NW Systems has provided its Streamdays live camera streaming service to one of the UK‘s leading premium Out Of Home (OOH) inventory owners Forrest Media. Streamdays‘ web cameras provide live views of Forrest‘s entire network of large format LED CityScreens which are located in high profile road-side locations in Glasgow Central, Glasgow Gateway, Edinburgh Central, Edinburgh Gateway, Central Manchester and now in Central Newcastle.
The cameras enable Forrest Media to ensure all CityScreens are working properly and reassure advertisers that their adverts are displaying in accordance with their requirements.
The latest Forrest-owned CityScreen is the largest digital screen in the North-East at 50 square metres. CityScreen Newcastle Central, which is located above the A167 (M) underpass, went live in October 2014. The A167 is the busiest road in Newcastle serving more than 2.9 million road users each month. Forrest owns and manages six CityScreen sites in total, with a further three sites going live in the next few months.
Forrest Media already controls around 60% of the premium OOH advertising market in Scotland and as such is the leading premium OOH media owner north of the border. Forrest Media owns and operates a mixture of premium OOH assets in addition to its flagship CityScreens.
In addition to its CityScreen network, Forrest Media operates a premium OOH portfolio comprising backlit 48- and 96-sheet formats, as well as backlit Mega 6 portraits and LxL displays. Forrest‘s CityScreen LEDs allow full-motion, broadcast quality display of adverts but some roadside locations simply aren’t suitable for digital so Forrest has been very careful in its selection of sites.
Forrest Media decided that its premium CityScreen sites would benefit from Streamdays live camera streaming service for two clear reasons, as Keith Vallance, construction director at the Forrest Group, explained:
“Firstly, our advertisers want the reassurance that the space they have bought is showing on our displays and that the scheduling and quality is accurate. We have also found the Streamdays webcam view is useful for scheduling visits by our maintenance and cleaning teams. The Streamdays service makes it possible for us to continually monitor each CityScreen location and in the unlikely event of any technical issues arising we are able to remedy these quickly and avoid any advertising downtime.”
Streamdays‘ cameras are fixed in secure locations up to 25 metres from the CityScreen displays, providing a live high resolution view looking square on to each display. By delivering 30 images per second, the system broadcasts the ads in real-time onto the web in uncompromised quality.
Frank Crouwel, managing director of NW Systems, summarised:
“Our use of the latest five megapixel network cameras ensures delivery of a detailed view of even the largest screens. The return on investment for DOOH providers is massive as the camera unit is the only new hardware item required on site. These cameras use the same ADSL connection that serves the screen itself. Only a modest monthly hosting package is added to distribute highly reliable live video over the internet. Yet once installed these cameras will deliver valuable real-time information to advertisers and OOH providers for many years with virtually no maintenance as the hardware we select is built to last.”
Read the full Forrest Media Case Study.
