Lebanon-based out-of-home advertising provider Pikasso recently announced a new partnership with Darabase, a UK-headquartered augmented reality (AR) outdoor media company, to launch a range of innovative mobile AR advertising products across its 13,000+ billboards and screens.

Communicate spoke with Francesca Vicenti, Group Innovation Project Manager, to understand how this move shows change lines in the OOG industry.

What prompted this partnership exactly? 

The many requests from advertisers and agencies to display Augmented Reality (AR) in Out-Of-Home prompted this partnership. We decided to partner up with Darabase because they have ready-to-use solutions that are very easy to implement and that create a real added value from a creative and experiential perspective. Brands can be certain that this partnership offers the best AR services content, which made the association between Pikasso and Darabase an evidence, being always dedicated to bring the best technology to the markets where we are present.   

What categories of clients do you expect to adopt it and why? 

Telecommunications and electronics will be the first ones to adopt AR for their OOH campaigns, as they are always very close to all tech innovations. But, eventually, many other sectors such as automotive, fashion, and personal healthcare are in search of new ideas to engage through a ‘wow’ effect with their customers. 

In which markets will this new offering be deployed and when? 

Our AR offering will be deployed in all of our ten markets immediately, as the main advantage of the Darabase technology is that it is triggered by a QR code that can be displayed on both static and digital billboards. Therefore, our entire inventory is included.  

Could you explain the cost-effectiveness of these solutions? 

The four ready-to-use AR solutions proposed by Darabase have a maximum cost-effectiveness as they are priced under $10,000 a month up to 50,000 impressions. Moreover, the same activation can be run in several markets within the same contract, which makes it affordable for almost any brand.  

Pikasso will rely on Darabase's technical platform, but how important it is for industry players like yourself to engage in digital transformation and how are you approaching that?  

We have engaged in digital transformation for years now, having introduced to our markets every single innovation in DOOH, from selling digital billboards and large formats by network or more contextually (by day, part of the day, on special occasions, or triggered by certain events, etc.) to the introduction of the convergence between mobile & OOH with Bluebite, a NYC-based company that provides QR codes tags, ten years ago. Since the Covid pandemic, QR codes are back in the trend line and everybody is using them on a daily basis.  

Offering AR solutions was long due as brands need to create an environment of qualitative experiences with their customers. So, we are very excited about this partnership, which precedes another big transformational announcement that we will share with you in March.