Vodacom ‘Anti-Hijack Ads’

Project Description:

There are over 800 000 drivers in South Africa that use the navigation app Waze to move around the country. The problem is that the app takes the drivers on the fastest route to their destination, and not the safest. In South Africa, there are over 30 000 hijackings reported in a year. The current solution is street signs that are placed in crime hotspots. Vodacom, South Africa’s largest data and mobile telecommunications company, wanted to find a new way to keep our roads safer, using their wide network coverage and data. We cross-referenced national police data with car-tracker data and historical reports to determine the roads where most hijack incidents occurred. Once identified, we used the data to create a geo-fence of real-time Waze ads, placed around the most dangerous roads. The mobile ads were activated by the driver’s approach, which alerted them of the possible danger ahead. It gave them the option to be rerouted around the crime hotspot without having to change their end destination – all communicated through the most popular navigation app in the country. The efforts were bolstered by using real-time data to deploy live ads to new hijack zones as they were reported – focusing on high-risk periods and times of day.