Global has signed a three-year deal with BT to become the telecommunications group’s outdoor advertising partner on its UK street furniture network, with the digital inventory to be made available on DAX.
The network includes traditional payphones and free Wi-Fi kiosks, with 17,500 traditional telephone boxes for print advertising, 500 ‘BT6′ payphones, and 500 digital street units – which were formerly known as InLinkUK.
As part of the deal, BT will also be able to work with Global on any new digital street products installed in the UK in the future, while Global will introduce news and content from LBC to the units’ screens.
The digital street units will form “a significant part” of Global’s outdoor inventory on its programmatic digital ad exchange, DAX, from April.
DAX, which was first developed to support Global’s radio business with a claimed reach of 133 million listeners worldwide, now gives advertisers the ability to buy digital outdoor campaigns through demand side platforms (DSPs), and as such was recently rebranded from the Digital Audio Exchange to the Digital Ad Exchange.
“We are delighted that after a competitive tender process BT has awarded Global their prestigious outdoor advertising sale contract,” said Stephen Miron, Global’s group CEO.
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“This three year partnership with BT will provide advertisers with many opportunities to access BT’s national street furniture estate based in key locations across the UK, many in very close proximity to major high streets and shopping centres.”
Katherine Ainley, MD of Ventures, BT, added that the deal represents a “milestone” in the “evolution” of the business’s future street strategy.
“Global has extensive experience of working across traditional and digital media for our existing estate, and have demonstrated a compelling vision for how we can work together in the future to innovate and grow our digital street presence.”
Last month BT acquired the entire digital street unit assets of InLink for an undisclosed sum, bringing close to 500 units under full ownership of the company. The state-of-the-art kiosks – which provide wi-fi, calls and phone charging services – were originally created in a partnership between BT, Primesight and Intersection.
Primesight was one of three outdoor businesses acquired by Global in 2019 and subsumed into a single outdoor business, with scale to rival JCDecaux. Global also acquired Exterion Media and Outdoor Plus.
Correction – we incorrectly said Global had acquired Ocean Outdoor in an earlier version of this story. The copy was updated on 5/3/20 at 9am to change this to Outdoor Plus
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