Deloitte Digital and Market Gravity, a Deloitte business, have developed outdoor advertisements with gaze-tracking technology at London City Airport, measuring how long people look at advertisements on display.

The collaboration has experimented with static and video content, as well as quizzes, on a media wall at the departures area at London City Airport, which will see 4.7 million passengers travelling through by the end of 2018.

This is the first time this technology has been rolled out in an airport, which Nick Sherrard, managing director at Market Gravity, says takes advantage of 30 minutes to an hour of unscheduled time. “The people travelling through the terminal are often a mix of leisure and business fliers, so they are an attractive group for brands to engage with.”

In its first year of being a Deloitte business, Market Gravity wanted to “create something new and get results over a few weeks of close collaboration with London City Airport,” says Nick. The idea for the project was to bring what we take for granted in the marketing world into the traditional out-of-home model, he explains.

The software provides advertisers with analytics on which media is best to show at different times of day. This allows brands to test and learn

which ads gain the most attention in real-time

, meaning they can adapt their campaigns quickly for maximum impact.

Experimental advertising

The results of the testing show people spend more time watching the content on the media screen when it’s quieter, with engagement falling off by one-third when the space was busier. This proved to be a surprise outcome for the project, as traditionally advertising is sold at a higher rate at busier times.

Quiz-style content, where questions are on the screen for 10 seconds before an answer is shown, performed the best, with engagement of these screens rising by around 10%.

Deloitte Digital and Market Gravity

have also opened a lab within the airport, The Innovation Gateway, to

provide a place for businesses to bring their innovation challenges

, create new ideas to prototype and test with customers in the airport, providing instant results.

The future of innovation in business is enabling entrepreneurial people working with big brands to test and learn with customers, of which advertising is a key part, Nick underlines.

“We are looking to use gaze-tracking technology in our upcoming projects to help advertisers test and learn around content, but also retailers to test and learn around store designs,” he says. “This is another example of us exploring technology with our clients as a platform for creativity. Something we believe is a priority for all future business.”