nib Turns Digital Billboards Into Medical Research Powerhouses

nib is using the computing power of digital billboards to help with vital medical research. Most digital billboards use only half of their CPU’s processing power. So leading Australian health brand nib and advertising agency Dentsu Creative have partnered with Folding@home and Alliance Outdoor to put that remaining 50% to work.

Developed at the University of Pennsylvania, Folding@home is a computer program that helps scientists develop new therapeutic treatments. The program is available to download for anyone who wants to take part and simply runs in the background on volunteers’ home computers, crunching data while they use other programs.

In a world first, nib has worked with Dentsu Creative and media partners to load the Folding@home program onto the computers found inside digital billboards across. The program will use the billboards’ spare processing power to run medical simulations for cancer and Alzheimer’s research, feeding the results back to scientists in America.

 

This wider rollout follows a trial in November, in which the program was loaded onto two billboards in Sydney and Melbourne with support from Alliance Outdoor and its preferred signage partner, Visual Exposure.

This is the first time Folding@home has partnered with an Australian brand and its first ever partnership with a health insurer.

Head of marketing and digital at nib, Chris Donald said, “We want Australians to realise their potential when it comes to health and wellbeing. Leveraging the unrealised potential in the computing power behind our advertising was a novel way to bring this to life.”

Greg Bowman, Professor at University of Pennsylvania said, “We’re thrilled to be working with nib. Using billboards to run medical simulations is something that has never been done before, so we’re very excited to see where this goes.”

Mollie Clyma of Alliance Outdoor said “We’ve loved working with Folding@Home, nib, Dentsu Creative and of course EssenceMediacom for the nib campaign, and look forward to tracking the performance of this technology and how it can continue to evolve partnerships for us in the future.”

This project comes off the back of nib and Dentsu Creative’s 'Potentially amazing' campaign, which launched on September 1st.