CBS To AnchorFree WiFi: WE Own The Ad Billboard, Online AND Off
The municpal wireless “business” is in a state of perpetual flux.
I am tasked with opinining on the “REVOLUTION,” or NOT, in local advertising at the Kesley Interactive Local Media Conference, kicking-off post Thanskgiving in Los Angeles, as a panelist on the closing “big thinkers” panel.
AnchorFree, the self-proclaimed creator of the “world’s largest Hotspot media network,” is a contender for “revolutionary” local honors, I noted earlier in the week.
AnchorFree helps display ads to hotspot locations across the country, framing wi-fi user sessions with good, old fashioned banner ads. AnchorFree creatively positions their standard looking banner ad product as a “AnchorFree Peristent Digital Browser Billboard.”
Web pages that a Hotspot user views showcases the ever-present, AnchorFree Persistent Digital Browser Billboard. With guaranteed top-of-browser placement on each and every page, this premium advertising space gives your message “top-of-mind” presence during each user’s Hotspot session. (And yes, we’ve even made the Persistent Digital Browser Billboard user-friendly, giving Wi-Fi users the opportunity to close the Banner with each page view.)
As the AnchorFree graphic illustrates, though, wi-fi users undoubtedly perceive the AnchorFree banner ads simply as tried and true banner ads overlaying the user experience.
AnchorFree nevertheless positions its service as must-go-to digital billboard infrastructure for old-school, incumbent, offline (big) billboard companies, such as CBS Outdoor Billboards and Displays. AnchorFree co-founder and CEO David Gorodyansky wants AnchorFree to help CBS go digital.
When Gorodyansky told me Tuesday that part of the AnchorFree value propostion, and business model, is to help bring CBS Outdoor and ClearChannel into the world of World Wide Web banners cum billboards, I questionned the interest of CBS and ClearChannel partnering with AnchorFree, when they would be best served by creating their own digital “billboard” business.
Two days later, CBS did indeed unveil its intention to “enhance the assets of CBS Outdoor with new technologies,” such as free wireless internet access, similar to the the AnchorFree model, announcing “CBS Outdoor Billboards and Displays Wired To Create a Massive, Free Wi-Fi HotZone Covering Times Square to Central Park South.”
Did AnchorFree ”inspire” CBS?
CBS says its “CBS Mobile Zone” ad-supported welcome page will showcase hyperlocal information and local businesses are offered free routers to be part of the CBS initiaive. Similarly, AnchorFree touts its “Doorway Page” seen at the beginning of each wi-fi hotspot user’s session and promos “free hotspot routers!” to spur local businesses to join the AnchorFree network.
Publicly traded CBS Corporation, however, has some disruptive ideas of its own, as it edges in on venture-backed startup AnchorFree’s “hotspot media network.” The “light up” midtown Manhattan project is part of a 6-month pilot program with the New York subway system to “test the potential communications capabilities of wi-fi technology.”
CBS Outdoor Billboards is committed to “turning out outdoor assets into next-generation interactive platforms” and seeks to “apply wi-fi capabilities across its outdoor properties globally.”
New York, New York, “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”
CBS is patnering with many Web and technology companies in its flagship Manhattan “CBS Mobile Zone”–Tropos, BIG, Fon, Veoh, Aptilo–but, apparently, not AnchorFree.
Once a local revolution is started, everyone is welcome to join in, even for their own (CBS) account!
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