Interactive billboards are nothing new. The advertising industry has been coming up with new and innovative ways to get your attention when walking past large screens for years. Some let you tweet a message that’ll appear on said screen, others let you manipulate the display with a text message. Over in Sweden, McDonald’s tried something different. First, you go to a specific website on your mobile phone. Your device then asks you if it can use your location. This is used to make sure that it’s indeed you who wants to interact with the billboard and not someone in another city or even another country. Then you’re taken to a simple page that has a slider which you fling up or down that corresponds to a paddle on said interactive billboard. It’s a convoluted way to play pong, that’s for sure, but if you manage to stay alive for 30 seconds then you get a free item of your choosing. Note how effective this is because it involves you standing stationary, staring at an object. When someone stands and stares, instinct makes you want to find out what they’re looking at, and then boom, advertising message delivered!
The video above shows people using the iPhone, but there’s no reason this shouldn’t be able to work on something like Android, webOS, or even Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Most modern browsers support the geolocation of HTML5, though we’re sad to say that Anna, Nokia’s next version of Symbian, doesn’t support geolocation, among other HTML5 features, so those users will be left out of the fast food fun. Anyway, expect to see more companies making use of large and small screens to deliver advertising, news, and other content to you across multiple formats.
Hopefully we’re not going to reach a “Minority Report” like era where ads are a constant part of our lives.