The Digital Ink billboard

The coming of digital paper seemed to take forever, but now that it’s here, we’ve seen a veritable explosion of products such as clocks, watches, rollable displays, and more recently, the holy grail we’ve all awaited since we could conceive the possibility, the digital book (the Sony Reader and iRex Iliad). But wait, there’s more! There's another very promising high res, low power display emerging and we’re about to see magink's proprietary digital ink technology used on billboards. Global outdoor advertising company JCDecaux appropriately premiered the new generation of high resolution magink-based digital billboards at the 59th Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday. The magink digital ink billboards are installed at multiple highly trafficked venues in Cannes, including one located adjacent to the Palais des Festivals, the official home of the Cannes Film Festival. The new displays will feature an array of full-motion video advertisements and information on the City of Cannes. The digital ink technology offers full-color, full-motion, high resolution and high contrast images that use ambient light to enhance image quality and visibility -- just like ink on paper. Beyond the world of billboard advertising, magink will also be used with other display applications such as consumer electronic products, in-store point-of-purchase, and promotional displays. Portable devices such as PDA's and mobiles in particular will benefit from the low power consumption offered by magink. Nearly three years ago when we first wrote about magink, CEO Ran Poliakine told us, "magink could take the place of every screen based technology across the board" said Poliakine, "not just e-books where you can download newspapers, magazines and eventually video into a conventional 'book' format, but wallpaper, exterior building facades and countless other applications".

Jean-Charles Decaux, Chairman of the Executive Board of JCDecaux, said: "After years of research and careful consideration, we are prepared to take our most significant steps into the digital display era with magink. We believe magink billboards will provide JCDecaux and our clients with the most reliable digital technology and most dynamic digital displays available today. This pilot program undertaken with magink and its management team is a big first, it will enable us to provide to our customers new schemes for communication."

In 1964, Jean-Claude Decaux invented the street furniture concept, combining public services and advertising, and installed the first bus shelters in Lyon. Now, JCDecaux has more than 80,400 bus shelters in 30 countries. JCDecaux is the number one worldwide in street furniture and airport advertising (153 airports), and the number one in Europe in billboard advertising. The Group has 7,900 employees and is present in 3,400 cities with over 10,000 inhabitants in 46 countries. In 2005, it has generated a revenue of 1,745 million euros. JCDecaux is the only company in the world exclusively dedicated to outdoor advertising and the development of all related activities: street furniture, billboards, transport advertising, and event banners. In 2005, it became the leader in outdoor advertising in China.