Billboard Monitoring and Surveillance: Viacom Outdoor

Viacom’s Outdoor Advertising Security and Monitoring Solution from VSI Brings Immediate Cost Savings

Vigilo Security International (VSI) developed a billboard monitoring and surveillance solution for Viacom, the world's largest out-of-home media company. Viacom Outdoor, Infinity's outdoor advertising division operates in more than 90 markets, including all 50 of the largest metropolitan markets in the United States, 14 of the 15 largest markets in Canada and all of the 45 largest markets in Mexico.

Viacom employs more than 100 people in North America just to physically travel to each of its billboards each month to check for vandalism, mechanical or structural defects, advertising errors, and product status. If vandalism or damage occurs shortly after a site visit, the damage could remain for weeks, and the lingering damage to Viacom's customers even longer.

In 2003, VSI first completed a proof-of-concept installation of the VSI Billboard Monitoring and Surveillance Solution, a highly scalable wireless system that uses a combination of IP-addressable video cameras and motion detectors together with wireless CDMA technology in order to secure two of the 6,000 Viacom billboards in Michigan. The system streams two video frames per second wirelessly via the cell phone packet network to a VSI server, and sends electronic notifications via email or cell phone using intelligent video analytics to determine if there is movement (which might indicate vandalism) outside of the normal functionality of the outdoor advertisement.

The cost of VSI's system is substantially less than physical monitoring. Further, billboard advertisers have 24/7 access to the status of each of their billboards via the Internet, the first time that outdoor advertisers have been able to verify that they are benefiting from the locations they are paying for without visiting each of them.