Overview & Vision
New technological developments in areas such as blockchain and artificial intelligence are sending shockwaves of disruption throughout many traditional industries, with such new innovations highlighting crippling weak points in aging traditional operational mechanisms. The monolithic $34bn out-of-home (OOH), or billboard, advertising sector- plagued by inefficiencies and lacking transparency- is no exception and is a shining example of an outmoded industry crying out for modernisation which has the potential to be disrupted immeasurably, in a way no less than revolutionary, by the innovative potential of the combination that is blockchain and artificial intelligence.
The team at Bidooh are attempting to usher in this new technology-driven evolution of the OOH industry, in an impressive merging of concepts from the physical and digital advertising sectors. Powered by blockchain and artificial intelligence, Bidooh endeavour to deliver a transparent, freely accessible, real-time digital advertising platform and network; by utilising their array of distributed physical digital billboards, equipped with facial recognition cameras and software, any advertiser can quickly and effectively deliver an advert specifically to their intended audience. Essentially, Bidooh is able to facilitate the delivery of advertisements to the right people at the right time, in an ultra-targeted, lightning fast, and verifiable manner.
Exactly how, we are about to explore.
Current Industry Situation
Bidooh is a project dripping with disruptive innovation, which is long past due for the outdated dinosaur that is the traditional billboard industry. The OOH sector is plagued by crippling issues relating largely to three core areas: accessibility, efficiency, and transparency.
Increased costs resulting from a plethora of middlemen, alongside minimum campaign spends, prohibit many businesses and individuals from being able to participate in traditional OOH advertising. Those who are financially able have to endure the cumbersome booking and payment process, and simply wait for their allocated advertisement slot/s; advertisers are required to book weeks or even months in advance, meaning a painful stagnation of business marketing until that time- a time in which the market may have completely altered since booking. This cost prohibitive, ultra-inefficient operational mechanism is simply cripplingly outdated, and needs to be fundamentally disrupted for the betterment of the current industry advancing forwards.
The overwhelmingly more detrimental flaw in the current OOH advertising industry, as is the case with most traditional advertising avenues, is the lack of transparency and therefore advertiser clarity within the entire process. The rateable value of advertising space is typically measured in footfall of the surrounding location, however the presented footfall figures are inherently extremely difficult to verify. Moreover, further data regarding how many individuals have actually noticed your advert- and especially who- is currently practically impossible to attain. OOH advertisers are left with little option but to rely on the questionable information presented to them by their chosen venue, leaving them with very little valuable campaign data and an inherent reliance on a positively-incentivised third party for information.
Effective tackling of these issues requires an innovative combination of cutting-edge technology, accessibility, and transparency.
Bidooh’s Solution
Bidooh’s innovative combination of easy-to-use advertiser interface, AI-powered superior ad targeting, and blockchain-enabled transparent data management has produced an openly accessible, ultra-targeted and verifiably transparent advertising opportunity for advertisers. Bidooh’s approach has huge ramifications for the potential opportunities of OOH advertisers.
Bidooh Platform
Bidooh have built a platform which enables advertisers to easily utilise their network of distributed, decentralised digital billboards to display adverts almost instantly to their chosen target audience, at their chosen location/s. Using Bidooh’s platform, advertisers are able to efficiently and effectively create, publish and monitor adverts- all from one convenient central hub. Bidooh claim that ads can appear within 60 seconds on the screen/s of choice, and the platform also hosts the advertiser’s campaign data, which is immediately available for user analysis. This presents an impressively effective solution to the plethora of traditional ad management inefficiencies and transparency issues which currently plague the space.
Some of Bidooh's existing billboards, with example snapshots of the ad monitoring platform. Individual images from the Bidooh website: https://bidooh.io/ and whitepaper: https://bidooh.io/whitepaper/whitepaper.pdf
It’s the innovative fusion of online advertising with the physical OOH advertising industry which makes the concept so ingenious; following the operational model set by online solutions such as Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, Bidooh will remove minimum campaign spends (by utilising an Adwords-style bidding system) and term contracts by presenting the ability for advertisers to purchase ads in extremely small instances (as little as one 10 second slot), whilst for the first time facilitating this type of blockchain-enabled opportunity in the physical real-world.
The team plan to gradually integrate further platform features over time alongside project development and expansion- Bidooh’s platform will evolve dynamically alongside their network, depending on its requirements.
Intelligent Ad Delivery
Bidooh’s network of digital billboards are equipped with built-in cameras and AI-powered recognition software to accurately and instantly gather key demographic information for the purposes of ultimately providing a superior marketing experience for both the advertiser and the viewer. Bidooh enables ads to be displayed to individuals depending on a range of demographic factors (such as age, gender, hair colour) specifically selected by the advertiser, thereby at once delivering adverts in an ultra-targeted manner whilst presenting individuals with vastly more relevant (and personally interesting) ads.
Audience selection options, taken from the Bidooh whitepaper: https://bidooh.io/whitepaper/whitepaper.pdf
Modelled on Facebook Ads’ targeting features, this is another shining example of the innovative fusion of the physical OOH industry with online advertising which makes this project so potentially disruptive.
Why Blockchain?
The concept and tech behind this project are truly impressively innovative, however technology involving public cameras and programmatic AI make many of us, especially in the blockchain space, wary of privacy infringement concerns- and rightly so; if you’re like me, the words ‘facial recognition’ inherently ring alarm bells. However, certainly not all use cases of identification technology need be inherently nefarious, as proven by Bidooh’s blockchain-based approach to data collection and management.
Ensuring ultimate operational transparency, and also auditability, all impression information is stored on a transparent ledger- free to access and examine immediately- and all collected demographic data is either instantly anonymised or deleted, thus negating the risk of data misuse or misplacement. This level of ultra-effective targeting and reliable blockchain-powered transparency in the advertising realm is unprecedented, presenting new potentially revolutionary possibilities for the OOH space.
Bidooh’s Team
When evaluating any project in the Wild West of crypto, ensuring that the team has the experience and capability required to carry out the vision they are outlining is crucial. Of course, anybody can write an impressive whitepaper and create a persuasive website; the idea is the easy part, it’s implementing the idea which is difficult. In the case of Bidooh, the team showcases three important factors required for success: ability, size and achievements in abundance.
The pioneers and co-founders behind the project are UK-based Abdul Alim and Shaz Mughal, who have tirelessly nurtured and guided the project on its journey from a seed of an idea to the flourishing next-generation platform existing today. Amidst winning numerous awards for their innovative use of technology, and successfully running multi-location trial, Bidooh has secured a wealth of interest and resulting investors. The most notable of whom is Manchester United F. C. non-executive director Michael Edelson (also an angel investor, venture capitalist and philanthropist) who is also helping to guide Bidooh’s journey as Chairman.
Team snapshot, taken from the Bidooh website: https://bidooh.io/
Bidooh’s team now stands at a healthy twenty-strong as currently visible on their website, plus advisors, each impressive in their own right and contributing a different valuable skillset- refined over Bidooh’s impressive operational journey thus far.
Partners & Expansion Strategy
The team at Bidooh clearly understand the value of active networking, partnerships and continuous real-world deployment of their solution; this fact has allowed the Bidooh project to begin to consistently flourish from its very beginnings.
Bidooh’s partner network is a key component to their growth strategy, and so the team are actively striving to make Bidooh a truly global solution- already covering 5 global territories and showcasing impressive initial results. License agreements have been formalized with partners covering the Czech Republic, Bosnia, Poland and Slovakia, Romania, South Korea and the USA. To date, more than 500 advertisers have signed up for the platform, since November 2017 when Bidooh’s first site went live.
Bidooh's partners as of September 2017, taken from their whitepaper: https://bidooh.io/whitepaper/whitepaper.pdf
With their dynamic and multi-pronged marketing strategy encompassing field sales, media agency cooperation and direct telesales, Bidooh intend to keep this adoption momentum accelerating; currently, the team is forecasting to have attained 8 partners by then end of May 2019 covering 14 territories globally.
The Bidooh project has been designed with operational scale explicitly in mind.
DOOH Token Utility
The DOOH token will be the Bidooh network’s native ERC20 utility token, which will be utilised to enable a range of network functionalities. For advertisers, one DOOH token is representative of a single 10 second slot on a screen of their choosing operating on the Bidooh network. The DOOH token is also utilised within the network to the benefit of the overall community in various ways; community members are rewarded with tokens for vetting advert quality, app users are rewarded for their engagement with adverts which they can then spend at selected retailers, and freelancers are given the opportunity to earn tokens for graphics, copywriting or translation work.
Overall, Bidooh’s token model makes the advertising process hugely more efficient, interactive and rewarding for network participants.
Bidooh’s token sale is currently live now and is due to end on the 30th November (subject to change). More token sale information can be found on the Bidooh website.
Verdict & Summary
Different characteristics of blockchain and other cutting-edge technologies offer various opportunities across industries, many of which serve to enhance- or even completely transform- the very operational mechanics of that space. Bidooh’s impressively innovative tech-based approach to OOH advertising is a glaring example of potentially disruptive innovation in motion.
For advertisers, Bidooh’s innovative combination of easy-to-use platform advertiser interface, AI-powered superior ad targeting, and blockchain-enabled transparent data management has produced an openly accessible, ultra-targeted and verifiably transparent advertising opportunity. Ad viewers are thus presented with vastly more relevant and engaging advertisements, whilst ensuring verifiably secure and transparent data collection due to Bidooh’s blockchain-based data management. Bidooh’s token utility model is designed to facilitate the overall transformation of the OOH advertising experience, making the advertising process vastly more efficient, interactive and rewarding for ecosystem participants.
Crucially, Bidooh’s understanding of the vital importance of active partnerships and networking have seen their operations already begin to flourish- with impressive results thus far. It’s Bidooh’s innovative fusion of online advertising with the physical OOH advertising industry which makes the concept so ingenious and potentially disruptive.
I will be following Bidooh closely on their journey to democratise and revolutionise the out-of-home advertising space.
Have any questions relating to Bidooh? Join their active community on Telegram where you can discuss anything Bidooh-related: https://telegram.me/bidoohio
Learn more at their website: https://bidooh.io/
Bidooh whitepaper, if you want to dig in deeper: https://bidooh.io/whitepaper/whitepaper.pdf
Get connected to Bidooh on social media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bidoohuk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bidoohuk/
NOTE: THIS IS A SPONSORED REVIEW, HOWEVER IT WAS CHOSEN BY MYSELF SPECIFICALLY DUE TO ITS INNOVATIVE POTENTIAL. ALL INFORMATION IS, AS ALWAYS, OBJECTIVE FACT-BASED ANALYSIS.