CONNECT WITH AIRCRAFT TRANSPONDER DATA
Using a special ADSB antenna, we read every aircraft’s transponder data within 200km. Using this data to obtain the planes location, speed, altitude and call-sign, we created a virtual "tripwire" in the sky, triggering our billboards to display our ads every time a British Airways plane flew overhead.
We’ve been asked why we did this when there are already flight data aggregators and websites out there. The reason is because this data often isn’t "live" and can be anything from a few seconds to five minutes old. We needed to know precisely where each aircraft was, because if our ad triggered even a fraction of a second early or too late, the children would be pointing at a clear sky instead of a plane—massive fail!
The ads not only displayed the flight number and where the planes were flying from, but dynamic retail messaging from BA’s servers, displaying targeted copy for each route, showing live pricing, special offers and weather information, all updated on a daily basis.
Each billboard also had its own cloud height sensor, so they had the ability to gauge if it was too cloudy to actually see the planes, and the functionality to switch off if the base cloud height was too low.