Contour Media, a leading out-of-home (OOH) advertising company in the UAE, has signed an exclusive partnership with drone technology company Skyvertise to offer brands and advertisers in the UAE a share of voice in the skies of Dubai.
This is a first-of-its-kind partnership between the UAE-based OOH advertising company and a cutting-edge drone technology company renowned for its eye-catching drone displays and dynamic aerial advertising.
The partnership opens avenues for brands to take their visual and creative messaging to a highly attentive audience through novel, high-impact, immersive and interactive drone show advertisements.
Skyvertise on immediate availability and easy approvals for drone ads
By dealing with the complex permit application processes, Skyvertise unlocks a pathway for brands working with Contour Media to advertise in the skies above a key cultural and tourist destination in Dubai.
What makes this a truly remarkable partnership is the fact that brands don’t need to wait weeks for approvals. Instead, marketers can go live with their aerial advertising campaigns immediately within as few as three days.
Drone advertising, thus, offers advertisers the agility and flexibility to go live with their creative campaigns on short notice, without having to worry about availability or lengthy approvals processes.
While Contour Media connects brands with their target audiences and bridges the gap between creative, media and how it resonates with consumers, Skyvertise handles the drones from the technology aspects and oversees all the necessary approvals needed for advertisement to light up the skies.
Muyassar Abulkhair, Co-Founder and CEO of Skyvertise, said, “The beauty of drone advertising is that it makes the entire advertising process seamless, so brands can focus on their core messaging, creatives, and how they connect with audiences, while we focus on the approvals.”
Abulkhair added, “We have worked with several brands such as BOTIM, highlighting their brands at great locations in the UAE such as the Dubai Frame. However, what makes this partnership great is that this is not a one-off activation; it is a sustained experiential marketing opportunity. By entering the branded drone advertising space, the partnership with Contour Media now offers brands highly engaged and diverse audience.”
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Contour media on ad effectiveness, cost and ROI of drone advertising
The partnership offers incredible reach, frequency and impressions. The key destination where the drone advertising will be activated welcomes, on average, more than 42,000 visitors per day from across 92 different nationalities.
Brands and advertisers now have the opportunity to capture the active attention of all of these visitors for 15 weekends starting from 15 October, bringing together approximately 600 drones for each advertisement – complete with pyrotechnics and firework capabilities – with each set of ads lasting for 15 minutes each.
Commenting on how the partnership benefits advertisers, Rabieh Adnan, Managing Director of Contour Media, said, “With drone advertising, there’s no doubt that brands garner 100 per cent active attention. This is extremely different from the general OOH, DOOH and fragmented digital media landscape where the quality of attention when the ad is served is much lower. People go to key destinations to enjoy exactly these types of brand experiences. So, in essence, they are already primed for an immersive and memorable brand experience.”
Additionally, apart from the obvious reach, this form of advertising can also guide consumers through the brand journey seamlessly because of its interactive nature.
Adnan explained, “Imagine a client from an on-demand delivery services industry or the banking industry advertising a giant QR code using 600 tiny drones in the sky, offering an exclusive and time-bound discount. Even if 20 per cent of the people who view the drone show lift their phones to scan the QR code, we’re immediately talking about thousands of people being driven to in-app digital traffic, resulting in immediate conversions that can be tracked.”
“Additionally, drone advertising offers brands access to a diverse audience, which includes people across generations, nationalities, behavioural preferences, and at various stages of their ongoing consumer journey,” Adnan added.
In terms of cost effectiveness and the return on investment (ROI) ratio, aerial advertising through drones drives a much higher ROI with immediate impact.
Adnan said, “Drone advertising through the 15 high-impact weekends of high footfall will cost only 30 per cent to 50 per cent compared to the costs of an OOH hoarding on Sheikh Zayed Road. However, the impact is much greater if you consider that brands advertising on Sheikh Zayed Road primarily drive reach, awareness and consideration, while drone advertising can also drive bottom-of-the-funnel conversions.”
Additionally, this is a great opportunity for brands to tap into user-generated content (UGC) and earned influencer marketing, given the novelty of such drone shows – offering earned and organic social media reach beyond the day’s footfall at the key destination without any budgets set aside for media spend.
All in all, this partnership marks a crucial step towards next-generation, tech-driven OOH experiences, reinforcing Contour Media’s position as an innovator in the industry and expanding Skyvertise’s commercial reach into branded drone advertising.
