Digital Billboards

First: I KNOW this is a not a critical quality-of-life issue. In the grand scheme of things, this is just window dressing.

But the thought occured to me that one of the great ways the folks at Paragon Studios can help generate advertising revenue is to offer space on digital billboards.

I've seen plenty of these in the Northern Atlanta area. Essentially these are super-large plasma screens running screenshows of billboard ads. Each billboard can run several ads for anywhere between thirty seconds and a minute each.

So if NCSoft/Paragon Studios is still interested in generating ad interest, instead of selling out ONE static billboard space per advertiser, why not offer it to FIVE or even TEN per digital billboard?

The great thing about this idea is that the developers ALREADY HAVE THE TEMPLATE for this! The programming for this kind of advertising would be no different than the code used for the tech monitor screens. The only difference would be the size and location and image coding.

So, for instance, you have a 5-image digital billboard in Steel Canyon by the Yellow Line station that has...
Image 1: http://i418.photobucket.com/albums/p...tLitigious.jpg
Image 2: http://i418.photobucket.com/albums/p...-SupreWulf.jpg
Image 3: http://i418.photobucket.com/albums/p...agonRealty.jpg
Image 4: http://i418.photobucket.com/albums/p...GreedyBean.jpg
Image 5: http://i418.photobucket.com/albums/p...ds/SoyChow.jpg

Every 60 seconds the images rotate, so you have different ad for that space. And if they need filler, then they can use the current billboard images, or tap some of the creative minds here.

What do you think guys? (And PLEASE don't be lazy and just say "/signed".)

I would really like this, would be a great way to advertise new superhero movies or new comic books.

I dont however want to see ads for Mc Donalds and things of that nature, they would (IMO) have to stick with game related things.

.... You do know that there WAS ingame advertising, right? And that it didn't work? Because we haven't seen an ad up for like ... almost a year now (? 9+ months?) since there were a total of TWO ads available from the company that they selected.

I very much doubt that the static billboard constructions are anything like the tv sets in the base builder - it's been said very recently "they aren't like that" (I believe it was one of the questions at the comic con panel actually suggesting to import things we can see already, into the base builder). So no, the code doesn't necessarily work that way.

Doublefusion should be a folder in your COH directory. THAT is the advertising company they went with. If youv'e got it on your computer, you've seen the ads - or maybe you missed em. It was a trial, didn't work, didn't generate nearly enough income, though it was far less offensive than it could have been - ... like the way you're suggesting.

Load times in your suggestion would be terrible. Each of the ads in the DF version would load *at character zoning*, and be *different based on location*. So one person who's in California might see something (if they had more than one) different than someone in New York.

What we do have, provided they are either still under licence to use the DF code, is the ability to send them art and have supergroups and events advertised. That was something that lots of people were interested in at the start of the "real ingame ads" discussion. However, I'm not sure that they DO still have the licence, that's something a redname would have to address.

>_> The fact that there have been exactly no ads on those boards for.... what, half a year or more?

Thing is I'm not trying to say that the idea is a failure, I'm saying that the company that they got to handle the whole thing may have not been really "into it" as well as they'd like. Considering the two ads we DID get were... well, half fail and half not really fail, and then nothing at all... They might not have had the right kinds of contacts.

Issue with the whole deal though, is that I don't know whether the *code* for the billboards was something that Paragon wholly owns, or leased through doublefusion, or if it's just something that any company can pick up as freeware.

So even if they don't stick with the company (df) to do ads, they may or may not be able to use that same code in the game to do OUR billboards. I'd LOVE to see our art, ads, supergroup banners, etc in the game. Thing is I just don't know that they're allowed to use the code *without having the official advertising* on them. See what I mean? It'd suck if they HAD to keep some "real ads" in order to keep the code, but I would hope they'd also want to make their own code if that was the case.