i-media запускает ANPR Audiences

UK out-of-home media owner i-media has launched ANPR Audiences, a real-time audience targeting solution that the company says replaces modelled estimates with measured vehicle data across its motorway service station network. The system uses automatic number plate recognition cameras to read plates of vehicles entering sites, then cross-references more than 200 million data points a week across 50+ attributes per vehicle — including make, model and fuel type. i-media reports the approach delivers a deterministic view of drivers without collecting personal data. The pitch is simple: sell the audience, not the site.

How the system works

Partial postcode data, Starcount open banking and behavioural data, and mobile location signals are matched against the plate reads to build audience profiles covering where drivers live, demographics, purchasing habits and travel behaviour. The company states that when enough vehicles from a target audience are observed at a site, advertising aimed at that audience is triggered in real time. i-media delivers a broadcast audience of 6.8 million people per week, and says the system ensures a higher percentage of that audience is relevant.

i-media CEO Jonathan Lewis said: "I've never met a client who wanted to buy an advertising site – what they actually want is the audience it delivers. That's exactly what ANPR Audiences lets us sell for the first time: not a modelled estimate, but a real audience, identified and reached in real time, at scale."

Lloyds Bank's My Car campaign

Lloyds Bank is the first brand to use the solution. The My Car campaign, planned and delivered by Publicis Media, ran across motorway service areas nationwide and was designed to win new customers — not simply retain Lloyds' existing base — while promoting My Car, a feature within the Lloyds app. Vehicles across four target models were identified and matched against open banking data to build a defined audience, triggering creative that was colour-matched to each vehicle model.

Vedad Obradovic, Head of Homes and Transport Marketing at Lloyds Banking Group, said: "In a world where consumers are exposed to thousands of messages every day, relevance is what drives impact… By connecting data and creativity in near real time, we're creating more relevant, engaging, and memorable experiences, and we're excited to be the first client to leverage this new capability from i-media to deliver personalisation at scale."

The launch includes 50+ pre-built audience segments available to activate immediately — from Lloyds Bank customers and EV drivers to Impulse Snackers, Tradespeople and HGV Drivers — alongside the ability to build bespoke audiences from more than 3,000 behaviours and demographics. Brands can also run conquesting campaigns that reach verified customers of competitor or category-adjacent brands, identified through Starcount's open banking data rather than modelled proxies.