Project: ECOBOARD

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Giant posters and billboards are a major advertising tool which is used all over the world as well as Europe. In Europe alone there are between 2 and 8 million billboards displayed at any given time and this number is constantly growing. The standard billboard is giving an area of nearly 3 square meters. The marketing strategy for billboard advertising is usually 4 week cycles, but the trend is changing, and more and more businesses opt for 2 week cycles, or even less. This means that every 2 weeks, over six million square meters of poster is thrown out. In most cases, due to cutting cost, the paper is not recycled, the ink is not eco friendly, and the glue used is toxic. In addition, these components are combined and they can not be separated easily. Due to this, billboard advertising has a disastrous affect on the environment, and this issue needs to be addressed.

Another important issue in the advertising industry is the need for real-time media. With the internet becoming more and more standard in every household, people are used to getting real-time information. Advertisers need to take this into consideration when planning a marketing strategy for a certain product. There is a real need for a new tool for Real-time Outdoor Media, which is cost effective and environmentally friendly.

The aim of this project is to produce a cost effective and environmentally friendly Real-time Outdoor Media tool which can give the same visual effect as a paper based billboard, but without the use of paper, ink, and glue which pollute our world. Further more, the proposed system would increase the competitiveness of SMEs within the advertising industry by reducing the time and the cost of advert implementation (no need to print).

The final product is proposed to be a pixel based advertising board that uses mechanical means to portray the required image. The pixel based mechanics allows changing the required image.