Axis solutions at the heart of cutting-edge digital advertising technology solution

LUMO Digital is New Zealand’s only nationwide, pure-play digital media network. In 2021, it partnered with LENS to provide audience analysis for digital display advertising. The two organisations launched a new digital display advertising solution, aiming to give advertisers and marketing professionals a unique, insightful experience for Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) marketing.

Rather than continuing with the ‘scattergun’ approach, which has proven popular and effective for many years, Out Of Home (OOH) marketing – large, bright visual displays at roadsides near shopping centres, airports and other areas of high pedestrian and vehicle traffic – needed to evolve and start taking advantage of modern technology by providing much deeper insights into an audience, and allowing the advertiser to adjust their message in real-time.

Previously, marketers would spend a lot of time, effort and capital on researching where their target demographic was most likely to see, respond to an advertising banner or display, and install it, hoping for the best.

LUMO Digital needed a new solution that drilled much deeper into specific details about the traffic passing one of these display advertisements, giving marketers more control over what ads are displayed, to whom they are displayed, and when. Essentially, this allows much more targeted and effective advertising and, therefore, a better use of marketing budgets. 

“Out of Home advertising has struggled to fully embrace the emergence of digital due to a lack of audience transparency and accountability. The long-term solution for Digital Out Of Home operators is to use purpose-built technology that captures meaningful data, which in turn offers insights to its customers about the audiences they are providing,” said Robin Arnold, Chief Technology Officer at LENS.

The LUMO Outdoor and LENS solution captures images specifically from passing vehicles, using advanced Licence Plate Recognition (LPR) technology coupled with high-resolution video cameras. At the core of this new technology, a range of Axis video cameras capture clear images of the advertising audience, which are then streamed back to the central LENS hub for analysis. 

The solution uses AXIS Q1700-LE License Plate Cameras, featuring ANPR software from Vaxtor, which is embedded into the advanced processing chips in each Axis camera. The company currently has a network of 60 AXIS Q1700-LE License Plate Cameras operating in New Zealand. LUMO Outdoor also uses AXIS M5525-E Network Cameras for high-quality PoP photos and live streaming across all digital display sites.

Data from each Axis camera on the ANPR network is updated to servers every five minutes. The LENS platform then collates that data, filtering it so that the team at LUMO Outdoor and their clients can view data on their dashboard every hour in real time. That way, organisations with a lot of capital invested in their display advertising can gain deep insights into aspects of the campaign, such as the volume of traffic passing an ad, the make and model of the cars, direction they are passing.

“LENS streams in real-time, with millions of data points taken from the site-based Axis cameras. These form the audience insights without any modelling, trickery or confusion, simply reporting what the cameras see twenty-four-seven, and live-streaming the data back to the LENS hub for analysis,” explains Arnold.

The Axis cameras provide data to the LENS platform in the form of cumulative and unique reach, visitor frequency, site-based demographics and motor vehicle information, including type, make, model and age. In order to maintain an accuracy level of above 90 percent, LENS built software which measures, checks and verifies each licence plate read at every site via the two Axis cameras in each deployment.

During the test phase, LENS performed a number of site tests across the network. The Axis cameras performed the best across all parameters during testing. The cameras were also selected due to the reputation of Axis hardware for maintaining operational excellence in all weather conditions. The cameras are designed to withstand conditions such as heat and cold, rain, snow, humidity and dust. Again, all cameras were tested upon installation, deployed upon the physical structures across various different angles and subjected to a range of challenges.

“We used Axis cameras for a number of reasons, which include reliability, quality and the reputation for excellence that the brand has,” continues Arnold. “We selected AXIS Q1700-LE for its processing power, as well as the Vaxtor onboard software and the quality of the image. We needed the onsite equipment to be the best on the market, allowing us to gain the ultimate accuracy and reliability for the LENS platform.”

The LENS platform, in conjunction with the Axis cameras, gives advertising clients insights and campaign validation, unlike any other OOH operator. The platform and information provided by the cameras offer stakeholders the ability to be smarter in planning campaigns and improve the return-on-investment of their advertising spend.