediate insight into campaign performance. This allows for quick adjustments to be made, as needed, to meet campaign goals effectively.

Search functionality and filters

An improved search mechanism, complemented by additional filters like campaign, client or contract names, enables quicker and more accurate campaign retrieval, saving time and improving workflow.

Dashboard customization

Tailor the platform’s dashboard to meet individual needs, ensuring that the most relevant and important information is always front and center.

Want to know more? 

Here’s a short FAQ to provide you with some answers to some questions you might have regarding our latest updates:

What do I need to do to prepare for the update?
There’s no need to do anything to prepare for the update. It will be applied automatically to your Broadsign Platform account.

Will all my users have access to creative management?
Admins automatically have access, and we’ve also created two new creative user roles which would also have access, if granted. Take a look at our documentation for more information on roles.

Will this affect any of my API integrations?
No, there will be no impact on the use of APIs or any integrations.

Will the update affect my existing campaigns?
No, the update will not affect your existing campaigns.

Will I still be able to access the original Guaranteed Campaigns (Broadsign Direct) interface?
Yes, however only by using this URL. The Broadsign Platform will now no longer redirect you to the old interface. 

Will https://direct.broadsign.com still work?
Yes, however we highly encourage you to use the new Broadsign Platform moving forward as new features and improvements may only be accessible there.

Interested in testing out these new features? Book a demo today