Piccadilly Lights format to be updated for first time in 10 years
Piccadilly Lights will update its format for the first time in a decade, with advertisers set to get three times as much domination time on the central London 783.5m curved screen from January 2027.
Ocean Outdoor and Landsec announced the changes at a showcase in The Venue, its London event space located under Piccadilly Lights, on Wednesday.
The changes include simplifying the patchwork, increasing advertiser domination time, and allowing greater integration with The Venue.
The familiar patchwork formation will remain, but will be standardised to equal 128sqm panels, reducing the number of artworks required from four to two.
It will also increase the screen area that can show full-motion content from 70% to 100%.
Advertiser domination time will triple from 40 seconds every hour to two 60-second slots every hour.
Advertisers will also be able to freeze the patchwork above the entrance to The Venue to extend brand presence, as well as livestream events and experiences onto Piccadilly Lights.
Nick Shaw, Ocean Outdoor UK CEO, said: “Piccadilly has been at the forefront of advertising for 118 years. This latest evolution reinforces Piccadilly’s place as the cultural heart of modern London.”
Ocean Outdoor took over the contract to manage Piccadilly Lights in 2016 and, in January 2017, switched them off for a nine-month renovation to install the single curved LED screen. The format update will mark ten years since the Piccadilly Lights went dark.
Alongside the announcement, Ocean Outdoor and Landsec commissioned independent research firm Truth Consulting to conduct a study looking at the social amplification of Piccadilly Lights.
It found that a campaign on Piccadilly Lights can drive more than a third of a campaign’s organic digital impressions.
It also found that content captured at the tourist hotspot in the UK capital can deliver 139m organic social impressions in a single month, and that one DOOH campaign can reach up to 107 countries.
The research combined social listening and semiotics, and measured ten campaigns using metrics including brand halo, impressions and views.